Politics

REMEMBERING ‘WALSHIE’

On the same day Richie Benaud passed away, April 10, so too did a former Australian federal finance minister, Senator Peter Walsh.

Benaud, as a former Australian Test cricket captain and long serving commentator, got far more accolades –and Peter Walsh would have agreed.

As a young bloke this writer worked for the WA Labor Senator from July 1976 until February 1978.

That had come about because I had had a bit to do with him in the period from 1971-5 in the Wheatbelt area of WA. Walsh was a wheat and sheep farmer at Doodlakine and I was a Commonwealth Employment officer at Merredin. 

In 1974 ‘Walshie’ got himself elected from the Labor senate ticket at the double dissolution.

Two years later, back in the city, I began working in his office on loan from the Public Service.

It was a dreadful period to be working for the ALP. Labor had been smashed in the December 1975 election, after Prime Minister Gough Whitlam had been sacked by a cur called Kerr, a drunken lecherous Governor-General who debauched his office shamefully.(Any conservative who thinks that sacking was warranted is a disgrace to the word  conservative- see my less than affectionate article on Malcolm Fraser, Without Affection, 23/3/15).

Gough may have forgiven ‘Malicious’ but both Walsh and myself never did. He and Kerr had done too much damage to the bodypolitik.

The female that followed me, as a Walsh staffer, ended up throwing an egg at Kerr. He was lucky, if Walshie had got anywhere near him it would have been a hand grenade! Although come to think of it ‘Walshie’ threw a few of those as a Senator and later as a minister.

There was more to Walsh than despising Kerr and his cur, however, and he was not frightened to assail some of the idiots in the ALP who wanted to push special interests.

During my stay with him, during the Dark Ages, I requested the official photo of the former PM for our Fremantle office. With the change of government, that photo was then gathering dust in some cupboard at the Department of Administrative Services.

The pinguid Government Senate leader, Reg Withers (Liberal WA) had taken over that portfolio, previously held by the loveable former Labor Leader of the House, Fred Daly (Grayndler NSW).

Daly was everything Withers was not, helpful, kind, considerate, witty –and was appreciated by all sides in the Parliament, particularly his old Liberal mate, Jim Killen.

What should have been a straightforward reply to a minor matter suddenly became an example of the need for financial prudency.

Withers wrote that if our office wanted a photo of Gough we would have to pay for this –and Withers sneeringly added, ‘though why anyone would want the photo is beyond me.’ Don’t you just love gracious winners!

Withers got a second letter –and this time I put it in my own name, not Senator Walsh’s- and I did not spare him.

‘Piggy,’ (Withers nickname), was aghast that a mere Opposition junior staffer should upbraid him and wrote in complaint about this to Senator Walsh, pointing to the ‘attached’ offending letter.

Only problem was there was no offending letter attached. ‘Walshie’ had a field day in his reply, railing against Liberal incompetence to even be able to attach something to a letter. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and even more so when Fraser sacked Withers a short time later. Talk about thieves falling out –and Withers received another letter from me, this time written with sheer delight!

Withers made it clear to political journalist, Laurie Oakes, that, as early as April 1973, the Liberal Party decided to destabilise the Whitlam Government by Senate action (see Oakes 1974 book, Grab for Power).

The ink had hardly dried on the Labor ministers commission when Withers admitted to that some four months after the first Labor government for 23 years had been formed.The Liberals, of that period, really had a born-to-rule mentality.

But Walsh also had high regard for some Liberals too notably John Hyde (Moore) and a very Modest Member, Bert Kelly (Wakefield SA). Kelly wrote a regular newspaper column under the heading a Modest Member.

Hyde was also a farmer elected in 1974, and in fact had a neighbouring property to Walsh. Hyde had  knocked off the Country Party MP, Don Maisey, something Walsh had tried to do on two earlier occasions in Moore. The veteran Kelly was impressed with both of these clear thinking boys from WA and indeed all three of them were ahead of their time in the 1970s, in being in favour of free markets, in a protectionist era.

Walsh was opposed to the Vietnam War and went after Fraser for his involvement in supporting the conscription of young men during an earlier period when he was Army minister. If Walsh had been around in the Great War he would have gone after Billy Hughes on the same issue.

He also didn’t think much of our alliance with the US and on that I disagreed with him-then and now.

‘Walshie’ had a good antenna in summing up individuals. He was a Hayden loyalist through and through being very disappointed in February 1983 when Hawke replaced that decent man as Opposition leader on the very day Fraser called an early election. A month later Hawke was PM, despite Fraser boasting about knocking off two Labor leaders in the one election campaign.

Instead it was the snivelling sook, Fraser, who was crushed, and then blubbed, for himself of course, on television. It was pathetic, and in contrast with Whitlam’s dignified concession speeches in 1975 and 1977.

