That is an excellent analysis of Howard, Ken. Though he can react to bushfires with quick-fix back-flips, he has, as Robert Manne noted once, almost no capacity for reflection, which means he probably feels no regret about anything he has done. Iraq, a monumental stuff-up and a humanitarian disaster? So what? We did our bit to secure the future of our country. We have seen something similar in his reflections on our Vietnam War commitment.

When the left and the centre have tried to convince him to embrace reconciliation he has genuine problems with it. He is not just pandering to the Hansonists. He has no empathy, even though there might be votes in adapting.

It is indeed a bit of luck that he has over-reached with his Workchoices hotch-potch. He is likely to stay with it even with political warning radar and that will be his downfall.

I find the above two quotations by Oakeshott to be valuable. But in talking about Howard, we really are talking about a one-off radical, and I seriously doubt in time we’ll see the leadership likes of him again in this country.

I’ve read that Oakshott book a good decade or more ago, and while I found it well put, a good read, well considered etc, it did get rather repetitive. But thanks for that quote re Hayek. I think it’s great. It’s where I part with the right. I have a great respect for the writing and ideas of Hayek. I think they’re powerful ideas. But they’re just ideas – principles – and take their place with other equally powerful principles. A point I tried to make in one of my first posts at this place.

Your Oakeshott quote makes the point well.

[workChoices legislation] certainly evidences a desire to smash the trade union movement, but is anything but a model of restraint or deregulatory simplicity.

In the ultimate of ironies, the dwarf of steel has managed to make trade unions safe to join again. After they had been smashed out of the dire apathy engendered by compulsory unionisation, then actively attacked by Workchoices, they started to offer services that encourage membership (and so they should).

I wouldn’t be surprised if 2005-2006 turned out to be the turning point back up for union membership in Australia, even if people are only joining to actively combat WorkChoices. Let’s face it, they’ve been getting lots of better press lately (Bill Shorten popping up at Beaconsfield, the DIMA fiasco with 457 visas and the surprising CFMEU greenhouse policy).

Patrick – In ‘Rationalism in Politics’ Oakeshott wrote:

This is, perhaps, the main significance of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom — not the cogency of his doctrine, but the fact that it is a doctrine. A plan to resist all planning may be better than its opposite, but it belongs to the same style of politics. And only in a society already deeply infected with Rationalism will the conversion of the traditional resources of resistance to the tyranny of Rationalism into a self-conscious ideology be considered a strenthening of those resources (p 26-17).

I’ve been wondering whether Rudd’s reference to Oakeshott comes from a book on ideology by Robert Eccleshall.

Howard is ostensibly a social conservative and HAS largely been inactive/restrained in that area. However, on economic policy he’s been very much an activist albeit in a hapahazard, idiosyncratic way as Nicholas observes. And on foreign affairs Howard has also been activist in an un-planned, idiosyncratic way (East Timor or x 2, Afghanistan, Iraq, Solomons, PNG, Tonga, tearing up and renegotiating treaty with Indonesia, US/Australia free trade agreement etc etc). Howard is anything but an Oakeshottian conservative (or indeed any sort of conservative except the neocon kind) on foreign policy.

Moreover, as mentioned above he’s also not a neoliberal/small government conservative on economic policy. The size of government and the tax burden have not fallen under the Howard government, and the voluminous (and dubiously workable) Work Choices legislation is one of the most striking examples. It certainly evidences a desire to smash the trade union movement, but is anything but a model of restraint or deregulatory simplicity. At least Howard has now belatedly reversed the absurd requirement for all employees to keep time diaries irrespective of whether they were paid wholly by salary, but Work Choices remains an unwieldy and excessively complex piece of legislation. I strongly suspect that it is indeed the result of Howard having no real interest in policy, and Kevin Andrews not having a clue and therefore being snowed by bureaucrats who love nothing better than a nice complicated set of rules that allows them to empire build to their hearts’ content. Similarly with that idiot Brendan Nelson and the micromanaging bureaucratic dog’s breakfast he created for tertiary education. God knows what he’s doing to Defence as we speak.

In all areas but social regulation, Howard is the very antithesis of a restrained conservative. But he’s much worse than the sort of passionate but principled activist Oakeshott had in mind, because his activism is motivated by lifelong malice combined with a complete lack of interest in policy detail or in re-examining any of the underlying assumptions that led to his initial passionate/malicious determination.

…was some off the cuff remark of Oakeshott’s the basis for Rudd’s nearly irrational (ie with no rational basis if he had read Hayek) opinion of Hayek?

But whilst I certainly like the idea of modesty and restraint in politics, you had better be careful – I am pretty sure that N Gruen and Fred Argy count it as one of Howard’s cardinal sins :) (of course, they argue that he has been restrained where it was not appropriate but activist and radical where it wasn’t).