The Opportunist

In the third Quarterly Essay, Guy Rundle comes to grips with John Howard, the prime minister who, on the eve of an election, seems to have turned around his political fortunes by spurning refugees and writing blank cheques for America's War on Terror.

This is a brilliant account of John Howard's dominant ideas, his concerted 'dreaming' with its emphasis on unity and national identity that reveals him to be the most reactionary PM we have ever had. He is the only political leader who would allow ideas like those of One Nation to dominate the mainstream of Australian politics in order to improve his political chances.

Rundle puts Howard in the context of the economic liberalism he shares with his colleagues and opponents and the conservative social ideology that sets him apart. It is a complex portrait in a radical mirror which relates John Howard to everything from Menzies's 'forgotten people' to the inadvertent glamour of the government's anti-drug advertising.

It is also a plea for right-thinking people of every political persuasion to resist the call to prejudice and reaction.

A portrait of a political opportunist who is also ... a sincere reactionary - putting back the clock because he believes in it, but also fanning the whirlwind of unreason in order to save his political skin. - Peter Craven, Introduction

The coincident occurrence of the asylum seeker confrontation and the attack on the U.S. has made visible the most dangerous and damaging thing he has done to the Australian polity... and that is to deepen contempt for such protection as we did have from unbridled executive power, mass hysteria, the rush to surrender our freedoms and offer them up on the altar of crisis. - Guy Rundle, The Opportunist