Loose Lips An Occupational Hazard For Ambitious MPs

by Annabel Crabb - Sydney Morning Herald

On the day after the December 1, 1984, federal election, John Howard's home phone rang. Hard of hearing even as a much younger man, Howard thought - when he answered the device - that he heard the caller identify himself as Peter Reith.

So he was absolutely comfortable in the belief that he was talking to an ally when he proceeded to unload an extremely frank assessment of Andrew Peacock, the then Liberal leader who had just led Howard and his colleagues to an election defeat at the hands of an in-form Bob Hawke.

"I don't think Andrew is ever going to be prime minister," Howard told his enthralled listener.

"He has some fundamental weaknesses … We don't really know what he stands for."

Howard at the time was not only shadow treasurer, he was deputy leader to Peacock and thus obliged - notionally, at the very least - to provide a bit of backup to his immediate superior.

"Are you intending to challenge?" squeaked the inevitable question through Howard's handset.

"What do you think I should do?" asked the interested Howard.

At which point, it became clear that a significant misunderstanding was afoot.

The caller was not, in fact, Peter Reith but Peter Rees, Canberra correspondent for Melbourne's Sun News-Pictorial.

You can imagine the conversation that ensued.

Eventually Rees consented, in view of Howard's legitimate disability, not to publish the remarks immediately (he reserved the right to publish an account in the event that a challenge did arise). He maintained the agreement in the face of sore provocation.

Imagine what he must have thought on September 3, 1985, for instance, when Howard issued this statement: "I am not plotting. I have not been plotting. I have not drawn up lists of shadow ministers. I have not made any approaches to people."

Two days later, on September 5, Howard successfully deposed his leader and Rees published his story.

It is interesting to note that Howard, having been the recipient of considerable clemency from Rees in 1984, showed none to Peacock three years later when the "Colt from Kooyong" was caught in his own unfortunate telephonic bungle.

Peacock's crime was to be the recipient of a vintage Jeff Kennett rant, conducted on a car phone in March 1987, in which Kennett described his latest conversation with the federal Liberal leader.

JK: And I said to him, 'Tomorrow, I'm going to bucket the whole lot of you'.

AP: No! Don't do that, Jeffrey.

JK: Hold your flow. I said, 'Tomorrow John' and he said, 'I know where your sympathies lie', and I said, 'I couldn't give a f---, I have no sympathies any more. You're all a pack of shits and tomorrow I'm going berserk'.

The excellent australianpolitics.com website, bless it, has a full transcript of that memorable conversation, if you're over 18.

The conversation was captured by a scanner and reported in full by the Sun.

Howard's response was to sack Peacock summarily from the front bench, for disloyalty.

The curse of the telephone remained dormant for a further 13 years until, in 2000, it returned to wreak vicious damage upon Peter Reith, who was forced to repay $50,000 in phone bills after lending his parliamentary phone card to his son, who in turn loaned it to everybody he knew.

But that is a digression.

I heard the Rees/Reith story from Rees himself, in 2000, when he was good enough to deliver the full, dramatised performance (all roles played by Rees) at his farewell party as he departed the press gallery to write his biography of Tim Fischer.

It's one of the gallery's great and widely told anecdotes; a tale sparkling with misfortune, hubris and farce.

But it hasn't been reported in a newspaper, according to my research, since 1987, which is why I exhume it today; welcome to another of the secret codes of journalism, which is that anything 20 years old can safely be recycled.

What lessons are there in it this week, apart from "use carrier pigeons wherever possible"?

That it is not unusual for politicians to talk endlessly and obsessively about themselves and each other, and to formulate grand and sweeping plans that do not necessarily immediately eventuate.

That the Subprime Minister, Peter Costello, is not the only bistro warrior in Australian politics.

That journalists often have to make difficult choices.

Enter your search terms

This Site Web Submit search form