Andrew Peacock: Colt from Kooyong on what might have been

Former Liberal leader Andrew Peacock now calls Austin, Texas, his home. Picture: Brian Birzer

Andrew Peacock is still not sure that he ever wanted to be prime minister, but in a rare interview to mark 50 years since his election to federal parliament the former Liberal leader, minister and diplomat has no regrets.

“I didn’t have this obsession with being prime minister,” Peacock, 77, tells Inquirer from his home in Austin, Texas. “I wanted to do a good job in politics, but being prime minister was not the be all and end all for me like it was for others. I might have been better off if I had that same attitude, but that wasn’t me, and no amount of rewriting can change that.”

Yet Peacock had a remarkable political career, one filled with so much promise that from the moment he succeeded Robert Menzies in the Melbourne seat of Kooyong in 1966 he was seen as a future prime minister.

“The Colt from Kooyong” galloped through Liberal ranks, becoming the youngest minister at age 30 during John Gorton’s prime ministership. He went on to serve under Billy McMahon and Malcolm Fraser, and was elected Liberal leader in 1983 and in 1989.

Peacock came close to becoming prime minister in 1990 when the Coalition won 50.1 per cent per cent of the two-party vote. Bob Hawke came within a whisker of having to give him the keys to the Lodge.

Andrew Sharp Peacock was born into the Liberal Party. His mother and father were prominent Liberals. His maternal grandmother knew Menzies and was a pioneer in the Australian National Women’s League, which merged with the nascent Liberal Party in 1945.

Peacock was president of the Young Liberal Movement (1962-63), president of the Victorian Liberal Party (1965-66) and served on the party’s federal executive (1964-66).

In 1961, aged 22, the Scotch College graduate and University of Melbourne law student stood as the Liberal candidate for Yarra against Labor MP Jim Cairns.

“Politics appealed to me as an area where you could get a lot of satisfaction and make a contribution,” Peacock recalls. But his ambition hit a roadblock. At the election, Cairns thrashed him.

In 1966, when Menzies retired, the dashing young lawyer and company director saw his opportunity. No seat was more prized than Kooyong, jewel in the Liberal crown. Menzies told Peacock he favoured Dick Hamer, then a Victorian upper house MP, as his successor. But Hamer turned Menzies down. A path was cleared.

Peacock won the hotly contested preselection and then the seat at a by-election. He was 27. “I was very honoured to be succeeding him,” Peacock recalls. “Menzies was very encouraging.”

The young MP was often compared to John F. Kennedy, who also radiated style and vitality. Peacock was regarded as a bon vivant, gregarious and confident. His private life, including three marriages and a score of girlfriends, was good fodder for gossip columnists and the corridors of power.

When Peacock sat in the House of Representatives for the first time, Harold Holt was prime minister. “Harold exuded decency,” Peacock says. “He was a good leader but didn’t have the strengths that Bob (Menzies) had.”

Although the government won in a landslide in 1966, Holt was facing a range of political difficulties by the time he went missing off Victoria’s Cheviot Beach in 1967.

Peacock backed Gorton to replace Holt. But the new larrikin PM challenged party orthodoxy, clashed with premiers and upset the cabinet with his single-mindedness. Gorton was his own worst enemy. In 1971, a partyroom motion of confidence in Gorton’s leadership was tied 33-all. Gorton used a casting vote against himself and ended his prime ministership.

“Courageous in war and determined in peace,” Peacock says of Gorton. “He was a very good man, a great soldier and a gutsy politician.” The catalyst for Gorton’s demise was a falling out with Fraser, who quit the cabinet and denounced him in parliament. Peacock describes Gorton’s downfall as “extremely traumatic”.

Gorton had appointed Peacock as minister for the army in 1969. Today, he looks back on the Vietnam war “with difficulty”. But seeing little point in revisionism, he will not accept the war was a mistake.

“If Vietnam taught us anything, it is that you cannot engage in military activities without the continuing support of the people,” he says.

His happiest years as a minister were, surprisingly, under McMahon. Why? Because he expected to be dumped from the ministry and was “stunned” when McMahon appointed him minister for external territories in 1972. His chief task was to transition Papua New Guinea towards independence.

“Creating a nation out of 500 different tribes, 700 different languages, trying to draw them together and setting up a representative government for this diverse country, was a huge challenge and I loved it,” Peacock says. He even taught himself pidgin English.

On McMahon’s prime ministership, Peacock hedges. “He did it hard and he also played politics hard. I know he was not well regarded but I was one of his ministers so I gave him support. I had been a Gorton man and remained a Gorton man, but I did my job.”

When Fraser’s political brinkmanship over supply paid off with the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975, Peacock was appointed minister for foreign affairs. He also briefly held the environment portfolio. After the 1980 election, he shifted to industrial relations.

It was during the Cold War and Peacock saw Australia as “a small but influential” country as the US pursued detente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with China. He developed relationships across the global political divide, especially in the US, where he counted George HW Bush and Ted Kennedy as friends.

But Peacock and Fraser never really got on. There were several disputes on foreign policy, including over recognition of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and disagreements on industrial relations. But what gnawed at Peacock the most was Fraser’s interventions into his portfolios.

