Talk: John Howard

Firstly, when the article mentions that, in 1985, Howard 'challenged' Peacock, what do we mean by this? Howard did not launch a challenge in the sense that he never contested a ballot against Peacock. Nor, as far as I'm aware, was Howard ever seriously considering running against Peacock. Peacock felt threatened by Howard and bungled an attempt to remove him from the Deputy Leadership position (he spilt the DL position, expecting Howard to challenge for the leadership - Howard simply recontested for his old position, putting Peacock in an untenable position and forcing him to resign).

It's slightly before my time, but if that is the true picture please edit the article to reflect it (I suppose I could get The End of Certainty and have a look...)

1998 Election

Secondly, about the financial figures in the 1998 election - again, I thought that the ALP actually outspent the Coalition (not particularly odd - it routinely happens in state elections nowadays), but that a tax-reform lobby group spent millions of dollars running a parallel campaign to the Coalition.

Dunno. I do remember "Australians For Tax Reform" (aka the Business Council of Australia). Lexis-Nexis might be able to answer that one.

Work-for-the-Dole

Thirdly, I seem to recall Peter Reith and Tony Abbott saying at various times that the work-for-the-dole program was not intended to create new jobs (however, I can't back that up, so I'll have to dig out a quote from somewhere).

Merric

For edits like these, which sound reasonably uncontroversial to me (particularly if you can cite sources) just go ahead and make them. --Robert Merkel 06:09, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I concur. Tannin 08:25, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Adam Rewrite

Hi Adam,

in your extensive rewrite, you took out a few aspects of the article which I'd written in. Inevitably, I'd like to discuss a few of these:

The Liberal Party was in a precarious internal state before the 1996 election. Although the Liberals had once been the "natural party of governance" in Australia, ruling for all but three years from 1949-1983, they had at that point lost five successive elections. When Howard regained the helm in 1995, he was their third leader in two years.

The strategy for the 1996 election was to moderate the harsh image which had harmed the Liberals at the previous (1993) election. They released policies and pledges which were significanctly more environment- and welfare- friendly than their previous election platforms. The incumbent Prime Minister Paul Keating, was perceived as lacking empathy with the broader public with his intellectualised "big-picture" approach to politics and combination of harsh political tactics and perceived elitist tastes.

The rewrite doesn't seem to capture the fact that the Liberals were genuinely desperate, that the party was close to falling appart, and the fact that there was something brilliantly disingenuous about the '96 Liberal platform (note: someone who's read more than me might be able to shed some light on whether it is Howard, or his advisors, who deserve the credit for this).

The article now says:

Soon after taking office Howard took control of the domestic political agenda, sometimes in unexpected ways.

This sentence doesn't seem very enlightening. Is this talking about anything other than the gun control issue? Did Howard "take control of the agenda" more than any other newly elected Prime Minister? How much of the agenda was due to Howard and how much to the rest of Cabinet?

The revised version no longer mentions some significant aspects of the government's first term - the importance of Mal Colston's vote (without which numerous pieces of legislation would not have been passed), the reversal of popularity after Cheryl Kernot's defection, or the fact that Australian universities were to start charging full fees for the first time since the 1970s.

That section of the article should probably also mention Brian Harradine...

You also removed the reference to database-driven campaigning in marginal seats. Can you confirm or deny that the Liberals gained a very significant advantage as a result of this? If, as I've heard, these Rovean techniques were in use, they would have been worth at least a few percentage points, thus being a major factor in the '98 election victory.

-- Pde 03:41, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Dear Pde: My feeling, after having either written or edited all the other Prime Minister articles, was that the Howard article was too long and too digressive and contained too much material which strayed too far from the biographical. Of course Howard's biography has to be placed in its political context, or it makes no sense to non-Australian readers, but an article on John Howard is nevertheless not a History of the Howard Government. That was why I pruned quite a lot of the discussions about policies and political events which (in my opinion) did not cast light on the central subject of the article.

