Opinion columnist Janet Albrechtsen marked John Howard’s 84th birthday today by talking of Australia’s cultural diet — appropriately via the following word salad, which runs for 75 exhausting words without a break.
Even now, nearly 16 years after he lost office, Howard’s ability to take the national temperature may have something to do with an enduring divide in this country between a small but loud group of cultural dieticians on the one hand, and a much larger group of Australians who don’t want to be lectured to by a group of elites who have fashioned themselves as moral guardians force-feeding ordinary folk their preferred cultural diet.
This continues The Australian‘s grand tradition of portraying the former prime minister as the human expression of mainstream Australia’s pre-political soul. In so doing, the paper offers Howard, and Howard offers the paper, another chance to slam the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
“Shouldn’t we just be sitting down talking to each other? Not about the Voice, not about reparations, not about treaties, but just talking about how to lift up Aboriginal people, and put them in the mainstream of the community, finding out ways of doing it,” he says, having arguably just listed three possible ways of “lifting up Aboriginal people”.
What really stood out to us in the Crikey bunker was the characterisation of Howard in opposition to those who have “fashioned themselves as moral guardians force-feeding ordinary folk their preferred cultural diet”. You’d never see Howard doing that. Except, of course…
Marriage
In 2004, Howard decided that his preferred cultural diet excluded same-sex couples committing their lives to one another, and amended the Marriage Act to define marriage as “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life”. The act had previously seen no need to offer a definition.
The stated aim was to “protect the institution of marriage”. Further, the government changed the Family Law Act “to ensure that same sex couples … will not be eligible as prospective adoptive parents under any multilateral or bilateral agreement concerning the adoption of children to which Australia is a party”.
Education
At the 50th anniversary bash for influential conservative journal Quadrant, Howard singled it out for praise on one particular topic: “Of the causes that Quadrant has taken up that are close to my heart, none is more important to me than the role it has played as counterforce to the black-armband view of Australian history. Until recent times, it had become almost de rigueur in intellectual circles to regard Australian history as little more than a litany of sexism, racism and class warfare.”
Howard took up with gusto the idea of “black-armband history” and “political correctness” during his time as prime minister. Not content with supporting historians Geoffrey Blainey and Keith Windschuttle, whose work argued that mainstream history had exaggerated the mistreatment of Indigenous Australians in the years after Europeans arrived, Howard went after the school curriculum. In 2007, he launched an Australian history policy amid criticisms that his final scheme was “overly prescriptive” and that he was bullying the states by tying funding arrangements to their adoption of the framework.
Howard has remained clear on his priorities for the cultural diet ever since. In 2012 he said: “The curriculum does not properly reflect the undoubted fact that Australia is part of Western civilisation; in the process it further marginalises the historical influence of the Judeo-Christian ethic in shaping Australian society and virtually purges British history from any meaningful role.”
The intervention
You want to talk about “moral guardians force-feeding ordinary folk their preferred cultural diet”? The Northern Territory intervention, undertaken in Howard’s last year as PM (supported and continued by the Labor Party) was undertaken in great haste and without consultation or engagement with local people and saw the army sent into Indigenous communities.
It implemented, among other things: the prohibition of alcohol in certain areas; the compulsory acquisition of 65 Aboriginal communities held under title provisions of the Native Title Act; the banning of pornography in designated areas; and removing customary law and cultural practice considerations from bail applications and sentencing in criminal trials.
The little runt has had an enduring influence on Australian society. Unfortunately all bad. Almost every gross corruption example of the LNP reign has its roots in Howard’s neoliberal philosophical excesses.
Could not agree more. Well said. He just will not go away. People forget this is the man that took us unto the longest war in which we have ever been involved in Afghanistan – AND ALL BASED ON LIES and brown nosing Bush Jnr to enlarge his personal public persona. However one has to expect this crap from Albretsen who u at least 100 ks to the right of Ghengis Kahn.
“Taking the national temperature”? Janet, you’re supposed to use a thermometer : not just stick your finger up there.
But, I suppose, if you want a ‘lying rodent’ for a pet (or even a leader, eh, George Brandis?) you can’t go wrong with an “Honest John Howard”……
a) Non-core promises.
b) A “Ministerial Code of Conduct” (he ran up, to gull the electorate, as some sort of ‘product differentiation’ between his mob and Keating) – that he had to be dragged kicking and screaming, over a couple of weeks(?), to implement against Geoff Prosser, first, and then the others.
c) The knifing of their own Speaker, Bob Halverson.
d) Children Overboard” and the fire-wall politicisation of the PS to protect his government.
e) The invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq.
f) AWB.
g) NPA.
h) That “Intervention”.
i) The long-term effects of micturating the ‘mining boom’ proceeds up the wall of “political/electoral expedience” – to fund tax cuts (and nobble future government revenue), and such middle-class welfare as negative gearing, franking credits….
If that’s your idea of a great PM, then head-down and keep colouring in, rewriting history and selling your BS for Rupert.
He is so good at “taking the national temperature” that when the Libs bring him out at election time they almost always do badly.
I would hope she would check her own temperature before practising her proctology on others…many would probably like to see photographic evidence of her doing so.
You meant tongue, I think
Lols! Spat on my screen thanks klewso!
That would be John Howard Australia’s own war criminal? You gotta hand it to Bush, Blair and Howard the worlds untouchable war criminals. You have to wonder if that would make Putin jealous?
Putin? Small world…. for amateur grifters…
Not only did he describe Brexit and Trump as tremendous news, his allies show their true colours, in addition to him joining Abbott et al with Jordan Peterson’s ‘Alliance for Responsible Citizenship’.
Abbott, Downer, Sheridan et al. cannot get enough of presentation opportunities at Koch (inc. IPA locally) linked entities in UK and Central Europe; the latter funded by Hungarian PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban and called out by conservative Anne Applebaum (3 April ’22), ouch.
Here’s Jeff Sparrow’s take on the same and ethics on the right of Oz politics https://uat.crikey.com.au/2019/10/16/viktor-orban-conservatives/
You left out Kissinger, that Metternich wannabe!
Very Little Johnny Howard’s real political talent lay in making every traducement of standards sound reasonable and fair.
He did so by creating a whole series of ‘others’: the people who are not like us; the people who would take your land, wealth, children, faith; the people who look, talk and act differently to us – the nice white European Christian folk whose women know their place and who share our free market values.
It worked so well that the Coalition now unthinkingly falls into the same pattern of divisiveness whenever it feels threatened or needs to win an election.
Far from the LNP’s saviour, VLJH’s strategies have left them languishing in the political wilderness with no idea how to find a pathway towards civilisation.
Goody.
Well said. Howard established the pattern they follow today. In other words, he ruined this country.
Well, ruined the battered edifice Fraser created…
Yes, he wanted to go back to the 1950s.
He marginalised groups who weren’t white and English-speaking males as special interest groups trying to get what wasn’t theirs at the expense of people like himself. And we’ve never had the same vigorous exchange of ideas etc since then.
I think the true believers now call them ‘liberal values’.
And we mustn’t forget the master of word salad/ lawyer speak in defense of the indefensible. The Right Horrible Philip Ruddock aka Mr Burns.
Howard was so good at taking the national temperature that he was voted out of a blue ribbon liberal electorate.
Beaten by a female, ABC, journalist.
He found it hot up Gina, Rupert, Maggi and Ronnies’ rectums.
A bit like a curry………….
Hot but tasty.
The only other PM to achieve The Stanley Melbourne Bruce Double.
Losing an election as well as that blue ribbon seat.