Derryn Hinch - Unfinished Business: Life of a senator

UNFINISHED
BUSINESS

OTHER TITLES

FICTION

Death at Newport

Death in Paradise

NON-FICTION

The Scrabble Book

AIDS: Most of the Questions, Some of the Answers

The Derryn Hinch Diet Book

Thats Life: The Private Life of a Public Person

101 Ways to Lose Your Mobile Phone

The Ultimate Guide to Winning Scrabble

The Fall and Rise of Derryn Hinch

You Are So Beautiful: The Passion and the Pain of Relationships

I Beat the Booze and You Can Too

Human Headlines: My 50 Years in the Media

A Human Deadline: A Story of Life, Death, Hope and House Arrest

Hinch Vs Canberra: Behind the Human Headlines

Life of a Senator

DERRYN
HINCH

Thank you

To all of you who believed enough in the cause of justice to vote for me and then elect three Justice Party candidates to the Victorian Upper House. We will be back federally 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 2020

Text Derryn Hinch, 2020

Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing

Limited, 2020

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.

Text design and typesetting by Megan Ellis

Cover design by Philip Campbell Design

Cover photo courtesy Alex Ellinghausen/SMH

Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

9780522873535 (paperback)

9780522873542 (ebook)

To my parents, Dick Hinch (19172009) and Betty Hinch ne Hood
(19201990).I tried to make them proud.

Certainly in no order of goodness, badness or (political) ugliness, heres the Hinch scorecard, updated from my last book, Hinch Vs Canberraeach in about 200 words or less.

Paul Keating used to go on about true believers. We found one. Scott Morrison. A true believerin himself. And God. And his ability to wear down Labor in marginal seats and snatch them for the Coalition on his narrow path to victory. I thought his happy clapper Pentecostal image would go against him, especially after he invited the media into his super-personal church service. It jarred with my separation of church and state mantra. But the experts now say that the religious freedom issue actually won votes for the Libs. I got on well with Morrison when he was treasurer and then as PM. I did think his Aussie bloke image hit homehed never be seen like Malcolm Turnbull (or me) eating a pie with a knife and fork. I can claim one accurate political prediction. Two days before Peter Duttons inept grab for the crown, I tweeted that ScoMo would be PM within twenty-four hours. I could smell ScoMo as the political Steven Bradbury. I was wrong by twenty-four hours because Malcolm Turnbullbeing more political in death than at any other time in his tenuredemanded forty-three names, in writing, of Libs demanding a spill. And then Mr I Believe in Miracles won the unwinnable election.

There was something about Bill Shorten that bugged me (and obviously bugged Labor strategists) for the whole of the 2019 campaign. Hed led the polls, ad nauseam, month after month, year after year, against Tony Abbott, Turnbull and then Morrison. But. He was never the preferred prime minister. What bugged me was something Id said, years before the election, on Paul Murray LIVE on SKY News. And it wasnt even original. It was first said in criticism of one-time UK Labour leader Ed Miliband. The description: How can you believe a word the man says, when his own face doesnt believe him? Very cruel, but maybe prescient. I dont know if Shorten had elocution and speech lessons, but his delivery and cadence changedin and out of parliament. I got on very well with him. Told him that, with Chloe, he was fighting way above his weight. Ill always appreciate that Shorten and Turnbull both agreed to let a Senate crossbencher chair the joint parliamentary committee into the National Redress Scheme. Believability? The voters didnt buy it. And he lost the unlosable election in 2019.

Aaah, Albo. For much of my time in Canberra, I misread Anthony Albanese. I thought he was a Labor relic in a bad suit. I mean, he still kept boasting I hate Tories in 201819. I tested that on a 33-year-old female journo in the Channel Seven newsroom. She had no idea what a Tory was. But then I spent some social time with Albo (pre-election) at the pollies watering hole: Ostani at Canberras Hotel Realm. He was charming, witty, entertaining company. Very switched on. And then he took the leadership, unopposed, after the shock election loss. I suspect hell have a tough, delicate balancing act. He is still, personally, stridently left-wing, but now he must pull that policy baggagewhich the voters clearly rejected in 2019somewhere back towards the centre, if he has any hope of winning in 2022. The grassroots love Albo. But they did in 2013 when he lost the leadership battle to Shorten. And Shorten is still there on the frontbench. Albo said in his acceptance speech that he is no Tony Abbott. He must pray nightly that Shorten isnt either.

Before the calamitous, not to mention clumsy, attempt by Peter Dutton to wrest the crown from Malcolm Turnbull, I wouldve (and did) put Mathias Cormann on my Top Three Most Trusted Politicians list. The other two were Labors Senate leader Penny Wong and Senate president Stephen Parry. The Parry trust factor evaporated when it came out that, for months, he had hidden his own eligibility to be in the Senate (let alone as its presiding officer), as had his confidant, Mitch Fifield, and, I suspect, Senate leader George Brandis. Cormann lost my trust when he connived with Dutton to usurp the throne while pledging allegiance to Turnbull. An ironic, but exquisite, Canberra memory: The night before the second challenge against Turnbull, there was a photo of Cormann sipping a good glass of red while dining with Dutton at Portias Place, the top Chinese restaurant. I knew that, while they were dining, the phones were still being manned at 11 p.m. in Turnbulls and Morrisons offices as part of the ultimately successful ABD Anybody But Duttonrearguard action.

My best Penny Wong moment. We were, coincidentally, standing next to each other in a Senate committee room minutes before the same-sex marriage postal survey result was going to be announced on TV. I actually asked her if shed like me to move away and give her some private time because of the magnitude of the moment, especially for gay people. She demurred. And then the results started to be announced. When it became obvious that same-sex marriage had won, the usually guarded and disciplined Senator Wong started to cry. I glanced down and saw a rainbow flag spread out on the table. I picked it up and draped it around her neck. It was a precious moment. In my time in Canberra, I thought Penny Wong could make a great prime minister. But I knewand, in her heart, Im sure she knowsthat Australia is still not ready for a lesbian, Asian woman to be prime minister. Pity. She is diligent, disciplined and forensicespecially when carving up recalcitrant witnesses at Senate estimates hearings.