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A LASTING IMPRESSION: The Howard Decade

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Australians are grumpy about John Howard’s handling of health. They are unsure of education. They oppose the war on Iraq and are wary of IR changes. And yet … they like the Prime Minister. It seems that if the economy’s good, Australians are willing to forgive almost anything, writes Karen Kissane.
JOHN Howard has won some and lost some in the 10 years he has been prime minister.
He has won Robert Hancock, 44, a father of two from Wangaratta who did not vote for him in 1996 but has become a convert.”
He’s a pretty solid PM – pretty honest,” says Hancock. “The way he gets a handle on the economy is the best thing he does. You don’t have high inflation and rates going through the roof.”
Hancock, who manages a printing company, has been won over by the continued economic prosperity: “It all gets back to quality of life.”
But Bruce Denton has shifted in the opposite direction. He helped vote Howard into power in 1996 but now, “I hate him. I feel like throwing a shoe when I see him on TV.”
Denton has never forgiven the Prime Minister for reneging on his promise not to introduce the GST, and he blames the atmosphere created by the Government’s new industrial laws for his unemployment.
The contract sign fitter worked for the same employer for nine years.”
These industrial relations things – I threw my job in and I blame him because the place I worked for wanted to cut my rates by 10 per cent. And I’ve done a stupid thing because now I am out of work and I’m 63 years old and who’s going to employ me?” There is a political lesson in these stories. As former prime minister Paul Keating discovered when interest rates skyrocketed, voters are unforgiving of leaders who are seen to have damaged their economic position. Conversely, it seems that a prime minister who is seen as keeping the economy ticking over has little to fear, whatever his perceived failings.
Howard has turned into the man we love to be in two minds about.
Ten years into his reign, he is seen by most Australians as providing strong leadership in uncertain times and as “bringing home the bacon” – a glowing 83 per cent of voters who rated the economy as the main issue believe he has managed the economy well or quite well.
Hancock, who was polled by The Age, is one of the 46 per cent who believe they are better off under the Howard Government.
Many are not so happy with other areas of his stewardship. They think Australia is now a less fair society, they question the PM’s honesty, and they see him as a divisive leader who wrongly took Australia to war in Iraq. Howard is also seen to have done poorly on health and education.
For most voters, however, these misgivings do not translate into wanting to give him the boot.
Ed Hallett, of Elwood, is a 26-year-old who works in IT and studies part-time at university.
He admires Howard’s ability to take a tough stand in the face of opposition, as well as his economic management and the place he has carved out for himself on the world stage.”
The Australian dollar has gone up and the national debt has gone down and, overseas, people know who he is,” he says.”
I have travelled through Europe and Asia and the US and, before, most people didn’t even know where Australia was, but they now know who this short little prime minister is who runs around the world all the time.”
Social researcher Hugh Mackay says Howard “is the most complex politician I have ever studied. There are so many contradictions. He does not have a simple kind of profile – it runs the full spectrum from high respect to deep loathing.”
And most responses are mixed: voters who like him confess to reservations, and voters who dislike him acknowledge they also have a reluctant respect for him.”
According to his former chief of staff, Grahame Morris, Howard has a gift for divining the views of middle Australia, to the point where, when he holds to a view that is clearly unpopular, “voters think, `You’re wrong, tiger, but we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.’” Across a broad range of voters, Howard is seen as reassuringly solid and reliable, a known quantity. Says Mackay: “He enjoys increasing respect without much affection. A lot of the respect is almost grudging; people finally have to admit that he’s a stayer, that his big characteristic is a combination of persistence and political skill.”
Howard is a politician whose popularity has swung wildly over the years but whose tenure as prime minister has seen him grow in stature.”
In the mid-80s, you couldn’t give him away,” says Morris. But in March 1996, Australians decided that they preferred him to what they saw as an arrogant, out-of-touch Paul Keating.
Morris says polling then showed that voters “thought of him as `Uncle John’ and liked his values”.
In his decade as PM, Howard’s popularity has often spiked following tragedies of historic proportions.
In 1996, his tough stance on gun control following the Port Arthur massacre helped turn him, according to one poll, into the most popular leader in a decade.
He won an almost unwinnable election in 2001 with his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks and his handling of the asylum seekers on the Tampa, which convinced many people who would otherwise have been Labor voters that he would protect the nation against “illegal immigrants”.
Australians also admired him for sending troops to East Timor in 1999, and for his tough and eloquent responses to the first Bali bombing in 2002, when he passed emergency laws to enable the arrest of al-Qaeda sympathisers and spoke of the need to “wrap our arms around not only our fellow Australians, but ¿ the people of Indonesia”.
Voters like him less when the statesman is seen as giving way to the politician. His personal standing crashed in February 2002 when more than half the electorate believed he had intentionally misled them over the “children overboard” affair.
They were more forgiving over Iraq’s missing weapons of mass destruction, with 70 per cent believing either that he told the truth about the reasons for going to war or unintentionally gave the wrong reasons.
His approval nosedived again last November, following unpopular changes to workplace laws.
Mackay says Howard is not seen as a charismatic leader. “A lot of people say he makes them cringe; there are aspects of his style that people find a bit (embarrassing). He’s so lacking in a visionary, inspirational style; he’s so pedestrian.”
But even that, as he himself says, is suited to the times, a time of fairly consistent anxiety and uncertainty.”
Some argue that Australians have never been big on “the vision thing” anyway. Grahame Morris scoffs at the term “visionary”.”
I hate that word. I have never met an Australian yet who got out of bed and said, `Oh dear, I’m going back into bed because no one gave me a vision.’ It’s crap,” he says.”
I just don’t think Australians work like that.
Most people live their lives around family and children and bills and mortgages and footy and mates, and politics comes in at number 12 – unless they’re angry. At the moment, through John Howard’s leadership, you rarely have an angry Australia.”
