Well have we had any good Prime Ministers in Australia in the modern era?
I believe the most misunderstood PM was John Gorton, the worst Billy McMahon and the rest have been pretty piss poor. Not one of these jokers could be regarded as a great PM, nor a great statesman.
In my mind the two best PM’s we’ve had and for different reasons were Sir Bob Menzies and John Curtin one of the best WWII leaders of any nation.
Regards digger
Agreed.
These two won’t win many votes, but their strengths are often overlooked because of their governments’ failings. Whitlam was good in principle, and introduced some great reforms, but lousy in practice, ably aided by a bunch of crooks (e.g. Grassby, Murphy), clowns (e.g. Grassby), and incompetents (e.g. Grassby). Keating had a vision of Australia’s future rather than being a steady as she goes, play to the lowest common denominator, keep the workers down, throwback like Howard.
The most remarkable one is Fraser. If he’d had a tenth of the moral courage and vision in office that he’s had since, he would have been a great prime minister. As it was, he was just a moderate Howard who never did anything memorably worthwhile. Just like Howard.
Menzies was a poor wartime prime minister but a very good post-war one, who introduced a lot of great reforms and was really a social democrat in some respects. He was the exact opposite of his greatest current admirer. J. W. Howard who has done his best, with a lot of success, to dismantle all the good Menzies and like-mined PM’s did.
Given what he had to contend with, Curtin did an outstanding job. I’d rate him the best prime minister we ever had, if only because it’s not going too far to say he saved Australia by actions such as standing up to Churchill over the Middle East troops diverted to Burma, who subsequently were critical in Papua New Guinea, and ensuring that America used Australia as a base rather than abandoning it.
P.S. Glad you’re back on deck. 
Thanks for you thoughts mate.
You hit two of my pet hates in your post-Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating. I mean we have been handed some pretty rough PM’s over the years, but these two should be very harshly judged by history.
Whitlam was a traitor and in any other country would probably have been locked away. His sell out of East Timor knowing the island was about to be invaded is one of the most apalling pieces of statesmanship this country has produced. And every PM since has helped live the lie.
The sad thing is, it took many years for Whitlam’s role to surface in this disgusting affair which led to the slaughter of over 100,000 people. Of course the treaty with the Indonesians ensured great economic benefits for this country which only serves to make it worse. The treaty was signed purely for greed.
On another note, many of Whitlam’s ‘great reforms’ were actually lifted from Holt and Gorton. But like many meglomaniacs, Whitlam used his powers to create a myth to be consumed by the slathering masses who licked his arse.
Well that’s my rant off my chest:shock:;).
A thought for the future-many of our political leaders are mere pygmies and that is so prevelent for the next election. What have we got? Little Johhny Howard or Kevein Pixie Rudd?
Digger:)
I remember that event acutely. Like a lot of Australians, I was outraged at our shameless sacrifice of an innocent people on our doorstep, and particularly as they served our troops selflessly in WWII, and lost a lot of lives and suffered in other ways doing it. I was all for getting into uniform and getting up there and fighting the Indos. Instead of, as it turned out, the next generation having to do it a quarter of a century later, but fortunately without real armed conflict.
The sad thing is, it took many years for Whitlam’s role to surface in this disgusting affair which led to the slaughter of over 100,000 people.
Regardless of the official information available, it stood out like dog’s balls at the time that we had given Indonesia the green light to go in. Because it suited us for them to do the dirty work and avoid East Timor falling under communist influence, of which there was not a great risk but Fretilin just got lumped in with all other S.E. Asian liberation movements as rampantly communist.
My view at the time was, and still is, that if we’d had the guts to stand up for East Timor’s independence and tell Indonesia to piss off, and back it up with just a few destroyers, they wouldn’t have gone in. They were clearly timid and wanted Australia’s sanction to act. And now there’d probably be 100,000 Timorese who weren’t killed by the Indos; East Timor wouldn’t be the mess it currently is; and we wouldn’t be sucking up to Indonesia all the time since then because they might have learnt a bit of respect for us and, more importantly, we might have learnt a bit of self-respect in standing up for ourselves and standing up for what’s right.
Not content with Australia stuffing Timor up under Whitlam, bloody Howard in his first major excursion into international relations nearly got us into a war with Indonesia because of his arrogant and demanding attitude at a time when the result could have been achieved with less conflict if he had been more diplomatic and had a better understanding of the direction Indonesia was moving in, and if he wasn’t such a stupid little twerp solidly rooted in the white man’s paradise of the 1950’s.
