Never a True Word Read online

  ‘Look, I know how you feel,’ says Leo gently. ‘No one likes that fucker. I have no doubt as soon as the election is done we will all be pulling the ripcord on the parachute and jumping out. But don’t go now. There’s only two months to go. We need you, the government needs you, and even that fucking baby next door needs you, even if he doesn’t realise it at the moment.’

  ‘Leo’s right,’ Harry jumps in. ‘Look at the bigger picture. You have worked fucking hard for two years now. I know you hate those fucking bastards. But think about election night. Think about how good that beer will taste after we have smashed them. Think about how much fun that will be. You will have accomplished something great, you will have helped us stay in government. And that’s a good thing. Take away the self-interest, the bullshit politics. You know, I know, we are a good government. Do you want to see it handed back to that lot of in-bred silver-spooners, who think that being born into the right families gives them the right to run this place as some sort of fucking eighteenth birthday present along with their new BMW?

  ‘Christ, that was a hell of a speech,’ I say. ‘Was that just straight emotional blackmail, or did you turn it around at the end there by appealing to my better nature and hatred for the other fuckers?’

  ‘I think it was a bit of both,’ he says with a grin. ‘But mate, seriously you can’t go now. It’s only a couple of months. I can’t promise you it will get any better, in fact it will probably get worse. But if you make it to election day we will look after you. You can walk away, or we will find you a job somewhere else. You will be a true battle-scarred veteran by then. One of us. We always look after our own. We’re like the Mafia that way.’

  ‘Bloody hell, now it sounds like you’re threatening me,’ I say, smiling. ‘Fine, bloody fine. I will stay. It’s not like I have anything else to do anyway. But try and keep that psychopath away from me for a couple of days.’

  41

  Back in my office again, praying to any deity that will listen to spare me from this day becoming any worse, and the phone rings. The display announces Ian Cavendish. Really? Not today. Dear God, not today. Clearly, no one upstairs is listening. I toy with not answering, but decide my mood is probably bad enough that a stoush with Cavendish will be fun. He can be my surrogate Sloan.

  ‘Yes, fuckwit, what do you want this time?’ is my less-than-welcoming start to the conversation.

  ‘Jack, I know this is not easy for you but can you try and be a little less unpleasant please. This is not personal you know,’ the oily little coackroach responds.

  ‘Oh, you want me to be pleasant? Forgive me, you fucking lowlife. I’ll try to improve my fucking manners next time.’

  He sighs. ‘Fine, Jack, be a child. But tell me. Have you had the guts to talk to Sloan yet about our little chat? Or are you still too scared of him to bring it up? You always were a coward, Jack.’

  ‘I thought it wasn’t personal, Cavendish. Yes, Ray and I had a long talk about your blackmail.’

  ‘And, did he see sense?’ I detect a hopeful note in his voice.

  ‘Well, in as much as he agreed with me. The message is go fuck yourself. And tell your scumbag boss that if he thinks he will be getting his grubby project through our Cabinet he’s even more deluded than I thought.’

  There is a good thirty seconds where I can hear nothing except for Cavendish breathing into the phone.

  ‘A mistake, Jack. A big mistake. We will crush Sloan and you in the process. Don’t think we are bluffing here. We are going to blow your boss out of the water if he doesn’t play ball.’

  ‘Cavendish, I don’t think you are bluffing. I know you are bluffing. You have nothing.’

  ‘Really?’ he says, and hangs up.

  A moment later my phone pings. Another picture. This time you can actually make out Sloan. Well, you can if you know him as well as I do. The shot is three quarters of his back at a forty-five-degree angle to the photographer. He is wearing a light-blue, short-sleeved shirt, black shorts and boat shoes with no socks, with Rayban sunglasses and a dark baseball cap. Again the picture is shot through by the light bouncing off the clear water, but it’s definitely him.

