Days of Wine and Rage

by Frank Moorhouse

  I was to have the night at home resting before they admitted me to the Eye Hospital the next morning. I would then spend twenty-four hours with both eyes blindfolded, then they would operate and try, by draining fluids and scarifying tissue, to put the retina back where it belonged. Later, they would weld it with laser beams. My wife and I went through the list of things-to-do I had scribbled out on the back of the Bulletin while I was at the doctor’s surgery. There was only a sliver of vision in the far right of the eye now. When we finished with the list I shut my eyes and imagined what it might mean if the poll figures accurately represented a significant mood. Humiliatingly, the suggestions they made at Tony’s Bon Gout might be right: there were enough authority-respecting Australians for them to change sides when a Governor-General had spoken. Australia was still colonial enough for the will of Government House to prevail. Alternatively there was the pragmatists’ theory of the hip-pocket nerve: when the Senate was using the blocking of the supply of money to force the government into an election, support had swung to Labor because people felt their incomes threatened. Now that there was to be an election the hard-heads had swung back to the Liberals, thinking there was money in it for them. (Which would show them to be as stupid as hard-heads often are.) Perhaps, because of this marginal shift, the Australian people were about to betray what might have been their destiny: positively affirming themselves a nation self-confident in its democratic forms. Two nights later, delirious as I recovered from the anaesthetic, I struggled with the nurses and my wife, on and on, for a couple of hours. I knew they had me in a cage. Downstairs were the documents that would prove the Morgan Gallup Poll was wrong. They wouldn’t let me go down and clear the name of the Australian people. Later, at midnight, when I had re-orientated myself as a hospital patient, and one who had to accept the Morgan Gallup Poll, the nursing sister wrote on the post-operative report that the patient was ‘conscious, co-operative, vague’.

  In the tunnel of darkness in which I lived for eleven days, as well as cassette music of Handel, Haydn and other positive thinkers, I heard all the radio news, listening for more opinion polls. I rang my wife after breakfast each morning: was there any good news yet in the polls? I had a new theory: the Liberals’ concentration on the economy as the main issue of the election would bounce back on them. During the campaign a significant margin of the hard-heads would detect the fraudulence of the idea that the economic crisis was simply due to either Labor’s ‘bad management’ or its ‘socialism’ and that once the Liberals took over, the crisis would go away and ‘prosperity would be restored’. On the day before the election I came out of hospital into the glare of a heat wave. A band of dock workers, banners calling for Labor for Australia, marched along the road on their way to a rally. A policeman was with them, to stop the traffic at intersections. We bought an afternoon paper. The opinion polls were as bad as ever.

  While I was in hospital I decided that if the frauds did work, if there was to be success for the most sustained and corrupting campaign to destroy a government in our national history, with outrages committed against the decencies of our political life, a huge campaign of political misrepresentation and a vendetta journalism so virulent that it makes me ashamed to have been a journalist, then I should write a book giving meaning to these events and suggesting some of the puzzles that have been cast into the future.

  The day Whitlam was sacked he said to the crowd on the steps of Parliament House: ‘Maintain your rage’. If you felt rage at the time this book is intended to help justify it; and, if you did not feel rage then, to understand and now perhaps join with those who did.

  The book [Death of the Lucky Country] is addressed in part to that coalition of Labor supporters and concerned people who were deeply motivated during the December 13 election campaign. But it is also addressed to those other Australians who may have taken another side at the time, but who share similar principles and priorities. Those who voted Labor may see more clearly how they were robbed. Those who voted Liberal may begin to understand how they were misled. For both, the book may help crystallise common feeling and a new consciousness of politics in Australia.

  The book is not intended to be wholly or mainly polemical, although there should be no shame in writing spiritedly. It is intended to throw up the shapes of what have been dark and sometimes unexamined aspects of Australian political life, and to look into matters that might previously not have seemed worth investigating. After the sense of atrocity suffered by so many Australians, we have to learn to see our politics in a new way.

