Top StoriesMay’s sharp fall in jobless numbers added to the greenness of the ‘recovery’ (or less bad) thesis; overnight June’s unemployment figures were so awful that they could have stunted at least, the wavering shoots.
Howard’s End silent on why we chose Kevin07
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Peter van Onselen and Philip Senior’s Howard’s End provides a detailed explanation of why the Howard Government should have been comfortably re-elected last November. This is a book for the partisans — the story of how a competent, high-quality government blundered its way to defeat at the hands of an opponent lacking in substance but rich in political savvy, and a media anxious for change. Van Onselen and Senior evidently lack the sort of in-depth access to the Liberal leadership obtained by Christine Jackman from Labor’s campaign team for Inside Kevin 07, which at least provided a glimpse into the heat of electoral battle, if not any profound analysis, and the book occasionally feels like a collection of press clips. There are some curious absences, too — Rudd’s slip-up on tax rates is cited, but not Howard’s more harmful A Current Affair senior moment on interest rates, nor the revealing problems the Coalition had with working out what campaign slogan to stick with once “Go For Growth” became an ongoing reminder of interest rates. In essence, Van Onselen and Senior think Howard was dudded — by the press, by his colleagues, and not least of all by his own failing political judgement, which like the proverbial frog in the saucepan left him unaware until too late that he should have gotten out much earlier. The media come in for repeated criticism — for being lazy, for getting on the grog when Howard wanted to convey his feelings about the death of a soldier, for helping Kevin Rudd because he used to be on Sunrise, for claiming Rudd won the debate because they were angry about the lack of chartered aircraft, and, in the case of the ABC, for being systematically anti-Coalition. The Australian’s blatant bias toward the Government — despite editorialising for Rudd at the last moment to curry favour with the party by then assured of victory — goes virtually unremarked. But cranky p-sshead journos have got nothing on Howard’s own cabinet colleagues. In recounting the events surrounding Howard’s offer, later withdrawn, to stand aside, Van Onselen and Senior do manage to effectively convey the absurd and comical cowardice of grown men and women, supposedly top political operators, who are unable to carry out the simplest of political executions even when their failing leader loads the gun and hands it to them. However, what’s missing — peculiarly given Van Onselen is a recent biographer of Howard — is an effective insight into what remains the most significant miscalculation by a leading Australian politician for a generation or more, one that cost him his own seat and his party government. Van Onselen and Senior neglect what the 1980s told us about John Howard, that he was prepared to go to any lengths, including damaging his own party, in order to lead it and that he was prepared to use the leadership to pursue what ended up being one of the few permanent goals of his political career — suppressing the moderate wing of the Liberal party. Howard understood that the Liberals’ supposed great asset — its union of liberals and conservatives — was also a significant weakness in the absence of both a Labor-style internal power-sharing structure and a strong leader. Howard’s success in keeping party moderates underfoot risked being undone if he’d made way for Costello, who even if not progressive himself, would have stoked hopes of a moderate resurgence within the party, but lacked the authority to quash them. Van Onselen and Senior also fail to make the connection that it was policy as much as political miscalculation that accounted for the end of the Howard Government. Like, one suspects, many current Liberal MPs, they see in the Government’s policies essentially sound goals, marred perhaps by implementation problems, or a well-funded campaign of opposition. They don’t understand what the majority of Australian voters came to believe — that WorkChoices meant unskilled workers relied on the goodwill of their employers to get a fair go, that Howard preferred to tax and spend for political benefit rather than invest the proceeds of the mining boom, thereby driving up interest rates, that the NT intervention was essentially political in nature, or that Australia’s foreign policy had become too closely associated with the views of one section of one US political party. These were not presentational difficulties, or the consequences of union-funded ad campaigns, or merely symbolic — they were the fundamental components of the Coalition agenda. Despite this and Jackman’s book, no one has yet really explained what happened in 2007, what occurred in the collective mind of the electorate to embrace Kevin Rudd. One suspects that John Howard, like Paul Keating before him, lost touch with the Australia he played such a fundamental role in creating during his time in power. But in 1996 the nation turned to a long-established political figure, a known quantity. In 2007, we bought a relative unknown from Queensland. It’s still not clear what we’ve ended up with. |
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11 Comments
Bernard, I agree with you 100%. I read Howard’s End and was struck by the fairly blatant cheerleading by the authors and the inclusion of a number of Liberal talking points post election. For example, a number of times the author’s referred to a “change for changes sake” feeling in the electorate without any further explanation. Did they really think the collective public became bored with the federal government and decided to toss them out on a whim?! Isn’t this counter to all previous elections? And if they honestly believed this, there was no analysis of why the electorate felt that (for example, the Labor Party made people feel the government could run itself is one explanation that has been proffered - is this true?).
Having read Kevin07 and this book, I must say I was disappointed that there was no analysis or in depth examination of the election. The book felt like it was written on the fly based on newspaper reports and personal observations (and an interview with Joe Hockey as credited). Disappointing.
Finally, I note that with the release of John Winston Howard in paperback I thought Howard’s End should have been included as an update to that biography. That the authors chose not to update that bio and release a slim volume on Howard’s End says a lot about the author’s motives…
Beyond “the absurd and comical cowardice of grown men and women, supposedly top political operators” of the Liberal Party, they were also guilty of poor political judgment.
