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One of the more prominent Australian politicians during the 1980s and 90s was a man called Neal Blewett. He was Minister of Health, Minister of Trade, and Minister of Social Security during the Bob Hawke and Paul Keating Governments between 1983 and 1994. As long serving Health Minister Blewett oversaw the implementation of Medicare and launched the first major anti-smoking campaign. He later served as Australian High Commissioner to the UK between 1994 and 1998.
Not only was Blewett gay but he had been living in a gay relationship since around 1955. He managed to avoid detection and scandal as a politician under the noses of both the feral Canberra press corps and his even more feral Parliamentary colleagues, and his ‘coming out’ in 2000 (in retirement) was greeted with universal astonishment. Rather amusingly, and according to legend, former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating refused to believe that Blewett – someone he’d known for thirty-five years – was gay (Keating was convinced it was all a Liberal party smear) until he went around to his house where a speechless, spluttering Keating had it confirmed in person.
As a Cabinet Minister, Neal Blewett kept a diary which was published in 2000 in a blaze of publicity which shone a light on how government is actually conducted in Australia. Blewett also gave some rather frank views (in the diaries) on various colleagues and their abilities. The fallout from his diaries at the time was very funny to observe, as people (you’ve never heard of, dear reader) like Ben Humphreys, Bob Collins, Jeanette McHugh and John Kerin all defended themselves from claims they were weak, ineffectual, and unimaginative. Blewett also made a cryptic reference about Collins which nobody could fathom until Collins’s arrest in 2006.
My point in writing this article is to observe it’s fairly clear that thirty to forty years ago Australia was very well governed. In Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and even in most opposition Liberal party figures, you had men who had a vision for the country, wanted to raise living standards, wanted to keep the books in good shape, wanted a wealthy Australia and didn’t worry too much about opinion polls or news media hysteria. They were also surrounded (on the whole) by ministers who also had a vision, a purpose: an intention to do the right thing and ask questions later.
Sometimes they got it wrong but, by golly, they never fretted about that; chalked it up to experience and moved forward with the next proposal to put a chicken in every pot.
And then there is Australia today. A government of lunatics driven by childish ideology, blinded by dogma which has long since been shown to have failed spectacularly. People driven by media headlines and opinion polls who appear to have little interest in doing the right thing. It really does bring tears to the eyes when you can easily draw comparisons with predecessors and find the current lot doesn’t cut the mustard and cannot hold a candle to those who came before them.
It is also not a case of declaring Albanese and co to be “unlucky” – in the way someone like James Scullin was very unlucky – because the incumbent Australian PM has done nothing which wasn’t intentional, and nothing he hasn’t been warned would end in tears; he did it anyway simply to tick another objective off his “Karl Marx Rulebook” list of insanity. Sort of like, well, New Zealand…
Sources:
Here are a series of interviews with Kerry O’Brien a while back. Keating mentions the incident (all rather funny)
https://youtu.be/rjB4O1MMZBE?si=hAftQJ38qpEHYnsR
https://youtu.be/Yl08FR8vHlI?si=_TYUFeERLtpVozvz
https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=fGZTkqsP55EC&redir_esc=y&hl=en
https://www.smh.com.au/national/minister-raped-me-in-his-parliament-office-20070926-gdr71o.html
