Bring back the ‘good old days’ of Keating-style political insults

CHARLES WOOLEY: The Canberra Press Gallery still dreams of Paul Keating and the abuse he heaped on his opponents. The Opposition was so weak it was “like being flogged with wet lettuce.” Protesters “should go and get a job”. Ah the good old days of political insults.

People are too sensitive. That’s why I’ve allowed the dust to settle a little from Premier Will Hodgman’s use of the term “anti-everything-brigade” to describe those who don’t entirely share his vision for the future of Tasmania.

  The truth is he is probably quite frustrated that almost everything he supports or gets put forward in the name of progress and development generates so much public opposition. And, given the recent tendencies of some of his team to become embroiled in controversy (two of them recently resigning and threatening his very ability to govern), I think he is a master of moderation. With Parliament currently on a month-long adjournment, in fact not sitting on a political haemorrhoid relieves Will, at least briefly, of an unpleasant pain. The poor bloke must now balefully scan his depleted ranks wondering who is going to let him down next.

I’m surprised, given all the pressure our Premier is under, that he used a term as moderate as “anti-everything“.

Robin Gray, whose political temperament was as fiery as his red hair, lambasted voters who had the temerity to disagree with his plans for the state. He even enacted legislation making it a crime to “derogate” a silicon mill on suburban North West Bay. Indeed to even question the pulp mills, factories and dams that Robin envisioned was to invite the denunciation of being “un-Tasmanian”. A curious term back in those dark days before our state was so hipster-foodie-cool.

When he used that expression on mainland television one of my Sydney colleagues taunted me with it. “Charlie, does ‘un-Tasmanian’ mean that you’ve only got one head?”

I never hear that phrase anymore. Nor do I have to respond as we all once used to: “Well mate, two heads are better than one.”

We have moved on people. And so has the calibre of insult from Australian political leaders. It is sadly declining along with the calibre of leadership. The former merely makes politics bland; the latter is our national tragedy.

The Canberra Press Gallery still dreams of Paul Keating and the vituperative abuse he heaped on his opponents down the years of his pre-eminence. The Opposition was so weak it was “like being flogged with wet lettuce.” Protesters “should go and get a job”. The leader of the Opposition “could not raffle a duck in a pub”. Even the inability to match insults generated an insult: “Unless you’re scripted you’re useless”.

Ah the good old days of political insults.

You could always trust Paul Keating to pull a verbal rabbit out of the hat. Picture: JAMES CROUCHER

“You’re a stupid foul-mouthed grub who’s flat out counting” ... and there was always worse in reserve. How about being called “a slithering mangy maggot”?

Keating didn’t just attack individuals. He denounced (accurately enough) the whole Senate House of Australia as “unrepresentative swill”.

And when his party dumped him and he threatened to take his bat and ball and go to France, he insulted his whole nation. “Look, this place is the arse-end of the world, I’m taking the Paris option.”

The Hodgman majority is shaky and depends on a Speaker who clearly has her own political agenda and the public profile to pursue it. Fortunately for the Premier, the Opposition is weak and, in fact, it opposes very little.

No one really knows where Labor stands on extending salmon leases, the cable car, Cambria Green and a host of spot fires in the flammable Tasmanian political landscape. Probably Labor doesn’t yet know where it stands either.

If the Premier’s worst political insult is to call some Tasmanians the “anti-everything-brigade”, well that insult certainly can’t be levelled at the Labor Opposition. No wonder the Premier is a model of parliamentary decorum and moderation.

His problems are not with the Opposition but with citizen activism and, of course, in recent times with accident-prone members of his own party. In his shoes that would irritate the hell out of me, and in those circumstances I’m certainly too old and grumpy to be as nice as Will.

Will’s behaviour is more in line with the gentlemanly age of Premiers like Reece and Bethune and Lowe. Robin Gray broke the mould when he donned the boxing gloves in the early eighties in Queenstown. I was there as a television reporter for the ABC when someone in the crowd handed me gloves to give to the premier. I duly did, we rolled film and Robin was seen around the nation sparring with the camera. It was quite uncontrived but it became his signature moment.

There was a time when Richard Flanagan returned to Tasmania covered in literary glory only to be greeted at Hobart airport by Premier Paul Lennon with, “Flanagan, you have no place in the New Tasmania.”

Flanagan simply copped it on the chin but later wrote his revenge when he described Lennon as “looking like a burst sav”.

Jim Bacon, the previous Premier, had earlier told me, in the wake of a 60 Minutes story on Tasmanian forestry, that I was a few four-letter words short of being his favourite reporter and would “never work in this state again”.

I wasn’t really that hurt.

It’s all a matter of ancient history now. But point is, I don’t think the nature of our polity today, by comparison, is really that bad. The problem is with the calibre of the players. And that’s not just a problem in our tiny democracy, it’s worldwide.

I understand the term “anti-everything brigade” was first used by a currently serving Tasmanian Liberal Senator, one of Keating’s “unrepresentative swill”. The Senator directed the expression towards the good folk of Swansea who didn’t want their patch turned into a Chinese amusement park. I’m told that he privately regrets the expression and probably won’t use it again.

Many of the politicians I have mentioned are no longer alive and none of them, apart from the unnamed senator, are still in power. You, members of the voting public are always in power.

Don’t be cowed by political criticism or perceived insult. If you don’t like something don’t hesitate to create a hell of a fuss. Remember, that’s how we won the right to vote in the first place.