John Howard fires the big guns at Fort Scratchley

The hair, and those famous eyebrows, are a few shades closer to white.

But John Howard, 75, Australia’s second-longest serving prime minister, after his idol and inspiration Sir Robert Menzies, wowed two crowds like the political pro he is in his visit to Newcastle on Tuesday.

At Newcastle City Hall, Mr Howard had a full house of 330 in rapt silence for half an hour in a speech that dwelt heavily on the rise of China and its implications for Australia.

After speaking, he spent a similar amount of time taking questions from the audience. These were fielded through Newcastle Business Club president Ty Brennock, as the two of them sat in armchairs at the front of the stage.

Mr Howard then posed for many dozens of photographs with well-wishers afterwards, before leaving with his driver for Fort Scratchley, where another 120 or so people were gathered to meet him and to see him fire off the fort’s cannons.

Unlike 2002, when damp stopped the big 80-pounder gun that failed to fire in the freezing cold and wet of Mr Howard’s previous visit to the fort, everything went well this time around.

He shook hands, listened to anecdotes, kissed babies and took in all aspects of a fort that was restored largely during the Labor years from money pledged under his Coalition government.

More than seven years have passed since the December 2007 election that saw the Coalition lose power, and Mr Howard lose the Sydney seat of Bennelong he had held since 1974.

Mr Howard’s driver said his boss still went to his office high up in Sydney’s MLC Centre every morning at 9am.

He drove up from Sydney on Tuesday morning with wife Janette, who stopped off with relatives at Hamilton East while Mr Howard was at City Hall and the fort.

Mr Howard opened his business club address by saying that while he was familiar with Newcastle, his wife was ‘‘more so’’ because her father was born in Adamstown and her mother in Stockton.

Mr Howard said he’d had some ‘‘interesting visits’’ to Newcastle, ‘‘some more friendly than others’’.

He referred, obliquely, to the years when media pressure forced him to stop taking holidays at Hawks Nest, by saying the family had returned to the town for annual holidays, as they had for about 25 of the past 30 years or so.

He said Newcastle had clearly prospered after the steelworks closure in 1999 and the diversity of the Hunter economy mirrored the sorts of changes the nation as a whole had been forced to make over the years as it went from wool and wheat to a more modern economy.

At Fort Scratchley, Mr Howard met briefly with Scott Robertson – who donated an historic WWII star shell to the museum in April – and his wife, Lauren.

Various familiar faces were in the crowd including former Newcastle lord mayor John Tate, who was with Mr Howard in 2002 when the gun failed to fire.

It was windy on the fort, but the cannons fired on cue enabling Fort Scratchley Historical Society president Frank Carter and his bevy of fellow volunteers to ‘‘right the wrong’’, as he called the 2002 gun failure. 

 THE idea of an inevitable conflict ‘‘in our part of the world’’ between China and the United States was a ‘‘dangerous notion’’, former prime minister John Howard said in Newcastle on Tuesday.

But in a speech that dwelt at length on the rise of China and its implications for Australia, Mr Howard made it clear that there was a lot at stake for the nation.

He said the world’s most important bilateral relations were no longer between the US and Russia but between the US and China.

Asked if China’s increased activity in the South China Sea was posturing or a threat, Mr Howard said it was both.

Mr Howard said history showed that economically strong countries usually tried to use that strength to make military and strategic gains.

He cited Germany in the 19th century and the US in the 20th century as examples.

He said China needed to heed international law, but whatever happened he was not expecting ‘‘a blow-up" over the South China Sea.

Praising the modern era of responsible Chinese leadership, Mr Howard said they had ‘‘remarkably’’ pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

But he warned against being ‘‘mesmerised’’ by China’s dramatic emergence onto the world stage.

He put ‘‘two caveats’’ on China’s continued growth.

The first was its ageing population, courtesy of the country’s one-child policy that meant it was likely to ‘‘grow old before she grows rich’’.

The other emerging giant, India, had lots of children and was a ‘‘young country’’.

The second caveat was China’s totalitarian government.

Despite increasing private wealth, the Communist Party still ruled almost all aspects of life in China.

Mr Howard said history showed economic liberalism would eventually trump totalitarianism.

Current generations of Chinese might be grateful to the party for improving their living standards but their children were less likely to accept its strictures.