From, Terry Lane’s Radio National program, The National Interest:

Terry Lane: I’ll read you a very touching paragraph from right at the end of your book and get you to comment on it.

‘In 2005 most people expect Labor to lose the 2007 election. So why not lose it with an up-to-date program of full employment and other blessings? Better to lose with an inspiring program than as a frightened copy-cat. And if the pessimists are wrong, and Labor wins with a program worth having, victory would be sweet. But what follows would be better than sweet. There would be hard, demanding, risky political and institutional work attacked by able business and political and press opponents, headlined as dangerous to all that we stand for, but inventive, adventurous and with more than a dash of fun.’

Have you spotted anybody in the Labor party who’s likely to come up with this program?

Hugh Stretton: You never know where they’re going to come from.

Terry Lane: I don’t know. If you look at Gough Whitlam perhaps as the sort of political prophet who came up with that program, we saw him coming for a long, long time, didn’t we?

Hugh Stretton: He was defeated but that does happen, I’m not always an optimist, but it’s absurd to help the damage along by conceding that it’s unstoppable. You’re just helping them. Very important not to do that.

Terry Lane: Hugh Stretton, talking about his book, Australia Fair which has just been published by the University of New South Wales Press. And that was a conversation recorded when Hugh Stretton was in Melbourne for the launch of the book.

The full transcript:
HERE

Also:
Perspective: Australia Fair

* “Who is in charge of the clattering train
The axles creak and the couplings strain,
and the pace is hot and the points are near,
and sleep hath deadened the driver’s ear,
and the signals flash through the night in vain,
for death is in charge of the clattering train.”