Fed: Power is everything - why Howard isn't quitting

AAP General News (Australia)
08-03-2006
Fed: Power is everything - why Howard isn't quitting

By Doug Conway, Senior Correspondent

SYDNEY, AAP - Unlike benevolent billionaires, who remain immensely rich despite giving
away vast sums of money, politicians are not noted for relinquishing what they spend their
lives trying to acquire - power.

Philanthropy does not exist in politics, as Peter Costello has discovered the hard way.

John Howard's decision this week to seek a fifth federal election victory, a feat achieved
only by seven-times winner Sir Robert Menzies, comes as a disappointment to few and a
surprise to none.

Without prime ministerial power, politicians cannot make their mark on history, cannot
shape the nation in the image they believe best suits it.

Rarely do they yield power, especially when they have sought it as tenaciously as John
Howard, who won it despite declaring his own leadership ambitions dead after being dumped
by his own party in the 1980s.

Australian prime ministers have generally had to be dragged kicking and screaming from
office, if not by the electorate then by their own parliamentary colleagues or the grim
reaper.

Menzies stands as the supreme example of one who walked away of his own accord.

Then again, what reason had he for staying?

He already had governed for almost a generation, and back in the mid 1960s a retirement
age of 71 (which makes him still our oldest serving PM) was seen as way above and beyond
the call of public duty.

John Howard is now nudging his way towards Menzies territory, a feat once considered
unrepeatable.

If he beats Kim Beazley again, he will surpass Bob Hawke's four election victories.

And if he serves the full term, he will have governed Australia for 14 years, just
three shy of his political hero, Menzies.

Prime ministers seem to acquire a taste for power, and have a habit of trying to retain
it as long as they possibly can.

Three have died in office - Joseph Lyons in 1939, John Curtin in 1945 and Harold Holt
in 1967, the latter in a drowning accident.

Occasionally, but not often - Australian voters are notoriously loathe to implement
change - the electorate tips an incumbent PM out of office, as it did to Paul Keating
in 1996 in favour of Mr Howard.

Sometimes the PM's own party decides enough is enough, as Labor did when Mr Keating
ousted Mr Hawke in 1991 at the second attempt, despite claiming to have had "only one
shot in my locker".

In a unique twist to the party-room vote, Holt's successor John Gorton voted himself
out of office in 1971 after a challenge to his leadership was tied 33-33.

But no such challenge looms to Mr Howard, especially now that he has forced Mr Costello
to back down and publicly accept the status quo.

Ironically, it seems Mr Costello's decision to air claims of a 1994 leadership handover
pact stiffened Mr Howard's resolve to stay in the top job.

Mr Howard sounded out his party, and he didn't need his hearing aid to make sense of
the sonar - the Liberals want him to stay because they judge him to be their best chance
of retaining power.

Bob Hawke was much the same; when it came to the crunch he dug his heels in, despite
having entered into the formally witnessed Kirribilli pact on ceding power to Mr Keating.

History shows prime ministers are recalcitrant in the extreme when it comes to stepping down.

But when someone tries to lever them out they can become downright mulish.

AAP dc/cjh/nf/bwl

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