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Happy Mastenator

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Not really, but aside from my own personal misgivings about his handling of Tampa and broader criticism of the increasing security state since 9/11 (not that an ALP government would've done it differently btw), he was competent and the economy went along well. The proportion of the success that can be attributed to him and government is up for debate.

I don't remember any divisions in the Liberal Party at the time when he was PM aside from of course Costello constantly angling for his job. Maybe it's the nostalgia talking. The modern Liberal Party is now deeply divided and while I enjoy seeing them fail, I'd rather they got their shit together.
The issue was that the economy was going well, but we have nothing to show for it once the good times ended, other than a tax cuts that put us in the crapper and a few more flat screens on peoples walls. There was no long term thinking with his handling of the economy.
 

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Forward Press

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The issue was that the economy was going well, but we have nothing to show for it once the good times ended, other than a tax cuts that put us in the crapper and a few more flat screens on peoples walls. There was no long term thinking with his handling of the economy.
Yeah you can definitely argue there was no long term vision, but I'm not convinced a Labor PM would've not done the same thing. Tax cuts are vote winners.
 

Happy Mastenator

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Pretty sure it included all PMs from Abbott back to at least Whitlam, so no, it's not the poll you're thinking of.

Anyway, I'm not arguing the validity of the poll's overall result - I certainly don't think Howard is the best PM.

My point is relative consistency of Howard's performance in it. They run the same poll every few years, and Howard's vote hasn't dropped off since he left office. That sort of gives the lie to the claim that the shine has come off his legacy.
I doubt the gloss comes off Howards years in the general populations mind, he looked after them well when he was in power, and most want link the long term effects of his policies and their issues now. Academics and economists on the other hand, but the are all raving lefties anyway so will be dismissed.
 

Mateyman

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The issue was that the economy was going well, but we have nothing to show for it once the good times ended, other than a tax cuts that put us in the crapper and a few more flat screens on peoples walls. There was no long term thinking with his handling of the economy.
Speaking of, the TV we bought with Kevin 07's budget stimulus is just starting to break :(
 

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More than three is only possible in some kind of extremely ugly continental European proportional system. Do not want in the House of Reps.
Speak for yourself, would like to see how a Greens/Lib/National coalition would work. :drunk:

But yeah, preferential system means it will not happen in the foreseeable future.
 

Mateyman

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That as may be, but it still shows that she comes along with the Coalition government far more often than with the Labor opposition.

She's hardly going to be massively obstructive in the event of a minority Coalition government, which is what many on these boards seem to be expecting.
She only has to block a couple of pieces of legislation to be a big problem in a minority government though
 

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Gillard never got married herself. I think she's of that old school feminist mold that says marriage came out of a paternalistic concept of owning women, so why would a modern woman take part in it?

There's similar thinking from some gay writers. Given marriage for so long has been associated with religion and religions in the past weren't very nice to gay people, then some people think gay people shouldn't want to get married. I'd have to look at her comments more closely, but she was openly atheist and I wonder if her comments about tradition could have slyly said that she was listening to those opinions, without really endorsing the conservative schools of thought.

Of course in both cases the far more popular opinion is to say that marriage is about official commitment to loving one other, and a lot of people love the feeling of stability it gives - especially when they're setting off on the long-term project of building a family.
The act of marriage in a church is one of the pillars that they use to give themselves a central position of social control. Its a pity they didnt control their own child molesting employees a bit better.

Separation of church & state is nearly as important as plumbing in our modern society. Both keep the nasty bugs at bay, to some extent anyway:rolleyes:
 

JeffDunne

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Examples of the 'hard right'? Certainly not as hard right as Tony and co.
Ultimately a distinction without a difference.

Howard wasn't a man of conviction he was a populist. That's the difference between the two. Abbott would never have been a leader had Howard not came to power.
 

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We were always following the US into that one. Even Tony Blair and Labour in the UK did.
That's completely wrong, but crazily even senior Liberal MPs have made the same error before.

Labor was very much against going into Iraq and said it loudly and proudly at the time. Hundreds of people marched in the streets against it. Labour in the UK has no affiliation with Labor in Australia.

