Scott Morrison should be bending John Howard’s ear
French agriculture is extraordinarily inefficient. French farmers nonetheless expect taxpayers to pay for their inefficiency. Their plots of land, often only 4ha or less, are way too small to ever deliver efficiency. Those farmers are accustomed to being well paid for their rather poor farming methods. Therefore there is little incentive to improve.
While John Howard may have chosen an awkward, clumsy word to describe what he wanted — “incentivisation” — we got the message anyway. Providing practical help to get the job done was the course of action to which he was wedded.
There can be a fine line between this and pork-barrelling and generally politicians cannot resist the temptation to cross that line.
Howard was an enigma in the sense that he was a conservative prime minister with a strong desire to reform our economy. He was not content with being a manager as Scott Morrison appears to be.
Howard was a driven man when it came to the introduction of a goods and services tax. This was a tax Paul Keating strongly favoured but he could not bring the Labor Party with him on that journey. At that point it was a bridge too far for Labor and Keating was forced to fall back on a fringe benefits tax and some reforms to the hopelessly inefficient sales tax regime. Howard took the GST to an election and was rewarded with a handsome victory.
Keating described himself as “crazy brave” and that description could easily have been applied to Howard, who had been ominously warned by the Labor prime minister that he would “wear his leadership like a crown of thorns”. Howard grew in the job and became a much more formidable figure the longer he stayed in the Lodge.
Now he revels in the role of elder statesman — because that is exactly what he has become.
The longer he was in the top job the more confidence Howard gained. But what is so admirable about Howard is his refusal to be “up himself”. He retains an amazing degree of humility for someone who has enjoyed such a stellar career. If you are fortunate enough to enjoy his company it is hard to believe you are sitting with a man deservedly called “great” by both his colleagues and former political enemies.
During one election in the 1980s, when Andrew Peacock was in the ascendancy, Howard covered each week of the campaign from the Liberal point of view for Channel 9’s Sunday program. I presented the Labor view. Howard put great effort into the program.
For his beloved Liberal Party, no task was too small or insignificant for him. He needed to be in the game. Howard was the quiet warrior of his time. He never shouted his value from the rooftops, but he didn’t need to. His value spoke for itself.
I could never understand how Peacock could ever be ascendant over him. The gap between them was broad and did not flatter Peacock. Howard never needed a suntan to be noticed.
Mostly if politicians reach the highest ranking positions in government, their characters and personalities have already been developed. Perhaps because of his shyness when he was a younger man, there was plenty of room for Howard to become more gregarious.
There is at times an old-fashioned cuteness to his conversation. He believes people should earn the right to call him “John”. I am not sure what I have or haven’t done to have so many people just call me “Richo”. Yet perhaps he would be pleased to know that many people automatically call him “Mr Howard”, whether they know him or not.
I do not know whether Scott Morrison consults him but if he is ignoring such a resource he does so at his own peril. Knowledge will always be king in politics and so much knowledge resides in Howard it would be crazy not to tap into that resource.
The Liberal Party’s great strength is its capacity to produce and reproduce leaders of the calibre of Howard and Morrison. Because the conservatives have been in government most of the time since Federation they have had plenty of opportunity to hone the skills of their leaders.
Nothing beats experience — as so ably demonstrated by the “bull at the gate” approach of the ministers who took office in the wake of the Whitlam victory. Politics is not the area in which to make up time. Twenty-three miserable years in opposition was too long to be largely irrelevant.
The raid on ASIO stands out as one of the most precipitous acts of stupidity by any government, Labor or Liberal. It underlined the doubt held by many that Labor wasn’t ready.
There is an obvious problem with that analysis. If Labor wasn’t ready then, after 23 years in opposition, it would never be ready. What followed after the Whitlam win was a period in which Labor proved the doubters right. Governance was poor because all the effort had been put into getting there, not what was to be done once we were there.
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