Speaker 1: It's the second of March nineteen ninety six, thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: This week, Paul Keating takes the stage in front of
Speaker 1: hundreds of true believers at the Bankstown Leagues Club.
Speaker 2: I've always passionately believed that all power, all power came
Speaker 2: from the public, every last morsel of it, and it's
Speaker 2: the nation's perfect right to decide who they want to
Speaker 2: govern it. I take this opportunity to congratulate John Howard.
Speaker 2: I wish him and his government well.
Speaker 1: Keaton's government had just been ousted in a landslide at
Speaker 1: Trouncing after thirteen years of labor and power. There was
Speaker 1: much a moment of reflection, as it was one of concession.
Speaker 2: We've opened the country up. We've opened the country up
Speaker 2: and turned it towards the world as never before, and
Speaker 2: we've done it in a way which has also put
Speaker 2: a high premium on social equity and social consensus. We've
Speaker 2: also taken the bigger view and tried to do something
Speaker 2: about some of the intractable problems, like a proper basis
Speaker 2: of reconciliation of our indigenies, which we held a.
Speaker 1: Bit for The door on the hawk Keeping years was
Speaker 1: coming to a close and another was about to open
Speaker 1: on a new political era, one that would change the
Speaker 1: country are one that is still impacting the way politics
Speaker 1: is run today, all shaped by one man.
Speaker 3: Can I say to you, and my first words are
Speaker 3: addressed to all of the people of Australia, that I.
Speaker 4: Am very conscious of the enormous responsibility that has been
Speaker 4: based upon me and upon my colleagues by.
Speaker 3: The verdicte of the Australian people.
Speaker 4: Today.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven Am. The
Speaker 1: course how It's set for the country during is eleven
Speaker 1: years in the nation's highest office, redefined the Liberal Party,
Speaker 1: reshaped the economy, hardened the culture wars and transformed the
Speaker 1: way power is exercised in Campra. In this three part series,
Speaker 1: author Amy Rimikers, who just released a book on John Howard,
Speaker 1: takes us back to his years and power, from his
Speaker 1: improbable rise to the Prime ministership in which he resurrected
Speaker 1: a political career many had written off, to the way
Speaker 1: he consolidated power and reshaped the nation in his own image.
Speaker 1: This is the Howard Effect. A series by seven Am.
Speaker 1: Episode one Australia's Sliding Doors Moment.
Speaker 3: And I want to say that the government that I
Speaker 3: will leave will be a government not only for the
Speaker 3: people who voted for us, but also for the people
Speaker 3: who voted against us.
Speaker 1: Amy, tell me about the size shift that was about
Speaker 1: to occur on the night of March second, nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: as power transition from Paul Keating to John Howard.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a moment in history. I don't think we
Speaker 5: think about enough because it essentially set up Australia from
Speaker 5: the direction that it was heading in in terms of
Speaker 5: opening itself up more to the world, reconciling itself with
Speaker 5: its indigenous history, shifting away from the anglosphere into the
Speaker 5: more geographical position of the Asia Pacific, and all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, John Howard is elected not because his policies
Speaker 5: necessarily spoke to Australians, but because he was not Paul Keating.
Speaker 3: I want to thank Paul Keating for his gracious words.
Speaker 5: I want and that is something to remember in talking
Speaker 5: about all of this. It's that Paul Keating had become
Speaker 5: so unpopular, mostly because of the early nineteen nineties recession.
Speaker 4: Ah, I thought these damn fool things were supposed to
Speaker 4: go up. We keep feeling the thing with hooty act,
Speaker 4: don't get your glands and I'm not bob, it'll make
Speaker 4: yourself learning.
Speaker 5: But also because he was forcing Australia to accept some
Speaker 5: really uncomfortable truths. And there's this idea now that perhaps
Speaker 5: he was moving too quickly to try and push Australia into,
Speaker 5: you know, into the future. And so then comes along
Speaker 5: John Howard who tells Australia that if you are feeling
Speaker 5: uncomfortable with the direction that Labor and Paul Keating in
Speaker 5: particular at taking you in, vote for me. I'm an
Speaker 5: average bloke who wants average bloke things, and I will
Speaker 5: make sure that you are famelessly relaxed and comfortable.
Speaker 1: Aimy comfortable and relaxed became a defining catch frame of
Speaker 1: how It's campaign a country at ease with its history,
Speaker 1: present and future in his mind, what did he consider
Speaker 1: uncomfortable about Australia.
