THE INTERVIEW
A tribute to Bryan Dawe and the late John Clarke
DAWE: Prime Minister, welcome.
CLARKE: Good to be here, Bryan.
DAWE: Prime Minister, you said repeatedly before the election that you
would not touch negative gearing or capital gains tax. How would you
describe those statements now?
CLARKE: Weren’t the Socceroos fabulous against Paraguay?
DAWE: Prime Minister, it was a nil-all draw in one of the dullest,
most unimaginative matches in modern FIFA history. And that’s saying
something.
CLARKE: We’ve changed our position.
DAWE: Yes, but how would you describe the statements?
CLARKE: We’ve changed our position.
DAWE: The statements, Prime Minister. The ones you made.
CLARKE: They were statements that were made, and that’s why we’ve been
up front that we’ve changed our position.
DAWE: Were they promises?
CLARKE: They were statements.
DAWE: Promises?
CLARKE: Statements.
DAWE: Is there a difference?
CLARKE: A statement is what was said. A promise is a commitment to a
future course of action based on what was said. They’re related but
distinct.
DAWE: And which were these?
CLARKE: They were statements that functioned, at the time, in the
manner of commitments, yes.
DAWE: So promises.
CLARKE: Statements we’ve changed our position on.
DAWE: Right. Why?
CLARKE: Because we couldn’t sit back and watch young people being
frozen out of the housing market, Bryan. Young Johnny. Young Mary.
Locked out.
DAWE: Johnny and Mary.
CLARKE: Archetypal figures, Bryan. They represent a generation.
DAWE: You invented them.
CLARKE: I didn’t invent the problem. Johnny and Mary are a
convenience, but the locked-out generation is real. Although I grant
you Johnny and Mary themselves are doing the heavy lifting.
DAWE: And yet you yourself have negatively geared property.
CLARKE: We’ve changed our position.
DAWE: You personally —
CLARKE: Going forward.
DAWE: Right. Now, the government promised 1.2 million new homes by 2029.
CLARKE: Supply, supply, supply.
DAWE: The forecast is 938,000.
CLARKE: Supply.
DAWE: That’s 262,000 homes short.
CLARKE: Supply.
DAWE: Is “supply” a policy or just a talking-point?
CLARKE: It’s both, Bryan. It’s also resilience. And social cohesion.
And the productive side of the economy. And quite possibly a
productivity bonus.
DAWE: A productivity bonus from not building 262,000 homes?
CLARKE: From redirecting investment away from distorted asset classes
and toward the Australian dream.
DAWE: Which is home ownership.
CLARKE: Which is home ownership. For young Australians. For Johnny.
For Mary. Though as we’ve established, they’re doing a lot of work for
two people who don’t technically exist.
DAWE: But house prices will keep rising under your changes?
CLARKE: They’ll continue to increase, yes, but at a slightly slower rate.
DAWE: So they’ll still be unaffordable.
CLARKE: They’ll be slightly less unaffordable. That’s the Australian
dream, Bryan. We’re not going to stop dreaming.
DAWE: ACOSS says investors are buying almost twice as many homes as
first home buyers.
CLARKE: Which is why we’ve changed our position.
DAWE: To allow investors to keep buying them.
CLARKE: To allow investors to keep buying new ones. Which is supply.
Supply, supply, supply.
DAWE: When did you decide to do all this?
CLARKE: Very late in the process.
DAWE: How late?
CLARKE: Well, final decisions were taken very recently.
DAWE: After the election?
CLARKE: After a great many things. The global situation. The
volatility. December the 14th.
DAWE: What happened on December the 14th?
CLARKE: We changed our position.
DAWE: About negative gearing.
CLARKE: About a great many things, Bryan. Fuel tax. Capital gains. The
distortions created by the Howard government in 1999.
DAWE: Were you in parliament in 1999?
CLARKE: I was.
DAWE: Did you own investment property in 1999?
CLARKE: (pause) We’ve changed our position.
DAWE: Prime Minister, is there any position you haven’t changed?
CLARKE: Bryan, if you concentrate on good policy, the politics will
look after itself.
DAWE: And if you concentrate on good politics?
CLARKE: Supply, supply, supply.
DAWE: Prime Minister, thank you.
CLARKE: The Australian dream, Bryan. For every Johnny. Every Mary.
Going forward. Resilience.
DAWE: We’ll see you again at the Mid-Winter Ball? Is it true Angus has
only seventeen percent acceptance on his dance card?
CLARKE: Barnaby’s cracking his stock-whip. Wouldn’t miss it for quids.
And I’ll be tapping the odd investor-class organ-grinder’s monkey on
the shoulder in the Excuse-Me Waltz. My oath, I will be.
With bells on.
Urban Wronski Writes 
I wonder how C&D would deal with current changed positioning? When the surreal is quotidian, when words mean less than the phonemes of which they consist, when post principle begs the question “Principle, que?”
In the Stone Age, back in their heyday, vestiges of ancien régime of agreed standards, precedent, action&consequence et al remained so C&D, like Monty Python, had piers from which moorings could be slipped to range the High Seas flaunting the exposed hypocrisies, lies and obfuscations hiding blatant self interest.
That was then, this is now.
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Principle, que indeed, amphibious. Four words, and you’ve nailed the whole crisis.
C&D’s method depended on two fixed points sharing the same universe: a stated principle and a politician’s visible breach of it, close enough together in time that the audience could watch the join. Clarke rarely had to invent anything. He’d take what the minister actually said at the doorstop that morning and read it back almost verbatim, one eyebrow doing the remaining work, and the gap between word and world supplied the rest. The joke lived in that gap.
There’s no gap left to live in now. When a position can be reversed on Tuesday and declared to have always been the position by Wednesday, and nobody with a microphone thinks to ask why, that’s not a narrower gap, it’s the abolition of the join altogether. What you’re calling post-principle is close to what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt named decades ago: not lying, which at least respects truth enough to need hiding from it, but bullshit, speech produced with no interest in true or false at all. You can satirise a liar, because a liar still flinches when caught out. Indifference doesn’t flinch. There’s nothing left to catch.
So if Clarke were sharpening the pencil this week, I doubt the camera would stay on the minister at all. It would turn around to face us, mid-scroll, thumb already twitching toward the next clip before the outrage of this one has finished landing. That’s the only stable target left standing: not the man who’s stopped pretending to believe anything (he’s past satire’s reach by now), but the witness who lets him get away with it, six seconds at a time, then asks for more. Your pier hasn’t disappeared, mate. It’s been quietly rezoned residential, the high seas drained for a car park, and most of us are too busy doomscrolling the demolition to notice the tide went out for good.
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