John Brogden - a fundamentally good guy

It has been suggested more than once in recent days that Brogden was nothing special for the NSW Liberal Party. That view was drawn from the lack of any huge bump in opinion polls following Iemma’s ascension. Only two classes of people could have made an observation like that: those who lack any knowledge of Australian politics and those who wanted Brogden to fail. It is almost a matter of course that new leaders get a dream run, commonly called a honeymoon, for a few months. Even Alexander Downer was, for a time, phenomenally popular with the electorate. Then when things started to fall apart, his ratings crashed through the floor.

The same thing could have been happening to Iemma right now if Brogden had been left alone. There’s the debt trap in which New South Wales is caught. There are the looming traffic problems and the associated rises in tolls on private arterial roads. The long-standing disasters of health and public transport show no signs of being recovered.

That is why Brogden’s instinct to resign should have been suppressed. Able people are hard to find. He had much to give, including the Liberal Party’s only realistic chance at achieving victory in 2007. The only truly great flaw of the small ‘l’ liberal tradition in the Liberal Party is the instinct to achieve a glorious political death. The need to be lilywhite too often denies brilliant careers.

Brogden would have had a few horror months, but I think he could have seen them off.

I do not believe we have an unrealistic need for our leaders to be flawless. We are, however, subject from time to time to persuasion by the media that a comparatively minor crime is a hanging offence. What follows is that we sometimes see able people destroyed before they have fulfilled their potential. That is what happened to John Brogden.

Having come to bury Brogden for his alleged racism, members of the political class will then go about making their speeches. Someone will drop in a quote by Churchill (one of the 20th century’s most prominent racists), another will proudly recite a lyric from Banjo Paterson (whose anthology was full of cries against Asian immigration), yet another will rely on the wit of one of history’s most famous slave owners when they proclaim once more that all men are created equal. They will do it without any sense of irony either external or internal and they will do it without realising the hypocrisy which has attended the political demise of John Brogden.

There is, behind all this, the possibility of a very happy story. About 21 months ago, a little boy was born into the world. He was a miracle because, as the press reported at the time, his parents, Lucy and John Brogden, had given up hope of conceiving naturally and were looking to adopt. Flinders Brogden is now going to see a lot more of his dad. He will grow up a better person for it both because a boy needs every moment his dad can spare and because this little boy’s dad is a fundamentally good guy.