Something good: buying back guns.

The SMH reports on one of the greatest legacies of former PM John Howard.

It's the unexpected saving of 200 lives per year from the guns buy-back in 1996, following the Port Arthur massacre.

From the report:

TEN years of suicide data after John Howard's decision to ban and then buy back 600,000 semi-automatic rifles and shotguns has had a stunning effect.

The buyback cut firearm suicides by 74 per cent, saving 200 lives a year, according to research to be published in The American Law and Economics Review.

A former Australian Treasury economist, Christine Neill, now with Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, said she found the research result so surprising she tried to redo her calculations on the off chance the total could have been smaller.

''I fully expected to find no effect at all,'' she told the Herald. ''That we found such a big effect and that it meshed with a range of other data was just shocking, completely unexpected.''

Mr Howard's agreement with the states to ban and buy back more than 600,000 weapons after the massacre at Port Arthur in April 1996 cut the country's stock of firearms by 20 per cent and roughly halved the number of households with access to guns.

Why the Liberals lost

Ross Gittins thinks it was Work Choices.

When there is close to full employment, individual contracts are likely to be favourable to workers and even better than award. When unemployment increases, the workers are over a barrel in negotiation. Howard recognized this and responded too late with a fairness test—so the voters punished the government accordingly.

Other questions of honesty and decency in public life are also addressed in Gittins' article. I agree with him when he says this:

I believe standards of honesty and decency fell under Howard. They were hardly very high under his Labor predecessors, but they declined further under a man who, to all outward appearance, radiated respectability. He was a tricky man, leaving you with a certain impression but then later protesting that you had failed to read his lawyerly words carefully enough.

How many times were we misled? There were the non-core promises, the children overboard, the Tampa (which, for all Howard's ministers knew, may have been carrying terrorists), the weapons of mass destruction and the probably illegal invasion of Iraq, the AWB scandal (which no minister had any knowledge of) and the promise to keep interest rates at record lows.

Howard was never told and so was never responsible. The buck always stopped elsewhere. As to decency, we had the brutal treatment of asylum seekers, the trampling of the legal rights of David Hicks and others, the shameful treatment of Dr Mohamed Haneef.

The Howard Government ruled by fear and behind-the-scenes bullying of bureaucrats, journalists, business economists and business people. It raised the abuse of incumbency to new heights, especially taxpayer-funded market research and political advertising.

In all these things, it had two standard defences: first, you may care but the electorate does not and, second, our Labor predecessors did it, too.

I would like to believe this election shows that, in the end, the electorate does care about declining standards of public morality.

Bennelong, Koreans, Chinese, etc.

Bennelong is the federal seat where I live, and here's an article about it from Chris Johnston of the Melbourne Age. He phoned me to get background for the story and asked about the Korean vote. About which I know nothing. I was able to tell him that I kept getting letters written in Chinese from both John Howard and Maxine McKew, including one inviting me to a reception for the Chinese community to meet with JH.

I wonder why they think I'm Chinese. No-one ever writes to me in Swedish, but it's the only other language (apart from New Testament Greek) that I can read. Come to think of it, no-one writes to me in Greek either.

Bennelong in the balance-vote for sale.

As regular blog readers will know I live in the Prime Minister's seat, Bennelong, where with little more than a week to go until the fed election the seat remains hotly contested. Maxine McKew and John Howard are running neck and neck in local polls.

Today I got the girls home from school to discover some lovely letters from both Maxine and John in the mailbox. Unfortunately Kevin Rudd had helped Maxine with her effort and so it was all in Mandarin, or Cantonese—I couldn't tell from looking at the writing, and it was all Greek to me. I do read a bit of Greek, actually, but it still wasn't making sense. "What's Grafton to you is Rangoon to me", it seemed to be saying.

Anyway, this is just to let you know, Maxine and John, that your little notes were appreciated and that my vote is, indeed, UP FOR SALE. The first of you to take me, my family and Grandpa out to Yum Cha at Rhodes gets my vote, guaranteed. I can't speak for Fifi, she's a bit of an ideologue in these matters. But, Maxine and John, you get to decide whether I neutralize her vote or make it count for two.

Think about it. It's going to be a close one remember, and when the half-dozen readers of this blog read about your response, I'm sure their opinions will be swayed inestimably. Which is to say, I can't estimate what they'll think.

Oh, and my youngest daughter likes you both and would like us to put posters of both of you in our front yard.

Maxine McKew

Maxine only needs a 4% swing to win the seat of Bennelong off the incumbent, John Howard. Polls have her sitting on 7%.

So yesterday John Howard spent two hours at my alma mater, Eastwood Public School ("Onwards! Each can serve!" sung to to the tune of Men of Harlech) meeting and greeting. No money exchanged hands, however, and the hoped-for grants for the water tanks and computers did not materialize.

Prediction time

Lots of articles inspired by events surrounding the coming Howard bio. Here's one.

If the Liberals lose, then John Howard's gone. That's a no-brainer.

But I think the Liberals will hold on to power, and Costello will stay.