Gerard Henderson's Speeches, Essays and Correspondence

This is an edited version of Gerard Henderson's Address to the Australian Liberal Student's Federation 2006 Federal Council
The Howard Government and the Culture Wars

5th July 2006 (The postscripts were added after the talk)

Many thanks for the invitation. Earlier this year, I spoke at the Australian National University on the phenomenon of the Howard-haters. Subsequently I addressed the Fabian Society in Sydney on the general topic of “John Howard: Ten Years On”. Both talks are on The Sydney Institute’s website. Today I intend to focus on a particular aspect of the Howard Government.

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I do not share the disdain – which frequently presents as cynicism – of Australian politicians that finds expression in the work of all too many journalists, academics and commentators. Never have. In my view, Australia has been well governed since European settlement in 1788. The one obvious exception has turned on the policy failures which occurred consequent upon the interaction of a modern Western society with a traditional indigenous society. For the rest, certainly mistakes have been made by governments and their advisers. But error is part of the human condition – and has been ever since The Fall. The facts indicate that, when compared with other democracies, Australia has been relatively well governed. And, of course, all democracies deliver better outcomes than dictatorships – however benign.

THE AUSTRALIAN ACHIEVEMENT – NOT LUCK

In his ironically titled book The Lucky Country, Donald Horne proclaimed the notion that “Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck”. This was a harsh assessment, judged by empirical evidence, when first made over four decades ago. It remains a harsh judgment after Mr Horne’s death on 8 September 2005.

Contemporary Australia illustrates the point. The economic reform process commenced in early 1983 under the social democratic Labor government, led by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. There were a few reforms during Malcolm Fraser’s prime ministership – but not many. The few that there were involved John Howard – either in his position as Minister for Business and Consumer Affairs or, later, as Treasurer.

Between March 1983 and March 1996 the Hawke/Keating government floated the currency, deregulated the financial system, commenced the privatisation process, substantially reduced protection, reformed the tax and welfare systems and commenced the process of deregulation of what had become perhaps the most centralised industrial relations system in the Western world.

After March 1996, the Coalition – under the leadership of John Howard and Peter Costello – continued the reform process. The budget was moved from deficit to surplus and the independence of the Reserve Bank to determine monetary policy was formally acknowledged. There was more privatisation, more tax reform and substantial additional industrial relations deregulation – along with some reform in the areas of health and education and welfare plus long overdue reform of the waterfront.

Economic reform in Australia has been underway for close to a quarter of a century. It was preceded by the immigration changes – which commenced in the mid 1960s and were legally implemented in the late 1970s – that saw the end of the White Australia Policy. As a result of social and economic change, Australia has one of the strongest economies in the world. This has made it possible for Australia to experience the impact of the Asian economic downturn of 1997, the United States recession of 2001 and the worst domestic drought in a century – while the Australian economy grew at 3 per cent or more with low inflation and an unemployment rate which halved to under 5 per cent in just a decade. A truly remarkable achievement – which was possible only because of the implementation of economic and social reform by both Labor and the Coalition.

I was in general agreement with the economic and foreign policies of the Hawke/Keating Government. And I have generally agreed with the economic and foreign policies of the Howard Government. From time to time, I have had public disagreements with the Prime Minister. In my view, Australia should have an Australian head of state. So I voted “Yes” – along with Kim Beazley and Peter Costello – at the 1999 referendum on the republic. I have also criticised the unduly harsh administration of mandatory detention for asylum seekers and have generally supported multiculturalism. And I believe that John Howard could have demonstrated more empathy with respect to reconciliation and should have been more critical of the positions of Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party in the mid 1990s.

FAILING IN THE CULTURE WARS

Such disagreements aside, I believe that the Howard Government has been very successful in doing what many administrations find difficult to do – actually implementing policy change. In my view, there is only one area where the Coalition has failed to have a significant impact – namely, in what some have termed “the culture wars”.

The Prime Minister has certainly played a prominent role in the public debate – he has bagged what, in July 1993, Geoffrey Blainey termed the “Black Armband view of history”. What’s more, Mr Howard has attempted to present a more positive interpretation of the Australian achievement. In short, John Howard has taken on what I termed (in an article in the Australia Day issue of The Bulletin on 26 January 1993 – i.e. before Professor Blainey’s entry into the debate) the left-wing interpretation of Australian history to a much greater extent than his predecessors as Liberal Party leader. Including such significant Liberal leaders as Robert Menzies and Malcolm Fraser. Even so, John Howard has had little success in overturning the impact of what has been called the left’s long march through the institutions. A few examples illustrate the point.

THE COALITION AND THE ABC

There is no record of John Howard having made any public criticism of the ABC before he became prime minister in March 1996. The fact is that, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating had a better understanding of the prevailing leftist orthodoxy at the public broadcaster than did Mr Howard and most of his colleagues in the Liberal and National parties. John Howard is the best informed Liberal of his (political) generation. Yet, for whatever reason, he remained quiet about the left-wing interpretation of Australian history through the 1970s, the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s.

In its March 1993 report titled Our ABC, a Senate committee (which was chaired by Richard Alston and which included Liberals Grant Chapman and John Tierney) actually found that “the basic structure of the ABC is sound and that the organisation is considerably stronger and more relevant to the Australian community now than it was ten years ago” and made no recommendation to abolish the staff-elected direction position on the ABC board. How about that? In government, of course, Mr Alston became one of the ABC’s most vocal critics.

It was as if Richard Alston and his politically conservative colleagues were completely unaware of the fashionable leftism which had prevailed at the public broadcaster since at least the 1960s – and which still prevails today. In other words, the conservatives were not as aware of the culture wars of that time as were such social democrats as Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Mr Hawke and Mr Keating knew, from first-hand experience, that the ABC’s in-house leftists invariably criticised Labor from the left. Some conservatives, from the Opposition benches, misunderstood the ABC’s criticism of social democrats as entailing political “balance”. They failed to understand that the left has virtually always opposed social democrats – just as it has always opposed political conservatives.

