Howard to Turnbull Liberals: let Menzies serve as a guide

John Howard speaks at a dinner marking the 75th anniversary of Menzies’ ‘the forgotten people’ speech. Picture: Ray Strange

On May 22, 1942, Robert Menzies was a former prime minister languishing in the political wilderness, eager to redefine his political image, climb back to power and invest the conservative cause with a new statement of belief.

The nation — led by popular prime minister John Curtin — was at war, its survival imperilled.

Menzies had begun a series of 15-minute radio broadcasts on a range of topical issues, delivered every Friday night.

Seventy-five years ago this week, as people in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane tuned their wirelesses to the Macquarie Radio Network at 9.15pm, they heard Menzies outline a philosophy that would guide conservative politics for generations.

“The time has come to say something of the forgotten class, the middle class who, properly regarded, represent the backbone of this country,” he said. They were neither the “rich and powerful” nor “the mass of unskilled people” organised by unions and “safeguarded by popular law”.

Instead, Menzies gave voice to the vast “unorganised and unselfconscious” group of Australians who represented “in the political and economic sense the middle class” and who were taken for granted by the major parties. Menzies defined them as “salary earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers and so on”.

These men and women were looking for economic security and opportunity. They were motivated by moral values such as aspiration, hard work and self-reliance. They were “lifters”, not “leaners”. They prized family, home and community. They were, Menzies said, “the backbone of the nation”.

They were people such as Lyall and Mona Howard, who lived in a modest home at 25 William Street, Earlwood, in southwestern Sydney. They owned a service station in Dulwich Hill. The youngest of their four boys was born in 1939. John Winston Howard would become Australia’s 25th prime minister in 1996.

“Those broadcasts did represent, as Menzies said, the outline of a political philosophy,” Howard tells Inquirer in an exclusive interview. “He was talking to what I would see as the natural base of the Liberal Party: middle class, small business, homeowners, family-centric. He was focusing very heavily on the individual versus the collective, and on individual enterprise and self-reliance. He certainly appealed to moral values. The great thing about it is that it is a reminder that politics is a contest of ideas and values, and not a public relations encounter.”

At a time of economic disruption and disaffection with the established political parties around the world, not least in Australia, Menzies’ “Forgotten People” broadcast is a timely reminder of the need for leaders to invest their political missions with purpose, values and direction.

Governments and oppositions need an animating vision for the nation they seek to lead. Leaders must be able to articulate to their supporters, and to the voters, how their values inform their policies. A clear ideology gives a party coherence and guidance. It offers a reason to keep the faith.

The Turnbull government is bleeding support to parties on the right-wing fringes of Australian politics. Its primary vote remains depressed. A common refrain throughout Australia is: what does the government stand for? This is understandable given that a fundamental pledge of conservative politics — smaller government, less spending and lower taxes — has not been kept.

The government has been accused of delivering a Labor-lite budget and losing ideological debates to Labor and the Greens. Is it in the grip of an identity crisis?

Howard — who wrote The Menzies Era (2014) and presented the documentary Howard on Menzies (2016) — acknowledges the Turnbull government can learn from Menzies’ example by more clearly expressing its philosophical values to underscore its practical policy ideas.

However, the former prime minister, although mindful of the Turnbull government’s present predicament, stresses that it may not be permanent and that for voters the Coalition remains a superior choice to Labor.

“You can always talk more about your philosophy and values,” he says.

“The more that Malcolm talks about the philosophy and values of the Liberal Party the better. People like to be reminded of what you believe in and there is a lot that he believes in that is very relevant to Australia in the modern world. I think he has got a very interesting life story and people are interested in that.”

Menzies, the master politician, would agree. “The art of politics is to convey ideas to others, if possible, to persuade a majority to agree, to create or encourage a public opinion so soundly based that it endures, and is not blown aside by chance winds,” he wrote in The Measure of the Years (1970).

Howard, who met Menzies at a cocktail party at the Lodge in 1964, sees a parallel between “the forgotten people” and the “Howard bat­tlers” who helped to sustain his government in power for more than a decade, from 1996 to 2007.

“They were aspirational people,” Howard says. “Their goals were to have a family and own their own home. If they were involved in starting a small business, it was making that successful. Exercising choice, in many cases for the education of their children. And being an active participant in the local community. Now that’s the road map of most of Middle Australia.”

In his “Forgotten People” broadcast, Menzies spoke of the values of the middle classes as representing “homes material, homes human and homes spiritual”. He identified the importance of home ownership; family, community and education; and an independence of spirit exemplified by “self-sacrifice, by frugality and saving”.

Howard says two of the great legacies of the Menzies era are supporting Australians to own their home, and offering grants to non-government schools that helped to bridge the sectarian divide. But he is concerned about the impact of the government’s new school funding model for Catholic schools and has reserved judgment on it.

On housing policy he is clear: “I don’t think changes to the tax system are going to make a dramatic difference,” he says. “I don’t agree with giving people access to their superannuation.”

Prudent management of the nation’s finances is a Liberal article of faith.

Yet government spending will rise to 25.2 per cent of gross domestic product next year — higher than in any year of the Menzies or Howard governments.

Taxation will rise to 23.8 per cent of GDP and, astonishingly, continue to increase over the forward estimates.

“I am troubled by that,” Howard says. “I do blame the Senate. I do point to the fact that the opposition, when I was either leader or deputy leader, supported things like tariff cuts introduced by the Hawke government.

“We did not block budget measures that involved cutting spending. We often argued they should go further.”

The Menzies government differed markedly from the Howard government in terms of economic policy. While Menzies eased wartime economic restrictions and defeated Ben Chifley’s plans for nationalisation, the economy remained firmly shackled to regulated capital, labour and product markets. It ran budget deficits for much of the period.

Menzies identified one of his major political successes as “the revival of liberalism”, he wrote in Afternoon Light (1967). The philosophical basis of the Liberal Party, formed in 1944, was laid down in the “Forgotten People” broadcast. It became the guiding star. But it did not have a significant immediate impact.

The Curtin government was re-elected with a huge landslide in 1943. The Chifley government was comfortably re-elected in 1946. But the broadcasts were an important step towards Menzies’ political resurrection and return to government in 1949.

“He saw these broadcasts as an opportunity for him to lay out his political credo and his beliefs, and to provide a very solid foundation for his return,” Howard says.

“At the time he delivered these broadcasts, he had every intention of staying in politics.”

Heather Henderson, Menzies’ daughter, recently told Inquirer that her father’s speeches remained relevant to this day, and she encouraged today’s politicians to read them.

“If they are really interested in politics, they should read what he said and wrote when he started the Liberal Party, and what he thought it stood for,” she said.

Howard agrees that revisiting Menzies would be timely. “There is obviously some unhappiness with both sides of politics,” he says. “It is evident in the primary votes of the two parties in the polls. “But I don’t see those things as necessarily permanent.

“Parties go through these ­phases and have got to take notice of that. I’m quite sure the Coalition can and will.

“There is still a lot of support for our basic positions but I think it is always important to relate policy to the fundamental philosophical values of the party.

“The most important thing that you must persuade the public of, as a political figure, is what you believe in and why.

“Winning the battle of values and ideas is absolutely fundamental. You’ve got to have a road map otherwise you’ll get lost — and that’s very important for both sides of politics.”