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The Forum > Article Comments > John Howard: a political obituary > Comments

John Howard: a political obituary : Comments

By John Quiggin, published 2/1/2008

In the end, it was fitting both that Howard should attain great political success, and that his career should end in humiliating defeat.

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palimpsest, I agree Keating was divisive, but he was almost never *deliberately* divisive - he just chose to largely ignore the opinions and circumstances of much of the electorate. Howard deliberately exploited existing divisions in society for political gain, instead of doing what he could to improve social cohesion.
I will say though that it's surprising the only truly nasty outcome among of that tendency was probably the Cronulla Riots, and even they were pretty mild really - no deaths or permanent injuries. In comparison to most of the world, Australia is still a very stable, cohesive place, despite our diversity. Let's hope it stays that way.

Still, there were plenty of other occasions under Howard I felt positively ashamed to be Australian, which was never the case under the previous government, even when I disagreed with their policies.
Posted by wizofaus, Wednesday, 2 January 2008 1:54:07 PM
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Before going down the path of condeming the Howard Govt for lack of over sight of AWB and the payment of kickbacks to the Iraq Govt, go back to the Volcker inquiry.
139 companies involved with oil surcharges worth $US 229m and 2253 companies involved with after sales service fees and transport fees worth $US 1.55 billion , not to mention B.N.P. being the escrow bank.

O.K. the AWB kickback was the largest but that was because it supplied the largest single item of the oil for food scheme that the UN set up i.e. the staple food product of wheat worth $US 1.536 B

Who would of been hurt if there had been no wheat sales into Iraq?

If you go through the list of the 2253 companies there are, for example, 76 from the Peoples Republic of China and 233 from the Kingdom of Jordan.
There were only two Australian Companies involved with the scheme's
No contracts were issued directly to US companies.

So all in all the UN had a better chance of picking up on the kickback schemes with all the contracts with the 2253 companies having to go through the UN's Iraq office.
(I wonder if there was any corruption in that office?)

I suggest that the Food for Oil scheme should be placed in the same catagory as the UN's involvment in Rawanda, the Balkans, the Horn of Africa etc etc etc.
A complete stuff up!

The Volcker report is well worth the read, even at 623 pages.
Posted by Little Brother, Wednesday, 2 January 2008 2:07:46 PM
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I don’t think Keating comes anywhere near Howard on the issue of divisiveness.

The Conservative ethos of divide-and-conquer has always been part of Howard’s personal and political strategy from the beginning. He was safe in the leadership while Costello and Reith faced off against each other and when Reith left, Howard stacked the cabinet with Abbott supporters to keep Costello’s ambitions in check.

Socially he used the “wedge” as often as he could. I still remember the shameful way he made sincere opponents of the Iraq war into rabid campaigners against the troops and how he would encourage his parliamentary attack dogs to make outrageous statements and stand back with clean Presidential hands while the public argued among themselves.

In his last days it was obvious he was frantically looking for new ways to wedge Rudd but ended up wedging himself on the nuclear power issue, which he desperately tried to back away from.

With nothing anything else to offer except division, he had nowhere left to go.

His previous anti-Asian stance and failure to address One Nation hysteria helped cost him his own seat, which eventually had a significant Asian population with a long enough memory.

As far as economic performance goes - selling off most of the gold reserves, deliberately failing to fund Commonwealth Super, raiding cash reserves and selling off every public asset he could to make the bottom line look good wasn’t a long-term financial strategy – it was a political one, and we are yet to see the full impact of these.

With the true level of education funding lie already exposed, I wonder how many more surprises await us in the months ahead?

As Mungo MaCallum correctly suggests, Howard's only real strategy was to climb to the top of the greasy pole and stay there as long as he could.

While this doesn't make him much different from previous leaders, it's not enough for him to be remembered for anything else significantly worthwhile.
Posted by wobbles, Wednesday, 2 January 2008 3:26:46 PM
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John Howard will be remembered for his failures not anything else.
His defeat was driven by those who put him in power the ex Liberal voters.
Howard was helped in power by Simon Crean and Mark Latham, and Howard's refusal to understand he was best choice in a poor Field for voters.
The manner of his defeat was well earned , in time not far away his own party will understand Howard has much to answer for.
In the strangest way he will in time bring about a rebuilding of his shattered party.
History and his party will not treat him well.
That rebuilding will see conservatives move in other directions than Howard and those who lacked drive to do anything but follow him Lemming like over that cliff.
Posted by Belly, Wednesday, 2 January 2008 5:13:03 PM
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One sentence in particular from John Quiggin's opening post took my eye:

>> Anyone who challenged the government on its lies was pursued vindictively, using both the power of the state, and the government’s cheer squad in the media <<

May I refer readers to an article which catalogs some of the many many moves taken by the Howard regime to clamp down on dissent.

http://www.newmatilda.com/home/articledetailmagazine.asp?ArticleID=2600&HomepageID=231

Frightening indeed. Such a relief that he and his extreme bigoted mob have been kicked out.

May Australia never again be taken so close to the brink of fascist authoritarianism.
Posted by ex_liberal_voter, Thursday, 3 January 2008 8:18:26 PM
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John Howard should be remembered for convincing thousands and thousands of otherwise intelligent, peace loving, and good Australians to vote for him over consecutive elections since 1996.

Blind spots prevailed and despite numerous warnings they still thought he was worth giving their vote to.

Many of them now won't admit to voting for him. His divisiveness still permeates Australian society but perhaps it’s become less polarized and more fluid.

Howard's hubris and zealotry taught us all something about politics and the role that a healthy democracy plays in nation building – and I suspect the cost of this lesson is something we are all about to learn much more about.

In some ways (not all) Howard was the PM we had to have so we could teach and convince ourselves that National leadership requires much more than Howard could offer. Even

Even postmodernists would agree that the following 4 questions are key:

o Have we seen the last of the statesmanship style of leadership that many of the greats (from both sides) provided us?

o Are we now in the age of slick corporate / government / managerialism?

o And I wonder if Australians feel comfortable with this style and mode of national leadership?

o What effect will this transition from Howard modernism to Rudd mangreialist post- modernity have on an aging populations view on the role of national politics in their lives?
Posted by Rainier, Thursday, 3 January 2008 9:14:52 PM
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