Email eulogy to Tony

I had a dream about her last week. She is in the passenger’s seat of a car, neither ours nor hers, and it’s stopped outside her house in East Melbourne. I do a double take, because she’s not supposed to be there, she’s supposed to be dead. I run to the kerb to help her. She grabs my elbow, and her hand is trembling, and she smiles and pulls herself up, and then gives me a proper hug, and asks why I’m upset. I’m completely overwhelmed, and I tell her that I haven’t seen her for so long, because she’s — and I struggle to get the words out — ‘Mum, you died.’ She doesn’t say anything, but she holds onto me for a long time. Eventually, we finish the hug, and she’s a bit teary, but she doesn’t comment on being dead. ‘Have you been well?’ she asks. I’m in a much worse way, so I don’t small talk, I say, ‘I only get to see you this once, don’t I? After a year I’m not allowed to go back … ‘

I don’t have any explanation for the turn the dream took at this point, except to say that I’m a big fan of the film ‘About Time’ (easily Richard Curtis’ best film, although my 19 year old daughter Polly has words to say about only the men in the family getting to time travel). Anyway, for mine it’s an only-slightly-sexist romcom masterpiece, and it’s possible I’ve seen it too many times, and final trips back to visit dead parents are a thing in that movie, and just maybe I have the tendency to dream derivative Richard Curtis plots when I’m short of ideas myself, but the sudden realisation that this was it, this was the goodbye we never had, the last goodbye we’d ever have — the grief was so overwhelming that the sleep bubble popped and I was awake, back in Northcote in my own bed, back in this new and discombobulating reality of being motherless in the world.

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It’s the only time I’ve dreamed about Mum since she died. It’s also the only time I’ve ever written about a dream and it’s ironic that it features Mum because nobody hated having a dream recounted more than Mum. Admittedly, the main re-teller of dreams in her life was Dad, and for all my father’s wonderful qualities, all we ask is that he read every submission to his dream slush pile carefully before deciding one might be ready for a wider audience.

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That tweet was written many years ago by Steve Hely, one of the great comedy writers. If you haven’t read ‘How I Became a Famous Novellist’, it’s a masterpiece. Hely also wrote episodes of 30 Rock.

I may have been distracted from the serious business of honouring Mum. We ate soft cheese and carrot cake with her sisters Lesley and Robyn this morning. She’s been front of mind all day. It feels both longer and shorter than a year, which isn’t so much about Mum as how I feel about years and time more generally nowadays. She would have hated getting old, losing more of her independence, struggling on with a body that was already letting her down. But she was absolutely still herself, and none of us were ready for a sudden death. I’m sure she wasn’t. Although she’d be more okay about it than her children and grandchildren. She was tough, my Mum.

I love her and miss her, today and every day.

If you missed Mum’s celebration of life last year, it was a memorable afternoon. I put the speeches up here:

My eulogy is reprinted below:

For Margaret Joan Wilson: ‘The bells of St Stephens, tolling for Mum’, Celebration of Life, by Tony Wilson

8 May 2025, Leonda, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Australia

Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I’ve wondered where I might be when the terrible day arrived. I would never have guessed 16000 kilometres away in an Airbnb in Budapest, barely awake but already trying to share a Dave Barry article about his prostate on the family group chat. It was Dad who called, dialing my phone number that has and always will end with Mum’s birthday 10.06.45, and I could tell by the tremor in his breathing that this was it. This was the day. I was cold all over before he started speaking: ‘Tony, I’m so sorry I have to tell you this but your mother, your beautiful mum who we’ve all loved so much, died today.’

Two hours later, Polly and I were in the square in front of St Stephens when the bells started ringing. We stepped into the middle of the square, and the bells just rang and rang and rang. We stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing up at this glorious cathedral, and the deafening cacophony didn’t let up. On and on it went. People began to assemble on the church steps, hundreds of people, but Polly and I didn’t move, squinting into the sun and the spires, faces flushed, tears streaming, and it all continued for nearly an hour. The bells of St Stephens, tolling for Mum.

Look it’s possible they were also tolling for the Pope, who died an hour earlier, but I’m going to say they were for Mum. And although none of us Wilsons are particularly religious, I did picture her at the gates of heaven, and I imagined a carnival atmosphere up there, just a great day to be at the pearly gates. And I thought two things. I thought firstly, there’s absolutely no way my beautiful, kind, generous mother isn’t getting into heaven. And secondly, I really hope she doesn’t let the Pope queue jump.

Of course Mum wouldn’t want me dwelling for too long at the gates of heaven in this eulogy. There’s a reason we’re at a reception centre and not a church. She was raised a North Balwyn Methodist, the eldest of five girls, and lived the tearaway social life you’d expect from North Balwyn Methodists in the 50s and early 60s. Even now, if an organist strays into this place and leans on the opening notes of ‘All People Who on Earth Do Dwell’, the three remaining Voutier girls will leap to their feet, ready for choral action. I’m not even ruling Mum out.

She was so smart, such an academic talent. In Year 7, she won a scholarship to MLC, but her father didn’t let her take it up because with four girls following, it might not be fair on everyone. Later, she graduated near the top of her class at Balwyn High, and went to Melbourne Uni to study Science and a Dip Ed. Teaching wasn’t her first choice, but her father again had strong views, this time that his daughters choose either nursing or teaching. These were the good jobs for girls, he reckoned, and that’s where the Commonwealth funded scholarships were too. Mum actually loved science, loved her science friends, although teaching not so much. A lot of the Year 12 boys at Benalla High asked her out during her teaching training year and she wasn’t a fan of that. She did courses throughout her life — computing courses in the early days of the Logo programming language, horticultural courses at Burnley, somehow fitting it all in between parenting four children. When she thought Sam’s Year 12 biology teacher was missing the mark, she purchased the first year uni text book and taught her the course herself. They got 100%. They got into medicine. Pippa did the same a few years later. Sam gave an amazing speech at Mum’s 75^th birthday about women of Mum’s generation and the sacrifices they made. So much of her talent, her phenomenal talent, was lavished on us.

She was a spectacular beauty, and it’s been a running joke amongst her four children that her puny, pretty genes were no match for dad’s pale balding genetic headkickers. We don’t care though. Who wants to be a nine or a ten anyway? It’s character building down in the sixes and sevens. I for one can walk past any building site and nobody ever hassles me.

It also gave Mum things to work on. It was impossible to enter a room without her commenting on my appearance. ‘Do you want me to shave your neck, darling?’ ‘What are you taking for your face rash? Do you think it’s because you’re drinking milk? I think it might be the dairy. Look at your nails! You can’t let them get like that? Do you want me to cut them? Does Tam cut them for you?’

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When I applied for Race Around the World in 1998, and made it to the finals, Mum had one of her greatest grooming masterstrokes. ‘I think you should tint your eyelashes’ she said. ‘It’ll work, I promise you, make your eyes seem bigger.’ A day or two later, I was in a salon — yes, we Wilson kids are nothing if not compliant — getting my lashes done. Six months later, me and my long irresistible lashes won Race Around the World. Was it all because of the eyelashes? Well we’ll never know, but, yes, yes Mum, it was.

Mum had her own television moment three decades earlier. In 1969, Dad was playing league footy at Hawthorn and the Sporting Globe and Channel 7 had a Miss Footy competition. The idea was that wives and girlfriends were circled in the paper, and for that glory alone you won you $5, some Dr Scholl’s orthopaedic sandals, a Volutis perm styled by Lillian and Antonio, and dinner at the Southern Cross Hotel. It was also an entry ticket to the Miss Footy Trivia Quiz on Channel 7s World of Sport. Mum’s face got circled but she was initially indifferent. The truth was she already had a pair of orthopaedic sandals and knew absolutely nothing about footy — also, the prize the previous year had been a trip to Mildura.

It all changed though when details of the 1969 prize were released. It was an all-expenses trip to Japan and Hong Kong, staying at the five star Mandarin hotels. The total value of the trip was more than Dad’s annual salary as a teacher. They’d been married two years and neither of them had ever been overseas before.

And so Mum rote learned the history of football, basically the whole lot, from Brownlow Medallists to club theme songs, club presidents, everything. Dad was her tutor and put lists all over the house. I can’t imagine how exciting this must have been for him. His young, beautiful bride whispering John Coleman’s career goalkicking stats into his ear. Mum learned it all, of course she did, and breezed into the last eight, then the last four, only to play out two tense grand final draws with Lyn Grinlington, a young teenage Hawks fan who, unlike Mum, actually liked football. Their rivalry captured the sporting world in the spring of 1969. ‘Beauty and Brains too!’ is one article we have clipped from the Herald. Another went with ‘Quiz Cuties at it Again’. In the end, Mum was simply too good. The winning question was ‘Which Richmond premiership player before the war coached a different team to a premiership after the war?’ The answer I hear you screaming is — Checker Hughes. Mum knew it, Lyn didn’t, and finally, gloriously, they were off to Japan and Hong Kong. Second prize was $50 worth of hair care products.

Between 1971 and 1979 she had the four of us, and she lavished so much love in our direction, it’s really difficult to describe. But she was demanding too. I only have to say words like Suzuki method, and Montessori technique for you to get a bit of an idea. She also convinced pre school Samantha that frozen peas were lollies. Imagine Sam’s surprise when she went to her first birthday party in prep. When Mum picked her up, the host mum said to our Mum, ‘I’m worried she’s going to be sick. She’s had nine chocolate crackles’. Ah Sam. What a moment. It’s hard to go back to frozen peas after copher.

She was also fanatical about restricting television, ‘half an hour a day, that’s it, then homework or reading.’ It was an ongoing espionage battle. Ned was our sentry, listening for the crunch of tyres on gravel when she was coming back from the shops. Sometimes, like a secret agent, she’d attempt surprise attacks, parking down the street and then sprinting in to place hand or cheek again the back of the box to feel if it was warm. If the Stasi caught us watching more than Get Smart, we’d be banned from Get Smart the following night. There were no real winners in this war. When I think about it, it’s an utter disgrace how many series she binged over the last few years. I should at least once have hid outside in the bushes and then jumped out. ‘Mum, no more Bridgeton! Go read your novel!’

Mum didn’t need any motivation to read novels. She was such a prolific reader, the east Melbourne library was a favourite place of hers. Ticking as it did two crucial Margaret Wilson boxes – the ones marked ‘books’ and ‘thrift’.

As a child, she read us everything from Seven Little Australians to The Wind in the Willows to Tolkien. As a teen, she put me onto John Wyndham, Aldous Huxley, JD Salinger, Margaret Atwood, Eli Wiesel, Toni Morrison and Clive James. As an adult she fed me Kate Atkinson, Cormac McCarthy, Kate Grenville, Ann Pratchett, Geraldine Brooks, Christopher Koch, Jennifer Egan and David Mitchell. And so many more, of course. She was never without a book or a reading recommendation. It was the same with the other kids, and the grandkids. She was Margaret Wilson, Mother of Readers. I said in a post this week, my father gave me sport, but my mother gave me words. It’s been difficult to find the right ones now. It’s unbelievable that she’s gone.

She’d even tolerate Macdonalds if it meant we’d read more books. In the eighties, she had a bribery deal going with us. If we went to Balwyn Library to choose new books, she’d allow us the fast food extravagance of a trip to the Maccas that shared the same carpark. One day, we were settling in for the rare treat of a junior burger, when out of nowhere she produced Tupperware containers. And what devilry was this?

They were filled with fresh lettuce, sliced tomatoes, cucumber, sliced cheese. ‘Mum, what are those!’ we hissed. ‘Well — ‘ she said, ‘I think my chopped salad is a fair bit healthier than their chopped salad. And I’ve got a nifty name for the burgers! We can call them Big Mags!

Big Mags. It’s mum’s Abbey Road in her discography of over-parenting.

There are some things I’ll always associate with Mum:

• Stylish clothes

• Fine art

• Bead necklaces

• A mastery of DIY dress ups

• Half finished coffees

• Cross word puzzles

• Tuna mornay

• Chops

• Inadequate sunscreening

• A VTAC insiders knowledge of which VCE subjects get standardised up and which go down;

• Reedy hymn singing

• 3MBS and ABC Classic FM

• Replacement swear words like ‘sheeba’, ‘ruddy’, and ‘blow me down’;

• Apologetic phone calls, ‘I’m sorry are you at work?’;

• Nervous gasps of ‘oh god’ from the passenger seat;

• A love of bargains;

• A desire for two for one surgery – go in for your hip replacement, get your varicose veins done at the same time! It brought untold joy when Harry had his lens columboma and herniated belly button fixed under the same anaesthetic;

• Fine interior decorating and an obsession with things looking stylish. Let’s never forget that Mum made this tasteful grey lid cover for her recycling bin, because she thought the yellow lid was spoiling the ambience of her front yard;

• Hairbrained schemes;

• Scrabble;

• Her hugs at the end of each visit;

• The sense that when I was growing up, I had the best mum – the smartest mum, the most beautiful mum. And it went for dad too. The sense we had the best parents.

None of us were ready for this.

One of the sentences I love most in the eulogy section of Speakola is from Stephen Colbert, whose mother Lorna had eleven children, lost three, lived to 92, and was a supermum on par with our own. In the week of her death he said on his show:

I know it may sound greedy to want more days with a person who lived so long, but the fact that my mother was 92 does not diminish, it only magnifies the enormity of the room whose doors have quietly shut.

