John Howard: ‘I believe Abbott and Hockey are correct’
THE country’s second-longest serving prime minister opens up in interviews with The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen.
JOHN HOWARD ON BIPARTISANSHIP
JH: There is a concern about the deadlock over the budget, there’s no doubt about that. We are not seeing a lot of bipartisanship on the budget and on major economic issues. There was a period of time when we had more bipartisanship, in the 80s … when I was either the leader or deputy leader of the opposition we supported the Labor Party on tariff reductions, we supported the Labor Party on changes in relation to the introduction to HECS. I’m not saying we supported everything the Hawke government did, I’m not saying that at all, but we certainly supported a lot of the principal economic things they did and it made their task a great deal easier.
JA: Was getting the GST through the Senate your finest moment?
JH: I can’t identify a finest moment. I think the finest moment in a sense is the collective belief that when I left office Australia was a stronger, prouder, more prosperous country than it had been when I was elected, and a lot of things contributed to that. But the GST was the hardest of all the great reforms of the last 30 years to implement because it was so complicated, it affected everybody and it was tenaciously opposed by the Labor Party. I mean, I can’t say often enough that the great reforms that Hawke is given credit for we supported, like floating the dollar and cutting tariffs, reintroducing university fees. Imagine how much more difficult their life would have been, particularly in relation to tariffs, if we had run a fear campaign with blue-collar workers: “Hawke is going to take away your job and give it to foreigners.” We didn’t do that.
JA: It’s a bit like Tony Abbot now isn’t it, what he faces?
JH: Well, yeah, it is and particularly, I mean there was a period when the Coalition opposition did support sensible reforms. Now it’s true they were things that we championed both in government and opposition but it doesn’t alter the fact that the present opposition is quite happy to disavow things it had previously supported.
BROKEN PROMISES
JA: After your first budget as treasurer in 1978 you faced headlines like “Honest John” and “Lies, lies, lies” — if they weren’t lies, what were they? To voters, what was it that happened?
JH: Well, what happened was that we had gone to the previous election with tax cuts and only a few months after that election we had to take a lot of those tax cuts back.
JA: Sounds familiar?
JH: And yeah it does. That was obviously very unpopular and people were entitled to feel angry.
JA: Do we have to get used to governments lying to us?
JH: No, I don’t, well you say do we get used to governments lying to us … All I can tell you about that budget was that there were decisions taken by the government and budgets are always, the final details were always determined by a small group of very senior ministers. Now I was surprised, frankly, before the 1977 election that the Fraser government decided to offer tax cuts, I didn’t think they were necessary, I thought we would have won the election without them.
JA: So do you feel for Joe Hockey?
JH: I always feel for treasurers who are trying to do the right thing.
JA: But you had to do what you thought you had to do in 78, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey would say that they’re doing what they have to do in 2014-15. They over promised to get elected and they’re now breaking promises to do the right thing?
JH: I believe that what Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey are doing is correct. I support the thrust of the budget and bear in mind that the problem the Abbott/Hockey budget is addressing is a problem bequeathed by a former government.
JA: When is the right time to break a promise? Julia Gillard clearly got it wrong breaking the carbon tax promise. When do you know it’s the right time to break a promise?
JH: If you have a proper full explanation for breaking a promise the public will understand. They’re rational people, the Australians. I think Julia Gillard made a terrible mistake after she was re-elected, well, sort of re-elected in 2010, in not saying to the Australian public: “When I made the commitment about the carbon tax, there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead, I didn’t imagine for a moment that I would have to depend on the Greens to govern.” She for some reason didn’t do that, I thought that was extraordinary. Never underestimate the capacity of the Australian public to understand a change of direction if a proper explanation is given.
PARTY SUPPORT
JH: Kevin Rudd in my view lost very quickly, in record short time, the confidence of those immediately around him. The most important relationship of a prime minister, in a sense, is with those he immediately leads, and that is his cabinet colleagues and his parliamentary colleagues. And you can never take them for granted.
JA: So you treat them decently?
JH: You treat them decently. You remember that you are there by their grace and favour and if you do that, well, it’s a solid base. And every prime minister will get into trouble and will need the understanding and support of his cabinet colleagues. So you consult them, you don’t pre-empt them unless it’s unavoidable, occasionally it is. You don’t make a whole lot of captain’s calls — I’m unconvinced about the wisdom of that. I think what you do is, unless it’s unavoidable, you don’t make major decisions without consulting. That doesn’t mean to say you don’t try to occasionally persuade them but you cannot expect people to be bound by cabinet decisions they don’t support unless they’ve had an opportunity to express their dissent
JA: Tony Abbott’s made a few captain calls?
