Orator! Orator!
ORATOR! ORATOR!
(Where have all the great speeches gone? Time to ask the hard rhetorical question.)
(c) David Astle
“Ladies and gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I shall carry on without further ado…”
Still awake? I can’t imagine why. There is nothing as deadly as a dull speech. Clichés, jargon, monotone and meandering can all outstrip hemlock in their crowd-killing qualities. Abraham Lincoln was lucky the crowd was still awake in 1863. The president climbed to his feet in Gettysburg, hot on the heels of a two-hour speech from statesman Edward Everett that nearly killed as many Americans as the recent Civil War, figuratively speaking.
After Everett’s 13,609 purple words, the crowd was willing for eternal sleep. A tuba blast from the Marine Corps failed to revive the mob. Then up stepped Lincoln, stovepipe hat in hand, and spoke. His Gettysburg Address, a three-minute dedication to democracy and the war-dead, entered every heart – and world history. “…government of the people, he coined, “by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Gough Whitlam, fresh from his sacking in 1975, seized the limelight for 100 words fewer than Lincoln, coining “Kerr’s cur” on Parliament steps and calling on the faithful to “maintain the rage”.
Whitlam’s speech was grand stuff, regardless of your political stripes. A terse, dignified address loaded with wit, venom, inspiration – and not a scrap of paper to be seen. No autocue. No fluff. Folklore says Lincoln drafted his own immortal words on the back of an envelope before letting memory and the moment lead the podium charge. Gough is thought to have shaped his words over a steak lunch, within an hour of his dismissal.
More recently, Russell Crowe stunned his sternest critic at the Oscars on receiving his Gladiator gong in 2001. Not with his fists – or his phone – but with oratory. Before the orchestra could interrupt, the bad boy of Hollywood had cast a hush over the glitterati, invoking his ancestors, his parents and “anybody on the downside of advantage”. On a night of ego and excess, his speech stirred the blood.
Accepting a prize, burying a father, toasting a bride – all of us will make speeches in our lives. With due respect, most will be forgettable. As phobias go, glossophobia (or fear of public speaking) is a heavyweight. Cricketer Michael Slater, skippering the PM’s XI in 1997, admitted to a deeper fear delivering the marquee address than facing the fiercest South African quick.
He’s not alone. In the Age of Terror, Gallup polls across the US nominate public speaking as among superpower’s rifest fears. Shark tanks seem alluring compared to facing a crowd and giving voice to your thoughts. It’s torture. Yet more and more of us are up for the challenge.
Like Martin Luther King – one of oratory’s finest – Australians have a dream: to speak, and speak well, in front of an audience. Look no further than the 10,500 Australians biting the bullet at Toastmasters any night of the week, a non-profit network devoted to fostering eloquence and leadership. The movement began in California more than 80 years ago and now boasts 500 clubs in Australia alone, including Eltham Bowling Club in outer Melbourne where Diamond Valley Toastmasters meet most Monday nights.
A horseshoe of tables is occupied by 20 souls in varying stages of glossophobia. Their goal is to speak for the next three hours, and provide feedback for other speakers, refining their craft along the way. I sit below a portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth – herself no slouch before a mike – and ponder the question: where have all our great speeches gone?
Rusty moments aside, we live in a time of Oration Deprivation. Ours is the era of soundbite and media grab. Instead of argument and intellectual engagement, state and federal ministers dole out snubs or think-tank slogans – um-free and tailored for the news. “The problem now,” says Alan Whiticker, editor of “Speeches That Shaped the Modern World”, “is politicians are so glossed over, so airbrushed, so PC, they won’t go out on a limb and say something.”
For all his fine speeches, Paul Keating will be better remembered for the barbed mot that guaranteed his airtime. (At various stages, his Liberal opponents were deemed “intellectual hoboes” and “antediluvian troglodytes” who “could not operate a tart shop”.)
