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John Howard: The dispiriting face of Middle Australia

By Kathy Marks

19 October 2002 - John Howard spoke eloquently of Australia's aching sense of loss. He laid a wreath by a cross and paused a moment, head bowed. Then he turned and tightly embraced a tall, young man who clung to him, weeping inconsolably.

The scene – at a memorial service for Australian victims of last weekend's devastating car bomb in a Bali nightclub – was the stuff of spindoctors' dreams. But the gestures were spontaneous and the words sincere; there is no doubt that the Prime Minister feels his countrymen's pain.

Times of national tragedy bring out the best in Howard, whose greatest gifts are a finely tuned empathy with Middle Australia and an uncanny ability to articulate its various moods. He has honed these talents during six years in office and three decades in the boxing ring of federal politics. They were illustrated most graphically and to an international audience when a shipload of Afghan asylum-seekers sailed over the horizon last year.

Many people, particularly outside Australia, make the mistake of underestimating Howard. He has scant charisma and no commanding presence; his eyebrows are unruly, his voice an irritating whine. Visitors seduced by images of a diverse, progressive nation are startled to find it run by a grey man who belongs in the 1950s.

For those who believe the hype about Australia, generated by tourism advertisements and the 2000 Olympic Games, Howard, in his early sixties, seems out of step with the times. Why did he sabotage a republican campaign that wanted a modern, self-confident country to stand on its own feet? Why has he steadfastly refused to apologise to Aborigines for past injustices? Why does he feel so threatened by the arrival of penniless people with beards and burqas?

The answer is that on all of those issues, each so crucial to national identity, Howard reflects the views of the majority of the electorate. Contemporary Australia is a deeply conservative place, hostile to new ideas, suspicious of outsiders. That – combined with a weak and aimless opposition – explains why Howard's right-wing coalition has won three elections in a row.

Under his stewardship, the country has turned in on itself – turning its back on Asia, cosying up to the United States, defiantly proclaiming white, Anglo-Saxon values. In Howard's Australia, prejudice lurks, intolerance thrives and sameness is celebrated.

But Howard is not a right-wing ideologue; he is a conviction politician, a formidably shrewd and skilled operator, an extraordinary survivor who has twice bounced back after being rejected by his own party – he once called himself "Lazarus with a triple bypass". He is stubborn, he does not lack political courage and he demonstrated strong leadership when he lobbied for a multi-national peacekeeping force for East Timor in 1999. Yesterday he rejected suggestions that Australia invited the attack on its citizens in Bali because of its support for the American-led war on terrorism. "I believe the view that if you speak softly of evil, you will buy yourself immunity from the reach of terror, is disproved by the lessons of history," he said.

His father, a garage owner, and his mother must have had a whiff of the ambition that drives him, for they gave him Winston as a middle name, after the British politician who became his political hero. (Later, Margaret Thatcher was to provide another role model.) The young Howard grew up in Sydney and did not distinguish himself at school, although he discovered a love of debating, later evident in his acerbic performances in parliament.

Howard joined the right-of-centre Liberal Party at 18, but he did not race into a political career. Instead he took a law degree and practised as a solicitor for 12 years; he has never quite shaken off the suburban-solicitor image and is still ridiculed by his opponents for living with his parents until he married at 32. His teacher wife, Janette, is said to be his most trusted political adviser; the couple have three children.

In 1974 he was elected to the seat of Bennelong, in northern Sydney, and just three years later he was catapulted into the political limelight when he was made Treasurer in Malcolm Fraser's government. It was a time of national upheaval; in 1975 Australia's first post-war Labour Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, had been dismissed by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, to break a parliamentary deadlock.

After Fraser was ousted, Howard returned to the opposition benches and became Liberal leader in 1985. He was deposed by his bitter rival, Andrew Peacock, in 1989 and mounted an unsuccessful challenge for the job four years later. He regained the leadership in 1995 and won an election the following year, defeating Labour's Paul Keating.

Keating had paved the way for Aboriginal land rights, championed an Australian republic and forged close ties with Asian neighbours. He was a clever and cultured man; Howard, by contrast, has made a virtue of his ordinariness. Thomas Kenneally, the Australian author, once likened him to the Dickensian character Gradgrind, the schoolmaster in Hard Times. "Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations." He has been said to have "turned ordinariness into a success story".

One incident stands out from his years in opposition: in 1988 Howard called for Asian immigration to be reduced in the interests of social cohesion. In a parliamentary debate on a related topic, a Liberal MP called Philip Ruddock crossed the floor in disgust to vote with Labour. It took Howard five years to disown his remarks. Ironically, Ruddock is now Howard's Immigration Minister, the public face of the government's ultra-hardline refugee policy.

Ambivalence on racial issues has been a running theme for Howard. He refrained from condemning Pauline Hanson's far-right One Nation party after it burst on to the political landscape, winning eight per cent of the vote in the 1998 election. Why? Because Hanson, with her crude anti-immigration and anti-Aboriginal platform, had tapped a nerve in rural areas – and Howard knew that to criticise her would alienate discontented voters even further. Instead, he quietly adopted a less strident version of her agenda.

In Britain, it is often said that government policy is directly influenced by the right-wing tabloids, the organs of Middle England. In Australia, it is the "shock jock" talk-back radio hosts who are credited with having their finger on the nation's pulse, and the Tampa crisis proved Howard's impeccable knack of anticipating their views and those of their callers.

