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PRIME MINJISTER 4/ 95
STATEMENT BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING, ! 4P
OLD JOCKEY, NEW COLOURS, SAME HORSE.
I congratulate Mr Howard on his election once -again to
the leadership of the Liberal Party.
No one has ever doubted Mr Howard's ambition, his
persistence and his willingness to stay long enough to
see everyone else off the scene though in the post-
Menzies Liberal Party that has not necessarily amounted
to an exceedingly long time.
I said after Mr Downer's election, the problem for the
Liberal Party is the horse not the jockey, and I was
pleased to see Dr Hewson, among others on the
conservative side, take up the refrain. But nothing in
the election of Mr Howard or his remarks at today's press
conference suggests that the Liberal Party understands
what it means.
Having put an old jockey on board the horse, the Liberal
Party is now trying to change his colours. Mr Howard has
declared himself the most conservative leader the Liberal
Party has ever had. In the 1980s he was a leading
advocate of the New Right. Essentially, he sounds
little different these days.
Today he attempted to skirt the issues on which his views
reflect the deeply reactionary basis of his politics. But
it is hard to say what sounded more improbable Mr
Howard talking about I'modernising' Australia, or
suggesting that he was a little liberal after all.
Mr Howard is the Liberal Party's most experienced
parliamentary member. He is said to be its most
articulate spokesman. Yet in his era in office and out
the Liberal Party has been a comprehensive failure.
No one speaks more eloquently of that failure than Mr
Howard. No one speaks better for the fact that the
Federal Liberal Party lacks national vision and a
national perspective.
And no-one speaks better for the dry, regressive, deeply
conservative spirit which has driven every moderate
influence from its senior ranks.
CANBERRA 30 January 1995