by Ken Saunders
Jiang held up an index finger. ‘We are in a position to be …’ again he appeared to be searching for the right way to present the next idea, ‘a force for good.’
‘A force for good?’
‘PR research firms are in a unique position with the government. We can suggest to them good things to do and it becomes just the nudge the government needs to go out and do them—like shutting down that lignite power plant, for instance.’
‘So you’re what—a band of do-gooder superheroes making sure the government serves the people?’ Olivia couldn’t believe the gall of them. ‘How do you decide which good works you’ll dupe the government into doing?’
‘The whole unit votes. It has to be unanimous.’ Sam put in. He seemed proud of the unit’s democratic principles. ‘We don’t do it that often,’ he added, reading Olivia’s disapproval correctly for once. ‘Besides, it’s a nice little money spinner for the company. That one made eighty thousand dollars.’
‘How could it be a money spinner? The anti-lignite mob had no money. We did everything for them pro bono.’
Sam realised he had blundered. ‘There was a paying customer as well,’ he responded quietly.
Olivia trembled. A paying customer? ‘You mean, there are companies out there that know you’re manipulating the government?’ This was potentially catastrophic. It meant more than the ruin of the company; this might be flee-the-country-level corruption.
‘No, no, no,’ Jiang replied. ‘Almost always, the customer thinks they’ve done it. We give them an analysis that says “Do this campaign, take out these sorts of ads, organise this kind of lobbying”—any old nonsense. They do all that and they think they’ve won over the government. They’ve no idea we were the ones who spurred the government into action.’
‘Where’s the money?’ Olivia queried. ‘You said you have paying customers. Where’s the money been going?’
Sam cleared his throat. ‘We keep it in a special account …’ he began.
‘In case I sacked the lot of you!’ she yelled, cutting him off. Heads turned from the other desks and focus pods. Olivia lowered her voice. ‘Just how many different slush funds do you have around here?’ she asked sarcastically.
Sam’s eyes looked upwards as if he was tallying something.
She spun back to Jiang. ‘You said “almost always”.’
‘I did?’
‘You said, “Almost always, the customer thinks they’ve done it.” That means there are some customers who do know you are manipulating the government.’
‘Just one,’ Jiang said soothingly. ‘In fairness, it was their idea. We hadn’t thought to manipulate the government this way until they suggested it.’
‘And they gave us the eighty thousand dollars to shut down the lignite power plant,’ Sam added. ‘They’re big in renewable energy.’ He decided it was not the time to mention the $15,000 Compink Australia had recently paid them to ensure the Luddites were invited to the leaders’ debate.
Just one company, Olivia thought. One might be manageable. How many in that company would know? Possibly only a few people … but those few could threaten to tell, blackmail Baxter Lockwood. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.
Jiang gave her his you-don’t-want-to-know look.
‘Just tell me,’ she pleaded wearily, her head spinning.
‘We sort of … do work for … Compink Australia.’
‘Only occasional jobs, special jobs when they ask us,’ Sam put in.
Olivia’s visual field seemed to close in on her and her head was swimming. She wobbled on her feet. Sam’s arms shot out to steady her but he found himself catching her instead. ‘My God!’ he cried. ‘She’s fainted!’
Mrs Giardino rushed across the office. ‘What did you boys do to her? Carry her over to that sofa,’ she ordered. ‘Tina, get wet towels to put on her head. Erica, make her a strong cup of tea with sugar.’
When Olivia came to, they were all fussing over her. Tears welled in her eyes as she savoured the brief comforting moments before reality intruded again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The blitz was on. Labor had started saturation advertising, a preliminary softening up of the electorate on the party’s chosen issues, the ones Roslyn Stanfield intended to hammer home during the leaders’ debate. Labor was bombarding all high-rating media targets: the reality shows and cooking competitions—everything except Fortuna Corporation’s Get Out of My Space. GOOMS was building up the hype for the program’s pinnacle moment, the much-anticipated Fortuna Friday. Though no details had yet been revealed, it was being modestly billed as ‘the greatest event ever to take place in space’. With an unpredictable Luddite astronaut/candidate still on board the space station, any association with the show was fraught with political danger for both major parties.