Speaker 5: It's a really interesting question because you have to go
Speaker 5: back thirty years to what was happening in Australia. And
Speaker 5: if you look at the ninety four and ninety five
Speaker 5: cabinet papers, so the last couple of years of the
Speaker 5: Keating government, these talking about wanting Australia to become a republic,
Speaker 5: which is shifting Australia away from the motherland of England
Speaker 5: and the anglosphere. About wanting to build a cultural identity
Speaker 5: for Australia beyond sport, Paul Keating was saying, Hey, I
Speaker 5: think we've matured enough as a country that we can
Speaker 5: start actually being a middle power and start having more
Speaker 5: cultural impact in the world, which meant, of course, also
Speaker 5: reconciling with Australia's atrocious indigenous history. And while you can't
Speaker 5: say that we were definitely on the steps to reconciliation,
Speaker 5: you could say that it was the beginning of the
Speaker 5: reconciliation process under Keating.
Speaker 2: Now give me a great pleasure to had produced the
Speaker 2: Prime Minister of Australia, mister Paul Keating.
Speaker 5: As he had done the famous Redfern speech.
Speaker 2: It begins, I think with an act of recognition, recognition
Speaker 2: that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took
Speaker 2: the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.
Speaker 2: We brought the diseases and the alcohol, We committed the murders.
Speaker 2: We took the children from their mothers.
Speaker 5: He had spoken about the inequality between indigenous Australia and
Speaker 5: white Australia, and how we needed to start closing that gap.
Speaker 2: We cannot imagine that will file, and with the spirit
Speaker 2: that is here today, I'm confident that we won't file.
Speaker 2: I'm confident we will succeed in this decade. Thank you
Speaker 2: very much for listen.
Speaker 5: Around the same time, we had things like Marbo at
Speaker 5: the heart of today's ruling, a ten year battle by
Speaker 5: the Merrian people of the Murray Islands in the Torres
Speaker 5: Strait for recognition of their traditional rights to the island.
Speaker 4: By recognizing the island as native title, the courters acknowledged
Speaker 4: the land belonged to the indigenous people before white settlement.
Speaker 5: And so all of this was happening at a time
Speaker 5: when Australians, white Australians, previous labor voters, working class voters,
Speaker 5: were feeling very uncomfortable about the cultural shifts, but also
Speaker 5: quite uncomfortable about their own individual wealth because of the
Speaker 5: recession that we had just gone through. And John Howard,
Speaker 5: in an electoral preview that he did with Liz Jackson,
Speaker 5: a journalist with four Corners at the time, was asked
Speaker 5: what his vision was for Australia.
Speaker 6: Can you give us a John Howard vision for the
Speaker 6: year two thousand to the Australian public, such that they
Speaker 6: will see, yes, this is the person we would like
Speaker 6: to be Prime Minister.
Speaker 5: Let me respond to your question, And almost by accident,
Speaker 5: he later said.
Speaker 4: I would like to see them comfortable and relaxed about
Speaker 4: their history. I'd like to see them comfortable and relaxed
Speaker 4: about the present, and I'd also like to see them
Speaker 4: comfortable and relaxed about the future.
Speaker 5: And that really ended up resonating with a lot of voters.
Speaker 1: The pace of reform during the hawks Keeping years transformed
Speaker 1: the economy, floating the dollar, cutting tariffs, opening Australia to
Speaker 1: the world. But for John Howard that Bragneck change came
Speaker 1: at a cost. Both men grew up in suburban Sydney
Speaker 1: during the mensies years. They saw the same Australia, but
Speaker 1: they drew very different lessons from it. For Keating, the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties were a warning a country protect did complacent
Speaker 1: and falling behind, as he told Parliament in no uncertain
Speaker 1: terms in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: And then, of course we had then a flurry of
Speaker 2: comment by the Member for bed Long about the fifties,
Speaker 2: what a very good period.
Speaker 7: It was a very very good period. He said, a
Speaker 7: golden age. This is the golden age.
Speaker 2: This is the golden age when vast numbers of the
Speaker 2: stade that's never going to look in, that the women who.
Speaker 7: Didn't get a look in but had no no equal
Speaker 7: rights and no equal pain, where migrants were factory partner.
