by John Howard
Tom Hughes came from a well-known family of Sydney’s eastern suburbs. He had served in the RAAF in World War II. He was intelligent and engaging. I took an instant liking to him, and we have remained friends ever since. His Bellevue Hill address did not bother the Liberal locals in Parkes. They liked the way in which he quickly adapted his speaking style from the courtroom to the back of a truck.
Tom had close links with the Packer family, which led to him being dubbed ‘Packer’s pea for Parkes’. He enlisted their help to produce a local campaign newspaper, called the Parkes Examiner. I spent several hours, a week out from the election, in the office of the now defunct magazine the Bulletin, with Clyde Packer, elder brother of Kerry, Tom Hughes and Tom’s younger brother, Robert, working on the newspaper. Robert was at that time quite an accomplished cartoonist. Clyde Packer’s editorial skill did wonders with the copy written by Tom and me.
The incumbent Labor member for Parkes, Leslie Haylen, had a left-wing reputation. He had visited China, and we decided on a cartoon which depicted Haylen dancing arm in arm with the Chinese leader, Mao Zedong. They were doing the ‘Peking two-step’. This was 1963 after all; the Cold War was still in full swing, and consorting with the Chinese communist leadership was not calculated to impress middle Australia.
The 1963 election took place under the shadow of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. ‘Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?’ forever and a day would become a question asked of my generation. I was at home in Earlwood, about to leave and meet Tom Hughes in the Campsie shopping centre for some campaigning. My brother Bob telephoned me at about 8.30 am, and said simply, ‘Kennedy has been shot dead in Dallas.’ What more could be said! When I arrived at the campaign headquarters on the way to the Campsie shopping centre, volunteers had already assembled to help with pamphlet distribution. One of them, Roddy Meagher, a brilliant barrister who went on to become a much-admired judge of the Court of Appeal in New South Wales, speculated about the possibility of the Russians taking advantage of the situation.
Whatever one’s politics, and whatever one’s opinion of the quality of Kennedy’s presidency at that time, it was impossible to shake the view that a remarkably talented and attractive young president, offering much hope for the future, had been cut down before he really had a chance to prove himself.
In 1964, as NSW Young Liberal leader, I was a delegate to the federal council meeting of the party in Canberra in April. It was a memorable event for me, as it included my one and only meeting with Sir Robert Menzies. It was at the traditional cocktail party for federal council delegates at the Lodge hosted by the Prime Minister. He was a big man, with a commanding presence, who chatted amiably with the six Young Liberals present. The great man demonstrated his reputed passion for martinis by mixing some for his guests.
There was an unhealthy air of smug self-satisfaction at that 1964 Federal Council meeting. Several speeches, including one from Menzies himself, suggested that the Liberal Party would remain in office indefinitely. As things turned out it was to be more than eight years before the party finally lost, but nonetheless the tone seemed wrong. Perhaps I was not sufficiently attuned to the ‘natural party of government’ sentiment amongst Liberals from Victoria. Henry Bolte had been Premier since 1955 and the Liberals would hold office in that state for a further 18 years.
By contrast, Labor seemed to have an iron grip on power in New South Wales. Moreover, there had been a very heavy swing against the Liberal Party in New South Wales at the 1961 federal election, prior to the 1963 resurgence. By contrast, again despite the recession, the Liberal Party had given no ground to Labor at the 1961 election in Victoria. This had been due, overwhelmingly, to the great bulk of DLP preferences flowing to Menzies.
The DLP emerged from the great Labor split of the mid-1950s, which played a major role in keeping Labor from office until 1972. The split was caused by a clash between, on the one hand, Labor trade unionists and branch members worried about communist influence in the unions and, on the other hand, the rest of the ALP, who regarded the activities of those worried about communist influence as having ulterior motives, subversive to the true interests of the Labor Party.
Those concerned about communist influence banded together in what were called industrial groups, in turn strongly supported by a Catholic lay organisation known as the Movement, led by B.A. (Bob) Santamaria, certainly the most influential person in post-World War II politics never to serve in parliament. Possessed of high intelligence and strong Catholic beliefs, he was a compelling and articulate critic of communism within both the ALP and elsewhere. He was a person for whom I developed enormous respect.
In 1955 the ALP’s National Conference declared membership of the industrial groups as out of bounds for ALP members. Many rank-and-file branch members, especially in Victoria, reacted against this and left the Labor Party. Seven federal Labor MPs resigned to form a new parliamentary Party, later called the DLP. As most Catholics then supported the Labor party, the split caused huge tension within the Church. Senior prelates took different positions: Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne backed the DLP, whereas his Sydney counterpart, Cardinal Norman Gilroy, urged Catholics to ‘stay in [the ALP] and fight’.
The new party, at first called the Labor Party (Anti-Communist) made a crucial decision to give its second preferences to the Coalition ahead of the ALP when Menzies called an early election for late in 1955, in part to capitalise on the ALP split. Menzies had already seen the split destroy Victoria’s Cain Labor Government; this catapulted Henry Bolte to office, with the help of Labor Party (Anti-Communist) preferences in May 1955. This preference decision was largely justified by the belief of the new party that the ALP’s foreign policy was not sufficiently anti-communist. Even though all of the seven MPs who had resigned from the ALP lost their seats to the Labor Party in the 1955 poll, that preference decision had far-reaching consequences. It conferred a huge advantage on the Liberal Party in marginal seats, not only in 1955 but also in subsequent elections. Normally 90 per cent of DLP preferences flowed to Liberals.
