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Former prime minister John Howard personally intervened to stop a domestic violence incident after stumbling across a couple fighting in the street. Mr Howard, 79, was on his daily walk near his home in Wollstonecraft about 7.45am on Wednesday when he saw the clash. It is understood a man was attempting to put something in a bin, triggering a row with a woman that allegedly escalated into physical violence. A Liberal source said Mr Howard called out “Hey” in a bid to stop the fight, before standing with the woman until police arrived. The former Liberal leader, who celebrates his...

John Howard believes the world has to let Donald Trump make mistakes, after his much-condemned press conference with Vladimir Putin. The former Australian prime minister said the US president had clearly made a mistake when he said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies. "I thought he was wrong to have said what he did but he's now dealt with that and the important thing is to understand that people shouldn't take sides too much on Mr Trump," Mr Howard told reporters in Adelaide on Wednesday. "I think one of the problems with the attitude around...

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott is facing an uphill battle after a Newspoll has revealed the Coalition’s worst polling ­figures, and Liberal MPs are divided on the leadership spill. The latest Newspoll, taken ­exclusively for The Australian, shows the Coalition’s primary vote down three points to an eight-month low of 35 per cent. Labor is up two points to 41 per cent. In two-party terms, the government’s vote went to 43 per cent with Labor on 57 per cent, which is the Coalition’s worst result since November 2009. Tony Abbott has admitted he could be removed as leader on Monday but...

8.31am: Half an hour to go. You can read a handy pointer to how a leadership spill works here (although do note the 102 partyroom has been reduced to 101 after one MP called in sick): 8.28am: Tony Abbott will need to channel John Howard’s historic 2001 recovery in the polls if is to emerge victorious, says Mathias Cormann: ‘Abbott has done this before’ 8.25am: Chris Kenny is saying on Sky that he is hearing there is strong support for the spill. 8.22am: Tony Abbott spoken briefly while leaving the church service.“We want to put the internals behind us and...

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JOHN Howard has urged the Liberal Party to give Tony Abbott more time to improve his performance amid signs the Prime Minister will stare down a leadership spill today but risk an ongoing revolt and subsequent challenge. The former prime minister said that “obviously some things have to change” but that Mr Abbott should be given the chance to fix the problems, in an influential move in the battle over the government’s future. Malcolm Turnbull will contest the leadership if today’s spill succeeds but Liberal MPs said a majority was unlikely to vote for change today despite frustration with Mr...

JOHN Howard has criticised Barack Obama for “wading into domestic political differences on climate change” during his recent visit to Australia for the G20 leaders’ summit. The former prime minister said the US President’s speech to the University of Queensland in Brisbane “could have been phrased differently”. ..... Mr Obama’s passionate speech to a young audience ­during the G20 summit embarrassed the Prime Minister, caused outrage among members of the Queensland government and drew public criticism from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. ..... Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said he was not about to criticise Mr Obama as “our guest” but the...

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has today referred to U.S. President Barack Obama´s approach to Islamic extremism as ´disappointingly complacent´ in a speech to the Margaret Thatcher Liberty Conference in London. The high-profile event was attended by hundreds of political journalists, activists, writers, legislators and other global stakeholders. Howard’s comments were met by nods of approval across the room as he took aim at Barack Obama´s West Point commencement speech of last month. Howard said: "Islamic fundamentalism is a far greater threat than many people in their culturally equivocal way believe. "Obama´s West Point commencement speech… with the greatest

• JOHN Howard has been named Australia’s best prime minister of the past 40 years, followed by Bob Hawke, with Gough Whitlam and Kevin Rudd tying for third place. The poll, conducted last week by Essential Research and provided exclusively to The Australian, shows that 39 per cent of voters ranked Mr Howard, the Liberal prime minister from 1996 to 2007, as the best. Labor’s Mr Hawke was rated as the best prime minister by 14 per cent of voters. A further 8 per cent of voters chose Mr Whitlam while another 8 per cent selected Mr Rudd. Paul Keating...

