The wit of John Howard

Those who know me will not be surprised to know that I'd expect The Wit and Wisdom of John Howard to be a very slim book indeed, right up there with the Reforms and Vision of the Howard Government and The Italian Book of War Heroes.

But credit where it's due. Our former Leader does show some promising skills as a standup comedian.

In a self-deprecating address to the Liberal Party faithful in Brisbane the other night, his first speech in Australia since his defeat on November 24, and immediately following his lap of honour through cheering throngs of neo-cons in the US, he said that despite his many years in office, he'd realised his diplomatic skills need honing.

Part of being in Texas was to go down to College Station which is where the library of the 41st President of the United States, George Henry Walker Bush, is located.

We had a very pleasant occasion and a gathering of supporters and friends turned up and I was invited to make a few remarks and one of the questioners got up and said would you name three things that, you know, you are really proud of about what you did as Prime Minister?

And I said, well yes. Chronologically, the first thing I'll start with is gun control.

The Brisbane audience laughs. John Howard pauses, then with the timing of a professional comic, looks around and says:

That wasn't their reaction.

I have to thank the AM show on ABC Local Radio for this snippet, reported by the ABC's Donna Field. I would have posted this item yesterday, but like many others trying to use ABC Online's redesigned website, I found myself blundering through a maze of impenetrable navigations links and pages which refused to open.

ABC forums now carry many protests from users who say the new ABC Online Local Radio pages have been changed for the worse. And it may be true. I've never had so much trouble following up an item I've heard on the radio.

Still, if you want the AM report, here it is.

John Who?

There I was at my No 1 Ladies Book Club, and I happened to mention our recently departed Prime Minister, John Howard. "John Who?", one of our number responded.

Very witty, I thought. But a bit later, I thought: By George, I think she's got it! Never again need I name the fellow who gave tolerant and progressive Australians so many dispiriting years.

So from now on, it's John Who?

Which leads to a delightful thought. When the opposing factions in the Liberal Party rump despair of their vacillating Oppostion Leader as he tries to be all things to all men and allows Kevin Rudd to play him like a hypnotised chook, he'll become Doctor Who.

Meanwhile, isn't it interesting how history repeats itself? And why do our conservative leaders so love dressing up in medieval finery to go poncing around the Old Dart?

First up in the buckle shoes and funny hat was Sir Robert Menzies, who took the title of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, a post created around the 12th century to make sure the Dover ports paid their taxes to the English monarch. I think he's the guy who said of Liz, "I did but see her passing by, yet I'll love her till I die."

His beloved Queen Liz rewarded him with the Lord Warden's post from 1966 till 1978, fitting him in between Sir Winston Churchill and the Queen Mother. She'd also put him into the Most Noble Order of the Thistle (which caused some merriment with the plebs Down Under).

Now, if newspaper reports are to be believed (a big ask), Queen Elizabeth of Australia, in her other role as monarch of England, is about to appoint John Who? to the Order of the Garter -- a collection of knights established around 1348 to provide companionship to the monarch.

Ermine robes, buckle shoes, pomp and ceremony, adulation of our beloved ruler, long to reign over us. Johnnie Who? will be so chuffed. And as for Janette!

But Queen Elizabeth owes him. With brilliant strategy, John Who? managed to thwart the desire of 70 per cent of Australians to make their nation a republic.

He split the republican vote when we debated whether our President would be elected by parliament or by a popular national vote. Like most Australians, I supported the idea that Australia should stand as a proud, independent nation, while still still acknowledging our British heritage.

But I also believed our President should be appointed by a parliamentary vote, not by a national election, because it would not disrupt constitutional arrangements which were working so well. And that's where we lost.

With the Mad Monk as his mouthpiece, John Who? showed his mastery of wedge politics. Tony Abbott said the position of President would be far too important to be decided by politicians. We should vote no to a republic so we didn't have the Prez elected by politicians.

Abbott lost me at that point. Either he's stupid, and I don't think he is, or he's so contemptuous of his fellow Australians he counted on their not knowing that under the existing, continuing arrangement, one person -- the Prime Minister, possibly but not necessarily in consultation with a few cronies -- chooses the Governor-General.

It would become a major constitutional crisis if the British monarch rejected the Australian Prime Minister's nomination.

This was shown in a confrontation in 1930 when Labor Prime Minister James Scullin nominated the progressive Australian politician and jurist Sir Isaac Isaacs as G-G. In London, the reaction was predictable. Gad! A good fellow and quite loyal, but he is a Jew, after all. Unthinkable.

Scullin had to go to London to put the case to King George V, and he won. Sir Isaac became Australia's ninth Governor-General, one who helped strengthen national unity into the difficult Depression years.

So today our proud secular nation has a head of state who can only be a member of the Church of England communion, under the Act of Settlement enacted on the opposite side of the world in 1701.

Thanks, Johnnie Who?

Why not use John Howard's sincere and moving apology?

A fortnight to go, and we will hear that long awaited sorry. Kevin Rudd has promised his new national government will deliver its apology to Australia's Aboriginal people on February 13.

It will be an emotional time. I expect to see some of my fellow Australians weeping, Aboriginals who experienced or know of the years of dispossession, family separations and social exclusion. And more than a few whitefellas, too. Even your grumpy old blogger will have a box of tissues nearby, just in case.

The Federal Government is still negotiating with Aboriginal leaders on the phrasing of the apology.

However, I'd like to suggest we use the text of an apology given by John Howard on July 3, 2000. (There's a bit of trick here, but if you don't know of it I'll explain later.)

Good evening. My name is John Howard and I'm speaking to you from Sydney, Australia, host city of the year 2000 Olympic Games.

At this important time, and in an atmosphere of international goodwill and national pride, we here in Australia – all of us – would like to make a statement before all nations. Australia, like many countries in the new world, is intensely proud of what it has achieved in the past 200 years.

