by Philip Luker
Bob Hawke, who was one of Australia’s most successful prime ministers (1983-91) with a great deal of help from Treasurer Paul Keating, told me at his Sydney office, ‘Phillip Adams is often a pain in the arse. Occasionally he says something that’s worthwhile. With all the important things to read today, who would turn to Phillip? I’m not saying that in a nasty way. There’s so much to read. I don’t think he has made a significant contribution to Labor Party thinking. I was never close to him. Labor Party policies are made by the conferences, caucuses and executives. It’s rare that an individual makes an impact. I’m not aware of a Phillip Adams idea taken up by the Labor Party that was not put up as soon as or earlier by other people. He has to give opinions every week and he must run out of ideas and get sick of it. That’s evident in much of his writing.’ I disagree with everything Hawke said about Adams except that some of his recent columns rake over old ideas looking for embers and need more fire in them.
Hawke was courteous but, aged eighty-one in 2010, seemed despondent, and was not as interested in Phillip Adams as in the fact that, in 1960, I was a junior sub-editor on the now defunct Sydney Sun when his wife Blanche d’Alpuget’s father Lou was a senior sub-editor on the same newspaper. Adams had told me Bob would not see me, as they don’t like each other, but I persisted and Hawke welcomed me with considerable lack of interest. He said, ‘I’m not a great radio listener. I never listen to Phillip on-air and rarely read his column. He is a person given to falling out with others. He and I had a falling out. I don’t remember what it was about. I don’t know and I don’t care. Some people think he’s a pompous pain in the arse, others tend to like him and others are indifferent. He’s a non-event as far as I am concerned.’ The spark that Bob Hawke had in office has left him as he has grown old.
In sharp contrast, Bob Brown, the Australian Greens leader with one of the most recognised faces in Australia, was brimming with vitality and praise for Adams when I interviewed him. Whatever you think of Green policies, Brown is respected and is a straight-shooter. He said, ‘Phillip’s contribution to the left side of Australian politics has been enormous. His policies are now much more similar to the Australian Greens’ than Labor policies. Phillip has never courted the Greens but he’s become a breath of fresh air in Australian political commentary, which has become materialistic — especially in the John Howard years — and supportive of the idea that everyone down on their luck is a bludger,’ said Brown. Adams’ listeners would include many Greens supporters.
Adams has a long history of wanting the Labor Party to once again become a great party of the left, especially in humanity and social justice. He is like a reformist priest wanting the Catholic Church to become a bastion of humanity. He still hopes something will turn up to make it again a party of ‘the light on the hill’ whereas in fact there is no hope for this, because Labor has moved too far to the right to take much notice of Adams, although some party members do. Bob Brown said Labor’s movers and shakers are now Sydney and Melbourne boardrooms — ‘we have a plutocracy of government by the rich.’ Adams’ flagrant atheism had been a great contribution to encouraging others to think for themselves. He had also been a maverick by bravely speaking out about the contradictions of religious dogma and this had been a remarkable contribution to Australian intellectual life over the past fifty years, when there had been very little of it.
The way that Adams loudly quit the Labor Party in June 2010, when Kevin Rudd was deposed, was an example of Adams as a left-wing political maverick. The image suits him. He was one of a number of people Rudd would phone for their opinions after he became Labor’s federal leader but before becoming prime minister, so he played an important role as a sounding board for ideas that got Labor into power in 2007. In early 2009, Adams claimed to me that Kevin had phoned him eight times in vain over a period of a few weeks to ask him to quit writing his Weekend Australian Magazine column in protest at the way The Australian was running a vendetta against him. Each of the eight times, Rudd had not got through to him. I wonder about the eight times.
