GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 43
26 FEBRUARY 2010
NANCY’S PICK OF THE WEEK
George Negus – Fawns to “Sir” Gaddafi
Dateline returned to SBS 1 last Sunday. And Dateline presenter George Negus can now be heard again each Sunday going on and on again about the subject he knows best – namely HIMSELF. In the lead-up to the return of Dateline, Negus spoke to Michael Lallo at The Age Green Guide (18 February) in the familiar Negus way about HIMSELF and his program which rates poorly. Reported Lallo:
In Negus’ world, friends and foes alike are “bastards”, from The 7.30 Report‘s Kerry O’Brien (‘”He’s my closest mate and not just in the business”) to the various network bosses he’s dealt with (“It’s hard to say yes to them when you really should be telling them to f— off”).
No matter the topic, he speaks as though perched at a bar, beer in hand. Margaret Thatcher’s former press secretary, for instance, is described as “some old, pinstripe-suited, bloody flunkey … I can’t remember his name but we had a screaming match in his office [after the 60 Minutes interview]. That’s right!” – he puts on a posh accent – “It was Sir Bernard Ingham. He was going on about how dishonourable I was and I said, ‘Did you seriously think I was going to stick to the list of questions I had to give you? What bloody journalistic cloud have you just come down on?”’
Your man George – who came to prominence as media adviser to Lionel Murphy, the controversial leftist attorney general in Gough Whitlam’s Labor Government in the early 1970s – is forever talking about the time he picked a blue with then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher when he worked on 60 Minutes.
How times change. In his first Dateline program for 2010, Negus flew to Libya to interview the superannuated terrorist Colonel Muammar Al-Gaddafi. Negus hung around for three days awaiting his moment with Gaddafi. When it came, Negus refrained from using the term “bastard” – in either a friendly or hostile way – and instead referred to the Libyan dictator as “Sir”. How vomitous.
So substantial is the Negus ego that the Dateline presenter really believed that Gaddafi and viewers would be interested in Negus’s own history. So the following Negus question was spoken in English and translated into Arabic:
Interestingly enough, I’m exactly the same age as you, and in 1969, when you had your bloodless coup, I started journalism. It is a strange coincidence. I also had a Volkswagen car like your Beetle….
Go on. The interview concluded when Negus thanked Gaddafi for his “very generous comment”. What was that? Well, believe it or not, the Dateline presenter thanked Gaddafi for forgiving people who once regarded him as “a fearsome person and a danger to peace and democracy”. According to Gaddafi, those of us who held his view were merely “ignorant”. Negus thanked Gaddafi “very much” for this put down.
The lesson of this story is that it is easier to row with democratically elected prime ministers like Margaret Thatcher and their media advisers than with a dictator like Gaddafi and his security detachment. Certainly Negus went limp in Libya.
YOU MAY REMEMBER THIS – FAMOUS U-TURNS OF OUR TIME – MALCOLM FRASER AS AN ECONOMIC REFORMER
On 20-21 February 2010 The Weekend Australian announced its serialisation of Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs with a story by Cameron Stewart titled “Fraser book attacks Howard ‘mythology’”. Stewart reported that, in “his long-awaited memoir, Mr Fraser says, that as prime minister from 1975 to 1983, he was an activist who laid the foundations of a new financial era in the face of stiff opposition from the Treasury and the Reserve Bank”. Stewart’s report concluded:
The book cites the opinion of John Rose, Mr Fraser’s principal economic adviser, that “had Fraser held power (in 1983) all or most of the financial deregulation achieved by Labor’s Bob Hawke and Paul Keating would still have occurred”. Mr Fraser argues he advanced progress towards each of the four major financial reforms of the 1970s and 80s: the surrendering of controls over the exchange rates, deregulation of interest rates, foreign bank entry and abolishing exchange control over movements of capital inside and outside Australia.
Funny that. MWD did some checking in the kennels yesterday and came up with the following Malcolm Fraser statement – made in 1984 – where the former prime minister denounced financial deregulation. There were many such speeches but MWD was particularly impressed by Mr Fraser’s address to the World Economic and Investment Conference on 20 March 1984 – just a year after he lost the 1983 election to the Bob Hawke led Labor Party. Spoke Mr Fraser in March 1984:
Whilst I am an ardent advocate of the principles of private enterprise, I can see floating exchange rates as no more an advantage to private enterprise than giving every trader on the street corner a right to print currency.
The following year, addressing a dinner for Kevin Newman on 12 April 1985, Malcolm Fraser proudly declared that he had “always been opposed to a free float of the Australian dollar”.
