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| ISBN-13: | 9781741766936 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2008 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 602 KB |
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The Godfather
The Life of Brian Burke
By Quentin Beresford
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2008 Quentin BeresfordAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74176-693-6
CHAPTER 1
SON OF LABOR
Rising to give his first speech in state parliament in November 1973, Brian Burke paid an emotional tribute to his late father, Tom. He said that 'any credit that is mine is due to him'. Fourteen years later, when announcing to parliament his impending retirement, the touching bond was undiminished. Describing his father as 'the greatest single influence on my life', the soon to be departing premier again felt compelled to acknowledge his debt saying, 'My achievements are to his credit.' There is nothing unusual in an adult paying such a tribute to a parent except that Burke's carried an unusually reverential tone; it was as if he had lived in the shadow of an idealised version of Tom. Continuing his farewell speech, he said he hoped he had 'brought some of his [father's] forbearance, humility and unselfishness to this Parliament'. Few who knew Brian Burke well at the time would have described him as either humble or selfless. And Burke himself must have been aware of the contradiction: that after five years of engaging in reckless, secretive and high-stakes games with Perth's entrepreneurs, he sought to leave office cloaking himself in his father's personality, which he rightly described as thoroughly decent. At the time, the full extent of the contradiction escaped everyone.
So how had the father shaped the son? And why had the son idealised himself through the father? These are tantalisingly difficult questions to untangle because Brian Burke was born into a family steeped in both religion and politics during one of the most tumultuous times in ALP history. Tom Burke would carry to his grave the scars of his battles within the smoke-filled backrooms of the ALP. His young son would witness his father's sad demise.
Tom Burke, like so many of the post World War I generation, grew up in the shadow of the Great Depression which hit Western Australia harder than most other Australian states. Born into a family of keen Labor supporters in the country near Moora, he was luckier than most in having the resources and determination to survive the catastrophic collapse of the economy. His father, Peter, descended from Irish immigrants, was a battling farmer before buying a cartage contracting business to ply produce to and from the West Perth markets. This provided a stable income while thousands were being thrown out of work. Peter's sons joined him in the venture. With two horses and two carts, the family toiled from three in the morning until five in the afternoon.
The slump in the price of wheat — the mainstay of the state's already fragile economy — sparked financial hardship in city and country. This spilled over into political protest and militancy. While he was enrolled at City College to study accountancy part-time, Tom could not have escaped the desperation of the demonstrations organised by the unemployed with their pleas for 'solidarity or starvation'. The family took an intense interest in politics: 'Religion and Labor was all we got — father used to eat and sleep the Labor Party.' 'Grandma Burke', Tom's grandmother, was the enforcer of the moral code, taking it upon herself to round up the local community for attendance at church.
Spartan and morally upright, the Burke family weathered the Depression. But at times it must have appeared to them that the democratic system might buckle under the weight of the hard times. Fear was aroused by several protest rallies. One held in the centre of Perth turned ugly when conflict erupted between the several thousand protestors and the police. As a Labor family, the Burkes were more than likely to closely follow these events. At the intersection of politics and economics lay the family's other abiding loyalty, the Catholic Church. It could not have escaped the Burkes' attention that communists were thought to be stirring the pot of protest among the unemployed. The Catholic Church was growing ever more alarmed at the appeal of communism among its working-class flock. As the seeds of a struggle for the soul of the ALP were being sown, Tom Burke started to make his way in the world, and into Labor politics.
Fired by his father's enthusiasm, Tom joined a debating society and practised speaking in front of a mirror, and upon the completion of his commercial qualifications he threw himself into Labor activism. He had joined the party some time after Labor's victory at the federal elections in 1929 under leader James Scullin. Soon afterwards the Burke family participated in its first election, a state election which was lost by the Collier Labor government. Described as 'an earnest man of high attainment', Tom had a role in forming the Perth branch of the ALP. This raised his profile and helped him win endorsement to contest the 1937 Federal election, which he lost.
Events over the next few years kept Burke from renominating. Still working as a carter, he married Madeline Orr and later joined the Royal Australian Air Force. Regarded as a young man of potential, and amid the darkening clouds of World War II, Burke maintained his involvement in the administrative affairs of the ALP until 1943, when he became the Labor candidate for the federal seat of Perth. This time he won, earning the affection and support of his intensely political wider family. Tom's sister Mary lived in the country and regularly sent him her thoughts on rural politics. In fact, when she had the telephone connected in the mid 1940s, the first bill created an almighty commotion because almost all of it had been incurred talking politics with her brother.
