AUSTRALIA:A new political biography has reopened leadership tensions between Australia's prime minister and his ambitious deputy, months out from an election the polls say that the conservatives are set to lose.
In a new biography of prime minister John Howard, treasurer Peter Costello snipes at Mr Howard's record as a former treasurer, while the book says Mr Costello has never been invited to dine at an official prime ministerial residence in 11 years in office.
"It doesn't worry me, I am just as happy eating fish and chips on a beach," Mr Costello told Australian radio yesterday as he played down the idea of new divisions over the leadership.
Elections are due in Australia within five months with opinion polls suggesting Mr Howard would be overwhelmingly defeated and could lose his own seat if an election were held now.
Mr Costello, who is 50 next month, has long been Mr Howard's heir apparent, but his hopes of taking over as prime minister were crushed in July 2006 when Mr Howard, who turns 68 next week, said he would seek a fifth term in office.
The latest developments come three days after Mr Howard convened a special cabinet meeting to discuss the continued poor polling, where the prime minister asked his ministers if his leadership was part of the problem.
While government ministers have strongly supported Mr Howard staying on to fight the next election, the Age newspaper on Wednesday said two government MPs believe Mr Howard should step aside and hand over to Mr Costello.
The new Howard biography, written by two academics, will hit bookshops next week, but extracts published in Fairfax newspapers underlined how the tensions between both men have been simmering for several years.
The authors, who interviewed Mr Costello for their book last year, said he blamed Mr Howard's office for leaking a damaging internal party memo in 2001, which largely blamed Mr Costello for the party's poor standing in the polls at the time.
The book said Mr Costello had also expected Mr Howard to stick to a leadership agreement the two men made in 1994 when they were still in opposition.
The agreement was for Mr Howard to hand over the leadership after 1½ terms in government.
Mr Howard won power in early 1996, has now won four consecutive elections, and has refused to consider retiring.
Mr Costello also criticised Mr Howard's record when he was treasurer under prime minister Malcolm Fraser, from 1977 to 1983, saying Mr Howard did not do enough to push reform and deregulation.
"Howard, when he had been treasurer in the Fraser government, had not been a great reformer.
"The Howard treasurership was not a success in terms of interest rates and inflation," the biography quotes Mr Costello as saying.
Age newspaper political editor Michelle Grattan said the new book would leave readers wondering how Mr Howard and Mr Costello could continue to tolerate each other.
"The treasurer has put a fresh grenade under an embattled government and huge strains on the relationship between its two most important members," Mr Grattan wrote. - (Reuters)