Alan 'The Red Fox' Reid : Pressman Par Excellence : Pressman Par Excellence [1 ed.] 9781742231334, 9781742231327

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Writer, broadcaster, historian and political commentator Ross Fitzgerald writes a regular column for The Australian newspaper and for The Spectator Australia, reviews for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Weekend Australian and regularly appears on ABC Radio, ABC TV, and on Channel 7. He has published 32 books, spanning fiction and non-fiction, most recently My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey. Stephen Holt is a Canberra-based historian and speech-writer. His biography of Manning Clark was published by Allen & Unwin in 1999. Working as a policy officer, he has drafted speeches and letters for various ministers, including Joe Hockey and Julia Gillard.

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pressman par excellence

ROSS FITZGERALD and STEPHEN HOLT

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A New South book Published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au © Ross Fitzgerald and Stephen Holt 2010 First published 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Fitzgerald, Ross, 1944– Title: Alan ‘the Red Fox’ Reid: pressman par excellence/ Ross Fitzgerald and Stephen Holt. Edition: 1st ed. ISBN: 978 1 74223 132 7 (hbk.) Notes: Includes index. Bibliography. Subjects: Reid, Alan (Alan Douglas), 1914–1987. Journalists – Australia – Biography. Australia – Politics and government. Other Authors/Contributors: Holt, Stephen, 1949– Dewey Number: 070.92   Design Di Quick Front cover Reid having a quiet smoke at his trusty typewriter, courtesy of Alan Reid Jr. Back cover Reid, 1966, courtesy of Alan Reid Jr Printer Everbest This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests. All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright holders could not be traced. The authors welcome information in this regard.

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Contents Foreword by Laurie Oakes Acknowledgments Prologue

xiii

1

A journalist is born War and postwar Capital capers Petrovied

vii

9

25

51

66

Sexing up Santamaria The House of Packer A Jungle Book

124

Telling stories

140

Faceless men

79 98

153

At home with the Liberals Power struggle Jolly John

165

181

200

In cold blood

221

McMahon PM

241

Whitlam and I

259

After the crash

284

From Fraser to Hawke

297

A last hurrah 316 Notes

333

Abbreviations and acronyms Selected bibliography

350

351

Index 358

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Foreword day or two before the 2003 Labor leadership ballot between Mark Latham and Kim Beazley, I received a phone call from Kerry Packer. ‘Who’s going to win?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Alan Reid would have known,’ he said. ‘Alan Reid would have organised it,’ I replied. Kerry laughed. ‘You’re probably right.’ That was the Red Fox. Both chronicler and performer. Always well informed, but often involved as well. Robert Menzies once scornfully dismissed him in Federal Parliament as ‘that scribbler’, but he took Reid’s advice on how to pull the 1961 election out of the fire. Reid was ahead of the pack in his reporting on the downfall of John Gorton, and then was privately thanked by Peter Howson – one of the assassins – ‘for all the help that he’d given us’. Reid was also regarded as his proprietor’s representative in Canberra – a loyal servant to Sir Frank Packer and then to Kerry. Bill Hayden, throughout his autobiography, refers to Reid as a Packer ‘hatchet man’. He is dismissed in The Latham Diaries as a ‘Packer stooge’. But Reid used to claim that he influenced the Packers more than they influenced him, and that Sir Frank frequently disagreed with what he wrote. Clyde Cameron, a friend as well as a source, described Reid as ‘a colleague of the proprietor’ rather than an ordinary working journalist. When I joined the federal parliamentary press gallery more

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than 40 years ago, I used to stand in Kings Hall in the original Parliament House and watch the wily old operator in action. He would take up station leaning on the glass case enclosing the Act that made Australia a federation (the spot was known as ‘Reid’s Rest’) and politicians of all stripes would stop to talk. They would tell Reid what was going on – he once described to me how he received a detailed rundown of a forthcoming Budget there, committing it to memory, figures and all – and he would impart bits of information that he’d picked up in return. He also dispensed advice. I thought then, and still do, that Reid combined the best and some of the worst aspects of political journalism. It is this that makes him such an interesting character in an era when media studies feature in university courses, journalism is subject to much closer scrutiny than it ever was in Reid’s day, and the role and ethics of political journalists in particular are constantly questioned. A proper look back at Reid’s career and the insights and lessons it provides is timely. ‘On the brief occasions when I enjoyed some little power it has affected me, and affected me adversely,’ Reid asserted a few years before his retirement in 1985. In using the words ‘brief’ and ‘little’ he was being disingenuous. No other Australian political journalist has exercised such influence. There was much to admire about Reid’s journalism. Paul Kelly once described him as ‘the finest newsbreaker the Gallery has ever produced’. It is hard to disagree. The scoop Reid took most pride in was his exposure of the activities of BA Santamaria – ‘of politics but not in them’ – which set in motion the process leading to the great Labor split in the mid-1950s.

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Foreword

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But it was Reid’s ‘36 faceless men’ story in March 1963 that is most remembered. It damaged Labor badly in the next two elections, before Gough Whitlam succeeded in reforming the party’s structure. What gave it such impact were the photographs Reid commissioned of then Labor leader Arthur Calwell and his deputy, Whitlam, waiting under a street lamp outside Canberra’s Hotel Kingston late at night while the machine men of Labor’s national conference were inside deciding a key policy issue. ‘That will be history in the making, my friend,’ he told the photographer. Reid knew the power of pictures. Vivid imagery, along with simple messages, marked his writing as well, making its astute political analysis accessible to a tabloid readership. When Reid made notes of an event or a conversation, he jotted down personal details of the participants – their facial expressions, what they were wearing, their body language – as well as what was said. That gave colour and life to his reporting. He told me that, early in his career, he had seriously considered giving up political journalism in favour of writing pulp fiction. But it was his contacts that made Reid exceptional. The information he got out of the Labor Party, in particular, was so detailed and accurate that myths developed about how he obtained it. Gough Whitlam referred to one such myth in a humorous speech marking the 70th anniversary of Old Parliament House: ‘My predecessor as Leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party took the innovative step of installing an en suite in a tiny space, formerly occupied by a fold-down bed, adjoining the Caucus room,’ Whitlam said. ‘The ventilation pipe went directly through the Daily Telegraph room immediately above. This was said to give Alan Reid a special

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conduit to movements and leaks from the Labor Party.’ The truth, though, was that Reid worked hard developing and maintaining contacts, wearing out shoe leather and spending hours on the phone. He also associated discreetly with Canberra’s top public service mandarins in the exclusive Commonwealth Club. Not all his best stories were handed to him by Deep Throats in politics or the bureaucracy. Often he pieced them together like jigsaw puzzles from scraps of conversation, things he read, behaviour that struck him as odd. He was a role model for young journalists – up to a point. ‘Just because you work in the zoo doesn’t mean you have to get close to the animals,’ Reid used to say. It was advice he never followed himself. He enjoyed close relationships with politicians in all parties, and unashamedly wielded influence behind the scenes as well as through his journalism. When I arrived in Canberra at the beginning of 1969, the extent to which Reid was a participant in political events rather than simply a journalist recording and explaining them was the subject of considerable discussion among his colleagues. It is very difficult to report politics without getting involved to a degree, but to some of his peers Reid seemed almost as much a political player as a journalist. There was, too, disapproval among the new generation in the Gallery of what we saw as Reid’s concentration on the Labor Party and failure to put the Coalition government under the same close scrutiny. Some years later, Reid candidly admitted in an interview on the Nine Network’s Sunday program that he agreed with some of this criticism. Because he had been an ALP member, and saw Labor as ‘the dynamic of Australian politics’, he said, it interested him more than the

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Foreword

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Liberal Party did. He added: ‘It would have been all right if I had been counter-balanced by other journalists who concentrated on the Liberals – but they were inclined to follow my example.’ In the late 1960s and early 1970s a number of us – including the late Alan Barnes, Alan Ramsey, Brian Johns and David Solomon – set out to turn the spotlight on machinations and brawling in the non-Labor parties as well as the ALP. It was a conscious attempt to provide the balance we thought had been missing, partly because of Reid’s influence. But, as I wrote when Reid died in 1987, even in this we got some of our inspiration from him. His book, The Power Struggle, a classic of political reportage, lifted the lid on the fierce manoeuvring among Coalition politicians following the death of Harold Holt in 1967. When his interest was aroused, Reid showed that the Liberals, too, had smoke-filled rooms, and were just as prone to intrigue and back-stabbing as those on the Labor side. Soon, though, his motives were again being questioned. William McMahon was a Packer favourite, and Sir Frank wanted his career protected and advanced. While Reid’s growing disapproval of Gorton was genuine enough, his role in the campaign to install McMahon in The Lodge was squarely in line with the Packer agenda – and it went well beyond mere journalism. It has been said, correctly I believe, that it is not possible to write the political history of Australia without including a section on Alan Reid. Nor is it possible to discuss the evolution of political journalism in this country sensibly without an examination of Reid’s methods, motives and influence.

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As much as the political figures he wrote about and associated with, the Red Fox deserves to be remembered. With this biography, which captures the essence of Reid’s life and career, Ross Fitzgerald and Stephen Holt ensure that that will happen. Laurie Oakes

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Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the significant contribution played by University of New South Wales Press in producing this book. In particular they would like to thank Phillipa McGuinness, Chantal Gibbs, Heather Cam and the rest of the team. The authors also wish to thank Sarah Shrubb for her excellent editorial work. Alan Reid’s son Alan Reid Jr provided valuable photographic material and unique personal information. His support is warmly acknowledged. Cheryl Yates and Peter Gatehouse ably facilitated Ross Fitzgerald’s investigation of photographic material held by Newspix/News Ltd. The authors wish to thank Laurie Oakes for writing such a fine foreword  to this biography of his former colleague. The authors would like to acknowledge the help and assistance of Phillip Adams, Rino Baggio, the late Clyde Cameron, Bob Carr, Barrie Cassidy, Wal Cranney, Graham Freudenberg, Bridget Griffen-Foley, Gerard and Anne Henderson, Sam Lipski, Jennifer Madden of the Bankstown City Library and Information Service, DD McNicoll, Chris Mitchell, Lyndal Moor, Elizabeth Nelson, Penelope Nelson, Alan Ramsey, Peter Samuel, Michael Schildberger, Brother Carl Sherrin, James Shrimpton, Sir David Smith, Mrs Joan Smith (formerly Reid), Cyril Wyndham, Barry York and Michael Zifcak.  The index is the work of Trevor Matthews.

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Prologue ‘Alan Reid was a famous journalist who worked in Canberra’s parliamentary press gallery, mostly for the Daily Telegraph, for 50 years until he retired in the 1980s.’1 The author of this single sentence summary of Reid’s long career was another famed political journalist, Laurie Oakes, writing in his nationally circulated column in the winter of 2008. A decade earlier, when accepting one of Australian journalism’s Walkley Awards (for ‘ journalistic leadership’), Oakes fleshed out Reid’s historical significance for the benefit of his peers at the gala ceremony: If you want to talk about the medium being a participant, when I was first posted to Canberra – about 30 years ago, I suppose – Alan Reid was the king. And Reidy was also the champion of being a participant in politics. He was much more a player than a journalist. He used to spend more time advising politicians than reporting on them.2

Reid died over 20 years ago, on 1 September 1987 to be precise, but his presence, on the strength of Oakes’ comments, persists in the folk memory of his journalistic successors. Reid is still remembered as well by the politicians whom journalists write about, if we are to judge by a tantalising entry in Mark Latham’s notorious political diary: ‘[Paul] Keating once told Caucus to be cautious with this bloke [journalist Mike Steketee] – he’s a protégé of the Packer stooge and infamous Labor hater Alan Reid.’3

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So Reid lives on in occasional throwaway lines from current or recently retired political and journalistic insiders; but does he deserve a full-scale biography? For anyone who is at all interested in gaining an insight into how politicians and political journalists interact on a daily basis this question would have to be answered in the affirmative. Reid was the supreme embodiment of this important relationship. He thrived in a world in which journalists rely on politicians as the primary source and subject of their stories and where politicians rely on journalists as an important resource as they try to impose their own slant on events and determine their outcome. The link between federal politicians and working journalists is, as Oakes implies, less intimate now than it was in Reid’s day, but there is a precise and immediate reason why Reid should not be forgotten. He was in his own day an acknowledged master of the frenetic form of journalism that, long after his death, remains by far the predominant way in which Australian politics is reported and allowed to unfold in the mass media. Whenever journalists collectively indulge in speculation about possible leadership challenges or pore over the latest opinion polls or uncover incriminating documents bearing on the very latest crisis or scandal involving politicians or senior bureaucrats, Reid is still there in spirit. The old pressman loved to engage in such activity and he was very good at it. Often he kept the excitement alive – or at least tried to – long after the initial story broke. He pioneered the art of writing books on current political history in Australia and made it a popular genre. Journalists are treading the same path that Reid once followed whenever they get too close to events or write news stories calibrated to the agenda of influential people in politics or

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the media. They continue to have an enduring fascination with power and with the unending attendant cycle of crises, splits and conflict between personalities. Most of the accoutrements, and even key features of Reid’s formative working environment – photographers hovering with flash bulbs, clattering typewriters, and poky newspaper offices wreathed in cigarette smoke – are gone for good, but the living essence of his world is intact. Reid and the political journalists who come after him speak the same tongue. Most of the internal crises and divisions that they report may be transitory and soon forgotten, but together all the stories they write form a continual and unbroken chain of discourse, each report crafted in the same style, with the headline stories of Reid’s day still connected, however remotely, to the 24-hour news cycle of today. Every manifestation of media frenzy keeps his voice, however hushed, alive and still audible today. For much of Reid’s career as a journalist it was hard to tell where a straight reporting of events ended and a behind-thescenes involvement in politics began. The Great Depression of the 1930s politicised him for life. Mass unemployment led him to support the Australian Labor Party (ALP) as emboldened by its NSW leader Jack Lang. Reid’s Langite connections eased his entry into the inner ranks of political journalism. To sustain his career after Lang’s appeal weakened, Reid, in the era of John Curtin and Ben Chifley, made new contacts, notably the archetypal ALP numbers man Pat Kennelly. He liked being close to power. It was good to know key political players and to be able to directly scrutinise their thoughts and deeds. Knowledge of the exact dimensions of Reid’s intimacy with politicians was best kept to insiders. In his glory days covering the beat in Canberra, Reid was known to engage in a curious

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initiation rite. He haunted King’s Hall (the central parliamentary lobby), where he loved to hover over a display case containing the Royal Commission of Assent to the Australian Constitution signed by Queen Victoria in 1900. Stirring from this favoured spot – favoured because from there everyone could be seen – he would carefully take aside any novice who had just joined the federal parliamentary press corps. The young man (and in years gone by political journalism was an exclusively male calling) would then be plied with an unvarying piece of advice. ‘Treat Federal Parliament like a zoo,’ the vulpine Reid, lean, gimlet-eyed and with the stained aureole of a confirmed smoker, would rasp. ‘It is all right to observe the animals, but you don’t eat lunch with the lions.’ It was unwise to ever get too close. Mungo MacCallum and Peter Bowers were among reporters new to Canberra who received such advice in these or very similar words, or at least heard of tyros being so counselled.4 So while Reid, as this ritual indicates, was always ready to downplay the importance of his closeness to politicians, he was also, at various times, crucially involved in political events. Observation, in his case, meshed with participation. Crises and leadership challenges were spirited up as well as reported. He had entrée to party leaders and senior figures in both the Labor and non-Labor side of politics. He conversed with Curtin and was close to Chifley. In later years he counselled Robert Menzies and Harold Holt on how to win elections. He took part in the machinations that precipitated the great Labor split under Dr HV Evatt. In the decade after 1968 he wrote unflattering books about the prime ministerial careers of John Gorton and Gough Whitlam and helped to promote leadership challenges directed against both men. As an act of loyalty to media

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proprietor Frank Packer (his employer after 1954), he presented Billy McMahon’s prime ministership in 1971–72 in as kindly a light as possible. He sought to boost Bob Hawke’s career in the 1970s by championing him as the nemesis of the Labor left. Near the end of his career, in the 1980s, he inadvertently inspired Malcolm Fraser to set up Frank Costigan’s Royal Commission into the affairs of the Ships’ Painters and Dockers Union, an inquiry which took on a life of its own, as Fraser and his Treasurer John Howard (a keen student of Reid’s writing) found, to their cost. Reid traded in information as he worked to construct a richer and wider understanding of what was going on. He needed to keep the trust of his sources and he did so by treating the journalistic code of confidentiality as sacrosanct. Politicians from all parties could swap stories with him in the knowledge that they would never be identified. At times Reid’s stories were tweaked to disguise or conceal the identity of the people who provided him with information. He gained a reputation for the utmost reliability – importantly, though, this virtue was always defined in terms of protecting the identity of his contacts rather than as a commitment to presenting an unvarnished treatment of political developments. Reid’s standing as an insider was greatly enhanced because he was linked to the Packer media empire. But any empire, if it is to last, needs to attract the support of able and proficient retainers. For such retainers, this need creates scope for autonomy and, in the case of an outstanding journalist such as Reid, freedom of expression. Reid’s professionalism and discretion – qualities evident for years before he joined Packer – were vital in allowing him to maintain his impressive network of contacts. Through them he had access to the inner workings of the

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nation’s politics and government. Reid fraternised with politicians, but he wanted everyone else to believe in the great untruth that the journalists who reported the news wrote in a segregated universe away from the political leaders who were, supposedly, directly and solely responsible for causing things to happen. He adhered, if only as an ideal, to the traditional view of the working journalist. Such a person, to be regarded as a worthwhile and credible figure, had to create the impression of being an impassive and invisible observer of exciting external incidents. If a reporter figured in the news something had gone seriously wrong. A good journalist, Reid felt, deserved a byline but otherwise should be anonymous. For this reason he never provided information during his lifetime to Who’s Who in Australia. In 1963 Reid’s legendary status expanded exponentially when he arranged for embarrassing photographs of Arthur Calwell and Gough Whitlam to be taken as they hovered outside a special national conference of the ALP. The idea conveyed was that sinister non-elected forces – Labor’s so-called faceless men – did indeed dominate and control the ALP. But the intriguing thing is that Reid was very much a faceless man himself. Though a non-elected figure, he was not averse to playing a role in influencing outcomes and decisions at the highest level of Australian politics. By the late 1960s he was helping to determine, or at least providing advice on how to determine, who should be the parliamentary leader of the federal Liberal Party. Having exploited fears of the power of faceless men, he could hardly afford to confess that he himself was one. Reid was vigilant in preserving his factitious anonymity. He dreaded exposure. Until his health gave out he regularly culled his private working papers. He did not intend to leave

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behind a paper trail for gloomy researchers to pore over. No early diaries survive and hardly any private Reid letters have turned up in research libraries. A strict separation between his private and his professional life was maintained at all times. Personal matters stayed within the confines of his home. As his career drew to an end in the 1980s, younger journalists seeking to add some colour to articles profiling Reid were fobbed up with a few miscellaneous and harmless anecdotes. And yet the absence of information is not total. It is possible to peek behind the mask. At the very end of his working life physical incapacity prevented Reid from further culling his working papers, thus ensuring that their destruction was far from complete. A mass of oral history testimony, initially embargoed, has been available since Reid’s death but has never been examined in depth. Reid looms large as a plotter in the handful of modern published Australian parliamentary diaries, notably those of Liberal MP Peter Howson. His activities as a member of the Australian Journalists Association (AJA) and, in his pre-Packer years, the ALP are documented in surviving minute books. There is the odd fascinating reference to Reid in the unpublished correspondence of leading politicians such as Menzies and Calwell. A scrapbook preserved in a repository of the National Museum of Australia in a forlorn Canberra industrial estate shows Reid, in articles written at the start of World War II, striving manfully to escape from the burden of anonymity. An unpublished semi-autobiographical novel dating from the 1950s indicates a suppressed imaginative side to Reid which, though denied conventional expression, coloured and shaped his approach to daily journalism. And then there are the stories that he tapped out on his typewriter. The accumulated product of over almost half a century

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of journalism, these are his greatest testament. His published work, ranging from racy articles in the daily press to a series of intriguing books on Australian politics, is full of hints and clues bearing on his journalistic contacts, working methods and shifting political orientation. A biography honestly derived from these sources throws considerable light on the inner workings of Australia’s federal history over five decisive decades in the 20th century. That is why it deserves to be recounted.

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A journalist is born lan Reid, when middle aged, loved confessing to people who did not know better that ‘Nobody believes me, but I’m a Pom.’1 This claim was apt to startle the unsuspecting because it was so at odds with surface appearances. To younger journalistic colleagues he seemed to be the very model of the sardonic Australian newspaperman of the old school. He was down to earth in thought, speech and deed. The homely way he greeted people (as either ‘comrade’ or ‘sport’), together with his love of stewed black tea and roll-your-own cigarettes, seemed to indicate a neat identification with the dearest traditions of popular journalism in Australia. His usual sobriquet among his colleagues – ‘the Red Fox’ – was derived from the colour of his hair and the extent of his cunning and worldly experience as a pressman. He loved tracking stories down wherever they were. There was nothing stuck up about Alan Reid. He was, surely, a home-grown product. Nevertheless Reid was, as he said, a British immigrant. His birth certificate indicates that Alan Douglas Joseph Reid was born at 13 Dorrit Street, Toxteth Park, Liverpool on 19 December 1914. His father, William Douglas Reid, was described as a steamship officer and his mother was the former Margaret Senar. From comments made by Reid in later life we learn that his mother was a Catholic and had a mixed French and English background while his father was a Protestant who traced his ancestry back to Galloway in Scotland.2 Census

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records indicate that Margaret Senar’s father at one time ran a public house; she must have met William Reid when his seagoing career took him to Liverpool. He was born in Auckland in either 18603 or a year or so later.4 On leaving school he ‘showed a great bent for a seafaring life’. At the age of 16 he was apprenticed to an Auckland shipping firm, and he later worked in the Pacific Islands trade. In 1882 he went to England, where he entered the service of a Liverpool shipping firm. On returning to New Zealand he joined the Union Steamship Company and worked in the intercolonial and India trade. In 1898 he was appointed as the examiner of masters’ and mates’ certificates in the Auckland customs house. He was a Freemason and a member of the New Zealand Natives’ Association. 5 Captain Reid’s life story took on a darker hue in 1902. In that year he was a passenger on the trans-Tasman steamer Elingamite, which sank after colliding with West Island, one of the Three Kings Islands at the northern tip of New Zealand. Forty-five people were drowned. Reid took charge of the first lifeboat to leave the ship and made a landing on the Three Kings.6 The sea was his destiny. During the Great War he commanded the Bellands, a four-masted steel barque which traded around the world. His last wartime journey ended on 20 October 1918 when the Bellands arrived in Sydney after sailing from New York.7 The future maritime writer Alan Villiers was a crewman on the Bellands when it sailed from Melbourne to France in 1921. By then schooners, from a trading point of view, were anachronistic, which was bad news for Captain Reid’s future livelihood. Villiers concluded his diary of the trip to France with an apposite comment on the decline in viability of sailing ships such as the Bellands: ‘she will probably be laid up or sold, seeing that 3 windjammers are tied together here laid up

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because there are no cargoes for them anywhere & there are also about 16 more laid up in Nantes’.8 Within a year or so the Bellands was sold to a Norwegian shipping firm; it was broken up for scrap in 1926. After he left the Bellands Reid’s father made money for a while by shipping bootleg rum to the United States – it was the Prohibition era.9 In 1924 he embarked on the fourmasted schooner Kathleen Annie. Commanded by Antarctic explorer Frank Worsley and with a cargo of 20,000 cases of crude spirits on board, it was bound for the three-mile limit off the US coast but was caught in a gale and wrecked off the Orkneys in Scotland. Reid’s father was left a cripple and could no longer work at sea. To support his family he wrote sea stories for London magazines.10 Young Alan Reid inherited his father’s literary bent. His discovery of the joys of reading was a great moment, though it occurred later than one might have expected. In later years he provided two vivid – but mutually inconsistent – accounts of his first thrilling encounter with the world of books. In oral history testimony he said that he spent most of his earliest years travelling with his seagoing father or living ashore in various ports, including in the Netherlands. Because he had such an itinerant life he received little formal schooling in his native England. When he was aged 9 or 10 it was discovered that he could not read or write properly, whereupon his father took drastic action, setting out to overcome his son’s illiteracy by immersing him in Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon’s masterpiece was Reid’s primer.11 In another account, however, published a decade earlier, he did not mention having been illiterate until the age of 9 or 10. He wrote, instead, that he was by then already a reader and was

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ready to move on to ‘grown up’ books. The first such book that he read, if we are to credit a later fragmentary account of his boyhood reading,12 was Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines. He then read Haggard’s Cleopatra, from which he obtained the vague feeling (‘hardened with advancing years’) that the adult world of politics was a male domain for which women, save for exceptional cases (which did not include the Queen of Egypt) were unsuited. Haggard’s book also conveyed the impression that politics was to a large extent a matter of secret documents and melodramatic conspiracies. This was another formative view that he never shook off. Life in England and Europe ended when doctors advised Reid’s father, by this time sick and ageing, to migrate to the balmier climate of Australia. William and his family, consisting of his wife Margaret, son Alan and two daughters (Nancy and Barbara), seem to have settled in Sydney in 1927.13 In 1928 William and Margaret Reid were enrolled to vote in the federal electorate of South Sydney, their place of residence being 41 Earl Street, Randwick. But they were not flourishing. Within a year or so William Reid’s health had collapsed. He was sent to the State Hospital at Liverpool. He suffered from chronic myocarditis and chronic bronchitis, and died on 26 November 1932. His family was left impoverished, and as a result was forced, Reid later told an interviewer, to move from Randwick to crime-ridden Underwood Street in Paddington.14 Reid’s formal education in Australia began in church-run schools, reflecting his mother’s French Catholic heritage. He attended St Francis of Assisi School at Paddington, where he won one of five bursaries available. This enabled him to board for three years at St Patrick’s College in Goulburn. A lingering English accent caused him to be dubbed ‘Chum’ by fellow

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students at his new school. These included Jimmy Sharman, later of show boxing fame, who remembered Reid as ‘a nice guy’ who was ‘very popular’ despite sounding funny. Reid was not always a force of harmony, however. He proved to be a divided spirit at St Patrick’s: sometimes he was a quiet and studious autodidact who loved reading, and at other times he was a mischievous anarchic Ginger Meggs (he too was a redhead). Books, Reid discovered, inspired both silent contentment and rebellious mayhem. At St Patrick’s Reid progressed from the scepticism of Gibbon to bumptious atheism, or at least agnosticism. He refused to attend chapel, which led to a quarrel with the headmaster. In 1930 Reid received straight Bs in History, Mathematics, Latin, French, Chemistry and English for his Intermediate Certificate. (The B in English was a bit of a blow given that he was a ‘constant reader’.)15 In 1931 Reid enrolled for the Leaving Certificate at Waverley College in Sydney, where his classmates included Con Wallace, later a Sydney municipal politician, and Frank Browne and Norm Gallagher, both fated to be journalists. His defiant ways continued, and he was dobbed in for reading Karl Marx’s Das Kapital instead of Shakespeare in class. Eventually he decided to wag classes, preferring to work with his pal Norm Gallagher in the stables at Randwick racecourse; he had, after all, run all the gambling games at school. He was a cheeky customer, confident that he could overcome any adverse results of his larrikin ways through a mixture of luck and last-minute bursts of studiousness. And indeed, in 1932 he obtained his Leaving Certificate.16 By now the Great Depression had well and truly set in. Amid the deepening gloom Reid, already fascinated with politics,

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looked for a saviour as the nation succumbed to debt and mass unemployment. The mantle of heroism was bestowed upon the Labor Premier of New South Wales, JT (Jack) Lang. Reid and his mates at the Randwick stables, their ears pricking up whenever they heard news about Lang on the wireless, ‘all had the revolutionary mood’.17 Reid attended the mass meeting held in Moore Park, after Phillip Game, the Governor of New South Wales, dismissed Lang, where the atmosphere was electric. Reid joined the ranks of the unemployed when he finished school. He later recalled that he was unemployed and itinerant for around two years.18 Though this claim may well be exaggerated (he got his Leaving Certificate in 1932 and joined the newspaper game, as we shall see, in mid-1933), he undoubtedly did lead a Grapes of Wrath-type existence for months on end during and after the fraught Bodyline summer of 1932– 33. Often hungry and sleeping under bridges, he hiked around the backblocks of New South Wales and Queensland in search of any casual job. He worked as a cattleman and on a dairy farm and dug drains and trenches.19 A life of job-seeking did wonders for Reid’s social skills, as he learnt to mix with people from widely different backgrounds. His political education continued apace as well. On one occasion in the Riverina he urged a dozen or so fellow unskilled labourers to stand up for their entitlement to overtime pay, but their action was futile because there were so many unemployed workers willing to replace them.20 This drifting life among the unemployed ended when, at the age of 18 or 19, Reid returned to his widowed mother. Back in the city he secured temporary employment, first as a liftman and then as an office boy with the shipping agent HC Sleigh. He hoped to emulate his father by taking up a maritime career,

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but the appeal of politics was starting to grow as well. For a while he frequented Communist Party clubrooms in Darlinghurst, but he was expelled after challenging and then getting into a fight with one of the official speakers. The Communist Party, he speedily concluded, was just as dictatorial as the Catholic Church.21 Reid’s employment prospects took a decisive turn away from the sea when his old school chum Norm Gallagher suggested that being a copy boy with Sydney’s Sun newspaper would be ‘a wonderful racket’, as it would allow him to make money on the side from poker games. No less a person than Robert Clyde Packer, who until June 1933 (when health considerations forced him to resign) was the managing editor of Associated Newspapers, which published the Sun, personally took him on as a trainee.22 Such was Reid’s induction into the wonderful world of journalism. A continual buzz of excitement energised the copy boys who worked at the Sun in the 1930s. Reid felt that he was part of a special breed. Copy boys were, as he later noted, ‘a colourful lot’, and imbued with great expectations. In 1932 the future bestselling author Paul Brickhill took a job as a Sun copy boy at the suggestion of his friend Peter Finch, the future movie star. (Finch started off as a printer’s devil at the Sun, where he was later assigned to a famed eccentric, George ‘Doggie’ Marks.)23 At the age of 16 D’Arcy Niland worked as a copy boy for the Sun before hitching his swag and heading for the outback. Bill Hudson, with a career as author, documentary film maker and foreign correspondent ahead of him, became a Sun copy boy in 1930, aged 14. His obituary in 2002 described him as ‘the quintessential Australian’; the chiacking that, as a good copy boy, he engaged in was evidence of this. Everything was so

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vivid. ‘Copy boys were paid a pound a week to race back to the Sun’s splendid new pink-faced building in Elizabeth Street with news reports written in longhand by jaunty journalists covering State parliament, the courts, the wool sales, the stock exchange and the waterfront,’ Hudson later recalled.24 Reid was as ambitious as his peers. Most copy boys at the Sun, according to Hudson, wanted to make the Jimmy Olsenlike transition from copy boy to cub reporter. That was the glittering prize. They were eager and determined. Competition for recognition was fierce. The hurdle to be overcome was not diffidence but a shortage of opportunities to acquire serious journalistic experience. There seemed to be a quantum leap between running errands and writing by-lines. The copy boys complained that they ‘lacked a window in which to display [their] wares’.25 Happily, the Sun had a guardian angel for them, in the person of the actress turned journalist Mary Marlowe. As ‘Dorothy Dix’, she had a column in the Sun in which she provided thousands of caring replies to letters from the lovelorn. Miss Marlowe had a strong social agenda. No feminist, she feared that unless something were done women and girls would in time take over many of the jobs performed by men. She saw it as her duty to develop the skills of young male employees to prevent them ending up on the scrap heap. With this end in mind she encouraged the copy boys at the Sun to produce an in-house journal. By writing for and editing such a journal they would demonstrate and develop their budding journalistic abilities and thus increase their future employability. The result was Sun Junior; Miss Marlowe was the mentoring angel. Copies were sold to staff on Friday mornings. It was ‘an impertinent, and an entirely unofficial, organ’.26 Miss Marlowe enlisted Reid as one of her surrogate sons.

