And it seems okay: another round, another fight, the Thriller in Manila still to come, a future battle, the war continues, the war goes on. And then he says:
‘It is not my intention to remain as Leader of the Australian Labor Party. It has been an enormous privilege for me to lead this great party, this hundred-year-old party, this party that has so much of Australian history bound up in it, this greatest political party. And one of the greatest political achievements is the fact that it exists and is still there, fighting and battling for the needs and concerns of ordinary Australians, through every hardship that they confront, and through every political difficulty that we confront. So I bow out of Labor Party history now in gratitude to all of you ordinary members of the Australian Labor Party who’ve stood so four-square with us over the years.’
And everyone shouts ‘No!’ and ‘We want Kim!’ and he says, ‘Please don’t make this any harder than it is.’ What madness, I still think as I watch it today. What a poor grasp of politics we in Labor have. We won the campaign. We came back from 39 to 49 per cent. We convinced nearly half of a country steeped in the fog of war. And the man who brought us back, and convinced the country, the best campaigner by definition in Labor history, who twice brought us back from oblivion, twice, was therefore stepping down; and a man who seems a midget beside him, a man distrusted and suspected … and … not well-liked, is now stepping up and grinning crookedly. Why? Why? I play the scene a few more times. It doesn’t get any better.
Natasha Stott Despoja, who was beside me, was cursing. Andrew West was saying ‘fuck’ a lot. I walked quickly out of the tally room and into the midnight air. Beazley was too big a man to be so abolished, so airbrushed, so swiftly gone from us. He needed trumpets, cannons, fly-pasts, a salute of troops, a grand farewell. And he needed language better than he got. A touch of Bunyan perhaps (from The Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678):
Then said Mr Valiant-for-truth, ‘I am going to my Father’s, and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the Trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My Sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my Pilgrimage, and my Courage and Skill to him that can get it. My Marks and Scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought his Battles who now will be my Rewarder.’ When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the Riverside, into which as he went he said, ‘Death where is thy Sting?’ And as he went down deeper, he said, ‘Grave, where is thy Victory?’ So he passed over, and all the Trumpets sounded for him on the other side.
Goodbye Babylon
JOHN HOWARD TALKING TOUGH
DECEMBER 2002
It may well be that John Howard’s flaw is a kind of propaganda schizophrenia. On the one hand he talks tough, and on the other says that nothing that happens is ever his fault. Talking tough, he said he was ‘America’s deputy sheriff’ in South-East Asia. When Bali blew up, it wasn’t his fault. When Osama bin Laden said it was his fault, he still swore it wasn’t. He stayed away from burns units whose victims might tell him it was, and claimed in speech after speech it was the work of ‘evil men’, an explanation that apparently sufficed. This week, talking tough, he told our cricketers not to go to Zimbabwe, but wouldn’t legally prevent them going. Thus, if they went, it wasn’t his fault. He’d done the tough talking, and now it was up to them. Talking tough, he swore that none of the Tampa boat people would ‘ever settle in Australia’. When eighty or ninety did, and it seemed he’d wasted hundreds of millions of dollars rerouting them through Nauru, this wasn’t his fault either. It was not his business, but that of the immigration officials, to decide these things.
This week, talking tough, he’ll ‘agree to consider’ deporting the asylum-seeking arsonists of Baxter and Woomera. When asked why our most secure facilities had no smoke detectors, he’ll say it wasn’t his fault. He’ll say it was for the private company to decide. When asked if they should be sued for neglect, he’ll say their contract doesn’t provide for that. When asked if the new private company’s contract provides for it, he’ll say it’s too late, it’s been signed already and, although it’s regrettable, it’s not his fault.
When asked if he’ll have a royal commission into the burning down of three of his ‘most secure facilities’ which, in a time of global war on terrorism, made him look a goose, he’ll say it’s ‘not appropriate’. When asked if he’ll bring the perpetrators to a trial by jury and find out why they did it, he’ll say it’s more appropriate to deport them. When asked in six months’ time if he’s done so, he’ll say no country will take them. Some of them are Iraqis and we’re at war with Iraq, and diplomatic contacts, regrettably, have been broken off. When asked if this makes them refugees he’ll say no, our expert examination has shown they’re not. When asked if they can be tried as criminals then, he’ll say no, it’s not appropriate.
This is not an exaggeration of what he does, or will do. So much of his success is due to precisely this kind of denial – of his calmly, dryly saying it was nothing to do with me, the navy got it wrong, my staff didn’t tell me, my minister acted on the best advice available at the time: I’m not going to apologise for acting in good faith on mistaken advice, why should I? – that it’s a habit by now, a lifestyle even. A principal feature of his personal psychology.
Whether it’s a good idea to have a prime minister who can’t look at reality squarely at a time of global war is another matter. Who believes in pre-emptively attacking unstated places in Asia at will. Who believes America will buy our meat. Who voted four times for the birthday ballot and doesn’t much mind the idea now of a war with nuclear elements, and germ warfare elements, in the Middle East. It’s been said we get the governments we deserve. One as loopy as this one is a punishment too far.
