"It's Like The Last Day Of The Roman Empire"

These are dark days indeed for Ireland, but Pat Rabbitte still has a big beaming smile on his face. It’s shortly after noon, on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, and the Claremorris-born Dublin South West TD has just been cheekily ambushed in the middle of a Hot Press photo shoot by a giggling school tour-group, emerging from Leinster House.

Rabbitte laughs loudly as the girls tease him with squealed threats of, “We’re gonna put this picture up on Facebook!” However, he looks slightly more uneasy when your correspondent points out, “They’re probably going to put it on the cover of The Phoenix!”
A couple of minutes later, we’re sitting in the Dail bar and the smile is gone. The Labour justice spokesperson is telling me that his Tallaght clinics are becoming depressingly reminiscent of the 1980s: “People who’ve lost their jobs, families who can’t pay their mortgages and are being threatened by the banks, single mothers who can’t pay their bills, people who can’t get hospital beds for their elderly relatives or their children into drug treatment clinics, anti-social behaviour. It’s all the same awful stuff.”
With Fine Gael and Labour currently well ahead of Fianna Fail in the opinion polls, it seems almost inevitable that we’ll have a new coalition government in the not too distant future.
Given Rabbitte’s vast political experience (he held a ministerial position in the last rainbow government and has enjoyed periods of leadership of both the now defunct Democratic Left and Labour parties), it’s a reasonably safe bet that he’ll be back in some kind of cabinet position before too long.
Of course, with a week being a long time in politics, he’s taking absolutely nothing for granted.

OLAF TYARANSEN: It’s St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow and, once again, everyone’s complaining about our Ministers travelling abroad to represent Ireland at various international celebrations. Is that not just a load of shit, that whole argument?
PAT RABBITTE: I think it is. I think St Patrick’s Day is a unique opportunity to exploit internationally, in terms of selling a small country that wouldn’t otherwise come to attention in very many places in the world. We need jobs, we need investment, we need tourists, and provided the schedules are properly organised and there’s content and substance in them, a lot of the rest is a lot of hot air and nonsense, really.
Did you ever make any of these promotional trips on Paddy’s Day when you were a minister?
I did indeed. I was watching the Taoiseach last night in Chicago with Mayor Daley. I did that in 1996 with the same Mayor Daley, which had a certain irony for me because I spent three summers in Chicago as a student and was fortunate enough to be invited by a relative to attend the famous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago when Mayor Daley père loosed the dogs and beat the bejaysus out of the anti-Vietnam War protesters. So it was an irony, when I went back as Minister so many years later, to present the bowl of shamrock, that the recipient was Mayor Daley Junior. He’s still there.
Even the taxis in Chicago have brass plates saying, ‘Mayor Daley welcomes you to Chicago’. The Daleys kind of own that city.
Even the clergy seemed to give their allegiance to the ...I was going to say the Democratic Party. I think more correctly, the Mayor Daley Party, in Chicago.
How would you rate this current government on a scale of zero to ten?
Em… two. It’s a God-awful government. The worst government we’ve seen since Independence. It’s worse than the short-lived Haughey government of 1982.
But surely it’s not corrupt in the same way?
I don’t think it’s especially corrupt. I think it’s trying to pick up the pieces from what were very unhealthy relationships between the top developers and the ruling party. That, of course, was a toxic triangle when you add in the banks. The only reason I give them two, really, is that Brian Lenihan – even where I don’t agree with his decisions – sought to impose some order on the chaos that reigned ever since the Lehman Brothers collapse.
Would you have let the banks fail?
No, I wouldn’t. I think that AIB and the Bank of Ireland, unfortunately, must be supported in the interests of trying to revive the economy, because we can’t revive the economy without having a functioning banking system. I think where I would differ with the Government, as I said on the very first week of the debate, is that I would never have included Anglo Irish in the all-embracing guarantee because I didn’t think then, and I don’t think now, that Anglo Irish was systemic.
If something happened to Brian Cowen, Mary Coughlan would be our Taoiseach. That thought might terrify some people.
Well, it would only be for a short while [smiles].
How would you rate her on a scale of one to ten?
She’s a very nice person. She’s very popular here in the house, and I think it’s unfortunate that the Taoiseach chose to put her into an economic ministry. And I don’t think her skills are suited to an economic posting.
Speaking of an economic posting, do you think that George Lee might have been more suited to Labour than to Fine Gael?
