The Answer Is In The Art
Illawarra Mercury
Saturday February 5, 2005
Former NSW MP John Hatton took himself out of the city loop in 1995. Looking back, he says that decision probably saved his life. Freedom, family and art are what matters now for the young-at-heart retiree.
BEFORE the interview begins, John Hatton - classified national living treasure, Officer of the Order of Australia and former anti-corruption campaigning MP - wants to show the paintings hanging on the walls of his Jervis Bay home.He's proud of the paintings. They're his own work. But there's more than pride in these paintings. Over there on that wall are paintings of aqua-coloured water washing up on brilliant white sandy beaches around the bay - one of the most beautiful bays in the world.On other walls are striking paintings of the bush, probably his favourite part of Australia. "If you want to know who I am now," he says, "you need to understand my paintings."To the amateur eye, they are exceptional. He has won art prizes for his works. Some he does spontaneously. If, while driving in the bush, his alert eye picks up something special, the car will quickly be brought to a halt, appropriate items collected from the boot, an immediate outdoor art studio set up and work goes on until the creation is complete.The story is the same during a walk on any of Jervis Bay's beaches. It is, he says, part of his spiritual experience to paint.As the interview begins, he wants to play a CD he and three mates recorded. "If you want to know who I am," he says, "you need to listen to my music."The CD features 13 tracks, all mood music based on scenes around Australia. Again, the work is spontaneous. There are no music notes on pieces of paper. "I think I'm the only one who can read music, anyway," he says.Usually, he takes the lead in the studio, sometimes playing clarinet; sometimes vibraphone. The others support. He goes where the scene in his mind takes him. Sometimes, one of the others will take the lead with a dominating input - maybe a didgeridoo; maybe a saxophone."Listen to that," he says. He's almost breathless with excitement. "Look," he cries with his eyes shut tight."Can you see it? Look, I can see the light across the water." He motions with his hand. "I can see the ripples. Can you see them? Look, look at the goose bumps on my arm. That's how I know when it (the music) is happening. It's extraordinary." The track is Jervis Bay Sunrise.And, then, there's a third dimension to John Hatton - the poet. Sometimes his poetry is spontaneous, too. An idea could come while eating at a restaurant. When it does, he grabs a sheet of paper and begins to write. "Vera (his wife) thinks it's poor manners."An idea might flash across his mind as he walks on a beach or drives in the car. "It might be something as simple as a power pole. I wrote one called Ode to a Pole, which was when the train was stopped at Heathcote station. I sat there looking at a power pole and it took me back to the bush and I'm thinking: 'that pole used to be a beautiful and straight tree. It was slaughtered'."I could picture myself in the bush with this beautiful straight tree, then the aliens arrive and they start hacking trees down. They haul them out, stand them up like a cross; like a crucifixion; strip them of all their bark; all their dignity; all their life, and they become power poles."Another poem was stimulated by insects. It's called Microcircutory, where I think: 'Okay, this (insect) is self-fuelling, it can fly, it's chemotropic, it's phototrophic, it can see'. One line of the poem says: 'Can it hear? I have no idea'. The end of the poem is: 'How did God fit all that in one tiny gnat'. That puts present computer technology in its place, where you have something that is a millimetre in size, but has all of those electronic systems built into it."IT'S 10 years since John Hatton retired from the NSW Parliament as the Independent Member for the South Coast. He is now 71."True," he says. "But I've never really gone past 40 or 45. Seriously. I still move quite quickly. I jump out of a car and run up a flight of stairs. Every morning, Vera and I walk on the beach; we swim every day, although until I passed the psychiatric test I used to swim in winter."He thinks young, too, he says. He's rethinking his values - the importance of leisure, personal relationships, family, friends, humanity in a spiritual dimension, joys of nature, interconnection, a whole range of things."The trick is lifelong learning." It's also pertinent that for the first time in the past 40 years, he does not hold a position in any community organisation. "I wake up in the morning and I now know what real freedom is," he says.Maybe he is a complex person and always has been. "Interesting," he says. "Complexity is in its simplicity. If I had a gift in politics, it was to break things down to their simplest, you know, what is a piece of legislation designed to do; what is it going to do for Fred Smith in the western suburbs."But the poems, paintings, music and their message; his intensity as a politician; his remarkable determination to take on corrupt police at enormous risk to himself and his family, I suggest, make it difficult to come to grips with his personality."Okay," he says, "you want to know who the real John Hatton is? I'll tell you." He relates a fascinating family history for the