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.
The Howard Years: history told by the players
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The Howard Years is an illustration of the problems of history-telling. It covers many of the events of the day, and much is interesting, but it is let down by a lousy theme. That theme is: John Howard the “conviction politician”, elected in 1996 with, in the words of narrator Fran Kelly, a “mission to recast Australia”. Leaving aside the validity of the “conviction politician” label, the fact is that this perception of Howard only came about at the 2001 “Tampa” election. Before then his leadership could be characterised as about anything but “conviction” Kelly and crew apply it retrospectively. A rummage through the newspapers of that first term should remind anyone. Here, for example, is conservative commentator Michael Duffy urging a vote for Howard in the Daily Telegraph before the 1998 election:
(But vote for him anyway, wrote Duffy, because Kim Beazley is even worse.) Squeezing that first term, 1996-8, into a “man of steel” package made for odd television. We heard a lot from staffer Graham Morris: his boss always did what was right and bugger the political consequences. The reaction to Port Arthur was an example of this. In reality, of course, political considerations played a large part in those gun laws. The series has Howard almost losing the 1998 election because of all the controversial “conviction” reforms he had put in place. Again the opposite of the truth: rather like Kevin Rudd today, Howard had disowned so much of his and his party’s past positions before the election — on Medicare, immigration and general fiscal matters — that once elected he found he had little room to move. It was the perception of a lack of agenda that led to the GST “adventure”. Unless I blinked, there was no mention of the record number of ministerial resignations, the perception of administrative incompetence. Where was the .. torpor that characterised that first term to such an extent that, for example, Max Walsh wrote in the SMH in late 1997 that ‘the odds are against John Howard leading the Government to the next election’? Making a series like this would be extremely difficult, and in squeezing several years into one hour it is not possible to do justice to everything. Yes, divided Liberal opinion was shown on Howard’s response to Pauline Hanson, and possible government sneakiness was implied in the waterfront dispute. (Peter Reith: never play poker.) But overall, we saw a bunch of politicians and staffers, very on message, attempting to write history, and the film-makers generally obliging. You can’t please everyone with a show like this. But they could have spread the pleasing around more. I kept asking myself last night: was “Labor in Power” like this? Did it allow the story to be dictated by the players? The Hawke-Keating split provided spark and dissent and correctives. But I’m sure those producers 15 years ago also cast a more critical eye. Or maybe my memory is faulty too. |
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18 Comments
Thanks - and accurate. I’l just ask one single question: “Where was ‘Max The Axe’ Moore-Wilton in yesterday’s episode????
Last night’s first episode of The Howard Years seemed like the early stages of a beatification and those who have always called him blessed would have been warmed by it.
Nah, your memory isn’t any more faulty than mine, Bernard. We’ve been told that the ABC has spent an enormous sum on making this documentary - can you find out how much please.
Why was it necessary for the Presidential Suite of a hotel to be booked for the interview. Who paid for it and how much did it cost?
The most awful part was when Peter Reith, with a very childish grin on his face, showed his delight that John Howard’s family, and especially Janette, had his support. - that said it all about that Government.
Likewise Peter Costello - searching for sympathy. Look at me! I am the one who worked the hardest!
Pity they weren’t chucked out long ago - no vision, wasteful porkbarrelling, and smallminded the lot of them.
Everyone told the truth about the wharf dispute except Peter Reith who stuck to his original script.
How embarrasing that his co-conspirators have now hung him out to dry.
um not Bernard BH
I have a high regard for Fran Kelly, invite her in as it were every morning especially tete-a-tete with Cobber Grattan most days. However as the dust settles on the PR ramp up it’s clear there are some major omissions.
As Ben Eltham points out today in the string on New Matilda, what happened to Kyoto treaty? I similarly asked yesterday would they cover Jabiluka involving thousands of annoyed Aussies. Another dimension on the environment was the still bogus RFA forest deals compounding Keating’s dumb ignorant appeasement of the CFMEU on woodchipping.
I thought it was really well made subject to omissions but almost in an enough rope sense. Right or wrong I came away thinking Howard’s badgering and hectoring of the Blacks at that conference was deliberate baiting. That he wanted and needed Agri Business in the tent and moral and legal principle over Wik be b*ggered. It’s easy for a pro politician to turn on an emotional cover. I think Howard was acting with barely a sincere word uttered even in defiance: He wanted the affection of the rednecks at the cheap price of one outrageous speech to the Indigenous.