That’s possibly because of the Prime Minister’s management of potentially disgruntled voters. Wayne Errington, a politics lecturer at Charles Sturt University in NSW, is co-writing a biography of Howard. He says his continued popularity after so many years in office is remarkable.”
Usually, after you have been a prime minister for a while, you have managed to offend quite a few interest groups, so you have (what the pollsters call) `high negatives’,” he says.
He attributes the PM’s position to his ability to learn from his mistakes, such as unpopular proposed changes to aged care – “he’s famous now for being strong, but he was quite famous for his backflips” – and to his targeting of groups that might be disadvantaged by his policies.
Nancye Coulson, 76, has one of the benefits created by the Howard Government: a veteran’s gold card, “so I am looked after in a way I couldn’t afford otherwise”.
Coulson, who was interviewed for the Saulwick AgePoll, likes Howard and admires his ability to make strong decisions even when they are unpopular. But she worries for her friends with big health bills, and finds that increases in her pension are not keeping up with increases in the cost of living; her savings are dwindling.
None of these doubts, however, is likely to lead her to vote against Howard at the next election.”
There’s no one I can see who could take his place and do the job to the standard that he has done,” she says.
For those who dislike Howard, the feeling is intense. Zosia Romanowski, 25, an office manager from Reservoir, says “there have been a number of events with a certain scandal, such as the children overboard affair, and he’s just turned around and said, `I didn’t know about that.’ He’s the leader of the party and the leader of Australia, and he should know,” she says.
Romanowski fears that the industrial relations changes will leave workers vulnerable in an economic downturn, that the war on terror has set back multicultural tolerance by 20 or 30 years, and that Australia under Howard has become “a little meaner”.”
Nobody wants to pay for things they don’t use themselves. Wealthy people complain about propping up the state health and education systems because they don’t use them.”
Middle-class and aspirational voters are central to Howard’s support. Pollster Irving Saulwick says the PM’s backers include established middle-class people who dislike disorder and to whom a growing economy is important. “They value progress as material progress,” he says.
A second constituency is the Pauline Hanson-style battlers, including those who have found a foothold in the consumer society and are desperately trying to hold on to it, as well as people who are poor and jealous of what they see as “hand-outs” to other groups.”
They are the resentful battlers. I think he’s given indications to them that he doesn’t favour giving special treatment to other minority groups,” Saulwick says.
He says Howard is disliked by a “mix of lefties” who are influenced by a broad ideology rather than notions of class war. Some are so antagonistic to the Prime Minister that they dislike everything from his looks to his body language.
The unemployed Denton is one whose dislike of the Prime Minister is now all-embracing.”
The economy is in his favour but what worries me is manufacturing in Australia. Nylex closed its factory and another 120 people are out of business.”
Denton is resigned to the fact that many people he speaks to do not share his views.”
People who are well off don’t care, they don’t take an interest,” he says. “They are sort of, `I’m OK, Jack.’” He admits: “I probably would be there myself if I had done as well.”
Former US president Bill Clinton famously campaigned on how, “it’s the economy, stupid”.
According to this poll, John Howard survives by the same principle – at least for now.
TOMORROW Michelle Grattan on how John Howard has changed Australia
ONLINE Join a forum on John Howard’s prime ministership at theage.com.au
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
ZOSIA ROMANOWSKI 25, OFFICE MANAGER, RESERVOIR
BEST THING HOWARD HAS DONE: Standing up to Japan regarding whaling.
WORST THING HOWARD HAS DONE: Industrial relations changes.
ARE YOU BETTER OFF NOW THAN YOU WERE A DECADE AGO? Yes.
IS AUSTRALIA BETTER OFF? No.
QUOTE: “A lot of his policies seem to be driving us in the direction of America with things like industrial relations and the education system, and significant parts of our foreign policy seem to be dictated by White House policy. That’s something I very much resent.”
ED HALLETT 26, IT WORKER AND PART-TIME UNIVERSITY STUDENT, ELWOOD
BEST THING HOWARD HAS DONE: Management of the economy.
WORST THING HOWARD HAS DONE: Children overboard affair.
ARE YOU BETTER OFF? Yes.
IS AUSTRALIA BETTER OFF? Yes.
QUOTE: “I think he’s done a very good job. He stands by his convictions. The Iraq war, although I’m uneasy about it, is definitely something where he has stood by his decision in spite of a lot of pressure and that has earned my personal respect.”
ROBERT HANCOCK 44, MANAGER OF A PRINTING COMPANY IN WANGARATTA
BEST THING HOWARD HAS DONE: The economy.
WORST THING HOWARD HAS DONE: The GST.
ARE YOU BETTER OFF? Yes.
IS AUSTRALIA BETTER OFF? Yes.
QUOTE: “I think he’s done the right thing for the country in many ways in his long tenure.” Going to war in Iraq “is saying Australia is not going to just allow (atrocities) to happen” and the furore about children overboard “was blown out of all proportion”.
Interviews conducted as part of the Saulwick AgePoll on Howard’s decade as Prime Minister.
WHAT AUSTRALIANS THINK OF JOHN HOWARD
47% believe Howard has done a good or very good job
17% believe he has done a poor or very poor job
46% think they¿re better off under the Howard government
50%believe Australia has become a meaner society
35% believe health is the most important issue in their lives
20% say the worst thing Howard has done is go to war in Iraq
THE HIGHS AND LOWS
The highs and lows
1996
– APRIL 28: Port Arthur massacre
– AUGUST19: Protesters converge on Parliment over IR legislation
1997
– APRIL 11: One Nation party formed by Pauline Hanson
– May 26-28: Howard refuses to apologise to indigenous Australians at Reconciliation Convention
– NOVEMBER 3: First Telstra share float
1998
– FEBRUARY 2-13: Constitutional Convention at Old Parliament House
– Wharfies launch industrial action against Patrick Stevedores
1999
– SEPTEMBER 20: Australian troops arrive in East Timor
– NOVEMBER 6: Referendum on the republic
2000
– JULY 1: introduction of the GST
– SEPTEMBER 15: Start of the Sydney Olympic Games
2001
– AUGUST 27: Federal Government refuses to let Tampa, carrying rescued asylum seekers, into Australian waters
– SEPTEMBER 11: Terrorists attack World Trade Centre and Pentagon in New York and Washington
2002
– FEBRUARY 14: Release of report disproving Government claims asylum seekers threw children overboard
– OCTOBER 12: 202 people, including 88 Australians, killed in bombing of Kuta nightclub in Bali
2003
– MARCH 20:Invasion of Iraq
– OCTOBER 22: US President George Bush visits Australia
2004
– OCTOBER 25: Car bomb explodes outside Australian embassy in Iraq
– DECEMBER 9: Senate inquiry backs claims that Howard was told there was no evidence asylum seekers threw children overboard
– DECEMBER 26: Hundreds of thousands die in South Asian tsunami
2005
– FEBRUARY 3: Unlawful immigration detention of Cornelia Rau revealed
– JUNE: Union campaign against Government’s IR laws
2006
– MARCH 2: Howard to celebrate 10 years in office.

