Intellectuals in the Australian Press

Craig Murray

B.A. (Hons)

Submitted in full requirement for the award of Doctor of Philosophy 2005

Creative Industries Research and Applications Centre Queensland University of Technology

ii KEY WORDS

Intellectuals Public Intellectuals Newspapers Political Columns Political Columnists Journalists Academics Think Tanks Paul Kelly Robert Manne Gerard Henderson

ABSTRACT

Intellectuals in the Australian Press

Craig Murray B.A. (Hons)

The notion of the ‘public intellectual’ has been a recurring discussion topic within sociology and the humanities for decades. Yet it has been largely neglected within media and cultural studies. Accordingly, few scholars have discussed in much depth how public intellectuals operate within the media and what functions this media role may facilitate. Intellectuals in the Australian Press is an exploration into this generally overlooked area of scholarship. It aims to provide three levels of insight into the topic. Firstly, the study looks closely at the appearance and the function of public intellectuals in the Australian press. It outlines how public intellectuals contribute to the newspapers and how newspapers contribute to Australian public intellectual life. Secondly, the thesis outlines and examines in detail three types of public intellectual in Australia. Specifically, it examines the journalist, the academic and the think tank researcher as types of intellectual who write regularly for Australia’s newspapers. Thirdly, Intellectuals in the Australian Press delivers detailed intellectual biographies of three of Australia’s most prominent press intellectuals, each of whom exemplifies one of these three categories. These commentators are The Australian’s Paul Kelly, The Age’s Robert Manne, and the Sydney Morning Herald’s Gerard Henderson.

ii CONTENTS

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….. ii

Certification………………………………………………………………………... vii

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………… viii

Chapter One ~ Introduction to Thesis………………………………………...... 1

Thesis Objectives…………………………………………………………... 3 1. Examining the Role of Intellectuals in the Press………………………... 3 2. Redefining the ‘Intellectual’…………………………………………….. 4 3. Identifying Types of Public Intellectual (in the Press)………………….. 6 4. Provide Analyses of Three Eminent Press Intellectuals………………… 7 5. Provide an Insight into Australian Public Intellectual Life……………... 9 6. Examining the ‘Political Columnist’……………………………………. 10 Chapter Breakdown and Notes on Methodology…………………………... 10 Summary…………………………………………………………………… 14

PART ONE ~ PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS IN THE PRESS………………….15

Chapter Two ~ Intellectuals……………..……………………………………….. 16

Introduction: What is an Intellectual?……………………………………… 16 Origins: the Dreyfus Affair………………………………………………… 16 Evolution of the Concept…………………………………………………... 19 Approaches to Defining the Intellectual…………………………………… 20 1. The Qualitative Approach……………………………………………….. 20 2. The Broad Approach…………………………………………………… 22 The Sociology of Knowledge……………………………………………… 24 The Gramscian Influence…………………………………………………... 25 Preferred Approach for this Thesis………………………………………… 28 The Intellectual as an Expert……………………………………………….. 29 The Intellectual as Independent……………………………………………. 35 Intellectuals as Independent Authorities on Public Matters……………….. 38 The Public Intellectual……………………………………………………... 42 The Role of Intellectuals in Australian Society……………………………. 45 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 48

Chapter Three ~ Newspapers and Australian Public Intellectual Life………... 51

Introduction………………………………………………………...………. 51 A. Newspapers and Public Intellectual Culture……………………………. 51 B. Australian Public Intellectuals………………………………………….. 54 ‘Tired Old Farts’…………………………………………………………… 55

iii Old Cold Warriors…………………………………………………………..57 The Right-wing Ascendancy……………………………………………….. 58 Angry White Males………………………………………………………… 61 Summary…………………………………………………………………… 62 C. Public Intellectual Debates: Cold War to Iraq War……………………... 63 1. The Cold War……………………………………………………………. 64 2. The Economic Debate…………………………………………………… 65 3. The History/Culture Wars……………………………………………….. 70 4. Asylum Seekers and the Immigration Debate…………………………... 76 5. The Iraq War…………………………………………………………….. 79 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 80

Chapter Four ~ Public Intellectuals in the Press………..……………………… 82

Introduction………………………………………………………………… 82 A. Political Columns……………………………………………………….. 82 B. Functions of the Political Column (i) Economic Function of the Political Column……………………………. 85 (ii) Social Functions of the Political Column……………………………… 91 The Press as a “Fourth Estate”……………………………………………... 91 Newspapers and the Public Sphere………………………………………… 95 A Propaganda Function?…………………………………………………… 99 A Postmodern Perspective?………………………………………………... 101 Political Columns and the “Political Class”………………………………...101 (iii) Conclusions on the Column and its Functions………………………… 103 C. Types of Political Columnist……………………………………………. 104 (i) Political Columns and the Persuasiveness of Status……………………. 104 (ii) Some Categories of Political Columnist in Australia………………….. 106 Conclusions: other categories……………………………………………… 109

PART TWO: A. CATEGORIES OF PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL; B. ANALYSES OF THREE AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS…. 112

Chapter Five ~ The Journalist as Public Intellectual…………………………... 113

Introduction………………………………………………………………… 113 The Political Journalist as Public Intellectual, Part 1……………………… 113 The Political Journalist as Public Intellectual, Part 2……………………… 116 1. Independence……………………………………………………………. 117 The Archetypal Press Baron……………………………………………….. 119 Journalists on Media Barons and Independence…………………………… 120 The Power of the Journalist………………………………………………... 121 Rupert Murdoch and Paul Kelly: Peas in a Pod……………………………. 123 2. Expertise………………………………………………………………… 125 3. Social Critique…………………………………………………………... 128 4. Public Performance……………………………………………………… 131 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 131

iv

Chapter Six ~ The Social and Political Thought of Paul Kelly……………….... 133

Introduction…………………………………………………………………133 A. Political Writings: From the Dismissal to November 1975…………….. 133 B. Political and Social Thought: Economic Determinism…………………. 140 (i) Economy Policy………………………………………………………… 141 Protectionists as Ignorant and Irrational…………………………………… 145 The New Zealand Example………………………………………………… 147 The Third Way: Social Democracy at the turn of the century……………... 148 (ii) Social Policy…………………………………………………………… 151 The Immigration Debate…………………………………………………… 152 Soft Power: Immigration and Image……………………………………….. 154 Multiculturalism versus White Australia…………………………………... 155 The Early 2000’s ‘Asylum Seekers’ Debate………………………………. 157 (iii) History and Culture Wars……………………………………………... 160 (iv) Foreign Affairs………………………………………………………… 162 Asian Integration…………………………………………………………… 162 All the Way with the USA…………………………………………………. 164 The Iraq War……………………………………………………………….. 166 Independence Limited?...... 167 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 171

Chapter Seven ~ The Academic as Public Intellectual…………………………. 173

Introduction………………………………………………………………… 173 A. Academics as Public Intellectuals………………………………………. 174 1. Independence……………………………………………………………. 174 2. Expertise………………………………………………………………… 181 3. Social Critique…………………………………………………………... 182 4. Public Performance……………………………………………………… 184 B. The Influence of Academics……………………………………………. 187 C. Robert Manne: The Academic as Public Intellectual…………………....190 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 193

Chapter Eight ~ The Social and Political Thought of Robert Manne…………. 194

Introduction…………………………………………………………………194 Robert Manne from Right to…Left?...... 194 1. Conservatism……………………………………………………………..195 2. Anticommunism…………………………………………………………. 198 After the Cold War………………………………………………………….206 3. Economic Protectionism………………………………………………… 208 Opening Schism with the Right……………………………………………. 211 4. The Politics of Race……………………………………………………... 214 (i) Anti-Semitism: The Demidenko Affair………………………………… 215 (ii) Indigenous Affairs: The Stolen Generations…………………………… 220 The Resignation……………………………………………………………. 225

v (iii) Immigration: The Asylum Seekers Debate……………………………. 226 (iv) The Hanson Phenomenon and the Howard Years……………………... 229 5. The Iraq War and the War on Terror……………………………………. 232 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 235

Chapter Nine ~ The Think Tank Pundit as Public Intellectual……………….. 238

Introduction………………………………………………………………… 238 Think Tanks as Intellectual Institutions……………………………………. 239 The Think Tank Pundit as Public Intellectual: Gerard Henderson………… 242 1. Expertise………………………………………………………………… 243 2. Social Critique…………………………………………………………... 247 3. Public Performance……………………………………………………… 247 4. Independence……………………………………………………………. 250 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 258

Chapter Ten ~ The Social and Political Thought of Gerard Henderson……… 259

Introduction………………………………………………………………… 259 Phase 1: Anticommunism (1960s-70s)…………………………………….. 260 Growing Up Catholic………………………………………………………. 261 Catholicism and Politics: The Movement………………………………….. 262 University Days: Student Activism………………………………………... 267 Anticommunist Thought…………………………………………………… 270 Phase 2: The New Right (1980s)…………………………………………... 272 Free Trade over Protectionism……………………………………………... 273 Henderson with the Liberal Party 1………………………………………... 277 The Industrial Relations Club……………………………………………… 278 The Fraser Government: Seven Wasted Years…………………………….. 280 Henderson and the Liberals 2……………………………………………… 281 The Sydney Institute……………………………………………………….. 283 Phase 3: History/Culture Wars (1990s)……………………………………. 284 Progressive Conservatism………………………………………………….. 288 The Demidenko Affair……………………………………………………... 293 Foreign Policy: All the Way with the USA………………………………... 296 Old Cold Warrior: Polemical Style………………………………………… 300 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 304

Chapter Eleven ~ Conclusion to Thesis…………………………………………. 305

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………. 313

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vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In completing this thesis I received the assistance and encouragement of several friends and colleagues. I am particularly grateful to Dr Gary MacLennan, my principal supervisor. It was he who encouraged me to undertake the thesis in the first instance, and it is he who has afforded me the most encouragement, support and assistance throughout the candidature. Having not received a scholarship for all but three months of the four years spent completing this dissertation, I have no reservations in saying that without his enthusiasm, generosity and encouragement it would not have been completed. On several occasions Gary has also been my advocate; championing and defending the project against those who saw little value in it. His dedication to his students, both postgraduate and undergraduate, is tireless, admirable and, frankly, remarkable. Much more than a supervisor, he has been an inspiration and a close personal friend.

I am also grateful and indebted to my associate supervisors, Dr Angela Romano and Mr Brian Johns. As a Media Studies major with no prior experience working within journalism, I have found their knowledge of the craft, in both theory and practice, useful, and their feedback invaluable. Special thanks also to Brian and to Dr Leo Bowman for their generosity in becoming my readers.

Thanks also go out to Brad Haseman and the team from CIRAC. Brad is a very friendly and enthusiastic man, and is wonderfully helpful. Thanks too to the Office of Research at QUT for the Write-Up Scholarship – it was much needed and most appreciated.

I would also like to thank many more of my colleagues at the Queensland University of Technology who have helped me through, either by offering ideas and suggestions or encouragement and friendship. Among them are Maria Mitropoulos, Peter Schembri, Marc Brennan, Alan McKee, Dr Graham Bruce, Dr Jason Sternberg, Dr Terry Flew, Dr Christina Spurgeon, Professor Stuart Cunningham, Dr Lee Duffield, Associate Professor Philip Neilsen, Callum Gilmour, Josh Green, Ellie Rennie, Helen Yeates, Merv Partridge and Dr John Hookham. On the whole, I have found teaching and studying at QUT enjoyable, largely because of the kindness and warmth of most staff members.

Additional thanks go to my family and friends. They may not have always understood, nor taken that much of an interest, in what I was writing about, but they have helped me greatly in other ways. My mother’s interest, encouragement and love motivated and supported me throughout my degree, as throughout my life. My father’s assistance in a wide range of areas, though unrelated to the project, has also helped me greatly throughout the past four years. My brothers, sisters and friends have assisted me by tolerating me during my ups and downs and helping me keep my sanity. Overall they have assisted simply by making my life easier.

Which leads to my final acknowledgement. I would not have been able to finish the thesis were it not for the love and support of my beloved fiancé, Arna Vikanes Sorheim. She has been my confidant, advisor, councilor, friend and partner. Not only has she helped me complete the dissertation, she has changed my life. I owe to her in particular my happiness and a higher appreciation of life itself.

viii Chapter One: Introduction to Thesis

The role of intellectuals in society has been a recurring subject of debate within sociology and the humanities for decades. In the past decade or so, this debate has been renewed in relation to a certain type of intellectual, the ‘public intellectual’.1 In his 1987 book, The Last Intellectuals, American scholar Russell Jacoby declared that the public intellectual was a dying species in American, and indeed in western, society. He suggested that by becoming academics, would-be (left-wing) intellectuals had sold out and refused the public intellectual role performed so nobly by their predecessors.2 Following Jacoby’s thesis, other scholars have bought into the debate and analysed what role, if any, public intellectuals play in democratic-capitalist societies.

This discussion has taken place in western societies like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.3 As Mark Davis has observed, in Australia the idea of the ‘public intellectual’ became a hot talking point following Pierre Ryckmans’ discourse on the topic in the 1996 Boyer lectures.4 One forum in which the matter was discussed was a radio series hosted by Melbourne writer Robert Dessaix for Radio National. The series of interviews he conducted with prominent Australian ‘intellectuals’ was compiled and published as a book, Speaking Their Minds: Intellectuals and the Public Culture in Australia (1998). Radio National is actually one media outlet which has demonstrated a recurring interest in the topic. More recently, in 2002 Alan McKee tried to initiate a discussion of public intellectuals in the academic journal, Continuum. As we shall see in Chapter Two, McKee wanted to redefine the category so as to strip it of its elitist connotations and make it possible for people working within ‘popular culture’ to at least be candidates for the title of public intellectual in Australia.

1 “There is a growing number of sociological volumes devoted to “intellectuals” of today...”. Marek Kwiek and Adam Mickiewicz, 1997, “Zygmunt Bauman and the Question of the Intellectual in Postmodernity”, http://www.policy.hu/kwiek/Bauman.pdf (Accessed August 15, 2004)) 2 Russell Jacoby’s The Last Intellectual’s thesis is quoted and summarised in Elizabeth A. Kelly, 1995, Education, Democracy &Public Knowledge, Oxford: Westview Press, p.85 3 Ibid., p.79 4 According to Mark Davis, “the 1996 Boyer lectures by Pierre Ryckmans sparked a renewed burst of activity around the idea of the ‘public intellectual’“. Davis, 1997, gangland, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp.172-3.

1 Despite the interest in ‘public intellectuals’ in Australia, few studies have examined in any real depth the role of intellectuals in the media. Public intellectuals are generally assumed to appear regularly within the media, but few scholars have looked closely at how they function in the media, and how, through the media, they contribute to Australian society and culture. Some notable examples when this has been attempted include Albert Moran’s essay, “Media Intellectuals”, from Brian Head and James Walter’s Intellectual Movements and Australian Society (1988); Pat Buckridge’s essay, “Editors as Intellectuals”, from Ann Curthoys and Julianne Schultz’s Journalism: Print, Politics and Popular Culture (1999); Eric Louw’s discussion of intellectuals for his book, The Media and Cultural Production (2001); and McKee’s aforementioned work in Continuum (2002). Only the first two looked specifically at press intellectuals. Both Buckridge and Moran affirmed the possibility of intellectuals working in newspapers and discussed instances in which this had occurred. In Buckridge’s essay, The Australian’s Paul Kelly, who is also discussed in detail in Chapters Five and Six, was one such instance. These studies did not, however, consider very deeply the role press intellectuals may perform through their work.

These are not the only studies which have looked at intellectuals in the media, but they are among the few that have managed to stand out in Australian literature. This is not to say they managed to spark a great deal of debate within academic circles, however. Media and cultural scholars, at least in Australia, have been noticeably uninterested in this topic. This is in spite of the periodic emergence of ‘intellectuals’ as a talking point within the humanities. Accordingly, there are few studies which have looked closely and thoroughly at what role, if any, intellectuals perform in the Australian press.

This dissertation is one attempt to do so. Like Buckridge and Moran, it affirms the possibility of intellectuals writing for newspapers, and nominates instances in which this has occurred. Yet it continues where these studies left off. After considering the circumstances in which writers could be considered ‘intellectuals’, this study identifies particular types of public intellectual writing in the press and discusses their role within newspapers and the broader society. This is something which, to my

2 knowledge, has not been attempted previously. It is hoped this thesis will facilitate further discussion of intellectuals in the media.

Thesis Objectives

1. Examining the Role of Intellectuals in the Press This dissertation is a contribution to the recent debate on public intellectuals in Australia. The central objective of the thesis is to examine the role performed by intellectuals in the Australian press. To do this, a three-tiered approach has been adopted. Firstly, this study identifies what ‘intellectuals’ are and considers how they operate within Australian newspapers. This part of the thesis has been completed through an extensive review of literature on: 1) what an intellectual is; 2) how newspapers contribute to public debates and the intellectual life of the nation; and 3) how newspapers, and particularly types of editorial or opinion pieces, shape public knowledge and public opinion. These analyses have been completed in Chapters Two, Three and Four respectively.

Secondly, this study has examined intellectuals in the press by identifying three distinct categories of press intellectual: the journalist, the academic and the think tank pundit. Chapters Five, Seven and Nine outline the circumstances in which these institutional or professional roles correspond to the function of the public intellectual. To complete this task, each role has been measured against four criteria of the public intellectual outlined in Chapter Two. This analysis reviews literature on the nature of professional work within journalism, academia and think tanks.

Thirdly, this study examines three actual instances of public intellectuals in the press. It examines three of Australia’s most prominent and respected political columnists: The Australian’s Paul Kelly, The Age’s Robert Manne, and The Sydney Morning Herald’s Gerard Henderson. Each commentator exemplifies one of the three aforementioned categories of press intellectual identified in Chapters Five, Seven and Nine. One chapter each is devoted to examining in detail how these thinkers have contributed to Australian public intellectual life over the past twenty years or so.

3 Through this three-tiered approach I intend to articulate three different levels of insight into how intellectuals function within the Australian press. There are also a number of ancillary objectives I hope to fulfil.

2. Redefining the ‘Intellectual’ Through a discussion of ‘the intellectual’ in Chapter Two, I have attempted to overcome what some have identified as a definitional problem in scholarship on ‘the intellectual’. Though – or rather, because – so many have tried to define what ‘intellectuals’ are and do, there are many differing conceptions of the category within the social sciences. Since the term was first coined in the French ‘Dreyfus affair’ of 1898, it has not only evolved, its meaning has splintered off into various competing, contradictory and irreconcilable denotations.

Accordingly, to examine the role of intellectuals, or public intellectuals, in the mainstream press, one must first clearly define what or whom one is discussing. This is the objective of Chapter Two. Through a literature review of ways in which the category has been defined previously, and an evaluation of the merits of these approaches, the chapter provides a method and a definition to guide analysis in subsequent chapters. The selected approach follows the Gramscian tradition of defining ‘the intellectual’ according to the performance of a particular social role in disseminating and thereby shaping ideas. Accordingly, this study is part of the push within cultural studies to broaden the category to include those who, for a variety of reasons, have traditionally been excluded. The thesis proposes the inclusion of at least one type of media personality, the journalist, which would not fit into more traditional, narrower definitions of the category.

However, this study has also imposed certain qualifiers absent from Gramsci’s original analysis; the absence of which, I argue, has caused the category to often become so broadly defined that much of its analytical value has been lost. Chapter Two, then, offers a conception of the intellectual which maintains an overall emphasis on social role, but which advocates retaining the sense that ‘intellectuals’ are a society’s culturally recognised intellectual elite. Instead of broadening the category to include almost all those persons who take part in the dissemination of discourse and meaning in society; it is advantageous, I suggest, to keep the category

4 narrow and to note that other, ‘non-intellectual’ forms of communication have achieved increased cultural significance since the introduction of mass communication forms. It is better to account for the declining influence of what we may call ‘intellectuals’, than to open the category to others, who I suggest perform a different role.

In making this point I also consider how being an ‘intellectual’ affects the reception of ideas by the broader community. In large part I justify my conception of the category on the idea, argued by theorists from Aristotle to Foucault, that a writer’s status affects the reception of his or her discourse. Here I borrow from Aristotle’s “character proofs” and Foucault’s notion of the “author function” of a text. I argue that ‘the intellectual’ is someone society regards as an impartial authority, and therefore more trustworthy, credible, and ultimately persuasive. I also specify that an intellectual is someone who not only disseminates ideas, but someone with whom a personal vision is associated. To an extent, then, the intellectual is like the auteur in screen studies.

I have, therefore, defined the category relatively. Being an intellectual is not being enlightened or independent in an absolute sense; it is being understood by sections of the broader public to be objective and authoritative. This is how some theorists have understood Gramsci’s ‘organic intellectual’ to have functioned: as the representative or spokesperson for a particular class or social group. (Gramsci’s ideas have been interpreted differently though.)5 After discussing ‘the intellectual’, Chapter Two will also define the ‘public intellectual’. Here I endorse, with some reservations, Dessaix’s ‘uncontroversial’ definition from Speaking Their Minds. He defines the public intellectual as someone who society considers both authoritative and impartial, and who, in Stanley Fish’s words, “takes as his or her subject matters of public concern, and has the public’s attention (Dessaix’s italics).”6

5 See for example Robert Dessaix, 1998, Speaking Their Minds, ABC Books: Sydney, p.21. Also see the footnote in Chapter Two on the possibility that Gramsci meant for the organic intellectual in some circumstances not to be a spokesperson or ‘orator’ at all. 6 Stanley Fish in Robert Dessaix, op. cit., p.12

5 3. Identifying Types of Public Intellectual (in the Press) Using this definition, in Chapters Five, Seven and Nine I will fulfil a second ancillary objective of the thesis: to analyse what I have identified as three types of public intellectual in the Australian press. They are the three mentioned earlier: the journalist, the academic and what Sam G. Riley has labelled the “think tank pundit”.7 These categories are not intended to cover all kinds of public intellectual in the press; they are merely three types to be discussed and examined in this thesis. No study, to my knowledge, has examined public intellectuals in this way. Many have looked at academics as public intellectuals, but few have looked closely in the same way at think tank researcher-commentators and especially journalists.

Chapter Five examines the journalist as a public intellectual through a case study of The Australian’s Paul Kelly. The chapter argues that there are few journalists who can properly be called ‘public intellectuals’ in the press, but that Kelly is one of them. Through an analysis of Kelly’s work, the chapter outlines the ways in which political journalists can function as public intellectuals in society.

Chapter Seven responds to recent claims that would-be intellectuals forfeit the role of public intellectual by becoming academics. Following on from Chapter Two’s discussion of intellectuals, the chapter argues that the vast majority of academics can be considered intellectuals, but only a small percentage function as public intellectuals. After considering why this might be the case, the chapter concludes with a discussion of Robert Manne as an academic public intellectual in Australia.

Chapter Nine evaluates whether think tank pundits, who are in several ways similar to academics, can also be public intellectuals. The chapter argues that, like academics, researcher-commentators affiliated with think tanks are generally considered authoritative by the broader community, but that their dependence on corporate sponsorship casts a shadow over their independence and integrity. Chapter Nine considers this theme, along with others, using Sydney Institute executive director Gerard Henderson as a case study.

7 Sam G. Riley, 1998, The American Newspaper Columnist, London: Praeger, p.125

6 4. Provide Analyses of Three Eminent Press Intellectuals Between the three aforementioned chapters are detailed analyses of the three exemplars of each category. The articulation of ideas is central to the public intellectual’s role, and these chapters fulfil a third ancillary objective by looking closely at the ideas that Kelly, Manne and Henderson have argued publicly over the last two decades or so. Whatever one may think of these columnists, few would deny they have featured prominently in Australia’s social and political public debates for many years. Chapter Six discusses Paul Kelly’s contribution to Australian public intellectual life, both in his acclaimed books, particularly The End of Certainty (1992), and his role as political columnist with The Australian. Chapter Eight looks closely at Robert Manne’s transition from conservative anticommunist with Quadrant to left-liberal with the Fairfax press. One of the most prominent public intellectuals of the Australian Right, Gerard Henderson, is the subject of Chapter Nine. This chapter considers Henderson’s role as a political columnist from his base within the Sydney Institute.

These comprehensive analyses of three Australian political columnists, as public intellectuals, represent an important element in this thesis’ contribution to new knowledge. Although these three thinkers are important public commentators, few have tried to discuss their contribution to public life in the same way as is regularly done for politicians and other powerful figures. Many have discussed the ideas of Kelly, Manne and Henderson, along with other prominent Australian commentators, yet such discussions typically cover their ideas on only one or a few issues, and are often polemical pieces penned by their critics. Few studies, if any, have analysed these ‘intellectuals’ in a scholarly and comprehensive manner. This is one of the main objectives of the intellectual biographies in Chapters Six, Eight and Ten.

To outline the social and political ideas each has contributed over the years, I have performed extensive reviews of (1) several of their books published throughout their careers, and (2) many of their newspaper commentaries, mainly from the past four years. I have also included various responses to their work from their critics and admirers (chiefly the former), to give a sense of how their work has been received by other Australian public commentators.

7 These three thinkers should not be seen as covering the full political/ideological spectrum of public intellectuals in the Australian press. Many regard Manne these days as one of the most prominent ‘left-wingers’ in the press; Henderson is often described as a leading voice of the Right. Manne, Kelly and Henderson are not, however, intended to represent the ideological range of Australia’s political columnists. Some commentators are more left-wing than Manne; others are more right-wing than Henderson. (And, as we shall see, these labels would be rejected by both). This dissertation does consider in Chapters Three and Eight the ascendancy of the Right in the press, but is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of the ideological nature of Australian political columnists.

Right and Left Briefly, I should clarify what ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ have been used to refer to in this thesis. These labels are used often throughout. It is common these days to announce that, as Australian political life has evolved, the old ideological labels have lost their relevance. And in some ways they have. Yet they are still widely used – often by the same commentators who have declared them useless. I recognise that the meanings of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ have been muddied since the Cold War wound down and ceased in the 1980s. Indeed, this evolution is discussed at some length in a number of chapters. But there is still clearly some basic consensus on what they mean. The particulars may be hard to pin down, but most agree that ‘the Right’ refers to those who believe in markets and individual ‘enterprise’ over government regulation, who believe in hierarchy and inequality, and who are opposed to the campaigns of ‘special interest groups’ – which are generally minority lobby groups (never big business). The Left, by contrast, supports a stronger role for government in most areas of social life, the economy in particular, and favours redistributive programs to redress social inequities where they may arise. This sees it championing the interests of minority groups, whether indigenous Australians, ethnic minorities or refugees. There is usually an identifiable and accepted ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ perspective on a given social issue.

These labels have been complicated, however, both by the steep decline (some say ‘death’) of the Left after the Cold War, and by the fact that what could be described as the Right in Australia is characterised by ideological division on various issues,

8 but mostly clearly over economic ideology. Whereas once it was largely unproblematic to place conservatives on the Right, Australian Conservatism split into two dominant groups during the 1980s: protectionists and free market radicals – or ‘wets’ and ‘dries’. (This ‘conservative rift’ will be discussed in Chapter Eight.) Despite this, most individuals can be designated as right-wing, left-wing or centrist by their advocacy of certain positions over others, and by their preoccupation with certain issues. Hence, Gerard Henderson is considered right-wing because of his clear advocacy of the (New) Right approach to the economy and his hawkish approach in favour of US foreign policy. Paul Kelly is judged to have become more right-wing over time, from being sympathetic to Labor under Whitlam, Hawke and Keating, to championing right-wing discourses on industrial relations and the ‘war on terror’. Robert Manne’s case is most interesting. He started his career on the Right but now finds himself closer to the Left, supporting government regulation of the economy and championing the rights of society’s minority groups.

5. Provide an Insight into Australian Public Intellectual Life The chapters on Kelly, Manne and Henderson provide detail to accompany the categorical analyses of journalists, academics and think tank pundits in Chapters Five, Seven and Nine. But they are also intended to fulfil a fourth objective for this dissertation: to provide an insight into Australian public intellectual life over the past two decades. They focus on several major public debates in which these three thinkers have participated prominently over the years. Most of these debates are introduced in Chapter Three. I have not attempted to provide comprehensive analyses of each issue, and where appropriate I have referred the reader to more detailed studies. What has been discussed in the thesis is intended to provide a sense of what Australian public intellectual life has been like in the past two decades.

Chapter Three also introduces the role of the press in facilitating public intellectual debates in Australia. There are a number of forums where Australia’s most prominent thinkers discuss “matters of public concern”, but the (quality) press is one of the few mainstream outlets where they can “have the public’s attention”. The chapter also looks at who Australia’s public intellectuals are said to be from a demographic perspective.

9 Following on from Chapter Three’s discussion of newspapers’ role as a forum for public intellectual debate, Chapter Four discusses the political column as the most common genre for public intellectuals in the press. The chapter outlines what political columns are and considers some functions this format performs. In particular, it discusses how public intellectuals contribute to the formation of public opinion. Accordingly, this analysis can accompany Chapter Two’s discussion of the role of intellectuals in society. The chapter concludes by outlining the three types of political columnist/public intellectual to be explored in Chapters Five, Seven and Nine.

6. Examining the ‘Political Columnist’ This study also essays a unique examination of political columnists. Most studies of political journalists have focused exclusively on political correspondents and reporters. Seldom have political columnists been examined – at least not in Australia. In America, studies like William L. Rivers’ The Opinion Makers (1965), Richard Weiner’s Syndicated Columnists (1979), Harry W. Stonecipher’s Editorial and Persuasive Writing: The Opinion Functions of the News Media (1979), and more recently William G. Riley’s The American Newspaper Columnist (1998), have examined the political columnist as a type of journalist. Perhaps the closest Australian equivalents include Margaret Simons’ Fit to Print (1999) and Derek Parker’s The Courtesans (1991). In these studies, not all of those discussed were actually political columnists; nor could they all be considered, or would they want to be considered, ‘public intellectuals’. As Chapter Four argues, many Press Gallery journalists are political commentators, but because the column is a personal, opinion- based piece, fewer can be considered ‘political columnists’. The chapter attempts to provide insights into a form of journalistic practice not often analysed in Australian literature.

Chapter Breakdown and Notes on Methodology It is unnecessary to discuss at length the chapter breakdown of this dissertation, as this was outlined in the previous explanation of the thesis’ objectives. I will recap briefly however, and explain more clearly the method adopted in each chapter.

10 Part One consists of Chapters Two through Four. Chapter Two defines both the ‘intellectual’ and ‘public intellectual’ and considers the role such thinkers perform in Australian society. The chapter consists of an extensive literature review of major works on ‘intellectuals’ and ‘public intellectuals’ from cultural studies, sociology and political science. As stated, after finding the dominant conceptions of ‘the intellectual’ inadequate, the category was redefined. In defining the ‘public intellectual’, Robert Dessaix’s conception from Speaking Their Minds (1998) was adopted and slightly adapted.

Chapter Three examines the idea of the press as a forum for public intellectual debate in Australia. It also looks at the demographic composition of Australia’s caste of political pundits, some of whom are ‘public intellectuals’, and provides an overview of five major issues these thinkers have debated in the press over the past two decades. This analysis was informed by several publications on Australian public intellectual life, principally Dessaix’s Speaking Their Minds, McKenzie Wark’s The Virtual Republic (1997), Mark Davis’ gangland (1999) and Stuart McIntyre’s History Wars (2003). Donald Horne’s influential classic, The Lucky Country (1964), was also consulted to enable greater historical insight.

Chapter Four looks more closely at public intellectuals in the press by discussing the format/genre through which most public intellectuals write for the newspapers, the political column. It then considers the social function of the political column in a democracy like Australia’s so as to provide a clearer insight into how public intellectuals contribute to the formation of knowledge, ideas and opinions in society. This discussion draws from Australian, British and American journalism literature on political columns and on the role of the press in a democratic society. In the analysis of political columns, particular consideration is given to Riley’s The American Newspaper Columnist (1998). The exploration of the press’, and opinion columns’, social function is guided especially by Jurgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989), David Conley’s The Daily Miracle (1997), Julianne Schultz’s Reviving the Fourth Estate (1998), and William G. Bovee’s Discovering Journalism (1999).

11 Part Two discusses three types of public intellectual, defined by institutional background, operating in the Australian press: the journalist, the academic and the ‘think tank pundit’. Chapter Five considers whether journalists, especially political journalists, are public intellectuals, and outlines the circumstances in which this is so. It does this through a case study of The Australian’s Paul Kelly. Much information on political journalists was extracted from Parker’s The Courtesans (1991) and Simons’ Fit to Print (1999). Information on Kelly was obtained by perusing a wide range of material relating to him and his role as a leading Australian journalist and political historian.

Chapter Six provides an analysis of Kelly’s social and political thought, and examines his contribution to Australian life as a political columnist. Much of the analysis is based on his most acclaimed work, The End of Certainty (1992), and a lengthy essay, “The Paradox of Pessimism” (1999). These pieces were particularly helpful in explaining his economic perspective and views on immigration and multiculturalism. On these issues I have also drawn from many relevant columns he has written for The Australian since 2000 – the period during which I commenced the project. Kelly’s other major books, The Unmaking of Gough (1976), The Hawke Ascendancy (1984) and November 1975 (1995), were also examined and, where appropriate, used to inform the analysis. The analyses of Kelly’s position on asylum seekers and the Iraq War were based exclusively on a number of key columns he wrote on each issue throughout the early 2000s.

Chapter Seven applies the criteria of the public intellectual to academics, at times using La Trobe University professor and Age columnist Robert Manne as a case study. In exploring the intellectual status of academics I drew from a range of books on university life in Australia, particularly those dealing with the higher education ‘crisis’ of the past decade or two. Anthologies like Why Universities Matter (2000) and Scholars and Entrepreneurs: The Universities in Crisis (2002) were particularly useful. I also consulted various American and British analyses which have more directly engaged with questions of academic expertise and independence, and the role of academics in contemporary life.

12 Chapter Eight analyses Manne’s social and political thought. Through the discussion of Manne, the chapter explores the ‘conservative rift’ of the 1980s and 1990s. In analysing Manne’s earlier, Cold War contribution to Australian public life, I considered some of the pieces he had written for Quadrant over the years, but drew mainly from a lengthy essay from The New Conservatism in Australia (1982), a transcribed radio interview from 1998, and those Quadrant essays he chose to edit together as the book, The Shadow of 1917 (1994). To discuss his perspective on several of the ‘cultural’ issues of the mid-1990s, I consulted mainly the essays and editorials he has written for Quadrant, which were similar (if not on occasion identical) to pieces he had submitted for the press. I also analysed some of his lengthier pieces, including The Howard Years (2004), The Culture of Forgetting (1996) and Whitewash (2003). My analyses of his more recent political commentaries on asylum seekers and the Iraq War draw exclusively from his columns in The Age.

Chapter Nine considers whether think tank pundits can properly be called public intellectuals. It draws from various American and Australian discourses on think tanks, including those articulated by the think tanks themselves. Key studies consulted include Leon H. Mayhew’s The New Public (1997), Ian Marsh’s Globalisation and Australian ‘think tanks’ (1990), Paul Sheehan’s The Electronic Whorehouse (2003), and various newspaper feature articles exploring the rise and operation of think tanks in Australia.

Chapter Ten essays an intellectual biography of one of Australia’s most prominent think tank pundits, Sydney Institute executive director and Sydney Morning Herald columnist Gerard Henderson. To analyse Henderson’s social and political thought I drew heavily from his two studies on Australian politics, Menzies’ Child (1994) and A Howard Government? (1995); his 1990 book Australian Answers; essays he had written for Ross Fitzgerald’s The Eleven Deadly Sins (1993) and The Eleven Saving Virtues (1995); his many volumes of Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch in the late 1980s-early 1990s; and numerous columns he has written for The Sydney Morning Herald. His Herald columns were used especially to discuss his perspective on the Iraq War.

13 For Henderson and Manne alike, I perused their columns on the Fairfax online archive (which spans back to before either began writing their columns) to gain a better idea of the issues each individual has preoccupied themselves with in their columns over the years. For all three columnists, Google searches unearthed much useful information and provided several leads.

The decision to draw heavily from these individuals’ books was based partially on the accessibility of such pieces, and also on the fact that some of these are either collections or edited elaborations of opinion columns published previously in the press. Henderson has noted, for instance, that “the bulk of [Paul Kelly’s most celebrated piece] The End of Certainty was written during his time in the Canberra Press Gallery.”8 Similarly, Manne’s The Way We Live Now (1998) is a collection of essays and columns produced throughout the 1990s. In the case of Kelly’s November 1975, which he serialised in The Australian when he was editor-in-chief, the book was reprinted as articles.9 Overall, after perusing these individuals’ books and many of their columns, I found consistency of viewpoint and argument. Accordingly, it was decided that analyses of work published in book format would be suitable for the examination of each individuals’ social and political thought.

Summary This study offers insights into a largely unexplored domain. Though previous examinations of ‘intellectuals’ in the press have not sparked much interest within cultural studies, it is hoped that, because I have taken a new approach through a different definition of the intellectual, this study may lead to fresh consideration of how, or whether, intellectuals operate within the media. Because this area has not often been explored, I have been able to look at several matters not often, nor comprehensively, explored in Australian literature. Through this thesis I hope not only to outline the operation of intellectuals in the press, but to contribute to future studies interested in the role of public intellectuals, newspapers and political columnists in Australia.

8 Gerard Henderson, “Paul Kelly’s Tome – A Great Read; But is it History?”, Media Watch, Sydney Institute, No. 24, October-December 1992, p.6 9 Crikey.com, http://www.crikey.com.au/media/2003/01/10-TheOZ.html (Accessed October 6, 2004)

14

PART ONE

PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS IN THE PRESS

15 Chapter Two: Intellectuals

Introduction: What is an ‘Intellectual’? Before we can examine the appearance and role of ‘intellectuals’ in the Australian press we must first define what an ‘intellectual’ is. So what, then, is an ‘intellectual’?

Anyone seeking a simple definition of the intellectual is destined to be disappointed. There isn’t one. There isn’t even a broad or general consensus. As Alan McKee observed in 2002, after “[e]xamining previous writing on the topic, the term turns out to be remarkably vague.”10 Two decades earlier, esteemed American sociologist Daniel Bell described the problem thus: “the definitions of what [intellectuals] do, or are supposed to do, are so contradictory that one runs into difficulties at the very start in trying to circumscribe, let alone define, their activities.”11

In this chapter I will review ways in which ‘the intellectual’ has been defined in sociological, philosophical and cultural analyses. I will focus on certain traits this social role category is supposed to possess, particularly expertise, independence and a role as a social critic. I will then consider how a particular type of intellectual, the public intellectual, has been conceived and how it differs from the intellectual per se. Subsequently I will develop conceptions of each that will guide analysis in later chapters. Finally I will discuss the role intellectuals play in Australian society today.

Origins: the Dreyfus Affair Look up ‘the intellectual’ in the dictionary and one is likely to find a definition emphasising expertise, enlightenment or certain ‘intellectual’ habits of mind. ‘The intellectual’ is typically conceived in relation to the ‘intellect’. In the 1976 edition of the Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary, for instance, the ‘intellectual’ is a person who is “enlightened”, “given to mental pursuits” or “of superior intelligence”.12 In the 1993 edition of the same title, it could also be someone “possessing a highly developed intellect”.13 The 1981 Macquarie Dictionary said an intellectual could be

10 Alan McKee, “Public Intellectuals: an introduction to Continuum’s new series of interviews”, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol. 16, No.2, 2002, p.221 11 Daniel Bell, 1980, Sociological Journeys: Essays 1960-1980, London: Heinemann, p.119 12 The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary, 1976, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.421 13 Ibid, p.552

16 “a member of a class or group professing, or supposed to posses, enlightened judgement and opinions with respect to public or political questions.”14 This would presumably require superior ‘intellect’ also.

Intellect is of course related to “reasoning” and “knowing”, and derives from the Latin intelligo, meaning to “understand”.15 In Ethics, Aristotle defined the intellect as the rational part of the mind and soul.16 He said: “[t]o arrive at truth is indeed the function of the intellect.”17 The intellect, then, is the rational, reasoning, calculating, deliberating part of the mind. Many theorists have taken this as a starting point for defining the ‘intellectual’ in society.

But this is not actually how the term originated. ‘The intellectual’ was not intended to describe someone of a certain (advanced) mental capacity or disposition; or of belonging to an enlightened social class – though these considerations were related. The label was actually created in the Dreyfus affair in France in 1898, and was first used as a “term of contempt” by the Right against the Left.18 When prominent “academics, men of letters, artists, journalists, students”19 and others dissented against the persecution of Dreyfus by the French state, the Right responded by declaring them traitors. They labelled this group “the intellectuels” (les intellectuels), and intended for the label to be derogatory. According to Parisian scholar Christophe Charle:

It is important to note that the word started out as an insult. To be ‘intellectuel’ meant to be...a person who pretends to uphold things that the majority of the French refuse. We find here also the idea of dissidence, and of questioning of the power that be, which give the word its particular flavor.20

From its very beginnings, then, the term ‘intellectual’ (or “intellectuel”) carried not positive connotations of intellectual superiority, but was intended to be used the way

14 Macquarie Dictionary, 1981, Macquarie Point: Macquarie Library, p.908 15 The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary, op. cit., p.552 16 Ibid. 17 Aristotle, Ethics, London: Penguin, 1976, pp.204-5 18 Elizabeth A. Kelly, 1995, Education, Democracy &Public Knowledge, Oxford: Westview Press, p.81 19 Christophe Charle, “The intellectuals after the Dreyfus Affair, uses and blindness of historical memory”, http://www.unc.edu/depts/europe/conferences/ACLS98/charle.html (Accessed 15 August 2004) 20 Ibid.

17 the populist Right have long used it: to denigrate dissenters of the Left. The fact that the word ‘intellectuel’ was selected to describe this treasonous group seems related to the fact that, as Elizabeth Kelly observes, “Les intellectuels were cosmopolitan, rational, elitist, and formal in their approach”, while the “partisans of the Right” were populists who “gloried in being rooted in tradition” and “chauvinistically celebrated nationalism, emotionalism, popularity, and contextuality.”21 The label seems to have been used ironically to mock those who, because of their lofty argumentative style and dissenting views, were perceived to be speaking down to the people in a moralistic tone and with an air of superiority. Thus, “[t]he ‘intellectuels’, like many artistic or political movements, [were] baptized by their adversaries.”22

For their part, the Left were happy to appropriate the term. According to Asen Davidov, “[t]he word ‘intellectual’ was coined as a badge of honor in France in the ‘manifesto of the intellectuals’ by Emile Zola and others in their fight against the unfair military and legal system.”23 Though Davidov is actually incorrect to locate the origin of the term in the “Manifesto of the Intellectuals”, his remarks reflect the Left’s subsequent embrace of it.24

When appropriated by the Left ‘the intellectual’ was emptied of its negative connotations and came to imply rationality, knowledge, and general intellectual superiority. This understanding of the term is reflected in the following passage from Michel Foucault.

For a long period, the ‘left’ intellectual spoke and was acknowledged the right of speaking in the capacity of master of truth and justice. He was heard, or purported to make himself heard, as the spokesman of the universal. To be

21 Kelly, op. cit., p.81 22 Christophe Charle, “The intellectuals after the Dreyfus Affair, uses and blindness of historical memory”, http://www.unc.edu/depts/europe/conferences/ACLS98/charle.html (Accessed 15 August 2004) 23 Asen Davidov, “The Guilty Spirit: Crossroads for Post-Totalitarian Intellectuals”, http://www.crvp.org/book/Series04/IVA-6/epilogue.htm (Accessed 15 August 2004) 24 As Charle suggests, the actual protest letter submitted to the French leaders by les intellectuels was only dubbed “The Protest [or Manifesto] of the Intellectuals” by their enemies in the newspapers. Charle, op. cit.

18 an intellectual meant something like being the consciousness/conscience of us all.25

Like the Right, the Left saw dissent as a hallmark of ‘the intellectual’. This is of course reflected in Jean-Paul Sartre’s appeal to the intellectuals to ‘engage’ in the fight for justice. The notion that the intellectual is a dissenter and, because he or she is leftwing, is also enlightened, remains prevalent on the Left. It is evident, for instance, in famous leftwing articulations of the concept like Noam Chomsky’s suggestion that “it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies”26, and Edward Said’s remark that intellectuals should “spea[k] the truth to power”.27

From its origins, then, ‘the intellectual’ was characterised by three central traits. He, for it almost always was a he, hailed from an educated background and was a left- winger who intervened into public affairs to dissent from the status quo. He was also, then, an outsider from organised or official politics. The connotations accompanying this role differed from Left to Right, so that only to the Left was the intellectual really enlightened. But both education and public dissent were recognised on both sides of the ideological divide.

Evolution of the Concept Over a century later, this conception remains popular on both the Right and Left. The connotations have remained largely intact also. From the Right it is still common to hear “anti-intellectual” sentiments such as, in Australia, denigrations of ‘the chattering classes’ and ‘idle scribblers’. And as McKee has recently observed, on the Left it is commonly argued that “only left-wing thinkers can properly be public intellectuals.”28

But in the hundred years since the Dreyfus affair the term has acquired a multiplicity of new meanings also. And as Bell was quoted earlier as saying, many are “contradictory” and irreconcilable. ‘The intellectual’, as we have seen, can also refer

25 Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, 1980, New York: Pantheon Books, p.126 26 Noam Chomsky cited in Kelly, op. cit., p.86 27 Edward Said cited in Robert Dessaix, 1998, Speaking Their Minds, Sydney: ABC Books, p.314 28 McKee, op. cit., p.221

19 to someone characterised by certain philosophical habits of mind and/or superior quality of thought. It has also been defined according to the knowledge or mental labour required to perform certain professions. This is reflected in analyses like John Frow’s, which define the intellectual as a member of the ‘knowledge class’. Sometimes it is the academic. Other times it is, more broadly, the professional. Often it is even broader than that. Another popular approach is to define the intellectual according to the performance of a particular social role in disseminating ideas and shaping public knowledge and opinions. In such cases, ‘quality of thought’ or habits of mind are often only peripheral concerns. There are, then, not only many different definitions of ‘the intellectual’, but several different methods of defining it.

Approaches to Defining the Intellectual One of the most commonly cited Australian analyses of intellectuals is Brian Head’s discussion of the topic in the book, Intellectual Movements and Australian Society (1988). Head suggested there were two ways of defining the intellectual: a ‘qualitative’ and a ‘broad’ approach. Though I think Head has had to oversimplify the matter to arrive at two dominant conceptions29, this dichotomy offers a good starting point. Basically, it highlights the fact that while many believe the term ‘intellectual’ should refer to an individual’s performance of certain ‘higher’ mental activities, many others locate the essence of the category in the performance of particular social, typically professional, activities.

1. The Qualitative Approach What Head called the ‘qualitative’ approach corresponds in some ways to the popular, dictionary definitions mentioned earlier. Quoting from Frank Knopfelmacher, Head described the ‘qualitative’ approach thus:

[I]ntellectuals [are] engaged in ‘moral and political discourse, reflection, articulation or polemic’; the intellectual’s concern with the ‘destiny of

29 American scholar Alain G. Gagnon, for instance, claims there are four dominant conceptions of the category. And it is likely that there are more even than that, given that Head’s ‘qualitative’ approach is not one of the four. Alain G. Gagnon, “The Role of Intellectuals in Liberal Democracies: Political Influence and Social Involvement”, in Alain G. Gagnon (ed), 1987, Intellectuals in Liberal Democracies: Political Influence and Social Involvement, New York: Praeger, pp.6-10

20 mankind’ involves a ‘critical analysis of existing institutional ideas and structures’.30

Pat Buckridge has described this conception as “emphasis[ing] learning, contemplation, critique and evaluation of the Big Questions in human life.”31

One oft-cited theorist to have expounded a version of the ‘qualitative approach’ is American scholar Richard Hofstadter. For Hofstadter, the intellectual was defined primarily by uses of the intellect, which he described as “the critical, creative and contemplative side of the mind.”32 He claimed the intellectual was not just an intelligent person, since “[w]hereas intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, adjust, intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorises, criticises, imagines.” Nor, for that matter, was the intellectual someone whose occupation required advanced knowledge or mental activity – like the professional. “At home he may happen to be an intellectual, but at his job he is a hired menial technician who uses his mind for externally determined ends.” Whereas the professional “lives off ideas”, the intellectual lives “for them”.33 As Head has noted of this view, the ‘intellectual’ could be differentiated from “the expert” because the latter “uses ideas in an instrumental way to achieve practical ends.”34

Another esteemed American sociologist, Edward Shils, employed a similar method. He said:

In every society however there are some persons with an unusual sensitivity to the sacred, an uncommon reflectiveness about the nature of their universe, and the rules which govern their society. There is in every society a minority of persons who, more often than the ordinary run of their fellow-men, are enquiring, and desirous of being in frequent communion with symbols which are more general than the immediate concrete situations of everyday life, and remote in their reference in both time and space. In this minority, there is a

30 Brian Head, “Introduction: Intellectuals in Australian Society” in Brian Head and James Walter (eds.), 1988, Intellectual Movements and Australian Society, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, p.4 31 Brian Head cited in Pat Buckridge, “Editors as Intellectuals”, in Anne Curthoys and Julianne Schultz (eds.), 1999, Journalism: Print, Politics and Popular Culture, University of Queensland Press, p.185 32 Richard Hofstadter cited in J.P. Nettl, “Ideas, Intellectuals, and Structures of Dissent” in Philip Rieff, 1969, On Intellectuals, New York: Anchor Books, p.75n 33 Richard Hofstadter cited in Bruce Robbins, 1993, Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture, London and New York: Vintage, p.9 34 Head, “Introduction: Intellectuals in Australian Society”, op. cit.

21 need to externalise this quest in oral and written discourse, in poetic or plastic expression, in historical reminiscence or writing, in ritual performance and acts of worship. This interior need to penetrate beyond the screen of the immediate concrete experience marks the existence of intellectuals in every society.35

Along these lines, more recently Donald N. Wood located the essence of intellectualism in “reason and responsibility”.36

For some theorists, then, being an ‘intellectual’ means thinking in a certain ‘heightened’ way. For Hofstadter, being an intellectual had nothing to do with one’s social location or occupation. One could be an intellectual at home. For Shils, being an intellectual also comes from within, though these intellectual impulses led to the performance of particular social roles: typically that of the artist, poet, philosopher, or another creative or critical type.

2. The Broad Approach The ‘broad approach’ differed from the qualitative by deemphasising ‘quality of thought’ and omitting the notion that thought must be ‘critical’ or generally philosophical. As Buckridge has noted, Head’s broad approach included “everyone in the society who ‘works with ideas’.”37 Head explained his approach thus:

Intellectuals are found not only in academic and research institutions, but also in a range of occupations that may involve a significant degree of social and cultural expression, such as writers, educators, journalists, lawyers, artists, publishers, politicians, senior public servants, publicists, union officials, corporate executives, and theologians. Not all people filling these, or similar, occupations could be considered sufficiently interested in ideas to qualify as ‘intellectuals’. The point, however, is that people in such fields often engage in significant intellectual functions, constructing and modifying the shape of social understanding…[emphasis added]. [O]ur broad approach emphasises that all ‘merchants of ideas’ are performing intellectual function even if they do not immediately identify themselves as intellectuals; they are significant for our purposes insofar as they contribute

35 Edward Shils, “The Intellectuals and the Powers: Some Perspectives for Comparative Analysis”, in Philip Rieff, 1969, On Intellectuals, New York: Anchor Books, pp.27-8 36 Donald N. Wood, 1996, Post-intellectualism and the decline of democracy: the failure of reason and responsibility in the twentieth century, Westport, Conn: Praeger, p.19 37 Pat Buckridge, “Editors as Intellectuals”, in Anne Curthoys and Julianne Schultz (eds.), 1999, Journalism: Print, Politics and Popular Culture, University of Queensland Press, p.185

22 to social processes of articulating, adapting and evaluating systems of meanings and values and the social practices they entail [emphasis added].38

This approach, then, focuses on the performance of particular social roles which are deemed to shape the way society understands itself. The examples he lists – “writers, educators, journalists” (etc) – are all marked by their function of disseminating ideas in society, thereby “constructing and modifying the shape of social understanding”.39

More recently, in The Media and Cultural Production (2001), Eric Louw defined the category similarly, but broadened it even further. Intellectuals became not certain kinds of communicators, but all “communications professionals”. They were “professionalised meaning-makers who…make and circulate ideas”; “those licensed to make meaning” in the media; and “the primary gatekeepers and regulators of the meaning in circulation.”40 His category included:

academics, researchers, teachers, journalists, publishers, film-makers, television producers, multimedia workers, architects, artists-cum-designers, politicians, policy advisors and regulators, economists, judges, psychologists and councillors, the clergy and those working in fields like advertising, marketing, public relations and community development.41

Hence, anyone whose professional work involves disseminating discourse (‘meaning-making’) is an intellectual. In providing no real qualifiers, ‘quality of thought’ was subjugated further from consideration – if not out of consideration altogether.

More recently, and along these lines, McKee advocated the “expansion of the term [public intellectual] to include workers in popular culture as well as in the academy”. He endorsed Stanley Fish’s definition of the public intellectual as “someone who takes as his or her subject matters of public concern, and has the public’s attention.”42 He suggested that, according to this broad definition, media workers like television producers Peter Abbott (Big Brother) and Russell T. Davis (Queer as

38 Head, “Introduction: Intellectuals in Australian Society”, op. cit., p.3 39 Ibid. 40 Eric Louw, 2001, The Media and Cultural Production, London: SAGE Publications, pp.12-13 41 Ibid., p.13 42 Stanley Fish cited in McKee, op. cit., p.221

23 Folk) could be considered to perform the role of the public intellectual in society. Unlike Louw, McKee was open about the implications of his broad definition. “It should be noted that such criteria include no guarantee of politics – nor, importantly, of the quality of ideas.”43 However, he still defined the (public) intellectual as “a member of the knowledge class, who produces and trades in ideas and information, and whose thinking is about ‘matters of public concern’.”44 Most recently (2004), he argued that expertise should be the central characteristic of the public intellectual.45

Another exponent of a ‘broad approach’ to emphasise expertise is John Frow. In Cultural Studies & Cultural Value (1995), Frow defined the intellectual as someone “whose work is socially defined as being based upon the possession and exercise of knowledge, whether that knowledge be prestigious or routine, technical or speculative.”46 Though Frow shares with Head, Louw and McKee a broader approach, his seems to differ somewhat for the fact that he believes knowledge workers, rather than strictly communications professionals, are ‘intellectuals’. Head seems to have been arguing similarly, yet, as noted, the professions he listed as examples of ‘intellectual’ occupations were mainly those involving a public communication role. Advocates of the broader approach are divided, therefore, over whether the intellectual is someone whose profession requires and demonstrates knowledge and mental capacity, or whether it is marked primarily by the performance of a communicative function. I shall return to this shortly.

The ‘Sociology of Knowledge’ The broad approach, advocated by Head and others, follows a tradition dating back to at least the 1930s which seeks to define ‘the intellectual’ according to the performance of certain social roles. Specifically, ‘intellectuals’ are studied in the context of what Karl Mannheim called the “sociology of knowledge”. Mannheim, and many others since, sought to examine how a particular caste of ‘elites’, who were respected by the broader society and regarded to be enlightened, contributed to social knowledge and shaped public opinion. These elites wielded great social power

43 McKee, op. cit., p.222 44 Ibid. 45 Alan McKee, “Who gets to be an intellectual?” (unpublished paper – to be published in David Carter (ed.), 2004, The Ideas Market: An Alternative Take on Australia’s Intellectual Life, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press) 46 John Frow, 1995, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p.90

24 without actually holding any real political, social, legal or economic power. Their power derived from their ability to shape social understandings and sway popular opinions. According to Mannheim:

In every society there are social groups whose special task it is to provide an interpretation of the world for that society. We call these the ‘intelligentsia’.47

While many theorists have advocated differentiating between ‘intellectuals’ and the ‘intelligentsia’, Mannheim used the terms interchangeably.48 He claimed that the intelligentsia were not only powerful, but enjoyed “a monopolistic control over the moulding of th[eir] society’s world-view, and over either the reconstruction or the reconciliation of the differences in the naively formed world-views of the other strata.”49 His view of the ‘intelligentsia’ is analogous to John Maynard Keynes’ theory that:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.50

Many scholars, some following Mannheim, others not, have interpreted the social function of ‘the intellectual’ in the same fashion. The approach remains popular within sociology especially.51 It is also apparent in the definition from the Dictionnaire des intellectuels Francais, which defined the intellectual as someone

47 Karl Mannheim, 1936, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, p.10 48 Examples of scholars who differentiate between ‘the intellectuals’ and ‘the intelligentsia’ include Bell, op. cit., p.147; Alain G. Gagnon, op.cit.; Robert Manne cited in Dessaix, op. cit., p.34 49 Mannheim, op. cit., p.10 50 John Maynard Keynes, 1936, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, pp.383-4 51 The use of this approach was apparent, for instance, in esteemed sociologist Talcott Parsons’ attempt to define the intellectual as a “social role category” in the late 1960s. Talcott Parsons, “‘The Intellectual’: A Social Role Category”, in Philip Rieff, 1969, On Intellectuals, New York: Anchor Books, pp.3-27. A more recent sociological study to draw from Mannheim is Gerard Delanty’s, Challenging Knowledge: the University in the Knowledge Society (2001), Buckingham: Open University Press (Chapter 7).

25 who “offers society as a whole an analysis, a direction, a moral standpoint which their earlier work qualifies them to elaborate.”52

The Gramscian Influence This approach is also common within the humanities and cultural studies. Yet it is the work of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, rather than Mannheim, which has shaped understandings of the term in these disciplines. Writing at about the same time as Mannheim, Gramsci also believed the category could be most useful if employed to analyse how an elite social caste of thinkers led the creation, the flow and the moulding of social ideas and ideologies. Gramsci explained the rationale thus:

The most widespread methodological error seems to be that of looking for this distinguishing criterion within the sphere of intellectual activities, rather than examining the whole general complex of social relations within which these activities (and hence the groups which personify them) are to be found.53

Gramsci’s interest in the social function of intellectuals was part of his broader project of analysing how ideas and ideologies are formed in society. He was particularly interested in discovering how it was that a particular, bourgeois ideology was able to become ‘hegemonic’ or dominant, even among the working class or proletariat. As a Marxist, he rejected the idea that bourgeois ideology was universalistic; that it applied for all persons and social classes. Rather, he argued that different social groups and classes were locked in a continuous social struggle for ideological supremacy – or hegemony. Intellectuals were an important part of this process because they functioned as the intellectual representatives, the ideological leaders, of society’s competing groups and classes.

Gramsci’s most important contribution to scholarship on the ‘intellectuals’ was his notion of the ‘organic’ intellectual. Before Gramsci’s discussion on the topic in The Prison Notebooks, ‘the intellectuals’ had typically been defined very narrowly to denote a small group of highly educated individuals. In Mannheim’s analysis, for

52 Dictionnaire des intellectuels Francais cited in Dessaix, op. cit., p.6 53 Antonio Gramsci, “The Formation of Intellectuals”, The Modern Prince and other writings, 1983, New York: International Publishers, p.120

26 instance, the ‘intelligentsia’ was epitomised by the clerisy.54 This notion is still common today. It is evident, for instance, in Pierre Bourdieu’s description of the intellectual as someone belonging to one of the “intellectual occupations (teachers, researchers, artists)”.55 It is also apparent in the many analyses which characterise intellectuals as primarily academics.

Gramsci’s analysis, particularly his conceptualisation of the ‘organic’ intellectual, was the main influence behind the ‘broad approach’ of Head, Louw, McKee and Frow. While Mannheim and others have examined the intellectual according to an influential social role, it was Gramsci who advocated broadening the category beyond that small caste of “ecclesiastic” thinkers he described as the ‘traditional’ intellectuals.56 Gramsci argued that alongside this small caste of “ecclesiastic” thinkers, which he described as the ‘traditional’ intellectuals57, had emerged a new class of ‘organic’ intellectuals. They were organic in the sense that they grew from, and came to speak to and on behalf of, a particular social class or group. Their role, he said, was to “give [a class] homogeneity and consciousness of its function not only in the economic field but in the social and political field as well.”58 All social classes have organic intellectuals, but because the bourgeoisie was the ruling class, intellectuals were more common to it. He called the bourgeois organic intellectuals “the ‘officers’ of the ruling class for the exercise of the subordinate functions of social hegemony and political government”. They were “officials” or “functionaries” of the superstructure.59

54 Mannheim, op. cit., p.10 55 Pierre Bourdieu cited in Frow, op. cit., p.44 56 Gramsci, op. cit., pp.119-120 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., p.118 59 Ibid., p.124. It is, in fact, unclear to me whether Gramsci actually intended his ‘organic’ intellectual to be a spokesperson or “orator”. While most of those who have followed his methodology, like Head and Louw, have focused on spokespersons (“professional communicators”), Gramsci seems to have been referring to people whose expertise was applied in their everyday duties. Their practical deeds, not their words, helped shape the way people understand the world. I cannot be sure, but his view appears to be a materialist rather than idealist understanding of how ideas are formed. It appears he believed those who play a significant role in transforming the social world contribute heftily to transforming our consciousness of it. For Gramsci was a Marxist, and it was Marx who said: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness.” (Karl Marx, “The Materialist Conception of History”, Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, 1961, Ringwood: Penguin Books, p.67.) Since the organic intellectual is described as an “official”, a “functionary”, and “‘permanently persuasive’ because he is not purely an orator” (Gramsci, op. cit., p.122); it appears Gramsci was referring to practical people, not only orators, when he conceived his new intellectual. However, for the purposes

27

As Gramsci noted at the time, in conceiving a new ‘organic’ type of intellectual he was “greatly broade[ning] the concept of intellectual.” He believed this to be necessary “to reach a concrete approximation to reality.”60 Specifically, it was to account for the emergence of ‘new’ intellectual roles in an evolving capitalist society.61 Other forms of knowledge worker or professional communicator, from increasingly varied institutional and professional backgrounds, now contributed significantly to the formation of public opinion and social knowledge. The old caste of traditional intellectuals lost its monopoly of the communication channels. And theories like Mannheim’s, which portrayed an ‘intelligentsia’ of clerics and other ‘traditional’ intellectuals as monopolising the formation of social consciousness, were no longer tenable. Either one must accept that these intellectuals had lost much of their power or one must broaden the category. Gramsci, and others since, chose the latter option.

Gramsci’s analysis, particularly his conceptualisation of the ‘organic’ intellectual, was the main influence behind the ‘broad approach’ of Head, Louw, McKee and Frow. While Mannheim and others have examined the intellectual according to an influential social role, based on the dissemination of knowledge, it was Gramsci who advocated broadening the category the ‘traditional’ intellectuals.62

Preferred Approach for this Thesis Like Gramsci and Mannheim, I believe the most valuable way of conceiving ‘the intellectual’ is not in the way it was intended, as les intellectuels; nor according to habits of mind – including political worldview. With Gramsci, I believe the category can be most effective when used to identify in society an ‘elite’ of knowledge workers and public commentators who, because they are considered authoritative, serve the role of interpreting the world and informing the broader society.

of this discussion I have elected to follow others in discussing the new organic intellectual as predominantly a spokesperson. 60 Gramsci, op. cit., p.124 61 Ibid., pp.118-125 62 Ibid., pp.119-120

28 Sometimes, as ‘organic’ intellectuals, they speak on behalf of a social group or “constituency”63, shaping its perspective and consciousness in the process.

The primary advantage of this approach over the ‘qualitative’ method is its ability to help explain how ideas are circulated, received, and shaped in society. Approaches emphasising habits of mind alone offer no such insights. If someone can be an intellectual in private, or “at home”, as Hofstadter suggested, the category does little to explain the social exchange and development of ideas. At best it can serve to lionise certain individuals in the same way that ‘genius’ does. At worst it could actually serve a rather dubious self-congratulatory function. As Head has observed, the ‘qualitative’ approach has been “highly attractive to many writers who identify themselves as intellectuals”64, but “fails to illuminate social processes.”65 Similarly, Frow argued more recently that approaches which considered intellectuals to be only ‘traditional’ intellectuals “can only be a moralizing exercise in self-hatred and self- idealization.”66

However, though I agree with the move to broaden the category beyond the more ‘traditional’ intellectual strata, I feel by defining ‘the [organic] intellectual’ primarily as an ideological representative, Gramsci and others broadened the category too far. In particular, there are two traits commonly attributed to the ‘intellectual’ which have been subjugated, but which I feel should be retained. These are: (1) expertise and (2) independence. The following section will discuss how these two traits have been emphasised in previous scholarship on ‘the intellectual’. It will also explain what these two criteria are intended to mean in this analysis.

The Intellectual as an Expert The expertise of ‘intellectuals’ seems to have been implied from the first usage of the term in 1898. Though conceived as a term of contempt, ‘les intellectuels’ is likely to have been chosen in recognition of the ‘treacherous’ dissenters’ status as experts in

63 McKenzie Wark interprets the ‘organic’ intellectual as a spokesperson for a social constituency. He said Midnight Oil vocalist and political activist Peter Garrett was an organic intellectual. Wark, “Homage to Catatonia: Culture, politics and Midnight Oil”, in John Frow and Meaghan Morris (eds.), 1993, Australian Cultural Studies: A Reader, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.112 64 Head cited in Buckridge, op. cit., p.185 65 Brian Head, “Introduction: Intellectuals in Australian Society”, op. cit., p.4 66 Frow, Cultural Studies & Cultural Value, op. cit., p.90

29 French society. They were, after all, mainly philosophers, artists, academics, students and other professionals. And this was at a time before mass tertiary education, when the university was closed off to all but a privileged few. As the following section suggests, most subsequent meanings the term has acquired have included at least some degree of emphasis on expertise.

Expertise may be part of most understandings of ‘the intellectual’, but the level of expertise one should possess, and in which field or fields of inquiry one should possess it, are more contentious matters. For some contemporary theorists, expertise in any area suffices, but one has to be a bone fide expert to be considered an ‘intellectual’. The proponents of the ‘broad’ approach discussed earlier, with the exception of Louw, share this notion. It comes across most clearly in Frow’s idea that the intellectual is someone “whose work is socially defined as being based upon the possession and exercise of knowledge, whether that knowledge be prestigious or routine, technical or speculative.”67 Being a “member of the knowledge class” was also central to McKee’s definition of the (public) intellectual.68 And while Head’s analysis was similar to Louw’s, in that both emphasised a public communication role, Head specified that “not all people filling [the various occupations he listed]…could be considered sufficiently interested in ideas to qualify as ‘intellectuals’.”69 Another important Australian examination of the topic was Robert Dessaix’s introduction to Speaking Their Minds (1998). Dessaix argued that “intellectuals must be understood to be speaking from a position of far greater than average knowledge and understanding in their field. Why else single them out for their insights?” There seems to be a general consensus in Australian literature, then, that expertise is a – if not the – central trait of the ‘intellectual’.

The idea of the intellectual as a member of some kind of knowledge class has also been particularly common in American literature, in which the ‘intellectuals’ are often defined as a ‘new class’ of experts and professionals. As mentioned earlier, the

67 Ibid. 68 Though McKee claimed ‘quality of thought’ was excluded from consideration in his conceptualisation of the category this was presumably only in an absolutist sense (given that he stresses that the public intellectual is a member of the knowledge class). McKee, “Who gets to be an intellectual?”, op. cit., and “Public Intellectuals: an introduction to Continuum’s new series of interviews”, op. cit. 69 Head, “Introduction: Intellectuals in Australian Society”, op. cit., p.3

30 level of expertise one is supposed to possess varies. Some, like Alain G. Gagnon, believe intellectuals are only people among society’s most well-educated strata. Like Bourdieu, who believed intellectuals were mainly “teachers, researchers, artists”70, Gagnon saw them as coming from “academe, research institutes, and…commissions of inquiry”.71 Others, however, believe that because the professions require specialist knowledge, most professionals qualify as ‘intellectuals’.

There are some scholars, however, who suggest even the most authoritative of experts may not be an ‘intellectual’ unless this expertise is either universalistic, or related to ‘political affairs’. (The latter often equates to the former). This is reflected in the 1981 edition of the Macquarie Dictionary, which said an intellectual could be “a member of a class or group professing, or supposed to posses, enlightened judgement and opinions with respect to public or political questions [emphasis added].”72 It is also central to Russell Jacoby’s influential thesis from The Last Intellectuals (1987). Jacoby argued that in becoming specialists and retreating from political and social debates, experts like academics had refused the role of the ‘intellectual’.

Often the specification that ‘the intellectual’ is authoritative or enlightened on public affairs is expressed in terms of the possession of a ‘universal’ expertise. J.P. Nettl, for instance, argued in the 1960s that intellectuals could be distinguished from scientists because the former are “universalistic” in focus while the latter are too “particularistic”.73 Another expression of this idea is Foucault’s aforementioned description of the ‘left’ intellectual as someone who “spoke and was acknowledged the right of speaking in the capacity of master of truth and justice.”74

Yet after Foucault’s ruminations on the topic in the late 1970s, this approach has become unfashionable in some cultural studies circles. Following Foucault, and Jean- Francois Lyotard, postmodernists suggest the image of the ‘universal’ intellectual, the speaker of truths on many subjects, is merely a façade. As Elizabeth A. Kelly has

70 Bourdieu cited in Frow, Cultural Studies & Cultural Value, op. cit., p.44 71 Gagnon, op. cit., p.3 72 Macquarie Dictionary, op. cit., p.908 73 Nettl, op. cit. pp.69-70 74 Foucault, op. cit., p.126

31 noted, the postmodern position held that “[t]he world is complex; no one can master it as an undifferentiated entity”, and thus “specialization is even more necessary today than in the (largely imaginary) past when, it is assumed, public intellectuals were generalists first.”75 The postmodern scepticism of ‘universal’ intellectuals is also apparent in Tony Judt’s less diplomatic suggestion that French intellectuals like Sartre and Albert Camus were “half-informed, frequently lazy and ignorant.”76 According to this approach, it is not only more realistic, but is generally advantageous to conceive the ‘intellectual’, following Foucault, as the “expert”, the “absolute savant”, the “‘specific’ intellectual”.77

In defining this thesis’ central category, therefore, I must decide not only whether expertise should be one of the central components, but whether it should be (1) either strictly universalistic or also particularistic, and (2) either a deeper level of expertise or the kind of expertise acquired by professionals.

On the first question, I agree with the postmodernists and with Gramsci and Frow that the category should not only denote the ‘universal’ intellectual, but should refer to certain kinds of specialist also. This is not because I believe, with the postmodernists, that the ‘universal’ intellectual has disgraced and discredited itself. Rather, I feel that if the category is to recognise a class or caste of highly influential social minds, it seems important that some specialists, especially esteemed experts, should be included. They may not intervene into public affairs regularly and on a wide range of topics, but people do look to them when they want to be informed and educated. Because they are socially recognised authorities, their knowledge informs and educates others, shaping the way we understand the world and our place within it. And this is a large part of what I think the intellectual should be. It is what Mannheim and Gramsci intended when they discussed the matter in the 1930s.

Another reason I believe it is not necessary to stipulate that the ‘intellectual’ is a man or woman of universal expertise, who speaks on a broad range of topics, is that there

75 Kelly, op. cit., p.86 76 Tony Judt cited in Russell Jacoby, “Intellectuals: Inside and Outside the Academy” in Anthony Smith and Frank Webster (eds.), , The Postmodern University, Buckingham: Open University Press, p.65 77 Foucault, op. cit., p.128

32 is another, separate category which covers this role. What Foucault described as the ‘universal’ intellectual is encapsulated in the subcategory of the ‘public intellectual’, which has been a recurring discussion topic in the past decade or so. I agree with Jacoby and others that the universal intellectual should be demarcated as a certain kind of important public and political thinker. But rather than specify, as some do, that the ‘intellectual’ is necessarily a ‘public intellectual’,78 it seems advantageous to keep the two separate. For this thesis, then, ‘the intellectual’ refers not only to the universalistic thinker, the speaker on public affairs, but to the ‘expert’ too.

This leads to the second question regarding expertise: how deep should an intellectual’s expertise be? Is the ‘knowledge class’ comprised of professionals per se? Or is the intellectual a more esteemed expert; someone with a deeper level of understanding? On this point I agree with Head that not all professionals, and therefore not all those we consider experts, should be regarded as intellectuals. But rather than the qualifier being the degree to which someone is “interested in ideas”, as in Head’s analysis79, the intellectual should be someone whose understanding of their field is more highly advanced. ‘Intellectual’ seems to connote, or at least should connote, someone more authoritative than the typical professional. It should refer to someone who is particularly well-regarded and important; someone more highly esteemed for their ideas. In this sense I advocate conceiving the category more narrowly than Frow and others have, as more than a knowledge worker. The intellectual should be someone who shapes not only the understandings and views of the ‘laity’, but of many other members of the ‘knowledge class’ also.

