Out of Their Brains
I came to see Craig Emerson’s performance of Whyalla Wipeout without any warning of the full, ahem, horror of what I was about to witness. The TEAC portable cd player pre-loaded with Best of Skyhooks and D-size batteries. The oh-so-long introduction. The dawning realisation. The awkward bobbing and weaving. Head cupped in hands. The seriousness and focus of Emerson preparing for his moment. Then, as if trying to shed himself of the embarrassment, the rushed delivery skipping ahead of Shirl’s vocals. A premature ejaculation from a virgin political stuntman. Then the shame. Oh, the shame.
This was no spontaneous bit of cutting loose done with a sense of comic timing and a knowing look in the eye. No Costello taking the piss out of Garrett’s shift in political ideology with a quick mimic of the frontman’s dancing style on the floor of the House. Not even Hockey being cajoled into doing something about Shrek. It was like Gordon Brown doing stand-up comedy. In a mankini. Pre-meditated, rehearsed, intense, poorly delivered, excruciating and lonely. No audience to bounce off, just one politician, a reporter, a cameraman and a portable cd player.
Horror movie on my TV indeed. Emerson is a smart guy and I’m sure the irony is not lost on him.
Being the empathetic soul that I am, my body involuntarily writhed in the most intense discomfort imaginable as Labor’s most switched-on policy wonk trashed his political credibility. No longer will Emerson be remembered as the bloke in Labor who always pursued the case for economic rationalism against his party’s many protectionist numpties, a breed that amazingly still exists in the party that did so much to reform the Australian economy in the 1980’s. Nor will he be remembered as the brainiest bloke on the team who generally got shafted by those better at the game of internal party politics. He will not even be remembered as the guy who was once on the most intimate terms possible with Julia – and that is looking like a good legacy by comparison with where things are now.
No, Craig Emerson has sacrificed his dignity for his inept and desperate political masters, just so he could be one of the team. Except none of his mates were out there with him doing the performing monkey schtick. It’s like the nerd in school being convinced to humiliate himself in front of the pretty girls just so he would be allowed to keep his lunch money. He’ll never live it down and his colleagues will not think he’s cool as the true awfulness of the whole spectacle is replayed over and over again, not least of all during the next federal election campaign.
Some people will argue that this was not the most dreadful media stunt ever executed in Australian political history. “No, you naïve fools”, they will say, “it is a political masterstroke that changed the national conversation away from the negative effects of the carbon tax to Tony Abbott’s propensity for exaggeration and fear mongering”. These people are too clever by half and could not be more wrong. The Whyalla Wipout does not change the national conversation. It just makes the government look like a bunch of buffoons who are so desperate they believe the electorate are stupid enough to be manipulated by such rubbish. It is a moment (there may be more) when people who might have been prepared to reconsider their shift away from Labor say, “these guys have lost the farking plot and I have no choice but to vote for that Abbott bloke even though he makes my skin crawl”.
The stupidity of Labor strategists never fails to disappoint, or uplift, depending on your political persuasion. Labor has a valid point to make about Abbott. He takes well justified policy positions and turns them into warnings about the end of the world unless the government is turfed out yesterday. As misguided and damaging as the carbon tax is as a policy reform, time and patience will bear out the unsustainable political strategy that Abbott is pursuing in promising the end of humanity. Time caught up with Rudd and his undeliverable promises and so they should with an already unlikeable Abbott and his predictions of doom. Yet he we are, Tony Abbott fronting the press and lecturing Labor on the need to behave like adults. The capacity for panic and misjudgment from Labor never fails to amaze. For so long Gillard has rightly talked down the cynics and panic merchants in her party by emphasising the importance of playing the political long game. And then we get Whyalla Wipeout, which undermines the crucial consistency of strategy that Labor has failed to master ever since coming to power, a five year long error that will ultimately cost it government next year.
I will remember Emerson’s important contribution to fighting the good fight in a party of economic amateurs. Most will remember being bewildered out of their brains by a government that has never understood how to talk to Australians.
By Andrew Bomm
