Former PM urges ‘outbreak of common sense’ to resolve issues such as schools’ right to religious freedoms

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The next federal election is still winnable for Scott Morrison, according to the former prime minister John Howard, but issues such as the debate on religious freedoms require an “outbreak of common sense” to resolve them.

Howard, the second-longest serving prime minister in Australia’s history, was at a briefing on the 1996 and 1997 cabinet papers in Canberra. The papers themselves are embargoed until 1 January but Howard’s remarks were not.

He used the event, and subsequent interviews with the media, to reflect on his own near-death experience at the polls in 1998 and to offer his strong support for Morrison.

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“Politics is more fragmented now; we obsess more about single issues than we used to,” he said.

“This religious freedom thing, what we need is an outbreak of common sense – it’s obvious,” he said of the turmoil around the debate on the need for legislated religious freedoms.

“No one wants children expelled from school but I think it’s reasonable for schools, whether they be Catholic or Jewish, to expect teachers to broadly assent to their values.”

Howard said Morrison was “a good communicator” and “an aggressive problem solver”.

“He has three things going for him: the economy is strong; Labor is going to wobble on border protection again, as they always do; and there’s no ‘it’s time’ factor,” he said.

But he said the Coalition’s primary vote was too low and that needed addressing.

He declined to outline what advice he was giving Morrison on this score.

As for the former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott, and their public commentary on the government, Howard said he “made it a habit not to comment on them”.

But he reflected that he owed much to the Liberal party.

“I became the MP for Bennelong because of the party’s support,” he said. “People worked hard for me.”

He pointedly criticised Julia Banks, the Victorian backbencher who defected to the independents two weeks ago.

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“I campaigned for her,” Howard said. “It’s entirely different if you are elected as an independent, like Cathy McGowan or Rebekha Sharkie or Andrew Wilkie or Kerryn Phelps, but she was elected as a Liberal,” he said.

Asked how he managed to so successfully wrangle the conservative and liberal wings of his party during his 10 years in office, Howard rejected the idea that there were conservative and liberal wings in the party.

“Factions to my mind have always been preferment cooperatives rather than being factions uniformly dedicated to a position,” he said. “That might have been the case in 50s and 60s but now it’s more fragmented.

“I call it the curse of identity politics.

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“One of the things that is misunderstood when talking about a broad church is that everyone is a combination of liberalism and conservatism.

“I think of all my senior colleagues they were a mixture.”

He said his strategy for managing cabinet differences was to take everything to cabinet and allow everyone to talk.

“Once they had had their say, a decision would be taken and everyone was locked in,” he said.

Howard was returned in 1998 for a second term despite polls indicating he was behind 47 to 53 two-party-preferred.

He did not win the popular vote, but a strategy of targeting seats on the fringes of Sydney and Brisbane with conservative policies and promises of tax cuts paid dividends. He squeaked back in, despite having just introduced the GST.

Howard noted that in 1996 when he was swept into office, he had achieved a swing of just 1.5 % in Victoria but 9% in Queensland and Western Australia.

Whether the Howard strategy of appealing to more conservative electorates on the city fringe would work in 2019 remains to be seen.