JH: Yeah, one or two. I mean, I make the observation, I’m not referring to him or anyone else. I’m making a general observation. I think Tony Abbott’s done well in his first year, but it’s too early in his term to start comparing him with other people.
KEVIN RUDD
JH: I think the leadership lesson for all of us is that you have got to have a clear set of beliefs and you have got to stick to them. The greatest political mistake Kevin Rudd made was not to try and stare down the opposition and Tony Abbott on the issue of climate change. He said it was the greatest moral challenge of our age. Well, having said that, he had to act as though he believed it and he didn’t. And that was his great mistake, and if he had acted as though he believed that, he might still have been there now …. if you don’t have a philosophy and a set of values then you will inevitably bungle the job of prime minister.
JA: People work you out?
JH: People do work you out. Australians are very intelligent, they are very savvy, they don’t like humbug, they don’t like phonies. They don’t mind a person being passionate about something they don’t necessarily support, provided that they get on with their own lives. But when somebody demonstrates a lack of conviction and consistency they lose interest.
JULIA GILLARD
JH: As prime minister she had no authority, that was her trouble. Having done the extraordinary thing of participating in removing a first-term prime minister and then not to win the subsequent election meant she never had authority. The most important thing that a prime minister has is not popularity but authority. You can be unpopular but still be seen by the community and by your colleagues as exercising authority.
JA: What did you make of her misogyny speech?
JH: I thought that was nonsense.
JA: Why?
JH: Well, I thought it was untrue. I mean the idea that Tony Abbott is anti-women is ridiculous, just quite wrong. And I think it’s the worst possible way of promoting a greater involvement by women in public life — and something that I support, we should have more women in parliament not through quotas and it will come in time — is to play the misogyny card.
ON ENTITLEMENT
JA: Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott are trying to dismantle what they call the age of entitlement, which is a lot about government handouts, why is it so hard for them?
JH: Well, I think they’ve done very well with things like industry assistance.
JA: But do you accept that you bear some of the responsibility for setting up that age of entitlement?
JH: I don’t make any apology at all for the family tax payment system, family tax benefit system. I thought it was a good policy. I believe that government should support parents in raising children. I believe very strongly that a couple on a given level of income who have children are entitled to more support from the tax system than a couple on the same income with no children. Now that’s just a fact of life and belief and it was something that infused everything that I did. I went to the 1996 election with this as a policy. What’s got to be understood is that in the last few years that we were in government, as we found the revenues to be stronger, we provided a surplus that the Treasury regarded as appropriate. So what did you do with the money? Isn’t it better to give it back to the people who gave it to you in the first place, the taxpayer?
JOE HOCKEY
JH: I, by my language and my attitude and my policies, paid particular respect to people who battled in their lives to not only keep their jobs and in some cases start a small business but raise their families, give their families a better start.
JA: Because it is noticeable there were no Fraser Battlers or Holt Battlers or Snedden Battlers, there were Howard Battlers?
JH: I think one of the explanations for that is that in the time that I was prime minister I was able to unlock support for the Liberal Party from many people who had previously come from Labor voting families.
JA: Do you think when Joe Hockey in a sense didn’t pay much respect to the concerns of what he called poor people and concerns over petrol prices that he was almost ignoring Howard Battlers?
JH: I don’t think he set out to do that but that was a very bad statement and he apologised, which is more than I think I have heard from people on the other side who made gross statements like that; they could never bring themselves to apologise. I thought Joe showed a lot of guts in apologising.
ONE-TERMERS
JH: I tell you what, it’s common sense to think that you might lose the next election if you don’t lift your game … I am a great believer that if you have the extraordinarily rare opportunity to do something that exercises power you have got to use it. If you don’t, and you don’t do it fairly quickly, you are going to lose not only the opportunity but you are going to lose the capacity because people will pick you as the piker. They will think, well this bloke is not really serious. My government, in the first year, we established that we were a reformist government; we weren’t going to waste time. And I was always, I suppose, beset by the belief that I would lose the next election. And that’s a pretty good political philosophy which I would recommend to anybody who wants to stay in power for a while.
Edited extracts from the extended transcripts of Howard Defined, which airs on Sky News across five consecutive nights, starting tomorrow at 8pm.