``SUDDENLY,'' says Tim Costello,
``everybody wants to know you.'' The celebrity preacher once voted a national
living treasure is sitting in an unglamorous office without air-conditioning
high above his Baptist church in Collins Street.
It's been a big month: elected
president of the Baptist Union of Australia, on the publicity trail for
his new book, Tips From a Travelling Soul-Searcher, a series of reflections
on life, and involved in discussions to possibly replace Malcolm Turnbull
as leader of the Australian Republican Movement.
He's everywhere, mobile
phone seemingly Araldited to his ear. Up here Costello is pondering the
life he leads, mixing it with powerbrokers on the national stage, versus
the one he used to lead, often on the phone all day trying to find homes
in St Kilda for people dislocated by drugs, prostitution and unemployment.
``...Too many flights to
interstate venues with five-star hotels are actually changing you,'' Costello
admits. ``And it does change you. The blandishments, the allurements, actually
soften your edge. You don't speak with the directness and truthfulness
that you once might have. Who you mix with and how they see the world rubs
off.
``People see me as a stepping
stone to their causes - many of them good - (and) they will tell you very
flattering things: `You really speak for us.' I had someone the other day
trying to tell me I was the Archbishop Tutu of Australia. I cringed terribly.
I felt awful. Tutu has lived with the most oppressive racism and evil and
this context is so soft.''
It is a fleeting shock to
learn that even the humblest of men is unable to entirely resist the seduction
of fame. It is also surprising to hear him talk about it. ``I hope I'm
not as influenced as others I've noticed. From one extreme - cash for comment
- to the other utterly ascetic stream where, some would say, in my position,
even when they're paying, you should never stay in a five-star hotel, or
whatever. There's a whole continuum of allurement between those two extremes
and I hope I'm nearer the ascetic still.''
It's hard to be ascetic
when you're a hot ticket on the speaking circuit, you've got a strong message,
good delivery and a name that dramatically raises the chance of getting
media coverage. Out come the schmoozers. And with it the compromises.
``When you're in a context
where they've paid for you to be there and read a CV with flattering words
of how privileged they are to have you speaking to them... If you wanted
to say some harder things, it's much harder to say them.''
The PRs work him over. ``It's
terrific, what you say, and we want you to speak at this and will you come
and have dinner with us?'' Costello says of his many invitations. ``It's
a natural defence mechanism that says you know that people probably are
interested in you and want to become your friend a little bit because of
your profile or name and you push them away. And it becomes a learned response.
You actually push people away.''
Pushing people away is a
concept hitherto alien to Costello. As a churchman whose constituency was
the people of St Kilda, with all that city's drug, alcohol and youth problems,
he has spent his adult life bringing people closer to him and to those
who can help.
The making of Tim Costello
as an influential and ubiquitous national social commentator began when
he was deciding whether to stay at the St Kilda Baptist Church or move
to a city church. His St Kilda friends encouraged him to move on, telling
him he was now too big for that fractured city.
Costello grew big slowly.
He became a passionate and articulate opponent of the Kennett revolution,
speaking out about the disturbing number of poker machines at Crown, taking
Kennett on when it was unfashionable to do so. With God on his side and
Jeff on the other, it was a neat set-piece, which the media lapped up.
To some, Costello became
Victoria's great party-pooper. To others, he became a courageous folk hero.
He wrote a book, Streets of Hope, on his life in St Kilda. He became a
star republican campaigner. More recently, at the weekend, he parachuted
out of a plane for charity into a community fair, wired for comment as
he came down, spreading his message even as he floated to Earth.
Indeed, he is so big that
even Sydney is interested in him. An interview was placed prominently in
The Sydney Morning Herald last month talking about the ``other'' Melbourne
with the ``other'' Costello, the brother the journalist described as the
``marginally more famous but arguably less powerful Peter (the federal
Treasurer)''.
The man of the cloth, the
champion of the underclasses, spends more time today talking to politicians,
business leaders and the media than in soup kitchens with his flock. It
is the price of fame, the result of the media finding someone in the church
prepared to challenge some of the Kennett orthodoxies and unafraid to be
contemporary.
Tim Costello's name went
national largely because of Jeff Kennett. He first became known with his
struggle against council amalgamation. ``He (Kennett) wanted to dissolve
us and the St Kilda community, by and large, didn't want to be dissolved.''
And then big things began
to be built, notably Crown casino. In a state where once Sundays meant
great difficulty buying a bottle of wine, you could now gamble 24hours
a day, seven days a week, including half of Anzac Day.
Somebody had to say something, even though criticism was ``un-Victorian''.
Tim Costello's time had come. He used the media as much as it used him.
If one was said to have had a good war, Costello can be said to have had
a good Kennett.
Kennett had inadvertently
conferred even greater martyr status on Costello by saying he wasn't really
a minister but a politician in disguise ``hiding behind the cloth''.
``Kennett was a master at
marginalising you,'' Costello says. ``To call me a politician was clever,
ironical and ultimately dishonest, because the role of clergy being voices
engaging in public issues is not a political role, it's as old as the prophets
of the eighth century.
