by John Howard
I knew that we faced a big challenge to hold the seat. The margin in 1998 had been 4.3 per cent. In a by-election that was a thin buffer. Naturally the public attitude is different when the vacancy is due to the death of a sitting member. But there had not been many by-elections in recent years and the Government felt vulnerable, given the multiple challenges it had faced during the first six months of 2001. Fortunately the Victorian division found and endorsed a first-class candidate in Chris Pearce. He came from the area, had an engaging and fully committed wife and family and had good small-business experience in computers. He really did fit the Aston bill.
As observed earlier, the quality of a candidate in a by-election is just so crucial. The media exposure is huge. A dud candidate can be hidden in a general election but in a by-election that is impossible. Chris Pearce was able to handle the media and embrace the general campaign themes remarkably speedily.
Kim Beazley was of unexpected assistance during the campaign for the Aston seat. For reasons best known to himself, he decided to allow Barry Jones to talk in general terms about his plans for science and technology. Jones had chaired a task group developing the policy. His presentation consisted of myriad interconnecting concepts held together by what was derisively called spaghetti lines. It quickly acquired the description of Noodle Nation and was a huge embarrassment for Labor.
Another gaffe came directly from Kim Beazley. A few days out from the by-election he said that he did not think Australians were overtaxed. The interview in which he made this statement was open to the interpretation that he might support higher taxation so as to fund more infrastructure investment. Such an attitude was completely out of touch with the aspirations of the people of Aston. It was quintessentially a middle Australian electorate. The people were concerned about their mortgages, their children’s education and health and the wellbeing of their elderly parents. Beazley’s remarks seemed a mile away from their concerns.
Although both the candidate and the Victorian Liberals had done all they could have, I approached the by-election on 14 July with considerable trepidation. That evening I attended the final match between the Wallabies and the touring British and Irish Lions at the Telstra Stadium in Sydney. The Lions had won the first Test in Brisbane, with Australia reversing that outcome in Melbourne. The Sydney game was a decider and, being an enthusiastic follower of the Wallabies, I was keen to be there. Aston, though, was very much on my mind. The first results phoned through to me by Lynton Crosby suggested that the swing against us was insufficient to lose the seat. This was tremendous news. At the close of counting that night, both the figures and the projections suggested that Chris Pearce would narrowly win the seat.
By any measure this had been an impressive result for the Coalition. Certainly there had been a swing of some 3.5 per cent against us but, in all of the circumstances, that was really quite a small movement. We had been in government for more than five years and had passed through many difficult months with a lot of controversial decisions.
I knew, and what is more I knew that Kim Beazley knew, that Labor should have taken the seat. If Labor could not, in a by-election, win a seat such as Aston, then it had limited appeal to middle Australia. If after five years our support was holding in electorates such as Aston, then we had a real prospect of hanging on when the election came at the end of the year. There was considerable latent respect for the Government.
The next day was the first episode of the ABC’s Sunday-morning television program The Insiders. From a combination of campaigning and barracking for the Wallabies I had picked up a dose of laryngitis. Interviewed from Kirribilli House, my voice was croaky. I was, nonetheless, able to say that the Liberal Party, as a result of Aston, was ‘back in the game’.
The other lesson out of Aston was for the Labor Party. Kim Beazley had hitched his star to negativity. He had now led the Labor Party for more than five years. Although he had given it early cohesion and credibility, the time had long since passed for him to declare what a future Labor Government would do. Negativity and being the nice guy worked for a number of years. By July 2001 it had begun to wear thin.
The Aston outcome was a huge tonic for the Liberal Party. It restored my colleagues’ self-belief. Once again they felt that we could win at the end of the year. They had renewed faith in our message and the conviction that good policy in the end has a generous political dividend.
Within weeks our world would be turned on its head. In Australia there were the events surrounding the turning back of the Tampa at the end of August and, of course, there was the horror of 11 September, which introduced the 21st century to the experience of terrorism at the hands of Islamic extremists.
The very magnitude of these happenings meant that the Government’s critics would seek to explain away Labor’s defeat in November 2001 entirely by reference to them. It is true that the Government’s position was strengthened by the stand it took to turn back the rising tide of illegal immigration. We won public support because we did the right thing in the national interest. Our swift response, alongside the Americans, to the terrorist attack of 11 September was widely supported. To the public, this was a Government willing to act decisively in a difficult situation.
That having been said, nothing can gainsay the fact that at the beginning of August 2001, the Coalition had largely resurrected its political support. For close to eight months it had responded in an intelligent, targeted fashion to legitimate areas of concern within the community. It had displayed a sensitivity which its critics claimed it lacked. All the while the Labor Party had simply assumed that it could continue to ‘surf to victory’ off the back of a negative attack on one of the Government’s greatest reforms.
