Howard's Legacy

Howard's history

2007-12-01T17:20:00.000-08:00

McKew finally makes Howard history

December 2, 2007, The Age

A WEEK after voters went to the polls, Labor star recruit Maxine McKew has officially claimed the Sydney seat of Bennelong, making history as the person who knocked off prime minister John Howard in his own electorate.
Despite leading Mr Howard from the outset, Ms McKew had been reluctant to claim Bennelong, saying it was too close to call.
Yesterday in Sydney, the former ABC journalist and now parliamentary secretary to the prime minister and cabinet finally said: "One week after the polls opened, I can now say that in Bennelong we are 2100 votes ahead, we have 51.25% of the two-party vote … Bennelong is now a Labor seat for the first time."

dairy.....diary of a hafwitt....wit.

2007-11-27T15:35:00.000-08:00

Election debacle doesn’t devalue 'crucial triumphs' (? Evidence that reality is subjective to morons)

Janet Albrechtsen Blog November 28, 2007 34 Comments The Australian

Janet Albrechtsen (read foxymoron) writes a weekly column for The Australian. She is a member of the Foreign Affairs Council. (Believe it or not). In 2005, she was appointed a member of the Board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. You can contact Janet Albrechtsen by email at: janeta@bigpond.net.au

(Janet Albrecthsen, as judged by her political and social and anti humanitarian views ie. her character, is unfit for public life. She should be deported (if there were any nation that would accept her), or left in charge of nothing greater than her own unlucky children - and on second thoughts they should be removed for their own good....What an utter halfwit.)

PAUL Keating once quipped that the best way to see Australia (OK, he said Darwin) was from a plane at 30,000 feet on your way to Paris.
So there I was, 24 hours after the polls closed, high above Darwin, en route to Paris, but with none of Keating’s disdain as he searched out Francophile sophistication.
Neither am I fleeing, like some ideological homing pigeon, to the home of Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing Government in France, doing what members of the Left threatened to do in 2004 when they muttered about having to leave Australia for a country more in tune with their politics. And there will be no Alan Ramsey-style dummy spit where you point to a dumb electorate for voting for the wrong guy. No need for any of that. The voters got it right. They usually do. John Howard must wear the blame for this election wipe-out. Yet he leaves behind a inheritance worth returning to.
Howard’s mistake was clear. He succumbed to the hubris of Keating, the same familiar political hubris that swept Howard into office in 1996. His decision to stay on, to fight another election, was a fight too many. It may have suited Howard’s warrior instincts to go down fighting, but he took the Liberal Party down with him. Deep in his heart he knew he would. The test Howard always set himself - to remain for as long as his party wanted him - was ignored. Instead, as he told us, he listened to his family. It was pure self-indulgence on Howard’s part. And it would be his undoing. When he decided to cling to the leadership in mid-September, it became all about him.
All great leaders confront two challenges: picking their time of departure and handling their succession. Howard failed on both counts. Like other successful leaders, Howard outstayed his welcome. He refused to concede that the government’s poor polling this year had much to do with him. Unfortunately, it had everything to do with him.
His compromise decision to present voters with the Howard-Costello tag team was never going to work. Sight-impaired Freddy could spot the flaws. Howard could never convincingly talk about Australia’s future when he was not going to be there to see it through. And Peter Costello was necessarily caught between a rock and a hard place. The political atmospherics called for renewal from a party in power for more than a decade. Yet, caught in Howard’s shadow, Costello was forced to promise more of the same when, rightly or wrongly, more of the same was turning voters away.
All of that is in the past. History will record Howard’s failings. But those dancing on Howard’s grave may want to stop their jigging. The election result was no win for the Left. Howard’s legacy is profound. History will record that, too.
On economics, Howard dragged Labor to the centre, ironically making it a winning political force. Just as Ronald Reagan’s legacy forced Bill Clinton to announce in January 1996 that “the era of big government is over”, Howard forced Kevin Rudd to do the same. From the moment Rudd became ALP leader, he sounded a Gilbert and Sullivan style chorus of being the very image of a modern fiscal conservative. When he talked about a Rudd razor gang, heeding the Reserve Bank’s inflation warning and chiding Howard for spending too much, he sounded more of an economic conservative than Howard. Time will tell whether Rudd can be taken at his word. But that a Labor leader chose to label himself in this way tells you something about the political transformation Howard, ably assisted by Costello, worked during the past decade.
In the workplace, Howard cemented his personal philosophy that individuals make better choices than the heavy hand of government or the clumsy collective mindset of unions. He has overseen the transformation of the Australian workplace into an enterprise economy where small business and individuals thrive and the attraction of collectivism and unions has declined.
In the home, too, Howard pursued policies enabling individuals to choose. Whereas the Keating government favoured childcare rebates for mothers in the workplace, Howard gave women the choice to stay at home with their young children. None of that will change under a socially conservative Rudd, whose political success - and therefore legitimacy - depends substantially on presenting himself as Howard lite on key social issues.
Under Howard, other left-wing shibboleths were discarded.
Unlimited welfare was replaced with a return to individual responsibility. Indigenous policies were premised on practical outcomes, not symbolic gestures, to the point where even Rudd, the leader of a centre-Left party, talks more about practical reconciliation than symbolism. And his embrace of the Howard government’s intervention in the Northern Territory reveals broad community support to tackle endemic indigenous child abuse with solutions the Left would once not countenance.
In the battle of ideas, Howard has also left his mark by bringing to an end the grey, Soviet-style conformist thought. Dare one suggest, under Howard, newspapers became livelier platforms for debate as conservatism became if not cool then at least acceptable. Much as it stuck in their craw, Robert Manne and David Marr now at least have to share the opinion pages with new conservative voices.
My colleague Greg Sheridan wrote a few weeks ago that Howard had lost the culture wars because he failed to change elite opinion in Australia. Sheridan’s measurement is wrong. Howard never set out to do this. Instead, just as Nikita Khrushchev noted that even when all the world was socialist, Switzerland would have to remain capitalist as a reminder of the prices of everything, Howard used elite opinion to similar effect.
For Howard, elite opinion stood as a useful reminder of the left-wing absurdities that needed to be confronted. Howard confronted the politics of shame and challenged the black-armband version of history with a narrative that embraced a more balanced Australian history. Under and after Howard, Australians can feel proud of our historical achievements. It has had profound consequences, with more Australians, including the younger generation, celebrating our national identity.
Howard became a cultural warrior who tackled the political correctness that had infected and intimidated our national conversation. Issues such as immigration, Western values and multiculturalism could be discussed among rational people of differing opinions. Sure, some members of the Left continued to hurl the racist epithet and cling to old sacred cows. They complained that Howard silenced dissent but what they really objected to was that Howard made it acceptable to dissent from their progressivist orthodoxies. In a very real sense, Howard brought the national conversation into a more sensible, central place. A place Rudd accepts and can change only at great risk to his political legitimacy.
Howard may fall just short of Robert Menzies’ stature in Australia’s political pantheon, just as Maggie Thatcher was not quite the giant of British history that Winston Churchill was. But he stands comparison with Thatcher: history will recall both as dominant forces in restoring their respective countries to greatness.
Over to you...

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GerryMullum 28 Nov 07 (01:31am)
Do tell Janet, how does a delusional halfwit like you get into so many positions?
Oh I see, I've just answered m y own question.

Enjoy Kevin Rudd.

DannySydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (01:33am)
Rudd has one term as leader, than we’ll put in a true believer, Greg Combet, also don’t get ahead of yourself with all this “Rudd is such a conservative” just remember in the words of the great man Peter Garrett “we’ll just change it all”. And yes it’s so great isn’t it that your dear leader Howards legacy is that in Australia it’s alright now to be a bigot! If Howard was so great for the conservatives, why is his party running as fast as they can away from him and to the centre left?

Embrace the truthSans SouciWed 28 Nov 07 (01:39am)
There is no turning back on the program to give a hand and opportunities to the Aboriginals. Hopefully there shall be a common pursuit by both parties with an ongoing debate to how best effect the desired outcomes. As Australians this issue is difficult to address be it in France or where others are subject to equally unfair treatment. It is premature to suggest that we are enjoying an economic high when much of disposable incomes are committed to a foreign debt which is more than $500 billion. The lack of a conversation of which Howard acknowledged a need of, between the leadership and the punters, has seen many find themselves in tight corners without an apparent remedy for mortgage rate increases. Our trade deficits do not suggest we are as living within our means. Productivity has room for improvement. JW Howard has imprinted a more conservative sense on us. Anyone who would try to change that radically would find resistance from Australians. The history that children will read will show Howard’s role will include his failure to retain his own seat and possibly the remedies that had to be taken to return “a fair go for all”. There will be residual Howardisms that historians can dwell upon. What they shall be will a while in the knowing as JWH has changed much.

DavidSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (01:55am)
Janet , We’ve been subjected to much self-serving dross masquerading as informed opinion through this campaign . Much of it , sadly , in the Australian. But this is a gold medal winning re-writeof history. Howard has restored this country to greatness??? Oh dear. Janet , while you were apparently dozing , Australia emphatically pitched him from office not simply because he over-stayed his welcome , but because he lead a government so divisive , so dishonest , so mean-spirited and so bankrupt of morality that it has no equal in Australian political history. It’s much , much too cute to pretend that Howard’s fate on Saturday was all just a matter of poor timing. And utterly transparent. As you quite brazenly ignore the small matters of the never-ever GST , children overboard , me-tooism with Pauline Hanson , core and non-core promises , Iraq and non existent WMD , AWB , ministerial non-accountability , Aboriginal non-reconciliation , record low interest rates promises dishonestly made and undelivered , and the truly divisive un-mandated WorkChoices ( which dare not even speak its name in your thesis ) ...to name but a few.
Oh dear . But he “leaves behind a (sic)inheritance worth returning to (sic)”. Excusing your shocking grammar , this is a crock. I think you’ll see , if you peer really hard Janet , that just about every Liberal politician in the country is running at mach speed away from John’s “ inheritance”. To which they have nil intention of returning any time soon. In truth , what he’s left behind is a smouldering ruin. And right now , I wouldn’t get too excited about your elevating him to that great political pantheon . Right now , the “ inheritance “ is to be found somewhat closer to the outhouse , I think you’ll find.
Janet , we all know your political persuasion only to well . That’s just fine. We all vote . But this is a chronic piece of fantasy , by any objective standard.

Ron BrownMitchamWed 28 Nov 07 (01:58am)
You no doubt believe what you wrote. However HISTORY WILL LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE OF HOWARD:
1/ the PM who lost his seat 2/ the PM who put his personal interests over his Party’s 3/ the PM who invaded Iraq on a false premise 4/ the PM whose Government allowed its own wheat board to bribe our military enemy with $300 million 5/ the PM who divided the country using race & religion 6/ the PM who WASTED the Mining boom proceeds with voter bribes rather than investment in our skills , education & infrastructure You may not like it , but the above IS Howard’s legacy

HanleyBallaratWed 28 Nov 07 (02:04am)
You should be happy Janet!
Now you can take your rightful place as one of those right-wing commentators, carping from the sidelines and calling for a change in government.
Unfortunately for you the next Liberal leader is a pro-republic, pro-Kyoto figurehead who doesn’t retain the fastidious conservatism of his predecessor.
So, in the unlikely event Rudd loses in 2010, wingnuts like you will have no reason to rejoice.

Les CooperNedlands, WAWed 28 Nov 07 (02:32am)
that was hilarious - enjoy your holiday… and do hurry back, ok ?

TimMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (02:44am)
You naturally have a right to defend your opinions so vehemently argued over the campaign and so conveniently available for perusal in the index .. but the overblown “.. restoring the country to greatness..” suggests both a golden age that I was not aware of ( could it be the 1950’s ? ) and a Colonel Blimp-ish patriotism that even Churchill warned about. The result could be described as his Waterloo, and the obsessive WorkChoices his march to Moscow, but this glorification carries a whiff of desperation. And to go from Menzies to McMahon in 12 months takes some doing - I suspect Josephine’s guiding hand.

elevengoalpostsPerthWed 28 Nov 07 (02:47am)
I usually disagree strongly with your views. Here, you are not far from the money. However, in your comments about “For Howard, elite opinion stood as a useful reminder of the left-wing absurdities that needed to be confronted” and “Howard became a cultural warrior who tackled the political correctness” you have to be dreaming or rewriting history. Howard has never had the intellect that you or even I have (which like Pooh’s is very small - “brain"). Howard has only ever had the most modest intellect driven by ideology borrowed from others, which is now being disowned in droves by his own “supporters”. How and why anyone can ascribe such deep thinking to such a shallow guy is indeed surprising. I expect such deep-thinking of you - you are so much smarter - but of such a nondescriptperson, demonstrable over some 33 years in public office is truly remarkable. Outside the political arena, the guy would never have registered on any scale (Richter, kitchen or otherwise)- have you never seen any of the footage since he took the Treasurer’s office in 1977 - my twenty-something son sat open-mouthed recently at this person’s inept and uncharismatic, historical public performances. Has any Australian Prime Minister in history (except Stanley Bruce) had less charisma or basic people skills than this joker? - it has been a constant source of embarrassment watching his public performances, which make George Walker Bush look positively bright !! However, one should not seek to change anyone’s rusted-on political views. Whether one person’s view of another differs from one’s own is acceptable, but support for such a grossly distorted and inferior view of Australian life and culture as his is neither necessary nor befitting a smart-thinking mind like yours. The guy has only ever been a (long-standing) aberration within the Liberal party (that must be an oxymoron), and never deserving of mention in the same tome as Menzies to Liberals. Keating’s observations can be crude, but usually not too far off the mark (tip/iceberg and little desiccated coconut)- Howard’s claims to superior comparative economic achievements are surely delusional. Finally, reference to Thatcher’s restoring her country to greatness is a little lame as it infers that John Major must have been a real dud, given the situation he left to that “"Great Impostor”, Tony Blair. For your deduction on Thatcher, I hope you were living in the UK during at least some of her “reign”, as the current crop of Conservatives who deserve merit for battling against that dud Blair and the clunker, McBroon, do not express such glowing tributes to the “Iron Lady” as you do. Nonetheless, a piece worthy of good argument.

DerekFragrant harbourWed 28 Nov 07 (03:12am)
Howard was big taxing and big spending politician. If only he did some substantive tax reform like removing bracket creep or simplyfing the tax system, then he can say he achieved something meaningful.
As for big government and the rights of individuals, well you only have to look at the performance of the immigration department under his watch.
Enjoy your stay in Paris. It will be a lot easier attacking the Rudd Government then trying to defend Howard.

ExpatParisWed 28 Nov 07 (03:30am)
Somebody turn the plane around! We’ve got enough delusional right-wing nationalists in France without adding another one to the mix!

RhodiePrinceton, USAWed 28 Nov 07 (04:01am)
Yes, it was Howard’s time to go. Rudd will now learn the realities of power. He’ll be over to Washington soon. With Brown, Sarkozy and Merkel all outdoing each other trying to display greater Amerophilia than each other, it will be amusing to watch Rudd join in. Anti-American Aussie lefties, prepare yourselves for your boy’s first post election disappointment. Like Howard , he knows that Australia’s best interests lie in as close as possible an alliance with America. He’ll be bending over backwards to try to convince America he can be trusted too.

Joe McArthyWed 28 Nov 07 (04:10am)
May I add here that one of the reasons that Howard lost the election was his pre occupation with the so called mythical left wing ‘elite’ (ably supported by your self and Andrew Bolt. And what is this so called ‘elite’? One or two journalists, a couple of writers/academics, a few artists? Hardly going to bring about the overthrow of society, but they serve as a useful distraction for Howard Huggers like yourself in avoiding confrontation with issues of substance such as climate change, unfair working conditions as well as a convenient way for hiding the inadequacies of a tired old government who were just clinging to power and had nothing to offer the electorate. That’s why Labor won so convincingly! Australian people couldn’t give a toss for any preocuppation that you , Andrew Bolt or Piers Akermann may have about any so called left elite. They are far too sensible. Dry your eyes Princess!

WarriorJapanWed 28 Nov 07 (04:16am)
Janet, rather than Howard dragging Rudd to the economic centre, as you suggest, “sight-impaired Freddy” could see that Rudd, in both the budget and the election campaign, promoted himself as a fiscal conservative in order to outmaneuver the “Dream Team”. His tactics gave the desperate government no option but to try and sweeten voters with inflationary tax cuts and offerings. When yet another interest rate rise was decided by the RBA, the myth of Howard and Costello as economic geniuses was shattered. Many people have come to realise that they were opportune to preside over a booming economy greatly benefited by Keating’s reforms. As for IR, you still don’t get that the vast majority of Australians saw WorkChoices as unfair and not mandated. Howard’s crude philosophies were to favour big business over workers, and that was just dumb politics because of the weight of numbers opponents to it ultimately represented. Your suggestion that nothing would change socially with a “Howard-lite” conservative Rudd is ludicrous and delusional. The new Labor government made it one of their first priorities to offer a formal apology to the aboriginal community precisely because it IS a symbolic gesture, Janet. Not only to promote national unity, but also to highlight the vast social chasm that exists between them and the preceding archaic, dissolute government. And please, Howard certainly never brought the national conversation about political correctness into “a more sensible, central place”. On the contrary. His obvious bigotry incited unprecedented race riots and violence, not to mention giving the vile rednecks amongst us a voice. Thanks to Howard, Australia had never been more divided. Not everything he did was bad it must be said. Gun control and East Timor were notable exceptions. But Howard’s atrocious legacy will instead be based on his divisiveness, his disgraceful blind loyalty to the abysmal Bush administration, his shift to far right ideologies, his arrogance, his lies, and last but not least his gigantic ego, which ironically ended up crippling the Coalition.

mother of 5 voterswauchopeWed 28 Nov 07 (04:17am)
David 1.55 from Sydney, You are spot on. It is a good thing dross eventually settles at the bottom where it belongs. John Howard will not be remembered in a way Janet will like. He will be seen as the opportunistic, nasty, divisive, racist, greed breading,opportunity wasting, stubborn politician he was .He was just fortunate to be P.M.during a boom time.

johnWed 28 Nov 07 (05:26am)
Janet, you are absolutely right; Howard’s impact was profound and history will gradually unravel it all and record it accurately within the context of the times. At this time in retrospect, the past comments of Malcom Fraser and Mahatir will make interesting reading.

David BakerWed 28 Nov 07 (05:55am)
As for this article Janet, David from Sydney said it all on page one.."self serving dross”. I would though like to add to Ron Brown’s excellent summary of Howards legacy by adding the richest one of all...his leading your beloved neo con Liberals into the political wilderness with not one State, Territory or now the Commonwealth allowing his great Liberal Party to occupy one Government bench. This is Howards great legacy. This is your hero Janet! Old Bob Menzies must be rolling in his grave! This along with his other “achievements” as so beautifully set out by Ron, will be the politcial epitaph for this man, the most divisive leader in Australian political history.

redsaunasWed 28 Nov 07 (06:07am)
I had the Howard = Thatcher argument with a gaggle of Liberal lovers on election night. Yes, they too still imagine that somehow John Howard was responsible for the great economic reforms of our time. When asked to name five of these great reforms that created our freed-up, dynamic economy...GST...and...and… I won’t go into the free-market economic reforms of the Hawke/Keating era. The list is too long and may lead to brain explosion. The big difference is that Hawke and Keating managed to pull it all off largely by talking to people (even...horrors...the unions!) and without resort to baseball bats. As a result we escaped the massive division and alienation that Thatcher bequeathed to British society. When Howard arrived, the game was largely over. Having missed out on his opportunity to reform the economy with extreme prejudice, Howard used his Senate majority to do it retrospectively through Work Choices, the policy equivalent of wrecking a Rolls because the tyres are worn. It revealed him to be the radical many had always warned he was. Australians DO NOT LIKE RADICALS of any stripe...and the rest is history - as is he.

RobertsonAlburyWed 28 Nov 07 (06:10am)
John Howard can be compared with Maggie Thatcher? That’s half the bloody trouble!

Martin DaviesvancouverWed 28 Nov 07 (06:12am)
"In the home, too, Howard pursued policies enabling individuals to choose.”
Rubbish!
He limited peoples choices to the ideological framework he dictated through policy.
He spoke often of choice but then betrayed his words with actions to the contrary.
He did that time and time again.
Fiscally responsible you say . . .
I say he hoarded wealth and failed to spend it on anything worth while.
Content instead to use surplus’s as his parties personal war chest for his re-election campaigns.
It worked for a long time but in the end people began to ask the simple question what is he doing with our taxes but hoarding it, and stripping the public system.
Now there’s some gapping holes that need filling.
you say.
“On economics, Howard dragged Labor to the centre, ironically making it a winning political force.”
Rubbish, Labor under Keating was criticized for flipping to a pro big business “Liberal” position long before Howard came in to power, and criticized for denying core Labor values of the left. labor was at the centre long before Howard came to office.
Howard simply exploited that trend once in office and ran a pro right campaign.
if anything under Howard the nation was pushed too far right.
Yet still, that said, i believe that the old left/right ideas aren’t as they once were.
The left is no longer what you think it is.
It’s changed. The right, well it’s still the same old leopard that hasn’t change it’s spots.
It’s needs to adapt.

GeorgeSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (06:17am)
What achievements? He brought in WorkChoices, a policy which ultimately was the cause of his demise. His greatest achievement? The decimation of the party for which he proclaimed so much affection! His legacy? A party bitterly divided, rudderless and at war with itself. They can’t even decide if they should discard WorkChoices as a policy. Minchin and Brandis haven’t worked out that this toxic piece of rubbish has to go. The people emphatically sent that message, yet these disnosaurs don’t seem to have worked that out. If they choose to block the government on this issue in the senate, they will only guarantee further damage to the Liberal party. Its time to move on and face reality guys. You no longer hold power, its over. The end of the Howard era is a blessing for this country, and no amount of eulogising will change that. History will judge Howard harshly once his record is studied in detail. Not much achievement at all really, but plenty of missed opportunities.

RONCANBERRAWed 28 Nov 07 (06:24am)
Janet
Enjoy Paris. While sipping a latte in a scenic street cafe you might take the opportunity to critically self reflect about your thoughts on what makes a great leader.
I, of course, strongly disagree with your rosy view of Howard. His only positive legacy was to facilitate the liberation of East Timor. As for the rest of Howard’s contributions to the nation I think histrorians will, and really should, judge him most harshly.

AndrewSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (06:31am)
Howard stayed too long (even Carr and Beattie recognised one decade for one leader is enough) and WorkChoices was, in military parlance, a bridge too far. And the people voted. What interests me is that all the morality speak now about why Howard lost (lies, deceit, decisiveness etc) were around before Rudd yet Latham lost. Why was that?
Howard lost and Labor’s soldiers are showing their true colours after the successful siege by being anything but gracious in defeat. But there are things that Howard did that were, by any objective measure, worthy of respect, and deserve a mention. They were:
1. Liberate East Timor (when Messrs Whitlam, Hawke and Keating did not have the gumption to do so). 2. Stand up to the gun lobby (something Labor never did). 3. Reform the water front (as harsh as it seemed at the time, it was necessary). 4. Introduce the GST (which Paul Keating wanted to but didn’t have the gumption to do so). 5. Provide more aid and support to East Asia following the tsunamis than any other nation.
Would the Labor party and its supporters care to remember these things next time it calls Howard mean and tricky?

jimnorthern nswWed 28 Nov 07 (06:55am)
Janet,you write\"Howard became a cultural warrior who tackled the political correctness that had infected and intimidated our national conversation”,what rubbish.Howard WAS the infection, and a particularly nasty one at that.Watching the remnants of this ship of fools struggling with their current situation is sickening since they,like you and many others,went along with him in his phsychotic rampage through much of what was good about this country.I’m all for differing points of view and the debates that go with them,but the last eleven years have been progressively more unhealthy.I won’t remember Howard as any kind of warrior,I would rather not remember him at all.

whiteyWed 28 Nov 07 (07:00am)
Huh? Janet, as much as I hope you’re enjoying the cheese over there, you’ve ahem missed a few salient points in your analysis of why Howard had completely overstayed his mark, led his party to annihilation but was STILL the best PM ever and ever and ever.
Fiscal rectitude is not something John Howard discovered. He left the country in an appalling mess as treasurer, which Hawke had to clean up. His government was the biggest spending in Australian history. America has shown us that the right under Reagan and the Bushes are the ones that spend big, and the centre left cleans up the mess. So too here, as Howard’s attempts to big spend himself back were seen as irresponsible. Rudd was being the rationalist.
Keating began workplace reforms. The only reform Howard tried was grotesquely unfair, was then hobbled by the fairness test that pleased neither business nor worker, and was so comprehensively rejected at the election that half the Liberal Party now agrees there is a mandate for it to be scrapped. Howard achieved nothing.
No symbolic gestures on indigenous issues. What, apart from scrapping the worst bits of the Coalition’s policies and finally saying SORRY?
Of course Howard fought culture wars. There was nothing balanced about his view of history, as his cultural warriors have demonstrated over the years. Eh Janet?
It’s currently fashionable to see Rudd as Howard Mk 2, but that’s because conservatives are in denial about the scale of the defeat and what it means, and that’s fine, because it means it’ll take them at least 3 elections to realise what’s happened to them. Howard’s achievement has been the destruction of his party in his hubris. Much actually as Thatcher managed—it’s still not recovered from her reign. Both left behind half the country that loathed them and everything they stood for. Tell me again how that makes them great?

BillTasmaniaWed 28 Nov 07 (07:07am)
Oh Janet! “Unlimited welfare was replaced with a return to individual responsibility”. Private health insurance subsidies, family tax benefits, tax deductions for property investers, first homebuyer handouts and the rest. John Howard was the ‘Sugar Daddy in chief’ of the biggest welfare state this country has seen and barely a means test in sight. For eleven years if you yelled loudly enough, Johnny would make it better. He has no credibility as a conservative or as a reformer. The GST remains the only significant reform in his time assuming workchoices is history. Eleven wasted years.

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HaywardFraserWed 28 Nov 07 (07:11am)
Janet, a very nice piece in support of th eman you said should go in your pass the baton piece. But you made no mention of the continuing mendacity/know nothing approach concerning Tampa, the Iraq Fiasco, AWB etc. or the tearing down of the Rodents supposedly beloved “Westminster System” with no Ministerial Responsiblity, the removal of Senate Committee powers, the abuse of matters of interest debate and Question Time. Above all the born to rule mentality of the large L liberal party which under The Rodent became a large T tory Party.

Jason of BedfordPerthWed 28 Nov 07 (07:17am)
History will not look upon Howard kindly. It will look upon him as mean, tricky, and a person who was quite happy to rattle the cage of xenophobia when it suited him politically. Howard’s legacy will one of missed opportunities. He spent all his time as Prime Minister counting the number of seats he had and made policy accordingly. He thought he could ride out Work Choices just as he rode out the GST, with enough of a buffer to see him through. The fact that you are still championing a lying, manipulative, devious politician says a lot about you Janet. Roll on the razor gang.

dan the geoqatarWed 28 Nov 07 (07:38am)
Janet, Sorry, but your article just comes across as sour grapes. At least guys like Andrew Bolt are able to look at the issue objectively and dispassionately. You have shown no attempt to assess whether the position you held (and still hold) was correct. And throwing snide comments here and there about ‘the Left’ just makes you come across as a sore loser. History will judge Howard. But just as it is always too early to judge a premiership team immediately after the grand final victory, so too is it too early to judge Howard’s reign immediately after its end. Comparisons with Thatcher are wrong. If you want to compare Thatcher with anyone, it would be Jeff Kennett, who was a dose of bad medicine that made the electorate better, but with side effects. Howard was more like a slow creeping cancer that made the electorate sick and decrepit, with none of Jeff’s benefits. Anyway, as a coach of Hawthorn once said: “winners are grinners and losers can please themselves”. I hope you please yourself in France.

GeorgeSouth YarraWed 28 Nov 07 (07:38am)
Janet, Howard was rejected and so was his right-wing ideological agenda. You are no better than Howard, your hero, and you should follow in his steps and exit stage right. You are an ideological warrior from a dissolving era, and a scan of the articles you have written in the past couple of years shows you as a right-wing radical, a neo-con cheerleader, a bigot, a hater of all things multicultural, and now out of place in a new Australia. Go quietly and we promise to forget you quickly.

BernardWellingtonWed 28 Nov 07 (07:39am)
Janet It has always bemused me that John Howard appeared to have a liking for femmes whose first name begins with “J”. No crime in that at all.
But here you are in the midst of the demolition derby fluttering around Paree when you could be of some assistance to the beloved back home.
Jackie can’t help. She has covered hersdelf from top to to toe in doo dah. It will never wash off - so she can’t be expected even do her share of the shredding.
Jeanette at least helped John with his concession speech. Gracious but not notable. Although her Sydney slight to Melbourne by refusing to entertain trooper Costello to supper will rank as a faux celebre. For a long time.
I for one will miss the Howard J curves

JohnNorth SydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (07:44am)
Janet, Given the Howard legacy that you extoll so strenuously how did he lose? Despite his good points, and there were many, nothing will erase the hubris that sent him and his party into oblivion. Prepare yourself for the long dark night that will probably last a decade.

RossMALLABULAWed 28 Nov 07 (07:48am)
How short your memory Janet! Increased quality of debate unfettered by political correctness? I don’t think! The pattern was set in the Wik debate. The High Court got it wront, we were told, but John Howard and Mick Minchin got it right. As such, aboriginal leaders, church leaders, legal experts, and even the Governor-general, were publically told they had no part to play in the debate and no right to contribute. Before the Iraq adventure, military experts were told to shut up. Before the GST, church leaders and welfare providers were intimidated. Dissent was everywhere derided and those few organs that allowed a divergence of opinion, like the ABC were pilloried and persecuted. Those millions of Australians who were shocked when shipwreck survivors on the Tampa were pushed back out to sea were disenfranchised. And those bindings of civil society - like the taboos against racial hatred - were loosed. The excrement flowed out, but at least it was excrement pleasing to the nose of our Prime Minister. This the legacy of John Howard and long may we guard against those who would repeat it.

BrettSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (07:48am)
Janet, I couldn’t agree more. I have been astonished at the vile media articles and replies to various blogs since the election, did you read Philip Adams article and the largely left wing reader replies earlier this week that painted Mr Howard as some kind of evil despot, unbelievable! I have always felt that the left were bad losers but it seems they are even more insufferable when they win!

MUDCRABFNQWed 28 Nov 07 (07:49am)
I’m still jigging Janet, and that means that you’ve got it wrong. Ha, ha, ha, you reckon that the electoral “atmospherics” were wrong and that’s the only reason Howard should have resigned. So what are you getting at? The “atmospherics”, as you charitably put it, were: an old man out of touch with reality....climate change, broadband, terrorism and worst of all Industrial Relations coupled with a formidable, credible Opposition leader. You must admit that Howard’s last term was the biggest sham in Australian political history. The only thing notable was Howard’s stumble to the far right with Workchoices. It was wrong from it’s inception and Aussies spurned it. Far from leaving us a legacy to remember Howard will go down in history as the small-minded Prime Minister of Lost Opportunities. The Howard Cheer Squad(apologists) needs to accept that they are responsible for the collapse of the Liberal Party.

TrivalveACTWed 28 Nov 07 (07:58am)
John Winston Howard is second only to Billy McMahon as Australia’s worst PM in my lifetime. You have a bizarre definition of greatness Janet. And his failure to go at the right time is not an aberration but a symptom of his whole philosophy. Which was: Him. As Prime Minister.

4leafAdelaideWed 28 Nov 07 (07:58am)
Give it up Janet. You lost. Your arguments of the last few years, which essentially amounted to saying your brand of ultra-conservatism had conquered anything to the left of it, has been utterly destroyed by the Australian voters. You, like Howard, just didn’t and apparently still don’t get it. Your hero wasted 11 plus years in office and if we put aside the economic superhero myth, I ask - what did he really achieve? He didn’t create the boom - he just happened to be there at the right time. So other than supposedly putting the iron and copper in the ground or the billion plus people on China, what did Howard actually do for this nation? He legitimised racism and a fear of anything that wasn’t white and English speaking. He sent troops to war on a lie. Your hero was one big charade. As was your declaration that ultra-conservatism had won the day. Your arrogance nearly eclipsed Howard’s.

Bill DoorHervey BayWed 28 Nov 07 (08:05am)
What a deluded world we live in Janet. Clearly, you have issues about Howard’s legacy. The enthusiasm of the right to get in first and writehis history is telling.
Janet, Howard will be remembered for one thing and one thing only. The complete destruction of the Liberal party for his own shot a glory. Menzies will be and is glorified for creating the Liberal Party. Howard will be demonised for it’s destruction not be the left but by the right. This will be his legacy.

darrenWed 28 Nov 07 (08:06am)
Janet, you started well by dispersing with the sour grapes but it was all down hill from there. As you yourself pointed out in your last column the Liberals are certainly not fiscal or ecomomic conservatives. Far from it. As you know, Howard is a big spending big taxing type - no “conservative” there. And no real reform either. Why then are you therefore saying that there has been a liberal victory in making Rudd an “economic conservative”? THat label means absolutely nothing. Lefties like me will pay lip service to it for a bit until interest rates go up a few more times (as they inevitably will as a result of Howard and Costello’s “conservative” policies) and then it will all be quietly forgotten. As will the people who cerated the false label.
As for “Keating’s Hubris” - no, hubris is the child of many: the libs displayed their incompetence by not having the guts to make Howard go. If the numbers had been there for change, Howard wouldnt have lasted 5 minutes. I know it, you know it. THis was collective stupidity and gutlessness.
Howard a “warrior”? No, to paraphrase Monty python, “he’s just a very stubborn old man”.
Have a good day, Janet.

rextMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (08:09am)
Evolution is based on the law of the jungle where individual choices determine one’s chances of survival. Great for the winners, sad but unavoidable for the losers. “Individual enterprise” is really only a thin justification for avarice, grab what you can, winner take all and to hell with the rest. Cohesive societies and communities however are collectives and not the jungle, with a set of values apparently alien to Howard and the ideologues of the right. The majority of Australians though recognized something essential had been lost under Howard, and lamenting the loss of these values have now emphatically endorsed a return to them. And no amount of revisionist self justifying nonsense on your part can change that Janet!

CredibitlityMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (08:09am)
Janet,
History will judge Howard with great clarity, a second rate prime minister, intellectually a disingenous person who survived due to lack of a credible opposition and a fortuitois China driven economic windfall. It says more about our political talent pool than most would acknowledge.
Look to the facts, don’t gloss over the hard truths, separate the mining boom out of the GDP, debt and growth calculations and then from 30,000 feet what do you see? At a guess; a big travel resort; small manufacturing capacity; and crumbling infrastructure! Now look to the right, what do you see? A once poor China buying assets in Australia. The clock has been running and Howard was asleep at the wheel for 11 long years. We have been, and continue to live on the next generations wealth and resource today.

AndreaFreshwaterWed 28 Nov 07 (08:13am)
Janet, no wonder you are fleeing to self imposed exile in the land of arrogance. You are alone in Australia where your opinions have been overwhelmingly rejected as unAustralian and totally unrepresentative. You are lucky that this nation is so politically correct that it allows musings such as yours to be published. It’s quite hilarious that you know when it’s appropriate for others to desist yet can’t take your own advice. The broom is sweeping through and perhaps you should just get out of the way with, as the French say, dignite.

Jen SmithWed 28 Nov 07 (08:25am)
Howard was not a great leader because leaders do not lead backwards they lead forwards. Howard was a social conservative. Conservatives look to the past. History will see him as an anachronism and all the apologists who have feathered his nest for all this time will be seen no better. But what I really want to know now from you Janet is: are we all unionists now?

Hell Fire RodTweedWed 28 Nov 07 (08:30am)
The only success Howard has had is the destruction of the Liberal party to it’s lowest point in it’s 60 year history, Menzies would be turning in his grave at the destruction of his party, 21 state election loses in a row and now the Liberal party leader loses his seat for the second time in history for doing the same as the one before him, ripping of the peoples wages and conditions, Howard without doubt is by far the worst most incompetent liar to ever to be a liberal party leader, the man was a fraud and this is how history will remember how every govt in the country is now a Labor govt, all because of the Howard lies, and the party refused to stop him destroying it, it stood and watched while Howard burnt the party to the ground.

seanshellharbourWed 28 Nov 07 (08:34am)
Not finished with your pin up boy yet Janet? I wonder how the party feels about him now that he has left it in a shambles and now that they are turning on each other. Seems as though the IR laws are in tatters and I doubt that the Liberals will revisit them in a hurry.It all made Joe Hockey cry. History will judge Howard badly as it already is. Oh yeah Janet I dont think its cool to be a conservative.

labor votermelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (08:37am)
’’In the workplace, Howard cemented his personal philosophy that individuals make better choices than the heavy hand of government or the clumsy collective mindset of unions.’’
By individuals, of course you mean one single employee sitting down at the table and making a ‘’better choice’’ with his or her corporate boss?
By ‘’heavy hand of government’’ you will be implying probably, that the playing field is always level and suggesting that regulations to keep unscrupulous employers honest are just not necessary and, in fact, are a hindrance to productivity?
It always works better this way of course, this individual thing, does it not? It means that those with practically no clout in the workforce can be bullied in to accepting working conditions which are stacked in favour of the employer and, which one of them, bar the very few, would not be tempted to offer only the minimum?

BostwickMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (08:48am)
Howard’s main achievement is to make Menzies look impressive by comparison. Menzies is often said to have ‘done nothing, done it effectively and for a long time’. Apart from the GST, Howard did nothing, did it divisively, and for a shorter (though too long) time.
As for the political correctness thing: I never get tired of hearing that old furphy. Howard wasn’t anti political correctness. He just wanted to replace the 1990’s version with the 1950’s version of what was PC.

EnjayAdelaideWed 28 Nov 07 (08:50am)
Janet, despite events and happenings in recent days you’ve still got that devilish glint in your eye as you look out at us mere peasants from your passport to Paris photo.
Howard preached the mantra that individuals should choose for themselves, but he didn’t choose himself. So he needed someone strong enough to push him. Nothing doing. Up steps your good self to the plate and, despite your not so gentle matriarchal urgings that he should choose to go and hand over to that political colossus in waiting, Costello, he didn’t.
If prime ministers want to turn us all into a country of choosers, they should practice what they preach.

pete down southWed 28 Nov 07 (08:56am)
Janet, Little Johnny will go down in Australian history as the PM who lost his seat, sent Australia to an ILLEGAL war, wasted nation building opportunities, cynically used children for his political ends, paid $300M in bribes to an enemy, etc. etc. BTW, I bet Peter Costello doesn’t agree with you either

MarkCanberraWed 28 Nov 07 (08:56am)
How can you be so out of tune with the rest of Australian society, Janet?

GrahamMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (09:00am)
Janet, With each passing day the likes of you and David Marr become more irrelevant. Welcome to centrism! How can you suddenly claim that “the voters got it right” when you have been telling us for months that Rudd is a dud or this just an attempt at graciousness, it’s OK Janet, you can say that the voters got it wrong if you think that is the case. I have no intention to go “jigging on Howards grave”, but I fancy dancing an ungracious jig on yours, without Howard your words are quite irrelevant. Sheridan may have got the cultural warrior bit slightly off target in his article but you failed to mention the litany of other negatives that he mentioned about the Howard era, cherry picking as always Janet. Sheridan is a conservative columnist who towers above you in every respect, you should listen a little more closely to him you might learn something.

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policy shopperSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (09:00am)
’Crucial Triumphs’?. Maybe...but sadly his legacy will be overlooked by the terrible state he has left his party in. It took ten years of conservative rule to shift labor even slightly more to the right. It has taken the Liberals about 2 days to shift twice as far to the left. Malcolm Turnbull as leader? Ratify Kyoto? Dump workchoices?

Rocket scientistGarran ACTWed 28 Nov 07 (09:02am)
The ALP victory was really a media victory and a defeat for democracy. For most of us, all we know about politics is what the media provides. There is no doubt the media savaged Howard while giving Rudd a dream run. Of course it was easy to savage Howard, because 11 years of incumbency had necessarily created some baggage he would rather forget. If Rudd survives for anything like 11 years, he will face the same problem. I’m afraid that is the way democracy works. THe public, lead by the media, thinks that today’s solutions to today’s problems will work tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, and a political leader recognizes new solutions to new problems are necessary, he is excoriated by the media for being inconsistent. So the political system favours the do-nothing politician. Sad, isn’t it?

WilliamPadstowWed 28 Nov 07 (09:05am)
Janet, Howard and the gang were DUMPED.Try as you might to put a gloss on it they were dumped because of their arrogance in talking down to the electorate rather than listening to it. And you supported it all the way. Johnny was your hero. Like the Libs at the moment you just don’t get it ,do you? It is to be hoped that your visit to France may improve your situational analysis ability.

BrianGold CoastWed 28 Nov 07 (09:07am)
Janet, where do all these Howard haters crawl out from? They must hang on every word you say in order to vent their spleen the moment your opinion piece is published! It seems to enrage them that John Howard was the greatest Prime Minister this country has seen and that he will be honoured for his legacy. Australia needs more of the social conservatism he promoted.

BarryCanberraWed 28 Nov 07 (09:13am)
As expected, this election showed how institutionally Left this country is: the media, the arts, the public service, teachers and academics, many professions and the judiciary are all predominantly Left. The message that I hope conservative thinkers learn from this is that you will NEVER win the culture war because it is NOT a battle of ideas but simply a matter of human psychology. For example, all of the new age Leftist lawyers hold their beliefs not because of any deep conviction, but simply because they were conditioned at university to believe that to hold such beliefs is to portray oneself as being virtuous and intellectually superior. In other words, they have adopted Leftist politics as an intellectual fashion accessory designed to elevate their own perception of themselves. To reason with such people is a WASTE OF TIME. The only way to de-institutionalise the Left - and the Liberals NEVER understood this - is to politically castrate them. Take away their power to monopolise the flow of ideas in the public domain. And the only way to do that is to introduce direct democracy. Certainly the Left would oppose this to the death and that being the case, it would never get through as a constitutional change. Instead it has to be introduced by legislation and once people get a taste for it, they will turn against anyone who tries to take it from them.