For yet more myths in Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs – which is jointly written by Malcolm Fraser and journalist Margaret Simons – see “History Corner”. It’s all about Mr Fraser’s memory and the late John Kerr and Margaret Simons’ defence of Mr Fraser. [Is this the very same Ms Simons who recently outed herself as compost-sexual? – Ed. See MWD Issue 23.]
A SALES ERROR – AND A SALES REWARD
Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs is another MUP book. MWD is a true fan of Ms Adler and all her works and all her books. However, MUP has erred significantly in choosing its The On-Nibus collection from its “On” series which included Germaine Greer’s On Rage, Barrie Kosky’s On Ecstasy, Blanche D’Alpuget’s On Longing and Leigh Sales’ On Doubt – all of which have been MWD favourites.
Alas, Leigh Sales’ magnum opus – or is it opus magnum? – has not been included in The On-Nibus “best of” collection which has just been released. What a travesty. After all, Ms Sales’ work has just been awarded an MWD award in the “Freshest Historical Insight In Calendar 2009” category – retrospectively of course.
MWD believes that Leigh Sales’ discovery that the radical, egotistical German theologian Martin Luther was, in reality, a self-doubting type deserves special recognition – including re-publication.
PILGERING ON EDUCATION
Not even Leigh Sales would describe expatriate Australian journalist John Pilger as a self-doubter. Last week Mr Pilger delivered an address at the speech night of his alma mater Sydney Boys High School. According to a MWD source, John Pilger has a collection of honorary doctorates and is referred to in his ex-school’s old-boy registry as “Dr John Pilger”. Well done.
In his speech, Pilger bagged Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard for its My School website which he regards as an attack “on the very essence of fair go”. He went on to assert that “by 2012 Australian taxpayers will have given $12 billion more to obscenely wealthy private schools than to schools where the majority of our children are educated.
This is yet another pilgerism. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of taxpayers money spent on education goes to the government school system. Still John Pilger seems to have built a successful career by “doctoring” statistics.
THE MONK’S DILEMMA – MAD OR NOT
Some journalists like to refer to Opposition leader Tony Abbott as a “mad monk”. Age journalist Mischa Schubert even supported the use of this term when defending a reference to Tony Abbott as a mad monk in a heading in “The Guardian-on-the-Yarra” on 4 February. Some time later, on the Sky News PM Agenda program, Ms Schubert criticised Abbott for not having views on public housing which are (allegedly) consistent with Catholic social teaching. It was the familiar “heads journalist wins – tails politician loses” routine.
On Q&A last Monday, a similar tactic was directed at the Opposition leader. Following a critical comment on Abbott by an audience member, presenter Tony Jones called in veteran politician commentator Mungo MacCallum, who resigned from the Canberra Press Gallery some three decades ago and went into semi-retirement near Byron Bay on the New South Wales north coast. [Does he worry much about rising sea levels? – Ed]
Mr MacCallum pontificated – in a secular way, of course – that Mr Abbott is not able to separate “the ideals of church and state”. In other words, Abbott is at fault for not separating his religious convictions from his political views. According to the leftist Mungo MacCallum, that is.
Not long after, Tony Jones called in a pre-planned question from Louise Easson – who made the following comment: “Tony Abbott recently commented that homelessness was a lifestyle choice for some. Does the panel believe that this is actually at odds with his religion – Catholicism – which prides itself on social justice.”
So there you have it. According to Mr MacCallum, Tony Abbott errs slavishly in following Catholic teachings. And according to Ms Easson, Tony Abbott errs in not slavishly following Catholic teachings. Tony Jones was not able to detect any contradiction in his argument.
HISTORY CORNER
On Malcolm Fraser, the Late Sir John Kerr and Memory
What a fun day last Monday. Early in the morning there was former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Fraser talking to Fran Kelly on the ABC Radio National Breakfast program. And that evening there was Mr Fraser talking with former Gough Whitlam media adviser Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report. [Did anyone ever find out why Red Kerry does not mention his time as a former Labor staffer in his CV? Ed. See MWD passim]. Earlier, at the weekend, there had been much coverage of Fraser in The Weekend Australian.
The occasion was the launch of Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs written by Malcolm Fraser and Margaret Simons. The book is published by the sassy Louise Adler at Melbourne University Publishing under its Miegunyah Press label. Margaret Simons is a freelance journalist who writes for Crikey and is also an academic at Swinburne University of Technology.
MWD only received copies of Malcolm Fraser’s 850 page memoir on Tuesday and, consequently, has only had a chance to read some chapters of the tome. History Corner focuses on Malcolm Fraser’s claim that the Governor-General Sir John Kerr effectively advised him in advance of his decision to dismiss Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam on 11 November 1975.
