Friday, November 28, 2008

The Howard Years - the key points

The 4 part documentary currently screening on your ABC - The Howard Years - has been getting summarised on the 7:56 Report segment by the hilarious John Clarke and Brian Dawe. You'd have to watch the ABC doco episode to catch the allusions, but while Labor in Power (1993) was dramatically structured by the Hawke-Keating contest, the Howard years, so far, is structured by a sour never-challenger -- Peter Costello -- and cabinet ministers and minders like Panto-despicable Peter Reith and Alexander Downer, and spin meister Graham Morris, all giggling and blushing as they tell us how seriously pleased Howard or Jannette was with some act of bastardry they'd accomplished.

As I said, you can watch the long version, or get the shorter version here:



Part 2 here.

An excerpt focusing on the Tampa incident:

JOHN CLARKE: The sense was we were about to be swamped by hoards of people landing on our shores.

BRYAN DAWE: And were we?

JOHN CLARKE: No, you're not listening. The sense was that we were.

BRYAN DAWE: And where did people get that idea?

JOHN CLARKE: I don't know where people got that idea from. No idea!

No, I don't think the Navy were happy about it the all. I mean they were up there; this was dangerous.

So someone in the office thought of some tin pot place up there somewhere.

Well, we slipped them a few bucks; they signed a few documents, problem solved.

I'll tell you something I have only previously told my teddy bear. He was seriously pleased with me!

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