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Newcastle Herald

Saturday December 29, 2007

Neil Jameson

IT was the year La Nina dumped on the drought, a rampant Rudd snapped the Howard reign, and a footballing genius revealed he was mortal after all.

John Winston Howard, the man who finessed the game of political poker longer and more shrewdly than anyone since Robert Menzies, might have cashed his chips and given up his chair to Peter Costello. Instead, he played on and lost the lot.

On November 24, just 11 months after landing the federal Labor leadership, Kevin Rudd shrugged off lap dancing and ear wax misadventures to bring the ALP in from the cold. Of the 21 seats Labor captured from the Liberal Party, the most definitive was Bennelong where John Howard was trumped by former ABC journalist Maxine McKew. Not since Stanley Melbourne Bruce in 1929 had an incumbent PM lost government and his own seat on the one day.

Three weeks later, Rudd passed his first test as PM. After signing the Kyoto Protocol he led an Australian delegation to Bali to play a meaningful role in rescuing an international climate change deal from American obstinacy. It marked a conspicuous departure from the all-the-way-with-USA attitude of the previous decade.

The new PM reiterated his intention to withdraw combat forces from Iraq by mid-2008. In Afghanistan, where the death in November of commando Private Luke Worsley marked the fourth Australian fatality of the conflict, the strategy was to stay the course.

Arguably, the army's most contentious engagement was not in Iraq or Afghanistan but rather the Northern Territory where, in June, Canberra seized control of 60 Aboriginal communities as prime minister Howard declared the problem of child abuse a national emergency.

Critics of the intervention and its timing queried why the government had left it to an election year to move on the issue. Greens leader Bob Brown said appalling evidence of neglect and abuse had been in the public arena for years.

The deciding issue in the federal election, the analysts told us, was industrial relations, or, more particularly the Coalition's controversial WorkChoices legislation.

By December, Kevin Rudd was in The Lodge, John Howard on the golf course, and Peter Costello had ditched his leadership ambitions, leaving Brendan Nelson to pip Malcolm Turnbull as the new boss of a leaner Coalition team. As for WorkChoices, a month after the poll, Nelson assigned it to the political dumpster.

Change was definitely in the air. In western NSW, while other parts of the nation remained in drought, December rain turned parch earth to an inland sea.

The return of the NSW Labor Government in March had ensured that by year's end, the ALP's rule in state, territory and federal spheres would be absolute. Not even the surprise retirements of Northern Territory chief minister Clare Martin, Victorian premier Steve Bracks and his Queensland counterpart Peter Beattie could dent Labor's primacy.

Health remained the hottest of political potatoes. As doctors in state public systems warned that every emergency unit was plagued with chronic management problems that jeopardised public care, PM-elect Rudd promised the Federal Government would take over the running of the system if the states failed to respond.

The job of leavening an otherwise austere political landscape fell to Australia's first woman Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who gave hope to all female aspirants, and those naughty boys from The Chaser program, arrested for breaching Sydney's security cordon during the APEC summit in September.

Money matters

THE polls suggested it didn't hurt but it certainly didn't help the Coalition when the Reserve Bank made the historic decision to cool an overcooking economy by raising interest rates during an election campaign. The November rise was the sixth since Howard's 2004 election pledge to keep rates low.

The resources boom and "you've-never-had-it-so-good" boosterism camouflaged a deepening balance-of-payments problem, one of the worst housing affordability climates in the developed world and the neglect of the nation's infrastructure needs.

The US sub-prime mortgage market fallout sent jitters through Australian markets with Centro, RAMS and Basis Capital among the high-profile victims of the global credit disquiet.

Under the impetus of the Chinese, Australian mining stocks worked up a formidable head of steam, especially in mineral-rich Western Australia. In NSW, where Hunter coal exports led the boom, the minerals sector delivered a record year with production valued at $12.3 billion.

It was the year of the private equity splurge with CVC Asia Pacific accepting James Packer's invitation to snap up 75 per cent of PBL Media, centrepiece of the Packer media empire. Wesfarmers managed to load Coles into its shopping trolley, but the Macquarie Bank-led Airline Partners' $11 billion tilt at Qantas stalled on take-off.

The long-awaited decision by the NSW Government to privatise much of its electricity industry had merchant bankers rubbing their hands in expectation of fat management fees.

On the land, farmers brought to the brink of ruin by a decade of drought were joined by thousands whose livelihood depended on the equine industry. From its detection in late August, the equine flu epidemic infected more than 33,000 horses in NSW and Queensland, brought thoroughbred racing in those states to a standstill for four months and cost the entire industry more than $300 million.

It was high tide for insurance companies in June when a cataclysmic storm blew the bulk carrier Pasha Bulker on to Nobbys Beach, and dumped floodwaters throughout Newcastle and the Central Coast with the cost of nine lives. The estimated payout was in the vicinity of $1 billion.

Foreign affairs

ALMOST predictably, the issue of homeland security was dusted off for yet another election year. But 2007 proved tough territory for spooks and feds searching for terrorists under beds.

In a slap in the face for former immigration minister Kevin Andrews, terrorism suspect Dr Mohamed Haneef was free to return to Australia after the full bench of the Federal Court upheld a judge's earlier decision to reinstate his visa. The Gold Coast-based doctor and Indian national had been detained following a firebomb attack on Glasgow airport by a group which included his cousin.

