Socialist Party Australia - "Howard's not invincible" - bourgeois journalist fret over government crisis

Behind the high polls, the Federal government is directionless with growing anger from ordinary people on Medicare and higher education. Only the uselessness of the Labor Opposition is keeping Howard ahead. This article from Murdoch's Australian (1st September 2003) shows the fear of the more far-sighted bourgeois journalists of a rapid collapse in support for the government.

Glenn Milne: Libs losing their security blanket

September 01, 2003

BEHIND the immediate impact of the confected Abbott-Hanson affair in the past week, the smarter members of John Howard's backbench have begun to detect something else about the Government: a dangerous sense of drift and complacency.
Let it be said at the outset. Tony Abbott has copped a bum rap. But bum rap or not, the Government's response to the media frenzy surrounding Pauline Hanson's tough sentence has exposed other deeper, more strategically important, weaknesses.
This is a cumulative worry. Senior Liberal MPs look to Howard's fortunes over the past few weeks and see a sorry pattern – political diversions which have exposed more fundamental truths about Howard's character and MO, which, combined, are beginning to provide Labor with valuable and long-awaited ammunition.
Count those diversions: first ethanol, then Wilson Tuckey, and latterly Abbott and Hanson. One strain, however, links them all. The increasing propensity of the Prime Minister to cut and dice the truth.
In the case of ethanol, it was Howard's refusal to admit a key meeting with Liberal Party donor and businessman Dick Honan, who later benefited from hefty government subsidies.
Tuckey should have been sacked on even a bush lawyer's reading of Howard's ministerial code of conduct over his attempts to use his office to pressure the South Australian police minister into dropping a traffic fine against his son.
While continuing to defend the code, Howard has now abandoned any notions of honour or principle when it comes to standards of ministerial conduct. All that matters is the political judgment – whether jettisoning a minister is going to do more damage than keeping them.
And finally Abbott. The Workplace Relations Minister has been the most forthright player in this episode. He disagreed with Hanson and her policies and went after her. His methods were legal. His guiding principle, the maintenance of the integrity of the electoral system, sound.
Where Abbott got himself into trouble was some historical economy with the truth about exactly when he set up his trust to bring Hanson down through the courts. And some opportunistic reporting by The Sydney Morning Herald that led to the impression Abbott had hushed up his efforts.
Far more damaging to the Government in the long term has been Howard's approach to the truth in this matter in both word and deed. First to the word. Asked last Friday week whether he knew of any Liberal Party funds being used to target Hanson, Howard answered "no". Technically, as is now usual with the Prime Minister, the answer was correct. But of course, as has now been revealed, Howard had known since September 1998 about Abbott's trust fund. But for reasons best known to himself, he did not explain this.
When the issue of the Abbott trust fund burst upon the scene again early last week, Howard was forced to admit he had known about it. At the very least he was left looking conspiratorial and a purveyor of half-truths. As to his deeds; well the general public is entitled to ask why Howard was schmoozing Hanson publicly while allowing one of his then junior ministers to raise a trust fund to bring her down.
If anyone is in doubt he had Hanson's lipstick on his collar, remember the private dressing down the PM gave to Peter Costello over Costello's unilateral and courageous announcement in 1998 that he'd be putting Hanson last on his electorate "how to vote" card.
In the end, it was Costello who was right and Howard who was wrong on Hanson. The proof was the subsequent Queensland election where the Liberals exchanged preferences with One Nation. The net result: 11 Hanson supporters won seats, the Coalition Government was swept from office and Labor's Peter Beattie has been there ever since.
So, on three issues on the trot – ethanol, Tuckey and Hanson – Howard has not performed with his usual deftness. He has looked vulnerable. And now, sense some senior Liberals, for the first time in a long time so does the Government.
What Howard has lacked through these three events has been the cover of national security issues. The Man of Steel has been stripped of his Superman suit. Says one Liberal MP: "Without [national security] it becomes immediately clear we don't really have a third-term, let alone a fourth-term, agenda."
What's also clear is that the enclave of complacency within the Government is Howard's power base; the class of 1996 MPs. Despite Howard's constant warnings many of them obviously believe Simon Crean is unelectable.
How else to explain their increasingly constant breakouts that damage the Government? Alby Schultz has broken ranks on Telstra privatisation (likewise the Nationals' Kay Hulls – the Nats too have to be counted as Howard supporters). Peter Lindsay got the public wobbles on the war in Iraq and Trish Draper is intent on putting an internally divisive private members bill into the parliament banning the burning of the Australian flag as a form of political protest. Not even Howard supports it.
Ironically, given Howard's decision to stay on, it's Costello's backers who continue to land punches on the ALP and the Government's political opponents. Christopher Pyne – who ought to be a minister – continues to effectively blast away at Labor's hard man Mark Latham, during their regular jousts on the ABC's Lateline. Together with Tony Smith, he combined to comprehensively wedge Labor over its wavering support for Israel in the Middle East, forcing Crean into some much-needed public repair work with Australia's Jewish community. And it was George Brandis who almost single-handedly neutered Labor's Senate inquiry into children overboard.
Inevitably, if the present sense of drift deepens, Costello's people will look at the behaviour of the Howard camp and think: "Why bother?" Says one Liberal: "If we think Medicare and higher education aren't starting to bite out there, we're kidding ourselves. And no one's doing anything about it."
In The Australian's weekend magazine on Saturday, my colleague Matt Price catalogued the rise and rise of Labor frontbencher, Julia Gillard. Gillard served the Victorian Opposition and witnessed the remarkable demise of the seemingly unassailable Jeff Kennett. The lesson: "Howard's not invincible," she says. "And when things fall apart they fall apart quickly."
More and more smart Liberal MPs are starting to agree.
Glenn Milne is chief political correspondent for the Seven Network