Four Corners’ Stories that Changed Australia

Liz Jackson is an Australian Journalist, most known for her work on Four Corners and Media Watch. Prior to her work in journalism, Jackson worked as a lawyer in both Australian and London. Jackson first begun her work with Four Corners in 1993 and has since received a number of accolades including 5 Walkley Awards and 3 Logie Awards. Most Notably, Jackson was awarded the Gold Walkley for her report “Stoking the Fires” for Four Corners in 2006. On Tuesday 18 September, Liz Jackson addressed The Sydney Institute to discuss her experience at Four Corners and the recently released book The Stories that Changed Australia: 50 years of Four Corners, edited by her colleague Sally Neighbour.

FOUR CORNERS’ STORIES THAT CHANGED AUSTRALIA

LIZ JACKSON

As Gerard has made clear, I’m a bit of a late ring in. But I’m more than happy to speak on the 50 years of Four Corners. I have worked there since 1993, not the full 50 years but a fair wack of that time.

I must say, it’s been a privilege from day one and I am pleased that this book has been produced. It is a suitable acknowledgment of the survival of this program. With the exception of Panorama, Four Corners, a 45 minute program, has survived in prime time on a Monday night. It has held that spot proudly. Some 900,000 viewers watched us last week.

This book begins at Day 1 and, for that reason, it’s fascinating. Even I hadn’t appreciated how it was a magazine program to start with. One of the first interviews done in that magazine program was with an American astronaut. In those early days, Four Corners did political stories but many more stories of a social kind. This has provided, over the years, a fascinating archive.

I don’t know how many of you have seen the Four Corners program on Tupperware parties. There’s also a Four Corners program on wife-swapping, if you’d prefer that. And a Four Corners program on sex education. More recently, however, we’ve tended to focus on other matters of a harder nature – the rise and fall of political parties and figures over the decades, along with social and political changes in a broader context as well as more international stories. This is a far cry from the early days, when the budget barely allowed a trip from Sydney to northern New South Wales. One of the important early stories was filmed at Box Ridge, for this reason.

My favourite quote from the book, given that the show has lasted 50 years, is the title of the first chapter: “This program will go to air over my dead body.” That was from the controller of News at ABC. Well, it went to air and it’s lasted 50 years.

Like many of you, I was just a viewer when some of the best-known investigative programs were produced by Four Corners. I’m sure many of you would know “The Moonlight State”, for example, or “The Big League”, or perhaps Chris Masters’ other famous program, “The Rainbow Warrior”. That tradition is proudly carried on and this year I point to Sarah Ferguson’s show on people smugglers, bailing up Captain Emad in the supermarket car park wielding the trolleys. That was one of those great moments in television. Then there has been the story on the Catholic Church and sexual abuse, the Gina Rinehart program, and Nick McKenzie’s exposure of corruption in the racing industry.

My personal involvement in this book, or my chapter, is about political coverage – political interviewing, specifically of John Howard. When I began at Four Corners, Paul Keating was the prime minister. It was the very end of 1993. In 1994, I put my first program to air. John Hewson was leader of the Liberal Party opposition. Having just lost the unlosable election, the sharks were circling him. Bronwyn Bishop was enjoying her brief moment in the political spotlight, and it was seriously considered that she might actually take John Hewson’s job.

As I moved into my Four Corners office, pinned above the desk was a scrap of paper on which – anonymously – someone had written, “No-one ever died from being asked a question.” It was a message I took to heart from day one. I believe it was left by Marion Wilkinson, but I’ve never been able to confirm that. My first assignment at Four Corners was to investigate the leadership tensions in the Liberal Party: how long would John Hewson last and who would the contenders be for his job? This was my first Four Corners program; I’d never done a day of television, although I had worked about nine years in ABC Radio, making radio documentaries.

Within the two week research time available, I did two things. I rang Michael Kroger for a date to have lunch and my team and I rang every single member of the parliamentary party at the time. As I remember it, about 75 per cent took our call, and most of them opined off the record that Hewson had to go. Only two agreed to go on camera, on prime time TV, to say that John Hewson was dead in the water. It was the first time that I appreciated the power of television. The day after the program, Four Corners and  these MPs and their disloyalty was front page news. Six months later, John Hewson was gone. It was what Paul Keating described at the time as “slow death by television”. Keating can certainly coin a phrase.