First published in The Age.

Still jobs for the boys, Guv’nor?

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The new governor is a good bloke, but still just another of the blokes.
MELBOURNE has racism. You often hear it from taxi drivers. It can show itself coarsely in the oaths of cricket crowds or delicately in the poisonous patter of dinner parties. The veils of Muslim women can be torn off in the street, and they and their children can be spat upon by strangers.
But Melbourne is also a town that turned out in great numbers to support one of its wayward sons who came from an ethnic background, Nguyen Tuong Van, the Vietnamese-Australian drug runner recently hanged in Singapore. A town, like a race, is as complicated and contradictory as the individuals who make it up.
Melbourne is now a place where several of the most eminent citizens are men from ethnic backgrounds. The Premier, Steve Bracks, comes from a Lebanese family; the Lord Mayor, John So, is Chinese-Australian; and the head of the AFL (probably the most prominent role of the lot in such a footy-mad city) is Greek-Australian Andrew Demetriou. This week it was announced that our new governor will be Professor David de Kretser, a renowned scientist who migrated from Sri Lanka to Australia when he was nine.
It is an impressive line-up in the tolerance-and-diversity stakes. It sends powerful messages about the kind of place Melbourne is – or wants to be. Migrant parents can have some faith in the prospects for their children. Institutional racism is, at worst, muted, and public discourse is civil. The media treated de Kretser’s family history as a heart-warming tale of migrant triumph, not as cause for disdain.
This city has its racial tensions – ethnic soccer riots come to mind – but we have seen nothing like Sydney’s race-based pack rapes of Australian girls by gangs of Lebanese-Australian youths. The week of the Cronulla riots, both Skip and Lebanese young people in Melbourne received text messages urging them to gather at beaches to fight. They ignored them. It was the rival text messages urging a peace rally that won a turnout. Melbourne is a more tolerant place than Sydney.
Researchers suggest this is partly because Sydney has developed closed ethnic enclaves but Melbourne’s ethnic communities are more mixed up together and more scattered among WASP communities.
That’s just another way of saying that migrants in Melbourne don’t feel as “locked out” as those in Sydney. As the world saw with Paris, it is that sense of being shut out – literally, in terms of living in a ghetto, and metaphorically, in terms of not having opportunities – that fuels racial violence.
So it’s a good thing that our Premier continues to attend to multiculturalism, one of several reasons he chose de Kretser. Racism is like a disease; it requires regular vaccination and the maintenance of herd immunity to keep it at bay.
All of this makes it almost shabby to pick holes in Bracks’ appointment of de Kretser, who seems a lovely man and an excellent candidate. I feel like Oliver Twist, asking timorously, “Please sir, can I have some more?”
Because this most worthy line-up of eminent citizens might be ethnically diverse but it is still strikingly monochrome in one respect: it has no women. Is it true to tell migrants that anything is possible in this new land? Or must we in all honesty confine that promise to their sons?
The argument that there aren’t enough women with appropriate professional backgrounds doesn’t wash any more. Science, academia and the professions now have many women in their 50s, and not a few in their 60s, who have the qualities Bracks said he was looking for: independence of mind, an ability to relate to the broader community in a non-partisan way, and humility.
In New Zealand, the Prime Minister (Helen Clark), the Governor-General (Silvia Cartwright) and the head of the largest company (Theresa Gattung, Telecom) are all women.
Cartwright once said she thought intelligent women wanted three things in life – marriage, children and career – but that most could have only two of the three. This, of course, is because behind almost every great career man with a family is a woman who runs it for him. The great career woman is less likely to find a partner whose own sense of purpose is linked to supporting her.
Public appointments of men with ethnic backgrounds are not new. What would break the mould is a qualified woman who was also a single mother, or who had spent years away from a high-powered career to raise her children, or who even – mercy on us all – never married at all. Maybe she could be a woman who also represents multiculturalism or indigenous Australians.
Because women will never “have what it takes” as long as part of what it “takes” is a wife.