The fact is our own Mum’s room could have been so much smaller. I remember I was in the Clyde when I called her in 1993 and she told me that she had bowel cancer with lymphatic involvement. The pub was noisy and it was surreal — a 50-50 chance of survival, a coin toss. I remember feeling numb and sick. We had to face up to the possibility of losing her when she was just 48. Pippa said to me the other day, ‘I couldn’t have handled losing her then. We don’t get more time now, but imagine if we’d lost her then.’ The fact she did that year of chemo, and she did it so bravely and without a ‘why me’, or a word of complaint — and the fact we were lucky — so many people get cancer and just aren’t lucky.

I’m so grateful my beautiful mum got to enjoy old age, got to meet her amazing, talented grandchildren, see then all get to double figures. I couldn’t have handled losing her then either.

I stood alone with Mum’s body on Tuesday and thanked her for everything. I thanked her for giving me life, and for giving me THIS life. She gave all of us her natural intelligence, which is part of the genetic pot luck, but she did everything else with such unbelievable energy and effort. She read to us, she put endless time into every interest or hobby, and she conquered the everyday mayhem of having four children, and Tam and I know, it’s a bloody mountain. Washing, bathing, shopping, medicating, comforting, disciplining, feeding, cleaning up, driving, counselling, in her case, a lot of optometry, just endless, thankless, mothering. Mum did it year after year, and she did it at A+ level.

Mum, I think of you at the end, alone, and it’s heartbreaking. I wish I’d been there to tell you I love you, to thank you for all that you’ve given us. I hope there wasn’t any pain, or if there was, that it was brief, I hope you weren’t too afraid, and that you felt our embrace — of Dad and us kids and your grandkids and your sisters and your friends. I really hope you felt that. We’re your boats that you set free upon the water. I know that you were proud of us. Your last words to me were on the phone at the airport were ‘have a great trip, you’ve earned it’. Well I’ll say the same back to you Mum. Have a great trip. You’ve earned it.

So long, Mum. We’ll miss you and think of you always.

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Ange & The Boss on SBS On Demand

This isn’t speech related, but our doco Ange & The Boss is up on SBS On Demand in Australia. You can watch it for free here.

Good one, Wilson!

Ange & The Boss is on SBS tonight!

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22 days ago · 7 likes · Tony Wilson

It’s an incredible story, an attempt at revolution almost certainly doomed to failure, and yet it becomes the blood sacrifice that is the foundation stone of the modern Irish Republic.

There is an Easter Uprising episode of The Rest is History that is in the pantheon of that incredible podcast, which features historian Professor Paul Rouse.

Rouse tells the story spectacularly. It begins with an attempt by British diplomat turned Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement to import German guns via a submarine drop in Cork, a mission which was intercepted by the British and resulted in Casement’s execution for treason. His speech at his trial is up on Speakola.

Despite the non arrival of German weapons, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Irish Volunteers and the other revolutionaries decided to push on with the planned uprising on Easter Sunday. There was indecision though, and Eoin Macneil of the Volunteers published a countermanding order in the Dublin press calling off ‘military maneuvers’.

The leaders of the IRB decided to push on, nevertheless, shifting the day of reckoning to Easter Monday. They hoisted a sign at Dublin’s Liberty Hall saying, ‘We serve neither King nor Kaiser’ and entered the post office building. Pearse read his Proclamation of the Irish Republic:

THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
OF THE
IRISH REPUBLIC
TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people.

In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.

The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.

We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.

Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:

THOMAS J. CLARKE
SEAN Mac DIARMADA THOMAS MacDONAGH
P. H. PEARSE EAMONN CEANNT
JAMES CONNOLLY JOSEPH PLUNKETT

Although the British were initially taken by surprise, not enough Dubliners joined the Uprising, approximately 2000 rather than the hoped for 20,000, and when thousands of British soldiers mobilised, the rebellion was defeated. By the following Saturday, the Irish Republican Brotherhood had signed an unconditional surrender. Of the 485 people killed, 260 were civilians, 143 were British military and police personnel, and 82 were Irish rebels, including 16 rebels executed for their roles in the Rising. There was an idea amongst the rebels that ‘blood sacrifice’ would turn the Irish population towards the nationalist cause.

As Rouse says, it does become a ‘sacral story’. The executions went on for an interminable ten days, and public outrage crystallised into support for Sinn Fein as a mass revolutionary movement.

If you’re a little bit interested in all this, listen to Paul Rouse episode, it really is brilliant. Rouse also recommends R.F. Foster’s ‘Vivid Faces - The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923’ and William Irwin Thompson’s The Imagination Of An Insurrection: Dublin, Easter 1916

Apart from being an accelerant towards independence, the Easter Uprising fuelled endless great art, from Yeats to U2. It was called ‘the Poets Revolution’, even at the time. Here is the last verse of William Butler Yeats’s immortal ‘Easter, 1916’:

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born

I had a go at getting Professor Rouse on Speakola to talk about Pearse’s speech. I got a no from Professor Rouse, and it’s a tricky and time consuming business finding guests, recording interviews, editing the audio and basically keeping the podcast going. Your support here for Speakola is a vote for the project, whether it’s the podcast, the speech library, this newsletter, or some other facet. It’s a one person project. Your donations and subscriptions are Speakola’s only revenues.

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It’s possibly The Greatest itself. I’m talking about the monologue, not the boxer.

If one of the 4.6 million views of this video isn’t you, you should rectify that now. Billy Crystal’s 1979 masterpiece ‘15 Rounds’ is a in-character journey through the storied career of Muhammad Ali, delivered in front of Ali, and with champ’s reactions inset into the corner. It was delivered and televised as part of a retirement tribute at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California.

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Crystal’s ear for accents and voices is astonishing. He perfectly inhabits both Ali and Howard Cosell, the legendary broadcaster who was sometimes the butt of Ali jibes and putdowns. The use of the bell to progress the life story gives the monologue forward propulsion. Crystal also lays off the jokes — most of the laughs come from Ali’s wit, or audience appreciation for the beauty of the impression. Crystal leans into the power of the Ali story — from changing his name away from the slave name Cassius Clay, to embracing Islam, to being a conscientious objector over his conscription to serve in Vietnam, to the glorious highs of Zaire and Manilla, to the final, inevitable decline as age overtakes him.

I’ve put the full transcript up on Speakola, but it’s the last round, the one underscored by the emotional piano, that is the climax of an incredible ten minutes of oratory: [watch the whole thing, I urge you. Words on the page fall a mile short of conveying the genius]

[BELL] [As Ali] [Soft piano] He surprised me that Spinks. I guess at the age of 36, I couldn’t train like I want to train, couldn’t do the things in the ring I want to do, gave that ugly sucker the first seven rounds and tried to come back after him. Just gave away too much. Every time I reached back for that something to knock him out, just wasn’t there. Hell, he was so ugly. I figured ain’t no way he could beat me. Oh, Leon. Yeah, they took away his driver’s licence.he walked into a telephone pole. Everybody’s saying to me now, they’re saying, “Hey Champ, you must feel bad you ain’t champ no more. You lost to some kid who looked like a train ran through his face.” I say, “Hey, hey man, I ain’t getting nothing to be sorry about. You see, everybody in life suffers a loss. You see, it’s the one who can overcome the loss and make a success of himself that’s really doing something. [applause] As I look back over my career, I was heavyweight champion 14 years ago, man. Ain’t that something? 14 years ago. I had a great life. Allah has been good to me. 59 professional fights, made a lot of money, got beautiful kids, great family, got everything to look forward to.
But something’s eating at me. I don’t want to go out losing to no Leon Spinks with eight professional fights. I don’t want to be remembered as being out of shape in that ring in Las Vegas. I want him one more time. And I’m going to do it. I’m 36 years of age, my body’s tired. I don’t like training very much, but starting tomorrow, I’m getting in shape for that rematch with Leon. Getting up early, I’m going to run with the moon! I’m going to start hitting that table and doing those pushups, doing sit ups, going to take the punches ... do whatever I have to do, and I’m going to run. And I want to be the first man ever to win the title for the third time. Nobody’s ever done anything like that. But then again, nobody’s ever done anything quite like me. And I’m predicting that I’m going to do it because I want to be the heavyweight champ for the third time. Because I can do it. And you can do it too! No matter what you is in life, no matter what colour, no matter what religion, it’s never too late to start all over again. Never forget that. And you’ll never forget me. I am the greatest of all time!’

[TRIUMPHAL MUSIC, ARMS RAISED, DANCING AROUND STAGE]

My spot with Tony Moclair (3AW Afternoons)

Tony is one of the radio people who have made me their ‘speeches guy’. (I’m open to the role, and it doesn’t have to be just Oz radio with facetime /whatsapp etc). This segment was about Pamela Anderson’s tour of Australia, and we took talkback on speakers /celebrities /motivators you’d pay to see.

Have you paid to go see a speaker? Was it a showbiz star or a political heavy hitter like Clinton or Obama?

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I saw Billy Crystal interviewed at the Arts Centre by back in 2016, and he treated us to some Ali (but not the full 15 Rounds).

Billy Crystal also delivered a Muhammad Ali tribute when Ali died, and again, it’s note perfect. I’ll post it below for paid subscribers below.

Latest post on personal Substack, Good one Wilson!

I ordered a Free Imran Khan T-shirt, thanks to .

Good one, Wilson!

Free Imran Khan

My ‘Free Imran Khan’ T-shirt arrived yesterday. They are available from Cricket et al — the Gideon Haigh and Peter Lalor led site that is a must for cricket fans. I chose a maroon background, which in retrospect belongs more to a Windies colour scheme, but I’m not sure I have the skin tones to pull off Pakistani lime green…

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2 months ago · 8 likes · 1 comment · Tony Wilson

For Muhammad Ali: ‘He is gone, but he will never die’, by Billy Crystal - 2016

10 June 2016, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, uh, we’re at the halfway point [crowd laughs]. I was clean-shaven when this started.

Dear Lonnie, family, friends, Mr. President [Clinton], members of the clergy, all of these amazing people here in Louisville. Today, this outpouring of love and respect proves that 35 years after he stopped fighting, he is still the champion of the world.

Last week, when we heard the news, time stopped. There was no war, there were no terrorists, no global catastrophes; the world stopped, took a deep breath and sighed.

Since then my mind has been racing through my relationship with this amazing man, which is now 42 years that I know him. Every moment I can think of is cherished. And while others can tell you of his accomplishments, he wanted me to speak and tell you of some personal moments that we had together.

I met him in 1974, I was just getting started as a stand-up comedian and struggling. But I had one good routine: it was a three-minute conversation between Howard Cosell and Muhammad Ali where I would imitate both of them.

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He was a tall man with a voice that was made for the airwaves. It had such clarity, such astonishing baritone, that you might have thought he was Australia’s answer to Casey Kasem rather than a sports commentator. Then you found out that he actually was a Top 40 radio on Perth’s 6KY in 1968. Of course he was. I can imagine him back announcing The Easybeats or The Shadows or the Stones even though I never heard him do it, inserting witticisms, allowing that honeyed voice to flow, cuing forth the Summer of Love.

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At the same time he was a serious footballer. Cometti never spoke much about it during his decades behind the microphone, but in 1968 he booted 63 goals for West Perth in the WAFL as a 19 year old. He’d never hit the same heights again, but coach Polly Farmer wrote ‘Dennis had just turned 19 and was well over 6 foot with the ability and agility of a co-ordinated rover. We thought we had a champion.’1

It wasn’t to be. He tried out at Footscray, but landed just four reserves games. He’d return to West Perth to coach. In the end, the temptation to pair that voice with a sport he’d played to a high level was irresistible, and Cometti made the progression from Perth sports radio to syndicated national calls to national television front liner to national treasure.

He was a broadcasting natural who thrived on preparation. There are no other football commentators who have ever inserted pre-prepared quips with such aplomb, and we had him on our Triple R Breakfasters show in 2006 when he was releasing his book, ‘Centimetre Perfect’ in 2004. He talked about the extent his gags were extemporised versus pre-prepared.

For football fans, the classics are timeless:

"Barlow to Bateman. The Hawks are attacking alphabetically ..."
”Gaspar — the unfriendly post”
"Remember the name: Y-Z-E—terrific young player; bad Scrabble hand."
(After a player was poked in the eye): "Liberatore went into that last pack optimistically and came out misty optically."

Cometti himself named this as his favourite:

Maybe one where I was able to combine my two art forms, and use a line from the Rolling Stones.

Crows champion) Andrew McLeod was involved in a skirmish, and the umpires had come in to say to the players to break it up, which allowed me to go with, ‘Hey, you, get off McLeod’.

I thought at the time, ‘how good is that’?

And no one said a word!2

There is a great short speech from Cometti on YouTube, and I’ll add it to Speakola. It’s from the Australian Football Media Awards in 2002, when Cometti received the Most Outstanding Caller (Television) gong.

What’s notable, apart from the trademark fluency, is that rather than flapping a shopping list of thank yous, Cometti dedicates most of his speech to a joke. And it’s a decent joke too, told quickly and skillfully and it works because broadcasters don’t usually tell set em up knock em down punchline gags at events like this, so the element of surprise that most jokes need is working for him.

It’s terrible news that we’ve lost him. It was a thrill to meet Dennis a few times, and to write an AFL Finals promo he voiced just after his retirement.

