It's time
for Labor
to return
the coup

Case closed: John Howard is unfit to govern
Harold Hark
6 December 2002

Memo to Laurie Oakes (et al): When interviewing the PM, you could save Australia and the region a lot of trouble by confining your questions to topics he is qualified to discuss. Cricket and Santa Claus come to mind.

Looks like Australia's uncharismatic toadstool with an aggressive streak has blown regional relations out of the water again. After a lifetime of humiliation owing to his unattractive persona and unevolved philistinism, Australia's accidental PM has come out swinging as the Napoleon of talkback. (Interesting note: Howard shares the Leo birth sign with Napoleon, as well as Mussolini and Milosevic. Wait a minute. That's my birth sign too!)

And right behind him is Australia's aggressively prissy Foreign Minister, Little Lord Downer, hissing with contemptuous indignation at anyone so bereft of intelligence as to "misinterpret" the PM's words.

Which were in response to Laurie Oakes question on Channel Nine's Sunday program:

Oakes: "If you knew that JI people in another neighbouring country were planning an attack on Australia would you be prepared to act?"

Howard: "Oh yes, I think any Australian prime minister would. I mean, it stands to reason that if you believed that somebody was going to launch an attack against your country, either of a conventional kind or of a terrorist kind, and you had a capacity to stop it and there was no alternative other than to use that capacity, then of course you would have to use it."

Unable to come to grips with the machinations of political life beyond the domestic manipulation of an unthinking Silent Majority, John Howard routinely vomits up these unnecessary aggravations. Trouble is, he's not bright enough to understand the ramifications. He seems to forget that we are 19 million, while the Muslim countries he has infuriated comprise some three billion.

Of course, the gist of what he is saying is obvious. No one is going to sit back and take an attack and do nothing. But everyone knows this. To voice it out of the blue is pure bellicosity for the sake of political point scoring with the rabid war-mongers at home. Worse, it shows a total lack of understanding of international diplomacy.

John Howard, whose passion quotient matches that of a leech unwittingly affixing itself to a corpse, is little more than a grasping mediocrity who managed to stay on his feet long enough to become leader after a succession of talentless throwaways soiled themselves. Indeed, all politicians live or die by dogged perseverance combined with sheer chance. Just look at Steve Bracks. Fate is far too grand a concept to apply to mere politicians.

Like a vaudeville entertainer who has no talent but somehow got on stage anyway, someone should come in from the wings, slip a cane around John Howard's neck and haul him off. Before the curtain comes down with a regional bang.

See the first article in this volume of Scum at the top: Urgent: Movement to force dismissal of Howard Govt

Top