Peter Roebuck, Peter Costello, and sundry ghosts still haunting the battlements ...

(Above: oh dear lord).

It becomes clearer and clearer by the day that what's required for reading Australian columnists is a deep amnesia of the kind that afflicted Jason Bourne.

Normally I wouldn't read the scribbles of Peter Roebuck - after all, he's usually on about the remorseless tedium known as cricket - but when it involves the ongoing adventures of John Winston Howard, then what the heck.

Here's Roebuck back in January in ICC arena no place for this inexpert right-arm slow:

Cricket Australia's decision to nominate John Howard as its candidate for the top job at the International Cricket Council is as pitiful as it is disrespectful. Howard's knowledge of cricket is more characterised by enthusiasm than depth or imagination. Plain and simple, he is not qualified for the job. Moreover, the way in which he has been plucked from the sidelines shows CA in the worst possible light.

On and on he ranted:

The notion that an aged and conservative white politician with scant knowledge of the intricacies of the game can act as a counterbalance is far-fetched. Howard does not know enough about cricket or cricket business and, besides, is a divisive figure.

New Zealand is entitled to be upset about Australia's churlish attempt to block its candidate. A mixture of pride and fear of Indian power has unhinged CA. And so Howard's name emerged as the pall of black smoke cleared over Melbourne's Jolimont Street.

Flash forward - in the manner of Jason Bourne suffering a moment of acid flashback - to Roebuck's new scribble on the matter Given the nod, Howard must use his clout. And what a world of difference there is now that Howard has been given the position:

Popes have been more easily elected then the regional candidate for high cricketing office. The boards remained deadlocked for months, even to the last hours, and Sir Rod Eddington, the appointed arbiter, could not find any middle ground. Eventually he made the call. Finally the smoke cleared and Howard emerged, beaming and indestructible as ever. Unless they have gone gaga, long-serving prime ministers are not easily denied.

Although political enemies will disagree, the appointment is hardly a calamity. Only the most churlish will deny Howard his experience and acumen. This was a contest between heavyweights. Howard may be captivated by the bright lights of cricket but he is also familiar with the dark arts of manipulation. Better him than a hundred sweet talkers. Apart from anything else, he has nothing to lose. For the next four years he's going to be immersed in cricketing affairs and after that comes the paddock. He'll have earned it.

Say what? At a moment like that it's tempting to act like a cartoon character doing a double take. Even if it's a tad churlish.

But what have we established? Well clearly 'churlish' is a favourite Roebuckism, and a favourite metaphor for the lad is the appointment of Popes to their position, preferably with a puff of black or white smoke. Or just smoke.

And of course there's no point in arguing with someone who can so splendidly argue with themselves and contradict themselves at every point. The pitiful divisive white man now seems to have not only handicaps but advantages:

... he is sound and well informed on Zimbabwe and will not tolerate the eyewash advanced by the incumbents. And he's been around long enough to appreciate the importance of governance, the greatest issue in the game.

Howard is many things, but not naive. Doubtless he will spend his two years as Sharad Pawar's second in command familiarising himself with the terrain. He will locate the levers of power, find the skeletons in the cupboards, work out the liaisons and so forth. In that regard his years in the Liberal Party were perfect preparation.

Well I guess the wise sailor likes to run with the wind, and Roebuck is indeed a windy sailor of the superior kind.

And his windiness does provide a solid introduction to that other ghost of governments past, Peter Costello, still wandering the battlements, rattling sabres and howling into the wind:

What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?

Indeed, why not read Costello's Federal-run health another batty idea.

But if you're up to the task, first it helps that you have deep amnesia, or that you've visited, Arnold Schwarzenegger style, a memory implant facility so that you retain no shred or trace of distant past Liberal party policy. By distant of course we mean a full three years ago, when Tony Abbott was bungling and dithering his way through through the health portfolio.

