Tales from the dead

by Milly Caffrey

Former Prime Minister John Howard smiled broadly as he took the stage at the North Sydney Council Chambers in the Liberal heartland early this month. “The best Prime Minister we’ve had since Menzies,” called out one spirited spectator. Howard opened his speech with the declaration that as former PM, “you owe an account to your fellow Australians.”
In his memoirs Lazarus Rising Howard does controversially admit that he conspired to break apart the Maritime Union of Australia in 1998, supporting Patrick Corporation in their infamous anti-union strategy. Patrick dismissed all of the company’s employees and literally locked them out from ports to reduce the ability of the sacked workers and the MUA to take industrial action against the Howard government, who justified the mass dismissal under the Workplace Relations Act 1996.
The former leader did not elaborate upon this repression of the union movement in his speech, but did concede “an ingrained bias towards small business operators… we tended to favor small business owners even though it was not always the most economically logical thing to do.”
When quizzed about Australia’s involvement in Iraq, a war that had no support from the United Nations Security Council, Howard appeared visibly uncomfortable.
“Every case stands on its merits,” Howard said. “There was no real debate around (the presence of) WMDs in Iraq at that time.”
For Howard, it seems the protests across Sydney in early 2003 in which least 200,000 people marched in opposition to Australia’s involvement in the “coalition of the willing” did not constitute “real debate”.
Howard’s remarks also contradict statements made in his autobiography which explicitly address “widespread public hesitation” for Australian involvement in Iraq. In the book he even recalls a comment made by an ardent Liberal supporter, “Can’t we just this once not go along with the Americans?”
For Howard, it seems this was never an option, and throughout his speech he emphasized the importance of the US-Australia alliance and urged the audience “never to forget that the Americans saved Australia during World War Two”.
“I was careful in the language I used (about Iraq),” Howard said. “It turned out to be misplaced, wrong, whatever.”
It is this seemingly indifferent attitude to previous policies and decisions that makes it hard to read Lazarus Rising as a statement of accountability to the Australian people. Instead, the autobiography raises more questions than it attempts to answer.