The Money Men by Chris Bowen (superbooks4u .txt) 📕

of thirty-eight, three years after entering parliament. He had pro-business instincts but not a well-developed economic philosophy to accompany them. And unusually for a treasurer ascending from within the current government, he had no Cabinet experience.

Like so many of the chapters in this book, the story of Howard’s treasurership underlines the importance of good, productive relations between the prime minister and the treasurer. In Howard’s case, he was dealing with a headstrong and dominant prime minister in Malcolm Fraser. Clearly, Fraser had confidence in Howard’s skills. His rapid promotion of Howard into the shadow ministry and then through the ministerial ranks is testimony to this. Yet their relationship gradually broke down in office and, after the fall of the Fraser government, declined into one of the great prime minister – treasurer feuds as they struggled to define their legacies.

If John Howard’s career had ended when he had ceased to be treasurer, it is likely that the verdict of history would not have been kind. While he showed considerable political courage and skill in tackling the scourge of tax evasion, he had a patchy record on fiscal consolidation and a disappointing ledger when it came to important financial reforms. He had sound views in favour of free trade over protection, but lost the key arguments on tariff reform within the Cabinet. Much of his lack of success can be sheeted home to an increasingly dysfunctional relationship with his prime minister. The dynamic between Fraser and Howard presents a useful case study in how prime ministers and treasurers should not interact with each other if they wish to achieve substantial reforms.

And yet, despite these setbacks, Howard left the Treasury an enhanced figure. Many people saw him as the most substantial thinker within the senior ranks of the Liberal Party, and the best hope for a coherent policy approach. Perhaps the lessons he learnt from this experience were a factor in his subsequent, much more politically successful prime minister – treasurer partnership, this time as the more senior of the two.

Beginnings

Howard grew up in a small-business household in a time of economic plenty. As he says in his autobiography, ‘The 1950s, when I grew up, was probably the most stable, secure and prosperous decade Australia had yet experienced in the 20th century.’1 While one of Howard’s brothers was to become an active member of the Australian Labor Party, Howard’s conservative instincts were reinforced by the political and economic environment in which he grew up.2

Howard’s parents, Lyall and Mona (nee Kell), were dedicated Liberal voters. Howard was given the middle name ‘Winston’ in honour of Churchill, despite Churchill’s career being at its nadir at the time of Howard’s birth. Churchill was then still a backbencher who was paying the price for his siren song of warning about the rise of Hitler. He had not yet been called upon by his nation to guide it through World War II.

Lyall had served in World War I, along with his father Walter, and upon his return had started a service station in the Sydney suburb of Earlwood, where the family was also active in the local Methodist church. Howard would retain an affinity with small business throughout his career. In particular, he would never lose his anger at the bureaucratic ineptitude that had seen the local council effectively close down his father’s business. The council had demanded that Lyall shut his bowsers to make room for a road project which ended up not proceeding for many years afterwards.

Howard attended Earlwood Public School and the selective Canterbury Boys High School. He decided to study law at the University of Sydney and did so alongside such eminent future jurists as Murray Tobias and Marcus Einfeld.3 The future governor-general (Sir) William Deane was one of his law tutors, and he did work experience at Denman Chambers, where one of his tasks was to do the banking of barrister and future governor-general (Sir) John Kerr.

Howard joined the Earlwood branch of the Young Liberals at the age of eighteen and was elected to the organisation’s NSW executive when he was twenty-three. He was the campaign director in 1963 for Sydney barrister Tom Hughes in Hughes’ successful attempt to enter parliament via the then federal seat of Parkes, centred on Ashfield in inner-western Sydney (not to be confused with the current seat in western NSW). Hughes needed a 6 per cent swing to win the seat, and he achieved this in a good year for the Menzies government.

In 1968 Howard suffered the first of what would be many setbacks in a very turbulent political career. He had been preselected as the Liberal candidate for the NSW seat of Drummoyne. Although the seat had a sitting Labor member, Reg Coady, a redistribution had made the electorate notionally Liberal, meaning that Howard had to simply maintain the vote from the previous election to win. Given the Askin government was still in its first term and was quite popular, Howard was widely seen as likely to win the seat. He lost. A popular member and a wily campaigner, Coady achieved a 3 per cent swing, which went against a pro-Liberal swing across the state. The 28-year-old Howard’s political career was in mortal danger of being cut short.

Howard’s luck did not improve in the short term. He came third in the preselection for the federal seat of Berowra in 1971, defeated by the professor of economics at Macquarie University, Dr Harry Edwards. However, in 1973, the sitting member for Bennelong, Sir John Cramer, announced he would retire at the next federal election. Howard and his wife of two years, Janette, had settled in Wollstonecraft, which was located in the seat. Cramer had endorsed and campaigned for Peter Coleman, a local state member, but Howard prevailed in the preselection ballot by twenty-eight votes to twenty. Coleman would go on to lead the NSW Liberal Party before losing his seat in the 1978 election, then enter federal parliament as the member for Wentworth and become father-in-law to future