SYDNEYSIDE WITH JANET PARR Not what they wanted

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33110, 28 December 1972, Page 5

SYDNEYSIDE WITH JANET PARR Not what they wanted

We don’t all get what we want from Father Christmas, or even what we might think we deserve after a year spen t in virtuous living and honest endeavour.

Children have a habit of speaking their minds on the subject—like the child who is handed a couple of new school shirts instead of the electric train set he’d had in mind.

I doubt if the child in the song whose only Christmas wish was for his two front teeth got his heart’s desire, either.

But gro-*«**»«w who feel that Santa may have handed them a lemon tend to be a bit more polite about it. And if they can’t quite get their mouths arranged sufficiently to form the platitudes of

“just what I wanted” they tend to say nothing, to join the legion of those who suffer in silence. And so I offer a small selection of some of those this side of the Tasman who haven’t necessarily got what they wanted for Christmas. Like the Liberals who’ve got Edward Gough Whitlam charging through the corridors of power that they’d held for a quarter of a century.

And Edward Gough Whitlam himself who, while he must have been very happy with the present the Australian electors gave him, didn’t “particularly want the Privy 'Councillorship that went with it and said so. He didn’t want the SIO,OOO shiny black Prime Ministerial car or the flag on its front because he thought they were “too pretentious.” : NO HONOURS LIST

By scrapping the New Year Honours List he also cut off a few hundred of those who may have felt they were due to receive a seasonal and well-justified reward. Just who those few hundreds are we shall never know, although the political writers have come up with some inspired and educated guesses.

Some unwanted Christmas t 'cards—the kind that have; I things like “Minister for . . (over the address, “Parliament| House, Canberra” — went quietly into the rubbish tin las those who had ordered ’ them found themselves no longer Ministers of anything and in some cases not even eligible to use the Parliament House address any more. Like the awful ties and the I hideous vases that find their way back to the shops after Christmas for exchange, part I of last year’s Christmas present to Sydney’s bus travelling public has gone up for sale. The blue Atlantean double-decker buses put all ; Sydney’s buses off the road for three weeks just before last Christmas when bus] unions struck over the proposal for their one-man opj eration. For a year the blue doubledeckers have been running ■round the city mainly run by ’two-man crews. But it appears extremely unlikely that there will be any more and there is, in fact, a move afoot to get rid of at least some of the Atlanteans, with Hong Kong said to be interested in buying them. “NICE IF .. Then, of course, there were the presents that it would have been nice to have if. . . . Like the invitation to Dawn Fraser to be in Fort Lauderdale in Florida on December 31, when the American Swimming Hall of Fame will dedicate a whole wall to her. Dawn Fraser, considered the greatest Australian woman swimmer of ail time, and possibly one of the greatest women swimmers in the world, is a Balmain housewife these days and mothers of a six-year-old daughter, I Dawn Lorraine. She is the first Australian woman swimmer to have al whole wall in the Hall of: Fame. But she is between’ jobs as a swimming coach I at the moment and can’t j afford the trip to Florida. “I’m greatly honoured, and I only wish I could be there, but I simply haven’t got the money to go,” she said. If I had to nominate a person who might really have

had her heart set on a special i present this Christmas and ‘didn’t quite make it, I think I i would choose Mrs Joan Child. Mrs Child wanted to go to Canberra as the only woman in the newly-elected House of Representatives. She very nearly made it, missing by a hairsbreadth unseating the sitting Liberal member (and former Government Whip) for the electorate of Henty, a middle-class, sprawling, south-eastern suburban area; of Melbourne. Mrs Child is a widow! whose husband died when | her five sons were young.! She brought them up on ai widow’s pension and what she could make in the way of a bit extra by cleaning [other people’s houses. I That gave her a burning interest in welfare problems, not just the problems of widows but of the old, the disadvantaged, and the unhappy, like the lonely housewife. NO RECOUNT As a life-long Labour supporter, she translated her interest and her energy into trying to get into Parliament. When they finally finished counting the votes in Henty —some time after most of the other election results were known—she found there had been a 10.6 per cent swing towards her. In fact, only a handful of preference votes stood between her and election. But while she said she felt the electorate had spelled out pretty clearly that it wanted a Labour member to represent them in Parliament, she wouldn’t ask for a recount because they didn’t want a “frivolous recount.” There are, of course, some people who have received [just what they wanted in the [Christmas handout. There is I Shane Gould, who is successfully shedding the nine pounds which, it has just [been revealed, she was carryling in over-weight when she i won her three gold, one silver and one bronze swimming [medals at the Munich Olympics. Germaine Greer came back to Australia to pick up 550,000 for four television shows and said she might think about coming back to

live now there has been a change of Government. Skippy, the kangaroo television star, became the mother of a boy joey. The father was Taillight, an old man ’roo who’s worked as an extra in the series which hasj been shown in 84 countries. A move was started to give non-unionists a union. This follows warnings by Commonwealth Public Service unions that the extra week’s (leave promised by the new ■Federal government, will only be given to union members. The union for non-unionists ■ — the Independent Workers’ (Association — has as its aim looking after the interests of people not in a union. THEATRE FARE And if anybody is getting something they really need over the holidays jt is the i children and their parents who enjoy films. After the wave of “R” classification films (restricted to those over 18 years) which have flooded Sydney’s cinemas and leaving “Fiddler on the Roof” as the only place you could take the family, these holiday’s have come up with plenty for the young. The Australian Opera has done a season of Lehars’s “Merry Widow,” which had the purists looking down their noses a bit but turned out to be a bubble bath of fun. Alan Marshall’s storv of his crippled childhood, “I Can Jump Puddles”; the film version of “Man of La Mancha,” arid “Young Winston,” Walt Disney’s “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” are all in town under a “G” classification. Out in the suburbs there are a few others, such as a reissue of “Swiss Family Robinson.” There are at least half a dozen pieces of “live” theatre going on specifically for children as well as “J.C. Superstar,” and “Godspell,” which are not specifically intended for them but would probably not do them much harm. “Bazza” McKenzie has moved the film version of his R-classified “Adventures” out of the Ascot Theatre in Pitt Street to the more suitable i atmosphere of King’s Cross. | To the Ascot has come the ■ gentler world of Beatrix Pot- | ter — choreography by Frederick Ashton, music by John Lanchebery, danced by the Royal Ballet and helped on its way bv a recommendation from Sir Robert Helpmann to SPA ir and tnk-p thp familv