He has his place in the sports media pantheon.

I’ll copy the AFMA speech transcript below.

Best wishes

Tony

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Dennis Cometti: ‘Do you know about the tradition of the two envelopes?’, AFMA, Melbourne, 2002

Thank you to CUB and the Association

Thank you to everybody at Channel 9, I’ve called football for something like 30 years and i can’t remember a more enjoyable season. I’d like to say congratulations to Cos Cardone who put the project together for Channel9 , and also thank Eddie McGuire. He is like the Red Adair of football in this town —starts fires, puts them out but I’ve got to say he’s never kissed me.3

it’s been a thrill working on the AFL this season and as i say i can’t remember a better season, but things changed very quickly in football, and in broadcasting. i’m reminded of just a short story—

i remember when i took over as coach of West Perth in the WAFL and I got a call from Graham Campbell who was the outgoing coach. He said, ‘Do you know about the tradition of the two envelopes? I said, ‘No I don’t.” He said, “It’s self-explanatory I’ll be straight over.’

He arrived at my doorstep with two envelopes. Written on one was “to be opened when things go bad”. Written on the other was “to be opened when things get even worse”.

First season was okay, halfway through the second season we lost about four in a row and I decided to check inside the first envelope. It said, “blame your predecessors”.

Well of course that is the first fallback position of anyone in football. A failed coach, that’s what you do automatically.

Unfortunately, we lost a few more games, probably another five straight as I recall, I decided well it’s getting bleak, there’s almost rebellion in the camp, I better have a look at the second of the envelopes to be opened when things get even worse was written on that one

And inside when I looked it said, ‘prepare two envelopes’.

Thank you very much.

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• Latest episode of the podcast has singer Meg Washington talking about stuttering, and the way music and singing helps stutterers.

A story about my son, Jack

I was told by my friend Tom Hannan at Pulp last night that this is his favourite piece of mine I’ve written. It’s the latest post in Good one, Wilson

Good one, Wilson!

Playlunch at the Espy

‘Do you know why I’m lucky, Dad…

Listen now

3 months ago · 11 likes · 2 comments · Tony Wilson

You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other platforms

Meg Washington’s is such a multi-talented artist. She’s been blowing us away with the quality of her voice since she made Alan Brough cry on Spicks and Specks back in 2009.

She was in her early twenties then, she’s in her late thirties now, and it’s already an amazing career that has encompassed three ARIAS, five albums, an AACTA award for Best Original Song (‘Fine’, I’ve sneaked a chorus into the episode) a voice acting part as Calypso on Bluey, and a screenwriting role on the AACTA nominated film ‘How to Make Gravy’, which came out last year.

This Speakola episode is about her TEDx Talk in 2014, and twelve years later it still stands up as a beautifully warm, informative, funny and uplifting speech about speech impediment. At various points she discusses:

• Being unsure on arrival at the TEDx event whether she was supposed to speak, or just sing;

• Being coached by a friend in the UK, who told Meg to be less 'expert on stuttering’ and more ‘expert on herself stuttering’. In other words make it more personal;

• Techniques stutterers use, like ‘smooth speech’ and surprising the brain by changing a potentially problematic word at the last minute;

• Early life in Port Moresby, and first memorable singing performance (as a flea!)

• How her professional career got started, and the assistance of Paul Grabowski and Spicks and Specks;

• The feeling of delivering the speech in the Opera House, and walking to a party afterwards. with your name trending on Twitter (audio snippet below)

There are so many good bits in this episode! Subscribe to the podcast, and if you felt like it, give us a rating or review on the podcast apps! At the moment we’re going at 4.9⭐ from 159 ratings and reviews. It would be a big boost to get some feedback. The podcast has been a labour of love these last six years. Sixty one episodes, all sourced, recorded, edited and promoted by just me.

Meg Washington’s is one of the best yet.

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Megan Washington: ‘The thing is, I stutter’, TEDx Sydney - 2014

26 April 2014, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia

I didn’t know when I agreed to do this whether I was expected to talk or to sing.

But when I was told that the topic was language, I felt that I had to speak about something for a moment.

I have a problem. It’s not the worst thing in the world. I’m fine. I’m not on fire. I know that other people in the world have far worse things to deal with, but for me, language and music are inextricably linked through this one thing.

And the thing is that I have a stutter.

It might seem curious given that I spend a lot of my life on the stage. One would assume that I’m comfortable in the public sphere and comfortable here, speaking to you guys.

But the truth is that I’ve spent my life up until this point and including this point, living in mortal dread of public speaking. Public singing, whole different thing. (Laughter) But we’ll get to that in a moment.

I’ve never really talked about it before so explicitly. I think that that’s because I’ve always lived in hope that when I was a grown-up, I wouldn’t have one.

I sort of lived with this idea that when I’m grown, I’ll have learned to speak French, and when I’m grown, I’ll learn how to manage my money, and when I’m grown, I won’t have a stutter, and then I’ll be able to public speak and maybe be the prime minister and anything’s possible and, you know.

(Laughter)

So I can talk about it now because I’ve reached this point, where — I mean, I’m 28.I’m pretty sure that I’m grown now.

(Laughter)

And I’m an adult woman who spends her life as a performer, with a speech impediment. So, I might as well come clean about it.

There are some interesting angles to having a stutter. For me, the worst thing that can happen is meeting another stutterer.

(Laughter)

This happened to me in Hamburg, when this guy, we met and he said,”Hello, m-m-m-my name is Joe,” and I said, “Oh, hello, m-m-m-my name is Meg.” Imagine my horror when I realised he thought I was making fun of him.

(Laughter)

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The Reverend Jesse Jackson commanded a stage like few speakers in history. He was also a man for a moment: in the building on the night Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated; alongside Nelson Mandela on the day he was released; envoy to Iraq to negotiate with Saddam Hussein for the release of human shield hostages on the eve of the First Gulf War; he ran for president, he was a shadow Senator, he stood in front of a crowd of a million people in Hyde Park to argue against the Second Iraq War in 2003.

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He was a titan of 20th century politics, a speaker in the MLK mould who was captivating with his preacher’s tone and his lyrical and descriptive phrasing. The speech I’ve attached here is one of his most famous but also one of his simplest. It was a call and response introduction to the Wattstax Music Festival in 1972, convened as a celebration and a commemoration by African American artists on the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots.

It’s like a soul classic itself, and well worth a listen as well as a read. I’ll attach the transcript below.

The Reverend Al Sharpton, himself a civil rights champion with a mastery of the spoken phrase, paid tribute as follows: ‘Our nation lost one of its greatest moral voices. A man who carried history in his footsteps and hope in his voice.”

He was indeed somebody.

Jesse Jackson: ‘I Am Somebody’, Wattstax Music Festival - 1972

20 August 1972, Los Angeles Coliseum, California, USA

Wattstax was a benefit-concert put together by Stax Records to commemorate the community of Watts, Los Angeles after its 1965 Riots

This is a beautiful day… It is a new day… it is a day of black awareness, it is a day of black people taking care of black people’s business… We are together, we are unified… and all in accord… Because when we are together we got power… and we can make decisions…

Today on this program you will hear gospel, and rhythm and blues, and jazz. All those are just labels. We know that music is music… All of our people have got a soul, our experience determines the texture, the tastes and the sounds of our soul. We may say that we are may be in the slum but the slum is not in us. We may be in the prison, but the prison is not in us. In what we have shifted from, burn baby burn to learn baby learn. We have shifted from having a seizure about what the man got, to seizing what we need. We have shifted from bed bugs and dog ticks to community control and politics.

That is why we’ve gathered today, to celebrate our homecoming and our own sense of somebodyness. That is why I challenge you now to stand together, raise your first together, and engage in our famous black litany. Do it with courage and determination:

I am ...[I am!]

Somebody... [somebody!]

I am ... [I am!]

Somebody ... [somebody!]

I may be poor ... [I may be poor!]

But I am ... [but I am!]

Somebody ... [somebody!]

I may be on welfare ... [I may be on welfare!]

But I am ... [but I am!]

Somebody ... [somebody!]

I may be unskilled ... [I may be unskilled!]

But I am ... [But I am!]

Somebody ... [somebody!]

I am ... [I am!]

Black ... [black!]

Beautiful ... [beautiful!]

Proud ... [proud!]

And must be respected ... [and must be respected]!

I must be protected ... [I must be protected!]

I am God’s child ... [I am God’s child]

When we stand together ... what time is that? ... [Nation time!]

When we stand together ... what time is that? ... [Nation time!]

What time is that ... [nation time!]

What time is that ... [nation time!]

Mr Kim Weston ... the black national anthem.

I Am - Somebody was written in the 1950s by Reverend William Holmes Borders, Sr., senior pastor at Wheat Street Baptist Church and civil rights activist in Atlanta, Georgia.

A Sesame Street version

I will post another Jesse Jackson speech tomorrow, his concession speech at the 1984 DNC Convention, one of the great speeches.

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Long term readers and listeners to Speakola will know how much I love Rob’s stick, and his story. He’s a true natural, as well as being dedicated to craft, and his storytelling now has him selling out comedy and arts festivals Australia-wide. His 2026 show ‘Virgin in a Knife Fight’ is touring Australia, including the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

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But I’m again championing the stick story in this post, a speech that is dear to my Speakola project. It seems impossible that it was delivered ten years ago today and at my own storytelling event, Show & Tell For Grown Ups. If I’m honest, I hoped this would become a live salon smash that fed into a TV show that I’d host for the next fifteen years, securing a Silver Logie of my own (is that the young talent one? Silver might be beyond me).

It didn’t happen, this brilliant idea of mine. Sure, Speakola paying subscriber and podcast guest Andrew Denton might tell me that he had audience show and tell at the end of each episode of ‘Enough Rope’. Yes, Andrew, but I was going to make it THE WHOLE SHOW, which is a different idea, surely, because it’s longer.

Anyway, back to Rob’s stick It is funny in parts, but it’s a harrowing story too, about the loss of his brother Richard to cot death. To give that away is to spoil some of this story’s meticulous structure but I want you to listen to the piece, it’s so beautiful, and it’s hard to get people excited by just leading with the stick.

In the early days of this website, this speech was one of the most popular pages I ever put up. Later, Rob did an episode of the podcast which is an absolute favourite too.

He discussed tips for structuring stories, and for delivering them too.

Listen to the episode, watch the YouTube above, attend Rob Carlton’s show, and the Bravewords Live storytelling salon and podcast he hosts with wife Adrienne Ferreira.

Thanks for helping me to start this Speakola project, Rob . Thanks to you, dear reader, if you’ve been a subscriber, free or paid, over the last decade. Double thanks if you’ve been generous with a donation, either one off, monthly, or as a paid subscriber here or on Patreon.

I’ll add Rob Carlton’s transcript below.

Best wishes

Tony Wilson

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Rob Carlton: ‘That’s my stick’, Wheeler Centre Show & Tell - 2016

17 February 2016, Wheeler Centre, Melbourne, Australia

Tony Wilson hosted a ‘Show and Tell for Grown Ups’ session at the The Wheeler Centre. The other guests were Sofija Stefanovic and Alison Lester.

Tony: It is, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a stick.

Rob: If I put it there it blends into the background though, you can’t see, it’s got a camouflage going on. Maybe... can you see that? Alright. There you are.

Tony: It’s a stick.

Rob: It’s my stick!

Tony: So, talk us through, ah, a stick.

Rob: So, I was thinking about this, and this stick kinda comes within a story, within a story, I think. And certainly by the end of this, we’ll know whether there’s a story in it at all.

So that stick, was in my house growing up, it was always part of our lives. My mum and dad were amazing cooks, my dad loved cooking curries, and for as long as I can remember, that stick was in our kitchen, in Bayview, which was my home where you get a real sense of home.

And that stick was used to stir our curries.

And at some point, I think in my teens, I learned that that stick was brought into my family when – before I was born – about 18 months before I was born, when my mum and dad and two older sisters were living in New Zealand and my older brother Richard was born.

And at eight weeks of age, my brother Richard died of cot-death, and my mum and my dad and my sisters walked down to the beach, on a lonely cold, windy day. An Australian family sitting on a beach in New Zealand, trying to gather courage together, and they picked up that stick. And they bought it home. And I learned about that when I was in my teens, and it was always this wonderful thing, it was something that was just there and we always used it and it was part of our life.

And then my mum and dad got a bit older, and as wise parents do, when they start to get older, they divested themselves of all these things that, should they go under a bus, it won’t mean anything to anyone else –

[adjusts wilting microphone] Hang on, I’m an old roadie, don’t worry about this. Being an actor, you can pretty much do EVERY job...um ...Coffee anyone?

Tony: A long time since you’ve done those ones though, isn’t it?

Rob: (laughs) So, yeah, when older people ... being sensible ... so they gave it to me. It was my stick. ‘Cos I was the replacement boy. And so I now got this stick and I then have it my house and I’ve got twin boys, my eleven year old boys, and I explain to them everything that goes on in my life, and I tell them that this is my stick and this is how we came to get it. And they call it ‘The Stick Of Richard Life’. My little boys call it ‘The Stick Of Richard Life’, so that’s the name.

