Hinch vs Canberra

Behind the human headline

Derryn Hinch

• Publisher: Melbourne University Press Digital
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780522873177
• eBook ISBN:
  9780522873184
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As a current affairs commentator, Derryn Hinch spent decades fighting with politicians. Then the unthinkable happened he became one.This is the inside story of Senator Hinch's first year in Canberra.Explosive, incisive, frank, brutal, and, at times, very funny.

SENATE DIARY

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

25 August 2016

Apologies to writer Guy Rundle (and maybe Hunter S Thompson) but, in the middle of my first day of Senate School in Canberra, my mind obscurely flashed to Winston Churchill. Maybe it was because I’d been staying in the Curtin Room, and later the Menzies Suite, at the Hyatt Canberra. But, anyhow, the British bulldog came to mind in the massive committee room I was herded into with all the other freshmen (and freshwomen) senators.

I was one of only 591 men and (shamefully few) women who have ever held the honorific ‘Senator’ in this Commonwealth of Australia. A far more exclusive club than for those who have worn the Baggy Green or played for the VFL/AFL.

Sitting there (wearing my exclusive ‘access all areas’ senator’s lapel button, which negates the need for a security pass) and clutching my Pocket Guide to Senate Procedure, I thought of Winnie, who once said, ‘I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.’

Know how you feel,Winston.

It was my first time back at school since 1959. That’s fifty-seven years ago. More than 20 000 days ago. I didn’t know what a ‘high school drop-out’ was until I went to America and discovered that I was one.

But here I was, for two-and-a-half days a week, back in school. The most famous/notorious/infamous other student at this political seminary was Pauline Hanson. We were two frosty seats apart.

She came with her quartet of accidentally elected Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON) stalwarts. Sounds irreverent, but Pauline, as the leader of the pack, reminded me (in Canberra) of the movie Grease. Certainly not Sandy. Betty Rizzo. Expelled from her last school. Bad reputation.

After day one of Senate School, the One Nation quartet went off (actually, Malcolm ‘empirical evidence’ Roberts asked for an early mark) to meet with the prime minister.Wallpaper: That would have been a meeting of the minds!

I’m told somebody asked Hanson if she had ‘worked Senator Hinch out yet?’ Her response was something like ‘I never will.’ That’s possibly a compliment.

This Canberra immersion has brought back great memories from years and decades past. The last time I was in Canberra, I was in another grand building: the High Court.

The last time I was in the new Parliament House, I sat in the marbled Great Hall for a Hinch live interview with prime minister Paul Keating. He joked about growth, and I remember he chided me, and my scepticism, and boasted that if GDP growth couldn’t be sustained at 4 per cent, he ‘might as well give the game away. I wouldn’t deserve to be PM’.They’d kill for 4 per cent now.

What a wonderful town of dreams and spin and bullshit this is. Hinchey, don’t let it get to you.

To finish on a serious note, some genuinely tangible stuff. I am making great headway in my quest to pull the passports of convicted sex offenders to stem the child sex tourists in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Thank you, Rachel Griffiths.

And, within a year, I am confident I will have helped add 1 million more names to the organs donors’ register.

The fire is still in the belly. This is exciting. It is an honour. It is awesome.

BEWARE SLEEPERGATE

1 September 2016

If this radical ‘Inside (really inside) the Senate’ weekly epistle is going to be the real deal, then I must face the most shock! horror! incident in one of the truly biggest moments in my life this week.

I tweeted from inside the Senate (note to self: find out if that’s legal): It’s official. Now sworn in as Senator for Victoria in 45th parliament. Now it begins.

It was an emotional moment. Walking alone down that glass-lined corridor on my way in, I felt the awe and responsibility of it all. As I went to sign the ancient senators’ book—the book, not the senators (apart from me)—I did get moist eyes when I looked up at the visitors’ gallery at my loyal crew (who started as volunteers for our fledgling Justice Party) and gave them a thumbs up.

It was a huge day. It started with Welcome to Country in the Great Hall, where Bill Shorten (who still thinks he won) spoke longer than the prime minister. Is that protocol cool?

