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CANBERRA - Are the Methuselah years of Australian politics finally passing?
This week, when Steve Bracks followed his resignation as Victorian Premier by quitting state parliament while still astride a peak of popularity, he broke a mould that has shaped leaders during two decades of remarkable prosperity.
His
resignation casts immediate attention on John Howard, now 68 and determined after 11 years in power to win a fifth term.
Unlike Bracks, Howard missed his chance to go in a blaze of glory and hand over to his anointed heir, Treasurer Peter Costello.
Now, unless he can pull one of his famous cats out of the bag, he looks very much like being dumped from office by Labor Leader Kevin Rudd.
Before Howard was Paul Keating, whose brief term as Prime Minister was shaped by the eight years and nine months in power of Bob Hawke, the Labor titan who until Howard was the nation's second-longest serving leader.
Hawke only left because Keating cut his knees from under him.
And before Hawke there was only Sir Robert Menzies, the imperious Liberal Prime Minister who ruled for 17 consecutive years, following two years as Prime Minister at the outset of World War II.
Like Hawke and Howard, Menzies enjoyed a long period of national affluence, through the 1950s and 1960s.
Otherwise, and with a handful of exceptions, Australian Prime Ministers have spent an average of about three years in power.
The good years have also supported political longevity in the states.
Bob Carr quit as Labor Premier of New South Wales in 2005 after a decade of power and prosperity.
In Western Australia, former Labor Premier Geoff Gallop also chose his own time to go, after five boom years.
And in Queensland, Premier Peter Beattie is rumoured to have been considering his options after nine years at the wheel.
Bracks, with eight years as Labor Premier of Victoria, set a new style.
Carr, Australia's most enduringly popular politician at his peak, left as troubles mounted in NSW and his star began to wane. Gallop quit to battle depression. And Beattie, despite retaining power with a thumping win at last year's state election and an overwhelming lead as preferred Premier, has been plagued by a run of scandals and woes.
Bracks, on the other hand, is leaving after a golden run that has even won plaudits from Howard, Costello, Victorian Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu and industry and business groups.
Last November he won his third term with a record majority, after previously making history by gaining control of both houses of parliament. This was no mean feat for a Labor politician. Victoria was home to Menzies, and a Liberal citadel that had kept Sir Henry Bolte as Liberal Premier for a record 17 years, coinciding with most of the Menzies federal era.
Four of the six Liberal Prime Ministers who followed Menzies were products of the Victorian party machine.
And Sydneysider Howard's likely successor, Costello, is from Melbourne.
Nor was Bracks a likely leader, starting working life as a teacher and education administrator, moving to the state bureaucracy, and unsuccessfully contesting the state seat of Ballarat North before finally winning Williamstown in 1994.
Five years later he replaced John Brumby as Labor leader - Brumby later became his Treasurer and this week his successor as Premier - and trounced Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett in the 1999 elections.
Bracks built on Kennet's reforms and supported a sound, prosperous state economy that among other successes saw Melbourne recover and recently outstrip Sydney's growth.
Unemployment in regional Victoria has halved during his term, final-year high school retention rates climbed to more than 80 per cent, crime rates fell, and the number of patients treated by the health system soared by about 25 per cent.
His decision to quit caught everybody by surprise. He was known to have been stricken by his son Nick's slamming a car into a tree while drunk, but told reporters that had only confirmed a course already decided. Simply, Bracks decided to quit while he was well ahead.
Now Brumby has inherited his very large shoes. Whether he can stride as far remains to be seen.