<p>FORMER PM John Howard thinks there'll never be a worldwide climate change agreement and admits he only backed emissions trading before the 2007 election because he faced a "perfect storm" on the issue.</p> <p>"I've always been agnostic about it (climate change)," Mr Howard told reporters in London before his address.</p>

She has been Britain's greatest prime minister since Winston Churchill. As leader of the Conservative Party in Britain she has been the most successful of all in the past 100 years. It should be remembered that Churchill led a coalition national government during World War II. The real measure of Margaret Thatcher's greatness was that she brought about profound change domestically and internationally. The British economy was in a downward spiral when she won office in May 1979; Britons were working a three-day week; uncollected garbage piled up in the streets of London; the all-powerful trade unions effectively ran the...

SYDNEY, Australia -- It is for Americans and their elected representatives to determine the right response to President Obama’s proposals on gun control. I wouldn’t presume to lecture Americans on the subject. I can, however, describe what I, as prime minister of Australia, did to curb gun violence following a horrific massacre 17 years ago in the hope that it will contribute constructively to the debate in the United States. I was elected prime minister in early 1996, leading a center-right coalition. Virtually every nonurban electoral district in the country — where gun ownership was higher than elsewhere — sent...

WHEN the members of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party met to elect a new leader after its defeat on November 27, 2007, the outlook for the party and its cause, nationwide, seemed bleak. The gallows humour started early. Campbell Newman, the Liberal Lord Mayor of Brisbane, was quickly named the most senior Liberal figure in Australia: he actually held elected office. Not since its formation in 1944 had the Liberal Party been so bereft of political power. Labor was in office everywhere at a national, state and territory level. The reasonable expectation was that the newly ensconced Rudd government would...

Australia's former prime minister John Howard has attacked "multiculturalism" in English-speaking nations, saying that some sectors have gone too far in accommodating Muslim minorities. The blunt-talking conservative, who led Australia for 11 years before losing 2007 elections, said Tuesday on a visit to Washington that the "Anglosphere" needed to take greater pride in its values and achievements. "This is a time not to apologize for our particular identity but rather to firmly and respectfully and robustly reassert it," Howard said at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. "I think one of the errors that some sections of the English-speaking world...

EAST Timor was John Howard's coming of age, the point at which the novice was transformed into a national security leader. This was Australia's most important military involvement since the Vietnam War. From this point Howard became a bolder prime minister. His actions after 9/11 cannot be comprehended without reference to East Timor. ..... The East Timor story is riddled with myths. Three of the benchmarks should be defined at the outset. ..... Second, the crisis became an example of Australian-American alliance co-operation and not the disaster often depicted...... The Risk of War: Australia took a deliberate decision that the...

THE Howard government decided in early 1999 to work for East Timor's independence but concealed this from the Indonesian government, John Howard and Alexander Downer have revealed. And senior Australian and US officials have disclosed that the Clinton administration threatened Jakarta with US military retaliation if Indonesian forces contested the Australian-led UN intervention in East Timor. These revelations in the book The March of Patriots - the Struggle for Modern Australia contradict the decade-long orthodoxy about the 1999 East Timor crisis. .... Before the Australia-led UN force under Major General Peter Cosgrove landed in East Timor, US defence secretary William...

FORMER prime minister John Howard is resting at home after spending two nights in hospital because of a severe allergic reaction to an anaesthetic on Friday. Opposition frontbencher Tony Abbott says Mr Howard, 70, was able to enjoy Father's Day at home in Wollstonecraft in Sydney's north on Sunday after he was discharged that morning from Royal North Shore Private Hospital. ”I spoke to him this afternoon and he was chirpy, joking and saying what a pleasant Father's Day he'd had,” Mr Abbott said. He said Mr Howard was having some routine dental treatment on Friday at Castlecrag Private Hospital...

President Bush held his last Cabinet Meeting this morning TranscriptPresident Bush met this morning with President Calderón of MexicoTranscriptThis afternoon President Bush honored President Uribe, Prime Minister Howard, and Prime Minister Blair. Transcript Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island

Rush attends a Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House. During the ceremony President George W. Bush presented the Medal of Freedom to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.