The fun’s gone out of politics

Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten are ‘so scripted it is hard to make a mistake’.

Neither Scott Morrison nor Bill Shorten is setting the world on fire so far in this election campaign. The Opposition Leader, however, has runs on the board. His cancer announcement was spectacular. It is always great when there is a confluence of good policy and good politics. Cancer is a malady that in one way or another affects us all. That single announcement is one of the best policy initiatives I have seen in more than 45 years of close observation of election campaigns. With just one policy, Shorten has the Prime Minister playing catch-up politics.

What I do appreciate about this campaign is that so far neither side has got down and dirty. The only time I have seen real nastiness has been the attempts by members of his own party to besmirch the name and reputation of Tony Abbott. Some of Abbott’s views may be a little old-fashioned but at least he stands for something. It is hard to forget the Manly campaign launch of his independent rival, Zali Steggall. It was a disaster, because it was obvious that she was clueless about politics. If you have a spare dollar, put it on Abbott holding Warringah.

The big worry for the Liberals is their slow-moving train wreck in Victoria. In the state election last November they were really punished by the electorate and I see no reason why another awful result would not be on the cards.

In Bob Menzies’ heyday it was the jewel in the Liberal crown, but the wheel has well and truly turned. Senior Liberals are wondering if their party has a future in the deep south. These things are cyclical, of course, and believing there has been a permanent change is a mug’s game. There is a lesson here for young players. When Neville Wran was king in NSW, he won seats like Manly and found that no matter how much largesse you throw at them, these seats inevitably go back home to mum.

The Nationals have had little trouble holding their seats in recent times but you would be entitled to wonder if the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party could make a contest of it in a few of them. Since the Shooters burst on to the scene a few years back by taking the NSW state seat of Orange in a by-election with a swing of more than 20 per cent, I have expected bigger things of them. They have not lived up to that early promise but also show no sign of giving up the ghost. But you have to hand it to Barnaby Joyce. Despite some nasty scandals he seems to have the capacity to tough out almost anything. It will be fascinating to see if the women in his seat of New England are prepared to overlook his excruciatingly difficult marriage break-up.

Shorten leads a Labor Party less divided than at any time I can think of, and I have a life membership dating back more than 50 years.

When Arthur Gietzelt, a dual ticket holder with secret membership of the Communist Party of Australia, was leader of the Left, there was little or no hope of successfully managing a united party. At least that was true until Gietzelt became a minister. Snout in the trough, big white car out the front, the revolutionary zeal ebbed out of him. Anthony Albanese, today’s leader of the Left, is a first-class human being — an accusation never directed at Gietzelt.

Albo’s mentor was Tom Uren, an old-style leftie who never wasted a moment of his time dreaming of the revolution. He was incredibly kind and really cared for the little people. The only time I hesitated in the early 1980s, when the battle for permission to mine uranium was being fought, was when Tom showed a film of the effects of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. You had to admire this bloke, who was held prisoner in Changi and emerged like the rest of his comrades as just skin and bone.

Interestingly enough, it was another leftie, Lionel Murphy, who introduced one of the great and most needed reforms during his time as attorney-general. No-fault divorce meant those who suspected their spouse of cheating no longer had to hire private detectives to sneak up and film errant spouses in flagrante delicto. As an articled clerk I worked for a lawyer, much of whose practice involved divorces. It was so humiliating for the couples being filmed.

I defended Murphy when his career was threatened because of his links to colourful racing identities, and in particular to a former union solicitor, Morgan Ryan. At a meeting with Bob Hawke and then attorney-general Gareth Evans, it became clear that Murphy had lost the confidence of the government and I was dispatched to tell him.

Murphy was put on trial and eventually died of a brain tumour before any decision was made by the court. Murphy had his detractors but he also had fanatical followers. In one parliamentary inquiry, a Tasmanian Labor senator, Michael Tate, who is now a parish priest in Hobart, found against him. I do recall that I gave Tate a monster serve that he did not deserve.

When one of your own gets into strife, you do your best to help. When Craig Thomson was found to be attending brothels, I tried to help him. When he denied attending these establishments, I pointed out that on one trip to Sydney from his home on the NSW central coast he rang one brothel three times. All he could say was that he didn’t have any explanation.

We always come back at this point to the Jack Lang classic — “never nurse a mug, he will die in your arms”.

This campaign is boring, the PM and Shorten are so scripted it is hard to make a mistake. We have become so adept at scripting our pollies, we have finally chloroformed politics to the point of exhaustion.