by John Howard
He was a relentless proponent of industrial relations reforms. He put his beliefs to work within CRA, with considerable success. In 1992 he spent some hours in my Sydney office, when I was opposition spokesman on Industrial Relations, accompanied by the boss of his company’s New Zealand subsidiary, explaining the enterprise-based reforms which the company had achieved in that country. John Ralph worked tirelessly to pull together a business coalition in support of tax reform in 1997–98.
Australians’ love of sport is widely perceived and properly based. It is part of our national cement. No horse race in the world stops a nation the way the Melbourne Cup does. The AFL Grand Final, or what many describe as simply ‘the last Saturday in September’, grips the southern states of Australia with fervour. Cricket retains pride of place as our national game, with the Boxing Day Test, traditionally held in Melbourne, having a special place in our sporting calendar.
Melburnians must be the most conscientious sports fans in the world. For many years Melbourne held the record for a crowd attending a cricket Test match, although that has probably been surpassed by attendance at Eden Gardens in Kolkata, India. It also does for a rugby union match in Australia, despite the city being the home of Australian Rules football. Our grounds are as good as, or usually better than, others in the world, not only for size but also facilities and spectator comfort.
Many foreigners are baffled that a nation of just 21 million people boasts four football codes. Only in the past 25 years has football become more national in character, predominantly through Australian Rules securing a foothold in Sydney and Brisbane. I’m not sure that the two rugby codes have been as successful in their reciprocal penetration of the southern states.
Although it is not national, Australian Rules, like cricket, spans every demographic where it is played and followed. Historically the other three codes suffered from sectional tags. League was the working-class game, union was heavily identified with private schools, and soccer was seen as the ethnic game. In different ways those three codes have thrown off this typecasting.
Having a natural interest in sport, I did not have any trouble in embracing that part of the job. Australians expect their prime minister to take an interest in sport and to identify with our national teams and champions. Janette and I hurled ourselves into barracking for Australia and Australians at the Sydney Olympics. We attended every event we could get to. Instead of the public seeing this as an indulgence, it was precisely what they had wanted. This was a big moment for our nation, and my job was to cheer for Australia. For many smaller sports, almost totally reliant on volunteers and with no source of funds other than competing for a share of government allocations, Olympic and Commonwealth games provide a place in the sun. Their hardworking supporters appreciate the recognition.
There are, however, traps for players, old and young. Australian sports fans know their favourite games backwards. They pride themselves on it. As a result they can spot a phoney a mile off, particularly if that person happens to be a PM or other public figure. From the start I resolved to avoid this trap by recognising, and asking my staff to recognise, that whilst I was well versed in a number of sports, particularly those which I had played, there were some that I was a lot less familiar with, and I should not pretend otherwise.
Australian Rules was the big challenge, if I could put it that way. It was the one code of football I had not played as a young person. I broadly understood the rules, but having grown up in Sydney at a time when there was no Rules to speak of there, and the divide between the codes was quite sharp, I was still unfamiliar with the game.
Several of my colleagues said that the way to fix this was to adopt a Melbourne club. More than one suggested Carlton; Menzies and Fraser had both been Carlton men. I decided not to do this, as I sensed it would seem artificial.
Instead I would attend games and events as appropriate, acknowledge my absence of background in the game, but pay proper respect to its place in the sporting psyche of our country. Followers of the code knew my background and would not have been taken in by what were essentially gimmicks, designed to ingratiate. There was no shortage of people willing to further educate me about the game whenever I was attending an event, a regular AFL game, or a Grand Final. Two wonderful people and former accomplished players, John Kennedy and the late Ron Evans, were the successive presidents of the AFL for almost the whole of the time that I served as PM. Over the years they added enormously to my knowledge and, therefore, my enjoyment of Australian Rules.
