Lazarus Rising

But when it came to economics, the Chifley Labor Government, in the late ‘40s, remained locked in the wartime mindset of controls and micromanagement of the economy.

Chifley led a government which tried to nationalise the private trading banks. This move galvanised into action many supporters of free enterprise, and not just the banks. Everything had gone wrong for Chifley following his Government’s re-election in 1946. His attempt to nationalise the banks had been rejected as unconstitutional by both the High Court of Australia and the Privy Council. Massive strikes on the NSW coalfields in 1949 produced prolonged blackouts in Sydney. In the end Chifley had to embrace what for a Labor man like him must have been a nightmare: the use of troops on the coalfields to keep essential supplies moving.

The times were clearly right for a man and a party preaching the gospel of competition and fewer government controls. Bob Menzies and the Liberal Party neatly filled the bill. Anyhow, that was what my parents, Lyall and Mona Howard, thought. So did my eldest brother, Wal, the only one of their children then to have a vote.

My parents were part of the ‘forgotten people’ who Menzies had defined in his famous radio broadcast in 1942: they neither belonged to organised labour, nor were rich and powerful. He called them middle class, with the description of ‘salary-earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers, and so on'. Mum and Dad aimed to give their four sons more security and more opportunities than they themselves had had. In that, they were successful, for which I and my brothers are eternally grateful.

Several days before the election took place a newspaper I bought carried the headline ‘Final Gallup Poll Predicts Coalition Victory'. On election night, my brother Bob and I had gone to a local picture theatre with our parents. During the screening of the second film, the theatre management displayed a slide which showed that the Coalition had taken an early lead. In those days polling booths remained open until 8 pm.

When we got home, we found my brother Wal sitting on the floor in front of the radio. He said that Menzies had won and that the biggest swing had been in Queensland. On that latter score at least, nothing much has changed in almost 60 years. When the Coalition won government in 1996, Labor was routed in the Sunshine State, and in 2007 the Labor Party achieved a greater swing in that state than in any other part of Australia. Everyone in our household was very happy with the result. Daniel Mulcahy was comfortably returned as the Labor member for Lang. Those shed workers across the road had done their job.

For as long as I can remember, I was a regular listener to sport on ABC Radio, mainly cricket and rugby league. Cricket always came first. I knew the names of Bradman, Miller and Lindwall before I learned the name Menzies. My father took me to the Sydney Cricket Ground on 28 February 1949 to see Don Bradman play for the last time at that ground, in the Kippax-Oldfield Testimonial. It was the only occasion on which I saw the great man play.

I also had a keen interest in boxing. I could recite, in order, all of the heavyweight champions of the world from James J. Corbett onwards. Controversies in boxing, such as the famous long count in the bout between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, enthralled me. I was fascinated when I read that Sydney had hosted a fight for the heavyweight title in 1909 between Tommy Burns and Jack Johnson. In my late teens I went to Sydney Stadium, in Rushcutters Bay, to see several bouts. Years later, when I was in politics, some of my friends were horrified when I confessed to my boyhood interest in boxing. As I grew older I lost interest in it, in part because I realised the terrible damage people suffered, but I had been quite taken by it in my youth.

From a young age I was an avid reader of the Biggles books, authored by Captain W.E. Johns, which told the story of a group of British airmen who not only fought heroically in the Battle of Britain but did other great things in defence of liberty. A little later I devoured books such as Reach for the Sky, by Paul Brickhill, an Australian, which covered the amazing war service of Douglas Bader, who lost both legs but resumed flying in the Royal Air Force (RAF); The Dambusters, the saga of the RAF bombing raids on the dams of the Ruhr Valley; and Nicholas Monsarrat’s classic The Cruel Sea. This book, which like the other two led to a film of the same name, covered the perils and heavy human losses involved in keeping open the sea lanes from Britain to Russia through the North Sea. Barely a decade had passed since the end of World War II and books and films about aspects of that huge conflict abounded.

I read a lot of sporting books, naturally starting with cricket. Two which I still have in the sports section of my bookshelves at home are Straight Hit, co-written by Keith Miller, one of Australia’s greatest-ever all-rounders, and R.S. Whitington. It told of the West Indies’ tour of Australia in 1951–52. I read it again and again over a period of years. The other was A Century of Cricketers, by A.G. ‘Johnny’ Moyes. He had compiled the stories of one hundred famous cricketers, ending in about 1950. Moyes was an accomplished analyst. It was a different era and a vastly different medium, but he was something of a Richie Benaud of radio.

As I grew older my reading tastes expanded to include history as well as biographies. To this day I maintain a marked preference for books in these two categories. My father subscribed to the Saturday Evening Post, a well-illustrated American periodical, which I read thoroughly. It gave me an early feel for some of the differences in both American culture and politics. This was the early 1950s, and hostility to communism came through strongly in the pages of the magazine.