First published in The Age.

HE’S BITING AND SATIRICAL, BUT IS LEUNIG ALSO GUILTY OF SEDITION?

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FOCUS
Writers and artists are alarmed. So are some lawyers. They fear the Federal Government’s new sedition laws could strike at the heart of free speech. By Karen Kissane.
COMEDIAN Rod Quantock likes to joke that the proposed sedition laws so bitterly attacked by the arts community might actually end up saving it. “I think it’s a bit of an inspiration,” he says.
He points out that Australia has won only one Nobel Prize for literature, which went to novelist Patrick White. “Most Nobel prizewinners come from repressive regimes,” he says. “This offers us a great chance to win more Nobel prizes, even though we might have to accept them anonymously from behind bars.”
Quantock, latterly best known for his comic bus tours, says he will pursue other opportunities provided by the terror laws: “I was thinking of a terror target tour of Melbourne.
You get a discount if you are even vaguely Middle-Eastern looking.”
Quantock’s humour has always been black. So are the prospects for artists, writers, comics, journalists and political dissenters, according to the wide-ranging groups who see the Federal Government’s planned changes to the law on sedition (see box) as a dangerous threat to free speech.
The Government and its defenders retort that the changes merely tweak laws that have been on the books for decades, and that the purpose of the changes is not to undermine democratic freedoms but to defend them.
Sedition is broadly defined as conduct or speech that incites rebellion. The Government’s proposals are meant to be aimed at those who incite or encourage terrorism, but the wording of the bill has aroused disquiet, not just in the Opposition – which wants sedition removed from the anti-terror laws – but even in the Howard Government’s own ranks. MPs including Petro Georgiou, George Brandis and Malcolm Turnbull have been critical of the proposals.
Playwright Hannie Rayson says the proposed bill contains three types of rules on sedition: sedition and treason offences that require an element of force or violence; new offences that do not require an element of violence but merely support of “any kind” for “the enemy”, which can be defended only if the accused proves he or she acted in terms of “good faith”; and a slightly expanded test for banning an “unlawful association” based on a very broad definition of “seditious intention”. The proposals also increase the penalty for the main sedition offences from three to seven years.
Rayson says: “Where artists will be caught by these provisions is the section of the proposed sedition law which outlaws support of ‘any kind’ for ‘the enemy’. The enemy is defined as individuals or organisations in a state of conflict with Australian forces outside Australia. At the moment this includes the Philippines, Afghanistan, Iraq and East Timor.”
Most of the recent crop of refugee plays, films, mini-series and documentaries are caught by this,” Rayson says. “In urging a more humanitarian approach to refugee issues, most artists are seeking to portray ‘the enemy’ in a positive light, not as a faceless unknowable alien threat but as a human being. The artist’s interest in exploring psychology, human relationships, the human condition, is going to urge disaffection with the cruelty that is being meted out to these people by government policy.”
Rayson believes that the sedition net will be cast so wide that it could even capture Mambo T-shirt artists who bring the Queen or the Government into disrepute. “They have no defences available to them. They can’t rely on the ‘good faith’ provision,” she says.
Many senior legal figures are also concerned about the proposals. Alistair Nicholson, formerly chief justice of the Family Court and now an honorary professor at the University of Melbourne, says the sedition laws forbid attacks on the constitution.”
I think a lot of people think there is a lot wrong with the constitution, and that they should be able to say that,” he says.
The defence of “good faith” does exempt those who can prove that, for example, they were pointing out in good faith the flaws of government legislation with the aim of reforming it. But Nicholson says the sedition proposals reverse the traditional onus of proof. In law, it is customary for the prosecution to have to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. The accused must prove nothing. But under these proposals, the accused would have to prove that he or she was acting in good faith.
Nicholson says sedition laws have been used in other countries to suppress political dissent. “People like (Nelson) Mandela would be charged with sedition; anyone who was against the system would be charged with sedition,” he says.
Professor George Williams, of the University of NSW, is another concerned lawyer.
Under the proposals, he says, “you would have to trust the Government not to prosecute”.
He fears the legislation will have “a chilling effect” on both journalism and academic discourse, and says there is no defence for satirists on TV shows such as the ABC’s The Glasshouse.”
I do support banning speech that’s a direct incitement to violence, including terrorism – (but) this net is too wide,” Williams says.
A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock says artists will continue to have freedom of expression “as long as they fall short of actually urging someone or some group to go out and carry out violence against our community or our troops abroad”.
The spokeswoman says Australia has had sedition laws for decades and that no artists or writers have ever been prosecuted under them. The Government is trying to protect democratic values from terrorists who would destroy them, she says.
But what about future governments?
Could they misuse the powers for selfish political ends?
Gerard Henderson, executive director of The Sydney Institute, says no. “No Coalition government or Labor government is ever going to jail the likes of David Williamson or Hannie Rayson – The idea that this is going to institute a fascist or a communist or an apartheid state is completely erroneous.”
Henderson says existing sedition laws have been in place for 40 years without being misused: “In that time, no one’s been jailed for any comments, even people who actually advocated that Australians should provide money to the Viet Cong, who would use that money to buy weapons to attack our soldiers in Vietnam.”
Henderson says people should bear in mind that it is not governments who would prosecute alleged offenders, but police. And it is not governments who would sit in judgement, but judges and juries. “John Howard and Kim Beazley don’t have the right to go around prosecuting people.”
The chairman of the Australian Press Council, Professor Ken McKinnon, is another who believes that even the revised Anti-Terrorism Bill remains “a serious threat to free speech”. He fears that journalists will be prevented from breaking news on security issues, leaving the public reliant on “leaked spin from security agencies”.
Independent reporting is prevented by provisions that make it a crime to report on detentions and which allow for summary detention of journalists. With regard to the sedition clauses, McKinnon asks: “Why put an onus on the media to prove that what they publish is ‘in good faith’? Will publication of articles that ridicule Prince Charles or advocate replacement of the monarchy with our own president be subject to legal challenge, with the paper having to prove ‘good faith’?
Would any defence constitute ‘good faith’ in the hands of monarchists anyway?” There is an argument that the laws need updating now because of the need for greater security in the war on terror. For Nicholson, the opposite holds true: “I don’t think it should be brought up to date in this climate. I think there should be a reference to the Australian Law Reform Commission so that any changes are done carefully and are subject to really reasoned thinking.”
The bill goes to a Senate review, which is due to be completed in five weeks. Mr Ruddock has promised that, if it is passed this year, the Government will review it next year to see if any further amendments are required.
SEDITION: WHAT THE NEW LAW WOULD MEAN
Q: WHAT CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE?
A: The legislation updates the sedition offence to cover those who urge violence against the constitution or Government, urge interference in parliamentary elections, urge violence within the community or urge others to assist the enemy. The legislation requires the Attorney-General’s consent before the issuing of proceedings and extends the geographical jurisdiction for offences to outside Australia and to non-citizens.
Q: ANY DEFENCE?
A: The provision gives discretion to a court in considering whether an act was done in good faith. For instance, if the person was pointing out in good faith the errors or defects of government legislation with an aim of reforming the legislation.
Q: WHAT ARE THE PENALTIES?
A: Up to seven years’ jail.
Q: ANY REVIEW?
A: The Federal Government has promised a review of sedition offences after the legislation is passed.

