Michael Pascoe:
And the award for the worst Liberal leader goes to… ??
03 Nov, 2023, updated 03 Nov, 2023

Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and John Howard all hurt Australia, writes Michael Pascoe.

On Wednesday a desperate headline was made out of an irrelevant Scott Morrison “warning” Anthony Albanese about the Prime Minister’s China visit.

There’s a dog across the road, barks a bit. Her woof-woofs would be of greater value.
The dog has never been a wrecking ball trashing Australian diplomacy, doesn’t have a track record of lying or duplicitous governance, suffers from no strange ideology potentially distorting her judgement and is not a Donald Trump fan.

In my book, that makes her more worth listening to than Mr Morrison.
It must have been a very quiet day in London for Mr Morrison to be noticed on the sidelines of the grandiosely-titled Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference – a three-day right-wing gathering providing a culture wars echo chamber for conservative spear-carriers and failed Liberal leaders, with Messrs Howard, Abbott and Morrison among the 100 or so Australians attending at somebody else’s expense.

Each of the three failed PMs has managed to generate a headline while on tour, Howard dissing multiculturalism,  Abbott dismissing the “climate cult”,  and Morrison sledging Mr Albanese’s China visit.

I’ll come back to the last of those, but first the confluence of the Liberal trio poses a perennial question that probably won’t be asked in London: Who has been the worst leader of the federal Liberal Party?
It’s a tough one.
The conservative faithful would no doubt nominate any and all of the parliamentary leaders who failed to win government, so the question needs refining: Which leader of the federal Liberal Party has done the most damage to Australia?
The race is open-ended, given Peter Dutton is doing his utmost to be divisive, misleading, negative and to keep the culture wars firing. He displays an inclination to combine the worst traits of Howard and Abbott, but he is yet to have the opportunity of being prime minister to test the full potential of his hostility.

In chronological order then, the main charge that tends to be made against the Howard prime ministership is that it set the tone for what came after – the weakening of the public service, the elevation of the culture wars, the demise of ministerial responsibility and the dismissal of the “black arm band” view of our history just when Australia was opening up to owning its past.
Good government, then not so much
The first two terms of the Howard Government featured good governance. There was genuine ministerial responsibility – ministers were sacked for failures. Major difficult tax reform – the GST – was taken to an election for a mandate. And, most famously, there was gun control.
Whether or not you liked the policies, they were legitimately introduced and Australia was better for them.

Then good government went to hell in the third and fourth terms, starting with the “children overboard” lie and going downhill from there. The Tampa affair, demonising refugees, joining disastrous American military adventures, ditching the concept of ministerial responsibility, running dead on climate, turning superannuation into an egregiously iniquitous and extravagant tax haven for the wealthy and the great sin of omission – not investing the resources boom windfall.
But then came Tony Abbott, the great wrecker.
His signature “achievement” was destroying anything like effective carbon policy in keeping with his unrepentant and continuing climate denialism, locking Australia into a lost decade aligned with Saudi Arabia and Russia.