Fri, 15. October 2010
Life in an MP's Office
Shortly after I migrated to Australia, I joined the Young Liberals and became interested in politics, which later led me to become the campaign Publicity Director for a candidate for the House of Representatives. The Candidate lived on the other side of Sydney and after winning pre-selection he planned to move into the electorate without delay. True to his word, at the conclusion of the first campaign meeting a few days later he announced that he wanted to look at a particular property nearby. He asked me to accompany him to a residential street and to my horror the prospective member proceeded up the garden path of a darkened house and was about to walk around the side when I suggested to him that it might not enhance his election prospects if the neighbours called the police and they found him lurking around someone's home after 11 pm. He agreed, we beat a hasty retreat and he ended up buying a different house.
The election night six months later was the only time I ever saw the Member outwardly nervous. The count was a cliff-hanger and as his tally officer, it was a difficult time for me too. As the count progressed over the next ten days we were able to observe the preferences. We maintained a small lead and I took great pleasure in ringing him near the end of the count to let him know that he had indeed won the seat. The winning margin was a mere 56 votes! The defeated candidate was a very disgruntled cabinet minister and his speech at the subsequent poll declaration was probably the most bitter and ungracious I have ever heard in politics.
Maurice Neil MP (St George), after the declaration of the poll, December 1975. That's me lurking behind, with Joan.
I was out of work and so I had the good fortune to be recruited by the Member as his full-time Parliamentary Research Officer. It turned out to be a very hectic two years for me because he quickly developed a strong reputation for generating a massive workload and with a staff of only two (MPs now have at least double that) he was grossly understaffed - and we had no word processors or internet to make life easy in those days. The electorate office inherited from the previous member was a very poky place, lacking a tea room and poorly furnished (it was six months before I got a proper office chair). Astonishingly, the toilet was reached through a small hatch in the wall, leading through the living room of the landlady. Word of this office feature got around the party room and any MP passing through would call in and gawk at it. Fortunately basic facilities were eventually made available when the office was merged with the shop next door but it remained a very modest set up. He could have demanded better but plush accommodation would have sent the wrong message to people. To identify even more with the electorate, the Member sold his Jaguar car and bought a second hand Valiant, more in tune with his constituents.
Working in a busy electorate office of the most marginal seat in the country, with a Member I much admired, was an experience I relished but the electoral situation deteriorated when a boundary redistribution wiped out the slim 56 vote winning margin and substituted more than a two thousand vote deficit. People started to deride the Member as a probable 'oncer' but he just dug in and worked even harder.
During this first term I recall going to an important political debate in Opposition Leader (and ex-PM) Gough Whitlam's electorate of Werriwa, in which the Member was to represent Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. We discussed his approach to the meeting and agreed that the audience was likely to be hostile. With nothing to lose I thought he should use it as practice for the upcoming election and attack Whitlam's credibility. This he proceeded to do so well that he won over the audience and gained the admiration of the representatives of all other parties in the debate. Afterwards, a somewhat stunned Gough Whitlam approached us and after shaking our hands, proceeded to indulge in the usual small-talk as if nothing had happened. However, I left with the feeling that he would not forget this humiliation on his own patch.
Sure enough, a few months later, the MP for Grayndler, Gough's son Tony Whitlam, was preselected to represent the ALP against the Member. It seemed Gough intended to get his own back by engineering the defeat of the Member in a very personal way by getting his son to give him a hiding. He already had a notional two thousand votes plus majority. He couldn't fail, could he? Well, the Member had other ideas. He had improved his reputation and enhanced his credibility since the last election and when the next election came, we both reasoned his re-election chances were quite strong. He was returned with a majority of 2665 (despite the adverse redistribution) and it was Gough's son who became the 'oncer'.
I resigned my full-time employment at this point to resume my career as an engineer but I remained as his campaign Publicity Director and I was flattered when he told me that if he won a place in the Ministry I could have any job in his ministerial office that I wanted. I privately doubted if I would have such confidence in myself if the situation had actually arisen.
It was not to be. The political climate changed and things did not go so well leading up to the third election. The Federal Budget was announced two months before polling day and I recall saying privately to the Member on the phone the next morning that it contained nothing whatsoever he could sell to voters in a marginal seat. I said that I felt that Prime Minister Fraser was prepared to sacrifice some of his huge majority. There was no doubt that seats were about to be lost and that his could easily be one of them. The campaign finances were not as strong as in the past two elections. To make matters worse the defeated previous member returned after a five year absence, to run a very strong campaign - which included a persistent whispering campaign of personal attacks on the Member.
As tally officer for the third time, it was my duty on this occasion to inform the Member early on election night that he had lost his seat in the House of Representatives. It was a sad occasion and my only consolation in the ensuing period was that when formally handing the seat back to the former member at the poll declaration, the outgoing Member's concession speech (unlike the bitter outburst of his opponent five years earlier) was modest, congratulatory and statesman-like.
The Member's name is Maurice Neil QC. He won the seat of St George in 1975 & 1977 and lost it in 1980 (by 6909 votes). Looking back, I found it one of life's big disappointments that he never re-entered Parliament again. I know he would have had a brilliant political career if he had.
See my astronomy images on my website: http://home.exetel.com.au/greybeard/Index.htm