Beware the enemy within

I have a theory. The Westminster system of parliamentary democracy is now driven by the pressures of a talkback, telecratic, opinion poll, focus-group driven political system. Australia and New Zealand have a hybrid Westminster system of elected MPs who can at any time change leaders. This is a freedom that does not exist in a presidential system. Richard Nixon would have been dog food at a party caucus meeting; so perhaps would Bill Clinton.

MPs have the power to respond to public opinion or factional opportunism at any time. Such are the pressures of a media-dominated political culture that in our system the prime minister becomes the president and the treasurer the prime minister. The deal is that the treasurer announces the bad news, leaving the PM to announce the good news. Tensions emerge. In NZ: Lange v Douglas, Bolger v Richardson. In Australia: Hawke v Keating. In the UK: Blair v Brown. In Canada, the party conference, not the caucus, elects the leader. Therefore, finance minister Paul Martin resigned to fight for the leadership when the Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, announced last year that he would be retiring in February 2004.

In Australia the predictable struggle emerged between John Howard and Peter Costello. It will take style to ensure this competition does not break out and weaken the strong front the government publicly presents.

All those MPs who know they will not get advancement under the status quo will be encouraging Costello. Prime ministers and treasurers normally reach an understanding in the early, heady days of government (e.g. Hawke and Keating, Blair and Brown, Chrétien and Martin), but few leaders voluntarily surrender power. Meanwhile, the numbers men in caucus go to work planting stories. The media love the conflict.

In my day, in NZ politics we decided that the prime minister at the time, Jim Bolger, needed some competition for the leadership and started rumours and produced polls that a particular effective minister would be a more formidable National leader. Ask him if he is a candidate, we suggested to the media - he won't deny it. And of course every politician in history has thought of the three golden words in politics: "why not me?"

Anyway, it was a useful diversion to light some fires behind the enemy lines. Disunity is death to a political party. The public think that if you can't run your own party, how can you run a government? The insurgents, like a guerilla army, have the advantage. A group of MPs who are determined and are prepared even to lose an election so they can get promotion are difficult to beat. Like suicide bombers with nothing to lose, they can create havoc and slowly bleed any parliamentary leader.

Of course, opinion polls help. They make cowards of us all. They are no longer instruments of marketing and selling policy: they create policy and leaders.

Australian Labor's factional system of tribal sub-leaders creates a rough proportional system of power-sharing. I opposed the idea in NZ. I was wrong. Without it the winner takes all - the right in the 1980s, now the left. Although such labels are puerile and banal, party sub-tribes need banners to justify themselves.

The present internal Labor troubles in Australia are sadly predictable. Simon Crean is smart, serious and substantial, but he is not getting public traction. How much of this is his fault when timing is everything in politics is questionable. Kim Beazley is a man of stature. A senior US Republican politician said of Kim, to me: "If he was a European we would make him the head of NATO".

Meanwhile Howard can't stop laughing. After larger-than-life leaders such as Hawke and Keating, Australians seem comfortable with an ordinary, decent person like themselves in charge. Labor underestimates Howard to their cost. Labor's attitude to Howard reminds me of how we in NZ kept underestimating Robert Muldoon's power over many Labor voters. Much of it was Labor snobbery. Deep down in NZ we couldn't believe people could keep voting for a bloke who had a face like a bum. Yet he beat us three times in a row.

Anyhow, being the leader of the opposition is the worst job in the world. Ask Howard, Crean, Mike Rann and Bob Carr. Hell, ask Mike Moore! I was terrible at it. I never mastered the five-second TV grab. As I said in my last speech in parliament: "In politics you have your opponents on the other side and you have your enemies on your own side!"