The Art of Argument

On Wednesday 10 February 2016, The Sydney Institute organised a discussion on the art of argument between David Marr, author, Sydney journalist and former ABC TV Media Watch presenter and Gerard Henderson, Executive director of The Sydney Institute, columnists for The Weekend Australian and media commentator. The discussion was chaired by media veteran and ABC Compass presenter Geraldine Doogue. To the delight of many, the discussion was both amusing and serious and, above all, very courteous. The paper which follows is an edited transcript of the proceedings.

 THE ART OF ARGUMENT

A DISCUSSION BETWEEN DAVID MARR AND GERARD HENDERSON WITH GERALDINE DOOGUE

Geraldine Doogue: Well this is Anne’s idea tonight. I actually said to David “What on earth did we agree to this for?” But here we are. Welcome everyone, and it’s lovely to be here. I’ll make a few remarks and I’ve invited both gentleman to speak for six or seven minutes after which I’ll do a little bit of a Q and A. Then I’ll throw it over to your good selves.

The more I thought about what we would do tonight, the more I thought that we have a real opportunity to think about the nature of political public discourse in Australia. Most of us, I don’t think, like what passes for political discourse, but I’m willing to be told something different.

I remember hearing Robert Manne, about six to seven years ago when he gave up the column in The Age, telling that we’ve lost the art of argument in Australia. By that he meant, if I recall it, the business of responding to an opponent’s suggestions when you weren’t necessarily ready for them (a la, a good university tutorial) where you had to assemble your material on the run and were dependent upon what your opponent delivered to you. This was the true art of argument. It had elements of trumping and wit, but it was primarily linked with the nature of the evidence presented. Whereas, he said, we’ve replaced that with gotcha moments and a sort of trumping mentality. So I throw that in as a thought as I was pondering today.

I interviewed Richard King, that very good writer in Perth who does excellent reviews, about his book on hypocrisies. He said, “I think it’s when one disagrees that you have your best discussions.” Whereas, he said, that’s not what occurs in Australia these days. He was inviting people to consider disagreement as the kick off point for a good discussion as opposed to closing it down.

The third little piece of evidence, as I was thinking about this, was a Scotsman who died quite tragically, and who was for a short time head of the Australian Institute of Family Studies. This was years ago when I was on Life Matters. I was in despair about the nature of political discussion and he said to me, but at least you have public discussion in Australia. And I said, “Really, do we?” And he said, in England, it’s all done below decks, as it were. We pretend it’s public discussion but we all know we’re engaging in rhetoric, which the English do very well. But nothing is decided in the public realm. But you actually do that in Australia. Even with your ghastly talkbacks and so on, and your shock jocks, things occur in the public agenda. That is an interesting challenge. I was amazed when he said it, because I thought a good Scotsman would deplore what passed for public discussion here. But he didn’t. In other words, it’s quite a provocative set of thoughts we’re going to debate tonight.

We see Gerard and David on the ABC’s Insiders. I cringe and go into a semi-foetal position. Others clearly love it. So I’ve asked them both to first of all reflect personally. After that we can go into broader issues about definitions, or as to when they have both felt that something is at stake in these personal interactions on Insiders that they haven’t necessarily programmed. When they’ve liked it, when they’ve hated it. What’s lost and what’s won from the types of interactions that our loveable Gerard and David do so well.

So first to you, David. How would you answer that? Your personal memories before you think more broadly about the art of argument.

David Marr: There is an unhealthy public appetite for the sight of Gerard and me scrapping early on Sunday mornings. It is astonishing. And I am always saddened by strangers who come up to me and say, “I love it when you and Gerard are on the show … giving it to Gerard.” This happens in the most extraordinary places.

Eighteen months ago I was in Vienna. And I had just entered St Stephen’s cathedral, Stephansdom for those of you who are familiar with the city. And a guy came up to me and said, “No, no, don’t tell me, don’t tell me, Insiders; I love you when you’re on with no, no, don’t tell me, don’t tell me, that guy, you know that guy. You give it to him!” I said, “I think you’re talking about a colleague, Gerard Henderson”. And I don’t particularly enjoy those stoushes at all. But let me tell you of something of what it is like on Insiders.

The stoushes sometimes begin in the Green Room beforehand. Gerard is not a reporter, something we might come back to later in our discussions – we’re different people: I’m a journalist and he’s something else, I don’t quite know what – but Gerard’s reports on his Media Watch Dog blog of the pre-show stoushes are spectacularly accurate. They’re extremely good reports.

We meet for decreasingly luxurious breakfasts and coffee in a corner of the ABC library just down from the studio. We arrive separately, and if Gerard has written something aggressive about me in the few days before I sometimes bring it up with him. This is a bad idea, it’s a silly idea, and I shouldn’t do it. But more often than not, we’re very cheerful with one another; we find topics to talk about. And then we go into the studio and we sit down in that hideous set. Ladies and gentleman, is that set not hideous? And ladies and gentleman, is that set not a lie? It does not matter what the weather is like in Melbourne that morning. But you are given the impression, a totally false impression, of a sunny autumn morning on the Yarra. It is a lie.

