The devious game

Saturday, 18th February 2012

‘The truth appears to be different.’ With this polite turn of phrase, as quaintly euphemistic as Spycatcher’s notorious ‘economical with the truth’, Four Corners reporter Andrew Fowler identified the cancer at the heart of public life that threatens to terminate two Labor prime ministers and the government.

Yes, all political parties have their leadership dramas; rivalries that are fuelled by rampant egos, relentless ambition and ancient hatreds. At the uppermost echelons of politics, there are no cleanskins.

But never before has the feud been so lopsided. Where Bob Hawke kept Paul Keating at bay for many years, or John Howard wore down both Andrew Peacock and Peter Costello, the sheer ineptitude of Julia Gillard in dealing with Kevin Rudd’s wily tactics has — to borrow an old British advertising slogan — succeeded in turning a drama into a crisis. Through her own lamentable judgment and poor acting skills, the Prime Minister has repeatedly fanned the flames of Mr Rudd’s mischief-making. An improbable media-fed leadership challenge is morphing into a fully-blown political disaster before our eyes, all of the Prime Minister’s own making.

There are simply too many lies now for Ms Gillard to gain authority in the eyes of the electorate. (Note our use of the word gain, not regain, because, let’s face it, she’d never had authority.) Her integrity and credibility are in shreds, bringing to mind the old gag about TV producers: ‘How do you know when the PM is lying? Her lips are moving.’ From the Rudd coup to the vile events of Australia Day, brilliantly exposed by Chris Uhlmann on 7.30 this week, the public are now daily being fed an indigestible diet of sickening political intrigue and back-stabbing.

Watching the speculation on Four Corners, it is reasonable to assume that the coup to oust Mr Rudd was mounted with Ms Gillard’s full connivance two weeks prior to 23 June 2010. Ambassador Kim Beazley was briefing the Americans on it, presumably as an act of revenge on Mr Rudd, with Graham Richardson in it up to his eyeballs. Then there’s Kerry O’Brien’s line that Mr Rudd wasn’t interested in appearing on the program. The wide-eyed excitement in Therese Rein’s eyes outside the church told us all we need to know about her ‘happy little Vegemite’s’ innocent involvement.

To the viewer, it’s now just a fascinating soap opera that will end in the inevitable spectacular end-of-season disaster at the next election, NSW-style. In the meantime, will Kevin get a second crack at the big gig? Will Julia tough it out? Or, as our own Mark Latham — someone only too familiar with the players — suggests on page xi, will a Third Man come through? Stay tuned for the next episode.

In praise of Liberal history

In some parts of the world, they hollow out their innards, stuff them full of chemicals, and pop them on display for future generations to behold. Elsewhere, they prefer to carve their faces onto rocky mountains. In Australia, we have several ways of preserving leaders, depending on which side of the political divide they come from. Labor, for instance, used to love to make a TV miniseries about their heroes, but nowadays, the party prefers to hang on to leadership, rather than leaders per se (see above). Intriguingly, the only plea we have heard recently for Julia Gillard to be preserved (chemically or otherwise) came from George Megalogenis in the Australian, who offers the ‘annoying advice’ — his words, not ours — to Messrs Abbott and Rudd to stop picking on the PM and let her get on with the excellent job she and her Treasurer are doing of trashing — our word, not his — our future prosperity.

Liberals have always been shy about honouring former leaders’ legacies. Yet by any proper reading of the post-war era, it is the party of Menzies, not Whitlam, that has been the policy and political trendsetter, from ending White Australia and discrimination against Aboriginals to creating the US alliance and increasing educational opportunities.

So we applaud the call from Senator George Brandis and MP Josh Frydenberg for Liberals to redress the neglect of their own history and traditions, made at this week’s launch of a display of portraits of Liberal leaders. (We suspect young Josh, a prolific writer, outstanding public speaker and sound thinker, may one day find himself hanging up there with them.) George Orwell wrote: ‘Who controls the past, controls the future.’ With Labor barely capable of preserving their current leaders, it is timely that Liberals choose to celebrate the achievements of their own.