  To his right is presumably the woman Melanie, whom Sloan fessed up to kissing on the cheek. She is much more in the shot than Ray. Tall, with long brown tangled hair, cut-off denim shorts and a yellow bikini top that is just about doing its job. But nothing much is happening. The shot has captured her mid-laugh, with a hand halfway to her mouth. Her other hand holds a champagne glass. It’s not a picture I would like to see in the public domain, but neither is it a sackable offence. I flick a text back to Cavendish: ‘And?’

  His reply lands ten seconds later: ‘Not impressed? Wait till you see the next one.’

  ‘So send it to me.’

  ‘No. You change your attitude and we’ll see. On the other hand, I could just send it to Annabelle today.’

  I don’t reply to his last taunt. I swivel in my chair and stare out the window into the blue sky and search through the heat haze for a glimpse of the sea in the distance. I look at the phone still in my hand, waiting to see if it will buzz again—but, no, nothing. There is no way around it, I will have to go and see the man again.

  I knock on the door and glance to my right to see Leo standing there, looking somewhat worried. Which is fair enough given only fifteen minutes earlier I was imploring him to keep Ray away from me. I suddenly realise why he is looking so concerned.

  ‘It’s ok, I’m not quitting. There’s something I need to clear up with Ray,’ I say. Before he can reply a voice booms from the other side of the door. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Gotta go,’ I say to Leo, grab the door handle, notice the slightly damaged lock, and walk in. Ray is staring at me and doesn’t say a word. Holding my phone in front of my face I say, ‘Cavendish. Picture,’ and he jumps to his feet. Still saying nothing, he takes the phone and examines the photograph.

  ‘Shit, that’s not a good look.’

  ‘No. Probably not. But let’s not panic. Most people wouldn’t even recognise you and you are not doing anything that could be classified as improper.’

  ‘But it does look a bit sleazy.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Thanks, mate.’

  ‘I’m not going to apologise for that. It does. But it’s not a hanging offence. People will take the piss out of you, but no one is going to call for your sacking over that picture.’

  ‘Ok, did Cavendish have anything else to say?’

  ‘Same as last time. Do what Fox wants or the pictures will be sent to Annabelle Howard. He reckons he has others that are more compromising but he wouldn’t send them. I told him he’s bluffing.’

  ‘That’s a big risk you are taking with my career there, Jack. Want to talk to me about that first?’ But he says this with a tone of weary resignation. There is no anger, no fight in his voice.

  ‘What’s he got to gain? Sure if he has something he can blow you up. But he’ll blow himself up as well. How the fuck does he think he’ll get his project up when it emerges he tried to blackmail a Cabinet minister? He’s likely to go to jail.’

  ‘Is it time to go the cops? I could call the Commissioner?’

  ‘That’s your decision, Ray. But if you do, it will get out. I have the evidence on this phone. They will charge him. It will be a nuclear story. You will be damaged in the process. Do you want that a couple of months out from the election?’

  ‘No. But afterwards I might just say fuck it and go for him.’

  42

  Mercifully a quiet few days follow. Ray takes time off. Cavendish doesn’t get in touch. Howard doesn’t ring asking questions about photographs so I assume Cavendish has not followed through on his threat, as yet.

  We are in the dog days of December and even the media egos need to take a holiday to escape the baking city. Even better when the big kids are away. Newspapers and TV wheel out their B teams. I shouldn’t be too hard, most of them are just out of journalism school or hav
e just been given their big city break after slogging it out in the country for a few years. This is where TV journalism becomes a press release with moving pictures attached.

  At a Boyle press conference I was told by Mark Wilson that after the Premier was allowed a golden run talking up his latest inanity (it may have been wind power, I’m not sure), followed by a couple of soft questions about why we are now the ‘Dubai of the windswept world’ the eager press pack moved on to the Opposition, which is going through one of its semi-regular bouts of leadership instability.