Meantime every polly from Rudd to Ruddock rehearse their respective slogans (Knowledge Nation, Cut and Run, un-Australian, Be Alert) for the gauntlet they run from Commonwealth car to the House of Reps.
Back at the bowling Club, William Higgins is shy, but a sublime public speaker, thanks to his 18 years of Toastmaster grooming. The 36-year-old actuary has won the Blarney Stone – the club award for best ad-lib speaker – on more occasions than an actuary can count. “But the most difficult speech I’ve ever given was to 300 people at my mother’s funeral. Dad couldn’t face it.”
For the next three hours, a personal trainer, a teacher, a psych student and a dozen others in the bowls club “face it”. One by one they march to the lectern, defy their demons and deliver. Topics range from ad-lib to scripted, from 60 seconds to seven minutes. Applause is genuine and peer review warm.
“Toastmasters is on a wave,” says Ian Chick, public relations officer for the NSW and ACT district. “I put the reason down to the workplace getting tougher. People are finding they’ve got to compete more and they need an edge – and they get the edge from being able to express themselves.” In the last year, numbers have leapt by a quarter, with all ages, cultures and professions in the mix. “We’ve had business people, solicitors, and a final-year doctor who couldn’t pass his orals.”
Plato, the Greek father of rhetoric, defined the art of speech-making as persuasion. Michael Fullilove, a speechwriter, and director of the global issues program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, believes most fine speeches are arguments. “They step an audience through – point by point. That sort of speech blows my hair back.”
Fullilove, 33, has hunted down our finer lectern spells as a nation, compiling a speech collection called “Men and Women of Australia”. Sir Robert Menzies (opposing communism: “Liberty in not an abstraction”) and PM Ben Chifley (inspiring loyalty: “the light on the hill”) are two paragons to be found in the book.
“When I was growing up,” confesses Fullilove, 33, “I used to read great speeches like those of Kennedy and Churchill. I got the feeling that very best speeches were given in a foreign accent.”
Years of trawling the public record have opened Fullilove’s eyes to the trove of homegrown oratory – though most are historic, evoking the heyday of PMs Deakin, Hughes and Menzies. “Speeches are time capsules. You dig it up, you open it and it’s just a glimpse into another time.”
Researching his own book, Alan Whiticker found most riches lay in the remote past, from the battle cry of General Patton to the poetic pacifism of Gandhi. “I mean which [John] Howard speech do we put in there?” says Whiticker. “Will we be talking about his workplace reform speech in 50 years’ time?”
The problem now, he says, is that “politicians stick to party line. Nobody would have the balls to say what JFK said to the Russians in 1962 [informing Cubans, during the Missile Crisis, that “your lives and land are being used as pawns by those who deny your freedom.”
“Even President Reagan,” says Whiticker, with a hint of homage, “called Russia the evil empire.” So what about the Axis of Evil? “That’s a brand-name,” scoffs Whiticker. “Bush lacks the rhetoric to back it up.”
Graham Freudenberg, the mercurial speechwriter behind Whitlam, as well as NSW Premiers Neville Wran and Bob Carr, equates the speech as the “prayer in Australia’s secular life”, yet steadily our public prayers are evaporating.
Though Fullilove remains a true believer. “The general level of background noise has increased,” he says, “but the single note of a good speech can penetrate it.” He nominates the recent Bali survivor – Joe Frost – as an example. Two months ago, the 20-year-old Newcastle student froze a memorial service with simple rhetoric: “Why did this happen? Apparently it’s about religion.”
Media, commonly, is cast as the culprit for Australia’s incredibly shrinking speech. Take, for example, the poignant speech of Governor-General Sir William Dean in 1999 – paying tribute to the Contiki canyoners in Switzerland. The moving whole was downsized to a blessing on most bulletins, plus 14 wreaths spinning on the surface. Slat by slat, the soapbox has been remodeled into the soap opera of current affairs.
