Not known for towing the line, THE INDEPENDENT MEMBER FOR LYNE is Rob Oakeshott’s plain titled memoir of a political career that has straddled state and federal arenas and proves a policy wonk with integrity may constantly get his arse kicked but never loses face.
It begins on polling day in the 2010 federal election when voters delivered a hung parliament and triggered seventeen days of negotiations between the Labor Party, the coalition, and four independents – Oakeshott, Tony Windsor, Bob Katter and Andrew Wilkie- the outcome of which would determine who would govern Australia for the next three years.
According to Oakeshott the wooing by Gillard and Abbott was diametrically opposed.
Julia Gillard was a sensitive suitor, in dialogue every day.
Abbott was aloof, ardent only at the eleventh hour, with promises galore for local projects, vows only valid if Abbott is genuine about running a three year term. Oakeshott was suspicious of Abbott’s sincerity, an intuition later confirmed when Bronwyn Bishop told Sky News in October 2012 that had they achieved power in 2010 they would have gone to another election.
On day 4, Wednesday August 25, 2010, Oakeshott spoke with 2GB radio talk host Ray Hadley who slams him for being elected on the coat tails of Mark Vaile. The shock jock doesn’t seem to acknowledge the fact that Oakeshott, if you include state results, had run six successful elections.
After terminating the interview, the bully boy broadcaster bags Oakeshott, dismissing debate, and earning a spray from the peeved politician, “Sydney commercial talk-back radio is the Australian home of the cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. …(they are) leaners not lifters”.
The seventeen days of bargaining, bartering and bickering that decided which Party would govern the forty-third parliament makes for insightful reading and a fast paced first eighty pages of the book.
Part two is an overview of Oakshott’s political history up until the 2010 election, a dossier that Mr. Hadley and his producers should have researched before the berating baying that passed as an interview.
Part three is the grist of the gruelling yet exhilarating running of the forty-third parliament, subtitled Life Being Hung.
Not so much self effacing as honest, Oakeshott’s arguments for a strengthening of the institution of parliament through independent players are persuasive and his sentence on the Senate is but one good illustration of it.
The upshot of this memoir is not only a highly insightful eye witness account of the last turbulent years of a Labor government but also an earnest plea for current and future politicians to be progressive and endeavour to achieve better results through dialogue instead of slander.
In his 1956 essay “On Being Conservative”, the Independent Member for Lyne’s namesake, philosopher Michael Oakeshott, wrote that the man of conservative temperament is “not in love with what is dangerous and difficult; he is unadventurous; he has no impulse to sail uncharted seas. What others plausibly identify as timidity, he recognises in himself as rational prudence. He eyes the situation in terms of its propensity to disrupt the familiarity of the features of his world”.
Thankfully, the independent, or rather interdependent, member is a progressive, rather than a conservative.
Some may perceive a Pollyanna in Oakeshott’s politics but history should show a pragmatism tempered by principle and integrity. What a pity he isn’t part of the 44th parliament of Australia.
THE INDEPENDENT MEMBER FOR LYNE by ROB OAKESHOTT is published by Allen & Unwin.