Peter Costello has finally got the job he's wanted for sometime - chairman of the Future Fund.
It may not be the prime ministership for which he'd yearned for years in government, but the former Liberal treasurer thinks the top role at the fund should have been his two years ago.
After all, he set up the entity that now controls more than $90 billion in assets designed to cover future public servant superannuation entitlements.
Costello was appointed to the fund's board of guardians in 2009 by the Rudd government, and has been acting chairman since January 14 this year after respected businessman David Gonski resigned to become chairman of ANZ Bank.
His term on the board was due to expire in April.
Eyebrows were raised when Gonski was appointed chairman by Labor in 2012, when all the talk was that the fund's board wanted Costello for the job.
"The Future Fund was something I conceived. I legislated it and I put every dollar of capital into it," Costello said at the time.
"No other treasurer, no finance minister, nobody has put a dollar of capital into this fund, except me."
Then opposition leader Tony Abbott said the choice of Gonski was more to do with Labor's obsession with "political management".
But not all of Costello's former Liberal colleagues backed his potential appointment.
Former finance minister Nick Minchin, who helped set up the fund, believed it would have been "most unwise" to appoint someone of Costello's political stature.
"The fund must be, and be seen to be, independent, professional, completely above politics and entirely apolitical," he said at the time.
It wasn't the first time Costello had Liberals tugging in different directions.
Costello's political ambitions to replace John Howard as prime minister were never far from the surface, but the numbers never added up to a challenge.
The former barrister was not prepared to take the plunge or sit it out on the back benches, as Labor treasurer Paul Keating did after losing his first leadership challenge to Bob Hawke.
Costello declined to take the Liberal leadership after the coalition lost the 2007 federal election and resigned his Victorian seat of Higgins in 2009.
He was first elected to parliament in 1990, becoming the Liberals' deputy leader in 1994 before going on to become the nation's longest-serving federal treasurer.
Costello, arguably, was the Howard government's best parliamentary performer as he used a sense of theatre to lampoon and ridicule Labor over 11 years.
After leaving parliament he was appointed to lead a commission of audit of Queensland government finances after Premier Campbell Newman swept to power in 2012.
He is currently chairman of the Independent Advisory Board to the World Bank in Washington.
In January 2011 he was appointed a Companion in the Order of Australia.
