Wayne Swan And Peter Costello Are Operating In Parallel Campaign Universes

The Age

Tuesday November 27, 2007

Katharine Murphy

THE Spanish-influenced steak house at the Breakfast Creek Hotel is packed to the rafters on a Tuesday night. It is a balmy Brisbane evening. People are downing huge hunks of medium-rare Wagyu beef and boutique beers. There are work mates, family groups, the odd date. There is laughter and perfume and body odour in equal measure.

As shadow treasurer Wayne Swan wanders through the restaurant to our table down the back, Brisbanites move their eyes in his direction and nudge each other.

Unusually for a politician, Swan seems not to notice he is making an entrance.

After more than a decade in Opposition, Labor frontbenchers are propping up their egos with sticky tape and matchsticks. They have largely forgotten to be masters of the universe, inhabiting spaces and holding court.

They are too busy grinding on through each day and trying to stay alive in the long shadow cast by the Prime Minister, the most effective conservative politician of his generation.

In a parallel campaign universe, Treasurer Peter Costello is also traversing the country. Costello, by contrast, is fully aware of the impact of his presence in a room. Swan's opponent is a bigger personality, he gets about with a highly experienced entourage, there are many resources. It is ego minus matchsticks, which is not to say the Treasurer is a terrible prat, because he is not, he is just running the country and used to being received in that way.

Costello is working hard too, but he can, by and large, breeze in and out of events on the campaign trail and leave the logistics to others, while Swan has his fingers firmly in the mechanics: thinking about the diary, thinking about his lines, thinking about what needs to happen in the national strategy, anticipating trouble and trying to get around it. The Herculean nature of the workload can make Swan appear mechanical, and it is true the shadow treasurer is instinctively an engineer who thinks about cogs and wheels, not an artist.

From my vantage point in the back seat of Swan's car, I see a bloke going absolutely full-tilt but with the steady gait of a marathon runner. Flamboyance and wild outbursts of imagination certainly are not Swan's thing - all the energy is being channelled into maintaining forward momentum.

From the back seat of Costello's car, there are more jolly theatrics, a fair amount of flourish but also more . . . something. Resignation? Possibly a building sense of displacement, although you sense Costello has been in this head-space for a little time. Costello's mood is hard to interpret because, in front of journalists, the Treasurer is a man in a thick mask.

Katharine Murphy, November 3