The Hollow Man

Producer: Paul Steindl

He's become the hollow man of politics, the PM who never was.

And for months now, Peter Costello's kept us on tenterhooks with the "will he or won't he" guessing game about his future in Canberra.

Well, now the truth's out, he's pulling the pin on politics, heading for the high-paying world of big business.

Or, then again, is he?

As Ray Martin discovered after spending a week with the former treasurer, Peter Costello just can't help himself and the impression Ray got is that he could yet accept the Liberal party leadership - if his colleagues begged hard enough.

Full transcript:

RAY MARTIN: Peter Costello boasts that he gave us an age of prosperity. And Saturday morning at his local markets it certainly looks like it.

RAY MARTIN: these days the cocky former treasurer has a lean and hungry look.

PETER COSTELLO: That's very sweet, isn't it?

RAY MARTIN: With wife Tanya, he still seems to be campaigning for something.

PETER COSTELLO: You ought to be a journalist.

RAY MARTIN: Simple question, just a simple answer - Are you going or are you staying?

PETER COSTELLO: Well, Ray, I'm not seeking the leadership of the Liberal Party. I made that entirely clear.

RAY MARTIN: Ever?

PETER COSTELLO: Ah, I'm not seeking it. I am supporting Brendan Nelson.

RAY MARTIN: No, but let's clear that up. Will you accept the... if you get nominated?

PETER COSTELLO: No, I'm not seeking the leadership.

RAY MARTIN: Why is Peter Costello still playing silly buggers? Why does everybody still wonder if he means what he said?

PETER COSTELLO: This is a Mr Squiggle method of administration.

RAY MARTIN: In Parliament, he and Paul Keating were the alpha males... PAUL KEATING: I withdraw dishonest and insert the word shabby.

RAY MARTIN: ..Streetfighters going straight for the jugular.

PETER COSTELLO: I am pleased to see I have got you worked up guttermouth. No mealy-mouthed words there.

PETER COSTELLO: Mr Speaker, I withdraw the remark and replace it with shabby now.

RAY MARTIN: But sitting on the back benches for almost a year now, Costello is clearly frustrated and bored.

PETER COSTELLO: Now you have bland men leading the blind.

RAY MARTIN: You sit up the back and go to sleep.

PETER COSTELLO: Well it is, it is boring. You wouldn't actually call Kevin Rudd and and Wayne Swan 'Mr Personalities'.

RAY MARTIN: Would you call Brendan Nelson 'Mr Personality'?

PETER COSTELLO: Actually, I like Brendan. Brendan is a very decent man.

RAY MARTIN: I didn't ask you that, would you call him Mr Personality?

PETER COSTELLO: He's got a lot of personality.

RAY MARTIN: Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan say they'd love to be taking you on. They'd love you to be across the benches.

PETER COSTELLO: Oh, yeah.

RAY MARTIN: Would you love to take them on?

PETER COSTELLO: I think the frequency and the loudness with which they say it belies a little bit of fear.

RAY MARTIN: But the fact is - Costello never had the courage to take on John Howard. You didn't dare for the top job, though, did you?

PETER COSTELLO: Well, well...I put my case.

RAY MARTIN: Gently...persuasively.

PETER COSTELLO: No, no, very forthrightly and I never had a majority. Now, that may say I'm not as persuasive as I should have been. I'll take that but I put my case.

RAY MARTIN: Do you accept the gutless?

PETER COSTELLO: Of course not.

RAY MARTIN: Accept the spineless?

PETER COSTELLO: Of course not.

RAY MARTIN: Indecisive?

PETER COSTELLO: Of course not.

RAY MARTIN: For a dozen years in public, they were the Liberals dream team. But in private, they just didn't like each other. Maybe it's because of their dark secret. The leadership deal that Howard refused to accept and Costello refused to challenge.

PETER COSTELLO: On at least five or six times, there was an occasion where he raised the prospect of handing over the leadership and a transition and on each occasion, there was a reason why he didn't do it. I told him, Ray, direct, as directly as I'm now telling you - "It should be done".

