by Julia Baird
6Nick Greiner, ‘The smart-alec culture: a critique of Australian journalism’, Australian Studies in Journalism, vol. 2, 1993, p. 4.
7Quoted by Ruth Wilson, ‘Political interviewers: what makes them tick’, Australian, 13 July 2001.
8Mungo MacCallum, ‘The Killen–Guilfoyle connection’, Nation Review, 22–28 Oct. 1976, p. 4.
9Bill D’Arcy & Hugh Crawford, ‘“Cabinet Ministers’ Romance” Story’, Sun, 22 Oct. 1976.
10Roy Eccleston, ‘Ousted Powell vows to fight on’, Australian, 20 Aug. 1991. Note the Australian Financial Review’s Robert Garran did not mention it: ‘Democrats oust Powell for deputy’, 20 Aug. 1991.
11Mike Seccombe, ‘Don’s Party’s over’, SMH, 31 Aug. 1991; Susan Mitchell, The Scent of Power: On the Trail of Women and Power in Australian Politics, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1996, p. 30.
12Christopher Pearson, ‘Friends and politics’, Courier-Mail, 5 April 1997, p. 24.
13In May 2002, he told a Young Labor conference in Sydney that Abbott was hypocritical to have encouraged journalists to publish stories on Kernot’s private life. Latham claimed Abbott told a conference that ‘the best support structure in our society is an intact family’ and ‘we want to discourage children out of wedlock’. Latham then asked, ‘Why doesn’t he practise what he preaches?’ In June 2002, he shouted across the chamber — as Abbott criticised Labor — ‘You’ve had too many unions, Tony, you grub.’ In July, in a speech given in Perth about modernising the ALP, responding to a comment of Abbott’s that the ALP was full of ‘hereditary peers’, Latham attacked him again: ‘Tony Abbott is always walking away. As a young man he became a “hereditary disappear”.’ On 11 August, Susanne Lobez, who had adopted a daughter, wrote an indignant column in the Sunday Herald Sun: ‘Where do you get off using adoption as some example of moral dubiousness which disqualifies a person from discussing families, responsibilities and commitment?’ Miranda Devine agreed: ‘Much good came from what must have been a painful process for Abbott and his girlfriend — a boy was alive and parents had been given the gift of a child.’ (Miranda Devine, ‘Adoption — how did it become a dirty word?’, Sun-Herald, 11 August 2002, p. 15.)
14One exception was in 1999, when NSW Liberal MP Michael Photios left his pregnant wife and toddler daughter for his long-standing mistress, fashion designer Mela Purdie. The Sun-Herald dubbed him ‘The Love Rat’, the press trailed him for days, and he lost his seat in the next election. The rationale used for revealing that story was the fact that he had used photographs of his family in the election campaign, while he was having an affair.
15He was forced to resign after she claimed he had rorted his travel allowance. She appeared on ‘60 Minutes’, and, as Rachel Browne wrote in the Sun-Herald, ‘with a trembling lip but a steely tone, the 30-year-old blonde dumped on her ex.’ She declared he had rorted his travel expenses by taking her on a trip to Europe during their two-year affair. She also took out an AVO against him when the relationship ended. When News Limited newspapers published photographs of Woods and his wife, Jane, at their Sydney home — taken by a photographer standing on the roof of his car, peering over the back fence — in February 1997, politicians condemned them for it.
16The Age reported that Harris was paid out by the state government, but this was not confirmed.
17A freelance journalist, Phillip Somerset, had squeezed the story out of Mrs Hewson and tried to sell it to various newspapers. It was rejected by Woman’s Day editor Nene King because Mrs Hewson insisted her remarks had been off the record. King said, ‘I felt she was vulnerable and John Hewson is a very prominent man . . . Perhaps I may have been alienating the next Prime Minister.’ In August the Weekly, which had initially been cautious, decided to publish it.
18Adele Horin was certainly sympathetic, wondering if Hewson would wish that his daughter do as her mother had: sacrifice herself for her husband’s career, then be abandoned for a career woman? (‘Strong mother is best gift for a daughter’, SMH, 3 Sept. 1991, p. 13.)
