The Marmalade Files Read online

  Killing off leaders was something of a sport for Buharia. He was the one who signed the death warrant, leaving his loyal lieutenants to push the bodies down the elevator shaft. He’d had a hand in putting down two New South Wales Premiers and one Prime Minister, a record unique in Australian politics. Unfortunately he didn’t seem to equate semi-regular assassination with long-term brand damage.

  He was almost single-handedly responsible for what people dubbed the New South Wales disease: the poll-driven approach to politics that focused on spin, and had wrung the last juices of idealism out of Labor’s marrow. What was left were the dry bones of a once great party.

  Buharia was obsessed with polling, particularly the focus groups of six to eight people who were gathered as litmus tests of community sentiment. He did not understand that, properly used, the idea was to lead that sentiment, not follow it. Buharia’s favourite saying after any focus group was, ‘The punters hate it, mate.’ One negative focus group on an issue was enough for him to start demanding that the government abandon multi-million-dollar projects. Several months of bad results saw him orchestrating Cabinet reshuffles.

  He had coveted power from an early age and graduated from playground racketeering to Labor politics with ease. He had a gift for arithmetic and soon discovered that a man who could deliver numbers in Labor was a man to be reckoned with. He cultivated ethnic community leaders who could swing large groups of their people into ALP branches at a moment’s notice. These flying squads would arrive at a branch en masse, sign up as members and then vote whichever way Buharia wanted.

  And so Buharia had risen through the ranks of his party to be New South Wales Secretary by the age of thirty, continuing the tradition of colourful characters who had littered Labor’s past all the way back to its 1891 origins. But he lacked subtlety and foresight. He failed to see that just winning power was not enough to sustain a government, or a party. In the end you have to stand for something.

  Watching appalled from Victoria, Brendan Ryan would note, ‘Buharia thinks a year is 365 contests for the 6 p.m. news. He’s all tactics and no strategy. And what he’s done is lose us his State for a generation.’

  Buharia quit his role as Secretary for the sinecure of the Senate before the full horror of his work in New South Wales was apparent. There he could enjoy a long career in relative anonymity. And continue to pull strings behind the scenes.

  After about two minutes of absorbing the Bailey headline – a reasonably in-depth study by his standards – Buharia picked up his mobile and hit autodial 1.

  ‘Cunts,’ the current New South Wales State Secretary spat as he picked up.

  ‘Yes mate, but what do we do about it?’

  1980-2011

  Ben Gordon had difficulty remembering the first time he’d felt different. He had wrestled with his gender and the key role this confusion played in his life for more than two decades. He often confided in Harry Dunkley, even though his old friend was clearly uncomfortable talking about it. ‘Ben, you live your life to the fullest, mate, and I’ll lead mine,’ Dunkley would say.

  Gordon was the product of a safe middle-class upbringing – he’d attended a GPS school, enjoyed strong academic results, had an excellent sporting record and an inquiring mind. Then, in his mid twenties, he’d felt a yearning to feminise his life. At his core he knew that his internal wiring didn’t match his exterior. Dunkley would console him by saying, ‘Everyone wonders who they are, mate; it’s just that, for you, the question is more profound.’

  He’d bottled these feelings up upon his arrival in Canberra, conforming to the regimented life of a bureaucrat, unwilling to stand out in a city that did everything in its power to fade into the landscape. And he did not want to cruel his chances of promotion. He spent eight years in the Defence Signals Directorate, working for one of the best analysts the agency had produced, Trevor Harris, before he’d worked up the guts to reveal all.

  Unfortunately his timing was bad. Trev was working flat chat on a Friday evening to finish a top-secret briefing for the Prime Minister on an operation gone wrong in Iraq, when Gordon bowled up and burst out with, ‘Trev, I’m going to change my name and identity —’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Trevor said, waving a hand to indicate he was busy.