There is a third key question related to expertise which needs to be addressed. It relates to the tendency, mentioned earlier, for some scholars to specify a political or ideological worldview as part of the intellectual’s make-up. It was observed earlier that it is common, particularly on the Left, to insist that in order to be truly

78 Jacoby tends to use the terms interchangeably and synonymously. Many others do too. One clear justification of this has been articulated by McKenzie Wark, who said: “The whole concept of an intellectual practice presupposes a public space in which particular intellectual practices rub up against each other, statement by statement, phrase by phrase.” Wark, “On Public Intellectuals: Ruminations from Back Paddock”, http://www.dmc.mq.edu.au/mwark/warchive/Other/public- intellectuals.html (accessed April 15, 2004). 79 Head, “Introduction: Intellectuals in Australian Society”, op. cit., p.3

33 ‘intellectual’, one must adhere to certain truths. The reasoning is straightforward: if ‘intellectual’ connotes understanding and enlightenment, then those articulating false ideas or ‘ideologies’ cannot be intellectuals. Expertise or enlightenment, therefore, is often gauged absolutely. Often this means, in practice, that truth is judged according to a political perspective or ‘regime of truth’. Accordingly, there is a tendency for scholars to consider their ideological kin ‘intellectuals’ but their foes not. This is reflected in Sartre’s suggestion that only leftwing thinkers are genuine intellectuals. He called the intellectual someone “oblige[d]” to “commit himself in every one of the conflicts of our time…[and] in each of these conflicts, he finds himself, as a man conscious of his own oppression, on the side of the oppressed.” Those who took the side of the Establishment or the bourgeoisie were ‘false intellectuals’.80 Conversely, dismissing leftwing thought as “ideological”, some on the Right (or just the non- Left) have suggested that only more conservative ideas are truly intellectual. This is reflected, for instance, in liberal pro-capitalist Daniel Bell’s decision to distinguish between ‘intellectuals’, who were committed scholars, and the ‘intelligentsia’, whom he described as “an ideologically-minded group”.81 More recently, after suggesting intellectualism was marked by reason and responsibility, Donald Wood (1996) claimed ideas like “scientific progress, capitalism, and democracy”, “competition”, “individualism” and “elitism” were examples of ‘intellectualism’; while contrary ideas, like “affirmative action”, “socialism”, “communism” and “popular art” were ‘post-intellectual’.82

However, to be an influential or important thinker is not always to be, in absolute terms, an enlightened or informed one. Thus, because the ‘intellectual’ has been defined here to signify a caste of society’s most important and influential thinkers, and since not all of society’s most important minds think alike, this study will define the ‘intellectual’ without reference to political worldview. Expertise should be defined relatively. The intellectual becomes someone who is not absolutely or objectively enlightened – if indeed this can be definitively established. Intellectuals are thinkers whose ideas, “both when they are right and when they are wrong” (as Keynes said), shape the way the broader community makes sense of the world.

80 Jean-Paul Sartre, 1974, Between Existentialism and Marxism, London: NLB, p.254 81 Bell, op. cit., p.147 82 Wood, op. cit., pp.21, 23

34

The truth of an idea, then, is no guarantee of its efficaciousness. It may even be the case that the more profound, original and complex an idea, the lower the likelihood it will shape popular opinions. Populism is a powerful political force precisely because it panders to prejudice and old certainties. It is the unoriginality, the simplicity of such views which enable them to capture hearts and minds. Talkback radio hosts are not popular and powerful by the profundity of their thinking. They tell the public what it wants to hear, and this is construed to be ‘telling it like it is’. The better idea, therefore, will not always win out – at least not in the short term. All that matters to be influential and socially important is that one’s ideas are “culturally validated”; that is, perceived to be credible or authoritative.

This is not an endorsement of postmodern relativism. Nor is it a negation of it. It is merely recognition of the fact that whatever I or anyone else may think is an objectively strong idea is not necessarily going to shape the way people perceive and evaluate their own experiences. The best ideas to one culture may be heresies to another. To you or me John Laws may seem highly ‘unintellectual’, but to someone of a more conservative mind he is likely to appear trustworthy, if not authoritative, on some subjects. The same could be said of the way Jean-Paul Sartre or Noam Chomsky would be perceived by the Right. We should think of expertise, therefore, in relative terms. The approach advocated in this thesis, therefore, is encapsulated in Raimond Gaita’s remark: “[t]o paraphrase Simone Weil, if you want to know how bright a torch is, you don’t shine it into your eyes and look at the bulb, you flash it around to see what it lights up.”83

The Intellectual as Independent The second feature commonly attributed to the intellectual, and one I believe to be indispensible from the category, is independence. As Dessaix has commented, “[s]ome, like Edward Said, consider that independence is a sine qua non of any public intellectual.”84 Mannheim was one of the most memorable articulators of this notion. According to Mannheim, the intellectual was distinguished from other experts in society by being “free floating, unattached” from a social class, a

83 Simon Weil cited in Dessaix, op. cit., p.246 84 Dessaix, op. cit., p.15

35 corporation or the state.85 Jacoby’s The Last Intellectuals was a clear and powerful endorsement of Mannheim’s view.86 For Jacoby, the intellectual is ‘free-floating’ or it does not exist.87 Other recent studies, particularly from America, have also embraced the notion of a ‘free-floating’ intelligentsia and lamented what they perceive to be a ‘grounding’ of the intellectual within social institutions, including the university.88

Independence has been stressed because it is considered to afford thinkers the freedom to pursue and speak truth without interference. This notion is clearly reflected in Said’s belief, summarised by Dessaix, that “the ‘principal intellectual duty’ [of ‘intellectuals’]…is independence from allegiances to institutions and worldly powers.”89 Decades earlier, sociologist Talcott Parsons argued similarly by suggesting that, “though a member of society”, and despite performing “a complex of social roles”, the intellectual is someone whose freedom from social ties enabled him or her to put “cultural considerations above social”. Parsons suggested the intellectual was distinguishable from the “organization executive”, (which would cover most professionals and ‘experts’), because the organisational executive lacked the freedom to make objective value judgements; if indeed they were free in their “principal role-capacity” to make such judgements at all.90

But there is also a more complex reasoning as to why independence assists the pursuit of truth. It goes at least back to Hegel, but was probably popularised more by Marx’s notion of ideology, which has been widely taken up (and modified) in the humanities and sociology (among other disciplines). Following Marx, many thinkers have suggested that social (typically class) ties inevitably create ‘ideological’ thought; that is, false or partial thought which misconstrues sectional interests as universal. For Marxists, like Sartre, this is evident in the ideology of bourgeois humanism, which Sartre summarises as the notion that “every man is a bourgeois;

85 Mannheim, op. cit., p.10 86 Jacoby’s view differed from Mannheim’s, though, by Jacoby’s characterisation of the self-funded writer, rather than the clerisy, as the epitome of the category. 87 See for example Bruce Robbins (ed.), 1990, Intellectuals: Aesthetics, Politics, Academics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; Talcott Parsons, “‘The Intellectual’: A Social Role Category”, in Philip Rieff, 1969, On Intellectuals, New York: Anchor Books, pp.15-26 88 See for example Robbins, op. cit. 89 Dessaix, op. cit., p.15 90 Parsons, op. cit., p.4

36 every bourgeois is a man.”91 Marxists like Sartre believed only ‘intellectuals’, as detached observers, were really able to objectively examine social affairs. From their vantage point as social and political outsiders, they could gain an understanding of universal interests. As Parekh explains: “a social theorist can offer an undistorted, concrete, categorical and objective knowledge of the social whole only by studying it from the standpoint of the whole.”92 ‘The intellectuals’ were the only social caste sufficiently removed from social responsibility and class ties to see the complete picture and understand the whole.

Though not entirely for these reasons, I too believe independence should remain a central trait of the ‘intellectual’. This is primarily because, like expertise, independence affords to a thinker connotations of authoritativeness, and therefore greater credibility. Most people, not just eminent scholars like those just discussed, believe on some level that detachment procures, if not enlightenment, then ‘objectivity’, impartiality, and integrity of thought. Someone detached from an issue, with nothing obvious to gain, is more likely to be trusted than someone with a lot at stake. They are more likely to be believed, and more likely to be persuasive. Hence, it is useful, I believe, to define the category so as to differentiate intellectuals from professional communicators or knowledge workers who are tied to particular interests which, by speaking honestly, they may jeopardise.

One problem of conceiving the intellectual this way has been highlighted by Frow. Arguing that the ‘intellectual’, as a knowledge worker, should include those ‘embedded’ within state and corporate institutions, he explicitly rejected the notion of the ‘free floating’ intellectual as a myth. Knowledge work, he said, was “embedde[d]…in capitalist production”.93 He suggested that because few, if any, experts or knowledge workers are truly separate from some kind of social institution, intellectuals should not only be those who are ‘free floating’, ‘unattached’.94

91 Sartre, op. cit., p.236 92 Bhikhu Parekh, 1982, Marx’s Theory of Ideology, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, p.19 93 Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value, op. cit., p.90 94 In this respect he argues similarly to Jacoby, except that while Frow broadened the category to account for the absence of genuine autonomy, Jacoby insisted on keeping it narrow and lamenting the decline of intellectuals in society.

37 Frow’s argument is solid. If one is to exclude all knowledge workers attached to a state or corporate institution, one would have to exclude the great majority of thinkers and communicators in society. There is also the complicated matter of how unattached a thinker has to be. For Said, it seems academics, writers and artists are among the small number of professionals with sufficient independence from “worldly powers”. But for Jacoby and others, even the university does not grant thinkers enough autonomy for academics to be intellectuals.

To solve this dilemma, we can suggest that intellectuals can be found within social institutions (corporations, government departments) since being attached to an institution does not necessarily undermine one’s autonomy. Chapters Five, Seven and Nine will discuss this theme in detail by looking more closely at the autonomy of thinkers and communicators within, respectively, the news media, academe and research institutes. For now, we can specify that one good indication of whether a knowledge worker or communications professional is autonomous is whether they are employed to argue or implement their own ideas, or to sometimes betray them in the interests of their organisation. Autonomy, or ‘independence’, therefore, relates to the ability to disseminate discourse which is honestly held to be true or right. And this is possible for experts working for the government, or corporations, or another kind of social institution. It is unlikely, however, that it would be common for roles involving some degree of public communication.

Accordingly, the ‘intellectual’ comes to be defined differently in one more respect to the ‘broad’ approaches discussed earlier. Specifically, he or she can be differentiated from some of the ‘role-categories’ listed by Head and Louw above. The category should not, for example, generally include the politician, the public relations official, the advertiser, and other professionals commonly suspected to be pushing a hidden agenda and to therefore to be inclined to bend or warp the truth. Intellectuals are society’s esteemed, trustworthy and reliable thinkers. They are the people we often turn to for verification and an honest assessment of whatever it is the politicians and spindoctors are trying to sell us. They are, as Dessaix suggested, people who genuinely “speak their minds”.

Intellectuals as Independent Authorities on the Public Interest

38 Both independence and expertise are worth salvaging, then, because they create a category which signifies that caste of people who are regarded as society’s most authoritative and trusted thinkers. If they are not always right, it is not because they have wilfully deceived. They can be trusted next time and every other time until they prove themselves either unauthoritative or lacking integrity. This type of commentator, who still speaks on matters of public concern and has the public’s attention, is what I believe ‘the intellectual’ should refer to.

The possession of the two traits of expertise and independence makes the intellectual, I believe, more influential than other public communicators and disseminators of ideas. Because the power of all public commentators comes from their ability to persuade people, to affect judgement, the basis of the intellectual’s greater power can be explained through a consideration of Aristotle’s remarks on rhetoric, and particularly his notion of “character proofs”.

In The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle identified three fundamental ways in which rhetoricians are able to persuade their audience, or three basic forms of proof: by demonstration, by emotion and by character.95 The first concerned the assembly of facts or real evidence; the second related to the rhetorician’s ability to persuade the audience through delivery, to illicit the desired emotional response; and the third to the credibility of the rhetorician. The ability to master these three forms of proof created the good rhetorician.

Ideally most persuasion would be achieved through the demonstration of evidence and, ultimately, by compiling the stronger case. Aristotle saw this is as the truly legitimate form of rhetoric. “Justice requires contention from the facts themselves, so that all other aspects apart from demonstration are ancillary.”96 However, he also acknowledged that an audience can be won over through less high-minded tactics. He conceded that character and emotional proofs “have a great effect...because of the baseness of the audience.”97 Sometimes the weaker case can win out because of the magnificence of a rhetorician’s delivery. This is of course what the Ancient Greeks

95 Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, London: Penguin, 1991, p.74 96 Ibid., p.217 97 Ibid.

39 sentenced Socrates to death for. Aristotle’s other two proofs, emotion and character, recognise the impact of delivery.

The proof of Emotion recognises the rhetoricians’ ability to connect with his or her audience. It is the ability to not only find the facts and assemble them rationally, but to make them resonate to one’s audience. He said the “delivery” of the facts was “that which has the greatest effect”; “written speeches have more effect through their style than through their intellectual content.”98 Aristotle noted that linguistic devices such as metaphor could be effective in delivering the case in an emotionally engaging manner.99

It is Aristotle’s third form of proof, “character”, however, which most concerns us here. He suggested that “character contains almost the strongest proof of all”.100 Character proofs are closely related to the emotional proofs, since both concern an audience’s view of the ‘speaker’. As Aristotle put it:

Proofs from character are produced, whenever the speech is given in such a way as to render the speaker worthy of credence – we more readily and sooner believe reasonable men on all matters in general and absolutely on questions where precision is impossible and two views can be maintained.101

While here Aristotle is again referring mainly to the delivery of the speech or essay, one can safely assume that the speaker’s status, not just style, plays a significant role in determining whether he or she is “worthy of credence”.

Michel Foucault’s rumination on the ‘author function’ of discourse is helpful in explaining this point. According to Foucault, one of the most influential features of a text is the author itself – or at least was before the ‘death of the author’. He explained the author function thus:

the author’s name characterizes a particular manner of existence of discourse. Discourse that possesses an author’s name is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten; neither is it accorded the momentary attention given to

98 Ibid., pp.216, 217 99 Ibid., p.219 100 Ibid., p.75 101 Ibid., p.74

40 ordinary, fleeting words. Rather, its status and its manner of reception are regulated by the culture in which it circulates.102

Hence, a text carrying an author’s name, or at least a recognised author’s name, will be considered differently from a text which is either anonymous or written by someone unrecognised by the broader community. To say that an idea belongs to, say, Karl Marx is to pre-empt to a large degree how that idea will be received. A Marxist would ponder it intently, even if they found it bizarre, while a liberal or conservative would process it much more sceptically, if not dismissively.

Consequently, we can say that in our culture, the name of an author is a variable that accompanies only certain texts to the exclusion of others: a private letter may have a signatory, but it does not have an author; a contract can have an underwriter, but not an author; and, similarly, an anonymous poster attached to a wall may have a writer, but he cannot be an author. In this sense, the function of an author is to characterize the existence, circulation and operation of certain discourses within a society.103

The function attributed to the author here is very similar to that I have tried to attribute to the intellectual. Like the author, the recognised name, the intellectual is a thinker whose discourse “is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten; neither is it accorded the momentary attention given to ordinary, fleeting words.” Rather, because of intellectuals’ image as an independent authority, we tend to accrue to them and their discourse, even if subconsciously, a higher status. In doing so, we generally enable them to become more influential, at least individually, than other types of public commentator in the mass media or broader public sphere. By attributing to them authoritativeness before they open their lips, we are affording to them instant credibility. They achieve what Aristotle called “character proof” – they are “worthy of credence”. We assume they will be correct, or are at least likely to be correct, because of whom they are or what they do. Therefore, when we look upon an esteemed individual, one with a reputation of expertise, and assume what they say will be right based on this reputation; or when we look upon an academic and assume this person knows what they’re talking about because they are an academic; that is when we perceive someone, consciously or not, to be an ‘intellectual’.

102 Michel Foucault, 1977, Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, pp.123-4 103 Ibid.

41

A related point is one that is not always stated but almost always implied: the intellectual is generally considered someone who is recognised for her or his thought. It is someone with a vision of the true and/or the just who communicates this vision as their primary occupation, and who is recognised as doing it. Again, this is not to say the public actually associates the term “intellectual” with this person. It means only that they associate a personal vision with the thinker, and that some regard it as authoritative. To this extent I am open-minded about, but not entirely convinced by, Alan McKee’s inclusion of certain television producers as public intellectuals. I do not believe in this day and age an intellectual communicates only by oratory or pen (or necessarily by word for that matter). Those we consider auteurs in film and, if it is possible, in television we are thinking of in a similar way to how we think of ‘intellectuals’. We attribute to them a social, political and/or cultural vision. Within the cultural industries, auteurs can be intellectuals – but only auteurs. Making meaning is not enough. One’s authoritativeness has to be culturally recognised.

The Public Intellectual The final major task remaining in this chapter is to define a particular type of intellectual: the public intellectual. This form of intellectual is the subject of this dissertation.

Some, like Russell Jacoby, use the term ‘public intellectual’ interchangeably with the ‘intellectual’.104 This reflects the idea that ‘the intellectual’ is someone who intervenes in social and political affairs. For Jacoby, all intellectuals are public intellectuals. However, because of how the intellectual has been defined here, not all intellectuals are, nor can they be, public intellectuals. The public intellectual is therefore a specific type of intellectual in society.

So what is the public intellectual? Though there are a few traits I feel should be specific to the public intellectual, the essential difference is this thinker’s publicness. Hence, the public intellectual is an intellectual who regularly contributes to public life. But just how regular is regular? Is submitting essays to Quadrant or Meanjin a

104 Kelly, op. cit., p.87

42 few times a year functioning as a public intellectual? What about if one also, for instance, lectures at university? What if one gives the occasional interview on top of that?

Let us say that the public intellectual is a permanent or regularly recurring part of public life (i.e. in the mass media). While one can be an intellectual by being a quality thinker with an assumed independence, to speak of a public intellectual should probably be to speak of someone who also speaks on matters of public concern and does so regularly in the media. This is to me what public signifies: someone who is a permanent or semi-permanent fixture in the public sphere.

In Speaking Their Minds: Intellectuals and the Public Culture in Australia (1998), Robert Dessaix provided a good definition of the public intellectual that, as he says, “few will vehemently argue against”.105 Dessaix’s definition is an elaboration of American theorist Stanley Fish’s view. As mentioned earlier, Fish said: “[a] public intellectual is someone who takes as his or her subject matters of public concern, and has the public’s attention (Dessaix’s italics).”106

A key advantage of the Fish definition is its relativity. A public intellectual is not defined by the absolute strength of his or her ideas (subjectively judged by others), but by his/her place and role in a social system. Hence, it matters not how strong we perceive a theorist’s ideas to be, it matters only that they act in some way as social experts on what is effectively the ‘true’ and the ‘just’. They are social critics the public listens to.

Dessaix modifies Fish’s simple definition slightly, expanding it for greater explanation and adapting it to the Australian situation.

[A] public intellectual is an independent thinker and performer who, working from some core area of expertise, takes as his or her subject issues related to the public good (and particularly issues of social justice) and, by the grace of the media and an outstanding ability to communicate with many publics

105 Dessaix, op. cit., p.12 106 Stanley Fish cited in Dessaix, op. cit., p.12 (Dessaix’s italics)

43 (even society as a whole), has the attention of a considerable segment of educated Australia.107

Hence, the Dessaix-Fish definition encapsulates the central features of the conception of the intellectual adopted for this study. It also extends that model to differentiate the public intellectual from other intellectual types.

There are, therefore, two traits not required of the intellectual per se in this more specific category. Public performance has already been explained. The other is social critique. According to Dessaix, “the thinker may be unaware of the social ramifications of his or her thought, whereas the public intellectual will emphasise them.”108 Drawing from Hilary McPhee, he says “the public intellectual’s area of concern” can be summed up “in two words: public policy.”109

The idea that intellectuals engage in social critique has a long history. It was a central characteristic of les intellectuels. According to Zygmunt Bauman, summarised by Sharp, the first intellectuals were:

a motley collection of novelists, poets, artists, journalists, scientists and other public figures who felt it their moral responsibility, and their collective right, to interfere directly with the political process through influencing the minds of the nation and moulding the actions of its political leaders.110

The idea of criticism was also central to Joseph Schumpeter’s view of the intellectuals. Largely because of their eloquence, Schumpeter suggested intellectuals were “people who wield the power of the spoken and written word”, who “liv[e] off criticism”, and whose “whole position depends on criticism that stings.”111 According to Geoffrey Hawthorne, the “modern sense” of ‘the intellectual’ was centred on the role in providing social critique. He says following Emile Durkheim, many maintained that “to be an intellectual [is] to criticise, to criticise not merely the

107 Dessaix, op. cit., p.29 108 Ibid., p.11 109 Ibid. 110 Zygmunt Bauman cited in Geoff Sharp, “The Idea of the Intellectual and After” in Simon Cooper, John Hinkson and Geoff Sharp, 2002, Scholars and Entrepreneurs: The Universities in Crisis, North Carlton: Arena Publications Association, p.270 111 Joseph Schumpeter, 1976, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, pp.147, 151

44 ways in which various groups [seek] to achieve their ends but also, and much more importantly, to criticise the ends themselves.”112

Integral to the public intellectual, then, is the role of not just disseminating culturally validated ideas, but to express opinions on ‘matters of public concern’. It is someone who, in Said’s words, “speak[s] the truth to power”.113 It is someone who intervenes in order to make political statements; it is a social critic. The intellectual can be an expert, someone who is adept at explaining or analysing things, but the public intellectual proffers opinions.

There is, however, one element of Dessaix’s definition which conflicts with this dissertation’s preferred model. Dessaix’s specification that the public intellectual’s command the attention of educated Australia hints at a creeping elitism at odds with the relativist view. Accordingly, this study shall accept Dessaix’s conceptualisation of the category, with the exception of his provision that educated Australians are the public intellectual’s audience. Therefore, the public intellectual is defined here as independent, a socially recognised expert, someone who engages in discussions of the public good, and who has the attention of the general public (not just the educated). As far as this dissertation is concerned, then, the public intellectual consists of four essential and distinctive features: (1) independence, (2) expertise, (3) social critique, and (4) public performance.

The Role of Intellectuals in Australian Society Finally, let us consider the role intellectuals, as defined here, play in Australian life. Subsequent chapters will address this question in more depth, but let me introduce it here.

In The Lucky Country (1964), Donald Horne claimed “in Australia, as a strong and publicly influential type of person, ‘intellectuals’ do not exist.”114 Two decades later, in 1984, Barry Humphries quipped that “Australia has no intelligentsia

112 Geoffrey Hawthorne, 1987, Enlightenment and Despair: A History of Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.195 113 Edward Said cited in Dessaix, op. cit., p.314 114 Donald Horne, 1964, The Lucky Country, Sydney: Angus and Robertson Publishers, p.209

45 whatsoever.”115 This is a fairly common view of the state of Australian intellectual life, historically and perhaps still to do this day. Denigrations of Australian public debate and the nation’s climate of ideas are commonly heard from esteemed Australian writers, such as Horne, Humphries, Patrick White, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes.

Horne said the absence of real ‘intellectuals’ made Australia “one of the oddest countries in the world” since “people who might be described as intellectuals are assuming enormous importance almost everywhere in the world except in Australia.”116 However, he believed “it seems unlikely that such a situation will last in Australia” and that “in fact it is now changing.”117 “[T]here is more development of organized intellectual life in Australia now than at any other period in its history.”118

There is a developing middle class of the intellect and of taste, although it still lacks leaders, self-confidence, and established forms of communication and influence.119

Horne wrote The Lucky Country in 1964. Speaking in the late 1990s he said a more prominent intellectual class had emerged over the decades and public intellectual culture in general had become “more diffuse”.120

One cannot help but notice, however, that in Australia today, anti-intellectualism is thriving under the populist conservatism of the Howard Liberal government. As has been the case in other western democracies, Howard and the Liberals have benefited from, and worked to inflame, widespread resentment and anger towards the so-called ‘elites’ within the universities, the ABC, and other sectors where members of the ‘chattering classes’ might be found. Like the “Dreyfusards”, the ‘elites’ are educated dissenters and have been depicted by the populist Right as treasonous and out of touch.

115 Barry Humphries cited Dessaix, op. cit. (on the back cover) 116 Horne, op. cit., p.209 117 Ibid. 118 Ibid., p.215 119 Ibid., p.204 120 Horne cited in Dessaix, op. cit., p.215

46 As many have observed, Australia actually has a strong “anti-intellectual” tradition. This could account for the dearth of a public intellectual life alleged by thinkers like Horne and Humphries. According to Dessaix, while to the French “there’s nothing suspicious about intellectuals at all as a category”, in Australia the term tends to convey negative connotations.121 He attributes this, as many others have, to “Australia’s settler history [which] favoured action over thought and imagination”, but says Australians are not generally uninterested in “ideas”; they are just suspicious of ‘intellectuals’.122 Whatever the cause, one of its consequences, as Dessaix points out, is that few Australian thinkers are comfortable with the label for themselves and many strenuously refuse it.

But then, Horne and others define the category more narrowly also. If we define the category to mean those thinkers who stand out as authoritative and independent, regardless of political orientation or objective ‘quality of thought’, then intellectuals are necessarily influential. They are not as influential as Mannheim suggested. Nor are they as influential as Head and Louw suggested. Their broad approach seemed to attempt to capture nearly all those who disseminate ideas in society. And since I chose not to broaden the category to the extent they had, we should think of intellectuals as having become less influential than in previous eras. There are many more commentators who have arisen and now disseminate ideas and meaning throughout society. The intellectuals’ share of the public sphere has diminished. And this trend may continue. Other types of discursive expression, including entertainment and propaganda, disseminated by other, ‘non-intellectual’ types of communicators have taken up a larger and larger share of the public sphere, and with it they have assumed greater levels of cultural influence. It is unrealistic, therefore, to speak of intellectuals as ‘monopolising’ public opinion without significantly broadening the category. As individuals ‘intellectuals’ can be considered generally more influential than ‘non-intellectual’ communicators, but collectively this may not be the case.

The declining influence of intellectuals was implied in Jurgen Habermas’ analysis of the structural transformation of the public sphere. This will be discussed in greater

121 Dessaix, op. cit., pp.5-6 122 Ibid., pp.5-7

47 detail in Chapter Four. Habermas believed the public sphere – the sphere of public debate in society – to have once been dominated by “rational-critical” speakers and writers. In short, the early public sphere was dominated by ‘intellectuals’. He suggested, however, that the intellectuals became less prominent with the emergence of mass communications. Other types of communications professional, including propagandists, entered the public sphere. Mass communications also diminished the level of “rational-critical debate” as the level of entertainment content increased. The public sphere was both depoliticised and transformed into an avenue through which social, political and commercial organisations aimed to manufacture public consent.

The notion that intellectuals have declined is generally shared by anyone who conceives the category both narrowly and according to the performance of a social role. As Elizabeth A. Kelly has observed, “the proposition that intellectuals no longer exist has become central to arguments on both [the Right and Left of the political spectrum].”123 It is a “simple fact”, she says, “that intellectuals have less clout today than in the past because of mass culture.”124 Endorsing the Habermasian view, she summarises the situation thus:

In the eighteenth century, public intellectuals could find their credibility in an emerging print media and the discursive communities available in coffee- house, salon, or table-talk environments. But today, the appropriation of these opportunities for free expression by the culture industries of late capitalism has necessitated a shift in the locus of intellectual credibility and intellectual identity.125

Conclusion In this chapter I have argued in favour of conceiving ‘the intellectual’ not according to absolute intellectual superiority, but as someone who performs a certain social role in disseminating ideas and knowledge. As argued, such an approach is valuable because it opens the potential for insights into the formation of public ideas and knowledge. This is how Foucault used it. He viewed intellectuals as integral parts of a society’s ‘regime of truth’. It is also how Gramsci used the category. He looked at how particular types of social role distributed ideas in society and thereby shaped

123 Kelly, op. cit., p.7 124 Ibid., p.84 125 Ibid., p.88

48 social knowledge. Mannheim, too, saw in the intellectuals a caste which shaped the worldviews of the other strata. Intellectuals, therefore, have long been considered worthy of analysis because they were considered to be influential social actors. They were a type of elite.

However, unlike various others to have addressed this question, such as Head, Frow and Louw (and Gramsci before them), I have included a number of key qualifiers within the category. The intellectual still performs a fundamental role in shaping ideas, but can be differentiated from other ‘meaning makers’ by his or her relative autonomy and high degree of culturally recognised expertise. They may not these days be as powerful as Mannheim claimed the ‘intelligentsia’ were. And the category may not be broad enough to encompass all those responsible for disseminating meaning in an influential way. But it is advantageous to have a category which recognises the greater credibility and esteem afforded to certain commentators and thinkers, and makes ‘intellectual’ refer to more than just the ‘disseminator of ideas’ in society.

I have chosen the term ‘intellectual’ to single out such thinkers despite its categorical sloppiness, complexities and confusions, because the role they play corresponds roughly to some of the ways in which ‘the intellectual’ has been understood before.

Within this chapter I also defined a specific type of intellectual: the public intellectual. This type was distinguishable by the performance of a regular public role as a social critic. Subsequent chapters will analyse three types of public intellectual in Australia: journalists, academics and ‘think tank pundits’. As we shall see, each has a different claim to intellectuality. The thesis will also examine three exemplars of each category. Among other things, this will give some insight into how each thinker has performed the role of public intellectual over the years. For this reason it will discuss their social and political thought and how they have expressed it during various key public debates over the years.

Finally, it was noted in this chapter that in Australia there is an interesting scenario in which the ‘traditional’ intellectuals, like academics, are often not trusted authorities, at least not on social and political matters. However, though Australians are often

49 ‘pragmatic’ and many are suspicious or contemptuous of academics, we should not conclude, as Horne did in the 1960s, that Australia has few ‘intellectuals’ – at least not if we define the category relatively to mean those culturally validated as authoritative experts. Australia, like all societies, has its share of these. The difference is that they are not the same type of thinker as would be found in, say, Europe. Here ‘intellectuals’ – that is, ‘free floating’ experts – often bolster their own credibility by undermining that of academics and other traditional intellectuals. However, different as they may be, these thinkers embody the essential qualities of the public intellectual as defined in this thesis. They are perceived to be independent, believed to be experts, and they publicly engage with social issues.

50 Chapter Three: Newspapers and Australian Public Intellectual Life

Introduction In Speaking Their Minds (1998), Robert Dessaix complained that in spite of new media technologies like the Internet, there remained a distinct “lack of forums” in which public intellectuals could “secure the public’s attention”. He suggested further that the “serious national forums for intellectual debate” in Australia are “shrinking”. “In the end”, he said, “it is still essentially in the newspapers and journals and on radio and television that public intellectuals perform and influence their audiences.” More specifically, “the ABC and the major dailies” are “where you must still perform if you are to be recognised as a public intellectual in Australia.”126 Similarly, Maslen and Slattery, who tend to use ‘academic’ and ‘intellectual’ interchangeably, have called the quality press “the one forum available for academics to talk to the wider society.”127 Even one of the contemporary newspapers’ strongest critics, postmodernist McKenzie Wark, has argued that newspapers are still “powerful” instruments, in which “public intellectual life struggles on fitfully.”128

This chapter will examine the newspapers as a forum for public intellectual discussion in Australia. Through a literature review of some key texts on Australian public debate from the past five to ten years, the chapter will also profile Australia’s caste of public intellectuals. The chapter will conclude with detailed overviews of a number of key debates that have been played out in the Australian press over the past two to three decades, beginning with the Cold War and ending with American invasion of Iraq. These issues will be explored further in subsequent chapters on the thesis’ three selected political commentators.

A. Newspapers and Public Intellectual Culture Largely because of their opinion pages, newspapers are an important site for public debate in Australia. Other spaces in which intellectual, sometimes public intellectual debates occur include books, academic conferences, non-academic conferences (such

126 Robert Dessaix, 1998, Speaking Their Minds, Sydney: ABC Books, p.26 127 Geoffrey Maslen and Luke Slattery, 1994, Why Our Universities are Failing: Crisis in the Clever Country, Melbourne: Wilkinson Books, p.66 128 McKenzie Wark, “On Public Intellectuals: Ruminations from Back Paddock”, http://www.dmc.mq.edu.au/mwark/warchive/Other/public-intellectuals.html (accessed April 15, 2004).

51 as those sponsored by think tanks), literary festivals, and scholarly journals or periodicals. The broadcast media are also important. On television, the public broadcasters, especially the ABC, provide most public affairs debate. Programs like the ABC’s 7.30 Report, Lateline and Sunday’s Insiders provide a forum for public intellectuals and other pundits to debate the topics of the day. Radio seems to contain more public affairs debate than television, with the ABC again the leader. Stations like Radio National are a prime example. Indeed, one of the major publications I have drawn upon in this thesis, Robert Dessaix’s Speaking their Minds (1998), was compiled from interviews conducted with Australian public intellectuals and broadcast on Radio National.

While not negating the impact and importance of other forums, this study focuses strictly on the press. As the following section attempts to demonstrate, though the press has experienced substantial circulation decline, it remains an important part of Australian political and even intellectual life. This is a contentious assertion. For some commentators, it is received wisdom that Australia’s papers have been disappointingly ineffective in stimulating and facilitating genuine ‘intellectual’ discussion Down Under. Perhaps the best expression of this view is Donald Horne’s critique of the Australian press, and generally of the nation’s intellectual situation, in his much lauded work, The Lucky Country.

In The Lucky Country (1964), Horne suggested that intellectual debate was sorely absent from Australian newspapers. The press, he said, both reflected and reinforced the sleepy, incurious nature of Australian culture. It became “a symbol to intellectuals of the whole Australian failure to develop [a] strong intellectual life.”129

The casting up of new concepts of how things are going is very rare; even regular background information and interpretation is hard to come by; there are few possibilities for sustained and rigorous debate on new problems; few journalists can take the time to involve themselves in a field to the point at which they can give an interpretative, related account of it, to follow a story to the point of significance.130

129 Donald Horne, 1964, The Lucky Country, Sydney: Angus and Robertson Publishers, p.208 130 Ibid., p.205

52 Long-serving senior public servant James Cumes articulated a similar complaint in his tirade against Australian politicians and bureaucrats, A Bunch of Amateurs (1988). He claimed Australian journalists were generally mediocre, with exceptions, and had “seldom risen to the heights of the best journalists in the best newspapers in other English-speaking countries.”131 More recently, in 1994, Maslen and Slattery suggested that though the quality press was “the one forum available for academics to talk to the wider society”132, “there is little abiding interest in intellectual movements, debates and issues on the part of the mainstream press.”133

However, though Horne complained that newspapers added little to Australian intellectual life, he also suggested they were often asked, particularly by academics and other ‘intellectuals’, to do too much. Newspapers, he said, “cannot be expected to provide a capsule of intellectual life, taken once a day, like a pill before breakfast.”134

The Lucky Country was, of course, written in the mid-1960s. How sure, then, can we be that his analysis, if accurate then, is still accurate now? Perhaps the press has improved in the four decades since. Indeed, Horne’s Lucky Country analysis did show signs of optimism. He noted that Rupert Murdoch had just launched The Australian, an attempt at a quality paper, and that the Canberra Times, another ‘quality’ daily, had also just been released. 135 Moreover, he proposed that while the established newspapers appeared stagnant, the emergence of new publications, such as the Observer and Nation, were injecting ideas and debate into Australian life. Furthermore, he seemed to infer that the press overall showed signs of improvement as a new generation of journalists and intellectuals, emerging from the newer niche publications, migrated into the older, established papers.

Reflecting on the transformation of the press in the 1960s, The Australian columnist and ABC broadcaster Phillip Adams said the period was “a good time to become a columnist because newspapers were being converted into views-papers, with straight,

131 J.W.C. Cumes, 1988, A Bunch of Amateurs, Melbourne: Sun Books, p.168 132 Maslen and Slattery, op. cit., p.66 133 Ibid., p.67 134 Horne, op. cit., p.206 135 Ibid., p.209

53 anonymous journalism being supplemented by by-lined interpretation, by punditry and ‘comment’.”136

Media and culture scholar Mark Davis is one theorist who believes the press has in fact elevated its role in public conversations in more recent years. He attributes this to the papers’ deliberate attempt, in response to declining circulation, to lift their prestige and cultural importance. “Newspapers”, he says “have been involved in their own competition with the academy for cultural authority”, in an attempt to “appeal to a middle-class, middle-aged audience.”137 To put it another way, the papers have attempted to appeal to what in America is called ‘political class’. In a moment we will examine one of the inherent features of the newspaper that makes it more amenable to a more politically engaged audience than either television or radio. It is largely because of newspapers’ appeal to the ‘political class’, or a more educated, politically engaged and politically active audience, that Davis contends they are “still important to governments” and enjoy “an influence on ‘public opinion’ disproportionate to [their] numbers of readers.”138

A significant part of the press’ attempt to become more central to Australian political and intellectual life is its role in facilitating public debates. Later in the chapter we shall see that Australia’s newspapers seem to have played a leading role in instigating major political and cultural discussions. Some suggest this is a deliberate strategy designed to combat declining circulation and therefore profitability. The economic reasons for the opinion column are discussed next chapter when political columnists and the opinion column are examined in greater depth. Let us now turn to a consideration of the profile of those who conduct the nation’s major political and cultural debates: Australia’s class of public intellectuals.

B. Australian Public Intellectuals Last chapter offered a comprehensive discussion of intellectuals, including public intellectuals, as an abstract role-category. It did not investigate in much detail the actual nature of Australian intellectuals, or of public intellectual life in Australia. The

136 Phillip Adams, 1994, Classic Columns, Sydney: ABC Books, p.v 137 Mark Davis, 1999, gangland, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp.172-3 138 Ibid., pp.265-6

54 following section offers a more precise profile. It draws particularly from the commentaries, or complaints, of postmodern cultural theorists, particularly McKenzie Wark and Mark Davis. Occasionally the commentaries of others, such as historian Stuart McIntyre, inform the discussion, but it is Wark and Davis’ work in The Virtual Republic (1997) and gangland (1997) respectively which inform most of the discussion. There are two reasons for this. The first is that much of what they say about the demographic makeup of Australia’s caste of public intellectuals seems essentially correct. The second is simply that they are among the few scholars that, to my knowledge, have looked closely at Australia’s (opinion) columnists and public intellectuals from this angle. Their motive for doing so is rather obvious, and has often been highlighted by their critics. They address this question because they feel that they, or others like them, have been excluded from the public conversation by this caste of commentators, whom they tend to characterise as mainly Angry White Males.

‘Tired Old Farts’ According to Davis, Wark and others, Australian public intellectual life has been dominated for decades by what is commonly labelled the ‘baby boomer’ generation. As Wark has claimed: “When you look at who’s writing columns in Australian newspapers today, you find the same names as in the newspapers of twenty years ago.”139 Elsewhere he endorsed fellow prominent postmodern columnist, Catharine Lumby, likening Australia’s public intellectual life to a pasture.

[I]t was Catharine Lumby who came up with what turned out to be an apposite image for Australian public intellectual life. Its like being put out to pasture, she said. The gates to the lush paddock of public life are zealously guarded, but once you’re in, you can ruminate aimlessly, for life. She wasn’t being resentful. Her stuff gets space in the Sydney Morning Herald and an airing on 2BL. But like me, I suspect she has taken a look around the paddock, noted at all of the fat old guys in ill fitting suits, and wondered where the hell everybody else is.140

Along these lines, in gangland, Davis lamented that, while the baby boomers were able to make an impact in Australian political and cultural life from a reasonably

139 McKenzie Wark cited in Dessaix, op. cit., p.27 140 Wark, “On Public Intellectuals: Ruminations from Back Paddock”, op. cit.

55 young age, the next generation (typically called ‘Generation X’) has been unable to join the conversation. The former have been hogging the media spotlight, denying younger people a voice. Basically, the baby boomers, like their parents before them, are concerned with the state of the nation’s young, their inevitable successors. Davis and Wark suggest that while there are several divisions between the current caste of public intellectuals, all seem to share a common mistrust of, and resistance to, new ideas, trends and movements. For this reason they have ganged up, intentionally or not, to rubbish young people, their culture and their ideas through a series of ‘moral panics’. As Davis and Wark point out, the 1970s generation reserved its greatest hostility for the ‘trendy leftist’ notions of ‘political correctness’ and postmodernism. As Wark expressed it:

By the mid-1990s, [postmodernism] had become a favourite bogey of the tired old ‘new left’ and the wearisome old ‘new right’, who erased their differences and became a culture of reaction precisely in their wilful refusal to understand what the new moment entailed.141

He, like Davis, argued that the baby boomers’ shared scepticism or even hostility to ‘postmodernism’ is in fact born of that generation’s fear of their own demise. They fear the day when their own beliefs and certainties no longer prevail; the day they are relegated to the scrapheap of history.

Davis’ thesis in particular held that the older generation fears itself being swept aside and resists this trend by vilifying the ‘Gen X-ers’. He forcefully argues, however, that these fears are largely unfounded – at least at the present moment. The young are virtually nowhere to be seen in public life – except when attacked in the media. The baby boomers monopolise the power centres in both business and the ‘intelligentsia’, along with the quality press and serious radio and television programs. In short, for the postmodernist Generation X-ers, public intellectual life in Australia is dominated by the ‘old’.

Davis’ ‘new generationalism’ critique in particular reads in some ways like a conspiracy theory of Australian public intellectual life. The old collude to oppose the young. They publish in each others’ journals and newspapers, they cite each other as

141 McKenzie Wark, 1997, The Virtual Republic, St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, p.93

56 authorities, and they generally proffer a remarkably uniform (anti-youth) perspective.142 But as he points out, rather than expounding some kind of conspiracy theory, he is merely suggesting that a shared ideology, liberal humanism, is uniting erstwhile ideological opponents against a common threat – postmodernism.

For all their differences, what [the cultural establishment]...share is some kind of specific debt (but not necessarily the same debt) to particular kinds of postwar liberalism. The kind of debts that accrue from having been formed by the particular ideas that dominated university arts faculties in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s…The kind of debts that often lead to a suspicion of the usefulness of the new kinds of knowledges that have circulated during the past two decades in universities and elsewhere.143

There is no club, nor are there clandestine ‘meetings-behind-closed-doors’. The 1970s generation sees in the young a rising movement against their common values. Their generation’s concepts of truth, taste and ‘good’ art are threatened by the younger generation’s interpretations of the same. Understandably, the baby boomers want to preserve all they believe to be good, beautiful and true. Davis modifies esteemed art critic Robert Hughes’ ‘Culture of Complaint’ thesis, claiming older ‘Leavisites’ (like Hughes himself) are the ones guilty of the long cultural whinge – against the young.

Old Cold Warriors Wark and Davis argue further that many of the past decade’s cultural warriors are former Cold Warriors who have reinvented themselves to remain relevant in the 1990s. They believe prominent Cold Warriors like Robert Manne and Gerard Henderson have tried to prolong their stay on the main stage of Australian cultural life by harping on about those cultural and historical issues on which they still have something to say. Davis says the ‘old Cold Warriors’ “nearly found themselves out of a job with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but swapped the Red Menace for the ‘PC’ Menace with barely a missed rhetorical beat and hardly a day’s retraining.”144 Similarly, according to Wark:

142 Davis, op. cit., p.285 143 Ibid., p.281 144 Ibid., p.65

57 Needing some polar axis to cling to, in needing to believe someone is still listening, old cold warriors crank up the old drill of the ‘present danger’. Only the Reds aren’t lining the other side any more...[W]ithout any reds with whom to indulge this fantasy any further, the cold warriors paddle about after fresh baddies – ‘political correctness’, ‘postmodern scepticism’, ‘sentimental multiculturalism’ – to get the old thrill. Otherwise they might have to face the possibility that the post cold war world just does not need cold war warriors.145

According to Wark and Davis, the Demidenko Affair was a key moment in Australia’s new ‘cultural wars’ and a prime example of old Cold Warriors trying to remain important. As Wark suggests, “the book’s critics from the right such as Gerard Henderson and Robert Manne got to parade their historical learning.”146

The Right-wing Ascendency The prominence of ‘old Cold Warriors’ in Australia’s current caste of public intellectuals is symptomatic of a broader dominance of right-wingers in the nation’s public forums. In the past two decades Australia has experienced a right-wing ascendency. This is reflected in the rise of the New Right, or the neoconservatives, in economic matters, and in conservative crusades described sometimes as the History Wars or Culture Wars. It is also reflected in the Howard Government’s reign and especially by the fact that Howard’s Liberals have been able to occupy the political middle-ground in spite of being considerably to the right of the previous Keating Labor administration – which itself was by no means left-wing.

In an article attacking the “greedy right” in The Age in 2003, Manne observed that Australia has “the most conservative government in Australia for over 40 years”, and noted that right-wing views “are disseminated daily in the popular press, on talkback radio and on commercial television.”147 As we shall see in Chapter Eight’s discussion of Manne’s own social and political thought, he has been one of the most prominent and effective expositors and critics of Australia’s rightward drift.

145 Wark, The Virtual Republic, op. cit., pp.209-10 146 Ibid., p.123 147 Robert Manne, “The greedy right”, The Age, 13 June 2003, http://home.iprimus.com.au/ltuffin/manne.html (Accessed 9 July 2004)

58 In his influential study, History Wars (2003), Stuart McIntyre argued the Howard Government has both capitalised on and extended the ascendancy of right-wing sentiments by stacking the public service with like-minded conservatives. McIntyre claimed that although all governments make politically-motivated public service appointments, the Howard Government employed this strategy to an unprecedented degree. He said Howard “purged the nation’s institutions of those who dissented from the new [right wing] orthodoxies”, replacing them with ideological warriors of the Right.148 Under Howard, conservatives were appointed to the top jobs at “the ABC, the National Museum and other public agencies that present history to the public.”149

Another symptom and contributor of this right-wing drift has been the rise and rise of think tanks in Australia. As Davis commented in gangland, the “renaissance in right- wing politics” occurred “with the emergence of privately funded policy think- tanks.”150 This trend will be discussed in depth in Chapter Nine.

The Australian right-wing ascendency was preceded and inspired by the rise of neoconservatism in the United States. As Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery has noted, neoconservatives now hold “key positions in the administration of US President George Bush, as well as in the web of right-wing and establishment think tanks that play an important role in formulating US policy and the views of the ed-op pages of influential US newspapers.”151 The same could be said of John Howard’s Australia. As we shall see shortly, much of what Australian conservatives have said in our cultural debates has been imported, almost unaltered, from America.

The general right-wing ascendancy in Australia is reflected in the Right’s dominance of public debate in the mainstream media. As Australian academic John Docker has observed:

148 Stuart McIntyre and Anna Clark, 2003, The History Wars, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, p.4 149 Ibid., p.5 150 Davis, op. cit., p.65 151 Uri Avnery, “United States: Architects of empire”, Green Left Weekly, April 23, 2003

59 Public opinion in the Australian media is dominated not by the intellectual left, who are nowhere to be seen, but by spokesmen for the right...that is, by commentators like Robert Manne, Gerard Henderson, and the current editor of Quadrant Paddy McGuinness.152

This is perhaps particularly the case in the opinion columns of the mainstream press. In gangland, Davis remarked:

As Phillip Adams, to his credit, has pointed out, ‘overwhelmingly, Australia’s newspaper columnists are pro-conservative’ by contrast with the mid-1970s, when he recalls ‘talking to the late Graham Perkin, then editor of the Age, about the urgent need to recruit at least one conservative columnist.”153

Similarly, Gerard Henderson has claimed that in previous times there was a distinct absence of conservative intellectuals in Australia. In Menzies’ Child (1994) he suggested that, apparently despite magazines like Quadrant and quite healthy media exposure in the 1980s and particularly the 1990s, conservative intellectuals were nowhere to be seen in Australia.

Where are the conservative writers and intellectuals [in Australia]? In Britain they exist – and can be found around the Spectator, Daily Telegraph and, until its passing, the offices of Encounter magazine. Likewise in the United States. The voice of the conservative intellectual appears on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, in Commentary and National Review. Irrespective of Australia’s smaller population, there have been no equivalent groupings in this country – in spite of the fact that, for the most part, political conservatives have held office in the national parliament.154

Elsewhere, however, Henderson has noted that, in the past decade at least, “the non- left have never had a better run in the mainstream Australian media.”155

Henderson’s under-representation claim is typical of Australian conservatives. As Davis has noted, conservatives “like to portray themselves as under siege, as ‘dissenters’ swimming bravely against the tyrannical imposts of marauding

152 John Docker, “John Docker launches The Devil and James McAuley”, Australian Humanities Review, www.llib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-Juley-1999/docker.htm (Accessed April 10, 2004) 153 Davis, op. cit., p.64 154 Gerard Henderson, 1994, Menzies’ Child, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.322 155 Gerard Henderson cited Davis, op. cit., p.64

60 feminists, multiculturalists and ‘organised opinion’, as if their networks and hierarchies of patronage are neither organised nor entrenched.”156

An interesting account of the rightward drift in the Australian media and culture is Wark’s observation that:

In the late 1960s and early 1970s it seemed a truism that the left had the moral upper hand in debates on social issues. A self-fashioned generation of poets, novelists, playwrights, academics, film-makers and journalists spoke to an equally self-fashioned new audience about new political causes – class conflict, feminism, race relations, Vietnam. Two decades later the right came into the ascendency, and suddenly books, plays and newspaper columns were dominated by feminist-baiters, anti-multiculturalism campaigners and complainers about academic theorists and leftie ‘political correctness’. Thing is, they were much the same people.157

According to Wark, then, is not that a new cohort of right-wingers stormed onto the public scene and supplanted the old left-liberal caste of public intellectuals. Rather, the old caste became more conservative. Davis makes the same assertion, commenting that many within the ‘cultural establishment’ are “disenchanted members of the 1970s left who use their credentials as proof of the virtues of recanting, even as they swamp other progressive commentary.”158

Angry White Males In gangland, Davis observed that few critics among Australia’s “cultural establishment” or “literati” come from non-Anglo backgrounds. The closest Australia has to an ethnically diverse caste of public thinkers appears to be the inclusion of several Jewish-Australians, such as Robert Manne and Andrew Reimer. Some of Manne’s comments regarding the Iraq War seem to recognise this, as he commonly described the war as an “Anglo-American” invasion and the West as “Anglophile” democracies. There are also numerous commentators of Irish descent. Few commentators, however, come from what one would consider a clear ethnic minority background. Even fewer articulate what might be generalised as an ethnic minority perspective.

156 Davis, op. cit., p.34 157 Wark, The Virtual Republic, op. cit., p.32 158 Davis, op. cit., p.65

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A final feature of Australia’s caste of public intellectuals I shall discuss here is the dominance of men – and, for that matter, heterosexual men. This is an observation made by both Davis and Wark. Similarly, when Docker made the aforementioned complaint about the right-wing orientation of Australian media commentary, he also noted that “women appear to be nowhere in sight”.159 Docker made this statement in 1999. Casually perusing the newspapers, one feels he may have overstated the point. Or perhaps the situation has changed somewhat in the few years since. Prominent women columnists are still less common than men, and they often write lifestyle- oriented columns or discuss strictly ‘women’s issues’ (examples include The Australian’s Emma Tom, The Sydney Morning Herald’s Adele Horin, and The Courier-Mail’s Frances Whiting and Jane Fynes-Clinton). But there are also several prominent female political commentators. Columnists such as Margo Kingston, Pamela Bone, Miranda Devine and Janet Albrechtsen have managed to either join the ‘club’ or raise their media profile, or both, in this time. Still, women remain a notable minority when it comes to engaging with public policy as columnists.

Summary It is for the above reasons that theorists like Wark and Davis complain of a bland uniformity and almost club-like unity among Australian public intellectuals. Australia’s caste of public thinkers is, as they suggest, dominated by ‘angry white males’ – with a few angry white females too (eg. Albrechtsen and Devine).

Those the postmodernists accuse of “zealously guard[ing]” the gates to Australian public intellectual life typically respond by dismissing them as malcontents and whingers. This common response in well encapsulated in the following passage by Ffion Murphy from the Australian Public Intellectuals Network:

Gangland might be interpreted as the classic whinge of the buster generation, who are often confused as late boomers or early x-ers. Busters fill-out the largest but most frequently overlooked demographic cohort, representing those born in the immediate wake of the boomers but before generation x. Around the time of Gangland’s publication, ‘younger’ journalists like

159 John Docker, op. cit.

62 McKenzie Wark, Emma Tom, Gideon Haigh, John Harms and Fiona Capp were beginning to make their mark in the broadsheets.160

Such responses are common, but they generally fail to amount to a convincing refutation of the ‘buster generation’s’ claims. Listing a handful of columnists like Wark, Lumby, Tom and others may demonstrate that the situation is not as dire as the buster generation tends to imply, but falls short of negating the notion that there are similarities in age, gender and ethnicity, and a general hostility to ‘political correctness’ and postmodernism, within Australia’s caste of public intellectuals. There are of course commentators who break the mould – like Wark and Lumby – but overall the Angry White Males portrait remains fairly accurate. It is notable that Manne, one of those most commonly criticised by the postmodernists, has expressed sympathy with Davis’ lament. He, like others, however, attributes the predominance of baby boomers and Leavisite liberals to the comparative weakness of postmodernism.

It is because Australia’s public intellectuals are demographically similar that the three individuals selected as case studies for this thesis, Paul Kelly, Robert Manne and Gerard Henderson, have a variety of similarities. They are roughly the same age, they are white, though not all Anglo (Manne is Jewish), they are male, and, in most ways, they are all conservative – though not necessarily right-wing. As stated in the introduction, the main reason I chose these three individuals is that they exemplify one of the three types of political columnist I am discussing in the thesis. The choice was grounded in my assessment that each thinker is a, if not the, most prominent exemplar of their category. It is by coincidence that they also correspond to what Wark, Davis and others identify to be the archetypical demographic for Australian public intellectuals.

C. Public Intellectual Debates: Cold War to Iraq War The current generation of public intellectuals, the baby boomers, began their intellectual development in earnest between three and four decades ago. Most went through university in the 1960s and 1970s. The following section provides an

160 Ffion Murphy, “Public Intellectuals: Writing Australia”, http://www.api-network.com/cgi- bin/page?home/public_intellectuals (Accessed 3 September 2004)

63 overview, albeit a selective one, of public intellectual life in Australia from this time. The issues covered here will be explored in more detail in the three chapters discussing the social and political thought of Kelly, Manne and Henderson. They are the Cold War, the economic debate of the 1980s and early 1990s, the Culture and History Wars of the 1990s, the asylum seekers controversy of the early 2000s, and the 2003-2004 Iraq War. I have elected to discuss the debates over the economy and the history and culture wars in more detail than the others here, and in subsequent chapters, largely because they have been more enduring and have perhaps been the two great public intellectual debates over the past two decades.

1. The Cold War I am discussing the Cold War here not because it was one of the defining political issues of the past twenty years, but because, as Wark and Davis comment, several of Australia’s public intellectuals come from a background in Cold War activism. This was the case for two of the three columnists discussed in this thesis –Manne and Henderson. As already established, Wark and Davis believe old Cold Warriors like them have retained their public prominence after the Cold War by reinventing themselves in the 1990s as culture and history warriors.

The Cold War was of course a major international issue in the past two decades. It was perhaps the biggest issue of the Twentieth Century. Manne, for instance, has argued “the Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd is probably the single most important political event in our century.”161 The 1980s witnessed some major Cold War developments, perhaps most spectacularly the Tiananmen Square massacre, the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the Russians’ abandonment of communism. However, perhaps reflecting the provincial nature of Australian political culture162, the Cold War was not really considered much of an issue in Australian political life in this time. According to Manne, the ‘Combe Affair’ of 1983, in which ASIO accused a Labor secretary, David Combe, of releasing secrets to the Soviets, was “the last major political struggle of the Australian Cold War”.163 Manne seemed to infer that this event became the last major domestic Cold War issue because, quite

161 Robert Manne, 1994, The Shadow of 1917, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, p.2 162 Robert Manne, 1984, “‘Even Old Stacks Talk’: The Combe Affair and Political Culture”, in Robert Manne, 1994, The Shadow of 1917, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, p.216 163 Manne, The Shadow of 1917, op. cit., p.23

64 simply, the Australian media was largely uninterested in the Cold War. This incuriousness comes, he suggested, from the “the prevailing anti-anticommunist worldview of Australian journalists”.164 He said throughout the Combe Affair the media were critical and contemptuous of ASIO, dismissing it as a bunch of “paranoid and sinister” old Cold Warriors.165 Hence, the Australian press, it seems, was simply not terribly interested in the Cold War by the 1980s. For this reason I will not cover the issue in any more detail here. Chapters Eight and Ten will look at communism, anti-communism and anti-anti-communism in Australia through analyses of the social and political thought of Manne and Henderson.

2. The Economic Debate The dominant issue in Australia in the 1980s was the economy. This is reflected in Paul Kelly’s comprehensive study of the decade, The End of Certainty (1992), which focuses overwhelmingly on the political battle over Australia’s economic direction. As Kelly shows, Australia underwent a major economic revolution in the 1980s, transforming from an insular protectionist model to an internationalised free market economy. From the early-to-mid-1980s, politicians and public officials widely renounced the decades-long Keynesian consensus in favour of a radical free market perspective, which in Australia came to be called ‘economic rationalism’. As Michael Pusey put in his influential book, Economic Rationalism in Canberra (1991), Canberra was “swept by a locust strike of economic rationalism.”166 Ironically it was the Australian Labor Party, the traditional party of the Left, which oversaw this national transformation.

There are a few differing accounts as to how the neoclassical model became the dominant economic paradigm throughout the 1980s and to this day. The two most prominent are the neoliberal and the protectionist views: the two dominant forces in the 1980s debate. Though the origin of the term ‘economic rationalism’ seems a mystery to many of the doctrine’s champions and detractors alike, it seems the free market advocates coined the term to imply the inherent rationality of their approach over the ‘irrationality’ of their protectionist opponents.

164 Manne, “‘Even Old Stacks Talk’: The Combe Affair and Political Culture”, op. cit., p.235 165 Ibid., p.190 166 Michael Pusey, 1991, Economic Rationalism in Canberra, Sydney: Cambridge University Press, p.1

65

According to the ‘economic rationalists’ themselves, economic rationalism grew, as its label suggests, through the rise of rational, reason-based economics. They tend to see ‘economic rationalism’ as economics itself. An influential expression of the economic rationalist ideology is William Coleman and Alf Hagger’s Exasperating Calculators (2001). This work is an endorsement of neoclassical economics, but also a (belated) response to its detractors, particularly from the early 1990s.

In explaining where the expression ‘economic rationalism’ came from, Coleman and Hagger suggest there is no single source. No one individual or publication coined the term, though they list several important mentions of it. Theorists they discuss for using the label include Max Weber, R.H. Tawney, A.S. Watson, Bernie Fraser, and Glen Withers. The common thread tying these expressions together, Coleman and Hagger say, is the connotation that ‘economic rationalism’ refers to scientific analysis, designed to achieve the best economic ends, as opposed to moral analysis for moral ends. What some of these theorists, and Coleman and Hagger, share is the belief that free market capitalism, not government intervention, is the best way to achieve economic wealth. For this reason they view attacks on economic rationalism and neoclassical economics as an attack on economists and the discipline of economics itself.167

It is appropriate that Coleman and Hagger begin their analysis by providing this definition, because it establishes their central thesis. ‘Economic rationalism’, or the neoclassical approach to economics, is real economics, based on rationalism, reason and economic expertise. Protectionism and any other critiques of the free market are heresy and superstition. It is a battle between “professional economists”, portrayed as under siege, against soft-headed novices.168 Indeed, suggesting that “movement against Economic Rationalism” is to long a label to describe the detractors, they propose “Economic Irrationalists” as a more suitable tag.169

167 William Coleman and Alf Hagger, 2001, Exasperating Calculators, Paddington: Macleay Press, pp.7-11 168 Ibid., p.11 169 Ibid., p.21

66 Other key economic rationalists to have inferred this ‘economic rationalism-as- economics-itself’ line include Padraic P. McGuinness170, Paul Kelly and Gerard Henderson. In this thesis Kelly and Henderson represent the champions of economic rationalism. Both have provided influential contributions to the debate; Kelly through his columns and his book The End of Certainty (1992) in particular, and Henderson mainly through a number of important essays and his columns. Henderson endorses the idea economic liberalism is rational economics explicitly and through his uncritical adoption of the ‘dries-wets’ dichotomy (with its obvious connotations of hard-headed realism against emotional sentimentality). Kelly also employs these terms but expresses this view most clearly in his portrayal of the debate as between ‘pragmatic realists’ and ‘sentimental traditionalists’.

Hence, the neoliberal perspective maintains that Australia became ‘economic rationalist’ in the 1980s because economic realities or circumstances made this transition necessary. This view has been summarised ‘TINA’ (There Is No Alternative). Neoliberals see the transition as a pragmatic and common sense response to Australia’s economic situation. Indeed, as we shall see, they also believe Australia should have always been a free market, and that protectionism stifled the Australian economy throughout the first eighty years of Federation. This is reflected in former Institute of Public Affairs executive director John Hyde’s forward to A Defence of Economic Rationalism (1993): “At the turn of the century Australians, by a considerable margin, were the wealthiest people in the world. Since then we have slowly squandered that advantage.” Like other ‘economic rationalists’, he believes protectionism was the problem. 171

One more elaborate way Australian neoliberals have tried to undermine the country’s protectionist tradition is to impugn the motives of leading protectionists. In the discussions of Kelly and Henderson we shall see that one common victim is the father of Australian protectionism, and the nation’s second Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin. Deakin is often portrayed as an opportunistic, even shonky, character, so as

170 Padraic McGuinness cited in Gerard Henderson, 1990, Australian Answers, Random House Australia, p.224 171 John Hyde, “Forward” in Chris James, Chris Jones and Andrew Norton (eds.), 1993, A Defence of Economic Rationalism, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.v

67 to imply that protectionism is a political, opportunistic solution to economic problems, without genuine intellectual or economic merit.

Against the ‘economic rationalist’ analysis, the main alternative explanation of the neoliberal ascendancy is Michael Pusey’s analysis, Economic Rationalism in Canberra (1991). Coleman and Hagger single this out as “the best known” of the discourses against economic rationalism, and claim “the blast of bitterness against Economic Rationalism was detonated by its publication.” It was the most celebrated critique advanced by the ‘protectionist alliance’.

Pusey’s view, based on several hundred interviews with ‘top public servants’, was that the widespread adoption of neoliberalism in Canberra was attributable to the shared background and education of Canberra’s leading politicians and bureaucrats. It was “the power of a particular university economics curriculum” which “has had the strongest hand in casting the nation’s future.”172 Rather than viewing ‘economic rationalism’ as tantamount to economic enlightenment, Pusey suggested it was nothing more than an ideology, though one which had managed to capture the hearts and minds of most of the nation’s leaders. As we shall see in Chapter Eight, Robert Manne shares this view.

A more visible factor in the adoption of ‘economic rationalism’, observed by the doctrine’s champions and opponents alike, was the rise of the New Right. This movement sought to smash the protectionist, later Keynesian, consensus that had dominated economic policy in Australia since Federation. As Paul Kelly has shown, the New Right was comprised of individuals and groups belonging to, or funded by, the corporate sector. In many ways it was led by corporate elites, who lobbied politicians and created and/or funded think tanks to do the same. Hugh Morgan and Ray Evans from Western Mining Corporation are often mentioned in this regard.173 It is curious, then, that Kelly has described the New Right as “a grassroots intellectual movement”.174 Kelly, with Pusey and others, demonstrates that the rise of the New

172 Pusey, op. cit., p.2 173 See for example Wendy Wedge, “Anti-democratic conservative commentators”, http://www.crikey.com.au/columnists/2002/01/21-endyrayevans.print.html (Accessed 27 May 2004). Also see Gerard Henderson’s interview with Morgan in Australian Answers, op. cit. 174 Paul Kelly, 1992, The End of Certainty, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.46

68 Right was helped – if not facilitated – by the proliferation of right-wing think tanks in the 1970s and particularly 1980s.175 (The rise of think tanks will be examined in depth in Chapter Nine.)

The rise of economic rationalism, then, was aided significantly by the emergence of New Right. Whether one believes, like the New Right, that neoliberalism grew from enlightenment or, with the Old Right and the Left, that it resulted from a powerful campaign led by corporate elites and their own ‘organic intellectuals’, the New Right’s central role is indisputable.

Aiding the New Right’s ascendancy was a sympathetic media. There were of course dissenting voices, but generally the discussion was one-sided. As various commentators have observed, the media, particularly the press, generally championed the neoliberal view throughout the decade. For instance, in his past life as a left-wing media critic, current darling of the neoconservative Right, Keith Windschuttle, observed that the Australian press, especially the financial press, had been endorsing free market ideas since the mid-1970s.176 Similarly, Pusey noted that the neoliberal economic journalists “dominate[d] editorial and leader writers” and regularly “comment[ed] on national policy in the leading daily newspapers”.177 He said the media, particularly the press:

have conditioned ‘public opinion’ to evaluate the total performance of governments and politicians in the narrowed terms of laissez-faire macro- economic calculus that, on the negative side shifts the ‘legitimate deficits’ and the blame for whatever the private sector is doing (or not doing) onto government and state; simultaneously, on the positive side, it puts Canberra in a good light only to the extent that it surrenders its sovereignty and authority over business to business, parading always as ‘the market’.178

According to Kelly, of Australia’s newspapers the Australian Financial Review, led by Max Walsh and P.P. McGuinness, was “the most influential organ for free market ideas.”179

175 Ibid., p.46 176 Keith Windschuttle, 1988, The Media: A New Analysis of the Press, Television, Radio and Advertising in Australia, Ringwood: Penguin Books, pp.360-1 177 Pusey, op. cit., p.229 178 Ibid., pp.229-230 179 Kelly, op. cit., p.48

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Some spokespersons of the New Right reject the media bias thesis, however. Indeed, according to Coleman and Hagger, there was a massive media campaign, but it was against economic rationalism. It was a “bushfire” in fact.180 They claim the broadcast media (especially the ABC), scholarly journals, the quality press and even the financial press, facilitated the “rage” over economic rationalism.181 Absent from their argument is any plausible evidence however. The only semblance of evidence they provide is their observation that most of the papers “gave space” to the ‘Economic Irrationalists’.182 Precisely how much space, particularly in comparison to the space given to economic rationalists, is not explained.

Ultimately, all Coleman and Hagger do demonstrate is their own intolerance to dissent. Indeed, in their view the dissenters should have no media space at all. “The world will not benefit from debate on whether the earth is hollow; or whether blood circulates; or whether witches ride on sticks, or Elvis lives.”183 For them discussion on whether economic rationalism is the true course for Australia is just as pointless.

It would seem, then, that despite the spurious protestations of some, economic rationalism received generous media advocacy throughout the 1980s and 1990s. There were of course some dissenting voices, there always are, but the general media consensus was that the free market held the key to Australia’s future prosperity and all-round success. The two sides of the economic rationalism ‘debate’ in the press will be discussed in greater detail through the analyses of Paul Kelly, Gerard Henderson and Robert Manne. Kelly and Henderson represent the ‘economic rationalist’ position; Manne the protectionist.

3. History/Culture Wars The next great debate among Australian public commentators was the Culture/History Wars of the 1990s. As Wark observed, in this decade Australia experienced an unprecedented level of public discussion on cultural and historical questions. “What is striking about the early 1990s”, he says, “is that a series of

180 Coleman and Hagger, op. cit., p.17 181 Ibid., p.303 182 Ibid. 183 Ibid., p.304

70 conflicts popped up through the domains of culture into the news columns.”184 Throughout the decade, the papers’ news and opinion pages contained an unusually high amount of material relating to a variety of cultural issues. As Wark puts it:

New public things circulated for our inspection: political correctness, postmodernism, Generation X. Some old ones came in for a fresh evaluation, particularly feminism, multiculturalism and Aboriginality.185

Wark, among others, referred to these cultural debates as the ‘Culture Wars’: a time of energetic, often intense and even spiteful discussion on cultural and historical themes.

A large part of these ‘culture wars’ was the ‘History Wars’ debate. Perhaps the most comprehensive overview of this is Stuart McIntyre’s History Wars (2003). According to McIntyre, while in the 1980s, particularly leading up to the 1988 Bicentenary, Australia experienced sustained public debate over its history, in the 1990s the debate exploded into the mainstream media with an energy and intensity not before seen.

There were two developments in particular that instigated the Culture and History wars Down Under. One was the attempt by the nation’s political leaders to place cultural issues on the public agenda. According to Kelly, it was former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating who started the trend, with his early-1990s “cultural agenda” of “republicanism, Aboriginal reconciliation and Asia-Pacific integration.”186 However, as McIntyre and Clark document, this strategy was subsequently adopted with greater effect by Keating’s Liberal Party opponent, John Howard, who exploited popular resentment towards Australia’s revisionist ‘elites’ to boost his own popularity. In the end the Liberals proved far more successful than Labor in campaigning on historical and cultural matters.

The other main development that sparked these ‘wars’ was a similar debate played out in the United States a few years prior. As McIntyre illustrated, the Australian

184 Wark, The Virtual Republic, op. cit., p.120 185 Ibid. 186 Paul Kelly, “Labor and Globalisation”, in Robert Manne (ed.), 1999, The Australian Century, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, p.256

71 history wars closely followed the American example. As it was in the USA, it was the conservatives who picked the fight in Australia. McIntyre says the Australian wars began with a backlash by the Right to what they saw as the alteration and falsification of Australian history by lefty university historians. The Right were angered by the gradual disintegration of the traditional, patriotic (‘Three Cheers’) view of Australian history, as historians began emphasising the negative events and themes it omitted. They believed this historical revisionism clearly favoured the Australian Labor Party and its platform of social reforms. The right’s position is summed up in John Howard’s famous remark: “One of the more insidious developments in Australian political life over the past decade or so has been the attempt to rewrite Australian history in the service of a partisan political cause.”187 McIntyre believes this statement was one of the main catalysts of the ‘war’.188

As McIntyre illustrates, the Australian conservatives’ attack on left-leaning or revisionist history was almost entirely derivative of the American neoconservatives.189 He says the Australian ‘History Warriors’ “took the offensive by adopting tactics that had been worked out in the United States.”190 Similarly, Davis and Wark observed that the broader cultural wars, and especially the marked anger towards ‘political correctness’ and postmodernism, were also, like so many aspects of our culture, imported from the USA.191

Another factor which led to the history and culture wars was the motives of the combatants themselves. Many of the cultural warriors were (and still are) affiliated with right-wing think tanks and thus, as we shall see in Chapter Nine, the energetic campaigning of conservative intellectuals may also stem from think tanks’ objective of making a public impact. While think tanks grew rapidly in the early 1980s with the rise of the New Right and ‘economic rationalism’, in the Howard years they boomed. One privately funded think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), nearly doubled its funding in the four years from 1998 to 2002 (from $867,447 to

187 John Howard cited in McIntyre and Clark, op. cit., p.1 188 McIntyre and Clark, op. cit., p.1 189 Ibid., p.108 190 Ibid., p.220 191 Davis, op. cit., pp.184-190

72 $1,606,637).192 According to Paul Sheehan, “the boom is consistent with the more general historic boom in corporate spending on ‘below-the-line’ advertising, promotion, public relations and corporate communications.”193

Similarly, from a more individual angle, earlier we saw that theorists like Wark and Davis explain the Australian conservatives’ assault on ‘left-wing’ history and cultural studies as largely an effort by ‘old Cold Warriors’ to remain relevant. As Davis put it:

The ‘culture wars’, as I’ve already suggested, owe their very existence to the realignment of conservative thinking that took place after the Cold War. Many of its protagonists are former Cold Warriors out of a job.194

To secure their place as cultural authorities, the Cold Warriors identified new threats to our freedoms, particularly ‘political correctness’ and postmodernism.

As discussed earlier, the newspapers’ key role in facilitating and presenting these cultural and historical public debates was motivated in large part by a desire to retain prestige and importance, and therefore financial viability. Through the waging of these wars in the opinion pages, the newspapers sought to provide something novel, important and, most of all, attractive to their desired (middle-class) readership. Wark believes the History/Culture Wars were also fuelled by the media and public’s desire for some real political debate. With Labor and Liberal largely indistinguishable on economic policy and the media all but agreed on the benefits of economic rationalism, Wark argues that “real reporters and the public” turned to “culture for some actual debate.”195 The cultural debates spiced up the opinion and features pages of Australia’s newspapers.

In History Wars, McIntyre showed that not only was the press a key site in which these (one-sided) ‘debates’ played out, the newspapers also helped initiate them. According to McIntyre, The Australian fanned the flames by introducing into Australian political discourse the American concept of ‘political correctness’, which

192 Paul Sheehan, 2003, The Electronic Whorehouse, Sydney: Pan Macmillian Australia, p.238 193 Ibid. 194 Davis, op. cit., pp.195-6 195 Wark, The Virtual Republic, op. cit., p.121

73 was central to the 1990s debates. “The Australian newspaper introduced political correctness to this country in 1991 with a series of syndicated articles.”196 Similarly, Robert Manne has shown that The Australian also helped renew debate over Aboriginal history following the publication of Keith Windschuttle’s controversial study, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2002).

On the publication of the first volume of Fabrication, the editors of The Australian decided to promote, within their pages, a wide-ranging Windschuttle debate...Chiefly because of the promotion by The Australian, the publication of the first volume of Fabrication became a national event.197

As Wark, Davis, McIntyre and others demonstrate, the media overall was strongly on the side of the ideological crusaders. For instance, in relation to the conservative attack on postmodernism, Wark said:

If [the postmodernism debate] was a debate about politics, boardroom wars or sport, the press would have taken great pains to at least get a quote from the other side. When it comes to these evil postmoderns, the standards of balance and factual accuracy need not apply...editors chose, in the main, not to open a space where questions of culture and value might find more than one answer.198

McIntyre argues right-wing polemicists, in the press and from think tanks, “dominate the national media”.199 “As the History Wars developed”, he says, “they became the staple fare of tabloid media and talk-back radio, but they also found a ready outlet in the quality press.”200 McIntyre does not cry conspiracy – for example, that corporate media organisations push for a right-wing perspective. He attributes the Right’s ability to dominate public debate also to their adeptness at providing good ‘copy’ to media outlets. The simplicity and assuredness of their argument fits better into mass media formats.

According to McIntyre, the press was also with the conservatives on the Stolen Generations. He notes that much of the Australian press was “in strenuous denial”

196 McIntyre and Clark, op. cit., p.134 197 Robert Manne, 2003, Whitewash, Melbourne: Black Inc. Agenda, p.10 198 Wark, The Virtual Republic, op. cit., p.181 199 McIntyre and Clark, op. cit., p.12 200 Ibid.

74 over the dispossession and injustice of Aborigines, with P. P. McGuinness attacking the ‘stolen generations’ thesis in Quadrant and the Sydney Morning Herald, along with “Frank Devine in the Australian, Christopher Pearson in the Australian Financial Review, Andrew Bolt in the Herald-Sun, Piers Ackerman and Michael Duffy in the Daily Telegraph, and other right-wing polemicists who seemed at times to conduct a competition in vitriol.”201 He said the Right “publicise their views freely through a sympathetic press, and enjoy favourable publicity as they seek to discredit Aboriginal land claimants, deny that the Stolen Generations were taken from their families, and insist that the European occupation of Australia was remarkably peaceful.”202 Robert Manne makes essentially the same argument in Whitewash.203

Some issues at the centre of the culture and history wars will be discussed in detail in Chapters Six, Eight and Ten. In particular, the chapters will consider the contributions of Robert Manne, Gerard Henderson and, to a lesser extent Paul Kelly, to the controversies surrounding the Demidenko Affair and political correctness, the Republic debate and the Stolen Generations. The conservative line on the ‘culture wars’ is represented here by Henderson and, at least initially, Manne. The ‘progressive’ resistance is represented, because of his personal transformation, by Manne also. Though Henderson was a leading conservative cultural and history warrior, his views can at times be rather progressive also. This issue was one instance in which he demonstrated, as he says, “I am one of the key opponents of right wing movements in Australia.”204 Consequently, on some issues the hard-right line is reflected only in the various right-wing criticisms that I have included of Manne.