Another possible cause of the disappearing speech is the slow death of the public meeting, where so many notable orations have been delivered in the past. Such a forum, writes Freudenberg in Fullilove’s foreword, “has been reduced to a nullity…not because people won’t come, but because it suits the convenience and self-interests of governments..”
As members of the audience, our own attention span, diminishing in sync with the ozone layer, is a further threat to Demosthenes down-under. Nowadays we flick and surf. Our focus is all too prone to wander. We glaze in the stream of corporate-speak and vote with our mouse fingers.
Mind you, dull speeches have a silver lining. Fullilove is grateful for one address he heard in 1999, the message afflicted by a heavy Spanish accent. The setting was Oxford University. “The speech was given by Xavier Solana, the Secretary-General of NATO. Halfway through the speech I was getting bored so looked around the hall and my eyes fell on this beautiful woman. We smiled at each other.” Gillian Charlton, a Canadian grad in history, is now his wife.
A fairy tale finish. If only every other brain-dead drone led to romance and healthy baby boy. Most bring sleep, or that glazed state of non-attention, as the Power Point tables flicker on the screen, the press release is read aloud, the tedious toast kills the bubbly and the passive language festers.
Clubs like Toastmasters are out to revive a fading art. Measured by bells and chess clocks, the Diamond Valley meeting has run three lively hours. Grammar is jokily reviewed. Grunts and ums are tallied. The Harkmaster – a monthly role shared within each club – tests how well we’ve been listening to the speeches. Little by little, 20 glossophobes will shed a little fear.
With fear the key word. According to Fullilove, the world’s troubled times demand the rebirth of fine speeches. Our hunger for strong, wise, compassionate words is primal. “There are no bigger issues than war, terrorism, industrial reform – they affect the lives of so many Australians. Great speeches can change policy. They can change lives. The time is ripe to step up to the lectern.”
BREAKOUT
HOW TO WRITE A GREAT SPEECH IN 7 EASY STEPS
+ Identify the speech’s aim – to persuade, amuse, enthuse, honour or instruct.
+ Bear that aim – and your audience – in mind. Constantly.
+ Build in a big idea – the engine at the centre of most great speeches. In 2002 Julian Burnside QC built his speech on asylum seekers around the tenet: “They are not illegals; they are human beings.”
+ Tell stories. The ploy is as old as Aesop and no less vital. “It was during the bombing of Baghdad,” opened writer John Doyle, for last year’s Andrew Olle Media Lecture – a yearly speech worth catching. + Fresh, active language speaks to all. “This is what we are going to do,” said Churchill, at the heart of his “finest hour” speech in 1940.
+ Style and tempo are the keys to delivery. Tony Abbott didn’t just debunk the republican movement in 1999, he dubbed it “Constitutional Viagra”. Coin a phrase. Leave your stamp.
+ Believe in what you say, as much as having something to say. “Australian audiences,” says speechwriter Michael Fullilove, “are good at sniffing fraud.”
ZINGER LINES FROM THE LECTERN
“[Malcolm Fraser] is the cutlery man of Australian politics. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, speaks with a forked tongue and knifes his colleagues in the back.” Opposition leader Bob Hawke of PM Malcolm Fraser, 1975
“English teams of recent years have played Test cricket with all the power and passion of a John Hewson speech about macwoenomic weform.” Andrew Denton, in a tribute to Allan Border, 1994.
“[Terrace houses] are inhabited almost solely by architects, advertising people and raving poofters – of impeccable taste.” Barry Humphries at National Press Club, 1978
“You look like an Easter Island statue with an arse full of razor blades.” PM Paul Keating to former PM Malcolm Fraser
“Nobody likes to be called a liar. But to be called a liar by Bill Clinton is a unique experience.” Ross Perot, presidential candidate, 1996
“Mrs Thatcher is doing for monetarism what the Boston Strangler did to door-to-door salesmen.” Denis Healey, Shadow Foreign Secretary, 1979
[Sunday Life, March 2006]