So here’s where the story gets into a bit of a different sort of story and it starts to go slightly skewiff. Right. Oh, and don’t worry about me, I do get emotional, but trust me, I’m feeling fine ...(laughs)

So we then, in Sydney we do something that’s called Story Club, and we sit down and write a sixteen hundred word story and we read it out in a big oversized chair. Now the theme of Story Club this month was ‘Sense of impending doom’ – write a story about when you had a sense of impending doom.

Now, here’s the bizarre thing. I don’t have a sense of impending doom. I’ve never had a sense of impending doom, and it remains one of the great mysteries of my life, how my mum and dad were able to bring me up in a world that was only ever going to shine on me, that was only ever going to give me joy and wonder and happiness if I showed it to the world.

I was never mollycoddled, I never ever got a sense that this world would take me away. And how my mum and dad did that after going through what they went through, remains a mystery.

So, I wrote this story. And I framed my story up with this stick, and talked about the irony of growing up without this impending doom, given everything I should have had should have been fear and worry.

So I write this story, and I read it out and it was good, man! I nailed it. (laughs)

But then, of course, I’ve gotta tell my mum and dad, and I’ve done this thing, and am I cashing in on the family heartache and grief? ... and then, oh dearie me, I wasn’t doing that, I know what I’m like, I was honest and clear in my intent. So I wasn’t doing that, but for the first time ever, I felt reticent. A little. To tell my mum and dad about my story that I’d written for fear of the emotions that it would bring up.

And shortly thereafter I came down to Melbourne, and I was having dinner, and I did think to myself, what shall I do in this situation? And so I do what I always do, I arrived and spilled my guts immediately - (laughs), that’s just how I roll.

And so that led to this, um – now we’re gonna be here ‘til eight o’clock – So I told my mum and dad, this is what I’ve done. And of course my mum and dad are amazing people, and so emotionally courageous, and transparent and we talked about that, the detail, I’d never really got an understanding of what my dad went through.

My dad’s framing of those horrible days back in New Zealand forty six years ago was always ‘it was so much worse for your mum’, ‘you see, Rob, back then our lives, it was segregated, I would go to work but your mum was at home with the children, and she carried Richard, and she was looking after Richard, and she was with Richard for every hour of every day’, and this was my understanding of that time. And in fact, my story, when I wrote it, it focused on that moment that my sister would tell me, she stills remembers that moment of mum running down the garden path, saying ‘He’s gone! He’s gone!’

And it’s a heartbreaking image in my mind, but that was my memory of this time, and I wrote this story. So I have this interesting evening with my mum and dad, and then I go to the theatre just down here, and my older sister, by chance – it’s her birthday and she’s at the theatre – and she rarely goes to the theatre, and I hadn’t organised to be there with her, she was there with her husband and we go and see a show together – it was poor – and we meet in the foyer afterwards, we go to the Curve Bar afterwards, and they say, ‘how are you’ and I say I’m really well, but I’ve just had this really interesting, incredible night with mum and dad talking about the detail of that day Richard died.’

And I said, ’you know, I’d talked about this, and I’d talked about that and I said about the moment with mum running down the garden path ... and I was just sad ...’

And she said, ‘Oh, but Rob, that’s not the clearest memory of my day.’

I said, ‘what is it?’

And she said, ‘Dad.’

And I’d never heard anything about my Dad’s response on that day. I’d only ever heard it through the prism of dad saying ‘it was so much worse for your mum’, and that was it.

I said, ‘What do you mean?’

Now I may lose it through this bit, again don’t worry, I’m brave.

So we’re standing in the Curve Bar, having this conversation, and my sister says, ‘My most potent memory of that day, when they put Richard in the back of the ambulance – Dad banging on the roof of the ambulance, and howling.’

And she told me that, and I had this emotional punch, it was like a fist jamming into my chest and I literally went [howls] and bent down and started sobbing and sobbing, and I couldn’t stand up and I bent down to my knees and it was, I was like a groaning wreck.

I’ve never felt anything like that in my life. Nothing since, nothing before. And at that moment I felt guilt, and I felt shame. I felt that I hadn’t honoured my father’s grief, I felt as a son I didn’t really know the truth of the most horrific thing in my father’s life. And I’d written a story and I honoured my mum and her bravery and courage and optimism.

But, I felt like I’d sold my father out a little bit.

It was an astonishing moment. And being what I am, I needed to kind of try and make a reparation. So, I thought about this and a week or two later I –

Oh and then mum and dad said, ‘Will you show us the story?’ Haah, shit! And it’s mad. I mean like, it’s an adventure story, it’s a road trip story, so, no sense of impending doom, man. And me and my buddy go on a road trip, we hitch-hike, we spend a night with an attempted murderess, there’s nudity, there’s panel vans, there’s you know, a lot of low-level criminality, and I think, but, you can read that mum and dad, but there’s also The Stick Of Richard Life stuff.

So I sent it to them and Mum and Dad read it and they ring up and they say, ‘Oh, we read your story’ and say some nice (things) and dad gets on the phone, and he’s very proper and he says, ‘Ooh helloo’ – you know I’ve written plays – and he says, ‘I’ve seen a lot of the things you’ve done, Rob, but, I’ve never read your prose, and they’re quite beautiful, crisp, not too many long words, very clear, I mean beautifully done, a lovely story, obviously very sad, and I’m sure the people that heard it were crying, but in terms of the quality of the literature, very well done.’

I’m sittin’ there thinking, fu-uck.

I said, ‘Thanks dad, but I gotta say..’, this thing – and I didn’t want to talk about that moment [indicates banging on the roof of the ambulance] it was not for me to bring up, that moment - but I did say, I’d been thinking about this, and I said, ‘You know dad, I really don’t feel that I’ve ever really, I guess, honoured or accepted or talked to you about what you really went through, it’s always been through the prism of a family, through the prism of what mum went through and what my sisters, but I never really ...’

And he said ‘Oh no, well yes, it was obviously very very difficult, very sad’, but – and then boom, like a switch, straight to the dominant story – it was so much worse for your mother, there was nothing really difficult for me, I had to go to work, this is the way it was, it’s your mother, it’s your mother, it’s your mother.

And I didn’t test it further, because that is my Dad’s story.

Now, two things to come out of this: one, I think it gave me an insight into what it is different members of the family do, and when we come to an experience and we walk away with our own story of it, each member of a family, each member of that experience has their own narrative that they need so that they can keep moving forward in a way that helps everybody get forward. And at that point in time, I truly believe that my dad needed to sublimate the heartache and the pain of what it is to lose his only son, in order for my mum to repair, and my sisters to grow, and for me, should I arrive, to be born into a world that still has hope, and that every time I go to sleep isn’t the most frightening time in the world, for a family. Which I think it would have been. So I think that’s what my dad had to do, and that’s what he clung to, and that was his story.

And then the thing I’ve been thinking on, in this last month – my dad died on Christmas Eve – it wasn’t guilt I felt that day, or shame or sadness, when my sister told me about that image [indicates banging both hands on the roof] and the ambulance. I have a feeling it was an inherited memory.

The feeling was so visceral, it was so strong, it was, I mean, the time was instantaneous, when my sister said this was what your dad did, I hit the deck and I was howling, and I don’t know how we as human beings learn, what we learn, what knowledge is innate, what we’re born with, what’s nature, what’s nurture, but it’s my feeling that that particular experience that my dad went through forty six years ago, has somehow, through the wonder of procreation found its way somewhere into my heart and body, and my dad’s experience rests now with me.

That’s my stick.

Rob discusses this speech and salon storytelling generally in episode 17 of the Speakola podcast

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In regard to Germans and foreigners, I esteem foreigners no better than other people, nor any worse. [Laughter and cheers.] They are all of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon any of them, it would be far better to lift the load from them than to pile additional loads upon them. [Cheers.] And inasmuch as the continent of America is comparatively a new country, and the other countries of the world are old countries, there is more room here, comparatively speaking, than there is there; and if they can better their condition by leaving their old homes, there is nothing in my heart to forbid them coming; and I bid them all God speed. [Cheers.

A longer excerpt is up on Speakola.

Lincoln had long been a champion of immigration, and during the Civil War, he was particularly ardent that immigration should be encouraged, as factory and farm workers were drafted out of occupations to serve in the military. Lincoln regarded new arrivals as assets, a vital replenishment to a labour market under the strain of war.

In his third State of the Union, on 8th of December 1863, the president said:

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Washington was being presented with a Most Outstanding Actor gong for ‘Fences’, a film he also directed and which co-starred Viola Davis. He launched into the speech by honouring the artist who’s work was being adapted, the African American playwright August Wilson. Wilson died in 2005 aged just sixty. and is sometimes dubbed ‘theatre's poet of Black America’ —best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle.

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Washington names five playwrights to open his speech, four of them are white and world famous, and then there’s Wilson. It’s an entry point to discussing other African Americans who are making outstanding films, which brings him specifically to Barry Jenkins, the director of Moonlight (and more recently, Mufasa).

Having heard excepts, I always thought Washington was talking about himself when it came to his, ‘without commitment you’ll never start … without consistency you’ll never finish’, but it’s far less mawkish and more generous for the fact that he’s elevating Jenkins, his Oscar nominated rival for Best Director.

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The funeral was on the 5th of January at the St Kilda RSL, and not the St Kilda Bowls Club — which is where I arrived at the published start time. It was a frantic race to the line, but I arrived in time to hear a succession of amazing eulogies from friends, relatives and colleagues of Amanda Brotchie.

She was a startlingly high achiever. A doctorate of linguistics, a former bandmember of Not Drowning Waving, a lover of cats, a master of word games, and an emerging great of Australian film and television. Not only did she direct several episodes of the remake of Picnic at Hanging Rock, Brotchie was also the only Australian to have directed Dr Who, and her two episodes, Lux and The Well, are the top rated episodes in the most recent series on IMDb. My own favourite show of hers was Lowdown, which is mentioned in the eulogy and was a husband-wife collaboration between Amanda and Adam. One episode has a gag about knives being placed in the dishwasher blade pointing up, a disagreement that rings true in my own relationship, and has one of the best and bloodiest payoffs I can remember in Australian TV.

Adam’s eulogy was one of half a dozen incredible speeches. When it was published in The Age/SMH, I welled up all over again, and wondered if it’s the best eulogy I’ve been in the room for. There were some amazing ones at the Celebration of Life for John Clarke —but this day for Amanda Brotchie rivalled it.

Deconstruction can be the enemy of art, so I’d recommend to just skip to Adam’s words below.

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But if you want a few signposts for why this is a near perfect eulogy:

1. First sentence. Grabs attention, we’re pulled into a story.

2. The ‘how we met’ has detail, warmth, and a killer punchline. ‘There’s gonna be no card night, mate’. You can tell this is a professional writer.

3. The warmth in the relationship is demonstrated throughout, but direct dialogue helps enormously. We live their conversations, right down to Adam’s prodding attempts to assess whether she’s finding him funny.

4. Career details are interwoven with anecdotes, political observation and jokes, including a brilliant line about grudges that is revealing of both of their characters.

5. There is personal revelation, and the sharing of deep pain.

6. There’s acknowledgement of the important people in Amanda’s life, and it’s done with warmth and love, and isn’t a shopping list.

7. Finally, Adam tackles dying, Amanda’s approach to it, the power of meditation and spirituality, his own sense of loss.

Adam Zwar is the person who got me onto Substack. We’ve been ‘newsletter buddies’ these last four years, and as two people who have done similar things (films, TV shows, books, podcasts, newsletters) he’s been my most important sounding board, even with him and Amanda in Lennox Head, and me in Melbourne. Without Adam, I’d have never done ‘Good one, Wilson!’. Without Adam, I’m not sure I would have got through the dark times with Ange & The Boss.

I’m so sad for what he’s gone through, and is going through. RIP Amanda. Love to you, , and thanks for sharing this with me and Speakola.

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The Kicker

Personal

Eulogy for Amanda Brotchie, by Adam Zwar

Published . Adam’s Substack and republished with permission

5 January 2026, St Kilda RSL, Melbourne, Australia

On the afternoon of June 2, 2002, I was happy. There was no reason to be, and I’m not usually an optimistic person, so it felt great, but strange. The St Kilda Film Festival Awards were that night, and I’d already been told we hadn’t won because one of the judges had very much hated our short film Wilfred. And yet there I was, bouncing around that apartment.

That night, I arrived at the Palace Cinemas in St Kilda, took my seat, and seconds later, a woman sat down eight seats away. A minute passed. For no real reason, I leaned forward and looked down the row at her at the exact moment she leaned forward and looked back at me. In her memory of the event, she felt it was a serendipitous connection between two people. Whereas all I remember was – “Oh no, I’ve been caught checking her out”.

At the afterparty, the woman came up to me and said she was disappointed that Wilfred hadn’t won Best Comedy. She said her name was Amanda, and I asked her if I could buy her a drink. I was surprised she said “Yes.” A little later, she excused herself to talk to other people, and as she walked away, I remember thinking: That’s her. That’s the one. Dad always said, “Son, when you know, you know.” But Dad also gave Christopher Skase a reference, saying he was a fit and proper person to buy Channel Seven – so I took that rule with a grain of salt. But here I was – I knew. And I knew.

I tracked her down later and asked if I could buy her another drink. Again, she said, “Yes.” Again, I was surprised. There was another guy also interested in her that night. He asked for her number under the guise of organising a card game, which is Amanda’s weakness– she loves games nights. And, as she gave him her number, I was nearby, watching on, thinking – “There’s gonna be no card night, mate. No card night.” There was no card night.

