Peta Credlin: Sad decline in politics since John Howard

It has been 25 years since John Howard was elected as prime minister and the period from 1996 to 2007 shows that whatever its faults, it puts subsequent governments to shame, Peta Credlin writes.

The 25th anniversary of the election of the Howard government has produced an understandable bout of nostalgia for a time when governments actually got things done and prime ministers lasted for more than one election.

In retrospect, the period from 1996 to 2007 seems like a time of stability and prosperity, untroubled by global financial crises, pandemics and periodic slanging matches with our largest trading partner.

To some extent, that’s the rose-coloured glasses through which we always tend to view the past.

But it was a time of significant achievement: tax reform with the GST; welfare reform with work for the dole; border security; a government that lived within its means; above all else, senior politicians who seemed to stand for things apart from their own ambition.

As someone who worked for the Howard government from 1998, I saw it up close and personal; its weaknesses as well as its strengths.

But whatever its faults, it puts subsequent governments to shame. Sure, there are still good people in our public life.

Former PM John Howard. Picture: Britta Campion

But, as a seasoned observed once put it to me, “politics has always been a bit of a snake pit, but there are more snakes than ever before and even the good people feel they have to be snakes to get ahead”.

In my time, and I worked for four cabinet ministers in portfolios across defence, immigration, foreign affairs and, for the most part, communications, I rarely heard sniping even behind closed doors. Even if a minister might not have supported a decision inside the Cabinet Room, once outside not only did they decline to criticise it, but they also actively backed it in, arguing its case to the public as strongly as did the proponents.

Even with an heir-apparent in Peter Costello waiting in the wings, despite an occasional skirmish, the ruthless internal campaigns to undermine elected leaders that define the recent decade were non-existent. It was a time when MPs who wanted to speak did so on the record; none of the weak “Liberal sources” rubbish that masquerades as journalism.

The Canberra press gallery, which likes to write about the decline of our polity, shares the blame.

Back in the Howard years, the media class were alive to policy detail and debates about reform; they focused on the competing political ideologies that drove the agenda rather than the lazy route of gossip.

Today, those gallery giants have been replaced by minnows who can’t read a budget paper, let alone comprehend serious policy. And we’re the poorer for it.

Watch Peta Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm