Lazarus Rising. John Howard

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      It was easy for cynics to dismiss Young Liberal activities as being entirely social and lacking in political gravitas. That was a superficial judgement. Sure there was plenty of social activity — and of course, why not? — but to those who were so inclined there were ample opportunities for political involvement. The Youth Council was a great forum for debate on contemporary political issues, and the physical participation of young people in local campaigns was especially welcome.

      In those days members of parliament (MPs) did not have postal allowances; we were years away from direct-mail campaigns. Hand delivery of pamphlets to individual letterboxes, usually at night, was the staple way of getting the local candidate’s message across.

      My first experience of serious organisational politics was my election, in 1962, as the Young Liberal representative on the state executive of the NSW division of the Liberal Party. This body was the power centre of the party in NSW and included the leader and deputy leader of the state parliamentary party as well as the most senior member from New South Wales of the Menzies Government. I was now involved in genuine politics.

      It was then that I first really got to know John Carrick, the general secretary of the party in New South Wales, a person who would influence me enormously over the years. He was to become my political mentor. I learned more about politics from John than from any other person I have known.

      He had become the party’s general secretary, the chief executive officer, in 1948 at the age of 29. During World War II, when a member of the Sparrow Force in Timor, he was captured by the Japanese and as a prisoner of war spent time working on the infamous Burma–Thailand railway. John would hold the position of general secretary for 23 years, until his election to the Senate in 1971. He became a senior minister in the Fraser Government, and served as Leader of the Government in the Senate, until that government was defeated in 1983.

      Possessed of abundant energy, as well as immense organisational skills, John always realised that politics was a battle of ideas — a philosophical contest — and not merely a public relations competition. He drew many people to his orbit through the force of his intellect and his indefatigable commitment to the political cause of the Liberal Party. To him, one of the roles of a general secretary was to act as a constant talent scout for people who might contribute as members of parliament, irrespective of whether they were members of the party.

      He formed a close relationship with Menzies, who much admired his tactical and strategic abilities. To my mind, one of John Carrick’s immense contributions to the continuing political success of the Liberal Party was the role he played along with others in persuading the Prime Minister to embrace a policy of direct government assistance to independent (principally Catholic) schools. This change was an important factor in the Liberal victory, federally, in 1963. Thus began the most enduring demographic shift in Australian politics in the past generation, namely the change in allegiance of a whole swag of middle-class Catholic voters, who hitherto had remained loyal to the Labor Party for none other than tribal reasons.

      Until the 1960s the ALP was the party of choice for the majority of Australian Catholics. Theology played no part in this; it was driven by socioeconomic factors, with Irish Catholics being predominantly of a working-class background. The sectarianism of earlier generations served to reinforce this alignment. Although the warming of Catholics towards the Liberal Party had begun in earnest with Menzies’ state aid gesture in 1963, the first Fraser cabinet of 1975 still included only one Catholic, Phillip Lynch. Over the coming years the dam would really burst on this old divide. One-half of the final Howard cabinet in 2007 were Catholics. Once again this had nothing to do with religion, it being the inevitable consequence of a socioeconomic realignment.

      When education became ‘free, compulsory and secular’ in the 1860s, Australian Catholics resolved to maintain their own school system, at enormous ongoing cost both to parents and the faithful. There was no government help for them. The prevailing view, in a much more sectarian age, was that those who sent their children to Catholic schools should bear the full cost of that choice: the free public system was available to Catholics and Protestants alike. As the decades rolled on, Catholic resentment grew, especially as, there being 20 per cent or so of the school-age population in Catholic schools, the state was relieved of a large financial burden.

      By the 1960s attitudes had changed. There was more recognition of the immense sacrifice made by Catholics to keep their education system; sectarianism had begun to crumble and there was a realisation that state schools would not cope if the Catholic system collapsed.

      Menzies, the self-styled ‘simply Presbyterian', became persuaded of the justice of the Catholic argument. In the 1963 election campaign he promised money for all schools in Australia to construct science blocks. Inspired politics, it was also cultural balm, and aided the decline of sectarianism. This symbolic breakthrough led over time to extensive funding of independent schools in Australia, with the greatest help going to those who were in most need.

      The Menzies thrust was not easily accepted throughout the Liberal Party and internal debate continued to rage. Early in 1964 I pushed a pro-state aid motion through the Youth Council, which struck real turbulence. The Liberal leader in New South Wales (later premier), Bob Askin, remained very sensitive about opposition to the policy within the party and was still to summon the courage to assert the merits of it at a state level in the way that Menzies had federally. During a telephone conversation with me, Askin remonstrated about the pro-state aid position of the Young Liberals, even musing that perhaps the Young Liberals might have to be closed down if they continued to cause trouble. That did not change the Youth Council’s view.

      Askin was an earthy and instinctive politician who loved horseracing, rugby league and card playing. He won four elections for the NSW Liberals, far ahead of any other Liberal leader in that state.

      The 1963 election was a real triumph for Menzies. He called it a year early and increased his slender majority of two to 22. For me, the personal high of that election was the victory of Tom Hughes QC in the electorate of Parkes. I was still living in Earlwood, which was in this electorate, and was Tom’s campaign director. He needed a swing of some 6 to 7 per cent, something he did not believe that he would achieve. It was a classic grassroots campaign, attracting much high-profile attention.

      Tom Hughes came from a well-known family of Sydney’s eastern suburbs. He had served in the RAAF in World War II. He was intelligent and engaging. I took an instant liking to him, and we have remained friends ever since. His Bellevue Hill address did not bother the Liberal locals in Parkes. They liked the way in which he quickly adapted his speaking style from the courtroom to the back of a truck.

      Tom had close links with the Packer family, which led to him being dubbed ‘Packer’s pea for Parkes'. He enlisted their help to produce a local campaign newspaper, called the Parkes Examiner. I spent several hours, a week out from the election, in the office of the now defunct magazine the Bulletin, with Clyde Packer, elder brother of Kerry, Tom Hughes and Tom’s younger brother, Robert, working on the newspaper. Robert was at that time quite an accomplished cartoonist. Clyde Packer’s editorial skill did wonders with the copy written by Tom and me.

      The incumbent Labor member for Parkes, Leslie Haylen, had a left-wing reputation. He had visited China, and we decided on a cartoon which depicted Haylen dancing arm in arm with the Chinese leader, Mao Zedong. They were doing the ‘Peking two-step'. This was 1963 after all; the Cold War was still in full swing, and consorting with the Chinese communist leadership was not calculated to impress middle Australia.

      The 1963 election took place under the shadow of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. ‘Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?’ forever and a day would become a question asked of my generation. I was at home in Earlwood, about to leave and meet Tom Hughes in the Campsie shopping centre for some СКАЧАТЬ