Transcript
A (0:01)
Hello, it's Jacqueline Maley here, the host of Inside Politics. Tony Wright, the associate editor of the Age, has been writing for 50 years. He's the master of what we call the political sketch. Sketches are akin to a verbal cartoon and when done well, they capture a moment in politics. Today we bring you Tony's sketch, published this week titled Nation's Worst Jane Hume's Hyperbolic Historical Claim.
B (0:31)
Jane Hume will never be accused of understatement, but her return to the coalition's front bench appears to have excited her to new heights of endearingly bonkers hyperbole. Hume, having been elevated to deputy leader of the Liberal Party after former leader Susan Lee cruelly condemned her to a period in purgatory, is clearly not about to let mould grow on new opportunities to lay it on thick. Thus, when she was given the microphone on ABC Radio on Wednesday morning, she set about sprinkling fairy dust on the ailing coalition's new front bench while denouncing with relish Anthony Albanese's labor outfit. We want to prosecute Labor's failures. It's the worst government in this nation's history, she declared. Hang about the worst government in this nation's history. Give it time. It might yet gain the exalted position of worst in history, but it's got some very stiff competition. Hume herself, after all, was a minister in Scott Morrison's government. We shouldn't dwell on the memory of the Morrison period, of course, it being too painfully recent for reasoned judgment. Lets scroll back then through the gaga Tony Abbott and tortured Rudd, Gillard Rudd periods. Tempting as it might be to invite spirited argument about which was worst? A knighthood for the Queen's husband, anyone? Or a real Julia moment In quest of escape from Kevin Rudd's relentless undermining, let's go back a bit further. What about the prime ministership of poor Billy McMahon? Such a champion liar, backstabber and leaker that Gough Whitlam dubbed him Tiberius with a telephone. McMahon will retain forever the title of silliest PM in Australian history, which naturally places his short lived government in contention as the worst. Famously, a journalist once asked McMahon about his vision for the future. He frantically flipped through his voluminous briefing notes before declaiming, oh no, nothing about the future here. Whitlam replaced McMahon in the Lodge and remains much lauded for his numerous achievements in upending Old State Australia and remaking its future. But the last year of the Whitlam government must be in the running for the worst in history or, or at the very least most mind boggling the secret and fruitless attempts to borrow billions through a shady commodities dealer named Tirath Kemlani. The various ministers who misled Parliament over this and other would be secret loans, a married treasurer Jim Cairns declaring he had a kind of love for his private secretary Juni Morozi, when just about everyone knew what kind of love it actually was. Oh, and Whitlam's own spectacular misjudgment for appointing his own executioner, John Kerr. Skip much further back and you'd have a rich choice regarding which government of an indestructible Billy Hughes was the worst. He was prime minister representing three different parties in less than eight years from 1915 to 1923. Having split his Labor Party by demanding and failing to introduce conscription During World War I, he was expelled by the party leading him to form the National Labor Party before switching to the Nationalist Party. All as pm, you would bewilder yourself trying to figure which might have been the worst of the governments the peripatetic Hughes served during his 50 years as an MP or all up. He represented six different political parties, led five, outlasted four and was expelled from three. As an aside, he never joined the Country Party. His explanation? You have to draw the line somewhere. And then there was the government of Jim Scullen. He had the great misfortune of becoming Prime Minister within days of the New York stock market crash of 1929, which soon enough condemned Australia to the Great Depression. Though Scullin himself strived mightily to cope, the economy and political enemies, including labor rebels who crossed the floor against him, conspired to bring him down, he was gone within three years, his one term labor government smashed by Joseph Lyons, United Australia party, reducing the ALP to just 14 of the parliament's 76 seats. We won't go on, though we could, for the title of worst is splendidly subjective. Choose your own. Meanwhile, we await Jane Hume's merry promise on Wednesday's radio outing that the latest coalition frontbench will soon enough be, as she says, ready for government and to change Australia for the better.