Howard is not Hitler
To equate this fourth election victory with a loss of the concept of ‘fair go’ and traditional Australian values is emotive clap trap and exhibits the short term memory problems of those who despise Howard.
When Howard was elected in 96, he talked of a return to traditional Australian values including ‘mateship’ – he was derided by the supporters of Keating for lacking the ‘vision thing’. Howard’s father and grandfather fought in wars where traditional Australian values were forged. How can he not be aware of them?
The criticisms levelled at Howard since then have bordered on the absurd. Howard has been criticsied for not being ‘sexy’ or charismatic enough to be PM because the most exciting thing about him is that he goes for a one hour power walk every morning.
Is this his greatest failing? For God’s sake, in a nation where 30% are obese he is a role model.
Is Howard a liar? He sent troops to Afghanistan to help rout the Taliban and al-Qaeda AFTER he had been in Washington on the day when a plane hijacked by Islamic militants slammed into the Pentagon. There were no lies that day, just the death of innocents at the hands of psychotics.
He sent troops to Iraq when the US was determined to remove a dictator who was not compliant with UN sanctions and who allowed his own citizens to be raped, tortured and murdered. Howard relied on US assurances that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. He might be a fool in that regard but I doubt he is a liar. Are we at greater risk of terror attacks due to our involvement in Iraq? The answer must be no.
Australia has committed a small, yet valuable, force that most outside our nation does not even realise exists. Bali happened before Iraq. The bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta was part of a campaign of bombings by Indonesian militants that has been running since the mid 1990′s and has more to do with our involvement in East Timor than Iraq.
On the other hand, would anything have changed under Latham to satisfy the Howard haters? The answer is no.
Labor has learnt from the ’96 crucifixion of Keating that the electorate does not forgive economic incompetence, so economic policy would not change. In turn this would ensure interest rates would be little different between the two parties.
The mandatory detention of illegal arrivals (they are not refugees until they can prove their claims and many fail in this regard) would not end – Labor introduced this policy and I cannot forget that Beazley supported the response to the Tampa issue.
The environment would not be better off – it is Labor governments at the State level who are permitting old growth logging in Tasmania and clear felling of bush in Queensland and NSW. The Kyoto treaty may not be ratified – if it were to cost one Australian job the workers would tear Latham apart.
Would Latham have offered East Timor greater revenue or control of the East Timor gap oil fields? This was not even raised in the campaign.
Howard has delivered the following since ’96:
- gun control (something Labor never tried),
- a free East Timor (something Labor never tried),
- a GST that has improved the tax revenue base and prevented large scale tax fraud by higher income earners who traded in cash or forgot to complete tax returns (the GST was something Keating proposed back in 1989),
- a stable economy that is not riven by strikes and massive budget deficits (something Labor never managed),
- greater standing in the international community (something Labor wanted but never quite got to),
- more jobs and
- a greater sense of national well being.
When he was elected in 1996 I did not like Howard for all the reasons many still hate him. I still feel I would not like him as a person. The reasons for this are varied, but at the gut level, he is not in the same league as Hawke or Keating.
But Howard has consistently delivered results. This is something the Australian public rewarded him for.
Australians have re-elected John Howard, not Adolph Hitler. Deal with it.