Never forget that Howard supported the White Australia Policy. His tax policies set us on the course to the current housing crisis; his economic policies gutted our secondary industries and reduced our economy to housing, farming and mining; and his industrial policies dismantling unions and empowering businesses to fire workers effectively put a stop to wages keeping up with the cost of living, let alone giving workers a fair slice of the economic productivity gains.
The only good thing he did was respond to Port Arthur with effective gun control policy and the best thing about his term of office was that we was the first sitting Australian prime minister to lose at an election in nearly 100 years.
He then spawned ScoMo, whose economically ineffective but highly inflationary policies just served to give billions of public funds to millionaires and billionaires without any accountability or even competent record keeping.
Howard is a blight on Australia. He is the closest thing we have to Thatcher and the queue to 'visit' his grave site will be long.
That's a tough one. Yes, he did, but we were always going to be dragged by the nose into that mess because of our US strategic alliance. Any other PM would've also taken us to war - I marched against it, but looking back it was inevitable.
Yeah but they defeated Sauron, if they'd really wanted to help they'd have rounded up the orcs with promises of many enemies to defeat and just let them loose in the Middle East.
It's an interesting hypothetical. All of them were rationalists who understood the importance of the American alliance. Beazley in particular was more "All the way with LBJ" than Harold Holt. But having said that, the crucial distinction about Iraq 2 was that it lacked UN sanction, and I'm not convinced any of them would have necessarily given in to Dubbya, especially given that Blair was the only other major leader who wanted to get involved. One thing I think people tend to underestimate is the psychological effect being in Washington DC on the 11th of September had on Howard. Not only was he watching the events in NY live, American security agents evacuated him from his hotel when they found out that two of the hijacked planes were heading for the capital. He was always politically sympathetic to America but I think his personal experience led him to cross a line he should not have.
One weird quirk of history is that Mark Latham is the last major party politician I can recall who indicated any willingness to rethink our subservience to the US. Not saying he would've made a good PM but it's an interesting hypothetical.
...reduced our economy to housing, farming and mining; and his industrial policies dismantling unions...
when you look around at the current wasteland where MANUFACTURING used to live - and wonder why everybody is investing in PROPERTY instead of actual businesses - look no further than this man...
Howard introduced Free Trade Agreements which dropped IMPORT tariffs on manufactured goods from countries like Thailand from 15% to 0% - so American and Japanese car makers stopped making cars in Australia and imported them "for free" from Thailand
this is how the Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger, and Holden Colorado (all Thai built) became the dominant vehicles on Australian roads
worse still, Thailand used non-tariff barriers to keep Australian-made cars from going in the other direction - like a 50% excise on large engines (like in the Commodore and Falcon)
manufacturing saw a rapid decline under Howard, not just from his bungling these Free Trade deals, but also his industrial relations policies - like Australian Workplace Agreements which allowed employers to bypass unions with individual contracts and then "WorkChoices" which allowed employers to strip away penalty rates, shift loadings, and overtime - in those individual contracts
Moving away from manufacturing was genuinely a good thing, subsidising failing industries isn’t good for anyone. The issue is we over-corrected into resources, construction & real estate rather than technology & advanced information services.
All of those industries began failing in the later part of John Howards third term as PM, largely because of all the changes in the comment you replied to, they were cut out of the market by policy introduced by John Howard, the subsidies that tried to keep them afloat were a consequence of the Howard government cutting their throat and making them slowly bleed out.
Those industries fell apart because we couldn’t compete with developing market wages and material costs. It’s just a natural cycle of development, as economies become more complex so do industries.
The inability to compete was introduced by the free trade agreements which were mentioned, this opened the Australian market to overseas flooding, that is what made it so they couldn't compete, this was done by the Howard government, it wasn't a "natural cycle of development" it was a failing of government to protect Australian industry from overseas influence, and that was all on the Howard government, it's amazing how blind you need to be to ignore these facts.
Remember how rabid the V8 Supercar fans were when Ford and Holden were competing Aussie-made cars in it? That's not unique; Aussie's love Aussie-made shit. Also why the "Made in Australia" advertising campaign was a success.
Even today, small industries such as local alcohols and the like often find a foothold cause we love buying locally made.
Yet again you miss the point, competition was made by import duties, 15% charged on items from overseas countries (figure is not exact), removing those import duties under free trade agreements meant overseas products were now cheaper to purchase than Australian made products, thus Australian industry suffers because of overseas flooding, a direct result of Howard government policy. Holden lost market share when production became cheaper overseas, and continued to lose market share with increased flooding of foreign brands, which could now undercut the domestic market, many other industries suffered the same fate, undercut by overseas manufacturing where they pay slave wages, or in many cases where it was real slavery and no wage was paid at all.
It's not a hard concept to understand, wages were not below market wages, CPI was more in line with inflation and life was relatively affordable for a vast many Australians, Australian made products were able to compete on the domestic market thanks to import duties, the free trade agreements opened the door to cheaply produced products from countries where slave wages and child labour was common, thus fair and domestic industry failed in the face of cheaper market flooding from overseas corporations, not rocket science at all.
