Big vote for democracy
• Terry Aulich and his latest novel Sete, which is indeed set in the southern France town that was home for much of the past 10 years, at the entrance to the school that fired his imagination.
By Tony Scott,
November 30, 2022
From Scottsdale paper boy to international man of intrigue, if not mystery, Terry Aulich’s life journey has been an adventure supreme.
The sometime novelist has had stints in local, State and Federal politics along the way and maintains an active interest in privacy issues and the democratic process.
“I’d like to ensure compulsory voting remains at all levels for ever and everywhere.
“It just makes me crabby when people whinge about their politicians when they haven’t even bothered to vote.”
Now a Hobart resident, he reflects on his time as a United Nations observer for international elections.
“People queued standing in the snow after midnight in Romania for the chance to vote in free and fair elections.
“Some of us just don’t appreciate what we’ve got with democracy.”
His own political views might have been formed very early.
He was in the vanguard of the post war baby boom – born at an army base near Bathurst NSW.
“There must have been a real shortage of beds in the camp at the time, because there was this photo taken of when we had a visit from a member of the Royal family.
“I think it was the Duke of York or someone and he was looking down at a baby in the drawer of a filing cabinet.
“The baby was me and the Duke looked so crabby I think I became a life-long republican there and then.”
He has much fonder memories of Scottsdale, where he was moved to as a baby, his three siblings were born and he spent his formative years until about 17.
“I went to infant, primary and high school all here in Scottsdale and it was a great place to grow up … a very supportive community.
“I remember being one of the paper boys, getting up at five in the morning on Tuesdays and Fridays to deliver the Advertiser that came out twice weekly in those days.
“We were all skinny, not because we didn’t get enough to eat but we rode our bikes everywhere.
“The notion that parents would drive you to school never came up.
“If it was raining, you put your raincoat on and rode your bike.”
That mode of transport led to an early enterprise.
“We must have been very entrepreneurial because it was when the cost of postage went up (broth-er) Chris and I put a case to local businesses to deliver their accounts, undercutting the Post Office.
“We called ourselves Allco and we must have provided a pretty good service because, it lasted a few years and the other brother Philip took over from me.”
The other thing to keep the young folk fit and healthy was “sport, sport and more sport. We could never get too much of it.”
“In those days Scottsdale had some very good junior tennis players.
“Leon Ranson and Robert Tuck, from Ringarooma, were among them and there was a State team made up largely of Scottsdale players.”
A young Terry Aulich himself was top seed when he got to Launceston High for matriculation.
Tennis took care of summer and apart from an interest in boxing, his father having been semi pro at one point, there was of course football.
The trouble was having started out in under age competition as a forward or in the centreline he had to endure playing under 19s for Scottsdale Magpies under his father as coach.
Gordon Aulich, or the Baron as he was known after a nickname coined by one Rex Lethborg, had certain views on team play.
“He always put me on the backline to stop me lairising, he said, now there’s a word you don’t hear much today.
“When I got to university and was recruited by Sandy Bay they asked where’d I’d played.
“I told them ‘Never in defence.’
He credits a couple of teachers setting him on the right course.
“One was Frankie Ray.
“A name like that he’s got to be pretty exotic and he was. He was an American with a crew cut. He wore a different suit every day and he drove the first Volkswagen beetle to be seen in town. We all thought he was very cool.
“And he made us think outside the square.
“He talked about this new thing called the European Union, which he said would become the biggest trading bloc in the world. And It’s come true, except the Brits have been stupid enough to pull out of it.”
There was a more basic reasoning for his other teaching favourite.
“Margaret Cox was a good looking, educated young woman.
“She was the French teacher and I was really keen on her … teenage adulation.
“As it turned out I became relatively fluent in French, which very useful while living in France off and on for much of the past 10 years and visiting for 30.
“The other one to be an influence was Ray Denny.
“He was a bit boring as a teacher, but then we found out he was a dead set war hero.
“He’d joined the forces as a medico and as a prisoner of war kept others alive by stealing and that sort if thing at the risk of his own life.”
Young Terry was less enamoured of headmaster L.V. Jacques, who’d told him there wasn’t much point in him going to matriculation.
He did anyway after being “rejected” by The Examiner newspaper.
“I thought being a reporter, reading, getting around the place and meeting different people, generally being a sticky beak would be the ideal job, but I was rejected.”
The headmaster also gets the blame for the limitation on the supply of reading material for the bookworm Aulich.
“The school had a library, but you could only go into it with a teacher and you never borrowed a book.
“It was as though a book might wear out if it were read too much.”
The saviour had been the Mechanics Institute lending library.
“We were allowed three books a week and I always chose the thickest ones to get me through.”
Eventually on to University with the aid of a scholarship tying him to a teaching job for four years the reading continued along with “drinking and chasing girls. There was a lot if socialising.”
The newly minted teacher was posted to King Island and after another move or two, including a stint in London, was at Latrobe when the call of politics resulted in him joining the local council, then in 1976 winning election to State Parliament as a Labor member for the old electorate of Wilmot.
He served as Minister for Education and the Arts and Industrial Relations before losing his seat in the 1982 Labor annihilation election.
His opposition to the Franklin dam had much to do with his defeat in the largely pro dam electorate, but so had backing the “Robson Rotation”, which put those with names beginning with ‘A’ on level footing as those with names lower down the alphabet.
He was quickly appointed new State secretary of the party in charge of a thorough review.
A reform he oversaw at that time finally saw him out of politics after nine years as a Senator in 1993.
“As State secretary I’d supported affirmative action to increase the number of women in Parliament so I couldn’t complain about dropping down the ticket.
“After 16 years in State and Federal politics I’d had enough anyway.”
But it was the interest and experience in foreign affairs, privacy issues and democracy through senate committee work that spurred his business interests post political life.
“I set up my own company as a consultancy for organisations implementing new technologies and we would look at connecting it to the human side.”
He’s grateful that neither Medibank nor Optus have been clients.
“Whoosh that’s someone else’s problem. But that’s the sort of work we do … trying to make sure people’s private data is not compromised, or dealing with the situation if it is.”
Much of the work is conducted overseas and requires Interpol clearance and working with the British security service MI6.
“I’m not a spook … just have security clearance.”
Some of his political and business relationships have fuelled his “spare time” outlet as novelist.
His first novel The River’s End was published in 1993 and was based on the campaign to save the Franklin River, but his latest offerings are more recent Clapperland and its sequel Sete
are satirical thrillers, involving a collision between technology, religion and politics with a murder thrown into the mix.
All have dealt with politics and the democratic process, albeit with a slightly jaundiced eye.
“I’ve always had an interest in how democracy functions and I’ve worked to make others realise its importance,” he says with the fervour of a religious zealot.