Guardian UK: A decade of John Howard has left a country of timidity, fear and shame

A decade of John Howard has left a country of timidity, fear and shame


His power resided in his ability to speak directly and powerfully to the negativity at the core of the Australian soul

Richard Flanagan
Monday November 26, 2007
The Guardian


John Howard famously said the times were his, and for more than a decade it seemed they were. Australia experienced the greatest and most sustained boom in its history. Yet at its end Australia's indigenous population was in a ruinous state, its extraordinary environment was threatened on numerous fronts, and its people were beginning to ask where the wealth had gone: public schools and public health were in crisis, social welfare was straitened, housing was unaffordable for many, and wages and conditions were being cut under Howard's industrial reforms.

Howard had promised that Australia would be relaxed and comfortable under his rule, yet this year Australians had become more fearful and suspicious of each other than ever, a state of affairs that Howard's government seemed happy to exploit.

Howard's divisiveness and his skilful manipulation of public opinion obscured the strange paradoxes of his era. If he flirted with racism, it was nevertheless under him that Australia ended up with the largest immigration programme in its history. His foreign policy was notoriously sycophantic to the Bush administration. Yet while he often seemed little interested in Asia, over the past decade Australia became far more closely tied in terms of trade to China, India, Japan and Indonesia, and its destiny ever more deeply enmeshed with the coming Asian century.

If he was the most ideologically driven prime minister Australia has had, on occasions he acted entirely out of character: his courageous introduction of comprehensive gun laws in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, and again, under enormous public pressure, his sending of a peacekeeping force to East Timor to halt a campaign of repression covertly sponsored by the Indonesian military after the East Timorese voted for independence - flying in the face of Australia's long-standing policy of support for Indonesia.

Howard's seeming blandness disguised his ruthless determination radically to reshape Australia. His politicisation of the public service severely weakened that institution; his government's ceaseless and ferocious attacking of alternative points of opinion brought a disturbing conformity to Australian public life; and he stacked body after body with sycophants and far-right ideologues to prosecute his causes through society. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2217016,00.html