LAUNCH OF MARGARET GUILFOYLE – AN AUSTRALIAN BIOGRAPHICAL MONOGRAPH

On Wednesday 6 April 2022, at The Sydney Institute, The Hon John Howard AC launched Anne Henderson’s biography of Dame Margaret Guilfoyle – Number 13 in the Australian Biographical Monograph Series. Senator The Honorable Senator Dame Margaret Guilfoyle joined the Australian Senate in July 1971 and served as the first Australian woman to hold a cabinet portfolio when appointed Minister for Social Security in the Fraser Government after December 1975. She was made Finance Minister in 1980 and served until the defeat of the Fraser Government in March 1983. The papers which follow are an edited transcript of John Howard’s comments, Anne Henderson’s response and the transcript of the Q & A discussion which followed.

LAUNCH OF MARGARET GUILFOYLE – AN AUSTRALIAN BIOGRAPHICAL MONOGRAPH

JOHN HOWARD

Thank you very much, Gerard and Anne. It’s great to be back at The Sydney Institute. I’ve been here on a few earlier occasions, and it’s a real pleasure to be here tonight to promote and launch this latest contribution to the Australian Biographical Series. It’s about a colleague of mine, Margaret Guilfoyle, with whom I worked very closely, because she was, for a significant period of time that I was Treasurer, was the Finance Minister. Now, of course, for a long time, there was no such thing as a Finance Minister in the Australian polity; the Treasurer covered the whole range. It was in the late 1970s that Malcolm Fraser split the Treasury and formed a separate Department of Finance. It caused quite a bit of controversy at the time; I don’t think the Treasury liked it. Of course, the Treasury was very much in favour of keeping it all together, particularly when it came to the advice flowing to government.

But I came to realise, in my later years as Treasurer, and also as prime minister, there was value in having a separate Department of Finance. The skill with which Margaret Guilfoyle administered that speeded me to that conclusion. Margaret had entered parliament not long before I did; she entered parliament as a result of the 1970 half senate election, and therefore took her place in the Senate in 1971. I was elected at the double dissolution election of 1974. Margaret was very close, as I understood at the time, to the former prime minister John Gorton and, like many but not all Victorian Liberals, she belonged to a loose group that operated on the basis that Malcolm Fraser should never become leader of the Liberal Party. That was not a view that I shared when I entered Parliament.

I came into Parliament with a very positive view of Malcolm Fraser; I thought amongst other things, he articulated the case for Australia’s involvement in Vietnam better than most. I think the only other one – and Gerard sort of alluded to him when he talked about the good fortune of Menzies and the splits in the Labor Party – after BA Santamaria. Malcolm Fraser articulated the case for our involvement in Vietnam better than most. I found Margaret an engaging, disciplined, intelligent woman which she brought to all of the things she did. In the immediate Fraser Government, not the caretaker government, but the immediate one after the election of the 13 December 1975, she was given responsibility for Social Security, and she did that extremely well. Later on, she became Minister for Finance, and I worked very closely with her.

Margaret contributed in a disciplined way to Cabinet meetings. She was somebody that didn’t carry on about female representation, but she was an exemplar of an intelligent woman. And that is precisely what one hopes for in this blizzard of identity politics in which we now exist. You just want people to contribute as individuals and they tell the story and make the point. If ever anybody made the point for the equality of contributions of men and women to Australian politics, Margaret Guilfoyle did. As many of you know, she was born in Belfast, but she escaped Belfast before The Troubles really arose, and came to Australia as a very young person and qualified, entered Parliament and made a great contribution.

Margaret Guilfoyle balanced the need for being a hard-hearted finance minister with a capacity to say to her then prime minister, “Malcolm, it’s not a good idea for you to do this. This will cost you support.” His ears would always prick up with the expression “cost you support” – that was a prime ministerial reaction not restricted to Malcolm Fraser. I could provide field evidence without match for that. I found her a wonderful colleague to work with, and I think Anne’s done a terrific job.

