"Peter Costello is swanning around flogging a new version of his memoirs," complained a letter to The Age last week. "As the last version was remaindered in record time due to severe lack of interest, what are the odds on this one?"
I've long thought that The Age's opinion page was so dripping wet one could not even turn it. (Costello himself is the only conservative to appear in what is known as "The Guardian of the Yarra", and his column appears only fortnightly.) But as mono-cultural and dull as The Age's commentary sections are, its letters page is even worse: it not only stifles dissenting right-of-centre viewpoints; it is also intellectually dishonest. There is, for instance, the world of difference between remaindering and discounting practices. As Louise Adler, the chief executive of Melbourne University Publishing, points out, discounting is the clearest indicator that a book is a winner; whereas it is a breach of the standard publishing contract to remainder a title within a year of publication.
The aforementioned letter accompanied a Tanberg cartoon of Costello struggling to write an inscription for a couple of potential book buyers. One asks: "Any sign of writer's block?" To which the other person replies: "Wishful thinking." Never mind that the Member for Higgins's memoirs were an untold publishing success story. I say untold, because the conventional wisdom in the press is that, unlike political books written by Labor politicians, The Costello Memoirs failed miserably. Within days of its first publication 11 months ago, even sober journalists such as the Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair and Christian Kerr peddled the line that the book's sales were dreadful.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Costello's autobiography, co-authored with his father-in-law (and fellow Spectator Australia columnist) Peter Coleman, has proved the exception to the rule that conservative political tomes do not sell in Australia. Having sold more than 40,000 hardback copies, The Costello Memoirs are arguably the most popular political book in recent years. Indeed, according to Adler: "In the history of Australian political non-fiction titles, this is a bestseller."
By contrast, the book sales of Labor political figures have been shocking, to say the least. Lindsay Tanner's Open Australia sold 383 copies; Wayne Swan's Postcode: The Splintering of a Nation sold 1,097 copies; Bob Carr's Thoughtlines sold 674 copies; and Craig Emerson's Vital Signs, Vibrant Society: Securing Australia's Economic and Social Wellbeing sold less than a thousand. Meanwhile, Tony Abbott's latest book Battlelines, with proposals to centralise power in Canberra and impose a new tax on business, has raised the ire of many conservatives and will be lucky to sell one-eighth of Costello's copies.
Still, the Opposition frontbencher and aspiring Liberal leader should be applauded for canvassing policies for our political future, and it is particularly refreshing to read a Liberal politician engaged in the literary battle of ideas. The only other sitting conservative politician, apart from Costello, who wrote a political book was Robert Menzies in 1943 (The Forgotten People and Other Studies in Democracy).
Costello's newly released revised version includes a couple of new chapters on the financial crisis and his decision to retire from politics which still saddens small "l" liberals and conservatives alike across the nation. Among other things, the new edition highlights the former treasurer's impressive command of economics and should be required reading for every member of the parliamentary Liberal party. This is particularly the case when one considers that the issue of economic management will dominate the next federal election.
Fortunately, an Australian recession is not inevitable. Indeed, we will probably weather the global storm, and Kevin Rudd and Labor will claim intellectual and political vindication. But the reason why Australia stands a good chance of not catching the financial contagion has very little to do with the past 12 months of Labor's "let-Canberra-solve-it" interventionism and virtually everything to do with the starting point. This is the essence of Costello's thesis, and he makes his case persuasively.
Australia, he reminds us, went into this global recession in an incredibly strong position. Unlike Britain and the US, we had a Budget in surplus. Unlike Britain and the US, we had no debt. Unlike Britain and the US, our banks were well-regulated, well-capitalised and profitable. All of this gave Australia a lot of padding and insulation. This was a position of unique strength bequeathed to the incoming Labor government. And this is why the RBA is now talking up the economy, even though the Labor government is talking it down.
Unfortunately, Costello has announced he is retiring from federal politics at the next election. So the onus is on other bastions of free markets to defend unapologetically the economic reform record, especially during his reign as our longest serving treasurer, and to point out how the nation became more economically secure, not less, by exposing ourselves to competition and globalisation.
Without the so-called "neo-liberal" agenda, Australians would have been poorer during this period, unemployment would have been higher, the fall in the Aussie dollar would have fed a vicious cycle of higher inflation rather than being absorbed as a boost to national competitiveness, and we would have had much less to spend on social services such as health, education and roads. Heirs to the Costello legacy should also highlight the perils of Canberra's big-government, big-spending, debt-driven agenda as well as pointing out the merits in a more market-oriented policy approach of reducing disincentives to hard work and innovation.
"It would be of enormous benefit to implement structural changes now that will bear fruit in the recovery," Costello says in his revised memoirs. "Changes that heighten flexibility in the economy will promote faster recovery; changes that allow flexible agreements in the workplace, enhance employee share ownership and reduce marginal income tax rates. Labor has introduced harsh effective marginal tax rates with changes to the private health rebate, family tax benefits and maternity leave. Reducing these would improve work incentives."
If this case is not spelt out in a coherent and compelling manner, Kevin Rudd, like Barack Obama in the US and Gordon Brown in the UK, will be able to alter the relationship between the federal government and private sector that has been in place for decades. Then the private sector led the economy; by the Prime Minister's own intent and purposes, now Canberra will chart its course. Rudd's new system may not represent socialism, but it is not the system that has produced Australia's miracle economy over which Peter Costello presided.
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