Reading some of Costello's comments on the rule of law, independent judiciary and cabinet parliament as being "Australian Values", reminds me of Greg Egan's pillorising this behaviour as acting like a "Professional Australian" .

Costello says;

According to our Constitution, we have a secular state. Our laws are made by the Australian Parliament.

"If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you.

"This is not the kind of country where you would feel comfortable if you were opposed to democracy, parliamentary law, independent courts and so I would say to people who don't feel comfortable with those values there might be other countries where they'd feel more comfortable with their own values or beliefs."

He added: "These are Australian values and they're not going to change and we would expect people, when they come to Australia or if they are born in Australia, to respect those values."

There is an ulterior threat there too, all those are functions of government, if you are against those, you are against the government - and the worst crime in the national security state is not agreeing with the government. A quick way to become the enemy of the state.

Greg Egan has his own remarkably insightful response to it in the novel "Distress";

He [Munroe] said, "Don't you ever get tired of living in a society which talks about itself, relentlessly - and usually lies? Which defines everything worthwhile - tolerance, honesty, loyalty, fairness - as 'uniquely Australian'? Which pretends to encourage diversity - but can't ever stop babbling about its 'national identity'? Don't you ever get sick of the endless parade of buffoons who claim the authority to speak on your behalf: politicians, intellectuals, celebrities, commentators - defining and characterising you in every detail ... from your 'distinctive Australian sense of humour' right down to your f**king 'collective subconscious iconography' ... who are all simply, liars and thieves."

I was taken aback for a moment, but on reflection this was a recognizable description of the mainstream political and academic culture. Or if not the mainstream, at least the loudest. I shrugged. "Every country has some level of parochial bulls**t like that going on, somewhere. The US is almost as bad. But I hardly notice it anymore, least of all at home[Australia]. I suppose I've just learnt to tune it out, most of the time."

"I envy you then, I never could."

The tram slid on, displaced dust hissing softly. Munroe had a point: nationalists - political and cultural - who claimed to be the voice of their nation could disenfranchise those they 'represented' just as effectively as sexists who claimed to be the voice of their sex. A handful of people pretending to speak for forty million - or five billion - would always wield disproportionate power, merely by virtue of making the claim.

.....

"So what's the big deal. Even Washington doesn't go out of its way to punish Stateless quite so ... comprehensively."

Munroe said, "I do have one theory."

"Yeah?"

"Think about it. What's the biggest lie the political and cultural ruling class tells itself? Where's the greatest disparity between image and truth? What are the attributes which any self-respecting Professional Australian boasts about the most - and possesses the least?"

"If this is a cheap Freudian joke, I'm going to be very disappointed."

"Suspicion of authority. Independence of spirit. Nonconformity. So what could they possibly find more threatening than an island full of anarchists."

Crikey spent a lot of time laying into Kennett and Carr for putting the boot into Brogden when he was down, and then crying crocodile tears of sympathy the next day, yet Crikey goes empathic on what constitutes a qualified Prime Minister. The quote in question;

Peter Costello looks insecure - personally and politically. He looks like anything but Prime Minister material.

That was a crikey comment on Costello's Lateline appearance where he was asked about Turnball's competing tax reform policies.

Spare me the hysteria and touchy-feely commentary on what makes Prime Minister material. Australians do not get to vote for the Prime Minister anyway, despite the increasingly Presidential nature of our elections. Even so, Costello has held the Treasury position for the entire tenure of the Howard Government. Despite the electoral buying, and tax creep at the middle income earner level, Costello has largely kept Howard's political paws out of the Treasury, something which Vanstone was unable to do at Immigration.

Costello is very suitable and qualified to be Prime Minister - the question is, whether some of the others ready to stick their hand up for the position would be better.

Beazley's statement on the cabinet reshuffle included the question;

What sort of reshuffle worked on for four months would leave Amanda Vanstone still in immigration?

That is an excellent question that should be answered and not side-stepped.

Bryan Palmer has a run-down on the changes . Malcolm Turnball didn't do too well from it.

Malcolm Turnbull goes from the backbench to Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister with particular responsibility for water policy. I suspect the water policy Howard had in mind was to have Turnbull inside the tent, pissing out; rather than outside the tent, pissing in.

First stop Goulburn . A promotion but an impossible portfolio given Australia's dearth of water. Minchin also got a shove forward;

Senator Nick Minchin - keeps Finance and Administration - now Leader of the Government in the Senate.

Minchin is the main Liberal advocate for removing compulsory voting .

Peter Costello still has not done a Paul Keating and forced the issue with John Howard. Keating was sacked by Hawke and spent six months on the back bench before managing to wrest leadership of the Labor party from Bob Hawke. Costello seems unwilling to give up his Treasury portfolio.

