Gerard Henderson's Speeches, Essays and Correspondence

Keynote Speech by Gerard Henderson to ANU John Howard's Decade Conference

It's all John Howard's Fault - Really?

3rd March 2006

Dearly beloved academics – and some others. We are gathered together at the Australian National University this evening to – variously – comment on, condemn or celebrate the election of the Howard Government a decade ago. And who is it appropriate to blame or praise for the anniversary? Well, my lesson for this evening is that we are here on account of the decisions made on 2 March 1996 by the likes of Julian Burnside QC, journalist Margo Kingston and Professor Robert Manne – all of whom, along with around five million other Australians, voted for John Howard to replace Paul Keating as prime minister of Australia ten years ago yesterday.

How strange it is that some of the strongest and most articulate critics of the Prime Minister today actually supported him on 2 March 1996.

Robert Manne, as is his wont, advised the readers of his newspaper column in the lead-up to the 1996 Federal election that he would be voting for Mr Howard and against Mr Keating. Since then, Mr Manne has become something of a professional Howard Hater. He has authored and edited books (with such titles as The Barren Years: John Howard and Australian Political Culture and The Howard Years), written numerous columns and articles and appeared regularly on ABC Radio National and elsewhere bemoaning the consequences of his own ballot box decision of a decade ago.

Mr Burnside QC once told a journalist that he had automatically voted Liberal up to and including 1998 – then, circa mid 2001, he suddenly discovered the existence of mandatory detention (which, of course, had been introduced by the Keating Labor Government some eight years earlier) and quickly signed up with the Howard Haters.

And then, lo and behold, Ms Kingston outed herself as having supported John Howard in 1996 in her book titled Not Happy, John! In a more reflective moment, she may have exhibited greater self-awareness by writing a tome with such a title as, say, “Not Happy, Margo!!!”.

I can understand why, today, the likes of Julian Burnside, Margo Kingston and Robert Manne dislike John Howard and all his works and all his pomps. My position is simply that they should have known what a Howard Government would be like. For, the fact is that Mr Howard has been a remarkably consistent political thinker since he entered the House of Representatives in May 1974. Sure, he has changed his position on some issues. John Howard was once a soft protectionist; he is now a soft free trader. He was once opposed to increasing the rate of Asian immigration to Australia; he is now an enthusiastic supporter of Asian immigration.

However, for the most part, the Prime Minister has been very consistent on policy issues. He has been a long time advocate of (i) industrial relations reform, including the removal of trade union privileges enshrined in legislation; (ii) financial deregulation, including a floating currency; (iii) the need for budget surpluses during times of relative economic prosperity; (iv) privatisation; (v) social policies aimed at benefiting families with dependent children; (vi) welfare reform, with an emphasis on private, rather than public, solutions; (vii) private education as a genuine real alternative to public education and (viii) the Australian-American Alliance.

Of course, the Howard Government has changed Australia. But change occurs in any event – with or without government intervention – in an increasingly globalised world. The fact is that the changes in Australia over the past decade have not been as substantial as some Howard Haters now proclaim. The governments headed by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating commenced economic reform in Australia with respect to such matters as (i) the introduction of a flexible exchange rate; (ii) financial deregulation; (iii) taxation reform; (iv) welfare reform; (v) the winding back of protection ; (vi) compulsory employer funded superannuation; (vii) higher education reform and (viii) industrial relations de-regulation. On foreign policy, it is apposite to remember that Mr Hawke presided over the embarkation of the Australian Navy for the Gulf in 1990 – sometime before the United Nations Security Council authorised Operation Desert Storm.

Certainly, there have been significant changes in Australia since March 1996 – some of which are due to the policies annunciated by John Howard, Peter Costello and other key ministers in the Coalition Government. But these do not represent enormous shifts. Yes - Australia is dramatically different today to what it was in 1980 – before the commencement of the economic reform process. Yet contemporary Australia is not dramatically different to Australia of a decade ago – despite what so many of the Prime Minister’s so many critics assert.

Indeed, some of the Howard Haters exhibit a form of publicly intellectualised psychosis. This is not the first time such behaviour has become evident in the Antipodes. Such a condition was present during the final period of the Keating Labor Government – when a few conservative men and women, who should have known better, compared the then prime minister with, variously, Josef Goebbels and Joe Stalin and warned that – should the Keating Government be re-elected – they would emigrate – an event which, sadly, did not eventuate. Demonstrating, once again, that it is not only politicians who break election promises.

This time round, the hyperbole-driven epidemic has returned with a vengeance – although, on this occasion, it has engulfed the left. This time round, John Howard is being linked with Adolph Hitler and Julian Burnside has broken his election promise to pack his barrister’s wig and set off to practice law in New Zealand or Canada. The noise is much louder on this occasion – primarily due to the fact that in Australia – as distinct from North America and Europe – there is a dearth of articulate and considered political conservatives and an over-abundance of leftists with polemical skills.

The lack of genuine diversity among the intelligentsia Down Under has led to a situation where many Howard Haters know only other Howard Haters. This was recently described – in all seriousness – by Professor (no less) R. W. Connell in Volume 24 Number 1 2005 issue of Dialogue – published by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, edited by Dr Peg Job, with a president’s column by Professor Sue Richardson. How prestigious – in a Humanities Department kind of way – can you get?

