tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/kim-beazley-4011/articlesKim Beazley – The Conversation2024-03-26T04:10:21Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2265042024-03-26T04:10:21Z2024-03-26T04:10:21ZPolitics with Michelle Grattan: Kim Beazley on Kevin Rudd, being an ambassador, and a possible second Trump presidency<p>Kim Beazley, a former Labor leader, served as Australia’s ambassador in Washington between 2010 and 2016. He is widely respected for his expertise in foreign and defence policy. </p>
<p>In this podcast episode, Beazley discusses the brouhaha over Donald Trump’s denigrating comments about Kevin Rudd, the present Australian ambassador in Washington. We also canvass wider alliance issues and the recent visit to Australia by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who included a meeting with Paul Keating among his engagements. </p>
<p>On Kevin Rudd’s future, Beazley says:</p>
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<p>I have hopes that he could serve under a second term of President Trump – if there is a second term, which I also hope does not occur. I think you’ve got to remember, ambassadors don’t see much of presidents. We do when we’re accompanying the Australian prime minister somewhere. But aside from that, we see people [in] much more lowly positions than presidents. </p>
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<p>On why AUKUS is so important to Australia now: </p>
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<p>Back in the 80s, we had a very different perspective. We had the capacity to basically defend ourselves with some of the equipment provided by the Americans and with their intelligence […] We now find ourselves in a situation where we can’t really defend ourselves without the United States assisting. […] It is just totally vital to us now. I don’t think that those of us who were in politics in the 80s have really caught up with that. </p>
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<p>On China, Beazley says Australia walks the tightrope: </p>
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<p>We’re trying to keep a situation where nothing goes wrong. […] We wish the Chinese well – absolutely. But there are lines in the sand that you have to draw in all these things.</p>
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<p>Beazley was Labor leader during Anthony Albanese’s first years in parliament. He says of the man who became PM: </p>
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<p>He’s always been a pragmatist. That’s the first point. The second point is when you get to the position that he is in, you understand that the survival of Australia is not guaranteed, that the changing circumstances around us are not necessarily in Australia’s favour.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kim Beazley, a former Labor leader and Australia's ambassador in Washington joins us to talk about Donald Trump's denigrating comments about Kevin Rudd, AUKUS and the Australia-Chinese relationship.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2158962023-10-18T09:08:35Z2023-10-18T09:08:35ZPolitics with Michelle Grattan: Kim Beazley on Albanese’s US trip, Biden in the Middle East, and the Voice’s defeat<p>The prime minister heads to Washington next week for a state visit. Talks between Anthony Albanese and President Joe Biden will canvass progress on implementing the AUKUS agreement, Ukraine, China and the situation in the Asia-Pacific region, and of course the Middle East crisis. Biden will have just returned from his visit to Israel and will brief the PM on the situation, which has worsened by the day.</p>
<p>In this podcast, Kim Beazley, defence minister during the Hawke government, former Labor leader, and former Australian ambassador to the US, joins The Conversation to talk about the Albanese visit and the international situation.</p>
<p>On AUKUS, progress has been slowed by the need to get approval for the export of sensitive military technology, and there have been some dissident voices over the supply of US-built Virginia Class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. </p>
<p>“We’ve got a lot to move along,” Beazley says. “The most important thing, at least to me at the moment, to move along is the process by which the approvals are given for the export of nuclear materials.” </p>
<p>On the Middle East, Beazley, from their contact in the past, is very impressed with Biden’s grasp of the detail of that fraught region. </p>
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<p>I used to see Biden modestly regularly when I was ambassador to the US, and he was enormously impressive in his knowledge on Middle Eastern matters. I remember him having a most interesting discussion with then foreign minister Bob Carr, which I attended, on a shift in Australia’s position from opposing the Palestinian resolution in the UN […] to abstaining (which really infuriated the Americans when that was done). But Biden explaining his perception of Palestinian politics and attitudes – it was enormously sophisticated. </p>