John Howard became a public critic of the ABC for the first time soon after he became prime minister. In July 1996 Donald McDonald was appointed chairman of the ABC. This evoked two responses – one initial, the other delayed. First up, supporters of the ABC – of the Friends of the ABC genre – alleged that the Howard Government had commenced stacking the ABC Board with conservative appointees and that this would adversely affect ABC programing. Later, critics of the ABC maintained that Mr McDonald had become a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome – that is, the tendency of hostages to empathise with their captors – since his appointment had made virtually no difference to the prevailing ABC culture.

This is another way of saying that Donald McDonald culturally bonded with the ABC’s prevailing leftist ethos and became a defender of the institution he was expected to reform. Well, that’s a theory. Yet it always seemed to me that Donald McDonald was residing in Stockholm at the time of his appointment – so to speak. In my view, Mr McDonald was never likely to reform the ABC because – irrespective of his many abilities – he did not have the political acumen to know what the problem was. Put it another way. John Howard’s decision to appoint Donald McDonald as ABC chairman indicated that the Prime Minister, too, lacked political judgment about what was required to prevail in the culture wars within key Australian institutions.

JOHN HOWARD’S ABC AGENDA – A BALANCE SHEET

Soon after the Donald McDonald appointment, John Howard and several ministers of his government – including Communications Minister Richard Alston – let it be known what reforms they believed the ABC needed to undertake. Put simply, the Howard Government wanted greater pluralism among ABC presenters and a significantly reformed complaints procedure.

The (Failed) Quest for Pluralism

Shortly after becoming Prime Minister, John Howard actually called for the ABC to appoint what he termed a “right-wing Phillip Adams”. This was an unfortunate message since it gave special attention to Mr Adams, whose self-importance led him to run, on 9 May 2001, a “Where is the Right-Wing Phillip Adams?: A Public Forum” segment on his ABC Radio National Late Night Live program. His ego was such that he actually named on air a few conservatives who were invited on the program but who declined to partake of his publicly funded self-indulgence. Around this time senior members of the Howard Government also let it be known that they were not pleased with Kerry O’Brien’s continuing role as presenter of the ABC TV’s 7.30 Report.

A decade later, Phillip Adams remains the public face of ABC Radio National – he is also a self-declared Howard-hater. Witness his claim that John Howard is “as much in control of this country as Ceauscescu was in Romania” and his proposal that “a stretch in Guantanamo Bay might be good for the PM”.

And, a decade later, Kerry O’Brien also remains very much the public face of ABC TV News and Current Affairs. Mr O’Brien’s apparent discomfort with the Howard Government is evident in his tendency to interrupt answers from Coalition ministers which he does not like and to make long statements disguised as questions. Kerry O’Brien has been known to make a statement at the Prime Minister – disguised as a question to the Prime Minister – of some 103 words. Yet the 7.30 Report presenter has been known to interrupt a response to him from a female interviewee after a mere 87 words with the refrain: “I’m sorry; can I get a word in?”

It is notable that Mr O’Brien’s curriculum vitae – posted on the 7.30 Report’s website – makes ample reference to his journalistic experience (including awards won). But it does not refer to Kerry O’Brien’s past employment in Gough Whitlam’s private office, when Mr Whitlam was Labor leader – at a time when the ALP was gripped by irresponsible Whitlamism and before the reforms initiated by such responsible Labor leaders as Bill Hayden and Bob Hawke in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There is no reason why a time as a political staffer should prohibit employment at the ABC. Yet there should be no need to disguise such an event.

These days the sixty-something Mr O’Brien (who lists no personal details in his Who’s Who in Australia entry) is wont to ask the 66 year old John Howard whether the Prime Minister should retire after a decade in the job. No such query is ever raised on the 7.30 Report about its own presenter. Fancy that.

In fact, the ABC is less balanced now than when the Howard Government came to office in March 1996. The ABC has found no conservative presenters – after an apparent ten year search. Sure, on 3 May 2004, the ABC proudly announced that Michael Duffy would present a program titled Counterpoint on Radio National. The implication was that Mr Duffy, on his own, would provide a counterpoint to the prevailing view on the entire network. But has he?

Well, if you happen to be able to listen to Radio National between 4 pm and 5 pm on Monday you will note that Mr Duffy is no “right-wing Phillip Adams”. Nor is he a dedicated follower of the Prime Minister. Take a couple of issues, for example. Michael Duffy gives the impression that he disapproves of private education and favours the government system. In this sense, he sounds more like Mr Adams than Mr Howard. Also it is just two years since, in his biography of Mark Latham, Mr Duffy depicted the erratic former Labor leader as one of the finest politicians of his generation. Really.

In any event, Mr Duffy does not consider himself a conservative. When his Counterpoint gig was announced, Michael Duffy told The Australian (6 May 2004) “I’m really a small-l liberal. I’m not such a conservative. I’m not a Christian, for example.” There have been no such other “counterpoint” appointments of presenters within the pubic broadcaster – in radio or television.
The (Failed) Quest for a Revamped Complaints Procedure

In the early days of the Howard Government, Communications Minister Richard Alston let it be known that be believed that the ABC’s complaints procedure should be substantially revamped. Some changes were made, but they were of a minor kind. The inadequacy of the ABC’s response was demonstrated by its woeful handling of (then) Senator Alston’s own complaint concerning the ABC and the Second Gulf War.

On 28 May 2003, Richard Alston wrote to the (then) ABC managing director Russell Balding complaining that, on some 68 occasions, presenters on the ABC Radio AM program had exhibited “bias” or made assertions which “were highly subjective and not factually based”. It is a matter of debate whether or not this was a wise move for a Communications Minister to take. In any event, it happened. So how did the ABC handle a complaint from its own Minister?

Well, first up, Richard Alston’s letter to Mr Balding was treated as a complaint. So, under the ABC’s complaints procedure, it went first to Murray Green, the head of the ABC’s Complaints Review Executive (CRE). The ABC maintained that this amounted to an “independent review”. This conveniently overlooked the fact that Mr Green, at the time, held the full-time position of the ABC’s State Director Victoria. How independent is that?

On 21 July 2003 Murray Green released his determination on Richard Alston’s complaints. The one-man CRE upheld 2 of the 68 complaints. In the body of his report, Murray Green chose to give his Minister a lecture about the media. He accused Mr Alston of selectively quoting material, of arguing for partisanship, of not understanding political reportage, of not being aware of the international debate, of not being straightforward, of engaging in value judgments and so on. In other words, Mr Green used the occasion of the release of his report to bag the complainant. How professional is that?

