I didn't know our former PM had this power:

John Howard issued a memo after he won office in 1996, telling the bureaucracy to avoid what he felt was the American ''program'' in favour of the British ''programme''.

In fact, the English used ''program'' for hundreds of years – it appears in Shakespeare's works – and only switched en masse to ''programme'' in the 19th century. When Kevin Rudd came to power in 2007, he reversed the move.

From the SMH. Full article here