We are a vibrant and resourceful people. We share a freedom born in the abundance of nature, the richness of the earth, the bounty of the sea. We are the world's biggest island. We have the world's longest coastline. We have more animal species than any other country. Two thirds of the world's birds are native to Australia. We are one of the few countries on earth with our own sky. We are a fabric woven of many colours and it is this that gives us our strength.

However, these achievements have come at great cost. We have been here for 200 years but before that, there was a people living here. For 40,000 years they lived in a perfect balance with the land.

There were many Aboriginal nations, just as there were many Indian nations in North America and across Canada, as there were many Maori tribes in New Zealand and Incan and Mayan peoples in South America.

These indigenous Australians lived in areas as different from one another as Scotland is from Ethiopia. They lived in an area the size of Western Europe. They did not even have a common language. Yet they had their own laws, their own beliefs, their own ways of understanding.

We destroyed this world.

We often did not mean to do it. Our forebears, fighting to establish themselves in what they saw as a harsh environment, were creating a national economy. But the Aboriginal world was decimated. A pattern of disease and dispossession was established. Alcohol was introduced. Social and racial differences were allowed to become fault-lines. Aboriginal families were broken up.

Sadly, Aboriginal health and education are responsibilities we have still yet to address successfully.

I speak for all Australians in expressing a profound sorrow to the Aboriginal people. I am sorry. We are sorry. Let the world know and understand, that it is with this sorrow, that we as a nation will grow and seek a better, a fairer and a wiser future. Thank you.

John Howard, July 3, 2000

To my mind, the apology, delivered by a John Howard seen indistinctly but heard clearly across the nation on ABC television, says all the right things, and could provide the basis of our nation's apology.

The John Howard who delivered the apology was not, of course, the Prime Minister we have recently voted out, but the Australian actor hired to appear on the ABC's satirical and somewhat manic series The Games.

In this episode, the Olympic Games organisers are frantic – visiting dignitaries will strip the games from Australia unless they hear that apology. So they call in the actor to pretend to be the Prime Minister, stand him in shadows, and have him read the words above.

The ABC noted: Any other John Howard who wishes to make this announcement should apply for copyright permission here, which will be granted immediately.

Most sorry resolutions passed by our state parliaments about a decade ago were apologies for the Stolen Generation, and it seems this will be focus of the Rudd government's apology on behalf of the nation.

I believe our nation should express sorrow for the wider suffering experienced by Aboriginal people since Europeans arrived on their lands, including the removal of children from their families. We need not assume the policies of our governments and the actions of some of our white settlers had evil or genocidal intent – although, at times, that may have been true – but we should acknowlege that often they were disastrous, and for that we should be sorry.

Nobody else seems to have noted it, but there's a remarkable resonance between the apology above and words written by historian Geoffrey Blainey quarter of a century ago.

In many ways the European history of this land has been a remarkable achievement. Today this land feeds fifty times as many Australians as it fed in Aboriginal times. We clothe hundreds of millions of people, across the seas; we supply minerals to hundreds of millions of people; and we feed millions in other lands.

But this great European achievement has been accompanied by failures. And the greatest of all the failures is the dispossession of the people who once roamed these lands.

As a nation we have to redeem that failure. We have to remind ourselves that we were not the only pioneers. We have to give back to Aboriginals the hope and the sense of security they have lost.

Blainey goes on to express reservations about land rights, but says:

Aboriginal land rights is not a gateway to paradise. But I can't help thinking that if this land is to be one land, and we are all to be one people, then we have no alternative but to give Aboriginals a
reasonable share of that land which was once their own.

The historian wrote these words in the opening chapter of The Blainey View, which accompanied the ABC television series of that name in 1982.

* I'm a member of the Central Coast Reconciliation Group. My views might not be shared by all members of the group, and I appreciate their tolerance and understanding if at times we differ.

Listening to politicians for 90 minutes is a bit numbing, but someone has to do it . . .

Kevin Rudd clearly won last night's debate with Prime Minister John Howard. Does it matter?

For Rudd, certainly. A flat performance, or an unwise answer, would have left the Labor Opposition Leader on the back foot right up to the November 24 election.

On Channel Nine – which broadcast the debate with a "worm", defying the PM ("I will decide the manner in which we debate") – a panel of uncommitted voters gave the nod to Rudd at 65 per cent, with only 29 per cent giving it to Howard.

The journalists who put questions to the two leaders also awarded the debate to Rudd, even the moderator, David Speers of Sky News, although he did so with a smaller margin.

And as the ninety-minute debate neared an end, Rudd's body language changed. He knew he'd won. At the same time, Howard's body language suggested he knew he'd been bested.

However, we should remind ourselves that three years ago Mark Latham won a similar debate with Howard, but by the time the election came around Howard had destroyed him (or did Latham destroy himself?).

And let's lay off the "old and tired" description of Howard. After all, your Grumpy Old Journo is almost the same age as the PM. And he would run out of puff trying to keep up with Howard's morning power-walk.

I'm still trying to be fair, and to overcome what may be bias, but to me it seems that Howard's problem in such a debate is his stubbornness. Liberal Party people admire that as a commendable determination, but I see an intellectual rigidity, if intellectual is the right word.

That leaves him unable to think fast on his feet, to keep up with the cut and thrust of a debate which departs from the script or the answers he has rehearsed.

In addition – and this is not a comment critical of Howard – he is handicapped by poor hearing. His rigid and somewhat awkward stance does not necessarily indicate that he has been caught off balance by the argument. Sometimes he may be straining to hear.

Howard also stumbled on industrial relations. He was well rehearsed with assurances that the Coalition, if re-elected, would make no further changes. The IR laws were now just about right.

But, strangely, he appeared unprepared when the questioner followed up: Why should we believe you? After all, you're the one who who kept your industrial relations plans secret until after the election which gave you control of the Senate.