On 21 July 2003 Russell Balding issued a statement welcoming Mr Green’s report and declaring that “it vindicates the AM program and its staff in relation to the Minister’s complaint”. It was as if Mr Balding was certain that the matter was resolved – in almost the ABC’s total favour. How wise is that?

When Richard Alston expressed displeasure at the CRE report, Mr Balding referred the remaining 66 matters to the ABC’s Independent Complaints Review Panel (ICRP) – the members of which are appointed by the ABC. The ICRP issued its report on 10 October 2003 and upheld 17 of the extant 68 complaints. This meant that, as of mid October 2003, Richard Alston had won 19 of his 68 complaints – i.e. a 28 per cent success strike rate. Not bad, really, in view of the circumstances.

So how did the ABC respond to the determination of its own complaints handling creation? Not very well.

- Linda Mottram – in her (then) capacity as “Compere, AM” – wrote to The Australian (14 October 2003). She accused the ICRP of lack of “due process” and a denial of “natural justice”. Ms Mottram also accused the ICRP (i) of displaying “a complete lack of understanding of the job of journalism”, (ii) of not understanding “dictionary definitions of words” and (iii) of lacking the necessary “scholarship” and “forensic research” capacity. Subsequently Linda Mottram (The Weekend Australian, 18-19 October 2003) confirmed that she did not accept the ICRP’s findings and declared that, following the ICRP report, “nobody” at the ABC was telling her to “do anything differently”.

- On 3 November 2003, ABC TV Media Watch presenter David Marr devoted the entire program to what he described as “the biggest media story of the year: the Senator’s 68 complaints of bias against the ABC”. Mr Marr proceeded to comprehensively bag the ICRP report – concluding that it was just “not good enough”.

It so happened that, in an article in The Australian published on 31 July 2003, Russell Balding had defended the ICRP against some (earlier) critics and had described any “questioning of the integrity and credibility” of ICRP members as “nothing short of offensive”. So what did Mr Balding do when such senior ABC identities as Ms Mottram and Mr Marr publicly questioned the integrity and credibility of the ICRP? Answer – nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I wrote to Russell Balding about these matters on 28 June 2004. He replied on 2 July 2004, in the following terms:

As I stated publicly at the time the ICRP released its findings, I instructed senior News and Current Affairs management to take note of the ICRP review, particularly in relation to the upheld complaints. This has occurred. How one of the journalists concerned chose to respond publicly to the ICRP report was irrelevant to management’s handling of the findings.

Media Watch is, as you know, a program of opinion and comment. Its critique of the ICRP report was a matter of its own assessment, in accordance with the program’s brief. Media Watch does not represent, and nor does it claim to present, ABC management’s view on particular issues. Given the role of the Media Watch program, it would be quite improper for me as Managing Director to seek to restrict the program from analysing or criticising particular issues, simply because they relate to the business of the ABC.

Talk about the cop-out. Here was the ABC managing director, who also happens to be the ABC’s editor-in-chief, saying that Ms Mottram’s public rejection of the ICRP report was “irrelevant” to him and that he exercised no editorial control whatsoever over Media Watch – despite the fact that it was (and remains) the public broadcaster’s only high profile media commentary outlet.

In time, Richard Alston took his case to the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA). As is its custom, the ABA initially brought down a preliminary investigation report which was circulated only to the respondent for a right-of-reply. Guess what? The ABA draft report – which found for Richard Alston on a further four matters, involving six of Mr Alston’s original complaints – was leaked to Media Watch. On 1 November 2004 David Marr commenced his program by declaring: “I’ve had to read a stack of ABA reports in the three years I’ve been presenting Media Watch but this is probably the silliest so far”. Mr Marr went on to allege that the ABA “doesn’t really know how journalism works”. Virtually the whole of Media Watch was devoted to bagging the ABA – which was variously described as “slovenly”, “dishonest” and “comical”.

So what did Mr Balding say about David Marr’s emotive criticism of the ABA’s draft report? Nothing. Then, on 1 March 2005, following the publication of the final ABA Investigation Report No. 1362 (into the Alston complaint), Russell Balding said that the ABC welcomed “the ABA’s finding” that “AM’s coverage of the war in Iraq…was balanced”. He simply chose to overlook the ABA’s specific finding that the “total…incidences of bias and partiality” found in response to the Alston complaint “compromised the quality of AM’s valuable and extensive coverage of the Iraq War”.

In short, despite the odds against him, Richard Alston prevailed in about a third of his specific complaints. Throughout the process senior ABC operatives bagged him, the ICRP and the ABA – while the ABC managing director said nothing. Clearly the Howard Government’s desire that the ABC’s complaints procedures be substantially improved came to naught.

WHO’S “IN” AT THE ABC?

Meanwhile, have a look at the appointments on the other side of the “balance” equation.

As if the ABC did not have enough in-house leftists, in recent years the public broadcaster has (i) recruited Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton from SBS to present At the Movies on ABC TV; (ii) employed Arena Magazine editor Guy Rundle for the position of executive producer in the ABC arts department; (iii) instituted a round-robin of fashionable leftie presenters for the ABC TV Media Watch program – from Stuart Littlemore, to Richard Ackland, to Paul Barry, to David Marr, to Liz Jackson and on to Monica Attard; and (iv) inaugurated a comedy sketch each Thursday on the 7.30 Report where John Clarke and Bryan Dawe mock conservative and social democrats alike – but invariably from a leftist perspective. Can anyone remember Messrs Clarke and Dawe mocking, say, Senator Bob Brown or his fellow leftists in the Greens, including Senator Kerry Nettle?

It is a matter of amusement to me that, even the increasingly high profile presenter of ABC TV Gardening Australia program, Peter Cundall, has a background in the Communist Party.

Contrary to what the Friends of the ABC set claims, the views of the presenters (and their producers) do matter. A few examples illustrate the point.
- At the Movies
  
  Ms Pomeranz and Mr Stratton have taken their political views to At the Movies.
  