We always had a dog. For almost 14 years we had a marvellous Irish setter named Caesar. He went everywhere with me, even to church, where he would position himself in the back vestibule. Nobody seemed to mind; it was, after all, his home territory. He had to be put down not long before I turned 21. I took him to the vet, and I cried as he died in my arms.

The 1950s, when I grew up, was probably the most stable, secure and prosperous decade Australia had yet experienced in the 20th century. There are many now who belittle 1950s Australia. In the process they do their country and an earlier generation much disservice. True, the Australia I was raised in was far from perfect. Women were denied many opportunities; the white Australia policy was still in place; and the plight of Indigenous Australians had yet to stir the national consciousness.

But it is beyond churlish to deny the achievement of an era when so many struggling Australian families secured a modest level of material comfort, sent children to university for the first time and laid the economic and social foundations of modern Australia.

Television arrived in 1956, the year that I did my Leaving Certificate. For most of the decade, and before television changed forever the leisure habits of Australians, going to the pictures was a major social pursuit. It certainly was for the Howards, and going to the pictures for us meant on Saturday nights. Saturday afternoon matinees were off limits. That was when young men were meant to be in the open air, playing sport.

This was Hollywood’s golden era, years before the renaissance of the Australian film industry. American films dominated the screen, although there was a reasonable stream of British productions featuring such talented actors as Alec Guinness. The familiarity I felt with both London and New York, especially the latter, when I first saw those cities in the 1960s was a mark of the cultural deposit left by Hollywood in its hey-day.

We four boys and our mother attended and were involved in the activities of the local Methodist church, which stood opposite our home at 25 William Street. The church played a big part in the lives of all of us, but in different ways. For my eldest brothers, Wal and Stan, it was in their teen years a large part of their social life, more so than for Bob and me. I maintained regular attendance at the church until I left Earlwood in my late 20s. My brothers and I indulged our sporting passions through the church.

Earlwood Methodist Church had a large congregation, and was able to field several teams in the very extensive Protestant church cricket and soccer competitions. At one stage the four of us, and one of our uncles, making five Howards in all, played in the church cricket team. I have fond memories of many Saturday afternoons in the sun, playing cricket for Earlwood Meths at grounds such as Rudd Park in Belmore, and Tempe Reserve and Steele Park in Undercliffe. This cricket competition proudly boasts Bob Simpson and Brian Booth, both Australian Test Cricket captains, amongst those who played for their local church teams at a very young age.

Although our lives revolved very much around the church, religion and theology were rarely discussed at home. My father was a very infrequent churchgoer. He was a believer, but not a participant. My parents belonged to a generation of Australians which did not talk a lot about religion, even if they held to their faith. Then again, it was an era in which personal feelings generally, and not just about religion, tended to be internalised. The willingness of today’s generation, especially men, to speak more openly about their feelings is something to be welcomed. This is an area where the good old days were definitely not better.

We grew up at a time when church attendance was much higher, and when a moral consensus flowing from the Judaeo-Christian ethic held a largely unchallenged place in Australian society. The influence of the Christian religion, even amongst those who privately repudiated it, was both strong and pervasive.

The fundamentals of Christian belief and practice which I learned at the Earlwood Methodist Church have stayed with me to this day, although I would not pretend to be other than an imperfect adherent to them. I now attend a local Anglican church, denominational labels within Christianity meaning nothing to me. Any religious belief requires a large act of faith. To many people, believing in something that cannot be proved is simply a step too far. To me, by contrast, human life seems so complex and hard to explain yet so extraordinary that the existence of God has always seemed to offer a better explanation of its meaning than any other.

The extended Howard family, given that Dad had been one of nine children, was quite large. My paternal grandmother, Jane Falconer Howard, lived with one or other of her daughters for the last years of her life. Most Sunday afternoons involved visits to my grandmother. She was a stoic woman, confined to a wheelchair from the age of 62 as a result of rheumatoid arthritis. Deeply religious, she was in every way the matriarch of the family until her death in 1953, when I was aged 14. I have quite happy recollections of extended Howard family gatherings for special occasions, which brought me in touch with my numerous cousins.

A great Howard family ritual was observance of Bonfire Night, strictly speaking Empire Day, 24 May, that date being marked because it had been Queen Victoria’s birthday. We always had large amounts of fireworks, built huge bonfires, had a half-day school holiday and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Like all Western societies Australia has become a nanny state on activities such as this. As a consequence today’s children are denied much innocent fun. I think that fireworks prohibitions are ridiculous.

My parents were quiet, even shy people whose total focus was the care and upbringing of their four children. They wanted us to have better educational opportunities than they had enjoyed. Doing homework or studying for university exams took precedence over everything else at home. My mother and father would frequently forgo listening to the radio — after the ABC news of course — so that one or more of their children could study undistracted. Often Stan would be at his desk in his bedroom, and Bob and I would be working on the dining-room table. They wanted their children to succeed, and did all in their power to bring that about.

