After eleven years in office, John Howard has stamped Australia indelibly with his imprint, far more decisively than did Robert Menzies in his record sixteen-year term as prime minister, the differences being not just in temperament and the times, but in the two leaders’ very different attitudes to political conservatism. Menzies owed much to the liberalism of William Gladstone and to the Victorian welfare-stateism of Alfred Deakin. As James Jupp has written, Melbourne conservatism differed significantly from Sydney in its political orientation, preserving a social hierarchy that held political power as well as enjoying wealth and prestige; Melbourne conservatism, with its strongly Nonconformist religious influence, retained a quiet confidence because it was unthreatened.

Catholic and Labor Sydney, on the other hand, shaped a defensive and oppositional conservatism of a very different colour, which derived its character from the market-oriented doctrines of the old Free Traders; what was conspicuously absent was the dimension of concerned humanism. In Jupp’s memorable phrase, Sydney conservatism is inflected by a right-wing ratbag character.

The Sydney in which the young Howard cut his political teeth was home to a Liberal Party that saw itself not as part of the establishment, as in Melbourne, but as very much an out-group. The Labor Party ruled New South Wales uninterruptedly from 1941 to 1965, and its Catholic and union networks were ubiquitous, not only in government and the bureaucracy, but also in local government, the church, community organisations, the universities and, to a surprising degree, business. To Howard and his ilk, a sense of hostile encirclement came naturally. It was not enough just to win elections; they must dismantle the Labor apparatus. Howard, more than any Australian conservative leader, embodies that term so beloved of political scientists in describing the party opposing the ALP – anti-Labor. There is no common ground: whatever Labor proposes, Howard opposes. The benign powersharing concept of Menzies, even of Malcolm Fraser, is nowhere to be seen.

This is the terrain, after a decade of Howard, that Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison explore. It is a bleak landscape; their analogy of the frog in the slowly boiling pot is as apposite as it is arresting. Australia under Howard has, as Robert Manne writes in a powerful and provocative foreword, undergone a profound transformation, ‘a kind of conservative-populist counter-revolution’. The wellspring of this unprecedented offensive is, I suggest, to be found in the character and political proclivity of the prime minister.

It is far more than just pursuing a political agenda. Howard’s way involves a concerted and systematic assault on democracy itself and on the very institutions that underpin it. In the Howard view, fashioned in the sullen resentfulness of Liberal Party marginalisation in New South Wales and in the insular, self-interested domain of small business, the world over which he assumed control was riddled with Labor sympathies; political Labor he had vanquished (at least for the time being), but cultural Labor required invasive surgery, which no previous conservative leader had even contemplated, let alone implemented.

In a military sense (and Howard is fond of military analogy), you go after an enemy by silencing his guns first. Howard has systematically pursued a strategy of silencing political dissent, with not insignificant help from the deferential media. There is a real cause for concern here in what Manne describes as the increasingly authoritarian trajectory of the political culture under Howard. Opponents and critics have been targeted and discredited, government funding has been deployed as a powerful weapon, and government boards have been shamelessly stacked with partisans. It is, of course, not just Howard: he has his willing executioners, such as the chilling Senator Abetz, whose use of his ministerial staff is questionably deployed in uncovering aspects of the past of witnesses before Senate committees in order to discredit them.

Sarah Maddison reminds us how fragile democracy is and how easily it can be subverted and derailed; it is not just voting, as Howard would like us to think, but embraces a capacity for participation in public life and the ability to have a modicum of influence over the shape and role of social and political institutions. Importantly, she reminds us that democracy is about the activities and capacities of citizens, not just of governments. In this regard, Howard has pursued a policy of political disengagement, his way of making us feel ‘relaxed and comfortable’.

Stuart Macintyre reveals how important research projects, under the Australian Research Council, were denied funding by the direct intervention of the then minister, Brendan Nelson, assisted by a hand-picked panel that included a television newsreader.

Ian Lowe chronicles how government scientists have been gagged from commenting on climate change, something the government seems to have suddenly discovered after years of sceptical dismissal. The CSIRO, once a national icon, has been hijacked and put under the control of a pliant board, and a CEO charged with dismantling its social culture.

Most worrying is the government’s concerted attack on NGOs, a vital component of any functioning civil society. Howard has simply set out to hobble the sector, embarking on a clear strategy of restricting all activities concerned with social justice, human rights or environmental protection. If it is not a cut in funding, it is a constant campaign of denigration by the government and its lapdogs, such as the increasingly shrill IPA. Outrageously, the government even commissioned the IPA to ‘audit’ the relationship of NGOs to government departments, resulting in a finding that NGOs are privileged in terms of access ‘that distorts the functioning of democracy’. (Interestingly, both the government and the IPA kept quiet about the $50,000 fee until it was revealed by the Age.)

Helen Ester documents the extent to which the government relies on media management, with all requests for information from the media effectively channelled through the prime minister’s office, while Geoffrey Barker charts the political corruption of the public service – a trend by which any genuine conservative should be seriously alarmed. This bastion of national development has been subverted to a mere tool of compliance with the government’s political agenda; dispassionate mandarins of the past have given way to apparatchiks and henchmen.

Andrew Macintosh, in a study of statutory authorities, describes how the government has purged public agencies of dissenters and of those seen as sympathetic towards opposition parties, replacing them with Coalition political clones. The ABC, Fair Pay Commission and National Museum board are just three egregious examples. The courageous Andrew Wilkie charts the ongoing politicisation of the security and intelligence services, and details how the government dictates what it wants to be told. This is bad enough, but at a deeper level this crucial function of a nation’s life is being left to those regarded as politically reliable rather than those who can think critically and analytically. It is a sad victory for the mediocre and the timid.

The most disarming chapter of all is that of Harry Evans, the Clerk of the Senate. This is a telling indictment of the government’s systematic undermining of the very institution of parliament itself. It is a perverse tribute to Howard’s power to see how a democrat such as Robert Hill could be won over. Evans’s comments on how the government has evaded financial scrutiny – surely the very basis of parliamentary democracy – makes for sobering reading.

This is a powerful and timely book that will be dismissed by the real élites of the country – the government and those who bask in its favour – as yet another exercise in Howard-hating. But it poses real questions about the future of an Australia already damaged, and it raises real concerns about who we are and how we want to be.