 My name is Ian Young and I put the great honour to be Vice-Chancellor of Australian National University. I'd like to begin by acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians off whose traditional lands we meet and paying my respects to the elders of the Ngunnawal people past and present. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to this 10th Sir Roland Wilson annual oration. Tonight we're joined by Sir Roland Wilson Foundation Chair Dr Ken Henry, the Board of the Wilson Foundation, secretaries from several Commonwealth departments, members of the ANU Executive and the Sir Roland Wilson Scholars. The Sir Roland Wilson Foundation was established by a gift from the Wilson family matched by the ANU to promote a significant dialogue and research interest in public policy. In 2011 the Foundation embarked on a new initiative in partnership with the Commonwealth to award PhD scholarships to senior Commonwealth public servants to pursue topics of national and enduring interest in public policy. We now have some 17 scholars in the program and the first of this cohort is due to graduate at the end of this year. Before I introduce our guest speaker I would like to take just a few minutes to profess your memory about Sir Roland Wilson. In 1932 Roland Wilson was the first economist to be appointed to a senior position in the Commonwealth Public Service. He went on to be appointed as Head of Treasury in 1951 at the age of 47 and he held that position until he resigned in 1966, the longest serving Head of Treasury. Wilson held two doctorates and as anyone involved in University Life will tell you, there's clearly one too many, but two doctorates, one from Oxford and a second from the University of Chicago where he studied with the noted economist Jacob Weiner. His thick thesis was on capital movements and their economic consequences. Sir Roland Wilson's greatest work in Treasury was in fostering a more efficient and dynamic economy. He was opposed to Australia's high rates of trade protection, often putting him at odds with his colleagues. Wilson was primarily interested in accelerating Australia's economic development and it was a period of quite remarkable growth. The Roland Wilson Foundation continues to make an important contribution to public policy and from my point of view to bring a closer relationship between the University, the Australian National University and the public service, something which is very central to the current University's mission. So with that background it's my great pleasure this evening to introduce the Honourable John Howard, Australia's 25th Prime Minister, holding the office for 11 years from 1996 to 2007. Since retiring from politics Mr Howard has released his autobiography, Lazarus Rising, and also more recently the Menzies Era, an account of the years of post-war economic prosperity and cold war anxiety over which Sir Robert Menzies presided as Prime Minister until his retirement in 1966. Tonight it gives me great pleasure to introduce the Honourable Mr John Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia, to deliver the 10th Wilson operation. Well thank you very much Vice-Chancellor, I acknowledge Dr Ken Henry, the Chairman of the Roland Wilson Foundation and many former public service advisors and councillors of mine and students of the University ladies and gentlemen. I should commend my remarks by congratulating the ANU in scoring so well in the news poll of world universities. The ratings of the ANU have held up extremely well and the University deserves congratulations for the esteem in which it is held around the academic community. It is a special honour for me to deliver to this lecture tonight. I think it's fair to say that the first time I spent much time looking at banknotes at the age of 12, the signature of Roland Wilson and AC Coons appeared on those banknotes and that reminds me of a remark that was frequently made to me at Liberal Party meetings that I began attending in the late 1950s and early 1960s and I would frequently hear esteemed members of my chosen political party say I've got one big complaint about Bob Menzies and that is he kept on those two socialists, Wilson and Coons. And as time went by and I learned a little more about Wilson and Coons, I understood that that remark was particularly inappropriate in relation to Roland Wilson as to whether it was entirely inappropriate in relation to the other gentlemen. No good question, let me put it as diplomatically as that. Roland Wilson of course was, or is rather, Australia's longest serving Treasury Secretary and he served as Secretary of the Treasury from I think April of 1951 until October or November of 1966. It was not only a very long period, it was a period of tranquility and stability in relation to the occupancy of the Treasury portfolio because for most of that time the Treasury was either the long-serving Sir Arthur Fadden or the almost equally long-serving Harold Hock and at the tail end of it after the retirement of Sir Robert Menzies, the Treasurer that Wilson served with, was William McMahon, was a very long and very tranquil stable period. By contrast, and this reminds me of the very first conversation I had in my newly amended position of Treasurer of the Commonwealth late in 1977 in rather unexpected circumstances and the then Treasury Secretary Sir Frederick Wheeler and Sir Frederick Wheeler looked me straight in the eye and he said, Treasurer, I have been Secretary of the Treasury for six years and you are the sixth Treasurer that I have served and it left me feeling rather uneasy yet given that he worked his way through so many Treasurers in that period of time but then I reflected that he was due to retire the following year and that perhaps some stability would return but in a way the stability in relation to the personnel of the Treasury portfolio was a metaphor for the stability of that period of time in Australia's