Costello spends the first half of his piece righteously trumpeting his opposition to the insulation scheme, and how he defeated Malcolm Turnbull, and then leads this as his trump card:

Bear this in mind. The Federal Government could not run a home insulation program. Do you think it can run every hospital and hospital department in the country?

They will say: "We will recruit people who have experience in hospital management. They will run the services properly." Which people? The people now running the health system for state governments. The same people running the same hospitals will report to Canberra rather than the state capitals.

Do you think this will make the hospitals run better? Do you think the federal minister will take responsibility for any failures in the health system? About as much responsibility as Garrett takes for the insulation system. Someone senior and sensible should think about this. And stop it before it begins.

Indeed. And who can remember John Howard, one time PM, now of the ICC, and there to fix up cricket for good, with his Health Minister Tony Abbott by his side, striding into the Mersey hospital in Tasmania, and taking it over in the name of the Commonwealth:

NARDA GILMORE: His announcement of a Commonwealth takeover at Latrobe's Mersey Hospital came before dawn on the Internet site, YouTube, without the knowledge of the State Government or even hospital management.

JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: This is not something the Commonwealth has normally done in the past, but action was needed. (here).

It got everyone agitated - well Tasmanians are easily agitated, I'm told - and it caught Chairman Rudd on the hop:

NARDA GILMORE: Labor says it wants to end the blame game, and just yesterday flagged giving the states more control over how they spend federal funds. But John Howard says he is just stepping in where the states have failed because that's what the public wants.

JOHN HOWARD: Their view is, "I don't care what level of government provides the service, as long as the service is provided".

It also got Barnaby Joyce agitated. Back in those days he was imitating a feral bush cat, as opposed to his current position as resident loon within the broad church of liberalism:

NARDA GILMORE: But Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce isn't happy with the emerging pattern.

BARNABY JOYCE, NATIONALS SENATOR: If there's a very good reason as to why we don't need states anymore, then we have a process called a referendum to deal with it.

And so the hare of federal control of the hospital - and by extension health care in general - got out of its hutch and went for an extended run.

And it's still running today. And everybody's right of course, in their own peculiar way.

The federal government could no more manage a health system than the flip flops it's produced on insulation, and indeed on Mersey hospital itself. That hospital became a symbol of policy ineptness (Tasmanian Mersey Hospital's price tag up by $20m a year, Tasmania warns against federal takeover).

The reason why the feds got into the health racket was that state governments - despite what Barners says about their constitutional rights - were inept on a managerial level.

But then what would you expect of the NSW Labor government?

One of my most traumatic experiences at Tamworth base hospital was tasting the food prepared in Newcastle, and shipped up, in the name of efficiency, to be heated up and turned into luke-warm sludge for patients. After one meal, if you didn't want to die or flee the hospital to die in peace elsewhere, you're a better woman than me Gunga Din (an old quote only understood by country folk, imperialists and readers of Rudyard Kipling here).

But the notion that the health system can be turned into a community managed idyllic pastoral retreat - involving incredibly expensive machinery and incredibly expensive practitioners with very specialised skill sets - is also an alternative delusion, one currently being peddled by Tony Abbott. (Abbott's health plan meets mixed response). As if it hadn't already been tried and failed.

And looming large in the memory is the folly of Mersey hospital, as managed by both sides of the political divide. Duck shoving as a finely tuned art form, as opposed to managerial skills tuned to the greater complexity of health care in these aging baby boomer days.

By golly, I know the solution. It's time for me to take another of those amnesia pills. That way I can see each new day as a positive step forward, carefree and without a worry about past frolics and follies.

Why, John Howard will be a boon to cricket, and the federal government can fix hospitals by taking them away from states and handing them over to local communities, and the local communities will never trouble the state or federal governments ever again, and all will be well.

Now following the pill I'll take some of that Chairman Rudd and Tony Abbott pie in the sky, or some hospital food prepared in Newcastle, thank you very much ...

(Below: oh dear lord).