by John Howard
From the moment I returned to the leadership, I had established a good relationship between my office and the federal secretariat of the Liberal Party, which meant that a smooth Liberal election campaign was in prospect. Nicole Feeley, who had been with me for several years when I was shadow minister for Industrial Relations, headed up my office. I was delighted when Arthur Sinodinos, who had been with me in my previous turnout as Opposition leader, agreed to come back as principal economic advisor and general policy counsellor early in 1995. Later, in government, he would be my chief of staff for nine years of my prime ministership. His work in that position was outstanding. He gave superb leadership to my office. Grahame Morris, an old friend and trusted confidant, transferred from Alexander Downer’s staff to mine. I also hired Tony O’Leary, a press gallery veteran. Collectively they represented an effective group and we also had the great resource of Michael L’Estrange’s advice. Michael had worked on both Hewson’s and Downer’s staffs as a policy advisor, but had agreed to serve as executive director of the Menzies Research Centre in 1995. This did not prevent him helping out with some speech drafting and other political counselling.
I was also determined that the ‘small l’ Liberal section of the party felt fully included. Robert Hill, by virtue of his being Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, as well as his intellectual capacity, was always the most influential figure in this group. He had been very reluctant about my return to the leadership. Like everyone else, though, he wanted to make it work. I set out, over time, to build a closer relationship with him, taking the opportunity, even when it was not strictly necessary, to consult him on policy and other matters. I am sure that Hill sensed what I was doing, and in his own way he responded positively. This process continued after we won government. The trust built between the two of us was an important ingredient in the remarkable cohesion of the party during our years in government.
I had seen the Liberal Party lose too many state elections despite a big swing its way, because we had poor candidates in the marginal seats that mattered. Accordingly, I set out, especially in New South Wales, to overturn some original candidate selections to ensure we had the best possible people; there was too much at stake. The gutsy and likeable Bill Heffernan, NSW Liberal president (later a senator), a good and loyal friend of mine, was of huge help. The new candidates installed included Bob Baldwin and Joanna Gash, who remain MPs. We also ensured that John Fahey, the former NSW Premier, became the candidate in the winnable seat of Macarthur. Charlie Lynn, originally chosen in that seat, is a Liberal stalwart in the NSW Legislative Council.
Paul Keating allowed his animosity towards me to cloud his judgement when he refused me a lift on his VIP plane to the funeral of the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It was a time for bipartisan expression of grief. Rabin’s murder, on 4 November 1995, was a tragic event, taking the life of a courageous man who, whilst defending his country’s interests, had worked very hard for a long-term peace settlement in the Middle East. Keating thought that he was being clever keeping me off the plane. The public thought him petty. Travelling with Keating on the VIP flight was the only way I could have got to the funeral in time.
The election had to be held early in 1996, but the actual date, which almost certainly was going to be in March or April, was naturally at the discretion of Paul Keating. The Howard family journeyed to Hawks Nest once again, knowing that its holiday would be interrupted on this occasion, for certain, by the need to return to Sydney and learn our son Tim’s Higher School Certificate results. They turned out to be extremely good, and the family celebrated Tim achieving all that he had wanted, in the knowledge that he would gain admission to the university course which was his first preference.
Literally, it was whilst walking along Hawks Nest beach that I developed the idea of earmarking part of the proceeds of the Telstra sale towards the environment. I knew that we had to work a little harder on our environmental credentials to counter the ALP in this area. The federal director, Andrew Robb, had collaborated with various environmental groups to secure a better preference deal come the poll. To me, and also the Coalition’s environmental spokesman, Senator Rod Kemp, committing some $1 billion of the proceeds of the one-third sale of Telstra shares towards establishing a natural heritage trust would attract a lot of support. When I announced the $1 billion fund in the campaign, it received accolades from the Wilderness Society and others. It also made our Telstra policy more appealing.
On 27 January, Paul Keating announced that the election would be held on 2 March 1996. The announcement of an election date, when you are in opposition, is a huge moment of relief. Finally, there is something definite. For many years now, election campaigns in Australia have been very presidential, and I knew that from that moment on, most of the responsibility for the Coalition’s fortunes would rest with me.
We were well prepared. Over previous weeks, we had spent days locked in my Sydney office, constantly ordering in pizza, putting together a detailed economic manifesto in which we had carefully costed all of our individual commitments. Eight of us, comprising the senior parliamentary leadership, plus key advisors, had toiled well together, and I was extremely proud of the watertight nature of our financial documents. Peter Costello had done an excellent job, carefully tabulating the cost of everything and making sure that we had an explanation for every dollar that we were committed to spend.
I wanted a big initiative on taxation assistance for families as the popular centrepiece of my campaign launch. I felt strongly that the taxation system had become increasingly mean in the support it provided to Australian parents towards the cost of raising their children. Our policy involved an increase in the tax-free threshold for each child in a taxpayer’s family, with a further proviso that if a family were a single-income one, the tax-free threshold for the breadwinner would be lifted by an extra $2500. The objective was to give extra help to all families with children, and some further help to single-income families, which I believed had been poorly treated over the years.