Foreign products were always going to enter the market, whether open trade or black markets. Subsidising American corporations to manufacture templates cars was never a sustainable industry.
Import duties are a tax on the local consumer, not the exporter - we have such a small market here that it was never going to create some brave new world where we were a manufacturing hub to compete with China, Thailand or India. We just don’t have the scale economies.
Universities, tech & engineering should have been our big pivot rather than mining and property speculation. Not low value processing.
The resources boom was a once in a lifetime economic gift which the Liberal Party grossly mismanaged and instead of building a sovereign wealth fund and upgrading infrastructure funded with proper resources taxation, they let all the profits go into private hands and most of it overseas.
And don't even get me started on the Americanisation of our education and health sectors, and what they did to gift patent protections to American pharmaceutical companies.
Little Johnny Howard's loyalties were split between his dreams of a Tory ruling class and the American special interest money.
What do you mean instead of building a sovereign wealth fund? WTF do you think the future fund is? Set up by Howard and contributed to by no other government of either flavour since.
I knew what the future fund is, I was paying attention when it was created. It is not a sovereign wealth fund, it was set up specifically to fund anticipated public sector pensions because at the time there were US cities going bankrupt because they couldn't pay out entitlements and there was a collective "Oh, shit" moment at the Treasury.
I asked, because it was obvious from context that you didn't know, and I wanted to see if you'd double down without checking.
And you know I knew, because if you'd given the correct answer - the sincere answer to the question, instead of petty snark, you'd have proven my point yourself that it's not a sovereign wealth fund in the sense of providing a widespread public benefit and investment for every citizen, such as Norway maintains.
"The Future Fund was established on 3 April 2006 by the Future Fund Act 2006 (Future Fund Act). The Future Fund is an Australian Government investment fund, set up to strengthen the Commonwealth's long-term financial position by making provision for unfunded superannuation liabilities that will become payable during a period when an ageing population is likely to place significant pressure on the Commonwealth's finances."
..
"The Target Asset Level is the best estimate of the Future Fund balance that would be required to offset the present value of projected unfunded superannuation liabilities, accrued up to the same point in time."
A what 17 year sequence of absolute pricks that degraded Australian polity and this nation for their own self aggrandisement. And the Australian public voted for them. It's maddening
If you look at the grand visions that people like Whitlam and Keating had for Australia and compare it to the sell-out bullshit we got with Howard it's just a tragedy.
We went from leaders who wanted Australia to stand on it's own two feet, play a role in global leadership, share the prosperity around to where we are now - a fucking backwater with insanely high cost of living, unaffordable housing, complete privatisation of our service sector and really not much else to show for decades of mining and billions upon billions of dollars of said resource extraction.
Australia feels like it's gone absolutely nowhere in 30 years.
We do, it’s called the future fund. It was setup by John Howard and is worth over $200 billion. Feel free to thank John Howard for having the foresight to do exactly what you wanted 19 years ago.
My source is "Stuff I read 30 years ago, before the Internet".
But if you hit up Wikipedia you'll see his milquetoast reintroduction of it as his 'One Australia policy', and looking at his behaviour as well as his extreme conservatism, the era of his political activity, and everything he said and did and continues to say and do, I don't doubt my memory of it all.
Call it 'strong circumstantial' if you will - slightly better than 'random redditor and bro-science' but not as good as 'confirmed'.
The GST was, and still is, a bullshit tax policy aimed at shifting the burden from the wealthy to the poor. What makes it reprehensible is the sneaky and absolutely dishonest way they sell it to the ignorant and the deliberately disingenuous.
"Everyone pays the same! That must be fair!"
No. Bullshit. It is by design a disproportionate burden on the people who make the least money.
Dutton isn't really the problem for those two, if anything having him around made them look better.
Hastie has a better looking meat suit than Dutton, but underneath it he's an even more monstrous lizard person than anyone else in the parliament (I don't mean this literally). When he could stand at the back looking fiercely determined his political stocks were on the rise, but when he opens his mouth he doesn't look so good and if he's pressed on the issues he'll make Pauline look like an empathetic and reasonable person.
Taylor has the nuclear policy millstone around his neck, but his bigger problem is that Hastie doesn't seem to be content with letting Taylor takes the top job so he doesn't have the numbers.
They are linked to the failed Dutton election though. They contributed to the incompetence of that campaign. The further we get from that election with them in the shadows the better chance they have at the next election.
The annoying thing was she was handed a gift after the last election and she squandered it. Basically when the Nationals had their hissy fit and quit after the last election, it was in her interest to let them go for a few years.
Experts are currently saying winning the next one is borderline impossible unless Albo catastrophically fucks it up, so the best you can hope for is to try and win back some of those lost Urban seats and create a stronger and safer foundation for the subsequent one.
