Why playwright Williamson won't come to the party

Mary Colbert, Sydney, The Age (article),  4/11/2001

"I couldn't believe that the party I had always believed to be the bastion of human values had gone along 100 per cent with John Howard on this hideousness," he says.  "Labor are far more progressive on domestic issues. I just wish they'd had the guts to take a more humanitarian stand on refugees and the war on terrorism.  "In terms of foreign policy, both Liberals and Labor have in fact subscribed to the Pauline Hanson doctrine."

He says the Greens' Bob Brown showed moral fibre over the Tampa refugees.  "Immediately after the Tampa incident I heard Brown say on radio `I don't care what the electoral consequences are. This is an inhuman act. I and my party are standing firmly against it'."

In Don's Party, set on the evening of the 1969 federal election and first performed at Melbourne's Pram Factory in 1971, Williamson depicts the hopes and ultimately the frustrations of a group of Labor supporters as Gough Whitlam's team loses an election it seemed to have in the bag.

All but one of the 11 Australians he brings together for an election-night party are Labor supporters, professionals educated in the affluent boom years of the Menzies era.  As the party warms up and Labor looks set to lose, their waning political hopes, sexual frustrations and inner failings begin to show.

Looking back, Williamson says he is intrigued by the similarities in the political climate. The 1969 election was close and he believes Saturday's will be the same.  "Both involvedan entrenched conservative government that could lose power through a relatively small swing. Both take place at a time when Australian troops are involved in a major conflict on foreign soil."

He believes the electorate to be more cynical now than in the era of his famous play, viewing the two major parties to be much closer in foreign policy than during the early 1970s.  "We knew a Labor victory would be a dramatic break with the past," he says. "At least, that was the hope, the dream. You don't get that feeling now.

"Since then there has been a huge sea change. My play in '69 dealt with a society that was too safe, too comfortable and we could afford radicalism. Now the world is radically different. "It's much tougher, much less forgiving. It was much easier to be radical in a climate of two per cent unemployment. "Now Australia is exposed to international competition, and it's a struggle out there for many people to just keep their head above water.

"Certainly, Kim Beazley's Labor Party is much more committed to social justice than his predecessors, but the fervor of the Whitlam era is missing. Then it was like a whirlwind. "For the first time we weren't the cringing subservient nation we'd been for so long, tied by our bootstraps to the British. Now we've exchanged masters for the Americans."

And that, says Williamson, is treading on dangerous ground.  "I think the ignorance of the Middle East that's patently obvious in American foreign policy over the past 50 years has fuelled extremism," he says. "As in Vietnam we're being drawn into a war that's likely to be prolonged. We're not going to get Osama bin Laden or beat the Afghans on their own ground. That's a lesson we should have learnt from the Russians."

Does he believe the Australian electorate to be gullible? "No, not at all," he says. "There may be a tendency to vote for their pockets but considering the economic climate, that's understandable. But what is a matter of concern is a national xenophobia. "It used to be perceived as the threat of an Asian invasion - the yellow peril - and now it's the Muslim peril.

"What are they afraid of? That we will be swamped with Muslims who will rape our women and commit acts of terrorism? "Hasn't it dawned on our politicians that most of these people are desperately trying to escape the Taliban and other extremist regimes? "Our Asian migrants have been exemplary. They've added enormously to Australia. So what's the panic?"

Williamson believes Australia's relationship with Asia has come full circle. "Keating went overboard sucking up to them, Howard has swung completely the other way."

On Saturday Williamson will discuss the parallels and contrasts between the federal election and the 1969 poll depicted in Don's Party to mark the beginning of a fortnight of celebrations of the 21st anniversary of the Australian Association of Screen Directors, jointly run with its senior partner, the Australian Writers Guild.