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His not yet having lost what she took to be the traces of a Scottish accent (his native tongue was in fact Liverpudlian) appealed to her romantic side. He was ‘the brightest star’ in a debating club associated with Sun Junior. A page could always be filled up with what he had said at the last debate. It was hard to think of a better way to attract the attention of the people who mattered at the Sun. Miss Marlowe’s encouragement paid off when Reid became the second Sun Junior reporter to gain a cadetship. When he heard the news he raced upstairs to Miss Marlowe’s office, where he was allowed to use her telephone to tell his mother of his good fortune.27 Reid, sadly, failed to acknowledge Mary Marlowe’s role in helping to kickstart his journalistic career in the accounts of his career that he gave to oral history interviewers. His teenage vulnerability and dependence on a consoling older unmarried woman apparently did not sit well with his mature view of himself as a hardboiled working journalist. Perhaps he felt it was slightly embarrassing, and was best passed over. Received wisdom at this time, which Reid did not question, was that a woman’s role centred on motherhood and the home. Public life and paid employment were male preserves. Married women could not, and indeed should not, hope to work in a respectable occupation; spinsters who did were condemned to be sexless, in every sense of the word. The mentors whom Reid did acknowledge in later years were all male. The first was RC Packer. There was also Walter Hamilton, who later joined the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s (ABC’s) news service but who was a Sun subeditor when Reid first met him. Hamilton donated prizes for the best contributions to Sun Junior and Reid later claimed that his own interest in journalism only really began after he started

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winning these prizes. Beating competition from the other copy boys for Hamilton’s prizes was a cherished achievement, as another copy boy (Paul Brickhill) later also attested.28 Hamilton added further spice to the competitive spirit of the copy boys by funding the debating society prizes that Reid tended to win. Unlike Miss Marlowe, he received generous recognition when Reid later recalled his progression up from the ranks of the copy boys.29 Once appointed, Reid performed the standard array of work expected of a cadet reporter. He covered the stock exchange and accompanied fellow cadets Wally Fingleton from the Daily Telegraph (the younger brother of the test cricketer and future fellow Canberra journalist Jack Fingleton) and David McNicoll from the Sydney Morning Herald on early morning forays to the markets to report on the price of fish, vegetables and grain.30 The shipping news was another stamping ground for tyros; in Reid’s case the impact was deep and decisive. The seamen’s strike of 1935–36, in which the up and coming militant Elliot V Elliot was involved, sparked an interest in trade union activities among maritime workers that was to last until the end of his career. Cadets also were expected to work as police roundsmen, covering murders, and accidents. In his third year as a cadet Reid covered a jewellery robbery in North Sydney. He was exultant when a crossed wire in a phone call to the police headquarters enabled him to get vital information about the crime.31 Getting a good story was everything for Reid, as it was for any keen young pressman. He never bothered to conceal his ambition. On rainy days he would come to work dressed as a hotshot reporter, wearing a hat and a long raincoat pulled up around his ears. When his auburn hair was revealed he cut an

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even more striking figure.32 A student of the Depression years has referred to ‘the grey mass of political apathy’ that prevailed once the worst of the economic crisis was over.33 If such was the attitude of most people at the time, it was not one that Reid shared. His political connections strengthened as the decade progressed. Eager to support Jack Lang, he had joined the dominant pro-Lang section of the NSW ALP shortly after leaving school. 34 He started to acquire an impressive range of acquaintances. An early local political hero seems to have been Solomon (‘Snowy’) Walsh, who at various times in the early 1930s served as president of the Randwick State Electorate Council and secretary of the Central Kensington branch of the ALP. Eventually, Walsh sat on the state executive of the party. Walsh was elected to the Randwick Municipal Council in the local government elections of December 1934 but his career was short; though still a young man, he succumbed to pneumonia barely five months later. In a by-election to fill the resulting vacancy FD Kelly, a Lang supporter, was elected. It was through the municipal operations of the Lang machine that Reid got his first close look at how politics operated. He was not old enough to vote until the end of 1935 (the voting age was 21 at that time), but even before then his Randwick ALP connections had led to his acquiring an impressive political contact: on 30 May John Curtin, not yet Opposition Leader, sent a letter of condolence from Perth to Eileen Walsh, assistant manager at the Hotel Canberra, after his ‘friend Reid’, in a ‘telephonic talk’, alerted him to her brother Solomon’s death.35 Reid was itching to move on to political reporting. His keenness impressed the Sun’s Canberra bureau chief Otto Olsen, who was on the lookout for a good cub reporter, but Reid’s

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appointment was not a wholly straightforward affair. Tom Gurr, the news editor, was doubtful, having relegated Reid to the task of captioning photographs after the young man had turned up for work drunk. In the event Gurr agreed to send Reid to Canberra to work under Olsen, on condition that he would not write anything for six months. Reid was to phone in all the stories produced by the Canberra bureau.36 He was now a cog in the march of new information technology. The introduction of bakelite table phones in the early 1930s had made telephonic news gathering easier; copy could now be phoned in to the editorial office close to edition time or when news broke.37 Not having to write stories turned out to be a boon for Reid. After he phoned in stories from his colleagues he had plenty of time to read through all the recent newspaper stories relating to developments in government policy and political machinations. The knowledge that he built up as a result of this intensive study was a powerful asset in his new career in political journalism.38 Federal Parliament had been meeting in Canberra for just on a decade when Reid joined the press gallery in his probationary capacity in 1937. The infant capital had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants and seemed to be stuck in the middle of nowhere, its isolation accentuated by the Great Depression, which had crippled investment in facilities and infrastructure. Whenever Parliament met there were just over 100 elected politicians in town, their doings chronicled by a score or so of parliamentary journalists. Intimacy and ease of access characterised this microscopic world. Parliamentarians and journalists toiled together in Parliament House. The Prime Minister of the day met journalists for informal briefings twice a day.

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Access to lesser ministers was just as unregulated. Endless gossip was exchanged in the corridors of the parliamentary precinct. Politicians and reporters drank together, fraternised on the Parliament House veranda and went on picnics and fishing trips together. When they travelled interstate they went on the same train and stayed in the same hotel.39 The tranquil façade of the bush capital was deceptive. Infighting of one sort or another contradicted its appearance of pastoral innocence. A rebellious WM (Billy) Hughes brought about the defeat of the non-Labor government of Stanley Bruce and Earle Page on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1929, and two years later the Scullin Labor government suffered a similar fate when a group of pro-Lang members likewise crossed the floor. Parliament House was a hotbed of intrigue and gossip, and the division between the politicians and the correspondents who were writing about them became blurred. As governments rose and fell journalists often found themselves intimately involved in action behind the scenes. Provided management or the proprietor of the newspaper they were writing for did not disapprove of what they were doing – and this was a crucial condition – they could hope to influence events in Canberra as well as merely write about them. The power of the press was on show during the various political crises that accompanied the Great Depression. In 1931 a group of Melbourne businessmen induced Joe Lyons to leave the Labor Party and preside over the formation of the United Australia Party (UAP). That cabal included Keith Murdoch of the Herald & Weekly Times Ltd. The Murdoch journalist covering federal politics, Joe Alexander, was in on the act; the political stories he wrote for the Melbourne Herald were intended to boost Lyons and discredit the Labor Party. Alexander was

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responsible for the publication of the text of cables from London in which Prime Minister Scullin expressed concern about his restive Labor caucus. After the UAP assumed office in 1932, Alexander boasted in his diary (which has, fortunately, survived) that ‘Everyone is saying at Canberra that I have put Lyons in as Prime Minister. It is more than half true.’40 Alexander felt increasingly uncomfortable once the imperious Robert Menzies, elected to Federal Parliament in 1934, emerged as the up and coming man of the UAP, but his employer, Keith Murdoch, regarded the ambitious Victorian as a saviour when the UAP’s fortunes began to sag. In 1938 the press magnate supported the destabilisation of Lyons. Murdoch’s Herald group promoted the idea of Menzies taking over as Prime Minister.41 Let us never forget that Reid was an innocent when he first worked in Canberra. His mature incarnation as the vulpine guardian of political secrets lay far in the future. For the moment he was still a raw initiate, and the wily veterans of the parliamentary circus could be intimidating. For years to come Billy Hughes, in particular, scared him, if we are to believe Jack Fingleton, one of Hughes’ numerous press secretaries.42 Intimacy and experience needed to replace awe if Reid were to succeed. Reid’s training was soon expanded, though, as he was asked to cover proceedings in the Senate.43 The Senate, because the Lyons government had a majority, was an impotent appendage of the House of Representatives and as such could be entrusted to a novice. The Senate might be a sleepy backwater, but it was soon apparent that the fevered atmosphere elsewhere in Parliament House when members were sitting was very much to Reid’s liking. There was no holding him back. The Sun’s six-month ban

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on his writing stories when it first sent him to Canberra quickly fell by the wayside.44 Reid fitted in well and soon was displaying skill in the vital journalistic art of developing good contacts. These early contacts reflected his political views. Still ‘a mad Langite’,45 he gravitated to Lang’s minions in the federal Labor caucus. They were led by JA (‘Stabber Jack’) Beasley, the man who, aided by colleagues such as Eddie Ward, masterminded the defeat of the Scullin Labor government in 1931. For the rest of the decade NSW Labor was convulsed by enmity between the supporters of Lang and their factional foes, such as EG (‘Red Ted’) Theodore and Ben Chifley. At the first Federal ALP Conference that Reid covered (in 1939), the main business at hand was the battle between pro- and anti-Lang forces in New South Wales. The Langites were a good source of news. Reid was impressed by Beasley’s ability to manipulate Question Time to maximise pressure on ministers.46 For a while Reid was ‘perilously dependent’ on the Langites, as they were his principal source of inside information on the ALP.47 He looked up to Beasley, which meant that everything in his early Canberra universe was seen through a Langite prism. There could be no forgiveness for anyone who strayed from that particular narrow Labor path. Hatred was a sign of political virtue. This was certainly Reid’s attitude when he first came to Canberra. He did not, for example, share in the widespread affection for Prime Minister Lyons; however kindly Lyons might be, he was an exLabor man, and Reid saw him as a ‘rat’.48 Reid did not have to cover Lyons for long. Stressed and embattled (Menzies, his Attorney-General, had resigned from the government over the issue of national insurance), Lyons died in April 1939. A tranquil autumn morning in

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pre-war Canberra was transformed into a historic occasion when Country Party leader Earle Page denounced Menzies as a disloyal coward. Reid, who had been nodding off with boredom in the gallery, was transfixed.49 When Olsen became news editor of the Sun Reid was appointed as the Sun’s permanent representative in Canberra even though he was ranked fourth in a team of four. This promotion followed an unfortunate incident when a more senior Sun journalist wrote a story which stated that Menzies, after he became Prime Minister in the teeth of Page’s hostility, intended to appoint people to Cabinet who were not Members of Parliament. This claim was published, against Reid’s advice, and attracted a blistering denial from Menzies. The Sun, following this incident, opted to make Reid its ‘number one man in Canberra’. 50

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War and postwar y September 1939, when Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced Australia’s entry into World War II (which made news gathering an even more interesting activity), Reid’s career in journalism was well on track. As a member of the parliamentary press gallery he was producing a stream of articles that confidently covered a wide range of topics and issues, and had acquired some influential contacts, notably Jack Beasley. There was no questioning Reid’s productivity or the quality of his work and yet, perhaps to his increasing chagrin, all his articles were appearing anonymously. The stories he despatched from the federal capital featured as the work of the Sun’s ‘special representative’ or ‘special correspondent’ in Canberra. They were not identified as his own work. Newspaper articles are an ephemeral genre, but Reid was loath to see his daily work vanish without trace or acknowledgement. So towards the end of 1939, in an effort to preserve his handiwork, he converted an old civil engineer’s diary into a scrapbook and started pasting his Sun articles into it.1 World War II was underway, and who could tell what future interesting stories he would have to write? Keeping a scrapbook was an eminently practical decision: it made it much easier to write a new article on a subject he had previously written about. In more worldly terms, the scrapbook might conceivably also serve as a portfolio that would support any future claim he might make for professional advancement. He was deadly serious about his career.

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As well as providing clear evidence of his youthful desire to succeed in his chosen profession, Reid’s scrapbook also provides a concentrated view of events in Australia’s federal capital in the early months of World War II. For a dedicated observer such as Reid, Australian politics at the end of 1939 was a fascinating affair. The two non-Labor parties – the UAP and the Country Party – were not in a binding coalition, which meant that the government of Robert Menzies was in an unstable position. The earliest articles in Reid’s scrapbook contain lively accounts of the three-way tussle in the House of Representatives over contentious issues such as wheat sales and pay levels for newly recruited soldiers. Reid, significantly, did not see himself as a blinkered specialist. His attention was not confined solely to the usual federal fare of Bills, Budgets and by-elections. He was billed as the Sun’s special correspondent in Canberra, not just Parliament House, and he ranged outside its corridors for stories. His articles covered summer bushfires and progress on repairing the Burrinjuck Dam. His readers learnt that nights in the national capital sometimes involved midnight suppers (‘beers, prawns and melons’) indulged in by young Canberrans at the Cotter River as well as rowdy all-night sittings of Parliament. The human comedy was always fascinating. In one story he revealed the Melbourne Cup-eve southward exodus of a trainload of federal public servants, and in another he noted that the ‘wholesale marriage of public service typists’ had led to ‘a shortage of girl labour’ in the bush capital. Reid’s most arresting Canberra news story in 1940 came on the morning of 13 August, when 10 passengers, including three Cabinet ministers, were killed when their plane crashed approaching the nearby RAAF aerodrome. Reid’s account of

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the air disaster was on the front page of that afternoon’s Sun and later stories covered the inquest. In 1940 there was a hard-fought federal election, but Reid’s scrapbook hardly records the event. As the Sun’s man in Canberra he had nothing special to say, since Canberra at this time did not vote in federal elections – the election was contested everywhere but in the national capital. Menzies, now in coalition with the Country Party again, was returned to office, but was dependent on the support of two cross-bench members. As Australia entered the second year of the war it seemed safe to say that many a newspaper story dealing with a vulnerable government was in the offing. Despite wartime austerity, Reid would have no shortage of material. The 12 months between the spring of 1940 and the spring of 1941 were an important period for Alan Reid both personally and professionally. He gained a wife and acquired a by-line. Wedded life began for Reid on Saturday, 5 October 1940, at the start of the Labor Day long weekend in Sydney. On that day Joan Kathleen Drummond married the 25-year-old journalist at Coogee’s romanesque St Brigid’s Catholic Church, with the Reverend Father AJ Perkins officiating. On the following day a brief account in Reid’s newspaper provided the details, albeit with one or two typos. The bride, a stenographer, wore a frock of white French crepe and a matching turban. Her bouquet was of white orchids. Two bridesmaids were in frocks of hyacinth blue crepe and flowered toques. As the bride was aged 19, the consent of her parents (Mr and Mrs John Raymond Drummond of Coogee) was required. Reid’s colleague Otto Olsen was best man and the reception followed at the Gloucester Room of the Australia Hotel.2 An enduring Australian marriage had begun. Over the next

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few years three children – Douglas (1941), Alan (1943) and Susan (1948) – were born. Marriage and fatherhood were sources of great personal happiness. Reid’s wife and family, along with his country, journalism, politics and the Australian bush, were the great loves of his life, though in the case of politics and domestic life, parallel universes operated. Reid cleaved to the conventional wisdom of his time concerning family and domestic life and the world of work. He considered that, ideally, these two worlds should have as little as possible to do with each other. The home was a refuge from which husbands emerged better prepared to cope with the outside world of paid employment and public affairs. The considered judgement of Reid’s fellow journalists was that his wife Joan’s ‘skill in managing their private affairs allowed him to keep to public business’.3 Knowing that his family provided him with a loving sanctuary, Reid was readier to venture out into the cut-throat world of journalism and politics. The year following his marriage, 1941, marked a major turning point in Reid’s professional career. At the very start of the year he was still producing articles as the Sun’s anonymous ‘special representative’ in Canberra and diligently sticking them in his scrapbook. By the autumn of 1941 he seems largely to have ceased using the scrapbook; his anonymity was about to end as well. Midway through the year he at last started to acquire a public profile. Just before midnight on 28 August he was among a group of pressmen who saw Menzies walk slowly from the Prime Minister’s suite in Parliament House after dissension in the Coalition had forced him to stand down as Prime Minister. A brilliant career, it seemed to Reid, had reached a premature end. He did not bother to hide his opinion that Menzies was unlikely to ever stage a political comeback

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after such a failure.4 What was bad news for Menzies, though, had been good news for Reid. In the lead-up to the Prime Minister’s downfall he had gained a by-line. He enjoyed an unrivalled insider’s view of the crisis because his contact, Jack Beasley, played a leading role in getting the Labor opposition to veto a second wartime visit to London by Menzies, a move which helped speed up the end of Menzies’ wartime government. On 22 August an article in the Sun on the very latest political events, which described members of both parties plotting all the way on the train from Sydney to Canberra and continuing in the lobbies and corridors of Parliament House, was attributed, in accordance with past practice, to an unnamed ‘special parliamentary writer’. It was highly colourful and personal: The sixteenth Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia was in session. Beneath the oil paintings of august ex-Premiers, Governors-General and decorous Speakers many conspiracies had been hatched. But the members of parliaments One to Fifteen had nothing on this Parliament for intrigue and mystery. 5

Within a matter of days the figleaf of anonymity was dropped. Reid had kept up with all the hectic details of Menzies’ forced departure from office and was at last worthy of a by-line. On 27 August an article on the latest developments in Canberra was finally attributed to him, as befitted a work of conscious artistry: There was drama – the tense, nerve-strained drama of men fighting for power – in every move in the Canberra scene this week. On the surface there was only political

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Al an ‘T h e Red Fox’ Reid manoeuvring. Beneath, there was the sullen cross-current of men struggling for their political futures, for the right to decide the destiny of this country during the vital war years to come.6

A leadership crisis had done wonders for Reid’s career. The excitement, moreover, would only increase in the spring of 1941, as the non-Labor side of politics went into free fall. A strange chain of events was now ready to unfold. The downfall of Menzies and his replacement by his amiable colleague Arthur Fadden angered Joe Winkler, a government press secretary and former Langite journalist. Winkler, later described by Reid as beady-eyed and Runyonesque,7 set out to exact revenge on Fadden’s colleague Billy Hughes, regarded as the focus of anti-Menzies disaffection. Winkler supplied the Labor Party with a copy of an incriminating memorandum which documented the existence of a dodgy government fund Hughes had set up. Reid gained an insight into Winkler’s murky wartime activities in the course of a furtive meeting in a deserted Parliament House office. The appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the slush fund gave respectability to Winkler’s efforts and sealed the fate of the wartime UAP-Country Party government.8 It fell on 3 October after two Independents who held the balance of power in the House of Representatives (Alexander Wilson and AW Coles) joined the ALP in voting against the Budget. There had been great competition in the press gallery to be the first to find out for sure that Wilson and Coles would cross the floor and it seems that Reid was several hours ahead of the famed Joe Alexander in learning that they would do so. There was much excitement but also much

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confusion. Overall, the fall of the Fadden government displayed Reid’s strength: he was a master of suspense, rather than a fearless forecaster. His stories in the Sun leading up to the fatal day had made gripping reading but had not specified an inevitable outcome. The Sun’s political correspondent, it turned out, was not all-seeing and all-knowing. But then neither, as Reid now knew, was Alexander, despite his reputation. At the end of a tumultuous day there was every reason for Reid to feel content. Another stage in Reid’s political education began when, barely two months before Japan entered the war, Labor’s John Curtin took over from the non-Labor Fadden as Prime Minister. Achieving power did wonders for Curtin’s reputation. Because Curtin was psychologically complex, Reid, in his brashness, had previously harboured doubts about his capacity as a leader. He had dismissed Curtin as ‘a namby-pamby’.9 It was now time, as Curtin became an inspiring Prime Minister, to treat him as a champion. A sense of Curtin’s new-found strength was conveyed to readers of the Sun in a major article by Reid: Visiting British Minister to the Far East, smooth-spoken, wellgroomed Duff Cooper who listened during the week in the House of Representatives, will have a surprising story to tell his Government of how physically unimpressive Curtin ripped to pieces in debate former Prime Minister Menzies, hailed during his recent London visit as the ‘Wonder Boy of the Dominions’. There was nothing wrong with Mr Menzies’s attack on the Budget – it was a well-reasoned, well-rehearsed, well-delivered speech – but he had mistaken the calibre of his opponent. It was not the same John Curtin who, as a close personal

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Al an ‘T h e Red Fox’ Reid friend, sat across the table when Mr Menzies was Prime Minister. It was Australia’s new Prime Minister with a new ruthlessness that transcended old friendships.10

On the night of Saturday, 6 December 1941, Reid was in Melbourne, as were the Cabinet ministers, who were waiting by their telephones at the Victoria Barracks, Australia’s military headquarters, to receive the latest reports of the movement of Japanese warships and troop-carriers. On the previous night Curtin had been called back, just as he was leaving the Victoria Barracks to return to Canberra by train. The day of infamy was nigh. At five o’clock on the morning of Monday, 8 December, one of the corridors in the Oriental Hotel in Collins Street echoed to the sound of Reid bashing away on his typewriter and shouting on the phone to the Sun’s headquarters in Sydney after he had learnt that Japanese planes had attacked Pearl Harbor.11 Relations between the government and the press reflected the sense of crisis: coordination and control prevailed. Don Rodgers, Curtin’s confidant and press secretary, implemented a bold policy of news management. The casual methods that had operated in Canberra under earlier governments of all persuasions were put on hold for the duration of the emergency. A centralised approach to briefing the press was introduced. Rodgers, a ‘standover merchant of great eminence’ if subtler means failed,12 controlled the flow of information relating to Australia’s role in the Allied war effort. Information from ministers other than the Prime Minister was obtainable solely in the form of press handouts. Only Curtin held press conferences. These were select affairs: attendance was

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restricted to the chief of each newspaper bureau in Canberra. The dozen or so senior pressmen who attended the Prime Minister’s wartime press briefings were given detailed and sensitive information on the planning and conduct of the war. This information was passed back to the nation’s major editors and proprietors on the understanding that none of it was to be published or commented on in editorials. There were to be no leaks or scoops under this regime. Amid the stresses and strains of a great national crisis, every effort was made to ensure that, in the interests of wartime morale, no unfavourable press coverage or criticism appeared.13 Curtin’s secret wartime press briefings were a memorable episode in the history of Australian journalism. Fred Smith, of the Australian United Press (AUP) news agency, prepared transcripts of briefings held in Canberra from July 1942 onwards, and in recognition of their historical importance these have since been published.14 For a complete picture, though, it is necessary to consult a number of less accessible sources of information. The select nature of the group attending Curtin’s wartime press briefings is indicated in comments by Alexander, which are incorporated into an unpublished thesis by journalist John Bennetts.15 Details of which pressmen were admitted to the secret briefings are contained in an unpublished autobiographical fragment by John Corbett, of the Melbourne Argus, who was admitted to the inner circle of top journalists when he arrived in Canberra in 1942. According to Corbett, those of his colleagues who were regarded as ‘first string men’ and worthy of admittance to Curtin’s confidential news briefings included Ross Gollan, Fred Smith, Joe Alexander, Don Whitington (Daily Telegraph), Harold Cox (of the Melbourne Sun and later Alexander’s replacement at the

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Melbourne Herald) and the ABC’s Warren Denning. Alan Reid was considered to belong to this select circle as well.16 Reid and the dozen or so other trusted pressmen who served as the conduit between Curtin and the nation’s press proprietors were quickly dubbed ‘the travelling circus’. They followed Curtin’s trail as he flitted by train between Canberra, the Victoria Barracks in Melbourne and the other state capitals. Curtin’s entourage, which tended to fill the train to the exclusion of ordinary travellers, comprised senior politicians, public servants, businessmen and these pressmen. Being in the wartime press corps was a heady experience and Reid loved it from the word go. His inclusion in the travelling circus meant that he had privileged access to sensitive information about shipping losses, the bombing of Darwin and the endless political moves and counter moves between Roosevelt and Churchill and between Churchill and Curtin, including the strategy debate after the AIF divisions left the Middle East in 1942.17 The deployment of Australian troops was a highly stressful matter for Curtin. This was brought home to Reid when he was travelling with Curtin on the overnight train to Brisbane, where the Prime Minister was due to meet US General Douglas MacArthur. After dozing for a while the pressman awoke and went into the corridor, where he bumped into Curtin who was in a sweat, staring into the blackness outside. The Prime Minister said that he had had a nightmare in which a convoy of Australian ships was ablaze and men were jumping into a burning sea. ‘I’m responsible,’ he said. ‘It’s my decision that sends them to their death.’ Reid then asked Don Rodgers and Curtin’s stenographer, Hazel Craig, to join him playing bridge with Curtin for the rest of the night in an attempt – futile, as it turned out – to get the Prime Minister’s mind off his worries. The bridge

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game remained a vivid memory for Reid for years to come.18 Reid’s strong Labor credentials were a powerful asset now that Curtin was Prime Minister. One person to recognise his position as an image maker and confidant in the new regime was George FitzPatrick, a pushy Sydney public relations consultant with Labor ambitions. FitzPatrick’s wartime media and publicity activities included transmitting commercial news between Australia and the United States. FitzPatrick, ever hopeful of extending his list of useful contacts in the wartime federal government, was more than happy to provide ministers and their associates with relevant extracts from the press coverage of wartime developments in the United States. In the autumn of 1942 he sent a parcel of American news articles to journalist and fellow Labor stalwart Allan Fraser. He was sure that Jack Beasley, now Minister for Supply and Development, would be interested in an article about US war production czar Donald Nelson, just as Eddie Ward, another minister, would, he felt certain, be interested in an article on unionist Walter Reuther. FitzPatrick was keen for Fraser to let other pressmen have a look at the articles after he had seen them; he named Don Rodgers and Fred Smith as possible recipients and, he added, ‘Also Allan [sic] Reid.’ The young man from the Sydney Sun was known to be in the loop.19 Although Curtin’s news management strategy was on the whole successful, the odd glitch did occur. There were instances of off-the-record information being published, and adverse editorial commentary was not unknown. Such occasions irked the sensitive Curtin, and at times working journalists were the meat in the sandwich between the Prime Minister and newspaper editors and proprietors. One incident that affected Reid occurred when his newspaper featured a story,

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originating from Canberra, which revealed that the United States had turned down a request for additional aeroplanes to be sent to the South West Pacific. Curtin hit the roof when he read the story in the Sun: [Curtin] wondered if offices instructed employees to disregard all censorship instructions. He regarded the

Sun’s offence as a serious breach, and he was disappointed that information which he provided to enable newspaper editorial writers to be well informed should have been disclosed.20

The growing friendship and respect between Curtin and Reid worked to soften the odd outburst of prime ministerial temper. Whenever they were together in Canberra, Curtin used to invite Reid to have a cup of tea in his office every fortnight or so. The Prime Minister recognised a kindred spirit in Reid, a fellow autodidact and lapsed Catholic whose reading took in such anti-clerical writers as Rabelais and Voltaire.21 Curtin confirmed Reid’s mental bent by pointing out yet another irreligious classic (Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade) that the young pressman was sure to appreciate.22 Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West was another recommended piece of reading.23 Reid’s ties with the Australian labour movement, forged under Jack Lang, were growing stronger all the time. He was an active member when a Canberra sub-district of the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA) was formed as a result of pressure from the federal parliamentary press gallery. The objectives of the new sub-branch included securing affiliation with the Canberra Trades and Labour Council (TLC) and pushing for new industrial award clauses to cover Canberra-specific working conditions and classifications. At the inaugural dinner,

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attended by the teetotal Curtin (himself an AJA member) and Fadden on a hot summer’s night, thirsty newspapermen made short work of the supply of wartime ale in Canberra’s Civic Hotel.24 Reid was elected to the sub-district’s executive committee, and in February 1943 he seconded a proposal to ballot members on the question of affiliation with the Canberra TLC. The ballot was held and affiliation was supported by 39 votes to 13. The vote on affiliation provoked a hostile response from Reid’s colleagues Cox and Alexander, who saw the proposed affiliation as the work of an ‘extreme section’ of the Canberra press gallery; they placed a public notice in the Canberra Times in which they proclaimed their conscientious objection to affiliation with the Canberra TLC. An unimpressed Canberra sub-district, in a motion supported by Reid, recommended that Cox and Alexander be reported to the AJA federal executive. Later the union fined the two men.25 The war years saw an endless struggle between the national ethos of sacrifice and normal demands for creature comforts. A notable example occurred with the introduction of meat rationing in January 1944. This prompted press criticism of the alleged failure of successive governments to foresee the importance of ‘the war-time food front’.26 Allan Fraser, a successful Labor candidate in the previous year’s federal election, decided to put pressure on military authorities to release ablebodied men to ease the labour shortage which was resulting in food shortages. To publicise this issue Fraser undertook a tour through dairying areas in his electorate of Eden-Monaro, accompanied by Reid and another newspaperman, Tom Mead.27 The two journalists interviewed more than 100 farmers and butter factory officials and filed their first stories on 10 January. Mead’s opening story was headed ‘Shortage of food amid abundance

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– Shameful waste in Bega Valley’. Reid pursued a similar theme. ‘Red tape and refusal to supply even a minimum of desperately needed manpower are responsible for this tragic position,’ he stated. Meat was going to waste and dairies were closing down or going to rack and ruin in south coast communities such as Bega and Eden. Readers of the Sun were provided with harrowing details of the burden placed on wives, children and elderly farmers.28 Reid reported that Fraser had informed Minister for Commerce Bill Scully of cases where farms were going out of production because the army was refusing to release men. Scully, in response, said that applications for the release of farm labour which the army had rejected would be reconsidered. He was quoted as saying that he would report on ‘the grave shortage of rural, particularly dairy, manpower’ to federal Cabinet. The press had demonstrated its influence.29 Reid was a good union man at a time when the ethos and practice of unionism were in the ascendancy among working journalists: ‘The war sparked a surge of AJA interest in closer links with the broader trade union movement.’30 The AJA’s NSW district voted to affiliate with the Sydney Trades and Labour Council, and chose Communist Rupert Lockwood as one of its TLC delegates. The expression of a more militant spirit also led to the election of George Godfrey, a democratic socialist, as district president. The fighting mood on the industrial front was infectious. The moment of truth came in the spring of 1944, when members of the printers’ union at the Sun lodged a claim for a 40-hour week and four weeks’ annual leave. On 7 October, supported by the NSW branch of their union, the Sun printers ceased work after management rejected their demand.31 The dispute soon affected all Sydney daily newspapers, as management sought to have the Sun printed by

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one of the other newspapers. Faced with stout trade union resistance, Sydney’s newspaper proprietors combined to produce a composite newspaper which carried the masthead of all four daily papers and used the facilities of the Daily Telegraph.32 The committee of the NSW AJA, which the proprietors had assumed would play a tame role in the dispute, threw a spanner in the works by instructing AJA members to ignore directions to work for the composite paper. Things were becoming serious. AJA members who refused to work on the composite paper were subjected to a lockout.33 The proprietors were banking on the Canberra journalists continuing to provide copy but the journalists had other ideas. Canberra’s AJA committee met on 9 October and, the journalist Don Whitington later stated in his memoirs, decided by four votes to three to support their Sydney colleagues.34 Sydney’s wartime newspaper dispute was ratcheted up still further when a mass meeting of the NSW branch of the AJA decided to launch a union paper in cooperation with the printers and in competition with the employers’ composite production. The Communist Party offered access to a printing press and the use of part of its premises in Rawson Place. The Transport Workers’ Union and the railway workers refused to handle the employers’ newspaper. Picket lines formed. At the Sydney Morning Herald office Reid and Whitington intercepted journalists arriving for work and induced most of them to transfer to the Rawson Place operation.35 Launched with a blessing from Anglican Bishop Ernest Burgmann, 36 the AJA-supported newspaper, called The News, lasted for nine days (12–20 October). After a series of conferences the Sydney Daily Newspapers Employers’ Association agreed to a 40-hour week for printers and promised not to

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oppose an application for four weeks’ paid annual leave. ‘The daily newspaper employees resumed work on 20 October, their victory complete.’37 So clear a success vindicated the militant approach taken by workers in the newspaper industry. The newspaper proprietors did not like this and made their views known. The Daily Mirror featured a hostile headline: ‘Lawless minority achieved nothing by stupid strike’.38 Criticism of the strike was meant to intimidate journalists but it had no effect on Alan Reid. He was not afraid to align himself with the militant wing of the AJA and favoured punishing anyone who had buckled during the lockout. At a branch meeting on 10 November he called on the Canberra AJA to formally record ‘that its attitude was that scabs should be dealt with as stringently as possible’. Although Whitington supported the motion, it was withdrawn in favour of a more diplomatic expression of the same opinion.39 Reid’s Labor faith was confirmed and renewed in 1945 when Curtin died in harness and was succeeded by Ben Chifley. Here was his second great enduring Labor hero. Peace, as well as war, had its noble challenges. The era of postwar reconstruction had arrived. Reid adhered to the common view that ‘Chif was the implementer; Curtin was the thinker.’ Chifley went on to become his ‘favourite Prime Minister’.40 The warm personal qualities of the man from Bathurst impressed Reid, as did Chifley’s great nation-building achievements (full employment, large-scale immigration and the Snowy River scheme).41 It was a great time to be covering federal politics. The future seemed bright. The coming of peace promised an end to restrictions on indulgence and material shortages. Journalists did not mourn the end of sobriety. Drinking sessions had long lubricated

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newsgathering in Canberra. Mischievous members of the press gallery had been known in the past to refer to their place of employment as ‘Cannedbeera’, and on a couple of occasions a mock newspaper called Hangover was published in an attempt to augment the ‘merry tone’ of the annual journalists’ ball.42 After 1945, pressmen embraced normality. Tongues were loosened as drinkers drowned unhappy memories of wartime austerity. The quest for information led Reid to wherever people gathered in Parliament House, which included where they went to drink. He seems to have frequented a visitors’ room immediately abutting the Members’ Bar with the intention of using it as a ‘listening post’. In time the two parliamentary presiding officers ruled that room off limits to the press.43 Bars could be unhappy places for Reid at times. He was a self-confessed ‘bad drinker’,44 and epitomised the stereotype of the hard-drinking heavy-smoking old-style pressman. Sometime during the war he was involved in an altercation in a pub in the neighbouring town of Queanbeyan. ‘I wound up in hospital and I reckoned I’d get killed in some pub brawl and I’d leave my wife as a widow with young children as my mother had been left and I decided that that was no good, that I’d just give it away.’45 And that is what happened, to his lasting good, despite a few initial acts of backsliding. It seems that his resolve to give up alcohol ultimately prevailed when he came home late one night and almost started a blaze after he knocked a candle into his son’s cot.46 He never touched alcohol again. Other vices could not be cured so easily, however. Reid’s famed addiction to roll-your-own cigarettes remained untamed, as indicated by his yellow fingernails, and easily outlasted his drinking. His wife’s incessant attempts to get him to

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abandon smoking were to no avail. Though less immediately dangerous to himself and his family, the unbroken wreaths of smoke were ultimately fatal to his health. The crisis atmosphere of the war years having passed into history, attendance at prime ministerial press briefings now tended to be on a much less exclusive footing. Less senior pressmen were admitted. Journalists who preferred the former more intimate arrangements resented this development. An underhand move to differentiate the wheat from the chaff soon followed. The press gallery stalwart Harold Cox knew what was going on. In one of his confidential internal despatches to his newspaper Cox dwelt on the emergence in Parliament House of a new informal group of insiders. It took the form of a gambling school which operated behind closed doors in Parliament House. The school featured two-up games which attracted pressmen from the Sydney newspapers and ‘a queer assortment of House messengers, refreshment room waiters and other outsiders and Mr DK Rodgers’. The Prime Minister’s press secretary, Cox noted, was always a big winner. The consistency of Rodgers’ winnings suggested to Cox that ‘the school is being used by some of the Sydney papers as a discreet way of keeping in his good books’. Cox was aware of cases in which one or other of the ‘Sydney people’ lost sums in the order of £20 a day (almost three weeks’ wages for the average male wage earner at that time). The school was an institution; a few years later Cox again referred to the ‘notorious press gallery two-up and poker school’, of which Rodgers was ‘the one great mainstay’.47 There is no positive evidence that any of the Sydney pressmen who funded Rodgers’ winnings at two-up and poker did so with a view to obtaining inside information. However, it would have been logical for Cox to assume that Reid

