Who needs a speechwriter when sound bites will do?

GRAHAM Freudenberg may not be a household name, but within the Labor Party, his status is legendary. Indeed, few people in the party's history have contributed more to its success than "Freudy".

He joined the staff of Labor leader Arthur Calwell in 1961, working as his press secretary and speechwriter. He went on to work as a speechwriter for Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Neville Wran and Bob Carr. Many others have drawn on his talents.

Looking back over five decades immersed in the art of great speechwriting, today Freudenberg has misgivings about the craft in which he excels.

"I have reservations about what has been my life's work," he tells The Australian. "I fear that the inescapable, inevitable and necessary wide cast of speechwriters means that anything now said in a speech tends to be discounted as not quite authentic."

Freudenberg is concerned about the declining quality of speeches, the ability of speechwriters to represent their masters' voice authentically and the Gillard government's struggle to present a cogent argument or a sharp political message.

"There are just too many messages being sent," he says. "Because we are spreading our effort so widely to cover all the media, the general public and Labor Party (members), in particular, don't receive a focused message."

Today, most political speeches would win accolades for their ability to spin a political message rather than win a complex argument. Speeches that inspire, inform and persuade are rare.

"All leaders of any substance have been leaders capable of telling a story," Paul Keating says. "Storytelling is, of its essence, the conceptualisation of ideas. Without a schematic or framework, subjects and events appear in isolation and with no purpose."

A political narrative is a compelling story about where government wants to lead the nation and why.

Hawke saw education and argument in speeches as fundamental to winning support for the landmark economic and social reforms of his government.

"Speeches by leaders of reformist governments, which is what Labor governments should be, need to be educative in making the electorate understand the need for change," Hawke says. "That's the critical role which I saw for speeches I had to make."

A speech provides the most effective way to present an argument by combining policies, political messaging and philosophy into a framework for persuading the public.

Speechmaking can take many forms. Hawke could be brilliant at a political rally, in an industrial tribunal or on television.

He did not like parliament because the outcome of debates did not "depend upon the quality of your argument". Parliamentary debate, Hawke says, is "just a charade".

Keating, however, saw parliament as important. "I proselytised about things that I believed would reshape Australia and make it stronger," Keating says.

"I was always indignant at reactionaries who either sought to diminish or attack those views. So I always saw parliament as the central cockpit of politics; the central square in the ideas market, where intellectual hegemony had to be mastered and kept."

Freudenberg wants politicians to speak more from their hearts and not only from ghost-written scripts. He believes Gillard should rely less on her speechwriters and speak more "off the cuff" in parliament and at public meetings, where he says she sounds more authentic.

"A proper public meeting is a great test of many things," Freudenberg says, "including the ability to think on one's feet and the ability to reach out to an audience. The public meeting is an act of participation in a democracy."

Freudenberg is critical of Labor's downgrading of the election campaign policy speech. He has been involved in the preparation of more than 20 policy speeches, including Whitlam's "It's Time" policy speech in 1972 - the most sweeping reform manifesto ever presented to voters.

"One of the great tragedies is that Labor has virtually abandoned the policy speech," he says. "In 2010, Julia only made the most perfunctory effort at a policy speech. I don't think it was a policy speech."

Freudenberg suggests Labor's backflip on climate change policy could have been avoided if a detailed policy speech had been prepared.

"If there had been a proper and full policy speech at the beginning of Julia's campaign, doing what policy speeches are intended to be, to open the campaign and set the ground with an argument, I don't believe the business about 'we won't have a carbon tax' would have arisen," he says.

In other areas, the government has faltered by not being able to effectively develop, implement or articulate policy. From the debacle of the mining tax to the unfunded promise of a dental scheme, a national disability insurance scheme or the Gonski education reforms, these are examples of spin over substance.

Last week Labor senator John Faulkner urged politicians to treat voters intelligently and not avoid complex policy. Sound bites, he said, are not a substitute for substantive policy advocacy.

"The best speech I've heard this year was Bill Clinton's speech to the US Democratic Party Convention," Freudenberg says.

"Now that was a speech! It was above all an argument. Plenty of detail, but it was an argument. The great thing lacking in speechwriting today is that there is no argument.

"What is lost is the idea of speech as argument rather than speech as presentation. Clinton's speech was an argument, not a just series of luscious phrases."

Amid rare flashes of great speechmaking, the art of oratory and the quality of public discourse is in decline. The key to reviving great speeches, as master speechwriter Freudenberg says, is not spin but authenticity, argument and character.

Above all, great speeches require speakers of great character who are prepared to lead with "courage, intellect and vision". Freudenberg would know; he wrote for the best of them.

Troy Bramston's For the True Believers: Great Labor Speeches That Shaped History will be launched by Bob Hawke this week.