<p>We all get caught up in this Republican propaganda […] that the president is mentally falling apart - has to be said that in this area he had great acuity. […] Biden moving into the Middle East is a totally confident man. He’s confident he knows all the nuances and confident that when he gets the intelligence about what is actually happening on the ground, he’ll have an erudite opinion on it. </p>
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<p>On the Voice’s defeat, Beazley, a Western Australian, says he feels “terribly depressed”. He sees the result as damaging not just for Indigenous Australians, but for Australia’s reputation abroad: </p>
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<p>This is not about government. This is about us, it’s about we as an Australian people and it’s not actually a good ad in the region around us that our response would be ungenerous.</p>
<p>Now the people come out and say, Oh, come off it, that’s just an elite thinking; it’s got nothing to do with the streets. That’s true. I don’t think anybody in the countries around us, or for that matter in the United States will be giving a minute’s thought to the referendum on its result. But every single elite will be. And it’s actually elites that make decisions.</p>
<p>You know, I was depressed by the way race seemed to be a factor in discussion about this whole proposition. This whole proposition had nothing to do with race. It had absolutely everything to do with originality. Who was here? Well, they have been here for 70,000 years.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In this podcast, Kim Beazley joins The Conversation to talk about the Albanese visit and the international situation.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2142622023-09-25T10:40:27Z2023-09-25T10:40:27ZView from The Hill: ‘Player’ Mike Pezzullo undone by power play<p>Mike Pezzullo, one of Canberra’s most powerful and certainly most controversial public servants, cannot survive the revelation of the trove of text messages showing him blatantly inserting himself into the political process. </p>
<p>Pezzullo, the secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, has been stood aside while his extraordinary behaviour, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/power-player-20230925-p5e7fq.html">exposed by Nine Entertainment</a>, is scrutinised by a former public service commissioner, Lynelle Briggs. But the end of the story is predictable. </p>
<p>In the tsunami of encrypted texts, running over five years and sent to Scott Briggs (no relation to Lynelle Briggs), a Liberal insider and confidant of prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, Pezzullo repeatedly lobbied for his departmental interests and his views. </p>
<p>He dissed ministers in the way of these interests or those (and other people) he didn’t rate. He used Briggs to seek leverage with the then PMs, asking for his opinions to be passed on. Briggs was happy to comply.</p>
<p>Nine <a href="https://www.9now.com.au/60-minutes/2023/episode-34">says it learned of the messages</a> “via a third party who obtained lawful access to them”. </p>
<p>Pezzullo is a one-off in today’s public service. He can perhaps be partly understood by referring back to the so-called bureaucratic “mandarins” of decades ago. They ran their departments with iron grips, and in some cases were, or tried to be, as powerful as ministers, or more so. They gave no quarter in bureaucratic battles.</p>
<p>The mandarins were “players”. Pezzullo is a “player”. </p>
<p>He’s tough and polarising, with supporters and bitter enemies. Critics have long questioned his judgement. On security matters, he’s the hawks’ hawk. While at first blush his texts appear highly partisan, that is too simplistic an interpretation. He fights bureaucratic and policy/ideological battles, rather than being directly party-political.</p>
<p>His addiction to texting is certainly bipartisan. Within the Albanese government they joke about it starting first thing in the morning and running well into the night. </p>
<p>As a public servant, Pezzullo has served both sides of politics. When in the defence department, he was lead author of the Rudd government’s 2009 defence white paper, which raised the hackles of China. Earlier, he was a senior staffer to Kim Beazley when Beazley was opposition leader. His primary interest is defence – he would have liked nothing better than to head the defence department.</p>
<p>When Anthony Albanese won government, some in Labor wanted Pezzullo gone. He survived not least because the new home affairs minister, Clare O'Neil, in charge of this huge, sprawling empire, needed an experienced hand. </p>
<p>In some ways, Pezzullo is a stickler for process – as we saw when Morrison was trying to make political use of a boat headed for Australia on election day – which makes these texts all the more shocking. But he portrayed himself as acting in broader interests, telling Briggs at one point during the 2018 battle over the prime ministership, “I say that from a policy perspective and not from a Liberal leadership perspective”. </p>
<p>Pezzullo lobbied relentlessly for the creation of the home affairs “super” department, which Turnbull set up in December 2017 to placate the ambitious Peter Dutton. </p>
