A SENSE OF BALANCE

As the 25th prime minister of Australia, The Hon John Howard MP managed to outlast all his predecessors, becoming the second longest serving Australian prime minister and bettered only by Sr Robert Menzies. In retirement, John Howard has written two best selling books – a personal memoir and a political evaluation of Robert Menzies. In 2022, John Howard felt the need for further political reflection which eventuated in his writing A Sense of Balance. As he puts it, “I was provoked into writing this book, by the appalling condescension of the self-appointed political elites and political commentators who brought scorn on two democratic decisions.” To discuss some of the themes and conclusions in his book, John Howard spoke for The Sydney Institute on Wednesday 7 September 2022.

A SENSE OF BALANCE

JOHN HOWARD 

Can I start by saluting The Sydney Institute for continuing as a beacon of a place to perpetuate the battle of ideas. Politics, more than anything, is about a contest of ideas. In order to have a good contest of ideas, you need to have groups in the community who are encouraging an examination of ideas. Obviously, political parties are an integral part of that process. But, by definition, they are profoundly partisan. And the collective that promotes the contest of ideas has to include an organisation such as The Sydney Institute, and the work that Gerard and Anne and the other people at the Institute have done over the years to keep that contest going.

Could I also pay tribute to my publisher. Authors should always thank publishers. My publisher is not an unknown force in the world media; it’s Harper Collins, which somebody tells me is owned by a very significant media player. I am referring to the most significant Australian business figure Rupert Murdoch, who has made a greater impact on the world business stage than any other Australian. I particularly acknowledge the presence of Hannah Lynch from Harper Collins, who is my campaign director on this exercise. Selling a book is a bit like running an election campaign; you’ve got to turn up, you got to talk people, you got to persuade them, you got to encourage them to buy your book so that you can sign it and say nice things in the inscription. So, I’ve got to tell you, having an enthusiastic campaign director is very important.

Why did I write this book? I was provoked into writing this book, by the appalling condescension of the self-appointed political elites and political commentators who brought scorn on two democratic decisions. Firstly, they poured scorn on the democratic decision of the British people to leave the European Union. A decision, incidentally, that I warmly endorsed. I was always a Brexiteer. Not like the newly elected Prime Minister of Britain (then Liz Truss) who was once a “Romanian”, and is now a Brexiteer, but God bless her and good luck to her. And the other scorning was of the decision of the American people in 2016 to elect Donald Trump as President in the United States. Let me say that it was not a decision that particularly excited me. In fact, I was on record as saying, before Trump’s election, that the prospect of him becoming President of the United States made me tremble. As events turned out, I thought he made some very good decisions. His handling of the economy was good. His handling of the pandemic was appalling. And those press conferences he conducted where he just rambled at will were very disconcerting. But what really cost him my support – not that it meant anything as I didn’t have a vote, I’m not an American – was his appalling unwillingness to accept the decision of the American people.

However, my point is that when these two events occurred, the self-appointed elites and commentators felt that the mob had got it wrong. They basically said: How dare these poorly educated, poorly remunerated people in the north of England, in places like Sunderland, and in the Midwest of the United States, how dare they vote in the way they did? How did they not deliver the presidency of the United States to Hillary Clinton, who called them deplorables? And how dare they not stay in the European Union, which was the fount of all goodness and wisdom.

It really provoked me because I thought it represented an attitude of mind that reeked of condescension. And it also caused me to examine in a little more in detail the structure of political parties. Not only in Great Britain and the United States, but also of course in Australia. So, having been provoked into that I then wrote a book which represents a stream of consciousness on a number of issues. And I chose the title “A Sense of Balance”, because I think it is one of the most defining characteristics of the Australian achievement.

The Australian achievement was a wonderful description that Malcolm Fraser wanted to give to the 200-year celebration of the British settlement in Australia. I thought it was a good description because it really encapsulated what we are about. Australia is an achievement. It’s a distinctly Australian achievement. It’s something of which we should be very proud. The term “Australian achievement” is not triumphalist. White or otherwise. It’s a plain statement of reality. And as I examined that, it became very apparent to me that this sense of balance has been with us for a long time.

One of the clever things this country did, right from the beginning of European settlement, was to take the good bits about British inheritance and reject the bad bits. We took the rule of law, we took the freedom of the press, to some degree we took our sense of humour, we embraced – and I say this with a little more passion in New South Wales, Queensland and in other parts of Australia – many of our sporting tastes. But we rejected the bad bits. We rejected class distinction. We rejected the notion of an aristocracy or a bunyip aristocracy as the famous WC Wentworth spoke of many, many years ago. So, we got it right.

That was something which went on to permeate the development of Australia. We have a wonderful balance in social provision. I hold the view that Australia has got the sweet spot when it comes to social welfare provision. We’re not as harsh as the Americans. And we’re not as paternalistic and interventionist as Europeans. Aspects of America’s social welfare system does drive people into crime, and is disruptive. Equally, I think the European system is so paternalistic that it robs many firms of the capacity to hire and fire in appropriate circumstances, and robs them of efficiency.

