1. Kiss every baby, lick every boot? (AFR, January 23, 1976)
2. Rebel wine is a very heady drink (AFR, April 7, 1977)

1.
A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “Kiss every baby, lick every boot?” The Australian Financial Review, January 23, 1976, p. 3.

After each election Mavis gives me a lecture about how I should start to campaign for the next election the day the poll for this one is declared.

“You must be ceaselessly assiduous, dear,” she says.

“Till the electorate soil endlessly and tirelessly. You must be seen to be a dedicated servant of the people. Attend every function, open every fete, wipe every eye, smooth every brow, kiss every baby, lick every boot. By so doing you will surely be able to increase your majority at the next election. And think how proud that would make me, and perhaps they will even make you a minister at last.”

Of course Mavis is talking nonsense, though I didn’t dare tell her so.

The lesson of the last election is that members of Parliament are swept in and swept out on electoral tides.

If the tide is running our way new members appear in our party, but if the tide is running out most will disappear next time.

Many of the Labor members who lost their seats at the last election were tireless in the services of their constituents, were ceaseless in their attention to their electorate — more so indeed than many members who are still in Parliament.

Members of Parliament often delude themselves that they are well and favourably known in their electorates and so have a large personal following.

But it is seldom so.

One day, after I had been an MP for some years and was, I thought, cutting a wide swathe through my electorate, a friend met me in the street and said:

“Nice to see you, old boy. Can you tell me who succeeded Mr X?” (our previous member of Parliament).

I thought for a while and then told him that I didn’t know but if I found out I would advise him. I hope he has found out now and is properly embarrassed.

Some MPs may attract a personal vote of even up to 1 per cent, but few manage this unless they are famous footballers.

All the powerful people in our party are urging the new members who have suddenly appeared in our midst to really work their electorates all day and all night in the hope of holding all the seats that we have won.

But the sad truth is in most cases the newly won seats will be held, not by the dedication of the members, but by the performance of the Government.

And the performance of the Opposition won’t make much difference either, because Oppositions don’t win elections — Governments lose them.

The best advice we can give our fine batch of new members is not to pee in every pocket in their electorate, but to help us evolve and then explain policies that are right.

If the Government is doing the right thing, the position of the new member will be assured. If it does wrong things and is unpopular, nothing can save him.

I repeat, most members in swinging seats come in and go out on the tide of the Government’s popularity.

One of the problems will be to resist the temptation to try to protect the position of all our new members.

There will be great pressure, particularly from the members concerned, to take particular action to safeguard a particular seat, even if the action to be taken is clearly wrong.

But this often does the member more harm than good, because if a Government becomes unpopular in other electorates because it has taken such policies, the electoral prospects of the member will suffer from the original action.

But far more important is the damage done to a party’s morality and morale if the Government does something that it knows is wrong in order to safeguard a particular member’s position.

The member will know, the Government will know, and much more important, the party will know, that a principle has been sacrificed, a philosophy weakened.

Once a political party lets its standard slip, is false to its philosophy, it pays the price sooner or later, and generally much sooner than we expect.

Fast footwork is admirable if you are going in the right direction, but if it is just being used to hide what you are at because you are ashamed of it, then it is better just to plod along the straight and narrow path of rectitude.

Summing it all up, it is not going to be plain sailing to have such a large number of such good members.

But I guess it is a problem that the Labor Party would be happy to have just now.

***
2.
A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “Rebel wine is a very heady drink,” The Australian Financial Review, April 7, 1977, p. 3.

There has been considerable comment in the press about how some Tasmanian members of Parliament were going to cross the floor and vote for an amendment of the Apple and Pear Stabilisation Bill which would have meant that apple growers in Tasmania would get an extra dollar a case for export apples.

They backed off at the last minute but they became heroes in Tasmania, which is where their voters live.

When Mavis saw this she was all for me finding some cause dear to my constituents and for which I could rebel.

“Become a hero, dear,” she urged.

“I know you want to do what is right, but surely sometimes you can let your hair down just a little and do, or suggest doing, something that is popular instead of what that wretched Eccles says is right.”

I know that there is no drink quite so heady as rebel wine.

You become a hero, and what is more moving, you become a hero at home. Your wife is congratulated when she goes shopping because you have been so brave.

This is a nice change from the general run of obloquy with which politicians’ wives have to contend. So I can understand Mavis’s eagerness to see me cast in a rebel role.

She would like to be the wife, if not the widow, of a hero, just for once.

But the trouble is that too often the rebel role is wrong. And I have been in politics long enough to realise that the euphoria that follows crossing the floor soon disappears.

You will be a hero for a week or two, or even a month, but then your electors will only remember that you meant well but you weren’t able to improve their lot.

And to make matters worse, you make a hero of yourself by doing something that is popular but harmful to your constituents.

Eccles reminded me that way back in 1960 when the continuation of the butter subsidy was in debate it was clear that it was fundamentally unwise for the economy as a whole, but, even more important, had for the dairymen themselves, to encourage the production of more and more butter which they would have more difficulty in selling.

“And what did you do, you wretched cowardly person?” Eccles thundered accusingly. “You voted for the bounty to be continued and by do doing you hid the market signals from the dairy farmers, so they went on producing more and more what the world needed less and less of.

“And you no doubt sent copies of your wretched little speech to your dairy farmer constituents and made a great fellow of yourself with the taxpayers’ money. And you did your dairy farmers much harm in the end.”

I have an uneasy feeling that Eccles may be right about what happened in 1960.

I encouraged people to stay in dairying when it would have been kinder to encourage them to get out. And if the rebels had had their way in Tasmania this year the same result would have followed.

Eccles says that I should read a speech by Mr John Hyde, the member from Moore, on March 17, which sets out the position with what Eccles calls “admirable, and, for a member of Parliament, exceptional clarity”. Eccles is always comparing me unfavourably with Mr Hyde.

One of the export apple industry’s troubles is that export apples incur very high freight costs. An apple is mostly water and it is costly to have to shift water in a refrigerated form half way across the world after it has incurred the devastating cargo handling costs in Tasmania.

We may regret these transport costs but I have no hope of them being diminished. And there used to be a steady market for applies in Europe during their off-season, but now, with controlled atmosphere storage in Europe as well as in Australia, there is no off-season, so the European market has greatly diminished.

And most of the apple subsidy has not been really helping the apple growers. In 1973-74 the subsidies averaged $14,000 per grower in Tasmania, yet the net farm income of apple growers totalled less than $6,000.

Most of them subsidy was going to people other than farmers.

If we wanted to help Tasmanian apple growers it would have been far better to use the subsidy money to give them welfare payments directly and not a subsidy on production which encouraged them to stay in the industry which they will almost certainly be forced to leave later.