<p>Those who resisted its establishment, particularly then attorney-general George Brandis, became Pezzullo’s targets. He accused Brandis of “lawyering” public servants “into a state of befuddlement”. </p>
<p>Pezzullo is particularly fond of military imagery. During the struggle to get home affairs up, he texted Briggs, “I am running deep and silent. Won’t come up to periscope depth for a while”. In another message he said the attorney-general’s department needed to be “put to the sword” on a matter, then “we can break out of the Normandy beachhead”. (In a 2021 Anzac Day message to staff Pezzullo caused a public ruckus when he wrote of “the drums of war” beating.)</p>
<p>Moderates were an all-round worry in the Pezzullo texts. Marise Payne, in the defence portfolio, was “completely ineffectual”, “a problem” and “doesn’t have a clear view of the national interest”. Julie Bishop received short shrift; he “almost had a heart attack” when she put her hand up as a candidate in the 2018 upheaval. He was sarcastically relieved when Briggs assured him she had few numbers.</p>
<p>In that battle, in which Dutton (Pezzullo’s minister) challenged Turnbull and Morrison ultimately emerged as prime minister, Pezzullo was concerned about who would end up his minister. </p>
<p>“You need a right winger in there – people smugglers will be watching”, he texted Briggs. </p>
<p>“Any suggestion of a moderate going in would be potentially lethal viz” for Operation Sovereign Borders, he said. </p>
<p>Pezzullo had little time for the head of the prime minister’s department, Martin Parkinson: he was not up to the job and “entirely lacking in self awareness”. In one of those nice ironies of politics, Parkinson was commissioned by the Labor government to lead O'Neil’s migration review.</p>
<p>Pezzullo, whose tug-of-war appearances at Senate estimates hearings are often compulsory viewing, complained to Briggs in 2020, after enduring a very long session, that the hearings were “actually a concern for our democracy”. But he boasted that “in batting terms we are 0-400”.</p>
<p>Free speech came well behind security in Pezzullo’s priorities. After an awkward story by reporter Annika Smethurst, who was subjected to a police raid, Pezzullo reportedly argued for a revival of the D-notice system, under which editors were requested not to publish certain information affecting defence or national security. It didn’t happen.</p>
<p>Pezzullo in one text asked Briggs, “Please keep our conversations confidential. Tricky tight rope for me”. Tricky indeed. The player obsessed by security has been undone by some unidentified power play that has left him totally exposed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214262/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pezzullo is a one-off in the today’s public service. He can perhaps be best understood by referring back to the so-called bureaucratic “mandarins” of decades ago.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2084512023-06-26T06:35:02Z2023-06-26T06:35:02ZVale Simon Crean: a true believer in the Labor Party<p>On reflection, Simon Crean was probably the first domino to fall in a certain madness that seized Labor during the Howard era and presaged a decade of turmoil that only settled down under Bill Shorten’s leadership (2013-19).</p>
<p>Crean, who died suddenly over the weekend while travelling in Europe, was known for his hard work, moral clarity and even temperament.</p>
<p>He had been one of very few people to go straight into the cabinet upon his election in 1990 and he was regarded as a skilled practitioner.</p>
<p>So withering were his critiques of the Coalition that he was sometimes described as a Labor “attack dog”, particularly once he was elected deputy Labor leader from 1998. In 2001, he was elected unopposed as Labor’s parliamentary leader.</p>
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<h2>Turmoil within Labor</h2>
<p>But in 2003, the former unionist’s work-a-day presentation was seen by critics in the caucus and the parliamentary press gallery as too negative in tone and unlikely to force the unfashionable prime minister, John Howard, from the Lodge in 2004.</p>
<p>Panicking Labor MPs connived to restore the twice-rejected Kim Beazley to the Labor leadership. Yet, it was the young and vituperative Mark Latham – these days representing One Nation in the NSW upper house – who emerged victorious.</p>
<p>Latham’s mercurial stewardship of Labor proved to be a disaster, delivering the Howard-led Coalition a thumping win in 2004, replete with control of both houses.</p>
<p>Further humiliated, Labor then switched back to Beazley, who had already lost to Howard in 1998 and 2001, and would face a leadership challenge himself in December 2006. Labor then won the next election in 2007 with Kevin Rudd at the helm and Julia Gillard as deputy leader.</p>
<p>Beazley may have been denied a third crack at the prize, but Crean had become the first federal Labor leader not allowed to contest an election at all.</p>
<p>It established a destructive pattern. Rudd would become the first Labor prime minister to be cut down before a shot at re-election, and Gillard, who had replaced him as PM, would suffer the same indignity.</p>
