On 26 April, IPA Executive Director John Roskam sat down with Gerard Henderson to discuss whether mainstream media can be trusted or saved for our monthly show IPA Encounters.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
John Roskam:
Welcome to I PA Encounters. My name is John Roskam. I’m a senior fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs. Today, in this episode of IPA Encounters, I will be talking with Gerard Henderson about the media, mass media, and what can be done for the media to regain the trust of the public. I’ll also be talking with Gerard about his new and important book, Cardinal Pell, the Media Pile-On, and Collective Guilt from Connor Court press. I’m speaking to you from the Bay Mayer Media Studio in the IPA offices in Melbourne, and Gerard is with us from Sydney. If you’re an IPA member, you are watching this live and exclusively at the moment, and you’ve had the opportunity to send us in questions. We’ve received dozens of questions. We’re not going to be able to get through all of them in the hour that we have together, but I will certainly be providing a selection of questions to Gerard.
Before we hear from Gerard, can I say a few words about him? He is, of course, the executive director of the Sydney Institute. He has a PhD and qualifications in Arts, Honors, and in Law. He’s a columnist for the Weekend Australian and writes every week on Friday the unmissable blog Media Watchdog. He’s made many appearances in the media and many appearances over a number of years in the ABC, which we are going to talk about. Gerard taught at universities before working on the political staff of the Fraser government, and he was chief of staff to John Howard as deputy leader and leader of the opposition in the 1980s. Gerard’s written a number of very important books about Australia and our history and our culture, in particular, Menzies’ Child, a history of the Liberal Party of Australia, Australian Answers, and Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man.
Gerard’s contribution to Australian thought and debate has been massive. One particular aspect of that I’ll identify and I quote, from an article about the intellectual influencers of the 1980s, “In September 1983, an article in Quadrant, The Industrial Relations Club, by a public servant in the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations, Gerard Henderson presented the Australian industrial relations system as an exercise in mutual back-scratching in which economic realities took second place to deal-making. That article changed Australia forever. It changed Australian public policy forever, and it introduced into the Australian public debate the concept of the industrial relations club.” Gerard, thank you for being with us today on IPA Encounters.
Gerard Henderson:
Thanks for the invitation, John.
John Roskam:
Let me start by quoting from the forward of Cardinal Pell by John Howard, former Prime Minister, but before I do that, let me tell all of those watching at the moment that the book Cardinal Pell, the Media Pile-On, and Collective Guilt can be purchased for $40 direct from the Sydney Institute. We are going to provide a link to the website where you can purchase the book on the YouTube video that we will be putting up, or you can go direct to the Sydney Institute website to purchase the book. And Gerard has said he’s going to sign it for you. It’s an important book, it’s a significant book, and as I said to Gerard as we were preparing for this discussion, I read it in just a couple of sittings.
So Gerard, John Howard said, in the forward to your book, “Cardinal George Pell,” speaking a number of years ago, of course, before his passing, “is the most senior Catholic figure in Australia. He’s a forthright and plain-speaking individual. He became a target for those who felt the church had let them down and had been insensitive to the suffering of abused children.” Gerard, before I talk about the book in general with you, can I begin by asking what in your view made George Pell a target?
Gerard Henderson:
But I think George Pell was primarily a target, not because he was a Catholic, although that had something to do with it, but because he was a conservative Catholic and he was opposed by many Catholics who presented themselves as progressive, and he was opposed by secularists and he was not liked generally, although I think his record was remarkably good across many areas. So he became a kind of focus for hatred, particularly from the sneering secularists in our midst, who were pretty bitter, but also with some disillusioned Catholics. So he was a target. Now, the truth is, and I demonstrate this in the book, that no one in the Catholic Church and virtually no one in any Australian institution did more to tackle child sexual abuse than George Pell. He set up in the Melbourne response. There may be criticisms about it, but he did it.
I think he was the first person in the Catholic Church to do it, and he set it up to look into this issue. And from the time he set that up, within months of becoming Archbishop of Melbourne, sexual abuse and the clergy in Victoria, and pretty well the whole of Australia, and the Catholic clergy stock, there’ve been virtually very few offenses in the last 25 years. So Pell set it up and it was working quite well, but we’ll come to this eventually. He did what the Victoria Police had not done for many decades.
If the Victoria Police had acted against child sexual offenders, like Ridsdale and Day, Ridsdale around the Ballarat area, Day in the Mildura area, if they had acted when they knew these crimes had been committed, they knew, and those two had gone to prison for long terms, most of the problems in the Catholic Church wouldn’t have happened. Victoria Police did not act, and then eventually, they turned against Pell and they turned against the Melbourne response when the criticism of Victoria police began to emerge. And then the pile-on commenced. And once Victoria Police had turned on Pell, others joined in, so led in Melbourne in particular by the Melbourne Age and by the ABC in Melbourne, but not only that part of the media, but that was the large part of the media, and since then, there was unremitting criticism for nigh on 20 years.
And Pell had very few people who had the courage to stand up and defend him. You were one of them. I mentioned you in the book. It’s a small group. It’s about probably 20, 25. I name something like 120 media people who were involved in the pile-on against Pell. And then there are institutions like the office of the director of public prosecutions in Melbourne, Victoria Police, and all these others, all in the pile-on. And we know the result and we know how it all ended up in the end, but it was just a massive pile-on. And I think in that kind of environment, it’s virtually impossible what anyone says to get a fair trial.
John Roskam:
Gerard, as I said, it’s an important book. It’s a significant discussion of politics, the law, the judiciary, the church over a period of some 20 years. As one reads it, one sees massive institutional failures by the church itself, then by the Victoria Police, then by the media, then by the judiciary. And yet, the political class seems to have turned a blind eye to the failures and the mistakes that you document through this entire process of the institutions that are meant to serve the public and that we are meant to trust. Is that an accurate assessment of what the political class have done during this period? And why do you think they did it?
