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Keywords: John Howard

  • AUSTRALIA

    A comfortable nation afraid to get off the couch

    • Scott Stephens
    • 05 June 2007
    3 Comments

    John Howard’s "relaxed and comfortable" approach to national life, then, was not simply a rejection of Paul Keating’s aggressive, deliberate reforms. It represented a vile pandering to our cultural inertia, an affirmation of our basest tendencies.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Grip eluding PM's legacy

    • Jack Waterford
    • 22 January 2007
    3 Comments

    With so many matters in John Howard's political calculus beyond his capacity to influence or control – Iraq, Afghanistan, the Pacific crises, wheat scandals and water reform – he must be thinking it would be nice to have a hold on something.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rudd and Gillard enjoy the bounce

    • Jack Waterford
    • 23 December 2006

    Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are enjoying their bounce, and their honeymoon, as John Howard predicted they would. Early polls suggest a marked upsurge in the Labor vote, in approval for the Labor leadership change, and in comparisons between the performance of Rudd and the Prime Minister. Were an election to be held now, one might think Labor would romp it in.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Three card trick keeps media oligopoly firmly in place

    • Jack Waterford
    • 30 October 2006

    John Howard seems to have pulled off the three-card trick, on both the National Party and the public, with changes to the media laws. His spin was that the small concessions were worth it in its efforts to "free up'' Australia's media.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    George W. Bush and "super-sized" war for freedom and values

    • Jack Waterford
    • 18 September 2006

    George Bush, John Howard and others insist that we are winning the long war against terrorists, and, perhaps by body count they are right. But there is evidence that the way we are fighting the war has massively increased popular sympathy for such people in some parts of the world.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shake, rattle and roll with John Howard

    • Brendan Long
    • 21 August 2006

    Unnerved in the knowledge that the Government is hurting over the pain to families from record petrol prices, the Prime Minister grabs the lectern at the dispatch box a bit too tightly and strives to make eye contact with the cameras as his staff have instructed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    David Hicks' rights under natural law

    • Daniel Baldino
    • 10 July 2006
    9 Comments

    Howard’s legal positivist stance limits individual rights to the confines of a particular legal system. In the ‘war against terrorism’, there is no safeguard against executive excesses or the seizure by the state of absolute power, no basis to defend the dignity of human persons.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The coalition of the unwilling

    • Jack Waterford
    • 05 July 2006

    John Howard probably committed Australia to a coalition of the willing two or three months before the Opposition suspects he did.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    New tricks

    • Jack Waterford
    • 26 June 2006

    Labor’s leadership problems have been a dream for the Liberal Party, not least by obscuring the fact that the real victor in leadership games over recent months has been the prime minister, John Howard.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The boy who cried wolf

    • Jack Waterford
    • 19 June 2006

    John Howard is correct in thinking that the public can discern between a grand lie and a little lie. He’s not, really, a grand liar.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Well-laid plans

    • Jack Waterford
    • 16 June 2006

    Most of the uncertainties of the year ahead are international, particularly in our region. John Howard will be lucky if things work out as he hopes.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    John Howard rewards excellence: what kind?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 29 May 2006
    1 Comment

    Before the Budget, Mr Howard defended tax cuts for wealthy Australians. He said that excellence should be rewarded. Where does excellence begin, and what kind should be rewarded.

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