Same with Hanson. The metaphor of the flame seems apt, like the Steve Biko song by Peter Gabriel in another context. You can blow out a candle - Hanson, but you can’t blow out a fire - Hansonism. That takes a fire hose. The PM’s Office was the fire hose and he didn’t even bother turning the hydrant on for 7 months.
Max the axe didn’t become well known until after the 2001 election.
I wanted to gut the lot of the cowards.
I was a little surprised by the way the gun laws were painted as a personal campaign that was close to Howard’s heart rather than an effort to jump on a bandwagon that was rapidly gaining popular momentum…
… and we somehow missed the fact that the laws had in fact been drafted several years before by the Tasmanian Greens.
Actually I’m not too surprised the ABC missed that bit.
I won’t be watching “T he Howard Years”, it’s too fresh in my memory. To be objective the producers should have waited about 10 or 15 years to do an objective job on Howard’s Way, but maybe the ABC wanted o be first cab off the rank.
Labour in Power was more compelling, because the characters were more entertaining, and, let’s face it, more bitchy about their colleagues.
There’s not much the current producers can do about this is there? The fact is that, still ,Costello has never bucketed Howard in the manner that Keating and Hawke delighted in doing so. It was very usefu however to be reminded of the manner in which Costello took the running against Hanson
I saw Howard’s murky recollection of events he might not be proud of and crystal clear recollection of events he was proud of. Isn’t the biogropher of Howard who was shouted off of nines election night coverage for flying the workchoices flag behind this.
truth is alien to these people
I could tolerate (just), seeing the old man Howard still trying to convince all in sundry, he did what he did for Australia. Bullshit, he did what he did for Howard, bullied on by Mrs H. I could smile at the spineless Costello, still wailing about the injustice of it all. Mind you I could sort of sympathise with him over the announcement of the GST, Howard made him look like a pratt, what a wanker. My worst recollection was Reith still lieing after all these years, he was a worthless yobbo then and if anything is worse now. We are better off for his absence, a dispicable person. The series obviously isn’t going to get better for Howard, and he deserves to be shown for the nasty divisive tyrant he further developed into.
I thought it was an excellent TV show - quite measured - well done ABC!
The absence of Moore-Wilton was very significant. His role in beating the public service in to submission was critical for the rest of the Howard era. And as Brent notes, the absence of any mention of the numerous travel rorts scalps was a bad omission. I mean Graham Morris - fine mind that he is - was a casualty of them himself, as was John Sharp.
Reith’s Albert Speer act - declaring he had virtually no idea what was going on - is impossible to believe, given the whole waterfront show was run out of his office with the bureaucracy kept entirely in the dark. Both he and Howard were obviously being economical with the truth in their interviews. Most of the rest sounded credible.
I couldn’t bear to watch The Rodent Howard & his fellow witless political spivs, attempting to ingratiate themselves into mainstream Australian political history.
I don’t need to witness any more performances from a group who collectively brought Australia’s political class into international disrepute.
Post Tampa I was ashamed to call myself Australian. …then Iraq, then David Hicks, then Guantanamo etc etc
Every time I hear that dill Abetz declare ’ the golden Howard years’, it makes me want to pewk…..
There’s nothing faulty with your memory, Peter Brent. I well remember Howard’s first term, and various commentators and editorials calling for, nay demanding, leadership from John Winston. I was fairly disgusted with the extremely short memories of such people, and fired off a long “Bah, humbug” to the editor of ‘The Age’ which, bless ‘em, they printed in full. Long story short - I said anyone expecteing good leadership from Howard has already forgotten his disastrous record when Treasurer, then detailed other reasons as well. I finished off with words to the effect that, “We HAD strong leadership in this country, which tried to take us forward, kicking and screaming, rather than back to the fifties, but we threw it out at the last (1996) election. Serves you all right. I have no sympathy at all.”
In the intervening years, I’ve had little reason to change my opinion on this subject.
Yours faithfully,
Ted Green
3/14 Illawarra Street
Glenroy 3046.
What amazed me was the fact that the Rodent kept coming back to ” I had to act/ or I would look weak” THe sign of a weak politician is one who worries how HE would look. But his comments were always about him, not the Government, not the Country but JWH…
What amazed me was the fact that the Rodent kept coming back to ” I had to act/ or I would look weak” THe sign of a weak politician is one who worries how HE would look. But his comments were always about him, not the Government, not the Country but JWH…