KEY POINTS:
Sydney is enjoying a revival of the classic David Williamson play, Don's Party. Set in the year 1969, the play focuses on the federal election of that year and upon a group of mainly Labor sympathisers who gather around the television on the evening of polling day. Gough Whitlam is expected to win but early confidence gives way to the depressing news that the Conservatives are back for yet another term.
Nothing too much should be read into this politically in 2007. But it's the characters - mainly Melbourne academics and professionals - who remain of interest. Williamson has woven a fascinating tale of emerging personal tensions as politics unfolds on the screen, in an authentic Oz setting.
Election night this year will see thousands of parties across Australia, akin to the one held by Don. We are dealing with an institution here, but there is another peculiar Sydney institution before which all others pale. It has outlived war, drought and depression and will outlive the threat of terrorism and rollercoaster rides on the stockmarket no matter how steep.
This Sydney institution is the eastern suburbs dinner party.
Now, Sydney's eastern suburbs should officially start east of College Street in the CBD. In reality, the eastern suburbs are considered to start in Paddington and run out to the Gap, through Watsons Bay, Bondi and "Bronte Carlo" and down the coast to Coogee. This is the dress circle for Sydney society. The great families, beginning with the Packers, are domiciled here. The great mansions, starting with "Boomerang", dot the landscape.
South of the arc that runs from Coogee Beach to Moore Park, where Randwick Racecourse, the Sydney Cricket Ground and the Sydney Football Stadium are to be found, begins the rest of Sydney. The east is largely covered by the Federal seat of Wentworth, held by Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull. It is a very marginal electorate, on the pendulum standing at a mere 2.5 per cent to change hands. Significantly, Wentworth contains a number of working class communities and many Labor and Green voters.
At this point it is necessary to permit absurd generalisations and suspend logic, for the story to work.
The eastern suburbs are different because the owners of property and business are to be found here. The management help - from CEOs to accountants - live on the lower North Shore. The best example of this was the arrival of "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap to run the Packer empire some years ago. Initial probings of the eastern suburbs real estate market were frowned upon by chairman Kerry Packer. The lower North Shore then proved comfortable as the Dunlap residence.
So an eastern suburbs dinner party would normally bring together some serious people across a range of occupations and interests, from corporate life to the arts. But they are usually decision-makers and opinion leaders. It's a pity that David Williamson has not yet devoted himself to the phenomenon. It would be fascinating and might take the following form.
The setting for this play or movie could be anywhere in the area described above but realistically it would be somewhere in the area of Elizabeth Bay through Vaucluse or Bellevue Hill down to Point Piper. Harbour views are de rigueur, with the CBD skyline featuring prominently in the background.
The guest list should be about a dozen people. Among them, the prominent Sydney business identity who is certain that the investigation or indictment will prove nothing or that his conviction will be overturned on appeal. His partner will be equally prominent in the social pages, as will those sitting opposite: a judge and his energetic wife, specialising in charity functions. A lawyer or two will be present. A doctor and her husband perhaps, big on Al Gore and solar power, while driving a brand new 4WD.
There will be an expatriate South African, keen to explain that he/she supports Australia at every conceivable sport, especially rugby, and that his/her favourite book is Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom. There will also be expatriates from the United States or Britain, possibly with diplomatic or financial backgrounds.
The fare will feature seafood and creative salads, and the wines will have all been drawn from "the cellar". If that suggests a veritable Burgundy estate underneath the house or apartment, in reality, most of the wines will have been purchased at Kemenys Liquor Store in Bondi. They will be a mix of Australian and French, with an occasional interesting white from Italy or Chilean red and an even more occasional New Zealand vintage slipping through.
It's the conversation that will make the drama.
The subject matter will range from politics to corporate crime, with much lamenting about the Howard Government being totally out of touch with the common man or woman as compared with leaders abroad such as Gordon Brown or Nicolas Sarkozy. The measure of this will be the state of property investments in foreign climes. One rolled gold phoney will need to be present, forever bragging that his wife is in Europe looking at property. They will never buy anything, of course, merely look and boast about it.
Conversation about corporate crime can cover the field, from just what was Rene Rivkin thinking about in Switzerland through to how did Rodney Adler cope in the prison showers. Opinions will vary dramatically from the "incarceration is futile brigade" (judges and lawyers) through to the "they deserve everything they get" division (most others).
But then the move is to scandal.
Eastern suburbs dinner parties fulfil a most necessary social purpose, for they create most of the rumours which circulate in the rest of Greater Sydney. Often they end up in the gossip pages of the Sunday papers or are translated briefly into speculative commentaries on radio. Affairs begin and collapse. Marriages dissolve and are rebuilt. Kids are relocated at school without explanation and real estate is traded as spices are traded in a Damascus bazaar. The real estate pages of the newspapers are, in fact, compulsory reading prior to these gatherings. The value of one's personal real estate is a measure of virility, health and meaning.
The timing of such dinner parties is important. Too early in the winter school holidays and people are missing, gone to everywhere from Thredbo or Bowral to Broome. Christmas/New Year and you strike people disappearing to everywhere from Palm Beach to Steamboat.
So the calendar has to be carefully planned for maximum impact. Names around the table are as important as names discussed over the table and the names of those absent are often given a workover. If your reputation can survive an eastern suburbs dinner party, it can survive any Royal Commission.
Now departures occur with ritual questions: Will we see you at the Venice Biennale? Wimbledon? Will you be in Paris for the final of the Rugby World Cup? With whom are you sailing to Hobart on Boxing Day? The answers need to be compelling, if unlikely to convince a polygraph machine. Then it's everyone away for the truly critical assessments to be made in the hire cars going home.
Obviously, the foregoing is fanciful. The presence in the National Rugby League of the Sydney City Roosters belies the notion that everyone in the eastern suburbs may be decried as a silvertail. But the eastern suburbs dinner party nonetheless is the stuff of a good comedy, placed in the skilled hands of a dramatist. Much business is discussed over the dinner table in the east and much charity work is done. But the dinner party dress circle lends itself to satire. And like New Zealanders, Australians know how to send themselves up.
* Stephen Loosley, a former federal president of the Labor Party and Australian senator, chairs business advocacy group Committee for Sydney.
