With the nation staring down the barrel of its first recession in two decades, it seems appropriate that the man most closely associated with our last downturn should pass away at this point in time. This is a moment in which we can reflect on the legacy of Alan Bond, a man who was both Australian of the Year and convicted fraudster.
There is some confusion in the media on how to best represent him. News has called him resilient, a tenacious man with a downside and a trailblazer who put WA on the map. Fairfax has gone the other way, emphasising the negative, describing him as a deal-maker gone wrong, leaving a bad taste and as the man who tricked Australia. The ABC has tried to straddle these two paths, with the usual 'hero and villain' and 'difficult to describe' paths. Not to say that this kind of balance is necessarily wrong in this case, it's just rather typical of the ABC.
The BBC only used one word to describe him: disgraced.
The ABC's Ian Verrender was also more willing to move along these lines, in a way that did not merely critique the man (as Fairfax is), but examining the society which enabled him to do the things he did.
How is that a man responsible for losing billions of dollars of other people's money, a man renowned for his lack of empathy for those hardest hit by his deal making, and a man who always ensured he made a personal profit regardless of whether his companies were doing likewise, manages to paint himself as 'Bondy', a good bloke who will be missed?
It's worth looking at who those most likely to praise the man are. These are almost always people who had personal dealings with Bond. There seems to be no doubt that Bond's ability to charm was first rate. Even those sceptical of the man became susceptible to his ways. He seems to have had a natural ability to convince anyone and everyone that he would make everything work out.
It is a fundamental part of being human that we should want to believe others. We want others to tell us the truth, and when they can do it with such confidence like Bond did, we almost feel we owe it to them not only to trust what they're saying, but to defend them too.
Bond leading the charge for the America's Cup certainly helped. No matter that the funding was (probably) mostly done with other people's money, the win in 1983 managed to turn him into a national hero. 'He' took on the Goliath of the US, refusing to give up and, thanks to a bit of ingenuity, eventually won.
It turned a non-event into a national celebration, and cemented him in the history of the nation forever. Bond then spent the remainder of the decade borrowing, buying and selling, all off the back of that one campaign. He was a winner, and society was loving winners like never before. Winners, in the 80s, had wealth, and Bond promised immense wealth for you if you lent to him.
When it all came crumbling down, thousands upon thousands lost their own wealth. Bond didn't, and soon enough he had worked his way back up to the top of the tree, on the back of mining in Africa. No-one seemed to bat an eyelid at this convicted fraudster becoming so wealthy again. Bond was still, for many, a winner, and Australians love a winner.
This is the legacy that Bond leaves us with. He represented what many call the worst of the 80s - greed is good - and yet in his death we didn't see him being denounced for epitomising this belief. This was true in his life as well. It is understandable that we should not wish to speak ill of the dead in the immediate aftermath of their death, but it does not seem Australia will ever seem interested in facing up to the truth of Alan Bond. Today, though we may try to hide it, we're still a society based around personal wealth and in getting ahead of the rest.
But if everyone wants to be a winner, some have to lose. What kind of society is that?
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