Kelly’s contributions to these debates will not be discussed in as much detail because, quite simply, he was less prominent. The culture and history wars were conducted primarily by more traditional intellectuals – by academics and other ‘cultured’ types. Those typically preoccupied with economic and political affairs, like Kelly, did not feature much in these conversations. This is not to say that Kelly

201 Ibid., p.146 202 Ibid., p.5 203 Manne, Whitewash, op. cit., p.11 204 Gerard Henderson, “Paul Kelly’s Tome – A Great Read; But is it History?”, Media Watch, Sydney Institute, No. 24, October-December 1992, p.8

75 had nothing to say on cultural matters. He was actually one of the leading contributors to the 1990s debate over the Republic. On other major events in the culture wars, like the ‘Demidenko Affair’ and Aboriginal history, however, he was less conspicuous.

4. Asylum Seekers and the Immigration Debate One of the most divisive issues in Australia is, and always has been, immigration. Though it is a young nation, and though, with the exclusion of the indigenous population, it is comprised largely of migrants or their recent descendents, Australia has a long history of apprehensiveness towards ‘New Australians’.205 Yet while Australians were for a long time generally antipathetic to all foreigners, greatest enmity was always reserved for non-Anglo migrants, particularly Asians.206 This found its clearest expression in the ‘White Australia Policy’; the racially discriminatory system which controlled Australia’s immigration intake for the first sixty or seventy years of Federation.

It was in the mid-1960s that racialism really began dissipating from Australian political culture. As Paul Kelly documents in The End of Certainty (1992), in this time the White Australia Policy was officially abandoned, by both major parties, and by the early 1970s the “the final vestiges of official racial discrimination” had been abolished.207 The new policy direction Australia embarked upon was ‘multiculturalism’. By the 1980s it appeared Australians’ aversion to foreigners, including those from non-Anglo backgrounds, had more or less abated. As John Pilger put it in 1989, “two generations of Australians have been educated to understand that immigration is ‘good’ for everybody.” Accordingly, “anti-immigrant groups are treated with contempt.”208 Thus, when in the late 1980s Liberal leader John Howard, now Prime Minister, tried to incite and exploit anti-Asian sentiments, he was widely condemned, and deposed as opposition leader soon after.209

205 Geoffrey Bolton, 1996, The Oxford History of Australia: Volume 5 1942-1995, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, p.54 206 John Pilger outlines Australians’ antipathy of foreigners in A Secret Country, 1989, London: Vintage, pp.103, 108; Donald Horne discusses Australia’s discrimination against Asian migrants in The Lucky Country, op. cit., p.99 207 Kelly, The End of Certainty, op. cit., pp.3-4 208 Pilger, op. cit., pp.126, 127 209 Ibid., p.129

76

In more recent times, however, xenophobia and hostility to foreigners has erupted in a manner perhaps unprecedented in our history. Though in previous generations anti- immigration sentiments were commonplace, they seem not to have surfaced with much conviction in the political sphere.210 Yet in recent years Australians’ typically relaxed attitude to immigration has given way to more open hostility towards New Australians. With the election of the Howard Government and the rise of Pauline Hanson’s populist conservative One Nation party, ‘ordinary’ Australians have voiced their discontent about immigration – and to Asian and other ethnic minority immigrants in particular.

Perhaps the loudest expression of the new, populist conservative Australia’s antagonism towards foreigners has been the popular backlash against ‘asylum seekers’ in the early-2000s. In recent years Australia has experienced a sharp increase in the number of illegal arrivals to its shores, mainly from Middle-Eastern countries like Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. ‘Asylum seekers’, ‘boatpeople’, ‘illegal arrivals’, ‘refugees’, or whatever else one wants to call them, have been a recurring theme in Australian politics at least since influx of Indochinese refugees after the Vietnam War. In the early 2000s, however, the issue erupted with unparalleled force. In Tampering with Asylum (2003), Frank Brennan observed that the controversy sparked a “vitriolic public debate”.211 And according to Peter Mares in Borderline (2001), in recent times “there has been an unprecedented level of public action on the issue of asylum seekers and refugees.”212

Robert Manne has described the asylum seekers ‘crisis’ as the defining political issue of 2002.213 Though public debate over illegal immigration had been intensifying from 2000214, it was not until the Howard Government elevated it to the top of the political agenda with the ‘Tampa Affair’ of August 2001 that it became the biggest issue in the land. This affair began with the Howard Government’s media-

210 For information on Australians’ apprehension, and yet relaxed approach, to immigration see Pilger, op. cit., p.98, and Horne, op. cit., pp.67-8 211 Frank Brennan, 2003, Tampering With Asylum, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, p.xii 212 Peter Mares, 2001, Borderline, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, p.257 213 Robert Manne, “How Tampa sailed into 2002”, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 December 2002, http://evatt.labor.net.au/news/163.html (Accessed 9 July 2004) 214 Mares, op. cit., p.3

77 orchestrated attempt to prevent the Norwegian vessel Tampa from offloading 433 asylum seekers into Australia’s migration zone.215 Prime Minister Howard touted the move as a tough and necessary action to stem the flow of illegal immigrants to Australian shores. He said it would send a “message to people smugglers and others around the world that...we are not a soft touch and we are not a national whose sovereign rights in relation to who comes here are going to be trampled on.”216 From then on the Government pursued, as vocally as possible, a “tough line” against asylum seekers. Their approach won the support of many media commentators, particularly the ‘shock jocks’ and conservative columnists like The Sydney Morning Herald’s Paddy McGuinness, the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt and The Daily Telegraph’s Piers Ackerman.217 And as the election result, opinion polls, and radio talkback demonstrated, the vast majority of everyday Australians were with them on this policy. As Mares observed, for the many Howard supporters, the central concern was national sovereignty – Australia’s right to choose who it does or does not let across its borders.218

Chapter Six will provide an overview of a number of key pro-Government and pro- detention discourses through a discussion of Paul Kelly’s analysis of the issue. Kelly was overall a defender of the Howard Government on this issue, particularly of then Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock. Yet he also maintained a critical scepticism about how Australia’s single-minded pursuit of ‘national sovereignty’ might wash with the international community, whose respect he regards as central to our national interest. Hence, his was a more moderate defence of the Howard line than the enthusiastic endorsements of the Ackermans and Bolts of the Australian press.

On the other side of the debate were those critical of the Howard Government’s approach to the issue, particularly in relation to the indefinite imprisonment of asylum seekers in detention centres. While these critics generally deride the Government for opportunistically ‘manufacturing’ the so-called crisis in the first place, most are more concerned with humanitarian factors and the damage the affair

215 Brennan, op. cit., pp.41-4 216 John Howard cited in Ibid., p.43 217 Brennan, op. cit., pp.98, 134, 158 218 Mares, op. cit., p.104

78 may cause to Australia’s international reputation.219 This view is aptly summarised by Mares’ comment that Australia’s response to asylum seekers was “an outcome which affronts human dignity and international norms.”220

This view will be discussed further in Chapter Eight through an analysis of Robert Manne, who has long been one of the most vocal critics of the Howard Government’s treatment of asylum seekers. Gerard Henderson was also quite heavily critical of the Government’s approach to this issue. His views will be covered in Chapter Ten. As we shall see, Henderson, a radical economist, was also concerned with humanitarian or moral questions, but was also motivated by the idea that tough border controls defy the deregulatory logic of free-trade.

5. Iraq War The final debate touched upon in this thesis is that relating to the 2003-2004 Iraq War. This issue has captured the media’s attention like no other in the past two years. As Manne has observed, the year 2003 “was dominated by the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, in which Australia was intimately involved.”221 The same could be said of the first half of 2004. This issue will be covered comprehensively in subsequent chapters, so a few comments will suffice here.

The Australian debate over the Iraq War was divided reasonably clearly between those who supported the war and those who opposed it. Few sat on the fence. As the chapters on Kelly and Henderson, two of the war’s most vocal apologists, will demonstrate, some Australian columnists tended to uncritically endorse US policy on the war. Most conspicuous here were the Murdoch papers, which all adopted a pro- war stance from the beginning. According to Manne, all but one of Murdoch’s 175 papers from around the world supported the war.222 And as Paul Sheehan observed in The Electronic Whorehouse (2003), at some point in the campaign “Bush administration policy and Murdoch empire policy had morphed into one and the

219 Ibid., p.233 220 Ibid., p.246 221 Robert Manne, “A year of eroding precious values”, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December 2003, http://www.gaiaguys.net/2003smh29.12.03.htm (Accessed 9 July 2004) 222 Robert Manne, “Understanding Howard’s war”, The Age, March 17, 2003, http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/16/1047749661968.html (Accessed 9 July 2004)

79 same.”223 Accordingly, pro-war columnists initially rationalised the war on the need to remove Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. When it became increasingly clear no WMDs existed, they followed the Americans by maintaining that, WMD or no, the invasion was justified by Saddam’s evil. And when embarrassing revelations emerged, such as the ‘prisoner abuse scandal’ and claims the war’s leaders had lied over WMD, the pro-war writers jumped to their defence, regurgitating the excuses of the Bush Government.

The war’s opponents saw the war as both a humanitarian and a political catastrophe. Manne, for instance, saw the war as an illegitimate and illegal act based on a wrong- headed neoconservative pursuit of American global hegemony. The dishonesty of the Americans, Brits and Australians also angered Manne and other anti-war columnists. However, largely absent from the Australian press was a more conventional Left perspective on the war. While several columnists opposed the war, few were motivated by general antagonism to American imperialism. Rather, the war’s detractors tended to support the American-led War on Terrorism. They saw the Iraq excursion as too excessive, however, and tended to prefer an international approach orchestrated through the United Nations. Manne was a leading proponent of the anti- war message, and his views will be discussed in greater depth in Chapter Eight.

Conclusion This is part of the context in which Australia’s public intellectuals operated in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. This is the mediascape they were part of, and these are the some of the key debates they entered into. Through case studies in Chapters Six, Eight and Ten, this thesis will look more closely at how these issues were debated in the press. Obviously case studies of only three individuals cannot possibly cover the entire debates comprehensively. But that is not my intention. A full coverage of the debates, would take us outside the parameters of this thesis. Anyone interested in learning more about these debates should consult studies like Wark’s Virtual Republic, Davis’s Gangland, Manne’s overviews of major debates like his The Culture of Forgetting (1996) and Whitewash (2003). There are several other major

223 Sheehan, op. cit., p.62

80 works covering the debates from the 1980s to the present, works that have informed my analysis. I have not intended for this dissertation to be another one.

What has been attempted, however, is to offer some background to the general discussion so as to provide a better sense of Australian public intellectual life in this era. Three case studies are believed to suffice not only because they cover the main sides of the conflicts, but because each case study contains references to other important views, points and counterpoints to the ideas of Kelly, Manne and Henderson.

81 Chapter Four: Public Intellectuals in the Press

Introduction So far this thesis has identified who intellectuals, including public intellectuals are, and discussed the way newspapers contribute to Australia’s intellectual life. Rounding off Part One of the thesis, this chapter will examine the kind of contribution public intellectuals make to the press. It will seek to explain how the material they write for the papers enables them to perform the influential social role outlined in Chapter Two. Drawing from theories of the various ‘functions’ of newspapers, the chapter will explain how the public intellectual, by writing political columns for the papers, contributes to the formation of public opinion. This chapter will conclude by identifying several types of political columnist writing for Australia’s newspapers. Three will be discussed in depth in subsequent chapters.

A. Political Columns Based on the definition given in Chapter Two, if any type of newspaper writer qualifies as a ‘public intellectual’, it is the political columnist. In The American Newspaper Columnist (1998), Sam G. Riley defines the newspaper column as “a brief, informal essay, averaging perhaps 750-850 words, that appears on a set schedule, whether daily, weekly or otherwise.”224 According to long-serving columnist and former editor of The Australian, Frank Devine, “In a way, a column is a Letter to the Editor written by a journalist.”225 For Riley, they are in some ways similar to the feature story or feature article, but are more closely related to the ‘editorial’.226 They are distinguishable firstly in that “columns are normally bylined and editorials are unsigned”, and secondly “the column represents the point of view of an individual, whereas the editorial is the position of the newspaper as an institution.”227 From Riley’s commentaries we can conclude, then, that the column is, like the editorial, a short, opinion-based essay, but one which offers the viewpoint of an identified individual.

224 Sam G. Riley, 1998, The American Newspaper Columnist, London: Praeger, p.xi 225 Frank Devine, “Columnist”, The Australian, August 7, 2001 (Accessed online at www.theaustralian.news.com.au, August 23, 2004) 226 Riley, op. cit., p.xi 227 Ibid., p.79

82 The political column is distinguishable, obviously, by its engagement with political questions, or what is sometimes called “public affairs”. According to Riley, the origins of the American political column lie in the intersection between political and foreign correspondents and editorial writers. He says it “evolved from the contributions of, primarily, Washington correspondents and, secondarily, foreign correspondents whose contributions came to their newspapers on a fairly regular schedule.”228 Furthermore, he says, “without doubt, the political column also owes much to the editorial, a journalistic form that emerged several decades earlier and that, like the column, took the form of a brief essay.”229 The political column seems to have developed, then, in America as political journalists and foreign correspondents expanded their regular news stories into the editorial, essay format, injecting greater explanation, interpretation, and often personal opinion. We could describe the political column, then, as a short, opinion-based essay, written by an identified individual, about political affairs.

As Riley’s likening of the personal column to the editorial indicates, opinion is seen as central to the personal column. According to Riley, “columnists are usually free to insert personal opinion into their writing, whereas reporters of hard news are not; opinion, obviously, is one of the things that make a ‘personal column’ personal.”230 British academic Richard Keeble is another who seems to believe that offering opinions is a central part of the personal column.231 And according to Australian scholar Geoffrey Craig (2004): “The column allows the journalist to express a subjective point of view, assess arguments and provide direct advice to participants, give background details gleaned from political connections, and even appeal for some kind of action.”232

Because opinion is central to the column, we can conclude that not all of Australia’s political correspondents or commentators can properly be called political columnists. Many political writers, whether by choice or editorial instruction, do not to inject their own personal opinions into their commentaries. Some writers, who may

228Ibid. 229 Ibid. 230 Ibid., p.xiv 231 Richard Keeble, 2001, The Newspapers Handbook, London: Routledge, pp.217-8 232 Geoffrey Craig, 2004, The Media, Politics and Public Life, Crowns Nest: Allen & Unwin, p.81

83 actually be at a stage in their careers where they could use their commentaries to express personal judgements, are content to be interpretive or analytical commentators rather than political advocates and editorialists. John Hohenberg offered a good distinction between the ‘interpretive’ and ‘editorial’ story in The Professional Journalist (1973).

The difference between interpretation and editorialization, broadly, is that the interpreter applies the rule of reason to the news but stops short of recommending what should be done about it. The province of the editorial writer is to urge a course of action upon the reader or the viewer.233

While there are many journalists in Australia who interpret and explain politics, fewer go the next step and advocate policy. We can suggest, then, that of the many political commentators in the press, only a percentage serve as political columnists.

To clarify what is or is not a political columnist, let us consider someone who is close to being one, but is not: the Australian’s Phillip Adams. Adams contributes a regular column to The Australian, into which he almost always injects his own views. Often his columns deal with politics. However, one could not accurately categorise him as a political columnist. Primarily, this is because his political essays are rather infrequent. As he says, he writes on “every imaginable subject”.234 He is a columnist, undoubtedly; but because his interest and focus are varied and his political essays infrequent, he would not properly be considered a political columnist.

Because political columns deal with public affairs, are written by identified individuals and express the opinions of their authors, they are the principal format through which public intellectuals contribute to the newspapers. As Robert Dessaix suggested, one of the defining traits of the public intellectual is that they speak their minds; that they express personal opinions. Columns, along with editorials, are the only format in the press which facilitate this role (though complaints are becoming louder about ‘comment’ finding its way into ‘news’). And since a public intellectual is invariably conceived as a recognised authority, the editorial, an anonymous piece,

233 John Hohenberg, 1973, The Professional Journalist, Sydney: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., p.444 234 Phillip Adams discusses some topics he covers in Classic Columns, 1994, Sydney: ABC Books, pp.iii-iv

84 cannot properly be considered a ‘public intellectual’ text – that is, enabling its author to operate as a public intellectual. A thinker cannot be a public intellectual if he or she cannot be identified. It is therefore only the personal column, particularly the political column, which can be understood to have been penned by a public intellectual.

Public intellectuals in the press do not just write political columns, however. Again Phillip Adams’ example helps demonstrate this point. Even among his many critics, few would deny Adams is a ‘public intellectual’. He shows no sign of having any ties that may jeopardise his autonomy, many consider him authoritative on a range of subjects, he opines on the ‘public good’ (even though his engagement with politics is often remote), and he is a very public commentator. According to Dessaix, he is one of three people who invariably appear on lists of public intellectuals in Australia.235 His example, then, demonstrates that non-political columnists can be public intellectuals also, even though ‘public affairs’ is what intellectuals are supposed to discuss. But since of all genres of column it is the political column which deals most explicitly with ‘public affairs’, one would expect this format to be the predominant form of expression for the public intellectual in the press.

B. Functions of the Political Column

(i) Economic Function of the Political Column Last chapter it was suggested that newspapers in Australia have deliberately tried to instigate and facilitate major public debates because they have an economic interest in doing so. Drawing from Mark Davis, it was argued that newspapers have fought circulation decline and dwindling prestige by sponsoring public debates. Because the editorial section, which includes the political column, has been the primary site for these debates in the newspapers, it follows that political columns offer financial advantages for the newspapers that carry them. The following section offers an analysis of whether columns, particularly political columns, are in fact financially beneficial for the papers.

235 Robert Dessaix, 1998, Speaking Their Minds, ABC Books: Sydney, p.1

85 Since the introduction and mass take-up of electronic media forms like radio and especially television, newspapers around the world have struggled to remain profitable and perhaps even relevant. The clearest indication of newspapers’ slide is the significant drop in circulation. As Sydney Morning Herald writer Ben Hills noted in 1997, despite significant population increases, Australia’s newspapers “have lost one third of their circulation” since sales peaked in 1974.236 According to John Henningham, “in the 40 years to 1990, metropolitan circulation per 1000 people dropped from almost 700 to below 300.”237 Similarly, Davis has noted that “over the past fifty years, per capita newspaper circulation has fallen 75 per cent.”238 And as David Conley has pointed out, declining sales and therefore profitability have led to many newspaper closures in Australia in recent decades, particularly since 1987.239

Much of the recent downturn is due to the fact that, as Hills observed, these days “more people are getting their news electronically.”240 Newspapers no longer have the near-monopoly they once enjoyed over the provision of news in society. To survive they have had to adapt, to diversify, and to offer something the electronic media cannot. As Conley observes, some papers have resorted to “reader competitions, bingo, prizes, and free or cut-rate deals for new subscribers.”241 More notable are the large and increasing number of supplementary, lift-out and lifestyle sections in the daily papers. As The Age’s Michelle Grattan, one of Australia’s most prominent political journalists, has noted, these sections have audience appeal and therefore provide commercial advantages.242

The inclusion of personal columns is another way newspapers have tried to stave off extinction. According to Richard Keeble, columns “exploded” in the British press in the 1990s.243 And as Geoffrey Craig argued of the Australian press in 2004: “A

236 Ben Hills, “The Golden Age: The Decline of Newspapers”, Quadrant, January-February 1997, p.53 237 John Henningham, “The Press”, in Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner (eds.), 1993, The Media in Australia, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.59 238 Mark Davis, 1999, gangland, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.230 239 David Conley, 1997, The Daily Miracle, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.29 240 Ben Hills, “The Golden Age: The Decline of Newspapers”, Quadrant, January-February 1997, p.53 241 Conley, op. cit., p.50 242 Michelle Grattan, seminar paper, Challenges of Journalism in the 21st Century (conference), University of Queensland, 22 April 2004 243 Keeble, op. cit., p.218

86 growing feature of newspapers in recent years has been the proliferation of opinion pieces on news pages other than the traditional ‘op-ed’ pages.”244 Opinion pieces’ popularity, it seems, has seen them spread to other parts of the paper.

Most personal columns are, like the supplementary sections, another part of what Conley calls the “entertainment function” of the newspaper. They are the “fun bits”.245 Riley has observed that they “exist more because they are interesting than for their news value”246, and suggests “many columnists write for people who read for the pleasure of the reading experience.”247 Accordingly, all columnists “must be interesting”; “if they aren’t, they will remain columnists for but a little while.”248

They don’t have to be brilliant, or exceptionally creative, or great stylists, or masterful storytellers, but they do indeed have to turn out writing that a substantial number of readers find interesting.249

According to Keeble, readers not only find columns interesting, often “the reader enters into a kind of relationship with the writer.” This is rare among other written pieces for the papers, and Keeble attributes it to columns’ highly personalised nature. Primarily it is the idiosyncratic features of the columnist, especially the viewpoint and written style, which foster this reader-writer bond. This is aided further by the inclusion of “a head-and-shoulders picture or drawing of the writer to help ‘personalise’ this relationship further.”250 The personal relationship between reader and columnist in Australia is perhaps most clearly evident in the many letters received by The Australian’s Phillip Adams, and further in the fact that he corresponds personally with many of his fans (and detractors).251

Readers’ identification with columnists has economic advantages for newspapers. As Keeble comments, “the value of good columnists is acknowledged by all newspapers”, and it is reflected in the salaries of leading columnists (he uses British

244 Craig, op. cit., p.80 245 Conley, op. cit., p.216 246 Riley, op. cit., p.xi 247 Ibid., p.xiii 248 Ibid., p.xiv 249 Ibid. 250 Keeble, op. cit., p.217 251 Phillip Adams discusses his correspondence with fans in Classic Columns, op. cit., p.iii

87 examples).252 According to Riley, many editors in the US see columnists as “the best antidote” to “drooping circulations and bottom-line management”.253 This view is reflected in Australia by the apparent spread of opinion pieces and by the high price paid to celebrity columnists compared to other print journalists. The salaries of Australia’s highest profile columnists does not compare with those of their American or British counterparts, by remains quite high. In 2002 The Age journalist Dorothy Cook noted that “Salaries for ‘name’ columnists in daily Australian newspapers can be $250,000 a year.”254 This is the amount popular (and controversial) columnist Padraic P. McGuinness is reported to have received as a columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald.255

The commercial benefit of columns for the newspapers has also been confirmed by eminent Australian journalist Michelle Grattan. Speaking at a conference at the University of Queensland on 22 April 2004, Grattan said columns can be a good money-spinner for their news organisations. Though she was critical of the opinionated work of “celebrity journalists” like the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt and The Sydney Morning Herald’s Miranda Devine, she acknowledged that their controversial views and brash style has made them profitable for their newspapers. Columnists like Bolt and Devine, and Paddy McGuinness, have developed loyal followings and are often read even by those who despise them.256 Such followings testify to Keeble’s suggestion that the good columnist will often establish a personal relationship with his or her readers.

UK scholar Brian McKnight has suggested that what Grattan calls the “celebrity journalist” can serve a ‘branding’ function for the newspaper. According to McKnight: “The rise of the political commentator is a direct consequence of the commodification of the public sphere which makes it necessary for news organisations to brand their output (give it exchange value in a market place containing many other superficially similar brands).”257 Hence, prominent political

252 Keeble, op. cit., p.217 253 Riley, op. cit., p.xv 254 Dorothy Cook (with Helen Shield and Stephen Reilly), “Pay muster”, The Age, May 27, 2002, Money p.8 255 Conley, op. cit., p.3 256 Michelle Grattan, op. cit. 257 Brian McNair cited in Keeble, op. cit., p.217

88 columnists can assist newspapers by helping readers distinguish between otherwise similar news products. They provide another item to distinguish them from the plethora of news sources available in the media. As Frank Devine has commented, they “contribute to the personality of a newspaper”.258

Yet while the reading for pleasure scenario is no doubt true of many, perhaps most, columns, it does not appear an apt description, at least not entirely, for political columns. On some occasions this is no doubt the case. Bolt, Miranda Devine and McGuinness are all political columnists and it is likely are read often for the pleasure of the reading experience. They communicate through a strident, cocksure style that many readers appear to find pleasurable, perhaps also reassuring. (In Chapter Ten we will look more closely at one of Australia’s leading conservative polemicists, the Sydney Institute’s Gerard Henderson.) However, if political columns were read just for pleasure, many writers in the Australian papers today, writers unlike Bolt and Devine, would probably not have a column. After all, as Riley acknowledges, of the various types of columnists, it is the “political pundits” who tend to be the least ‘interesting’ and “more sober-sided”.259 Some writers, like The Australian’s Paul Kelly, communicate in a rather ponderous tone, largely devoid of flair. Fellow journalists Margo Kingston and Michael Millet said of Kelly in 1996: “Many people make fun of the ponderous, deadly serious persona of Paul Kelly…They say he has no sense of humour, is egotistical and devoid of self-doubt.”260 Not that this appears to be a problem; Kelly is one of the nation’s leading political columnists. He gets his points across logically, rationally and clearly. Lack of flair (or humour) has not burdened him at all. So why else, if not strictly for the reader’s pleasure, do newspapers carry political columns? And why do people like to read them?

Arguably the answer lies in comments made last chapter. As was mentioned, cultural theorists like Mark Davis and McKenzie Wark believe Australian newspapers have used columns as a means of combating waning sales and “enhanc[ing] their declining prestige”.261 Realising that “currently the authority of the quality press is under

258 Devine, op. cit. 259 Riley, op. cit., p.xiv 260 Margo Kingston and Michael Millett, “Kelly slips as the son rises”, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 23, 1996, p.38 261 Davis, op. cit., p.230

89 threat” from “other forms of media (tabloids, the Internet and on-line services, the mass electronic media, niche publications and so on)”262, newspapers have tried to elevate their prestige, their relevance, by “sponsoring certain kinds of debates”.263 The editorial section has been the battle ground for these debates, and the column, rather than the editorial, has been the principal weapon for the combatants. Columns, then, can help newspapers not only by providing pleasurable reading for consumers; they can elevate the political prestige of the press and keep the medium socially relevant. Columns offer a reason for the politically-interested citizen to keep buying the papers even though news is abundantly available elsewhere. As the Australian Press Council’s Jack R. Herman observed in 2002:

As other media have become more able to report on immediately unfolding events, newspapers have ensured their survival in part by providing more detail and depth than is available to television, radio and internet news sources. This frequently involves background stories, investigative pieces providing the reader with an understanding of issues, and the publication of opinion pieces.264

With political columns, among other features and items, then, newspapers can offer to consumers something different from what is available in the electronic news media.

Aside their potential to boost the quantity of readers by raising overall sales and circulation, columns and debate can help newspapers by also improving the ‘quality’ of readers. Political columns and ‘cultural’ debates can help newspapers appeal to a more educated, and therefore a generally more affluent, audience. As Davis, drawing from Simon During, has pointed out, appealing to “narrower, niche audiences” and providing “more specialised information” is one way media institutions can remain profitable. Accordingly, “the broadsheets want to appeal to a middle-class, middle-

262 Ibid., pp.230, 265 263 Ibid., p.230 264 Jack R. Herman, “A Defence of Opinion”, Australian Press Council News, May 2002, Volume 14, No.2 (Accessed online at http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/apcnews/may02/opinion.html, on October 5, 2004)

90 aged audience”, and sponsoring cultural debates is one way this can be achieved.265 Hence, in an era of declining circulation and narrowing readership, one of the ways newspapers can remain sustainable is by capturing more the affluent, middle-class readership that advertisers find more attractive. Facilitating public debates and carrying opinion columns by culturally recognised ‘experts’ is one step towards achieving this.

(ii) Social Functions of the Political Column Now we have established what the nature and economic rationale for the political column, let us consider their function in society. If political columns are the typical format for public intellectuals in the press, then an analysis of the political columns’ function should help clarify how it is that public intellectuals exercise the significant social power attributed to them in Chapter Two. To identify the function, or rather functions, of political columns, the following section will draw from theories of the social role of newspapers. Some of these have looked specifically at the editorial section of the paper, where political columns generally appear.

Most theories on the social role of newspapers stress the central role this medium plays in shaping “public opinion”. (‘Public opinion’ is another problematic concept in political and cultural studies. For this thesis the term will refer simply to the ‘general will’ – the majority or popular opinion on a given subject.266) Continuing on from last chapter’s discussion of newspapers’ role in facilitating public debates, the following section looks more closely at how one aspect of the paper, the political column, helps the press act as a ‘forum’ for public debate in a democratic society. It will consider a variety of influential theories on how newspapers are supposed to inform and shape public opinion.

The Press as a ‘Fourth Estate’ Discussion on the social function of newspapers often revolves around the idea of the press as a ‘Fourth Estate’. This notion has its roots in liberal theories of the democratic state. As Australian journalism scholar Julianne Schultz has observed,

265 Davis, op. cit., pp.172-3 266 One decent discussion on ‘public opinion’ is Warren G. Bovee’s Discovering Journalism, 1999, London: Greenwood Press, pp.136-7

91 though actual definition of the ‘Fourth Estate’ has changed over the two centuries it has been in use, its essential meaning has remained the same.267 The basic idea is that alongside a democratic society’s central three ‘estates of the realm’ (executive, legislature and judiciary) is a fourth – the media (traditionally the press). Unlike the other three, the fourth estate possesses no actual legal or political power, and yet exercises considerable political and social power through its ability to inform and to shape public opinion. In its most idealised form it acts as independent ‘watchdog’ of the other three estates. It guards against the abuse of power by making the actions of government (and corporations) public knowledge. On another level, the media can play the role of political and social critic. Nominally acting on the public’s behalf, the media can scrutinise and criticise the actions of policymakers, and can even go as far as to advocate policy as being in the ‘public interest’.

Schultz offers a good summation of this model when she says the press ideally “report[s] those in power and influence and exercis[es] its own voice in commentary and analysis”, while at the same time “scrutinising the consequences of actions and decisions on ordinary people and consciously representing the interests of the disadvantaged and downtrodden.”268 Another good expression of this ideal is American scholar William G. Bovee’s assertion from Discovering Journalism (1999) that journalism “provides the people who constitute the deliberating assembly with the knowledge they need to make judgements about public affairs.”269

Especially through the exercise of their reporting and interpreting functions, journalists alert the public to people, events, and situations that require political action; they provide background information; they point out what, if anything, is being done elsewhere, what options exist, what the admitted likely consequences of various actions might be, what choices their political leaders are considering. One of the principal roles of journalism is to inform public opinion.270

In their articulations of the Fourth Estate ideal, Schultz and Bovee both outline two distinct functions of the press. Bovee refers to them as journalism’s “reporting” and “interpreting” functions. Australian scholar David Conley has described them as the

267 Julianne Schultz, 1998, Reviving the Fourth Estate, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.2 268 Ibid., p.3 269 Bovee, op. cit., p.139 270 Ibid.

92 “informative” and “educative” functions.271 The ‘informative’ relates to the provision of news reports and, according to Conley, it “is linked to the media’s traditional watchdog role.”272 The latter, ‘educative’ function is an interpretive and explanatory one. Conley says educative stories go “beyond what decision-makers have said on an issue in the news story and explain what the decision means to the public.”273 Decades ago John Hohenberg remarked a few decades ago that this enduring function of the press “help[ed] to create a better-informed electorate and better government.”274

Political columns are part of this process of public enlightenment. And because they are interpretive, explanatory and evaluative pieces, they contribute more to the ‘educative’ than the ‘informative’ function of the press. On one level they help explain the news, making the world more comprehensible to their readers. As Harry W. Stonecipher argued in 1979, they “serv[e] a vital need of the consumers of news who ‘these days are drowning in data’.”275 Or as Suzanne Moore (1996) observed more recently, “in these times of media saturation and its subsequent neurosis – information anxiety – columnists in their idiosyncratic ways wade through the mire of information about the world we live in.”276 Similarly, in 2001 Australian journalist Frank Devine said part of the columns’ appeal laid in the fact that “interpretation is often as valuable - even more valuable at times - to readers than a bald statement of the facts.”277

Whether or not columns are more or less influential than news stories, news features, editorials, or any other written format in the papers is hard to say. They are not likely to inform their readers as well as either news stories or news features. And if we define the educative function as interpreting and explaining the news, nor are they likely to educate as well as the news features. According to some scholars, however, opinion pieces like columns are able to serve a function the news stories and feature

271 Conley, op. cit., p.37 272 Ibid., p.39 273 Ibid., p.43 274 Hohenberg, op. cit., p.442 275 Harry W. Stonecipher, 1979, Editorial and Persuasive Writing: Opinion Functions of the News Media, New York: Hasting House, p.8 276 Suzanne Moore cited in Keeble, op. cit., p.218 277 Devine, op. cit.

93 articles cannot. Numerous theorists over the years have attributed special relevance to opinion columns (and editorials) by virtue of their ability to perform what Stonecipher has described as the ‘opinion function’ of the press. In his 1979 book, Editorial and Persuasive Writing: The Opinion Functions of the News Media, Stonecipher described this opinion function as vital to a healthy democracy.

Numerous sources could be cited to establish the need for the mass media to extend the news columns and newscasts to tell what it all means, to put complex issues into perspective, to attempt to persuade readers, listeners, and viewers to accept this or that point of view as being in the public interest.278

In making this point, Stonecipher also quoted another American scholar, George N. Gordon, suggesting that “to express opinions, mostly in a political context...[was] a necessity if, in any manner, the American voter…was to cast an enlightened and useful vote at the next election. An absolute prerequisite, in fact!”279

If opinion pieces like columns and editorials, as Stonecipher and Gordon suggest, do ‘enlighten’ public opinion, it follows that the opinions such pieces carry must too be enlightened. Columnists and editorialists, therefore, must be genuine authorities; bone fide experts. And because people understandingly prefer analysis and policy prescription to come from those with real authority and credibility, most columnists are in fact culturally recognised experts. Hohenberg’s remark from the 1960s that “no matter how vigorously column writers and editorialists are sometimes scorned, most of us will agree that most of them are intelligent, widely informed persons”280, remains valid today.

The notion that columnists are in fact genuine authorities on public affairs is of course at the centre of the dissertation. Because most prefer that she or he who is effectively telling them how to think is not only an expert, but someone with honesty, integrity and independence, the ideal columnist for most of us would be the ‘public intellectual’. And there are quite obvious similarities here between what Stonecipher called the “opinion function”, the role performed by editorialists and

278 Stonecipher, op. cit., p.8 279 George N. Gordon cited in Stonecipher, op. cit., p.12 280 Bovee, op. cit., p.145

94 political columnists, and that attributed to ‘intellectuals’. Both have been ascribed the role of ‘enlightening’ the masses. According to the Fourth Estate model, then, political columnists influence public opinion by performing a deeper type of ‘educative’ function. They not only explain the world of politics and public affairs, they advocate solutions to political problems.

The notion of the ‘educative’ function of the press also helps explain why newspapers, from a strictly financial perspective, carry political columns. Earlier it was noted that columns, including some political columns, are printed, to paraphrase Riley, for their entertainment (as opposed to news) value. But as the traditionalists stress, newspapers have long been a successful social institution simply because they provide news, not entertainment. People buy them not mainly for the pleasure of the reading experience, but to find out what is going on. Accordingly, political columns, as educative pieces, appear to be popular not just because they are interesting written pieces, but because they help readers understand the political environment. They satisfy readers’ need to know.

* * *

Newspapers and the Public Sphere One of the most celebrated analyses of the democratic contribution of the press is Jürgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989). Habermas’ study provides another interpretation of how newspapers and political writers shape public opinion – or at least how they used to. Whereas some proponents of the Fourth Estate model tend to see the papers and their journalists as themselves educated and informed, extending their wisdom to the people, Habermas saw them as one part of a broader forum for public debate: the “bourgeois public sphere”.

According to Habermas, the public sphere was a space or arena in which private citizens could publicly discuss and debate public affairs. It was a forum for “rational- critical public debate” for “private people come together as a public”.281 It was

281 Jurgen Habermas, 1989, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Polity Press, p.27

95 relatively open; “education was the one criterion for admission”.282 In effect this meant that various groups, including the illiterate, women and effectively the proletariat, were excluded.283 But the remaining, ‘educated’ citizens, largely from the bourgeoisie, enjoyed the freedom to participate. The only rules governing the public sphere were the rules of reason and logic; it was “founded on trust in the power of reason”.284 And the only sense of hierarchy was that established by the debate itself. Status was allocated within this domain only by “the authority of the better argument”285, not to “preexisting social and political rank”.286 Because access to this arena was relatively open and because the only rules that governed it were the rules of rational debate, the consensus or “public opinion” it formulated was deemed a rational, informed and enlightened one. It was “a public opinion born of the power of the better argument.”287

Through their provision of arguments on the public good from a range of individuals, groups and ideological positions, newspapers were one of the most prominent and important “public organs” of the public sphere. In fact, the press was “the public sphere’s pre-eminent institution”.288 Habermas’ study affirms the notion of the press acting as a Fourth Estate. It provided a forum in which public affairs were discussed rationally and openly. The press acted as “a genuinely critical organ of a public engaged in critical public debate.”289 Newspapers contributed to the enlightenment of public opinion.

One main difference between the notion of the public sphere and the ideal of the Fourth Estate is the way public opinion is said to be ‘informed’ or ‘enlightened’. Whereas in the latter model the influence is an ‘educative’ one, with connotations of a top-down teaching role by informed journalists and writers; the public sphere model suggests public opinion is formed via “rational-critical public debate”, which newspapers were central in facilitating. Thus newspapers are not possessors of

282 Ibid., p.85 283 Ibid., p.56 284 Ibid., pp.199, 219 285 Ibid., pp.31-36 286 Ibid., p.54 287 Ibid. 288 Ibid., p.181 289 Ibid., p.60

96 enlightened opinion, able to ‘educate’ the masses; they provide a forum in which the dialectic of rational debate can establish a general consensus or public opinion. Another US scholar to have claimed the press acts as a public forum is David A. Copeland. Elaborating on Habermas’ public sphere thesis, Copeland claims American newspapers have long acted as a forum; though this role has diminished at a national level and is now dominated by but a small number of social representatives.290

The political columns contribute to the dialectic quite obviously. They provide clear arguments on the “public interest”. Indeed, as Bovee has quite recently suggested, of all media it is newspapers which perform such “rational-critical debate” best. Bovee suggests the editorial section of the papers, of which the political column is an important part, serves what he calls the “forum function” of the press. Principally, this is because the editorial section, comprised of the editorials, letters to the editor and the political columns, acts as a “public forum”, where private citizens can “exercise the democratic function of the deliberating assembly.”291 Because radio and television are too temporal and impermanent, “it is to newspapers, therefore, that we most often turn to find the public forum”, and “[w]ithin the newspapers, the forum that is open to the public is most often found in the editorial section.”292

Some Australian commentators have voiced complaints about the quality of debate in forum section of the Australian press. Robert Dessaix, for instance, has argued that Australian public intellectual life is not terribly well served by the forum made available in the op-ed section of the press. He has stated: “The opinion column in our newspapers is not the answer. The columnists state their opinion, and that’s that. I am talking about exchange.”293 Robert Manne, too, has expressed frustration at the lack of protracted debate facilitated by Australia’s newspapers. He said he was “a little frustrated by the unwillingness of editors to tolerate the re-entry of columnists into

290 David A. Copeland, “Newspapers in the Americas” in Shannon E. Martin and David A. Copeland (eds.), 2003, The Functions of Newspapers in Society, London: Praeger, pp.110-114 291 Bovee, op. cit., p.146 292 Ibid., p.144 293 Robert Dessaix cited in Angela Bennie, “Missing in action”, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 23, 2003 (Accessed online at www.smh.com.au, October 4, 2004)

97 the controversies they have provoked. Blow and counter-blow is about as much as newspapers will take.”294

Because of the limited nature of debate in the press, Dessaix concluded that the press is not a good site for ‘public intellectual’ discussion. After saying in 1998 that newspapers were one of the few remaining forums for ‘public intellectuals’ to discuss matters of public concern, in 2003 he argued that “The only thing we have that are genuine forums for such activity are out [sic] literary festivals.” Dessaix’s point is interesting, yet reflects an emphasis on the notion that ‘intellectuals’ “think about ideas”.295 This was not something he stressed as strongly in Speaking Their Minds (1998), but it was probably implied – for instance, in the idea that public intellectuals appeal to “educated Australia”, and by his choice of mainly artists, academics and writers (like himself) as exemplars.

Another reason Dessaix, among other literary figures, tends to see the press as not facilitating much worthwhile intellectual discussion and public debate is his evident belief that it is only left-leaning or dissenting thought that is ‘intellectual’. As Gerard Henderson has noted: “The people invited to these kinds of gatherings [literary festivals] are all from the same ideological position, and the audience just comes along to have their own opinions reinforced. They are all from the Radio National set, and they come to listen to people they agree with.”296 Dessaix and others from the ‘Radio National set’ tend to view such festivals as truly ‘intellectual’ because the ideas exchanged there are ideas they believe to be enlightened or intriguing. This approach was rejected in Chapter Two. We can say, therefore, that the press, by providing a space for public commentators to expound ideas, does provide some kind of forum for public intellectual discussion in Australia – though debate is not as intense and sustained as it could be.

As discussed in Chapter Two, the concept of the public sphere, or public forum, offers a way of understanding how intellectuals exercise influence in a democratic system. They do not constitute a caste of like-minded cultural authorities as in some

294 Robert Manne, “Robert Manne, Polemicist” (interview), The Reader, September 17, 2004, No.64, p.39 295 Dessaix cited in Bennie, op. cit. 296 Gerard Henderson cited in Bennie, op. cit.

98 previous epochs, such as when religious ‘truths’ were effectively unchallenged and debate about these truths was prohibited, by force if necessary. Rather, intellectuals, as a caste, offer differing views on what is true and just. Instead of representing an absolute sense of truth and justice, they are representatives of particular political or ideological perspectives. In some way, they become Gramsci’s “organic intellectuals”; spokespersons and leaders for social classes or groups. According to the notion of a public sphere or forum, through their discussions in the editorial section of the papers, political columnists, among them public intellectuals, shape public opinion.

A Propaganda Function? Though theorists like Bovee and Copeland suggest the press in democratic systems, or at least America, still serves the forum function of the public sphere; Habermas’ thesis was, as Brian McNair puts it, a “narrative of decline”.297 Habermas argued that while the early (bourgeois) public sphere acted in the manner described above, at some point in the nineteenth century the public sphere’s critical, rational and political nature diminished considerably.

In part, this decline was caused by the changing role of the press. According to Habermas, the press surrendered its critical role because of commercial pressures, particularly the influence of advertisers and the need to reach a mass audience. Increased reliance of advertising saw the papers lose much of their independence. The nature of their discourse transformed from “rational-critical” argument to “staged and manipulative publicity”.298 Advertisers, public relations officers, and other representatives of social and economic elites, supplanted the earnest deliberators who used to occupy the newspaper editorial sections. The editorial section became a “gate through which privileged private interests invaded the public sphere”.299

At the same time the expression of opinions was becoming more staged and manipulative, the overall level of political content diminished significantly. From the

297 Brian McNair, 2003, News and Journalism in the UK, London: Routledge, p.48 298 Habermas, op. cit., p.232 299 Ibid., p.185

99 early-to-mid nineteenth century: “Editorial opinions recede[d] behind information from press agencies and reports from correspondents; critical debate disappears behind the veil of internal decisions concerning the selection and presentation of the material.”300 As Habermas observed, it is one of the ironies of mass communication that as technology provided the opportunity for a more inclusive public sphere (the opportunity for almost everyone to at least follow the debates), politicised public debate diminished. To maximise audiences, to appeal across ideological lines, media outlets depoliticised content.301 Ultimately, then, greater access for the proletariat, women and minorities did not open up the public sphere to even more comprehensive debate. It coincided with the watering down of the public sphere’s political function. A more recent expression of this “narrative of decline” is Bob Franklin’s book Newszak and News Media (1997). Franklin argued “news media have increasingly become part of the entertainment industry instead of providing a forum for informed debate of key issues of public concern.”302

Hence, according to Habermas, the ideals of the public sphere and the Fourth Estate were once a reality, but during the nineteenth century became little more than “liberal fiction” and “ideology”.303 Rather than a forum for “rational-critical public debate”, the contemporary public sphere delivers to the public mere “staged and manipulative publicity” by state and corporate powers.304 In this environment, public opinion is no longer enlightened; it becomes “the object to be moulded in connection with a staged display of, and manipulative propagation of, publicity in the service of persons and institutions, consumer goods, and programs.”305

In his description of what the public sphere had become, Habermas articulates a fairly traditional radical or critical perspective on the contemporary media. Like other radical media theorists, Habermas shares with liberal theory the belief that newspapers and other mass media do contribute to the formulation of public opinion. However, he rejects the proposition that this public opinion is genuinely ‘informed’ and ‘enlightened’. He suggests instead it has been “manipulated” by political, social

300 Ibid., p.169 301 Ibid., pp.168-9, 184-5 302 Bob Franklin cited in McNair, News and Journalism in the UK, op. cit., p.47 303 Habermas, op. cit., p.211 304 Ibid., p.232 305 Ibid., p.236

100 and economic elites. It is this conclusion in particular which allies Habermas’ thesis to other radical perspectives on the media. The idea of elites “procure[ing] plebiscitary agreement” from the public306 is very similar, for instance, to Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s ‘propaganda model’ and the theory that state and corporate elites have hijacked the media to “manufacture consent” from the people.307

According to this (propaganda) model, many political columnists could be viewed merely as spokespersons for elites. They become ‘propagandists’ for media proprietors, advertisers, or others with some kind of influence over the papers. If indeed this is the case, such columnists’ role could still be viewed as shaping public opinion, but through a process of manipulation rather than enlightenment. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, this is a common allegation made against some media commentators (but certainly not all). It relates closely to the question of independence for political columnists – a question to be discussed in depth in subsequent chapters.

A Postmodernist Perspective? Habermas’ thesis is one of the most powerfully argued and influential expressions of what, as we have seen, Brian McNair calls the “narrative of decline”.308 McNair believes this view has become almost common sense these days. Yet many media scholars, particularly postmodernists (including McNair), are more optimistic. Against claims newspapers and other news media are “dumbing down” by including more infotainment, McNair points out that alongside the tabloid content there is still much political material. In fact, he claims mass communication has made more, not less, news available. Moreover, he says, it has also opened the public sphere to previously excluded groups. Accordingly, to postmodernists like McNair, rather than “dumbing down”, these days society is “braining up”.309

Political Columns and the ‘Political Class’

306 Ibid., p.232 307 Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, 1994, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, London: Vintage 308 McNair, News and Journalism in the UK, op. cit., p.48 309 Ibid.

101 Theories of the social function we have considered thus far discuss the papers and the political columns in terms of ‘public opinion’. A final influence to be examined here is more direct. As some have noted, political columns are not only read by ‘the public’, they are read by political leaders and what in America is sometimes referred to as the ‘political class’. Robert Manne has described the “politically interested class” in Australia as “the class which reads the quality press and follows public affairs on the ABC.”310 This class also includes actual participants in the political system (i.e. the politicians and senior bureaucrats).

As Bovee noted, columns are sometimes aimed not only at a ‘politically interested class’, but directly at political leaders.311 This seems to be a long-term trend that has become entrenched in the Western media over decades. As early as the 1960s, Hohenberg observed, also in an American context, that:

In most communities and regions, it is primarily the leaders who pay the closest attention to editorial content and who are the most likely to be influenced by it. Thus, despite low total diffusion, the editorial section can have an enormous impact on the decision-making process and community leaders are well aware of it.312

More recently, Martin Conboy (2004) has argued that because political debate has been restricted “to a narrow range of elite broadsheets and specialized journals”, it “becomes a source accessed only by the political and economic elites who continue to value print media.”313 This can be seen in Australia in the respect some high- profile columnists enjoy among society’s politicians and business leaders. The Australian’s Paul Kelly, for instance, is said to be “widely read by politicians, business people and other journalists”314 and as “help[ing] to inform the opinions of Australia’s power elite.”315 Similarly, according to Frank Devine, “Terry McCrann of the Melbourne Herald-Sun and Mark Westfield and Brian Frith of The Australian

310 Robert Manne, 1998, “The Republic’s Unanswered Question”, The Way We Live Now, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1998, p.175 311 Bovee, op. cit., p.145 312 Hohenberg, op. cit., p.524 313 Martin Conboy, 2004, Journalism: A Critical History, London: SAGE Publications, p.180 314 Max Suich, “The power to change, and the power to prevent progress: it’s Murdoch’s choice”, The Sydney Morning Herald, October 17, 1988, p.21 315 “Our 40 Most Influential People”, The Australian, (need to find date), p.13

102 have large followings” in the business world.316 Hence, political columnists not only shape “public opinion”, they have direct access to policy-makers and corporate leaders, and thus, according to some theorists, can contribute to policy in a more direct fashion.

Appealing to the political class also has economic advantages. It is one way newspapers have been able to remain relevant and prestigious, and generally to survive. The political class is, after all, a predominantly middle-class readership. It is an affluent readership. And, as argued earlier, if the quality of the readership is high, from an advertiser’s perspective low circulation may not be such a drastic problem.

(iii) Conclusions on the Column and its Functions From the above discussion we can conclude that political columnists serve both an economic and a broad social function. It may be possible to identify other functions, but these two will suffice for our present discussion. It is of course columnists’ social function which is most relevant to this study. If, as many argue, newspapers are vital institutions in the ‘informing’ and ‘education’ of the public, or overall in the ‘enlightenment’ of public opinion, then political columnists can be considered to contribute to this process.

Moreover, because political columns and editorials are the clearest expressions of political discourse in the press, the writers of these pieces perform a role akin to those engaged in the “rational-critical debate” Habermas described of the “bourgeois public sphere”. And though the public sphere’s political flavour has diminished, columns and other ‘editorial’ pieces, as Bovee has suggested, are the foremost contributions to what these days would pass as the public sphere of civil society: the “public forum” in the editorial section of the press.

It is of course unlikely that we could ascribe to the writers of political columns an influence like that Habermas attributed to the intellectuals and other rhetoricians in the early, bourgeois public sphere. If the percentage of traditional political discourse has dissipated within the contemporary public sphere, it follows that the relative

316 Devine, op. cit.

103 influence of those arguing political opinions in the media has declined with it. ‘The public’, it is often stated, are not as interested in conventional politics as in centuries, or decades, past.317 Hence, it is unclear whether political columnists, including ‘public intellectuals’, enjoy as significant a degree of power over public opinion as in times past.

A less controversial point is that pertaining to political columns’ relationship to the ‘political class’. While most agree that the public in general is not particularly engaged with public affairs, the political class by definition is. Political columnists, as a group, can be assumed to enjoy some influence over this class. And if we think of society as layered according to power, whether according to an ‘elites/non-elites’ model or something more sophisticated, then direct access to the top layer(s) affords influence even if total dissemination to the general public is low. Furthermore, as mentioned, it is not only a political class that reads the columns, but political leaders also. As Hohenberg’s abovementioned remarks indicate, direct access to leaders via these columns achieves for political columnists a more direct influence over the political process. They can bypass the court of public opinion and influence public policy directly.

I do not, however, want to discount altogether a broader influence over public opinion, nor to confine political columnists’ influence to the ‘political class’. Even if we are to accept that the public sphere’s political function has shrunk, we must acknowledge that remnants of it still exist (such as in the editorial section of the press). We should regard the influence of the newspapers and their columnists over public opinion as having diminished, but has not entirely dissipated.

C. Types of Political Columnist

(i) Political Columnists and the Persuasiveness of Status While to this point I have discussed political columnists as a unified category, the remainder of the thesis will consider a number of different types of political

317 According to Simon Cottle, “[e]lection turn-outs in liberal democracies regularly suggest that voting is in decline...”. Cottle, “TV Journalism and Deliberative Democracy: Mediating Communicative Action”, in Simon Cottle (ed), 2003, News, Public Relations and Power, London: Sage Publications, p.154

104 columnist. The rationale for such an exercise relates to the Aristotelian “character proofs” discussed in Chapter Two.

As discussed in Chapter Two, one of the three main types of proof available to rhetoricians, such as political columnists, is that of character. By developing the notion of a character proof, Aristotle highlighted that a large part of the way an opinion piece is received does not even relate to the article itself. Rather, we often make initial assumptions as to the validity of an argument before we begin reading it. And one of the most effectual elements of the written piece in this regard is its author. If an argument is advanced by someone with a pre-existing reputation of expertise, we are likely to afford it greater respect than one advanced by a person we hold in low regard or of whom we have no pre-existing opinion at all.

The name accompanying a column is also an important consideration for the newspaper carrying it. It is of course why they try to find columnists with some prestige, and to market the prestige of the columnists they find. It is why some newspapers’ online sites carry brief bios of their columnists stressing their professional excellence in a separate or past career and/or, if possible, their prominence as a public commentator. The Australian’s description of Paul Kelly is an excellent case in point, describing him as the “nation’s leading commentator and modern political historian”.318 The name accompanying a column, then, is an important factor not only in relation to the reception of the column itself; it is also important for the newspapers as they try to present themselves as both authoritative and as essential reading for those interested in public affairs.

Another way ‘character proof’ can be established is from a writer’s background. As different occupational backgrounds carry connotations of varying levels of expertise, one’s background can contribute to one’s credibility. By mentioning a columnists’ professional or institutional background, then, newspapers can contribute to the development of character proof. For on occasions when an author’s name is

318 The Australian, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/columnists/0,5977,pkelly^^TEXT^theaustralian,00.html; accessed 16/10/01

105 unfamiliar to the reader, their background may serve the function of establishing credibility.

Typically a columnist’s background is noted in a short note accompanying the column – as in “Gerard Henderson is executive director of the Sydney Institute” (The Sydney Morning Herald) or “Robert Manne is professor of politics at La Trobe University” (The Age). To take these two columnists as examples, status as a university professor or director of a research institute can establish credibility since most would interpret these backgrounds as reflecting intellectual authority on political, social and perhaps cultural matters.

Academics and policy researchers are but two of the backgrounds from where political columnists often come. The following section will discuss of such backgrounds, three of which will be discussed further in subsequent chapters.

(ii) Some Categories of Political Columnist in Australia It was mentioned earlier that in his 1998 book The American Newspaper Columnist, Sam G. Riley identified numerous categories of newspaper columnist. One of these, the “political pundit”, corresponds to what I have been calling simply the political columnist throughout this chapter. But while I have defined the political columnist as anyone, from any background, who writes a regular political column, Riley wrote of this type of writer as a journalist only. In his view, the political pundits were professional news workers. This included freelancers. For Riley, political pundits were not outsiders (such as academics, think tank researchers, politicians, lawyers etc) who wrote regular columns. These outsiders were something separate. This is reflected in his remark that “academics and other politically involved individuals” are “competing for space” with the political columnists, and that “the think tank pundit is a direct competitor of the political columnist.” He goes as far as to denigrate non-staff or non-journalist writers, describing them as “amateur pundits”.319 For this thesis, however, ‘political columnist’ covers anyone, from any background, who writes a regular column about politics or public affairs. There are, then, many different backgrounds from which political columnists can and do write.

319 Riley, op. cit., p.125

106 This thesis will concentrate on only three: the journalist, the academic, and the think tank pundit.

The Journalist As John Hartley (1995) has aptly demonstrated, defining the journalist is a complicated task, and many possible definitions exist.320 So let us simply define the ‘journalist’-columnist as someone whose principal profession is as a journalist and whose primarily employer is a news institution. They are professional news workers – not individuals from other professions who occasionally, or even regularly, write for the papers.

Because most journalists work for the papers day in day out, writing columns is often only part of what they do at their news institution. Many are still news-gatherers, or often editorial staff, but write a political column too. Often they are current or former correspondents from the Canberra Press Gallery. It seems an almost natural evolution for some journalists that they go from reporting politics to analysing and commenting on it.

One term used to describe such journalists-turned-political columnists is ‘journalist- pundit’. In The Media, Politics and Public Life (2004), Geoffrey Craig, drawing from American scholars Nimmo and Combs, defined the journalist-pundit as being “able to express opinions through a regular column in the newspaper”, and as someone who is “an authority on political affairs, [who] has good access to political circles, and is a ‘source of opinion-formation and opinion-articulation, agenda-setting and agenda-evaluation’.”321

As we shall see next chapter, while many political journalists become political commentators, few actually become ‘journalist-pundits’. Few use their column to clearly express personal opinions – at least not on the merits (or lack thereof) of public policy. Most political commentators do evaluate public policy at some time or another, but typically the criteria against which they judge it is not the ‘national

320 John Hartley, “Journalism and Modernity”, Australian Journal of Communication, Vol. 22 (2), 1995, p.20 321 Craig, op. cit., pp.80-1

107 interest’ or ‘social justice’. Rather, policy is often evaluated only for its potential political impact. Social implications are commonly neglected or downplayed. As Julianne Schultz has observed, political commentators in Australia tend to “evaluat[e] and speculat[e] on the theatre of politics, rather than addres[s] the substance of policy.”322

Some Australian political journalists who do use their column to function as a ‘pundit’ include The Sydney Morning Herald’s Alan Ramsey and Margo Kingston, The Age’s Kenneth Davidson and Pamela Bone, and The Australian’s Paul Kelly. Others who write important political analyses but do not act so clearly as ‘pundits’ include Channel Nine and The Bulletin’s Laurie Oakes, The Age’s Michelle Grattan, and The Australian’s Glenn Milne. This matter shall be examined in more depth next chapter.

The Academic Unlike many political journalists, when academics contribute political analyses to the press they generally offer personal opinions. Hence, if we accept, contra Riley, that academics can potentially be political columnists, then most academics who write political analyses for the papers could be considered columnists rather than commentators. It is far less common, however, for academics to act as political columnists than for journalists. This is simply because more journalists produce political commentaries than do academics. Journalists also produce more regular commentaries. While on any given week there may be several academics contributing to the press, most will not have a regular spot. And this is understandable. Much political commentary entails comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge of political developments. Political journalists, whose primary occupation is to know what’s going on in Canberra, have an obvious advantage over those, such as academics, who have other professional obligations and who don’t always have the time to keep abreast of the latest in public affairs. There are several other factors ensuring academics are less regular contributors to the papers however. These will be investigated further in Chapter Seven. La Trobe University’s Robert Manne is an example of an academic political commentator in Australia. Others from the recent

322 Schultz, op. cit., p.140

108 past or who write semi-frequently include Sydney University’s Catharine Lumby, Macquarie University’s McKenzie Wark, Dennis Altman from La Trobe, and Australian National University’s John Warhurst (for the Canberra Times).

The Think Tank Pundit A third columnist to be discussed in this thesis is the think tank pundit. The term comes from Sam G. Riley’s The American Newspaper Columnist (1998).323 It will suffice for our present discussion. Though the label is borrowed from Riley, as mentioned, he did not actually view this type of writer as a “political columnist” at all; the “think tank pundit is a direct competitor of the political columnist.”324

There are several similarities between think tank pundits and academic columnists. Both conduct research as part of their primary occupation, though academics also teach, and both tend to write for the press infrequently. Accordingly, only a handful of the think tank pundits who write for the papers have a regular column. Much like academics, when think tank pundits do write for the press they tend to provide opinion-based copy. According to Wendy Wedge, they “tend to be nasty, brutish and aggressive.”325 In this regard they are quite unlike many academic contributors. Stuart McIntyre and Anna Clark have suggested this tendency has enabled think tank researcher-commentators to obtain greater access to the press. They claimed that while most academics are “unused to the polemical style [the media] practices”, “The history warriors [many of whom are from think tanks] provide good copy. They tell a simple story with great certainty, assuage unease and put the pedants in their place.”326 For reasons to be discussed in Chapter Nine, think tank pundits are also, as a general rule, right-wing conservatives. The Sydney Institute’s Gerard Henderson is perhaps Australia’s highest-profile think tank pundit. Another example is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Hugh White. Both write for the Sydney Morning Herald.

323 Riley, op. cit., p.125 324 Ibid. 325 Wendy Wedge, “Anti-democratic conservative commentators”, http://www.crikey.com.au/columnists/2002/01/21-endyrayevans.print.html (Accessed 27 May 2004) 326 Stuart McIntyre and Anna Clark, “Crusaders drive this war”, The Australian, 8 September 2003, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,7197245,00.html (Accessed 12 October 2004)

109 Conclusions: other categories These are but three types of professional that contribute to the opinion pages of the Australian press. One could identify commentators with backgrounds in, for instance, economics or business, religion, law, among others. In general, political commentators have a background in one or another profession. Because of their expertise, professionals are more likely than a non-professional to be commissioned to comment on a matter of public impact. For instance, a prominent businessman may be asked to write on finance or economics; an educator on education; a scientist on new technology, a new discovery, or a looming environmental threat; a doctor on healthcare or disease; a lawyer on legal and judicial matters – the list could go on. However, rarely are such commentators broad enough in their scope or engaged enough with public policy to properly be considered political commentators.

Economists are a good case in point. As Michael Pusey noted in Economic Rationalism in Canberra (1991), economists became increasingly prominent in the newspapers during the 1970s and 1980s. They remain prominent commentators in the press. However, while they often comment on policy and public affairs, their focus is rather singular and their scope narrow. They opine on economic and financial matters, but generally ignore social policy and anything else not directly related to economics. They are better categorised as economics columnists rather than political columnists. Some examples of this kind of columnist include Ross Gittens, Richard Ackland, Peter Hartcher and (until recently) Paddy McGuinness from the Sydney Morning Herald; Terry McCrann from the Herald Sun; Alan Mitchell from the Australian Financial Review; Mark Westfield and Alan Wood from The Australian.

Someone like Janet Albrechtsen, columnist for The Australian, is an example of a writer from a specific professional background, law, who can be considered a political columnist because she comments on a wide range of public affairs issues. Another political columnist for The Australian who could be considered to fit into a ‘miscellaneous’ category is former Howard speech-writer and current Adelaide Review editor Christopher Pearson.

110 Another type of public commentator is the self-funded columnist; the columnist of independent means. One would expect this pundit to be a professional writer most commonly; one who generates income solely from publishing his or her work. As Robert Dessaix mentions, writers are perhaps the closest any type of intellectual or public commentator comes to being completely independent. And this depends on being published. There are perhaps fewer of such commentators in Australia than in larger countries like the United States. In America, with so many newspapers and newspaper markets, columnists can be syndicated far and wide, possibly living just off their political commentaries, and perhaps other writing projects. In Australia there are few self-funded columnists, at least not with a regular column. Most operate from a position within some kind of institution, such as those discussed throughout the chapter. Writer/publisher Michael Duffy, columnist for The Courier-Mail, is one of the rare examples of this kind of political columnist in Australia.

The following chapters will investigate three types of political columnist, distinguished by background. Chapter Five looks at the journalist political columnist through an analysis of Paul Kelly; Chapter Seven at the academic political columnist through Robert Manne; and Chapter Nine at the think tank political columnist through Gerard Henderson. Chapters Six, Eight and Ten examine Kelly, Manne and Henderson as public intellectuals in more detail, offering comprehensive overviews of their contribution to Australian public intellectual life over the past two decades.

111

PART TWO

A. CATEGORIES OF PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

B. ANALYSES OF THREE AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS

112 Chapter 5: The Journalist as Public Intellectual – A Case Study of Paul Kelly

Introduction Paul Kelly is one of Australia’s premier political journalists. As this chapter argues, he is also a public intellectual. Through a case study of Kelly’s public commentary, this chapter examines whether political journalists are, or sometimes act, as public intellectuals.

A vast amount of research has explored the roles journalists perform in society. Very little published work, however, has considered whether in performing these roles journalists also act as intellectuals. One notable Australian study in this vein is Pat Buckridge’s 1999 essay, “Editors as Intellectuals”. Through three Twentieth Century case studies, Brian Penton, John Douglas Pringle and Paul Kelly, Buckridge considered whether some editors were intellectuals. He concluded that these three editors/journalists did act as intellectuals, even by the more narrow definitions of the category. It was therefore possible, even according to the qualitative approaches, for journalists to be intellectuals.

This analysis of Kelly will differ to Buckridge’s in a number of ways. For a start it will focus on Kelly’s activities as a political journalist, not as a successful editor for The Australian. It will also explore Kelly’s political journalism, specifically his political commentary, in greater depth than was necessary in Buckridge’s study. It does so with a view to understanding whether other political journalists, not just Kelly, are public intellectuals. Buckridge wanted to know whether some editors were intellectuals. This study wants to discover whether all political journalists are public intellectuals, and, if not, the circumstances in which some can be. Finally, this analysis is to examine a specific type of intellectual, the public intellectual.

The Political Journalist as Public Intellectual, Part 1 In his “Editors as Intellectuals” essay, Pat Buckridge says there are two “distinct conceptions of the intellectual”. These are the “broad conception, including everyone in the society who ‘works with ideas’” and the “narrower, more ‘qualitative’

113 conception...that emphasises learning, contemplation, critique and evaluation of the Big Questions in human life”.327

As Buckridge observes, the first view is so broad that all journalists can be considered intellectuals because they ‘work with ideas’ or, as Brian Head and Eric Louw put it, ‘make meaning’. Far fewer journalists meet the standards set by the second conception though. Among those rejecting the notion that political journalists act as public intellectuals are some prominent political journalists themselves. For instance, in a journalism discussion forum at the University of Queensland in April 2004, Paul Kelly and The Age’s Michelle Grattan argued against considering journalists intellectuals because, essentially, the intellectual is a more learned and perhaps brilliant thinker than are most journalists. At this forum Kelly and Grattan delivered independent assessments of the ‘journalists as public intellectuals’ question, but arrived at similar conclusions. They supported the narrow definition and felt ill at ease with the thought that the term may describe them. Kelly even stated that he did not like the term. Buckridge has noted a similar reaction in his essay, mentioning Kelly is “uncomfortable with ‘intellectual’ as a self-descriptive term, and sees it as slightly alien to both traditional Australian egalitarianism and journalistic pragmatism”.328

Though they did not like to classify journalists as public intellectuals, Kelly and Grattan both conceded (and lamented) that an increasing number of journalists were posing as intellectuals in the opinion pages of the nation’s press. Grattan in particular complained of the emergence of the ‘celebrity journalist’, who was akin to the ‘shock jocks’, like John Laws and Alan Jones, in having become known for a particular (controversial) perspective. She mentioned the Sun Herald’s Andrew Bolt and the Sydney Morning Herald’s Miranda Devine as examples. She attributed the emergence of celebrity journalists to the commercial benefits they provide their newspapers. They are “hot property” because they manage to develop a following. Their opinions, therefore, are valued for their commercial rewards, not because they are particularly enlightened. This point offers one explanation for why the opinion

327 Pat Buckridge, “Editors as Intellectuals”, in Anne Curthoys and Julianne Schultz (eds.), 1999, Journalism: Print, Politics and Popular Culture, University of Queensland Press, p.185 328 Ibid., pp.199-200

114 pages, along with the supplementary sections, are increasingly important to newspapers. They offer something the electronic media, particularly television, generally does not.

Both Kelly and Grattan advocated that the nation’s opinion pages feature less opinionated journalists and more bone fide intellectuals. Too many ill-informed journalists lent their views to public debates. In Kelly’s words, there is “too much noise, not enough light”. He attributed the fact that media personalities often pass as public intellectuals in Australia to a dearth of genuine intellectual depth in the country. He predicted that as Australia matures more genuine intellectuals will emerge, and welcomed the creation of more think tanks in Australia.

Among journalists themselves, therefore, there is resistance to notions that journalists function as public intellectuals in Australia. There appears to be a tendency to view intellectuals in quite traditional (and narrow) terms. However, as outlined in Chapter Two, though this dissertation’s adopted model tries to narrow the category of ‘the intellectual’ from broader approaches, it is not as exclusive as the ‘qualitative approach’. It claimed a middle ground between the narrow and the broad approaches. On the one hand it recognised that when people talk about ‘intellectuals’ they generally mean someone of advanced understanding. The broad approach seemed to relegate quality of thought too far for the category to refer to something truly distinct. On the other hand, the adopted approach acknowledged that society’s most influential persons and social groups were not always the most enlightened. It also saw in the qualitative approaches the tendency to judge intellectuality according to the political position or ideology one subscribed to.

The conception of the public intellectual this study endorsed was a slight modification of Robert Dessaix’s definition from Speaking Their Minds (1998). Following Dessaix, the public intellectual was defined according to four distinct but often interrelated criteria. The public intellectual possesses: (1) independence and (2) expertise; he or she engages in (3) social and political critique of matters of public concern; and (4) performs this role regularly in public.

115

The Political Journalist as Public Intellectual, Part 2: Paul Kelly Paul Kelly has been an esteemed member of the Australian journalism community for over a quarter of a century. After graduating from Sydney University in the late 1960s, he served in the Prime Minister’s Department from 1969 to 1971. In 1971 he entered journalism as a reporter for Rupert Murdoch’s Australian, and was appointed the paper’s Chief Political Correspondent in 1974. He left the Murdoch stable in 1976 to become Chief Political Correspondent for the National Times. This was shortly after The Australian’s infamous campaign against the Whitlam Labor Government in late 1975, in Rupert Murdoch was notoriously interventionist. Kelly became the National Times’ Deputy Editor in 1978. He returned to a purer political journalism role in 1981 when he joined The Sydney Morning Herald as its Chief Political Correspondent. In 1985 he returned to The Australian as National Affairs Editor. He has been with the paper ever since, serving as Editor-in-Chief from (1991- 1996), International Editor (1996-2002), and ‘Editor-at-large’ from 2002.329

Kelly has earned several prestigious accolades from his journalism work. In 1990 he was named Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year330, and in 2001 he received Walkley awards for both “Journalism Leadership” and “Commentary, Analysis, Opinion and Critique”.331

In addition to role as a political journalist, Kelly has been involved in various traditionally ‘intellectual’ activities. He has published six highly regarded books, including the influential The End of Certainty (1992), and has been involved in a number of Australian think tanks, including the Australia-Indonesia Institute, the Brisbane Institute and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. Like other prominent journalists such as Michelle Grattan, he has also acquired an honorary adjunct professorship. He has been Adjunct Professor of Journalism at the University

329 Ibid., p.199; Brisbane Institute Website, http://www.brisinst.org.au/people/kelly_p.html, (Accessed October 16, 2001); The Australian website http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/columnists/0,5977,pkelly^^TEXT^theaustralian,00.html, (Accessed August 8, 2003) 330 The Australian website, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,1858566%255E12251,00.html (Accessed October 3, 2004) 331 Walkley Awards website, http://www.walkleys.com/2001/index.htm (Accessed September 13, 2004)

116 of Queensland. He has also received an “honorary Doctorate of Letters” from the University of New South Wales.332 Kelly also occasionally gives public lectures on social and political issues and participates in public policy conferences.333 In 2002 Kelly was “a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School of Government and a visiting lecturer at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University” in the USA.334

Obviously his involvement in institutions traditionally considered to be the domain of ‘intellectuals’ supports the idea that he too is one. Yet since this case study seeks to illuminate the possibility of the political journalist fulfilling an intellectual role, the proceeding analysis will focus primarily on his contributions as a journalist rather than his extra-journalistic work. In examining whether his political journalism, particularly his political commentary, is a public intellectual activity, the four criteria outlined above shall be applied: (1) independence, (2) expertise, (3) social and political critique, and (4) public performance.

1. Independence Independence is a major consideration in most treatises on the ‘intellectual’. It is also a common theme in journalism studies. However, as an earlier discussion illustrated, it seldom emerges as a serious consideration when the question of ‘journalists as intellectuals’ is discussed. Kelly, Grattan and Buckridge were all preoccupied with whether journalists were expert enough. Independence is, nonetheless, one of the most problematic considerations in this matter.

Journalists’ independence from various external, usually commercial, forces is one of the commonly discussed issues in journalism theory and practice. Some of the most emphasised external influences are: news sources, audiences, advertisers and, perhaps most famously, ‘media barons’. Many media and journalism theorists maintain that a journalist’s autonomy is often, if not generally, undermined by these external forces. Theorists to have articulated this view include Pierre Bourdieu,

332 Crikey.com, http://www.crikey.com.au/columnists/2002/08/11-honorarydocs.html (Accessed 4 June 2004) 333 Brisbane Institute Website, op. cit. 334 University of Sydney website, http://www.usyd.edu.au/grad_school_govt/council.shtml (Accessed 4 June 2004)

117 Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Ben Bagdikian, Peter Golding and Graham Murdock, Julianne Schultz and Brian McNair.335

If this is indeed the case, if journalistic independence is indeed compromised, journalism would appear an unlikely profession in which to find public intellectuals. But against this view, others believe journalists do actually possess a significant degree of autonomy. For some, ‘critical perspectives’ on the media are little more than (left-wing) conspiracy theories. And for the past decade or two, the fashion within media and cultural studies has been to ‘move beyond’ these old conspiracy theories. Even Australia’s chief media regulator, the Australian Broadcasting Authority – or at least its chairman, Professor David Flint – believes media ownership and other external influences have only a minor influence on journalists. Most of the time, it is journalists that influence journalists.336

It is therefore appropriate to examine this independence question in a little more depth. To addressing the issue I will explore just one of the nominated external influences on journalists – the ‘media baron’. Media proprietors are the central external influence upon journalists since it is they – or management personnel working on their behalf – who have the final say on what can or cannot be published, or who does and does not work in a news institution. As Rupert Murdoch famously suggested, “the buck stops with the guy who signs the checks”.337 The other influences, such as sources, advertisers and audiences, are peripheral to this central relationship, though they do of course impact upon it immensely.

