Never a True Word

by Michael McGuire

  Boyle was also a master media manipulator in those days. In Opposition, he would ring Caldicott, a bloke who thought the last idea he heard was the best he’d heard, every morning before he went on air, ostensibly just to chew the fat on the issues of the day. More importantly though, Boyle used those calls to plant seeds in Caldicott’s mind that would often find their full bloom when he was getting stuck into whatever poor unfortunate the government had decided to put up for radio that day.

  By the time I was on board the whole show was still running at the breakneck pace that characterises all new governments. In my head and heart I was still a journo and now I was constantly in meetings I would have given anything to be part of just a few short weeks before. Budget meetings, strategy meetings, meetings with business types who want to spend money in the state. I was at a meeting with one bloke who had flown in from interstate to pitch some idea or other. I recognised him from my last job, we had got on pretty well I thought, but he just froze when he walked into the room and saw me. He barely acknowledged me before giving a stilted presentation. At the end of the meeting I went up to say hello and mentioned this was only my second week in the job. ‘You work for these guys?’ he asked.

  ‘Yep, I am Ray Sloan’s press sec these days.’

  ‘Dear god,’ said he. ‘I thought you were still with the paper. I was thinking they had a very strange way of doing business in this town.’

  The weariness and paranoia that weighs down all long-term administrations hadn’t started to surface in the Boyle government as yet. It should have been a happy place to work. Maybe in other parts of the government it was. But Sloan, well, what can you say? Perhaps deep down he was surprised he had achieved so much in life. As far as I could tell, he had coped at school, but not excelled. He had travelled straight from Year 12 to university, joining thousands of other confused kids in completing an Arts degree.

  At uni he specialised in the bar—the drinking, not the legal kind—and was heavily involved in campus politics. In the end it was the connections he made in the brawling, insular world of student politics that led him to a job in the more grown-up version and from there he used his peculiar combination of charm and an ability to instil fear to climb the greasy pole.

  After all the bonhomie of the initial job interview and a first few days where I was allowed to settle into the rhythm of my new office life, the reality of the job soon set in. A call came from one of those current affairs shows that make you despair about the future of journalism. Somehow the producer knew we had some footage of a public servant who had been caught nicking paperclips or something from an office. Real crime of the century stuff. They wanted to use it in a broader story about workplace theft and how all employees are really crooks who need to be watched. It seemed a reasonable request. How could it damage the government? In fact it would show how tough we were on crims. This, of course, fitted in nicely with the government’s relentless law and order message. I checked with Leo, who agreed, so we said they could have it. I didn’t check with Sloan. The next day I was in the big white car going to some function or other and the boss was asking how I was settling in. This was the first time I had been out in public with him in an official capacity and I was a little nervous. Escorting the boss on these trips, I would later discover, would always make me nervous. There were so many things that could go wrong and set him off on one of his rants about how useless everyone was. The car could get lost, there would be nobody there to meet us wherever we were going, he would be seated next to the wrong person at lunch, he didn’t like the briefing he had been given, he objected going to the particular event in the first place. It was a long list.

  So all I said on that maiden voyage was fine. Before I made the mistake of telling him about the request from the current affairs show.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  I repeated myself.

  He exploded. Shouting at me. Turning around from his seat in the front of the car to give me the full experience in stereo, digital and 3D.

  ‘Mate, don’t ever do that again. Never deal with that bunch of cunts again. You should have asked me. Why didn’t you come and see me? I’m the fucking boss here. It’s my head on the block and you’re running around helping those cunts. Jesus, mate, I thought you were a bit smarter than that. This is not a good way for you to start.’

  I had nowhere to run. I was stunned. Upset at the sudden fury. Completely unable to defend myself or explain so I just stayed quiet, muttering only a quiet and pathetic apology.

  Sloan got straight on the phone to Leo. ‘Mate, do you know what this fuckwit’s done?’

  I could hear Leo say no, so Sloan told him. This was early days so I didn’t know if Leo would defend me or cut me loose. When Sloan erupted with ‘Well, you are a bigger dickhead than he is. Don’t ever do that again or you won’t be working for me’ I gathered Leo must have stuck with me. He hung up. Didn’t say a word to me. And didn’t for two days. I was beginning to think the bloke in the front seat was maybe a borderline psychopath.

  Still, what I did learn that day was the importance of seating arrangements in the ministerial car. My rookie mistake was to sit directly behind the driver. Sloan liked to ride in the front passenger seat, which on that first trip left me on a forty-five degree angle to Sloan. After that day I always made a point of taking the seat directly behind Sloan. At least he can’t turn round and bollock you that way. He has to stare out the window and do it, or at the very least hopefully tear a neck muscle as he twists around to give you a mouthful.

  When I finally got back to the office after another icy cold car trip on the way back I went to see Leo. One to say thanks for sticking up for me, and two to find out if it was always like this. Bob was there as well, so we told him the story. He started laughing.

  ‘This is not funny,’ I said. ‘He went nuts. I think he hates me already. He might fire me. Technically I am on probation for three months. He doesn’t even need an excuse to throw me out the fucking door.’

