verging_on_random

Pollies meeting crims

Sometimes I wonder if some members of the general public understand how politicians spend their time. Maybe they imagine that your typical pollie wakes up and goes to parliament house where they devote the day to reading draft bills, making representations on behalf of constituents, writing speeches, participating in debates and so on.

Someone should tell these innocent souls that pollies now have paid staff to do all these things for them, well except for the debates bit and not many of them bother to sit there while anyone else is talking. No, pollies spend hours and hours every day doing one thing:

Meeting people.

They have one-on-one meetings in their offices. The receive delegations of voters who want to whine about something or other. If they’re ministers or even shadow ministers, they could probably eat six or seven times a day if they accepted all the invitations they get to breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Actually if you look at some of them they accept a few too many invitations like that. Plus cocktail parties of course … if you like a drink, politics is one of the best occupations to aim for.

The purpose of all these gatherings is for the pollie to meet people. The people usually have something they want to tell him or her, often they have a pet project they want to promote or a strong view they want to get off their chests. Pollies have to put up with it because the cumulative impact of all the tiny individual impressions that they make when dealing with groups becomes the public image that determines whether or not they get re-elected, promoted, appointed to high office. They also value the chance to make potentially helpful contacts, gather useful information, and get a feel for the mood of the masses.

Lobbyists are good at arranging opportunities for groups to meet pollies. I know, I used to be one. In a previous life in Sydney I’ve organised breakfasts with Bob Carr, dinners with Laurie Brereton, lunches with John Howard, chats in his office with Andrew Peacock … I’ve arranged dozens of the things. They served a useful purpose for everyone involved at the time. I can’t remember now what most of them were about and I’m sure most of the pollies involved couldn’t either.

That’s the business of politics … meeting and greeting and listening, and trying to gather a handful of wheat every day from the bales of chaff. The notion that pollies use these occasions to ‘do deals’ is pure fantasy. Sheer delusion, probably the result of watching too much television.

Needless to say this little reflection was prompted by the hilarious uproar about Kevin Rudd attending the same function as Brian Burke on three occasions in 2005. Most attention seems to be on a dinner attended by about 30 business people and apparently organised by Burke. I can readily visualise it. Burke would have used it to entice a few business people who didn’t especially want anything to do with him but were interested in meeting Rudd. Burke would have spent the night working on them to get whatever he wanted in the way of information or a closer relationship or whatever.

The rest of the people there would have been attracted by vague curiousity to meet Rudd, or a particular wish to forge a relationship with someone who might be Foreign Minister one day … a few probably just wanted to have a night out on the piss with the boys and Rudd was a convenient excuse. But if you’re running a resources company exporting into China, it’s handy if the next Foreign Minister can put a face to your name when you need to talk to the government about something. People mightn’t like the fact that the system works that way but tough, it does. Any pollie who doesn’t want to play the game should migrate to a one party state, or join Family First.

The idea that Rudd would have sat down with Burke at a dinner of business people and canvassed support for a leadership challenge against Beazley is not just silly, it also betrays rank ignorance about how these affairs work in practice. The whole evening would have been at a very light and general level of discussion, especially as the night wore on because in my experience most of these functions feature a lot of booze on the part of most attending apart from the guest of honour*. After dinner Rudd would have been invited to say a few words, he would have given a version of the standard informal talk that he used for these occasions, he would have invited a few people with specific issues to write to him or contact his office later and that would have been it. When he says he doesn’t recall what was discussed I bet he’s telling the truth. It would be remarkable if he could.

I’m sure there was a lot of heavy wheeling and dealing within the Labor Party to get the Rudd/Gillard team elected, just like you see in the Penrith Panthers or the local church tennis club or any other organisation where people covet an office that can only be obtained by means of an election. But if people think these kinds of things are sorted out in public, with the participants making explicit deals, they’re very naive.

…

*There are exceptions. I remember one night a pollie cancelled out as a dinner guest at the last moment (always a risk at these affairs - anybody who had Ian Campbell lined up as an official dinner guest this week will probably be spewing) and I got Norman ‘Nugget’ May, the sports commentator, as a substitute from one of those agencies that hire speakers out. Nugget was a bit cranky during the meal because the waiter wasn’t quick enough to fill his glass up. Eventually he demanded that the waiter leave the bottle, followed not long after by another bottle. Then he got up and delivered a most polished, amusing talk about his life in sport, after which he sat down and got stuck into another bottle.

I’m not bad on the red myself, but not in the same class as Nugget. Not even close.