Over the years, many intriguing, famous and noteworthy individuals have written a diary for The Spectator. Some good, some bad. Some exhilarating, some excruciating. But this week’s diarist offers a timely lesson in how to do it properly. The best Speccie diaries are both personal and professional, idiosyncratic yet informative, quirky yet insightful, giving the reader a unique ringside perspective into important topical events. Ideally, they are devoid of the spin and crass self-promotion normally found in the mainstream press, and delve not only into the mindset but also the emotional vulnerabilities of the diarist at a decisive, reflective or simply amusing point in their lives.
This week’s very special diarist — it’s his first such appearance in these pages — offers a few key pointers. Self-deprecation is to the fore. Rather than trying to flog us his book, he merely mentions it in passing and (wrongly) describes it as ‘wretched’. An Australian of extraordinary achievement, he chooses to avoid self-justification, the rewriting of history or the narcissistic promotion of his own ideology, preferring instead to humbly ponder the fact that ‘since I retired [nobody in Australia] has ever asked me for my views on anything.’
Describing events first-hand without big noting yourself, but capturing the flavour and excitement of the moment, is what keeps the reader enthralled. Again, our diarist offers some excellent examples. Dining with two US Presidents, he finds himself fascinated by one and bored to tears by the boorish behaviour of the other. A few days earlier, baffled by the outpouring of grief surrounding a dead pop mogul, he drily observes that ‘the world has moved on, and I perhaps have not moved with it’.
Being unafraid to court controversy on the one hand, while confronting one’s own foibles on the other, is another key skill of the good diarist. Fully aware of the irony of his decision, our guest shares with us his own stupidity at turning down a generous offer of an hour-long interview with the affable Channel Nine, only to be humiliated and snubbed in a two-minute hatchet job by his implacable foe — the ABC.
Which just goes to prove one final point: a good diary piece is timeless. This week’s diary — which we trust you will enjoy as much as we have — has in fact been compiled by The Spectator Australia from a series of personal letters scribbled down more than four decades ago by an eminent Australian in the twilight of his life. Yet it is as entertaining, humorous, informative and lively as the reader could wish for, and rings as true as if every word were written last week.
Rip off
‘I am furious! We’ve been ripped off!’ raged Anna Bligh, clearly angered by the siphoning off of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money by one of her own public servants. Now she knows how the rest of us feel. The flamboyant, trilby-wearing Hohepa Morehu-Barlow may have helped himself to sports cars, waterfront homes, fancy artworks, a perfume shop and racehorses, paid for out of the public purse, but even so his lavish spending spree pales into insignificance when compared with the wasteful and excessive splurging of public funds by another couple of profligate Queenslanders.
Over the past four years Messrs Rudd and Swan have squandered our hard-earned readies on a shopping list that would take even Morehu-Barlow’s perfumed breath away. Racking up the reckless expenditure on the uncommercial NBN, a carbon tax that won’t stop climate change, school halls for schools now being closed, advertising campaigns for dumped health reforms, a disastrous boat people policy that will cost the taxpayer untold sums in welfare and policing as asylum-seekers are sent unprocessed into the community, all the legal and other costs associated with the failed Malaysian Solution, the increased foreign aid granted for the sole purpose of currying favour with the UN, the utterly pointless millions handed out willy nilly to African dictatorships to line their pockets and, er, ‘tackle climate change’, the lost productivity caused by increased union demands and strike activity and countless other ideologically-based and ill-thought-out commitments is a depressing activity that sees the Australian taxpayer dudded to the tune of more than $100 million a day.
Anna Bligh intends to recover ‘every last cent’ of Morehu-Barlow’s ‘rip off’. Alas, the Australian taxpayer will have no such luck.
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Several subscribers have raised concerns about late delivery. We can assure readers that The Spectator Australia is printed early Thursday morning in sydney and ready for delivery in the mail on Friday. The fault lies with Australia Post.
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