Amanda and I went home to her place to watch the Big Brother finale, which she had taped. After that, we talked and talked. And for some reason, the conversation got onto cricket, and she correctly named the Australian batting order for the 80/81 series against India, which, of course, meant we would have to move in together. Later, she would tell me that when I hugged her goodbye, she said she felt “home”. I felt the same.

We moved in together within six weeks, and I lived to impress her. In those early days, we would lie in bed in the dark, chatting until very late, and I would try to make her laugh. And when one of my jokes didn’t get the requisite vocal response, I would lean over and touch her cheek to see if she was at least smiling. If she wasn’t – that simple act ensured she did. It sounds creepy and manipulative now I’m saying it out loud – but it was lovingly creepy and manipulative.

When I first proposed to her, she said something along the lines of “Wow, that’s a big step.” Now, an emotionally mature person would’ve responded by saying – “That’s completely fine. You take as much time as you want. I’ll be here when you’re ready.” But, I said: “No, don’t worry about it then!! I’m sorry I asked!!!”

I didn’t propose again until there was assurance – probably in writing – and notarised – that she would say “Yes”.

When we got back from our honeymoon, she acknowledged that an unwelcome pattern had emerged in her directing career. She would work with the writer on their scripts. (And by the way, her script editing always made scripts soar beyond their potential.) Then, just as the film was about to be financed, the producers would decide to replace her with a mediocre man, who no one would ever hear from again. And if we did hear from them again, it’s because they were selling duplexes in Parramatta. This was the playing field for Australian female directors in the late ‘90s, early 2000s. Even if they’d won an AFI award, as Amanda had. But she never held grudges. In our household, I ran the office in charge of grudges. It was an efficient operation. Particularly, when it came to anyone who’d wronged her. The receipts were logged and noted.

Sometimes I would bring up the slights others had inflicted on her. And she’d say, “Oh that. I’d forgotten about that. Can’t you let it go?” And I’d say, “No. I’m German, babe. This is what my people do.”

So, with her directing career in a quiet period, Amanda decided to return to Uni to pursue a PhD in linguistics, where she would live on a remote island in Vanuatu, creating a writing system and grammar for a language that had never been written down before, and then analysing its narrative structure.

To do this, she would need to learn Bislama – the lingua franca of Vanuatu – so she could communicate with the people about the language they were trying to preserve – and she would live in a hut in an isolated village for five months with one tap, malaria and 10,000 giant centipedes. If one of the centipedes stung you, the pain sensation was similar to a hot needle repeatedly stabbing you in the arm for three hours.

When Amanda told me of the plan, I remember being confused about why she was doing it. But I was looking at it from my point of view. What I hadn’t quite got my head around was that I’d married an adventurer. This was her métier. She loved it. She loved the challenge, the new experiences, the sleeping in the jungle. Whereas I love a concierge and a turndown service.

Before she left, I gave her a handmade book filled with blank pages for her to write a diary of her adventure. I have that diary at home. About a quarter of the way through, she writes about me visiting the island and describes me getting off the plane and looking “smaller than she remembered.” Which is not the compliment it sounds like.

When she returned home, we wrote the TV show Lowdown while she finished her PhD. I have memories of her sitting at her computer, her whole torso shaking with laughter. That generally meant she wasn’t writing the PhD. She was writing Lowdown, or more particularly, the character of Alex, which she used to exorcise everything that frustrated her about me.

Amanda loved learning. She was always curious. And honoured every challenge with a thoroughness and attention to detail. As Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies said of her: “She was bright and sharp and kind and questioning and always determined to make things better, better, better. Ooh, she could be beady, peering at the script, niggling away at something… until we all realised she was right! God, we adored her.”

Her perfectionism wasn’t pervasive. It was a happy perfectionism that got the job done.

That’s why not getting pregnant confounded her. We went on an Odyssean journey to get pregnant. Miscarriages, IVF, donor eggs. Finally, we decided to move to the US to adopt. We were matched with a birth mother through an agency. Met her in Florida. Flew her to LA. Paid for her medical expenses. Amanda took her under her wing, looked after her cat, and made her life blissful. The woman had the baby. She gave it to us. We were parents for two days, and then the woman decided she wanted the baby back. We were gutted.

But after spending a week on the couch, crying, fate intervened, and Amanda’s directing career took off. First, she directed Girlboss for Kay Cannon, then Picnic at Hanging Rock, A Place to Call Home, How to Stay Married, Squinters, and The Letdown with her friends Sarah and Al. After that, England and Sally Wainwright came calling with Gentleman Jack, Renegade Nell and Riot Women, and then Russell T. Davies tapped her for Doctor Who.

Amanda suffered from depression. She went through a lot of hardship. She pulled herself out of it with meditation, structure, and Wordle. And she was so happy in the final 5 years of her life. She loved her job. She loved her friends and family. She was so proud of her nieces Taylor and Brit. And nephew Cody. She said they were like oxygen to her. And then there was her sister, Rebecca. Rebecca was Amanda’s rock. The Dean Martin to Amanda’s Jerry Lewis. No matter where Amanda flew in her life - physically or emotionally - Bec and her husband, Daryl, were her safety net - they were there with emotional support, a bed, excellent advice, and sometimes a truck to carry stuff.

There was her pharmacist father, Norman, whose precision, sense of style and love of cricket she admired and inherited. And then there was her mother, Joy, actress and director. As a female director, she cracked the glass ceiling so Amanda could soar.

Some quick facts: Amanda had an otherworldly sense of smell – that she could also use to detect bullshit. She never called it out directly. Instead, she’d ask calm, reasonable questions, gently backing liars into a corner like a sweet, five-foot-three Perry Mason, until they either told the truth or burst into tears.

She never put down anyone’s creative output; she’d just refer to things as “not being her cup of tea,” which, coming from her, was devastating. She had a profound sense of justice. She liked things to be symmetrical. And she had an extraordinary ability to make people feel seen.

Amanda smiled at me whenever I walked into any room she was in. A smile that never stopped taking my breath away. Even when she was very sick, she would smile whenever I turned up. A few months ago, I thanked her for doing that and told her how much it meant to me. I’m not sure she was aware she even did it. The honour of having that in your life - the agony of it being taken away.

So here we find ourselves in an Amanda-less physical world. That smile, that laugh, that wit, and that unflappable happiness are no longer here.

And when I say unflappable. Not even dying rocked her. Five days before she took her last breath, the palliative care doctor told her, “Unfortunately, all we can do now is make you comfortable.” Amanda said, “Not unfortunately. I’ve had a great life. And now I’m getting ready for the next adventure.” The author Bradley Trevor Greive said it best when he called Amanda: “A deeply serious thinker. Slight of frame, huge of heart, she bent light with her gaze and held countless worlds inside her mind.”

On her last night of being conscious, she said she was so happy and so grateful. And here we are - so grateful and sad. Sweetheart, if there is an eternity, I will be looking for you throughout it. To find you and hold you again would mean everything to me. Goodbye, my beautiful girl.

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Good one, Wilson!

'The bells of St Stephens, tolling for Mum'

It was a memorable day, something close to a perfect send off. All of Mum’s kids spoke, as well as her sister Lesley, her close friends Mary Besley and Deidre Pope, our dad Ray, and her grandson Paddy. Jack introduced the thirteen grandkids to the stage, and that was lovely too…

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a year ago · 21 likes · 7 comments · Tony Wilson

Courageous, timely, spellbinding in a foreign policy sense, and quite possibly ten minutes of oratory that slowed or stemmed the tide for Trump’s mad expedition to capture Greenland.

I can’t remember a ‘new world order’ speech quite like it.

George W Bush spoke to a joint sitting of Congress after 9-11, announcing his ‘you are either with us, or with the terrorists’ rolling War on Terror, and however much we were feeling America’s pain at that time, we could also detect a dangerous and new reality.

Ronald Reagan delivered his famous ‘Evil Empire’ speech to Evangelicals in 1983, but when I read it now, it’s just a restatement of existing Cold War ideology, with some anti abortion and abstinence ladelled over the top;

These sabre rattling speeches were memorable, but in an international relations sense, they weren’t particularly surprising or courageous. The were both by American presidents, and the USA is — to use Carney’s dry, pursed lipped term — the hegemon.

What’s amazing about Carney’s speech is that it isn’t delivered by an American president, it’s delivered by the Prime Minister of a self declared middle power, a middle power seeking to divest itself from reliance on a major power, and trying to drag much of the world with it. And just as with his classic 2025 speech in response to Trump’s announcement of 25% tariffs on Canadian imports, Carney is calm, meticulous yet unnervingly direct:

‘Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality’

‘The rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.’

‘Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.’

‘You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.’

Carney begins his speech by outlining the fiction that has prevailed in international relations since the Second World War. The fiction is that we all were protected under a rules based international order, strengthened by institutions like NATO, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, COP, the World Health Organisation. He explains why it was a lie, why we went along with it, and why we can no longer persist with it.

Perhaps most brilliantly, he invokes the greengrocer from Vaclav Havel’s ‘The Power and the Powerless’:

Every morning, the shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world unite.” He doesn’t believe it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists — not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this living within a lie. The system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack.

Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

Freakin hell! The delegates at Davos break into applause. Carney hasn’t mentioned the United States by name, hasn’t mention Trump, but in a few short paragraphs he’s got the economic boffins at Davos leaping out of their seats ready to storm the barricades. It’s interesting, too, that the Havel example invokes the oppressive totalitarianism of communism, which reminds conservatives in the audience that it isn’t ‘the radical left’ Carney is advocating for. He’s speaking for Canada, seeking favour from Australia, Mexico, the UK, the EU. He’s doesn’t talk about immigration. He doesn’t label anything as fascist or totalitarian. He uses the language of the consul or diplomat, being careful not to name names or toss matches, but the overall effect is a flame thrower.

A beautiful section of the speech is at the midpoint, where Carney anticipates what will happen as faith in the fiction of a rules based order evaporates. Fortresses. Isolationism. Transactionalism. He doesn’t mention Trump, studiously and pointedly never mentions Trump, but we can all picture that heinous body on its throne, sneering at world leader after world leader, squeezing the lemon for maximum personal gain and believing himself to be the master deal maker, and not just a tyrant leveraging America’s economic and military power while draining it of its democratic soul.

A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

But let’s be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.

And so Carney articulates a better way for middle powers. He argues for coalitions, trade and military alliances, a rules based and mutually supportive international order for Canada and countries like Canada, that doesn’t rely on the unnamed hegemon. He argues for standing up to the bully, for disengagement with those who would exploit a position of power. He’s like a union organiser for middle powers but with an accountant’s haircut and a management consultant’s dress sense. But the words are electric:

Our view is the middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.

But I’d also say that great powers can afford, for now, to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what’s offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.

This is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.

In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in-between have a choice: compete with each other for favour, or combine to create a third path with impact. We shouldn’t allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield it together.

Which brings me back to Havel. What does it mean for middle powers to live the truth?

He comes back to Havel. Havel is the warm heart amidst the cold IR jargon. If you’ve never read Havel, he really is one of the all time great writers and activists. I love his new year speech from 1990, which to answer my earlier question might be one of the best ‘new world order’ speeches of my lifetime. Except the mood for that one was of optimism and a dawning freedom. Carney is confronting the dark — trying to turn us towards the light.

We have to remove the sign from the window. We have to find the third path.

Will our leaders in Australia be brave enough?

Best wishes

Tony

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Below is the full Mark Carney speech from Davos. Thanks to who writes an excellent Canadian politics page, and who had this transcript up last week.

Mark Carney: ‘We are taking a sign out of the window’, World Economic Forum - 2026

20 January 2026, Davos, Switzerland

Below is the full transcript of the English parts of Carney’s remarks. Speech begins at 9.49 on the YouTube embed.

Thank you very much, Larry. I’m going to start in French, and then I’ll switch back to English.

(IN FRENCH)

It is both a pleasure and a duty to be with you tonight, in this pivotal moment that Canada and the world is going through. Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.

On the other hand, I would like to tell you that other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.

The power of the less powerful starts with honesty.

(IN ENGLISH)

It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry — that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.

And this aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable, as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.

Well, it won’t. So what are our options?

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called “The Power of the Powerless,” and in it he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?

And his answer began with a greengrocer.

Every morning, the shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world unite.” He doesn’t believe it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists — not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this living within a lie. The system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack.

Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We join its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful. An American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works.

Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied — the WTO, the UN, the COP, the very architecture of collective problem solving — are under threat. As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains. And this impulse is understandable.

A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

But let’s be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.

And there’s another truth: if great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate.

Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. They’ll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty, sovereignty that was once grounded in rules but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.

This room knows this is classic risk management. Risk management comes at a price. But that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentations. Complementarities are positive sum.

The question for middle powers like Canada is not whether to adapt to the new reality — we must.

The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls, or whether we can do something more ambitious.

Now, Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture. Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security, that assumption is no longer valid. And our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, has termed value-based realism.

Or, to put it another way, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic. Principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter and respect for human rights.

And pragmatic in recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values.

So we’re engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.

We are calibrating our relationships so their depth reflects our values, and we’re prioritizing broad engagement to maximize our influence, given the fluidity of the world at the moment, the risks that this poses and the stakes for what comes next.

And we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength.

