Howard Government - Background

Background

John Howard became Leader of the Opposition on 30 January 1995, replacing Alexander Downer, who resigned in his favour. Downer took the position of Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Peter Costello retained his position as Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and Shadow Treasurer.

Howard had had a long Parliamentary career, having entered Parliament in 1974 and served as Treasurer in the Fraser Government from 1977–83. He replaced Andrew Peacock as leader of the Opposition and in 1985 and challenged the Hawke Government at the 1987 Election, which saw Labor returned. Peacock successfully challenged and replaced Howard prior to the 1989 Election, which again returned Labor. The Liberals turned to two further leaders (John Hewson and Alexander Downer) before restoring Howard to the office to lead the Coalition against the Keating Labor Government. Long-serving Labor Treasurer Paul Keating had successfully challenged Bob Hawke for the leadership of the Labor Party and the prime ministership in 1991. Despite Australia suffering a deep recession in the early 1990s, Labor had increased its lead over the Coalition at the 1993 Election, which had seen the Liberals under Hewson offer an ambitious program of economic reform called Fightback!, which proposed a Goods and Services Tax as its centrpiece.

As opposition leader, Howard delivered a series of "headland speeches", which dealt broadly with the philosophy of government. In contrast to Keating, he used these addresses to speak in favour of traditional Australian institutions and symbols like the Australian flag and ANZAC legacy. By the time of the 1996 Election, unemployment was high, but at a lower rate than at the previous 1993 Election, and interest rates were lower than they had been in 1990, but foreign debt had been growing. The Keating Government was projecting a small budget surplus. Following the election, an $8 billion deficit was confirmed.

In his 18 February 1996 Policy Launch Speech delivered at the Ryde Civic Centre in Sydney, Howard emphasised that Labor had been in office a long time, and cited high inflation, a poor current account deficit and high national debt as evidence of bad economic management. He called for industrial relations reform to increase flexibility and improve productivity and offered tax relief for families. He proposed increased spending on environmental challenges, to be in part funded by the partial sale of telstra. He also promised to restore the prime minister's attendance at question time in parliament (which Keating had reduced in his final term).

The 1996 Election brought to an end 13 years of the Hawke-Keating Labor Government.