Howard & the LNP are entirely responsible for giving unquestioning support to the US (+UK) in this venture, which is the worst policy decision in my lifetime.
 

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That's completely wrong, but crazily even senior Liberal MPs have made the same error before.

Labor was very much against going into Iraq and said it loudly and proudly at the time. Hundreds of people marched in the streets against it. Labour in the UK has no affiliation with Labor in Australia.

Howard & the LNP are entirely responsible for giving unquestioning support to the US (+UK) in this venture, which is the worst policy decision in my lifetime.
The Opposition would oppose, that's no surprise. I am saying that if it was an ALP government communicating with GWB in the US they would've done the same thing. Don't get me wrong, I'm anti-war and probably side with the ALP over the Libs in most things, but the political reality at the time meant we were going in no matter who was in power (imo).

Ultimately a distinction without a difference.

Howard wasn't a man of conviction he was a populist. That's the difference between the two. Abbott would never have been a leader had Howard not came to power.
Don't see how that's a negative, would rather a leader willing to change his or her opinions based on the sentiment of the people and govern accordingly.
 

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That's completely wrong, but crazily even senior Liberal MPs have made the same error before.

Labor was very much against going into Iraq and said it loudly and proudly at the time. Hundreds of people marched in the streets against it. Labour in the UK has no affiliation with Labor in Australia.

Howard & the LNP are entirely responsible for giving unquestioning support to the US (+UK) in this venture, which is the worst policy decision in my lifetime.
To be fair, the US' decision was the bad one, Australia's decision could be argued to be calculated and rational.

At the end of the day we contributed a small force, achieved our objective (which I would define as continuing to show ourselves as a valuable ally of the US) with minimal loss, and left after we finished what we considered to be our job (and before the worst of the insurgency began).
 

Lebbo73

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As long as the Libs hang their hat on Howard they can't move forward as they need to. History will be far kinder to the Rudd/Gillard government, even Paul Kelly admitted it was a success, than the Howard years. It's taken less than ten years to see Howard's alleged legacy to be pulled to pieces.
Keep kidding yourself
 

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To be honest I wouldn't describe either the Howard or Abbott governments as 'hard right'.

I think some people on this board need a bit of a reality check about what hard right politics are. We are pretty lucky that real hard right politics (e.g. Marine le Pen's FN) have a negligible following in this country.
 

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To be honest I wouldn't describe either the Howard or Abbott governments as pursuing 'hard right' policies.

I think some people on this board need a bit of a reality check about what hard right politics are. We are pretty lucky that real hard right politics (e.g. Marine le Pen's FN) have a negligible following in this country.
Also that's one of the things which is kind of good about Hanson is that she's not actually particularly skillful I don't think, unlike people like Trump and Le Pen, who have much more charm/charisma.
 

Mateyman

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Also as is probably clear from my posting about it a fair bit, I wish they would update the count of Melbourne Ports! I reckon it's massively underrated how close it is but would be interested to hear others' thoughts. For some reason it's one of the least counted electorates in the land, with less than 60,000 votes counted at this point. Not really sure why
 

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I think that's how fascism starts.

Populism is fine when it's restrained by principle. Howard had none.
There's definitely a fine line between democracy and fascism but throwing around terms like that really isn't helping your argument. In the end the leader of the government is accountable to the people.
 

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Also as is probably clear from my posting about it a fair bit, I wish they would update the count of Melbourne Ports! I reckon it's massively underrated how close it is but would be interested to hear others' thoughts. For some reason it's one of the least counted electorates in the land, with less than 60,000 votes counted at this point. Not really sure why
Big postal/pre-poll/absentee vote?
 

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Gillard never got married herself. I think she's of that old school feminist mold that says marriage came out of a paternalistic concept of owning women, so why would a modern woman take part in it?

There's similar thinking from some gay writers. Given marriage for so long has been associated with religion and religions in the past weren't very nice to gay people, then some people think gay people shouldn't want to get married. I'd have to look at her comments more closely, but she was openly atheist and I wonder if her comments about tradition could have slyly said that she was listening to those opinions, without really endorsing the conservative schools of thought.

