The Howard Years

December 8, 2008 11:04 PM

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard was booted out in the 2007 elections. He had been Prime Minister for 11 years and in that time he had taken the country to war and divided the country on issues like Aboriginal reconciliation and workplace reforms. The Howard Years, a four part documentary originally screened on the ABC, is now online and available to view for free and takes a detailed look at the legacy of his Prime Ministership. The four part series explores in greater detail than ever before Howard's fractured relationship with his deputy and heir apparent, Peter Costello, and also contains some startling revelations from Howard Government ministers that many candidly admit they would never have told you while they were still in Government.
posted by Effigy2000 (32 comments total)

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posted by Fiasco da Gama at 11:09 PM on December 8, 2008

Josh Fear of The Australia Institute wrote a great research paper about dogwhistle politics. It is called "Under the Radar, (PDF)" (2007). He uses quite a bit of speech data from Howard to demonstrate the divisive nature of the tactic, and the ways Howard used it to his political advantage, and undermined the idea of democracy in the process.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:18 PM on December 8, 2008

Dang, sorry. Last week you could get the whole thing. Not sure what happened. Maybe somebody can find an alternate link, unless its something the author wants to not make public any longer. Shame, it was a fun read.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:21 PM on December 8, 2008

iamkimiam, I found the full paper here. 60 pages, and definitely looks worth checking out. Thanks for the heads-up.
posted by barnacles at 11:27 PM on December 8, 2008

First Howard, then bush, now Harper. Good by to all these conservative Douchebags.
posted by delmoi at 12:07 AM on December 9, 2008

Janette has one; John is one.
posted by dangerousdan at 12:27 AM on December 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I dearly want to watch this, but am getting all sorts of odd connection errors.
posted by awfurby at 12:49 AM on December 9, 2008

Oh my Peter Reith doesn't improve with distance, does he?
posted by wilful at 1:07 AM on December 9, 2008

Oh cool, there's a transcript:

JOHN ANDERSON, PRIMARY INDUSTRIES MINISTER 1996-1998: The Prime Minster rang me early one morning just a few days after Port Arthur, and said well now we’re going to have to do something as you know about gun laws.

He said your job is to explain to me and convince me, ah as to what sort of firearms farmers need and legitimately must have access to.

Ah what sort of gun do you use? And I hesitated for a moment because I thought oh I don’t quite know how to tell the Prime Minister that I have what he would regard as an arsenal.

I was out of the country when this happened so I missed the aftermath and the gun control fallout.
posted by awfurby at 1:14 AM on December 9, 2008

I couldn't watch this, even as a keen student of politics. It's too soon, weve only just split up.
posted by mattoxic at 2:08 AM on December 9, 2008

meh, i wasn't impressed by the doco at all.

it had some interesting comments & revelations, but was obviously produced under some sort of agreement, whereby the conga line of suckholes would only consent to be interviewed and shown if certain other people were completely excluded.

i imagine that paul keating would have been able to take up an entire episode alone, tearing the lying rodent to shreds.

likewise, former party colleague of howard - ex prime minister malcolm fraser - would've had some choice comments about the runty cunt.

unfortunately, neither made an appearance, much to the detriment of the historical record.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:53 AM on December 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I agree somewhat, Ubu. Keating and Fraser would have been nice additions but in a doco called The Howard Years, a decade where Keating and Fraser hardly played a significant part, I'm afraid their inclusion would have served only our amusement rather than an analysis of the behind-the-scenes goings on of the Howard Government during its major flashpoints.
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:05 AM on December 9, 2008

I much prefer Clarke and Dawe's gold-standard pisstakes to the doco itself.

''Oh, look, I may have spoken to them. I don't remember exactly.
It wasn't our policy, no, but it was what we always intended to do.
Well it wasn't our stated policy.
It was our policy. We just hadn't told anyone.''

Bless!

I would've loved to see a Keating interview in there too. Or - dare I say it?! - Mark Latham.

That would've livened things up no end.
posted by t0astie at 3:23 AM on December 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

well, if we can't have keating to liven things up, here's my favourite snippet of keating: the musical; about the most accurate & complete retrospective possible regarding howard.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:58 AM on December 9, 2008

Nice line from Alan Ramsey in the SMH on the first anniversary of the Rudd government (paraphrased):
"Monday is the first anniversary of the Rudd government, or as I prefer to see it, the first anniversary of the death of the Howard government."
posted by bystander at 4:22 AM on December 9, 2008

I suppose Keating and Frazer weren't really part of the Howard prime ministership- hence the lack of material. Meg Lees' attempt at rewriting her shameful performance was enough for me. And fucking Reith! Total fucking scumbag. The rodent's rodent.
posted by mattoxic at 4:26 AM on December 9, 2008

First Howard, then bush, now Harper. Good by to all these conservative Douchebags.

