Tramps like us, baby we were born to bore ...

(Above: why not sing along?

In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway pedant's dream

At night we ride through Phillips street institutes dreaming of glory in suicide machines

Sprung from cages out on Penrith road ...

Baby this bore rips the bones from your back

He's a death trap, he's a Whitlam suicide rap

We gotta get out while we're young

'cause tramps like him, baby he was born to bore ...)

There's a danger in being a weekly columnist, especially if you're as dull and torpid as that prattling Polonius Gerard Henderson.

Long after the chattering classes have dispensed with the rooster Swannie and his addiction to Bruce Springsteen, Henderson turns up with the Boss as his opening par in Toss 'The Boss' palaver, leader's economic legacy the real issue.

The real issue for Henderson is terminal tedium - he doesn't even have the grace or the style to deliver a musical opinion on the Boss or the rooster's musical tastes.

Perhaps that's because Henderson usually shows absolutely no interest in music or the arts in general. Perhaps he's like my father - tone deaf and wandering in a world where the music stopped with the death of Bing Crosby.

Anyhow, this week's historical lesson is what a disaster the Whitlam government was for the economy. Yep, it's ye olde ancient and medieval fear-mongering, a rattling of cages and a stern finger pointed at the wedding guests and "aye me hearties look what Gough did to the albatross".

It takes a commendable rigour of mind to discuss the economy of Australia in the 1970s without once mentioning the oil shock and the start of the worldwide recession in 1975, but Henderson manages it in style.

There's something about his naturally blinkered approach that keeps him on a one-way track. The Whitlam government mismanaged its response, but then so did the Fraser government. They were strange times, and yet here we are ...

Meanwhile, since Mark Latham has gone off ferreting in the trough with Andrew Bolt for tasty French food and European beer, let the pond brood yet again about Henderson distorting for the nth time the truth of the Commonwealth Scholarship scheme:

For example, the likes of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard claim that they would never have gone to university if it had not been for Whitlam's decision to introduce free tertiary education. This initiative was continued by Malcolm Fraser but scrapped by Hawke. The fact is that, as bright students, Rudd and Gillard would have won scholarships under the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme which came into operation in 1951 under the Robert Menzies led Coalition government. This scheme covered tuition fees and provided a means-tested living allowance.

The fact is that in those days bright students often ended up as bonded teachers because the teaching scholarship paid more than the Commonwealth scholarship, and next thing you knew you were a bonded teacher out back of Bourke ready to have a beer with Chips Rafferty, get mauled by Donald Pleasence, go 'roo shooting with Jack Thompson and generally Wake in Fright.

For a brief moment during the Whitlam years, some students did experience genuinely free tertiary education, and no harm in that.

Not to worry, the real trick is in the wording, "which came into operation in 1951 under the Robert Menzies led Coalition government". This studiously ignores the role of the Chifley Labor government in devising and implementing Commonwealth scholarships.

In the immediate post-war period the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme provided capital and recurrent funds to universities to enable them to enrol hundreds of demobilised defence personnel that it was hoped would hasten post-war development. Even Curtin’s death could not slow the momentum. Enrolments more than doubled immediately after the war, rising to almost 32, 000 in 1948. The Chifley Government continued the new pattern of involvement by approving 3000 university scholarships, in September 1949, to veterans and other able students who wished to undertake studies in fields deemed to be relevant to reconstruction. Ten thousand scholarships for secondary education were intended to follow. (here in pdf format in a handy review of higher education history in Australia).

Yep, it was the Menzies' government's singular achievement to continue the policy of the Chifley government, except to discontinue the notion of secondary education scholarships.

As for Whitlam's achievements in relation to education, why not have a read of the same source, since the Whitlam years showed a utopian interest in the education of people who might not otherwise be able to afford it, a desire which has always earned the disdain of prattling inner city patrician elitists like Henderson.

But we digress, because there is another singular achievement in the column. Not once does Henderson manage to drum up a conspiracy involving greenies, the ABC, and inner city elites.

It stands as something of a record.

Instead Henderson gets agitated because the rooster Swan refuses to pay due attention to the wondrous economic work of John Howard and Peter Costello. But that'd be like the pigeon Henderson paying due attention to the way the Australian economy has rolled along these past few years, despite the ministrations of a minority government.

How it must stick in the craw. How it needs to be diminished. How there needs to be fear and doubt and uncertainty spread in the land.

What to do, but to nuke the fridge, jump the shark, and roll out what is known as the ultimate weapon, the "W" option:

The essential problem with Labor since its election in November 2007 is that it is more like Whitlam than Hawke/Keating.