  Gordon had considered a full sex change and done the research on what was required; he had even chosen a pretty name – Kimberley. But he’d decided against meddling with nature and instead opted for the less extreme life of a transvestite. He’d be a cross-dressing transformer working in one of the most secretive and paranoid arms of government – all six feet two inches of him … er, her.

  When Gordon arrived at the DSD office the Monday following his announcement to Trevor, the first hurdle he confronted was security – they wouldn’t let him in. Trevor fielded an irate call from the chief guard.

  ‘Trev, we have someone down here who claims to be Ben Gordon.’

  ‘And?’ said Trevor.

  ‘He’s a she.’

  ‘Oh fuck …’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

  At this point Trev realised he should have paid more attention to Ben’s change-of-identity announcement.

  But Trev went into bat for him, extolling his analytical skills as some of the best in the business. The security clearance had then been routine, less trouble than Gordon expected. Reluctantly, the DSD hierarchy had given its blessing.

  Trev’s only request was for Ben to be discreet when he was at meetings with other sections of the intelligence community. ‘No flirting,’ he had insisted.

  That wasn’t an issue. However, Ben’s insistence on using the female bathroom had caused a near meltdown.

  Fifteen years later and Ben Gordon’s cross-dressing lifestyle was now as routine as Friday night drinks. The women had even accepted him using their bathroom (but were quietly thankful when the agency installed a ‘gender neutral’ toilet).

  From his kitchen, a kettle whistle sang, stirring Gordon from his thoughts. There is work to be done, Ms Analyst, he said quietly to himself. He had been putting in long hours at DSD and there’d been precious little time to pick up his ‘project’ with Dunkley. He’d finally squeezed a half-day off.

  Dressed in a casual outfit he referred to as ‘Target Chic’, he was preparing to spend the next few hours immersed in what he imagined would be largely historical trivia. With just a few computers and a cup of steaming chai for company.

  Whenever Ben hit a dead end in analysis his routine was to radically shift thinking. What made him the best in his trade was his ability to imagine another path. In his experience, too much focus on minutiae meant you could miss the big picture. The photo was a tiny part of the huge story that was Australia–China relations. So he would set it and his secret databases aside. Ben would now tackle the problem by using ‘open source’ material. And he would start with the woman charged with leading Australia’s side of the relationship.

  ‘Catriona Bailey, Catriona Bailey, Catriona Bailey.’ Line after mind-numbing line of information about Ms Bailey consumed the 27-inch computer screen, mostly mundane facts about the Foreign Minister’s early years in politics, her rise to the highest office in the land – and then her quick demise.

  He was more intrigued by several pages of information that outlined Bailey’s trajectory as an academic at the Australian National University. She had built such an impressive list of achievements before choosing a life in the helter-skelter of politics.

  But nearly hidden among the reams of facts and figures was a nugget so golden it could have been sold then and there for a high price.

  Gordon leaned forward, eyes trained on a single line. Bailey had been in Beijing for three months in the early 1980s. Wasn’t that about the same time that Paxton had visited the Chinese capital?

  The small gem, until now, had escaped both Gordon and Dunkley. Something inside the analyst’s razor-sharp mind sensed it could be significant.

 
It would mean a short drive across the lake to the ANU. But that would have to wait. Gordon’s real job beckoned. And the skills of a professional voyeur had never been more in demand.

  July 13, 2011

  George Papadakis scanned the small room and called the meeting to order. He felt like a Soviet general at Stalingrad, hoping to survive the latest setback in a long siege.

  He had assembled his best war Cabinet to map out a strategy on what he called the Bailey Affair.

  In the room were the convenor of the Victorian Right, Brendan Ryan; his NSW counterpart, Sam Buharia; National Secretary, Alistair Cook; and constitutional wizard Dr Sarah Franklin.

  Franklin was there because Bailey’s staunch refusal to die meant that they were now in uncharted waters. The Foreign Minister had been in a coma for several weeks now and while she thankfully hadn’t woken up, she also didn’t appear to be going away.