We are building that strength at home. Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, on capital gains and business investment. We have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade. We are fast tracking $1 trillion of investments in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond. We’re doubling our defence spending by the end of this decade, and we’re doing so in ways that build our domestic industries. And we are rapidly diversifying abroad.

We’ve agreed to a comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU, including joining SAFE, the European defence procurement arrangements. We have signed 12 other trade and security deals on four continents in six months.

In the past few days, we’ve concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We’re negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur.

We’re doing something else: to help solve global problems, we’re pursuing variable geometry. In other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. So on Ukraine, we’re a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per capita contributors to its defence and security.

On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future.

Our commitment to NATO’s Article 5 is unwavering, so we’re working with our NATO allies, including the Nordic-Baltic Eight, to further secure the alliance’s northern and western flanks, including through Canada’s unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, in submarines, in aircraft, and boots on the ground — boots on the ice.

Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve our shared objectives of security and prosperity in the Arctic.

On plurilateral trade, we’re championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific partnership and the European Union, which would create a new trading bloc of 1.5 billion people.

On critical minerals we’re forming buyers’ clubs anchored in the G7 so the world can diversify away from concentrated supply. And on AI, we’re cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure that we won’t ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyperscalers.

This is not naïve multilateralism, nor is it relying on their institutions. It’s building coalitions that work issue by issue with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations. What it’s doing is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.

Our view is the middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.

But I’d also say that great powers can afford, for now, to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what’s offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.

This is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.

In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in-between have a choice: compete with each other for favour, or combine to create a third path with impact. We shouldn’t allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield it together.

Which brings me back to Havel. What does it mean for middle powers to live the truth?

First, it means naming reality. Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.

It means acting consistently, applying the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.

It means building what we claim to believe in, rather than waiting for the old order to be restored. It means creating institutions and agreements that function as described, and it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion.

That’s building a strong domestic economy. It should be every government’s immediate priority.

And diversification internationally is not just economic prudence; it’s a material foundation for honest foreign policy, because countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.

So, Canada. Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. In other words, we have capital, talent. We also have a government with immense fiscal capacity to act decisively. And we have the values to which many others aspire.

Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability. We are a stable and reliable partner in a world that is anything but, a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.

And we have something else: we have a recognition of what’s happening and determination to act accordingly. We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.

We are taking a sign out of the window.

We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine cooperation.

The powerful have their power. But we have something too: the capacity to stop pretending, to name realities, to build our strength at home, and to act together.

That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.

Thank you very much.

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My personal Substack - Good one, Wilson!

I write pieces about music, family, sport, and life here in Australia, usually with a humorous or feel-good bent. I sometimes share stories from my writing and filmmaking careers. The latest post was about getting middle aged and SCARED.

Good one, Wilson!

If I only had the noive

For those who aren’t up for the video, it’s a one minute encapsulation of much of what is great about the world. We are seeing The Lumineers on a blissful 28 degree Melbourne night at the Myer Music Bowl. Elder son Harry is looking after younger son Jack who is the more obsessive fan but has sensory processing disorders that mean he survives gigs rathe…

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3 months ago · 7 likes · 7 comments · Tony Wilson

I’ve just finished season three of Stranger Things, which isn’t the sunniest depiction of Cold War tensions. The Russians spend most of season three inhabiting an undetected weapons lab under the mall in a small town American town, which stretched credibility a fraction, and definitely situated the show pre-glasnost and perestroika. When we cut to Russia, the guards are feeding American prisoners to ravenous demogorgans. It’s definitely 1985.

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In real history timelines, the Cold War thaw was on by New Year’s Day 1988, precipitated by a Soviet economy collapsing under the strains of the Reagan administration’s accelerated nuclear arms race, including the Star Wars missile defence program. General Secretary Gorbachev was a moderate confronting a political reality that involved independence movements, economic crises, and a thirst for westernisation, especially amongst the youth.

President Reagan often gets the credit for ending the Cold War, especially from Republican hawks, but I find it unsettling that ‘peace by escalation’ is the contribution we’re celebrating. Did he really think he would spend the USSR into submission, or did he escalate because he was a ‘force with force’ personality type, and that’s what they do? It could have been disastrous if Gorbachev had been a less visionary leader himself, or if the USSR had continued to prioritise military spend.

Having said that, the peace we celebrated in the 90s really was a false dawn when it came to Russia. The wall came down, there was much ideological triumphalism, ‘The End of History’ is the only article every person of my generation remembers from early 90s undergraduate reading1. Whatever we see now in Russia — a dictator, a warmonger, an anti-democratic strongman who appeals to nostalgia for the days of empire, was sewn in the chaos of the Russian experiment with 90s capitalism. The freedom the west invited Russians to at the end of the last century was a freedom for oligarchs to plunder the nation’s riches, one of the greatest asset heists in European history and one that set ordinary Russians against western democracy, and unfettered capitalism.

I’ve been distracted from this 1987 speech, which was the beginning of a time of optimism and hope. It’s worth a read, and a listen, even if only to remind yourself that amidst the fear and apprehension of the Cold War, there was a sense that the people in charge were motivated by civic duty, or could at least say the right words to give the impression they were motivated by civic duty.

We’re not so lucky now.

Best wishes and Happy New Year

Tony

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Ronald Reagan & Mikhael Gorbachev: ‘This is a season of hope and expectation’, New Year’s address - 1988

1 January 1988, Washington DC & Moscow

The leaders of USA and USSR addressed the people in one another’s respective countries in an innovative and Cold War thawing New Year’s address.

MR REAGAN: Good evening. This is Ronald Reagan, President of the United States. I’m speaking to you, the peoples of the Soviet Union, on the occasion of the new year.

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But they all miss the essential Jewishness of this moment. A father and son terrorist team fired with deadly purpose into a crowd of Jewish people celebrating the first night of Hanukkah on the most iconic strip of land in Australia. Fifteen innocent lives have been taken. It was conceived as an act of terror. It was designed to slaughter as many Jews as possible, and terrify Jewish communities around Australia and the world.

I’ve read some beautiful pieces in the last couple of days. TV critic and humorist Ben Pobjie wrote his lyrical ‘My city of shining waters’

There is no inoculation against the world. There is no guarantee against it, no way to separate from it. It’s even worse when you smile, and you open your arms to it, and the world rewards you with a snarl, and a knife in the guts.

Gideon Haigh, perhaps most famous for his cricket writing but in actual fact, one of the most diverse and prolific non fiction writers in Australian history, hit me in the heart with his piece yesterday morning, ‘Cricket in a time of Terror’.

Not really until the last five years had it occurred to me how many Jewish friends I have. It had never been integral to our friendships. But especially since 7 October 2023, they have felt their Jewishness more keenly, and I’ve been privy to their discomfitures and anxieties. On Sunday, the eight-year-old son of one of these friends played his first game of competitive cricket and took his first wicket - the proud father sent me a video, his laughter audible in the background. This father must now explain to this son why Australia harbours people who would be proud of killing them both. This son will go forward in cricket knowing that the day of his first game was the gravest day in the history of his people in Australia. The Bondi killers are not just responsible for sixteen deaths. They have succeeded beyond their imaginings, in bequeathing decades of fear, of grief, of sorrow and terror.

But they’re not speeches. When it comes to great speeches on Speakola, there are two that felt most on point. The first was delivered by the now deceased Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in September 2016 to the European Parliament. for a conference entitled ‘The Future of Jewish Communities in Europe’.

This is how Rabbi Sacks opens his speech:

The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. That is what I want us to understand today. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Hitler. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Stalin. It isn’t Jews alone who suffer under ISIS or Al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad. We make a great mistake if we think antisemitism is a threat only to Jews. It is a threat, first and foremost, to Europe and to the freedoms it took centuries to achieve.

Antisemitism is not about Jews. It is about anti-Semites. It is about people who cannot accept responsibility for their own failures and have instead to blame someone else. Historically, if you were a Christian at the time of the Crusades, or a German after the First World War, and saw that the world hadn’t turned out the way you believed it would, you blamed the Jews. That is what is happening today. And I cannot begin to say how dangerous it is. Not just to Jews but to everyone who values freedom, compassion and humanity.

The appearance of antisemitism in a culture is the first symptom of a disease, the early warning sign of collective breakdown. If Europe allows antisemitism to flourish, that will be the beginning of the end of Europe. And what I want to do in these brief remarks is simply to analyze a phenomenon full of vagueness and ambiguity, because we need precision and understanding to know what antisemitism is, why it happens, why antisemites are convinced that they are not antisemitic.

First let me define antisemitism. Not liking Jews is not antisemitism. We all have people we don’t like. That’s OK; that’s human; it isn’t dangerous. Second, criticizing Israel is not antisemitism. I was recently talking to some schoolchildren and they asked me: is criticizing Israel antisemitism? I said No and I explained the difference. I asked them: Do you believe you have a right to criticize the British government? They all put up their hands. Then I asked, Which of you believes that Britain has no right to exist? No one put up their hands. Now you know the difference, I said, and they all did.

Antisemitism means denying the right of Jews to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as everyone else.

It’s an incredible speech, so clear and passionate, and well worth listening to in its entirety.

Another speech that I’ve only experienced in French (which I can’t speak) with English transcript is this one from Manuel Valls, who was Prime Minister of France at the time of the Charlie Hebdo shootings. For those who don’t remember, this was a terrorist attack on a French magazine that published satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammad, breaching Islamic rules about depictions of the prophet, and triggering claims of blasphemy. Twelve people died in that horrendous attack.

Valls spoke about growing antisemitism, and the part Jews have to play in French life. He also talked about the difference between blasphemy and hate speech or Holocaust denial.

There is a huge level of concern, that fear which we felt at the Hyper Cacher at Porte de Vincennes and in the synagogue de la Victoire on Sunday night. How can we accept that in France, where the Jews were emancipated two centuries ago, but which was also where they were martyred 70 years ago, how can we accept that cries of “death to the Jews” can be heard on the streets? How can we accept these acts that I have just mentioned? How can we accept that French people can be murdered for being Jews? How can we accept that compatriots, or a Tunisian citizen whose father sent him to France so that he would be safe, is killed when he goes out to buy his bread for Shabbat because he is Jewish? This is not acceptable and I say to the people in general who perhaps have not reacted sufficiently up to now, and to our Jewish compatriots, that this time it cannot be accepted, that we must stand up and say what’s really going on.

There is a historical antisemitism that goes back centuries, but there is also a new antisemitism that is born in our neighborhoods, coming through the internet, satellite dishes, against the backdrop of the loathing of the State of Israel, and which advocates hatred of the Jews and all the Jews. It has to be spelled out, the right words must be used to fight this unacceptable antisemitism.

Again, the whole speech is worth visiting.

The speeches have begun in Australia. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese delivered something in the moment that didn’t soar, but nor did he have much time to prepare, nor take obvious missteps. In the next few days there will be more speeches to come — eulogies, laments, prayers, hespeds.

And then hot takes, name calling, political take downs, international bickering, attempts to make sense of this terrible thing that has happened in this country that was meant to have consigned mass shootings to the past.

The speech I watched on Sunday night, the speech I rewatch more than any other, might make other Australians feel better too. It’s the Robert Kennedy one on the death of Martin Luther King, my favourite call to peace.

To Australia’s Jewish community, to my many Jewish friends, I’m thinking of you all.

זיכרונם לברכה

Tony Wilson

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There are accounts of LBJ that are highly unflattering. A four volume Robert A Caro masterpiece of a biography portrays him as power hungry bully with a genius for the cut and thrust of politics who was truly relentless as he climbed the rungs of political life. This included behaviour that seems unusual and depraved (then and now) as outlined in this Guardian review of Caro’s Volume 3 —

He sucked up to his superiors and kicked down on his inferiors. A favoured device to embarrass subordinates was obliging them to take his orders while he defecated. He liked to pee in the washbasin in his office in front of female secretaries and then wave his member about. Inordinately proud of his sexual apparatus, Johnson was given to bragging: ‘Jumbo had a real workout tonight.’

Whatever his personal failings, Lyndon Johnson could pass legislation using the force of personality and any aces up his sleeve to bend the will of people. As both a senator and a president, he pushed through civil and voting rights legislation that had stalled in the states chamber for generations. From the same Guardian article by Andrew Rawnsley:

Thanks to the Senate, no meaningful progress against racial discrimination had been made since the Civil War. Not only did the Senate resist all attempt to give the vote to blacks in the South; it would not even pass laws against lynching.

The Senate was, as one observer put it, ‘the South’s unending revenge upon the North for Gettysburg’. Lyndon Johnson’s triumph, the more sensational because he was a southerner himself, was to mould the reactionary Senate into the creature of his will and then wield it as an instrument for progress.

The speech above is LBJ’s last speech. He was justifiably proud of what he achieved in the civil rights era. If you listen to the tone, laboured as it is as Johnson traverses his last days, you might lament for a time when even problematic political personalities had a democratic vision of a greater good, when there was a sense of the world getting better.

