cant get the link to come up. I’ll google AWB and see what shows up.
The wheat deal. Now I got it.
It’s not about AWB, it’s about “what caused it” :
SYDNEY — British Conservative Enoch Powell once famously observed: “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure.” Well, here’s an Australian version of the same idea: “In the end, politics will get you. Politics will always get a politician. A politician can no more rise above and beyond politics than a doctor can rise above and beyond medicine. In the end, it reaches and it grabs you. You can’t walk free.”
That was Peter Costello, Australia’s long-serving finance minister and John Howard’s long-suffering heir apparent. He was recalling the political demise of John Hewson, the conservative Liberal party leader and presumptive prime minister, who lost the “unloseable election” of 1993 to Paul Keating, the much-despised Labor prime minister. Mr. Costello might have been talking about his leader today. For Mr. Howard’s career is ending in failure, if ever one did, and there is no way now that he can “walk free.”
That’s right. The 12-year-old government of John Winston Howard — Australia’s second longest serving prime minister and patron saint of conservatives in the Antipodes — faces political annihilation this Saturday. So much so that the 68-year-old Houdini of politics down under is in danger of losing the very seat he has held for nearly 35 years. It was not supposed to end like this.
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That was back then — March 2006. The public’s admiration and respect for him has today turned into boredom or, in some cases, outright hostility. Words such as “sad,” “petty,” “arrogant,” “desperate,” “tired” and “out-of-touch” are freely used to describe him. Economic growth is now so strong that the nation’s central bank keeps hiking interest rates, aggravating many swing voters who are mortgaged to the hilt. In conservative circles, there is much sighing and shaking of heads.
If ever there were a political conundrum, this is it. Australia is the envy of the industrialized world. Unemployment, at 4.2%, is at historic lows; commodity exports are booming; and Aussies are fat and happy. Pace Tony Blair’s 1997 campaign theme, things can hardly get better. And yet Aussies are about to throw out a colossus. Why?
Well, blame the Powell-Costello theory of the inevitability of let-down. If political heavyweights — from Woodrow Wilson to Margaret Thatcher — could not survive the epidemic of disappointment that has raged through the profession for decades, why should the Australian Prime Minister escape their fate? Of course, Mr. Howard has had plenty of chances to cut off his political life at a happy juncture. For instance, when it was revealed last year that he, in late 1994, did a deal to hand the party leadership to Mr. Costello after a term and a half of his prime ministership, he was as stubborn as a mule. Like Tony Blair at the peak of his powers, Mr. Howard refused to pass the torch to his patient and loyal deputy. And like Mr. Blair, he missed a grand opportunity to go out on top.
That was back then — March 2006. The public’s admiration and respect for him has today turned into boredom or, in some cases, outright hostility. Words such as “sad,” “petty,” “arrogant,” “desperate,” “tired” and “out-of-touch” are freely used to describe him. Economic growth is now so strong that the nation’s central bank keeps hiking interest rates, aggravating many swing voters who are mortgaged to the hilt. In conservative circles, there is much sighing and shaking of heads.
If ever there were a political conundrum, this is it. Australia is the envy of the industrialized world. Unemployment, at 4.2%, is at historic lows; commodity exports are booming; and Aussies are fat and happy. Pace Tony Blair’s 1997 campaign theme, things can hardly get better. And yet Aussies are about to throw out a colossus. Why?
Well, blame the Powell-Costello theory of the inevitability of let-down. If political heavyweights — from Woodrow Wilson to Margaret Thatcher — could not survive the epidemic of disappointment that has raged through the profession for decades, why should the Australian Prime Minister escape their fate? Of course, Mr. Howard has had plenty of chances to cut off his political life at a happy juncture. For instance, when it was revealed last year that he, in late 1994, did a deal to hand the party leadership to Mr. Costello after a term and a half of his prime ministership, he was as stubborn as a mule. Like Tony Blair at the peak of his powers, Mr. Howard refused to pass the torch to his patient and loyal deputy. And like Mr. Blair, he missed a grand opportunity to go out on top.
And yet Mr. Howard, after seeing off four Labor leaders, succumbed to hubris and underestimated his new opponent Kevin Rudd. The 50-year-old Labor leader is a nerdy Mandarin-speaking former diplomat in boxy spectacles who reminds colleagues of the smart arse chap at school who always knew the answers to the teacher’s questions, and would delight in telling his classmates so. Yet he has nevertheless appealed to Middle Australia precisely by mimicking Mr. Howard’s agenda, even styling himself an “economic conservative” and copycatting the Prime Minister (just as David Cameron did to Mr. Blair) on virtually everything from his support for big income tax cuts to his opposition to gay marriage. This is hardly surprising, for the most notable political success stories of recent times have been of center-left politicians moving to the right.
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Basically, Rudd “pulled a Clinton” of 1992. Hillary will be doing the same focus-pocus here after she wins nomination. The left will know it’s baloney and will vote for her, but she’ll try to get some of the middle class that was disenchanted with Republicans in 2006, and is ready to “get fooled again” by Clintons and Democrats... And so, round and round it goes...