Speaker 7: Wherever it's respirted from the system, where we had these
Speaker 7: Xennifiers running around about Britain and boat steps and an
Speaker 7: awful cultural cremdge under Menzies, which told us back for
Speaker 7: Neli our generation.
Speaker 1: But for the Member for Benelong, John Howard, the fifties
Speaker 1: were a utopia, a place he wanted the country to
Speaker 1: get back to. Menzies was his hero.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the him being a big fan of Mensiism.
Speaker 5: It was cherry picking what parts of Menzies Australia that
Speaker 5: he wanted and what parts of that, you know, nineteen
Speaker 5: fifties white Australia he wanted. And you really have to
Speaker 5: go back to how John Howard grew up. He grew
Speaker 5: up in a white Methodist conservative suburb of Earlwood in Sydney.
Speaker 5: It was not a multicultural suburb and you could see
Speaker 5: that in his you know some of his first policy
Speaker 5: documents that he created famously, there's one that he released
Speaker 5: in nineteen eighty eight called One Australia, and if you
Speaker 5: read it now, it's almost like a primer for not
Speaker 5: only the Australia that Howard built over his eleven years
Speaker 5: in office, but also for one nation's policies. And back
Speaker 5: then it was Asian migration, and he ended up losing
Speaker 5: the Liberal leadership after cautioning against more Asian migration.
Speaker 4: There is some concern about the pace of change involved
Speaker 4: in the level of Asian migration, and I think any
Speaker 4: government is entitled to take that into account.
Speaker 5: And Australia and more importantly, the Liberal Party at that point,
Speaker 5: were not so comfortable being so openly racist. This was
Speaker 5: still an Australia that was reckoning with the white Australia policy.
Speaker 5: But then you get to the mid nineties and as
Speaker 5: he said, the times will suit me, and they did.
Speaker 5: And all it took was the economic insecurity of the
Speaker 5: early nineties to create the sort of environment where someone
Speaker 5: like Howard would.
Speaker 1: Flourish coming up from punchline the political powerhouse. The Howard
Speaker 1: comeback in not only five John Howard became Liberal leader
Speaker 1: after a party room showdown called by Andrew Peacock.
Speaker 8: It is certainly in a personal sense that a very
Speaker 8: significant day, and very important day in my own parliamentary career.
Speaker 8: I accept the leadership of the Liberal Party with a
Speaker 8: sense of great responsibility, a profound gratitude that my colleagues
Speaker 8: had proposed that confidence in me.
Speaker 1: And after the public rejected his platform with the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven election, he was booted as leader by the
Speaker 1: party in nineteen eighty nine and said this about the
Speaker 1: chances of a return to leadership.
Speaker 3: The prospect of mounting some return leadership bit of his own,
Speaker 3: he dismisses with scorn as Lazarus with a triple bypass.
Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine that at one stage he was
Speaker 1: almost seen as a laughing stock of Australian politics. So
Speaker 1: it was a remarkable comeback and assent to power.
Speaker 5: It is completely remarkable. In modern terms. You almost cannot
Speaker 5: imagine that we will ever see somebody who lost as
Speaker 5: much as Howard did come and take over the leadership
Speaker 5: of the party given a second or third and then
Speaker 5: managed to hold that party, you know, almost completely by himself.
Speaker 5: In the direction that he wanted, but not necessarily because
Speaker 5: Australia suddenly became more conservative, although there certainly was elements
Speaker 5: of that, which follows all times of economic insecurity, and
Speaker 5: I think we can even say that we're seeing that
Speaker 5: play out now. Howard knew how to seize on that,
Speaker 5: but he also spent most of his political career up
Speaker 5: until the mid nineties laying the foundations for the times
Speaker 5: that he wanted. Looking back, you can see that Howard
Speaker 5: had three main priorities that he wanted to address almost immediately.
Speaker 5: One was his lifelong battle against industrial relations. He really
Speaker 5: wanted to nobel union power. He could not stand unions,
Speaker 5: and one of the first things that he did was
Speaker 5: essentially set up the Waterfront Dispute as a way to
Speaker 5: break the unions.
Speaker 9: It was a human barricade several hundred deep across the road,
Speaker 9: frustrating the passage of trucks into the Port Botany terminal.
Speaker 9: On April the seventh, fourteen hundred plus workers were summarily
Speaker 9: and illegally dismissed from their jobs in the middle of
Speaker 9: the night with armed guards with dogs onto.