Eek, it's that deep sea monster Gough W (and while at it, what a pity there doesn't seem to have been room for the communists in the fifties).

... when in reality the essential problem is that Gerard Henderson increasingly sounds like the Ancient Mariner stopping the wedding guests and warning them of the dire threat arising from albatrosses.

Naturally Henderson follows with the Rex Connor gambit:

Rudd and Gillard have significantly increased regulation across most areas of the economy, particularly with respect to industrial relations. In Whitlam's time, the cabinet minister Rex Connor regarded the mining industry as led by hillbillies.

Hillbillies? We can't have that, can we, and so Henderson heroically stands shoulder to shoulder with a trio ... of hillbillies.

Today Swan is obsessed with castigating the likes of Twiggy Forrest, Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart.

Is it possible to imagine a grander hillbilly than Clive Palmer, responding to the rooster's love of the Boss with his love of Australian bands like Redgum, Paul Kelly and the Seekers?

That's right up there with John Howard saying he liked the music of Bob Dylan, but not the lyrics (he never inhaled either) - though it could have been worse, with former Chairman Rudd confessing to a love of John Denver and jolly Joe Hockey fond of Delta Goodrem (ah the good old days of 2009 and It's irresistible to poke fun at Joe Hockey for liking Delta Goodrem).

In his other forum, Henderson manages to diss working class people, and working class heroes, while maintaing Clive Palmer's hillbilly attitude to Bruce Springsteen, and the relevance of the discussion to Australia.

That's the patrician way, and the seedy sordid contempt for places like Nambour (how did the world get by without an attempt at a joke at a "Back to Nambour High" occasion). Of course if anybody did that about the outer suburbs and the people of Penrith, Henderson would be up in arms about a contempt for normal everyday Australians. But that's the thing, you can reliably rely on Henderson's slip and contempt to show.

It goes hand in hand with the complete disinterest in anything to do with kultur, high and low, which in explains why Henderson so readily reaches for his revolver when kultur is mentioned (more here if you can stand it with Henderson showing penis envy in relation to Bob Carr and Gore Vidal).

Anyhoo, it seems that Henderson - without a conspiracy involving the ABC - gets utterly lost in the woods:

And Labor seems to be committed to a worthy but expensive National Disability Insurance Scheme, without having determined how it will be funded.

Yes, yes, but in a more realistic world, that would have been followed by another, equally accurate par:

And the state and federal Liberal and National parties seem to be committed to a worthy but expensive National Disability Insurance Scheme, without having determined how it will be funded.

There's Abbott offering up bipartisan support in an April press release here, and there's Joe Hockey undermines Tony Abbott on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. (paywall affected).

The trouble with being a one-eyed partisan at the wedding feast is that you completely overlook such remarkable pleasures, with jolly Joe discreetly nibbling at the throat of Abbott.

So what's Henderson got left this week?

Not much, just the big "W":

"The Boss" does not really matter in the Australian political debate. But the economic legacy of "The Leader" is still capable of doing real harm.

Yes yes, the boogeyman, look under your bed children and make sure Gough Whitlam's not hiding there.

Is this how conservatives still scare their brood? Watch out or the Gough Whitlam zombies and vampires will get you?

But what if the person infected with "W-ism" is Tony Abbott, with his social Catholic desire to interfere in everything, and promise everybody everything in the hope that nobody expected him to carry out the promises when in power?

What if the real spirit of Gough Whitlam lurks in Tony Abbott? What if Abbott promises to spend billions on roads, to produce workable IR laws, to rev up the east-west link, to put controls on land sales, to allow neo-Nazis to abuse Jews, to get rid of carbon pricing, to return to Work Choices except it won't be work choices, to sort out climate science, except it won't have anything to do with carbon, and to provide generous paid parental leave, and so on and on and on and on.

What if Abbott faces his own race against time?

What if Abbott has invented something entirely new, as explained in Aspirational Opposition Leader is careful with the P-word. (forced video at end of link)

Mr Abbott invented a new form of political promise, a quaint thing called a policy ''aspiration'', or alternatively, a policy that is ''in prospect''.

Yes, there are non-core aspirations and prospects these days, and possibly even core ones.

Eek, run and hide under your beds children, and pray that Gerard Henderson will be there to protect you.

He'll be ready to dissemble and distort, and whenever you're in doubt or fearful, he'll bring out the big "W" and can watch an old re-run of Halloween together ... and if you're good, you can call it a policy seminar ...

(Below: and now for no particular reason, the pond would like to present this photo, which proves, if nothing else, that Julia Gillard isn't afraid. It made the pond nostalgic for Tamworth and the days when every second member of the family had a pet white cockatoo).