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was involved. It had been the prospect of being able to play poker during working hours that had lured him into journalism in the first place, after all, and gambling did not lose its appeal in the confined world of Canberra. In time the Speaker of the House of Representatives admonished Reid after he caught him and other journalists playing poker in the press gallery common room.48 It seems that the message sank in. Journalistic folklore has it that Reid gave up playing cards for money at the same time as he stopped drinking. His fondness for cards and two-up became a fond memory.49 But the gambling, while it lasted, had been good for Reid’s career. It bonded him to Labor insider Don Rodgers, who, Reid later acknowledged, was a ‘wild gambler’. 50 Rodgers had a rousing signature farewell – ‘and good sport to you all’ – which entered local folklore. 51 Reid, undeniably, was close to the press secretary, describing him later on as one of his ‘fairly good friends’ and, alternatively, as ‘probably his best friend’. 52 The pair of them were involved in all kinds of scrapes. Years later, when chatting with Labor politician Clyde Cameron, Reid referred to a secret Trust Account (or a ‘slush fund’ as he preferred to call it). On one occasion Reid and Rodgers deposited £32,000 into the Labor slush fund during an election campaign. It seems that the money came from a single donor. The money, in £5 notes, was stuffed into a Globite suitcase, and Reid accompanied Rodgers when he deposited it in a bank. 53 Reid also performed less mundane work in support of the Labor cause. He was ready to enlist in the battle of ideas. In the autumn of 1947 his friend Allan Fraser launched a national Labor journal of opinion called Australian Observer. Fraser, as editor, drew on an impressive level of support from leading members of Labor’s postwar illuminati, including Brian

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Fitzpatrick, Jim Cairns and Heinz Arndt. The Australian Observer stable also included a contributor who styled himself or herself ‘ADR’. This person, it seems safe to assume, was none other than Alan Douglas Reid. Writing for the Australian Observer further indicated the strength of Reid’s position as a Labor sympathiser, though his articles steered clear of partisanship. The contributions from ADR had a scholarly bent; a review of M Barnard Eldershaw’s Macquarie’s World, for example, indicated an interest in the documentary sources used for the study of Australian colonial history. 54 The Australian Observer ceased publication after two years but Reid’s faith lived on. In the years ahead he maintained his regard for Fraser as a fine embodiment of third way (or, in the language of the times, ‘Third Force’) thinking, thinking that offered a suitable home for the ideological agnostics in Australia who refused to accept Communism or political Catholicism as a cure for the capitalist world’s ills. 55 Reid had long ago put his socialist faith to the ultimate test by joining the ALP in Sydney back in the days of Snowy Walsh, 56 but his membership seems to have lapsed once he settled down in Canberra, as residents of the federal territory were not entitled to vote in federal elections. This anomalous situation ended a year before the 1949 federal election, when the Chifley government gave the residents of Canberra the right to elect a non-voting member in an expanded House of Representatives. Local ALP branch politics became a hotbed of grassroots democracy as a result of the need to preselect a candidate and then organise a campaign for the local federal seat. The upsurge of local Labor activity infected Reid. The National Library of Australia (NLA) holds the surviving records of the Canberra branch of the ALP and these include

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a copy of a party ticket that he took out on 25 October 1948. Each January thereafter Reid renewed his ALP membership in what became a summertime ritual. As an ALP member he was required to make a solemn pledge of loyalty, his party ticket reading as follows: The holder of this ticket is pledged to actively support and advocate the Socialisation of Industry and to loyally support the Platform, Principles and Rules of the Party and to vote for and assist to return the endorsed Labor candidate, and is not a member of any other political organisation. 57

Reid was prepared to look beyond being a mere rank and file ALP member. In oral history testimony he later revealed that Chifley once suggested to him that he should think about entering Federal Parliament. An offer to help him out should he seek preselection was made, although a fatherly proviso was added: ‘Never become dependent on politics for your crust, because it affects your judgement.’58 It seems that Allan Fraser supported the suggestion; the member for Eden-Monaro’s career certainly demonstrated that a transition from the fourth estate to the Labor caucus could be made. There were other examples as well. Curtin had worked for a newspaper, as had Les Haylen, who was elected to the House of Representatives in the anti-UAP landslide of 1943. In the event, the offer of a parliamentary career, though tempting, was not taken up. Reid mulled over the prime ministerial offer but arrived at the conclusion that he was likely to become morally corrupted more swiftly than the average politician. 59 The offer, having been turned down, was never repeated. Reid’s closeness to Chifley was not affected when he chose

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not to take up this invitation. Because of his connection with Rodgers, he could tap into the innermost thinking of the Chifley government. Reid had other notable Canberra contacts as well. He was a friend of Murray Tyrrell, who served as Chifley’s private secretary until 1947. The two men were good companions and loved to talk about politics and what went on in Parliament House. They shared a deep respect for Chifley. At weekends they used to go hunting the rabbits and foxes which could be found running wild on the outskirts of the capital.60 Such camaraderie added to Reid’s status as an insider. For the moment it seemed that Reid could be both a successful journalist and a faithful party member. He was, from his privileged position, able to break a lot of news stories and was familiar with the broad framework of assumptions on which the Chifley government was operating, and on which future decisions were likely to be based. During the great coal strike of 1949 he had no trouble accepting the Prime Minister’s line that it was largely a Communist-inspired strike.61 Reid, knowing what made the Prime Minister tick as a Labor man, was confident that he could anticipate Chifley’s next move on the chessboard of politics. Consistent with this belief, he later claimed that Chifley’s bold decision, on 16 August 1947, to seek to nationalise the private banks did not surprise him.62 Chifley’s banking legislation was challenged and invalidated by the High Court in 1948 and by the Privy Council in London in 1949. Reid was no detached observer of these stirring events. The faith in parliamentary socialism that he shared with Chifley was confirmed when he immersed himself in a contemporary political classic, The Politics of Democratic Socialism. Its author was Evan Durbin, who became a junior

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minister in Britain’s postwar Labour government. Durbin died in 1948 but his book lived on for Reid.63 Its democratic socialist message seemed as applicable to the Australia of Ben Chifley as to the Britain of Clement Attlee. Labor’s responsibility, from this Fabian standpoint, was to keep a steady course between the excesses of laissez faire capitalism and Soviet Communism. Though by now a hardened journalist, Reid’s youthful political zeal had not dried up. At the height of the Chifley era he was one of Labor’s True Believers. He was quietly excited by the Prime Minister’s vision of a Light on the Hill. When he described Chifley in the Sun as Australia’s ‘major influence towards Socialism’,64 he was saying something that, from his personal point of view, was high praise. Government direction of the nation’s financial institutions was needed, he believed, to counteract the poverty and unemployment that had blighted Australia during his own formative years. His socialist faith was strong and well defined. After a decade covering federal politics, Reid was one of Parliament House’s old hands. A new member of the parliamentary library staff automatically assumed that he was an officer in one of the other parliamentary departments because he seemed to be such a fixture.65 His working methods were well established. He kicked off many an intimate chat with the people he bumped into at Parliament House by claiming to know more about something or someone than was really the case. Those on the receiving end of this treatment were usually impressed at his apparent depth of knowledge, but sometimes the approach backfired. Journalist (and future Liberal politician) Paul Hasluck, for instance, in Canberra to work on the official war history, was mystified when Reid, whom he had never met, laid claim to ‘a very old and close acquaintanceship’.

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Reid also claimed that he had ‘the real low down’ on every important Cabinet decision since 1941. Hasluck, relying on standard archival research, soon came to doubt the accuracy of that claim, and in time characterised Reid as ‘a competent though somewhat venal purveyor of political gossip’.66 Most people around Parliament House did not agree with Hasluck’s negative assessment. Acknowledgement of Reid’s status grew as the Chifley years marched on. In September 1949, as a sign of his increased importance, Reid began to publish a by-lined column each Tuesday. His stories in the Sun, he felt, had a ‘big impact’ because they could be considered to provide ‘the inside story’ of the Chifley government’s plans and intentions. His more avid readers included Labor’s conservative opponents, for whom his columns provided frightening insights into Chifley’s dogged commitment to nationalisation. Reid later claimed that the Country Party circulated his articles as hostile election propaganda: ‘They were not intended as such, but they were used as such.’ Arthur Fadden, he added, believed, as a result, that his newspaper articles helped determine the outcome of the 1949 election.67 While Fadden was grateful to Reid, another leading politician, in the person of the Labor Cabinet minister Arthur Calwell, was far from impressed by him. Bad blood between the two men went back to the war years. Calwell, when still a backbencher, reportedly compiled a blacklist of working journalists he was not prepared to be interviewed by on any matter after they (or the papers they wrote for) criticised his strident opposition to Curtin’s proposal to extend the area in the Pacific where Australian conscripts could be sent to. The blacklist, which Calwell maintained when he became a minister, was known to include Alan Reid, along with Joe Alexander,

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Ross Gollan and Don Whitington.68 Relations did not improve much when Calwell, as Immigration Minister, sought to deport a number of Asian women who had married Australian men during the war. Reid was critical when Calwell claimed that the women were prostitutes; the Immigration Minister responded by accusing the pressman of betraying the labour movement, presumably because Calwell considered that it was Labor’s duty to uphold the White Australia Policy.69 The static between Reid and Calwell became even more intense after Reid published a story in which he quoted from a confidential memorandum from Calwell’s department which had been circulated to Cabinet ministers when they were considering legislation to give judges the power to recommend the deportation of undesirable aliens. Following the story Reid was questioned by a Commonwealth security officer about the source of the leak; he gave nothing away.70 Reid had a much happier relationship with Calwell’s fellow Victorian Laborite Pat Kennelly, the party’s federal secretary and a legendary numbers man. Kennelly was, indubitably, a mate. He was, Reid later observed, ‘colourful, likable, shrewd, passionate, a good hater’.71 Back in 1943 Reid assured Kennelly that there was no need to be concerned about the absence of enthusiasm surrounding Labor’s wartime election campaign. The lack of excitement showed that Curtin was home and hosed.72 Kennelly was suitably impressed by Reid’s judgement when the result was as he had predicted. From then on the Victorian powerbroker ‘always regarded [Reid] as an expert on elections’. This was at a time when the nation’s political dynamics were rapidly changing, with the moribund UAP having morphed into the new and far more competitive Liberal Party. In 1948 and 1949 Kennelly and Reid ‘used to talk a lot

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on tactics and things like that’. 73 As the federal election drew ever nearer, the pressman was forced to conclude that Menzies, energised and focused by a period in Opposition, was likely to be the winner, thus reneging on his own well-known prediction that Menzies would make no comeback. Kennelly’s trust in Reid’s judgement was confirmed when events bore out his private pre-election comments. On Tuesday, 13 December 1949, it was Reid’s melancholy duty to write a post-mortem account for the Sun following the Chifley government’s electoral defeat at the hands of Menzies and his Country Party allies. The Liberals, Reid told his readers, now acknowledged that government had a legitimate role to play in alleviating social and economic hardship. By doing so they offered an acceptable alternative to socialism. Reid, for his part, was still a dyed-in-the-wool Labor Party man. He could not imagine that one day he would be involved in efforts to lengthen the life of the incoming Liberal government into the future.

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Capital capers n January 1950 Alan Reid found himself in trouble when disappointment in Labor’s ranks caused by the electoral defeat of 1949 was directed against him. His difficulties began when the Canberra branch of the party renewed his membership at the start of the year. Arthur Calwell, on learning that this had happened, was indignant. He and Reid had had a poisonous relationship before the election and defeat had not softened his mood. Calwell was adamant that Reid, because of some of the candid things that he wrote as a journalist, did not belong in the Labor Party. Determined to do something, he wrote to the NSW branch of the party, which oversaw the affairs of the Canberra branch at this time, to get advice ‘as to what action your Executive decides to take on my complaint – indeed my charge – against Reid of unworthy and disloyal conduct’. Calwell’s complaint related to two articles by Reid which had appeared in the Sun back in September, in which, Calwell maintained, he and Dr Evatt were presented as ‘if we were just ordinary Liberal Party-Country Party political gangsters’.1 Head office in Sydney, at Calwell’s repeated urging, contacted the ACT branch, which expressed the hope that ‘this matter may be handled satisfactorily without having it dragged over the floor of the branch’. Private discussions with the ACT branch led to a decision not to pursue the matter.2 Calwell aside, Reid felt free to fraternise with all the beasts in the Canberra zoo. Though a Labor sympathiser, he had no

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intention of relying solely on Labor stories. If news broke in the newly triumphant Liberal Party he wanted to have sources that he could tap into. After 1949 he cultivated the younger Liberal Party men in Canberra, and his network soon included an up-and-coming insider as well as the odd maverick. The insider was the Sydney MP Bill McMahon, who pushed issues by beavering away in private forums and intimate meetings rather than by making colourful public statements and generating headlines. Once McMahon arrived in Canberra it did not take Reid long to note his tirelessness as a backroom operator. 3 The mavericks he cultivated were epitomised by the backbencher WC Wentworth, whose wayward streak inspired a number of Reid stories and profiles from 1950 onwards.4 There were other disgruntled Liberal backbenchers around, such as Jeff Bate and Charles Falkinder, but Prime Minister Menzies and his cronies kept them firmly in their place. Mavericks could generate the odd tantrum in party room meetings, and caused the occasional hiccup on the floor of the House, but their acts of rebellion never developed into anything serious or sustained. Menzies’ gravitas, buttressed by the power of patronage easily withstood their pinpricks. Dissenters who offended Menzies were condemned to a life of frustration and impotence on the backbenches. Their antics, while enlivening the Canberra parliamentary routine, were never going to inspire a major news story. Had internal discontent ever seriously threatened Menzies, Reid would have homed in on it, but it never did. Though Reid cultivated Liberal politicians, links with Labor men were his specialty. His range of contacts was a source of pride. He was always ready to trade on his ability to ‘fit together painfully but painstakingly from miscellan-

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eous and occasionally conflicting fragments of information a mosaic of what went on behind the closed doors of the [Labor] party room’. 5 Politics in the ALP, unlike politics in the Coalition parties, was a truly serious affair. It was the best game in town. Non-Labor politicians, Reid wrote later, ‘wistfully cling to the belief that politics should be an amateur game reserved for gentlemen’, whereas for Laborites politics was a ‘tough professional fight for existence’. Such a no-holds-barred approach was a godsend for the Canberra press corps, because Labor Party men loved to ply journalists, even those who wrote for hostile newspapers, with informative leaks in a bid to discredit internal party rivals.6 Cold War pressures intensified divisions in the ALP on the question of Communism. Towards the end of 1949, in a corridor conversation in Parliament House, Chifley told a group of listeners – including Eddie Ward, Reid and a few other journalists – that ‘he feared there’d be a terrible upheaval and that he wanted to keep the Communist Party in the open’.7 Midway through 1950 Reid used the dreaded word ‘split’ after Menzies introduced the Communist Party Dissolution Bill, which proposed the banning of the Communist Party. The federal ALP was deeply divided on how it should respond to Menzies’ proposal.8 At first it used its veto power in the Senate, where it still had a majority, to extort some breathing space, but the façade of cohesion came unstuck when, faced with the prospect of a double dissolution, the federal ALP executive humiliated Chifley by ordering the parliamentary party to pass the Bill. Reid, as a friend, witnessed Chifley’s distress first hand. The pros and cons of outlawing the Communist Party was a staple topic whenever the two men chatted about politics. Reid at first seems to have favoured proscription, believing that

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such a course of action was a legitimate way to defend freedom against Communist tyranny, but talking with Chifley seems to have swung him over to the opposite view. The influence of a favourite author had a similar effect. Reid was impressed by the phrase ‘you cannot impale ideas on bayonets’, which figured in Scaramouche, Rafael Sabatini’s bestselling novel set during the French Revolution.9 Meanwhile, Calwell kept up his vendetta against Reid. Early in 1951 the irascible Victorian again contacted the NSW branch of the party. He asked it to instruct the ACT branch not to renew Reid’s membership for the coming year. He enclosed two further examples of Reid’s ‘bitter attacks’ in the Sun. Calwell was incensed by an insinuation in one of the articles that he, Calwell, ‘was betraying Labor Party secrets to [Harold] Holt over the Red Bill’. NSW party officials were unmoved. They preferred to rely on the judgement of the ACT branch, which viewed Reid as ‘a good A.L.P. member’ and felt ‘that his articles were not in conflict with his position as a journalist who was a member of our Party’.10 Calwell’s hostility failed to dampen Reid’s passion for politics. He lived and breathed the stuff. His job at the Sun involved long hours. Each day during the week he would return home at half past six, just in time for the Macquarie News. For the next 45 minutes or so there was absolute silence at the dinner table as first the commercial and then the ABC news bulletins were read. After the meal he often engaged in further talk with his political contacts. There was no let up. On Saturday morning he would repair to the Sun office to resume his endless informal encounters with the denizens of Parliament House. Reid’s intense involvement in his career was hardly compatible with taking on all the responsibilities of a stable

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family life. The result was only to be expected. His young sons Douglas and Alan tended to play up. They were, for a time, a couple of tearaways. On one occasion they set fire to the hedge at Parliament House, and the Canberra police investigated the possibility that insurgents were responsible. Later on the Soviet Ambassador’s chauffeur chased Alan down Mugga Way after he and some other urchins raided a cherry tree in the garden of the ambassador’s private residence.11 Reid knew what was happening. His concerns surfaced early in 1951 in a letter he felt compelled to write to Dr Guildford Young, Auxiliary Bishop in the Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn. Though admitting that he was ‘a godless man personally’, Reid wrote to express his concern at the absence in Canberra of a Catholic boys’ school. He was worried that the education of his two sons was in the hands of teaching sisters who found them difficult to teach or handle. The lack of a Catholic boys’ school meant that there were no male teachers to guide his sons in the right direction. Something had to be done: I can’t leave them where they are. I don’t – and I am sure that neither the Church, nor you, Sir, as the senior representative of the Church in these parts – want them to grow into ignorant clods, knowing only a mechanical patter of prayers. In such a state they would the more easily fall prey to the talons of Communism, to the resistance of which the Church is pledged.12

There, notwithstanding its seriousness, the matter rested for a while. Despite its adverse effects on his family life, nothing could cure Reid’s addiction to politics. Fascinating things were happening. In March 1951 the High Court invalidated the ban on

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the Communist Party. Soon after, Menzies took up the double dissolution option when the Senate blocked banking legislation. A federal election on 28 April saw him re-elected. Though again defeated, Chifley was not downcast. On 13 June he told Reid that despite everything he was cheerful: ‘That’s yesterday’s happenings – it’s tomorrow that counts.’ Sadly, there were to be no more tomorrows for Chifley. During the evening he suffered a fatal heart attack. On the following day Reid wrote a page one obituary for the Sun in which he mourned the passing of ‘an ardent socialiser’.13 Dr HV Evatt succeeded Chifley as federal ALP leader. Reid did not believe that Evatt – or any other of the other possible successors, for that matter – would match Chifley’s success in smoothing out differences in the party by coming up with verbal formulations that enabled opposing groups to tolerate each other.14 Plenty of good Labor stories were in the offing. A lot of the drama took place in a very modest setting. In the 1950s Australia’s federal capital was still in its infancy. Everything was small scale. ‘Though it is the national capital,’ Reid told his readers, ‘Canberra is also a village with the population of a village – 28,000 – and many of the usual village drawbacks.’ It was not like Sydney or Melbourne, ‘where at the end of the political day the politician emerges from State Parliament House to vanish, if he chooses, into the anonymity of the crowd’. In the intimate milieu of Canberra the ‘little human things reveal more pitilessly than [does] the high drama of Parliament the true story of feelings within a party’.15 The fallibility of elected politicians was all too easy to spot in Canberra. Reid was not in awe of the people he was paid to write about, and just as importantly, he enjoyed a degree of freedom to publish candid

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views of their behaviour and actions. Compared with the standard bureaucratic inhabitant of Canberra, who was dependent on the public payroll, he was less constricted by the company town ethos of the national capital. Provided his proprietors backed him up, he was in a position to publish material that annoyed people in high places and get away with it. There was an unwritten code in Canberra which decreed that pressmen would write solely on political matters and would not publicise embarrassing personal incidents occurring in the parliamentary precinct or venture into criticism of the administration of Parliament House, which had a working population of over 500. Pressmen were silenced by the implicit threat that any comments critical of life in Parliament House would be treated as an attack on the parliamentary institution and dealt with as a breach of privilege. Reid was determined to break down this Canberra taboo. Politicians were human, which meant that abuses were sure to flourish whenever critical scrutiny was absent. Reid, unlike most other people who worked in Canberra, was not a Commonwealth employee. If journalists did not publicly comment on the frailties and peccadilloes of federal politicians, who in Canberra would?16 Reid made a preliminary feint late in February 1951, when he wrote an article whose theme was that Parliament was ‘a good institution – for the members, not the staff’. When Parliament sat, ministerial and parliamentary staff had to put up with unreasonable hours and poor facilities. Their conditions were ignored by the elected members who, in stark contrast, seemed intent on enjoying their own subsidised entitlements to the full. As an example of their attitude Reid cited the unlovely end of session practice of members carting away

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‘almost limitless supplies of beer and cartons of cigarettes’.17 Reid returned to this theme on 2 October 1951, when his column in the Sun featured a claim that a ‘mass movement’ of honourable members had participated in an ‘inglorious and undignified rush’ to the parliamentary bar in their eagerness to beat price increases announced in the federal Budget. According to Reid, ‘Within minutes of the Budget details being announced and members learning that whisky, other spirits, cigarettes and shaving gear were to be dearer, there was a concerted onslaught on the parliamentary bar.’ Members treated the parliamentary branch of government as a private club, he claimed, imposing rationing on all the inmates of Parliament House except themselves.18 If Reid was trying to provoke, he achieved his aim. Parliamentary privilege, whose spectral force he was prepared to challenge, was speedily invoked. On the day after the Sun published his article a Country Party member from Queensland (Bernard Corser) drew the attention of the House of Representatives to Reid’s article. He denounced it as a ‘vicious and unwarranted attack’. The article attributed ‘selfishness and bad manners’ to honourable members, and thus ‘urgent consideration’ was required. The matter was duly taken up. In referring the complaint to its Privileges Committee, the House asked it to consider the following matters: 1) The truth, or otherwise, of the impressions conveyed by the article. 2) The privileges extended by the House Committee to the writer of the article, and to all others who work within the precincts of Parliament House. 3) The wisdom or otherwise of continuing the extension of

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privileges to other than members of Parliament.19 It is not necessary to be a student of parliamentary privilege to see that these terms of reference were an ‘implicit threat, not only to Reid, but to all journalists working within Parliament House’.20 The all-important House Committee was entrusted with regulating access by non-members – such as journalists – to the precincts and facilities of Parliament House. If it did decide to make an example of Reid there was no telling how much things would change for the worse. His colleagues in the parliamentary press gallery were alarmed. They called a special meeting which declared its support for the right of members of the gallery to report fairly and accurately on the proceedings of the House or on happenings within its precincts.21 In the course of its deliberations Reid noted, for the record, that he was able to criticise federal politicians because he was not on the Commonwealth payroll.22 The Privileges Committee went ahead with its investigations. It took evidence, which included statistics on the purchase of commodities from the Members’ Bar in Parliament House. After considering the evidence the committee concluded that Reid ‘was not able to substantiate satisfactorily the accuracy of many of the allegations contained in the article’. The Committee noted Reid’s admission, when giving evidence, that his use of the word ‘mass’ in relation to the alleged movement to the Members’ Bar was ‘unfortunate’ given that he estimated that over a period of some hours he had observed no more than 18 honourable members coming from the bar. However, the Committee was not impressed. When it drew up its report to the House of Representatives it stated that Reid’s article contained comments on the behaviour of members which were ‘grossly exaggerated and erroneous in their

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implications, and consequently [conveyed] a false impression’. There had been no mass movement from the parliamentary chambers to buy articles at pre-Budget prices and to suggest that there had been ‘grossly reflect[ed] on the parliamentary conduct of Members’. The Privileges Committee, though having nailed Reid, did not want to turn the matter into a cause célèbre. The case was already a lively topic of conversation among insiders. Hearsay reports indicating that federal Cabinet discussed the matter and that ministers might well have supported draconian action but for opposition from the Minister for Defence Production, Eric Harrison, reached Reid.23 Whether or not federal Cabinet was involved, the Privileges Committee held its fire. While considering that his article did amount to a breach of privilege, it decided not to recommend punitive action: The article is in poor taste; whilst not wholly untrue, its many distortions and exaggerations classify it as irresponsible. The Committee considers that the House would best serve its own dignity by taking no further action in the matter.

The Committee also neatly sidestepped the broader question of the entitlements extended by the House Committee to nonmembers. It defined ‘privileges’ in the context of the Reid article to mean services provided by the parliamentary refreshment rooms. These came within the aegis of the House Committee, which meant that any privileges in relation to them did not fall within the purview of the Privileges Committee.24 As a result, the Privileges Committee judged that its report did not have to canvass the question of press access and privileges in the parliamentary building.25

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The House of Representatives debated the report from the Privileges Committee on 13 November. The speakers included Eddie Ward, who latched onto Reid’s response to a query from the Committee about whether or not he felt justified in reporting any occurrence in the parliamentary precincts which appeared to have news value: No [Reid testified]; I do not write everything in these precincts that has news value, because if I did so I would be writing a tremendous number of scandal stories, and to be quite frank, I do not like writing scandal stories.

Ward suggested that the press had no right to suppress the details of any scandalous matter that took place in the precincts of the Parliament. Because of the press’s anti-Labor bias, he claimed, it was likely to suppress news of a scandal if a member of the Menzies government was within ‘cooee’ of it.26 Another contributor to the debate was former Labor Speaker JS Rosevear, who called for punitive action against Reid: I am convinced that this man ought not to be allowed to remain in the press gallery. I would exercise the right – as I exercised it in the past – to remove a man of his type. He is a menace to the parliamentary institutions, because he plays into the hands of those people in the community who would degrade parliament for their own political purposes.

Rosevear suggested that Reid’s resentfulness originated in a decision made during the time he (Rosevear) was Speaker to stop pressmen using the visitors’ room next to the Members’ Bar as a listening post.27 The former Speaker was the only member to call for punitive action. Most members hoped that Reid would not repeat the offence and decided to adopt the

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Privileges Committee’s recommendation that they should take no further action. On the broader political scene, Labor’s ambitious and wilful Evatt remained without question the biggest newsmaker. In the spring of 1951 he led the campaign for a ‘no’ vote after Menzies tried to ban the Communist Party by means of a referendum to change the Constitution. In one of his columns Reid dwelt on the tension between Evatt and Stan Keon, who presided over Labor’s militant anti-Communists in Victoria, during the referendum campaign.28 But he had to report a different situation after the success of the ‘no’ campaign led to a dramatic switch in factional allegiances. Following his triumph in the referendum, Evatt, driven by ambition to win the next federal election, sought a rapprochement with Labor’s antiCommunist wing, as represented by Keon. He set out to validate the claim that Communism was better combated through political opposition than through legal proscription. A mechanism to mobilise such opposition already existed, in the form of the ALP’s network of Industrial Groups (whose supporters were known colloquially as Groupers), which had been set up to unseat Communist officials in trade union elections. Labor factionalism became ever more kaleidoscopic once Evatt went into overdrive. Reid responded to the thrill of the chase and in various Sun articles kept track of Evatt’s energetic progress. He reported on the birth of an alliance with Keon and his associates in Victoria, 29 dwelt on Evatt’s willingness to court the ALP Industrial Groups, 30 and observed that the anti-Grouper minority in New South Wales received no support at all from the federal ALP.31 The swing to the right also isolated Dr John Burton, who had been seen as Evatt’s protégé when he headed the Department of External Affairs in

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the late 1940s. Because of his progressive views on international issues Burton was now, Reid reported, an ‘embarrassment’.32 Reid knew that his great source, Pat Kennelly, whose role as Victorian powerbroker was menaced by the Groupers, was itching to replace Evatt with Calwell as Labor leader. 33 Such a change was unlikely to happen, however, because Evatt’s star was in the ascendancy. The outbreak of the Korean War generated economic instability which left the federal government looking flat-footed, and it seemed it would be only a matter of time before Evatt supplanted Menzies as Prime Minister. In August 1952 Reid noted that the leader of the Opposition was considered to have ‘an excellent prospect’ of winning the next election.34 Reid was impressed by the strategy Evatt had chosen. Evatt and the ALP Industrial Groups, unlike Calwell and Ward, rejected Depression-era notions of class struggle and further nationalisation. Evatt seemed to recognise, Reid noted, that Labor had to cater for an ‘enlarged existing petit bourgeois, not for a now almost non-existent proletariat’.35 Indirect control of the economy through the manipulation of financial mechanisms rather than public ownership was the way to go.36 What Evatt was promising was better management of existing circumstances rather than radical change. In his columns in the Sun Reid dwelt on the Menzies government’s waning popularity, as evidenced by Coalition defeats in federal by-elections and State elections. The economy was picking up after a recession in 1952 and yet the electorate’s fear of unemployment continued to weigh against Menzies: ‘It is almost as if the electors had closed their minds against the Government months ago.’37 Such was Labor’s confidence that Cabinet positions were already being divided up. One tip that

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Reid picked up was that the studious Fremantle Laborite Kim Beazley Sr had been promised the job of Minister for External Affairs (an offer that was later withdrawn). 38 But Menzies could not be written off. Reid believed that he still had a fighting chance, and this view was supported in May 1953 when he retained control of the Senate even though Labor outpolled the Coalition parties in all states except Queensland. Reid observed that Menzies could win the next federal election with just 48 per cent of the vote.39 In September Reid provided a blow-by-blow account of a meeting of NSW Labor members at which Fred Daly survived a move, allegedly inspired by Eddie Ward, to unseat him as one of the federal party’s representatives on the NSW state executive.40 Hard on the heels of this story the Sunday Sun featured an account by Reid of a meeting of caucus at which he, Reid, was attacked for having apparently unlimited access to its secrets. The story went on to provide further details of the same caucus meeting, including complaints from those attending about not being given information about the Labor leader’s election slush fund and about Evatt making unilateral and arbitrary changes to party policy.41 A question without notice was prompted in the House of Representatives after a member visited the Parliamentary Library and discovered that someone had torn out the Sundy Sun page containing Reid’s article.42 By now the nation’s recovery from recession had finally begun to benefit the Menzies government. The tide had turned by the end of 1953, when Labor was outpolled in a by-election in the winnable seat of Gwydir. From Labor’s viewpoint the result, Reid wrote, was ‘a disastrous and ominous debacle’.43 At the end of the year, despite a spectacular slump in his popularity earlier in 1953, Menzies’ stocks ‘stood higher than ever

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before’.44 By March 1954 Reid had begun to contemplate the possibility of Evatt’s losing the next, now imminent, federal poll and Labor having to elect a new leader.45 Evatt, for his part, felt that he needed to pull out all stops in his pursuit of victory. He redoubled his commitment to presenting an image of moderation. To this end, on 14 March 1954 he joined Prime Minister Menzies in praising church schools at the opening of the new St Edmund’s Christian Brothers School in Canberra.46 Reid’s plea of February 1951 had been answered, and though he was as godless as ever, his two sons were enrolled in Canberra’s brand new Catholic boys’ school.47 The establishment of a new school was a sign of progress. Civilisation was taming the wide brown land and disturbing its easy torpor. Rival faiths were at work. 1954 was to be the year when underlying political tensions rose and rent the surface.

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Petrovied he decline in the unpopularity of the Menzies government just as another election drew closer in 1954 did not bode well for the federal parliamentary press corps. The Prime Minister was haunted by the downfall of his wartime government because of dissension and was determined not to repeat the experience. In addition to maintaining firm control over his Cabinet colleagues, he had a long-term policy of trying to minimise the opportunities for journalists to foment mischief. The objective was to restrict access to sensitive and potentially embarrassing information, thus neutering them. For a prominent member of the press corps such as Alan Reid, whose lifeblood was information, this strategy was a grievous challenge. He was well aware of what was happening, and late in March 1954 devoted a column to examining Menzies’ success at keeping the press in the dark. He informed his readers that the two or three press conferences a week, plus the substantial amounts of off-the-record material, once the norm in Canberra irrespective of whichever party was in office, were fast becoming a distant memory (he did not mention the even cosier wartime arrangements under Curtin). Under the post-1949 Menzies prime ministership, off-the-record meetings between pressmen and the head of the government had dwindled, then disappeared. By the autumn of 1954, Reid noted, reporters in Parliament House seldom got to see the Prime Minister.1

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When Chifley and Curtin were in office Reid had been at the centre of the action, but under Menzies he was seen as a nosy pressman who was a known Labor sympathiser, and so had to contend with an added dose of hostility and suspicion. The most unambiguous expression of this lack of empathy took the form of a running joke between Menzies and Reid. In some not so good-natured banter the Prime Minister loved to remind the pressman, at least once a year, of Reid’s mistake in so readily writing him (Menzies) off back in the dark days of 1941.2 Reid was by now working for a new employer. In September 1953 there was a ‘battle of wits and writs’ between the rival Packer and Fairfax empires, which ended with John Fairfax and Sons, publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sunday Herald, merging with Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Sun and the Sunday Sun. The most obvious result of the merger was the amalgamation of the Sunday Herald, a broadsheet, with the Sunday Sun, a tabloid, to form a new Sunday tabloid, the Sun-Herald. The intention was to combine the circulation of the Sunday Herald with the advertising revenue of the Sunday Sun. The creation of the Sun-Herald allowed Reid to reach a wider Sunday audience. He started off in style, with the SunHerald featuring a series of three articles that he wrote when he switched his attention from federal to NSW politics. The three articles presented a tale of graft and conflict of interest presided over by the Cahill Labor government in Macquarie Street.3 Reid then returned to the federal beat, where his strength lay. He was busily gathering material for an article in the Sun on espionage. Clyde Cameron, one of his best Labor sources, had a contact in the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Because of Cameron, Reid was able to tap into what could be known about ASIO.