My first show was also the first time I’d interviewed John Howard. It was an awkward start. It was not the best of times for Howard; five years earlier he’d been dumped as Liberal leader, famously conceding that his return to the leadership would be like Lazarus with a triple bypass. In this Four Corners  show, a former Howard ally – Bill Taylor – wrote him off as yesterday’s man. On camera, we needed to put that to John Howard.

In those days, Four Corners was filmed on film. We operated with ten minute camera rolls. So, you always had to time your interviews carefully so that you didn’t ask the critical questions just when the camera roll was being changed. We started off with the normal questions. Then, so that he’d have a chance to respond, it was time to put to John Howard that one of his political colleagues had told us that he’d tapped John Howard on the shoulder and told him it was time to go. In this man’s words, “You must accept that you’ve missed the boat, that you will never be leader of the Liberal Party.”

Right at this moment, the camera man said, “Tape change.” So we sat there. And, as I say in the book, it seemed like ten minutes of waiting, although it was probably only two minutes, in absolute silence. For me, it seemed inappropriate to make small talk. So, when the camera was reloaded, I asked exactly the same question as I’d asked before – I’ll read what happened from the book:

“John,” I repeated as if nothing had happened. “I’ve spoken to some of your parliamentary colleagues and … you will never be leader of the Liberal Party.” “Well,” he responded, “I haven’t had any such conversation, so they must have mistaken me for someone else.”

A certain panache, really.

But Howard was nothing if not tenacious. As you will no doubt remember, within a year he was leader of the Liberal Party and one year later he was prime minister, a position he held for 11½ years; he was no yesterday’s man. Over those years, I interviewed John Howard on a number of occasions, more often than any other Four Corners reporter, so it was suggested that I should write the chapter entitled “Comfortable and Relaxed: Encounters with John Howard, 1994-2007”.

I’d like to read you a short extract from the interview I did in 1966:

Me: Do you like television?

John Howard: Love it.

Me: What do you watch? What is your favourite show?

 John Howard: Ah, well, I watch the news and current affairs. Four Corners, I always watch Four Corners.

Not all our interviews were so convivial. Over the years, John Howard became increasingly skilful at ducking and weaving, or simply shutting down a question, as his power and authority grew. I remained what I would call tenacious, but probably what Graham Morris would call a cow. And the series of further encounters are documented in the chapter. I think the longest interview I did with him would be for the profile that we produced in 1996, the year that he became prime minister. The “children overboard” affair was probably the most acrimonious. Emotions were tight.

In these interviews, when you sit down to do them for something like a political profile just before an election, there’s a lot at stake. People are careful, people are tense, and what’s said is important, as to whether the interview went well or came across well. There is quite a lot at stake. Similarly with the “children overboard” affair, stories about weapons of mass destruction, the war on Iraq and Tony Abbott. When we were doing what we’ll call the election program, the 1996 election program, there were a series of questions about the ways in which John Howard had changed his position over the years. For instance, that Medicare was a total disaster. The questions were framed in terms of, for example, when did you change your mind about Medicare? So the response is, well, in what way? Response – well, that Medicare was a total disaster. His reply – well, I changed my mind when the community seemed to feel it was appropriate. Question – when did you change your mind on bulk billing, that bulk billing was a rort? And so on.

Some of the research was checking to what extent those positions were being put to the public as a softening of John Howard’s image. Because he, perhaps unfairly, wore the mantle of being the most conservative politician that had ever led the Liberal Party – a statement he had made at an awkward time in his political career, when he was being challenged by Joh Bjelke-Peterson. At that time, saying that he was the most conservative leader the Liberal Party’s ever had was made in a very different context from that of the 1996 election campaign.

In my chapter, I discuss how you frame questions and why people might make the answers they do. And, how often it’s possible and courteous to ask the same question. In terms of the children overboard affair, I felt very strongly that there was a question to be asked about what John Howard knew about the so-called photographs of children having been thrown in the water, in the lead-up to the 2001 election. I wasn’t getting the answer that I looked for and I did ask my question too many times. I didn’t perform as well as I should have.

I’d like to say that, despite the sometimes awkward, sometimes acrimonious, interviews that we had over the years, John Howard only once refused an interview. The only time he ever said no was when he said no to everybody. When John Howard lost the 2007 election to Kevin Rudd, he gave no media interviews in the immediate election aftermath. We did interview him later in relation to Tony Abbott.