Whilst never a completely reliable guide, the published opinion polls for 2001 offered some perspective. For the first five months of the year, Newspoll showed a clear lead for Labor, with the opposition’s primary-vote lead hitting 13 per cent in March. By June the Coalition had begun to reconnect. There was very little between the parties when MV Tampa sailed over the horizon at the end of August. My response to the Tampa did give the Coalition a big lift in the polls, but if the Liberal and National parties had not proved responsive to public concerns on other issues, the public verdict on Tampa could well have been more cynical.
The real story of 2001 was that the policy indolence of the Labor Party, coupled with the policy responsiveness of the Coalition, meant that when the remarkable events of August and September unfolded, Labor was already off balance and completely overwhelmed by them. If the Coalition had not acted on petrol, the BAS, older Australians, the temporary housing slump and other issues, its lack of political credibility could well have coloured, in particular, the public response to its dramatic handling of the asylum-seeker challenge.
The Coalition won the general election on 10 November with an increased majority. I deal again with this elsewhere. The firm line we took on border protection and the clarity and vigour of our support for the Americans in responding to the attacks of 11 September garnered wide public support. The two combined to add to an already solid base of support for the Coalition in the Australian community.
If the Tampa had not come into the picture and 11 September had never taken place I still believe that the Coalition would have been returned at the 2001 election. Its majority would probably have been lower.
The Australian public felt that after five years we had governed well. The economy continued to grow quite vigorously. Unemployment was down, and despite the teething problems produced by such a big structural change, taxation reform had been embraced and, ultimately supported, by the Australian people.
Added to this Labor was seen as unconvincing. There was no shortage of people willing to say that Kim Beazley was a ‘good bloke’. His convictions, though, were elusive. He demonstrated this himself when, during the election campaign, his party ran television advertisements blandly stating that he stood for general improvements in health and education. The advertisemen
ts actually had him saying, ‘That is what I stand for.’
It was legitimate of Beazley’s critics to ask the question, why on earth have you not established that in the eyes of the Australian public after five-and-a-half years? The explanation was that Beazley and the Labor Party totally misread the 1998 election. They saw it as substantially a negative reaction to the GST, and all that was needed for them to return to power was to enjoy the political benefits of the GST being, in their eyes, a ‘slow burner’. This was not only a misinterpretation of the reasons for the swing against us in 1998 but also the open-mindedness of the Australian people to an essential, although irritating, reform.
The Coalition had won the public debate on the GST. What Kim Beazley and his colleagues completely overlooked was that there had been two to three decades of debate about the desirability of changing Australia’s taxation system. Finally, a government had done something about it. The Australian public discovered, despite the aggravations of implementation, that the new system, so far from being the ogre depicted by its critics, was not only beneficial but carried with it quite significant reductions in personal income tax.
It is an iron law of politics in Australia and, I suspect, in other countries, that each election is quite different. The issues that defined and shaped an earlier campaign were almost entirely irrelevant to those of a later one. It was an iron law that the Australian Labor Party in 2001 had not carefully studied.
Writing in the Australian, two days after the 2001 election, Paul Kelly said that through 2001 I had accomplished one of the most stunning recoveries in the nation’s history. He said that a key ingredient had been my ability to penetrate and hold traditional Labor areas. Crucial to this had been the actions taken during 2001, as well as my resolute stance on asylum seekers and national security.
Kim Beazley gave up the Labor leadership after a second successive defeat. Simon Crean replaced him. Another feature of the 2001 election was the defeat of Cheryl Kernot, the former Democrats leader, who had dramatically defected to the ALP in 1997. It was also about this time that I resumed the habit of keeping a diary on major issues. There were to be plenty of them in the next six years.
31
WASHINGTON, 11 SEPTEMBER 2001
The graceful residence for the Australian ambassador in Washington, once owned by General George Patton, was the venue for a convivial barbecue late on Sunday afternoon, 9 September 2001, attended by the top echelon of the US Administration — Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, two judges of the Supreme Court and several other cabinet ministers; protocol precluded the President coming. The open personal warmth on that near-perfect late-summer day testified to the intimacy of an old and durable friendship which faced the world with hope and confidence — but blissfully unaware of what was about to hit. It was the lost ‘idle hill of summer’, but absent the distant drummer of Housman’s imagery.
Our host was Michael Thawley, newly Australia’s envoy to Washington, who had taken over from Andrew Peacock. Thawley proved outstanding in the job, with other ambassadors drooling at the access he obtained. He had been my first advisor on foreign policy and defence and was a calm but aggressive thinker. Thawley’s sustained counsel and help during the East Timor intervention had proved invaluable, and he remains amongst the very top flight of people who advised me as Prime Minister. He put on a good party; our principal guests lingered, with Donald and Joyce Rumsfeld having a particularly enjoyable time. Lleyton Hewitt lifted Australian spirits by taking out the US Open from Pete Sampras whilst the barbecue was in progress.