In 1981 Peacock quit the cabinet and savaged Fraser, accusing him of having “a mania for getting his own way”. It was an electric speech reminiscent of Fraser’s mauling of Gorton a decade earlier. “It’s called payback,” Peacock recalls.

In 1982 Fraser called a partyroom ballot to settle speculation that Peacock would challenge him. Fraser trounced Peacock, winning the ballot by 54 votes to 27. If he had his time again, Peacock would not have challenged Fraser. “Resigning from cabinet is not an easy thing to do and not something that I would encourage,” he says.

Later that year, with an election looming, Fraser recalled Peacock to the cabinet as industry and commerce minister. Although Fraser is long gone, Peacock is reluctant to criticise him. “He was a most successful prime minister and that record overrides everything else.”

Peacock became Liberal leader when the Fraser government was defeated in 1983. Because Fraser was annoyed with John Howard’s legitimate criticisms of his government, Peacock had Fraser’s support “by default”. In the partyroom vote, Peacock defeated Howard by 36 to 20 votes.

As leader, he wanted to steer the party in a new direction.

“I wanted to put it in a position to win an election and to have a platform which was somewhat more liberal in the classic sense,” Peacock says. Despite some internal division, Peacock out-campaigned the more popular Hawke at the 1984 election, and the Coalition won 16 additional seats in the larger parliament.

Meanwhile, the Peacock-Howard rivalry was barely concealed. Peacock had flair and panache; Howard was solid and studious. Peacock was an effective communicator; Howard was the policy wonk. Peacock was liberal; Howard was conservative. It was along these lines that they clashed spectacularly.

One of the most bizarre episodes in the Peacock-Howard rivalry took place in 1985. Peacock is certain that Howard, then deputy leader, was eyeing the leadership. Peacock asked Howard for a public declaration of loyalty and a commitment he would not challenge. But he refused.

So Peacock tried to have Howard replaced. But the parliamentary party re-elected Howard as deputy. Peacock felt he had no choice but to resign. Howard was then elected leader. Peacock continued in the shadow ministry but tensions remained high.

Ahead of the 1987 election, a car phone conversation between Peacock and Victorian Liberal leader Jeff Kennett was intercepted and leaked to the media. Kennett relayed a discussion with Howard following a state by-election. Kennett and Peacock rounded on Howard and both called him a “c..t”. Peacock was dumped from the frontbench. Looking back, Peacock says “a day of reckoning” with Howard was inevitable.

It was at this time that Peacock says he didn’t know if he really wanted to be prime minister. But he became deputy leader after the 1987 election. Then, in 1989, a secret plot hatched by a parliamentary ginger group that dubbed itself “the cardinals” caught Howard off guard. Peacock defeated Howard by 44 votes to 27 in a surprise coup. He insists there was no “retribution” motive.

While Peacock had been underestimated as a campaigner, he struggled to compete against Hawke’s popularity. The press gallery wrote him off as a policy lightweight and Paul Keating launched withering barbs across the dispatch box.

Peacock’s return to the leadership, prompted Keating to ask: “Can a souffle rise twice?”

The 1990 election was another Hawke-Peacock match-up. Peacock thought he would defeat Hawke and become prime minister. But the Liberal campaign was beset by political blunders and Hawke and Keating outgunned him on policy. Peacock suggests the rivalry with Howard also “must have had an impact”.

Although the Coalition won a majority two-party vote, Peacock accepted the result. “You have to win the seats — that’s the system,” he reflects. “I never complained about losing the election and I didn’t think I was robbed.”

He stepped down from the leadership after the election but remained in the shadow ministry and became a backroom powerbroker. He watched the Liberals cycle through John Hewson and then Alexander Downer before returning to Howard.

Peacock’s resignation from parliament in 1994 removed a barrier for Howard’s return. Indeed, Peacock acknowledges Howard “may not have” returned as leader, and become prime minister, if he had remained in parliament.

But he rates Howard as “a very good” prime minister. The two later became “quite friendly” and Howard appointed Peacock ambassador to the US in 1997. “I wanted to do a good job for him and I think I did,” Peacock says.

Peacock has “great admiration” for the US and enjoyed being Australia’s top diplomat in Washington. But he found that the “reservoir of goodwill” towards Australia was no substitute for building relations with congress.

He often spoke to Howard about policy and political issues — and recalls telling him about Bill Clinton’s liaison with Monica Lewinsky, 36 hours before the news broke.

Peacock married former US diplomat Penne Korth in 2002. They have lived in Austin, Texas, for 12 years. He is very proud of his three daughters — Jane, Ann and Caroline — with Susan Renouf. He remains well-connected in US political circles, and expects Donald Trump’s election as president means “more will be asked of us” in the Asia-Pacific region.

Peacock no longer follows Australian politics as he once did. But he does think about how it has changed in the past 50 years. He worries about the level of “personal denigration”, the decline of “thoughtful argument” and the “calibre” of politicians being elected to parliament.

While he believes the Liberal Party is “more conservative than it was”, and may no longer be the broad church Menzies envisioned, he has only admiration for Malcolm Turnbull. “The party has got a very good parliamentary leader who’s not getting the support that I think he should be getting,” Peacock says. “He has done a great job. He’ll win the next election.”