"Monday will be the 25th anniversary of one of the most prophetic speeches in Australian political history. Then prime minister Paul Keating told the National Press Club: "When the government changes, the country changes ... but what we've built in these years is, I think, so valuable - to change it and to lose it, is just a straight appalling loss for Australia." He was dead right. The legacy of John Howard's government is the opposite of the picture he painted on election night in 1996, when he restated that "united Australians were infinitely more important and more enduring than the things that divided Australians". Instead, he favoured the well-off, the strong and big business over the vulnerable, the less wealthy and wage and salary earners."