Quotes of the Day

He's the voice of the boom. Treasurer Peter Costello has been Australia's carnival barker for 10 years. Using a backdrop of blissful financial chart lines, Costello can sound like an auctioneer. Promoting his 11th Budget at a recent Liberal Party fundraising event for 700 in Sydney, Costello was in full boom. Heckling the man who was about to cut their taxes by $100 a week was not this crowd's style. Where a property salesman employs a gavel, Costello does a PowerPoint floor show with happy hands and a jerky delivery. You can never predict when Costello's number will switch from the piano of crisis to the forte of triumph. So an audience tends to ride out the bumps with him. "Where the bloody hell were you?" Costello shrieks, referring to an era of high indebtedness when Labor leader Kim Beazley was in charge of the nation's finances. Soon there'll be no tax on superannuation benefits taken at age 60, Costello brags. When the cheering stops, he cheekily claims success for his procreation mantra, "One for Mum, one for Dad, one for the country."

While John Howard was away on foreign duty, Costello, as acting Prime Minister, looked the part: serious and steady. He traversed the country, taking the TV cameras from the mines of Broken Hill to the illegal foreign fishing vessels smoldering in Darwin harbor. Despite the Budget, a lot of non-Treasury business has been dominating the news: East Timor's troubles, the death spiral of remote Aboriginal communities, nuclear power and uranium enrichment. Custodian Costello slotted right in. Voters, and the Liberal party, are getting a little taste of life after Howard and a carefully managed introduction to his natural successor. So far—ignoring Labor's hysterics in Parliament—it seems that little would change if Howard called it quits. Why? Because Costello has modeled himself on his boss, and because the government's strategists are unlikely to mess with a winning formula.

The Treasurer has matured; the youthfulness has gone and caution slipped in. Once seen as sympathetic to, rather than working toward, the republican push and the cause of Aboriginal reconciliation, Costello has detached himself from the liberal-progressive caravan on social issues. These days he's either pitching to his party's conservative base or trying to master the populism that explains Howard's hold on the masses. Costello is not soft. The argument that he's had an easy run and needs a stint in opposition to forge his character smells of retribution for Costello's unfortunate smirk. Just as valid, if no less comforting for his supporters, is the view that, considering the discipline, stress and scrutiny that goes with the job, 10 years as Treasurer has been too burdensome a preparation. Is Costello, not yet 50, a man with a beautiful future behind him? At a time when his rivals are acquiring the taste for power, he appears to be slowing down.

A revealing flash emerged as Costello, projector clicker at the ready, was explaining the Budget to sequestered reporters on May 9. Searching for a word to sum up the changes to superannuation, he thought for a few beats, then settled on "radical." It was Costello looking down the time tunnel; the exact image of the landscape and people out there in 2040 was elusive, but he seemed happy with the shape of the outcome. The moment passed and the Treasurer went back to the script. But radical was a description Costello was burdened with—or guided by—for two decades. His choice of the word was also a reminder of how Australia has changed under Howard—and how the notion of reform has been manipulated, if not debased. The superannuation measures are sensible and overdue. It's the sort of house-keeping that was pro forma in the Hawke-Keating years; there was a lot to do, and the Labor leaders did most of it. Howard-Costello gradualism, however, is chamber music compared with their predecessors' hip-hop approach: mixing it up, three turntables on the go, to a Labor beat.

Well before the Budget, great hopes were held by the urgers. Maverick M.P.s, think tanks, business lobbyists, welfare groups and opinionaters shot out a stream of ideas for things to do with revenues swollen by the resources jackpot. A short list included tax cuts, for companies and individuals; more investment in skills development, education and research; increasing workforce participation and raising national savings; improving child-care arrangements; and modernizing infrastructure, especially broadband, roads, railways and ports. The government certainly delivered in some of these areas, but the programs were scattered and underfunded; they seemed like mere sops to the policy police, designed by the message consultants to counter anticipated criticism. Howard does not yearn for applause from the wonks or pointy-heads; he wants to put dollars in the pockets of families now and next year. In a two-horse political race, Howard has learnt to back the short-priced galloper called Today, rather than the roughie Tomorrow. Costello, great with numbers, comfortable in gray and almost out of his apprenticeship, also knows the form.

• Tom Dusevic
• Just Like Howard (But Can Do PowerPoint)