  On 25 November 2004 David Stratton railed against Team America: World Police declaring that he was “really disgusted by this film”. The reason? Well, the ABC reviewer accused the film’s director Trey Parker of “playing into the hands of George W. Bush”. Shocking, eh? So he gave Team America: World Police just one star out of five.
  
  On 15 February 2006, Margaret Pomeranz reviewed Sam Mendes’s film on the First Gulf War titled Jarhead. During the course of her comments, Ms Pomeranz declared that she was “anti-war” (wow) and maintained that “the First Gulf War was an air war”. She should have told that to those ground troops who, sanctioned by the United Nations, drove Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait and into southern Iraq in 1991. Apparently Ms Pomeranz believes that Saddam’s regime should have been allowed to conquer Kuwait. In the event, she gave Jarhead three stars but only on account of the fact that it was “well made”. It seems, that according to At the Movies, films should be primarily assessed according to leftist political principles rather on whether or not they are well made.
- Guy Rundle and Vulture
  
  In 2005 the ABC chose Guy Rundle, one of Australia’s leading Howard-haters, to produce its brand new arts program titled Vulture. At the time Ms Rundle was on the board of the faintly (or is it quaintly?) quasi-Marxist magazine Arena. The comedy writer-cum-arts guru engaged a series of overwhelmingly fashionable leftist panelists who, inter alia, used such concepts as “white middle class” and “capitalism” as terms of abuse. Not one conservative got a gig on the panel. However, the social democrat Peter Craven made some important contributions against the all-pervading fashionable leftism on Vulture. Needless to say, he stood alone.
- ABC TV’s Media Watch
  
  Monica Attard has continued Media Watch’s leftist tradition. Here’s the litmus test – The Age’s in-house leftist cartoonist Michael Leunig.
  
  In 2002 The Age’s (then) editor-in-chief Michael Gawenda refused to publish a Leunig cartoon which equated “Auschwitz 1942” with “Israel 2002”. Media Watch editorialised on 6 May 2002 in favour of Michael Leunig and against Michael Gawenda. No surprise there.
  
  On 20 May 2006 The Age’s (current) editor-in-chief Andrew Jaspan ran a Leunig cartoon proclaiming the “Prime Ministership falls to the person most willing to appeal to the lowest appetites of the population”. No surprise there. However, Alan Oakley, the Sydney Morning Herald editor, decided not to publish Leunig’s cartoon in Fairfax’s Sydney broadsheet. In a personal note to Leunig which was leaked to Media Watch (no surprise there), Mr Oakley said that “regardless of the subject (i.e. the PM)” he “found the whole idea somewhat coarse” and commented that “SMH readers expect something a little more sophisticated, if not subtle”. Monica Attard described Mr Oakley’s decision as simply “wrong”. No surprise there.
- Peter Cundall’s Rave
  
  You would think that the former Communist Party of Australia operative Peter Cundall (he stood as a CPA Senate candidate in the 1961 Federal Election in Tasmania) would concentrate these days on such worthy causes as, say, organic farming. But no. Mr Cundall is still very much a political activist. Billed to address the National Press Club on 3 December 2003 on the topic “The View From The Compost Heap”, Mr Cundall quickly moved into standard-fare leftist rave mode. He bagged “uncontrolled greed”, “the most powerful”, “the invasion of Iraq”, George W. Bush and so on. As Ian Warden commented in the Canberra Times (4 December 2003), Peter Cundall emerged from the address as “someone way to the left of Greens Senator Bob Brown”. Little wonder that he is such a hit with organic farming types at the public broadcaster – see Peter Cundall’s (self-indulgent) self-profile on the cover of the April 2004 issue of Inside the ABC.
- Insiders
  
  In mid 2001 – during Jonathan Shier’s time as managing director – ABC TV News and Current Affairs commenced the Insiders program at 9 am on Sunday morning. This was intended to provide balance on current affairs television – and has done so, to an extent at least. Insiders usually engages one political conservative each week but frequently the remaining panelists argue with the conservative. Yet it’s better than ABC programs where everyone agrees with everyone else, in a fashionably leftist kind of way.
- Terry Lane
  
  There is an old joke told about the debutante who came out – but only until public opinion forced her back in. I was reminded of this when life-long ABC leftie Terry Lane – who wound up his career by presenting The National Interest on ABC Radio National – retired. As soon as Mr Lane announced that he was out – ABC management invited him back in, on a part time basis. It seems that old ABC leftists never die – they just go part-time. So it came to pass that Mr Lane accepted an offer to present a dozen interviews for the Radio National Big Ideas program in 2006. Celebrating the occasion, Terry Lane declared: “I’m not a journalist. I’m an opinionist. Actually, I think I’m really a sort of pseudo-Marxist pessimist”. No wonder he feels at home at the public broadcaster. [See Postscript No. 1]
WHO’S “OUT” AT THE ABC

And then there are the very real exits over the past decade.
- Jana Wendt
  
  After just one series in 1998, Jana Wendt’s Uncensored program was junked by the ABC. It seems that she simply did not fit in with the prevailing ABC culture – and she was publicly bagged by the ABC TV Media Watch program. It was not only that Uncensored was an out-sourced program – i.e. it was shown on, but not made by, the ABC. More importantly, large numbers of ABC staff disapproved of the fact that Ms Wendt did not embrace the prevailing ABC fashionable leftism.
- Sally Loane Out – Virginia Trioli In
  
  Last year Sally Loane was dumped as the presenter of the 702 morning program in Sydney and replaced by Virginia Trioli. The word went out from the ABC that Ms Loane did not rate well enough in inner-suburban Leichhardt. Meaning, apparently, that she did not appeal to Green-voting-leftist-luvvies or to the Labor left and, horror-of-horrors, was just too middle class. The ABC even ran such criticism – if criticism is the correct word – on its web chat-room. The public broadcaster happens to be about the only media outlet which likes to publicise the views of critics who bag its own products and presenters. Usually, of course, the critics are leftists.
  
  So Ms Trioli was called in from 774 in Melbourne where, shortly after 9/11, she had appealed to the inner-city leftist-luvvies in Fitzroy by suggesting that the best way to handle al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was to invite him around for a chat to discuss (in the parlance of the modern cliché) his issues.
  