I actually wore a suit and tie. The president of the Senate, Stephen Parry, had briefed us about appropriate attire and said it wasn’t compulsory, so I wore a tie of my own free will. Perverse, huh?

At that dos and don’ts briefing from the prez, all the newbies sat in the imposing Senate chamber for the first time. I happened to sit in Arthur Sinodinos’s seat. I must admit I opened his drawer. There was no cash in it.

At that dummy run, I realised that I couldn’t clearly see the prez. And then, somehow, I chipped a tooth.

So, back in Melbourne on the Saturday, I saw my loyal cosmetic dentist, Yvonne King, for an emergency veneer. Then my ‘senatorial sartorialist’, Kelly Casey, who cuts my hair and touches up my beard. And then my optometrist, Helen Robbins, for some trifocals so I can see if Stephen Parry is frowning.

On Opening Day, I had green tea with the PM and got a hug from the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, and a pic with the governor-general, Sir Peter Cosgrove. Malcolm Turnbull has a stunning John Olsen on his wall. From his own collection—not from the Parliament House Aladdin’s cave, which senators get to borrow from.

I explained that my friend and former wife, actress Jacki Weaver, and I owned an Olsen from the Lake Eyre collection but the bank thought they needed it more than we did. Like my Mount Macedon farm and vineyard. And a couple of properties in Hawaii.

That will make the pecuniary interests register pretty straightforward.

Cory Bernardi, now leader of the Australian Conservatives, tracked me down in the Senate dining room, where I was lunching with my staff, to get my signature on a bill to remove ‘offend’ and ‘insult’ from section 18C.That’s my fall-back position, but at least it will get it debated. Issue one.

(Fact check: the bottled water in the Senate dining room is halal-certified. Wonder if Hanson knows? Will she dine there now? Question: how many waterfall throats do they cut and bleed out to get halal water?)

Issue two: I attacked Senate censorship and pounded out an iPad media release announcing my decision to support the press gallery and get the Senate to greenlight more media freedom and oppose archaic restrictions—which don’t apply in the lower house—on still photographers taking shots in the Senate.

I said:

People have a right to see exactly what is happening on both sides of the parliament. The media—and thus the public—should be able to see us in action, or photograph our inaction. If you get caught nibbling your ear wax, or counting your money or dozing: tough. We are here to represent the public, and we are paid a lot of money to do it. It is absurd that the media can’t effectively show the public exactly what we are up to.

This is not about publicity for me. It’s not about more exposure for my bearded mug—this is about the public being entitled to see the people who represent them representing them, even when we’re stuffing it up.

And then came the gotcha moment. Sleepergate. Hinch caught with eyes closed during the GG’s speech.

I could claim sleep apnoea, from which I suffer. I’ve overnighted at the Epworth sleep clinic. Tried a CPAP machine. But bugger it … no excuses. I dozed off.

Other people did too as we listened to a rehash of a long, boring speech spoken by a bloke in an ill-fitting suit that looked like a Nikita Khrushchev cast-off. Using other people’s words while he talked about ‘my government’.We’d heard it all in the marathon election campaign.

Bob Katter later told me that Wayne Swan had elbowed him three times and, on the other side, George Brandis and Christopher Pyne looked suspiciously somnolent.

Using the old Hinch program motto—if you are being run out of town, pretend it’s a parade and you’re leading it—I can see a silver lining. It also focused attention on the fact that on any other day (because of an Opening Day exemption) the media could not have published that photo. And that is ludicrous censorship.

After the pic went so public, I still introduced a motion to end that censorship.

Not bad after the old man of the seat had been the target of a nanna-nap pap.

HEMINGWAY ON THE HILL

8 September 2016

From now on, for me, the first session of the 45th parliament will be remembered as Hemingway on the Hill: for whom the bell tolls.

The division bells rang, the green lights flashed incessantly on the plethora of corridor clocks, and ten lazy Libs (including several ministers) were exposed playing hooky—more focused on getting an early start to a 10-day break from Canberra than protecting their vulnerable leader from a humiliating string of def...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• The good, the bad and the ugly
• How the hell did that happen?
• Senate diary
• From bullshit to burqas