Previously unpublished
GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG, 2007
ELECTION DAY, 24 NOVEMBER
9.05 A.M.
A still, sombre morning, heavy covering of cloud, threatening rain. I get through mounting traffic to a Cremorne school where Mike Bailey’s people, handing out how-to-vote cards, are unhappy. There are posters of Rudd in abundance, looking like Chairman Mao, but none of Mike, the widely beloved ABC weatherman who’d resigned to stand for Labor in North Sydney against Joe Hockey.
‘You can’t do this,’ I say. ‘It’s Mike who wins here, not Kevin. Where are some photos?’
‘We had some but the Liberals tore them down.’
‘Do you have any more?’
‘There’s maybe four more back at the office.’
The Liberals have a plastic wraparound poster with an ugly, demented Peter Garrett saying ‘We’ll just change it all’ many yards long and blocking the view of anything else.
‘This is disastrous,’ I say.
10.20 A.M.
I drive in a frenzy through barping, building traffic, taking half an hour to go a mile, and arrive in Mike Bailey’s office where two mouldy pictures of him are smiling at me. He may be the one who wins it, or loses it for us. I can’t believe this. I scoop them up and drive half an hour back, through patters of rain. Christ! It’s going to rain on the wedding – Jack and Alice were to be married that afternoon in a Kirribilli park – and I haven’t written my speech yet.
I get back to the school and try to put up the posters but there’s no sticky tape, nothing. Voters are coming past in their hundreds, all of them Liberals, scorning our leaflets. Where do these people come from? There’s so many of them. The clam-faced bearers of haemorrhoids, I call them. They sit in their rocking chairs behind their green shutters and come out once every three years to vote for John Howard and they all look just like him, the men and the women, and go back home for three years. Put on their cardigans, eat Vegemite sandwiches and play Kamahl’s Greatest Hits. Some of them recognise me. What are you doing here? Go back to your hippy friends on the Northern Beaches. What you said about Tony Abbott was disgraceful.
We’re going to lose this.
11.20 A.M.
&
nbsp; Annie rings and asks, ‘What do you think?’
‘I think we’re going to lose.’
‘It’s better here at Bennelong. They bring you drinks and meals and it feels like a carnival.’
‘I don’t think we’ll even win Bennelong.’
‘It can’t happen again.’
‘It can happen again.’
‘And we … what?’
‘We survive again. We grow old under John Howard.’
‘We’ve already done that.’
‘We grow older. We make shift. We go on.’
‘Have you written your wedding speech?’
‘No.’
1.10 P.M.
It’s all too depressing. Liberals have torn down the two Bailey posters and Rudd is beaming uselessly in the rain and elderly women are ripping up our literature. I go and sit in the car and attempt to write the speech.
I ring Bruce Hawker.
‘How is it?’
‘Look, it’s bumpy, but we’re okay.’
‘Promise?’
‘Yeah, I promise.’
I ring Mike in South Australia and he says, ‘We’re swarming in, digger. We’ll pick up four seats.’
‘Not five?’
‘Not five. I’m always right, as you know.’
‘You’re always right. What is it about you?’
‘I have a gift.’
4 P.M.
Sasha is to be at the wedding but not Mike, who is Vice-President of the ALP and has duties that keep him in Adelaide campaigning down to the wire. Bob Carr and Helena turn up, Les Murray and Val, Bill Maiden (my high-school English teacher from Lismore who taught me to write), Vivienne Skinner, high-school friends of the bride and groom and Stephen Ramsey with a video camera. The rain has stopped and there are blooming blue jacarandas and red coral trees in the park below the Ensemble Theatre. Patches of sunlight beginning to warm up the vegetation. Tom is Jack’s best man. Alice, who is twenty-four, looks in her cream satin dress and white veil about fourteen. Jack in an ill-fitting suit looks more like me at that age than I expected.
There’s tape-recorded music and for once a male celebrant who isn’t an upstaging dipstick. Eventually in the afternoon light, among the jacaranda blooms and red coral flowers and the long-stemmed spiky flowers whose name escapes me, I watch with awe as the two young people – my blood, my kin – face each other and say:
ALICE: I promise to support you,
To be loyal to you, and stick with you through everything.
To be patient with you,
To cuddle you every day,
And to enrich your life as much as you enrich mine.
I promise never to take you for granted.
Thank you for making every day a special day, for making me feel safe, and for being my love, my very best friend, my home, and now my husband.
I am so proud that I’ll be your wife.
JACK: I’ll stay with you and
Look after you and
Be faithful to you and
Cook for you when you’re hungry and
Put my hand on your head to check if you’ve got a fever and
Write songs for you and
Splash water on you face when you get shampoo in your eyes and
Wait by the window for you to come home.
I promise.
I love you so much.
Then they kissed and were, as they say, united in marriage.
‘That was well done,’ Les Murray murmured. ‘Well said. That’s a nice girl.’
Bill Maiden, Bob Carr and I posed for photos. My two saviours and me.
6.30 P.M.
We went to the Yacht Club and did the speeches. Mine was less than wonderful, and Alice’s dad’s – Bob O’Keefe, from Lismore like me – rather better. There were other good speeches and a bridal waltz and some of us quit at six-thirty and went to the next room and watched television.