The North Melbourne Grand Final Breakfast, always held on the morning of the Grand Final, is the most amazing event of its kind in Australia. The top table represents a cross-section of our nation and is testament to the reach of the game to every part of the community in those parts of Australia where it is widely played. It is always addressed by the PM and the Leader of the Opposition. I attended every one of those breakfasts during the 16 years that I held those two positions, with the exception of 2003, when it was the day of my daughter’s wedding in Sydney.
Poor Tony O’Leary, the head of my press office and a South Australian, was an avid Rules follower. For some years after I became PM, he would prepare detailed notes for my Grand Final Breakfast speech, replete with references to past Grand Finals, no doubt familiar to keen followers of the code. I never used this material. I just didn’t feel comfortable doing so as I had no personal recall of, or familiarity with, the events I would be talking about. I always kept these speeches short, opting to speak about how important sport was in the life of Australians. I apologised to Tony for not referring to his work, and after a while he gave up.
My passion for cricket was well known to Australians long before I became PM. It was Mark Taylor who christened me a ‘cricket tragic’, and the expression really caught on. It was during a speech of his at a Daily Telegraph lunch, which I attended to mark his remarkable innings of 334 not out at Peshawar in Pakistan in October 1998. I had rung Mark the morning after his innings to congratulate him, and it was then that he told me he would retire so as to share with Sir Donald Bradman the honour of the highest Test score by an Australian. Matthew Hayden would surpass them both when he scored 380 against Zimbabwe in Perth in 2003.
If there is such a thing, the senior sporting post in Australia is captain of the Australian cricket team. It is our one truly national game. I formed a close link with the three men who held the captaincy during my time in the Lodge: Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting. I had also got to know Allan Border well from my earlier contacts with the team. He had a tough row to hoe, as he led the team through a period when other cricketing nations were strong, and our team was not always at or near the top.
I occasionally joked about how being captain of the cricket team was the most or equal most important job in the nation. It was a mark of my respect for the game as well as a piece of self-deprecation. Australians don’t like their PM taking himself too seriously. Most saw my remark for what it was, although the odd utterly humourless journalist took me to task for saying what I had.
Each of these four Australian captains brought different qualities to the leadership. Two of them, Taylor and Waugh, had to endure periods when critics said their form with the bat was not good enough any more. Both answered the critics: Taylor with his memorable innings of 334, and Waugh with his superb 102 at the Sydney Cricket Ground against England in January 2003. That innings was one of the highlights of my watching cricket in recent years. His autobiography was as good a sporting book as I have read, and I was delighted to launch it for him.
Ponting’s form over such a sustained period means that the question should be asked: since Bradman has there been a better Australian batsman? Certainly none of the others played the hook shot as well as he does. He feels keenly the two Ashes losses under his captaincy, and I can understand his desire to lead the team once more to England. I hope that it happens.
I still believe very much in role models in sport. In cricket it would be hard to go bey
ond Adam Gilchrist. He was an unbelievable player, always entertaining and seeming to have all the time in the world to play his shots. On top of that his willingness to walk when he knew that he was out was a breath of fresh air. We are ferociously competitive as a sporting country and should remain so, but we can keep the sportsmanship as well. The most eloquent advocates for this are champions like ‘Gillie’ who walk.
Both codes of rugby attract me. Rugby league is built around the NRL club competition and the titanic State of Origin clashes. I have followed the St George-Illawarra Dragons for years. I have been in many dressing rooms over the years, celebrating and commiserating. The most devastated dressing room I have been in, without question, was that of the Dragons after their 1999 Grand Final loss to the Storm. St George had led 14–0 at half-time, but it all went to custard after that, and Melbourne just got home at the last minute. Not a word was spoken. The players, coach and club leaders were numb. This was gloomier than a Queensland dressing room after losing a State of Origin to New South Wales, and that sets a high benchmark in post-match despair, and gloomier than the Wallabies’ room after the World Cup loss to England in 2003.
