Praise the Libs for progress: Howard

In an interview to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Liberal Party, the former prime minister praised Scott Morrison as a “miracle worker”.

Former Prime Minister of Australia John Howard. Picture: Getty Images

John Howard says the Liberal Party should be recognised for its contribution to Australia’s post-war prosperity and stability, the shaping of national character through immigration, ending sectarianism and expanding tertiary education, and establishing key trade and security relationships.

In an interview to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Liberal Party, the former prime minister praised Scott Morrison as a “miracle worker” and said the felling of Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull had been “traumatic” for the party. “Malcolm had, as Tony did, a people management issue,” Mr Howard, 80, told The Weekend Australian.

“The most important relationship you have as a political leader is the relationship … with the ­people who you immediately lead.

“This idea that you can reach out across the parliamentary system and draw all your authority from the people is true to a significant degree but if you don’t have a good relationship with the people that you immediately lead, you will get into trouble.”

Mr Howard urged the party to put leadership churn behind it and remain united behind Mr Morrison. “We have been through a very strange period and I hope that that is behind us,” he said.

Mr Howard said the Liberal Party must always carefully manage ideological differences and warned against “a winner-takes-all approach” when navigating difficult policy issues. “It is very much a broad church,” he said. “It is the trustee of both the classical liberal tradition and the conservative tradition. We are not wholly conservative or wholly classically liberal; we are a mixture of the two. And we are normally more successful when that is the prevailing sentiment.”

Mr Howard cautioned that ­declining membership and the rise of factionalism meant the party was less representative of the electorate than it once was, and it was difficult to recruit candidates with a diversity of life experiences. “The party is too heavily factionalised and people feel they are wasting their time in nominating because the factions have got it sewn up … anybody who pretends otherwise is deluding themselves,” he said.

“I’m in favour of capable party activists getting preselection — I was one myself — and many of them end up making a big contribution but you’ve also got to allow for the talented outsider,” he said.

“It’s quite hard to get talented outsiders if you have a tight factional system.”

The Liberal Party boasted a membership of about 200,000 in the 1950s but is now about 50,000 (which includes the LNP in Queensland). The Labor Party’s membership has also fallen from a high point of about 150,000 in the 1930s to about 50,000 today.

“Party membership decline is an undoubted fact (and) it does bother me,” Mr Howard said.

“You have this phenomenon in political parties all around the world where the active membership is unrepresentative of the generality of the people who vote for them.”

The Liberal Party, formed at conferences convened by Robert Menzies in Canberra and Albury in 1944, has not often promoted or celebrated its history.

“The essential contribution the party has made to Australia is progress, stability and laying the foundations of our middle-class character,” Mr Howard said. “What is often not remarked is it is the party that oversaw the removal of negative aspects of our domestic, political and social discourse. “It was under a Liberal government that the White Australia Policy disappeared.

“It was under a Liberal government that a massive contribution was made to reducing sectarianism in the community.

“And it was under a Liberal government that the first opening up of Asia as a trading place for Australia occurred.

“The dramatic growth in home ownership, the opening up of tertiary education to large numbers of Australians who had been shut out and, internationally, our most important security relationship, the ANZUS Treaty was put down and signed in the early years of the Menzies government.”