Howard, John Winston (1939-…), was prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007. A member of the Liberal Party, he led a coalition of the National and Liberal parties to victory in federal elections in 1996, 1998, 2001, and 2004. Howard was the second longest-serving prime minister in Australian history. Only Sir Robert Gordon Menzies—who served from 1939 to 1941 and from 1949 to 1966—held office longer.
Howard’s time in office was marked by a lengthy period of economic growth. Many of his policies aimed to decrease government control over the economy. In foreign affairs, Howard favored closer links with Australia’s traditional allies, especially the United Kingdom and the United States. In March 2003, against strong domestic opposition, Howard committed about 2,000 Australian troops to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Early life and family
John Winston Howard was born on July 26, 1939, in Earlwood, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales. He was the youngest of four children. His parents, Lyall and Mona, owned and operated a garage. John Howard attended Earlwood Primary School and Canterbury Boys’ High School. He received a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Sydney in 1961. 
In 1962, he was admitted as a solicitor (lawyer) of the New South Wales Supreme Court and began working for a Sydney law firm. That year, he was elected president of the New South Wales Young Liberals. In 1963, he became a member of the Liberal Party State Executive and worked on Tom Hughes’s successful campaign for a seat in the Australian House of Representatives.
On April 4, 1971, Howard married Janette Parker (full name Alison Janette Parker, born in 1944), a teacher. The couple have three children: Melanie (born in 1974), Tim (born in 1977), and Richard (born in 1980).
Entry into politics
In 1968, Howard ran for a seat in the New South Wales state Parliament but was not elected. He was elected vice president of the state division of the Liberal Party in 1972. In 1974, he won election to the Australian House of Representatives, representing the district of Bennelong. He would hold that seat until the end of his political career.
Howard quickly rose through the ranks of the Liberal Party. In 1975, he became minister for business and consumer affairs in the coalition government of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. In this position, he helped establish the National Companies and Securities Commission, a government body created to administer laws concerning the buying and selling of securities (stocks and bonds). This commission was later replaced by the Australian Securities Commission, which became the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
In 1977, Howard became minister assisting the prime minister, as well as minister of state for special trade negotiations. That same year, Fraser requested that his treasurer step down and appointed Howard to serve in the position.
In 1982, Howard became deputy leader of the Liberal Party. In 1983, Fraser’s government lost a general election to the Australian Labor Party, led at that time by Bob Hawke. After the election, Andrew Peacock replaced Fraser as head of the Liberals, and Howard became deputy leader of the opposition and shadow treasurer. In 1985, Howard replaced Peacock as leader of the Liberal Party in Parliament and head of the opposition. He led the Liberals in a general election in 1987, but Hawke’s Labor Party remained in power. In 1989, the liberals serving in Parliament voted to replace Howard with Peacock as head of the party in Parliament.
Prime minister
Howard returned to Liberal Party leadership in January 1995. At a general election in March 1996, he led a coalition of Liberals and Nationals to a decisive victory in the House of Representatives. Howard became prime minister on March 11.
Economic policies.
Howard’s government soon began a program of sweeping economic reform. A budget introduced by his administration slashed spending on such public services as health, education, and assistance programs for Indigenous (native) people. (Australia’s Indigenous peoples include the Aboriginal peoples of Australia and the Torres Strait Islander peoples.) Howard’s government also arranged for the partial privatization (sale to private owners) of the government-owned telecommunications company Telstra. In May 1996, Howard’s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, angered several Asian nations—including China, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam—by abolishing a program that provided those countries with loan and grant assistance for such projects as bridges, roads, and power stations.
In 1998, Howard called a federal election. The central issue of the campaign was Howard’s proposed goods and services tax (GST), which would replace the previous federal sales tax. Although a proposal to introduce a GST had cost the Liberal-led coalition an election in 1993, Howard’s coalition remained in power in the 1998 election. The GST went into effect in 2000.
Relations with Indigenous peoples.
In 1997, the federal government released a report about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who had been forcibly taken from their parents by the Australian government from about 1870 to 1970—a group known as the Stolen Generations . According to the report, most of the children had been placed with white adoptive parents or in orphanages under a policy that aimed to assimilate Australia’s Indigenous people into white society. The report recommended that the government offer compensation to Indigenous families affected by the government’s actions. However, Howard refused to offer compensation and blocked attempts to issue a formal government apology.
