Equally entertaining were the numerous attempts by up and coming tyros of the Labor Party, particularly, if memory serves correctly, Young Labor, to catch him out with questions from the floor. We’d been exposed to the character of Alf Garnett in Til Death Us Do Part, but here, large as life and twice as ugly was rabid conservatism writ large right on our doorstep.
Put that way, of course, Aikens’ longevity would be equally remarkable, as a man whose social attitudes made Atilla the Hun look like some kind of wimpy pinko milk-lapper, but he survived because he was a remarkably effective local member, and those who went to him with a grievance that needed to be pursued seemed to end up satisfied.
The same Cloncurry Jim who reported the news we were apparently having trouble with the native servants found himself at one point in the sort of difficulty with the Queensland Police that more or less went with the territory if you were a long-haired bloke wearing trendy clothes. I don’t recall the exact circumstances, but they were sufficient to outrage Jim’s parents, who took the matter to their local member and, if I recall correctly, received an actual and official apology.
And it wasn’t just the effective local member factor that kept Aikens in his seat. He connected rather well to the mindset that made the North the sort of place people with my tastes in music, literature and entertainment tended to leave, and while local and regional issues got him into State Parliament, and his careful cultivation of the electorate kept him there, so did the reluctance of the conservative parties to run candidates against him.
A cynic would suggest, after the Country Party and their Liberal counterparts won office in 1957 they were happy to accept the Aikens vote when it was there, and mindful of the efforts the ALP would make to haul his seat back into the fold. The time, effort and expenditure that went in to those attempts meant the resources Labor could devote to other seats in the region (particularly Perc Tucker’s seat of Townsville North) were diminished, making them marginally more winnable or easier to retain.
Given limited human and financial resources, and a lack of other candidates with the same combination of electoral appeal and animal cunning on the hustings, it’s hardly surprising the North Queensland Labour Party was kept to a single parliamentary representative.
Even today, Independent Members of Parliament tend to be relatively high profile individuals from areas with a strong regional identity and, in most cases, a perceived axe to grind with Canberra, Brisbane or the relevant other capital city. So regionalism is still there, but the passage of time has weakened the feeling of separateness.
And when you look at regionalism, which sat on top of and was regularly undermined by provincial parochialism (the topic explored in the next chapter) and set out in search of a segue between the two it’s hard to go past the football field and an era which, after thirty-odd years of State of Origin is a dim and distant memory.
More...