FidelGerringongWed 28 Nov 07 (09:22am)
Hello Janet, I don’t think that Mr Howard will be recorded well in the history yet to be written. I venture that he will be referred to as a ‘footnote’. This is partly because so many opportunities were not followed or even considered by his government. Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, and Gough were all sitting together at the policy speech by Kevin Rudd John Hewson and Malcolm Fraser were nowhere to be seen at Mr Howard’s policy speech. I think that there is some significance in the above. Howard led a political movement that now has no majority in any Federal,Territory,or State Parliament in any part of this great South Land. This all happened as the result of democratic voting. It is always good to look at the empirical evidence. At this time in our history, the majority of Australians do no favour conservative representation.

NDWed 28 Nov 07 (09:24am)
Janet, Is Conservatism still cool?

richierichRandwickWed 28 Nov 07 (09:28am)
Janet you fail to realise the truth behind Howard and his approach to any real debate about the key issues that help to define Australia in the 21st Century. He was always a divisive megalomaniac, never the consensus politician. He did nothing to engender real debate. His mantra was divide and conquer. His tools were the dog whistle and the wedge. His legacy a schism. If there was ever going to be a real debate in this country, we would not have been subject to the demonising of any opposition, the stacking of boards and instrumentalities with his ideological cohorts, the muzzling of the bureaucracy, the use of government departments and tax payer dollars for propaganda drives, the isolation of minorities and most alarming of all, the attempt to divide Australia by race, colour and creed. History is littered with ruthless zealots who hold power by marginalising opposition so that it is ineffectual in providing a balance to the dominant power. What Australians yearn for now is a government of inclusion. Real debate of issues on a level playing field and an end to the divide and conquer mentality of an uncaring and unsympathetic administration. No matter the policy direction of the next government, the real success of the Howard years is that he has ensured that they are unlikely to be repeated any time soon.

GerrySunshine CoastWed 28 Nov 07 (09:29am)
Wow! Janet, you have restored much of my confidence in Australia. At last genuine intellect has come to the fore on the issue of Government and Howard’s legacy. Thank you. Please continue to report in your refreshing style of balance and sobriety. Here is a woman of class.

francoisWed 28 Nov 07 (09:37am)
Thanks Janet, Because comments like “Indiigenous policies were premised on practical outcomes”. Makes me understand why you and your right wing mates are truely out of touch with humanity.

imaccaperthWed 28 Nov 07 (09:43am)
Give it a rest Janet!
Howard will always be remembered as he who was turfed out of his seat by the voters, not his party. He was a divisive leader who ALWAYS looked to his political advantage, not the countries advantage.
He made an art form of demonize and divide tactiics. didnt care who he hurt and denigrated so long as it served his political purpose of the moment. His skill, was telling enough people what they wanted to hear when he needed to.
Still, lets look at a more durable measure of the longevity of his legacy. What markers, or contributions did he leave in the English language. Core and non-Core promises. Nuff said.

BenSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (09:47am)
I’ve heard a few Liberal supporters mutter they would leave the country if Rudd got in, so that kind of sentiment is not confined to the Left. And I’ve heard at least two retired Liberal supporters - the bulk of the Liberals’ support base these days, it seems - say they’ve got their pension and so they don’t care. One even used the hilarious phrase “I’m alright Jack”. So, in a way, they’ve left their country. Though you’re trying to do what most right-wing pundits do and suggest that the Left are unpatriotic, the fact is, Left or Right, you can never really leave your country. It’s a part of you.

LawrieSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (09:47am)
Oh Janet, How I love to hear the luvvies howl as you drill into their sensitivities with your incisive words and wit. As I read their carping and wailing I do wonder where their Australia is. It certainly is NOT the one I have lived in for the past 11 years or so. Perhaps this is because I do not suffer the lefty delusions that their superior morality derives from thier obviously so superior intellect. The one area where Howard did not win the cultural war was ridding the ABC of its pernicious left bias. Despite some brillaint board appointments it appears that Aunty is still a captive of her staff. If only more of them had followed Maxine, who knows what might have happened.

BillyWed 28 Nov 07 (09:53am)
Howard stoked the fires of class warfare for political gain at a time when the country is rolling in money. He was too divisive Janet. I despised him for this. Im glad hes gone, I wont remember him fondly. As to your comparison of Howard with Thatcher, when Thatcher was asked what her greatest achievment was she replied New Labor - The libs will be out of power for a long long time.

PeterSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (09:54am)
Let me get this straight: are you really saying that the only reason the Libs were absolutely hammered at this election - essentially sent into the political wilderness with not a scrap of power left in the country - was because John Howard hung to power a wee bit too long? Yet, otherwise, he’s done a marvellous job and everybody’s happy? You must have jet lag to believe that. Actually, you probably don’t believe that, do you. You’re just trying to be controversial, as usual.

JeffCanberraWed 28 Nov 07 (09:56am)
Janet The election outcome is causing the Liberals (or at least those who are capable of self-reflection and critical analysis) to examine why they were so comprehensively thrashed last Saturday. It will be occurring to them that, in the broadest terms, it was the excesses and abuses of power under John Howard that caused their demise. They will no doubt need to consider a major change in their direction, in their rhetoric and perhaps in their philosophy, if they are to become relevant again. You might consider doing likewise.

MarkWed 28 Nov 07 (09:56am)
Howard has no plan for most things he did, such as Iraq invasion and his own political carrer as well as his party’s future. He has talent in spotting opportunity and exploit it for his own benefit regardless the price…
He is a bloody opportunist.
However, in the end, the most important thing is the Australian public got it right; and now we all can start rebuilding the society.

Bob the BuilderCanberraWed 28 Nov 07 (10:00am)
Janet, re. ‘Unlimited welfare was replaced with a return to individual responsibility’ surely you mean it was replaced with middle class welfare and targeted bribes. Enjoy Paris, maybe one day I’ll be able to afford a trip there.

NoocatMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (10:16am)
Janet. I hate to tell you this, but history will not be anywhere near as selective as you have just been in this article. You have pulled out what you believe to be some positive things that Howard has done, but ignored many of the negative and destructive things. Do you really believe that historians will view Howard’s reign with the kind of rose-coloured glasses that you have always worn? Janet, I understand that you would be upset with Howard’s downfall, especially with the humiliation of him being only the second PM to ever lose his seat, but you will not have a place in the writing of history, thank goodness. I suggest that you devote some of your time to helping rebuild your beloved Liberal Party because right now, it is in the worst state since it was first created by Menzies. This is Howard’s great legacy - the collapse of his own party - out of government everywhere and still unelectable.

PeterMosmanWed 28 Nov 07 (10:24am)
A few corrections Janet.The country was great before Howardism diminished us all in the eyes of the world with wedge politics.Labor was already in the centre thanks to the Hawke/Keating legacy.There was nothing great about Howard as a leader...I so enjoy your right wing suffering...but take heart,there are still heaps of minorities to bash.

susanWed 28 Nov 07 (10:27am)
You had too much wine on the plane but, yes, Thatcher and Howard stand together. They are both now hated by the people who once elected them.

DavidCanberraWed 28 Nov 07 (10:31am)
Just one point - ‘Unlimited welfare was replaced’. This is a complete rewriting of history; I worked in Social Security pre 1996 and there was no unlimited welfare. What nonsense; I expect the rest of the article is of the same high standard. I will say about the Howard legacy what I have always said. Except in the minds of the JAs of this world, I expect Howard will be forgotten very quickly.

AnthonyMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (10:38am)
The most senior office now held by the Liberal Party is Lord Mayor of Brisbane City Council. The party can’t even get Lord Mayor in the other cities, and it is now in opposition in every state and territory and now federally. Janet, this tells me that Australians wholeheartedly reject the Liberal Party and its brand of conservatism, which is also your brand of conservatism. The Liberal Party is now on the fringes of Australian society. I know that must be hard for you to accept, but your world view, and that of the Liberal Party, is becoming increasingly irrelevant. It’s time that you moved ahead a few decades and join the rest of us in the 21st century.

Sam BakarBrisbaneWed 28 Nov 07 (10:39am)
You’ve really hit the nail on the head by stating the Liberal party has dragged the Labor party more and more over to the ‘right’ in the last decade or two. Your detractors on this blog have obviously no grasp of terms such as ‘economic rationalism,’ or ‘free market economy.’ Even policies such as floating the Australian dollar and removing centralised wage systems introduced by the Keating government are essentially right wing Liberal policies that were fully supported by the opposition Liberal party at the time. Only the uneducated, left-wingers and the ignorant will argue that the right-wing Liberal policies implemented by both the sides of politics have been detrimental to the economy. Australia owes so much to the economic rationalist policies implemented by the Howard government, yet it is just so disappointing few Australians actually understand them.

Eyes OnlyWed 28 Nov 07 (10:39am)
Janet, Just when I thought you had opened your first post-Howard article with humility, you ended it with hubris. “In the workplace, Howard cemented his personal philosophy that individuals make better choices than the heavy hand of government or the clumsy collective mindset of unions”. Work Choices sank the good ship Howard. If you can’t accept this, you have become one of the very “elites” you despise. In your case, you are not an elite of the left, with their good-natured impractical high mindedness, but an elite of the Right, with their small-minded downward envy. No one cared for Howard’s cultural wars, except maybe the religious right in this country. The rest of us wanted economic conservatism married to social progress, which is why we voted against Latham in 2004. Howard fatally mistook this as a vote of admiration for him. It is why Work Choices annoyed us; why the incarceration of Hicks and the treatment of Haneef was wrong. It is why we marched and vehemently disagreed with Howard over the Iraq War. It is why Howard couldn’t do the Big Smear on Rudd, why the Big Fear of unions didn’t work and why the Big Bribe of huge tax cuts couldn’t get us to vote for him. We want economic conservatism with forward thinking because we are decent and honest fundamentally, and Howard wasn’t. As for Big Government, no one has done it bigger than Howard, with his middle class welfare, now so ingrained that Rudd and any future government will have a hard time dismantling it. As for welfare, corporate welfare runs to the tune of $30 billion a year, but you never mention it, do you Janet? It’s far easier to pick on the favourite whipping posts of the Right: single mothers, the unemployed, the disadvantaged, the poorly paid, the Muslims, Aboriginals and whoever else is convenient. I’m sorry, but if you want us to move back from the incremental step to the Left that we have collectively taken, you will have to come up with better arguments.

BobbyTaraWed 28 Nov 07 (10:51am)
Janet, it is easy to be wise after the election but I feel you were hard on Howard suggesting he stayed too long. Howard was far more popular than Costello and it was in the party’s interest that he try to win his last election because Costello and the rest of the gang never stood a chance. Costello has been an excellent team player and treasurer but he had some traits that rubbed the electorate the wrong way. Costello knows this more than anyone and explains why he never challenged Howard or took on the leadership of the party himself when it became available. He is only fifty years old. In my view, Howard was more like a grandfather trying to set his kids up with an election win before he retired. I admire his courage in going down with the ship fighting the opposition all the way.

DavidAthelstoneWed 28 Nov 07 (10:54am)
Janet, Howard lost the election for two reasons: Work Choices, and (to a lesser extent I think) his inaction on climate change. The Liberal party will be doomed to electoral oblivion until they purge the drys and the uglies, and I don’t think that’ll happen in the near future.

Tony NJoondanna WAWed 28 Nov 07 (11:17am)
Get real Janet. Howard was a disaster as Treasurer and the worst PM this country has seen. No amount of revisionism on your part can alter those facts. Australia will be a better society now that he has gone.

The RedSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (11:26am)
Dear Janet, The problem I see with you is that you simply do not get it. When you are in a hole you stop digging, but you just keep on digging. Like a lot of other people, I think your time is up. You will simply not get away with your endless biased rubbish anymore. People have voted for change and your era is passed.

GerryMullum Wed 28 Nov 07 (11:27am)

The Red Sydney, No, You dont get it...Albrechtsen is the hole you speak of.

Ben MSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (11:31am)
Janet, Why is the conservative right so determined to create hate, mistrust and extol the virtues of big business at the expense of humanism ? Is it so wrong to try to do the right thing by people ? Do we live in an economy or a society ? Do we want to live in a country that continues it’s economic growth at the expense of happiness and security. What’s wrong with saying sorry to indiginous people ? Would that compromise your elitist view of yourself ? It’s funny that only 24 hours after comprehensively losing a federal election (and every state election in the last 5 years) that senior liberal figures blame the loss on a union sponsored ‘scare campaign’. We’ve just experienced 11 years of divisive, left vs right politics that has exposed the ugly side of human nature - race riots, anti (skilled or refugee driven) immigration, pre-emptive invasions whilst we’re paying the enemy ? It’s time for a change - yes. But the vote against Liberal was a vote for liberalism, humanism, fraternity. You elitist, hate mongering, obnoxious and arrogant person - the saddest part is that you will never realise how much power you have to do good, not divide and conquer.

NomaddKedron QldWed 28 Nov 07 (11:39am)
John Howard’s main problem was his obsession with dedication to country, duty and government. I have always mistrusted such individuals, because basically, they are no different to dictators. They love being in power and never want to let go. Samuel Johmson once said. “ A patriot is a scoundrel.” And what a scoundrel John Howard was, lies forever pouring out of his mouth, like water dripping from a tap. He dreamed of leaving a legacy like Alexandra The Great, but in reality he was a very small cog in the order of politics. Always swayed by subservience to royalty and George Bush, I can never understand any man bowing to another, whatever his nationality. I like my leaders to stand tall and proud, and I never was proud of John Howard, and although he presented at times an iron fist, he was in truth - a paper tiger! I good puff and he was gone.

MarcusAdelaideWed 28 Nov 07 (11:43am)
Yeah Janet, Howard’s legacies are: a bloated beauracracy which he never listened to anyway unless it matched his own views. Massive increase in Middle & Upper Class Welfare-whilst cutting back on help for the needy. Huge & often impenetrable red-tape associated with the GST & WorkChoices. One of the biggest skills shortages we have ever seen. Yeah, that is ONE HELL of a legacy Janet-one the Liberal Party will be excising from its history books as fast as can be.

JoshSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (11:44am)
Janet,
Nice to see you’re enjoying Paris, not to mention the large dose of denial that many of the ultra-right rabble are now indulging in.
As much as it pains you and the other Howard Huggers, history will remember one thing about JWH and one thing only - that he lost his seat. All your hagiography will count for nothing in the great wash-up of history. Forget any of Howard’s crimes and misdemeanours, although there are many to forget*. Forget any of his achievements, although there are few. John Howard is destined to be question number three at the local pub trivia night:
“Name the two Australian prime ministers to lose their seats in a general election.”
Quite fitting really. A little legacy for a little man.

L.BortolotMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (11:46am)
Howard represents/ed our last connection with conservative colonialism. He was the last of the “great white hunter”. Turnbull is your only hope.

Rod HallTweedWed 28 Nov 07 (11:47am)
If you listen very carefully you can hear Bob Menzies turning in his grave at the death of the Liberal party in every state and now federally with the prize fool Howard the first and only Liberal prime minister to lose his seat in an election, what a humiliation, how can he show his face in public again, he will have to leave the country like Kerr had to. Whats that you cant hear Menzies, the noise of the non stop rise in interest rates and inflation is far to loud, lets hope Rudd can get a handle on them as they spiral towards Howards record interest rates and inflation when he destroyed the economy as treasurer, I think Howard has already done far to much damage for Rudd to control rates in the short term, it’s going to take a decade to repair the mess Howard has left.

AnthonyMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (11:55am)
The most senior office now held by the Liberal Party is Lord Mayor of Brisbane City Council. The party can’t even get Lord Mayor in the other cities, and it is now in opposition in every state and territory and now federally. Janet, this tells me that Australians wholeheartedly reject the Liberal Party and its brand of conservatism, which is also your brand of conservatism. The Liberal Party is now on the fringes of Australian society. I know that must be hard for you to accept, but your world view, and that of the Liberal Party, is becoming increasingly irrelevant. It’s time that you moved ahead a few decades and join the rest of us in the 21st century.

PatrickSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (12:08pm)
Hi Janet, you have mentioned the names of a number of fellow commentators but perhaps I should not be too surprised that you choose not to mention Phillip Adams. Either you have not read his article in The Australian yesterday or you find the facts stated and the embarrassing views expressed in it are not in concordance with those of yours. History will not judge Mr. Howard kindly and that will be by his own making!

Sanity`Wed 28 Nov 07 (12:17pm)
Janet, I emplore you to invest a little of your time responding to some of the irrational, ignorant, sloganeering you cop in your blogs. If only you weren’t too busy to point out the massive ideological flaws, startling factual errors and mindless Howard-Hating parroting we may see greater balance in these blog responses.
It amazes me that few responses here show any objectivity or recognition of the many positives the Coalition under Howard has brought to this nation. Their pillars of leftist, anti-Howard faith wither under scrutiny… they cannot see for their ideological blindness and contradictions which silences dissenting opinion with accusations of “racist”, “Divisive”, “mean spirited”, etc, etc. Please Janet point out the factual errors in their pillars such as AWB which as we know was a UN run program, not fed govt, Children overboard which as we know they sabotaged their own boat, etc, etc. Please also point out that much of the groundwork for a strong economy which ALP luvvies like to claim as theirs was really the outcome of John Howard’s commissioned report when he was treasurer in 1982 recommending all the major changes Labor later went on to implement (remembering that the ALP has opposed almost all Coalition reforms). Please Janet remind these nongs that you’re actually writing an OPINION piece and those opinions are formed from your own empirical evidence and research and your writing clearly conveys relative restraint, solid argument and factual reporting. Yes you’re judgemental but that’s the point of a blog. Take a leaf out of Pier’s book… he’s great at revealing these biased, ignorant, ranting lunatics for what they are.

marcelitosydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (12:18pm)
Oh Janet, - you are bordering on being ridiculous now. The Labor vistory was no victory for the Left ? Please, even though the Labor became a much more centrist party recently that is a trend seen in many other parties of similar persuasion worlwide - a trend started with Tony Blair,s New Labor rise in the UK.... it is still a leftist party ( doesn,t matter how far left of the centre - left is still left ). Reading your comment that Howard was somehow ironically responsible for making Labor a winning force is laughable and wishful thinking for the legend of Howard that exists in your mind. Labor win had everything to do with Kevin Rudd,s abilities, ideas, skills and vison of what a modern Labor party should be - he is one smart cookieand will be a great PM for many years to come. That will be in great contrast to the divisive biggot Howard whose legacy ^David of Sydney ^described accurately in his comment. So please stop clutching at the straws, put your chin up , the legend of Howard out of your mind and move on girl! Hopefully your Paris holiday will help you do that.

pxcbdWed 28 Nov 07 (12:24pm)
Just move on, Janet - Costello has.

PetesydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (12:27pm)
Good article Jane. Dare I say “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” - we will be sorrier for his loss.

gsmchatswood, nswWed 28 Nov 07 (12:28pm)
Whilst there have been many critical analyses of the Howard era by journos from different leanings, I think none has actually pin-pointed the reason for Howard’s behaviour that led to his humiliating defeat. My believe is that the conservative commentariate have to take a fair share of the blame for Howard and the Coalition’s loss. The likes of Akerman and Albrechtsen were clear cut-examples of jounos that never could see wrong in their hero. Akerman is probably the worst offender as till today he has not given praise to the Rudd team. Till the very last day of the campaign when the majority of the commentariate were giving credit to Rudd, Akerman took the opposite view by continuing to vilify Rudd and his team. His constant rantings on the Heiner affair week after week when others knew it was non-event, was pathetic and disgraceful.
For most part of Howard’s years he has had the benefit of such support that he began to believe he was invincible. To add to that his mate George Bush, calling him the man of steel, only reinforced his invincibility in his mind. It was far too late when the conservative commentariate began to hint at his resigning. Howard has always been a divisive, racist and selfish person. His support from the media only created a self fulfilling born-to-rule notion that he was unbeatable. The conservative media players must also take the blame for the creation of this political monster that is Howard.

Middle ManMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (12:34pm)
Janet, I’m actually starting to feel sorry for you. Still banging the old culture war drum of the 1970s, still going into bat for Howard and Thatcher, still trying to revise history, and still trying to convince yourself that Australians embrace your brand of conservatism, which is really nothing more than the politics of hate. Janet, you are a shining example of the new Loony Right, a class of people with their holier-than-thou attitude, clinging to old battles in order to maintain a sense of purpose and self identity. Here’s a tip. Move on now and move on quickly. Otherwise, it will only get harder for you to accept the nature of life in the 21st century as the years tick by.

PenguinParramattaWed 28 Nov 07 (12:36pm)
Funny and sad at the same time Janet. Howard was petty, mean and self serving. What he and Janette did to the Liberal Party by his insistence to stay was disgusting; he threw people on the scrapheap (Costello, Haneef, Tran, Solon, the Tampa refugees etc) without any human dignity, and put himself in front of the party and the country. His economic record is really Costello’s, and he wasted the reforms brought in by Keating. He was a cunning politician, a great divider and a bigot, or at the very least a user of racism and bigotry. He was never accountable, and never knew what the government was doing eg AWB, children overboard etc. With the single exception of the Gun Laws, he was never a leader or a unifier. He tarnished Australia’s international reputation, took us into an evil and unnecessary war and denied/ignored the greatest moral and economic issue of our time, climate change. He was prepared to lie on big issues and small. I could never raise my kids on his lack of values. His own party is running from his legacy, and so will historians. Australians finally saw the light, but only after 11.5 mean-spirited years. Welcome to the future, and good riddance to the worst PM in living memory, including McMahon!

BobWed 28 Nov 07 (12:38pm)
The fact that you are writing such an article obviously shows that the election debacle has devalued Howard. He is already getting ripped apart by his ‘loyal’ party who have changed their tune in a week. History will not remember him kindly.

WarriorJapanWed 28 Nov 07 (12:39pm)
Sam Bakar of Brisbane, you believe that “Australia owes so much to the economic rationalist policies implemented by the Howard government”. How exactly were they responsible for generating the massive amounts of wealth our nation has benefitted from over the last decade? The reality is Howard and Costello’s fiscal policies amounted to little more than the distribution of capital that they didn’t earn. It was all too easy to gloat about delivering balanced budgets and erasing debt when there was that much revenue to play with. This is not just leftie rhetoric either. Economists consistently concur that the professed economic genius of the ousted Coalition government was in actuality a myth. Whether Rudd and Swan can disprove the notion that they will be inferior economic managers is another subject.

M.SpencerWed 28 Nov 07 (12:43pm)
Menzies like Churchill?
I’m afraid Pig Iron Bob’s war record of being sacked after poncing around with the toffs in England in 1940 is incomparable to Winston’s.

john herbertHobartWed 28 Nov 07 (12:47pm)
Wow, David at 1.51 am has captured the zeitgeist of the selectively deaf leftist movement. Congratulations David, If I were looking to manifest the criteria for a one side affected debate I could not have put it better, thanks again.

darrenWed 28 Nov 07 (12:52pm)
Barry, at 9.13am. What you have written there is a sad indictment of your views. It is, sadly, representative of the poverty of thought from the right - worldwide - these days. Your time is over. Instead of behaving like some mad liberal party wahhabiist, why dont you start trying to join the human race again? You may actually like what you find once you free your mind of 11 years of accumulated rubbish.

Pedro De SwiftPerthWed 28 Nov 07 (01:12pm)
John Howard a “warrior”? Ok lets look up the definition - right! a warrior is one who “habitually engages in warfare”. Well that explains it. He must be a warrior, he engaged in warfare against the Asians, the Unions,the working families, the Howard battlers, the Aboriginals, the refugees, the inoccent Iraqi woman and children, the children overboard, and finally! - his own party!! Your description intended to paint this nasty little man as heroic, but the pure definition of “warrior” paints the correct picture and history will properly condemn his acts and many disgraceful ommissions.

dravidbrisbaneWed 28 Nov 07 (01:21pm)
Well said Janet. Enjoy your holiday and look forward to an interesting year ahead. There will be plenty to writeabout and a never ending supply of good material will be landing on your desk. The Rudd Circus is about to start !

AnthonyWoollahraWed 28 Nov 07 (01:32pm)
Howard will be remembered as the second PM in Australian history to lose his seat and for the destruction of the Liberal Party. Just as he should be.

MarcusAdelaideWed 28 Nov 07 (01:37pm)
Janet, Graham of Melbourne (9am) is dead right - you and David Marr should form a support group called Whingers Anonymous. Both of you should just get over it. In your case, Janet, your poster-boy is gone, and Bush is just around the corner. As for Marr, Rudd is not a socialist, so just get over it. I definitely consider myself left of centre, but whingers from both sides of the political spectrum really tick me off!

BrettNaremburnWed 28 Nov 07 (01:44pm)
As a conservative voter, this election posed difficult questions for me. I had enjoyed a number of years of relative economic prosperity and retained vivid memories of high interest rates and high unemployment under previous ALP governments. In addition I also view ALP governments as poor managers of the economy and prone to accrue debt. On the other hand I had not been happy with the direction and impact of Work Choices. Working in senior positions of large multinationals, I had witnesses first hand the very deliberate use of AWAs to lower the real wages of workers to add to the company bottom line. This was very evident when real wage growth has been stifled in recent months, yet the job market was very tight (historically low unemployment). This is an indicator that IR policy has given too much power to the employer. I do not view this as a fair system. In addition to this I had not been happy with the level of meaningful tax reform over the past 11 years. The elimination of bracket creep had not happened, allowing any government to increase their real tax take through inaction, this remains a completely unacceptable position. Water was another area where I viewed the Howard government as doing too little to late; we have suffered water restriction now for many years, with little action either state or federal to resolve the problem. In summary I viewed some of the important policies of the Coalition to be out of step with my own views. So did many other Australians, it would seem. I think Howard will be remembered for governing a growing and prosperous Australia, I think he did the job well and represented the majority view for a long time. Leading any democracy is no easy task, and anyone who did this for as long as Howard deserves credit.

CathMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (01:45pm)
Janet, I am not dancing on Howards grave. I am dancing because the man who took Pauline Hanson’s policies mainstream, who used the worst kind of race politics (and history will have the final say on that issue) is gone and now perhaps my country will become a more decent and less divided place.
It was the environment and people who decided they wanted to live in a society not just an economy, stupid.

mikegold coastWed 28 Nov 07 (01:53pm)
David of Sydney, when the issues you raise were prominent, Howard was re-elected in a landslide. Your analysis falls apart with that simple fact.
Spot on, Janet. Great article.

PaulAdelaideWed 28 Nov 07 (02:11pm)
Well having read all the vitriol about Howard one is left to conclude the writers obviously consider themselves smarter than the australian population who elected Howard 4 times ..thats more than any Prime Minister other than Menzies.... To get elected 4 times he must have done a fair bit right

Kirribilli RemovalsWed 28 Nov 07 (02:15pm)
While watching Mr Rudd on the 7.30 Report last night, two words came to mind: ‘relaxed’ and ‘comfortable’. Watching him raise a few laughs with Kerry while assuredly taking the party through transition to government, I suddenly realised that this guy is headed ultimately to the ranks of international statesman. Rudd looks over the horizon and knows where he wants to go, which is why he never stooped to look down at the little man he defeated, and wasted no time with self glory and indulgent vanquishing of the last government.
This is the true man of steel, with his eye firmly on the ball.
Howard was given that epithet as a reward for the most cringing sycophancy to the mad neoconservative administration in Washington, and he never deserved it. Rudd on the other hand will earn it, every hour of every day.
From day one Rudd is making his plans to get his government on the ground, among us, and engaged with the real world, as we watch him establish Labor as the party of the people, not just of unions or the left. There IS a revolution coming, and it has great promise to be a re-engaging of the populace with the process of government rather than what it has become under the Howard years, a resigned apathy and a divisive smouldering resentment.
Janet, instead of playing the caustic partisan games of the last decade, (and desperately trying to re-writeit’s history), maybe it’s time to accentuate the positive, move on, and mould a new paradigm. It’s time, sieze this moment, Australia has voted for it.

MakkaBrisbaneWed 28 Nov 07 (02:16pm)
John Howard’s “legacy” is wall-to-wall Labor governments, the Iraq debacle, reluctance on climate change and being the first PM in 70-odd years to lose his seat. I suspect those will be the only things he will be remembered for in a 100 years or so.

RhodiePrinceton, USAWed 28 Nov 07 (02:20pm)
Oh my God,… you Aussies have just elected your Jimmy Carter !!

Mark JamesSouth YarraWed 28 Nov 07 (02:29pm)
Regeneration and change comes through challenge and competition. That’s a maxim the free-market right should be able to relate to. The paradox, however, is that the right rolled over and played dead for Howard. They laced themselves into an ideological straitjacket for fear of falling from favour, raising their heads only to cheer from the gallery. As a consequence, Howard grew stale and lost touch. He really thought he could get WorkChoices through, but nobody had the nerve to tell him otherwise. Shame, really.

MaureenSydneyWed 28 Nov 07 (02:39pm)
The only thing John Howard will be rememberd for now is being the ‘other’ Prime Minister who lost his seat while still in office. There you go, Stanley Bruce in 1929 and John Howard in 2007. Guess what brought down the Bruce government - his uncompromising stand on industrial relations!

pauladelaideWed 28 Nov 07 (03:29pm)
For all the appalling things JWH did he did enough to get elected 4 times..I cant remember too many Labor PM’s doing that

CamillusGlen Waverley - VicWed 28 Nov 07 (03:33pm)
Hi Janet, how refreshing that you are able to writea realistic article after Howard has gone. Couldn’t you have seen all this coming before the people did? One thing is for sure: there seems to be more intelligent people in this country in comparison to people like you who take us the public for granted. Hope to read more realistic and progressive articles in the near future.

MattThe Great South LandWed 28 Nov 07 (03:34pm)
I now realise that when John Howard said he’d stay PM as long as it was in the best interest of the Liberal Party he really meant it. He was the Liberal Party and there was no-one else Howard was one man band. He knew no-one would every oppose him as he stated his mantra time and time again. Say alot about those conservative politicians who retained their seats both Liberal and National they didn’t have the courage to stand up to Howard yet had the courage to send Australian troops to war.

LankamithraDarlingtonWed 28 Nov 07 (03:37pm)
Janet, If you have not deleted my previous comments which you opted not to publish as they did not fit well within your Howard worshipping mentality. Hope you have the courage to publish this. Ron Borown of Mitcham has itemised the points very well. I am happy for you girl! as you seem to have started to grow up since 24th November. Grow up dear, but make sure the growth is proportionate - otherwise your head will be too heavy for your feet.
If you wrote about John Howard the things that you writeabout him now, he could have been saved. Until the Ruddslide shook you up you did not know where your guts were. Now that you have found the guts make sure you do not loose them again.

JuanWarrnamboolWed 28 Nov 07 (03:39pm)
"The election result was no win for the Left” - hilarious! Were the Greens supposed to sweep to power? The Left and Right are just tags you use to push your ongoing campaign of personalised paranoia. Too bad it’s all about you, Janet. And too bad we can’t vote you out, though I wonder how long you’ll be at the ABC?

darrenWed 28 Nov 07 (03:55pm)
Rhodie of Princeton USA, if you think Kevin Rudd looks like Jimmy Carter, wait till we make Bob Carr grow a funny Amish beard, put a top hat on him and send him to Washington as our Ambassador. That’ll get their attention! He’ll be able to charge tourists for photos down by the Lincoln memorial.

vigon6edgecliffWed 28 Nov 07 (04:49pm)
Nice column - but I am not sure you are right in your analysis. Howard’s main mistake is that he went one reform too far. There is a clear backdrop of international financial turmoil at the moment and since you are visiting France you will notice that a pall of pessimism has enveloped ‘old Europe’ I thik Howard was not thinking of himself but of his country to make the labour market as flexible as possible so that Australia could take the hits of an international slowdown but that those hits were not necessarily going to be as deep or as permanent under a more rigid industrial relations system. Howard broke his own rule of not waiting until it was obvious that reform was needed before he introduced WorkChoices, therefore Labor had the basis of a very very effective fear campaign.
Blue collar, single mothers and lower dual income families with debts and a perception they didn’t have much bargaining power swapped their votes to Rudd, who gave evrey indication he was exactly like Howard except for this bit.
Also labor pursued Costello to challenge the old man calling him cowardly etc. In fact the only time Rudd lost his temper was over this issue. They would then have the bais of two fear campaigns as theirpolling and Newspoll said that voters were less likely to vote Costello. Labor wanted the change big time.
So Mr Rudd could be very disciplined in his campaign - not a superhuman as seems to be implied by some - just long enough to keep looking like Howard and keep talking about working families or in reality the lived expereince of many lower single and dual income families. The issues are - was howard right? If we go into a recession will the rollback of Workchoices mean the effects of the recession be felt most keenly by those working families Mr Rudd says he represents? ie higher unemployment? And how long can you keep looking like John Howard?

GerrySunshine CoastWed 28 Nov 07 (05:27pm)
A couple of issues here: 1) Howard did a great job. Thank you, sir. 2) How dreadful 11 and a half years must have been if you were anti-Howard from the beginning. 3) These silly, pent up emotions about Howard should perhaps be allowed to be expressed so people can move on. 4) Rudd is now elected. However much I doubt that he’ll deliver sustainable solutions, as opposed to the usual spin, I’ll support him to hopefully do a great job while he is in office. 5) The shake-up may turn out to be a good thing for Australia - Labor may very well become the new Liberal party. 6) Rudd’s character/personality, his “Team”, his Party’s policies and his ability to apply sound judgement are not the same things. Each of these will have to stand up to the test of time. 7) May I never get so bitter about Rudd as I see many here have become towards Howard. What torment such bitterness must bring!

mikeyMelbourneWed 28 Nov 07 (05:52pm)
I’m glad for the change of government particularly on the grounds of Climate Change and Iraq. However, for all the people who mentioned John Howard as the “worst Prime Minister ever”. Let’s not forget a couple of simple facts.
1.) John Howard was the 2nd longest service Prime Minister in Australia’s history 2.) John Howard won 4 successive election before being defated in 2007.
That’s right - the people of Australia voted him in 4 times. Eventually (and in my opinion rightly) his time ran out. The polls showed his demise very early in 2007 and Janet rightly points out his holding on to the top job eventually caused his party to lose it completely.
I commend those who changed their vote to labor not those who blindly follow the labor party (or liberal for that matter) year after year after year. It’s the 5-10% of swinging votes who make the real decisions in this country. Good on you all!

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Howard’s legacy

Club Troppo, Tony Harris on Wednesday, November 28, 2007

If John Howard were to summarise his legacy, he would emphasise economics. As he claimed in the election, Australia has a strong economy with low inflation and low rates of unemployment. With the benefit of asset sales and budget surpluses, the commonwealth has the financial capacity to do wondrous things, notwithstanding recent wasteful spending.
Yes, the economy has inflation pressures and faces possible interest rate increases. And there are uncertainties, this time the state of the world economy and the duration of the commodity boom. But these are hardly problems compared to the recession, high interest rates and inflation which the Hawke government inherited.
From Yesterday’s Fin.
The coalition also undertook important structural improvements. Howard never gave unions credit for their contribution to major economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, but he correctly saw that the behaviour of some unions - particularly those in the maritime and construction industries - was beyond the pale. And while Howard’s work-choices anti-union policies were excessive, Rudd benefits from a number of the Howard government’s industrial relation changes - such as secret voting.
There is a bevy of other beneficial, though not startling, economic reform. These include welfare-to-work, an economically oriented immigration policy, low income tax offsets and the provision of family assistance. Although Howard never understood how to work within the federation - instead he made Canberra the font of policy and money - he did give GST revenues to the states.
This economic legacy is commendable. But Australia is more than an economy. And it is in non-economic matters where the Howard government was wanting and where it failed to convince voters. There were good moments, including the removal of the East Timor canker and the gun reduction program after Port Arthur. But the overwhelming mark of Howard’s government was the supremacy of pragmatism over principle, politics over morality.
To achieve political mastery, Howard engaged in sophistry: providing soothing words instead of answering questions and accepting responsibility. He danced around the government’s apparent illegality in the waterfront dispute. He denied the government’s inept eagerness to wage an unjust war in Iraq. He never accepted responsibility for the government’s false claims about children overboard.
Howard also diminished institutions important to democracy. He required his backbench to place the government’s political needs above parliamentary democracy, and only a few resisted him. He preferred ambition to propriety. If the government could prevent an inquiry, there was none. If the government wanted to keep information from the public, it was kept secret. If the government agreed to treat the opposition contemptuously, ministers concurred. The Howard government did not invent this behaviour, but it honed the style to a razor edge.
Although the coalition introduced a model public service act, one which requires public servants to act apolitically, it perverted the public service. The government taught officers to identify with its political goals. Ministers trained public servants to keep embarrassing information to themselves. The government ensured that departmental reports anticipated government preferences. Some senior officers even acted illegally because this served the government’s purpose. And Howard allowed unaccountable ministerial staff to reign over the public service.
Quite oddly for a government whose philosophy is meant to emphasise individuality over the state, the Howard government reduced the rights of individuals. Asylum seekers who arrived by boat were imprisoned as a matter of policy. Contrary to world-wide practice and the spirit of the refugee convention, the coalition tried to deport uninvited refugees. The government’s harsh dealings with unauthorised immigrants meant Australian citizens and residents were illegally deported or detained.
The Howard government granted sweeping anti-terrorism powers to police and security agencies, but it failed to ensure those powers were fairly exercised. And its agencies abused the law. Indeed, there is a suspicion - hopefully to be explored by a foreshadowed inquiry into the Haneef affair - that political pressures caused illegal and unjustified treatment of Australians.
Finally, the Howard government diminished democracy by encouraging undisclosed political donations and by reducing the time available for new enrolments after an election is called.
The test for a Rudd government is to sustain the economic legacy it has inherited from the Howard government while repairing the damage done to Australia’s important institutions and to democracy. It won’t be long before we can measure its attempts.

Sweet Regicide

2007-11-27T15:07:00.000-08:00

Illustration by Dyson

End of the Strongman

Shaun Carney, The Age, Nov 28, 2007

John Howard brooked no dissent. Now he and his party are paying the price.
ONE of the great political mysteries in recent months was why John Howard kept delaying the calling of the election. He could have gone five weeks earlier and avoided the September quarter inflation figures and the Reserve Bank board meeting, but he didn't. Howard had his own people and a good swag of the media so mesmerised because of his past successes that they were sure he had something up his sleeve, something that would explain his curious election timing.
If you doubt that, look at the way the commentary slavishly swung in Howard's favour during the first few days of the election campaign. After the surprise $34 billion in tax cuts were revealed the day after the November 24 date was announced, the old stager was said to be back in town and was already outfoxing the neophyte Kevin Rudd. Those first few days were, of course, as good as it was going to get for Howard.
In the end, it turned out, he had nothing special up his sleeve, no great idea or event planned. There was never any good reason for holding off on calling the election. He simply liked being prime minister and wanted to do it for as long as he could. He had the job and the salary and the great house and the staff and the media exposure and he was hanging on to it. The Liberal Party? It could look after itself.
The man sucked his government and his party dry. He obviously had dedicated himself to keeping Peter Costello out of the prime ministership and ultimately he succeeded. During his leadership, the Liberals have managed to fall out of government in every state and territory. This is his legacy.
Things are obviously not good for the Liberals. The party's two leading figures have gone. Philosophically, the party is confused. Generally, Liberals abhor the suggestion that their party is ever factionalised and in a formal sense, that's a reasonable response. But there are always divisions, either based on personalities or on approach.
Right now, you would have to say that the party is divided into ostriches and meerkats. The ostriches include Alexander Downer and Tony Abbott, who want to believe that most voters didn't dispatch their government because it had done anything unsavoury or distasteful but because they were simply bored. You could probably throw in with that lot the former minister George Brandis, who somehow thinks that Labor has no authority to overthrow WorkChoices. Brandis, who speaks with the fruity tones of a former member of the Queensland bar, would need to be convinced about the mandate theory, your honour.

The meerkats include the two chief candidates to replace Howard as leader, Malcolm Turnbull and Brendan Nelson. They're willing to stick their heads up and look around the sand hills for something new. Both acknowledge the mistakes of the Howard government in its latter stages and want to find new ways of putting the party's case, based on what they've learned from not just the election outcome but from those awful, final last years in office. Nelson has even acknowledged the occasional power of symbolism, a direct philosophical assault on Howard's insistence on the "practical" before the symbolic.
There was something faintly pathetic in Turnbull's public acknowledgement on Monday of the need to ratify the Kyoto Protocol — not because of anything he said, but because of what it told us about the way the cabinet process had become misshapen under Howard. Turnbull, as environment minister, favoured ratification. His prime minister refused point-blank; he'd formed some sort of weird ideological-political pact with his Republican friend George W. Bush. Ipso facto Australia signs but doesn't ratify Kyoto, even though the man charged under the Crown with responsibility for the environment thought this was the best thing for the country. Soon, the new Australian government will ratify Kyoto and, as another example of just taking care of business, will offer an apology to the indigenous people — both places Howard was determined that he and the country would never go. When they happen, most of us will wonder what the fuss was about. The country will move on and Howard's obstinacy will look silly.
Australia needs the Rudd Government to be a decent, honest, effective, forward-looking administration. But just as importantly, it needs a Liberal opposition with the same qualities. This isn't just offered as a series of feel-good bromides. For the past 10 years at least, the pursuit of political advantage has had far too much effect on policy debates.
There's too much of a tendency within a lot of the media and, to be fair, in the political world, to view any disagreement or rivalry within a party as poison. Similarly, too much is bestowed on election winners. Already, it is being treated almost as holy writ that Rudd can expect at least two terms in office. While history suggests that's probable, it's no certainty. The Liberals are going through just what they needed: a leadership contest. They haven't had one for more than 13 years. How else are you supposed to argue out a party's direction if there are no internal struggles from time to time?
Since the weekend we've learnt that Nick Minchin in 2006 and Downer early this year both suggested to Howard that he should retire and were rebuffed. From the outside it seems bizarre that neither of them went to Costello and discussed ways of blasting Howard out. A senior Liberal yesterday offered a simple explanation: Howard was the king and no one wanted to kill him.
Inevitably, the kingdom vanished with the king. During Howard's reign, the cabinet, the party organisation and the Coalition partner, the Nationals, were all weak and got weaker with time. And the Liberal state premiers dropped one by one. Towards the end, no one stood up to Howard and no one even bothered to argue with him. He's gone and the internal debates are back. Soon enough, if the protagonists handle the process sensibly, the Liberals will be back too.