Anyway, we sit down there and then they take a photograph of us because they tweet the photograph. So Gerard and I usually find something to do for the photograph. I quite like just putting my hand on his knee. And Gerard is marvellous at this point and he sort of looks solemnly forward as if it’s some sort of bizarre wedding shot and out the picture goes. It immediately attracts an audience of some kind. And everyone is waiting for the Gerard and David moment.

Gerard likes to get in early, coming at me with a completely outrageous statement, like, “You said Tony Abbott would never win the election”. And I’m completely flummoxed by this. Because, it’s just not true. When I am flummoxed and feel misrepresented, I immediately climb onto my high horse. And the high horse is a very stupid place to be on television, even though there seems to an appetite out there for it in the public. And we have a little ding dong. And Gerard’s next line, when I reply furiously to some sort of allegation, is tremendously clever. He says, “You’re very sensitive.”

And that works very well to get me even higher onto my high horse. At that point I usually say something pretty drab like, “I’m very sensitive to being lied about on television.” At about this point, apparently hundreds and thousands of people across Australia who would be much better off at Mass at that time on a Sunday morning are thoroughly enjoying themselves.

I don’t enjoy these exchanges. Apart from the circus aspect of them, I think that they’re pretty pointless. Because the point of public argument is to get to the facts and to bring judgement to bear on the facts so that we can deal with substantial issues, to bring our very different attitudes to bear on those facts, and give Australia the advice it so clearly needs. But this is, I must say with all due respect, difficult with Gerard.

I had not quite worked out why until reading his unique biography of B A Santamaria. And there, on page 153, is the definition of Gerard’s approach. What Gerard is discussing here is the series of controversies that broke over the years because that little worm Santamaria got out of going to war because Archbishop Daniel Mannix put in a good word for him with the government. Gerard does not admire him avoiding service in that way, but he does admire tremendously how Santamaria, over the years, dealt with various eruptions that came along to haunt him. And on page 153 of the book Gerard says, “The response was Santamaria at his argumentative best. He once told me that if criticism was well founded and documented, it was best to ignore it. But if the prosecution’s case contained factual errors, it should be attacked with ferocity so as to discredit the source. Also he advised that wherever possible it was useful to query a critic’s motives.”

Now that’s Gerard’s MO. The problem with that MO is that it is, not entirely of course, about why we should not deal with facts. And my view is that the public wants us to deal with the facts. Ad hominin arguments about the positions of our adversaries or personal lives of our adversaries are all very well and give a certain amount of colour to argument and I would never say they’re entirely out of place.

In the terribly difficult business of persuading people to understand complex reality, or to change their minds about the reality of life in this country and the issues that face us in this country, what people want us to do is to get to the facts and to bring our values and our intelligence to bear analysing those facts. I’m distressed that so much public debate in this country is about slanging away at each other. At our adversaries. Rather than moving to the facts.

I’ll say a bit more about this later, as the show goes on, but while we bring colour and movement to Insiders, I much, much prefer it when we get those parts of the show where Gerard and I bring very different points of view to bear on the facts that are being discussed. That, I think, is where we might from time to time be useful to the country.

Gerard Henderson: Thank you David. I think most of David’s analysis was pretty accurate, except for the facts. It is true that I have reported some of these exchanges in my Media Watch Dog blog, which goes out every Friday after lunch, of course. I have reported some things. Some of our exchanges on Insiders are exaggerated because they don’t actually happen. The truth is David and I have only been on Insiders together twice in the last year. I’ve got all the figures here. Being a little factoid I have produced them all. So I can tell you what it is. It’s only two in the last year. So it’s not that much. But people think we’re on all the time. That’s very interesting.

It is true what David said. On the last occasion we were on together, he did suggest that he should put his hand on my knee. I was trying to be very friendly at that stage and I suggested perhaps I should put my hand on his knee as well, but he advised against that. Probably for good reason I suspect.

I get similar reactions. In December, I’d been to get my eyes tested. I had all this stuff on my eyes and I was having more trouble than usual seeing early after breakfast. A chap came up to me who was repairing gas cylinders in the commercial buildings just off Hunter Street. He said, “Are you this bloke Gerard Henderson? Are you the guy who’s on Insiders?” And I said yes and he said, “God mate, keep giving it to those lefties every Sunday will you mate.” So I do my best.

It is true that the best exchanges we’ve ever had were never filmed. There was a memorable exchange when we used to fly Qantas. We now fly Virgin. David was kind enough to meet me as I came off the plane, he being closer to the front. He wasn’t in business class, just further up, as he should be I suppose. I was further back, as I should be. As we walked down, he made a comment and I made what I thought was a perfectly innocuous response and he said that he had never been more offended in all his life. We had a huge row as people were getting in and out of taxis.

There was another in the Green Room. And there was famously one on the set in between the breaks, which I think related to Tony Abbott. David did let off a bit about me and I was deeply offended. But I said very little whilst David was ranting. And what I noticed was that nobody wanted to be involved. Barrie Cassidy started looking at the lights on the ceiling. And George Megalogenis started switching papers and saying, “Do you really have to be like this blokes?” So I’m trying to get the producers to film those moments, because I think they’re probably more engaging than what goes on, on the program.