These monographs are very good, because they remind us that the fabric of Australian politics has a whole lot of stories that haven’t been told. To have the benefit of this monograph is absolutely terrific. I kept in touch with Margaret and Stan Guilfoyle years after we all left politics and I, like so many others, was very sad when she passed away. But she lived a long, very vigorous and a very successful life, and I’m delighted that Anne has honoured her with this work, and I’m delighted to declare it launched.

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Response to John Howard – Anne Henderson

Well, it’s many thanks to Australia’s 25^th Prime Minister for a fine launch. Dame Margaret Guilfoyle’s memory deserves no less.

Thanks also to Connor Court publishing and Scott Prasser for making this biographical monograph possible. And to Gerard Henderson for suggesting it.

It was a pleasure to be asked to write this short biography of Dame Margaret Guilfoyle. As a former Melburnian and someone who quite a while back interviewed Margaret Guilfoyle in relation to women gaining seats in parliament, her life story has been of particular interest. For a decade and more, Senator Guilfoyle stood head and shoulders above many in the world of Australian politics.

Another reason I was so pleased to be given the task of writing Dame Margaret’s profile was that, for all her achievements, it seemed to me that she had somewhat disappeared down the memory hole.

Margaret Guilfoyle was not a reformist politician like our 25^th prime minister John Howard. She also did not seek to take the top prize as Julia Gillard did. She was, however, a politician who fought hard for outcomes with the limited options she had before her. And she led in ways that some of our current MPs could learn from.

Acclaimed by many journalists, when she entered the Senate in July 1971, as a trail blazer for women, Margaret Guilfoyle was inclined to reject such singling out. She wished simply to be treated as any male MP might be. In her pre-selection for the Senate nomination, when asked how she would manage her children if selected, she had responded:

I’m asking you to make a decision to give me responsibility to be a representative in the Senate and I would ask that you would accept that I have the responsibility to make decisions regarding my family.

Like Enid Lyons and Ivy Wedgwood before her, Margaret Guilfoyle won her seat in federal parliament against odds that overwhelmingly favoured male applicants. For all that, and even as the numbers of women MPs have multiplied since 1971, there are timeless lessons to be learned – for both men and women entering parliament – from the career of Margaret Guilfoyle.

She was not from a political family. Her father died when she was aged ten, a few years after emigrating from Belfast and settling in Melbourne’s Fairfield. Left as a single parent, her mother reared Margaret and her two siblings on a modest pension. They were encouraged to use their abilities astutely and make the most of all opportunities.

From this Margaret Guilfoyle often spoke of the importance of “first chance”. When it came, it was not to be wasted. Starting work at age 15 and studying accountancy at night school, by age 21 Guilfoyle was a fully qualified and chartered accountant.

That belief in talking up a “first chance” would stay with Margaret Guilfoyle as she became a member of the newly formed Liberal Party of Australia after her marriage to Stan Guilfoyle in November 1952.

She accepted office holder positions in the South Camberwell branch of the party and in time leadership roles within the Victorian Women’s Section of the party. In 1969-70, she was chair of the Women’s Section and on the party’s state executive. This took her to standing for pre-selection as a replacement candidate in the Senate with the retirement of Ivy Wedgwood in 1971.

Margaret Guilfoyle believed in loyalty to her community – something she had learnt from her days in Fairfield as part of the Presbyterian Church with her socially engaged mother. She did not believe in factions and knew what she stood for. As Josh Frydenberg said, in his condolence speech for Dame Margaret in November 2020, “She knew what she believed – but understood why.”

Lesson one – Those who stand as MPs should not only take up opportunities but also know what they stand for and why they do it. For those who are members of political parties, experience in the party and loyalty to the party is fundamental to success. Margaret Guilfoyle was, to the last, a team player.