On joining the federal parliament, Tom quickly won the affection of both Prime Minister John Curtin and Treasurer Ben Chifley. Chifley, in particular, took a shine to him as Tom stood out among his colleagues for his grasp of financial matters. Loyal and charitable and sympathetic to battlers, he was regarded as a devoted Labor man. He carried into parliament many of the values of old working-class Australia. In his maiden speech he made a heartfelt declaration that Labor would never again allow a 'man-made depression to ravage the life of the nation'. And he argued that good wages were crucial to addressing the pressing problem of lifting the nation's birthrate. He was an enthusiast for the White Australia policy, too. In one speech, he robustly declared that Australia should not apologise for the White Australia policy, explaining: 'Racial superiority is not involved. The White Australia policy had to be introduced because unlimited immigration from Eastern countries would submerge the comparatively small white population here; and the whole of Australia's living and working standards.'
Two years after Tom entered parliament, and in the dying days of the war, a tired and worn-out John Curtin died in office. The by-election for his seat of Fremantle was won by Kim Beazley Sr, and Tom and the new member of parliament quickly became firm friends. They shared much in common. Both were deeply religious (Beazley belonged to the religious movement called Moral Rearmament) and fiercely anti-communist. Tom was best man at Kim's wedding and later on their families enjoyed social occasions together. Their two sons, Kim Jr and Brian, spent a lot of time in their early years together, and were almost like cousins. Both men nurtured their political ambitions — Tom dreamed of one day serving as the federal treasurer in a government led by his good friend.
At this time Labor had several fights on its hands which occupied Tom's energies, none bigger than the one over Labor's plans to nationalise the banks. Burke became one of the frontline defenders of the plan after Chifley dropped the bombshell following the 16 August 1947 Cabinet meeting. Emerging from the meeting with a wide grin to announce the government's intention, Chifley seemed unprepared for the predictable backlash. While the plan caused outrage in the financial sector, and sent shivers down the backs of many Australians, Labor members of parliament with bitter memories of the Great Depression were resolute. Tom could remember the attitude of the banks during his father's failed farming venture in the lead up to the Depression. With his characteristic manner of speaking at the dispatch box with one of his hands tucked in the back of his trouser belt, Tom told parliament that the development of the country was being impeded by the 'huge burden of capital indebtedness' endured by farmers embroiling them in 'a never ending struggle to make ends meet'. With the nationalisation of the banks, farmers along with home builders and home purchasers would be provided with 'the money they require at a reasonable rate of interest'. Labor members were flooded with letters of protest as the measures passed though both houses of parliament only to be struck down by the High Court in August 1948.
Against this stormy background Tom's wife Madeline had given birth to Brian on 25 February 1947. He was the couple's third child. Terry was the eldest child, followed by Anne. The family home was in the solidly middleclass suburb of Wembley, notable for its strong Catholic population and the presence of nuns on the street walking back and forth to the Brigidine Convent. A year and a half after Brian was born, a fourth child came along, Frankie, who was soon found to have Down's syndrome. Frankie grew up to be a much-loved member of the family, a focus for the affections of not just his brothers and sister but of the wider Burke clan. Brian Burke, in particular, was very supportive of his brother and in later years he publicly expressed his love for Frankie. But Frankie's first few years were difficult. He was a sickly baby, in part because of the problem he had in swallowing. Madeline, joined by Tom when he was home from Canberra, would sit up all night and feed Frankie with an eye-dropper. For much of the time in his earliest years Brian had to fend for himself as his parents were occupied by Frankie's special needs. This must have been a source of some anxiety for young Brian, even though his mother said that he was a happy, independent little boy.
Before the advent of air travel, the life of a Western Australian federal member of parliament was a grinding one. Away for six weeks at a time and having to face long train journeys across the endless expanse of the Nullarbor, only the most committed could endure the strain. Luckily, the Burke family home at 61 Simper Street, Wembley provided Tom with a haven. The California-style red brick bungalow, set on a quarter acre block replete with spacious back lawn, vegetable patch and garden shed, displayed the family's solid but unpretentious circumstances. There was no flashiness about the Burkes' life: furniture was conventional and the car was an older model.
Tom's position as a local politician lent a certain élan to the family's reputation, but it was Frankie who helped cement the family's links to the wider neighbourhood. He was forever ducking off up or down the street to be found by caring neighbours who would escort him home. Tom loved to chew the fat with anyone who cared to talk about the issues of the day. He also appears to have shaped Brian's life in one very interesting way as the source of his son's life-long fascination with stamp collecting, a hobby which, almost unbelievably, helped to send Burke to prison many years later. As a federal politician, Tom received lots of mail and, presumably, from all parts of the world. Collecting was part of the family tradition. Other adult family members kept stamp and coin collections. Starting him at a young age, Tom began interesting his son in the stamps that came through the letterbox as a way of furthering his education, encouraging him to investigate the people and places whose images adorned the stamps. After ripping the stamp off the envelope, he'd say to Brian something to the effect of 'find out about this and stick it in your album, boy'. Harder to fathom is why Brian kept up such an interest when most other children let such childhood hobbies slip by.
