'A book on Howard and the Liberal party is long overdue .....'
Why bother? As a person Howard is a boring little man who couldn't mount the podium without falling over the lecturn, and in his various attempts to strut the international stage made most of us cringe with embarrasment. He became leader of his party only by default and was by far the most divisive prime minister in recent history. His policies left a legacy of wealth polarization, bankrupt public universities, and almost the total cessation of research and development. He remains one of the few senior politicians not to publicly condemn the uninformed nonsense of the Hansenites, and his shameless abuse of commonwealth funds for party political purposes set new standards in chicanery. His disgraceful pandering to the religious right via the school chaplaincy funding and many other abuses also set new standards in pork barrel campaigning. I could go on.
Better a book about his wife.

GYM-FISH,
Thank you for providing proof that some people, even with 20/20 vision can be more blind in vision & mind than a non-indoctrinated.
I do think however, that the Howard Government did stuff up badly with gun control. Only criminals now have access to weapons & the rest of us have no legal option of physical defence against intruders/attackers.

Gym-fish wants R+D, quality univerisities and wealth equality; condemns racism and the abuse of Commonwealth funds.

Individual wants a gun.

I know who I'd vote for.

My assessment of the Howard Government is also pretty negative – around issues of industrial relations and foreign and immigration policies, although unlike 'Individual' I was fully in support of the decisive action Howard took on gunlaws following the Port Arthur massacre. I believe Howard, unlike his Conservative predecessors was out to destroy the Trade union movement on two grounds, one because of ideological obsession with the 'free market' and also his determination to reduce the ALP's source of electoral fighting funds. In the Foreign policy area his determination to follow Bush into Gulf War 2 in which was quite blatantly (from my perspective) 'wrong' on both moral and geopolitical grounds. Even though I abhorred Saddam Hussein and what he stood for in my opinion Bush Senior had missed the opportunity to remove the dictator in Gulf War 1 where there was far more internatonal support for intervention in Iraq.
However it was in area of Howard's blatant party political exploitation of latent xenophobia in the electorate on the issues of 'boat people' from the time of the Tampa on that I feel the most contempt. Nor does the few crocodile tears and questionable arguments of Abbott Howard's neo-ideological successor make me feel that the the Conservative side of poltics is any where in the same field as the Conservatives of earlier years. Mind you the ALP's thrashing around on this issue and failure to reach a principled position leaves me cold and as for the Green's although they make some of the right noises on this issue their fundamental social agenda leaves me green around the gills.

TrashcanMan,
this is one of the more stupid replies I've seen on OLO. Your OLO name a reflection of your mentality ?

Thanks Scott for your review. I'm now totally convinced that i will go out and buy it as soon as i can.

Thanks again