The Mandarin Code (27 page)

Chinese warplanes confronted two unarmed B-52 bombers, a move that military experts said put the two powers one mistake from war.

Pentagon officials claim a ‘reckless' act by one of the Chinese fighter planes forced the B-52 pilot to take emergency evasive action to avoid collision.

The Prime Minister flicked through the daily briefings on his desk. It was 6.20am and the leader's office was pulsing with the energy of forty staff.

In his office next door, George Papadakis looked more worry-worn than usual as he leafed through the same high-level briefings that had been prepared by the Office of National Assessments. They offered ominous warnings that the US–China standoff could be the flashpoint for a regional confrontation.

He glanced up at a monitor on his office wall to note that Toohey had arrived and was hard at work. Papadakis had a special camera trained on the PM's desk. Not even the Australian Federal Police were given access to it. He bundled up his papers, grabbed his coffee mug and walked the short distance to greet his friend.

‘One mistake now and this will go completely pear-shaped,' he said.

‘Yeah, it isn't good.' Toohey still had his head buried in the briefs. He looked up and took off the reading glasses he wore in private, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

‘I gave the Canadian Prime Minister a call last night before this latest bloody escapade and he thinks Earle Jackson is the most dangerous President in our lifetime. The Tea Party has him by the balls and he's an ugly mix of stubborn and stupid.'

‘And the Five Eyes intel is starting to paint a pretty chilling picture of this new Chinese leadership.' Papadakis pointed the PM to a file in his papers marked ‘Analysis of the Standing Committee'. ‘The President relies heavily on the head of his Propaganda Department, Jiang Xiu. He turns out to be an ultra nationalist.'

Toohey pulled out the brief and read its four pages. ‘Gee . . . we've managed to bug the leadership's phones.'

‘Well, not us specifically, but the Americans have been pretty successful at getting a fix on the President – what he's contemplating and plotting.'

‘Question is, where does that leave us? I don't want to get drawn into a pissing competition with the two biggest dicks on the planet.'

‘But we might not have much choice in this, Martin. The Americans will expect us to roll in behind them.'

‘Mate, we can't afford that. We have to try and keep this dispute at arm's length. Just say enough to keep the Yanks happy and not so much that we piss off the Chinese.'

Papadakis rolled his eyes. ‘That will take a level of skill that we haven't yet displayed.'

‘Well, we'd better get this right. Our future actually does depend on it. We'll keep our position non-committal for as long as we possibly can. I intend to nurse this gas-hub deal to the other side of the election. Even if it evaporates the day after it.'

‘And if we can't manage that? If conflict breaks out?'

Toohey leapt from his seat with a ferocity that startled Papadakis.

‘Then, George, I will be a leader during a national security crisis. I will use fear to make the Australian people think twice before they change government. I'll win this election fair and square . . . or I'll use every dirty trick in the book. Just like my fucking opponents always do.'

Papadakis was shocked and disturbed. For all his faults Toohey usually kept his cool. Now even that was breaking down.

A knock on the door interrupted a tense silence. ‘Prime Minister, the Greens leader is here to see you, for her scheduled 7am meeting.'

Toohey groaned.

‘From the absurd to the absolute fucking ridiculous.'

Kiirsty Stanford-Long was in her early thirties, a political vixen who'd schemed her way to the helm of the Senate's balance-of-power party. She was statuesque and shiny and had one of the Parliament's sharpest tongues. In another life, Toohey might have found her alluring.

But he despised Stanford-Long's holier-than-thou approach to politics, so typical of this party of wowsers, environmental flat-earthers and do-gooders. Meetings with her always reminded Toohey of Whitlam's barb to the Victorian Left: ‘You are pure in the way that eunuchs are pure.'

‘Prime Minister.' Stanford-Long offered her hand. ‘Thanks for seeing me, I know you have a very busy schedule.'

‘Well Kiirsty, nothing is more important to me than the Mental Justice Bill and I hope that we can rely on your support. The numbers will be tight and this is the kind of initiative that this country needs.'

‘Martin, I'm delighted by the bill and the Greens have always supported legislation that seeks to improve the lives of Australians. Of course we support it, but I think that we have a historic opportunity here for more sweeping reform.

‘As you know, Prime Minister, one of the biggest contributing factors to depression is the abuse of alcohol. The Mental Health Commission's latest report was quite explicit on the link between excessive drinking and the growing number of people seeking help.'

Toohey could feel it coming: a Greens boondoggle that would, no doubt, nail him to the cross of a dog of a policy.

‘What do you have in mind?'

‘We have a once-in-a-generation chance to take the lead here, as we did with the plain packaging of tobacco.'

Stanford-Long lifted several sheets of paper from her bag.

‘We've been working on this in the party room and with the help of the preventative health agency. It's bold. And, I am sure, will be popular. Here, have a look at some of these pictures.'

The Prime Minister gazed down at what he hoped was a mock shot of a bloodied corpse lying across a car bonnet, beneath three words blasted in large, prominent font.

DRINK. DRIVE. DEAD.

Toohey rubbed his brow, sensing a headache building. ‘Let me get this right. You want me to plaster every can of beer and every cask of wine in Australia with graphic shots of dead people. So every night when people sit down to relax with a harmless quiet ale they can be reminded that I've ruined one of the few pleasures they have left. That should go down a treat in marginal seats.'

Stanford-Long wore the expression of a pet cat that'd been chastised for bringing a dead rat into the home.

‘I'm disappointed, Prime Minister. I thought you would see the wisdom of this. The bottom line is: we want this as part of the mental health package. Without it the job is only half done. We are not going to support a bill that locks in failure.'

