Lech Blaine

Lech Blaine. Lucky bastard. Great stories fall in his lap, like butterflies alighting on an open hand. All he has to do is write them up.

Oh, that it were so easy. Earning great material, in Blaine’s case, has meant more travails in three decades than some people endure in a lifetime. Surviving a horrific motor accident that claimed three young lives and profoundly damaged several others was grist for his first memoir, Car Crash (2021). The early death of his father, his mother’s decline through neurodegenerative illness, and managing a Bundaberg motel when his peers were attending university have produced compelling essays.

Bill Hayden might today be recalled as the unluckiest man in politics: Bob Hawke replaced him as Labor leader on the same day that Malcolm Fraser called an election that Hayden, after years of rebuilding the Labor Party after the Whitlam years, was well positioned to win. But to dismiss him thus would be to overlook his very real and laudable efforts to make a difference in politics – as an early advocate for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and as the social services minister who introduced pensions for single mothers and Australia’s first universal health insurance system, Medibank. Dismissing Hayden would also cause us to miss the counterpoint he provides to Peter Dutton, current leader of the Liberal Party.

Young writers may turn to the page for catharsis – for writing-as-therapy – but that’s not why we read them. The ageist view, that a writer mustn’t pen their memoirs until they are older and learned, neglects the breadth of excellent work by precocious writers who have a story to tell. Naïveté and inexperience can enchant, sometimes more so than brilliant craftsmanship or intellectual maturity.