JOHN Howard has made his first major speech since losing the election, while receiving an award from a US conservative think tank.The former Liberal prime minister received the Irving Kristol Award from the American Enterprise Institute at a large black-tie dinner at the Washington Hilton in the US. More than 1200 conservative figures attended the event to honour Mr Howard, who entered to the strains of Waltzing Matilda and a standing ovation and was introduced as a "great friend of freedom, John Winston Howard".However, despite George W. Bush being in Washington, the US President did not attend the dinner to honour his friend and political ally Mr Howard. No current senior members of the Bush administration were there.Among those present were former UN ambassador John Bolton, former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz; Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice-President Dick Cheney; and disgraced Cheney adviser Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was found guilty in court for lying over a media leak.“In foreign policy, Howard was a steadfast friend of the United States. When asked by an interviewer about the Iraq war, he said, "I am not going to be part of a policy which leaves the job unfinished and leaves behind (to) one or two other countries the responsibility of completing the job; that is not the Australian way of doing things."Mr Howard's address to the institute dinner could be a pointer to his future job. He has signed with a prominent speaking agency, the Washington Speakers Bureau, in the strongest hint yet of how he plans to supplement his parliamentary pension in civilian life.
At my last voice acting gig I had to read a passage that said Johnnie is on his way to eclipsing Bill Clinton as the highest paid public speaker of all time. He got something like 250,000 AUD for a 40 minute speaking engagement in Hong Kong.
I feel ill.
