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Howard Cops A Right Whack

By Brian Boyd
VTHC Secretary
8 July 2010

John Howard may be yesterday’s man. However, working Australians will never forget how he rushed through the federal parliament in 2005 the worst industrial workplace laws in this country’s history – WorkChoices. In the 2004 federal election he won control of both houses of parliament and grabbed the opportunity to go after organised labour – a long held dream of this arch-conservative politician.

We saw him thrown out of office and even out of his seat in 2007. The historic labour movement campaign against WorkChoices 05-07 saw to that.

Howard wanted to make his mark on history by trying to manipulate and re-write ‘Australia’s narrative’, attacking simultaneously both the union movement and our multicultural legacy. Industrial and cultural wars were to be “little Johnny Howard’s” mark of ruling class arrogance.

But three years on, part of Howard’s past has already come back to haunt him. Recent headlines like “Howard’s innings turns to ashes” (2/7), “Out for a duck” (4/7) and “Indians blast Howard” led just some of the stories concerning the International Cricket Council ruling against his nomination to be a new Vice-President.

Cricket Australia must have set Howard up. Everyone knows that the majority of the cricketing nations are post-colonial entities who well know John Howard’s political record on thwarting the anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa. He was also on the record as opposing the independence struggle of Zimbabwe in the 1970’s.

This is not a case of a ‘cricket tragic’ doing it hard, this is a tragic humiliation for an arch-conservative in his last days of pretending to be relevant.