  ‘Do you know why he hates that show more than any of the others?’ asked Bob. Leo and I agreed we didn’t. ‘Last year, they sacked one of his old girlfriends.’

  This job was going to be more complicated than I thought.

  5

  Another day, another staff meeting. There are two big events on the horizon. There’s a budget coming up and next year’s election is already starting to hove into view. It should be a doddle really. The government is on track for comfortable re-election, no one gives the other side a hope, but still the tension is starting to rise.

  I have been here a year now, settling into the permanent anxiety that defines my existence. Every time the phone rings, which is often, a little flutter of fear runs through me. It’s either going to be a journo with another daft question or the boss with some impossible request or a bit of advice on why I am shit at my job.

  Sloan doesn’t like anyone to have his mobile number so when he rings, up flashes ‘private number calling’. Of course every time someone rings from our office, or indeed any government number, their number is blocked as well. It feels like Russian roulette. One in six times you pick up the phone and get a Sloan bullet through the brain.

  Sloan is paranoid about journos getting his private mobile number. Being aware of this, and not an idiot, I never give it to anyone. But the inevitable happened.

  ‘Mate, have you been giving my number to fucking journos?’ he asked one day.

  ‘No,’ said I.

  ‘Well, someone has and if I find it was you I am not going to be happy. Some of these fuckers reckon they can ring me any time they like. I haven’t been handing it out.’

  Bob was listening to this conversation. ‘Ray, do you ever text these journos?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Well, there you go.’

  ‘What do you mean? My number is blocked.’

  ‘Yes, if you call them, but not if you text.’ And with that Sloan stormed off.

  Today’s staff meeting
is about the budget. Specifically, how do we want to handle it from a media point of view. We will decide which interviews we do beforehand, which stories we will drop to which media outlets in the weeks leading up to the budget, and what we will do after the big day to sell the message. The four of us have gone through all this already and have a full week’s schedule of ‘good news’ stories to sprinkle around the media like chocolate eggs on Easter Sunday. Like children on an Easter egg hunt it’s important everyone wins a prize. Otherwise, there will be tears. Theirs and ours. Hell hath no fury like a journo scorned is always a good mantra to keep in mind. Sloan pays cursory attention. He’s happy enough. Only stopping to check whether the Premier’s office has been kept in the loop. He still rarely trusts us to make a decision by ourselves.

  ‘So what’s the schedule for the day after the budget?’ he asks. The decision has been taken to keep it the same as last year. We see Caldicott at eight, then pop across town to have a 9 am session with Terry Dowell. Dowell is Calidicott’s rival in the shock jock stakes. Naturally, Dowell and Caldicott hate each other.

  ‘Ok, how long with Dowell this time?’

  ‘It’s usually the full hour. He gets stuck into you for half an hour about why the budget is a disaster then he lets his listeners wind you up for the next thirty minutes.’

  ‘What about the funeral?’

  The funeral in question is a sad story. A couple of off-duty cops had died in a car accident, leaving a baby behind. Sloan is keen to attend the service as a senior member of government.

  ‘It’s 10 am Friday,’ I say.

  ‘Fuck, can we get there after Dowell?’ he asks.

  ‘No, it’s at least a half-hour drive and we’re supposed to be with him till ten.’

  ‘Can we get them to put back the funeral?’

  What follows can only be described as a stunned silence. We all know Sloan’s defining characteristic is self-indulgence, but surely even he can see this is nuts. The headline generator is whirling through my head again. ‘Sloan delays police funeral for media interview.’

  The silence in the room lasts a couple of seconds. I am just about to tell him it’s not a good idea when Sloan interprets our silence as a warning.

  ‘Just, thinking out loud, guys.’

  ‘What about if we tell Dowell we have to get out the studio earlier? He’ll understand this one,’ I venture.

  ‘No, mate, we have a budget to sell. Make sure we send some flowers though.’

  6

  Getting the budget out is always a nightmare. Sloan goes through the motions of listening to all his colleagues as they come and ask him for money to fund their favourite projects. He delights in thinking up as many ways as possible to say no. Fair enough too, if you caved in to all your Cabinet colleagues with their hand out you would go bankrupt in short order. Clearly the exception is Frank Boyle. Whatever Frank wants, Frank gets. No discussion. No ifs, buts or maybes. Just how much and when. And would you like a little extra gravy with that?

  The relationship between Boyle and Sloan is intriguing to watch. Boyle is pure politics. It’s all he’s ever known. He made his way through student politics, a bit of side activism, briefly slummed it in the media, then got a job in a political office and never looked back.

  He is consumed by the profession in all its forms. He came into the morning meeting one day and gave us an insight into who was going to win the election in Uganda and why. No one else in the room knew Uganda was even having a poll. I think most of us still thought Idi Amin was in charge. In fact, most of the people in the room couldn’t find Uganda on a map.

  Boyle attended the Tony Blair school of politics. To quote a line from a review of the wonderful and weird David Bowie film, The Man Who Fell to Earth, you tend to think that ‘after you scratch through the veneer all you find is another veneer’.