  What happened?

  This: The Governor-General secretly made a decision, the effect of which was to support the political plans of the Liberal and National Country Parties.

  Against all contemporary practice he did not discuss that decision with the government that was then in power. But having contemplated the decision secretly he secretly got for it the support of the Chief Justice, a person of no more constitutional significance in this matter than you or me, but one whose respected office could seem to give extra authority to what the Governor-General had decided. The Governor-General then mounted a time-tabled operation, for which the phrase ‘constitutional coup d’état’ seems a useful description. It was an operation which had the general effect of leaving the Prime Minister with a false sense of security, then, without discussing any alternatives, kicking him out of office, installing the minority leader as Prime Minister, then dissolving Parliament. It all happened so quickly that no preventive action could be taken …

  To the Labor government supporters, or to those who came to its support because the destruction of the government affronted them, the sacking of Whitlam had the shock of an assassination. It was followed by a dream-like period of physical disorientation: when the words ‘prime minister’ came over transistors or television sets people still saw the face of Gough Whitlam. They would wake up in the mornings and for a moment imagine it hadn’t happened. As the election caravans moved across the landscape of disaster the media put up such a brutal clatter that the sense of shock became sharper. Has there ever been such crying on an Australian election night? It was not only the Labor Party that was being destroyed, but the sense of trust of hundreds of thousands of Australians.

  The Violent Option

  Manning Clark

  (part of a speech given in Sydney Town Hall on 20 September

  1976, from Kerr and the Consequences, 1977)

  What is to be done? Well, I’ll be quick. We have two traditions in our history. One is the tradition of what was called ‘a lick on the lug’. That’s not lechery by the way [laughter], it’s a lick, L-I-C-K, on the lug, L-U-G. This was the method used at Eureka in December 1854; it was used at Lambing Flat in the winter of 1861 against the Chinese. It is a method used sometimes, it’s said, by militant unionism. The other is called ‘moral suasion’ – that is, that you present the truth to the people and the people will want to follow it. Now that is what I would commend to you tonight. I’m like you; I’m timid too. [Laughter.] We’ve got to liberate our people from the dead hand of that past. [Hear, hear, applause.] We’ve got to give our people confidence that they, not a few, can control the conditions under which they live. Second, we’ve got to educate our people on what the issues are in 1976. Donald Horne has already done it magnificently in Death of the Lucky Country [applause] and, if I might say so without being misunderstood, I think the issues are so serious I propose to write a book about it myself. [Laughter, applause.]

  We must show our people it’s not a choice now between the capitalist society – a corrupt, decadent and disappearing society with all its moral infamy – it is not a choice between that and the so-called communist societies, which so far (and I say so far underlined) have been characterised by what I call spiritual popery, conformism and greyness of spirit. We’ve got to show our people that there is a third and exciting possibility to which Australians can contribute. We’ve got to release the creative forces of our day to help them to build t
hat.

  So as I see it, the consequences of Kerr could be a dilemma between being resigned to conservatism, being resigned to what I call the dead hand of the past – this, I believe, will provoke revolution; if we do that then we’re going to find what Lawson prophesied was right: ‘Blood will stain the wattle’ – or the people must decide that they’re going to get rid of these ghosts from the past and all these elaborate checks and balances for the defence of privilege.

  Paradoxically, it will then be shown, I believe, that men such as Sir John Kerr, Fraser and Lynch – whom I take to be the quintessence of the latter-day receiver in bankruptcy [laughter and applause] – these men will be seen not as they see themselves, as the defenders of a great civilisation but, I believe, as the grave-diggers of what was threatening our future here. [Applause.] Otherwise, it’ll be our fate to be sojourners in this country. We will be the second invaders; we will be swept into the dustbin of history. I believe that these men who seem to have done great evil will be shown to be the unwitting grave-diggers of a society they believed had the divine right to govern. [Applause.]