And Howard must have been relieved he was not grilled about his backflip after his shock discovery that WorkChoices was unfair, leading him to reintroduce the no-disadvantage test he had been so determined to discard.

Although both sides argued economic credentials, the debate was unconvincing. At the political level, economic debate has long corrupted into sloganeering, and last night was no different.

On economic reform, Howard stuck to his previous main claim for credit – he had always supported the reforms brought about by Hawke and Keating – and he was unable to put his hand up for much else.

Rudd got off lightly, with little interrogation about his "me-tooism" as he tried to make himself a smaller target for the Liberal Party. Would he reveal more progressive policies if he made it over the line?

For those rusted on to the Liberal Party, Rudd's arguments last night would have lacked substance. Although Rudd spoke with assurance and vigour, he probably made Howard supporters see him as a snake oil salesman.

Now, how many weeks until November 24?

Blatant bias or reasoned assessment . . . why do I oppose John Howard?

Way back when I first put up some posts as Grumpy Old Journo, I tried to define some directions the blog would take. Right at the top of the list, I acknowledged that I would have to defend myself against accusations of bias, using these words:

Sooner or later, I'll have to put up or shut up in my irreverent slagging of John Howard. Some time, I'll offer my assessment of where the Prime Minister falls short if he does indeed try to govern for all Australians. I hope I won't be branded a Howard-hater.

Today, after a period of self-doubt and procrastination, I 've sat at the keyboard trying to fulfil that promise. It's pretty well a coincidence that it's also the day the Prime Minister went to ask the Governor-General to dissolve the present Parliament and call the Federal election on November 24.

It's time to put up or shut up. Especially after a friend emailed after my last set of posts:

Even though I think you give the Liberal party a hard time and find the blog all over the place, I do like your style. You are a good journalist. Biased but a really good writer.

Oh dear! And I thought I had moderated my comments. Somehow, I don't think the following will win over my friend.

So you want more evidence?

Two major announcements by John Howard in the past week help explain my assessment of the Prime Minister. First, his attempt to convince us he has changed his mind on Aboriginal reconciliation, and second, his trashing of consensus recommendations from people who know Australian history and how it's best taught to high school students.

First, a close reading – going past the headlines and the TV grabs – of his speech to Gerard Henderson's Sydney Institute last Thursday suggests his views are little changed. He does not resile from his view that “a collective national apology for past injustice fails to provide the necessary basis to move forward”.

Nor does he acknowledge the stolen generation.

Earlier in the speech he said: “This new reconciliation I'm talking about starts from the premise that individual rights and national sovereignty prevail over group rights.”

Howard did anticipate our doubts:

Some will say: Surely we've been here before. What's different now? Good question.

I'm convinced we are dealing with a new alignment of ideas and individuals, a coming together of forces I have not witnessed in 32 years of public life . . .


At its core is the need for Aboriginal Australia to join the mainstream economy as the foundation of economic and social progress.

Howard also makes clear his belief that the old reconciliation agenda proposed “symbolic gesture alone, without grappling in a serious, sustained way with the real practical dimensions of indigenous misery.”

One could accept Howard's belief that symbolic gestures don't amount to much, although that could leave one puzzled about his dogged fight to retain a foreign flag in the top corner of our Australian flag.

And, to my mind, his proposal for a new preamble to the Constitution is not complemented by other practical changes – it doesn't go much further than symbolism. Last time he strove to get mateship into the preamble, this time it's acknowledging Aborigines' special – though not separate – place within a reconciled, indivisible nation.

For the record, I'm a member of the Central Coast Reconciliation Group – although I'm still capable of the odd heresy.

I totally support an apology as a major step forward, but I'm not convinced about a treaty because it would acknowedge a separate Aboriginal nation – an artificial concept which probably came from Kevin Gilbert in Because a White Man'll Never Do It (Angus & Robertson). Gilbert wrote:

The Aboriginal nation, as a nation of the spirit, a nation without a flag [In fact, Aborigines had adopted Harold Thomas's powerful design as their flag when Gilbert's book was published in 1973 – it had flown over the tent embassy the year before], a nation without land or hope, a nation of underprivilege, has existed, probably, from about a generation after Captain Cook landed.

Reading Howard's speech, one can accept the sincerity and decency of his views – that Aborigines must share fully in the bounty and the life of this great nation.

But he's misguided. His is a new paternalism, not a new reconciliation.

He's also left it a bit late. However, if he's re-elected and he wants to leave a legacy of a reconciled nation, he must shed his paternalism and join in a dialogue with the broader Aboriginal community – not just a few leaders selected by him to speak on behalf of Aboriginal people.

Howard conceded some would portray his remarks as a Damascus-road conversion. In reality, he said, they are little more than an affirmation of well-worn liberal conservative ideas.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hartcher agreed it was not a Damascus-road conversion – he said it was a deathbed conversion. The Herald ran Hartcher's comment under the heading, “Last-minute change of heart in the face of annihilation.”

Howard's media staff hadn't posted the speech to his website when I looked late today (Sunday), so I've relied on the edited version published in Friday's SMH.

Press reports have also picked up on Howard's comments as suggesting he'd been blinkered by his suburban, middle-class background. They included:

I'm the first to admit that this whole area is one I have struggled with during the entire time that I have been Prime Minister.

I acknowledge that my own journey in arriving at this point has not been without sidetracks and dry gullies.

There have been low points when dialogue between me as Prime Minister and many indigenous leaders dwindled almost to the point of non-existence. I fully accept my share of the blame for that.

Yet this is no mea culpa. At no point does Howard repudiate his old ideas about practical reconciliation.

Howard will decide what's in our history curriculum and the circumstances in which it is taught

There's something about history. It's so dear to the hearts of Great Leaders, they refuse to delegate it to historians or educators who might not tell it the way the GL wants.

