Riding high on victory

By GREG ANSLEY

In a few weeks Australian Prime Minister John Howard will win his own, huge peace dividend: columns of troops returning home unscathed and showered in glory from Iraq.

"We will have public parades," Howard said this week, "so that Australian people in the traditional open-hearted fashion for which they are famous will have an opportunity to salute these people and welcome them home and say, 'Well done - you did your duty and we are pleased to have you back safe and sound'."

For all his air of sincerity and refusal to gloat at the success of his gamble to ignore overwhelming public opposition and commit the nation to America's war in the Gulf, the parades will be accolades almost as much for Howard as for the soldiers, sailors and airmen.

For, politically, this has been Howard's war. During its course, Australian opinion flipped from 75 per cent rejection to, at the most recent count, 57 per cent support for the commitment, as against 37 per cent remaining in stubborn opposition.

During Easter, while churches continued their damnation of the war from pulpits around the country, Howard's ascendancy continued to soar, placing himself and his Government in an almost unassailable citadel.

He has gathered power within and without the Liberal Party. His Labor rival, Opposition Leader Simon Crean, is plumbing new political depths and warding off rebellion within the parliamentary party. His heir apparent, Treasurer Peter Costello, can do little but cool his heels and wait for a final anointing.

"All I can say is to you is [Howard] has announced what he will do later in the year, and obviously we will all be interested in that announcement," Costello said this week when asked about his leadership prospects.

Howard can bide his time and do whatever he chooses. In two weeks he will fly to George W. Bush's Texas ranch to discuss the immediate future of Iraq with the US President and British Prime Minister Tony Blair - hardly another Yalta, but a strong affirmation of Australia's place in America's new world order. He will also meet United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose organisation Australia helped to sideline in Iraq and who Howard believes has no place in the interim administration of the ravaged land.

Somewhere in the vast Indian Ocean separating Australia from Asia, more gifts are afloat. This week, news came of two boats laden with Vietnamese asylum seekers, and another forced to break its journey.

These are the first boat people to brave the journey since the Norwegian container ship Tampa was boarded notoriously by SAS soldiers off Christmas Island, precipitating a crisis that led to much of Australia's navy and maritime surveillance aircraft blockading the approaches to the continent.

Howard's uncompromising and internationally condemned policy of turning back fragile boats towards Indonesia, or sending asylum seekers to barbed-wire compounds in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, played a deciding role in returning his Government to power for a third term.

East Timor, boat people, September 11 and the Bali bombings made Australians even more aware of their vulnerability, enabling Howard to focus national attention on defence and security.

His decision to send SAS troops, warships and planes to the war on terror in Afghanistan was roundly applauded at home and in Washington, and his call on Iraq ultimately vindicated his political judgment.

Now boats are back on the horizon, overlaying border security with deepening alarm at the growing global epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome and enabling the Government to again present itself as an unflinching defender of hearth and home.

Never has Howard's position been stronger. With barely a raised eyebrow, he has been able to transform his justification for war in Iraq from a campaign against weapons of mass destruction to a war of liberation.

In the build-up to war, and in his March 20 statement to the nation committing Australia to war, Howard's overwhelming emphasis was on these weapons and their potential acquisition by terrorists.

"This is the reason above all others why I passionately believe that action must be taken to disarm Iraq," he said. Regime change was never on the agenda, except as a beneficial byproduct expressed almost as a footnote to the statement.

As the war came and went without the discovery of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, Howard brushed aside questions on the issue and focused instead on the downfall of Saddam.

Images of Iraqis cheering American troops blotted out everything else and, by the time the demonstrations turned against the occupiers and the desperate reality of Iraq's immediate future began to emerge, the war had largely vanished from Australia's popular horizon.

The image that remained was of Howard flanked by Australian flags likening the downfall of Saddam to the collapse of Soviet communism. "What we witnessed is something the Iraqi people wanted the world to know, and that is they're glad to be rid of the loathsome dictator, Saddam Hussein," he said.

