Political Anecdotes

Selected and introduced by Mungo MacCallum
(Duffy & Smellgrove) $39.95 PB

Mungo MacCallum, political commentator, is a nostalgic man - in selecting the materials for this anthology, it is clear that he has a great preference for the 1960s, 70s and 80s, days of 'personality politics', drunken brawling and fiercely contested ideals - while the last decade or so seems bearly worth a mention. I had expected that this book would be all larrikins and bon mots, but in fact there was a good deal more to it. The anecdotes selected date as far back as the establishment of New South Wales. (What a terrible name! Some scurvy Englishmen happen to chance upon the biggest island in the South Pacific, a land embracing extremes of climate and terrain, unique flora and fauna, and the biggest rock in the world, and how do they christen it? As a derivative of some poky little English shire! If it was up to me, I would have called the new colony Graceland or Never Never Land or something awesome like that.) Anyway, MacCallum's collection of anecdotal fragments reaches right back to that sad day, because it's going for something much more than a few cheap chuckles. In a certain sense, Political Anecdotes is a canned history of Australia's ruling elite - but instead of tying the whole into narrative form, it is left loose as a collection of fragments. The other interesting thing about this form of presentation is that - as anecdotes - the fragments are not given the status of Official Historical Fact; instead, it's all hearsay, selective remembering, and no doubt a good dose of exaggeration and artificial colouring. This reminds me a little of the ancient Roman style of history (Tacitus, Pliny etcetera) where it was well accepted that all things should be blown into mythical proportions (numbers exaggerated wildly, quotes made more eloquent) in order to communicate the gist of things in a more entertaining form.

The anecdotes from the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century are particularly implausible, and entertaining. They can also be read with less critical caution, since the figures involved are no longer relevant as political symbols (by contrast, the more recent anecdotes must be read in view of Mungo's Labor attachments, and his undoubted love for figures such as Gough Whitlam). A favourite anecdote of the antique variety tells of a particular rowdy phase of parliament, some ten years after Federation. The anecdote ends:

At the end of a lengthy all-night session the Speaker of the House, Sir Frederick Holder, fell prone from his chair muttering "Dreadful! Dreadful!" He was dead before breakfast.

Now if only politics were still played like that, the Age wouldn't keep putting me to sleep again before I've even finished breakfast.

As mentioned above, the material from the 60s and 70s is also very colourful, though I didn't enjoy it as much because if focused too much on 'witty' one-liners which really weren't that funny, whether they actually happened or not. I did enjoy the story of how Labor lost the 1974 election in the Northern Territory because all their candidates were too drunk to make the most basic shows of public dignity.

Overall, I felt this book mis-represented itself somewhat - with the chocolate-box cover, Mungo's smiling face, and the title together suggesting that it might be a bit of a cheap-laughs Christmas-book. It did have a bit of that, in certain phases, but read as a whole, it was much more informative. Strange that a certain sort of information - a general feel for how politics has been conducted and the type of issues that have made it tick - should be conveyed through a jumble of fragmentary misinformations. Thankfully the fragmentary form also helps to avoid the factual swamps in which single authors sometimes get bogged, and makes it easier to read in snatches on the tram.

Review by John Mansfield