INSIDE the CANBERRA PRESS GALLERY Life in the Wedding Cake of Old Parliament House INSIDE the CANBERRA PRESS GALLERY Life in the Wedding Cake of Old Parliament House Rob Chalmers Edited by Sam Vincent and John Wanna THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY E PRESS E PRESS Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Chalmers, Rob, 1929-2011 Title: Inside the Canberra press gallery : life in the wedding cake of Old Parliament House / Rob Chalmers ; edited by Sam Vincent and John Wanna. ISBN: 9781921862366 (pbk.) 9781921862373 (ebook) Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: Australia. Parliament--Reporters and Government and the press--Australia. Journalism--Political aspects-- Press and politics--Australia. Other Authors/Contributors: Vincent, Sam. Wanna, John. Dewey Number: 070.4493240994 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU E Press Back cover image courtesy of Heide Smith Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2011 ANU E Press Contents Acknowledgments . vii Foreword . ix Preface . xi 1 . Youth . 1 2 . A Journo in Sydney . 9 3 . Inside the Canberra Press Gallery . 17 4 . Menzies: The giant of Australian politics . 35 5 . Ming’s Men . 53 6 . Parliament Disgraced by its Members . 71 7 . Booze, Sex and God . 89 8 . Evatt, Splits and Garters . 99 9 . Out on the Hustings: Getting in the votes . 117 10 . Press Secretaries: Before spin doctors . 121 11 . The Prime Minister Disappears . 133 12. The Influence Seekers . 141 13 . The Coalition Starts to Slide . 147 14 . Labor Out of the Wilderness . 161 15 . Darkness Descends on Whitlam . 181 16 . A New Home . 195 17 . New House, New Rules . 221 Epilogue: Changing the game . 235 Bibliography . 241 Name Index . 243 Subject Index . 251 v Acknowledgments My first thanks must go to my wife, Gloria, for transcribing a number of interviews (which sometimes, on the tape, sounded like a conversation among illiterate, drunken professional footballers). Gloria closely edited the text many times and picked up some howlers. So many people have assisted me that I do not dare try to list them for fear of leaving one or more out. Generally, they are mentioned in the text. I must give particular thanks to Senator John Faulkner, Eric Walsh and Jeff Townsend for, among other things, passing a practised and knowledgeable eye over the text and for some great material. Michael Delaney was an invaluable source of much material and an instant guide to how things worked in government. Justin Stanwix constantly nagged me to hurry up and write the book. I drew material from many authors listed in the bibliography and they are generally acknowledged as the source in the text. Finally, I thank my late father, Bobby, for the care and attention he devoted to this selfish only child during its upbringing—and my late mother, Janet, for marrying him. Finally, I thank the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery for just being there to join. vii Foreword If the Canberra Press Gallery is an institution, Rob Chalmers was an institution of that institution. His career spanned 60 years and 12 prime ministers, 24 federal elections and five changes of government. There is not a member of Parliament today who can remember a Press Gallery before Rob Chalmers joined it in early 1951, moving up from Sydney as a young journalist. As a result, his insight was as unique as his experience. At a time when politicians and political correspondents alike have become simply talking heads on televisions for most Australians, scrutinised and judged on the same terms as minor (and not very interesting) celebrities, Rob has written the story of the men and women of the Australian Parliament and the Australian Press Gallery from the perspective of one who knew them: knew their foibles and their frailty, knew their strengths and weaknesses and their sometimes unexpected kindnesses. At a time of great cynicism about the political process, not just in Australia but around the world, this book provides an acute and timely reminder that politicians, and the journalists who report them, are not the semi-fictionalised figures flattened to ten second sound bites or thirty second direct-to-camera feeds that our modern media so often makes them appear to be, but instead are men and women frequently doing their best, and sometimes doing their worst, in complex circumstances and faced with huge dilemmas. Arriving in the Gallery just a few years after the Second World War, Rob had a front row seat and a backstage pass for both dramatic political crises and subtle policy changes for more than half-a-century, and in this