So it is with John Howard. He's back at it, refusing to accept the guidelines prepared by a working party set up to implement the ideas coming out of last year's history summit.

The leading historian Stuart Macintyre, in an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald (October 13-14), wrote that the guidelines were sensible and practical, based on consultations with teachers, curriculum officers and historians, and Education Minister Julie Bishop was happy with them.

John Howard wasn't. He took the guidelines out of Ms Bishop's hands and appointed an “external reference group” – historians he felt were more likely to reflect his views, such as Geoffrey Blainey and Gerard Henderson. They delivered what the PM wanted, and now Howard has turned to the states and threatened to cut school funding if they don't teach the subject his way.

Macintyre makes some strong criticisms of the revised curriculum guidelines, and frankly, I'd back his expertise against Howard's. But once again, the PM knows best and that's what your children and grandchildren will be forced to study – if Howard wins on November 24.

I think conservatives still distrust Macintyre, despite his now being a professor of history at Melbourne University – the uni which fired up the study of Australian history under Professor Max Crawford. He's moved well away from his early well-to-the-left position, but he's probably still too moderate for GL's who admire Keith Windschuttle and Hal Colebatch.

And a fascinating point from Macintyre's opinion piece. As visiting professor of Australian studies, he reminded his Harvard students of Oscar Wilde's remark that Britain and America were two different countries divided by a common language. Oscar who?

It's interesting to see such cultural illiteracy in the next generation of America's business and political leaders. The spirit of George Dubya Bush is in safe hands!

National emergency response: Concern for Aboriginal kids, or a clever political ploy?

“National emergency response to protect Aboriginal children in the NT” That was the heading on the June 21 media release from Mal Brough, the Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs. June 21 was Federal Parliament's last sitting day before the politicians fled Canberra's cold for a six-week break.


At 12.54pm – according to the Sydney Morning Herald's acerbic commentator Alan Ramsey – Prime Minister John Howard's office called journalists to a joint press conference by Howard and Brough at 1.15pm. It was only 45 minutes before the House of Reps resumed for its last question time until August 7. Not much time for thoughtful questioning.

[This comment has been modified since its original posting.]

July 1, and Grumpy Old Journo finally comments. The delay may have surprised those who know that I'm a member of a local reconciliation group – and, by now, that I'm not an admirer of John Howard. Why not speak out earlier?

One risk was that a quick response would be ill-considered. It would have joined those who said Howard had found himself another Tampa or a “black children overboard”, a gut-wrenching issue – in this case, the sexual abuse of children in dysfunctional, remote Aboriginal communities – which he could exploit to get re-elected.

Could not have Howard's action been honourable, a statesmanlike response to a genuine national emergency?

But the day after these comments first went up, the Murdoch tabloid papers reported a Galaxy poll result that just 25 per cent of voters thought Howard acted because of concern for the problem, while 58 per cent said his action was to boost his support in the looming election.

What if the truth is somewhere in the middle? The Galaxy question didn't offer the chance to reply, "Well, a bit of each, actually", so its result may have been unfair. No-one doubts Brough's sincerity, and it's possible he did persuade Howard that urgent action was needed to impose troops, police, doctors and “managers of all government business” on prescribed Aboriginal communities, and to ban alcohol and porn. All without consultation, it seemed initially.

But Howard is a consummate politician and it's difficult to believe he failed to see electoral advantage in his stance.

As it happens, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd didn't take any risks. He offered Howard full support.


But surely it was possible to applaud the Federal Government for taking decisive action -- even if one still had reservations about the way in which Howard said he would go about it.

Largely, it was left to non-politicians to express misgivings. Fortunately, there were many voices doing so – including many with expertise in Aboriginal communities and in child abuse cases.

Medical experts pointed out that compulsory mass screening of children for sexual abuse, involving physical examinations , would almost certainly be illegal as well as a breach of medical ethics.

Of course, one could call the Howard-Brough move paternalistic They were going to tell the Aboriginal people what would happen to them, and initially they implied there would be no consultation. As Howard said, the time for talk was over.

Some could argue paternalism was justified in the circumstances. But there was always an alternative – sit down and talk to the Aboriginal people.

And of course, the Howard-Brough move, as initially stated, was racist. There was little suggestion of a crackdown on booze and porn in the wider, white community, nor of compulsory mass screening of white children for sexual abuse. But perhaps there too, one could argue the need for this "profiling".

A better-thought-out approach could have avoided the Sydney Morning Herald's big front-page headline on June 27, “Families Flee in Panic”, and under it, “Brough blames liars for spreading hysteria”. Under it, the intro read:

Panic about the Howard Government's crackdown on child sexual abuse has spread widely throughout remote Aboriginal communities, where parents fear their children will be taken away in a repeat of the stolen generation.

But even the most reasonable people with misgivings about the Howard-Brough approach could draw abuse like this extraordinarily vituperative piece by Miranda Devine in the SMH. (By the third par, Ms Devine has also quoted approvingly from a new book by Helen Hughes of the right-wing “think tank”, the Centre for Independent Studies, attacking land rights as apartheid.)

After a week, Howard and Brough appear to have softened their rhetoric and to have accepted they need the co-operation of Aboriginal communities to ensure the success of their “national emergency response”.

But for Howard, at least, credibility would be improved if he had previously shown concern about the well-documented problems of Aboriginal communities, including child sexual abuse, detailed by Alan Ramsey in a piece as vituperative as Ms Devine's. For other evidence that Howard shrugged off these problems for the past decade or so, The Australian has provided many examples, including this.

If only Howard had been prepared, all those years ago, to say sorry. If he had not shut down the stolen generation inquiry when it was set to substantiate its findings. If he had confronted the racial bigotry of Pauline Hanson's supporters. If he had offered more support for land rights and for the Mabo and Wik judgments, his credibility would have been strong.

Without that credibility, it's understandable that many of us remain wary.

