Inside the Canberra Press Gallery: Life in the Wedding Cake of Old Parliament House

266 Pages·2011·1.152 MB·English

by  Rob Chalmers & Sam Vincent & John Wanna

INSIDE
the
CANBERRA
PRESS GALLERY
Life in the Wedding Cake of Old Parliament House

INSIDE
the
CANBERRA
PRESS GALLERY
Life in the Wedding Cake of Old Parliament House
Rob Chalmers
Edited by Sam Vincent and John Wanna
THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
E PRESS
E PRESS
Published by ANU E Press
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Email: [email protected]
This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Chalmers, Rob, 1929-2011
Title: Inside the Canberra press gallery :
life in the wedding cake of Old Parliament House / Rob Chalmers ;
edited by Sam Vincent and John Wanna.
ISBN: 9781921862366 (pbk.) 9781921862373 (ebook)
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Subjects: Australia. Parliament--Reporters and
Government and the press--Australia.
Journalism--Political aspects--
Press and politics--Australia.
Other Authors/Contributors: Vincent, Sam.
Wanna, John.
Dewey Number: 070.4493240994
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover design and layout by ANU E Press
Back cover image courtesy of Heide Smith
Printed by Griffin Press
This edition © 2011 ANU E Press
Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
1 . Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 . A Journo in Sydney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3 . Inside the Canberra Press Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4 . Menzies: The giant of Australian politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5 . Ming’s Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
6 . Parliament Disgraced by its Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
7 . Booze, Sex and God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
8 . Evatt, Splits and Garters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
9 . Out on the Hustings: Getting in the votes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
10 . Press Secretaries: Before spin doctors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
11 . The Prime Minister Disappears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
12. The Influence Seekers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
13 . The Coalition Starts to Slide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
14 . Labor Out of the Wilderness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
15 . Darkness Descends on Whitlam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
16 . A New Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
17 . New House, New Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Epilogue: Changing the game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
v

Acknowledgments
My first thanks must go to my wife, Gloria, for transcribing a number of
interviews (which sometimes, on the tape, sounded like a conversation among
illiterate, drunken professional footballers). Gloria closely edited the text many
times and picked up some howlers. So many people have assisted me that I do
not dare try to list them for fear of leaving one or more out. Generally, they are
mentioned in the text. I must give particular thanks to Senator John Faulkner,
Eric Walsh and Jeff Townsend for, among other things, passing a practised and
knowledgeable eye over the text and for some great material. Michael Delaney
was an invaluable source of much material and an instant guide to how things
worked in government. Justin Stanwix constantly nagged me to hurry up and
write the book. I drew material from many authors listed in the bibliography
and they are generally acknowledged as the source in the text. Finally, I thank
my late father, Bobby, for the care and attention he devoted to this selfish only
child during its upbringing—and my late mother, Janet, for marrying him.
Finally, I thank the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery for just being there to
join.
vii

Foreword
If the Canberra Press Gallery is an institution, Rob Chalmers was an institution
of that institution. His career spanned 60 years and 12 prime ministers, 24
federal elections and five changes of government. There is not a member of
Parliament today who can remember a Press Gallery before Rob Chalmers joined
it in early 1951, moving up from Sydney as a young journalist. As a result,
his insight was as unique as his experience. At a time when politicians and
political correspondents alike have become simply talking heads on televisions
for most Australians, scrutinised and judged on the same terms as minor (and
not very interesting) celebrities, Rob has written the story of the men and
women of the Australian Parliament and the Australian Press Gallery from the
perspective of one who knew them: knew their foibles and their frailty, knew
their strengths and weaknesses and their sometimes unexpected kindnesses.
At a time of great cynicism about the political process, not just in Australia
but around the world, this book provides an acute and timely reminder that
politicians, and the journalists who report them, are not the semi-fictionalised
figures flattened to ten second sound bites or thirty second direct-to-camera
feeds that our modern media so often makes them appear to be, but instead
are men and women frequently doing their best, and sometimes doing their
worst, in complex circumstances and faced with huge dilemmas. Arriving in
the Gallery just a few years after the Second World War, Rob had a front row
seat and a backstage pass for both dramatic political crises and subtle policy
changes for more than half-a-century, and in this book he has collected the most
memorable. His observations are pointed – there are no free passes in this book,
as there were none in Inside Canberra, the political junkie’s must-read newsletter
he published for well over 30 years – and his sharp eye and sharper pen capture
and sketch politicians from Billy Hughes to Bob Hawke and beyond. For many
of us in Parliament House, losing Rob from the Gallery corridors was very much
the end of an era. We are all lucky that he recorded so many of his experiences
– a lasting record of a time past and of an extraordinary career.
John Faulkner, September 2011
ix