Mood:
downTopic: big media
We've watched Paul Keating's career quite closely since about 1992. But he's been playing politics as one of the 4 amigos (Carr, Richardson, Brereton, Keating) since at least the mid 1970ies, standing next to ex PM Whitlam on his dismissal in 1975.
No comment … the Assistant Health Minister, Tony Stewart, during question time in Parliament yesterday.
Photo: Ben Rushton
Now his mate Tony Stewart, numbers man for the ALP Right, is on the skids with the nominally Left Rees Govt for some abusive treatment of a staffer. (This follows a ramp up of equity and justice claims for pollie staffers by the crikey.com.au ezine about l0 days ago.)
Both big press in Sydney are after Stewart now today in a career ending sense.
What's a guy, in this case an ex PM mover and shaker, to do? Dependent as he is on the ALP right for any number of NSW Govt sinecures? The Pineapple Mafia are runnings things for the ALP federally so no joy there.
Keating, or as we like to call him - TMCSI, The Master of Conflicted Self Interest - needs such as struggler Tony Stewart MP, chip off the old block. Needs his numbers and his favours in the future. Stewart needs the PR interference and cover, and he needs it today. Right effing now.
So the King of Political Vaudeville does "a Henson": He pulls on a highly sensitive emotionally charged topic of debate for which there are multi-factorial perspectives and issues all of which are essentially moot, and of tangential or marginal significance with a GFC, a climate package, a brown coloured US Presidential nominee. A moral panic by any other name. Where many many people of good faith but who are not so cunning or political will think it's a genuine posture by Keating that demands engagement. It's Keating at his usual highly manipulative, very corrosive, and essentially a mind f*ck waste of time by all concerned with good public policy and integrity in government.
Thus we say ABC 702 breakfast show this morning were played like a fiddle by the Keating 'Gallipoli debate' effectively running interference and cover for Tony Stewart, loyal foot soldier of the ALP Right here in Sydney. They even had a highly expensive violin on the show. And that's a pretty fair metaphor for Paul Keating, a multi million dollar, polished, squeaky fiddle.
Not for nothing, notice in the smh picture below this is the Jubilee Room in NSW Parliament where they hold estimates. It's the sandpit of the ALP Right. In attendance were several amigos Carr, Keating pictured, Brereton, honourary amigo ex Premier Neville Wran and a range of others. Plenty enough to cook up a PR gambit. It's what these folks know.
Signing up … Blanche d'Alpuget and Graham Freudenberg.
Photo: Nick Moir .
