 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Run, Johnny, Run
By Mungo MacCallum
Duffy & Snellgrove $22.00
 To many the recent federal election is an event best forgotten, yet viewed in microcosm, with some events lasting days (at most), others hours, it was fascinating theatre and there is no better critic than Mungo MacCallum, formerly of the Canberra press gallery, now a regular at the Billinudgel pub to where he decamped when the Brunswick Hotel banned dogs.
Combining his knowledge of Australian politics, profound scepticism about its practitioners and an acerbic wit, Mungo has penned commentaries for more terms than anyone in the two Houses has served - including John Winston Howard with his three decades.
As Echo readers would know, the columnist is especially passionate on the subject of Howard, whom he sees as the most destructive of our contemporary leaders, a man fully deserving the epithet 'the Rat', coined by opponents in his own party, but even more so 'The Stonefish' which 'captures the essence of the man, both in his lack of personal appeal and his success as a politician. The stonefish is a sluggish and rather stupid predator with neither flair nor dash; it waits for its prey to come to it then kills by treachery.
'And time after time, it gets away with it... behind the innocuous disguise is one of the most poisonous and lethal creatures on earth.'
Overviewing the long election lead-up and the campaign proper, he concludes that the electorate fell for the 'oldest trick of all, the naked appeal to those most basic of emotions, fear and greed', then leads us through such major events as the Latham ascendancy, the Howard and Costello 'partnership that had brought you undreamed of prosperity' and Labor's recruitment of Peter Garrett - joining the ALP is clearly a health hazard - whom MacCallum confesses to 'have always found... faintly extra-terrestrial,' although in Byron Bay, as he notes, 'this didn't matter - indeed it could well have been a positive.'
The minutiae spans the hilarious, the worrying and the barely believable - Latham winning the press gallery's $700 footy tipping comp, the 'daiquiri swilling diplomats' who slammed Howard's Iraq policy and the broadcasting feud between Laws, Jones and the Broadcasting Authority's pompous Flint.
After all the twists and turns, it ended as it began. Today, as Mungo observes, 'The Stonefish rules', an outcome that prompted the author to repair to the Billinudgel to contemplate the pollies from afar, listen to the locals and sharpen his pencil for three years hence.
- Thanks to Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.
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