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Sir Walter Murdoch Memorial Lecture (1987) Here Come the Yuppies: the Greedy Society Or the Intelligent Society Lecture Delivered By: Robyn Williams

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Sir Walter Murdoch Memorial Lecture (1987) Here Come the Yuppies: the Greedy Society Or the Intelligent Society Lecture Delivered By: Robyn Williams Sir Walter Murdoch Memorial Lecture (1987) Here come the Yuppies: The Greedy Society or the Intelligent Society Lecture delivered by: Robyn Williams In February 1972 a shabbily-dressed young man strode up William Street in Sydney. He was unemployed and had no special qualifications that would make a "wise career move" likely or straightforward. Only a science degree, a rather wide and eclectic reading, experience of some thirty countries, and the dubious distinction of having appeared on television with Tom Jones, Terry Thomas, Engelbert Humperdink, John Cleese and Dr. Who. That morning he'd been interviewed by the headmaster of a girl's school, who'd been encouraging to an alarming extent. The position was to teach the young Catholic virgins of the western suburbs both mathematics and geography. Being almost entirely innocent of Australian geography and not having studied mathematics for 12 years appeared to be no impediment. The headmaster, a handsome man in his early forties and dressed in a long white habit, smiled tolerantly and said, "No, that will be all right, but please do not go to the pub at lunchtime." In 1972 Australia had basked in the glory of one of the most exciting booms in mining shares in history. For months, Poseidon had been the stock to buy: all over the world we marvelled at the soaring price of its issue. In 1972, William McMahon was Prime Minister. His austere Minister for Science and Education was called Malcolm Fraser. Joh Bjelke Petersen was already an experienced Premier of Queensland and in Victoria, Sir Henry Bolte seemed set for another hundred years. On the wireless we heard "The Hospital Hour", "Blue Hills", "Scope", "The Wilfred Thomas Show" and at 1240 on Saturday on what we now call Radio National, someone steadfastly read the river heights for five minutes (even if there was only 2 minutes worth to say) and then played scratched LP's (usually Brahms or Gluck) for the next three- quarters of an hour. On TV, "Monday Conference" had started, excitingly, and "TDT" was being cheeky and controversial. The ABC employed people called Willissee and Bill 1 Peach and Ray Martin and Huw Evans and the boss was someone called Talbot Duckmanton who'd been there since the First Fleet. We were still in Vietnam, Margaret Thatcher was Minister for Education and Science in the Heath Government in Great Britain and Richard Nixon was quietly cruising to an automatic victory in the Presidential Election. Watergate was simply the name of a large hotel in Washington at that stage. In 1972 there were still two Apollo moon shots to go: 16 and 17. Another four men would walk on the moon, making a total of 12 since July 1969. They would send back live pictures and radio for the ever decreasing world audience. Apollo by then, was to become as commonplace to some as the Shuttle would be in the 1980's. Anyway, the young man continued his walk up William Street, not nervously, but dreading the prospect of his only option so far: teaching maps and maths to the papist burgers of Bankstown. He entered a building with a car showroom on its ground floor and climbed four stories (typically eschewing the lift, which also appeared to date from the First Fleet) and asked for Dr. Peter Pockley. Now, Dr. Pockley, once head-boy of Geelong Grammar, then after the University of Melbourne, recipient of a doctorate from Oxford, Dr. Pockley had been director of the ABC Science Unit since he set it up back in 1964. He welcomed the young man, myself, with a mixture of surprise and curiosity. The surprise was in response to meeting someone so limited in qualifications for broadcasting. Then, as with the BBC, as I knew, the minimum qualification for a novice was ten years' experience. His curiosity was no doubt connected to a desire to inspect the source of this impertinence. In 1972 the output of the ABC Science Unit was "INNOVATIONS" a 15 minute radio program presented by Glen Menzies; "INSIGHT", another 15 minute piece featuring one scientist; and the "WORLD TOMORROW", presented by the late Mike Daley. An occasional documentary series was also produced and called "HERITAGE". Now, it so happened, that the producer of "HERITAGE", one Max Bourke, had left the ABC the week before. He's now, Director of the Australia Council. Another Unit member, one Robin Hughes, had decided to move to TV to a program called "Chequerboard". She, as it happens, is now head of Film Australia. As a result, there were empty desks. I was hired as a journeyman, to fill them. The first thing that surprised ME about the ABC was the length of the lunch hour. It was so extensive, and the arrival of pub time in the afternoon SO precipitate, that I once ungraciously took down the office sign on the door and put up ABC LUNCH UNIT instead. 