Yesterday’s Herald Sun carried the lurid headline – “John Howard’s Revenge”. Unfortunately, the former PM comes off as a ‘funny uncle’ masquerading as a hardened culture warrior. That’s what happens when you’re over the hill and you believe your own hype.

Two of Howard’s claims — the the Rudd government has engaged in “symbolism” and high-spending, are entirely true. The problem for Howard, however, is that there is nothing wrong with symbolism per se. Moreover, if Howard had been in power during the GFC, the recession in Australia would almost certainly have been worse. Workchoices would have exacerbated current problems of unemployment and underemployment. Even the current Federal opposition does not deny that it would have spent money of a stimulus package, but rather, merely quibbles about the amount.

Howard is particularly critical of the stimulus package: “Mr Rudd will say he had the global financial crisis to handle. Well, courtesy of us, he was well endowed with money in the bank.”

Actually, it was courtesy of Howard and Costello that Australia was left with a structural deficit in the budget, in effect making budget surpluses dependent upon record (and unsustainable) revenues from mineral exports. That’s the real Howardian ‘legacy’ – casualisation of Australia’s labour force, and ‘fiscal prudence’ predicated on a unique, temporary and entirely contingent set of economic circumstances.

So there you have it. Howard is predictable and completely ineffectual in any debate without a team of News Ltd trollumnists behind him. And the Herald Sun can’t even do Sunday sensationalism like it used to. Until the Sunday Hun can let us know which strip joints Howard attends, the man should be wheeled back out to pasture.