  Well, the good folk of Leichhardt may well be happy with Virginia Trioli – who has a tendency to preach at, rather than listen to, callers to the program. It is a matter of record, however, that her current ratings (at 7.4 per cent) are still lower than Sally Loane’s final figure (at 9.0 per cent) – in spite of the fact that Ms Trioli’s program commences and finishes earlier than that of her predecessor and, consequently, should rate higher since it benefits from the popular News and AM programs which precede it. Well, it might still do so – but it has not as yet. Ms Trioli has the talent to present an metropolitan radio program. But the manner of Sally Loane’s axing, and Virginia Trioli’s subsequent employment, was handled with a high degree of unprofessionalism.
  
  Soon after taking up her Sydney gig, Ms Trioli headed back to Melbourne where, on Sunday 5 February 2006, she took part in a performance of Sedition!. According to the pre-performance advertising: “Sedition! will bring together a coalition of comedians, commentators and satirists to protest against the Howard Government’s recently introduced sedition laws…”. For “balance”, Kim Beazley was mocked as well. But not, of course, Bob Brown or – indeed – Osama bin Laden.
ON BALANCE – AND ALL THAT

The fact is that there is much more political diversity on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel in the United States than there is on the public broadcaster in Australia.

Recently ABC TV seemed to be in a rush to screen Robert Greenwald’s film Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism. This was very much the case for the prosecution – in that only views critical of Mr Murdoch and Fox News were heard on air. No surprise, then, that in her review on At The Movies (on 7 October 2004) Margaret Pomeranz gave Outfoxed four and a half stars out of a possible five. She described the documentary as both “riveting” and “scary”, compared the contemporary West with the totalitarian Soviet Union and used the occasion to self-indulgently proclaim the value of the ABC and SBS “where the flag is still flying high for truth in journalism”. Yeah, sure.

Needless to say, no counterpoint to Outfoxed was shown on the ABC. The public broadcaster maintains that it is only required to balance news and current affairs and not opinion – and Outfoxed fitted into the opinion category. The fact is that some liberal presenters – in the American sense of the term – are heard on Fox News. Fox News even has a balanced media watch style program – titled News Watch – where the opinions of two conservatives (Jim Pinkerton, Cal Thomas) are contrasted with the views of two liberals (Neal Gabler, Jane Hall) with discussion guided by a presenter (Eric Burns) who contributes little to the arguments. Mr Gabler frequently uses his on-air time to criticise Fox News.

There are very few conservative presenters on the ABC and there is no such debate on the ABC TV Media Watch program. Under all its (various) leftist presenters, Media Watch hands down judgments – like a Pope speaking ex-cathedra. Take last Monday’s program, for example. Monica Attard laid down the law about what we should all believe about the decision taken by the ABC not to publish Chris Masters’ unauthorised biography on Alan Jones (titled Jonestown) which had been commissioned by ABC Enterprises. No other view was canvassed. Using the royal “we”, Ms Attard laid down the line – and that was that. She declared: “We don’t believe that media release [from ABC Enterprises] is accurate” – implying that senior ABC staff was not telling the truth about the decision not to proceed with the publication of Jonestown. And she editorialised: “Direct involvement of the Board in such decisions has to create the perception that the ABC is editorially timid or worse….” So there.

Likewise, there is much more diversity in News Limited’s The Australian than there is on the ABC. The Australian’s regular columnists include leftists Phillip Adams, Ross Fitzgerald and David Salter along with the social democrat Michael Costello. Come to think of it, there is also much more balance on The Australian’s opinion page than on that of The Age. The Age’s political culture is very much set by Michael Leunig and is part of the same fashionable leftist culture which prevails at the ABC – and which does not recognise the necessity or even the legitimacy of alternative views. The Age has no regular weekly or fortnightly conservative columnist and the views on its Opinion Page on such issues as national security and industrial relations, for example, have been overwhelmingly one-sided.

So it comes as no surprise that The Age regularly comes to the defence of the ABC – just as ABC Media Watch automatically comes to the defence of The Age’s Michael Leunig. The Age was the only major Australian newspaper to editorialise against the Howard Government’s decision to remove the staff elected director position from the ABC board. The Age also ran one opinion piece on this issue – by the (then) ABC staff elected director Ramona Koval. No alternative opinion found expression within the newspaper. Much like the public broadcaster. It is as if (so-called) error has no rights. [ See Postscript No. 2]. Fortunately The Age is an aberration within the John Fairfax Limited stable – there is balance within the Australian Financial Review, the Sun-Herald and the Sydney Morning Herald.

DONALD MCDONALD’S MISCONCEPTION

In a speech to the National Press Club on 1 June 2005, Donald McDonald could not see the implications of his comment that the ABC’s financial requests have been rejected by governments “both Liberal and Labor”. Apparently he does not understand that, in government, both Labor and the Coalition believe that the public broadcaster criticises them from the left – and that there is no “balance” in criticising both major parties from the left. Unwittingly, Mr McDonald found himself supporting the existence of a prevailing leftist ethos at the ABC – and not for the first time.

This, after all, is what some ABC types concede – when somewhat off their guard. In 2004 David Marr attended (in his capacity as Media Watch presenter) one of those self-indulgent media gigs where journalists receive awards from their peers. The occasion was held at the University of Technology, Sydney and audience was, well, enthusiastic. In receiving a gong on behalf of Media Watch, David Marr proudly declared:

The natural culture of journalism is a kind of vaguely soft left inquiry, sceptical of authority. I mean, that’s just the world out of which journalists come. If they don’t come out of this world, they really can’t be reporters. I mean, if you are not sceptical of authority – find another job. You know, just find another job. And that [journalism] is the kind of soft leftie kind of culture. (ABC Radio National, Big Ideas, 26 September 2004)

The former ABC TV Four Corners producer Gordon Bick said much the same when he wrote to The Age (24 January 2006) in the following terms:

Governments continually condemn the ABC’s left-wing bias and yet without the ABC there would be little account for the government’s decisions. It is necessary and essential for the ABC to always be left of centre – whichever government is in power. To be completely “unbiased” and not be opinionated is to be weak in my terms.