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In October 1953 his ASIO contact told Cameron and his colleague Eddie Ward that a Soviet diplomat might soon defect, which might well create a political scandal that could damage Labor. Cameron persuaded Ward that they should warn Evatt, but he did not appear terribly concerned when they did.4 Despite the brush-off, Cameron refused to let up on the issue of espionage. On 18 November he asked the Prime Minister whether security officers were tapping telephone lines and monitoring telegraph and teleprinter services. 5 As soon as he could, Reid used Cameron’s loaded question as a peg on which to hang an article. The cloak of official secrecy surrounding ASIO aroused his desire to discover how the spooks operated. Through his ALP contacts he could try to delve into the world of ASIO, even if he could give his readers ‘no more than a glimpse of its inner workings’. From Cameron he knew that some of the information that ASIO had acquired was ‘political dynamite’. In his article he referred to the bugging of a flat in Kings Cross that was occupied by a man ASIO believed was the main Russian agent in Australia. This man, not named in the article, was Feodor Nosov, the TASS representative in Australia from 1943 to 1950 and a Soviet security agent (TASS was the Soviet news agency). Reid’s article indicated that ASIO had a series of photographs that showed an individual stepping out of a Commonwealth car and disappearing into the ‘communist occupied flat’. The photograph, if published, would cause ‘a political sensation’. Reid, though he did not reveal the name in the article, had been told that the individual in question was Evatt’s secretary, Allan Dalziel.6 So in the dying months of the twentieth Commonwealth Parliament, insiders were aware that a security crisis might well be in the offing. A key date was 13 April 1954, the last sitting

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day of the House of Representatives (the election was set for 29 May). It was against this background that the Petrov affair erupted. The protagonists, Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov, were Soviet security agents masquerading as diplomatic officials. They had arrived in Canberra early in 1951. The Russian was a famously incompetent driver, so it was no great surprise when Reid found him one day in a distressed state on the side of a winding road near Canberra. Petrov’s car had a puncture and Reid changed the tyre.7 Reid did not realise what was in store. On 3 April 1954, Petrov left the Soviet embassy, taking sensitive documents with him, and was granted asylum. Ten days later, at the prime parliamentary broadcasting hour of 8.00pm, the Prime Minister announced that Petrov had defected. A Royal Commission on Espionage was set up to inquire into and report on Soviet espionage in Australia. Menzies made his dramatic announcement in the absence of Evatt, who was attending a Fort Street Old Boys reunion in Sydney. Evdokia Petrov’s defection, at Darwin airport on 20 April, added to the melodramatic atmosphere. The Petrov affair having broken on the eve of a federal election meant that it was hard to keep partisan considerations at bay. In the days after Petrov’s defection hit the headlines, sources in the Menzies government systematically released information about the defection to the press. Their idea was to arouse concern about what they were portraying as a great national security crisis. The campaign, which bore out Clyde Cameron’s warning of six months before, was led by the Treasurer, Arthur Fadden. The Treasurer was the source for a Reid article in the Sun-Herald on the Petrov affair in which it was claimed that ‘very important figures are involved – not key in themselves, but key in that they would occupy, if Labor was

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returned to power, posts from which they would have access to vital information’.8 This was another allusion to Allan Dalziel and to staff in Evatt’s office generally. In covering the unfolding Petrov story Reid remained focused on the actual timing of Menzies’ announcement. Around lunchtime on the fateful day (13 April) a decision was made to shift the announcement of the defection from Question Time (2.30pm) to 8.00pm that night. A later student of the period (Robert Manne) has pointed out that Harold Holt, then acting as Leader of the House, was in a position to tell Evatt about the new time but failed to do so before Evatt left for Sydney. Manne is of the view that ‘the impending absence of Dr Evatt from the house, of which Holt no doubt informed Menzies, determined the change in timetable’. Evatt ‘felt, not unjustly, that he had been treated dishonourably’.9 He blamed Menzies, although it seems that Holt, who (as Reid later stated) ‘preferred attacking [Evatt] in his absence than in his presence’,10 may well have been in on the act as well. Reid referred to Evatt’s absence in an article that appeared in the Sun-Herald on 25 April. The article examined the suspicion, now widely held within the Labor Party, that the decision to announce Petrov’s defection in Evatt’s absence had been designed to wrong-foot the Leader of the Opposition. Reid’s article gave credence to this suggestion. Menzies, Reid asserted, had ‘framed’ Evatt. Reid’s understanding of events was that at 10.00am on 13 April Evatt and Calwell had told Holt, as a matter of normal parliamentary courtesy, that Evatt was planning to fly out of Canberra at 5.30pm for the Fort Street reunion. Holt, according to Labor’s version of the day’s events, then went straight into a meeting of Cabinet at which Menzies decided that he should release the news about Petrov at eight

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o’clock that night. Menzies did this despite Evatt’s absence – or perhaps, it now appeared, because of it. Reid stated that an hour before he rose in the House Menzies asked to see Calwell. Reid’s article then presented the details of his understanding of what happened at this meeting. Told of the impending statement, Calwell pleaded with Menzies, without success, to defer making it. Menzies, in Reid’s account, was ready to breach a parliamentary convention whereby ASIO notified the Leader of the Opposition of all important national security developments. After meeting with Calwell, the Prime Minister went into the House, where he ‘tossed’ a copy of his announcement to Calwell. Reid thought Menzies had been unsporting in not telling Evatt that he should be in the House that night. It was a ‘silent’ and ‘dejected’ Calwell who was in the House when Menzies made world headlines. Evatt did not get a look in. Reid’s article vexed Menzies. He was angry because Reid had published it without having sought his version of the events of 13 April. The Prime Minister was keen to clarify matters. On the day the article appeared an unsigned high-level aidemémoire was drawn up. The document’s purpose seems to have been to set down and compare Menzies’ recollection of his activities on 13 April with Reid’s account. Discrepancies were tabulated. The aide-mémoire noted in particular that on the day in question Cabinet had not fixed a definite time for the Petrov announcement to be broadcast, whereas Reid claimed that ministers had agreed that the statement should be broadcast at 8.00pm that night. The aide-mémoire also stated that Holt was told of Evatt’s impending absence after, not before, Cabinet met.11 On the Sunday that his contentious story appeared, Reid received a phone call at home. It was from the Prime Minister’s

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press secretary, who told him that Menzies was convening a special press conference. The intention was to allow the Prime Minister to issue a public denial that he had ‘shelfed’ Evatt. Reid attended the press conference, and after it was over Menzies asked him to stay behind. Once Reid was ensconced n Menzies’ office the Prime Minister told him that he had written to Rupert Henderson, the Sydney Morning Herald’s managing director, asking for Reid’s ‘ journalistic head on a platter’. Menzies accused Reid of being ‘malevolently slanderous’ and of being in the grip of his ‘known pro-Labor sympathies’. The private chat with Menzies turned into a ‘real ding-dong go’. Reid felt that, for the first time ever, he held his own in a verbal clash with Menzies; however, for the moment, this seemed little consolation. When Reid got home he told his wife to ‘keep your hat on the sideboard and be ready to put it on’. He feared his career as a political journalist in Canberra was over.12 A copy of the Prime Minister’s letter to Henderson survives, as does a copy of a similar letter from Menzies to Reid (both are dated 27 April, although in his oral history version of these events Reid said he was given a copy of the letter before he entered the press conference on 25 April).13 In the two letters Menzies claimed that Reid’s article contained ‘a series of statements of a highly offensive and objectionable kind which are untrue’. The Prime Minister denied that it was accepted practice for ASIO’s Director-General, Charles Spry, to brief the Leader of the Opposition. He insisted that he had not known that Evatt would be absent at 5.30pm and that Calwell, far from pleading for him to do otherwise, had agreed to his proposed course of action when he was informed about it at 7.40pm. There was, Menzies contended, no truth in Reid’s suggestion of ‘scurvy conduct’ by the Prime Minister.

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The letter to Fairfax management contained the following final sentence: ‘I would be glad to hear from you at your convenience what action you propose to take.’ For a while office typewriters ran hot as the various parties to the dispute staked out their positions. On the same day that Menzies wrote to Reid, Sir Warwick Fairfax wrote to Menzies to indicate his regret at publishing ‘an ex parte statement referring to certain criticisms of you and your Government which I understand are being made in Labor circles, without reference to you’. Reid’s article was seen, said Fairfax, as an ‘error of judgement’ which reflected on the fairness and impartiality of the Fairfax press.14 Following the exchange of correspondence Reid consulted Fairfax management, presumably by phone. Later he was summoned to Sydney. Reid contended that he should do Menzies the courtesy of responding at length and in detail to his criticisms ‘even if the reply rebutted stiffly the charges made and justified the article’. Instead it was decided that the reply, which was despatched on 7 May, should be brief. Reid was directed to reply to the Prime Minister as follows: Viewing the article in retrospect, I acknowledge that I should have approached you directly for your answer to the Labor allegations which formed the subject of the article.15

Reid later told one of his oral history interviewers that when he was summoned to Sydney, Rupert Henderson was already aware that advertisers were threatening to boycott the Sydney Morning Herald if he was not sacked. Reid said he told Henderson that management should have no compunction at all about sacking him given that its prime responsibility was to keep the paper afloat. Henderson’s response, he noted, was to say that he was not going to fire Reid and that he thought the matter

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would blow over if Reid were to disappear for a few weeks. Reid was willing to do this, and so adopted a lower profile for the requisite period, by which time the immediate shock of the defection was over and his career was safe.16 Reid experienced Petrov-type grief from Evatt as well. Reid knew that Evatt was highly susceptible to conspiracy theories in the wake of the Petrovs’ defection. The Opposition Leader seemed to believe that people were out to get him. By way of confirmation of this penchant for dark thoughts Reid remembered a conversation he had with Evatt on the day that Menzies announced Vladimir Petrov’s defection. On the morning of 13 April Reid ran into Evatt in Parliament House. In the course of gossiping Evatt told Reid of his intention of taking the night off to go to the Fort Street reunion because he understood that nothing was going to happen in the House that night. Reid, while not knowing anything definite, told Evatt that he had a vague feeling that ‘something [was] in the air’. Evatt told Reid that he had checked with Holt, who had said that nothing was about to happen.17 At another impromptu meeting that afternoon Evatt told Reid that he had rechecked with Holt and had also seen Menzies, who had confirmed that nothing was going to happen. When something big did happen – the Petrov announcement – Evatt became convinced that Reid knew beforehand that something was up but had not divulged what he knew; at best he had given only an oblique hint. Reid believed that this caused Evatt to harbour an ever-growing grievance against him.18 Along with most other journalists in Canberra, Reid figured in the documents Petrov brought with him when he defected. In a 1952 Soviet assessment Reid was classified as a reactionary writer of anti-Soviet material who avoided associating with

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Soviet representatives.19 He also appeared in an assessment of the Canberra press corps prepared by the journalist Fergan O’Sullivan which ended up in the Soviet Embassy (this was the mildly scandalous document later immortalised by the Petrov Royal Commission as ‘Document H’). Here he was described as an ‘opportunist’ who liked to see himself as pro-Labor. The document also declared (incorrectly) that he was the wealthiest man in the press gallery.20 Because the Petrov documents referred to Reid, ASIO, in true bureaucratic fashion, decided to open a file on him. On 5 May it extracted relevant information from an earlier security report, this information having been acquired by bugging Feodor Nosov and from other surveillance activities. The TASS man, in 1950, was said to know four pressmen, including Reid, ‘well’, thus refuting the notion that Reid did not associate with representatives of the Soviet regime. He was formally identified in his new ASIO file as being the same Alan Reid whose name appeared in the Petrov documents.21 Reid did not appreciate appearing in Document H, as it had unpleasant implications, and expressed his irritation publicly. At the annual general meeting of the Canberra branch of the AJA he called on his colleagues to endorse the proposition that ‘Canberra Division would like action taken against Mr Fergan O’Sullivan as soon as legally possible.’22 He was not immune to the passion that the Petrov affair generated. The Petrov defection was a great story and Reid, not surprisingly, wanted to arrange an interview with the stars of the show. He had reason to believe that he was in ASIO’s good books, having allowed ASIO to use his garage to monitor the Soviet Ambassador’s private residence in Mugga Way when the weather was too bracing for comfort, as is it apt to be in

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Canberra.23 An approach was made through ASIO’s Regional Director in the ACT but it got nowhere, the Petrovs indicating ‘that they appreciate the interest of Mr REID, but they have made a rule not to see journalists until the report of the Royal Commission is given out’.24 The Petrovs and Reid were fated not to meet. In due course a statement from Petrov was added to Reid’s ASIO file. The Russian, on whom the incident with the flat tyre apparently had made no lasting impact, averred that ‘Alan Reed [sic] is not known to me.’25 ASIO wanted to keep it that way. There was no question of giving Reid access to the Petrovs. The Petrov affair lasted for over a year, but at no stage did Reid ever strike up a cosy relationship with ASIO. On 11 May 1955 the Petrov Royal Commissioners released transcripts of evidence given at secret sessions of their inquiry, which had taken place in February and March. The transcripts revealed that an unidentified woman journalist (referred to only as ‘Mrs A’) had associated with Australian Communists while acting as an Australian security agent. Mrs A provided Rex Chiplin, from the Communist Party newspaper Tribune, with secret information that senior public servants had vetted. Chiplin testified that Mrs A had given him information about a draft of a proposed treaty with the United States.26 The sensational case of Mrs A piqued Reid’s interest and he used it as the basis for an unflattering story about ASIO. He was disturbed, he said, to discover that an earlier security investigation into how a sensitive document which went missing from ‘a certain department’ had fingered an Australian agent (presumably Mrs A) as the culprit. Reid’s information was that the agent ‘had always been regarded by acquaintances as rather neurotic, [and] addicted to grandiose illusions’. Medical records allegedly showed ‘a

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high degree of emotionalism and unbalance that culminated in a near tragedy’. It was sad, he said, to see techniques developed in ‘spy films and melodramatic novels’ being introduced to Australia.27 Reid’s story did not impress ASIO. An internal document dismissed it as ‘mischievous and not factual’. Reid had indicated that some of his information came from Evatt via labor MP Allan Fraser, who was by now a prominent civil libertarian. What really concerned ASIO, however, was that, in preparing his article, Reid had contacted the ACT Regional Director. Other ASIO personnel raised the matter with the Regional Director in what must have been a slightly fraught chat.28 Reid’s probing irked ASIO, but in the overall scheme of things it was at most a minor irritant. A 1959 assessment of the material in his ASIO file was that ‘the traces are not considered adverse’.29 His interest in the Petrov affair did not generate much anxious internal documentation. The Petrov affair, while an exciting event, did not at the time sweep all other political considerations aside, notwithstanding later mythology.30 This no doubt made it easier for Reid to get over his run-in with Menzies. Though the defection occurred on the eve of the 1954 election, Evatt, wisely, did not base his campaign on national security or civil liberties. He preferred to stump the country as Father Christmas, trying to attract votes with a range of sweeteners. On 18 May Reid predicted that an Evatt victory was ‘seemingly impossible’31 and, true enough, Evatt’s offers of largesse failed to carry the day. On 29 May 1954 Menzies was returned to office, though with a reduced majority. Labor lost an election that it, though not Reid, had considered unlosable. The reaction was not healthy. Dark forces were blamed. A shaken

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Evatt became obsessed with hostile plots and conspiracies. It was Reid’s task, in the following months, to penetrate the darkness. He was the first Canberra pressman to give a public face to the post-election demons haunting Evatt. These fears were embodied in a mysterious figure by the name of BA Santamaria.

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Sexing up Santamaria he great Labor split of the 1950s, when antiCommunist elements in the party formed the schismatic Democratic Labor Party, is usually dated from 5 October 1954, when Opposition Leader Dr HV Evatt issued a press statement in which he accused ‘a small minority group of Labor members, located particularly in the State of Victoria’ of being ‘increasingly disloyal to the Labor Movement and to Labor leadership’. This subversive minority, he added, was ‘largely directed from outside the Labor Movement’. Though his name figured nowhere in the 5 October press statement, the lay Catholic activist BA Santamaria was the intended target. The link was made when Evatt’s statement suggested that the Melbourne publication News Weekly was active in fomenting internal disaffection. This was not the first pointed public reference to News Weekly around this time. A fortnight earlier Reid had published an article that referred to its importance as Santamaria’s mouthpiece. After reading Evatt’s opaque comments in the light of Reid’s earlier article, observers were better able to join the dots. They discovered, when they did so, that Evatt’s press statement amounted to a denunciation of Santamaria and his disciples in the Catholic Social Studies Movement (usually referred to simply as ‘the Movement’), a secretive anti-Communist organisation that, Evatt seemed to think, was bent on taking over the ALP and using it for its own sinister objectives and ideals. Its evil influence had to be

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exorcised, Evatt believed, and he saw himself as the only man who could perform such a heroic task. Following Evatt’s pronouncement, Santamaria’s persona was fixed for life as an omnipresent weaver of plots and conspiracies. His reputed influence made Australian politics less boring. If he had never existed, Alan Reid, as a connoisseur of arresting journalistic prose, surely would have had to invent him. In part, this seems very much to have been the case. It was Reid who wrote the first public appreciation of Santamaria’s significance. Flushed with the chase, he invested his depiction with a strong dose of melodramatic tension and brooding intrigue – this did not fully mesh with dull reality, but it was well suited to the colourful brand of political reporting that was practised at the Sydney Sun. Reid’s exposing of Santamaria was, it has been claimed, the single news story ‘of which he was rightly most proud’.1 In time, however, he must have had other feelings about it as well, since it helped to precipitate a split in the ALP – his party – that made it unelectable until the 1970s. The fear and loathing that came to be associated with Santamaria’s name had a long prehistory. The young Santamaria had immersed himself in the latest currents in Catholic social thought as a member of the Campion Society at Melbourne University in the 1930s. There he gravitated to Catholic Action, a movement originating in interwar Europe which sought to reinfuse the existing social order with Christian principles. By the late 1930s it had an institutional presence in Australia. A number of entities, such as the National Catholic Rural Movement, were mandated as official Catholic Action bodies. Santamaria became Assistant National Secretary of the Catholic Action movement in Australia.

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Melbourne’s Archbishop Daniel Mannix mentored Santamaria. The nemesis of Protestant Australia during the conscription controversy in the Great War, Mannix targeted a different enemy in World War II. He looked to Santamaria to organise resistance to Communist and left-wing influence in the trade union movement in wartime Victoria. The Catholic Social Studies Movement was set up in 1942 to advance this objective. The Australian church hierarchy endorsed it in 1945. From the start it was, fatally, an anomalous entity. The ‘rapid expansion of the Movement left it still as a lay body run by Catholic laymen, with episcopal approval and help, but not control. The fact that some Movement members belonged also to Catholic Action bodies and that the Movement had episcopal backing fostered the notion that the Movement was a form of official Catholic Action, entitled to the full support of the Catholic community.’2 Such confusion left the church vulnerable to the charge of meddling in politics. Catholic Action theorists defined rejection of Communism as a moral rather than a political duty or activity, but it was hard to maintain such a clear distinction in Australia. The Labor Party was linked umbilically to its affiliated unions, which meant that anti-Communist activity in the unions inevitably took on a factional colouration. Influence acquired as a result of such activity in the affiliated unions readily translated into influence in the party. Catholic Action was not intended to be party political and yet Santamaria’s Movement, its strange offspring, was undoubtedly so. The Movement inspired many of – though far from all – the union activists who organised the network of ALP Industrial Groups which formed the public face of anti-Communism in the postwar trade union movement. Through their presence in the affiliated unions and

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in local ALP branches, the Industrial Groups (or ‘Groupers’, as they were eventually dubbed) became a force in ALP state executives and conferences. By winning preselections in Victoria they, and therefore (though to a lesser extent) the Movement, gained a presence in the federal parliamentary caucus. As a result, Santamaria, the driving force in the Movement, acquired influence in the ALP without ever being a member of the party. The Movement operated as a secret body and his political role was completely unofficial. In public, at least, ‘no one in Australia seemed to have heard of him or to know anything about the Movement’.3 A lot was happening behind the scenes. In the run-up to the May 1954 federal election Evatt intensified the courting of Labor’s anti-Communist wing that he had been pursuing for the previous three years. His extensive round of pre-election campaigning was accompanied by a series of private meetings with Santamaria at which the two men discussed policy.4 On the Monday after Labor’s shock May 1954 federal election defeat the Sun featured two articles in which Reid pondered the significance of the result. In one of the articles he suggested that Evatt was going to lose no matter what he did: ‘there was no issue ready-made [or] of synthetic manufacture, that would justify the Government being emptied out at this particular point in Australia’s history’. 5 Reid’s other story was more colourful. It took up the point that, although defeated, Labor had gained ground with voters everywhere except in Victoria. Evatt would have won the election had he picked up five Victorian seats which, before the election, were widely seen as eminently winnable. Members of the Victorian ALP who were out of step with the Grouper-dominated state executive knew who to blame: ‘[they] claim that in Victoria, where the

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party suffered its only electoral losses on Saturday, the campaign was frustrated by the political wing of Catholic Action’. The state party, Reid’s story alleged, had run dead in five marginal seats where the Labor candidate was not considered to be a friend of the Victorian state executive.6 Within a day or so Reid was hinting that Pat Kennelly was the source of his inside information on the Victorian situation.7 Evatt’s alliance with the right made Kennelly feel vulnerable and desperate. At one of their secret meetings in February 1954 Evatt agreed with Santamaria that it was very important to get rid of Kennelly as federal party secretary.8 Kennelly, for his part, was determined to nobble Santamaria as a prelude to replacing Evatt with Arthur Calwell. The interpretation of Labor’s electoral defeat that Reid floated on Kennelly’s behalf was taken up by the Communist party in Tribune, which reported that a secret pre-election meeting of ‘extreme rightwing ALP politicians and officials’ had decided, with a view to destabilising Evatt’s leadership, that the election should be ‘thrown’. Reid’s article was cited to show that Prime Minister Menzies had a ‘fifth column inside the Labor Movement’, although Tribune suggested that it was the Industrial Groups (‘which unite Catholic and non-Catholic reaction’) which acted as the Trojan horse, not Catholic Action (‘many staunch Catholics fought hard for a Labor victory’).9 Between them Reid and the Reds formed a powerful pincer movement, and the references to secret conclaves and antiEvatt plotting had the desired effect. A few days after he lost the federal election, Evatt lunched with Fairfax notables Rupert Henderson and Sydney Morning Herald editor John Pringle. Evatt, Pringle saw, had taken the election loss badly – he ‘seethed with plots and conspiracies’. He attributed his

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defeat to a conspiracy, although it was not clear to Pringle who was being blamed. At one moment Evatt blamed ASIO and the Petrov affair; at another, without naming names, he referred to ‘certain forces’ in the ALP who, it appeared, were out to get him. He seemed confused.10 Reid decided it would be exciting to ramp up the pressure and see what happened next. In July 1954 he published a story which referred to the existence of a ‘secret motion’ criticising Evatt’s leadership style. The federal executive, at the instigation of Kennelly and fellow Victorian Dinny Lovegrove, had endorsed the motion. Reid’s trusted source, Kennelly, having become a Senator, was about to stand down as ALP federal secretary, but his successor, Jack Schmella of Queensland, could be trusted to provide him, and therefore Reid, with carbon copies of the executive’s minutes.11 Reid got the information for this story from Schmella or Kennelly, the latter of whom still dreamt of replacing Evatt with Calwell.12 While the Petrov affair was not the determining issue in the 1954 election campaign, its immediate legacy, in the form of the Royal Commission on Espionage, became lodged ever more uncomfortably in Evatt’s consciousness after the election. Evatt viewed the Royal Commission as a malevolent force and went on the warpath. He sacked Fergan O’Sullivan as his press secretary as soon as he learnt that O’Sullivan was considered to be the author of the pen portraits of journalists in Document H. The proceedings of the Royal Commission threatened to grind to a halt after the Labor leader, on 16 August, was given leave to represent two members of his office staff (Allan Dalziel and Albert Grundeman), who were named in a Petrov document known to the Royal Commission as Document J. Evatt was certain that Document J, which provided a highly opinionated

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overview of modern Australian political history, was a forgery concocted to discredit the Labor Party. He was convinced that Document J was the Australian equivalent of the notorious Zinoviev letter of 1924, which led to a Red scare that helped Britain’s Conservative Party win the general election in that year.13 As the Royal Commission’s proceedings crawled along, Evatt reshuffled his ever-shifting band of associates and informal advisers. He moved sharply to the left as a result. Evatt collaborated with Communist Rupert Lockwood and Ted Hill as he tried to clear the reputation of Dalziel and Grundeman. Another important realignment involved his former protégé, Dr John Burton, who had been on the outer during Evatt’s dalliance with the Labor right. Burton was trusted again. In the middle of 1954 Burton published a small book entitled The Alternative, which soon came to be seen in informed Labor circles as an important policy document. It heralded a ‘shift in emphasis in left-wing thinking away from aggressive nationalisation of industry towards a rather anti-Western position in foreign affairs’.14 In other words Burton wanted Evatt to move beyond Chifley’s focus on postwar reconstruction and carve out a new and more daring internationalist agenda for himself. Reid, who idolised Chifley, was incapable of responding dispassionately to such a radical shift. By September, federal Labor’s anti-Communist phase of 1951–54 had run its course. There was tension and instability in federal caucus as Groupers and anti-Groupers circled each other. Evatt’s appearance at the Royal Commission on Espionage had alienated Victorian right-wing Labor MPs, led by Stan Keon and his colleague Jack Mullens. A concerted bid to remove Evatt was seen as inevitable. Reid and Kennelly, who was ready to drop his opposition to Evatt if he came out against

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the Groupers, began to tot up the numbers in caucus. 15 Reid, through Kennelly, had a powerful – if slanted – view of what was becoming a great political story. Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Pringle was pursuing a more upmarket line of inquiry. During the summer of 1953–54 he met the Melbourne poet Vincent Buckley, and other intellectuals, who alerted him to the pressure that the Movement was exerting on young Catholics. He then had a private meeting with Santamaria, who said that his operations had to be secretive given the power of Australian sectarianism. ‘Even my name is against me,’ he confided. Such comments went into a ‘formidable dossier’ that Pringle was compiling.16 Labor’s plight, with Santamaria’s conspiratorial aura fuelling Evatt’s paranoia, was manna from heaven for Reid. If a lurid exposure damaged Santamaria, so much the better, since Reid saw himself as a disciple of Chifley, and had not Chifley refused to place militant anti-Communism at the top of the Labor agenda? Excitement mounted as the struggle for the soul of the ALP heated up. Eddie Ward’s lobbying in a postelection caucus ballot, in which, in opposition to Kennelly, he attempted to prop up Evatt with a view to an eventual Ward– Calwell succession, led to a colourful description of the unfolding events by Reid: In the swirl of dark, devious intrigue that last week surged through the Labor lobbies in Parliament House [in] Canberra, old friendships dissolved and mate double crossed mate in the frenzy of ambition as power hungry men jockeyed for position.17

In later oral history testimony which seems entirely in character, Reid indicated that something as trivial as his continued

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love of a wager precipitated the decisive stage in Labor’s spiralling crisis.18 In this version of events, Reid jumped at the chance when an anonymous colleague was willing to bet that he, Reid, could not produce a verbatim report of a caucus meeting. With this challenge as an incentive, Reid contacted his caucus sources as he set out to reconstruct the ‘secret, dark undercurrents of hate, intrigue, ambition and ideological divergence’ that typified a meeting of caucus in 1954. He hit pay dirt when he was provided with details of a meeting of caucus held on 25 August. One issue that caucus considered on that day was whether or not to authorise Evatt to continue participating in the proceedings of the Royal Commission on Espionage. Ward supported – and Kennelly and Fred Daly opposed – a recommendation to that effect. The recommendation failed to get up, after which, Reid reported, discussion moved on to the activities of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, with Ward calling on his colleagues to boycott the Committee. His comments provoked interjections which ended in a fierce confrontation between Keon and Ward. In the course of a heated exchange an impassioned Ward, Reid commented, named a ‘mysterious background personage who, he said, exerted powerful influence on caucus members, Keon particularly’. A few yokels from South Australia and Western Australia hurriedly asked for details, as they had never before heard the strange name that Ward mentioned. Keon then demanded that Ward should stop pretending that he was the sole repository of Labor’s holiest traditions. Ward’s answer, in Reid’s breathless account, was that Labor had more than one high priest. He told caucus: ‘There are two of us. —— and me (again he mentioned the mysterious personage).’19 Reid’s story, for which he presumably won his bet, appeared

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in the Sun on the last day of winter. The reference to the ‘mysterious personage’ piqued the interest of Rupert Henderson, who phoned Reid to find out more. Reid explained that the unnamed person was BA Santamaria, who wielded untold trade union and political influence. Henderson promptly asked Reid to write a profile of this fascinating character for the weekly magazine People. Reid preferred not to write anything without having first met Santamaria, whereupon Henderson said that he was willing to send Reid down to Melbourne to conduct an interview and to arrange for photographs to be taken. There was no need to arrange a stake-out. After years of enforced anonymity, Santamaria – a natural media performer, as became apparent straight away – wanted to go public. He was willing to allow Reid to write a profile because he had a mounting list of powerful enemies who were ready to capitalise on the sinister connotations of his supposed desire for secrecy. Far from being unconquerable, Santamaria was already an increasingly embattled figure. Early in the spring of 1954, as Reid stated on a later occasion, a reaction against Labor’s antiCommunist line was ‘already well under way’.20 At the Victorian convention of the Movement in August 1954 Santamaria analysed the growing opposition and enumerated the main currents of resistance, which ranged from the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) to ‘supplanted’ Labor hacks and the Communist Party.21 Santamaria was on the defensive on the ecclesiastical front as well. Though supported by Mannix, he had lost the backing of Cardinal Norman Gilroy in Sydney and, as Gerard Henderson later indicated, was well on the way to also losing the support of Archbishop Matthew Beovic of Adelaide: ‘the fissure in the Catholic Church actually preceded that in the ALP’.22

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The perceived hostility of ‘a section of the Sydney Press’ was another source of concern for Santamaria.23 Reid, because of his role in furthering Pat Kennelly’s anti-Santamaria agenda following the May 1954 election, was undoubtedly seen as hostile. Since the election Reid had continued to support Kennelly. Behind the scenes he was urging Evatt to take action against the Movement and the Groups.24 But the lines of communication between Reid and Santamaria were not severed. Both men realised the wisdom of being flexible. Reid, proudly godless, was not happy with Santamaria’s influence in what, after all, was, notoriously, his party, but he also realised that in his hands this could be a great news story. For his part, Santamaria knew that Reid was the nation’s top journalist cum insider. He loved being associated with people of influence and power, whatever their religion, and so was not willing to write the sardonic pressman off as a lost cause. He needed to mollify Reid. If he was going to be exposed anyway, he might as well cooperate. Though Santamaria was willing to welcome Reid when Henderson flew him down to Melbourne to gather material for his projected article, he quickly discovered that Reid was going to write the story in exactly the way he wanted, whatever the consequences for Santamaria may be. It was soon clear that Reid planned to sex his story up. There was going to be plenty of colour and drama. In the course of the interview Reid hinted at a possible resemblance between Santamaria’s Mediterranean heritage and that of the murderous Borgias of Renaissance Italy.25 Such an imaginative view of the situation went down ‘like a lead balloon’ with Santamaria, but he could do nothing. It was full steam ahead for Reid. Back in Sydney, Henderson was sucked in; on seeing the story, he considered

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it too good for People and decided to place it in the Sun-Herald instead. Other less detailed articles about Santamaria were scheduled for the Sun. It was not every day that a single man of mystery and secrets could be endowed with all the occult powers or motives needed to make sense of the arcane world of labour movement factionalism. While all this was going on Evatt was in overdrive. Realising that the Leader of the Opposition’s capacity to frustrate its activities was infinite, the Royal Commission on Espionage, on 7 September 1954, withdrew his right to appear before it. The Sun reported that Evatt gave an ‘impassioned’ address to caucus after he was excluded: ‘Caucus heard him, fascinated, for 75 minutes.’26 The full story was not revealed until the following morning, when reports indicated that after Evatt finished speaking an attempt to pass a motion of confidence in his leadership nearly led to blows being exchanged between Eddie Ward and his aged colleague Albert Thompson from South Australia. After this incident received newspaper coverage Evatt summoned a press conference at which he denounced the ‘deliberate falsifiers’ who had leaked the story. Reporters at the press conference described Evatt as ‘excited’. This was a euphemism that Reid did his best to undermine. Writing in the Sun, he said that caucus insiders were telling him that an exhausted Evatt was labouring under ‘intense nervous strain’.27 Labor’s embattled leader refused to believe that Reid, whom he was always eager to cultivate, would ever willingly present him in such an unflattering light. A ropable Evatt, whether at his raucous press conference of 9 September or more likely privately, confronted Reid and at great length insisted that Henderson, as the tool of management, must be the real author of the ‘disloyal material’ that was appearing so prominently in

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the Fairfax press. Reid’s denials fell on deaf ears.28 The formal public outing of Santamaria was not delayed. It duly went ahead in Reid’s weekly column in the Sun on 21 September 1954. Accompanied by the journalistic equivalent of an introductory drum roll, the Melburnian was ushered into the limelight, his anonymity now a thing of the past: In the tense melodrama of politics there are mysterious figures who stand virtually unnoticed in the wings, invisible to all but a few of the audience, as they cue, Svengali-like, … the actors out on the stage.