Gerard Henderson:
It’s a very fair assessment. Victoria Police did something quite extraordinary. They set up off Operation Tethering, aimed at targeting George Pell, 12 months before they got a complaint. And the first complaint they got was a man who’d got out of a psychiatric prison, or psychiatric unit, the day before. And then sometime later, another complaint came forward. So it is extraordinary that Victoria Police would set up an operation targeting George Pell when they hadn’t made a complaint. And so it goes on through the system and through the various procedures, so the charging, the director of public prosecution stepped back, Victoria Police charged him, then the director of public prosecution stepped forward and into the magistrate’s court, where some matters were thrown out, and then into the county court where he was convicted. And then the various appeal, the Victorian Court of Appeal failed miserably, when at two out of three, apart from Justice Mark Weinberg, who gave an outstanding judgment in dissent, they failed there.
And then through the system until finally you get to the high court, and the high court throws it out in an extraordinary judgment of seven, nil in a unified judgment. Most of those are quite unusual and it’s devastating criticism. And just on one point, just shows you how bad it was for the political and legal class in Melbourne, and I’ll quote, Professor Jeremy Gans at Melbourne University, he didn’t take any role in this debate. I didn’t know which side he was on, but he gave a very objective analysis. And on the morning of the high court decision, he referred to the hearings that had taken place over two days in the high court before the judges went away to write their decision.
He said that on the second day of the hearings, every high court judge, all seven, had asked the Victorian director of public prosecutions, Kerri Judd, who was then at QC, now at KC, they’d asked her incredibly detailed questions about the evidence, especially the various alibi and timing witnesses, and Professor Gans added, “They, that is the judges, were really on top of the factual details, way more than Judd.”
Because normally in a high court, sort of two judges take the running. So what Gans is saying, and it’s a very interesting analysis of it, he sat through the court proceedings, and they were also available on television through scanning, that the seven judges, all of them knew more about it than the person taking the prosecution.
Now, in that situation you would expect that a professional Victorian government would set up an inquiry about how this situation came about, how you can start off with Operation Tethering, when the police put up eventually 26 charges, none of which succeeded, and after that, Graham Aston, the police commissioner, went on 3AW and said that had a pretty good result. It was a good brief, which a bit like coming away from a rugby league game, I’m an Aussie rules man, myself, ex-Melbourne. But coming away, could the score lines better, coming away from a rugby league game and you’re down 26, zip and you say, “Oh gee, we had a great match.” I mean, that’s what Ashton said, and no one ever inquired how Victoria Police got it so wrong, the director of public prosecutions got it so wrong, the two most senior judges in Victoria got it so wrong.
John Roskam:
Why is that, Gerard? So in this day and age, we are very happy to jump on, examine government failures, whether it’s the Robodebt inquiry, the Royal Commission into pink batts. There are many investigations, many inquiries, many commissions looking into government failure at the state government level, the federal government level, under coalition governments, under labor governments. Why is it that people have shied away, and when I say people, politicians and the media itself, have shied away from examining the failures in this case, which are clear and are obvious? And as you said, the high court identified in a seven, nil judgment.
Gerard Henderson:
I think it’s a matter of fashions. George Pell was completely unfashionable. And on the other side, it’s a matter of courage. You’ve got to have a lot of courage to stand up in this debate. Those of us who did, and there weren’t very many, I was called a pedophile protected by Louise Milligan. I sent a note to the ABC managing director and editor-in-Chief, David Anderson. I said, “Do you think it’s proper that your journalists are saying this about columnists?” He said, “I wasn’t aware of this.” He wrote, he sent me an email, “I wasn’t aware of this. I will look into it and get back to you.” I’m still waiting. Every day I open up my emails to see if he’s got back to me. He never got back to me.
It was just unfashionable to stand up. And it’s foolish for people to say, I mean, generally around, these days, you’re supposed to acknowledge unconscious bias in public service departments, in other areas. You’re supposed to say, “Well, look, I don’t feel biased, but maybe I’ve got unconscious bias.” But no one ever says that about the legal system. And no one said about the George Pell case with Victoria Police or the DPP or judges who looked at it, “Do you think there might be an element of unconscious bias here?” And I think the evidence suggests there was. I’m not making personal allegations against anyone. People can make mistakes and whatever, but I don’t really think the matter was looked at fairly at the time, and I don’t think it’s been looked at fairly since. And I’ll just give you one example. I mean, in this book, just looking at the media, apart from the political crowd, I nominate about 120 people who are in the media alone. I’ve also got chapters on the Royal Commission, Victoria Police, and whatever else.
Now, this runs in small print across two pages. And for your IPA viewers, I did a special artwork today, and I just marked in red, of this list, which runs from the bottom of page 166 through two thirds down page 167, all those names in red are ABC, all of them ABC journalists or associated with the ABC. Now of the 120, including about 50 ABC types, not one, not one has come back to me and said, “I got it wrong.” Not one has said, “I exaggerated or made an error,” but all have totally ignored it, everyone.
And like Keith Windschuttle, who got one interview on the ABC for his book, Frank Brennan got none. I got none. And I wrote to David Anderson again, I said, “Well, you are the editor-in-chief of this organization. You, with Louise Milligan and Sarah Ferguson and all the others, David Marr, have been deeply involved in all this criticism of Pell. I’ve mentioned the two most recent book, Brennan’s got a book out, I’ve got a book out, you’ve ignored it.” And again, I’ve got his personal email. Again, I sent it twice. No answer because everyone’s in denial about it, having it failed miserably in the high court, seven, zip, nobody wants to talk about it.
