"While Labor is enthralling itself with tales about itself, the Coalition is reshaping the country. While Labor and its observers are writing books about the past and present of Labor, the conservatives are writing the future of Australia.
The Howard Government has always been a busy one. In an astonishing finding, the Business Council of Australia reported that the Government has passed as many pages of legislation in its first nine years as the total that the Federal Parliament passed from the time of Federation in 1901 until 1985.
By the time a government anywhere reaches 10 years in power, it is normal and natural that it slows. But the Howard Government, like its leader, is showing no evidence of fourth-term torpor. Howard's personal schedule, as demonstrated in this column two weeks ago, is frenetic, with one day off in a month. His Government's agenda is similarly hyperactive.
By Wednesday, the Parliament had passed 143 pieces of legislation this year. In the preceding three years it passed an average of 155 in each full year, so, with two sitting weeks remaining this year, it is on track to exceed the pace of legislative output of the previous term.
It is not only the quantity of law Howard is driving through Parliament that is striking, but also its power. The bills now before Parliament, notably the anti-terrorism bill and the workplace relations bill, are not tinkering or incremental but transformative.
Australia has had a system of industrial arbitration and conciliation for the century since the Harvester case of 1904; Howard is ending it and introducing an entirely new system. Australia, through the state legal systems, has had the presumption of innocence and habeas corpus at the centre of its criminal justice system for longer than Australia has existed as a unified political entity; Howard is compromising those principles with preventive detention and control orders.
As the most senior official in the Senate, Harry Evans, puts it: "There is certainly a trend in recent years to increase the volume of legislation and you've also been dealing with matters that are more far-reaching."
So in the numerical indicators, but also in the transformative power of the legislative agenda, the Howard Government is exerting an enormous pressure for change. There are three main reasons. First is that the Government is doing all this because it can. Now it has control of the Senate it has the first opportunity of any government since 1981 to get its way in both chambers of Parliament.
Second is that it has a number of thrusting and competitive ministers who want to position themselves for future greatness through reformist activism. Third is in the nature of Howard. He is an idealogue who wants to remake Australia in his own image. His agenda is not limited by a 10-point checklist that he carries in his back pocket but by his political imagination.
You can see the narrative written year by year in the law of the land. But don't look in the bookstores because you won't read about it there."
