Yesterday, I was in Echuca at one of those town hall meetings that politicians apparently don't go to anymore. Afterwards we had a media doorstop, and the techno-savvy acolytes of one Lyndon LaRouche were in abundance. Mark Latham-like they made their way into the media pack and I was waiting for the question that morphed from the Water Act to whether Prince Philip really is the grand architect of world domination.
Naturally enough, seeing they are from a political party, not from a media organisation, Tony Abbott refused to engage with them.
I like Sir Galahad came in from left-field to defend Tony, and finding a cameraman posing a question I asked him “mate are you from the fourth estate.” He looked startled and panicked, but eventually responded to me that “No, I am a normal person, I work for the ABC.”
What I think Laurie’s book shows, from an author who was the dux of Lithgow high, born during the Second World War and was bureau chief at the age of 25, is that the gentleman from the ABC, in mistakenly reflecting on his own profession, should not have been so hard on himself.
Inspection by the media is essential for the protection of democracy.
Laurie has been at the forefront of ensuring that the media plays this role for over 40 years.
A great example of his art form is no better displayed than by a recent conversation I had with a very prominent past politician, who may or may not have recently written a book. He explained Laurie’s style as using short direct questions, then he would look down at the clipboard and you would think … “Here comes a zinger”. What’s even more disconcerting than this “zinger” was when it was prefaced by the statement “Just before you go I’ve got a question.”
He conveyed to me that if you didn’t manage to dodge this bullet you were in real strife.
Laurie has probably the greatest stable of connections in the Australian political debate therefore he can deliver authority based on authority. Who else could leak the 1980 budget before it was released? What about the appointment of Vince Gair in 1974? Or more recently Laurie’s connections with the Labor leaks? Though I think we’re now starting to get a better idea where they came from.
Laurie has expressed in this book that nothing gives you the ability to see the greater picture than long and detailed experience. This allows you to see in clear focus a politician’s qualities, their fatal, as opposed to their idiosyncratic defects, and their capacity to draw more on Alexander Pope in their analysis than on Paul Howes.
What becomes apparent through Laurie’s book is that the inherent political narrative remains the same.
For example, Laurie's column from 20 August 1977 reports that the then Coalition Treasurer, Phillip Lynch, in an address to the National Press Club tripped over the "rubbery" numbers in the budget and, at one stage claimed that "Inflation, of course, has been a primary goal of the present Government."
It is reassuring to know that you are not Robinson Crusoe when it comes to National Press Club faux pas.
In regard to my party, Laurie is correct to highlight the demographic pressures faced by the National party over a long period of time.
But the philosophy of our constituents, and what they want from us, hasn’t changed. There will always be marginalised people who live outside the metropolitan capital as long as there are metropolitan capitals.
It’s just that the people that listen to the Nationals now are not just the farmers, but the National party voter today lives in the brick and tile and weatherboard and iron. Many of them wear those disparagingly called “don't kill me’, reflector shirts.
People should always remember that the National party represent the poorest seats in Australia. In its greatest proportion, our people are more on the margins than the inner-suburban affluent supporters for the Greens.
There will always be a Country / National Party that will flex its muscles when it has to.
I agree with Laurie that the Nationals were at their best when we delivered our message from the back of a truck. Now Laurie is of the view that politicians don’t climb onto the back of trucks anymore but I have to pull you up there Laurie, I was on the back of the truck in Mildura just a fortnight ago.
It might be just that the media doesn’t go to the places were politicians still stand on the backs of trucks.
I also take from Laurie’s book that there is a lack of conviction in modern Australian politics. That might be broadly true, but I want to put on the record that the Nationals have bucked this trend recently.
When the Nationals took on the ETS, only 8% of people agreed with us. But we fought it because we thought it was right. We won that fight and the ramifications of our win affected the leadership of the two major political parties.
Just this one example demonstrates what conviction can achieve, even in the modern 24/7 media environment from a position of a minority party in opposition.
I broadly agree with Laurie, that the political system has, as Pink Floyd said, become ‘comfortably numb’. This is not because of a lack of philosophical desires, personal ambitions and ulterior motives in abundance, but because of the logic of sanitisation, to provide a bland picture and to say little except capitalising on your opposition’s mistakes.
This has led to media minders being able to micromanage and diminish our message into nothingness.
As TS Eliot would have said “we had the experience but we missed the meaning.”
How would the modern Australian media deal with Charles Kingston? Charles Kingston was the premier of South Australia in the late 19th century and was Minister for Trade and Customs in the first Australian Government, led by Barton.
He challenged Richard Baker to a duel (but was arrested before he could carry out the threat), he was horsewhipped by another bloke and, even today they are digging up his bones because there is a wing of Adelaide that believe they are related to him, but not in the 19th century sense of the word “legitimate”.
Sure the modern media would have crucified him. But this was also the man who brought in universal suffrage, coming only second in a global context to New Zealand. In the scales of judgement, your assessment has to be taken over the long-term experience of the political dynamic. If you’d just arrived, you would condemn him, if you had observed him for a while you might re-elect him and over the long-term he would be judged as a good politician.
Even more modern examples exist in Laurie’s book. How would the media today take to Tony Abbott throwing a glass of water over Wayne Swan? Because if you had asked for his immediate resignation, then you would have asked for the resignation of Gough Whitlam when he performed that act on Sir Paul Hasluck.
I agree with Laurie that Australian politics has become bland. The Australian media hold a cynicism of American politics but then they do their very best for us to mimic it.
The thing that keeps Australia together is our Australian identity, which is by its nature defined by the laconic and at times profane vernacular. If we sanitise politics so much then we leave a vacuum such that another culture comes in.
Here I wish to digress once more and say to Laurie that I know you laud the one-liners of Keating but I think George Reid, former Prime Minister, was the best at this loquacious art form. George, a rotund gentleman, was heckled by an interjector at a public meeting.
The interjector cast the aspersion that George's girth suggested he was with child and was inquiring on what he might call it. George faced his accuser and said if it's a boy I will name it after myself, if it's a girl I think I will call it Victoria, but I think it is all piss and wind so I will name it after you.
What Laurie’s book breaks down to me is that we need people in our fourth estate like Laurie, like Michelle, like Bongiorno and dare I say it, like Kerry. You need in our fourth estate people with experience. This book is a book about the Australian political experience.
If you place this book on the floor of the toilet and read it when you get that quite moment, you’ll understand more about the Australian political experience, that you would looking for those pearls on a 24 hour news channel.
But just for their record, that does not mean that I think this book would sell more copies if the paper was softer.
I congratulate Laurie for a life dedicated to being the very best at his craft. We have only our selves to blame if our professionalism doesn’t match his.