An Election Memoir

GH on a brush with greatness

The pundits have been scathing about this election campaign; my daughter C, previously described here, has relished every moment. She has focused her laser-like gaze on the ABC seat-by-seat guide and the Australian Electoral Commission website. We have read the section 44 filings for every candidate, which disclose often surprising details of their personal lives, and are mildly obsessed with the peripatetic Queensland Senate candidate Duke Wong, who has spent $15,000 on traversing the length and breadth of his great state listening to ‘the people’, or at least dragging them into his selfies.

The last couple of days C has gone to polling stations simply to watch people vote, and to add to her flyer collection. I’ve explained to her that the secret ballot is an Australia innovation; she has memorised a list of Australian prime ministers and now asks me very hard trivia questions about them, like which Labor prime minister, after Bob Hawke, served second longest (answer below)? Today, she’s been excited to learn, she can join her grandfather in the booth to vote - he has early dementia and will need help, but cannot be accompanied by another adult. Glad to oblige! Tonight she’ll be excitedly tuning into the hate media to follow the count.

Last night, however, I momentarily floored her by mentioning that I had Gough Whitlam’s autograph - indeed, that my family had met him on the campaign trail in 1974. What’s more, I had proof. She looked sceptical, so I explained. In May of that year, my mum took my four-year-old brother Jaz and eight-year-old me for one of our budget holidays - two nights in a motel in Bendigo. The colt Peter Lalor was in the vicinity - a seven-minute drive away, it so happens - but that meeting would be staved off for another thirty-odd years. We were hunting bigger game.

It happens that Labor had been campaigning in the seat of Bendigo that same day, David Kennedy trying to unseat John Bourchier, who had unseated him in 1972 with the help of the Catholic voting bloc antagonised by his support for abortion access. We returned from our jaunt on the talking tram to find the prime minister and his brains trust ensconsed in our rather humdrum motel on View Street. It was too good an opportunity to miss. My mother took us both by the hand, strolled past the desultory security, and knocked on the door of what was evidently the prime minister’s room. Whitlam opened it, his 194cm seeming at once to fill the doorway but enquiring very solicitously how he might help. ‘I was wondering,’ my mother began, ‘whether you might sign autographs for my sons, Gideon and Jasper.’

Whitlam turned back towards an occasional table behind him and scrabbled round for some motel notepaper - remember when there was such a thing? As he bent to his task, my mother filled the silence. ‘Well, boys,’ she said to us. ‘Have a good look at your country’s leader.’ Conscious that he was presenting us with a view of the prime ministerial posterior, Whitlam commented over his shoulder: ‘It’s not exactly my best side.’ The whole transaction probably took less than a minute, but I remember it clear as day, and I promised C last night I still had the autographs - only to fret in the next breath than I wasn’t sure I knew where they were. Now where would I have put them? I read my own mind correctly: they were inside the front cover of the first volume of Jenny Hocking’s biography.

I’ve always loved this memory - it seems to capture something about the breezy familiarity of Australian democracy, where a cat may gaze upon a king. Maybe we brought the great man luck: five days later, the government was re-elected, although Bourchier won narrowly again. Anyway, vote wisely today, and I’ll detain you some other time with the story of how Malcolm Fraser’s autograph came to be inside the front cover of my 1974-5 Cricketer Annual….

Oh, and it’s Andrew Fisher!