I don’t think George Lee was suited to politics. I think he misjudged what’s involved. I think it’s unfortunate that a lot of people see it as a case of the political system was given a messiah and it spat him back out again, that the political system couldn’t absorb a “star”. I don’t think it was like that, I think it was a misjudgement on George Lee’s part. If he really did think that he was going to change the economic tide in eight months, and from the opposition benches, he misunderstands the nature of politics. He has probably been the best economic commentator since Justin Keating. I think reportage of economic affairs and making it accessible and intelligible for the ordinary person, is different from coming forward with economic prescriptions.
Do you think that politicians are a misunderstood breed?
They bring a lot of the misunderstanding down on their own heads. I think, since you mentioned George Lee, that it bears out in a pretty dramatic way that the practice of politics is not as seen from outside. This is a messy, imperfect, tough business. What is the alternative? And the only thing that worries me about the Niagara of criticism of politicians now is that there is a tendency to say that we’re in the mess we’re in because of the defects in the political system. We’re in the mess we’re in because of the wrong decisions made by the Government, and therefore it’s not surprising that you have members of Fianna Fáil leaping onboard the bandwagon that the political system is at fault. No. The Government, over the last five or six years, is directly at fault for our recession and our banking crisis being worse than it might otherwise have been.
As a former leader of Labour, is politics still as vital for you personally?
Oh, I think politics is more exciting, and more frightening, since the collapse of Lehman Brothers than it has been for very many years. I stepped down from the leadership because I felt I had to take responsibility for a particular electoral strategy that, whatever its merits, didn’t work for the Labour Party. It was my electoral strategy. It wasn’t the decision of the parliamentary party. Yes, I got 75% endorsement at the annual conference, but it was my decision, and when it didn’t work I felt I should take responsibility.
If our next government is to be a Labour-Fine Gael coalition, do you see yourself in a ministerial position?
I’m long enough around in politics, first of all, not to take it for granted that we will win the next election. But I believe we will. And whether or not I’m in cabinet is a matter for whoever the Taoiseach will be. And if the Taoiseach isn’t Eamon Gilmore, it’ll be a matter for Eamon Gilmore and the Taoiseach.
In a sense, Labour have never had it so good, in terms of opportunity. In this next election they could plausibly set out to be the main party.
Well, the economic situation has, for the first time, put a major crack in the traditional political architecture. The two-and-a-half party system under Eamon Gilmore, has become a three-cornered contest. And that’s a sea change in Irish politics. Gilmore is the people’s choice as leader, and that puts a huge responsibility on the rest of us and on the party to make sure that, in each of the constituencies, we offer the choice of candidates of calibre, togging-out for the Labour Party, and not just the traditional choice between the two civil war parties.
Is there not a fundamental difference between Labour’s position and Fine Gael’s on the public service?
There certainly are differences, there’s no doubt about that. There are differences of emphasis, at a minimum. This goes back, really, to benchmarking where the Fine Gael leader took up a position of opposition to benchmarking, and the Labour Party took up a position of support for benchmarking – provided it could only be implemented in return for badly needed reforms in the delivery of quality public services. I don’t think those two positions are irreconcilable.
Labour would be closer in lots of policies to Fianna Fáil than to Fine Gael.
I’m not sure that that’s true anymore. There was traditionally a socially-democratic wing to Fianna Fáil. I think, more and more in recent decades they have been dragged down-side the developers and the bankers and the powerful and influential in our society. So I’m not sure that Labour in government with Fianna Fáil, as distinct from Fine Gael, would find it any more a congenial experience in terms of policy implementation.
If you were in coalition with Fine Gael who would decide fiscal policy?
I think everything is to play for in the sense that for the first time we have the prospect of a Labour Taoiseach.
But even so, isn’t it inconceivable that our economic policy would be decided by anyone other than Richard Bruton?
I’m not sure that I would agree with that. The experience I had around the cabinet table suggested that there is a unique relationship between the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance. And they really do have to be ad unum or at least have a very close understanding. So if Eamon Gilmore is Taoiseach there is one scenario in terms of fiscal policy; if the Fine Gael leader is Taoiseach then a different scenario applies where, it seems to me, the Minister for Finance will be a Labour minister.
Where’s the real talent, do you think, on Fine Gael’s front benches?