Many Liberals hung on in circumstances where they would otherwise have lost. This made the decisive difference in the 1961 election, which saw a huge swing against the Menzies Government, resulting in its majority being reduced from 32 at the 1958 election, to just two. Amazingly, in Victoria, where the DLP presence was greatest, the Liberal Party did not lose a single seat. In other states, Coalition seats tumbled. The DLP had saved Bob Menzies. He and other Liberals, such as Malcolm Fraser, never forgot this.
In July of 1964 I gave up the leadership of the Young Liberals and went overseas, following the familiar Australian pattern of the time. Go to London, work for a while, then ‘do Europe’, return home. Although I added, atypically then, visits to India and Israel on the way across and a period of weeks in Canada and the United States on the way home. In London I worked for solicitors at Ilford, Essex. This frequently took me to the Stratford Magistrates Court, in East London, putting me in touch with a cross-section of Londoners. Representing people charged with all manner of offences was a huge experience, one that I would like to have pursued for longer.
My time in London coincided with the election of the Labour Government led by Harold Wilson, in October 1964. The Conservatives had been in power for 13 years, having been returned to office under Winston Churchill in 1951. Naturally, I volunteered my services to the Conservative Party, and helped out in a very narrowly held Tory constituency in London, Holborn and St Pancras. Polling day was a cultural shock for an Australian. It was all about getting people out to vote, not handing out how-to-vote tickets at polling booths. Voting in Britain is not compulsory. I spent hours running up and down flights of stairs of council flats in inner London, knocking on the doors of people believed to be Conservative voters, reminding them to vote. I was still on this round at 9.30 pm, and given that the polling booths closed at 10 pm, I developed a diminishing belief that the assurances I would receive that ‘She�
�ll be right, gov’ meant anything. The Tories lost Holborn and St Pancras.
Winston Churchill died whilst I was living in London, and I watched his funeral procession from Ludgate Hill with an English girlfriend. Returning to her home, I then, with her family, viewed a marvellous speech by our own Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, delivered from the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral. Menzies’ eloquence and sense of history deeply impressed this small English gathering, and left an Australian supporter feeling very proud.
The Britain I experienced was a nation in clear economic decline; worse than that, it had begun to lose that priceless quality of self-belief. I would not return to Britain for another 13 years when, as a junior minister in the Fraser Government, I paid a short visit. The process that I had sensed in 1964 was much further advanced in 1977.
It was to take that remarkable woman Margaret Thatcher to turn around her nation. I don’t remember her promising any revolutions during her 1979 election campaign. She did, however, deliver one in many areas of British life. The most important one was that of self-belief. She restored Britain’s pride and sense of achievement, as well as her economy.
My brief visit to the United States, on the way home from Europe, had me staying at Columbia University in New York with my cousin Glenda Felton (later Adams), who years later would win the Miles Franklin award with her book Dancing on Coral. It was well into 1965 by the time of my visit, and already mounting opposition to American involvement in Vietnam could be felt on university campuses. Not long before, the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr, had grabbed national consciousness. The enthusiasm of student bodies for the civil rights cause was strong and widespread.
When I returned to Australia I found that a full-scale debate was under way, not only about Australia’s involvement, side by side with the United States, in the war in Vietnam, but also about the decision of the Menzies Government, early in 1965, to bring in conscription to obtain the necessary numbers of troops to meet our country’s commitment. This debate was to continue for another seven years, until all of Australia’s combat troops had been withdrawn from South Vietnam. In that time a huge shift in public opinion took place.
Although the introduction of conscription was always a touchy subject, the Australian public began by endorsing the sending of troops to fight with the Americans. Support for the American alliance was strong; in addition, most Australians broadly accepted the so-called domino theory, namely that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, then others might follow, and this could bring potential aggressors closer to Australia.
In 1966 Lyndon Johnson became the first serving American President to visit Australia. He received an enthusiastic reception, and at the federal election at the end of the year the Coalition, led by Harold Holt (who had replaced Menzies as Liberal leader in January 1966), won with a significantly increased majority. Although there remained controversy over conscription, the war itself still attracted support; Holt benefited from that. Over time that would change. As the conflict dragged on, seemingly without end, domestic support for Australia’s commitment declined, and with a spitefulness of which this country should be ashamed, many of those opposed to our military support of South Vietnam vented their hostility towards our soldiers.
Labor’s defeat brought Arthur Calwell’s leadership of the Labor Party to an end and delivered stewardship of the opposition to Gough Whitlam, whose intellect, energy and modernity were to transform the Labor Party and make it an election-winning force.
After my return to Australia I re-entered Liberal Party activities wholeheartedly, and within a few months was back on the state executive, not as a Young Liberal but as a representative of the full membership of the party; this was a big step forward, once again putting me at the centre of the party’s affairs in New South Wales. My association with John Carrick strengthened, as it did with Eric Willis, deputy Liberal leader and, by then, a senior minister in the newly elected Askin Government.