After first posting these thoughts on Sunday, I walked down to the waterfront at Woy Woy, where Aboriginal people had a major function. In a big marquee, I watched children performing traditional dances, seemingly oblivious to the icy wind, heard some heart-breaking personal stories of the stolen generation (and yes, I believe them to be true), and tried some bush tucker.

The growing pride and determination of Aboriginal people can be seen clearly at such an event. The activism of decent whitefellas has helped, but the big advances have come from the dedicated work of many respected Aboriginal leaders and mentors.

Howard and Brough appear to be modifying their initial, hard-line approach. It appears the medical checks on children will be carried out more sensitively, and will address wider health issues, rather than just probe for signs of sexual abuse. After days of prevarication, the Federal Government seems to be promising it not plan an assault on land rights.

But issues remain. Is a move to private home ownership sought by Aboriginal people in the remote communities?

There is a good chance Howard and Brough will make a worthwhile difference -- if they go beyond a short-term "shock and awe" attack, and provide more resources for the longer term. Brough has conceded the NT needs more help with providing police and police stations, but he has refused help with teachers and schools.

But most of all, nothing will work if Aboriginal people are denied a say in their own future.

Meanwhile, read this with anger

The SMH's P1 lead shows another broken promise by the NSW Labor government, or more accurately, its failure to provide funding so that its promise to combat sexual abuse of Aboriginal children can become more than empty words. The SMH story begins:

OUTBACK NSW is plagued by a shocking lack of resources to tackle indigenous child abuse which has led to a permanent queue of 40 cases needing investigation and another 30 waiting to be heard by the courts.

More than a year after a State Government report revealed Aboriginal children in NSW are four times more likely to be abused than non-indigenous children, a senior child sexual assault specialist has painted a devastating picture of dwindling funding and shortages of expert counsellors and
investigators in NSW's west . . .

In some communities, child sex had become so normalised that children as young as six had been observed performing oral sex on each other. "They say they're just playing, without having any sense that it's wrong."

When the Federal Government announced its crackdown on indigenous child abuse last week – to be focused on the Northern Territory – it accused NSW of sitting on its own report, revealing
a similar crisis, for nine months.

NSW's Breaking the Silence report followed interviews with more than 300 Aborigines in 29 communities and found that not one could name a family unaffected by the scourge of child sexual assault.

You'll find these claims backed up on the website of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation. And if you want to raise your voice in protest at the Federal or State government failures, ANTaR's site provides links where you can sign online petitions.

A tectonic shudder as crusty conservatives shift to the middle ground

Did you feel the earth move, a slight tectonic shudder in the crust of conservative opinion? You weren't imagining it.

A significant editorial in The Weekend Australian on Saturday was unstinting in its praise of the economic reforms of former Labor prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.

Even more remarkable, the latest Quadrant concedes we're right to worry about global warming, and agrees that governments should be doing something about it.

In its editorial – subtitled, “Kevin Rudd must strive to reclaim Labor's reform legacy” – the Weekend Oz also said it believed the Howard government had dropped the ball on micro-economic reform, and the government's lack of vision had crimped the ability of the nation to capitalise fully on the boom fuelled by the rise of China.


The newspaper acknowledged that some saw it as a captive to conservative opinion, but said it had for many years lavished praise on the reform legacy of the Hawke and Keating years.

The period from 1983 to 1996 transformed the way Australia does business. While not always responsible for devising the policy prescriptions, Hawke and Keating were brave enough to seize the reform initiatives identified but not implemented by their conservative predecessor. This included the floating of the Australian dollar and deregulating the banking sector.

Keating can also claim credit for winding back import tariffs, opening the Australian economy to global competition, driving a wave of competition at a state level, introducing enterprise bargaining to boost productivity growth and introducing compulsory superannuation.

In Mr Keating's view, these reforms underpin Australia's contemporary prosperity and he can't understand why Labor does not want to claim the fruits as their own. We, too, have long believed that Labor has made a mistake in distancing itself from the Hawke and Keating reform legacy.

“Their conservative predecessor” is, of course, John Howard, who served as Treasurer in the Fraser government.

Howard has long been sensitive about accusations that he failed to implement reforms when he was Fraser's Treasurer. It was 2004, I believe, when he told The Australian's editor at large, Paul Kelly, he had at least appointed the Campbell inquiry into the economy. He claimed credit for something else, too, but I can't remember what it was.

Today, on economic reform, Howard can boast of little more than that he didn't oppose the Keating reforms.

Unless, of course, you agree with his attempt to destroy the right of workers to bargain collectively, returning industrial relations to the 19th century.


Quadrant's revised view of climate change, expressed in its editorial for June issue, is all the more remarkable. For years Quadrant has been our most vociferous mocker of those who believe man's activities are warming our planet.

Any scientist able to argue against climate change theory seemed sure of a run in Quadrant, guaranteeing their view would be disseminated by hard-right newspaper columnists across the land (at least until Rupert Murdoch recently acknowledged climate change, and committed News Corp to a softer environmental footprint).

Quadrant's hard line provided support to John Howard in the decade when he stubbornly denied global warming.

Quadrant editor Paddy McGuinness doesn't say anything so crass as “We wuz wrong”, of course.

And he continues to say the climate change deniers should always be valued, as they play an indispensable role. Here's the core of his wordy and heavily qualified editorial:

There are many scientists of the highest professional standing, with great intellectual achievements to their names, who are convinced of the reality of the problem of global warming and the dangers it represents to the future of the world.

While the knowledgeable and well-qualified sceptics of the phenomenon should always be valued, since they are playing an indispensable role in questioning and refining the conclusions of other experts, there is by now sufficient reason for non-experts (the vast majority) to accept that there is something to worry about, and for governments to seriously examine what if anything can be done about global warming, and how urgent this is. This is simply a matter of risk analysis, as well as cost/benefit analysis.

