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186 | denis beckett<br />
were university territory. I felt that the arithmetic deserved<br />
attention. I asked Nusas for their election figures. These were<br />
uncanny. again and again, the Prog shortfall balanced the<br />
Nusas voters. Of course, not all anti-voters were enfranchised,<br />
or registered in that constituency, but the thrust was plain: had<br />
the holier-than-thous deigned to tarnish their purity the Progs<br />
could be ten seats to the good.<br />
In the regular press I only saw Ken Owen, Sa’s punchiest<br />
columnist, note this phenomenon. Ken came up with sentiments<br />
similar to mine but without the quantification angle which,<br />
rough as it was, I wanted to give a look-in – for the bad reason<br />
of seeing righteous lefties bang their heads as well as the good<br />
reason of deterring future shootings-in-foot.<br />
My angry paragraph dropped its specklet into the pond. for<br />
quite a while I heard boycotters telling me that maybe they’d<br />
re-think next time. But I felt I’d ducked the real point, the<br />
inadequacy of a political system dependent on accident.<br />
Those ten seats jointly delivered maybe 70,000 Nat votes<br />
and 69,000 Prog. result Nats: 10, Progs: 0, demise of liberalism<br />
widely proclaimed. a little-known Prog councillor announces<br />
from australia that the election proves there is no hope, he<br />
has fled Sa. His five minutes of fame follow. The Progs lose the<br />
resulting by-election. Voters say in bulk: you’re losers and you<br />
run away. accident creates reality.<br />
By the time of circus clowns I’d argued for three years that<br />
there was a sounder, more solid, way of playing the political<br />
game. One reason I made no headway was that people thought<br />
politics had to be about winners and losers, chance and risk. I<br />
had thought so too. Now I began to suspect that chance and<br />
risk could be erased; maybe losers too. Was a new mode of<br />
politics on the way, to be to human affairs what tungsten was<br />
to lighting or silicone to technology?<br />
I was attuned to focusing on the faults of the structure<br />
instead of the faults of the people, but I now felt that the secure<br />
structure would do more than stabilise the playground; it would<br />
change the players.
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