``There's no doubt Victorians
were suffering a loss of confidence and in some ways that loss of confidence
was a social and democratic masochism where they said: `We've been spendthrifts,
we've been profligate, we do deserve to be punished,' and Kennett fitted
the times perfectly. He said: `I'll punish you, I'll rein it in.'''
But while Kennett slashed
and burned in an attempt to rein in debt, the poor ``copped the most'',
Costello says. ``At times during those seven years I felt a bit like a
lone wolf saying that.''
It is a measure of Costello's
honesty that he recognises he has changed. Seven years ago, he was a slightly
dishevelled figure with a casual shirt open at the neck and adrift at the
trouser, pacing up and down outside St Kilda's Galleon Cafe, talking into
a mobile phone.
He was a very un-mayoral
mayor, a hands-on helper of drug addicts, prostitutes, schizophrenics,
psychiatric patients and street kids. Inside, over a hot chocolate, Costello
told his story, or the stories of St Kilda of which he was a part: dining
with a sex-worker, heroin-addict client at a soup kitchen; physically restraining
a woman from pouring petrol over her rented housing with a view to burning
it down; the schizophrenics and special-accommodation people heckling him
during his sermons before slipping out for a smoke. After the interview,
he asked for a lift home because he didn't own a car.
The first feature article
on him, in The Sunday Age in 1993, was headlined ``Saint Tim'', but his
wife, Merridie, said: ``He's not a saint, and you can quote me on that.''
It announced to a wider audience the irony of Peter Costello, then an economic
rationalist Liberal MP, having a brother who helped people on the streets.
When his brother became
Treasurer, the link between them - the siblings Phillip Adams has called
``the most interesting brothers since Cain and Abel'' - became even more
irresistible. And still the ``brother'' stories are written. When Peter
on the right and Tim on the left joined forces on the republic issue, the
story then was ``brothers actually agree!''
Seven years on, Merridie
Costello has seen changes in her husband from the St Kilda community worker
to the high-flyer in the glamorous hotels who finds it hard to say no.
``The context is so much broader in terms of who he rubs shoulders with,''
she says. ``The five-star hotels ... it's seeing another side of life,
one he hadn't been exposed to. He's got a very good sense of humor and
he's a self-mocker. He often ringsfrom these five-star hotels and describes
it and says: `I wish you were here,' and I say: `Someone's got to do an
honest day's work.'''
Merridie Costello says he
finds his work fascinating. ``I don't think it goes to his head, but he
finds it stimulating... He's often very surprised by the powerful reaction
his words have on people. He comes back from conferences saying: `They
came up to me in tears.'''
Watching her husband being
feted is a curious experience, she says. ``His sense of honesty and integrity
is critical to the role he plays. I know there would be many temptations
for him to be pulled away from that. I fear a little bit the impact of
celebrity status because I think it can undermine people very quickly and
make them a victim, particularly when it comes to a person who's taken
a stand in terms of values and in a spiritual context.''
Costello's warm relationship
with the media isn't shared by the household on weekends. ``It can be pretty
intoxicating being recognised, always called upon (for a quote),'' Merridie
Costello says. ``I get sick of the mobile phone and I always want it turned
off. When a hot issue's running, Tim will say `Oh, no one's rung me today,
what's wrong?' We have a family joke, `He's at it again.' We say `Go out
of the room, we don't want to hear it.'''
Costello's desire for an
even larger stage, federal politics, still percolates. ``I have to be honest
and say every time an election comes round there's just a little bit of
itchiness and restlessness,'' he says.
The seduction of Tim Costello
began as early as 1994. In his new book he reveals that the then Democrats
leader, Cheryl Kernot, came knocking in 1994. Later, bizarrely, Michael
Kroger invited him to the Savage Club to persuade him to join the Liberals.
He was concerned that, should
he accept the Democrats' offer, he would be pitted against his brother
in Parliament, which would have upset his parents. He asked a journalist
confidante whether ``the sibling stuff would ever go away''. The journalist
confirmed that it almost certainly would not. He decided that his brother's
presence had blocked his career, and for a while ``the injustice of that
burned very brightly''.
Has the ``sibling stuff''
worked more favorably for Tim than Peter? ``It's worked very favorably
for me insofar as I have all care and no responsibility,'' he says. ``It
works favorably for him because there are some people who say: `Well, if
his brother Tim thinks that, he (Peter) must be OK too.'''
It doesn't matter how big
he gets, Tim Costello will always have his family - and especially his
17-year-old daughter Claire - to keep him down to earth. ``I watch my daughter
talking on the phone, tapping something into her e-mail, listening to music
and the radio on, and I say: `You can't do all this,' and she says: `Go
away, you're boring.''
``My greatest humiliations in life come from my kids. For a while there
with my daughter, I wasn't allowed to be seen because I turned up once
to pick her up from tenpin bowling in my slippers. She was so embarrassed.
She said: `How could you humiliate me in front of my friends? You are such
a nerd.' I said: `Well tell your friends I love you and I'm a good father,'
and she said: `That won't do, you're a nerd.'
``It's very difficult (for
them),'' he says. ``As my daughter said to me, `We've got the trifecta:
you're a reverend, you're a reverend in the media and, what's worse, you
often go and speak at schools where our friends are. Bad trifecta.''