David came up with the suggestion we discuss the art of argument. I had suggested, “Heaven and hell and all that jazz”, but that was rejected. Not the first time in my life I’d been rejected. I did put together something on paper so I’ll come back and highlight a couple of points. The essential criticism of me is that I’m a factoid. That I’m too obsessed with facts. And I’m happy to bear that; I think that’s a good way to go. I’m pleased that David’s read most of Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man, and I’ve read most of his very good essay on Bill Shorten. I’ve also read Geraldine’s book and we’ve all read each other’s books. But the essential criticism of me is that I’m a factoid.

I have been both a critic and an ally of Santamaria. Santamaria had many, many faults. But he was a brilliant polemicist. As well, intermingled with these polemics, which he did on the Channel Nine program Point of View every Sunday morning, he could speak directly to camera for seven minutes without an autocue. That is a pretty fine achievement. If you look at what he said, or you read the scripts of what he said, he voiced a lot of polemics but interlaced with the polemics was a huge amount of facts, of quotes, of references to places, of what people said and so on. That is really the essential bit of argument.

I can understand why persons are on one side of the Santamaria argument, and on the other side of the Santamaria argument. But what Santamaria taught me, when I was young and I was associated with him between 1965 and 1975, was in a sense the art of polemics. In this country, the intellectual environment is predominantly left – as David himself said in 2004 – that is the culture of journalism, media and the social science departments is primarily left. Santamaria began to counter that culture as I tend to do. You can’t just go in with opinions. So I try to be courteous, I try to be polite; I was well brought up, although it was a long time ago. I also try to present facts and to be fierce with facts.

I don’t regard the main exchanges I might have with someone the same as exchanges on Insiders. On the program, we’re responding to the latest news; we’re asked questions and asked to respond. This is the first occasion I’ve ever been with David on a platform. I’m not disreputable enough to be invited to literary festivals where you meet people like David. I tend to stay at home and walk Nancy and so on.

As a young person, I was influenced, obviously, by George Orwell, but also by Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge had an irreverence, but it was an irreverence intertwined with lots of references to facts. I still greatly admire Muggeridge’s 1940s book, The Thirties.  And I do a lot of such argument these days in Media Watch Dog, in my Weekend Australian column and on Insiders.  But I’ll make just a couple of points. I focus all the time on facts, quotes, people, places and all that stuff. I believe memory is completely unreliable.

For example, Geraldine quoted Robert Manne and I’m always happy to listen to quotes from Robert Manne. But I’m announcing today that I am increasing the $16,000 I have offered we’re giving to Robert to $20,000 if he can produce evidence of his assertion that, in 1993 or it might have been 1995 or it might have been 1998, I wrote to The Age (sending a copy apparently to one other) proposing that he should be sacked as an Age journalist. Of course, I never sent such a letter. At first, I could only afford $8,000. But fortunately a Perth neurosurgeon got interested in this and offered to take it up to $16,000 and now I’m taking it up to $20,000. My $12,000 is promised to an asylum seeker cause nominated by Robert. But the neurosurgeon in Perth reckons Robert needs a bit of break and he can use it to take a holiday. All I say is “produce the document”. Since Manne maintains there are three extant copies.

I say all this as a serious point. Because, whilst I’ve got a reasonably good memory, I think memory is extraordinarily unreliable. Many people who are very intelligent and very clever and very honest, like Robert Manne, have very clear recollections of events that never happened. In fact, I understand that Ronald Reagan once, long before he got Alzheimer’s when he was a vibrant president, told a person who had made a mistake about one of Reagan’s Hollywood films, “Don’t worry Charles. Some of my clearest recollections are of events that never happened.” Now $20,000 is a pretty good offer and A-Pac’s got the news tonight.

I try and avoid hyperbole and prophesy because hyperbole is the enemy of evidence. All we know about the future is that we don’t know anything about the future. I do know prophets because I quote them a lot but I’ve never met one that matters. My favourite, of course, is the False Prophet of Palm Beach – Bob Ellis. And I wish him well. I want Bob to keep making prophesies because I record them every year and produce them at the end when they fail to eventuate.

To conclude, I think the art of argument is really not dissimilar to what the German sociologist Max Weber said about the art of politics and democratic society as he was writing between the wars. Politics is really about slow boring through hard boards. It’s the same with argument. The art of argument requires a commitment to established fact and a certain irreverence towards intellectual fashions of the day, which in Australia are essentially on the left. That’s not the case in all societies all the time. I tend to agree with David that what matters is fact. You can always disagree on the interpretation of fact. In David’s most recent book, which is a fine essay on Bill Shorten, he has his opinions – but they’re surrounded by facts. In my own way, I have my opinions and they’re surrounded by facts. But people will disagree on the interpretation of facts or more significantly I think the importance of facts.

Geraldine Doogue: That’s very interesting because I would have said that it’s your capacity to set up very strong opinions about people and motives. Going back to Santamaria’s, what you quote characterises you rather than the use of facts. So it’s interesting that’s what you see yourself as doing.

I think you have a very broad based view on the dilemmas involved in asylum seeker policy. And you allow me into those nuances strangely enough. In other areas, I don’t think you do as much. So you allow nuance in my opinion to enter into your discussion around asylum seekers, which you don’t in other areas.