Arriving in the Senate, Margaret Guilfoyle joined just one other female senator – Nancy Buttfield from South Australia. It seemed not to worry her. Instead, she set out to make a mark in areas not seen as those relating to women as such. Her husband Stan Guilfoyle told her as much, suggesting she take opportunities in finance or administration.

Her maiden speech tackled the value to Australia of the mining industry as well as issues of conservation, the environment and the arts. She joined the Senate standing committee on Finance and Government Operations as well as the public accounts committee. She served on estimates committees and learned to have questions ready from reading reports. She regarded the Senate as an opportunity to develop relationships with members of the cross benches, such as senators from the Democratic Labor Party.

After serving in the last years of Coalition government to December 1972, Guilfoyle gained from the experience of those years in opposition. She was appointed shadow minister for the media in June 1974. She also served as a valuable team member in the Senate through the days of the 1975 Dismissal and was appointed Minister for Education in the caretaker government of Malcolm Fraser.

When Malcolm Fraser formed government in December 1975, Margaret Guilfoyle accepted the position of Minister for Social Security, the first woman to hold a cabinet level portfolio in Australia’s federal government.

Lesson two: Gaining a seat is valuable but influence is best had at cabinet level. For Margaret Guilfoyle, making it to cabinet was not because of her gender but from age old tactics – mastering wide experience and knowledge of policy and practice, alongside playing with the team.

As a minister – as her former colleague Michael Baume has described – Guilfoyle was no captive of the bureaucracy. But she did work closely with her departmental heads and won their respect.

Former senior bureaucrats I spoke with for this monograph could not speak highly enough about Margaret Guilfoyle. Andrew Podger, who worked with Guilfoyle as a departmental senior executive, told me she was still his favorite minister he ever worked with. I listened to similar affirmations from others such as Helen Williams, the first woman to hold a deputy secretary position, and David Stanton, a former divisional head in Social Security. Marie Coleman, former Director of the Office of Childcare, still holds Margaret Guilfoyle in very high regard.

As Minister for Social Security, Guilfoyle was firmly of the view that pension payments and social services should not be part of expenditure cutbacks. Under her watch, universal family allowances replaced child endowment and tax rebates for dependent children meaning families in lower income levels benefitted more.

She pushed through better funding for women’s refuges, automatic indexation of most pensions and a supporting parent’s benefit extended to fathers. She was pragmatic about attending to individual requests from ministers where social needs had been overlooked. Former senior Social Security bureaucrat David Stanton credits Guilfoyle for significant social benefit reform in the Fraser years.

Many who knew Margaret Guilfoyle – from John Howard to her adviser Rod Kemp – noted her ability with figures and quickness at absorbing a brief or picking up departmental changes to her instructions. She also avoided astutely any straying into areas that were not her responsibility.

In Senate Question Time, when answering on behalf of ministers in the House of Representatives, Guilfoyle developed what she termed her “postbox” answers. She would simply read out the answer given to her in advance by the lower house minister and nothing more. Much to the annoyance of the opposition.

During the so-called Greek pensions affair, such was Guilfoyle’s forensic questioning of her somewhat cavalier and heavy handed departmental head Patrick Lanigan, whose handling of the matter had been somewhat questionable, she deftly fended off opposition attacks. At no stage did the opposition call for her resignation.

Lesson three: Always be up to speed with a brief and never leave solutions to departmental officers. A minister must always be on top of the game.

Margaret Guilfoyle would end her time as minister holding the portfolio of Finance. As she put it, the PM might have thought in 1980 that, as the biggest spending minister in the government at Social Security, it was only fair that she be given the task of pruning the budgets of all minsters.

In this role, Guilfoyle did not succeed. Inflation, lack of budget repair at a time when government debt mattered and a general malaise about economic stagnation had eaten back Malcolm Fraser’s record majority of 1975.