Having been five years Editor-in-chief of The Australian, six years its International Editor and currently its Editor-at-large, Kelly is not likely to have his independence curtailed by intermediaries in the ‘journalist-proprietor’ relationship – he is one of

335 See, for instance, Julianne Schultz, 1998, Reviving the Fourth Estate: Democracy, Accountability & the Media, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.139; Brian McNair, 1998, The Sociology of Journalism, p.61; Pierre Bourdieu, 1996, On Television and Journalism, London: Pluto Press, p.68- 69; and various contributors to Howard Tumber’s News: A Reader, 1999, New York: Oxford University Press, including Chomsky and Herman, Ben Bagdikian, and Peter Golding and Graham Murdock. 336 David Flint, “How news is made in Australia – some personal views”, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1119 (Accessed 3 October 2004) 337 This quote can be found on various websites via a Google search. See for example http://en.thinkexist.com/quotation/In_motivating_people-you-ve_got_to_engage_their/224749.html (Accessed 3 October 2004)

118 them. The independence issue for Kelly, therefore, depends solely on his relationship with News Corporation’s management, if not Australia’s most (in)famous press baron himself, Rupert Murdoch.

The Archetypal Press Baron In his 1988 book The Captive Press, David Bowman argued that all editors and journalists are obliged to satisfy media proprietors to some extent, and this is particularly the case for employees of The Australian’s proprietor Rupert Murdoch – “the archetypal press baron”.338 Murdoch’s editors, he suggested, “must see eye to eye with the proprietor to survive”339, and consequently “do their damnedest to put his policies into effect, since that is one of the key performances by which they are judged”.340 “Editors knew pretty well what Murdoch stood for, knew they had to please him, and knew the penalty for stepping out of line”.341

As Bowman notes, Murdoch has openly admitted, if not bragged, that he curtails the independence of his journalists and editors. Some of the more remarkable Murdoch quotes he provides include: “Of course I intervene...a publisher cannot abdicate his responsibilities to an editor”; “In 1972 I ran all of the election policies of my papers in Australia”; and “I give instructions to my editors all round the world”.342 The most famous case of Murdoch’s heavy-handed proprietorship in Australia was his papers’ bias against the Whitlam Government in 1975. As William Shawcross, Murdoch’s unofficial biographer, comments:

During the [1975] election campaign The Australian’s coverage was not totally one-sided, but it clearly favoured Fraser. The paper published misleading unemployment figures, and many of Murdoch’s journalists on both The Australian and the Daily Telegraph became convinced that their copy was being slanted by the sub editors.343

He notes that many journalists complained against the obvious bias and even went on strike, but to no avail.

338 David Bowman, 1988, The Captive Press, Ringwood: Penguin, p.105 339 Ibid., p.141 340 Ibid., p.105 341 Ibid., p.143 342 Ibid., p.100 343 William Shawcross, 1992, Murdoch, Melbourne: Pan Books, p.171

119

Against the “Murdoch apologists” who claim Rupert simply “could not spare the time to intervene on such a scale”, Bowman suggests he “doesn’t need it”.344 He says Murdoch’s power is more invisible – editors and journalists have some idea of what he stands for and wants published, and that they generally seek to replicate it. Bowman paraphrases a former Murdoch editor, Ita Buttrose, who commented in her autobiography that in Murdoch publications journalists are “afflicted by [an] all- pervading invisible presence...They worked with a query hanging over their heads: would Rupert like this?”345 For journalists and editors, then, particularly Murdoch employees, independence appears to be limited.

Journalists on Media Barons and Independence Written in 1988, Bowman’s analysis runs of the risk of being a dated piece – particularly considering Murdoch’s profile has grown immensely since then and his Australian operations constitute a rather small share of his overall operations. However, recent remarks from some high profile journalists are instructive on this matter and affirm the contemporary relevance of Bowman’s 1988 thesis.

The views of Paul Kelly on this question are obviously particularly helpful. At the aforementioned 2004 UQ journalism forum, Kelly offered some blunt admissions on media ownership and media power. According to Kelly, upon becoming The Australian’s editor-in-chief in 1991 he was flown to the USA to meet with News Limited chief executive Rupert Murdoch to “sort out” the paper’s editorial position. This was done via a meeting of several hours. Kelly found Murdoch a good person to deal with.346

At this forum Kelly further discussed proprietorial power in relation to The Australian’s support for the Iraq War. He explained that News Corporation organisations throughout the world met before the war to decide upon a unified editorial position. He notes that all Murdoch papers have followed it. He did not explain exactly how the ‘Murdoch line’ was implemented at ground level, but his

344 Bowman, op. cit., p.144 345 Ibid., p.105 346 Paul Kelly, seminar/forum discussion, Challenges of Journalism in the 21st Century (conference), University of Queensland, 22 April 2004

120 revelations about his own editorship suggest individual editors are notified of the editorial position and are expected to follow it. Indeed, he commented that the editor’s job was to keep the proprietor happy and, accordingly, s/he is obliged to realise the proprietor’s vision. He noted for this reason it is best that the editor be sympathetic to the proprietor’s editorial position.347

At the same forum, Michelle Grattan told an anecdote about editorial writing for Kerry Stokes’ Canberra Times years ago. She recalled that in one instance, but only one instance, she subjugated her own view when writing an editorial because it was contrary to the proprietor’s. She says she ‘softened’ her editorial in favour of freer media ownership laws because she knew Stokes opposed them. This was the correct decision, she argued, because the proprietor has “the right” to decide the paper’s editorial policy.348 In light of Kelly’s remarks suggesting editorial appointments are, to some extent, political appointments, instances like this in which an editor, or for that matter any columnist, feels pressured to push a line contrary to his/her own would be fairly uncommon however.

The Power of the Journalist In all industries, different employees experience different working conditions. Employees judged to be more valuable than most are generally able to demand better working conditions – better jobs, better pay, and often more autonomy. Surely this operates, to some extent, within journalism also. Prestigious journalists can demand, and receive, greater salaries and better jobs than their peers. The relevant question here is, of course: Can they demand greater freedoms also?

In his book The Courtesans (1990), former conservative political advisor, Derek Parker, appears to allude to this point in relation to the Canberra Press Gallery. Against Left conspiracy theories of all-powerful media barons, Parker suggests that because news organisations also depend on journalists, not just the other way round, journalists have been able to attain quite a lot of independence – too much in his view. Parker argues that because journalists are the key to a news organisation’s

347 Ibid., 348 Michelle Grattan, seminar/forum discussion, Challenges of Journalism in the 21st Century (conference), University of Queensland, 22 April 2004

121 profitability, corporations like News Limited waive the right to intervene and control their journalists. To do so may motivate these assets to move elsewhere, thereby jeopardising the corporation’s profitability.

[J]ournalists such as Paul Kelly, Michelle Grattan, and Laurie Oakes are publicly identified as knowledgeable and authoritative. Their by-lines can help to sell newspapers or magazines, or draw an audience for a radio or television program. For instance, when Paul Kelly took up his position as chief political writer of the Australian, the newspaper published it as a front- page story headlined ‘The Incomparable Paul Kelly’, with a short biography and a picture of Kelly in a visionary pose. He, like other senior journalists, is seen by the company that employs him as an asset; a sensible proprietor would understand that to interfere in the work of such an asset for partisan reasons would endanger the company’s profitability.349

Parker’s thesis proceeds to claim that because some journalists are valued assets and can claim higher degrees of independence, all press gallery journalists are therefore free. With other conservatives, Parker suggests that journalists are a ‘herd’ that leads itself about and effectively holds proprietors to ransom. This is the view emphasised by Professor Flint from the ABA. Though even Press Gallery journalists (eg. Grattan) acknowledge some truth in the ‘herd’ theory, the portrait of a free-floating journalism community is rather dubious. Furthermore, Parker’s point about partisan bias rather than a broader ideological bias misses the point of more sophisticated critiques of media power. A detailed discussion of these points is unnecessary here though.

What Parker’s thesis does point out, though, is that intervention can backfire on ‘media barons’. Perhaps Australia’s most famous case in point, at least in the last thirty years, was the Murdoch papers’ aforementioned bias against the Whitlam Government in 1975. Murdoch’s partisan campaign against Whitlam in The Australian undoubtedly contributed to the Fraser Liberals’ election victory (even if only to its magnitude), but it also significantly reduced the paper’s circulation. Shawcross notes that the affair hurt the paper’s credibility, but perhaps more devastatingly, “scores of journalists cleared their desks and left”. He says the paper “lost its soul” because of the resignations and seven years would pass before it would

349 Derek Parker, 1990, The Courtesans, North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, p.9

122 break even again.350 There is a real danger, therefore, in trying to curtail journalists’ autonomy and professional integrity; proprietors also rely on journalists.

Paul Kelly was one of the journalists who left The Australian after Murdoch’s interventionism. This makes his return to The Australian in 1985 rather interesting. Had something changed in the meantime? Had Murdoch loosened his grip? Had Kelly sold out? Or converted to the Murdoch ideology? Given Kelly’s aforementioned statements about his editorship of the Australian and interaction with Murdoch, there are actually decent grounds to conclude that Kelly’s return was based, at least in part, on an ideological affinity with the Murdoch vision. But as Shawcross has noted, Kelly was also able to negotiate with Murdoch to ensure that he could operate with autonomy. According to Shawcross, Kelly “demanded and received guarantees of independence; Kelly was told that he could write precisely what he wanted, and that promise had been honoured”.351 In 1988 journalist Max Suich described Kelly as “an example of an independent-minded journalist who can flourish under Murdoch, and who routinely disagrees with The Australian’s editorial opinions and gets front-page leads for his insolence”.352 Kelly’s example therefore affirms Parker’s thesis about the value to ‘media barons’ of prestigious journalists. It shows that such journalists can demand and receive independence.

Rupert Murdoch and Paul Kelly: Peas in a Pod Though Suich describes Kelly as often having disagreed with The Australian’s editorial policies, there are few occasions when this seems to have been the case in recent years – perhaps over the past decade or so. His views are remarkably similar to Murdoch’s on a number of issues.

Bowman summarises Murdoch’s political and social thought thus:

He pursues a world in which good capitalism advances against evil communism, where capital holds greater sway than now, and labour correspondingly less. ‘Deregulation’ is a recent discovery for some people, but Murdoch has applied himself to it in one form or another for

350 Shawcross, op. cit., pp.168-173 351 Ibid., p.438 352 Max Suich, “The power to change, and the power to prevent progress: it’s Murdoch’s choice”, The Sydney Morning Herald, October 17, 1988, p.21

123 years...Essentially he wants smaller and smaller government, which means government with less power to intervene and to control business, and with less money and power generally...What Australia needs, he says, is a couple of thousand more millionaires...The removal of many controls on the Australian financial system was a major step along the Murdoch road...The next great objective is the deregulation of the labour market...It is imperative, he believes, for the English-speaking countries to stick together, and keep their defences strong. Implicit here is that we must follow the leader, America.353

As shall be seen next chapter, Kelly has championed discourses akin to the Murdoch vision in his commentaries for The Australian. Like Murdoch, Kelly seems over the years to have drifted from an early left-liberal position, sympathetic to Whitlam, to a right-wing approach not dissimilar to contemporary neoconservativism.

Kelly’s earlier point about editorialists, and by extension opinion columnists, needing to be sympathetic to their proprietor’s editorial position gives an insight into how in some circumstances journalistic autonomy coexists harmoniously with proprietorial interests. Rather than employ difficult journalists with unacceptable opinions, it may be more prudent for the media baron to appoint like-minded and therefore cooperative people to key editorial and opinion writing positions. It is the easiest and most efficient way to ensure the paper runs as desired. In such situations the journalist acquires intellectual autonomy, albeit a licensed autonomy, and is able to express honestly held beliefs. The licensed nature of the relationship, however, means journalistic autonomy could alter should other circumstances arise – such as a shift in the journalist’s views, the proprietor’s views, advertisers’ or audience tastes, among other factors. The fact that Paul Kelly shares many views with his proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, suggests that though he is still responsible to his employer, he is able to work autonomously. The fact that Kelly returned to The Australian in 1985 on the condition that he could operate autonomously strengthens this conclusion.

Hence, though News Corporation/Rupert Murdoch employs Kelly and has the final say as to what he can publish, his prestige equips him the power to demand intellectual autonomy. The consistency between the views expressed in his books and his journalism support this conclusion. This means that, despite belonging to an

353 Bowman, op. cit., pp.103-104

124 occupation in which independence is generally understood to be threatened by various factors, Kelly satisfies the first criterion of the public intellectual. His example suggests further that it is at least possible that other journalists are ‘independent’ too. However, given that independence appears not to be guaranteed, but demanded and won, and available only to those able to convert prestige into bargaining power, this would be the exception rather than the rule. Another thing Kelly’s example suggests is that, contra Parker, journalistic independence is also often linked to a journalist’s ideological acceptability to their proprietor.

2. Expertise As previously stated, the common focal point in discussions of the ‘journalists-public intellectuals’ question is whether journalists are sufficiently enlightened to be genuine (public) intellectuals. Are journalists real experts? Crucial here is what is meant by expertise. We are all experts on something. What expertise separates the public intellectual from everybody else?

It is unlikely that many would dispute the notion that political journalists understand the political process far better than most. Political Journalists are recognised experts in this field. Some would be higher authorities on the subject too. In this sense it is possible to say that some political journalists, so long as they are autonomous, are ‘intellectuals’ – bone fide authorities on politics.

However, it was established in Chapter Two that public intellectuals took as their subject the ‘public good’. This is the third criterion of the category. Hence, it is not on just any matter that public intellectuals are experts, nor is it in specific fields of enquiry. Public intellectuals are generally understood to be experts on a wide range of topics relevant to the public good. Accordingly, though many political journalists are bone fide experts on the Australian political system, few of them would possess the well-rounded expertise required of the public intellectual. This may be implied the narrow scope of political journalists’ commentaries, but more on that later.

As Pat Buckridge has commented, Paul Kelly is one political journalist whose expertise extends beyond politics and encompasses many key social issues. Many recognise him as an expert on social and political issues, and by most accounts he

125 enjoys eminent status within Australian political culture. According to The Australian’s website, he is “universally recognised as the nation’s leading commentator and modern political historian” and writes with “unmatched authority on national and international issues”.354 Recently The Australian also included him as the only political commentator in its list of “Our [Australia’s] 40 Most Influential People”. The Australian suggested his status as “the pre-eminent media analyst of Australian politics and our relation to the world” meant he “helps to inform the opinions of Australia’s power elite”.355 Coming from The Australian such acclaim should be treated with some caution, but one feels such propositions could not be made if they did not sound at least reasonable to a significant number of people. Indeed, such status has been accredited to Kelly by more objective, even rival sources. In The Sydney Morning Herald in 1998, Max Suich observed that Kelly’s commentary “is widely read by politicians, business people and other journalists”.356 In 2001 the Australian Financial Review listed Kelly as one of the 10 “most culturally powerful Australians” for his leading role in public debate.357 Likewise, The Reader, a weekly subscription newsletter, listed Kelly as number eight on its list of the nation’s top fifty political columnists in June 2003. Kelly’s inclusion was based on the fact that he, “[l]ike [Laurie] Oakes, [has] seen it all and commands immense respect.” The Reader said: “if Oakes is The Insider, Kelly is more like The Observer, standing at a decent distance from the fray and offering a kind of oracular analysis that’s more about the sweep of history than it is about the moment.”358

Kelly, with other eminent journalists like Michelle Grattan, also appears quite regularly for guest commentaries in the broadcast media.359 Every Sunday he does a commentary piece on ABC TV’s Insiders. In 2001 the ABC also screened a five-part documentary he wrote and presented on one hundred years of Australian federation, 100 Years: The Australian Story. In 1990 Gerard Henderson wryly observed that

354 The Australian, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/columnists/0,5977,pkelly^^TEXT^theaustralian,00.html (Accessed 16/10/01) 355 “Our 40 Most Influential People”, The Weekend Australian, July 17, 2004, p.13 356 Suich, op. cit. 357 Brook Turner, “The 10 most culturally powerful Australians”, Australian Financial Review, September 27, 2002, p.28 358 “Australia’s Top 50 Columnists”, The Reader, June 2003, p.20 359 Parker, op. cit., p.29

126 Kelly, among a small cohort of elite political correspondents, is “as over-exposed as the politicians upon whom they constantly report.”360

Kelly is also an esteemed member of the journalism industry. As mentioned, he has been awarded Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year (1990) and has received two Walkley Awards. He has also been accredited with rescuing The Australian upon becoming editor in 1991. For instance, though they complained that his editorial style was “interventionist” and “dictatorial”, Sydney Morning Herald journalists Margo Kingston and Michael Millet conceded in 1996 that “Kelly resurrected the reputation of a paper struggling for an identity amid a revolving door of editors.”361 According to Margaret Simons, under his editorship the paper “was regarded by print journalists as the best in Australia”.362

Kelly is also invariably cited as being a ‘leader’ within the Canberra Press Gallery. Fellow political commentator Margo Kingston has described him as “possibly the most influential political journalist of his generation”.363 In 1993 Gerard Henderson claimed, “Paul Kelly has enormous influence on his former colleagues in the Parliamentary Press Gallery and on those journalists who arrived in Canberra after he left”.364 He also commented that “[h]is book The End of Certainty…had a considerable influence on journalists, editors and producers.”365 According to various sources, including Henderson, the Canberra press gallery operates under the direction of a small handful of ‘leaders’ of opinion, whom other gallery journalists follow like a ‘herd’ or ‘pack’.366 Other typically cited leaders, at least according to studies in the 1990s, are Laurie Oakes, Michelle Grattan, Alan Ramsey and Glenn Milne.367 In Fit to Print (1999), Margaret Simons says these leaders are (or were once) referred to as

360 Gerard Henderson, “Canberra’s pecking order worth debating”, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 20, 1990, p.11 361 Margo Kingston and Michael Millett, “Kelly slips as the son rises”, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 23, 1996, p.38 362 Margaret Simons, 1999, Fit to Print, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, p.25 363 Kingston and Millett, op. cit. 364 Gerard Henderson, Media Watch, No. 25, January-March 1993, p.6 365 Ibid., p.5 366 Parker, op. cit, pp.24-27; Simons, op. cit., p.23; Trish Payne, 1999, The Canberra Press Gallery and the Backbench of the 38th Parliament 1996-98, Canberra: Dept. of the Parliamentary Library, Information and Research Services p.30; Gerard Henderson, “Canberra’s pecking order worth debating”, op. cit. 367 Parker, op. cit., p.24; Simons, op. cit., p.23

127 ‘God correspondents’.368 The remarks of some of his fellow ‘God correspondents’ suggest that Kelly is well regarded within this small elite group also. Alan Ramsey has described him as “at his best [a] wordsmith and analyst without peer among those who make their living observing and reporting national politics”, and Laurie Oakes described his The Hawke Ascendency (1984) as “a superb account of dramatic political events”.369

As discussed, Parker noted that pre-eminent journalists like Kelly are also highly regarded as ‘experts’ within the broader society – or at least the newspaper reading public and the political class (in short, Dessaix’s “educated public”). Indeed, Kelly is a regular feature in the paper’s promotion, most commonly via his name, article title and sometimes his face appearing on the front-page banner. In a television campaign from the early-2000s, The Australian aired one advertisement devoted solely to boasting about Kelly’s eminence.

Finally, Kelly’s role itself is immediately suggestive of expertise. As Dessaix remarks of prominent media intellectuals:

In some practical sense…intellectuals must be understood to be speaking from a position of far greater than average knowledge and understanding of their field. Why else single them out for their insights?370

In being socially licensed to regularly comment, publicly, on matters of the public good, Kelly’s expertise would appear to be implicitly recognised by the broader society.

3. Social Critique As Buckridge observed, Kelly qualifies as an expert in social and especially political matters. Whether the same can be said of other journalists depends on the individual case. Many apparently do not meet this criterion, however. This is because, though political journalists, or at least more senior or respected members of the press gallery, could be considered bone fide experts on Australian politics, not all of them

368 Simons, op. cit, pp.8, 23-27 369 Alan Ramsey and Laurie Oakes in Paul Kelly, 1992, The End of Certainty, St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, p.ii 370 Robert Dessaix, 1998, Speaking Their Minds, Sydney: ABC Books, pp.7-8

128 demonstrate an expertise on the ‘public good’. And this, of course, is that on which the ‘public intellectual’ is supposed to be an authority.

Australian political journalists, as a group, have been criticised often for their tendency to disregard policy through their obsession with the political process. In The Courtesans, for instance, Parker commented that for political journalists “the game is all”; their “concern is with the mechanics of power, not its uses”. He noted that “policies are means” to political journalists, “the political contest itself is the end”.371 Margaret Simons makes the same observation in Fit to Print, saying because Gallery commentary suffers from “less policy and more game”, “the game becomes everything”.372 Senior members of the gallery, too, have expressed discontent with this trait. Both Paul Kelly and Michelle Grattan have complained about the Gallery’s “concentration on tactics rather than substance”.373

Like the more seasoned and cynical of politicians, political journalists tend to analyse policy for its political rather than social impact. The question asked of policy is not how it will affect the public, but how the public will receive it. The emphasis on opinion polls is an obvious indication of this preoccupation. This is why, in a continuation of sporting metaphors, standard political journalism and commentary has sometimes been described as ‘horse-race journalism’.

Another key reason journalists do not engage in policy critique is that such opinion- based writing is anathema to the pervading objectivity ethos within journalism. Generally journalists strive for objectivity, ‘impartiality’ and ‘balance’. Accusations of bias are likely to be vehemently denied and may even receive a hostile reaction. Because credibility remains a major selling point for media organisations, such accusations will be not only personally insulting but may also damage a journalist’s reputation. As Chomsky and Herman propose in Manufacturing Consent (1988), accusations of bias may damage journalists and their news organisations as they push

371 Parker, op. cit., p.5 372 Simons, op. cit., p.65 373 This quote is from Paul Kelly, “Who Runs Australia?: The Press Gallery or the Parliament?”, Media Watch, Sydney Institute, No.18, June-July 1991, p.22. Michelle Grattan said almost exactly the same thing in 1988: she criticised the Gallery’s “excessive concentration on tactics rather than substance”. Michelle Grattan cited in Gerard Henderson, “The Canberra Rat Pack – A Reassessment”, Media Watch, No.19, August-September 1991, p.22

129 to establish an image of fairness, balance and impartiality. Chomsky and Herman observe further that this situation has been exploited by powerful social groups, who fund media monitoring organisations designed, in part, to slander journalists who provide ‘unacceptable’ news or commentary. Chapter Ten will discuss this point further in relation to the Sydney Institute’s media watcher, Gerard Henderson. Out of professional pride and also self-preservation, therefore, many journalists try to exclude personal views and sentiments from their work. This objectivity ethos can even be witnessed in the work of some of Australia’s most prestigious political journalists. Even with the opportunity to turn opinion columnist, Michelle Grattan and Laurie Oakes, for instance, keep for the most part to political – rather than policy – analysis. Grattan’s aforementioned views on loud but unremarkable ‘celebrity journalists’ hint at another motivation behind her choice. She has also stated that she would prefer that commentary sections contain feature articles with new information rather than mediocre opinion pieces.374

Hence, journalists do not always offer their own opinions on how best to serve the ‘public good’ or ‘national interest’. And this is precisely what Dessaix says the public intellectual does. Many political journalists, then, do not operate as public intellectuals. Paul Kelly, by contrast, is among that smaller group of political journalists that does critique public policy; that does engage with the national interest on a regular basis. Some of his columns are pure analysis in the more common mould used by Oakes and Grattan, but most offer an appraisal of the nation interest. It is this which differentiates his role from that performed by some other leading or ‘God’ correspondents like Oakes and Grattan. This is not to suggest that Kelly is necessarily more important or influential, merely that he operates as a public intellectual where many of the others do not.

In her 1998 book, Reviving the Fourth Estate, journalist and academic Julianne Schultz summarised The Australian under Kelly’s editorship as playing a “deliberately leading role in public debate”.375 This is an apt description of Kelly’s individual role as a political columnist. This role is also of course what Dessaix was

374 Grattan, Challenges of Journalism in the 21st Century (conference), op. cit. 375 Julianne Schultz, 1998, Reviving the Fourth Estate, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.178

130 referring to by stipulating that the public intellectual was not just a public thinker, but one who engaged with matters of public concern.

4. Public Performance The final criterion, ‘public performance’, is one of the most obvious attributes that distinguishes the public intellectual from other intellectuals. A public intellectual’s independent, expert social critique is delivered publicly. When it comes to journalists, little need be said of this criterion. All working journalists operate in a public capacity. Their work is necessarily public. And for those political journalists who write commentaries, the fact that they have been deemed ‘qualified’ by their editors – on behalf of the reading public – to comment on politics suggests that, as Dessaix decrees, they have gained the public’s attention via “an outstanding ability to communicate with many publics”.376

Hence, whether or not a political journalist is a public intellectual depends on the other three criteria. As we have already established, most political journalists, and journalists generally, are often said not to possess a very high level of independence, their expertise is typically limited to a specific field (politics), and they refuse or are unable (‘unlicensed’) to offer an assessment of the ‘public good’. According to the model adopted in this thesis, then, most are not public intellectuals.

Conclusion Despite his protests to the contrary, Paul Kelly is a public intellectual – at least according to the preferred definition. Inevitably some would disagree with this assessment and suggest he fails to meet one or perhaps all of the first three criteria. In any event, the conclusion of this thesis is that he does. And he is not necessarily alone in this. There are other political journalists who have conducted their political commentary in this more critical, evaluative mode. I will not endeavour to establish these figures as ‘public intellectuals’ in the same way I have just performed for Kelly, but can nominate some who serve, or have served, a similar function. These include the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt; the Daily Telegraph’s Piers Ackerman; the Sydney Morning Herald’s Alan Ramsey, Mike Carlton and Margo Kingston; The

376 Dessaix, op. cit., p.29

131 Age’s Pamela Bone and Ken Davidson; The Courier-Mail’s Matthew Franklin and Peter Charlton; the Australian Financial Review’s Geoffrey Barker and Brian Toohey; and The Australian’s Frank Devine. Some are still political correspondents; others have acted only as columnists for years. These journalists, and no doubt more, write in a fashion similar to that of Paul Kelly – and that described of the public intellectual. Hence, Kelly is not the only journalist functioning as a public intellectual in the Australian press. But he is perhaps the most prominent and is arguably the most influential.

Next chapter will offer an analysis of Kelly’s political and social thought. It will outline in some detail some of the contributions he has made to Australian public debate over the past two or three decades. This can enable us to look more closely at some of the themes explored in this chapter. For instance, a deeper analysis of Kelly’s thought will enable us to compare the ideas he has championed to those publicly espoused by his proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. It is also hoped the chapter will offer some insights, where appropriate, into Australian political culture over the past few decades.

132 Chapter Six: The Social and Political Thought of Paul Kelly

Introduction Last chapter affirmed Paul Kelly as a public intellectual in the Australian press. This chapter looks more closely at his contribution to Australian public intellectual life over the past two decades. The analysis begins with a review of Kelly’s major writings on political history. Specifically it will discuss his four major political and historical works: The Unmaking of Gough (1976), The Hawke Ascendancy (1984), The End of Certainty (1992) and November 1975 (1995). This will be followed by a comprehensive analysis of Kelly’s economic perspective: the central component to his social and political thought. Subsequently the chapter will examine his responses to social policy, including a brief look at his limited participation in the culture/history wars of the 1990s, and will conclude with a lengthy discussion of his approach to foreign policy. Through the last theme, the issue of journalistic independence will be reassessed.

A. Political Writings: From the Dismissal to November 1975 As established last chapter, Kelly is a highly regarded commentator and political historian. He has been one of the nation’s most respected political journalists since the mid-1970s. Though his reputation is based primarily on his political reporting and commentaries for the various papers for which he has worked over the years, it has been substantially enhanced by the publication of several well-received political histories. His first book, The Unmaking of Gough, was a detailed analysis of the Whitlam dismissal of 11 November 1975. Published in 1976, it was released not long after the dramatic events it described. Even Robert Manne, a conservative commentator, claimed this book was rivalled by only one other study on the Whitlam dismissal.377 Manne described his later book on the same events, November 1975 (1995) as “the most penetrating analysis of the dramas which overtook Australian politics in the spring of 1975.”378 He even states that it changed his (traditional conservative) view on the dismissal.379 In 1984 Kelly released his second book, The Hawke Ascendancy, which was also well-received. As noted last chapter, this book

377 Robert Manne, 1995, “The Kerr Conundrum”, The Way We Live Now, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1998, p.141 378 Ibid. 379 Ibid., p.146

133 was praised by other eminent political commentators like Alan Ramsey and Laurie Oakes. But it was not until the release of his third book, The End of Certainty, in 1992 that Kelly came to be regarded by some as one of Australia’s leading political historians and commentators. In 1993 Robert Manne described it as a “masterpiece” and one of only two “genuinely illuminating interpretations of Australian politics during the 1980s.”380 By 1995 he was saying that “nothing, however, even remotely rivalled Kelly’s tour de force on the Hawke years, The End of Certainty, his finest achievement to date.”381 Ramsey said this text “will become the political textbook for the period”, and the late ABC presenter Andrew Olle called it the “definitive work on politics through the 1980s.”382 The End of Certainty was also to inform the writing of other commentators. Manne is one of them. And as Gerard Henderson has remarked, “The End of Certainty…had a considerable influence on journalists, editors and producers.”383 With this book Kelly established himself as not only a pre-eminent Australian journalist and political commentator, but a leading political and social theorist also.

Kelly’s rise to prominence as a social theorist appears to have been facilitated in large part by the different approach he adopted in writing this piece. Unlike The Unmaking of Gough and The Hawke Ascendancy, his third book provided heavy doses of social and political theory, along with personal opinion. Rather than just report, interpret and explain events, The End of Certainty offered an evaluation of the events and era it covered. The earlier books were more conventional political journalism pieces, offering detailed information and reserving judgment mainly only for the political effectiveness of those involved. Kelly is less willing in these books to decide what policies needed to have been taken and to offer authoritative, prescriptive conclusions. Accordingly, these two pieces have been applauded for their balance and fairness by reviewers as diverse as Michelle Grattan and Humphrey McQueen.384 By contrast, The End of Certainty frames the overall account by

380 Robert Manne, 1993, “Labor (Still) in Power”, The Way We Live Now, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1998, p.56 381 Robert Manne, “The Kerr Conundrum”, op. cit., p.141 382 Gerard Henderson, “Paul Kelly’s Tome – A Great Read; But is it History?”, Media Watch, Sydney Institute, No. 24, October-December 1992, p.3 383 Gerard Henderson, Media Watch, No. 25, January-March 1993, p.5 384 Michelle Grattan and Humphrey McQueen’s reviews are referred to in Lorraine Campbel, “November 1975 by Paul Kelly”, Australia & World Affairs, Winter 97, Issue 33, p.58 Lorraine Campbell, Australia & World Affairs, 1997

134 establishing what needed to have been done in the introductory chapter, and then assessing how well the decade’s politicians met these objectives. It also offered a prescription for the future. With this book Kelly performed as a pundit on the ‘national interest’. It would seem, then, that in the eight years between The Hawke Ascendancy and The End of Certainty, Kelly felt he had matured enough as a thinker to inject his own opinions into his analysis. Hence, if his books are any indication, Kelly did not really become a public intellectual until the 1980s or early 1990s.

This is not to say Kelly’s first two books were without bias. Even if one does not explicitly announce one’s personal opinions there are more subtle ways bias can creep, or be slipped, into a writer’s work. An obvious example is the conclusions he draws at the end of The Unmaking of Gough. Most are sympathetic, but certainly not uncritical, of Gough Whitlam. In this book, and his later work, November 1975 (1995), Kelly denies the conservative thesis that Whitlam’s reign was a debacle and that Labor’s fate was caused by its own bungling. In Kelly’s work, Whitlam is portrayed as the victim: firstly of the Liberals’ cynical attempt to remove Labor from office, and secondly of Sir John Kerr’s ineptness as Governor-General.

With the important exception of economic policy, Kelly is not very critical of the policies Labor implemented under Whitlam. Kelly actually applauds many of the Whitlam Government’s sweeping reforms and depicts Whitlam as a man of brilliance and vision. He is critical of the misadministration of the Whitlam Government and of Whitlam’s stubborn, arrogant and aloof political style that allowed it, but blames much of this on the Liberals’ cynical pursuit of power.

The constant threat of being forced to the polls became a built-in factor in the decision-making process of the Labor government. More than any other single influence, this disrupted the pattern of government and made sound administration a near impossibility. It is true that bad government breeds contemptuous Oppositions; but it is equally true that in the Australian context contemptuous Opposition can breed bad government.385

Kelly shows little sympathy for the conservative rationale that the Coalition Opposition was saving Australia from Labor’s damaging policies. The Whitlam

385 Paul Kelly, 1994, The Unmaking of Gough, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.430

135 Government’s 1974 budget, the budget the Opposition refused to pass, is defended as responsible and sound.386 The blocking of supply was therefore little more than a generation of ‘born to rule’ Liberals cynically refusing after 23 consecutive years in power to surrender government to Labor. He bitterly complained in the book’s conclusion that the Liberals had set a dangerous precedent and established “a whole new range of opportunities for harassment and obstruction against the government of the day.”387 Kelly’s criticisms of the Liberals and Kerr have convinced many that his political sympathies lie with the ALP. Conservative writer Lorraine Campbell has said for instance that The Unmaking of Gough “revealed bias and anger – not explicitly but in small ways.” It also showed “animosity and resentment” towards the conservatives.388 Kelly’s conclusions are not really partisan ones though. They relate more to his belief that the Liberals had acted anti-democratically. The basis of Kelly’s judgement is outlined in the preface to his subsequent book, The Hawke Ascendancy, which he claims is “written not to favour any individual or party over another.”389 “The perspectives are historical cynicism – that all governments make mistakes – and political optimism – that there should be a better way.”390

Kelly’s last major book on Australian political history, November 1975 (1995), covers the same subject as his first. He has since produced other books, such as Paradise Divided (2000), but none are comprehensive political studies like those discussed. November 1975 deals with the same period and events as The Unmaking of Gough, but focuses less on the political lead up to the 1975 crisis and more on the inherent problems within Australia’s constitution itself. It provides a thorough analysis of the implications of Australia’s attempt to synthesise the British Westminster model (‘responsible government’) with American federalism. While some believe he did little more than reiterate the argument he made (more convincingly) in 1976391, others, like Manne, saw this book as the finest study on the Whitlam dismissal to date. Indeed, Manne has said it helped him see the validity of

386 Kelly has described ‘the Hayden budget’ as responsible and decent in both The Unmaking of Gough, op. cit. and November 1975: The Inside Story of Australia’s Greatest Political Crisis, 1995, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, and also The Hawke Ascendency: A Definitive Account of its Origins and Climax, 1975-83, Sydney: Angus & Robertson 387 Kelly, The Unmaking of Gough, op. cit., p.430 388 Campbel, op. cit. 389 Kelly, The Hawke Ascendency, p.v 390 Ibid. 391 Campbel, op. cit.

136 the republican movement. And this is, in many ways, what Kelly apparently wanted this book to achieve. By looking back at the constitutional crisis of 1975, Kelly argued the need for constitutional reform. Towards the end of the book he explicitly endorses the republic as a step towards a solution – as he had done commonly in his columns.

In regard to the events of 1975 themselves, Kelly did reiterate many of the points he made two decades earlier. He is again critical of Whitlam’s arrogant bravado and Fraser and the Liberals’ cynicism, but in this text he apportions most responsibility for the 1975 crisis to the alleged spinelessness of then Governor-General, Sir John Kerr. Through his indecisiveness, his timidity, and by misleading both Fraser and Whitlam, Kerr was the one most responsible for the events panning out as they did. It could have been settled much more easily, Kelly argues, but for Kerr’s dereliction of duty. Whitlam is again the noble, though arrogant, victim. Ultimately, Kelly endorses Whitlam’s struggle to uphold ‘responsible government’ against the federalism of the Senate; of fighting for a government’s right to implement policy. For this and the fact that it was Keating Labor that supported the republic over the Howard Coalition, it seems again that Kelly was more sympathetic to the ALP.

The fact that all Kelly’s major studies focus on Labor supports the conclusion that his political sympathies lie with the ALP. Though he has not neglected the non- Labor parties in his political studies, their history seems subsidiary to Labor’s. It is also conspicuous that while writing two books on the Whitlam years and one on the Hawke-Keating years, he did not care to produce a similar study on the Fraser legacy. That the book which most closely touches upon the Fraser years discusses Fraser’s reign only in the context of the “Hawke ascendancy” is particularly instructive. He focuses on Labor in opposition rather than the Liberals in government. It is as if Labor were the real definers of the new Australia; as if the Fraser Government of 1975 to 1983 was some hiccup or back-step in Labor’s transformation of Australian society after the long Menzies/Coalition era.

Certainly he appears to praise Labor more often than the Coalition. He concludes that Labor has accomplished much, and more than their rivals, while in office. Under Whitlam it was Labor who redefined Australia’s national identity and started the

137 trend to a more internationalised, independent country – one which would embrace our Asian neighbours. Whitlam too presided over the first major cut in tariffs. In The End of Certainty he said, “It is to the lasting credit of the Labor Party that the reductions in protection have been achieved entirely as a result of decisions by the Whitlam and Hawke governments.”392 And it was Labor, under Hawke and Keating, which finally broke the ‘Australian Settlement’: “The Hawke-Keating government will occupy a unique place in Australian history because it launched in this country the great transition which sought to recognise the arrival of the global free market economy.”393 Fraser did implement some positive policies, such as multiculturalism, but since his economic performance was considered poor, his legacy became a sorry one (‘Seven Wasted Years’). Hence, Labor is the party of progress and change. The Liberals upon attaining office merely steer the course. Accordingly, in 1999 Kelly attributed what he saw as Australia’s economic success not to the Howard Liberal Government but to the Hawke-Keating administrations that preceded it. Howard merely “inherited a growth economy from Keating.”394 The Coalition has “been fortunate enough to preside over an economy now in the ninth year of its growth cycle.”395 Keating was determined in 1996 not to lose the election “in order to prevent John Howard ‘stealing’ the best years of the 1990s growth cycle.”396

Kelly’s Laborism has been identified by conservative theorists. Reviewing Paradise Divided (2000), I.C.F. Spry asserted that Kelly’s attitudes “recall the years of the Hawke-Keating governments and the varying demands of political correctness.” Kelly calls for “a national apology to Aboriginals” and a republic, among other things, and “is critical of the dismissal of the government of Mr. Gough Whitlam by Sir John Kerr in 1975.”397 Similarly, in his attack on the national press gallery, The Courtesans (1990), Derek Parker identified Kelly as one of the Labor government’s “courtesans”. He was one of the leaders of the gallery which, according to Parker, endorsed Labor under Hawke and Keating throughout the 1980s. He even accuses

392 Paul Kelly, 1992, The End of Certainty, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.667 393 Ibid., p.684 394 Paul Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism: Australia today – and tomorrow”, in Waldren, M. (1999) (ed), Future Tense: Australia Beyond Election 1998, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.11 395 Paul Kelly, “Howard moves onto the front foot”, The Australian, July 26, 2000 396 Paul Kelly, “A ‘listening’ government becomes a panicking government”, The Australian, March 7, 2000 397 I.C.F. Spry, “Paradise Divided (Book Review)”, National Observer, Spring 2000, Issue 46, p.71

138 Kelly of distorting opinion poll data to support the ALP.398 Gerard Henderson, too, has suggested that the Canberra Press Gallery, “almost to a man and woman”, conducted a “love affair” with Paul Keating.399 In The Sydney Morning Herald in 1991, Tom Burton described Kelly as “another Keatingphile”.

Keating and Kelly have been personally close since the 1970s and Kelly has been a strong and consistent supporter of Keating’s economic line. Their families socialise and can be seen occasionally together on a Saturday morning down at the salubrious (at least for Canberra) Manuka village green.400

Hence, conservatives tend to see Kelly as they see most other political journalists: as a left-liberal supporter of the ALP. That Kelly is, or was, left-of-centre is implied in Robert Manne’s 1984 attack on the press gallery for their coverage of the “Combe affair” of 1983. Manne chastised the Gallery for failing to take seriously what he considered a genuine Soviet threat to national security, and was disturbed by journalists’ apparent dismissal of ASIO as a bunch of old, paranoid Cold Warriors. This was evidence, he said, of “the prevailing anti-anticommunist worldview of Australian journalists.”401 Kelly, then writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, is among the leading journalists Manne singles out. Other notables included Michelle Grattan, Laurie Oakes, Brian Toohey, Richard Carleton and David Marr.

But if Kelly’s left-liberalism and sympathy for Labor was as pronounced as commentators like Parker, Manne and Henderson believe during the 1970s and into the 1990s, they are not so easy to pick today. He is quite approving of the Howard Liberals. He is perhaps more approving of this Government than he has been of any other Liberal Party he has covered. In the mid-1980s to the early 1990s he criticised the Liberals, particularly under John Hewson, for being too doctrinaire in their support for the free market.402 Under Fraser they were too protectionist: the “old Liberal Party, the born-to-rule generation…had failed the test of economic

398 Derek Parker, 1991, The Courtesans, North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, pp.90, 109-110 399 Gerard Henderson, 1995, A Howard Government?, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp.125-126 400 Tom Burton, “The press gallery, where from little acorns mighty oaks grow”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 16, 1991, p.38 401 Robert Manne, 1984, “‘Even Old Stacks Talk’: The Combe Affair and Political Culture”, in Robert Manne, 1994, The Shadow of 1917, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, p.235 402 Kelly, The End of Certainty, op. cit., pp.683-4

139 management under Fraser.”403 But today the Liberals seem to have got the economic balance pretty well right. Kelly has often criticised Labor for flirting with alternatives to the Liberals’ free market stance while in opposition. Throughout the remainder of the chapter we shall see that Kelly has in fact championed several key Liberal policies while they have been in power.

B. Political and Social Thought: Economic Determinism Earlier it was established that Kelly did not really become a public intellectual, at least not as indicated in his books, until the 1980s or early 1990s. In his books, the change was marked by the publication of The End of Certainty, which broke the ‘journalistic’ mould to provide an opinion-based assessment of Australian political, social and economic life. Accordingly, this chapter’s analysis of Kelly’s social and political thought will not begin ‘straight out of uni’ like subsequent chapters on Robert Manne and Gerard Henderson will. It will begin by looking at the social vision laid out in his magnum opus, The End of Certainty.

The primary focus of much of Kelly’s work is the economy. He tends to emphasise economic issues over others and typically looks to the economic ‘bottom line’ when assessing social policy. Hence, there is a strong element of economic determinism in his thought. At least since he wrote The End of Certainty he has heralded the benefits of ‘economic rationalism’ and the need to sacrifice political, cultural and even moral considerations before the altar of economic growth. In a 1999 essay he made the explicit point that economic prosperity is at the centre of a people’s quality of life, and that this is why the economy needs to sit atop the priorities list in public policy decision-making. He believes economic prosperity is a prerequisite to social and cultural prosperity, that it is an indispensable factor to the creation of the good society. “The stronger our growth economy, the more compassionate we can become as a society. On the other hand, the path of economic decline will multiply our social divisions and disorder.”404 Like other ‘economic rationalists’, he maintains that economic liberalism is the best guarantor of economic prosperity. He has consistently argued over the past decade or so that “Australia has no successful

403 Ibid., p.600 404 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., p.35

140 future but as an open and competitive economy.”405 Endorsements of the free market are frequent in his political and social commentaries, and The End of Certainty remains perhaps the most powerful of these to date.

(i) Economic Policy Kelly’s The End of Certainty (1992) is an endorsement of Australia’s transition from a protected to a free market economy. It is also a comprehensive political history of the 1980s, but particularly in its introductory and concluding chapters it is a clear affirmation of the economic direction in which Labor steered the country since taking office in 1983. To prove his point, Kelly does what many ‘economic rationalists’ do. He looks back over the economic history of Australia and claims that, in adopting a protectionist model since Federation, Australia wasted almost a century of opportunity. Protectionism had “stifled” Australia’s growth for the eighty years from Federation to the Hawke-Keating reforms. “It offers a wonderful symmetry: that Australia will enter its second century as a nation in 2001 liberated from the protectionist shackles which stifled its first century.”406

In the introduction to The End of Certainty, Kelly argued that from Federation in 1901 to the 1980s, Australia operated under a national political consensus. He labelled it the ‘Australian Settlement’, and suggested “though devoid of formal definition”, it was characterised by five central tenets: “White Australia, Industry Protection, Wage Arbitration, State Paternalism, and Imperial Benevolence.”407

Australia was founded on: faith in government authority; belief in egalitarianism; a method of judicial determination in centralised wage fixation; protection of its industry and jobs; dependence upon a great power, (first Britain, then America), for its security and its finance; and, above all, hostility to its geographical location, exhibited in fear of external domination and internal contamination from the peoples of the Asia/Pacific.408

405 Ibid., p.18 406 Kelly, The End of Certainty, op. cit., p.7 407 Ibid., pp.1-2 408 Ibid., p.2

141 These five doctrines, he suggests, tended to reinforce each other, and collectively they reflected an Australian “bedrock ideology” of “protection”.409 This is Kelly’s version of the notion of ‘Fortress Australia’.

Fellow Australian political columnist Gerard Henderson has endorsed three tenets of Kelly’s “Australian Settlement”, but suggests that “state paternalism” and “imperial benevolence” never enjoyed the same widespread acceptance as the other three. He suggests that instead of five central facets, the Deakinite consensus had only three: which he calls the “Federation Trifecta”.410 In A Howard Government Henderson said Kelly “somewhat distorted the reality of Australia in the first two decades after Federation.”411 As we shall see in Chapter Ten, Henderson has accused Kelly of copying his own ‘Federation Trifecta’, and has stated that “Without White Australia, protection all round and centralised industrial relations (i.e. the components of the ‘Federation Trifecta’), Kelly’s Australian Settlement is meaningless.”412 Others have lauded Kelly’s ‘Australian Settlement’ notion as a good description of post- Federation Australia however.

The idea that Australia adopted a “fortress” mentality assists the economic rationalists in portraying Australian protectionism as irrational and even as a policy based on fear. “Protectionism” refers to the economic model based on government regulation of the economy, even though “industry protection” is only part of it. Kelly’s description of the Australian Settlement helps to not only explain a broad consensus to which all major Australian parties adhered, it helps him undermine it. The notion that it represented a fortress mentality is but one way this is achieved. Linking economic protectionism to the White Australia Policy is another. Not only do the two sit side by side in Australian history, according to Kelly, White Australia was the “foundation idea” of the Australian Settlement and “the indispensible [sic] condition for all other policies”.413 Protectionism, then, can be explained as an extension of Australian xenophobia. Australia was fearful of its neighbours and the

409 Ibid. 410 Gerard Henderson argues this point in both Australian Answers, 1990, Milsons Point, N.S.W: Random House Australia, p.36, and A Howard Government?, 1995, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp.98-9 411 Henderson, A Howard Government?, op. cit., p.99 412 Gerard Henderson, “Documentation”, Media Watch, Sydney Institute, No.38, No.4 1996, p.18 413 Kelly, The End of Certainty, op. cit., p.2

142 outside world, and protectionism was a way of hiding from it. Protectionism is irrational.

As mentioned in Chapter Three, Kelly also advanced the now rather conventional economic rationalist discourse that the father of Australian protectionism, Alfred Deakin, implemented this model as a political fix, not because it had any intrinsic economic rationale. He says of Deakin, the “principal architect” of the Australian Settlement, that “economic understanding [was] never [Deakin’s] forté”, and describes him as having been “converted to Protectionism by his patron”, the wealthy industrialist and The Age proprietor David Syme.414 By contrast, Deakin’s Free Trader opponent, George Reid, had “an economic brain and the common touch”.415 Free trade is, again, a ‘rational’ approach while protectionism is born of a mixture of ignorance and opportunism. Later in the chapter he accuses the Country Party of being “bought off” when converting to protectionism.416

These are some of the more subtle denigrations of protectionism in The End of Certainty. There are many more explicit endorsements of free trade over protection. “The evidence against the Australian Settlement”, he says, “is overwhelming.”417 Here he draws from the conventional neoliberal critique of Australian protectionism, blaming it for the relative decline in GDP and income per head in Australia compared to other nations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. “The transition from success to failure ran parallel to a rise in protection.”418 As I shall discuss next chapter, protectionists like Robert Manne reject this common neoliberal argument.

Moreover, the entire tone of his analysis portrays the issue as settled, as a fait accompli. In a book about a new era of uncertainty, there are constant assertions of a new certainty taking hold. Deregulation and free trade are depicted as the only viable option for Australia. There are regular declarations that the change has occurred and cannot be reversed: “the central message shining through [the 1980s’] convulsions was the obsolescence of the old order”; “the Settlement ideas underwent a process of creative destruction from which there is no return”; “this framework – introspective, defensive, dependent – is undergoing an irresistible demolition.”419 These statements appear in the first five paragraphs of the text alone. To this extent it is clear that, as

414 Ibid., p.5 415 Ibid. 416 Ibid., pp.5-6 417 Ibid., p.13 418 Ibid., pp.13-14 419 Ibid., pp.1, 2

143 Mark Davis has noted, The End of Certainty was inspired by Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis.420 Kelly occasionally refers to Fukuyama in his commentaries. In 2001 he endorsed the Fukuyama thesis, saying the “triumph for liberal-democratic capitalism” represented “the road to a deeper enlightenment.”421

One of Kelly’s more recent and detailed endorsements of the free market is his 1999 essay, “The Paradox of Pessimism”. Here he again argued that governments have no place intervening into the market. “Governments should not try to run businesses in competitive markets. They should leave business to the private sector whether it is a bank, airline or telecommunications company.”422 Markets should be liberalised and privatised.

In this essay Kelly defended the conclusions of his End of Certainty thesis, saying the tough deregulatory reforms of the 1980s and 1990s had enabled Australia to prosper.

Australia’s economic growth in the 1990s has been strong precisely because the nation had the courage to open its economy, embrace reform and improve its public and corporate performance. This was a singular enduring achievement of the Hawke-Keating era.423

Kelly has commonly restated this view in his commentaries for The Australian. In 2002 he said “deregulation, privatisation and micro-economic reform...have helped to fuel the productivity gains of the 1990s.”424 “[T]he internationalised deregulated economy created over the past generation that has so weakened the unions... remains the instrument for ongoing wealth creation and healthy living standards.”425

Protectionists as Ignorant and Irrational In The End of Certainty and elsewhere, Kelly’s denigration of protectionism’s advocates is even blunter than his endorsement of free trade. We have already witnessed what he had to say of Alfred Deakin. The contemporary champions of

420 Mark Davis, 1999, gangland, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.193 421 Paul Kelly, The Australian, 26 September 2001 422 Paul Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., p.24 423 Ibid., p.19 424 Paul Kelly, “Labor policies give government a starring role”, The Australian, August 2, 2000 425 Ibid.

144 protection are invariably depicted as irrational, ignorant, if not opportunistic and cynical. While economic liberals are “realistic”, “internationalist rationalists”, their protectionist opponents are “sentimentalist traditionalists”.426 More recently, in an article for The Australian in 2000, he called them “economic primitives”.427

In another 2000 Australian article, Kelly strongly reiterated the ‘protectionists-as- opportunists’ line. Responding to the growth of anti-globalisation protests in the late 1990s-early 2000s, Kelly summarised the emergent movement as a new “protectionist alliance” which “poses a threat to Australia in particular and the poor nearly everywhere.”428

The developing nations today surely have it tough enough. Now they have a fresh obstacle: a new protectionist alliance in the rich nations, a student- greenie-union coalition whose aim is to deny the developing world what is so desperately needs: more access to rich-country markets...The element which makes [the movement] so offensive and so hypocritical is that it is conducted in the name of the very people it will hurt most.429

Rather than exploiting the poor for the benefit of the rich, ‘globalisation’ (i.e. international free trade) aids the poor by redistributing capital from the wealthy to the poorer nations. It is protectionism that “help[s] the rich against the poor”. To illustrate his point he used American billionaire Roger Milliken’s self-interested support for protection as a metonym for the relationship between protection and the rich. He implied further that rich individuals like Milliken have duped the well- intentioned, naïve anti-globalisation protestors into fighting their battles for them. Elsewhere he has called emerging anti-big-business sentiment in Australia “populist” and “an emerging political risk in Australia”.430

Kelly’s “Paradox of Pessimism” essay is in many ways another criticism of the free market’s detractors. In this essay he calls widespread Australian pessimism amid what he believes to be prosperous and favourable economic times “paradoxical”, and proceeds to portray Australians’ fears and gloom as unjustified and, again, irrational. After noting that many Australians are pessimistic about the way the free market has rapidly transformed Australian life, and that many are looking back fondly at the 1950s and 1960s, he argues that quality of life has improved with the improvement in material standards of living. If people “were transported back to the 1950s”, he says,

426 Kelly, The End of Certainty, op. cit., p.2 427 Paul Kelly, “Back on the Shelf in our national interest”, The Australian, April 28, 2000. 428 Paul Kelly, “Biting the hand that needs it”, The Australian, September 6, 2000 429 Ibid. 430 Paul Kelly, “I’ll huff and I’ll bluff”, The Australian, March 31, 2000

145 “they would be shocked and horrified.”431 The “great lift in material conditions” means that “in absolute terms, the overwhelming majority of people are better off than they were before.”432 Indeed, “the late 1990s had the potential to be a Golden Age for Australia”433 and “The idea of Australia as the lucky country has never been more apt than it is today.”434 It is in arguments like this that Kelly’s economic determinism become most apparent. He rejects the view of many Australians that, despite the lower standards of living, life was better in the egalitarian Australia of old; that social and cultural factors could mean more than material wellbeing. For Kelly material wealth equates to personal wellbeing.

Accordingly, that many Australians were pessimistic about life in the 1990s is paradoxical. It is also based, he suggests, on ignorance and irrationality. “The gulf in Australia between our objective strengths and our psychological pessimism is very wide.”435 The problems exist only “in our own minds and hearts”.436

Australians are trapped in a contradiction – too reluctant to grasp their successes outside sport, too willing to overlook genuine national progress as a role model, too ready to cut down tall poppies and too susceptible to the appeal of egalitarianism to justify mediocrity.437

Moreover, Australians these days have lost sight of what is important in life. After invoking historical tragedies like World Wars and the Great Depression he claims Australians these days have “no frame of reference beyond an expectation that things are supposed to get better, and a resentment when this process is frustrated.”438 Life has become too easy. “Australians are just plain unhappy about having so much good fortune and opportunity.”439 In all, Australians’ unhappiness amid such good fortune and opportunity is born of the nation’s “culture of complaint”: “a variation of the old-fashioned Australian gripe magnified.”440 Hence, that Australians are unhappy about the way Australian life has changed under economic liberalism is a reflection

431 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., p.6 432 Ibid. 433 Ibid., p.5 434 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., p.4 435 Ibid., p.5 436 Ibid. 437 Ibid. 438 Ibid., p.6 439 Ibid., p.5 440 Ibid., pp.5-6.

146 not of a declining quality of life – it reflects a poisoned Australian mindset. It is “an affliction of the spirit or inner life.”441 That the changes to work, social and cultural life may have contributed to Australians’ spiritual malaise is not an issue, it seems.

Kelly has denigrated Australian malcontents in his political commentaries also. In The Australian in 2001, for instance, he said a slumping economy reflected that “Australia, once again, seems to be on the brink of defeating itself.” He warned that Australia’s “self-reinforcing circle of vicious pessimism” and tendency to indulge in “a cultural binge against free trade, markets and rational economics”, would see Australia become a “new banana republic”.442 Australians ‘sentimental’ attachment to the old Australia is a cultural trait Kelly is highly critical of. It is a trait he feels may harm Australia’s future success.

The New Zealand Example New Zealand is a common reference point in debates over Australia’s economic direction. Curiously, it is seen by economic libertarians and protectionists alike as evidence of the correctness of their respective positions. As we shall see next chapter, Robert Manne has used neoliberal responses to New Zealand to argue that economic liberalism has failed and is in fact dogmatic and ‘ideological’. For Kelly and the economic rationalists, however, New Zealand’s economic woes depict Australia’s future should Australia retreat from economic liberalism. According to Kelly:

New Zealand today raises loud alarm bells for an Australian. This is a country that has embraced and implemented much of the anti-market correction of the 1990s that is now the gospel in Australia of the Democrats, the Greens, much of the intellectual elite and sections of the ALP. The results are on display: a rapid fall in living standards compared with Australia; emigration of the best and the brightest; and the prospect that the nirvana of a clean and fair polity subsuming economic performance is the road to national decline.443

441 Ibid., p.6. 442 Paul Kelly, The Australian, March 17, 2001 443 Paul Kelly, “Clark seeds ideas in Pacific’s Petri dish”, The Australian, August 8, 2001. Kelly made similar arguments in The Australian four days earlier (Paul Kelly, “Merrily down the plughole”, August 4, 2001), endorsing the conclusions of pro-market theorists, London-based New Zealand economist Robert Wade and Harvard University professor Michael Porter.

147 Throughout the 1980s, New Zealand was one of the most aggressive nations in implementing free market reforms. In recent times the New Zealand economy has performed poorly. It is no surprise, then, that some theorists blame the neoliberal transformation of the 1980s for the nation’s contemporary malaise444. Such theorists argue this direction should be slowed or reversed. Kelly, by contrast, maintains the answer lies in faster and deeper deregulatory reforms.445

The Third Way: Social Democracy at the turn of the century Though Kelly is a strong advocate of deregulation and the free market, he is not a market purist in the neoconservative, right-wing mould. Indeed, Kelly has often criticised the “radical liberals”, like former Liberal leader Dr John Hewson, for being too doctrinaire in their enthusiasm for the market. He claims they invest far too much faith in theory and pay insufficient attention to actual circumstances. This criticism echoes that of fellow political columnist Robert Manne, though Manne, a protectionist, extends this description to all ‘economic rationalists’, including Hawke, Keating and, presumably, Kelly.

Kelly’s preference is not laissez faire but the Third Wayism of Britain’s New Labour and, of course, their Australian predecessors, the ALP of Hawke and Keating. This preference is outlined quite clearly in his “Paradox of Pessimism” essay and articles within his 2000 anthology Paradise Divided. It is also evident in The End of Certainty, which was fundamentally an endorsement of the Keating vision for Australia.

In this respect he opposes government intervention in principle but affirms some place for government in economic management. Specifically there is a role for government, albeit a limited one, in helping maximise the economy’s benefits and limiting its failings. In 1999 he said: “Markets are valued for their ability to create wealth efficiently, but they possess no inherent morality and must operate within democratically sanctioned rules.” Hence, “markets can’t be automatically trusted to deliver for the public good”, as they “undershoot or overshoot, sometimes on a vast

444 The Helen Clarke Labor government in New Zealand is the principal example of this. 445 Kelly, “Clark seeds ideas in Pacific’s Petri dish”, op. cit.; Kelly, “Merrily down the plughole”, op. cit.

148 scale.”446 He said much the same in The End of Certainty (1992): “markets will fail…markets are not perfect and do not necessarily advance the national interest.”447

One of the adverse consequences of a market system is its tendency to widen the gap between rich and poor, ultimately creating the potential for social division and disunity.

[I]t seems that globalisation, while creating great wealth, distributes that wealth on an increasingly unequal basis that threatens the social compact. Market forces have helped to promote inequality of wealth in Australia.448

As we shall later see, Kelly sees social disunity as a major problem. He believes governments should utilise the free market to maximise national wealth, yet balance this approach with social policy that can retard the divisive consequences of the market and ensure greater social unity and harmony. They need to achieve “a better integration of economics, social policy, values and leadership”449, and to “channel” market forces “globally and domestically, for the benefit of people and society.”450 Thus he welcomes “political pressure in Australia to try to reconcile market forces with ongoing support for a degree of wealth redistribution and to balance equity and incentive.”451 He says, specifically in reference to unemployment, that Australia should seek “a mid-path between the European social regulation and American pro- market models.”452 As he acknowledges, his preferred approach “constitutes a new politics whether it is called the ‘third way’ or ‘progressive liberalism’ or something else.”453

This is the main way in which Kelly’s economic perspective diverges from the New Right theorists he criticised in The End of Certainty for being too doctrinaire. Unlike the “radical liberals”, he recognises that what Milton Friedman celebrated as ‘the power of the market’ has its limitations. As he said in 1999, “markets can’t be a

446 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., p.26 447 Kelly, The End of Certainty, op. cit., p.682 448 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., p.27 449 Ibid., p.18 450 Ibid., pp.22-23 451 Ibid., p.28 452 Ibid. 453 Ibid., pp.22-23

149 religion any more than Keynesianism, social democracy or Marxism could be a religion.”454 Kelly evidently views his personal free market advocacy as pragmatic rather than ideological This is how he describes the approach of Hawke and Keating, whom he regards as “intelligent pragmatists”.455 Accordingly, his thinking seems to have been, at least throughout the 1980s and 1990s, more aligned to the right wing of the Australian Labor Movement than the (neo)conservative or ‘New Right’ Coalition.

It is possible that he followed Labor, and Keating in particular, into accepting the superiority of the free market. He has stated that during the 1980s the Canberra Press Gallery became “essentially what I would describe as economic rationalist” because it was “heavily influenced in its thinking during the 1980s by Paul Keating.”456 Given that The End of Certainty is a clear endorsement of the Keating push towards a free market, it is likely that he was among those ‘heavily influenced’.

The End of Certainty was not uncritical of the ALP, however. Throughout the book he criticises Labor for being too slow and timid in deregulating the economy, and suggests its principal failure was deregulating the financial markets without deregulating the labour market.457 But unlike the New Right, which made the same criticism, Kelly explains these flaws as the consequence of political realities. The need to compromise, particularly with the union movement and the electorate, prevented Labor from implementing policies when and where Kelly and other neoliberals saw necessary. However, he suggests also that only Labor could have deregulated the economy as quickly and relatively smoothly as it had done. Only Labor could garner the support of both capital and labour; from business and the unions. A smooth transition from protectionism to a free market required the support of both. He suggested the radical liberals’ ‘zealous’ approach would have encountered significant implementation problems, perhaps even leading to “a repeat of Whitlam-era politics”.458

454 Ibid., p.26 455 Ibid., p.20 456 Paul Kelly, “Who Runs Australia?: The Press Gallery or the Parliament?”, Media Watch, Sydney Institute, No.18, June-July 1991, p.22 457 Kelly, The End of Certainty, op. cit., pp.669-673 458 Ibid., p.613

150 Overall, Kelly’s essential economic approach is encapsulated in Robert Manne’s following description of current Labor leader Mark Latham.

At the core of Latham’s thought is the ambition to reconcile the social democratic dream of rough equality with the neo-liberal faith in markets and individual enterprise.459

This is not to say Kelly’s economic perspective is identical to Latham’s, but this description aptly summarises the approach he has championed over the past two decades. He wants society to be fair and equitable, but he believes interventionist strategies implemented to achieve this will threaten economic growth. He therefore opposes them. The result is that he typically ends up saying exactly what the radical laissez-faire ideologues advocate: let the market decide.

(ii) Social Policy As stated earlier, Kelly’s approach to policy evaluation typically prioritises the economy, and even when reviewing social policy, he generally bases his judgement on how it will affect the economic bottom line. This is evident in his approach to anything from Australian multiculturalism and immigration to the environment and foreign affairs. Nearly all commentaries highlight the cost or benefit to Australia’s economic interests, which are equated always with the ‘national interest’. Consequently, his commentaries are often akin to those of the Right; or at least the neoconservative ‘economic rationalists’. He is dismissive of most left-wing positions. But Kelly does not assess social policies according to narrow economic interests alone. He also considers the humanitarian and moral angles at times. This is particularly the case when they go hand in hand with a policy of some economic advantage. If morality and economic advantage collide, however, Kelly generally favours the latter.

The following section discusses some of the main social policy issues Kelly has engaged with over the past decade or two. In particular it will examine his discussions of immigration and multiculturalism, indigenous policy and Australia’s response to asylum seekers. Though not really foreign policy issues, most have an

459 Robert Manne, “Latham’s line looks a lot like Howard’s way”, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 December 2003,

151 international element to them. And this is to be expected considering Kelly’s principal preoccupation is Australia’s internationalised economy. As Australia opened up its economy to the world, foreign policy became inextricably linked to economic policy. His perspective on immigration is a clear indication of how economic factors are prioritised above others.

The Immigration Debate Kelly is a strong advocate of immigration. He believes Australia has a proud tradition as an immigrant nation, particularly after the abolition of White Australia in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, and views multiculturalism as one of the nation’s finest achievements. Yet his support for immigration is neither humanitarian nor moral, at least not primarily. Rather, he tends to champion immigration on the basis that it serves key economic functions.

One way in which immigration is economically advantageous to Australia is its ability to help expand our small population base. Population growth, he says, has been a key to Australia’s economic fortunes and will continue to be so into the future. As he has recently suggested, “over the past 40 years, half of Australia’s GDP growth has been driven by population growth.”460 And in order to continue growing, to remain successful decades from now, the population must grow substantially also. For that reason he has called upon both parties to support a program of substantial population expansion.461 A failure to do so, he says, would cause “lower economic growth” and “a diminished national influence in the world and region.”462 It would cause “economic decline, rising social inequities and national marginalisation.”463 Moreover, it would exacerbate what he describes as the problem of Australia’s aging population.

Accordingly, endorsements of greater immigration are consistent in Kelly’s commentaries. Recently, for instance, he endorsed the Business Council of Australia’s

460 Paul Kelly, “Nirvana in numbers”, The Australian, 1 May 2004 461 Paul Kelly, “Restocking the nation”, The Australian, August 3, 2002 462 Ibid. 463 Kelly, “Nirvana in numbers”, op. cit.

152 call to substantially lift Australia’s immigration intake in the next half-century.464 Earlier, in 1999, he argued that immigration “has been basic to national development”, having “helped to expand our small population base” and thereby “assisted over time our economic growth.”465

Kelly has not only called for greater immigration, but more selective immigration also. He supports the immigration direction of the Howard Government, which he has described as aiming to “strengthen the link between immigration and economic progress.”466 Hence, he is unmoved by calls for policy to be more accommodating to the sick, the poor, refugees or family reunification. He endorses the Howard vision that “migrants be younger, more literate in English, better skilled and less welfare- dependent.”467 This is perhaps one reason why, as we shall see shortly, he was unreceptive of the Middle Eastern “queue jumpers” during the asylum seekers affair of the early 2000s.

Kelly has had some reservations regarding boosts to immigration, however. In 1999 he warned that immigration must first be economically and socially sustainable. He suggested that greater immigration was beneficial, but could “only be sustained” in conditions of low unemployment. Predictably, labour market deregulation was his answer to this problem.468 Another was the ‘regional solution’ of sending skilled migrants to smaller country towns.469

A second theme Kelly has recently discussed in relation to population expansion is the national fertility rate. In The Australian in 2002 he joined with several other media commentators, most of them men, in arguing that policy is needed to arrest the nation’s declining fertility rate. He described fertility, rather than immigration, as “the pile-driver of population outcomes”, and called it “the main force driving our demography.”470 Indeed, “if fertility continues to slide below [the current] level then

464 Ibid. 465 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., p.33 466 Kelly, “Restocking the nation”, op. cit. 467 Ibid. 468 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., pp.33-34 469 Ibid. 470 Paul Kelly, “It’s breeding obvious”, The Australian, September 04, 2002

153 virtually no feasible immigration intake will be large enough to offset the downward trend.”471

Soft Power: Immigration and Image Something Kelly has discussed in relation to immigration, and foreign policy, in recent years is the notion of “Soft Power”. According to the man who devised the concept, Harvard University’s Joseph Nye, Soft Power relates to “how a country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example”; “it co-opts people rather than coerces them.”472 As Kelly puts it, Soft Power concerns “the influence of the image, reputation and brand name of individual nations.”473 The values a nation is seen to uphold can raise a nation’s profile. Nations without significant military or economic weight can nonetheless exercise power on the global stage because other nations admire and respect the example they set. This, Kelly argues, in turn opens the door to more material, economic benefits. Kelly notes that the notion has been ridiculed by “political hardheads” but he maintains that while “there is substitute for military action”, the best approach to international relations is “a strategy that integrates soft and hard power.”474

Kelly has argued that immigration is one way in which soft power can be established. He has suggested, for instance, that it can assist in achieving closer ties with Australia’s regional neighbours. And this is good for the national interest because, as he suggested in The End of Certainty, “Australia’s future living standards are tied, in part, to the success of Australia’s integration into the Asia/Pacific.”475 Immigration policy can assist this integration by presenting Australia as an open and tolerant place to visit, and to cooperate and do business with.

Multiculturalism versus White Australia

471 Kelly, “Restocking the nation”, op. cit. 472 Joseph Nye cited in Paul Kelly, “Soft option turns hard”, The Australian, 19 June 2004 473 Paul Kelly, “We of never never land”, The Australian, September 8, 2001 474 Kelly, “Soft option turns hard”, op. cit. 475 Kelly, The End of Certainty, op. cit., p.4

154 For this reason, among others, Kelly is a strong supporter of the multicultural project initiated by Fraser and advanced by Hawke and Keating. In “The Paradox of Pessimism” he said “one of our greatest achievements has been the substitution of the original Federation belief of White Australia with a multicultural Australia.”476 He also championed multiculturalism over White Australia in The End of Certainty. Here he portrayed multiculturalism as inevitable.

It was the legacy of the post-war immigration program and the transformation of the Asia/Pacific from a region on military threat to one of economic progress which forced Australia to substitute multiculturalism and regional integration for the original idea of White Australia.477

His endorsement of multiculturalism in The End of Certainty also suggested that he views the project’s economic advantages, rather than its humanitarian or moral advancements, as its most compelling rationale. He said the opportunity for greater trade and commerce with and in Asia dictated that “a greater Asian presence in Australia and a greater Australian presence in Asia” became necessary.478 To achieve a stronger relationship with Asia, Australia could not afford to be seen as racist and xenophobic. The transition to multiculturalism showed Australia’s non-Anglo neighbours that it had evolved into a more open and tolerant nation. It was Asia’s friend, its ally, and its trading partner.

But Kelly’s advocacy of multiculturalism is not entirely ‘pragmatic’, however. There is a humanitarian dimension. Describing multiculturalism as “social inclusion” in 1999, he described its human benefits thus:

Social inclusion relates to individual opportunity, how people feel, whether they are appreciated, the values the leader wants to promote in the community by example, and the ability of new arrivals to find work, friends and a satisfactory existence.479

Despite such sentiments, however, Kelly’s view is markedly different from the perspective of ethnic minority groups and multiculturalists from the Left. In fact, he often criticises the “Ethnic Lobby”, along with others pushing for what he describes

476 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, p.30 477 Kelly, The End of Certainty, op. cit., p.4 478 Ibid. 479 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., p.31

155 as an “open-ended” approach to multiculturalism, accusing them of going too far in pursuit of cultural diversity and focusing too little on social unity. He has warned on several occasions that diversity and freedom which are too “open-ended” will threaten social cohesion and national identity, “leav[ing] societies divided and damaged.”480 Accordingly, he sees “multiculturalism” as an ill-advised term, preferring “many races: one Australia” because it “captures diversity and unity”.481 He believes “diversity must operate within firm limits and social balance”;482 “unity- in-diversity” is the ideal scenario.483

Following American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jnr, Kelly advocates an approach synthesising right-wing assimilation (or monoculturalism) with left-wing “open- ended” diversity. His solution is to create “a brand-new national identity”, one which “arrivals would aspire to join.”484 This is not surprising given Kelly’s disdain for Australia’s pessimistic, “self-defeating” culture and laidback attitude, and his desire that backward-looking Australians get over their attachment to the nation’s egalitarian past. And though Kelly has rejected the monoculturalism of the Right, he seems more sympathetic to it than to the Left’s ‘open ended’ approach. This is implied by the credence to which he affords the Right’s dire scenarios of social disintegration, and in the regularity of his criticisms of both the Left and the “Ethnic Lobby”.485 On this issue, as with several others, then, Kelly’s sympathies lie more with the Right.

The Early 2000’s ‘Asylum Seekers’ Debate Another immigration issue in which Soft Power became central was the asylum seekers debate of the early 2000s. As outlined in Chapter Three, this affair was of major political import – many claimed it decided the 2001 federal election. Kelly engaged with this matter regularly in The Australian. As is typical of Kelly, he viewed this issue not from a domestic perspective, but an international one. His main concern was how Australia’s response to the affair would wash with the international

480 Paul Kelly, “Diversity’s test in face of unity”, The Australian, May 4, 2002 481 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., pp.32-3 482 Ibid. p.31 483 Kelly, “Diversity’s test in face of unity”, op. cit. 484 Ibid. 485 See for example Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism” and “Diversity’s test in face of unity”.

156 community. As he noted, at stake was “Australia’s reputation for human rights, its regional ties and its credentials as a great immigration nation.”486

Kelly saw the asylum seekers affair as a conflict between two underlying principles: national security and the imperative to satisfy international opinion. As he noted, in pursuing national sovereignty almost singularly, the Howard Government had attracted considerable criticism from the international community, most powerfully from the United Nations. Kelly was sympathetic to the Government on this issue, but was highly critical of their contentment to flaunt international opinion. He saw the affair as a major Soft Power failure.487

From this international, “Soft Power” perspective, the Howard Government’s response was a “failure of national policy”, “an inept saga of crisis management”488, and “a reversion to the old-fashioned Fortress Australia mind-set.”489

Australia is a great immigrant and refugee country now looking mean; it has a long record of regional co-operation but now looks somewhat isolated; it has enjoyed a constructive role at the UN but now appears thrown on to the defensive; it has more secure borders than most other nations but seems beset by a bout of insecurity; and it has a domestic history of managing immigration policy in an enlightened fashion but now seems to have lapsed into an insularity that reflects an older character trait.490

Critical as he was of the Coalition’s stance, he distanced himself from its harshest critics, whom he dubbed the vocal “legal-humanitarian-media coalition”. Kelly argued that criticisms which emphasised ‘shame’ and ‘racism’, “offer only a limited insight into the nature of the problem.” “[T]o think this story is just about venal politicians stoking xenophobia to win votes is to misconstrue, fundamentally, what is happening.”491

This is not just a contest between tolerance and intolerance or generosity and prejudice. It represents a crisis for the liberal-democratic state between the

486 Paul Kelly, “Buoyed by boatpeople cut adrift”, The Australian, September 22, 2001 487 Kelly, “We of never never land”, op. cit. 488 Paul Kelly, “One last chance of vindication”, The Australian, September 1, 2001 489 Kelly, “We of never never land”, op. cit. 490 Ibid. 491 Paul Kelly, “No refuge from democracy”, The Australian, April 27, 2002

157 idea of universal human rights as applied to asylum-seekers and the idea of a democracy mandating a government to tighten border protection.492

As sympathetic to the sovereignty position as he was, however, Kelly believed the overriding concern should always have been international opinion. The Government needed to reach “a new and better compromise” between sovereignty and adherence to international standards; one which leaned more towards the latter.493 Indeed, he has suggested elsewhere that in the contemporary, globalised world, “nations must adjust to having less sovereignty.”494

Despite this, he did defend Australia’s refugee policy against international criticism. After observing that the international community was critical of Australia’s detention of asylum seekers because it defied the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, he suggested “the 1951 Refugee Convention is now obsolete”, and “most states that are party to this convention would not sign the same document today.”495 Nonetheless, he advocated that, appropriate or not, the Convention should be obeyed so as to ensure Australia keeps in line with international standards.