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A vote for honesty and decency

Ross Gittins, SMH, November 28, 2007

Wouldn't it be great if the defeat of the Howard Government and the election of fresh-faced Kevin Rudd proved to be a turning point, a swing back to moderation in public policy and decency in public life? I am not at all sure it will - politicians tend to ape the ethical standards of their competitors - but it sure would be nice.
The lawyer and academic Greg Craven says the Australian people are radical about only one thing: that their politicians must be moderate. The radical policy in this campaign - at least in its initial form - was Work Choices. By favouring individual contracts it shifted the balance of bargaining power heavily in favour of employers at the expense of less-skilled workers, who were able to lose penalty payments and conditions without reasonable compensation.
The belated restoration of a fairness test did much to correct this injustice, but it came too late. As Liberal insiders are admitting, Work Choices was the greatest single reason for John Howard's defeat. Inexplicably, it harmed the very working-class battlers whose support had kept him in power for so long.
Work Choices was extreme in another respect: by permitting the removal of penalty rates for overtime and work on weekends and public holidays, it advanced the seven-day working week and the demise of the weekend. Nothing could have been more calculated to damage family life and make social relations more difficult. How this would leave us better off was never explained.
I do not believe the motivation for Work Choices was to promote employment and advance economic efficiency. Rather it was to strike the final blow against the hated unions.
Howard sought to delegitimise the union movement from his first moment in office, removing unionists from government boards and declining to consult the unions about legislation that affected them. Contrast that with Rudd's concern in just his first few days to establish good relations with business.
Other things suggest this election result represented a rejection of the extreme and a search for greater balance. One is that, much to the Howard Government's astonishment, the voters were perfectly prepared to toss out a government that had presided over more than a decade of strong growth in the economy, rising wages, low inflation, moderate interest rates and low unemployment.
Perhaps reflecting their own values, the Libs assumed the goal of material comfort reigned supreme in the electorate's mind - that, when you got right down to it, nothing was more important than keeping the good times rolling. They discovered to their surprise that we do care about fairness, for others as well as ourselves; we do care about achieving a reasonable balance between work and life; and we do want our leaders to uphold reasonable standards of honesty and decency in public life.

This election revealed a desire to restore balance in another respect: the checks and balances of politics, under which many, probably most, Australians prefer their federal government not to also have control of the Upper House. Having the balance of power in the Senate held by third parties has restored its intended role as a house of review and made it a rare brake on the ever-growing power of executive government.
Over the years, a divided Senate has saved us from the worst extremes of both sides' policies. And saved the major parties from themselves. It is a safe assertion that Howard gained control of the Senate in his last term only by electoral accident. The sudden decline of the Australian Democrats caught voters off guard. What were the consequences of that miscalculation?
One was that the Senate was immediately cut back to a rubber stamp. Another was the rush of blood to Howard's head that produced Work Choices. He and his party must now privately curse the day they gained control of the Senate. It was the beginning of their end.
On the face of it, the voters' decision to install Labor federally as well as in every state and territory across the land hardly represents a vote for moderation and balance. We are now a one-party state. Not to worry. I think what we are seeing is just the first stage in an inevitable changing of the guard. Many voters are attracted to the idea of the each-way bet: governments of opposing colours at federal and state levels. Labor gained its stranglehold over state and territory governments while Howard's Liberals were entrenching themselves federally. Labor's ascension to power federally makes it only a matter of time before state Labor governments start falling - which will be no bad thing.
I believe standards of honesty and decency fell under Howard. They were hardly very high under his Labor predecessors, but they declined further under a man who, to all outward appearance, radiated respectability. He was a tricky man, leaving you with a certain impression but then later protesting that you had failed to read his lawyerly words carefully enough.
How many times were we misled? There were the non-core promises, the children overboard, the Tampa (which, for all Howard's ministers knew, may have been carrying terrorists), the weapons of mass destruction and the probably illegal invasion of Iraq, the AWB scandal (which no minister had any knowledge of) and the promise to keep interest rates at record lows.
Howard was never told and so was never responsible. The buck always stopped elsewhere. As to decency, we had the brutal treatment of asylum seekers, the trampling of the legal rights of David Hicks and others, the shameful treatment of Dr Mohamed Haneef.
The Howard Government ruled by fear and behind-the-scenes bullying of bureaucrats, journalists, business economists and business people. It raised the abuse of incumbency to new heights, especially taxpayer-funded market research and political advertising.
In all these things, it had two standard defences: first, you may care but the electorate does not and, second, our Labor predecessors did it, too.
I would like to believe this election shows that, in the end, the electorate does care about declining standards of public morality.
As for Rudd, some friendly advice: the first time I hear "but Howard did it, too" I will take it as an admission of moral bankruptcy. It will be red rag to a bull.

---------------

It's time to get to know PM Kev

Catherine Deveny, The Age, November 28, 2007

HOWARD'S gone, Maxine triumphed and McLeod's Daughters has been axed. Life just doesn't get sweeter than this. Unless of course, George Bush chokes on his own foot.
But how about Julia Gillard? Hands up who wants to be president of the Julia Gillard fan club? I can't look at that woman without wanting to burst into tears and give her a hug. Everyone's making a big deal about her being the first female deputy PM. I think it's far more significant that she's in such a powerful position despite the fact she has red hair, because everyone knows that people with red hair don't have souls. On Saturday night I was hoping Julia would say: "This is a victory for redheads, 'rangas and carrot tops everywhere."
So the question is "Who are we going to hate now?" If only Tony Abbott became Liberal leader. I can't really hate Malcolm Turnbull yet, I just like laughing at him in the same way I would laugh at a dog with a bucket on its head.
Highlights of the evening? Kerry O'Brien making the gaffe about "a swing to the ABC" in Bennelong. And Kerry's inability to repress his jubilation when it looked as if the Max Factor was going to make it over the line. And Julia, when they cut back to her after Rudd gushed about what a great deputy she was going to be. Such a disciplined, restrained woman so overwhelmed with emotion that the tears just welled. What a moment! And could Maxine's smile be any wider? Her joy seemed not about her but about bigger things. Justice, the people, fairness. Maxine and Julia were the luminous bridesmaids who may one day be the brides.
On Sunday morning I woke and felt like a woman in love. I felt buzzy and post-coital. Do you reckon Kev got lucky? It was a full moon that night. I bet there are going to be a swag of election babies born in August — all with the middle name Kevin. I'm beside myself that I'll be living in an Australia with a prime minister called Kev. If only we had a deputy called Narelle.
Despite drinking my body weight in tart fuel (cosmopolitan in a can) on Saturday night and only having five hours' sleep, I did a victory lap around the People's Republic of Moreland in my KEVIN07 T-shirt on Saturday morning. It was delicious. Horns beeped and people gave my T-shirt the thumbs up. A large section of Lygon Street was closed off for tramline work. As I ran past a group of 30 workmen, they downed their tools and applauded. It was a beautiful moment. I could have run for hours on an empty belly, a clear head and a heart just bursting.

I recalled the day after Howard won in 1996 going for a walk in the morning and thinking to myself: "Who are these people I am sharing my country with?" It's been a long 11½ years.
My mate Caitlin (who wore her Kevin 07 T-shirt all Saturday and slept in it that night) sent me an email on Sunday morning saying: "I feel like hiring a signwriter to paint the sky with 'John Howard, the people have spoken, now rack off!' "
I have to admit thinking last week that if Howard lost (did that really happen or was I dreaming?) I would drive up to Bennelong with a bunch of garlic and a stake to finish him off. But now he's been decimated I don't feel like that. I actually feel a bit sorry for him. I don't understand it either.
It's similar to bitter people who vow to take revenge on people from their past when they become successful.
But when they make it, they are so full of magnanimous love for all mankind all they can do is glow.
Is the election result just swapping one bunch of accountants and lawyers for another bunch of accountants and lawyers? Howard's gone but who is Rudd? A robot who goes to church? Or a passionate man with vision in the body of a diplomat?
Saturday night felt like 10 new year's eves. I feel as if I've started dating another man after being in an abusive relationship for 11 years. But who is this other man? It's as if we've had an intoxicating kiss in the kitchen but still haven't made it to the bedroom. Who knows what he's like between the sheets. Is he really conservative or is he into kinky stuff and toys? Will he be sweet and shower me with kisses or will he be unreachable and aloof but behind closed doors like it rough. Who cares? Ding-dong the witch is dead, the fat lady has sung and it was time after all. But time for what?

-------------

The Liberal future lies with Turnbull

Paul Kelly, Editor-at-large The Australian, November 28, 2007

THE 2007 election has ripped open a chasm in the Liberal Party. Don't doubt that this is a crisis. The Liberals have lost in one blow John Howard, the party's most successful leader for 40 years and Peter Costello long seen as his successor.
Howard must carry the responsibility. If he had resigned mid-term and allowed Costello to lead then, win or loss, the outcome would have been superior. Howard would have left unconquered; the party would have embraced generational change; Costello's ability as prime minister would have been tested; and the election result could hardly have been much worse.
"We are in the worst position we have been since R.G. Menzies founded the Liberal Party," says prominent Liberal, Michael Kroger (see Cut & Paste on the opposite page). This is a truism. Yet many Liberals cannot grasp that the old ideas and structures must be slain.
The party should turn to Malcolm Turnbull as leader. Of the candidates Turnbull is easily the brightest prospect, most able to summon the energy, brains and market the new direction the Liberal Party needs.
His deputy should be Julie Bishop. Turnbull might even do a Kevin Rudd: move his party on to new terrain. The Turnbull-Bishop team would be best to face Labor's new leadership.
There are many arguments against Turnbull. He is short of political and parliamentary experience, his judgment is suspect and his ability to unite the party must be doubted. Yet he remains the best hope.
Now is the time for the Liberals to be politically and intellectually ruthless. The new leader must burn the dead wood so furiously and symbolically that a new Liberal era is signalled. Nothing else will suffice.
"The Liberal Party accepts the new industrial relations settlement as voted by the people at this election." This should be Turnbull's pledge at his first press conference.
It will be a difficult retreat, but this is democracy. The people have decided. Unless this declaration is made and repeated each week for the next three years then Rudd will win the 2010 election on Work Choices. Turnbull was not in the 2005 cabinet that approved Work Choices. He can say this with credibility. The defiance on Work Choices threatened by Liberal senators needs to end immediately. It is folly, but understandable because during the Howard Government's 11 years the Labor Party destroyed the mandate theory.
But revenge is no justification for Liberal blindness. Reality demands that the Coalition give passage to Rudd's industrial bills.
That means in the existing Senate, let alone the new Senate. If the Liberals offer defiance, they hand Rudd the sword to lance them again.
"The Liberal Party believes in Kyoto ratification and a post-2012 system that binds developing nations into the compact." This needs to be Turnbull's second pledge at his media conference. Such a positive stance is critical.
Turnbull, having told Howard's cabinet to ratify Kyoto and having championed water reform and climate change action, has equal or better environmental policy credentials than any ALP figure.
Accepting the 2007 election settlement on industrial relations and climate change is essential for the Liberals. They need to start now because it will take years to sell such new positions to the public.
(The exception on IR is unfair dismissals, a Liberal stance that predates Work Choices and is seen as Liberal policy long geared to small business.) The next step for Turnbull is to uphold the Howard-Costello economic record. This is where Rudd is most exposed. Rudd and treasurer, Wayne Swan, know their worst blunder would be to preside over a recession in the 2007-10 parliament. That would confirm Howard's every warning.
This is the first government to be defeated in decades with clean hands on the economy: there is no recession, no downturn, no guilty party. It means Turnbull has a powerful record to use against Rudd as Labor struggles with rising interest rates, labour shortages, higher inflation and new industrial laws.
As a believer in markets, economic reform, low tax, better broadband and efficient services Turnbull should become quickly credible on the economy. He will pose one repeated question to Rudd Labor: can it maintain the expansion?
Indigenous policy should be a Liberal Party plus. That demands immediate acceptance of Labor's apology to the indigenous people.
This issue assumed an inflated status courtesy of Howard's defiance. The party must immediately sever itself from Howard's dogmatism. Once done, Turnbull can exploit the huge problems Rudd faces on his main task: closing the living standards gap and trying to contain the internal Labor divisions on indigenous affairs.
On education, Turnbull and Bishop can promise their own revolution. They need to rebadge the Liberals as the genuine education party, at school, technical and university level knowing that Rudd has created expectations far too ambitious to be realised.
Turnbull's social policy task is to triangulate to a new Liberal position beyond the old brawls between conservatives and progressives. This will require immense skill.
His fatal blunder would be to listen to the nonsense from the media about converting the Liberal Party to social progressivism. This was never an election issue. It had nothing to do with Howard's defeat.
It misreads the meaning of the election when Rudd proved that a future vision and social conservatism are tied together, a point much of the media cannot comprehend.
So Turnbull should support social policy ideas that work and are geared to tangible progress.
That means backing practical reconciliation, mutual obligation, high immigration and tough border protection with detention, welfare reform, firm national security laws with review mechanisms to guard civil liberties, education standards that reject postmodernism and demand objective testing, strong support for families and for individual choice. This is largely an affirmation of Howard's agenda, but it needs a new framework, fresh marketing and dressed with a moral ethos. Any reversion to obsolete social policy brawls between progressives and conservatives would be the kiss of death.
In overall strategic terms the Liberal Party should track very close to Rudd. He is the popular winner shaping a new agenda and style.
Much of this agenda is natural Liberal Party territory. It would be absurd, therefore, for the Liberals to engage in warfare or difference maximisation with Rudd. The Liberals need to learn from the Kevin 07 masterclass: neutralise your negatives by accepting your opponent's policy, pick your fights selectively, wait for mistakes, inflate small differences into great principles.
At the organisational level the Liberal Party needs to show steel. Its institutions must become more national, state divisions need to be reformed, new professionals must be recruited and the racists and ratbags should be expelled from the party.
Most of these prescriptions are no-brainers. It is utter folly for the Liberals to think they have time to reflect. They don't. They need to act before Christmas. Give Rudd a successful three months as PM and he will bury the Liberals even further in the political mud. Yes, it is a crisis.

In the end he retired disgracefully

2007-11-26T17:56:00.000-08:00

If only he'd retired gracefully

Gerard Henderson, SMH, November 27, 2007

John Howard deserves to be remembered as one of Australia's two most successful prime ministers, ranking equally with Bob Hawke. Moreover, Peter Costello and Paul Keating deserve to be remembered as Australia's most successful treasurers. Provided, of course, political achievement is measured by the ability to implement long-term reforms.
Yet neither Howard nor Hawke had the judgment to quit the top job while they were ahead. Hawke was humiliated in 1991 when he was dumped by his own colleagues in the Labor caucus and replaced by Keating. Now Howard has faced the ultimate political embarrassment by losing both the election and his own seat.
It's not quite like 1929, when the conservative prime minister Stanley Bruce was defeated in his seat of Flinders, then on the outskirts of Melbourne, since it was a safe seat. Howard has lost what was a marginal seat to Labor's celebrity candidate Maxine McKew, with a swing against him that reflected the national average.
Howard, like Hawke - along with Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair - could not manage leadership succession. Blair did best, stepping down after a win at the polls in favour of his Labour foe Gordon Brown. Thatcher's replacement, John Major, managed to achieve one election victory before the onset of the Blair ascendancy. But Howard has left the Coalition in a dreadful situation.
There was a case for Howard to step down before the 2004 election. It is likely that Peter Costello would have defeated Labor's erratic leader, Mark Latham, and ensured a successful leadership handover. There was an even stronger case for a Liberal Party leadership succession in March last year, on the 10th anniversary of the Howard Government's election. Had Howard announced his resignation at one of the functions held to celebrate the event, there would have been loud cries of the "don't go" kind. For people of a certain age, it invariably makes sense to retire while many of your supporters want you to stay.
I used to believe that Howard would probably have stepped down late last year - had he not been thwarted in his intention by Peter Costello's public reaction to the news that Howard had entered into a leadership pact in December 1994 to hand over to him about 1½ terms into the Coalition. I now realise this was a miscalculation.
Having become Liberal leader in January 1995, Howard defeated Keating in March 1996. In view of their apparent understanding, Costello had reason to expect that he might take over from Howard some time around 2000. Costello was not that surprised when Howard led the Coalition to the 2001 election, but he was disturbed when Howard did not step down soon after. He then came to believe Howard would hand over the leadership around 2006, but this belief was demolished following the leaking of the note held by the former Liberal minister Ian McLachlan about the December 1994 understanding. Howard responded to the controversy by indicating that he would stay on.

It now appears that Howard never formed a firm intention to retire, despite some indications to the contrary. As Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen document in their biography John Winston Howard, Howard's hint, delivered in mid-2000, that he might step down by his 64th birthday in July 2003 was a ruse. Apparently, this line was suggested to him by his confidant Grahame Morris as a means of diminishing leadership speculation. In July 2002, Howard convinced the journalist Paul Kelly that he would step down as Liberal leader the following year. Kelly reported that Howard understood the importance of a proper leadership succession plan.
I was not convinced by Howard's hints about a leadership handover circa 2003. However, as indicated, I did believe that last year was a real possibility - until I saw hin interviewed on The 7.30 Report on September 12 this year, following his acceptance of the cabinet-negotiated agreement that he would step down some time after a victory in this election. Howard's words were telling. He declared that, if re-elected, he "would probably, certainly" step down. The obviously reluctant correction of the word "probably" with the word "certainly" spoke volumes. If Howard could barely discuss his ultimate retirement some time around next year, when this had been effectively forced on him by a majority in his cabinet, there was no chance he would have voluntarily quit any time before the 2007 election.
The fact is that Howard, supported by his wife, Janette, and their adult children, never accepted it was time for a leadership change. This was a monumental miscalculation, which will tarnish his political legacy and has unintentionally harmed the Liberal Party. By late this year, when pressure was applied by senior Liberals and some conservative commentators, it was too late for an orderly leadership succession. This should have been done, as Senator Nick Minchin advocated privately, last year, when Howard appeared invincible and Labor was still led by Kim Beazley. From the moment Kevin Rudd became Opposition Leader, it was most unlikely Howard would quit voluntarily, since he would not have liked to be seen to surrender in the face of the Rudd challenge.
Peter Costello has made the correct decision not to contest the Liberal leadership. He is entitled to feel let down by Howard and most Liberal parliamentarians. There was never any point in Costello challenging Howard when he did not have the numbers to win a leadership ballot.
After the 2004 election, I wrote that Labor should cut its losses and replace Latham with Rudd and elect Julia Gillard deputy leader. This time the Liberals would be well advised to give a Malcolm Turnbull-Julie Bishop leadership team a chance.

Wollstonecraft

2007-11-26T16:37:00.000-08:00

Why it’s great to see him go

Phillip Adams Blog November 27, 2007 163 Comments

SPARE me the sentimental tosh about John Howard. Here’s why his departure is a joyous occasion.
The scene: The Great Hall at the University of Sydney. The grand opening of a conference for the Centre for the Mind. Crowds have gathered to see Nelson Mandela cut the ribbon. As chairman of the advisory board it is my duty to welcome our patron, the Prime Minister. That long-time opponent of sanctions against apartheid South Africa will then welcome Mandela. When I complain bitterly about my chore, the vice-chancellor murmurs, “Protocol.”
A last-minute phone call from a protocol officer in the PM’s department.
“Do you really want to introduce the PM?” he asks.
“Of course I bloody well don’t!”
“Yes, it would be a bit hypocritical.”
“Not as hypocritical as the PM introducing Mandela.”
The resolution? The VC will introduce Howard. I’ll move the vote of thanks. When I explain the change, Mandela isn’t fussed but asks me: “How’s Paul Keating getting on?”
This backstage kerfuffle is nothing to Malcolm Fraser’s loud performance in front of the gathering dignitaries, including the PM. He tells of a crisis early in his prime ministership involving Vietnamese close to the Australian embassy. They are understandably desperate to be allowed into this country. Fraser phones Gough Whitlam, who agrees they should be welcomed. “So did my entire cabinet, except for one person. Guess who!” And he points the finger at Howard.
The scene: John Laws’s 2UE studio in 1988. Anticipating One Nation by many years, Howard warns the nation of the dangers of Asian immigration. So outraged is the response to his statement that Howard loses his job as Opposition leader a year later.
The scene: A new prime minister manipulates Hansonism in the mid to late 1990s. Forget dog-whistle politics. In a campaign as deafening as any air raid siren, Howard declares war on multiculturalism and political correctness. White Australia rises from its grave. Bigotry is unleashed via an epidemic of racist graffiti, schoolyard attacks and shock-jock broadcasting. Thanks to the main parties’ accommodation of One Nation, Australian racism is world news.
The scene: A few thousand refugees flee the Taliban and Saddam Hussein in 2001. Howard brands them queue jumpers, illegals and has cohorts hint that they’re terrorists. The Tampa sails into view and our detention of decent people in concentration camps becomes an international disgrace. Kim Beazley rolls over. The ALP is complicit in this political pornography, this immense stunt. Kids overboard. The Australian Navy is appalled by what it’s ordered to do. More than 350 die on the SievX. All this wins Howard another term.
The scene: 9/11. Howard jumps the queue to sign up for the misconceived war on terror and the horror story of the Iraq invasion. Immense numbers of Iraqis are killed. We are complicit in hundreds of thousands of deaths, in Abu Ghraib, in torture, in rendition. It isn’t democracy that blossoms in the Middle East. It’s terrorism. To this day Howard insists that the fiasco of Iraq is a success.
The scene: Guantanamo Bay. Howard permits the monstrous treatment of David Hicks.
The scene: The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission prepares Bringing Them Home, the tragic account of the stolen generations. Before publication date in 1997, Howard’s bovver boys not only deride the document but slander Ronald Wilson. Historical revisionism kicks in. Reconciliation is rejected. The black-white divide deepens. Quadrant crows. Pauline Hanson is pleased.
The scene: The Kelly gang - the husbands of retiring member Jackie Kelly and her would-be replacement - are caught distributing a piece of crap designed to press the hot buttons on anti-Muslim bigotry. We’re told this attempt to throw fuel on the world’s most inflammatory issue is a prank. The PM promptly denies any knowledge of this dirtiest of dirty tricks, yet it sits within the culture of bigotry he has encouraged over many years.
The scene: As the election gains pace, Howard’s immigration minister Kevin Andrews targets the alleged criminality of Sudanese refugees and immigrants. Deja vu all over again.
The scene: A few days before the election, Howard is asked to list his proudest achievements. Right up front he says the destruction of - yes - political correctness.
Is Howard a bigot? His support of apartheid South Africa, his long-term indifference to the issues of Aboriginal Australia, his exploitation of the refugee issue and his on-the-record hostility to Asian immigration would suggest so. Or is he a main-chancer, a cunning manipulator of other people’s fears and racism? If the latter, isn’t that morally worse? That’s why I’m not shedding tears at Howard’s departure. Because his fondness for the Menzies era involved the revival of too many aspects of White Australia. No other modern PM on either side of politics would have touched it with a barge pole.

Your Comments
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RationalityNSW North CoastTue 27 Nov 07 (01:16am)
Hmmmn. Not looking good for the history books is it. Will JWH regret encouraging the study of Australian history?

ErnestBrightonTue 27 Nov 07 (01:20am)
A great economy, the threat of union leaders ‘coming back’ and wall-to-wall Labor Governments nowhere near enough to stop a landslide against the Howard Govt. The PM even lost his seat! The result on Saturday says it all about the ugliness of John Howard. What amazed me is how he didn’t care what he became in his quest to remain PM. He had no sense of wrong. What also amazes me is how his wife didn’t stop him becoming this ugly creature. Remember he was once called ‘Honest John’? That was a lifetime ago. Go to hell and don’t come back!

SeanBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (01:20am)
Well Phillip, here, here!!! I have never liked the man, never will. I agree with Paul Keating when he said today that he felt like a worker covered with toxic waste who was able to hose it off, that is exactly what the ejection of this insular, ugly, backward-thinking, nasty, racist, unsympathetic government means to me as well. I feel as though a weight has lifted from my shoulders. If I hear another Australian bang on about the economic prosperity that Howard brought I will be physically sick. Government is more than a bank where money is deposited and later withdrawn and dispersed. Our leaders should be just that, leders - statemen who lead. Howard was so full of his own desperate agenda, that no-one, not even the old harmless, do-nothing Liberal Party was going to stand in his way. It was re-made in his image and with his departure, the party will depart as well, figuratively, or maybe in reality. I feel the same amount of sympathy for Howard that he gave to most people. At least you, Bob Ellis and a few others have always been consistent. What has surprised me is how some of the most well-known political journalists have written today denouncing the excesses of the outgoing government. Where were they over the last decade? It seems even they now feel permission to have their say, funny really that was what Howard said he was fighting for in this “politically correct” world.

Mr BasherSumatra IndonesiaTue 27 Nov 07 (01:24am)
"Howard has taken Australia in an ugly direction” Well Phil the world is taking an ugly direction. “The monstrous treatment of david hicks” Come on Phil. While we see holy warriors cut off the heads of anyone guilty of not being a muslim, and Hicks is out there fighting at there side? Refugees are people who run to the nearest border to escape persecution, war or poverty. Not people who fly Emirates to Jakarta then pay thousands of dollars to board a leaky boat to be smuggled into Australia. Denial will not make the worldwide problems go away Phil. It was one of the Arab leaders I think that said “political correctness will ruin the word”!!!

NormCastle HillTue 27 Nov 07 (01:26am)
Adams, Just the sort of vile jibberish you expect from you, you’ve reconfirmed what a fundamentally nasty piece of work you really are.. Norm

SilverfoxKLTue 27 Nov 07 (01:26am)
Ah Mr Adams the classic armchair critic! Never anything positive....just constant sniping. A wooly minded do-gooder if ever I heard one. How you would ever cope in a leadership position I wonder!!

GregCOORPAROO, QLDTue 27 Nov 07 (01:28am)
Is little johnny a bigot? Is the pope a catholic?

Trubbel at MillBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (01:30am)
Spot on Mr Adams. When the Howard legacy is settled, it will be distilled down to this; ‘A bigot, a small-hearted racist who used the dog whistle with varying degrees of intensity but never quite managed to take his lips from it.’ Future Liberals embrace this creature at their electoral peril, because to me and millions of others any statement of affection for the Rodent immediately identifies the speaker as an enemy of decency.

Big SighSouth West WATue 27 Nov 07 (01:37am)
Why so many people trusted John Howard for so long has always baffled me. It’s a lesson in human nature that I don’t think I’ll ever digest. I notice that his cohorts are now bringing out the knives for him. Bit late chaps.

GerryPerthTue 27 Nov 07 (01:37am)
I fully concur with every word you have written here Mr Adams. The former Prime Minister was a man with a flawed character who should never have risen to the office.

BrutusPerthTue 27 Nov 07 (01:40am)
Phillip Adams; Boring! It’s time you moved on Phillip, let someone else have a go; you are a smart guy but also very predictable and boring. Please retire while you have some respect. Either you will be sorely disappointed in the new Rudd regime or Rudd has lied to the electorate; either way you will again become an apologist. PS It was nice to see you admit finally that Whitlam did the East Timorese over. Have a nice day.

Peter SElthamTue 27 Nov 07 (01:47am)
The full royal commission that has to be be held into the AWB scandal will be the most important way of apologizing to the Iraqi and Australian people for the Howard years. The cover up for two of Howards ministers complete incompetence in this fiasco are the most disgusting actions ever undertaken by a Prime Minister of Australia. There are a lot of sins to be purged from the psyche of Australia for the past 11.5 years.

ohfrabjulousdayperthTue 27 Nov 07 (01:48am)
Very kind of you Phillip to only focus on one aspect of JWH’s many insidious and downright destructive (from one in a position of great influence) attitudes.
The rest of his ethical flaws and mean, manipulative ways are also well known and well documented and, thanks to his monumental inneptitude and hubris in his last term of office, can’t and won’t be airbrushed out of history.
His last act; to self destruct, completely destroy his own reputation and leave his party in tatters (the ship, in this case, going down with the captain) was possibly the only truely poetic thing he did in 33 years of parliment.
Anyway, moving on...keep that new bloke and his mates on their toes, don’t let ‘em get away with nothin’

GusTue 27 Nov 07 (01:53am)
People reading Mr Adams’ article should not be lulled into thinking that these issues are meaningless abstractions. For many Australians, including me, they are painful realities.
It all began when Mr Howard sough to exploit Professor Blainey’s comments on Asian migration for political advantage. In the heat of that ‘debate’, neigbours who had previously politely ignored me were encouraged to vent their feelings; or perhaps they were told what they were supposed to be feeling. In any event, I will never forget being spat on, or having empty beer bottles thrown at me.
And it wasn’t all tweny years ago. Following Mr Andrews’ Cabinet-endorsed demonisation of Dr Haneef some nice young men leaned out of their car to tell my 75 year-old mother to go home.
My family came to Australia to escape a political class that exploited the race card for personal political benefit, at great cost to the country. The average Australian will never know how lucky they are that Howard is gone. Those of us with Ozzie spit still burning on our non-white skin know only too well.

vhugoTue 27 Nov 07 (02:01am)
Oh Happy Day! My face hurts from smiling.

Kenya LowtherPerth, W.A.Tue 27 Nov 07 (02:10am)
Since you were both born on the same day, I think it is time for you to go, too, and make way for “generational change”. While John Howard can claim to have made a valuable contribution to Australia, and the now positive way in which Australia is regarded in international circles; you only sit in your web spewing out poisonous comments that are out of touch with the young and only read by jaded old mandarins such as yourself. They are a dying breed. With all your business pursuits, you have five times what Mr Howard can expect as his Parliamentary pension at your disposal, and you are occupying a position that a younger person with a “fresh” perspective and “new ideas” should have. It’s time for a change and for you to go off to where all bilious old dinosaurs like yourself go when they die. You’ll be quickly forgotten, because all you have done all your life is spread hate and dissension. Of course your massive ego will ensure that this will not be printed, but you and your bosses would be amazed at how many people feel just like me about you. They’d also save a bomb, as well, since you have such a high price on yourself, and see circulation increase into the bargain. You poor sad old man!

Sam GPerth WATue 27 Nov 07 (02:14am)
Howard’s qualified racism divided Australia like no other, and he alienated many immigrants like myself who are otherwise proud to call themselves Australian. His eleven and a half years in power will be remembered for opportunism, political incorrectness and wedge politics. Never has bigotry been celebrated in this country as much as in the past 10 years. I’m not sorry to see the back of him. Poetic justice that he lost his seat to the votes of New Australians.

Expat in MontrealCanadaTue 27 Nov 07 (02:15am)
Absolutely. Here is another scene: My wife was shopping in our current local supermarket in Montreal, Canada - and the delicatessen man asked her where she was from? “Australia....” The pause was followed by, “Oh, why would you want to live there? They’re not very friendly over there, are they racist....?” Thank you John Howard for portraying our nation into your image and transforming our social fabric into your “White Australia” era. Likewise, there was not a hint of sympathy in our household, only relief that the majority of Australians had woken up and some imported Australian red wine cheers to herald in a new era and bid good riddance to one, J. W. Howard.

SilviaPrestonsTue 27 Nov 07 (02:36am)
Yes, yes, yes and yes a multitude of times! He and his foul politics are the reason that I have spent the last 11 years in a funk. Sadly, I don’t think that it’s why he was voted out, I really think that the main reasons for his demise were work(crap)choices, the Costello issue and the interest rates rise. It is a generalisation and I know that there are many, many Australians that look beyond their own self-interest and perhaps now, will feel at liberty to express themselves. But who cares about the selfish, I don’t because Howard and his cronies are either gone, self-flagellating or assisting the Coalition to implode. Woo Hoo!
I have now had two mornings where I have awoken with a lighter, more optimistic heart and I’m loving it. Now my children will maybe learn strong moral values, and dare I say it? political correctness from sources other than their mother and father. I am ecstatic. Thank you Phillip for putting all my feelings into your article.

JustinadelaideTue 27 Nov 07 (02:44am)
Well Phil, you got your wish, now you will have nothing to repeatedly moan about. Will you now do us a favour and let someone fresh and vibrant take over from you. Your repetitive bleating, not unlike Paul KEATING has become rather boring. We will even let you tell anyone you manage to trap into listening how you were the one responsible for all that is good in the world, also, very much like Paul KEATING. Please Phil, go now, or you may just find that you too will become the wrapping of tomorrows fish and chips.

fireclownqldTue 27 Nov 07 (02:46am)
and with Bronwyn Bishop running as leader or deputy leader, oh, I can see you rubbing your hands

HamLondonTue 27 Nov 07 (03:01am)
Without tears goes this tyrant, he couldnt shed them. A few years ago Howard got an effective dose of how his lack of genuine goodwill would tarnish his reputation in the years to come. The moment was his address on Reconciliation (oh… way back then) when members of the audience rose as a group and turned thier back on him. It was a fine example of how to silence a sickening voice of pretend emotion from a heartless politician. Now Australia has risen and turned I hope this moment represents an opportunity for some to also see what the others are looking at, a better more compasionate and considered direction for our society. Interestingly, some Howard supporters l knew were talking about him being remembered as a statseman. More likley a rusty old Charade.

MarilynTue 27 Nov 07 (03:12am)
Thank god Philip. I feel like I have been in Wonderland reading most of the media about this “campaign”. It seemed like all of Howard’s sins were wiped out the minute he called the election.
And now the pundits, even Christian Kerr and Laura Tingle, expect that everything has to be changed before Rudd is even sworn in, got a cabinet or an office or moved to the lodge.
Weird. Glad the see the back of the thug personally, rejoiced in the street when he lost his damn seat to a star and a lady.

PeterBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (03:14am)
Agreed! Race has become an issue in this country only twice since the end of WW2. Both times it was John Howard. First with his anti Asian comments as Opposition Leader. Second, his covert approval of everything Hanson said, and then stealing her voters by adopting her policies. The only perceptive thing Hanson ever said was to blame Howard for taking her votes. It’s also worth mentioning the forgotten David Hicks in the list of Howard atrocities. I’m sure his torture for Howard’s perceived political advantage swayed a lot of votes. No doubt David’s Father will be well pleased by Saturday’s result.

DavidComoTue 27 Nov 07 (03:32am)
Perhaps you could make enquiries amongst those that might know whether the original furniture designed for the Prime Minister’s Office in Parliament House is still around, and if it will be reinstated. I could never understand why Mr Howard insisted on replacing the architect’s vision with those chesterfields—they just made him look like Ronnie Corbert in his oversized-chair sketch.

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LaurieBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (03:34am)
Shyster - unethical person: an unscrupulous person, especially a lawyer or political representative (slang insult).
Australia can be redeemed from its recent sins by fair and compassionate leadership into the future; the former PM and his Government cannot. History will not be kind to him and them. I concur with Paul Keating’s comment, when asked if he felt for Howard as he went to give his concession address. A resounding “no”. The nation must now go forward in light and in future, avoiding shysters at all costs.
Whilst I am here, I would also like to say thank you to you Phillip for all your good work in the media over several decades. I, for one am very grateful for your insight and wit. It has brought me enlightenment and enjoyment. I hope that doesn’t sound sycophantic.

MickEmeraldTue 27 Nov 07 (03:38am)
There’s an old saying in the bush. “Its a long road without a bend”. Howard just hit the bend. All the fears and boogymen he through at the Australian people over the years failed to work for him this time. I will remember him for a lot of things. The never ever gst. The weapons of mass destruction. The children over board. The IR laws are a few that come to mind. But I mostly want to remember him for the state he left his party in by his life long belief that his right wing ideas were right. Liberal Party November 07. Leader losses own seat. Treasurer resigns his job. Deputy Leader resigns his job. Biggest swing since the War. I watched him on his walk the sunday after. A beaten and broken man. I dont want to live to be 100, but I do want to live long enough to read what history writes of this man. Already they are sharpening their pencils on his final chapter. I dont even feel any pity for him. And that is not my nature.

SandyChicagoTue 27 Nov 07 (03:39am)
Thank you, Phillip for deftly summarizing the major points for why it was time for Howard & his brand of backward-looking Menzies-era politics to be superseded. You could also add to the list his government’s screwing up of higher education and research. As a member of the Australian diaspora, the so-called ‘brain-drain’, I am hoping that sometime soon there will be a better-funded and less exhausted tertiary and research sector for me to return to.

fredcoldstreamTue 27 Nov 07 (03:47am)
I think we have a great chance to clean out the stables. Howard stood on the back of our primitive worst fears which he kindled. We now have a chance to start breaking down the divisions created in our society. Hopefully now we can all be winners to a certain degree, rather than straight-out winners and straight-out losers.

Martin in PortoPortugalTue 27 Nov 07 (03:59am)
Howard’s arrogance in holding out to the bitter end against any renewal in his own party has had a just reward - the complete destruction of the liberal party big-wigs too gutless to turf him out when they saw he was leading them to descruction. Let’s hope now for a complete rejuvenation of the party, and a rejection of the far-right conservatism beloved of Howard (and many of the Australian’s columnists).

The ChookAnnandaleTue 27 Nov 07 (04:01am)
"The scene: Guantanamo Bay. Howard permits the monstrous treatment of David Hicks”. Having yourself never been in the working end of a battlefield and bled for anything more than your sanctimonious self, I guess it would be hard for you to see the harsh reality in this particular situation. David Hicks should be jailed for life. The fact that he was detained before he had a chance to shoot / kill Australian soldiers and innocents alike makes not the slightest difference. I always wonder how willing you would be to go into bat for people like Hicks if he had the opportunity to fulfill his dream and kill his enemy - and that victim just so happened to be a member of your family, who was wearing a uniform for Australia. Your thoughts don’t extend that far because you can’t get past both your own twisted self-importance and your blind hatred of Howard. Whilst I too am glad to see the back of John Howard, the detention of David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay was necessary. What is not necessary is his imminent release back into the Australian community. You Phillip, and all others who support David Hicks, support the very people that want to destroy you - but this little inconvenient truth is always blinded by your hatred for Howard.

leighParis, FranceTue 27 Nov 07 (04:22am)
Amen to that. Now for George and Sarkozy.

RobinozAl Ain, UAETue 27 Nov 07 (04:26am)
I’m always interested to read your bull Phillip because some of it makes sense. However, it’s one thing to be in charge of a government and make decisions every day, sometimes fully informed, sometimes less informed, and another to sit on the sidelines and find fault with every decision made.
When were you a Prime Minister with the charter to balance thousands of different minority groups, millions of taxpayers and voters, international relationships, and make tough decisions about Australia, our people and our future?
John Howard is a man of integrity who has served Australia and Australians admirably well. So, he may be judged to have made a few mistakes. He who never made a mistake made nothing.
You’ve told us all the bad things John Howard did. Why don’t you now tell us now about all the good things?
If you can’t do that, you aren’t half the man John Howard is.

ElijaTue 27 Nov 07 (04:33am)
Here here! It feels like waking up after 11 1/2 years. Especially with ‘Work Choices’, I think a lot of people realised how nasty and detrimental Howard is once they started to feel the brunt of his ideological will - his attack on working rights was simply another instance of his ingrained pattern of behaviour. He could get away with it when it only affected minorities - but when he risked the majority, that’s when he was shuffled off. Fancy doing a program on possible John Howard Work for the Dole (or Dull) programs? Perhaps the winner could have John Howard mow his lawn.

Liberal SlayerTue 27 Nov 07 (04:37am)
Great comments Phillip. I agree with you, Howard has proven that he is both a bigot and a main-chancer.-Thank goodness the Australians Have seen through him . The great thing is that history will not be kind to him. The magnitude of his removal from power will provide the historians with the foundation of analysis needed to quantify how bad Jonny was for the land-See you next Tuesday, Howard.

pixiesouth caulfield victoriaTue 27 Nov 07 (04:54am)
Spot on!!

RRMGlen Iris, VicTue 27 Nov 07 (04:57am)
Howard deserved the biggest kick in the backside for any PM - losing the election and losing his own seat. His policies were roundly repudiated by the electorate. Good riddance to the foulest smell that was the Howard government.
I hope Rudd institutes the judicial probes and Royal commissions into several of the attrocities perpetrated in the name of Australian people by the Howard government to uncover the real truths.

AlexCanadaTue 27 Nov 07 (05:32am)
People should indeed spare their nostalgia in this instance. Whilst its natural to feel a sense of loss or insecurity when the landscape changes, we need to really be aware of the horror that John Howard has inflicted on so many people.
Most directly, we see that he is literally complicit and responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans. Not to mention Indigenous Australians, queer people and countless others on low incomes. When you slash the security net from underneath people, it results in family abuse, misogyny, sexual abuse, race-based abuse, queerphobia, suicide, and numerous other ills.
John Howard was definately constrained in some instances, like everyone is, by his political environment. But it is clear that he was someone who took the low road - and pressed for it on more than one occasion.
Our society will never experience a true healing of what John Howard has done until we hold him accountable and embrace a socialist project.
Have no illusions in Kevin Rudd. His quibblings over ‘sorry’ on day number 2 should make it obvious that he is more Howard than Howard.