When the Tampa, a Norwegian freighter, picked up 434 Afghans from a sinking ship in the Indian Ocean and headed for the Australian territory of Christmas Island, he felt it was time to draw a line in the sand. The government was frustrated by the rising number of "illegal" arrivals – although they amounted to only a few thousand people a year – and Howard refused to allow the Tampa's passengers to land. "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come," he declared, dispatching the SAS when the Tampa's captain ignored him.

The talk-back callers were delighted. "Build a plank and give them all a blindfold," one suggested. A few weeks later, Howard's government – which had been languishing in polls all year – was returned to power with an increased majority.

The government dispersed the Afghans around the Pacific and sent naval warships to turn back refugee boats. Howard weathered the storm of international protest and, a few months later, stood equally firm when the spotlight moved to Woomera, a grim detention camp in the desert where children had sewn their lips together and tried to hang themselves. United Nations envoys who criticised conditions there were dismissed as meddlers.

A year later, Australia is a changed place. Educated, well- informed people sit around Sydney dinner tables and swap horror stories about Lebanese gangs plotting to blow up the Harbour Bridge. They sigh about the number of "immigrants" – for which, read Muslims – and relate tales of refugees sneaking into the country with diamonds in their teeth.

Racism has become respectable, and it is the government's fault. When the Vietnamese began turning up in leaky boats in the late 1970s, Fraser defied public opinion because he saw it as Australia's responsibility to help. Howard and his ministers have not only failed to take a moral lead; they have whipped up xenophobia by portraying refugees as queue-jumpers and potential terrorists. No wonder that prejudice no longer hides in dark corners; if politicians can say such things, then everyone can.

Is Howard racist? Not exactly. He feels more at ease with his own kind and he is not someone who naturally embraces cultural diversity. But then he is uncomfortable with most of the social reforms undertaken in the West since the 1960s. He played an adroit backroom role in the scaremongering campaign that helped defeat a republican referendum in 1999. He has refused to say sorry to Aboriginal children who were removed from their families to white orphanages until 1970. Disgracefully, he remained silent when a senior Liberal MP, Bill Heffernan, abused parliamentary privilege to accuse a respected High Court judge, Michael Kirby, of picking up rent-boys – even when evidence quickly proved the claim to be nonsense.

Howard derides intellectual "elitists" – which means anyone who champions liberal principles. He himself extols the old-fashioned Australian values of mateship and "the fair go", but – it seems – only for white Anglo-Celts. He is already guaranteed a place in the history books, for he will be Australia's second longest-serving Prime Minister when he leaves office, surpassed only by Robert Menzies.

As one commentator put it: "He is a genius of sorts: he looks this country in the face and sees us not as we wish we were, not as one day we might be, but exactly as we are."

LIFE STORY
Born : John Winston Howard 26 July 1939 in Earlswood, New South Wales

Family: Married (1971) Alison Janette Parker. Three children: Richard (21), Melanie (27), Tim (24)

Education: Earlwood Primary and Canterbury Boys' High and Sydney University. Gained Bachelor of Laws in 1961

Legal career: Trained as a solicitor and was admitted to the New South Wales Supreme Court in 1962. Went on to become a partner in a Sydney firm

Political career: Joined the Young Liberal Movement at the age of 18. Liberal MP for Bennelong, New South Wales, since 1974. Minister for Business and Consumer Affairs, 1975; Minister assisting prime minister, 1977; Minister for special trade negotiations 1977; Federal treasurer 1977-83; Leader of the Parliamentary Liberal Party and leader of the opposition 1985-89, 1995-96; Prime Minister of Australia since 11 March 1996

Recreations: Reading, tennis, cricket. Follows the St George Rugby League football team

He says: "I'm not concerned about the international view of Australia's treatment of asylum-seekers."

They say "Not for him the high-flown imagery, the fancy ideas. Plain man's fare is more than enough. He is the political equivalent of the lamb roast." Jennifer Hewett, Australian cultural critic

Clip from The Independent


related links:

• Australia marches backwards on its Aborigine rights
  4 June 2002 - Independent (UK) - Reconciliation is off the agenda, the optimism has evaporated and race relations are as polarised as ever. Thanks to John Howard, Keating's successor, the Mabo legacy has been a tale of lost opportunities and crushed aspirations.
• Martin Luther King III tells Howard to apologise
  4 May 2002 - The son of Martin Luther King is coming to Australia, and he has a clear message for John Howard: Say sorry.
• Australia is the only developed country whose government has been condemned as racist by the United Nations
  13 October 2000 - By John Pilger. There is no doubting the efficiency of the Sydney Olympics, the friendliness of the people, the beauty of the setting; but there was a political façade. Soon after the Aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman won her gold medal, the cabinet of John Howard’s government met in Canberra to mount yet another attack on her people by planning to change the Land Rights Act.
• Aborigines to Protest At Ceremony in Sydney, Group Will Try to Drown Out Prime Minister
  International Herald Tribune - Prime Minister John Howard of Australia and other political and civic leaders will attend a ceremony in Sydney on Saturday that is intended to advance proposals for reconciliation between the country's indigenous black minority and its predominantly European majority.

Further information: human rights issues page - includes news index and external links