Paul Thomas: Another gripping tale of the Old and the Restless

En route to making the decision, many of the 600 New Zealanders who move to Australia every week would have sat down and listed the pros and cons.

In the pros column would be things like better weather, higher wages, lower taxes, greater opportunity, efficient public transport, girls who look like a young Elle Macpherson, or possibly the fact that Sydney's the gay capital of the southern hemisphere.

The cons column might include bush fires, poisonous spiders, cane toads, drought, Pauline Hanson, Alan Jones, the fact that Sydney's the gay capital of the southern hemisphere and, problematically, Australians.

I doubt many put politics into the equation but it definitely belongs in the pros column. Australian politics is a blend of soap opera, reality show and stand-up comedy which for sheer entertainment leaves ours for dead.

In the latest episode the simmering rivalry between Prime Minister John Howard and his restless deputy Peter Costello is threatening to come to the boil. Again. Like the J.R. Ewing-Cliff Barnes feud that energised so many episodes of Dallas, this goes way back.

Just how far back we discovered this week courtesy of one of those engaging supporting actors with whom Australian politics is well-endowed: Ian McLachlan, a South Australian blueblood who represented his state at cricket before entering federal politics at the instigation of the Liberal Party's born-to-rule tendency which briefly viewed him as a future Prime Minister.

In December 1994 McLachlan attended a meeting at which Howard and Costello discussed the Liberal leadership. The Liberals had been out of power for a decade and the party leader was smirking, puerile Alexander Downer, who grew up to become Foreign Minister.

Having been methodically mauled by his opposite number Paul Keating, Downer was, in leadership terms, a dead man walking. The only question was who would take over: Howard, the battle-scarred nearly man of Australian politics, or Costello, the bright young thing unmarked by failure - or, for that matter, success.

McLachlan made notes on the back of an envelope which he stowed in his wallet. There it remained for eleven and a half years until he decided to reveal what was agreed: if and when Howard became Prime Minister, he'd serve one and a half terms before handing over to Costello.

Well, Howard became Prime Minister after the 1996 election and is now into his fourth term. History is littered with examples of politicians reneging on deals, but it takes a chilling combination of ruthlessness and shamelessness to shaft your heir apparent over and over again.

Howard's image as a suburban Machiavelli is bolstered by the brazenness of his self-justification, which is that two individuals can't decide who's going to lead the party at some indefinite point in the future because those decisions are made by the parliamentary party.

The deal wasn't worth the envelope it was recorded on and Costello was a bloody fool to believe otherwise. The "deal" was only a device to keep Costello out of the leadership contest.

It all bears an uncanny resemblance to the falling-out between former Prime Minister Bob Hawke and his heir apparent Keating.

Like Howard, Hawke was a long-serving Prime Minister, a sports fanatic with populist instincts who revelled in the trappings of office.

Like Costello, Keating was a successful Treasurer, respected rather than liked by the public and seen by many insiders as the real driving force behind the Government.

Like Howard and Costello, Hawke and Keating struck a handover deal in front of witnesses. Like Howard, Hawke reneged.

Keating eventually launched an assault that blasted Hawke out of the Prime Minister's Lodge, but we shouldn't assume history will repeat itself. Costello appears to lack Keating's killer instinct, while there are few figures in contemporary democratic politics who come close to matching Howard's durability and relentlessness.

This is a man who entered federal politics in 1974, who became Treasurer in 1977, who in 1983 lost his first tilt at the leadership to his nemesis Andrew Peacock, who rolled Peacock two years later only to have the Prime Ministership yanked from his grasp when the conservative vote was split by Joh Bjelke-Petersen's lunatic attempt to transfer his frontier-town brand of politics to the national stage.

After he was ousted by the Peacock faction in 1989, Howard was asked if he saw himself having another chance at the leadership. That, he said, would be "Lazarus with a triple bypass."

Given the chattering class's underestimation of Howard and the fact that it remains one of the few witty or memorable lines he's ever uttered, it's not altogether surprising that this remark is often attributed to Keating, whose collected wit, wisdom and vituperation would make a substantial and immensely enjoyable read.

Keating did come up with a killer one-liner about Howard - "He has all the vision of Mr Magoo without the good intentions" - but a decade after consigning Keating to political oblivion, Mr Magoo bustles on regardless.