CharlesTue 27 Nov 07 (05:35am)
Well summarized
Every man does good and bad, but nothing Howard did or can do will balance the ledger.

GeorgeSydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (05:41am)
Well put Phillip. Apart from all this,in time the current eulogising will end, and then history will judge the man with a much clearer view of his legacy. His sole pitch for re-election was economic management, and a healthy dose of fear and negativity, as if that’s all that mattered. A comment on a school noticeboard said it all, “we are a society, not just an economy”, and that I suspect is what the majority of Australians also believe. When the Liberals compose themselves sufficiently, they too will look at the Howard legacy differently. When they do, they will come to the realisation that his true legacy was the annihilation of the Liberal party at every level in the country. His ego and ideological obsession, coupled with a servile, amoral, sycophantic and gutless parliamentary party group behind him ensured the destruction. This is what will be remembered most, particularly if Rudd has a long period of tenure. In true Liberal fashion, the bloodletting and recriminations will not be long in manifesting themselves. They need to reinvent themselves and do so quickly. They need to get over John Howard, and Peter Costello for that matter, if they are to have any chance at rebuilding themselves. Above all, they must dump the religious hard right nutters that have hijacked the party and kept them in opposition everywhere at state level. They must also abandon extreme right wing ideology and adopt a more centrist policy approach. If they don’t heed the lessons of 2007, they will be doomed to a long period in opposition at all levels of politics...even local government.

woodenshoesUSATue 27 Nov 07 (05:51am)
So true, but why has it taken Australians soo long to realise where Howard and Co stood for? I for one am dissappointed that it took 11 years before peoples eyes began to open. Glad you mentioned Labors complicity in the Tampa affair, find it hard to forgive them for that. Unfortuntely, there is still a strong undercurrent of racism within Australia and John Howard knew how to play to this as no one else did. Hopefully with the correct policies and guidance from a fairer and more open government we can learn to enjoy and not fear the wonderful multi cultural society Australia is today.

SalaSydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (06:05am)
All you say is true of course, but Howard’s divisive tactics were in play on a domestic front too, and did enormous damage to the fabric of Australian society. He is responsible for the demonisation of anyone who was vulnerable, anyone who did not fit his personal norm of financial, marital, faith, ethnicity, sexuality or ability status. Too many were treated with a harshness that was almost incomprehensible, and those fortunate enough to be exempted from such legislation were encouraged to regard these measures as quite fitting, and probably well deserved. He divided education outcomes by manipulating parents; he divided mothers with heavily-slanted middle class welfare; he divided workers on the basis of their earning ability, and therefore their negotiating ability; he divided the poor from everyone else; and he inculcated the over-riding mantra that money was all that mattered, and that rampant consumerism was nirvana. In his manic pursuit of the dollar as God, John Howard was directly responsible for almost destroying decency, and any semblance of compassion; under his rule, values were rewritten, and in the process, totally devalued. He turned us into a society that viewed labelling as acceptable. After Saturday’s election result, I am prouder of this nation, and Australians, than I have ever been, and more relieved than words can convey that he is finally gone.

gundaroostergundaroo 2620Tue 27 Nov 07 (06:08am)
Philip what a wonderful an insightful salvo to speed Howard into history which certainly will not view him kindly. We are so sick of the smarmy politically correct tributes which reflect either lack of incisiveness of just downright dishonesty.

DemocritusWATue 27 Nov 07 (06:12am)
But wait, there’s more. How about the Orwellian named “Electoral Integrity Act” which gave first time voters, particularly the young, scant hours to be enrolled to vote after the election writs were issued. The calling of an election was a good trigger to remind youth to enroll. And it used to be that they had time to do so. Howard, realising our young despised him (WMD, AWB, Kids Overboard,Tampa, Siv, Hecs, WorkChoices, AWAs, Education & Training etc etc) changed all that and did his darndest to deny them a vote, particularly in remote and regional Australia, where I live, because the infrastructure and communications here (or rather lack of them) meant they simply couldn’t get their details to the AEC in time to enroll. But wait, there’s more. I recall playing lawn bowls in Port Hedland WA, right next door to the detention centre there. Howard razor wired the complex. I recall seeing kids behind razor wire kicking a deflated football around within a few square meters of concrete. I recall their parents chanting to the bowlers.."WE ARE NOT CRIMINALS!” It was then that I resolved to do something about Howard, and the Australia I wanted my kids to inherit. But that’s another story.

dan the geoqatarTue 27 Nov 07 (06:12am)
Hi Phillip, Quite shocking to see all those indictments on one page. At least Jeff Kennet had a forward looking vision when he assumed dictator-like control of Victoria. Howard wanted it to be the 1950’s again. That is the obvious distinction. I doubt the future will judge Howard kindly, and I applaud those (few) in the Liberal party who had the guts to stand up to him. I have actually started to view Malcolm Fraser in a different light in the last few years.

redsaunasTue 27 Nov 07 (06:18am)
Paul Keating was spot on (again). Saturday night was like having toxic muck hosed off the body politic.
And yet the vile little creep Howard still has millions of Australians in a trance. The beady eyed robots like Janet Albrechtsen will still proclaim this withered husk of a human being the ‘greatest ever PM’. Why? Because he ‘brought us’ economic prosperity. It’s like watching a surfer and giving him credit for the wave. The only thing I can give Howard any credit for is East Timor. I’m sure that under a Keating government support for independence would have been much more difficult. Not impossible, just more difficult. But that’s it, I’m afraid. On every other point his legacy is either entirely negative or rests on utterly fraudulent premises. A liar. A grub. A plagiarist who took credit for other people’s economic reforms.

Red StaffordSunshine CoastTue 27 Nov 07 (06:28am)
Phil you are about as old as I am and yet you haven’t figured out that all Australians are bigots. Ask any Yank, Pom, Frog, Wog or Raghead living here. It’s not a fatal or peculiarly Australian disease. It seems we all distrust things that are different and believe it or not, there are places where Australians are not liked. The tag “JAFA” at Whistler and the fenced compounds built to house visiting drunken young Aussies at the Munich Beerfest come to mind. Even some journalists hate people with different views. I guess the definition of bigotry depends whether it’s your own bigotry or someone else’s being discussed

rosscanberraTue 27 Nov 07 (06:33am)
Hear hear. The Australian needs more voices of reason like yours Phillip.

BarryBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (06:38am)
Phil Phil....easy petal...I am a fan of yours, particularly Radio National....now is the time to let go and acknowledge a man who acknowledged he wasn’t perfect but made life better for so many. Not necessarily you personally but why do Labour people hate so much? Perhaps bidding JH farewell but with the grace of God is a better option?

RodBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (06:42am)
The main thing I found ugly was his worship of materialism as a sign of success. He made real estate exploiters and speculators the “cream” to which we should all aspire. The meritocracy order was defined as what one could could grab, not by what one could give. Our GDP then galloped ahead based on personal debt and an expanding retail sector.
I love the way that losing makes him and his team of conceited ministers nothing - the Australian way prevails.

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Adrian CaoimhTabulam NSWTue 27 Nov 07 (06:43am)
I did not hate Saddam. Nor did I hate Soeharto. Both of these late gents were responsibile for many crimes against their populations. But I did not hate them. That inner feeling that overwhelms at times is reserved for someone special, someone so out-of-the-ordinary, that one wonders from where such hard feelings derive. Phillip, you have encapsulated all that has warranted my hatred for Howard. No more to be said. The evil bastard is gone. He should be locked up at Baxter or Villawood for a few months and see how Ms Rau and Solon felt. I still hate Howard. His evil resonates within the land and it will take many months of ‘smoking’ to rid our nation of his evil vibe.

David BakerSwitzerlandTue 27 Nov 07 (06:51am)
Of course, Philip your quite right..the flaws of the man cited by some as a “great PM” are numerous. I suspect the damage done to this nation on the international stage are not apparent to many Australians. But, what amuses me to be honest, is the blind loyalty displayed in many letters from Liberals in their support of John Howard. Those blundering on about his supposed achievements have failed to see that Howard has led the once great Liberal Party of Australia into political oblivion, with not one Government, State, Territory or Commonwealth allowing liberals to occupy the Government benches. Howards neo-conservatism, dallied with by the Australian public for a period, has now led the Party to face total humiliation and a period of re-evaluation that I hope will allow Australians in the future to choose between two worthy opponents, instead of facing the unfortunate choice of picking either a forward looking progressive leader like Rudd, or remaining with a backward focussed, aged and thoroughly out of touch neo-con like Howard. Luckily for all of us, the Australian people decided enough was enough and turfed Howard into the political wilderness with an almost brutal response. So the legacy of Howard is now complete and instead of whining and blaming the media or the “reds under the bed” for this utterly appropriate result, Liberals need to recognise the myopic vision of Howard has led them to this, and that its time to change the direction of the party and move more to the centre in the hope of gaining some level of self respect. While Howard remained, self respect was never an available option.

Jill BarnesTownsvilleTue 27 Nov 07 (06:53am)
I was appalled at the appalling treatment of the refugees and David Hicks, and made up mind then that this Government, for whom I had always voted, had to go. Hence my voting decision was made ages ago.

LarryLeuraTue 27 Nov 07 (06:57am)
Agreed - his time was disastrous for Australia, and the effects will linger like a cask wine hangover, such as his assault on multiculturalism, and his pathetic posturing which got us into Iraq. To my mind the only good things he did were gun control, and, I hate to say it, the gst, which assures a strong revenue flow to government and will mean this time Labor will have the money to implement socially beneficial policy. But overall he was a disaster, never having transcended the worst and meanest values of the postwar white Australia he grew up in: he was even worse than Menzies really.

MackUnited States, MiamiTue 27 Nov 07 (07:00am)
Yes, the poor refugees. We should just do away with all borders and to hell with what happens to our countries as a result. Importing the worlds problems is just another form of denial. Really, you may have some valid points on other topics, but enough about the suffering children around the world until you can get a handle on the Aboriginal issue. Here is an idea, how about the millions in the 3rd world start focusing on something other than fornication for once. I realize you are not concerned about the affects of overpopulation being “Down Under” and all but try sharing a border with such a nation. You have no idea what your talking about! You should be thanking God for your oceanic border. Try dealing with such scenarios with only a “virtual fence”!

RealistBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (07:00am)
Thank you Phillip. My sentiments entirely.

David HartshornToowoombaTue 27 Nov 07 (07:07am)
I love your term Kelly gang. That sums up that appalling episode perfectly and it will go down in history known as the “Kelly gang incident”, one of the highlights, or rather lowlights of the 2007 federal election campaign. It would not surprise me if Howard knew about it but in any event it has backfired and he is no longer prime minister.

David BlackRockhamptonTue 27 Nov 07 (07:12am)
Interesting to note that the foremost of Philip Adams’ grievances was that he (Philip Adams) was not given due deference at the Mandela reception. This has been the underlying issue of most of Adam’s diatribes - that Australia has failed to give him the respect he feels he is owed. He is a spiteful little man.

homer Jgold coastTue 27 Nov 07 (07:19am)
Phillip your from another planet mate not just this article but in general your living in your own comfy imagination not OZ.

Rob LappinWodongaTue 27 Nov 07 (07:20am)
My congratulations and thanks to Phillip Adams for reminding us of Howard’s real record. I was in the UK when the BBC screened a 4 Corners style report about the 350 deaths from SievX - it made me feel absolutely ashamed to be Australian [upon my return I was told it was not even shown in Australia???]. For those of us committed to a free and decent world committed to the sustainable enjoyment of our global environment John Howard’s removal from office was long overdue and a huge relief. I feel sorry for all Australians and hope that in time Kevin Rudd also apologises on our behalf to the people Howard’s Government abused!

AffectedBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (07:22am)
Philip - I wish I could have written your sentiments so clearly and succinctly. Howard’s behaviour over these long years have deeply affected us all and our nation. This is exactly why voters all over Australia rushed to the polling booths on Saturday. What a great sight those early long queues were.

steve bTue 27 Nov 07 (07:22am)
Howard makes Billy Hughes look like a healer and a uniter of the Australian people!

SarahTue 27 Nov 07 (07:24am)
Phillip,
Does it always have to come back to being about you?
ZZZzzzzzz.....

The FremantleDoctorPerth, WATue 27 Nov 07 (07:24am)
And the winner is… the Australian People! The voters of this country did a remarkable thing on Saturday night - they eschewed scare-mongering, racism and the most disgusting of lies to throw the bastards out. And be assured - that’s what they did. I am impressed with their insight. If only Labor had picked a candidate who was vaguely electable a bit earlier we might have been spared the embarrassment that was the last days of the Howard regime and our international disgrace. Johnny “you might not like me - er, we don’t” gone. “I stand beside George W. Bush.” Not anymore thank the Lord. Peter “smug git” Costello. “I’m taking my bat and ball and going home” - no surprise there! Macquarie? Alexander “Mister Condescension” Downer gone. “I can’t really see me going back to Opposition - I mean, I’ve been swanning round the world meeting important people you know!” Razor Ruddock ...anyone remember him? Hidden from view during an entire election campaign - we don’t want to scare the children. Hopefully Count Dracula won’t be bothering us again and locking up anyone who looks ...er, foreign ....behind the wire in concentration camps. A national disgrace which will be hard to expunge. Tony “holier than thou” Abbott - who absolutely knows what’s right for Australian women and, God’s sole representative on Earth apparently. PLEASE - oh please make him Leader of the Liberal Party (who they?). He makes Mark Latham look electable. Pardon the gloating but as a conservative by nature - the last 8 years of Bush, Blair and Howard has been a nightmare. A frightening example of what happens when you take the eye off the ball. Well - the moral nightmare is nearly over! Well done Australia. Now let’s see if Kevin has got what it takes. Unless he’s planning on invading Poland I think we’ve got a chance. Cheers to all - happy days P.S. RIP Matt - we’ll miss you.

mysteriosydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (07:25am)
Absolutely spot on Phillip. I am overjoyed that the ‘Coalition’ has been comprehensivly dumped, including the loss of Howard’s seat, as these events will further tarnish his place in the history books.

RobMansfieldTue 27 Nov 07 (07:30am)
I come down on the side of Howard as a “main chancer”, with a bit of “I’m not a racist but...” thrown in. I think the past 11 years have shown him to be someone who will do anything to retain power. I don’t think he is genuinely racist, but insular and does not find xenophobia or racism abhorrent.
However, to borrow shamelessly,
Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead!
We can all now move on, and enjoy the future.

dASwitzerlandTue 27 Nov 07 (07:32am)
JWHoward was no admirer of the Menzies era. That period saw a cultural exapnsion in Australia. Universities were established, research institutes establsihed and fostered, immigration - multicultural, even if “white” - an appreciation of the intellect and culture. We had state run enterprises, banks, airlines, utilities, rent -control till almost the veryend, centralised industrial relations and wage setting, tenured public service positions, and the referendum for Aboriginal rights came to be formulated. There were many things wrong, and much room for progressive improvement. But these improvements in Australian society occurred during the Menzies era. They are all the things Howard attempted to dismantle with far too much success. No, Howard’s aim was to make Australia Dickensian with modern clothes and gadgets, rather than period costumes. He came close to completing the task.

DavidBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (07:32am)
Phillip, Howard’s departure is wonderful for all the reasons you have outlined. But for me it was Howard’s opportunistic attempt to use the death of people in the Canberra bush fires a few years ago to promote his foreign policy in the Middle East with his “bush fires are the terrorism of the Australian summer” comment was truly unforgivable.
Some weeks ago I bought a 1996 bottle of red to celebrate his departure. I will share with a few true believers in the next week or so.

Rob BanksStanmore NSWTue 27 Nov 07 (07:33am)
Phillip I think Howard is partly a bigot but not a total bigot. To be a bigot one must have feeling, emotion, Howard does not have much of either. Most certainly he was an opportunist that played with other people’s feelings, he liked to stir the racial pot and it paid off with 11 1/2 years of government. The fact it worked says more about Australians than it does Howard, think about that Phillip. This post mortem of the still warm Howard is not what we should be doing, Howard has left baggage behind that still has to be thrown in the dumpster. Australians should focus on removing Howard’s running mate, Bill ‘the Hitman’ Heffernan. I say Australians because if the Libs don’t get rid of Heffernan then we will have to. Much of Howard’s career has depended on other people doing his dirty work, Abbott is still out there ranting in a Howardista style, and he is another that has to be booted out of the Liberal Party. Only yesterday Abbott was saying he has ‘people skills’, this is classic Howard all over again, if any one ‘me-toos’ it’s Abbott. If you are going to do a post mortem then let it be of the entire Liberal Party not just Howard. You see Phillip most of us no longer give a rats about the Rodent, we can afford to not care about him, he has no power, he’s history. WriteHoward’s epitaph later, let’s get on with picking at the bones of what’s left of the Libs.

Fan of ClarityUSATue 27 Nov 07 (07:34am)
Well said. Now please writesomething along these lines regarding Bush and send them for publication in the New York Times. Your vision is much appreciated. Cheers.

dASwitzerlandTue 27 Nov 07 (07:34am)
JWHoward was no admirer of the Menzies era. That period saw a cultural exapnsion in Australia. Universities were established, research institutes establsihed and fostered, immigration—multicultural even if “white”—an appreciation of the intellect and culture. We had state run enterprises, banks, airlines, utilities, rent -control till almost the very end, centralised industrial relations and wage setting, tenured public service positions, and the referendum for Aboriginal rights came to be formulated.
There were many things wrong, and much room for progressive improvement. But these improvements in Australian society occurred during the Menzies era.
They are all the things Howard attempted to dismantle with far too much success.
No, Howard’s aim was to make Australia Dickensian with modern clothes and gadgets, rather than period costumes. He came close to completing the task.
Sadly, this was the directionset by his predecessors --- who else but Hawke, Keating and Howard could have made Malcolm Fraser look and sound like a socialist?
While Howard’s End is no longer just the title of a novel, but also a joyous cry of relief, I have little illusion about the next government’s willingness to even attempt to begin undoing the damage. I expect palliative care, rather than therapy from Rudd’s ALP.
As soon as the “sound economy” bubble bursts, the new government will flounder. I cannot see the ALP remembering that in my youth it warned about this dislocation between the paper and the real economies, that it had policies which would have averted most and amelerioated other ecological and social problems we face, and which willbecome more grave --- just look at the various state ALP governments in action.
I find it truly amazing that JWHoward has been able to establish and sustain the myth that “his” government is a “low tax” government, whn, under him, the Federal government has taken a greater proportion of GDP as tax revenue than any other government in Australia’s history.
I cannot believe that hishas been able to establish and maintain the myth that Australia has low interest rates when the Swiss landowners and renters are up in arms because the bellwether mortgage lender here is about to RAISE mortgage interest rates to 3.75%, when the corresponding rate in Austrtalia is over 8%.
It’s time Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin awoke!!

EddyAnnandaleTue 27 Nov 07 (07:38am)
As to your last paragraph, Howard is both a bigot (can be replaced with the descriptor “racist") and a manipulator. He is, after all, a politician.

RichardRegional SATue 27 Nov 07 (07:41am)
I absolutely agree. As would anyone who has worked in the communities he has demonised.

BazEttalongTue 27 Nov 07 (07:42am)
Unfortunately I won’t be around when my grandchildren read about John Howard in their history books. By then a lot more will be revealed about the evil little man and those who voted for him will be quick to deny it.

Hetty HerbertBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (07:43am)
Beautifully and accurately written Phillip Adams and your article exactly epitomises the reasons I did NOT vote for John Howard. The cruel disregard for humanity in general made my stomach churn and ashamed to be Australian. Good riddance to this self serving, ego-driven bigot.

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ChannelMelbourneTue 27 Nov 07 (07:43am)
A rehash of the last 11 years columns.
Is that the best you can do, Adams?

John CapelMelbourneTue 27 Nov 07 (07:49am)
This is all well and good, Phil, but let’s understand your pique: it was you who confidently predicted that John Howard would be a ‘one-term PM.” After all, he’d had the gall to defeat your idol, Paul, a man still racked with bitterness, whereas Howard was up and about on his morning walk yesterday while intellectual genius Bob Ellis arrived and jeered. Hell, how pathetic is that? Still, its par for the course; in the final weeks, when nobody seemed to be getting under the skin of the PM, the Howard haters turned on his missus...how strong is that? You have simply linked a series of events and directed them all to one person. How is Howard complicit in SIEV X? You have cast terrible aspersions on serving personnel within our armed forces. I was lost at sea once, and I could see my would-be rescuers, but they couldn’t see me bobbing in the water. The ocean doesn’t have gridlines on it. This is just a hate-filled accusation on your part because your original prediction wasn’t to pass. (A bit like your other prediction that ‘If the Americans don’t find WMD’s in Iraq, they’ll plant them.”...remember that doosy?) Its little good quoting Malcolm “Zimbabwe’ Fraser to us. He has no credibility, recently calling the war in Iraq an ‘unmitigated disaster.’ Well what was the fracas Malcolm oversaw, Vietnam? Iraq still has a chance to work out well, and I seem to recall a global sigh of relief when Saddam and his idiotic and cruel sons were relieved of duty. The Taliban is a phenomenon we’ve still come to grips with, but then so were the Nazis, and the Nipponese. We hadn’t seen lessons in cruelty like them, but they were overcome. And talking about Zimbabwe, wasn’t it Howard at CHOGM who was part of a three man team who tried to deal with that Zimbabwe’s Marxist ratbag leader...but the other two (Africans) wouldn’t take action? They seemed to like the old despot. Is Rudd going to restore African immigration? No. Its time you put away all this hatred, Phil. Your recent comments about the Americans killing ‘tens of millions’ of native Americans was terribly wrong. It had to be pointed out to you that there weren’t even ten million of ‘em to start with, but your rancor had got the better of reason...yet I note that other readers had written in to congratulate you on your erroneous piece, as they will with today’s hate-filled offering. Hatred is so easy to foster. You commenced a recent column with Howard’s ‘Never-ever GST lie.” I can’t find anyone who can show me how that was a lie. Most of us can remember the GST being taken to an election...how can that become a lie? Meanwhile Howard will go about his day, still in the company of a wife and family with whom he shares a close bond. He will not rubbish anyone, put-down anyone. Different, huh?

DavidCairnsTue 27 Nov 07 (07:51am)
Thank God the electorate had the sense to sweep away that Liberal filth. Howard has been a living nightmare, what an ugly man he is. Finnaly, the sun shines on Austrlia, and not just an economic sunshine!!!!!!

RosalindQueens Park, SydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (07:53am)
Well said Phillip. There are so many instances of this man’s bigotry and cunning manipulation that we forget how long a list it is until reminded by a column such as this. It should shame us all that he represented this country as PM for over 11 years. He should have been drummed out of Parliament when his support for aparthied and keeping Nelson Mandela in prison was first voiced, but he was allowed to continue as he railed against anyone who was not from a white anglo-saxon christian ancestry. I wonder if the Liberal Party would have pursued such a fascist agenda had someone else been their leader as all the so-called ‘wets’ were forced out early in the piece. Then they do have Abbott, Costello, Pyne, Andrews, Ruddock, Minchin, Coonon, Nelson, both Bishops et al who didn’t mind carrying out orders jsut to stay in power, so its doubtful. Education is the best defence against the ignorance of rascism and Kevin Rudd’s emphasis on this may well see the return of a more tolerent society over the next decade as children understand just how wrong it is to discriminate against others because of colour, creed or social standing.

TerryTue 27 Nov 07 (07:54am)
You’re dam right Phillip, the disgust and shame I’ve felt for the past decade being an Australian with Howard as a democratically elected leader is starting to disappear. It’s a strange feeling but I think the alienation I’ve felt for the past 11 years is going to change to a feeling of being home. Phew!!!

ConcernedBendigoTue 27 Nov 07 (07:56am)
One disconcerting thing regarding the whole saga of his record breaking tenure that it took the Australian public at least two electoral terms too long to wake up to his style of politics. Better late than never though.

KevChatswoodTue 27 Nov 07 (07:57am)
Thanks Adams, It is absolutely nice that his record has been set straight by you. As a teacher I have got the feeling that he has poisoned or has attempted to poison the attitude of the young, including his attempt to re-writehis brand of Australian history, his worship of the market, his attack on the vulnerable etc . Thanks Adams

RobertsonAlburyTue 27 Nov 07 (07:59am)
When the post election Liberal self immolation began, my first thought was that if ever the Liberals were to be re-elected (or even survive), the new leader would need to take a harsh, Soviet style approach by expunging John Howard from its history, removing liabilities such as past incompetent and widely loathed former ministers Abbott, Ruddock and Andrews and changing party culture to restore honesty, decency and accountability to eliminate lies, dirty tricks. The looney NSW right should be exterminated.
Such tactics may work, but on further reflection, they should not be used. If we are to ensure that Australia never has such a vile, dishonest, repugnant leader such as Howard ever again, we should always remember him, unpleasant as this maybe - lest we forget.

Mad in MadridSpainTue 27 Nov 07 (08:00am)
Spot on, Phil. Racist or facilitator...in the end it amounted to the same thing. I’m happy to skip the eulogies.

AvieAdelaideTue 27 Nov 07 (08:00am)
Thank you Phillip! The unrevised history desperately needed to be spelled out for so many Australians to move on!

JHByron BayTue 27 Nov 07 (08:01am)
Thank you Mr Adams. I realise that it’s traditional to be generous to an outgoing PM but in Howard’s case we need to make an exception.
I was particularly flabbergasted by his exit statement that he had left Australia a “stronger and prouder and more prosperous” country than it was 11 years ago when he came to power.
I was living in London during the shame of Tampa. My English friends where genuinely perplexed, and I was at a complete loss when trying to explain how my country, famous for its “fair go” and friendliness, could behave so reprehensibly. Pride was not involved.
As we know, the Tampa disgrace was just one of the many deplorable acts of the Howard government. Thankfully the Australian character has finally rejected the evil of neo-conservatism and now can enjoy a new era when we might again have pride in more than the size of our wallets. But we need to honestly review the Howard years so that we might not revisit such dark, disgraceful times.

MUDCRABFNQTue 27 Nov 07 (08:01am)
As I watched Howard desperately trying to find a hand to shake at the Cairns Markets last Friday morning it was transparent that the man was a fake and was victim to his own hypocrisy. He appeared so small and so alone. The well known Christian fanatics at the markets were swooning with adoration because they were so close to the man who had given them so much money! When someone called Howard a liar, the Christians retorted that all politicians are liars so it doesn’t matter if Howard lies. When Howard was heckled for children behind razor wire and AWB, the Christians replied with “What about Rudd at the strip joint?” as if they had a sound argument. But the bottom line for the born agains was....we’ve never been better off. I think it was at that point that my electorate felt so nauseous that the huge swing to Rudd commenced. The Christian element has received a slap in the face from the Australian electorate and mobs such as the Exclusive Brethren would be well advised to slip back into the shadows until their fast approaching day of reckoning. As sure as the day is long, these people are worshiping false idols.

LongfulanNewcastleTue 27 Nov 07 (08:01am)
In another place and in another time, Howard would be facing an international war crimes tribunal along with Tony Blair, GW Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al....

dashercanberraTue 27 Nov 07 (08:05am)
Phillip you and Paul Keating should take a leave out of John Howards book - a dignified man in power and in defeat. You can rewritehistory as much as you like but you like Keating have nothing to say.....I suspect Rudd will be more like Howard than you will be comfortable with...I will enjoy that.

TrivalveACTTue 27 Nov 07 (08:05am)
I’m with you all the way Phillip. And to think that there are people still out there who think that the election was lost just because people wanted a change! Are we so vacuous that we needed no other reason (George Brandis, take note). Good riddance to this mean, small-minded little man at last.

philbo78LondonTue 27 Nov 07 (08:06am)
Absolutely brilliantly writte. Bravo. Absolutely spot on. Thank God the nightmare is over!

RustyMelbourneTue 27 Nov 07 (08:07am)
Gday Phil, you make a pretty convincing case as to why Iam so happy to see the back end of Howard. There are just so many things that Howard used to divide the Aussie community, but the sad part about it is he still got elected 4 times. I think by Howard losing his own seat is an example of how Aussie voters finaly recognising Howard’s divisivness,racism, mean and tricky ideology and not tolerating it any more. Enjoy your tax payer funded retirment Howard, don’t know if you deserve it though.

'96 Liberal voterbundabergTue 27 Nov 07 (08:07am)
Ah, Schadenfreude!

AlexCanberraTue 27 Nov 07 (08:08am)
Amen. It’s not that I have any huge fondness for Kevin Rudd and the ALP but there is no doubt that John Winston Howard has been the most divisive Prime Minister I have had the misfortune to live through.
As national leaders go one of the very worst.
Thank you Phillip for a gentle reminder of just some of the facts.

DUDDY DIDDAMSTue 27 Nov 07 (08:08am)
Yea I’m glad to see the end of 33-year-low unemploymet. I’m glad to see the end on unprecedented job opportunities. I’m glad to see the end of low interest rates. I’m glad to see the end of the war against political correctness. I’m glad to see the end of keeping the thought police at bay. What I am looking forward to is the Union Movement obtaining pay back from Rudd. What I am looking forward to is the reality of Rudd’s promises and the effect on the economy. What I am looking forward to is the usual splintering and factional infighting that dogs a party of both trade unionists and multi-millionaires. What i am looking forward to is watching ineffectual novices attempting to make up polices that seem to be different from the coalition. I am also looking forward to Labor state governments imploding one by one now that Federal Labor is in Govt. I look forward to the resignation of more gutless Labor politicians like Martin in NT shamed by the intervention. I look forward to the next Middle East crisis (Iran) and watching Rudd crawl to the US. I also look forward to watching the economy deteriorate and the mortgage belt squealing like stuck pigs. Most of all though I look forward to Rudd emulating Gough. Rudd doesn’t have to perform, as one blogger said yesterday.There is nothing for him to do.The economy is at an all-time high thanks to Howard/Costello.His Education Revolution, a computer for each child, pretty easy. By the time he modifies the schools for his new tech colleges, jobs will be running thin. Kyoto should be fun for the coal unions and associated unions as job losses occur. You thought we were heading in the wrong direction...you ain’t seen nuthin yet. Howard will be judged very favourably down the track as many voters realise their mistake.

alex3909Tue 27 Nov 07 (08:09am)
Hopefully real sanity has returned in australia.For my life I could not understand how Howard was elected,I put it down to complacency of the australian public,as they could not understand the the way they where manipulated.Without doubt,he was a lover of menzies ways and the ugly past.I thank you for your opinion,very well put

James MoylanMackay QTue 27 Nov 07 (08:09am)
You summed it all up beautifully Phillip. Howard was the most divisive leader our country ever had and I would prefer to see him rot in prison rather than enjoy a gentle retirement - charge? Attempted theft of Australia’s moral compass. Let us all hope and pray (or at least hope) that we will become a lot more politically correct in the next few years. (PS - on a personal note I would like to thank you for doing your bit to oust the rodent. You never buckled like so many of your jounalistic companions. Out here in voter-land there are long memories that will never forgive nor forget the words spewed viciously forth by so many right-wing apparatchiks pretending to be jounalists.)

GarySydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (08:10am)
Voldemort has been banished, and many of his deputies are now scurrying back under their rocks - hopefully to learn some manners.
Saturday was a glorious watershed for Australia.
Let’s hope that the new government can act with fairness, dignity and grace to advance us all.

PaulTue 27 Nov 07 (08:11am)
Wow, after 12 years I finally have a government I’m not ashamed of. Darn pity in a way though, pollie bashing is a wonderful sport.

SamAdelaideTue 27 Nov 07 (08:18am)
Indeed a time to rejoice Phillip. John Howard represented all the human ugliness and the history will judge him as such. I for one suddenly feel free in a Howard-free Australia, a feeling I have not had since early 1996!

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LukeHMelbTue 27 Nov 07 (08:20am)
Here, here! Couldn’t agree more. It feels like a thick fog of fear, dread, scare-mongering, despair and negativity has lifted, and now there’s a sense of hope, opportunity, acceptance and possibility. Last Sunday I awoke feeling the most optimistic I had felt in a long, long time.
I still appreciated the graciousness of Rudd’s speech when referring to Howard though. The main thing was that he was gone, and that’s all that mattered. Maybe now we can start thinking of Australia as a nation that we can be proud of again, rather than simply as an ‘economy’.

Bert MorrisSunshine CoastTue 27 Nov 07 (08:23am)
Well said Phillip. A nasty, mean, spiteful, deceitful man. How some people are describing him as great is beyond me. He made me feel ashamed to be Australian. I think his Prime Ministership will be recognized historically as a black period in Australian history. A blot on our landscape. Oh, and you didn’t mention AWB. Our official (backdoor) contribution to Sadam Hussein.

Andrew ESydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (08:24am)
So Howard is gone and Rudd is in. One tax-&-spend politican replaces another tax-&-spend politician. Big deal. It will be the same. A federal government that just grows and grows, and wasn’t it Labor who introduced mandatory detention anyway?

SuaveredlandsTue 27 Nov 07 (08:25am)
How true was that. Inspirational Phillip. Those are the reasons we’ve given away 6 weeks of our time to work with the Labor party to send this little mongrel packing, hopefully with his tail between his legs.

Alex McDonnelBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (08:29am)
I think he’s a bit of both. Definately a racist but also capable of pressing those buttons that ignite the underlying xenophobia that exists here. But I also suspect that Janette Howard encourages him to demonise non Anglos.

JasonAdelaideTue 27 Nov 07 (08:30am)
Well Phillip, you had to wait a long time to get that bile out of your system, so you might as well make the most of it. I notice you choose to ignore the more positive highlights of his term as Prime Minister, eg, dealing with the Bali bombing, the aid package to Indonesia after the Tsunami, getting several hundred thousand more of your fellow australians into work. Although I guess your fellow Australians are more of the Latte drinking chattering calss. After all, you wouldn’t be seen dead in areas such as Elizabeth or Hackham. You also fail to mention that Keating and Frazer both sent this country to hell in a hand basket with the economy going south.Certainly not the case for Howard. You now love Frazer since his social concience conversion, trying to re-writehis place in Australian history. No doubt if Howard follows the same route you will give him the same respect? Of course not! Howard would not want it either as he has too much self-respect.

Brian MasonAdelaideTue 27 Nov 07 (08:32am)
Could’nt agree more Phillip. We are well rid of this vile man.

ChasserPaynesvilleTue 27 Nov 07 (08:34am)
Phillip: I have been longing for this day for a long time. I always felt that Mr. Howard will get his come uppance at some stage. However, I am left with a bad taste. A bad taste for all the injustice, the division, the incitement to bigotry. As Andren put it, “I felt diminished as an Australian”. Now he has left us with seems like an ineffectual opposition. I believe that history will repudiate the Howard years as the drowning into the dark sea. His party compatriates have a lot to answer to in this reqard.
Chasser

steven of sydneysydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (08:34am)
Howord tried to resurrect what is worst in the human nature and the australian psyche - luckily,it seems, he finally failed; but we are not out of the woods yet - there are still hockeys and abbots around; he will pass into history books as a national disaster.

penning alongMelbourneTue 27 Nov 07 (08:34am)
The issue now should be about who will take over and give new life and policies to a party that must be seen as having become out of touch and irrelevant.
Malcolm Turnbull for leader of the opposition and Greg Hunt for deputy leader.
Take a good hard look at both of them, they represent a much more progressive stance on a range of issues that is in keeping with mainstream Australia. With the ultra conservatives forces left to take a hard look at their denial of actual social circumstances, these two should be given the opportunity and freedom to use their creativity and vision in order to re-build a robust party of relevance and appeal.
Those in the Coalition who remain in denial about the role of Coalition policies in delivering a defeat, and believe that the solution is to put in place members who represent branches grown out of the Howard tree (eg. Robb and Abbott)must take responsbility for keeping the Coaltion out of power and need to do a serious reality check.

AlexCanberraTue 27 Nov 07 (08:34am)
Howard was the most cunning and ruthless of politicians, a man so in lust with power and his own hard/far right ideology he was prepared to hurt ANYONE if it furthered his cause. I think in the literal sense, the nasty little man was truly evil.

P LaylawTownsvilleTue 27 Nov 07 (08:37am)
H’mm almost too good to be true, and almost forgotten already! What can we say about Honest John, to paraphrase Dylan He threw all it away, Squandered our goodwill and set the country back decades, and gave us a malicious form of Dog whistle politics. Mr Rudd and his Team, now has to waste valuable time cleaning up the mess and healing some very grievous wounds.

Jenny StirlingTownsvilleTue 27 Nov 07 (08:40am)
Thank you Phillip and your long memory. I think someone should chronicle the Howard years. Lest we forget. All the best to you and long may your column prosper. Through the barren years, you held the flame of good sense, humanity and democracy aloft for all to see. I also thank The Australian for allowing you to have a platform for your views.
Now the race is on to save the planet. I hope that you will join us in that most difficult battle for the head space of gas guzzling Aussies.

New AustraliaTue 27 Nov 07 (08:40am)
Good on you Phillip.
How short our memories are to the ugliness of this horrible little man and his brand of nasty politics. History will not treat John Howard well, and with justice. The political corpse is still warm but the reality of his legacy is being spoken loud and clear by many thinking people across this nation and around the world.
Sadly its 10 years too late.. There is much rebuilding to be done to our tarnished image and demoralised soul.

WayneOPort StephensTue 27 Nov 07 (08:40am)
Beautifully put Phillip, The sun shone brighter & the birds were singing on Sunday morning.This hellish government and the worst prime minister in Australia’s history have gone forever.He also left what his party in the worst postion in it’s history. The party deserved a lot better the JW Howard. Hubris does terrible things to people, Howard will be remembered for what he was, a loser. Good riddance.

matilda the drovers dogfreoTue 27 Nov 07 (08:41am)
But Phil is Rudd being loose with the truth and therefore will he demonstrate some of the traits of your nemesis? Before the election in regard to Brough’s NT intervention:
“We don’t intend to roll it back at all,” he said. “Therefore when I say that we will be implementing and backing the intervention, it is as I have described before, and that is without qualification.”
Yet after the election:
.. the incoming prime minister said through a spokesman he was open to altering John Howard’s unprecedented intervention.

MaccaSwitzerlandTue 27 Nov 07 (08:44am)
Goodness me.....the opinions of many journalists often give creedence to much of what is written about here .. so perhaps the media should take a look in the mirror and ask whether you too, played a part in reviving the embarrassing and shameful racist overtones that made headlines all too often in the last five years…

Jason DickMurrumbatemanTue 27 Nov 07 (08:48am)
Phillip, I’m frankly amazed that you would feel the need to explain your lack of tears. Could anyone in the last eleven years have been so deaf to your bellowing and ranting that they might think you would miss John Howard? Give us a break. As for all your trendy causes (I mean, David Hicks, monstrous treatment? He should have been given the bullet right there in the courtroom) you seem to forget it was all that nonsense that got the ALP bounced in the first place. The sooner you and the comrades can push us back into that happy state, the sooner we can return to sanity.

DogfordLondonTue 27 Nov 07 (08:49am)
Very nicely said. A friend of mine said she was a bit sad for Howard, having lost his seat in such a way. I said she was crazy, that it was only fitting that the country he deceived for so long should finally wake up to him. If only he’d done a bit less damage to the country before it happened.

DennisBendigoTue 27 Nov 07 (08:50am)
Well written Phillip, as usual. Saturday was a great day for all those who believe in integrity and decency. Only he above would know where this country would have headed if the Australian people had again given the nod to Howard’s way.

Stephen FSydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (08:50am)
Funnily, or perhaps not so funnily, enough Phillip, I said something along these lines in a post to Paul Kelly’s blog piece yesterday.My line was about Howard’s failure to totally repudiate Hansonism and his use of explosive racial policies that encouraged the ignorant, xenophobic attitudes of some people who still, unfortunately, were to be found in this country. He still hasn’t published it. This is what amazes me when I read and hear people say that history will regard the Howard years as great years for this country. This litany of racial abuse and opportunistic appeals to the redneck sector of the community, ensures that Howard’s political career will be seen to be nothing more than the 33 year campaign of a bigotted , suburban solicitor. And this is what is on the public record. God only knows what’s going to come out after the 30 year expiry date on Government papers occurs in 2037. I dont think I’ll be here to see it somehow, but in way I’m glad as it still sickens and enrages me every time I think about this petty little man’s agendas over the years. If there was one reason and one reason alone why so many people literally hated Howard it was his dangerous, duplicitous racial policies and tacit agreement with the Apartheid programme in South Africa.

Look to the rightTue 27 Nov 07 (08:51am)
That’ll be right Phillip. Typical irrational and over-simplistic leftist view on what are indeed very complex social matters. The fact is that the Howard government, regardless of the unfounded rhetoric that you lot on the left like to spill, but action speaks much stronger than words. The act of the matter is that we have had the largest intake of overseas migrant in history. Not to mention our commitment to overseas aid. You’re viewpoint is based on a personal dislike of the ex-PM and this is quite evident in most, if not, all of your written pieces. Love your work otherwise.

TrivalveACTTue 27 Nov 07 (08:52am)
Phillip, I was fascinated to hear Howard’s claim that he left Australia ‘prouder’ than he found it on Saturday night. What do you think he might have based that on?

AnthonyHamilton HillTue 27 Nov 07 (08:54am)
Adams’ column on Howard explains why I feel uncomfortable about living in WA, where there was a swing TO the Liberal party.

Bring Back KeatingHornsbyTue 27 Nov 07 (08:55am)
As Margaret Thatcher would say
“Rejoice, rejoice at that news”.
While it can be said that there are many comparisons with Thatcher (11 years in power, went one bridge too far - she with the poll tax, he with workchoices), one thing she never did was to politicise terrorism to the extent that Howard did. Any act of terror anywhere in the world, Howard would assess how it could win him votes rather than putting some effort into addressing the causes of it.
I feel like the French after being liberated from the Germsns at the end of WWII.
There will never ever be a leader like him again.
Two suggestions for his epitaph.
“Here lies John howard” and “Licensed for dancing”.