Well, Mr Marr and Mr Bick should know.

A POLICY FAILURE

The fact is that, whatever its intentions, the Howard Government has manifestly not succeeded in changing the public broadcaster’s culture. In a sense, then, appointments to the ABC Board are little more than a distraction – since they give the impression that something is being done when, in fact, virtually nothing has been done.

The ABC Board does not run the ABC on a day-to-day basis – nor should it – although it has an oversight role in accordance with the principles of corporate governance. The only important role for the ABC Board is to choose the ABC’s managing director. Mark Scott takes over as ABC managing director and editor-in-chief today. He may, or may not, be successful. But, on his track record so far, Mr Scott does not present as a radical political conservative in, say, the Peter Costello mode. The ABC Board, under Donald McDonald’s chairmanship, appointed (and then sacked) Jonathan Shier, appointed Russell Balding and then appointed Mark Scott. Mr Shier’s period turned out to be essentially counter-productive in so far as reform of the public broadcaster was concerned while Mr Balding had no reform agenda at all. As to Mr Scott – well we shall see.

POLITICAL IMPOTENCY - CONTINUED

I have focused on the ABC today because it provides a ready example of the Howard Government’s relative impotency in the culture wars. Its record is better than that of the Menzies Government or the Fraser Government – but not by much. It is much the same with other key institutions in the public debate.
- Australia Council, The Archives And All That
  
  The Howard Government has appointed all the non-executive members of the Australia Council – including the current chairman James Strong – along with the members of the various sub-boards, i.e. the Literature Board, the Major Performing Arts Board and so on. However, as with the ABC, the Australia Council is essentially run by its senior management who report, in the first instance, to the sub-boards. In fact, the actual operations of the Australia Council have changed little over the last decade.
  
  Also, over the past three years, the National Archives of Australia has virtually handed over the release of the Cabinet Records for 1973, 1974 and 1975 to former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam. Yet these are government papers and not Mr Whitlam’s personal papers. (See the editorial in The Sydney Institute Quarterly, Issue 28, May 2006).
- SBS
  
  SBS TV is no less leftist, and no more balanced, than it was a decade ago – despite the appointment of the chairman and Board members of the Howard Government. For evidence, there is no need to look beyond the appointment of George Negus as presenter of the SBS Dateline program. This is the very same Mr Negus who wrote in his appalling book The World From Italy (HarperCollins, 2001) that “Australia is probably nowhere near as sophisticated…as many of the less developed countries”. How alienated can you get? In this woeful tome, George Negus had a predictable bash at John Howard and Peter Costello. (For all the dreadful details, see The Sydney Institute Quarterly, Issue No. 14, July 2001).
  
  In June 2005 SBS ran Carmel Travers’s documentary on Iraq titled Truth, Lies and Intelligence where only critics of the Bush, Blair and Howard governments were heard. You get the picture. The presence of the likes of Christopher Pearson on the SBS board have yet to change the ethnic broadcaster’s political culture. Nor is it likely any time soon – for the obvious reason that non-executive directors do not run organisations.
- National Museum of Australia
  
  Nothing better illustrates the weakness of the Coalition in the battle of ideas than the saga of the National Museum of Australia (NMA) in Canberra. This was effectively constructed on the Howard Government’s watch, which appointed the chairman and the board members. The Prime Minister himself opened the NMA on 11 March 2001 and the plaque proudly declared: “This was a Commonwealth Government initiative under the Federation Fund”. The Federation Fund was financed from the sale of shares in the first tranch of Telstra’s privatisation. Richard Alston was the senor Arts Minister in the early years of the Howard Government. The opening ceremonies ended, after sunset, with a performance by Peter Garrett’s band Midnight Oil. How appropriate.
  
  It took some time for the Howard Government to discover that, in fact, it had funded and created a monument to the left-wing interpretation of Australian history. What’s more, the Gallery of the First Australians was physically constructed in a way to resemble the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which focuses on the Holocaust. The implied message was clear – that the Nazi genocide of the Jews can be equated with the treatment of indigenous Australians by governments since 1788. Later still, it was revealed that the unusual markings on the NMA’s walls contained, in fact, messages in braille which bagged the Howard Government. The signage in braille, which has now been removed from the NMA’s walls, included such missives as “Forgive Our Holocaust”, “Sorry” and “Resurrection City”. All brought to you, albeit unintentionally, by the Howard Government and the Australian taxpayer. In time the Howard Government realised it had to reform the NMA, its very own creation. This was one battle in the culture wars where John Howard and his colleagues could not blame past Labor governments.
  
  Even before the NMA opened its doors, there was disquiet about the museum’s message. This was led, in private, by NMA board member David Barnett who was supported by fellow board member Christopher Pearson. News of their concern leaked to the media and NMA chairman. Tony Staley decided to set up an inquiry. At the suggestion of Geoffrey Blainey, he appointed Monash University historian Graeme Davison, in time, who found that none of David Barnett’s “criticisms could be supported by reputable scholarship”. So there. (See Graeme Davison’s article in The Age, 12 December 2002).
  
  But the criticism did not go away. Following public criticism by the likes of Keith Windschuttle and Ron Brunton, in January 2003 Mr Staley announced another inquiry. This time by conservative academic John Carroll. Following Dr Carroll’s report Review of the National Museum of Australia, which was released in July 2003, the NMA’s focus began to change and the Howard Government set in place a reform of the Howard Government’s very own creation. It was a belated admission that all was not quiet on the cultural war front – just over two years since the Prime Minister had opened the NMA and seen fit to praise the way it sought “to interprete the history of our nation”.
WHERE ARE AUSTRALIA’S CONSERVATIVES?

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the Coalition won successive Federal elections. However, this disguised the fact that the left was winning the debate in its long march through such institutions as universities, schools, trade unions and the media (including the ABC).