I think there’s a great deal of energy and appetite there to be in government, and that’s a big part of the battle, because what people are crying out for is leadership. They’re not getting that leadership, and haven’t been getting that leadership for some considerable time. Mr Ahern tended to take the soft options, and Mr Cowen seems to be defeated by the height of the mountain he has to climb. So I think a change of government, in itself, will convey a new optimism and confidence to the people that they need at this stage.
Do you think it’s right that the Taoiseach is paid more than Barack Obama?
I don’t. I think that top salaries got out of hand here during the Ahern era. That has been corrected somewhat. I think it was a calamitous political error at a time when lower-paid public servants have taken two very big hits that the Government found itself conceding a lesser pay reduction to the top level of the public service than applied for the rest of us. And I think it has undermined a lot of the other changes that have taken place in the remuneration package of politicians, and Ministers, and the Taoiseach. But no, I don’t think it’s right that our Taoiseach should be paid more than the President of the United States.
Do we have too many TDs?
I don’t think that’s the right question, if I may say so, because I think there are changes that are long overdue in the political system, but I wouldn’t start from the proposition that we should reduce the number of TDs.
We have 166 TDs. Would reducing the number to 75 not make for leaner, more efficient governance? And result in less of the parish pump politics?
When you think that through, it is a dangerous proposition – for a number of reasons. For example, over recent years, the position of parliament has been down-graded vis-à-vis the executive. The Government has taken more and more powers to itself and more and more dictates what happens in parliament. And parliament’s independent existence has been gradually eroded. If you reduce the house to 75 members, that phenomenon would worsen. Secondly, in the nature of our democracy, the electorate throws up a great variety of TDs. Nobody can say that it’s not impeccably democratic. And they have different strengths, if I may delicately put it that way. Some see themselves primarily as legislators, some are strangers to legislation. And I think that whether the house comprised of 75 or 166 that same phenomenon will apply. And the business of trying to construct a government out of a house of 75 would leave us, I believe, with less talent than is there at the moment. In addition, the popular view that the reason why wrong decisions have been made in recent years in the political arena by Government is due to the constituency workload of TDs, is, I think, wrong.
But surely their constituency workloads are often a distraction?
TDs nowadays are somewhat better resourced than used to be the case, and are in a position to judge their workload. It is not a bad thing that a legislator must confront, in his or her clinics, a person who has just lost their job, or confront a person who can’t pay the mortgage, or who is living in poverty, or who is suffering from anti-social behaviour. That is not a bad thing. This is a very small society. You are never going to remove TDs from the public. I think that interaction can be a positive thing. There’s no doubt that the multi-seat constituency can produce this competitive thing where some TDs and Ministers spend too much time on that side of it. The Labour Party is looking at some reform proposals in that regard, and we hope to publish them in the near future.
Have you attended many funerals this year?
I have never attended a funeral unless the deceased person was known to me. Unless a member of his or her family was known to me, unless they had some connection to the Party. It’s not a practice that is nearly so widespread as is believed, certainly not in urban Ireland today.
Let’s talk about the Church for a moment. Should Cardinal Sean Brady resign?
I think he should. When you meet the survivors of abuse they straighten you out, in terms of one’s tendency to wobble occasionally, or to accept the argument that that was then and this is now: the argument that ‘here was a young priest carrying out instructions in a different time when the accepted wisdom was that you protected the institution of the Church above all’. When you meet survivors of abuse, when they come to your clinics, when they write to you with their harrowing stories, you find it unconscionable that anybody who had reached the age of reason could refrain from, if not bringing the crimes to the attention of the civil authority, at a minimum pursuing thereafter what happened his report. In this case the Cardinal was not just a note-taker; he made an assessment for his boss, the Bishop. In that assessment, he accepted that those two young people had been abused by a particularly monstrous predator in the case of Father Brendan Smith. And he considered that that was his job done. Smith went on to abuse so many young people thereafter that might have been protected had he acted differently.
What about the fact that the children were required to take an oath?
I find repulsive, even if it isn’t Cardinal Brady’s fault, that the clerical authorities would act in such an oppressive way as to require young children to take an oath of secrecy. An oath, which I am sure, given the Catholic theology that attaches to taking an oath, they would do in some fear, and wouldn’t reveal the substance of what happened to them as a result of taking that oath. I think that’s also a very serious matter. So, I don’t get into the business of asking for Bishops to resign, that’s a matter for the Church, but . . .
