The Mandarin Code

by Steve Lewis

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘We have a once-in-a-generation chance to take the lead here, as we did with the plain packaging of tobacco.’

  Stanford-Long lifted several sheets of paper from her bag.

  ‘We’ve been working on this in the party room and with the help of the preventative health agency. It’s bold. And, I am sure, will be popular. Here, have a look at some of these pictures.’

  The Prime Minister gazed down at what he hoped was a mock shot of a bloodied corpse lying across a car bonnet, beneath three words blasted in large, prominent font.

  DRINK. DRIVE. DEAD.

  Toohey rubbed his brow, sensing a headache building. ‘Let me get this right. You want me to plaster every can of beer and every cask of wine in Australia with graphic shots of dead people. So every night when people sit down to relax with a harmless quiet ale they can be reminded that I’ve ruined one of the few pleasures they have left. That should go down a treat in marginal seats.’

  Stanford-Long wore the expression of a pet cat that’d been chastised for bringing a dead rat into the home.

  ‘I’m disappointed, Prime Minister. I thought you would see the wisdom of this. The bottom line is: we want this as part of the mental health package. Without it the job is only half done. We are not going to support a bill that locks in failure.’

  Toohey’s temper was rising. ‘That’s what you said when you opposed our first emissions trading bill and allowed the global warming sceptics in the Opposition to argue that not even the Greens thought it was any good. Because of that we lost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get bipartisan support for action on climate change. That’s what I call locking in failure.’

  The Prime Minister paused and took a deep breath before continuing.

  ‘Kiirsty, can I remind you that the last brainwave the Greens had – and that we foolishly accepted on the advice of closet activists in the Department of Health – was to ban foods with high salt content.’

  Toohey was reliving what was clearly a painful moment.

  ‘The problem was that the salt level was measured by every 100 grams. Unfortunately that saw Vegemite pulled from supermarket shelves. For a bloody month! No one eats 100 fucking grams of Vegemite on their toast! No one! That’s half a jar. Oh, and remember the tabloid headlines when it was discovered there was a black market in the stuff: “BOOTLEG KIDDIES”.’

  Toohey was getting red in the face and Papadakis briefly worried that the PM might be getting too much salt in his diet. But he was just warming up. He stood up and began to pace the room. Stanford-Long was shocked into silence. For once.

  ‘Oh, and then it got out that you and your mates in Health had been exchanging emails about kids’ exercise. You proposed, and they entertained, the idea that we ban all contact sport for under-eighteens.

  ‘And who found out about that? Who got the leak? I’ll tell you who. Ray fucking Hadley. He only built his fucking first career on calling fucking football and his second fucking career on fucking me. It was the perfect storm. And the first thing I knew about it was when the shock jock broadcast it.’

  Papadakis considered intervening. But Stanford-Long was flint-hard and was not going to be bludgeoned into changing her mind. Toohey could engage in bluster but she had what he needed. The numbers.

  When Toohey finished shouting, her response was icy.

  ‘Thanks for the history lesson, but both of those reforms would have succeeded if you hadn’t gone to water. And the country would have been better for it. We are not turning on this. I look forward to your considered response.’

  Stanford-Long gathered her papers and bag and stormed out. Papadakis turned to a still-fuming Toohey as the door slammed.

  ‘Have I ever told you how much I admire your masterful way with women?’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Canberra

  Emily Brooks had achieved what she had always courted. Worldwide fame. The online footage of her cavorting with journalist Jonathan Robbie had gone Gangnam-Style viral.

  Snippets of the sex tape had also aired round the clock on Australian TV. The images had been discreetly blurred, but what was left to the imagination only made it worse.

  The warning at the end of every introduction was guaranteed to draw a crowd: ‘The following story contains graphic sex scenes that might offend some viewers.’

  Towards the end of each replay it became apparent, even through the blurred images, that the man wasn’t having such a good time.

  ‘Noooooooooo!’

  Online there were no constraints and the images were paraded in their uncut glory. On Twitter #SpankMeEmily had become the top trending Australian topic for 2013.