Such was the role of Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria, who aspired to be the unacknowledged legislator of Cold War Australia: ‘of politics but not in them, a man dedicated to an unrelenting crusade against communism’. His ALP enemies (identified as Kennelly, Calwell, Ward and Clyde Cameron in the article) saw him as a major political influence and yet he was out of the public eye and seemingly a casual bystander. Truly he was a man of mystery. His very name, which stamped him as a stranger to mainstream Anglo-Celtic attitudes, could well have been plucked from the pages of a steamy novelette, Reid opined. He was an ‘exotic’ presence working away in the interstices of the Australian body politic. The article cited Santamaria’s not being in Who’s Who as a sign of his secretive past. Reid, however, had found an entry in the Catholic Directory where his subject was identified as a ‘lay member of Catholic Action in Australia’ and secretary of the National Catholic Rural Movement; further research indicated that he was the driving force behind the Melbourne publication News Weekly. His private speeches to his supporters, distributed by his enemies, indicated a virile commitment to anti-Communism

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and a pro-family agenda. It was a speech of this kind, examining the influence of a ‘neo-Marxist school of thought’ in the ALP, which had alienated the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) strongman Tom Dougherty, formerly an ally of the ALP Groups.29 Reid’s article added to the fevered atmosphere of internal Labor politics. On the day before it appeared, his colleague Harold Cox noted privately that the ‘overwhelming consensus of opinion in the Caucus’ was that while Labor had no ‘credible replacement’ for Evatt, his performance at the Royal Commission on Espionage had finished his career. The ALP, Cox considered, was ‘so completely incohesive, so completely lacking in any unanimity on policy or even ideology, and so riven with personal dislikes and bitterness that it is hard to see how it can reconsolidate until a showdown is forced either by expulsion or resignation’. The situation in caucus was ‘highly explosive’; ‘an incident could precipitate an upheaval at any time’.30 When caucus met two days later, the AWU’s Bill Edmonds alleged that a pro-Calwell plot was afoot. Reid reported that an attempt by caucus opponents to ensure that Evatt did not comment further on the Royal Commission on Espionage without reference to the party as a whole resulted in further acrimony.31 By now observers were likening the situation in caucus to ‘a blocked septic tank’.32 Evatt so far had resisted taking up arms against the Movement and the Groups but the situation had become unbearable. The time had come for Evatt to end the impasse; he hoped to achieve this by publicly denouncing Santamaria. It seemed that the best way that he could rally his hopelessly divided caucus was by stirring up hatred against a demonised enemy. It was altogether too tempting to attribute Labor’s disunity and leadership woes to sinister outside forces

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who were manipulating susceptible members of caucus. The Labour Day long weekend at the beginning of October gave Evatt the opportunity to consult with sympathetic trade union and party powerbrokers in Sydney. On Monday and Tuesday (4–5 October) an 840-word press statement was drafted. A number of insiders, including Les Haylen, Jim Ormonde and Allan Dalziel, were consulted about what the call to action should include. It is understood that Evatt also consulted Reid.33 The pressman, because of his association with Kennelly, was considered to be ‘on side’.34 Tuesday, 5 October 1954, was the day of reckoning. In the Sun of that day Reid dwelt on the paradox of the Industrial Groups. A noble cause, it was suggested, had gone astray. Grouper zeal, mobilised by Santamaria, had led to electoral victories in Communist-led unions but was now being diverted into unions that did not have Communist officials, such as the Transport Workers’ Union. Santamaria’s crusaders, like their medieval predecessors, had lost their way. The anti-Communist bandwagon was attracting careerists and opportunists. At four o’clock on the same day, after caucusing with intimates at Colonel Alec Shepherd’s Sydney bookshop Morgan’s, Evatt released his historic press statement. He proclaimed that Labor’s election loss back in May was due to the party being betrayed and subverted by a small Victorian minority. This malignant force was directed from outside the official labour movement and its views were set out in News Weekly. Evatt’s denunciation did not name any names but Reid’s article outing Santamaria had prepared the way by noting Santamaria’s link with News Weekly. Reid’s commentary on the statement came on the following day. Labor’s crisis, he wrote, boiled down to a matter of Evatt versus Santamaria. This was the real fight.

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The centrepiece of Reid’s exposure – his article for the Sun-Herald, complete with a picture of Santamaria sitting beneath a crucifix (‘It was used against Santamaria, quite wrongly, but it was used against him for years’35) – appeared on 17 October. Uncovering Santamaria, attentive readers learnt, was a matter of peeling off various organisational layers before the beating heart of anti-Communist passion was revealed. The Industrial Groups were animated by activists from Santamaria’s Movement, which produced an anomalous situation because the Groups had an open and official connection with the ALP whereas the Movement definitely did not. The role of the Church was also unclear. Catholic Action, which promoted lay activity, was non-political (it was, Reid later accurately noted, ‘basically … religious and spiritual in its purpose’), but its shadowy offshoot the Movement, though beginning with a focus on propaganda, had moved into active politics through its attempt to direct the Groups. Santamaria’s activities, Reid commented, had culminated in ‘one of the stormiest political controversies in Australian history’. 36 Evatt’s manic U-turn – the former would-be collaborator with Santamaria was now a deadly foe – kicked off an old-style Australian sectarian donnybrook. Labor’s Industrial Groups, hitherto a mainstream extension of its official party structure, were suddenly equated with the dark and secretive Movement, which in turn was conflated with Catholic Action. From now on Catholics in the ALP could readily be targeted as puppets of Santamaria no matter how uninvolved they might be with him or his supporters. Hysteria and bigotry made it hard to make sense of what was in fact a complex situation. Santamaria’s activities raised important issues concerning the relationship between the Church and politics in a pluralistic

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society. In the early 1950s the question of what the ideals of Catholic Action meant in terms of practice and organisation inspired endless debate and behind the scenes negotiations among rival groups of ecclesiastical bureaucrats in the Catholic Church in Australia. Competing ideas generated a mountain of internal paperwork which latter-day scholars37 must sift through to determine what was actually going on. To many outsiders in the spring of 1954, however, the whole business was clear cut: obviously, a Popish plot was afoot. Australia was still hag-ridden by ancestral suspicion between Catholics and Protestants. It was all too easy for a group such as Catholic Action to acquire sinister connotations. Reid’s portrayal of Santamaria as an exotic and occult force with 10 fingers in every pie provided just the right element of human interest and drama to hold his readers’ attention throughout a story that was in reality about the complexities of power struggles in the ALP. Accuracy, inevitably, suffered. The sudden exposure of Santamaria in the Sun distorted his importance. The newspaper-reading public was given a false impression of his role. He seemed, from the coverage he was generating, to be the secret architect of a monolithic Catholic position on key political and social questions, but in truth there were many Catholic churchmen and lay activists who disputed or distrusted his views. Reid, without wishing to, helped to set off a sectarian firestorm that could not be controlled. Though he was no antiCatholic bigot, he could not escape being singed. In November, Sydney’s Catholic Weekly described him as ‘highly provocative’. The colourful lead taken by the Sun, it suggested, was being followed whenever a newspaper used the words ‘Catholic Action’ as a label to describe almost everyone who might be arrayed

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against Dr Evatt in the ALP or who supported the Industrial Groups. Sectarianism, the Catholic Weekly lamented, relied on a ‘scant regard for exact terminology’. 38 The Catholic Weekly’s disappointment with Reid was not easily assuaged, and for a while he was an object of suspicion and distrust in influential Catholic circles in Sydney. Eventually, to assist reconciliation and gain indulgence, Reid performed good works for the Church by ghost writing two publicity features for his old Catholic boarding school at Goulburn. 39 The sectarian passion that was released in 1954 came as a shock to Reid. The aim of the anti-Santamaria strategy, as originally envisaged by his friend Pat Kennelly, was clear and limited: Santamaria’s spell would be broken by sowing fears of ‘extreme Catholic Action’ – non-Santamaria forms of Catholic Action were perfectly acceptable – in Evatt’s mind. Reid’s role was to dramatise this issue through the odd story in the daily press. Once Evatt stopped dallying with Santamaria there would be an orderly return to the centre on the part of the federal ALP. But Reid was the wrong man to be involved in such a delicate exercise. His brand of journalism, honed in the unsubtle world of a metropolitan afternoon newspaper, was too dramatic and colourful to act as a gentle solvent. Spicing up the notion of a Svengali-like Santamaria helped trigger a morbid reaction in Evatt’s mind. Reid, in his more thoughtful moments, wanted the alternative to Santamaria to take the form of a reaffirmation of the ‘light on the hill’ school of socialism embodied by his hero Chifley. What Labor got, however, was something completely different. The views of Evatt’s anti-Grouper allies were not framed by erudite Fabian policy tracts. Religious sectarianism was the great, if coded, rallying point for Evatt’s followers and

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anti-Catholic sentiment opened the way for a rapprochement with Communists and fellow travellers in the broader labour movement. Reid was a centrist in a party that was incapable of steadily pursuing a broad middle course. Evatt, so recently the ultra-pragmatist, quickly mutated into, as Reid soon put it, ‘the symbol of Left-wing, old-fashioned militant socialism of the class struggle variety and of anti-Americanism’.40 Survival in the jungle of internal Labor politics demanded that Evatt and his supporters appear more radical than they really were in order to distance themselves from former Grouper associates. Outing Santamaria unleashed havoc in the party of which Reid was a signed-up member. As 1954 drew to an end the only consolation he had – and it was a big one – was that he could count on being supplied with a host of colourful news stories well into the future as the drama unfolded. Newspaper prose was not designed to convey a nuanced view of the complex situation in which Santamaria operated, but the process of oversimplification could not be wound back. The image of Santamaria as a master manipulator had assumed a destructive life of its own.

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The House of Packer rank Packer, the owner of the Sydney tabloid the Daily Telegraph, needed to have journalists with a competitive streak because his paper was involved in a perpetual morning rivalry with the Sydney Morning Herald. Scoops were important in this struggle for primacy, and were a sign of prowess for the individual journalist. For a while the benchmark was set by Ken (‘the Crow’) Schapel, a Packer political correspondent in Canberra in the 1950s who was renowned for his determination to outsmart other pressmen: ‘It was rumoured that Schapel was so inquisitive that he sometimes returned to the press gallery late at night to go through the carbon copies of other people’s stories in their wastepaper baskets.’1 Packer was ever on the lookout for employees endowed with similar determination. In the spring of 1954, in this spirit, he decided to poach Alan Reid. The articles on Santamaria in the Sun and the Sun-Herald were a tabloid coup. They were written by a newsmaker who deserved to be headhunted. Reid, for his part, was ready to move on. On 5 October, the day on which Evatt denounced Santamaria, Lindsay Clinch, the Fairfax newspaper company’s executive editor, informed senior management of Reid’s decision, notified three days earlier, to switch camps.2 Reid had a soft spot for the Packer family dating back to when RC Packer (Frank’s father) first employed him at the Sun, even though the working environment at Frank Packer’s

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company, Australian Consolidated Press, was not, initially, an entirely cosy situation for him given his political background. His strong identification with the ALP from the days of Jack Lang was definitely a fly in the ointment. By tradition, Australia’s daily newspapers were, for the most part, anti-Labor in editorial orientation and, especially when there was a strike on somewhere, vociferously anti-union as well. But even by these standards the stance of the Packer press in the 1950s was notable. Frank Packer was unrelenting in his antagonism to the Labor Party and trade unions. His hostility inspired much unflattering coverage and countless dyspeptic editorials in the Daily Telegraph. Reid hoped to finesse his way through the competing pressures. He did not see why he should have to sacrifice his labour movement links because he worked for Frank Packer. There was some friction to start with, when he did not bow fully to the anti-Labor ethos of his new employer and refused to resign from the ALP. He stood his ground and stated that no one told him what to do in his own time.3 He got his way on this point and remained a party member. An associated cause of concern for Reid’s new employer would have been his status as a union activist. Reid had supported the AJA during the rousing lockout of 1944, but after he joined Packer he was expected to toe an anti-union line if other journalists went on strike. In July 1955 there was ‘a virtual reprise of the 1944 strike’ when an industrial dispute involving printers and journalists led to the newspaper proprietors of Sydney putting out a composite newspaper – which, for a few days during the dispute, faced competition from the Clarion, produced by union labour. Some 3000 newspaper employees went on strike but Reid was not one of them. In contrast

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to his position in 1944, he wrote for the composite newspaper. This blemish was tolerated by Reid’s AJA colleagues; he retained his AJA membership and served on its Canberra district committee at various times until 1960 when, on not seeking re-election, he was thanked for his long and valued service. 4 Reid’s initial coverage of the Petrov affair had, at least in the eyes of Prime Minister Menzies, reinforced his image as a determined Labor man. To be seen as such in Liberal-dominated Canberra had the potential to lessen his value in the eyes of his new employer. However, he was not being taken on just as a political journalist; he was also expected to be the day-to-day representative of the corporate interests of the Packer media empire in Canberra. It was essential, from this perspective, for things to be put on an even keel following his run-in with Menzies back in April. This consideration resulted in an epistolary charade having to be conducted. On 27 November 1954 Reid sat down and typed a letter to Packer the purpose of which was to indicate that, from his standpoint, the unpleasantness occasioned by his Anzac Day article on the Petrov affair was a thing of the past. He had to confess in his letter, however, that he doubted if Menzies felt the same way. In the months that had followed the Sun-Herald article Reid had seen or spoken to Menzies only on formal occasions, and the Prime Minister had treated him with ‘punctilious courtesy’. Reid told Packer that the ‘obvious intensity’ of the Prime Minister’s feelings back in April was such that the lack of overt hostility ought to be seen as a sign of natural politeness rather than of forgiveness. The Reid letter to Packer was speedily followed by a Packer letter to Menzies. The Prime Minister was told that Reid was ‘a very good journalist’ but that he would be ‘not nearly as

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effective’ if he were, as Reid seemed to fear he was, persona non grata with Menzies. Packer wanted Menzies to know that Reid’s ‘abrupt and, to the Prime Minister of Australia, rude’ letter of 7 May relating to his Petrov article had been written under instructions from Henderson and the Fairfax management and was sent despite Reid’s wishes. Along with his own missive Packer enclosed Reid’s letter of 27 November, which represented the pressman’s most thought-out version to date of his dealings with the Fairfax management as a result of the Petrov article. Packer told Menzies that he had every intention of fixing up the ‘disturbing situation’ that had arisen. The flurry of letters was meant to achieve this goal. It is not fanciful to suggest that Packer got Reid to write the letter of 27 November so that he (Packer) could then forward it to Menzies in the hope that it would shift the responsibility for the controversial Sun-Herald Petrov article onto the Sydney Morning Herald. Packer wanted there to be no residual coolness between Prime Minister Menzies and Reid, who was now, in effect, Packer’s personal emissary in Canberra. The serious purpose behind the exchange was to create a mollifying letter from Reid that could be stored in Menzies’ personal archive (as it was). Packer’s diplomatic initiative seems to have had the desired effect, aided no doubt by the cheerfulness of the impending festive season. Two days after Christmas a letter was prepared for Menzies in which it was stated that the Prime Minister would not be ‘prejudiced in any way in my future dealings with Alan’. There was, happily, no need for Menzies to sign and send the letter; in an annotation he indicated that he had seen Frank Packer personally. 5 What goes on between powerful friends, as Menzies and Packer well knew, is best never written down for posterity.

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Packer hired Reid because of his ability to come up with scoops and Reid was eager to do so. From the word go he set out to show that any number of incriminating letters and documents would continue to be plucked out of the ether. In his first article for the Daily Telegraph he referred to a document from the federal ALP’s allegedly ‘secret’ and ‘guarded’ office records (in truth the ALP leaked like a sieve) which, he said, provided an insight into ‘the labyrinth of conflicting hates, vendettas, backstabbing, and intrigue within the currently arring Labor Party’. The document in question was a federal executive report on the charges made by Dr Evatt against the Movement and its links with ALP politicians. All this was grist to Reid’s mill. ‘1955 should be an interesting, if rather bloodstained, year,’ he chortled.6 Before chronicling Labor’s woes for the Packer press Reid was given a far more pleasing task to perform. At the start of 1955 he was included in the party that accompanied Menzies when the Australian Prime Minister undertook a leisurely world trip. The itinerary involved a sea journey to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where Menzies stayed for four days, a short visit to Pakistan, attendance at a Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London, an excursion to Greece and functions in Washington and New York.7 The trip was not entirely smooth sailing. Reid may have become a paid Packer retainer but his professional judgement and freedom of expression did not immediately vanish on that account. He did not suspend his critical faculties during the long jaunt, with the US leg of the trip receiving a candid assessment in one of his articles. Before the party arrived in New York, he wrote, television and radio outlets deluged Menzies with requests for interviews, and yet he refused all the offers, despite having made a successful,

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albeit reluctant, TV appearance in London. His bias against media people was incorrigible, causing him to put on a ‘Greta Garbo act’ in New York. Thus rebuffed, the New York media chose to ignore the visit. Reid observed that Menzies ‘might as well have stayed at home for all his contribution to Australian– US public relations’.8 Reid’s fierce dedication to his work as a journalist was unabated. It continued to consume his waking hours. The overseas trips with Menzies, once they became a feature of his life, kept him away from home even more. Back in Canberra his hours were even longer than before because the Daily Telegraph was a morning newspaper. He set off for Parliament House at ten o’clock each morning and might not return home until three o’clock in the following morning, often accompanied by colleagues. He relaxed at the weekends by reading and doing cryptic crosswords.9 After the early hiccups Reid managed to seamlessly mesh his political stance with the anti-Labor position of Packer. Though still a member of the ALP and determined to remain so, Reid was unimpressed with the power arrangements in his party. The wheel of political fortune had swung too far to the left for his liking. Evatt, it now seemed, was ready to tolerate the presence of Communist Party members in leadership positions in the unions as the price to be paid for exorcising Santamaria’s influence in the party. Reid’s discomfort with this situation coloured his stories in the Daily Telegraph. At the federal level the ALP was, he insisted, ‘helplessly in the grip’ of left-wing trade union groups.10 As proof of the power of their ambitious agenda he cited the 1955 ALP federal conference’s decision to call for the recognition of the People’s Republic of China and to oppose Australia’s participation in combating

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the Communist insurgency in Malaya. The Evatt camp, Reid claimed, was planning an ‘audacious new foreign policy line’ based on the British socialist Aneurin Bevan’s anti-American ‘trust the Communists’ neutralist attitude. The new Labor line also reflected a rapprochement between Evatt and his former protégé John Burton. It was hard for Reid to discuss the one without commenting adversely on the other. Reid depicted Burton as a Marxist version of Santamaria. No sheltered egghead, Reid claimed, Burton exercised a ‘Svengali-like influence’ over Evatt. Reid was persuaded of this when he was at Canberra aerodrome one day and was buttonholed by Evatt, who vigorously asserted that Burton’s book The Alternative provided the key to an enlightened Australian approach to external affairs. Reid smarted at the thought that Burton might have acquired the behind-the-scenes power in top Labor circles that he himself had once aspired to.11 Burton, for his part, seems to have reciprocated the animosity. Though rarely remembering individual press articles, Burton never forgave Reid for writing, while working for the Sun, what he saw as a particularly ill-informed and sensationalist story about the anti-Dutch activities of Indonesian seamen in postwar Australia. The pressman, it seemed to him, was a bumptious smart aleck.12 Under Evatt things were so chaotic in the ALP that political stories that would have been lingering sensations in normal times became forgotten overnight – life and death crises seemed to be routine. Just such a one-hit wonder occurred early in April 1955 when Evatt’s disgruntled parliamentary deputy, Arthur Calwell, joined a hare-brained attempt to strip Evatt of his party leadership when it was discovered that he had failed to renew his annual ALP membership ticket. The plot was hatched in the Canberra branch of the party at a time when

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Reid was getting back into the swing of things after his overseas trip with Menzies, so he can be presumed not have known about its prehistory but his coverage of the story, once it surfaced, is fascinating nonetheless because it gives a good insight into his flexible notion of accuracy in journalism. Reid’s authority as a pressman depended on his access to information provided by insiders, but when publishing a story he was ready to tweak literal truth in order to protect his sources. Labor MP Fred Daly was one such source, as was indicated by an article in the Sunday Telegraph in which Reid, after it had fizzled out, covered the recent attempt to depose Evatt because of his lapsed membership ticket. The story opened as follows: A phone bell shrills insistently in a darkened Sydney home until the receiver is lifted and a tired voice says with weary patience ‘Hello’. Over the phone, humming with the faint resonance of long-distance, comes an exultant, triumphant voice: ‘Fred, tomorrow’s the day – Arthur’s positive’.13

Years later Daly, in his memoirs, provided a more accurate account of this incident. It was, he revealed, Calwell himself, not some anonymous third party commenting on what Calwell was thinking, who made the midnight phone call. ‘Evatt’s gone, Fred,’ Calwell had said, excitedly. ‘He has not renewed his ALP membership ticket. He is no longer a member of the Labor Party and cannot be leader.’14 By fiddling with the identity of the midnight caller Reid managed to use Daly as a source for a good story without revealing him as the source who had divulged the content of a private and sensitive conversation with a colleague. The attempts to get rid of Evatt had the unintended effect

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of consolidating his position. They meant that he was now the embodiment of anti-Santamaria orthodoxy in the party, and as such deserved unwavering support. His newly created foes in Victoria split from the federal ALP and formed the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist), whose support base was largely Catholic. Mania was abroad, which was to Reid’s liking. He characteristically presented Evatt’s crusade against Santamaria and the Groupers as a gripping novella, full of sinister characters, furtive meetings and sudden acts of treachery. Beginning in April 1955 he had a weekly column in the Daily Telegraph. It was called Political Parade, and labour movement factionalism loomed large in it. A dramatic tone was set from the word go: It is the bar of the Newcastle Hotel in George Street, Sydney … cool, dim. A bleakfaced man with tight lips is leaning against the counter. He is Ernest Thornton, Communist boss, tough but ageing, one-time czar of all the ironworkers, later key Communist industrial agent for war-torn, distracted Asia, probably still one of the top Communist brains in Australia, bitter, implacable, capable. Another man enters. He is short, chunky, cheerful.

The article identified this lesser light as Alan Cameron, a Labor man and secretary of the NSW branch of the Federated Ironworkers’ Association (FIA).15 Cameron’s visit to the Newcastle Hotel was one of the many meetings that took place as the split between Evatt and the Groupers worked itself out. Reid’s information, when the lurid embellishment was stripped away, was that in the course of the meeting Thornton suggested to Cameron that he run against Laurie Short, a Grouper, in the FIA

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election to be held at the end of the year. After rejecting this suggestion Cameron contacted Short, whom we may presume was Reid’s source for the story, since Short and Reid had regular longdistance telephone chats in which they discussed FIA factionalism.16 Thornton, they knew, was trying to win back control of the FIA by teaming up with anti-Grouper elements in the ALP. Trade union factionalism was inseparable from the power struggle in the ALP. Another favoured locale for the setting of Reid stories at this time was the Sydney Town Hall, where the NSW branch of the ALP held annual conferences which were as likely as not to involve fierce internal clashes. The August 1955 state conference, delayed because of the ructions in the party, did not disappoint Reid: There is bitterness amounting to hatred at the A.L.P. ‘unity’ conference in Sydney’s grimy, depressing Town Hall. Wild scenes are occurring, with men threatening each other physically, spectators intervening from the galleries, and abuse being shouted venomously across the hall. The sole thing emerging is that the Labor movement is – on the emotional, complex issues involved in the dispute – split irreconcilably.

The Daily Telegraph ’s coverage of the conference was enlivened by pictures. One photograph showed Town Hall attendants moving in to eject a persistent interjector from the public gallery, and another portrayed a sealed ballot box, in which were uncounted votes for the incoming state executive, which armed guards were conveying to a strongroom.17 Internecine warfare in the ALP was a Reid staple, as was, apparently, the still touchy issue of parliamentary privilege. 1955 was a vintage year on both fronts. On 3 May the federal

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Labor member Charles Morgan claimed in Parliament that a recent article appearing in the Sydney suburban newspaper the Bankstown Observer had impugned his honour and had questioned his fitness to serve in Parliament by alleging that he had engaged in an ‘immigration racket’. The Bankstown Observer was owned by the businessman Ray Fitzpatrick and was edited by Reid’s old classmate, the journalist Frank Browne. The House of Representatives referred Morgan’s complaint to its Privileges Committee which, on 8 June, concluded that there had been a breach of privilege. Two days later Browne and Fitzpatrick appeared before the House of Representatives, which imposed a gaol sentence of 90 days on the two men. They served their time in the gaol at Goulburn. The punishment of Browne and Fitzpatrick enlivened the Canberra winter. Journalists seized on the riveting story. Ray Fitzpatrick, an ally of Jack Lang’s, featured as the ‘Mr Big’ of Bankstown politics. He could be presented as yet another element in the lurid world of Labor factionalism. In Reid’s coverage of the story he suggested that Fitzpatrick was bent on obtaining control of the Labor Party in New South Wales by installing a stooge as state secretary of the party. Increased excitement was guaranteed when Morgan claimed that a NSW judge – whom Reid promptly dubbed ‘Mr Wig’ – was shielding Fitzpatrick from charges of corruption and ‘Chicago-like gangsterism’. Suspense mounted as the House of Representatives, in Reid’s words, ‘trembled on the verge of revelations imputing corruption and impropriety to high New South Wales officials’. But the matter was taken no further. The confidential minutes of the Privileges Committee remained under lock and key even though insiders such as Reid had a fair idea of their content. He knew that Morgan, in his testimony to the Privileges

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Committee, had named Mr Wig – he was Stanley Taylor, head of the NSW Industrial Commission – but Mr Wig’s identity was not revealed to the public at large until 2001, when the embargo on the confidential minutes was at last lifted.18 The cry of privilege, which had now led to two men being gaoled, was soon heard again in Canberra. In the Daily Telegraph on 29 September 1955 Reid reported that many fellow members were puzzled when the face of Stan Keon, the strategist of the breakaway anti-Evatt Labor group in Federal Parliament, ‘dropped disconsolately’ after Menzies announced that he had deferred a pay rise for federal politicians. Reid claimed that Keon was disappointed because he had hoped to gain kudos by refusing a pay rise. This claim led to Reid’s being accosted by Keon’s anti-Communist colleague Robert Joshua, who warned him that his story might well be taken up as a matter of parliamentary privilege. For a moment the fate of Browne and Fitzpatrick floated before Reid’s eyes. On 5 October Joshua told fellow members that Reid had ‘grossly misrepresented his Party’. In a rare instance of agreement with Joshua and the other anti-Evatt Laborites, Calwell called Reid ‘the lowest thing to crawl around this House’. He no doubt was disappointed when Joshua did not demand that Reid be referred to the Privileges Committee but instead merely asked for the AJA to be directed to see that nothing similar happened again.19 The final act in the protracted Petrov saga was played out in 1955, when the Royal Commission on Espionage presented its report to Federal Parliament. Its findings were due to be handed down on 14 September, but three days before they were released Reid wrote an article for the Sunday Telegraph in which he provided a summary. For all the hysteria surrounding the Petrov defection, the Royal Commission’s report, he said, was a ‘damp

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squib’. There were no recommendations for punitive or preventive action. The report merely confirmed and amplified earlier suspicions about the activities of Soviet agents. Reid considered that the main impact of the report would be to revive interest in the role played by key figures in the pre-1949 Australian government, specifically Dr HV Evatt and the then secretary of the Department of External Affairs, John Burton. The report, Reid stated, criticised Evatt, with whom it linked Burton, for ‘failure to stem Communist influence in the key External Affairs Department’.20 A court case resulted from this article. Burton, alleging that it damaged his reputation, sued Reid and Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) for libel. Claiming that the article seemed to suggest that he was unfit to hold a high public office, he sought £25,000 in damages. The case was heard in the ACT Supreme Court. The defence offered by Reid and ACP’s lawyer was that his article comprised fair comment on a matter of public interest. Finding for Burton, the judge hearing the matter (Mr Justice Simpson) stated that he could find little evidence that the facts contained in the Royal Commission on Espionage’s report were known to Reid at the time the article was published. The submission by Burton’s counsel that Reid’s article was not fair comment was held to be substantially correct. The findings were not all adverse, though. Mr Justice Simpson ruled that Burton was entitled only to a nominal sum of damages because the report had been publicly released within a few days of the article appearing, thus minimising the effect of the article on his reputation. He awarded Burton damages of £100, with costs.21 At one time amid the excitement of 1955 Reid had a memorable conversation with Evatt about the electoral consequences

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of Labor’s internal upheaval. The locale may have been one of the lobbies in Parliament House or it may have occurred during one of Evatt’s notorious late night phone calls. It is possible to reconstruct what was said, using various pieces of oral history testimony by Reid. An amalgam drawn from his several later accounts of this conversation, in which Reid was made to realise that he was in part responsible for Labor’s woes, would go along these lines: Evatt: Alan, you’ve left me. Reid: I haven’t left you, Doc. Evatt: But you were with me. Why have you left me? Reid: What do you mean why have I left you? I wasn’t with you, Doc. I was with the story. Evatt: You’re anti-Santamaria but you’re not with me in this campaign. Reid: No. Evatt: Why? Reid: Look Doc. I’m anti-Santamaria and what he stands for. I’m agin what I believe to be the authoritarian strand in his thinking. But I’m not anti-Catholic. I’m not anti-Protestant. I am not anti-Jewish. You’ve turned this into an anti-Catholic crusade and I want no part of that.

As Reid later recalled, the discussion wound up as an exercise in comparative political arithmetic: Evatt: I’ll tell you something Alan, for every Catholic vote I’ll lose I will get two Protestant votes. Reid: You’re out of your cotton-picking mind, Doc.

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Al an ‘T h e Red Fox’ Reid The Church of England mob belong with the Protestant party which is the Menzies party; they will applaud you but they won’t shift. You have all the nonconformists that Labor ever is liable to pick up, so all that is going to happen is that you’re going to lose the Catholic vote.22

Menzies was determined to capitalise on the Labor split and to this end called a federal election for 10 December 1955. The Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist) directed its preferences to the Liberals. Evatt could not win the election, and at one stage he appeared likely to lose his own marginal seat of Barton, in suburban Sydney. In one of his pre-election reports Reid commented that playing the sectarian card might yet result in Evatt saving his imperilled skin in Barton. The ‘statistics favour Evatt’, he noted. There being three Protestant voters for every Catholic, Evatt could ‘afford to lose some of the Irish Catholic vote, which is traditionally Labor, provided he can pick up sufficient Liberal votes to compensate for the leeway’.23 One would have thought that getting re-elected in Barton was, for Evatt, a poor consolation for losing the entire election but Reid was prepared to devote an article to the subject. He was, in this instance, channelling Evatt’s dark thoughts on sectarianism. On the eve of polling day Reid reported that in marginal electorates Communists were circulating an election issue of their newspaper, Tribune, in which there was a reference to ‘the Communist-Labor Party side’. Tribune, he noted, was calling for a ‘firm’ exchange of preferences between the Communist Party and the ALP. Reid claimed that some Communistcontrolled unions were recruiting members from country areas to man polling booths in Evatt’s seat of Barton on polling

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day. To Reid it all looked like the ‘kiss of death’.24 On 10 December Evatt narrowly won Barton, but Prime Minister Menzies was swept back into office for a fourth term. Assessing the significance of sensitive documents remained a key ingredient in Reid’s craft. In the spring of 1956 he reported that a revealing document was circulating in Parliament House. Opponents of Santamaria were flaunting it because it contained some damning words: ‘It is proper for there to be in Australia an official Catholic organisation of political action established and controlled by the Catholic hierarchy.’ The document was a photostat of an article in a Catholic journal, the Bombay Examiner, and it revealed a commitment to methods of permeation and secrecy in Australian politics. The article was the smoking gun that the anti-Santamaria camp had long sought.25 Reid, however, did not get too excited about it. He had become less interested in Santamaria’s secrets of late. The prime focus of unflattering stories in the Packer press needed to be Evatt and his anti-Grouper allies. Santamaria was the enemy of Frank Packer’s enemies and was therefore now to be treated as a friend. Reid dwelt lovingly on the Labor leader’s plight even though he remained a paid-up member of the ALP. Unlike Evatt, he faithfully renewed his membership ticket each year and, like most members, attended branch meetings with some degree of regularity. He donated to the local party’s coffers for the 1955–56 financial year, which covered the December 1955 federal election, 26 in which he presumably voted for the usual local Labor candidate, Jim Fraser. In 1956, in response to the prevailing factional dissension, the Canberra branch of the ALP was divided into two new

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branches. The old branch was anti-Evatt but the new branch – Canberra South, of which Reid was a founding member when it was established in November27 – contained academics and school teachers and other tertiary-educated folk with whom Reid felt uncomfortable. The question of whether or not he should be allowed to stay in the party, which his nemesis Calwell had periodically canvassed, was a matter of keen interest in the new branch. In the first half of 1957 Reid as often as not went to Canberra South branch meetings at the Manuka Hockey Pavilion, and signed the attendance book in a clear bold hand.28 He obviously felt that he had nothing to be ashamed of and knew that he could count on being able to block a vote to expel him, having recruited some new members who had been plied with stories of the foibles of his local enemies. The NSW state executive would have to act if he were to be expelled and he was still confident that he had the numbers there.29 Reid was prepared to encounter hostility in the ALP at first hand even if the question of his party membership was insignificant in the broader scheme of things. In the era of Suez and instability in Asia Evatt was focused on international issues, which had resulted in the federal ALP, in Reid’s estimation, having gone ‘all airy fairy’. This was a key theme whenever he wrote about the ALP at this time. The federal party had, he considered, lost touch with bread and butter concerns as a result of Burton’s rejuvenated association with Evatt. Burton, Reid insisted, was intent on converting his ‘very considerable influence’ into a parliamentary career. He observed that Burton, in ‘one of the minor mysteries of politics’, was the honorary secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) in Canberra. He seemed, in Reid’s view, to ‘have eyes on the ACT seat, now held by Labor’s Jim Fraser’ and as a first step hoped to become