First published in The Age.

HIGH COURT: WELCOME TO THE CLUB

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Does Susan Crennan’s elevation to the High Court add one more conservative or has the Government unwittingly played a wild card? Karen Kissane reports.
WHEN the news got about that Susan Crennan had somehow nabbed a star traineeship with a senior barrister, it caused much consternation. Crennan was working as a librarian in a Sydney law firm while she completed her degree. An august partner at the firm dashed around to her tiny office. He had three questions: Had she lost all capacity for rational thought? Shouldn’t she follow the customary route and spend time as an articled clerk before going to the bar? And did she not understand that his firm could not possibly brief a barrister with so little experience?
Crennan’s response to the first two questions was a smile. In relation to the third, she pleasantly agreed with him. But she did exactly as she had planned. She left the firm when she graduated and became the pupil of David Bennett, now Solicitor-General. And six months later, when the firm’s barrister was unavailable in a simple matter, her former employer offered her a brief. The firm went on to become one of her greatest supporters. Crennan had crashed through without crashing. Humility, after all, is rarely a useful weapon in a barrister’s armoury.
The story illustrates many of the qualities Crennan would display in what was to become a legal career of brilliance: intellectual independence, fierce strength of purpose and shrewd networking (she had approached Bennett through his father, who worked at the firm where she had been a nobody).
On Tuesday she will be sworn in as the 45th judge to sit on Australia’s High Court bench, having spent only 18 months as a Federal Court judge. She will be the fifth High Court appointment by the Howard Government and her arrival will leave only two judges who were appointed by Labor, Michael Kirby and William Gummow.
Crennan will take her place on the bench at a crucial time in the history of the court, the Government and the nation. Prime Minister John Howard’s radical and wide-ranging industrial relations changes are likely to be challenged as unconstitutional; all the state leaders are expected to join Queensland in a High Court case to try to have the legislation overturned. If this happens, the Federal Government will hope the bench will rule the laws constitutional.
What might Susan Crennan – lawyer, wife, mother, Catholic, lover of history and literature and defender of Newman’s idea of the university – bring to this moment of truth? Is she really the conservative that she has been painted, or will the Government find that it has played a wild card?
There was a strange riff running through the responses of almost every legal figure interviewed for this story. All spoke of Crennan’s merit but most, on both left and right, expressed surprise at her appointment by a Government with the goal of “Capital-C conservatives” on the bench, as called for by former National Party leader Tim Fischer after the Wik decision in 1996. “I’m astonished that (Attorney-General Philip) Ruddock appointed her,” says one left-leaning barrister who has appeared before her in refugee cases. “She’s fiercely independent.”
Greg Craven worked as an adviser to the state attorney-general in the Kennett years. He witnessed close up the way Crennan, then head of the Bar Council, fought the Kennett government over many of its planned legal reforms. “She is extremely honest and forthright. She says exactly what she thinks and if she disagrees with you, she’ll tell you.”
Craven says that if, on reflection, she comes to believe the other side has a case, she is capable of compromising. If not, she is implacable. He concludes wryly: “As Sir Humphrey Appleby might have said, it is a ‘courageous’ appointment.”
NO ONE could accuse Crennan of being publicity hungry. She likes her encounters with the media to be minimal and firmly managed. Quotes on professional issues aside, it seems she has given only one personal interview during her career, in 1994 to a Sunday Age reporter writing an article on “The Women Most Likely”. Crennan insisted the article be shown to her in full before publication and sent it to the ethics committee of the Bar Council to ensure she had not breached rules forbidding barristers to advertise. Journalists tell of being chided through third parties for having called her Sue rather than Susan in reports, or for having left QC off her attribution.
Since the news of her High Court appointment, Crennan, 60, has refused requests for interviews and has also refused to be photographed, forcing media outlets to run over and over again the two carefully staged office photographs she has chosen and issued herself. She can set these boundaries because Australia does not scrutinise High Court appointments with the public rigour of America’s Supreme Court process. There is not the same expectation that a candidate should lay her legal, political and personal views open for dissection.
Which does not mean those views are any less significant. The individual mix on the bench is important. A High Court that during the 1990s was seen as either progressive (if you’re on the left) or as pushing the boundaries (if you’re a conservative) has given way to a much more restrained, legalistic bench today. The liberal Mason court that delivered the Mabo judgement, acknowledging Aborigines as original owners of the land, is history. In contrast, today’s more conservative court has ruled, for example, that the Federal Government has the right to detain indefinitely a man who could not be deported because he was stateless (Ahmed Ali al-Kateb). Legal analysts point out that often it is not judges’ personal attitudes that influence their work so much as their attitude to the judicial process, although history suggests that political conservatives are also more likely to be judicially conservative. But it is not always so simple. The Liberal-appointed William Deane was part of the majority on Mabo. Retiring Justice Michael McHugh voted for the Kateb decision but recently called for an Australian bill of rights to empower judges to protect human rights.
So what will Crennan bring to the mix?
Susan Maree Crennan grew up in an Irish Catholic family with five brothers and sisters in a small Housing Commission home in Heidelberg West, where her father Maurie was a barman and, later, a hotel manager. He paid for six Catholic educations on a barman’s wages.
Crennan went to Our Lady of Mercy girls’ college in Heidelberg before doing an English course at Melbourne University (where she studied Anglo-Saxon) and taking up teaching. Some time later she decided to do law. By then she was married to English lecturer Michael Crennan, whom she had met at Melbourne Uni in the ’60s. They returned to Melbourne from Sydney in 1979. They have three children and several grandchildren.
The woman from Struggletown now runs a famously sociable household known for its dinners and for its St Patrick’s Day parties, at which Susan Crennan has been known to play the bodhran, the Irish hand-held drum. As president of the Bar Council, she jokingly complained that her predecessor had not stocked the cupboard with Guinness.
She laughs intensely, says constitutional lawyer and academic Greg Craven: “It’s not like she brays like a horse, but when she laughs, she really laughs.”
Michael Crennan became a lawyer too, “but she’s the more high-powered one in the marriage,” says a QC friend. “He plays the more supportive role.” Another lawyer says the Crennans have a lot in common: “They are such an intellectual couple it’s a bit deflating for everyone else, really. They are into history and literature in a serious way. They are real intellectual partners. They are also very good friends, that’s obvious when you see them together. And he’s very proud of her.”
Crennan is a woman used to authority. As a barrister speaking in court, she was not one to lean over the lectern. She held herself straight and spoke formally and with assurance, her voice unfaltering. She was considered a formidable advocate who mastered with apparent ease the complexities of commercial cases and high-profile corporate fraud prosecutions.
She served as senior counsel to the Tricontinental royal commission and as the lawyer for the National Crime Authority in its pursuit of businessman John Elliott, and helped prosecute the directors of the failed Pyramid Building Society. Former Pyramid head Bill Farrow once described facing her as being “a bit like being picked for fullback against Gary Ablett”.
Her only recorded blunder was as a QC on an arbitration case when she went to view an electricity generator. She absent-mindedly leaned against an emergency stop button and shut down the entire plant. The joke was that the case centred on her client’s claims that the plant’s supply was often interrupted. That week, the availability report recorded “plant stopped by QC”.
Professionally, Crennan rose like a rocket. She took silk in 1989, only 10 years after joining the bar. She became the first woman to be appointed chairman (her choice of title) of the Victorian Bar Council, and the first woman to be appointed president of the Australian Bar Association – grand achievements for any female at the blokey bar. She became a Federal Court judge last year.
Retired lawyer Eve Mahlab says Crennan got ahead “because she thinks like a man and works like a dog”.
Mahlab, a feminist, says diplomatically: “If, as a woman, you want to get on, you devote yourself to the goals of your male colleagues and you don’t rock the boat by asking, ‘Is this fair to women?’ . . . What I think Susan Crennan always did, to her credit, was that she devoted herself to the goals of the male society that makes up the profession of the bar. She really contributed there and excelled.”
A conservative newspaper column welcomed her High Court appointment as “one in the eye for the sisters” because she was not a bra-burner or quota queen. In fact, Crennan’s relationship with feminism is a bit more complicated than it seems at first light.
She has certainly rejected feminist rhetoric; she says there is no evidence of gender bias in the law and that she has never suffered discrimination at the bar, and she does not believe in affirmative action.
But Crennan is no queen bee, climbing the ladder and pulling it up behind her; she has often reached down to help other women up a rung or two.
And there is evidence that she is aware of the realities of discrimination. Crennan worked as a part-time hearing commissioner for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission from 1992-1998. Beth Gaze, an associate professor of law at Melbourne University, has examined Crennan’s decisions for The Age.
“I’m not sure John Howard knew who he was nominating,” Gaze says. “She has a good record in human rights. It’s always difficult to make a case of discrimination. People have to show firstly that they were treated less favourably, and secondly that the reason was because of their sex or their race. But Susan Crennan handed down seven decisions in substantive matters and upheld six of the seven, including cases involving sexual harassment, sex, racial and disability discrimination.
“My view is that that’s quite an extraordinary record, because a lot of the other commissioners were reluctant to uphold cases.”
As a Federal Court judge, Crennan the anti-affirmative actioner upheld a union rule requiring 50 per cent representation of women as delegates as a legitimate special measure. “A special measure may, on the face of it, be discriminatory but to the extent that it has, as one of its purposes, overcome discrimination, it is to be characterised as non-discriminatory,” she ruled.
She also overturned a finding of insufficient evidence by the Refugee Tribunal in the case of an Eritrean woman who feared returning to serve in that country’s army because of widespread sexual abuse of female draftees. Crennan said the fact that were were many such examples meant the practice was “non-random and so oppressive that the applicant could not be expected to tolerate it”.
Says Gaze: “Even though I have heard interviews where she has said she never suffered discrimination, she is able to recognise when other people have.”
A friend of the Crennans says she has never told him her politics but that he would characterise her this way: “She is conservative, but I think it’s more to the right wing of the Labor Party, Labor-type Catholic-DLP thing.”
Crennan is reported to be a practising Catholic and was briefly on the board of Eureka Street, the Jesuit magazine of ideas. One lawyer who did not want to be named suggests that her Catholicism, active or otherwise, could prove interesting. “Basically, Catholic judges come to the bench with quite a strong understanding of Catholic social justice. Some of them won’t apply it on the bench, but others have much leakier compartments.”
He believes it will be telling to see how Crennan approaches the IR changes because they undermine collective bargaining, a principle dear to many Catholics: “Papal encyclicals still talk of it.”
Greg Craven, who is now professor of government and constitutional law at Curtin University in Western Australia, agrees Crennan will be one to watch.
“The thing you have to understand about the High Court judges is that they often change when they come into office. On the Federal Court, they are always subject to correction. Suddenly they get to the High Court and all predators are removed, so there is a tendency to behave in quite unpredictable ways . . . This idea that you can buy something from a shop window in the form of a judge and it will always behave a certain way is wrong.
“I don’t expect her to go berserk, but she’s not as predictable as people think.”
The thoughts of Susan Crennan
On proposals that judges should undergo retraining after alleged sexist remarks by colleagues in rape cases:
“I think it is rather a fascist world view to think that if someone does not toe the line . . . we have to educate them . . . There is no need to force them, I would have thought. With natural attrition and time, the percentage who did not want to get up to date with it will retire, and so life goes on.”
On TV coverage of court cases:
The cameras would distract everyone, focus on appearances rather than issues, and give proceedings a soap-opera quality.
On suggestions that contingency fees should be introduced:
“What entitles lawyers to tax their clients’ damages? The size of the damages reflects the injuries suffered by the client, and not the work done by the lawyer; that is properly measured by time spent, nature of tasks undertaken etc.”
On the Kennett government’s attempts to vet the decisions of the public prosecutor:
“(It) clearly compromises the independence of the office and introduces the potential for political persuasion.”
On the Kennett government’s sacking of former equal opportunity commissioner Moira Rayner:
“This should not be done in a way that effectively ends prematurely the term of a statutory office-holder.”
On criticism that the bar was anti-competitive:
“We barristers, we’re such a ready symbol of the litigation process, so we get it in the neck.”

First published in The Age.

