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Authors: Steve Lewis
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abandoning a government that has been rocked by crisis.
The polling, details of which have been obtained by The Australian , shows voters in battleground seats in western Sydney and Brisbane have lost faith in the governmentâs ability to manage the country.
Labor insiders fear the party is beyond salvation and the public has stopped listening to the Prime Minister.
âThey are waiting with baseball bats and chainsaws,â one senior source said. âWhen the election is held, the streets will run red with our blood. Tooheyâs a great guy but this canât go on.â
This government is in more strife than Speed Gordon.
But unlike the mythical superhero, there would be no salvation in the final frame. Half the front page of the national broadsheet was devoted to delighting in the latest piece of bad news for the Toohey Government, dissecting the troubles of a once great and proud Labor Party. Pointers promised more thrills inside, including a thundering editorial which would point out that, once again, the judgement of the Oz had been vindicated.
A historical analysis revealed that Toohey was the least popular prime minister since Billy McMahon. The paperâs caustic âCut and Pasteâ column amused itself with a series of quotes from the ABC and Fairfax ripped from Tooheyâs days of early promise, all designed to show the multiple delusions of the âLove Mediaâ.
Just to make sure that not a single reader was left in any doubt as to where the newspaper stood, The Australianâ s chieftains had published a photo of a glowing Opposition leader, Emily Brooks, as she left a function full of cheering Tory types, with the caption âHeaded for the Lodgeâ.
Dunkley flinched. He had no trouble going in hard with the facts and Labor had brought most of its woes on itself. But he did worry that the paper looked as if it was barracking for the Opposition when it ran puff pieces on Brooks, as rarely had he met a more objectionable individual. While the country seemed poised to throw the government out, the punters werenât hungering for the alternative. Would Brooks be better able to provide the three key things Dunkley believed Australians craved from their leaders â predictability, certainty and competence?
Dunkley blamed most of the governmentâs grief on the now catatonic Foreign Minister, Catriona Bailey. The deposed prime minister had laid such rocky foundations in the first two years of her chaotic reign that she had been on track to be the first PM since Scullin in â32 to be tossed out after a single term.
Bailey had pissed record ratings up against the wall. She had started dozens of grand projects and never finished a single one. Her obnoxious and high-handed style coupled with a deluge of demented demands had alienated the bureaucracy inside six months.
Sheâd lost Cabinet in the first year. But the real problem was the scorn sheâd heaped on Caucus, totally misunderstanding that in a parliamentary democracy a prime minister is selected by her party, not the people.
Caucus despised her.
So they pulled the trigger in a minute-to-midnight coup just months out from a general election. But the unexpected and largely unexplained shift to Martin Toohey shocked and confused the public. The election had seen the major partiesâ share of the vote split down the middle, leaving neither with the numbers to form government.
Toohey had cobbled together a minority government. But the compromises, and the messy aftermath of the Bailey era, had crippled him.
Bailey refused to go quietly, undermining him at every opportunity.
At another time, under different circumstances, Dunkley believed Toohey might have made a decent PM. But that was a fantasy. History had punched Tooheyâs card and before the end of the year his brief, unhappy term in office would be over.
The sun pouring through a small eastward-facing window lit up a dust-covered Walkley
The polling, details of which have been obtained by The Australian , shows voters in battleground seats in western Sydney and Brisbane have lost faith in the governmentâs ability to manage the country.
Labor insiders fear the party is beyond salvation and the public has stopped listening to the Prime Minister.
âThey are waiting with baseball bats and chainsaws,â one senior source said. âWhen the election is held, the streets will run red with our blood. Tooheyâs a great guy but this canât go on.â
This government is in more strife than Speed Gordon.
But unlike the mythical superhero, there would be no salvation in the final frame. Half the front page of the national broadsheet was devoted to delighting in the latest piece of bad news for the Toohey Government, dissecting the troubles of a once great and proud Labor Party. Pointers promised more thrills inside, including a thundering editorial which would point out that, once again, the judgement of the Oz had been vindicated.
A historical analysis revealed that Toohey was the least popular prime minister since Billy McMahon. The paperâs caustic âCut and Pasteâ column amused itself with a series of quotes from the ABC and Fairfax ripped from Tooheyâs days of early promise, all designed to show the multiple delusions of the âLove Mediaâ.
Just to make sure that not a single reader was left in any doubt as to where the newspaper stood, The Australianâ s chieftains had published a photo of a glowing Opposition leader, Emily Brooks, as she left a function full of cheering Tory types, with the caption âHeaded for the Lodgeâ.
Dunkley flinched. He had no trouble going in hard with the facts and Labor had brought most of its woes on itself. But he did worry that the paper looked as if it was barracking for the Opposition when it ran puff pieces on Brooks, as rarely had he met a more objectionable individual. While the country seemed poised to throw the government out, the punters werenât hungering for the alternative. Would Brooks be better able to provide the three key things Dunkley believed Australians craved from their leaders â predictability, certainty and competence?
Dunkley blamed most of the governmentâs grief on the now catatonic Foreign Minister, Catriona Bailey. The deposed prime minister had laid such rocky foundations in the first two years of her chaotic reign that she had been on track to be the first PM since Scullin in â32 to be tossed out after a single term.
Bailey had pissed record ratings up against the wall. She had started dozens of grand projects and never finished a single one. Her obnoxious and high-handed style coupled with a deluge of demented demands had alienated the bureaucracy inside six months.
Sheâd lost Cabinet in the first year. But the real problem was the scorn sheâd heaped on Caucus, totally misunderstanding that in a parliamentary democracy a prime minister is selected by her party, not the people.
Caucus despised her.
So they pulled the trigger in a minute-to-midnight coup just months out from a general election. But the unexpected and largely unexplained shift to Martin Toohey shocked and confused the public. The election had seen the major partiesâ share of the vote split down the middle, leaving neither with the numbers to form government.
Toohey had cobbled together a minority government. But the compromises, and the messy aftermath of the Bailey era, had crippled him.
Bailey refused to go quietly, undermining him at every opportunity.
At another time, under different circumstances, Dunkley believed Toohey might have made a decent PM. But that was a fantasy. History had punched Tooheyâs card and before the end of the year his brief, unhappy term in office would be over.
The sun pouring through a small eastward-facing window lit up a dust-covered Walkley
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