http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/17/1061059710322.html?from...

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/17/1061059710322.html?from=storyrhs

Commentators today misunderstand the man and his modus operandi when they argue that today's times suit Howard because the era has become so conservative. They fail to understand how much he has made the times, how much Australia today reflects his values and his views.

If you think about it, this is a very different country from what it was seven years ago. On virtually every marker, the times are less tolerant, less generous, less egalitarian and less compassionate than they used to be. This is Howard's legacy. He has moulded the times to suit him.

We know from his political track record that Howard does not ditch, he merely defers. We have the GST. He is trying to get rid of Medicare. So it is worth going back to his 1986 remarks and recalling what he planned for us back then.

Howard told me that night that "governments on our side of Parliament in the past have been too timid about change. They've thought people on our side of politics must always be cautious about change. I think that is wrong. I think you've got to be selective about change, be willing to hang on very hard to certain things but be willing to radically change other institutions."

So what was the Howard agenda back then? He made no bones about his radicalism, saying he believed he was the only "reformer" on the political landscape.

Deregulation of the labour market was "necessary and inevitable", he said. He intended to liberalise foreign investment except in the area of communications; he wanted to market tertiary education overseas, especially to Asia; and he said he would privatise the delivery of social welfare.

Looking at that list, all but the last have been done. Is the Charities Bill, currently before Parliament, the beginning of taking away public support for non-government welfare agencies and other advocacy organisations?

In 1989 Howard was dumped as leader because his party could not cop a lot of this. As Kelly put it, Howard was defeated because he was seen as favouring the rich, empowering the boss, threatening job security, breaking up our companies and enriching the banks via interest rate deregulation. Labor had to fight for air space against Howard's own Liberal party colleagues, the wets, to make these points.

Of course, there are no "wets" in the Liberal Party any more, all purged from a party that now gives Howard nothing in the way of policy aggravation. He has cemented himself into the prime ministership and, given what it took to get there, surely one of the thorniest paths in Australian political history, nothing is going to dislodge him.

He has been enabled by the terrible new reality of terrorism and the fear and uncertainty this has brought into our lives, but the process of changing the country to conform to his values and his agenda began long before September 11, 2001.

And now there's no stopping him. Howard has become a master of the wedge politics as we have seen in recent weeks when he has hopped into controversial subjects such as gay marriage or the death penalty and then sat back and let the shock-jocks do his work for him.

It's a long way from the days when he had to try to persuade business, via interviews with the financial press, that he was worthy of the job, and don't think he isn't enjoying every minute of it. The times suit him all right. He's made sure of that. And he's not about to let them stop