Lech Blaine tp speak at Sydney Writers Festival this month

I spoke to a lot of colleagues, so past and present just and I also spoke to people who you know in the public service also. I didn’t really quite. I didn’t want to have like a list of Peter Dunn’s critics in terms of like from the Labour Party. But it was really interesting speaking to people across the aisle from him about how he acts in private and how personable he can be even to members of the Labour Party. Yeah, so give us a peek into it. What’s he like, you know, behind the cameras, behind what we see in parliament? Well, lots of people talk about the fact that, yeah, he’s got this public image as a really chest beating, macho populist. And then, yeah, in meetings he from second hand accounts, he’s like very cautious, softly spoken, calm, considered and very focused on the political pragmatics and how he’s going to succeed and how his party is going to succeed. He says that his time as a cop in Queensland really has shaped the way he views Australia and the world and his policies as well. He’s also spoken about how he had PTSD from his time. How much has that time really shaped the man that we see today and you know, his views on where Australia should be heading? Yeah, I think, well he, he ran for State Parliament for the Liberal Party in 1989. Yeah, he, which he started running for that seat as an 18 year old. So he was a member of the young Liberal. So he had really strong political convictions before he went into the police force. And then I think the police force hardened his views about humanity and it also hardened his views against the people that he saw as inner city elites. And the manifestation of that with for him as a police officer would have been the barristers who were defending the criminals that he was trying to lock up and keep off the streets, right? That’s an irony, isn’t it? Because we also know he’s quite a wealthy property developer as well. Yeah, he he started he he started going into property as a quite a young man and then after leaving the police force, he went into that full time with his father and did extremely well for himself. MMM. I I wanna quote something that you write here that really struck out for me. There is more to this bland man than meets the eye, no doubt. And so much dread. His line of sight is small, his will to win is big. But he wants to be the Prime Minister without people seeing him. How does he reconcile that? How? How do you become a Prime Minister without people seeing you? Well, this is a really interesting thing, going back through his childhood and adolescence as well. Is the fact that he was, by his own admission as well, a really shy individual? He’s not. He’s not in the same mould as some of the previous prime ministers and opposition leaders that we’ve seen in terms of that desperate desire for attention and kind of affection. I don’t think that he’s in politics for those reasons. I don’t think he’s necessarily someone who loves the sound of his own voice and likes the sight of himself on the front page of the newspaper. And then even throughout his career. Yeah, I don’t think he’s kind of the most outgoing person yet. He’s one of the most by talking to people who’ve worked with different prime ministers, one of the most ambitious politicians that we’ve seen, if not the most ambitious politician in the current federal Parliament. So I think that that ambition, that ambition is what drives him to be able to go beyond his natural shyness and lack of desire for the spotlight. And then adding on to that that contempt that he holds for journalists, which is kind of like well documented is is that I, I I think goes to that, that that fact that he that he doesn’t see that as a necessary part of what he does or what the country needs. And so he really bristles under the spotlight and we’ve seen numerous examples of that.