When I was in my last year of high school, my Politics teacher took our whole class to sit in a session of WA Parliament – kind of a special “treat” for making it up to exams. His apparent plan to instil in us a pride in and connection to government process majorly backfired when we arrived for the afternoon session. Instead of a group of level-headed bureaucrats debating policy, we were witness to a screaming match between sweaty-headed old men who had loaded themselves during a long lunch. One member was so drunk he couldn’t actually articulate, and instead spent most of the session laughing at the roof and making confusing gestures towards us and whoever else was in the visitor’s gallery. My teacher might’ve been embarrassed, but it set in me an interested, if bemused, perspective on the world of politics just before I spent ten years reporting on it, and taught me a valuable lesson; the wheels of our nation are greased with alcohol.
It’s no secret booze is heavily intertwined with our society; since a bunch of white folks decided to colonise this land, alcohol has been an integral part of the country’s development, much to the chagrin of the people who were already here. Because the trip from England to here was mostly spent on the sea in wooden boats, rum was an important ingredient to colonisation, being the drink of choice for pirates and other groups who liked to take things that didn’t necessarily belong to them. So it was with us, as demonstrated by one of the most important early historical events of our young nation’s history: the Rum Rebellion.
In case you didn’t hear about it at school (I went to Catholic school so anything involving alcohol, sex or not being a weird creep was pushed out of the curriculum) the centrepiece of the Rum Rebellion was Governor William Bligh, who according to most reports was a miserable piece of shit. Bligh had already been told enough during the mutiny on the Bounty; as a captain he was notorious for his harsh and cruel treatment of sailors, workers and basically anyone else in his general vicinity. It’s probably for this reason the British Government appointed him Governor of New South Wales in 1805, when it was still a British penal colony. Specifically, he was tasked with straightening out the News South Wales Corps, the local militia who had been profiting headily from the illicit trade of rum. While Bligh’s domineering nature lead to actual change in the stagnating colony, including the proper provision of supplies to farmers and rural workers outside the colony’s centre, he earned enmity from those around him due to the disruption of the barter system that had developed.
This brought Bligh into a feud with army commander John Macarthur, who was one of many men of power in New South Wales who enjoyed or profited from alcohol. In fact Bligh’s attempts to clean up the colony were often thwarted by the Judge Advocate Richard Atkins, who was a pisshead himself. After a series of land disputes and fuck-yous via mail, Macarthur had the militia march on Government House and arrest Bligh. With the intervention of the Crown the whole dispute was more or less sorted out, but the ability of alcohol to cause stupid shit to happen at the highest levels of Australian bureaucracy had been set in stone.
In 1918, the similar Darwin Rebellion continued the trend over almost destroying government because of booze. The residents of the city were sick of unfair taxation, specifically on beer, and the nationalisation of pubs among other less alcohol-related (read: not important) issues. An angry mob carried a burning effigy of Northern Territory Administrator John Gilruth to Government House, where he was almost killed before escaping the country under escort. The rebellion has been described as the biggest anti-government protest that wasn’t the Eureka Stockade, and firmly established groups like the Australian Worker’s Union in the Territory and beyond.
By World War One the growing temperance movement managed to convince most state governments to close bars at 6pm as both a promotion of temperance and an austerity measure. What resulted was a complete mess called the “six o’clock swill”. Beer-loving patrons now rushed to pubs and bars after work and pumped as much alcohol into their system as they could between the hours between 5 and 6pm, at which point they presumably stumbled home and provided responsible parenting to their children. It radically changed the layout of Australian pubs: Owners tiled the walls to handle the amount of fluids covering the venues, rubber hoses were fitted on beer taps to fill everyone’s glasses and lounge areas and pool rooms were removed to make room for the huge, centred bars that fill a lot of pubs up to today. It’s a bit ironic considering the 6 o’clock closing time law was achieved via referendum. Most Australians, at least in South Australia where the prohibition began, seemingly voted to limit drinking times before the thirsty masses made it into a game. The next time you stop drinking out of that beer pong cup or beer bong or other beer-related paraphernalia and ask yourself, “What is wrong with me?,” remember that we always have our forebears to thank/blame.
