The 30th anniversary of the election of the Howard government has induced a fair bit of reflection and reminiscing. John Howard and Peter Costello have been at the centre of most of it. Fair enough. They were the key players.

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However there is a much bigger story to tell. They didnt do it on their own. We the people elected the members of parliament that gave the Coalition a majority and thus allowed them to form government. It was a stunning victory. The Coalition won 94 seats with a huge influx of women into parliament.

Dame Margaret Guilfoyle and then Liberal federal president Chris McDiven had worked tirelessly to encourage and help female candidates. Sure, policies and campaign skills played a vital role. But the Dame delivered the dames.

Without all these members there is no government. There is no juggernaut of change led by Howard and Costello. We the people voted for the members. It was our doing. What followed was a few years of tough political debate and of serious budget restraint.

Only a couple of ministers faced the barrage of thousands of demonstrators. I was one of them. It was politics live. Not from a news desk or a lecture theatre ... from the street. The others watched it on the news.

Even more remarkable is that after a few years of that and the promise of a new tax we re-elected that government. We voted not in our own narrow personal interest but in the national interest. How things have changed.

No doubt that government, of which I was lucky to be a part, deserves credit for the work it did. Costellos comment no net debt to no net worth is telling. But paying off all that debt could only happen because we re-elected that government. We were collectively agreeing to fix what we knew needed fixing.

Our system might operate more effectively if we nurtured the realisation that the government is actually our government. Its not some rent-a-crowd installed by others to boss us around. Using the government seems to ignore the very real connection between it and us.

We might have a richer more meaningful political debate if we referred to governments as being our government. It would be a constant gentle reminder of who is responsible to whom. Referring to our government would not only keep highlighting in their and our minds that we are the gatekeepers. It just might serve to amplify........

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