Lazarus Rising. John Howard

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СКАЧАТЬ strange about this. Both then and now, running a small business of the sole trader or sole owner type entails a total commitment of time and energy. There are no guaranteed market shares, and no penalty rates or overtime for effort beyond normal working hours. The qualitative difference between owning and operating a genuinely small business and working, even at a senior executive level, in a large corporation is immense and rarely understood by those not involved in it.

      My father was always very tired when he came home from the garage, particularly on Saturdays, when he would often spend most of the afternoon resting. The business was discussed over the dinner table. My brothers had helped out, serving petrol and doing other tasks at the garage. I couldn’t wait until I was old enough so I could have a go as well. I started when I was about 14. I loved it. It was a real buzz serving petrol, checking oil levels, pumping up tyres and trying to sell a few ‘sundries', such as new spark plugs. Years later Paul Keating would sneeringly refer to the ‘bowser boy from Canterbury’ (sic). To me it was a badge of honour.

      I enjoyed meeting the customers, who, my father reminded me, were always right. I had quite an argument with one customer, who insisted on smoking a cigarette as he stood beside me while I pumped petrol into the tank of his car. In the end I pulled the nozzle of the pump out of the tank. Then he put out his cigarette. I hope he stayed as a customer.

      Like all service stations of that time, my father’s sold all different brands of petrol. Unlike many others, though, Dad owned the freehold of his garage. From the early 1950s onwards, the major oil companies began an aggressive ‘one brand’ service station expansion policy of either building new service stations or doing deals, of various kinds, with existing operators, so that only one brand of fuel was sold at a site. This intensified competition as the number of sites expanded rapidly, with new operators often being obliged to open for longer hours. It was hard for someone in my father’s position to match this. The inevitable business pressure affected Dad’s health. Although he didn’t want to go one-brand, it became a commercial necessity as there was a small rebate per gallon paid to owners who sold only one brand. He signed up with Mobilgas in 1954.

      The one-brand switch badly affected Dad’s business, but it had to be accepted as a tough but unavoidable competitive development which could occur in any market. What could not, however, be viewed in the same light was an arbitrary edict delivered by the local Marrickville Council later in the year.

      The council told him to remove his petrol bowsers from the kerbside in front of his service station, as it wanted traffic lights installed on the street corner where the garage stood. This was tantamount to telling Dad to close down his business. Neither the council nor the NSW Government authority, at whose instigation the council would have acted, offered any compensation for the potential destruction of my father’s business. It dealt a real body blow to my father and, coming on top of the market-related setbacks he had suffered, left Dad deeply dispirited and worsened his health.

      As a 15-year-old boy, I thought that my father had been treated outrageously by an insensitive, high-handed council, against which he had no redress. This edict hung over my father and was still there when he died at the end of 1955. Exchanges went on for some time after that, and it was not until the early ‘60s that traffic lights were finally installed on the corner.

      This incident reinforced the feeling in my family that governments, generally speaking, weren’t all that sympathetic to small business; that if you had one, you were very much on your own. Big companies could look after themselves and unions were strong, but the little bloke got squeezed. Such attitudes weren’t entirely logical, and in government I always emphasised the common interests of businesses, large and small. Yet, when on-balance judgements were called for, I confess to usually siding with the small operator, even if some violation of free-market principles might be involved; my support for newsagents and pharmacies come readily to mind.

      * * *

      As I’ve said, politics and current affairs were frequently discussed, not only around the dinner table, but also in direct conversation between my mother and father. There was no particular starting point for the discussion of politics at home. I can remember it always being there. My eldest brothers usually joined the discussions quite freely.

      Occasionally, my father would listen to important parliamentary broadcasts on the ABC. We all followed the events leading up to the double dissolution of federal parliament obtained by Bob Menzies in 1951. It was the first time that a double dissolution had been sought since World War I, and — particularly given the political antecedents of the Governor-General, Sir William McKell, who had been the Labor Premier of New South Wales — there was much conjecture as to whether he would agree with the advice offered by Menzies supporting the request for a double dissolution.

      In the end, McKell did the right thing and granted the dissolution. For doing his sworn duty he incurred the lifelong hostility of some Labor people, who simply believed that he should have done the bidding of his old political party rather than discharge his constitutional responsibility. This was a precursor to a much more savage application of the Labor belief that the party always owned the man, irrespective of the circumstances, some 25 years later.

      Although my parents were united in their commitment to the Liberal Party, I suspect that they voted differently on one important occasion, and that was the referendum, held on 22 September 1951, to ban the Communist Party of Australia.

      At that time the Cold War was intense, the communists had taken over in China only two years before, and Soviet communism was seen as a real threat to the peace of the world. On top of this, communist officials held many senior positions in Australian trade unions. The Communist Party in Australia was regarded by many as a subversive organisation because it sought the overthrow of the economic and social order under which Australians then lived. Menzies had secured passage of a law which declared the Communist Party an illegal organisation.

      The validity of that law was challenged, and the High Court of Australia declared the law unconstitutional, as being beyond the power of the federal parliament to enact. Menzies’ response had been to propose a referendum asking the people to agree to change the Constitution of the Commonwealth to give the federal parliament the power to pass the law which had previously been ruled invalid. The referendum campaign provoked intense debate and division. Menzies and his followers argued that the free world was engaged in a life-and-death struggle against communism, and Australia should not tolerate what he believed amounted to a fifth column in our country. Against that, many argued that the proposal violated free speech, and that it was never desirable to drive political movements underground.

      This debate spilled over into the kitchen of our household. I recall quite clearly my mother’s strong reservations about the additional power being sought by Menzies. One night she said, ‘Menzies would be a bit of a dictator, if he had his way.’ My father would have none of this. This was the one particularly short and sharp exchange on the subject, and after that I heard nothing more. Knowing my mother’s determination once she had made up her mind, I am sure that she ended up voting against the proposal. If such loyal Liberals as my mother had reservations, then it is not surprising that the referendum went down.

      This incident said a lot about my parents. They were both politically and socially conservative, but that was the result of their separate convictions. In no way did my mother automatically embrace the views of my father. Although in so many ways Mum fulfilled the traditional homemaker role typical of the times, she was a woman who held fiercely to her own independent opinions. Like my father, she had a well-developed interest in politics, and for years after Dad’s death she and I would have quite lengthy discussions about political events in Australia in the 1920s and ‘30s.

      I became totally absorbed in the Petrov Affair. Vladimir Petrov had been the third secretary in the Soviet Embassy in Canberra (but in reality a low-level spy) when suddenly, in April 1954, he defected and sought political asylum in Australia, which СКАЧАТЬ