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JohnKew 3101Tue 27 Nov 07 (08:56am)
Dear Phillip,
I could not agree more! I have a business that involves agents in the Middle East and yesterday I received emails from several of them, congratulating Australia on getting rid of “the cancer in our society” and “Bush’s puppet”.
On another matter, I am disgusted every time I hear one of Howard’s former colleagues describe him as the best prime minister except for Menzies. In my view, having been around since Curtin, I regard Howard as the worst prime minister that this country has had the misfortune to suffer. The so-called economic prosperity delivered by Howard is a fiction. Howard simply takes the credit for prosperity created by the resource boom and China. However, even if he was partly responsible for our economic prosperity, this achievement is well and truly offset by his racist policies, treatment of refugees and illegal invasion of Iraq.
I am also amazed that when he talks about his achievements in economic reform, he includes GST in a rather short list. The imposition of a new tax is hardly economic reform and, of course, GST was one of those non-core promises.
However, Howard has now gone and while many will wish him well in his retirement, I personally trust that he will spend it reflecting on the thousands of refugees whose lives he has shattered.

JulianBennelongTue 27 Nov 07 (08:56am)
Phillip
The American poet Emerson stated succinctly:
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
Voters who knowingly support a party and more particularly a leader who is guilty of such reprehensible behaviour as the former Member for Bennelong cannot hide behind the puerile claim that “the others would be just as bad”. Bad behaviour that is rewarded at the ballot box contaminates democracy. I find it shameful that the damage perpetrated by the fomer PM was allowed to build unfettered for so long. It will take a generation to repair.
May I suggest that if the “others” fail to deliver they be treated similarly. I trust no such letter need be written in the future. It is the responsibility of all voters in a democracy to engage sufficiently in the political process to at least keep our representatives accountable by taking note of their behaviour.

TantalusTue 27 Nov 07 (09:00am)
This article does not deserve a comment. I can only remark that it is sad that you don’t recognise in yourself the faults of which you accuse Mr. Howard. I remind you that a bigot is “one who is strongly partial to one’s own group. religion, race or politics and is intolerant of those who differ”.

Roddy RodentNth nSWTue 27 Nov 07 (09:01am)
Phillip...Those tears are tears of joy!...The well documented acts of political bastardy will be a stain on this country and the people(sheep) who voted for the germ in four elections!....It’s only fitting that we are wittnessing the political death of the rodent and his poxy party.

dark knightSydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (09:03am)
All the questionable to despicable things, as you have outlined Phillip, were carried out by Howard’s underlings during his tenure were a reflection of his values. Sadly, Australians allowed him to inflict them on the country for 11 years. He foisted his narrow minded, outdated dogma onto a country that could have been a respected nation in the region. But thanks to his reactionary antics, the reputation of Australia has been sullied in many parts of the world. Howard will be remembered by many Australians as a selfish blinkered old man who encouraged the bigoted behaviour that has infested our society. History will show that his government contributed little to the real growth of Australia. The Hawke-Keating reforms set Australia up for the prosperity the country enjoys. Howard and Costello squandered the opportunities and resources to build the infrastructure for Australia to move into the 21st century. Instead, at any one time, now there are literally dozens of ships at anchor offshore waiting to load their cargo. Costello was happy to sycophantly go along with Howard and displaying little understanding of economics or accountability, just kept swaying away in the hammock, to paraphrase Keating. They allowed the health system to decay to the point where women give birth in hospital toilets. Howard encouraged the childish behaviour of States vs Federal which also contributes to the current inadequate education system as well as the health debacle. Howard put education beyond the reach of many and failed to provide skilled people so necessary for Australia to grow. Now people have to brought into this country to fill the jobs that Australians if trained could do. That is an example of Howard’s vision. Instead, he left us with millions of Australians who are supposedly employed if they work a couple of hours a week and have to rely on charity to survive. Howard supposedly idolised Menzies. Menzies would be utterly disgusted that such a selfish old man had left the Liberal Party in the parlous state it is today both at State and Federal levels. Howard cowardly used fear campaigns to keep himself in office. More fool Australians for believing him. Howard had nothing more to offer than that. Howard’s vision for Australia was always seen through the screen of his black and white television set. Now, Howard has nothing to offer Australia but to disappear with she who must be obeyed. Howard was a puppet. Can’t imagine too many people in this country would want to live next to him except for other legends in their own pantries. So maybe he should build a house where his nearest neighbour is at least several kilometres away....the road to Hawk’s Nest. Or is that too close? In the meantime, as he and Bush are such good mates, maybe he (and her) should bunk down in one of the guest houses at the ranch in Crawford, Texas until his villa in the mulga is built. What do the Liberals do now? Have a cup of tea, a good lie down and discover the 21st century. That will frighten the hell out of them. As for the National Party....who? Hand me that history book please.

CadwallonBelgraveTue 27 Nov 07 (09:07am)
Spot on Phillip. Howard was forever trying to put issues back in the box - the “relaxed and comfortable” aspect. Never think or do things that make you uncomfortable - or, god forbid; plan for a time when digging stuff out of the ground so other people can make something valuable out of it won’t cut it. Republic, reconciliation and (workplace) reform are the only 3 R’s I’m interested in. (OK, environment too - but it didnt fit the allusion) ALso at last we can put the history wars behinds us - and ensure that Howard’s pet cultural vandals Keith Windschuttle, Janet Albrechtson et al are given short shrift. Triumphalist?! You bet…

BBLGold CoastTue 27 Nov 07 (09:14am)
Given your extreme left wing bias - its time you went also Mr Adams.

TrivalveACTTue 27 Nov 07 (09:14am)
And another thing....(there are so many!) May we never again see the likes of Howard, Ruddock Deanne Kelly or anyone else dismissing the likes of the 43 eminent people who wrote an open letter against the Iraq invasion as ‘armchair critics’ or similar derisive terms. I want to see respect and respectability from the government of this country.

LongyBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (09:15am)
You must be slipping Phil, you forgot the hatchet job on the republican issue.... Celebrating too much perhaps?

tonygthe shireTue 27 Nov 07 (09:15am)
Philip, You ask is Howard a bigot, or a main-chaser ? How about asking if he is a homophobe as well !! In all of his years as the Prime Minister, he totally failed in doing anything in reducing direct discrimination of Australian gay and lesbian people. I’m not talking about the symbolic sham (both political and religious) that is called ‘marriage’ and the Howard ‘belief’ that only a man and a woman can marry - and dare I say divorce and marry again, and divorce and marry yet again (what gay person would want to go through all of that ??). Discrimination in law and basic rights (financial, migration, etc) is something Howard has strongly fought against for all of his political life. Has any person in the media ever had the will to question his homophobic beliefs - and find out the root cause of his discrimination ? This is the same man who comes out and says that a family consists of a mum and dad - and then kicks in the guts all those single parents. I’m totally glad to see this homophobic man destroy his political career. Its a pity that many didn’t see this ‘man’ in his truest form many years ago.

PeterSydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (09:15am)
You’re bang on, Phillip. Very well put. And what about his closing statement at the one and only debate with Rudd? Something about his version of history?

CyeMelbourneTue 27 Nov 07 (09:17am)
If his supporters want to keep repeating the mantra that he was good for the economy, go ahead. But I couldn’t agree more with this blog. Howard had to go. He was a threat to the great character of this country.

FreddieMittagongTue 27 Nov 07 (09:19am)
Well done Phillip! Your piece succinctly says it all as to why this nasty little man will not be missed in Australian politics. I am of the view that he was all about manipulation and dishonestry which as you point out is morally more reprehensible tham plain bigotry. The other nasty thing about this man thing you didn’t mention specifically was Howard’s persisent grovelling at the feet of the well know intellectual and statesman, George W Bush. I hope that the Liberals now take time to reinvent their party.

AllanSouth YarraTue 27 Nov 07 (09:19am)
As a former member of the Liberal Party, I can say without equivocation that John Howard was the worst and most damaging Prime Minister this country has ever endured. Not only for the excellent reason articulated by Mr Adams, but because for Howard it was always about the money.
No vision, just materialism.

Damon22Allenstown QldTue 27 Nov 07 (09:21am)
Howard’s monumental ego and relentless hubris have destroyed the coalition government. Just ask Peter Costello.

tunja1NewcastleTue 27 Nov 07 (09:24am)
The Coalition party is the new Tampa. The spokespeople are telling us their side of the story, whilst the public really knows what went on. Howard has been thrown overboard, a lot of others have followed, and the so-called strong wannabe leaders are all sitting up the back of the boat sucking their thumbs like little lost children. I can see them all now - Costello, Downer, Vaile.....
Costello will never be remembered as the economical whiz he claims to be - he will remembered as the spoilt little kid who was promised the world but left crying and wailing showing his true colours to his constituents. Move over Augustus Gloop!!!!
And another question..... Why has Helen Coonan been thrust into the limelight as the Coalition spokesperson, appearing in every interview in relation to what happened on Saturday? It is interesting to see that she is still shouting the Coalition mantra (blinkers on Helen). Keep on chanting Helen for this will result in the two-party fight in Australia being between Labor and the Greens for at least the next 3 elections. The Coalition will fade into the wilderness.....

PedroTue 27 Nov 07 (09:26am)
The fact that 350 died on the SIEV X is a confirmation that Howard’s policy was correct. Australia can only take a certain quota of refugees. Why should we make people compete for those spots by having them show up illegally in Australia to be eligible? It’s ridiculous to have them crossing dangerous waters in overcrowded boats to gain refuge. Sadly, it takes a tragedy like SIEV X before serious action was taken on the Indonesian side. Let’s face it, those refugees already had refuge from persecution while in Indonesia or any of the other countries they transited through, if they would only choose to claim it. Any port in a storm, right? Why transit halfway across the planet to Australia? The Australian public understands this. Phillip Adams apparently does not. Settling refugees directly from the camps is the more humane solution. Phillip Ruddock realised this and stood up for what is the correct option. The Australian administration also worked with Indonesia to fix the people-smuggling problem and stop it at the source. Our problems of refugee drownings have abated now. Meanwhile bodies wash up on the Mediterranean coast in Europe, in the US Gulf coast, and people drop dead in the desert crossing into the US. John Howard’s administration got this sorted out, so we no longer have to endure these humanitarian tragedies in our own region. I am no great fan of John Howard, in fact I am happy about the change of government. That said, Phillip Adams is incorrect to demonise Howard for the SIEV X sinking.

JumiTue 27 Nov 07 (09:27am)
Well said Phillip. Some people just don’t get it, they think its just about the economy. Politically and socially speaking the last decade has been an indecent disgrace often played out on the world stage. Finally we can put the attitudes and prejudices of the 1950’s behind us and move from the 20th into the 21st century.

lejuanCanberraTue 27 Nov 07 (09:30am)
Let all fair-minded Australians rejoice that Howard’s refusal to stand down and make way for Costello allowed the electorate the opportunity to toss him onto the scrap-heap in terms so certain that his hitherto carefully cultivated legacy will forever be tarnished. This is his greatest achievement. I am ecstatic.

KenkoTue 27 Nov 07 (09:33am)
Good on you Phillip Adams, spot on analasis of Howards charactor, how he managed to drag us with him for so long I will never understand. Good riddance.

Fanny the Fandango DancerPerthTue 27 Nov 07 (09:33am)
You don’t seem to like Johnny Howard a bit, Phillip! Given the results of Saturday I get the impression there are one or two others who feel the same way - I believe for much the same reasons. Advance Australia Fair!

RedPendle HillTue 27 Nov 07 (09:38am)
Phillip has got it 100%. Howards claims on his departure speach on stage Saturday night that he left this country a prouder nation are a joke. I for one have hope that the Labor party will once again make us a proud nation by treating all people with respect.

DavoArmidaleTue 27 Nov 07 (09:42am)
Completely agree. Perhaps now we can get back to being proud to be Australian

richierichRandwickTue 27 Nov 07 (09:49am)
The Liberals must repudiate Howard and his 11 1/2 year debacle as PM of Australia, if they ever want to be taken seriously as a political force ever again. The Australian people have spoken and they have emphatically rejected this despicable political opportunist and his team of hacks. No one should feel sorry for anyone of them in the slightest. They ruthlessly manipulated situations to suit they’re needs, maligned opposing viewpoints and speakers, stifled debate, lied consistently and without remorse, subverted the political process and knee-capped the public service. In terms of contribution to this society, the opposing ledger is blank. Confine them to the dustbin of history as they so rightfully deserve. Let us now move forward. Justice does come to those who can wait.

GlennBenallaTue 27 Nov 07 (09:50am)
The scene:Benalla (Indi), safest Liberal seat in Australia. I’m in my Kevin07 T-shirt, the only Labor supporter among a group of 14 guests. Sick of defending my views I start handing around last weeks P.ADAMS article on HOWARD. As the night records the downfall of the Lib’s, it’s satisfying to know I’m not alone. Thank’s Phillip for provided a view which is rarely reflected in these parts.

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John HerbertTasmaniaTue 27 Nov 07 (09:51am)
John Howard pulled this country out of Keatings’ gutter. A man who sells his slaughter house to a dictator, a man who flies over his country on his way to St. Petersberg while denigrating his constituents, a complete chalatan. John Howard erased his murky legacy and has established Australia as a country to be reckoned with. The new Labor boy Rudd will be doing much more by the Howard way than the Keating way, he got elected on the Howard way. Smug lefties are just that and you have manifested their feelings for as long as I can remember. History will be genereouns to the John Winston Howard, not so to Keating and his like. Rudd? well we will see in due course, I personaly am prepareing to be underwhelmed by the somewhat engratiating little man.

GJSYDNEYTue 27 Nov 07 (09:52am)
I couldn’t agree more Phillip. Mr Howard over the years has lowered our international standing and indeed created division amongst Australians. His opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa, his opposition against Asian Immigration in the 1980s, his disgraceful behaviour regarding the Tampa incident and using refugees to gain political advantage during the election of 2001. Involving us in a war using falsehoods of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction and then denying that ASIO warned him that our participation in the Iraq war would make us bigger terrorist targets. Mr Howard has taken the Australian people for granted once too often and the result of that has been a resounding backlash at the Saturday elections. Maybe in retirement Mr Howard will have an opportunity to reflect on his decisions over the years as Prime Minister and realise the errors of his ways.

anbgLagunaTue 27 Nov 07 (09:53am)
Dear Phillip,
You and P.K. have summarised so well my feelings of that despicable man.
Paul yesterday said he wasn’t so much happy that JWH had gone, but relieved like after being hosed down after wading through years of toxic waste. I feel the same way and although I am bit apprehensive about this delusional (God fearing) technocrat that has all the passion of a strong cup of tea and an iced vovo (I imagine he drives a Volvo?)I support his election and hope the greens will rise to the balanced vision of the sadly departed Australian Democrats for whom I handed out leaflets at Wollombi having a wonderful time with those doing likewise for the Coalition Against Climate Change and The Greens. There was excitement in the air.
It is interesting (I am told) that the Labor Party has never had a comprehensive policy for drought. Apparently when Labor reigns start, so does the rain; remember back to 1983. Let us hope still more National Party. voters see the light through the mist.

anbgLagunaTue 27 Nov 07 (09:55am)
Howard is a lonely self obsessed man, a man obsessed with power and his waspish version of history. In his heart he feels that Anglo whites are superior to Aborigines and Asians. There was no one more politically astute to read the electorate’s mind, and he has jumped on opportunities to push fear whether on interest rates or on immigration. His values are entrenched in the past and his colleagues have mainly moved on. I expect he will have his own clique of friends such as Ruddock, Minchin and Alston with Andrews hanging on.

Gerry RobertsMelbourneTue 27 Nov 07 (09:55am)
I could not agree with you more Phillip. John Howard, as this country’s leader, legitimised racism and other forms of bigotry in the guise of freedom of speech and liberation from political correctness. I have loved this country, practically from the moment I set foot on it in late 1974. I have relished and thrived on its egalitarianism, it’s sense of fair play, and an inclusiveness that appeared to be the rule rather than the exception. Since 1996, these wonderful qualities have been eroded. I can well imagine decent, well-meaning people being horrified by what Australia seemed to have turned into: a country characterised by mean-spiritedness and uncaring self-centredness.

DonCairnsTue 27 Nov 07 (09:56am)
With respect to Iraq - I take it you much prefer stability and a nice steady predictable stream of executions and disspearances rather than any attempt to set things right? Yes it is a mess, yes it was carried out for the wrong reason etc etc etc. However what path would you consider to be the right one for getting rid of such a hideous regime as that of Saddams?
Sanctions - what a joke and they were corrupting the UN as as a result, I haven’t read anything by you on this subject. Nothing to see here people.
International pressure - works great for Sudan - just ask China. Oh once again nothing from you on their support for that regime.
No - a much better tactic is to bang on and on and on about how bad America is for the world and how it was all their fault and all the usual boilerplate we hear from you. I would love to live on Planet Adams, things are so nice and simple there.

CyberJacPerthTue 27 Nov 07 (09:56am)
Thank you Philip for reminding us of JWH’s historical legacy. In the end it was an ignominious defeat for Little Honest John. I’m normally compassionate when it comes to long serving statesmen, not this time, good riddance Honest John you got what you deserve, a humiliating farewell....

Asian Legal EagleMelbourneTue 27 Nov 07 (09:57am)
Mr Adams: The parallels between elections and having juries in criminal trials are inescapable. Ordinary folk are better discerners of character and facts than John Howard gave them credit for. That they understood the disdain he had showed them by saying one thing and doing the total opposite was reflected at the polls on Saturday. Australians are decent people, and the notion of the “fair go” is less the urban myth than the concept of “mateship”. John Howard trashed the values of decent ordinary Australians with his cynical and self-serving policy enactments. Like you, I am glad to see the back of a Liberal government led by a man who gave voice to bigots and modern slave drivers.

erinCanberraTue 27 Nov 07 (10:01am)
I agree with everyting you said Phillip. I also agree with RRM who said he hoped for Royal Commissions to be held into several Howard Government activities. Perhaps then the real truth will be revealed, which is necessary if history is to be accurately recorded.

NeilSydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (10:04am)
People smuggling is a difficult issue. Easy to score political points with. Keep up the lies Phil- it makes you feel good. Says more about you than Howard. Also we took in 180,000 immigrants last year, the highest in our nations history. If Howard was as racist as you say we wouldn’t take so many migrants.

RobinWCanberraTue 27 Nov 07 (10:04am)
You’re dead right Phil. It is with joy and a renewed sense of hope in the innate decency of people that I see in the demise of this racist ex government. The sooner that blot on the soul of the country leaves the better. Go, Johnny, go! (and be bloody quick about it).

MemBCanberraTue 27 Nov 07 (10:06am)
For the first time in years, I have faith that much-needed renewal will occur in Australian society. Under the watchful eye of Howard, modern Australia has become mean, selfish, and insular. I have left her fair shores twice in desperation at the close-minded nature fostered by Howard for political gain.
Now, all that has lifted. A new era has begun. That long lost thing called hope has returned. We can rejoin the world stage once more with our head held high because we have collectively moved on. No more will Howard be able to foster the darker elements of Australian society.

WarwickTue 27 Nov 07 (10:07am)
Howard has even given morning walks a bad name. When I was on mine this morning I hoped I didn’t look like him. I don’t know if Howard is a bigot/racist or whether he used it to rally the troops - probably both. But either way it is certainly his trademark that I will never stop reminding people about. Now all I want is for the Libs to eat each other - slowly - we can’t have them getting indigestion.

Detest National SocialistsTelopeaTue 27 Nov 07 (10:09am)
Spot on, Phillip!
Neither I, nor any of my friends and acquaintances will be shedding any tears over the demise of the former PM.
Howard is as divisive and reactionary a figure as we have ever experienced in our history, and it is a national tragedy that he attained the highest office from where he was able to do so much damage to the fabric of our society.
Lies and fear mongering were the currency of the discredited Howard regime, taken straight from the Karl Rove handbook of how to whip up a frenzy of bigotry and hatred, and get yourself re-elected by a befuddled citizenry who have been conned into believing that the very existence of their society is threatened by mythical ‘terrorists’ among us.
This constant stoking of the fear of the ‘evil ones’ has clouded the wider issue of combating the real terrorists, as is evidenced by the debacle of the Iraq War, where Al Qaeda have been allowed to revive across the middle east because of the misdirection of trillions of dollars into a war against the wrong enemy.
The Howard legacy will be one of a man who brought down his own party, and debased a nation during the 11 dark years of his Prime Ministership - history will be the judge, and she will surely be a harsh critic of this mean spirited and cynical manipulator of all that is base in our society.

Gary ClarkNew GisborneTue 27 Nov 07 (10:09am)
I could not agree more with Phillip. We may now put behind us the years of disguised racism and disdain for the ‘elite’. Australia may benefit in many ways in the next few years by being progressive and leading the way on a number of issues. Our country is the best example of multi-ethnicity and moderation. It is now time to listen to the ‘elites’ to get the country going in the right direction.
cheers Gary

DavidSydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (10:09am)
An accurate and erudite summary , Phillip.
History will not be kind to Howard , and nor should it be. And how fitting that his overwhelming hubris saw him thrown from office so unceremoniously , and jettisoned from his own long-held electorate...leaving behind an absolute rabble. An entirely apposite end for the luckiest man I’ve ever seen in politics ...and one of the most narrow-minded. Be gone.

scouseadelaideTue 27 Nov 07 (10:12am)
Phillip, you must have been aching for last Saturday to happen. As I was. I would have been happy even if the Coalition had been returned, just so long as Bennelong fell. I loathe the man.
When the Hanson movement happened, I said to friends that Howard would be delighted because she reflected his views and he would use her to prise working class votes from Labor, which is what happened.
I have often wondered what the working classes of Australia had done to him, because he despised them so much. Let us not have any mealy-mouthed tributes to him - he was a disgrace, and we were sullied by his Prime Ministership.

not so even keeledbrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (10:14am)
spot on philip, Howard has dragged our nation through the mud and into a moral nightmare, a man so obsessed with power and his own 1950s white picket fence vision of australia that it all but prevented any formal or intelligent debate. His crime is not that he is a racist, it was that he told all australians that it was OK to be racist. Fianlly, kevin, get him and his family out of kirrabilly asap, I don’t want one more dollar of my taxes paying for his and his wife’s accommodation.

Asian migrantTue 27 Nov 07 (10:19am)
Norm and Silverfox: Mr Adam speaks for the common decency of this great country. The fact a person like Mr Howard could have stayed nearly 12 years in the top office brings shame to this country.

craig merrilaBRISBANETue 27 Nov 07 (10:20am)
Howard a bigot? Phillip please, we saw more asians enter Australia under Howard than anytime in history, we have cashed in on very lucrative trade deals with China because of Howard and unlike other nations around the world, not a single terrorist attack occured on Australian soil. Your a strange fellow Mr Adams, not inclined to see things from a more pragmatic angle. And I wonder too, this lecture of your on racism and I’d bet you don’t have one Aboriginal friend and probably never had a muslim or mainland chinese person in your home for a meal, am I right Phillip? Hypocricy has always been a close friend of people on the left. Your perhaps the greatest leader of them all.

NielTue 27 Nov 07 (10:21am)
A perfect epilogoue to an illusory leader. Historians please take note when writing John Howard’s legacy to Australia.

PatrickSydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (10:21am)
Soon after Howard’s election win following the Tampa incident, I happened to be overseas and I faced many questions at social level from my hosts about Australia and Howard’s treatment of the Tampa refugees in particular. I defended his every actions as best as I could, but I could feel my hosts were far from convinced at my efforts to enhance the image of Australia, a country of my adoption from pre-Whitlam days where I have made a carrier and raised my family. I now feel somewhat ashamed to have taken a short sighted and bigoted views in those days. Since then, I encountered my hosts again but with Howard’s subsequent many further actions of disrepute, there was never an windowof opportunity for me to correct myself. I feel now very proud about the country, which has shown a great maturity in its readiness to take a giant step to the future while note forgetting the lessons from the past. I thank you for your article and hope it will be read by all who believed in Howard unquestioningly.

Stephen FSydneyTue 27 Nov 07 (10:22am)
I see there’s still the self-decieving Howard believers that are still too afraid to face the truth about their ex-leader and want everyone to ‘move on’ and quickly forget this man’s revolting legacy. I’m sure they’re the self same people who are forever reminding us of Labor’s failures that happened over 11 years ago!!!! Not easy being reminded that you supported a basically racist regime for 11 and a half years is it? And nor should it be....

VerdigrisEatons HillTue 27 Nov 07 (10:22am)
"The evil that men do lives after them” mused Shakespeare. The point is that it is the deeds not the personality of the doer that matters, although they are related. John Howard is not an evil man but he did promote evil neo-conservative policies, not understanding that their consequences were deeply harmful. To this extent he must be judged morally defective and therefore not qualified for the high office of Prime Minister. Howard was a product of his times and circumstances. The truth is that he was too small for the emminence he achieved through hard work, guts and determiniation. He did the best he could with the poor material he inherited.

JubjubBrisbaneTue 27 Nov 07 (10:23am)
When I woke up on Sunday morning it felt as if a weight had been lifted from the shoulders of Australia’s collective consciousness. This man was a master manipulator, a person who would sacrifice anything to remain in power. A person devoid of any principle other than he should should do anything to serve this principle purpose. Through this John Howard legitimised greed and bigotry in this country and in doing do so ripped apart it’s very soul. I have to admit that I felt pity when I watched him lose his seat. I know that if John Howard were in my shoes he would have felt nothing.

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History buff will be contemplating his own legacy

Craig Skehan, SMH, November 27, 2007

THE in-some-circles popular notion that Alexander Downer is no more than a buffoon masks another side: that of a man with an eye to history and its legacies.
So it is that after a record 11½ years as Foreign Minister, his thoughts must be turning to his own legacy.
Despite the bluster of political rhetoric and alliance diplomacy, it seems highly likely that in his own heart of hearts he would deem the Australian-backed 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq to be a humanitarian and strategic disaster.
"He is very, very well read on history," one long-time associate said yesterday. "And I think within himself, he never really recovered from the Iraq policy failure."
After a short, ill-fated stint as opposition leader, marred by the "things that batter" and other gaffes, as Foreign Minister Mr Downer returned to his career roots as a diplomat.
He mastered myriad policy briefs and, where he was successful in terms of personal diplomacy, it was sometimes courtesy of an easy charm and off-beat penchant for self-deprecation.
He started off his job on the wrong foot, by on the harshest interpretation misleading Parliament on an Asia-Pacific regional backlash over plans to scrap financing for infrastructure projects. And a joke went that for a while that Mr Downer would not order a new coffee pot for his office without first clearing it with John Howard's office.
But he developed competence in the technical aspects of his portfolio and in squeezing national economic advantages from foreign policy pursuits, even if he did not build a reputation for visionary initiatives.
His capacity to front the media on just about any subject earned a grudging respect from many parliamentary colleagues, but a measure of derision from others.
On East Timor, the Downer legacy is not entirely written, as that small nation struggles to achieve stability and benefit from its natural resources wealth. After sharing with Labor the odium of having appeased Indonesian annexation, he atoned by supporting an act of self-determination, even if standing up to the Jakarta back-militias was belated.
In the Pacific, not least in the strife-torn Solomon Islands, to his credit Mr Downer shifted to a more hands-on approach, tackling problems ranging from infant mortality to corruption.
In terms of personal survival, Mr Downer had to draw on his not inconsiderable cunning to worm his way out of at least partial responsibility for the AWB Iraq wheat sales kickback scandal.
While traversing the globe, the "Energizer Bunny" harboured hopes of the winning the Liberal deputy leadership, or even regaining the top job.
It has only been in recent times that his driving ambition has started to fade. But Mr Downer might even yet fit himself with new batteries.

2007-11-25T17:55:00.000-08:00

New PM on the edge of greatness

Dennis Shanahan Blog, The Australian, November 26, 2007 7 Comments

KEVIN Rudd is now in a position to be one of Australia’s great prime ministers and establish a decade of unprecedented Labor power in Australia.
Rudd’s thumping victory was emphatic, historic and changed all the “rules” of modern electioneering.
A non-threatening Opposition leader was able to effect a benign dismissal of a competent government during a period of unprecedented economic growth.
His gracious recognition of John Howard’s contribution ensured he kept a positive tone for his victory, leaving it free of acrimony.
Rudd’s personal authority, based on where Labor and Kim Beazley were placed against a dominant Howard Government less than a year ago, is arguably the greatest of any modern Labor leader. And, he will use it ruthlessly and validly.
Using a prosperous economy, a China-led mining boom that will persist for years, fresh and talented personnel, a thumping mandate and essentially a clean policy slate, Rudd doesn’t have to rebuild an economy as Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and John Howard had to after coming from Opposition.
He can truly set a new course for the nation.
There is no doubt that this Labor victory is built on Rudd’s leadership. The unions’ campaign was important but earlier campaigns had failed to lift Labor’s votes to the vital levels for victory—above 43 per cent of the primary vote.
Rudd’s ascension was proof positive that a leader’s support can lift—or suppress—the party vote.
Julia Gillard’s partnership ensured that team Rudd had maximum impact and his deputy, along with NSW State secretary Mark Arbib and frontbenchers Lindsay Tanner, Tony Burke and Joel Fitzgibbon, is one of the few to whom Rudd “owes” anything.
He intends to act as his own man, without allegiance or debt to large sectoral interests in the ALP and with a personal link to only a handful of people who helped him to the Labor leadership in December.
While the unions will claim a place at the table and the factions will want to be recognised, Rudd’s authority will prevail because his win is so stunning and owes so little to so few.
Rudd became leader last year after one Newspoll survey dropped Labor’s support below 40 per cent last November. His leadership was opposed by his new treasurer, Wayne Swan, many in the union movement and many in both the right and left factions, as was Gillard’s campaign to become deputy leader.
The size of the victory ensures a huge buffer at the next election and seats that were once marginal are now safe.
Liberal hopes of Rudd being a “oncer” or imploding in a Whitlamesque manner are forlorn. It is highly likely Kevin07 can parlay into Kevin11 and beyond.
It’s not just Rudd’s strength; the Liberals are in chaos, the Nationals in retreat and the Liberal officer corps has had a swath cut through it by execution or resignation.
The Liberals remain out of power in every state and territory and have had Rudd appropriate their middle ground and conservative voters.
In the end Rudd was able to get Liberals across the line, in large numbers and spread widely in Queensland and NSW. The Liberal Party has had its officer corps executed and talent banks stripped bare.
Yet Rudd will face challenges, large challenges and early in his term.
While making it clear yesterday he had been careful not to promise what he couldn’t deliver there is a clear perception that he cares about and can address rising grocery prices, housing affordability, childcare costs and inflation.
With a continuing mining boom, which isn’t about to end soon despite Rudd’s warnings, and a Christmas shopping boom, inflation and, hence, interest rates are likely to continue rising.
Workers are also likely to expect wage rises after Howard’s industrial relations laws are repealed, which is another problem with expectations.
Rudd will have to prove that ratifying the Kyoto Protocol actually does have a real impact and a beneficial one for Australia. And finally, the saddest and toughest of all will be maintaining his resolve on Afghanistan, where casualties are bound to increase and where he will have to commit more troops.
But he has the momentum and the mandate to do what he likes.

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A new brand of Labor leadership

Paul Kelly Blog The Australian, November 26, 2007 24 Comments

THE Kevin Rudd era has begun. It is expected to last a long time. Rudd offers a new brand of leadership for Australia that breaks not just from John Howard but from Labor’s past.
Rudd enjoys a big majority, an unqualified mandate, a growth economy, a Labor Party invigorated by a surge of fresh talent and a demoralised Liberal Party that will take many years to recover.
It is a watershed election. On the numbers, it is Labor’s greatest victory, excelling Gough Whitlam’s 1972 win, with the swing shading even Bob Hawke’s 1983 victory.
Rudd will govern Australia in a new fashion. He is a practical modernist pledged to move the agenda beyond the old ideological battles of the Howard period. Rudd is a centrist who will pitch to the mainstream and an aspiring agent of consensus seeking a more united nation. He has no time for Labor’s true-believer romance or its rich mythology rooted in the past.
From today, Rudd will aim at securing Labor’s 2010 re-election. He presents as a long-haul leader, an incrementalist, the technocrat as PM, short on emotion and strong on practicality. How long Labor tribalism tolerates his style and authority defies prediction.
In office, Rudd will obsess about his economic credentials, opting for caution, responsibility and anti-inflation structures. Whether his government has the mettle to be more reformist than Howard and take the tough decisions in its first budget remains to be seen.
The Howard era has ended in a shuddering collapse. Howard has lost his government and probably his seat. Rudd has liquidated Howard and Peter Costello, at one stroke casting the Liberals into the well of uncertainty. Howard’s local tormentor, Maxine McKew, provided the unique candidate profile that made possible his defeat in Bennelong.
This is probably the worst election result in the Liberal Party’s history. Having smashed Labor at four elections, Howard stayed too long and has presided over his party’s collapse.
The Liberals, having lost power and patronage across the nation, face a protracted reinvention of their party. They have no obvious leader, though Malcolm Turnbull must come into real contention. Their weakness generates more opportunity for Labor. Rudd will know the main risks to him come from Labor’s performance in office, rather than the Liberal Party.
The central issue of the election was leadership - Rudd versus Howard. While Work Choices, climate change and the “education revolution” were vital issues, they were subsumed via leadership. Rudd’s success was to depict himself as the leader of the future, thereby defining Howard as the leader of the past.
Howard could never combat this perception. Having branded the Liberals as yesterday’s party, Rudd will intensify this campaign from office.
In his election night and Sunday remarks, Rudd’s relish for office is visceral. He talks like a school teacher about to set his ministers their homework. The message is that Rudd will set the tone, style and priorities of his government. His authority will be unmatched as a Labor PM as Rudd selects his own ministry, sweeping away decades of Labor tradition. His key ministers will be deputy PM Julia Gillard and treasurer Wayne Swan, both of whom had excellent campaigns.
Rudd has already spoken to US President George W. Bush, Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He signals that the phoney debates of the past are dead - Rudd wants close ties with the US and Britain along with our Asian neighbours. There is no choice or trade-off.
On election night he was explicit about burying the old ideological divides, naming those divides of public/private, unions/business, economics/environment and federal/state. Rudd has no interest, now that Howard has gone, in winning the old battles with Howard (unlike most of the progressive side). He seeks, instead, to build upon the logic of his campaign to entrench Labor as the party of the future in the minds of the Australian people.
Rudd will be effective in orchestrating Kyoto ratification and taking early action on hospitals and education. His greatest challenge will lie in taking the tough decisions in the first budget. So, how tough is Kevin Rudd?
Over to you...

Legacy?

2007-11-25T17:50:00.000-08:00

PM's hubris leaves the Liberal Party in ruins

The Australian, Glenn Milne November 26, 2007

YOU have to hand it to John Howard. The man who immortalised himself as "Lazarus with a triple bypass" has reached from just beyond the point of political extinction to achieve his ultimate personal aim; denying Peter Costello his chance to lead the Liberal Party.
There is only one conclusion here; Howard has likely incinerated two generations of Liberal leadership on the bonfire of his own vanity. The most accurate statement the outgoing prime minister made in his concession speech on Saturday night was that he "owed the Liberal Party more than the Liberal Party owed him".
With Costello's shocking announcement yesterday the ledger of Howard's debt grows as inexorably as his legacy shrinks. The price of Howard's fatal misjudgment of his own worth is Costello's exit and the consignment of the Liberal Party to at least two and perhaps three terms in Opposition.
First to Costello's decision. When it came late on Saturday night it was as sudden as it was swift. The Friday before election day Costello was still thinking long term. What not many people have tripped to is the deeper strategic thinking that drove the surprise announcement by the treasurer and Howard of $34 billion worth of tax cuts in the opening week of the campaign.
Costello calculated correctly that Rudd would be forced to adopt the tax cut package. In gambling on this Costello also calculated that if Rudd won, Labor's options for tax reform over the next three years would be severely limited. This was especially so given Rudd was also forced to embrace Costello's aspirational goal of further flattening the rates in the out years.
In other words, Costello's tax package was a device to deny Rudd future room to move. Tax reform would remain overwhelmingly a Coalition-authored policy. And the beneficiary of that would be Costello as the new Opposition leader. While the tax package's primary aim was to push the Coalition to victory, its secondary purpose was to become the building block for a Costello-led Liberal Party recovery.
Even during the campaign Costello was giving private assurances he was in for the long haul. But on Saturday night as he watched the Coalition defeat unfold things were changing. "It was the magnitude (of the loss) that did it," says one Liberal who watched the process of conversion.
And Howard played a role, as always. It was noted as Costello watched Howard's concession speech from the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney that the Prime Minister specifically limited his responsibility for the awful defeat to the campaign itself. This was taken as a clear signal that as the inevitable internal bloodletting took its course Howard was going to make certain that Costello shared the odium of his politically fatal ideological obsession with Work Choices.
The Howard speech gave Costello a glimpse of his immediate future as leader: 50 years of age, the party facing six years at least in the wilderness. As Opposition leader he knew he would have little chance of survival if he didn't deliver success at the next election.
And Howard was already fitting him up on the issue that the party would most be looking to find scapegoats for: industrial relations.
Costello went into a room alone and made several phone calls. One, we now know, was to Howard. It's still not clear who the other people were on the end of the line. Certainly his obvious parliamentary colleagues were none the wiser yesterday. When Costello came out of the room he gathered his staff together and told them of his decision.
Howard is no doubt well pleased with his work. As the Liberal Party tastes the bitter dregs of defeat and digests the effective departure of Costello we now realise why the outgoing prime minister constantly lectured his party room against hubris. Because all along it was the dark whisper that fluttered at the core of his own being.
And on Saturday night he finally succumbed to that spirit by playing out the last act in a succession of acts of wilful pride that eventually took his party down with him. Having ignored the repeated urgings of his colleagues to go both in his own interests and those of his party, Howard's hubris saw him finally dare the voters to dispatch him. They obliged, ultimately convinced it was the only way to get rid of him.
That wilful pride also defined the disastrous nature of the Coalition campaign itself. Insider accounts are starting to emerge. The formal structures fell away early under the pressure of the Rudd challenge. Howard's chief of staff, Tony Nutt, was sidelined. Howard relied increasingly heavily on his former chief of staff, Grahame Morris. Howard would conduct phone calls with Morris without anyone else being allowed to be present.
Mark Textor, the Liberal's pollster and joint architect of previous Coalition victories, was also not being listened to. Word leaked out to Labor that it was Janette Howard who was in fact running the campaign. Whether true or not, behind the scenes the ALP made merry hell with the "intelligence". The consultation with Costello, who was meant to be running on a joint leadership ticket, was perfunctory.
Howard was unable to stay on message about the economy. His discipline gone, he fell headlong into the trap laid by Rudd; making the election a referendum on the two leaders and thus anticipating a verdict on Rudd as the symbol of the future and Howard as a signpost to the past.
Inexplicably the prime minister invited the public to decide whether "they loved him or loathed him". The vote is now in. In the fag-end days of the campaign, as the Liberals struggled to recover from the racist blunders of Jackie Kelly's husband in Lindsay, the desperate imperative was to keep driving home the economic risks posed by Rudd.
Instead, Howard talked about his political instincts, that he had a sense he was "coming back". This became the story in the final hours leading to the poll. In the end it was all about him. As Costello knew all along.
All in all it has been a wild and brutal ride in politics during the past 72 hours, made even wilder and more brutal by the impenetrable news of the passing of Matt Price.
The warmth and humanity of Matt's writing needs no comment. What should be said is that in the often brittle world of political journalism, Matt was that rare thing; a generous spirit. Competitor or not, he would always celebrate your successes with you and likewise fret over your failures. And with an exuberance that made you feel better no matter which one it was.
When Matt fell ill, Costello wrote him a note saying he'd stopped thinking up funny things to say because The Sketch wasn't there to record them.
Now that's permanent. Regardless, it will take a while for Costello to find his sense of humour again.
And for that you can blame Howard, not Matt. Matt, I think, would have liked that last observation.

