John Howard

John Howard had a long and unlikely run-up to being Australia's second longest serving Prime Minster, after Bob Menzies. For 21 years he was either a minister or shadow minister, and had served as Treasurer in the Fraser government from 1977 to 83. He had also been Opposition Leader twice, from 1985 to 1989 and from 1995 to 1996. After he lost the leadership in 1989 his political career seemed to have peaked. There was, however, much more to come.

As Prime Minister, Howard is best known for the sale of Telstra, for changes to the tax system and to Indigenous land rights legislation and for overseeing the failed referendum on the Republic. He also played a central role in changing workplace relations, in overseeing the War on Terror and the Iraq war, and in changing Australia's policies toward asylum seekers.

Born in 1939, John Winston Howard grew up in Earlwood, a suburb in south-west Sydney. After studying law at Sydney University, Howard graduated in 1961 and practised as a solicitor for the next twelve years. He was a committed member of the Liberal Party, and was high up in the organisation of the New South Wales State branch of the party.

At the federal election of 1974 Howard was elected as the Liberal member for Bennelong, a suburban Sydney seat.  He was considered a skilful political performer and within two years of his entering parliament he was appointed Treasurer under Malcolm Fraser. During the subsequent 13 years of Labor government under Bob Hawke and then Paul Keating, Howard occupied a series of positions in the shadow ministry.

He was Shadow Treasurer and Deputy Leader in the early 1980s, and had a long rivalry with Andrew Peacock. For many, Howard signified a more hardcore 'economic rationalist' philosophy within the Liberal party, with less concern for social justice and welfare programs and more of a focus on cutting government spending.

Howard led the Coalition to a narrow loss at the federal election of 1987. His leadership had been damaged from within the Coalition by the failed attempt of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the popular Queensland National Party premier, to enter federal parliament and seek the prime ministership.

Howard stayed on as Opposition leader for another 18 months but Peacock managed to take the job from him in 1989. Howard again took up a series of shadow ministry portfolios until 1995, in the wake of the disastrous turn of Alexander Downer as Opposition Leader and with the Liberal party in disarray, Howard took up the position for the second time.

In the year running up to the 1996 election Howard attacked the Labor government of Keating on its record of economic management and campaigned on a promise of drastically reducing government debt and spending. The Liberal-National Party coalition had a decisive victory, winning a large majority of seats.

Howard's first political test was gun control. Three weeks after he took office, the Port Arthur massacre saw the murder of 35 people in Tasmania. The government took the decision to limit individuals' rights to gun ownership and to buy back guns from existing owners, securing the cooperation of the States and Territories in passing uniform gun control legislation.

Howard also entered into the debate on Reconciliation. After the High Court's decision in the 1996 Wik case, which allowed Indigenous people to enter some leasehold land where they had customary usage rights, the government legislated to restrict their access and confirm the leaseholders' title. This led to widespread condemnation of the government by Indigenous groups and their supporters. Relations with the Indigenous community were not helped by further controversy surrounding the Howard government's refusal to apologise to the so-called 'Stolen Generation'. This referred to the Aboriginal and part-Aboriginal children who had been separated from their parents and placed in institutions because of official policies (in place up until the 1960s) of assimilating Aboriginal people into the wider population.

There was more controversy over the government's plans to reduce public debt and make the economy more competitive by selling-off government assets. This included the privatisation of Telstra, which was widely opposed in the Senate and in the public. In June of 1999, the Senate finally approved the government's plans for selling off a large part of Telstra. This agreement hinged on the support of two Independents with whom political deals were done to pass the legislation.

Another controversial initiative which resulted in success for Howard was the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST). The GST had been rejected in 1993, and was seen as the main reason for the Coalition defeat in that election.

Undaunted, Howard and his Treasurer, Peter Costello, confidently entered the election campaign of 1998 with the introduction of the 'GST' as their main policy initiative. Although traditionally new tax proposals are very unpopular, the government comfortably won the election of 1998 on the back of the GST initiative. See image 1

It was also in June of 1999 that the Senate accepted the government's legislation for the GST. The passage of the GST package, comprising more than 30 separate bills, was assured when the Australian Democrats agreed to support it after arguing for GST exemptions on basic food items. Within the space of one week, the Senate's acceptance of the bills for the GST and the sale of Telstra had given Howard what he considered his two greatest triumphs as Prime Minister.