The Nationals split meant they could have consolidated and rebranded to appeal to the average Australian. It also meant that they wouldnt have been led around by the nose into following Nationals climate denialism and Sky news talking points.
It would have Kept Sussan's gig safe as no-one would knife her leading into a losing election. However, a rebrand and a recentring would give her some cred as an actual leader. It would have saved her having to carry on like this in times of disaster and give her the chance to be seen as both a sensible and unifying force, and picking up a few more urban seats would have put them in a much better negotiating position when it came to re-establishing the coalition with the Nats.
Instead she pissed it away, and every day since has been a desperate scramble to keep her job, whilst appeasing the rats which are abandoning the sinking ship.
Nah, this is based on the assumption that the part WANTS to take a turn to the left.
You're absolutely right that downplaying the crazy and rebranding to a more moderate party would very likely be their best strategy to get back into contention.
But it's not one that party will accept. it's not a failure on Ley's part so much as any moderate would get the same result, because there's too many of the far right types running the show. And compromising, even to get reelected, is not who they are.
And making herself look vile in the process, are these attempts to make hay out of this playing well with anyone? This is one of those events where bipartisanship is normal, she's throwing decades of common decency and norms out the window for nothing.
I’m okay with him hanging on for another couple of decades, providing he has to spend it stuck on the sidelines watching impotently as his old party crumbles into oblivion.
Nah you’d be surprised how popular he still is with a good chunk of the nation, outside the reddit bubble. His recent interview with Mark Bouris and the positive reaction to that online was overwhelming.
One bright spot (maybe) is that in the last election the LNP candidate of Bennelong went in hard on promoting Howard in their campaign materials, presumably to sway those oldies and it didn’t work.
Now there were other things wrong with that candidate (close ties to the CCP etc) but they were obviously hoping on getting the Howard lovers to come around.
don't forget booby trapping our medical system with the mandatory private health care otherwise lifetime increase in Medicare levy. John Howard is the root of almost all major issues we face today. a disgrace of a human
yep….at bare minimum Pell was told / knew of a lotta the heinous shit that was going on, and Howard the piece of shit wrote a glowing character reference for him, which included shit like this;
“…Pell is a person of both high intelligence and exemplary character”
Exactly people give him a lot of false credit around Port Arthur. The LNP openly admitted if they were in opposition they would have done everything they could have to oppose the changes being implemented. That says everything you need to know about them.
The staggering point of this article is it is suppose to be satire but it is true in every sense. I have never seen such a pile on by opposition politicians trying to take advantage of a major tragedy. Remember John Howard had so much faith in his fellow Australians that when he fronted up to announce his gun policy he wore a bulletproof vest. It's not imagration that is changing Australia as we have always had imagration. It's the politicians who try to use it as a wedge that's the problem.
I don't wish for his death or anything, but I wish he would just permanently sit the fuck down and shut up.He has done so much damage to this country, especially with housing. The only beneficial thing he ever did was act ASAP during the Port Arthur massacre - everything else has been to benefit those who hold the cards, and sell off anything else not nailed down and send multiple generations into financial straits as a result. THAT is his legacy.
Honestly think he's only come out because his firearm laws are the only thing he did that had any kind of long term widespread public support and he feels any reform now undermines his personal legacy. Nevermind his decision to go to war not only caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and insane suffering, it also radicalised an enormous number of people worldwide and created the conditions and probably quite directly led to these two pyschos going on a shooting spree.
I mean the laws aren't even the issue, the issue was a fault somewhere between ASIO communicating with state authorities when it comes to people on the watchlist. They knew in advance that the guy was radical, that he went to the Philippines training camps recently and nothing was done. They didnt even flag his dad or his firearms. If anything its a failure of the government, not gun laws. Now people who do collect historical items or hobby guns may have to, have them destroyed as a result of reactionary laws, instead of though out policy.
He is without doubt most destructive politician / PM this country has ever had. Most of what he and Costello did has not been undone.
Things like deregulation of aged care, getting private equity into childcare, the private health insurance rebate. Increased federal funding to elite private schools under the illusion of choice, refunds of unused franking credits. Truly and absolutely shit policies that cost us billions every year and lead to worse outcomes for 99% of Australians.
Abbott, Beetrooter, DJ mad cunt, Friedburger… all coming out of the woodwork on the Newscorp opportunist band wagon. Fuck off. And they blew their load way too early, we just had an election.
I will always remember how Howard and his government, ably helped by then Federal Police Commisioner and pathetic Howard lickspittle, Mick Keelty, tried their absolute best to fit-up Dr Mohammed Haneef and falsely label him a terrorist with the absolute flimsiest, laughable evidence imaginable. It was the most despicable thing I have yet to see an Australian government try to do to anyone. Just completely shameful, racist bastardry - they tried to lock the guy up for a long time based on nothing at all. Howard was foaming at the mouth to get him.
There should be an unwritten law for ex prime ministers to live out rest of life in dignity and leave politics and their opinions out of the way once out of the job.
It’s only fitting to leave and live with respect for remainder of your days.
