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The Forum > Article Comments > Puzzling polling: how popular was Howard? > Comments

Puzzling polling: how popular was Howard? : Comments

By Benjamin Jones, published 8/2/2013

The Liberals lack of success in the last 25 years made John Howard the 'most popular prime minister'.

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@ individual:

Fact: Howard lost. He suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the electors in their final judgement of his merits.

Opinion (yours): Australia lost and Rudd didn't win.

Give me fact over opinion, any time.

Besides which, he couldn't even bowl a cricket ball yet professed to be a cricket tragic. The man was a fraud from start to finish.

Thank Somebody that he did indeed lose when he did - the nation needed a better team at the helm in order to weather the financial storm which followed.
Posted by JohnBennetts, Saturday, 9 February 2013 7:44:39 AM
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Give me fact over opinion, any time.
JohnBennetts,
I can only assume that you have an academic background if you can't tell by now that Australia's gone downhill since your "Howard loss" & the Rudd election .
I think it's also safe to assume that you're on the public service payroll where you don't need any degree of competence to make a very good & guilt-free living out of making working peoples' existence a misery.
Posted by individual, Saturday, 9 February 2013 8:38:25 AM
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Howard was popular initially because he wasn't Keating - but was deeply unpopular toward the end of his first term.

He stayed "popular" because of Tampa, an ineffectual opposition and the well managed use of a compliant media where employed three media managers in lieu of the usual one.

He also avoided a lot of scrutiny by declining media conferences as a way of making policy announcements in favor of appearances on supportive radio programmes.

In the end, like most things, it came down to marketting and spin but eventually it caught up with him when he seemed to believe in his own infallibility and pushed policy too far to the right with Workchoices.
Posted by wobbles, Saturday, 9 February 2013 8:51:45 AM
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Howard was popular because he was neither Keating nor Hawke. He is even more popular now because he is now perceived as far better than either KRrudd or Juliar.

I think voters are now realising what a mistake it was to put themselves in the corrupt and incompetent hands of Labor.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Sunday, 10 February 2013 6:16:05 AM
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The academic question re Howard's popularity really needs to be syphoned off into the more practical question of Abbott's ability to do/be similar. I only hope that Abbott who is blessed with having access to hindsight will indeed see Howard's mistakes & act accordingly. Hopefully, the Abbott advisors come from a more pragmatic background than Gillard's.
It is absolutely imperative that the academic component in Government be severely reduced if we are to have any hope at all to regain sense in policy making. By all means have them in schools up to grade 3 or so but anything after that is too detrimental as we have seen in the past 40 years.
I think Abbott has what it requires to put Labor in the shade so far as governing is concerned.
He only has six years to get it right before the next lot of ignorant first-time voters & their just as silly parents outnumber those with common sense again.
I'm just getting a little tired of fighting those little Lego Hitlers from the left.
Posted by individual, Sunday, 10 February 2013 7:57:07 AM
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Of course John Howard is popular - that was all he ever aimed to be, and his long tenure points to his success in that. A more interesting poll would be which Prime Minister has left Australia better off (in a variety of ways, not just riding a boom) at the end of their term in office, whatever its length. Malcolm Fraser is regarded as having 'wasted' his Prime Ministership by failing to introduce the reforms that were implemented by Hawke and Keating. My main recollections of Howard are scare-mongering about asylum seekers and a raft of vote-buying middle-class welfare initiatives. I think Kevin Rudd would have achieved a lot if he hadn't been sabotaged by his own party. Julia Gillard - who knows, but she seems to be concerned about the welfare of the low-payed and disadvantaged so perhaps history will overlook the way she came to power and the ghastliness of the ALP during her term.
Posted by Candide, Sunday, 10 February 2013 10:17:05 AM
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