Hungo

This blog has on occasion made mock of Mungo MacCallum in these his declining years, but occasionally he has seen his predictions come true. Admittedly, not in 1992, when he wrote in the Weekend Australian Magazine just before the Tasmanian election that the State's Hare-Clark electoral system ("also known as the 'Hare-Brained System'.... ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Brilliant! Never heard that one before!) was certain to deliver a hung parliament.

But back in the day, at the height of his powers, Mungo was indeed a journalistic force to be reckoned with, for in 1977 he managed to predict the result of an election one-third of a century later:

"... Win, lose or draw (a very real possibility which must be causing the incoming Governor-General, Sir Zelman Cowen, the odd sleepless night)..."

- "Malcolm's Last Joke," Nation Review, 1-7 December 1977), repub as Chapter 21 in Mungo on the Zoo Plane: Elections 1972-77 (UQ Press, 1979), p 196.

As did John Howard's former chief of staff, Grahame Morris, back in the now-expunged era of the Latham Ascendancy:

"There is every chance after the election the Prime Minister will have to wake up every morning worrying about what Bob Katter had for breakfast."

- Glenn Milne, Hamstrung by the minors," The Australian (6 September 2004).