By Mike Carlton
Poor old Peter Reith. Never quite knew what was going on. Always in the dark. Why, back in 1998, as John Howard's workplace relations minister, he was astounded to hear that serving defence personnel would be trained as scab wharfies in Dubai to break the maritime dispute.
And no, he'd been given no hint whatever of the rottweilers and balaclava'd goons sooled onto the docks to enforce the lockout.
In 2000, all bewildered innocence, he learned of a $50,000 bill on his government phone card, at least $1000 of that racked up by his son.
A year later, he was flabbergasted again when the Defence brass told him that evil boat people had not actually tossed their kiddies overboard from SIEV 4. ''Well, we'd better not see the video then,'' he cried in shock.
Then, just last weekend, the poor chap believed he had Tony Abbott's support as federal president of the Liberal Party, only to find the stuntman voting, almost ostentatiously, for his rival, Alan Stockdale. Gobsmacked again. He must have missed that famous confession to Kerry O'Brien, that you should always get an Abbott promise in writing.
Believing now that his leader's duplicity has released him from some vow of silence, Reith says he will publicly campaign for industrial relations reform, perhaps setting up yet another Melbourne ''think tank'' to advance the cause.
We know what this means: WorkChoices Mk2. Reform, in Reithspeak, is code for the crushing of trade unions and the industrial courts, abolition of the workers' right to bargain, sweated labour in the dark satanic mills, 13-year-olds toiling 60 hours a week down coal mines, a return to blackbirding on the Queensland cane fields.
The political puzzle is, why now? With WorkChoices thrown overboard and replaced by Labor's Fair Work Act, the industrial landscape has never been so tranquil.
The ACTU has vanished from the headlines; if you don't believe me, try to name its president and secretary.
There hasn't been a strike in ages, let alone a red-ragging revolution for the smashing of Capitalism and the triumph of the proletariat.
And best of all, at a time of virtually full employment there has not been a wages breakout to fuel inflation and smother productivity.
It doesn't come much better than this. Yet Reith and his fellow high Tory ideologues soldier on regardless, still fighting the industrial wars of the 19th century.
These days, all the noise is coming from the top-hatted capitalists bellyaching about how tough they are doing it. The racket is deafening.
We began the year with the likes of the retailers Gerry Harvey and Solly Lew - he of Coles Myer and the famous Yannon transaction - shouting that the internet was killing them and demanding that everyone pay GST on everything bought overseas.
The big miners, having successfully seen off both Kevin Rudd and his Resource Super Profits Tax, now keep up a drumbeat of outrage at its replacement, the Minerals Resource Rent Tax.
And the wicked carbon tax, of course. Not a day goes by without Rio Tinto's Tom Albanese, BHP's Marius Kloppers or Andrew ''Twiggy'' Forrest warning of national ruin if they pay a cent more tax than they feel is fair and proper.
At times this posturing rockets to new heights of absurdity, as with Gina Rinehart's funding of the latest visit of that loopy British climate denier, Lord Munchausen.
James Packer, meanwhile, pronounces that Julia Gillard is ''anti-business'', because, oh horror, the government's poker machine reforms might slug him $300 million a year when he is struggling to run a corporate jet and a mega-yacht or two.
Then we have the insensate fury of Big Tobacco. Corporate drug-dealers with the back-alley morals of Al Capone, their latest standover trick, from Philip Morris, is to sue for billions from the federal government if plain packaging laws get up.
Adding to the din on the sidelines is Melbourne's mysterious Institute of Public Affairs.
This a right-wing propaganda unit which floridly describes itself as ''an independent, non-profit public policy think tank, dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of economic and political freedom''.
Independent of what, exactly? Where does the money come from to support its hordes of directors, senior fellows, research fellows, emeritus fellows and even adjunct fellows all furiously scribbling away at their reactionary tracts?
Perhaps the IPA's executive director, John Roskam, could demonstrate his commitment to public debate by revealing who his sponsors are.
If they are not Big Miners, Big Tobacco and the top end of Collins St, he could always say so.
This weekend will be the last that Allan Grant ''Angus'' Houston goes to bed with the fear that an early morning phone call will be to tell him of another digger dead in Afghanistan.
On Monday, he hangs up his four-star uniform as Chief of the Defence Force and retires after 41 years of service in the RAAF and to the nation.
His story is remarkable: the lanky kid from Scotland who emigrated here in 1968 at the age of 21, with just a few dollars to his name, rose to the summit of his chosen career, the profession of arms.
As you will know, your columnist is not given to splashing lavish praise around but in all my years in this trade I have not met a public figure of such integrity and decency. In the grubby milieu of Canberra and Defence politics, he shone like polished steel. It was Houston, remember, then acting Defence chief, who told the aforementioned Reith, at the height of the 2001 election campaign, that he could no longer get away with the children overboard scam. That the truth should come out.
His greatest strength was his humanity. I know for a fact that he genuinely shared the bereavement of every Australian family that lost a boy at war. Their pain was his, and he had the moral courage to show it. The ADF will miss him.
The new chief, General David Hurley, is a good man, too. With big boots to fill.
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