Raising a glass while they can

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This was published 13 years ago

Raising a glass while they can

By Tony Wright

Our leaders are holding traditional end-of-year drinks for the press gallery, but only a fool would predict who might be throwing the parties next year.

JULIA Gillard will have the press gallery over to The Lodge next week for the traditional end-of-year drinks. The ritual signals the final week of a year's parliamentary sittings, entree to the festive season and the long healing weeks of summer. Journalists look forward to it, not only because it means the beginning of a period when parliamentarians won't be buzzing around Canberra, getting in the way of al fresco luncheon arrangements as the weather warms.

The party at The Lodge has long produced memorable and sometimes bizarre moments. Bob Hawke was much given to challenging his favoured journos to a marathon at the billiards table upstairs and refusing to let them go until he had won. There were nights that clicked along till dawn.

Paul Keating wasn't at all keen to have the lizards of the press trooping through The Lodge or even its grounds. He had the gardeners plant a Californian redwood plumb in the centre of the lawn, ensuring the marquee that had long been the venue for the end-of-year festivities couldn't be erected. Instead, Keating took to inviting the scribes to the National Press Club, where he'd have a couple of beers, deliver a lecture on the error of everyone else's ways and stomp off into the night.

John Howard had the Keating redwood transplanted to some distant corner of The Lodge's garden, reinstalled the marquee and turned the beer-keg taps back on. The journos drank lustily in relief, and one year a photographer became so enthused he stripped to his underpants and performed a splendid dive-bomb into the pool. Howard was much amused - vastly more, it turned out, than his wife, Janette. The following summer, the pool was covered, nary a glimpse of its water visible to entice anyone to strip to their underpants.

To compensate, a few of the journos persuaded Howard at a subsequent party to join them in a conga line through The Lodge's downstairs living area, culminating in a session around the piano. Mrs Howard was absent on that occasion.

Last year, Kevin Rudd joined members of the press gallery in a merry game of cricket on the lawn as the evening sun filtered through the trees, drinks all round. Such a happy-go-lucky time.

Perilous times, though, the last week of a parliamentary year. Punctuation marks in the political cycle.

It is possible for those of us with long memories to recall Hawke's end-of-year party at The Lodge in 1991. He waltzed around nursing a tankard of foaming alcohol-free beer, dispensing faux bonhomie and promising an exciting 1992 with him still prime minister.

A few streets away, his most senior ministers were meeting in the knowledge that Hawke's political execution was inevitable.

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That surreal party at The Lodge was on December 18. Exactly 24 hours later, Hawke was defeated by Keating for the prime ministership.

Who could have imagined this time last year that it would be the last game of cricket on The Lodge's lawns for Kevin Rudd, and that it would be Julia Gillard hosting the shindig this year?

It was even worse for Malcolm Turnbull. Not only the prime minister, but the opposition leader holds a traditional festive occasion for the press gallery in the last week of each sitting year.

Last year it was Malcolm Turnbull who sent out invitations to the opposition leader's end-of-year party. He didn't get the chance to turn up.

The knives were out for him and the bubbles and beer went flat and stale on the parliamentary terrace as he fought vainly downstairs to hold off the gathering lynching party.

Tony Abbott, thus, will be holding the Coalition's reception for Canberra's journalists a couple of days before the knees-up at The Lodge, though his will have to be at Parliament House because he failed by a whisker to get the keys to The Lodge's cellar.

A year in Canberra is such a long time. The events of the last year are so dizzying only a fool would try to predict who might be throwing next year's parties.

Julia Gillard is in Lisbon, Portugal, this weekend to attend the NATO summit, where she will have a curious opportunity of cogitating on changing fortunes. At her side will be Australia's ambassador to NATO. His name? Brendan Nelson. Remember him? He barely had time to host a single Christmas party as opposition leader. It was December 2007 and he had been leader just a few days. By the end of 2008, he was already yesterday's man.

Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott, of course, will be able to ease their way into summer without fear that they won't see out the end of 2010 at the top.

The Labor Party, having dispensed with Rudd only a few months ago, has no taste for further blood-letting, and anyway, Gillard has just won an election, albeit by the skin of her teeth.

Abbott, against everyone's expectations, very nearly got his Coalition onto the government benches, earning for himself a substantial slab of goodwill among his colleagues.

History proves, however, that neither leader can gaze into the far distance with any measure of sanguineness, though Abbott has a measure of the luxury of standing back and letting the government make its mistakes for him.

Gillard has rather more reason to be masking a slight tremor in the hands as she passes around the drinks on Thursday evening.

Wedged between the Greens, country independents, nervous MPs to her left and simmering members from traditional working-class suburbs and regions to her right, she has struggled to give the impression that the government she leads has regained the way it said it had lost under Kevin Rudd.

In the past few days, she has allowed the one big-bang agenda item proposed by Labor - the national broadband network - to dissolve into farce.

Having spent $25 million on a business case for the NBN, the government's insistence that it can't make any of its findings public until after the Parliament votes on legislation critical to the $43 billion project sounds akin to asking a cattle breeder to buy a stud bull without any evidence that it can sire calves.

Time for a drink to the long summer break, really.

Tony Wright is national affairs editor.

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