  ‘Sarah, how long do we have to wait before we can declare Bailey’s seat vacant?’ Papadakis asked.

  ‘That depends,’ replied Franklin.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On the question.’

  Franklin loved knowing more than anyone else and Papadakis feared this was going to take a long time.

  ‘Sarah, assume for a moment that I don’t really care about the health of the member in question and might, if I let my dark side dominate, be wishing her a swift and not entirely pain-free death. Given she, typically, stubbornly refuses to die, what I want to know is how long it will take to kill her politically and have a by-election.’

  ‘Unfortunately, given the circumstances, the Constitution isn’t clear on this,’ Franklin said. ‘Nor is precedent much guide. The Constitution says she has to sign a letter of resignation to the Speaker of the House of Representatives.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, she can’t sign, she’s a veggie,’ roared Buharia, who was getting cranky surprisingly early in the conversation.

  ‘If she can’t sign we can get someone to act as her agent,’ Franklin said. ‘But we need to be able to establish that we have her permission. That is, we need to prove that she wants to resign.’

  Brendan Ryan weighed in. ‘In case my colleague didn’t make himself clear, she has been on life support for weeks now. She’s in intensive care and not expected to recover.’

  ‘And you are certain she’s incapable of understanding what’s going on?’ Franklin asked.

  ‘Let’s assume she’s plant life.’ Ryan confirmed Buharia’s assessment.

  ‘Well, if she’s absent from Parliament for more than two months, the Speaker can declare her position vacant. But let’s be very clear on this. In the one hundred and eleven years of Federal Parliament in this country no member’s position has ever been declared vacant because he or she was absent without leave. Only one has ever been expelled. That was Hugh McMahon, the member for Kalgoorlie, on 11 November 1920, for making seditious statements against the Crown. And, by the way, changes to the rules since then mean that can’t ever happen again.’

  ‘Jesus, there must be some sort of time limit on how long you can represent a seat without showing up in Parliament,’ moaned Buharia.

  ‘Not really.’ Franklin warmed to her task; she had spent a week buried in the finer points of procedure and practice. ‘The longest leave of absence on record is Adair Blain, an independent member for the Northern Territory. And this might shed a bit of chilly light on the current state of affairs: he was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore in 1942, and then re-elected unopposed in 1943, while he was a prisoner of war. When he finally walked into Parliament on 26 September 1945, wearing his uniform, after two years as a POW, he received a standing ovation. He was then granted another two months leave to recover in hospital.’

  A shudder went through the room. This was stupidly harder than anyone anticipated, but it was par for the course when dealing with anything to do with Bailey.

  ‘I swear this woman is like some kind of medieval curse on the party,’ muttered Ryan, neatly summarising the feeling of the room.

  ‘Indeed, but if there is no precedent, we will have to make one,’ Papadakis said. ‘Her specialists tell me there is no likelihood of recovery. We need to get that in writing, then we need to write to the Speaker asking that her seat be declared vacant. And the Speaker needs to say yes.’

  ‘What if the House intervenes?’ said Franklin. ‘What if the independents, the Greens and the Coalition refuse to countenance the removal of a member at the behest of a party?’

  ‘She was elected as a member of this party,’ raged Buharia. ‘She can’t do her job from intensive care. We have a right to replace her.’

  ‘You have no right to do anything of the sort,’ snapped Franklin, irritated by the routine ignorance of the law she so often found in the Senators and MPs who were charged with making it. ‘There is no mention of political parties in the Constitution. There is no mention of the Prime Minister or Cabinet. The law puts great weight on the people’s right to elect their representatives and on the right of those representatives to hold their place in Parliament until the people remove them.’

  ‘That may be so,’ said Ryan, ‘but I think that we should proceed as George advises. We should wait a decent amount of time, say a couple of weeks, and then put the advice of the specialists to the Speaker and encourage him to make the call, no matter how the House feels about it. He is, after all, supposed to be one of us. And we should begin planning for a by-election now, which, God knows, is going to be almost impossible to win.’