John Roskam:
So no one wants to talk about the collective failures of our institutions. Something else that struck me and you write very powerfully about is the failure of the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, you discuss, the right to a fair trial, you discuss, the right to appeal. Journalists should be upholding these principles, and yet, you give case after case where they just dismiss it, ignore it, or think it’s unimportant. How has that come about?
Gerard Henderson:
I think people just turned to blind eye. Frank Brennan originally did this. I put this map in my book, but it just shows you how, you have to wonder how this could possibly have got to court. This is what the complainant, who was named Jay in the lower courts and A in the high court, how he got to the scene of the crime, which was the priest’s sacristy. This is what he told the police along that red line. When he went to the magistrates court, he said they went that way. I’m sorry, it’s yellow. When they went into the magistrate’s court, he said they went that way and into the priest’s sacristy that way. And before the county court, he said that he went that way, that way, up there, down there, back again, down there, up there, around there, through there.
So the first one took 44 seconds. The second one took four minutes, 25 seconds, and the third one took five minutes, 26 seconds. So now you’ve got one of the major criminal cases in Australian history, and, as Frank Brennan points out and I demonstrate in my book as well, not only is it impossible for the accused to get to the scene of the crime, it’s also impossible for the complainant to get to the scene of the crime because neither of them had time because they’re in a long procession. Now, anyone could have worked that out. I mean, if you go to the second case before the magistrate’s court or what was presented before the county court, neither Pell nor his alleged victim could have got to the scene of the crime in time for the crime to take place in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on a Sunday morning at high mass, with a high solemn mass, with about something, an estimated 350 people in the vicinity, including a couple of busloads of Taiwanese tourists.
It’s funny in a way, but it’s very sad in a way because Victoria Police just went ahead and even after the high court threw it out, Victoria Police said they had a good brief. The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, virtually said, disagreed with the high court decision. He said, “I believe the victims.” But the high court had decided that Jay or A, as he was termed, was not a victim. He was a complainant. So you had the Victorian premier, and virtually no one had the courage to stand up and say, “There should be an investigation here.”
And here, I think mean the Labor Party in Victoria wouldn’t do it. But there was a lot of weakness among the liberal opposition down there at the time. I’m not aware of anyone much did anything there either. And there are a few people who spoke up. And since then, virtually all those people have been silenced. The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald wouldn’t run anything on these books. The ABC wouldn’t run anything on these books, and The Guardian wouldn’t do it. I mean, The Guardian blocked the book before, my book, before it came out, said, “Oh, this will be fun.” And when it came out, they just ignored it.
John Roskam:
So that then leads us to a topic I’d like to explore following this, which is, how are the public to trust the media? What does this do to trust, when you have outlined the essential case that, as we said, the high court came to a very firm conclusion on, what does it do to relations between the media, the community, and the public?
Gerard Henderson:
I don’t think it’s damaging, but I must say, I also should point out that Royal Commission was incredibly prejudicial of George Pell as well. And now that the high court cases has gone, people now quote the Royal Commission, but I’ve analyzed that in my book and elsewhere, and those allegations weren’t tested either, and they were about covering up. They weren’t about abuse. So what you’ve got there is a situation where, I mean, Peter McClellan headed the Royal Commission. In 1980, it said, “You can’t really handle these things to royal commissions because they don’t act like normal courts.” He sat on the Royal Commission with George Pell and his fellow commissioners condemned George Pell for not reporting certain things, but they couldn’t prove it. So they said it was unbelievable or untenable, that he hadn’t done this. But when you say things like unbelievable and untenable, they’re not judicial findings. They’re opinions.
John Roskam:
And these were reported uncritically by the media.
Gerard Henderson:
It was all reported uncritically by the media. Yeah.
John Roskam:
And again, this is a question many IPA members have asked. In your view, when did the media change? Has it changed? Has it changed into a series of individual journalists being partisan barackers rather than organizations that present at least both sides of an argument?
Gerard Henderson:
I’ve been around for a long time, John. I think it was bad going back a long way, and social sciences departments and universities were unbalanced going back a long way. And people like myself, it was a conservative experience, that although I got on well with some of them, but not with all of them, but I would say it’s got significantly worse in recent years as more and more journalists have chosen to become activists. In days gone by, editors tried to bring a, and both in the print and electronic media, tried to bring about a division between opinion and reporting. That has pretty well disappeared now. So in the case of George Pell, I mean Louise Milligan, who led the ABC reporting, she acted as an activist and so did others, and I point them all out. Louise Milligan actually said on the ABC, around 2017 when the book came out, she said, “This book is written from the perspective of the complainants.”
So once you say a book is written from the viewpoint of the complainants, that’s the work of an activist. There’s nothing wrong with being an activist, but she won very substantial prizes, including from law companies, for a book on George Pell, which was written from the point of view of complainants and concerning which she wouldn’t answer questions. So when it came out, when her book came out, I wrote, it’s in the back of a book. I wrote her a letter, I like writing letters, but she wouldn’t respond to letters. I wrote a letter and just asked questions about the book. How did she put people’s words in quotes when they were made 30 years ago and she wasn’t there? I mean, about her sources, and you can read it. They’re very fair questions about scholarship, which any editor at the ABC should have had a look at because here you had their most senior journalist making statements that were based really on nothing much at all except what someone had told someone who had told someone else.
Two of my favorite quotes in her book, George Pell on George Pell, two of her sources are these. I don’t make this up. I put this to her in my letter and she never denied it. Two of the sources, among a number, was a friend who was a mother in the neighborhood, and my favorite source, I think the most authoritative source she had, I’m not kidding, I’m not making this up, was the father-in-law of an ABC journalist. How about that? And so what happened when I said, “Well, how do you justify all this?” She refused to answer me. She ran to her publisher, Louise Adler, Louise Adler, who I know a bit because she’d published my book on Santamaria. She sent me an angry email, telling me to piss off effectively, which I refrained from doing, but the questions have never ever been answered.