He also removed parts of the Racial Discrimination Act to put in the place intervention program in NT targeting the Aboriginal communities. In an interview he said did not like the word multiculturalism, thought it divisive, the Tamps incident, look that up. He has called out pauline on her racist views, so that’s a positive.
Howard is incapable of being a ‘statesman’. He is a hateful racist, remembered for dividing this country, because he couldn’t understand why you would want unity.
Sussan Ley would have enhanced her standing by walking with the PM, and pledging her personal support for helping him get the action needed to make Australians safer, which was her priority.
She should have acknowledged that things are not perfect, but this is not the time for political point scoring.
crazy the downvotes - his squandering of our wealth into tax cuts rather than nation building projects just further entrenched the emphasis on individual outcomes over community wellbeing
I assume the downvotes relate to the 'albo is worse' part.
Howard was by far worse. The issues you note are horrific enough by themselves, and are still dwarfed by much of the other even more harmful shit that Howard inflicted on us.
Never forget that Howard supported the White Australia Policy. His tax policies set us on the course to the current housing crisis; his economic policies gutted our secondary industries and reduced our economy to housing, farming and mining; and his industrial policies dismantling unions and empowering businesses to fire workers effectively put a stop to wages keeping up with the cost of living, let alone giving workers a fair slice of the economic productivity gains.
The only good thing he did was respond to Port Arthur with effective gun control policy and the best thing about his term of office was that we was the first sitting Australian prime minister to lose at an election in nearly 100 years.
He then spawned ScoMo, whose economically ineffective but highly inflationary policies just served to give billions of public funds to millionaires and billionaires without any accountability or even competent record keeping.
Howard is a blight on Australia. He is the closest thing we have to Thatcher and the queue to 'visit' his grave site will be long.
Also never forget he lead us into the Iraq war.
I remember him commenting on Al Gore inconvenient Truth, calling climate change unproven Science lol
Greenhouse gas effect was proven in 1824 💀
To be complete accurate here, it was detected in 1824. It was far from proven.
But it was most definitely proven by 2001 lol.
That's a tough one. Yes, he did, but we were always going to be dragged by the nose into that mess because of our US strategic alliance. Any other PM would've also taken us to war - I marched against it, but looking back it was inevitable.
New Zealand stayed out of the Iraq War. And nobody is more chickenshit when it comes to defying America than us.
That's only because their military was utterly decimated by the ill-advised siege of Rohan, followed by the disastrous incursion into Gondor.
But if NZ did get involved, it would have taken no time for 2 hobbits to sneak in to the mountains and find Bin Laden.
Thank you so much .. you made my day!
Yeah but they defeated Sauron, if they'd really wanted to help they'd have rounded up the orcs with promises of many enemies to defeat and just let them loose in the Middle East.
lol
I completely agree, although I would note that the US--NZ aspect of ANZUS had already been long nixed by that point.
Doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen on his watch. He was the leader and could have said no, as hard as that would be.
I agree that it would have happened had anyone else been in office
the Opposition had TWO leadership spills that year (2003)
Simon Crean won the first, against Kim Beazley, in June - and by November RESIGNED - with Mark LATHAM replacing him (with Kim Beazley losing again)
I cannot see how any of those guys would have resisted the US alliance pulling us into that clusterfuck
Fucking Mark Latham, what a turd he is. Prime Minister Kim Beazley would've been so good for us all.
The man who supported Howard's ban on gay marriage. That Beazley.
It's an interesting hypothetical. All of them were rationalists who understood the importance of the American alliance. Beazley in particular was more "All the way with LBJ" than Harold Holt. But having said that, the crucial distinction about Iraq 2 was that it lacked UN sanction, and I'm not convinced any of them would have necessarily given in to Dubbya, especially given that Blair was the only other major leader who wanted to get involved. One thing I think people tend to underestimate is the psychological effect being in Washington DC on the 11th of September had on Howard. Not only was he watching the events in NY live, American security agents evacuated him from his hotel when they found out that two of the hijacked planes were heading for the capital. He was always politically sympathetic to America but I think his personal experience led him to cross a line he should not have.
One weird quirk of history is that Mark Latham is the last major party politician I can recall who indicated any willingness to rethink our subservience to the US. Not saying he would've made a good PM but it's an interesting hypothetical.
when you look around at the current wasteland where MANUFACTURING used to live - and wonder why everybody is investing in PROPERTY instead of actual businesses - look no further than this man...
Howard introduced Free Trade Agreements which dropped IMPORT tariffs on manufactured goods from countries like Thailand from 15% to 0% - so American and Japanese car makers stopped making cars in Australia and imported them "for free" from Thailand
this is how the Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger, and Holden Colorado (all Thai built) became the dominant vehicles on Australian roads
worse still, Thailand used non-tariff barriers to keep Australian-made cars from going in the other direction - like a 50% excise on large engines (like in the Commodore and Falcon)
manufacturing saw a rapid decline under Howard, not just from his bungling these Free Trade deals, but also his industrial relations policies - like Australian Workplace Agreements which allowed employers to bypass unions with individual contracts and then "WorkChoices" which allowed employers to strip away penalty rates, shift loadings, and overtime - in those individual contracts
Moving away from manufacturing was genuinely a good thing, subsidising failing industries isn’t good for anyone. The issue is we over-corrected into resources, construction & real estate rather than technology & advanced information services.
