by Philip Luker
Adams’ home compound at Hawthorn in Melbourne was amazing in those years — he kept buying houses next door to accommodate artifacts he had bought around the world. He had a huge lake and one time when he was ill, Peter Best and his wife Cherry bought him a remote-controlled boat so he could sit by the lake and frighten the ducks with it. Best told me, ‘What happened to Phillip as a child was awful and the scars made him bitter in many ways. He didn’t like my own father and thought he was jealous of me. Phillip told me, “Just get rid of him, Pete. Tell him to piss off. That’s what I did.” I replied, “I actually like my dad,” and Phillip said, “Well, if you like him, that’s okay.” He’s never forgiven people who were bad to him when he was a kid. It has affected many of the ways he feels and things he does. His childhood comes back to him often. You always wish you could rewind the video of life.’
The weaknesses Adams admitted to me were: ‘A short attention span, never producing a great master work, being like a little Chinese juggler twirling bamboo sticks to keep all his plates in the air at once, a weakness for a cup of tea, and not being gregarious, which is a great problem for my family because I have no small talk and spend a lot of time alone and prefer it that way.’ He also acknowledges the criticism that he sometimes tap-dances with issues instead of dropping depth charges. ‘The truth is that, because I was never properly educated, I was never taught discipline.’
Adams doesn’t look after himself; he never exercises and is overweight. He eats hardly anything when he is in Sydney although Adams’ partner Patrice Newell is a good cook and they grow most of the food they eat at their farm: beef, lamb, honey, olives and vegetables of all sorts.
Several of his friends and I have told him that to keep his mind active, which he certainly does, is great, but he should also keep his body active. He hasn’t taken any notice and that will count against his health in the long run.
Adams is passionate about people although a self-proclaimed anti-social but enjoys the attention he gets when, for example, he chairs ideas festivals. He naturally revels in the spotlight when something he says or does makes headlines. When in August 2010 he got Kevin Rudd to give him his first major interview after the Labor Party backroom assassinated him and appointed Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, the interview received massive coverage in newspapers and on television and radio.
For a public intellectual who has made a long and well-publicised contribution to Australian media and politics, Adams acts, when he achieves a significant impact, like a cadet journalist getting his first story in print. He emailed me after the interview, ‘KR (Kevin Rudd) reckons I’ve saved the election — and his career. Mark Scott (ABC managing director) is thrilled. RN (Radio National) is enraptured by the public and media response.’ Adams usually overstates reactions to what he says and does. Unfortunately for the Labor Party, the interview did not save Labor in the election, which resulted in a hung parliament and Labor staying in government only with help from independents.
Gerard Henderson, executive director of the Sydney Institute and one of Adams’ arch rivals, told me all media commentators receive letters; other people might get hundreds a year but Adams says he gets ten thousand, ‘which seems a bit high. I don’t know if anyone cares how many letters he gets but it’s pretty self-indulgent to talk about the number. However, Phillip definitely has a fan club and they all love him. If I knew how to get a fan club, I’d get one myself.’ It’s probably a question of Gerard and Adams’ personalities — Gerard’s fans probably like him; Adams’ fans love him, particularly the women.
Paul Keating has said there are lovers and haters. Phillip Adams is a lover. People like him because he invites them into his heart and mind. Matt Noffs told me, ‘The rudest thing about him is his abrupt phone calls and emails. If I phone him, he answers, “Yup?” and if he has finished wanting to talk to you, he just cuts in and hangs up. I’ve started to act the same way — people tell me I now don’t say goodbye on the phone. It’s amazing how much time it saves!
‘I’m sure Phillip is an arsehole at times. Another dark side of him is that he likes to drive expensive cars. And sometimes he promises to do things for people and doesn’t get around to them.’ Aged 31 in 2010, Matt Noffs is only half the age of most of Adams’ friends, which makes his perspective of Adams particularly interesting. He told me some of his Adams experiences: ‘He showed me how to choose my battles wisely. For example, I wanted to get stuck into the Reverend Fred Nile (a bible-bashing New South Wales politician) because I thought he was an ignorant bastard. But Phillip said everyone would make up their own minds about Nile no matter what I said and I would only exhaust my energy. He was right.