We do chart the way in which, over the years, politicians have increasingly put conditions on the way that they’re prepared to do interviews. Conditions that are very difficult for Four Corners  to meet. Nowadays, we are being forced to offer interviews more or less “live”, which means no cutting. This leaves a big chunk of one person. You must use every word that’s uttered. If you negotiate the bits that you’re going to cut, you have to agree which bits will be cut.

When first approached for the book, I was keener to write about the work I’ve done covering indigenous issues in Australia. I’ve done far more of those and the second last program this year was about Mabo, 20 years after the High Court decision. I’ve had a long and interesting time with indigenous affairs which was a very early interest with Four Corners. So, what I’d like to do is read from the book some of David Marr’s chapter called “Reporting Black Australia”. And it starts with a quote from Four Corners in 1961 when Four Corners  was just 3 weeks old. They were filming on location for the very first time, which gives you a sense of just how small the unit was when we first started off, and this is from Michael Charlton, who was the reporter at the time:

“This is Box Ridge,” said Michael Charlton, looking like a man from another planet come to earth in Coraki, New South Wales. “Just over here is a cemetery. A cemetery for the dead. And here is what Bishop Davies has called a cemetery for the living.”

 What the camera was showing was a small squalid group of tin shacks or humpies, about a dozen, where over 100 Aboriginal people lived. One water point, no light and no power. Four Corners had not discovered this shameful little settlement. The producers had seen the story in The Sydney Morning Herald, which had quoted the Bishop’s outrage. But this was the first time, the very first time, that television cameras brought the shame of that squalor right into the lounges of people’s homes.  

Over the following 50 years, Four Corners has reported on issues concerning indigenous Australians once or twice every year. It’s a body of work, over 100 documentaries, that has charted what has largely been a failure of indigenous policy over all that time to effectively address Aboriginal disadvantage.

 In fact, the community wanted the canteen closed, but the community council was making money from selling alcohol.

Now, I want to talk briefly about the best of David Marr’s indigenous stories. This is a program set in Aurukun and called “Six Pack Politics”. What I liked about it was the preparedness to abandon the hesitation that there was at that time to show the ugliness of the drunkenness and violence in Aboriginal settlements. There was, at the time, a feeling that we can’t show that, we shouldn’t show that. And yet, people who lived in that community, particularly the women, were very keen to have that highlight, and very keen for a story to be made that showed the devastation that was being brought on the community by the canteen that was serving alcohol.

These, as David describes it, “well-spoken mission-educated women” wanted it closed. In fact, the community wanted the canteen closed, but the community council was making money from selling alcohol. They also liked the fact that there was alcohol in the community and were not prepared to close the canteen. It was a story that was controversial at the time because it showed the drunkenness and the violence. People felt that that was a shame job on Aboriginal people. But, over 50 years, people have begun to accept that you’ve got to show things the way they are. One of the supporters of that program from David Marr was Marcia Langton, who’d always taken the view that the best thing to do is to show reality. Four Corners  wasn’t the first, I should say, to show that kind of footage. David Bradbury had made a film called State of Shock, which also graphically showed the impact of alcohol on indigenous Australians. But was David Marr’s program that took that into people’s lounge rooms and people’s televisions, on a Monday night.

A couple of things made that program special. Firstly it was a milestone to get the confidence of people to talk. Four Corners sent a producer to live in the community for a week, so that people felt comfortable that they knew him. Even so, these sorts of programs are incredibly sensitive and incredibly difficult to make. People rightfully see that they can be, and sometimes are, made into a shame job. And, people don’t want them done. So, that Four Corners  had the time to send someone to live in the community was very rare.

The other factor was the kids, as they are so often the positive. A group of four children, boys, were interviewed. They were the smartest, brightest, cheekiest boys you’d ever meet, And one of the great things that a 50-year program can do is return, and return again. Four Corners has developed a practice of going back to communities every decade. And we’ve gone to Aurukun three times; we’ve been to Box Ridge three or four times. And, just last year, someone went back to Aurukun to see what has happened to the four boys that were so cheeky and so smart and so clever and so winning. Here is how it is told in the book:

Now, as adults, they can’t read or write and three of the four boys interviewed have spent most of their lives in and out of prison.