When I was young, the really big clashes in rugby league, apart from club Grand Finals, were the Tests between Great Britain and Australia. They were fairly evenly matched then and they were muscular encounters, to say the least. The gap has widened since, and Australia has been regularly dominant in what passes for an international contest in rugby league. State of Origin games have become the big representative fixtures on the league calendar.
I never took sides in these matches. State rivalries leave me cold. Besides that, I have a dirty little secret when it comes to NRL clubs. I am a passionate Dragons supporter, but my default choice if the Dragons are out is the Broncos. I was delighted when the Broncos beat the Storm in 2006, having never quite got over 1999. I arrived in the Broncos’ dressing room just ahead of the victorious 13. Shane Webcke, who had played his last game that night, arrived first. I greeted him by saying, ‘What a way to retire from the game.’ He replied, ‘Just like five straight election wins.’ The Grand Final was played only weeks after I had announced that I would lead the Coalition at the 2007 election. I liked his spirit.
The Wallabies played in three World Cup competitions in my time as PM. I followed their fortunes intently, and developed a close bond with many members of the team as well as those running the game. After the 1999 World Cup win I held a reception for the team in Parliament House, and then invited the team plus wives and girlfriends to the Lodge for a very memorable dinner. Rugby union had reached a pinnacle in Australia at that time. At that dinner we had not only the team plus others but also the William Webb Ellis Trophy (the World Cup), the Bledisloe Cup (Australia and New Zealand) and the Cook Cup (Australia and England). The cups were all drunk from. Things could not be any better for Australian rugby.
The members of that victorious 1999 team were an impressive bunch. They were champions, had lots of fun and represented their country with considerable dignity. John Eales, the captain, was another fine sporting role model. He played the game hard and to great effect; many rate him the best-ever Wallaby. To use that old, but relevant, cliché, they were all good ambassadors of the game.
In the same vein, Pat Rafter had been an exemplar of sportsmanship and generosity of spirit in tennis. George Gregan, who succeeded Eales as captain of the Wallabies, also brought credit to Australian rugby. He led Australia in defence of the World Cup when Australia hosted the competition in 2003. As the games in 2003 progressed, many gave Australia little chance of making the final, let alone retaining the trophy, won in 1999. I went to London in the middle of the competition for the dedication of the Australian War Memorial at Hyde Park Corner on Remembrance Day. Tony Blair, whose football passions were much tied up with soccer, asked me how I thought the World Cup would end up. I replied, ‘Tony, the way things are going at present, I regret to inform you that the final is likely to be between France and New Zealand.’ It was a fair comment on form at that stage, but I could not have been more wrong.
The following weekend I saw Australia defeat New Zealand in one of our best-ever performances in rugby, and the next night I watched England defeat France on a soggy ground. So Tony Blair was entitled to write me off as a rugby sage. The final saw Jonny Wilkinson break Australian hearts with a deft field goal in extra time. The Australian dressing room afterwards was disappointed but not devastated. Our team had not expected to reach the final. Their PM was pretty devastated, and apparently it showed when I presented the trophy to Martin Johnson, the English captain.
A few weeks later I chatted informally to the Queen just before the start of the Abuja Commonwealth Summit in Nigeria. She complimented me on how well Australia had hosted the World Cup, and remarked that I had not looked happy when I presented Johnson with the Webb Ellis trophy. I simply replied, ‘Ma’am, I was not.’ I may support the monarchy and respect Australia’s British heritage, but it really hurt to hand over that wonderful cup to an English captain.