economic history. I've had occasion in writing my second book, The Menzies' Era, to reflect on that period of time. It was a period of remarkable political and economic tranquility and stability. It was not, of course, an uneventful period either economically or politically and it did bring together not only Australia's longest serving Treasury Secretary but also Australia's longest serving Prime Minister because for all but I think about 14 or 15 months at the beginning of Menzies' period as Prime Minister Roland Wilson was the Secretary of the Treasury and they developed a particular partnership. They obviously had very strong regard for each other. It was an era, of course, in which the relationship between the public service and the government was different from what it would ultimately become but perhaps not as different as some of the six and some of the more obsessive commentators would now about. Certainly the role of private office advisors other than people who came straight out of the public service didn't exist and the idea that people other than deep heart mental officers would give ministers policy advice was almost abhorrent to people such as Sir John Buggy and Sir Roland Wilson. But to counter that, can I say I had an extremely successful experience as Prime Minister with a former distinguished public servant in Arthur Synodinus who was my chief advisor and a chief staff rather and a regular advisor on policy matters. Roland Wilson's period of Treasury of the Treasury was not, of course, without drama and without turbulence. In a few months of becoming Secretary of the Treasury he and the then treasurer Sir Arthur Fadden had to deal with the stabilizing economic consequences of the wall boom that arose out of the ferocious acquisition of wall stockpile by the Americans at the time of the Korean War and for a period of some 12 months I think in either 1951 or 1952 inflation rose by 23% in a period of a year but remarkably it returned to more normal and much lower levels within a period of 12 months and it was one of the number of occasions during the Menzies years and this, of course, was a period of fixed exchange rates. It was long before the flow of 1983. There were many occasions when within the coalition government there were tensions about the value of the currency and on that particular occasion there was a push by many liberal members of the coalition for a discreet appreciation of the value of the pound and that was resisted by some liberals and members of the country parties then was and ultimately what was settled upon as a device for handling the problem was to impart a special tax on wall receipts and credit that into an account to be applied against future taxation liabilities of Graziers and that resulted in returning a great deal of stability to the situation. I mentioned that to remind you and remind the audience of the fact that although it was a period of extraordinary tranquility and great economic growth and very low unemployment, rising levels of home ownership and seemingly endless period of economic stability was not without challenges and in any fair examination of that period enormous credit has to be given and not only of course to the leaders of the government of particularly Menzies and Fadden and later on John McEwan and Harold Hart also the credit had to be given to the advice received from that person so inappropriately described as a wretched socialist by, summoned by the people I met when I first joined the Liberal Party. I was fond when I was Prime Minister of saying that economic reform was like competing in a never ending foot race. The finishing line kept proceeding but if you didn't keep trying to get there others in the race would go past you and I thought that was an apt metaphor to describe the challenge that we now have. Economic reform remains a major challenge for Australia at the present time. There is a view that the process of economic reform has stalled is an argument that I want to address and contribute a couple of observations about in the remaining part of my remarks. The Menzies period of course was one of very great economic stability and growth and prosperity. It was part of good management, it was also a view to world economic circumstances and in any fair study of the economic history of that period in the early 1970s will tell us that it came very much to an end in the early 1970s with such unsettling things as the quadrupling of world oil prices the end of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate arrangements and much of the other economic turbulence which followed the pressures on the American economy flowing out of the way in which the Vietnam War was financed first by the Johnson administration and then by the Hawke administration, then by the Nixon administration. The Hawke period of government in Australia saw very significant economic changes. One of the benefits enjoyed by that government was the willingness of the then opposition to support most, not all, but most of the major economic initiatives of that government, such as the floating of the Australian dollar which is by far in my view the most significant economic reform that this country has experienced over the last 30 to 40 years. Also the very significant reductions in tariff protection which for a Labour government was a courageous thing to do given its association with the trade union movement. I reflect upon the fact that it's now almost 30 years since the tax sum where my successor as Treasurer Paul Keating proposed option C which was a 12.5% consumption tax and if my memory serves me correctly I think I as opposition Treasurer E. Spokesman afforded more support to Mr Keating's proposal for the 12.5% consumption tax than he received from his then Prime Minister or the then leaders of the trade union movement. Now I mentioned that just to give you an anecdote in passing to sort of make that obvious