Today this is reflected in the fact that there are so few home-grown political conservatives born before, say, 1960 who are prominent in the public debate. Many of Australia’s most influential contemporary political conservatives, of a certain age, have a background on the left (Piers Akerman, David Barnett, Tim Blair, Ron Brunton, Jonathan King, P.P. McGuinness, Christopher Pearson, Imre Salusinszky, Max Teichman, Keith Windschuttle) or within the social democratic tradition (Andrew Bolt, Bob Catley, David Flint, John Hirst, Ross Terrill). [See Postscript No. 3] Quite a number of contemporary political conservatives chanted “It’s Time” in late 1972 in support of Gough Whitlam and Whitlamism. It is somewhat ironic that the authors of the sympathetic biography John Howard: Prime Minister – David Barnett and Pru Goward – both voted for Gough Whitlam in 1972.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s good to have one-time leftists and social democrats now standing up against the left. (By the way, I have defined what I mean by the contemporary left in the December 2004 issue of The Sydney Institute Quarterly). Yet it says something about the relative failure of Australian conservatives in the culture wars that there are so few from-cradle-to-grave conservatives in the public debate. Here the situation in Australia differs significantly from that prevailing in North America and Western Europe. Per head of the population, there are many more articulate political conservatives in the United States and Britain than there are in Australia.

Like the Menzies Government, the Howard Government has been very successful at elections. Yet the voice of the Howard-haters and Bush-haters and Blair-haters is still heard loudly in the humanities departments at the universities, within some professions, among many journalists and overwhelmingly at the various taxpayer subsidised literary festivals or so-called festivals of ideas (which are all too frequently festivals of one leftist idea). In other words, the left still prevails within many of Australia’s key non-government institutions.

CONCLUSION

Certainly the Australia Liberal Students Federation is more politically attuned today than it was when I was a student at Melbourne University in the late 1960s. But there is much more work to be done. No doubt in a decade or so there will be many more natural-born political conservatives prominent in the public debate than there are today. Just as the political generation of Peter Costello, Alexander Downer, Michael Kroger and Tony Abbott has produced many more politically astute Liberal Party and National Party MPs and operatives than were present during the governments of Robert Menzies and Malcolm Fraser.

So I wish you well in your deliberations – and in your future careers, whether within or outside politics.
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POSTSCRIPT NO 1. – BELIEVING WHAT YOU WANT TO

Terry Lane’s leftism is so engrained that, as he himself has acknowledged, it affects his judgment. In his Sunday Age column on 30 July 2006, Mr Lane did a usual far-leftist rant on Iraq and all that. He claimed that “the Australian Army was sent to a country with which we had no quarrel to oppress and kill its citizens”. It’s as simple as that, apparently. For evidence that the Coalition of the Willing (the United States, Britain and Australia) are nothing but Nazi-like murderers of Iraqi citizens including women and children, Mr Lane turned to the (alleged) admissions of a certain “US Army Ranger Jessie Macbeth” whose message could be seen on Google Video. Yes, it could. But, alas, it was a fake – which had been widely known some months before the Lane column appeared in the Sunday Age.

When the error was revealed by blogger Tim Blair, Terry Lane went into instant remorse and fessed up to how he had failed to check his facts:

My attention was drawn to what looked like a professionally packaged documentary video in which “US Ranger” (I now know that that is bogus) Jessie Macbeth recounts his experiences as a soldier in Iraq, where he claimed to have served for 16 months. I was completely taken in by his fake sincerity. That, I suppose, could be excusable for any person with no responsibility to check bona fides, but in my case I fell for it because I wanted to believe it. That is inexcusable. (Crikey, 1 August 2006).

Interesting admission. Mr Lane confessed that he believes what he wants to believe – so much so that, on occasions at least, he does not bother to engage in fact-checking. However, the true confessions had a limited life span. Terry Lane corrected the error in his Sunday Age column on 6 August 2006 but devoted his entire space to maintaining that his general point was correct. Obviously Mr Lane came to see that his acknowledgement that he believes what he wants to believe was a bit too honest for his Sunday Age/ Radio National fan club.

In his article Terry Lane attacked the US and its allies for civilian deaths in Iraq – but made no criticism whatsoever of militant Islamists who target Iraqi civilians in markets, playing fields, etc (Sunday Age, 6 August 2006). Presumably, Mr Lane does not believe that most civilian deaths in Iraq are caused by Islamists because he does not want to believe it.

POSTSCRIPT NO 2. – “ERROR” HAS NO RIGHTS

Sometimes ABC and Age types do not seem to realise that there are alternative opinions. Two examples illustrate the point – one occurred before this speech, the other after.

On 1 November 2005 the ABC Radio National Law Report devoted an entire program to the Coalition’s proposed anti-terror laws (which happened to enjoy the broad support of Labor). Presenter Damien Carrick interviewed only critics of the legislation. First barrister Rob Stary, followed by legal academic George Williams, followed by German lawyer Christopher Michaelsen (currently studying in Australia). No view supporting the legislation was heard. It was as if Mr Carrick could not even imagine that an alternative view existed.

On 20 July 2006 the ABC Radio National Report interviewed Matthew Ricketson – The Age’s media and communications editor – concerning the Howard Government’s new media legislation. Believe it or not, Mr Ricketson actually boasted: “….In The Age, which is the newspaper that I work for, there’s been…five opinion pieces, or pieces of commentary, written about the legislative package and all of them were quite strongly critical of it.” In other words, Matthew Ricketson believes it proper that 100 per cent of all commentary pieces published in The Age on the new media legislation were critical of the Howard Government. How about that?
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POSTSCRIPT NO 3 – DOWN MEMORY LANE

