By GREG ANSLEY
CANBERRA - John Howard's decision to stay on as Australian Prime Minister and lead the Coalition into the next election has set political time bombs ticking throughout the cavernous expanses of Parliament House.
Yesterday, Howard began dealing with his own camp, publicly praising and preening his white-lipped deputy, Treasurer Peter Costello, who must now wait an indefinite period for the leadership he was convinced was within his grasp.
Costello, lacking the mana and numbers to attempt a putsch against a Prime Minister who is virtually untouchable at this stage, can do little but accept Howard's call, although the previously rock-solid Liberal Party will inevitably smoulder with the discontent of the Treasurer's supporters.
On the opposite side of the divide, Howard's surprise announcement on Wednesday has galvanised the forces massing behind the two heavyweights sparring for leadership of the ailing Labor Party.
Simon Crean, who assumed a troubled leadership after Howard's decimation of Labor in 2001, has spent compounding amounts of time, energy and political capital defending his job, often at the expense of his party's performance.
Kim Beazley, the man who handed Crean the leadership after his second humiliating drubbing by Howard, has been campaigning through proxies to dismount his former deputy and again assume generalship for a battle that this time he believes to his socks that he can win.
Howard's decision is rapidly bringing the matter to a head.
"This has to be resolved sooner rather than later," said foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd, reflecting a growing view that a leadership vote must be called soon to end division and allow Labor to get on with the job of defeating Howard at the next election.
Labor's interminable malaise has been one of a number of lucky breaks for Howard, and one which he will be able to exploit to the full while he prepares his campaign for a fourth successive term.
But for all the glory and support he has gathered around him as conservative reformer, guardian of social values, and defender of hearth and home, Howard is not impregnable.
The way in which he decided to stay - consulting only his wife Janette, his children and a handful of close friends, and dropping the news on Costello without warning or discussion - has fuelled some resentments.
And the nation's leading newspapers, even those which support Howard to the hilt, issued warnings that even the most popular of leaders can fly too close to the sun.
The Australian warned that "the gods of politics destroy their servants who stay too long", while Sydney's Daily Telegraph said that Howard risked destabilising an effective partnership with Costello.
In the Australian Financial Review, political editor Tony Walker reflected on the similarity between the peaks and troughs of politics and the stockmarket, and said that Howard may have made a mistake.
"He must know that his decision to stay on for the time being invites the possibility, indeed a probability, that from his present untrammelled position he risks, if not a fall from grace, then a long slide toward political mortality."
But Howard, basking in the warmth of applause from the bulk of his MPs, has no doubt that he had made absolutely the right move.
"In taking the decision, I responded to overwhelming views put to me by people in the party and judgments that my health and focus and concentration and commitment were still very full and strong and effective," he said yesterday.
As for Costello, Howard said, no humiliation or pain had been intended to a man who quite rightly held ambitions for leadership, but whose inevitable time would come "later rather than sooner".
Costello has little option for the moment but to smile agreement through clenched teeth.
Howard starts bombs ticking
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