In an attempt to appeal to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Howard in 1999 put to referendum (direct public vote) a draft preamble to the Australian Constitution that recognized Indigenous people as the original inhabitants of Australia. Howard co-wrote the preamble and campaigned in its support. The referendum also asked voters whether Australia should become a republic, with a president replacing the British monarch as head of state, a measure Howard opposed. Neither measure received enough support to pass.
Peacekeeping missions.
In August 1999, the people of East Timor—the eastern side of the island of Timor, just north of Australia—voted for independence from Indonesia, which had held East Timor since 1975. After the vote, the Indonesian armed forces assisted opponents of independence in a campaign of terror against the East Timorese. In September 1999, Howard mobilized 4,500 Australian troops to lead a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force to East Timor. East Timor became fully independent in 2002.
In 2003, Howard sent Australian troops to lead a peacekeeping mission to the Solomon Islands. A four-year civil war had caused the breakdown of law and order in the country’s capital, Honiara.
Immigration.
In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the numbers of refugees and illegal immigrants arriving in Australia increased dramatically. In August 2001, an Indonesian boat carrying more than 430 Afghan refugees sank off the coast of Christmas Island, an Australian overseas territory. A Norwegian freighter rescued the survivors, but Howard refused to allow the boat to land at Christmas Island. Australian immigration officials demanded that the immigrants be returned to Indonesia, but Indonesian officials refused to accept them. In September, New Zealand agreed to take some of the immigrants. Nauru agreed to temporarily house the others in return for financial assistance from Australia. This agreement was part of a policy that became known as the Pacific Solution. Under this policy, the government transferred asylum-seekers from Christmas Island to processing centers in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The policy was in place until 2008.
Immigration became a central issue in that year’s general election. Howard’s tough stance on illegal immigration was seen by political observers as one of the keys to his coalition’s victory.
Environmental policies.
In 2002, Howard announced his refusal to ratify (formally approve) the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement intended to reduce global warming (see Kyoto Protocol ). Howard expressed concern that the treaty would harm Australia’s prosperous coal industry. Instead of following the terms of the treaty, Howard said Australia would work to develop cleaner ways of using fossil fuels. Critics accused Howard of protecting the coal industry and refusing to set goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2004, Howard unveiled a new energy strategy aimed at reducing harmful emissions. The strategy involved burying carbon dioxide deep underground and developing renewable energy technologies. Critics still urged him to support the Kyoto Protocol, and they argued that his new plan relied too heavily on fossil fuels.
In 2006, members of Howard’s government began serious discussions about reducing fossil fuel use in Australia. Government officials met with representatives from the United States and several Asian nations to discuss the development of clean coal technology and nuclear power.
War in Iraq.
In early 2003, Howard deployed Australian troops and equipment to the Persian Gulf in anticipation of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The U.S. government had claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of the United States and other nations. Howard’s move triggered strong domestic opposition. In February, the Senate passed a no-confidence motion against Howard and accused him of making a unilateral (one-sided) decision without the approval of the Parliament. Although the vote carried no legislative weight, it was seen as a rejection of Howard’s support for the war. Australia withdrew its troops in 2009. See Iraq War .
Final term and defeat.
Despite the controversy over Howard’s support for the war in Iraq, his coalition won the October 2004 election. The Liberals also won control of the Senate for the first time since 1981. Political experts credited Howard’s victory in large part to Australia’s healthy economy, which had grown steadily since he took office.
In 2006, Howard’s government passed a sweeping industrial relations program called WorkChoices. Among other reforms, the program replaced union contracts with individual agreements between workers and employers. Opponents of the program argued that it allowed employers to take unfair advantage of their employees. Howard added a so-called “fairness test” to the program to address critics’ concerns.
At a general election in November 2007, the Labor Party defeated Howard’s coalition. Although Labor and the coalition held similar views on a number of issues, Labor leader Kevin Rudd described the election as a referendum on Howard’s controversial WorkChoices program. In the election, Howard also lost his seat in the House, becoming only the second serving prime minister to do so. Howard remained as interim prime minister until Rudd took office in December.
