When it comes to the private conduct of public figures, Australians like to have it a bob each way. And that’s not an oblique reference to one of our most accomplished prime ministers both in the parliament and the bedroom.
As a general statement, we say that we don’t much care whether our politicians are cheating on their partners. It’s a badge of honour for us that we’re not like the United States, where the moral majority wields tremendous influence within politics and any hint of infidelity will destroy a career.
Australians just shrug their shoulders and say: well, nobody’s perfect, politicians are human too. You can spare us the lectures from the holy-rollers, most of whom will eventually be sprung inside a $55-a-night Formula One motor inn dressed as Shirley Temple.
At the same time, we will freely consume news of the private wrongdoing of politicians, continuing to watch, read or listen to media which cover such stories, and have spirited conversations over beers and at barbecues about the rights and wrongs of their actions.
In some cases these stories have no impact on their ability to do their job but go purely to their character. One of the forgotten dimensions of the 1993 election – a supposedly unwinnable contest for the ALP, but where Paul Keating held on against John Hewson – was the revelation in his 60 Minutes profile that Hewson had walked out on his first wife on Christmas Eve. ALP strategists said that this fact played just as badly in focus groups as the GST, especially with female voters who regarded it as a total dog act from which there was no recovery.
But the general test is that we only care about their private conduct when it affects their ability to do their job.
If you are such a serial flirt that you can’t go out in public without putting the hard word on women, if you put the moves on your staff, or if your dalliances are so frequent or intense that saving your marriage becomes more important than doing your job, then you’ve placed yourself in the firing line for some intense public scrutiny.
John Della Bosca finds himself in this latter category. He has abandoned his public duties on the frontbench because his private life has gone off the rails. As he said yesterday, this has become a distraction for a government which cannot afford any more distractions.
But on a private level the bigger challenge facing Della is an intensely personal one – to save, or agree to terminate, his marriage to federal Labor MP Belinda Neal.
If there is a manual for how politicians should deal with these kinds of situations, it should be revised to include a chapter on John Della Bosca’s conduct yesterday.
Della Bosca’s great political talent –as a backroom operator, which he dominated, not in his less inspired incarnation as a parliamentarian – was an ability to read the public mood. And yesterday, it looked as if he’d done a quick mental calculation against the test set out above – private conduct that affects public duty – and decided to take his cuts.
It was a dignified and honest performance by a bloke who, not to put to fine a point on it, is up to his neck in it on the home front.
The full details of the Telegraph’s account of his six-month dalliance with a 26-year-old woman is such excruciating, ego-driven, middle-aged ratbaggery, replete with playful text messages and declarations of love, that frankly I don’t know how the guy even got out of the house yesterday.
Indeed Victoria’s snow-capped Mount Feathertop seemed a better option, as he’s in more strife than Tim Holding.
From the craven perspective of the political tactician, Della Bosca didn’t actually need to get out of the house at all - certainly not to hold a press conference.
The statement from Nathan Rees on Monday night and the accompanying letter of resignation from Della Bosca, where he admitted to his infidelity, was probably as much as a reasonable person would have expected him to do.
His press conference instead looked like an act of contrition and catharsis where he felt that he needed to front up and declare, over and over, that he was personally responsible for his actions, had to own up to what he had done, and pay the price.The former De La Salle pupil said he had let down his family, his community, and his Church, making it sound more like a televised confessional than a mealy-mouthed presser aimed at getting him off the hook.
It’s debatable whether Della Bosca can ever come back as a political force. I’d say it’s unlikely. But if he doesn’t return to prominence this press conference could stand as an appropriately enigmatic final contribution from the man.
When I joined The Daily Telegraph in 1999 as state political reporter my riding orders, verbatim, from the then editor in chief Col Allan were to “get inside the mind of John Della Bosca.”
And I’ve got to say I failed miserably. Della Bosca – who had then shifted from a distinguished nine-year stint as NSW Labor secretary to the NSW Parliament, where he was touted as a long-term successor to Bob Carr – had absolutely no interest in gald-handing journalists or, it seemed, even bothering to talk to them.
It’s for this reason that, in one of his very rare one-on-one interviews, the wily Maxine McKew took him to lunch on The Bulletin and suckered him into a candid exposition on Kim Beazley’s hapless “rollback” policy for the GST, causing massive damage to federal Labor.
Della Bosca didn’t make the transition from calculating operative, reader of the public mood, counter of numbers inside caucuses and booths, to a polished speaker and presentable premier.
After the McKew episode Della Bosca went back to his almost completely withdrawn self. In the decade I’ve spent watching NSW politics I could count the number of conversations I’ve had with him on both hands.
One of the most enjoyable ones came out of the blue earlier this year, when he rang up to say that he had liked a column I’d done about the hysteria over shark attacks in Sydney, and what I described as the bizarre calls from the public and sections of the press for “tough government action” to tackle the shark menace.
Della Bosca said the piece appealed to his conviction that government could not solve everything in life, and that if people had made their own choice as a rational adult to go and have a dip in the ocean, it was laughable to turn around and blame the state for failing to step in. People should understand that if they chose a certain course of action, they might have to deal with the consequences.
I was reminded of this watching him yesterday as he faced up for his own mauling, one entirely of his own making.
He showed yesterday though that he had the ability to front up and put his hand up, to deal honestly with deceitful conduct, and put himself on a path where he’s now trying to salvage whatever he can from his troubled marriage, without burdening the public with the impact of his private problems.
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