Labor’s catchphrases—hardly even catchphrases, Fitzwilliams snorted, being only two words long—constituted an endless supply of alliterative adjectives to pair with the word ‘battler’. Telephone poles around the country were affixed with images of Beleaguered Battlers (Liberal Party housing policy), Buoyant Battlers (Labor’s Opportunity-Based Employment policy), Brilliant Battlers (Labor’s Advancement-through-Education policy), Bruised Battlers (Liberal health policy) and so on. Negative adjectives were framed in Liberal blue, positive ones in Labor red. In the TV ad, the Beleaguered Battlers were a photogenic white family being told by the hated figure of a banker that the bank was foreclosing on their mortgage. ‘What are we to do?’ asks the father, directing the question not to his wife or, more pertinently, to the banker, but to the camera. Cut to Roslyn Stanfield, standing on yet another AFL pitch. ‘First thing to do,’ Stanfield says, ‘is kick this lot out,’ concluding the ad with a perfectly placed kick between the posts (forty metres, Russ Langdon estimated), the goal umpire giving his two-handed endorsement to the Labor Party.
‘This battler business is tiresome,’ campaign manager Georgia Lambert declared. ‘Another week of saturating the media with this and they’ll be hit by serious Ridichet.’ Fitzwilliams was familiar with the term. Ridichet (Ridicule Ricochet) was the term for policies or, more often, politicians pilloried mercilessly by political satire shows.
‘Do we know of any comedians working along those lines?’ Donna Hargreaves asked.
‘Careful,’ Fitzwilliams cautioned. ‘We can’t be seen to encourage anyone in that direction.’
Everyone had played that game to some extent, offering choice material about political opponents for comedians to feed upon. It was their unlamented former Minister for Industry who had embellished this pastime by also offering a tidy $5000 to a certain comedian to take the satirical axe first to his shadow minister opposite and later, utterly disloyally, to his own foreign minister, whose job and travel perks he desired. The ensuing Cash for Comics scandal had rolled more than that one head.
‘What do you think of their ad, Quentin?’ Fitzwilliams asked.
Russ Langdon, as Minister for Security and Freedom, had insisted that bodyguards be attached to all party leaders at all times, including at confidential meetings. Given what had happened to Langdon in the last election, Fitzwilliams could hardly overrule him. If the bodyguards had to sit in on meetings, Fitzwilliams decided he might as well use them as a portable vox populi to consult whenever the opinion of the ‘general public’ was needed. Quentin seemed a name ill-suited to a bodyguard, Fitzwilliams thought. It didn’t sound protective. The other bodyguard was Leon. Quentin and Leon. It sounded more like a comedy duo than the people charged with guarding the life of the nation’s prime minister.
‘Stanfield can kick, Prime Minister,’ Quentin conceded, ‘but I’ve never been a fan of that aerial ping pong stuff.’ He thumped his chest. ‘Rugby league’s my game.’
Perhaps the intolerance followers of different football codes had for each other’s sports might limit the appeal of Stanfield’s kicking prowess—unless (Fitzwilliams grimaced at the thought) Stanfield proved able to master NRL dropkicks as well. The Prime Mini
ster checked his watch. Where was Olga? Lister St John, his former campaign manager, had teed up two prime interview spots, both just before the leaders’ debate. St John was making good on his threat to give tell-all interviews to the media unless he was paid out his full contract. Olga had promised to deal with him.
‘The campaign song,’ Georgia Lambert announced. ‘One of your staffers discovered this gem.’
Onto the screen came a conventional four-piece rock band, a bit scruffy, but not hard-edged. The lead singer, half swallowing the microphone, cut into a lively opening riff, singing about a bush town pulling itself up and making a go of it. By the chorus, all four band members were singing:
We are Aussie, it’s what we are about.
We are Aussie, let me hear you sing and shout
Here you know you’ll get a fair go
You have your say, it’s the Aussie way
We are Aussie, it’s what we are about.
‘It’s catchy,’ Fitzwilliams agreed. The lyrics had reassuringly expressed nothing but utter clichés.
