Chardonnay Cheryl

Cheryl Kernot:  The Woman Most Likely
by David O'Reilly

This book should carry an electoral authorisation, it is a 425 page press release rather than a biography.  Carmen Lawrence called David O'Reilly's treatment of the personal and political life of Cheryl Kernot a pop hagiography.  She was right, this is Saint Cheryl sent by the gods to save Australia.

At least a dozen times O'Reilly tells us, "Cheryl was the first senior politician to ..." everything from take the environment seriously, understand the family, the need for tax reform, defend the public sector, discover superannuation, appreciate small business and on and on.  Of course this is wrong on two counts.  Cheryl was not a senior politician in the sense that she had responsibility for governing, and all the matters were well and truly on the political agenda long before Cheryl entered Parliament.  With great respect and no doubt to Cheryl's great embarrassment the book finds gold where none exists.

Cheryl's great achievement was to rescue the Democrats from the irrelevance of the leadership of Senator Coulter, when it had fallen into environmental fundamentalism.  She flowered on the back of the John Dawkins' Federal Budget of 1993 when she was smart enough to save the masses from new and visible taxes like tax on long service leave and substitute rises in other taxes, hidden ones like wholesale sales tax, oh, and most important saved the workers from the tax on Chardonnay (and other wines).  This she did with great aplomb, holding up the Budget just long enough to gain maximum coverage but not so long as to be compared with the two ratty Green Senators Dee Margetts and Christabel Chamarette who wanted to rewrite the Budget and send the bill to the next generation.  In this exercise Cheryl was responsible, she respected the need to not change the Budget bottom line.

This period of great notoriety soon came to a halt with the defection of Senator Colston (why did they ever preselect him for God's sake!) from the Labor Party.  Cheryl's date with destiny, according to Gough Whitlam "the best chance of being Prime Minister of any woman in Australia", was pushed by the realisation that without the pivotal role as balance of power in the Senate, relevance deprivation sets in.  She too defected.

According to O'Reilly Cheryl was "a lone voice against economic rationalism".  Hardly, what does he think the left wing of the Labor Party was doing throughout the 13 years of the Hawke/Keating governments.  I remember one day in the Labor Caucus when John Langmore, left winger and economist of some note, slated Keating for his economic policies.  Keating's off-the-cuff reply was 10 minutes of pure genius, a brilliant explanation of why it was possible not to be economically irrational and care for the casualties on the way.  Keating received a standing ovation from the Caucus, a rare event.  Which reminds me of O'Reilly's description of the Democrats party room, "more fireworks than the major parties".  Give it a break, seven school teachers deciding who is on roster duty.  Try staring down 110 political professionals in an ugly mood.  Now that's a party room!

I think O'Reilly lets the cat out of the bag in a chapter devoted to "economic rationalism" where he describes Paul Keating as a puppet of the Neo-Classical school of economists.  How come he ran such huge Budget surpluses as the circumstances demanded?  The "Pusey" theory that Federal treasury was riddled with "new right" economists is given a run.  This is like discovering orthopaedic surgeons in a hospital!  It's what they do.  In this diatribe Cheryl barely rates a mention except to lay the groundwork for later chapters in which Cheryl's misgivings about foreign investment are aired.  This is dangerous territory.

Cheryl's contribution to this New Right conspiracy was to tell Australians that foreigners should not own Australian land.  To illustrate this point she launched the Democrats foreign investment policy on vacant land owned by Japanese investors in Cairns.  We all indulge in a bit of populism from time to time, but dressing up a bit of economic Hansomism as responsible is a nonsense.

O'Reilly presents Cheryl as the embodiment of "the New Politics", a more caring and sharing game.  His evidence for this amongst other things was Cheryl's views on the Keating overthrow of Hawke.  "Kernot's stomach turned at the tactics being used by Keating's foot soldiers to blast Hawke from office.  She was also struck that ... many of the Labor MP's who lined up behind Hawke seemed solid and principled.  She wondered if she had this right, but it seemed that some of those supporting Keating were motivated by self interest, hatred or simply at the behest of their factional bosses.  But it was the methods used that actually incensed her".  Kernot confided to a Labor Senator, a Hawke supporter, that she didn't like what Keating was doing, that it was gutless.  As an eye witness I can tell you that the person Cheryl confided in took a colleague by the arm in the first Caucus ballot and against his will directed him to vote for Hawke.  Whoops.

ADVERTISEMENT