Cheeky: The Review

Cheeky — Confessions of a Ferret Salesman
A Review by Nick Evers

H.L.Mencken (1880 — 1956), the American journalist and literary critic, was a fine writer, an astute observer of the world around him and engagingly surgical in his observations on the human condition.

Mencken observed that “The saddest life is that of the political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.” Many of Bob Cheek’s critics and opponents may like to see him in these terms. I don’t see him in that light, not least because he has produced a testament that will certainly outlast him and his critics.

Mencken also declared that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” He might almost have been referring there to some of the rorts and perks to which Australian politicians have treated themselves from time to time!

I don’t know Bob Cheek well, having only met him about a dozen times over the years but I welcome his book. First, I welcome it because of the contribution it represents to the body of political literature on and in this country.

Back in the mid-1970’s — shortly after I returned from Tasmania from working overseas and in Canberra and Melbourne — I did some work at the University of Tasmania tutoring and lecturing in the Department of Political Science. What impressed me most, in a negative sense, was the paucity of quality texts — biographical, autobiographical, analytical, descriptive etc. — on all or any of the aspects of the Australian political system. I am informed that the improvement in this respect over the ensuing three decades has been modest, at best.

The sequel to this observation is of course that the more we know about politics and its practitioners the more our proactive interest will — or may or should — help improve the system. Judging from the polls, opinion pieces and anecdotal evidence that may be a vain hope. And the depressing corollary is that while this non-debate festers in the background people of substance and quality may increasingly be disinclined to put their hands up for a political career.

Angry citizens

So, Bob Cheek has laid bare his political life and left two questions unresolved. Will disgust at what he reveals lead the people — as prospective practitioners or just angry citizens — to step forward and engage the system in a positive sense? Or will that same disgust merely lead to accelerated withdrawal? My well developed cynicism leads me to fear the worst.

Another reason why I endorse the release of this book is that Bob Cheek can write and write very well indeed. The text has an amiable flow that is by no means accidental; rather, the momentum reflects good craftsmanship. As a professional journalist for some fifteen years and one who rose to senior levels in his trade, Cheek knows how to pen a sentence and, compared with many other such recollections in Australia, over the years, this one has the important bonus of not allowing deficient composition to divert the reader’s attention.

True, one is somewhat diverted by graphic descriptions of brawls in the party room, savage verbal exchanges, snouts in the trough and politicians salivating over bar girls in China. For many, the latter episode may not amount to an appealing image but nor is it illegal. Just in bad taste and best confined to a dusty corner of a remote RSL club in your own electorate.

What also assists in the engagement of the reader is the humour. There are many parts of the book that are very funny indeed, especially the early chapters where he writes of his youth, football career, jobs, business initiatives and family life. His obvious enjoyment of those years is communicated with a warmth and deftness that is a far cry from the po-faced self-obsessiveness that characterises so much autobiographical material.

An honest one

The book also impresses me as an honest one. Bob Cheek is surely not so silly as to court legal action which — given Rene Hidding’s earlier warning — would surely have been forthcoming if it was judged to be sustainable. We may not like everything he says but, for me at least, it has a clear ring of credibility about it. I do not know Rene Hidding any better than I know Bob Cheek but from the few times I have met him he has seemed a decent and diligent man. He fired a shot across Cheek’s bows, returned to the bunker and shut up. Smart move, that — too many others would have tramped around in the marsh until they became bogged in their own verbiage.

So, why did the Cheek experiment fail? I think it failed because it was never meant to be. It was all an impossible dream and it was not the first such dream to come unstuck. There are countless precedents for what happened to Bob Cheek. Many business people, farmers and others have had a shot at politics and failed and they failed because they simply did not fit the mould. Cheek’s ego, ambition, dynamism, entrepreneurial flair, business success, openness and boat-rocking enthusiasm is simply not the stuff of which successful politicians are made.

The successful ones may have most of the characteristics of successful people in other walks of life but, in particular, they need to be measured, disciplined, prepared to do their time at the menial level, tug their forelocks and respect the hierarchy. Many of them also have a big smile and a knuckle-duster in the pocket. Even so, they too can often behave with monumental stupidity and infantile ill-judgement, as Bob Cheek observed from time to time during his own turn at politics. The best political regimes are those that are headed by talented leaders, born leaders if you like. Leaders who command respect for their qualities of substance, leadership and judgement. Bob Cheek didn’t see any of them in his own time in politics. Well, not on his own side of the house anyway.

Finally, perhaps a principal message that I gleaned from the book was the extent to which politics in Tasmania — and beyond — has become such a venal business and with terminal levels of self-obsession on the part of so many of the players.

The notion of politics as a service — of managing public affairs and advancing the public good as a genuine mission — has been subsumed by a political ethic that reflects cynicism rather than service, electoral success almost for its own sake rather than the enrichment of people’s lives in tangible terms. None of this should surprise us because, in the absence of any tangible philosophical difference between the parties at state and federal levels, they only have brawling and name-calling left as weapons.

As will be apparent from the above, a reading of Bob Cheek’s book left me convinced that he should not have gone into politics in the first place. But then who am I, of all people, to question his judgement in that particular respect!?

Nick Evers, born in November, 1937, has been a diplomat (in Africa), trade policy advisor, economic/management consultant, university lecturer, Premier’s Department head, Liberal Government minister (1986-89) company director, Chairman, TT-Line Company Pty Ltd (1995-05), chairman of Forest Industries Association of Tasmania (2004-05), occasional consultant, columnist and writer.