Howard declines offer of education portfolio

Press, 13 May 1989, Page 12

Howard declines offer of education portfolio

NZPA-AAP Sydney The dumped Federal Opposition leader, John Howard, yesterday criticised his successor, Andrew Peacock, for not giving him a choice of portfolio on the new Opposition front bench. At a news conference in Sydney, Mr Howard announced that he had turned down Mr Peacock’s offer of the education portfolio on 'the ground it was neither appropriate nor sufficiently senior. “I would have thought the sensible, gracious thing to (say to) a former

leader would have been to have said, ‘Look, what do you want?’, to try to accommodate him,” he said. Mr Howard said he had asked to be given either the shadow foreign affairs or defence portfolios, but Mr Peacock had said he had promised them to other members of the party. “That’s a shame, because I genuinely wanted to be part of the team at a very senior level and I had hoped he would understand that someone who has been leader for four years, treasurer for five, deputy leader for three years, perhaps may have been entitled to have

some choice in the matter of the portfolio that that person occupied,” the former leader said. “I find it hard to fathom why it was impossible, if we are in the business of healing and uniting and binding up the wounds, I find it hard to imagine why I wasn’t given one of those two jobs and I regret that very much,” he said. Mr Howard said he and Mr Peacock on Wednesday had canvassed the possibility of his remaining on the back bench until after the election, when he would be given a Cabinet position if the Coalition won office.