Soft Power considerations aside, Kelly saw Australia’s refugee program as “an excellent policy approach”.496 He defended border control on the basis that it ensures “the Australian Government controls the total numbers [of immigrants] on an annual basis”, thereby maintaining immigration “at a level acceptable to the community”.497 He also defended the detention regime, saying “it is a mistake to misjudge either the logic or the politics that sustain Australia’s detention policy.”498 Repeating arguments laid out by then Federal Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock, he also maintained that Australia has a “very generous system of decision-making”.499 Kelly in fact endorsed the Ruddock-Howard line on several other occasions. One was his endorsement of Ruddock’s distinction between ‘onshore’ and ‘offshore’ refugees.500 As discussed in Chapter Three, the former were the ‘asylum seekers’ and the latter

492 Ibid. 493 Paul Kelly, “Howard’s not for turning”, The Australian, August 24, 2002 494 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., p.24 495 Kelly, “No refuge from democracy”, op. cit. 496 Kelly, “We of never never land”, op. cit. 497 Ibid. 498 Paul Kelly, “Refugees subject to immigration laws”, The Australian, July 25, 2001 499 Ibid. 500 Kelly, “One last chance of vindication”, op. cit.

158 refugees outside Australia awaiting resettlement. Following Ruddock, he portrayed the asylum seekers as “queue jumpers” and “economic migrants”, who stole limited resettlement places from genuine, deserving refugees. As he clarified:

[A] refugee is not a person who merely travels by boat from the Middle East to Australia. A refugee is not an economic immigrant. A refugee is not a “forum shopper” who transits several nations where asylum could have been sought.501

Accordingly, he found it “offensive” that people felt sympathy for the asylum seekers, and that the asylum seekers had tried to jump this so-called queue in the first place.502 Kelly collaborated, then, in Ruddock’s successful attempt to demonise asylum seekers as queue-jumpers. But as Peter Mares has observed, the idea of the refugee “queue” is “largely something manufactured by government.”503 “The selection of refugees for resettlement is more like a lottery than an orderly process.”504

Kelly in fact adopted several right-wing discourses on this issue, and not only from Ruddock. For instance, he joined the chorus attacking what he called Australia’s “legal-judiciary establishment”. He accused the courts of ‘misjudging’ the issue and undermining the national interest.505 Following the Institute of Public Affairs506, Kelly also rejected calls for Australia to adopt the less draconian Swedish approach to asylum seekers.507

Though the asylum seekers affair was not really a foreign policy issue, Kelly judged in principally from a foreign policy perspective. From a domestic perspective he found little wrong with the Howard Government’s approach, and defended it accordingly. But since this policy, right or wrong, had upset the international community, and particularly since the Howard Government decided to flout world opinion, Kelly found the Howard way to be in conflict with the national interest.

501 Paul Kelly, “No shelter from the storm”, The Australian, June 16, 2001 502 Kelly, “We of never never land”, op. cit. 503 Peter Mares, 2001, Borderline, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, p.24 504 Ibid., p.18 505 Paul Kelly, “First step: a deal with Indonesia”, The Australian, August 29, 2001 506 Mares, op. cit., p.255 507 Kelly, “Refugees subject to immigration laws”, op. cit.

159 Concurrently, however, he demonstrated that, international standards aside, he believed the detention of asylum seekers was justified policy. In this respect he aligned himself, again, with the Right.

(iii) History and Culture Wars A discussion of Kelly’s contribution to the History and Culture “Wars” throughout the 1990s need be only brief. As an economic rationalist with a tendency towards economic determinism, Kelly has engaged less frequently than other public intellectuals in matters cultural. He has of course participated in historical debates, having written four major books on Australian political history (among many other contributions). Yet he has made little comment, and thus little impact, on the cultural and historical debates of the past decade. For instance, if he did contribute to the “Demidenko debate” of 1995-1996, his participation failed to rate a mention in any of the major studies of the affair.

Kelly made more of a contribution to debates over indigenous issues, yet has not really been part of the heated exchange between left-leaning historians and the Right over the accuracy of Aboriginal history. He did contribute to the Reconciliation debate, however. In 1999 he stated his view thus:

You can’t have one section of the community alienated and expect to have a harmonious society. Aboriginal reconciliation involves a formal recognition of the prior occupation of the continent by the Aboriginal people, a recognition of their unique culture and an acceptance that history and deprivation mean that special programs for Aboriginal advancement are needed. It also means, however, that such action must occur within the spirit of a united Australia. In this respect, I think it means an implicit acknowledgement that a full restoration of past injustice cannot be achieved, and will never be achieved. It is important to say this because it is at the heart of much of the current misunderstanding.508

Kelly’s perspective on this issue, then, is rather uncontroversial. In the context of the broader debate over Aboriginal Australia, he sits pretty much on the fence. He concedes to the Left the fact that Aboriginal history has been marked by injustice, but then joins the Right in advocating that such bygones remain bygones. The final sentence of the above statement, about “the current misunderstanding”, even seems

508 Kelly, “The Paradox of Pessimism”, op. cit., p.31

160 to be aimed at parts of the Aboriginal movement and the Left. Kelly’s preferred approach to the issue, articulated elsewhere, is for Aboriginal Australians to be absorbed into the mainstream economy and society. Predictably, he sees the solution to indigenous problems in their fuller participation in Australia’s capitalist economy.

The Republic is one ‘cultural’ issue in which Kelly has been prominent. In his columns for The Australian and in his second book on the Whitlam dismissal, November 1975 (1995), he has made powerful contributions to this particular debate. As mentioned earlier, Kelly has been a strong and vocal supporter of the republican movement. Also mentioned was the fact that Keating, as Labor prime minister, was perhaps the leader of this movement. Hence, this was another issue in which Kelly would endorse the Keating vision for Australia.

As stated, the Republic aside, Kelly did not play much of a role in the culture or history wars of the 1990s. One possible explanation for this is the fact that, though partially instigated by Keating and Howard, these debates soon gained a momentum of their own and were eventually conducted outside of the political or parliamentary sphere. As literary and academic ‘public intellectuals’ debated culture and history, politicians and the journalists that cover them, such as Paul Kelly, turned their attention elsewhere.

(iv) Foreign Affairs That Kelly was for six years The Australian’s International Editor is fitting, as much of his policy analysis takes an internationalist approach. As his commentaries on the asylum seekers affair demonstrated, he sometimes views domestic matters through an internationalist lens. He is very interested in how policy makes Australia look to the rest of the world. As stated, recently this has related to Kelly’s belief that “Soft Power” offers a way for Australia, as a sparsely populated country with a mid-sized economy, to be influential on the world stage. International prestige can procure rewards in foreign policy areas like trade and national security. As an ‘economic rationalist’, Kelly is most interested in trade. But as his coverage of the ‘War on Terrorism’, particularly the Iraq War, indicate, he is rather hawkish when it comes to

161 ‘defence’ and national security also. In discussing Kelly’s approach to foreign affairs I will focus on what he tends to portray as the two major relationships: that with Asia and that with the USA.

Asian Integration It was noted earlier that Kelly has been a strong advocate of the Hawke-Keating policy of integration into Asia. Multiculturalism and the fostering of closer ties with regional trading partners are programs he has supported at least since the early 1980s. One of the most spectacular expressions of this view was his “damaging” and “damning indictment” of former Liberal leader Andrew Peacock for attempting to play the “anti-Asian card” in the lead-up to the 1990 federal election.509 In The Australian, Kelly declared: “Mr Peacock has stooped to exploit immigration fears and anti-Japanese sentiment in a way which suggests that Australia’s national interests are best served by keeping Mr Peacock in opposition.”510 As Kelly recalls in The End of Certainty, this criticism led to a fiery exchange between himself and Peacock at a National Press Club appearance.511

Kelly’s advocacy of Asian integration has not wavered. Recently, in 2004, he stated that “the logic of a closer integration between ASEAN and Australia and NZ (having roughly the same gross domestic product as South-East Asia) is inescapable.”512 In 2002 he said that “Australia’s most important single relationship is with the US” but its “single most important regional relationship is with East Asia.”513

East Asia takes 57 per cent of our exports and will remain the world’s fastest growing region. It is our neighbourhood and the focus of our future…No Australian government can afford to soft-peddle engagement [with Asia] because our commercial, security and political interests in East Asia are too great.514

Because, as we shall see, he also values the US Alliance, he believes “the main challenge for Australian statecraft has been to integrate our Asian engagements and

509 Bob Hawke, 1994, The Hawke Memoirs, Port Melbourne: Mandarin, pp.483-4 510 Paul Kelly cited in Hawke, op. cit., p.484 511 Kelly, The End of Certainty, op. cit. p.582 512 Paul Kelly, “A door opens in Asia”, The Australian, 24 April 2004 513 Paul Kelly, “Politics must not obscure clear world view”, The Australian, July 31, 2002 514 Ibid.

162 our US alliance.”515 In spite of the recent strain the US Alliance has placed on this relationship, he maintains this still a possibility.

The Howard government’s retreat from the Keating-Hawke mission of integration with Asia has been one of the main areas in which Kelly has criticised them. He has often accused the Howard Government of undermining Australia’s national interests by becoming too neglectful and disrespectful to our Asian neighbours and trading partners. Under Howard, he said, “Australia’s influence within the region continues to decline.”516

In recent years he seems to have been particularly dismayed at how the Howard Government has conducted its relations with Indonesia. In the midst of the asylum seekers affair of 2001, for instance, he attacked the Government for their “blatant and patronising lack of respect for Indonesia”.517 He described their approach to Indonesia as “five years of chronic administrative ineptitude”518, and complained that “the difference between Howard and his predecessors is that Howard runs Indonesian relations via the court of public opinion.”519

Kelly views Indonesia as perhaps the most important of all Australia’s regional neighbours. In 2001 he argued that “a relationship of mutual respect with Indonesia” was “essential”520, and that “Australia cannot afford a hostile relationship with Jakarta.”521 Such assertions are commonplace in his political commentaries.

Kelly’s support for Australia’s “special relationship” with Indonesia saw him defend its brutal annexation of East Timor. According to David Bowman, he “became an apologist over East Timor.”522 He was an apologist for the Soeharto regime generally. John Pilger has documented that, as editor-in-chief of The Australian, Kelly agreed to print one of his articles on East Timor, but then retracted the offer

515 Ibid. 516 Paul Kelly, “Mandate will rock the boats”, The Australian, November 07, 2001 517 Ibid. 518 Paul Kelly, “Willpower or chronic ineptitude?”, The Australian, September 12, 2001 519 Kelly, “Mandate will rock the boats”, op. cit. 520 Kelly, “We of never never land”, op. cit. 521 Kelly, “First step: a deal with Indonesia”, op. cit. 522 David Bowman cited in Margo Kingston and Michael Millett, “Kelly slips as the son rises”, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 23, 1996, p.38

163 because it was critical of the Indonesian Government. He noted further that, shortly after this, Kelly was appointed by the Keating Labor government to the Australia- Indonesia Institute, “a body funded by the Australian Government to promote Indonesia’s and Australia’s ‘common interests’.”523 Pilger claimed that Kelly’s refusal to print his piece was on behalf of his proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, who was trying to set up his Star TV network in Indonesia at the time.524

Another major foreign policy concern Kelly has addressed, in more recent times, is “the rise and rise of China”. After noting that China is increasingly challenging the USA for the position of global hegemon, he concluded that this will inevitably cause a rethink and eventual redesign of global trading patterns. This would affect Australia as everyone else. He has suggested that sooner or later Australia will have to devise a way to balance the US Alliance with policy more favourable to China.525

All the way with the USA As mentioned, Kelly sees Australia’s relationship with the United States as “Australia’s most important single relationship”.526 He has long maintained that, alongside the Asia/Pacific, the USA is Australia’s most important ally. He has often argued the need for Australia to maintain its closeness with the USA. This point has perhaps never been as strongly asserted as it has recently, during the ‘war on terror’.

Kelly has been a stringent supporter of America’s ‘war on terror’ from the start. When the Bush administration initiated the war in the aftermath of 9/11, Kelly said, “Bush is correct in his effort to construct a broad-based and long-run campaign.”527 Alongside other pro-American Australian commentators, he pressed the need for Australia to commit itself in support of its great and powerful friend.

523 John Pilger, 1994, Distant Voices, Sydney: Vintage, p.317 524 Ibid., pp.316-318 525 Paul Kelly, “That unsettling sleeping giant”, The Australian, 30 June 2004 526 Kelly, “Politics must not obscure clear world view”, op. cit. 527 Paul Kelly, The Australian, September 26, 2001

164 At times Kelly painted a very simple picture of life in what he described as the post- September 11 ‘new world order’. The terrorists were simply “evil”.528 They were also primitives. The “postmodern, globalised, financially interdependent multicultural world best symbolised by New York is beset by a force from the medieval world”; a force embodying “fanaticism, absolutism, religious fundamentalism” and whose “mind-set is ancient”.529

Kelly’s approach to covering the “new world order” was often to mimic the arguments advanced by neoconservatives in the United States. This was evident in his endorsement of America’s controversial, and internationally rejected, doctrine of “pre-emptive intervention”. This doctrine, he said, “means that the US won’t give terrorists the benefit of the doubt anymore.” In his advocacy of Bush, Kelly joined the (Republican) neoconservatives in denigrating the alleged softness of the (Democrat) Clinton legacy. “Bill Clinton tried [giving terrorists the benefit of the doubt] for eight years in a policy that died on September 11 along with more than 3000 civilians.”530

Clinton’s sweet song is terminated, along with many of our illusions. Indeed, his reputation will scarcely recover, since the US national security failures so starkly exposed a fortnight ago accumulated under his watch.531

As liberal US commentators, such as Al Franken, have pointed out, the Republican tendency to blame Clinton was not only a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11, but also largely unfounded. As Franken has documented, Bush actually cut Clinton’s counterterrorism programs when taking power in 2000.532 Bush’s laidback approach to national security was also outlined in Michael Moore’s controversial documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004).

The Iraq War Kelly was a strong advocate of the Iraq War from the beginning. Like the war’s other supporters, he justified it on the twin discourses that (a) Saddam was evil and (b) he

528 Ibid. 529 Ibid. 530 Paul Kelly, “National interest and the balance of risk”, The Australian, July 24, 2002 531 Paul Kelly, The Australian, September 26, 2001 532 Al Franken, 2003, Lies, And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Dutton: New York, pp.104-122

165 had weapons of mass destruction, which he refused to surrender, and which posed a threat to the world. Both lines of reasoning were clearly on display in an article of August 2002, “An evil to be reckoned with”. In this piece Kelly detailed Saddam’s heinous crimes, including “genocide”, using “chemical weapons”, and deploying “weapons of mass destruction”, and concluded that Hussein’s record is one of “unusual evil”.533 He also endorsed the views of Richard Butler, “former chief of the UN Special Commission to disarm Iraq”, that Saddam is “simply...addicted to weapons of mass destruction” and “wants to rebuild the WMD capability to which he is so addicted.”534 In a front page commentary from January 2003, he explained that, in contrast to the unusually evil and WMD-addicted Saddam, George W. Bush pursued “the liberation of Iraq and implanting the idea of freedom in the Arab world.”535

In relation to the Australian national interest, Kelly argued that it was vital that Australia make “a credible commitment to the US alliance”.536 Kelly also understood, however, that to support the US would be to endanger Australia’s relations with other sections of the international community – particularly our south-east Asian neighbours. Many, such as Robert Manne, believed it was not possible. Kelly, among others, believed it was difficult but still attainable. In fact, in his estimation, the Howard Government has done remarkably well in balancing the two objectives.537 Though he had criticised the Howard Government for straining relations with Asia a few years earlier, in relation to Iraq he rejected claims that its attachment to the USA has distanced Australia from its regional neighbours. “[T]he line from Howard’s critics about the mortal

533 Paul Kelly, “An evil to be reckoned with”, The Australian, August 17, 2002 534 Ibid. 535 Paul Kelly, The Australian, January 30, 2003 536 Paul Dibb cited in Kelly, “Politics must not obscure clear world view”, op. cit. 537 Kelly, “A door opens in Asia”, op. cit.

166 damage done to Australia in Asia because of our Iraqi mission hardly looks credible.”538

Independence Limited? As Paul Sheehan and Robert Manne have separately demonstrated, the Murdoch/ News Limited papers have been unequivocally supportive of the Iraq War from the beginning. As Manne observed in March 2003, “of the 175 newspapers [Murdoch] owns, all but one have followed Bush and Blair towards war.”539 He suggested Murdoch “has explicitly mobilised his empire in its support.”540 In April 2004 he also claimed that “inside the powerful Murdoch empire...a general pro-war directive was delivered around February last year.”541 This directive “represented nothing less than the party line”, under which a sceptical or critical approach to the war was “forbidden to the editors of our overwhelmingly most powerful newspaper group.”542 Similarly, Sheehan has suggested that Murdoch has utilised his many “media assets” to stage a “global media armada...in support of George W. Bush and Tony Blair and John Howard – all politically vulnerable – over the invasion of Iraq.”543 He says at some point in the Iraq War campaign, “Bush administration policy and Murdoch empire policy had morphed into one and the same.”544 Kelly was one of the most prominent of the Murdoch editorialists throughout the Iraq War, as he is in most of The Australian’s campaigns.

Throughout this chapter, and last, I have given Paul Kelly accepted the notion that Kelly is an independent intellectual operator. I have suggested that, because of the consistency of his views both over the years and from his columns to his books, he speaks his own mind in The Australian. I have assumed that he is not merely a mouthpiece for Rupert Murdoch or any other powerful figure behind the paper. However, a consideration of Kelly’s independence at The Australian would not be

538 Ibid. 539 Robert Manne, “Understanding Howard’s war”, The Age, March 17, 2003, http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/16/1047749661968.html (Accessed 9 July 2004) 540 Ibid. 541 Robert Manne, “Lack of critical media gave Government free rein on Iraq invasion”, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 April 2004, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/18/1082226632717.html (Accessed 9 July 2004) 542 Ibid. 543 Paul Sheehan, 2003, The Electronic Whorehouse, Sydney: Pan Macmillian Australia, p.61 544 Ibid., p.62

167 complete without an investigation of his perspective on the Iraq War. Though there is a clear consistency between Kelly’s and Murdoch’s views on many issues, Kelly’s support for this war raises questions as to his autonomy.

Robert Manne has described the Howard Government’s “lamb-like” faith in the American line on Iraq thus:

When the US announced its new revolutionary strategic doctrine of the pre- emptive strike, the Minister for Defence, Robert Hill, almost nonchalantly offered our immediate support. When, in July, the US appeared ready to go to war without reference to the UN, the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, described all opposition to such a war as “appeasement”. When, in August, after misgivings about US unilateralism were voiced, the Government immediately praised the newfound US commitment to the UN. When the UN, however, proved resistant to US insistence upon a resolution which would provide it with an automatic trigger for the use of military force, the Government agreed that the very future of the UN was at risk.545

Like the Howard Government, Kelly has followed the US line on Iraq almost every step of the way. As documented, he was immediately enthusiastic about the notion of pre-emptive strikes. In July 2002 he, with Alexander Downer, attacked those who purportedly suggested “there should be no US retaliation” to 9/11.546 When in August 2002 the US turned to the United Nations for a resolution condoning the invasion, he suggested that “not even the record of genocide, murder and defiance of the UN that defines Hussein alone justifies pre-emption.”547 But then when the UN, despite intense US lobbying, rejected the case for war, Kelly followed the Americans and the Howard Government in denouncing it. He declared that “it is obvious that the UN has failed”548, and could therefore be bypassed. Typical of the war’s advocates, and of Murdoch commentators, he reserved harshest criticism for the French.549 Kelly was, then, from the moment the USA announced its intention to invade to the actual invasion itself, a champion of the Iraq War and a close follower of the US line.

545 Robert Manne, “Labor’s ‘great and powerful’ policy battle”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 November 2002, http://www.progressivelabour.org/MANNEalpiraq.htm (Accessed 9 July 2004) 546 Paul Kelly, “National interest and the balance of risk”, The Australian, July 24, 2002 547 Kelly, “An evil to be reckoned with”, op. cit. 548 Paul Kelly, “Last chance for globalism”, The Australian, September 07, 2002 549 For one of Kelly’s attacks on the French see The Australian, January 30, 2003; for the tendency for Murdoch commentators to attack the French see Sheehan, op. cit., pp.57-68

168 After the event, though, Kelly has been rather critical of the Americans. Recently he has described the war as a Soft Power failure for the USA. He criticised the Bush administration for practising “not enough co-opting and too much coercion.”550 As he notes, “the war in Iraq has undermined America’s credibility abroad.”551 Similarly, he has recently described the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison as having inflicted “great damage” to “America’s ability to persuade people around the world to follow its light and its example.”552 Of particular concern is that to the extent that the war was an attempt to defeat Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, the mission has actually backfired.

The conclusions are that the Muslim world sees the US war on terrorism and the Iraq intervention in a way very different from that of the Bush administration, that it is largely hostile and disbelieves the US position and offers support to insurgents against the US-led multinational force.553

He notes that surveys conducted in several Muslim nations showed most people thought suicide attacks against Westerners were justified.554

Because of the calamitous nature of the Iraq adventure, Kelly concluded that “military pre-emption in relation to other states such as Iran or North Korea is a dead letter.”555 Moreover, it means “realism is breaking into US policy-making, reluctantly, slowly but surely.”556 In making this critique Kelly draws from Francis Fukuyama, who advocated a “more prudent” US approach to the war against terrorism and in reshaping the world in its own image generally.557 So now, after the event, Kelly is singing the praises of internationalism, saying “US power cannot substitute for coalitions and effective use of international organisations.”558 With the benefit of hindsight he has asserted that “the strategic case put by Bush and Howard

550 Kelly, “Soft option turns hard”, op. cit. 551 Ibid. 552 Paul Kelly, “The damage is done”, The Australian, 8 May 2004 553 Kelly, “Soft option turns hard”, op. cit. 554 Ibid. 555 Paul Kelly, “Latham closes UN door”, The Australian, 3 July 2004 556 Ibid. 557 Ibid. 558 Paul Kelly, “No place for ideological extremes”, The Australian, 26 May 2004

169 for intervention in Iraq was never persuasive.”559 The last comment in particular is curious given Kelly’s own role in trumpeting this very ‘strategic case’.

Recently Kelly has also accused the Bush administration of being dangerously ideological. He endorsed think tank researcher Anthony Cordesman’s suggestion that:

a small group of neo-conservative ideologues were able to substitute their illusions for an effective planning effort by professionals using the inter-agency process...[they have] trapped us into a war without setting realistic and obtainable goals, and without a realistic and workable approach to creating stability.560

Kelly has suggested that “Bush had virtually decided upon his Iraq war by late 2001.”561 He has criticised the Bush government for having “no proper plan for governing Iraq after Saddam’s fall and no idea of its political needs”562, and described it as “dysfunctional”.563 He even corrected the neoconservatives for believing “Bill Clinton had been too soft” (!).564

It seems safe to look back in hindsight at the problems with the war. After all, it has already happened. In relation to contemporary events, however, Kelly remains fixed to the US line – the same line followed by Howard and championed by the Murdoch Empire. He has been among the many Australian political commentators defending the war and advocating that Australia reaffirm its commitment to the war by extending the stay of our troops. In July 2004 he criticised “the absolutists and the anti-Bush fanatics” who say the Iraq War was “illegal and immoral” and that “Australia must withdraw immediately”.565 Along with most other Murdoch commentators, Kelly denounced Labor leader Mark Latham’s policy, announced early 2004, of withdrawing Australian troops by Christmas that year. Recently he

559 Kelly, “Latham closes UN door”, op. cit. 560 Kelly, “No place for ideological extremes”, op. cit. 561 Paul Kelly, “Not a trace of doubt in his mind”, The Australian, 5 May 2004 562 Kelly, “The damage is done”, op. cit. 563 Kelly, “Not a trace of doubt in his mind”, op. cit. 564 Ibid. 565 Kelly, “Latham closes UN door”, op. cit.

170 has warned that “it is folly to think Labor’s Iraq policy will not hurt the [Alliance]” and stressed the need for both parties to “keep an effective relationship with the US during and after the war.”566

Conclusion On issues like the Iraq War and asylum seekers, Kelly has been a fairly unambiguous supporter of the Howard Government. Yet, as argued earlier in the chapter, for most of his career his social and political thought has been more closely aligned to right- wing Laborism. This is reflected in his preoccupation with Labor in his numerous books, his sympathetic portraits of the Whitlam years and Whitlam himself (he said in 2002 that he still loves Whitlam567), his unambiguous endorsement of the basic Hawke-Keating reform agenda of the 1980s, his admiration for both Hawke and Keating, and his embrace of a ‘Third Way’ approach to economic policy throughout the 1990s.

Just as the ALP moved rightward from the Whitlam days of the 1970s to the Hawke- Keating era of the 1980s and 1990s, Kelly too has transformed from left-liberal to right-of-centre. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, he seems to have been particularly influenced by Keating. He is one of the many Canberra journalists who were mesmerised and captured by the Keating vision.

To say Kelly’s thought is closely aligned to the politics of the Labor Right is in no way to say he is a partisan commentator, however. He has demonstrated the contrary often enough through the balance he achieves in his analyses, and recently in his many attacks on Labor leader Mark Latham. He has been a regular critic of the post- Keating ALP. He has consistently criticised Latham, for instance, most notably over Iraq and the US Alliance, but also on matters like his Asian integration strategy (which he argued was less realistic than the Howard Government’s).568 Indeed, there is good reason to believe he has actually been more pro-Howard than pro-Labor in the past half decade. This is particularly evident again in his endorsements of the Iraq War and the US Alliance, but also in his support for the detention of asylum seekers and his opposition to

566 Paul Kelly, “Trouble in the garden”, The Australian, 5 June 2004 567 Gerard Henderson, “Real Gough can’t walk on water”, The Sydney Morning Herald, December 2, 2002 (Accessed online at www.smh.com.au, October 1, 2004) 568 Kelly, “A door opens in Asia”, op. cit.

171 interventionist economic policies. On all three issues he has tended to portray Labor as weak and indecisive. On economics he regularly warns the ALP about flirting with policies contrary to the principles of pro-market ‘economic rationalism’. Kelly is not, then, a partisan commentator. His background and much of his vision seem more sympathetic to Labor, but he has never blindly followed where the ALP has sought to lead. Rather, if he has tended to support Labor policy more than Liberal, it is because the former have corresponded more often to his own estimation of the national interest.

A more interesting question in relation to Kelly’s intellectual integrity is his relationship with The Australian and its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. As argued, it has been the Iraq War more than any that has cast doubt on his independence. Murdoch’s enforcement of a pro-war stance throughout his media empire severely complicates the question as to whether Kelly is hired for his views or, on some occasions, to change them. He says not. As I did last chapter, I will give Kelly the benefit of the doubt here.

One thing which seems undeniable, though, is that Kelly would owe at least some of his success at The Australian to the ideological acceptability of his commentaries and his vision. This is not to say that he has not earned his status through high calibre journalism and commentary. After all, he established his reputation in and outside the Murdoch stable. And as mentioned last chapter, this was often done (some years ago) by expressing views contrary to the conservative Murdoch line. However, to be for so long not only a leading columnist but the main man at The Australian owes something to value Murdoch sees in the messages he disseminates. And given that editorships at The Australian are notoriously short-lived, Kelly’s views have undeniably helped him hold down key editorial positions for so many years.

In any event, from his base at The Australian and through his various books, papers and seminars, Kelly’s contribution to Australian public life over the past thirty years has been immense. He has not only been for many years one of the nation’s premier political commentators, he has firmly established himself as one of our most respected pundits on the national interest, or matters of public concern. Over the past decade, in particular, he has been one of the country’s most prominent and influential public intellectuals in the press.

172 Chapter 7: The Academic as Public Intellectual

Introduction Discussions on the social function of intellectuals invariably contain at least some reference to the universities. Often it is to hold up the academic as the epitome of the ‘intellectual’ in society. Indeed, as McKee has observed, “Many writers use the term [‘intellectual’] as a synonym for ‘academic’.”569 Such views typically relate in some way to the idea, articulated most memorably by Cardinal John Henry Newman in 1852, that universities, and thus academics, are dedicated to the pursuit of truth above all else. As Miller has summarised: “the fundamental purpose of the university is the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, as well as the dissemination of that knowledge for the sake of the community.”570 As mentioned in Chapter Two, to pursue truth or knowledge above all else is a commonly cited element in (narrower) conceptions of ‘the intellectual’.

As this chapter details, however, in more recent times the ‘intellectuality’ of academics has been questioned on a variety of grounds. Perhaps the most common is the argument is that intellectual independence in the universities is being increasingly eroded by a combination of external and internal pressures. The issue of university funding and controversies over academic conformity seem to be the most often mentioned of these. There are other reasons academics are sometimes considered not to be real intellectuals, or at least public intellectuals, however. Some theorists believe specialisation within the universities, the abandonment of the idea of a ‘liberal education’, has made academics less likely to function as intellectuals – who are believed by some to be necessarily universalistic in focus. By devoting themselves to narrower fields of inquiry, academics are said to lack the rounded expertise public intellectuals are supposed to possess. Finally, many accuse academics of having either turned away, or been excluded, from public intellectual

569 Alan McKee, “Public Intellectuals: an introduction to Continuum’s new series of interviews”, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol. 16, No.2, 2002, p.221. Richard Reeves, in New Statesman, is someone who believes only academics are generally bone fide intellectuals. Reeves, “There is a character missing from the cast of political life: the public intellectual”, New Statesman, 7 July 2003, Vol. 132, Issue 4645. For an example of the two terms being used synonymously see Geoffrey Maslen and Luke Slattery, 1994, Why Our Universities are Failing: Crisis in the Clever Country, Melbourne: Wilkinson Books, pp. ix, 64 570 Seumas Miller, “Academic Autonomy” in Tony Coady (ed), 2000, Why Universities Matter, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.115

173 life. While it is generally accepted that Australians are not particularly interested in ‘theory’, or academic pursuits, many attribute this to the pedantry and “impenetrable prose” of an exclusive and elitist academic caste.

This chapter will explore these themes to determine whether academics can in fact be considered public intellectuals, or even intellectuals per se. By applying the four criteria established in Chapter Two, it will examine whether academics are sufficiently independent, authoritative, and engaged in social critique from a public platform, to be public intellectuals. It will focus on academics in general, but will conclude with a discussion of La Trobe University professor and Fairfax columnist, Robert Manne, as a case study.

A. Academics as Public Intellectuals

1. Independence Decades ago, few would have questioned the idea that academics enjoy far greater autonomy and independence than thinkers in most other professional settings. As Bernd Huppauf has suggested, “academic autonomy” was once thought to be the “essence” of the modern university.571 While most professional occupations are marked by an imperative to meet employers’ or clients’ expectations, or else an economic bottom line, the university environment was generally regarded as sufficiently insulated from such political, societal or economic demands to afford its professionals a high level of intellectual independence.

Historians Stuart McIntyre and Anna Clark describe the traditional view of the university thus: “the mission of the university, it used to be said, was to pursue knowledge for its own sake and to follow the inquiry wherever it might lead.”572 This view is of course the portrait painted 150 years ago by Cardinal Newman. After Newman’s celebrated “Idea of a University” lectures, the university and its academic professionals were commonly seen to pursue truth at the expense of all other considerations. It is reasonable to conclude that it is largely because of the

571 Bernd Huppauf, “Universities and Postmodernism” in Simon Cooper, John Hinkson and Geoff Sharp (eds.), 2002, Scholars and Entrepreneurs: The Universities in Crisis, North Carlton: Arena Publications, p.21 572 Stuart McIntyre and Anna Clark, 2003, History Wars, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, p.15

174 prevalence of this notion that academics are regularly held to be the clearest instance of the ‘intellectual’ in society.

The prevalence of this view made it common sense that if one wanted to join a profession where one was free to think what one wants to think, write what one wants to write, the academy would be the obvious choice. La Trobe University’s Robert Manne says this is why he became an academic in the first place.

I quite self-consciously chose a university to work in, taking it to be the one institution where, because of a kind of historical oddity, freedom of thought was preserved...I chose to work in a university partly because there was something called tenure. I took there to be a trade-off: if one went into the law, one could be very wealthy, whereas if one went into the universities, one could have freedom of thought, you could more or less say whatever you wanted, without fear of the consequences.573

As stated, serious doubts have been raised over the appropriateness of this view in modern times however. Many theorists, including many academics, have come to believe that intellectual independence within the university is either a myth or something that has been lost over time. Manne offers a clear expression of this gloomy perspective.

[U]niversities aren’t at all as they were meant to be...Universities have become quite ordinary institutions – trade-unionised, self-interested, with no clear conception of their role...I thought there was an institution where freedom of thought was really secure, but it’s not true any more.574

Theorists who bewail a decline in academic freedoms typically point to one of two threats to intellectual autonomy. One is imposed from outside the university, the other from within.

Manne’s above reference to “a kind of historical oddity” in which “freedom of thought was preserved” alludes to universities’ unique status as one of few social institutions without a clear attachment to, and therefore dependence on, social power centres like government and the corporate sector. Though government has

573 Robert Manne in Robert Dessaix, 1998, Speaking Their Minds, ABC Books: Sydney, pp.33-34 574 Ibid.

175 traditionally provided the bulk of the funding, the currency afforded to the idea of intellectual autonomy meant academics were largely “unaccountable” to the state or society. They were free to pursue truth without having to worry about how fashionable, profitable, or as some complain, useful their ideas are. As Miller has argued, “universities have been established as centres wherein independence of intellectual inquiry is maintained.”575 Similarly, Turner has claimed that intellectual freedom is “an essential prerequisite for the proper performance of the [academic] profession.”576

However, due at least in part to this apparent “unaccountability”, throughout the 1980s in the western, ‘economic rationalist’ world, governments substantially reduced their higher education budgets and dictated that universities must look also to the private sector for finance. In Australia this revolution was initiated by the Hawke Labor government and was overseen by Minister for Education, Mr John Dawkins. Following the ‘Dawkins reforms’ of the late 1980s, many observers, mostly academics, complained that by making universities “accountable” to the market, academic autonomy would be jeopardised. Funding received from corporations and government departments, they feared, would inevitably have strings attached. Unprofitable or ideologically undesirable research and scholarship would be threatened. As Manne has put it, universities would be obliged to “render their course offerings more market sensitive and to abandon even the most important fields of study if they cannot pay their way.”577 Fields of inquiry like philosophy, the humanities and the arts would be among those most clearly under threat. Expressions of this kind were prominent throughout the western world. In Australia, anthologies like Scholars and Entrepreneurs: The Universities in Crisis (2002) and Why Universities Matter (2000) raised this and other issues related to the “crisis” of the universities.

Though the vulnerability of academic autonomy to external forces has been the principal concern in recent discussions of the “crisis” confronting Australia’s universities, other theorists believe the main threats to intellectual independence

575 Miller, op. cit., p.121 576 John R. G. Turner, “The Price of Freedom” in Malcolm Tight (ed.), 1988, Academic Freedom and Responsibility, Philadelphia: Open University Press, p.106 577 Robert Manne, “Roderick West and the University”, Quadrant, March 1997, p.4

176 come from within the ‘ivory tower’. This view has been particularly prominent since the 1960s, and is typically conservative. Conservatives complain that since the 1960s, radicals have swamped the universities, particularly the humanities, and attempted to enforce “ideological conformity” within the academic class. The conservative anthology, The New Conservatism in Australia (1982), offers some traditional articulations of this perspective. Manne, the book’s editor, complained of the “reigning left-wing orthodoxy of the intellectual class” and suggested that since the 1960s there was a clear “movement in the atmosphere of these institutions [universities] towards the left, particularly in those faculties where the humane and social sciences were taught.”578 In the same volume, John Carroll claimed “the universities have been the seed-beds of remissive [left-wing] culture” in Australia.579

In the past decade or so this theory has been revised slightly to account for the transition of some strands of radical thinking into postmodern theory and so-called ‘political correctness’. The most commonly cited instigator of this revision is American scholar Allan Bloom, author of the influential study, The Closing of the American Mind (1987). As postmodernists like McKenzie Wark and Mark Davis have documented, many scholars, particularly but not exclusively of the Right, have alleged that postmodernism and political correctness are eroding freedom of expression and imposing upon academia an ‘ideological straightjacket’. In their 1994 book, Why Our Universities Are Failing, for instance, Geoffrey Maslen and Luke Slattery claimed postmodernism has an “unyielding...hold on the modern academy”.580 This view is also evident in Robert Dessaix’s lament that these days “many areas of the humanities enforc[e] ideological conformity.”581

A similar conservative position claiming that academics voluntarily surrender their autonomy, even integrity, is the old and remarkably versatile notion of the ‘new class’. According to this view, academics are generally left-leaning and tend to support ‘socialist’ policies because they owe their own livelihoods to the state. This notion can be found in Milton Friedman’s celebrated manifesto, Free to Choose

578 Robert Manne (ed.), 1982, The New Conservatism in Australia, pp.viii, xi 579 John Carroll, “Paranoid and Remissive: The Treason of the Upper Middle Class” in Manne, The New Conservatism in Australia, op. cit., p.2 580 Maslen and Slattery, op. cit., p.x 581 Dessaix, op. cit., p.19

177 (1980, 1990) 582, and is also evident in a fairly recent statement by the Institute of Public Affairs, that private think tanks like itself are more independent because their “intellectual opinion [is] funded by consent”, while academics’ “intellectual opinion [is] funded by the coercive transfers of the tax system.”583

A final negation of academic independence to be discussed here is the radical perspective. Articulated most notably by American scholar Russell Jacoby, this view also suggests the academy encourages ideological conformity, but by ‘moderating’ opinions rather than radicalising them. In The Last Intellectuals (1987), Jacoby maintained that the academy is not a haven for free-thinkers, and indeed that “in becoming academics, [thinkers] ceased to be intellectuals at all.”584 Former intellectuals of the New Left, he argued, were “seduced, as it were, into the job security offered by faculty lines in the universities.”585 Elsewhere he has said academics “are very much part of the establishment.”586 As Elizabeth A. Kelly has commented, Jacoby saw universities as “elitist ivory towers where leftists go when they want to sell out.”587 In 1984, before Jacoby’s thesis, Australian radical Humphrey McQueen made the similar point that “academia is itself one of the gravest threats to intellectual life in this country”, since “academic privileges” impose “fatty tissue in the brain and in the soul.”588 More recently, Dessaix, whose endorsement of the conservative lament was mentioned earlier, has also affirmed the Jacoby view. He has claimed that “it may now be impossible, given the rules of tertiary institutions work by in countries like Australia, Canada and the United States, to be both a public intellectual and an academic at the same time.”589

There are, then, numerous discourses, most of them quite recent, which deny the old- fashioned notion that academics are in fact independent enough to be public

582 See for example Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, 1990, Free to Choose, Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, pp.141-2 583 “Moral Vanity Manne”, IPA Review, September 1999, p.22 584 Russell Jacoby cited in Elizabeth A. Kelly, 1995, Education, Democracy &Public Knowledge, Oxford: Westview Press, p.85 585 Kelly, op. cit., p.85 586 Russell Jacoby, “Intellectuals: Inside and Outside the Academy” in Anthony Smith and Frank Webster (eds.), , The Postmodern University, Buckingham: Open University Press, p.65 587 Kelly, op. cit., p.91 588 Humphrey McQueen, 1984, Gallipoli to Petrov: Arguing With Australian History, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, p.xii 589 Jacoby cited in Kelly, op. cit., p.85

178 intellectuals. Let us consider the merits of each. First let us evaluate the notion that the academy enforces ‘ideological conformity’, particularly in the humanities. Supposing we concede to the conservatives the idea that left-leaning or postmodern thought dominates in these faculties, which it may well do. Can we then proceed to allege that there also exists a pressure to conform? And, if so, is this pressure unique to the humanities and exerted only by ‘tenured radicals’?

The last question in particular is rather dubious. For as some scholars point out, pressures to conform to dominant paradigms do actually exist in universities, as in other institutions, but they transcend faculties, disciplines and political perspectives. UK academic Ronald Barnett has articulated this point well.

[I]t is difficult, though admittedly not impossible, for alternative ways of going on to get a hearing. It is clear enough why this should be so: alternative concepts and theories would constitute a rival paradigm; they would represent a threat to the way in which the disciplinary community defines and understands itself. More than that, they would constitute an attack on the personal academic identities of those who have, over many years, established their own status and credentials by faithfully working within the paradigm.

Attempts, therefore, to offer a new perspective do more than rock the boat. They are hardly less than mutiny, and must be treated accordingly. In fact, through control over journal publications and influence over book publications, it is possible substantially to hinder the new paradigms from ever getting an effective hearing, and so slow, if not stop, the snowballing effect of what might be an intellectual revolution.590

Internal pressures to conform, then, are nothing new to the university. Nor are they restricted to the humanities. For instance, as Michael Pusey has observed, Australia’s university economics departments have been dominated by a “neoclassical economics curriculum” for decades.591 And as the accused within the humanities point out, “ideological conformity” was evident well before the radicals took over. Wark and Davis, for instance, argue that before Marxism, postmodernism and ‘political correctness’, it was the ideology of “Leavisite liberalism” which dominated such faculties. Similarly, Russell Jacoby has dismissed the Bloom view by accusing

590 Ronald Barnett, “Limits to Academic Freedom: Imposed-Upon or Self-Imposed”, in Malcolm Tight (ed.), 1988, Academic Freedom and Responsibility, Philadelphia: Open University Press, p.99 591 Michael Pusey, 1991, Economic Rationalism in Canberra, Sydney: Cambridge University Press, pp.2-6

179 the conservatives of clinging to what he calls “dogmatic wisdom”.592 Such thinkers suggest that those who decry ideological conformity do so on the dogmatic belief that “other people’s ideals are instances of ‘political correctness’ [and ‘ideology’]; mine are ‘ethics’.”593 Similarly, Henry Giroux has rejected notions of ideological conformity, saying the university acts as a contemporary public sphere, and claiming that complaints against ‘political correctness’ and the like merely reflect the bitterness of conservatives at the demise of their own canons and intellectual traditions.

Accordingly, that universities are these days places where thinkers are pressured or encouraged to embrace fashionable ideas is insufficient reason to conclude that intellectual autonomy has dramatically declined since the 1960s or as a result of postmodernism or PC. One should, rather, accept that universities do not, and cannot, offer a space where academics are completely free from intellectual trends and the pressures they entail.

The question which remains, then, is whether this inherent form of duress means universities cannot, as Jacoby suggests, harbour intellectuals? The answer, I believe, lies in the university’s relationship to external pressures and forces. For all organisations are susceptible to ‘ideological conformity’ or ‘peer-pressure’. Academics are no more vulnerable to ideological trends than any other professionals. And since “Complete independence is something that no man [sic] can achieve”594, we should gauge academic independence not according to absolutist principles but in comparison to the other professions.

Despite the regular warnings from academics that freedom of thought and expression is threatened by increasing reliance on the market, universities still appear to provide something of a haven for those dedicated to learning and ideas. Certainly compared to other institutions they do. This has perhaps declined somewhat since the higher education revolution, and may well decline further in the future. For now, however, the university appears to remain somewhat of an ‘ivory tower’, or what Huppauf has

592 Russell Jacoby, 1994, Dogmatic Wisdom, Sydney: Doubleday 593 Mark Davis, 1999, gangland, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.217 594 Donald Horne, 1965, The Lucky Country, Sydney: Angus & Robertson Publishers, p.204

180 described as “an enclave in capitalist society”.595 That the university can harbour so many left-wing thinkers and writers in a political and economic culture dominated by the Right, is testament to their relative insulation from the market and the state. And though radicals like Jacoby and McQueen believe left-wing thought is moderated at the university by a combination of external and internal pressures, their idea of intellectual independence seems stricter and more absolutist than conceived in this study. For such writers, only the self-funded writer can, as a rule, enjoy genuine independence.596 And as Manne has observed, “even that depends on being published.”597 Hence, to cling to more absolutist notions of independence becomes useful only if one wants to lament the death of intellectuals in society (which of course is Jacoby’s intention). This is not the intention of this study, and why I have defined the category according to more relativist criteria.

We can conclude, therefore, that though universities may not, and cannot, provide an absolute sanctuary from external or internal coercion, they are relatively independent. Academia’s continuing, albeit threatened, insularity from external influence makes it “one of the few arenas where the struggle for democracy is active and continuous.”598 Hence, as one Australian academic concerned about eroding freedoms, Stuart McIntyre, has observed, academics “enjoy a greater measure of autonomy over what they do than [those] working in most other settings.”599 He concludes that despite the various forces threatening the ivory tower, “freedom of judgement and expression is nevertheless a hallmark of the academic vocation.”600

2. Expertise To query whether academics are experts seems an unnecessary task. The nature of their work is, after all, to research and impart knowledge. So if academics are not experts, what are they? And who, if not the academic, can be considered an ‘expert’ in society? Even in the least flattering stereotypes, be it the absent-minded professor, the mad scientist or the ivory tower snob, academics are assumed to have a firm grasp of whatever it is they have devoted their lives to. The fact that academics

595 Huppauf, op. cit., p.25 596 Kelly, op. cit., p.85 597 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.34 598 Kelly, op. cit., p.91 599 McIntyre and Clark, op. cit., p.15 600 Ibid.

181 frequently appear as ‘experts’ in news and current affairs media indicates they are considered, at least in their specific field of study, to be authoritative. They are, as McIntyre and Clark observe, generally believed to “speak with the authority of the expert” and are recognised to be “appointed to university posts because of their expertise.”601 And since this study has defined the ‘public intellectual’ from a relativist perspective, determined by public perception, we can conclude that academics are experts.

3. Social Critique However, as outlined in Chapter Two, expertise per se is generally not sufficient to qualify a thinker as a public intellectual. Intellectuals can be specialists, but the public intellectual is generally either a ‘universal’ intellectual or a commentator whose expertise encompasses political and social issues. For the public intellectual is someone whose intellectual contribution to public life is prominent and regular. And this requires the ability to speak on many “matters of public concern”; to be able to authoritatively engage with public policy. Thus, though most would agree that academics are genuine experts in at least one field of inquiry, fewer would be convinced of their expertise on political and social issues – particularly in a ‘pragmatic’ culture like Australia’s.

One reason this is so, one just alluded to, is Australia’s ‘pragmatic’, perhaps ‘anti- intellectual’ culture. This theme has already been discussed in Chapter Two. As was mentioned, academics are perhaps the principal victim of populist anti- intellectualism and, these days, diatribes against ‘the elites’. As Peter Coaldrake and Lawrence Stedman have remarked, “the popular image [of the university academic] is of an ivory tower, and the term ‘academic’ is usually used pejoratively by outsiders to mean ‘out of touch’.”602 Such sentiments are directed most commonly towards academics’ attempts to ‘intervene’ into political affairs by making strong statements (as les intellectuels did). Henry Giroux explains the populist critique well: “Charged with being hopelessly theoretical, academics are viewed as ill prepared to

601 Ibid. 602 Peter Coaldrake and Lawrence Stedman, 1998, On the Brink: Australia’s Universities Confronting Their Future, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, p.174

182 address the real problems of everyday life.”603 Because of the pervasiveness, though perhaps not dominance, of this view in Australia, academics seem to be markedly less welcome into public political debates than their counterparts in many other (especially European) nations. This was an observation Donald Horne made in The Lucky Country (1964). He said Australian academics played a significantly smaller role in public life than their foreign counterparts. He attributes much of this to the public’s indifference to ideas and the people who devote their lives to them. “In the universities”, he said, “clever men nurse the wounds of public indifference.”604 As Maslen and Slattery have observed, other eminent Australian thinkers like Patrick White and Robert Hughes have voiced the same lament.605

Another reason academics’ expertise on political matters is not always culturally validated is because of the highly specialised nature of academic scholarship. Whereas once upon a time it was believed the university would provide academics and students alike with a “liberal education”, one that is general and which provides a ‘universal’ understanding, these days academic study and scholarship are recognised to be highly specialised. Huppauf summarises the liberal ideal of the university as assuming a “unity of knowledge”, in which “all sciences could be linked together as facets of a process of man’s self-liberation and liberation from nature.”606 But gone are the days of the Cardinal Newman “idea of a university”, in which scholars would learn for learning’s sake and acquire from scholarship a “philosophical mind” and an appreciation of, in Matthew Arnold’s words, “the best that has been written or said.”607 The university these days is a place of specialised knowledge in which instead of conversing and collaborating across disciplines, scholars devote their energies to narrower and narrower fields of inquiry. In The Last Intellectuals, Jacoby concluded that because most academics have become specialists, lacking a general or universal expertise, few can properly be considered public intellectuals.608 And though postmodernists and ‘economic rationalists’ alike applaud specialisation as recognition that universal understanding is either a façade

603 Henry A. Giroux, “Academics as Public Intellectuals: Rethinking Classroom Politics” in Jeffrey Williams (ed), 1995, PC Wars, London: Routledge, p.296 604 Horne, op. cit., pp.8-9 605 Maslen and Slattery, op. cit., p.66 606 Huppauf, op. cit., p.24 607 Matthew Arnold cited in Jacoby, Dogmatic Wisdom, op. cit., p.11 608 Kelly, op. cit., p.85

183 or unproductive, it seems specialisation has, as Jacoby insists, lessened the likelihood that academics will be authorised to speak and opine on matters political. For as Barnett has observed, academics, as specialists, become “less and less a critic of society...and more and more an underlabourer, working in a confined intellectual field, fulfilling a range of limited services for the state.”609 It would seem, then, that by limiting the number of fields into which academics venture, and thereby helping to diminish their role in public life, specialisation has, as Jacoby suggests, diminished the role of the academic as a public intellectual.

4. Public Performance Because they are recognised as authoritative, academics often appear in the news media as expert sources, as interviews in current affairs programs, and sometimes as columnists, particularly for the quality press. Often when an issue grabs the public’s attention, a number of academics, seen to be experts on the topic, will be called upon to provide an explanation, analysis, and sometimes evaluation of the matter.

However, most of these academics do not remain in the public eye for long. Academics, as mentioned, are recognised experts on one or a small number of specific fields of inquiry. Their insights are considered valuable on certain matters, but not on others. People rarely wish to hear, for instance, what a professor of education thinks about health policy. There are exceptions, such as renowned linguist Noam Chomsky regularly discussing a wide variety of social and political matters. But generally the academic is considered a specialist. Accordingly, their media commentaries will be limited to certain matters, and therefore infrequent. They are unlikely to become, for instance, political columnists. When an issue on which he or she is authoritative leaves the public spotlight, the academic will generally depart with it.

The ‘History Wars’ and ‘Culture Wars’ offer an instance when a considerable number of academics have functioned as public intellectuals. As McKenzie Wark has observed: “‘Culture’ is rarely newsworthy, in any sense of the word.”610 History, like Culture, is generally non-news and not often discussed with much interest in the

609 Barnett, op. cit., p.103 610 McKenzie Wark, 1997, The Virtual Republic, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.120

184 mainstream media. However, when Keating and Howard laid the groundwork for what would become the Australian version of America’s History Wars, history did become an issue within Australian political culture. Academic historians, along with historians from other backgrounds (most notably from ‘think tanks’), began voicing their views on matters historical. They were read in the op-ed pages of the newspapers, particularly the quality dailies, and were seen and heard on television and radio. Historians became visible intellectuals, public intellectuals. The some occurred for cultural theorists in the Culture Wars. Literary commentators, including several academics, moved from little-read academic journals to the mainstream media over issues like feminism in relation to Helen Garner’s the first stone, censorship following Port Arthur, anti-Semitism in the ‘Demidenko Affair’, and postmodernism and ‘political correctness’ in all three.

Overall there are some disciplines which have a greater likelihood of producing public intellectuals because, even if their knowledge is specialised, it is closely related to ‘public policy’. Specifically, academics from the social sciences, including political science and the humanities, are more likely to be considered sufficiently qualified to speak about politics and society. This is, one could argue, why Robert Manne, professor of politics at La Trobe, is one of the few academic political columnists in Australia.

Manne’s field of expertise appears to qualify him to speak on nearly all ‘matters of public concern’. But why is he one of only few academics to write political columns when there are many other academics whose professional lives are devoted to studying and writing on the true and the just in social affairs? Australian populist anti-intellectualism is one reason. As we shall see next chapter, criticisms of excessive idealism and moralism, of being ‘out of touch’, have commonly been levelled at Manne. The left-wing orientation of many academics is likely to deny them access to the Australian media also. As Manne has recently observed, “in the market-sensitive commercial media, left-leaning views are increasingly unwelcome.”611 Moreover, that Manne, a former editor of Quadrant and unreconstructed anti-Marxist, has become the left-wing alternative in the Australian

611 Robert Manne, “Robert Manne, Polemicist” (interview), The Reader, September 17, 2004, No.64, p.39

185 press indicates how far to the Right Australian political culture, and the mainstream media, have journeyed.

But there is a further, more oft-cited reason as to why academics rarely appear as political columnists or public intellectuals in Australia. A common complaint by editorial staff is that academics cannot write for a mainstream audience. According to Maslen and Slattery, “people in the media” attribute the absence of academics to “the poor communication and writing skills of the majority of academics.”612 Maslen and Slattery criticised academics for their exclusivity, characterised particularly by their “impenetrable prose”.613 They called the universities “secret societies”.614

It is not only editors and media workers who have complained of this either. This is one of Jacoby’s main criticisms of academics in The Last Intellectuals. Jacoby censured academics for refusing to modify this specialised academic-speak to accommodate the lay reader. He argued that by “eschewing ‘public prose’ for specialist jargon, [intellectuals] became invisible to the public at large”, and by so doing “intellectuals of the New Left ceased to be ‘public intellectuals’. In fact, in becoming academics, they ceased to be intellectuals at all.”615 As Elizabeth A. Kelly remarked, Jacoby claimed the academic ‘intellectuals’ “refused to write for the general public, finding an audience instead in the specialized professional journals of academic disciplines.”616

Australian writer Robert Dessaix has also articulated this view, saying in a university system which condones “the use of impenetrable language, which considers an ability to address a broad public as not only worthless but dangerous...the emergence of a truly public intellectual is severely hampered.”617 He concludes that universities are “unlikely to nurture the kind of maverick, free-ranging thinkers with wide public appeal Australians expect their public intellectuals to be.”618

612 Maslen and Slattery, op. cit., p.66 613 Ibid. 614 Ibid., p.ix 615 Jacoby cited in Kelly, op. cit., p.85 616 Kelly, op. cit., p.85 617 Dessaix, op. cit., p.19 618 Ibid.

186 Horne argued along these lines four decades ago in The Lucky Country. Though he believed Australians were generally incurious about academic or ‘intellectual’ pursuits, he suggested much of the public’s indifference to academics was due to the mediocrity of the academics themselves. He said many academics tended to see their work as just another job; that as a whole they had either turned away from public affairs or elected to discuss such matters among themselves.619

Stuart McIntyre has suggested that academics’ tendency to write “for each other in a professional patois” that alienates most readers620, is why right-wing polemicists have been so successful in accessing the media to denounce academic historians and their work. Their ‘academic’ prose has been one factor working against the academic historians as they attempt to defend themselves from the onslaught of the “history warriors”.

B. The Influence of Academics Thus far this chapter has been preoccupied with how, or whether, academics contribute to public life as public intellectuals. Since, as discussed, their appearances are limited and they seem to play a less significant role than academics in other countries, it appears that academics’ influence, as public intellectuals, is somewhat slight.

However, acting as public intellectuals is not the only contribution academics make to Australian political, social and cultural life. Rather, academics are one of the most influential intellectual groups in society because of their role in educating the leaders of tomorrow. For this intellectual role, academics and the universities are often depicted as more or less determining public policy – at least in the long term. This is a view common to both the Left and the Right.

One expression of this view from the Left is Michael Pusey’s analysis of Australian economic policy in his influential book, Economic Rationalism in Canberra (1991). Pusey suggested the university education of Australia’s political leaders and top public servants was the primary factor that decided Australia’s national direction

619 Horne, op. cit., pp.200-204 620 McIntyre and Clark, op. cit., p.15

187 from the 1970s and into the 1980s. Specifically, he attributed the rise of ‘economic rationalism’ over protectionist, Keynesian economics to these individuals’ passage through the Economics departments of the nation’s universities. “The power of a particular university economics curriculum”, he claimed, “has had the strongest hand in casting the nation’s future.”621 This curriculum, the “neoclassical economics curriculum”, shaped the minds of Australia’s future leaders, top public bureaucrats, and presumably also our ‘captains of industry’ and their executives.622 Academics, by teaching this neoclassical approach to the nation’s leaders, contributed mightily to public policy and the national direction.

Though right-wingers have criticised Pusey’s reasoning623, it has a right-wing equivalent in the idea of the ‘New Class’. One variant of this concept maintains that it was through the radicalisation of the universities in the 1960s and 1970s that Australian culture moved leftward and became more liberal. This view was articulated strongly by Robert Manne and other contributors to the early 1980s conservative anthology, The New Conservatism in Australia (1982). Manne suggested that in pursuing a policy of “mass tertiary education” in the 1960s, Robert Menzies created the “unintended consequence” of “radicaliz[ing] the Australian political culture.”624

From the late 1960s, the rapid growth of universities and colleges was paralleled by a movement in the atmosphere of these institutions towards the left, particularly in those faculties where the humane and social sciences were taught. From the 1970s, thousands of graduates from these faculties joined the workforce and moved into those occupations – in the schools and colleges, the government bureaucracies, the media, private welfare agencies and trade union offices – for which they felt some enthusiasm and possessed at least formal qualification.

Few of these institutions into which the new graduates settled could survive unchanged the peculiar political, moral, and aesthetic values and prejudices they brought with them as part of their mental baggage. But, more importantly for the culture, the most characteristic vocations of the new graduates – teaching, journalism, broadcasting and the public service – were

621 Pusey, op. cit., p.2 622 Ibid., p.6 623 See for example William Coleman and Alf Hagger’s critique of Pusey in Chapter 3 of Exasperating Calculators, 2001, Paddington: Macleay Press 624 Manne, The New Conservatism in Australia, op. cit., p.xi

188 precisely those where the core values of our civilization were defined and shaped and passed on to the young.625

In the same anthology, John Carroll argued that “the universities have been the seed- beds of remissive [left-wing] culture, which has flowed from them into schools, into the mass media, and into public and private bureaucracies.”626 Similarly, Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) attacked the impact of radical academics on society, blaming the decline in American academic standards for the decline of American culture generally since the 1960s and 1970s.

There is an assumption, then, shared by Left and Right, that universities are powerful institutions which, in the longer term, shape society and public opinion. They are often assumed, as Talcott Parsons suggested, to play a leading role in “the cultural self-understanding of society”.627 This influence is separate from the media and operates without any direct access to policymakers. The prevalence of this perspective on the impact of education is reflected in controversies over the ideological flavour of schools’ social science curriculum. The basic idea is that students’ minds are shaped at school and during their university days. Academics can therefore be considered to be influential contributors to public opinion, though only rarely through media channels. One should note, however, that those who attack Australia’s higher education reforms of the 1980s tend to describe this role as diminishing. For instance, in the introduction to Scholars and Entrepreneurs: The Universities in Crisis (2002), Simon Cooper argued that the universities’ role in providing “the cultural interpretation of their societies”, has been “greatly reduced in recent decades.”628 He was speaking particularly about the threat to the humanities. But as Michael Pusey’s analysis suggests, the humanities’ role in defining Australia’s culture seems to have been taken over by other academic disciplines, particularly commerce and economics.

Another way academics can influence public policy is through their occasional role as public policy advisors. In this sense they operate as what Daniel Bell called

625 Ibid. 626 John Carroll, “Paranoid and Remissive: The Treason of the Upper Middle Class” in ibid., p.2 627 Gerard Delanty, 2001, Challenging Knowledge: The University in the Knowledge Society, Philadelphia: Open University Press, p.74 628 Simon Cooper, “Introduction” in Cooper et al., op. cit., p.1

189 “policy intellectuals”; that is, “specialists and advisors, attached to elites or government, utilizing their knowledge for purposes of policy and action.”629 Bell described University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman as an exemplar of this intellectual. Academics do not have a monopoly over this role, and it may in fact be increasingly common for it to be performed instead by ‘think tank’ researchers. Universities do of course run ‘think tanks’, and through them academics can be employed to advise public officials on policy matters. The influence exercised by think tanks is a theme explored in detail in Chapter Nine. That chapter’s discussion will focus on the privately funded, invariably right-wing think tank, but the points made there about think tank researchers acting as policy advisors can be applied to academics within university think tanks also.

* * *

C. Robert Manne – The Academic as Public Intellectual Combining an academic background with regular social commentary in public forums, few would deny Manne is a public intellectual. As Dessaix remarked in the preface to his book Speaking Their Minds (1998), Manne’s was one of three names which appeared in “almost all” lists he received in a small survey on who people regarded public intellectuals in Australia.630 Given that most people see the university and the academic as traditionally ‘intellectual’, this is understandable.

But Manne’s affiliation with ‘scholarly’ institutions and endeavours has not been confined to his long career within the university. In a 1999 profile of Manne, the Institute of Public Affairs noted: “He was formerly on the Research Committee of the Australian Institute of Public Policy, a Perth-based think-tank which later merged with the IPA. He is currently on the Board of the Brisbane Institute, another privately owned think-tank.”631 In addition to his involvement with think tanks, Manne was eight years (1989-1997) editor of one of Australia’s leading academic journals, Quadrant. Given this kind of academic and scholarly history, his claim to culturally validated expertise seems secure.

629 Daniel Bell, 1980, Sociological Journeys: Essays 1960-1980, London: Heinemann, p.158 630 Dessaix, op. cit., p.1 631 “Moral Vanity Manne”, op. cit., p.22

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But what makes Manne one of Australia’s rare academic ‘public intellectuals’ is that his intellectual activities include regular social and political commentary in the mass media. Along with his fortnightly opinion columns for The Age (which is syndicated to The Sydney Morning Herald), he also appears quite regularly on television and radio. As mentioned, undoubtedly his academic field, politics, is one reason his views on Australian society and politics are sought while those of academics from many other fields are not.

But his political commentary is not just public; it also clearly takes as its subject ‘matters of public concern’. And, importantly, it is critical and evaluative. His own political, social, cultural, and indeed moral vision comes through strongly in his writing. Readers can identify a particular perspective with Manne. This vision will be discussed in detail next chapter.

The only real area of doubt in Manne’s status as a public intellectual is, perhaps surprisingly, his integrity. As a high profile public commentator, it is inevitable that Manne will have his critics. As we shall see next chapter, critics from both the Left and the Right have negated his expertise and criticised him for being overly moralistic, perhaps self-righteous. Others, however, have accused him of opportunism; of more or less ‘selling out’.

On the Left, for instance, Humphrey McQueen has drawn attention to Quadrant’s history of receiving funding from big business and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to depict Manne as a propagandist. In Suspect History (1997), his analysis of the Manning Clark controversy of 1996, McQueen said a group of Melbourne business executives, “headed by Hugh Morgan of Western Mining”, “installed Robert Manne as editor [of Quadrant] in late 1989”. He notes that Manne’s economic protectionism “brought him into conflict with the mining corporations in Quadrant’s back room”, but says his editorship was rescued when a “pro-protectionist source” began backing the magazine. “None of these corporate backers has had its name on Quadrant’s editorial page, any more than did the

191 CIA.”632 According to McQueen, then, Manne was the editor of a propaganda pamphlet; making him little more than a glorified public relations officer.

Accusations of intellectual opportunism are not confined to the Left either. Following Manne’s defection from the Right, to be discussed next chapter, it has been common for right-wingers to depict him as ready and willing to sacrifice truth for favour. This is how they explain his supposed capitulation to the Left. He is accused of having deserted the anticommunist bandwagon for another – the new ‘politically correct’, leftist, ‘Keating Agenda’ of the Republic, Reconciliation and Multiculturalism.633 This critique is epitomised by Peter Howson’s remark in 2001 that: “Manne now has something of a history of seizing on a particular subject that appears to have populist appeal.”634 This accusation has been from outside the Right also. According to McKenzie Wark: “One could say of Robert Manne what Manning Clark said of another Melbourne conservative, Peter Ryan – ‘a shrewd judge of how to ride a wave’.”635

These criticisms are important to a consideration of Manne’s intellectual credibility and therefore his status as an intellectual, but they relate not to his work as an academic. Of his many detractors, few have identified his university background as posing a conflict of interest. This implies that few actually view an academic background as a genuine obstacle to free thought. If they did, Manne’s academic history would be called into question in the same way Gerard Henderson’s critics draw attention to his status as executive director of a privately-funded, right-wing think tank (as we shall see in Chapters Nine and Ten).

As to whether Manne is in fact lacking in intellectual integrity, or a ‘shrewd judge of how to ride a wave’, let us reserve our judgement until we have considered in more detail the key positions he has adopted over the years as a public commentator. Next chapter will discuss Manne’s social and political thought in depth. From this

632 Humphrey McQueen, 1997, Suspect History, Wakefield Press: Kent Town, p.135 633 Greg Melleuish used the term ‘Keating Agenda’ to refer to “the Republic, Reconciliation and Multiculturalism” in “Political Commentary: Prophecy or Conversation?”, Australian Journal of Social Issues, November 2001, p.352 634 Peter Howson, “The Stolen Generation’s True Believers Take One Step Back”, National Observer, Winter 2001, p.61-64 635 Wark, op. cit., p.209

192 discussion we can also look more closely at his expertise and his role as a public social critic.

Conclusion From our discussion of academics and the brief case study of Robert Manne, we can conclude that despite culturally validated expertise and generally recognised autonomy, few academics become public intellectuals in Australia. By a combination of Australian ‘anti-intellectualism’ and academics’ apparent inability to speak to the broader public, only a few academics, in Stanley Fish’s words, “ha[ve] the public’s attention”.636 Manne is one of the few to speak on “matters of public concern” regularly, and it is to a consideration of his contribution to Australian public intellectual life that we now turn.

636 Stanley Fish cited in McKee, op. cit., p.221

193 Chapter Eight: The Social and Political Thought of Robert Manne

Introduction Robert Manne is one of the most interesting figures on the Australian intellectual scene. After years affiliated with the Australian Right, culminating in his editorship of Quadrant, he is now one of the country’s leading so-called ‘bleeding hearts’. After campaigning strongly against communism and the Left during the Cold War, he has spent the past decade engaged in an often bitter dispute with the Right over a variety of issues, particularly economics and the politics of race. In effect, in the space of only a few years he journeyed from one end of the political spectrum to the other. This transition is reflected in the changing focus of his books and essays: from The Petrov Affair (1987) and The Shadow of 1917 (1994) to In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right (2001), The Barren Years: John Howard and Australian Political Culture (2001) and Whitewash (2003). By and large it is not Manne’s views that have facilitated this shift, however. Rather, his thought has remained reasonably stable amid a rightward shift in Australian political culture. This is not to say his thinking has undergone no significant changes. It has. But these have been more in focus than flavour.

This chapter will trace Manne’s transition from, as Mark Davis put it, “cold-war shock trooper to mainstream conservative-liberal defender of ‘core values’.”637 It will look closely at some of the major contributions he has made to public life over the past two decades, beginning with his anticommunist writings from the Cold War, before moving to discuss his reflections on culture, history and particularly the ‘politics of race’ in post-Cold War Australia. In addition to mapping the ideas of one of the nation’s most eminent public intellectuals, it is hoped this analysis will also provide some insight into the changing nature of Australian political culture in the past twenty years.

Robert Manne from Right to…Left? Though he denies ever having been a “right-winger”, Manne was for many years a leading intellectual of the Australian Right. As an anticommunist during the Cold

637 Mark Davis, 1999, gangland, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.281

194 War, from the 1970s to the 1990s he contributed regularly to Australia’s premier right-wing forum, Quadrant magazine. After writing a regular column on foreign affairs for this journal in the late-1980s, he was appointed editor in November 1989 – on the day the Berlin Wall fell, in fact. As Manne has commented, “It was on Cold War cultural and political issues that I wrote for Quadrant for many years.”638 In this time he focused particularly on attacking communism and the Left; engaging in public battles with prominent left-wing thinkers like Noam Chomsky and Humphrey McQueen.639

Soon after the Cold War ended and the Right’s focus shifted farther and farther from communism, however, Manne’s relationship with the Right was increasingly strained by a growing number of political and ideological differences. Several of them will be detailed throughout the chapter. By 1997 these differences had become insurmountable. In December of that year, after falling out with the Quadrant’s Committee of Management, he resigned as editor.

Manne and the Right have been embroiled in an often bitter public conflict ever since. Though there are some issues on which they still agree – such as communism, euthanasia and censorship – on most contemporary matters they are ideological opponents. A common perspective of Manne from the Right is that throughout the 1990s he capitulated to the Left. Indeed, as one of the leaders of the ‘New Right’, Hugh Morgan, remarked as early as 1995: “By all measurements, Manne is of the Left.”640

1. Conservatism By his own account, Manne is an Australian conservative. Given his split with the Right and supposed move to the Left, it is understandable that for some this is curious if not paradoxical. As Manne himself notes, when he tells people he is “a

638 Robert Manne, George Munster Journalism Forum lecture, http://acij.uts.edu.au/old_acij/munster/f3manne.html (accessed February 16, 2004) 639 Martin Flanagan, “A solitary voice”, The Sydney Morning Herald, July 11, 1998, Spectrum p.3. For examples of Manne actually attacking Chomsky and McQueen see 639 Robert Manne, “Shouting Dissidence”, Quadrant, July-August 1996, pp. 97, and Robert Manne, “Humphrey Bare”, Quadrant, July-August 1997, pp.2-4. McQueen attacks Manne in kind in Suspect History, 1997, Wakefield Press: Adelaide 640 Hugh Morgan cited in Tony Stephens, “Manne the barricades: The right-wing republicans are here”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 25, 1995, Spectrum p.5A

195 conservative, but not a right-winger”, it “makes people double-take sometimes.”641 It is an interesting feature of Manne’s work and his career that he proudly defines himself as conservative yet constantly finds himself at odds with traditional conservative discourses and in conflict with leading conservative commentators. But then, as political economist Barry Clark has outlined, Conservatism, like other ideological labels, has an historical definitional problem. Though it traditionally referred to the Nineteenth Century movement formed in defence of “hierarchy and community” against “individualism and democracy”, by the Twentieth Century it was associated with right-wing defences of “individualism, free markets and limited government”.642 Two people defining themselves as ‘conservative’, therefore, may find they have little in common ideologically.

Compounding the definitional problem further, Manne defines his own Conservatism differently altogether. Rather than emphasising particular ideals or tenets, Manne defines the philosophy in terms of its overall mission to conserve social traditions. As he commented in 1998, “to be a conservative is partly to value certain traditions in one’s own society.”

It’s partly, too, to be sceptical of wide-ranging schemes of reform...it means to cherish existing ways of life, to think that a way of life that already gives people sustenance is to be in general preferred to a scheme for a radically new way of doing things. So it’s an anti-utopian suspicion of broad change and a cherishing of what already exists over grandiose hopes for something better.643

As the great conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott put it, being conservative entails “a propensity to use and to enjoy what is available rather than to wish for or to look for something else; to delight in what is present rather than what was or what may be.”644 For Oakeschott:

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited

641 Robert Manne in Robert Dessaix, 1998, Speaking Their Minds, ABC Books: Sydney, p.35 642 Barry Clark, 1991, Political Economy: A Comparative Approach, Praeger: London, p.71 643 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., pp.35-36 644 Michael Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative” in Michael Oakeshott, 1962, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, London: Methuen & Co Ltd, p.168

196 to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.645

When Manne says he is conservative, then, he means conservative in the sense Oakeshott described it. He means he wants to preserve key aspects of the Australian way of life. In a 1998 interview he provided an insight into a number of the Australian traditions he holds dear, stating: “I belong to the English tradition”, and suggesting “Australia has been extraordinarily lucky to have inherited [from it]... ideas of representative democracy, parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law.”646 Manne’s admiration for the Australian way of life is clearly reflected in his remark from The Way We Live Now (1998) that: “As a young Australian born in the early postwar years my earliest political experiences were of life in one of the most materially comfortable, politically stable and humanly decent societies on earth.”647

Manne’s faith in the ‘English tradition’ and the Australian way of life seems to also have been moulded, at least in part, by his horror at the alternatives. In the same 1998 interview, he said the destructiveness of Nazi fascism and Sino and Soviet communism “have taught us [that] to found good societies on anything other than representative, liberal and rule-of-law principles almost always leads to disaster.”648 Similarly, in The Shadow of 1917, he told of long having held “a profound suspicion...of all the dreams for the reconstruction of human society on the basis of logically explicated first principles.”649 This suspicion, he said, “deepened my admiration for the Australian political system.”650

Absent from this democratic English-Australian tradition are of course some of the common tenets associated with Conservatism like authoritarianism and hierarchy. For Manne, therefore, there is no contradiction in being conservative, of wishing to preserve Australian values and traditions, and cherishing liberal ideals like democracy, equity and even multiculturalism. However, as shall be discussed later, there are also aspects of Australian life Manne is uncomfortable with and has at

645 Ibid., p.169 646 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.47 647 Robert Manne, 1998, The Way We Live Now, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, p.1 648 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.45 649 Robert Manne, 1994, The Shadow of 1917, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, p. 15 650 Ibid.