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Felled by the young and the religious

Your Say Blog November 26, 2007 0 Comments

JOHN Howard has been a great prime minister who has taken Australia to outstanding levels. We are, thanks in large part to his leadership, the envy of the industrialised world. And yet his legacy, after the ALP has finished dismantling his achievements, could well be the destruction of the NSW Liberal Party, writes David Barnett.
He has presided over the country while a religious faction has been at work within his party, stacking branches in order to control preselections and putting into parliaments members whose status as right-wingers derives from their social conservatism not from their economic principles.
He made Australia a staunch ally of the US in the war against terrorism, sending forces to Iraq and Afghanistan made up of servicemen who want to fight, are proud to serve their country, and who have covered themselves with distinction.
He put Australia at the head of a world league table of economic performers, always as one the top three or four best run economies, for most of his near 12 years as prime minister.
Australia baled out three neighbours during the Asian financial meltdown. Yet 20 years earlier we were being mocked as the poor white trash of Asia.
He kept interest rates low. The Reserve Bank’s successive increases were each of 25 basis points. His undertaking to keep interest rates lower than an ALP government could manage stands up.
He took Australia to a new level of prosperity. Real wages went up 20 per cent. Inflation stayed low and unemployment just kept on falling until it was down to 4 per cent. When full employment was last discussed as an issue of national policy before Gough Whitlam was elected in 1972, two per cent was regarded as constituting full employment, given that there would always be people in transition between jobs.
With the great social dislocations of today, 4 per cent must be close to being as low as can be achieved.
So Howard’s legacy to Kevin Rudd is a prosperous country where people who want work can find it, a country that is respected for its contributions when international recessions or terrorism threatens, and a country that moves with outstanding speed when natural disasters overwhelm neighbours.
But every year he grew older, and more voters came on to the rolls who had never lived under federal Labor governments. Today there are 3.4 million of them, one quarter of the electorate.
By last Saturday there were two electorates. Older voters who could not contemplate putting the gains of the past decade at risk, and the young who were bored with a leader from the generation of their parents, and were in the mood for change not for any good reason, it was change for change’s sake.
There was a generation that read newspapers, watched the news and calculated their advantage, and a generation that did neither, that used personal computers the way their parents used the telephone, that was increasingly forming political opinions on the basis of political satire, for whom illusion and reality were both dancing dots on a computer screen. For them, it was time to change channels.
In Rudd, the ALP stumbled on the right man for the times. Ben Chifley embodied the Henry Lawson archetype. Whitam was erudite and witty when we reached the stage where we expected our leaders to be amusing television performers. Bob Hawke was the embodiment of ultra-Australianness when we felt our national identity was slipping away.
Howard saw off Kim Beazley, Simon Crean, Mark Latham and Beazley (again), but in Rudd, he was up against something completely different: modern metrosexual man. Rudd became leader 51 weeks ago and was never less than 10 per cent ahead in the polls. He became preferred prime minister. And he foxed the commentators completely. He was never going to lose.
Perhaps if the pundits had been more clever, if the public service and private office advisers had been more perceptive, if the prime minister and his team had been more politically attuned, they might have been able to do something, to switch Peter Costello into the leadership, to finesse Work Choices. But I doubt it would have made much difference.
Furthermore, the forces that were driving Howard away from the modern and the metrosexual, namely the religious Right faction within the Liberal Party had basically won. They were controlling preselections, getting their right-to-life members into safe seats, forcing a socially conservative agenda on to the party.
Abortion and contraception became issues. Dead babies were turning up on rubbish tips, and two foundlings on doorsteps.
How could you support a party that was reforming itself in this way against a Government even as bad as Morris Iemma’s, members of the NSW Press Gallery wondered. And they didn’t.
What happens when a branch is stacked is that the branch dies. The religious Right gets its delegates to state conference and to the electoral councils.
But the ordinary members, often elderly, respectable and retired, stop turning up to meetings. They don’t man booths on election day, as happened on Saturday, or raise money.
Howard sees himself as a social conservative. The Right is his faction. So while he was running the country, his other legacy is a party in disarray that has to be rebuilt by a new leader.
There is plenty of time. Rudd is in for six years, perhaps nine.

David Barnett, a former press secretary to prime minister Malcolm Fraser, is author of John Howard: The Biography (1997).

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Howard the tragic anti-hero

2007-11-25T17:18:00.001-08:00

Labor's ascendancy as the Coalition crashes and burns

Editorial, The Age, November 26, 2007

AUSTRALIA'S political landscape has changed utterly. The Howard era is over. Emphatically it is over. Voters have delivered to John Howard and the Coalition a resounding verdict of renunciation. They did it across the continent and they did it personally. Mr Howard is likely to lose Bennelong, which he has held for 33 years. It will be only the second time that a prime minister has done so. Stanley Bruce was the other in 1929. Mr Howard will have to live with this legacy: that he will enter the annals of history as much for this ignominy as for anything he has achieved. He has no one to blame but himself. On Saturday night he took responsibility for defeat. He could hardly have done otherwise.
The swing to Labor nationwide has been about 6%. If not a landslide it is a major upheaval of voter belief in change as revolutionary as it is profound.
That was the earthquake, then came the aftershock. Peter Costello, the heir apparent once to the prime ministership after the election, announced that he would not be seeking the party's leadership. Ambition thwarted, not by an intransigent leader this time but by the people. "The time has come for me to open a new chapter in my life," he said yesterday. "I will be looking to build a career post-politics in the commercial world." In the space of 24 hours, the two men who had been the backbone of Coalition government for more than a decade were gone from the stage. Mr Costello would have been no stranger to the opposition benches, having been elected in 1990 to Parliament, and four years later being made deputy leader.
Stripped of the public sentiment, Mr Costello's precipitous decision should rightly be debated. After years at the helm of the economy, and faced now with the challenge of leading a disheartened party out of the wilderness, it could be seen that Mr Costello simply threw in the towel. At only 50 years of age, his argument of the party needing generational change is weak. The probable leader of the party now, Malcolm Turnbull, is 53. The trammels and travails of Mr Costello's path to the prime ministership are well documented. His aspirations have suffered at the hands of a man who thought himself king, who put his own ambition and overweening pride above that of the party. Mr Howard made much on Saturday night of being a servant to the party, of owing everything to it. Yet when it was clear to all, even his most senior ministers during this year, that for the good of the party's chances he should hand over the reins, he could not do it. He became blind. Perhaps the trappings of that power played a part. The servant became the master who led them onto destruction.

This election has turned on its head the well-spun and relentlessly communicated message from the Coalition, in particular from Mr Howard, that it is the economy, and only the economy, that matters when people vote. In a time of unparalleled prosperity in this country — with record levels of low unemployment and inflation rates — how could anyone possibly contemplate throwing out the prime minister?
It is clear people had had enough. The spirit of the times is not purely greed. The first salvo in the Coalition campaign was $34 billion in tax cuts, an instant vote winner in past elections — this time it just showed a paucity of vision. Labor later did not quite match it, but added a social dimension to the cuts. But for a government it was a move that illustrated to many that it did know how to confront the future or address the concerns of the public. Two issues loomed large this year: climate change and industrial relations. On the first, the Government found itself trapped from the obstinacy of its leader to embrace both the problem and possible solutions, and on the latter because it introduced WorkChoices without voter mandate, without community consultation and without scrutiny. Both stances were symptoms of an arrogance of power that was promulgated and exercised from the top down. When political arrogance holds sway, it acts like a magnet on the moral compass. The Howard era bent the needle, cynically and often, in its pursuit of its own ends. Its treatment of refugees, for instance, is a scar on the national psyche not easily removed.
Mr Howard made much of his view that Australians under his government felt relaxed, comfortable and secure. But during the campaign the Coalition tried to foment fear and insecurity about the future as an argument for re-election. People are not stupid. They vote not only for themselves but for their children. This result heralds a rebalancing, a moving of the axis from the mean-spirited dip in public intercourse to a more greatly attuned equilibrium with social issues. The Liberal Party needs to rediscover the essence of small-L liberalism if it is to connect with people.
If it is to be an effective opposition it must not fall into a torpor, as the party has done in NSW. The health of democracy demands vigorous questioning of government. Mr Turnbull's public agenda, for instance on climate change, would seem to point to a party that would be more engaged with the issues that concern the electorate.

For the Prime Minister-elect, Kevin Rudd, the challenges ahead are formidable but not forbidding. He has been given an extraordinary mandate to take Australia into the future. Throughout the campaign, and indeed since his rise to Labor leader, he has asked voters to place their trust in him. They have done so overwhelmingly. Claiming victory on Saturday night, he pledged to govern for all Australians and to end the battles between the environment and the economy, between the left and the right, between workers and bosses. This is no less than a revolution in thinking. It requires an unbounded strength of character and energy. The shape of Mr Rudd's ministry, which is expected to be announced soon after caucus meets on Thursday, will be crucial in this. How he does this will be watched not only by the voters but by this newspaper. The Age uniquely believes its role to be free of any obligation to any party. It is the bedrock to independent criticism. We will hold the new Labor government to account.
Two of the first issues Mr Rudd has promised to tackle are the Kyoto Protocol and industrial relations. A Labor government will ratify the protocol. Its election means that Mr Rudd goes to next month's United Nations conference in Bali on climate change with an impetus Australia has previously never had on the subject. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has welcomed Mr Rudd's Kyoto pledge. On WorkChoices, Mr Rudd has promised to wind back some of the legislation, but given that the Coalition has control of the Senate until the middle of next year, this may become his first parliamentary test.
Kevin Rudd has made no secret of his pro-American views, and there is no argument that the US-Australian alliance is important, but no longer should this country view itself as "deputy sheriff" to the White House. An independent foreign policy would win respect, and help promote this country as a valuable "soft power" player on the world stage.
This election was a watershed. For the first time in its history, Australia is governed both federally and in the states by one party. (For about a year in the 1960s, conservatives also held power, but by various parties.) This monopoly must not be abused. For the first time, Australia will have a female deputy prime minister. It is satisfying to know that Mr Rudd will move to the Lodge, and thus end the view that Sydney is the nation's de facto capital.
The people have voted overwhelmingly for change. In governing for all, Kevin Rudd must not be seduced into thinking he is anything but a servant of those people. His words will be judged by his actions.

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Escaping the wreckage

The Age, Shaun Carney, November 26, 2007

WITHIN weeks of becoming the leader of the Labor Party late last year, Kevin Rudd made a private observation about the possible impact of his ascension on the Liberal Party. Already, the first opinion polls after he had replaced Kim Beazley had shown a surge in support for the ALP. Clearly, something was going on within the community. With a slight grin, Rudd said: "You know, I could turn out to be Peter Costello's worst nightmare."
Rudd made it plain that his intention was to destroy not just John Howard but Costello too. His assessment was that if he could defeat Howard at this year's election, Costello would not have the stomach to face two or three terms in opposition and would leave public life. Rudd was utterly tantalised by the prospect of knocking off two Liberal leaders in one election.
What was driving Rudd at the time, understandably, was political need — the primal desire to defeat one's opponents. Rudd got what he was looking for; his reading of Costello proved to be spot-on. But Labor's election victory, and Costello's announcement of his imminent exit from Parliament, will mean even more in terms of public debate.
The most important outcome of this election — more important than John Howard losing his seat and the powerful blow dealt to the morale of everyone involved on the non-Labor side of politics — is the electorate's repudiation of WorkChoices. It might be that WorkChoices could have got the assent of the people if they had been allowed to discuss and absorb it before it was passed into law. We'll never know, because Howard never gave the legislation or the Australian public that chance.
Instead, he unleashed it six months after being re-elected in late 2004, shortly before the Coalition took control of the Senate. Let's be clear: WorkChoices was the ideological apotheosis of the political careers of John Howard and Peter Costello. It was the purest expression of the free market ideology that took hold in one part of the Liberal Party in the early 1980s and it was the policy area that was the most fiercely contested within the organisation for much of that decade.
The desire to deregulate industrial relations was what first brought Howard and Costello together. And it is what has brought their lives as politicians undone. The Rudd government will obliterate the central tenets of WorkChoices, which were to hand all employers the ability to dictate wages and conditions, and the gradual destruction of the right to bargain collectively. The repercussions of this on the Liberal Party will be profound.

For all the talk of Howard's deep understanding of the average Australian, he never understood the fidelity of the bulk of the Australian public to the practice of fair treatment at work — something that's continued to underpin society's understanding of itself even in an age of rampant technological advancement, greater affluence and higher levels of individualism. What seems to have blinded him to this was the political benefit an assault on unionism offered; kill the unions and the Labor Party could be reduced to a rump.
The smashing of orderly wage-setting processes and the role of the unions has been a central organising principle of the two key figures of the Liberal Party, Howard and Costello, for more than 20 years. Now that WorkChoices is headed for the knackery and the two men who acted as the wellsprings for it are headed for the exits, the Liberal Party nationally must formulate a new set of key ideas. This is not to suggest that industrial relations will or should become a sort of no-go zone for the Liberals. Too much is at stake for the interests that will continue to group themselves around the party. And in any event as the pace of economic change picks up, which it was bound to do whichever side won on Saturday, the need for regular IR reforms will continue.
But the harsh lesson for the party is that the great polemical and ideological adventure that began with the ascendancy of the neo-liberals and the formation of bodies such as the pressure group the H. R. Nicholls Society in the '80s has drawn to a close. That particular dream is over; it's exhausted. The vision of an Australian worker who, as Tony Abbott proposed during the campaign, accepts that if the boss doesn't like him for no good reason he should just draw stumps and get a job somewhere else, comes from a fantasy to which far too many Liberal MPs have clung for way too long.
The advice to the Liberals about what they should do and where they should go is already flying in thick and fast. While the party's situation is bleak now, Labor's own experience shows how quickly things can turn around. It's not that long ago that the federal ALP was seen as hopeless and Howard was regarded as the total master.
Clearly, Costello's decision to abdicate the political stage is one of the great bombshells. Liberal MPs, party members and supporters were encouraged all the way up to Saturday night to see Costello as the cog around which the Liberal cause would turn and this was never put forward as being conditional on victory or defeat at the ballot box.
However, it can be argued that Costello has made an astute decision. A post-WorkChoices political and economic environment, which is what most Australians have said they want, would not suit Costello. As opposition leader he would have had to learn an entire new set of skills. As he's matured as a politician, his modus operandi has been to assert the excellence of his achievements. You cannot do that in opposition and outside his treasury portfolio there are probably many things the Howard government has done that would not sit comfortably with him. I am no psychic but I suspect that what he concluded as he looked at the results on Saturday night is: why should I clean up Howard's mess?

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Howard hung on too long, and they let him

Phillip CooreyNovember 26, 2007 SMH

BRENDAN NELSON summed it up best.
"It's the responsibility of all of us," he lamented on Saturday night. "It's not John Howard, it's not Peter Costello. We all bear responsibility for the outcome of the election."
He is right. Howard stayed too long, and they all let him.
Most voters were not hostile towards Howard on Saturday. After more than a decade his approval rating was more than 50 per cent. But they were tired of him and, as the Liberal Party's federal director, Brian Loughnane, finally conceded yesterday, Work Choices torpedoed Coalition support among the Howard battlers.
Howard's colleagues knew this, Howard knew it, yet he refused to go, and no-one had the guts to blast him out or even try.
Politics is only ever truly honest in the aftermath of defeat, and the consensus yesterday was that the Liberals went into the election knowing they would lose.
"My view through this year was that it did not look to me as though we were going to win the election," Alexander Downer said. "I of course didn't say that publicly, and you wouldn't have expected me to. It would have been suicidal to do that sort of thing."
Another of Howard's closest allies said: "The PM, they were just so over him. He looked old, they were sick of him."
"We could just see Howard couldn't win, and I could see that by March."
Downer and Costello both made the point that the polls refused to budge all year, no matter what the Government did.
Costello's decision yesterday not to seek the leadership but to leave politics, probably before the end of the term, was laced with bitterness.
"I argued the case, you knew what my view was ," he said of his repeated warnings that the Coalition was finished unless it changed leaders. "If a majority doesn't agree with you, that's it."
The post-election orthodoxy was that the Coalition would have lost by even more had Costello been leader. This assumes he would have maintained the deep personal unpopularity that dogged him as a treasurer.
It is an unfair point. Had he been given sufficient time he would have been able to turn that around, just as every other person has done upon elevation. The question is as hypothetical as whether Kim Beazley would have won on Saturday.
Costello's flaw was that he never made a play for the leadership. Had he done so last year, and lost as he would have, he would have walked into the job by May, when it became apparent the love for Kevin Rudd was no honeymoon. Even during the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in early September, when cabinet lost confidence in Howard, it would have been worth the risk.
This election spelled the end of not just one leader but two. The shell-shocked Liberals were looking to Costello yesterday to tell them it would be all right and that he would look after them.
He turned his back on them as they had done previously to him.
Costello is the same age as Rudd, yet he left, saying generational change was needed.
There was bitterness at Howard's farewell speech on Saturday, in which he spoke of the debt he owed the Liberal Party for the great privilege it had afforded him. Howard departs a greater conservative prime minister than Robert Menzies. He achieved more in less time in a more volatile world and against united opposition.
As Fred Daly once said of Menzies: "[He] set out to do nothing, took a long time to do it and did it pretty well."
However, unlike Menzies, Howard's legacy will be chequered.
Despite all he said, in the end Howard put himself before the best interests of the party. It has reached a nadir, in government nowhere and with no-one to lead it from the wilderness.
Australia will have a prime minister called Kevin and a treasurer called Wayne, and they are both from Queensland.

Keating

2007-11-25T16:54:00.000-08:00

The Liberals must purge the reactionaries

Paul Keating, The Age, November 26, 2007

ON SATURDAY night, when it was clear the Howard government had been defeated, many Labor supporters around me said: "You must be so happy." But my emotion was not happiness, rather; it was relief.
Relief that the nation had put itself back on course. Relief that the toxicity of the Liberal social agenda, the active disparagement of particular classes and groups, that feeling of alienation in your own country, was over. And over in the only way that could be final: with a resounding electoral instruction of "no more".
In the Sydney Sun Herald last Sunday, John Howard nominated the putting asunder of political correctness and the celebration of our Anglo-Celtic past as the pinnacle of his social, indeed national, achievement.
In making the claim, he was nominating as a virtue political incorrectness of a kind that gave some the right to speak and behave towards others in terms disparaging of their colour, religion, class or social standing.
In a country of immigrants, such a view emanating from the prime minister is social poison.
Saturday night's victory was not just a victory for the Labor Party, it was also a victory for those Liberals such as Malcolm Fraser, Petro Georgiou and Judi Moylan, who stood against the pernicious erosion of decent standards in our public affairs.
The Liberal Party of John Howard, Philip Ruddock, Alexander Downer and Peter Costello is now a party of privilege and punishments. One that lacks that most basic of wellsprings: charity.
The French philosophers had it pretty right with the Enlightenment catchcry of liberty, equality and fraternity.
There was not much liberty for the boat people or fraternity for the Aborigines or the Muslims or equality for the trade unionists who believed in nothing more revolutionary than the simple right to collectively bargain.
John Howard says that he was the progenitor, the giver, of the past 11 years of economic growth and without him or Costello the growth would evaporate.
This election result means that the public didn't believe him. They knew it took more than simply being around and spending up big to create the conditions that have underwritten the longest economic expansion in our history.
John Howard's greatest inheritance from the Labor Party was low inflation, the factor that above all others provided the golden thread through each of those 16 years of growth.
When John Howard decided to go after workers with his WorkChoices legislation, he did so not out of any economic necessity, as the economic record for wages and inflation attests. He did it simply to break the back of the unions. His motivations were ideological and spiteful, telling us he had learned nothing from the fact that there had been no wages breakout in Australia for 26 years, since the last one he himself detonated in 1981.

Howard proudly mentions his GST. Yet its great harvest
of money was not spent on education or health or infrastructure. So cynical was Howard about it he forbade the Treasury from accounting for it in the budget papers, even though it is a federal tax and allocated under Commonwealth policies.
When I turned over the prime ministership to John Howard in 1996, the opportunities presented to him as the century closed were unprecedented.
A new-made economy, with open financial, product and labour markets for the first time in our history. Five years' growth already behind us, at an average inflation rate of 2.5%. A universal and compulsory superannuation system, where the previous Labor government had encouraged workers to save 9% of their wages for their retirement. A framework for the movement to an Australian republic with a model designed for acceptance by the Liberal Party.
He also had a set of new international relationships abroad, especially with Indonesia and China, with Australia sitting as the founder of the major piece of political architecture in the Pacific: the APEC leaders' meeting.
As we entered the new century, what did John Howard do with these new opportunities? The short answer is he squandered them. He took a knife to the new enterprise-bargaining wages system the moment he got control of the Senate. He left superannuation jammed at 9% of wages after promising to maintain the commitment I had made to take it to 15%. He connived in the defeat of the republic referendum so that now we are more likely than not to have King Charles and Queen Camilla as our heads of state, as ludicrous as that would be. His triumphalism over Timor destroyed the relationship Labor had built with Indonesia, which probably can't be rebuilt or, if it can, only after decades. He attended every APEC leaders' meeting since 1996, but brought not one new idea to it, not even to his own meeting in Sydney this year.
In the end, John Howard didn't understand how great his opportunity was and how it could not be advanced by regressive and reactionary policies fuelled by social exclusion and division.
Let us hope the Liberal Party purges itself of its reactionary majority, for Australia cannot afford another prime minister like John Howard.
Paul Keating was prime minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996.

Love me or loathe me

2007-11-25T00:27:00.000-08:00

Love me or loathe me, he said. We now have the people's verdict

The Age, Michelle Grattan, November 25, 2007

JOHN Howard has gone from Liberal hero, the star whose brightness was second only to that of Robert Menzies, to the leader who has taken his party to a nadir — out of power everywhere in the country.
He is at gravest risk in his own seat — if it doesn't come back, he will be only the second PM to be thrown out by his own electorate.
"Love me or loathe me, the Australian people know where I stand," Howard said throughout this campaign. Last night the voters delivered their verdict, nationally and — whatever the final result there — in Bennelong. It has been a massive humiliation to a man who used to be determined to go out like Menzies — on top and in his own time. How could it have come to this? How could he have got so out of touch?
Since the 2004 election Howard's judgement on policy and leadership has been deeply flawed. He pursued his pet issue — industrial relations — way beyond anything that was politically sustainable. His great 2004 victory in the Senate did him in, allowing him to succumb to hubris and embark on WorkChoices.
Personal hubris also caused him to hang on to the leadership when clearly he should have handed it over well before this election. Whether Peter Costello could have pulled off victory, however, is questionable.
In retrospect, it's clear that once Kevin Rudd became Opposition Leader, Howard was always going to have an uphill fight. His age, the push for generational change, the arrogance of the Government and the community's anger and fear about WorkChoices all provided electoral gold for Labor.
People were reluctant to back Kim Beazley, but once Rudd was there they felt freer to decide they were over John Howard, that it was time for renewal.
The Peter Costello transition — announced by Howard under pressure — did not appeal. If voters wanted a switch, why wait, especially for someone who was unpopular anyway?
Despite all that me-tooism, Rudd appealed as different — and he convinced the electorate that he was a safe pair of hands.
Although the groundwork for Labor's win was laid over many months, Rudd had to cement it in the past six weeks. The Government ran a shocking campaign; Labor's was smooth, apart from the odd glitch. Howard's spendathon was a tactical disaster. It provided Rudd with the chance to make Howard look bad with economic management.
Rudd comes to the prime ministership less known than, for example, Howard or Bob Hawke when they won. He has flagged he will use his authority to the limit, without too much regard for some of Labor's long-held traditions.
As Howard said in his last desperate days during the campaign, Australia will change under Kevin Rudd. Just how much, we will learn over coming months and years. The Rudd agenda is still a work in progress.
Without incumbency anywhere, the Liberals will find it extremely difficult to regroup. So will the Nationals, who have shrunk even further. And the Liberal-Nationals relationship could become fraught.
Pity Costello. The biggest loser, of course, is Howard, who knew some time ago he should have quit. But now he really is off the leadership scene. Costello has a long road ahead, with no guarantee the pot of gold will be at the end.
As for Howard, his Bennelong electors are inflicting the most painful torture. Last night it appeared more likely than not that he'd lose the seat. If he won on postal votes he would be in a dreadful dilemma. He would not want to stay in Parliament. But to quit in a byelection would just make him look even worse.

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From 'pointy head' to PM

Jason Koutsoukis,The Age, November 25, 2007

Four years ago, people laughed when Rudd tilted his hat at the Labor leadership.
KEVIN RUDD first became a candidate for the Labor leadership at 10.15am on Friday, November 28, 2003. Four years ago, almost to the day.
It was the moment Simon Crean resigned as Labor leader and two others — Mark Latham and Kim Beazley — also threw their hats into the ring to replace him at a party-room ballot scheduled for the following Tuesday.
At a press conference that Friday afternoon in a Parliament House courtyard, Rudd told the media that he thought he had about 18 or 19 votes, maybe more. With barely five years in Parliament, Rudd was selling himself as the compromise candidate.
I wasn't the only one to laugh. Labor powerbrokers across the country also thought Rudd's candidacy was a great joke. According to them, Rudd could count on only one vote that afternoon — his own — but he could possibly get six people to vote for him if his life depended on it.
As for what they thought of him personally, here is a sample of some of the descriptions of Rudd offered by his caucus colleagues published in the newspapers that weekend.
Tasmania's Harry Quick said Rudd was about "as exciting as a carpet" and noted that one couldn't talk to him without "an encyclopedia".
Others said Rudd was too "pointy-headed" to ever lead the party and would be "electoral poison", particularly in Queensland, where everyone knew him as "Dr Death" after his days running the public service under former premier Wayne Goss.
Other critics referred to him as the "pixie" or "Harry Potter", and picked on his image as a "too-smart" foreign policy guru.
Rudd withdrew his candidacy over the weekend but, as The Australian newspaper's Greg Sheridan observed in a comment piece published on the day that Latham was elected leader, Rudd had successfully launched what must be regarded as one of the most remarkable leadership campaigns in Australian political history. "The Rudd determination is nothing to be sneezed at," wrote Sheridan. "His poll standing … is a tribute to the effectiveness of his tireless media campaigning.
"His brief but exotic leadership dance of the seven veils forced media organisations to include him in candidate polling and his good poll results have established him as a leadership contender next time."
And this, in essence, has been the story of Rudd's ascension to the prime ministership.

Thanks to this tireless campaigning in the media, Rudd's powerbase has always been the voters themselves.
Rudd's parliamentary colleagues didn't elect him leader last year because they liked him. They voted for him because his poll ratings were solid and they thought he had a better chance of winning than Beazley.
The irony of the Coalition's focus on the unions in this election campaign is that of all Labor's prime ministers, Rudd will be the first never to have worked for one.
Rudd has become Prime Minister almost despite the unions. In Rudd's home state of Queensland, local union chieftain Bill Ludwig spent years ridiculing him as an irritating nerd and did all he could to prevent him winning the leadership.
Nor does Rudd owe anything to Labor's factions, as he won the leadership despite them also.
With the freedom to pick and choose his own ministry, instead of having it picked for him via a caucus ballot rigged by the factions, it's fair to say that Rudd has almost killed off the factions entirely and will, like John Howard before him, be free to shape the government almost entirely in his own image.
Rudd's caucus colleagues owe him far more than he owes them. Nevertheless, Rudd should enjoy the moment while it lasts. The moment he makes his first decision, he will also make his first enemy. Governments start dying the moment they are elected and, if history is any guide, Rudd has four election wins in him at the most — around nine years. Only Robert Menzies won five and he had the good fortune to be running against a bitterly divided opposition.
The first three years are likely to be the most difficult. Rudd will make mistakes and so will some of his ministers. Like Howard's first term, there are bound to be several scandals and resignations, even the odd sacking, as Rudd settles into the job.
Nor will it take long before the media starts to obsess about who will succeed him. Will it be Julia Gillard or Bill Shorten? Greg Combet or Wayne Swan?
So what sort of prime minister will he be? Pragmatic and moderate, of course, but different in emphasis to Howard.
His priorities will be federalism, a large part of which will involve sorting out the delivery of health and water services, and education.
By the time Rudd has begun construction of the promised national broadband network and put a computer in every school, that may begin to feel like a great deal of change indeed.

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Unkind will question Costello's nerve

Sid Marris, Online political editor, The Australian,November 25, 2007

PETER Costello has given history little chance to be kind to him with his sudden post-election refusal of leadership.
Mr Costello has served the party and the country well, he is right to claim that.
But many in his party will wonder why he has given Labor a political scalp before the election dust has settled.
To listen to the Labor’s operatives talking on the morning political interview shows it would seem the first priority on election day was to nail the incoming opposition leader.
To paraphrase one of Costello’s own great quotes: his leadership did not last from election night to lunchtime.
The oddest thing is that if he had already made up his mind to leave if the Coalition lost, why did he let the prime minister endorse him so strongly. Were the conversations between them so sparse that his salient fact could not be communicated?
Costello’s arguments for not contesting are reasonable, except for the strong endorsement from his colleagues. It will allow the unkind to question his nerve.
Another delusion of 2007, it would seem.

The End of an Error

2007-11-24T16:01:00.000-08:00

Best-laid plans win day

The Age, Michelle Grattan, November 25, 2007

Kevin Rudd will be prime minister and, as John Howard said in his last desperate days during the campaign, Australia will change. Just how much, we will learn over coming months and years.
The Rudd agenda is still a work in progress. Despite some nerves in the ALP camp about whether it would really be able to get the needed 16 seats, last night's Labor win did not come as a surprise. But if we think back a year - before Rudd displaced Kim Beazley - it was another story. This result seemed out of reach, even though Beazley was doing all right in the polls.
Once Rudd was there, people felt freer to decide they were over Howard, that it was time for renewal. A move to Rudd would be generational change; going to Beazley wouldn't have been.
The Howard-Peter Costello transition arrangement did not grab them. If they were going to make a switch, why wait?
And why go to someone who might be more of the same, with a younger face admittedly - but what about that smirk? Despite all that me-tooism, Rudd appealed as different. He convinced the electorate that he would be a safe pair of hands.
So this victory was not forged in the campaign itself. Labor and Rudd have been well ahead of their opponents all year. This spooked Howard, who delayed the campaign, hoping the polls would turn, which they did not. One consequence is that the campaign ran slap into the interest rate rise.
Although the groundwork for Labor's win was laid over many months, Rudd had to cement it in during the past six weeks. Labor ran a smooth operation; the Government made more of the mistakes.
ALP environment spokesman Peter Garrett was a problem, but Health Minister Tony Abbott was a bigger one. And the leak of Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull's advice that the Government ratify Kyoto was embarrassing. Howard's spendathon during his launch was a tactical disaster. It provided Rudd with the opportunity to make Howard look bad on the Prime Minister's own ground of economic management.
Rudd comes to the prime ministership less known than, for example, Howard or Bob Hawke when they became PM. He has flagged he will use his authority to the limit, without too much regard for some of Labor's traditions.
One early test will be Rudd's determination to personally choose his ministry. Previously the power rested formally with caucus and in practice with the factions. While little has been said against Rudd's plan, it's hard to think there will be no factional jostling, and you can bet the lobbying will start today.

All eyes will be on whether Garrett hangs on to environment, and whether union heavyweights Greg Combet and Bill Shorten are in the fast lane to ministries.
Rudd has spelled out his early priorities - including ratifying Kyoto, attending next month's Bali climate change conference, getting his education revolution under way, planning for the rollout of a faster broadband system and beginning the (partial) rollback of Work Choices.
There will be a meeting of the new government and the states early next year; one of the main topics will be the Rudd demand that the states improve their hospitals or risk having a federal takeover. The states have been very accommodating in the run-up to this election as they tried to maximise Rudd's chances. When they are negotiating with a Rudd government, they will fight harder for their own interests.
Rudd will have to open negotiations soon with the United States about the withdrawal of Australia's combat troops from Iraq. This is a delicate operation because it will be Labor's first testing of the alliance. At least Rudd has already - at the time of APEC - had a face-to-face meeting with US President George Bush, who has therefore had a chance to get a handle on the new Australian leader.
For the Coalition this result is devastating. It is out of power everywhere, when in the modern political system incumbency is a vital political commodity. Without incumbency anywhere, the Liberals will find it difficult to regroup. And Liberal-Nationals relations are always under more stress in opposition.
Pity Costello. Of course the obvious biggest loser is Howard, who knew some time ago he should have quit. But now he really is off. Costello is left picking up the pieces with what is arguably the worst job in politics, suddenly stripped of all the trappings of office that help a senior politician do his or her work. Costello has a long road ahead, with no guarantee the pot of gold will be there at the end.

mgrattan@sunherald.com.au

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Rudd triumphs as Howard cast aside

Triumph ... Kevin Rudd will become the 26th Prime Minister.

Kerry-Anne Walsh Political CorrespondentNovember 25, 2007

JOHN HOWARD led his Government to a humiliating defeat last night and was poised to lose his own seat as Kevin Rudd became Australia's 26th Prime Minister.
Families and Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough was another high-profile scalp on a night in which Australia called a definitive end to Mr Howard's 11-year reign.
The national two-party preferred swing to Labor of 6.3per cent was the second-largest since World War II, bettered only by Gough Whitlam in 1975. Labor looked certain to secure 86 of the 150 House of Representative seats and hoped for 90 - a gain of at least 30 seats.
At 10.35 pm Mr Howard conceded defeat and acknowledged it was very likely he would lose the seat he had held for 33 years to celebrity Labor recruit Maxine McKew.
Flanked by his teary-eyed wife, Janette, and two sons, Richard and Tim - his daughter Melanie was absent on bridesmaid duties - Mr Howard accepted blame for the defeat and anointed Peter Costello as his successor.
"It has been an enormous pleasure every day of my life, over the last 11½ years, to be Prime Minister of this beautiful country," he said in a strong, dry-eyed concession speech.
Accepting victory just after 11pm, Mr Rudd told a cheering crowd of Labor faithful in Brisbane he would be Prime Minister "for all Australia".
"Today Australia has looked to the future. Today the people of Australia have decided that we move forward," the Labor Prime Minister-elect proclaimed.
Ms McKew described the Rudd landslide as a "fabulous, transforming day for the country".
With her partner Bob Hogg and mother Mary close by, Ms McKew told a huge cheering crowd in North Ryde that Bennelong "will never, ever be taken for granted again".
The star candidate forced Mr Howard to campaign every weekend in Bennelong, destabilising his national campaign and diverting his attention from a string of marginal seats.
The Greens were pivotal in the Labor win, recording primary votes of up to 20 per cent in many electorates, which went to Labor candidates.
Greens leader Bob Brown said Greens voters had played an "enormous part" in the Labor win, and predicted the Greens would hold the balance of power in the senate.
Australia's first female Deputy Prime Minister-elect, Julia Gillard, cited the Government's industrial relations laws as a reason for the savage voter backlash. "WorkChoices really did crack a substantial proportion of the so-called Howard battlers," she said.

NSW was central to the Labor assault, turning the once-loyal territory of "Howard battlers" into the revenge of Rudd's "working families" with a swing across the state of 7.4 per cent.
Mr Rudd's home state of Queensland swung strongly behind Labor, recording an 8per cent swing to lift the party's representation from six to at least 16 of the state's 29 seats.
Eden-Monaro, which has reflected the national result for 32 years, was ceded to Labor's Mike Kelly less than an hour after polling booths closed.
Edited version of John Howard's concession speech:
"My fellow Australians, a few moments ago I telephoned Mr Kevin Rudd and I congratulated him and the Australian Labor Party on an emphatic victory.
"I wish him well in the task that he will undertake. We bequeath to him a nation that is stronger and prouder.
"I've led a Government that has taken this country from deep debt to strong prosperity. I've led a Government that has never shirked the difficult decisions. I've led a Government that has reformed the Australian economy and left it the envy of the world."
Mr Howard said he wanted to thank the Australian people for the privilege of leading the country.
"It's something that has really been the most unbelievable experience," he said. "The Australian people are the greatest people on earth and this is the greatest country on earth."
Mr Howard thanked his family, colleagues and staff, particularly Deputy Leader Peter Costello, to whom he said "we owe a very special debt of gratitude".
"He's been a wonderful steward of the Australian economy and the future of our party is very much tied up with Peter Costello. He is very much our future."
Mr Howard said he accepted responsibility for the election loss.
"I accept full responsibility for the Liberal Party campaign and I therefore accept full responsibility for the Coalition's defeat in this election campaign."
Mr Howard said he was saddened by the defeat "but I count myself very fortunate to have been the beneficiary of the support of the people of Australia for so long. I thank them, I wish this nation well, I believe very profoundly that Australia's best years lie ahead of her.
"I wish the government elected by the people today the very best of good fortune in the years ahead, thank you."

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Howard emerges for morning walk

Photo: Andrew Taylor

On the move ... ousted Prime Minister John Howard on his morning walk.

November 25, 2007 - 7:45AM, The SMH

Outgoing prime minister John Howard went on his daily morning walk in Sydney today after losing government last night.
Mr Howard emerged from the prime minister's official Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, at 7am (AEDT) and was followed by a sizeable media pack as he took his usual route along the Sydney Harbour foreshore and through the streets of Kirribilli.
People stopped to clap the prime minister as he walked by with one woman remarking, "they don't know what they've done".
Some fishermen on Sydney Harbour heckled Mr Howard with one calling: "Better luck next time buddy".
Asked how he felt this morning Mr Howard said only "I'm fine thanks" and declined to answer any other questions from reporters.
The Howard government's 11-year rule ended last night with a sweeping victory by Kevin Rudd's Labor Party.

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Voters rewrite history

Glenn Milne, The Daily Telegraph, November 25, 2007 12:00am

AUSTRALIAN voters last night fundamentally re-wrote national political history.
From this day forth no government can rely on the successful management of the economy to guarantee its re-election.
The message from election 2007 is that long-serving governments must demonstrate the will to renew both their ideas and their leadership to survive in the modern electoral era.
In this context, this Coalition defeat is a terrible indictment of John Howard's judgment and a vindication of Labor's collective courage in backing Kevin Rudd.
The verdict of the Australian people has been emphatic; John Howard should have gone last year and made way for Peter Costello. WorkChoices was his fatal obsession and climate change his historic oversight.
Kevin Rudd read the national mood better on both issues.
In his hands Howard's Senate mugging of the Australian people on industrial relations became an assault on the nation's commitment to the ethos of a "fair go''.
In those same hands climate change became a symbol of Rudd's commitment to the future.
This was a future which Howard had already written himself out of by announcing his retirement even before the campaign had begun.
This rendered his leadership an impossible commodity to sell and crippled Costello, who fell inevitably under its unsaleable shadow. Australia today wakes up to a new Prime Minister, which is, above all, what voters wanted. But not too different.
Which is what they also wanted.

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The viscount of Wollstonecraft

Jack the Insider Blog The Australian, November 24, 2007 164 Comments

HONEST is gone. A 6 per cent swing in Bennelong has seen him off after thirty-three years. That’s politics for you.
It’s a tough caper. One minute you’re flying around the country in an RAAF burner, dining on swan and schooners of Grange.
Next thing you’re sitting around home on the recliner rocker waiting for the phone to ring.
Back in 1929, the Prime Minister Stanley Bruce lost the seat of Flinders. Not for him the long dole queues and a lot of impertinent questions before he got his Job Search allowance. Stanley Bruce came up with a with solution, quick smart.
Stanley Bruce became Viscount Bruce of Melbourne and never looked back.
Truth is, the good Viscount didn’t make it to the aristocracy so quickly. He had another crack and won Flinders back in 1931. He became Minister Without Portfolio in the Lyons Government but his habit of driving around in a Roller and wearing spats made his colleagues nervous.
He got the flick again (this time by his own Prime Minister, Joe Lyons) and was dispatched to London to take on the sweetest of all jobs for the boys, High Commissioner.
He went on to become a member of the Imperial War Cabinet and set about paying Australians back for their treachery by insisting that the 2nd AIF remain in North Africa, rather than in the Pacific where they were so desperately needed.
It was a rich and full life by any measure. Viscount Bruce was well shot of The Lodge. Not that it was built then but if it had been, he would have walked from its doors a happy man. He was just 46 years of age after all.
Poor old Honest isn’t quite so lucky. He’s 67 and he doesn‘t know how to do anything besides be a politician.
I suppose, we could all chip in and buy Honest a lawn mowing franchise. That would give him something to do. But truth be told, the early morning walks have taken their toll and stumbling around Wollstonecraft with a leaf blower would take years off his life.
So, if you don’t mind indulging Honest a little further, I suggest we bounce a sword off his shoulder or whatever you have to do make the bloke a Viscount and point him in the general direction of the Mother Country.
He could get about in a tracksuit all day long, watch plenty of cricket, genuflect to the Windsors and be spared the ignominy of ever having to look the nation in the eye again.
You never know, Honest might come up trumps in a pair of spats.

D-Day

2007-11-23T19:13:00.000-08:00

Let this be an epitaph for a man of shame

The Age, Tracee Hutchison, November 24, 2007

FOR the past 11 years, Prime Minister John Howard has been fond of reminding us of his favourite Australian traditions and catchphrases. The so-called Aussie values he believes have come to define us such as a fair go, mateship and the Gallipoli spirit.
They've been curious, male-oriented choices wrapped for the most part in empty rhetoric that has served to divide, not unite, us and heralded a zealous campaign to treat philosophical, intellectual and cultural vigour as if it were a plague.
Indeed, one of the PM's self-proclaimed triumphs was to oversee the eradication of another much-touted Howard catchphrase — political correctness. Whatever that actually means, we apparently don't have it in Australia any more, much to the PM's delight.
But it was another, more universal, catchphrase that occupied my thoughts this week as John Winston Howard found himself boxed into an ugly corner — largely of his own making — and was forced to confront a house of cards with race writ large on them all.
Somehow the word comeuppance came to mind as the 11th-hour race implosion in the federal seat of Lindsay derailed Howard's re-election momentum. And it screamed poetic justice.
After years of playing on the nation's xenophobic fears and whipping up race-based frenzies to deliver political victories, it was the PM's former golden girl minister, Jackie Kelly — the accidental politician who epitomised Howard's aspirational battlers when she helped sweep him to power in 1996 — who brought him unstuck so spectacularly.
Kelly's attempt to laugh off an appallingly ill-judged anti-Muslim campaign leaflet being handed out in her electorate by her husband and close associates had all the hallmarks of Russell Crowe's dynamic performance in Romper Stomper, except it was for real. Jackie just couldn't see what all the fuss was about. And it spoke volumes.
It was an extraordinary finale from a woman once touted as Liberal leadership material but who is now opting for a parliamentary pension. Her train wreck of an interview with Chris Uhlman on ABC radio was, apparently, her way of helping the woman hoping to replace her in Lindsay. The PM, most definitely, was not amused.
The episode did little other than remind us that some rivers still run very deep in the modern Liberal Party. The same modern Liberal Party that John Winston Howard has led so proudly for so long. The same modern Liberal Party that has driven the most decisive of racial wedges through the heart and soul of this country, eroding its essence so comprehensively it will take considerable strength, determination, courage and vision to restore it.