point and I also might mention as an anecdote in passing that when it came to the introduction of the goods and services tax that bipartisanship was not repaid and I think it's fair to say that just as the most important economic reform of my time in Parliament was the floating of the dollar as far as its consequences were concerned the hardest was the introduction of the GST because not only was the introduction of the GST vehemently opposed by their opposition but the GST had a far greater impact on the daily lives and the patterns of economic behaviour for the average citizen than did the float of the dollar. When you look at economic reform over the last 30 years I think it's fair to say a couple of things in assessing why it is that it does appear to have stalled at the present time. One of them is that to some degree you take yourself back 30 years there were when we reflect on it properly there were some low hanging fruit of economic reform. We did self evidently need significant changes to our taxation system. The Asprey report which was the first economic report to my knowledge to recommend the introduction of a broad based indirect tax was handed to the Whitland government in 1975 having been initiated by Willie Snedden when he was treasurer in the last months of the McMahon government. But it took a very long time 1975 until the 2000 for a GST to be finally introduced but anybody who brought serious study to the state of Australia's economy during those years of automatic knowledge that the need for taxation reform was very strong indeed. The need for the privatisation of government enterprises also falls into that category as time went by it became overwhelmingly necessary and desirable that the government relinquished ownership of such organisations as Qantas and then Australian Airlines and ultimately of course the Commonwealth Bank. The Commonwealth Bank was the last act of privatisation carried out by the Labor government prior to the election of my government in 1996 and I do remember in the afternoon of the last Keating government budget delivered by Ralph Willis I was brought by Kim Beasley the finance minister and on the other side of politics with him I always enjoyed a pleasant relationship and he said to me I remember very vividly John he is still in favour of privatising the Commonwealth the rest of the Commonwealth Bank and I said yes I am and he said well I'm going to need your vote to get it through the Senate because the Australian Democrats are opposed to it and as it turned out he did receive our vote to get it through the Senate although not before quite justifiably Peter Costello characterised Ralph Willis commitment to the public service unions that the privatisation would not take place as the equivalent of issuing a false prospectus in a floating company but I leave that to one side. When I look at the challenge of economic reform at the present time I've really got a couple of central observations to make. The first of those is that I still believe that the Australian public will accept the desirability of economic reform if two conditions are satisfied. The first of those conditions is that the public must be persuaded that it is in the national interest. Australians still do look to the national interest. I know the popular cry from many commentators and I fear also many political participants the common cry is that the public is not concerned about the national interest of course individual members of the public are rightly concerned about the well-being of themselves and their own families but they do have a capacity to look beyond it and I think providing a strong argument is made in favour of the national interest reform is still possible. I think the other condition is that it must be seen fundamentally as fair and not imposing too harsh a burden on vulnerable sections of the community and if those two conditions can be satisfied then I believe that the public will embrace economic reform and drawing on my own experience and that of my government in relation to the introduction of the GST. I recall that whenever we advanced arguments such as this is a reform whose time has come, those arguments were greeted with supreme disinterest. It sounded too much like an ideological ploy but when the argument was that it makes more sense to tax what you spend rather than tax what you earn and that introducing your GST will increase the export competitiveness of the Australian industry the public was willing to go along with that but it had to be accompanied by plenty of reassurances in relation to the structure of the tax that individual in the community, the more vulnerable section of the community could not be disabarred by that. I think it's fair to say that when an argument is addressed to the national interest the public will take notice providing the supporting arguments go to the national interest and not to some kind of ideological prejudice or some kind of sexual interest. One of the greatest challenges that those in politics face today and I think it applies to people both in government and in opposition and I assert very strongly and I have in a modest way I was able to practice it in politics that oppositions have reform responsibilities as well as governments. The idea that once you go into opposition you have no responsibility to support sensible reforms is not a proposition that I put in any way support and I think it's very important that both sides of politics in Australia understand it. We are of course now living in a far less tribal political state than what we used to live in. When I was growing up and getting engaged in politics there seemed to be in existence what was called a 40-40-20 rule. Not a 30-20 rule known to those who studied the Australian financial system of that period but a 40-40-20 rule and 40% of the public always voted Labour, 40% voted for the coalition and 20% moved around in the middle. If