The rather arrogant Prime Minister was quickly losing support after his/her historic election victory a year and a half earlier. He/she failed to appreciate the effect inflation, in particular, was having on the general public; the concerns people had at the supermarket checkout at the soaring cost of their food, their power bills and filling the tank of their car.
Things were so different under the previous government. The supreme example of Prime Ministerial arrogance was a refusal to even acknowledge this was recent history, that stable prices for food and other necessities had been a feature of life during the entire term of the previous government. The Prime Minister wished the man in the street, especially their own supporters, weren’t such moaning minnies.
A long-serving politician had long since become an embarrassment, so much so, many in their own party wanted them gone. He’d been first elected decades earlier, bounced back from losing his seat to have a long career a feature of which was to fall out with everybody.
The Prime Minister saw an opportunity. Instead of holding meetings to, for instance, see a way to flood the country with goods and consequently nip inflation in the bud, he/she held a meeting with this long-serving politician and offered him the post of Ambassador to Ireland. It was readily accepted; thoughts of undertaking his normal boorish behaviour – but with diplomatic immunity – had the politician salivating!
It would also create a vacancy which the Prime Minister could fill with a more suitable replacement; someone less of a thug, someone more loyal, someone who was on their side for once.
Does any of this sound familiar dear reader? Ring a distant bell? (albeit from last week)
I am describing what was known as the “Gair Affair” in Australia in April 1974 where Gough Whitlam offered the Ambassadorship to Ireland to a DLP Senator called Vince Gair – someone whose thuggery makes Mallard look like a choir boy – thereby creating a Senate vacancy in Queensland which the ALP was likely to win, and with it control of the Senate.
The problem with Whitlam, like Ardern, was his narcissism; it never crossed his mind that his political opponents were smarter and more cunning than he was. They were. One thing led to another, various opposition Senators threw Vince Gair a ‘farewell party’ – getting him drunk and therefore ‘incapable’ of actually handing his resignation to the Senate leader by the constitutionally mandated time (6pm on a specific day). Instead of six Senate seats up for election in Queensland, writs were issued for only five.
The Gair Affair was a political disaster for Whitlam; apart from the fact it didn’t work, the whole caper looked a bit shady and forced Whitlam to call a snap election where he again failed to win a majority in the Senate. From that moment he was rooted.
Vince Gair as Ambassador to Ireland was an embarrassment. He considered diplomatic immunity made him ‘above the law’ and happily engaged in everything from drunkenness to brawling in pubs to grand larceny – (Gair openly stole whatever he wanted; threatening any shopkeeper who tried to stop him with arrest) – to bouncing cheques to basically doing whatever he wanted including regular criticism of the Irish government. Soon after the change of government in Australia in November 1975 the new foreign minister, Andrew Peacock recalled him. Naturally, such behaviour would be (ahem) out of character and unthinkable for someone like Trevor Mallard.
