SCOOP  We have been fortunate to be chosen by Mr G Henderson as the vehicle to disseminate his view of Australian Literature. 

G Henderson comment. The first 233 days

Hello there, it’s about time I was called to account.

Things are going very well I can tell you.  If you hadn’t heard I’m now in charge of the literature awards, that’s me and the P.M.  You’re probably thinking, ‘Tony, a Rhodes scholar, knows a thing or two about literature’!  Well I’ll disabuse you on that one.  He knows bugger all about literature.  But he does know about certainty, you see certainty is what makes a bloody good writer!  Good for sales also.  You cannot deny the cash register as the gate keeper.  That’s what Labor lost sight of, the cash register.  Tony doesn’t like writers much at all, and being a thinking persons gatekeeper I’m inclined to agree.  You see a literate PM is what the public can’t stand, gives them the ‘Gareth Evans’.  We like PM’s who are decisive and get on with the job of government.

You see writers, are a clique.  Being lefties they all hang around together.  Remember I told you about readers and writers festivals?  They’re all the same, the Age readership, Fairfax, and Michael Leunig.  They’re are all talking ‘like with like” whereas in my paper, the Australian and my friends at the IPA  don’t always agree.  We’re a broad church, and though some of us think the death penalty is alright, others are just in favour of castration and flogging.  You see we on the right represent a pluralist society.  And as for the role of women?  As on most things, we agree sensibly, that they should remain at home.  Punishment, the certainty of death, and the fact that some people need a little bit of persecution.  It’s all gods will!!

Now you’re probably wondering what sort of a grasp I’ve got on Australian literature, am I getting too deep here?  For a start I don’t like anything controversial.  Glad to say we’ve eliminated busy body academics ever since Donald Horne started to bang on about the ‘Lucky Country’.  Give us a break what a ‘Country’ he turned out to be!  Happily nowadays no academic is game to make a contribution to the public conversation and that’s a bloody good thing.  We want bang for our buck, not effete thinkers and daydreamers!

Same for all those novelists who bang on about “our society’, and ‘where we’re heading’, can’t stand them, and besides with the new ‘Freedom Commissioner’, they can go peddle their wares to Tim.  He’ll set them straight.

No I’ve got time for the important things and I’m thinking what we need more of is literature that celebrates a sense of ourselves.  We need to identify not what makes us different but what makes us identifiable as a ‘community’.  That’s why I’m commissioning several dozen excellent books on Gallipolli and Australians at war.  They’re written in a straight language about people we can really admire, and it demonstrates how we’ve grown as a nation.  There’ll be none of that carping about injustice, poverty and the ‘Secret Australia’.  This is as real as it gets, and to my thinking puts us at the forefront as a progressive society.  No time for all that claptrap about language and the migrant experience.  I’ve got little patience for aboriginal writers and the so called ‘cultural wars’.  This is the culture we have, it’s got us this far and I can’t think of a better one.  Celebrate literature, celebrate inclusiveness.  Difference and ‘other voices’ are confused background noise.  It’s what happens when you stray from the central theme of Gallipoli, sacrifice, the monarchy and god literature.  (Sorry a typo, but we must reinstate GOD)

Have you read a good book trecently?  Well I have.  There’s a new one by Senator Bernardii.  Alright, you’ve got me there!  Seems there aren’t so many right wing writers, but that’s because the left have a monopoly, it needs to be corrected, and as for language it’s like history, if it’s not standardised people will go off on tangents.  It could lead anywhere, and the returns are impossible to assess.  That’s why the PM has entrusted me with this task, and I’m very happy to say that when we remove funding from those lefty writers festivals we’ll have the sort of writers I agree with.  The Australian is a good example, balanced and not afraid to call the shots.  There has to be more of this, for without balance, we’re lost.  Bit like the aborigines, they had forty thousand years, hundreds of non standardised languages to mine, deforest and degrade this country, and what did they do with it?..Bugger All.  I rest my case.

And finally I plan the next literary award to be give posthumously to Bryce Courtenay.  Did more for Australian literature than anyone, and he wasn’t even a ‘Real Australian’.

Cheers