Costello still sulking over lost chances
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Phillip Coorey
December 15, 2007
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PETER COSTELLO is maintaining the rage against John Howard and his Liberal Party colleagues by blaming the election loss on their reluctance to make him the leader.
In a sign his bitterness has not abated in the three weeks since the election, Mr Costello used yesterday's declaration of the polls in his Melbourne seat of Higgins to say a lack of "renewal" had cost the Coalition the election.
"As I moved around Australia there was no great enthusiasm for any policy differences between Labor and the Coalition," he said.
"To the extent you could pick up any mood for change, it was a mood for newness."
Mr Costello said the Coalition had not lost because it had done a bad job, and the economy Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan inherited made them "the luckiest lotto winners in the history of Australia".
"In economic terms, Australia is in its best economic state probably in its history," he said.
"But the electorate wanted a sense of renewal and they voted in a new government.
"We had the opportunity to do renewal, we didn't do it and the electorate did it for us."
Mr Costello pointed out several times that the swing against him in Higgins of 1.6 per cent was much less than the national swing against the Coalition of 5.6 per cent. He implied this meant he could have led the Coalition to victory. "If our party could have kept the national swing to 1.6 per cent we would still be in government," he said.
Mr Costello stunned colleagues the day after the election by moving to the back bench and refusing to inherit the leadership.
His view was that the party had had its chance to make him leader before the election and had blown it. He has mooted leaving politics for the private sector.
The Nationals MP Peter McGauran, another cabinet minister in the Howard government, is expected to retire soon from politics.
The Nationals were reduced to a record low of 10 MPs at the election. If the party failed to win the ensuing byelection in his Victorian seat of Gippsland, this would reduce its stocks even further.
Yesterday the Nationals joined the Liberals by announcing a review of their poor performance at the election. The review will be led by the former parliamentary leader John Anderson, who has retired from the party.
The party's federal director, Brad Henderson, said Work Choices and a "massively resourced fear campaign" against it had hurt the Coalition badly.
But he acknowledged the conservative parties needed to "come to grips" with how to employ the use of political proxy groups.
The left-wing Getup.org had a fundamental effect in helping Labor at the election.
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