Once upon a time, Malcolm Fraser was loathed by the left. Not any more. These days he is beloved by inner-city sandal-wearers – and the more Mr Fraser criticises the Liberal Party the more he is loved. Why even Margaret Simons has become an admirer of Malcolm Fraser – as, apparently, has Kerry O’Brien.
So it came as no surprise that, during his 7.30 Report interview with Fraser on Monday, O’Brien accepted Fraser’s damaging claim that the Governor-General effectively gave Fraser warning of his intention to dismiss Gough Whitlam. The warning allegedly came during a conversation which took place when Kerr phoned Fraser at 9.55 am on 11 November 1975. Whitlam had first made this claim against Kerr and Kerr had always denied the allegation. Fraser did not make the allegation until over a decade after the dismissal.
At Page 304 of Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs, Fraser/Simons write that this call “was one of the most momentous phone calls in the history of Australian politics”. Really. The authors claim that, during this conversation, Kerr sought undertakings from Fraser that he would abide by certain conditions pertaining to becoming prime minister of a caretaker government pending a double dissolution election.
Apart from the timing, there was nothing unusual about this conversation. Consequently, Kerr would not have been under any doubt that Fraser would have accepted these conditions. They required that the Coalition pass supply, advise a double dissolution election immediately, go into caretaker mode which required that no policy changes be implemented and promise not to hold enquiries or royal commissions into the previous government. As Fraser and Simons should be aware, there was nothing unusual here.
The only thing that was unusual turns on Fraser’s allegation that Kerr put these conditions to Fraser before Whitlam was dismissed later in the day. But did he?
John Kerr always acknowledged that he phoned Fraser at around 10 am on 11 November 1975 – merely to check whether the Opposition was intent on continuing its refusal to pass supply. When Fraser confirmed the Opposition’s intention, Kerr decided that he had no alternative but to dismiss Whitlam in view of Whitlam’s own refusal to go to an election and his attempt to govern without supply. The Whitlam Labor government was dismissed just after 1 pm on Remembrance Day 1975.
In their book, Fraser/Simons write:
There has been some controversy about this telephone conversation. Kerr later denied that it ever took place. There can be little doubt that it did. Fraser’s Principal Private Secretary at the time, Dale Budd, remembers seeing a signed note of the conversation on Fraser’s desk later on 11 November. National Country Party member of parliament Peter Nixon was in the room at the time of the call and remembers it, although he heard only one side – Fraser’s monosyllabic responses. So why did Kerr deny that the call took place? Fraser believes that this was a measure of pressure Kerr was under in the wake of the dismissal, with conspiracy theories being floated…
However, there is plenty of evidence that the phone conversation did not take place as Fraser remembers it – and little that it did. The conversation was only revealed in 1987 – in Philip Ayers subject-friendly book Malcolm Fraser: A Biography (William Heinemann). Sir John Kerr denied Fraser’s assertion as reported by Ayers – but none of the substantive points made by Kerr are referred to in the Fraser/Simons book. Fraser and Simons present only the case for Fraser.
Evidence Against The Fraser/Simons Claim:
▪ Sir John Kerr’s personal files contained a contemporaneous note – dated 16 November 1975 – in which Kerr recorded that his phone call to Fraser on the morning of 11 November 1975 had been to determine “whether it was the Opposition intention to continue to refuse supply.” [See Gerard Henderson, Menzies’ Child: The Liberal Party of Australia (HarperCollins 1998 edition) pp. 234-238; The Weekend Australian, 7-8 November 1978 and The Weekend Australian, 14-15 November 1987]. In this contemporaneous note Kerr made no reference to setting out conditions in his phone conversation with Fraser.
▪ In his book The Whitlam Venture (Hall of Content, 1976) Alan Reid reported that Malcolm Fraser told him on 11 November 1975 that he had no knowledge of Kerr’s intentions when he (Fraser) went to meet the Governor-General after lunch 11 November 1975 (See page 411).
▪ Bob Ellicott QC., who was Opposition shadow attorney general in 1975, told both John Kerr and Gerard Henderson in the late 1980s that he was present in the room when Kerr phoned Fraser and the conversation was so quick that there would not have been enough time for the Governor-General to have put a series of conditions to Fraser and hear all his responses.
▪ As Malcolm Fraser wrote in The Australian Financial Review on 29 October 1987, Philip Ayres was given access to all Cabinet documents of the Fraser Government and to all Fraser’s private papers. When Ayres wrote about the Kerr/Fraser phone conversation of 11 November 1975, he could not put a time on the call. At Page 292, Ayres commented that “the call must have been made between 10:05 and 10:30”. This would suggest that there was no note of this conversation then in the Fraser Papers which documented the conversation as having taken place at 9:55 am. This also suggests that the document in question may have been dated sometime during the last two decades.