All of those industries began failing in the later part of John Howards third term as PM, largely because of all the changes in the comment you replied to, they were cut out of the market by policy introduced by John Howard, the subsidies that tried to keep them afloat were a consequence of the Howard government cutting their throat and making them slowly bleed out.
Those industries fell apart because we couldn’t compete with developing market wages and material costs. It’s just a natural cycle of development, as economies become more complex so do industries.
The inability to compete was introduced by the free trade agreements which were mentioned, this opened the Australian market to overseas flooding, that is what made it so they couldn't compete, this was done by the Howard government, it wasn't a "natural cycle of development" it was a failing of government to protect Australian industry from overseas influence, and that was all on the Howard government, it's amazing how blind you need to be to ignore these facts.
Compete how?
Subsidies and below market wages?
Nationalism.
Remember how rabid the V8 Supercar fans were when Ford and Holden were competing Aussie-made cars in it? That's not unique; Aussie's love Aussie-made shit. Also why the "Made in Australia" advertising campaign was a success.
Even today, small industries such as local alcohols and the like often find a foothold cause we love buying locally made.
Yet again you miss the point, competition was made by import duties, 15% charged on items from overseas countries (figure is not exact), removing those import duties under free trade agreements meant overseas products were now cheaper to purchase than Australian made products, thus Australian industry suffers because of overseas flooding, a direct result of Howard government policy. Holden lost market share when production became cheaper overseas, and continued to lose market share with increased flooding of foreign brands, which could now undercut the domestic market, many other industries suffered the same fate, undercut by overseas manufacturing where they pay slave wages, or in many cases where it was real slavery and no wage was paid at all.
It's not a hard concept to understand, wages were not below market wages, CPI was more in line with inflation and life was relatively affordable for a vast many Australians, Australian made products were able to compete on the domestic market thanks to import duties, the free trade agreements opened the door to cheaply produced products from countries where slave wages and child labour was common, thus fair and domestic industry failed in the face of cheaper market flooding from overseas corporations, not rocket science at all.
Foreign products were always going to enter the market, whether open trade or black markets. Subsidising American corporations to manufacture templates cars was never a sustainable industry.
Import duties are a tax on the local consumer, not the exporter - we have such a small market here that it was never going to create some brave new world where we were a manufacturing hub to compete with China, Thailand or India. We just don’t have the scale economies.
Universities, tech & engineering should have been our big pivot rather than mining and property speculation. Not low value processing.
That's a really long winded way of saying he is a cunt.
Yeah but budget surpluf gud
The resources boom was a once in a lifetime economic gift which the Liberal Party grossly mismanaged and instead of building a sovereign wealth fund and upgrading infrastructure funded with proper resources taxation, they let all the profits go into private hands and most of it overseas.
And don't even get me started on the Americanisation of our education and health sectors, and what they did to gift patent protections to American pharmaceutical companies.
Little Johnny Howard's loyalties were split between his dreams of a Tory ruling class and the American special interest money.
What do you mean instead of building a sovereign wealth fund? WTF do you think the future fund is? Set up by Howard and contributed to by no other government of either flavour since.
What's the future fund?
What is Google?
I knew what the future fund is, I was paying attention when it was created. It is not a sovereign wealth fund, it was set up specifically to fund anticipated public sector pensions because at the time there were US cities going bankrupt because they couldn't pay out entitlements and there was a collective "Oh, shit" moment at the Treasury.
I asked, because it was obvious from context that you didn't know, and I wanted to see if you'd double down without checking.
And you know I knew, because if you'd given the correct answer - the sincere answer to the question, instead of petty snark, you'd have proven my point yourself that it's not a sovereign wealth fund in the sense of providing a widespread public benefit and investment for every citizen, such as Norway maintains.
Oh no! Did you not Google it?
Here, I saved you the effort.
https://www.finance.gov.au/government/australian-government-investment-funds/future-fund
"The Future Fund was established on 3 April 2006 by the Future Fund Act 2006 (Future Fund Act). The Future Fund is an Australian Government investment fund, set up to strengthen the Commonwealth's long-term financial position by making provision for unfunded superannuation liabilities that will become payable during a period when an ageing population is likely to place significant pressure on the Commonwealth's finances."
..
"The Target Asset Level is the best estimate of the Future Fund balance that would be required to offset the present value of projected unfunded superannuation liabilities, accrued up to the same point in time."
Dickhead.
Since we are slinging names, What are the names of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth funds you so admire. What were they created for?
Google it and post the response. You aren't going to be happy.
Cockhead.