  Inevitably, the creative sexual escapades of two mostly consenting adults had been distilled to one predictable phrase: ‘Bondage-Gate’.

  The Left-wing blogs were ablaze with anger at the hypocrisy of a leader who had made so much of her Christian values, but had been caught in flagrante delicto. Despite the Left’s profound commitment to advancing women’s rights, when it came to Brooks all bets were off. Blog sites were littered with lewd and sexist references to the Opposition leader.

  Fairfax couldn’t get enough of the story and the News Limited tabloids were in overdrive.

  But The Australian decided to use the issue to launch one of its regular jihads on the ABC. It focused on the public broadcaster’s ‘ethics’ in breaking the story when the media had traditionally avoided peering into politicians’ private lives. An Oz editorial thundered that the story was driven by ‘a blatant Left-wing bias that infects the entire organisation’.

  Channel Nine was in a position almost as uncomfortable as the one that its manacled reporter had endured. It couldn’t ignore the story and yet its Canberra-based attack dog had a starring role. Its news stories focused on Brooks and referred only fleetingly to ‘television journalist Jonathan Robbie’. The network was also forced to put out a statement saying that Robbie was taking extended leave to recover from a lower back injury.

  For Seven and Ten, ‘Bondage-gate’ was proof that, somewhere in the universe, there is a God. They camped outside Robbie’s Deakin home and tried to doorstop him whenever his 1971 orange and black VH Valiant Charger pulled into the driveway.

  But the real gold was mined when an eagle-eyed ABC crew, Dave McMeekin and Nick Haggarty, spotted Robbie’s unmistakable muscle car at the Deakin shops. Both hated Robbie from long days spent working with the bad-tempered and arrogant reporter in pool crews on overseas trips.

  Their camera was waiting as Robbie emerged, decaffeinated soy cappuccino takeaway in hand, from a bustling Cafe D’Lish. McMeekin was shooting, Haggarty was carrying the sound boom and firing off questions.

  ‘Jon, have you got a moment?’

  ‘Piss off you bastards.’ Robbie pushed past the camera.

  ‘Mate, can you relive the experience for us . . .’ Haggarty was grinning like a schoolboy.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say and you guys are invading my privacy.’

  ‘It’s a public place and . . . hey, why are you limping?’

  ‘I’m a sick man.’

  ‘We know, we saw that online.’

  ‘Leave me alone, I have nothing to say.’ Robbie lifted his pace but was clearly labouring. It was a long walk to the Valiant but the two hardened professionals had no trouble keeping pace under the weight of their gear. By the time Robbie was fumbling with the keys at the car door he was breathless and angry and the camera was a metre from his face.

  ‘Does that kinky stuff hurt?’ Haggarty was running out of questions that could run on prime time.

  ‘Fuck off you vultures!’ Robbie screamed as he slammed the door, upending the nancy-boy coffee he’d left on the roof. The V8 roared to life and its tyres squealed as he reversed and the crew retreated. Then, the footage would show, he appeared to veer towards the camera as he took off, laying down more rubber as he straightened at the last moment before extending his arm out the window, of
fering the middle finger of his right hand in a final defiant salute.

  News of the encounter reverberated through the gallery even before the crew had arrived at Parliament. The ABC’s pool-sharing arrangement meant that its partner, Ten, would have access to the footage, but not Seven.

  When word of the pictures reached Seven’s chief of staff, Craig Sullivan, he sprinted across the corridor from his office to front the ABC’s chief of staff, Simon Johnson.

  ‘Simes. I beg you. I beg you, mate. Let us have it.’

  ‘No.’ Johnson was enjoying the rare opportunity of having something he knew Sullivan couldn’t live without. Several long minutes of bartering ensued before Johnson relented.

  ‘Okay, but next time I want something from you, remember this moment,’ Johnson said. ‘And we’re bugging these shots.’

  That meant the ABC logo would run on the pictures given to Seven, something the commercial channel’s management hated. But Sullivan knew his bosses would love the pictures.