A second high-profile terrorism case collapsed with a judge accusing ASIO officers of kidnapping and unlawfully detaining a young Sydney medical student. Prosecutors dropped terrorism charges against Izhar ul-Haque after a NSW Supreme Court judge ruled that the misconduct of ASIO and Australian Federal Police officers meant interviews with him were inadmissible as evidence.

Foreign travel presented its own hazards. In March, five Australians were among 21 passengers killed when a Garuda Boeing 737 burst into flames in a field after skidding off the runway at Jogjakarta in Java.

A report found that the pilot was so "fixated" with landing he ignored 15 alerts and the pleas of his co-pilot warning he was coming in too fast for a landing approach.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, more Australians were sensing their mortality. Six inmates of death row, sentenced for trying to smuggle 8.3 kilograms of heroin from Bali to Australia in April 2005, were dealt another legal blow in October when a court ruled Indonesia was within its rights to order their executions. Three of the six Australians sentenced to die for their roles in the Bali Nine drug ring had sought the protection of Indonesia's constitution, arguing it enshrined life as a basic human right. Meanwhile Newcastle's Renae Lawrence, a Bali Nine conspirator, had three months shaved from her 20-year term to mark Indonesia's national Independence Day.

In July, former beauty student Schapelle Corby spent her 30th birthday in Bali's Kerobokan prison waiting for word on a final appeal against her conviction and 20-year jail term for marijuana smuggling.

In May, the return of Australia's most celebrated international convict effectively ended an election-year public relations problem for the Howard government. David Hicks's US captors released him from Guantanamo Bay, where he had spent more than five years, and returned him to Australia after convicting him not of being a terrorist but of being a supporter of terrorism. He was taken to Yatala Labour Prison where he served the final seven months of his sentence before his scheduled release today on strict security conditions.

Departures

GONE forever was Billy Thorpe, the bloke who started off crooning a cover of Over The Rainbow and graduated to lead singer of the Aztecs, the loudest pub rock band of them all. He died of a heart attack in February, aged 60. Joining him backstage in the great beyond was fellow rocker Lobby Loyde who succumbed to lung cancer.

Radio lost one of its more controversial broadcasters when former shock jock Stan Zemanek died of a brain tumour in July.

Bernie Banton, the public face of the fight for asbestos diseases compensation, died in November. He was 61. Banton had aggressive asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma.

Cancer claimed Australian playwright Steve J. Spears, famous for penning The Elocution Of Benjamin Franklin, at the age of 56. "The theological question," he wrote, "why cancer? Is there really, truly a God who, along with sunsets, dreams this foul stuff up just to torment us?"

A heart attack took Turkish-born mobile-phone entrepreneur John Ilhan at age 42.

Off to the retirement paddock went the man said to be the world's highest remunerated broadcaster, John Laws.

Test cricketers Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer, three of the most influential players in Australia's international domination, called it a day.

No exit attracted bolder headlines than that of rugby league's Andrew Johns. The former Australian, NSW and Newcastle Knights skipper succumbed to a chronic neck injury in April. In August his fans awoke to the news from London that he had been arrested in possession of an ecstasy tablet. Johns returned to Australia and an astonishing live interview on The Footy Show where he detailed a career-long battle with alcohol, drugs and bipolar disorder. Before year's end he would marry his partner Cathrine Mahoney, release his biography The Two of Me, and commit to coaching consultancies with at least two NRL clubs and the NSW Blues.

In parallel with Johns's troubled flight flew West Coast Eagle Ben Cousins. From Perth to rehab missions in Los Angeles, the onetime AFL pin-up boy made a mess of every attempt to rescue his career from the grip of drugs.

Play things

ON the field, the footballing honours went south of the Murray with Melbourne Victory claiming the inaugural A-league prize, the Storm reigning supreme in the NRL and the Geelong Cats snapping a 44-year drought in the AFL. In rep football, victories in the first two games delivered a 2-1 State of Origin win to Queensland. Lost in France at the Rugby World Cup, the Wallabies went with barely a whimper, beaten 12-10 by England in the semi-finals.

The Asian Cup presented a sharp learning curve for the Socceroos who went out in the quarter-finals, beaten on penalties by defending champions Japan. By year's end, the game's governing body had moved on the vexed question of Guus Hiddink's successor by opting for another Dutchman in Pim Verbeek.

The line between pop celebrity and sporting stardom blurred a bit more when David Beckham's visiting LA Galaxy took on Sydney FC before 85,000 fans. A signature goal from a free kick by Beckham wasn't enough to avert a 5-3 loss.

The Melbourne Cup carnival managed to shake off the equine flu curse long enough for Michael Rodd to ride Efficient to a rousing win over import Purple Moon.

In the unreal world of glitz and goss, Kylie Minogue celebrated 20 years as a pop diva by putting the big C scare behind her and delivering a top-selling album, Home and Away perennial Kate Ritchie unplugged herself from the long-running soap, and the gladiator Russell Crowe led South Sydney Leagues Club members out of poker machine enslavement.

Holmesville hottie Jennifer Hawkins didn't let a catwalk catfight with David Jones rival Megan Gale warp her karma. Our Jen bloomed in The Great Outdoors, fronted the Myer campaign, put her body on the line for Loveable and leant her face to the Covergirl cosmetics campaign.

Which all goes to show, in 2007 the cup was at least half full. Or, as one smart dude put it: "An optimist stays up to midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves."

By December, Kevin Rudd was in The Lodge, John Howard on the golf course, and Peter Costello had ditched his leadership ambitions . . .

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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