The Courier Mail reports this morning that John Howard is going to broker a peace between the Queensland Libs and Nats. Here we go again. Not that the CM journalists appear to be aware of this.
The CM reports “Mr Howard has never before personally and formally intervened in the Queensland Liberal Party division” which is dead wrong. If you can call convening a meeting between the two state parliamentary leaders a “formal intervention” Howard has intervened both personally and formally at least thrice before to my certain knowledge.
One was the federal intervention into the state branch after the 2001 election (noted by the CM, but apparently not personal and formal). Another was in 2000 when he put pressure on the state Liberals over three-cornered contests. Yet another time was in 1996 when he put pressure on for a joint senate ticket.
None of his interventions have been successful (unless you count the failure to convince of the need for a joint senate ticket which ultimately delivered him control of the senate at the last election). There is a good reason for that – you can’t micro-manage the rest of the country from Canberra, something the centralists currently in charge have missed on a number of fronts.
This one is likely to be just as unsuccessful, particularly judging on this excerpt from ABC radio this morning:

Announcer: The PM is to step in to broker a peace deal between the Liberals and Nationals in Qld. John Howard’s invited the Party’s State Leaders and the Nationals Federal Head, John Anderson, to a peace summit in March. Nationals Leader Lawrence Springborg says he’s been asking to meet with Mr Howard since last December. Mr Springborg believes the Prime Minister has realised Qld needs a unified conservative force to take on the Beattie Government.
Springborg. It’s taken some 3 months for that happen. Nevertheless, we’re grateful that there is a meeting but we do need this level of Federal intervention and just keep in mind that Federal intervention has failed in the past to convince the Qld Liberals that they need to adopt a more conciliatory position.

Springborg castigating the Libs for not taking a “conciliatory position”! Isn’t he the leader of the party that is threatening to throw the next election away by running against the Liberal Party in every state seat that they hold? And hasn’t he been running around the state accusing the Liberals of knocking back his amalgamation proposal because of selfish factional interest?
In 1996 when Howard suggested temporising with the National Party I remember saying something like, “It doesn’t matter how many bones you throw this dog, it will not be happy until it takes your whole arm off.” My advice is still the same.
[Note: I’ve just been reminded by a colleague – how could I forget – that the Nationals unilaterally ended the last coalition and immediately evicted the Liberal Party from the Coaltion offices. Yes, very conciliatory indeed.]