John Roskam:
Gerard, before we talk about what is to be done about the ABC, what does that then say for the media? And you quite correctly say, anyone entitled to be an activist to fight for a cause they believe in, but that’s not journalism necessarily. That’s not being a balanced media organization. What can be done about the media as, at least in Australia, the media is seeming to bifurcate into sides and partisan barracking?
Gerard Henderson:
I’m not sure much can be done. It’s a worldwide phenomenon. It’s probably as bad here as it is another.
John Roskam:
What do you think has caused it? You mentioned younger journalists coming through. Are there other causes of what we are seeing?
Gerard Henderson:
I wouldn’t target younger journalists. I think a lot of the people I’m talking about in my book are not young. They’re in their 40s, 50s. Some of them are in their 60s. David Marr’s about my age, He’s not young anymore. And at least David Marr had the intellectual honesty to accept the high court decision. Most of the others didn’t. They refused to accept the high courts. Marr conceded that. I acknowledged that. I just think it’s got worse because the left’s got stronger and people in positions of authority have got weaker, intellectually weaker. The inability to stand up to journalist and just say… In days gone by, in some instances, editors would say, “Look, you can’t run that. There’s no evidence for this or whatever else.” Now, it’s much easier, I think, to get into the media and make allegations.
And then you feed off other things, like there are royal commissions, so you can report that sort of stuff. And then you don’t have to go back when these matters are overturned and whatever. So I think what we are getting is a situation that’s getting worse, but it’s not particularly new. I mean, as someone who supported Australia’s Vietnam commitment in the late ’60s into the early ’70s, it was virtually impossible to state that position on Melbourne University campus when I was there. It’s much worse now. But even then, you got ministers from the Gorton and McMahon governments couldn’t appear on campus. And that’s over 50 years ago. So it’s a lot worse now, but it’s not new. And I think it will probably continue, but the difference now is that we’re not so dependent on mainstream media. And that’s good. There’s a lot of social media and the problem of, say, the Age dominating the political debate in Melbourne, or the ABC dominating the political debate is not so anymore.
They have a role in the political debate, but there are other areas, and I just mentioned Connor Court. Without Connor Court, a lot of people would not be able to write books in this country because publishers wouldn’t have the courage to publish them. And Anthony Capello at Connor Court does, and he publishes people on the right of the Labor Party. He publishes conservatives. He doesn’t publish just right-wing work. He’s got a book out by Mark [inaudible] coming out. He publishes Michael Sexton and others, but a lot of people couldn’t get published. So you just need a few people of courage to stand up, but it’s not easy to find them, unfortunately.
John Roskam:
So Gerard, I’ve asked this about other guests on IPA Encounters. What gives you the courage to do this, not just on the Pell case, but on many issues over many years?
Gerard Henderson:
John, I’ve always found that eating glass for breakfast helps and going to bed after a gin and tonic in the evening helps. And the combination of a gin and tonic at night and a mouthful of glass in the morning toughens you up. I’d recommend it to all IPA members, I’d recommend it. I don’t know. I’ve just been like that all my life, so I’m not… Well, you stand up. I mean, I could ask you, you stand up for issues and a lot of people do, but it’s not easy to do. The easiest thing is not to surrender, but just to say nothing. And there are a lot of silent people out there who just don’t talk about matters because they don’t want the angst. And I can understand that. You got to be a bit mad to stand up, I think, a little bit mad. It helps. But apart from that, I enjoy doing it. It makes life interesting if you’re having a few arguments around the place.
John Roskam:
Well, and coming to arguments, you and the IPA have a slightly different view on the future of the ABC.
Gerard Henderson:
Yeah.
John Roskam:
Can I ask you your views on the ABC and what, if anything, should be done about the ABC?
Gerard Henderson:
Well, I’ve been criticizing, I mean, for a while I worked in places where I couldn’t say much, but since I’ve been out of political jobs and other service, I’ve said much more. But I’ve had the same view about the ABC since the 1960s. I haven’t changed. It’s probably got a bit worse. The disagreement I have with the IPA on this, and you kindly invited me to go on your podcast, and I said no because I didn’t want to get lumped in with all the others.
John Roskam:
With everyone else who wants to sell the ABC.
Gerard Henderson:
Yeah, or privatize it. Yeah. Because it’s not going to happen. I’ve been around politics a long time. It’s not going to happen. And the reason why it is not going to happen in the Labor Party, is not going to happen in the Greens. So what about then Liberals and the Nationals? It’s not going to happen there because those politicians, when they go back to their electorates, the ABC is stronger than any other commercial area. They give them interviews, and the ABC is not so one-sided in the rural and regional areas as it is in places like Melbourne-
John Roskam:
Which it isn’t. That’s, I think, an important point to make.
Gerard Henderson:
And I can understand why Nationals and Liberals in the party room say, “We’re going to close the ABC” because they want it for their own exposure, but also because it does fulfill a gap in certain parts of the media in rural state. Now I know Sky News Regional is now going into the regions, but that’s a pretty recent development and it’s doing quite well, as I understand it. So you’re never going to get a majority of politicians, let alone in the representatives, let alone get it through the Senate, to do it.
John Roskam:
So what do we do, Gerard?
Gerard Henderson:
There is an argument that it’s completely lost until you and I join it. There’s that kind of argument around, but the basic point is it’s not going to happen. So I don’t want to get involved in any discussion about something that’s not going to happen because I’ve got better things to do. I can understand the arguments, but it’s not going to happen. So what can happen? Nothing very much. The board doesn’t run the ABC. I see Laura Tingles jumped [inaudible] Connors. Laura will find that most of the medias are very boring. You’ll have to spend hours looking at the audit of a billion-dollar company.