Spawned Abbott as well.
I was going to include him but I couldn't remember his name and I refused to waste Google resources to look it up on principle. What a piece of shit.
A what 17 year sequence of absolute pricks that degraded Australian polity and this nation for their own self aggrandisement. And the Australian public voted for them. It's maddening
If you look at the grand visions that people like Whitlam and Keating had for Australia and compare it to the sell-out bullshit we got with Howard it's just a tragedy.
We went from leaders who wanted Australia to stand on it's own two feet, play a role in global leadership, share the prosperity around to where we are now - a fucking backwater with insanely high cost of living, unaffordable housing, complete privatisation of our service sector and really not much else to show for decades of mining and billions upon billions of dollars of said resource extraction.
Australia feels like it's gone absolutely nowhere in 30 years.
Totally agree.
Australia should have a sovereign wealth fund that is overflowing from all the mineral/oil/gas extraction.
Ala Norway whose recently crossed the $2 trillion mark.
We do, it’s called the future fund. It was setup by John Howard and is worth over $200 billion. Feel free to thank John Howard for having the foresight to do exactly what you wanted 19 years ago.
Got a source for this one? I mean it would be on brand for him, but I don't want to trust a random reddit comment.
My source is "Stuff I read 30 years ago, before the Internet".
But if you hit up Wikipedia you'll see his milquetoast reintroduction of it as his 'One Australia policy', and looking at his behaviour as well as his extreme conservatism, the era of his political activity, and everything he said and did and continues to say and do, I don't doubt my memory of it all.
Call it 'strong circumstantial' if you will - slightly better than 'random redditor and bro-science' but not as good as 'confirmed'.
Howard advocated for a whiter immigration policy, saying that racist Australians feelings needed to be respected:
https://www.afr.com/politics/howard-risks-all-on-immigration-19880805-k2z8j
This led to the resignation of some members of his shadow cabinet.
my mum barely knows anything about aussie politics (she's a pr so can't vote) she still holds a grudge against Howard for the gst
The GST was, and still is, a bullshit tax policy aimed at shifting the burden from the wealthy to the poor. What makes it reprehensible is the sneaky and absolutely dishonest way they sell it to the ignorant and the deliberately disingenuous.
"Everyone pays the same! That must be fair!"
No. Bullshit. It is by design a disproportionate burden on the people who make the least money.
The GST is a tax cut for the high earners.
No Frydenberg, Howard and Abbot never let an atrocity go to waste when it comes to furthering their personal lust for power.
Let’s not forget Sussssssssan.
Though as the token woman and sacrificial lamb of the LNP I think she is just trying to be one of the boys.
I almost (note ALMOST) feel sorry for Sussssan, she's working overtime to score political points for the LNP right now.
It's a real shame they're gonna knife her in the back as a party within the next six months for a new leader :)
Hastie and Taylor hiding in background til we forget their association with Dutton.
Fantastic. Great work. Well done Angus.
Dutton isn't really the problem for those two, if anything having him around made them look better.
Hastie has a better looking meat suit than Dutton, but underneath it he's an even more monstrous lizard person than anyone else in the parliament (I don't mean this literally). When he could stand at the back looking fiercely determined his political stocks were on the rise, but when he opens his mouth he doesn't look so good and if he's pressed on the issues he'll make Pauline look like an empathetic and reasonable person.
Taylor has the nuclear policy millstone around his neck, but his bigger problem is that Hastie doesn't seem to be content with letting Taylor takes the top job so he doesn't have the numbers.
They are linked to the failed Dutton election though. They contributed to the incompetence of that campaign. The further we get from that election with them in the shadows the better chance they have at the next election.
The annoying thing was she was handed a gift after the last election and she squandered it. Basically when the Nationals had their hissy fit and quit after the last election, it was in her interest to let them go for a few years.
Experts are currently saying winning the next one is borderline impossible unless Albo catastrophically fucks it up, so the best you can hope for is to try and win back some of those lost Urban seats and create a stronger and safer foundation for the subsequent one.
The Nationals split meant they could have consolidated and rebranded to appeal to the average Australian. It also meant that they wouldnt have been led around by the nose into following Nationals climate denialism and Sky news talking points.
It would have Kept Sussan's gig safe as no-one would knife her leading into a losing election. However, a rebrand and a recentring would give her some cred as an actual leader. It would have saved her having to carry on like this in times of disaster and give her the chance to be seen as both a sensible and unifying force, and picking up a few more urban seats would have put them in a much better negotiating position when it came to re-establishing the coalition with the Nats.
Instead she pissed it away, and every day since has been a desperate scramble to keep her job, whilst appeasing the rats which are abandoning the sinking ship.
Nah, this is based on the assumption that the part WANTS to take a turn to the left.
You're absolutely right that downplaying the crazy and rebranding to a more moderate party would very likely be their best strategy to get back into contention.
But it's not one that party will accept. it's not a failure on Ley's part so much as any moderate would get the same result, because there's too many of the far right types running the show. And compromising, even to get reelected, is not who they are.
maybe she can sell one of her many investment properties to make herself feel better?
