In praise of the Liberal history warriors

Wednesday, 18th March 2009

The so-called ‘militants’ and ‘hard-liners’ are merely defending the Howard-Costello legacy, says Tom Switzer

Michelle Grattan calls them ‘militants’. Laurie Oakes labels them ‘hard-liners’. Matthew Franklin tells us they’re ‘rigid conservatives’. To whom are these stalwarts of the Canberra press gallery referring? No, not remnants of the ousted Taleban leadership in Afghanistan or even die-hard supporters of the rejuvenated, albeit much maligned, Pauline Hanson. They are Liberal party backbenchers whose crime is to defend the Howard-Costello legacy of economic management.

In recent weeks, these true believers have taken exception to the Rudd government’s $42 billion fiscal stimulus package as well as its plans to implement an emissions trading scheme and beef up the union movement’s power in the workplace. Initially, Malcolm Turnbull barely raised any objections at all to Labor’s big spending, let-Canberra-solve-it interventionism. But these party militants — from former treasurer Peter Costello and former leader Brendan Nelson down to veteran parliamentarians Wilson Tuckey and Bronwyn Bishop — did something pretty unusual for politicians these days: they stood up for principle. And they presented such a unified front that their leader backed down and embraced their agenda. Three cheers for party room democracy.

That, of course, is not how many esteemed members of the Fourth Estate see it. If only these ‘militants’ had stood behind their leader and bowed to the prime minister’s agenda, they argue. I’ve given up counting the times the press gallery has urged the coalition to back Labor government policy on the grounds that it was in the national interest. Yet I don’t recall the same journalists calling on the former (Labor) opposition to give unconditional bipartisan support to the former (coalition) government policy from 1996 to 2007 — whether it was Peter Costello’s fiscally conservative agenda to pay off Labor’s $96 billion debt and $20 billion budget deficit, or Peter Reith’s war to end all the union militancy and long loading delays on our container wharves that made us an international export laughing stock. Surely what’s good for the goose is good for the gander?

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