Alan Howe
From: Herald Sun
September 27, 2009
IT was the day Jeff was bushed as rural anger overflowed, changing the face
of our state. But what did we learn?
George Santayana's family knew all about drought. He was born in Avila, a
town on an abrupt shaft of rocky tableland in the middle of the Iberian
peninsula that receives too little rain and whose land is barely arable.
The Spaniard left Avila as a youngster, received a glorious education that
included Harvard and Cambridge, and became a noted philosopher and poet.
He is famous for the powerful, but often misquoted, aphorism that "those
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it''.
The inhabitants of rural and regional Victoria also know too much about
drought. They've looked on in the past decade as, it would appear, increasingly
less of Victoria is as arable as we once thought.
They have also had cause to ponder Santayana's words a decade after the
extraordinary events of September and October 1999 when an apparently
invincible premier went to "his'' people and got his marching orders.
The state election that year became one of the most improbable stories of
Australian politics. Former Ballarat school teacher Steve Bracks, an almost
unknown Opposition leader just seven months into the job, was taking on the
leviathan of Australian conservatism, Jeff Kennett.
The polls had Kennett not just winning, but almost certainly achieving an
increased majority in his third-term. The sure victory in 1999 was to put
Kennett up there with our longest-serving prime minister, Sir Robert
Menzies, and legendary long-term premiers Sir Thomas Playford, of South
Australia, and our own Sir Henry Bolte. We were talking statues.
But country Victorians had other plans. It felt betrayed by both terms of
the Kennett government and was out for blood, plenty of which flowed as
the mute Liberals -- Kennett controversially silenced his colleagues for the
duration of the campaign -- fell in silence, one by one, to a re-energised
Labor Party and three bold independents.
As everyone remembers, election night threw up its own rare drama: the
Member for Frankston East, Peter McLellan, was found dead on polling day,
his estranged wife breaking in to his flat after he failed to respond to knocks at
the door.McLellan's death was a blow to the Liberals. So had been the last 14
months of his life.
Once a valued member of Kennett's team, McLellan departed suddenly in
1998, criticising the premier's "autocratic'' style, along with changes to
WorkCover and the role of the Auditor-General, as the reasons for his
dissatisfaction.He didn't mention the abandonment of the bush.
Neither, it seems, did his colleagues or even the Nationals, who provided the
deputy premier as part of their Coalition agreement. Few were listening,
but the bush -- ill-advisedly, but not maliciously, described by Kennett that
year as Victoria's "toenails'' -- was speaking loud and clear.
A bush initiative came from an outfit calling itself A Future for Rural Australia.
Their action man was Derek Manning, from Bendoc, in the state's northeast,
who, on his horse Deveraux and billed as the Lone Rider, decided to visit
struggling country towns to collect letters to be delivered to Spring Street.
Other riders joined as the campaign gained momentum."I'd planned to do the
trip before the election was called,'' Manning said yesterday. The "toenails''
comment had angered him.Kennett had badly disappointed the bush. "Not
only the bush, Kennett was betraying everyone outside of Melbourne.
You only had to go past Dandenong to find out,'' Manning said.The Sunday
Herald Sun, of which I was then editor, was on the case. In a leading article
before the election, under the headline "Spread the prosperity'', we talked of
towns that had been left out on a limb, their rail link severed. We spoke of
hospitals and schools that had been closed, council branch offices shut down,
while banks and other private institutions joined the painful exodus."It is time
to take stock before more damage is done and more lives are ruined,'' we wrote.
"In the countdown to the election, both the Coalition and Labor need to ponder
the disturbing fate of country Victoria.''THAT election day, Melbourne stayed
with the Coalition, but the bush sought its revenge and, with 20-20 hindsight,
that was inevitable.While we in Melbourne were celebrating the rapid
recovery from the embarrassing debacle that was the final Cain-Kirner
years of unforgiveable Labor mismanagement of Victoria, things elsewhere
hadn't improved as much.In parts of the resurgent capital, unemployment
had fallen below 5 per cent, and was at worst 10 per cent in the jobless
blackspots.
Across Moe and Morwell in the Latrobe Valley it was headed towards 20 per
cent.John Brumby, trounced by Kennett as Opposition leader at the 1996
election, but newly installed as minister for state and regional development in
the new Bracks government, pointed out that of the 21 plans being worked on
by the Office of Major projects "not one is in country Victoria''."
All $2.1 billion worth of projects are within the tram tracks of Melbourne,'' he
added.Ten years on, has Brumby, the former federal member for Bendigo
and who maintains a hobby farm at which he'd like to spend more time, also
given in to the arrogance of a vast, albeit inherited, parliamentary majority?
Brumby owns the safest Labor seat in the state, whereas marginal seats incline
you to keep in touch with the electorate. Has he lost touch with the country
Victorians whose choice of Steve Bracks 10 years ago eventually delivered to
Brumby what in 1996 seemed so out of reach -- the premiership?
Last week, people living near the planned, but still controversial, Wonthaggi
water desalination plant, woke up to a shock: John Brumby had "acquired''
easements across their properties to allow passage of the plant's pipeline
to Melbourne.Using an exemption from the Land Acquisition and Compensation
Act, the Government wrote to landowners the other day saying it had already
"purchased'' the easements -- in at least one case a 1km long, 20m wide swath
through a prime beef holding.
The letter they received stated that: "Given the urgency of this project (we have)
obtained an exemption from serving a Notice of Intention to Acquire.'
'Apparently, compensation will be paid in December.
Landholders are allowed to keep using their own land "rent-free'' for the next
three months. Crikey, that's generous of them.SPRING Street insiders believe
Brumby was hoping autumn and winter rains might obviate the need for the
$3.5 billion plant, but the continued dry ruled that out.Jackboot footprints also
litter the mud of the easements acquired for the equally controversial north-
south pipeline, but that includes a much-needed updating of the northern
Victorian irrigation system, which will bring long-term benefits to country
and city folk.
It took about four years for the Kennett government to lose the bush.
Brumby has been Premier for two. Let's hope he knows his history.
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