Mark Latham, a man rejected, scorns a love he lost

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JOHN from Ferntree Gully thought he had the answer to the Mark Latham phenomenon.
John had a friend who developed chronic pancreatitis as a side-effect of mumps. For six years, his friend “was ill beyond all previous experience”. In that time he also blew up every relationship he had: “He alienated all his friends, both business and personal.”
Four years later, torn by regret, the friend rang all those people and apologised for what he had done.
John told ABC radio host Jon Faine yesterday, “Not to put too (fine) a point on it, I think Mark Latham is in a similar situation. I think he’s quite ill.”
“We shall ask him,” promised Faine, who was about to interview the bovver-booted angry man of Australian politics. But Mark Latham exhibited the same granite intransigence that had carried him through his interview with ABC TV’s Andrew Denton. He refused to be drawn on the question of any relationship between his health and the highly publicised bile of The Latham Diaries, his account of his crash and burn as Labor leader in the wake of the last federal election.
“Are you paranoid?” Faine asked him, in a pleasant tone that almost took the bite out of it.
“No, not at all,” Latham said matter-of-factly, as if he is asked this every day (which he probably has been of late).
“Are you depressed?” Faine pressed.
Here, curiously, the answer was not a direct “No”. In fact, Mark Latham passed right over the opportunity to wave a banner for the serene state of his own mental wellbeing or, at the very least, to fend off claims of wounded narcissism. Instead, he grabbed the chance for another free kick against his old rival Kim Beazley, repeating his claim that “Mr Decency” had failed to telephone suicidal MP Greg Wilton and offer him support when he needed it most.
Feminists used to say that the personal is political. For Mark Latham the political is still very, very personal. All through yesterday’s interview, his voice was calm and measured but his comments scathing. He spoke with the bitterness of a lover who has been discarded and defamed, but in his case the love was a cause – the Labor politics to which he had given his adult life.
Like Dickens’ Miss Havasham, sitting broken-hearted beside her cobwebbed wedding cake, Latham warned the young not to delude themselves into following the path that gave him so much heartache. “A young intelligent person who cares about the community and has a young family – I’d advise them not to go into politics. I’d advise them don’t set yourself up for media voyeurism, be aware of the impact this has on family.
“You can learn something out of my failed political career to that extent . . . Do things outside the cesspit of Australian politics.”
He was an angry man with a flamethrower. Journalists? Sensationalistic, intrusive voyeurs. Faine protested that, at the time he was campaigning as leader, Latham had actually played on his novelty value to score media exposure. Latham responded by talking over him.
The Labor Party? The Liberal Party? Both tarred with the same brush, he said, full of “voyeurs and sickos” who enjoy spreading sexual innuendo about political opponents. “There’s a sickness right across the political spectrum . . . There are no standards, no boundaries, no rules, no ethics. It’s whatever it takes to get power and hang on to it.”
The man who has called a pox on both their houses is a long way from any remorseful phone call.

First published in The Age.

Election 2004: Lazarus just keeps on rising

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The Verdict
For resilience, ambition and determination, there is no match for John Winston Howard, writes Karen Kissane.
He was centre of the national stage on Saturday night, beaming from the podium with his family as 800 party faithful roared their delight at Lazarus’ fourth coming. But come Sunday morning, Prime Minister John Howard was just another worshipper at the prayer service at his local evangelical Anglican church in Sydney. Well, almost.
All the important events of this small community were raised: a baby’s christening, a parishioner’s illness, the 132nd birthday of the beautiful sandstone church, which has an Australian flag and a Union Jack mounted near the altar. The Prime Minister, in his turn, got a share of the attention in the prayers of intercession: “We pray for Mr Howard and his newly elected team, that in his elation and sense of humility he will look to You and to Your ways to lead this great country so that justice and mercy for all will be his ambition, as they are Your ways . . . but also (that he be) aware of the needs of so much of our world and (be) proactive to meet those needs.” Presumably the PM joined the rest of the congregation in their “Amen”.
Leaving the church, a cheerful Mr Howard declined to speak to reporters, other than to say that he had been phoned the night before by both US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “They rang me and congratulated me and I had a brief discussion with each of them.” He would spend the rest of the day talking to a few people and “taking it a bit easier”.
He could well afford to. He has joined a pantheon of rare prime ministerial successes; only Bob Menzies and Bob Hawke share with him the winning of four elections.
“This is a truly historic achievement,” he said on election night. “You have to reach back to the ’60s (to find an incumbent government that) has increased its majority on two successive occasions,” he said, referring to his hero Menzies.
Mr Howard has probably won control of the Senate. He has also strengthened his dominance over the party’s internal critics by virtue of his sheer success.
It will probably take at least two elections for Labor to claw back Howard’s comfortable majority. The man who spent so many years in the wilderness, the pollie who couldn’t win a chook raffle, now appears to have an unassailable hold upon the nation’s leadership.
Before the last federal election, an eye-rolling Paul Keating is reported to have said of Mr Howard: “The man must have been hit in the bum by a rainbow at birth.” In fact, John Howard’s luck – and his ill-luck – have come in alternating bursts. As a boy at Canterbury Boys High School, he could not muster enough votes to become one of 25 prefects. As Opposition leader in 1987, his electoral hopes were stymied by the machinations of the Joh-for-PM campaign. In 1988, a poll reported that “John Howard appears to be a leader without any kind of voter mandate. He is neither liked nor respected . . . We can only question the potential inherent in a leader (of whom the) strongest perception is that he’s boring.”
In 1989, his own party dumped him as leader. Asked then if he could make a comeback, he said: “That’s Lazarus with a triple bypass – I mean, really.” But his wife, Janette, had said in 1987 that she never doubted they would make it to the Lodge: “I think it is our destiny. He told me he’d be prime minister the first time we met. He will be, wait and see.”
Now his party is hailing him as the greatest conservative prime minister since Menzies, who served 15 years, five months and 10 days as leader of the nation. There are similarities between the two, agrees Paul Strangio, a political historian at the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University.
“Both of them struggled early on, and their ascendancy has been built on three main pillars: their ability to manage the economy, their superior ability to look after Australia’s interests in dark and threatening times, and their forging of constituencies. For Menzies, it was ‘the forgotten people’; for Howard, it’s been ‘the battlers’.”
Howard has more appeal for the battlers than Latham, argues Professor David Flint, a leading monarchist and one of the party faithful celebrating at the Wentworth hotel on election night. “I think a lot of rank-and-file Labor supporters have voted for John Howard . . . Traditional Labor voters are very conservative.”
Dr Strangio agrees: “Labor has a problem in reconciling its two constituencies: those who are middle-class, liberal and cosmopolitan, and the more traditional working class.”
Gerard Henderson, author of a history of the Liberal Party called Menzies’ Child and a former chief of staff for John Howard, yesterday summed up the Prime Minister’s appeal this way: “He’s not at all charismatic, and he can be a bit boring. But you know where he stands and he doesn’t surprise you because there’s a degree of consistency (in his attitudes) that goes back 30 years.”
Mr Henderson believes the Government would have had to blunder seriously to lose this poll, given the state of the economy. So did this election fall like a ripe plum into Mr Howard’s lap?
Dr Strangio says that, in fact, it is possibly the first election win that Mr Howard can claim to be all his own: he won in 1996 because of public loathing of Paul Keating; in 1998, with the GST, he fell over the line and came close to being a oncer; and in 2001, critics argue, the outcome was affected by the Tampa and the children overboard affair. This time, Howard’s stance was “Here I stand, I can do no other,” says Dr Strangio. “In the end, he basically stood on his record . . . and he won handsomely.”
What does the PM promise for his fourth term? In his election-night speech he returned again to his core values, his love of country, the strength of the economy and his decisions to send Australian troops to East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq.
“This is a proud nation, a confident nation, a cohesive nation, a united nation, a nation that can achieve anything it wants to,” he said; a country that he passionately believed “to be a beacon of democracy and tolerance and hope and achievement all around the world”. He said this election had always been about one thing: who Australians best trusted on security and the economy.
John Winston Howard is determined and resilient, as any reporter who has panted after him on one of his early-morning walks will attest. His gait and speed are deceptive; like that of elderly marathoner Cliff Young, it appears unremarkable, almost awkward, but he sets a cracking pace that forces followers into occasional little trots to keep up.
His walk on election morning was along his usual route, which takes in views of the Sydney Opera House, Luna Park, and the Harbour Bridge. On this walk, as in his political life, critique did not sway him. He did not slacken his stride when he reached the graffiti chalked at intervals on the pavement below his feet: “Vote for the forests”; “WMD – Where are they?”; “Free children in detention”; and “Howard throws the truth overboard”.
He knew where he was going and he paid no mind.
On election night, that honed political judgement was proved right.

