‘It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.’ Lyndon B Johnson on J Edgar Hoover Most authorities agree that the greatest of all political insults in the English language came from the 18th-century radical John Wilkes. When John Montague, Earl of Sandwich said, ‘Upon my soul, Wilkes, I don’t know whether you’ll die upon the gallows, or of the pox,’ Wilkes retorted, ‘That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles, or your mistress.’ This riposte, with its neat juxtaposition of sex and politics, has been much plagiarised and bowdlerised but never equalled in all the years and political exchanges since. Lamentably, sexual innuendo appears to have become unparliamentary from the Victorians onward. Winston Churchill fired one barrel at Labour’s Clement Attlee with his comment that Attlee was ‘a sheep in sheep’s clothing’ and another by saying that he ‘is a modest man, with much to be modest about’. Margaret Thatcher scored a hit with her comment on Harold Wilson, who had stressed his humble beginnings: ‘If he ever went to school without boots, it was because he was too big for them.’ I am aware of only one thing comparable from the conservative side of politics in Australia (see Costello below) and very little at all in recent years. When Winton Turnbull, the member for a Victorian rural electorate asserted, ‘I am a country member,’ Gough Whitlam interjected, ‘I remember.’ Whitlam later said that the bewildered Turnbull heard applause from both sides of the house for the first and last time. Whitlam’s characterisation of egregious Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen as ‘that Bible-bashing bastard’ had both alliterative force and accuracy. For alliteration, though, it was bettered by Senator Robert Ray, whose description of fellow Senator Mal Colston (who had deserted the Labor Party to take a remunerative office in the parliament and support certain measures of the conservative government) as ‘the Quisling Quasimodo from Queensland’ was cruel and precise. Nothing much since has had such a sharp bite, except perhaps – for its feline cruelty – Peter Costello’s repeated use of the word ‘possum’ when lampooning beleaguered and emotionally troubled ALP Senator Nick Sherry. Although he was supposedly a master of invective, I’m not greatly impressed by the Paul Keating efforts that I’m aware of. However, his reply to opposition leader John Hewson’s question as to why he didn’t call an election – ‘The answer, mate, is because I want to do you slowly’ – deserves a mention. The use of the word ‘mate’ in this context was deliberate and pure Keating. These days cartoonists seem to be doing the job of insulting politicians, with journalists, in the regrettable absence of Mike Carlton, and parliamentarians being circumspect. But cartooning is a hit and miss business. While Bill Leak’s characterisation of Kevin Rudd as Tin Tin and Alan Moir’s of John Howard as a bespectacled Cyclops were spot-on, Moir’s depiction of Tony Abbott as Popeye misses the mark in my judgment. For all the heat and antagonism generated in the turbulent Rudd/Gillard/Rudd/Abbott period, no pithy insults emerged. The present lacklustre parliamentary participants don’t seem likely to rise to the challenge.

Tags: Gough | Whitlam, John | Wilkes, Lyndon B | Johnson, Margaret | Thatcher, Paul | Keating, Robert | Ray, Winston | Churchill