You may feel I have gone too far, and if so you are free to work some of that material back into the text, but hopefully in a way which doesn't bog the reader down in side-issues.

On the particular points you raise:

I didn't think either the Colston saga or the Kernot defection was sufficiently relevant to Howard's biography. Foreign readers find the Australian parliamentary system difficult enough to follow, let alone trying to explain the balance of power in the Senate. In this article it is a distraction from the subject.

Well, maybe the two cases are very different. I think Colston should be included, because the affair was so central to the spirit (and outcomes) of the first term. But I agree that there's a John Howard vs. History of the Howard Government issue. Which is an aspect of the issue you pointed out before, on the structure of political articles...

The material about the 1996 campaign is I suppose more debateable, although I don't in fact think the Liberal Party was about to disintegrate, any more than the ALP is now. Part of the historian's job is to critically reassess short-sighted media overstatement with the benefit of hindsight.
I agree that the sentence you quote is weak, it was my attempt to lead into your discussion of the 1996-98 policy agenda. Feel free to replace it. :)
Both parties use database driven campaign techniques and there's nothing particularly sinister about them. In any case I don't think Liberal Party campaign tactics are relevant to this article unless Howard invented them himself, which he didn't.

Of course both parties use them now -- and whether they're good or bad for democracy is a question beyond the scope for this article (digression: I couldn't find an article on election campaigns, so I created a stub). The story I heard was that in 1998, the Liberals had started using databases, while the ALP had not. If that was in fact the case, it may have been quite important to JH's career.

Finally I'm sorry if I have butchered your copy too severely. I'm still getting used to people doing it to me.

No problem, I guess the challenge of wiki collaboration is to move from the moment of "Oh no! They've butchered it" to agreement on a better text :) -- Pde 08:35, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Adam 04:31, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Working-class

"Many working-class voters backed the Howard line on illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers, while the party's middle-class supporters strongly opposed it."

Can somebody please clean this up? I really don't like any discussion of 'class'. It is wrong to make any distinction between socio-economic groups in such an obviously belittling manner. -- Mark Ryan 06:40, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Mark, it can be perfectly sensible NPOV commentary to describe things in terms of class (or race, or religion, for that matter), provided there is actually a statistical basis for the claim. I don't know enough to comment on the facts in this particular case, though. And it's important to not confuse correlation with causation. -- pde 01:53, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

OK. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Anyway, I had interpreted the old paragraph wrong, thinking it was referring to working and middle-class supporters of the Liberal Party, not the ALP. It makes a whole lot more sense now. :-) -- Mark Ryan 02:53, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The amusing thing is, I was under the same impression until I was actually trying to reword it. -- pde

Simon Crean

Simon Crean is no longer leader of the opposition. The page should be modified to reflect that. he kept his lead in the opinion polls over the new Labor leader, Simon Crean.. Reference: http://www.alp.org.au/

Done. - Mark 13:12, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

East Timor

I find it astonishing that Adam Carr would revert my edit with the comment: "(rvt comments about Timor which are (a) matters of opinion and (b) not relevant to this article)". His version said:

Australia led pressure on Indonesia to uphold that country's offer to East Timor of a referendum on independence, and later contributed a significant peacekeeping/policing force to protect the inhabitants against pro-Indonesian militias. Most Australians and the rest of the Western world viewed this as a moral, principled stand. Howard reversed a decades-old bi-partisan foreign policy of appeasement towards Indonesia which had hitherto been followed by governments of both persuasions.