The so-called Razor Gang became what John Howard has since referred to as a damp squib. Despite Howard’s efforts for any reform, Malcolm Fraser was not in favour of upsetting voters. And, as Guilfoyle found, all ministers at budget time seek increased expenditure; there are no “dry” ministers as she put it. In March 1983, Margaret Guilfoyle found herself, along with her Coalition colleagues, back in opposition.

Guilfoyle retired in 1987. In time she would be an elder statesman of the Liberal Party and increasingly throw her efforts behind promoting women to stand for parliament. Looking back, she might be best described by former senior bureaucrat Helen Williams:

Where do you start with Margaret? She was a terrific minister. She had this calm confidence that stood her in great stead in very fraught discussions … We kept hearing that her colleagues respected her views and respected the fact that she stayed unruffled and got things through.

And now for a postscript.

As we watch Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells hurl her accusations at the party that gave her a seventeen-year career in the Australian Senate, it is mindful to look back on Margaret Guilfoyle’s example when missing a chance for an important spot on a party ticket.

In 1993, in spite of her backers, which included Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett, believing she would have easily won the federal presidency of the Liberal Party, she stood aside after pressure from her former leader Malcolm Fraser. Guilfoyle respected Fraser’s presence in the party and would not have wanted an unseemly spat. In the event, Fraser withdrew from the vote at the last minute when he realised he did not have the numbers and the position went to former Liberal MP Tony Staley. At no stage did Margaret Guilfoyle blame her party or Liberal leaders for what happened.

The Liberal Party needs more MPs like Margaret Guilfoyle.

Question & Answer session

Question: John Howard mentioned Guilfoyle’s background in Belfast, of a Protestant kind. Margaret Guilfoyle comes to Melbourne; she grows up in Fairfield – which was then a working-class suburb – and she belongs to the Presbyterian Church. Which, in Melbourne at the time, in the 1930s and 1940s, was in part replete with anti-Catholic sectarians. She didn’t display any of that, so what was her religious background?

Anne Henderson: I don’t know that she was very religious at all, in a sense. I imagine she possibly went to church – she got married in the Presbyterian Church at Fairfield. There’s nothing in Margaret Guilfoyle’s history that I have noticed, from talking to her, hearing others talk about her, that is in any way sectarian. In fact, she worked for a Japanese company, before the war years, before they were forced to close down, and she made a lot of friends among Japanese in Australia. She always kept a very positive view of individual Japanese people at a time when there would have been a lot of anti-Japanese feeling in Australia. I have a feeling that her mother wasn’t a sectarian. I know nothing about her father, but from what I’ve read, and what she’s told interviewers, there doesn’t seem to be any feeling of church division. In the neighbourhood in Fairfield, the Guilfoyle children played with all the neighbourhood kids. They used to do activities with the Presbyterian Church on Sundays, but the kids in the neighbourhood all played with one another, whatever their background. So, I guess she came out of it pretty well rounded.

John Howard: I never detected a skerrick of prejudice in her – none whatsoever. But maybe that was due to the fact that, like Bob Menzies, she was a “simple Presbyterian”, as he described himself when he granted state aid to Catholic schools. But it was just never part of her being to be, in any way, bigoted or sectarian. Definitely not.

Question: Your final comment – the Liberal Party needs more people like Margaret Guilfoyle. I’d say the whole of the Parliament needs more people like Margaret Guilfoyle. What I would say after everybody’s knowledge of her, particularly John Howard’s and Anne’s book, her achievements, against all competitors, throughout her whole life, what she stood for, what she worked for and her achievements – is there any way we could use that as some example or legacy to try and improve the current antics of parliament?

John Howard: I’m not quite as pessimistic about the quality of the current parliament on either side. We run the danger of overdoing the pessimism. Margaret Guilfoyle did well because she was able. But she also did well because people recognised her ability. I have to say, I don’t ever remember people saying, “Malcolm’s only done that because she’s a woman.” Everybody thought she was a capable person, and people thought she was promoted on the basis of her ability. She did her work in an effective, efficient, courteous manner – far more effectively and courteously than many of her male colleagues in government, but no better than many of the others.