‘I told Phillip I was terrible at writing but The Village Voice, a local newspaper in Maroubra, Sydney, wanted me to write a regular column. Phillip said reading and writing go together like a horse and carriage and told me to read a lot, so I did — even a dictionary — and I felt my mind was opening up. It made me feel better when I found out that Phillip’s spelling is as bad as mine.’
Matt Noffs was named in The Weekend Australian Magazine in 2009 as one of the next hundred leaders in Australia and also by The Sydney Morning Herald’s (Sydney) Magazine as one of the top hundred most influential people in Sydney. With no political experience, he decided to take part in the 2007 federal election. The Labor Party asked him to be in its campaign and Malcolm Turnbull, the Liberal MP, took him for a walk at Bondi early in 2007 and outlined what he would like Noffs to do. Turnbull told him the Liberals would lose the election but he would take over the leadership, both accurate predictions. After the Liberals got back into power, Noffs could ‘take over youth affairs’. It sounded wonderful and some of his friends told him he could be a Trojan horse in the Liberal Party and change it. He phoned Adams and told him what had happened and Adams said, ‘Be here tomorrow at 10.30am.’ He got there and Adams advised him very strongly not to join the Liberals: ‘They’re not a political party; they’re a state of mind. Don’t join either party. Your grandfather (Ted Noffs) was influential because no-one could pigeonhole him. He was a multi-partisan, so he could put pressure on anyone and any party. Look what I do. I might be a Labor Party member (he was then) but I’m never beholden to any party or anyone.’
Another example of how Adams and Matt Noffs have worked together was early in 2009 when Noffs set up the Street University at Liverpool in Sydney as a division of the Wayside Chapel to give disadvantaged young people with nowhere to go a place where they can explore ideas outside a tertiary institution. He asked businesses in south-west Sydney, which has huge drug and alcohol problems, for help to buy a warehouse for $1.5million. He told me, ‘I thought I was kidding myself. I went to the federal government and it gave me a small sum. Phillip said he would write a column about it and in the end he wrote three and raised $100,000 from his readers.’ Now at the Street University young people attend free lectures from experts on subjects such as sociology (‘Shit You Can Wrap About’), identity, maths, literacy, basic science, making speeches, writing CVs, art and graphic design, and business.
Adams is a sincere person, skilled and devoted to trying to improve people’s lives. He hates injustice and hates authority being used for its own sake and many Late Night Live programs expose injustice. For example, the programs for the week from August 2 to 6, 2010 included interviews with: a Cambodian woman whose parents were murdered by the Khmer Rouge; two people who described Indian corruption and shoddy building work in preparing New Delhi for the 2010 Commonwealth Games; ex-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd about how he was sacked; an African American who spent forty-four years in Louisiana state prisons; and three South Africans about the first democratic elections there in 1994.
In spite of the seriousness of Late Night Live, Adams enjoys the program and uses his sense of humour to lighten it. His character is passionately engaged. His aim is to discover ideas, to analyse them and to discuss events, trends and issues. Mark Aarons, the left-wing writer, told me, ‘Phillip is an engaged,
even chaotic person, which I love about him. He appeals to a section of society that is engaged with ideas and wants to be challenged by information. He has a passion to explore ideas and to talk with people doing things beyond the headlines. Not that he is uninterested in current affairs, but he is particularly interested in the trends and what the future holds. When I was working on the original ABC Radio Lateline program in the 1970s, Phillip was playing an important part in developing the Australian film industry and he would appear on Lateline to talk about films and the need for cultural expansion.
‘It was an exciting time, with the Whitlam government putting a lot of money and effort into culture. But I didn’t meet Phillip until 1989, when he had moved to Sydney and interviewed me for his late-night 2UE program about my first book, Sanctuary! Nazi Fugitives in Australia (Heinemann). The session was a dialogue and occasionally a monologue from Phillip.’
