ABSTRACT
John Valder may be best known to many readers because of the ‘Not Happy John Campaign’ that the former Liberal Party president ran during the 2004 election. Valder was outraged by the Howard government’s backing of the United States’ decision to pre-emptively invade Iraq in 2003 and by its indifference ever since to the fate of Australian citizens Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks, imprisoned indefinitely at the con troversial American facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. John Valder’s name is also associated with a very important Liberal Party document, entitled Facing the Facts, of April 1983. It was a report written by a committee Valder headed. The way political historian Dean Jaensch tells the tale, the heritage of the Liberal Party of Australia was divided from the start. The Fusion Party of Alfred Deakin ‘fused’ the two non-Labor Parties in Australian politics.
