In praise of Ceasar

For as much as I harp on about John Howard and his policies, I can't deny that he will likely be seen by history as one of the great PMs since Federation. I won't resile one inch (in his language) from my criticism, but he has had the good fortune and/or good administration to be steward of the country during one of its most wealthy decades ever. His social policies could have been better but I don't think he actually did too much to make it impossible for later governments to fix. He certainly has "resonated" with the general electorate.

We compare him to Bush a lot; it makes for cheap and easy hits, sometimes deserved, other times just to make a point by exaggeration. But we should also compare him to Bush from the standpoint of what Bush has done so horribly wrong. Bush has ushered in a era of corporate cronyism in the US that is the most breath taking since Hoover. The perceived alignment of general business interests with the government's policies has been a hallmark of Howard. The perceived alignment of particular business interests with the government's practices has been outstanding in Bush's administration. The former is a form of debatable political philosophy; the latter a form of political corruption. I have never heard or read a word of any corporate crony charges being leveled against Howard. Nor have "jobs for boys" charges been more potent under him than we saw with Labor. (The comments section is open for those who want to post non-libelous and otherwise resepectful dissent or correction.)

His success is acknowledged in this:

"Australia has stolen a place ahead of Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom on the World Economic Forum's leader board of the 10 most competitive global economies. Moving up four places to 10th, Australia received praise in the think-tank's annual survey for its "world-class" public institutions, corruption-free governance and high levels of innovation.
The emerging power-houses of China and India ranked 49th and 50th respectively, with the survey highlighting concerns about their governance systems.
Nordic countries nabbed half the top 10 places despite intrusive tax and welfare regimes. "The Nordics are also challenging the conventional wisdom that high taxes and large safety nets undermine competitiveness, suggesting that what is important is how well government revenues are spent rather than the overall tax burden per se," the survey concluded.
The US would rank top in an index based on technological capacity and innovation alone but this was offset by its shaky macro-economic environment, the forum said." http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/australian-economy-rated-among-top-10/2005/09/28/1127804549054.html

OK, hugs over. Let the slanging (and NON-LIBELOUS comments) begin (again).

The problem with his security at whatever the cost plans and other measures is that we can't know in advance where he or the next person is going with it. So much of his policy has been on a "trust me" basis. And I'm sure we'd rather trust him than not, but can we? If he refuses time and again to build in transparency and accountability and review in his social policies, you simply loose faith. Why did he toss aside a sunset clause for the new terror tactics with a waive of the hand, then finally allow it after much wrangling, acknowleding that it probably was a good idea after all? Maybe he means well, maybe we ought to trust him, but why didn't he insist on the sunset clause in the first case? As letter writer Mike Goodwin asks in today's SMH letters column, "If we were on the road to fascism, how would it differ from this?"