It was not until towards the end of the interview that I asked John Howard the question that produced his most revealing and remembered answer. It was a ‘soft question’, an open-ended invitation to spell out his vision for the year 2000 to voters. His answer contained the catch phrase that would dog him for years.
HOWARD: By the year 2000, I would like to see an Australian nation that feels comfortable and relaxed about three things: I would like to see them comfortable and relaxed about their history; I’d like to see them comfortable and relaxed about the present; and I’d also like to see them comfortable and relaxed about the future.
It struck me at the time as a little underwhelming, with a touch of Brave New World. The vision of a nation of people all feeling ‘comfortable and relaxed’ about their past, present and future.
JACKSON: Do you think that’s a dynamic enough vision to inspire Australians as they move into the next millennium? Is that dynamic enough for Australians?
HOWARD: I think people do want to feel comfortable and relaxed.
JACKSON: They don’t want to feel excited?
HOWARD: Well, you can’t possibly hope to feel excited about something unless you feel comfortable and familiar with it.
The show went to air two weeks before the election. The commentators and cartoonists jumped on the weakness of the Howard vision, highlighting the phrase ‘comfortable and relaxed’. The secretary of the union movement, Bill Kelty, publicly mocked Howard, calling him ‘the Captain Snooze of Australian politics’. Journalist Pamela Williams would later reveal what Howard’s senior adviser, Graeme Morris, wrote in his diary the day the program went to air: ‘Gaffe over tax policy; foot fault on Laws. FOUR CORNERS. LOSS — BIG TIME.’ Williams wrote that Howard’s advisers later ‘dismissed the program, calling it a typical ABC hatchet job. They expected nothing better and some privately vowed revenge when they got into government’.
But maybe the bland reassurance of the vision we aired was precisely what the electorate was craving after the unease and overexcitement of the Keating years. On 2 March 1996 the Coalition swept into power in a landslide victory, and John Howard would be the Prime Minister of Australia for the next 11 years.
Six months after taking office, John Howard cut the ABC’s budget by $60 million. It turned out the commitment not to cut the funding was ‘a non-core promise’. Four Corners colleague Jonathan Holmes joked darkly that the ABC should send me back to Canberra with a placard around my neck declaring: ‘YOU CAN HAVE HER. GIVE US BACK OUR $60 MILLION’.
INTERVIEWER: Would you ever agree to come back on Four Corners for a profile?
HOWARD: Yes, I think it’s an important program. I’m the Prime Minister, and the ABC’s an important Australian institution, and if I’m ever invited for that kind of program of course I would agree [pause] I might argue about the conditions but I’d certainly agree.
[Interview for Four Corners’ 40th anniversary program, 2001]
The next time I interviewed John Howard he was the Prime Minister of Australia, and there were conditions imposed; conditions that arguably Four Corners should not have agreed to. The story we were making was ‘Too Good to Be False’, a forensic account of who knew what and when, in relation to the Children Overboard affair. It went to air in March 2002, five months after the Prime Minister had told Australians that asylum seekers heading for Australia had thrown their children into the sea when intercepted by the navy. This shocking claim exploded into the 2001 election campaign, in which border protection was already a passionate and critical issue, and community reaction was huge.
PHILIP CLARK, RADIO 2GB: I was horrified, I think every parent would have been, about the image you had at the weekend of boat people throwing their children overboard. What was your reaction?
JOHN HOWARD: Well, my reaction was I don’t want in Australia people who throw their own children into the sea.
Three days after the alleged incident, pressed for evidence that it had indeed happened, the Defence Minister, Peter Reith, produced two photos. They showed women and children in the water being assisted by navy personnel, but that was all. That night the photos were shown on the ABC’s 7.30 Report, and senior naval officers were aghast. They knew immediately the photos had been taken the day after the throwing of children was alleged to have occurred, and that they were in fact photos of women and children being rescued, after their boat had sunk. The Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Chris Barrie, later told a Senate Estimates Committee that he personally phoned Peter Reith the next day and told him the photos were wrong, and that senior officers had doubts the incident had occurred at all.
