The Money Men by Chris Bowen (superbooks4u .txt) 📕

responsibility for policy successes. This, of course, is not unusual—witness Fraser–Howard and Hawke–Keating as rather spectacular examples of the same phenomenon. The Howard–Costello post-government dynamic is unusual, however, because they disagree about how much they disagree. Howard has emphasised that they worked together as an effective team, writing that the ‘real key to the economic success of the Howard Government was the close working relationship between Peter Costello as Treasurer and me’, and that ‘Costello and I agreed on all the main economic issues.’1 Costello has a different recollection, telling journalist Peter Hartcher: ‘I had big fights with Howard all the time, big fights.’ Hartcher concludes that ‘at the heart of the Howard Government’s management of the Australian economy was a raging, unending argument. The two most senior figures in the Government were in perpetual conflict about how the nation’s finances should be structured.’2

Howard and Costello did argue about spending initiatives versus tax cuts. However, an objective reading of the history of the government tends more to Howard’s side of the argument than Costello’s: they were more in agreement on big questions than they were in conflict. The main disagreement between them was not about economics but about leadership, and this conflict was largely subterranean, with the two of them rarely expressing their feelings and intentions to one another.

Howard and Costello worked well together on their government’s most significant economic reform: the introduction of the GST. Howard was the driving force behind the government embrace of a GST, completing a task he had begun twenty years earlier when he was treasurer. But the substantial task of developing the detailed implementation plan for the GST fell to Costello, a task to which he brought his considerable intelligence and his barrister’s ability to master a brief. He had no choice: he knew that if he was not across the detail of the proposal, it would potentially be fatal to the tax-reform project, and to his career.

Beginnings

Peter Costello was born into a Melbourne family that was ‘comfortable but not privileged’.3 His father Russell fought in World War II, and on his return home he took advantage of a Chifley government scheme that enabled ex-servicemen to be reskilled, receiving training as a secondary teacher. Peter, born in 1957, was the middle child of the family, with his brother Tim arriving before him and his sister Janet four years after him.

Religion was important to the Costello family, including his mother Anne, and the rhythms of the different branches of Protestantism would remain of interest to Costello as he got older. Russell had been a Methodist lay preacher before converting to the Baptist Church. Russell’s brother Chris was a Catholic and refused to attend the wedding of Russell and Anne because it took place in a Baptist place of worship. Anne’s father was an Anglican and her mother a Presbyterian.

As a 15-year-old, Costello handed out how-to-vote cards for Andrew Peacock in Kooyong at the 1972 federal election. This had been organised by his father, who was a dedicated Liberal voter and had contacts in the party. By 1975 Costello was old enough to cast a vote for the Liberal Party in the House of Representatives, but he voted for the dripping-wet Liberal Movement (a breakaway organisation with more-moderate policies) in the Senate to protest the blocking of supply by Malcolm Fraser, of which he did not approve.

Peter attended Carey Grammar School at the same time as his father taught there and did well, qualifying to study medicine at Monash University, but he decided to pursue law at Monash instead. Costello was attracted to student politics. He convinced the Evangelical Union, in which both he and his brother Tim were active, to lift a ban on political involvement by members, and he successfully ran for the student body on a ‘Christian Reform’ ticket.

The Monash student body had been at the forefront of the anti–Vietnam War movement and was regarded as radical in the mid-1970s. Indeed, Costello was disgusted by a student blockade of visiting prime minister Fraser in 1976. In October of that year, he ran for the chair of the Monash Association of Students as the standard-bearer of a broad anti-socialist coalition that included the Labor Right, Liberals, evangelical Christians and Jewish students. Costello used his position to insist that the student journal become more mainstream, and he vetoed the publication of radical anti-Israel articles. His refusal to allow the use of student funds to finance an alternative left-wing journal called Piranha prompted a fellow student to assault him; Melbourne newspapers carried pictures of the injured Costello.

There has been much conjecture over the years about Costello’s political leanings during his time in student politics. What is clear is that he led a team of the moderate centre, which encompassed both right-wing Labor and Liberal students. He was not a member of any political party, but he did stay true to his family’s Liberal roots. He even developed a close friendship with a leading member of the Australian Liberal Students Federation who was also a fellow Monash student, Michael Kroger, although he kept the friendship low-key in order to keep his broad coalition of support viable. He once attended a weekend retreat organised by the NSW Right of the Labor Party at the urging of fellow activist and friend Michael Danby, who would go on to become the Labor member for Melbourne Ports in the House of Representatives. It is possible to conclude that this was more about satisfying his own curiosity as well as keeping his broad coalition happy with his even-handed approach, rather than being a serious flirtation with Labor politics.

Costello helped organise a campaign against the radical-dominated Australian Union of Students, in league with fellow Liberal students Tony Abbott and Eric Abetz. It was during this campaign, in 1979, that he met University of Sydney student Tanya Coleman. Tanya’s father, the NSW Liberal leader Peter Coleman, had just lost his seat in a Neville Wran–dominated election, or ‘Wranslide’; the same fate would befall