Harper's gone? Is this something they keep from Canadians?
posted by gman at 4:31 AM on December 9, 2008

Meg Lees was fucking Reith?!??
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:16 AM on December 9, 2008

UbuRoivas: "Meg Lees was fucking Reith?!??"

No but she certainly fucked the Australian people, that's for sure.
posted by Effigy2000 at 11:22 AM on December 9, 2008

Threads on Political figures on the Blue usually get quite large.
I delights me in a strange way that this thread is about 20 posts long.
Because Johnny liked to think of himself as an important worldwide figure.
When in reality no one really knew about him, or cared.
This small thread shows the level of worldwide interest in the man.

So glad he is gone.
posted by AzzaMcKazza at 1:24 PM on December 9, 2008

Yeah, Australian political threads generally are pretty small around these parts. Except for these two.

I share your sentiment about his departure though. Whenever I'm feeling blue I watch his concession speech (saved on my PS3 as a video file and on my iPhone for emergencies) and suddenly I feel all happy again.
posted by Effigy2000 at 2:09 PM on December 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Johnny liked to think of himself as an important worldwide figure.
When in reality no one really knew about him, or cared.
This small thread shows the level of worldwide interest in the man.

So true. One of the most nauseating things about him (and shown in the doco) was how puffed-up he got when he was seen to be hobnobbing with Bush. Everybody else in the world knew that Bush is a complete fucking joke, but somehow Howard thought it increased his credibility & standing.

Speaking of credibility, it's a shame the doco didn't spend more time on the APEc fiasco. The combination of Rudd giving his speech in fluent Mandarin, and the Chaser guys breaching the ridiculous security that had already tested the limits of Sydneysiders' patience, dressed as Osama bin Laden, ruined Howard's last shot at playing the big-man-on-world-stage image that he'd been trying to build for himself. I hope that one day the Chaser guys receive an Order of Australia medal for that; I mean, for services to the entertainment industry.

And Effo: one of my instant mood enhancers is to think of that jazz band playing When the Saints go Marching In at that fair in Bennelong, with Maxine dancing with jubilant supporters, and Howard & Janine onstage looking on, dour & helpless.

Naturally, the lyrics *must* have been "Oh When Maxine, Oh When Maxine, Oh When Maxine Goes Marching In..."

Damn, now I'm grinning from ear to ear again :D
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:20 PM on December 9, 2008

whoops, Janette, or Jeanette, or something. difficult not to expunge from one's mind the very concept of somebody who had sex with howard *gaaah, washes brain in acid*
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:26 PM on December 9, 2008

But I'm a country member!
posted by Wolof at 2:58 PM on December 9, 2008

Are you trying to tell me that Adelaide doesn't count as metropolitan?
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:26 PM on December 9, 2008

"Yes, I remember!"
posted by Wolof at 4:13 PM on December 9, 2008

When in reality no one really knew about him, or cared.

I'm with mattoxic - it's too soon.

Like my Mum used to say: If you can't say something nice about someone, how the fuck does he end up PM for over a decade???
posted by pompomtom at 5:03 PM on December 9, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

by lying through his teeth, smearing the opposition, pretending he controls global interest rates & economic conditions, and by stirring up racism & xenophobic paranoia, perhaps?
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:56 PM on December 9, 2008

"...how the fuck does he end up PM for over a decade???"

Hilarious, and favorited!

That said, I present to you the reasons why Howard won every election from 1996 to 2004, and why he lost the 2007 election.

He won in 1996 because: He wasn't Keating.
He won in 1998 because: Preferences barely favored him over Beazley.
He won in 2001 because: September 11, Tampa and appealing to Australian xenophobia.
He won in 2004 because: Latham shook his hand a bit too hard and an incredible Liberal scare campaign.
He lost in 2007 because: He wasn't Rudd.
posted by Effigy2000 at 7:38 PM on December 9, 2008

Howard: war criminal, liar, shitbag.
posted by Henry C. Mabuse at 8:56 PM on December 9, 2008

Rudd won in 2007 because: He wasn't Howard.

Well, not quite.
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:05 PM on December 9, 2008

Respectfully:

2004: Because Australians are idiots who have no idea about how interest rates are set, and how insignificant their particular mortgage is in comparison to, say, the price of iron ore.

(I still feel a fool, remembering myself thinking "the electorate's too smart for that line of bollocks, you little rodent!")

(and Ubu... quite)
posted by pompomtom at 9:55 PM on December 9, 2008