  ‘And while the Constitution might make no mention of the Prime Minister or Cabinet, they both exist,’ said Papadakis. ‘And, after a decent amount of time, the Prime Minister will announce that his Foreign Minister is incapacitated and incapable and we will have a Cabinet reshuffle. Alistair, get a team together to prepare for a by-election in Bailey’s seat. I’ll be fucked if I’m leaving that in the hands of that dropkick Secretary of the New South Wales branch.’

  Papadakis turned his attention to Buharia. He loathed the Senator from New South Wales and rarely deigned to speak to him directly.

  ‘And, finally, Sam, is there anyone left in that festering cesspool you preside over who’s not currently facing some kind of charge and is capable of actually winning a by-election?’

  ‘I don’t like your tone,’ said Buharia.

  ‘I don’t like you. I don’t like your branch. I don’t like what you’ve done to our party. So we all have our crosses to bear,’ snapped Papadakis. ‘You were the clown who foisted Bailey on us in the first place. You backed her long after it was clear she was barking mad. You are the architect of this crisis and you would not be drawing breath if I had anything to do with it.’

  ‘I didn’t hear you complaining when we won the election, or for the two years she was untouchable in the polls. It’s easy to be wise after the event, soft-cock.’

  Ryan didn’t like Buharia either but he needed a working relationship.

  He intervened. ‘Everybody take a powder. We all need to work on this together. It’s going to be tough enough without squabbling among ourselves. Let’s do the research, find a candidate, and see if there’s a single positive we can massage into a message.

  ‘And let’s look on the bright side. Bailey might die any day now.’

  July 15, 2011

  It was a small obituary, tucked away on page 22 of The Age, a quarter-page of copy that most readers would ignore on their way to the crossword or TV guide.

  Lifted from the New York Times, it was a perfunctory 350-word opus on Walter Chang, known to his Communist mates as ‘Wally’. The reclusive industrialist had survived the brutal crackdown against capitalists at the height of the Cultural Revolution, later emerging as a central player in China’s economic awakening from the late 1970s.

  CHINA’S ‘RED CAPITALIST’ DEAD AT 93

  Born in 1918, Walter Chang had a privileged upbringing, living in a luxurious mansion and driving an American-made sports car. On the eve of the
1949 Communist revolution, he took over the family’s business, which by then consisted of more than twenty flour and textile mills with some 65,000 employees. But the Chang business empire was effectively shackled by the Communists in the 1950s as the State shut down large swathes of privately run firms, replacing them with centrally controlled mega-sectors. Despite losing much of his fortune, the diminutive Chang would later become one of Deng Xiaoping’s most trusted advisers. He provided valuable guidance to the newly appointed leader as he encouraged like-minded entrepreneurs to attach their capitalist flag to the Communist mast. Chang took full advantage of his status, and played a key role in spearheading the first wave of Chinese mining investment to Canada and Australia through the State-owned investment vehicle, China International Trust and Investment Corp —

  Dunkley pulled up suddenly, mid-sentence, doing his best not to spill coffee on a just-ironed business shirt. He reread the lines before reaching into his shoulder bag for the file he had already compiled on Paxton, a collection of notes and photocopies of documents and old press clippings.

  And there it was. An article from the early 1980s taken from the business pages of the West Australian. Paxton and his UMF mates were running riot on building sites in what was then the very wild West. But a single line had struck Dunkley as odd the first time he’d read it.

  Union Secretary Mr Bruce Paxton congratulated Guangzhou Mining for being a model employer in the WA mining sector.

  And underneath it said:

  Guangzhou is a subsidiary of China’s State-owned investment arm, CITIC, which is understood to be exploring offshore opportunities in Australia, as well as the US and Canada. Its chairman is Mr Zheng Tian, also known as Wally Chang, who has handed responsibility for the Australian venture to his son, Zheng Wang …