Howard's mainstream Australia occupied a primal position between the privileged and wealthy, and what he identified as the class of politically correct urban elites. Identifying the former category weakened voters' bonds to traditional party allegiances hence broadening the voter base and consequently his electoral appeal. Howard's disparaging description of the cosmopolitan politically correct class was an effective wedge device which isolated his political opponents. By identifying Keating with a small group of cultural elites, Howard drew traditional Labor voters' attention to the gap between their leader's perceived elitist values and to those values traditionally associated with working class backgrounds. It also served to distance Howard from his British-centric image which Keating had always been so keen to highlight.
The tag of political correctness stuck to Paul Keating as a result of Howard's unrelenting political rhetoric. Keating was and economic reformer as was Howard, but this tag followed Keating whenever he broached the issues of a new national flag, Australia becoming a republic, reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and closer ties with Asia. As the result of the 1999 referendum where Australians rejected a proposal to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic showed, Howard's mainstream Australia was by some distance more popular or at least more comforting to the electorate, than Keating's vision of Australia's future which he linked to the dynamic Asian economies.
Howard's success in using his language of mainstream identity to capture the support of his opponents is illustrated by a verbal joust he had with Keating who could not shake off the label of politically correct cultural elitist despite his impeccable left wing credentials. Keating was a socialist who represented an inner city working class constituency(Bankstown) and he was also a protégé of Jack Lang, a Depression era socialist state premier. Howard memorably used this against Keating in 1995 with the comment that:
The battlers have taken a fearsome battering from the boy from Bankstown. It is little wonder that he is seen increasingly by Labor's traditional constituents as a remote, elitist figure, comfortable with the chattering classes but decidedly uncomfortable with the rank and file who spawned him16
The fundamental pillars in Howard's construction of national identity were ordi- nary Australians, the battlers who Howard convinced were short changed by the cul- tural elites who used political correctness as a weapon to justify concessions to spe- cial interest groups and Indigenous Australians. As we have seen the figurehead of this class of privileged cultural elites was Paul Keating, and the contrast in his style and views produced a clear choice for the electorate in the 1996 election. The choice was also made in Howard's favour with assistance from an under performing economy and what might be called the `rhetoric of resentment' emanating from Pauline Hanson but tacitly supported by Howard (partly as a concession to his coalition partner) under the auspices of freedom of speech. Hanson had nearly usurped Howard's appeal to Aus- tralia's mainstream constituency and she embodied the struggles of the veritable `Aussie battler.' Hanson attributed the country's economic plight to the effects of globalisa- tion and to Asian and other immigrants, Aborigines and even single mothers, which echoed Howard's emphasis on mainstream family values. Such terminology typified the language of exclusion which was prevalent in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries which ensured the continuance of a white Australia. The lan- guage now divided Australians into the opposing factions of `us' and `them.' In this case
the `us' being the group of mainstream Australians, and `them' referring to `Aboriginals' and `Asians.' In her maiden speech in parliament Hanson used language that echoed Howard's the image of the ordinary Australian.
Immigration and multiculturalism are issues that this government is trying to address, but for far too long ordinary Australians have been kept out of any debate by the major parties.17
Howard in turn borrowed from Hanson's language. The sentence that Howard exploited in his election speech of 2001,`But we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come' became the most well known slogan of the campaign. However, a similar remark `I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country' was initially used by Hanson in 1996.18 In the opinion
of Howard's biographer `Hanson was prepared to state bluntly what many of Howard's critics believed to be his implicit message on race.'19
In the lead up to the 1998 election economic pressures resulting from a decline in the agricultural sector and the negative effects of globalisation on small rural town businesses was cause of some electoral concern for Howard. His political acumen was confirmed by the realisation that Hanson's One Nation Party represented a constituency which was vital for the government, particularly for the Coalition's junior partner, the rural-based National Party, which many voters had fled in favour of Hanson's One Nation Party. Both the Coalition and Hanson were using the invasion fear sown by the History Wars debates and the electorate's `rejection of the politically correct and distorted view of Australian history.'20 The Coalition was narrowly
returned to power and with Hanson losing her seat it became easier for Howard to regain this part of his mainstream constituency.
17 Pauline Hanson, ``Pauline Hanson's Maiden Speech In The House Of Representatives Sep 10, 1996,''
1996.
18 Pauline Hanson, ``Official Website One Nation -the Voice of the People Pauline's Contribution,'' One
Nation Party, n.d.
19 Errington and Van Onselen,John Winston Howard, 252.
20 Carol Johnson, ``John Howard's `Values' and Australian Identity,''Australian Journal of Political Science