Warrior statesman

RETIRING Liberal politician Alexander Downer has some advice for Brendan Nelson and worries about US policy towards North Korea.

THE retirement of a prominent politician attracts the usual brickbats and bouquets. He did this right. He got that wrong. What was he thinking there? How inspired was that? Alexander Downer, Australia's longest serving foreign minister, who will announce his retirement from parliament tomorrow or Thursday, will expect plenty ofboth.

As foreign minister, he made one heck of a mark, mercilessly slaying his political opponents while determining Australia's foreign policies. Some will never forgive him and John Howard for taking Australia into Iraq. Many will admire his conviction in confronting Saddam Hussein and the scourge of terrorism. Some will deplore his role in the Tampa asylum-seeker stand-off. Many will respect his determination to foil people smuggling. Some will sigh with relief at another Howard man gone.

Many more will lament the departure of one who was, simultaneously, one of Australia's most dedicated public servants and effective conservative cultural warriors. To each his own.

But like him or loathe him, Downer's record as foreign minister is imposing.

Speaking to The Australian on Sunday on the eve of his departure from politics, the pugnacious Liberal is in no mood for mellowing. After all, he is sitting in the lounge of New York's chaotic JKF airport ("named after a man I don't approve of"). He prefers Ronald Reagan airport in Washington, DC.

Regrets? Unlike Frank Sinatra, not even a few. But he admits to a few mistakes. They hark back to his time as Opposition leader when, he says, he was too inexperienced to manage the political levers of leadership. But soon after becoming foreign minister in 1996, when the Howard government dislodged Paul Keating and the Labor Party from power, Downer wasted no time wielding his foreign policy acumen.

He forged a peace accord in Bougainville in 1997, where "right on our doorstep more people were killed than in Northern Ireland". His achievements may unite even some of his critics, such as securing the independence of East Timor or changing the approach to regional assistance to the Pacific through the mission to the troubled Solomon Islands. Or the free trade agreement with the US. Then there is Iraq. Australia's involvement may have divided the nation, but Downer is unrepentant that it was and remains the rightmove. Downer's passion for foreign affairs is far from over. He is about to become the fix-it man in the Mediterranean. The official title is the Secretary-General of the UN Special Envoy for Cyprus. Not a bad gig for a man who has had his fair share of disagreements with the UN.

In 1996, when Downer opened the R.G. Casey building in Canberra, which houses the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, he remarked on the fine history of former foreign and trade ministers on the international stage. There was John McEwen, Doug Anthony, H.V. Evatt, Gareth Evans, Percy Spender and, of course, Casey, who was then the longest serving foreign minister.

Downer now heads that list, his appointment at the UN a sign of his stature on the global foreign affairs stage. Backed by the Rudd Government, Downer's role -- yet to be announced -- is to find a solution to the long-running dispute over Cyprus between Greece and Turkey. The 1974 coup d'etat by Greek nationalists led to an invasion by Turks to protect their citizens and a divided Cyprus, with 30,000 Turkish troops defending a northern enclave of Turkish Cypriots. The aim is to remove the troops and unify the Turkish Cypriots with the Greek Cypriots.

"It's not going to be a cakewalk," Downer says, pointing to the many failed attempts to solve the crisis in the past. "These things are always untidy. It's never easy to do. We ended the civil war in Bougainville. We played our part in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why not try to fix up Cyprus as well?"

Even before this appointment, Downer has not been sitting on his foreign policy laurels. In Washington last week for the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, he offered his advice to Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky about the worsening crisis in Zimbabwe.

"I told the Americans they should establish an international criminal tribunal to try President Mugabe and his cronies for their crimes, just as there was one for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia," he says. "They were very taken with the idea and were going to do some work on it."

At the dialogue, Downer rejected the notion that the Howard government was simply an echo chamber for US policy.

"People said we should have more disagreements with America, with the Bush administration. My attitude was, well, if I disagreed, I'll say so. If I don't disagree, then I'll support them."

He says the Bush administration's objection to the International Criminal Court is a case in point. The Howard government supported the ICC.

Neither is Downer comfortable with the Bush administration's approach to North Korea. He says the decision last week by the US to remove the communist Pyongyang regime from the list of states that sponsor terrorism is not a wise move.

"They are a threat because they are serial proliferators and they support any manner of extremists in the course of making money. They are not Islamic extremists. They are North Korean communists. Their interest is making money."