Being humble is a broadcasting technique, but Phillip’s love of people is completely genuine. Most people I interviewed about Adams mentioned this point directly or by example.
Barry Jones, the former international quiz champion, Hawke government minister and close friend of Adams, said, ‘You can cure people of dengue fever or you can try to cure the swamps where the mosquitoes live — that’s what Phillip tries to do. He wants to create an environment where people don’t suffer. His primary role has not been to create policy but to encourage, goad or persuade people to take up particular issues.’ Like Adams, Barry Jones has a brilliant mind but unlike Adams, he has no people skills. I waited for him outside his unattended Melbourne University office for an hour after our appointed meeting time and was about to give up when he arrived and apologised. I could tell he didn’t like me, or my questions about Adams. Other people I have spoken to about Jones told me they have the same problems with him. Despite the reluctance that was seeping out of Jones like a vapour, I made the best out of meeting him because he is one of Adams’ best friends.
He told me, ‘I talk to Phillip by phone and we exchange emails several times a week but we see each other only a few times a year because I live in Melbourne and he lives in Sydney.’ I asked Jones his opinions of Late Night Live. Only an intellectual like him could give this response to such a simple question: ‘Late Night Live is a combination of an emotional and intellectual response to people of a particular demographic. Phillip’s contribution and its consistency week after week reinforce his listeners’ value systems. It is also a combination of predictability and unpredictability — if Phillip talks about a well-known person, you can predict the broad line but you might not predict the specifics that have just occurred to him. It means a lot to listeners, many of whom will say, “I’m glad I heard that because it reinforced what I believed”.’
Miranda Devine, the controversial News Ltd columnist, also said that Adams’ views in his columns and radio programs are predictable. Overall she was not complimentary of him — she said he is a talented writer who is entitled to his own opinions but uses a lot of hyperbole and exaggeration, possibly because he is from a fiction-writing background in advertising and films. ‘He’s preposterous but it’s fabulous to have a writer like him, with talent and passion. He’s like an old-style bleeding heart. He has genuine concerns but these are not rooted in reality and are based on vague notions. He’s probably another bleeding heart who never really rubs shoulders with the great unwashed. His column writing can easily become stale, and it’s dangerous as he’s teetering on the verge of exaggeration. My bullshit detector often goes off when I read what Phillip writes. But he is fresh and energetic in his ideas.’
Miranda Devine knew me from when I published Mediaweek. In The Sydney Morning Herald (where she used to work) on December 6, 2007, she wrote about Adams: ‘Here we go again. Smug white folks have reactivated the “Sorry” debate, demanding that our new political leaders demonstrate their non-racist bona fides by apologising on behalf of the nation for the “Stolen Generation.” Phillip Adams writes in The Australian of “weeping with” members of the stolen generation and scorns Paddy McGuinness and co, who seem to prefer the term saved generation. Adams should go out to Brewarrina in Western NSW, where five-month-old Mundine Orcher was systematically beaten to death over four weeks by “culturally appropriate” foster carers. Harrowing would be a visit to the gravesides of any number of Aboriginal children beaten to death by their “carers” under the so-called watchful eyes of welfare workers reluctant to intervene for fear of creating another stolen generation.’
There is enough of the old leftie in Adams to want to change systems and the environment, without considering — as many current politicians do continually — whether the changes will gain or lose votes. He is very driven and gets through a prodigious amount of work, and that is important to him. He is a genuine person with empathy for less fortunate people and his interest in people is also genuine. On air, he talks about a lot of dreadful things happening on Earth in a way that is kindly to his audience, and he addresses his audience in an endearing way. He doesn’t put people down (except a few arch enemies like the rival columnist Gerard Henderson) but adds familiarity and friendliness to an otherwise very trying world. Bob Brown, the Australian Greens leader, told me when I met him at his federal parliamentary offices in Sydney, ‘As a compere, Phillip magically lightens a meeting but doesn’t distract from the discussions, so you want to keep listening instead of going home and locking yourself in a cupboard. That’s a great ability. Phillip is one of the great popular philosophers and intellectuals of Australia. He leads all the others.’