Toohey's temper was rising. ‘That's what you said when you opposed our first emissions trading bill and allowed the global warming sceptics in the Opposition to argue that not even the Greens thought it was any good. Because of that we lost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get bipartisan support for action on climate change. That's what I call locking in failure.'

The Prime Minister paused and took a deep breath before continuing.

‘Kiirsty, can I remind you that the last brainwave the Greens had – and that we foolishly accepted on the advice of closet activists in the Department of Health – was to ban foods with high salt content.'

Toohey was reliving what was clearly a painful moment.

‘The problem was that the salt level was measured by every 100 grams. Unfortunately that saw Vegemite pulled from supermarket shelves. For a bloody month! No one eats 100 fucking grams of Vegemite on their toast! No one! That's half a jar. Oh, and remember the tabloid headlines when it was discovered there was a black market in the stuff: “BOOTLEG KIDDIES”.'

Toohey was getting red in the face and Papadakis briefly worried that the PM might be getting too much salt in his diet. But he was just warming up. He stood up and began to pace the room. Stanford-Long was shocked into silence. For once.

‘Oh, and then it got out that you and your mates in Health had been exchanging emails about kids' exercise. You proposed, and they entertained, the idea that we ban all contact sport for under-eighteens.

‘And who found out about that? Who got the leak? I'll tell you who. Ray fucking Hadley. He only built his fucking first career on calling fucking football and his second fucking career on fucking me. It was the perfect storm. And the first thing I knew about it was when the shock jock broadcast it.'

Papadakis considered intervening. But Stanford-Long was flint-hard and was not going to be bludgeoned into changing her mind. Toohey could engage in bluster but she had what he needed. The numbers.

When Toohey finished shouting, her response was icy.

‘Thanks for the history lesson, but both of those reforms would have succeeded if you hadn't gone to water. And the country would have been better for it. We are not turning on this. I look forward to your considered response.'

Stanford-Long gathered her papers and bag and stormed out. Papadakis turned to a still-fuming Toohey as the door slammed.

‘Have I ever told you how much I admire your masterful way with women?'

Canberra

Emily Brooks had achieved what she had always courted. Worldwide fame. The online footage of her cavorting with journalist Jonathan Robbie had gone
Gangnam-Style
viral.

Snippets of the sex tape had also aired round the clock on Australian TV. The images had been discreetly blurred, but what was left to the imagination only made it worse.

The warning at the end of every introduction was guaranteed to draw a crowd: ‘The following story contains graphic sex scenes that might offend some viewers.'

Towards the end of each replay it became apparent, even through the blurred images, that the man wasn't having such a good time.

‘Noooooooooo!'

Online there were no constraints and the images were paraded in their uncut glory. On Twitter #SpankMeEmily had become the top trending Australian topic for 2013.

Inevitably, the creative sexual escapades of two mostly consenting adults had been distilled to one predictable phrase: ‘Bondage-Gate'.

The Left-wing blogs were ablaze with anger at the hypocrisy of a leader who had made so much of her Christian values, but had been caught
in flagrante delicto
. Despite the Left's profound commitment to advancing women's rights, when it came to Brooks all bets were off. Blog sites were littered with lewd and sexist references to the Opposition leader.

Fairfax couldn't get enough of the story and the News Limited tabloids were in overdrive.

But
The Australian
decided to use the issue to launch one of its regular jihads on the ABC. It focused on the public broadcaster's ‘ethics' in breaking the story when the media had traditionally avoided peering into politicians' private lives. An
Oz
editorial thundered that the story was driven by ‘a blatant Left-wing bias that infects the entire organisation'.

Channel Nine was in a position almost as uncomfortable as the one that its manacled reporter had endured. It couldn't ignore the story and yet its Canberra-based attack dog had a starring role. Its news stories focused on Brooks and referred only fleetingly to ‘television journalist Jonathan Robbie'. The network was also forced to put out a statement saying that Robbie was taking extended leave to recover from a lower back injury.

For Seven and Ten, ‘Bondage-gate' was proof that, somewhere in the universe, there is a God. They camped outside Robbie's Deakin home and tried to doorstop him whenever his 1971 orange and black VH Valiant Charger pulled into the driveway.

But the real gold was mined when an eagle-eyed ABC crew, Dave McMeekin and Nick Haggarty, spotted Robbie's unmistakable muscle car at the Deakin shops. Both hated Robbie from long days spent working with the bad-tempered and arrogant reporter in pool crews on overseas trips.

Their camera was waiting as Robbie emerged, decaffeinated soy cappuccino takeaway in hand, from a bustling Cafe D'Lish. McMeekin was shooting, Haggarty was carrying the sound boom and firing off questions.

‘Jon, have you got a moment?'

‘Piss off you bastards.' Robbie pushed past the camera.

‘Mate, can you relive the experience for us . . .' Haggarty was grinning like a schoolboy.

‘I've got nothing to say and you guys are invading my privacy.'

‘It's a public place and . . . hey, why are you limping?'

‘I'm a sick man.'

‘We know, we saw that online.'

‘Leave me alone, I have nothing to say.' Robbie lifted his pace but was clearly labouring. It was a long walk to the Valiant but the two hardened professionals had no trouble keeping pace under the weight of their gear. By the time Robbie was fumbling with the keys at the car door he was breathless and angry and the camera was a metre from his face.

‘Does that kinky stuff hurt?' Haggarty was running out of questions that could run on prime time.

‘Fuck off you vultures!' Robbie screamed as he slammed the door, upending the nancy-boy coffee he'd left on the roof. The V8 roared to life and its tyres squealed as he reversed and the crew retreated. Then, the footage would show, he appeared to veer towards the camera as he took off, laying down more rubber as he straightened at the last moment before extending his arm out the window, offering the middle finger of his right hand in a final defiant salute.