Alan Chandos spoke up. ‘Georgia, this band …’
‘The Jaggernauts.’
‘The Jaggernauts don’t look like the sort of people who vote Liberal.’ Chandos looked around the room. ‘No offence, but they look, well, cool. Would they agree to let us—the Liberal Party—use their song?’
Georgia Lambert chuckled. ‘That song is five years old. The Jaggernauts never made it big. The lead singer is now really fat. The drummer offered to join the Young Liberals if it would help seal the deal.’ Georgia paused. ‘Only she’s no longer young enough to qualify. They’ll take any money we offer and consider it cream.’
‘Subsequent verses?’ Hargreaves asked. It was a pertinent question. Even the second verse of the Australian national anthem sometimes sounded like seditious anti-government propaganda.
‘Harmless. All Aussie spirit stuff. There’s even self-mocking humour in verse four about our annual thumpings at the hands of the All Blacks.’
‘Pay the band for the rights,’ Fitzwilliams decided, ‘and we’ll test it out. Use it as closing music at events.’
Georgia next summarised the polling data. The Luddite Lie had transformed misleading pollsters into a national sport; 81 per cent of the people were claiming they intended to vote for the Liberal–National Coalition and 19 per cent for Labor. Everyone had thought it impossible for Labor to drop below 20 per cent. Normally, 20 per cent of the population were rusted-on Labor voters, people who’d vote Labor if they were running a block of granite for prime minister. Incredibly, some of that Labor core were now lying to pollsters as to their voting intentions. If the Luddite Lie was even being taken up by some of these Labor stalwarts, you might as well give up polling altogether.
‘Which brings us to the problem of countering the Luddites,’ Georgia Lambert pressed on. ‘The Luddite candidates are using no social media platforms. They are simply going around meeting people face-to-face. The Luddite candidates for the House of Representatives could be described as a hundred and fifty-eight loose cannons, each proposing policy positions independently of the rest of their party. For instance,’ Georgia pointed out, ‘only the Ned Ludd at the debate with Donna has advocated that radical overhaul of the pharmaceutical industry.’
Donna Hargreaves ducked her head at the memory. Fitzwilliams had been kind to her afterwards. ‘At least we found out how dangerous they can be. It would’ve been worse if that celery stick trick had happened in the leaders’ debate,’ he’d said. She still felt humiliated. Anywhere Hargreaves spoke now, some jokers in the crowd were wearing celery sticks on their hats.
Fitzwilliams had dealt with populist parties before. Luddite policies, however, were not so much populist as complex. They required lengthier explanations, and during those lengthier explanations the cameras were focused on the Luddites. It was hard to counter them with catchphrases. Being committed to ‘building innovation capacity for Australia’s future’ would sound like a vapid reply after some Luddite had droned on about a fascinating new way to fund scientific research.
‘We have identified over three hundred of these … ideas,’ Lambert said, choosing a word that seemed distasteful to her. ‘The Luddites just throw them out on everything from child care to defence policy.’
She presented the Prime Minister and his colleagues with a sheet marked Confidential. ‘This comes from our PR research unit at Baxter Lockwood. They’ve identified four of these Luddite ideas that the public will find highly objectionable. Corner the Luddite spokesperson at the debate on these. You’ll either get her to disavow her fellow candidate—not a good look—or, preferably, defend a policy that the public will hate.
‘Then we hit the anonymity issue,’ Georgia continued. ‘So far it has all been a bit of fun, a party with a hundred and fifty-eight candidates all named Ned Ludd. But we’re getting close to the election now. The Luddites have no leader. Who’s really in charge of the party? It will start to spook the electorate. We won’t attack the Luddites directly. Instead, we market our reassuring personalities. Here’s a cabinet full of familiar faces. Here’s a prime minister you know, his steady hand on the tiller. Here’s his family. Here’s his dog.’