you think that's lacking substance can I remind you that in the 1960s the Nadia of the Labour Party's fortune has reached the 1966 election when on a two-party preferred vote Harold holds victory at that election was the greatest calculated by the two-party preferred vote of any side of politics since the end of World War II and yet the Labour Party's primary vote at that election did not fall below 40%. Yet it's primary vote of the 2013 election that fell under 33%. We have seen the fragmentation of politics on both sides. It appears as though we have at the moment a detachable flank of about 15% of the once core vote of the two sides of politics and in the case of the Labour Party that much of that goes off to the Greens and you have plenty of evidence of that particularly in the recent New South Wales election and in the case of the coalition of the 1998 election wanted off to Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party and the last election some of it wanted off to the Parliament United We are living in a less tribal political state and the binary system which brought a certain amount of unity and predictability to political outcomes has changed a great deal and one of the consequences of that change has been of course a very big change and I think it's very important and perhaps not as commonly understood and remarked upon as it should be a big change in the composition and attitude of the principal cross bench party in the Senate and therefore in Australian politics. There is an enormous difference between the Australian Democrats and the Australian Greens It was possible for the coalition government to negotiate significant economic reforms with the Australian Democrats. I would be very surprised if it's possible for the coalition government to negotiate major economic reforms with the Australian Greens. I recall of course in 1996 Peter Reath as industrial relations minister was able to negotiate most of his workplace reform missions with Cheryl Kerner who was then the leader of the Australian Democrats and those negotiations included the crucial introduction of individual workplace contracts which represented in a sense the core of the difference in the approach of the coalition and the Labour Party to the organisation of industrial relations because it was the introduction of individual contracts that took away the monopoly on the bargaining process enjoyed under the old system in which essentially has been returned as a result of the changes made by the Roland Gillard governments and then even more well remembered was the negotiations we were able to have with the Australian Democrats in relation to the introduction of the GST and although the introduction of the GST was less than what the public had voted for at the 1998 election and crucially excluded coverage of fresh food and a number of other items and that of course when the downturn after 2008 came had a very big impact on the revenues flying to the states because of the inelastic nature of demand for fresh food and those other items nonetheless the fact that we were able to achieve something like 80 to 85% of our reform package through negotiations with the Australian Democrats is very important now that has changed and that has complicated things for the current government and it is a factor that does need to be kept in mind I think the other big change that's occurred in Australian politics and this is something that afflicts both sides of politics perhaps it's a little more advanced in the case of the Labor Party and particularly a little more advanced in both parties at a state level than it is at a federal level and that is the increasing proportion of people who enter Parliament without having had any occupational experience other than in politics now I am the last person to decry active participation in a political party or the demonstration of ambition for influence within a political party but I do worry that we have perhaps a great proportion of people in politics who have not had any job other than in politics in the case of a person on the Labor side university, a period of service in a union office and then on a politician's staff and then in the Parliament in the case of the coalition member the period of service in the union office is normally skipped and the politicians directly to the politicians office and then into Parliament and when I first entered Parliament in 1974 there were a large number of former trade union officials amongst the Labor members and senators but the difference in many cases was that they had in most cases they had shorn a few sheep or fixed built a few houses or in fact had been furniture manufacturers or whatever activity that might have been involved and that is even less so now. I think it's fair to observe that we have two state premiers at the present time who come into that category and they're both newly elected, premiers of Queensland and the premiers of Victoria, they may of course turn out to be outstanding leaders and outstanding premiers and I acknowledge that and I reflect not in any personal way but I use them as examples and how is this relevant to the reform process? I think it's relevant in this sense. The people whose only preoccupation has been with what I might call the internal machinations of politics and it's been their daily job I mean it's one thing to do something during the day be a teacher or a public servant or a lawyer or a doctor and then do politics at night and at the weekends it's another thing to be working full time on somebody's staff and doing nothing else and I do think it breeds perhaps over time it breeds a different attitude. Now coming to the present situation and the circumstances that face the current government we're all of course waiting with some anticipation for the budget on Tuesday night, someone that's been talked about I understand that and different governments have different