Australian politics has become more and more Presidential, both as a result of the way the parties play politics and how the media represents their political theatre. The Cabinet reshuffle stage act kept several Costello supporters on the sidelines;

Addendum: Capable Costello supporters, George Brandis, Christopher Pyne, Bruce Baird, and Tony Smith were passed over when it came to the promotions. (Although Brough and Bishop have also been reported as Costello supporters, and they were big winners in this reshuffle).

I could not find any commentary on the cabinet reshuffle on the ALP website . The Liberal Party website has a complete list of changes and release from John Howard . The Australian Democrats have a spiffy looking new site , but no mention of the cabinet changes.

The Greens' have some commentary on the changes .

Greens Leader Bob Brown says that Tasmania has been snubbed in the Cabinet reshuffle.

"Eric Abetz is the new minister for forests, but it's a junior ministry - he gets the timber but not the Cabinet.

But it is not much.

Peter Costello makes a bid to claim the diaspora is still Australian ;

This song is something of an anthem for those Australians now recognized in Hollywood or on Broadway or Wall Street and other centres of the arts or business around the world. There are many Australians who live overseas because their talent or ability or drive has taken them on to the world stage. ... This does not mean they have turned their back on their country. For many of them the love of country grows stronger through this process. Apart from anything else, living overseas gives them a comparison to measure all the benefits that Australia brings.

OK Peter, you obviously think us diasporans are the ducks guts, so do us a favour; don't kick us off the electoral rolls because we are living outside of Australia, and don't make it hard for us to get back on them when we do get kicked off.

To keep us engaged with Australia also make it super-easy for our foreign spouses/partners/dependents to get work visas and permanent residency in Australia. Since so many of us diasporans are overseas, supposedly up to one million, give us direct representation in the Senate. At least the equal of the territories - who we outnumber.

It has been too much of a one way process for too long with the government. It maintains a nationalist siege mentality, where citizenship is myopically defined. The world has moved toward volatile capital, goods and labor flows. Where labor mobility was once limited to immigration, it is now far more transient. Citizenship laws, immigration laws, and numerous other aspects of national government are way behind, and are maintaining artificial barriers for people to move where their labor is most valued.

The federal government needs to smarten up if it wants to keep diasporans engaged.

Amanda Vanstone attempts to reconcile all the inherent contradictions in conservative nationalism with the simple test case of what song to play. She ends up looking foolish.

It is not her fault. The ideology she is following is unsustainable due to its inconsistency. Nationalism is predicated on exceptionalism but the nostalgia for British heritage and anglospheric power means conservative nationalism as practiced in Australia is undercut by subservience.

Exceptionalism fails it in the constitutional system, the heraldry and protocols, as well as defence and foreign policy. That leaves the only areas that Australia can practice exceptionalism in is immigration and citizenship.

Howard, Costello and Vanstone have that area cornered.

Peter Costello on an Australian Republic ; "I think in 2106 we will be a republic because I think in our minds and our imaginations we're already there - we think like that ... The question is how do you produce a legal and constitutional model which will win the acceptance of the Australian people."

The Inevitable Republic

Mark MacKenna in his book, The Captive Republic covers how political and public figures since the 1800s have claimed that a republic was inevitable. So inevitable in fact, we are still waiting for it, and Costello has now put that inevitability off until the twenty-second century.

Costello argues that a legal and constitutional model needs to be developed to win acceptance. One of the purposes of South Sea Republic is to create a wider republican doctrine that goes beyond constitutional issues and form a wider political framework.

In my opinion the republic in Australia has been undercut by what I call a 'boo' republic notion which is one of minimalism. Just change the name of the constitution to a republican one!

This is the path that Dutton and Horne took, as well as Turnbull and the ARM. It nearly worked in 1999 as Australians are republican by nature but the 'boo' or the yelling of 'republic' didn't get over the line.

The problem in my opinion is that there was no grounding for the political philosophy other than remove the Queen and change the name.

Republicanism is a set of philosophies, doctrines and practices which have been developed over the years. Rather than exporting these in ad-hoc and arbitrarily they need to be explored, developed, adapted and applied in a provincial Australian permutation to ensure the most efficient form of social organisation in the Australian federal and state forms of government.

However McKenna warns against enunciating it as a 'true' form of republicanism ;

In many ways, the history of Australian republicanism is the story of Australian politicians, journalists and political activists, drawing on these models [British, American and French] and often taking one set of associations - the 'true' republic, into the public domain.

As the Constitutional Fun Challenge on this site showed, Australian Republicans are starting to think beyond the British, American and French models.

In addition we are questioning those models and scrutinising them ever more closely for their benefits, weaknesses and faults.