Not only does the board not control the ABC, but it shouldn’t. I mean, boards don’t run companies. They supervise. You understand. They oversee them, but they don’t run them. So they’re run by the managing director. And as you know, there’ve been a couple of conservatives put on the board by the Howard government, who couldn’t achieve anything. And it wasn’t their fault because you just can’t do it. I mean, some of them did, well, some of them not so well. None of them did badly, but it had no implications. So the only important thing that the board, really important thing that the board does in the sense that we’re talking about is it appoints the managing director. And the managing director is a board member, and then the managing director runs the staff.
So unless you get to the ABC a managing director who’s tough minded, who can intellectually take on various people in the ABC, many of whom are very intelligent, they may be left-wing activists, but they’re bright, unless you get a managing director who’s prepared to uphold standards and prepared when a strike comes up to say, “Well, you can strike.” Because quite frankly, it doesn’t matter much whether the ABC strikes or not. Unless there’s a bushfire or a flood or something like that, it really doesn’t matter whether they’re strike or not. There’s plenty of other media. But you’ve got to have a managing director who will recognize there’s a problem and bring about a situation where no longer do the ABC people appoint their own and promote their own. So at the moment you’ve got what I call, others have called a staff collective, I call it a [inaudible]. You’ve got this group, a little group, who appoint one another, promote one another, and that’s why there are no dissenting views.
If you want to find the dissenting views, if you want to look at the dissenting view at the moment on issues like the voice, well, it goes Sky News, Chris Kenny, Chris Kenny is a yes man, Andrew Bolton, Peta Credlin are no people on the ABC. There’s no one in the ABC who would advocate the no cause. And this runs through all these areas. So they keep talking to one another about the same issues. And that’s why you get programs like Q&A, Wherever You Are. They’re good for me. I don’t want them to change, where everyone agrees with everyone else and they all go away.
And I had one conversation with David Anderson when he actually got the job. He came to one of our annual dinners. And I said, “David, I’m all for ABC reform, but don’t do it too quickly because I need something to write about.” But the ABC’s been very good to me. For 30 years. I’ve sort of had a part-time career critiquing the ABC, but there’s so much to critique. It’s getting it a bit worse, but there’s always been plenty material. And it’s often forgotten that the Prime Minister who had the biggest row with the ABC was not John Howard or Tony Abbott. It was Bob Hawke, as you know at the time of the first Iraq war, and that’s covered in the ABC official history.
Journalists, I do make this point, journalists in particular are very sensitive to criticism, extraordinary sensitive. I know many over many years. And what’s important is that the criticism of the ABC keeps up, and the best criticism is to criticize the programs, not to call for it to be privatized. I spoke to someone who wanted it to be privatized and I said, “Well, who’s going to get control of the property?” The property is worth multi, multimillion dollars in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane and other places. So my view is don’t talk about privatization. Just critique it and keep throwing it in, and the journalists don’t like it. Now they will go into denial. They will reject it. The Morrison government did do something that brought about a situation where they’ve got an ombudsman, which is better than what they’ve had before.
And that’s a positive move. And I think this board has been a better board because they’ve done that. And you’ll notice that directions coming down from this current board, some people are stepping off after the last meeting, which was yesterday, I think, the five-year term, a couple are stepping off, but the best thing this board’s done is to bring about a situation. And I think Ita Buttrose is involved in this as well. They’re brought about a situation where they are prepared to look at criticism. And Ita Buttroses organized two independent inquiries, one into the Luna Park fire, which unfairly targeted the Labor premier and never ran. Well, he was a Labor premier, but he still shouldn’t have been unfairly targeted. And there was another one, and we’ve had recent examples of it. So the criticism over the last 10 years has brought about a situation on the board where they’re more likely to say, “Every now and then we should apologize or make a correction.”
Before that, it was very difficult. So I’m not deeply pessimistic about it, but it’s got to come at the area of staff. And staff have got to be put under pressure. And the best way to put under staff under pressure is to criticize, provided its criticism supported by facts and evidence. You’ve actually got to… You know what it’s like you do it yourself. You got to get the transcripts, you got to read the books, you got to read the articles, you got to go online and check out, you got to look at the tweets and have that. And then you put it all together. The argument itself isn’t enough. The reason why I didn’t agree with the IPA on on on that is because I just don’t think it’s going to work. And I’ve got better things to do than advocate stuff that I know is not going to work since I advocate enough stuff that without me getting into that area.
John Roskam:
One of the questions that many IPA members have asked is, can you please ask Gerard to explain the vitriol directed at Rupert Murdoch and News Limited, given, as you’ve just outlined, there is a far wider range of diverse voices in News Limited newspapers than will be found sometimes in the old Fairfax, now Nine Entertainment, newspapers and media, and the ABC? What is it about Rupert Murdoch and News Limited that raises the ire of so many on the left?
Gerard Henderson:
Before I come back to that, at the institute, recently we had a discussion on The Voice with George Williams. He’s a columnist with the Australian and Chris Merritt. He’s a columnist with the Australian taking quite different views. They’re both contributors to the Australian. You find different views in the Australian. For God’s sake, they’ve had Phillip Adams for years, and not the only one, many of them. So you don’t find that in the ABC. John Howard famously said years ago when he became Prime Minister, “Where’s the ABC’s Phillip Adams?” I wouldn’t have said that if I were John for different reasons, but Adams liked it. But the point was, there wasn’t one then and there’s not one now.
Going back to Murdoch, I’m talking about Phillip Adams. I was on a platform with him at Adelaide Festival of Ideas. I never got invited back. It was the first one, and I was on with a couple of people. And Phillip, as he often is ABC’s man in black, was the [inaudible]. And I made a rather nebulous statement, bearing in mind that Murdoch had started his commercial career really in Adelaide, with the Adelaide News, which was a nothing paper in the afternoon because the Advertiser dominated and Murdoch set up the news and did remarkably well. And from Adelaide, he went on to Sydney, and then he went to London and New York and whatever. But I made what I thought was a banal comment. I simply said that Murdoch was one of Australia’s most successful business figures ever. This is about in the mid-1990s. And that virtually all the audience jeered me and Philip Adams just mocked me. But saying that a man like Murdoch, who was then very influential in London, soon to become influential in the US, I couldn’t even say he was an important successful business figure.
