As soon as the Gillard government published its national school curriculum for history in 2012, John Howard entered the public debate to denounce it as “unbalanced, lacking in priorities and quite bizarre”. He accused it of marginalising the Judeo-Christian ethic and purging the British contribution to Australian history. Howard had good reason to be unhappy. The idea of a national curriculum originated in his government towards the end of his term as Prime Minister. It was founded in an attempt to combat the radical versions of history that had emerged in some of the state’s school systems. In an address…