16 BOOKS

July 22-23, 2017 theaustralian.com.au/reviewAUSE01Z01AR - V1

So opens Taboo, Kim Scott’s fifth noveland the first since he won the 2011Miles Franklin Literary Award forThat Deadman Dance, a book TomKeneally described as “an insider’s

view of Australia before it was Australia’’.That simple first paragraph says a lot about

Taboo. “They”, we assume, are Aboriginal Aus-tralians. “Others” are white Australians.

The story unfolds in the here and now,unlike That Deadman Dance, set in early-19th-century Western Australia, or one of its prede-cessors, Benang, which focuses on the decadesof forced removal of indigenous children, thepeople we now know as the Stolen Generations.Benang was joint winner of the Miles Franklinin 2000.

“Being Aboriginal is contemporary,’’ Scottsays in a telephone interview from his home inCoolbellup, South Fremantle. “Healing is a con-temporary preoccupation, through truth andjustice … and land, giving back land.

“Identity is not remote, or about posturing.In my part of Australia, Aboriginal people areeverywhere. There’s a community that inter-mingles. So the relationship, or potential rela-tionship, between Aboriginal Australia and themodern nation-state is sort of in this novel.’’

This is a novel where the descendants of theoriginal inhabitants and the descendants of thepeople who took their land live in awkward, al-most respectful familiarity. They are in Scott’sWestern Australia. They are uncomfortableabout dwelling on the past and with saying orhearing certain words.

“Our people gave up on that Payback stuff along time ago,’’ we are told by an unnamed oc-casional narrator, “because we always knewdeath is only one part of a story that is foreverbeginning ...”

We soon meet the man who owns and liveson the farmland that is at the heart of the story:

Dan Horton, who two months ago lost his wifeof 50 years. He and Janet fostered indigenouschildren on the station. Now, one of them wantsto pay a visit, as part of a group of Noongar peo-ple, including elders, who are returning to theirhomeland, to this place made taboo by death.

The ceremonial aspect of their visit is theopening of a Peace Park in town. When Dantells his brother Malcolm about this and usesthe word massacre, Malcolm says, “I wish theywouldn’t use that word. Massacre.”

The brothers seem like decent men. Theywant to welcome the indigenous people. Whathappened was “a long time ago” and “here Danand Malcolm agreed — there was no evidenceof any more than a few Aborigines being killed’’.

They do remember, as boys, finding a skull“on their property’’. Soon after, in this telling, al-though the event it marks came before the skull,we see the grave of a Horton ancestor, William,1848-81. Carved into the timber cross is “Killed

by natives”. “That’s what this place is known forthese days, I’m afraid,’’ Dan says to one of theNoongar visitors, Gerald Coolman, who is justout of jail. “Nothing about all the Noongarskilled then,’’ Gerald replies, without hostility.

We learn why this 19th-century Horton, partof five or six generations who have occupied theland, was killed, what he did to warrant such alethal response. His relatives and friends re-sponded, with Winchesters and poison. But, ournarrator intervenes, “we will not dwell on theskull, the bones and bodies and bullets’’.

This contested history is why some Noongarpeople believe the land is taboo, not to be visi-ted. “It is a place for ghosts, not for living peo-ple,” says one, Wilfred. Later another, Nita,reminds her friends that “there’s good whitepeople too, you know that …”

With Gerald is his twin brother Gerrard, andScott has a bit of fun with the two Gerrys. He isalso playful with animal metaphors. At a funeral

FOREVERBEGINNING

Kim Scott’s new novel is set in the here and now because, as he tells Stephen Romei, indigenous

identity is not remote but contemporary

I GREW UP IN ALBANY IN THE 1960S. IT WAS AN APARTHEID SITUATION

KIM SCOTT

In 2009 an embattled Nathan Rees warnedthat, should he not be NSW premier by the endof that day, his successor would be nothing but“a puppet of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi”. Thismarked a decisive moment in the disintegrationand degeneration of NSW Labor.

