Ten years on, Howard is still riding high

John Howard, shown here after coming to power, makes Australians feel safe. Picture / Reuters

John Howard was humble yesterday, refusing to get too excited about a new poll naming him Australia's best Prime Minister of the modern era.

Instead, he told Sky News, the Newspoll published in the Australian was more remarkable for placing fellow Liberal Sir Robert Menzies in the top three, four decades after he stepped down from a record 17 consecutive years in office.

Such humility does not extend to his own position after this week achieving 10 years in power, placing him above Labor's Bob Hawke and behind only Menzies in political staying power.

With Treasurer and Liberal deputy Peter Costello champing at the bit in the wings, Howard still gives no hint of when he will step aside, declaring only that he will quit if the party wants him to.

It is hard to see the party showing him the door at the moment. Howard begins a new decade as a remarkably successful leader who has reshaped the nation and ensured his new agenda will be fulfilled through control of both Houses of Parliament.

He has shrugged off criticism from all sides, sailed through scandals - even the present row over wheat kickbacks to Saddam Hussein has yet to dent his Government - and tapped new wells of conservatism to entrench his power.

His decade as Prime Minister spans a golden age for Australia, weathering with ease the Asian meltdown of the late 1990s and delivering a seamless run of years of economic growth and prosperity.

But it is a tale of survival as much as good management. Always tenacious, unquestionably determined, astute and skilful, Howard has also enjoyed some significant windfalls that have allowed him to skirt potential disaster.

Howard defeated Paul Keating on March 2, 1996, after a series of blows that would have flattened most others. He inherited an economy that had been transformed by the previous Labor Government at a time when it was enjoying robust growth, laying the foundation for the subsequent Liberal years.

Howard launched his own reform agenda, beginning relatively modestly before progressively accelerating to overturn the taxation system, industrial relations, federal-state relations, indigenous affairs and a host of others. He has guided a surge in popularity of private education and health care, and shows no sign of slowing.

Recent opinion polling may show slipping popularity for the Government, but not for Howard's personal stature. He remains solidly ahead of all other potential prime ministerial contenders, both Labor and from within his own party.

The Newspoll on the standing of modern leaders confirms this: above Labor's Bob Hawke and Menzies, streets ahead of Keating, Labor icon Gough Whitlam and his former boss, Malcolm Fraser; and with his popularity extending across both men and women, and all age groups except 35- to 49-year-olds.

His lack of charisma has become an asset. Many Australians see Howard in much the same way they once would have regarded a small town banker: safe, respectable, protective. He embodies suburban values of family and decency, and he has developed an almost uncannily astute ability to judge the mood and tolerance of voters.

He has also shown courage - personally, by braving death threats during his successful campaign to introduce tough new gun laws; and politically, by refusing to suborn ideology to popular opinion, as he did with GST.

Howard has also displayed genuine compassion: no one could doubt the sincerity of his feelings after the Bali bombings.

But he has also leveraged these qualities and perceptions into political capital, a talent he displays across the spectrum.

Howard makes Australians feel safe. He has delivered a decade of prosperity, high employment, low interest rates and financial security. He has taken tough and unremitting stands on all matters of national security and, despite popular misgivings, has tied Australia's future far more closely to America's.

Howard has been remarkably fortunate in this respect. At critical points of his tenure, falling popularity has been reversed by alarm at terrorism or fleets of refugees. Fear and international crises have worked well for him.

He has taken the nation to war in the Gulf, East Timor and Afghanistan, with his forces returning almost unscathed and bathing in acclaim.

His political opposition has become a shambles. Labor disintegrated into a brawling, divided and ineffective mess after the long Hawke-Keating years, culminating in the disastrous leadership of Mark Latham and the return of twice-defeated Kim Beazley as leader.

The Democrats also self-destructed, destroying their place as the third political force and the balance of power in the Senate.

Demographics have worked Howard's way. Former inner-city blue-collar electorates that were once solidly Labor have been catapulted by soaring property markets into Liberal arms. Seachangers have changed the dynamics of coastal electorates.

The young have become more conservative. In the last election, more voters under 30 chose the Coalition than Labor.

Voters can see no reason to change, even when they resent Coalition policies on a broad range of issues.

Ten years on, the tide still seems to be running Howard's way.

Battler's rise to power

John Winston Howard
Born July 26, 1939.
Raised in Earlwood, Sydney.

* Given his middle name in honour of Winston Churchill.

* Married with three children.

* Joined the Liberals in the 1950s.

* Entered the House of Representatives in 1974, becoming Treasurer in 1977 in Malcolm Fraser's Administration, and deputy leader in 1982.

* Contested party leadership after its 1983 election defeat, but lost to Andrew Peacock.

* Tit-for-tat leadership bids saw Howard displace Peacock in 1985, only for Howard to be beaten by Peacock again in 1989.

* Made leader in 1995 after Alex Downer quit. Likened comeback to "Lazarus with a triple bypass".

* Beat Paul Keating to become PM in 1996, and won successive elections in 1998 and 2001.