What is it with Peter Costello? Parliament's greatest performer who can mesmerise both sides of the chamber is pure mogadon outside it. This was the impression he gave in this week's National Press Club debate with his opponent, Wayne Swan.
Does economic policy have to be so dull? Whatever happened to a bit of wit and sparkle?
In an earlier life Wayne Swan was apparently a university lecturer but pity his students if they ever went to his lectures. Ray Martin quipped at the end of the televised event whether anyone had fallen asleep. The worm flat-lined when either speaker droned on and on about economic orthodoxy. It turned up at the mention of tax cuts and more spending on community services and turned down when there was talk about industrial relations and interest rates.
There were none of the dramatic statements that Costello had made the week earlier that, frankly, went beyond the pale and said that a Labor victory would spell recession for Australia. The next day, Costello was warning of an economic tsunami when China bows to the inevitable and floats its currency. A steady hand was needed at the tiller. Ergo, Peter Costello.
That old vitriolic vaudevillian, Paul Keating, commented last week that Costello was the laziest, most indolent and unimaginative Treasurer in Australia's post-war history. It's an interesting observation on Australia's longest-serving treasurer who has brought down 12 federal budgets in succession, 10 of which have been in ripe surplus.
In the last parliament session before the election was called the Coalition backbench would hail Costello as Australia's most successful treasurer before giving him a Dorothy Dixer.
It would be more accurate to call him Australia's luckiest treasurer. Apart from steering Australia through the Asian financial crisis and the economic fallout from 9/11 Costello has enjoyed a fairly benign global economy. For Australia the blessing was multiplied by having the resources to fuel China's industrialisation.
Costello's portfolio was also made easier by the Hawke and Keating governments making most of the necessary structural economic reforms. All Costello had to do was reduce the deficit, pay off the public debt and amass budgetary surpluses.
He has, it is true, fiddled around with the tax scales and commissioned a well received inter-generational report on the economic implications of an ageing population. However the hard stuff like the implementation of the GST in July 2000 was carried by Howard. An independent Reserve Bank has adroitly managed monetary policy since 1996.
Nor did Costello have to disentangle the knot of "stagflation" or confront adverse supply shocks like rising oil prices for too long. Even the fears about Australia's foreign debt (currently $544 billion) which tortured Keating when he was treasurer are now dismissed by the official economic advisers and taken in fact as a sign of confidence in the country's future. Nor is there much community concern about Australia's manufacturing sector which now employs less that 10 per cent of the workforce.
If the Coalition is re-elected then Costello is bound to hand down two more budgets before taking the keys to the Lodge. That prospect should still be in place given the robust state of the economy.
The only irritant in the short term is perhaps a succession of interest rate rises which, as everyone now knows, are because of a succession of tax cuts and exuberant, debt-financed spending.
It would be tragic of Costello for not foreseeing the possibilities of an interest rate rise come election time when he was plainly warned about it on Budget night. Nor did he listen to the OECD, business groups and even the odd galah in the pet shop talking about the need for more spending on infrastructure and skills formation to give the economy greater productive capacity.
Were Costello to lose his office as Treasurer on November 24 it would be the greatest opportunity lost suffered by a Treasurer since E.G. "Red Ted" Theodore missed out on the prime ministership in the 1930s.
Alex Millmow is a senior lecturer in economics at the University of Ballarat. These are his own views.