So there’s a great deal of opposition, I think mainly because people don’t like Murdoch’s political views, but Murdoch’s views have changed a lot. He’s not a left winger, but he’s moved from right of center to left of center to right of center. He supported Tony Blair in Britain, but he’s just not liked, I think partly because he’s successful and partly because he’s tolerant of different opinions. Without Murdoch, there’d be virtually no conservative voices in the country. That’s a fact. And that’s really what the left want. What’s stronger than ever is, in the past, as someone who has been around for a long time, I’m used to criticism from the left. But what is now quite new is not simply criticism, which doesn’t often happen, but just a shutting down.
Conservatives aren’t often criticized anymore. They’re just told, “Shut up. Don’t appear,” either through threats or through verbal intimidation or whatever. And Murdoch makes it possible for different views to be held. So Murdoch has profoundly hated in sections of the media, particularly in the ABC, but not only in the ABC. But you also got to remember that in a sense, Murdoch is a rival to the ABC in so far as he has influence over Sky News. That’s a rival to the ABC. It may be a small rival, but it’s an important rival. And so there’s a degree of that. And also, there’s this sort of culture around the place. I’m surprised, I must say, you mentioned my book, Australian Answers. I interviewed Rupert Murdoch for that, and he told me that when he was at Oxford, he had this little statue of Vladimir Lenin on his mantelpiece.
So he’s come a long way from being a Lenin admirer to being, for a while, a Trump supporter. It’s quite a difference. But I think the fact is that Murdoch’s a pluralist, and he does allow free debate and discussion. And in all, I wrote initially for the Australian. Then for 20 years, I went to Fairfax, mainly with the Sydney Morning Herald, sometime with the Age, and now for the last 10 years, back at the Australian. No one’s ever told me what to write. No one’s ever told me to write anything. Murdoch has never interfered, or his managers have never told me what to do. And you talk to any other columnist and you talk to Phillip Adams or whatever, all these people, they can tell you, I mean, Phillip will tell you, Murdoch doesn’t tell him what to say. It’s pure myth, but the left is full of hatred.
And Murdoch is someone they’ve never been able to control. And in a sense, I think some people are jealous of his great commercial success because whether you agree with him or don’t agree with, remember what he done on the media, in a time when media is in difficulties, is extraordinary. And he helped preserve newspapers. Without those reforms when he was running the Times in London and whatever, without those reforms to the printing process and whatever, print media would’ve died a lot more quickly than it’s going at the moment. So Murdoch’s been great for the media, but you wouldn’t want to say that at an ABC cocktail party.
John Roskam:
Or a Festival of Ideas.
Gerard Henderson:
Unless they had plastic glasses.
John Roskam:
Can we then move on? You mentioned your experience. You’ve had, as I mentioned, you worked in the Fraser government, vast experience in politics and the world of ideas. A question that many IPA members have asked is, can you please ask Gerard, what advice would he give to Peter Dutton?
Gerard Henderson:
Well, it’d be similar to the advice I gave John Howard when I started working for him in ’84. I was there ’84, ’85, ’86-
John Roskam:
Well, what were his polling numbers in 1984 or 1985?
Gerard Henderson:
Well, at one stage it got very low, but I must say when I left, not because of me, cause Laura Tingle took me up on this and I had to correct her in the Financial Review some years ago. When I left John Howard in 1986, the Liberals, the coalition was in front of Labor in the polls, but what happened after that was the Joh for Canberra movement. And so, I’m not saying that John Howard would’ve won in ’87, but he certainly was in with a chance. But once the Nationals and Joh Bjelke-Petersen, and I must say a lot of conservative commentators, myself and people like John Hyde who was at the IPA excluded, many of them went with Joh for Canberra. And that was a disaster. So Howard’s chances the first time around were ruined through ’87, and Hawke went early and won the election and whatever.
But when I was with John Howard and I’d watched the Fraser government carefully from, I worked for Kevin Newman, my brush with fame these days is I once worked for Campbell Newman’s father, is my brush with fame. My advice to Howard was always be yourself and be courageous. Now, when I left Howard at the end of ’86, he wasn’t quite the man he became by the time he became Prime Minister in 1996. I think he looked back on some of his failures. He’d been remarkably successful, but he had some failures. He looked back on that and he came back much stronger and much more coherent about his positions, much more willing to take people with him. And he came back strong. So I would say, and the fact that John didn’t look good, I mean, I remember once when Andrew Olle and Paul Lyman on the ABC live television mocked his teeth.
Now this was important. He was really mocked. He came back strong and he was himself. He was never going to look like a Hollywood film star, a male Hollywood film star. And it didn’t matter. And he was never popular. I mean, we’ve discussed this before, but all the liberal leaders who have won government from opposition, Robert Menzies in ’49, Malcolm Fraser in ’75, John Howard, and then Tony Abbott, none of them were popula. They’re all disliked to a greater or lesser extent. And they all had some of the greatest victories ever in Australian political history at certain times because everyone knew what they stood for. Many people was disagree, but they all knew what they stood for, and then in ’49, and then Howard, and then Abbott, and then these people, when they won these big elections to get into office, they never pretended they were someone else and never tried to look like someone else.
Now Labor people are much more popular. Bob Hawke was extremely popular than he won. Kevin Rudd was extremely popular. Julie Gillard had a great deal of popularity when she won. Goff Whitlam was very popular. Political conservatives don’t get liked very much, mainly because the intelligentsia is against them and they form a lot of the debate. You don’t have to be liked, as you know. You’ve got to be respected. And I think that Peter Dutton has just got to be stand up, be strong, and be considered and strong, and who knows where you’ll end up.