As Howard stood at the National Press Club making his last-ditch stand for power on Thursday afternoon, nothing could rid him of that elephant in the room.. Try as he might to tell us over and over that we've never had it so good, the elephant just kept getting in the way. Try as he might to persuade us he is not yesterday's man, it all came back to the elephant.
And it was the very same elephant that Howard let into the nation's lounge room when he became Prime Minister in 1996. That same elephant that underscored Cronulla, Noble Park, the intervention in the Northern Territory and the proliferation of Australia's draconian immigration detention policies. It is time to tell it to leave.
It is time to make room for change to take place. It is time to make room for hope to be restored. It is time to make way for leadership with vision and compassion to flourish.
Today is the day that we tell John Howard — and his elephant — it is time for them to go. Today is the day for Australia to reclaim its sense of justice, humanity, equality and pride. Today is the day we tell each other and the world that we are a decent, good-hearted, generous people who reach out and reach down and walk tall because of it.
And today is the day John Winston Howard walks into the hall of mirrors that is the politically, socially and culturally redefined multicultural electorate of Bennelong.
Oh, what an epitaph. That the man whose political party played the race card once too often — in his 11th hour — is not only tipped out of government, but the man himself tipped out of his now culturally diverse seat by the very people he used so successfully for so long as pawns in his political chess game.

Could there be a sweeter decline?

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Desperate tactics

Shaun Carney, The Age, November 24, 2007

THERE are two reasons why Jackie Kelly, the retiring member for Lindsay, is better known than most other barely talented federal MPs. When she won her seat at the 1996 election, it was a boilover of near-Pauline Hanson proportions; Lindsay had been safe Labor since its creation 12 years earlier. That was enough to make her a minor political celebrity. Later in 1996, her image was further enhanced when the ALP, arrogantly believing that the voters had somehow made a mistake and hadn't meant to toss their man out, challenged Kelly's victory on technical grounds and managed to convince a court to overturn the result.
In the subsequent byelection, the people of Lindsay told the ALP exactly where to go and increased Kelly's margin by 5%, rendering the seat safe for the Liberals. After that, as has been well chronicled, she became an absolute favourite of John Howard's, the poster girl for his so-called battler demographic. At the start of the following term, in 1998, Howard promoted Kelly, then only 34, into the sports and tourism ministry.
She was a hopeless minister, even for such soft portfolios. Howard couldn't keep her on the front bench for the Government's third term; after the 2001 election he took away her ministry but gave her a consolation prize and made her his parliamentary secretary. After the 2004 election, Kelly gave up that gig too and returned to the back bench. Her chief contribution in the electoral term that concludes with today's election was to vow in July last year that if Peter Costello replaced Howard as leader she definitely wouldn't be staying in federal politics.
Her stance was all a bit confused. She'd already decided that she was probably heading out the door. She said she wanted to go into business — "I need to be reaping the benefits of this great economy," she told The Age — but the only reason she might stay was if Howard could stare down Costello's renewed push to replace him. Kelly sent champagne and flowers to the Prime Minister to persuade him to bat on.
The Prime Minister, as we have learnt, did not need much convincing to stay and when he declared that he would not step aside, Kelly told reporters she was "absolutely stoked". "I was on a high all day," she said. Kelly hinted that she might even change her intention to leave Parliament because Howard was putting the hard word on her to run again. "The PM is leaning on me and he talks me into most things normally. I may as well say 'yes' now. It's an 80% sure thing, probably 90% actually."

Well, not quite, because she decided in the end to quit Lindsay. Kelly is the gift that keeps on giving. Having made it that much harder for the Liberals to regenerate and recalibrate by helping to block Costello last year, this week she made it harder for Howard to hang on by making a complete idiot of herself on national radio.
Kelly's gormless and quite incredible performance on Thursday's AM program on the ABC will surely go down in Australian political folklore. Kelly's husband, along with the husband of the Liberal candidate in the seat, had been caught letterboxing a bogus leaflet in a Lindsay street on Tuesday night.
The leaflet purported to be from an Islamic group thanking the ALP for giving support to the Bali bombers and radical Muslims. Its purpose was clear — to portray Labor as close to terrorists. The initial response by the Liberal Party organisation was firm. NSW director Graham Jaeschke moved quickly to condemn the production of the leaflet and to expel those deemed directly responsible. Later on Wednesday night in a TV appearance, Government frontbencher and campaign spokesman Andrew Robb softpedalled a little. He tried to portray the whole thing as an isolated bit of silliness by a tiny "rogue" element in the local party.
Of course, we now know that the pamphlets were kept at Kelly's Penrith home before being taken to the working-class suburb of St Mary's for distribution. On Thursday morning, the Government defence collapsed. Kelly, who has a law degree, told the ABC that the "alleged pamphlet" had made her laugh when she saw it. "If you read it you would be laughing. Most people who have read it have sort of said that's a Chaser-style of prank."
The thought that keeps getting in the way with this is: why did it happen? Why would the spouse of the current member for Lindsay, a woman who was sworn in as a minister of the Crown, and the spouse of the woman who is seeking to replace her for the Liberal Party, think that it's good practice to get up to this sort of stuff, stoking fear, suspicion and hatred among fellow citizens?
The answer, unfortunately, is clear. In 2001, John Howard, aided by Philip Ruddock, showed that it was good business. Howard's vital sentence, uttered for the first time during that campaign during the Liberals' formal launch at the Sydney Recital Hall, was: "We decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come." I was there and there were two moments during that event when the roof of that beautiful space just about lifted off due to the rapturous applause from Liberal supporters: when Howard made that statement and when Ruddock, the hero of the push against boat people, was introduced to the crowd.

The Prime Minister did speak out against the pamphlet and those who cooked it up during his Thursday appearance at the National Press Club. He faced a series of questions about it, much to the rising anger of Liberal supporters who had been brought in by local party organisers to fill up what would have been empty tables. For these supporters, the villains weren't those trying to profit by generating fear in Lindsay, they were the journalists who asked the nation's most senior Liberal about it. In the end, Howard got exasperated too. "I've condemned it, I've dissociated myself from it, I think it is stupid, it's offensive, it's wrong, it's untrue, I mean for heaven's sake get a sense of proportion," he said in response to yet another question.
Stupid? Interesting word. Later, the Prime Minister volunteered that this was a clean campaign. "This is not an angry election campaign, and I don't think it is dirty either." What would it have to be for him to describe it as dirty? There's often a bit of a nod and wink from senior members of the Government to this ugliness. Some party members take up the cues, as they did when they heckled the journalists at the press club for doing their jobs in throwing the Prime Minister some curly questions. Yesterday morning, the irrepressible Alexander Downer went after probably the straightest shooter in political journalism, this paper's Michelle Grattan, during an interview on ABC Radio National.
Grattan had just finished her regular on-air chat with host Fran Kelly. Downer identified The Age political editor as a typical enemy of the Liberal Party and condemned her for "breathlessly rabbiting on" about the leaflet scandal for two mornings in a row. If there is a political afterlife, may Downer spend it in the company of Jackie Kelly.

Rubbery Figures

2007-11-23T02:56:00.000-08:00

It's a cliffhanger: Newspoll

The Australian, Dennis Shanahan, Political editor November 23, 2007

THE 2007 election has become a real contest in the final 72 hours of a gruelling six-week campaign.
After he was written off as a ‘has-been’, John Howard’s last week of campaigning will give the Coalition hope of pulling off a miraculous victory tomorrow. Labor is still in front and favourite to win the 2007 election but the latest Newspoll survey is showing a late surge to the Howard Government, particularly in Queensland and Western Australia. Newspoll’s two-party preferred figure, based on preference flows at the 2004 election, (there's the rub...ed.) has the Labor Party in front by 52 per cent to the Coalition’s 48 per cent.
The sample size was larger than average - 2614.Last week the two-party preferred figure was 54 for Labor and 46 per cent for the Coalition. It is the closest the Coalition has been to Labor since exactly one year ago today when Kim Beazley was still leader of the Labor Party facing a leadership campaign from Kevin Rudd. At the beginning of the election campaign the ALP held a 16-point lead over the Coalition which would have annihilated the Howard Government. The four-point lead Labor now has on two-party preferred figures gives Labor the edge but means the election will now depend on state by state variations and results in marginal seats.
The Newspoll results for The Australian back a Galaxy poll published in News Ltd newspapers which shows the same two-party preferred figure – 52 to 48 per cent. It is possible for the ALP to get 51 per cent of the two-party preferred vote and still fail to get the necessary 16 seats it needs for victory. As John Howard blitzes marginal seats in Queensland, where there is a movement towards the Coalition, and Kevin Rudd does the same the result on election night may come down, partly because of timing and aprtly because of a similar surge in Perth, to two or three seats in western Australia.

D-Day-1

2007-11-23T02:26:00.000-08:00

A hundred reasons Rudd is in like Flynn

The SMH, Mark Coultan, November 23, 2007

KEVIN RUDD has scored a century. Earlier this week he passed a psephological landmark - the Labor Party has been ahead of the Government for 100 consecutive opinion polls.
Rarely have the opinion polls been so unanimous or consistent. Since December, when Rudd became its leader, the ALP has been ahead on both primary and two-party preferred counts.
The latest Herald/Nielsen poll shows Labor leading by 57 per cent to the Coalition's 43 per cent. The final Galaxy poll has Labor leading 52-48, which means one must be wrong.
The polls have a margin of error of between 2 and 3 per cent.
If repeated on Saturday night, such a result would equal the landslide that Harold Holt enjoyed in 1966. Beyond that you would have to go back to Joe Lyons and the United Australia Party's win in 1931 for such a one-sided result.
Nielsen's two-party preferred result is based on asking voters where their second preference will go. Other pollsters use the distribution of preferences at the last election to determine a final two-party preferred figure. If you apply this method to Nielsen's final poll, you get a two-party preferred result of 56-44.
If you aggregate all of Nielsen polls taken during this campaign, (a method which has closely mirrored the result in previous elections) you get a two-party preferred figure of 55-45.
Newspoll will not publish its final poll until tomorrow, but its last poll showed Labor leading 54-46, which would translate into a Labor majority of about 24, according to the ABC election analyst Antony Green's calculator.
Newspoll's latest state by state analysis, which aggregates its last two polls, would result in a 44-seat majority, mainly due it forecasting a massive swing in Queensland, which results in a swag of seats falling to Labor.
Roy Morgan Research's telephone poll last weekend had Labor ahead 55.5-44.5. (Morgan gives his results in 0.5 increments, despite such polls having margins of error of 2 to 3 per cent.)
The unscientific NineMSN poll of 50,000 Australians (unscientific because the respondents self-select to respond to the poll) predicts the loss of at least 20 seats to Labor.
Before the latest Nielsen poll, the Reuters Poll Trend, which is a weighted aggregate of the Morgan, Newspoll and Nielsen polls, showed Labor leading 55-45.
But what if voting patterns in marginal seats is different to the national trend? There has been considerable polling in marginal seats in this election, and it shows a similar trend to national polling.

A poll of 4000 electors in 20 marginal seats in five states by Galaxy Research found Labor would gain 18 seats, while Newspoll surveyed 18 marginal seats in four states which indicated Labor would win 24 seats.
Both these results excluded Tasmania, where local polling suggests Labor will win two seats.
Morgan has surveyed marginal seats in Western Australia and suggested a small swing towards the Coalition, although this swing was well within the poll margin of error.
A Taverner poll taken among 600 mortgage-holders in NSW and Victoria found a crushing 57-43 lead to the Labor Party.
A Nielsen poll taken in Malcolm Turnbull's seat of Wentworth showed a narrow victory to Labor's George Newhouse, while an earlier Galaxy poll showed the result was too close to call.
Two polls in the Prime Minster's seat of Bennelong have both shown John Howard losing.
And for those who believe that the betting markets are better predictors, Centrebet has Labor at short odds to win.
But punters who have been betting on individual seats predict a much closer contest.
As of yesterday, they had backed 79 Labor candidates to win, to the Coalition's 69.

The Day before

2007-11-22T16:00:00.000-08:00

I've never lied to you: Howard

Clinton Porteous, News.com.au, November 23, 2007 07:00am

Howard's final pitch as "an honest man"
Voters find Rudd twice as likely to tell truth
Last polls predict landslide, cliffhanger

JOHN Howard has used one of his final pitches for re-election to declare that he is an honest man and has never lied to the Australian people.Putting his credibility on the line, the Prime Minister said voters would ultimately decide tomorrow at the ballot box whether they trusted him.
Throughout the campaign, Labor has accused Mr Howard of repeatedly misleading the Australian people - especially on interest rates.
The Coalition went to the last election promising to keep interest rates at record lows and Mr Howard himself said rates would stay at "30-year lows". Official interest rates have jumped six times since and this month's rise was the first during a federal campaign.
Asked if he had credibility problem, Mr Howard said it was a matter for Australian voters.
"I am an honest man, I have never lied to the Australian people," he told The Courier-Mail late yesterday in an interview on his VIP air force jet."It's for them to decide issues of trust."
'Honest John'Earlier in his decades-long parliamentary career, Mr Howard gained the ironic nickname of "Honest John" - which has dogged him since.
A survey this year showed voters thought Labor leader Kevin Rudd was twice as likely to tell the truth as Mr Howard.
The Prime Minister used his last set-piece speech at the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday to brush off suggestions he had a broken promise on interest rates.
"What I can say about the future and that is interest rates will always be lower under the Coalition than under the Labor Party," Mr Howard said.
PM snaps over pamphlet affairHis main message at the televised appearance was that only the Coalition could be trusted with economy, but this was drowned out by repeated questions about the false pamphlet scandal in the Sydney seat of Lindsay.
At one stage, Mr Howard told a journalist: "for heaven's sake get a sense of proportion".
He told the audience the main reason the Coalition deserved to be returned for a fifth time was its good record, a plan for the future and Labor's lack of experience.
"If you believe that Australia is heading in the right direction, don't put that at risk by changing the Government," he said.
In his speech, Mr Howard made no reference to the planned leadership handover to Treasurer Peter Costello if the Government was returned, but when asked he said there would be no major changes.
"There won't be fundamental differences, he will bring a different style because he's a different man," Mr Howard told the audience.
During yesterday's interview, Mr Howard said he still thought the Coalition could win, that he could retain his own seat of Bennelong and that his Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull would retain his seat of Wentworth.

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Time to think about the future

Editorial, The Australian Your Say Blog November 23, 2007 29 Comments

BLESSED with resources at a unique time in history, as two billion people are making the transition from poverty to affluence, Australia has the great luxury of being able to consider what pathway its destiny should take. We can be confident that whoever wins tomorrow’s election, the nation’s immediate economic wellbeing is assured. But, as the Pacific century gathers pace, a rare opportunity exists to harness an almost limitless potential presented by our geographic location and well-earned reputation as a reliable supplier and good global citizen. The choice now on offer is to continue to manage our prosperity well and with caution or to utilise it in a way that maximises our claim to the future and better provides for the generations to come.
John Howard came to office in 1996 at a time when many in the community had reform fatigue after 13 years of Labor trying to modernise the Australian economy to meet the demands of globalisation. As well as having to cope with high interest rates and a recession, many voters had become disconnected from the progressive social agenda and historical revisionism adopted by Paul Keating. In short, Mr Keating had got too far ahead of the Australian mainstream. Mr Howard promised voters a more relaxed and comfortable life.
Mr Rudd, by contrast, has offered himself as a man of the future. Mandarin-speaking and married to a very successful businesswoman, Mr Rudd has campaigned to help take Australia into the 21st century, offering to provide the infrastructure and tools to complete the transition into the digital age. This includes a national high-speed broadband network and computer resources for every secondary school.
Having presided over a period of uninterrupted economic expansion, Mr Howard is now accused of being reform-shy, at least by this newspaper and the business community, and increasingly behind the mainstream on the issues that have a building sense of urgency, such as climate change. Mr Howard has made a big effort to catch up. He has declared himself to be a climate change realist and, after years of rejecting symbolism, has announced plans for a referendum to recognise Aboriginal Australians as the nation’s first inhabitants in the preamble to the Constitution. Mr Howard is asking voters for the opportunity to complete reforms such as a commonwealth takeover of responsibility for the Murray Darling Basin and the intervention to protect children and lift living standards in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. Other reform plans, such as the takeover of a single hospital in Tasmania and the creation of local hospital boards, appear to be poorly thought through and a reaction to what is being offered by Mr Rudd. The core of Mr Howard’s campaign is the promise of consistency in economic management and a continuation of big government that redistributes rising prosperity while promoting individual choice. Mr Howard has offered $34billion worth of across-the-board tax cuts, higher pension and carer payments, tax deductibility for education expenses, including school fees, and tax incentives for anyone saving to buy a first home.
Mr Rudd has trimmed the tax cuts to $31 billion, deferring cuts to the top rate, and pledged to increase the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50per cent. He has offered similar tax incentives to Mr Howard for education and first-home ownership. To boost his credentials as a candidate for the future, Mr Rudd has made building a high-speed broadband network and the provision of a computer to all senior high school students a centrepiece of his campaign. On climate change, Mr Rudd has promised the largely symbolic gesture of ratifying the Kyoto protocol but mirrored the Government’s core position that any post-Kyoto agreement must include China and India. He has promised a carrot-and-stick approach to forcing state governments to improve health services or lose responsibility for them and a razor gang to cut the fat from what he says is a bloated public service.
The Australian is particularly interested in Mr Rudd’s desire to modernise the federation, something for which we have long campaigned. The evidence is, with the recent exception of water, Mr Howard and Mr Costello have not really shown much interest. Mr Rudd claims his background as a senior public servant with the Goss government in Queensland and the network of state Labor administrations will be an advantage to his reform plans. Mr Howard is keen to portray wall-to-wall Labor as a great threat.
Mr Howard is being challenged because many believe he went too far with the Work Choices industrial relations reforms, the culmination of a 25-year passion to improve workplace flexibility. We have always supported the Government’s IR policy and believe it has been badly misrepresented by Labor in a big-spending campaign funded in part by a trade union movement fighting for its own survival.
If he wins, Mr Rudd must deal with the high expectations of the union movement. This remains our biggest reservation about the possibility of a Labor government. Mr Rudd says unions will get no special treatment from him and we would expect him to honour his word. More than anything, we would wish Mr Rudd to be a true reformer for Labor in the mould of former British prime minister Tony Blair. On balance, we think the introduction of a fairness test has weakened the reform credentials of Mr Howard’s Work Choices package, which was designed to keep pressure off wages and improve workplace flexibility. On the other side, Mr Rudd has successfully moved his party towards the centre on IR, agreeing to keep individual contracts for high-paid workers and limit the influence of unions. The big difference is Labor’s plan to return unfair dismissal laws for small business, which could have a negative impact on employment growth.
While we are mindful of the economic dangers posed by a resurgent trade union movement, we do not believe Mr Rudd poses an obvious threat to Australia’s financial wellbeing. We are encouraged by his determination to pick his own cabinet.
Despite opinion polls consistently giving the contest to Mr Rudd, the outcome of tomorrow’s election is by no means certain. It would be very unusual for Australia to turn its back on such as successful Prime Minister during such prosperous times. The latest polling, both Galaxy and Newspoll (which was still polling last night), shows the Coalition is coming home strongly and the contest is likely to be tight. If Mr Howard wins, Australia will continue to be well served. We have never accepted the leftist critique that Mr Howard has made Australia a divided, nasty and selfish society. The statistics on wealth distribution and workforce participation prove the opposite to the true.
Mr Howard is offering a safe pair of hands but, in reality, they are not his own. His campaign has been weakened by mixed messages about economic growth and turbulence as well as confusion over the handover to Mr Costello some time in the next term.
Mr Rudd’s attention to process, including a determination to push ahead with plans to improve the living conditions of indigenous Australians, is impressive. So too is his pledge to make sure his ministers and bureaucrats keep in touch by meeting regularly outside of Canberra.
The Australian has been portrayed by many people as an unquestioning supporter of the Howard Government. The truth is we exposed the children overboard affair, we pursued the Government over AWB, we argued passionately for tax reform, to the annoyance of Mr Costello. We exposed the weakness of the case against terror suspect Mohamed Haneef and were vocal about Mr Costello’s ill-advised appointment of businessman Robert Gerard to the Reserve Bank board.
The truth is we are not so interested in one side of politics or the other. We advocate a set of principles that have motivated us for 40 years: an open economy, markets, international engagement, reform of the federation and labour market deregulation. With the caveat of industrial relations, Mr Rudd shares many of our reform ideals. We believe it is a new century and that Australia deserves a leader who reflects Australia’s character and position in a rapidly changing world and fast-growing region.
As Australia’s economic centre of gravity shifts north to reflect the mining boom and the rise of Asia, it is fitting that the new Labor leader comes from Queensland. We believe this is a great advantage. ALP leaders from Queensland and Western Australia, more than the southeast of the nation, are attuned to the concerns and aspirations of middle Australia. We believe the incumbent Government has been a good manager but has not done much with the prosperity with which the nation has been blessed during its watch. Mr Howard and his team have a proven track record but, to us, they have run out of energy. Their campaign is a signal of their torpor. Mr Rudd has spoken of recapturing some of the reform zeal of the Hawke and Keating years, the economic benefits of which are still being felt. There is much detail missing from Mr Rudd’s promised reform revolution, especially in education and health, but we believe he has the administrative experience to manage constructive change. We recognise that no change is free of risk, but we recommend a vote for Mr Rudd.

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When the luck finally runs out

Robert Manne, The Age, November 23, 2007

UNLESS scores of astonishingly consistent opinion polls have been systematically misleading, tomorrow the Howard Government will be voted out. How will historians judge it?
Not every judgement will be negative. Even though foreign and personal debt are at record levels, the nation is far wealthier than ever in its history. The Howard Government will be praised for its part in creating the conditions for non-inflationary growth, with low levels of unemployment, but without dismantling the basic pillars of the welfare state. It will also be praised for introducing the GST and using this new tax to finance the states; for introducing effective gun control; and, despite early missteps, for helping East Timor gain its independence.
Compared to the harm it has done to Australia, however, all this will seem relatively trivial. Stimulated by the Hansonite movement, from 1996 the Howard Government has waged a protracted culture war against what it called "political correctness". As part of this war, the Government turned its back on the aspiration that had been embraced by every government from Whitlam to Keating via Fraser — to build a multicultural society in Australia. It did not fight against the Hanson attempt to make "Asians" feel unwelcome in Australia. Following September 11, the rhetoric of Howard Government ministers, which challenged Muslims to prove their loyalty, succeeded in marginalising patriotic citizens. In its desperate eleventh hour, it cast a slur on the Sudanese refugees brought to this country.
The abandonment of multiculturalism was paralleled by the attempt of the Howard Government to deny the moral meaning of the indigenous dispossession. It refused to apologise to the thousands of Aborigines who had been removed, as children, from their mothers and communities. It destroyed the prospect of a symbolic act of reconciliation at the centenary of Federation. The Prime Minister personally encouraged a new denialist school of history, pioneered by Keith Windschuttle.
The abandonment of both the aspiration for multiculturalism and the quest for reconciliation had no direct electoral impact. The Government's callous treatment of asylum seekers, fleeing from the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, did.
At first, using Labor's dangerous mandatory detention legacy, the Howard Government imprisoned these refugees for indefinite periods in appalling desert camps. With the arrival of the Tampa at Christmas Island, in late August 2001, it decided on an even more brutal strategy — to use military force to drive all asylum seekers away. To legitimise its cruelty, the Government let the people believe a lie: that the Iraqi refugees had thrown their own children into the ocean. In the long term, mendacity and a carnal desire for power at almost any cost became the trademarks of the Government. In the short term, "border control" hysteria helped Howard win the November 2001 election.

Tampa was the defining political moment in the history of the Howard Government. Labor was destabilised. Pauline Hanson's One Nation lost its purpose. By now a new kind of political culture had crystallised — populist conservatism. For years, it was exploited by the Howard Government exceedingly well.
John Howard was in Washington on September 11. He made two decisions that dominated the second half of his prime ministership and will determine his reputation.
Howard signed a blank cheque in favour of the United States in its war on terror. As a consequence, Australia followed the US into Iraq, without UN approval and on the basis of false intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction. Catastrophe has descended — the deaths of hundreds of thousands; the flight of millions; the preparation for religious civil war; the battle-hardening of a new generation of al-Qaeda militants. Iraq was the worst foreign policy blunder of any Australian government.
On September 10, Howard was offered a choice by President Bush: to go with Europe on climate change or to support the US in opposition to binding national carbon emission targets and the Kyoto Treaty. Howard chose to follow the US on global warming, wherever it might go.
Unprecedented international co-operation is the only chance humanity now has for avoiding real disaster. Just as Western governments of the 1930s are now judged over their response to the Nazi threat, so will today's be judged by whether they have risen to the challenge of global warming. Of all Western governments, Bush's America and Howard's Australia — both of which believe that climate change can be combated by voluntary national emissions targets and yet-to-be-discovered technological miracles — will be seen by history as the most blind, reckless and delinquent.
For the past 12 months the Howard Government has been staring at defeat. There are three main reasons. Australia was now in the grip of a ferocious drought, without apparent end. For many Australians this has personalised the seriousness of the climate crisis and the astonishing folly of the Howard Government, for which, until the day before yesterday, global warming denialism — where "the jury was still out" and where "something would turn up" — had been the dominant form of daydream.
In July 2005, the Howard Government took control of the Senate. Getting what it most desired provided the foundation for impending defeat. The Government now introduced to an unsuspecting public, radical "WorkChoices" legislation. Even the name was offensive. As Australia is not America, and as Australians have no wish for it to be, this new law proved a godsend for Labor. Citizens might trust government rhetoric on issues remote from their own lives, such as asylum seekers. They did not need to rely on trust on things personally experienced, such as exploitation in an unequal workplace.
In December 2006, Kevin Rudd took over the leadership of the Labor Party. His combination of ambition, energy and comparative youth; acute political judgement and instinct; natural social conservatism; steady vision, at once generous and modernising; obvious but non-condescending intelligence; and considerable personal charm, made him the most attractive and electable Labor leader since Bob Hawke. With Rudd's arrival, Howard's political luck had finally run out.

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As one leader shows he's rattled, another remains an enigma

The Age, Michelle Grattan, November 23, 2007

THAT the Coalition apparently stands on the brink of defeat at tomorrow's election is an extraordinary indictment of John Howard.
This Prime Minister has been the overwhelming driving force in his Government and, if the Coalition is swept away, as the polls are suggesting, he will have to shoulder most of the blame personally.
He has made bad decisions this term, ranging from WorkChoices to his refusal to retire. After many years of warning against hubris he has succumbed to it. And he has run a poor campaign.
The seeds of a loss — if the polls carry through to election day — were sown in the glory of 2004's great victory. Be careful of what you wish for, the old saying goes. Howard wished for untrammelled power, a Senate that would not obstruct. When he unexpectedly got it, he promised "we're not going to allow this to go to our head" — but it did. The Government became more arrogant. The PM stepped up the culture wars, the history wars, even the Australian contribution to the Iraq war.
Most dangerously for itself, the Government intensified the industrial relations war. It was not surprising — and perfectly reasonable — that it would use its Senate majority to prosecute more workplace reform. It was, however, a major misjudgement to bring in measures that would be seen as excessively harsh, so much so that the Government itself belatedly had to put in a "fairness" test.
Industrial relations was the lever that Labor and the cashed-up union movement, fighting for its life, used to weaken the Coalition's connection to the electorate. The Coalition became a victim of its own policy greed.
The Government's weakness has been what started as its greatest strength. Howard lost his sense of proportion, about policy and what he personally was able to do. In earlier days he knew better how much he could get away with; he also had larger political capital for a few gambles. More recently he has been badly advised, and hasn't taken what good advice presumably also came to him.
Not only did he personally hang on too long; he delayed calling the election when common sense screamed that he should have gone weeks earlier. If there was an interest rate rise looming, although not certain, why would you risk waiting?
In the campaign, the Coalition made more, and more damaging, mistakes than Labor. The Opposition had Peter Garrett's big mouth; the Government had the leak of Malcolm Turnbull's unheeded advice to sign Kyoto, and Tony Abbott's multiple gaffes. Anyone would have thought Howard, after the criticism of his excessive spending in the 2004 "launch", would have avoided a repeat. But he spent even more this launch, received a worse beating, and left himself wide open to Rudd cleverly under-spending him. Local Liberals' attempted fit-up of Labor with a fake leaflet in Lindsay, which said Labor wanted the Bali bombers forgiven, was the cap on this blighted campaign.

In the final desperate days, Howard is repeating the Paul Keating pitch of 1996 — a change of government would mean a change of direction for the country. Howard argues that there is a difference between 2007 and 1996 — that people now are not dissatisfied with the country's direction.
Howard's right that there is not the anger of 1996, and his personal ratings remain high. But he underestimates the extent to which people want to move on from his era. Governments can have use-by dates even when they are managing the economy quite well. The power of the new is a factor in politics as much as in other aspects of modern life.
Today's Age/Nielsen poll points to a strong win for a Rudd government but Howard yesterday declared he could still get home. Earlier he was more inclined to seek underdog status, but now he seeks to claim the life force of a winner.
In elections, of course, strange things happen at the end and poll results can err. The Nielsen poll suggests it is unlikely Howard could hang on — Galaxy is closer — but in 1999 the election day story, based on polling, said Jeff Kennett was heading to a third landslide. In 1998 Howard got a majority of seats but a minority of votes. It would be fascinating if Howard pulled this election out of the fire: given what seems the strong national mood for change, the Government could be faced with a resentful, sullen electorate.
Rudd has surprised almost everyone with how effective he has been as Leader of the Opposition. Politics, however, is one endless test — leaders can't rest on their laurels for long. If Rudd does win, he will have huge authority in his party and he has indicated he will use that to break with Labor tradition to personally choose his front bench. It will be his first challenge.
Beyond that, Rudd would use his authority to impose his policy line. As time goes on this would test his political management skills. The party has given him free rein for the sake of trying to get to power; once the intoxication of the honeymoon has worn off, competing interests would reassert themselves.
We have seen, in the postwar period, two changes to a Labor government. The Whitlam one arrived with every i dotted and t crossed on its policies — and did not translate into office very well although it left some enduring legacies. The Hawke government, in contrast, was more flexible and performed impressively.
We knew a great deal more about Whitlam and Hawke before they were elected than we do about Rudd. On the other side of the fence, Howard was a known quantity when he won. Despite all the talk, it is still hard to draw, in one's mind's eye, anything but a crayon sketch of "Kevin Rudd PM". That's one reason why, if Rudd wins tomorrow, what follows will be something of an adventure.

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The right man for the times, Kevin Rudd

Editorial, The Daily Telegraph, November 23, 2007 12:00am

THIS is an unusual editorial in that it praises the leadership and legacy of our current prime minister - and calls for him to be thrown out of office.
The Daily Telegraph believes Kevin Rudd should be the next Prime Minister of Australia.
We believe Australia has been lucky to have been led by John Howard for the past 11 years.
But we now believe Mr Howard has reached his use-by date - if for no other reason than he almost believes it himself.
Our three-year Federal terms are short enough without a candidate for Prime Minister making a vague promise to walk away at half-way through.
The 18-month to two year construction Mr Howard has put on his departure is, bluntly, an insult to the voters' collective intelligence.
We agree in part with the argument that Mr Howard has shown more honesty than Bob Carr, Peter Beattie, Steve Bracks or Geoff Gallop.
But if you intend to do something unacceptable, letting people know up-front does not somehow render it acceptable.
He simply does not look like a man who has his heart in it any more. We say that more in sorrow than in anger. It is a pity that after more than a decade of energetic reform and strong leadership, he goes to an election which, in retrospect, he will probably admit he should not have contested.
We believe it is totally unacceptable for Peter Costello to waltz into the prime ministership. It is not the job of John Howard to make Peter Costello prime minister. It is the right of the Australian people to elect him.
It is an insulting argument that the people can this Saturday exercise a vote by default for Peter Costello to inherit the job during the term.
On its recent, ill-disciplined form, the Liberals are not in a position to guarantee anything.
His vague future and confusion over future Liberal structure, informs our conviction a vote for Kevin Rudd is a vote for certainty and unity.
Certainty and unity are not of themselves the basis of a cogent argument for change. Oppositions must provide a compelling alternative. We believe Kevin Rudd has done so.
In 12 months, Mr Rudd has achieved tremendous policy discipline across the ALP. Measures which previously would have drawn condemnation from Labor's Left, such as the Aboriginal intervention strategy, have won bi-partisan support.
More importantly, and with the able assistance of Shadow Treasurer Wayne Swan, Mr Rudd has given reassurances Labor will maintain the prudent economic path charted by the Coalition. If they don't, they will be gone in one term.
We were heartened that Labor abandoned its former oppositionism and backed the $31 billion in tax cuts - relief which, given vast returns from the minerals boom, should be viewed as the beginning of ongoing tax reductions. We welcome plans to reform the public sector.
Industrial relations remains Labor's weakness. Kevin Rudd must show that, with 70 per cent of his frontbenchers being unionists, it is he who is leading the party - not the other way around.
That said, Mr Rudd has shifted Labor someways towards the centre on industrial reform. He has ousted labour movement thugs. While unconvinced as to the claimed evil of AWAs, we are impressed Mr Rudd stared down calls to completely reverse Workchoices, maintaining the blueprint's most important limits on union power.
Most impressive of all is that Kevin Rudd has embraced new thinking and championed new ideas, which appears alien to John Howard.
This election can really be summarised as the tale of two campaign launches. Where John Howard looked flat and pessimistic, Kevin Rudd looked fresh and optimistic.
Thousands of families are excited by the idea of a prime minister who passionately advocates IT as the cornerstone of learning, who will make Canberra the enabler of a long-overdue solution for high-speed broadband access throughout the suburbs and towns. It is not gimmickry. It is vital.
It is not faddish to acknowledge the reality of climate change. This week, 250 of the world's leading scientists delivered a sober account of its implications. While the Kyoto Protocols are imperfect, Kevin Rudd is right to argue that signing the agreement is a vital first step .
John Howard was the right man for his times. He has been a great economic manager, he has stood up on national security, he mourned with us through the Bali attacks, through flood, drought and fire. But he clearly no longer wants to go the distance, failed to spell out a three-year vision, and he does not deserve a lap of honour.
Kevin Rudd has shown discipline. He has campaigned with enthusiasm, ideas and energy. We believe that Kevin Rudd is the right man for these times.

The moral compass of John Winston Howard

2007-11-21T12:07:00.000-08:00

A chance to rebuild, after a decade of moral erosion

Paul Keating, November 22, 2007, The Age

The principal reason the public should take the opportunity to kill off the Howard Government has less to do with broken promises on interest rates or even its draconian Work Choices industrial laws, and everything to do with restoring a moral basis to our public life.
Without this, the nation has no standard to rely upon, no claim that can be believed, not even when the grave step of going to war is being considered. When truth is up for grabs, everything is up for grabs.
Cynicism and deceitfulness have been the defining characteristics of John Howard and his Government. They were even brazen enough to oversee the corruption of a United Nations welfare program. And when they were found out, not one of them accepted ministerial responsibility. Not Alexander Downer, not Mark Vaile and certainly not Howard. What they were doing was letting the cockies get their wheat sold through the AWB, while turning a blind eye to the AWB's unscrupulous behaviour - illegally funding a regime Howard was arguing was so bad it had to be changed by force.
Howard took us into the disastrous Gulf War on the back of two lies. One, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, capable of threatening the Middle East and Western Europe; the other, that Howard was judiciously weighing whether to commit Australian forces against an evolving situation. We now know he had committed our forces to the Americans all along.
If the Prime Minister cannot be believed, who in the political system is to be believed?
When Opposition leader in 1995, Howard told us he would restore trust in government, when at that time trust in government was not in question. He also told us he would make us more "relaxed and comfortable". Well, some relaxation and some comfort. These days, there are many parts of the world where Australians dare not go. Something new for all of us.
But bad as all this is, how much worse was it for Howard to begin the fracturing of his own community?
His tacit endorsement of Pauline Hanson's racism during his first government, his WASP-divined jihad against refugees; those wretched individuals who had enough faith in us to try and reach us in old tubs, while his wicked detention policy was presided over by that other psalm singer, Philip Ruddock.
This is the John Howard the press gallery in Canberra went out of its way to sell to the public during 1995. The new-made person on immigration, not the old suburban, picket-fence racist of the 1980s, no, the enlightened unifier who now accepted Australia's ethnic diversity; the Opposition leader who was going to maintain Keating Labor's social policies on industrial relations, on superannuation at 15 per cent, on reconciliation, on native title, and on the unique labour market programs for the unemployed.

These solemn commitments by Howard, which helped him win the 1996 election, bit the dust under that breathtaking blanket of hypocrisy he labelled "non-core promises".
Even on Medicare. And on that, contrary to his commitment, he forced each of us into private health or carry the consequences.
During the 1996 election campaign, a number of people I regard well said to me "Oh, I think Howard will be all right"; meaning, while not progressive, he would not be reactionary or socially divisive, or opportunistically amoral.
Well Howard wasn't "all right". He has turned out to be the most divisive prime minister in our history. Not simply a conservative maintaining the status quo, but a militant reactionary bent upon turning the clock back. Turning it back against social inclusion, cooperation at the workplace, the alignment of our foreign policies towards Asia, providing a truthful and honourable basis for our reconciliation, accepting the notion that all prime ministers since Menzies had: Holt, Gorton, McMahon, Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and me: that our ethnic diversity had made us better and stronger and the nation's leitmotif was tolerance. Howard has trodden those values into the ground.
He also trod on the reasonable constitutional progression to an Australian republic, even when the proposal I championed had everything about it that the Liberal Party could accept. A president appointed by both houses of Parliament; meaning by both major parties, while leaving the reserve powers with the new head of state as the Liberals had always wanted. The price of Howard conniving in its defeat probably means we will ultimately end up with an elected head of state, completely changing the representative nature of power and of the prime ministership and of the cabinet.
To compound Howard's transgressions, he has run dead on the continuing obligation of structural economic change, just like he did as treasurer in the 1970s.
He and Costello have simply made hay while the sun has shone from the great structural reforms introduced by the Hawke and Keating governments. Those changes: open financial and product markets, the new decentralised wages system of 1993, were married up with a trillion dollars in superannuation savings, to underwrite the country's prosperity and renew its economic base.
Howard's sole example of reform is his GST. The one he told us in 1996 he would not give us. A regressive tax on all spending regardless of income.
Nations get a chance to change course every now and then. When things become errant, a wise country adjusts its direction. It understands that it is being granted an appointment with history. On this coming Saturday, this country should take that opportunity by driving a stake through the dark heart of Howard's reactionary government.

Paul Keating was prime minister from 1991 to 1996, and treasurer from 1983 to 1991.

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New boat, new election, no politicking

Michelle Grattan, The Age, November 22, 2007

Rudd as the new Gough, more IR laws - this campaign already has its scare issues. Boat people won't be one.
HISTORY repeats itself endlessly and ever differently. Who would have thought that six years after the Government won an election partly on the back of the appalling "children overboard" affair, a group of people in a leaky boat would pop up in the last week of the 2007 campaign?
And that, once again, some of them and Navy personnel would end up in the drink? But not, this time (at least so far), amid wild, inaccurate and mean-spirited accusations from the Government.
In 2001, John Howard and his ministers exploited the issue shamelessly. Labor, despite all its efforts to avoid ensnarement, was wedged.
Now Government, Opposition, military and public servants are being extremely careful. Everyone, even the Coalition — albeit belatedly — was eventually burned by what happened in 2001. Reputations were broken, politicians discredited, public servants compromised, the military put in a dreadful position. Even those players who won votes paid a price. Some of the pent-up criticism of John Howard from the small-l-liberal section of the community is a legacy of Tampa and everything in the months that followed. The whole saga left a terrible stain on the body politic.
With the 16 Indonesian-speaking men, women and children on a Navy ship bound for Christmas Island, and nothing much known of who they are or what they want, the Government is aware any attempt to score points from this incident could backfire badly.
Ministers were low-key or silent yesterday. Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, a glutton for publicity, put out a statement but kept away from the TV cameras; Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews was silent.
Nor does Labor want a wildcard boat people issue. It is rusted on to its message, which doesn't include too much about boat people. It would change some aspects of policy but within the framework of maintaining a strong deterrence.
Kevin Rudd said yesterday: "Our principle is clear-cut: we stand for an orderly immigration system and we believe that we must always have vigilant laws when it comes to people-smuggling." He reaffirmed that a Labor Government would put an end to the Pacific solution as soon as possible (the precise timing seems to depend on what contracts Australia has). The huge taxpayer-funded 800-bed facility on Christmas Island should be used instead, Rudd said. When pressed on whether a Rudd government would let into Australia a group of Sri Lankan refugees now on Nauru, he fudged the answer.

There was another player in the latest boat incident yesterday, the Maritime Union of Australia. It had members on the Jabiru Venture, an oil tanker owned by a Perth-based resources company which spotted the leaky boat at 9.30am on Tuesday, and summoned the Navy.
The MUA has a long memory and issues with the Government going back to the waterfront battle of 1998. In an election campaign that is much about unions, this union is having its minor moment of revenge. The sailors were happy to talk, recounting how their company told them not to pick up the people. They were very willing to speculate that this had to do with the immigration law.
With the odd exceptions, including these 16, boat people have disappeared in reality and as an issue. The Government would say that's a result of its policies — that the stream of people stopped because its tough "Pacific solution".
There are plenty of scares being drummed up in this campaign — ranging from the Liberals claim that Kevin Rudd would be the new Gough Whitlam to Labor's assertion that Peter Costello would have new work laws in the drawer.
But the scares are not about national security. In fact, national security — whether terrorism or border security — is not much on people's minds. Politics has moved right on.

It's about redemption, stupid.

2007-11-21T04:34:00.000-08:00

Australians have a chance to prove they're not all that bad

The Age, Catherine Deveny, November 21, 2007

We could go down in history as greedy, gullible, mean-spirited, selfish, short-sighted and tight-fisted, writes Catherine Deveny.