Howard should have gone at least 2 years before the election.
Much of the unwillingness to dump Howard was due to the prejudice oft repeated in the media that Howard was an astute political operator who enjoyed the support of ‘battlers’.
They may have voted for him but they were never fond of him.
Distrust of The Labor Party and/or their leader rather than intrinsically positive belief in Howard was the reason The Coalition was re-elected so often.
The Ruddmeister nullified that distrust very effectively.
JamesK, you’re 100% spot on today.
Further to that comment, for the time being anyway, the ALP is the natural party of government insofar as a slim majority of Australians default to Labor unless doubts about its leadership are significantly substantial for enough voters to buy the inevitable Liberal scare campaign. The NSW Libs are in real trouble but I’ll be surprised if any other state governments suffer too badly in the next round of elections. I think WA is in the bag.
The answer for the Libs in the longer term is, in my view, well canvassed in this article. Moderate Libs, stop voting Labor, your true Party needs you! The question is whether the Liberal Party organisation can recover sufficiently from the Howard years to ever be attractive to urban liberals in significant numbers again.
Enjoyed your well written observations… one thing that few things people seem not to spend much time commenting on is john and hyacenths oft proclaimed “I/he didnt quit because I/hehe did not want to be called a coward… ” ie he was more worried about what people thought of himself than what was good for the party he professed to love…the guy was a delusional, heartless, war monger who would stop at nothing for political advantage….. he lost whatever moral compass he had . Sure he was excellent public speaker and debater was not enuogh in the end . He was surrounded by a bunch of whimps save for Brough, Turnbull and Hockey. Had there been a few more people with some fortitude around him his legacy would be much rosier.
I’ve reached the conclusion that those who continue to somewhat aggressively support Howard (invite him to dinners and give him medals and awards) do so because they benefited, as did we all from the economic success.
But, IMHO, they are also unable to face the other ugly fact that he betrayed Australia and all Australians more than any other leader ever has.
I can forgive the lying and attempts to restore what he believed was some balance in the industrial scene. Even the stupid and uncaring neglect of education and hospitals.
But, by co-operating with Bush and the fossil fuel industry to delay action on Climate Change for those 10 critical years, he put the lives of our children and their children at risk for the sake of corporaste profits.
That I can never forgive and I don’t understand why this is the elephant in the Australian room. If we continue to pretend that didn’t happen, the fossil fuel industry will succeed in doing it again - as they continue to try very hard to do.
The idea that Howard is/was a conservative misses the point. Howard’s poitical ideas may have been formed by conservatism, but basically he was three things: an opportunist, a political thug, and a right radical. None of these is necessarily the stuff of conservatism.
Good one Mike. You’re quite correct. Howard’s conservatism was evident in some of his social commentary (presumably your reference to thuggery) but not his budgets or economic policy, which are best summarised as identify swinging voters, tax, bribe, repeat (your reference to opportunism).
What many pundits can’t comprehend is why Work Choices was such poison for Howard. The answer is simple - most voters are working or have worked for an employer at some stage. Therefore most voters knew what an absolute joke Work Choices was in terms of lowly paid and powerless employees ‘negotiating’ for improved pay and conditions. Even older and more secure employees such as myself knew that a shop assistant or an office cleaner or an office junior would have no chance. This is when I knew Howard and his fellow travellers had totally lost the plot - maybe because they had never been in such a position in the workforce. The anti-union ads showing fat unionists switching lights off were also laughable because the majority of the workforce know that ‘union power’ is restricted to a couple of blue collar unions and elsewhere it is virtually non-existent. As for Van Onselen - I never read any of his books. If I want to read pro-Liberal Party apologists I’ll stick to Milne or Shanahan or the rest of The Australian’s Howard (now Costello) cheer squad.
For mine I would say Howard lost because of …. ta da … the internet (read Get Up etc)
All other things being equal second reason is ….. Simon Crean. Now I know this especially sounds out there but Crean as leader made the wise/lucky/prescient/flukey choice to oppose the invasion of Iraq in Feb 2003 when it really counted. Huge rally in Sydney that month. Then the jury was out all the way past Crean, past Latham, until Milky Bar Kid.
If there is accountability for anything in politics it has to be for a war that proceeded on a false premise. Whether Howard - Downer et al proceeding in good faith, is largely irrelevant. To get it wrong must be sackable. And they got it wrong as the WMD inspection team finally reported. And then they were sacked next outing.
I know there’s so much more to the skirmishing eg APEC not coming off as a LauraNorder PR triumph etc but I think these two things above are at the heart of things.
Tom McLoughlin, you’re wrong. Those issues did not swing votes in the marginals. In the marginal seat where I live, virtually everyone has forgotten who Simon Crean ever was. Tom, you’ve got to understand that Iraq and the other issues promoted by GetUp did not get anyone to change their vote from Liberal in 2004 to Labor in 2007. Claret is much closer to being right about Workchoices, which blew apart the so-called ‘Howard Battlers’ vote and gave rise to Labor’s pitch to working families. Tom, I’m guessing from your comments that you haven’t set foot in an outer suburb for some time.
Workchoices showed, once and for all to even those who ignored it wih the GST, and with the War in Iraq, that the government did NOT have the interests in the battlers, in fact, that it was only interested in Big Business. It was a repeat of 1942 - Big Business killed Howard.