Did the crowd boo when Gough Whitlam was so ill-mannered as to refer to Kerr’s cur? Did the crowd at the steps of Parliament chant ‘manners, Gough, manners’ rather than ‘shame, Fraser, shame’?
When Gough was challenged by a voter for his view on the contentious issue of abortion, hoping to catch him out, Whitlam replied that he was for abortion and in the heckler’s case, he wished that abortion would be retrospective. Everyone laughed and Gough got off the hook.
30 years ago when public meetings in elections were raucous affairs rather than photo opportunities, being able to give as good as you get was a key political skill.
Public meetings were tests of a politician’s mantle and those that did not fight back were judged to be weak. Stand-up comics had easier initiations.
Wit has lost its place in public discourse.
Robert Muldoon pinged the famous insult “New Zealanders who emigrate to Australia raise the IQs of both countries”.
Consider David Lange:
- Micheal Bassett was a member of parliament and a cousin on my father’s side of the family. My father delivered him and it became plain in later days that he must have dropped him.
- To US Ambassador H. Monroe Browne, who owned a racehorse called Lacka Reason: “You are the only ambassador in the world to race a horse named after your country’s foreign policy”.
- And I’m going to give it to you if you hold your breath just for a moment…I can smell the uranium on it as you lean towards me.
- …a man whose life is so boring that if it flashed past he wouldn’t be in it.
Paul Keating’s contributions to Australian culture would be lost:
- He described his opponents as “mangy maggots”, “intellectual rust buskets”, “gutless spivs”, “foul-mouthed grubs” and “painted, perfumed gigolos”.
- Keating said of Howard: “From this day onwards, Howard will wear his leadership like a crown of thorns, and in the parliament I’ll do everything to crucify him”.
- On Andrew Peacock: “A soufflé doesn’t rise twice”.
- On Wilson Tuckey: “He’d be flat out counting past ten”.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments