Death of a fatally flawed giant

Former Territory Labor Opposition Leader and Keating government Minister Bob Collins has died in Darwin at the age of 61. Whether from the bowel cancer he had suffered over the last couple of years or from some other cause is yet to be revealed.

I knew Bob Collins very well in the 1980s and early 90s, and had a high regard for his abilities as a political leader, although even for a politician he had a remarkable propensity to treat the truth as an infinitely flexible commodity. He was a towering figure in the decimated Territory ALP of those days, holding the party together sometimes almost single-handedly in the wake of successive crushing electoral defeats in the early 80s, and exercising a morale-boosting Keating-like parliamentary dominance over his numerically overwhelmingly powerful CLP opponents.

Later, after entering Federal Parliament as a Senator for the NT, having being rolled as local Opposition Leader by a somewhat unsavoury alliance between the Left and Centre Left with the connivance of a couple of members of his own Right faction, Collins became the first NT representative to achieve federal Cabinet rank as Minister for Transport and Communications in the Keating government. His record once achieving that high office, however, is rather more equivocal. The general opinion is that his stewardship of Australia’s conversion to the digital age was somewhere between mediocre and disastrous, as this article of uncertain provenance explains. In fairness, it may well be that Collins’ decisions were dictated by pressure from Keating, Richo and others to bend over backwards to avoid antagonising the Packer and Murdoch interests even at the risk of incoherent policy.

In retirement, Collins was commissioned by the NT CLP government in 1999 to inquire into and report on indigenous education. His report, titled Learning Lessons: An independent review of Indigenous education in the Northern Territory , continues in large part to guide the development of education in remote Territory communities.

Bob Collins’ advice and guidance were also undoubtedly significant factors in the unexpected victory of Clare Martin’s Labor team at the 2001 Territory election.

It’s impossible, however, to write an obituary of Bob Collins without acknowledging the elephant in the room: the sickening child sexual abuse charges he faced at his death. I have no knowledge of their truth or otherwise, although I can certainly make some fairly educated guesses. Do those events erase or negate a record of impressive achievements in public life? I guess it depends on the observer. I certainly know that I feel much sorrier for Bob’s family, especially his son Robbie, and for the Aboriginal men he allegedly abused as children back in Maningrida in the 1970s, than for Bob’s own tragically tarnished reputation. At least they will all now be spared the trauma of what would inevitably have been a series of very unsavoury criminal trials.

For me, Bob Collins’ character is succinctly illustrated by a dealing I had with him in the 1980s, when I acted as his legal adviser. Bob battled severe weight problems throughout his adult life. I’ve also occasionally engaged in a Battle of the Bulge myself, though to a much less extreme extent. Around 1988 I lost a lot of weight and got extremely fit. “How did you do it?” asked Bob. “I just can’t seem to lose any weight at all, what with travelling all the time and eating hotel and airline food, and Jenny Craig is a waste of time”. I told him that I’d found a range of pre-packaged frozen diet meals called Findus Lean Cuisine to be very effective. Bob said he’d try them. To encourage him, I bought 10 packs and dropped them off at his office. I saw his wife Rosemary a few days later and enquired how he’d gone with the Lean Cuisines. “Oh fine,” she replied. “He loved them. He ate all ten in a single sitting.”