In grim times like these. . .

As we toddle (slouch?fiddle?burn?) towards the end of the forgettable first term of the Rudd Labor government - time for a moment's reflection. In honour of John Clarke - who's been funnier on the subject of the miseries of Australian political life than possibly any Australian: a vaguely Clarke-Dawe style interview conducted by Marc Hiatt with one of the nation's lesser-known pundits - a man of some humour and great testiness - at about the same point in the life-cycle of the last Howard government that is now being approached by Rudd Labor mark 1.

Since Rudd's intellectual make-up people at The Monthly are about the only ones on this side of politics who could possibly toast him three years in - after the mockery of the Garnaut Review, the recent re-emergence of base populism on the question of asylum seekers and his and Julia Gillard's unstinting entirely Howardesque churning out of rhetorical sausage-meat for the equally surreal purposes of political attack and defense - three cheers instead to John Clarke and Bryan Dawe. And to a certain philosophical notion that's in the background of Marc's 2007 interview and has been richly exemplified in political reality ever since - the theory of the identity of indistinguishables. . .  

In grim times like these. . .

Marc Hiatt: Eric Timewell, obviously the topic of this interview is politics - something you claim to be an expert on.
Eric Timewell: Thank you very much.
HIATT: Dr Timewell, you're renowned for your cynicism on the topic of Australian politics. . .
TIMEWELL: It’s not cynicism, Marc, it’s “acidic scepticism”.
HIATT: Sorry, your acidic scepticism. So we’ve invited you in to cheer us all up tonight, and maybe enlighten us, given the miserable state we socially concerned people are in 11 years into the reign of the Coalition government.
TIMEWELL: I’ll see what I can do there.
HIATT: Can you start maybe by giving me an indication where you stand on John Howard.
TIMEWELL: Beg your pardon.
HIATT: Thinking about national politics - where do you stand on John Howard.
TIMEWELL: Who?
HIATT: John Howard!
TIMEWELL: Sorry, I’m drawing a blank there.
HIATT: You don’t know who John Howard is?
TIMEWELL: For the time being, no, I don’t want to buy Qantas either, Marc, no.
HIATT: Dr Timewell, please think for a minute. The current prime minister of Australia – who is it?
TIMEWELL: It’s not Alfred Deakin. . .
HIATT: No.
TIMEWELL: Noel Coward?
HIATT: No.
TIMEWELL: John Hunt?
HIATT: I think you know who I’m talking about, Dr Timewell.
TIMEWELL: I know, John Wayne.
HIATT: No, it’s not John Wayne.
TIMEWELL: Can I phone a friend?
HIATT: Absolutely not.
TIMEWELL: You know, the Los Angeles Times used to think it was John Hunt.
HIATT: They’re from California.
TIMEWELL: Some of them think Australia should be towed into Southern Ocean and used as a nuclear waste dump.
HIATT: But Doctor!
TIMEWELL: Where were we? Oh, that’s right - John Howard.
HIATT: Are we on the same page?
TIMEWELL: (pause) Maybe.
HIATT: Do you think Australia is rising, Dr Timewell?
TIMEWELL: No, I don’t think there’s going to be an uprising in Australia.
HIATT: No, I mean. . .
TIMEWELL: Marc, Australians like watching telly much too much for there ever to be any sort of uprising.
HIATT: I said do you think Australia is – rising.
TIMEWELL: What’s that meant to mean?
HIATT: Mr Howard said in his speech to the Queensland Press Club the other day that Australia was rising.
TIMEWELL: What?!
HIATT: That’s right, he said we’re rising.
TIMEWELL: Like a cake in the oven?
HIATT: He said we need to foster – I’m quoting him now – foster a rising Australia that can prosper in a fast-changing world. Let me try and get the intonation right - a ri-sing Australia that can prosper in a fast-changing world.
TIMEWELL: A rising Australia? Australia isn’t some sort of hovercraft, Marc. What does he mean by that?
HIATT: That’s what I’m asking you.
TIMEWELL: What’s the context. It probably makes more sense in context.
HIATT: (slowly, as if labouring under heavy delusions) “Our abiding national challenge is a rising economic tide that lifts all boats. . . That is a calling for our time and for all time.”
TIMEWELL: (pause) The meaning of that is not immediately perspicuous to me, Marc.
HIATT: No idea? Rising tide? Lift all boats?
TIMEWELL: There does seem to be some sort of underlying theme of . . . tides and, maybe . . . hovercraft.
HIATT: How about this one: “The best kept secret of the Australian achievement is our national sense of balance. The national sense of balance is the handmaiden of national growth and renewal.”
TIMEWELL: The hand-what of national growth?
HIATT: The handmaiden.
TIMEWELL: (irritably) What’s that supposed to mean?
HIATT: That’s what I’m asking you.
TIMEWELL: Handmaiden or handtowel did he say?
HIATT: Handmaiden.
TIMEWELL: I’m not sure about any of that.
HIATT: No idea?
TIMEWELL: What is a handmaiden exactly, anyway? Do you know?
HIATT: Not exactly, do you?
TIMEWELL: I could take a guess. Is it some sort of serving girl who hands you a handtowel?
HIATT: Could be.
TIMEWELL: I didn’t think we had those any more. What else has he got?