  ‘You’re killing me, mate.’

  Emily Brooks was also under siege. The initial response from her office to the outside world had been stony silence. Brooks was determined to follow the ancient political dictum: ‘Don’t explain, don’t complain and never resign.’ But in the long run, saying nothing had not been an option.

  The first step had been to issue a statement raising the possibility that the pictures had been doctored. Her footsoldiers were dispatched to sell this line, with disastrous results. No one believed them. Experts were paraded across every television and radio program, every print outlet, to testify that the images were genuine.

  Next, the Opposition leader’s press secretary, Justin Greenwich, had been urged by Brooks to spin the story.

  ‘How the fuck do I explain this away?’ Greenwich had muttered to a colleague. ‘Houdini couldn’t escape those images. They’re keeping me awake at night.’

  Greenwich was in awe of Brooks’s toughness and calmness under pressure. Although she had forged a reputation as one of the hardest politicians ever to walk the corridors of Parliament, she rarely lost her temper with her staff, no matter how bad the day. She was not panicking now, refusing to resign and adamant that her party would have to sack her if it wanted her gone. Together they devised a plan that might save Brooks’s political skin.

  Brooks would make a statement to the Parliament. The advantage was that she wouldn’t have to face questions from the media. The downside was that she would have to face the scorn of the House of Representatives. She could not lie. And she would be beamed live to the nation, as when she announced that she would seek the House’s indulgence to make a personal statement, the networks decided to carry it live.

  The chamber and its galleries were full when Brooks strode in with her carefully prepared speech. In the end she and Greenwich had decided that the best form of defence was attack. She would cast herself as the victim and only address the tricky question of her bondage session in passing.

  Brooks began by theatrically turning on the press gallery, pointing her finger at representatives of each media outlet.

  ‘J’accuse you . . . and you . . . and you . . .’ Brooks thundered. ‘You seek to stand in judgement of me: as judge, jury and executioner. Today I open my own court and you are indicted. You are charged with a criminal invasion of privacy and the gross abuse of your privileged role as journalists. Our democracy has been damaged by your desperation to damage me.’

  Brooks put on her glasses and turned to her speech like a QC checking a brief.

  ‘Let’s begin with the facts. I am a single woman in a relationship with a single man. We are consenting adults. I have broken no law. What was done occurred in the privacy of my own home. People can make their own judgement about what they have seen. All I ask decent Australians is to consider how they came to see it.’

  Brooks’s voice was strong and her hands steady as she turned the pages of her speech.

  ‘Someone broke into my home. That is a crime. Someone installed not one but two video cameras in my bedroom. That is a crime. Someone videotaped me without my knowledge and then distributed the images without my consent. All those things are crimes. I ask the Australian people: how would you feel if the same thing happened to you? How would the members of this House feel?’

  Brooks’s eyes wandered slowly around the chamber, searching out those with more interesting private lives.

  There was a nervous shuffling. Some MPs who had been riveted by the Schadenfreude of Brooks’s discomfort found pieces of paper that, all of a sudden, demanded urgent attention.

  ‘But those crimes pale beside the complete moral bankruptcy of the media.’ Brooks eyeballed the journalists in the gallery just a few metres above her. ‘You trafficked these stolen goods and then you had the gall to demand that I, the victim, be made to stand trial.’

  Brooks had memorised the final paragraphs of her speech and addressed the chamber with a confident air.

  ‘But I will not be lectured to about morality by the media or my opponents. I will not. And after today I will not be answering any more questions about my private life. If asked by the media about it, I have plenty of questions of my own about their role in a series of crimes. I have asked the police to investigate. Politics is a hard business and I play it hard. I expect no more or less than is expected of others.’

  It was a bravura performance and a throaty ‘Hear, hear’ followed Brooks as she gathered her papers and swept out.

  After the speech the corridors rang with gossip as MPs of all political persuasions appraised Brooks’s performance and her prospects. Even her enemies were impressed by the audacity of a speech aimed at morphing her from villain to victim. There was a grudging admiration, too, at her shifting the attack onto the media, something all politicians and most of the public enjoyed.

