John Howard shows the difference between a true conservative and power-hungry Donald Trump | David Penberthy
The man many call Australia’s greatest PM had some words that both right and left wingers should hear, writes David Penberthy.
Opinion
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Last week I covered a Liberal Party fundraiser where John Howard was the guest speaker.
Howard can be fairly described as Australia’s greatest conservative prime minister.
Many Australians regard him as our greatest prime minister.
Even lefties laud his legacy in ushering in the 1996 gun laws which have kept Australia free of mass shootings since Port Arthur.
Others remember that period as one of comfort and affluence, with low interest rates and baby bonuses making family life a much more affordable proposition than today.
There are many Australian conservatives who love John Howard and also love Donald Trump.
They love the former president’s anti-PC stylings and talk gushingly of how the world was a safer place with him at the helm. Fair enough.
These Trump-loving Australian conservatives should reflect on Mr Howard’s assessment of Trump, which he repeated at the lunch last week.
They show the difference between a true conservative such as Howard who is guided by respect for traditions, institutions and rules, and the vanity-driven recklessness of someone like Trump, who would trammel and traduce anything standing between him and power.
Howard revealed earlier this year that if we were an American citizen he would not be voting for Donald Trump.
While he also said at the time that he believed Joe Biden was losing “cognitive capacity”, the ex-PM said there was no way he could bring himself to back The Donald.
Fittingly enough the cricket-mad Howard used an apt analogy to make his point about Trump’s conduct after losing the 2020 election.
“He didn’t leave the field when the umpire’s finger went up,” Howard said. “If you claim to be a believer in democracy you have to accept the verdict of the people.”
In politics as in cricket, there is no greater crime than not walking when you’re clearly out.
Howard demonstrated this himself in 2007 with the sobriety and resignation he displayed when he not only lost the election to Kevin Rudd but his own seat of Bennelong in a Labor landslide.
There was no call from the ousted PM for his supporters to take to the streets at a rigged result.
Howard figured that’s politics, them’s the breaks, and in his own well-adjusted way spent more time with his family and planning his business life beyond politics.
It really is a hell of thing denying an election result, defaming the electoral authorities, rubbishing every single court which has unanimously dismissed your baseless claim to martyrdom.
To that end, it doesn’t really matter whether Trump was a good president or a bad president. His hanging offence was that he has never accepted that in November 2020 he ceased to be president.
In doing that, he places himself out of the North American political tradition and into the South American political tradition, not alongside a Bush or Truman or Roosevelt but a Noriega, Stroessner or Pinochet – a tin-pot crackpot with no commitment to democratic principles.
Howard’s speech last week had lessons for progressives and conservatives alike around the respect of independent institutions.
It had particular resonance amid federal Labor’s transparent and politically-craven public war with the Reserve Bank amid criticisms of inflationary spending by the Albanese government and state Labor governments.
Howard’s mind turned again to the year 2007 when on the cusp of the election, with interest rates having been the ace in his deck for so long, the RBA jacked up rates on the cusp of the campaign.
It was a big moment in politics. I was editing the Sydney Daily Telegraph at the time and on the day the RBA pushed up the cash rate our front page featured a photo of Mr Howard standing on the steps of his home at Kirribilli House.
The front page had an intro reading “What interest rate jump means for you – and him” with the all-caps headline reading THIS MAN COULD LOSE HIS HOUSE.
The not-so-subtle insinuation was that having made so much political mileage from keeping interest rates down – the centrepiece of his 2004 re-election pitch – the PM had lost his magic touch when he could least afford to do so.
I know the former PM wasn’t thrilled with that front page but he certainly understood the gist of it given the timing, especially with the polls pointing to a Rudd victory.
Howard reflected on that timing last week in the context of Treasurer Jim Chalmers and former treasurer Wayne Swan now coming out and potting the RBA over its rate hikes to deflect attention from Labor’s role in fuelling inflation.
“To say I was thrilled with that rate increase on the eve of an election would be wrong,” Howard laughed in his off-the-cuff speech.
“But I didn’t pick up the phone to the Reserve Bank Governor and say ‘Aw, thanks mate, great timing’.
“You don’t do that. You don’t go to war with the independent Reserve Bank for your own political ends. The bank has to make its own determinations based on economic conditions, with no political considerations.”
It was a great speech from a great man whose greatness stems in large part from his belief that he isn’t great at all, but was merely the lucky recipient of public support which ultimately faded away.
It’s an important reminder that in politics the best politicians are those who recognise that none of this is about them, that no man is ever bigger than the institutions that keep us safe and free.
And one final note – at 85 years old, four years Joe Biden’s senior, he was making a hell of a lot more cognitive sense than the bloke currently leading the free world and who, to use one last fitting cricket term, has retired hurt ahead of the November election.
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