peteg's blog - noise - politics - 2006 10 04 BarryJones

Barry Jones: A Thinking Reed book launch at Gleebooks.

/noise/politics | Link

This is Barry's long-in-coming autobiography. The launch itself was another in-conversation-with Jennifer Byrne, who surprisingly managed to get some words in edgeways without talking over the big man. Bazza's schtick has always been to ramp up the geek in a self-deprecatory and seemingly oblivious fashion, though it is a pretence that he can't keep all the time. His anecdotes (e.g., roughly, "the return of Halley's Comet may well be the single greatest achievement of the Hawke government", uttered to the press gallery in his role as Science Minister, circa 1987.) make him human, but he also likes to use the ramble to avoid answering uncomfortable questions. Still, it's more entertaining than the bald dissembling and visionless blandness of the current mob.

Interesting in the light of Petro Georgiou's recent spray was his claim that Bob Menzies, late in life, gave up voting for the Liberals and went for the DLP instead.