The 6pm laws lost favour by World War 2, largely driven by clubs and associations who recognised and supported the alcoholic greasing of wheels in both the lowest and highest levels of society. Even our most high-profile leaders have become synonymous with swigging: one of the most Googled search terms relating to Australian politics is “Who was the Prime Minister who chugged beer?” This query clearly points at the country’s longest-running Labor Prime Minister, Bob Hawke. Famed for his beginnings as a union organiser and for saying any employer who sacked someone for chucking a sickie after we won the 1983 America’s Cup was a “bum”, Hawkie may be even better known for setting the record for sculling a yard of beer in his uni days. At eleven seconds, it was a masterful if confusing record to be held by a Rhodes Scholar.
Hawke was by no means an outlier, though; among Australian Prime Ministers, he was one of an alcoholic class that stretches right back to the start. Australia’s first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, was nicknamed “Toby Tosspot” by his enemies due to his drinking habit. Setting a form before Churchill was even around, Barton would fill his day with inebriation. Beginning the day with “rum and milk”, he would move on to sherry, beer, wine, spirits and liqueurs before assumedly passing out on the bank of the Parramatta River, coated in his own vomit. Much-loved post-war PM Robert Menzies apparently had a jug of martini with lunch, which I didn’t even know existed until now. As with Hawke, John Curtin gave up the booze before running for office but suffered from alcohol-related health problems throughout his life. While there were many who regularly scorned these leaders for their behaviour, there were just as many who let their antics fall under the banner of larrikin behaviour. It’s a two-sided sentiment which has continued on, past the day I watched state politicians burping into each other’s faces, until now.
While over time those at the top have built themselves a comfortable niche in the country’s boardrooms and overpriced restaurants, they are no less susceptible to getting drunk and in trouble, even if instead of drinking too much beer and punching on its downing too many glasses of chardonnay before crashing a Mercedes into a school. Just think of the ever-growing list of politicians who’ve been accused of being drunk on the floor of Parliament, or behind the wheel of a car, or an hour after telling the parents of crash victims that drink driving needs to stop. On the other side of all this is a continuous line of Prime Ministers and Politicians who have used their prodigious drinking abilities to get punters on their side. Tony Abbott threw down a schooner in six seconds at a Sydney pub because a bunch of university football players told him to – proof that hazing doesn’t end in adulthood if you’ve built your life on being an entitled douchebag. More recently, Anthony Albanese took on a similar challenge at a Gang Of Youths concert. It was the political reverse of Abbott’s experience, in that Albo was wearing a Joy Division shirt instead of a tailored suit and those shouting at him were likely less of the “drinking to blackout is the private school way” variety, but the outcome was the same.
Australia as a federated nation has always had a complicated relationship with alcohol. Much like a drunk’s memories, we tend to focus on the good and sweep the bad under the rug. We ignore the pervasive damage alcohol has done to First Nations communities until it’s used as a political scapegoat. We click our tongues at yet another report linking domestic and sexual abuse against women to alcohol consumption before turning our backs to what seems to be an increasingly insurmountable problem. Meanwhile, we focus on the social side of it; the ability for a drink to break down barriers, to be the common denominator between people from different walks on life. Drinking culture is something we’re all subject to whether we drink or not, because it’s used as a way of “taking the edge off”; avoiding the pressure the usual day-to-day stresses of work and life in general can cause. Pubs and bars are go-to destinations for those who need a break or someone to talk to. They’re often the main community meeting points in rural towns, and they have always played a part in the commercial and political progress of the country.
And it is all of those things. This is by no means a treatise against drinking, because alcohol can be as damaging or as fortifying as it’s allowed to be. It’s an incongruous aspect of Australian political and social life that seems to be a part of who we are. Or at least, it seems to represent who we are, for good and bad.
The Red Deaf 