WHEN you find yourself at the ballot box on Saturday, remember, my friends, that this is a rare opportunity to make a difference to the soul of Australia.
Our participation in public life is limited to five minutes every three years and an election like this only comes about once in a lifetime. In four days you will have an impact on the history and the direction of our country. Your vote will affect people who haven't even been born yet. You'll have an opportunity to stand up and say, "We're better than this." Braver than this. Smarter than this. And more compassionate than this. And bigger than this. We are not afraid of the future. We are shamed by our recent past. But united by the possibility of the future. And hope.
This election is an intelligence test. A test to prove we can see past the spin, the dog whistles, the short-sighted rhetoric, the scare campaigns, the pork-barrelling and the fearmongering. A test to show that we are smarter than the Government gives us credit for.
If we do not seize this opportunity for change we will go down in history as the most greedy, gullible, mean-spirited, selfish, short-sighted, tight-fisted generation in the history of Australia. How will it feel sitting in front of that $5000 plasma TV watching reruns of American reality shows, wearing clothes manufactured in a sweat shop and sitting on a sofa made by Third World slaves? How will that feel when our public education and hospitals have been gutted and our environment corroded to a point of no return? How will it feel knowing we have turned our back on people who need us most: the poor, the broken, the scared, the sick, the elderly and the vulnerable? How will it feel when you turn to your children and say, "I believed him"?
On Saturday, you can prove that what is in your heart and on your conscience is more important than what's in your hip pocket. You'll be able to say to your grandchildren that you voted for better. You voted for truth. You voted for imagination. You voted for all of us, not just for the white middle-class working families who have never had it so good.
Our family has never been better off because we are one of those white middle-class working families.
But not all of us are working. We are not all white. We do not all speak English. We are not all heterosexual. And we are not all families. But we all deserve a life of dignity, peace and fairness.

I don't have to imagine how it feels to be an outsider. I know. I know how it feels to be a child and have our home sold from under us. I know how it feels to live with parents crushed by poverty and paralysed by hopelessness. I know how it feels when you can't afford to go to camp and instead have to wave the bus goodbye. I know how it feels to know that you are poor.
But like many people from the working classes, I also know how it feels to be given a chance. And the thrill of achievement beyond your wildest expectations. To live the better life for which our families courageously fled poverty, war, persecution and famine.
Opportunity is created only through vision, tolerance, acceptance and imagination. I was the first person in my family to graduate from university. And many have followed since. At the time it seemed as though the club was being dismantled, but this Government has almost finished building a new clubhouse. And this one is surrounded by razor wire, security guards and X-ray machines.
This election is a gift. Look back at the past 11 years and imagine the next decade as more of the same. The divides becoming wider, the damage becoming irreversible and the lies and deceit in politics becoming normal.
On Saturday you will have a rare opportunity to prove to our past, to our present and to our future that we are better than this. And we are not stupid enough to swallow the short way round but the long way home. At my grade 6 graduation, I stood side by side with Greeks, Yugoslavs, Macedonians, Poles, Italians and Maltese and we sang: "I'm as Greek as a Souvlaki, I'm as Irish as a stew, I'm as Italian as spaghetti, I'm as Danish as a blue, I'm as German as a dumpling, Middle Eastern as a lamb. I'm an Aussie, yes I'm an Aussie, yes I am."
And we believed it.
Over the past 11 years, I have lost faith in the Australian people. I've felt shame at the spin they have swallowed, the politicians they have believed and the values they have embraced. I'm horrified at how politicians have chosen to lead our country using fear over faith, greed over bounty and us and them over we. I just hope I am not alone. There's plenty for all of us.

If government changes, so does nation - (Amen)

2007-11-20T14:10:00.000-08:00

Paul Kelly, Editor-at-large November 21, 2007 The Australian

IN his final-week interview with this newspaper John Howard has belled the cat, warning against the new political era Australia confronts if Labor wins the election. Howard's scare tactic is reminiscent of Paul Keating's dictum that "you change your government, you change your country".
From the moment he entered politics, Kevin Rudd wanted to make a difference. His chance is imminent. Despite his clever me-tooism Rudd, an ambitious and single-minded leader, intends to make a difference to Australia if he prevails. Rudd will change the nation and nobody should expect anything less of a new prime minister. The magnitude of Labor's potential supremacy may be unprecedented. This was the foundation for Howard's final-week wake-up call.
His sketch of the Rudd era, if it comes, is Labor control of the House of Representatives, a Labor-Greens majority in the Senate, coast-to-coast Labor governments in the states and federally, and a Labor-trade union alliance to rewrite our industrial relations laws from top to bottom.
This portrait is not just a Howard scare. It is a realistic result from the election if the polls are vindicated. Howard calls this system "the least checked and balanced political distribution in the history of the country". This may become the crucial prophecy from campaign 2007, with Labor's supremacy comprehensive.
What Howard did not concede, though he knows, is that Liberal Party weakness across the nation is assisting Labor to such dominance. The accumulation of such political power would constitute a historic test of Labor's values, policy and character. The nature of that test is new because Australia has changed in basic ways since 1996, when Labor last governed, and the policy agenda has evolved dramatically. If Labor wins, it is Rudd who will put his stamp on Australia's future in four critical dimensions.
First, it would be Rudd Labor that finalises Australia's industrial relations settlement for the open economy of the new century, contrary to all expectations in 1996 that Howard's side would complete this process. Howard's 2005 Work Choices reform is a contested framework that has provoked a political backlash and that Labor is sworn to revise. Rudd's mandate for IR change will be unquestioned. The test for Rudd Labor is how it uses this power: whether it privileges unions and organised labour, thereby damaging Australia long term in the globalised age, or whether it strikes a superior balance to Howard's.
Howard warns his defeat means the non-Labor side will never again attempt industrial reform.
Its new folklore will be to avoid forever Howard's fate. Despite the melodrama, this is a realistic interpretation. The Liberal Party will surrender its last claim on decisively shaping the industrial relations system. That opportunity and responsibility will reside with Rudd, Julia Gillard and trade union influence.
Second, it would fall to Rudd Labor to devise Australia's institutional response to climate change. It will be the key policy innovation of the next decade. Because the debate about pricing carbon and cutting emissions has been so chaotic, Rudd faces a huge challenge to harmonise the politics with the policy.
Howard's misjudgment on climate change, perhaps his most serious domestic mistake, delivers this initiative to Labor. But this imposes a new historic responsibility on the ALP.
So far Labor is split between a market-based emissions trading response and a series of government-directed clean energy initiatives. The issue will demand, ultimately, a philosophical response from Rudd: whether to rely on the market or state planning. He had the wisdom to ask Ross Garnaut, an architect of the 1980s pro-market reforms, to provide Labor with the blueprint.
This reveals Rudd's own instincts. But the politics will be difficult, with the green lobby demanding evidence of industry shutdowns and state mandating of clean energy sources. Howard warns about the risks of a Labor-Greens alliance. The reality, however, is that Rudd must establish Labor's climate change framework on an entirely separate basis from the Greens and anchored in a national interest context.
Third, Rudd's mission is to take economic reform into areas where Howard has been ineffective.
With more reforms tied to commonwealth-state relations and given his own experience with the Goss government, Rudd's task is to use the Council of Australian Governments more effectively.
He tends to call this "fixing the Federation", an unfortunately lofty phrase that defies realisation.
The risk is that Rudd's economic agenda, by definition, is hostage to state ALP governments. The worst among them reject market pricing, privatisation and competition policy. Fiscal bribery may help at the margins.
While Howard slams the states as reform failures, Rudd is pledged to convert them as part of his solution, though on hospitals he threatens a federal financial takeover down the track. If the Hawke-Keating era was shaped by the Accord with the union movement, Rudd's may be shaped by COAG with the states, a prospect enough to frighten many political veterans. The line is drawn. Rudd declares this era of Labor supremacy will result in superior economic dividends arising from better federal arrangements that will expose Howard's failures.
The fourth area where Rudd promises to change the nation is his education revolution. In the campaign his passion has not been backed by dollars. But Rudd repeats the revolutionary goal: to make Australia's the best educated and skilled workforce in the world. It demands a huge financial reallocation through time, combined with better policy, notably towards universities. So far there is little evidence of any policy innovation.
On education, Howard warns that a nationwide Labor supremacy cannot deliver because Labor remains culturally and organisationally tied to the progressive Left, whose power base is the producer side of the education system. It is one of Howard's deepest articles of faith. And its validity will be tested by any Rudd government.
Howard sees election 2007 as a contest between values. His disappointment, surely, must be that this alleged contest of values has not won prominence. This is because Rudd denied it as a tactic and as a policy. Rudd decided he would not be wedged by Howard on cultural issues. On education, Rudd presents as a practical realist seeking better investments tied to better outcomes.
This raises a wider issue about a Rudd government: its stance on values and culture. As Howard shows, the leader's character is fundamental to projection of values. Expect from Rudd a new national direction, a path that is distinctive, that is neither Howard's conservatism nor Labor's progressive left but falls between them.

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Handover show a sure sign party is out of control

The Australian Spin Cycle Blog November 21, 2007 0 Comments

JOHN Howard’s decision to revisit the leadership question in the dying days of the election campaign must stand as the clearest symbol yet that the Liberal campaign is careering out of control.
Time and again, when the leadership is raised, it is the Prime Minister who puts the issue on the table.
To raise it again now as a campaign theme begs the question, does Howard have a guilty conscience?
Monday’s Today Tonight interview told the story: Howard and Peter Costello insisting they were mates and the PM predicting a handover without a challenge, as the Treasurer sat, slightly incredulous.
After years of thwarting Costello’s ambitions with a field of candidates, Howard’s final act looks like an attempt to put together some sort of party agreement that he will not have to fight for the leadership.
But a fight is exactly what the Treasurer needs.
Costello, the most powerful parliamentary performer of the Howard years, will be crucified on the floor of the House of Representatives for the rest of his career for his failure to tackle the Prime Minister.
If the Coalition loses, the Labor Party will show no mercy. And the question of whether things could have been different if Costello had worked harder to challenge Howard will haunt him.
History will judge Howard, a fact weighing on his mind. But it will also judge Costello over his failure to act. As Kim Beazley’s ascension to the leadership in 1996 so tragically illustrates, delivering the leadership on a platter does no one any favours.
Malcolm Turnbull and Alexander Downer were yesterday rolled out to confirm Costello would be given a clear run. What sort of message is that: talking about who will take over on the eve of an election?
Costello must have known Howard would only relinquish power when there was nothing left to give.

You're being too kind Bob, most would say he's a downright LIAR

2007-11-20T14:00:00.000-08:00

The PM continues to misrepresent the truth. He must go

Bob Hawke. November 21, 2007 The Age

JOHN Howard has advanced three arguments why you should not vote Labor, each one based on a gross misrepresentation of the truth. I will now demolish those arguments, not with opinions but with facts.
First, the trade union bogy. Every working Australian, and those dependent on them, is indebted to the trade union movement. Everything they take for granted that largely makes up their standard and quality of living — their pay structure, paid annual leave, long-service leave, sick leave, penalty rates, equal pay — was fought for and won by the trade union movement.
I can speak with authority on this because for many years I presented before the national Arbitration Tribunal the union case for improvements in wages and conditions. On every occasion when I walked into the court I was confronted with an array of bewigged senior counsel representing the Coalition governments in the states and Canberra, lined up with the employer organisations, to oppose the improvements that trade unions were fighting to obtain for working Australians.
So whose advertisements on industrial relations and WorkChoices are you going to believe? The employer organisations and the Coalition that have consistently used the independent tribunals to deny you any improvements, and who have now neutered those tribunals and the protections they provide for the most needy — or Labor and the trade unions who have argued the cases from which working Australians continue to be the beneficiaries?
As to TV advertisements and the trade unions: what an insult to voters' intelligence is Howard's "union thug" scam. The fact is that in an organisation as vast as the Australian trade union movement there will be some bad apples. (You may remember that when I was prime minister I finished off Norm Gallagher, a union bad apple of his day; Kevin Rudd has shown his readiness to be just as tough.)
But ask the question: what would Howard say if Rudd, in the context of attacking employers' support for WorkChoices, authorised a TV advertisement with a photograph of a businessman, jailed for criminal behaviour for defrauding thousands of senior citizens of their life savings, with the caption "Employer Crooks"?
I conclude my observations on this first Howard misrepresentation, by saying that no institution in this country's history has done more to flesh out and give real meaning to the concept of the "fair go" than the trade union movement.
Second is Howard's economic management myth, that only he and not Labor can be trusted with the economic management of Australia. Again, let me use facts to destroy this grotesque misrepresentation. Who, as treasurer, had responsibility for economic management for more than five years before I was elected on March 5, 1983? John Winston Howard. I knew that he was handing me the worst legacy in terms of unemployment and inflation in Australia's history; both were at 11%. But I didn't know exactly how bad the projected budget deficit was, because he had refused to come clean on this during the campaign.

On Sunday, March 5, I called in the secretary of the Treasury, John Stone, who told me that the projected figure for 1983-4 was $9.6 billion, the largest in our history; equivalent today as a percentage of GDP to more than $40 billion. Stone pointed out that "the budget balance is projected to deteriorate from near zero to more than 6% of GDP in a two-year period. The speed and magnitude of that deterioration is almost without precedent among the major OECD countries in the postwar period". Stone was no Labor stooge — he went on to become a Nationals senator — and his written judgement was that Howard's performance was virtually the worst anywhere in the developed world since 1945.
My government had to rescue an economy wrecked by Howard. We made the tough economic management decisions he had shirked — we reduced tariffs, floated the dollar, introduced competition into the financial and banking sectors and massively stimulated funding in industrial research and development. Central to all this was a great act of institutional self-sacrifice: the trade unions, in return for improvements in health, education and welfare, agreed to forgo increases in wages, and thus increase the competitiveness of Australian industry.
It is the judgement of economists here and in the relevant international institutions that it was the economic management and structural reforms of Labor and the restraint of the trade unions that laid the foundations for the strength of the Australian economy today.
Prime Minister Howard has squandered it again. With the strong economy we handed over and the enormous surge in demand for our resources from Asia, his Government has had unprecedented surpluses to invest in our future, particularly in education and training. But he has utterly failed to do so and thus our future is hamstrung by shortages of skilled tradesmen and professionals.
Third, and in some ways the greatest Howard myth, is his claim about foreign relations and security. Again, look at the facts: joining with his pal, George Bush, in Iraq (described by Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of the US-led forces there, as "a catastrophic failure"). It is the unanimous view of the Australian, US and UK intelligence agencies that the war in Iraq has increased the threat of a terrorist attack in our country. Thank you, Prime Minister.
When the facts are examined against the panicked rhetoric of Howard, I suggest there is only one conclusion to which you can come: it is time for him and his Government, with all their misrepresentations of the truth, to be gone.
Bob Hawke was prime minister from 1983-1991.

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Lady luck embraces Labor, again

Michelle Grattan, November 21, 2007, The Age

This week the Opposition has been able to play the WorkChoices fear card, to considerable effect.
LUCK is Labor's lady in this campaign. This final week, the Opposition has had a couple of fortuitous breaks over WorkChoices, one of the most potent issues going for it.
The kerfuffle about the Government's successful attempt to keep hidden documents from 2005, including other options for industrial relations reform, has been going on more than two years. It was entirely serendipitous for Labor that it came to a head on Monday, with an Administrative Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting the documents' release. In a useful killer quote, the tribunal said the Government was accountable for the present law and "not for amendments to that law that it may enact in the future".
This was manna for Labor, feeding straight into its scare claim that the Government, if re-elected, would embark on more IR change.
John Howard yesterday was again having to try to reassure voters the Government had no plans to go further — not in his time, nor in that of his nominated successor, Peter Costello.
"There will be no further changes to the industrial relations legislation. There is no second wave. We have nothing in the drawer."
But Rudd always has the easy counter, pointing to Howard's record — on interest rates, WorkChoices, and more troops for Iraq — when he went back on his word or didn't disclose plans.
As the Government battled to throw a blanket over this new fire sparked by the AAT decision, Labor kept the heat on the PM-in-waiting, issuing a timeline of "Peter Costello's 21-year crusade to impose radical industrial relations changes on all Australians".
It begins with his days in the HR Nicholls Society, a radical group started in the 1980s to promote IR reform (Costello said he has dropped his membership because the Society criticised him). The timeline goes to 2006, when he received "economic modelling from his own department to take WorkChoices even further", and 2007 when he "begins denying he wants to take WorkChoices further". The punchline is "2009? Prime Minister Peter Costello will take WorkChoices further".
Costello parrotted the line that "there will be no changes" — to which Rudd, reviewing Costello's record, snorts: "Well, pigs might fly". In relation to the documents, Costello wanted to make clear he wasn't the central character: the secretary of the Prime Minister's department, Peter Shergold, had sought to keep them confidential, in line with usual practice.

As if this was not bad enough, Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce also clomped into the IR debate yesterday.
Joyce is a rare character — an unscripted politician. Mostly, he says what he thinks. He has already annoyed his peers by some unflattering references to the Coalition's campaign.
Yesterday was more serious: he said he would consider whatever a Labor government brought into the Senate to roll back WorkChoices. "Anyone who says you vote something out without looking at it is disgracing the Senate", he said. "I'm saying I'll look at it". On one view these comments were not all that surprising for someone who takes the Senate and its scrutiny role as seriously as Joyce does.
For good measure, however, he added there was basically no difference on IR between the parties for workers on less than $75,000.
One can imagine what Howard thought of this intervention from the outspoken Queensland National. "There is a big difference," Howard retorted. Would he urge him to re-read the policies? "I don't hypothesise about what people might do in the event of the Labor party winning the election." Would he talk to Joyce: "No."
Mark Vaile, Joyce's leader and one of several ministers having a less-than-easy campaign, tried to contain the damage. His message to voters was that "the important thing is to look at and listen to what the leaders of the major parties have to say".
It's not advice he can always get Joyce to follow.

As Bukowski said - 'Luck counts too'

Editorial

2007-11-17T15:22:00.000-08:00

Why Kevin deserves a chance

Editorial, The Sunday Telegraph, November 18, 2007 12:00am

THIS time next week, Kevin Rudd could be Prime Minister of Australia. Will Australia have made the right choice?Mr Rudd has displayed in his 12 months as opposition leader an ability to lead, even though he has stumbled occasionally along the way. At times he performed poorly, such as when he was put under pressure by the Anzac fake dawn affair. But on the whole, he has dusted himself off and stayed true to his message. Mr Rudd, whose life-long ambition is to be Prime Minister, has committed himself to improving life for middle Australia. Australians like him and accept, despite his burning ambition, that he has their interests at heart. The Sunday Telegraph believes he now stands on the precipice of the Prime Ministership because of the Coalition's WorkChoices legislation. Prime Minister John Howard's badly promoted industrial-relations policy is loathed by the very people who have kept Mr Howard in power for 11 years: the so-called Howard's battlers. Those Howard battlers have defecteden masse to form "Rudd's regiment''. They turned on the Coalition because WorkChoices threatened the prosperity the Coalition gave them in the first place. Under Mr Howard, they upgraded their homes and stuffed them full of booty such as new cars, flat-screen televisions, computers, games rooms and designer kitchens with European appliances. Then the crunch came: rising interest rates and grocery prices on top of WorkChoices. The IR laws hovered above these families as they watched the balance tip further in favour of the boss at work. The overwhelming perception was they could lose their jobs at any time, leading to the loss of everything a decade of prosperity handed them. At the same time Mr Rudd arrived as a safe, and trustworthy, alternative. He looked like Mr Howard and acted like him. Bar WorkChoices, climate change and education reform, he copied his policies. "Me-too''. Importantly, he was not Kim Beazley or Mark Latham or Simon Crean. It is a tribute to John Howard that Mr Rudd has performed as well as he has. Indeed, the Opposition Leader has learned from the master. Mr Howard does not deserve to be tossed out of office - but politics is a brutal business and he has made mistakes. The admission he will stand down in 18 months has rendered him a lame duck. Voters are correct to think a vote for John Howard is a vote for Peter Costello. Eleven years of government has also taken the spark out of the PM's appeal to the electorate. It has stopped listening. Over the past five weeks the Coalition has campaigned poorly as it wandered off message, handing out bribes to special interest groups. But Mr Howard has been a great prime minister and the country should thank him for the work he has done. He is owed our gratitude. After several false starts, he had a shot at the top job and became Australia's second-longest-serving prime minister, winning four straight elections. The introduction of the GST, his handling of the crisis in East Timor, the crackdown on guns and the (belated) intervention in indigenous communities have all made significant contributions to our way of life. But now there is a mood for change. The Sunday Telegraph accepts readers believe it is finally time to give Labor a go. But Mr Rudd needs to guarantee our nation several things. He must stare down a Labor cabinet inhabited by many with union and factional allegiances. Labor is restless after four terms in opposition and, with no real factional allegiance or support himself, Mr Rudd has to impose himself on the party. He must stand before them and tell them it has been he who delivered government and it will be he who drives the agenda. Not factions. Not unions. If they do not want to play it his way then they can challenge him and toss him out. If not, then stay out of his way as he delivers his promised agenda. Mr Rudd must surround himself with a loyal team that will help him deliver on his promises. During 2007, under the grinding weight of opinion polls in favour of the new boy, Mr Howard has faltered with endless giveaways to make us ever more dependent on government, which is already far too big. The Sunday Telegraph advocates a vote for Labor, provided Mr Rudd give these assurances.

A fine campaign

2007-11-17T07:29:00.000-08:00

Brace for a Rudd-slide

Jason Koutsoukis,November 18, 2007,The Sunday Age

TWO words sum up the Coalition's election campaign: bloody awful. A complete and utter shambles from start to finish.
It started with the $34 billion tax cut, perhaps the greatest flopperoo in campaign history.
Despite being one of the most expensive promises ever made in the lead-up to an election, the Coalition has not put one television advertisement to air to back it up.
John Howard and Peter Costello simply released it, patted each other on the back, then stopped talking about it. All it did was give Labor a neatly costed package of tax cuts to which it could promptly agree. No mess, no fuss.
It had the added advantage of being so generous to rich people that Labor could shave $3 billion off the top and instead give the money to lower and middle income voters in the form of an education tax rebate.
Howard finished the first week by losing the televised leaders' debate. He looked nervous, bad-tempered and stale. In contrast, Kevin Rudd looked confident, fresh and capable.
The Coalition's core theme at the start of the campaign was the strong economy. The slogan to match was "Go For Growth", which was fine until week two of the campaign when the release of high inflation figures made a rise in interest rates inevitable.
Suddenly going for growth sounded like going for higher interest rates.
To combat this, Howard and Costello were forced to contradict their slogan by arguing that the economy was about to be swamped by a "tsunami".
The interest rate rise itself was another black-letter news day, a humiliation that could have been avoided if the election had been held on November 3.
Whoever advised Howard not to worry about an interest rate rise during an election campaign would be feeling sorry for themselves.
No doubt it was Costello, the Treasurer who boasted in September that he was "absolutely certain" interest rates wouldn't rise.
Wrong. So spectacularly wrong, it makes you wonder what led Costello to make such a risky economic prediction.
Other campaign lowlights have included the revelation that Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull wanted to ratify the Kyoto Protocol — a bad look given that Howard has spent the past decade declaring the treaty useless.
Tony Abbott? The less said about him the better. He's managed to insult a dying man, turn up 30 minutes late to the televised health debate and publicly criticise the government's WorkChoices laws.

The Coalition's doleful campaign launch failed to produce any of the momentum the strategists said was vital, and Howard was trapped into spending so much money that he found himself wedged by Rudd on economic management.
The Coalition's television advertising campaign has also failed to impress. Loads of unconvincing union-bashing presumably to shore up the base vote, but nothing to say about the future. Many of the ads have also been recycled from 2004, reinforcing the perception that the Liberals don't know what to do with a fifth term.
The still unsettled leadership issue has been another distraction. Voters know Howard is going, but they don't know when. Why vote for someone who is going anyway?
The latest thing to blow up in Howard's face was his $400 million regional pork-barrelling fund, which was condemned in a caustic report by the Commonwealth Auditor General released on Thursday. And the response? Dazed and confused, with Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile calling for an inquiry into the Auditor-General's office. What was the auditor supposed to do, cover it up?
That's how arrogant this lot have become. They think that when statutory office holders show their political independence and do what the law requires of them, it's a political conspiracy.
So can John Howard still win? One can construct such an argument, but it looks near impossible given the state of the polls.
Minus Latham, Labor's vote will be around 54 per cent of the two-party vote. While that seems historically high (the ALP's highest result was 53.2% under Bob Hawke in 1983), it would give Labor only 87 lower house seats, or a 26-seat majority. That would give Labor 58 per cent of the 150 lower house seats, just under the 60 per cent of lower house seats won by Hawke.
Coalition optimists maintain that they have run an effective marginal-seats strategy which will see the Government hold the line. They are deluded. As the cliche goes, when the swing is on, it's on.
I also believe Howard will lose his seat of Bennelong, on the basis that voters will reason that with the Coalition set to lose the election, there is little point returning Howard to Canberra.
History will likely judge the Howard era as a period of stable and successful government. It has seen unprecedented economic growth, high employment, low inflation and low interest rates.
But it won't long take before the Liberals start to wonder if they squandered their opportunities. A scant perusal of the reform ledger still shows Hawke and Keating way out in front of Howard and Costello.
An unsentimental bunch, the Liberals never forgive their losers, as Billy McMahon, Billy Snedden, Malcolm Fraser, Andrew Peacock and John Hewson can attest.
Brimming with rage on the Opposition benches, Costello and what's left of his "faction" will be tempted to start trashing Howard immediately. With Howard gone, the right wing of the NSW division — known as "The Uglies" — will also be free to exert the full force of their influence and begin the morals crusade they have long hankered for. In other words, civil war. Could be a long time between drinks. Next Sunday, the Liberals' highest office holder will be the Brisbane mayor.

The Dustbin.

2007-11-16T17:14:00.000-08:00

History about to repeat itself - in reverse

Alan RamseyNovember 17, 2007, SMH

When Kevin Rudd's pledge not to repeat John Howard's "reckless spending spree" got one of the loudest - and more genuine - bursts of applause by the invited Labor faithful at the Brisbane campaign "launch" this week, Paul Keating leaned across to Bob Hawke and said: "If we'd promised that, they would have shot us." And he added, nodding to the audience: "We've come a long way as a party."
Maybe. Perhaps all the packed hall was doing was heaving a collective sigh of relief that Rudd, so close to victory, hadn't gone rushing down another of the Prime Minister's desperate boltholes, like Alice after the White Rabbit. What was truly remarkable was how far the Hawke/Keating "relationship" had come, finally.
There's been no relationship for 16 years, not since Keating ousted his "old mate" five days before Christmas 1991 and went on to lead Labor to its fifth successive election victory 15 months later, before losing to the Coalition under Howard in March 1996. Now here the two of them were, acknowledged by an applauding crowd as honoured guests, along with Gough Whitlam, as Labor's trio of living prime ministers, and looking like they were actually enjoying it.
A photo of all three, with beaming faces and raised, clasped hands, appeared in all Fairfax city papers next morning.
That's what the pungent scent of victory does. And have no shred of doubt, a week out, that Labor is going to romp this one, just as Howard did almost 12 years ago. The Coalition swept 29 seats off Labor in 1996 before losing 18 of them 2½ years later in the election that gave us the GST Howard had pledged, as opposition leader, he would "never, ever" introduce.
This time, with this leader, after all these Howard years, Labor is going to reverse 1996.
And when the Rudd team duly buries its opponents next weekend, it will deny Howard the glory of matching what Hawke and Keating managed to rack up between them - five election triumphs on the trot. However galling, Howard will have to make do with four. The Labor duo, in absentia, will have bested him. That in itself is enough to warm the hearts of the two men who have kept a chill distance for the past 16 years.
So who says victory is assured?
The numbers do.
On October 26 the Australian Electoral Commission announced that 13,645,073 voters had enrolled before the rolls closed three days earlier for next weekend's election. That represents 550,000 more than had been on the electoral rolls three years earlier (13,098,461) and almost 1.3 million than actually voted in the 2004 election.

The commission also gave a breakdown of the age groupings of the Australian electorate. These are:
18-24: 1,535,870.
25-39: 3,513,510.
40-54: 3,856,190.
55 and over: 4,739,500.
The figures in each have been rounded.
If nothing else, the breakdown tells you why Howard has been showering the over-55s with a poultice of electoral inducements to shore up the Coalition's hold on the so-called grey vote. It is the biggest voting cohort - and getting bigger, and generally greedier, all the time.
So how do all four age groups see the choice?
The Nielsen organisation's John Stirton analysed figures in recent weeks on Nielsen polling averages during the campaigns of the Howard Coalition's four winning elections (1996, 1998, 2001 and 2004), as well as for October of this year's campaign, and matched them with the voting outcome in each election. His numbers included breakdowns for each age group, for each state, for men and women, and city/country.
They give a reasonable idea of why the Coalition has been nearing hysterics over what is happening - and not happening - as election day has drawn closer.
For one, Labor in Nielsen's polling has been killing the Coalition in all age groups but the over-55s, where the Coalition has an advantage nationally of 49 per cent to 43 per cent in the primary vote.
But even that six-point lead over Labor is well down on the Coalition's "grey vote" support during each of the four earlier campaigns.
The relevant figures among over 55s are: 1996 - Coalition 58, ALP 32; 1998 - Coalition 47, ALP 37; 2001 - Coalition 55, ALP 32; and 2004 - Coalition 58, ALP 34. This campaign, according to Nielsen's polling, Labor has gained nine percentage points among over-55 voters (up from 34 per cent to 43 per cent) three weeks out from polling day.
In the other age groups the Coalition is lagging far behind.
This election, polling among 18-24s, including first-time voters, has increased Labor's advantage in this age group to 53 per cent to the Coalition's 32 per cent of the primary vote, with the Greens polling 11 per cent, easily their best showing in any of the four age groupings.
Three years ago Labor's lead over the Coalition among young voters was a mere 2 points - 43 per cent to 41 per cent. The swing this campaign has been a huge 10 percentage points. Among 25 to 39s, Labor is favoured 49 per cent to the Coalition's 38 per cent, an 11-point gap, while in the 40 to 54 age grouping - the electorate's largest - the gap is even greater, at 13 points - 51 per cent to 38 per cent.

Overall, including the over-55s, Labor in the three years since the 2004 campaign has increased its primary vote in all states and all age groupings by more than 925,000 votes, according to Nielsen's analysis translated to the 13.64 million Australians eligible to vote next Saturday. This is almost exactly the same margin the Coalition polled against Labor in its landslide against the Keating government in 1996.
More broadly, Stirton's analysis three weeks out had Labor leading the Coalition 49 per cent to 40 per cent in the cities, 46 per cent to 43 per cent among country voters, 47 per cent to 41 per cent among men, and 48 to 41 per cent among women. And why should we think voters would change dramatically - as they would have to - for Howard to come surging from behind to win in these final days?
Because such thinking is absolute nonsense given Rudd's leadership has transformed how voters have perceived Labor all year. The last time the Coalition led Labor on the primary vote was exactly a year ago, when Kim Beazley was still leader. Not once has the Coalition polled above Labor since Rudd replaced Beazley in the first week of December.
And perhaps Stirton's most significant analysis of campaign polling over the past four elections since 1996, compared with what has been happening among voters this year, is the comparison with the result in each election.
In 1996 Nielsen's sampling of the Coalition's support during the campaign period averaged 47.7 per cent, compared with the Coalition's primary vote on polling day of 47.2 per cent, while Nielsen's campaign average for Labor was 38.6 per cent compared with its vote of 38.8 per cent.
In the 1998 GST election the figures were just as remarkably similar: Coalition 42.2 per cent poll average, 39.5 per cent actual; Labor 41.2 per cent poll average, 40.1 actual.
This was the election where Labor won the popular vote nationally - by 0.6 per cent - but lost the election reasonably comfortably in the marginals. John Howard still clings to the hope he can do the same again. But this time Labor's surging primary vote all year makes such a turnaround in the final week impossible.
The 2001 and 2004 elections were a mirror of the figures between campaign polling and the actual result. And this year, with the election just seven days away, Nielsen's campaign primary poll average for Labor is 48 per cent, the Coalition 41.5 per cent. With a week to go that says lights out at Kirribilli for the Howards and welcome Kevin Rudd and co.
The carnage in NSW and Queensland will be immense.

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Nothing will save us from gullibility and greedy self-interest

By Alan RamseyOctober 11, 2004 SMH

A small book turned up last week entitled How to Kill a Country. It was written by three Sydney academics about our "free trade" deal with the United States. They could as easily have been writing about what, spare us, happened on Saturday.
How on earth could we have put this scheming, mendacious little man and his miserable claque back in office for another three years? Worse, how could we have brought them to the very brink of absolute control of the nation's entire parliamentary process and authority?
Very easily, as things turned out, to the cost of the rest of us and our national self-respect.
For almost nine years this Government, incompetent in most everything except mediocrity, debauched its word and the people's trust, along with voters' gullibility, their ignorance, their taxes and, in the end, their greedy self-interest.
It deceived and dissembled about joining us with Washington's military adventurism in Iraq, and it went on deceiving and dissembling, irrespective of the heightened threat to our national interest, to keep our minuscule presence there purely for the political pleasure of George Bush and his cronies.

Then when we reached the one time every three years of a people's audit, 4.6 in every 10 of us turned round and said, thank you, gimme the money and flog us for another three years. Most times, despite the thick and the avaricious and those who feel it's just all beyond them, we get it right as a nation.
Not this time. This time we've really buggered things. A politically immoral man who, by any civilised measure, disqualified himself from public life, has been given a pat on the back and even more power. This time the people's will has got it dreadfully wrong.
Now we all have to pay for the comfortable idiocy of the manipulated minority. And it is a minority: the 46 per cent who voted for the Coalition, or 4.6 in every 10. The other 5.4, in the main, wanted something better, and were denied by a lowest common denominator system in which all the spoils go to a degraded 50 per cent plus one.
I thought we had more brains, more self-respect. I was wrong in thinking enough voters "just might" see through the confidence trickery of John Howard, master illusionist and toad of a human being. I apologise for nothing.
However, don't get snowed by the spin merchants about the size of the Government's win. Howard's real achievement is the Coalition's Senate victory. In the House of Representatives, Labor went into the election with 63 seats, the Government 83, with three independents and one Green MHR.
By midday yesterday, with a bit over 10 million votes counted in an electorate of 13 million, the most likely result, after the doubtfuls are finally sorted, is that Labor will have a net loss of between one and three seats, no more.
Labor's loss was great in votes, not seats. It's primary vote (38.3 per cent) is only marginally better than under Kim Beazley's losing leadership three years ago (37.8 per cent). What is different this time is the Liberal Party (40.3 per cent) out-polling Labor in primary votes (as distinct from a joint Coalition vote of 46 per cent).
That happens rarely: twice only in the Liberals' 60-year history, the last time, ironically, in the Fraser victory of 1975 that buried the government of Latham's political father figure, Gough Whitlam.
Still, Latham's time will come. Believe it.

(And maybe not......)

Everyone loses in Howard's 'History Wars'

2007-11-16T14:46:00.000-08:00

Coalition clutching straw

The Australian, Dennis Shanahan November 17, 2007

JOHN Howard only has one chance left to retain government: the published polls are wrong.
Well, not necessarily wrong, just showing an undeniable general swing to Kevin Rudd and Labor that won't be reflected next Saturday in the marginal seats.
It's a scenario that has kept the Liberals hopeful and disciplined in circumstances where they could be excused for a complete panic and shambles.
It's a scenario that takes another beating from today's Newspoll survey, showing swings in the 18 most marginal Coalition seats no better than the general polls, which have shown a consistent Labor lead of 8-10 points on a two-party-preferred basis all year.
Yet party officials on both sides, federal and state, insist the contest remains close and the election will be tight.
This defies logic and the published polls. How could a contest that has been poles apart ever since Rudd became leader of the Labor Party become tight overnight on November 23?
The answer from the insiders is that the published polling, such as today's extrapolation in Victoria showing a loss of six seats, simply doesn't take the local factors into account.
The common words to describing the party polling in individual seats are perplexing and weird. It's difficult to tell what's happening from day to day except for a clear and strong swing to Labor and record approval for Rudd.
In the atmosphere of a benign dismissal, Coalition and Labor officials are finding it difficult to say with certainty what's going to happen -- notwithstanding the consistent indication of a landslide to Labor. The only answer they can give is that if there's a landslide, the marginals don't count because they'll all be marginal. But in the case of a tight election, which has historically been the case in Australia, particularly at times of strong economic growth, then each marginal will count, seat by seat. It just looks pretty lame when you put it next to marginal polling that's no different to the national polling.

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Dave Hughes: Choices there for all

Dave Hughes, The Herald Sun, November 17, 2007 12:00am

HOW many days now 'til Australia decides? No point asking Johnny, obviously.
He hasn't got a clue. His latest guess is Wednesday the week after next.
He's just adamant that we can't bring our troops home now 'cause that will mean the Germans will have won and by 1920 we'll all be wearing lederhosen and starring in weird porn films.
As the woman on the Labor ad says: "No offence Mr Howard, but you're really, really, really old and you smell funny and you should be in a home for people who've completely lost their minds."
When even a nice, simple courteous woman like that lays the moccies in, you know you're in trouble.
Everyone is predicting a Labor win now, not just salivating union thugs. Even honest hard-working squillionaires like Ron Walker. Liberal ministers are talking "when" not "if" a Rudd government comes to power. The landslide could make the one at Yallourn power station look like a small landslide. (I really must work on my analogies.)
The Coalition is still trying. But the bags of cash it's using to prop up the empire don't appearing to be working. No one wants any more pork from its barrel.
Are Australians no longer obsessed with money? At Monday's campaign launch, the Howard and Costello show pledged an extra $9 billion for one more go.
They were like two drunks trying to bribe a barmaid to give 'em a couple more jagermeisters, even though last drinks were called an hour ago.
The Ruddster isn't like that. No splurge at his Labor launch shin-dig on Wednesday. He turned up, had half a glass of lemon, lime and bitters and went home to rearrange his collection of Nerds Monthly magazines. He's so boring he makes Johnny look like Mickey Rourke on a bender.
The only carrots he's offering are computers for kids and dental work for teenagers. For that he's being hugged at high schools.
Could life get any sweeter for him? His Kevin 07 T-shirts are selling faster than the Government can sell uranium to India, he's got a filthy rich wife and can chat fluently to the kitchen staff while waiting for his order at the local Chinese takeaway. Wow!
How will Costello, Downer and Abbott go in Opposition? I suppose if they don't like it they can just quit. As Abbott so proudly pointed out, WorkChoices has given

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Blainey ire over PM's history prize

John Lyons November 17, 2007 The Australian

HISTORIAN Geoffrey Blainey has told the Howard Government he is upset over the handling of the inaugural Prime Minister's prize for Australian history, worth $100,000.
Professor Blainey, who was a judge for the prestigious prize, made his displeasure clear by telling a senior federal Education Department official recently he was not happy with the way the award was conducted.
As John Howard has tried to make Australian history an issue in the election, The Weekend Australian has learnt of a significant level of discontent over the Prime Minister's prize for history.
On a recent visit to Canberra to advise on the teaching of Australian history, Professor Blainey told the official the prize had been run in a "very poor" way.
He was upset because a government representative was included on the judging panel, which he felt added a political element to the process.
While the judges chose four books for the short list -- including Les Carlyon's The Great War -- Professor Blainey and at least one other judge left the judging, which ran for several months, believing Peter Cochrane's Colonial Ambition should win.
Professor Blainey was overseas for the announcement, but other judges who gathered with 100 people at Parliament House in Canberra on June 20 were surprised when Mr Howard announced the winner: Peter Cochrane and Les Carlyon -- two winners. Author Gideon Haigh, who reviewed the Carlyon book for Monthly magazine, said the decision "smacked of a PM over-eager to distribute the spoils of victory in the culture wars".
So sensitive are the history wars that this week hardly anyone involved would comment. Professor Blainey, the emeritus professor of history at the University of Melbourne, would not comment after The Weekend Australian explained the story being researched, saying that he had been required to sign a confidentiality agreement. A spokesman for the Prime Minister put the issues to Mr Howard, then said: "The Prime Minster wanted to stay out of that one." Professor Blainey was known to be upset that a government representative -- the secretary of the Department of Education, Lisa Paul -- chaired the panel. One judge, who asked for anonymity, said having the two winners was "a neat solution" between strong support among the judges for the Cochrane book and what Mr Howard wanted -- the Carlyon book. The judging panel was asked for a short list of four from 151 works. That list was then handed to Mr Howard. The judges were Professor Blainey, historian and Anglican bishop Tom Frame, University of Wollongong historian Gregory Melleuish, deputy director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies unit at the University of Queensland Jackie Huggins and the chair, Ms Paul. However, Dr Frame disputes Professor Blainey's view that the Cochrane book was the standout winner. "We were told at the outset we were to give a list to the PM who would himself make the choice because it was his prize," he said. Mr Howard feels a connection to the subject of Carlyon's book, The Great War. Mr Howard's grandfather Walter and his father, Lyall, were wounded in World War I, the former being shot in the Somme and his father being gassed in Belgium. Gideon Haigh said of The Great War: "This isn't a bad book, it's even quite a good book. But it's ultimately a pretty safe, unambitious and formulaic book -- too big, too unwieldy, too superficial. In the end, too obviously in the Australia-saves-the-world-again camp." Haigh stresses he is not "anti-Carlyon", describing Carlyon's first war book, Gallipoli, as "a modern masterpiece of narrative history". Cochrane's book has sold about 4000 copies while Carlyon's has just passed 100,000. Cochrane said: "My understanding is this has been established to promote Australian history as an important part of our culture. "One would hope a prize that is as lucrative as the PM's prize is awarded on merit by a distinguished panel of specialists in the field."