Howard has been a good Prime Minister for Australia, not a great one. Namely he restored people’s faith in the immigration system; I remember a time when people wanted to completely stop further immigration all together. Some of things he did like indefinitely detaining boat people on places like Christmas Island and Nauru even I have to wonder about the morality, why did not the government just escort the boats back to where they came from like Indonesia and Malaysia.
He could done a lot more to cut taxes and cutting spending (like strip the ABC of it's funds would be a good start), instead of spending shitloads of money to get re-elected. Plus his workplace relations reform does little to actually creating jobs and getting the people who wants jobs, jobs, more an excuse to beat up the union movement.
His government’s foreign policy has been generally good with supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the government has done a lot in fighting Islamist terrorist organizations domestically.