The day Field took on the mob
MORE than 30 years ago protesters circled the government offices in Devonport. Hundreds of people, many with placards, had heard Labor premier of the day Michael Field was visiting the NorthWest city and wanted to let him know how they felt about his plan to restructure education, as recommended in a report by Sydney management consultants Cresap.
The boisterous crowd was chanting anti-government slogans and banging with their fists on the doors and windows of the offices, demanding Field come out to address them.
They discovered the doors were actually open and began pouring into the small office. About 60 crammed in the waiting area, with many more pushing to get inside.
No matter the rights and wrongs of a protest, I always feel uneasy with mobs. The adrenalin of a densely packed gathering incites a volatile feedback loop of fervour that leads to otherwise normal people wanting to break things.
I was pushed against a wall, feeling claustrophobic, when a door near me opened, someone put their hand on my shoulder to usher me aside, and a short man in a suit forced his way to the middle of the throng.
Deep in the thick of the mob, he found something to stand on that lifted him to the average height of those around him and began to yell “oy”, like a farmer berating his sheepdogs for barking at a possum in a tree.
The farmyard tone worked, and the room hushed. A stage whisper circulated urgently from person to person: “It’s Michael Field.”
Field launched a spirited defence of his education reforms, explaining that the budget he had inherited from the previous Robin Gray-led Liberal government was a mess, and that restructuring would enable the department to survive until the state coffers were in a better shape.
Field had the mob in the palm of his hand — hanging on his every word. He had disarmed them with his surprise off-the-cuff oratory and its compelling delivery.
It was inspiring as he cast his gaze around the room, making eye contact and savouring each prolonged moment of silence that he used as dramatic pauses.
Then, just as the mob appeared to have been won over, a lone voice timidly called, “save our schools”, and again, “save our schools”, and by the third repeat, three or four others had joined him, and by six or seven the mob was in full chorus.
Field retreated into his office and the crowd spilled outside to wave placards.
A little while later, Field and I gazed at the protesters from his office window. I pointed out a placard that read “Field is a wimp” and told the premier the mob was chanting the phrase earlier. He chuckled at the puerile taunt, making an aside about the state of our democracy, and turned his back on the crowd to walk away from the window.
“I’m not a wimp,” he said, with defiance, and no longer laughing. “You can say what you like about me, but I’m not a wimp. I’ve faced more hostile crowds than any politician in Tasmanian history.”
It was a big call, but he was right. Few have faced anger like Field after daring to govern with the Greens in 1989.
Field’s performance that day in Devonport changed my view of him, and opened my eyes to the fact that commonly held perceptions of political leaders are often plain wrong.
Field’s opponents seized on his short stature, dubbing him the “Field mouse”, which came with the scurrying connotations of a rodent. He was treated as a turncoat, with the constant snipe that he was “in bed” with the Greens. He was portrayed as small, weak and timid.
But that memorable day in Devonport I saw a brave man take on a riled-up mob with nothing but reason and walk away with a technical knockout. Field was not a wimp, as so many had chanted.
Nowadays, few reporters are able to get close enough to leaders to judge character. Advisers provide that kind of thing in back-room briefings and in tightly controlled photo opportunities.
I did not approach Field’s minders for an interview in Devonport that day, I just walked in off the street when everything was quiet and luckily found him alone. Times have changed.
In 30 years, a weal of spin doctors (pardon my collective noun) has swollen up in the bureaucracy to stage-manage every word, every image.
In the late 1980s, the odd political journalist colleague would “cross to the dark side” to work as an adviser for an MP, but this escalated in the 2000s to the point so many reporters were recruited it became regarded an inevitable career path for journos.
It became the norm for reporters fresh from university to spend a few years in as many roles in the media as possible, and then trade their $60,000 reporting gig for an $80,000plus junior adviser role and a chance to climb the advisers’ ranks. For some, that was their ambition from the start. Their interest in reporting was just as a stepping stone, and it showed.
Over 30 years, reporters’ pay packets kept at best a halfstep ahead of the consumer price index, as senior advisers’ pay rocketed. They are paid big bucks to create and protect an MP’s reputation, which can and does mean they have to try to stop journalists, like me, from finding out the truth.
But, worst of all, advisers have created a national network of expertise and sophisticated techniques at manipulating information.
The PR machine, most paid for by taxpayers, now spans everything from big business to lobbies, footy clubs and community groups — and there are vastly more advisers busy spinning the truth than journos trying to expose it.