The Hon. John Howard OM AC (b. 1939) was Prime Minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007. A lawyer by profession, he was elected as the Federal Member for Bennelong in 1974, and was returned to the Parliament at every ensuing Federal election until the Labor landslide of late 2007, when he became the second Australian Prime Minister to lose his own seat in a general election. Born in Sydney, Howard graduated with a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sydney in 1961, and was admitted as a Solicitor of the NSW Supreme Court the following year. He has been active with the Liberal Party since the age of eighteen when he joined the Young Liberal Movement and participated in student politics at university. After entering parliament Howard’s ministerial appointments included Business and Consumer Affairs and Special Trade Negotiations. From 1977 he served over five years as Treasurer, and spent two periods as Leader of the Opposition (1985–1989 and 1995–1996). The 1996 Howard Coalition government’s election win ended 13 years of Labor government. His most enduring piece of reform as Prime Minister was quickly introducing strict gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre, which occurred just weeks after he came to power. Howard remains Australia's second longest-serving Prime Minister, behind Robert Menzies – the focus of Howard's The Menzies Era (2014).