Because it was said in the 1940s, you can’t win with Menzies. It was said in the 1980s, you can’t win with Howard. It was often said for a while, although Fraser was only in opposition briefly, but it was said early on that Fraser could never possibly become leader of the liberal party. And I’ll come back. There’s a bit of a joke on that. And then same with Tony Abbott. I got on very well with Andrew Peacock, but it’s alleged that Andrew Peacock once said, and it could be true, he’s alleged to have said, “Malcolm can never be the leader of the Liberal party. He wasn’t a prefect at Melbourne grammars.”
But that could have happened because Andrew was a prefect at Scotch College. But in any event, Malcolm had this huge victory. Now, the Malcolm Fraser one in 1975 was not the Malcolm Fraser ended up getting standing ovations at literary functions full of sandal-wearing lefties shortly before he died. But I’m talking about that Melbourne, Malcolm Fraser. So I think that’s the only message. Be yourself and be strong.
John Roskam:
You made a very, so you made a very interesting point that, paraphrasing, you liberals will usually not be liked, especially not liked by the glitterati, the literati, the media. Is that a point that too many liberals are slow to grasp and to understand, and it then merges into ideas about we’ll appeal to the center, move to the moderate middle, try and get the ABC to dislike you less? Is this something that liberals have to keep on relearning, that it’s about authenticity, not about being liked?
Gerard Henderson:
I think they need to accept that. And I noticed that, without naming names, looking around some of the state governments, state oppositions, or state liberal parties, and not so much the national parties. I think that’s right. They’ll never be liked. I mean, Margaret Thatcher wasn’t liked. Ronald Reagan wasn’t liked among the intelligentsia, broadly defined, or the glitterati as you call them. But you just got, it doesn’t matter because these people don’t decide elections. The people who decide elections are not particularly interested in politics, and they look for strength and they look for guidance. You’ve just got to not care because I don’t know any political leader on the conservative side of politics who was ever successful and liked. The ones who tended to be liked never got anywhere.
John Roskam:
Who are you thinking of, Gerard?
Gerard Henderson:
Well, I’m not going to name names here, but, well, I mean-
John Roskam:
Does he live down the road from you?
Gerard Henderson:
Oh, well, Malcolm Turnbull. Well that’s one. Well, I don’t mind mentioning Malcolm Turnbull, but if you look at the recent leadership at the South Australian Liberal Party, for example, nice bloke. But you know, and I remember someone say to me once about Malcolm, that Malcolm thinks that everyone who likes him is going to vote for him. It doesn’t actually work like that either. Often people can lie. The intelligentsia can like you, but they’ll still go off and vote for the green left or something. Yeah, I mean, Malcolm’s just across the harbor from here, so I’ve better keep my voice down.
John Roskam:
So-
Gerard Henderson:
The problem with Malcolm is that he was never seen as really standing for anything. But he was a very handsome man, a very successful man. But you look at his success or lack of it, you look at John Howard’s success and you think, gee, I mean, Howard never had much money. He wasn’t going to be a film star, but he made it after Menzies, next most successful Prime minister. And Menzies had a bit of luck because he had the Labor Party split in the mid-50s. So Menzies was a bit lucky. Howard didn’t have that sort of luck, but he did remarkably well. And he’s still going and did a nice introduction to my book, which he read.
John Roskam:
You mentioned, and again, I draw on your personal experience and your experience as a political historian, you’ve mentioned courage, you’ve mentioned authenticity as required for political leaders. What else do political leaders need and, over your experience, who has struck you by their leadership?
Gerard Henderson:
I think what they need is, and I’m conscious there are of advisors around these days, but I do think they need a written record of what they stand on. I think they should communicate their thoughts in writing, in pamphlets, or what used to be called pamphlets ,or social media these days. I think we need liberal leaders or national party leaders who can say, “Look, I gave this speech there. I may not have written everything, but it’s their views.” And John Howard did that, and Malcolm Frazier did that early on, when he is in opposition. Menzies did it. We know from 1944 on or before 94, and Abbott did it. I think they need to write stuff. It’s not simply a matter of standing up and stating positions. You have to build around it your views. And I think they’re best communicated in writing, although that’s only the start.
And beyond that, you have to pick your targets and who you want to look after. Obviously, and I concede, obviously there is a problem among youth in Australia with housing and ownership of housing. And bear in mind that Menzies and Howard, I mean, their overwhelming policy was home preservation, home ownership. That’s what they stood for. And Fraser, to some extent, by the time Tony Abbott got in, it was, things have changed a bit. But I just think stating positions clearly. I’m just a commentator, John. I haven’t put my hand out myself and it’s not easy. And me, as you know, you’ve worked around politic. Being a political leader is extraordinarily hard. And you get all these demands on you, and it’s not an easy life and it’s easy to criticize. So as you notice in my columns, I’ve never spent much time personally criticizing political leaders. I know I’ve worked in government, I’ve worked in opposition, I know I’ve worked in the public service. I know how hard government is. It’s really, really hard. But I think the best thing you can do is state a clear position and stick to it and take your chances. A lot of people won’t like you. It doesn’t really matter.
John Roskam:
And you talk a little bit about this in Menzies’ Child. Why are conservatives or liberals sometimes reluctant to commit themselves to writing and discussion and debate and ideas? And we were in fact, just talking about this in the office today, that regardless of what you think of Kevin Rudd’s, 5,000 words in the monthly, or Jim Chalmer’s 5,000 words, or Wayne Swan’s books, Bowen’s books, Latham’s books, they write things and they debate and they argue. On the center right of politics, there’s a little bit more of a reluctance to do that. Why do you think that is?