<p>Gripped by factional conflict and frustrated by Howard’s electoral success, Labor had forgotten its formula for stability under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. It succumbed instead to intrigue and self-referentialism. </p>
<p>Crean’s ousting as party leader in 2003 was a sign of the madness to come. </p>
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Read more:
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<h2>A moral stand on Iraq</h2>
<p>Yet during his truncated opposition stint from 2001-03, Crean took what was arguably the riskiest and most courageous stance since Gough Whitlam committed Labor to <a href="https://theconversation.com/50-years-after-gough-whitlam-established-diplomatic-relations-with-china-what-has-changed-195705">recognise</a> “Red” China in 1971 and Herbert “Doc” Evatt <a href="https://labourhistorycanberra.org/2015/05/the-communist-party-dissolution-bill-and-its-aftermath/">opposed</a> not only the Menzies government’s Communist Party Dissolution Bill, but personally led the High Court challenge to its constitutionality.</p>
<p>Crean’s decision to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/simon-crean-stuck-to-his-guns-on-the-iraq-war-and-was-proven-right-20230626-p5djif.html">oppose</a> Australia’s participation in the US-led “coalition of the willing” invasion of Iraq is now seen as correct. The war was based on falsified and misinterpreted intelligence and probably led to a worsening of Australia’s national security conditions. </p>
<p>Crean made a point of visiting Australian troops leaving for the war, telling them they had the Opposition’s complete support, even though the war itself was wrong.</p>
<p>Just as Evatt and Whitlam had risked being tagged as “soft” on communism, Crean risked being viewed as weak on terrorism by his detractors in the Howard government, the media and even some within his own party. </p>
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<h2>An engaged post-parliamentary life</h2>
<p>A true believer in the Australian Labor Party and in the labour movement, Crean, like Beazley, was Labor royalty. Both men had been around parliament as children. Their fathers, Frank Crean and Kim Beazley Sr., had been frontbenchers and eventually ministers in the Whitlam Labor governments of 1972-75.</p>
<p>That pedigree may explain his commitment to remain in parliament as the member for the Melbourne seat of Hotham, becoming the only minister to serve in the cabinets of the Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments.</p>
<p>His post-parliamentary life involved ongoing representation of Australia’s interests abroad, primarily as chair of the European Australian Business Council.
Crean remained deeply engaged in the issues facing the world, and fiercely committed to the protection of working people and the vulnerable.</p>
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<p>In my own dealings with him as a minister and on occasions since, he was unfailingly polite, generous with his time and good-humoured.</p>
<p>Where other ex-leaders carried the scars of their removals, Crean exuded a kind of upbeat forward focus. His tendency was always to the analytical.</p>
<p>I remember meeting him for a drink in Brussels in 2018, where the main subject was the ongoing debacle of Brexit, at that stage nowhere near its final form.</p>
<p>Crean was across every detail, simultaneously mystified by the political basis of such an egregious act of national self-harm on the part of the UK, yet also fascinated by its underlying socio-economic wellsprings.</p>
<h2>‘History will treat Simon well’</h2>
<p>His sudden death at just 74 has shocked his party and his country, of which he was an energetic and relentless advocate.</p>
<p>It is a mark of that service and the civility he exhibited so effortlessly that Opposition leader Peter Dutton genuinely mourned his loss.</p>
<p>“Simon was a gentleman to deal with and a giant of the labour movement. I always admired Simon for his decency and intellect and only just saw him recently in Melbourne,” the current Liberal leader remarked.</p>
<p>Perhaps the last word, though, should go to Keating, who served with Crean in the Hawke cabinet and was his prime minister, too.</p>
<p>Keating told me today that Crean had been an </p>
<blockquote>
<p>honourable participant in the game of politics, eschewing internecine cabals and trickiness. He was straight up and down, always looking beyond factional games for positive policy advances.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“History will treat Simon well. Particularly, under pressure, as leader of the parliamentary Labor Party in refusing to join John Howard in his commitment of Australian military forces to the criminal Western attack upon Iraq,” Keating said.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208451/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Kenny does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Crean was the first federal Labor leader not allowed to contest an election at all. Yet, he never carried the scars of his removal.Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/989282018-06-28T19:56:30Z2018-06-28T19:56:30ZFrom ‘Toby Tosspot’ to ‘Mr Harbourside Mansion’, personal insults are an Australian tradition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225268/original/file-20180628-112604-1xrw75p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The insults have becoming increasingly personal, but they don't always work.