First published in The Age.

ELECTION 2004: Prime minister takes history in his stride

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John Howard’s day started with nerves as he faced becoming the second longest-serving prime minister, writes Karen Kissane.
Perhaps it was because he’d had a bad night. Prime Minister John Howard yesterday postponed his scheduled 6am power-walk, emerging at seven to lead the media pack up the hills and down the dales of Sydney’s Kirribilli. He confessed to butterflies in his stomach, and later said he had slept fitfully: “What would you expect?”
He had seen that morning’s polls, and one of them gave credence to his claim – incumbent upon leaders on election day – to underdog status: “I think they tell a picture of a very close result.” He then took off on what was either his last morning walk as prime minister, or his last before walking into the history books as the longest-serving prime minister since Robert Menzies.
He was not left wondering for long. The Prime Minister watched the result unfold from his official home, Kirribilli House in Sydney, with his wife Janette and children Melanie, Tim and Richard. Richard had flown home from Washington, where he has been working on the election campaign of US President George Bush.
At 7.05pm, Liberal Party powerbroker Michael Kroger told Channel Nine that in Victoria there was an early swing to the Liberals in every one of the state’s 37 federal seats. By 7.15, Labor Senator Robert Ray predicted that it would be almost impossible for Labor to win the election, and that it was likely to emerge with fewer seats than before.
By the time the official Liberal function began at the Wentworth Sofitel Hotel at 8pm, many of the invited 800 family, friends, key advisers and donors who had begun to trickle in were confident they were headed for a party rather than a wake.
Former Liberal Senator Michael Baume said Mr Howard’s campaign tactic of “pointing out the risks of change” had proved right.
Would this latest win make the PM’s position in the party room unassailable? “He was already invincible.” NSW Liberal Party director Chris McDiven agreed: “He is unassailable now for as long as he wants to be prime minister.”
On his power-walk that morning Mr Howard’s pace was, as usual, unrelenting, and his tracksuit was of the requisite dagginess, with a patriotic twist: the fluorescent yellow jacket had a green “Australia” and the stars of the Southern Cross on the back. On his walk, as in his political life, critique did not sway him. He did not slacken his stride when he reached the graffiti chalked at intervals on the pavement below his feet: “Vote for the forests”; “WMD – Where are they?”; “Free children in detention”; and “Howard throws the truth overboard”. The chalked opposition may have been extensive but it was in a form that George Bush’s “man of steel” could literally walk right over.
Mr Howard did not get off quite so easily when he arrived mid-morning at Putney Public School, in Sydney’s north, to cast his vote in his home seat of Bennelong. He was met by his daughter, Melanie Howard-McDonald, and her husband Rowan, who were in jeans and Liberal T-shirts handing out how-to-vote cards. Mr Howard kissed her and said effusively, “Family support – fantastic!” His wife and sons were not with him.
As the PM democratically took his place in the queue, he ignored a woman who shouted from the back of the crowd in broken English that he did not rescue countries that did not have oil to protect them. Then another lone female voice began warbling an angry ditty of the kind PMs do not enjoy as background to their media moments: “Shame Howard shame, you have cheated on the game.”
As the singer launched into encores, Mr Howard’s efforts at innocuous chitchat with reporters were suddenly re-energised. A reporter asked if this would be the last time he voted for John Howard. The PM gave a tight smile: “You never rest, you guys, do you?”

First published in The Age.

ELECTION 2004: Generous PM talks of years ahead

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SYDNEY. John Winston Howard entered the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney to a triumphant piece of musical kitsch of the kind that would signal a happy ending in a Hollywood movie. He brought with him his beaming wife, Janette, in peach and pearls, and his children. He was too tactful to say it, but backslapping supporters in the room had no qualms: “The sweetest one of all!” one roared.
Mr Howard had more grace. In a generous, confident and impassioned speech, he thanked the nation for its vote of confidence and made an almost prayerful vow to rededicate himself to the Australian people. Australia stood on the threshold of a new era of achievement, he promised. “The rest of the world sees us as a strong, successful nation . . . We are a nation that is respected by the world because we are prepared to stand up for what we believe in.”
He promised never to forget that governments are elected to govern for the people who voted for them and those who voted against them.
He thanked the Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, for his loyalty and his Treasurer and would-be successor, Peter Costello, for Australia’s strong economy, “the strongest economic conditions that this country has arguably experienced since World War II”.
He did not mention Iraq directly, but made several references to Australia’s willingness to stand up for democracy, and pointed out that “on this very day the people of Afghanistan have had an election, and that election has been made possible by reason of the fact that a number of countries, including Australia, were prepared to take a stand for democracy and to take a stand against terrorism”.
Earlier in the day, he had postponed his 6am power walk, emerging an hour later to lead the media pack around Kirribilli. He confessed to butterflies in his stomach, and later said he had slept fitfully: “What would you expect?”
He had seen that morning’s polls, and one of them gave credence to his claim, incumbent upon leaders on election day, to underdog status: “I think they tell a picture of a very close result.” He then took off on what was either his last morning walk as Prime Minister, or before walking into the history books as the longest-serving prime minister since Robert Menzies.
Mr Howard’s pace was, as usual, unrelenting, and his tracksuit was of the requisite dagginess, with a patriotic twist: the fluorescent yellow jacket had a green “Australia” and the stars of the Southern Cross on the back. On his walk, as in his political life, critique did not sway him. He did not slacken his stride when he reached the graffiti chalked at intervals on the pavement below his feet: “Vote for the forests”; “WMD – Where are they?”; “Free children in detention”; and “Howard throws the truth overboard.”
Mr Howard denied that he saw the fine, sunny weather as a good omen: “The first time I was elected to Parliament it poured rain, in 1974, it was unbelievably wet.” Was he superstitious at all? “Oh no, not quite. (But) I occasionally carry a gold watch that my father carried through the First World War.”
He was not left wondering about his place in the history books for long. The Prime Minister watched the result unfold from his official home, Kirribilli House in Sydney, with his wife Janette and children Melanie, Tim and Richard. Richard had flown home from Washington, where he has been working on the election campaign of American President George Bush.
At 7.05pm, Liberal Party powerbroker Michael Kroger told Channel Nine that in Victoria, there was an early swing to the Liberals in every one of the state’s 37 federal seats. By 7.15pm, Labor Senator Robert Ray predicted that it would be almost impossible for Labor to win the election, and that it was likely to emerge with fewer seats than before.
By the time the official Liberal function began at the Wentworth Hotel at 8pm, many of the invited 800 family, friends, key advisers and donors who had begun to trickle in were confident they were headed for a party rather than a wake. They paid more attention to the wine and the tempura prawns than they did to the TV screens running election news; they knew it was all over, red rover. They were as one for the first time only when NSW State director Scott Morrison took the stage at 9.30 to ask them for silence during Mark Latham’s upcoming concession speech, “out of respect for our opponents”. He was greeted with jeering laughter.
Former Liberal Senator Michael Baume said Mr Howard’s campaign tactic of “pointing out the risks of change” had proved right. Would this latest win make the PM’s position in the party room unassailable? “He was already invincible.”
NSW Liberal Party director Chris McDiven agreed: “He is unassailable now for as long as he wants to be Prime Minister.”
Leading monarchist Professor David Flint said this could not be guaranteed: “I can’t see him facing a challenge, but economics don’t always go up.”
What now . . .

