About

Mark - Breakfast E.P.: …

NewsRadio’s Steve Chase walked the corridors of Macquarie Street for 13 years between 1988 and 2001 as ABC Radio News’ State Political reporter. He wrote a colourful book about his time there called “You Didn’t Get It From Me”.

Steve dogged three Premiers during his time: Nick Griener, John Fahey and Bob Carr.

NewsRadio Breakfast’s Marius Benson was based in the Daily Telegraph Bureau at the New South Wales State Parliament for several years from the mid 70’s - incidentally when one of his press gallery colleagues was an ambitious young mover-and-shaker called Malcolm Turnbull.

Eric Willis and Neville Wran were the Premiers then.

My grandpa, Alan Hill, was the Telegraph’s State Political roundsman in the years after the war.

He charted the careers of Labor’s Bill McKell and James McGirr before heading off to Tenterfield in the state’s north to edit the local paper, “The Star”.

All three of these seasoned journos saw plenty of political stoushes, backroom intrigues and scheming.

But nothing compares to the sheer political bastardry we’ve seen in the last few years in the NSW Labor Party….and probably best exemplified by the extraordinary events of yesterday.

Steve, Marius and Grandpa covered events at the “Bear Pit” for a combined total of more than 20 years.

They saw the rise and fall of seven Premiers.

In the last four years, there have been no less than four Labor Premiers in New South Wales, while the state has lurched from crisis to crisis.

Only one of those four Premiers has chosen the moment of his own departure.

That was Bob Carr, who quit ahead of what he apparently believed was an unwinnable 2007 state election.

A hapless Liberal opponent meant that Carr’s replacement, Morris Iemma, essentially won that poll by default.

Lauded by the ALP as its new saviour, Iemma was knifed by the party barely 18 months later over his first major reform — attempting to privatise the state electricity sector.

Such was the paucity of talent they saw around them, the factional bosses in the NSW Right who control the Parliamentary party chose someone from the Left — the relatively unknown Nathan Rees.

Then, less than 15 months later, angered that Mr. Rees had finally been given the power by the State ALP to put his own stamp on his administration by being able to pick his own Ministry, the warlords simply pulled the rug from underneath him.

Their answer?

Another relative unknown.

Kristina Keneally — the American-born Planning Minister probably best known to the public as the NSW Government spokeswoman for World Youth Day.

Recently, at Sydney’s Manly Beach, I spotted a mate of mine who worked in the Carr and Iemma Governments.

He was busy chasing his young son, so I didn’t yell out to him.

But I did notice that he no longer had the grey pall about him that he had when he worked for a Labor government preoccupied with internal fear and loathing, that is, in turn, widely loathed by the people of New South Wales.

Grandpa must be turning in his grave….

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Marius - Politics

Most of us, when we walk into a crowded room, have our heads filled with thoughts like “hope I’m dressed right…is there a familiar face here…hope someone will talk to me..”

Leaders don’t think like that.

They walk into a room packed with people and think (a) I should be running this mob….and (b) who here is useful to me?

Malcolm Turnbull’s tendency to assume command was well demonstrated at his last couple of doorstops, when he confronted packs of microphone and camera-wielding journalists as he was on the slippery slope out of the Opposition leader’s office.

On both occasions, when lesser mortals would have been involved in trying to frame a coherent answer, Turnbull told journalists not only what to ask, but how to ask it then rehearsed them before insisting they then deliver their lines to his satisfaction.

Tony Abbott’s parents equally found in their son a quite startling willingness to take control. His father Dick Abbot has told The Australian that it was clear from an early age that Tony was destined for great things.

He recalls that when Tony was a young child: “A priest asked my wife: ‘What will Tony do with his life….She said: ‘Well , he’ll either be the Pope or Prime Minister.”

Leadership is an interesting quality. Like courage, it is morally neutral. Mandela was a natural leader and a man of courage, but so was Hitler.

Plato drew up a system of government which would see those who were best equipped, the philosopher-kings, put in the position of supreme power.

But that’s not how it works. Leadership belongs to those who want it enough.

Most of us are prepared to be Lance-Corporals of life. But there are those who have with them in the crib a Field Marshal’s baton.

Their fierce energies will drive them to the top so that one day they can stand in front of the world, enjoying the attention they have always wanted, needed.

They will say they are not there for their own ends, they are not interested in power and that they are now “humbled.”

They’re always humbled. The rest of us are periodically humiliated, only the genuinely powerful are “humbled.”

But you can’t blame them: they are slaves to a nature and/or early circumstance which has seen them destined from the first to achieve that one goal, to lead.