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The insults have been flying thick and fast. Malcolm Turnbull is “Mr Harbourside Mansion”, “Top Hat” Malcolm, “the slick merchant banker”, “the top end of town” man. It is a measure of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mr-harbourside-mansion-credlin-gives-turnbull-a-moniker-with-cut-through-59390">unhappiness in the Coalition</a> that not all of these epithets were invented by Labor.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Bill Shorten is, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-08/turnbull-and-shorten-trade-barbs-during-question-time/8252540">according to Turnbull</a>, a “sycophant”, a “groveller”, a “man who abandoned workers” while he “tucked his knees under” the table of billionaires like the late businessman Richard Pratt. </p>
<p>The red faces, raised voices and flying spittle that accompany the parliamentary trade in insults are meant to convey passion and spontaneity. But we can be confident the lines have been sorted well in advance. </p>
<p>Turnbull’s insults, for example, made in parliament just recently, largely repeat things he said <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2017/feb/08/malcolm-turnbull-calls-bill-shorten-a-social-climbing-sycophant-video">in February last year</a> when he called Shorten “a social-climbing sycophant” and “would-be tribune of the people”. On the other side, Labor has been seeking to present Turnbull as an out-of-touch Sydney snob from the day he took office.</p>
<p>Do such insults work? We know from the research of Australian political scientists – such as my colleagues here at the Australian National University who produce the <a href="http://australianelectionstudy.org/">Australian Election Study</a> – that elections have become increasingly personalised. Most voters do not comb through policy documents. Rather, they use the party leader as a means of making judgments about the things that matter to them.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-evening-with-the-treasurer-how-governments-belt-out-budget-hits-and-hope-someone-is-listening-95929">An evening with the treasurer: how governments belt out budget hits and hope someone is listening</a>
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<p>So, the Labor Party hopes that, if it can make enough mud stick to Turnbull, it can present him as unqualified to make decisions about the welfare of ordinary people. Being so rich, they suggest, he is out of touch with their concerns.</p>
<p>The Coalition hopes that if it can make its mud stick, Shorten will be seen as a self-serving opportunist who built a union and political career by taking advantage of the workers he was supposed to represent.</p>
<p>There is nothing new here; the appeal on each side is a traditional one. </p>
<p>Labor cartoonists of a previous era <a href="http://books.publishing.monash.edu/apps/bookworm/view/Drawing+the+Line/77/xhtml/chapter06.html">would often draw Mr Fat</a> – an obese capitalist – complete with top hat, tails and cigar, the very embodiment of greed and excess. They would sometimes set him beside a brawny, manly worker determined to resist his wiles. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225273/original/file-20180628-112604-s02htr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225273/original/file-20180628-112604-s02htr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225273/original/file-20180628-112604-s02htr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225273/original/file-20180628-112604-s02htr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225273/original/file-20180628-112604-s02htr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225273/original/file-20180628-112604-s02htr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225273/original/file-20180628-112604-s02htr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Phil May, ‘Poverty and Wealth; It all depends on the position of the bundle’, Bulletin, c. 1887.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://books.publishing.monash.edu/apps/bookworm/view/Drawing+the+Line/77/xhtml/chapter06.html">State Library of New South Wales via Monash University Publishing</a></span>
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<p>The anti-Labor images of the union boss as a parasite on the working man, and of the Labor politician as self-serving careerist, have existed as long as the Labor Party itself.</p>
<p>Political name-calling and insults are sometimes like water off a duck’s back. But others can stick. The radical Daniel Deniehy’s lampooning of William Wentworth and his followers in 1854 for wanting to create <a href="http://lrrpublic.cli.det.nsw.edu.au/lrrSecure/Sites/Web/nsw_parliament/lo/legislative_council/applets/bunyip/267/show_tell267_text.htm">“a bunyip aristocracy”</a> of titled men to fill a colonial upper house was recalled for generations. (Personally, I’ve always thought the funniest jibe was Deniehy’s suggestion that James Macarthur’s coat of arms as “Earl of Camden” should include a rum keg, a reference to his father’s role in the commerce and politics of early New South Wales.) </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/top-paul-keating-quotes">Paul Keating’s question</a> about an Andrew Peacock leadership comeback – “Can a soufflé rise twice?” – was perfect in every way, as was his designation of Liberal leader John Hewson, “the feral abacus”.</p>
