John Howard
John Howard was prime minister of Australia for eleven years, from 1996 to 2007, the second-longest tenure after Menzies, the suburban solicitor from Sydney who had been treasurer under Fraser, lost the Liberal leadership twice and said of his chances of getting it back that it would be Lazarus with a triple bypass, and then won four elections; in office he took the semi-automatic weapons out of Australian hands within twelve days of the Port Arthur massacre of April 1996, over the objection of his own rural base, brought in the goods and services tax, led the intervention in East Timor in 1999, sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq beside Bush, turned back the Tampa and its rescued Afghans in 2001 and built the offshore camps, refused to say sorry to the stolen generations, and presided over the mining boom that paid for everything until the election of 2007, which he lost along with his own seat. He was born in Earlwood in 1939, the son of a garage owner and returned soldier, read law at Sydney, and entered parliament in 1974 for Bennelong. Fraser made him treasurer in 1977 and he was the party's leader from 1985 to 1989, losing the 1987 election, and again from 1995. The gun laws after Port Arthur, where thirty-five people were killed, were a national agreement forced on the states, a buyback of six hundred thousand weapons, and no mass shooting for twenty years. He wore a bulletproof vest to address the gun owners. The second term was the GST he had promised never to introduce and the republic referendum of 1999, which he opposed and which failed on the model offered. The third began with the Tampa, the Norwegian freighter he refused entry to with four hundred and thirty-eight asylum seekers aboard, and the election weeks after September 11 in which he said that Australia would decide who came to the country and the circumstances in which they came. The Pacific solution sent the boat people to Nauru and Manus. Iraq in 2003 he joined without a vote, and the alliance with Bush was the closest since Menzies and Eisenhower. WorkChoices, the labour law of 2005 that took away unfair-dismissal protection, was what beat him. Rudd won in November 2007 and Howard lost Bennelong to a television journalist, the second prime minister to lose his seat. He wrote memoirs and has been the party's authority in retirement.
- Lived: 1939 CE – ?
- Nationality: Australian
- Roles: prime minister, politician