Adams’ influence on the Labor Party has mostly been on individuals. His primary political role has not been to create policy but to encourage, goad or persuade people to take up particular issues. When he lived in Victoria, his influence was mostly on how to sell a policy because of his marketing skill. John Cain, the Victorian premier from 1982 to 1990, had direct experience of Adams’ work for Victorian Labor and was keen to talk about it when I spoke to him at his office in the Old Treasury Building in Melbourne. He said, ‘Phillip made a significant contribution to Victorian Labor politics in the 1960s, when Labor was down and out in every sense after the 1955 split’ (which led to the rival Democratic Labor Party being formed). ‘Phillip kept Victorian Labor going in those years. The party became an arrogant rump with no policies. Phillip went to Clive Stoneham (state Labor leader) and wrote two policy speeches, in 1961 and ’62, as the source of ideas and traditional Labor policies and values.’ (But the Liberals under Henry Bolte remained in power.)
Adams in those years was a keener Labor Party supporter than he is now that the party has moved right, following the voters. He was also impressed and even seduced by the trappings of the advertising world, where he first became such a success and also where he made a pile of money. It was his brilliant ideas and selling ability that made him an advertising wizard and he applied the same abilities to Victorian Labor Party policies and campaigns. When Labor won government in Victoria in 1982 as the state’s first Labor government for 27 years, Adams gave it plenty of good advice because it was implementing a full agenda in difficult times. He helped write Labor’s policy speech for 1985; Labor won again and John Cain was re-elected premier.
In those days in Victoria, when Adams and Barry Jones were very influential in getting John Gorton, who was Liberal prime minister from 1968 to ’71, to recognise the importance of the arts, most Liberal governments paid little attention to the arts. Bob Menzies, the founder and still the father figure of the Liberal Party, did not want to interfere in the arts when he was prime minister from 1949 to ’66. Adams, Gorton, South Australian Premier Don Dunstan and Gough Whitlam (prime minister from 1972 to ’75) created an atmosphere where government had a role to play. John Cain told me, ‘This was the time when political parties started to use focus groups and Phillip was good at interpreting the results. Even after he moved to Sydney in the late 1980s, he was influential in talking to opinion-makers.’ Cain is still active in politics as an associate professor in Melbourne University’s Political Science Department. He criticised current Australian politics: ‘The parties are now less responsive to ideas and don’t do the policy work they should. They depend on donations from lobby groups and others who want to win favours. Australian politics is going American-style. Phillip was right to recommend Kevin Rudd as Labor leader. Beating John Howard was a great achievement. Howard ran the most evil government Australia has ever had. It lost all sense of decency and proportion. Phillip said in The Australian that Rudd had the best chance to beat Howard. But I’m not sure that what Phillip — or any writer — says in a newspaper is influential. Phillip’s main appeal is the breadth of issues he covers, his forthrightness and his worldwide contacts, many of whom we would otherwise not hear from.’
Even Gerard Henderson, The Sydney Institute’s executive director and a person who Adams seems to dislike more than anyone except John Howard, admits that Late Night Live has a lot of talent and is a good program and that Adams is an able broadcaster who he listens to regularly, although not every night. At least he listens, which is more than most of Adams’ critics do, whether they lean to the right like Gerald does or nowhere at all. But Gerard said Adams’ columns are always predictable — you can tell what will be in them in the first paragraph. ‘He is a successful columnist but his columns are essentially his opinions, whereas I put many facts and quotes in my columns. Phillip’s positions are predictable as standard fashionable leftism, although he is a very successful produ
ct and he’s done well. I don’t feel resentful about him at all. He will be on Radio National until he wants to leave, and he’s had a good run, four nights a week for twenty years. Radio National should share the spot around a bit, keeping Phillip but giving others a go, too.’