You can read the Quadrant editorial here.


And here's The Weekend Australian's editorial. Also in that issue, a feature article, “Top Marks for Peter and Paul”.

That's not my partner, that's my wife

[ I've rewritten parts of this item since its original post – Ian Skinner]



The caller sounded a bit of a nutter, but he got through to Prime Minister John Howard on the radio in Adelaide. "I am now about to go on a sex strike, and I am calling on Mrs Rann, Mrs Downer and your partner . . ."

He got no further. Howard snapped back to say he didn't have a partner, he had a wife. The caller found himself disconnected.

A trivial thing, recorded by Strewth! columnist Sian Powell in The Australian. But it set me to wondering whether the growing use of "partner" reflected some change in the way people see their relationships.

What's wrong with regarding your wife as your partner? Surely if anyone is entitled to be regarded as Howard's partner, it's Janette. She's said to help him scan the media each morning, and he listens carefully to her advice.

One quick and easy answer may be that Howard snapped an unthinking reply to an irritating pest.

Another, which may be more convincing, is that Howard sniffs some political correctness in calling your wife your partner. Howard is a social conservative, and proud of it. Many Australians share his views on social issues.

For them, the term "partner" may be disturbing because it can include those in relationships once called trial marriage or living in sin, or homosexuals who've decided to share their lives.

Is it also a generational thing, a word (and a concept) seldom used by those over 60, but common among younger people?

I still introduce Merry as my wife, and she presents me as her husband. Yet I can say that for at least four decades – of our 46 years married – I have thought of her as my partner (and she calls me her best friend).

Does it really matter? What's the difference between wife and partner? My answer is tentative. It works for us, but perhaps not for everyone.

To me, "partner" supports a mindset which puts a greater emphasis on equality in the relationship. Also, "wife" and "husband" seem to imply defined roles, perhaps the wife as homemaker and the husband as breadwinner, rather than the flexibility which enhances the lives of so many couples today.

Some Christian churches (and other faiths) even spell out inequality – in marriage, the man must be the head of the household. My memory dims, but I seem to recall that in our wedding vows we changed a word, dropping "obey" and inserting "cherish".

Do more rigidly defined roles in marriage work? To a point, they may. Or perhaps did. Many people have lived long and fulfilling lives in marriages in which they had a clear understanding of one another's roles, and accepted them in faithful companionship.

But come down to the club with me and meet a few widows. They'd love to get around independently, but their husbands always did the driving, and now they think it's too late to learn.

Or look at that elderly couple getting on a crowded train. They're visibly distressed when they have to sit apart. They've always done everything together since they married.

Nor should we ignore that in those earlier times, marriage sometimes became a miserable trap from which escape was difficult.

A woman whose husband could not pass the pub on payday might have to take in the neighbours' washing. If she got a job, and it was not just menial "women's work", she still received only about two-thirds of a man's pay.

If she had to grab the kids and flee her husband's violence, she had few places to seek refuge.

Some of those people should never have married. But in an age when we gave teenagers little guidance about their developing urges, "heavy petting" – remember the term? – sometimes got out of control. I think many of us attended the shotgun wedding of a cousin or workmate who really wasn't ready to face the responsibilities of marriage.

What makes a good marriage? Perhaps fundamentally, nothing all that different from what made a good marriage 50 years ago. But in today's world, those people who would describe themselves as partners may be better placed to achieve it.

I dislike the idea of a marriage in which each partner is discouraged from doing something not shared with the other.

The most loving and fulfilling marriage is one in which each party helps the other fly as high as possible, and sometimes solo – as when I encouraged Merry to fulfil her dream of seeing the Antarctic from the air. As when Merry supports my blogging, despite the unmown lawn.

Oldies may be disconcerted as their offspring move through a number of live-in relationships before finding one to which they're prepared to commit. But that commitment, when it comes, usually is impressive.

Much more than in the past, the relationship might offer a women career opportunities and personal fulfilment of which their mothers might only have dreamed. (When we married, our employer, West Australian Newspapers, required Merry to quit.)

In such a relationship, the man might find an involvement in family life much more rewarding than that achieved under the old patriarchal model.

If those people want to call themselves partners, I'm in there cheering for them. If they'd rather be wife and husband, I don't mind a bit.

And while we're wandering around looking at labels that couples put on themselves, whatever happened to de facto?

A year or two ago I clipped out a witty explanation. I can't find it now, but I think it came from Macquarie Dictionary publisher Susan Butler. I think it went like this:

There's this woman, Shazza, outside a Housing Commission unit, a cigarette in her mouth and four kids – all by different fathers – hanging off her hips, and she's answering a guy with a briefcase.

"You lookin' for Kevin? That'd be me de facto. He's in jail."

Yep, de facto just isn't trendy any more.

If mudslinging is such a failure, why is NSW Labor still flinging dirt around?

Should we be surprised that the Federal Labor Party, and its leader Kevin Rudd, are performing so well in the polls despite a week in which Prime Minister John Howard and his senior ministers have flung so much mud at them -- perhaps more than we've seen in any campaign this nation has known, even in the bitter conscription debates of the First World War?

As we know from the reputable ACNielsen poll published in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Rudd and the Labor Party now have the highest approval ratings ever of any Opposition coming into an election. It supports The Australian's Newspoll a week ago, but suggests support for the Labor Party and Rudd is accelerating.

Read the SMH report here.

The poll showing Labor has 61 per cent of the preferred two party vote, against the Liberal-Nationals Coalition's 39 per cent, and Rudd's 53 per cent as preferred Prime Minister to incumbent John Howard's 39 per cent, startled even me.

But I'm not sure that I agree that the public have rejected mud-slinging, as much of this morning's commentary suggested. I think that after more than 10 years in office, the Howard government is suffering from an "It's Time" feeling against it. And I think Howard will claw back at least some ground when he switches his campaign to economic credibility.

