Launch of Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man

The Hon Tony Abbott MP, Prime Minister of Australia, launched Gerard Henderson’s Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man (MUP) on Thursday 30 July 2015 at the Melbourne offices of Arnold Bloch Leibler. The Prime Minister was introduced by the event’s host, Mark Leibler AC and MUP CEO and Publisher-in-Chief Louise Adler spoke on behalf of MUP. In launching the book, Tony Abbott described B A Santamaria’s life as “a magnificent failure that changed and improved our country and hundreds, if not thousands, of its leading citizens”.

LAUNCH OF SANTAMARIA: A MOST UNUSUAL MAN

GERARD HENDERSON

Thanks to all for coming along this evening. And many thanks to the Prime Minister for launching Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man – and for being interviewed for the book some years ago.

As I mentioned in the biography, in around 1978 Mr Santamaria counselled the young Tony Abbott – who was beginning to attain media attention – concerning the consequences of the sin of pride. Bob Santamaria said that if Tony Abbott was intent on pursuing a public career – then he should pray daily for the humility not to become possessed by fame and not fall victim to the associated deadly sin of pride.

I am very pleased that, in this instance, Tony Abbott rejected B.A. Santamaria’s spiritual advice.  However, I remain concerned about the impact of this decision on the Prime Minister’s prospects for eternal salvation.  This is a matter about which I think every morning, every night and frequently during the day.

Many thanks to Mark Leibler, Henry Lanzer and the team at Arnold Bloch Leibler for their generosity in hosting this event. This great office at 333 Collins Street was also the location last year for the launch of Anne Henderson’s book Menzies at War. Once again, thank you Mark.

Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria – or Bob Santamaria or BAS – was born almost a century ago, on 14 August 1915, in Melbourne.  BAS’s story is a Melbourne story as well as a national story.  He grew up in Brunswick and went to school in Brunswick, North Melbourne and East Melbourne (the birth place of St Kevin’s) and graduated in Law and Arts at the University of Melbourne in Parkville.

Bob Santamaria lived in Brunswick, Balwyn, Kew and finally Balwyn again.  He frequented the Carlton Football Ground on Sydney Road.   And he spent much time visiting Archbishop Daniel Mannix at St Patrick’s Cathedral in East Melbourne or Dr Mannix’s residence Raheen on Studley Park Road, Kew.

And then there is Collins Street. Bob Santamaria commenced working in January 1938 at the Australian National Secretariat of Catholic Action in Collins Street. The original office of the Catholic Social Studies Movement – The Movement – was also in Collins Street.  Bob Santamaria met Helen Power – his first wife and mother of his eight children – at the Central Catholic Library, then just across the road in Collins Street.

As you will note, this map – which pinpoints Bob Santamaria’s most frequented places – resembles an Australian Rules football oval.  For the benefit of Tony Abbott and others here who had the misfortune to grow up in a Rugby League/Rugby Union city, I offer the following interpretation.

Bob Santamaria spent much of his time making attacking moves from the mid-field and up forward attempting to kick goals.  Occasionally he headed down to the backline to help with the defence.  And he rarely, if ever, went to the inter-change bench.

Bob Santamaria became a national figure after the Labor Split of 1954-1955 and predominantly due to his brilliant and idiosyncratic Point of View television program (which commenced in November 1963) and his lively column in The Australian (which commenced in March 1976).

When I was asked on the day of BAS’s death by another publisher, not MUP, to write a biography – I remembered The Bulletin’s cover story of 15 February 1964 which featured a photo of Santamaria on the Point of View set at Channel 9 in Richmond.  The profile was written by Peter Coleman who described BAS as one of the three most important Australians of his time – along with Robert Menzies and Bert Evatt.

I went around to Australian Consolidated Press – as it then was – in Sydney and managed to locate and purchase the Bulletin photo which appears on the cover of this book, published for the first time in half a century.

The late Jim McClelland, the Whitlam government minister who attended St Kevin’s with BAS, advised me not to rush writing this book.  It was wise counsel. In 2006, the Santamaria Family placed their father’s correspondence and documents in the State Library of Victoria with a 40-year embargo.  I am grateful to Kevin Molloy and his staff for facilitating access to the Santamaria Papers. 

