Australian Books - Just World Campaign

The Godfather; The Life of Brian Burke; Quentin BERESFORD

A new Brian Burke biography is notable for not shedding any new light on Labor's shadowy ex-premier. Greg Craven reports.
Writing about the political phenomenon that is Brian Burke must be like wresting with a very large python. Your subject is so vast, slippery and unpredictable that there are bound to be difficulties.
   So it is to Quentin Beresford's credit that The Godfather: The Life of Brian Burke is as good as it is. Though not without limitations, the book is thoroughly researched and well-written in its examination of one of Australia's most perplexing public figures.
   Beresford certainly captures Burke, the grimly determined son of the politically failed father. He convincingly traces Burke's iron will to succeed and to wield power to the appalling treatment of his loved father, Tom, by Labor's Left.
   He also plots a comprehensive atlas of Burke's legendary and undeniable charm, which allowed him not only to rise to power but then to reclaim it after seemingly terminal disgrace. This is important at a time when many Australians think of him only as a sinister and faintly bloated figure in a strange hat. As this book reminds us, it is Burke's capacity to collect people – as well as stamps – that has made him so lethal to friend and foe alike.
   Beresford also chillingly traces Burke's progress along a road that ultimately leads to a bleak and lonely place where power and its exercise are the only ends that matter. Whether Burke got there quite as quickly and comprehensively as Beresford suggests may be open to question, but the overall direction is difficult to dispute.
   The book is full of thoughtful insights into Burke's behaviour during the fraught years of WA Inc. As Beresford sketches the binding similarities of background and character between Burke, Laurie Connell and Alan Bond – all outsiders on the make – one begins to realise that there was more at play here than political and commercial forces.
   In fact, Beresford's total treatment of WA Inc. is compelling. Too often, this saga disappears into a maze of confusing commercial detail. Beresford's account is clear, lucid and compelling.
   The book, does, however have its difficulties. One is that Beresford is that unusual sort of biographer who does not like his subject, and it shows. The result is that the book is not only extremely unfavourable to Burke, but sometimes struggles to explain how such an apparently unlikeable man could have had the influence he did.
   This comes out in a variety of ways. One is that while Beresford comprehensively documents and demonstrates Burke's charm, he does it with such distaste that it is almost hard to accept his premise.
   Another is when Beresford describes some of the lobbying activities of Burke and his partner Julian Grill in tones of obvious outrage, but the reader finds themselves thinking "He's a lobbyist: What part of the word lobby do you not understand?"
   Finally, Beresford haughtily insists that just because Burke's second conviction was quashed on appeal, this did not necessarily establish his wider innocence. Obviously true, but so what? Being declared not guilty by a court is the only criterion of legal innocence we have.
   Strangely, given the centrality of Burke to recent West Australian politics, the book gets rather less compelling as it approaches the present day, rather than the other way around. You are left with the nagging sense that something is missing in Beresford's treatment of Burke's most recent campaigns for power.
   Perhaps it is the fact Beresford does not really offer a convincing explanation as to how Burke was able to rise from the political grave after the mid-nineties. Yes, he had the remnants of a faction and, yes, he was charming, but even allowing for that this man should have been as dead as Julius Caesar. Perhaps there really was more to Burke's appeal than patter and patronage.
   This leads to probably the biggest flaw in the book: it is too Burke-centric. Blaming WA Inc, and Brian Burke himself, on the charm and ruthlessness of Burke is all too easy. What is it about WA as a society that allowed Burke to flourish in a way that no similar political phenomenon has flourished in another Australian State?
   Beresford makes a few stabs at an answer, blaming a supine media culture and the perennial temptation to run the State as a giant resources company. But there was more than this going on.
   Reading Beresford's book, you are constantly struck by the same names in the drama, everybody knowing each other, everyone in bed together in one way or another in that simultaneously delightful and claustrophobic embrace we know as Western Australia.
   Could it be that the very smallness of Perth's political and commercial elites and the shortness of its lines of political communication make it particularly susceptible to domination by one gigantic personality with a talent for marshalling loyalty?
   The other peculiarity of the book regarding Burke's "Second Coming" is Beresford's myopia towards parts of Labor politics swirling around his ultimate demise. Certainly, the Left's targeting of Burke had the effect of closing down his undesirable operations, but are we really to believe their campaign was an act of altruism untinged by considerations of power and tribal hatred? Hardly.
   The book certainly proves one thing. It reveals a Brian Burke who may yet produce a sequel.
   Greg Craven is vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University and previously was Professor of Government and Constitutional Law at Curtin University #