Now that I’ve got that off my chest, here’s another rant. 
Bob Hawke. A one-trick show pony. The best [sarcasm on] post-war Liberal PM[sarcasm off] this country has had. A couple of lasting achievements.
Fiddling with unemployment by keeping kids at school longer without thinking it through and realising that when they got their higher school certificates with a couple of D’s in media studies and visual arts they would feel they were qualified for university. So the universities need to expand. Government funding doesn’t. So he introduces HECS, thus reversing the move towards free tertiary education initiated by Menzies and completed by Whitlam. A process which Howard has enthusiastically pushed along, so now we have kids with parents prepared to fork out $100,000 for a law degree pushing poor kids out of the other end of the government-supported queue, regardless of what the universities and government say about it not happening.
Doing deals with the bosses and unions and suppressing real wages beyond any level the bosses could have hoped to achieve before Howard, Reith, & Co had a real good go at it through Workchoices and importing labour.
A thought for the future-many of our political leaders are mere pygmies and that is so prevelent for the next election. What have we got? Little Johhny Howard or Kevein Pixie Rudd?
Digger:)
That’s one of the reasons I have a bit of time for Whitlam and Keating, and Latham in the first couple of months as leader before his minders got to him and made him tone it down. At least they had a bit of fire in their bellies and weren’t afraid to put forward a different vision of Australia.
Honest John Howard presents himself as a man of principle, but will always abandon principle at the first sign of real electoral damage. Rudd’s just a more up-front Howard, without the adenoids and the “I didn’t know. Nobody ever tells me anything.” whining excuses. At least Rudd takes it on the chin when he stuffs up, which isn’t something we’re used to in national leaders.
One thing is certain Bob hawke and Paul Keating buggered the economy and sold the worker down the drain. Keating was a jellyfish who could not look anyone in the eye in a conversation, which is piss poor for a man of his standing.
Keating’s greatest crime to this country was his interference with the decison to rid this country of a certain Islamic cleric. Yes we can thank brother Paul of effing that one up and leaving us with a legacy which may cost us dear.
Pffffffffffft…Mark Latham a mad thug with a serious case of dementia and a very selective memory.
Yeah we got a pretty bad bunch and I doubt very much the situation will improve after the next election.
Regards digger
I’ve had a fair bit to do with junior politicians of both major parties over the past 20 or so years, and seen these lying little turds go on to bigger and better things. And occasional scandals, which were just more of what they did when I knew them.
The only ones who wouldn’t sell their mother into a Timbuktu camel drivers’ brothel if the political advantage was worth it never went on to municipal, state or federal politics. So you can guess how high my regard is for politicians of both major parties. Unlike the rare independents, e.g. Peter Andren and Bob Katter federally, and Nationals’ mavericks Barnaby Joyce, who have the guts to say what they think instead of just spewing out the major party spin.
As for the mufti, there’s a serious problem with supporting germs who shouldn’t be here, more with Labor because of the way its machine operates in ethnic communities (e.g. the John Newman murder) but by no means not a problem with the Libs who are just as heavily into branch stacking and recruiting ethnic communities, although not as good at it. It’s harder to recruit when you don’t have anyone who’s actually working at the coal face on the railways; cleaning toilets; in rag trade sweatshops, and so on where Labor has a presence.
In case anyone who’s not an Aussie is wondering what the mufti stuff is about, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20658333-601,00.html
Pffffffffffft…Mark Latham a mad thug with a serious case of dementia and a very selective memory.
True.
But it was still a bloody good performance to watch in the early days. And promised something different for a while.
Unlike Rudd with his bland “I’m John Howard, but more cuddly” approach.
This all goes back to Whitlam. Labor learnt after that experiment that the road to political suicide was to stand up for anything and, worst of all, propose radical change. Or any change. So now all we have is two middle of the road parties who argue about which is closer to the centre line. Like I give a shit! I’d rather have someone who stands up for something - anything - than the boring party hacks who populate our parliaments.
Yeah we got a pretty bad bunch and I doubt very much the situation will improve after the next election.
For all the breast-beating and wailing and gnashing of teeth on both sides, we’ll end up with Tweedledum or Tweedledee. It won’t make much difference to daily life for any of us.
Same shit. Different arseholes.
Ah, yes. Remember when Pauline Hanson tried to stand up for something(and in some cases history has proven her right) what the big boys did to her? That case was one of the greatest acts of bastardry by both major parties along with a certain little obnoxious Greenie from Tasmania.
Regards digger;)