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President of the Canberra Trades and Labour Council (TLC) as a result of his association with the AWU. Holding such a position would be an advantage should he ever contest preselection.30 Reid was ready to do his bit to stop Burton, and this was a good enough reason to stay on in the ALP. Further comments on ‘airy fairy’ attitudes followed when some local TLC delegates resisted approving a resolution to condemn Soviet intervention in Hungary. Reid cited their attitude as proof of ‘the struggle that is taking place in the Communist Party between party loyalty and common sense’.31 Such coverage led to the Canberra TLC declaring Reid persona non grata and deciding not to give the Daily Telegraph any press releases.32 Reid was assiduous in pursuing Burton. At the start of 1957 his interest lay in Burton’s having a connection with Morgan’s Bookshop in Sydney, which Evatt had chosen as the venue to launch his anti-Santamaria crusade in 1954. A Daily Telegraph article reported that senior ALP figures were ‘desperately trying’ to prevent Evatt from declaring open the new Canberra branch of Morgan’s Bookshop because, allegedly, it sold ‘Left-wing literature’. 33 Even as the Labor Party was organising a censure motion in Parliament on the Menzies government’s housing policy Evatt was conferring with Burton about the prospects of the new bookshop. However, on the following day Reid reported that Evatt had been absent when the new Canberra bookshop opened its doors. He quoted Alec Sheppard, the anti-Grouper stalwart who ran Morgan’s Bookshop in Sydney, as saying that ‘reports that the bookshop would carry Left-wing literature were correct’. This comment provoked a letter to the editor from Sheppard, who pointed out, correctly, that it was wrong to suggest that the sole purpose of Morgan’s Bookshop was to sell left-wing publications. 34 Alleging a breach

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of journalistic ethics, Sheppard referred his grievance to the AJA’s District Committee in Sydney. The District Committee forwarded the complaint to the Canberra AJA; it did not, however, take any action.35 The struggle against left-wing tendencies was protean in scope. In the autumn of 1957 Reid was intrigued by a comment made by Judge Alfred Foster in a matter before the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. In the course of proceedings involving a dispute in the maritime industry Judge Foster opined that ‘shipowners are still subsidising unions in this country … and doing it secretly’. Foster said that four maritime unions divided a payment of £5000 among them when Australian crews were not employed on two ships recently sold to overseas buyers.36 This comment prompted Reid to investigate the practice of ‘indemnity payments’ whereby maritime unions obtained cash compensation from shipowners when an Australian ship was sold to an overseas buyer and was delivered by a non-Australian crew. In publicising this practice Reid’s aim was to ‘shake the iron control that the Communist leaders have maintained over the Seamen’s Union for years’, the assumption being that indemnity payments, where they were not siphoned off for private gain, were being used to fund undesirable political causes. Within days the Daily Telegraph was featuring a claim by Reid to the effect that shipowners had made undercover payments of above £30,000 to maritime trade unions.37 On 28 May a deputation from the maritime unions visited the offices of the Daily Telegraph and demanded a right of reply.38 When no statement was forthcoming from the unions, Reid noted the fact in the Sunday Telegraph.39 For good measure he added that the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) had failed to lodge

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a statement of financial accounts with the Industrial Registrar. Reid also referred to a letter of protest from crew members of the freighter SS Cycle; on 10 June the Canberra AJA committee received a letter which accused Reid of breaching journalistic ethics in connection with his articles relating to payments allegedly received by the maritime unions.40 There was no letup in hostilities. On 16 June the Sunday Telegraph featured a statement from the WWF which branded Reid’s 9 June article as ‘scurrilous’. Reid responded, stressing the legitimacy of his methods. He had paid a 2/- search fee to access the union’s file in the Industrial Registry. He called on the wharfies to hand over their balance sheets to the Industrial Registrar, as was required by law.41 Bob Santamaria and his associates, though their influence had worried Reid before the Labor split, were firmly on his side in his struggle with his trade union critics. In the spring of 1957 Frank McManus, who represented the newly formed anti-Evatt Democratic Labor Party (DLP) in the Senate, took up the indemnity payments issue in Parliament; News Weekly also covered the matter. McManus claimed that indemnity payments were going to the Communist Party. The maritime unions were fair game. McManus threw his weight behind allegations, many of which were first published the Daily Telegraph, directed against the Seamen’s Union of Australia (SUA). The SUA was said to be engaged in ‘standover tactics, blackmail, embezzlement, murder, attempted murder, arson and general thuggery’. It was suggested that federal secretary Elliott V Elliott had borrowed £30,000 from the Soviet legation in New Zealand to balance the SUA’s accounts.42 A concerted attempt was made to discredit Elliott. The breakthrough came one Friday night when he was taken from the Commercial Hotel in George

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Street in Sydney and charged with drunkenness. Over £1000 in cash was discovered on his person. When Elliott was released from Central Police Station, Reid, acting on a tip-off, had a photographer waiting outside to take a picture.43 There was every reason to believe that the tip-off came from the police, as the ‘lurid published reports and photographs in the Sunday papers’ contained details known only by them.44 The controversy intensified after the Senate appointed a select committee to investigate the practice of indemnity payments. ALP Senators boycotted its hearings and the SUA denounced it as an Australian version of the House un-American Activities Committee in the United States. Union members thronged the public gallery when its hearings commenced in Sydney. Reid was present as well, partly as reporter and partly as participant, and in both capacities was mercilessly chiacked; the SUA issued a pamphlet which noted that Reid’s coverage of the hearings was, in an amazing display of coyness, not bylined. The pamphlet also claimed that he sported dark glasses at the hearing, in line with the sinister role played by the Daily Telegraph in inspiring the inquiry.45 Reid had to drop the disguise when he was asked to answer questions from the Committee about the sum of money found on Elliott V Elliott. He revealed that in the week of Elliott’s arrest an anonymous source had told him the exact day on which the payment would be made and by whom (an emissary from a Perth shipbroker who wanted to get a black ban lifted).46 Presentation of the Committee’s report to the Senate inspired a favourable editorial in the Daily Telegraph (‘the Select Committee has established the truth’) and the newspaper was pleased to note the report’s praise for Reid’s ‘vigorous publicity’ in focusing attention on the indemnity payments

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issue.47 Yet the report, for all the hype, was a fizzer. The Select Committee’s general conclusion was that the indemnity payment system involved ‘acts of a highly improper character in the nature of conspiracy, extortion and intimidation’ and invited the Commonwealth government to take legal action. But in the event nothing happened: ‘despite repeated requests no further action was forthcoming’.48 While skirmishes such as the indemnity payments issue might have had inconclusive outcomes, overall the struggle between capitalism and its enemies in Australia was becoming increasingly uneven. The prosperity of the 1950s was well established. Reid’s career was buoyant, as were the diversifying material assets of the Packer empire. Expansion into television began in 1956, when the Packer-owned Channel Nine started operations. It did not take long for Reid to become involved in cross-promotional activities. The quest for profits marched hand in hand with the need to push an anti-Labor message. In May 1957 the Daily Telegraph carried a story based on a Channel Nine Meet the Press interview involving Santamaria and Reid, two other Packer employees (Ken Schapel and Ronald Monson) and Francis James of The Anglican, in which Santamaria discussed the content of his pre-election chats with Evatt in 1954. The subjects covered, he revealed, included the value of secret ballots in union elections, state aid, foreign affairs and land settlement. The Daily Telegraph pointed out, accurately enough, that such revelations were ‘sensational’ in view of Evatt’s later denunciation of the Movement.49 Coordinated coverage in the newspaper and television wings of the Packer media empire was again evident when the NSW Labor Party held its annual conference in June 1957. On the night of Sunday, 16 June, with the state conference due to

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resume on the following day, two Sydney aldermen from the Democratic Labor Party (Aldermen Thom and Slowgrove) appeared on Meet the Press, where they aired charges of malpractice in the affairs of the Sydney City Council. Their allegations covered the issuing of illegal building permits, an alderman being impersonated and the existence of unlicensed fruit barrows. The Daily Telegraph featured a photograph of the panel, which included Reid and his Packer colleague David McNicoll, interviewing the two aldermen. 50 Responding to this Packer-led airing of the Town Hall allegations, ALP state president Fred Campbell said, ‘we are not going to be stampeded by rumours seized on by the Press’. 51 Campbell criticised the press for continually attacking the Labor Party. 52 To show their disapproval, delegates at the state ALP conference voted for the establishment of a NSW Press Council; the recommendation had been pushed by Evatt loyalist and AJA stalwart George Godfrey. 53 The 1957 state ALP conference was followed in short order by Reid’s enforced departure from the Labor Party. The delegates, long convinced that the press was biased against them, would have been well peeved with his televised spoiling tactics by the time the conference ended. They felt hard done by. Furthermore, the state conference included a delegate for whom the task of initiating the process of stripping Reid of his party membership would be an honour. The person in question was Denis Holmes, a noted Evatt loyalist who gained newspaper coverage at the conference when he made disparaging comments about the NSW Labor government’s inaction in the face of the party’s commitment to getting rid of the post of state Governor. 54 Holmes was a member of the Randwick East branch of the

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ALP which, on the night of 11 July 1957 resolved to record its deep concern that Alan Reid, whose Daily Telegraph journalism was ‘considered incompatible with Labor principles’, was reportedly a member of the ALP. The branch requested the NSW executive to institute inquiries with a view to ascertaining whether Reid really was a party member, and if he were, ‘whether or not his writings from time to time in the beforementioned newspaper are in conflict with the Rules’. Holmes conveyed this resolution to head office on the following day. 55 The matter then came before the state executive, which resolved that ‘the repeated press articles under the name of Mr Alan Reid … express views contrary to the well-being of the ALP, by the distortion and misrepresentation of ALP matters’. It was also resolved that the views in Reid’s articles were incompatible with membership of the party. Following this decision the executive directed the Canberra South branch not to renew Reid’s membership ticket when it expired on 31 December 1957. 56 The response of Canberra South came when it met on 9 September. Reid did not attend but his friends had the numbers. It was resolved that the branch executive should report to the next meeting on the matters raised by head office, ‘paying special attention to the rights of members and the powers of the State Executive to expel members by the procedures adopted in the case’. Members expressed a desire for clarification of key questions. Did the state executive really have the power to act in the way it was acting and would this case be a precedent for the future? 57 By way of reply head office insisted that the action was taken in accordance with party rules and was ‘based largely on the fact that the numerous instances of articles appearing in the name of Alan Reid in the press unduly slanted against Labor were incompatible with his membership in the Party’. 58

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Canberra South was not willing to yield. The branch passed a motion formally regretting the method adopted in the Reid case and declared that ‘no member should be deprived of his membership unless a definite charge has been made against him and he has had the opportunity to answer it’. 59 As the dispute dragged on a group of fellow party members visited Reid at home and expressed their support. The branch, it seemed, might well rebel, but Reid counselled forbearance. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘let’s cut the painter. If you characters bail up on this instruction you will be expelled too.’ 60 So nothing further was done and his membership of the party was allowed to quietly lapse. Reid left the Labor Party in 1957 not because he rejected socialism and external direction but because he was out of step with the prevailing power relationships in the party. The ALP had become obsessed with demonising Santamaria. A radicalised Evatt, advised in part by Reid’s Labor adversary John Burton, was in charge of its destiny. Santamaria spooked the left and everyone to the right of Evatt was leery of Burton’s influence. In the melodrama of politics Reid saw himself as much like Burton and Santamaria, providing discreet advice to elected leaders from behind the scenes. In the impassioned wake of Labor’s split, however, he simply could not hope to match their divisive aura. He was never again to enjoy the days of Labor rapport he had known with Chifley. Burton and Santamaria, in their different ways, were better attuned to this different and harsher era. The shift in fortunes, though, did not alter everything. Some things were too valuable to abandon. Reid may have left the ALP but he was too much of a professional to allow his links with his Labor sources to suffer as a result. In the years

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ahead his favourite ALP contacts – Kennelly, Daly, Cameron, Allan Fraser, Les Haylen – continued, for their own purposes, to ply Reid with information even as he became ever more publicly identified with the vitriolic anti-Labor agenda of Frank Packer. In time a rival pressman (Ian Fitchett of the Sydney Morning Herald) was to complain that Reid got more material than he did from the Labor Party even though Fitchett was a member of the party whereas Reid was very much an ex-member.61 This was an odd situation indeed.

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A Jungle Book lan Reid was never satisfied with being a successful 1950s-style daily newspaperman. Behind the cynical mask there lurked a wish to write a serious and lasting work of literature. In the early 1950s he experimented with various ideas as he tried out the likeliest-looking road to authorship. For a while he was seized with the idea of writing something for the stage based on his observations of skulduggery and intrigue behind the scenes at Parliament House.1 He also conceived the notion of writing a novel featuring the life and death of Jesus. He had read the anti-clerical Winwood Reade in his youth and the memory of Reade’s Martyrdom of Man seems to have inspired him to write a 100,000-word novel about the crucifixion written from a political angle (‘with no religion in it’). Reid called the novel Christ Killers and sent the manuscript to publishers in London. His treatment of the New Testament was seen as ‘too controversial’, though, and the manuscript was rejected. Reid then converted the would-be novel into a script for a play, but it was fated never to be performed.2 The next significant recorded initiative came in the spring of 1955, when Reid contacted the Saturday Evening Post in New York. He had, he said in ensuing correspondence, 3 read The Man from Laramie when the Saturday Evening Post serialised it. The appeal of the story was confirmed when it was made into a successful film. Reid hoped to benefit from the popularity of the cowboy genre while staying true to his antipodean roots.

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He set out to write a Western that had a distinctive local feel about it. The result was a story called ‘The Native Born’, which was set in the Snowy Mountains in the mid-19th century, when the area was infested with bushrangers. It was 50,000 words long and it took Reid a fortnight to write. He then sent the manuscript to New York. The Saturday Evening Post forwarded Reid’s story to the New York literary agent Sanford Greenburger. From then on the news was not good. Greenburger conceded that Reid’s story was ‘filled with suspense’ but questioned its commercial viability. Reid’s ‘unfamiliar setting, and the unfamiliarity of the Australian vernacular of the time’ made it, he felt, unsuitable for serialisation in a major US magazine and it was too short to be a hardcover book. Greenburger was ready to consider testing the paperback market but wanted to see other work by Reid before doing so. In his reply to Greenburger Reid regretfully noted that he had no other work that he could send. Apart from some shorter stories and his two unperformed plays he had only written one other story, and it had, he admitted, the same faults, from an American perspective, as ‘The Native Born’ (‘a historical background and too much Australian idiom’). It had already been sold as a serial to a local publisher and had been written under a pseudonym (‘Douglas Alan’)4 so as not to offend his employer. Reid was confident of his ability to finish something in a hurry but at present, with the December 1955 federal election looming, he had no free time for story writing. The New York venture went no further. After these early rebuffs things seemed to crystallise for Reid some time in 1957 or 1958. He was, as he later ruefully related, 5 driving home from Parliament House one night when

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he was struck by the thought that the personalities in the great Labor split – HV Evatt, BA Santamaria, Arthur Calwell, Pat Kennelly and the lesser lights – could serve as the basis of an Australian novel. The intractable nature of the split seemed to indicate that the ALP, ‘that most colourful, picturesque, and restless of all the Australian political groupings’, might well be in the throes of disintegration. For Reid such a possibility implied ‘both tragedy and high drama’. The big issues at stake in the Labor split surely presupposed an increased level of national complexity. The innocent days when (as Reid himself had so recently tended to think) an Australian novel had to reek of gum leaves and feature sun-bronzed bushmen and squatters’ daughters were surely gone. Reid’s projected novel, in contrast, would have a thoroughly up-to-date theme: the human side of the Labor Party’s recent savage schism. Reid set his sights high. One of his favourite books, Bertrand Russell’s Power, identified Renaissance Italy as the place where the ruthless acquisition of naked power could be observed in its purest form. The Borgias practised what Machiavelli, in his political classic The Prince, prescribed.6 Inspired by the fame of Machiavelli, Reid planned to take up the durable truths in The Prince and present them in modern Australian dress. By deciding to write an Australian political novel Reid was not venturing into virgin territory. The benchmark had been set a few years earlier with the publication of Frank Hardy’s novel Power Without Glory (1950), whose central character, John West, was based on the Collingwood business identity John Wren. A member of the Communist Party, Hardy was committed to the notion that literature embodied class conflict. Until 1954, Hardy saw the ALP in Victoria, because the Groupers

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controlled it, as the class enemy and felt it was his duty to expose its infamy. Hence the connection in the author’s mind between John Wren’s alleged criminal activities and the appearance in Power Without Glory of various prominent Labor Party and Catholic figures. In October 1950 Hardy was arrested and charged with defaming John Wren’s wife in Power Without Glory. The trial that followed has become famous. As the author Jenny Hocking notes in her biography of Hardy, ‘As the trial progressed, the central dilemma became the relationship between the novel’s fictional characters and real individuals.’7 In reporting the trial the press identified a number of the Labor politicians and their associates – such as Stan Keon, Pat Kennelly and John Wren – on whom characters in the book were based. The criminal proceedings were a searing experience for Hardy and lasted until June 1951, when he was finally found not guilty of criminal libel. The stressful history of Power Without Glory failed to daunt Reid. He was determined to write his own fictionalised account of the corrosive effects of power and politics. The pages piled up as he warmed to his task. No early drafts appear to have survived but a version of the complete text as it proceeded toward the longed-for goal of publication is to be found in the National Library of Australia’s collection of the working papers of Colin Roderick, who then worked at Angus & Robertson, which at one stage was the intended publisher. From the word go Reid did not plan to wander too far from the course of recent political events. How they were to be presented can be gleaned by combing through the surviving manuscript. The story, in essence, takes the form of an Australian roman à clef in which the polarising figures are Evatt and

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Santamaria. Most of the characters in Reid’s tale have a reallife equivalent. At the start of the narrative we are introduced to a Reidian alter ego in the person of Macker Kalley (Machiavelli in Reid-speak), a 40-year-old political insider. Macker Kalley shares many of his creator’s attributes, including a love of reading and of the outdoors (after periods of being confined in Parliament House Reid loved to repair to the hilly countryside surrounding Canberra and go fishing). Cold-eyed and calculating, he likes to feel that he is influencing, however slightly, the course of events. His view of politics is detached and clinical: ‘In the final analysis, energy, tenacity, ambition and, above all, luck were more rewarding political attributes than integrity, ability or originality of mind.’ Politics, from Kalley’s hardboiled standpoint, is a morally corrosive business. ‘All politicians are bastards,’ he muses, ‘but some are bigger bastards than others.’ He sees it as his solemn duty to shield his wife (‘a nice girl’) and daughter, both named Anne, from the brutal world he is involved in. Politics is a man’s world. Reid’s tale features an Evatt-like figure named Kaye Seborjar (Cesare Borgia). Brilliant yet flawed, Kaye Seborjar is swayed by a sense of historic destiny. He is a man with limitless ambition. ‘He’d sell his mother if it helped his ambition.’ He will do anything to ensure that he dominates his party, and thus can get to run the country. As a result he is erratic and untrustworthy. Once a leftist, then a moderate, he is now moving out of a rightwing phase which saw him allied with Carr Domenico, a creepy Catholic powerbroker. Reid shamelessly based Carr Domenico on the received image of Santamaria (an image that Reid had had a hand in creating), presenting him as ‘a backroom Hitler with Fascist sympathies super-imposed on deep religious feelings, and the surface mildness of an Oriental sage’.

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Another character in the novel is Kent Kertsey, who is brought in to advance Reid’s view of the, in his opinion, unhealthy relationship between Evatt and John Burton. Kertsey, Reid tells the reader, ‘exercised an almost Svengali-like influence’ in the party. He is fanatically opposed to Catholic Action. The scheming and backstabbing in the novel climax when Kalley, along with Kertsey and other insiders, gather at Kaye Seborjar’s palatial home. In an echo of the Petrov affair and Document J, Seborjar brandishes a document whose contents are believed to show that the Communist Party supports Seborjar because of his repudiation of his party’s right wing. Seborjar insists that the document is a forgery. Carr Domenico, he insists, must have fed it to the Prime Minister (a shadowy character named Alex Pope). Urged on by Kent Kertsey, Seborjar decides that the time has come to unleash a crusade against the ‘Papal Fascist Domenico’. Evatt’s act of excommunication of 5 October 1954, in Reid’s novelised version of the events of that year, takes the form of a public accusation drawn up by Kaye Seborjar: ‘I accuse a Fascist religious group of conspiring secretly to capture by infiltration, stealth and betrayal from within the Party which I have the honour to lead.’ Carr Domenico is outed as ‘the brains and organising genius’ of a secret Roman Catholic group. Was a Machiavellian tale of intrigue and backstabbing likely to appeal to Australian readers in the 1950s? While anyone interested in Australian politics would have found it fascinating, Reid’s manuscript did have some shortcomings which were capable of defying even the ablest of editors. Uprooted from their origins in the world of real-life politics, the characters in his novel tended to lack colour and depth, and failed to take on a life of their own. They were far too wooden and the dialogue

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was flat, and there was also a shortage of genuine drama or action to keep the narrative ticking over. There was not a robust sense of background or a loving recreation of detail. Because of its genesis in the roughhouse world of Australian politics, its shrewd reflections on power and politicians were drowned out by the creaking of its pseudo-fictional façade. The novel had a lifeless hothouse air which, while reflecting political life in Canberra well enough, was hardly designed to appeal to the common reader. In the event, the decision on the future of the proposed work was determined by other than aesthetic considerations. Once he finished writing it, Reid began thinking about finding a publisher. In the first instance he submitted it to his employer, Australian Consolidated Press (ACP). This was, he later maintained, ‘a most unenthusiastic submission’. Publishing political novels seemed way outside ACP’s normal line of business. It duly turned down the manuscript and as a result, now bearing the title The Gathering, it was, sometime in 1958, submitted to Angus & Robertson, then the nation’s leading commercial book publisher and bearer of a proud history dating back to the end of the 19th century. The initial response at Angus & Robertson was favourable. The novel, Reid was told, would be ‘one of the most mature ever produced in Australia’. Acceptance, he felt, was a mere formality. It seemed that his shortcomings as a stylist were not fatal after all. For a moment visions of winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award, which had been going for only a year or so, shimmered before the pressman’s eyes. But these early visions of glory were nothing but a mirage. Reality intruded once Angus & Robertson agreed with Reid that he was indeed ‘a controversial figure writing on a

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controversial subject – politics’.8 The prospect that Reid’s novel would be controversial was enough to set off alarm bells. The fate of Frank Hardy’s Power Without Glory showed what could go wrong when politics got mixed up with literature. Angus & Robertson was determined not to undergo a similar ordeal. Before it could be published, the company’s board of directors would have to ‘clear’ the novel. Litigation had to be avoided at all costs. The novel’s prospects of being published by Angus & Robertson dipped once its board of directors began to deliberate on whether or not defamation was likely to be an issue. This was the cue for Colin Roderick to make his presence felt. He was the director of educational publishing at Angus & Robertson and sat on its board of directors. On 12 August 1958 Roderick sent an internal memo to his colleague, the famed editor Beatrice Davis. Roderick was adamant that the company should not proceed with the novel. Reid’s characters, he insisted, were too ‘obviously derived’ from real-life Australian politicians, including Evatt and, albeit fleetingly, Menzies. Identification would be ‘quite simple’, and this was of great concern given that the book’s ‘general tenor … seems to be to show just how rotten politics are’. The novel was ‘scarcely fair to some of the men who would be so easily recognised’. The idea that Angus & Robertson should publish it was, Roderick insisted, out of the question: It would certainly not be fair for us to use our resources to kick these men, and I feel also that it would be inviting trouble for us to publish this book. However interesting it is, I don’t think the risk worth the sales that would ensue and I advise against acceptance.9

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Roderick’s response led to Angus & Robertson’s deciding not to publish. Reid received a ‘charming letter’ which indicated that there could be ‘trouble’ if the novel appeared.10 Thus rejected, Reid again approached ACP, to see if it would reconsider. A candid scrutiny resulted. The company received reports from readers the thrust of which Reid found ‘gratifyingly flattering’. But the final decision was again negative. Reid had no comeback when the executive in charge of the publishing section stated his view that political novels were chancy things financially. Reid was able to cite some wonderful American political novels – Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men (1946), Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah (1956) and Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent (1959) – which had made money. The executive’s reply was unanswerable: ‘Yes, but they were published in the States. The US is a big market. Australia is a small one. I can’t see a quid in a novel on Australian politics – and we’re not in the business to lose money.’11 There the matter rested for a few months more until a third publishing company, Cleveland Publishing, offered to take up Reid’s languishing manuscript. Its managing director, JP Atkins, was president of the Democratic Labor Party in New South Wales, and was not put off by the book’s political content. Atkins’ previous activities were a far cry from the world of Angus & Robertson. Until Reid came along, his forte as a publisher had been 1950s-style pulp fiction. Beginning in 1939, Australian import licence restrictions effectively banned the import of cheap US paperbacks. As a result, a local pulp fiction industry flourished. By the 1950s, mystery, western, crime and war fiction were being published cheaply and in huge numbers. Reid, as noted earlier, had contributed to this flood of paperback material when, as Douglas

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Alan, he had sold his Australianised serial to a local, unknown, publisher. Jack Atkins founded the Cleveland Publishing Company, one of the leading Australian paperback publishers, in 1953. In 1954 it launched its Cleveland Books series of novellas. Initially, the series was a mixture of crime and western fiction. For a while Cleveland published 18 westerns each month in various series. In 1954 Atkins began publishing what was to become his most notable contribution to Australian crime fiction, the Larry Kent series. In addition to crime and westerns, Atkins published war and romance fiction,12 and comic books – he published western, romance and war comics.13 All went swimmingly until early in 1960, when the ban on importing US pulp fiction ended after the Menzies government virtually ended Australia’s system of import licensing. The abrupt change in market circumstances formed the commercial backdrop to a deal between Atkins, a publisher of pulp fiction whose freedom from competition had been removed at the stroke of a pen, and Alan Reid, rejected author. Atkins decided that the best way to survive in a newly menacing environment was to break into the hardcover book business. Reid was going to be his first client. ‘There may be dough in it’ was his conclusion after reading Reid’s manuscript; he was also confident that Reid had other novels in him. As part of his business plan Atkins set up a shelf company, Newhaven Press, to publish Reid’s book, which was seen as a quality product compared with Atkins’ usual downmarket fare. It would not be tainted by any open association with the Cleveland name. A few cosmetic changes were made to Reid’s book once it received the imprimatur of Newhaven Press. It was given a new title, pinched from Kipling. Previously known as The Gathering,

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it was now called The Bandar-log, a sly reference to the vicious tribe of monkeys who featured in Kipling’s The Jungle Book. The punctuation was tidied up and a cover designed. The book was further tweaked to take account of a recent major political development. At the beginning of 1960 Dr Evatt had left politics to become Chief Justice of New South Wales. Reid’s response was to add a coda to the novel in which he covered Evatt’s retirement, even though this addition reinforced the dangerous association between the supposedly fictional characters in the novel and the real world of politics. Reid’s take on events, as set out in the surviving updated manuscript, concludes with Macker Alley having left politics. He is now working for a Packer-sounding business identity named Carter Garland and spends his time dealing with trade union officials as a paid ‘fixer’ for a company called Multicos. But it is hard for him to break his addiction to politics. The sight of a newspaper headline (‘Political bombshell: Seborjar accepts new post’) is enough to remind him that politics continues to have ‘the eternal fascination of problems that are never really solved’. The text was now complete and printing was contracted to Halstead Press. Though this company was chosen because it was known to do ‘a prestige production job’, the decision was nonetheless unwise, because Halstead Press was a wholly owned subsidiary of Angus & Robertson, whose board of directors considered the novel a potential source of trouble. For the moment, though, the prospect of publication again hovered on the near horizon after Newhaven Press accepted a quotation from Halstead Press for printing Reid’s book. Then disaster struck. In May 1960, by which time the novel had reached the final proof stage at Halstead Press, Angus & Robertson intervened after Colin Roderick discovered that

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the novel, apart from having a new title and an updated ending, was exactly the same work as the novel that almost two years earlier he had warned against publishing. The lawyers were now called in. A Mr Cousins, of Halstead Press, informed Newhaven Press that his company’s solicitor had advised that the book could be defamatory of Dr Evatt and former Labor Premier of Queensland Vince Gair. Newhaven Press replied by claiming that the book ‘was entirely fictional in character’. On 24 June Halstead Press advised that it could not continue with the printing, a barrister having confirmed the solicitor’s opinion that the book libelled Evatt and probably libelled Gair and Santamaria as well.14 On this ground, Halstead Press refused to deliver any copies or hand over the type to Newhaven Press.15 The spectre of litigation that had hung over Reid’s book since 1958 materialised, though not in the form originally envisaged. An aggrieved Atkins, having missed out on a hoped-for killing in 1960’s Christmas book trade, decided to sue Halstead Press for breach of contract. Proceedings in The Bandar-log case opened in Sydney’s District Court on Monday, 11 September 1961. In essence, Halstead Press would have to pay damages for breach of contract if the court considered the book not to be libellous. Angus & Robertson’s defence was that if the book were libellous, as its lawyers claimed, any contract to print was illegal and therefore void. The parties agreed that damages should be assessed at £550 if the verdict favoured Newhaven Press. The first witness called was Jack Atkins, who testified that Reid ‘had given an assurance that the book was completely a work of fiction’. For the rest of the week Colin Roderick, the main witness for Angus & Robertson, was the star of the show. Each morning he got up in the witness box where, under

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cross-examination from the plaitiff’s representative, Tom Hughes (later QC), he had to explain why Angus & Robertson felt it had to block the publication of Reid’s novel. For this purpose he came armed with proofs of The Bandar-log, annotated to indicate links between the text and key events and personalities associated with Labor’s schism in 1954.16 He also relied on a summary that he drew up which traced the parallel course between incidents in the book and the Labor Party’s troubled recent history. Another item in the defence material was a summary of the ideas of Machiavelli. Roderick had read The Prince during his university studies in Queensland and was familiar with Machiavelli’s estimation of human nature and his view that in politics the ends justified the means.17 The burden of Roderick’s testimony was that Reid’s novel was ‘a thinly disguised documentary on actual political events and persons’. The ‘whole pattern of the book, and the way the characters were interlocked, reflected occurrences within the Australian Labor Party in 1954’.18 Hughes grilled Roderick in an attempt to prove that Angus & Robertson had seized on ‘a few superficial similarities’ between Reid’s characters and actual Labor politicians while ignoring dissimilarities.19 But Roderick stood his ground. He delved into the detailed notes that he had made on the characters and synopses of the plot as he continued to insist on the points of similarity. On day one of his testimony he identified Con Fortune as Arthur Calwell, although arguably this character was modelled more on Pat Kennelly than on Arthur Calwell. He also stated his belief, based on general reading, personal knowledge and a television appearance by Santamaria, that Reid’s novel included characters who could be identified as HV Evatt and Santamaria. As an example he noted that ‘Seborjar was described as

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The Big Man, which was what some people called Dr Evatt’.20 On the following day he suggested other real-life equivalents of characters in the novel: ‘Kent Kertsey’ was John Burton, ‘Chris Tion’ was Tom Dougherty of the AWU and ‘Gilly Hoskin’ was Eddie Ward.21 On the third day of the trial Roderick dwelt on the parallels between Document J of the Petrov Royal Commission, which Evatt regarded as a forgery, and the Communist Party document that Seborjar insisted was a fabrication. In crossexamination he said he thought that ‘the fictional elements in the novel were so slight as to have no weight in the overall picture of Mr Reid’s book’.22 In testimony on the following day Roderick stated that the crux of Reid’s book was ‘an attempt by a secret Roman Catholic organisation to get control of a political party’.23 In what was a stressful week for Roderick, some solace was forthcoming from Dr Evatt who, after arranging a private meeting, told him that he was ‘a good boy’, 24 presumably because of his attempts to suppress publication. In the second week of the trial Halstead Press called an expert witness in the person of Douglas McClelland, Evatt’s former campaign manager. McClelland’s testimony was that ‘characters portrayed in the book in many respects resembled personalities who were engaged in the forefront of the faction fight within the A.L.P’.25 Another expert witness, Dr Charles Currey, a university lecturer, identified Seborjar as Evatt but was ‘less sure’ that he could equate Santamaria with Domenico.26 The decisive testimony came when a third witness, Halstead Press proofreader Mrs Jean Darrell Owers, of Miranda, identified Seborjar as Evatt (it was she who had alerted Halstead Press to the crucial likeness in the first place). Mrs Owers’ testimony was weighty indeed, as it was patronisingly thought

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that if she could identify Evatt in the novel then anyone could. Angus & Robertson’s counsel, RL Taylor QC, summed up their case by submitting that the characters in The Bandar-log were portrayed as ‘corrupt and void of standards of morality and ordinary decency’. The book’s tone was one of ‘complete cynicism’. It was peopled by amoral beasts struggling to survive in a political jungle: ‘Apart from one minor female character [this was presumably the Mrs Alan Reid character], no other person in the book has anything to commend them as far as character and actions were concerned.’ A novel with such unsavoury characters who, as witnesses had indicated, could so easily be identified with real people must be ‘both civilly and criminally libellous’.27 Hughes’s final submission, in contrast, was that the plaintiff was ‘entitled to the benefit of a presumption that, [in] what purports to be a work of fiction, the characters portrayed are types, and not real persons’. He also noted that ‘Apart from supposed similarities between actuality and the book, there were startling dissimilarities.’ Colin Roderick, Hughes said, had come to the court with ‘a very large axe to grind’.28 After considering the evidence, Judge Perrignon handed down his decision on 3 November. He determined that The Bandar-log was indeed libellous. Mrs Jean Owers, he said, could be considered to be ‘the only witness who came anywhere near being the counterpart of the ordinary person in the street’. If such a person believed that Reid’s novel contained an Evattlike character, then the resemblance must indeed be obvious. Reid, it was decided, had libelled Evatt, so the claim for damages deserved to be dismissed.29 Reid was devastated. He was not a party to the District Court proceedings but the experience had nevertheless been

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traumatic. He had written a novel which, in a legal first, had been judged to be defamatory without having been published. In the years to come he was careful never to dwell on his defeat at the hands of Roderick. He was not destined to be a successful novelist. His abiding love of plot and character, if it were to be expressed at all, would have to be incorporated in something he wrote openly as a political journalist.

