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

we couldn’t have any banks in the top fifty unless I overturned the four pillars policy,’ Costello says now. ‘But of course, I did not allow the mergers and now we have four banks in the top ten, as all the others have fallen away.’48 Costello’s refusal to overturn Keating’s restrictions meant that the four pillars policy became an entrenched bipartisan position, and Australia is the better for it.

Afterwards

When the Liberal Party was defeated at the 2007 election with a swing of 5.4 per cent and the loss of twenty-two seats, Costello was widely tipped to take the leadership role that he had coveted since at least 1999. Howard had become the first prime minister since Stanley Bruce to lose his seat, and he would have retired from the leadership in any event. There is no question that the Liberal Party would have turned to Costello to lead its efforts to rebuild. Costello, however, had different plans. The day after the election, he announced that he would not be a candidate for either leader or deputy leader of the party, and would instead pursue opportunities in the ‘commercial world’.

Costello’s calculations were transparent and understandable. The Liberal Party had had numerous opportunities while in government to ask Howard to vacate the field and invite Costello to rejuvenate the party. Having now been turfed from office, Costello decided that since the Liberal Party had not wanted him to lead in government, he was under no obligation to lead in opposition. Another factor was that the road back to government would likely be hard and slow, and there was no guarantee that the party would stick with Costello through the entire period. As it was, the Coalition would churn through two leaders before the third led a return to government six years later.

What would have happened had Costello assumed the Liberal leadership in 2007? It is my view—a view that I know many of my colleagues share—that if Costello had been leader of the Liberal Party in 2010, the Gillard government would most likely have been defeated. But it was not to be. Costello remained in parliament as a backbench MP. Brendan Nelson’s troubled tenure as leader of the opposition prompted regular speculation that Costello would launch a challenge, but in June 2009, the former treasurer announced he would not be contesting the next federal election. Four months later, he declared that he was bringing forward his retirement. He resigned from the House of Representatives on 19 October.

The Rudd government appointed Costello to the board of guardians of the Future Fund, which Costello had created. In 2012, the fund’s chair, David Murray, indicated to the government that he wished to retire. While the majority of the board may have favoured Costello as the new chair, this would have been a bridge too far for the Labor government, which instead appointed respected businessman David Gonski, the man who had originally been asked to lead the search for a new chair. (Costello would finally gain the chairmanship in February 2014, accepting a five-year term.)

Costello then took up a role as managing partner of BKK Partners, a boutique investment bank that advises on corporate acquisitions. In 2009 he published The Costello Memoirs, which was in many ways half a memoir and half a polemic, which argued (in retrospect) for a managed transition to himself as prime minister during the course of the Howard government. It sold very well.

The tradition of post-government rivalry between former prime ministers and treasurers over legacy issues has continued with Howard and Costello. Howard’s own successful memoirs, which are much longer than Costello’s, as befits a longer political career, were released in 2010. In them, Howard refers to Costello as the best treasurer in Australian history and praises him for his command of detail during the implementation of the GST. However, he also criticises Costello’s alleged elitism and argues, with some credibility, that Costello had seen the leadership of the Liberal Party as some sort of right and had tried to publicly position Howard in terms of a decision to retire. Costello hit back, accusing Howard of refusing to take responsibility for the defeat of the government in 2007.

A more surprising argument was the one that exploded publicly between Costello and Kroger in 2012, ending their friendship. Kroger had suggested to Howard and Costello that they be joint guests of honour at a large event to raise funds for Costello’s successor in the seat of Higgins, Kelly O’Dwyer. Kroger subsequently claimed that Howard had agreed, but that Costello had refused to share the stage with the former prime minister. He accused Costello of unjustified bitterness and of plotting to return to parliament and take the Liberal leadership. Costello denied this and in turn accused Kroger of bitterness over the Senate preselection defeat of his former wife, Helen Kroger.

Costello writes regular columns for the News Corp tabloids The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun, in which he is mostly (but not always) supportive of the policies of the Abbott government. In 2014 he used one such column to caution Abbott not to increase the GST or broaden the base of the tax.

In 2008 Costello was appointed chairman of the World Bank’s Independent Advisory Committee on anti-corruption measures.

An Evaluation

What are we to make of the tenure of Australia’s longest-serving treasurer? Howard described him during the term of his government as the best treasurer in Australia’s history, fully believing this to be the case, although he was also certainly aware of the political benefits that accrued to himself and to his government if this judgement was widely held. At the other end of the spectrum, former Treasury secretary John Stone, angry at the lack of more-serious personal income tax cuts during Costello’s term, has described him as the worst treasurer that he has observed. Do either of these arguments hold up? No.

It is very hard to find any evidence to support Mr Stone’s conclusion on Costello, so not much more can be said