John Howard tells parties to put Greens in last on how-to-vote cards

John Howard is demanding both sides of politics preference the Greens last and has vowed to denounce personally any Liberal division that cuts deals with Green candidates.

John Howard in Adelaide on Thursday.

Former prime minister John Howard is demanding both sides of politics put the Greens last and has vowed to denounce personally any Liberal division that cuts deals with Green candidates for local electoral gain.

Declaring the party “extremists”, Mr Howard said the Greens were the greatest current threat to Australia’s prosperity and security and the Labor and Liberal parties must unite to eliminate their influence.

“Both the major parties should put the Greens last because they’re extremists,” Mr Howard told The Australian. “They have got extreme positions on foreign policy, extreme positions on economic policy, extreme positions on social policy. Who knows what some of their social views are. They’re so extreme.

“Not only do I call on Labor to put the Greens last but I will really dump on any Liberal division that tries to do some preference deal in an individual seat with the Greens. You have got to put them last. We have to make sure it’s a majority government.”

Mr Howard made the comments after delivering a keynote speech at a private Liberal Party fundraiser in Adelaide, to which The Australian was granted exclusive access.

His speech was symbolically important for the beleaguered SA Liberal branch, bringing together factional rivals in conservative Nicolle Flint and moderate James Stevens to raise funds for their campaigns in the must-win federal seats of Boothby and Sturt.

The SA branch has again been beset by internal instability; the snap resignation of its director, Alex May; a messy state leadership change from David Speirs to Vincent Tarzia; and it is still recovering from the defeat of Steven Marshall’s one-term government by Labor’s Peter Malinauskas in 2022.

Mr Howard used much of the speech to escalate his attack on the Albanese government and particularly Jim Chalmers over its management of inflation and its attempts to scapegoat the Reserve Bank for interest rate hikes.

He told the party faithful the past few days had shown both Anthony Albanese and the Treasurer were “completely out of their depth” when it came to running the economy.

He told The Australian he was bemused by Dr Chalmers’ claim that without public expenditure, the cost-of-living crisis would be even worse. “What’s wrong with that assertion is that mass public expenditure has kept inflation high and therefore kept interest rates high,” he said.

Mr Howard also derided Labor’s criticisms of the RBA over the impact of rate cuts and predicted voters would see through the criticisms. “It’s pathetic,” he said. “It looks so transparently political. The mob, the public, see through those games.”

Around 260 guests gathered at the Arkaba Hotel in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs to attend the lunch, the brainchild of former member for Boothby Ms Flint, who quit ahead of the 2022 election because of health problems but is now running again.

Their coming together for the event was a rare recent show of unity for the state branch, with Mr Stevens echoing the comments of his federal leader Peter Dutton in saying both Boothby and Sturt would be pivotal in the election result.

“We will not form government if we do not win Sturt and Boothby,” said Mr Stevens, who faces a strong Greens challenge in his eastern suburbs seat.

In his half-hour off-the-cuff address, Mr Howard declared “history is against us” in that only one government, the Scullin government in 1931, had been defeated after one term of office since Federation but the bigger threat to Labor was that every government lost seats when seeking a second term, pointing to his own close shave at the 1998 GST election. He said it was SA that saved the Liberals at that election.

“I don’t have much time for doctrinaire wets but I don’t have much time for doctrinaire anybody,” Mr Howard told The ­Australian.

“You have to work to­gether to defeat a common enemy. That’s what the broad church is about. Sometimes the pews have to be particularly long.”