Three weeks later the Australian’s Natalie O’Brien reported: ‘Christmas Islanders allege that naval officers told them that claims that asylum seekers had thrown children overboard during a confrontation last month with HMAS Adelaide were untrue.’ In addition to the photos, the government had talked of there being a video, but Defence Minister Reith knew it contained no evidence to back the claims. The day the O’Brien article was published the acting Chief of the Defence Forces, Air Marshal Angus Houston, rang Peter Reith to make it clear that ‘fundamentally there was nothing to suggest that women and children had been thrown in the water’.
Later that day Peter Reith phoned John Howard. The content of this call is critical. Did Reith tell Howard that he’d been advised by Defence ‘there was nothing’ to back the allegations that children were thrown into the sea? Howard and Reith say no. Months later Howard would agree, however, that Reith had raised doubts about the photos: ‘He indicated to me that there was some debate about whether they were the one day or the next … He just said there was doubt about it.’ The next day, at the National Press Club, two days before the election, the journalists knew nothing about these phone calls. But the ABC’s Fran Kelly put it to Howard that Defence sources were saying the photos were of people ‘in the water because the boat was sinking, not because people had been thrown overboard’. There was nothing in Howard’s answer indicating he knew of any doubts or debate about the photos; in fact he said nothing about the photos at all.
Five months later the content of Air Marshal Houston’s phone call to Reith finally became public. It was in this context that Four Corners sought an interview with Prime Minister Howard.
But there was a problem. The PM would not agree to an interview unless we agreed to his conditions. First, we would have exactly ten minutes of his time. Second, he would not do the interview until four days before the show was due to air. Third, we could not cut his interview into the show: it had to stand alone at the end of the program. Fourth, we had to run it all, uncut. Fifth, if we did run over time we could not cut it down unless his press secretary, Tony O’Leary, agreed the cut was ‘fair’.
We’d refused requests like this before. Four Corners makes documentary-style programs — that’s the distinctive format of the show — with interviews edited into them. If we agreed, our acquiescence would set a dangerous precedent. But at the same time we felt it was critical that we include Howard, in fairness and because the show raised questions that needed to be answered. Reluctantly we agreed to the terms, and it drove home the power that Howard had now gained. Opposition leaders have to work hard to get media coverage while Prime Ministers can pick and choose who they want to talk to, and how.
We began the interview and the clock started ticking down. It didn’t start well. In my first question I asked the Prime Minister if Peter Reith had told him there were doubts about the photos at their ‘meeting’. It was a slip; it had not been a meeting but a phone call, and I knew that. Howard corrected me and continued: ‘Mr Reith indicated to me there had been no advice contradicting the original advice. The main subject of our discussion at that time was the release of the video.’ Nothing about the photos, so I followed it up:
JACKSON: But you’ve indicated that you did discuss the photos.
HOWARD: Yes, I indicated there was an allusion to the debate — to the discussion about the photog
raphs, yes.
JACKSON: To their doubtful nature?
HOWARD: Look, I just repeat what I’ve said before.
JACKSON: Was it indicated to you there was any doubt that they were the wrong photos?
HOWARD: Look, I can only repeat what I’ve said before.
I knew the Prime Minister had previously admitted that Reith had told him there was doubt about the photos, and I was surprised, perhaps naively, and increasingly frustrated that he would not now say this. It was important.
JACKON: Well it’s an important issue, isn’t it?
HOWARD: Yes.
JACKSON: Because you were asked —
HOWARD: That’s why I am very careful in what I am saying because it is an important issue.
I asked five times about the photos and was still getting nowhere, but I couldn’t resist just one more try.
JACKSON: Fran Kelly put it to you that Defence Forces were saying they were the wrong photographs. Why didn’t you indicate at that stage that you’d discussed the photographs the night before and the issue had, in your words, ‘been raised’ with you?