The 'bearded men' wrote a poor constitution that is static to change except in the hands of the High Court. It is an inferior constitutional model.

The challenge for sites such as this is create a fourth republican model, an Australian one, which captures the public imagination, and acceptance. One which is rooted in the republican philosophies in the past, but advances those doctrines to modern technology and needs - serving as the platform for on-going maximum liberty and prosperity.

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One of the more interesting people in Australian politics at the moment is Julia Gilliard, especially with the establishment of the Rudd Government. She is the obvious heir apparent to Rudd as the Prime Minister and since Australian governments can expect to be in power for at least nine years in modern politics thanks to the advantages of incumbency there will come a time when she believes she is ready to be Prime Minister. I consider this healthy.

We have two templates from opposite ends of the spectrum in Paul Keating and Peter Costello in how this has been handled. Keating made it so uncomfortable for Hawke that the party established Keating as the Prime Minister after some procrastination. The other end of the scale is Costello who continually bent to the wishes of his party leader and party; never seriously challenging for the position and watching Howard lead his party and Costello's chances of being PM into crushing defeat.

Westminster government's openness and poor separation of powers invites executive exhaustion and overstay. This was obvious in the national election and there are several state goverments suffering from similar executive over-reach and policy poverty. However, there has been two interesting retirements in NSW and Victoria with Bob Carr and Steve Bracks saving themselves from themselves. Carr was hastened out by ICAC on his heels, but Bracks' retirement seems entirely genuine.

More Prime Ministers and Premiers should look to Bracks' example.

Apparently one narrative for why we went through six years of bad governance was because Howard thought Costello would be worse. I cannot accept that; for it to be true we would have to ignore the Schmittian governance since 2002 including the out of control governance in the last two years with emergency after emergency and executive whim. Howard was fine as Prime Minister until the Tampa Affair when he effectively stated that he was willing to trade good governance for maintenance of power. This is sufficient to explain why he would not pass on the reins to Costello.

I think Costello would have been fine as Prime Minister, no worse in corruption than any of the other Prime Ministers we have had. The malignancy in the Liberal Party's governance only came as they exhausted their policy outlook and then they sat on power. They abused government and executive power in the weak Westminster system to maintain that power. This is where they tripped up. It is also why they were voted out in a landslide.

Bad governance gets governments kicked out. Especially if there is a credible opposition.

Howard's tenure has to be judged under the damage he has done to liberal democracy, executive power and anti-federalism. In this he comes short. It is hard to see how Costello could have done worse. If anything a change would have brought the Liberals back to something less Schmittian, as we are seeing with the Rudd government as it seeks to disentangle itself in the electorate's eyes from what was seen as the excesses of Howardianian government.

Via John Barrdear, Peter Martin relates a story of the different approaches by Peter Costello and John Howard. The way the story is written Costello comes off as the dumb bureaucrat blind to political realities and consumed by graphs and other boring things like mathematics and budgets, and so forth.

However, in that little quip of a story Costello comes off better than either the Democrats or John Howard. Costello gives the Democrats a long discussion on budgets, cost effectiveness and what can be afforded. Costello is the empirical rationalist. However the reply from the Democrats is a political quip:

"At one point Costello said: Natasha, you don't appear to understand the numbers. To which she replied: I do understand the numbers Peter, you don't have them in the Senate and you won't be passing this bill"

So the Democrats were talking politics when Costello was talking mathematical and economic realities. Why would they be surprised when they get into Howard's office and he starts talking politics? Why would they be floored at all? They made a quip saying they didn't come to Costello to be convinced by empirical or rational arguments, they wanted a political solution; not an economic one. Why would they be surprised when Howard immediately talked politics with them?

I think it is a story to make the bureaucrat sound out of touch, when in reality there were political solutions being enforced and the political horse trading that is so often detested from politicians being made out as the noble, human and in-touch methodology. There has been a strong commitment to Australia getting its public debt under control, and it has been bureaucrats like Costello who actually understand numbers, economics and rational arguments; and more so, apply them over politics that have made a difference in that area.

By comparison the US has not, for instance Cheney's statement that "deficits don't matter", they do of course, economically they can be disastrous, Cheney was saying they don't matter politically.

For John Howard, his political ear led him to trash limited government, limited executive power, and even the public purse. Each new policy from him in the latter half of his time as Prime Minister was a political game to get re-elected. The "Children Overboard" affair, the Aboriginal intervention; with each new application of politics governance got worse and worse. However, during this period the power of the executive and national government continued to grow at the expense of a decentralised system. The same laws continue to be on the books.

Personally I prefer the dry economic rationalist who has empirical arguments rather than politics. I know politics are necessary, the position of least dissatisfaction is necessary to obviate violence and include as many political interest factions as possible, but a rational argument should be enough in most cases.