  But some Coalition MPs told their Labor mates that they thought her leadership was doomed.

  ‘We’ll let Brooks take all the hits on opposing the mental health bill and then we’ll dump her and have a new leader for the dash to the election,’ one Coalition plotter said. ‘Say what you like about her, she’s tough. Elizabeth Scott would wave the bill through even though we can’t afford it.’

  For the first time in ages, Martin Toohey and George Papadakis looked forward to the evening news. The PM had ordered snacks and a good bottle of red. They were ready for showtime.

  ‘Hurry up, George; you’ll miss the start,’ Toohey hollered at 5.58pm.

  Papadakis bustled through the door to the opening strains of the Seven News theme. The sting promised extended coverage of ‘Bondage-gate’.

  Toohey and Papadakis rocked with laughter at the opening. Commercial TV news stories usually run for ninety seconds, but a staggering three minutes was devoted to Robbie’s encounter with the ABC.

  ‘Stick that up your arse!’ Toohey yelled at the television and then laughed himself red at his own wit. Wiping tears from his eyes he turned to Papadakis.

  ‘I’ve always hated that little shit and, no matter what happens to Brooks, this is the end of him. He’ll never be able to set foot in the gallery again. The ABC just paid for itself. Let’s give them more money.’

  The next story, covering Brooks’s speech, wasn’t as good. The Opposition leader had shown steel and pulled off a great performance in the most difficult of circumstances.

  The third was a collection of vox pops, and opinion was split on whether Brooks should go. But everyone agreed Robbie was a grub. ‘Like all journalists,’ one woman added.

  When the fun on Seven ended after ten glorious minutes, Toohey ran through the tapes of Nine and Ten. He switched to SBS live at 6.30. The entertainment only ended after the ABC’s 7.30 devoted twenty minutes to the affair, including a side-slapping defence of Brooks by her deputy, the dour National Party leader, Charles Mayfield. The best exchange was, as always with Mayfield, unwitting.

  ‘It’s you lot at the ABC that should be ashamed,’ Mayfield raged. ‘You’ve
been whipping this up into a frenzy.’

  ‘Would you like to rephrase that?’ a poker-faced Leigh Sales replied.

  7.30’s last story examined the reaction of the Christian lobby and it was clear many were struggling to defend Brooks, although the word ‘forgiveness’ was used a lot. Toohey was sorry when the program finally moved on to other news.

  ‘How do we keep this going?’ The Prime Minister, the usual whipping boy for the nightly news, wanted to drag out the Coalition’s pain.

  ‘We could have a few of the more crazy-brave MPs and senators drop some inflammatory remarks,’ Papadakis said. ‘We’ll get the Victorian Right’s online stooge to post some really appalling stuff. Ah, and Martin, there are all those fake Twitter accounts the national secretariat manages.’

  Toohey had been schooled in the art of union ‘shit sheets’ since his early years in Labor and knew the best stuff needed imagination and flair.

  ‘Yes, yes, all that. But we need something that will really bite. I know, get someone to call Robbie Swan and get the Sex Party to come out and say it applauds Emily Brooks for making bondage acceptable. And that as a result of her good work he hopes to see the basics of it taught in high school. That kind of third-party endorsement will screw with her base.’

  Papadakis frowned at his boss.

  ‘Sometimes you scare me, Martin.’

  Toohey wasn’t listening.

  ‘And Black Ops, George. We don’t want our fingerprints on it.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Honolulu

  ‘Thank you, Mr President. I will do that, sir. You have a good day.’

  Aubrey W. Holland bristled with anger. His men, on a peaceful mission in international airspace, had been provocatively shadowed and put in harm’s way.

  The admiral’s fury had been heard all the way to the White House.

  From his base in Hawaii, the Commander of Pacific Command controlled an area spanning half the world: from the blue waters of the US west coast to the western border of India. From Antarctica to the North Pole.