John Brown, the Minister for Good Times, launches his memoir
Here for a good time: John Brown, Minister in the Hawke government, launches his tell-all book, with a chapter titled ‘About That Desk Business.’
Who remembers federal MP John Brown’s wife, Jan Murray, telling 60 Minutes they’d once had sex on a desk in Parliament House – and that she left her knickers in the ashtray?
The nation was scandalised but Brown’s boss, prime minister Bob Hawke, refused to sack him.
Fair enough, too, because it was never entirely clear what the offence was.
Sex at work? Try banning that in the age of work from home.
Sex with one’s own spouse, in Canberra? Maybe Hawkie just couldn’t comprehend.
These days, of course, the offence would be obvious. It would be the ashtray.
Thirty years on, people still rib “Brownie” about the incident. “Onya Brownie!” He gets that all the time, from punters at the track and even at the supermarket.
Truth be told, he is a tiny bit annoyed that so much else he did in service of the Crown has been overshadowed by the incident, which may explain why this week he published a 347-page memoir, Brownie: Minister for Good Times. (That wasn’t his real title; he was minister for sport, recreation and tourism in the 1980s.)
The book comes just two weeks shy of Brown’s 92nd birthday, and you’ll be pleased to know that he’s not so taciturn as to have buried the lede.
Indeed, the opening chapter is called About That Desk Business.
Brown explains that Murray, whom he met when she was just 16 and drop-dead gorgeous, was agitated about his absence from home, so she had travelled to Canberra “to claim her conjugal rights”. She was toey, in other words.
She turned up dressed “in a tempting way”. They went out for dinner before heading back to the old Parliament House.
According to Brown, the desk had its “own political history” – but they were certainly about to put in another notch, as it were, in it. And so they got down – or maybe up on? – to it.
Brown insists in the book that there was no “proof of use” when they were done. It was a strong desk, he adds.
He also says the knickers story wasn’t true, but who cares? The story rated its, erm, socks off, and that year Brown was year the only bloke over 50 to make it into Cleo’s Sexy Top 50.
Brown is right when he says the incident tends to be remembered ahead of his many significant political achievements, among them the creation of the Australian Institute of Sport, which for a time was the envy of the world; and the doubling of tourism budget, which led to the creation of the greatest tourism campaign in Australian history: “Come and say g’day. I’ll slip another shrimp on the barbie.”
Anthony Albanese, who launched Brown’s book at the Winx Stand at Royal Randwick in Sydney on Monday, praised the work, saying the minister had brought to his portfolio all the joy he felt at being Australian.
“Brownie came to his role – minister for tourism – not only with a clear understanding of what is special about this wonderful land of ours but also with a determination to share Australia with the world,” the Prime Minister said.
In that sense, Brown’s book is a little like Playboy: you might pick up it up for the sex but you should stay for the passion.
The policy passion!
It reminds the reader that we – Australia – once were the best in the world at many things, among them winning gold medals and attracting global events.
Of course, Brown teamed up with a famous comedian, Paul Hogan, for the most memorable of the tourism ads, and Hoges, who is now 84, also was on hand on Monday to help him launch his book with an amusing if rather long speech.
When Brown was done, Hoges himself took to the stage.
“You done?” he said, in that drawl we all remember. Brown nodded. “Good, you can shove off then, Shagger.”
The room dissolved like a Canberra marriage. (For the record, Brown and Murray are now divorced but extremely good friends.)
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