Meanwhile, it's worth noting that in New South Wales the Labor Party backroom heavies have no compunction about running the most brutally abusive, mud-slinging campaign against Opposition Leader Peter Whatzisname I have ever seen.

It's disgraceful, and I mean that word. Journalists with access to Peter Debnam suggest he is shaken by the vehemence of these attacks, and is depressed about his failure to make inroads against Labor. In that case, one must admire the gutsiness of his fight to the finish for the election on March 24.

So where did the NSW Labor heavies find the model for this vicious television advertising? The answer: They copied the Coalition's ads attacking former Oppositon Leader Mark Latham in the 2004 Federal election, wiped out the name Latham, and inserted Peter Debnam's name in its place.

The story is confirmed by a report in the Australian.

So one might suggest, in the old phrase, the Libs have been hoist on their own petard (that is, blown up by their own bomb -- a petard was an explosive device used to blow in a city wall or a castle gate).

Okay, okay, I do have something to say about Kevin Rudd and Brian Burke

Why hadn't I commented on the political row over Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's meetings with disgraced West Australian lobbyist and ex-Premier Brian Burke?

A couple of the guys at our Probus meeting yesterday asked me just that question, and I wasn't sure of the answers. One might be that last weekend the story was developing so fast, I couldn't keep up. Another is that I felt unable to compete with the excellent newspaper commentary.

Also, I'm trying to focus more on the positive, and there was nothing positive about the mud-slinging of Coalition members as they saw their first opportunity to wing “Saint Kevin.”

I came close to posting some opinion on day one. On the TV, I had watched Peter Costello in full flight, jeering, hooting, smirking, mimicking, sardonic and abusive, as he drove home the attack in the House of Reps. A superb parliamentary performance.

But I wonder if there's a disconnect between most Australians and the antics of their representatives in the Parliament. Do ordinary Aussies really admire Costello's histrionics, or – whether they're Liberal voters or not – do they join in a widespread opinion that all politicians are clowns?

Labor's Deputy Leader Julia Gillard can dish out the scorn too, but she falls well short of “doing a Costello” on the floor of the House. Is that just leftie bias on my part?

But in addition to the clownish antics, Costello also kicked a foolish own goal which blunted Prime Minister John Howard's attack.

The PM can present a sincere gravitas, whether he's explaining that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction make it essential we invade Iraq, or that throwing children overboard made a boatload of refugees too despicable to be given haven.

In his best “we will decide” voice, he drove home a relentless attack on Rudd's explanation of his attending three meetings hosted by Burke. He was doing well, targeting Rudd's claimed inability to remember much of what happened at those meetings.

But then Costello's ill-considered and over-the-top comments tripped him up. From the dispatch box, Costello had declared: “Anyone who deals with Mr Brian Burke is morally and politically compromised.”

Um, yes. Someone tipped off The Weekend Australian that Coalition minister Ian Campbell had attended a 20-minute meeting hosted by Burke, and Campbell conceded it was true. Campbell offered his resignation from Cabinet, and Howard accepted.

Few would say his meeting with Burke was a sacking offence. It was short. Initially it had been called by Burke's partner Julian Grill – who, unlike Burke, is not a “convicted felon” – and it was on a matter of relevance to Campbell's portfolio.

Campbell appeared to show no bitterness at his sacking (okay, resignation), fuelling the widespread belief he'd be back in the Cabinet if Howard won the next election. They say there's no deal, but in these things a wink is as good as a nod.

As an ABC commentator said, Howard had to sacrifice Campbell so he could jump the corpse and continue his attack on Rudd.

But on Monday, The Australian returned with the suggestion that if mining entrepreneur Andrew Forrest – one of Burke's major clients – was so morally and politically compromised, why was he still dining with John Howard on his visits to Canberra?

Oops! By Wednesday, The Australian was able to report: “John Howard has qualified his Government's condemnation of people associating with Brian Burke, defending business figures for hiring the disgraced lobbyist.”

What else could he do? Burke's client list is almost a who's who of West Australian business. And many of them Liberal Party supporters.

To be fair, Burke delivered for his clients. Were they aware of his unscrupulous methods? We should give them the benefit of the doubt.

So where does all that leave us? It may not seem much, but I think Rudd has come through maintaining a quiet dignity. The Liberal-leaning commentator Gerard Henderson believes he will benefit because “Saint Kevin's” halo has been knocked off, and people will accept him better.

I think, however, that Howard has damaged him, although it's debatable whether that will still be so by election time in October or November.

I'm no fan of Costello. As an Australian Treasurer, he's a great union-busting barrister. Dollar Sweets, and all that.

He presents as a buffoon, and I think history will rank him as Australia's most mediocre Treasurer since one John Howard served in that role in the Fraser ministry (we'll go back no further, lest we remember Frank Crean. And was Jim Cairns really Treasurer for a while?) .

By most expectations, Costello will step up as Prime Minister in 2008 or 2009 if Howard wins this year's election. I have my doubts. Costello has shown himself more than somewhat inept in the past week, and Howard has promised to remain as long as the party wants him.

I think the party will want Howard to stay at least until someone better comes along. Howard may even believe he could go another seven years, to top Menzies as Australia's longest serving Prime Minister (La Trobe University professor of politics Judith Brett canvasses the issue in the March edition of The Monthly).

But I believe Howard's retirement is less likely to be delayed till he tops Menzies' record, than until there's a strong successor. It shouldn't be Costello, it mustn't be Tony Abbott, who contemplates intellectual debate by lacing on a bigger pair of Doc Martens boots, and Brendan Nelson would be laughable.

Really, that leaves Malcolm Turnbull, the guy who once said Howard broke a nation's heart when he made sure we retained a foreigner as our head of state. There's a long rapprochement ahead of them, but I think Howard will step down only when he – and the Liberal Party heavies – believe he has a worthy successor. And I think it will be Turnbull.