<p>But Keating’s quips went down better with the press gallery and the intelligentsia than the ordinary punter, and he had to endure insinuations that an enthusiast for Italian suits and French clocks could not be a true Labor man.</p>
<p>Bob Hawke, more than Shorten, acquired a large coterie of “close personal friends” among the rich and the filthy rich. But this was probably an advantage in his early days as prime minister, when he talked of consensus between workers and bosses in the national interest. As the feeling developed that his friends were doing very nicely while most others were doing it tough, the term “rich Labor mates” became shorthand for the idea that Hawke and Keating had sold out the workers. </p>
<p>Hawke was “the silver bodgie”, a reference to the colour of his still luxuriant hair, somewhat like that of a 1950s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/hindsight/the-young-ones----bodgies-26-widgies/4109816">“bodgie”</a>, a stylish youth somewhat in the James Dean mould.</p>
<p>But some of our political leaders have had nicknames that were more distinctly pejorative. The Sydney Bulletin called Australia’s first prime minister, <a href="http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/primeministers/barton/">Edmund Barton</a>, “Toby Tosspot”: he had been known as “Toby” much of his life and a “tosspot” was a vulgar term for an enthusiastic drinker. </p>
<p>“Affable Alfred”, for <a href="http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/primeministers/deakin/">Deakin</a>, was affectionate but could be used by opponents sarcastically when he wasn’t being quite so affable. “Jolly John”, for John Gorton, sounds affectionate, until you recall that it was a reference to his <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/03/18/1015909929252.html">erratic personal behaviour</a>.</p>
<p>“Honest John” – for Howard – was mainly used ironically rather than descriptively. But Howard’s own claim that Kim Beazley <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pm-gets-personal-beazleys-got-no-ticker/2005/10/13/1128796640367.html">lacked “ticker”</a> is usually seen as having worked on voters looking for strong leadership and doubtful the Labor opposition leader could provide it.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mis-red-why-bill-shorten-is-not-a-socialist-91752">Mis-red: why Bill Shorten is not a socialist</a>
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<p>Robert Menzies’ critics on the left called him “Pig Iron Bob” after his role, as a member of the Lyons government, in opposing union bans on the shipping of pig iron to Japan. The epithet, which stuck throughout his long career, was intended to remind people of Menzies’ poor judgment and association with the policy of appeasement of the Axis powers. It was a potent rhetorical weapon during the 1940s and even became the subject of <a href="http://unionsong.com/u150.html">radical folksong</a> but, as the years of his prime ministership rolled on after the war, it seemed to do him no obvious harm.</p>
<p>Highly personal assaults can backfire badly. The best example from Australian politics is Country Party leader <a href="http://www.nma.gov.au/primeministers/earle_page">Earle Page</a>’s savage attack on Menzies in 1939 for failing to enlist in the first world war. Menzies had wanted to serve but already had brothers at the front, so remained behind as the result of a family decision.</p>
<p>Page’s career never recovered from the disgust that his attack induced. That didn’t stop the mischievous Labor firebrand, Eddie Ward, from later joking that Menzies’ brilliant military career had been cut short by the war. It’s a tough place, the federal parliament.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98928/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Creating epithets for political opponents has a long history in Australia – and when it works, it can be devastating.Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/681512016-11-03T05:13:04Z2016-11-03T05:13:04ZPolitics podcast: Kim Beazley on the US election<p>Kim Beazley’s time as Australia’s ambassador to the United States came to an end earlier this year, but he is riveted by next week’s presidential election. </p>
<p>“When I was the ambassador to Washington I just missed politics every day. In this year, I am missing the United States every day,” he says. </p>
<p>Beazley tells Michelle Grattan that “slightly, on balance” Hillary Clinton is more likely to win. “But the anger, the energy, in this campaign is within one group and that is with the white working class - mainly male but also female - who feel that America is being taken away from them,” he says. </p>
<p>“I see the election contest at the moment has the momentum with Trump.”</p>