Gerard Henderson: But the facts are always there. I started writing columns nearly 30 years ago now, and I’ve written a column every week over 29 years. Because of my unfashionable opinions I decided that people weren’t going to read my opinions because they wouldn’t be interested in them by and large. But I thought, if I put a lot of facts in them they may read my columns because they’re interested in what I quote and what I say. And they could form their own opinions about my opinions. And I’ve tried to do it that way.

So every column I write has a lot of facts in it. Yes, you approach different topics differently and I understand what you’re saying there. But if you look at my stuff there’s a lot of facts in there. David has quoted my biography of Santamaria, and I’ve mentioned his biography of Garfield Barwick. You may disagree with parts of either but they are full of facts. That’s why this material works.

I turn up on Insiders when people ask me – I’m a courteous guy. But that’s not a place where I build a case. Occasionally I build a case on the ABC – every 25 years Philip Adams asks me on the program and I turn up. He had me on last year. So in 25 years, whenever it is, I’ll be back.

Geraldine Doogue: Do you think of yourself as a gladiator?

Gerard Henderson: Well not really, I don’t have many shields, you know.

Geraldine Doogue: I think of you as a gladiator. I don’t mind gladiators.

Gerard Henderson: The only thing different between me and David really is that, in the circles in which the three of us and others here work, I’m essentially saying unfashionable things. I’m saying that George Pell is being very harshly treated by the media. I’m saying that I think that Tony Abbott is quite a clever guy. I’m saying that I still support the Allied policy in Vietnam. The reason I’m regarded as a gladiator is because I say unfashionable things. If I said exactly the opposite, with exactly the same number of facts, people would think it was just what they heard at morning tea at the ABC, or it was what everyone was propounding in that editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald. The only reason that I’m a gladiator is that I’m by myself.

When I was young and I used to vote DLP. Bob Santamaria went to Sydney and met Professor David Armstrong, the philosophy professor, and came back and told me that Armstrong voted Democratic Labor Party. Apart from Frank Knopfelmacher, I’d never met an academic who voted DLP. And when someone agrees with me, I look around and say, “Could that be right?”

I’m a gladiator because I’m sort of out there, on the bridge with no one behind me. Quite frankly it’s quite a nice place to be if you’re not very sociable. I do find when you’re on your own the company’s better.

David Marr: He actually said that. It’s fact. Okay, now let’s get serious about this. My view is, Gerard, that you are a gladiator. I’m something else. Yes, I have issues and subjects that interest me deeply and I’ve written about them over many years. But there’s a profound difference between us. And there’s a very neat way of showing it. It is Gerard’s view that politicians shouldn’t speak to people like me. Now, journalists don’t hold views like that. Journalist’s views are that we want to get to speak to whoever we can and we want to get access to whatever documents we can. And that’s our job. Our job is getting to people and getting to documents. In fact, that unseemly row at the Melbourne Airport was provoked by him telling me that Tony Abbott was foolish to have spoken to me.

Gerard Henderson: No, no it wasn’t.

David Marr: Or was it that George Pell shouldn’t have spoken to me.

Gerard Henderson: I said George Pell was smart not to speak to you.

David Marr: George Pell was smart not to speak to me. That is not the instinct of a journalist. And Gerard has also told me that Tony Abbott was foolish to speak to me.

And I thought, maybe I’m deluding myself here, but how can somebody who believes in public debate, actually advise politicians not to speak. And there I was researching my Bill Shorten piece, and there’s Jane Cadzow’s very good profile of Bill Shorten. And Jane is with Bill Shorten somewhere or other and they bump into Gerard. And Gerard says to Shorten “You shouldn’t be talking to Jane Cadzow.”[1]

Now, for a journalist, this is weird. This is a weird instinct to be saying things like this. It’s just weird. And this makes,

Geraldine Doogue: It makes you suspicious of him?

David Marr: Not suspicious. But where do we place Gerard? He is a gladiator. In a way, it is completely remarkable that there is a respectable figure in public life in this country who still argues for the merit of the Vietnam War. I could not disagree with him more profoundly, but it’s good that there is someone out there doing it. It’s good that there is someone around, I suppose, defending George Pell. But this is where you do need to get to the facts. And it’s great colour in the Santamaria biography for Gerard to describe me as a born again atheist with sectarian views and anti-Catholic prejudices and all of that kind of thing. I don’t believe it’s true, but that’s fine.

Motive doesn’t matter when you’re bringing the truth to light. Motive doesn’t matter. I believe my motives as far as Pell are concerned is that he is a person who has a case to answer. Gerard doesn’t acknowledge this. But there are facts that present Pell in a very poor light and he will have an opportunity from the 29 February to address some of them at the Royal Commission.

It doesn’t help anybody to attack me as a bigot. Francis Sullivan runs the Truth Justice and Healing Commission for the Church. This is the body for the Catholic Church which was representing the Church before the Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Francis Sullivan delivered a very interesting speech last year in which he asked people not to defend the Church by attacking its critics as bigots. It’s up on the internet and I really recommend it to people.

He says, look, the Church did terrible things. The Church has terrible things to answer for. Don’t make the mistake of saying there’s an unfair focus on the Catholic Church, that these people who criticise bishops are bigots. There are facts and sad facts that have to be dealt with. Now I have never heard Gerard actually come to grips with the facts that George Pell has to answer. He makes claims for him but I’ve never heard him actually come to grips with them.

