"Keep the bastards honest" is a view former Queensland premier Campbell Newman probably holds.
Except unlike late Democrats founder Don Chipp, Newman's "bastards" aren't the politicians, they are the media.
His brutal assessment of the press came as he found out he was destined to lose the state election as his cavalcade aimlessly circled the tarmac at Cairns Airport on a sweltering January afternoon in 2012.
"That's the last press conference I will ever have to do ... that's the last time I'll ever have to talk to that pack of bastards," he said at the time, according to his new tell-all book.
Newman is still cranky about the media's alleged culpability in his unlikely downfall just over eight months ago.
He bemoans how journalists were always obsessed with "internal machinations" and personalities rather than policy when he was premier.
"Journos are only covering what's happening inside the Beltway," he is quoted in his tell-all book.
But much of political reporting is trying to give voters a peek inside the mysterious realm of political decision-making.
Politicians from both sides often fail to give honest or coherent explanations for highly controversial decisions.
And the Newman government fed the fascination with inside the Beltway, as former US president Richard Nixon described the ring-road surrounding Washington, from the very beginning.
Former treasurer Peter Costello's appointment to audit of the state's finances, the perceived influence of the lobbyist sons of former ministers Bruce Flegg and Ros Bates, and Liberal National Party party figure Michael Caltabiano's appointment as Director-General of Transport all raised questions.
Freed from the chains of political office, Newman frankly admits some of his decisions were "dud politically".
But he has maintains they "were in the best interests of Queenslanders" without offering any deeper dissection of his decisions.
A lack of consultation is given as a key reason his government managed to get so many groups and individuals offside.
Newman and his family were also the victims of vicious insults and unsubstantiated claims of impropriety during the 2012 election.
The harsh criticism led to Newman developing a siege mentality that seeped into his media strategy.
The government's habit of providing responses late in the evening, if at all, allowed his media savvy opponents to frame the policy debate throughout the day.
There was a public perception that his government had surrendered on policy debate because they didn't care what voters thought any more and were willing to absorb an electoral backlash.
His final departure from advocacy was sealed when he claimed the Labor Party had been financed by the bikies during the election.
It the premier's most damaging miscalculation of the campaign.
The backlash over those claims dogged Newman in the dying days of the election.
Campbell Newman always saw the media as an adversary rather than an advocate. That hostility came to define him.
It still does.
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