Speaker 10: The NA will be once again responsible for damaging businesses
Speaker 10: and losing people jobs.
Speaker 5: And he convinced Australians that the waterfront dispute was about
Speaker 5: greedy unions who were trying to take advantage of Australians,
Speaker 5: when what he was doing was handing over worker power
Speaker 5: to corporations and to their bosses.
Speaker 6: In Kens, the Prime Minister defended his actions, saying an
Speaker 6: efficient waterfront was vital to the country's future.
Speaker 10: Unless we create the economic weapons and tools for Australians
Speaker 10: to compete effectively with the rest of the world.
Speaker 4: We're not going to.
Speaker 5: The other things that he wanted to do were slow
Speaker 5: down any steps towards indigenous reconciliation, stop the republic, and
Speaker 5: stop any slide away from Australia's identity within the anglosphere.
Speaker 5: And he started that almost immediately.
Speaker 4: Australians at this generation should not be required to accept,
Speaker 4: build and blame for past actions and policies over which
Speaker 4: they had no control.
Speaker 5: And the other thing that he wanted to do was
Speaker 5: reform the tax system. So he was an economic conservative,
Speaker 5: so he set about reforming the beginnings of Australia's tax
Speaker 5: system and we still see that today with baked in
Speaker 5: middle class welfare, a housing market that's out of control.
Speaker 1: I mean i'my slowly and you're taking this into episode
Speaker 1: two at a rated knots stop for that.
Speaker 5: Yet all of those things we can trace back to Howard.
Speaker 1: No matter where you stand on Howard's politics, there's little
Speaker 1: doubt than purely political terms, he was the most gifted
Speaker 1: politician of his time. A mixture of rigid ideologue and
Speaker 1: fleet footed pragmatist.
Speaker 5: He was really slick, but not obviously so so. I
Speaker 5: mean the year before he was elected in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 5: he was saying about what Keating was doing at the time,
Speaker 5: no one owns the national identity.
Speaker 4: Let me say, mister speaker, that the interests of eighteen
Speaker 4: and a half million Australians are more important than the
Speaker 4: identity of one.
Speaker 5: That was basically him saying, somebody telling us what the
Speaker 5: national identity is is not correct, because we know instinctively
Speaker 5: what the national identity was.
Speaker 4: And if we do want to achieve change that unifies
Speaker 4: and doesn't divide, then we need to choose a method
Speaker 4: of facilitating that change that the entire Australian community can
Speaker 4: feel comfortable about.
Speaker 5: And we are still having the arguments around Australia's national
Speaker 5: identity that were put in place when average Joe John
Speaker 5: Howard came along and said, oh, actually, I just think
Speaker 5: that it's an Zac Day and Australia Day and that
Speaker 5: nobody is better than anybody else, which we all know
Speaker 5: is a dog whistle. But he was so effective at
Speaker 5: it that nobody could really get a handle on how
Speaker 5: to counter him. At the time.
Speaker 1: You argue Howard didn't invent the culture wars, but he
Speaker 1: did master them. What did he understand about identity politics
Speaker 1: that others didn't.
Speaker 5: He understood about identity politics that it truly was emotional,
Speaker 5: that it was not rational, it was not something intelligent,
Speaker 5: It's not something that you necessarily could teach people. It
Speaker 5: was about weaponizing feelings. Howard just absolutely mastered being average.
Speaker 4: So if he chose three words, they'd be I hope
Speaker 4: I'd like to be seen as an average Australian blag.
Speaker 5: So most people saw him as being quite benign, bumbling.
Speaker 4: As a person. I think somebody very much with quintessential
Speaker 4: Australian values.
Speaker 5: But that was a very cultivated political costume that he
Speaker 5: was wearing. He knew exactly who he was speaking to, and.
Speaker 4: I can't think of I can't think of a nobler
Speaker 4: description of anybody than to be called an average Australian blag.
Speaker 5: He was speaking to Australians who felt they had been
Speaker 5: left behind. Howard Cell was going, Oh, I'm not actually
Speaker 5: selling you anything. I'm just pointing out that you are
Speaker 5: right to feel discomforted by all of this. And while
Speaker 5: he was doing that, while he was started waging a
Speaker 5: lot of these culture wars. At the same time, he
Speaker 5: was winding back union power, he was winding back government regulations,
Speaker 5: he was winding back a government support and all of
Speaker 5: these other things that people had relied on for community,
Speaker 5: for organizing, for being able to, you know, actually get ahead.