  So, Mr Chairman, I say to you quite simply and I say to the people here, we must have faith that we can build a good society in our ancient and very beautiful land. Thank you. [Applause.]

  I have very much pleasure, Mr Chairman, in formally moving the following resolution: Now that representative democracy is becoming even more limited, it is essential to Australian political freedom that Australians be ready to engage in extra-parliamentary activity. [Prolonged applause.]

  Chairman: If you approve that resolution would you please raise your right hand and say ‘aye’.

  Audience: Aye.

  Chairman: If you disapprove of the resolution would you please indicate your disagreement. I think that I could say that the resolution has your overwhelming support.

  At a committee meeting planning a political rally against Kerr, it was suggested that the Eureka flag should be used as a backdrop.

  A gay movement activist at the meeting objected to this as sexist. The committee, considering itself to have a progressive consciousness, queried this. The gay activist said that the gay movement repudiated the flag because straight history had suppressed the fact that the Eureka hero, Peter Lalor, was a homosexual and had been with his lover when he signed the flag.

  Donald Horne – Profile of a Republican

  (adapted, from Pol, winter 1976)

  I know four or five Donald Hornes. I know Donald Horne, editor of the Bulletin until 1972. I know D. R. Horne, the boy from Muswellbrook in The Education of Young Donald, his outstanding book about life up to 1941. I know Donald, the good companion, luncheoner, dinner-party host. Finally, there is Horne, the legend of a hundred journalists’ stories and Horne a presence in my novella Conference-ville.

  After a long lunch with Donald during the constitutional crisis in November 1975, we were sprawled on the floor of the living-room of his house while he was being interviewed by Radio 2JJ over the telephone. They had asked him how he wanted to be described. He turned to me from the telephone, unsure, and said, ‘They want to know how I should be described.’

  Tell them everything, I said: author of the most important book on contemporary Australia – The Lucky Country, contributing editor of the American magazine Newsweek, former editor of the Bulletin, senior lecturer in political science at the University of New South Wales.

  Reporters and television and radio commentators both here and from other countries instinctively grant the title ‘doctor’ or ‘professor’ to Donald. I told him that he should accept this and allow it to go uncorrected; that the universities should not be the only people who grant these titles – they should be granted also by respectful consensus. That appeals to Donald, not only to his ego, but to his irritation at the over-special role of the university.

  The truth is that he has no degree from a university. He is one of the rare people (if not the only person) on a teaching staff of an Australian university without a degree. He attended Sydney University during 1939– 40–41 but did not complete his arts degree.

  We were together at a conference in Canberra organised by UNESCO called Man and the Biosphere. We were both giving papers, together with about twenty other people, almost all of whom were from university faculties. Jack Mundey was the only other person, I think, who was not from a university. He got up on stage and said that he was at a bit of a disadvantage, being a builder’s labourer and being the only person without a university degree.

  Donald leapt up and said, ‘That’s not right – Frank Moorhouse and I don’t have university degrees.’

  I remember saying in a loud whisper, ‘Shut up, Donald – I don’t want everybody here to know that.’

  At the same conference Donald stood up at the end of Professor Leonie Kramer’s paper and said, ‘Phooey’ and sat down.

  Donald is a frequent speaker at conferences. In my novella Conference-ville there is a character called Horne. This Horne says, ‘Go to all the papers – do not duck off; be there for the before-the-paper chat, the talking in the doorways; be the last to leave … go to all the parties in all the motel rooms; collect and file the last morsel of the last remark …’ Horne’s rule for doing conferences properly.

  Even in his autobiography, The Education of Young Donald, there are two Hornes – D. R. Horne who rants and Young Donald who cries.

  Donald Horne, the host, together with his wife Myfanwy, is a bountiful and witty giver of frequent dinner parties. Donald likes to photograph his dinner parties.

