AAP Image/ Paul Miller
LAST NOVEMBER, ABC1 ran a four part series called The Howard Years. Much anticipated, it had the cooperation of practically everyone involved in the government that ruled from 1996 to 2007. But it was marred by a simplistic narrative and an obsessive desire to avoid being seen to unfairly criticise the former prime minister, which made for frustratingly one-dimensional viewing.
On Tuesday this week, SBS began its three part series Liberal Rule: The Politics That Changed Australia. It is the better of the two series, and its makers obviously had no qualms about criticising the former government. But it does have flaws, the most serious of which is the way it does this criticising.
As Tuesday’s opening episode showed, Liberal Rule has a sense of political history, of the vagaries of politics. It has memory. Tuesday’s title, “Cycles of Power,” was apt, as it recognised the part that timing and luck play in political success. The first half reprised how we got to here: quickly snapshotting John Howard’s early life, his 1974 entry into parliament, the Whitlam dismissal, Howard’s rapid rise up Malcolm Fraser’s ministerial ranks and the thirteen opposition years from 1983, culminating with the election of the Howard government in March 1996. All was done with sympathy for its subject and was an enjoyable frolic down memory lane for the viewer. The second half of the episode dealt mainly with the Howard government’s economic record.
Next week’s episode, “Hearts and Minds,” traverses territory like the 1998 waterfront dispute, Aboriginal affairs, multiculturalism and education. We are reminded that many things were attempted in that first term but not many succeeded, and nor was it a very popular government. The final episode, “Fortunes of War,” largely deals with Howard and the war on terror and George W. Bush.
The series is well put together, and it does not avoid the contentious issues. Arthur Sinodinis, Howard’s chief of staff until 2006, adds excellent value.
So what of the show’s flaws? The first, which it shares with The Howard Years and most commentaries on Howard, is that it makes exaggerated claims about its subject’s importance. The introduction explains that the series is about how “the government of Australia became the machinery for one leader’s ambition to change the nation’s idea of itself and its place in the world.”
Was Howard so important? Is any prime minister? You wouldn’t make a series about them if you didn’t think so. But many of the things attributed to Howard would have happened anyway. We probably still would have joined America in Iraq under any Liberal and perhaps most Labor leaders (say, a Kim Beazley or a Kevin Rudd), the international economic boom that began in the early 1990s would not have passed us by, house prices and foreign debt would have exploded, and the internet revolution would have taken place. In this globalised world governments’ influence on events is limited.
Another problem comes from a particularly Australian delusion about our importance in the world. Many of our journalists, including senior ones, actually believe that Australia, along with the United States and Great Britain, took the decision to invade Iraq. They think John Howard was a major figure in Washington, and take seriously the “close friendship” between Howard and George W. Bush. In reality Bush whispered sweet nothings to most leaders of the “Coalition of the Willing” (of which there were about thirty members) and had many of them to his Texas ranch. Many national leaders, not just Howard, have received congressional awards. Yet there is much unnecessary fuss made in the final episode of Liberal Rule about the Howard Bush friendship.
But the major flaw in this series is the device it uses to achieve its “balance.” These choices are difficult. The ABC’s much-lauded 1993 Labor in Power series had the benefit of the Hawke–Keating rivalry, and grumpy former finance minister Peter Walsh, to provide dissent. And that program was less about outcomes than political machinations. In Liberal Rule, members of the former government are uniformly on message (although not as much as they were in The Howard Years) about the fine deeds they performed.
A collection of talking heads, mainly comprising two economics journalists and several academics, flesh out the story from time to time. They also serve to correct the government’s versions of events. While most of what they say is valuable and insightful (and no doubt many more of their words are on the cutting room floor) the way it is put together amounts to a “ganging up,” particularly by the academics. Most troubling, at the end of each episode, these talking heads get the last word, explaining where the government went wrong.
The show would have benefited from a few other talking heads. Supporters of the Howard government are scarce in academia, but they do exist. The historian John Hirst, for example, would have been ready made for the job.
Where The Howard Years was not judgemental enough, Liberal Rule is too judgmental. But maybe I’m hard to please. •
Peter Brent, a researcher at the Australian National University, is editor of Mumble
4 Comments
Yes, I got the same impression. There is no doubt that this documentary is founded upon a false premise namely that Howard changed Australia. These types of shows are very much in vogue following the ABC “Labor in Power.” Intriguingly the Hawke-Keating government did more to change Australia than the Howard government although “Labor in Power” was more focused on the relationship between Hawke and Keating and thereby missed “the big picture.”
The claim that Howard changed Australia is more reflected in the cultural sphere than anywhere else. The argument is that Howard was a kind of populist-nationalist that reversed the cosmopolitan direction of successive governments since the 1972 election. There is an element of truth to this.
The purpose here was to counter the rise of “special interests”, essentially based around social movements and civil society groups, as he made very clear in his headland speeches prior to the 1996 election. Special interests means the broader population; it never included big business for catering to big business was “the national interest.” One of the purposes was to reverse the democratisation of Australian society since the Whitlam era. Whitlam was not responsible for this, contrary to much myth making amongst the educated classes. Responsibility for this must be given to the rise of social movements in the 60s and 70s which the “socialist” minister for de-regulation, Lindsay Tanner, has bemoaned as being “individualistic.” Presumably for this socialist free market de-regulator further de-regulation couldn’t be so termed.
Conservatives have tended to opposed this democratisation process through out the western world especially neo-conservatives. In this sense Howard’s characterisation of himself as a “Burkean conservative” is correct, but only partially. As a noted free market reformer Howard has played a critical role in breaking the Australian contract that has lied at the heart of Australia’s conception of self.
