A Secret Country

by John Pilger

  As a guest of Her Majesty (Mrs Thatcher, I mean) I was amazed to be supplied with a Minder (female), who held my hand, hailed taxis and even searched for laddies’ loos.

  I trust my judgement wasn’t too badly affected by the red carpet, but I did come to the conclusion that things are much improved in Britain . . . People on the street in London seemed better dressed, for example. I noted the absence of the formerly ubiquitous dirty yellow anorak. And my nose told me that the use of deodorant is spreading.

  Not only was the use of deodorant on the increase, so were company profits and house prices, but ‘best of all’, unemployment was falling. In his rejoicing, Gittins paid tribute to ‘the discipline imposed by high unemployment’.121 This, of course, was not journalism, but a victory for the Thatcher propaganda machine.

  What Gittins failed to tell his readers was that the affluence he saw was restricted to where his minder led him; that unemployment was ‘falling’ because the Government was doctoring the figures – simply leaving people off; that the homeless had been effectively abandoned; that Dickens’s debtors’ prisons were returning; that millions of Britons were living in poverty, and so on. The article was a crude but accurate representation of a form of pamphleteering which has helped to narrow the agenda for public discussion in Australia to that set by the new order.

  Overshadowing and at times intimidating those journalists who fail to see their job as the promotion of doctrine are some of the most punitive libel statutes in the world. ‘The politicians’, wrote Evan Whitton, a distinguished journalist, ‘have never surrendered the weapon of the libel laws which are concerned with what is publicly known about their reputations, not what is privately known about their character and activities.’122 One of Australia’s best columnists, James McClelland (ironically, a former judge), described this as ‘the great defamation rort [i.e. scam] which has flourished under our antiquated laws [and] protected corrupt people in high places from exposure and fostered a language of double-speak about “well-known identities” etc., leaving it to the inevitable scuttlebutt to fill in the names.’ McClelland wrote that this ‘rort’ had long been ‘a useful source of tax-free capital for many members of what passes for an elite in this country, notably politicians’.123

  One beneficiary of this system has been Prime Minister Hawke, who used to delight in showing off the fruits of his successful libel actions, including the swimming pool and sauna in his Melbourne home.124 In one action Hawke’s lawyers managed to persuade a Sydney television company and a newspaper to pay him untold dollars in an out-of-court settlement after it had been satirically reported that he had said he would be prepared to use nuclear weapons against the Arab hordes if he were a wartime Israeli Prime Minister. Hawke’s biographer, Blanche d’Alpuget, recalls that Hawke did indeed make remarks to this effect.125

  For many journalists, the most disastrous consequence of the Government’s Media Bill was that it left the Fairfax organisation, the only rival to Murdoch, in chaos. The principal Fairfax papers were then the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Times on Sunday and the Canberra Times. The new rules had set in train a process of lucrative deal-making which deepened an already bitter feud within the Fairfax family, forcing out the chairman, James Fairfax. He was replaced by his twenty-six-year old American-educated half-brother, Warwick, known as ‘Young Wokka’, and a new board of Mates. The new managing director was Martin Dougherty, publicist to the powerful, a Mate of Murdoch, Hawke, Abeles, Wran, and so on. Also on the new board was Laurie ‘Last Resort’ Connell, a moneylender and gambler who had been warned off the Kalgoorlie racetrack in Western Australia. Connell is a Mate of Hawke, whom he has entertained on a deep-sea cruiser. With these Mates behind him, Young Wokka, a religious recluse with no experience of newspapers, turned a huge, profitable business into a much-reduced debt-burdened one and in the process closed down two newspapers with the loss of 500 jobs.

  In February 1988 there was rebellion at the Herald. The editor-in-chief, editor and other senior executives resigned, protesting management interference. The paper’s journalists supported them and went on strike, forcing Young Wokka to appoint a new board. But the company’s debt had increased in the aftermath of the stock-market crash, and major assets had to go, including its other principal newspaper, the Melbourne Age.

  A few weeks earlier Paul Keating had met Robert Maxwell in London. Keating and Hawke had been impressed by the support given by Maxwell’s Mirror Group of newspapers to the British Labour Party, or rather to its right wing. And Maxwell was interested in confronting Murdoch on his home territory. In his subsequent bid for the Age, Maxwell even gave a public guarantee of the paper’s future political leaning. ‘As I understand it’, he said, ‘Mr Keating, according to newspapers, is alleged to have told the caucus of his party that he would prefer Mr Maxwell to own the Age because I have never reneged on my political promise.’126 A new, large Mate was on the way.

  The Age journalists decided to fight. A defence committee was formed, backed by the editor, Creighton Burns. A ‘Charter of Independence’ was drawn up as the basis for any future sale. It is a concise document, which insists that a potential owner be bound to the principle that journalists ‘must record the affairs of the city, state, nation and the world fairly, fully and regardless of any commercial, political or personal interests, including those of any proprietors, shareholders or board members . . . that the editor shall not sit on the board of the owning company . . . and shall not be directly responsible to the board’.