RAY MARTIN: And he said?

PETER COSTELLO: He didn't agree with me. He didn't accept it.

RAY MARTIN: Are you a slow learner?

PETER COSTELLO: Well, I thought it should be done. I was very direct and very upfront with him.

RAY MARTIN: We come back to the spineless, the gutless, that have been thrown at you - why didn't you do a Keating?

PETER COSTELLO: Well, first of all, I wouldn't want to be compared in anything with Paul Keating,

RAY MARTIN: He had a go.

PETER COSTELLO: Well, I think he also illustrates that someone can get consumed by bitterness.

RAY MARTIN: He got the job.

PETER COSTELLO: Keating, Keating was a very lucky man.

RAY MARTIN: Peter Costello seems more relaxed on the political sidelines these days, watching his younger daughter Phoebe score her own goals. He now regrets he has missed his children growing up.

PETER COSTELLO: Now I go home at night and my kids remember my name and I sleep in the same bed with my wife and life has its consolations.

RAY MARTIN: Surprisingly, 60 Minutes is the first camera he's allowed to film his private world. Maybe it's about selling his memoirs. Maybe its about selling himself, just like he did to Tanya back in their student days.

TANYA COSTELLO: Oh, there is no question that he was incredibly charismatic. He was, had everybody stopped silent to listen whenever he spoke.

RAY MARTIN: You're kidding!

TANYA COSTELLO: No. It's totally true, totally true. All these, you know...

PETER COSTELLO: How things change.

TANYA COSTELLO: How things change, that's right, that's right, that's right. So there was really, you know, it's an old fashioned and ridiculous thing to say but I think for me, it was love at first sight.

RAY MARTIN: Like Peter, Tanya Costello is also a lawyer.

PETER COSTELLO: The first thing that we believe is that each individual person is valuable and significant.

RAY MARTIN: 30 years ago, they kicked off together in the long-haired world of university politics. It was fun back then.

TANYA COSTELLO: Peter stood out as being this sort of fair-haired angel, really, in the centre of the stage.

PETER COSTELLO: A long-haired angel. I had hair in those days.

TANYA COSTELLO: Long curly hair.

PETER COSTELLO: Long curly hair.

TANYA COSTELLO: Politics is not an easy game to be part of.

RAY MARTIN: But last year, all the speculation and spite prompted Tanya to cancel the morning papers.

TANYA COSTELLO: It was a very, very difficult 12 months. it was probably better not to have to start the day with a dose of poison.

PETER COSTELLO: And it's bad for your health reading newspapers, particularly when you are reading about yourself.

RAY MARTIN: So this could have been you? You could have had your portrait up there. Tanya laments that Peter never got his chance to be Prime Minister.

TANYA COSTELLO: I think he would have been a wonderful prime minister, I think Australians had been duped. They voted in someone because they wanted to get rid of someone else.

RAY MARTIN: So who duped them - Kevin Rudd or John Howard?

TANYA COSTELLO: The newcomer, the sort of... that you didn't know much about. But if they'd had a chance to see Peter they may not have voted for the new prime minister.

RAY MARTIN: Did you ever tell him to make a run for prime minister?

TANYA COSTELLO: I know that Peter makes up his own mind I would certainly have, in a gentle and laughing way, said, "Really, you ought to have a go."

RAY MARTIN: So why didn't you listen to her?

PETER COSTELLO: Biggest mistake of my life.

TANYA COSTELLO: He believes the best in people - whereas, clearly, I don't.

RAY MARTIN: Did you ever say to Peter, "Look, I don't think John Howard is going to step aside?

TANYA COSTELLO: Well, yes - but I always got my head bitten off because Peter is a person who believes that people keep their word.

RAY MARTIN: In his book, Costello paints a vivid picture of John Howard under his wife's thumb.

PETER COSTELLO: I think he himself said at the time of the APEC Summit, that he consulted his family and his family wanted him to stay.

RAY MARTIN: Which meant Janet.

PETER COSTELLO: Well, that's his family.

