Sorry to speak ill of the dead – but I didn’t like what Button did.

That said, I am bloody-well annoyed that much of the “prosperity” claimed to have come about through what was done by Howard, Reith, Costello, Abbott and all that mob was actually a result of the changes that had been brought about by Hawke, Keating …. AND JOHN BUTTON.

The other bunch just got a free ride on the results of all the radical changes that Hawke, Keating and Button had already carried out. Oh yes, they did add a little bit of brummy ornamentation – like the Waterfront Dispute, AntiWork [Choices?], 457 visa dodginess – but absolutely nothing substantial.

Australia has indeed lost one of its most influntial politicians ever.

Earlier, Paul Norton wrote:
“Although if he had joined the CPA he probably would have been expelled in 1956 for holding revisionist views on the invasion of Hungary and for thinking the Khrushchev secret speech was genuine.”

Yes, Paul: most likely. The waves of resignations around Hungary, (then later around Czechoslovakia in ‘68)… but then wasn’t there a fairly steady drop-out rate, say after the Great Patriotic War had been won in 1945, and the Depression became a distant memory?

Completely OT, but I’d be interested to hear of ex-CPA persons doing well in the ALP, even gaining Parliamentary seats. Jean M in Victoria? Jenny G in NSW? Others?? The reason I’m interested is, we hear so much about other renegades such as Ian Tuner (later Prof) and Stephen Murray-Smith (later Prof) and writers like Frank Hardy, Dorothy Hewett.

cheeio

So there were, and a few feral gerunds as well.

And a schoolboy howler homophone. (That isn’t a communication device lodged up Nabs’ fundament.)

There’s nothing quite like sitting s drafty classroom in the middle of winter freezing your bum/tits off listening to someone reading the correspondence and the minutes of the previous meeting, and then going home.

If you sat down and designed a meeting of a political party with the express purpose of killing people’s interest in politics, let alone any instinct for political activism, you wouldn’t do it any other way.

Vale Mr Button. Great sense of humour and a great sense of what’s right.

There were at least two major and egregiously dangling participles there.

So there were, and a few feral gerunds as well. But he still writes amazingly well for a bloke who left school at fifteen.

Wherever Button is now, I bet John Gorton is buying him the next drink.

Possibly his first few wives?

And jayzus Paul Keating, while your Button obit contained many good and inimitably expressed points, you’ve gottta stop dictating it all while marching around your office. Or at least proof the transcripts properly. There were at least two major and egregiously dangling participles there.

Despair we can handle; it’s the hope which kills

The perfect epitaph for a fan of any sport.

Speaking of straight shooting, there was a nice bit on the TV news tonight where they showed Button at a press conference on resigning from Parliament in 1993. He said he’s miss many of the people, but there were a few he wouldn’t miss, epecially if he had a shotgun in his hands!

Last time I saw him was at an Australian Universities Alumni pissup at Melbourne Museum about five or six years ago. Even though he was five foot tall and nearly 70, he still had no problem attracting a bunch of throughly entertained women to listen to him telling yarns in his great mellow smoky voice.

His “Flying The Kite” is a great read. Which also features a cameo appearance by Nick Gruen.

They never made politicians quite like him before and I doubt they will again.

John Button is a real loss to the country and the Labor Party alike.

A lawyer who inhabited the centre ground of Victorian Labor politics, he was material in returning the pendulum of Labor politics from the left, where it had stuck fast for a quarter of a century, to the political centre.

A consequence of his work within the Independents’ group was the advent of the Cain Labor government and with that change, the underlying fabric of Victorian politics returned to the Labor fold, where it has more or less remained, for just on thirty years.

A person needs a lot of horsepower to be at the forefront of such a change, and while it was not all John Button’s work, he left his fingerprints on all the important bits.

In his prime, he was more or less despised by the left and the right. In the swing position, he played corner politics with cunning and élan. Some would say too cunning, others mercurial, while the impartial onlooker might say inspired.

As a Senator, he was a member of the post-Whitlam government group lead by Bill Hayden in 1977. That group, the reform ministers of the 1980s and early 1990s, came together as a coherent unit out of conviction borne by the defeat of the Whitlam government and the fact that post-War growth, worldwide, had collapsed from the mid 70s in the context of hyperinflation.

John Button like every other member of the group knew that the old closed way for Australia, the old Australian economic defence model was coming to an end. Like the rest of us, he was not sure what should take its place but he knew it had to be something competitive and more open.

As a person with a background in legal issues, including such things as civil liberties, it was a surprise to us all that he asked Bob Hawke for the Ministry of Manufacturing Industry. I remember going to his office after our swearing in and saying ‘what are you going to do with this job?’ He said ‘I dunno; something! God knows, something needs to done.’ Pretty much reflecting the mood of most of us.

Button was a case book example of giving a complex job to a person with a good mind, one formerly unsullied by its complexities, leaving the mind to sift through the issues, while coming to a new set of conclusions. As it turned out, he was the Minister for Manufacturing Industry at the fulcrum point of that industry’s development and history.

He and I had great battles over tariffs and for the tariff reductions announced in the May Statement of 1988 and the Industry Statement of 1991. But he knew the reform mantle meant he had to see his constituency’s interests in a longer term perspective. I remember calling him at home one Saturday morning in 1991, urging on him a further reduction in general manufacturing protection to 5% by the year 2000. I said ‘come on John, in for a penny, in for a quid’ and in a measure of all that was good and brave about him, he said ‘why not?’.

He drove a hard bargain at the Cabinet table on adjustment packages for particular industries, perhaps best known being the car industry, but being prepared to play the game, whilst being charming with it, I found him, at once, exasperating yet irresistible.

He was a fully paid up and foundation member of the reform group of ministers, the one that changed Australia forever. Deep personal losses in John’s life meant his heart and mind were always vulnerable to issues which affected the needy or those less well off.

He had a large group of friends and political associates and of course, many he picked up in his lifelong support of the Geelong Football Club. He was a warmly regarded person, yet for all that, he was always a loner. An intellectual loner and a political loner. None of us held that against him, because the same epitaph may be stuck to so many of us.

For all that, he held firmly to one idea throughout his life, and that was that political life was the highest calling, within which great things could be done; where the greatest leverage existed. And as his life’s work attests, he stuck to that idea with enthusiasm and perseverance.

John Button is gone but he will not be forgotten, inasmuch that at some point, we are all forgotten. Those of us who were close to him will always remember his penchant for devilment, for the zany and the unpredictable, but also the fun in being around such a quixotic character.

PJ Keating
8 April 2008

At least he got the double last year; the Cats and the ALP.