A great friend and mentor to me as the young Parliamentary Reporter for The Courier-Mail;: Give me one good fact, he used to boast, and on it I can build an edifice of assumption. Tom was a master of Parliamentary oratory and good humour. More about him in future..
1950s Queensland Premier Ned Hanlon
Giving kind advice to me as a young reporter, standing on the floor of the House ; “Look son, who do you think MPs are talking to in Parliament? Each other? No way. Son, they’re talking to you up there in the Press Gallery.” And so it still is.
Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Labor and Liberal Prime Ministers
You couldn’t imagine two more different men. Interviewing them was difficult for a short-arse like me. Both were giants. I like to look my interviewee direct in the eyes but, standing, my eye level was somewhere between their navels and nipples. My neck still has a kink.
Gough was much loved by reporters. He was elegant and a lot of fun, with an imaginative, embracing and captivating mind. Fraser was an Easter Island statue but with a surprisingly encouraging heart – his Ministers were terrified of him. On many an occasion at conferences, Ministers would leave ashen-faced, and in a hurry, when they got the PM’s call. Only John Bourchier, then Chief Government Whip, who used to run the Bendigo timber yards was uncowed. Timber man through and through.
Sir Paul Hasluck, External Affairs Minister and Governor General
The most impressive man of my time for his intellectual gifts, his great drive and energy and his implacable demands for competent departmental briefings. And beneath that austere exterior some memorable poetry with the Walt Whitman touch to it, that American sense of expansiveness. My favourite lines:
Oh give us your hand,
Digger dingo, sandgroper,
Old fossicker, swaggie,
Cow cockie, sheep chaser,
Mullock shoveller, crow eater,
Boundary ride and farm hand,
For Chrissake, don’t sing but give us your hand.
Digger dingo, sandgroper,
Old fossicker, swaggie,
Cow cockie, sheep chaser,
Mullock shoveller, crow eater,
Boundary ride and farm hand,
For Chrissake, don’t sing but give us your hand.
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