Читать книгу Lazarus Rising - John Howard - Страница 8

I stayed in Drummoyne after my 1968 loss, even though I knew that I would never run for the seat again. It was a question of regrouping, and working out where I went next in politics. Besides, I had more or less agreed to be Malcolm Mackay’s campaign director, in the federal seat of Evans, at the election due at the end of 1969. It was going to be a tough fight for him; Gough Whitlam had given the Labor Party a new edge, and at least some movement back to Labor from the devastating loss of 1966 seemed likely. Evans would need a lot of work to hold. Mackay was a good local member. He listened well to people’s concerns, and both he and his wife, Ruth, had established close links with key organisations.

We had become good friends. The Mackays welcomed me into their home and we swapped thoughts on all political issues. I was in constant touch with Malcolm through the drama-packed days which followed Harold Holt’s drowning on 17 December 1967. In fact I had been at his home in Haberfield when news that Holt was missing came through. It was such an Australian tragedy. The Prime Minister had apparently drowned after plunging into a rough surf at Cheviot Beach near Portsea in Victoria. His body was never found.

John McEwen, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Country Party, announced that the Country Party would not serve in a government led by Holt’s Liberal Party deputy and Treasurer, Bill McMahon. That complicated the imminent leadership stoush within the party. Due to the McEwen veto, McMahon ruled himself out of contention. Mackay started out as a supporter of 64-year-old Paul Hasluck, but over time, I watched him shift to John Gorton, who was energetic in pursuit of his leadership ambitions. This contrasted with Hasluck’s ‘merit unheralded’ approach, which shunned overt convassing for support.

The real clincher for Gorton, however, was his appearances on television in the lead-up to the leadership vote. His relaxed laconic manner, coupled with his crumpled war-hero face, really appealed to viewers. He was new. Most Australians had not previously noticed him. On first blush they liked him a lot; he gave direct answers and clearly wanted the job. He was the first person to win the leadership of a major political party in Australia largely through the force of his television appearances.

I remained on the party’s state executive and, therefore, heavily involved in the party’s organisational affairs. This was also the time when I went into partnership with Peter Truman, and the following year we were joined by John Nelson to form the firm Truman, Nelson and Howard. Although my passion for politics never receded, this was a period when I derived considerable satisfaction from the practice of law. The firm had offices in Pitt Street, Sydney.

There was nothing quite like having a direct stake in the business. It was a mixed practice, and I handled any variety of work. I had carriage of any litigation which came the firm’s way, including divorce work. I didn’t like doing divorce work very much, but it was part of the practice and someone had to look after it. Time and time again I was reminded of how irrational people would become when a formerly close relationship had broken down altogether. Levels of intelligence or wealth made no difference to the degrees of irrationality.

I drew much professional encouragement from a personal injury case I ran on behalf of a man called Bozanic. He was an immigrant from the old Yugoslavia, and had been injured whilst working on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. The injuries he sustained resulted from his being thrown from a loader. Bozanic had tried a number of solicitors who, after a while, told him he did not have a strong enough case. I felt sorry for him and took his case on, essentially on a speculative basis.

It took a long time for a hearing date to be fixed, and at times I wondered about the wisdom of having taken on the matter in the first place. The poor man had been referred to me by a friend in the Liberal Party who felt that because of his age and poor language skills Bozanic had been pushed around. The date of the court hearing finally arrived; the case went extremely well, and Bozanic was awarded $40,000 plus costs. In 1969, given the nature of his injuries, this was a terrific outcome. To me this was a good example of how the law could be used to help someone who really needed assistance.

The 1969 election saw Harold Holt’s 1966 majority of 38 reduced to seven. Whitlam outperformed Gorton during the campaign. At one stage, there had been real concern that Gorton might lose. He came to Mackay’s electorate, where I presided at a Liberal Party dinner held at the Western Suburbs Leagues Club, in Ashfield. He was late for the dinner because he had detoured to the members’ room of the club to have a game of darts and a beer with local club members. Some at the dinner were aggravated by this, but next morning a marvellous photo appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald showing the Prime Minister throwing darts. This kind of behaviour now by prime ministers would be regarded as quite commonplace and natural, but 40 years ago it was seen by some as unconventional.

John Gorton made no secret of his liking for parties and conviviality. This would not have mattered if he had applied more discipline and routine hard work to the job of being prime minister. He had an appealing personality, a direct style and was extremely intelligent. It was his lack of general discipline over such things as punctuality that did him damage. I had not been attracted to him when he was chosen as the party’s leader and would have preferred Paul Hasluck, but several people close to me, such as Tom Hughes, were strong Gorton supporters, and suffered in their own careers when Gorton was later removed as prime minister. I maintained my scepticism throughout his time in office. In later years, however, I changed my mind about Gorton.