When I look at our education system, it’s got plenty of faults. And I won’t initiate a discussion on mobile phones or we’ll be here all night. But it is our education system is a system that provides far more choice. I’ve never forgotten the absolute astonishment of George Bush when I told him that 34 per cent of Australian school aged children are educated in the non-government sector; he couldn’t believe it. And one of the things that we’ve done very well is to get that balance.

And we saw in the pandemic, with all the weaknesses and the criticisms people made, that the governments, federal and the state of both political persuasions, handled the pandemic pretty well. I don’t think we’ve given ourselves as a nation enough credit. If you got COVID in Australia, you were 34 times less likely to die than if you lived in the United Kingdom and 45 times less likely to die if you lived in the United States.  It’s an interesting statistical comparison.

There was an American sociologist called Robert Putnam, who wrote a wonderful book titled Bowling Alone which traced the decline of people joining organisations. He said that, years ago, in America, people went to bowling alleys in groups. But he had detected a big change; people would now go there on their own. He had picked this up because he discovered the beer and pizza sales at bowling alleys had declined very sharply. From that he developed his theme. And we are aware of that.

All organisations struggle now to get members. And it affects their influence. There’s one exception to that – the trade unions. Unions still struggle to get members, even while their influence and power has gone up exponentially.  We are living in a society which is a non-joiner. Putnam’s theory was that those who came of age in what Americans call “the greatest generation” or the generation that fought in World War II was the generation that joined organisations. In my view, the generation that went before them, that endured the impact of World War I, had a far greater proportionately impact on Australia, than it did on the United States and the Great Depression. But the point Putnam made, very simply, was that we are no longer living in an age where people normally join organisations.

This has had a huge impact on churches, local sporting groups, parents and citizens clubs, parents and friends associations. It’s also had a big impact on political parties. Today they are smaller and less representative of the people who are normally supposed to vote for them. Years ago, people joined the Labor Party because they had a very strong sense of social justice. Whether you shared those views or not, you had to respect them. And many people joined the Liberal Party because they thought it best represented their belief in free enterprise, small business and individual freedom. Of course, many of you will know, and some of you will have experienced, the upsurge in Liberal Party support after World War II, after Menzies had formed the Liberal Party. Especially when an attempt was made to nationalise the private trading banks, because that was seen as a direct attack on the free enterprise principle. In my book, I’ve talked about that; I’ve also talked about the influence of factionalism in political parties. If you have a smaller membership base, factions are more venomous, and they have a greater influence, because they have a smaller group to organise. I wouldn’t say they represent an existential threat, but they certainly represent a serious threat to the viability of our major political parties.

As part of this stream of consciousness, I have also talked about our relationship with China. Let me say just one thing about relations with China – it is our most difficult foreign policy relationship. I don’t have any basic criticism of the manner in which the newly elected Labor government has handled that relationship because it has largely followed what we’ve seen as the approach of the former government, which in turn followed what had been the attitude of earlier governments. Indeed, we’ve had a fair degree of bipartisanship. The point I make most strongly about our relationship with China is that I do not share the view of many commentators, that it is inevitable that China will overtake the United States as the most powerful country in the world. China has two huge problems. The first one is demography. China will grow old before she grows rich, following the path of Japan with a declining birth rate. The only big difference, and it’s a huge difference, is that Japan started off as a wealthy country compared with China. For China, it’s a big challenge. The other thing for China is that, as more and more people are born into rather new affluence, those people will want a greater say in running their own lives. Although autocracy and totalitarianism seems very much to be holding sway in China at the moment, I’m not sure that it’s going to continue indefinitely.

Two other issues. I have talked about the possibility of Australia becoming a republic. As some of you might know, I have mildly anti-republican views to say the least. I accept that when her Majesty dies there will be some reappraisal in this country. I’m not sure that it will lead to a change. And I say that in the book. I don’t think any of us know because the Queen has been such an astonishing person. I celebrated my 83rd birthday only a few weeks ago. I was aged 12 in my first year at Canterbury Boys High School when Elizabeth ascended to the throne. A lot has changed since. Although we held the Ashes back then. But you’ve got to keep a sense of perspective about these things, even as we acknowledge the Queen has been and astonishing person.

For all the turmoil there may be in Australian politics, in comparison with alternative democratic systems that are on offer, Australians at the moment would not think there’s anything fundamentally wrong with the current structure of government. In the United States we are seeing the travail that the Republican Party is going through. And I do hope the Republican Party finds an alternative to Donald Trump. I don’t think he’s fit to be president again, after having tried to bully his vice president into defying the will of the American people. Now that is an observation that will probably draw criticism of me from some people who might normally be disposed to agree with many things that that I say, but I feel that very strongly. And, finally, I do offer some opinions on why I thought the Coalition lost the last election.