  I got to know Donald Horne when he was editor of the Bulletin (for the second time). I was a reporter who’d given up work and was trying to write fiction. I missed out on a Commonwealth Literary Fund grant and was wondering how to survive when Donald Horne, then only a legend to me, rang and said that he understood I didn’t get a grant but if I’d do one piece a week – anything – he would send me $50 a week and I could get on with my fiction writing. It was then a significant living subsidy.

  This conflicted with my legendary picture of him. As a young journalist I’d been told many stories of Horne the deadshit and Horne the right-wing polemicist.

  But not only did he subsidise me during those difficult years; I found that he was also an editor who took his staff and writers to lunch in the great tradition of magazines.

  The other Donald Hornes I don’t know are probably the ones I wouldn’t have cared to know.

  He was a public figure in the DLP-Cultural Freedom Association anti-communist movement in the late fifties and into the sixties. I consider this movement did more harm to the atmosphere of freedom, to the opponents of authoritarianism and to the liberal tradition than it ever did to communism. They were posturing, last-ditch anti-communists who mounted a blind defence of bad governments and silly institutions; who abandoned political subtlety and discrimination, which pushed them into condemning liberals and radicals for giving comfort to the enemy. By doing this they misunderstood and failed to see other important movements in society. In turn they pushed liberals into over-reaction against them. They discredited anti-communism. To this day, to make a stand against communists in Australia among intellectual groups is to be tainted by these people from this period and the irrationality of their stand.

  I don’t think that I would have liked the Donald Horne either who edited the light-entertainment, sexually retarded magazine Weekend in 1954. But I think I might have liked the Donald Horne who at that time was living at the Australia Hotel (at Consolidated Press’s expense), drinking Great Western champagne and having weekly manicures. He was during this time the blood-and-guts editor of journalists’ legend who enjoyed firing people (and let it be said, that even for hard-bitten reporters, being sacked is a trauma and leaves permanent scars). He was the editor, they said who would take a journalist’s copy, read it, say ‘rubbish’, and tear it up and throw it out the window into Park or whatever street.

  Once, the legend goes, he tore up the wrong copy and th
en had to send a copy boy out to pick up the pieces which had fluttered down four storeys into the city traffic. This story is told about his editorship of Weekend, Everybody’s, the Observer and the Bulletin. I suppose a flamboyant gesture, like a good joke, bears repeating.

  Legend has it that so bitter were his relations with journalists that he could not go to hotels where they drank or to the Journalists’ Club without someone throwing a beer over him. It seems that the story began with two brothers: Donald fired one and the other, in retaliation, later tipped a beer over Donald in a newspaper hotel. From then it became a galloping legend with people claiming to have thrown, or saying that they would throw, a beer over Horne. Donald said there were only three beers in all ever thrown at him.

  His support for the Whitlam administration (as distinct from ongoing commitment to the Labor Party) was a dramatic change which surprised everyone. He spoke for Whitlam at rallies. He says that although this strained his social relations, he has not lost a friend.

  Donald supported Whitlam because of his emphasis on education, civil amenities, the cultivation of leisure, and quality-of-life issues. Donald liked the developing new national consciousness and Whitlam’s assault ‘on racism, Britishry, and the world view of the loyal little ally’.

  ‘If Australians had given the Whitlam government a better run, Australia might have developed something of a name for itself in the world as a humane and progressive nation with a distinctive originality.’

  One day in 1974, over lunch, we sheepishly agreed that, out of character as it was for both of us, we felt oddly ‘protective’ towards Whitlam and his government. This was then overlaid with outrage at the constitutional crisis and the undemocratic tactics of Kerr and the Liberal Party.

  To illustrate how uncharacteristic this protective feeling was, let me tell another anecdote. I was with Donald when we read a newspaper report that Whitlam had interfered with the ABC: he had ordered a news item off the air. This was totally unacceptable to both of us and we said, almost simultaneously, that at last we could attack Whitlam and the Labor Party and we were free of our unnatural roles as protectors (until then we felt Whitlam had not done wrong).