It could be argued that he was an accessory to child rape...
Well, this man was also a citizen; he would have been expected to know right from wrong. He probably was following the precepts of the Church at the time, which was to protect the institution at all costs, and if that meant covering up, to do that. And I’m afraid that you can’t confer approval on that.
Given what we now know about the Catholic Church in Ireland, do you think that control of the schools should be wrested away from them?
I think that’s inevitably going to happen on a perhaps more gradual basis than some people would like. These are cataclysmic events for the Catholic Church. They are cataclysmic events not just for the Catholic Church in Ireland, but elsewhere, including the difficulties we see the Pope himself embroiled in in Germany. So, you know, the separation of Church and State, the freedom of people to profess whatever faith they believe in, and to take religious instruction in their own way, I think is the way that we are going to go.
In light of all this, do you think that the deal Michael Woods made should be renegotiated?
Well, you know that I pursued that day after day after day in the Dáil, and I did it at some considerable political cost. Because when I pointed out the folly of that deal deliberately entered into by Mr Ahern and Mr Woods, which capped the liability of the religious orders at €127,000,000, and exposed the taxpayer to a cost of approximately €1,000,000,000, Mr Ahern accused me day after day of wanting to close down the religious orders. And that word was spread coming up to the general election, around the country, by Fianna Fáil to the detriment of the Labour Party in the last election. It had nothing to do with me wanting to close down the religious orders, it had everything to do with exposing a dishonest deal – a sweetheart arrangement entered into, on the instructions of the Taoiseach, by a Minister on his last day in office, who knew he wasn’t going to be in the next government, and excluding the Attorney General of the day, and the advice of the Attorney General’s office. It was a disgraceful deal done by Mr Ahern – and he now has the hardened neck, in his biography, to say that the religious orders should pay more.
What’s your take on the blasphemy laws?
Well, the succession race is underway in Fianna Fáil, and Justice Minister Dermot Ahern is seeking, despite his small stature, to present himself as a hard man in a number of areas. And the fact that he took a different view on the blasphemy issue than his two predecessors I think bears out that view. The reaction has been so strong that I see in Sunday’s newspapers he’s counselling that there should be a constitutional referendum to excise the constitutional imperative, as he sees it, to enshrine blasphemy in the Defamation Act. So, I presume that, sooner or later, we are going to see that included in some other referendum that will be held.
Do you think that secretive religious organisations like Opus Dei might have undue influence on government?
Well, I have always believed that since 1922 there has been disproportionate religious influence on ministers right down the years. That has been revealed now in terms of books like John Cooney’s book on Archbishop McQuaid, books like Noel Browne’s memoir Against The Tide, various political books and biographies since then reveal the extraordinary influence of the Church and some of its secret organisations down the years. It’s still probable that an organisation like Opus Dei has influence, perhaps more limited nowadays, but has influence nonetheless at ministerial level.
Were you ever approached by any members of that kind of organisation?
I was, yeah. I was. When I was in college I was approached by Opus Dei to join.
Was this when you were a student union leader?
Before that. I was active in student politics before I was President of the Union of Students of Ireland, and it was in Galway. And I was approached by Opus Dei. I went along to a couple of meetings, but unfortunately I didn’t have the staying power [smiles].
Should Mary Harney resign over the Tallaght Hospital fiasco?
Well, it’s difficult to answer that question when your position is that Mary Harney and the 14 other ministers should resign in the interests of the health services, the economy, and the country. Tallaght Hospital is only the latest eruption of inexplicable errors and cock-ups in the health services. Mary Harney’s attempt to aggravate the two-tier system in Health, and to implement a policy of co-location in the health services, is disastrous from the point of view of ordinary working people. It’ll only make the two-tier system worse, and worse to the detriment of the average earner in this society. She is also responsible for creating the behemoth that is the HSE. She insisted on proceeding to impose it with all its bureaucracy on the old bureaucracy that was there of the Health Boards. Mr Ahern signed a deal that nobody could be made redundant, and so on. And the result is we have a dysfunctional HSE in many regards. So, Mary Harney is much praised for her courage and her resoluteness as a politician, and her honesty and her integrity, and I don’t dispute any of those things. But she has been bad for the health service. And it would be better now, if we have to put up with this government for a few more months, that she would be re-shuffled into a different ministry.
What’s your take on the Head Shop debate, given that you were the Minister with responsibility for Drugs some years ago?