Geraldine Doogue: But what he did come to grips with, I thought, was that, he said that no one else has had their appearance flagged in advance by the Royal Commission as they did about Pell.

David Marr: That’s just not true.

Geraldine Doogue: Is that not true?

David Marr: As far as I know the witness list is known ahead of time.

Gerard Henderson: But not with the dates and times.

Geraldine Doogue: I must say I thought that was a very interesting remark.

David Marr: Say it’s true. What’s the point?

Geraldine Doogue: Well the notion is that he is the person whom everyone agrees is the person who will in effect cop the flack. He’s the big bad bogey of the entire thing.

David Marr: He’s not the worst of them.

Geraldine Doogue: By flagging his appearance, we’ve –

David Marr: I just don’t get, I mean I just don’t get it.

Geraldine Doogue: Gerard, are re you interested in public debate?

Gerard Henderson: Of course I am; that’s why I’m here. And that’s why we’ve asked both of you here before. It is true that I said I thought Tony Abbott was unwise to speak to him, although it was off the record.

I don’t really care whether people speak to me. I wrote to all of Santamaria’s family to talk to me about my book and everyone I wrote to refused. All of Santamaria’s workers refused. I didn’t get offended. I didn’t care. What does it matter? They probably should have but I didn’t care. Lots of people don’t speak to me. You’d be surprised how many people don’t speak to me. I don’t even care.

David Marr: I’m not offended.

Gerard Henderson: You were offended.

David Marr: No, I was shocked to hear somebody say that a politician shouldn’t talk to a journalist. Because that is a political operator’s judgement. It is not a public discussion judgement. That is about political advantage.

Geraldine Doogue: In other words you’re saying you’re standing in different corners of the room.

David Marr: And it’s a reminder to me that Gerard and I are terribly different people.

Gerard Henderson: After you blew up at the airport, people who were in that taxi queue are still suffering shock. They were looking around with taxis coming in; we’re at rank 4 and 5 and going at one another. People were saying, “Can you move down?” and looking around. Some of them were from overseas and must have been thinking they had come to a pretty odd place.

David Marr: But the wonderful thing about Gerard is that he always wants to share the taxi with you after you’ve had the row.

Gerard Henderson: As we walked down, I was doing what Malcolm Fraser used to call “doing the hypocrisies”. I was trying to talk about the weather. I spoke a bit about Pell, and you said to me, “Well you know Pell refused to speak to me.” I just said, thinking this was completely innocuous, that it was a pretty wise decision on his part. David told me he’d never been so offended in all his life. Now if that’s the most he’s been ever offended, he doesn’t get my correspondence.

But I’ll just make one point about it. I don’t want to go into this because I have written about Pell. There’s never been a debate on the ABC involving Cardinal Pell that I’ve ever been asked on. David’s been on.

David Marr: Have I?

Gerard Henderson: Yes, you were on The Drum for example. The problem is I’m a bit of a factoid. My head is full of trivia. Of a factual kind. But I’ve never been invited to join any such discussion. The only discussions I have are in my column in The Australian or in my Media Watch Dog blog.

In my column in The Australian recently, I wrote that Archbishop Frank Little of Melbourne and Bishop Ronald Mulkearns of Ballarat were clearly aware of paedophilia within in the Church and clearly covered it up. Both of them were progressive Catholics; they weren’t conservative Catholics. I’ve made that point.

A lot of the evidence against Pell has already been shot down at the inquiries and he’s got his own legal representation to be heard at the end of February. And he’s entitled to be heard. But, so far, there’s been no causal linking. And we’ll see what comes up. The reason I’m a gladiator is because I say unfashionable things. I could say things with the same intensity running the fashionable opinions of the left wing agenda in this country and people would think I was just a nice sort of guy. They would.

David Marr: I want to say something more important. In the business of public discussion in this country, the categorisation of people as left to indicate that they are untrustworthy is completely exhausted. It is done. There is a boutique audience for it, but it is essentially done.

Ten years ago when I was writing a piece for Overland essentially about what it means to be left in Australia, I asked Gerard amongst a number of other people to tell me what they thought left meant. Gerard wrote me a long and very carefully considered and nuanced definition of what it meant to be left. I valued that, because what he gets to there is the extraordinary number of categories of left there are. He went through them meticulously. But then he’s still using, in this day and age, the category of “left” as if it was one thing.

Gerard mentioned earlier a “progressive agenda”. These mysterious agendas, which are supposed to make people like me dangerous or untrustworthy. This is a busted form of public discussion in this country. Left is not a meaningless expression. Right is not a meaningless expression. They have their uses. There’s never a column of Gerard’s which doesn’t attack somebody as being left, and his biography is fabulous. On every couple of pages somebody is left, leftist, left, leftist. You know where you stand as you read the biography.

But I just wanted to make the point, a bigger point than us just brawling with each other, that I think public discussion in this country has shed that form of combat as useless.

Geraldine Doogue: Okay last word to you before we throw it over.

Gerard Henderson: Well I’ll try and make it a brief word like David’s and I won’t go on for more than 25 minutes. I did speak out about hyperbole and we just saw an example of it. I’m not really blaming David for all the world’s problems. When I wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald, that David had said that to be a journalist one needed to be of a left wing persuasion, David rang me up, very annoyed and said he had never said it. But he had said it, and I produced the tape.

