Talk:John Howard

No offence but...

"Self-proclaimed as the "most conservative leader the Liberal Party has ever had", Howard's political vision combines a lassiez-faire economic policy, including tight reins on government spending, tight restrictions on welfare (including "work for the dole" schemes requiring the unemployed to participate in make-work projects) and demanding with highly conservative, even reactionary social views, being strongly supportive of stay-at-home mothers, unsympathetic towards multiculturalism, opposed to an Australian republic (Australia's notional head of state is the British monarch), opposed to an apology to Australia's indigenous people for the stolen generation, opposed to a treaty, or any formal document, between Australia's indigenous people and the government."

...is very difficult to read. I'm going to edit it for clarity, but I've copied it here in case anyone disputes my modifications. - MMGB

SJK - I'm no fan of Howard, but the statement "many asian leaders came to consider him a racist" is too inflammatory without suitable references to back it up (not that I actually disagree with you).

I'm fairly sure Mahathir and the odd Indonesian politician has said so. Mahathir, of course, is a paragon of ethnic tolerance, freedom, the rule of law, and is an all-round nice guy - NOT. I'll try to dig up a specific reference. I didn't put the claim in the article, though. --Robert Merkel

Congrats to the Libs, boo-f'n-hoo to Labor who could have won, but didnt. Not surprisingly, the ALP will once again be lead by a former ACTU presiden, crean. in 3 yrs crean vs. costello will be awesome.... - dh

I'm sure we've each got our opinions on the last election but could we please try and keep this directly relevant to the article? --Robert Merkel

The characterisation of the Mabo decision is totally wrong.

This article needs serious work. It is unambiguously POV at some points. And you cannot accuse a prime minister of 'bribing' someone, unless there is clear and unambiguous evidence. Has black and white evidence been shown? The most you can say is that he was accused of bribing someone . . . JTD 04:58 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)

Frankly, Australian politics bores my unmentionables off, but there seem to be two major problems with this entry that need to be rectified:

1. Despite a lengthy and clearly anti-Howard section on the illegal immigration thing, it doesn't seem to bother mentioning the fake babies overboard scandal. This is ridiculous!
2. It credits Howard with reversing the long-established East Timor policy. In this, he followed a long, long way behind Labor, in particular (of all people!) Shadow Foreign Minister Laurie Brereton.

I dread the thought of delving into names and dats and details of this stuff - if there is a subject that bores me rigid, it's Australian politics - so, please, can someone fix it? Tannin 06:53 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)

One thing puzzles me. Most of the Australian pages I have visited are viciously POV. I know Australian parliamentary debates are notorious for their brutal language, but please don't let the low standards of Australian politicians impact on the standards used on Wiki. (So far, in trying to NPOV Aussie articles, I'm been accused of being a monarchist (by republicans), a republican (by monarchists) and other things! Obviously I'm a monarchist-republican, or should that be a republican-monarchist? Or maybe I'm just getting the balance right, and some on both sides don't like that.) So please, people, just because you hate Howard's guts, you adore the monarchy, you want to burn Buckingham Palace down and live, eat, breath and have sex while dreaming of an Australian republic, try to show some balance when writing pages on Wiki. JTD 18:17 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)