197 times bewailed strongly. Most involve the politics of race, and are most obviously Australian xenophobia and the nation’s record on the treatment of minorities, especially the indigenous population.

Considering how Manne defines Conservatism, it is easy to see how he could remain a conservative and yet experience a bitter public split with many other conservatives on the Australian Right. As this chapter shall illustrate, on matters such as economics, immigration and multiculturalism, and the Iraq War, Manne’s perspective has starkly contrasted with the dominant conservative view. As Manne has acknowledged, it was really only the communist question that allied him with the Right in the first place. It was perhaps inevitable, then, that when the Cold War ended, so too would this alliance. And this is precisely what happened. With the Cold War over and anticommunism no longer relevant, the common thread disappeared. By the late 1990s, Manne’s relationship with the Right had degenerated into open conflict and bitter hostility.

2. Anticommunism For the last decade or so of the Cold War, Manne was one of Australia’s leading anticommunists. To exclusion of most other issues, Manne devoted his public and professional life to the fight against communism and its defenders on the Left. He was, as some left-wing commentators suggest, was one of Australia’s leading ‘old Cold Warriors’.651 As discussed, he was a prominent intellectual of the Australian Right.

Yet as some of his right-wing critics, such as Gerard Henderson, like to point out, prior to becoming an anticommunist Manne was actually something of a left-winger. Manne has stated that he had “belonged for a brief time to the Labor Club at university, which was the furthest to the Left of all the groupings – close to the Communist Party.”652

This affiliation was rather short-lived, however, as upon becoming an anticommunist he became suspicious and contemptuous of the Left. He says, horrified at its

651 See for example McKenzie Wark, 1997, The Virtual Republic, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.149 652 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.49

198 “ambiguous relationship to what was happening in the Soviet Union or China”, he had “no alternative but to break with the Left”.653

Manne has reflected on his conversion to anticommunism on various occasions. In what is perhaps the most detailed of these testimonials, he said in the introductory chapter to The Shadow of 1917, that it was 1969, the final year of undergraduate study at the University of Melbourne, when he first became an anticommunist. The conversion was “a consequence of three things: who I was, who I met at the university, and what I began to read.”654 The first of these, who he was, was ultimately the most decisive. Manne was the son of Holocaust survivors: “a young Jewish man of Central European parents...who arrived, separately, in Australia in 1939, as refugees from Nazism.”655 His grandparents, he suggests (but does not know for sure), were not so lucky.656 Manne has discussed profound impact of the Holocaust on his intellectual development on several occasions. In a 1998 interview he said the Nazi Holocaust was “what I came up to university wanting to find out more about.” “Nothing in my life has mattered more to me than my understanding of the Nazi Holocaust. It’s the ground of my being.”657

The connection between the Holocaust and anticommunism is not immediate. After all, this horrendous crime was committed by fascists, not communists. This is why it was not until university when the connection was made. Those to have influenced Manne most at university were the anticommunist lecturers Frank Knopfelmacher and Vincent Buckley. Under their tutelage he came to believe that “what had happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin and what was going on in China under Mao was not dissimilar in its destructiveness to what had happened to my own family.”658 He says Knopfelmacher in particular taught him that “the real historical association of 1917 was not with 1780 but with 1933.”659 His earliest instincts on communism, then, followed the traditional anticommunist discourse, summarised by McKenzie Wark, that:

653 Ibid. 654 Manne, The Shadow of 1917, op. cit., p.14 655 Ibid. 656 Ibid. 657 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.49 658 Ibid. 659 Manne, The Shadow of 1917, op. cit., pp.16-7

199

the Holocaust happened because of the rise of Nazi totalitarianism. An alliance of world powers defeated the Nazis, but the evil of totalitarianism lives on, in the Soviet Union. Therefore, nothing else matters but that a new alliance oppose this evil.660

Such ideas were reinforced by what Manne read. Of particular influence were the anticommunist writings of George Orwell, Hannah Arendt and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.661 Reading Arendt in particular cemented in his mind the idea that fascism and communism, whatever their apparent differences, were actually “expression[s] of a single political essence”. They were expressions of totalitarianism.662 Accordingly, he interpreted Arendt’s critique of totalitarianism as “a kind of call to arms” against communism.663 Manne says a few years after consuming Orwell and Arendt he read of the actual suffering these authors had described only in abstract, by reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. It was shortly after reading the second volume of this work in 1976, he says, that “I threw myself, for the first time in my life, into a form of anti-totalitarian political activity.”664 That activity was against the Cambodian revolution.

As shall be discussed in Chapter Ten, the Cold War activities of the anticommunist Right in Australia often involved clandestine operations and covert conspiracies. This was the case even for many academics, such as the poet James McAuley and Manne’s mentor, Frank Knopfelmacher, both of whom spied on colleagues for ASIO.665 To my knowledge, however, Manne was never really caught up in such campaigns. His anticommunist activity consisted mainly of published attacks on communism and the Left. Most commonly these were essays submitted to Quadrant. As mentioned, several of the more important of these appear in his anthology, The Shadow of 1917. Other key contributions are his acclaimed study, The Petrov Affair (1987), and essays in The New Conservatism in Australia (1982), which he edited.

660 Wark, op. cit., p.135 661 Manne, The Shadow of 1917, op. cit., p.17 662 Ibid., p.18 663 Ibid., p.19 664 Ibid., p.20 665 Cassandra Pybus, 1999, The Devil and James McAuley, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, p.226

200 This last source contains one of his clearest and most detailed expressions of his view on communism.

Manne’s view of communism is a conventional one. According to communist intellectual Humphrey McQueen, it adheres to the “police conception of history” – which basically means it corresponds to the demonised portrait painted by the powers of the capitalist West.666 Manne believes that from the 1919 formulation of the Third (Communist) International, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were able to transfer “the command structure of the Bolshevik Party to the entire revolutionary socialist movement of the world.”667 Control was tightened under Stalin, as “national communist parties began to act more or less exclusively as agents of Soviet foreign policy.”668 From its very beginnings, international communism was Soviet imperialism; it was created by and for the Soviets. The Soviet’s grip only began to loosen, he says, when other communist movements, particularly the Chinese and Yugoslav parties, gained power in their own countries.

In this respect Manne tends to portray all communist movements and parties as puppets of the Soviet Union, or sometimes China. This is how he viewed the Australian Communist Party669, and why, as McQueen has noted, he defended Australia’s security agencies’ suppression of the Australian communist movement throughout the Twentieth Century.670 This view is also evident in what Manne has written of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). In 1996 he argued that had the PKI achieved power in the 1960s it would have “devastated” the nation’s peasantry because it “was closely allied to the world’s most murderous regime, Maoist China.”

If the PKI had come to power it was precisely the Indonesian peasantry – whose class comrades had been devastated by Stalin during collectivisation and by Mao during the Great Leap Forward – who had most reason for fear.671

666 Humphrey McQueen, Suspect History, 1997, Wakefield Press: Adelaide, p.184 667 Robert Manne, 1982, The New Conservatism in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, p.186 668 Ibid., p.190 669 See for example Robert Manne, “The Venona Decrypts and Australia”, Quadrant, December 1996, pp.39-41 670 Humphrey McQueen says Manne defended ASIO’s suppression of the Australian communist movement in The Petrov Affair (1987). McQueen, op. cit. 671 Manne, “Shouting Dissidence”, op. cit., pp.97

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As this quotation suggests, Manne believes not only that all communist parties were mere puppets, but that they would all have exercised power exactly how Stalin and Mao did. This view is reflected in Manne’s contempt for the notion, maintained by many communists, that “communism has never failed because it has never been tried”.672 Hence, for Manne, no national communist party could have been anything other than a Russian or Chinese satellite or clone; nor could it have been anything other than totalitarian. As former Australian Communist Party member Bernie Taft has remarked, Manne “puts every communist into the Stalinist basket”; “All communists, to him, are Stalinists.”673

Because Manne believes the Bolshevik regime was “one of the most monstrous State regimes that history has seen”, and that “Communism moulded the lives of, and caused extraordinary suffering for, millions of people”674, he has long been shocked, puzzled and dismayed that many decent, intelligent individuals of the Left seemed so unwilling to condemn the communists during the Cold War.

I’m still genuinely astonished that for almost 50 years the most generous, the finest, the most intelligent people in Western societies thought that the future of humanity rested with communist societies.675

He has complained often of an “anti-anti-communist” consensus within the universities and the nation’s broader intelligentsia. So unfashionable were anticommunist ideas during the 1970s and 1980s, he claims, that he became “something of a pariah amongst my fellow university people.”676 He has claimed:

Up until 1989 or perhaps just a little earlier, to be an anti-communist was to be regarded as a rather suspicious figure. I took part in Australian intellectual life until the late 1980s under a sort of cloud, and this cloud had nothing to do with anything other than my view on communism.677

672 Manne, The New Conservatism in Australia, op. cit., p.ix 673 Bernie Taft, “Taft on Manne”, Meanjin, 1995, Vol. 54, p.152 674 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.40 675 Ibid. 676 Manne, The New Conservatism in Australia, op. cit., p.181 677 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.43

202 He believed this anti-anticommunism was symptomatic of the broader “reigning left- wing orthodoxy” within “the intellectual class as a whole”.678 He still believes this. Some reject his claim however. For instance, Mark Davis has argued that “Manne was just following an age-old tradition in which conservatives are presented as a set- upon minority.”679

Much of Manne’s commentary during the Cold War consisted of attacks on the Left. Mostly it related to the communist issue, but dealt with other (usually historical) questions also. His contributions to the 1982 book, The New Conservatism in Australia, include various denigrations of the Left and endorsements of numerous right-wing positions. He complained, as mentioned, of a “reigning left-wing orthodoxy” in the universities.680 He also accused the Left of perpetuating “a highly partisan [pro-Labor] account of Australia’s post-war history”. Curiously, he also seemed to dismiss multiculturalism, calling it “shibboleth of the left”.681 On the issue of communism, he has accused some on the Left of being “deeply corrupted”, and depicted others as just plain naïve.682 One of the obvious objectives of his The Shadow of 1917 was to shame the intellectual Left into repenting for their ideological sins. After claiming that the “judgement of the anticommunists was vindicated” by the defeat of communism683, he offered a truce to the Left – but with the clear condition that they capitulate on the issue of communism.

But for leftist intellectuals, Manne’s claim that the anticommunists were “vindicated” is unjustified because, they maintain, the anticommunist perspective was an oversimplification of a complex issue. They suggest the defeat of communism in no way justifies the conduct of the anticommunist side during the Cold War; nor does it validate their interpretation of it. They view the ‘communism-as-Stalinism’ view propagated by Manne and others as distorted and overly simplistic. As mentioned, Humphrey McQueen has dismissed this view as little more than capitalist propaganda.684 Leftists like McQueen do not deny the brutality of Stalinism, but

678 Manne, The New Conservatism in Australia, op. cit., p.viii 679 Davis, op. cit., p.50 680 Manne, The New Conservatism in Australia, op. cit., p.1 681 Ibid., p.xii. 682 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.40 683 Robert Manne, “Whisperings of the Heart”, Quadrant, May 1997, p.2 684 McQueen, op. cit., p.184

203 claim to hold a more sophisticated understanding of it. For instance, postmodernist and former “teenage communist” McKenzie Wark has argued that though “Stalinism [was] an oppressive regime beyond salvage”, the “cold war moral fable” articulated by anticommunists like Manne is sadly inadequate and full of blind-spots and “forgettings”.685

These ‘forgettings’ include the evils which transpired during the Cold War on the other side of the so-called “iron curtain”, in the anticommunist world. Leftists are critical of what they perceive to be Manne’s unwillingness to acknowledge the atrocities committed by the West during the Cold War. Bernie Taft, for instance, has accused Manne of being “blind in one eye”, focusing “only on the evils of the communist regime established in the Soviet Union, and ignor[ing] many other evils in the world.”686 Similarly, in an endorsement of Manne’s Petrov Affair (1987) as “the most thorough account of the Petrov Affair available”, journalist Kevin Rowley complained that it “is a pity that [Manne] is not as sceptical about the myths of ASIO cold warriors as he is of those of the ALP.”687

When the Left accuse Manne of being ‘one-eyed’ they often refer to his failure to look critically at the evils of US imperialism. Wark, for instance, has accused anticommunists like Manne of neglecting the plight of “oppressed people who happened to live in client states of the American alliance throughout the cold war.”688 Manne has rarely condemned the USA’s involvement in the military overthrow of democratic regimes and its support for the military dictatorships that arose in their place. His view of the American side in the Cold War appears to be a very favourable one. In an essay from the 1980s, for instance, he complained about the increasing unfashionability of the view, prevalent in the 1950s, that “the United States [w]as a benign democracy which led the free world in the struggle to contain Soviet- communist expansionism.”689 Similarly, in The New Conservatism in Australia, he appeared largely dismissive of the American imperialism thesis, criticising the Left

685 Wark, op. cit., p.152 686 Taft, op. cit., p.152 687 Kevin Rowley, “The cold war down under”, The Far Eastern Economic Review, October 22, 1987, p.56 688 Wark, op. cit., p.135 689 Robert Manne, 1984, “‘Even Old Stacks Talk’: The Combe Affair and Political Culture”, in Manne, The Shadow of 1917, op. cit., p.233

204 for complaining only of the “alleged crimes of American ‘neo-imperialist’ aggression in the Third World [emphasis added].”690 More recently, however, he has admitted: “I was less clear-sighted about the contradiction at the heart of the anticommunist camp – which opposed communism in the name of justice but which, by a series of blind spots and intellectual evasions, managed to avert its gaze from the injustices in its own society and those of its Third World allies.”691 His silence on these crimes throughout the Cold War resounded as loudly to leftist intellectuals as the Left’s silence on communist crimes does to Manne. It is why Wark accuses him of perpetuating “moral fables” and fantasy tales “where only the Nazis and the Communists are ever really the bad guys.”692

A related criticism is McQueen’s complaint that Manne’s vulgar anticommunism causes him to see the Cold War in terms of a struggle between ‘peace’ and ‘violence’. Rejecting Manne’s claim from The Shadow of 1917 that “the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 [w]as the determining political event of this century” because it “usher[ed] in our era when states slaughter their own”693, McQueen argued it was the First World War, a bourgeois war, which ushered in this age. He suggested further that capitalism’s peace is made possible only by bourgeois domination, and if its power was threatened by social unrest this class would respond with violence also – as they had responded to the Paris Commune in 1871.694 He concludes that the Cold War was therefore not “between peace or violence, but among forms of violence”, and accuses Manne of forgetting the dead of war and focussing only on the dead of revolution.695

Leftists and former communists also reject Manne’s tendency to portray the Australian communist movement as an extension of Soviet, and perhaps later Chinese, power. Bernie Taft, for instance, concedes that many Australian communists were once committed defenders of the Soviet Union, but asserts that many became “anti-Stalinists” after Stalin’s crimes were confirmed by Khrushchev

690 Manne, The New Conservatism in Australia, op. cit., pp.181-182 691 Manne, The Way We Live Now, op. cit., p.2 692 Wark, op. cit., p.126 693 McQueen, op. cit., pp.172-3, 175-6 694 Ibid., p.177 695 Ibid., pp.174-175

205 in 1956.696 He complains that by the time Manne became an anticommunist the Australian Communist Party “and most western parties were strongly and openly critical of the Soviet model.”697 The CPA had distanced itself from the totalitarian regimes and championed the alternative Euro-communist model, which according to Taft “rejected the Soviet model and stood for democracy, pluralism, freedom of expression and an open, free society.”698 Wark has argued along the same lines.

The party I joined in the late 1970s was the one that broke with Moscow in 1968, when Russian tanks put an abrupt end to the Czechoslovakian experiment in ‘socialism with a human face’. Without a Moscow or a Beijing to look to for guidance, all kinds of intellectual currents passed through the party bookshops and on from hand to hand.699

Wark concludes: “As for kowtowing to Moscow or Beijing – that was somebody else’s fantasy.”700

Hence, for leftists like Taft, McQueen and Wark, Manne’s anticommunism is so simplistic and narrow that his attacks on communism and the Left are inappropriate and misdirected. According to Taft, “By ascribing all the horrors of the Stalinist regime to communism, Manne is chasing the wrong culprit.”701 For Taft and many on the Left, the real culprit is “uncontrolled power”: it is totalitarianism.702 Taft concludes that it is because Manne does not really understand communism that he finds it so incomprehensible that so many intelligent and decent people once believed in it. Interestingly, he cites one of Manne’s personal heroes, George Orwell, remarking in 1944: “I wouldn’t want to see the USSR destroyed, and I think it ought to be defended if necessary.” “I want the existence of democratic socialism in the west to exert a regenerative influence upon Russia”.703

After the Cold War

696 Taft, op. cit. 697 Ibid. 698 Ibid. 699 Wark, op. cit., p.210 700 Ibid., p.212 701 Taft, op. cit. 702 Ibid. 703 George Orwell in ibid.

206 Considering how contemptuous he once was of the Left, and how bitterly he fought them during the Cold War, Manne’s post-Cold War affinity with the Left and its causes seems at first glance to be an odd development. But then again, Manne was once a leftist himself. And, as he has commented, “During the long period of the Cold War the most important question dividing the Left-wing and the conservative intelligentsias was the assessment of communism.”704 Accordingly, with the Cold War over and communism no longer a major political issue, “new political alignments and new lines of conversation between former antagonists were possible.”705 The door had opened for a reconciliation with the Left. Many leftists, including Taft, have welcomed Manne’s gesture – though they have not repented for the alleged sins.706 But most of his former colleagues on the Right have resisted the call. While some anticommunists, like Manne and B.A. Santamaria, ended the Cold War by reconciling with former antagonists, conservatives and other right-wingers wanted to fight to continue.

Manne will always be divided from the Left over communism, however. It seems he will never agree with them on more moderate forms of socialism also. On separate occasions in 1998, for instance, he quipped that socialism had “collapse[d]” as a “plausible project”707 and expressed surprise over continuing suspicion of capitalism on the Left.

I’d have thought that sort of suspicion would have to be re-thought – not that one should be uncritical of how contemporary economics function, but the old forms of anti-capitalism, premised on a socialist alternative, have somehow persisted without the socialist alternative being available. As far as I can see, there is now on the Left simply no serious thinking about economic alternatives to the current drift.708

For Manne, capitalism may not be perfect, but it remains the best option available. As he put it in Quadrant in 1997:

704 Manne, “Whisperings of the Heart”, op. cit., p.2 705 Manne, The Shadow of 1917, op. cit., p. 1 706 Taft, op. cit. 707 Manne, George Munster Journalism Forum lecture, op. cit. 708 Mannie in Dessaix, op. cit., pp.44-45

207 Whatever the faults, inequities and hypocrisies of the cultures of advanced capitalism, it is wrong to deny that they have delivered to very large numbers levels of prosperity, security and health hitherto unknown in human history.709

For a conservative, this is enough. As Oakeshott put it, “To be conservative” is to prefer “the sufficient to the superabundant”.710 Manne’s scepticism of revolutionary change means he is unlikely to endorse anything other than capitalism. Just how capitalism should best operate, however, via a mixed economy or an invisible hand, is another question, and it is to this we now turn.

3. Economic Protectionism When the Cold War ended and faded from public life in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Manne broadened his focus and engaged with issues he had previously neglected. Economics was one of the first areas he devoted himself to. The early 1990s was, after all, the moment when the ‘economic rationalist’ consensus was shaken by the recession ‘we had to have’, and when debate erupted over the nation’s economic direction. Manne was one of many prominent Australians to come out in opposition to the economic rationalist project. With John Carroll he edited one of the major attacks on neoliberalism, Shutdown!: The Failure of Economic Rationalism and How to Rescue Australia (1992). Moreover, as Coleman and Hagger suggest, from 1991 Manne, as editor of Quadrant, played a leading role in facilitating the conservative backlash against economic rationalism.711

Until this time economics had not featured at all prominently in Manne’s social and political commentaries. His commentaries have been considerably less frequent than those of the likes of Paul Kelly, Gerard Henderson and Paddy McGuinness. Perhaps a good indication of why is his remark from The New Conservatism in Australia (1982) that he “must admit to having no competence in economics whatsoever.”712 Years later this obviously regrettable remark was seized upon by his critics as a sign of his ignorance.713 One would assume that Manne’s economic competence had

709 Manne, “Shouting Dissidence”, op. cit., pp. 97-98 710 Oakeshott, op. cit., p.169 711 William Coleman and Alf Hagger, 2001, Exasperating Calculators, Paddington: Macleay Press, p.78 712 Manne, The New Conservatism in Australia, op. cit., pp.viii-ix 713 See Coleman and Hagger, op. cit., p.78

208 improved at least a little by the time he inserted himself into the economics debate a decade later. That he would take some time to enter this debate is consistent with his interpretation of his own method. In 1998 he claimed that he “usually take[s] a long time to get into issues.” “For a long time I like to listen to what’s being said, not saying much myself and maintaining a certain scepticism.”714

Despite his 1982 declaration of ignorance, what little he did say at the time offered an early indication of his economic leanings. He professed to have “little sympathy for some of the social consequences apparently acceptable to the more doctrinaire enthusiasts of monetarism and the unshackled Free Market.”715 In the 1990s he expressed this view more clearly. Late in 1997 he stated that “In economic matters my views have always been more social-democratic than neo-liberal.”716 Hence, his perspective is Keynesian.

Manne’s contribution to the early 1990s debate was a defence of the protectionist tradition he believes had served Australia well since Federation. With other old- fashioned conservatives like Carroll and Malcolm Fraser, Manne charged that the zealous rush to neoliberal reform was ruining the Australian economy and tearing at the fabric of Australian life. These thinkers were troubled by the fervour with which the old, tried and tested economic policies of Twentieth Century Australia were being swept aside for a radical, laissez faire model.

Manne’s most thorough offering to the economics debate was probably his contributions to Shutdown!. In the preface, Manne and co-editor John Carroll asserted that:

The evidence tells definitively against the liberal view…that the state should stay out of the market...In our view, too, the evidence supports a much larger role for government in directing economic development. It supports an interventionist state.717

714 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.39 715 Manne, The New Conservatism in Australia, op. cit., p.ix 716 Robert Manne, “Why I Have Resigned”, Quadrant, December 1997, p.2 717 John Carroll and Robert Manne (1982) Shutdown! The Failure of Economic Rationalism and How to Rescue Australia, East Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company p.2

209 One of the points Manne makes in his own chapter is that deregulation was hurting Australia by exposing its businesses to competitive pressures they were ill-equipped to face. He argued: “a program of tariff reductions is more likely to shut down Australian factories, or to tempt them to move their business off-shore, than it is to promote the creation of a new, internationally competitive, export sector in its place.”718 Australia would be best served, he argued, through industry protection and government intervention.

Manne devoted a considerable portion of his Shutdown! analysis to a reappraisal of Australia’s economic history. Last chapter we saw how in endorsing free trade Paul Kelly argued that protection had “stifled” the Australian economy throughout Twentieth century.719 Manne identified this kind of argument as another common discourse in ‘rationalist thought’, and claimed it misunderstands and misrepresents Australian, and international, economic history. He argued, for instance, that economic rationalists fail to appreciate the role protectionism played in the economic success of the USA, Imperial Germany, East Asia and Japan.720 He concluded that it is “preposterous to see the history of successful industrialisation as an uncomplicated story of free trade and free markets”, and accuses the ‘rationalists’ of being “either ignorant of large parts of modern economic history or highly selective in their presentation of it.”721

In response to such allegations, the economic rationalists accuse Manne of doing the same. In Exasperating Calculators (2001), Coleman and Hagger reject Manne’s interpretation of economic history, accusing him of having “no great respect for factual accuracy”.722 They also suggest he resorts to name-calling and ad hominem arguments to compensate for his lack of research and economic understanding.

Instead of argument, what we receive in Manne is commentary on politicians; commentary on commentators; ruminations on the scientific method; false and misleading figures; accusations of malignity; and name calling...The observer can only remark on the slightness of everything Manne has written

718 Robert Manne, Shutdown!, op. cit., p.53-54 719 Paul Kelly, 1992, The End of Certainty, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.13-14 720 Manne, Shutdown!, op. cit., p.55 721 Ibid. 722 Coleman and Hagger, op. cit., p.80

210 on Economic Rationalism. He seems to have done little of anything like research...Facts are just to decorate; judgements are to intimidate...723

Other economic rationalists, such as Peter Howson and Paul Sheehan, have embraced and endorsed this critique.724

As Coleman and Hagger’s critique suggests, Manne, probably wisely, did not anchor his critique in economic theory. His main criticism was a typically conservative one. Essentially, he accused the neoliberals and neoconservatives of failing to heed “the voice of commonsense”.725 They were too doctrinaire. With Carroll in the preface to Shutdown!, he described economic rationalism as “abstract and rarefied theory, with a poor grasp of reality.”726 In his own chapter, he argued that rationalists are “extraordinarily impervious to evidence”727, and portrayed the debate as a ‘collision’ between “the logic of the textbook and a belief in the value of common sense.”728 Drawing from the Popperian notion of ‘ideology’, Manne concluded that economic rationalism “has been elevated into an ideology”.729 He reiterated this point in the late 1990s, years after his gloomy predictions of economic crisis failed to materialise730, saying “neo-liberalism was remarkably naïve about the real world limitation of academic economics, over-confident in their views about what its textbook applications would in fact achieve.”731 By calling economic rationalism an ideology and hence rationalists ideologues, Manne’s critique is an inversion of Paul Kelly’s take on protectionism. In essentially the same manner as Kelly dubbed protectionists ‘sentimentalists’, implying a blind, irrational attachment to the past, Manne suggests the ‘rationalists’ are unwilling to betray doctrine and confront reality. As was the case in his critique of communism, then, Manne’s attack on economic rationalism was also marked by an attack on its proponents.

723 Ibid., p.90 724 See for example Peter Howson, “The Stolen Generation’s True Believers Take One Step Back”, National Observer, Winter 2001, pp.61-64; Paul Sheehan, 2003, The Electronic Whorehouse, Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, p.34 725 Manne, Shutdown!, op, cit., pp.53-54 726 Carroll and Manne, Shutdown!, op. cit., p.2 727 Manne, Shutdown!, op. cit., p.56 728 Ibid., p.53 729 Ibid., p.56 730 On the incorrectness of Manne’s prophecies see Coleman and Hagger, op. cit., pp.78-90, and Sheehan, op. cit., p.48 731 Manne, 1998 George Munster Journalism Forum lecture, op. cit.

211 Opening Schism with the Right To Manne’s dismay, those to have most vigorously adopted and championed the ‘doctrinaire’ market approach were from the conservative side of Australian politics. As he has commented, “At a certain point, perhaps in the mid-to-late eighties, the penny dropped for me and I suddenly saw that some of the things I’d been suspicious of on the Left were now taking place on the New Right.”732 He elaborated on this point in a 1997 Quadrant editorial.

As the Cold War was drawing to a close, and as anticommunism was becoming increasingly irrelevant, a new ideological breeze blew up as a more or less unifying force within the conservative intelligentsia – economic rationalism...Australian conservatism became increasingly blind to the force of any idea which was driven by moral rather than economic considerations...and especially hostile to the possibility that for moral reasons some economic sacrifices might have to be borne.733

As a conservative criticising economic rationalism, Manne’s example is uncommon but not unique. Many ‘old’ conservatives, most notably retired Liberal politicians, have spoken out against the market-orientation of contemporary Australian political culture. As Manne has commented, the New Right’s embrace of neoliberal economics in the 1980s opened up a major site of conflict between old and new conservatives. To Manne, it was “clearly generational”: “Older Australian conservatives are far more sceptical about economic rationalism than their more systematic and radical sons.”734 He attributed this, instructively, to both the wisdom of “old age”, when “philosophical enthusiasms are, characteristically, tempered by doubt based upon experience”, and to the “personal experience” that the older generation endured of both “the helplessness of pre-Keynesian neo-classical economics during the Great Depression” and “the remarkable successes of the Western economies during the years of the Keynesian consensus.”735 Older-style conservatism, therefore, “is pragmatic, experimental and, ultimately, sceptical about the role of theory in human affairs.”736 The neoconservatives or New Right, by contrast, were naïve and ‘ideological’. Manne’s assessment of neoconservatives as

732 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.36 733 Manne, “Whisperings of the Heart”, op. cit., p.3 734 Manne, Shutdown!, op. cit., p.57 735 Ibid. 736 Ibid.

212 born-again ideologues has been evident most recently in his commentaries on the Iraq War, were he accused the neo-cons of coming out of the Cold War with a radical reform agenda, in this case “the application of American ideals - free markets and elections - on a universal scale.”737

As Manne has incisively highlighted, “Because of what’s happened in economic terms, I would nowadays actually call much of the Left more conservative than much of the Right, especially the New Right.”738 It is now the Right that seeks to revolutionise society, to transform it from a protectionist economy to a free market, and the Left that seeks to preserve the government’s economic role.

In an attempt to counter the ‘ideological’ drift towards market economics throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Manne says he “became determined that Quadrant should open its pages to unorthodox economic views and to sociological or philosophic critique of Thatcherism and neo-liberal revivalism.”739 His attempt to critique economic rationalism within the pages of Quadrant, long an exclusively right-wing journal, antagonised, perhaps inevitably, some within the magazine’s inner-circle and many of its loyal readers. As he has noted, the Right’s response to his project was predictably hostile. In his final Quadrant editorial he said, “When I opened the pages of Quadrant to a discussion of ‘economic rationalism’ in the early 1990s...a first set of determined enemies of my editorship of Quadrant formed.”740

The Right remains highly critical of Manne’s protectionist economic perspective to this day. In his first editorial as Manne’s editorial successor at Quadrant, Paddy McGuinness bemoaned the “conservative romanticism” the journal became prone to under Manne, and complained that “The kneejerk use of the term ‘economic rationalism’ is rarely based in serious argument, but is rather an attack on rational policy making subject to fiscal constraints.”741 Here, as elsewhere, McGuinness suggested that ‘economic rationalism’ is not an approach grounded in the neoliberal

737 Robert Manne, “How Bush got into this quagmire”, The Age, 31 May 2004, http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/articles/12928.htm (Accessed 9 July 2004) 738 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.36 739 Manne, George Munster Journalism Forum lecture, op. cit. 740 Manne, “Why I Have Resigned”, op. cit., p.2 741 Padraic P. McGuinness, “The Future for Quadrant”, Quadrant, January-February 1998, p.13

213 belief that deregulation is the ‘rational’ approach to economic policy, but is “the discipline of economics” itself.742

Manne says the early 1990s (neo)conservative backlash prompted him in 1992 to “submit my resignation to the Board”. He says, however, that following “a rather heated discussion, my resignation was not accepted although, not long after, two members of the Board withdrew.”743 In the end, Manne kept the Quadrant editorship and held it for another half-decade. His opposition to economic rationalism, at that stage, had strained but not severed his affiliation with the Right.

4. The Politics of Race Racial issues, or issues involving Australian multiculturalism, have preoccupied Manne in his social and political commentaries since the mid-1990s. In this time he has devoted himself to fighting what he sees as a tide of rising intolerance and racism in Australia. The major issues he has discussed in this period – the Demidenko Affair, Hansonism, the Stolen Generations, and asylum seekers – have been discussed in this context. His perspective on these cultural issues, beginning with the Demidenko Affair, further soured his relations with Australia’s conservative Right.

Though today Manne is identified as one of the nation’s strongest advocates of multiculturalism, he seems not to have always been so enthusiastic about it. In a 1998 interview he said, “I’ve come to understand that something like multiculturalism – cherishing diversity, withdrawal from the idea of social unity – is an extension of the Enlightenment.” This understanding, he remarks, “to some extent, is a change in me.”744 Earlier he seems to have viewed multiculturalism less favourably. As mentioned, in 1982 he derided it as “one of the newer shibboleths of left-liberal teachers, welfare workers, publicists and bureaucrats.”745 In more recent times, however, Manne has spoken up in favour of multiculturalism and lashed out at what he sees as rising public intolerance to social difference. Since the mid-1990s he has championed the minority perspective regularly. This stand would seem to be quite obviously related to his own minority status as the son Jewish refugees. In

742 Ibid. 743 Manne, George Munster Journalism Forum lecture, op. cit. 744 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.47 745 Robert Manne (1982) The New Conservatism in Australia, p.xii.

214 particular, one would think this Jewish heritage has shaped his perspective to the asylum seekers affair and, especially, the Demidenko affair of 1995.

(i) Anti-Semitism: The Demidenko Affair Manne’s contribution to the Demidenko debate was the first of a series of excursions into the politics of race. The ‘Demidenko Affair’ was also the second major sticking point between Manne and the Right. The affair erupted in 1995 after the release of the award-winning Australian novel, The Hand that Signed the Paper, by the purportedly Ukrainian-Australian writer Helen Demidenko. Demidenko’s novel was set in pre-World War II Ukraine and dealt with escalating tensions between the Ukrainians, the Soviets and, most controversially, Jews. While the ‘literary establishment’ adorned the book with the nation’s highest literary honours, many, including Manne, saw the book as clearly anti-Semitic. To Manne, the book had misinterpreted and/or misrepresented the history of the Ukraine in the years preceding the Second World War in order to vilify Jews.

When claims of anti-Semitism began to emerge against the book, Manne inserted himself into the debate with a series of articles condemning it, its author, its supporters, and later its defenders. He published The Culture of Forgetting (1995), his account of the controversy, soon after. Manne says he spoke out so strongly against The Hand because he was “really shocked that a considerable part of the literary culture here was blind to the shabbiness of this young woman’s very foolish and poorly written book on a subject that was at the very heart of the tragedy of my people and my family – indeed, of twentieth-century European history.”746

Virtually nothing in Australian public life has unsettled me more than this case...I felt that until I had put my case as best I could, until I had revealed what was shabby about The Hand that Signed the Paper and astonishing about the misjudgement of it, I literally could not rest.747

Aside The Culture of Forgetting, one of Manne’s most detailed analyses of this affair was a Quadrant essay from September 1995. As he did in his book, Manne sought first to demonstrate the historical inaccuracy of The Hand, before arguing that it is

746 Manne in Dessaix, op. cit., p.49 747 Ibid.

215 both morally bereft and openly anti-Semitic. He says The Hand that Signed the Paper exhibited “little but moral vacuity, vulgarity, historical ignorance and overt anti-Semitism.”748

The main thrust of Manne’s critique was an attempt to discredit what he identified as the book’s central themes and discourses. Firstly he argued, forcefully, against Demidenko-Darville’s suggestion that the Ukrainian massacre of Jews during the Holocaust was born of previous Ukrainian oppression by Jews. He then sought to discredit the interrelated idea that the Bolsheviks, who under Stalin oppressed the Ukrainians, were dominated by, and operated in the interests of, Jews. As he points out, this latter view is also found in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and is, along with the absence of any non-evil Jewish characters, also the clearest evidence of anti- Semitism in The Hand.749 Another tell-tale sign, he suggested, was the complete absence of sympathy for the Holocaust’s victims in the book.

[H]ow little respect she feels for those who perished in the Holocaust, how little pity or terror or astonishment or humility she feels in the presence of what is, after all, the subject matter of her book – radical evil. 750

Manne called The Hand “one of the coldest books I have ever read”, and bemoaned its “moral vacuity”.751

Many observers applauded Manne’s stand against this book. Some praised his Culture of Forgetting as an authoritative and important contribution. For instance, Anne Neumann, an academic, said in Meanjin that “Half a century from now, when the Darville debacle celebrates its half-century, Manne’s is the book thoughtful Australians will consult to clarify the affair.”752

Many others believed Manne’s campaign was “censorious”, though.753 Several have claimed it was also misguided and inappropriate. One of the most common critiques

748 Robert Manne, “The Strange Case of Helen Demidenko”, Quadrant, September 1995, p.21 749 Ibid.,pp.21-25 750 Ibid., p.24 751 Ibid. 752 Anne Neumann, “Grasping the Nettle of Australian Anti-Semitism”, Meanjin, 1996, Vol. 55, Issue 3 753 Wark, op. cit., p.147

216 of the stand Manne, Gerard Henderson and others took against the book was that it was improper to subject a work of fiction to historical scrutiny. Among those leading the charge were Andrew Reimer, author of The Demidenko Debate (1996), and conservative Australian columnist Frank Devine. These two, among several others including Humphrey McQueen and McKenzie Wark, also charged that Manne demonstrated a poor grasp of literary theory, and in particular a failure to distinguish the characters’ voices from the author’s.754

Some were also unconvinced of Manne’s claim that the book was clearly and deliberately anti-Semitic. Devine, for instance, said he was “unsatisfied” that “anti- Semitism alone [w]as the driving force” of the book.755 And though most confirmed its anti-Semitism, some were still critical of Manne’s campaign. Critics from the Right saw his intervention as part of an attack on intellectual and literary freedom. It was part of a ‘politically correct’ witch-hunt. Reimer was perhaps the most eloquent exponent of this view. As Wark observed, Reimer accused Manne of “totalitarianism” for condemning the book. (He believes Reimer “puts it too strongly” though.)756 Critics from the Left, such as Wark and Mark Davis, saw Manne’s campaign as part of an attack on postmodernism and/or youth, as well as an attempt to remain relevant after the Cold War.757 Wark also argued that Manne’s attack was motivated by his unwillingness to accept any transgressions to his understanding of the Holocaust. He says Manne worried that revisionism would lead to the event taking on a different meaning.758 He charged that Manne not only wants Australians to remember the Holocaust, he wants us to remember it as he does. Manne’s desire for history to be remembered as he remembers it is clearly evident in The Shadow of 1917 also, where he stressed that “the meaning of 1917” should be neither “fudged nor forgotten.”759 Again, he not only wants Australia to remember the Cold War, he wants us to remember it as he does: the forces of light defeating the

754 Andrew Reimer, 1996, The Demidenko Debate, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp.30-1, 74; Frank Devine, “From the Other Side”, Quadrant, July-August 1996, pp.95-96; McQueen, op. cit., p.157; Wark, op. cit., pp.129-134 755 Devine, op. cit., pp.95-96 756 Wark, op. cit., p.238 757 Ibid., p.123 758 Ibid., pp.150-1 759 Manne, The Shadow of 1917, op. cit., p.1

217 forces of darkness, and the western intelligentsia shaming themselves by becoming Stalinist apologists.

In his attack on The Hand, Manne also took a swipe at those who had admonished the book. With others like Gerard Henderson, Manne criticised the “literary establishment” and university academics, who he accused of corrupting the nation’s youth. As Humphrey McQueen observed, “He tries to blame the rewards given to Demidenko on her ignorance or on her miseducation in universities by Lefties.”760 In attacking left-wing academics and other literary figures, Manne reiterated his complaint, noted last chapter, against the “reigning left-wing orthodoxy” of the universities. He was expounding a traditionally conservative view – albeit an updated one. As Davis observed, it was essentially the same thesis Allan Bloom articulated in his The Closing of the American Mind.761 In essays, columns and his book, Manne argued that the affair had “inadvertently exposed...the pretensions of academic post- modernism and sentimental multiculturalism” in Australia.762

Though this critique seemed primarily directed at university ‘lefties’, it became one of the most significant contributors to his falling out with the Right, and with Quadrant especially. It seems the main problem the Right had with Manne’s cultural intervention in the Demidenko Affair was that he seemed to have joined the side of ‘political correctness’. For the Right, Manne’s campaign against Demidenko meant he had effectively partaken in what they saw as a ‘politically correct’ crusade against freedom of the expression. He had joined the enemy, the Left, just as he had done with his critique of ‘economic rationalism’.

As Davis and Wark have observed, the Demidenko Affair became a cause celebre in the Right’s cultural war, following the US neoconservatives, against postmodernism and political correctness. Manne was actually on this conservative bandwagon for a period, until the Demidenko Affair, where he revised his view on political correctness (in particular) and became more critical of the conservative assault against it. Before the Demidenko Affair, Manne had typically dismissed PC in

760 McQueen, op. cit., p.157 761 Davis, op. cit., pp.194-5 762 Manne, “The Strange Case of Helen Demidenko”, op. cit., p.28

218 chorus with the rest of the Right as a device used by the Left to stifle debate. As McIntyre observed in History Wars, “when Robert Manne expounded the term in Quadrant, he suggested that it indicated membership of an ‘intellectual pack’ marked by smugness, severity, intolerance, even ‘self-totalitarianism’.”763 However, as Neumann has pointed out, more recently however Manne has come to see PC not as a debate-stifling tactic, but as a method of “persuasion rather than coercion”, which “need not preclude independent thought.”764

Aside the ideological differences the Demidenko affair unearthed, one of the obvious matters at the heart of his souring relations with Quadrant was that in attacking the champions of the Demidenko book Manne had, at least by implication, attacked one of Quadrant’s most influential board members, Dame Leonie Kramer. Kramer was a key figure behind The Hand’s reception of several prestigious awards and had defended the book (eventually) when it was attacked. According to Manne, in 1995 the two had argued over the book.765 In condemning those who had championed and rewarded Demidenko’s The Hand that Signed the Paper, Manne had, it seems, made a very powerful enemy on the Quadrant Committee of Management. Indeed, Manne has commented that he believes the souring of his relations with the Quadrant Board began at about the time of the Demidenko Affair. “The struggle between the friends and enemies of the new Quadrant [his Quadrant] began in earnest - I think, in 1995 or 1996.”766

The Right’s annoyance with Manne’s ‘cultural interventions’ would only increase in the years after the Demidenko Affair. To the ire of many, Manne followed his Demidenko ‘interventions’ with criticisms of the conservative politics of the Howard government and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation movement, and attempts to engage the Right over Aboriginal issues, refugees and the Iraq War. As well as taking a keen personal interest in such debates, Manne sought to open Quadrant to serious discussions of some of these issues. In doing so, he again reversed the magazine’s tradition of dismissing alternative, non-right-wing views, and managed to irritate,

763 Stuart McIntyre and Anna Clark, 2003, History Wars, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, p.134 764 Neumann, op. cit. 765 Robert Manne cited in John Jost, Gianna Totaro and Christine Tyshing, 1996, The Demidenko File, Ringwood: Penguin Books Australia, p.245 766 Manne, George Munster Journalism Forum lecture, op. cit.

219 once again, the magazine’s right-wing core. This compounded the growing hostility to his editorship. He undoubtedly agitated the Right further by accusing them of stubbornness on racial matters.

(ii) Indigenous Affairs: The Stolen Generations It was Manne’s views on Hansonism, or the rise of populist conservatism, and on the Stolen Generations in particular which led to the conservative Right’s backlash against him in the late 1990s. To the dismay of those on the Right, he wrote regularly on these issues in Quadrant throughout 1997. As Manne comments, it was the Stolen Generations issue which antagonised the Right most.

I think nothing more alienated the Old Guard at Quadrant than the tone in which the discussions of the Stolen Generation issue - particularly the seriousness of the discussion of the question of genocide - in that issue during 1997.767

As well as his own articles, some of which endorsed left-wing allegations of white Australian genocide against Aborigines, Manne published various writers who endorsed the so-called ‘black armband’ view of Australian history – perhaps most notably the conservative philosopher Raimond Gaita. Ultimately, rather than inspiring a conservative rethink, as was evidently intended, Manne inspired a venomous right-wing campaign against his editorship. As he has commented:

I have never before received so much hate mail from Quadrant readers as I have received this year, narrowly over the question of Quadrant and Aboriginal issues, more generally over the claim that under my editorship Quadrant has somehow caved in to the Left.768

To Manne, Aboriginal justice was, or at least deserved to be, one of the biggest issues in Australian politics. He has stated that he, “like many non-indigenous Australians, [had] come to a serious interest in the question of the maltreatment of Aborigines far too late.”769

767 Ibid. 768 Manne, “Why I Have Resigned”, op. cit., p.2 769 Robert Manne, “The Stolen Generations”, Quadrant, January-February 1998, p.53

220 Following the release of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s report on Aboriginal child removals, Bringing Them Home, the ‘Stolen Generation’ became a major discussion topic for Australia’s public intellectuals. Though some saw problems with the report, many nonetheless viewed it as an extremely important document and considered its conclusions to be fundamentally correct. Manne described it as “a report of great importance for this country”.770 Others, however, mainly conservatives, saw the report as seriously flawed to the point of irrelevance. The Institute of Public Affairs’ Ron Brunton called it a “highly dubious report”, and asserted that “a report as shoddy and irresponsible as Bringing Them Home should not be allowed to define how Australians see the child removals.”771 Paddy McGuinness also dismissed the report in his first editorial as Manne’s editorial successor at Quadrant.772

Ultimately the debate over this report escalated (or degenerated) into another bitter Left-Right conflict. It became one of main discussion points in the ‘History Wars’. As discussed in Chapter Three, throughout the late 1990s and into the new century, this ‘war’ has been one of the primary preoccupations of Australia’s intellectual class. Manne was at the forefront of this war throughout the 1990s. It is for this reason the major studies of these cultural debates, like Wark’s The Virtual Republic and Davis’ gangland, have tended to focus a lot of attention upon Manne. As well as discussing the Stolen Generations and other Aboriginal affairs in his columns and Quadrant editorials, Manne penned the essay, In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right (2001), and edited an anthology, Whitewash (2003), refuting Keith Windschuttle’s historical revisionist piece, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2002). Manne has described Windschuttle’s controversial piece as “the most reactionary book to be taken seriously in this country for very many years.”773

As a leading supporter of the ‘Stolen Generations’ thesis, Manne became, perhaps for the first time, clearly associated with the left wing of Australian politics. In his view, Aboriginal child removal policies were not, as the Right claimed, “ill-advised

770 Robert Manne, “A Piteous Tale”, Quadrant, June 1997, p.2 771 Ron Brunton, “Why Bother with Facts?”, IPA Review, September 1998, p.23 772 McGuinness, op. cit., p.11 773 Robert Manne, “How Tampa sailed into 2002”, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 December 2002, http://evatt.labor.net.au/news/163.html (Accessed 9 July 2004)

221 but well-intentioned”, they were policies directed towards, at different times, “biological assimilation” and “socio-cultural assimilation”.774 They were, at least at one point in history, genocide. As Paul Sheehan has commented, “No-one has done more in Australian public life than Robert Manne to link the accusation of genocide with the removal of Aboriginal children from their families.”775

Manne clearly outlined his genocide thesis in two Quadrant essays from September 1997 and January-February 1998. In 1997 he suggested that key Australian authorities in the Twentieth Century had pursued policies of biological assimilation for Aborigines. The plan, he said, was to breed out Aboriginal race via “mating between natives and Europeans” so that “every trace of Aboriginal blood could be removed.”776 He concluded that “the policy of the forcible removal of Aboriginal children was in essence not an exercise in misguided paternalism but of racially- inspired social engineering.”777 In a later Quadrant essay, Manne attributed the racist child removal policies to the power of the early Twentieth Century ideas of racial Darwinism and the science of eugenics – which he describes as “the science that taught that one of the responsibilities of the contemporary state was to improve a nation’s racial stock by breeding programs.” He claimed that “two of the three most important administrators of Aboriginal Affairs” in the 1920s and 1930s were “enthusiastic converts” to the eugenics project.778 He concluded that because the child removals were, during this period, designed to “keep White Australia pure” by gradually eliminating the Aboriginal race, they were an attempt to commit genocide against the indigenous population.779

The claim that Australian authorities implemented genocidal policies against the Aboriginal people is a much disputed allegation. For the Right, it epitomises the extremism of the left-wing perspective. How can the Australian maltreatment of Aborigines equal, they ask, the horrors of the Holocaust?780 To the Right, Manne’s

774 Robert Manne, “The Age of Biological Assimilation”, Quadrant, September 1997, p.2; Manne, “The Stolen Generations”, op. cit., p.62 775 Sheehan, op. cit., p.35 776 Manne, “The Age of Biological Assimilation”, op. cit., p.2 777 Manne, “A Piteous Tale”, op. cit., p.2 778 Manne, “The Stolen Generations”, op. cit., p.59 779 Ibid., pp.56-59 780 See for example Peter Howson, “The Stolen Generation’s True Believers Take One Step Back”, National Observer, Winter 2001, p.61-64

222 endorsement of the ‘genocide’ thesis must be particularly puzzling, given the profound and obvious impact the world’s most infamous case of genocide had on his worldview. Yet Manne qualifies his view by defining genocide against the popular image and in line with the official definition advocated by the United Nations. To Manne, policies designed to assist and accelerate supposedly ‘inevitable’ extinction of Aborigines are comparable to Nazi policies aimed at exterminating the Jewish race – though obviously the means employed to achieve these ends differ enormously. He said the Holocaust “as [a] model of genocide may be misleading”, and, drawing from Hannah Arendt, defined genocide as “the intention to eliminate a distinct people”.781 Accordingly, he interpreted the attempt by “the most important administrators in Aboriginal affairs in Australia in the late 1930s” to “allow the full- blood Aborigines to die out, and to breed out the half-castes”, as a case of attempted genocide.782

[I]t seemed to me inescapable that in at least one period in our history something genuinely terrible – genocide in the Arendtian sense – had been seriously contemplated by those who held in their hands the powers vested in them by the state, to administer Aboriginal affairs.783

Manne qualified the genocide thesis further in a lengthy Quadrant essay in early 1998, where he argued that genocide may have occurred, but only for a period during the 1930s. He says child removal policies were genocidal when the objective was ‘biological assimilation’, but not when it was ‘socio-cultural assimilation’ (as it was after the 1930s).784 He considered both, of course, utterly deplorable. As Sheehan has outlined, Manne thoughts on this issue appeared frequently in his columns for the Fairfax papers also.785

The ire Manne inspired through his endorsement of the genocide thesis in Quadrant was exacerbated by his open criticism of the conservative side’s “resistance to the idea of the injustice done to the Aborigines”. In an editorial from May 1997, Manne complained that this resistance sometimes seemed “rooted in nothing deeper than a

781 Manne, “The Age of Biological Assimilation”, op. cit., p.2 782 Ibid. 783 Ibid. See also Manne, “The Stolen Generations”, op. cit., p.62 784 Manne, “The Stolen Generations”, op. cit., pp.61-63 785 Sheehan, op. cit., pp.38, 47-8

223 kind of reflex anti-leftism” and was thus attributable simply to “the deadening force of political habit”.786 Manne made the same criticisms in his resignation editorial in December 1997, and would repeat these remarks elsewhere.787 As its title suggests, In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right (2001), argues this point in detail.

Predictably, the Right has been highly critical of Manne on this issue. When Paddy McGuinness took the reins of Quadrant after Manne’s resignation, the magazine immediately changed its approach to Aboriginal affairs. As Stuart McIntyre has observed, under McGuinness Quadrant launched a campaign against the push towards reconciliation, particularly regarding the apology and the stolen generations.788 In a public lecture not a year after resigning, Manne lamented that, particularly on the issue of Aborigines, “I bitterly regret what [Quadrant] has, within a few months, become.”789

Manne was a regular target in assaults against Bringing Them Home in the new (McGuinness) Quadrant, and also within the various publications of Australia’s privately-funded right-wing think tanks. One of his most virulent critics was Ron Brunton from the Institute of Public Affairs. In Quadrant in 1998, Brunton accused Manne of ‘omitting’ and ‘misrepresenting’ information to arrive at his “ignorant and fatuous” conclusions.790 These allegations also appeared in an IPA Review essay from the same year, where he concluded Manne’s “careless approach” is “yet another instance of the degraded state of debate on Aboriginal issues” in Australia.791 Brunton restated his accusations in an IPA essay from 2001, saying Manne displayed a “wanton disregard of facts” and occasional “fabrication of evidence”.792

Another of Manne’s biggest critics on this issue was former Aboriginal Affairs minister for the Menzies Liberal government, Peter Howson. In the National Observer, a publication from the right-wing think tank, Council for the National

786 Manne, “Whisperings of the Heart”, op. cit., p.2 787 Manne, “Why I Have Resigned”, op. cit., pp.2-3; Manne, George Munster Journalism Forum lecture, op. cit. 788 McIntyre and Clark, op. cit., pp.146-7 789 Manne, George Munster Journalism Forum lecture, op. cit. 790 Ron Brunton, “Genocide, the ‘Stolen Generations’, and the ‘Unconceived Generations’”, Quadrant, May 1998, pp.19-24 791 Brunton, “Why Bother with Facts?”, op. cit., p.23 792 Ron Brunton, “Cultural Wars”, IPA Review, June 2001, pp.21-22

224 Interest, Howson too claimed Manne “produces no evidence” to support his assertions, one of which he says was “comical”.793 Howson also criticised the Left’s take on the Stolen Generations in Quadrant, where he suggested that child removals had rescued part-Aboriginal children from an intolerant Aboriginal society.794 Western Mining Corporation’s Ray Evans, a key figure in the creation and sponsorship of think tanks in Australia, has also participated in the Right’s Quadrant campaign against ‘revisionism’ on Aboriginal history.795 More recently, Sheehan devoted most of a chapter in his Electronic Whorehouse to attacking Manne’s genocide thesis, which he says is only sustainable if one “ignore[s] a mass of detailed evidence”. Sheehan also notes that Manne had watered down his genocide accusations by 2001.796

The Resignation As mentioned, Manne’s support of the Stolen Generations campaign was the final straw for the Right and was the issue which most influentially precipitated his resignation as editor of its leading forum, Quadrant. Manne has clearly outlined the reasons for his departure on several occasions. One of these was his final, resignation editorial in the December 1997 issue of Quadrant. Although his editorship had long been attacked by the magazine’s right-wing contingent, particularly from the mid- 1990s, Manne says he only decided to resign when it became clear to him that the Quadrant Board had lost faith in his vision for the magazine. By Manne’s account, the first signs of major conflict with the Quadrant team came when the magazine’s Literary Editor, Les Murray, instigated a ‘feud’ with him late in 1996 that soon “turned to open warfare”.797 As McIntyre has observed, Murray was among those accusing Manne of having taken up the “received leftist line on Aborigines”.798 Manne suggests his decision to resign was ultimately prompted when in 1997 the magazine’s Committee of Management refused to endorse his request that Murray be replaced.799 This refusal, he concluded, was a sign that the Board had lost faith in

793 Peter Howson, “The Stolen Generation’s True Believers Take One Step Back”, National Observer, Winter 2001, p.61-64 794 Peter Howson, “Rescued from the Rabbit Burrow”, Quadrant, June 1999, pp.10-14 795 Ray Evans, “Gnosticism and the High Court”, Quadrant, June 1999, pp.20-26 796 Sheehan, op. cit., pp.36, 45 797 Manne, “Why I Have Resigned”, op. cit., pp.2-3 798 McIntyre and Clark, op. cit., p.146 799 Manne, George Munster Journalism Forum lecture, op. cit.

225 him as editor. He says he announced his resignation to the Committee at a meeting a short time later, immediately after which “the next hour or so was devoted to criticism of my editorship.”800

Manne says as editor he tried to make the new post-Cold War Quadrant, his Quadrant, “a kind of reflective space, beyond the old ideological divides, where writers and readers have met and conversed in a manner not all that common in Australia – seriously, courteously, passionately.”801 He wanted Quadrant to be “a forum where complex, open-ended conversation could take place”, rather than the site for “some new all-embracing post-Cold War political campaign.”802 The latter, of course, is what his enemies on the Right had hoped for, and what the magazine became under McGuinness.

To the frustration of Quadrant’s right-wing core, Manne wanted serious discussions of the ‘Left cultural agenda’. This is not to suggest that he had, as his critics argue, ‘capitulated to the Left’. Rather, he maintained a heavy scepticism and opposition to several Left positions. As he has commented, he wanted to “insist upon the discussions of certain issues which parts of the Left found awkward or would have liked to sweep under the carpet.” He mentions “the impact of violent pornography on our society”, “institutional child care for babies”, and “the more intolerant aspects of...academic feminism” as examples. Ultimately, however, in considering left-wing positions at all in John Howard’s Australia, Manne’s editorship made Quadrant “closer to a Left-wing journal like Arena and a long way indeed from the Australian mainstream.”803 As Manne has noted elsewhere, to the dismay and growing frustration of Quadrant’s right-wing contingent, he was steering the magazine away from the Right “at the precise time the culture was drifting rather quickly in precisely that direction.” He was “editing Quadrant against the cultural cycle.”804

(iii) Immigration: The Asylum Seekers Debate

800 Manne, “Why I Have Resigned”, op. cit., p.2 801 Ibid. 802 Ibid. 803 Manne, George Munster Journalism Forum lecture, op. cit. 804 Ibid.

226 After the Stolen Generations, one of the biggest recent issues with a racial undertone has been the immigration/refugee debate of the early 2000s. As mentioned in Chapter Three, this issue was definitive in the politics of the period. According to some, like Manne, it was the primary reason John Howard won the 2001 election. Throughout the affair, Manne stood out as one of Howard and Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock’s most vigilant and eloquent critics. His principal objection to this issue, as in most others, was a fundamentally moral one. For its “denigration of the asylum seekers”, he said, Australia has “a heavy moral price to pay.”805

Over the past three or four years he has frequently chastised the Howard government, particularly Howard and Ruddock, for their “mean” and “merciless”, and indeed cynical, approach to illegal arrivals.806 He believed one of the government’s more appalling initiatives was to exploit the affair for their own ends. He was particularly critical of their moves to demonise the asylum seekers. He called Ruddock’s distinction between deserving ‘offshore’ refugees and undeserving ‘onshore’ refugees, between genuine refugees and queue-jumping forum shoppers, “little more than moral cant”.807

He also accused the government of being too strict in its interpretation of what constitutes a genuine refugee and complained that its preoccupation with the economic benefits of immigration meant many needy refugees were being turned away. In The Age, for instance, he lamented that “it is almost impossible for refugees to gain entry to Australia if they are not fit and well”, and called for “special provision to help those refugees who are old and ill.”808 Moreover, rejecting Ruddock’s line that “for every boat refugee the government accepts it has no alternative but to reduce by a similar number its humanitarian program abroad”, Manne argued Australia could always lift its refugee quota.809 Late in 2003 he asserted that “by offering permanent homes to refugees on temporary visas and to

805 Robert Manne, “Parents face Sophie’s choice at Villawood”, The Age, August 13, 2001 806 Robert Manne, “A year of eroding precious values”, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December 2003, http://www.gaiaguys.net/2003smh29.12.03.htm (Accessed 9 July 2004) 807 Robert Manne, “Our refugee shame”, The Age, May 7, 2001 808 Ibid. 809 Ibid.

227 those presently indefinitely detained in Australia or on Nauru, absolutely nothing would be lost - but 10,000 lives would be redeemed.”810

But the most deplorable aspect of Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers for Manne, and many others, was its detention regime. As Paul Kelly has noted, refugee detention is a bipartisan policy aimed to deter illegal immigrants.811 Manne accepts the policy has been an effective deterrent, but insists that the cost has been too great. He has complained that asylum seekers are “left to rot in the detention camps” as a result of what he has described as “shocking and purposeless cruelty”.812

To accentuate the human cost of the Government’s policies, Manne wrote a series of articles in The Age focusing on life within the detention centres. After listing ongoing problems like rioting, hunger strikes and suicide attempts, he blamed them on the “prison-like conditions” asylum seekers must endure.813 He was particularly critical of the detention of children. In 2001 he wrote a series of articles highlighting the plight of one six-year-old Iranian boy, Shayan Badraie. As Peter Mares observed in his analysis of the issue, Borderline (2001), Badraie “became the subject of national debate in the media in August 2001.”814 By this time the child had “been detained in Australia, with his parents, for the past 17 months.” Manne suggested that after witnessing other detainees self-mutilate, Shayan “began to withdraw from life” and was “experiencing a daily psychic death”.815 This case, he said, was a “monstrous injustice”.816 Manne outlined the conditions children endured in long-term detention again in May 2004.817

For Manne, the asylum seekers affair signalled something of a turning point for Australian political culture. He believes since the election of the Howard government in 1996, Australia has steadily moved rightward. A large part of this transition has

810 Manne, “A year of eroding precious values”, op. cit. 811 Paul Kelly, “Refugees subject to immigration laws”, The Australian, July 25, 2001 812 Manne, “How Tampa sailed into 2002”, op. cit. 813 Manne, “Parents face Sophie’s choice at Villawood”, op. cit. 814 Peter Mares, 2001, Borderline, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, p.59 815 Manne, “Parents face Sophie’s choice at Villawood”, op. cit. 816 Robert Manne, “A little boy lost in the lucky country”, The Age, August 27, 2001 817 Robert Manne, “Barely a blink, despite the evidence of children’s suffering”, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 May 2004,

228 been the rise of racialism. As early as 1997, Manne was arguing that Australia had turned for the worse.

Since the election of March 1996 among the most important issues in our political life have been the emergence of racial politics, connected with the rise of Pauline Hanson, and the conspicuous souring of the public mood on matters concerned with multiculturalism, Asian immigration and Aboriginal rights.818

He suggests the popular response to Howard’s stand on refugees, most of whom were Middle Eastern, demonstrated vividly how intolerant and xenophobic Australia had become. In one notable article, he suggested that if the government had treated white Zimbabwean farmers “fleeing their country without papers or passports” in the manner it had the Middle Eastern boatpeople, there would have been “overwhelming national outrage”.819

(iv)The Hanson Phenomenon and the Howard Years Since the late 1990s Manne has been a consistent critic of the Howard Liberal government. Though, as he admits, he voted for the Coalition in 1996820, he was by the end of its first term openly critical of it. As Sheehan complained in 2003, “[s]ince the publication of the Bringing Them Home report in 1997, [Manne] returned to the subject of Australia’s dark legacies more than a hundred times in his columns.”821 Many of these have been implicitly or explicitly critical of Howard. Alongside his many newspaper articles, he has attacked the government in journals, his instructively titled critique, The Barren Years: John Howard and Australian Political Culture (2001), and the anti-Howard anthology, The Howard Years (2004), which he edited. Very recently in The Age, in the lead-up to the 2004 election, he stated his disapproval of Howard thus:

In the November 2001 election I voted against Howard mainly because of his attitude to reconciliation and his cruelty to refugees. This time, in addition, I will be voting against his Government because of the complicity of the Prime

818 Robert Manne, “The Republican Drift”, Quadrant, September 1997, p.3 819 Manne, “Our refugee shame”, op. cit. 820 Robert Manne interviewed by Steve Austin, 612ABC Radio, February 18, 2004 821 Sheehan, op. cit., p.47

229 Minister in the invasion of Iraq and the impact of his increasingly authoritarian style of government on Australian public life.822

As his quotation reflects, Manne’s primary complaint against the Howard government is the moral deficiency of its approach. One of his central, and most controversial, critiques is his belief that Howard has been able to maintain power in large part by exploiting the Australia’s populist conservative backlash. For Manne, Australian political culture in the Howard era was marked by “economic and cultural reform fatigue” from the Keating years. This fatigue meant Howard’s “inward- looking...style of populist conservatism” was able to prevail.823 He has argued repeatedly that though this backlash was expressed most clearly in the rise of One Nation and Pauline Hanson, the Howard government was able to ride the wave by adopting One Nation’s policies. In response to the government’s refugee policy, for instance, he said: “Ever since 1998 the Government had been looking for a way of overcoming the influence of the One Nation party. With border control chauvinism, this objective was magnificently achieved.”824 Because of Howard’s appeal to One Nation supporters, Manne calls his reign in the late 1990s and early 2000s, “the Hansonite phase” of Australian history.

Manne has fought against the rise of populist conservatism in Australia since it spectacularly announced itself in the 1996 election. Reflecting on this result shortly after the election, he expressed some concern at the popularity of “politically incorrect” candidates like Bob Katter, Graeme Richardson and Pauline Hanson.825 In 1997, before Hanson had established One Nation, Manne appealed in Quadrant for Australia’s conservative intellectuals to join him in condemning and opposing Pauline Hanson and her following. “In my view, the time for the conservative intelligentsia to declare themselves unambiguously against the Hanson phenomenon has come.”826 Most conservatives failed to respond however. Manne touched upon one of the apparent reasons at the time, though seemingly unconsciously, when

822 Robert Manne, “Descent into desperation a sideline to choice already made”, The Sydney Morning Herald, October 4, 2004, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/03/1096741896289.html (Accessed October 4, 2004) 823 Robert Manne, “How a single-issue party held on to power”, The Age, November 12, 2001 824 Ibid. 825 Robert Manne, 1996, “The Keating Collapse”, in The Way We Live Now, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1998, p.66 826 Robert Manne, “Paranoia Party Manifesto”, Quadrant, June 1997, p.86

230 reviewing the One Nation ‘manifesto’, Pauline Hanson: The Truth. Many conservatives, he said, “will find their own ideas – on the new class, political correctness, Mabo, multiculturalism, Asian migration, the High Court – absorbed, simplified, systematised and radicalised.”827 Simplified, systematised and radicalised or not, Hansonism still appealed to many Australian conservatives in a way that Manne’s multicultural agenda simply could not.

Manne’s take on the evolution of Australian politics has been criticised by various thinkers, not all of whom are so clearly right-wing. In The Australian, Paul Kelly has criticised Manne’s take on Australian politics as “a serious misreading of our history and politics”. Kelly rejects Manne’s view, which he summarises as saying “Howard has defeated Hanson by adopting her policies”, contending the Howard government’s refugee policies were authentic Howard positions, consistent with his “conservative populism”.828 Sheehan too has rejected Manne’s vision of Howard’s Australia, summarising it as follows:

Manne’s Australia is a place of callousness, cultural entropy, of things falling apart, a nation always on the brink of outbreaks of racism, or wild greed, or economic decline, a society devoid of humour and honesty led by a government that must inevitably fall, if not politically then morally.829

A similar criticism is University of Wollongong professor Greg Melleuish’s claim that Manne tended to apply a rigid, outdated, “naïve” and “simplistic” model to Australian politics.830 Melleuish alleged that Manne misunderstands Howard when portraying him as “standing for reaction, selfishness and immorality”831, and claims Manne’s assessment of Hansonism and One Nation is equally deficient. Overall, he accuses Manne of basing his conclusions on little else but “sentiment and personal experience”, and of writing with “an unacknowledged prejudice”.832

827 Ibid. 828 Paul Kelly, The Australian, September 8, 2003 829 Sheehan, op. cit., p.47 830 Greg Melleuish, “Political Commentary: Prophecy or Conversation?”, Australian Journal of Social Issues, November 2001, p.352 831 Ibid. 832 Ibid., pp.357-358

231 Criticisms of Manne for being overly moralistic or self-righteous are in fact fairly widespread. They come from commentators as diverse as the Institute of Public Affairs to postmodern leftists Mark Davis and McKenzie Wark. The IPA has denigrated him as “the point man for contemporary moral vanity”.833 Similarly, in Quadrant, British scholar Kenneth Minogue accused him of “a curious moral and intellectual vanity” in the Stolen Generations debate.834 Davis’ gangland contains several swipes at Manne for his ‘Leavisite’ tendency to “attribute finer values to [himself] and nominate [himself] to speak these values to the rest of society as ‘moral good’.”835 His “quiet certainties” have also been scrutinised in Wark’s The Virtual Republic.836

This criticism was also made very strongly by Sheehan, who concluded that Manne is “an intellectual undertaker. His dour, grim, accusatory and utterly humourless observations are presented with an impregnable sense of certainty, [and] self- intoxication.”837 Sheehan then endorses The Australian’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan’s, remark that “there is an extreme moral self-righteousness, an almost absurd self-regard that depicts all his positions as self-evidently morally pure and anybody who disagrees with him as an evil grub.”838

(v) The Iraq War and the War on Terror The most recent issue Manne has devoted himself to with an elevated sense of purpose is the Iraq War. As was the case throughout the asylum seekers affair, Manne has stood out as one of the strongest critics of the Howard government from the time the Iraq War came onto the political agenda late in 2002.

Throughout this issue, Manne has again allied himself with the Left. In fact, because of the general absence of a left-wing voice of the nature of, say, John Pilger, Manne has in some ways again represented the ‘Left’ perspective in the Australian press. And he has made arguments akin to the left-wing view, such as his claim that the Americans and Brits surrendered their claim to a humanitarian justification for war

833 “Moral Vanity Manne”, IPA Review, September 1999, p.22 834 Kenneth Minogue, “Aborigines and Australian Apologetics”, Quadrant, September 1998, p.17 835 Davis, op. cit., p.283 836 Wark, op. cit., pp.126, 236 837 Sheehan, op. cit., p.48 838 Greg Sheridan cited in Sheehan, op. cit., p.48

232 because they had for years “watched coldly as Saddam Hussein has allowed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to die as a result of the impact of the sanctions policy they have imposed.”839 Manne’s stance is by no means a radical one however. He does not, for instance, oppose the war as an imperialist adventure, nor has he spoken in favour of the Iraqi resistance. In fact, he supports the US-led war on terrorism and supported the invasion of Afghanistan.840

The primary basis of his opposition to the Iraq War is his view that the American strategy was deeply flawed and involved far too many dangerous risks. Close to the start of the war, in February 2003, he was warning that its outcome would be disastrous. He feared Iraq would descend into chaos.841 And indeed it did. Ultimately, it was not the ends the Americans pursued, but the means by which they tried to achieve them, that Manne was opposed to.

Throughout the entire saga he has denounced the US doctrine of “preventive wars” against “rogue states”. As early as October 2002 Manne was arguing that this doctrine was “extremely dangerous” because it threatened to “introduce new perilous uncertainty into the world.”842 He warned that “if all nations possessed the same right as the US - to wage preventive wars without UN support - the law of the jungle would prevail in international affairs.”843 His preferred approach was “the creation of a worldwide counter-terrorist coalition aimed at destroying al Qaeda and its associates.”844 He is a multilateralist. And unlike Paul Kelly (discussed in Chapter 6), he saw no justification for American unilateralism. He wanted terrorism fought, but through the United Nations.

On several occasions he has rebuked the American Bush administration for inadequately considering the consequences of their unilateral attack. Revealing again

839 Robert Manne, “Armed with everything except moral authority”, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 February 2003, http://www.gaiaguys.net/smhiraq10.2.03.htm (Accessed 9 July 2004) 840 Robert Manne, “Toe the line on Iraq or the boot goes in”, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 2004, 841 Manne, “Armed with everything except moral authority”, op. cit. 842 Manne, “How Tampa sailed into 2002”, op. cit. 843 Robert Manne, “Lack of critical media gave Government free rein on Iraq invasion”, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 April 2004, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/18/1082226632717.html (Accessed 9 July 2004) 844 Robert Manne, “The end of the delusion”, The Age, 21 October 2002, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1538 (Accessed 9 July 2004)

233 his old-fashioned conservatism, Manne has said “the plan to create a model Western- style democracy in Iraq was little more than a fantasy of the neo-conservative imagination.”845 It was a “childish dream”.846 Of the invasion he has said: “In my years of observing Western foreign policy, I have never witnessed a more foolish adventure than the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.”847

Manne’s criticism of the Americans, and the Howard government that followed them to war, increased as it became clear that Iraq had been invaded “on the basis of a lie”.848 As he has argued, it was in fact built on several lies. In several articles throughout 2003 and 2004 he has condemned the coalition’s leaders, particularly the Bush neoconservatives, for deliberately misleading their publics and trying to deceive the international community.849 As he argued, the US neo-cons had wanted this war for years and Iraqi WMD was merely their way of finally justifying it. Their real motive was regime change. He portrays the neo-cons as capitalising of September 11 to rationalise their plan.850 He has called the USA’s “spurious justification” of the war “one of the greatest foreign policy scandals involving Western governments since 1945.”851

Manne was also very critical of the Howard Government (again), for “follow[ing] every twist of US policy over Iraq like a faithful lamb.”852 He suggested that while Howard’s support for the war was partly genuine, it was also initially another opportunistic stunt like the Tampa Affair.853 Manne lamented that Australia’s position on Iraq tarnished our international reputation and, though bringing us closer to our ‘great and powerful friends’, strained relationships with our other allies,

845 Robert Manne, “A year of eroding precious values”, op. cit. 846 Robert Manne, “The choice: two kinds of disaster”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 November 2003, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/16/1068917671936.html (Accessed 9 July 2004); Manne, “Lack of critical media gave Government free rein on Iraq invasion”, op. cit. 847 Robert Manne, “A truly foolish adventure”, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 November 2003 848 Robert Manne, “A mission in Iraq built on a lie”, 16 June 2003, http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/articles/1687.htm (Accessed 9 July 2004) 849 See for example Manne, “The choice: two kinds of disaster”, op. cit. and Manne, “How Bush got into this quagmire”, The Age, 31 May 2004, http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/articles/12928.htm (Accessed 9 July 2004) 850 Manne, “A mission in Iraq built on a lie”, op. cit. 851 Ibid. 852 Robert Manne, “Labor’s ‘great and powerful’ policy battle”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 November 2002, http://www.progressivelabour.org/MANNEalpiraq.htm (Accessed 9 July 2004) 853 Robert Manne, “Understanding Howard’s war”, The Age, March 17, 2003, http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/16/1047749661968.html (Accessed 9 July 2004)

234 friends and neighbours.854 One of the more illicit critiques Manne advanced against the Iraq invasion was that there was, again, an underlying racialist element. By frequently inserting the word “Anglo” in descriptions of the coalition, as in “Anglo- American” and “Anglophone democracies”, Manne hinted at a racial dimension to the war. This is of course consistent with his broader critique of Australian political culture since the election of Howard in 1996.

Conclusion Robert Manne is both a well-respected and much-maligned political columnist in Australia. For those who share his gloomy perspective on the Howard years and the right-wing ascendancy in Australian political culture, his moralistic commentaries are brave and timely contributions to public life. For Howard supporters, economic rationalists, right-wingers and many unforgiving leftists, however, his moralism is self-righteous and infuriating.

