Despite the sound and fury, no one has produced one shred of evidence to nail Julia Gillard with any corrupt or illegal act. Photo: Andrew Meares
'Sometimes there are moments when a prime minister must keep faith with their convictions," snapped yet another scolding editorial in The Australian on Wednesday. Oh dear. Sometimes a leader writer must keep faith with plain English grammar: tautology, singular, plural, that sort of thing.
Even in quiet times the Oz's Canberra political coverage has a hectoring tone. Obsessive, bombastic, endlessly repetitive, it is a newspaper with Asperger's. Platoons of reporters, columnists and commentators, all grandly titled - chief this, national that - tumble over each other in furious agreement with their proprietor's view that only nice Mr Abbott can save the nation from the perdition to which Labor is leading us.
This week they soared to dizzy new heights. What I suppose we must call the Gillard/AWU Affair whipped them to a frenzy, to page after page of grey print that bellowed and howled like some lunatic chained in a padded cell. It seems every hack on the payroll has lunged into the fray, save for the golfing writer and the food editor so far as I can gather, but sooner or later even they will be expected to join this News Ltd stampede to crucify the Prime Minister. It's the group-think way the joint works. HOPELESS JULIA DOUBLE-BOGEYS 18TH. PM's COQ AU VIN POISONS CAT. With the federal election due next year, the creative possibilities are endless.
Towards the end of the week a collective madness seemed to infect everybody. Fairfax Media, publisher of this very organ, was berated by the Prime Minister in Parliament over its front page splash on the subject. At the ABC, a couple of impenetrable interviews on 7.30 shed more heat than light.
Despite the sound and fury, what have we got at the end of this week and this turbulent year in Parliament? For all the lurid talk of slush funds and bagmen, the allegations of fraud and other sinister crimes, no one has produced one shred of evidence to nail Julia Gillard with any corrupt or illegal act during her time as a lawyer at Slater & Gordon. Neither The Australian nor the opposition has come up with the smoking gun in the drawing room, the bloodstained candelabra in the library, the clump of charred faxes in the fireplace. Nothing.
Yes, she once had a dud boyfriend, until she dropped him like a hot brick. Show me a woman her age who hasn't. Even the
sanctimonious but risibly ineffectual Julie Bishop might have to plead guilty to that heinous offence.
ON A starry evening, the backyard was crammed with jostling party-goers, each adding to the din by shouting over it. The bar was doing a roaring trade. Many of the guests were cheerfully drunk by 10 o'clock and a good many more were heading there.
It could have been a summer barbie anywhere in suburban Australia. In fact the venue was a modest home in Albert Street, Cabramatta, and the date 40 years ago tomorrow. There, in his sunroom, at 11.27pm on election night, Saturday the 2nd of December, 1972, Gough Whitlam claimed the prime ministership of Australia.
Thus ended 23 years of conservative rule, an astonishing thing for us baby-boomers. When Ben Chifley lost office in 1949, I was three. I was 26 when Gough won it back again for Labor and dismissed forever the notion that the Tories were born to rule.
It is fashionable now to bucket the Whitlam government, but its monuments stand. To pluck just two at random, there was the diplomatic channel opened to China, and the creation of Medicare, both savaged by the conservatives of the day.
Those were triumphs. Labor's tragedy in NSW is that the glory days are dust and ashes. What a horrible fall it has been from Gough Whitlam to Eddie Obeid.
EVERY time you read or hear about Qantas the news is bad. Routes are cut, engineers are sacked, jobs are sent overseas, new aircraft buys are postponed, profits slump, the share price collapses. The plump cashews you used to get with your drink have been replaced by little green and gritty Japanese thingies.
Through it all dances the leprechaun figure of Alan Joyce, serenely proclaiming that
everything is actually hunky-dory at the national flag carrier. He has an effortless command of the banalities of corporate speak. The challenges and opportunities are being met going forward, blah blah. That's not a sheet of flame coming from the port outer engine, customers, just a routine maintenance requirement.
Joyce's latest disaster, announced with much fanfare, is the decision to junk Qantas's old and trusty partnership with British Airways and to hook up with Emirates, the global giant based in Dubai and funded by the bottomless pockets of a Persian Gulf oil sheikh. I do not pretend to understand the aviation industry, but I cannot for the life of me see why this is a good idea, and nothing Joyce has said has convinced me otherwise. It is the mouse having sex with the elephant and hoping not to get crushed.
This Emirates deal is said to be behind a falling-out between Joyce and his old boss and mentor, the now-retired Geoff Dixon. The two no longer see each other for long lunches and merry banter. Joyce is fearful of the colourful rumours that Dixon wants to get back into the Qantas business again, in cahoots with the moneybags banker Mark Carnegie and the famous ad man and punter John Singleton.
It might not be a bad thing if they did. Joyce and his chairman, the bare-knuckle Melbourne mining boss Leigh Clifford, have presided over the gradual shrinkage of Qantas's international business to the point where it has virtually abandoned Asia altogether. The share price has indeed collapsed, and there hasn't been a dividend for yonks.
I find it incredible that they could so blithely scrap the hallowed Kangaroo route to London via Singapore, but scrap it they have. Maybe they just can't compete any more. When I flew to London earlier this year I went British Airways because their business-class ticket was $500 cheaper than Qantas was offering.
If things keep on as they are, I expect Qantas will simply disappear in a few years, like the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, leaving nothing behind but the smile.
smhcarlton@gmail.com
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