  It’s not possible to determine where the politician ends and the human being starts because they are one and the same person. He also has an almost hypnotic hold over the media who can’t decide whether they love him or hate him. And again and again he will sell the same message, without shame, for years selling the idea the state has improved drastically because of the ‘holy trinity’ of health, law and order, and education. If he has given an interview in the last three years where he hasn’t mentioned all three, usually in the same sentence with some sort of dollar figure attached, then I haven’t heard it.

  To give him credit, he is easily the hardest working politician in town. He is not happy unless he is meeting people all day long and sharing the Frank Boyle story. And he’s very good at meeting and greeting. There’s the strong handshake, the look in the eye, the apparent sincerity. Boyle is not a man to let a vote go begging.

  But there’s a ruthless and cynical side to the bloke that generally only the privileged few get to see behind those closed doors. He is a man who’ll cut you dead once he deems you’ve outlived your usefulness. If he is ever in a cab or a lift he will often whip out his mobile and start imaginary conversations such as: ‘Really, the Opposition Leader was spotted in a strip club last night?’ hoping those listening, will start spreading whatever imaginary rumour he has just invented.

  One of the bedrocks in Sloan’s life is his conviction that he and Boyle are an unmatched team. The salesman and the headkicker. But more than that, they are great mates and Boyle will always look after him. And unusually for a politician, Sloan appears to have no great ambitions to topple the boss and take his job. This clearly suits Boyle. Having a deputy in politics who will protect your back rather than stick a knife in it is a precious gift. Sloan mistakes Boyle’s gratitude for real friendship, not realising that as soon as he outlives his political usefulness he too will be sliced and diced. Boyle didn’t get where he is now by making friends.

  Boyle’s favourite two hobby horses are the environment and the arts, which Sloan comprehensively despises but acquiesces to, in order to keep Frank happy. So, recent budgets have seen millions spent on frankly daft projects, such as putting a mini solar farm on top of Parliament House and bringing a puppetry festival to town.

  It’s lucky we are in power at a time when we have enough money in the bank that such indulgences are not often noticed by either the media or the wider public. The fact that money is pouring into the coffers is a happy accident really, after years of despair that the good times were never coming back. The politician’s natural reaction is to move back into happy spending mode. Frankly, there is so much cash flowing, much more than Treasury predicted, that it’s a little embarrassing. A week ago, John Stokes reminded us that last budget we had predicted a healthy, but not excessive, surplus of $200 million.

  ‘So, good news, Treasurer,’ explains the somewhat naïve Stokes. ‘Latest indications are the surplus for the current financial year will come in just above $600 million.’

  ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ Sloan asks the somewhat perplexed public servant.

  ‘No, I thought you would be pleased. It’s a great result.’

  ‘That’s why you’re a public servant, John. Fuck me, the media will rip me to shreds if we put out that number. What will the headline be, Jack?’

  ‘Treasurer sucks tax dollars out of public,’ I suggest. ‘State government highest taxing in history? Ray’s rolling in dollars?’

  ‘All right, enough, smartarse. Get the idea, John? A record surplus means the punters will just think we are ripping them off, and they’re probably right. Especially, after all my sermons about belt-tightening. What can we do?’

  ‘Not a lot, Treasurer. It’s only six weeks until the end of the financial year. To run the surplus down you would have to spend the money before then or by the accounting rules we use it won’t count towards this year.’

  ‘Fuck,’ says Sloan quietly to no one in particular.

  The following silence is taken by Stokes and his boffins as a sign the meeting is over. No one says a word as the five grey men return to the sane world of Treasury next door where the political imp
lications of their decisions are beyond their care. Sloan looks at the rest of us with a hint of desperation on his face.

  ‘So, what do we do, Leo? I don’t have to tell you how badly this could play. I can already hear that fuckwit Caldo in my head. There’s a limit to how far I can play the “it’s a result of good economic management” card.’

  ‘I really don’t see how we can get the money out the door in time,’ says Leo. ‘Even if we committed to some big infrastructure announcement we can’t count it as you can only book it up in the year the money is spent. Tax cuts are the same. We’d never get it through in time.’

  I make no claim to political genius but it’s at this point I am struck by a thought. My strategy in strategy meetings is to take notes while the professionals are speaking and only respond when asked how it will play in the media. Indeed in the years I wound up working for Sloan this would be my only moment of such inspiration. So as Leo confesses he has no ideas, and Harry and Bob remain uncharacteristically mute I haltingly make my suggestion. Unsure that it’s even possible.

  The morning’s paper had been full of tales of woe about rising electricity prices and the sad effect it is having on all and sundry, particularly pensioners. It was an issue that wasn’t causing the government too much pain at the minute, but you could see it coming and when it did it would be ugly. It wasn’t an issue you wanted to fight an election over.

  ‘Could we,’ I began, ‘offer a rebate for electricity? Maybe for pensioners. We’re copping a lot of flack for electricity and water price rises. This might be seen as doing something. But just do it as a one-off.’

  Sloan’s expression doesn’t change. Leo looks interested. A small grin breaks out on Bob’s face. Then the boss asks me: ‘How would that work? How much would we give them? How much would it cost?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ I am forced to admit. ‘Just throwing out ideas.’