Labor conference light on drama but a showcase of party unity

The only time I have been spat on was at a Labor national conference. There was a group in the 1970s and 80s called People for Nuclear Disarmament.

They were bitterly opposed to uranium mining in Australia and the conference had just approved the “three mines policy”.

A well-dressed woman started screaming at me as I walked to the lifts to go up to my room. She was an Olympic-class spitter.

Some 35 years later, no one challenges uranium mining. Apparently, we have collectively determined that coal is far more hazardous than uranium.

Had we not mined uranium it would have made no difference to the number of countries relying on nuclear power nor to those who produced nuclear weapons.

At least with Australian uranium there are safeguards attached to its sale. This was the one area of disagreement I had with Bob Brown and the fledging Greens with whom he was associated when I became Environment Minister a few years further on.

The numbers on uranium were too close for comfort but when the crunch came a majority of one was good enough.

Today Telstra is in private hands and there are a welter of phone companies offering competition to it.

So good has the competition been and such lead weight has the NBN been in Telstra’s saddlebags that its shares are way down on where they were a year ago.

While he was Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull made a complete balls-up of the NBN. While trying to lever the cost of the NBN he opted for copper to the home. Is it any wonder that many households on NBN now find internet speeds are slower?

When a special conference was called in the early 90s to deal with opening Telstra up to competition, it was obvious that the numbers were very tight and there was a real chance the government could suffer an embarrassing defeat on the conference floor.

The billionaire John Roberts, the founder of Multiplex, was a good friend of mine who oddly enough for a super-rich guy, always voted Labor.

I told him how I was struggling with votes on the conference floor.

Roberts then arranged for me to meet a far-left delegate in a suite at Canberra’s Hyatt Hotel. The delegate was Kevin Reynolds who had been with the old BLF and had moved on to the Building Workers Industrial Union. He was, I thought, the least likely delegate from the Left to vote with the Right — yet he did so.

When I told Hawke and Keating, they laughed at me. They were smiling when Reynolds’ hand went up with theirs.

There will be precious little excitement at this conference but it will deliver something that is electorally necessary and a precious political quality — party unity!