HOWARD: Well, the reason, the reason why I’d moved on from the photographs —
JACKSON: But she was asking you about the photographs.
HOWARD: No, I’m sorry.
JACKSON: I mean, you might want to move on, but the whole of the Australian —
HOWARD: No, what I’d like to do is to be allowed to answer your question and not constantly interrupted. The reason why I gave the answer that I did to Fran Kelly was that in my mind, the important thing was the release of the video. And I don’t have anything to regret or retract about the answer that I gave to Fran Kelly.
At the end of the interview Howard was tetchy, but Tony O’Leary was pleased. Nothing had been clarified, let alone conceded. The ten minutes had been eaten up by going over the same ground or off at a tangent. I had interrupted too many times to try and stop this, and the look was bad. We’d gone a minute or two over the allocated time, but O’Leary didn’t care, as long as we did not cut out the start where I had made the slip. The Prime Minister insisted on that.
The reaction to the interview from viewers on our website forum was polarised:
Subject: Interview of John Howard post id: 1730 The person interviewing John Howard in this evening’s programme was treating John Howard in the same way that a lawyer would treat a criminal being charged with some offence — utterly disgraceful. The woman should be taught a few manners.
Subject: Liz you’re a dynamo post id: 1194 Thank you for doing what I suspect many would like to do is pin the PM down & make him answer the question directly, that he didn’t just shows his culpability in the whole affair.
I was disappointed. Not because I agree the encounter was a win for John Howard; that’s not the point. But because, despite my persistence, I never managed to get an answer to what still remains an unanswered question: What did Howard know about the photos? Why didn’t he disclose this? That was all I wanted to know.
JACKSON: Mr Latham has acknowledged that you’re a formidable opponent. He’s described you as ‘wily’, ‘cunning’ and ‘tough’. How would you describe him?
HOWARD: Inexperienced.
[‘The Contenders’, Four Corners, 5 October 2004]
Two years later, in 2004, we were back on the election campaign trail with Prime Minister Howard. We were in a Christian bookshop in Howard’s electorate, with his now familiar press secretary, Tony O’Leary. O’Leary told me there was no way Four Corners would get a Howard interview unless it was on the same conditions as the last time: an uncut interview played ‘as live’ at the end of the show. It was just as we had feared; the interview from ‘Too Good to Be False’ was cited as a precedent.
I explained it wasn’t possible, that that had been a one-off agreement. Furthermore it wouldn’t be fair to Opposition leader Mark Latham. The discussion got loud and heated, and other journalists were listening in. O’Leary was saying, ‘Well, you can’t have Howard then.’ I was saying that was a shame, as we were getting access to Latham for an hour and a half and so he’d be all through the show. It was typical minder-versus-media brinkmanship. The final outcome was as follows: We could have the interview with the PM, for 20 minutes. We could cut the interview into the program, but it had to be in an agreed number of unedited segments, up to a maximum of four. Deal done.
One of the major issues to be covered was the war in Iraq. Since I’d spoken with John Howard two years before, his government had sent Australian troops to fight in Iraq, in the face of opinion polls that showed the majority of Australians were opposed. Howard justified this commitment in an Address to the Nation, stressing the need to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction: ‘Not only is it inherently dangerous for a country such as Iraq with its appalling track record to have these weapons, but if Iraq is allowed to get away with it, other rogue States will believe they can do the same.’
By the time we did our interview it was clear to the world that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and the question of when our troops would come back had become a major election issue.
JACKSON: You told Australians that you knew that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. Do you think it’s time, now, to tell Australians you were wrong?
HOWARD: Well, the intelligence assessments haven’t been vindicated, but I made my statement based on the intelligence assessments.
JACKSON: I’m not disputing that. I’m just asking if it’s time, now, to say to Australians, ‘Look, looks like I was wrong.’ Can you say that to them?
