In my very first post at No Minister I indicated that one of the areas I would not be writing about would be Australian politics, for the very simple reason that I did not follow it, and basically never have.
At any given time I may be aware of the name of the Australian PM and which party is in government.
But that’s about it. Other Ministers, MP’s, policies, the daily dregs of the Australian Parliament – though admittedly they’re often brilliantly funny, no more so than when Keating was there, tearing the Liberals another asshole on a regular basis.
Aside from that? I know I should be interested, but…. Meh.
However, in honour of the fact that an Australian election just happened across the ditch, allow me to drop you all into some nostalgia.
The following is a 15 minute clip of a press conference on March 2, 1983, just before that Federal election, where Bob Hawke gets questioned by the Aussie press.
Brilliant! It’s all there: intelligence – both in terms of knowing his stuff and being quick on his feet – wit, and the humanity that was always so genuine about him. And Aussies knew it.
I don’t know much about the current Labour leader, Anthony Albanese, but gathering from all the Facebook shit I see from Australians, it seems they’re not impressed by their leadership choices.
I suspect they’d be even less impressed when they look at this performance from 42 years ago. Grab a glass of red, sit back, and watch a master class in retail politics. Had I been living in Australia at the time I’d have voted for this guy every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
No Minister 
Some one should have got Dame Edna Everidge (Barry Humphries) to interview Hawke. That would have been gold.
My hearing difficulty means I can only sort-of listen to Mr Hawke but, notably, he stems from a time when pollies had to actually answer to the electorate in person rather than hide behind friendly, no-nothing and biased media hacks.
New Zealand (remember that place?) at that time also had it’s share of (political) orators, of which Messers Lange and Muldoon stood large.
This, of course, made politics, or at least the following of politics, fun.
I miss those times!
As an aside: New Zealand no longer has to strive to attain parity with Australia. The Ockers just voted to come down to us.
You can switch on a transcript for YouTube videos and it’s pretty accurate. Here it is from that clip. Just hit the “more” in the description of the clip to reveal all this.
Aussie Labor has always been a lot more right wing and reasonable than NZ Labour, and the Liberals more milquetoasted than NZ National, if that’s possible.