There are of course many harsher criticisms that have been levelled at Manne, not least of which are the regular allegations of inaccuracy, even wilful distortion. It is unclear, however, that Manne’s errors are in fact wilful. As one of Manne’s admirers, Robert Dessaix, has observed, Manne is “open about having been wrong.” Dessaix also calls Manne’s approach one of “a rational mind gently sifting through the evidence, coming to logical conclusions in its own good time.”855 Similarly, The Australian’s Kat Legge described him as “a man of reason and gentle persuasion who appeals not with strident opinion but by quietly setting out the facts.”856 Throughout this chapter I have included several common criticisms of Manne’s writings on the various issues covered. Not as often have I included endorsements of them. But there are many. One clear acclamation of his work was The Reader’s nomination of Manne as “the best columnist in Australia” in June 2003. The Reader praised “his passion, his plausibility and his transparent desire to make Australia a more civilised place.” It said he “writes with a powerful mixture of authority and

854 See for example Manne, “How Tampa sailed into 2002”, op. cit. and Manne, “Understanding Howard’s war”, op. cit. 855 Dessaix, op. cit., p.31 856 Kate Legge, “Defusing the Mindset: Removing the oxymoron from Australian intellectualism”, in Murray Waldren (1999) (ed), Future Tense: Australia Beyond Election 1998, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp.81-2

235 conviction about the nation’s most important issues.”857 For these reasons and others, Manne is an influential commentator who invariably manages to stand out in particular debates and even to sometimes epitomise or define a political position. This is why he is so regularly singled out for attack – that and the fact that he rarely sits on the fence.

One point of note that I have not included in the body of this chapter is the respect which even many of his critics have for his eloquence as a political commentator. McKenzie Wark, for instance, an eloquent writer himself, said after criticising Manne repeatedly in The Virtual Republic: “I’ve used Manne as a foil throughout this essay because of the quality of his writing. It embodies the most extreme moderation, the most aggressive calmness, the most unbounded restraint.”858 Of course, Wark is here criticising again Manne’s “quiet certainties”, but in a more complimentary way than other (usually right-wing) critics. His eloquence is perhaps the main reason for his prominence as a political commentator.

As argued earlier, it is a clear reflection of how far to the Right Australian political culture has moved, that Manne is sometimes seen as a left-winger and that he has often come to represent what in the Australian press constitutes the ‘left-wing’ perspective. As left-leaning commentator Phil Cleary has remarked, even despite his recent campaigns Manne “could hardly be accused of being from the Left.”859 And yet, as The Reader noted in 2003, he “lean[s] to the left on most but not all issues”.860 A result of Manne’s left-leaning commentary in recent years is that he has become, as Ian Syson has noted, “something of a darling of the left”.861

In the Howard years, he is about as far Left as the mainstream political perspective goes. As Manne himself has observed, with Labor a right-wing party under Mark Latham, “If there is any hope for the emergence of an oppositional politics, at the

857 “Australia’s Top 50 Columnists”, The Reader, June 2003, p.20 858 Wark, op. cit., p.236 859 Phil Cleary, “Chewing on the wrong bone”, http://www.philcleary.com.au/politics_iraq_cultural_relativist.htm (Accessed 9 July 2004) 860 “Australia’s Top 50 Columnists”, op. cit. p.20 861 Ian Syson, “What The Age Wouldn’t Print”, http://workers.labor.net.au/37/d_review_syson.html (Accessed 17 September 2004)

236 time of the Howard ascendancy, it now lies with the Greens.”862 Manne’s example aptly demonstrates this shift because he is, above all else, a conservative thinker. His thought remained relatively stable while the neoconservatives tried to revolutionise society along free market lines. Manne became the defender of tradition and conventional wisdom against what he saw as a new form of ideological radicalism.

For his visibility, and for the high regard in which many hold him, Manne is a clear example of a public intellectual in Australia. He is also perhaps the clearest case of an academic joining public life. Even if we are to accept the view of Russell Jacoby (and in Australia, Robert Dessaix), that academics do not in general perform as public intellectuals these days, we could not deny Robert Manne’s contribution to Australian political culture makes him an exception to the rule.

862 Manne, “How Tampa sailed into 2002”, op. cit.

237 Chapter Nine: The Think Tank Pundit as Public Intellectual

Introduction As ‘intellectual’ institutions, Think Tanks play an important role in the construction and distribution of ideas and knowledge in society. Their power and influence is exercised in a variety of ways, the most important of which will be dealt with in this chapter. Think tanks have gained particular attention in recent times, not only through their continued proliferation in advanced western democracies, but also because their influence is notably increasing. For example, think tanks gained significant attention, and notoriety, from the US-led ‘War on Terrorism’, when it was revealed that the aggressive foreign policy designs of the Bush Government were concocted years earlier in far-right think tanks.863 Generally, however, think tanks’ increasing importance is reflected simply by their greater visibility, and in the visibility of their spokespersons, such as the Sydney Institute’s Gerard Henderson.

Whatever one may think of Gerard Henderson’s strong views and hectoring, provocative style, few could deny that he occupies a prominent position within Australia’s contemporary public intellectual culture. This is not to say that most would agree he is a leading, or indeed worthy, ‘public intellectual’ though. For some, on both the Left and Right, he can, or at least should, be dismissed as a rancorous ideologue and/or corporate propagandist. And while Henderson would obviously disagree, he has himself rejected the ‘public intellectual’ label, stating: “The term ‘public intellectual’ is pretentious…Nor would I call myself one. I am a public commentator and columnist. You can take part in public debate without being a ‘public intellectual.’”864 However, pretentious or not, by the definition of ‘public intellectual’ employed in this thesis, Gerard Henderson is one of the nation’s highest- profile and effective public intellectuals. This chapter sets out to demonstrate this by applying the criteria for the public intellectual to Henderson and the role he has performed from his base in the Sydney Institute.

863 See for instance Uri Avnery, “United States: Architects of Empire”, Green Left Weekly, April 23, 2003 - http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2003/535/535p18.htm, accessed March 26, 2004; and Jochen Boelsche in Margo Kingston, “A think tank war: Why old Europe says no”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 7, 2003 864 Gerard Henderson cited in Angela Bennie, “Missing in action”, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 23, 2003 (Accessed online at www.smh.com.au)

238 Think tanks are of interest to this dissertation for two main reasons. The first relates to their general contribution to public debates, and the ‘public sphere’. The second involves the appearance of ‘think tank’ intellectuals as experts in both news/current affairs features and opinion columns. The columns think tank-based intellectuals produce for Australia’s major newspapers are obviously of greatest concern here.

Another reason think tanks are of interest is that many public intellectuals, at some stage in their careers, become associated with them. This can range from merely participating in a conference organised by a think tank, to writing for one of their publications, to becoming a paid researcher-commentator for one. The three ‘public intellectuals’ discussed in this dissertation, for instance, have all had some association with think tanks. Hence, this chapter’s analysis of think tanks relates not only to think tank commentators like Henderson. It relates to many of Australia’s intellectuals and public intellectuals alike.

Partially through a case study of the Henderson, this chapter will examine the role think tanks play in Australian society, and look particularly at their contribution to public intellectual culture. It will analyse Henderson as an example of the think tank- based public commentator: a rising phenomenon in the western world, and the third and final form of public intellectual to be discussed in this dissertation.

Think Tanks as Intellectual Institutions American theorists Georgina Murray and Douglas Pacheco claim that “there is no accepted definition” of the think tank. There is, after all, a diversity of research organisations or institutions, fulfilling a variety of services, covered by this umbrella term. Yet the ‘think tank’ is somewhat easier to define than some of the other categories discussed in this thesis. A good and simple definition comes from US sociology professor Leon H. Mayhew. According to Mayhew, think tanks are “organizations that undertake large-scale, professional studies of policy alternatives.” They are “policy research institutes” that “advocate and certify policy”.865 Journalist John Lyons advanced a similar definition in a feature article on think tanks for The Sydney Morning Herald in 1991. “A think-tank is a group of people, often former

865 Leon H. Mayhew, 1997, The New Public, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, p.233

239 academics or public servants, who seek funding to focus debate on policy issues which concern them.”866

Thinks tanks are said to have begun in the USA in 1907 with the creation of the Russell Sage Foundation. After growing slowly but steadily for six decades, in the 1970s they proliferated rather dramatically in the USA and elsewhere around the world. In the USA, according to Mayhew, “By 1970, after sixty years of growth, the count stood at thirty-two”, but from 1970, “Fifty-six new think tanks were founded in the next twenty years.”867 As often occurs, the US example was replicated in Australia. According to Ian Marsh (1990), think tanks “have proliferated in Australia since 1970.”868

The causes of think tank proliferation in western countries during the 1970s are a matter of contention. Some, like Mayhew, see the growth as a consequence of the ‘politicisation’ of all areas of public communication in recent decades. This view is reflected in the warning of American scholars John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, authors of Trust Us, We’re Experts (2001), to: “Be especially sceptical of ‘think tanks’, which have proliferated in recent years as a way of generating self-serving scholarship to serve the advocacy goals of industry.”869

Others see the growth of think tanks as a response to the needs of a changing society. Marsh, who himself is affiliated with a university-based think tank, the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University870, suggested in a 1990 research paper that these institutions proliferated in the 1970s in response to “a new external environment and internal political (value) fragmentation.”871 In simpler terms, Marsh is apparently referring to the breakdown of old certainties, of social consensus, in Australia during the 1960s and 1970s. This era of course witnessed

866 John Lyons, “Think-tank commanders”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 9, 1991, p.43 867 Mayhew, op. cit., p.233 868 Ian Marsh, 1990, Globalisation and Australian ‘think tanks’: an evaluation of their role and contribution to governance, Kensington: Australian Graduate School of Management, University of New South Wales, p.1 869 John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton cited in Paul Sheehan, 2003, The Electronic Whorehouse, Sydney: Pan Macmillian Australia, p.238 870 Research School of Social Sciences website, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/columnist.asp?id=640 (Accessed October 4, 2004) 871 Marsh, op. cit., p.1

240 Australia’s ‘cultural revolution’, which conservatives like Robert Manne and B.A. Santamaria have bemoaned for decades, and the collapse of the Keynesian economic consensus. In this environment, Marsh argues, policy decisions became more complicated and a greater need emerged “for reason to fertilise action”.872 Think tanks were a response to this need and, according to Marsh, the continuation of this need “implies the continued proliferation of ‘think tanks’ in Australia.”873

Marsh’s view appears to offer an explanation for the dramatic increase in the number and relevance of economics-oriented think tanks since the 1970s. The uncertainty generated by the economic crises of the 1970s and the widespread abandonment of Keynesianism, would seem fertile ground for think tanks dedicated to the analysis of economic policy. Certainly the think tanks themselves would favour such an explanation. They emerged because more enlightened consideration of economic questions became necessary.

The portrait Marsh painted of think tanks in 1990 is favourable, some would say romantic one. In Marsh’s picture think tanks are almost singularly marked by their bone fide expertise. They operate as independent advisers to the government ministers, public officials and private executives responsible for making the nation’s key decisions. They offer honest, impartial assessments and advice.

Many have raised serious questions about the integrity of think tanks, however. They maintain that the institutions’ reliance on state and corporate funding compromises their independence and may even mark them as propagandists. They become just another part, albeit a highly influential and authoritative one, of the public relations industry. But let us return to this point later.

In his analysis, Marsh identified three different categories of think tanks in Australia: 1) university based centres, 2) public sector and 3) private sector research institutes.874 It is the last of these that has received the most curiosity, publicity and indeed suspicion. It is also that which produces the most public affairs commentators

872 Ibid., p.2 873 Ibid. 874 Ibid., pp.7-8

241 – commentators like Gerard Henderson. Accordingly, this form of think tank will be the primary focus of this chapter.

The Think Tank Pundit as Public Intellectual: Gerard Henderson For the past two decades, Gerard Henderson has regularly been at the forefront of public debates on the nation’s major social and political issues. Many regard him accordingly to be “one of Australia’s leading political and social commentators”.875 Because of his prominence as a national commentator, senior Australian Financial Review journalist Andrew Clark said in 2001 that Henderson exerted an “indirect but nevertheless powerful” influence over policy formation in Australia.876 For most of the past two decades, Henderson has operated from his position as executive director of the privately-funded think tank, the Sydney Institute. In previous careers he has worked, in reverse chronological order, as a political advisor, a public servant, an academic and, intriguingly, as an assistant to one of Australia’s most controversial Twentieth Century public personalities, B.A. Santamaria.

Henderson has regularly appeared in the mainstream press as a political and social critic for years. He writes regularly for both Australia’s major press corporations, Fairfax and News Limited. According to the Sydney Institute’s website, he writes weekly for The Sydney Morning Herald (his column is syndicated to The Age in Melbourne), and fortnightly in Brisbane’s The Courier-Mail and The Sunday Tasmanian.877 His columns are also syndicated in The West Australian. In the late 1980s he wrote a column for The Australian, before in January 1990 he began his Sydney Morning Herald spot.878 He appears regularly on radio and television, including a weekly spot on the ABC Radio National Breakfast program and regular appearances on ABC TV’s Insiders on Sunday mornings.879 Curiously he is one of the ABC’s harshest critics, frequently complaining about left-wing bias.

875 Direct quote from both The Sydney Institute website, http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/gh.htm, and ABC Radio’s website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/brkfast/henderson.htm 876 Andrew Clark cited in Julie Macken, “The 10 most covertly powerful Australians”, Australian Financial Review, September 28, 2001, p.18 877 The Sydney Institute website, http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/gh.htm (Accessed March 26, 2004) 878 Gerard Henderson, “Documentation”, Media Watch, Sydney Institute, No.38, No.4 1996, p.17 879 http://www.csc2003.org/spk-gh.htm (Accessed September 21, 2004)

242 Henderson has written several books on Australian politics and society, most focusing on the conservative side. He has commented that this focus is an attempt to redress the imbalance of historical studies of Australian politics; most being interested in Labor and the labour movement. Paul Kelly’s major books are a case in point. Henderson’s books include Menzies Child: The Liberal Party of Australia 1944-94 (1994), A Howard Government?: Inside The Coalition (1995), Mr Santamaria and the Bishops (1982), Australian Answers (1990) and Scribbles On... (1993). He also contributed to Ross Fitzgerald’s two books, The Eleven Deadly Sins (1993) and The Eleven Saving Virtues (1995).880

As stated earlier, describing Gerard Henderson as a leading Australian public intellectual was somewhat controversial. Though he is one of the nation’s prominent social critics, he is also dismissed by some as a mere propagandist for his corporate sponsors. Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan, for instance, has called him a “corporate cheerleader”.881 Expatriate journalist John Pilger has described him as an “ideological messenger”.882

The following analysis will examine whether think tank-based researcher- commentators are genuine public intellectuals through an examination of the role performed by Henderson and his Sydney Institute. It will also look beyond this at other leading Australian privately-funded think tanks. It will consider their role against the four criteria for the public intellectual established in Chapter Three: (1) independence, (2) expertise, (3) a concern with ‘the public good’, and (4) public performance. As the subsequent analysis will demonstrate, clearly the most controversial of the four criteria is the first, independence. But let us examine the other three before returning to this most important of considerations.

1. Expertise For some, the question of think tank researchers and commentators’ expertise is rather uncontroversial. Paul Kelly, for instance, believes more think tanks would improve the intellectual condition of the nation. After suggesting that Australia,

880 The Sydney Institute website, op. cit. 881 Sheehan, op. cit., p.229 882 John Pilger, 1989, A Secret Country, p.228

243 compared to other developed nations, has few real intellectuals, Kelly predicted this might change as think tanks multiplied.883

Theorists like Kelly see think tanks as expert institutions by their very nature and claim the primary service they provide is expert analysis and enlightened opinion. This is reflected in Mayhew’s aforementioned definition of think tanks as “organizations that undertake large-scale, professional studies of policy alternatives”, and which are contracted to “advocate and certify policy”.884 Naturally this is how the think tanks present themselves. The Indonesian think tank, Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, is a good example. On its website it says it describes itself as “an independent non-profit organization focusing on policy- oriented studies and dialogue on domestic and international issues”, and aspires to “contribute to improved policy making through policy-oriented research, dialogue, and public debate.”885

Undertaking studies on policy alternatives is one of two main ways think tanks exercise political and social influence. This is the more behind-the-scenes influence think tanks enjoy. (The other is the more public role they perform as social and political critics in the mass media.) As policy advisors, contracted by politicians and business executives, think tanks can play a more direct role in the shaping of public policy. This is a prime example of the more invisible power exercised by intellectuals in society. It shows that a thinker need not gain a wide audience to become important. All one needs is an audience with the right people, the people who make the decisions which shape the lives of the greater mass of people. This function is, in some sense, reflected in the Centre for Independent Studies’ mission statement, which says the institution tries to promote free market ideas “by targeting directly the opinion-makers and policy-formers of tomorrow.”886 Paul Kelly affirmed the influence of Australia’s growing think tanks in The End of Certainty. He says during the 1980s, “the Australian think-tanks became influential among opinion

883 Paul Kelly, seminar/forum discussion, Challenges of Journalism in the 21st Century (conference), University of Queensland, 22 April 2004 884 Mayhew, op. cit., p.233 885 The Centre for Strategic and International Studies website, http://www.csis.or.id (accessed March 26, 2004) 886 Centre for Independent Studies website, http://www.cis.org.au (accessed March 26, 2004)

244 makers in the media, academia and politics.”887 According to Philip Mendes, “Think tanks have arguably been able to not only shape the policies of individual governments, but have also succeeded in moving the whole policy debate to the Right.”888

As Gerard Henderson has noted, a common conservative myth in Australia holds that the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) was influential in shaping the policies of the Liberal Party when Menzies created the party in 1944. He says many conservatives believe C. D. Kemp, IPA founder, was also the “founding thinker” of the Liberal Party, providing the economic and philosophical ideas that guided it during Menzies’ reign.889 One such conservative, Brendan Darcy argued in 1996 that the IPA played a decisive role in the Menzies Governments’ acceptance of Keynesian economics through its “power of persuasion through the media, among the business community, future members of Parliament and, above all, the party braches to which [they] were invited.”890 Henderson rejects this view however. He acknowledges that Kemp and the IPA “played an important role in the economic debate that was taking place in the early 1940s”, but believes their “impact has been grossly exaggerated” because they had “virtually no influence on the Menzies Government.”891 He maintains that because Menzies’ was adept at “master[ing] policy issues”, he “did not need C. D. Kemp for policy advice and implementation.”892 Overall Henderson believes both the ideological friends and enemies of the IPA tend to “embellish the organisation’s influence.”893 One should note, of course, that the IPA is one of the Sydney Institute’s rivals, and that he has bickered with the IPA since the late 1980s.894

A good contemporary example of how think tanks serve an advisory role for policy makers is the Foreign Affairs Council, established by the Howard Liberal government in the late 1990s. Henderson is on this council. So is Paul Kelly. In its

887 Paul Kelly, 1992, The End of Certainty, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.46 888 Philip Mendes, “Closed Minds”, http://workers.labor.net.au/features/200310/c_historicalfeature_think.html (Accessed May 20, 2004) 889 Gerard Henderson, 1994, Menzies’ Child, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp.82-3 890 Brendan Darcy, “Menzies Child by Gerard Henderson”, Australia and World Affairs, Summer 1996, Issue 27, p.60 891 Henderson, Menzies’ Child, op. cit., pp.87, 88 892 Ibid., pp.83-4 893 Ibid., pp.88-9 894 John Lyons, “Eternal outsider prefers tolerance now”, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 7, 1989, p.11

245 mission statement, the Council describes itself as enabling “the Government, in developing foreign policy, to draw on the expertise and views of a range of individuals working in business, academic and the media. Its work supplements that of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and other agencies.”895 Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, described the Council’s function thus:

The Council will help bring the collective wisdom of our academic community and other prominent experts to bear on some of the most pressing and complex issues relevant to Australia’s foreign and trade policy and the future of our region.896

To briefly return to a point made earlier in Chapter Three, namely the Howard Government’s politicisation of the public service, this institution is comprised mainly of political conservatives. Along with Henderson and Kelly, members include former Howard speechwriter Christopher Pearson, executives from large Australian corporations, and representatives from conservative think tanks.897 Political composition aside, the Foreign Affairs Council offers us a good example of government’s increasing respect for, and indeed reliance on, think tanks.

The argument in favour of the ‘expertise’ of those working for or with think tanks is, then, solid. They are typically highly educated and professional and, most of all, they are widely regarded as bone fide experts. This is reflected in the self-promotion of the American think tank, the Manhattan Institute, which boasts that it has “cultivated a staff of senior fellows and writers who blend intellectual rigor, sound principles, and strong writing ability.”898

There is some element of controversy on this matter, however. It relates to the question of whether think tanks are truly independent bodies or whether they are tied to the organisations, typically corporations, which fund them. If they are merely paid propagandists, as some critics allege, they need not be bone fide experts. They need only be good at delivering the kind of message their sponsors want heard. However,

895 Foreign Affairs Council, www.dfat.gov.au/fac/ (Accessed March 26, 2004) 896 Alexander Downer in “ANU dominates new Foreign Affairs council”, ANU Reporter, http://info.anu.edu.au/mac/Newsletters_and_Journals/ANU_Reporter/_pdf/vol_29_no_02/foreign.htm l 897 Foreign Affairs Council, op. cit. 898 Manhattan Institute website, http://www.manhattan-institute.org (accessed March 26, 2004)

246 even if we were to accept this accusation, we must still concede that ‘think tank pundits’ are paid to articulate the appropriate arguments because, quite simply, they argue them effectively. And this ability derives from their above-average understanding of issues and their excellent ability at getting their point across. We should, then, at least tentatively, accept think tanks’ claim to ‘expertise’.

2. Social Critique As mentioned, think tanks exercise their influence in two primary ways. One of these, by acting as policy advisors, has already been discussed. The other is by articulating political and social critiques in the mass media. The latter of course relates to the next criterion to be discussed: Public Performance. Accordingly, an evaluation of the degree to which think tanks engage in matters of public concern, and address the ‘public good’, need not be lengthy.

In any event, think tanks easily satisfy this criterion. For some think tanks, taking a direct interest in public affairs is precisely the role they carve out for themselves. This point shall be discussed below. It is the conservative, privately-funded think tanks which perform this role most actively. They are more heavily involved in lobbying and activism than other think tanks, many of which are content to perform more advisory or research-oriented roles. But even these less conspicuous institutions often embark upon assessments of the public good. The very act of providing policy reviews and prescriptions for government representatives implies a strong engagement with public affairs. It is, however, the activist variety that this dissertation is most concerned with. Through their activism and the high public profile some of their commentators attain, these think tanks perform most visibly, and consciously, a kind of public intellectual role in society. There is little dispute that this kind of think tank, in particular, engages in matters of public concern and delivers regular social critique. This will be further reflected next chapter when we consider Gerard Henderson’s role as a social and political commentator.

3. Public Performance For many think tank-based commentators, conversing in the mass media is a major part of their institutional role. Such commentators, like Henderson, with public profiles and regular media commentary spots, easily fulfil the ‘public performance’

247 feature of the public intellectual’s role. Others have low public profiles and rarely reach a considerable audience. This does not necessarily mean that they are therefore uninfluential though, since, as established earlier, it is possible for someone to exercise greater influence by reaching a small audience of powerful individuals than a large audience of ‘ordinary people’. It is, however, only the commentator with a high media profile who can rightly be considered a public intellectual.

Establishing a media profile is something think tanks often deliberately pursue. It is, after all, one of the best ways for them to achieve, and be seen to achieve, influence. It is also, one might add, a way for think tanks to show prospective sponsors that their work is making an impact. Leon Mayhew has argued that the pursuit of media coverage and publicity is a fairly recent development, and that formerly they typically performed a more private, advisory role for public officials and business leaders. With the rise of newer, typically right-wing think tanks in the 1970s, the role changed considerably. They sought to exercise influence through actively lobbying policy makers rather than responding to a direct request for advice. As Mayhew puts it:

Rather than bringing expertise directly but discretely to decision makers, the new think tank affects the climate of opinion surrounding decision makers by shaping the views of strategic public groups, especially the elite ‘policy communities’ of organizations that define public issues.899

Part of this lobbying role is the attempt to set the agenda for public affairs debate and force ideas into the public sphere. Ian Marsh has claimed that to some considerable degree think tanks have been effective in defining the political agenda, and that “political parties have been displaced by issue movements in setting the strategic agenda.”900

According to Mayhew, ever since Heritage Foundation was established in the USA in 1973, many think tanks have adopted from this institution “a public relations model that measures successful performance not in weighty books but in the placement of editorials, op-ed pieces, and magazine articles, in distributing brief and

899 Mayhew, op. cit., p.235 900 Marsh, op. cit., p.7

248 timely bulletins to a well-placed audience, and in media appearances.”901 The mission statements of the think tanks themselves contain declarations to this effect. The Manhattan Institute in the USA, for instance, tries to “make every effort to ensure that [its] authors are published...and that their books receive as much review attention and publicity as possible.”902 In Australia, the Institute of Public Affairs says it aims “to promote an understanding and appreciation of the free society and free enterprise”, through a variety of means. These include publishing their own reports, magazines and books, sponsoring others’ research, organising “conferences, lecture series, expert discussions, boardroom lunches”, and by “participat[ing] widely in the media – either by way of contributed columns to the newspapers or in radio and television interviews.”903 The Centre for Independent Studies says it is “actively engaged in support of a free enterprise economy and a free society”, by “critical recommendations to public policy and encouraging debate amongst leading academics, politicians and journalists.”904 The H.R. Nicholls Society says its “ambition is to bring about, through the processes of debate and argument, urgently needed reform in Australia’s industrial relations attitudes, law and institutions.” It aims to “promote discussion about the operation of industrial relations in Australia.”905 The Australian Strategic Policy Institute lists as one of its principal objectives “informing the public”; “help[ing] Australians understand the critical strategic choices which our country will face over the coming years.”906 And though the Sydney Institute contains no pronouncement of an activist role, Gerard Henderson’s activities show that it serves very much the same kind of purpose. As Henderson’s nemesis, John Pilger, has remarked: “his views are heard widely, often as a result of a phone call to a radio or television station from Henderson himself, demanding ‘equal time’.”907

As the mission statement of the IPA shows, some of the campaigns and debates conducted by think tanks receive little public exposure. Like academics, it is in

901 Mayhew, op. cit., p.234 902 Manhattan Institute website, op. cit. 903 Institute of Public Affairs, “About the IPA”, http://www.ipa.org.au (accessed 26 March and 23 June 2004) 904 The Centre for Independent Studies website, http://www.cis.org.au (Accessed March 26, 2004) 905 The H.R. Nicholls Society website, http://www.hrnicholls.com.au (accessed March 26, 2004) 906 Australian Strategic Policy Institute website, http://www.aspi.org.au/about.cfm (accessed October 4, 2004) 907 John Pilger, op. cit., p.227

249 conferences, lectures, small circulation publications, and the pages of journals where think tank commentators conduct the majority of their discussion. Less frequently, persons affiliated with think tanks will write a column for the press or provide an interview for news and current affairs on the electronic media.

As mentioned in Chapters Three and Seven, these commentators, typically of the Right, have been markedly more successful in infiltrating the mass media than have academics. Stuart McIntyre noted this phenomenon in History Wars (2003). He attributes the Right’s successful campaign against left-leaning interpretations of Australian history to the think tank commentators’ greater effectiveness in attaining media coverage.908

There are still few, however, that occupy a place of genuine prominence in Australian public life. Many think tank commentators are called upon for an interview in the electronic media or manage to get an article published in the mainstream papers, but few do so with much regularity. Gerard Henderson is one of the few to have succeeded in this. Unlike most others, there is permanence to his prominence in public life. In this sense he is to think tanks what Robert Manne is to academia. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Hugh White, columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, is another instance of the ‘think tank pundit’ performing regularly in public life.

4. Independence As mentioned earlier, the greatest controversy surrounding the operation of think tanks relates to the degree of intellectual freedom they enjoy. For some, including Ian Marsh, Paul Kelly and the institutions themselves, think tanks operate as independent, expert entities which fulfil society’s need for enlightened, rational advice on public affairs. For others, think tanks are often mere ‘advocacy tanks’, performing a function as highly-skilled, well-resourced lobby organisations for their (usually corporate) financiers.

908 Stuart McIntyre and Anna Clark, 2003, The History Wars, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, p.12

250 According to Marsh’s model, think tanks and their theorists fit the criteria for ‘intellectuality’ well. They are independent bodies, removed from the pressures of governance, and employed to provide honest, independent analysis and opinion on social matters. Marsh, for instance, argued in 1990 that think tank intellectuals are generally “free of the priorities, pressures and restraints that arise in institutions charged with the management of current issues.”909 “[The] relatively loose organisational form [of think tanks] reflects the best work environment for individuals whose natural talents and technical skills fit them for the complex analyses of fact and value, and the special energy and leaps of imagination, that are required.”910

Another believer in think tanks’ independence is, predictably, the think tanks themselves. Many market themselves on their independence. For the Centre for Independent Studies this goes without saying. The Institute of Public Affairs claims that “the IPA’s independence is one of its most valuable assets.”911 There are many people, however, who regard think tanks with suspicion. Most of the concern relates to the corporate sponsorship of think tanks, and particularly the institution’s reluctance to disclose who their sponsors are.

One excellent articulation of the critical view appears in Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s analysis of the US media, Manufacturing Consent (1988). Like Marsh’s analysis in 1990, Chomsky and Herman acknowledge that think tanks did in fact emerge in response to a declining social consensus, but they maintain that the rationale behind them was not as honourable as their supporters like to claim. Rather than independent organisations dedicated to expert analysis, they argue that think tanks are often established as lobby organisations, particularly for government organisations and private corporations. As new ideas and movements, particularly of the Left, arose in the 1960s and 1970s, big business and government found their operations increasingly questioned and opposed. Sponsoring think tanks which would espouse views favourable to their narrow interests became one way for corporations and the state to fight the forces of social change, to ‘correct’ public

909 Marsh, op. cit., p.3 910 Ibid. 911 Institute of Public Affairs website, op. cit.

251 perceptions.912 Gerard Henderson has conceded as much, but puts a positive spin on it. He believes corporate sponsorship of think tanks “reflected a natural defence mechanism” by industries and corporations “which in the late 1970s and early 1980s was regarded by some as the embodiment of all evil.”913

In The New Public, Mayhew provides an explanation that, in a way, synthesises Marsh’s early idealism with the pessimism of Chomsky and Herman. According to Mayhew, think tanks began as institutions operating in much the way Marsh describes, but during the 1970s, the period Marsh recognises as witnessing the proliferation of think tanks, many institutions emerged to serve the ‘propaganda’ function described by Chomsky and Herman. According to Mayhew:

Thinks tanks...originated in the early years of the twentieth century in a spirit of progressive, reformist rationalism. The original animus of the movement was in a sense anti-political: rational policy should be based on factual research and objective analysis rather than political manoeuvring for power and payoffs. The movement began in 1907 with the establishment of the Russell Sage Foundation and immediately began to grow...By 1970, after sixty years of growth, the count stood at thirty-two. Then...the pace accelerated during the 1970s. Fifty-six new think tanks were founded in the next twenty years (Ricci 1993, 162). The story of this rapid expansion can only be read as an account of the politicization, within the framework of the new politics of public relations, of what had once been conceived as institutes for objective policy studies carried out above the fray.914

‘Think tanks’ became so popular, he suggests, because politicians and business leaders saw potential in exploiting “their success as trusted, and therefore influential, purveyors of policy studies.”915

From time to time this suspicion receives an outlet in the mainstream Australian media. This was the case, for instance, in 1999 during the ‘Cash-for-Comment’ scandal, where it was revealed prominent Australian radio broadcasters John Laws and Alan Jones had received money from the banking industry for favourable commentary. During this scandal, Robert Manne called corporate sponsorship of

912 Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, 1994, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, London: Vintage, pp.21-4, 26-8 913 Gerard Henderson, 1990, Australian Answers, Random House Australia, p.242 914 Mayhew, op. cit., p.233 915 Ibid.

252 think tanks into question, arguing that “An obligation for public disclosure of corporate sponsorship ought to be extended to all media outlets and all public affairs institutes whose purpose is to shape the way we think.”916 As John Docker observed, Manne alleged that “right-wing moralists like Gerard Henderson and Ron Brunton were not totally dissimilar to John Laws: they worked for dubious institutes without ever revealing or declaring the business interests – Australia’s venal banks perhaps? – who supported these institutes.”917 Even Marsh has expressed concerns about the right wing think tanks in more recent analyses, saying the “market-liberal think tanks - the CIS and the IPA - are less engaged in enlightenment than in persuasion and popularising a market liberal policy agenda.”918

The think tanks offer a variety of defences against such allegations. One of the more common arguments is that they protect themselves against conflicts of interest by receiving support from a range of donors. The IPA’s website, for instance, says the institution “maintains its integrity” by ensuring that their funding base is “wide and diverse” and by having its own Research Committee and external referees, not sponsors or contributors, make the final decisions before publication.919 Similarly, the Sydney Institute’s chairperson, Meredith Hellicar, paraphrased by Brad Norington, maintains that “the [Sydney Institute] generally receives small sums from large numbers of corporate and individual donors, which mean it is immune from cutbacks when three or four withdraw each year.”920

Like news organisations, then, think tanks can generally risk displeasing one sponsor since another is likely to fill the funding vacancy should the offended party withdraw support. One case in which a corporation has cut its funding for a think tank was mining company Rio Tinto’s withdrawal of sponsorship to the IPA. According to Norington, “the right-wing Institute of Public Affairs...lost Rio Tinto because the mining company wanted to maintain good relations with Aboriginal communities.”921 (The IPA has been a vocal opponent of various Aboriginal social

916 Robert Manne cited in Sheehan, op. cit., p.229 917 John Docker, “John Docker launches The Devil and James McAuley”, Australian Humanities Review, www.llib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-Juley-1999/docker.htm (February 19, 2004) 918 Brad Norington, “Think Tank secrets”, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 12, 2003 919 Institute of Public Affairs website, op. cit. 920 Norington, op. cit. 921 Ibid.

253 justice campaigns, such as the stolen generations and land rights.) Because the IPA has other potential donors, such as competing mining companies (those more concerned about land rights claims in mining regions), Rio Tinto’s move is not however, likely to create long term problems for the IPA.

There is a limitation to this argument, however. What if all mining companies suddenly decided they wanted to maintain good relations with indigenous communities? Would think tanks and their pundits forge ahead with their campaigns against the Aboriginal movement? Given that the mining industry is a leading supporter of think tanks, and especially considering the key role played by the Western Mining Corporation in facilitating and supporting them922, this is unlikely. If they did, the financial repercussions would be dire.

Another of the think tanks’ defences is the claim that whatever the synchronicity between their views and their supporters’ interests, their work is not shaped by their sponsors. This is perhaps the most important question to consider for this dissertation. It provides the best indication of whether think tank pundits are bone fide intellectuals, expressing their own opinions, or merely paid-propagandists.

Gerard Henderson’s example is illustrative in this instance. As Manne’s aforementioned critique reflected, Henderson’s integrity is occasionally questioned. This is particularly the case whenever his views are revealed to have coincided with the interests of one of the Sydney Institute’s known sponsors. Paul Sheehan investigated this question in considerable detail in his book, The Electronic Whorehouse (2003). After noting that the Sydney Institute is known to have been sponsored by development firms like Boral and Westfield, Sheehan draws a line between this funding and Henderson’s consistent advocacy of a higher immigration intake. As he comments, one of the greatest beneficiaries of a higher population is the building industry. “Boral supplies the building industry; higher immigration levels means more building; more growth means more business for Boral. It is a

922 For information on WMC’s support for Think Tanks, see Wendy Wedge, “Anti-democratic conservative commentators”, http://www.crikey.com.au/columnists/2002/01/21- endyrayevans.print.html (Accessed 27 May 2004)

254 happy coincidence of beliefs shared by Gerard Henderson.”923 Sheehan then cites Henderson warning in 1996 that cutting immigration will “further decrease housing and retail demand”.924 Sheehan even goes so far as to call Henderson “something of a development fundamentalist.”925

Brad Norington has also noted an apparent conflict of interest involving Henderson’s Sydney Institute and cigarette companies.

Henderson has attracted publicity over a $10,000 ‘charitable donation’ given to the institute by Philip Morris in 1993. Before then he wrote in support of tobacco industry positions, describing smokers as a ‘disadvantaged minority’ and criticising ‘social regulators’. He has written little on tobacco since.926

Concerns over the potential for conflict of interest are exacerbated by Henderson’s refusal to disclose where his funding comes from. In his investigation into privately- funded think tanks for the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003, Norington noted that this is common of right-wing think tanks. As well as Henderson’s Sydney Institute, this was true of Greg Lindsay’s Centre for Independent Studies. Norington quotes Lindsay saying he withholds the names many of his large corporate supporters because “many donate on condition of anonymity”.927

The mystery surrounding the Sydney Institute’s funding has predictably led to some interesting claims. For instance, Federal Labor leader Mark Latham has suggested that the Sydney Institute was backed by US intelligence agencies.928 Even more provocative, the ultra-Right Australian League of Rights has claimed Henderson’s consistent support of Israel betrays Zionist-Jewish sponsorship, and therefore that he is part of a Zionist conspiracy.929

However, all the known sponsors of Henderson’s Sydney Institute are corporations. The Institute’s website says: “The Sydney Institute receives support from the

923 Sheehan, op. cit., p.236 924 Henderson cited in Sheehan, op. cit., p.236 925 Sheehan, op. cit., p.237 926 Noriginton, op. cit. 927 Ibid. 928 Ibid. 929 Eric D. Butler, “Gerard Henderson versus B. A. Santamaria”, Australian League of Rights website, www.alor.org/Volume33/Vol33No30.htm (Accessed July 26, 2004)

255 Australian business community.”930 According to Sheehan, “The institute’s revenue is derived from membership subscriptions and corporate sponsorships...from companies, law firms and private individuals.”931 Norington outlined that sponsors have included “Shell, Boral, AMP, Australia Post, Macquarie Bank, Corrs Chambers Westgarth and BT”.932 Sheehan also lists Philip Morris International, the Westfield Group and Smorgan Meat Group.933

Against accusations like those from Sheehan and Manne, Henderson has repeatedly protested that his financial supporters do not influence his work. In the December 1999 edition of The Sydney Institute Quarterly, for instance, he stated: “I have not accepted any money from any individual, business or association to change my views on any issue.”934 He has also been quoted saying: “There is no evidence of any link between what I write and the corporate supporters of the Sydney Institute.”935 Despite the insinuations of his ‘expose’ on Henderson, Sheehan, curiously, accepts this claim, conceding “there is no evidence” showing Henderson “has ever taken corporate funding to change or modify his views.”936

As stated, it is this consideration which is most important for this study. If some think tanks are mere lobbyists for the wealthy and powerful, serious questions arise over their intellectual independence and therefore their status as truly ‘intellectual’ organisations. It would establish think tank commentators as propagandists, albeit highly educated, and not bone fide ‘intellectuals’.

Though many would disagree, for the purposes of this dissertation let us assume that think tanks commentators are sufficiently autonomous to be considered genuine intellectuals. The reasoning behind this presumption is similar to that provided in affirmation of Paul Kelly’s autonomy in Chapter Five. Like Kelly, right-wing think tank commentators express views beneficial or akin to the interests of their sponsors. However, as in Kelly’s case, it is most likely that think tank pundits, unlike public

930 The Sydney Institute website, op. cit. 931 Sheehan, op. cit., p.229 932 Norington, op. cit. 933 Henderson cited in Sheehan, op. cit., pp.235-6 934 Ibid., p.235 935 Norington, op. cit. 936 Sheehan, op. cit., p.235

256 relations officers or ‘spin doctors’, are paid to offer their own views. This is a luxury such commentators enjoy – to be paid to speak one’s mind.

This is not to reject the critical perspective of Chomsky and Herman and Mayhew. On the contrary, it is quite clear that think tanks operate in the interests of their corporate sponsors. But instead of assuming people affiliated with them are therefore cynical opportunists and propagandists, prepared to change tact at the behest of a sponsor, I have accepted that such theorists are employed because their ideological orientation already fits the mould. They are not spin doctors; they are ‘intellectuals’ employed to propagate their own views – their reliable, desirable views. Think tank commentators like Gerard Henderson, therefore, are generally considered genuine free market ideologues. They advance their corporate sponsors’ interests by co- incidence rather than conspiracy. As Norington has observed, “big business is attracted to right-wing think tanks when their philosophies coincide.”

Like their British and American counterparts, the Australian right-wing groups are devotees of a 20th-century Austrian economist, Friedrich von Hayek, who theorised on the benefits of free markets and small government. Even if there are no obvious strings attached to funding, right-wing think tanks are spreading a message corporate Australia wants heard.937

Though this reasoning would uphold the integrity of the think tanks, it does not exonerate their corporate sponsors. There is little doubt that corporations support think tanks with a view to advancing their own interests. Why else would they fund them? Such a comment is neither unfair nor conspiratorial. Entrepreneurs or capitalists, depending on your view, are often quite open about the need to serve their own interests first. Their economic ideology, whether labelled ‘economic rationalism’ or neoliberalism, maintains, quite conveniently, that self-interest, via Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, advances the interests of not just the individual, but of the greater community. According to neoliberal ideology, the best thing a capitalist can do for the world is look after him or herself.

937 Norington, op. cit.

257 Conclusion Though the relation of think tanks to each of the four ‘public intellectual’ criteria is in some respects complicated, these institutions generally conform relatively easily to the definition of ‘intellectual’ adopted in this dissertation. They are generally authoritative, many engage with public affairs and public policy, they are at least relatively independent, and in some organisations, typically right-wing think tanks, their researchers are well heard through the media. We could probably conclude that most people affiliated with think tanks are ‘intellectuals’, but a considerably smaller number could properly be considered public intellectuals. One such individual is the Sydney Institute’s Gerard Henderson, who enjoys a high media profile, and who is the subject of the following chapter.

258 Chapter Ten: The Social and Political Thought of Gerard Henderson

Introduction Last chapter examined the role of think tanks as intellectual institutions, and their researchers as public intellectuals. Questions it explored included the independence of think tanks from their sponsors, the expertise of their researcher-commentators, the nature of the commentary they produce, and their influence. This chapter will explore these themes more deeply through an analysis of perhaps Australia’s most prominent think tank pundit, the Sydney Institute’s Gerard Henderson. The analysis will consist primarily of an intellectual biography of Henderson, discussing several contributions he has made to Australian public intellectual life throughout his varied career.

Most people probably know Henderson from his long-running weekly newspaper column and frequent interviews in the electronic media. For the past fifteen-to- twenty years, he has performed this role from his base within the privately-funded think tank, the Sydney Institute. There is, however, a more intriguing background to this controversial public figure. In addition to his career with the Sydney Institute, it is common knowledge that Henderson was once senior advisor to current Prime Minister John Howard when Howard was Liberal Party Opposition leader in the mid- 1980s. Less common knowledge is that he had been an academic for some years prior to this, and that, as a university student during the Vietnam War, he campaigned with the anticommunist Right against the rise of left-wing politics on campus. For some time he was in fact associated with Catholic lay intellectual B.A. Santamaria and his secretive and notorious organisation, “The Movement”.

By looking at Henderson’s career and his contribution to Australian public intellectual life we can gain some insight into key political and social trends in Australia over the past three decades, including the Cold War, the emergence of the New Right in the 1980s, the right-wing backlash against academic history, and the Iraq War. Henderson’s personal journey will also show us the other side of the post- Cold War conservative split discussed in Chapter Eight’s analysis of Robert Manne.

259 To aid the following analysis of Henderson’s social and political thought, I have segmented his career into three main stages, representing his Anticommunist, New Right and History Warrior phases. The first covers Henderson’s university days, the second his days with the Liberals (from 1976 to 1986), and the third with the Sydney Institute (circa 1987). I have included an additional segment to discuss his pro- American views on foreign policy, specifically in relation to the Iraq War. The chapter concludes with a discussion of his controversial style.

Phase 1: Anticommunism (1960s-70s)

Growing Up Catholic Gerard Henderson’s background has been described as a “classic Irish Catholic” one.938 He was born of Irish-Catholic parents in Balwyn, Melbourne, in 1945, and educated by Jesuits at Xavier College.939 From his own reflections on his upbringing, Catholicism seems to have been a powerful influence on him early in life. He recalls, for instance, and with a trace of bitterness, being lectured continually on humanity’s fall from grace (or “The Fall”) both at school and by his mother at home. He says his mother, a “pessimistic Jansenist”, would constantly tell him “we are all born imperfect”, and, indeed, that “we are all maggots in the sight of the Almighty.”940 This notion has evidently made a lasting impact. It often appears in Gerard’s political and social commentaries.

Henderson is in fact something of an expert on Australian Catholicism. At La Trobe University in the 1970s, he wrote his PhD thesis on Catholic Action in Australia between 1938 and 1960. It was published in 1982 under the title, Mr Santamaria and the Bishops. Given this and his strong Catholic heritage, it is understandable that he is one of the few political commentators in Australia to examine religious matters fairly regularly. Recently he has discussed, for instance, historical anti-Semitism in

938 Simon Kent, “Gerard’s knives cut deep wounds”, Sun Herald, August 11, 1990, p.33 939 Gerard Henderson, “Affection” in Ross Fitzgerald (ed.), 1995, The Eleven Saving Virtues, Port Melbourne: Minerva, p.68; Gerard Henderson, “Anger” in Ross Fitzgerald (ed.), 1993, The Eleven Deadly Sins, Port Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, pp.58-9 940 Henderson, “Affection”, op. cit., pp.67-8. Henderson discussed The Fall in relation to his own upbringing again in 2001. Gerard Henderson, “The sins of our fathers”, Sydney Morning Herald, January 20, 2001, p. Spectrum 2

260 the Catholic Church, one of Catholicism’s oldest foes, the Freemasons, and the Christian churches’ opposition to the Iraq War.941

Henderson is not, however, a deeply religious thinker. He said in 1989: “I’ve come from an Irish Catholic background and it would be silly to say I haven’t been influenced by Catholicism but I’m not a regular church-goer.”942 In 1995 he described himself as a “non-attender”.943 According to a profile on Henderson for The Sydney Morning Herald in 1989, he sent his two daughters to an Anglican school.944 In 2003 he argued against religious leaders, Anglican or Catholic, becoming Governors-General.945 And he has been strongly critical of the Church in some of his columns over the years. Most recently he has attacked the Vatican, on several occasions, for speaking out against the Iraq War. These attacks are part of his broader and more long-running criticism of the Church for its embrace of left-wing causes over the years. He made this criticism as early as in his PhD thesis.946

Distant as he is from the Church these days, he still often defines himself by his Catholicism. He has been quoted as describing himself as a “cultural Catholic”.947 Elsewhere, he has declared: “I come from the Catholic/Irish tradition in Australia - not from the Protestant/British tradition.”948 His continuing identification with Catholicism is reflected in some of the positions he has adopted over the years. He has often not only discussed a variety of matters Catholic, but has occasionally underscored the contribution of Catholics to Australian life. In 1992, for instance, he spoke out against the removal of Caroline Chisholm, migrant advocate and Catholic,

941 Gerard Henderson, “A son’s dangerous passion, in the name of the father”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 2, 2004; “The secret we should all be let in on”, The Age, September 3, 2002; “How churches played into Iraq’s hands”, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 15, 2004 942 Gerard Henderson cited in John Lyons, “Eternal outsider prefers tolerance now”, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 7, 1989, p.11 943 Henderson, “Affection”, op. cit., p.66 944 Lyons, “Eternal outsider prefers tolerance now”, op. cit., p.11 945 Gerard Henderson, “Not up to the job - and it showed“, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 26, 2003 946 Gerard Henderson, 1983, Mr Santamaria and the Bishops, Hale and Iremonger, p.175; Henderson, “How churches played into Iraq’s hands” op. cit. 947 Kent, op. cit.; Edmund Campion, 1988, Australian Catholics, Ringwood: Penguin, p.247 948 Gerard Henderson, “Name Calling”, Lateline Guestbook, 23 September 2003, http://www2b.abc.net.au/guestbookcentral/list.asp?guestbookID=124 (Accessed 26 June 2004)

261 from the (then) new five dollar note.949 In his history of the Liberal Party, Menzies’ Child (1995), he emphasised the place of Irish-Catholicism alongside British-based Protestantism in Australian history, saying “before the post-World War II migration inflows, there were two significant cultures in Australia – not one.”950 In this book he also criticised the traditional Protestant discrimination against Catholics in Australia, especially within the nation’s conservative political parties.

Catholicism and Politics: The Movement Given his self-described conservatism and regular identification as a right-winger, perhaps even far right-winger951, it may come as some surprise that he actually grew up in a Labor household – at least initially. Until the Labor Split of the mid-1950s, Gerard’s father was “a rank-and-file Labor Party member”952, and Labor leaders John Curtin and Ben Chifley were family “heroes”. As a seven-year-old, Gerard distributed flyers for the Labor Party.953

However, like many other Irish Catholics954, his father became convinced in the mid- 1950s that the ALP had drifted too far to the Left. Accordingly, he turned his back on Labor and joined the predominantly Catholic-based breakaway party, the Democratic Labor Party (DLP).955 By distributing preferences against Labor, the DLP has often been accredited with helping keep the ALP out of power during the long Coalition reign of 1949 to 1972.956 Gerard never actually joined the DLP like his father, but supported the party in a different way. As a university student he worked for one of its primary influences, Catholic intellectual B.A. Santamaria.

949 Gerard Henderson, “Australia must reassess its history and learn to be proud of its achievements”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 3, 1992, p.11 950 Gerard Henderson, 1994, Menzies’ Child, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.167 951 Journalist Laurie Oakes, for instance, described him as “coming from the far right of the political spectrum”. Oakes cited in Kent, op. cit. 952 Milton Cockburn, “Past Master; what makes Gerard Henderson tick”, The Sydney Morning Herald, October 7, 1994, p. Spectrum 7 953 Lyons, op. cit.; Kent, op.cit. 954 Niall Brennan outlines that the DLP and NCC found their strongest support in Catholics of Irish heritage who left the ALP in the Split. Niall Brennan, 1972, The Politics of Catholics, Melbourne: Hill Publishing, p.25 955 “Many DLP men to whom I have spoken say their party is about 80 per cent Catholic.” Ibid., p.24 956 See for instance Gerard Henderson, “A prophet strikes blindly into the wilderness”, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 13, 1991, p.11

262 Santamaria was highly regarded in some circles but infamous in others. He was most notorious for ideological fanaticism and for his commanding role in the secretive Catholic organisation, ‘The Movement’. Formed in the late 1930s or early 1940s (accounts vary), The Movement was created by Santamaria as a more politically interventionist variant of Catholic Action. From the mid-1940s it was officially supported by the Catholic Church, but then a decade later this support was withdrawn when members of the Church hierarchy decided the Movement’s activities were too directly political to be officially sponsored.957

The Movement/NCC and its leader are mostly remembered for their zealous campaign against communism, particularly as it appeared within the Australian Labor Movement. Santamaria became preoccupied, some say obsessed958, with the communist threat from the early days of the Movement and campaigned against it energetically and relentlessly until the end of the Cold War. According to Niall Brennan, former ALP politician and Catholic, the Movement was “pathologically anti-Communist”.959

The organisation became infamous in the mid-1950s when it was ‘exposed’ by Labor leader Herbert Evatt. Evatt damned the Movement for instigating the Labor Split through its conspiratorial, clandestine operations against communists and fellow travellers within the labour movement. According to Robert Murray, whose book, The Split: Australian Labor in the Fifties (1970), is probably the most highly regarded account of the affair, The Movement conducted campaigns of “conspiracy and counter-conspiracy”, acting as a “tightly run small organisation trying to manipulate larger ones from inside.”960 Henderson and Santamaria, too, have acknowledged the conspiratorial nature of The Movement’s operations, describing its

957 For information on ‘The Movement’ see: Gerard Henderson, Mr Santamaria and the Bishops, op. cit., B.A. Santamaria, “The Movement – After Forty Years”, Australia at the Crossroads, 1987, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press; Robert Murray, 1970, The Split: Australian Labor in the Fifties, Melbourne: Cheshire Publishing; Brennan, op. cit.; Campion, Australian Catholics, op. cit., pp.165-170; Edmund Campion, 1982, Rockchoppers; Growing Up Catholic in Australia, Ringwood: Penguin, pp.104-123 958 Brennan, op. cit., p.77 959 Ibid., p.54 960 Murray, op. cit., pp.64-65

263 method as seeking to establish power and influence by “infiltrating” larger organisations through a process of “permeation”.961

It has also been alleged The Movement enjoyed close ties with the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), and that the two worked together sometimes to achieve their common goal of defeating communists and the Left. In Australia’s Spies and their Secrets (1994), David McKnight documented that declassified reports show ASIO “worked closely” with Santamaria’s Movement leading up to the Split and “greatly magnified” these links thereafter.962 He notes that ASIO actually considered The Movement “in itself an intelligence agency”963, and was suspicious enough to phone-tap it to “ensure that it stayed on top in the relationship.”964

Initially The Movement’s actual title was the Catholic Social Studies Movement, but after it was officially disendorsed by the Church, Santamaria reinvented it in 1957 as the National Civic Council. By most accounts, little changed in this transformation. As Edmund Campion explained in Australian Catholics (1988): “In substance the only change was in its name: its members continued to be mainly Catholic males; they met on church premises; there were chaplains, prayers and pledges of secrecy. As the Perth organiser wrote in 1958, ‘we are still fighting the same fight in exactly the same way’.”965 Indeed, Santamaria himself never stopped calling it ‘The Movement’.966

By the time Henderson was working with the Movement, then the National Civic Council, it had broadened its operations to include campus politics at some major universities. As Niall Brennan has outlined, the Vietnam War was adopted by the NCC as “a cause celebre for Australian Catholics”967, and it was at the universities where the anti-war movement was strongest. According to Henderson, just as the

961 Santamaria, op. cit., p.84; Henderson, Mr Santamaria and the Bishops, op. cit, p.160 962 David McKnight, 1994, Australia’s Spies and their Secrets, St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, pp.201, 203 963 Anonymous ASIO officer cited in ibid., p.202 964 McKnight, ibid., p.203 965 Campion, Australian Catholics, op. cit., p.169 966 See for example Santamaria, op. cit. 967 Brennan, op. cit., p.97

264 Movement had operated within the labour movement, the NCC applied its permeation method to student unions and councils in an attempt to “overturn the left dominance of campus politics.”968 McKnight has shown that the NCC was exchanging information and even sharing agents, including some students, with ASIO in this campaign also.969

Given that Henderson was both active in student politics and working for the NCC in this time, it is understandable that some look upon his university days with suspicion. As journalist Christine Wallace said in a profile of Henderson for the Australian Financial Review in 1993:

As a staffer working for John Howard in his deputy leader and early leadership days in the 1980s, Gerard was viewed with deep suspicion. Even within the Liberal Party several parliamentary members would mutter darkly ‘NCC’ when his name arose.970

His involvement with the NCC is an angle from which he is sometimes attacked by his critics. In The Electronic Whorehouse (2003), for instance, Paul Sheehan drew attention to this aspect of Henderson’s past in a chapter almost solely devoted to undermining his integrity. (The chapter’s title, “The Shadow”, is instructive.)971

Henderson is apparently, and understandably, resentful at the NCC link being mentioned972 and has tried to play down the connection in his own reflections on the matter. Discussing his time with the NCC in an autobiographical piece from 1993, he said he worked there part-time in 1970 and 1971, but inferred he was largely an outsider, with little knowledge of what was happening.

Looking back from two decades away, it seems that, apart from Bob Santamaria himself, no-one else worked there...At times the CSSM [predecessor of the NCC] was so secretive that even its own staff did not know what was going on.973

968 Henderson, “Anger”, op cit., p.68 969 McKnight, op. cit., pp.203, 217, 229 970 Christine Wallace, “Coming in from the Right”, The Australian Financial Review, September 16, 1993, p.8 971 Paul Sheehan, 2003, The Electronic Whorehouse, Sydney: Pan Macmillian Australia, pp.242-3 972 John Lyons, “Think-tank commanders”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 9, 1991, p.43 973 Henderson, “Anger”, op.cit., p.66-7

265 Similarly, he says of the NCC operatives on university campuses that “Their meetings were carried out in an atmosphere of secrecy” and “this lot was destined to interfere with my campus activities” (emphasis added).974

This is not how his involvement with the NCC is depicted by others, however. Santamaria, for instance, said the following of his former employee in 1997: “Many years ago, when he was employed in the National Civic Council’s office, Gerard Henderson proved a competent and zealous official.”975 Similarly, in her biography of another Catholic intellectual, James McAuley, Cassandra Pybus described him as one of Santamaria’s “lieutenants”.976 She said together Santamaria and Henderson played a “key role” in the university-based, pro-Vietnam War organisation, Peace With Freedom (PWF). And according to Catholic historian Edmund Campion, Henderson was “once seen as a successor to B.A. Santamaria”.977 Henderson’s involvement in the NCC and the enthusiasm with which he conducted his work, then, seem greater than he likes to concede.

However closely associated the two men were at the NCC, their relations deeply soured after the release of Henderson’s Mr Santamaria and the Bishops in 1982.978 Henderson was not unsympathetic to Santamaria in this book, but criticised him for, among other things, the simplicity of his views and the intensity of his political zeal. In 1989 he noted: “I also said I thought he’d discredited the anti-communist cause.”979 The two appear to have had some differences before this though: Henderson remarked in 1990 that he had not spoken to Santamaria since 1975.980 Throughout the late 1980s and until Santamaria’s death in 1998, the two were embroiled in an often nasty public conflict. Their central intellectual (as opposed to personal) disagreement was over economic policy.981 In 1990 Henderson wrote that

974 Ibid., p.68 975 B.A. Santamaria, “Benefits go to the few”, Sydney Morning Herald, August 3, 1997, p.23 976 Cassandra Pybus, 1999, The Devil and James McAuley, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, p.235 977 Campion, Australian Catholics, op. cit., p.247 978 Lyons, “Eternal outsider prefers tolerance now”, op. cit.; Wallace, op. cit.; Kent, op. cit. 979 Gerard Henderson cited in Lyons, “Eternal outsider prefers tolerance now”, op. cit. 980 B.A. Santamaria cited in Gerard Henderson, 1990, Australian Answers, Random House Australia, p.154 981 See for example Henderson’s critique of Santamaria’s economic policy: “A prophet strikes blindly into the wilderness”, op. cit.; and Santamaria’s response to a similar critique: “Benefits go to the few”, op. cit.

266 Santamaria declined to be interviewed for his book, Australian Answers, citing “the various unpleasantries of recent years”.982

The day after Santamaria’s passing, Henderson wrote a front-page obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald. It articulated similar points to those outlined in his Mr Santamaria and the Bishops, but was understandably more moderate in its criticism than most of his earlier appraisals.983

University Days: Student Activism Gerard Henderson has, according to his wife, Anne, “always been politically active”.984 As an employee of the National Civic Council, his earliest political activities were as an anticommunist during the Cold War. This is one reason left- wing commentators, like Mark Davis and McKenzie Wark, often describe him as an ‘old Cold Warrior’. As an undergraduate at Melbourne University in the 1960s, Henderson became a student advocate for the Vietnam War. Considering the NCC’s interest in student politics, his student activism and work with the NCC are likely to have been closely linked.

Reflecting on his university experience in 1993, Henderson said “At the University of Melbourne in the mid-1960s it was all the rage to be an angry young man of leftist credentials.”985 As an angry young man of rightist credentials, Henderson was apparently an unpopular figure on campus. According to his wife Anne, who was with Gerard at MU and helped him in his campaigns, Gerard and his grouping were “an unfashionable lot”.986 In a profile of Henderson for The Sydney Morning Herald in 1989, journalist John Lyons said he was in the 1960s “a bete noir of the left”.987

982 Santamaria cited in Henderson, Australian Answers, op. cit., p.154 983 Gerard Henderson, “B.A. Santamaria, Labor Split warrior, dies at 82”, Sydney Morning Herald, February 26, 1998, pp.1, 11 984 Anne Henderson cited in Kathleen Carmody, “Conversation: On the other side of the institute - Anne Henderson, author, wife and mother”, The Catholic Weekly, 18 November 2001, http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/01/nov/18/13.html (Accessed 4 June 2004) 985 Henderson, “Anger” , op. cit., p.62 986 Anne Henderson, 1993, From All Corners: Six Migrant Stories, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.107 987 Lyons, “Eternal outsider prefers tolerance now”, op. cit., p.11

267 In addition to working for Santamaria at the NCC while he was at university, Henderson was a member of the Democratic Society, president of the DLP Club (which he claims had no ties to the DLP), and the publisher of his own anti-Left newsletter, Public.988 He also participated in James McAuley’s Peace With Freedom. According to Pybus, McAuley established this organisation in the 1960s “to involve anti-communist academics and others in intellectual activities to counter the anti- [Vietnam] war sentiment growing apace on campus.”989 In Australian Answers (1990), Henderson described PWF as “provid[ing] a loose organisational framework for the few academics who were prepared to take a stand against the left-wing excesses of students and staff during the heady days of the failed left-wing cultural revolution. It consisted of individuals whom James McAuley brought together for an informal meeting once or twice a year.”990

As an upshot of joining Peace With Freedom, Henderson became a student correspondent for Quadrant magazine, of which McAuley was founding editor. Under McAuley’s editorship, Quadrant mounted an attack on the student anti-war movement. According to Pybus, Henderson’s essays “derided the derivative nature of the student movement, its infantile pretensions and the ‘sub-articulate habits of mind’ of the participants.”991

In The Devil and James McAuley, Pybus said PWF had close links to Santamaria and the NCC. In fact, “despite vociferous denials by McAuley...Peace With Freedom was funded and controlled by Santamaria.”992 She also comments that PWF was accused of having all the hallmarks of a Santamaria front. She observed that “there was a suspicion that Peace With Freedom planted spies in student meetings and trained others to subvert the student unions.”993

While it was said there were no student members of Peace With Freedom, it did maintain close connections with the Democratic Clubs on campus, which were funded and organised by the NCC. It was also believed that Peace With

988 A. Henderson, From All Corners, op. cit., p.107; Gerard Henderson, “Paul Kelly’s Tome – A Great Read; But is it History?”, Media Watch, Sydney Institute, No. 24, October-December 1992, p.8 989 Pybus, op. cit, p.208 990 Henderson, Australian Answers, op. cit., p.196 991 Pybus, op. cit., p.221 992 Ibid., p.208 993 Ibid., p.226

268 Freedom had links to ASIO and that its members reported to ASIO about colleagues and students. McAuley did. So too did Frank Knopfelmacher.994

Though she says Henderson, with Santamaria and another NCC “lieutenant”, Tony Macken, played a “key role” in PWF, there is nothing in her analysis that actually demonstrates that he was in fact involved in such conspiratorial activities as a student – either with PWF or the NCC. The most that comes across is her observation that he was accused of playing a leading role in such campaigns as a tutor in the early 1970s – something Henderson himself has also noted (and denied). In 1993 he mentioned being accused of such activities as a tutor at La Trobe University. He dismissed the allegations as “paranoid” mutterings of the “fascist left”.995

Henderson’s contempt for the ‘Vietniks’996 of his generation and for the Left today remains strong. In his columns, left-wingers remain common targets (especially expatriate journalist John Pilger). In “Anger”, a personal, reflective essay in Ross Fitzgerald’s The Eleven Deadly Sins (1993), he told of still harbouring, even with the passage of years, a deep anger and contempt for his left-wing student contemporaries and particularly the leftist academics of the period.

Looking back on it now I still recoil in anger remembering how many of the so-called best and brightest of our generation worshipped at the feet of such totalitarian dictators as Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro and prostituted their learning and scholarship to mouth simplistic slogans and proclaim unworthy causes.997

Because Henderson, like Manne, believes his Cold War stance was completely right, he is contemptuous of the Left for their refusal to unequivocally admit to and apologise for their intellectual crimes. In “Anger” he said:

There is something nauseating about affluent Western intellectuals glorifying totalitarian regimes which repress entire populations, including intellectuals, and receiving academic advancement for doing so. Their subsequent unwillingness to issue a mea culpa or to acknowledge in any way their past errors is even more contemptuous.998

994 Ibid., p.226 995 Henderson, “Anger”, op. cit., p.71 996 The NCC labelled anti-Vietnam War protestors “Vietniks”. Brennan, op. cit., p.112 997 Henderson, “Anger”, op. cit., p.63 998 Ibid., p.65

269

Evidently unlike Manne, however, he has refused to lay down his arms to reconcile with the Left. He has explained his position thus:

These days as a newspaper columnist I am sometimes told that it is not worth reiterating how in 1960 Manning Clark wrote a book (Meeting Soviet Man) in which he attempted to justify the crimes of Josef Stalin or that many of the leading academic ‘experts’ of their time barracked for Ho and the communists in Vietnam, Mao and his fellow oppressors in China, even Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. I invariably reply, with all due decorum, pig’s bum – or some such. Dead or alive, they are all fair game.999

Henderson’s desire to make leftists repent for their previous political sins comes across in his book, Australian Answers (1990), a collection of interviews with prominent Australians. Here he asked columnist and broadcaster Phillip Adams to reflect on his days in the Communist Party of Australia, and pressed eminent historian Manning Clark to justify his allegedly pro-Soviet book, Meeting Soviet Man.1000

Anticommunist Thought Henderson has attributed his early anticommunist worldview mainly to the guidance he received from his teachers at Melbourne University. Again like Manne, who was one of his student contemporaries at MU, Henderson claims to have been particularly informed by the teachings of Frank Knopfelmacher. He has listed Knopfelmacher, along with La Trobe professor, Hugo Wolfsohn, as one of his two “key intellectual mentors”.1001 As Henderson notes, both Wolfsohn and Knopfelmacher were “Jewish émigrés from right or left-wing totalitarian regimes”1002, and were also both “among the few Australian intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s who publicly opposed communism when it was unfashionable to do so.”1003

999 Ibid., p.63 1000 Henderson, Australian Answers, op. cit. 1001 Henderson, “Anger”, op. cit., p.57. Henderson’s PhD thesis, published as Mr Santamaria and the Bishops (1982), acknowledges Wolfsohn’s “intellectual guidance” throughout his candidature. Henderson, Mr Santamaria and the Bishops, op. cit., p.xii 1002 Henderson, “Anger”, op. cit., p.57 1003 Ibid., p.57

270 Given this connection, it is perhaps unsurprising that Henderson’s perspective on communism is similar to that described of Manne in Chapter Eight. Because of this similarity, several critiques of the Manne approach to communism can be applied to Henderson’s. Like Manne, Henderson tends to articulate the conventional anticommunist discourse that ‘communism’ is, and can only be, Stalinism. From his commentaries, it is reasonably clear, for instance, that he sees Stalinism as the model for Maoist China, Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Similarly, in his history of the Liberal Party of Australia, Menzies’ Child (1994), he articulated the twin anticommunist discourses that (a) communism was a global, totalitarian monolith and (b) all communists are Stalinists. The former is reflected in his suggestion that “the Soviet Union under the leadership of Josef Stalin was a threat to world peace”1004, and both come across clearly in the following passage about the Communist Party of Australia.

From the time of its creation in 1920 the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) had been a dedicated and loyal follower of the Soviet Union and its leaders Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin. The CPA was a member of the Comintern (Communist International) and, as such, agreed to subordinate its policies to the wishes of the totalitarian rulers in the Kremlin…In Australia, homegrown communists followed every switch in the Kremlin policy with total loyalty and obedience.1005

Henderson did not just maintain that the Communist Party was aligned to the Soviets; he explicitly claimed all communists were Stalinists.

At first glance the Australian communists seemed mild-mannered enough and, in a sense, they were. In power, however, they would have been something else...Australian communists were, almost to a man and woman, deeply committed Stalinists. They supported Stalinism in the USSR and they wanted to impose Stalinism in the Antipodes.1006

In making this generalisation he uses but one example, former Communist Party general secretary Eric Aarons. And the quote he extracts from Aarons is rather alarmist too. He cites Aarons saying: “our outlook was such that, had we been in power, we too could have executed people we considered to be objectively, even if

1004 Henderson, Menzies’ Child, op. cit., p.100 1005 Ibid., pp.99-100 1006 Ibid., p.109

271 not subjectively (that is, by intention), helping our enemies.”1007 (In response, Aarons has accused Henderson of “falsification”, and called this alleged misrepresentation “ludicrous” and “reprehensible”.)1008

Though Henderson attributes most of the credit for his early worldview to his university lecturers, it is likely his strong anticommunism is also related to his upbringing. Though not all Catholics supported Santamaria’s Movement, anticommunism was strong within sections of the Catholic community and, according to Niall Brennan, was most pronounced in Irish Catholic circles. An Irish Catholic himself, Brennan noted further that the Irish were perhaps Santamaria’s strongest supporters and that “The words ‘left’ or ‘leftist’ have become so abominable to the tender ears of Irish Catholics”.1009 Given Henderson’s father was a DLP man, and that Gerard himself was educated by Melbourne Jesuits (who according to Brennan had “strong links” to the NCC1010), part of Henderson’s ‘classic’ Irish Catholic background was presumably a thorough instruction on the evils of the Red Menace and the shortcomings of the Left.

Phase 2: The New Right (1980s) Henderson’s break with Santamaria signalled a significant turning point in his life. If Henderson’s university days and political life generally in the 1960s and 1970s can be characterised as the Anticommunist phase of his career, the 1980s signalled a major shift in emphasis. Throughout the 1970s he evolved from the narrow anticommunist agenda of his past and became involved in more mainstream political activism. In the early 1980s, economics in particular became a primary focus. His commentaries on this matter established him as a leading voice of the emergent political force of the 1980s: the New Right.

As Robert Manne has outlined, at some point in the 1980s Australian Conservatism split in two. The full extent of the split would not be realised until after the Cold War, when old alliances, forged and maintained in the name of anticommunism,

1007 Eric Aarons cited in Henderson, Menzies’ Child, ibid., p.109 1008 Eric Aarons responded to Henderson in a letter to the editor for the Sydney Morning Herald. Eric Aarons, “When could becomes would”, The Sydney Morning Herald, July 29, 1993, p.10 1009 Brennan, op. cit., p.111 1010 Ibid., p.31

272 became unnecessary. While it now encompasses many issues, including multiculturalism and indigenous affairs, the Conservative Split was initially almost singularly over the economic direction of the country. Some conservatives, like Manne and Santamaria, wanted to continue on the protectionist path well trodden by conservative governments from Robert Menzies to Malcolm Fraser. Others revolted against the ‘Australian Settlement’ tradition and championed a free market approach following the model established by Margaret Thatcher’s Britain and Ronald Reagan’s America. In Chapter Eight we traced one side of the conservative split, the Old Right, through an analysis of Robert Manne. Henderson went the other way.

The single thread tying the New Right together was a shared advocacy of laissez faire economics. It was able to reconcile groups whose social policies had previously pitted them against each other. In particular, the New Right united neoconservatives with neoliberals. Hence, bubbling beneath the surface of the New Right were immanent conflicts over social issues like the republic, multiculturalism, indigenous policy, gender and sexuality. These conflicts continue to this day within the Liberal Party, the party of the New Right. They pop up, for instance, in recurring speculation over the Liberal leadership – ‘conservative’ John Howard versus ‘progressive’ Peter Costello. And now that economic liberalism has achieved bipartisan support in Australia, the New Right alliance also seems to have splintered – as shall be discussed later, Henderson has been at odds with former New Right allies for some time.

Free Trade over Protectionism Since the early 1980s, Henderson has championed a free market model for the Australian economy. He has argued against a strong role for government in economic affairs and regularly attacked the unions. In 1990 he was quoted as saying, “I am concerned with commercial freedoms and people’s right to expect them.”1011 He believes strongly that both capitalists and workers should be, as Milton Friedman put it, ‘free to choose’.

1011 Gerard Henderson cited in Kent, op. cit.

273 Henderson’s economic liberalism is clearly evident in his 1990 book, Australian Answers. As mentioned, the book is a collection of interviews with prominent Australians. It featured several testimonials from ‘economic rationalist’ converts like John Howard, Bob Carr, Paul Keating and Padraic Pearse McGuinness. With Henderson’s prompting they extolled the virtues of ‘the market’ against protectionism, and told of how they came to see the light. In the introduction to the book, Henderson proclaimed that “in the 1980s, modern Australia grew up”.1012 The proof of this maturity was the new political and economic consensus in favour of a free market system.