  Leaflets were distributed asking people to sign a pledge to cease buying the Age if its editorial integrity was lost. More than 15,000 were returned. The Labor Premier of the State of Victoria, John Cain, backed the campaign; as did many others in and outside the Labor movement. The issue quickly became foreign ownership and the onus once again fell to the Hawke Government. Having given Murdoch his way, Hawke now had little choice but to stop the Maxwell bid.

  At the end of 1990, with Fairfax in receivership, the Canadian newspaper prorpietor Conrad Black began his bid. Black’s fight against two others – the Irish entrepreneur Tony O’Reilly and a Melbourne consortium – awakened many Australians to the prospects for their press. Black, owner of the London Daily Telegraph and backer of the Tory Party, joined up with Kerry Packer to form the Tourang Consortium. As Gough Whitlam pointed out, a Tourang takeover would mean that ‘95 per cent of newspapers in Australia could be run by two men living in North America, Murdoch and Black’127 Whitlam and his arch foe, Malcolm Fraser, stood on a platform together to declare, ‘We share a common concern about the future of the Australian media and about the concentration of its ownership and control, now without parallel in the democratic world’128 Packer allegedly told a financial adviser that he and Murdoch had a ‘game plan’ for the Australian newspaper industry.129

  As was the case during Murdoch’s takeover of the Herald and Weekly Times, the Hawke government remained silent; Packer was one of Hawke’s most valued Mates. But this time public pressure could not be ignored. A Parliamentary enquiry into the press was announced and Packer was summoned. His appearance was one of Australian democracy’s most demeaning moments. His arrogant behaviour before a Parliamentary committee said to be ‘interviewing’ him, merely demonstrated his power. The event was a Packer triumph.

  However, another enquiry was announced, this time by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal. On November 28, 1991 the eve of the enquiry, Packer withdrew from the Tourang bid. ‘History will ask’, wrote Tom Burton in the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘what, if anything, did Mr Packer have to hide?’130 The Chairman of the Tribunal, Peter Westerway, announced that ‘important information’, which prompted the enquiry, would not be released.

  With Packer out of it, Tourang was in difficulty. In December the Black bid was rejected by the Federal Treasurer, John Kerin, on grounds of ‘national economic interest’. Less than a week later Kerin was replaced by Ralph Willis, who immediately announced that Black could go ahead. On Decem
ber 16 Fairfax was effectively his. There was no gratitude, alas. Black described his suspension from bidding as ‘sleazy, venal and despicable’ and himself as ‘the victim of sleazy political lobbying’.131 Although Australian institutions would own 80 per cent of Tourang, and Black’s Daily Telegraph 15 per cent, there was no doubt who was in charge of Australia’s oldest and second biggest newspaper group. The following, written by Conrad Black for one of his Canadian papers, is said to express his world view:

  If Moscow has provided the requiem for communism, Toronto and Ottawa are witnessing the Gotterdammerung of the soft left. Sweden has electorally repudiated six pretentious decades of socialism to the self-conscious silence of all those Canadians of the drivelling left who keened after Nordic socialism . . . New Zealand has repealed and is rooting out the socialist encrustations of generations. Only in Ontaria in the entire democratic world, is the cant and hypocricy of union-dominated soak-the-rich, anti-productivity politics of envy official, approved and po-facedly presented as ‘caring and compassion’132

  Murdoch has said as much. Together, with Packer, who owns most of the magazines, they now control Australia’s ‘free press’.

  The Fairfax débâcle has left Rupert Murdoch with unparalleled power in a country whose citizenship he has forsworn. It is a power greater than he has acknowledged, a power not always visible. When Murdoch took over the Herald and Weekly Times group, he was forced to divest those of his interests that would have given him a press monopoly in Adelaide and Brisbane. This was a sop to an enfeebled watchdog, the Trade Practices Commission. However, as Colleen Ryan and Andrew Keenan have revealed, ‘negotiations with the Commission to remove this dominance have led to the extraordinary situation whereby two former [Murdoch] News Corporation employees now own papers which are effectively underwritten by their only competitors, News Corporation’.133 Through a web of indemnities and ‘put options’ Murdoch has guaranteed that the two owners do not lose a cent for four years, an arrangement which mocks the spirit of freely competing newspapers. All involved deny backdoor control and motives untoward. But it is clear that a man who can ‘disappear’ from his own company records is a man who can run newspapers without actually owning them.

  In his fine book The Captive Press, David Bowman, one of Australia’s most experienced journalists, chronicles Rupert Murdoch’s rise to power, then compares it implicitly with the ascendancy of Alfred Hugenberg in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. ‘Hugenberg is reliably estimated to have enjoyed control or influence over nearly half the German press by 1930,’ wrote Bowman.