This contradiction has nowhere been discussed in a detailed way. Robert Manne has come closest to doing so but not in a systematic way.
But even here the argument can be overdrawn. I say this for two reasons. First, I think Howard simply failed to change the new Australian sense of self post-Whitlam. His project engendered too much public opposition with Australia’s critical intellectuals, such as Manne, providing a critical role in the defeat of Howard’s agenda. Hence Paul Kelly’s disgraceful rant about the “mournful wailing” of Australia’s public intellectuals. Secondly, free market reforms undercut the cultural aspects of Howard’s agenda. They do so in many ways. That strike at rural communities. The strike at families. They strike our sense of mutual cooperation (mateship?). They enmesh Australia deeply in Asia and so on. Howard was more interested in catering to big business, the purpose of the Liberal Party, than fostering the cultural agenda when they conflicted (as demonstrated by his policy on temporary visas) which in the end became merely an instance of wedge politics.
I would argue that there are three foundational myths to the Howard narrative
(1). That we lived in an “age of prosperity” fostered by structural economic reforms. At any rate these reforms were not his alone. Howard went on to try finish what Labor under the Hawke-Keating “hijack” (which required severely restricting democracy within the ALP) started. He was to do this pragmatically unlike Hewson.
(2). That Howard changed Australia’s sense of self and role in the world. On the former Howard failed on the latter, as pointed out in this article, there were no real changes in Australian foreign policy under Howard.
(3). That Howard was “strong on national security.” I will leave that for another day.
I am working on a book of essays on neolberalism, Australia and the world. I will try and argue these point at greater depth there.
I have not yet seen the final episode of this series. But Peter Brent’s criticism that the series overstates the importance of the Howard-Bush connections in the 2003 Iraq Invasion war is plain wrong. Australia was far more than just one among about 30 members in the Coalition of the Willing. Australia was a particularly willing third military partner, the only country apart from the UK that actively demanded to be included in US Central Command’s military planning for the invasion of Iraq, starting in Florida halfway through 2002. This story was well documented by John Lyons in a 2003 feature story in the now-defunct ”The Bulletin”.
The first engagement on Iraqi soil took place during the night of 18/19 March 2003 (Iraq time), when a regiment of ADF SAS forces was deployed in western Iraq, Within hours of crossing into Iraq, the regiment was engaged in its first firefight. Two more major battles quickly followed. This secret campaign began some 30 hours before the expiry of the ultimatum to Saddam, at a time when US and UK forces had not yet commenced operations. The Howard Government had no qualms about ordering Australian forces to fight in Iraq during the ultimatum period, a discreditable fact that many have found it convenient to try to obscure since then. See ‘Australia’s secret pre-emptive war against Iraq, 18-20 March 2003,’ Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol 58 Issue 3, 2004, pp 318-336; ‘Our questionable tactics in Iraq’, Tony Kevin, The Age, Opinion, 17 January 2004; ”Secrets and Allies”, Tony Kevin, SMH Weekend Edition, Spectrum, 17-18 January 2004. (Sorry to be self-referential, but no one else has written on this). Later, senior Australian military personnel officially attached to US forces were involved in the Fallujah massacre (November 2004) and in later US efforts to cover up Abu Ghraib tortures from International Red Cross investigators. All these things were done with the full knowledge and endorsement of Howard government ministers.
In the urge to sanitise our history, we are already forgetting things that must not be forgotten. Under Howard, Australia was in the US Iraq Invasion war, boots and all, from the very beginning, in ways that went well beyond a proper understanding of Australia’s ANZUS alliance obligations.
Tony Kevin.
The problem is Peter, that there was not a coalition of the willing to attack Iraq, you are confused with Afghanistan.
Only 4 countries entered Iraq in 2003 with Australia being 36 hours ahead of everyone else as they slashed and burnt in the western desert.
And Howard with his ugly, vindictive streak certainly has changed Australia in ways that deserve all the censure they can get. His demonisation of any group he didn’t like, his refusal to follow the recommendations of Bringing them Home, a report published in 1997. Many say Keating should have done the apology over that report but he was long gone.
Howard’s demonising and abuse of refugees has led to the continued disregard for human life that caused the deaths of 353 innocent people on SIEVX and the new mob still whine that it is about “border security” or “stopping people smuggling” when it is about refugees seeking refuge in our country and nothing more sinister.
It’s amazing to me that we are locking up Indonesian fishermen for helping refugees from wars we started and not bothering to push for the trials of the murdering thugs who caused them to be refugees.
WE have become a very sick, ugly and racist country in the last 13 years and I don’t like it one bit.
Well Marilyn, I hope that little rant made you feel better. It must be hard to maintain the rage now that Howard is gone.
Marilyn I look forward to reading your evidence of “demonising and abuse”. Howard may have had views you didn’t share but I do not recall him ever demonising or abusing anyone.
I especially like the way you have managed to use the words “Howard” and “caused the deaths of 353 innocent people” in the same sentence.
Any rational review of the Howard years is that he was very successful in a political way, he was after all the 2nd longest serving PM. He also changed Australia in many ways both good and bad over the 11 years he was in power.
In my view the good were:
* introduced the GST
* reduced gun ownership and usage in Australia
* committed troops to East Timor to ensure democratic elections without permanently harming our relationship with Indonesia
* reduced industrial disputes to historic lows
In my view the bad were:
* failed to apologise to the stolen generation
* politicised the public service
* introduced WorkChoices
I am sure you can add to both of these lists.