Johnson says this near the start of his last speech:

I believe that the essence of government lies with unceasing concern for the welfare and dignity and decency and innate integrity of life for every individual. I don’t like to say this and I wish I didn’t have to add these words to make it clear, but I will: Regardless of color, creed, ancestry, sex, or age.
…
Up on the second floor of this library in a special exhibit designed especially for this occasion, you will see the original Emancipation Proclamation by which our great President Abraham Lincoln ordered that the slaves should be freed of their bondage. A decade ago, in year 1963, we observed the 100th anniversary of that proclamation signing. On Memorial Day of that fateful year, I was called upon as the last President to speak at Gettysburg Cemetery where a century before, words had been spoken which all of us have long remembered, and on that occasion, I said this: “Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skin, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent, we have fallen short of assuring freedom to the freed.”

It’s an interesting speech, and even has a section where LBJ plumbs for compulsory voting. Most of us Australians are fans of our compulsory voting system. Certainly, it forces candidates to pitch towards the centre, because we’re all going to hit the polls. Is having a centrist political tendency a good thing? Arguably, Trump doesn’t win either of his elections in Australia because he’s too unappealling to the apathetic middle, who aren’t caught in the cult, but who might not vote if they’re not forced to.

Here’s what LBJ says about compulsory voting:

Black Americans are voting now, where they were not voting at all 10 years ago, but let me say quickly that not enough are voting. Little more than half of all eligible Americans voted in the last national election. I don’t know how many of those that didn’t vote were Black, but I do know this, we have to come up with some kind of plan or incentive to perfect our democracy by seeing that more of our people do vote and I certainly mean to include more of our Black people.

Now, I don’t know how to do it. I don’t want to get into it from the hip, with compulsory voting, but we ask our young men, we require them by law to all go and register for the draft. We require all of our children to go to school. We require our people, under the great laws of privilege, to have a Social Security Number. I have no doubt but what this would be a better country and a purer democracy if 95% of our people voted and the 5% that didn’t had an exemption because of illness or whatever it might be, but when the hand of government reached out to them, if they had to reach in their purse or pocket book and show a stamp that they had voted, for the party of their choice and the individual of their choice, this would be a better land.

Interesting stuff. Full transcript below.

Best wishes

Tony Wilson

Current Speakola podcast episode is with Steve Kilbey of The Church. Subscribe

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For the personal newsletter, I have been handing out tips on applying for Race Around the World, the Australian documentary travel show that I did in the 90s.

Good one, Wilson!

Race Around the World Tips #2 — Stories and Mini-docs — How Green Was My Soccer Club

This four minute video is the reason I was selected and eventually won the second season of Race Around the World. I was phenomenally fortunate to run into this story which had humour, community involvement, sporting action, an amazing character and even a foreign language component, so I could include subtitles and really show off that I’d cope with a trip around the world…

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5 months ago · Tony Wilson

Good one, Wilson!

Race Around the World Tips #1 - The 'Here's Me!' PTC

In 2026, the third season of Race Around the World will take place…

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6 months ago · 6 likes · Tony Wilson

Lyndon Johnson: ‘I am confident we shall overcome’, Civil Rights Symposium, LBJ’s last speech - 1972

12 December 1972, LBJ Library, Austin Texas, USA

Mr. Middleton, esteemed former Chief Justice, and Miss Warren, and all of you wonderful people who have come here to try to make life better for your fellowmen:

I sat in the adjoining room and watched the panel this morning and got great satisfaction and compensation in my own way in feeling that all is not lost, all has not been in vain. All we have to do is kind of reorganize, reevaluate; and Rome wasn’t built in a day and we can’t overcome all the injustices or make this a perfect world overnight. But we are on our way in. We are going to do just that before it is over.

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In many ways it’s a better and more important speech than Glenn’s, although delivered in less dramatic but infinitely more troubling circumstances. In 1974, John Glenn seized upon an ill advised point made by a Democratic primary opponent, Howard Metzenbaum who said said that Glenn hadn’t worked a payroll job, and that might make him less qualified for the role of being Senator. So began ‘The Gold Star Mothers Speech’, which might be the greatest debate slapdown of all time:

Earlier today, Senator Mark Kelly was responding to threats from President Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth. At the end of the speech he leaned into the contrasting ways they have served their county:

President Trump has crossed the line.

And this time it’s not going to work. I will not be intimidated by this president. I am not going to be silenced by this president or the people around him because I’ve given too much in service to this country to back down to this guy.

In 1991, when Donald Trump was driving the Taj Mahal casino into bankruptcy, I was getting shot at over Iraq and Kuwait.

In 2001, after Donald Trump said that the collapse of the Twin Towers meant he now owned the tallest skyscraper in Manhattan. I was carrying flags honoring 9/11 victims into space on a rocket ship.

In 2003, when Donald Trump was writing birthday greetings to the monster Jeffrey Epstein, I was the first on the scene to recover the bodies of my fellow astronauts who died when Space Shuttle Colombia exploded during re-entry in 2011.

When Trump was hosting a reality show and pedalling conspiracy theories against President Barack Obama, I was sitting next to my wife’s hospital bed as she recovered from a gunshot wound to the head.

My point is this. I’ve been through a lot worse in service to my country. The president and Pete Hegsath are not going to silence me. They aren’t going to keep me from speaking out and they’re not going to keep me from doing my job.

It’s incredible stuff, but of course these are incredible and unprecedented times. The speech starts at 11.40 above and is really worth a watch.

The sections regarding the president’s bullying and the nation’s descent into political violence are amazing too.

The full transcript is below.

Best wishes

Tony Wilson

If you like Speakola, or this speech, drop a like on it so Substack knows to push it out there! I also have 60 episodes of a podcast about great speeches, you can find here.

Sen. Mark Kelly: “President Trump is trying to silence me, threatening to kill me for saying what is true”, Capitol Hill

1 December 2025

Good afternoon everybody. Seems like most of you guys are here and thank you for taking the time. Uh let me get started. So throughout his entire career in business, reality TV, and politics, Donald Trump has had one and only one play, bullying his opponents into silence.

He did it as a failed casino owner who bankrupted his properties and screwed over his contractors. He did it as a reality TV host known for firing people. And he’s done it as as president who tries every day to intimidate people with no regards for the rights or well-being of the American people.

I’ll say this for the guy. While he’s never seemed to do much else right, for most of Donald Trump’s career, bullying people has worked out for him.

But not now. Because I won’t let it happen. The American people won’t let it happen. President Trump is trying to silence me, threatening to kill me for saying what is true.

And he sent his Secretary of Defense after me. And it’s not going to work.

Here’s how we got here. A week and a half ago, Senator Slaken and I along with others who also served in the military and the intelligence communities, we released a video with a simple message to service members that they must refuse illegal orders.

Nothing was controversial about that.

Everyone must follow the law. No one may break the law. This is pretty basic stuff. Seeing that video, here’s how any other president would have responded.

They would have said two words, ‘of course’.

But that’s not how this president responded. We become so accustomed to Donald Trump’s behavior that it is worth emphasizing. The president of the United States said that two US senators and four members of the House of Representatives should be arrested, hanged, executed for something we said, for something that is true.

My family knows the cost of political violence. My wife Gabby was shot in the head and nearly died while speaking with her constituents.

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In 2010, they were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. Steve Kilbey, Peter Koppes, Tim Powles and Marty Wilson-Piper were reluctant inductees. They’d passed up the honour previously and, as Kilbey explains in this episode, reluctant speech makers too. ‘We weren’t going to say anything … we all thought we were too aloof and clever to do this sort of thing …’

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As the night unfolded and fellow inductees produced heartfelt speeches, it dawned on Kilbey and his bandmates that somebody would have to speak or it would seem rude and churlish. While entree was being served, Kilbey was trying to nut something out, using the old skills he’d honed as part of the ACT’s school debating team, where he took on (and lost to) Malcolm Turnbull’s NSW team!

The speech that followed has become a classic in the history of the ARIAs. It was so funny, the anecdotes soared, and Kilbey shed his reputation for being a serious artistic type to bring the house down. There is a hilarious moment where former manager Michael Chugg is on his feet, in shouted conversation with Kilbey, and he yells ‘why couldn’t you have been like this fucking 25 years ago!’ (it’s at the end of this Part 1 on YouTube)

I was recommended this speech by so many music industry people when I first started Speakola. I got to speak to Kilbey thanks to a good word from Sean Richards who runs our footy tipping competition and has been a tour manager for The Church, Cold Chisel and many other legendary Australian bands. Readers, if you can make an interview happen for me with another excellent speaker, I’d be so grateful. It’s finding the energy to make approaches and convince people to come on that’s slowed down my output. Guess who knocked me back this week?

Oprah Winfrey! You can’t say I’m not aiming for decent guests!

The basic structure of Kilbey’s speech is this:

• Icebreaker with George Negus - ‘would you represent us in Waverley District Court’

• ‘I didn’t prepare a speech’

• Salute to Australian music past and present

• Salute to the other inductees

• Anecdotes from the road

• We’ve had ups and downs but we’ll keep going!

Here is Part 2 of the YouTube:

A great performance and such an excellent podcast episode — so interesting and covers quite a bit of Kilbey’s rock ‘n roll life. His description of his first gig aged eleven is life affirming!

Thanks for your time, Steve Kilbey. A real thrill for me.

Best wishes

Tony Wilson

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Race Around the World Tips

For people aspiring to apply to the 2026 season of the Australian travel-documentary show Race Around the World, I’ve been posting some tips and thoughts on personal newsletter Good one, Wilson, as well as my own application videos and writings.

Good one, Wilson!

Race Around the World Tips #2 — Stories and Mini-docs — How Green Was My Soccer Club

This four minute video is the reason I was selected and eventually won the second season of Race Around the World. I was phenomenally fortunate to run into this story which had humour, community involvement, sporting action, an amazing character and even a foreign language component, so I could include subtitles and really show off that I’d cope with a trip around the world…

Listen now

6 months ago · Tony Wilson

Christmas book orders at tonywilsonauthor.com

I’m an author with books available. The most popular titles are Harry Highpants (ages 4-7), The Cow Tripped Over the Moon (ages 1-5), 1989:The Great Grand Final (adult) and The Selwood Boys (middle grade). There are another dozen titles too, and I also have Ange & The Boss movie posters that I’ll make available asap. Order in the next week to ensure things arrive by Christmas.

He was electrifying, right from the start. I’ll never forget him just running over the top of international athletes like they were school kids at lunchtime. His four tries versus England at the 1995 World Cup will brighten your day, possibly even if you’re English. He’s gliding, at 120 plus kilograms!

I remember watching this Eric Rush eulogy below and thinking it was such a funny and loving tribute.

He included some markers that are often there in good eulogies:

The how we met story -

And so I saw this big fella marking me, and I had a go at him, on the outside a couple of times, and he was just jogging beside me, smiling, as he caught me. And I thought, far out, this guy’s not bad, alright!’

I went up to him after the game. I said, ‘mate you played pretty good touch, have you ever played Sevens?’

He said, ‘Na.’

I said, ‘we got a bit of a Sevens team, are you keen to have a crack?’

‘Yep.’

I said, ‘Mate, we’re off to Singapore in a few weeks, you wanna come?’

‘Sweet’

That was pretty much the extent of his vocabulary back then ... so

Snatches of dialogue -

It’s amazing how a retold conversation brings immediacy and intimacy to storytelling. Direct speech also captures character and personality, and the audience feels like they’re getting a peak behind the curtain. So much of storytelling is about recreating moments, and dialogue naturally pushes the speaker towards a moment in time.

What did they love that wasn’t work or family? -

A person’s occupation and family will usually find their way into a eulogy, but sometimes it’s the quirky passion or hobby off to the side that makes a speech memorable and gets to the essence of the person. In this one, Eric Rush touches on Lomu’s love of hotted up cars. You get the sense that Rush is just a a natural at this. Not many people would include Arnie, but Rush does and it feels like the story is just pouring out of him, almost without filter:

And his best mate at the time was this little Asian fella called Arnie. He was his best mate. Arnie used to soup up the cars, and Jonah put the sounds in them.

And that big green truck of his. Man, far out! He’d come and pick you up and you gotta drive along, like this, with your fingers in your ears. And your shirt going like this. And he’s nodding away ... hell, I hated going for rides with that fella!

A peak behind the curtain -

For a public funeral like this one, it’s great when you get a story from the locker room, or the green room, or backstage or the home front, or wherever it is that the wider audience wishes they could have sneaked a peak into the celebrity’s world. Rush is just so naturally funny, and his willingness to be honest about the initial antipathy between Lomu and his coach, Laure Mains, is golden.

And when Laurie [Mains] became the All Black coach, and selected Jonah at the start -- those two never got on very well at all. Because Jonah didn’t know how to talk to this southern man, this Waitangi type from down on the South Island, and Laurie Mains didn’t know how to talk to a young Islands boy from the south side.

So I kinda became the go-between. Between the two of them for many of their conversations. So Laurie would tell me what he wanted to know, I go and ask Jonah to get the answer, go back, tell Laurie.

And for some reason, at All Blacks, Laurie wouldn’t let us eat eggs. And one morning, it was before one of the trials before the 95 World Cup, the coaches all went to the gym. So we’re in the breakfast room, and the boys are just going for it, man, we’re eating anything we like. And Jonah had this French stick, this baguette, and he had sixteen boiled eggs in it. And he was eating it like this [demonstrates] and somebody was taking photos of him. And anyway, Laurie Mains come walking back into the breakfast room, and he went through the roof.

He comes over to me, and he says, ‘what the bloody hell is he eating now!’

And I’m just having my Weet-Bix man, I’m just trying to stay in the team, you know. He says, ‘you bloody well get over there and tell him to think about what he’s eating.’

