The Demonist

Australia is an immigrant country and, as John Winston Howard famously said, its people decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come. With the exception of the First Australians, every generation has exercised its right of veto, not always without controversy. Elections have been won and lost on the issue, none with less honour than the Children Overboard Election of 2001, of which Howard was the architect.

Unlike an immigrant wave, the arrival of a new biography of the former conservative prime minister is always timely, particularly one to which the man himself has contributed, or at least had words put into his mouth.

As the fate of the First Australians amply demonstrates, and as the Children Overboard affair also illustrates, we’re not always the authors of our own destiny, or even of the record of our past. Not all of it, at any rate – which is probably just as well. The history of Australia has seen many leading characters come and go, and it’s seen truth-telling wax and wane. John Winston Howard is still with us, but at least with the publication of The Demonist his dark deeds are now more or less factually on the record.