I think we have overdone the denigration of past dismissiveness towards women in politics. It was a different society then, and we have to recognise that. Because of the way society was organised, it was harder for women to break through. But they weren’t prevented from breaking through if they were able, and Margaret was a wonderful example of it. There was another Margaret that was an even greater example of that – her surname was Roberts [later Thatcher].

Anne Henderson: I simply would add that I think some individuals – we’ve seen it in the last few years, – forget why they’re there. If you’re an Independent, okay, you’re an Independent. But if you’re a member of a party, you’re only there, really, because the party chose you. There’s always been the one who wants to go it alone, but it is unprofessional to turn on your party. Do you recall Don Chipp turning on the party as such? If you want to go it alone, go it alone. Winning a preselection, you’re there because you’re able and you won the nomination, but you’re only there because your colleagues thought you should be there. So, I think it’s a timely reminder that you can do very well without trying to be number one spot.

John Howard: Just to add to Anne’s comment about Independents – in my time in federal parliament, the only bona fide Independent was Ted Mack. He had built a local following as the mayor of North Sydney, he presided over the beautiful restoration of North Sydney Oval, he became the state member and then he ran for federal parliament and defeated John Spender who remains a good personal friend of mine to this day. All the others, they got their first placement in a party; Bob Katter, lovable though he is in some ways, was a National Party MP to start off with. That’s how he got there. I would never have got within a bull’s roar of being the member for Bennelong if I hadn’t carried a Liberal endorsement.

Question: With an election coming up, what hope is there for Independents who do have standards such as Guilfoyle, and what, John Howard, you’re alluding to?

Anne Henderson: I think it’s very hard as an Independent in the Australian political system – and John Howard can come up after me and tell you much more about this. It will be very interesting at this election to see just how well this group of “Voices Of” Independents do. Even then, they’re not really Independents. They’re working as a kind of ghost party; they’re all together in the same batch, they’re all being funded by the same group. So, I don’t think it’s easy to do it, but it happens, and it will be good if those that do get into politics as Independents have some of Margaret Guilfoyle’s qualities. As John Frydenberg said, she knew what she stood for and why. She knew what she wanted to do, and she did it.

John Howard: The current crop of Independents is actually a group of anti-Liberal candidates – the biggest test of their authenticity is that not one of them was nominated against a sitting ALP member. The comment I made about Independents and their background, I stressed that it was in my time in parliament. I have to admit that there’s a bit of a hybrid now, with the member for Indi, who appears to have been passed on the seat by Cathy McGowan, the former member. That’s a slight difference. Rebekha Sharkie, in Mayo, is also in a slightly different category. How do I think they will go? I think if the consequences of a minority Labor government depended on Greens support, particularly in the Upper House, the consequences of that policy wise can be pointed out in certain electorates such as Wentworth and North Sydney. That will be crucial, because the nature of Australian politics is that if Albanese ends up in a minority position needing Greens support, he will naturally get the support of Bandt and Wilkie.

I doubt that he’ll get Bob Katter’s support. As to the other Independents, it all depends on whether they’re re-elected. I think Katter will get re-elected; he’s got a huge following and he’s still fundamentally seen as a renegade Nat, but a Nat, nonetheless. I think he will be successful. But they will need the support of the Greens in the Senate, and the Greens will extract their price. They’ll extract a price on certain foreign policy issues, and those have been alluded to in the press in recent days, and I think they should continue being alluded to because they are important considerations. They’ll also extract a price on some domestic issues. So, when those consequences are driven home, my instincts are that the least likely result of the next election is a comfortable Labor victory.

