PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF TIlE PRIME MINISTER, TIlE lION P J KEATING, MP
. AUNCI I OF TERRY AULICH'S BOOK " TIlE RIVER'S END"
26 NOVEMBER 1992
E& OE PROOF COPY
PM: Well thank you very much I am quite happy to be associated on this occasion with
Kerr publishing and most particularly with my friend and colleague, Terry Aulich.
On this very novel occasion for the Parliament because we believe that this is the
first novel written by a meniher of Parliament since Federation, which makes it
something of an event.
You have got to say one thing about the Labor Party we can breed all the
varieties -we arc the entrepreneurs, the adventurers, the romantics of Australian
politics. And in that high tradition we have produced Brother Aulich. He has
brought to the public a very hiteresting novel. It is interesting because it is about
something which is not quite a contemporary issue, but it is not that long ago that
it was, a decade ago. The issue of the Franklin River and its possible damming,
something which divided our national life which caused the fall of a Government
in Tasmania. The first time that a Government actually took on an cnvironment
issue in this country and of course changed Tasmania for cver, I won't say for ever,
that is too big a claim, at least for the monient. But certainly from the quieter days
of Tasmanian life, things changed when the Franklin and the Gordon-below-
Franklin debate was on.
The interesting thing about this is as described this book, not simply as fiction but
as faction. Half fact, fiction, or fact rolled with fiction, or fiction rolled with fact.
And Terry paints quite interesting pen sketches of some of the players, including
Doug Lowe, then Premier, who Terry in the past used to describe to me as the sort
of boy-ncxt-door type that every mother loved and that every mother wished her
daughter to marry. Well that was a prctty big wrap for Doug, but it didn't do him
much good politically when the crunch came.
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He lived through this period tumultuously. Of course, one has to know Tasmanian
politics to understand just how tightly fought it is, within that H-are Clarke system
and those multiple-member constituencies. People of thc same party campaign
against one another, so it is all hamlet and village-political machination, inighting
and thc rest. And I had much experience of this when I used to come to
Tasmania as the Shadow Minister for Tasmania in the then Opposition in the
1970s, and Terry was the person who used to take me around the State. Terry
always had a good automobile under him and wc used to he likes the good
things in life Terry and we dashed up and down Tasmania; Fingal, up the top,
and one day Fight down thc full length of the State to two or three things, we were
stopping at all these villages we will just stop in here, two drinks, be seen at the
pub, say hello, out we go, back in the car and off again. He had this sort of death
defying -struggle with the dreaded Michael Policy, who he shared a place with in
the same constituency and it was the fox eyeing off the fox and how one would
gamner support within this constituency. Now you can just imagine an issue like
the Franklin River dropped into the middle of this minutia of political
manoeuvrings that went on, and of course it was really something which was
cathartic to the political system.
What's nice about this book is that Tcrry has writtcn about it in a way that only
somebody as involved as he was could write about it. Someone who actually
knew about it, knew about all those little internecine battles, all those little
jealousies, past rebukes never to be forgotten, all that sort of stuff. And he has it
here woven into a story which I think tells a very nice tale about a big Australian
national issue. That's a very good thing to do and of course it is a most
unpretentious book, and that is in keeping with Terry himself who is certainly not
a pretentious person. He is good humoured and he does like a laugh and he has
that mocking style and all the time I have ever known hinm he has always sent up
all the personalities around hinm and has never taken the whole thing all that
seriously. Now that comes through, which is a very good way to be, a very good
way to be, particularly in public life, and that comecs through in the book, and I
mean there are just some very nice sort of this could only be written by an
Australian as, " Sinbad was a born victim, he had a certain style which didn't go
unnoticed." " There was a sudden intake of breath, a cross between a honk and a
snort", it goes on, " she's a bit on the skittish side and that right fetlock is still
troubling her", or, " you are seeing a lot of that McMillan bird" ( bird is an old word
now in Australia) but " Kerry Wade said plonking his burai on my desk". I mean it
is not reallIy James Joyce, but nor is it obl ique and distended l ike Patrick Wh ite.
So, this is very readable and while it may not be knocking on thc door for a Booker
prize, it's ccrtainly a very nicc piece of writing about Australia and the Australia
that we all know.
It is interesting that Terry has, it's one of a trilogy of books, he has two others
completed and in the course of publication, and it's again quite interesting that
somebody who has been involved in public life as much as he has has been able
still to turn his mind to a subject like this and get himself published and have two
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other bo~ ks at the ready as well. So, I think this is going to be a joy for many of
us. particularly in political system and journalists, to read. Terry has had a bent for
prose with poetry and writing over the years and I think that many of us who are
ourselves victims of the systemn of politics will find this a really good read.
So Terry, congratulations on putting it together, it is a very rcadablc book, it spins
a very nice tale, it paints tremendous pcn portraits of the characters, Patrick
[ Cennedy reads Ilike a refugee from the NSW Labor Party, but I[ don't know whcthcr
that is true, and he certainly found his way around Tasmania. Congratulations
again, Terry, I hope the book succeeds, it deserves to, it occupies a unique place in
the history of this place and the fact that you are the first as we understand it, the
first MP to have published a novel and not just one but three. Congratulations to
McMillan an Australia publishing company for publishing it. Goad luck to all
concerned.