Commentary
In June 1998, the Howard government looked to be in serious trouble. Notwithstanding having brought the budget back to surplus in just two years, introducing serious industrial relations reform, taking on the militant Maritime Union of Australia, it looked, for all intents and purposes, as if Howard would be only the second prime minister in the history of this country to lose office after just one term—the first being Labor’s James Scullin in 1931 at the height of the Great Depression.
