John Howard espoused his philosophy of conservative governance in his Australia Day speech in 2006. It included:

The permanent challenge for Australia is to avoid the extremes of big, overbearing government on the one hand and laissez-faire indifference on the other.

There is much in American society which I admire, but I have long held the view that the absence of an effective safety net in that country means that too many needy citizens fall by the wayside. That is not the path that Australia will tread. Nor do we want the burdens of nanny state paternalism that now weigh down many economies in Europe.

In this he is constrained as Australians are used to many of the social institutions such as medicare - which is really only a modern institution - and Howard was a majoritarian and nationalist populist. There are always inconsistencies in these views as well, Howard increased the pace of national legislation, regulation and centralization, while weakening many other wider safety nets through sectarian subsidy (private health for instance).

It is also popular to bash the laissez-faire nature of America, but it is that laissez-faire with which Australian economic rationalism was based upon, not to mention American capitalism saw off central planning and communism as an alternative means of social organization.

The main failure of modern American government was governance itself. The lack of adherence to existing regulations meant that financial institutions were able to act criminally and fraudulently; leading to a massive taxpayer bailout of the financial system under-pinning the American and global economy.

Australia did not have that issue, and certainly not to the same extent as the US did. In this Australian conservatism was superior to American conservatism.