PAUL Keating is 100 per cent right when he says that when you change the government, you change the nation. He might have added that when the government changes, the nation's storyline also changes as the incoming party emphasises, and sometimes rewrites, strands of our historical narrative to suit itself. 
 
The narrative matters. Along with taking care of the voter's hip pocket, it's a fundamental weapon in asserting and maintaining dominance over your political opponent. They, along with the qualities of the contending leaders, are what determines election outcomes.

That's why there has been a mighty mud wrestle this week between current and former prime ministers, treasurers and Treasury secretaries over who did what, when and why on economic policy in Australia during the past three decades.

And that's why this isn't an academic spat about the past between former treasurers Howard and Keating, but rather is a key political conflict between Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd. At stake is Labor's reputation as an economic manager and, by implication, its fitness for government.

And it's not just a former Labor prime minister pointing out Howard's porkies on this score but a former Liberal prime minister, too - Howard's old boss, Malcolm Fraser.

Howard would have us believe that as the Fraser government's treasurer from 1977 to 1983 he was frustrated in his desire to open up the then uncompetitive, inward-looking Australian economy, by a fuddy-duddy boss.

Howard positions himself as the person really behind the subsequent floating of the Australian dollar, the dismantling of industry protection and the introduction of enterprise bargaining into the workplace that resulted in big increases in labour productivity in the 1980s and early '90s.

The massive boom Australia is enjoying now is therefore down to him, goes Howard's argument.

Does this stand up to scrutiny?

Over the years Fraser has had a simple, consistent and powerful response to Howard's whine about being an economic reform warrior cruelly stymied by an old-money, Western Districts prime minister: show me the cabinet submissions.

Fraser points out that Howard cannot produce a single cabinet submission in which Howard proposed any measure to open up and modernise the Australian economy that was knocked back. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, Fraser's word has to be accepted.

The 30-year-rule protecting cabinet papers from Howard's period as treasurer is unlikely to save Howard on this point as it progressively expires from the end of this year. As prime minister he can access any cabinet paper he wants. If there were cabinet submissions countering Fraser's taunt, you can bet Howard would have dug them out and leaked them by now.

Further, Howard was widely known at the time to have dragged his feet establishing the Campbell committee, whose report on the financial system set the tone for aspects of Labor's reforms in the '80s and early '90s. The impetus came from Fraser's office, which had to prod a reluctant Howard into bringing a cabinet submission forward to get the Campbell committee going.

Howard trying to steal credit for the Hawke and Keating governments' massive and massively successful modernisation of the Australian economy (in partnership with an informed and intelligent trade union movement) is desperate stuff.

As he casts his mind back to that period he may want to pause and consider this point: he was in Opposition the whole time. .

In the case of economic reform in the '80s and early '90s it took actually being in office. Not only was Howard in Opposition at the time, he and his ideas were so ill-supported on his own side of politics that he was Liberal leader for just three years and nine months of Labor's 13 years in office.

Howard couldn't sell an ice cream in hell for most of his time in Opposition, let alone a challenging economic reform agenda. Following on from Bill Hayden's herculean efforts in Opposition to school Labor in modern economic fundamentals, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, in contrast, could and did.

Howard's economic legacy is this: a massive increase in the complexity of the tax system, an explosion in business regulation, inculcation of a public debt aversion that has choked off development of the infrastructure needed to optimise growth, and labour laws thicker than the Sydney Yellow Pages.

That's progress Howard-style.

You can take the word of Keating and Fraser as gospel on Howard's worth as an economic reformer. Lucky for Howard he's got a once-every-50-years sized terms of trade boost and booming world economy to provide a figleaf for his embarrassment

.


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/michael-costello-history-backs-keatings-...