A Swedish Winter

Matt Price died last weekend, aged 46, after a brief battle with cancer. His column informed and entertained The Australian's readers for more than six years. Here are some edited column extracts.

JOHN Howard is ordinary. Deeply ordinary. The PM's ordinariness was on display this week when he invited 150 media types to the annual press gallery Christmas function at the Lodge.

Howard made it his business to individually welcome everyone on arrival. (Janette Howard declined to play hostess to the gallery; the PM's wife has standards.) Since the throng arrived in dribs and drabs, Howard often found himself standing alone at the entrance to the outdoor marquee looking, frankly, like a spare dick at a wedding. It didn't bother Howard a bit, as he greeted office secretaries and household names with equal enthusiasm.

The PM is long past blatant brownnosing to members of the press, many of whom have written him off numerous times over the past 25 years. Howard made a short but gracious speech, mischievously skirting around his 64th birthday conundrum and paying what sounded like a sincere tribute to the media's coverage of the Bali bombing.

Howard, whose determination never to become complacent is possibly his greatest political asset, still gives the impression he's slightly astounded it has all come to this. The 1970s nerd and Mr 18 Per Cent popularity has survived and thrived to be hailed as a political genius. Even the PM sees the funny side.

Observing Captain Ordinary reminded me of a story a friend has been dining off for a couple of years. She, let's call her Alice, lives in Canberra and wouldn't vote Liberal under threat of death. With a bunch of colleagues, Alice was attending a leadership and ethics conference near the PM's residence at Kirribilli. While taking a walk early one morning she stumbled upon the power-walking PM and his entourage. They nodded at each other and Alice returned to her colleagues to relate the tale of bumping into Howard. A genial mix of cockeyed optimist and mild eccentric, Alice determined to front the PM the following morning to invite him to the conference.

Reckoning correctly the PM was a creature of habit, Alice returned to where she'd encountered Howard the previous day. Sure enough, the PM rattled past and on being accosted by the strange woman he recognised from the previous morning, he invited Alice to join him for the home stretch. By the time they reached Kirribilli she'd explained about her conference, taken a deep breath and invited Howard to address them.

"I'll be there in 20 minutes," the PM said, much to Alice's astonishment.

Howard, of course, is also cagey, lucky, determined, stubborn, sneaky, driven, awkward, inflexible and incredibly thick-skinned. Just for starters. But the PM's extraordinary and entirely unconfected ordinariness - and determination to remain that way - has become his most potent political weapon. It's also to Howard's advantage that other unremittingly ordinary politicians delude themselves that they can emulate the PM's success.

(December 14, 2002)

SO that's it then. The wind-up of the 41st parliament of Australia, probably the end of the Howard government. No niceties, no faux goodwill. The Prime Minister's final address to the House of Representatives, which wound up at 4.11pm on Thursday, accused Kevin Rudd of being weak, gutless, thin-skinned, brittle and hypocritical. The Labor leader's departing words pegged Peter Costello as "Captain Arrogance" and asserted, without a skerrick of proof, the Liberals had been hawking round Rudd's medical records to raise doubts about his health and durability.

The parliamentary denouement centred almost entirely on the notion of Rudd as victim, a wonderfully apposite metaphor for the rise and rise of Kevinism. Much of Rudd's success has been generated by avidly encouraging Australians to feel sorry for ourselves. Oh me, the price of petrol has increased. Oh my, the cost of eggs is on the rise. Alack, alack, our hospital system is run down. Mayday, mayday, there's far too much gambling. Rudd feels our financial pain, even though - like Howard - he has supped off the public teat for a couple of decades and, unlike Howard, his wife is a multimillionaire. In Kevin World, replete with problems but thin on solutions, everybody is hard done by.

Since winning the leadership last December, Rudd has been repeatedly alluding to the election campaign as a marathon. He's about to hit the brick wall where human pain thresholds are severely stretched.

Swinging voters are looking for excuses to switch to Labor and so far Rudd has ticked all the appropriate boxes. He is cunning, intelligent, diligent, conservative, young, cautious and TV-friendly. Right now many Australians are barracking for Rudd to do well. They're forgiving the Labor leader his occasional stumble, hoping he'll break through the pain barrier to be in front as the marathon reaches its climax. The Coalition may be old and tired, but the PM and senior Liberals haven't given up on hitting the tape in front. Kevin's glass jaw and 50-year-old ticker are about to receive a thorough working over. If, as expected, Rudd emerges as prime minister, he'll have earned it.

(September 22, 2007)

DURING Easter, tens of thousands of people - young, old and in between - will flock to the five-day East Coast Blues and Roots Music Festival at Byron Bay in northern NSW. Last weekend I attended its curtailed cousin, the West Coast Blues and Roots festival in Fremantle. Some of the featured artists, such as Bo Diddley, predate 1967; most were born long afterwards.

That people on either side of this large, remote island can access so many wonderful and different forms of music - and these are just two of many festivals - in such a short period strikes me as a minor modern miracle. The internet allows teenagers to instantly scan every video, study every lyric, discover every obscure detail about their favourite artists. Consequently, the definition of teenager has become absurdly elasticised.

One of the most astute political observers in the country - let's call him Dennis - owns a hectic chunk of MySpace in which he alleges to have 164 mainly famous friends including the Pixies, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, the Dixie Chicks, Van Morrison and Tom Waits. That delusional Dennis is pushing 53 is both faintly pathetic and magnificently heroic. Nostalgia aside, music has never been better, more interesting and more accessible. While determined to remain iPod-free, I suspect a combination of cheap CDs and lovely Pandora will see me through to 2067.

Meanwhile, spare a thought or prayer for Liberal senator Jeannie Ferris, who died this week after succumbing to ovarian cancer. I saw Jeannie when parliament last sat; she looked unfeasibly terrific and blithely batted off queries about her illness. "Yeah, it's tough, but I'll be right," she said, knowing, I'll bet, she was anything but. I copped that familiar Jeannie beam as she disappeared down the corridor; a perfect way to remember such a lovely woman.

James Taylor has suggested "the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time". Brave, candid, mischievous and eternally cheerful Jeannie Ferris unequivocally enjoyed life.

(April 7, 2007)

 The Australian

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22850120-7583,00.html