<p>He cites the reduced turnout of Democrat-voting African-Americans and the mire of the Hillary Clinton email controversy as factors in a possible upset. </p>
<p>“One would have to say that if there is more of this over the weekend that the Trump momentum may well be unstoppable.” </p>
<p>If Trump pulls off an unlikely victory, Beazley foresees huge challenges for Australia. “Were he to implement the policies that he talks about in regards to the Asian region, we would be confronting strategic damage and possibly economic disaster,” he says.</p>
<p>Beazley says Hillary Clinton has a very favourable view towards Australia. “She sees us as a skilled, well-off and purposeful people and she will have things for our will and purpose and a lot of them may well involve decisions or topics that we’re quite uncomfortable with.”</p>
<p>“I think for starters she would be looking very strongly at a deeper integration of Australian and American forces in the region. She might be looking more vigorously than Obama has been at deployment of American aircraft from Australian bases and she’d in all probability look quite strongly at the possibility of rotating ships through [Royal Australian Navy base] Stirling.” </p>
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<p><em>Music credit: “Star-spangled banner” by the United States Marine Band on the Free Music Archive</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68151/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kim Beazley's time as Australia's ambassador to the United States came to an end earlier this year, but he is riveted by next week's presidential election.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraKim Beazley, Senior Fellow, Perth USAsia Centre, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100192012-10-07T23:50:49Z2012-10-07T23:50:49ZTony Abbott and women: how both sides have played the gender card<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16260/original/7rckch5d-1349651946.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott greets Liberal MP Kelly O'Dwyer before an event in Melbourne. Does the Opposition Leader have an issue with women?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Crosling</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a discussion with ABC journalist Emma Alberici on Lateline last week, Liberal MP Kelly O’Dwyer defended Tony Abbott from attacks by Labor ministers who criticised his attitudes towards women. In the process, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3605170.htm">O’Dwyer claimed</a> that “what we’re seeing for the very first time in Australian political history is gender being used as a political weapon”.</p>
<p>However, O’Dwyer is being disingenuous to say the least. In fact, there is a long history of gender being used as a political weapon in Australian politics, including by the Liberal Party. The difference is that normally gender is used as a subtext rather than being explicitly talked about. After all, gender was being used as a political weapon when John Howard and Peter Costello depicted Kim Beazley as “flip-flop” Beazley who <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pm-gets-personal-beazleys-got-no-ticker/2005/10/13/1128796640367.html">lacked the “ticker’</a> to make the tough decisions to protect Australia and keep the economy strong. </p>
<p>In other words, they suggested that Beazley wasn’t man enough. Gender was being used as a political weapon when Tony Abbott suggested that Kevin Rudd was <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/rudd-all-talk-and-no-ticker-abbott-20100130-n5h1.html">"all talk and no action”</a> – in other words that Rudd was an ineffectual nerd who wouldn’t deliver the policy changes necessary, unlike that real man, Tony Abbott. Gender was also being used as a political weapon in the 2004 election when the Liberals suggested that Mark Latham was a dangerous, aggressive, potentially violent rogue male and that it wasn’t safe to put the country in his hands. </p>
<p>In other words in 2004 the Liberals used a gender strategy against Latham that has some similarities to the strategy currently being used by against Tony Abbott by Labor.</p>
<p>Of course, such strategies aren’t confined to one side of politics. Latham himself was a master of using both gendered and heterosexist subtexts that <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/howard-says-he-expected-crunch-time/2008/11/14/1226318927501.html">belittled the masculinity of his opponents</a>, including by casting aspersions on whether they were red-blooded heterosexual males. So Howard became an <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/26/1023864602092.html">“arse-licker”</a> towards the US; Peter Costello was likened to Gary Glitter and Latham suggested that “maybe Doug Cameron was right. The fellow that Abbott beat in the boxing final at Oxford went on to be the director of the Royal Ballet in London.” </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Julia Gillard herself notoriously once described Christopher Pyne as <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-02-23/gillard-labels-pyne-mincing-poodle/305818">“mincing” and a “poodle”</a> compared with Abbott’s <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/gillard-drops-abbott-in-pile-of-poodle-doo-20110602-1fizk.html">“macho” “doberman”</a>, thereby managing to cast aspersions on both men’s forms of masculinity.</p>