Of course in both cases the far more popular opinion is to say that marriage is about official commitment to loving one other, and a lot of people love the feeling of stability it gives - especially when they're setting off on the long-term project of building a family.
I certainly hope that wasn't her argument - matrimony is a religious institution, marriage is a legal one. The notion that it's a feminist or a LGBTIQA idea to allow religion to hijack a legal institution so as to deny them legal equality would be crazy. Especially when you bare in mind that state conference after state conference voted to support marriage equality as party platform at the time.

I think Bomberboy was more on the mark - she was pandering to the powerful shoppies union in rejecting it.

Never voted for him but I think John Howard deserves to be rated as one of our best ever PMs. Getting the gun control laws passed is probably one of his finest achievements and I like to think the vast majority of Australians would give him plaudits for it.
I don't think it's unreasonable to view this as proof that even a broken clock is right twice a day. Nothing more, nothing less. Don't get me wrong - I watch what happens in the US and I will remain eternally grateful for the political courage it took - but doing one universally laudable thing in the space of 11 years doesn't support the idea that he was a great PM.

Not really, but aside from my own personal misgivings about his handling of Tampa and broader criticism of the increasing security state since 9/11 (not that an ALP government would've done it differently btw), he was competent and the economy went along well. The proportion of the success that can be attributed to him and government is up for debate.

I don't remember any divisions in the Liberal Party at the time when he was PM aside from of course Costello constantly angling for his job. Maybe it's the nostalgia talking. The modern Liberal Party is now deeply divided and while I enjoy seeing them fail, I'd rather they got their shit together.
It would've taken someone extraordinarily mentally deficient to not keep that economy going along well. He road the wave of the Telstra sale and the mining boom. And the reason I agree with the suggestion that his Prime Ministership (and Costello's treasurership) is because we now see the long term impact of the mining boom and the Telstra sale ie. There isn't one.

Those proceeds were pissed away on middle class welfare and tax breaks for the wealthy... and now we find ourselves in debt having to pay for essential infrastructure such as an NDIS and a fibre optic network to replace the long-failing copper network.

Examples of the 'hard right'? Certainly not as hard right as Tony and co.
While there are obviously examples of "hard right" politicians overseas - we've seen them in Europe an of course we saw Thatcherism in the UK.

But I don't believe it was ever an issue that Howard had to deal with. Hanson's infamous speech was in 1996 - she was rightly castigated as an ignorant racist.

It was only after 9/11 that Tea Party politics gained traction in the US, with the Australian version gaining traction shortly after with Tampa.

Shortly after this, Howard had won 3 elections consecutively, coming off the back of a disastrous period of Peacock/Hewson/Downer... by the time this hard right politics was gaining traction, Howard was all-powerful in his party, and was invoking a lot of the same ideals that they'd ridiculed following Hanson's speech.


Howard's "legacy" is a product of timing - he got the back of the mining boom, the fall of the Democrats (which is relevant to the GST), Telstra, the mining boom and Tampa. He got the perfect set of circumstances for a Liberal PM that even Abbott couldn't not have screwed up.

But his lack of a lasting legacy is why his Prime Ministership has quite rightly not aged well.
 

Forward Press

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To be honest I wouldn't describe either the Howard or Abbott governments as 'hard right'.

I think some people on this board need a bit of a reality check about what hard right politics are. We are pretty lucky that real hard right politics (e.g. Marine le Pen's FN) have a negligible following in this country.
Would you classify One Nation as hard right? I am aware that their primary vote totals are still relatively small but it was still substantial in 1998 and obviously they have at least one in the Senate so far.
 

Happy Mastenator

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Also as is probably clear from my posting about it a fair bit, I wish they would update the count of Melbourne Ports! I reckon it's massively underrated how close it is but would be interested to hear others' thoughts. For some reason it's one of the least counted electorates in the land, with less than 60,000 votes counted at this point. Not really sure why
Looks like Danby's going to win reasonably comfortably, unless the Greens candidate can somehow over take him and move into second place in the preferences.
 
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