Senator Andrew Bartlett
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
 
My First Speech
Readers will be forgiven (just this once) for not being aware that Nov 11th is also the anniversary of my First Speech to the Senate in 1997, as it does rather pale in comparison to the Dismissal, Ned Kelly and Remembrance Day.

The speech can be found here. I cringe every time I read the opening lines, which were intended as a bit of an aside to set the tone rather than something to be recorded for posterity. Other than that, there's only a couple of others bits I'd take out now if I could, although looking at what I said about what I wanted to achieve and what I have managed so far is a bit sobering. Cheryl Kernot resigned from the Democrats and the Senate to join the ALP on October 15th 1997. For those that like trivia and eerie (almost) coincidences, October 16th 1997 was the day the Jupiter 2 left Earth in the TV series "Lost in Space".

Cheryl's decision (to quit the Democrats, not to leave the planet) was a total surprise to me, as it was to virtually everyone else in the nation. After waking up to what seemed likely to be a fairly average day on the 15th October, it was a bit of a quick transition to find myself sworn in as a Senator for Queensland two weeks later and making my First Speech to the Senate less than a month later on the 11th November. Some people say that the day Cheryl quit was the start of the decline of the Democrats. I guess in a purely electoral and chronological sense that has some truth, but I think it is giving it rather too much significance. Perhaps it did shake us a bit subconsiously to see our Leader appear to lose faith in us. Certainly, the delicate balances of power and influence that various people had internally in the party was altered suddenly and without any pre-planning, which led to some people having more power to influence events coupled with weaker constraints in case they made bad judgements.

In any case, while there is no doubt Cheryl's decision was a major shock at the time, I think the party dealt with it quite well and recovered quickly. If we made some bad decisions or failed to address particular problems down the track, that is the fault of those in the party, not the fault of Cheryl Kernot. Much has been written about Cheryl before and since that time. Although I defended her when the (in my view unjustified) decision was made to publicise one aspect of her personal relationship with Gareth Evans, I haven't said that much publicly about her. She is an interesting character, talented and flawed. She has been subjected to some of the most vicious and ongoing criticism I have ever seen directed at a public figure, some of it justified and a lot of it not.

Perhaps I will write more about her another time, but this is supposed to be about me and my First Speech. A great thing about that time was being able to get so many Queensland Democrats there to hear the speech, not so much because it was me but just so they and the many people committed to the Democrats could be acknowledged at a time when we were seen to be damaged. Looking at all the people whose names I mentioned, there are many who are now not involved with the party. A lot of that is due to the natural process of people moving on to other things, which happens with many community organisations, some of it is due to people falling out with others or generally getting burnt out. Those who are still active and positive after 7 years and a few more traumatic events deserve special recognition.

It was a speech I enjoyed giving at the time, because most of it felt very right, which I guess is why most of it still seems valid for me 7 years on. The saddest part in looking at the speech now is in knowing how much weaker we have become as a party. It does make me feel like I have failed all of those people I spoke on behalf of. Knowing now some of the mistakes we made (not many, but big ones), it also has a bit of an air of youthful innocence about it. Having said that, I believe maintaining idealism is important. If you allow yourself to become totally walled off behind a rhinoceros-thick hide and world-weary contempt, than you probably should give it away, as there will be enormous opportunities and ideas that you will fail to see or dismiss as unrealistic.

Don’t get me wrong, there's plenty of things that deserve complete contempt and many of them reside in Parliament House, and it is unrealistic and blinkered to think otherwise. But that does need to be balanced with some optimism and idealism, and a bit of naïve trust in the goodness of human nature (some humans that is).

One other interesting echo for me in looking at that speech again was the response I got from giving some praise to Brian Harradine. I was surprised at the time how much antagonism I got from some people for that. A few people in the gay lobby were quite grumpy about it, whereas my view was that I wasn't praising his views on gay & lesbian issues (which I disagreed with then and still do) but rather his consistency in sticking to his principles and beliefs over such a long period of time, especially in the context of the major parties having moved so far from theirs in so many key areas. I think some of the people who couldn't figure it out got a bit more of an understanding of what I was getting at when they saw his response to the GST legislation about 18 months later. (ah, the GST – now there's another story to be told.)

It does have some echoes for me now (only echoes, not a total replica) with some of the reactions I've been getting about Family First. Whilst clearly I made some pre-election decisions which in hindsight were mistakes, there is a reminiscence about criticisms of FF on the same sort of moral issues that also concern people (including me) about Brian Harradine being extended to assert that therefore they are beyond the pale in toto. I've written way more than enough on that general topic, but I guess it shows that I still misread some of the things that generate strong feelings in people.

That might be another thing I inherited from my parents – too much emphasis on the literal, rational interpretation of words and not enough on the undercurrents and on what one might call (if you're wanting to sound like a pretentious tosser) the hermeneutics, or (if you're wanting to sound more human and probably more accurate) the vibe.



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