Rees, who had succeeded Morris Iemma 12months earlier, indeed did not see out that dayas premier. His speech had an electrifying im-pact that continues to resonate.

Kristina Keneally, handpicked by Obeid,

Tripodi and Ian Macdonald to replace Rees,tried to reassure voters that she was “nobody’spuppet” and “nobody’s girl”.

Former minister Carl Scully, in this self-pub-lished memoir, Setting the Record Straight, pullsback the scab on these unhappy events and thepus oozes out.

This is an important book that deserves awide audience because he is prepared to tell thetruth about the decrepit state of NSW Labor inthe post-Bob Carr era. Its publication is timelyahead of next weekend’s Labor state confer-ence.

The author tells me that the party had toatone for allowing “criminals” to effectively ap-point three premiers following Carr’s retire-ment in 2005. Scully is referring to sub-factionkingmakers Obeid from the right and Macdon-ald from the left. Appointing the premier, one

observer tells me, was like the mafia loungingaround in the back of a greasy pizza parlour inNew York, dividing the spoils among the mademen (and women).

Scully is unfair to Iemma, who was elevatedto the premiership with the support of Carr andthe imprimatur of Mark Arbib, then NSWLabor secretary. His Sussex Street successor,Karl Bitar, played a decisive role in smoothing apath for Rees to become premier in 2008. Reeswas ousted because he sacked Tripodi and Mac-donald from cabinet. Without Obeid, Keneallywould never have become premier. She re-turned Macdonald to the cabinet.

It is true, however, that Iemma was not hun-gry enough for the job and Rees never ad-equately filled it. Iemma, despite Scullylabelling him “the master mumbler”, did win re-election in 2007. This should not be discounted.

Keneally, however, in 2011 presided over theworst election result for Labor in more than acentury. These disastrous years are now under-scored by former ministers occupying jail cells.Others may soon join them.

Scully is not an impartial observer of theseevents. He had long aspired to become premier.His sights were set on succeeding Carr after thelatter’s stellar electoral success, winning twolandslides in 1999 and 2003. But Scully wasblindsided when Carr announced his retire-ment in 2005.

“I immediately felt an enormous surge ofelectricity through my body,” Scully writesabout the moment he heard the news. “My timehad now come. I felt overwhelmed with emo-tion and excitement. I was ready. I was going tobe premier.” Flanked by his family, he held apress conference and announced he was run-

Troy BramstonSetting the Record Straight: A Political MemoirBy Carl ScullyIngramSpark, 468pp

Premier who never was settles the score

COLI

N M

URT

Y

Our home was a massacre place. People called it taboo. They said it is haunted and you will get sick if you go there. Others just bragged: we shot you and poisoned the waterholes so you never come back.

17BOOKS

theaustralian.com.au/review July 22-23, 2017V1 - AUSE01Z01AR

there is a “crowd of men in dark clothes, somewith ties so tight they kept turning their headslike discomforted and wary tortoises’’.

That is funny on one level, and wary is theperfect word on another. When I tell Scott theimage made me laugh, he is relieved. “That’sgreat. I’m glad you saw humour through that.It’s a hard thing to do.” When I tell him I thinkthe novel is remarkable, he says, “Good.” Insome ways he is a taciturn man.

The person at the funeral who thinks of themen as tortoises is the main character: the late-teenage Tilly Coolman, still a schoolgirl. She isextraordinary. She is at the funeral because it’sfor a grandfather she did not know.

She joins the group heading to the tabooland at the urging of Gerald, cousin to her fatherJim. But Tilly did not meet Jim, who is in jail,until recently. Nor did she know of her mixedheritage. Her white mother, Ellen, brought herup alone. On learning the truth, she “thought it

made her really Australian, and then she won-dered what else it made her, not ever havingmet many Aboriginal people’’.

There are parallels here with 60-year-oldScott’s life. His mother was non-Aboriginal, hisfather Aboriginal. “My father was the only sur-viving child. His mother died when he was 10,so he was brought up all over the place.