But, on the less bleak side, the canteen was finally about to close, and the community had embraced the Noel Pearson style of intervention. The Noel Pearson style of intervention is where the community asks for an intervention and embraces it themselves – doesn’t ask for it, that’s the wrong word, embraces an intervention after a long period of consultation. And there were better truancy figures; more kids were going to school, so things were looking up. But, as David said, the story is never really over and, no doubt, if Four Corners keeps continuing, we’ll go back to those communities. And I think it’s something that’s very special and particular, which you can’t get from just a snapshot.

I remember very well the first indigenous story I did was an indigenous story called “Payback”. I remember trying to get the story up and being told at the time, who’s going want to watch this story on Aboriginal payback? It was about the incapacity of the white criminal justice system to comprehend. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. An Aboriginal man called Wilson Jagamara Walker had stabbed another Aboriginal man on the Todd River Bank and killed him. One of the relatives of the victim, an aunty, was Bess Price, now quite an outspoken supporter of the federal government’s intervention program. Her family didn’t want to do traditional payback on Wilson Jagamara Walker. They wanted him put in jail; they wanted him out of harm’s way. When the case came before the Chief Justice of the Northern Territory at the time, the defence for Wilson Jagamara Walker said, “He’ll be getting customary payback, so we will mitigate his sentence.” So he didn’t get a jail sentence. In a sense, this was saying, payback is real, customary law is being enacted. But there was no consultation or respect for what the particular Aboriginal people wanted in that particular instance.

I suppose this was also the first intimation I had from people about the level of violence that there was within Aboriginal communities generally – but specifically towards Aboriginal women and children. Not only did I meet Bess Price, but I met Nanette Rogers and Jane Lloyd. I went on to make a program called “The Shame”, about the fact that people like Nanette Rogers and Jane Lloyd had reached the point where they had decided that the time had come not only to change the way they worked but to speak out about it. In a sense it was also an epiphany for me in terms of reporting this. In a paper by anthropologist Peter Sutton, circulating amongst all white advisors in Alice Springs at the time I made those programs, he called for the silence on these issues to end – and for white people to accept that they had a responsibility to talk as well. Aboriginal people must talk, but white advisors had, for many years, kept silent.

I don’t want to give the impression that we do nothing but indigenous stories that talk about drunkenness and alcohol. I did a program on Alice Springs called, “Dog Act” which was about an Aboriginal man kicked to death at Todd River Bank by five young white men. What we wanted to do, looking at that story, was to ask why in a community like Alice Springs, where people have been living together side-by-side, the boys attending the same schools, and playing the same footy clubs could this violence occur?  The Aboriginal man’s mother was a well-known collectable artist in Alice Springs, and the family well respected. What could possibly lead five white youths to kick to death an Aboriginal man like that?

The interesting thing about doing that story was that almost every person I asked in Alice Springs about the incident, or that would agree to an interview, said one of two things. One was – “Why don’t you do stories about black-on-black violence?” And I would say, “We’ve done those stories, we do those stories, it doesn’t mean that we don’t do stories like this as well.” The other response was, “It wasn’t a racist act. They would have done that to anybody in that situation.” So, we keep a weather eye on what’s going on and report it.

In the book, I can highly recommend “No More Mr Nice Guy” by Jonathan Holmes, about resuscitating Four Corners when there was talk of it being dropped at the end of 1981. Debby Whitmont’s “Stories About Asylum Seekers” is the inside story of 6-year-old Shayan Badraie in Villawood detention centre who’d stopped eating because he was so traumatised by what he’d witnessed while he was there, a time when young children were being held in mandatory detention. Debbie writes beautifully about that. John Penlington chapter on the early days is not just about Tupperware parties. He’s got an extraordinary and chilling interview with a group of young boys about a gang bang, how often they do gang bangs, why they do gang bangs, what they think are the rules about gang bangs. And, the last chapter, “The Waitress, the Refugee and the Killing Box” by Sarah Ferguson offer three separate stories about sexual abuse, refugees and the slaughter houses in Indonesia.

I’ll conclude by drawing your attention to the Four Corners website. The internet has been a good thing for us. For Four Corners the web is not a threat, it’s a bonus. We can now put on our website all the documents that are the sources of our stories. The website has itself won a Walkley, in its own right. If anything, it’s brought people to the show. Far from losing viewers, a lot of new people have been brought to the show. So, check out the website after reading the book, and if you want to see the shows in the Four Corners book, there’s a fantastic array of Four Corners shows that you can watch on the website. You just have to the 50 years of Four Corners. Especially if you’ve got an awful lot of time on your hands.