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Telling stories y the time he reached his mid-forties, Reid’s striking persona was fully formed and observers of Australian journalism were remiss if they did not comment on it. In the spring of 1959 the high-brow magazine Nation contained an article on the Canberra press corps in which he had a starring role. The Red Fox, his hair now less auburn but his shrewdness and cunning becoming ever more honed as the decades passed, was depicted as unique among the parliamentary gallery’s ‘long-faced, seasoned by-liners’. Ambling and unshaven, roughly dressed and subsisting on roll-your-own cigarettes, he came across as ‘a professional hobo in the Press Gallery’, right down to his trademark greeting (‘G’day, sport’).1 With all these striking and original ‘effects’ it was increasingly hard to keep reality and image apart. Reid was undoubtedly a character of whom anything could now be believed. A legend was born when, in homage to Canberra’s status as a bush capital, he kept two horses in the back garden of his house on Mugga Way, from where he used to ride out to nearby Red Hill. He eventually, it was later said, used to travel to work down Mugga Way to Parliament House on a horse which he tethered in the rose gardens outside the building.2 The tale about the horse and Parliament House was a myth, 3 but there was no doubting Reid’s genuine love of horses and bush life generally. This passion was born when he roamed across the countryside, from one casual job to another, during

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the Great Depression and it grew stronger as his newspaper career blossomed. Outdoor activities were good therapy to counteract the stressful and artificial aspects of his life as a journalist. He needed at times to escape from the confinement of Parliament House. On such occasions he headed off to the clean and sparsely populated high country to the south of Canberra, sometimes going on droving trips with a group of Snowy Mountains lease-holders. He had an abiding love of the Snowy Mountains. His favourite spot was the historic Currango homestead.4 Tom Taylor, a park ranger, and his wife Mollie, who lived at the homestead, became Reid’s closest personal friends. Although a 50,000word story he had written, based on early European life in the area, had proved to be unpublishable in the United States, the alpine slopes otherwise increasingly became a haven of cherished memories for Reid. In October 1958, wreckage from the airplane Southern Cloud, which had disappeared without trace over the Snowy Mountains during bad weather on a Sydney to Melbourne flight back in 1931, was discovered in a secluded and rugged mountain area. Within days hundreds of sightseers, many seeking souvenirs, tramped to the site. The Daily Telegraph was involved in the press coverage of the story, which gave Reid a legitimate reason to pay a visit. He was accompanied to the crash site by his son Alan, who souvenired the clock from the aircraft’s instrument panel. 5 At other times Reid would drive out to the Brindabella mountains near Canberra, where he could fish for trout in the clear streams or shoot ducks, hares and feral pigs. Reid’s rustic excursions could be highly social events, involving his family and a wide range of friends. The morning’s smouldering ashes, discarded bottles and heavy snoring would indicate that long

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discussions on the state of the nation had been held.6 In truth, it was hard to ever get away from the job when you worked for the highly political Frank Packer (who in 1959 was knighted). For Reid the connection became no less demanding as time passed and the Packer empire continued to expand. In the spring of 1960 Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) acquired the Bulletin, and with Donald Horne as editor, it was soon modernised and rejuvenated, becoming a US-style weekly news magazine. Reid approved of the purchase of the Bulletin because it gave him a chance to write more expansively on Time-style cover stories. In his first lengthy Bulletin story he profiled the senior bureaucrat Roland Wilson, head of the Treasury and ‘czar of the Commonwealth Public Service’.7 Evatt’s retirement in 1960 and his replacement as Labor leader by Arthur Calwell led to no softening in Reid’s attitude. This was not surprising, as it had been Calwell, after all, who had started the campaign to have Reid removed from the ranks of the ALP. In August Calwell was the guest on Channel Nine’s Meet the Press program, where the questioners included Reid. Among other things Calwell, according to the follow-up report in the Daily Telegraph, said that Labor would be called back to power after there had been a downturn in the economy. He also referred to the ‘Angel of Death’ as a possible factor in combating the anti-ALP animus of the breakaway Democratic Labor Party (DLP). Calwell’s answers attracted an unfriendly Daily Telegraph editorial, which was followed by a Reid column that accused the Labor leader of looking forward to the death of Melbourne’s pro-DLP Archbishop Daniel Mannix or to a recession as the only possible ways of winning the next federal election. Reid told Santamaria about the column before it appeared, informing him that he was ‘writing quite a blistering

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article at Arthur’s expense’.8 Reid also still kept a wary eye on developments among Labor’s trade union allies. Editorial policy at the Bulletin was in favour of using damaging stories on union activities as ‘good election material’9 and the pressman readily complied, as it was one of his favourite themes. In the winter of 1961 he again focused on the waterfront, as the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) was electing its general secretary. The incumbent – Jim Healy, a Communist – out-polled Gus Alford of the DLP but died while the ballot was still being conducted. Alford insisted that the vacant secretaryship was his by default. Reid supported Alford in the Daily Telegraph, which caused the union to denounce the pressman as ‘Australia’s greatest Federation hating newspaper scribe’.10 While waterside workers were still mourning Healy, the Bulletin featured three lengthy articles on Australia’s waterfront jungle. Drawing on statutory declarations and quoting copiously from the Seamen’s Journal, Reid traced the fate of Liverpool-born seaman William Francis (‘Mac’) Phillips. A selfdescribed ‘tough anti-Communist’, Mac Phillips once ran (unsuccessfully) for union office, then was subjected to threats of violence and eventually ceased working in the coastal shipping industry. Reid presented Phillips as the human face of the maritime workforce, likening him to a wharf bollard – ‘squat, round and thick’ – and his thesis was that maritime union officials, in their zeal to entrench the power of the Communist Party on the waterfront, were bent on a culture of violence, as exemplified by Phillips’ story. Equally, unflattering coverage of developments in the ALP was stepped up whenever an election loomed. The 1961 federal ALP conference, held at the Hotel Kingston in Canberra, took

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place a few months before an expected end-of-year election. On the eve of the conference ALP federal secretary and power broker FE (‘Joe’) Chamberlain announced that he, not the party president, was the official spokesman for the party. Reid presented this declaration as ‘a breach of tradition and a parade of power’.11 This suggestion enlivened a press conference held by Chamberlain … at which Reid himself was not present, members of the federal executive having detained him in another room in the Hotel Kingston and peppered him with accusations of bias and inaccuracy. Another executive member raised, but then dropped, the suggestion that the AJA should take action against Reid.12 The tried and true anti-Labor spectres that had been promoted since the Labor split of the mid-1950s failed to gain much traction in the 1961 election campaign. Nationalisation, unity tickets between Communists and Laborites in union elections and talk of socialist profligacy failed to alarm voters.13 The big election issue was, for a change, the economy. Calwell had been right to factor a recession into his electoral considerations. Following a credit squeeze, unemployment rose above 100,000, the highest level since the Great Depression. The Leader of the Opposition was promising to take measures to restore full employment within 12 months. In focusing on domestic issues, the Opposition benefited from advice from an unexpected quarter. In July 1960 the Sydney Morning Herald’s general manager, Rupert Henderson, began inviting Calwell to lunch with Fairfax executives and finance writers. The credit squeeze had had a deleterious effect on advertising revenue, accelerating the Sydney Morning Herald’s willingness to support Calwell. In October 1961 Henderson told Calwell that the Sydney Morning Herald would support his campaign, though only

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in the sense of editorialising against an ‘anaemic and enervated’ Menzies government. Fairfax journalists, notably Max Newton, prepared speeches, statements and other material for Calwell.14 With Sir Frank Packer maintaining an anti-Labor stance, the federal election of 1961 ended up as a sideshow in the battle between two rival media empires. Packer’s lieutenant, David McNicoll, ensured that Daily and Sunday Telegraph cartoonists Clarrie King and Les Tanner lampooned the Fairfax camp.15 The Daily Telegraph contended that Calwell would treble unemployment and featured a sympathetic article on Pattie Menzies entitled ‘I’m just an ordinary housewife’.16 Alan Reid was, unsurprisingly, deployed as well. In the midst of the election campaign he was in a press contingent accompanying Prime Minister Menzies as he travelled almost 7000 miles (11,200 km) across Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia. For long stretches of time they were all cocooned in aeroplanes, and an unwise feeling of serenity threatened to take over the Prime Minister’s campaign. Reid reported in the Daily Telegraph that ‘the surface indications’ in the four states visited by the Prime Minister were that ‘the Menzies Government will be returned for another three years of office’. Reid insisted that ‘employment is not an issue’ and commented that, apart from some student hecklers, Menzies had attracted an ‘extraordinarily good reception’ during his trip. The only cause of concern was that, because he was supremely confident, Menzies was ignoring the Labor Party, enabling its leaders to sidestep embarrassing questions about left-wing control of the party.17 The false sense of security was shattered as soon as the prime ministerial caravan returned to the eastern seaboard. No sooner had Menzies disembarked at Sydney airport than

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Reid was required to stamp out rumours about the Prime Minister’s health. Menzies, he insisted, did not have a heart murmur. On the contrary, he said, despite his gruelling schedule, the Prime Minister ‘was relaxed and in good humour’. A medical acquaintance of Reid’s was quoted as saying, ‘I’ve seldom seen a healthier colour, or less evidence of tiredness.’18 Behind the scenes, though, the mood was far less serene. After Reid returned with Menzies, Sir Frank Packer asked him who he thought was going to win the election. It was time to drop the cheery façade. ‘Calwell’ was Reid’s unequivocal reply. Packer, who must have been surprised, asked Reid if he thought Menzies could do anything to turn things round. ‘Yes,’ Reid replied. ‘Menzies [could] give an unqualified pledge that when returned he will restore full employment in six months’ (Calwell’s promise was for the same result, but over 12 months). This advice impressed Packer, who phoned the Prime Minister and arranged a private meeting between Reid and Menzies at which the advice was repeated. On the following day Menzies went to Bega, in the marginal electorate of Eden-Monaro, and made a statement promising to restore full employment should he be re-elected. He was careful not to commit himself to a specific timeframe.19 The Bega declaration generated a healthy level of publicity, but this pleasing result did not reflect its intrinsic merit. The promise was, in itself, fairly meaningless. The Daily Telegraph made it a big news story because that was how its chief political reporter intended it to be presented. Menzies’ claim that ‘he would never rest content until every capable man and woman wanting work was able to work’ got front-page treatment there and was the basis for a pro-Menzies editorial (‘Mr Menzies talks sense on jobs’).20 Reid’s intervention in the election campaign added

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piquancy to the Fairfax-Packer tussle. On 1 December, for the first time ever, the Sydney Morning Herald endorsed the election of a Labor government. Menzies’ comments at Bega had included a swipe at the Fairfaxes’ beloved newspaper, which may well have been the factor that inspired the ringing preelection endorsement. The Sydney Morning Herald was unimpressed by Menzies’ pledge on employment. After a year of continuing economic mismanagement, it editorialised, ‘we are tired of words and we want results’.21 Reid seems to have thought that the Bega declaration had done the trick in propping up the Menzies government. On 4 December he told his readers that only New South Wales and Queensland showed any movement against Menzies and that it was ‘hard to gauge how much of the seeming movement is synthetic and how much is genuine’. So ‘Both Government and Labor expect Mr Menzies to win.’22 In the event, on 9 December the Coalition lost a swag of seats in New South Wales and Queensland and Menzies was returned to office with a majority of one following the election of the Speaker. Behind the scenes, Reid was of the view that the ‘major publicity’ given to the Bega announcement was a large factor in securing the narrow victory.23 Reid’s confidant, Bill McMahon, endorsed this view when he stated privately that ‘One of the means by which the strong trend against us was slowed was the sustained support of the Daily Telegraph. I believe this to have been the decisive influence.’24 Labor came close to winning the 1961 election because it was fought on domestic issues. The best way for the Menzies government to restore its fortunes after having won the election was to switch attention back to questions of foreign policy and national security, areas in which Labor was vulnerable.

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This was the big challenge for the Packer press in 1962 and Reid responded to it with gusto. He was required to play a part in shaping the political agenda so that it better favoured Menzies. His opening salvo came early in April, in relation to the state election result in Western Australia, where the Brand Liberal government was re-elected. He attributed Labor’s loss in large part to the negative impact on its image of Joe Chamberlain, whose role as a federal powerbroker was an extension of his position as party secretary in Western Australia. Reid told his readers that Chamberlain, a strong anti-Grouper, ‘symbolised A.L.P extremism’ and was electoral poison. By demonising Chamberlain, the political scenery would be shifted, giving Menzies a better chance to roll back the electoral reverse of 1961. Reid’s thinking was clear: ‘employment figures tend to be less important when the ideological factor of the A.L.P. being Left Wing or Communist influenced comes into play either in a State or Federal election’.25 This was the line that had to be upheld. Labor fell into the trap by taking on a more ideological hue. Political zeal in 1962 centred on the threat of nuclear destruction. Across the world peace movements were a force to be reckoned with as Kennedy confronted Khrushchev. In the United Kingdom and the United States protest campaigns against nuclear weaponry and atmospheric testing were organised. Anti-nuclear zeal became an issue in Australian party politics when sections of the ALP began to push for the adoption of a policy to declare the South Pacific a nuclear-free zone. This was at a time when the Menzies government was moving towards a military pact with the United States which would allow the establishment of US bases on Australian soil.26 Reid was attuned to the change in dynamics. On 5 May

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he kicked off another round of teasing the ALP when he revealed that the executive of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party had, in his words, ‘approved an unconditional “Ban the Bomb” policy’. The executive had expressed opposition to nuclear tests ‘at any time, by any nation, in any way and in all circumstances’. Reid saw the influence of the left-wing Victorian state executive at work after Calwell broke a deadlock by voting with the ‘Ban the Bomb’ group on the executive.27 An irritated Calwell issued a statement denying Reid’s claim about the power of the Victorian executive, 28 but the unfriendly spin was unending. When Calwell managed to amend the executive’s ban the bomb resolution to make any ALP nuclear disarmament policy subject to international safeguards, Reid described his action as a ‘gesture to the Right Wing’ and continued to insist that the Left was ‘ jubilant’ at the progress it had made towards getting an unconditional ban adopted.29 The fear of nuclear destruction perpetuated Cold War phobias. On 16 May Reid was in the House of Representatives chamber for Question Time when Labor member Bert James asked the Minister for External Affairs (Sir Garfield Barwick) a question without notice concerning the Menzies government’s attitude to a possible expansion in the membership of the anti-Communist Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) to allow Malaya and Japan to join. Reid did not forget the question. A day or so later he was chatting in the Daily Telegraph’s office in Parliament House with someone reputed to have links to ASIO – believed to be John Bennetts of the Age 30 – and recalled that he had recently witnessed an incident which caused him to conclude that left-wing members of the ALP were asking questions in the House which the Soviet Embassy had fed them. He went on to claim – knowing that Bennetts was

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likely to pass on these comments to ASIO – that a staff member of the Soviet embassy had given Bert James a ‘thumbs up’ sign when James quizzed Barwick about the anti-Communist SEATO. The incident had caused Reid to recall similar questions and statements from other Labor members which, he surmised, may have been phrased to reflect the interests of the USSR. It was ASIO’s understanding that the Soviet diplomat Reid had in mind was the First Secretary in its Canberra embassy, IF Skripov.31 Reid’s comment about Skripov and James was fed into the ASIO assessment process, as was evident soon enough. In the House of Representatives on 29 November 1962, Liberal MP Dudley Erwin claimed that Skripov had been ‘cultivating’ Bert James and his colleagues Les Haylen and Tom Uren.32 In February 1963 Skripov was declared persona non grata and expelled from Australia. Amid the accompanying media coverage, Uren noticed a story in the Sunday Telegraph stating that the expelled diplomat had asked two federal Labor MPs to ask questions in Parliament about security matters. Though neither MP was named, Uren considered the story to be clearly aimed at him, as he was the only MP who could be identified as having asked the particular questions.33 Uren there and then decided to sue the House of Packer for defamation. He sought legal advice from Labor barrister Clive Evatt, who asked him if he knew of any other libellous material. This led Uren to produce a December 1961 Daily Telegraph election editorial by David McNicoll which stated that the ALP, exemplified by leading figures such as Uren, was a ‘ragbag and bobtail outfit’ which ‘would have difficulty in running a raffle for a duck in a hotel on a Saturday afternoon’.34 The defamation suit soon had a life of its own. Reid was

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entangled in it after Evatt and Uren decided to sue on account of a third article as well, this one written by Reid for the Bulletin. The article had appeared in the spring of 1962, when the USSR had been facing off against the United States over Cuba and India and China were engaged in a border war. An apocalyptic mood had been abroad. Reid’s article featured the inelegantly expressed statement that ‘Leftwinger Tom Uren (Labor NSW) still stubbornly adhered to the line that Moscow and Peking-controlled Communist Parties in non-Communist countries assiduously peddle mainly through peace movements’. Uren would have ignored this claim but for his need to build up a case of concerted malice on the part of the Packer organisation.35 Six years of litigation ensued. The first phase ended after a 13-day trial in March 1964 when Uren was awarded £10,000 for the Reid article and £20,000 for the two other items. This was the largest verdict ever given against an Australian newspaper company for damages and was a source of distress for Reid. His reaction inspired some heavy-handed Packer humour. On the morning after the verdict his employer phoned him to say that he should put a loaded gun to his head and pull the trigger. Only then did the sardonic punchline come: ‘It’s only money, Alan. What’s money? Don’t be upset. The only thing that’s upsetting me is that you’re upset.’36 ACP was ready to spend a lot of money to fend off Uren’s suit. The company took the case to the NSW Supreme Court, lost there, and then appealed to the High Court of Australia, which held that there should be a retrial on all counts but that punitive damages could be awarded in a new trial. That decision was taken on appeal to the Privy Council in London but it upheld the decision. A second jury trial led to a further appeal to the Supreme Court, as a result of which one count

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went on to a third jury trial and two counts went to the High Court. The matter was not finalised until 1969, when an outof-court settlement was reached. Reid, whose original involvement was accidental, played a key role in finalising the matter by acting as an intermediary between Uren and ACP.37 Despite having an unflattering nickname for Reid – ‘Poison Pen’38 – Uren was ready to use him as a go-between. Accounts differ as to who first thought of using Reid’s services in this way – Reid claimed in private that the approach came from Uren and Uren later wrote that it came from Reid39 – but whoever came up with it, the idea had the desired effect. Reid, in the words of his later oral history account, ‘put the two of them together in a room, and Sir Frank finally agreed’ on a payout. Thereafter Reid and Uren were on amicable enough terms.40

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Faceless men n the autumn of 1963 the major national political issue in Australia was Labor’s response to the Menzies government’s new security agreement with the United States, under which a communications station to control Polaris submarines was to be established at North West Cape (also known as Exmouth Gulf) in Western Australia. The agreement provoked clamorous opposition. A resolution from Labor’s WA state branch expressed opposition to ‘any base being built in Australia that could be used for the manufacture, firing or control of any nuclear missile or vehicle capable of carrying nuclear missiles’. Some federal members began to treat the WA resolution as official party policy, but Calwell and Labor’s deputy federal leader EG (Gough) Whitlam felt that support for the base was not in conflict with party policy provided the base was subject to joint control.1 Reid sensed that a great story was in the offing. It was surely a sign of instability and weakness that Calwell, worried about the attitude of Tom Uren and other leftists, twice sought a favourable ruling on North West Cape from the ALP federal executive. He could not, Reid reported, ‘take a trick’; the executive referred the issue to the party’s federal conference, where the left, with the support of Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland and a couple of Tasmanian delegates, had ‘a clearcut majority’ of the 36 delegates (6 from each state). A special federal conference, the first since Curtin’s conscription initiative in 1942, was called for March to determine the issue.

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Pragmatism, Reid commented, might carry the day, but then again it might not: If … the extreme leftists – the ‘principles at any price’ advocates – take over the Conference (as they have the numbers to do) and force a declaration that a Labor government will instruct the United States to withdraw from Exmouth Gulf the situation will be even more interesting. Such a declaration made against the background of looming trouble to Australia’s north has the potential to split the Labor Party from top to bottom.2

The federal executive, in calling the special conference, directed the relevant conference committee to prepare a policy report on North West Cape. The committee produced a majority report which accepted the American base provided certain conditions were met. A minority report opposed the base under any circumstances. On the eve of the conference Reid observed that the tactic adopted by the ALP left would be to lay down conditions for occupancy which the United States could not accept without the base becoming useless; there was no need to die in the ditch for an outright ban although this was the ultimate left-wing position. 3 The big test was whether the left had the numbers to enforce such a pseudo-compromise.4 Relying on an inside source, whom Uren later suggested was Les Haylen, Reid wrote in the Daily Telegraph that the left could count on having 17 to 19 votes in the 36-member conference. This was not a clear-cut majority at all. 5 The conference assembled at Canberra’s Hotel Kingston – where Reid had been done over two years earlier – on Monday, 17 March 1963 and ran through the next couple of days before coming to a head in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

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At the start of Wednesday night it was Reid’s understanding that right-wing delegates were prepared to compromise with the left by accepting a motion: which would only appear to give the United States authority to operate a base. One of the conditions imposed would be that the United States must consult Australia before it could use the base for any active operation by any of its nuclear armed vehicles, including submarines. Such a condition would probably be unacceptable to the Americans.

Right-wingers felt that such a motion evaded putting an unconditional ban on the base, but compromise was difficult because the combined forces of Victoria and Queensland were pressing for the acceptance of a WA motion for a complete ban on the base. They had the numbers, Reid thought at one point, to block Calwell at almost any stage.6 At 8.00pm on that endless Wednesday night, Reid could see that ‘delegates were still running around’ with no decision, compromise or otherwise, having been reached.7 Calwell and Whitlam, who had both addressed the conference, were in their offices at Parliament House waiting for a telephone call to tell them of the conference’s decision. Half an hour later the parliamentary leadership began ringing the Hotel Kingston to see how things were going. The delegates had voted 21 to 15 against a complete ban, and the conference was now deadlocked at 18 votes each as left-wing and right-wing negotiators tried to formulate a resolution that would get up. The issue was determined at 1.45am by 19 votes to 17 after a Queensland delegate (state Opposition leader Jack Duggan) abandoned the left and voted for a resolution which the delegates from New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania supported, under which

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the conference accepted the US base subject to joint controls. Uren treated this decision as a historic defeat for the left. The key paragraph amid a forest of ‘ifs’ was: ‘A defence radio communication centre capable of communicating with submarines operated by an ally in Australia would not be inconsistent with Labor policy.’8 In the lead-up to the final vote Reid and his fellow pressmen were gathered in the foyer of the Hotel Kingston. As things stood, he realised that he did not have a memorable news story on his hands. Labor, he knew, would have plenty of time to recover from this display of disunity and indecision, the next federal election not being due until the end of 1964. The decision to accept the base would have removed a major point of difference between the Opposition and the Coalition. Labor now had a breathing space of more than a year in which to turn the focus of attention back onto the more favourable battleground of domestic issues.9 Even at midnight Reid remained unflustered. He knew that he still had time to conjure up a good news story given that his journalistic working day could often last until three o’clock in the morning. As Wednesday ticked over into Thursday he asked a colleague (who can tentatively be identified as the seemingly ever-present John Bennetts) to see what was happening outside in the darkened environs of the Hotel Kingston. A report came back to the effect that Calwell and Whitlam had just arrived from Parliament House. This piece of information caused Reid to have a brainwave. Experience told him that a picture was worth a thousand words. Were the two loitering Labor leaders, he hoped, doing something that might make an arresting or embarrassing photograph? As luck would have it, they were. Calwell and Whitlam could be seen outside the Hotel Kingston

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conferring with Joe Chamberlain and other conference identities under a street lamp.10 Delegates were ducking out of the hotel to tell them of the latest developments as the final decision was about to be made. An inspired Reid instantly envisaged a graphic take on the scene: Almost as though they were emphasising their exclusion from the conference, then debating a subject on which it could legitimately be argued Australia’s future could depend in the event of a major war, they stood forlornly under a street lamp. Conference delegates emerged from the hotel to confer with them almost patronisingly.11

A scoop would be plucked, Prospero-like, from the jaws of frustration if the moment could be captured in a photograph. Reid went into full poker-playing mode. Never was the Red Fox more vulpine than on this night. After waiting to ensure that the other pressmen with him did not know what he was up to, he went to a nearby phone and asked for a newspaper photographer to be sent over. Although told that no photojournalist was available, Reid’s run of luck continued, as he later revealed in oral history testimony. After making his fruitless phone call Reid suddenly discovered, to his great relief, that among the people who had come to the Hotel Kingston to have a squiz at the proceedings was someone who was both a highly skilled photographer and a friend, or at least the friend of a friend, their familiarity springing from the fact that they were both enthusiastic anglers who loved to go fishing for trout at the famed Blue Water Hole at the head of the Goodradigbee River. Reid promptly asked this saviour – since identified as Vladimir Paral, a senior scientific photographer at the John Curtin School of Medical Research12

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– to rush home and get his equipment and take as many photographs of Calwell and Whitlam as he could. Reid told Paral that he need not worry if the shots did not glamorise the subjects. The more disordered and confused people appeared to be in the photos the better, for Reid’s purposes. In some shots Paral only got the backs of the heads of the party insiders Whitlam or Calwell were talking to. Such was the way in which the photographic images of the ‘faceless men’ who ran the Labor Party were created. A few hours later the pressman and the photographer met up in King’s Hall, where Paral’s unflattering photographs, which had been developed in a darkroom at the John Curtin School, were handed over and despatched to Sydney by the first flight out of Canberra.13 The midnight photographs accompanied Reid’s final story on the ALP conference in Friday’s edition of the Daily Telegraph and were presented as indicating ‘a sad commentary of the decline in status of Labor’s parliamentary leadership’. Calwell and Whitlam, the Daily Telegraph’s story lamented, had been forced to wait in the darkness outside the Hotel Kingston as the federal conference delegates – 36 ‘virtually unknown men’ – decided Labor policy on the proposed US communications base. One of the photographs showed Calwell and his speechwriter, Graham Freudenberg, huddled with Labor’s Lord Mayor Clem Jones of Brisbane, pleading with him (he was a delegate) to oppose the call for a complete ban on the base. Another picture showed Calwell and Whitlam earnestly buttonholing Frank Waters, another Queensland delegate. In a third photograph Calwell was seen conferring with Joe Chamberlain. The West Australian still believed that he had the backing of 18 of the 36 delegates to go for broke and block approval of the base, which would have forced Calwell, in Reid’s view, to ‘defend the

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indefensible’. A worried-looking Jack Duggan provided the denouement in Reid’s version of the Bayeux Tapestry. After being photographed with Whitlam and Calwell, Duggan returned to the conference room where, after some uncertainty, he finally voted with right-wing delegates to get the diluted resolution of support through. The intention was to provide ‘an electoral face saver for himself and for Mr Calwell’, but Reid was not convinced: [A]fter the vote Left Wingers say openly in the hotel lounge: You can forget Duggan after this – he’ll be finished as Parliamentary leader in Queensland within six months. In this manner Federal Labor leadership was publicly humiliated. The conference has demonstrated that it regards the Federal Parliamentary Labor leader, not as an alternative Prime Minister, a leader and an adviser, but as a lackey.14

The substance of the policy adopted at the Hotel Kingston was no longer the immediate concern; what Reid had succeeded in doing was to present Calwell and Whitlam, whose policy had got up at the conference, as wholly dependent on decisions made by invisible forces in the party machine. The result was, in the opinion of a Whitlam aide, ‘a publicity disaster’.15 Reid’s story was directed against Calwell and Whitlam. Demonising the organisational wing of the party was merely a means to this end. Labor’s machine men had been among Reid’s most reliable sources of political information for years, since the days of Pat Kennelly, and had figured in many a colourful story, and he had no desire to see the likes of Joe

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Chamberlain and Clyde Cameron vanish from the scene. Reid’s relationship with the machine men was a highly ritualised affair. No sooner had one dust-up finished than another one was arranged. This was evident at the regular ALP conference following the special conference in Canberra, which took place in Perth in the winter of 1963. A determined effort was made there to lessen the chance of another public relations disaster. To this end the conference was meant to be open to the press. Reid, however, refused to accept the conditions laid down for admission. He then repaired to his hotel room. Everybody knew that his sources would ensure that he knew what was going on anyway. Later on, other journalists joined him. ‘No pressman,’ Reid chortled, ‘elected to be “in” on Mr Chamberlain’s terms.’16 He savoured a triumph that turned out, as he later indicated, to be brief: ‘And anyway, the conference debated [the set of conditions for press admission] and it was decided it was stupid, and thereafter all the conferences would be open to the press and the public, and from then on all conferences have [been].’17 The focus on Labor’s machine men intensified as Menzies, bent on reversing the losses of 1961, searched for issues on which he could fight an early election. Initially the alliance with the United States was the key point of differentiation, but as 1963 progressed it was Labor’s division on whether or not to support state aid for Catholic schools that was increasingly mined as an issue. Here, for a change, was a domestic issue that could be put to good use. Divisive sectarianism was still alive. Labor’s fear of Santamaria, unmodified since the split of the 1950s, made it wary of supporting state aid. Reid and the Daily Telegraph were caught up in the action as the parties jostled for advantage. When covering the 1963 NSW ALP

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conference, Reid had been impressed by a policy document which proposed state aid for libraries and science blocks. It was not adopted, but Reid did not forget it. He mentioned the document to Menzies, who asked for a copy. The issue of state aid was bubbling along nicely at the highest levels of government.18 Early in October 1963 the Daily Telegraph featured a story by Reid that claimed Calwell was desperate to get the NSW Labor government to modify a proposal to aid parents of pupils at non-state schools in New South Wales. Calwell, Reid reported, ‘begged’ an unnamed state government minister to act as an intermediary to have the proposal ‘adjusted’ after the federal executive censured the NSW Labor government and the ALP state executive because of their soft position on state aid. Calwell, Daily Telegraph readers learnt, was scared that another act of heavy-handed involvement by the federal machine in a sensitive policy matter would revive memories of the Hotel Kingston fiasco back in March.19 Reid’s claim concerning Calwell’s alleged state aid intermediary in New South Wales irked the Leader of the Opposition, who issued a statement in which he accused Reid of perpetrating ‘a complete fabrication’. No ‘retreat’ had been effected and no ‘pleas’ had been made. Reid’s response was to claim that his informants had indicated that Calwell’s direct approach to a NSW Labor minister had been matched by approaches from at least three people, ‘all with high authority in the Labor movement and closely associated with Mr Calwell’, who spoke to the same mysterious minister.20 The spat highlighted Labor’s sensitivity on state aid and came at a crucial moment. Just over 24 hours later Menzies began meeting with senior colleagues to soften up the Coalition for a snap election. On 15 October he announced that

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the nation would go the polls on 30 November to elect a new House of Representatives. This statement was followed by a rare Menzies press conference. In reporting this event Reid waxed lyrical about the Prime Minister’s ‘aplomb and gusto’. The suggestion of a possible post-election decision to retire or go to the House of Lords, diffidently raised by pressmen, was greeted with ‘withering cheerful scorn’. A gruelling election campaign was being embraced with ‘the casual off-handedness of a Sydneysider talking about a Manly ferry trip’. It was clear, Reid wrote, that the Prime Minister had the zest to carry out his demanding job.21 As a result of an ‘imaginative and appealing’ policy speech, Calwell and his colleagues, Reid thought, had for a brief moment ‘a real chance of becoming the next Government of Australia’.22 But the tide turned once Menzies delivered his policy speech on 12 November 1963. After relating his government’s contribution to economic growth, Menzies asked his television and radio audience the following loaded questions: In the very hey-day of our progress, the Australian Labor Party asks you to dismiss us; to commit the national fortunes to the hands of its Members of Parliament and the famous outside body, thirty six ‘faceless men’, whose qualifications are unknown, who have no elected responsibility to you. Do you feel tempted? Why? 23

Reid, powerfully aided by Val Paral’s back-of-the-head shots of conference delegates, had originally written about the ‘virtually unknown men’ and their role at the 1963 special conference. He had posited a void, which Menzies had filled up with scary imagery. The Menzies formulation of ‘thirty six faceless men’ reinforced the idea in the mind of a fearful electorate. The

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notion was milked for all it was worth. A Liberal Party election leaflet featured one of Reid’s photographs of Calwell waiting outside the Hotel Kingston. It was a worrying day, the leaflet said, when ‘national leadership on great affairs is surrendered to unknown outsiders bitterly fighting with one another about action on national survival’.24 Labor’s faceless men rejected state aid for Catholic schools, so Menzies pledged £5 million for science blocks for private as well as state schools. The Sunday Telegraph enlivened the debate by quoting comments in the Bombala Parish Record from a parish priest (Reverend Fr JP Kelly) who indicated that a vote for educational justice would be: 1 – DLP; 2 –Liberal-Country Party; 3 – ALP. 25 It is tempting to believe that the Sunday Telegraph was put onto the story by a contact of Reid’s in the electorate of Eden-Monaro. As polling day drew nearer Reid made much of a pledge made by Calwell to abolish preferential voting. He suggested that such an action, by preventing the Liberal and Country parties from pooling their votes, ‘would mean that a Federal Labor Government once in power would continue in office almost indefinitely’.26 Within a few days the need for scare tactics was obviated, in tragic circumstances. The assassination of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963 confirmed the electorate’s determination to steer clear of political change at a time of intense insecurity. On the following weekend, as voters trooped to the polls, media coverage of an Australian election reached a new technological level. Sir Frank Packer, eager to turn the event into the nation’s first televised election night, devoted the manpower and technical resources of TCN9 and its Melbourne associate, GTV9, to an election night telecast covering Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Newcastle and Wollongong. The

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lynchpin was a coaxial cable which linked television coverage in Melbourne and Sydney with the Canberra tally room, where the Packer team featured the psephologist Creighton Burns, who had a state-of-the-art computer at his disposal to process the results. There was no question of Reid not being involved. He was positioned on the Daily Telegraph editorial floor and was ready to back his instinct against Creighton Burns and his computer.27 Election night kicked off at 8.00pm, when Brian Henderson in Sydney introduced viewers to ‘the first network election coverage’. Behind the scenes an epic race between man and machine was underway. At 8.10pm the news director at the Daily Telegraph called the master control room to say that ‘Alan Reid’s got something to say.’ There were few results on the tally board and the computer had yet to enlighten any one about anything when the control room cut to the Daily Telegraph newsroom, prompted by the sight on the monitor of Reid’s worldly-wise face wreathed in cigarette smoke. ‘The government’s back in, and we’re saying so in the edition that’s going out now,’ the pressman announced. At about 9.00pm Reid reappeared in the telecast, standing in front of a news board which proclaimed ‘Menzies Wins’. ‘Menzies is back with a majority of about thirteen,’ he said. It was soon clear that Reid had bested the computer, and Sir Frank Packer ordered the computer to be removed from the presentation after Creighton Burns, despite Reid’s correctness by then being in no doubt, continued to announce that Calwell still had a good chance of winning the election.28 By the time the program ended Reid could feel truly content. His journalist’s instincts were amply vindicated. His reputation had been further enhanced.