Being an avid collector of stamps was an integral part of Brian's life. He once described himself to a journalist as 'having been a self-conscious fat kid with a fascination for stamps'. This is probably a reference to his primary school years when his problem with weight, which dogs him to this day, manifested itself in repeated bouts of binge eating. It is likely he had a form of a compulsive eating disorder linked to anxiety. Childhood eating disorders are known to have links to family traumas. In Burke's case these traumas may have been due to the difficulty his mother had giving him attention after the birth of Frankie and/or his later anxiety when he saw his father suffer at the hands of the Labor Party.
These anxieties could be contained in an otherwise happy household. The kitchen was the hub of the house. Here Madeline carried out her duties as the cornerstone of the family. Loved and admired by the Burke clan, she welcomed everyone with open arms and never had a bad word for anyone. Tom had a likeable and straightforward approach to the world. But, unlike his father, Brian started showing signs of being precocious while in primary school. He could charm the nuns and have other children in stitches of laughter by peeling off one-liners with ease. Early on he showed an innate ability to have an effect on the emotions of others. Yet up until the age of thirteen his self-confidence was dented by his being short and fat. Afterwards he had a growth spurt which contained his battle with weight.
Certainly the Burkes were an atypical family. More than most, they were drawn into the darkening clouds of international politics. The family's politics and faith made this inevitable. The end of the war sparked renewed fears among Catholics about the influence of communists in the Australian trade union movement. For years the Catholic hierarchy had been ramping up its denunciations of the evils of communism, alarmed that many of its flock continued to support the Left, ignoring dictates about 'correct' political behaviour. During the early to mid 1940s left-wing ideas remained popular among many working people, who continued to suffer poor working conditions and low wages. Nevertheless the Communist Party of Australia actively supported the war effort. At their high point in 1945 communists could lay claim to at least a third of the votes at the Australian Council of Trade Unions Congress, and they controlled a number of powerful trade unions even though from this point their influence began to slip away. Intensifying concern about their activities was the shadow of the Cold War and the incipient rise in tensions between a distrustful Soviet Union and a fearful Western alliance. For those connected to the world of politics, the early Cold War years were a time of increasing insecurity. Loyal Catholics felt especially vulnerable. It would have been impossible for the Burkes to ignore the international role of the Catholic Church as one of the main sword bearers opposing communism. Equally the family would have been aware that fear of communism was becoming irresistible political capital for conservative politicians.
Tom became enmeshed in the politics of the Cold War. With communism on the march in much of Asia, the Soviet Union in possession of the 'bomb' and with the outbreak of a witch-hunt against communists in the United States, it was inevitable that fear of the perceived threat of communism to the security of Australia would be exploited locally. The alarm over communist involvement in the trade unions became the lightning rod for the political battle within the ALP. Tom Burke was opposed to communism but not only because he was Catholic. Speeches he gave in parliament indicate a strongly felt, anti-communist world view. But this was not the climate for rational enunciations of political philosophy, especially those uttered by a provincial West Australian politician not well versed in international affairs. In fact, such an irrational climate was bound to produce casualties. Tom Burke became one of the saddest casualties of the split in the ALP between its left and right wings. He was politically destroyed by this schism and ended up despised by large sections of his beloved Labor Party. To many Catholics, however, he remained a hero.
The spark that led to his ultimate demise was ignited by an influential Catholic layperson, B.A. Santamaria, whose 'doom-laden view of the world' espoused the possibility that, through the ALP's left wing, the Communist Party could take over the party. However fanciful and exaggerated a notion this was, Santamaria, with the backing of the Church, embarked on a crusade to rid the ALP of its communist influences and, in the process, change the party's policy direction. Forming a secret group called the Movement he infiltrated unions with Industrial Groups committed to his organisation. Although Santamaria repeatedly denied that he intended to 'take over' the Labor Party, later research shows he wrote to Melbourne's Archbishop Mannix telling him that he intended to replace the Labor leadership with Movement sympathisers.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Godfather by Quentin Beresford. Copyright © 2008 Quentin Beresford. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements,Introduction,
1 Son of Labor,
2 The making of a political operator,
3 In the shadow of Huey Long,
4 The fixer,
5 Crony capitalism: Burke and WA Inc,
6 The rise and fall of an ambassador,
7 On trial,
8 Back from the brink,
9 Return of the Godfather,
10 An uncertain future,
Epilogue,
Notes,
Bibliography,