Henderson’s critique of protectionism is similar to Paul Kelly’s in that both portrayed it as an unrealistic alternative in an internationalised (globalised) world. In Australian Answers, Henderson said protectionism in Australia “could not survive because no commodity exporting country with a small population-base could forever frame its economic and social policies as if the rest of the world did not exist.”1013 He made this point again in A Howard Government? (1995):

Australia is now part of the international economy. In view of this it is impossible for a trading nation of 18 million...to go it alone on economic policy. Consequently, no Australian government can increase taxation above a certain level, or unilaterally decide to impose restrictive import barriers, or borrow at large in order to fund domestic welfare payments without having an impact on how the nation is perceived on world markets. This limits the options for governments and oppositions alike in Western democracies.1014

In Australian Answers, Henderson also advanced the typical New Right argument, championed by Kelly, that protectionism stifled Australia’s potential in the Twentieth Century. He says “for most of the 20th century an inward-looking Australia was adversely affected by the key economic and political decisions taken in the first decade after Federation.”1015

One hundred years after the first settlement at Sydney Cove, the Australian colonies had the highest living standards in the world. Then along came Alfred Deakin, White Australia, Henry Bournes Higgins, New Protection,

1012 Henderson, Australian Answers, op. cit., p.1 1013 Ibid., p.7 1014 Gerard Henderson, 1995, A Howard Government?, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp.97-8 1015 Henderson, Australian Answers, op. cit., p.10

274 John Watson and the ‘Industrial Relations Club’...Prosperous Australia soon became insular Australia...It would be accompanied by declining relative living standards.1016

To critique Australia’s “inward-looking” protectionist past and the “shackles” it imposed1017, Henderson has his own version of Kelly’s ‘Australian Settlement’. His version, formulated a few years before Kelly’s, is the “Federation Trifecta”. The models are effectively the same, though Henderson believes Kelly had “distorted the reality” by adding another two tenets to the Australian legacy.1018 Henderson’s trifecta is: “White Australia, protection all round and centralised industrial relations.”1019 Henderson has suggested that Kelly in fact copied his Federation Trifecta in devising his Australian Settlement concept. After arguing that “the core components of Kelly’s Australian Settlement are identical with my Federation Trifecta”1020, Henderson claimed the idea of this being a coincidence “seems unlikely”.1021

Whatever the case, Henderson’s later work, Menzies Child (1994), offers more or less the same anti-protectionist, pro-market thesis as Kelly’s The End of Certainty (1992). As conservative former Liberal parliamentarian Brendan Darcy noted, Henderson’s book provides a “New Right approach to Liberal and economic history” which sets out to undermine the Liberal Party’s Old (protectionist) Right to support his New Right vision for Australia. “Henderson’s conviction is to deregulate the financial, labour and other markets...and to live in...a globalised economy.”1022

Like Kelly, one of the ways Henderson denigrates protectionism is by disparaging the father of Australian protectionism, Alfred Deakin. As did Kelly, Henderson seeks to impugn Deakin’s integrity by emphasising his relationship with “arch-protectionist David Syme, the publisher of The Age”. Henderson says Deakin’s “career was going nowhere” before he met Syme, who subsequently “converted Deakin, once a free

1016 Ibid., p.4 1017 Ibid., p.10 1018 Henderson, Menzies’ Child, op.cit., pp.36-7; Henderson, A Howard Government?, op. cit., p.99 1019 Henderson, Australian Answers, op. cit., p.4 1020 Gerard Henderson, “Documentation”, Media Watch, Sydney Institute, No.38, No.4 1996, p.18 1021 Henderson, “Documentation”, ibid., pp.18-19 1022 Brendan Darcy, “Menzies Child by Gerard Henderson”, Australia and World Affairs, Summer 1996, Issue 27, p.60

275 trader, to the protectionist cause and employed him as a journalist.”1023 In other words, Deakin was bought off. By emphasising Syme’s role, Henderson also alludes to another neoliberal discourse against protectionism: that it serves and protects the rich. Deakin’s opportunism is hinted at further when Henderson notes that he compromised his protectionism by forming an alliance with the Free Traders in 1909. For this move, Henderson notes, Deakin was “regarded by some as a sell-out” and by one politician as “a ‘Judas’”.1024 He also implies that Deakin was somewhat of a shonky character, “not without (political) stain”, for having been “involved in far too many ‘shady’ companies which collapsed during the 1890s Depression which devastated Victoria.”1025 Alfred Deakin, the metonym for protectionism in this history, is therefore both a shady character and a sell-out. Protectionism is a system born of political compromise. As this story’s appearance in both Henderson and Kelly’s histories suggests, the Deakin conversion is part of neoliberal folklore in Australia. Deakin’s main opponent, Free Trader George Reid, is in Henderson’s analysis, as in Kelly’s, a more principled and intelligent economist. He was a self- made man and honest broker.1026 Free trade is the true economic approach.

The New Right’s critique of Australia’s protectionist history is, like many other neoliberal discourses, derivative of American theory. The argument that protectionism soured the nation’s economic fortunes during the Twentieth Century follows the line established by pro-market economists like Milton Friedman. In his neoliberal manifesto, Free to Choose (1980), Friedman makes the point that America and Britain experienced a “golden age” in the Nineteenth Century because of the free market, before politicians, unions and public servants introduced protectionism and spoiled the party.1027

While Henderson’s economic outlook is similar in several respects to Kelly’s, his advocacy of the free market is stronger. Politically, he is rightward of Kelly. In The End of Certainty (1992), Kelly identified Henderson as among the right-wing

1023 Henderson, Menzies’ Child, op. cit., p.31 1024 Ibid., p.32 1025 Ibid., pp.31-2 1026 Ibid., pp.32-3 1027 Milton and Rose Friedman, 1990, Free to Choose, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p.3

276 “zealots” whose deregulatory agenda was too extreme for the times.1028 Kelly, as we have seen, believed the Hawke-Keating Government needed to be swifter in implementing microeconomic reform, but not to the extent Henderson did. Henderson has objected to Kelly’s characterisation of him as being part of the “right- wing intelligentsia”, noting that “It is a matter of record that I am one of the key opponents of right wing movements in Australia.”1029 All the same, he was a leading light in the New Right, and after the Hawke Labor election victory in 1987, he stated that “the platform offered by those labelled the New Right offered the only long-term economic hope for the nation.” He also added, however, that the damage of the Labor victory would not be too severe since “the Australian Labor government today is adopting many aspects of the New Right agenda.”1030

Henderson with the Liberal Party 1 As Kelly demonstrates in The End of Certainty, though both Labor and Liberal advocated free market policies in the 1980s, it was chiefly through the Liberal Party that the New Right sought to exert influence.1031 Henderson’s activities were a clear example of this tendency. He took a key position with the Liberals in 1984 as senior advisor to current Prime Minister John Howard, then one of the party’s leading figures of the New Right. According to Kelly, he did so “to test whether radical reform was possible through the Liberals.”1032 His “arrival as Howard’s senior advisor”, says Kelly, “was another sign of the radicalisation of the Liberals” in the mid-1980s.1033

Henderson’s work with Howard was actually his second stint with the party. From 1976 to 1980 he was a personal secretary to Liberal frontbencher Kevin Newman.1034 Previous to this he had tutored in politics for three years at La Trobe University and for a year at the University of Tasmania before that. He says he decided to apply for

1028 Throughout The End of Certainty, and especially in the Conclusion, Kelly argues that the New Right were “zealots”. They were overly zealous in championing the free market. They weren’t as pragmatic or realistic as Hawke-Keating Labor in endorsing the free market. Henderson is listed among the leading ‘radical liberals’. Paul Kelly, 1992, The End of Certainty, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, pp.35, 42, 48, 660-686. 1029 Henderson, “Paul Kelly’s Tome – A Great Read; But is it History?”, op. cit., p.8 1030Gerard Henderson, “Australia Turns (New) Right”, Wall Street Journal, July 20, 1987 1031 Kelly, op. cit., pp.34-5 1032 Ibid., p.115 1033 Ibid. 1034 Henderson, Menzies’ Child, op. cit., p.228

277 work with the Liberals at this time because he admired Malcolm Fraser, party leader and former Prime Minister.1035 He applied for a position in Fraser’s office initially, but was rejected after Bob Santamaria, whom Fraser consulted, gave him a poor reference.1036 He landed the position with Newman a short time after.

Though he spent four years in Newman’s office, Henderson did not actually become a party member until the early 1980s. (He let his membership lapse after leaving Howard’s office).1037 From what Henderson has written on this time with Newman, there seems to have been nothing exceptional about his role.

The Industrial Relations Club The four years between these two stints with the Liberals (1980-1983), Henderson (unhappily) spent as a public servant in the Commonwealth Department of Employment and Industrial Relations. He expressed his disillusionment with the department in a 1983 Quadrant essay, ‘The Industrial Relations Club’. The article became an important and influential piece, coining the phrase, “Industrial Relations Club”, but more significantly also managing to attract the attention of leading political and business figures. He expanded this essay’s complaints in his 1986 paper, “The Fridge Dwellers: Dreamtime in Industrial Relations Club”, which mocked the IR Department’s economic primitivism.1038 (The latent racism of this critique presumably escapes him). These essays articulated New Right critiques of arbitration and industrial regulation, and the public service.

Henderson’s critique of the ‘Industrial Relations Club’ was twofold. On one hand he attacked the culture within the department, characterising the IR Club as a bunch of stupid, lazy, left-leaning alcoholics, loyal to the Labor Party. Thus he was able to tap into conservative discourses of the public service as a lazy, self-interested cohort (perhaps most effectively encapsulated in Barry Humphries’ Whitlam-era public servant, Sir Les Patterson). Yet Henderson’s mission was not likely to have been an attempt to reform the work culture within the department. It is more probable that his

1035 Ibid., p.228 1036 Ibid. 1037 Cockburn, op. cit. 1038 Gerard Henderson, “The Fridge Dwellers – Dreamtime in Industrial Relations”, in Arbitration in Contempt: the Proceedings of the Inaugural Seminar of the H. R. Nicholls Society held in Melbourne, 28 February-2March 1986, Melbourne: H. R. Nicholls Society (1986)

278 portrait of the IR Club as alcoholic cretins was designed to undermine the centralised industrial relations system they presided over.

For Henderson and the New Right, a centralised industrial relations system is “economic irrationalism”.1039 The system’s main problem, they say, is that arbitration produces wage decisions unreflective of productivity. They believe the system is inclined to push wages up too far, causing businesses to struggle and sometimes close, leading to job losses and perhaps even recession. In A Howard Government (1995), Henderson described ‘wage hikes’ or ‘wages blowouts’ as “economic insanity” and, like other neoliberals, blamed them for the recessions of the early 1970s and 1980s.1040 In “The Fridge Dwellers” he claimed the centralised system had driven Australia “into a form of economic hell”.1041 He also sought to demonstrate that centralised industrial relations harms those it was originally designed to protect. “It is quite indefensible that strict interpretation of awards has actually forced Australian workers on to the dole queues”, he says.1042 This argument reflects the central neoliberal discourse that any intervention into a free market is harmful. Or as Milton Friedman put it:

In the government sphere, as in the market, there seems to be an invisible hand, but it operates in precisely the opposite direction from Adam Smith’s: an individual who intends only to serve the public interest by fostering government intervention is ‘led by an invisible hand to promote’ private interests, ‘which was no part of his intention’.1043

Economic arguments aside, Henderson also depicted the arbitration system as a deprivation of workers’ civil rights. He argued it denies employees the right to “work on his own [sic] her own terms”, and complained that “in Australia the right to work is not protected by legislation.”1044 His solution is to grant individuals what Friedman famously called the ‘free(dom) to choose’.

The key to industrial relations reform is to make it legal for employers and employees to reach their own agreements about work conditions and

1039 Ibid., 1040 Henderson, A Howard Government, op. cit., p.100; Henderson, “The Fridge Dwellers”, ibid. 1041 Henderson, “The Fridge Dwellers”, ibid. 1042 Ibid. 1043 Milton and Rose Friedman, op. cit., pp.5-6 1044 Henderson, “The Fridge Dwellers”, op. cit.

279 practices – free from the interference of trade unions or industrial tribunals.1045

Hence, Henderson paints a classically neoliberal portrait of government, in collusion with the unions, imposing an unpopular industrial relations system upon the people.1046 Employers and employees are united in defiance of government tyranny and union thuggery. He even went as far as to claim that unions’ “traditional role” is “preventing workers from doing what they want to do.”1047 Hence, he seems to view industrial relations sans unions and tribunals as a level playing field where workers can freely negotiate mutually beneficial contracts with their employers.

The Fraser Government: Seven Wasted Years During his time in the Industrial Relations Department, Henderson became highly critical of the Fraser Liberals for their failure to implement what he regarded as the tough reforms needed to improve Australia’s economic health. Just as Henderson believed the early-1980s recession was the period in which Australia ‘matured’, it is likely he himself came to embrace the market at this time.

Henderson’s contempt for Fraser’s legacy was expressed in an article, ‘Fraserism: Myths and Realities’, published in Quadrant just days after the Liberals lost the 1983 election to Hawke Labor. Reflecting on this piece in Menzies’ Child, Henderson summarised his point thus:

The thesis was that up to the middle of 1982 the Fraser Government did relatively well...The essential problem with Malcolm Fraser was that...[he] lacked a policy direction which would have achieved the economic benefits flowing from a real – as distinct from rhetorical – tough mindedness.1048

In the actual essay Henderson accused Fraser of being “a bit of a bleeding heart” and of failing to implement “Milton Friedman’s advice”.1049

1045 Ibid. 1046 Ibid. 1047 Ibid. 1048 Henderson, Menzies’ Child, op. cit., p.256 1049 Gerard Henderson cited in Kelly, op. cit., p.97

280 As Kelly illustrated in The End of Certainty, Henderson’s attack on the Fraser government was part of a broader ‘Liberal revolt’ against protectionism by the New Right. Inspired by the success of neoconservative pro-market parties in the UK and America under Thatcher and Reagan respectively, the New Right began denigrating Fraser and his legacy almost as soon as Liberal government lost the 1983 election.1050 The catchcry became ‘The Seven Wasted Years of Fraser’ and, according to Kelly, it soon “assumed gospel status” for the radical liberals.1051 Kelly says Henderson’s Quadrant essay was the “inaugural attack from the right-wing intelligentsia”.1052 In Menzies’ Child, Henderson himself claimed to have been “the first” to have pointed out Fraser’s alleged failings.1053 So, after having admired Fraser enough in the mid-1970s to request a post in his office, by the early 1980s Henderson had become one of his biggest critics.

Henderson and the Liberals 2 The publication of his “Fraserism” and “IR Club” essays in Quadrant led to another turning point in Henderson’s career. The positive reception of these articles by the emerging New Right propelled him into the political spotlight and established him as one of the leading figures in this new political force. The essays were the basis upon which he became John Howard’s senior advisor in 1984. As Kelly has documented, Henderson first gained Howard’s attention with ‘The Industrial Relations Club’, and had become his senior advisor within nine months of launching his attack on the Fraser years.1054

In 1985, with Henderson as his advisor, Howard became Liberal and federal opposition leader.1055 Through Howard, Henderson tried to implement his laissez faire prescriptions for the Australian economy. For instance, acting upon their shared dissatisfaction with the ‘IR Club’, he and Howard tried to create an alternative industrial relations system in which employees and employers could “opt out” of the existing, centralised arrangement channelled through the Industrial Relations

1050 Kelly, op. cit., p.97 1051 Ibid. 1052 Ibid. 1053 Henderson, Menzies’ Child, op. cit., p.256 1054 Kelly, op. cit., p.97 1055 The Sydney Institute website, http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/gh.htm (Accessed March 26, 2004); http://www/csc2003.org/spk-gh.htm (Accessed March 26, 2004)

281 Commission and the unions. According to Kelly, “The Howard-Henderson tactic was to open the door towards an alternative industrial system and eventually to see the infant strangle the parent.”1056

However, after less than three years within the transformed (New Right) Liberal Party, Henderson concluded that the party was still too tentative and weak to make the tough decisions. Kelly says by 1986 Henderson, and the New Right generally, were annoyed that in seeking to reach political compromises Howard was “going soft on free market beliefs” and “flirting with betrayal of their cause”.1057 Kelly says after long “feeling he had no influence”, Henderson quit late in 1986, accusing Howard and the Liberals of being “too indecisive”.1058 According to Kelly, “they had a blazing row.”1059 Henderson has (again) challenged Kelly’s depiction of these events, stating that his split with Howard “was all to do with personal factors and totally unrelated to ideology.”1060 Either way, Henderson’s stint as Howard’s advisor was his last foray into organised politics.

Though Henderson angrily left the Liberal Party in 1986, his two books on the party in the mid-1990s, Menzies’ Child (1994) and A Howard Government? (1995), infer that he may remain more of a Liberal man than a Labor one. Though Menzies’ Child (in particular) is highly critical of the post-Menzies Liberals (i.e. the Libs circa 1966), both books seek to offer not just a critique of the party, but a prescription on how to improve their chances of re-election. In an interview from 1994 he spoke of being “depressed” at how poorly the Liberals had performed while in Opposition.1061 In 2001, Robert Manne said Henderson was “certainly doing a good job of supporting Peter Costello [Liberal deputy leader and Federal Treasurer]”.1062

But if he has in fact preferred Liberal over Labor since leaving the Libs to become a political commentator, this preference is not always very distinct in his commentary.

1056 Kelly, op. cit., p.118 1057 Ibid., p.234 1058 Ibid. 1059 Ibid. 1060 Henderson, “Paul Kelly’s Tome”, op. cit., p.8 1061 Cockburn, op. cit. 1062 Robert Manne cited in Julie Macken, “The 10 most covertly powerful Australians”, Australian Financial Review, September 28, 2001, p.18

282 He is contemptuous of both the Left and the extreme (“lunar”) Right, but fairly balanced in his appraisal of the two major parties. He has supported some Labor polices over Liberal, and at one point, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was fairly approving of Labor – of Paul Keating in particular – while being quite critical of the Liberals. In this time he used his column to criticise his former employer, Howard, and to regularly challenge the economic policies advanced by Dr John Hewson, Liberal leader in the early 1990s.1063 In 1989 he commended Labor’s governance under Hawke and Keating, saying “things are a lot better now than they were five years ago.”1064

The Sydney Institute In 1991, journalist John Lyons noted that Henderson “resents the tag ‘former advisor to John Howard’”.1065 It is likely Henderson wants to bury this aspect of his past because he feels it tarnishes his credibility as a public affairs commentator. Since January 1990 he has written a weekly column for The Sydney Morning Herald. Before that, in the late 1980s, he wrote a column for The Australian.1066

Since leaving the Liberal Party in 1986 Henderson has worked as a think tank-based public affairs commentator. He left Howard’s office to become director of the Sydney branch of the Institute of Public Affairs. According to Kelly, Henderson “took over and revitalised” the Sydney IPA.1067 In 1989 Henderson, with his wife Anne, reinvented the organisation as the ‘Sydney Institute’, over which he acquired greater control.1068 Under Henderson’s directorship, the Sydney Institute has become one of Australia’s premier think tanks. Along with providing a base for Henderson’s regular newspaper, radio and television commentaries, the institute engages in several other public affairs activities. As the ABC Radio website outlines:

The Sydney Institute is a high profile privately funded policy forum for debate and discussion. It publishes two journals (The Sydney Papers and The Sydney Institute Quarterly incorporating Media Watch), holds around 60 policy forums per year and occasional conferences and conducts a major

1063 Wallace, op. cit. 1064 Gerard Henderson cited in Lyons, “Eternal outsider prefers tolerance now”, op. cit., p.11 1065 Lyons, “Think tank commanders”, op. cit. 1066 Henderson, “Documentation”, op. cit., p.17 1067 Kelly, op. cit., p.48 1068 http://compassreview.org/summer02/9.html (Accessed 4 June 2004); Kelly, op. cit., p.48

283 annual lecture. The Institute enjoys good relations with both sides of mainstream Australian politics.1069

As discussed last chapter, one of the most controversial issues for the Sydney Institute, as with most other think tanks, is funding. Henderson himself has repeatedly refused to outline which businesses and individuals sponsor the institute. As journalist Brad Norington put it: “Gerard Henderson from the Sydney Institute is very reluctant about identifying his supporters - and claims it is not relevant.”1070 The institute’s website simply states: “The Sydney Institute receives support from the Australian business community.”1071

The institute is also associated with foreign think tanks. According to ABC Radio,

It has links with similar institutes around the world, including the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, the Manhattan Institute in New York, the European Policy Forum in London, Keidanren in Tokyo and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.1072

These connections suggest little or nothing in relation to the institute’s funding, but they do give some indication of its ideological flavour. All the think tanks mentioned are pro-market, neoconservative institutions.1073 These connections may also suggest that Henderson’s analysis may often be ‘informed’ by theories promulgated by these influential foreign organisations. Given the views Henderson has expressed over the years in favour of US-style capitalism and American foreign policy, it is likely that his affiliation with the US think tanks has been in some way influential in shaping his contributions to public debate.

Since becoming the director of a well-funded, successful think tank, Henderson has been able to gain a more prominent position within Australian political and public intellectual culture. From the Sydney Institute he has engaged in public debates over

1069 http://www.csc2003.org/spk-gh.htm (Accessed March 26, 2004) 1070 Brad Norington, “Think Tank secrets”, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 12, 2003 1071 http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/home.html (Accessed 4 June 2004) 1072 ABC Radio website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/brkfast/henderson.htm (March 26, 2004) 1073 European Policy Forum website, http://www.epfltd.org (accessed March 26, 2004); Manhattan Institute website, http://www.manhattan-institute.org (accessed March 26, 2004); American Enterprise Institute, http://www.aei.org (accessed March 26, 2004); Nippon Keidanren website, http://www.keidanren.or.jp (accessed March 26, 2004); The Centre for Strategic and International Studies website, http://www.csis.or.id (accessed March 26, 2004)

284 a broad variety of subjects, including his early preoccupations: advocacy of the free market and attacks on the Left.

Phase 3: History/Culture Wars (1990s) Henderson was most conspicuous in the 1980s for his economic commentaries, yet he was also a part of the neoconservative Right’s attack on left-wing ‘revisionism’ in the lead up to the 1988 Bicentenary. His main target here, as always, was John Pilger. He was particularly angered by Pilger’s “pilgerisations” of Australian history in the book A Secret Country (1989) and in a number of television documentaries, including the three-part series The Last Dream (1988). Pilger’s prominence made him an apt metonym for the Left, and it was through him that Henderson attacked left-wing accounts of Australian history and society.

As Paul Sheehan has observed, Henderson “set himself up as a media critic in the early 1980s”.1074 The forum through which Henderson conducted most of his criticism was the journal, Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch. First published in April 1988 and printed via the Sydney Institute until 1997, Media Watch was, according to its first editorial: “devoted to the proposition that the media should be subject to the same severity of scrutiny as that to which it subjects others.”1075 In Media Watch Henderson frequently attacked the media, particularly the Canberra Press Gallery and celebrity journalists, for a variety of alleged failings, one of which was for being too left-leaning.

Henderson’s first notable swipe at the media was his essay, “The Rat Pack”, from The Weekend Australian in August 1987.1076 Here he accused the Canberra Press Gallery of, among other things, having a herd mentality and following the direction (and the ‘fashions’) of a few leaders. Later he described his attack as “the first considered critique”1077 of the Gallery. He has also claimed that “primarily because,

1074 Sheehan, op. cit, p.229 1075 Gerard Henderson, “Editorial”, Media Watch, Institute of Public Affairs (NSW), No.1, April 1988, p.2 1076 Gerard Henderson, The Weekend Australian, August 29-30, 1987, p.19 1077 Gerard Henderson, “The Canberra Rat Pack – A Reassessment”, Media Watch, No.19, August- September 1991, p.20

285 for the first time, it was subjected to public scrutiny and intelligent criticism” (like his own), the Gallery soon reformed “for the better”.1078

Henderson’s role in monitoring the media, particularly dissenters, establishes him as one of the clearest instances in Australia of what Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman have described as “flak”. In Manufacturing Consent (1988), Chomsky and Herman identified five ‘filters’ which, they argued, ensure the media seldom challenge powerful social and economic interests and the status quo. One of these is ‘flak’, which referred to “negative responses to a media statement or program.”1079 Chomsky and Herman suggested the most powerful form of flak is that either delivered or sponsored by the business sector. Some of the most conspicuous sources of flak, they argued, were media monitoring institutions and think tanks, which monitored the media and attacked it when the messages it delivers are deemed ‘unacceptable’.1080

Few have performed this flak or surveillance function in the Australian media as prominently and diligently as Henderson. Along with apportioning voluminous amounts of flak through Media Watch, Henderson has criticised the media regularly in opinion columns for the mainstream press. Criticisms of left-wing media texts and personalities still appear in his weekly Sydney Morning Herald articles and are sometimes published in the Murdoch papers also. His biggest target, John Pilger, described Henderson’s role and his institute thus:

Since renamed the ‘Sydney Institute’, it is similar to the ultra-right ‘think tanks’ which devoted themselves during the Reagan years to monitoring and ‘naming’ American liberal politicians and journalists and to exploring methods and avenues of propaganda.1081

Henderson’s attacks on the Left have continued unabated. History remains the most common subject. As Stuart McIntyre noted in History Wars (2003), the Australian History Wars heated up in the early 1990s as Australian conservatives followed the

1078 Ibid., p.24 1079 Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, 1994, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, London: Vintage, p.26 1080 Ibid., pp.26-28 1081 John Pilger, 1989, A Secret Country, London: Vintage, p.228

286 lead of their American counterparts. According to McIntyre, Henderson was one of those leading the backlash.

Gerard Henderson...widened the charge. ‘Australians are variously portrayed as racist, sexist, materialist and with very little culture. This is alienated history at its worst.’ Henderson also returned the blame to the history profession, since ‘so much of our history is taught by the alienated and discontented.’ It was at this low-point in the fortunes of Australian conservatism that Henderson issued his rallying cry: ‘It is time to junk guilt and alienation. Down with the falsification of Australian history.’1082

McIntyre describes Henderson’s final “rallying-cry” as having “the ring of a Stalinist ideologue calling down the wrath of the people on dissident intellectuals.”1083 Andrew Riemer described Henderson’s conduct during the Demidenko affair similarly. In The Demidenko Debate (1996), Riemer described Henderson’s approach as “uncomfortably reminiscent of the rhetorical and polemical devices totalitarian systems employ to discredit those who hold opinions falling outside narrowly- defined margins of acceptability.”1084 We shall return to Henderson’s notorious style towards the end of the chapter.

As observed in Chapter Three, McIntyre has demonstrated that the conservative discourses adopted by Henderson and other ‘History Warriors’ were closely derivative of the American neoconservatives. It is worth repeating McIntyre’s view at this point:

[Australian conservatives] took the offensive by adopting tactics that had been worked out in the United States. First, in the early 1980s, they took up the American neoconservatives’ charge of new class guilt. This cast the historians along with other intellectuals as privileged and disaffected radicals intent on blackening the past and making Australians feel ashamed. Second, in the early 1990s, they followed the American discovery of political correctness. This allowed them to accuse a malevolent intelligentsia of imposing its own views on the rest of the country and preventing any disagreement.1085

1082 Stuart McIntyre and Anna Clark, 2003, The History Wars, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, p.128 1083 Ibid, p.4 1084 Andrew Riemer, 1996, The Demidenko Debate, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.156 1085 McIntyre and Clark, op. cit, p.220

287 As the aforementioned complaints against ‘alienated’ history reflect, Henderson, like his former boss Howard, loathes the “black armband” view of history projected by the Left. In a precursor to his 1993 assault on Left historians, on the back of the Bicentenary debate, Henderson suggested in his 1990 book, Australian Answers, that Australians should find pride in our history rather than focusing on past wrongs. He made the same argument in some of his columns and in Media Watch.1086 In one Media Watch piece he dismissed Pilger as “a fossilised survivor of the Australian left of the 1960s and 1970s”, and attributed to him “self hatred, conspiracy ridden exaggerations and serious factual errors.”1087 In the same critique he attributed to the “left-inclined intelligentsia” a “self-loathing”, while applauding the “overwhelming majority of Australians…who rightly feel proud about our country and its achievements.”1088

As we saw in our discussion of Robert Manne, Aboriginal history has been one of the central sticking points throughout the ‘History Wars’. In Australian Answers Henderson addressed the matter thus:

The treatment of the Aborigines is a sad chapter in Australian history. Yet it should not over-ride the very real achievements of the early Australians in establishing a prosperous society in a hostile environment and leading the world in economic basic democratic rights for men and women.1089

In this piece Henderson also denied suggestions, voiced more loudly in the late 1990s, that Aborigines were victims of genocide. “There was no policy of genocide but killings did occur and a large proportion of the Aboriginal population was devastated by diseases, the most serious of which was smallpox.”1090

Progressive Conservatism Henderson, like Manne, describes himself as a ‘conservative’ thinker. His position differs considerably from that of Manne and other conservatives on some issues though (particularly the economy). Interviewed in 1990 he said: “I am conservative,

1086 See for example Henderson, “Australia must reassess its history and learn to be proud of its achievements”, op. cit., and Henderson, “The Ten Left Wing Myths of Mr. Pilger”, op. cit., p.16 1087 Henderson, “The Ten Left Wing Myths of Mr. Pilger”, op. cit., p.13 1088 Ibid., p.16 1089 Henderson, Australian Answers, op. cit., p.5 1090 Ibid.

288 but probably after the American model, not the Australian, which labels you reactionary or interventionist.”1091 Curiously, despite identifying himself as conservative, his views on social issues, particularly those involving race, often reveal a man of rather ‘progressive’ sensibilities. In this regard his conservatism is similar to the peculiar progressive conservatism of Manne, not that the two are likely to welcome this comparison (as we shall see). Accordingly, though Henderson followed the New Right path after the Conservative Split, he often finds himself in conflict with the dominant stream of Australian neoconservatism found in the post- Manne (Paddy McGuinness) Quadrant crowd and at rival think tanks like the Institute of Public Affairs. Many of these very public disagreements were (and are) over immigration, multiculturalism and the Republic.

Henderson’s progressiveness can be seen in his critiques of the modern Liberal Party in Menzies’ Child (1994) and A Howard Government? (1995). In Menzies’ Child he criticised the Liberals of the early 1990s, under the leadership of Alexander Downer, for being out of touch. It suffered from looking “outdated” and “narrow”1092 and desperately needed to “modernise”, particularly on issues like the Republic and multiculturalism. He said while the party can be depicted “as locked in the 1950s on the monarchy and attitudes to Asian immigration, [it] cannot present an image of a thoroughly modern Liberal Party.”1093 As former Liberal politician Brendan Darcy has commented, “Henderson’s conviction” is to “embrace multiculturalism and to live in a republic with a globalised economy.”1094

He has adopted the general attitude that unless the Liberal Party adopts his convictions it will remain out of step with the general march towards Progress.1095

Henderson explicitly supported Australia becoming a republic in the late 1990s, most regularly in the lead up to the referendum in late-1999. His support for the republican movement is one issue upon which his Irish-Catholic background seems to have been influential. Indeed, according to Manne, “Irish Australians are instinctively both anti-

1091 Kent,op. cit. 1092 Henderson, Menzies’ Child, op. cit., pp.25-6 1093 Ibid., p.27 1094 Darcy, op. cit. 1095 Ibid.

289 British and anti-monarchy.”1096 And though Manne has perhaps overstated the point, anti-British and anti-monarchy sentiments have been common in Henderson’s columns.

Throughout the past decade, Henderson has often advocated that Australia abandon its attachment, both symbolic and legal/constitutional, to Britain and the monarchy.1097 He made this point quite frequently in 2000 and 2001 as Australia was preparing to celebrate 100 years of Federation. In one provocative column from 1996 he argued that unnaturalised Britons should be stripped of their Australian voting rights until they take out citizenship.1098

Another of the ‘progressive’ themes Henderson championed throughout the 1990s was multiculturalism. This is a theme his wife, Anne, has also written on.1099 Both are renowned for their support for the multicultural project and their sympathetic approach to migrant communities.1100 In Australian Answers, Gerard was critical of White Australia and one of its (supposed) justifying views that, as he puts it, “Asians work too hard and, in doing so, threaten the social cohesion of the land of the long weekend.”1101 Henderson sees most migrant cultures as socially beneficial, suggesting the only reason they have attracted resistance is “because they were regarded as too industrious”.1102

Last chapter it was noted that Henderson endorses greater immigration. It was also noted that columnist Paul Sheehan believes this position is suspicious given the Sydney Institute’s known links to development companies. However, though there is a definite congruency between the institute’s developer sponsors and Henderson’s

1096 Robert Manne, 1993, “Why I Am Not a Republican”, The Way We Live Now, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1998, p.124 1097 See for example his Sydney Morning Herald columns: “A right royal embarrassment” (August 31, 1999); “Black armband view of future” (October 19, 1999); “Royal visits: time for a change” (February 29, 2000); “Changing job description of our royal visitor” (March 28, 2000); “Recasting our symbols” (June 13, 2000); “Wind of change ruffles Liberal thinking” (December 5, 2000); “We can go forward without looking back” (January 23, 2001); “A party where the birthday girl stays away” (June 12, 2001); “Will Charles declare his intentions to our PM?” (August 28, 2001); “Butler exposes more than secrets” (November 12, 2002); “Whose party is it, anyway?” (March 14, 2003) 1098 Gerard Henderson, “Brits – no right to the Aussie vote”, The Sydney Morning Herald, September 10, 1996, p.13 1099 Anne Henderson, op. cit. 1100 Wallace, op. cit. 1101 Henderson, Australian Answers, op. cit., p.9 1102 Ibid., p.7

290 pro-immigration views, it is most likely that these views are more ideological or theoretical than opportunistic.

One expression of Henderson’s pro-immigration views is his attack on the Liberal Party’s immigration policies in Menzies’ Child, where he laments that the Liberal Party “intentionally or otherwise – sends out a message that immigrants are not really wanted.”1103 In particular he was dismayed at the party’s resistance to Asian immigration1104, which gained most controversy in the 1980s when as opposition leader John Howard tried to incite and capitalise on Australian apprehensions towards Asian migrants.1105 As John Pilger noted in A Secret Country (1989), many Australian conservatives were in fact critical of Howard’s “opportunism” in this affair. They saw the move as dangerous for two reasons, both economic. Firstly, the explicit remarks about Asians were viewed as potentially damaging to Australian business interests in the region. According to Pilger, racialism, particularly attacks on Asians, was seen to be “bad for business”.1106 Secondly, many conservatives believed immigration generally was, by contrast, “good for business”.1107 Pilger notes that in the 1980s leading Australian businessman John Elliott had “publicly expressed his enthusiasm for immigration as a vital stimulant to the economy.”1108

Peter Mares provided a good explanation of the radical liberal approach to immigration in Borderline (2001), his analysis of the asylum seekers affair of the early-2000s. According to Mares, “radical economists recognise that open borders would maximise the return to capital.”1109

The radical economist argues that, if we are really serious about competitive global free-trade, then we must unshackle all the factors of production, including labour. Without the unimpeded movement of workers around the world, talk of a global free-market is disingenuous.1110

1103 Henderson, Menzies’ Child, op. cit., p.26 1104 Ibid. 1105 Pilger, op. cit., p.128 1106 Ibid. 1107 Ibid., p.127 1108 Ibid. 1109 Peter Mares, 2001, Borderline, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, p.235 1110 Ibid.

291 Accordingly, “many of the most vocal critics” of the Howard Government’s asylum seeker policies were “prominent Liberal Party figures”, including radical economists like John Hewson.1111 Henderson’s support for immigration, then, is not exceptional among Australian conservatives, but reflects New Right discourses on immigration.

Like the ‘prominent Liberal Party figures’ identified by Mares, Henderson was a regular critic of the Howard-Ruddock treatment of asylum seekers. He has criticised the Howard Government’s resistance to such new arrivals repeatedly over the past few years. He has argued that despite the hysteria about boatpeople, Australia remains “relatively untouched by the international people movement phenomenon”1112, and has stated: “There should be room for a policy which is tough in sending the required message to criminally inclined people smugglers while exhibiting greater empathy to whose who make it to Australian shores.”1113

Overall Henderson remains a strong supporter of immigration and multiculturalism in Australia – something many on the political Right are not. In 2004 he attacked the Howard legacy on social policy by accusing him of having a “certain lack of empathy” for asylum seekers, and for non-Anglo immigrants generally.1114 But he is not among the Howard Government’s fiercest critics on this issue. He has defended mandatory detention, for instance. After criticising the Government in 2001 for linking asylum seekers with terrorism, he remarked that “Mandatory detention (for a limited period) makes a contribution to national security.”1115 Therefore, his perspective on this matter favours the acceptance of asylum seekers, but is not as strongly anti-Howard as the commentaries of Peter Mares or Robert Manne. His is still a more of a right-wing approach to immigration and refugees, based in part on economics, rather than a left-wing or ‘bleeding heart’ perspective, founded primarily on humanitarian or moral principles.

1111 Ibid., p.237 1112 Gerard Henderson, “For the ALP, a refugee solution is hard labour”, January 29, 2002, http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/290102.htm (Accessed July 21, 2004) 1113 Gerard Henderson cited in Mike Seccombe, “Where strangers are now welcome”, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 10, 2004, p.23 1114 Gerard Henderson, “It’s time to put away the big stick”, The Age, May 25, 2004, http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/24/1085389331037.html (Accessed July 21, 2004) 1115 Gerard Henderson, “Leaky boats no haven for sleepers”, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 19, 2002, p.13

292

The Demidenko Affair Another instance in which Henderson would find himself in conflict with other right- wingers was the ‘Demidenko Affair’ of 1995-1996. This was also one of the 1990s cultural issues in which he featured prominently. His leading role is noted in the major books covering the debate, including Manne’s The Culture of Forgetting, Andrew Riemer’s The Demidenko Debate (1996), and The Demidenko File (1996), a collection of articles and interviews on the affair. As these studies illustrate, Henderson was one of The Hand that Signed the Paper’s (1994) most vocal, and indeed venomous, detractors. In his view, it was “a loathsome book”.1116

Henderson’s response to the book was very similar to Manne’s. Like Manne, he saw the book as intolerably anti-Semitic. He claimed it would “give comfort to racists and anti-Semites.”1117 His critique was also less literary than historical. Several of his attacks, in his columns and in an unusually large number of interviews in the electronic media, challenged the historical accuracy of the novel, saying it “contains an amoral and historically inaccurate message.”1118 In particular he objected to the ‘Judaism equals Bolshevism’ thesis, which he described as “part of the ideological baggage of every anti-Semite movement worldwide.”1119 In what was one of the issues most significant moments, he stressed this point on 27 June 1995 in a debate with the book’s author, Helen Demidenko-Darville, on the ABC’s 7.30 Report.1120

For this historical approach Henderson, like Manne, was criticised. As we saw in Chapter Eight, many thought it inappropriate to subject a literary work of fiction (or even ‘faction’) to historical critique. In fact, most of the central criticisms of Manne’s campaign against The Hand and its author were applied to Henderson. As these have been discussed earlier in the thesis, there is little point in repeating them here.

1116 Gerard Henderson, “Playing Loose with the Truth in this Work of ‘Faction’”, Sydney Morning Herald, June 27 1995, p.11 1117 Ibid. 1118 Ibid. 1119 Ibid. 1120 John Jost, Gianna Totaro and Christine Tyshing, 1996, The Demidenko File, Ringwood: Penguin Books Australia, pp.68-71

293 Again like Manne, Henderson saw in the book’s accolades evidence of an ignorant and morally bankrupt ‘literary establishment’. He too used the opportunity to reignite his old conflict with the Left, haranguing the literary community and many academics, both of whom he identified as left-wing. As Andrew Riemer observed in The Demidenko Debate:

A major undercurrent in much of the overtly political and ideological objections to The Hand that Signed the Paper...was indeed furnished by the strongly conservative intellectual hostility of such figures as Manne, [Raimond] Gaita and even Henderson towards these [left-wing] academic phenomena.1121

However, while most accepted that in attacking book, Manne, the son of Jewish émigrés, reacted from genuine alarm and concern, a common complaint about Henderson’s contribution was that it was opportunistic and self-serving. Riemer described Henderson as a “controversialist” and says he “seized the opportunity to mount a full-scale though indiscriminate attack on what quickly came to be identified as the literary establishment.”1122 Similarly, ‘postmodern’ theorists McKenzie Wark and Mark Davis suggest in The Virtual Republic and gangland respectively that Henderson, and other Old Cold Warriors (including Manne), seized upon this controversy, among others, to preserve his own relevance in the political and cultural life of post-Cold War Australia.1123 Alternately, according to John Jost, Gianna Totaro and Christine Tyshing in The Demidenko File, “Gerard Henderson has been singled out as a sort of baying hound inspired by the scent of blood and little else.”1124

By attacking Demidenko-Darville, Henderson made himself a target for many on the Right, who seized upon the backlash against the book as an example of political correctness gone mad. In fact, with Manne, Henderson became a central target for the book’s defenders. Given the tone of his columns on the matter, this is understandable. Like it was for Manne, most of the reaction to Henderson’s anti- Demidenko campaign was motivated by the Right’s distaste for ‘political

1121 Riemer, op. cit., pp.193-4 1122 Ibid., p.149 1123 Mark Davis, 1999, gangland, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.285; McKenzie Wark, 1997, The Virtual Republic, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, p.123 1124 Jost et al., op. cit., p.xi

294 correctness’. It is reflected in criticisms like Riemer’s aforementioned claim that Henderson was acting like a totalitarian, silencing dissent. In Media Watch in 1996, Henderson rejected the Right’s ‘PC’ claim as exaggerated and absurd. As he noted, those claiming free speech is being eroded are themselves prominent and highly successful public commentators – indeed, one of PC’s most vocal critics, John Howard, was Prime Minister.1125

Even further to the Right, groups like the Australian League of Rights (ALOR) were angered by the attack for clearer ideological reasons. They saw Henderson’s criticisms as part of his alleged broader campaign for Zionism and Israel. Henderson perhaps invited this row by linking the ALOR to what he viewed as the book’s racist message.1126 Another of what Henderson calls “Lunar Right” groups was the eccentric website, ‘Fairfax Are Yellow’, which described him as “something of a Zionist head kicker” and a “hired gun”. They also awarded him “the (in)famous sieg runen of the Nazi SS, who, let’s face it, were full of mercenaries just like him.”1127 Both ALOR and Fairfax Are Yellow claimed Henderson’s anti-anti-Semitism and pro-Zionism betrayed Zionist-Jewish funding for his Sydney Institute. Fairfax Are Yellow, for instance, claimed Henderson says “what [he is] told to say.”1128

One would suspect Henderson’s anti-anti-Semitism and support for Israel has a lot to do with his closeness to anticommunist Jewish émigrés Frank Knopfelmacher and Hugo Wolfsohn, his two “key intellectual mentors”, however. Moreover, as Riemer, drawing from Henderson’s wife, Anne, observed, the generation of Catholics from which Henderson comes was “intent on dissociating themselves from the anti- Semitism evident among some Catholics.”1129 (Gerard himself has explicitly attacked this anti-Semitism in a review of Mel Gibson’s controversial film, The Passion of the Christ (2004), which he warned had the potential to “inflame the prejudices of real and latent anti-Semites” even though the film itself was “not explicitly anti-

1125 Gerard Henderson, “On Political Correctness”, Media Watch, Sydney Institute, No.36, No.2 1996, p.12 1126 Gerard Henderson in Jost, et al., op. cit., p.115 1127 Fairfax Are Yellow, “Who in the Hell is Gerard Henderson?”, http://www.geocities.com/fairfax_are_yellow/henderson.html (Accessed March 16, 2004) 1128 Ibid. 1129 Riemer, op. cit., p.242

295 Semitic”.1130) Hence, whether or not there are in fact Zionist-Jewish sponsors to the Sydney Institute, his reaction to racist and anti-Semitic sentiments is more likely to have stemmed from elsewhere.

Foreign Policy: All the way with the USA From his days as a hardline anticommunist during the Cold War, Henderson has long been a strong supporter of American foreign policy. He claims to have been one of the few students who supported ANZUS while at university and, as discussed, he campaigned diligently in favour of the US invasion of Vietnam. As his commentaries on the recent Iraq War have aptly demonstrated, his confidence in American economic and military policy has not wavered in the three decades since.

Reflecting on Australia’s alliance with the USA in Menzies’ Child, Henderson stated there was “no doubt” the ANZUS Treaty of 1951 “was considered to be – and in fact was – in Australia’s national interest.”1131 This remark was in response to Left notions such as ‘Other People’s Wars’ or that Australia has long been too subservient to an imperial nanny. The reasoning behind Henderson’s pro-ANZUS stance is conventional: Australia’s support for US military action, such as in Vietnam, is the premium we paid to ensure the US would defend us against invasion.1132 During the Cold War, this would mean protecting us from the threat of Asiatic communism (as in the anticommunist ‘domino theory’).

Henderson’s continuing commitment to the US Alliance was demonstrated in his response to the Bali bombings of 2002. He argued the bombings reiterated the need for Australia to align itself with the USA, in this instance in the ‘war against terror’.1133 Henderson’s endorsements of the American ‘war on terror’ have been frequent since 9/11.1134 Most recently Henderson has championed the American

1130 Henderson, “A son’s dangerous passion, in the name of the father”, op. cit. 1131 Henderson, Menzies’ Child, op. cit., p.134 1132 Ibid. 1133 Gerard Henderson, “The Trauma of Bali”, Far Eastern Economic Review, Hong Kong, 31 October 2002, p.28 1134 See for example his Sydney Morning Herald columns: “Leftist luvvies exposed as fools“ (October 15, 2002); “Facing off with the anti-Americans“ (February 4, 2003); “US alliance no bed of roses for Mark and Tom“ (February 11, 2003); “Neighbours are now just friends“ (April 22, 2003); “Crean runs afoul of new patriotism“ (April 29, 2003); “How to bomb friends and alienate us all“ (May 20, 2003);

296 cause in relation to the Iraq War. In the lead-up to the invasion and throughout the campaign, his arguments have followed the American line closely. Indeed, he has more or less served as a mouthpiece for the Bush government. Broadly he justified the war on the benefits of toppling Saddam, though initially it was mostly about weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He was among those trying to convince the world that Saddam had stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and that, in defying the United Nations, he was the aggressor.1135 He even compared Saddam to Hitler and the US-led Coalition’s invasion of Iraq to the Allied nations’ war against the Nazis.1136 He said the West had to “stand up to Iraq”.1137

When complaints emerged about the absence of WMD, Henderson rushed to the defence of the war’s leaders. Despite evidence suggesting the war’s leaders had exaggerated and manipulated intelligence reports to justify the war, Henderson has denied throughout the campaign that “George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard were lying when they maintained, before the invasion, that Iraq still had a WMD arsenal.”1138

As the US-led forces failed to uncover WMDs, the US line was that WMD or no WMD, the war was still a just cause. The emphasis shifted to the benefits of regime change. Henderson followed the lead. He had always been espousing the benefits of regime change in Iraq but, like most other pro-war commentators, afforded it greater emphasis once the original rationale for war proved to be false. Consistently he has portrayed Saddam’s Iraq as “one of the world’s most repressive and barbarous regimes” and “evil”.1139 In December 2003, he said:

If those who opposed the Coalition of the Willing (US, Britain, Australia, Poland) had won the political debate, then Saddam would have triumphed. He would now be presiding over a regime which murders its own people, threatens its neighbours and had prevailed over the US and Britain.1140

“Bush shows he’s as good as his word“ (May 27, 2003); “Latham wises up on our links with US“ (July 20, 2004) 1135 Henderson, “How churches played into Iraq’s hands”, op. cit. 1136 Ibid. 1137 Ibid. 1138 Gerard Henderson, “No escape for war’s opponents”, December 16, 2003, http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/161203.htm (Accessed 9 July 2004) 1139 Henderson, “How churches played into Iraq’s hands”, ibid. 1140 Henderson, “No escape for war’s opponents”, ibid.

297

In May 2004 he was still arguing “the cause is still a just one”, saying “if the second Gulf war had not been fought, Saddam and his murderous henchmen would still be ruling Iraq.”1141 The comparison with the Nazis was redrawn here. By comparing Saddam to Hitler, and Iraq to World War Two, Henderson hoped to dismiss the pacifist movement as naïve and based on “simplistic” logic.1142

The evidence indicates that, on occasions, only force - or the threat of force - can achieve peace. If…war-is-not-the-answer pacifist views had prevailed in 1939 and after, the Nazis and the fascists would have conquered the world. Let’s give common sense a chance.1143

Hence, Henderson’s ‘higher’ logic is that because on one occasion (World War Two) pacifism was not the solution, it is therefore not the solution to Iraq. Robert Manne has argued against this rather fallacious logic in his columns – though not responding directly to Henderson. Manne also asserted that “claims that Saddam Hussein was a new Adolf Hitler” and that Iraq posed a Nazi-like military threat “were always implausible”.1144

A second distinguishing aspect of Henderson’s war advocacy was his frequent denigrations of the war’s opponents. These began before the war commenced. Early in 2003 he dismissed the Australian peace movement as just another fashionable lefty cause, “back in vogue”.1145 Moreover, the campaign was conducted, once again, by “alienated and/or naïve types”.1146 According to Bob Gould, Henderson also used “a kind of conspiracy theory to explain the historically unprecedented, enormous size of the demonstrations against the Iraq war.” He says Henderson has “attempt[ed] to imply that the demonstrators are not representative of ‘real Australians’ and are somehow corrupted by intellectual ‘elites’.”1147

1141 Gerard Henderson, “The cause is still a just one”, The Age, May 11, 2004 1142 Gerard Henderson, “Logical flaws in the patchy case for peace”, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 18, 2003 1143 Gerard Henderson, “Logical flaws in the patchy case for peace”, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 18, 2003 1144 Robert Manne, “The greedy right”, The Age, 13 June 2003, http://home.iprimus.com.au/ltuffin/manne.html (Accessed 9 July 2004) 1145 Henderson, “Logical flaws in the patchy case for peace”, op. cit. 1146 Ibid. 1147 Bob Gould, Workers Online, http://workers.labor.net.au/176/letters12_gould.html (Accessed April 10, 2004)

298

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation was another target. On several occasions he supported the Howard Government’s allegations of ABC bias against the war.1148 According to Manne, Henderson’s criticisms were part of an unprecedented attack on the public broadcaster by the Howard Government and the right-wing media. He said “never has a more calculated assault on the independence of the ABC been mounted.”1149 Manne called sections of the Right’s attack “McCarthy-like” – which is odd given the strength of his own anticommunism.1150

Henderson also engaged with the Catholic Church’s position on the war. In April 2003 he attacked the churches for their leading role “in what is termed the peace movement”.1151 Henderson was particularly disgusted with the Vatican’s willingness to meet with and hear out Iraqi leaders, describing this as “truly grotesque” and “vomitous”, since Saddam “murdered and persecuted Muslims and Christians alike.”1152 Gould has described him as acting “as a kind of cultural commissar for religion” on this matter.1153

Through his defences of the war and his attacks on its opponents, Henderson defended the war and its leaders at every turn. Each time these leaders’ integrity or competence was questioned by damaging revelations or accusations, Henderson produced a column defending them. This was the case for the absence of WMD and any link between Saddam and al Qaeda, when the war’s leaders were accused of ‘sexing up’ intelligence reports, when the war seemed to be descending into disaster, and with the prisoner abuse scandal. As was the case for Paul Kelly, Henderson’s Iraq War commentary championed the US line with little if any scepticism.1154

1148 Gerard Henderson, “Pig-headed ABC must expect a funds roasting”, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 July 2003 1149 Manne, “The greedy right”, op. cit. 1150 Ibid. 1151 Henderson, “How churches played into Iraq’s hands”, op. cit. 1152 Ibid. 1153 Gould, op. cit. 1154 For examples of Henderson championing the US line see the Sydney Morning Herald columns: “Sting in tale of Crean’s goodbye“ (January 28, 2003); “Logical flaws in the patchy case for peace“ (February 18, 2003); “Credibility lost amid war hysteria“ (March 18, 2003); “Labor should heed lesson of past wars“ (March 25, 2003); “Rallying around the flag is no jingoism“ (April 8, 2003); “How churches played into Iraq’s hands“ (April 15, 2003)

299

Old Cold Warrior: Polemical Style A discussion of Gerard Henderson’s role as a political commentator would not be complete without some consideration of his strident polemical style. As libertarian thinker Wendy Wedge has observed, think tank commentators “tend to be nasty, brutish and aggressive.”1155 A similar sentiment has been expressed by left-wing academic John Docker, who accused think tank commentators of dabbling in “ugliness, hatred, paranoia, of demonising anyone one doesn’t like, while always claiming ideological and moral purity and, if one can, victimhood.”1156

Henderson is an exemplar of this aggressive approach. In addition to being recognised as a leading political columnist, he has also developed a reputation for his hectoring, often abusive style. This is one of the main reasons he is often dismissed as an ‘Old Cold Warrior’. As Andrew Riemer, McKenzie Wark and Mark Davis have all observed, Henderson has carried on as if the Cold War never ended. He is the type of columnist Manne criticised for refusing to relinquish the “thoughtlessly reflexive anti-leftism” and “bitter and sneering tone” of the Cold War.1157

In The Demidenko Debate (1996), Riemer repeatedly singles Henderson out when criticising the more rabid of The Hand that Signed the Paper’s detractors. It was mentioned earlier that Riemer, like Stuart McIntyre, had compared Henderson’s approach to that employed against dissenters by totalitarian systems. He also depicted Henderson as perhaps the worst offender among those who were unable “to argue or present their misgivings in coherent literary terms, relying instead on rhetorical techniques: hyperbole, ad hominem arguments, misrepresentation, and emotionalism of various kinds, reverberating in some instances with the strident tones of fundamentalist theological invective.”1158

Criticisms like this imply Henderson is an unreformed ideological warrior. In some ways he is. He aggressively champions his causes, and, as the above observations

1155 Wendy Wedge, “Anti-democratic conservative commentators”, http://www.crikey.com.au/columnists/2002/01/21-endyrayevans.print.html (Accessed 27 May 2004) 1156 John Docker, “John Docker launches The Devil and James McAuley”, Australian Humanities Review, www.llib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-Juley-1999/docker.htm 1157 Robert Manne, “Why I Have Resigned”, Quadrant, December 1997, p.2 1158 Reimer, op. cit., pp.74-5

300 suggest, he often stoops to rhetorical tactics to undermine his opponents. Many are cheap and transparent, but combined with strength of conviction even these devices can sound convincing. Two I shall discuss here are his frequent use of ad hominem arguments and misrepresentation.

As Paul Sheehan has commented, Henderson has “a long track record of making personal attacks”1159 and an “enthusiasm for judging others”.1160 This characteristic of his style has prompted some, such as historian Michael Cathcart, to accuse him of having “stooped to name calling” and “to playing the man and not the ball”.1161 We have already seen several ad hominem arguments throughout the chapter. They included his attack on protectionism by accusing Alfred Deakin of shadiness and opportunism, and his critique of centralised industrial relations by denigrating the lazy, stupid, alcoholic buffoons in the ‘IR Club’. The same tactic has long been used in his attacks on “alienated” left-wing historians. The insinuation is of course that internal discontent has caused historians to either see only the bad in life or to use historical criticism as a means of venting frustration or taking revenge on the society which alienates them. They lack the capacity for objective assessment and are unbalanced (in more than one sense). In January 2004 Henderson was still pushing the “alienation” line in an attack on whinging expatriates and “Australian-based fellow complainers”.1162

Henderson’s fondness for ad hominem arguments was evident in his commentaries on the Iraq War. Once again Pilger was among the aggrieved. Perhaps his most notable attack, however, was against Australian intelligence dissenter, Andrew Wilkie. After Wilkie made headlines by accusing the Howard government of exaggerating intelligence reports on Iraq’s WMD, Henderson produced articles ridiculing him in an obvious attempt to destroy his credibility. His main approach was to portray Wilkie as irrational and childish. His public resignation from the Office of National Assessments was depicted as a “media choreographed” stunt to make him a “media star”. Wilkie is also compared to the ridiculous black knight

1159 Sheehan, op. cit., p.230 1160 Ibid., p.243 1161 Michael Cathcart cited in Henderson, “Name Calling”, op. cit. 1162 Gerard Henderson, “Still here, but expatriates in spirit”, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 27, 2004

301 figure from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and described as “remarkably self- indulgent” and “confused and confusing”. He is accused of believing “he has a right to travel the world” attacking the Howard Government but, like a child, becoming “resentful” and sulky when the accused “choose to defend themselves”.1163 Nowhere does Henderson seriously address Wilkie’s claims, seeking instead to discredit the man behind them.

As Robert Manne has pointed out, the Howard Government was the main force behind the right-wing campaigin to discredit Wilkie.

For his whistleblowing Wilkie was not forgiven. The Government tried to discredit him by questioning his Iraqi expertise. Then it claimed him to be psychologically unstable. Finally, by leaking a top secret Office of National Assessments (ONA) report he had written on Iraq to the right-wing journalist Andrew Bolt, it tried to suggest Wilkie’s judgement was hopelessly unsound.1164

Henderson, like Bolt, enthusiastically followed the Government’s lead.

According to leftist Bob Gould, Henderson’s attack on the world’s anti-Iraq War religious leaders followed the same pattern, in that he “[did] not really address this question seriously, but just chide[d] the religious leaders.”1165

Another related technique Henderson employs is ‘dirt digging’. He is notorious for compiling files on people. As Paul Sheehan has commented:

Be careful what you say to the Hendersons. They are the great dossier- keepers of the Australian media. Henderson collects errors, scores points. He casts more shadow than light. Many are judged, most are found wanting.1166

Compiling dossiers is something the Movement/NCC was renowned for. According to Campion, “Members were to be alert to the activities of local communists, compiling detailed files on them. ‘Every scrap of information is useful,’ said one

1163 Gerard Henderson, “Wilkie seems to believe he is beyond reproach”, Sydney Morning Herald, September 9 2003 1164 Robert Manne, “Distortion became a weapon of mass destruction”, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 June 2004 1165 Uri Avnery, “United States: Architects of empire”, Green Left Weekly, April 23, 2003 1166 Sheehan, op. cit., p.239

302 directive from headquarters’…In time, headquarters built up capacious dossiers on known communists.”1167

Henderson’s files help him locate inconsistencies of argument and to draw attention to previous mistakes. He lists errors and past ‘wrongdoings’ so that, if necessary, he may avoid addressing an opponents’ current thesis. This was one of the main angles from which he attacked Manne when the two had a public spat in 1999. He sought to discredit Manne by showing that he was a Left radical in the 1960s. Similarly, during the Iraq War he argued that France had no legitimate right to criticise the American invasion since the French wartime legacy was woeful. He also accused the French of having an “anti-Semitic tradition” and for collaborating with Hitler when France was occupied by the Nazis in World War Two, including deporting “tens of thousands of French Jews to Nazi death camps”.1168 Alleged actions of sixty years ago are used to discredit a nation today.

Henderson has also been accused of stooping to distortion and misrepresentation in his personal attacks. In The Electronic Whorehouse, Sheehan notes a few instances when people have complained, it appears justifiably, that Henderson has misquoted or misrepresented them.1169 In one example he provides, Henderson criticised the Queen Mother by quoting her out of context so that it appeared (falsely) she had endorsed Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. 1170 Similarly, Manne has accused Henderson of misrepresenting Wilkie and bending the truth in his attempt to discredit him. Manne says Henderson “misled his readers” over Wilkie’s allegations and “grossly misrepresenting the position of the Howard government”. He calls Henderson’s attack on Wilkie unjustified and “absurd”, and concludes that “it is not Andrew Wilkie but Gerard Henderson who has sought to obfuscate and mislead.”1171

1167 Campion, Rockchoppers, op. cit., p.108 1168 Gerard Henderson, “French have much to be humble about”, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 June 2004, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/31/1085855500038.html (Accessed 9 July 2004) 1169 Sheehan, op. cit., pp.240-2 1170 Ibid., pp.240-1 1171 Robert Manne, “Robert Manne responds to Henderson”, Overland, http://www.overlandexpress.org/173correspondence.html (Accessed 8 July 2004)

303 Conclusion One interesting feature of Henderson’s social and political thought is that it is unconventional enough to ensure that while he has made many intellectual enemies, he has made few identifiable allies. Like Manne, he formed alliances with anticommunist Right during the Cold War, but broke from many of them during the Conservative Split. Within the New Right he was initially closely aligned to the neoconservatives, but his ‘progressive conservatism’ has alienated him, like it did Manne, from the neo-cons. And he has managed to alienate others with progressive social views, like Manne and commentators from the Left, because of his contempt for ‘socialist’ economics and the Left generally. There are few groups he has not managed to distance himself from. Of course, his hectoring, polemical style and penchant for personal attacks have been crucial in facilitating this.

Given the nature of his views and the ferocity of his attacks, it is easy to see why Henderson and his Sydney Institute have become so successful. He expresses views the business community want heard and, as his prominence reflects, he is adept at getting his point across. He, like other effective think tank commentators, performs a function the corporate sector is willing to sponsor. This is not to say that Henderson shifts his opinions according to who is paying the bills, but he does champion causes beneficial to those who sponsor him – which is why they sponsor him in the first place. He is, as his arch-enemy John Pilger has observed, an “ideological messenger”.1172 But because he operates with intellectual independence, regularly provides social criticism, is highly regarded and considered authoritative on several subjects, he nonetheless operates as one of Australia’s most prominent and influential public intellectuals.

1172 Pilger, op. cit., p.228

304 Chapter Eleven: Conclusion to Thesis In looking at intellectuals in the Australian press, this thesis has addressed a number of key questions. Do intellectuals write for the papers? If so, who are they? What do they write? And what functions do they perform? It has addressed these questions by analysing the ‘intellectual’ in the press on three levels. Part One established who intellectuals are and how they contribute to public life via newspapers. Part Two examined, firstly, three distinct types of public intellectual in the press, and looked, secondly, at the contribution of three prominent press intellectuals to Australian life.

The notion of the ‘intellectual’, or the ‘public intellectual’, is not something discussed often in Australian political and cultural life. While some academics and other ‘educated’ individuals have shown interest in the topic, for many the idea is irrelevant, if not ostentatious. As Robert Dessaix quipped in 1998, while the term ‘intellectual’ is worn as a badge of honour in some countries, “Any Australian whose name was included in a ‘Dictionary of Australian Intellectuals’ would very likely sue for libel.”1173 But Dessaix also pointed out that there is nothing intrinsic to ‘intellectuals’ that should make the term so discomforting, even slanderous, in the Australian context. On the contrary, “the signs of enthusiasm for ideas on the part of the Australian public…are strong.”1174 He argued that rather than a general antipathy towards ‘ideas’ or intellectual leadership, Australians’ discomfort with the notion of ‘the intellectual’ reflects the widespread feeling that the term is, as Gerard Henderson put it, “pretentious”.1175 It is the perception that the label is used by certain thinkers as a form of self-congratulation and self-praise. According to Dessaix, “What Australians are presumably deeply mistrustful of in the intellectual arena is the self- declared intellectual, the self-professed tall poppy, rather than the activities of tall poppies themselves.”1176 If indeed this is the case, that Australians are not necessarily antipathetic to ideas or intellectual leaders, then there is no reason that, if analysed from a different angle, scholarship on ‘intellectuals’ cannot spark interest in Australia. This study is an attempt to look at ‘intellectuals’, particularly ‘public intellectuals’, from a different perspective.

1173 Robert Dessaix, 1998, Speaking Their Minds, Sydney: ABC Books, p.6 1174 Ibid., pp.6-7 1175 Gerard Henderson cited in Angela Bennie, “Missing in action”, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 23, 2003 (Accessed online at www.smh.com.au, October 4, 2004 ) 1176 Dessaix, op. cit., p.8

305

Redefining the Intellectual As Chapter Two’s literature review of previous work on the subject demonstrated, there is no single conception of the ‘intellectual’ most can agree upon. Rather, there are numerous competing definitions, many contradictory and irreconcilable. Yet of these there are two basic approaches that stand out. One is narrow, focusing particularly on genius and quality of thought. It is this conception people have in mind when they complain of the term being ‘pretentious’. As Brian Head remarked in 1988, it has been “highly attractive to many writers who identify themselves as intellectuals.”1177 The other main approach is a broad one, focusing on the performance of a particular social role in disseminating ideas.

Identifying key problems with both, a new approach was championed in this thesis which, in a way, synthesises the two. Seeing little value in the ‘qualitative’ approach other than self-aggrandisement, the ‘intellectual’ was defined, following Antonio Gramsci, according to the performance of a social function in disseminating discourse and shaping ideas – but with two key exceptions. In a departure from the Gramscian method, this dissertation advocated the insertion of two key qualifiers: independence and expertise. The principal motivation for this move was to preserve the term’s categorical distinctiveness. It was a reaction to the trend in which ‘intellectuals’ becomes so inclusive as to be almost interchangeable with ‘the elite’ or even ‘the media’, as in Brian Head and Eric Louw’s analyses, or else with the ‘expert’ or ‘professional’, as in John Frow’s. Narrowing the category, then, was in large part an attempt to establish a wholly separate category of public performer, a distinct ‘social role category’ to utilise when investigating the creation, dissemination and formation of ideas in society. Ultimately, the result was the redefinition of ‘intellectuals’ as society’s especially respected thinkers and communicators. Those who, as Foucault said of the ‘author’, produce discourse that “is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten.”1178

One consequence of this move, noted at the end of Chapter Two, is that if we are to cull the ranks of whom we consider ‘intellectuals’ we must decrease also the influence and power we ascribe to them as a caste. There are simply too many ‘meaning makers’ or public communicators in the contemporary public sphere to say, as Karl Mannheim did early last century, that intellectuals exercised “monopolistic control over the moulding of th[eir] society’s world-view”.1179 It seems undeniable that, as Jurgen Habermas implied, intellectuals’ power over ‘the masses’ has considerably diminished with the rise of mass communications. A great number of other ‘meaning makers’ compete for the public’s attention. Nonetheless, defined as they are as those held to be particularly authoritative and also

1177 Brian Head cited in Pat Buckridge, “Editors as Intellectuals”, in Ann Curthoys and Julianne Schultz (eds.), 1999, Journalism: Print, Politics and Popular Culture, University of Queensland Press, p.185 1178 Michel Foucault, 1977, Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, pp.123-4 1179 Karl Mannheim, 1936, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, p.10

306 impartial or objective, ‘intellectuals’ still wield, on an individual level at least, an influence over and above that of the great mass of communicators and ‘meaning makers’ within the contemporary public sphere. Indeed, one could hypothesise that their influence may extend also upon them. Hence, as individual commentators their impact upon public opinion and public knowledge is more marked, and it is in this sense that they constitute a society’s intellectual elite.

After articulating a new approach to defining the intellectual, this dissertation has focused on a particular kind of ‘intellectual’: the public intellectual. Dissensus on the meaning of this term is considerably smaller within the social sciences. Following Robert Dessaix (and Stanley Fish), the public intellectual was defined as a thinker who was not only impartial and authoritative, but who regularly addressed “matters of public concern, and had the public’s attention”.1180 This is, as Dessaix suggested, a definition “few will vehemently argue against”.1181

The Intellectual and the Australian Press 1 Moving from the theoretical to the actual world, the dissertation then examined the role of intellectuals in the Australian press. It addressed this topic in a number of different ways. Firstly, after drawing from a number of prominent Australian cultural commentators, Chapter Three observed that, from a demographic point of view, Australia’s caste of ‘public intellectuals’, such as those writing in the nation’s major newspapers, are remarkably similar. They are generally university graduates from the 1960s or 1970s, they are typically male, they are typically white, and they are predominantly right of centre politically. By coincidence rather than planning, the three individual political commentators studied in detail in the thesis fell into this specific demographic.

Also examined in Chapter Three was the role of newspapers in facilitating major debates for Australian public intellectuals. Though for some decades cultural commentators, perhaps most memorably Donald Horne, saw newspapers as contributing little to what has often been chided as Australia’s disappointingly mediocre intellectual culture, the press has more recently elevated its role in promoting political and social dialogue on ‘matters of public concern’. Indeed, for some commentators, the quality press stands today as one of the few forums for

1180 Stanley Fish cited in Dessaix, op. cit., p.12 1181 Dessaix, op. cit., p.12

307 intellectuals to debate publicly in Australia. Some of the major debates of the past two decades, for instance, have been conducted on the opinion pages of the nation’s quality dailies. (Some of the more hotly contested of these were summarised in Chapter Three, with additional detail appearing later in chapters Six, Eight and Ten.)

It is, as argued in Chapter Four, the op-ed section where public intellectuals feature most commonly in Australian newspapers. The political column, in particular, provides the press format through which public intellectuals communicate with the broader community, and indeed amongst themselves. By its nature this format is a personal, opinion-based engagement with public policy and the national interest. As argued in Chapter Four, public intellectuals perform through political columns an ‘educative’ function, contributing to the formation of public knowledge and public opinion. Through the political column they also exercise additional social and political influence more directly, bypassing the court of public opinion and communicating directly to the nation’s leaders.

The Intellectual and the Australian Press 2 Beginning with Chapter Five’s look at Political Journalists, Part Two of the thesis looked more closely at instances of public intellectuals in the Australian press. It did so firstly by examining in detail three Weberian ideal types, distinguished by professional background: the journalist public intellectual, the academic public intellectual, and the think tank public intellectual. These categories were never intended to cover all the types of intellectual writing for the nation’s major newspapers, but represent three of the more notable (if not common). The dissertation then analysed three individual political columnists who epitomised each category. Respectively, they were The Australian’s Paul Kelly, The Age’s Robert Manne, and The Sydney Morning Herald’s Gerard Henderson. Hence, Part Two served a dual purpose, examining both ideal types and actual instances of public intellectuals in the press.

After extensive analyses of the three ideal types it was concluded that though in varying degrees each of the three professional backgrounds produced and harboured public intellectuals, only a small cross-section from each could be rightly considered to have achieved that standing. As Chapter Five outlined, political journalists are

308 necessarily public creatures whose area of concern is public affairs. But instances of journalists ever attaining the status of a bone fide expert or authority on public affairs and advancing personal treatises on the national interest are rare. Thus only a small number of political journalists, such as Kelly and a handful of others, ever act as public intellectuals. This is not to say only a handful of political journalists are capable of performing this role, however. Rather, some eminent Australian political commentators, like The Bulletin and Channel Nine’s Laurie Oakes, actually reject it in favour of a more strictly interpretive and analytical style. It may well be argued that the more distinguished political writers, like Oakes or Michelle Grattan, are actually ‘intellectuals’ in the sense that they are impartial authorities (on political affairs), but by generally resisting the urge to critique policy and opine on ‘the national interest’, they eschew the role of public intellectual played by the likes of Kelly. Hence, though journalists are sometimes claimed to lack any significant degree of autonomy, this is not the main reason most were excluded. Indeed, the independence of senior correspondents at least, was actually affirmed (though not without reservations).

Chapter Six looked in more depth at an instance of the political journalist acting as a public intellectual through a detailed analysis of Paul Kelly’s contribution to Australian public intellectual culture. As the chapter outlined, Kelly has been acclaimed not only for his political journalism, but for his analyses of public policy and the national interest also. The Australian’s comment that Kelly is “the pre- eminent media analyst of Australian politics and our relations with the world” may be self-serving, but considering how others have responded to his work, it is not completely off-target. And even if The Australian had exaggerated further when it said “Kelly helps to form the opinions of Australia’s power elite”1182, one can safely conclude that his ideas, disseminated in the press as well as outside it, have certainly made an impact in Australian life.

Like senior political journalists, academics were demonstrated in Chapter Seven to exhibit several hallmarks of the public intellectual but to actually perform this role in rare instances. As the beneficiaries of the universities’ historical – but eroding –

1182 “Our 40 Most Influential People”, The Weekend Australian, 17 July 2004, p.13

309 separation from the state and the private sector, academics generally enjoy greater autonomy than professionals in other settings, including journalism and think tanks. They are also widely regarded as authoritative in at least one area. But, in particular contrast to the journalist, the instances of academics exercising a regular public (i.e. media) role are few. While in Australia this is partly attributable to a general apathy towards academics and their concerns, it has most often been explained in terms of academics’ apparent inability to communicate with the general public. So even when academics are authoritative enough to speak about ‘matters of public concern’, their ‘impenetrable prose’ often precludes their ability to gain ‘the public’s attention’.

One academic who has managed to remain in the public eye for many years, examined at length in Chapter Eight, is La Trobe University professor of Politics, Robert Manne. A passionate and effective commentator, Manne is perhaps Australia’s most prominent columnist, receiving both praise and disparagement in heavy amounts. The latter seems to have markedly increased since his views have become ever more identifiable with the left wing of Australian political culture. Manne’s personal journey from the Right to what passes in the press as the Left, offers a good indication of how Australian politics has shifted (rightward) since the mid-1990s. Because of his ability to communicate with a wide audience as well as other prominent commentators, Manne stands out as one of only a very limited number of Australian academics who make a consistently public contribution to the nation’s intellectual environment.

Like academics, commentators associated with think tanks tend to occupy the media spotlight only occasionally and sporadically. As outlined in Chapter Nine, they are, like academics, generally considered to be authoritative. Indeed, most have extensive academic or scholarly experience. But while academics are notoriously unskilled at writing for a broader audience, or the ‘lay reader’, ‘think tank pundits’ tend to write in more accessible style – though one which tends also to be rather aggressive. As outlined, public visibility is of great benefit to think tanks for it shows to sponsors they are capable of making a public impact. Gerard Henderson, one of the Australian media’s most visible controversialists, has long been adept at achieving such visibility. Think tank pundits, like Henderson, are also more inclined to engage with public policy. Ultimately, the biggest shadow over the ‘intellectuality’ of this type of

310 commentator is these institutions’ reliance on corporate sponsorship, which for some observers makes them little more than glorified public relations organisations. But, as argued in Chapter Nine, while it is true that think tank pundits are paid to speak on behalf of their sponsors, it seems likely that they do not necessarily tailor their discourse to fit these sponsors’ expectations. Indeed, considering they are generally pro-market to begin with, they usually don’t have to.

Such themes were considered further in Chapter Ten’s analysis of Gerard Henderson’s contribution to Australian political life. Like many other ‘think tank pundits’, Henderson has long championed free market economic principles and promoted a conservative – though not overtly ‘right-wing’ – agenda on social issues. From his Sydney Institute he has been an effective commentator (and agitator) for nearly two decades. He has been a prominent voice in various high profile public debates, typically adopting a line supportive of the conservative Liberal Party.

Through the analyses of Kelly, Manne and Henderson this dissertation attempted to offer a closer insight into two decades of Australian public intellectual life, and to the role of the public intellectuals in the press. Each commentator has contributed significantly to Australian political culture over the past twenty years. By looking closely at these contributions one gets, hopefully, a clearer impression of the issues and trends to have characterised it. These three chapters were also intended to provide a more detailed consideration of three highly influential Australians who, despite their import, have been largely ignored in serious scholarship.

Summary This thesis has investigated a largely unexplored domain, covering several areas noticeably neglected in academic scholarship. It has, as just mentioned, produced novel scholarly analyses of three important Australian thinkers whose place in Australian political culture deserves attention. Additionally, in order to elucidate the role of public intellectuals in the press, the political column as a journalism genre has been explored in greater detail than previously attempted in Australian literature. The study has also established and explained in depth three categories of public intellectual in Australia. Finally, it has redefined the ‘intellectual’, articulating a

311 conception designed to enable new approaches to the analysis of intellectuals in the media and in society. These are all original contributions to knowledge.

Overall this dissertation has demonstrated its central thesis on the role of public intellectuals in the Australian press. It demonstrated that though few of those who contribute to the Australian press are ‘public intellectuals’, public intellectuals do write for the nation’s newspapers. Typically it is via the political column, where they provide their assessments of current events and articulate their ideas on how to best address the national interest. And because public intellectuals are particularly respected and admired commentators, the discourse they generate resonates more strongly than that of other ‘meaning makers’, enabling them to contribute more powerfully to the dissemination and formation of ideas in society than their small number would otherwise suggest.

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