David Marr: What?

Gerard Henderson: Well, when you spoke at UTS.

David Marr: Oh this is the big UTS quote ladies and gentlemen! Pay attention.

Gerard Henderson: Okay, thanks. Can I have a say now? Great, thanks.

David Marr: Don’t miss a word.

Gerard Henderson: In David’s words, the natural culture of journalism is a kind of vaguely soft left enquiry. And you told journalists that if they weren’t soft lefty kind of culture types, they should get out and try another job. Now that’s a decade ago. So, you’re using this expression but when anyone who says the same thing and politely answers your queries, you say they’re obsessed. But you did say, if you weren’t on the left you should get out of journalism.

David Marr: I made a complete hash of it that night. I made a complete hash of it.

Gerard Henderson: Unlike tonight.

David Marr: It is not my view, it has never been my view that only lefties can be journalists. I admire right wing journalists enormously. I was talking in a completely off handed way about people who define all kinds of scepticism as left wing. I made a mess of it. When Gerard produced the quote, I wrote a letter to The Australian or to the Herald, wherever it was, setting out my actual views. Gerard you are absolutely free to quote until doomsday what I said at the UTS that night. But, in all honesty, you should say that I admitted to making a mistake and withdrawing it but you never do.

Geraldine Doogue: Okay.

Gerard Henderson: I just want to make one point.

Geraldine Doogue: No!

Gerard Henderson: No hang on, the difference here is.

Geraldine Doogue: Wimbledon umpire here.

Gerard Henderson: The difference is, if I say something I believe it. I don’t go around the next day and say, “Oh gee, I stuffed up I shouldn’t have said that.” I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it.

Geraldine Doogue: Oh, but you’re allowed to make a mistake and…

David Marr: Come on Gerard.

Geraldine Doogue:  You’re allowed to pullback surely.

David Marr: So my correction is regarded as a lie.

Gerard Henderson: No not a lie.

Q & A

Question: Tonight we have two giants, intellectual giants, that are capable of assessing a whole range of issues in their own way. One is marginally deceitful. The other is entirely inconsistent. The result of the Australian debate is a result of those interpretations. And, if we could only get less deceitfulness and more consistency then we might be at a point where we can have a sensible conversation and end up with something we can all agree with.

Geraldine Doogue: In other words, can we improve by actually having (it wouldn’t be as much fun) less inconsistency less deceitfulness in debate.

Gerard Henderson: I think David and I disagree on some things and it would be pretty dull if we didn’t. I don’t think we’re deceitful. But I don’t know.

David Marr:  The key word is polarising. Another aspect of public debate in this country which we are just sick of is for every issue to be divided into your side or my side. As though there were only two opinions or two teams. Whenever I hear the metaphor of a war applied to public debate, I just want to puke. It is crude, it is over simplified, it is deliberately designed to be brutal. It is supposed to justify all kinds of otherwise really unjustifiable tactics.

Public debate in this country at its best is nuanced, it is not about sides, it is not about left vs right, progressives vs conservatives, Catholics vs Atheists. It is about the nuanced facts of the situations at hand. And it’s the cheapening and polarising which I think people are sick of.

Question: I have a rather meagre social life. For many years I watched Q & A and Insiders religiously. What jumped out, time and time again, is that people who represent the Labor Party and the Greens always talk over the people who represent the Coalition. Those on the conservative side tend to be quite polite. David, tonight you are great. But on Insiders , Gerard hardly gets a word in.

David Marr: That’s why people love it. The right is polite and the leftists and Greens tend to be impolite. It’s never a good idea to speak over somebody else and I do it a lot.

Geraldine Doogue: Why?

David Marr: An impatient wish on my part that nothing should stand between the public and the truth.

Question: With the Republican and Democratic primaries going on in America, at the moment, I was wondering about your thoughts on the benefits or otherwise that the current debate series brings to the American democratic system.

Geraldine Doogue: So what are the current merits of the American system leading up to the election? The wins, the losses and how would you score it as it were.

Gerard Henderson: On cable TV, the debates rate quite well. So people seem to watch them. I find them rather tedious because people are essentially saying the same thing over and over again. But if people watch them and they’re entertained by them, I don’t have a problem. It’s a different political culture. Our debates here are a bit different. We don’t have as many. In the US, I don’t know that such debates lead to many breakthroughs but they’re kind of an endurance test. If you can get through them all you probably deserve to be president.

David Marr: We should have more debates in this country at election time. The fact that we have so few is very sad. In the United States, there is a pressure to have these debates. I was recently trapped in a hotel room in Honolulu with nothing to do but watch the Iowa debates. What they really do is show how completely in trouble the United States is. I don’t know what it is like to be an American and watch those debates. But to be a friend of America, such as myself, someone who admires the country very much, to watch those gladiators posturing in the way that they are doing is deeply, deeply depressing.

Geraldine Doogue: The polarisation of the US makes our polarisation look like a picnic. We still do, I think, have a centre that can be appealed to. And it’s very hard to find that in the US.

Question: Our parliamentary system is polarising, and our judicial system is polarising. Is it not the case that we’re trapped in debate because we’re in a country where that’s our system, that’s how it’s been structured, that’s how it works?

