From the Archives, 1982: Some prime views from Drumalbyn Road

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on January 5, 1982
Some prime views from Drumalbyn Road

In a media performance that was as sultry as the weather, the former Prime Minister, Sir William McMahon, 73, yesterday formally made his farewell to 32 years in Federal politics.

Sir William McMahon announced his retirement at Press Conference in his Bellevue Hill home today. January 04, 1982.Credit: Antonin Cermak

The venue in which he received 30 representatives of the media was a downstairs sitting room of his comfortable mock Tudor home in leafy Drumalbyn Road, Bellevue Hill.

The room looked out on to a low stone rail, with a swimming pool and barbecue area around to the left, a lawn in front, bushes and a low tree festooned with coloured lights, and beyond that a spectacular northerly view of the Harbour.

Sir William delivered his somewhat barbed remarks from a green and white divan. Above him was a representation of a green tropical scene dotted with clusters of orange mangoes.

Facing him was a low glass coffee table surrounded by armchairs in orange, green and brown along with a brown divan. Under the coffee table was a square of one of those rough white flokati rugs, and under that a white carpet.

Sir William wore for the occasion a black and red tie, a shirt in shiny silver vertical stripes, black trousers and black boots. His blue eyes were alert, and the remnants of his hair had been trimmed a little at the sides, but still stuck out at the back. His black suit coat was flung over the side of the divan.

He was flanked, if that’s the right word, to his left by his wife of 16 years, Sonia, Lady McMahon, 49, an arresting blonde and blue-eyed figure in a pink sleeveless top with a décolletage as spectacular in its way as the view of the Harbour, a dark floral skirt, bare legs, and white slip-on shoes.

“He was flanked, if that’s the right word, to his left by his wife of 16 years, Sonia, Lady McMahon.”Credit: Antonin Cermak

Why, one wondered, would a man so obviously in the prime of life - today the surfboard, tomorrow Everest - want to get out of a business he found so enthralling for so long?

Would his departure embarrass the Prime Minister by initiating the Bass Effect? (The rot for the Whitlam Government really began to set in with its heavy defeat in the Bass by-election of June 28, 1975, caused by the retirement of Mr Lance Barnard).

Sir William felt that his last year in politics had been a waste of his time. In his time as Prime Minister he had not allowed himself to be stood over by the bureaucrats. He rattled off a string of figures that demonstrated both his mental agility and his view that the 1981 Budget had been based on wrong figures and wrong assumptions.

After this, he had begun to think seriously about getting out of politics.

On the other hand, there was no alternative in the Liberal Party to Mr Malcolm Fraser, and everybody ought to get that clear.

As a service to the community he proposed to write his autobiography, but as a last service to the Liberal Party, he would not publish it until after the next elections.

He could disclose, however, that it would reveal the dreadful way elements of the Liberal Party in Victoria had treated him as a Liberal Prime Minister who unfortunately came from New South Wales.

Would the Liberal Party hold his seat of Lowe? He hadn’t thought about that, Sir William said, demurely. The Prime Minister, however, had been “horrified” when notified of his decision.

Sir William admitted that elements of the Labor Party had spoken to him about retiring from politics, but insisted that these discussions had played no part in his decision.

On the other hand, he offered a scenario hopeful for the Liberal Party, a sort of tar-baby effect: If Mr Neville Wran could, in effect, be suckered into standing for Lowe, he would make no impression on Federal politics, and at the same time his departure from State politics would give the Liberal Party in NSW a chance to get under way again.

Sir William got in a couple of plugs for those bulwarks in the unceasing war against communism, President Ronald Reagan and the Republic of South Africa, and retired to the garden where, with stoic fortitude and every appearance of animation, he repeated his remarks in turn for a series of television cameras.

Sir William’s secretary brought out half a dozen bottles of KB lager by way of refreshment for the toiling media types.

My sole contribution to the sum of our knowledge on this further end of an era was to ask Lady McMahon the name of a little island out in the harbour. “It’s either Clark or Shark,” she said, with a dazzling smile, and light pressure on the fingers. “I can never remember which...“