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The race for the top job

Australia seems certain to have a Monash graduate as its next Prime Minister: either Peter Costello or Simon Crean. The author of Costello's biography and Monash graduate SHAUN CARNEY takes a look at the powerful pair.

Barring accidents involving the proverbial bus or some other form of calamity, the big question is who will snare the honour of being Australia's next prime minister: Peter Costello or Simon Crean?

Costello, deputy leader of the Liberal Party since 1994, has a lock on the succession. What will remain unknown until the middle of next year is when Costello can expect to take over from John Howard as leader.

The Prime Minister has nominated July 2003, when he turns 64, as the moment when he will decide on his political future. Some political observers expect him to step aside for Costello at that point ­ the mid-point of the Coalition's third successive term of office. Others are more sceptical about Howard's capacity to willingly bring an end to his political life.

Crean, on the other hand, has a good idea of his medium-term political prospects. Elevated to the Labor Party leadership in November 2001, he must wait until the next election, which can be held as late as May 2005, before offering himself to the people as a potential prime minister.

In any event, Australians seem destined to be blessed with the first Monash graduate to become prime minister sometime between next year and 2005, no matter which way they vote. It is intriguing to consider how disturbing a prospect this would have been early in the university's life when it had a reputation as the most radical campus in Australia.

Certainly when Crean was at Monash studying for a Bachelor of Economics and a Bachelor of Laws from 1967 to 1971 ­ when anti-war protests were at their height ­ the very notion would have horrified the Melbourne Club.

But Monash's image as a left-wing campus receded in the late 1970s when an undergraduate law student by the name of Peter Costello became a star of what was then referred to as the 'centre unity' or 'moderate' forces. Costello attended Monash from 1975 to 1979, undertaking arts and law degrees.

Although Crean and Costello are both products of the Monash Law School, they are dramatically different in temperament and style.

Costello, who built up a healthy practice at the Melbourne Bar before entering Parliament in 1990 aged 32, is flamboyant and theatrical in his political presentation. Crean, who entered Parliament aged 41, also in 1990, after serving first as head of the Storemen and Packers Union and then of the ACTU, has a style more in keeping with his pre-parliamentary career: dogged, unspectacular and intense.

There is also a palpable difference in the two men's personal characteristics. Costello, who was schooled at Carey Grammar, raised in a devout Baptist household in Blackburn and whose parents were both teachers, was a star pupil. While his non-work interests are generally confined to his young family and the Essendon Football Club, his belief in his intellectual capacities is substantial. His ability to master a brief often stuns his colleagues.

For Crean, who grew up in inner- suburban Middle Park and attended government schools, politics was the family business: his father was the Labor member for Melbourne Ports from 1951 until 1997 and was, for a brief period in 1975, deputy prime minister in the Whitlam government.

Crean's manner is dour. Although much of his union career involved addressing meetings of the rank-and-file, he is less comfortable playing to the gallery than is Costello. But while Crean lacks the innate capacity to make the big rhetorical flourish, he tends to compensate for it with his prodigious capacity for work.

Which particular brand of Monash graduate will suit the temper of the times and grasp the ring first? Only time ­ and John Howard ­ will tell. Oh, and the Australian people might have something to say about it too.

Shaun Carney is an associate editor of The Age and author of the biography Costello - The New Liberal (Allen and Unwin, 2001). He attended Monash from 1975 to 1977 and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree.

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