SYDNEY -- With the government of Prime Minister John Howard still reeling from a by-election humiliation, along comes a morale booster -- a corporate deal that makes Australia the dominant player in global-resources trade. Comeback Kid Howard has done it again, although his chances of staying prime minister after this year's election still depend on a disgruntled electorate, not on multinational games.
A litmus-test by-election went horribly wrong for Howard's conservative coalition government this month, with voters slashing their support for the coalition candidate by 10 percent. After an agonizingly slow count of postal preference votes, an unknown Labor Party candidate finally took the blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Ryan in Queensland.
After such a shock, Howard's critics would usually have been calling for his head on a tray. But at that moment, BHP, the country's corporate giant, announced a merger deal with London-based mining behemoth Billiton. Worth $58 billion, the merger will create the world's largest mining and exploration conglomerate, with major operations in Australia, South America, southern Africa and Europe and projected annual revenues of $33 billion.