19Michelle Grattan was not impressed: the program had left a ‘nasty taste’. ‘Do we really want to start down the American road,’ she argued, ‘where every detail of private life is likely to find its way into the public arena, salacious seasoning for the political debate? We’ve usually operated on different informal rules in this country . . . we should be careful of throwing that restraint away in the excitement of one somewhat tawdry tale.’ She insisted what made a good politician ‘is not necessarily what makes a good family person, or vice versa. Elections are judgements about the former.’ If these stories were encouraged, she said, good candidates would be loath to enter politics, and the political process would be debased. (‘Ticking off for “60 Minutes”’, 1 Oct. 1991, p. 13.) Mary Hennessy, head of Channel Nine publicity, said the station had received more than 100 phone calls after the program was aired, and the ‘vast majority’ were in support of Hewson.
20In an address to a NSW Liberal Party convention in October 1992, he said, ‘You’ve got to be suspicious of a guy that doesn’t drive, doesn’t like kids and things like that. When he’s up against a full-blooded Australian like John Fahey, he has not got a hope.’ Prime Minister Paul Keating said he was ‘flabbergasted’ at the move to bring in ‘the worst of American politics’, and pointed out that not one Labor politician had ever sought to exploit Hewson’s own family dramas. Hewson called Carr to apologise. (Oddly, several years later, Liberal MP Peter Collins, when opposition leader, also pointed to Premier Carr’s lack of children — which again backfired on him.) Mike Seccombe wrote that Hewson’s comments were extraordinary because in federal parliament there were up to a dozen homosexual MPs, and ‘plenty of members and senators who have had or are having affairs, have broken marriages, drink to excess, and even some who smoke a little dope. Yet as long as it does not interfere with the performance of their duties, their parliamentary opponents and the press gallery usually ignore all this.’ (Mike Seccombe, ‘Shock! Horror! The muck stops here’, SMH, 2 April 1994, p. 5.)
21The investigation was into whether notorious underworld figure Louis Bayeh had provided ‘benefits or rewards’ to state MPs from mid-1990. Gibson had befriended Bayeh in the 1990s after Bayeh claimed he had been framed by the police over heroin-related charges, and Gibson was seeking information on corrupt police. Nori was Gibson’s lover at the time, and allegedly was the beneficiary of some of Bayeh’s largesse, including a holiday to Fiji and gold jewellery. At the time Nori was married to federal Labor MP John Faulkner, but said she believed her relationship with Gibson, which had begun circa 1988 and ended in about 1993, was ‘substantial and serious’ with long-term prospects. The story of the affair was good copy, and Nori was pursued over the relationship in a way Gibson was not. The Sunday Telegraph managed to get a photo of her at her front door, crying. The reporter described her as anguished, distraught as she admitted she was hurting: ‘Take a look at me, will you?’ The reporter continued: ‘Stripped of make-up and smoking a cigarette, Ms Nori appeared to have had little sleep. Unable to control her emotions, she burst into tears. Ms Nori has had to carry her burden for some time, and what was once a private pain is now clear for all to see.’ Indeed. (‘The tears of Sandra Nori’, Sunday Telegraph, 19 April 1998, p. 7.)
22Gibson had sung out ‘Love is in the air’ after Terry Metherell had asked a Dorothy Dixer of Greiner. The chamber burst out laughing, but Greiner tartly responded: ‘It is rather strange that the honourable member for Londonderry should say “Love is in the air”. Of all the people opposite, who but my friend and squash partner, the honourable member for Londonderry, do you think would be stupid enough to say, “Love is in the air”?’ After an application from Gibson, the Supreme Court ordered that O’Keefe step down from the investigation because of ‘ostensible bias’ on moral grounds. Assistant commissioner and retired judge Jeremy Badgery-Parker eventually cleared Gibson of any corrupt conduct but criticised him for a lack of truthfulness and reliability in his evidence. As Kerry
-Anne Walsh wrote in the Sunday-Telegraph, Nori ‘had her past love affair with Gibson plastered over the papers as a result of the inquiry and the end result was: nothing’. (‘Does this watchdog have any teeth?’, Sunday Telegraph, 8 August 1999, p. 141.)
23Fia Cumming, ‘Affairs of State’, Sun-Herald, 16 Feb. 1997, p. 39.
24Lyndall Crisp & Jill Margo, ‘Sex and power: the liaisons that make history’, Perspective, AFR, 6 July 2002, p. 24.
25Mungo MacCallum, ‘Sex, power and politics’, Insight, Age, 6 July 2002, p. 1.
26Michael Bachelard, ‘Men in arms’, Sunday Age, 21 Dec. 1997, p. 4.