I can imagine Adams’ reaction to that suggestion would be vitriolic and Adams does not have the same ambivalence to Henderson as Henderson has to him. They snap at each other in print and Adams’ snaps seem more heart-felt than Henderson’s. He said in his Weekend Australian Magazine column on February 24, 2007, ‘My favourite adversary remains Gerard Henderson, hereafter poor Gerard. Or PG. I’ve known PG for decades, and approved of his early columns attacking “the lunar right”. We fell out when I chaired an event at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas and introduced him somewhat lightheartedly. But Gerard is bereft of humour. His conservative colleagues don’t take themselves so seriously. Constantly trying to outdo each other in the preposterousness of their public utterances, they become self-parodic when attacking such favourites as Robert Manne, David Marr, the ABC or me. It’s all good fun, involving panto performances. Only PG seems to believe what he says in columns, on the ABC and in that strange magazine from his mysteriously-funded Sydney Institute.’ The column droned on for a whole page and Adams’ loyal readers would probably have preferred one of Adams’ beautifully-worded stories about the animals on his farm. Adams and Henderson sometimes exchange terse emails. On June 5, 2009, Adams emailed Henderson, ‘Gerard, would it be possible for you to stop, just for a moment or two, being such a humourless bore? Silly question. The average house brick is more amusing, the most pigeon-shit-splattered bronze statue of some long-forgotten 19th Century personage propped up in a public park less pompous than the Gerard who spends so much time and effort trying to keep himself on his pedestal. Big hug — Phillip.’
Adams tends to dismiss Henderson but certainly not the reverse. He told me Adams is a very polished presenter, that he chairs many conferences, that it’s fun for him to have a go at Adams from time to time, he is not calling for his execution and he’s glad he’s around. He takes Adams very seriously indeed. Seriously enough to have observed him closely.
If Gerard Henderson is not a true believer in Phillip Adams, Carmen Lawrence certainly is. On a trip to Sydney from her home state of Western Australia, where from 1990 to ’93 she was the first female premier in Australia, she told me, ‘Phillip is always asking questions. He’s driven by intellectual curiosity and wants to find how the world ticks and others’ views of it.’ I asked her whether she, like many intelligent women, finds Adams attractive. With caution that comes from a lifetime in politics, she replied, ‘I find him an attractive person because what he does, he does well, engagingly and warmly. He allows others to speak freely, to tell their stories. He gets good people on his program, not just current celebrities. His producers dig out some of the best minds around the world.’
‘Charming’ is too weak a word for Phillip Adams, Carmen said. ‘People often talk about his intellect and say he is a vigorous, thoughtful person and a provocative public intellectual. His brain attracts both men and woman but he uses it in a way that is not condescending. You wouldn’t be able to do a job like his without having an ego, but his self-depreciation is real.’ On this point, I disagree with Carmen. Adams uses self-depreciation to hide his justifiable egotism. Carmen Lawrence said, ‘He is a “people person” who has always tried to influence policy by discussion, not by making recommendations to committees. And the good thing about Late Night Live is that it includes people of all stripes.’
A person of a very different stripe to either Carmen Lawrence or Adams is Alan Jones, who has the biggest radio audience in Australia as 2GB’s breakfast presenter. I knew him from when I published Mediaweek and he told me at his studio he would not dump on Adams, then proceeded to do so. He even claimed Adams could not even call himself a broadcaster because his range of subjects is limited and he ‘follows a very narrow path’. Adams had limited appeal and that would always be the case. It sounded an awful lot like ‘dumping’ to me. Alan’s audience reaches about 486,000 New South Wales listeners a week; Adams’ Late Night Live reaches 233,000 people a week in the five mainland state capitals and more than 350,000 when smaller cities and towns are included. In other words, not nearly as many people as Alan Jones.
Adams got stuck into Alan Jones’ ethics in his book, Talkback: Emperors of the Air (Allen & Unwin): ‘Jones makes no bones about being an opinion for hire. He is a salesman and entertainer, not a journalist, so he is not bound by the journalists’ code of ethics. He has been likened to a secular priest.’ (So has Adams.) ‘His flock responds to his opinions, his interest in their concerns, his wholesome country childhood, his omniscient public image and his reassuring daily presence.’
