Inside the Hawke–Keating Government: A Cabinet Diary
By Gareth Evans | Melbourne University Press | $49.99
If Gareth Evans were only an ambitious man, this would be merely another self-regarding specimen in the current bumper crop of tall-poppy memoirs that have sprouted with the rising of the prandial sap, a season when we prefer our politics full-strength. But Evans, whose tributes to the Grand Old Man last week were among the earliest and most effusive, is more than ambitious: he’s a blend of public intellectual and private satirist on a scale unseen in the world of political biography since Richard Crossman, whom the erstwhile senator openly venerates and strives at times to imitate.
As the risk of lèse-majesté recedes, perhaps it will be forgiven if I point out that E.G. Whitlam himself – ever an observer of the proprieties – would scarcely have dropped buckets on his cabinet colleagues in the manner of Evans unplugged.
The diaristic form is both a blessing and a curse: open this handsome volume at any page and you know exactly where you are – and when. But survey it as a whole, and you realise this is just a portion of what the work’s title appears to be offering. We go inside the Hawke–Keating government for two full years – from September 1984 through to October 1986 – and what we see is a snapshot of the administration’s internal dynamics from early in the second Hawke ministry until a point well before the binary star system begins to implode.
Much of the fascination lies not in political history as such (the government was not rocked by scandal during this period, or destabilised by anything more than the usual clash of healthy egos) but in the vanity and posturings, the almost ritually predictable behaviour of politicians on the make – and in the fly-on-the-wall view of how politicians really got on (or didn’t) in a government widely respected as one of the ablest to rule our nation.
Here are a few of his favourite stings:
On Bill Hayden, whom he portrays as fiercely territorial within the cabinet and determined early on to ensure that he (Evans) isn’t groomed for foreign minister: “a man who has been hurt; who doesn’t much care whom he hurts back in following his own instincts; whose judgement has always been a little erratic anyway; and who basically feels entitled to say what he likes, when he likes…”
On Paul Keating: “If I were as hypersensitive to criticism as him, I would have committed suicide a dozen times over the last two years.”
On Medibank architect Neal Blewett, who comes across as almost too timid to mix it in cabinet: “no more anxious than usual to alienate anybody.”
And on John Button, who is more than once the target of Evans’s scythe: “[he exhibited] his usual flair for avoiding anything of any sensitivity or difficulty…” Quite how Button got his reputation as the staunch defender of an embattled car industry Evans never gets round to explaining.
Attacks on colleagues are par for the course in this type of revelatory memoir, but to his credit the one-time senator sometimes manages to impale his victim more subtly, with a mordant wit worthy of the masterly Crossman. In early 1985, at stylish EJ’s restaurant, he sees an ectomorphic Chris Hurford distinguish himself “by demolishing a plate of roast duck, then complaining vigorously about its toughness, thereby ensuring not only a discount on the bill but half a bottle of Grandfather Port by way of compensation.”
Hawke himself, satirised as “His Nibs,” is portrayed as pathologically pro-American, and Evans himself as a sort of apostle for a geopolitical Third Way avant la lettre. It becomes clear that, if he doesn’t storm out of cabinet and hold a press conference to denounce the boss he has grown increasingly distant from, it is only because he knows that History has a role set aside for him, so he must bide his time. Connections to colleagues he secretly despises must be kept in good repair: those bridges are not for burning.
Just occasionally, Evans comes face to face with the truth of what he is doing here: ripping the private mask off public figures in the cause of general entertainment, selling more books and – oh, yes – setting the historical record straight. At that point, yet another skewering can transform itself in an instant into a display of disarming frankness. Thus, he writes, education minister John Dawkins “is fine when he is not being manically obsessive and self-promotional, but I guess that goes for most of us.”
As an author, the man who earned the nickname of Biggles for overflying a Tasmanian wilderness site in an RAAF jet fighter reminds us that our public life benefits from the zest and relish political practitioners bring to their duties. The reader’s sympathy is engaged when Evans displays his family-man aspect during the all-too-rare times he is back in the bosom of his family. His musing on whether any of this statecraft, and lesser craft than that, could ever compensate for time not spent with his son is a reminder that our politicians are human after all.
More central as a theme – and a diary doesn’t need a theme but a book does – is the slow-moving final act of the life of Lionel Murphy. Three decades on, Evans clearly remains sensitive on the topic of whether he could and should have done more as attorney-general to protect Murphy when legal proceedings against the High Court judge were initiated. The reader is in the presence of true drama when Evans – aware that Murphy himself must have felt let down by him – phones the dying judge to discuss how his wish to take on at least one more case can be accommodated, if time doesn’t overtake them, while keeping the prosecution hounds at bay.
Murphy’s death in office signals curtains down in the most fitting manner possible. Then follow ten pages of generous bibliographical notes that mirror the overall reliability of the manuscript, with one slight oversight, obviously not of Evans's making: late NSW premier Neville Wran’s demise last April is noted in the margins, but not the death – six days earlier – of Tasmanian ex-senator Brian Harradine, whose surname is misspelt into the bargain.
The editing of this compelling read is of impressive quality, only very occasionally testing the scope of the people employed to do it – such as when the mid-century English fast bowler Fred Trueman appears to be mistaken for that American president chappie who bombed the Japanese, an error irritating enough when committed once…
But this review mustn’t become as captious as a politician cooped up in his office for too long. It’s remarkable to realise how long has passed since these still-familiar faces were in office. Thirty years hath Senator Biggles stewed, these diaries-cum-logbooks being as much catharsis as history.
But, let’s face it, in the year of the death cult that dare not keep its name, we could do with more of the former and less of the latter. •
