Word: howard
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...routine annual statement on taxing and spending? While fiscal policy is nowadays a second-tier economic tool, it's always been a top-shelf political accelerant. It's also the best example around of how governments set the agenda - particularly when general elections loom. If Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Costello have become masters at anything during their 3,000 days in government, it's been how to turn their brand of conservatism - quiet economic reform and blunt social populism - into a winning electoral strategy. Howard's team is like a great football club that's won the comp...
...funny to think back to 1996, when Howard won office. The first Howard ministry was a bunch of no-names; after 13 years of Labor rule, today's big guns, like Costello, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, had no ministerial experience. But the conservatives have put their stamp on the country, improved their party organization and employed the privileges of office to keep themselves in power. Howard became P.M. with a huge parliamentary majority; implementing his convictions - tax and industrial-relations reform, tougher gun laws and cultural realignment - cost him some of his electoral buffer...
With an election expected later this year, the outline of Howard's campaign pitch just got clearer: continued economic growth, tax cuts all round, and generous payments to voters with children (or those planning to have them) and the aged. Howard has played this game before. Three years ago, he was toast, his government seen as "mean" and "tricky." Sure, 9/11 and the Tampa issue allowed Howard to display his superior national security credentials compared with Labor aspirant Kim Beazley. But a Budget-time spending bonanza six months before the poll helped Howard and his government to get back...
...more than ever, as well as setting the political agenda, governments can manipulate public perceptions. Political scientists have written about the "public relations state"; not "spin" per se, but the way public relations has become institutionalized within government. Not only does the Howard government maintain some three dozen media advisers to deliver its message; like its recent Labor predecessors, it also uses additional people in the state capitals to monitor local media and produce transcripts. If a Labor frontbencher is interviewed on Perth radio, there's a good chance that within a few hours the relevant minister will be responding...
...Howard's incumbency explains in part why Labor has struggled to define itself since 1998. The Opposition has only one-fifth as many ministerial staffers. In costing its programs, it does not have all the information it would like. When Opposition leader Mark Latham blundered on superannuation math, an army of bureaucrats was there to give the Treasurer the correct numbers. If Oppositions are accused of holding back on policy detail, one reason could be that federal governments can call on some 130,000 public servants to mull over those programs. As well, being out of the loop on intelligence...