It fair to say that the next election’s going to be tight and any believer in the Liberal cause who believes otherwise is deluding themselves. But I don’t see a pathway to a comfortable Labor victory, so if there is to be an unfortunate result on the fateful day, then it’s going to be very narrow and that means the Greens will be a significant factor. Therefore, the implications for people who are thinking of voting for Independents because they see them as disillusioned Liberals should think again.

Question: Considering Margaret Guilfoyle’s background, why did she choose the Liberal Party?

Anne Henderson: Well, she didn’t come from a political family, but she came from a conservative family. They didn’t join any party or party branch in Fairfield because the Liberals – or the United Australia Party as it would have been then – didn’t have a branch there. I’m assuming from that, she became more interested in politics when she met Stan Guilfoyle – and she met him at night school. He said to me, they took a couple of years to become romantically involved because all he was looking for when he went to talk to Margaret was someone to help him get through his accountancy exams. She was the only woman in the class and, no doubt, he didn’t want to tell the blokes he was having trouble with it; he’d come off the back of flying fighter planes. So, he went to the female. They became pals – which is a nice way to become a married couple, being friends first. But his mother was very politically active.

Stan had become a member of the Liberal Party himself. Margaret became involved in politics with Stan. After they married, South Camberwell was their Liberal Party branch. When I spoke to Margaret Reid, who was President of the Senate, she said, “Oh, and their South Camberwell branch!”, as if Margaret Guilfoyle talked about her South Camberwell branch a lot.

Margaret Guilfoyle was natural and she had a belief in stepping up – a bit like Enid Lyons. These women who did so well, so few of them too, took challenges. It was like jumping hurdles. That “first chance” as Guilfoyle called it – an odd phrase to me – but it makes sense. The same thing happened with Enid Lyons. They didn’t go out to become prime minister or an MP, or any of that; they got onto a pathway where challenges and opportunities came to them. “Will you do it?”; “Yes, I’ll do it.” As they took up the opportunities, they both found themselves where they never dreamed of being.

That certainly happened to Enid Lyons. She was a widow with 11 children still living and it was 1943. That election was one of the biggest victories that the Labor Party or any other in Australia has ever had. She won her seat, in northern Tasmania, against two others of her own party. So, she just had a go. Likewise, Margaret Guilfoyle didn’t say no. She said, “Yes, I’ll do this”, “Yes, I’ll be the secretary. I’ll be the president. I’ll stand for the state executive.” And so on. In doing that, she built up the experience. I often think, that one of the factors that’s held back women on the conservative side of politics, or the non-Labor side of politics, is a lack of official positions where they can get experience. With Labor, there are the unions, and other positions in Labor politics. This helps lead female party members on to a political path. Within the Liberal Party, it’s not quite so large a network, where you can actually have political positions.

Gerard Henderson: Just a quick comment from John Howard, because you wrote the book on Robert Menzies. Is the Guilfoyle – Margaret and Stan – is that the kind of group that Menzies appealed to?

John Howard: I think it is. To me, Margaret was a natural Victorian Liberal. She was conservative, but not ultra conservative. She was ideological, but not zealously so. She had a good balance, and it didn’t surprise me in the slightest. Of course, when she entered Parliament, the consensus across the political divide on economic policy was still intact. Everybody in the early 1970s believed in centralised wage fixation. Everybody believed in fixed exchange rates. Nobody in the early 1970s was advocating for changing the taxation system, and nobody was advocating dismantling tariff protection. So, it was a very different world economically and, in many respects, you had a consensus on economic policy across the major parties – Labor and the Coalition. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the big debates emerged – or the late 1970s – about some of these things driven by all sorts of pressures.

Question: I’ve just been in the United States the last couple of years, and I’ve asked this question of numerous politicians and various lobbyists, and they can’t tell me. So, you two, being very insightful people will help me. Some of the most conservative societies on earth; England, Australia, New Zealand and even India, have had female prime ministers. When I put this question to Americans, why hasn’t America ever had a female president, none of them can tell me why. Can you comment on what you think that says about the difference between America and Australia?