I tried hard to support all Australian national sporting teams and was assisted in this by Janette. She was a keen soccer follower and we got to as many representative games as possible in that code. We had much pleasure in hosting the Socceroos to a reception at Kirribilli House following their impressive showing in the 2006 World Cup. She was also a conscientious patron of the Australian women’s hockey team. She developed a real friendship with them. After she ceased being patron, she still kept in touch and received a warm and well-deserved reception from them after we watched them defeat Holland at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
The mind can play tricks when one encounters the children of former sporting greats, now deceased, who bear a striking physical resemblance to their famous parents. This happened to me when I agreed to inaugurate the Racing Hall of Fame in Melbourne some years ago. I was not a regular racegoer, but as a boy I had listened to the ABC Radio coverage of races, and was familiar with the famous jockeys of that era: Billy Cook, Neville Selwood and, of course, Darby Munro. Munro, long since dead, was one of the inaugural inductees in the Hall of Fame. I had seen many photos of him and knew what he looked like. The inductees, or those accepting in their place, were asked to walk down a long carpet towards me and the head of racing in Australia to accept their awards. Darby Munro’s son was there to accept the award in honour of his father. The physical resemblance was extraordinary. As he walked towards me, I said to myself, ‘Darby Munro’s dead, isn’t he?’ It was quite an uncanny experience.
It’s something of a tradition for some Australians to boo a PM when he walks onto the field to present a trophy or the like. The extent of it can be a wider sign. I had copped it from a section of the crowd at several NRL Grand Finals in the late 1990s. At the 2001 Grand Final, on the eve of the election, I was struck by the absence of hostility. It proved to be a good omen.
Throughout my political career and especially in the time that I held a leadership role, I sought constant personal contact with voters, beyond what was involved in meeting constituents to discuss their concerns or attending functions to which I had been invited. I liked doing street walks and, being very well known, walking through a shopping centre was no chore. People recognised me and most wanted, at least, to say hello. Many proffered a view, others asked questions, and many simply wished me well. Others of course made it plain they did not support me. Only a few abused me.
These experiences were something of a barometer of what the public was thinking. I never felt that the Liberal Party should dump its pollster and rely on my gut feeling from street walks, but I always paid regard to what I called field evidence. I have referred to it elsewhere. It was instructive in the 2007 election. I walked through Tuggerah shopping centre on the Central Coast of New South Wales, three days out from the election, accompanied by Jim Lloyd and Ken Ticehurst, the two Liberal MPs for the adjoining seats of Robertson and Dobell. It was hard going. People weren’t hostile, just uninterested.
I gained the impression that some of them had simply moved on from me and my Government. Both seats swung to the ALP.
By contrast, two days earlier I had walked through Cannington shopping centre in Perth. It was in the electorate of Swan. The reception was really enthusiastic and warm. People wanted to talk, were definite about their opinions, and sufficient were enthusiastic about the Liberals to really buoy me. Steve Irons, the Liberal Party candidate, won Swan from Labor at the election. As has been the case on earlier occasions, Western Australia voted quite differently from the rest of Australia on 24 November 2007.
Certain personal encounters were reminders of the immense sadness experienced by some in life. Late in 2005, whilst visiting Pakistan, I went to a mountainous area of Kashmir to see an Australian Army medical team helping the victims of the terrible earthquake which had hit the region. I was introduced to local people who were either being treated at their improvised hospital or were helping to treat the injured. One of the latter was a woman doctor from a village some distance up the mountainside. She had lost her husband and two children in the earthquake, yet had volunteered her services to help care for survivors. Her strength and compassion were remarkable.
I doubt that I had a more heartbreaking meeting in my whole time as PM than the one I had at my electorate office in Gladesville on 15 November 2005 with the mother of Nguyen Tuong Van, a Vietnamese-Australian who was awaiting execution in Singapore for drug offences. I had already raised the issue directly with Lee Hsien Leung, my Singaporean counterpart, after a formal appeal for clemency to the President of Singapore had failed. I knew that this poor lady’s son would die very soon on the gallows. The Singaporeans are extremely tough on these issues, and notwithstanding my good personal relations with Lee, he was not going to relent. In an earlier discussion, at the CHOGM in Valetta, Malta, he had explained the rationale of his country’s policy on drug offences. He firmly believed that the hard line taken both against Singapore’s own citizens and foreigners had worked.