There was nothing self-important or pompous about either of my parents. They actively discouraged such character traits in their children and were scornful of anyone who exhibited what their generation called ‘side'. We were taught to be polite to people doing menial tasks. My mother rebuked me at the pictures one night because I had used my foot to push a sweet wrapper towards a cleaning lady who was collecting rubbish during interval. She said that I should have picked it up and handed it to her.

Due to the age difference, I had a minor form of hero worship towards my two eldest brothers, Wal and Stan. At the age of 15, I was absolutely devastated when Wal was not elected captain of the church cricket team. This was because he took it for granted, owing to his seniority, that he would be elected. He had not bothered to organise his numbers. I thought the decision of the team was most unfair, and it left me feeling upset and angry for weeks. I found it hard to accept that the other members of the team would not all want Wal as captain. It also taught me a lesson about ballots, which I have never forgotten.

I attended Earlwood Public School, the local primary school, and won admission to Canterbury Boys’ High School, then one of the nine selective high schools in Sydney. Its catchment area was the St George and Canterbury-Bankstown districts, a large chunk of southwestern Sydney.

Earlwood Primary School reflected the locality which it serviced. About half of my final-year class had fathers who were tradesmen, and in most other cases they worked in banks, insurance companies or utilities, with just two or three in small business.

In my last year at Earlwood, I had a wonderful teacher, Jack Doherty. He constantly fed my interest in current affairs and conducted plenty of additional question periods on the news of the time. A very fine ABC Radio program called The World We Live In, narrated by H.D. Black (later Sir Hermann and Chancellor of Sydney University) and which extensively covered world affairs, was a regular part of our class work. This was in 1951, and the Korean War was still raging. One of the hotly debated issues then was the sacking of General Douglas MacArthur by President Harry Truman. This was a big call by Truman. MacArthur was an iconic World War II figure who had established his headquarters in Brisbane after being pushed out of the Philippines by the Japanese. From there he led the Allied fightback, which ended in victory. When the Korean War started in June 1950 with communist North Korea invading South Korea, MacArthur was the Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific.

He clashed with Truman over the conduct of the Korean War, wanting to carry the fight against the Chinese, who had come in on the side of the North, over the North Korean border into China itself. Truman opposed this and when their differences could not be resolved, Truman, as Commander-in-Chief, sacked him. I followed these developments avidly.

At the end of primary school, when I was 12, I made my first public speech, at the school presentation day at the local Mayfair Theatre in Earlwood. The headmaster was retiring, and I gave a short speech of thanks on behalf of the teachers and pupils, and presented him with a watch. I was nervous, but it seemed to go well. My father and mother were both there and appeared very proud. Dad was so pleased he gave me my first fountain pen to mark the occasion. I needed one for high school.

My interest in politics mounted during my years at Canterbury Boys’ High School, where my active participation in school debates and as a member of the school’s debating team in the Combined High Schools’ (CHS) competition laid the groundwork for such speaking skills as I was able to bring with me into public life years later. I learned then the great value of speaking ‘off the cuff', because a significant part of the debating curriculum required me to speak in an impromptu fashion on subjects of which I had no prior notice. It was marvellous training. It was invaluable during my early years in parliament when, at a moment’s notice, I was able to respond to the whip’s call and jump into a debate.

The immense merit of formal debating is the discipline of having to articulate the reasons for holding a particular opinion. Years later, in public life, I learned that it was not enough simply to assert a strongly held view. Logically arranged arguments, explaining why that view was held, were crucial. My friend and long-time advisor Grahame Morris would often say to me, when discussing an announcement, ‘Boss, what’s the why?’ In other words, he wanted to hear my explanation.

Perhaps my love of debating, or the chronological memory gifted to me by my mother, or both of them, meant that I never felt comfortable reading a prepared speech. In senior office, it was essential, on certain occasions, to do so. Nonetheless, less than 10 per cent of the speeches I gave as Prime Minister were read from a prepared text. I feel that I always give my best speeches when, having thought about what I will say, I then eyeball the audience, and speak directly to the people in it. Never in my life have I used an autocue or teleprompter. I hold them in contempt as rhetorical crutches.

Canterbury High wasn’t all debating though. I played both cricket and rugby in the school’s second XI and second XV respectively, in the CHS competition. History and English were far and away the subjects I enjoyed and excelled in most. History fascinated me. One of my real educational regrets was that I never did an arts or economics degree as a precursor to law. Amongst other benefits, it would have allowed me to further indulge my passion for history.