I agree with the Walsh assessment that Hayden should have been given a second chance to lead the ALP into the March 1983 election. He had worked hard to make Labor viable again for over five years and had gone close to victory in 1980.

Hayden famously said a drover’s dog could have led Labor to victory in 1983.

Like Walsh, who famously referred to Hawke as ‘Old Jellyback,’ I could never warm to Hawke –the narcissists, narcissist. Hawke believed he had a special relationship with the Australian people but he was chiefly a legend in his own mind, not his own time.

In fact I thought he was a crass, vulgar little man having met him in his parents West Leederville home, in the winter of 1971, when he was ACTU chief. His parents were wonderful people but he was the quintessential nasty little man, made the worse for, at that time, being drunk. Paul Keating once said, “Bob could be rude’’ and he was absolutely right.  Indeed he was, more often than not.

Hawke did, however, run a disciplined, capable government, and with Keating (Treasurer) and Walsh (Finance) the government carried out reforms that a craven Fraser found impossible to do, despite having a thumping majority in the House of Representatives, and also the Senate, for five years.

It is interesting to note that one of the Liberals rising stars, Senator Mathias Cormann, has emulated Walsh in becoming both a WA senator and the current Finance Minister.

Cormann clearly respected Walsh and became a friend of the ex- Labor senator, who retired in 1993, after meeting him some 15 years ago, via a Walsh friend, Jim Laffer.

Cormann said Walsh was the benchmark for responsible Finance Ministers to follow and that his 1995 book, ‘Confessions of a Failed Finance Minister’ was a manual for them to follow. In 1986 Walsh carved savings of $6billion from the budget in a move that Cormann clearly envies as he seeks to do similarly today.

Cormann also said that former Treasury chief John Stone, later a National Party senator for Queensand, said that Walsh, rather than Keating, had been the real architect of budget savings.

(Cormann, incidentally, is also the most interesting person to come out of Belgium since Hercule Poirot. Like Walsh he had to battle to gain party selection. When he was seeking pre-selection Senator Ross Lightfoot (Liberal WA) thought he was ‘unsuitable’ as he hadn’t been in the country for long enough. However, the Liberal Party, at the time, took the sensible view that Lightfoot had been in the Senate too long!)

Howard’s Finance Minister, Senator Nick Minchin (SA), in his retirement speech in 2011, went further than Cormann, saying Walsh was the best minister in the finance portfolio ever.

None of this surprised me because I recall his love and knowledge for the dismal science (economics) when we were churning out his News Sheet. Paul Murray made reference to this on 6PR recently when interviewing Cormann. Murray referred to the news letter as both ‘scurrilous’ and ‘devastating to opponents.’

It was and some of the entries had the initial JE at the end of them as he encouraged me to contribute to the publication but not the economic material.

Perhaps it was appropriate he and Benaud died on the same day. Benaud was a no frills commentator, the master of the pause and the enigmatic smile. He expected co-commentators to be able to express their views and not just be a clone. For that Benaud earned respect.

As for Walsh, he too left his staff to do their own thing and he never dictated how they should think or act. He was helpful and supportive to me in the years I had dealings with him. I do not pretend we remained close after I left his employ. In fact after he became the Federal Resources Minister (1983-4) I never saw him again, apart from a brief meeting at a Merredin funeral, some years ago.

Not long after he became a minister I finished my involvement with the ALP, totally disillusioned, and today’s crop of Labor nonentities simply fills me with despair.

But I respected ‘Walshie’ because he earned it by performance and example, not demanding it or by abusing his position like so many of them do. He was frugal, low key and modest. He also appreciated different views. In fact when Gough was challenged for the leadership Walsh supported the challenger, Bill Hayden, who lost by two votes. Hayden eventually succeeded Whitlam, unopposed, after the second election debacle of 1977.

I supported, Gough in that 1976 ALP leadership battle, although obviously I had no vote (it is only recently that financial members of the ALP can vote for the federal parliamentary leader). However, few, if any political bosses would allow a young staffer to write in support of a candidate that they in fact were voting against.

But Walshie did. He was that sort of bloke.

As a minister from 1983-90, the last six in Finance, he was a no frills, workaholic with a manic determination to cut out waste. Keating called him Sid Vicious.  Piggy Withers had been known as the toe cutter but Walshie often wanted to excise the whole leg!

Walsh was pro-development and accordingly had no time for the Greens and their shonky arguments on anything from mining to climate change.

As Mathias Cormann noted he never left anyone wondering what he stood for and his instincts were usually good.

For those of you of faith who believe in heaven and are wondering how Peter Walsh and Malcolm Fraser could be in such a place together my answer is simple: Fraser won’t be there!

‘Walshie’ would certainly have approved of that comment.