The Howard Years

[loic]

I just finished watching The Howard Years on ABC Online. It was fascinating. I'd forgotten how much of Howard I hadn't been around for. The most surprising thing for me was how sympathetic Mal Brough was.

Comments

[quog]

Couldn't bear to watch it, kept screaming at the tv and throwing things. Eventually gave up and switched it off.

[loic]

I watched it in 10 minute chunks in the morning. I don't think I could have done it all at once.

[quog]

the only good thing I got out of it - the schadenfreude-istic pleasure of seeing that Peter Reith has not aged well.

[loic]

and that's made better by the fact he's even more of a git in this than he was in government.

[strangedave]

We've been thinking and talking a lot about The Intervention in the last year, and I've become quite convinced that Brough's motivations, despite all the cynicism about them at the time, were really motivated by an honest and sincere desire to help and break long ongoing dysfunctional patterns in indigenous politics, and was actually a pretty courageous act of politics motivated by compassion.

I think it was mostly done badly anyway (sincere motivation and needing to break a cycle doesn't excuse an amazingly hastily and poorly planned program) but Brough is a sympathetic guy, yes.