Let’s go to Professor Connell’s text – published shortly after John Howard and Peter Costello had creamed Labor, led by Mark Latham, in the October 2004 Federal election. Let’s hear the words of Professor Connell:

On election night in October 2004 I was invited to a dinner-and-television party in an inner suburb of Sydney. Most people there were professionals and cultural producers of various kinds – an author, a musician, an academic, a human services administrator, etc. As the results came in and the success of the Liberals’ fear campaign became clear, the party became rather quiet. Eventually one of the guests remarked that she found the results surprising, because she did not know personally anyone [emphasis in original] who supported the Howard government and had been going to vote Liberal. Others around the room nodded, and said that was true for them too.

This seemed a neat measure of the distance that now exists between the regime in power in Australia, and a considerable part of the intelligentsia in Australia. The hostility is obviously reciprocated. Where previous national governments had shown respect and support for cultural and intellectual producers – witness Menzies’ university policy, Whitlam’s arts policy – the current government has tried to commercialise the universities, intimidate the ABC, and expand corporate control of communication and culture. In a range of policy areas – from school education to the intervention in Iraq – expert knowledge has been brushed aside the moment it conflicted with corporate interests, the market agenda or the party line.

This is a very instructive reflection – in which the author described Australia’s democratically elected government as a “regime” and called for the primacy of “expert-knowledge” in public policy implementation. Not only did R.W. Connell choose to declare his complete lack of any contact of any kind with the 53 per cent of the Australian electorate who supported the return of the Howard Government at the last election. More significantly, the powers-that-be at the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia believed that The Thought of R.W. Connell actually deserved publication in their esteemed journal.

Such isolation in Intelligentsia-Land is not confined to inner-city Sydney. It is also evident in inner-city Melbourne. Interviewed by Jennifer Byrne about her Peter Costello-hating play Two Brothers, Hannie Rayson referred variously to “the establishment” and “the right” and proudly declared: “I don’t have cause to meet such people in my life; they don’t tend to hang around Fitzroy.”

Ms Rayson’s reflection and Professor Connell’s thought-piece tells us significantly more about what he terms “a considerable part of the intelligentsia in Australia” than it tells us about John Howard and his supporters. The fact is that, in Intelligentsia-Land, you can get through the entire day without hearing anything but criticism of the Howard Government. Here’s how such a scenario might work – via live radio/television, Foxtel IQ, Ipod, tape, DVD, newspapers or whatever.

Professor Connell’s reference to the distance which exists between the Howard Government and “a considerable part of the intelligentsia in Australia” should serve as a reminder of the limits of the Prime Minister’s power – not the contrary. Mr Howard has not reformed the ABC or SBS – in fact, the public broadcasters are probably less pluralist now than they were a decade ago. Nor does the Prime Minister’s success in what have been termed the culture wars extend into the teaching of social sciences in the universities or schools.

It is in the areas of economic and social policy – along with foreign policy and national security – that the Howard Government has had an impact on Australia.

The Australian economy is in good shape. Unemployment has halved in just over a decade – from 10 per cent to 5 per cent. Due to the economic reforms – initiated at the political level by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating – and continued by John Howard and Peter Costello – Australia has been able to withstand the impacts of the Asian economic downturn of 1997, the US recession of 2000 and the worst domestic drought in a century – and still continue to grow at around 3 to 4 per cent annually. The rich are getting richer but the poor are not getting poorer. It’s now much easier to get a job than has been the case for some decades. What’s more, a typical family with two dependent children do not pay any income tax in net terms until their income exceeds $45,000 per year.

These are real achievements. It’s just that the present and likely future impact of the Howard Government is not as substantial as many of his critics assert. Despite the (false) prophecy of Dr Marion Maddox in God Under Howard, a conservative version of Christianity does not prevail in the land. Witness the fact that the likes of John Howard and Tony Abbott were on the losing side in the conscience vote on who should authorise the use of the drug RU486. Despite the need for enhanced national security legislation – following terrorist attacks on New York, Washington, Madrid, Bali and London – freedom of speech still prevails and the best and brightest of Australia’s artists are not bound in chains. Max Gilles, Hannie Rayson and Stephen Sewell, among others, remain free – despite their predictions to the contrary. Mr Sewell’s prophecy that every Australian faces “the prospect of being disappeared to who knows where” remains unfulfilled.

Certainly many members of the intelligentsia opposed Australia’s involvement in the Coalition of the Willing’s invasion of Iraq. Yet – agree with the Prime Minister or not – the Howard Government’s decision to provide military support to our traditional allies (the United States and Britain) in Iraq is consistent with a hundred years of Australian foreign policy. Australia has always supported our traditional allies when they are involved in conflict in a part of the world where Australia has an interest. Witness 1914-1918, 1939-1945, Korea, the Malayan Emergency, Confrontation, Vietnam, the First Gulf War, Afghanistan and now, the Second Gulf War – covering such areas as Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

Yet some of the Prime Minister’s critics would deny his government even the right to make foreign policy. Retired diplomat Richard Woolcott has gone so far as to suggest that foreign policy decisions should not be made by elected governments but by retired diplomats – like him.

Once again, it is not surprising that the Howard Government has its enemies – even critics. Yet the level of intensity of hatred to the Prime Minister is surprising. A few of many possible examples illustrate the point – from the pens or computers of some of our better educated minds.

The problem which much of the opposition to John Howard is that it is psychotic – and, consequently, has little impact in the marginal seats in suburban and regional Australia where elections are decided.

The opponents of the Howard Government would have much more impact if they threw the switch to rationality with respect to the Prime Minister and if they ceased their all but endless criticisms of Kim Beazley and Labor. At the moment, the Howard Haters achieve the unintended consequence of aiding the Howard Government.