The formulation "Most Australians and the rest of the Western world viewed this as a moral, principled stand" is most certainly a matter of opinion -- for which no evidence is offered. My correction:

On the one hand, some in Australia and the rest of the Western world viewed this as a moral, principled stand. However, critics observe that the motivation for this intervention may have been less than altruistic: instead of negotiating with a relatively strong and determined government of Indonesia over rights to the oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea, Australia now is able to deal with a powerless and desperate government in East Timor. According to the British-based non- governmental humanitarian group Oxfam, Australia's thirst for petroleum poses a threat to East Timor's independence www.atimes.com/atimes/ Southeast_Asia/ FE22Ae02.html (Asia Times)

-- is an attempt to balance the article with an opposing (and documented) view. If opposition to Howard's East Timor policy is "not relevant", than surely the dubious assertion that the whole world admires it cannot be relevant, either. --172.192.173.23

Just for the record, the line "the rest of the Western world viewed this as a moral, principled stand" was not written by me. I agree that it is too sweeping and could be deleted. However, the line "instead of negotiating with a relatively strong and determined government of Indonesia over rights to the oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea, Australia now is able to deal with a powerless and desperate government in East Timor" is even more sweeping, and much more tendentious. Many more people in Australia would subscribe to the former statement than to the latter. The correct solution is probably to delete all opinionated statements about Timor. This is not after all an article about Timor, and a statement of the fact that Howard did what he did will probably suffice here. Adam 04:24, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Newspaper Article

Hey, I e-mailed a Newspaper Article on him to the Canberra Sunday Times. User:Patricknoddy User talk:Patricknoddy 8:02 August 22, 2004 (EDT)

Letter

I got a letter from him. --Patricknoddy 21:14, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)User:Patricknoddy --Patricknoddy 21:14, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)User talk:Patricknoddy 17:14 August 31, 2004 (EDT)

What did it say? - Ta bu shi da yu 13:22, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Could we setup a temporary block on a specific network range?

I notice in the history there has been quite a bit of vandalisation from the following netblock:

inetnum:      211.26.0.0 - 211.27.255.255
netname:      INTERNETPRIMUS
descr:        Primus Telecommunications
descr:        Internet Services Network
country:      AU
admin-c:      jp21-ap
tech-c:       rc35-ap
mnt-by:       APNIC-HM
mnt-lower:    MAINT-PRIMUS-AU
status:       ALLOCATED PORTABLE
remarks:      -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
remarks:      This object can only be modified by APNIC hostmaster
remarks:      If you wish to modify this object details please
remarks:      send email to hostmaster@apnic.net with your organisation
remarks:      account name in the subject line.
remarks:      -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
changed:      hm-changed@apnic.net 20030930
source:       APNIC

person:       Jeff Pace
nic-hdl:      JP21-AP
e-mail:       netops@primus.com.au
address:      L3 1 Alfred Street
address:      Circular Quay
address:      Sydney NSW Australia
address:      2000
phone:        +61-2-9423 2400
fax-no:       +61-2-9423 2410
country:      AU
changed:      netops@primus.com.au 20030724
mnt-by:       MAINT-PRIMUS-AU
source:       APNIC

person:       Richard Coombe
nic-hdl:      RC35-AP
e-mail:       netops@primus.com.au
address:      Level 3
address:      1Alfred Street
address:      Circular Quay
address:      Sydney  NSW  2000
phone:        +61-2-9423 2400
fax-no:       +61-2-9423 2410
country:      AU
changed:      netops@primus.com.au 20030724
mnt-by:       MAINT-PRIMUS-AU
source:       APNIC

(from http://www.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois.pl)

Could we block this for a while? (I may yet regret this as I may be in the same network range at work... still) - Ta bu shi da yu 04:36, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

iPrimus and Primus-AOL combined make one of Australia's largest ISPs. Are you suggesting blocking the entire ISP? - Mark 07:14, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yup. Only for a short while. I was putting this out there temporarily to see what happens. Probably not practical. - Ta bu shi da yu 09:12, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No mention of Medicare

Didn't Howard vote against Medicare and brand it a waste? Why doesn't this article mention that? - Ta bu shi da yu 04:49, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Because, in my understanding, it is not realy relevant to this article. Xtra 09:54, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I disagree. In 1987, John Howard was recorded as saying that bulk billing will not be permitted for anyone except pensioners and the disadvantaged. Also, try the following quote from Margo Kingston' website:

JOURNALIST: But Mr Howard, you used to oppose Medicare.