So I went over to Jonah, I says, ‘mate, Laurie’s a bit angry about what you’re eating.’

He says to me, ‘you go tell him to go get f***cked’

I’m looking back at Laurie. He’s waiting for the answer.

I walk back over.

‘Oh, he says he’s just about finished.’

Doing the love stuff well -

If it is a loving eulogy, it pays to still try to be creative as you express what the person meant to you, or what family meant to the deceased. Eric Rush seems to be able to effortless draw interesting and arresting little phrases out of himself, and he’s great on the love stuff.

[wife] But Nadene, I just want you to know, I’ve been around the fella a long time, and it’s the happiest I’ve seen him. It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen that fella. So I know he’s gone, but I know he’ll be looking down over you and the boys, and all the mates and family will be there to help as well. You are not alone.

[mum] Jonah feared no man. But he did fear one person and that was his mum, Hepi. ‘Cause he was … the jandal, (flip flop or rubber thong) I think he was still scarred from the jandal, Hepi! But when his mum said things, he acted. He didn’t listen to anybody else but his mum….

[Eric himself] He’s going to be remembered as a colossus on the football field, no doubt about that. But I‘m going to remember him as a good mate. And most importantly, as a loving dad.

A story that reveals character -

Eric Rush started the eulogy by saying that the young Jonah Lomu found joy in playing rugby, and played with an effortless freedom. At the end of the eulogy, he passes on a story that reveals how Lomu stayed true to himself, and the game:

When the Dallas Cowboys came knocking, and it was a big contract, he showed me that contract, it was a lot of money, and he turned it down.

I said, ‘why’d you turn it down?’, and he said, ‘oh, it’s only money. It’s not everything.’

I said, ‘money’s not everything , but it’s right up there with oxygen, bro, you do need it, you know? And that’s a lot of oxygen, brother. That’s a lot of oxygen.’

All he said to me was, ‘I just want to play rugby with my mates, and I want to play in that black jersey for as long as I can. And that’s the reason he stayed with football.

It’s a magnificent speech for one of the world’s greatest athletes, taken far too soon. I recommend listening to it in full. I’ll post the transcript below.

If you know Eric Rush, he’d be a perfect podcast guest for me! Put us in touch!

Email Tony

I am currently editing the next podcast episode featuring Steve Kilbey from The Church. It’ll hopefully be out by Friday.

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To paid subscribers, donors, and Patreons, thanks for all you do to keep Speakola afloat.

Best wishes

Tony Wilson

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For Jonah Lomu: ‘I want to thank the Lomus for sharing your son, not just with New Zealand but with the whole world’, by Eric Rush - 2015

30 November 2015, Eden Park, Auckland, New Zealand

It’s a great honour to be up here today to speak on behalf of Jonah’s rugby mates. And there’s a lot of us here today.

Whenever me and big fella got together, we used to take the mickey out of each other. And that’s not going to change today, so, I’m gonna tell a few stories about the big fella, and I hope he doesn’t sit up.

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The famous bit starts at 1.50 above

Good news! A new episode of the Speakola podcast will drop in the next few days. It’s an interview with The Church’s Steve Kilbey, who wrote ‘Under the Milky Way’ and delivered one of the great ARIA Hall of Fame induction speeches in 2010.

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Fifty years ago today, Gough Whitlam stood one the steps of what’s now Old Parliament House in Canberra, and listened to the Governor General’s Official Secretary, David Smith, read a proclamation that announced that he had been sacked as Prime Minister, and both houses dissolved pending an election. For overseas readers, this is as dramatic as political life gets in Australia. An elected government that enjoyed majority support in the House of Representatives was dismissed by the Queen’s representative, Sir John Kerr, who had been appointed by Whitlam sixteen months earlier. It runs counter to the principles of responsible government which are core to the Westminster system. I was taught by my Labor voting father that it was a shameful and undemocratic moment, and I still believe it to be so. There is a Liberal Party counter-view that speaks of profligate debt and shadily sourced government loans, all serving as justification for Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser’s decision to block supply (our equivalent to the shutdown that’s recently occurred in the USA, public servants don’t get paid) which prompted Kerr to action. It’s an incredible story, and if you’re half interested in Australian history you MUST listen to a seven part podcast called ‘The Eleventh’ by Alex Mann.

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It’s difficult for overseas readers to comprehend how famous this speech is. Whitlam was (and still is) a politically polarising figure. He was a huge personality and intellect, with a booming voice and staggering ego. In 1972, he swept into power with an ‘It’s Time’ slogan — and set about implementing a radically progressive agenda. Within his first term he ended conscription and Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, recognised the People’s Republic of China, abolished fees for tertiary education, and started the process for the universal healthcare scheme, Medibank (now called Medicare, and Americans, it is much loved here in Australia — you lose elections if you try to water it down!)

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Much of this reform was done by decree, as Whitlam and his deputy, Lance Barnard, formed a temporary “duumvirate” or “cabinet of two’, before the full Labor caucus could elect a larger ministry. In 1974, the Whitlam government squeaked back into office, and crucially, numbers were tied in the Senate. If a senator died, and the casual senate vacancy conventions were ignored by a conservative state government, the power to block supply could be handed to an opportunistic and conspiring opposition.

A senator died.

If you’re not going to listen to the podcast above, watch the 80s miniseries.

But back to the speech.

It’s a virtuoso performance at a moment of personal and national crisis. Whitlam was famously witty and erudite. He was once asked, ‘what would happen to the Government if you fell under a bus tomorrow?’, to which he answered — “with the improvements my government has initiated in urban transport this is unlikely to happen”.1 If anyone was equipped to rise to the moment, it was Gough,

And rise he did.

Here is the transcript as recorded in Sally Warhaft’s excellent (but out of print), ‘Well May We Say … The Speeches That Made Australia’ speech anthology:

Ladies and gentleman (applause and cheering), well may we say God Save the Queen (pause) because nothing will save the Governor-General (applause and cheering).

The proclamation which you have just heard read by the Governor-General’s official secretary was countersigned ‘Malcolm Fraser’ (boos and jeering) who will undoubtedly go down in Australian history from Remembrance Day 1975 as Kerr’s cur.

They won’t silence the outskirts of Parliament House, even if the inside has been silenced for the next few weeks (cheering).

The Governor-General’s proclamation was signed after he already made an appointment to meet the Speaker at a quarter to five.

The House of Representatives had requested the Speaker to give the Governor-General its decision that Mr Fraser did not have the confidence of the House (pause) and that the Governor-General should call me to form the Government. . . (cheers and applause).

Maintain your rage and enthusiasm through the campaign for the election now to be held and until polling day.

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An interesting tit-bit I found on the National Film and Sound Archive site relates to David Smith’s use of ‘God Save the Queen’ at the end of his proclamation. These were provocative words, and without them, we couldn’t have had the most famous ad lib in Australian history. Here are the notes compiled by the NFSA curator:

The spontaneity of Whitlam’s attack on the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, is obvious, prompted by the final words of the Governor-General’s Official Secretary, David Smith, ‘God Save the Queen’. That they were not scripted is confirmed by Whitlam’s then Press Secretary, Evan Williams, speaking in 2010, ‘They came straight out of his own head and very much on the spur of the moment. They were not scripted.’

What was not fully understood until the publication of David Smith’s book Head of State in 2005 was that there was a history to the words used by Smith, a subtext that may have influenced Whitlam’s reaction. In April 1974, the opposition led by Billy Snedden refused in the Senate to consider two appropriation bills passed by the lower house. Prime Minister Whitlam used this as the trigger for a double dissolution, where both houses face a simultaneous election. When the proclamation to dissolve parliament arrived on David Smith’s desk, he pointed out to the then Governor-General, Sir Paul Hasluck, that the customary words ‘God Save the Queen’ were not on the bottom of the proclamation. Smith wrote that he asked the deputy secretary of the Attorney-General’s department, Ewart Smith, for an explanation.

‘He told me that the proclamation had been submitted to the Prime Minister in the customary form, but that it had been returned to the Attorney-General’s Department with a wavy line drawn through the request to the Almighty and with a notation in the margin in Whitlam’s handwriting, “We’ll have no more of this nonsense”.’ Nineteen months later, at 1 pm on 11 November 1975, Sir John Kerr, Whitlam’s own appointee, sacked Whitlam and swore in Malcolm Fraser, leader of the Opposition, as caretaker Prime Minister after requiring him to sign a promise to call an immediate election of both houses. David Smith was required to call Ewart Smith again, to prepare a proclamation to dissolve both houses. On his own volition, David Smith told Ewart Smith, ‘One more thing, Ewart, don’t forget to put “God Save the Queen” back in’.

This was the proclamation that David Smith read on the steps of Parliament House at 4.45 pm that Tuesday afternoon. It’s clear that Whitlam reacted directly to hearing these words, because he starts his response by repeating them. ‘Well may we say “God Save the Queen” …’

It is likely that only he and David Smith understood the significance of these words in the proclamation at that moment. Whitlam’s prediction was prophetic: Sir John Kerr was vilified and denounced by demonstrators at many of his public appearances after this day, until he stepped down prematurely as Governor-General in December 1977.2

Australia’s current Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, acknowledged Gough Whitlam and The Dismissal in a speech yesterday. Tonight, there will be a dinner at Parliament House. I know this because my friend and former Speakola podcast guest, Sammy J, is hosting and performing. ‘I’ll see how I go doing my Gough song a few metres away from John Howard’ he texted this morning.

His episode of Speakola podcast is great too.

Gough Whitlam died in 2014 aged 98. The eulogy by Noel Pearson is another of the great Australian speeches, and one of the first included in the Speakola collection. Towards the end of their lives, Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser mended some bridges, and became advocates for an Australian republic.

If you like Speakola but feel more comfortable with either Patreon or a one off donation, any help is always appreciated.

Race Around the World rebooted!

The ABC announced this week that the television show that gave me a break 28 years ago, Race Around the World, is returning in 2026. This is great news. Here is my reaction to that, as well as a Good one, Wilson announcement that I’ll share application tips for aspiring Racers.

Good one, Wilson!

Race rebooted!

Apply to be part of 2026 Race Around the World. You have to be 18yo…

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6 months ago · 4 likes · 1 comment · Tony Wilson

Tony Benn was a Labour MP who served as a Minister in the Harold Wilson cabinets of the 60s and 70s. He belonged to the left wing of the party, and had a stint as opposition leader in 1988. He actually succeeded a man we’ve had on the Speakola podcast — Neil Kinnock. After his retirement from politics, he was a passionate anti war activist, and served as the president of the Stop the War coalition until he died in 2014.

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This is a brilliant speech, and one hears its echoes whenever bombs are falling, whether it be in Yemen, Ukraine or Palestine. The conflict being debated was the bombing of Iraq in 1998 — which would go ahead and would become known as Operation Desert Fox —a President Clinton ordered attack that took place from 16th-19th December 1998. The issue was whether or not the Saddam Hussein regime was producing and storing weapons of mass destruction, a question that would dominate international politics across the first decade of the 21st century.

Things to listen for that might help your own speaking -

• There is a beautiful ad libbing. Benn doesn’t look down at his notes as he’s talking about his own reflections on the Blitz. He’s an experienced speaker and he knows this stuff well … so his head his high, and it allows him to be pacy and humorous - more pacy and humourous than he’d be with head in notes;

• There’s incredible percussion in the way he hits the most important paragraph in the speech, (again he’s not reading) the bit beginning ‘Aren’t Arabs terrified?’ You can even see Benn beating out the urgency of his rhythm with his hand.

• ‘Aren’t Arabs terrified’ begins a slew of rhetorical questions - a good device in any argumentative debate. They’re quick, punchy, and emotive.

• Quote from the stuff that moves you. Benn dips into the UN Charter, and he is visibly choking up at the sacrifice a previous generation made, and the lengths they went to to avoid future wars. Because he’s moved, we’re moved.

The transcript of the Benn speech is below .

Happy anniversary UN Charter. You’ve had good days and bad days across these 80 years. Hopefully there’s still a place for liberalism, multilateralism, global cooperation and debate in a world that lurches in totalitarian directions.

We need more Tony Benns! We need longer memories.

Best wishes

Tony

Tony Benn: ‘Don’t Arab and Iraqi women weep when their children die?’, vote on Iraq bombing - 1998

17 February 1998, Westminster, United Kingdom

I finish just by saying this: war is an easy thing to talk about; there are not many people left of the generation that remember it. The Right Honourable Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup served with distinction in the last war. I never killed anyone but I wore uniform.

But I was in London in The Blitz in 1940, living in the Millbank tower, where I was born. Some different ideas have come in since. [laughter] And every night, I went down to the shelter in Thames House. Every morning, I saw Dockland burning. Five hundred people were killed in Westminster one night by a land mine. It was terrifying. Aren’t Arabs terrified? Aren’t Iraqis terrified? Don’t Arab and Iraqi women weep when their children die? Doesn’t bombing strengthen their determination? What fools we are to live in a generation for which war is a computer game for our children and just an interesting little Channel 4 news item.

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Only two months ago my friend Laini (a Speakola subscriber) suggested taking my kids through Melbourne’s Holocaust Museum with Abram Goldberg. ‘He doesn’t do as many tours, but I think he still does them’.

It says everything about Abram that he told his story to the end. I met him first at the Holocaust Museum in the early…

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