<p>However, above all, Kelly O’Dwyer was being disingenuous because, as I’ve <a href="https://theconversation.com/happy-anniversary-julia-gillard-but-youve-still-got-a-lot-of-work-to-do-1951">explained previously in The Conversation</a>, the Liberals have consistently used gendered subtexts against Julia Gillard. </p>
<p>There have been repeated Liberal party suggestions that Julia Gillard is a vicious and devious <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/pyne-gillard-doth-protest-too-much-20120208-1rf1r.html">“Lady Macbeth”</a> type figure who knifed Kevin Rudd. While there are legitimate questions that can be asked about both the justification for, and timing of, Rudd’s removal, it is interesting that women who successfully challenge existing leaders seem to be constructed differently from male politicians who do so. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16261/original/vq4fb9bd-1349652408.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16261/original/vq4fb9bd-1349652408.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16261/original/vq4fb9bd-1349652408.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16261/original/vq4fb9bd-1349652408.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16261/original/vq4fb9bd-1349652408.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16261/original/vq4fb9bd-1349652408.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16261/original/vq4fb9bd-1349652408.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Julia Gillard at a community Cabinet meeting in Tasmania last week.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Scott Gelston</span></span>
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<p>For example, Paul Keating did not receive the same level of personal opprobrium for successfully challenging Bob Hawke and neither did Tony Abbott for successfully challenging Malcolm Turnbull. Yet both gained their positions by removing previous male leaders, as so many of their male predecessors have done before.</p>
<p>Furthermore, Tony Abbott constantly uses gender subtexts against Julia Gillard. For example, he has repeatedly implied that, as an unmarried woman who has not given birth, Julia Gillard can’t empathise with ordinary Australian families. That is why <a href="http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2012/04/gleeson_johnson.html">Abbott started the 2010 leaders debate</a> by declaring: “my wife, Margie, and I know what it’s like to raise a family, to wrestle with a big mortgage, with grocery bills and school fees”. </p>
<p>It is also <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-machiavellian-genius-of-abbotts-honest-politician-jibe-1283">why he alluded to</a> Julia Gillard’s unmarried state by claiming that: “Only an election could make an honest politician of this Prime Minister”. It is also why, during the 2010 election campaign, Abbott was continually depicted with his wife and daughters. Indeed , Margie Abbott’s own impassioned speech defending her husband from sexism chances was entitled <a href="http://www.liberal.org.au/margie-abbott-speech">“The Joy of an Ordinary Life”</a> and itself had a subtext that repeatedly counterposed her “ordinary” married family life to that of Julia Gillard’s.</p>
<p>In addition, as Labor MP Andrew Leigh pointed out when responding to Kelly O’Dwyer’s comments, Tony Abbott has a habit of repeatedly referring to Julia Gillard as “SHE” in parliament. This usage seems to be spreading into popular discourse as “SHE” is commonly blamed in everyday conversation and talkback radio for everything ranging from higher electricity prices to higher penalty rates in the hospitality industry.</p>
<p>So, contrary to Kelly O’Dwyer’s statement, gender has long been used as a political weapon in Australian politics. What is perhaps different is that, particularly since the Prime Minister referred to “sexist” and “misogynist” online attacks on her, the use of gender as a political weapon is now being more explicitly articulated, rather than gender issues being evoked via subtexts. Interestingly, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2012/s3605398.htm">Attorney-General Nicola Roxon suggested</a> on the ABC’s Insiders that Kelly O’Dwyer’s reference to a “handbag hit squad” was an attempt to suggest it was illegitimate for senior female ministers to openly discuss sexism in politics, including the sexist behaviour that Roxon claimed she had personally experienced from Tony Abbott.</p>
<p>It certainly seems hypocritical for the Liberals to be complaining about Labor’s use of the gender card against Tony Abbott, when they have so skilfully played the gender card against Julia Gillard.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10019/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a discussion with ABC journalist Emma Alberici on Lateline last week, Liberal MP Kelly O’Dwyer defended Tony Abbott from attacks by Labor ministers who criticised his attitudes towards women. In the…Carol Johnson, Professor of Politics, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.