The writer-creator of the Labor In Power series has rejected the view of the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, that the frank and damning statements in the series “just slip into history”.
Philip Chubb also rejects Mr Keating’s statement that the reason politicians spoke so frankly was because they thought they were going to lose the election.
He said the main reason they were so frank was because they wanted to put a favourable light on their position in history.
The series begins on Tuesday night. In it Mr Keating and his predecessor Bob Hawke make extraordinarily derogatory statements about each other. Mr Hawke accuses Mr Keating of a pathetic rewriting of history, naked ambition and arrogance. Mr Keating accuses Mr Hawke of envy, of getting others to do his work and says he was unable to trust his word on the leadership.
“It’s absolutely not true that it just slips into history,” Mr Chubb said. “It’s a natural thing for him [Keating] to say, but it is much more complex and broader than that.
“We have uncovered a slice of reality, a slice of how power works which Paul was prepared to sweep aside on the basis that “we are grown up men and women and we play the game hard’.
“But a lot of people who are not close to the political process, ordinary Australians, do not understand how the game is played.”