There would be two head-to-head debates between Paul Keating and me, with a minor skirmish over who would moderate these debates. I flatly refused to have Kerry O’Brien of the ABC, because of the way he had handled the second Keating–Hewson debate in 1993. I plumped for the debates to be held at the Channel Nine studios in Sydney and to be moderated by Ray Martin. On my calculation the first debate was a draw, with the advantage for me being that I had been seen to match the Prime Minister. By contrast I felt that, using a good deal more aggression, I beat Keating in the second debate. I believed that my success in that debate resulted in the final box being ticked for some undecided voters. My son Tim gave me good advice which helped in the second debate. He told me to control the twitch which sometimes developed in my right shoulder when I was under pressure. I did.
We had some campaign glitches, including two successive stumbles (literally) by me at a women’s policy launch. For one horrible moment I thought that I had badly sprained my right ankle. Also, on the John Laws radio program, I wasn’t sufficiently across the fine detail of an aspect of our tax policy.
I was supplied with the nightly tracking research, which showed that the Coalition started the campaign in a strong position and, although there were fluctuations, maintained a healthy lead in the key marginal seats throughout.
Once again, for me there was field evidence. On this occasion it was found in the electorate of Leichhardt, in far north Queensland, based on the city of Cairns. That seat had fallen to Labor in 1983 and had been held thus ever since. The Liberal candidate was a colourful crocodile farmer, Warren Entsch, whose unconventional habits and larrikin style appealed to many uncommitted voters. His campaign had organised a small-business breakfast at the Cairns International Hotel on 13 February. There was a huge turnout, and the sense of excitement and enthusiasm was quite infectious. Those present just could not wait for election day. I felt for the first time in more than a decade the Liberal Party had really rec
laimed its natural small-business base. Small business is the absolute economic backbone of rural and provincial cities, and for our prospects in Leichhardt this breakfast was most encouraging.
Such campaign glitches as the Coalition had were minor compared with two big tactical mistakes made by Labor. Towards the end of the campaign there was a major rally for Keating in Melbourne, sponsored by the ACTU and addressed by Keating’s good friend Bill Kelty. No doubt carried away by their political and personal regard for each other, rhetoric overtook the occasion. Kelty’s firebrand, traditional-union-leader-type speech attracted plenty of headlines, but of the wrong kind. He made it clear that if the Coalition won the election, there would be a no-holds-barred wages campaign by the unions, irrespective of the economic consequences. This may have pleased the assembled throng, and the Prime Minister, but it was poison to the Australian public. It was precisely the kind of irresponsible union behaviour which middle Australia disliked. Kelty had done his friend no service, although I doubt that Keating himself realised it.
The Treasurer, Ralph Willis, was responsible for a big blunder right at the end of the campaign. Anonymously, he received copies of letters purportedly written by Jeff Kennett to Peter Costello objecting to plans by the Coalition to cut payments to the states. We had no such plans, and the letters were fakes. His decision to punt on the veracity of this material badly damaged Labor right on the death knock. It smacked of a desperate government clutching at anything. It was out of character for Ralph Willis, and I remain completely mystified about the source of those fraudulent documents. I was furious as I entered a news conference to denounce the letters as fakes. Michelle Grattan of the Age said to Grahame Morris, who accompanied me, ‘You’re dead, cobber.’ After hearing my angry denial, she said to him on the way out, ‘You’re still alive, cobber.’
Years of disappointment and successive defeats had robbed me of the capacity to expect other than a narrow victory. Despite the polls and the enthusiasm of our supporters, I kept calculating in my mind, as I visited booth after booth in my electorate of Bennelong on 2 March, the handful of seats we would probably just win in New South Wales and Queensland in order to get us across the line. On election day, I did not imagine the scale of the Coalition’s victory. We had thought that we would win comfortably in 1993 and didn’t. Why would that not happen again? When so much hangs on an event, the natural defence mechanisms of one’s emotions come into play.
Janette and I had taken a suite at the Inter-Continental hotel in Sydney. The plan was to watch the TV coverage there in a small group and then go to the nearby Wentworth Hotel for the formal speech. Tony Staley, the federal president, Nick Minchin, who had travelled for much of the campaign with my party, and of course Grahame Morris were all there with me to analyse the results as soon as they began trickling in. Janette, in another room within the suite, was entertaining a small group of friends, who we had invited to share what we hoped would be a very special occasion.
I was told, before the results started coming in, of the party’s exit polls, which indicated that we would have a big win. I did not take much notice of this, as we were too close to getting the real thing for it to matter.
There were two officials with computers from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) at the Inter-Continental hotel suite, and they began feeding us small-booth returns from about 6.25 pm. Famously, the very first result we spotted was from a booth near Portland, in rural New South Wales, in the electorate of Macquarie. It showed a swing of some 16 per cent to the Liberal Party, which cheered me hugely. Grahame Morris put a dampener on that by pointing out that the booth had only about 80 voters. It was not long, however, before this trend began to be repeated all over those parts of eastern Australia where counting had commenced at 6 pm Eastern Standard Summer Time. South Australia and Queensland would respectively be half-an-hour and an hour behind. Some time shortly after 7 pm, it was apparent that the Coalition had won, although the size of its victory would grow as the evening wore on. The swing in Queensland was massive, with the Coalition recording 60.2 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote. On neither side of politics has that been bettered since Federation, although it was matched by the Coalition in 1975.