Thoughts while building a boat

Just colour the sails tan, and you'll know what to look out for in a few months on Brisbane Water, Broken Bay or Lake Macquarie. A designer's sketch of my boat.

A grab-bag of jottings today, thoughts I saved as I worked in my hot shed trying to complete a boat that's been years in the building. And it's not that big either. A largish dinghy, really, at 4.47 metres (or 14ft 8in for we oldtimers).

Old fashioned too, with a big standing lug mains'l and a triangular mizzen hanging out over the stern. With both sails tan coloured, it's going to attract attention wherever it's launched.

Cap't Flint is a stock design by Hobart naval architect Murray Isles, designed as an “adventure cruiser” for voyages in more open water. Looks safe for an old guy, even when single-handed. Younger fellows may even enjoy camping in it, as Murray intended.

I've already built one of Murray Isles's designs, a delightfully nippy sailing dinghy, but at 9ft 7in it gave me moments of terror when a stiff breeze swept across Lake Macquarie.

Building boats is fun, but Cap't Flint will be my last. My Scottish skin is becoming too allergic to the chemicals you mix to make epoxy resin.

Alas, it doesn't take long for a respected journalist, lawyer and merchant banker to sink into political life when he's elected to the Federal Parliament. Take Malcolm Turnbull, our new Environment Minister, quoted in this morning's Weekend Australian: “The whole climate change phenomenon has informed and underpinned the policies of the Australian Government for more than a decade.”

The truth, as Malcolm must well know, is that Prime Minister John Howard has denied evidence of climate change for a decade. A stubborn man who overestimates his own intellectual abilities, he listened only to those scientists who had the Quadrant Seal of Approval.

The result: We lost 10 years in which we could have been looking for ways to deal with the crisis.

Now we're looking at such measures as clean coal technologies, including geosequestration to bury carbon gases deep into the soil. The trouble is, there's at least eight to ten years' research before the technologies could be found to be viable. And we, thanks to John Howard, are just starting.

I think John Howard is in trouble with this in an election year. Even those dear old blue rinse ladies who still vote for that nice Mr Menzies are going to think twice about voting for a man who has helped leave a damaged world for their grandchildren.

Howard knows the danger, and as a taxpayer you may expect that millions of dollars of public funds will be expropriated for Liberal Party spin doctoring that Howard has been on top of the global warming issue right from the start. George Orwell's Ministry of Truth still in action, more than two decades after 1984.

It's a pity to see Malcolm Turnbull getting down to their level with such misinformation.

But then, he's the Republican who once wrote of Howard: "Whatever else he achieves, history will remember him for only one thing. He was the prime minister who broke a nation's heart. He was the man who made Australia keep a foreign queen."

A politician, unlike a leopard, must change spots to survive in the jungle. But surely, one can stop short of telling porkies.

Sorry Malcolm, you've lost me. Once I thought you'd be a great prime minister.

For some reason, the people in my household rolled about laughing and hooting tonight when John Howard came on TV to say: “I'm delighted to say that the charges have been laid and that the deadline I set has been met.”

Howard giving an ultimatum to the United States? “I demand you charge David Hicks or release him by February.” And the simpleton who happens to be the leader of the free world responding, “Of course, Old Buddy, I'll see to it right away. When was that election, again?”

Oh, pass the tissues. The comedy is just too much.

Sorry folks, more mockery of our beloved Prime Minister. “The tyranny of incrementalism and the lowest common denominator must end.” Goodness! What does that mean? Prime Minister John Howard's words to the National Press Club show he's got something momentous on his mind, like winning this year's election.

Still, there is merit in his plan for the Australian Government to take over management of the waters of the Murray Darling Basin, promising $10 billion to improve water efficiency and address the over-allocation of water in rural Australia. Provided it's not a non-core promise.

I don't suppose we can do anything about using taxpayers' money to buy back over-allocations of water from irrigation farmers. I've heard enough rumours over the years to suspect National Party ministers overruled public servants who advised against the over-allocations.

Perhaps we could send the buyback bill to the Nationals. Some hope!

And for those who heard the National Press Club speech, there was a real treat – you had to listen carefully, but John Howard came closer than ever before to admitting he'd been wrong in the past. Take a look at his speech, find the sentence “I regard myself as a climate change realist,” and read on. You'll have to read carefully, because this is a masterpiece of the spin doctor's art.

On Newcastle's NBN3 news, I watched NSW Opposition Leader Peter Whatzizname present the Liberals' $132 million plan to save the Central Coast from its desperate water crisis. And, as you'd expect, Whatzizname bitterly attacked the State Labor government for the mess we Central Coast residents find ourselves in.

But hey, surely much of the blame for the mess attaches to the Gosford City Council and the Wyong Shire Council, which jointly ran the Central Coast water supply as its dams dropped to around 13 per cent full.

It's been months since Central Coast residents have been able to use town water for any outdoor use – gardens, car-washing, pools, anything.

Perhaps that's why I didn't spot Liberal candidate Chris Holstein on the TV at Whatzizname's water policy launch. A prominent member of Gosford City Council, he might have faced some interesting questions.

Gosford Council members appear to have put more effort into resisting fluoridation than they did in making sure we actually had a water supply.

The fig tree saga continued as hot days brought on a bucketful of ripening figs at once. So it's out with my mother's old Golden Wattle cookbook, published way back between the wars as a textbook for WA schoolgirls and "to set before those taking up life in rural districts of the State simple directions for bread-making, jam and jelly making and fruit preserving, which will secure success at the outset." Simple enough even for me.

Later editions, from 1973, are a bit disappointing. They omit old recipes like cow heel jelly, and my childhood favorite, celery soup. But they've still got fig jam, and the result is marvellously thick, chunky and spreadable.

I'll email the recipe to anyone interested.