Initially, I had been mildly put out that my visit to Washington could not take place until September, rather than the more traditional time of July. It was, however, no simple matter to match the programs of the President and me. But the eventual visit had a personal bonus. In April, our son Tim had gone to London on a working holiday, and was employed there by Lehman Brothers. He had come over to see us in Washington and was staying at our hotel, which gave us a welcome opportunity to catch up.
The ostensible reason for the visit was to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Australia, New Zealand and the United States (ANZUS) Treaty. I had not previously met the 43rd US President, George Bush, but had spoken to him as a candidate some nine months before the desperately close presidential election of November 2000, and early in 2001 he had telephoned me for a general discussion.
I met the new President the morning after the barbecue, Monday, 10 September. I found him direct, energetic and likable. I will have much more to say about him in Chapter 35. Bush and I attended a ceremony at the naval dockyard in Washington to honour the ANZUS Treaty. The symbolic event of the ceremony was the President passing custody to me of the bell from the USS Canberra. There was a spick-and-span turnout from the US military on a clear and beautiful Washington day.
He offered me a lift in his car from the dockyard to the White House for our formal discussions. Amongst those present at the discussions were the Vice-president; the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice; the National Security Advisor as well as senior White House officials. There was no mention of terrorism. We recommitted to the Alliance. I canvassed the possibility of a free-trade agreement, making reference to our continued unhappiness with US agricultural protection, which hurt Australian farmers. We also talked about conditions in Indonesia.
For his part, the President spoke of his desire to build a closer relationship with the Russian Federation. At that time he placed great store on the personal links he had made with Vladimir Putin. This meeting was followed by lunch.
Later that day I went to the Pentagon for a formal meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary. He has been a controversial figure, but I always liked his direct and engaged approach. He had come to Australia for the annual AUSMIN talks — involving Defence and Foreign Affairs representatives from both countries — with Colin Powell two months earlier. We had had a very enjoyable dinner at the Lodge, attended by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the newly arrived US ambassador to Australia, Tom Schieffer.
That evening I dined with Rupert Murdoch at the Occidental Restaurant, immediately adjacent to the Willard Inter-Continental Hotel, where I was staying. Murdoch is always interesting company, having a capacity to remain contemporary in his thinking and never entirely predictable with his opinions. No other Australian has had a greater impact on the world business stage than Rupert Murdoch. News Limited papers had been supportive of our reform agenda, most particularly taxation and waterfront reform.
As we left the restaurant we were ‘door-stopped’ by a large Australian media contingent. Asked whether he thought that I deserved a third term in office, Murdoch replied, ‘It doesn’t matter what I think. You ask my editors.’ Back in my hotel room I remarked to Janette that my meeting with Rupert Murdoch would get a big run in the Australian media the following day. I had no idea how utterly irrelevant that meeting would be to news coverage during the next 24 hours.
The 11th of September was a sparkling Washington day. As customary, I walked from the hotel up past the Vietnam Memorial alongside the large lake and turned at the Lincoln Memorial for the walk back to the hotel. It seemed just another normal and pleasant September morning in the US capital.
As I passed that very familiar television position in front of the White House fence, with the residence in the background, I took a phone call from Peter Costello, who wanted to discuss the looming receivership of Ansett. This had become a major domestic political issue and was of concern to Peter, John Anderson, and me. We were resolved that the Government would not bail out Ansett. There was growing pressure for this to happen, but there was no way we would entertain it. I knew that we would need to do something about the entitlements of retrenched workers, but a capital injection or government guarantee had to be resisted.
I had agreed to have a news conference at the hotel shortly after 9 am. Apart from incessant questions about my visit, the Australian media were keen to talk about An
sett. Shortly before the news conference was due to start, Tony O’Leary came to my hotel room to discuss issues and likely questions at the news conference.
Almost casually, he said that a plane had hit one of the towers at the World Trade Center in New York. We both thought, and I believed said to each other, that it was probably an accident. A few minutes later he came back and told me that another plane had hit the other tower of the World Trade Center. We knew then that there had been no accident and that some planned assault on the building had occurred. I flicked on a TV set and saw the grim live coverage of the burning World Trade Center. Like millions of others, I was stunned at the terrible images.
I prefaced my news conference by acknowledging what had occurred. ‘Can I just say, before I start on the domestic things, how horrified I am at what I have just heard regarding what has happened in New York. I don’t know any more than anybody else but it appears to be a most horrific, awful event that will obviously entail a very big loss of life.’ Those words revealed my shocked immediate reaction. This was before the third plane hit the Pentagon, at a time when people were only just beginning to focus on the motivation for the attack.
I then answered questions about both the Ansett dispute and a court decision on the Tampa issue. During the press conference, the third plane was driven into the Pentagon. I was informed of this at the end of the news conference by a member of my AFP detail, who told me that their Secret Service radio frequency had picked up the very loud explosion when the plane crashed into the Pentagon building.
With the news conference over, the curtains — drawn for the conference — were pulled back, and smoke could be seen rising from the direction of the Pentagon building. Events had happened so rapidly, it was hard to assimilate their real significance.