approaches to budgets. I think one of the observations I'd like to make about the general economic climate is that we are in my view living in a certain uncharted waters in an unpredictable environment in that the progressive reduction of interest rates and the circumstance where there appears to be large amounts of liquidity within the system does not appear to have had the sort of impact that it might have had on economic activity five or ten years ago. Now whatever the reason for that is it's complex but I think it is a factor to be born in mind that some of the economic circumstances in which we are now existing are different and the reactions of economies around the world and Europe is a prime example. The United States I think is different I think the United States despite the stuttering of the first quarters of statistics I think the United States is essentially recovery I am very pessimistic about the situation in Europe I think the construct of Euro is fundamentally flawed the idea that you can have a monetary union without having a fiscal union is absurd and I don't believe that Europe will ever have a fiscal union notwithstanding the pronouncements of those who believe in the unaccountable and essentially undemocratic nature of the European project I think it's unlikely in the extreme that for example the French National Assembly is ever going to give up the right to determine taxation policy to a super European body. Of course the phenomenon of what I spoke earlier of the fragmentation of politics in Australia and the breakdown of tribalism is explicitly illustrated in the United Kingdom and political tragic such as myself of course find the character election in the United Kingdom quite extraordinary and we are looking forward to spending plenty of time on Friday morning watching the results as they are counted on the cable television but there are parallels I know it's stretching perhaps the analogy a little but you can almost see in the Scottish Nationalist Party a parallel with the Australian Greens and you can see in the war of Australian Democrats who are no longer in force a parallel with the Liberal Democrats but you are seeing with both the party in the UK and the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom you can see that the once presumed level of support within the electorate is no longer there and some of the Conservative support has gone off to the United Kingdom Independence Party and the level of support appears to have gone off big time to the Scottish Nationalists in Scotland and you have other parties in the mix now this is a circumstance that all democracies have got to deal with and the reason I stressed it tonight is that of all the lessons I took out of my 33 years in Parliament was that you have to have a proper understanding of the interaction of politics and policy it is true as one of my predecessors said that good policy is good politics yes that's true but it's also true when it comes to policy it's better to be 80% pure in government than 125% pure in opposition and that it is necessary to strike a balance I think of the economic debate that I observe at the moment perhaps the thing that irritates, disillusions me more than anything else is when I hear business leaders saying to the government and saying to the political cohort whether it's government or opposition you've got to demonstrate more leadership and you've got to run the country like a business running the country is not like running a business but if you are charged with running the country you need to have a very good understanding of business and you need to have a proper interaction with business and the balance between the two is fundamentally very important and those who do successfully implement reform and have done so over the years are those who have been more successful than others in achieving the balance between those two so bringing my thoughts together can I finish on the point that I made a few moments ago is that I don't despair about the possibility of achieving further economic reform I think it stands beyond argument at some point and just how and in what manner and again to what background is a matter for current practitioners of the art of politics to resolve but it stands without argument we must return to taxation reform we must return to industrial relations reform we should address some of the deficiencies of the federation but I don't think we should get carried away with the idea that you can start from scratch from the federation maybe I've lost my sense of adventure but I think starting from scratch the federation I look at this expression of concern from Western Australia about the division of the GST I understand that but I also remember going to Lone Council meetings when they existed as treasurer when Western Australia was a Dominican state and that most of the complaints were from New South Wales and Victoria and essentially what I think is happening with Western Australia is that there is a short term issue and then the electorate in Western Australia feeling aggrieved about the short term consequences and it seems to me that if what I read in the papers is correct I still do read the papers very closely the government appears to have been addressing it against that background so I think it is possible to isolate some of the things that do need to be addressed but more generally what is important for all of us to remember and all of us who are concerned about the quality of government and the quality of reform process is to bear in mind that the Australian people are fundamentally capable and willing to embrace reform they do worry about the future of this country and I hope that is addressed to the national interest but it does need to be seen by the community as fundamentally fair and can I finish with a personal anecdote from the very first budget that I produced as treasurer in 1978 which is an awful long time