I would be absolutely blown away if there wasn't a massive golden parachute awaiting her exit from politics - probably in China
And making herself look vile in the process, are these attempts to make hay out of this playing well with anyone? This is one of those events where bipartisanship is normal, she's throwing decades of common decency and norms out the window for nothing.
Frydenberg’s grandstanding and hotdogging is the single most shameless acts I can remember in recent history.
And the ENTIRE speech printed in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Frydeanberg, never seen a massacre of his people he couldn't use too restart his political career
Yeah I think and Hope it was just off-putting outside of the rusted ons who suck the milk that these guys excrete.
Like Chris Minns is doing now?
John "Bomb some more brown people to mask social divisions at home" Howard
I appreciate the massive change with guns he brought in. But fuck he’s a cunt
I keep saying, these LNP nut jobs got nothing of substance to offer the Aussie worker. Any opportunity to stir the pot. Useless bunch.
I reckon his death will unite the nation.
Got some bubbles on ice for that occasion
Not sure. A lot of people in their 50s - 70s love Johnny.
Ugh. My parents being some of them
I hope those bubbles have a long expiry date. I fear the custy old arsehole is gonna outlive me. :(
I’m okay with him hanging on for another couple of decades, providing he has to spend it stuck on the sidelines watching impotently as his old party crumbles into oblivion.
Maybe not with how dangerous Albo is. He did kill 15 over the weekend (/s)
It's the bile in evil people. Pickles their insides and preserves them.
I can't stand the man, but he is good evidence for why you should take a brisk walk every morning.
It'll be our Thatcher moment.
Nah you’d be surprised how popular he still is with a good chunk of the nation, outside the reddit bubble. His recent interview with Mark Bouris and the positive reaction to that online was overwhelming.
One bright spot (maybe) is that in the last election the LNP candidate of Bennelong went in hard on promoting Howard in their campaign materials, presumably to sway those oldies and it didn’t work.
Now there were other things wrong with that candidate (close ties to the CCP etc) but they were obviously hoping on getting the Howard lovers to come around.
HEAR HEAR! Full mast flag!
don't forget booby trapping our medical system with the mandatory private health care otherwise lifetime increase in Medicare levy. John Howard is the root of almost all major issues we face today. a disgrace of a human
He said that he looks at the US health system and admires it!
I absolutely loathe Howard.
Agreed, but I do enjoy seeing his lying old war criminal arse get dragged by so many people I know.
yep….at bare minimum Pell was told / knew of a lotta the heinous shit that was going on, and Howard the piece of shit wrote a glowing character reference for him, which included shit like this;
“…Pell is a person of both high intelligence and exemplary character”
Let him burn in hell for eternity. Absolute scumbag.
Agreed …..but I absolutely loathe Albo
DJing like a mad cunt only gets you so far, beyond that you still need to be a respectable person
That's a deep cut. That jpeg has survived many years on my hard drives.
I never respect that man. He did good I response to Port Arthur, but that’s it.
Only did that because his focus groups said it would win votes.
Exactly people give him a lot of false credit around Port Arthur. The LNP openly admitted if they were in opposition they would have done everything they could have to oppose the changes being implemented. That says everything you need to know about them.
The staggering point of this article is it is suppose to be satire but it is true in every sense. I have never seen such a pile on by opposition politicians trying to take advantage of a major tragedy. Remember John Howard had so much faith in his fellow Australians that when he fronted up to announce his gun policy he wore a bulletproof vest. It's not imagration that is changing Australia as we have always had imagration. It's the politicians who try to use it as a wedge that's the problem.
I don't wish for his death or anything, but I wish he would just permanently sit the fuck down and shut up.He has done so much damage to this country, especially with housing. The only beneficial thing he ever did was act ASAP during the Port Arthur massacre - everything else has been to benefit those who hold the cards, and sell off anything else not nailed down and send multiple generations into financial straits as a result. THAT is his legacy.
It's ok, I'll wish for his death for you.
Honestly think he's only come out because his firearm laws are the only thing he did that had any kind of long term widespread public support and he feels any reform now undermines his personal legacy. Nevermind his decision to go to war not only caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and insane suffering, it also radicalised an enormous number of people worldwide and created the conditions and probably quite directly led to these two pyschos going on a shooting spree.
I mean the laws aren't even the issue, the issue was a fault somewhere between ASIO communicating with state authorities when it comes to people on the watchlist. They knew in advance that the guy was radical, that he went to the Philippines training camps recently and nothing was done. They didnt even flag his dad or his firearms. If anything its a failure of the government, not gun laws. Now people who do collect historical items or hobby guns may have to, have them destroyed as a result of reactionary laws, instead of though out policy.
Can always count on Little Johnny to make it about himself.
He is without doubt most destructive politician / PM this country has ever had. Most of what he and Costello did has not been undone.
