John Howard

I was watching Four Corners on TV about a week ago regarding the Howard Government. I think that what happened in the last term is that the government had control of both houses in the Australian parliament. This gave John Howard the opportunity to put in policy that he had wanted to put in for ages. This policy was the so-called "Work Choices" or Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), to further deregulate the employment market in Australia.

In this case John Howard put in a "vanity" policy, whereas he normally had finely tuned antenna for how the government's policies were or would resonate in the community. In this case he got it wrong. But what damaged it is that he did not then moderate this policy enough. I can correlate politicians to boxers - most of them go for one fight too many. They don't retire on top (although two recent exceptions to this have been Steve Bracks and Bob Carr, Premiers of Victoria and New South Wales respectively).

I wonder if Australia historically did not have strong union membership, whether we would now be in the same position as the USA. The USA is a country where the lowest earners and the highest earners are wide apart.