Drawing on Ramsey's 2273 Fairfax columns and 43 years in the press gallery
Alan Ramsey’s Wednesday and Saturday columns in the Sydney Morning Herald are essential reading for many thousands of Australians, among them Kevin Rudd and Peter Costello.
“For years his column has been an essential, often enjoyable, frequently uncomfortable, part of my Saturday morning regime,” says Kevin Rudd.
Ramsey is a retired veteran of the National Press Gallery, having seen through eight prime ministers and written for 43 years. He has had 2273 columns published in Fairfax newspapers across 22 years, of which 150 pieces have been culled and compiled in A Matter of Opinion.
Grouped in chronological and thematic chapters, they cover fifty-fifty the Hawke/Keating years (1987-1996) and the Howard years (1996-2007), with Ramsey claiming that there is nothing written on Rudd as “the Rudd era is for others to compile”.
Pre-Rudd, though, no political event is spared the Ramsey treatment – the reader gets his honest, unflinching views on issues like East Timor, Indonesia, the Iraq invasion, the children overboard incident and a litany of scandals, rorts, scuttlebutts and conspiracies from all over the political spectrum.
With chapters titled “Mates, Twerps and Deadbeats” and “Other People’s Wars”, Ramsey’s opinions are plain and undisguised by rhetoric or metaphor, so the reader’s enjoyment will likely depend on whether they agree or empathise with the points that he makes. Where applicable, he has added entertaining postscripts to update the reader on the subject or events mentioned in the column.
Included also is a range of Ward O’Neill drawings which have enhanced Ramsey’s column over the years.
A Matter of Opinion by Adam Ramsey, Allen & Unwin, RRP $35
Review by Eliza Sum