▪ In his book November 1975 (Allen & Unwin 1995), Paul Kelly quoted Malcolm Fraser as having said that he (Fraser) had not kept the “piece of paper” on which he recorded the notes of his conversation with Kerr and added: “I promise you that”. Fraser also told Clyde Cameron, in an interview recorded for the National Library of Australia, that he did not keep his notes from the phone conversation. There is no explanation of this matter in Malcolm Fraser: the Political Memoirs and Margaret Simons has declined to explain the evident disparity in Fraser’s accounts.
Evidence In Support Of The Fraser/Simons Claim:
▪ There is Malcolm Fraser’s handwritten note as illustrated in Malcolm Fraser: the Political Memoirs. Clearly the words in the first half of the note are written with a different pen from the time, date and signature at the bottom of the same document. Margaret Simons has acknowledged that the only evidence for the claim that Malcolm Fraser dated and signed this note on 11 November 1975 is Mr Fraser’s memory many years after the event [Margaret Simons email to Gerard Henderson, 24 February 2010].
▪ There is Dale Budd’s evidence. But this is a recollection first recorded in the edited collection The Dismissal (MUP, 2005) of something which he had seen a full three decades earlier. In any event Dale Budd’s recollections have been challenged by Sir David Smith who was Kerr’s official secretary in 1975. Also Dale Budd told Gerard Henderson that Malcolm Fraser had refused to give him permission to quote from this note. [See The Sydney Institute Quarterly, Issues 27, 29 and 30.]
It is not suggested that either Mr Fraser or Mr Budd is being dishonest in any way. It is just that memory is fallible. And the authors of Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs are asking readers to accept their interpretation of a phone call which took place in November 1975 on the basis of Mr Budd’s recall of what he saw on a note 30 years before he wrote about the event and on Mr Fraser’s recall of when he signed a note which he once believed had been destroyed.
The Most Likely Scenario
There is no dispute between Malcolm Fraser and the late Sir John Kerr that they were involved in two conversations on 11 November 1975. The first was a phone call which took place around 10 am. The second took place at Government House when Kerr, having dismissed Whitlam, commissioned Fraser as prime minister.
It seems that, unintentionally, Fraser has confused the two conversations. The likely scenario is that Kerr merely asked whether the Opposition was still intent on opposing supply during the phone conversation – and that he set out the conditions pertaining to the caretaker government at the subsequent meeting at Government House after Fraser had been commissioned as Prime Minister.
In Issue 27 of The Sydney Institute Quarterly (Volume 9, Number 4, January 2006), Sir David Smith recalled the events which occurred after lunch when Kerr swore-in Fraser as prime minister. The comments were taken from a reply made by Smith to a question following an address he gave to The Sydney Institute on the publication of his book Head of State.
I have no personal knowledge of the phone call between the Governor-General and Mr Fraser in the morning. I know it took place – I was not in the study at the time. My understanding of it, from the Governor-General immediately afterwards, was that he sought to confirm what had taken place at the meeting that had been held at Parliament House that morning between the leaders of the Government and the leaders of the Opposition. They failed to reach a resolution and, as a result, Mr Whitlam was to come out with certain advice later in the day.
…as I recall, Sir John Kerr has denied that he gave Mr Fraser any warning of the caretaker conditions. I’d been instructed by the Governor- General to draft the letter which Mr Fraser signed in the study, and before he was sworn in as prime minister, accepting the caretaker conditions that the Governor-General had imposed on him. The Governor-General read the letter to Mr Fraser in my presence and asked him if he would be willing to sign that. I can simply say that I formed the impression that the conditions were coming to Mr Fraser as new. If he’d had any warning of them earlier that morning he was a good actor and I have no knowledge of what is now claimed by Dale Budd.
It is quite likely that Fraser took notes of this conversation and that, sometime after 1987, Mr Fraser found the piece of paper on which he had written down the Governor-General’s conditions – signed and dated it – and subsequently forgot about this. This would explain the different writing on the note which is reproduced in Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs.
There was no need for Kerr to ascertain in advance whether Fraser would abide by the caretaker arrangement before Whitlam was dismissed because they were unexceptional and on account of the fact that Fraser had no option. Having blocked supply to bring down Whitlam, Fraser could hardly have refused the prime ministership when offered the position by Kerr.
What’s surprising in all this is how left-leaning journalists like Margaret Simons and Kerry O’Brien have embraced Fraser’s position. During his 7:30 Report interview, O’Brien accepted without question Fraser’s interpretation of the contested phone call.
Due to space considerations, the promised analysis of The Hungry Beast left-wing rant against ASIO has been held over.
Until next time.