HIATT: There’s a lot about balance. “What helps us keep our balance?”
TIMEWELL: It’s something to do with the inner ear, isn’t it?
HIATT: No, this is from Howard. “What helps us keep our balance?”
TIMEWELL: “What helps us keep our balance?” - question mark.
HIATT: Yes. “What helps us keep our balance?”
TIMEWELL: “What helps us keep our balance?” - he asks rhetorically.
HIATT: What helps us keep our balance, he asks rhetorically, yes. This is what he says. (slowly) “To me, it’s no secret. It’s economic growth leavened always by Australian common sense.”
TIMEWELL: “leavened”?!
HIATT: Yes, “leavened”.
TIMEWELL: (pause, in contemplative wonder) There is a touch of the carrot cake about his vision for Australia, isn’t there. Ha-ha.
HIATT: So what does it mean?
TIMEWELL: This isn’t a trick question, is it?
HIATT: No.
TIMEWELL: I mean, these aren’t all trick questions are they?
HIATT: No.
TIMEWELL: Questions of meaning have a horrible way of turning out to be trick questions – know what I mean?
HIATT: Hm.
TIMEWELL: Read it again.
HIATT: “What helps us keep our balance? To me, it’s no secret. It’s economic growth, leavened always by Australian common sense.”
TIMEWELL: (pause) Does he maybe mean something more like “leveraged”. As in “economic growth, leveraged by Australian common sense”. You see, the particular metaphor the political animal usually grasps for in these situations – after he’s done with his metaphors of growth and fecundity – is a metaphor of the economy as a piece of machinery, a lovely glistening metallic set-up which is very good at doing things.
HIATT: There’s nothing about a glistening metallic set-up in here.
TIMEWELL: Look, Marc, my guess is it’s basically hot air.
HIATT: Is that the best you can do?
TIMEWELL: It appears to be the best John Howard can do, Marc.
HIATT: Deeper interpretations?
TIMEWELL: He doesn’t say the economy is fungible does he?
HIATT: Fungible?
TIMEWELL: Yes.
HIATT: No, he doesn’t say anything about fungible.
TIMEWELL: I’ve never known what fungible meant. Sounds like something the economy might be. Also sounds like a foot disease.
HIATT: Shall we move on?
TIMEWELL: Let's.
HIATT: Ok then, what do you make of the performance of the Leader of the Opposition?
TIMEWELL: Who? (pulls face of tortured incomprehension)
HIATT: The Leader of the Opposition.
TIMEWELL: Marc, we’ve been talking about John Howard for the past 10 minutes.Think of something else for us to talk about - go on.
HIATT: That’s what I’m saying, let’s talk about Mr Rudd.
TIMEWELL: Marc there are serious people in the audience. I’m not going to sit here and indulge one of your fantasies about an android from Queensland who’s colonised the body of a man as boring as John Howard so he can promote the ideological agenda of the actual John Howard.
HIATT: You have no idea who Kevin Rudd is. . .
TIMEWELL: Marc, you’re just being hysterical. John Howard this, John Howard that.
HIATT: Dr Timewell, how long are you going to keep this up? KEVIN RUDD.
TIMEWELL: John Who? Marc, don’t scream. You may be petrified of barely human beings impersonating John Howard, but let me just point out - you have not been visited by aliens, you have not been sexually abused by a rogue Christian from the right wing of the ALP, and you are not about to experience the Australian version of the Rapture.
HIATT: Mr Rudd’s been talking about it as if it was going to happen in Canberra just after the election.
TIMEWELL: What?
HIATT: The Australian version of the Rapture.
TIMEWELL: Look, if any sort of full eschatological-style Rapture is going to happen anywhere, it’s not going to happen in Canberra.
HIATT: You must have heard at least some of Mr Rudd’s religious references . . .
TIMEWELL: I deny that.
HIATT: What about the thing about the light on the hill. How do you read Mr Rudd on that?
TIMEWELL: I think it’s a reference to something a certain beardy reforming type once said.
HIATT: Chifley?
TIMEWELL: No, I think a slightly earlier figure in the Labour Movement, Marc.
HIATT: Henry Lawson?
TIMEWELL: No.
HIATT: Karl Marx?
TIMEWELL: Jesus Christ Almighty, supposedly.
HIATT: Dr Timewell, tell us what you think the light on the hill means in terms of the modern Australian Labour movement - even if you won’t admit to knowing it’s one of Mr Rudd’s favourite metaphors.
TIMEWELL: Sounds like hot air again to me.
HIATT: In the Cultural Studies department they say it could be part of some sort of coded environmental discourse, for instance.
TIMEWELL: Almost certainly not, Marc.
HIATT: For instance, could it have something to do with the electricity Mr Rudd wants to save by switching the lights off after we’ve left the room.
TIMEWELL: It’s not lights off on the hill.
HIATT: Have you got a better interpretation?
TIMEWELL: Of John Howard’s “light on the hill”?
HIATT: Of Kevin Rudd’s light on the hill.
TIMEWELL: One that doesn’t involve an acutely felt political need to borrow a bit of the Jesus man’s credibility on social issues?
HIATT:That's right.
TIMEWELL: If you really want a Cultural Studies angle, maybe think of it as a stray signifier that needs to be taken to the pound, Marc. . .