Gerard Henderson:
I think it’s true that there is a reluctance. I think it’s wrong. I remember when I was working for John Howard very early on, I was often in my office reading stuff and people would say, “What are you wasting your time reading the newspaper for?” Well, that’s where the news is. But I’ve made this point in the past. I haven’t made it so much recently. I think the intellectual tradition on the conservative side is much stronger in Britain than in Australia. It’s much stronger in the United States than it is in Australia. I mean, there are all these journals, newspapers in the United States still there that are essentially conservative, the same as two of Britain. And there are a lot of American conservative politicians and British ones, and particularly British ones, who do what we are talking about. And I think it’s wrong, and you picked it up, but I’m glad you mentioned at the IPA because it seems to me, if someone’s going to write 5,000 words, I mean, I read it, I wouldn’t want to see what they’re on about.
But it gives them some sort of status and we just need more of that. Now, the politician in recent times is written most, although he is done most of it after his time in office, is John Howard. But Tony Abbott wrote, Malcolm Fraser didn’t write much, but Menzies did. Again, the successful leaders they took, took their writing work and their reading work very seriously, all of them. I was talking one story, a successful politician, Alexander Downer, and one of the guys now I know in foreign affairs who didn’t agree with Downer, but he said to me, “Gee, he was impressed by Alexander.” He said, “Whenever they traveled, Alexander’s always reading.” Alexander, like a lot of politicians, John Howard and others, they like reading biographies, political biographies in history. That’s good, but they’re successful ones. And I think there needs to be a stronger intellectual tradition in the Liberal Party than there is.
And it hasn’t been encouraged really over the years. And people who write a bit are sometimes mocked. But I think I agree with you, that’s wrong. I think, and it ought to be encouraged any rate, because people like Chalmers and Swan and others are writing stuff. It should give the Liberal Party and others a chance to critique what they’re doing. But the Liberal Party should be doing much more of that. And I look around some of the people who got pre-selection, and I don’t think they’re ever going to meet that mark, but they should be looking for people who can meet that mark.
John Roskam:
And on that note, I want to mention, of course, that Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has written a 5,000 word essay for the IPA in Essays for Australia. So there is certainly… Well, now she’s a shadow minister, people on the coalition side who can do that. And it’s important.
Gerard Henderson:
No, I’ve seen that. And that’s what you need, and the work you are doing down there encourages that. And I think the work we are doing up here, we encourage that, too. But we need more of that. As you know, after, well, during the success of the Howard government, some of these think tanks emerged and the IPA was revitalized and the Sydney Institute came to be, although we’re not quite a think tank. And so this idea started, but that sort of faded away, not these organizations. They’re not many new ones coming forward. The left has got full of them. Universities and the social sciences are full of left wingers. The journalists is full of left wingers, but you’ve got to have someone else. You only need a few people standing up the other way. And it just puts a bit of balance in. So I think that is a real problem, but it’s not an insurmountable problem. I mean, who thought John Hal would do what he did? Who thought Tony Abbott would do? Same with Fraser and Menzie and other successful political leaders on the conservative side of politics. But it requires a lot of hard work.
John Roskam:
As we draw this wonderful discussion to a conclusion, and before, again, I remind people how to obtain a copy of Cardinal Pell, the Media Pile-On, and Collective Guilt, can I ask you, Gerard, are you optimistic about the future?
Gerard Henderson:
I’m broadly optimistic. Compared other nations around the world, we’re not doing too badly. Really, it’s not too bad. I’ve always been fairly optimistic. I worked part-time for Bob Santamaria for a couple of years, and I pointed that out in my book, and they’re always pessimistic. And Bob thought I was a bit unusual because I used to occasionally laugh at him and make some irreverent comments. He’d be surprised by that. And he found me a little bit odd, I think, although he had a reasonable relationship. But I once said at a conference that in the National Civic Council, they call it the movement, I said, the pessimists say we’re all doomed. We’re absolutely doomed. And the optimist would say, we’re not ready. There could be another general Depression or a third World war. So the optimist were in for a third World War or a general depression, and the pessimist thought it wasn’t even worth that.
I’ve never been in that side. And I am generally optimistic because compared with everyone else, we are not doing too badly. But it requires a lot of work. And I admire the people on the left who work hard. They work very hard and I admire that. I disagree with them, but I admire it. And the ones who are activists I admire. I just wish there were more on the conservative side of politics. But there can be, there’s no one stopping them. And the thing about, just ending where we started, the thing about George Pell, and he knew he had limitations, we all have limitations, but George Pell was remarkably resilient and strong. He had this massive pile-on him, year after year, time after time, false allegations, hostile police force, hostile legal system.
And he got through it all. He wrote his journal, his prison journal, which a terrific work, three volumes, I’ve read them all, and a very strong man. Now, we’ve all got weaknesses, but Pell stood for something. And what he stood for was certain values in society, partly in the Catholic Church, but generally interesting all kinds of Christians, not simply Catholic Christians. And he stood firmly and he’ll be remembered when so many people have simply forgotten who opposed him. But he’ll be remembered for years. And I hope I’ve made a small contribution to that. And you made around contribution in a way, and I’m grateful for this time.
John Roskam:
Gerard, thank you so much for a terrific episode of IPA Encounters and to remind everyone watching this discussion, Cardinal Pell, the Media Pile-On, and Collective Guilt, very important contribution to an understanding of Australia and such an important event in Australia’s history, is available from the Sydney Institute for $40, including postage signed by Gerard Henderson. You can get get your copy by going to the Sydney Institute website or ringing them up. Gerard Henderson, thank you so much for your time today.
Gerard Henderson:
Thank you very much, John. Keep up the good work.
This transcript of IPA Encounters from 26 April2023 with Gerard Henderson has been edited for clarity.