“He had that sort of disconnection. Hismother was born in so-called taboo country,eastern Albany. I grew up in Albany in the1960s. It was an apartheid situation.”

Scott remembers his father’s “impoverishedsense of heritage and who we were”. He hassince met relatives who were told, as children,they were from Fiji, to explain the colour oftheir skin. They were “educated in shame aboutwho they were’’.

He recalls a talk, hardly a speech, in whichhis father told him that being of Aboriginal de-scent was “the best part of you’’.

Later, an older man, Wilfred, remarks,“Words, see. It’s language brings things prop-erly alive. Got power of their own, words.’’

“That’s dead right,’’ Scott says about the ab-sence of Noongar language on the page. “I wasthinking what it would mean to put our lan-guage in a book that I hope speaks outside ofour country. Would I just be posturing or feign-ing authenticity?

“That’s part of the reason I use phrases like‘ancient tongue’ and ‘the old language’. I thinksome of what I’m working on applies outside ofour country, and I want to make sure people re-alise that as well, and not give them overly liter-ary references.’’

This brings us to another question: the powerof words. When I mention a recent interview inwhich the award-winning Melbourne authorTony Birch, who is of part-Aboriginal descent,said he was thinking of abandoning writing totake up direct activism, in his case on climatechange, Scott is understanding.

“I have a lot of sympathy for that position, totell you the truth. Being an indigenous writeryou do wonder a bit about who you’re writingfor and what it is doing, what it is achieving.

“I do think about such things a lot … I do liketo be useful. But I do deeply value the intimacythat’s made available to one in novels. The shar-ing of a sensibility … several hours together, ashared interior world … that can make a lot ofchange to how people think and what they do.

“That’s what writing needs to do, and it doesrequire a certain way of writing that might be indecline. So, yes, I have a lot of sympathy withwhat Tony’s saying.”

The day we speak, Scott is home in bed. “Justman flu,’’ he says. He will travel a lot to promotethe book, which is dedicated to his two adultsons. Details are available on his publisher’swebsite (panmacmillan.com.au/picador).

Even so it seems almost harsh to ask him thequestion most authors don’t want to be asked,whether he can win a literary award, in this casea third Miles Franklin, which would put himequal with Peter Carey and David Ireland. OnlyThea Astley and Tim Winton have won four.

“I’d like to!’’ he says. “But I do my very bestnot to think about it. It’s lovely to have won it ... Iknow there is a great deal of luck involved.”

An aspect of that luck is who else happens tobe in the running. Scott is first cab off the rankin what will be a memorable second half of theyear when it comes to new novels by MilesFranklin winners. Carey has one, as do dualwinners Tom Keneally and Alex Miller andone-time (for now) recipients Michelle de Kret-ser, Sofie Laguna, Steven Carroll, Roger Mc-Donald and the incumbent AS Patric. AndRichard Flanagan, a Miles Franklin virgin de-spite five shortlistings, will publish his first novelsince winning another rather well-knownaward, the Man Booker Prize.

When I tell Scott it’s like Phar Lap racingPhar Lap, he says, “Yes ... Oh well, oh well. Thewinner will be deeply deserving.”

Taboo, by Kim Scott, is published on Tuesday by Picador Australia (304pp, $32.99).

“That sounds racist in itself, but it’s an at-tempt to hang on to that quality in hostile cir-cumstances.” He adds, after a pause, that hiswriting has been an attempt “to add words tothose few words of my father’s articulatingidentity and significance’’.

Unlike Tilly, he has long known who he isand where he is from. He is one of the Noongarpeople and “it’s a source of pride for me”.

Yet he does not see Taboo as semi-autobio-graphical, unlike Benang, in which he traced hisfamily line. The new novel is more about con-temporary identity and how that is partly hos-tage to the legacy of history.