My Leaving Certificate exams, in 1956, were sat against the backdrop of the brutal Soviet invasion of Hungary and the controversial Anglo-French Suez operation. On the happier side there was the great excitement of the Olympic Games coming to Melbourne. It was also a time when Robert Menzies appeared to have established a stranglehold on Australian politics, courtesy of the bitter Labor split of 1955 and the ultimate emergence of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), initially called the Labor Party (Anti-Communist), which in 1961 would save Menzies from otherwise certain defeat.

Both of my parents were fierce believers in private enterprise. This was barely surprising, given that my father had worked incredibly long hours for more than 20 years in building up his garage business in Dulwich Hill, an inner suburb of Sydney. He was a qualified motor mechanic, and the garage he ran provided the full range: not only did he serve petrol, but he also serviced and repaired cars. In my lifetime, Dad always opened the garage on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Only on Christmas Day, Good Friday and Anzac Day was the garage closed all day. Years earlier it had been even tougher, with Dad not getting home until about 10 o’clock at night, after he had closed.

If you ran a small business, there was nothing particularly strange about this. Both then and now, running a small business of the sole trader or sole owner type entails a total commitment of time and energy. There are no guaranteed market shares, and no penalty rates or overtime for effort beyond normal working hours. The qualitative difference between owning and operating a genuinely small business and working, even at a senior executive level, in a large corporation is immense and rarely understood by those not involved in it.

My father was always very tired when he came home from the garage, particularly on Saturdays, when he would often spend most of the afternoon resting. The business was discussed over the dinner table. My brothers had helped out, serving petrol and doing other tasks at the garage. I couldn’t wait until I was old enough so I could have a go as well. I started when I was about 14. I loved it. It was a real buzz serving petrol, checking oil levels, pumping up tyres and trying to sell a few ‘sundries', such as new spark plugs. Years later Paul Keating would sneeringly refer to the ‘bowser boy from Canterbury’ (sic). To me it was a badge of honour.

I enjoyed meeting the customers, who, my father reminded me, were always right. I had quite an argument with one customer, who insisted on smoking a cigarette as he stood beside me while I pumped petrol into the tank of his car. In the end I pulled the nozzle of the pump out of the tank. Then he put out his cigarette. I hope he stayed as a customer.

Like all service stations of that time, my father’s sold all different brands of petrol. Unlike many others, though, Dad owned the freehold of his garage. From the early 1950s onwards, the major oil companies began an aggressive ‘one brand’ service station expansion policy of either building new service stations or doing deals, of various kinds, with existing operators, so that only one brand of fuel was sold at a site. This intensified competition as the number of sites expanded rapidly, with new operators often being obliged to open for longer hours. It was hard for someone in my father’s position to match this. The inevitable business pressure affected Dad’s health. Although he didn’t want to go one-brand, it became a commercial necessity as there was a small rebate per gallon paid to owners who sold only one brand. He signed up with Mobilgas in 1954.

The one-brand switch badly affected Dad’s business, but it had to be accepted as a tough but unavoidable competitive development which could occur in any market. What could not, however, be viewed in the same light was an arbitrary edict delivered by the local Marrickville Council later in the year.

The council told him to remove his petrol bowsers from the kerbside in front of his service station, as it wanted traffic lights installed on the street corner where the garage stood. This was tantamount to telling Dad to close down his business. Neither the council nor the NSW Government authority, at whose instigation the council would have acted, offered any compensation for the potential destruction of my father’s business. It dealt a real body blow to my father and, coming on top of the market-related setbacks he had suffered, left Dad deeply dispirited and worsened his health.

As a 15-year-old boy, I thought that my father had been treated outrageously by an insensitive, high-handed council, against which he had no redress. This edict hung over my father and was still there when he died at the end of 1955. Exchanges went on for some time after that, and it was not until the early ‘60s that traffic lights were finally installed on the corner.

This incident reinforced the feeling in my family that governments, generally speaking, weren’t all that sympathetic to small business; that if you had one, you were very much on your own. Big companies could look after themselves and unions were strong, but the little bloke got squeezed. Such attitudes weren’t entirely logical, and in government I always emphasised the common interests of businesses, large and small. Yet, when on-balance judgements were called for, I confess to usually siding with the small operator, even if some violation of free-market principles might be involved; my support for newsagents and pharmacies come readily to mind.

* * *

As I’ve said, politics and current affairs were frequently discussed, not only around the dinner table, but also in direct conversation between my mother and father. There was no particular starting point for the discussion of politics at home. I can remember it always being there. My eldest brothers usually joined the discussions quite freely.

Occasionally, my father would listen to important parliamentary broadcasts on the ABC. We all followed the events leading up to the double dissolution of federal parliament obtained by Bob Menzies in 1951. It was the first time that a double dissolution had been sought since World War I, and — particularly given the political antecedents of the Governor-General, Sir William McKell, who had been the Labor Premier of New South Wales — there was much conjecture as to whether he would agree with the advice offered by Menzies supporting the request for a double dissolution.