  Q. ‘Should the Opposition stick with Jeremy Montague as leader?’

  This is a question that should embarrass any journo with half a brain. For a start, despite the adversarial nature of the political world, inviting a member of one party to start bagging the other side on the basis of something he’ll know nothing about—this time leadership tensions—will not advance the story in any meaningful sense. But what such a question does give him is essentially fifteen seconds to launch an unpaid political ad for him and his party. While that delights me in my current job, old habits die hard, and I feel guilty and sad about my own role in the degradation of an ancient craft. Too much journalism these days is concerned with filling holes. This ninety-second TV spot needs to be filled, this space in the paper will take 500 words, this three hours of talkback radio needs all manner of crackpot opinions. And quantity will beat quality every day of the week. Thus we have such questions as: ‘Should the Opposition stick with Jeremy Montague as leader?’

  Just for the record Boyle’s response, which was run word for word in all TV bulletins and much of it also made the newspaper, was that of course Montague should keep his job. Boyle included words such as ‘decent’, ‘hardworking’ and ‘honest’ to describe Montague. It also included ‘disloyal’, ‘treacherous’ and ‘highly ambitious deputy’ to describe Montague’s enemies within his own party. It didn’t seem to occur to any of the journos that if Boyle was trying to prop up Montague it was because he thought he would be the easiest bloke to beat come election time. Or even the corollary. If Montague’s deputy, one of those archetypal business blow-in types the party always wanted, deep down, to lead them, got up before the election then Boyle was already out there defining his opponent.

  Even if all was relatively quiet on the public front, behind closed doors it was time to crank things up. There were meetings, panics, more meetings. There were policies to write, electoral bribes to consider, and more meetings.

  The meeting phenomenon still felt foreign to me. Journalists don’t generally do meetings. Not humble reporters anyway. Sure the higher-ups get involved, meeting to discuss the news of the day, deciding on strategy, considering marketing pitches and circulation numbers and surviving in the digital age …

  And I was always happy to leave them to it. Journalists, generally, aren’t team players. But, dear God, does government love a meeting. For argument’s sake I will define a meeting as any gathering that involves three or more people. But more commonly it means ten people stopping whatever useful work they are doing to gather in a windowless box so they can doodle on the notebook in front of them. At some point each of the ten will say something, just to be sure everyone else believes they are paying attention and contributing. Usually, though, it’s just a recap of something someone else has said.

  Meetings, to me, were what you did when you wanted a break from work. But now I am faced with big meetings, small meetings, meetings about having meetings and meetings about not having meetings. For the election I am involved in the in-house group deciding what the Treasurer should do (and that was fine), on the media strategy group, the rapid response team, the early morning review team and the night strategy outfit. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for, you know, work. Especially as in the majority of the gatherings I’m not really expected to contribute.

  Sloan is there of course, as is Boyle, the pollster, the head of the party, the head of the campaign and a few assorted hangers-on. I am there mainly as window dressing for Sloan. Boyle has Jennifer Masters and Mark Wilson, plus a couple of their deputies, So Sloan has to show he is also important by bringing along his entourage—me, Leo and Harry generally. And it is stressful because you never know when Sloan will derail a meeting in a moment of madness.

  A couple of weeks out from the election Sloan is growing increasingly antsy.

  I am prepared to cut him some slack with the Bruce affair hanging over his head. No matter the polls show the government is well in front and we’ll be picking up a swag of seats that will prove useful in the years ahead. No matter the other lot are little more than a rabble.

  On the bright side (and this is just my nasty side talking) the election campaign does bring the joy of Ray to a wider audience. While government makes a display of teamwork the reality is that most of the time it’s every office for itself. We are a group of self-sustaining organisms that develops its own culture, mores and belief systems. Like little cults, really—or the AFL, in theory one organisation but in reality eighteen teams bashing the hell out of each other trying to prove who is top of the tree. But come election time, we tend to put aside those petty differences and work together. All our jobs are at stake here so it makes sense to combine our mutual antagonisms and face them outward rather than inward. Just for a month. After it’s all over, and if we win, we can resume the old hatreds.

