Bert Kelly, “The silly image of our MPs,” The Advertiser, December 22, 1977, p. 4. Published two days later as “The politician and his image,” The Age, December 24, 1977, p. 10.

When I was defeated for pre-selection most of my friends gave me some sympathy for two reasons.

They knew that it hurt my ego and most of them were concerned that the lower tariff cause had lost a persistent advocate. Having said that, they almost all closed the conversation by saying, “You must be very glad to be out of the wretched, sordid life, Bert.”

This comment was particularly pointed during the election campaign which was conducted at the lowest level by both big parties.

Why is it that the ordinary citizen usually regards Members of Parliament with cynical disdain?

People are nice to us when they want money for some cause or when they want us to open something or other. Indeed, I found that most people treat individual Members with respect much of the time.

It is only when they think of Members of Parliament as a group that their gore really rises.

One reason for this is the general Australian suspicion of anyone higher on the money scale than they. Another is an underestimation by the citizen of the amount of dedicated work done by a good Member.

But the main reason why parliamentarians are held in such universal low regard is that when we are in Parliament our behaviour is so silly.

We spend far too much of our time trying to score personal points off our opponents. Sometimes at the end of a parliamentary week I have heard some of the clever ones in my party making wise assessments about the events of that week. You would hear one say, “We finished up this week well ahead.”

But I bet that if this Member went down the street next day he would be desolated to find that his friends were absolutely indifferent as to who won the week’s argument, and even worse, most of them would have been blissfully unaware that the House was even sitting.

Our citizens should, however, realise that Members of Parliament are all egotists, otherwise we wouldn’t have the nerve to go around asking people to vote for us. And if we politicians aren’t queer before we start, the life we lead ensures that we are soon after.

Egotists that we are, we never really understand how little it means to the citizen if we win a week’s argument in Canberra, but that doesn’t stop us behaving as if the whole world was watching us with breathless interest.

There is another reason why we are so badly regarded. When both sides of the House are in agreement about some matter one of two things happens: either the debate is so dull that no one listens or it is so short that you haven’t got time to listen.

So the public doesn’t often hear us agreeing with one another and sometimes we do this quite nicely.

But disagreeing with the other side seems to bring out the beast in us. Far too often we end up criticising people and not policies and this makes people despise us.

Why we behave like that is hard to understand. We often blame the Press knowing that the Press is likely to notice a Member if he behaves like a yahoo.

But probably the real reason is that we think this is the natural way for a politician to behave. And he is more likely to feel like this when he notices that the front bench on both sides, particularly our present leaders, delight in personal abuse.

We should, however, realise that not all the abuse that you hear in Parliament is genuine.

Once I was acting as Government Whip and we were having a debate on a critical Bill. There was an important function at Government House on the evening on which the debate was to conclude so a deal was done between the Whips for the division to be taken in time for the good and the great to get to Government House. I think the time arranged between Gil Duthie, the Labor Whip, and me was 5:30 p.m.

I hopefully suggested that surely it wouldn’t be necessary for me to move the gag no that we had come to an agreement. Gil’s reply was quick and pointed. “Don’t be a nit, Bert,” he said, “we have to go through the motions of frantic opposition to the Bill so you would have to move the gag if the time was 5:30 in the morning.”

So I knew where my duty lay. I had to move the gag in time for the division to be held in time for the leaders to go to Yarralumla.

At 5:30 p.m. my last speaker was on his feet and I was anxiously watching the clock when Gil came across the chamber and said, “Now Bert, you know the position, don’t you? When your chap sits down I’m going to jump up and if you don’t gag me I’ll be like a shag on a rock standing there with nothing to say!”

I comforted him by saying that gagging was the kind of simple process which a modest man such as I could understand so he could rely on me completely.

Eventually my man sat down and Gil lept to this feet so I moved that the question be put, to be greeted with a howl of simulated rage from Gil. “You jackbooted Fascist,” he yelled across the chamber.

Not all the angry words you hear are said in earnest.

The cruel thing is that Members who behave badly in Parliament often behave with impeccable decorum and good sense when on parliamentary work.

I was a member of the Public Works Committee for many years and no one on the committee would claim that we were the greatest lot of brains in the country. But after many Public Works Committee enquiries I have heard witnesses say that the way the committee handled its task made them more hopeful about the democratic process.

I have never known a party political division on the committee and this goes whether it was serving under a Liberal or Labor chairman.

So parliamentarians can and do behave sensibly — but it is mostly when no one is watching.