Politeness be jiggered, politeness be hanged

Politeness be jumbled and tumbled and banged

It’s really a matter of putting on face

Politeness has nothing to do with the case.

When new NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns and his predecessor Dominic Perrottet joined in mutual post-election admiration of the ‘respect and civility’ with which they conducted their ‘courteous campaign’, did this really, in the words of one commentator, ‘change the political dynamic in NSW’? Or was it, as Norman Lindsay’s Magic Pudding says, merely ‘a matter of putting on face’ for the sake of political appearances. It certainly worked for Minns, but left his opponent (and good friend) Perrottet on the boring – and losing – side of a mainly lacklustre campaign. It resulted in Labor’s improved but still unimpressive 37 per cent first preference vote which failed to give Minns majority government. And the Coalition’s dismal 35.6 per cent continued the steady decline that has seen its primary vote (Liberal and National equally) collapse by almost one third from over 50 per cent only 12 years ago. Such is the reward for gentility.

But not everyone heard this ‘respect and civility’ message. Sydney’s independent MLA Alex Greenwich responded to the irascible Mark Latham’s campaigning pre-election attendance at a suburban church hall to talk about ‘religious freedom, parental rights, school education and keeping LGBTQIA+ activism out of schools’, with an ad hominem statement to the press that spectacularly lacked both respect and civility.

Greenwich said: ‘Mark Latham is a disgusting human being and people who are considering voting for One Nation need to realise they are voting for an extremely hateful and dangerous individual who risks causing a great deal of damage to our state.’ Such personal abuse invited a strong response; that it came as a homophobic rant (preceded by ‘Sometimes in public life when you throw out insults they come back at you harder and truer…. When he calls someone a disgusting human being for attending a meeting in a church hall, maybe attention will turn to some of his habits….’) has probably ended any further political aspirations Latham may have had. But so what? He now has a secure eight years in the NSW Upper House following last month’s modest election victory. Widespread condemnation, including from One Nation’s national leader Pauline Hanson, are water off this duck’s back. If cut loose, he looms as an eight-year unguided missile in Macquarie Street.

And a reader’s comment on the Australian website (one of the many supportive blogs) that Latham’s church hall talk ‘doesn’t make him a “disgusting human being”’, suggests he has not entirely destroyed what was left of his support base after the relatively poor NSW electoral result by the Latham-led One Nation party; its Legislative Council vote fell from 6.5 per cent under Pauline Hanson’s banner in 2019 to only 5.7 per cent under Latham.

And Alex Greenwich? The reward for busting the Minns-Perrottet political love-in atmospheric was a marginal increase in his first preferences from 41.4 per cent to 42.1 per cent, leading to a slight increase in his two-party preferred win to a massive 67 per cent.

If further proof was needed that the Minns-Perrottet politeness entente defied the reality of political bastardry, the ever-reliable former prime minister Keating emerged to restore the old values. As reported in The Spectator Australia’s web-page coverage of Keating’s resurrection by the National Press Club to attack the Aukus agreement, ‘it was a vicious public spray at the current Labor leadership, and the self-regarding journalistic elite. He described Aukus as the worst decision by a Labor government since Billy Hughes sought to introduce conscription during World War I. And that was mild. He went on to eviscerate current PM Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and Defence Minister Richards Marles. He insulted journalists who dared question him. And he lavished praise on the Xi Jinping communist regime, and plaintively asked why is Australia picking on poor little China’.

The Conversation noted, ‘Throughout his political career former prime minister Paul Keating was famous for colourful attacks, ranging from parliamentary jibes… to torrents of invective designed to intimidate insufficiently pliable journalists’. Whether he was successful in intimidating the still-prominent female journalist he addressed while prime minister as, ‘you fat-arsed bitch’ following an unfriendly article, is unknown; the compliant press gallery never reported the abuse, beyond referring to her for a while as FAB.

Keating’s vicious political humour, particularly in question time, was useful in rallying his own troops but turned off many people. As one commentator noted, ‘Question time is structured for combat and he was a combatant without Queensberry rules’. Not that all his Labor colleagues were fans. In his regular Sydney newspaper column, former Whitlam government minister, ‘Diamond’ Jim McClelland, wrote this about then-treasurer Keating in the 1980s: ‘The shallowness of his learning does not entitle him to the certitude that he pronounces and to the contempt he expresses for those who do not share them… his performance to date leaves a big question mark over his capacity to be anything more than clever’. In response to which Keating phoned McClelland: ‘Paul Keating here. Just because you swallowed a f–king dictionary when you were about 15 doesn’t give you the right to pour a bucket of shit over the rest of us.’

Many of Keating’s lines were written by  speechwriter Don Watson. ‘The thing about poor old Costello, he’s all tip and no iceberg.’ Some were brilliant: on Peacock beating Howard to become Liberal leader for the second time, his response was, ‘A souffle doesn’t rise twice’. But Keating’s description of Howard as ‘the little desiccated coconut’ was really just abuse

His ferocious attack on Wilson Tuckey (who meticulously avoided bad language) as a ‘foul-mouthed grub’ was when Tuckey interjected in the middle of one of Keating’s abusive tirades: ‘Stop that or I’ll bring up Christine’. Tuckey had got details of a successful breach of promise action many years earlier against Keating by his then fiancée Christine. No bad language, just a (very sensitive) woman’s name. This exchange led to a verbal war in which Tuckey unloaded the list that I had gathered from Hansard of the personal abuse that Keating had got away with in the parliament despite the requirement that members behave respectfully to each other: it included descriptions of coalition members from John Howard down as harlots, sleazebags, frauds, mugs, blackguards, pigs, clowns, boxheads, criminal intellects, loopy crims, stupid foul-mouthed grub, piece of criminal garbage, dullard, alley cat, bunyip aristocracy, clot, fop, gigolo, hare-brained hillbilly, ninny, scumbag (aimed at John Howard), sucker, thug, dimwit, tripe and drivel, and barnyard bullies.

So let’s see whether it will be the new Minns Labor or the traditional Keating version of ‘respect and civility’ that will dominate the upcoming divisive debate on the Voice. First indications are, in the words of the late sanctified rugby commentator Rex ‘Moose’ Mossop when the game became too protective of players, that they will ‘Bring back the biff’. Tighten your seatbelts.