“I know a number of people who — how do Iput this? — are attempting to reconnect orstrengthen their sense of Aboriginal identity.They get very mixed up, in my humble opinion,confused because of the paucity of informationavailable to them. It’s a trap they are put into be-cause of our societal situation.

“I have Tilly go through this experience, andthat’s part of why she’s damaged, like a lot ofpeople who are at the interface of Aboriginaland non-Aboriginal worlds.

“Yet I also think people can be healed, per-haps even transformed, by connection to placesof their heritage. Land, language and people: acommunal connection, and it’s one that appliesto the old farmer as well.”

Tilly, it soon emerges, has a direct connec-tion with the Hortons, including with Dan’s ab-sent son, Doug, who is tall, strong and bald. Heworks in the city as a parole officer, so knowslots of indigenous people. For Tilly, he steps outof “nightmare memories”. It would be unfair toreveal more, but this is the darkest part of thenovel and in some sense its inevitable centre.

There’s a moving moment where Tillyawakes at dawn after a night camped outdoors,“the sun bright on her face”. “Tilly felt unusuallyrefreshed, but for that dark star within; thatconstant, central shrinking; that memory andshame she must fight to extinguish.”

Scott is professor of writing at Curtin Univer-sity. He is a founding member of the WirlominNoongar Language and Stories Project, whichaims to reclaim and preserve Noongar heritagethrough language, storytelling, illustration,music, song and dance. He has helped retell “oldstories” in four children’s books.

This language is central to Taboo yet it ap-pears in print not once. When people use it, theyare said to be speaking in the “old language” or“old people’s tongue” and their words are pre-sented in indirect speech. When a woman asksone of the Gerrys how he is, “In the old lan-guage, he told her he was well.’’ When she re-plies, “You talking language, now. Properblackfella, unna”, we read: “He agreed with her,again using the old people’s tongue.”

Author Kim Scott: ‘Identity is not remote, or about posturing’

ning for the job. He promised to bring some“sparkle” to the premiership.

In truth, Scully was royally done over by hisown Terrigal sub-faction and the party office.

He never saw it coming. He had even estab-lished a “transition to government” committeein his office to prepare for his elevation to prem-ier. Some of his policy manifesto is outlined inthis book.

There was another crushing blow the follow-ing year when Iemma sacked Scully for alleg-edly misleading parliament. His political careerwas over. His ambition lay unrealised. A cloudhung over his time as a minister. Scully turnedto writing as catharsis. It is how he starts thebook, recalling his career ending in “the cold,harsh reality of political life”.

Scully sketches his pre-parliamentary life onthe north shore and in western Sydney. Thereare insights into party politics, seeking preselec-tion, speaking in parliament, dealing with themedia and being a minister.

Many of his former ministerial colleagues

will not be happy with how they are character-ised as he surveys his time in the transport,roads, housing and police portfolios. He lashesCarr and treasurer Michael Egan for preferringto retire debt and install tolls rather than investin infrastructure. He slams another treasurer,Michael Costa, for scuttling several projectsthat are now being built by the Coalition gov-ernment.

Scully’s reflections are timely given the infra-structure building under way in NSW. Thereare endless stories about battles with other min-isters, bureaucrats and activists about roads, railprojects, tunnels, bridges and bypasses. Politicalconsiderations often intervened. He writes thatthe decision to build the $1 billion desalinationplant was made by a focus group rather thanproper cabinet processes.

There is wistful air of what might have been.

The book brims with Scully’s characteristic self-confidence. Not becoming premier and beingsacked as a minister left him bitter and withscores to settle. It sours the narrative, despitethe kernel of truth that is woven throughout,and the likelihood that he would have been acapable premier.

There is value here for students, observersand practitioners of politics. There are notmany books about state politics published inAustralia. The prose is not polished and thereare typos, but it is a useful addition to the genre.Above all, it serves as a reminder of how brutalpolitics can be and how power, when unrivalled,corrupts.

Troy Bramston is a senior writer at The Australian. His latest book is Paul Keating: The Big-Picture Leader.