Derryn Hinch - Hinch vs Canberra: Behind the human headline

Derryn Hinch is/was a journalist, newspaper editor, broadcaster, author and ex-crim.

He hosted the current affairs program Hinch on the Seven and Ten networks, Midday on Nine and had award-winning stints on 3AW.

Hinch has been jailed twice, fined, and spent five months under house arrest for his campaigns against suppression orders for sex offenders. In 2011, he received a liver transplant after being diagnosed with terminal cancer and given twelve months to live.

He jumped the shark in 2016 to launch Derryn Hinchs Justice Party and was elected a federal senator for Victoria.

He hosted Hinch Live on Sky News until his political career took off. He now writes for Crikey and appears on Sunrise, Paul Murray Live and 3AW.

He lives (well) in Melbourne.

Read this book and youll never let the big parties get their way to streamlining the way legislation is moved through to law. Our country would be ungovernable with a parliament full of Derryn Hinchs but it wouldnt be worth governing without one or two.

Rachel Griffiths

Thank you

To all of you who believed enough in the cause of justice to vote for me. This was the first year, as we tried to keep the bastards honest.

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

Level 1, 715 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

www.mup.com.au

First published 2017

Text Derryn Hinch, 2017

Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2017

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

All previously published columns originally appeared in Crikey.

All unattributed photos are the authors own.

Cover design by Philip Campbell Design

Typeset by Megan Ellis

Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

9780522873177 (paperback)

9780522873184 (ebook)

Ive met every prime minister since Bob Menziesall fourteen of them. And Ive interviewed hundreds of politicians and would-be politicians over the decades.

So, I guess I am sort of equipped to rate my Canberra confrres, and protagonists, after my first year on the Hill (with more detail to come in my diaries).

Here they are, in no order of import, impact or relevance, in about 100 words or less.

It was lyrical to tag the PM Malcolm in a muddle, as I did, when the Tony Abbott sniping escalated, the conservatives hog-tied him and his much-vaunted policies stalled. I invoked legendary Hawthorn coach John Kennedy: Do something! Do a Gough, I urged him: Crash through or crash. Be the man remembered for bringing Australia marriage equality or solving the energy crisis. Something. In person, he was genuine, and honest in his dealings with me. Without his help, I would not have got the passport ban on convicted paedophiles signed into law within seven months.

With Turnbulls torpor in the polls putting his leadership on thin ice, Bill Shorten started being called the Steven Bradbury of Canberra. I did write it was a mite early for him and Chloe, his wife, to be measuring curtains for the Lodge, because he still lagged in the polls as preferred PM. And then theres the cutting smear, first aimed at failed British Labour leader Ed Miliband, that has been applied to Shorten: How can you believe a word he says, when his own face doesnt believe him? Still, Shorten was great in his support of me as chair of the joint National Redress Committee, to operate as watchdog over the governments reaction to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Long before Tony Abbott became prime minister, I was one of those commentators who dubbed him the Mad Monk. Since being rolled as PM, Abbott has been a bigger, more acerbic, critic of his successor than even Bill Shorten. I suspect Malcolm Turnbull has continued the clerical theme by thinking Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest? I was on the receiving end of an Abbott phone-message blast after reporting his supporters were leaking to Shorten. He told me to produce evidence or shut the fuck up. As well, Abbotts leadership of the same-sex marriage No campaign has, at times, been unhinged.

It would be glib, and easy, to say everything is slow-mo with ScoMo when the economy has been sluggish and wages stubbornly low. But stop the quotes. Apart from a personal hiccup with the backpacker tax, I found the treasurer good to deal with. No flim-flam, no bullshit. As the year wore on, the pragmatism of the Turnbull team was reflected in it actually getting some stuff through the Senate. A long way, Im told, from the chest-poking My way or the highway Abbott approach to senators. Couldnt abide Morrisons Hillsongstyle opposition to same-sex marriage, though.

I know some people are tempted to spell Cormann with a Kas in krautwhich is unfair because the senator is/was Belgian. Ill concede, Cormann does have a Germanic manner in the chamber, but I have found him to be one of the best, most straightforward, people to deal with on the government frontbench. He is pragmatic and, if some parts of an omnibus bill are obviously on the nose, he will summarily say, Park it park it. Meaning that amendment will not see the light of day again this parliamentary term.

The truncated, in more ways than one, (now former) One Nation senator I found to be a pleasant-enough fellow except for his fruit-bat behaviour over the dual-citizenship issue. As the crossbench planned to refer his case to the High Court, and before he fell on his own sword, I went to see Roberts to get his story. After what I would hear later, I declined to call him a liar in the chamber but did say hed been extremely economical with the truth. Roberts did bring the term empirical evidence into the Senate lexicon. In the supplicant prayers we have in the Senate every morning, I wanted to shout to him, Wheres the empirical evidence?

She is a genuine enigma. Loved by many, loathed by some. And shes been around in politics for twenty years, for Christs sake. In the old days, a novice, manipulated by cynical operatives, Pauline Hanson, back with a bloc of four One Nation senators, now has real voting power. She doesnt like me. We were sparring partners on Sunrise on Channel Seven until she started making excuses, and then refused to appear with me at all. Hanson has a blotting-paper ability to absorb figures; get her off-guard and she is a startled rabbit caught in the headlights. Not that bright.