ago and one of the measures in that budget was a proposal to abandon the policy of twice the yearly indexation of the pension and to index the pension annually that proposal died in the coalition party room because it was seen as fundamentally unreasonable and unfair it was an interesting experience and a reminder that there are some things that people do regard as unfair and unworkable and yet over the years not only in that and the phrase of government but of course through the experience in opposition in relation to the hawk government and our own period in government far more major and significant changes were introduced but because that proposal was seen as unfair by the Australian community it was never going to be a flyer and it ultimately died a death of a thousand cuts in the coalition party room and it was a salary free lesson to me from the very beginning of the importance of that I finish on a personal note I have enormous respect and warmth towards the current government and the current prime minister in particular he was a wonderful minister of mine in a period where in government and I remain very optimistic about his capacity to do the right thing by this country and to deliver good outcomes for the future of our economy thank you very much Mr Howard I want to thank you very much for those particularly apt remarks I was sitting there thinking how refreshing it is to hear Senator Deese spoken one shouldn't have to say that I feel like saying it and this is a time in which Senator Deese needs to be spoken you have Mr Howard agreed generously to take questions from the audience and we do have some time we have some microphones roving and so if you would like to ask Mr Howard a question here's your opportunity and I'm sure there will be questions from the audience that's one down here thank you Mr Howard can you hear me thank you for your wonderful comments about economic reform I have a three pronged question very quickly do you have any regrets that you didn't offer any apology to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people during your term as Prime Minister did you have any regrets about any ambiguity about the children overboard saga and subsequent political gain and thirdly do you have any comments about the national disability insurance scheme that wasn't even a twinkle in anyone's eye during your term thank you first question I did not think a formal apology was appropriate and one of the reasons I didn't think it was appropriate was that I did not accept the central proposition of bringing them home report that genocide has been committed against the indigenous people of this country and therefore I was not willing to embrace a formal apology having said that I accepted a formal apology has been given I accept also that many indigenous leaders that I respect feel that the giving of the apology was beneficial it's not something that you revisit but if you're asking me if I had my time over again would I have taken a different position the answer is no I would not in relation to the children overboard incident it remains my position as I stated at the time that the major thing on people's minds as they voted in 2001 on the subject of asylum seekers was the success my government had achieved in stopping votes I don't think the children overboard issue influenced many votes at all it was not deliberately stated there was clearly a breakdown in communication between sections of the defence department and other sections and also between the department and the then minister I don't think there was any attempt by the then minister but then I had an enormous regard it was Peter Wreath to mislead the Australian public you will recall there were a number of inquiries and you will also recall that the senior public servant and senior defence officer at the time Angus Houston who publicly said that he had given certain advice to Peter Wreath that went on to become chief of the defence force and somebody who was greatly regarded by my government and by subsequent governments I don't feel any embarrassment in relation to that the national disability the concept of a disability scheme I support should we have done it well I suppose you might argue that I was not as persuaded that other methods couldn't work as well I was particularly attracted to a voucher system that Mel Brough who was the final person to occupy that portfolio in my government device so I think my answer on that is that sure the national disability scheme provided it is properly funded and properly trialled will be beneficial but it does have to be paid for and I do hope that it doesn't involve too many examples of one size fitting all and that's why I was particularly attracted to the voucher system that was developing the Australian way of government has become progressively more open the role of senior public servants has become more challenging what advice can you offer for younger leaders of the public service well I think one you can offer the first advice is don't believe it's about everything I've said about Roland Wilson I mentioned and others such as Fred Wheeler who was really the one quote man of the old order that I had contact with don't believe the idea that there are no longer any frank and fearless public servants who say what they think my experience was there were plenty of public servants who said exactly what they thought and said it very directly and said it to political figures of both sides of politics I think we have become more open in exchanges of opinions between the public service and the rest of the community it was the case in the mentees period of the period for which the admiration I've written about it was the case that the public service many of them resent advice coming from other sources there was a wonderful quote that I have in my book about from John Bunging in which he talks about how tremendously importantly the role of what was the