7.20 P.M.
The first returns look threatening but Mike Rann, ringing, says it’s early days. A young friend, Iain Giblin, scrutineering (and therefore absent from the wedding), says it’s going bad in Bennelong. Minchin on screen looks smug and hopeful, Kerry O’Brien unhappy, and we could fall short. Mike Bailey’s losing big in North Sydney. There’s a swing to Costello in Higgins. Downer close but safe in Mayo.
8.10 P.M.
It starts improving and seats fall in quick order. Parramatta, Robertson, Moreton, Longman, Kingston go and Eden-Monaro, Dawson, Deakin, Corangamite and the magic number seventy-three is approaching. I’m drinking whatever is put in front of me and fighting the waiter who keeps changing the channel to Seven. I threaten to deck him and am dissuaded. I shout and refuse to dance. Then Bennelong goes, and everyone is shrieking.
MIDNIGHT
By eleven it’s over and Howard is graciously conceding – having said ‘I’m dead meat’, we are told, half an hour before – with Janette in yellow smiling beside him, her eyes bespeaking unbelief in an almost primal way: This can’t be happening. This is not what I meant at all.
Some of Jack’s young friends propose a raid on Kirribilli House which is just up the road but are dissuaded. Viv can’t believe it. ‘Oh, Ellis, it’s all right, is it? It’s all right?’
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘We’re there.’
‘Oh Ellis. Oh Ellis.’
I am by then the drunkest I have ever been. ‘These are the days of miracle and wonder,’ I sing, or I think I remember singing.
Eventually I stagger out and Annie drives me the few hundred yards up the road to our private hotel.
I hardly make it up the stairs.
‘Well,’ I say. ‘It’s a new world.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It is.’
I lie down on my single bed in my single room, in my wedding clothes, my shoes still on, and quickly, in a deathly rush, am sleeping like a corpse.
I had put Bill Maiden on the train at Milson’s Point after the wedding. My creator. As I slept I heard him again sing, before the East Lismore Boys School 5A class in 1952:
When I’m lonely, dear white heart,
Black the night or wild the sea,
By love’s light I’ll find thee,
Sad am I without thee.
Vair me oh oh ro van oh,
Vair me oh oh ro van ee,
Vair me oh ro-ho-oo,
Sad am I without thee.
And So It Went
BLACK SATURDAY
FRIDAY, 18 DECEMBER 2009
The Copenhagen conference – after riots, walk outs, accusations by the poorer nations of betrayal by the richer nations – is haemorrhaging credibility and tottering like a raucous halfwit over the Gadarene cliff among squabbling pigs into storm-lashed, sea-washed oblivion. And what do we do to save our planet now? Meet up and squabble again, I suppose.
The weather has cooled the bushfire danger, too late for some, with conflagrations in Michelago, Londonderry, Gerogery, and brush fires all over the state. I look again at the parliamentary speech I wrote for Nathan Rees in February on the Black Saturday fires. I didn’t see him do it, but most there present said it had wrong-footed O’Farrell and given the fledgling premier uncontested mastery, for the first time, of the Lower House:
It is the fate of nations to be tested now and then. When Darwin was bombed, and Singapore was lost, and Gallipoli was lost, and Kokoda regained with difficulty, there was each time a cause, and an honourable cause, we grieved and died for. But for Ash Wednesday, and the Newcastle earthquake, and the Granville train crash, in the Maitland floods and the Thredbo ski lodge disaster there was only blind accident at the core of our grief and no great sense of purpose in it, and no valid target for retaliation.
And so it is with the flames of February 7th and 8th in Victoria. Some of it was lightning strike, some of it a crazy man with jumbled things in his mind, some of it teenagers out looking for kicks, some of it a fallen power line.
But most of it, Mr Speaker, was the weather, and a wind that blows ill sometimes, whose
hot breath moves towards towns that are beloved, and trees that are landmarks, corner stores that are precious in memory and heirlooms that cannot be replaced, and animals and birds that were alive at Christmas and are not now, and human souls that are no more.
And it is coping with this illogic, this shaft of fate, this violent, voracious, disproportionate mischance, this body blow to the mood of our tribe that is hardest to achieve at a time like this. We no longer have the certain language of other centuries with which to say, it’s all for the best. Too many of the tens of thousands of the intimates of the dead, some of whom are still searching for a fragment of their loved one to come back to be buried, know it’s not for the best, and no comfort can be manufactured from it that has any emotional validity for those who remain and mourn and sift ashes for melted photos of the past, and yearn each night, in Tennyson’s words, for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still.
Mr Speaker, these are hard yards for a people, a town, a community, a family, a bereaved bloodline, to travel in the coming months and the years. They will reach automatically for things that are not there: a tea cup, a wallet, a wedding photo. They will go suddenly to tears at the accidental utterance of a name. They will have dreams in which the pet dog comes back out of the blackened bush, tail wagging, and then wake up.
And they will need a good bit more than our prayers and our parliamentary motions to get through the worst of what is imminent in their lives and inevitable, I fear, in their souls’ journey.
Bob Ellis Page 12