The Howard Years

Well ring-a-ding-fucking-ding, it’s finally election time. Howard has called it and on the 24th of November the nation will decide between Howard the Great and Rudd the Impaler. But before I tackle the campaign issues, I think it’s time for a little reflection on the Howard years.

John Winston Howard has been in power for eleven and a half years. He’s been my Prime Minister since I was in year 12, before I gave a shit about politics. Love him or hate him, for many voters this election he is the only leader they have really known.

I would place myself squarely in the latter of those two groups. I hated Howard when his Government used the Tampa incident to scare Australia into thinking swarms of soulless refugees were landing on our shores. I hated him when he refused to apologise to the Stolen Generation and did bugger all to help Aboriginal Australia. I hated him when he joined up with the Yanks to invade Afghanistan, then a few years later Iraq. I hated his stance on terrorism, immigration and tertiary education. You name it, I hated it.

So you’d think that there would be no one happier than me to see John Howard kicked out of office, but you’d be wrong. You’d be wrong because if he is kicked out, it won’t be because of the reasons listed above. Australia still doesn’t give a shit about Iraq, immigrants, blacks, terrorist scare mongering. They’re just sick of Howard because he’s been there for so long.

Besides the industrial relation reforms, there is not much fundamentally different between this election and the last. The same issues are around, only this time people just seem to be sick of that short bald bloke being on the telly.

I suppose I’ll be somewhat happy to see him go, but it will be a hollow victory for me because the issues that I care about will have been inconsequential to his downfall. Some, like Aussie troops in Iraq or the Pacific Solution will probably be reversed, but by opposition default, not by mandate.

Mostly though it will be just be business as usual. People will go on caring only about their wallets, football and the size of their McMansions. We’ll all forget about Aboriginal child abuse and what wars we’re involved in. The opposition will inherit Costello and be in a shambles for a while then the whole cycle will start again.

What I really wanted was for Australia to have seen through the lies of a deceitful Government back in 2001 and kicked them out of office. Or for Australia to have made a stand and thrown Howard out in 2004 when it was clear he took our country to war on what was best case an unforgivable failure of intelligence and worst case an outright lie.

I guess you could say I’m disillusioned with politics this election. Howard will retire one of our greatest Prime Ministers and Rudd is more Liberal than half of the Coalition’s front bench.

There is one thing that would bring a smile to my face come November 24th, and that would be if Howard loses his own seat of Bennelong to Maxine McKew. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when our 68-year-old conservative Prime Minster gets the news that an ex-ABC reporting woman has just kicked him out of office.

I think I feel my passion coming back.