RAY MARTIN: So effectively, what you're saying between the lines is that Janet was more powerful in his ear than the Cabinet.

PETER COSTELLO: Well, that the family would be more influential than the Cabinet.

RAY MARTIN: Did Janet Howard like you?

PETER COSTELLO: Well, I never had any arguments with her.

RAY MARTIN: Costello details how Howard betrayed him again and again over the leadership but, always the loyal party man, he still won't put the boot in. Are you friends?

PETER COSTELLO: Ray, we were colleagues in a successful partnership over a long period of time.

RAY MARTIN: But never friends?

PETER COSTELLO: We didn't go round to each others kid's birthday parties or anything like that.

RAY MARTIN: On the eve of last year's election, any pretence of friendship disappeared. Led by Alexander Downer, senior Cabinet members decided that John Howard should finally go. But again Howard baulked at giving Costello the top job.

PETER COSTELLO: Alexander Downer rang me and he said, "He may just ring you and say, 'its all yours mate'". And I thought, "Well, what should I do here? And the important thing for me to do was to write a speech that I would give.

RAY MARTIN: An acceptance speech.

PETER COSTELLO: An acceptance speech.

RAY MARTIN: So this is two months before the election?

PETER COSTELLO: Two months before the election. Did John Howard ever ring and say, "It's yours mate"? No.

RAY MARTIN: Did you write the speech?

PETER COSTELLO: I wrote the speech all right.

RAY MARTIN: Where's the speech?

TANYA COSTELLO: Yeah, where's the speech?

PETER COSTELLO: It's a good speech.

RAY MARTIN: Its in a draw somewhere, is it?

PETER COSTELLO: It never got delivered but it was a good speech. You would have liked it. Normally in politics you don't hear nice things about yourself until your funeral.

RAY MARTIN: Just the other night at a Victorian Liberal party love-in, Costello was still breathing life into his political career. He can't stop teasing Brendan Nelson and the party.

PETER COSTELLO: It reminds me of Woody Allen. Someone said to him once, "Woody, what would you like to hear people say at your funeral? He said, "I'd like to sit and look at my casket and say, "'He's moving still? "'I think he's still alive.'"

RAY MARTIN: Again, with respect, it's these antics that you're now doing that has contributed to the impression that you are gutless, that you're spineless, that you're indecisive. That you can't make your mind up about things.

PETER COSTELLO: Ray, as the longest serving treasurer in this country, I did what Keating could never do. Howard couldn't do it - nobody else had been able to do that. This was the biggest tax reform in Australian history.

RAY MARTIN: For a man who goes to church every Sunday, Peter Costello, the politician, still likes to dance around the truth. Remember this is what he clearly said last year, the day after the election disaster.

PETER COSTELLO: I will be looking to build a career post-politics in the commercial world. As a consequence of that, I will not seek nor will I accept the leadership or deputy leadership of the Liberal party.

RAY MARTIN: Ten months later - is that still the same?

PETER COSTELLO: That's, my view. Yep.

RAY MARTIN: You will not accept?

PETER COSTELLO: I will not seek, nor am I being drafted and I am not seeking it.

RAY MARTIN: You won't answer my question.

PETER COSTELLO: Well, that's a pretty straightforward answer, Ray.

RAY MARTIN: No, will you accept it?

PETER COSTELLO: No.

RAY MARTIN: You can say, "No, I won't accept it". Watch, in tip-toeing around that your'e endorsing the general impression that politicians use weasel words. That they lie, that they aren't true to their word.

PETER COSTELLO: These are not weasel words. I said the day after the election, "I will not run, nor will I accept the leadership." That is my position.

RAY MARTIN: That seems like the end of the story but remember Peter Costello is a politician. What if the Liberal Party plead with him to take over in a years time?

PETER COSTELLO: I don't think so Ray.

RAY MARTIN: Do you know so?

PETER COSTELLO: I don't think so.

RAY MARTIN: You don't think so but you don't know so.

PETER COSTELLO: I don't think so. I don't think you'll be going through that.