First published in The Age.

Winds of blame sweep though the Liberal ranks

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Election 2002
The Liberals are accusing themselves and even their supporters, but as Karen Kissane reports, few are publicly pointing the finger at their new leader.

It was a sombre Robert Doyle who faced the media yesterday. Gone was the cocky, quipping politician high on the excitement of a campaign. He had led his people over a political cliff – or had he?

Mr Doyle was non-committal when offered chances to defend his performance. He deflected them with promises of an inquiry into the party’s electoral disaster. Asked whether his negative anti-union push in the final week of the campaign had hurt the party, he said: “The foolish thing would be to try to jump in and have quick and ready answers.” But some Liberals say Mr Doyle is responsible not for carnage but for rescue from what could have been a worse catastrophe.

Party polling the weekend before the election indicated the party faced losing so many seats that it could have lost party status in the parliament, a Liberal source said yesterday.

The polling suggested the party could finish up with fewer than seven lower house MPs after the loss of even blue-ribbon seats such as Doncaster, Bulleen and Sandringham. “We were going to be wiped out,” said the source, who did not wish to be named.

“So that (anti-union) strategy was adopted in the last week to save the Liberal Party from becoming an irrelevant rump. We appealed to our own people, to our heartland, because it was our own bloody people who were soft. They were deserting us. And it worked, to a certain degree.”

Had Mr Doyle controlled the campaign or was he told what to do? Mr Doyle told a press conference at Parliament House yesterday: “The campaign is a team effort with input from a number of sources.”

Upper house Liberal MP Cameron Boardman said Mr Doyle had been constrained by a party machine that refused to allow him off the leash: “A very small group of people . . . were saying what he was going to say, and it wasn’t Robert Doyle. It was completely manufactured.

“If Robert had been given scope to perform like himself then people would have seen a completely different side of him. But his lines were predictable and he ended up sounding like a politician.”

Mr Doyle said the electorate “felt we had not heard their message of 1999”. Other MPs also blamed the loss on the party’s failure to face the truth about the Kennett defeat. The parliamentary party was out of touch, said one MP: “There’s a lot of complacency, a lot of laziness. People don’t really get out of their offices to try and work out what’s happening on the ground.” MPs and candidates talked to each other and their constituents: “It was just purely Liberals talking to Liberals.”

Consequently, candidates had been too smug and had behaved more like MPs than people seeking votes: “The party machine, in fairness, tried to put the fear of God into the candidates as a whole team. But the message was pretty late and not adhered to.”

Labor, in contrast, worked hard to build relationships with all kinds of groups and organisations: “We lost creativity and we lost the edge, and the Labor Party filled the gap,” he said.

Peter Katsambanis, who lost his upper house seat of Monash, agreed that the seeds of the disaster were sown by the party’s response to the 1999 election loss: “Far too many people sat around trying to convince themselves that we hadn’t really lost. They tried to blame the people of Victoria, tried to suggest that somehow the people had got it wrong and hadn’t wanted to vote the government out.”

Mr Katsambanis also criticised the organisational wing of the party for redecorating its headquarters rather than saving money for the campaign: “There was no war chest to run an effective campaign, and I believe the Labor Party outspent us by three
to one.”

Had the Kennett factor been important in Mr Doyle’s downfall? Mr Doyle said: “I don’t know about that. I think one thing that’s very important for the Liberals is that we stick together.”

But Bernie Finn, unsuccessful Liberal candidate for Macedon, said Mr Doyle had been continually upstaged by Jeff Kennett.

“It’s a ghost that has to go away. What the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party needs is an exorcism.

“Even in the last week of campaign, he pushed Doyle off the front pages when he resigned from 3AK. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a collection to send him on a one-way ticket to Chechnya.”
Was Mr Doyle’s leadership now under threat? Mr Doyle said: “I will certainly stand again as leader and then it’s a matter for my party room.”

Mr Finn said: “When they meet in a telephone booth on Monday – there’s only a bloody dog and a cat left, after all – I would be staggered if they were to dump Robert. Who else is there?”

First published in The Age.

Doyle vows to battle on

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THE RESULT – THE LIBERALS
At a booth in his Malvern electorate yesterday, Robert Doyle ran into a woman who predicted his fate. She brusquely brushed aside his offer of a how-to-vote card. “No way. No way. You’re gonna lose, mate,” she said. Dead man walking.

Shortly after nine o’clock last night he appeared, grim-faced and red-eyed, to acknowledge it. Flanked by his wife, Jennifer, and his two older children, Andy and Bridie, he made his concession of defeat to a room full of Liberals stunned by the extent of their loss.

There was no sign of the ebullience that had carried him through the campaign and through its final day, when he had whipped around his own 13 booths and four marginal seats exhorting people to “Vote for me!”
Last night he faced the public after first having completed the grim task of phoning all his members who had lost seats. He said soberly: “We in the Liberal Party have to fully accept the verdict of Victorians, and we have to work very hard to win their trust back again. There are some real lessons here for us in the party and I promise all of you . . . that we are going to have a full, frank analysis of where we went wrong over the last three years . . .

“I’ve lost some good friends and we’ve lost some very good members. We need to learn that we can’t sit back for three years and try to do everything at the last moment.”
Two hundred Liberal Party faithful had been invited to celebrate at the Carlton Crest Hotel in Albert Park at 7pm. By 8pm it looked as if not just the state but the party’s own members had turned their backs on the Liberals, with waiters and media outnumbering party supporters. They stood shaking their heads at the big television screens blaring out confirmation by one commentator after another that their party had not just lost, but lost badly. Platters of food turned into leftovers.

More party faithful appeared in time for Mr Doyle’s appearance but Federal Treasurer Peter Costello and Arts Minister Rod Kemp were the only senior politicians to arrive. Mr Costello declined to speak to the media. He told one party worker: “Keep working on it. We’ll win Broadmeadows in due course.”

Some old-guard Liberals had reportedly been alienated by what they perceived as the negative campaigning of Mr Doyle’s increasingly desperate last week. Branch members, who did not wish to be named, said the result was devastating and far worse than they had expected. “The amount of seats lost is just unbelievable,” one woman said.

Mr Doyle thanked his family for having put up with him over the past four weeks; his wife laughed, providing the one moment of relief on the stage. He then promised he would give 100 per cent to the job of winning back Victoria, which started now.

But the man who had won the leadership after warning that the party would be “in desperate trouble” at this election without a change, now has to face his party room with a massive defeat. He gave no interviews last night but earlier in the day had been asked what a large loss would mean.

Mr Doyle had said that he was very happy with his leadership team and they would stay, even after a loss. As for what would happen to him, “That’s a question for my party.” Would he like to stay on as leader? “I’m here for the long haul. There’s no doubt about that.”

Jennifer Doyle had said her husband would be very disappointed if he lost. He had worked “amazingly hard . . . he has really dug deep . . . and shown me how determined he can be. It’s taken so much out of him and he’s given it everything.”

As Steve Bracks’ victory speech was televised to the Carlton Crest last night, Liberals stood stern and silent or hoed determinedly at last into the food and drinks. As Mr Bracks talked about health, schools and police, one man called out, “Who paid for it, Steve?”
Mr Doyle might talk of trying to win back voters’ trust. But last night at the Carlton Crest, his troops were more of the mind to say, “They’ll be sorry.” Several warned that Victorians did not know what they had done to their state. One woman said: “Let’s just see how many people get bumper stickers that say, `Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote Labor’, when things start to go wrong.”

First published in The Age.