Some other key legislation put in place by the Howard government include:

• The Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Act 1997 (Cth), which aimed to reform industrial relations and certified agreements in the workplace;
• The Social Security Legislation Amendment (Work for the Dole) Act 1997 (Cth), which put in place work programs in which people who received unemployment benefits could be required to participate;
• The Natural Heritage Trust of Australia Act 1997 (Cth), which established a Natural Heritage Trust Fund with some of the proceeds of the partial privatisation of Telstra;
• The Native Title Amendment Act 1998 (Cth), which was a response to the Wik High Court decision, and involved extensive amendments to the Native Title Act of 1993.

Coming to power after Keating meant that Howard inherited the issue of whether Australia should become a republic. Howard is personally an avowed monarchist, but aware of the large amount of support the republican movement had garnered, he made a campaign promise to establish a constitutional convention to debate the creation of an Australian republic.

In 1997 the part-appointed, part-elected Constitutional Convention met in Canberra. After two weeks of debate, a model for a republic and a method of selecting a head of state was agreed upon and recommended to the Howard government. The Howard government put the proposal to a referendum in November 1999, where it was narrowly rejected. A second proposal (sponsored by Howard) to add a Preamble to the Australian Constitution also failed.

As Howard's time in office went on, foreign affairs and immigration became areas in which the government's policy program increasingly became more driven and controversial. The government's attitude towards events such as the arrival of many boatloads of illegal immigrants, the independence of East Timor and the rise of global terrorism set the tone for Australia's engagement with Asia and the rest of the world under Howard.

Of initial concern was the outbreak of violence in East Timor following a vote on its independence from Indonesia. Australia subsequently led a UN peacekeeping force known as INTERFET which successfully restored order following widespread violence in the territory, particularly on the part of pro-Indonesian forces. Many independence supporters were killed, and large numbers forced to flee from the territory.

The terrorist events of 11 September 2001 in the US meant that Howard had to increase his credibility on national security. Forming an even stronger alliance with the United States, Howard supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, committing a small number of troops and other personnel. The terrorist bombing of a Bali nightclub in October 2002 also strained Australian-Indonesian relations and seemed to bring the global terrorist threat home to Australians, with 88 Australians killed.

In 2004 the Australian embassy in Jakarta was bombed, and in 2005 further bombings in Bali were widely seen as an attack on Australians. In 2005 the government passed anti-terrorism legislation intended to prevent terrorist activities in Australia. Several provisions in the Act, including those relating to sedition and the holding of terrorist suspects, have been widely denounced.

In the wake of the Tampa Affair, where a Norwegian cargo ship picked up asylum seekers and was refused entry to Australia, and the complicated 'Children Overboard' Affair, where asylum seekers were falsely rumoured to have thrown their own children off of a boat, the Howard government took what some thought were drastic measures to ensure Australia's 'border protection'. The so-called 'Pacific Solution' involved excising certain islands from Australian territory for immigration purposes, and the establishment of offshore processing facilities on Pacific islands. These facilities meant that asylum seekers could be intercepted and dealt with before they landed on Australian soil.

Under Howard, the government also looked to reform industrial relations across Australia. It sought to replace industry-wide industrial agreements on wages and work conditions with workplace agreements between individual workers and employers. This provoked much hostility from the unions. In 1998, the government's determination to eliminate compulsory trade union membership and secure waterfront reform came to a head in a long-running waterfront dispute which involved locked-out unionists being replaced with non-union labour.

In the wake of victory at the 2004 election, the Howard government took control of the Senate in mid-2005 (the Senate working on a different rotation to the Lower House). This allowed them to put further workplace reforms into place, with widespread protest and condemnation from workers' groups.

In December 2004 Howard eclipsed Bob Hawke to become the second longest serving Prime Minster in Australian history, after his political hero Robert Menzies. See animation