  Everybody in government circles understands how difficult Sloan is. They have heard the stories, seen the wounds, noticed my rapid ageing (although that could be my imagination) and glimpsed it themselves at the morning meeting. Whenever Boyle is away Sloan likes to take over the morning meeting. Strangely, I enjoy these gatherings of twenty or so staffers around the table and I think Ray enjoys the novelty of scaring the fuck out of a whole different group of people. There is also the enjoyment of using these people as proxies for whatever minister they happen to work for.

  Not that Ray holds back in a direct confrontational sense with any of his Cabinet colleagues (and I use ‘colleague’ in the loosest possible sense). When he’s in one of his good moods he likes to regale us with how he mangled the Education Minister or destroyed the Environment Minister during Cabinet that day. So, a morning meeting with staff of said ministers is just a chance for him to continue the war by other means. If he gives them a bollocking he knows the word will reach their already traumatised bosses and the message he is sending will be reinforced.

  So when I see Ray line up Brad from the Environment Minister’s office and tell him: ‘What the fuck was your minister doing on radio this morning?’ I do get a naughty (and unworthy) thrill. Brad’s a bit shiny and full of himself so Sloan doesn’t like him on general principles, and I have to say I am with him on this one. Mid twenties, with carefully gelled hair, black shoes so highly polished I can see the ceiling lights reflected in them, sharply pressed white shirt, Hugo Boss black suit, red silk tie (with tie pin), he’s the kind of bloke who gives our profession a bad name. He’s barely out of university, already being paid more than his mother or father and carrying the certainty of someone who has suffered a life devoid of setbacks. Indeed, he is so full of his own sense of self-importance he actually thinks it’s a good idea to debate Ray.

  He starts to rationalise why his minister told Caldicott the government would consider increasing support for farmers who wanted to plant more trees. Ray hates policy on the run because it involves spending money. Even worse, from Ray’s point of view, is it’s ‘Greeny bullshit’.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ snarls Ray as Brad starts to embark on what he no doubts considers a sound and rational explanation of the morning’s events.

  ‘But, Treasurer,’ Brad foolishly tries to continue. I smile and lean back comfortably in the high-backed leather chair, waiting for the show to start.

  ‘Don’t interrupt me, you sad excuse for a press secretary. Fair dinkum, I am trying to keep this government together and while I know we have to employ fuckwits like you from time to time I don’t have to
like it. You fucking swan in here as if you own the place, you think you know everything there is to know about politics, and then want to tell me why your minister is not the most inept, badly advised fucker in this government.

  ‘Take a tip from me. When I am talking, you shut the fuck up and listen. Then when you have finished listening, get up, leave this room and go and tell that fuckwit you work for that I am coming for him. Understand?’

  Brad nods.

  ‘Then fuck off.’ Meeting over.

  43

  During the first few days of the campaign we have the set piece of my carefully compiled ‘Dollar dazzler’. With the help of a designer we have come up with a highly polished, glossy document that runs to twenty-four pages and documents every promise, half-promise and thought bubble the Opposition dreamt up in the last four years.

  I’m talking about my own work here, but it’s a masterpiece, with a ludicrous $25 billion price tag attached to their spending promises over four years. The fact no one will believe the number is irrelevant. The aim is to expose the other lot as a political party that will do anything, or say anything to anybody, if there’s a vote in it for them. And it’s a response to their inevitable charge that we are a bunch of economic wastrels, the argument run against every government in history by their Opposition. It’s not intended to be a knockout blow; we’re just planting seeds of doubt, particularly in the minds of the media. If we really get lucky it will also infect the Opposition, making them wary about making too many big-spending election promises.

  My job has been the collecting and presenting of the evidence. The booking of venues, the timing of press conferences and the gathering of the media I delegated to one of the advance teams, scouts sent out to find locations. They think about backdrops, accessibility, how it will look on TV—and they identify potential problems.