  His philosophy was right-wing nationalist, and accordingly he helped block the spread of democratic ideas in Germany, to that extent weakening the Weimar republic and paving the way for the triumph of the Nazis. This may seem an extreme case to hold up to innocent, laidback Australia, but it is a fair warning that a concentrated press can contribute to political and social evils.134

  At the other end of the spectrum from Murdoch was The Eye, published by Brian Toohey on a desk-top computer from his home. Until resources finally ran out in 1991, The Eye continued the disclosure tradition of Toohey’s old paper, the deceased National Times. Documents were leaked to it, and the issues of corruption, duplicity and hypocrisy in high places were kept alive in it. When Senator Gareth Evans, also known as the ‘Minister for Mates’, took over at Foreign Affairs in 1988, one of his first tasks was to arrange a High Court injunction against The Eye. According to Evans, an article in the magazine threatened national security. The article was said to be about the operations abroad of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, ASIS. No such article existed, nor had Toohey intended to publish one. Yet Evans had persuaded the highest court in the country to convene at night on the basis, as it turned out, of speculation and gossip.

  Although farcical, the incident demonstrated the Government’s resolve to punish and intimidate, using a favourite legal weapon against those journalists who tell the public what politicians and their Mates prefer they should not know. This is not to suggest that investigative journalism – the vogue term for good reporting – ought to be beyond the law or can rely on public support. The press is not regarded highly by its readers; and even the most honourable muckrakers find their motives regarded with hostility by a readership grown dangerously cynical about all journalism, even about its own ‘right to know’. Cynicism of this order has increased as the diversity of both the media and politics has diminished; and this situation is not unique to Australia, but perhaps it is only in Australia that the media is so diminished. In his book, David Bowman proposed a way out. What the good journalist must have, he wrote,

  is a sense of commitment. Moral courage goes with it. Who is to tell the world what’s going on, if the journalist doesn’t? Someone has to represent those hundreds of thousands of innocent readers who without the selfless journalist to inform them would be at the mercy of malign forces in society. In time the selfless journalist learns what ingrates these innocent readers can be. How many of them give a damn? The good journalist’s response is not to take refuge in cynicism but to try to persuade the readers to give a damn.135

  ‘Australia in the first half of the 1980s’, wrote Supreme Court judge Athol Moffitt, ‘has seen rise before its eyes the spectre of organised crime and corruption, highlighted by allegations, revelations and associated political turmoil beyond any prior experience in Australia.’136

  While Prime Minister Bob Hawke said that his Mates could count on him being ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with them. He also said he would protect no persons, whoever they might be and whatever his associations with them, if evidence emerged that they were corrupt. When Hawke came to power in 1983 he endorsed a Royal Commission which already had been assigned to enquire into crime and corruption, under a tough Melbourne lawyer, Frank Costigan. The Commission had access to police files on 70,000 individuals – roughly one in every 200 Australians. Graft, extortion, blackmail and the elimination of awkward witnesses were found to touch on almost every corner of Australian life. More than 600 charges were laid. There was promise of bigger fish.

  Hawke announced abruptly that the Commission must be wound up. His then Attorney-General, Gareth Evans, accused Costigan of being ‘a gung-ho commissioner’ with an inadequate concern for people’s civil rights. However, reported Robert Milliken, ‘not all Australians are convinced that a sincere concern for civil rights explains all the opposition that Costigan has aroused. The opposition leader, [Andrew] Peacock, for one, hints that the increasing closeness of the investigation to the Government and its friends provides a more convincing explanation.’137 What the Costigan Commission had done was to penetrate a wall of secrecy. Until then, many of the corrupt and criminal in Australia could project a publicly unsullied reputation, secured behind the laws of libel.

  When Hawke received Costigan’s final report in November 1984 he said, ‘As far as my Government is concerned, we will be taking a very positive approach to [all] his recommendations.’ Thereafter, his Government rejected Costigan’s model for a National Crime Authority and his recommendation for the removal of a Government veto over the Authority’s powers and for the appointment of a tax crime investigator. Costigan also called for further Royal Commissions to enquire into his unfinished work; but this, too, was rejected.

  The Hawke/Keating government has refused to release some 1,200 documents on the Nugan Hand Bank, the front for international crime and CIA operations in Australia. The Government has repeatedly refused to find out why the CIA bars the release, under the US Freedom of Information Act, of fourteen intelligence reports on Commerce International, the CIA-front company that played a central role in the destruction of the Whitlam Government.138 In 1989 a committee headed by a former Chief Justice of the High Court recommended rigorous Government secrecy in order to prevent disclosures about the actions of the security services, such as the CIA, and MI5/6, in the internal affairs of Australia.

  The recession of the 1990s has not been kind to the Order
of the Mates. The principal Mates are no longer public heroes, or rather, heroes of those who so assiduously promoted them in the financial pages. Their new public image was reflected in a series of damning articles in the Sydney Morning Herald entitled ‘Greed Inc.’.139 Even Murdoch has seen his shares fall dramatically and his debts rise to almost £5 billion.140 He is selling, not buying now, though the family silver seems safe for the moment.

  So the Order survives. For example, the Australian transport industry is being de-regulated. This means that much of it will be handed over to Sir Peter Abeles and Rupert Murdoch, who already own most of the Australian airline industry. The first ‘independent’, Compass Airlines, has already collapsed, and the Government-owned Australian Airlines has been denied revenue to buy aircraft which it needs to compete with Abeles’s Ansett airline; the reason given is the drain on foreign reserves. However, Abeles’s borrowing against the national debt to buy new aircraft is seen as beneficial to the tourist industry.