ELLIS ON MONDAY Monday, July 14, 1997 A black mark for Australia In judging bad character this Government has shown its true colours, writes BOB ELLIS. I'M ON the board of the new Sydney Writers' Week, and I was happy for a while. I had this plan of a big-name short list - Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman, Arthur Miller, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, Norman Mailer and Arthur Schlesinger jnr. Then Lorenzo Ervin was arrested because of his bad character and I realised they all could be too. Woody Allen is widely believed to be a pederast. Ingmar Bergman, a three-wives-in-the-bath man from way back, absconded from Sweden and stayed away 10 years to evade his income tax. Arthur Miller, a former communist, in the McCarthyist era wrote a play, The Crucible, that mocked his government and advocated its overthrow. Norman Mailer stabbed his wife while running for mayor of New York and, while filming Maidstone, bit off Rip Tom's ear. Arthur Schlesinger as official Kennedy historian hid the family's Mafia connections and Jack's womanising. And Lord Jenkins, while Harold Wilson's Home Secretary, allowed the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover, a tract that favours heterosexual sodomy. Men of bad character indeed. Amanda Vanstone might protest that she would deal with these men on a case-by-case basis but I dare not suggest them now. Some would say hijacking a plane to Cuba is qualitatively different as a character defect to molesting children, advocating buggery, dodging tax and planning Marxist revolution. But I don't think this Government does. These names must be pricked down, along with the Nobel Laureate Yasser Arafat, the revisionist historian David Irving and Gerry Adams, the hero of his country. Some bad characters luckily are dead or the visitors' blacklist would be longer. Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin, and the Jewish terrorists. Menachem Begin, who blew up the King David Hotel, killing scores of English. Robert Mitchum, alumnus of a chain gang, rejailed for drug use. Jimmy Stewart who, as a pilot, killed innocent women and children in the terror bombing of Germany. Henry Fonda, two of whose wives suicided. J. Edgar Hoover, the cross-dressing blackmailer and Mafia dupe. Lucky for them. George Bush is alive, of course, once head of a world-wide terrorist organisation called the CIA. Teddy Kennedy, the drunken womaniser suspected of murder. Mike Tyson the convicted rapist and, like Mailer, ear-biter. Jane Fonda, who flew to Hanoi to give comfort (and possible weight-loss advice) to her nation's enemies. They must also be pricked down. Supposing you argue that hijacking-and-kidnapping is different, even at the age of 19, even while fleeing for your life from the FBI, who have gunned down many of your colleagues - behaving like many a freedom fighter in many a modern country: Nicaragua, South Africa. Even though nobody died and you served 14 years and got an eventual pardon from your fellow terrorist Bush. Is it hijacking and kidnapping that makes his character different? Or is it his colour? For if it isn't his colour, and his awareness of it, what is the good senator afraid he will do here? Hijack a Qantas 727 to New Zealand and drink all the first-class champagne? Teach Aborigines how to kidnap, throw bombs, make speeches? Why, after behaving well in 22 countries, will he suddenly go mad and turn criminal here? I'm sure she can't say. All she really wants to do is give a black man a hard time for talking to blacks about black wrongs with eloquence. Racism is, above all other things, a product of stupidity. Amanda Vanstone is either a very stupid woman or the mouthpiece of a very stupid Prime Minister - one who doesn't mind making us look like crazy bigots before a baffled world. Let's test it a little further. Let's ask these morons if they propose to keep O.J. Simpson out, on the grounds of his character. And Muhammad Ali, the draft dodger and Black Muslim separatist. Let's test it out on some big black names for a change. Do it, Amanda. Do it. --- Bob Ellis is a speechwriter, playwright and film director. Jim McClelland is on leave.