HIATT: Admit, you’re secretly a fan of Mr Rudd, aren’t you.
TIMEWELL: No.
HIATT: Admit, you’re so sick of the government you’d be happy for the country to be run by a team of labradoodles with ties round their necks wearing pink glasses-frames without any lenses in them.
TIMEWELL: I will not admit anything of the sort, Marc.
HIATT: Admit, you think Mr. . .
TIMEWELL: I didn’t know there were any labradoodles on the ALP front bench.
HIATT: Admit, . . .
TIMEWELL: You’re very keen for me to make some sort of admission tonight, Marc.
HIATT: All right, admit, Mr Rudd did do the rhumba quite well with Kerri-Anne Kennerley on the morning show.
TIMEWELL: That can only have been Kerri-Anne's natural grace rubbing off on him.
HIATT: So you admit you saw him on the morning show.
TIMEWELL: I’ve seen Kerri-Anne dancing with all sorts of hucksters on the morning show, Marc. Who was the one she reduced to smirking schoolboy depravity all those years ago . . .
HIATT: I can’t believe you watch the morning show.
TIMEWELL: Costello, that’s the one.
HIATT: Tim or Peter?
TIMEWELL: I think it was Harpo.
HIATT: But what were you doing watching the morning show? Some of the people in the audience tonight respect your judgement and . . .
THE VOICE: (spontaneous audience outcry) I don’t.
HIATT: Obviously only some . . .
TIMEWELL: (looking disgusted into the audience in the direction of THE VOICE) I know where you live, right - - (pause) Marc, let me explain to you why I happen to watch the morning show. One of life’s few pleasures in these grim times is the thought that Kerri-Anne Kennerley, with her disarming mixture of brainlessness and sexual bravado, is about to publicly humiliate another of the hucksters who aspire to run this country.
HIATT: She didn’t manage it with Mr Rudd.
TIMEWELL: Marc, the particular huckster to whom you refer is - not known to me.
HIATT: What about Julia Gillard.
TIMEWELL: No thanks.
HIATT: What do you mean, “no thanks”? I’m not offering you anything.
TIMEWELL: Well, I’m not taking any Julia Gillard, whether you’re offering any or not.
HIATT: Come on, give us something really biting about Ms Gillard we can all go home and chuckle over.
TIMEWELL: Well . . .
HIATT: Do you think she looks like Mr Squiggle?
TIMEWELL: Marc, that’s just a cheap shot.
HIATT: What about partnering up with her hairdresser. The last person she should’ve fallen for, going by her hair, don’t you think.
TIMEWELL: Also a cheap shot.
HIATT: Well, give us a better one. Are her vowels too flat?
TIMEWELL: You’re winding me up, Marc.
HIATT: Well, are her vowels too flat?
TIMEWELL: Yes.
HIATT: Admit they really hurt your ears.
TIMEWELL: They really hurt my ears.
HIATT: Dr Timewell, you’re not the acidic sceptic you say you are if you can’t do better than that.
TIMEWELL: I have the distinct impression you’re trying to wind me up, Marc.
HIATT: How do you feel when she talks about Industrial Relations?
TIMEWELL: Oh for Christ's sake, Marc, you know it’s Industrool Relations. Industrool Relations. Three syllables. Think of drool.
HIATT: That’s the shot.
TIMEWELL: And as for her other flat vowels, I’d say the inner city landscape of Hiroshima had more up and down to it after September 1945 than the vowel landscape after Julia has finished talking about workplace relations. What I don’t understand is why these ALP hacks have to talk as if they’d just come out of some sort of collective coma.
HIATT: So you admit you’ve heard of Julia Gillard.
TIMEWELL: Who?
HIATT: You admit we’ve just been talking about Julia Gillard.
TIMEWELL: Did I say I’d ever heard of her?
HIATT: Who have you just been talking about if not Julia Gillard?
TIMEWELL: Who did you say it was?
HIATT: Julia Gillard.
TIMEWELL: I deny that.
HIATT: You deny we’ve been talking about Julia Gillard?
TIMEWELL: Actually, I deny everything.
HIATT: Eric Timewell, you are a twisted individual.
TIMEWELL: In grim times like these I take that as a compliment.
HIATT: Thankyou very much for your time.
TIMEWELL: Thanks for inviting me.

(performed, Dennis St Dream-Stage, 22 April, 2007)