2 However, a major project soon disrupted the languor. The last Apollo missions were to be covered, done live as a service by the Unit, interrupting other programs as events dictated. Peter Pockley was dauntingly energetic. He seemed to have considerable military ancestry, for he produced campaign charts worthy of Mountbatten, cross-checking worthy of Montgomery, and attention to technology worthy of Rommel. This did not impress the ABC one little bit. They ignored all requests from the hyperactive Director of Science.. until it was more convenient to give him some small fraction of his demands, just to shut him up. So we 'talked-back' to the public (for the first time on ABC radio) using a field telephone pinched I'd hazard, from the local barracks. We organised the VOICE of Apollo live from the moon, took over the network studio, and broadcast by the seats of our still scruffy pants. And I loved it. Whatever my reservations about the merits of moonshots or military significance of their infrastructure, there was nothing like being on air as we all waited, across planet earth, in nations united by this common experience, for two fellow human beings to land on the surface of another celestial object; even more, to take off safely. Nothing could replace that staggering picture of the earth, blue and vulnerable in a pitch- black sky, as it was seen from the moon itself. On that picture, the only discernable living thing to be seen from such a distance, the Great Barrier Reef stretched alongside the southern island continent. Another remarkable event of 1972 was to be the United Nations Conference on the Environment, held in Stockholm. That, combined with the picture of space-ship earth taken by the astronauts, would launch the conservationist movement on a path from which it would never look back. I was also taken aback by the popularity of our broadcasts on science, including the Apollo ones. So I stayed in the Science Unit. They found it hard to believe that I worked all those hours I recorded on my timesheet and docked me accordingly; but I shelved plans to return to England and settled in to enjoy an extraordinarily exciting period ON AIR and IN SCIENCE. The best reason to stick to Australia, it seemed to me, was that they were prepared to take on board new ways of doing things. You could not use the old joke I've since learned from Canada: "Why did the Canadian cross the road? A. To get to the middle." In Australia you aimed to go the whole way. Trouble is, as I've found since, that if the trip turns out to be 3 unexpectedly hazardous, Australians will all too often give up entirely and run back to the place they started. So the penalty for a hopeful, energetic beginning is a sudden loss of confidence, often followed by a sudden death. Nonetheless, with the help of some brilliant colleagues, many of whom are still there, I was able to take part in several experimental, even outrageous programs, which, in their way, helped change broadcasting history in Australia. In 1973, there was "LATELINE", plugging us in, via satellite, for three quarters of an hour, to any world-figure we could get near a studio. Chomsky, R.D. Laing, Roy Jenkins, V.S. Naipaul, E.F. Schumacher..... they all eventually agreed and faced their cheeky, but well-read interviewers in Australia, and went to air. The Australian Broadcasting Commission was talked about from Harvard to the London School of Economics, from Dehli to Rome. In 1974 there was "INVESTIGATIONS", in which we had not only 'live' studio guests in Sydney, but famous folk in their various time-zones at the end of international links, PLUS 'phone-ins' (using that same field telephone), plus tapes. The programs went for three hours and increased the rating of the Wednesday timeslot by five times. We did six heroic "INVESTIGATIONS", of which the second, which happened to be called "THE MEDIA GAME", turned into the worst radio disaster I've ever experienced. Our guests in Sydney included Peter Manning now E.P. of "Four Corners", Adrian Deamer, first editor of "The Australian" newspaper, now legal consultant to Fairfax, Paddy McGuiness, then and now of the "Financial Review", Kerry Packer, Liz Fell.... in Melbourne, 'live', the late Graham Perkin editor of "The Age" newspaper, in London, Harold Evans, then editor of the "Sunday Times", soon to be editor of "THE TIMES" itself..... I faced this line-up with experience of only ONE program as a 'live' presenter, and with no formal training whatsoever. I was assured that, on a signal from me, all present would attack Kerry Packer, and all I'd have to do was interrupt now and then as a restrained but civilized mediator.
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