John Howard: I can’t answer that. I can speculate that one of the reasons why it hasn’t happened is that the American political party system is very ramshackle when it comes to choosing people for the highest office. As somebody who, because of my own political attitudes, would normally want to see a Republican in the White House, I found it astonishing that the Republican Party could have chosen Trump as its candidate in 2016. I find it even more astonishing that a large part of the Republican Party should contemplate installing him as its candidate for the next election. One of the advantages of a parliamentary system is that you can actually observe the quality of people under the stress of political life, before you choose them as a leader. Because all the leaders have tended to be male in the past, there’s a built in feeling in many political parties, that you’ve got to have a man to run the business, which is absurd.

You’ve mentioned Britain and Australia; the first woman to be a prime minister was Mrs Bandaranaike in what is now Sri Lanka. Golda Meir was the second. Britain’s had two. We’ve had one. Isn’t it interesting they’ve all been parliamentary systems? In one way or another, Israel’s got a rough and tumble hue to it that doesn’t exist elsewhere, but it’s nonetheless fundamentally a parliamentary system. I think there’s something in that. I thought it was astonishing that Trump got there, and I’m still staggered that there’s such support for him. I thought his behaviour after he lost was appalling; it was the equivalent of somebody being given out and then the DRS (third umpire) failing, and then wandering off the field with your bat flailing behind you.

Anne Henderson: My six pennies worth is much the same. The US presidential election is a very different system. It’s a bit like electing a pop star, really. It’s all about money, and it’s, as you say, ramshackle. In our parliamentary system, right now, the press keeps saying that Anthony Albanese is going to run an election campaign where he’s like Joe Biden. He hides away, so that he’ll just slip in. But you can’t do that in parliamentary system. Even today, Anthony Albanese was standing with the Premier of Western Australia when an individual – a man – came out to the press conference and wanted to ask a question. Albanese was totally caught. He said, “I’m not going to answer it. This is only for the press. This is not right.” You can’t get away with that sort of thing in a parliamentary system. People watching that would say, “Why can’t the man ask a question?” Whereas the American style of presidency is all staged. I imagine for their Congress, and the Senate, it’s a different kind of battleground.

John Howard: I went on to the floor of the Congress immediately after they passed this resolution on the 12 December 2001, to meet senators and members of the House of Representatives. Two things that struck me was the age – they were all much older – and how few women there were. To think that women are underrepresented in our parliament; they’re massively overrepresented compared with Congress. The age too.

Question: Mr Howard, if we do see a change of government, and the potential for influence from the Greens and the far left, how do you think the ALP will look at our relationship in AUKUS? Will that diminish our role with traditional, strong conservative countries like the United States and Great Britain? Will they look at us differently if we swing left and swing Green?

John Howard: Well, I’m not looking for a change of government, as you know, and will do my level best to help it not come about. I can only take the Labor Party on its word; it says it supports AUKUS. I have my doubts, given its track record.

There has been a long streak of anti-Americanism in sections of the left of the Labor Party. I suppose the one time in my living memory that bi-partisan support for ANZUS and the American alliance was put under strain was probably around 1972/73, when the Whitlam government objected very strongly to the resumption of American bombing of North Vietnam. Some of the things that were said by left wing ministers of the then Labor government, people like Clyde Cameron, Jim Cairns, and the like, were quite extraordinary. I’m not claiming that Anthony Albanese is one of those who made those remarks because he didn’t come into parliament until 1996, but certainly that kidney of the Labor Party, with which he was closely associated in his early years, did have that streak of anti-Americanism, and therefore you have to discount some of the comments that are now being made.

Question: When you went through the names of the all the Liberals from the late 1960s and early 1970s – of course Senator Guilfoyle came from Victoria – the names you mentioned, Tony Staley, Malcolm Fraser, John Gorton, Harold Holt; all those people were from Victoria. Victoria used to be called the jewel in the Liberal Party crown. In NSW, all we had – until you came along perhaps – was Bill McMahon. What happened to the Liberal Party in Victoria and, dare I say, was it some of the preselections between the wets and the drys that, to some extent, that killed off the Liberal Party in Victoria? Or were there other reasons?

