A Bob Each Way

with Bob Ellis

"After a century's search," said the wise old Labor hack, stubbing his cigarillo, coughing copiously and pouring another scotch, "our party has found, at last, its Hewson."

"Pardon?" I said. "Oh: Latham."

"Fibro-bred. Twice married. The first of his bloodline to suffer education. Seemingly adept at economics. Globally committed. Paternally abused. Keen that we compete as equals with the enslaved Chinese. Author, like Hewson, of many trenchant essays whose theme is Civilising Halliburton."

"Housetraining the Crocodile," I murmured.

"Just so. Handsome. Tactless. Running an American-style campaign. Youthful. Wayward. Rancorous. Baleful. Mutinous. Neurotic to the core. And convinced, like Hewson, it was he, and he alone, who invented thinking."

A silence followed. I looked at my knuckles.

"He'll do better than Simon," I said.

"Worse. He will lose Kim's seat. And Rudd's. And his own."

"He may," I protested, "appeal to the aspirational classes.'

"He will indeed. And disgust their wives."

"Oh yes?"

The old man rose and looked out wheezing at grey vague Sydney clouds over melancholy skyscrapers. "It is a pity," he said, "that the Labor Party has lost, of late, all acquaintance with arithmetic. Consider these figures. Fifty-one percent of all voters are women. Thirty-two percent of these dislike bad language, find Howard pleasingly wholesome and those who shout 'suckhole" and 'arse-licker' unsuitably employed as Prime Minister. One third of them will not now vote Labor, I think. Ergo, Latham may lose us 10 percent of the entire female vote."

"And pick up, from the men..."

"Not enough. You mark my words," the gnarled old fixer unwrapped a Mintie and placed it with care between two brown surviving teeth, "the upshot will be a January boatload of immigrant lice-ridden heathens, a February 7 election, a Silly Season non-campaign, no coverage of any election event, no 7.30 Report, no Sunday, no Insiders, no Current Affair, all the media awash with tennis, cricket, hobbit earnings and tragic drownings, plus a simple, resounding Liberal slogan, 'Would you trust this man's hands on the levers in time of war?' And... catastrophe. Krakatoan. Kaboom. Finis."

Beyond the window a distant jumbo seemed to be heading for a skyscraper, but passed behind it, not exploding. Thunder muttered round the skyline. I poured a further scotch.

"Keating and Whitlam like him," I said.

"Our two foremost losers. The great men who gave us John Kerr and 18 per cent interest. Eighteen percent!" He shook his head in unyielding disbelief. "Any acquaintance with simple arithmetic would suggest that 18 percent on $500,000 - to wit, $90,000 per annum in interest alone-- is a memory of Labor in government no voter should have. And yet he did it: 18 percent. And the proud, soft-spoken author of that blithering folly, himself a trifle foulmouthed in Hansard, now favours Latham and further besmirches his name with his approbation."

He folded the Mintie paper, looked at it, and put it in his pocket.

"He can't win, then?"

"Oh no, he can win. He may well be lucky. Some politicians are dim and lucky. And some bright ones like Kim are unlucky. It took a whole world war to defeat him, and sure enough, it came." He lit a further cigarillo, coughing glutinously as he did so.

"How can he win?"

"By abandoning all his principles, probably. By becoming pro-Green, and pro-union, and pro-public education. By promising to abolish all university fees. And, oh yes, by a single, brilliant campaign slogan, lately composed by my good self."

"Which is?'

"We will bring the troops home, and only send them back if the UN asks us to."

I thought about these things. There was lightning now, above the horizon.

"It's good," I said. "It's all... very good."

"I know. But he won't want it."

"Why not?"

"Because it wasn't him that thought of it. And that's a worry. A real worry."

Scotches in hand, we looked out of the window. The thunder increased.

The problem with Latham is a chick thing