Jonesing There has been, and will continue to be, no shortage of post-mortems on the Scott Morrison government. One person chiming in is former science minister, prolific author and national treasure Barry Jones, but we somehow doubt he’ll get much of a response given where he sent his take.
Earlier this month Jones sent a letter laced with a dry but palpable glee to Georgina Downer, former Mayo candidate and head of the Robert Menzies Institute. Promising he doesn’t “want to twist the knife (well, perhaps just a bit)”, he offers an outline of what he says could be “a fascinating seminar on ‘Who killed Menzies’ Liberal Party?”:
It was striking … that seats held by former Liberal prime ministers moved dramatically to the teals or the ALP — Kooyong, Higgins, Wentworth, Warringah, Reid (which incorporated much of McMahon’s seat of Lowe) and Wannon is now marginal.
Do you think this worth exploring? I do.
…. Interesting too, the Liberal leaders who became disillusioned with their former party: Menzies himself, Gorton (although he came back after remarriage), Fraser, Hewson, Turnbull. Worth considering? I think so.
Jones goes on to list the achievements of the Menzies government and contrast them with Morrison (Menzies building institutions that Morrison trashed; Menzies resigning with his colleagues’ respect, as opposed to Morrison having anonymous colleagues calling him a “fuckwit” on his way out the door) before concluding: “The idea that wheeling out John Howard [would] improve the vote in 2022 was ludicrous. Your father was right in 2007. Anyway, think about it.”
It would make an interesting seminar, but we suspect the Menzies institute won’t be holding it any time soon.
Deves-tating It was always a vain hope that, having failed so miserably in her bid to take Warringah back for the Liberals, anti-trans activist Katherine Deves would fade into well-earned obscurity. If the past five years have taught us anything, it’s that using the indulgence of high-profile politicians and media figures to constantly, loudly lose every argument you take part in is absolutely no impediment to the shameless culture warrior. So Deves, who deleted her truly hateful social media during the campaign (to no avail, as it turns out) has relaunched her Twitter and Facebook accounts. It’s exactly as you’d expect, packed with her crusade against trans women in sport and approving retweets of JK Rowling.
And, as ever, Sky News have been more than happy to put a megaphone in front of her. She’s been on Sky at least four times since the election, and it’s posted about that 15 times on its Facebook page.
On Brandis Former attorney-general George Brandis has been appointed professor in the practice of national security at the Australian National University’s national security college. He joins former cabinet colleague Julie Bishop, ANU chancellor since 2019. We wonder which facet of glorious record on matters of national security while in government secured him the job? Apart from the bungling of the Man Haron Monis saga, he played a big part in giving us the ongoing prosecution of Witness K/Bernard Collaery. He launched an ASIO raid on the former ASIS officer who had revealed the Australian Secret Intelligence Service’s illegal bugging of the Timor-Leste cabinet and demanding the pair be prosecuted.
Beneath contempt It’s one of the first things you learn in journalism school: don’t fuck with judges.
Just like defamation, Australia’s contempt of court rules are strict. If your story somehow alters what a jury might think of an alleged perpetrator, you could face hefty fines or even land in jail. It’s why journalists litter their stories with the word “alleged”, like a school kid who has just learnt a new swear word. So how is it that a veteran journo like Lisa Wilkinson managed to break such a sacrosanct rule by sharing details of her interview with Brittany Higgins in her speech to the Logies?
ACT Supreme Court Chief Justice Lucy McCallum has decided to delay the trial of the man accused of raping Higgins, saying the landscape has changed since Wilkinson’s speech. It’s left many in the media to ask: for the love of God, why? The Daily Telegraph couldn’t help turn Wilkinson into a punch line: “Hands up if you’ve caused court chaos”:
Chaos is one thing but injustice is another. A delay could have serious impacts on the trial, and even see it fall over entirely. But let’s not forget the real victims here: the poor book publishers who will now be forced to wait even longer to release their tell-all books about the saga.
Barry Jones is a genuine national treasure.
He sure is, and what a brilliant suggestion for the Menzies Institute to follow up. Unfortunately, I fear his suggestion may have gone completely over Ms Downer’s vacuous head. Her father was aptly described by Keating as ‘the idiot son of the squattocracy’, and the gene pool didn’t get any deeper in the next generation either, judging by her performance in a QandA session a few years ago, where she sat there with head turning from side-to-side like a mechanical circus clown, vainly struggling to follow the conversation.
Miauw
Jones argued in parliament that gays not be allowed to serve in Australia’s military. Fly in the ointment of national treasure.
That is completely untrue. In 1975 when I was still in the Victorian Parliament I introduced the first private members bill to decriminalise homosexuality and I have never wavered from that position. Barry Jones
When Menzies retired in Feb 66, he owned no home and lacked the readies to buy one – he had been roughing it in the Lodge so long he had never felt the need – so his colleagues arranged the purchase of something suitable for him and his wife. He had neglected to line his pockets like those who woould come later.
And picture this: such was the institutionalised veneration of Sir Robert, it was considered entirely appropriate that he do a farewell tour of the major cities. His motorcade cruised some of the major roads to farewell his subjects. School children were walked from their local schools by their teachers to line the roadsides, like teenyboppers welcoming the Beatles. Credit this or not, they were given hundreds of little Union Jacks on sticks that had been distributed in advance to schools – some of which scarcely had a library book to their name – to wave as he motored by.
Is any of this even recognisable in 2022?
Oh yes! Good old Sir Pig Iron Bob, resigning from office as he was sending our soldiers overseas to fight an unwinnable war and conscripting our young men just in case and throwing draft dodgers in jail. What a great bloke!
Proud to claim that “I am British to my bootstraps!” and retired to Blighty for the regalia of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports – a relic of Norman rule, by then already 500yrs out of date.
I thought it was John Howard who killed Menzies’ Liberal Party? And then Morrison killed Howard’s New Liberal Party. Did I miss something?
Brandis joining Bishop – who misled parliament over the correspondence from Monis to Brandis’ department, on behalf of (Senator) Brandis.
Former Liberal leader John Hewson is a professor at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.