Geraldine Doogue: Are we trapped in a sort of Westminster system, but not just in politics, also in the law?

Gerard Henderson: I don’t think the debate in Australia is all that polarised because I don’t think that society is very polarised. What we’re debating about here, as seen by someone coming from North America or Western Europe, wouldn’t suggest that there’s that much division in our society. And I don’t think there is.

In my columns, I tend to stay away from politicians and look at other people in the public debate. Apart from the Greens, there isn’t a great deal of difference between the mainstream Labor Party and the mainstream Coalition parties. So we can exaggerate it. I don’t believe we have a great many great issues that divide us. And when there are occasional issues, it’s about how to handle those matters of division.

It is true, when every word that a politician speaks is going to be reported, politicians are going to be much more careful about what they say. Which leads to the situation where most politicians say virtually nothing. There are a few politicians around who will speak loosely and many others who won’t at all. Tony Abbott was much more effective before he became opposition leader, because he was much freer. He froze up when he became opposition leader; he froze up even more as prime minister.

Most of our political leaders do that because they’ve been warned not to make a mistake. I think it’s better if people do make a few mistakes but there are penalties for making mistakes. I think the debate in Australia was much more polarised after the Second World War when there was a genuine issue of free enterprise against socialism and when the Labor Party wanted to socialise the private trading banks.

David Marr: The Westminster system, with government and opposition, is one of the greatest political inventions of the millennium. That parties be organised in such a disciplined way in order to govern is frankly what the United States requires. The fact that courts are in this very formal way polarised, between prosecution and defence compels the rest of us to be as little polarised as possible and to be as nuanced and free flowing in our arguments as we possibly can be.

That’s why, earlier, I was complaining about attempts to run polarising arguments of left, right, progressive, conservative. I don’t think they’re very useful. We need to get to the facts. And there are some great issues in this country at the moment. The refugee issue is a great issue here, and an issue that will determine the reputation of this country for a long time. And I am hoping that we are beginning to have a fresh and nuanced argument about that. But that’s a very polarising argument.

Geraldine Doogue: What about education? Education is a giant debate that we’re not having. With very strongly held views that will absolutely determine the future of our country. That’s not regarded as polarised but I actually think it’s polarised the education debate.

David Marr: The poles being?

Geraldine Doogue: Well there’s the private vs the public, that sense of whether we’re adequately spreading the cup of money. That’s a very big debate.

David Marr: Geraldine I’m not going to sit here and hear my old school implicitly criticised. Just because Shore is about to spend $30 million building a new grandstand at the sports ground is no reason whatever that federal funding should be ceased for that school. I know what you’re getting at.

Question: I fear that the next generation, or three down, will be focused in the social media area on very limited discourse – because of the way social media is played in our community. And it’s the main communication tool. I’m interested in your views on the pluses and the minuses of social media. Facebook, tweets, blogs so one.

Geraldine Doogue: The pluses and the minuses of social media, whether it’s going to be reductionist in regard to the art of argument.

Gerard Henderson: Obviously you can’t do anything about it. I think it is more abusive than other parts of the media but it’s not alone in that. All we can do is adapt to it.

I don’t open up my blog to comment because I can’t spend the hours getting rid of the defamation that people are going to put on it. So I don’t engage in that kind of stuff. I don’t think David’s on twitter, I’m not on twitter. I do monitor it, and I do like the find out what other people are saying. Particularly Mike Carlton after lunch; and Mike Carlton during gin and tonic time. Keep those tweets coming folks.

I suppose this is a problem that emerged with every new form of communication. What it essentially does is increase the level of abuse. The level of abuse is not simply from people who are new to the debate. A lot of people who would usually say something in 5000 words now tell people to piss off in two words.

David Marr: There’s a plus for that.

Gerard Henderson: I’m too courteous to do it.

David Marr: Neither of us tweet. Neither of us are on Facebook. There is somebody called David Marr on Facebook. I have a cousin called David Marr and there’s was a very nice man who was the police chaplain in South Australia called David Marr, who I feel very sorry for. There must be other Gerard Hendersons around?

Gerard Henderson: There was a fake Gerard Henderson around because he was involved in advocating a certain biscuit brand, and this fooled Crikey who ran it and said, “What’s Henderson been doing today, he’s commenting on biscuits.” But it wasn’t me. I don’t have a real presence there, and I’m not trying to do it actually.

David Marr: I do understand that my employers, Fairfax and now The Guardian, are desperate for me to tweet. It gives you an interactive presence which delights readers. But, frankly, I don’t have time. And I don’t have the appetite for it. And I know that I would be the one who tweeted the absolutely unforgivable tweet. I would end my career. Most of the time I think I’m going to end my career by needlessly and impatiently crossing the street, without looking where the traffic is coming from. That’s the most likely way that I will die. But the most likely way if I were a tweeter, to end my career, would be the great last tweet.

Gerard Henderson: But it would be David, the ultimate truth, as you pointed out before.

David Marr: Not necessarily. It’s an appalling thing. I was having, I have to say a drink, with Mike Carlton at the writer’s festival one year. I said to Mike, “I’ve worked out Gerard Henderson. He’s just a crank.” That’s the kind of thing old colleagues say to one another. But he immediately tweeted it – to my grotesque embarrassment. I then had to go into print in The Sydney Papers to convince Gerard that he actually was a crank. The whole thing had the most ugly repercussions.

