Howard's entire career proves taxing

Well, the GST will soon be with us.
Our Prime Minister, John Howard, has said – quite proudly – that securing enough support to bring this new tax to fruition is his proudest achievement in a 25-year political career.
I know only too well how he feels.
More than 20 years ago I was working on the staff of then Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, and John Howard was Treasurer.
He had only been in federal politics for around three years before Fraser tapped him on the shoulder and gave him what, even then, was regarded as the second most important job in the government.
I had known Howard for some years. He had first come to my attention when I was travelling with another former PM, the late Harold Holt.
Accompanying Holt to a Liberal Party fundraiser in Sydney, I was seated next to a thin young man with equally thin tousled hair and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses.
We introduced ourselves. He told me his name was John Howard.
After I told him I was on the PM’s staff he immediately launched into a passionate dissertation about the need for tax reform and the advantages of a consumption tax.
Someone else at the table must have thought I appeared bored because they attempted to change the subject. The war in Vietnam was raised, but it wasn’t long before Howard returned the discussion to tax.
The relatively new – as it was then – decimal currency system was mentioned, as was the contraceptive pill, miniskirts, equal pay for women, the foreshadowed referendum on Aboriginal rights, poverty, and even the release of the new model Holden.
Against all conversational opposition, Howard stuck to his tax guns. He produced a pen and started to draw diagrams on table napkins to show the various tax systems operating around the world and how he thought they compared with Australia’s.
I left the function impressed by his passion for what many at our table had dismissed as a mundane subject.
It wasn’t until almost 10 years later when I was a senior advisor on Fraser’s staff that I had cause to talk to him again.
Fraser called me in and broke the news that Phillip Lynch was being forced to resign as Treasurer because of some allegations of impropriety over a land deal in Victoria.
I could tell Fraser was, naturally, not happy at the thought of losing such a senior Minister.
Talk turned to a replacement. It was then Fraser stunned me by casually dropping John Howard’s name.
At first I knew I knew him, but didn’t quite know why or how.
Fraser helped me out by describing Howard – physically, intellectually and politically.
Despite that description, the PM appeared keen to nominate Howard as the new Treasurer.
I must say I was apprehensive, but after a few years I knew Fraser had made the right choice.
Howard now had a platform upon which to push for his beloved new tax.
Unfortunately for Howard, Fraser – ever the pragmatist – overruled him every time the issue was raised.
Such was Howard’s persistence that he acquired a nickname, Bracket Creep, because of his constant badgering of anyone who would listen to him about the evils of the existing tax system and what he saw as the inherent unfairness of forcing people into higher tax brackets as their income grew.
Even Fraser took to using the nickname. Although towards the end of his government he tended to shorten the sobriquet.

Rufus Badinage MBE, now retired, is one of Australia’s leading
experts on politics and public administration having worked as a
senior bureaucrat for various state and federal governments.