Speaker 5: He presented all of this to the Australian people in
Speaker 5: a way where they felt he was speaking for them,
Speaker 5: even when what he was doing was essentially setting them
Speaker 5: up for failure. What he did was set us up
Speaker 5: for generations of inequality, you know, division, and put us
Speaker 5: backwards not only on the world stage but also domestically.
Speaker 1: The other politically seismic event of nine ninety six was
Speaker 1: Pauline Hanson's made in speech to Parliament.
Speaker 11: Iron most Australians want our immigration policy policy radically reviewed
Speaker 11: and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in
Speaker 11: danger of being swamped Iasians between nineteen.
Speaker 1: Eighty four and ninety did Howard see the speech and
Speaker 1: the reaction to it as a threat or an opportunity.
Speaker 5: Oh, it was absolutely an opportunity. And he had learnt
Speaker 5: from nineteen eighty eight where he had gone out on
Speaker 5: a limb when it came to migrant Asian migration, how
Speaker 5: far he could go as somebody who was in the mainstream,
Speaker 5: and how he would be held to account for what
Speaker 5: he said. So he did not criticize Pauline Hansen.
Speaker 4: People do feel able to speak a little more freely
Speaker 4: and a little more openly about what they feel. In
Speaker 4: a sense, the pall of censorship on certain issues has
Speaker 4: been lifted.
Speaker 5: It wasn't until the lead up to the nineteen ninety
Speaker 5: eight Queensland state election where Pauline Hansen was starting to
Speaker 5: become a force in Queensland and threatening to take Ellen Pece.
Speaker 5: It's that Howard started playing things a little bit tougher.
Speaker 2: The Prime Minister has made his strongest attack yet on
Speaker 2: Independent MP Pauline Hanson's anti Asian stand.
Speaker 4: She is wrong when she says that Australia is in
Speaker 4: danger of being swamped by Asians. She is wrong to
Speaker 4: seek scapegoats for society's problems.
Speaker 5: And it wasn't a moral stance that he took, but
Speaker 5: he did do a decree for political reasons that she
Speaker 5: was to be put last. But then we also have
Speaker 5: to remember that when she came back into the Senate
Speaker 5: in twenty sixteen, it was John Howard who gave the
Speaker 5: Liberals and the Nationals the approval to be able to
Speaker 5: work with her, effectively lifting the ban of putting her
Speaker 5: last by saying that you have to work with her. Now,
Speaker 5: of course, ten years on, we know that that has
Speaker 5: cannibalized the Liberal and the National Party. That one nation
Speaker 5: is once again rising in the polls, and they're so far.
Speaker 5: They're doing it at the expense of the Liberals Nationals,
Speaker 5: And ironically, from a polling position, if they did do
Speaker 5: the put her last, it actually would probably stemy enough
Speaker 5: of her vote at an election booth where they wouldn't
Speaker 5: be as panicked about losing as many seats. So you
Speaker 5: could say that John Howard set the Liberals and Nationals
Speaker 5: on the path that we see today for election annihilation.
Speaker 1: Amy, thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Next time on the Howard effect.
Speaker 5: When you think about the Howard government, you think of
Speaker 5: strong economic management.
Speaker 4: There is no doubt, my fellow Australians, that this country
Speaker 4: desperately needs a new taxation system.
Speaker 5: Not the circumstance of high iron ore prices, a mining boom,
Speaker 5: and increased tax receipts all coming in at the same
Speaker 5: time to basically give him a giant treasure load of revenue.
Speaker 4: I haven't found anybody in seven and a half years
Speaker 4: shake their fist and mean say how I'm angry with
Speaker 4: you for letting the value of my house increase.
Speaker 1: Buoid by the mining boom, Howard funded sweeping tax cuts
Speaker 1: and rewired the tax system so higher earners received larger
Speaker 1: breaks than those on lower incomes.
Speaker 5: It was Howard readdressing the tax system to put more
Speaker 5: onus and responsibility on individual taxpayers rather than richer people
Speaker 5: and corporates who actually could afford to be paying more
Speaker 5: tax to pay for the services that we all need
Speaker 5: and use.
Speaker 1: That's tomorrow. See there