equivalent of a chief of staff could be and making sure that appointments are kept and that the minister's appearance is up to date and all that kind of stuff but of course always at a removed from policy the idea being now the truth is that we live in a world now where advice in every field is contestable and the intelligent public servants and there are so many of them that I dealt with didn't really resent other advice they did resent legitimately their advice not being considered and one of the standing requirements I had in my own office was that if the advice of the department was not to be taken there had to be proper explanation given as to why it was not to be taken and that the interaction between the department and the office had to be one of respect and professional engagement and if I can again mention my own experience with Arthur Sinodenas and Tony Nutter as my principal private secretary it helped enormously my own experience was very positive in relation to the public service and I think the most important thing is to disabuse younger public servants of the idea that they're no longer listened to and they're no longer mad at me and it's all I that was not my experience and I'd be watching down since I've been out of it for seven years shouldn't pretend that things remain the same they certainly haven't but I think the idea that the golden there was a golden age and that's gone and it's never coming back it's that age is not coming back but a different more contemporary contestable age is with us Questions yeah you talked about your comments about the 40-40-20 the boat split, the travelization of the electorate do you think this trend will continue and if so do you think that we'll see a recurrence of minority governments? Well I think the fragmentation, the certain amount of fragmentation is with us because we are just no longer as ideological as we were and in a sense this is a product of the fall of the Berlin war I know that's a stretching but we did, I mean I grew up I mean I'm a bit older than you are and hold a lot of people in this audience but we did grow up in an era where it seemed as though not only was the world divided geostrategically but it was also divided economically between the more or less capitalist world led by the United States and the command economy model and a lot of people even as late as the middle 1980s who was seriously argued the moral equivalence between the Western and the Soviet Union and people still believe that maybe the command economy model would triumph now when it all ended to oversimplify I think the world moved a bit to the right while you use that expression when it came to economics I mean I can remember in the first budget I heard introduced by Frank Prean in 1974 he actually had a paragraph in the budget in which he said that the relatively subdued conditions in the private sector make it possible to transfer more resources to the public sector in other words it was an objective of budget policy to shift resources into the public sector I never heard Wayne Swan say that at the height of the Gila particularly the right government's response to the global financial downturn so I think a certain amount of the ideology has gone and when that happens you do get a fragmentation I'm running to fewer people who now say to me my father would spit in his grave if he knew I was voting liberal or if he knew I was voting Labour but he used to hear that very commonly in the 1950s and 60s so I think it's going to go back I think fragmentation again and of course it's having an impact on both parties I think it's probably having a little more impact on the Labor Party maybe on the wrong but I think some of the reaction of the Labor Party to the success of the Greens in those two inner city state seats and Newtown and Balmain is interesting and it's obviously having quite an impact and of course you're seeing it played out in a different way but the same forces that work in the United Kingdom. Just on that Mr Howard whether you think that this breakdown in tribalism we're observing has anything at all to do with the changing nature of the media and in particular social media? I think it predated the social media social media is probably fueling it but it predated and Pauline Hansen was 1997-98 and there was no Twitter and Facebook when I was Prime Minister and not that I had any connection between the two but you know I think they haven't we had even more trouble Maybe it has made life more difficult Menzies early years as Prime Minister made good use of international experience of many senior public servants. Sorry Menzies early years as Prime Minister made good use of international experience of many senior public servants. In what ways should Prime Ministers invest in international experience of their public servants? To what extent should Prime Ministers have international experience a great deal. Although I had a long-standing interest in foreign policy and defence and something of an instinctive sympathy for our defence forces from the very beginning, I don't pretend in my pre-prime ministerial years to have had a sophisticated involvement with international affairs and I relied very heavily on public service and it could range of them. Many of them are here tonight who advised me very closely and I found their advice extremely valuable. I think it's very important in the crucial public policy areas to have as much stability as possible. I always remarked for one of the reasons why some people are kind enough to regard my government as having been stable and perhaps modestly successful was that we had the same people occupying the Prime Minister's ship, the Treasury portfolio and the Foreign Affairs portfolio for the entire period. We're in government now, not everybody within the party is necessarily happy with that arrangement. I always, he likes that. But the point I made is that you do need that and I found