Saturday, May 18, 2013
Dubai: My friend Mike is no-nonsense, tell it as it is affable Aussie. So when I wanted to know more about John Howard — the man — not just the biographical details you can pick up by a quick net search, Mike was the choice.
“So what about John Howard?” the question was asked.
“The best Prime Minister we ever had — not like the shower we have in now,” Mike replies. Obviously, he’s centre-right Liberal and not a big fan of the current Labor Party government and all its internecine rivalries and political shenanigans.
“Why?” was the obvious question.
“Because he was good with the economy and left us with a surplus, which this lot has wasted.”
True.
“Was he involved in any scandals? Affairs?” are the next questions.
“No,” Mike replies with his usual candour. “He is a good family man and been married to the same woman for years. Really, he was just a straight and clean leader.”
‘Clean’ leader
And sure enough, apart from the usual political infighting and internal Liberal Party squabbles, there’s little to suggest that John Howard, Australia’s Prime Minister between 1996 and 2007, was anything but an effective and ‘clean’ leader.
Sure, politics wasn’t his first choice. He wanted to be a lawyer in Sydney, but a hearing loss that left him with a slight speech impediment — one he worked his entire life to overcome — meant he couldn’t be an effective courtroom lawyer. But when it came to public representation and a career in politics — in the best leadership sense of that phrase — he excelled.
As he took office in 1996, a gunman struck in Port Arthur, hunting down and killing 35 victims — a sickening and horrific event that shocked Australia and the world.
Howard’s reaction was swift — pushing through legislation banning most forms of gun ownership and placing tight licensing and checks in place.
“By all of the surveys and analysis which have been done over the 17 years since the change, there has been a marked fall in the number of gun-related homicides and a fall in the number of youth suicides, especially among men and in the rural areas of Australia,” Howard said in an interview recently. “The ban has worked. Australia... It is judged, across the political divide, as having been a success.”
In that same interview, he talked about his over-riding view of life and politics.
Policies
“The role of the political centre-right is to propound individual freedom, to argue always for choice in the options available to people in the community,” he said. “In my estimation, there should always be a mixture of economic liberalism — which means small government, a great emphasis on markets — but also a certain degree of social conservatism, not to favour change unless that change is beneficial. So I describe myself as an economic liberal and a social conservative.”
For Howard, achieving a reasonable political balance was the key to his 12 years leading Australia.
“I used to say to my colleagues in government: It was better to be 80 per cent pure in government than 125 per cent pure in opposition,” he recalled. “You can’t become so obsessed with the last fine detail of the principle that you lose contact with the politics — but if you only trade in politics, then you will lose in the public.”
For Howard, his family and its values provided him with the fundamental compass and the first principle of his political conviction.
“The principles you’ve got to bring to it is, first, that the best welfare system is a strong, united family, where people are well looked-after within the family, and also where people have jobs. Having a job is always preferable to welfare, and we should have incentives for people to work rather than take welfare,” he said.
“Having said that, I recognise — and anyone who’s got common sense recognises — that some people miss out on having a loving family, and that some people, through no fault of their own, cannot get work. Those who genuinely cannot find work, they should be provided with a means of support by the state, but not so generous that it discourages them from looking for work,” Howard said.
Put to test
He left office in 2007 when the Labor Party narrowly defeated the Liberals. After more than a decade in power, Howard left with few regrets. And with the financial crisis about to stagnate the global economy, his economic groundwork was about to be put to a rigorous test.
And it passed.
“Australia wasn’t as badly affected as many other countries, and one reason for this is that my government left with no net debt, a budget surplus, and a lot of money in a future fund to meet pension liabilities of military personnel and public servants,” Howard said. “We had a very strong public balance sheet, and that was very different from many other Western countries.”
Yeah, you can level criticism at Howard for his tough stand on immigration, but he did have to balance what he believed was right for Aussies and balancing the need to accept genuine cases of humanitarian hardship.
“But he’s still the best Prime Minister we had,” Mike reassures. “We could do with him now.”
That’s not going to happen. Howard is working on his gold handicap, relaxing with his family and working on some personal projects. Retirement is suiting him — and his family — just nicely, thank you very much.
— With inputs from agencies
By Mick OReilly Senior Associate Editor
Gulf News 2013. All rights reserved.
