Australia is an immigrant society and, as John Winston Howard famously said, its people 'decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come.' Every generation has exercised its right of veto, not always without controversy. Elections have been won and lost on the issue, none with less honour than Howard's own Children Overboard election of 2001. Unlike an immigrant wave, the arrival of a new biography of the former conservative prime minister is always timely, particularly one to which the man himself has contributed, or at least had words put into his mouth. As the Children Overboard disgrace amply demonstrates, we are not always the authors of our own destiny, or even of the record of our past. The history of Australia has seen many leading characters come and go, and it has seen truth-telling wax and wane. John Winston Howard is still with us, but at least with the publication of 'The Demonist' his dark deeds are now more or less factually on the record.