Significant praise.
Another person who, like Bob Brown, is often interviewed by the news media is Philip Nitschke, Australia’s most prominent and controversial euthanasia campaigner. He told me, ‘You never feel you are walking into a minefield with Phillip Adams. I have been interviewed by many people who don’t like me, and others who try to get some response that will attract media attention, but I never feel Phillip might trap me. You feel you are talking to someone interested in what you say. That’s rare among interviewers.
‘Phillip is a shining light in a bleak landscape of informed comment on contemporary social issues and he fills a unique place in broadcasting. I can’t think of anyone else I want to listen to. It is rare that I’m not interested in his Late Night Live topics. When I switch on television current affairs, I often find I’ve got better things to do. I almost never think that when listening to Phillip’s program. What stand out particularly are the people the program gets, and the regulars. You generate respect for what they say. Phillip has a humble approach when interviewing people who are full of themselves.’
It’s probably a strategy to get the best out of people; it works and it’s clever. Adams doesn’t stand in their light. He enjoys what he does and sounds as much on the ball as ever, in spite of speaking a little more slowly as he has grown older. He could never just sit around. What drives him is his fantastic brain.
It is Phillip Adams’ brain that amazes Professor Allan Snyder, director of the Centre for the Mind at Sydney University. Adams is a board member and the centre aims to help people harness their full creative capacity by studying what makes the mind work best. Snyder was born in the United States but is now an Australian citizen, and with typical American enthusiasm he went over the top about Adams: ‘He’s an incredible, remarkable man; he has a panoramic, universal mind and can explain anything. He can put a magnifying glass on anything and make it come alive. He understands the emotions, drive and rationale behind everything in politics. And he’s the quintessential psychologist — he understands people’s motives and passions perfectly.’ What Snyder particularly likes about Adams is that he is interested in everything. Snyder himself is interested in what makes a champion and he finds Adams good to talk to about that because he says Adams is a champion himself, one who applies his champion mindset to one field and then to another. Snyder asked me, ‘What’s Phillip going to do when he grows up?’
On an en
thusiasm for Phillip Adams scale of one to ten, Allan Snyder would score ten, in contrast to the News Ltd columnist and one-time Melbourne Herald Sun editor Piers Akerman, who scored none by telling me, ‘Phillip Adams is not current. He represents a number of left-wing people who have enough money to be able to spout extreme views that have little or no relation to ordinary Australians’ concerns. What he says is fine in theory but lousy in practice. He is a theoretical socialist. His views are outmoded. He would be laughed out of any circle except the backwaters of a former Soviet satellite which had not been reached by news of socialism’s collapse. He is amusing as a museum piece.’ Piers Akerman’s statement said more about him than about Adams.
What the English poet Alexander Pope wrote in 1711 could apply to Phillip Adams: ‘Great wits may sometimes gloriously offend and rise to faults that true critics dare not mend’.
Chapter Seven:
The Angry Old Left-winger
Phillip Adams has certainly influenced the Australian Labor Party but when I asked fellow left-wingers how much he has influenced it, for how long and in what ways, I received a wide variety of answers. He saw that Kevin Rudd could beat John Howard with policies only a few degrees to the left of Howard’s (‘Howard Lite’) and recommended Rudd to lead the federal Labor Party before many party members had even heard of him. Then when Rudd grew too keen on running Australia by himself and with a kitchen cabinet, his popularity both inside and outside the party crashed and he was knifed in the back and replaced by Julia Gillard. Adams became really upset and quit the party. He had never been to a party meeting anyway. It was typical of the way Adams broadly supports many Labor Party policies but sensibly remains a maverick by attacking the policies he dislikes, although he rarely supports Liberal Party policies and the few liberals he interviews on-air about politics are ‘small l’ liberals. After the federal election in August 2010, he said on Late Night Live that he had voted Green. It was a sign of how much he — like many other left-wingers — has become fed up with the party’s power-brokers and policies, or the lack of them.