next 30 minutes.His father was an illegal immigrant. "He jumped ship in Australia and kept walking. He'd be in Woomera (detention centre) if he tried that today." After a few years in Australia, his father sent for his wife.Hatton senior served in World War I, but wouldn't shoot anyone. He served as a field ambulance man in World War II. He was a strong Labor Party man. Former prime minister Gough Whitlam and former premier Jack Lang were his heroes.John Hatton junior was born at Greenwich (North Sydney) in 1933. His mother had malnutrition and was not expected to live. In 1935, the family was evicted and moved to Hammondville, near Liverpool.Hammondville was a social experiment. To qualify for housing there, applicants had to be unemployed, homeless, destitute and have three children under five years of age. They had to clear bushland given to them. Their homes were built by unemployed tradesmen.Gough Whitlam, a young MP for Werriwa at the time, would visit the family with his wife, Margaret. While Mr Whitlam and Mr Hatton senior talked politics, Mrs Whitlam and Mrs Hatton chatted over the kitchen sink."So, that is the root of my politics; of me, John Hatton," he says. "I came from a very economically disadvantaged and very emotionally rich background."My father put me to bed every night with a prayer to God thanking him for my health, happiness and what I had, and to use my talents to work for those people less fortunate than myself."HATTON junior was a high school agriculture teacher. His first teaching appointment was in the bush. He lived alone - and very lonely - in a fettlers' camp between Broken Hill and Menindee for two years and was then transferred to Nowra High School.He joined the Labor Party, but quit in disgust when the party "wouldn't help" underpaid workers at Nowra brickworks and unemployed shop assistants.In 1959, he bought land at Huskisson and built a garage, in which he lived. Then he built half a house and gradually added to it. It's still not finished. His father taught him as a boy it was his own responsibility to provide a home for his family.He started a progress association, got elected to Shoalhaven Council and became president. He stood unsuccessfully twice as an independent for State Parliament. In 1973, he was elected as Member for South Coast, retaining the seat until his retirement in 1995."When I got into politics, a deputy head of Nowra High School said to me: 'You've got a problem, Jack. Your problem is that when you pick up a stone, you see something crawly underneath it. You can't quietly put it back'."Well, I could never ignore it (the 'something crawly'). Something would keep rubbing at my conscience until I did something about it. That led me into dangerous and difficult circumstances."No circumstance in his political life was more dangerous that his exposure of police corruption over several years. Labor and Liberal governments branded him obsessive, irrational, a liar, paranoid, drama queen - and much more.But he won a Royal Commission into the NSW Police Service. The commissioner, Justice James Wood, found a year after Hatton retired that what he (Hatton) was alleging was right. The long campaign came at a heavy personal cost. "The great fear I had wasn't that I was going to be shot - and that was a possibility, without any drama. My fear was that they would get Vera or the children."It would have been easy for them to set up my kids with heroin. I was expecting that could happen. I still don't know how I would have reacted, because my Achilles heal is my family."It was acknowledged by Justice Wood that there was nothing a corrupt police officer would not do."And, then, he surprises: "Ignorance, in some ways, is very important. If I had known where taking the cops on was going to lead me, I may never have started it."At the start of 1995, he took a decision which he now says saved his life. It was a decision to retire. "I knew that if I stood again, I was in real danger of physical breakdown."He assisted his son, John, in an unsuccessful bid to win the seat, bought a second-hand ute at auction, slid a caravan onto the back of it and "headed bush"."We got to Darwin and I said to Vera: 'We're not going back'. I remember sitting outside the ABC studios in Longreach. The (Police) Royal Commission was roaring along on the radio. I thought: 'Will I go in (to the ABC)?' "I said: 'No, I'm disappearing from the planet'. And I did - for six months. That was a very important healing process."My health improved radically. I had my clarinet with me. I took my painting gear and we spent enormous amounts of time nowhere. That six months saved my life."He left the city behind. "Cities are carbuncles on the planet. Unless you have a blackout, people (in the city) don't see the creation. We are the stars; to the stars we shall return. That's not just spiritual; that's physics."You know, I almost always travelled by train (to parliament). On the way home, bursting out of the tunnel this (south) side of Kiama onto the Gerringong flats was a great release for me. I was back home. There were pastures, cattle, commonsense and order."Each night before he goes to bed, he takes a walk in his backyard. He spends a few minutes looking up at the stars and then stands under a gum tree. "It makes me feel good. It's home. It's where John Hatton belongs."
© 2005 Illawarra Mercury