Jones told me, ‘Phillip didn’t rate when we both broadcast on 2UE from 1988 to 1990 and he would never rate on commercial radio because its demands are not consistent with his talents — but that’s not a criticism.’ I doubt that Alan Jones would rate (or even get a job) on ABC Radio National. He continued, ‘If I start talking about opera, I know that people will listen for only a few minutes and then switch off. Phillip takes a particular subject and then goes into some detail about it and there is a role for that, but not in general broadcasting. I don’t listen to his program but I read many of his columns in The Weekend Australian Magazine. As a self-educated person, he’s got a wonderful breadth of knowledge in his known areas and he has read widely, not necessarily on subjects that everyday Australians would identify with. His writing is more humorous than his radio work. He’s got a lot to recommend him because there’s an audience for his kind of stuff.’
But probably few people want to hear about Mahatma Gandhi having an erection at the age of sixty (and why shouldn’t he?), which according to Adams himself in The Sydney Morning Herald on June 6, 1987, was what he talked about on his first morning on-air. Adams added, ‘That tended to lose half the audience and three-quarters of the management.’ John Brennan, the program director who, in sixty years in radio, discovered Alan Jones, and also John Laws and Stan Zemanek, gave me a good example of how Adams has a brilliant mind and has mixed with other brilliant minds but could not adapt to ordinary listeners’ interests. Kerry Packer, who at the time owned 2UE, told the station to hire Adams as a presenter because he had heard him address a meeting. John Brennan, who was 2UE’s program director at the time, asked Adams what was happening in his life and Adams told him the most important thing just then was the birth of a litter of beautiful Dalmatian puppies. Brennan continued the story: ‘I said, “Terrific. Tomorrow, ask the listeners to name one of them.” He said, “You’re joking!” I said, “I know you think it’s mundane but you will relate better to your listeners.” When Adams asked his listeners to name one of the puppies, the switch melted. He was very surprised.
‘He didn’t stay long in breakfast because our average suburban listeners wanted presenters to speak out for them over their social and economic concerns and to explain complex issues. That’s what commercial radio talkback is all about.’ Brennan envied Adams’ intellect and found him a genuine and understanding person with an encyclopaedic mind. He got to know Adams well enough to be invited to stay a weekend at his Elmswood farm. After Adams was switched from mornings to 8 p.m. (after Stan Zemanek), he took talkback calls on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights and interviewed top people of all occupations on Thursdays and Fridays.
No-one has ever aroused Phillip Adams’ anger as much as Stan Zemanek did. Stan used to name talkback callers ‘dickheads, numb nuts, half-wits, left-wing loonies and typical Labor voters’ and in Talkback, Adams said Zemanek’s style was like a wrestler’s, his favourite callers were ‘soft targets, the more drunk the better’ and his show was a running joke. But in 1997, Zemanek’s program topped Sydney evening audiences with 210,000 listeners — which says something about average listeners’ intelligence. Adams was on the government-appointed committee that made
Aboriginal singer Mandawuy Yunupingu Australian of the Year in 1992 and Zemanek told his audience the committee comprised ‘arty-farty wankers’. Adams called Stan ‘lecherous, an oaf and spectacularly incoherent’. But I couldn’t call Stan to ask him for a rebuttal because he died of a brain tumor in 2007.
Adams’ own evening audience rose to 52,000 and John Brennan said his talkback presentation improved. But he still found it hard to relate to ordinary listeners’ interests. He was funny and outrageous, he said what he believed and didn’t care whether you liked what he said or not. The listeners thought he was off the planet. His contract expired in 1990 and was not renewed. Luckily for him, Brian Johns, the ABC’s managing director, phoned him and asked him to present Late Night Live — the luckiest phone call he ever received, because LNL suits him perfectly, he enjoys presenting it and in 2011 he will have done so for twenty years.
Brian Johns’ call opened a new life for Adams, in which he could use his great interviewing skills not on commercial talkback callers concerned about the price of bread but on intelligent experts from around the world, in what has become Australia’s literary magazine with an audience far greater than any intellectual publication. Part of his charm and skill is to make people he interviews think they are the most important people in the world, unless they are one of the people who have clashed with him in the past, like Bob Carr, who was New South Wales Labor premier from 1995 until 2005. Adams told me Carr would not talk to me about him. But as usual I persisted and Carr did talk to me about Adams, mostly but not entirely in praiseworthy terms.