Moderates Fight Back

by Glenn Milne - The Australian

Yesterday's stunning victory by Petro Georgiou in the Liberal preselection for Kooyong represents both a repudiation and a reprieve for John Howard. This dual assessment is made in terms of the values and policies of the Liberal Party, on the one hand, and the leadership positioning that looks beyond the Howard ascendancy, on the other.

First to the leadership implications. The most obvious point to make is that Georgiou's win, given he is the most prominent representative of the moderate wing of the Liberal Party, has strengthened Peter Costello's hand in his home state of Victoria.

Costello supported Georgiou for a complicated mix of factional and ambiguous local reasons. But nevertheless he did, powerfully underlining that support by turning up in person at the preselection ballot. This is important for two reasons: Howard and Alexander Downer.

Georgiou's opponent was the intelligent, young and articulate Josh Frydenberg. Despite having his backside whipped by Georgiou 62-22, the biggest margin Georgiou has achieved in four preselection challenges, Frydenberg will one day be an important federal MP for the Liberals. He has worked for Howard and Downer in recent years. Despite protestations that he was a centrist candidate, Frydenberg was undoubtedly viewed as the champion of the Liberal Right. His principal sponsor was seen as Downer, with Howard as seconder.

In that context Kooyong became a proxy battle between Costello on the one hand and Howard and Downer on the other. Again, despite the Foreign Minister's private hands-off protestations, yesterday's preselection battle was looked at within sections of the Government as the first test of his authority beyond his home power base of South Australia.

In other words, Downer's opponents viewed this contest as the Foreign Minister's initial attempt to project influence nationally, with a view, post-Howard, to winning the Liberal deputy leadership under Costello. Or even perhaps the ultimate leadership prize. Downer has previously denied any such ambition to this columnist. While accepting such denials, perceptions are everything in politics and there is a large body of opinion inside the Liberal Party room that refuses to accept Downer's assurances. That opinion was abroad yesterday.

Behind the scenes Downer's obvious qualities are quietly paraded by Howard who at the very least sees his fellow right-wing warrior as a foil to Costello's ambitions, and at most promotes him as a possible future contender for the Liberal crown.

During the Kooyong preselection campaign Howard stuck to the eminently sensible line that a leader always supports his sitting members, a lesson Kim Beazley might well have taken note of in the run-up to Simon Crean's Hotham preselection. But while Howard stuck to the central mantra, every time he was asked about Frydenberg he managed just a touch of boosterism.

For example, last month he said: "I know Mr Frydenberg ... he is a very able person. He did work for me at one stage and I certainly appreciate his abilities. [But] I support all of my sitting members and I would never do anything in a preselection campaign to undermine a sitting colleague."

That's not how the Right saw matters. For them it was an under-the-radar inducement to dump Georgiou. So yesterday Georgiou quashed Frydenberg. Ergo Costello quashed Downer and Howard.

If you still don't believe this to be true, consider the intervention of the Minister for Ageing, Santo Santoro. Santoro, a Queensland senator, is said to have privately declared at the time of his Senate nomination that he wanted to go to Canberra to be the national organiser for the Right of the Liberal Party. "I want to be the Noel Crichton-Browne of Queensland," he allegedly told fellow Liberals, referring to the notorious West Australian Liberal powerbroker.

Santoro, a long-time supporter of Howard, was promoted into the ministry in the most recent reshuffle. And during the Georgiou-Frydenberg contest he came out publicly for Frydenberg. Santoro is now widely seen within the federal Liberal Party caucus as a self-appointed factional sponsor of Downer. Those who would know say has convinced the Foreign Minister he has effective control of the Queensland division in the event of any vote on the deputy leadership - and, dare it whisper its name, the leadership itself. How complicit Downer is in this is unclear.

But could Santoro's self-assessment of his power reach be a chimera? Because of his brutal factional tactics in Queensland it's estimated he has a "bad relationship" with three-quarters of federal Liberal MPs and senators. Of that number, it's said, two-thirds actually hate him and another one-third would never allow themselves to be influenced by him.

While Santoro did undoubtedly hold sway in Queensland for a time, in the past month in at least four internal state ballots, including one for a party vice-presidency, Santoro has been on the losing end. Says one close observer of the process: "It's the first time since John Herron [a former minister and Howard confidante] resigned as party president in 2002 that Santo or his loyalists do not control the Liberal Party organisation in Queensland. And Santo's intervention in Kooyong cost more votes for Frydenberg than it won."

The accusation against Santoro, therefore, is this: in terms of Downer's future ambitions, he has sold the Foreign Minister a numbers' pup when it comes to the votes of Queensland federal MPs he claims to control. And so it was in Kooyong, say Georgiou's supporters. Santoro brought the Foreign Minister's message stick to Victoria and it was comprehensively broken.

This failure underlines the geographic alignment that now prevails in terms of the future leadership of the Liberal Party. Costello holds an axis that runs from Victoria to Queensland. Howard's Maginot Line runs from NSW through South Australia and into Western Australia. Both axes will increasingly assert themselves.

So Georgiou's victory, as the champion of small-l liberalism, the architect of the Government's softened refugee policy and multiculturalism, represents a repudiation of Howard and Downer; a win for the so-called doctors' wives within the Liberal Party. But what about the reprieve for Howard mentioned at the beginning of this article?

Well, against the background of the Papuan asylum-seekers, strained relationships with Indonesia and a planned revival of the so-called Pacific Island solution, defeat for Georgiou would have seen an unholy rebellion within moderate federal Liberal MPs against both Howard's authority and continued leadership. The hounds of hell would have been let loose.

Seen in that light, Frydenberg's defeat was a get out of jail ticket for Howard, if not Downer. Maybe someone should ask Georgiou if he was grateful for the PM's "support".