Let’s Examine Our Misguided Nostalgia for the Howard Years

On March 2, Australia marked the 20th anniversary of John Howard's first election victory. Now, all these years later, it's tempting to feel wistful for a bygone era of lavish eyebrows and fiscal conservatism.

A few rose-tinted articles have recently appeared from political commentators like Terry Barnes, who labelled the ex-PM as the "greatest of our time," and bemoaned the fact that his (long list of) successors have failed to unite Australians in the same way since. Then there's the fact that Howard is still regularly interviewed on issues such gun control, political correctness, and the Safe Schools Program.

Under Howard, Australians enjoyed a period of political stability we might now wish we hadn't taken for granted. Twelve years, zero leadership spills, four effortless election victories, and one bald, mild-mannered ex-lawyer around which everything else was in orbit.

In some ways, the late 1990s and early 2000s were a more comfortable time to be alive. The Howard years neatly coincided with a pre-GFC period of economic stability during which there was little to complain about. Interest rates were low, and consumer confidence was high. The mining boom was ramping up. Generous tax cuts kept people smiling.

Speaking to VICE, Professor Peter Whiteford of Australian National University's Crawford School of Public Policy notes much of the Howard Government's perceived success was derived from external factors over which they had no real control. "When they were elected in 1996, there had just been a recession, and the recovery was just beginning. That upswing didn't really have anything to do with the change of government. It would probably still have happened if Keating had been re-elected."

As any Howard romanticist will tell you, Australia enjoyed enviable economic growth during the late 90s. But we were hardly unique in this regard. "If you look at income trends in Australia and the UK up until 2003, they're remarkably similar—and they had a Labour government, whereas we had a Liberal government," says Whiteford.

Economics Professor Jeff Borland, from the University of Melbourne, agrees. "I think one thing that happens with governments is that we judge performance based on outcomes, without adjusting appropriately for the degree of difficulty."

"The Howard-Costello years were a period of relatively strong economic growth. So people probably look at that outcome and think that it was a relatively prosperous period, that the government must have done a fantastic job. But you have to take into account other factors that made for relatively strong economic performance."

Of these "other factors," Professor Borland lists management of the Reserve Bank, flow-on effects from Hawke-Keating reforms, and the role China played in stimulating the international economy.

As well as benefiting from global upswings and the cash flow of the mining boom, the Howard government's popularity came from its ability to sell itself. Swept into power in 1996 on the promise of alleviating the previous Labor government's $96 billion debt, the Liberal party managed to gloss over the fact that $39.9 billion of it had actually been accumulated under Malcolm Fraser, whose treasurer was none other than John Howard.

There was one early piece of governing worthy of praise, and that was Howard's much-lauded implementation of gun control laws after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Australia's gun-culture was never as entrenched as America's, but the government did face an uphill battle to remove military weapons from the hands of the public. A famous photo of Howard delivering a gun-reform speech in a bulletproof jacket is a fairly weighty reminder of this.

On the other hand, Howard's mastery of image control came into play during the children overboard affair of 2001. This was when Howard ministers encouraged the false public belief that asylum seekers had thrown children into the ocean to force a rescue effort. This conveniently promoted the Liberal party's harsh border protection policy in the lead up to an election, and provided a pretext for our increasingly rthless policy of detaining refugees in offshore camps.

A year later, the Chairman of the Human Rights Council of Australia would declare that the real focus of the children overboard affair was not about "asylum seekers desperate for protection from persecution, but politicians and their lackeys desperate for re-election."

Beneath the surface of the Howard era lurked the same controversial policies we still encounter today. As last week's episode of Stan Grant's The Point highlighted, the Howard government possessed a poor track record when it came to Indigenous affairs. Among it legacies include the controversial 2007 Northern Territory intervention, funding cuts to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, and a refusal to acknowledge the findings of the Bringing Them Home Report.

Misplaced foreign policy decisions were another hallmark of the Howard era. Australia was there when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and joined the effort to disarm Iraq in 2003 despite public dissent and a lack of UN support. Even if you enjoyed watching The Chaser's War on Everything, 2001 to 2007 were pretty bleak years.

Under Howard, Australians enjoyed 12 years of stability, cheerfully accepting every decision bestowed upon us. But since 2007, we've subjected our governments to a little more scrutiny. Maybe it has something to do with social media, where no gaffe goes unnoticed and spin doctoring becomes a little trickier. Chances are, the children overboard affair would have gained more traction if hashtags had been involved. As a 2012 study by the Australian Electoral Commission noted, "social media affords new opportunities for engaging citizens in democratic processes."

Whiteford says it is easy to oversimplify the way we look back at past governments, forgetting the range of historical and global factors that helped or hindered their policies. There's a reason we get nostalgic for the late 90s and early 2000s—in the last glorious pre-GFC era, life really was a bit easier, regardless of the party in power. Also things in the 90s just seem cool because, well, dude, it was the 90s.

As Whiteford reflects, "Nostalgia influences the way some political commentators look at the past records of Australian governments. But a government shouldn't be held responsible for all the good or bad things that happen during its term, you need to look at a very wide range of indicators and trends."

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