I think it’s over-heated. I think the calls to close them down are somewhat simplistic. Clearly there are products on offer that ought to be banned and that ought not to be available, and there ought to be planning regulations in terms of where they can spring up. But I think some of the reaction is over the top. Once you get the planning regulations right and once you excise some of the harmful products on sale, I think that should deal with the issue.
The pubs being closed on Good Friday is an issue down in Limerick at the moment because there’s a major rugby match. Do you think pubs should be allowed serve on that day?
I take a very conservative position on it myself, a bit like I do on the Angelus. You know, I think the Angelus is something that is uniquely Irish. And I don’t think anybody minds, one way or the other. And I don’t think that calls to remove it from the airwaves contribute to anything, including any better understanding in a multi-cultural society. And similarly, I think that Good Friday is still a very special day for a great many Irish people, and I have no difficulty with the existing law. And I don’t think it’s beyond the ingenuity of those locally in Limerick to ensure that the fans who go to Thomond Park are in an appropriate mood to cheer on their heroes. As I understand it, drink is available in the stadium itself.
It’s more about people going to the pub to watch the match.
It is, and I wouldn’t go to the wire on the issue one way or the other, honestly.
What’s your take on the Aer Lingus situation at the moment, where they have made all the cabin crews redundant and are going to offer them lesser contracts?
Well, Aer Lingus, it seems to me, is fast becoming a mini-Ryanair. Once the Government embarked on privatisation, it was inevitable that this was where it was going to end up. There have been horrifically wrong decisions made at Dublin airport, from privatisation to the handling of the SR Technics dispute. It’s too late to create a row about what Mary Coughlan ought to have done after Aer Lingus signed the contract. It was what happened for the previous eleven months that ought to be focused on. And to think that there is a body of work that requires to be done, and a significant body of skilled workers with nothing to do, and that it was beyond the capacity of the government to match the two, is a particularly damning commentary on the ability of this Government to get up and do anything on issues that affect jobs. So, Dublin Airport has been one long miscalculation, and unfortunately Aer Lingus is now going to become a minor regional airline applying a philosophy very similar to the philosophy that obtains in what is a very successful multinational, Ryanair.
Are you genuinely personally angry at the moment or is it all for political show?
Oh yeah, I mean in twenty years time when the history comes to be written, people will be amazed that we have been so complaiscent as a people in terms of how, over the last six or seven years, the Fianna Fáil led governments threw away the fruits of the boom. Remember when the government, of which I was a member, went out of office in 1997, we were creating 55,000 jobs per annum. We had a budget in surplus. We had a more equitable taxation system in place, and we were on the cusp of a boom. That was maintained for three or four years. And since then, the wrong decisions are easily identifiable.
What were they?
You know, the notion that we would continue and extend, for example, tax incentives for hotel rooms, until we now have some 25,000 surplus hotel rooms; that we would continue some of the tax-based incentive schemes for apartment blocks and house building that leaves us with ghost estates; that the Taoiseach, over the years between 2003 and 2007 was impervious to arguments about implementation of the Kenny Report on the price of building land. I remember we set up a commission at the time on the housing question, under the chairmanship of Professor PJ Drudy of Trinity College, and Eamon Gilmore was the spokesperson on environment and housing at the time, and he brought in recommendations that foresaw the crash that was coming. No action was taken on these.
So, while the people are hugely angry, I think historians will say that we are still a very tolerant and complaiscent people, when such mistakes were made in terms of the banks, in terms of not intervening to address the issue of credit expansion, in terms of using the tax code to further generate economic activity when we were at the top of the cycle. So many decisions that has meant that the recession combined with the banking crisis in Ireland is so much worse than in any other Euro-member states, with the possible exception – and I say only ‘possible exception’ – of Greece. These Ministers have an awful lot to answer for.
Would you say that to them personally, here in the bar, or do you keep it all for the chamber?
I don’t think that there is any doubt about where culpability lies, and I think that’s part of the reason for the paralysis that we’re enduring at the moment, that the present Taoiseach knows in his heart that he was driving the car when it crashed. He knows that he was the Finance Minister at the critical time, that he sat back and didn’t exercise the levers of power available to him.
Should other heads within the Department of Finance not roll also, given that a lot of the head honchos in there would have been equally culpable since they were his advisors?