As the counting continued I wandered to the larger room, where our guests had assembled and were, by then, in a state of high excitement. I kept going to a television set to check on the count, and was struck by two results which dramatised the scale of our victory. The first was in the Sutherland Shire-based Sydney seat of Hughes, where the Liberal Danna Vale had secured an 11.3 per cent swing to unseat the sitting Labor member and Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Robert Tickner. This was an especially pleasing result as Tickner epitomised the politically correct left of the Labor Party. Whenever the Coalition disagreed with his proposals for Indigenous people, he would suggest that our position was based on prejudice or discrimination.
The other remarkable result, also in Sydney, was the 11.8 per cent swing which Jackie Kelly secured in the outer-western-suburbs seat of Lindsay. As someone who had spent all of his life in Sydney, I found it extraordinary to contemplate that Penrith and St Marys would be represented in the national parliament by a Liberal.
We were to claim victory with a majority of 45 seats over the ALP in a house of 148, a truly amazing result and way beyond my best hopes and certainly any of my rational expectations. Five independents had been elected, three of whom — Pauline Hanson, Allan Rocher and Paul Filing — were former Liberals. At 9.30 pm we all watched Keating’s concession speech and our guests then departed for the nearby Wentworth Hotel. I sat alone for a moment to compose some remarks for my victory speech.
I was overwhelmed with exhilaration and pride. My hand shook as I jotted down some notes. It was an immensely satisfying moment, and one for which I had been well prepared. True it was that as a political warrior I felt gratitude that at long last the Labor Party, which had won several elections it did not deserve, had been bundled out of office in a thumping fashion. I was, however, immediately aware that I had become the nation’s 25th prime minister — a special privilege of which I remain conscious to this day. I thought of all those people who had stayed with me with through thick and thin and continued to believe that I could make it to the top. Janette and our three children and broader family, of course, were first amongst these. As well there were so many close friends and staff who had toiled for this day and I hoped would be with me for some years into the future in the great experience of governing Australia.
I had not given any thought to what I might say in my victory speech until just before I left to travel to the Wentworth Hotel. I knew innately that, if we were successful, I would not find it hard to make the speech.
It was a simple speech in which I thanked the people of Australia for the privilege they had given me, paid appropriate tribute to Paul Keating, and thanked everyone who had supported our campaign. I promised to govern for all Australians, but made it clear that we would not be a pale imitation of our predecessors and would make the changes which we believed Australia needed.
I had not received a private telephone call from Paul Keating conceding defeat before he made his speech, nor did I receive one from Kim Beazley in 1998. This well-mannered habit, in my experience, did not commence until 2001 when Beazley telephoned me. Latham repeated the gesture in 2004, and in 2007 I telephoned Rudd, conceding defeat.
After my victory speech in 1996, I mingled with the hundreds of delirious supporters who had gathered in the Wentworth Hotel to savour this long-overdue victory for the Liberal and National parties. Following a congratulatory call from the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jim Bolger, I and my family went back to the Inter-Continental, where we partied with close friends and supporters until 2.30 on Sunday morning. It was very hard to sleep after all of that. In any event, Janette and I rose early and went to church at the family place of worship, St Giles’ Anglican Church in Greenwich, where our three children had been confirmed. The closing hymn was ‘Be T
hou My Vision O Lord of My Life’.
With the benefit of hindsight, it was so clear that once the Liberal Party stabilised its leadership, defeat of the Keating Government was as inevitable as anything in politics can ever be. In contemporary times, any term of office for a national government beyond a decade is very hard to secure. Labor received an unexpected bonus with its victory in 1993, and many believe that it should have been defeated in 1990, given the state of the Australian economy.
Paul Keating had contributed very directly to his government’s defeat. On the economic front, his scorecard was dismal. At the time of the election, unemployment was still at 8.2 per cent; interest rates, although having begun to fall, were still very high; and many small businesses felt that the recession had never really lifted. Beyond this, though, he was, to many Australians, remote from and uninterested in their routine concerns. His preoccupation with converting Australia into a republic, his version of reconciliation with Indigenous Australia, which struck so many Australians as being an abject apology for white civilisation rather than a genuine desire to include Indigenous people in the mainstream of the nation, and his total preoccupation with Asia were discordant priorities, and completely removed from the needs of their daily lives.
A metaphor for Keating’s attitude to Asia, and in particular Indonesia, had been his febrile excitement when he concluded secret negotiations for a security treaty with Indonesia just before Christmas 1995. He really believed that this would be seen by the Australian public as a masterstroke of diplomacy. I took an excited, indeed breathless, phone call from Gareth Evans, who informed me, in utmost secrecy, of course, that the treaty had been concluded and was about to be announced.