John Howard has The Australian newspaper to thank for his elevation to the nation's top job, Prime Minister Tony Abbott says.
But the current leader has stopped short of crediting the News Corp publication or any of its state-based stablemates with his own success as he championed the masthead's objectivity on its 50th birthday.
At a gala dinner in Sydney on Tuesday marking the half-century milestone, Mr Abbott - who once worked as a journalist at The Australian - said the contemporary publication is "one of the world's very best".
And he wants to "kill" the urban myth that News Corp papers are ciphers for boss Rupert Murdoch.
"The Australian has borne his ideals but not his fingerprints: it has been his gift to our nation," Mr Abbott told an audience which included past and present politicians, sporting greats and business leaders.
The newspaper barracks for causes rather than political parties and promotes issues not individuals and tells both sides of a story, the prime minister said.
However it was The Australian in 1994 that cleared the way for Mr Howard to take the coalition leadership and become prime minister "by putting on the front page his change of mind on Asian immigration".
Thirteen years later though the paper was campaigning against Mr Howard, he added.
Mr Abbott acknowledged that The Australian has sought arguments for and against a number of issues, including the much-debated price on carbon.
"No think-tank, no institution, no university has so consistently and so successfully captured and refined the way we think about ourselves."
Mr Murdoch thanked the thousands of staff who have worked on The Australian since its Canberra inception in July 1964, and recalled with humour his battles with "flights, fog and finances" in the newspaper's early days.
But rather than dwell on the past, Mr Murdoch spoke about the future and his confidence that The Australian will reach 100 years.
Newspapers are not doomed, he said, adding that they are "able to engage, to entertain, to educate, to provoke, to occasionally irritate, and I hope often, to enlighten".
He urged Australia to build stronger relations with its regional neighbours, strive toward higher-level education and not rely on "exporting chunks of our terrain".
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