We don’t know the quality of advice he was getting. We don’t know what papers – and they won’t yet be released – might or might not have been put on the record. But on the face of it, in so far as the average taxpayer outside can see, the Department of Finance didn’t intervene in the fashion that you would expect; they didn’t respond to the Central Bank, if they were getting briefings from the Central Bank about the growing credit bubble; if there was information in from the Regulator, did they alert the Minister for Finance of the day? We know the Regulator had the information. We know he was put in possession of the information from the individual banks, as they are required to do, but he turned a blind eye. Now, did he bring any of his concerns behind the scenes to Merrion Street to the Department of Finance, and what did they do with it? Unfortunately it will be thirty years before we will know the answers to those questions.
In the meantime, the ordinary citizen is paying…
That’s right. It will be 30 years before we know what went on, on the infamous night of the 29th of September, 2008. I mean, it beggars belief that the two chief executives of the two largest banks, and their two chairpersons, would arrive at Merrion Street gates at close of business on the 29th of September, and advise the two Brians that the banking system might crash in the morning. There had to be discussions leading up to that. It was no secret in Dublin, in financial circles, that Anglo-Irish Bank, in particular, was a basket-case long before that time. We have the evidence of people like Doctor Michael Somers, who did not place any monies from the National Treasury Management Agency on deposit in Anglo-Irish Bank for some considerable time before that, because he regarded it as a risk. So the information was around, and it’s just not credible that the two chief executives should come calling after the close of business and work throughout the night to persuade government to bring in an all-embracing banking guarantee that is now such an albatross around the necks of Irish taxpayers for the next generation.
What do you think of the notion of David Norris as President?
Well, I think it’s very exciting. I think he certainly would clear away whatever remaining cobwebs are up there. He seems immensely energised by the idea, and wants to do it. One has great respect for the office of President. It’s not something that one can readily understand why people would want to do it, but David wants to do it. I’d be very happy to see him there.
Labour is currently proposing that separated fathers will get the same rights as mothers as regards custody of children.
I am surprised that it’s been such a slow-burner. Children have two parents. You know, I’m a bit surprised at some of the vehemence of opposition to it from some of the existing civic organisations. And I think they confuse it with some of the very bitter issues that can surround marital breakdown and so on. I think it’s a genuine equality measure. And I’m glad that Kathleen Lynch has published the Bill.
Do you think it’ll get through?
It’ll be very interesting. I mean, the issue raised by the Ombudsman in connection with the Lost At Sea Report is – as I understand her thesis – whether the whipping system is responsible for the decline of the stature of parliament vis-à-vis the executive or government. I’m not sure that I agree that it’s the whipping system per se. I think the imprudent use of the whipping system, improper resort to the whipping system, partisan protection in terms of the whipping system, is what is wrong. And on an issue like this Bill, I can’t see any reason why the House ought not be given a free vote. You know, that’s not to say that I agree that when, for example, the Finance Bill comes in to implement the budget that it ought to be a free vote. I can’t envisage how we would govern the country without a whipping system. But there are so many issues, we’ve talked about some of them, and this is a good example, where people ought to vote according to their conscience.
Ever since Joe Higgins left, you seem to have taken over the role of chief smart-aleck of the Dáil. Does that perception ever bother you?
Oh God, I hope I don’t have that perception, but if you say I do. I’m afraid that’s not really the substance of the Justice portfolio! I can tell you it’s dealing with very unfunny, serious, substantial issues. And I suppose, if I have laboured under that perception – I have done it before Joe Higgins came into the Dáil – and I’m sad to hear, if it’s true, that I’m doing it after he has left.
Okay, well do you ever work on your one-liners the night before?
To be honest, not really. I mean, there are things that occur to one, and not always to my advantage, let it be said. I remember taking a great deal of criticism when, on the spur of the moment on a television debate before the last election, I described Michael McDowell as “a menopausal Paris Hilton.” And I took a lot of criticism for that, and it’s typical of my tendency to say things that perhaps were better unsaid, but I think Michael McDowell was an inveterate attention-seeker, and I thought it was apposite. Clearly, I’m in the minority.
Do you think the current government will last the full term?
No. No, no. No, no. No, no. It won’t. It’s like the last days of the Roman Empire in here. It’s dysfunctional; it’s paralysed; it’s undisciplined; it’s all over the shop. No, it won’t. Whether it will survive to bring in another budget is really the only issue, whether the election will be early before that budget, or early after that budget.