Similarly, Howard has tap-danced around his early promise that Australians would not remain as peacekeepers or as participants in the interim occupation of the country.

Now, about 1200 troops on the ground, in aircraft and on warships, will remain for an indefinite period, and Australian bureaucrats are working with the American administrators. These are not peacekeepers, according to Howard. They are niche forces.

There are still angry critics, with solid ammunition on their side. Richard Butler, a former Australian diplomat who was also UN chief weapons inspector in Iraq, has been scathing of Howard, accusing him of manipulation and of putting the nation at greater risk of terrorism.

"He has done what he did with the Tampa and boat people and children overboard, on which subject he lied," Butler said. "He has played to ordinary Australians' anxieties and fears, and the chief one here is that unless we have a protector - in this case the US - we end up naked and defenceless."

Nor has fast victory in Baghdad stilled the criticism of the former military leaders who tried to turn Australia away from war, among them former Defence Force Chief General Peter Gration, Returned Services League president Major-General Peter Phillips, and retired Air Force chief Air Marshall Ray Funnell.

The rationale for war remained weak, Funnell said, and the war itself unjustified.

But the power of protest has been muted by the imagery of liberation and of Australia's part in it, filtered through an efficient and tightly controlled military public relations machine.

The media, and particularly the powerful Murdoch press, has thundered in support of war and cheered its outcome.

The national newspaper The Australian encapsulated the line in one editorial headline: "Coalition of the whining got it wrong."

Howard is already among the most successful Prime Ministers in Australian history. He is already nudging former boss Malcolm Fraser as Australia's third-longest-serving Prime Minister, and if he sees out his present term will eclipse Fraser and Labor's Bob Hawke to lie second behind Sir Robert Menzies' 16 years of Liberal rule.

"The war is a measure of Howard's skill and luck," wrote Paul Kelly, one of Australia's most distinguished political commentators. "He kept his party united throughout in a display of leadership reinforced by a short war with no Australian military casualties so far."

The polls bear this out. The most recent Newspoll shows Howard has pushed down Labor's primary vote to just 33 per cent, and on two-party preferred basis leads Labor 55 per cent to 45. This would translate in an election to the loss of 16 Labor seats.

Simon Crean's stocks have fallen so low that only 10 per cent of Australians believe he should lead the Labor Party, causing such alarm and despondency within the party that a backbench cadre is trying to push Kim Beazley back into the job he vacated after his second defeat by Howard.

Newspoll showed about four times as much support for Beazley as for Crean, with the struggle finally bursting to the surface this week after Beazley ruminated in the Bulletin on how he would run the tattered party.

Crean was furious: "I showed him total respect and total loyalty and I expect the same in return."

Beazley rejected claims of disloyalty but, significantly, did not rule out a challenge.

Commenting on poll results, Newspoll chief Sol Lebovic noted: "Crean and Labor have got nothing from the war despite having the majority view on their side before it started ...

"The accusation of Howard being poll-driven didn't apply in Iraq, and this is a strength for him. He comes across as a leader committed to his views. The electorate doesn't necessarily agree with it, but they do respect it."

With the Opposition in such public disarray, his party rock solid, and his popularity touching new heights, Howard can write his own ticket. He has promised to make a decision by his 64th birthday on July 26 whether to stay or go, creating a new betting industry in a federal press gallery.

Opinion is split two ways: that Howard, as a student of history, will want to quit at his peak; or, he stays on in glory, takes Australia to an early election - possibly by the end of the year - and sets the stage for an orderly, strong Costello succession.

Howard this week shied away from talk of an early election, which he believes would not be welcomed by a cynical electorate, although he has kept his options open.

And he remains coy on his future: "I have said that I'll have something to say about that and I'm not quite ready to say it at the moment ... I'll be saying something about my medium and long-term future in the not-too-distant future."

In the meantime, Howard continues to ride tall and firm in the saddle.


Herald Feature: Iraq