PAUL KEATING was being dismissive. “”I think a lot of this stuff just slips into … history,” he said. He was being interviewed on Four Corners about the coming series Labor In Power, a five-part documentary over the near-decade-long leadership contest between him and Bob Hawke.
His dismissive comment could not have been a higher compliment. History is what it’s all about. And the story of political history is the story of power.
The writer-creator of Labor in Power, Philip Chubb, said this week, “”I wanted to prise the lid off how power works, who exercised power, how they exercised it and why.”
He picked a good example; there is none better in Australian history. Australia has had its fair share of leadership contests: Evatt and Chifley, Calwell and Whitlam, Gorton and McMahon, Snedden and Fraser, Howard and Peacock. But, like nearly all fights in the heavyweight division, they did not go the full distance. Chubb reveals that the Hawke-Keating contest began in 1980. Keating was staking his claim to the leadership a full 11 years until he finally got the prime ministership in December 1991.
The brutal frankness of those interviewed in Labor in Power exposes a deep-seated hypocrisy of the Labor years to 1991. Publicly the great Hawke-Keating team was instituting change and reform. Privately, Keating thought of Hawke as no more than a populist who got Labor to power but who did nothing from 1985 on, leaving him, Keating, to run the Government. Now they lay it bare. Some examples.
Hawke: The Keating analysis is a pathetic rewriting of history. Keating: That was the first one I didn’t forgive him for. (1985). Richardson: What the Government did was crazy stuff. Just so stupid.
Backbencher about Richardson telling him how to vote: He used short four-letter words in tight language. Keating: Bob has said envy is not one of his traits. That is not true. That is absolutely not true. Walsh on Richardson: Principle is something that Graham does not concern himself with.
Keating: Bob could take a lesson from Lang. Lang never had one ounce of bitterness. Button: The environment debate was chronic adhockery in every way. Richardson: That’s a load of crap.
Hogg on why Hawke caved in to WA pressure on Aboriginal land rights: Burkey was a mate (because he got $1 million in Labor fund-raising).
Hawke reflecting on the 1988 Budget: One associates Paul with pigs again…bringing home the bacon.
Keating: I said, “Listen, Bob, you’ve always had people in your life to do your work for you, who you’ve cast aside … I am not such a person … and you don’t treat me like that.”
Walsh: General economic policy was rarely discussed in Cabinet. Keating: I didn’t think I could trust Bob’s word.
Hawke: This man’s naked ambition and arrogance was leading him to a total perversion of the history of the labour movement. Keating: I bled for him (Hawke) too often.
Hawke at a press conference (after Kirribilli) denying there was a secret deal for Keating to take over: Let me look straight in your eyes … and say believe me.
But Labor in Power is more than words. It has an extra dimension that little Australian primary-source history to date has had: body language.
Hawke’s eyes go up or they look down as he reinterprets or re-explains Kirribilli or his reneging on a treaty. He can’t face the truth.
Treasury official David Morgan’s right-hand fingers do spider movements as he is questioned on why the Australian economy got over-heated. He is very uncomfortable at his organisation’s failure to predict events, thus worsening the recession we had to have. The words alone written in a history book would not reveal this.
But Labor in Power is like all primary-source political history. It shows the essential vanity of the power-seekers and the power-holders. Nowhere, not once, in the first four hours of this series does any politician reflecting on events say, “”I was wrong.” The best we get is one or two we-were-wrongs or an acceptance of responsibility without blame. How did Chubb get them to spill their guts?
Chubb rejects the view that they did so because they knew they were going to lose the 1993 election so had nothing to lose.
“”Keating accused me of propagating the view that people would talk because they were going to lose,” he said. “”I haven’t been…. It was a small factor. More importantly, I think the reason Keating participated (and probably Hawke too) is because they were convinced it was a serious effort and they were not prepared to write it off as just another piece of dumb television or dumb journalism. They were prepared to treat it seriously and you have got to admire both of them for that.