The experience of government led me to identify more strongly with Gorton’s nationalistic views. During the last few years of his life I saw him and his wife, Nancy, often, and I felt that we had become quite good friends, overcoming earlier estrangement on account, firstly, of my closeness to Malcolm Fraser, whom he loathed, and my rivalry with Andrew Peacock, who had been a Gorton supporter. I spoke at a wonderful dinner to mark Gorton’s 90th birthday on 7 September 2001 and felt honoured to launch his biography, written by Ian Hancock.

Although he won the 1969 election, Gorton lost a lot of seats and had to beat off leadership challenges from both David Fairbairn, a senior minister from New South Wales, and Bill McMahon, then still deputy Liberal leader. By this time, John McEwen had dropped his veto of McMahon, a sure sign that the Country Party had grown uneasy with Gorton’s governing style.

It was an inauspicious start to a new term of government, having an incumbent prime minister challenged by two of his ministers. Gough Whitlam’s impressive performance in the campaign added to the list of ominous signs. Yet so lengthy had been the Coalition’s grip on power that the possibility of being defeated by Labor was still not seriously entertained by many people.

About this time, my brother Bob began to question his earlier support for the Liberals, and by the early 1970s he had joined the ALP. I respected his right to change his opinion and his political allegiance and, for that reason, I never asked him exactly why he had shifted. Over the years I divined that it had been a case of two people growing up in the same environment ultimately having a different take on events and society. For example, where I responded positively to people defeating disadvantage by personal initiative, Bob was repelled by the disadvantage and the fact that not all people could overcome it. That is where he saw a larger role for government. He opposed Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, but that was a companion to his change of political heart, not the main driver.

For several years Bob had been a Liberal Party member. Like me, he is an activist, and he became quite heavily involved in the local branches in the Earlwood area. He and his wife were living there. Later, and after they had moved to Armidale so that Bob could continue his studies at New England University, his political leanings shifted.

Although her personal commitment to the Liberal cause never faltered, our mother worried that politics would divide Bob from the rest of the family. Sometimes she asked that we steer clear of too many political discussions when all of us were together. Mum was especially anxious about our traditional family gathering on Christmas night, 1975. Bob, by then a staunch Labor man, was in high dudgeon about the dismissal of the Whitlam Government, and had been shattered by the electoral rout of his party. To cap it all, his young brother had just been made a minister by the dreaded Malcolm Fraser. It was a bit tense, but we made it.

Both of us were determined not to allow our political differences to come between us and, although we had plenty of intense arguments, particularly over the 1975 dismissal of Whitlam, this did not happen. By contrast Wal and Stan, my other brothers, who had always been Liberal followers, increased their active involvement and support, particularly after I entered parliament. Wal had been an enthusiastic branch office-bearer for years, and Stan would help out in a variety of ways, including with fund-raising.

In the 33 years that I was in parliament, including some of those difficult opposition years, Wal and Stan were loyal and consistent backers. They were the ultimate in true believers. And it was not just the loyalty that I valued. As a small businessman for much of his working life, Wal was a constant window into a world so important to the Liberal Party’s base of support. Stan was a senior partner for many years in one of Australia’s largest legal firms (Mallesons) and his professional activities gave him insights into the thinking of corporate Australia. In different ways they were both great sources of counsel and advice.

During the years that I was Prime Minister, Wal, Stan and their families joined Janette, me and our children in election-night celebrations (commiserations on one occasion), as well as other landmark events. Naturally Bob did not. He did, however, find personal ways of marking my success, consistent with his ongoing Labor convictions. When I was sworn in as Prime Minister on 11 March 1996, Bob came to the first part of the ceremony, when I took my oath of office alongside Tim Fischer as Deputy Prime Minister. Bob gave the rest a miss; that involved the swearing in of the remainder of the new Government. ‘You’ve got to draw the line somewhere,’ he joked. Likewise, he didn’t come to a large Liberal Party celebration of my 30 years in parliament in 2004, but instead asked me and my family to his home for a dinner to mark the occasion. Today we continue to discuss politics in an avid fashion, but with a sense of detachment.

My mother left me with a fount of old aphorisms and sayings, some of which endure today, others having slipped out of usage. ‘It’s a long road that has no turning’ is one that has largely disappeared. ‘Blood is thicker than water', though, remains a reasonably commonplace expression. It most certainly applied to the way my family handled political differences within.