John Howard

John Winston Howard is a former Liberal prime minister, born in Sydney in 1939. A commercial lawyer, he won the seat of Bennelong in 1974 and served as treasurer under Malcolm Fraser. He led the Liberals twice, losing the 1987 election before returning as leader in 1995 and winning the 1996 election in a landslide. He won four elections and governed for nearly twelve years, second only to Robert Menzies. In 2007 he lost both government and his own seat. He has since remained active in political debate.

Admirers credit Howard with a long period of economic growth, paying down government debt, the GST, the gun buyback that followed Port Arthur, and the Australian-led intervention that helped East Timor to independence. He built broad support among working and middle-class voters, often called his 'battlers', and is often ranked in the upper tier of Australian prime ministers. Critics fault him for joining the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for the offshore detention of asylum seekers under the Pacific Solution, for breaking his earlier promise never to introduce a GST, and for the unpopular WorkChoices laws that contributed to his 2007 defeat. His refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generations and his initial silence on the views of Pauline Hanson also drew criticism.