27The topic of the interview was the ruling of the Remuneration Tribunal that the special minister of state be empowered to decide if de facto spouses should be entitled to overseas travel like legal spouses.
28Robert Manne, ‘Attack on Kernot reveals “Canberra” double standards’, SMH, 16 March 1998, p. 15.
29Marion Frith, ‘Where Cheryl Kernot is happy to be a nobody’, Sun-Herald, 28 March 2004, p. 28.
30The night before Ramsey’s Saturday column was due to come out, he was seated next to Oakes at a dinner for a retiring colleague. Ramsey told me, ‘It was a jolly evening, but as soon as I sat down I told him I’d taken to him with the cudgels in the paper next morning, that I disagreed strongly with what he’d done, and he responded relatively amiably, saying yes he understood I’d been writing about it, and we proceeded to have a great night with Peter. At the end of the night, Oakes and I shook hands, would you believe, because I said we may never do so again. There was some good-natured argy-bargy between us, with me saying I hoped he’d get over it before my birthday in the first weekend of January — Oakes and Kath had been guests at my birthday lunch the previous two years, a wonderfully riotous affair down at our South Coast house at Tuross, where I cook fish and chips for about a dozen of us (I catch the fish with a friend) — and him saying he hoped so too, because we’d been friends for 25 years. And that was the last time we spoke. He has ignored me ever since. We pass in the corridor in the press gallery without a word. Sad, isn’t it?’ When I mentioned Ramsey to Oakes, he said, ‘If you are going to use Ramsey as a source we can end the conversation now. Ramsey knows nothing and is wrong on many things, quite often, so let’s not quote Ramsey as a source.’ When I reminded him they had been friends before they fell out over this story he countered, ‘Well, it depends what you mean by friends. We’ve known each other a long while, that’s all.’
31Interview with the author, 9 April 2003.
32Laurie Oakes claimed Gray told him differently, and also pointed to Ramsey’s column, where it was revealed that in 1997 Gray had asked Kernot directly if there was anything they should know that would come back to embarrass the Labor Party, Kernot herself, or the defection deal. (Alan Ramsey, ‘Political voyeurism that hides the real sting in the tale’, SMH, 6 July 2002, p. 37.)
33David Epstein, ‘Love and other bruises’, Australian, 6 July 2002, p. 1.
34In an editorial, the Australian Financial Review similarly argued the affair ‘may help explain many odd things about Ms Kernot’s defection to Labor and her decline from a cool, professional Democrats leader to an erratic shadow minister’.
35David Epstein, op cit.
36During an interview with Clive Robertson on Channel Seven’s ‘Newsworld’ program, he said his wife ‘understood that it was part of a pretty volatile, exuberant character and she knew my love for her had never changed’.
37While he had heard rumours of the affair for some time — he had even received a phone call from a Qantas steward after a flight they had been on — he said the emails provided ‘irrefutable proof’.
38Kate Ellis, op. cit. p. 27.
39Kate Ellis, op. cit. p. 55.
40Hanson-Young v Leyonhjelm (No 4) [2019] FCA 1981, www.jade.io/article/675945.
Chapter Ten: Saint Carmen: canonisation and crucification
1Quoted by Christine Wallace in ‘The nobbling of Carmen Lawrence’, Eye, 16–29 December 1999, p. 50.
2Michelle Grattan, ‘Carmen — a case to answer’, Age, 15 April 1995.
3Rod Cameron, ‘Feminisation: the major emerging trend underlying future mass audience response’, unpublished address, 11th National Convention of the Public Relations Institute of Australia, 19 Oct. 1990.
4Geoff Kitney, ‘Female trio to shape politics’, SMH, p. 9.
5Jane Cadzow, ‘Carmen Lawrence’s year of living dangerously’, SMH, Good Weekend, 11 March 1995.
6Paul McGeough, ‘Did she know? The teflon-coated woman faces her toughest test yet’, SMH, Spectrum, 15 April 1995, p. 3.
7The first political interference came in 1987, after Penny Easton obtained documents from Richard Court, then opposition leader, which included meeting minutes of a company Brian Easton was involved with. She gave information to a Liberal MP, Ross Lightfoot, which he used in an attempt to embarrass the Labor government. He claimed Brian Easton was concealing a $200,000 ex-gratia payment from the Public Service Board in the divorce settlement.
8The government funded a legal attempt by Lawrence to ask the West Australian Supreme and High Courts to determine the extent of parliamentary privilege.