Ah, memories. Memories. In chronological order, of course.
- 1966-67. Padriac Pearse McGuinness A.O. (as he became) works in London as manager of the economist department of the Moscow Narodny Bank. Meanwhile, back in the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev’s regime is heavily into communist-style repression. (See Mr McGuinness’s entry in Who’s Who in Australia).
- 27 November 1971 the leftist National Review carries a full-page advertisement sponsored by the leftist Association for International Co-operation and Disarmament. Signatories include well known communists (Laurie Aarons, Jack Mundey), assorted leftists (Jim Cairns, Lionel Murphy, Jennie George) and militant trade union leaders (Elliott V. Elliott, Pat Clancy). This is not a pro-forma expression of opposition to the Australian commitment in Vietnam. Rather, it is a hard-left manifesto which accuses Robert Menzies of war crimes, depicts members of the Australian Defence Force as “mercenaries” taking part “in one of the most obscene crimes of the 20th Century” and refers to the “cesspool of American imperial politics”.
- It’s April 1975 and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge has just conquered Phnom Penh. Christopher Pearson and his fellow students in Adelaide University’s Contemporary Social Theory course adjourn to the Staff Club and toast the Khmer Rouge in Great Western Champagne. But Mr Pearson came to express “shame” for his action. (See Christopher Pearson, “The Ambiguous Business of Coming Out” in Peter Coleman (ed), Double Take, (Mandarin, 1996).
- On 11 November 1975, the Governor-General (Sir John Kerr) dismissed the Whitlam Government. Soon after, Max Teichmann – in his capacity as Senior Lecturer Politics, Monash University – issues a pamphlet titled Don’t let History Repeat Itself!. Mr Teichmann draws parallels between Germany circa 1932/1933 and Australia circa November/December 1975 and predicts that the election of Malcolm Fraser’s Coalition at the December election of Malcolm Fraser’s Coalition at the December election would lead to the establishment of a dictatorship in Australia. This, declares Max Teichman, is a “fearsome prospect”. It turned out that Max Teichman survived the Fraser Terror and went on to become a columnist for News Weekly (founder B.A. Santamaria – whom Max Teichman used to bag weekly).
- 2 December 1975. No fewer than 1650 Australian academics issue a statement titled “Democracy In Danger” in which they “urge the people of Australia to vote for the Australian Labor Party in this election”. This academic collective believes that the dismissal of the Whitlam Government has “created the prospect of unstable government in Australia for years to come” and declares that “there is a grave risk that large sections of our community would not accept the validity of a non-Labor government after this election”. There follows a prophecy about “the prospect of an irreversible breakdown in the almost universal acceptance by our community of the legitimacy of our government”. And so on. Signatories include Professor Manning Clark and Dr John Hirst (The Age, 2 December 1975).
- On the eve of the December 1975 election, The Age publishes a letter from Ross Terrill – c/- Harvard University. He lavishes praise on Gough Whitlam and urges Australians not to “turn the clock back” by voting for Malcolm Fraser. Professor Terrill declares that the Whitlam Government has “given Australia the best standing she has ever had in the world” and refers to Robert Menzies’ time as having imposed on Australia a “bleakly negative” foreign policy which “was only half-Australian”. (The Age, 12 December 1975).
- 14 June 1976. The Age publishes a letter by Imre Salusinszky (then, national affairs correspondent, Farrago newspaper, Melbourne University). Mr Salusinszky supports the actions of demonstrators – himself included – who had recently protested against the Governor-General Sir John Kerr in Melbourne in the following words: “There was some damage done to Sir John’s Rolls-Royce. Though I did not do it, I do not disassociate myself from that. I do not feel overwhelming remorse at seeing some dents in a luxury Rolls-Royce containing the man who destroyed what history…will see as the best government in this nation’s history.” Yes, Imre Salusinszky is referring to Gough Whitlam’s government, which was dismissed by the Governor-General on 11 November 1975.
- It’s 1978 and Jonathan King’s leftist rant Waltzing Materialism reaches the bookshops. Mr King bags the “great antipodean disease of complacency” along with Australia’s “maddening smugness”. Manning Clark is praised; Robert Menzies is bagged. Under the mocking title “Our Glorious Anzacs”, Jonathan King runs the line that Australia has invariably fought “other nations’ battles” and opines that “the Anzac tradition was founded on an act of murderous folly”.
- 1985 sees the publication of Keith Windschuttle’s book The Media, in which the author criticises “the political program of the New Right which originated as part of the baggage of monetarist economics and which, from the mid 1970s onwards, has set out to change the capitalist world”. He argues for “government restrictions and regulation” and against “private enterprise and free markets”. Yet Keith Windschuttle circa 1985 is but an ideological shadow of Keith Windschuttle of a decade earlier. Mr Windschuttle told Jane Cadzow that his disillusionment with Marxism was triggered by the 1978 murder, while on a visit to Cambodia during Pol Pot’s time, of the British Marxist Malcolm Caldwell. (See Jane Cadzow’s profile in the Good Weekend, 17 May 2003).
- 1987. Geoffrey Blainey reviews the last (and worst) of Manning Clark’s six volume History of Australia titled The Old Dead Tree and the Young Tree Green (MUP, 1987). Professor Blainey makes no substantial criticism and refers to this “triumphant volume”. He concludes that Manning Clark’s “power of observation, sense of wonder and stately prose unite to make these six books something of a tower in Australian history and literature”. (Melbourne Herald, 24 August 1987).
- September 1998. Ron Brunton goes into true-confessions mode and commences his column with an admission: “I must begin by acknowledging something that fills me with deep shame. In my youth, I was favourably disposed towards communism and believed that anti-communists in the West were greatly exaggerating the brutality of Marxist regimes in Europe and Asia”. Dr Brunton adds that he “once ridiculed men such as B.A. Santamaria and Melbourne academic Frank Knopfelmacher”. (See Ron Brunton’s column in The Courier Mail, 19 September 1998).
- November 2002. Tim Blair joins the true-confession set. He tells readers of his column that he was “once a teenage socialist idiot” – at one of “Victoria’s wealthiest private schools”, no less. (See Tim Blair’s column in The Australian, 28 November 2002).
- June 2004. Michael Duffy informs Jennifer Byrne that, as a youth, he rejected his parents’ support for B.A. Santamaria and joined the anarchists instead. (See The Bulletin, 15 June 2004).
- July 2004. David Flint tells Jane Cadzow that he joined the Labor Party in 1975 due to his indignation at John Kerr’s dismissal of Gough Whitlam. He adds: “I liked Whitlam. I think I was attracted to him because he was so polished.” (See the Good Weekend, 3 July 2004).
- August 2004. David Barnett tells Jennifer Byrne that he was once a radical leftie and that he voted for Gough Whitlam in 1972 (The Bulletin, 31 August 2005). Maureen Hickman – Mr Barnett’s first wife – writes a letter to the editor providing somewhat more detail. She recalls that, when they married in 1957, “David had been the proverbial left-wing groupie: duffle coat, beard and a copy of To the Findland Station under his arm”. (The Bulletin, 14 September 2004).