Tom Aikens’ White Bullock trick

Tom Aikens, Far North Queensland loco driver, and NQLP member for Mundingurra (Townsville) in the 1950s and 60s was a brilliant Parliametnary orator. He had two implacable techniques:

1. Interjectors threatening to disrupt a meeting had to be squashed at all costs, whether by ridicule, pretended anger, any form of character assassination short of legal defamation, or sheer brazen impertinence.

This exchange took place in 1922 at an angry miner’s meeting protesting at Mt Isa’s then appalling water supply

“It’s all bloody right for you politicians to come out here and tell us what great blokes you are but you’re living on champagne, pork and chicken and we’re out here without a drop of water, dying like frogs.”

The retort - “ Well, you’ve still got a croak in you anyway” - brought the meeting to an abrupt end with flying fists and exiting bodies (From “A Majoriity of One” by Ian Moles QUP)

2. The White Bullock Trick. – An audience like the “white bullock” in the slaughter yard who led reluctant beasts up the race on to the floor when the knocker-down waiting to hit them on the head with a sledge hammer, could fairly be led up to, but not beyond, the farthest limits of gullibility. For Tom is was a variation of his old headmaster’s advice, “never tell a lie if somebody can prove it to be a lie.”