9This was made worse because Penny Easton’s mother, Barbara Campbell, consistently made the connection and faxed the report of the coroner, who said that the publicity generated by the petition had exacerbated her distress, to journalists. The coroner, David McCann, had concluded that the petition was a contributing factor to her death, writing that: ‘As a result of a petition presented to the State Parliament further publicity was generated concerning the deceased and her family . . . it is clear that the deceased had been concerned and distressed by past events and that her distress was exacerbated by the more recent events.’
10Christine Wallace, op. cit.
11Michelle Grattan, op. cit.
12James Oram, ‘Far from home’, Sun-Herald, 18 Feb. 1996, p. 12.
13After the 2001 election the public discovered that the story about asylum seekers throwing children overboard was not true, that the photographs released by the government showed something entirely different, and that the defence minister, Peter Reith, was advised by bureaucrats that they did not depict children thrown in the water. We also learned that although two days before the election the acting chief of the defence force spoke to Reith about the photos, and Reith spoke to John Howard later that night, Howard spent the following day repeating that ‘the best advice’ available to the government was that children had been thrown overboard.
14We discovered part of our rationale for sending soldiers to Iraq was false when John Howard admitted intelligence that claimed Iraq had bought yellowcake uranium from Africa was wrong. He said, ‘Anything that I have said that might be seen as misleading was not a deliberate misleading.’ This information was one of the reasons we went to war, even though spy agencies had warned against its use. The Office of National Assessments (which provides advice to Howard on intelligence) and the Department of Foreign Affairs said they had received a report days before Howard gave a statement in parliament which said the claims were ‘uncorroborated and not necessarily believed’.
15Without directly addressing the government, he said, ‘There is one challenge for the future leaders of our nation which I would particularly emphasise . . . the challenge of justice and truth, the challenge never to be indifferent in the face of injustice or falsehood. It encompasses the challenge to advance truth and human dignity rather than to seek advantage by inflaming ugly prejudice and intolerance. Who of us will easily forget the untruths about children overboard? Or the abuse of the basic rights of innocent children by incarceration behind Woomera’s razor wire? . . . Some may think that these and other similar unpleasant things should be left unmentioned. But if our coming generation of leaders refuses to honestly confront the denial of truth or responsibility which they reflect, our nation will surely be in peril of losing its way in the years ahead.’
Chapter Ele
ven: How to Succeed in Politics Without a Penis
1Bruce Jones, ‘Janine’s greatest gamble’, Sun-Herald, 19 Feb. 1989.
2Interview with the author, 10 July 2003.
3Paul Austin, ‘Janine Haines — no Chipp off an old Democrat’s block’, Australian, 17 June 1987.
4Sue Dunlevy, ‘Haines — deft use of reality as image’, Herald (Melbourne), 1 March 1990. It was paralleled to a commitment to feminism by Jane Cafarella in ‘The first slice, not just the crumbs’, Age, 21 March 1990.
5Sue Dunlevy, ibid.
6Alan Ramsey, ‘If only the seats of power carried more backsides like this’, SMH, 13 Nov. 2002, p. 15.
7Jane Cadzow, ‘Tasmanian Tiger’, Good Weekend, 18 March 2000, p. 16.
8See also a piece Liberal senator Helen Coonan wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald where she argued: ‘The cult of celebrity that has been created around certain women politicians distorts the purpose for which we are elected. Women politicians have an unprecedented opportunity to respond to the public disenchantment with political style.’ (Helen Coonan, ‘Time for a good look in the mirror’, SMH, 25 Nov. 1998, p. 19.)
9Interview with the author, 5 May 2003.
10Australian Left Review, vol. 3, July/Aug. 1989, p. 9.
11Interview with the author, Dec. 2003.
12Geoff Kitney, ‘Female trio to shape politics’, SMH, 1 April 1994, p. 9.
13Susan Mitchell, op. cit., p. 29. Not all members of the press gallery would agree. Journalist Peter Cole-Adams, for example, attributed Kelly’s problems to a damning report from the auditor-general, criticism from a parliamentary committee, Kelly’s refusal to answer questions, and her own lack of competence. However, historian Clem Lloyd saw it as a ‘feeding frenzy’ of the press. (Australian Press Council Conference Papers, Public Figures and the Press, University of Southern Qld, Toowoomba, 24 March 1994, pp. 9, 22.)