“All autobiographies are by their nature self-serving,” John Howard told the National Press Club today.
He’s correct, particularly when it comes to the autobiographies of political leaders.
Fairly or not, the impression left by Mr Howard’s book is of a man still anxious, after all this time, to snipe at his long-serving deputy Peter Costello. Costello has repeatedly been criticised for lacking the guts to challenge Howard, but Costello’s defence — entirely correct — is that he put his party’s interests first ahead of his own ambition, knowing a leadership challenge would have served only to undermine a successful government.
And John Howard can be accused of many things, but putting his party’s interests first has never been one of them. Not in the 1980s when he wrecked the party fighting Andrew Peacock for the leadership, through to 2007, when he refused to stand down despite common agreement in his party that he should.
There’s one thing we can gain from Lazarus Rising, however. Howard and Costello stand, at this point, as the last of a reforming generation of politicians who were responsible, along with Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, for our extended period of prosperity. If nothing else, our current generation of politicians, on both sides, should closely study even Howard’s necessarily biased account of his time in government for answers to the fundamental problem of how to successfully prosecute major economic reform.
We were spoilt, in the 1980s and 1990s and much of the 2000s, in having political leaders who knew how to deal with that problem, to solve it, indeed to turn it into a key component of their entire political personality. If Howard wants to render a final public service while he’s flogging his book, he should give his successors on both sides some tips about how to go about the basic business of reform.
One again we are treated to unadulterated bullsh-t, written by one of the faceless contributors to the leader page.
[If nothing else, our current generation of politicians, on both sides, should closely study even Howard’s necessarily biased account of his time in government for answers to the fundamental problem of how to successfully prosecute major economic reform.]
It would be of immense assistance if the writer would include some of these major economic reforms. Over the 12 years of the Howard regime, infrustructure went nowhere. There were numurous half baked broadband plans that didn’t get off the ground, his was the highest taxing Govt in yonks, Health saw a billion dollars dragged,education spending, particularly on universities slashed. Apprentiship, Tafe and Technical training spending went by the boards.
Public Service mauled. However one major economic reform he can take credit for, the storing of 50 billion dollars that was not spent on major economic reform.
John Howard’s much heralded re-arrival
On the national scene with memories archival
Must give cause for more than one old rival
To curse the dessicated coconut’s survival.
One can imagine how that last election night
Must have brought joy and so much untold delight
To pollies on the left, and many on the right,
To see him down, undone, defeated in that final fight.
Now here he is again with memoir, “Lazarus Rising,“
With his usual self-promotion and
old rivals patronizing.
Self-satisfied and smug, it’s even said he’s been devising
With publicists a plan to achieve his own canonizing!
He smirks and smiles as if already in that blissful state
And seeks from Cardinal Pell through Abbot, their mutual mate,
To ask the Pope, without conversion or undue wait,
To confer on him the title “St. John of Oz, the Great!”
Meanwhile old acquaintances look on in fascination.
Former foes now see a way through past frustration.
They say Howard’s sainthood would serve the nation.
Forget past enmities! Together they’ll achieve his canonization –
Through martyrdom and Australia’s first political assassination.
Oh God, another one of those dumb, crude mainstream editorials the semi regular ocurrence of which in crikey makes me regret financially supporting it. This guy has a fetish for the word ‘reform’ seemingly unrelated to the real world.
Despite all the strutting and ‘man of conviction’ spouted dullards like the guy who wrote this editorial, Howard’s reform record over 11 long years was actually pretty modest. The GST, which he was pretty much forced into in response to criticism that he was a ‘do nothing PM’, Industrial relations reform which apart from the disasterous Workchoices had pretty much been advanced by Keating. Can’t think of much else other than the explosion in middle class welfare used to finance the publics access to private services.
Really, Please, put this guy in his box.
The real test of success is sustainability. Keating and Howard both championed the conversion of wet to dry forest in the tens of millions and millions of tonnes of woodchips. Seems trivial for urbanites but that’s megafire material down the track. And we are just seeing the start of that – oh that’s right disasters are good for GDP!
And Keating and Howard on the Murray Darling? Systemic over allocations by their own Tamany Hall land use regional machines at State level. A big fail for governance there.
Then there is Howard and Keating unbridled faith in the global market leading to a GFC involving more costly bail out than the total of all the wars of the 20C and Great Depression, oh and the space programme etc put together. That’s a broken economic philosophy.
What I find most disappointing about current PM Gillard lately is that she can whinge about treating an ex PM properly – vis a vis a shoe thrower – a PM who in fact has the blood of thousands on his hands. Incredible disjunction of priorities there. And Gillard has nary a harsh word for the systemic emotional and intellectual violence against refugess? What is wrong with this moral picture?
I found the Howard of Q&A as relaxed and comfortable as the Gillard of Deputy PM last year. Howard stuck his chin out (like she used to) and nobody could land a glove on him – just like we became accustomed to with Gillard – and rather enjoyed, since Rudd was predictably boring. David Hicks was a bit unexpected but Howard batted him away – no bowling required.
But it’s not as if Howard was never uncomfortable. I clearly recall squirming (and him squirming) as he accounted for the conversation at the Lodge that night between him and that scoundrel Peter Reith, about asylum seekers and children overboard. There was a liar between them but of course neither could take the fall for it. And that other moment when the Indigenous audience at a reconciliation function stood and turned their backs to him – Howard will never forget that one. He was angry, he was wrong and he was blowing it big time. You just have to move on, move forward, get the job done and get the hell out of there.
Oh and Howard might know something about reform but he knows how to not reform too. Given his incredible agility in slipping and sliding around obstacles the bullshit he sprouts about the leadership challenges suggests his own ego finally got the better of him. So there’s three things John Howard can’t be proud of.