Gerard Henderson: I was very grateful because I put it out as an endorsement in my Media Watch Dog blog. So it’s still there if you trace it down on the blog. I don’t get much praise these days.

Geraldine Doogue: The etiquette of a new media. This happened with phones too. But if you watch the way young ones assume there will be gigantic ebb and flow on social media, it’s very different from the etiquette and understanding of an older generation about argument. So I think it’s a work in progress. One thing that is incredibly provocative is whether the older generation contribute at all or not? I leave that as an open question.

David Marr: That is the spectacular thing about Geraldine, she keeps up. She’s across this stuff.

Question: You both talked tonight about the importance of facts. Most of us here are interested in current affairs. Having watched the British parliament and seen what is happening in Australia with regard to the lack of ability to get hold of facts, the inability of journalists to get information, to go to refugee camps, why wouldn’t two public figures like yourselves be in the vanguard of attacking such lack of access to the facts which is very prevalent?

Geraldine Doogue: Why wouldn’t you both be in the vanguard of objecting to the restrictions against access to facts that our questioner has suggested has invaded us in the last 10 to 15 years? On both sides of politics.

David Marr: I’ve written a great deal about that. I continue to write about it and I speak about it as well when I’m on Insiders and at other public appearances. One of the most disgraceful things that the Labor Party has taken part in, in the last year, was to back the government’s Border Force Act, which threatens medical personnel with two years in prison for telling the truth about what’s happening on Nauru. I said to Bill Shorten, how can you do that? How can you be a party to closing down public discussion and access to those facts? No comment.

Gerard Henderson: The difference here is that I’ve worked at a senior level in opposition in government. I know how hard government is. If you take the current issue of refugees, I know that a lot of activity can be counter-productive. The more that this is made a public issue, the less likely it is that the remaining 2000 people will be released. The more people offer sanctuary in churches and spout their conscience in public, the less likely it is that people will respond. So to some extent things are better done quietly. I spoke to John Howard after the 2004 election when he’d won. In the remaining years, all those people were let out but no one said anything. It wasn’t done by beating down the door, because beating down the door leads to a reaction. So I’m quite sympathetic; it’s a very difficult problem. It’s a question of whether public pronouncements in the long run help. Sometimes they do, sometimes they’re counterproductive. I think you’ve got to draw the balance.

David Marr: This is the most perfect definition of the difference between us.

Geraldine Doogue: I always like to leave this sorts of conversations attempting to be constructive about the future. Where would you like public discourse to head? Gerard?

Gerard Henderson: I would like a bit more pluralism. More views expressed in places like the ABC and Fairfax Media.

David Marr: News Limited as well? More pluralism in News Limited?

Gerard Henderson: News Limited runs Phillip Adams. I tell you what, there’s more pluralism on Fox News than on the ABC. Fox actually pays quite a number of left-of-centre commentators to comment. The ABC has not one conservative on any prominent program. I’m all for diversity, and we could do with more of it in Australia. I’m not so pessimistic about the standard of debate. I think the standard of debate in this country is quite good.

David Marr: The standard of debate in this country is not bad. You will not be surprised that I think the ABC is one of the most important institutions in this country. Allan Ashbolt is still alive in Gerard’s mind. Which is fabulous because how long ago did he die? Critics say there isn’t a single conservative commentator on the ABC, and Amanda Vanstone isn’t conservative enough, etc, etc. But after all of these campaigns, the culture wars against the ABC, and accusations of the terrible bias of the ABC – survey after survey of the Australian people say that the ABC is amongst the most trusted institutions in this country.

Year after year after year it is up there with the High Court. The notion that it is a closed shop is not shared by the Australian people. It is one of the great institutions in this country. I am very glad that we’ve also got Foxtel. I’m glad we’ve also got Sky News. I’m glad we’ve got News Limited. The death of The Australian newspaper would be a tragedy for this country and it may well happen. The death of Fairfax would be a tragedy for this country. Thank goodness we’ve got The Guardian.

Public debate is in pretty good shape. But there is a real problem that politicians can’t get outside their party lines. And when they’re out in public, such as on Q & A, politicians are locked into party positions. Gerard made a good point before. That we should be more forgiving of politicians who make mistakes as they venture into public debate about where we should be going in this country. There’s a real problem with the press diving on the tiniest discrepancy between what somebody said and what the prime minister said.

But I reckon public debate isn’t bad. And here are two people who can barely stand to be in the same room together chatting away for an hour and a half.

Geraldine Doogue: When are you both next on Insiders?

David Marr: Sunday week.

Gerard Henderson: I can barely wait.

ENDNOTE

[1] A note from Gerard Henderson: “It is true that I suggested to Bill Shorten that he not talk to Jane Cadzow. The conversation took place outside the Gallipoli Club before Bill Shorten addressed The Sydney Institute. I wanted the proceedings to commence and consequently the Shorten-Cadzow exchange to end. The fact is that Jane Cadzow had interviewed Bill Shorten at considerable length for the Good Weekend before he addressed The Sydney Institute.”