John Howard: The Liberal Party, federally, in Victoria, in the time I was in parliament, produced quite outstanding people. I thought Peter Costello, for example, was the best treasurer Australia’s had. It has to be said that he not only served longer in that job, but he and Alexander Downer and I occupied our respective positions for the whole 12 years of our government. It’s the only time in federation that you’ve had the same person for so long as prime minister, foreign minister and treasurer. The two Kemp brothers were fine MPs. Peter Reith showed remarkable courage in taking on the Maritime Workers union. We had been screaming for something to be done about the waterfront, and he came along and actually did something, with the great help of Chris Corrigan.

So, I don’t think something bad happened to the Liberal Party in Victoria. I think Victoria is politically a different state and that’s got something to do with the enduring impact of the 1950s split on the Labor Party, and on the politics. I’m intrigued at all this talk about federal intervention in the affairs of state branches. I tell you what if, in the 1950s, the Labor Party had the same federal-state structures that the Liberal Party has, the split would never have occurred. Because the federal executive of the Labor Party under our system would never have had the power to sack the Victorian branch. That’s a very complicated argument, but it’s a valid one.

Different parts of Australia are different politically; that’s one of the things we should understand. That’s no bad thing. I found as prime minister, on some issues, there was a difference between the attitude of Queenslanders and Victorians. There always has been for a long time, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s one of the advantages of the federation.

Gerard Henderson: I knew Margaret Guilfoyle, you [Anne Henderson] knew Margaret Guilfoyle, John Howard knew Margaret Guilfoyle extremely well. What about her legacy, and why is it that she doesn’t seem to have had many public arguments with anyone? Was she just a nice person, or was she just polite, or did she disguise her strong position? Why didn’t she have any arguments?

Anne Henderson: Well, I don’t really know. I think she was one to avoid an argument. She avoided a spat over the federal presidency with Malcolm Fraser. Malcolm Fraser wasn’t exactly her favourite MP, but she was always loyal to him. It probably goes back to her Presbyterian upbringing; the idea that you stay loyal. She didn’t have strong opinions, I would say, such as on foreign policy; I didn’t find anything much in the papers that suggested she had any great interest that would lead her to a division on such an issue. She did travel, she did various government trips at times, but there was nothing there that came across as being of particular interest to her. She was very much the financial person. She stuck with what she knew best. She did not want to cause any kind of upset – like today we see people that come out and speak in front of a microphone, whatever they want to say. She was very conscious that her words would have weight, and she didn’t want to take a path that would, in any way, upset the purpose of the Liberal Party in its work.

Margaret Guilfoyle spent years doing things after she retired; she was on various committees and boards. But what I found interesting was that she did admit to changing her view of helping women in politics. She did, in the lead up to the 1996 election win of John Howard, become part of that big exercise in the Liberal Party to encourage women to put their hands up for nominations, for preselections. There was the famous photograph in 1996, when John Howard won the election, of all the Liberal women MPs down a big line at Parliament House, with the new faces that had come into parliament, because of the work that the women in the Liberal Party had done. So, in a way, she found that she could change, but she was always one to do it without wanting to cause trouble. That was the way she was made.

John Howard: One of the great qualities I think Australians, and Australia, have always had is a sense of balance. We’re not gullible, we’re not fanatics. We don’t like fanatical people, on either side of politics. I thought Margaret Guilfoyle epitomised that. There was a sense of balance about her. If you had an argument in the Cabinet – there were sharply different points of view – Margaret did have a capacity to negotiate. One who would say, “Hang on, that’s ridiculous. Why don’t you do this?” I think she did have that sense of balance. That was a very valuable quality.