stoush.net

Mon, 08/05/2006 - 9:33pm — liam

You may find, reader, everything you could want to know about the launch of The Wran Era at Modia Minotaur’s reliably excellent site. Let it be said here, though, that Paul Keating and Neville Wran at any time between them, can fire up the cold smouldering mound of coals that is the fuel of Labor Party passion. I defy anyone to listen to a few curses from Nifty’s creaky throat and not be inspired to glorious, if pragmatic, revolution.

I admit I found myself this morning thoroughly out of place amongst the young scions (male and female) and the old cold war warriors (male) of the NSW Right, at a book launch. Apart from their ingrained anti-intellectualism, suspicion of the written word and disdain for hoity-fucking-toity-poofter headgear, the Right don’t take kindly to cameras in the wrong hands—or to strangers in a crowd. My applause in the wrong places, such as when Bruvva Neville spoke against ethnicity-led moral panics, about the importance of due legal process, and on the presumption of innocence, seemed liable to have me thrown, bloodied, out of the room in a treasonous heap: however, at the correct moment, the great man mentioned Lionel Murphy’s martyrdom and the suspenseful spell was broken.

A comrade working in the publishing racket, noting with surprise my presence, and my NSW Parliament staff card attached to the noose around my neck, made some remarks to me upon my new job, expressing surprise that I was working in the field I now do, part-time-two-days-a-week-while-studying.

Liam,

…he said,

Liam, I never would have picked you for a staffer. You don’t look nearly shiny enough to be one of the new class of media-driven imagination-free cynical technocrats with whom the Party wages its struggle.

(Readers: I’m liberally paraphrasing).

Though glad to be let off the heinous crime of shininess, I claimed innocence on monetary grounds—everyone, after all, has to make a living. It’s an interesting, satisfying, intellectually challenging job, and on political grounds I don’t think it’s right to criticise people for their essential exchanges of labour-for-money. Alas, when I mentioned that my suit fit me like a sack of shit tied up in the middle my older tweed-jacketed comrade could only nod in condescending agreement.

All in all the worthy and sometimes inspired speeches made by Wran and Keating left me despairingly self-reflective upon my class.

It occurs to me that despite their many achievements the Labor Governments of Wran and of Hawke/Keating are responsible for perhaps the worst of crimes perpetrated by recent Cabinets upon their undeserving electors. Keating, Hawke and Wran brought the Labor Party out of the dark ages of post-war regulatory monomania and into the modern era of interest in popular nationalism, ethnicity, media theory, talkback, community organising, statistical electoral studies, and the politics of minority and majority rights.

They’ve killed off the old undemocratic rule of public service Freemason aristocrats and God-Professor experts in policy, a rule which, though passing unmourned, has left only a semi-meritocratic Party-based rule of advisers and permanent entrenched stafferariat, the beauty of the whole move being their infection of the Tories with the same contagion.

In short, they’ve brought about people like me. I don’t think I can yet forgive them.