“”Once a handful of ultra-key players had agreed to participate on the basis that they would speak frankly, then it was inevitable that you would get the vast proportion of people to do so because everyone wants to ensure that their version of history is put on the record, and that is the prime motivator of people in this series. They recognised it was an important series and recognised that the series would play a part in history, that it would live in history, that the interviews would go into the archives and so on and, if they aren’t prepared to step before the camera and have their say, then the views of those who have different views might remain there uncontested.” Ironically, their competition for a favourable place in history ironically has given them an unfavourable one, because Chubb reveals: “”If I didn’t get full cooperation, then I would have had to give serious consideration to scuttling the whole thing.”
But the “”place in history” as motivator of those who seek power is, as Chubb says, “”utterly important” and Chubb says it is getting more important as an element in the conduct of Australia’s national political affairs.
“”Australia’s national system of government has been around for nearly 100 years,” he said. “”It’s now got a pretty deep and rich history and the players in this era know the history of Australian politics very well. They know it backwards and they will talk about it endlessly if you give them a chance.
“”The current players see themselves as living within that historical tradition and they see themselves as extremely concerned that history will treat them kindly and will understand what they did and what they were trying to do: their motivation and achievements” But Chubb did not claim Labor in Power to be a work of history.
“”Rather, I claim it to be a building block of history,” he said. “”A five-part television series, however well executed, can never be a work of history. It can never be comprehensive enough. Nor can a book or series which is written so shortly after the events. History requires a certain amount of time to digest and to understand the impact and effects of what has happened.””
It was a building block “”so that when historians came after us in 20 or 30 years they would think that this was an extremely important addition to the sum of knowledge about this era”.
None the less, he was seeking to arrive at answers to historical questions about power, using this as an example. He agreed it had Shakespearian overtones.
“”I was thinking of writing into the commentary a line from Macbeth in Program 5: “Who would have thought that one man had so much blood in him?”’
Chubb does not appear in the series. His questions are not screened. The answers tell it all. It indicates good questioning and a welcome rare event in Australian political television reporting: where the events and subject assume their proper place as of greater importance than the interviewer.
He understands Keating’s desire to underplay Labor in Power, but rejects it.
“”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,” he said.
“”It can only be described as doing them a favour to represent some of the reality of how it is played to them. That is not a matter of history; that is a matter of how people see the process and that has important ramifications into the future.” But he did not want to overstate that.
“”Politics has been played in this way since the year dot,” he said. “”So I wouldn’t think that a series of this kind would change the animal instincts of politicians, but I do think that it might leave ordinary voters in Australia with a clearer understanding of how it is that … decisions are made and the bases upon which they are made.
“”I don’t think that the end result of this ought to be that one becomes utterly cynical of the process. There are many examples within this series (examples which have tended not to be highlighted by the media so far) … of pretty conscientious policy-making as well.”
The series can claim to have lifted the lid on the power process in a ground-breaking way. There are few if any books, and certainly no television, that records such a great range of people (close in time and place) speaking so utterly frankly on the record.
Who comes out best, Hawke or Keating? Chubb said, “”I can’t answer that. When you have done this sort of thing you get too close to it and after 18 months of work I didn’t know whether we had something good or something lousy, let alone whether Hawke came out of it better than Keating or vice versa. You tell a story as you see it and you have to leave it to others to make a judgment.”
My judgment for what it’s worth is that there is a great irony in the public perception of the Hawke-Keating contest. The mass perception is of Keating as ambitious and power-hungry while Hawke is seen as a warmer man with great affinity for ordinary Australians.
This series shows, yes, Keating had a desire for power, but so he could use it to do something, to reform Australia. Keating comes out as forcefully taking risks and stands. He is arrogant and cannot bring himself to admit error, but he has direction. Hawke, on the other hand, comes out as a man with no end goal himself, as long as everyone agrees and is seen to agree on whatever road the Government takes and he gets any credit. It invited Keating’s challenge. Ministers reveal Hawke as sitting in Cabinet never taking a position, only wanting agreement no matter which way it went. That reveals a man who wants power and position for its own sake.
Your own judgment can be made after five Tuesday nights’ viewing beginning next Tuesday on the ABC. Philip Chubb, meanwhile, will be taking a holiday and working out what to do next.