For the Byron Echo, May 2005

Four months on, the Latham Interim looks increasingly bizarre. One can imagine him launching his book of diary entries with the words, 'They gave me everything I asked for, the bastards, and now I will have my revenge.' Beware the lower-class mother's boy turned man of destiny, say I. Surrounded with love, and ignorant of the world because of his family's poverty, he gets the proportions wrong, and in Latham, Howard and Hitler you see the problem. No more Mr Nice Guy, is the usual manifesto. Now we do it my way. You will give me love, approval and abject obedience the way Mum did, or die.

A Bad Week for the American Empire

May 5 to 12 was a bad week for the American Empire and its funny little wars. Blair's electoral 'bloody nose', General Janis Karpinski's demotion for prisoner abuse, the Afghanistan protest marches against the goons in Guantanamo who put the Holy Koran on the toilet (with, some say, human turds on it), the UN's abandonment of Jellalabad, the dud hand grenade flung at Bush in Georgia, the errant Cessna that panicked and emptied Congress and White House, Putin's defiant praise of the Soviet Union, Kim Jong-Il's fuel rods, John Bolton's flame-out, Downer's grovellings on al-Jazeera, Doug Woods' brothers' 'charitable donation' to his torturers, Laura Bush's breezy defamation of her husband, and the continuing slaughter of Iraqi police and civilians show a War on Terror going badly and America's Loony Right pretty much on the ropes. The idea that Bush, Rice and Rumsfeld are leadership material and leading anyone anywhere seems sillier by the hour.

A hundred and one years after the Wright Brothers' ascent at Kitty Hawk the American Century is over and the strange bright era of the New American Impotence and a multipolar world begun. And there is no viagra for this. The orgy's over. And this was the week it became plain.

The Budget Reply

Eight and a half years after I first helped out with Beazley's Budget Reply Speech, a lot is the same. The same big office, the same three ageless, protective backroom girls, the same delighted yelps of merriment from the Leader down the corridor, the same impression of chivalrous climactic battle with the same Prime Minister and Treasurer, the same stoic flurry round 6 p.m. It's good to be back. Kim's odd mixture of qualities -- innocence, gravitas and self-mockery -- has no parallel in politics. Whitlam had the last two, Clinton, Joh and Arafat the first and last, but nobody else I can summon up has all three.

Does this mixture, plus the physical hugeness, the mental sharpness, the garrulous wit and cubic hectares of learned information add up to a Prime Minister? Well, it certainly adds up to a Candidate, as lame duck Simon and loose cannon Mark never did, and I've begun in prayerful hope the third part of my triptych, Hello Jerusalem. 'I always knew he'd be back,' said one of the backroom girls. 'I never, ever doubted it.' We'll see.