book he has collected the most memorable. His observations are pointed – there are no free passes in this book, as there were none in Inside Canberra, the political junkie’s must-read newsletter he published for well over 30 years – and his sharp eye and sharper pen capture and sketch politicians from Billy Hughes to Bob Hawke and beyond. For many of us in Parliament House, losing Rob from the Gallery corridors was very much the end of an era. We are all lucky that he recorded so many of his experiences – a lasting record of a time past and of an extraordinary career. John Faulkner, September 2011 ix Preface Ben Chifley occupied the Opposition Leader’s chair and, opposite him, across the table of the House of Representatives, sat the recently elected Prime Minister, Robert Gordon Menzies, when I first reported Question Time. Here were the two giants of Australian politics: ‘Chif’, revered by my father, and ‘Ming’, whom he loathed. Menzies was often referred to as ‘Ming’ after a comic-book character, Ming the Merciless, an evil Chinaman dressed in robes and with long fingernails. (Another explanation was that ‘Mingees’ was the Scottish pronunciation of Menzies.) I was overawed and apprehensive on this day, 7 March 1951. Behind Chifley sat household names: Bert Evatt, Eddie Ward, Arthur Calwell, Reg Pollard, and Cyril Chambers. Behind Menzies on the front bench were Harold Holt, Artie Fadden, Jack McEwen, Earle Page, Richard Casey and Larry Anthony (father of Doug). On the back bench of the Government side sat the wizened figure of Billy Hughes, who was then aged eighty-nine. The public galleries, occupying two sides of the square chamber, were packed, as was the press gallery, occupying the other two sides—one above the Speaker’s chair (where I sat), and the other on the opposition side. Some of the best- known political journalists sat in the press gallery: Alan Reid (Sydney Sun), Harold Cox (Melbourne Herald), and Ian Fitchett (The Age). The Speaker, Archie Cameron, read prayers and everyone stood. Prayers over, we all sat down and Menzies announced ‘with deep personal regret’ he had received a letter of resignation from the Cabinet of Dame Enid Lyons, the widow of Joseph Lyons, Prime Minister for most of the 1930s. An extraordinary woman, mother of 12, she was only seventeen when she married the thirty-five- year-old Lyons, who was then the Tasmanian Labor Government’s Treasurer. Dame Enid was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives and, as Vice-President of the Executive Council, the first woman to gain cabinet rank. After Menzies’ announcement, the Speaker, craggy-faced Archie Cameron, revealed he had received a letter from M. Spaak, President of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, inviting representatives of the house to ‘certain proceedings’ in Strasbourg. Cameron also announced he had received a letter from the President of the Knesset, ‘the Parliament of Israel’, as he put it, together with a resolution of the Knesset ‘concerning the proposed re-armament of Germany’. The letter, said Cameron, was in Hebrew and French and he tabled it. Then Question Time began. In contrast with current practice, on this day, the Leader of the Opposition, Chifley, did not ask a question. Evatt led off, asking Menzies if he would intervene in retrenchments in the Legal Service Bureau, which provided advice to ex-servicemen. Menzies’ reply was brief and courteous: ‘I cannot undertake to intervene in one sense of the word, but I shall be very glad to discuss the matter with the Attorney-General, with a view xi Inside the Canberra Press Gallery to ascertaining what the position is and what he has in his mind.’ No attempt at point scoring, or a smart reply: just a simple, straight answer to a straight question. For an hour, the Opposition asked about hides, sulfur, immigrant labour, defence, dollar loans, Commonwealth diplomatic services and currency. All of this marked a milestone in my years as a journalist. Still only a cadet, I found myself at the very centre of political life in Australia and it had not taken all that long. I had no idea whether I would last in political journalism. I did know, however, that it was enjoying and satisfying. As it turned out, I remained in the press gallery at the Old Parliament House until May 1988—37 years—when the move was made to the new and permanent Parliament House on Capital Hill, directly behind the Old Parliament House. I remain a member of the press gallery and, at the time of writing, the journalist with by far the longest continuous membership, with more than 58 years on the clock and still ticking.