A symbol of the failed policy on North Korea is, he says, the fact that while the six-party talks were settling on the terms of an agreement for North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, the communist regime was in the process of building a nuclear reactor inSyria.

Downer says he asked the Americans a lot of questions. "I have been sceptical about the virtue of America's policy on North Korea."

Foreign policy aside, Downer has been one of the stalwart warriors for conservatism in Australia. Having come close to losing his federal seat of Mayo during the GST election in 1998, he looks back with great satisfaction on his achievements.

"Whether in terms of international diplomacy or domestic policies, the great take-out of the Howard years was a focus on practical solutions," he says.

"No posturing. No spin. Just practical solutions to real problems. The Howard government intellectualised policy and rejected symbolism. It was part of our undoing, too. We would not go in for symbolic gestures. And that is where the Left has been very effective in recent times, putting symbolism ahead of practical policies."

Downer is critical of those who say the Liberal Party in Opposition should go in a different direction.

"People say you've got to seize the middle ground. But the middle ground is always changing, so it's impossible (to do that). It's much better for the Liberal Party to position itself not so much in those terms but in terms of practicality. Basically the Liberal Party is the party that believes you should lead your own life, without some bastard of a politician telling you how to live it.

"Labor wants to tell us how to run our own lives. Labor wants to tell us whether we are fat or we're thin. Or whether we should have four drinks or three. Well, who cares whether we're a bit fat or we drink four drinks or have a fag out the back? Whose business is that but your own business? By the way, I smoke cigars. And it just incenses me and it even encourages me to think about going into state politics, that's how much it incenses me to have state governments tell us where we can smoke and where we can't smoke. Why can't we have a pub where people can smoke and a pub where people can't smoke?"

As he looks at the Liberal Party now, Downer sees a party that has lost the ability to sell its core message about defending individual freedom.

"The Liberal Party has to explain why there is a role for government in any particular form of activity, in practical terms, not in terms of Left and Right," he says. "Just in practical terms.

"What they need to do, which they have not done very well so far, is develop a better narrative: both a negative narrative about the Rudd Labor Government and a positive narrative about the Liberal Party. They need to build policies around that narrative. It is one thing to start barking on about reducing fuel excise about 5c, but what's your point? Why would you want to do that? The Liberal Party does not have a story to tell at the moment. Just a bunch of ad hoc comments."

Known for his wicked sense of humour and a strong set of beliefs voiced in his maiden speech to parliament in 1985, Downer is a poster boy for true conservatives if the recent assessment of Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion, is correct.

"Conservatives differ from progressives in many ways, but one important way is in the quota of cheerfulness and humour they deploy," Kimball wrote.

"Conservatives tend to be cheerful because they do not regard imperfection as a personal moral affront. Being realistic about mankind's susceptibility to improvement, they are as suspicious of utopian schemes as they are appreciative of present blessings."

Downer's verve for present blessings is palpable. Most of his time will be spent trying to solve the Cyprus issue. There is also a post at a university. A few directorships. And a consultancy with Ian Smith advising corporations about their strategy with governments. Downer will bring to the table his formidable connections with foreign governments.

But his departure from federal politics means a pronounced thinning in the ranks of Liberal Party cultural warriors. You could count the remaining fighters on the disfigured hand of a clumsy woodchopper.

Howard? Gone. Peter Costello? In retreat, probably going. Now Downer, gone too. As Downer says, they were there, wielding their swords, day in and day out, and with good humour and many amusing jokes largely at the expense of their opponents.

"And yes, we call people lefties. Sometimes even shocking lefties. For the Left, raging against something is a vocation. The Left prefers an obsessive campaign. They are very emotionally driven. If one things passes, they go on to something else. Just like climate change. Some clown telling you to sign the Kyoto Protocol and the weather will change. I mean, what next?"

He remarks on the fanciful impression that the drought will break suddenly because Kevin Rudd is going to whack up the price of everything you use. "I think people's concern about climate change is declining, by the way," he says, as people finally twig to the fact they will wear the enormous costs of mitigating climate change.

"I must get a Hummer," he muses, chortling at the image of him in a petrol-guzzling car.

"Surely with a driver at the wheel," I suggest, as he takes up his plum UN job.

"Perhaps," he says with a laugh.

One thing is certain. Downer may be exiting politics but he won't be going quietly. Some will cheer his departure. But for many, parliament has just lost one of its towering figures of the past two decades.