PRIME MINISTER: Yes, I did.

See http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/000294.html.

So, perhaps this should still be added. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:48, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think it is relevant, given that Howard has been posing lately as Medicare's best friend. The fact is that Howard doesn't beliece in universal health insurance and never has, and if he ever gets the chance he will abolish it (like if he should ever get control of the Senate, for example). Adam 06:50, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think your being a tad cynical adam. I can guarantee you that Howard will not abolish medicare even in the event of a senate majority. it is irrelevant to this article, plus i doubt anything could be written on that topic that was not POV. incidentaly, what are these fake greens how to votes that i have been hearing about? Xtra 13:31, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Across Melbourne Ports and some other seats the Libs had a squad of teenage girls dressed in green t-shirts and caps handing out a green-coloured HTV saying "vote for a green Australia" or variants of that. This was clearly designed to deceive Green voters, especially first-time voters, into voting Liberal, and led to angry scenes at several booths. This is all photographed and documented, and will lead to legal action. Adam 02:26, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Menzies

That bit about 2012 being when Howard passes Menzies is wrong - Menzies was PM for a total of 18 years, 5 months and 12 days so Howard will pass him on August 24, 2014. PMA 09:17, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Excelled academically?

From the Sydney Morning Herald: Howard scored As in English and modern history in the Leaving Certificate and Bs in Latin, chemistry and economics. He failed general maths. These are reasonable marks but I wouldn't say Howard excelled academically as the article states. Is it reasonable to put these marks in the article or should the statement just be removed?

The statement should be removed. Adam 06:50, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

FTA

I guess there should be a sentence or two about the FTA with the USA, right in the middle of the current last paragraph of the third term.

Reverting edits

It appears that some people are reverting edits that aren't vandalism without giving any reason why they are doing this. The text was reverted "These criticisms came from conservative figures such as ex-Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and political commentator Robert Manne, as well as critics from the military, public service and Howard's own personal staff." to "These criticisms came from conservative figures such as ex-Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and political commentator Robert Manne, as well as the more usual critics on the left." Why was this done? No explanation was given! It's ironic that both statements are pretty POV and have unattributed critics though. - Ta bu shi da yu 14:12, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I must say I agree with your factual version more that the clearly POV original. Mark Hurd 15:45, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

ministries

those ministries seem a bit bulky compared to the article. could they be made their own article with a link here? Xtra 06:50, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

They're already in a list of Australian ministries that Adam just created. I also agree that they bloat the article. Ambi 06:58, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's not my fault that he has been in power so long or has appointed so many ministers. All the other PM articles now have similar lists. Adam 07:02, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I guess the point is that they bloat the article - if that's the case for this one, it's most probably the case for most other Prime Ministers, particularly those who have served more than one term. Note that I've not seen this repeated elsewhere (none of the US Presidents have their administration in their article, none of the UK Prime Ministers have their cabinet there, etc.) Ambi 08:26, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes they do. Adam 08:32, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

whether they do or not, adam. wouldn't it make more sense just to have a link to your article of the ministries. don't think that i don't apreciate your work, because i do, but it really looks silly here. Xtra 08:45, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That is an entirely subjective statement, with which I disagree, and I don't see why your opinion about what looks silly is any more determinative than mine. Contra Ambi, I am bringing the Australian PM articles into conformity with the US President and UK PM articles, which do indeed give Cabinet lists. Mine are just more comprehensive, which is what an encyclopaedia is supposed to be. Adam 08:57, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

that now looks much better adam. Xtra 00:37, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think the separate articles look good too. Also as the info isn't duplicated from the Australian Commonwealth ministries 1901-2004 article, theres no chance of the info getting out of sync. -- Chuq 01:11, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Freemason

We should mention somewhere that he is a Freemason. http://www.nobbys.net.au/~gumtree/mmma15.htm

That website makes it clear that he is NOT a Freemason. Adam 14:09, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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