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National Observer No. 69 -Winter 2006
Editorial commentNational Observer Costello’s Latest Bouts of Self-Harm If the Coalition loses the next federal election, every government in Australia will be a Labor government, not a cheering prospect if one believes that a country’s political life is healthier for the odd check and balance. John Howard has shown he is adept at working within a variety of checks and balances while still, for the most part, getting his own way; and when he can’t get his way he at least behaves in a dignified and stoical manner, for example whenever two or three Coalition members make it clear they are prepared to cross the floor of the Senate on some measure of which they disapprove, such as the recent asylum-seeker legislation. Mr Howard has a generally good working relationship with the Labor state premiers, and his diplomatic skills in this regard are self-evident. On the other hand Mr Costello, who has generally done a good job as Treasurer (though see John Stone’s analysis of the latest Costello budget, in this issue), has shown himself less than adroit in his manipulation of the political environment. An excellent example is his recent handling of the “revelations” of former Government minister Ian McLachlan regarding Mr Howard’s purported “agreement” with Mr Costello many years ago, when the Liberals were still in Opposition, that Mr Howard would only serve two terms as prime minister and promptly hand over to Mr Costello (as if the party room would tolerate being denied any say in the matter). Try to imagine the scene. Mr Costello says to Mr Howard, back in the mid-1990s, “I’m not sure I can support you for Opposition Leader — let me put it bluntly, I myself want to become prime minister, as soon as possible”. Mr Howard replies, “I see. Well, I respect your forthrightness. Actually, I agree with you, you should be prime minister, Peter, but I don’t think you’re quite ready for that yet, are you? However, if you give me your support now, and later I become the prime minister, then in return I give you this cast-iron guarantee, that I will serve just two terms, then step down, and you can be prime minister, on my say-so, and no-one will dare throw their hat into the ring — I guarantee that too. And all this I solemnly promise on my word of honour.” Many years later, in mid-2006, Mr McLachlan makes his “revelation” and Mr Costello at once confirms it. “Yes, that was the solemn promise — the prime ministership, which as everyone knows is in the gift of the prime minister of the day, was solemnly promised to me way back then and not delivered. I never said anything when the date of agreed delivery passed with nothing happening, but I was very sore about it, and now I’m absolutely fed up with all this waiting. He promised!” Well, words to that effect. No doubt because he is so sore about it, Mr Costello now goes into spoiling mode, which seems increasingly to be his “default position”. In his own state of Victoria an election looms. The new Liberal leader, Mr Ted Baillieu, will be launching his campaign within a very few months. He will then have his first real chance to display his leadership credentials. But never mind about waiting to see how Mr Baillieu performs in the first few days of the campaign—Mr Costello proceeds to undermine him right now, on no sufficient evidence that Baillieu lacks anything as a leader. In a country where the Liberal Party desperately needs to swing at least one state its way, Mr Costello sets out to lengthen the odds against a Liberal victory in his own state of Victoria, at a point when in any case there is no time to change the Victorian Liberal leadership once again. It is an extraordinary action that reveals the level of pique and animus (not even self-serving, just instinctual and quite self-destructive) that drives Mr Costello, for Costello epitomises the driven man — to use a cliché that in this case fits perfectly — driven by (he says) “the desire to serve Australia”, but more obviously by a self-blinding, self-harming arrogance, and a self-reducing petulance. Although most Australians respect Costello’s achievements as Treasurer, with regard to the Liberal leadership he has become a laughing-stock, the worst fate that can befall a would-be leader. Mr Howard has displayed remarkable restraint in the face of this sort of thing, when he has a very handy rottweiler in the shape of Malcolm Turnbull who could be given the nod at any time to inflict damage.
Israel’s Disastrous War in South Lebanon One can blame Hezbollah for many things, and they are not popular among wide sections of the Lebanese people including the Christians and the Druze, but they are a respectable force for social action in southern Lebanon, which accounts for their popularity among the Lebanese Shi’ites, and they know how to fight. The repeated statements from Israel and the United States to the effect that “Hezbollah must disarm” ring hollow because Hezbollah has not been defeated. There is justification for Hezbollah’s claim that it was they who forced Israel to pull out of southern Lebanon (though not completely) a few years back. Their recent provocative action in capturing two Israeli soldiers within Israel while killing a number of other Israeli soldiers in the operation was an in-your-face response to what the Israelis were doing just then in Gaza and the West Bank, where they actually outdid Hezbollah by kidnapping dozens of members of the (Hamas) Palestinian government, an easier operation, because these prisoners were civilians, not soldiers. The Hezbollah raid was a stunning thing and the Israeli government had to respond to it with heavy force if it were to retrieve face. It is almost as if the Hezbollah raid had been designed not so much to secure the freedom, in a prisoner-of-war exchange, of hundreds of long-time Hezbollah prisoners in Israel, as to provoke an unpopular and inevitably unsuccessful Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah have all the strategic advantages. When after several weeks the Israelis halted their offensive they did so because their tanks and tank-crews were being destroyed by advanced anti-tank missiles Hezbollah had in profusion. If the advance had not been halted, Israel would have lost many more tanks. It was this, more than the rain of Hezbollah rockets on northern Israeli cities, that turned the tide against the Israeli army in southern Lebanon. The result has been catastrophic for the morale of the Israeli army, with junior and even senior officers and men criticising the conduct of the war, charging the minister of defence and the prime minister with treasonable incompetence. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is all but finished in that role. Both he and his defence minister have lost credibility and, as if that weren’t enough, Olmert faces legal problems that could undo him anyway. Mr Howard has rightly refused to contemplate sending any Australian contingent to participate in the mainly European peace-keeping force being assembled for deployment in southern Lebanon. The ground-rules there are going to be blurred at best. Better to keep out. Meanwhile, every day the need for a comprehensive solution to the Palestinian problem becomes more urgent. Unfortunately the present American administration cannot or will not achieve it (and it can only be achieved by a change of policy and massive pressure). However, it is looking increasingly likely that the next American administration, whether Democrat or Republican, will achieve this objective in America’s own self-interest, and the Palestinians will be the big winners.
West Papua Obviously it would be against the interests of Australian military security for Indonesia to fragment. Indonesia is not a natural geographical or ethnic entity and it has no unifying identity apart from the historical one. The alternative to a strong Indonesia, however, is a number of unstable and conflict-ridden minor states haemorrhaging a potentially massive number of refugees from ethnic and religious conflicts that at present are kept in some kind of check. It is only self-hating Australians who would want to see this eventuality, though there are undoubtedly quite a few of those. It is argued by some that because West Papua was not part of the original post-war Indonesia (though it was part of the Dutch East Indies), and because it has everything in common with East Papua and practically nothing in common with the rest of the Indonesia of which it forms a part, we should recognise these realities and respect the testable will of the West Papuan people, who were never given a free and supervised vote on their incorporation into Indonesia; or that we should at least be neutral in the matter. In fact, we should consider our own strategic and defence interests first, work closely with Indonesia while mediating to some extent, with the aim of securing an acceptable long-term solution of the problem such as a far more thorough-going, Acehnese-style autonomy agreement, which of course has yet to prove that it works in Aceh. What we cannot sensibly do is recognise, even de facto, the West-Papuan independence movement by accepting the asylum rights of its fighters, because to do that is to deny the de jure territorial integrity of Indonesia — close to a declaration of war on our neighbour. That we have already helped to detach one piece of Indonesia is not automatically an argument for helping to detach other pieces. We should work to keep Indonesia patched together while influencing its government towards a more confederal system of national administration.
National Observer No. 69 - Winter 2006
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