Fitzwilliams could see Donna Hargreaves giving tiny shakes of her head at the new campaign manager. Beatrice, Fitzwilliams’ wife of thirty-five years, didn’t do publicity. An IT professional, she didn’t understand or like politics. Hers was a simpler world of designing things well and fixing them immediately if they weren’t designed well. ‘If something is a bad idea,’ she would tell him when he was weighing up his political options, ‘don’t do it. Who cares if some MP will lose a seat because of it?’ It was worst whenever she caught a bit of question time on the news. ‘You all act like a bunch of schoolboys when the teacher is out of the room,’ she would exclaim. ‘Is that any way to discuss the nation’s business?’ She had famously left the platform on the night of his first victory as prime minister; she’d been on call that night and her beeper had gone off. He’d made a virtue of it. ‘Her work is important,’ he told the media after she hustled off the stage during the part of his victory speech where he thanked his family for their fantastic support. ‘Gone are the days when a woman is defined by her husband’s job even when that husband’s job is prime minister.’ Still, he sometimes sighed when other politicians trotted out their adoring partners to gaze at them with misty-eyed pride.
Meanwhile, his daughters had been raised so thoroughly imbued with the independent Aussie spirit that they’d both scarpered off to Europe at the first available opportunity. One was studying archaeology in Berlin and the other was a part-time pub waitress in Manchester and bass player in a band prophetically named The Unemployables. As for the dog—clueless. Hyperactive years beyond its puppyhood. Good only if you wanted to be bowled over or slobbered on. It was like living with a backbencher.
He was about to explain this to Georgia Lambert when Olga O’Rourke appeared in the doorway. ‘I’ve brought someone for you to meet.’ She smiled as she ushered in a tall, casually dressed man.
‘My God!’ Langdon cried, lurching to his feet.
‘Quentin, Leon—grab him!’ Fitzwilliams shouted at the bodyguards.
Langdon tried to step in front of Fitzwilliams, but caught his good leg on something and sprawled into Fitzwilliams, knocking him aside.
‘What’s going on?’ Hargreaves demanded. ‘Who is this?’
The bodyguards had the man by each arm. He was unresisting and smiling. ‘I’m ex-Senator Bolen of Arkansas,’ he announced with a pronounced American drawl. ‘You won’t find a piece on me, boys,’ he informed the bodyguards proudly. ‘It’s been two years and three months since I last carried a gun. I’ve taken the pledge.’
...
The Luddite Party had given Aggie Posniak this specific task because of her reputation as a computer programmer. Programming had its specialities, though, and this current assignment was entirely different from her former work at A
utocar. She’d been presented with an already completed program that involved a laser projection. Her task was to alter the shape of that projection.
The two Veronicas, the Bicyclism militants running her local campaign, had practically moved into her flat, which had become the headquarters for her campaign for the electorate of Wills. They were organising the day’s itinerary now, mapping out the route. On some days this involved upwards of eighty kilometres of cycling, pedalling their message beyond Wills to the whole of the greater Melbourne area. Aggie’s thighs had finally stopped aching and she was fitter than she’d been in years, but she was physically tired. It was a relief to spend some familiar, sedentary, bad-posture time slumped in front of a computer screen.
This week had seen the unexpected arrival of a bodyguard sent around by the Department for Security and Freedom. Aggie was the only Ned Ludd to have received one. The department clearly presumed she was the leader of the Luddite Party, having been designated the Ned to take on Fitzwilliams and Stanfield at the leaders’ debate.
Both the bodyguards sent so far by the department had run afoul of the Veronicas. The first had thought to protect Aggie by driving a car alongside her bicycle. The Veronicas, annoyed at this motoring presence on the campaign team, chose an itinerary that crisscrossed public parks and scooted down narrow laneways and gave the poor, earnest fellow the slip a dozen times. A different bodyguard arrived the next day with a department-issued bicycle. However, he was a sports car owner who let the Veronicas know he believed bicycles were for ten year olds and had no place on public roads. The Veronicas had deliberately sprinted on the hills to punish him. ‘No cardiovascular,’ they’d observed derisively as he puffed up a hill behind them. Tensions spilled into outright argument by the end of the day and he’d told them the department would need to send some other chump tomorrow. ‘Go. Go crawl back into your car, you … motorist,’ one Veronica had shouted at him in disgust. It was possibly their vilest term of abuse.