Don’t the wankers in the mass media love it when someone slags off ‘Australian icons’ (TM) like Don Bradman, Steve Irwin or Gallipoli. Today it’s Paul Keating, who in his latest book points out quite correctly that the Gallipoli campaign was a disaster from whoa-to-go, and that building a national identity on it is tenuous at best. You could just sense the populists, the blind patriots and the blue-rinsed bigots queueing up 3AW talkback or tapping away madly on the Herald Sun’s comment pages. Keating: the ‘lizard of Oz’; the lover of froggy antiques and Italian suits; the man who groped Her Maj; the scumbag who gave us ‘the recession we had to have’ (as opposed to the one we’re about to) - now he’s slagging our brave Diggers.

But we all know Keating’s not slagging anyone off - save perhaps Churchill, the drunken imperialistic old toad - and that factually, he’s quite right about Gallipoli. It was a tragedy for our troops but its elevation above other battles and campaigns is illogical. It wasn’t our first war as a nation: we had close to 20,000 men serve in the Boer War, another British military fuck-up. We didn’t suffer the worst there (France lost a much higher proportion of its troops) nor is it our costliest defeat (six times as many Australians died on the Western Front - and three-quarters as many died in one day’s fighting at Fromelles as did in the entire seven months at Gallipoli). But let’s face it, the rocky beach, the high cliffs, the Muzzies with machine-guns - it all makes for a great yarn, the stuff from which national myths are woven.

None of that will matter to the Gallipophiles, however, who have spent their lives marching to the nationalist drum and getting drunk on CEW Bean or Les Carlyon. The facts of history mean little to those who just want to use it as a euphoric drug.

Andrew Bolt, pants fairly bulging with admiration, has posted an item about John Howard’s first major post-crucifixionelection speech, given today in Washington.

Howard, who you may remember as only the second Australian prime minister in history to be turfed out of his own seat during an election, has used his Irving Kristol Lecture for The American Enterprise Institute (a neo-conservative wankthink tank) to take what Bolt describes as a “well-deserved swipe” at the new Rudd government.

The Australian reports:

Mr Howard also made two key criticisms of the Rudd Government, which swept him from office in November last year, saying Australia should not withdraw its combat troops from Iraq and should not roll back his government’s industrial relations reforms.

“That will be a mistake. It will be the first time in 25 years that a major economic reform in Australia has been reversed,’’ he said. “In particular, bringing back the old unfair dismissal laws will stifle employment growth amongst small businesses.”

Bolt foams with indignation whenever Paul Keating points out the mistakes of the government that succeeded his. Worst of all, suggests Bolt, is that Keating’s comments insult the voters who saw fit to remove his government from office and hand Howard the mandate for his many controversial reforms.

You’d therefore expect the ever-reasonable and balanced Bolt to be equally critical of Howard’s petty self-indulgence, right? Well, you’d be wrong:

Howard may in time prove a more fearsome critic of Kevin Rudd than Brendan Nelson. For one, he’s sticking to his guns.

I’m beginning to think Andrew Bolt might be a bit of a hypocrite.

We were left in no doubt after his appearance on 7.30 last night.

So, the APEC leaders’ meeting was an idea that I had…

…the last thing I did as Prime Minister was get Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin to have reciprocal visits.

…the first big meeting I had after I left the prime ministership to deal with Washington to deal with the Clinton’s staff to get Clinton to go through with it.

I set up the new Australian economy for him…

…that’s the one I introduced…

…I abolished centralised wage fixing after 100 years in 1993.