HOWARD: Well, the intelligence assessments have turned out to be inaccurate, and I’ve said that, and I don’t intend to add to that.
JACKSON: You don’t intend to actually say, as Tony Blair has to the British public, ‘Look, I was wrong about it.’
HOWARD: I don’t know —
JACKSON: Don’t find — you can’t come at that?
HOWARD: The most recent thing that Mr Blair has said, but I make my own decisions based on my own assessments, much and all as I like Mr Blair, irrespective of what he says —
JACKSON: Can’t say, ‘I was wrong on that’?
HOWARD: [Does not answer question]
‘Does not answer question’ is what the interview transcript records, and it’s literally what happened. There was silence. John Howard simply sat there: not just declining to answer the question, declining to speak. He was displeased. It was tense as I sat and waited. Twelve seconds passed and he was still immobile and silent, so I moved on to another issue. When we put the rough cut of the show together, I included the full 12 seconds of silence. I thought it was compelling and revealed a man unable to concede an error. When the show went to air it was cut back to four seconds. The majority view, and the Executive Producer’s decision, was that it stood out too much, and opened us up to a charge of bias.
Two years later, the Prime Minister and I returned to the subject of Iraq, for a show timed for broadcast five years after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. Howard had been in Washington on the day and I was keen to know if he had ever thought there was any link between Iraq and 9/11. His response was meandering and evasive.
HOWARD: Well, when something like this happens you are looking for immediate information to try and fill in the picture; you’re looking for some kind of immediate explanation. I mean, I had seen President Bush the day before, and we had not talked about terrorism, and that’s an indication of how unprovoked it really was. I mean, let’s understand one thing very plainly — that this was the beginning of the world in which we have lived over the last five years.
JACKSON: But can I just re-ask the question, which was did you at any time think there was any —
HOWARD: Well, I’ve given you, I’ve given you my answer.
JACKSON: Yes, but specifically, did you at any time think there was any link between Iraq and the attacks on 9/11?
HOWARD: When this attack took place, as I said to you a mome
nt ago, you look for immediate information and explanations.
For my sins I kept trying, but the ensuing exchange hit the edit room floor:
JACKSON: At any point in the next —
HOWARD: No, no, no, well, well I’m, you can ask that question any time, any way you like, I’m giving you my answer.
JACKSON: Which is?
HOWARD: The one I’ve just given you.
JACKSON: Was that ‘a link’ or a ‘no link’ answer?
HOWARD: It was the answer I gave you.
It was the classic Howard stonewall: stand by an irrelevant answer, and then act as if it’s out of order for the interviewer to continue to question him on the subject. Sometimes, I concluded, the best you could do in a John Howard interview was to highlight the questions he would not answer, as a way of revealing the issues on which he could not concede he was wrong.
HOWARD: I accept full responsibility for the Coalition’s defeat.
[John Howard’s concession speech, 24 November 2007]
It needs to be said that to his credit, Prime Minister John Howard almost always agreed to be interviewed on Four Corners. He was generous in his praise for the show. Many other politicians — Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating come to mind — were not so amenable. The only program I was involved in where he refused to take part was the last major show we made about him, ‘Howard’s End’. It went to air in early 2008, after John Howard lost not only the 2007 election but his own seat of Bennelong — a humiliating outcome. He spoke to no media outlets at the time.
On election night we were at the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney, and by 9pm the result was clear. We waited ready to film Howard arriving to give his concession speech. He appeared, riding up the elevator, a fixed smile on his face, his wife, Janette, by his side, and strode head high into the ballroom. The crowd of supporters closed in on him as he made his way to the podium, past the banner which said ‘JOHN HOWARD FOREVER’, where the ‘A’ in Howard was a love heart. Voices called from the throng, ‘We love you, John … we love you, Johnny.’ He raised his arms and lowered them, to hush the crowd.
The Stories That Changed Australia: 50 Years of Four Corners Page 18