Patrick Morgan was given access beyond the embargo for his excellent two volume collection of Santamaria’s papers which was published by MUP. The first, Your Most Obedient Servant, was launched by Mr Abbott in 2007. Frank Mount also recently wrote a valuable account of BAS’s involvement in South East Asia from the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s.  Both books contained information important to Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man.

Some years ago I agreed that MUP should publish the book.  I am grateful to Louise Adler and her team – Collette Vella, Cathryn Game, Louise Stirling, Sally Heath and Michelle Sollitt-Davis – for their encouragement and advice.  We all got on very well.  I only recall one significant disagreement concerning the text when a proof reader wrote all over a manuscript page suggesting that I had mistaken the Nicene Creed for the Apostles’ Creed. This annoyed me at the time – primarily because the proof reader was correct. So both creeds get a mention in the text.

Many of my staff, friends and family helped me with this book.  Anne of course. Plus my long long-time executive assistant Lalita Mathias who typed and re-typed the manuscript and most of the transcripts.  And my Melbourne-based family – Veronica Henderson, Paul and Jenny Henderson and my niece Clare Henderson – all of whom provided valuable material. Two of The Sydney Institute young casuals – Paige Halley and Anusha Rutnam – did terrific work on the photographs and the video.  My friend John McConnell, who is in the book, died a couple of years ago. It’s great to see Carole McConnell here this evening.

I devoted my book Menzies Child to my parents – who appear briefly in this book.  I have devoted this book to my Dargavel maternal aunts and uncles. Rita, Ellen and William – who were very good to me when I was young – and also to Eileen who died as a young girl in 1907 and Alan who fell during the Third Battle of Ypres in November 1917.

I will be writing about my personal relationship with Bob Santamaria in my column in The Weekend Australian next Saturday and talking about the book at The Sydney Institute in a couple of weeks. Tonight I want to conclude with a few brief recollections about a man who was always right about communism (when many were not) and who was a brilliant orator, a compelling writer and possessed of invincible intellectual courage – but who, like all of us, was afflicted by The Fall (commonly known as Original Sin).

I worked part-time for the National Civic Council in 1970 and 1971 and had many conversations with BAS between 1965 and 1975.  On one occasion, I asked Santamaria why he moved John Martyr (who later became a Liberal MP in Federal politics) from the NCC’s Melbourne office to Perth. The conversation went like this:

Gerard Henderson:  Why did you send John Martyr to Western Australia?

B.A. Santamaria: Because I couldn’t send him to Madagascar.

On another occasion in the early 1970s, I met BAS in the car park on his way to a NCC meeting at Belloc House in Sackville Street, Kew.  As was his wont, Santamaria was carrying a large map of South East Asia – on which numerous coloured pins were embedded.  Red for the communist forces, blue for anti-communist forces, white for neutral forces and so on.  Borrowing on a Frank Mount private joke, I said:

Be careful you don’t drop the map.  If you do, and the pins get returned to the wrong positions, it could change the whole strategic situation in South East Asia to our disadvantage.

BAS was not amused with my irreverence and did not reply.  I followed him up the hall.  Santamaria commenced the meeting by placing his map on a frame and declaring:

As I was coming in today, I bumped into Gerard Henderson in the car park.  I said to Gerard:  “I have to be careful not to drop this map. If I do, and the pins are replaced in the wrong positions, it could change the whole strategic situation in South East Asia to our disadvantage.”

Whereupon the meeting burst into hilarious laughter – led by the NCC president himself.  Whereupon I learnt that there was such a phenomenon as a president’s joke.

In conclusion, as I mention in the book, Bob Santamaria had a tendency to speak at considerable length at meetings of The Movement.

John Cotter told me of one such occasion when, in Victoria, the hotels closed at 6pm. It was late in the afternoon on a hot Saturday summer’s day, in the years before air-conditioning.

James McAuley (a political ally of BAS) was a brilliant poet, a fine academic and an accomplished drinker.  As Bob Santamaria went on and on, Jim kept wistfully looking at the clock on the wall – while dreaming of a few cold ones before the local pub closed.  He scribbled down a note in exasperation and passed it to John Cotter. Jim McAuley’s ditty was as follows:

The clock strikes tick

The clock strikes tock

And if Bob keeps talking

It’ll be six o’clock.

* * * * *