the advice obviously of people such as Philip Pludd and Ashton Culver and Peter Barghese here tonight and Michael Thornton, Liz could go on and Dennis Richardson, all of whom had a tremendous background in foreign affairs, extremely valuable, Rick Smith and so on. I didn't always take their advice but you don't. The important, the way it should work is you listen to the advice and if you don't take it you should indicate why but in the end if you follow that process then the system works. I think in the area of international affairs and defence the best thing my government did institutionally was to establish the National Security Committee which involved not only senior ministers but also involved at the same time as part of the body of the senior public service advisors. I found those gatherings where you could talk about national security issues with the head of foreign affairs and defence and the CDF and RNA and ASIA. I found those meetings absolutely invaluable and that forum brought forth an understanding and exchange of ideas that was certainly to me and I think to my other colleagues invaluable. We have time for one more question. Wait for the microphone. Thank you for your talk. My question relates to a comment you made in your presentation about the politician having the apprenticeship, the union movement, if you're a conservative you jump straight to a staff or in the minister's office. The question relates to the policy advice of the policy advisors to ministers and whether you see that as a problem and interfering with the work of the public service or do you see it as another source of advice noting that some of the advisors may not have a lot of world experience. Well it will vary according to people. In an ideal world you will have non-public service policy advisors who are savvy in the policy area respectful and professional in their doings with the public service but you'll also have a minister or a prime minister who has a capacity to sift information and make the right decisions. I think 90% of the pieces of paper that come across my desk as prime minister deserve immediate endorsement because they were self-evidently common sense pieces of advice. It was the 10% that you had to deliberate on and that involved working out what was the 10% because the 90% don't have flags at the top saying you know this should be it automatically endorse even that. That might be the wish of the author of the advice. And having that capacity to prioritise that's where I think extremely astute good quality private office staff are very important but it will just vary enormously. I mean if you get somebody who's on a minister's staff is essentially being just a political aberration and has no policy field at all and that person has enormous influence that can be quite bad but on the other hand if you get somebody who's who's got good policy instincts but just is at a remove from the public service stream of advice and brings another perspective and outside economic perspective and I'm embarrassing by saying when I first became treasurer John Hueson was on my staff and he was extremely valuable to me because he was a very skillful economist he brought a different perspective and but he interacted well with the public service so I think it's depends entirely upon the circumstances and the individual and particularly the frame of mind and attitude of the minister if if he is just involved in a purely political exercise all the time that's bad equally if he is completely a policy captain of his or her department that's bad as well. Okay Mr Howard I want to thank you very much on behalf of the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation which I'm honored to be chair you've given us a lot of food for thought you took us back to 1951 and you covered a lot of ground in your address you reminded us that whilst that period from 1951 to 1966 is usually seen as a period of great stability and that is largely true was nevertheless not a period without its own particular challenges and in particular the the wall price spike associated with the Korean War which turned out to be a relatively short shock if a big one and a shock that turns out to have been very well handled although of course at the time it was incredibly unpopular and I know I've had occasion to look at an editorial written in the Sydney Mining Herald at the time that basically said both the government and its advisors have lost sense it was much more colorfully written than that so this was not a period that has challenges but then of course when the oil price shocks of the 1970s hit we found that we had bigger challenges to deal with and as you said the policy apparatus found itself not at all up to the task and so the case for economic reform became increasingly obvious and by the 1980s there was a bipartisanship that had developed around the case for quite wide-ranging economic reforms you then address the question why it is that reform seems to have stalled appears to have stalled and you took us through several reasons that might explain some of what appears to be stagnation in economic reform but you gave us reason for hope and in particular you you said to us that reformers have to have a proper appreciation of the appropriate balance or getting the appropriate balance or interplay between policy and politics and in particular you left us with the important message that Australians will listen to good argument that's in the national interest provided the outcomes are seen as being fair and I think I would have to agree with that I want to thank you on behalf of everybody who is here to thank you for having been so generous with your time to have come down to this place that is as you knew before you got here can be cold and and I want to thank you also for being so open in your responses to to questions we have a little moment here for you a little a little bit from this round thank you