From 1967 onwards, I began to participate in debates on Australia’s involvement in Vietnam. Before long they included opponents such as Jim Cairns, the federal Labor MP and future deputy prime minister, who was a relentless critic of the Australian commitment. These were tough encounters, before large and normally hostile audiences, but the political experience was priceless. Many of them were at universities, and they were sometimes euphemistically called ‘teach-ins’.
The bulk of the audiences were strongly opposed to our being in Vietnam. Many academics were active in their criticism of the war. Often they comprised the most vocal part of an audience, asking hostile but effective questions. It is impossible to exaggerate the extent to which this experience hardened me for later political life. Being booed and cat-called by hundreds of students in my late 20s, and receiving abuse delivered without a skerrick of good humour, was not only rigorous training for later public life, it also forced me to confront and be satisfied of the strength of my own beliefs on issues. By 1968 Vietnam had begun to deeply divide the Australian community. There were bitter feelings on the conflict which would only intensify as time passed.
3
DRUMMOYNE
During 1967 I decided to seek the Liberal Party’s nomination for the state seat of Drummoyne. A redistribution of electoral boundaries carried out in 1966 had made the seat winnable for the Liberal Party. A very pro-Labor slice had been removed from the electorate, leaving a small but useful Liberal majority, based on the results obtained in the 1965 election. The electorate was comprised of the suburbs of Drummoyne, Five Dock, Abbotsford, Haberfield and Croydon, all inner-western suburbs of Sydney.
Although my real goal was federal politics, I had the naïve belief that a seat in state parliament was a stepping stone to Canberra. It might have been so in the earlier days of Federation, but it became increasingly less so from the ’60s onwards.
Also at that time, I saw a superficial connection between most of the law I was practising, such as dealing with commercial leases, other property transactions and common law matters, and state politics. State parliaments enacted most of the laws on which I gave advice.
I was encouraged to seek the Drummoyne nomination by both John Carrick and Eric Willis, who had held the seat of Earlwood since 1950. Through my activities in the local Young Liberals and ordinary party branches in the area, I had come to know Willis extremely well. I liked him a lot. He became something of a public patron of mine, and openly encouraged me to run for Drummoyne. He was Askin’s deputy and heir apparent for nine years. In 1976 he served briefly as premier, then lost narrowly to Neville Wran, after having called an election way too early.
I won the preselection for Drummoyne and set about campaigning for the seat. What I had not taken into calculation was the immense popularity and appeal of the sitting Labor member for Drummoyne, Reg Coady. He was a likeable, knockabout and hard-working local member. Partly crippled with polio at an early age, he continued, as a bachelor, to live in the old family home in Leichhardt. He had been an official in the union representing brewery workers and was a classic example of the committed Irish-Catholic working-class member of the Labor Party.
Whenever we met, he killed me with kindness, never saying anything critical of me. On the upcoming election his standard public lament was that because of the redistribution he had no hope of winning. It worked a treat. After a few months it was obvious to me that I’d face a real uphill battle to win the seat.
There was a lot of local resentment within the Liberal Party at my having won the preselection. Most of it came from a number of aldermen on the local council who had contested the preselection. Although I moved into the area, I continued to be regarded as an outsider, and a young, inexperienced one at that. Everywhere I went I was told what a decent, hard-working man Reg Coady was. This came back to me even from hardened Liberals.
I sensed that many people thought it unfair Coady might be removed as the member. And even some strong Liberals thought that they could have both a
state Liberal Government and Reg Coady as their local member. The local Liberal Party branches were small, but willing to help. Many of my friends and family members came to assist in the campaign, but at no stage did I feel that I had gained any traction. I would comfort myself by regularly looking at the figures from the 1965 election, which showed that I should win.
The election was scheduled for 28 February 1968. It had been just under three years since the election of the Askin Government, and there was a widespread belief that the Government would gain ground against Labor at the election. Three seats, including Drummoyne, were generally regarded as near-certain wins for the Government. It had performed well during its first three years. Having been in office for almost 25 years before its defeat, the Labor Party was seen as tired and needing fresh blood at the top.
One of the other seats thought to be an easy Liberal win was the newly created seat of Fuller, which adjoined Drummoyne, and for which Peter Coleman, the journalist and former editor of the Bulletin magazine, had been chosen. I could not know it at the time, but both Coleman and the seat of Fuller would touch my life considerably in the future. Fuller included suburbs such as Gladesville, Hunters Hill and East Ryde, all within the federal electorate of Bennelong.
Reg Coady achieved a swing of about 3 per cent, which was contrary to a state-wide movement to the Liberals elsewhere, and held Drummoyne by 839 votes. Given the general result, it was a remarkable performance and a tribute to his hard work and popularity as a local member. It was a grim night for me and my supporters. When the first tally came in from a booth in Haberfield, then a pro-Liberal area, the sign was ominous. Malcolm Mackay, the federal member for the area, was with me that night and flinched at that first result. He lived in Haberfield, and would himself face the voters within a year or 18 months.