Things like deregulation of aged care, getting private equity into childcare, the private health insurance rebate. Increased federal funding to elite private schools under the illusion of choice, refunds of unused franking credits. Truly and absolutely shit policies that cost us billions every year and lead to worse outcomes for 99% of Australians.
Abbott, Beetrooter, DJ mad cunt, Friedburger… all coming out of the woodwork on the Newscorp opportunist band wagon. Fuck off. And they blew their load way too early, we just had an election.
Nobody has caused more damage to Australia than this shithead.
I despise him. I will literally take a dirty brown piss on his grave when he finally kicks the bucket.
Can we ever be rid of these shameless cunts?
He's a lying, disingenuous bastard. He ought to be in prison for Iraq.
Watching the has-beens trying to relaunch their political careers at memorial services has been something, that's for sure
It seems the LNP have attempted in a gasp to garner some political capital immediately on the back of a tragedy, in a divisive partisan way.
That's who these people are. Don't forget it.
At this tragic time I think we can all agree that the most important thing is for Josh Frydenberg to advance his political aspirations
They are going to build this c*"t a memorial in canberra when he passes, sadly it won't be the Johnny Howard memorial urinal.
It will, but it might not be official.
Margaret Thatcher's statue ended up on a very high plinth because people kept chopping its head off.
I’ll be treating it as if it is regardless
What is it about the Libs that lets them wheel out these relics for their opinions??
What next - Turnbull, Morrison and Abbott sought out by the press as well?
The Libs will never wheel out Turnbull. He’s the only one with a shred of decency.
I will always remember how Howard and his government, ably helped by then Federal Police Commisioner and pathetic Howard lickspittle, Mick Keelty, tried their absolute best to fit-up Dr Mohammed Haneef and falsely label him a terrorist with the absolute flimsiest, laughable evidence imaginable. It was the most despicable thing I have yet to see an Australian government try to do to anyone. Just completely shameful, racist bastardry - they tried to lock the guy up for a long time based on nothing at all. Howard was foaming at the mouth to get him.
Howard was, and still is, an absolute cunt.
Reminding Australia that the most dangerous and harmful ideologies in Australia actually emerge from Liberal politicians
I can't think of anything else that Howard did besides the gun laws. But if it's one thing the LNP will do, it's to use a tragedy for political gain
Ive been avoiding this news story like the plague because I know it will be on TV as a circus for the next 3 weeks.
He was always the master of wedge politics, if not the inventor
There should be an unwritten law for ex prime ministers to live out rest of life in dignity and leave politics and their opinions out of the way once out of the job. It’s only fitting to leave and live with respect for remainder of your days.
He also removed parts of the Racial Discrimination Act to put in the place intervention program in NT targeting the Aboriginal communities. In an interview he said did not like the word multiculturalism, thought it divisive, the Tamps incident, look that up. He has called out pauline on her racist views, so that’s a positive.
I wish that war criminal would roll over and die already.
Remember when this fuckhead called Mandela a terrorist?
Howard is incapable of being a ‘statesman’. He is a hateful racist, remembered for dividing this country, because he couldn’t understand why you would want unity.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
The most satisfying thing is seeing the general public recognise the utter shit that the LNP are spewing via MSM
When will this God forsaken see you next Tuesday, fucking die already?!
Not until he's done sucking off blair and bush junior 🤮
Love how they dig his corpse up every time they need a contrarian opinion on the current government. Fuck me, how is he still alive?
Sussan Ley would have enhanced her standing by walking with the PM, and pledging her personal support for helping him get the action needed to make Australians safer, which was her priority.
She should have acknowledged that things are not perfect, but this is not the time for political point scoring.
Yeah he's the expert on creating division. eg The children overboard bs.
Johnny, how many times have we told you? Words are for helping, not hurting and inciting hatred.
That's quite a raunchy pickup line in Straya.
Well don’t get too excited in Australia, we’ve got someone worse in power right now: Albanese and Labor.
Labor and Albanese are truly frightening, because they’re so much smarter than Howard.
Were you alive during the period when Howard was Prime Minister?
He was worse in every way than Labor and Anthony Albanese.
Yep, and as much as I dislike him, Howard is definitely smart.
Certainly was. He succeeded in turning Australia into a highly competitive dog eat dog society.
And to think Albanese is worse.
crazy the downvotes - his squandering of our wealth into tax cuts rather than nation building projects just further entrenched the emphasis on individual outcomes over community wellbeing
I assume the downvotes relate to the 'albo is worse' part.
Howard was by far worse. The issues you note are horrific enough by themselves, and are still dwarfed by much of the other even more harmful shit that Howard inflicted on us.
omg lol i thought he was being sarcastic ahahahaha what a moron
Indeed. Good way to put it.
Bro has Scummo amnesia
Bro thinks we’d have been better off with Dutton.
Like that would have made any difference whatsoever.
Did you blame Howard for port author ?
Abbot for Lindt Cafe?
You know Labor have passed more laws to protect Jews compared to any other government.