AND THAT’S IT

And so another year bites the dust.

For many people, including this journalist, as a year closes one image epitomises the 12 months that have just sped by.

For me it is an image of Mark Latham. A man radically (even rashly) chosen by the Federal Opposition a year ago last week to replace Simon Crean and stop The Bomber from having another shot at The Lodge. He got up by one vote after Crean vented his spleen and supported an ABB (anybody but Beazley) campaign.

Latham’s year went from “promise to putrid”. He lost the 2004 federal election with Labor’s worst primary vote in about eighty years – handed the Coalition control of the Senate for the first time in more than two decades -- and at year’s end increasingly looked like a dead man walking. At best a rabbit with startled eyes trapped in the headlights. A man truly in denial.

On 3AW recently, in our first interview since the rout, I asked Latham when he knew he had lost. He took so long to respond that I thought the line had dropped out.

His version is that he knew the night before the election that he would not win it. That John Howard would be returned for the fourth time and be set on an historic path to become the second longest serving Prime Minister in Australian history.

I disagreed. I watched Latham at the National Press Club several days before polling day and he looked like a punch drunk fighter just going through the motions. To be cruel this was a dead political fish. The eyes flat, expressionless, beaten.

As Monty Python would say: this is a dead parrot. And it started with such zest and zeal for a party prepared to take a huge risk to break a three-time losing streak.

Since the drubbing (which even John Howard could not have truly expected to be of such magnitude) Latham has been subjected to such opprobrium from his own party and even party leaders that he must feel gutted. It reminded me of the old mafia line: we catch and kill our own.

Meanwhile “little Johnny Howard” strides the international stage. Four consecutive election victories under his belt. Talking to George W. in Chile last week and then on to Laos this week. This month he overtakes Bob Hawke as the second longest serving PM this country has ever seen. He’s still out there power walking – but not power sharing – and Andrew Peacock (his supposed nemesis) is in hospital having bypass surgery. What was that about “Lazarus with a triple bypass”? Is this a soap opera or what?

In his heart of hearts Mark Latham knows he will never be Prime Minister. Peter Costello may be thinking the same thing. Howard aint going nowhere. The PM has adroitly felt this country’s pulse.

Several days ago we saw Howard and Latham on TV. The PM was cocky, making jokes and cricket analogies when seemingly “bowled a googly” about the sale of Telstra. Latham on Sky TV, interviewed in the Caucus room, clutched the arms of his chair as if it were electric.

So that was 2004 for me. I have just re-signed with 3AW for three more years to do the Drive programme. If you allow some end of year indulgence:

One awesome experience for me in 2004 was your response to a virtually impromptu rally that I organised on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House. It was prompted by judges’ decisions to let two rapists walk free. With only a couple of days notice I did not know whether fifty or 500 people would turn up. On that Sunday morning I returned from a Make A Wish fundraiser in Shepparton. The car rounded the corner into Spring Street and couldn’t go any further. Ten thousand people filled the steps and spilled out to block the road. It was raw, angry, concerned people power.

We had a few campaigns and a few scoops. One of the fastest was not even on my own programme. It was on Sports Today. Only six minutes after Lewis Moran was shot dead I called on air to identify him as the latest gang war victim.

There were some entertaining underworld calls. Carl Williams phoned in to attack me. Couldn’t answer a tough question so he hung up. But he called back, pretending the line had dropped out.

I was pretty tough on the gangsters’ molls as well. Roberta Williams complained to journalists that she was “sick of all this shit”. I think I said that when you live in a sewer that’s what you get. “And Roberta you are a piece of it”.

And then there was Wendy Peirce. She called up to protest after I called her a gangster’s moll and a slag. She threatened to sue for defamation until I pointed out she had no reputation to destroy. He response: “If I saw you in the street I wouldn’t spit on you”. My response: “I wouldn’t pee on you if your teeth were on fire”.

But there were good people too. Like listeners who donated money for more than 1100 Christmas bikes for disadvantaged kids in our 3AW-Variety Club Bikeathon.

And there was the David Hookes tragedy and the ensuing internecine warfare inside my own radio station. A new book called Keeping it Real by Darren Berry and a headline-creating court case have, I believe, confirmed the truth of my stand. Not that I ever felt I needed confirmation.

I am off to New York and Los Angeles to do more research on a new book about Australian journalism which will be published next year by HardieGrant. It is called “Human Headlines – My 45 Years as a Frontline Journalist.” It will include interviews with some of the most famous Australian journos around the world.

People like Steve Dunleavy and Desmond Zwar and Bruce Wilson and Ross Mark. And, obviously some personal observations about some of the interviews I have done over the years. I was going to call it “Famous People Who Have Met Me”. Only joking.

Have a safe and meaningful festive season with family and friends. If you drink don’t drive. Thank your mother for the rabbits.

December 5, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004