Nicholas Hasluck Melbourne, The entries were usually done at night from jottings and memory. I decided to adopt a similar practice. Mark Latham does not explicitly state that he ever kept a physical diary. Neither does he make clear why he kept a diary or why he decided to publish. Across these seven published diaries, four different forms of editorial practice are evident, but no clear editorial trends.
Millar and Don Aitkin intervene strongly as editors in the published diaries of Casey and Howson, respectively.
Millar, preface to Casey, Australian Foreign Minister, p. Each has sought to present himself as an impartial, objective observer, seeking to act in the public good. Latham consistently collapses distinctions between the different kinds of truth that diaries contain, between eyewitness reporting and purely subjective interpretation.
But the fact that he makes no mention of changing his mind on this point seems also to imply, or be intended to imply, that he had always meant for the diaries to be read as a whole. Emphasis added. First, after the election, many Labor MPs and Party officials offered their views and analyses of the conduct of our campaign in background briefings to the media. Presumably, Latham disagrees with the views and analyses of the election campaign that he refers to, and wants to put his own.
But why is it important that this supposedly rare, truthful information be put on the public record straight away? It is notable though not surprising that Latham neglects to mention direct economic reward as a motive for rapid publication. Reader interest was obviously greatest in the immediate aftermath of his electoral defeat. It could be expected to evaporate quickly. But aside from financial imperatives, it seems most likely that Latham decided to publish his diary primarily in order to justify his actions and to intervene in political debates around the ALP.
And it also seems likely that he decided to publish this material as a diary rather than a scholarly study mainly because he wanted his views to be received as simply factual, to benefit from the aura of immediate, unmediated truth that diaries still possess.
Ironically, while Latham bemoans the lack of privacy he received as ALP leader and reviles the public and media voyeurism associated with celebrity, he also clearly trades on this voyeurism in presenting his views as personal, secret ones.
With some justice historians have often questioned the reliability of diaristic evidence. The diaries of Casey and Howson appeared some twelve years after their final published entries. With Cameron the gap was thirteen years. At the very least, the publication of the diaries of Blewett and Latham, and especially those of Latham, have set a precedent for using political diaries as forms of personal and political intervention, and not merely of historical record, within public life.
Analysis of the Genre Political diaries convey the texture and rhythms of parliamentary political life better — more completely — than any other source. They throw a special light on what life is like for actors within the parliament, the executive, and the parties. But it is also evident that individuals experience and understand their own political careers in a number of different ways. How to make sense of the idiosyncratic reflections of so many politicians, spread out across such divergent moments of political history?
They are indispensable for this purpose. These can be thought of as ideal types of the patrician, the radical and the professional. The modes suggest dominant orientations to politics; forms of cultural capital; affiliations; orientations to change; and relationships with other political actors.
Individual politicians do not map directly onto these ideal types, and draw from them selectively in making their own careers. Nonetheless, they loom as models of behaviour and patterns of identification. Australian diarists affirm the importance of these types when they reflect upon their own behaviour and attempt to understand the 50 Nicholas Hasluck, introduction to Hasluck, The Chance of Politics, p.
Shils and Henry A. Their writings serve to circulate these models, and thereby to reproduce them in the eyes of their readers and observers. However, it was once the most acclaimed model of the politician in action, to which nearly all British statesmen aspired.
Traces of the paradigm are strongly evident in the diaries of Casey and Menzies; they are also present, if less purely, in the records that Howson and Hasluck kept of their time in politics. This is not to say that all of these politicians were born to privilege, of course as is well known, both Menzies and Hasluck were humbly born.
It is to suggest that their diaries evoke and exalt a political world organised according to the principles and duties of an aristocratic order. Patricians consider politics a duty. Educated in elite schools and universities, these politicians display their learning with a studied insouciance. When Menzies visits the Middle East he records a close conversation with a local official. We find political problems are the same the world over — and laugh over them.
These mysteries under which Englishmen hold posts of authority 67 in non-British countries are quite beyond me, but the breed is superb. His place is on the throne but his instincts take him to the servants hall.
The patrician sought the rank of the statesman. Consequently, he also rejected those politicians obviously venal or self-interested. When 62 See for example ibid.
Louisiana has just erected one to Huey Long! This induces sober reflections. When Hasluck met the former Prime Minister S. There lunches are held86 and cocktail parties given. Howson, The Howson Diaries, pp. Ruling elites shared a common world of institutions, reaching across the boundaries of geography and race. The ward of the Thai Prince was apparently at college in Armidale, New South Wales; a former Thai Ambassador to Washington had a son at Geelong Grammar; the Leader of the Opposition had two sons enrolled at the same institution; and the Director of Immigration had a son in Australia, too.
Protected from the painful restrictions of poverty, he was inclined to see all conflicts as an expression of personal relationships and character: I have always believed that the most important and most difficult thing in life was the relationship between human beings […] Every human being is different, mentally and psychologically from every other one although physically we may be much alike.
Human personality and character is indefinable. In consequence, Casey placed great emphasis upon his ability to build up reliable personal contacts.
It was on the basis of this logic that Casey became concerned when senior 89 Ibid. For the practiced patrician, once someone was known personally, then their motives could be judged and their actions understood. This procedure was a kind of social networking developed into a diplomatic technique. In the give and take of trustful dialogue, commonalities could be glimpsed, and differences breached.
This is why Casey was convinced of the merits of verbal over written communication: In discussion, people can frequently mutually adjust attitudes so that the differences disappear. When a thing is on paper, it is hard and fast and takes a good deal more of an effort to alter. This is another argument for face-to-face discussion rather than relying wholly on the written word to convey attitudes.
From the narrow vantage of the clubroom, they only rarely glimpsed another life. They had no perspective from which to comprehend the high-fences that marked out their tiny and privileged world, still less to understand the anger or the hurt that propelled others into the parliamentary life.
Blewett is the most educated of Australian diarists, in possession of an undergraduate degree from the University of Tasmania, and postgraduate qualifications from Oxford University. He was Professor of Politics at Flinders University from , and is the author of several works of political science, including a study of political biography. His artistic interests are wide his Diary refers to his support for the Bell Shakespeare Company, and to his enjoyment of French dance, for example , and his writing clear.
Casey, Australian Foreign Minister, pp. Blewett does not reflect upon the purposes of political life, and his model of politics must be inferred by the silences and emphases of the daily record. The Minister describes a world of organisational groupings: Cabinet, faction, party, and department. As a political actor, Blewett aims to meet the institutional imperatives of these wider structures, and to balance their sometimes competing demands. At times, this involves conflict. However, the bitter clashes of the Cabinet Diary are not obviously driven by either service or passion.
Fitting with the bureaucratic ethos, Blewett often identifies political weakness with an excess of emotion or insufficient attention to detail. His orientation to change is neither the complacent defence of the patrician nor the ardent reform of the radical politician. Within the technocratic or professional framework, distinctive issues are weighed for their political consequences, rather than for their social or ethical import.
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