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At home with the Liberals he 1963 election had proven to be a highly successful referendum directed against Labor’s faceless men. Alan Reid’s encyclopaedic knowledge about Labor Party infighting was clearly an invaluable asset, but at the same time the continued dominance of Sir Robert Menzies meant that he needed to cultivate his Liberal Party sources as well if he did not wish to become dangerously specialised. It paid to be versatile. Reid had a number of good Liberal contacts. Bill McMahon was a constant source of gossip and high-level inside information. Other conservative contacts included the maverick Bill Wentworth and, of for more immediate use, Sir Garfield Barwick, who served as Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs after entering Parliament in 1958. Reid’s dealings with Barwick were eased by the two men’s common interest in outdoor pursuits. (Barwick loved skiing in the Snowy Mountains and became a trustee of the Kosciuszko National Park.) Their close connection was evident in the spring of 1964, when Chief Justice Owen Dixon told Prime Minister Menzies (now knighted) that he wished to retire. His imminent departure led Barwick, Menzies’ first choice as Dixon’s successor, to make soundings as to whether or not he should go to the High Court and thus end his parliamentary career. Reid was one of the people he approached. ‘I’ve been offered the Chief Justice,’ he revealed in a confidential chat. ‘What do you think I should do? Have I got a future in this game?’ Reid’s response was

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blunt: ‘Gar, you’re not a politician’s bootlace.’ And so Reid may have been partly responsible for Barwick’s leaving politics and becoming the nation’s Chief Justice.1 Even as he was losing one contact in the ranks of the Menzies government Reid was gaining another. ‘It was a newspaperman-politician’s relationship. It wasn’t a friendship.’2 This was his later and misleadingly low-key description of the association he enjoyed with the Liberal MP Peter Howson (English-born, Cambridge-educated). Their association was well covered in the ever-expanding private political diary that Howson kept religiously. On 10 June 1964 Prime Minister Menzies appointed Howson, a World War II airman, as his Minister for Air. As with Barwick, a common interest in things alpine – Howson was another skier – provided Reid with a useful icebreaker. On Tuesday, 28 July, he contacted Howson and asked if the RAAF could be used to drop food for cattle marooned in snow near Canberra.3 Though an RAAF Dakota had dropped 200 bales of fodder on the previous Sunday, more food had to be provided; Howson agreed and a second RAAF Dakota airdrop of 60 bales went ahead on 28 July although, annoyingly, wombats got to share some of the fodder.4 Reid would not have been alone in calling for something to be done for the cattle, but his direct involvement in the matter was a sign that his connection with the Minister for Air was hardly a normal ‘newspaperman-politician’s relationship’. While it was not his sole interest, Labor Party infighting still remained the subject closest to Reid’s heart. In the wake of his 1963 election defeat Arthur Calwell was smarting at Gough Whitlam’s post-election response. Following the poll, the NSW state executive requested the state’s federal MPs to present written submissions on defects in the condition and functioning of

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the ALP. In his comments, Whitlam criticised the party’s lack of professionalism and discipline. Whitlam then gave a copy of his submission to Allan Fraser, Reid’s old parliamentary Labor friend. Whitlam seems to have anticipated that Fraser would leak the submission. Its contents were duly published in the Daily Telegraph, alongside a Reid story on the report which bore the headline: ‘Calwell Hit in Report to Executive’. The Daily Telegraph also accused the Sydney Morning Herald of ‘stealing’ Reid’s story from an early edition of the Daily Telegraph and featuring it in its own later editions. As a result of its being leaked and publicised in this way, Whitlam’s report became the public agenda for internal reform in the ALP. The process of winding back the power of the faceless men gathered pace over the rest of the decade. 5 Reid later claimed some of the credit for reform when he looked back on the resulting changes to Labor’s federal organisational structure: And they … changed the structure so that the Parliamentary leader in each State was added for each State, and the four Federal leaders … also became members, and this changed entirely the structure of the Federal Conference and the Executive. And I think [Bob] Hawke was quite accurate when he said that that was largely due to the night of the Exmouth Gulf incident.6

Labor’s modernising wing marketed the structural reforms, which came into effect in 1967, as ‘the greatest change in the framework of our party on a national scale’ since the formation of the federal executive in 1915. Whitlam, elected Labor leader in 1967, was proud to announce that the party had ‘now demolished the cry of the 36 faceless men’.7 But despite the rhetoric, Labor’s faceless men lived on.

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They were not extinguished; their position was merely modified. The parliamentary leadership, state and federal, was rudely grafted onto the federal conference, whose composition otherwise remained exactly the same. The six state conferences continued to pick six national conference delegates and two delegates to the national executive. The faceless men, while no longer the sole controllers of the party organisation, were still a part of it. Their influence was further sustained by factional ties between them and individual members of Labor’s parliamentary leadership group. Further reform, involving restructuring of various dysfunctional state branches of the party, was required in order to make the organisation of the ALP truly seem less exclusive and anachronistic. Reid was ambivalent about Labor’s attempt at internal reform. His reputation would be enhanced if he could say that he was partly responsible for kicking off the process of exorcising the faceless men, and yet he did not entirely seek their demise. He had long had a soft spot for Labor’s backroom operators, as exemplified by Pat Kennelly. He did not want to see too drastic a diminution in their influence, as they provided endless assistance to him in his work, both as subjects of colourful stories and as providers of information. The faceless men story of 1963 showed that a working journalist could make an impact on national affairs without having to move up the hierarchy to the level of an editor or senior manager. Reid was a force to be reckoned with, but he was keen to give the impression that power had not gone to his head. Management, he insisted in a rare public address in 1965, determined what journalists did and managers, for the most part, did what the private owners of the Australian press told them to do. Pressmen such as himself were humble hewers of information.8

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Laborites and unionists who were at the receiving end of Reid’s journalism in Packer-owned publications refused to accept this self-deprecation. There was no doubting the relish with which Reid served his master. Late in 1964 the Daily Telegraph’s anti-Labor animus was directed against Les Haylen. Enrolled in Frank Packer’s list of enemies from the moment in 1943 when he switched from being one of his journalists to being a successful Labor parliamentary candidate, Haylen lost his seat in the House of Representatives in the 1963 election. A year later, when a half-Senate election came round, he was on the Labor ticket in New South Wales. Polling day was 5 December. A week before the poll the Sunday Telegraph featured an article in which Reid claimed that a secret group of ALP members was attempting to sabotage Haylen. The group had obtained copies of an anti-state aid leaflet which advocated a vote for Haylen and had then circulated it among the Catholic clergy of New South Wales. State branch offices, Reid added, had asked Haylen to disown the leaflet but he had not done so. Haylen, well aware that the story was meant to ruin his already slim chance of success by discrediting him in the eyes of Catholic voters, drew up a reply in which he asserted that Reid’s piece was ‘only part of the manhunt against me lasting over many years’. The article was the final Packer attack: Haylen’s Senate bid failed, and that was the end of his political career.9 Hostility to left-wing politics also led to Reid, over the summer of 1964–65, getting caught up in events at Mount Isa in Queensland, where a major industrial dispute involving mine workers was underway. Workers and rank and file organisers faced up to the owners of Mount Isa Mines Limited, who were supported by the Queensland and federal governments and, eventually, by the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) as well.

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The Packer organisation regarded the strikers as a subversive and sinister force. Sir Frank despatched Reid to Mount Isa with orders to advise the AWU on how to break the strike. Reid’s interest was guaranteed because of the factionalism involved. The AWU was in conflict with the Queensland Trades and Labour Council (TLC), and their antagonism reverberated far beyond the sunshine state. The TLC helped pick the Queensland delegates who had played such a crucial role in determining the outcome of Labor’s special party conference in March 1963. The exotic figure of Pat Mackie (‘a cauliflowered-eared New Zealander with a Canadian accent and a history as a professional agitator’) was the readily identifiable face of rank and file militancy among the Mount Isa mine workers. He had to be discredited. To this end Reid reported from Mount Isa just before Christmas in 1964, that ‘Left-wing leaders today decided to “put the skids” under Mr Pat Mackie and to provide their own leaders for the Mount Isa dispute.’10 On the evening of 16 February 1965 Mackie, still a force to be reckoned with, was on a plane flying from Melbourne to Sydney to address a regular early-morning stop work meeting of the wharfies. Reid just happened to be a passenger on the same plane, and during the course of the flight the two men struck up a conversation. There are two accounts of this encounter and they vary markedly. Reid says that he was reading the Melbourne Herald when Mackie approached him. Mackie’s account, which is more detailed, is that Reid, whom he did not know, flopped into an empty seat beside him and started a conversation about the dispute at Mount Isa. Reid, according to Mackie, canvassed ‘the general line of anti-worker media against the Mount Isa rebels’: the workers were ‘dissidents’ and

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‘Communist tools’. Mackie responded by denying that he was ‘a professional disrupter’. His fellow passenger then astonished Mackie by stating, ‘I am in a position to act as go-between, between a certain newspaper and yourself. I could arrange to have your plane fare paid to any part of the world you wish to go, if we had exclusive right to the story.’ Mackie, despite the attractiveness of the offer, was not interested. The stranger’s parting comment was: ‘Well, we had a very interesting discussion. I’m glad to have met you. My name is Alan Reid. I’m a journalist.’11 Once the Mount Isa dispute faded from immediate attention – the striking miners returned to work in April – Reid was better able to concentrate on politics in Canberra. Unfettered by the drabber aspects of journalistic life – ‘office responsibilities and daily routine assignments’ – he was free to range far and wide looking for secrets and scoops.12 On the evening of Wednesday, 28 April 1965 Parliament House was agog after it became known that in the next morning’s Daily Telegraph Reid, whom McMahon (if we are to believe Graham Freudenberg) had tipped off, was going to reveal that the Menzies government had decided to send a big force of troops to South Vietnam by the end of the year. An announcement to this effect was expected within a few days. The buzz led to panic in official circles because the government of South Vietnam had not yet made a formal request for troops to be sent. Reid’s story duly appeared on Thursday morning, prompting other journalists to seek comments from the Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence. The excitement continued until 8.00pm, when Menzies was at last in a position to announce that the Australian government had received, and therefore could positively respond to, a request from South Vietnam for military assistance along the lines being mentioned

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in the press. An infantry battalion was being sent.13 During the latter months of 1965 the afternoon light of the late Menzies era was becoming ever more golden, but the end was a long time coming nonetheless. For its part, the Packer press wanted the balmy Menzies era to go on for as long as possible. Action was swiftly taken when a junior pressman (Ian Day from the Age) was heard to voice the dreaded word ‘retirement’. ‘It is my newspaper’s policy,’ the usually affable Reid sternly pronounced after he strode up to the young man as he was working, ‘that Sir Robert Menzies is not about to retire.’ Speculation about a possible departure should not be encouraged.14 Relations between the Coalition parties, Reid suggested in a yuletide Bulletin column, ‘are going to be thoroughly tested in the coming year if Menzies decides to retire’. It was wise to keep using the conditional tense.15 Punctiliousness was maintained until the very last moment. On 19 January 1966 Reid wrote that Menzies was ‘adhering scrupulously to his undertaking that the joint Government parties will be the first he will tell officially and personally of his future political intentions’.16 On the following day the Prime Minister announced his retirement, so ending the Age of Menzies. Reid farewelled him in the Bulletin as ‘a cautious reformer’ and ‘superb consolidator’. For the most part, with the wealth of the nation expanding all the time, his ‘was a lucky as well as a politically stable Age’. Reid identified Menzies’ great weakness as ‘a strange awkwardness in dealing with Asia’s problems’.17 The beat that Reid had to cover was now transformed. He was soon reporting that Menzies’ successor – and painfully loyal deputy – Harold Holt was a ‘significantly different’ Prime Minister. The unassuming Holt, in contrast to his aloof predecessor, was ‘a team man’. He was accessible, and happy to seek out,

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and heed, advice. His affability was not necessarily incompatible with an ability to make firm decisions, though, as indicated, in Reid’s estimation, by his trebling of Australia’s military presence in South Vietnam, a move which involved a greater deployment overseas of conscripts, traditionally a divisive issue. Unlike Menzies, Holt was prepared to be frank in announcing policy. However, he also had a noticeable weakness: a desire to justify unsustainable policies rather than, as Menzies did, ruthlessly ditch them.18 In 1966 Australia’s support for the United States in the Vietnam War was the big political issue. Reid could not help noting that Holt, after his early show of decisiveness, was failing to press home his advantage on this front. Through wordiness and lack of focus he had allowed Calwell, Labor’s ageing but indomitable leader, to concentrate his fire on the conscription issue, which diverted attention from the embarrassingly antiAmerican policy position of Labor’s left-dominated federal executive. There was, Reid stressed, a crying need for Holt to emulate Menzies’ ‘superb gift for explaining issues and problems in simple understandable terms’.19 In June 1966 Reid was picked as one of the five accredited newspaper reporters to accompany Holt on a visit to the United States and Britain.20 The highlight of the trip came on 30 June when, standing under a hot sun on a red-carpeted dais on a White House lawn, Holt was given a near-royal reception. Australia’s position on the Vietnam War was deeply appreciated. In response to a warm greeting from President Johnson, the Australian Prime Minister spoke from the heart: ‘you have an admiring friend, a staunch friend, who will go all the way with LBJ’. The reference to Johnson’s 1964 election slogan, Reid wrote, ‘raised a laugh in what otherwise was a solemn

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ceremony’.21 Twenty-four hours later, in a follow-up Reid story, Holt’s answer to critics of his unqualified support for armed intervention in Vietnam was given a good run: ‘If I am fulsome, I believe we have every reason to be.’22 Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict dominated the federal election held near the end of the year. Raucous anticonscription and anti-war demonstrators dogged Holt’s election meetings; their rowdiness distressed the Prime Minister, as Reid discovered first hand. Faced with hatred and hostility, Holt ‘practically wept’ on the pressman’s shoulder and asked the question ‘What do I do?’ Reid was ready to offer advice. ‘I’d concentrate on the US alliance,’ he told Holt. ‘If you concentrate on that and stick to that and nothing else, conscription, Vietnam, everything else falls into place.’ At the start of the campaign Reid declared in the Bulletin that the Coalition intended to dwell on the importance of the US alliance to the exclusion of everything else.23 He now had to make sure that Holt stayed on message. It took a few days for his comments to sink in, but electoral success – or so Reid later felt – was guaranteed when Holt finally managed to focus his election speeches on the need to maintain the US alliance (‘All the way with LBJ’) without getting bogged down in the messy details of the Vietnam War and the conscription of young men.24 Labor was trounced in the November 1966 poll. It won only a third of the seats in the House of Representatives. In the aftermath of the defeat Calwell stood down as party leader and was succeeded by Whitlam. The change underwhelmed Reid, who wrote that Labor was ‘not likely to pick up in morale for a while even under the most enlightened and energetic of leaders’.25 Whitlam had ‘achieved Labor office but not Labor power’. Reid doubted if the new leadership team had the will to confront

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the party’s demons. Whitlam’s deputy, Lance Barnard, was ‘untried and inexperienced’, and Senate leaders Lionel Murphy and Sam Cohen were left-wingers, while Whitlam was not. Whitlam did not have the numbers on the federal executive and there was no vibrant rank and file to appeal to over the heads of the ALP machine. Given this situation, Reid’s view was that ‘Caucus is so slenderly divided that [Whitlam] will either have to abandon his aims or take considerable risks to achieve them.’26 The size of the Coalition’s majority in Parliament following 1966’s ‘khaki’ election led observers to suggest that the big challenge facing Holt might come from emboldened domestic antiCommunist zealots rather than from a diminished Labor Party. During the federal election a possible sign of things to come was provided by developments in the safe Liberal seat of Warringah in Sydney, where the threat to the Liberal candidate, Edward St John, came not from the ALP but from an Independent candidate who enjoyed the blessing of a range of far right groups including the League of Rights.27 In beating off this right-wing challenge St John benefited from favourable publicity in mainstream media including the Bulletin and the Daily Telegraph.28 The Coalition lost its aura of unassailability once Holt was seen as a flawed leader. In the autumn of 1967 Reid noted the Coalition’s desire for new ideas following the retirement of Menzies, but remarked that this desire had yet to be acted on because of a lack of strategic leadership. Decisive action on new issues was all too rare, he claimed. Also, Prime Minister Holt, because he lacked Menzies’ ruthlessness, was being let down by his ministers. They were able to avoid responsibility by referring to Cabinet any proposal that might produce the slightest trouble for its originator. As a result, administrative

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trivia was swamping Holt and his Cabinet colleagues.29 Great minds, in the matter of Harold Holt, tended to think alike. Midway through the year the sense of drift alarmed McMahon (now Holt’s Treasurer) and Reid’s airman friend Howson, who between them decided that the time had come to cut down on the number of ministerial submissions reaching Cabinet. Howson, now the Minister assisting the Treasurer as well as Air Minister, took over as much administrative work of the Treasurer as he could in order to give McMahon and Holt more time to engage in strategic thinking. Reid later endorsed Howson’s view during a private chat in which he said that ‘the government as a whole has given too much attention to administrative machinery and administrative efficiency this year and not enough to the political importance of the measures under consideration’.30 Though swept back to power so recently, Prime Minister Holt was running into a lot of trouble in matters relating to the armed services. Criticism, some of which came from his own backbench, dogged him as he was forced to deal with the seemingly endless political repercussions of the accidental sinking of HMAS Voyager three years earlier. During the parliamentary dinner adjournment on 17 May 1967, former Lieutenant Commander Peter Cabban, who had drawn up a statement which had reignited the controversy, was chatting with Clyde Cameron and the Liberal MPs Edward St John – who had just delivered a brilliant maiden speech on the Voyager incident – and John Jess when a man interrupted them to exclaim: ‘Mr Cabban, you’ve won. There is going to be a Royal Commission. I have just spoken to Sir Frank Packer, and he has told the Prime Minister that if he does not hold a Royal Commission, he will bring the government down.’ St John told Cabban that the

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stranger was Reid, whereupon the journalist added: ‘There’s just one catch. McMahon’s going to drop a bucket on you after dinner, and if you break down, the deal’s off.’31 Someone had their wires crossed – it was Prime Minister Holt, not McMahon (who had already done so), who was planning to question Cabban’s credibility after the dinner break. Cabban was rattled, but Reid’s deal went ahead. The appointment of a Royal Commission was announced on the following day. The Packer intervention, it was considered at the time, was crucial.32 Unwanted attention then switched to the air force. On 24 August Howson and Reid had a chat in Parliament House which focused on newspaper criticism of the government’s expenditure on defence items, notably purchase of F-111 aircraft. Later in the day Reid called on Howson and discussed the criticism again. Together the two men worked out a plan for combating the criticism with a series of articles in the Sunday Telegraph. An article on the F-111 appeared under Howson’s name, while defence expert TB Millar contributed comments on the way in which the F-111 fitted into the strategic picture. 33 In a phone conversation with McMahon after the articles appeared, Howson dwelt on the satisfactory outcome of the chat with Reid: ‘This has certainly stemmed some of the adverse criticism that we’ve had in the Sydney press, and I think will pave the way for an improved public image on defence.’34 Another pleasing result was chalked up when Howson and Reid discussed an article on the RAAF written by former wartime pilot Peter Isaacson, Reid agreeing that the article should feature in the Bulletin. When it did, Howson commented in his diary: ‘I think this will help the image of the RAAF.’35 Soon afterwards the Air Minister had to deal with allegations of misuse of VIP aircraft by government ministers. Reid

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warned Holt that the Senate – where the government lacked a majority and for which a half-Senate election was due soon – might press the government hard on the issue. Holt ignored the warning and was wrong-footed when Reid’s advice proved correct.36 In handling the controversy the Holt government’s new Leader in the Senate, John Gorton, acquitted himself well, displaying openness and affability. An embattled Howson, in contrast, lost credibility because he gave the impression that he was trying to cover up something. Reid was willing to help him navigate the turbulence. In the course of a private chat the pressman ‘highlighted some of the mistakes we’ve made on the VIP question in the last week or two. Unfortunately I could not but agree, although didn’t say so.’ The Air Minister was glad ‘to hear an outsider indicate to us some of our shortcomings’. 37 In November the half-Senate election was held. It was a chore for voters but gave political pundits an unambiguous indication of how the Holt government was faring. The result reflected Holt’s uninspiring performance. There was, Reid wrote in a post mortem, an ‘ominous’ slippage in the Liberal vote. Labor would have picked up seats in the three biggest states but for DLP preferences going solidly to the Coalition. There were now four DLP members in the Senate and they formed a significant power bloc.38 Elsewhere Reid suggested that as good a way as any of freshening up the ministry was by switching External Affairs Minister Hasluck to Defence and replacing him with Senator Gorton (‘no mean performer’).39 Reid’s antennae twitched as concern among government backbenchers mounted following the Senate poll. He was keen to learn what was happening, and in due course the information came. Sometime in December he was standing at the top of the stairs leading up to King’s Hall when Holt grabbed him

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and asked, ‘Alan, what do you know about a secret meeting of my members in Sydney?’ The Liberal leader was particularly anxious to know if Bill Aston, the Speaker of the House, was involved. Reid said he knew ‘a bit’ and went on to confirm that there had been a meeting of backbenchers and that it had canvassed how the decline in the government’s fortunes could be turned around. This information added to the pressure on the Prime Minister.40 Reid was impressed when Holt finally showed an element of ruthlessness in dealing with a troublesome colleague. On 12 December 1967 the Prime Minister, egged on by McMahon, confronted John McEwen, the Country Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister, after McEwen questioned Cabinet’s decision not to devalue the Australian currency after Britain devalued the pound. In reporting this development Reid commented that McEwen had undertaken to refrain from further public controversy on the devaluation issue. By doing so Reid ‘quite upset’ Holt, who wanted this undertaking to be kept quiet. The Prime Minister was eager for all traces of the painful fissure and its outcome to be decorously concealed.41 The press consensus was that Holt’s successful bid to put McEwen in his place was indeed a tremendous victory.42 However, the strain involved was immense. Though Reid claimed in public that Holt ‘was his usual self, cheerful, full of energy [and] good spirits’,43 a different picture was presented when he described in oral history testimony what was to be his last meeting with the Prime Minister. On the Thursday before his fatal plunge into the surf at Portsea, Holt hosted drinks at the Lodge for the press gallery and their wives, including the Reids. Being a non-drinker, Reid left early and was escorted out by Holt, who, according to Reid’s account, began lamenting ‘what a

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difficult time he had [and] what should he do’. Reid said he tried to console the Prime Minister by pointing out that Parliament had risen for the long summer break. There was plenty of time for Holt to do what Reid’s hero Curtin used to do: sit back and think his way through the problems facing him. Reid never saw Holt again after they parted.44 The nation needed a new Prime Minister after Holt mysteriously disappeared. In providing a behind-the-arras account of the events leading up to the choice of a successor, Reid’s reputation as the man who knew all the secrets in federal politics entered a new and even more impressive phase.

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Power struggle lan Reid was never likely to let such a minor medical procedure as the removal of a lung stand in the way of his ferocious work ethic. He had ceased to have a drinking problem for almost two decades by the mid-1960s but he was not immune from the other toxic elements – stress, irregular hours, heavy smoking – that characterised and shortened the life of many an old-style newshound. Years of smoking endless roll-your-own cigarettes as he talked on the phone late into the night from his chair in the corner of the Daily Telegraph newsroom in the parliamentary press gallery at last exacted its price in 1964 when he was diagnosed and operated on for lung cancer. Despite the ordeal he was able to return to work outwardly unaffected. In vowing to soldier on he was fully supported by his powerful employer. During his illness, not a week passed by without a personal call from Sir Frank Packer in Sydney asking him how he was getting on. He may have lost a lung, but he kept his job.1 This intimation of mortality meant that Reid’s determination to become a published author was reinforced. The best affirmation in the face of sickness was to work harder than ever. Besides writing daily journalism for the Packer empire, Reid still hoped to write, in his spare time, an impressive book by which he would be remembered. The only thing that changed was his idea of what kind of book he should write, and that change in direction took some time to emerge. His ambition to become

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a novelist, though attended with frustration and humiliation, did not vanish overnight. For some time after the adverse District Court decision The Bandar-log retained a strange half-life in the Australian literary and publishing scene. A couple of relevant events occurred in 1965. In July, Colin Roderick accepted an invitation to become Professor of English at the University College of Townsville. His departure removed the doughtiest opponent of publishing Reid’s novel at Angus & Robertson. Then on Melbourne Cup Day (2 November), Dr Evatt died in Canberra. His passing stirred up memories of the still-not-forgotten novel. The Bandar-log demonstrated the depth of Reid’s fascination with the Labor leader’s tragic last years as a public figure. Surely this interest, Angus & Robertson thought, could now profitably be directed along non-fictional lines. On 5 November, striking while the iron was hot, Beatrice Davis wrote a letter to Reid in which she asked him to think about writing a biography of Evatt for Angus & Robertson. Miss Davis was encouraging: I was so impressed with your understanding of him in the novel (which I feel we ought to have published) that I know you would be the best possible person – particularly in view of your grasp of all political situations.2

Reid, it seems, did not want to write such a book. Following Evatt’s death he limited his assessment of the former Labor leader’s significance to an article in the Bulletin in which he dwelt on the transformation of the ALP in the 1950s. The theme of the article, hardly surprisingly, was one of decline and fall.3 Miss Davis’ kind words were not completely without effect though. Her comments about his novel caused Reid to wonder if

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it might yet be brought back from the dead. Hope was renewed, although he did not act straight away; sometime in the first half of 1967 he sent the manuscript back to Angus & Robertson for reconsideration.4 This was not a wise move. The passing of time, while diminishing the possibility of a defamation suit, had also lessened the immediacy and timeliness of the political passions that suffused the novel. The public having now forgotten many of the events it covered, Reid’s novel had to rely more on literary merit as the basis for publication. This was fatal for its prospects, as on any candid assessment it was hardly a great work of art. Such certainly was the opinion of the readers from whom Angus & Robertson solicited reports. A reader’s report penned by Anthony Barker was scathing. He described Reid’s novel as ‘dull reading, with too much discussion about what a dirty business politics is and not enough action’. A second reader (John Abernethy) agreed. He advised Miss Davis that Reid’s novel was far too static: the author, he said, failed to deal directly with the political crisis that his characters endlessly talked about and as a result it was hard to get interested in their fate. 5 It was Miss Davis’ sad duty, once these reports had been received, to convey the readers’ candid comments to the author. Angus & Robertson, she had to tell Reid, did not believe that it could make a success of the book. The best that Miss Davis could offer was the prospect of a consoling chat with Abernethy or with her good self. Alternatively, Reid might care to have the proofs sent back.6 The unqualified nature of the rejection caused Reid to finally wake up to reality. He was not likely ever to become an acclaimed Australian novelist. The Bandar-log was considered unpublishable because it failed to engage directly with events.

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He drew the obvious conclusion: he had to drop the idea of publishing a political novel and instead concentrate on producing a highly informative, if occasionally varnished, piece of political reporting. That was where his strength lay and he was wrong ever to have thought otherwise. Reid’s journalistic imagination, now freed from the incubus of his unwanted novel, was primed for action … he just needed to wait for the next big political story that came along. At that end of 1967 it arrived: the death of Harold Holt. Holt’s disappearance on 17 December marked the beginning of a period – 23 highly newsworthy days – which saw a stand-off between John McEwen and Bill McMahon culminate in the startling choice of Senator John Gorton as the third parliamentary leader of the modern Liberal Party of Australia. Such a wonderful political story was a wish come true for an ambitious working journalist and Reid was determined to exploit the opportunity to the full. The by-lined articles he wrote at the time, while flagging the significance of the underlying clash on economic policy between McEwen and McMahon,7 told only part of the story, and his desire to produce something more impressive and lasting was not to be denied. His long-frustrated wish to be seen as a serious writer was finally satisfied when his insider’s view of these recent events formed the basis of a successful book. His chronicle of this hectic period took the form of The Power Struggle, a 200-page account of a Liberal-Country Party free-for-all. It was hailed as an Australian political classic as soon as it appeared on 9 January 1969, a year to the day after Gorton’s elevation. Way back in 1941 Reid had acquired a by-line because of his colourful coverage of the collapse of the wartime Menzies government. He finally became an author as a result of his immersion in yet another leadership tussle.

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Writing about a serious power struggle was always a good career move for Reid. The Packer media empire, of which Reid was a loyal retainer, was not an impassive observer of the madcap midsummer events of late December 1967 and early January 1968 that were covered in The Power Struggle. It was very much in the thick of things. Sir Frank Packer’s instinctive wish was for McMahon, who was ‘an old friend … and a regular guest at his Sunday night dinners’,8 to take over as Liberal leader once Holt was presumed to be dead. It was soon apparent, however, that the best that could be hoped for was to ensure that McMahon stayed where he was, as federal Treasurer and deputy leader of the Liberal Party. Powerful forces were ranged against him. On 17 December, in a private chat, Deputy Prime Minister and Country Party leader McEwen, a sworn foe of McMahon as indicated by their recent policy clash on devaluation, told Lord Casey, the Governor-General, that he would not serve under McMahon if he tried to become Prime Minister.9 Two days later Casey appointed McEwen as Prime Minister. The assumption was that McEwen’s appointment would only be an interim arrangement, pending the election of a new Liberal leader, but there were a few important Liberals who were ready to make it permanent. Following his appointment, McEwen, without bothering to give any reasons, told the nation that there would be no Country Party ministers in the incoming government if McMahon became Prime Minister. As the succession struggle got underway another Packer retainer, David McNicoll, conducted daily phone conversations with his boss, then holidaying in Acapulco. McNicoll persuaded Packer to drop the idea of pushing McMahon for leader. To convince Packer that McMahon ‘was not in the race’ he quoted

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‘people he respected’. 10 Reid was one source of such advice. The pressman said that there had been a count of heads which indicated that McMahon did not have the support of the party room even before McEwen blackballed him. Reid’s opinion of McMahon, conveyed one way or another to Packer, was that ‘He won’t make it, he has not got the numbers.’11 Such an assessment put paid to the claim, aired publicly by Reid in the Daily Telegraph, that McMahon definitely intended to defy McEwen and stand for the leadership.12 Had the Packer camp had its way, there would never have been a Liberal Party power struggle for Reid to write about: the power struggles Reid was paid to report on were meant, after all, to be those within the Labor Party. An uncontested McMahon takeover would avoid ‘a tense, possibly acrimonious battle for the leadership’ and such a battle would do the party no good at all.13 A peaceful change of at the top, generating no colourful new stories, was desired. But once McMahon had been sidelined, this scenario vanished. Packer now needed to know which contender among the other hopefuls he should plump for. Paul Hasluck was a candidate, but in the previous year’s Bulletin Reid had already set out a fundamental objection: Hasluck’s forte was external affairs, which would allow McEwen to dominate economic policy if Hasluck ever became Prime Minister. The advice from McNicoll was that there was a very strong body of opinion which felt that Senator Gorton, although being a far less prominent figure than Hasluck, was the man for the job. This recommendation was consistent with Reid’s view of what Packer should do: ‘If I were involved in writing the editorials that you’re involved in,’ he told his employer, ‘I’d go for John Gorton, against Hasluck.’14 Reid opted for the still littleknown Senator because of the dexterity Gorton had displayed

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in the Upper House during the VIP flights affair back in September 1967. Over the previous 10 years Reid had periodically urged Gorton to transfer to the Lower House.15 In December he had named Gorton as a possible choice for the post of Minister for External Affairs. He was now ready to contemplate Gorton’s leaping directly from the Senate into the Prime Ministership. Gorton, if Packer was going to support him, had to look after McMahon. Nothing was left to chance. Gorton later stated that three separate Packer emissaries contacted him to see if he intended to stand up for McMahon. Reid was one of them; he told Gorton that he (Gorton) ‘nearly had it in the bag’ but that to ensure success he needed to issue a statement condemning McEwen for interfering in the Liberal Party and supporting the right of McMahon to stand despite McEwen’s veto. Gorton did not consider this good advice,16 so a statement was not forthcoming. Despite this, Packer agreed to back Gorton after the Senator assured McNicoll that there was no reason for him not to consider reappointing McMahon as Treasurer.17 In reconstructing the Gorton ascension in the pages of The Power Struggle Reid felt free to add embellishment when describing the things he had seen happening behind the scenes and setting out the background to events. Though he had had to give up his ambition of becoming a major Australian novelist, Reid continued to put great store on the importance of imagination and creativity. All the episodes included in The Power Struggle could be documented or sourced, but Reid exercised a degree of licence in rearranging their sequence and adding flashes of descriptive colour in order to do the story full justice. As one of the book’s eventual readers (Professor Heinz Arndt) later put it, Reid’s account combined political reporting

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and analysis ‘with all the excitement of the whodunit’.18 Reid’s love of garnishing events with an air of conspiracy and intrigue was evident from the word go. He decided, when he came to compose The Power Struggle, to kick off the narrative with an account of a meeting in Parliament House on 18 December involving Dudley Erwin, the Chief Government Whip, the young Malcolm Fraser (then Minister for the Army) and Malcolm Scott, the Government Whip in the Senate. These three men were in fact minor political figures in Holt’s Canberra, but in Reid’s version of events the role they assumed was not humble. They were intent on securing the election of an equally obscure Liberal – John Gorton – as party leader and next Prime Minister of Australia. ‘Also present,’ Reid added, ‘was Miss Ainsley Gotto, Erwin’s young, intelligent and attractive secretary.’ The idea that a presentable woman should be involved in a leadership contest struck at the heart of Reid’s male-centred view of politics. He did not include Gotto (by then Gorton’s principal private secretary) in a staged photograph of Erwin chatting with Fraser and Scott that later graced the pages of The Power Struggle, but her involvement in events was welcome nonetheless; combined with the lowly status of the three politicians in Erwin’s office it allowed Reid to stress the ‘audacious’ nature of the meeting of 18 December 1967.19 But in sombre truth the gathering in the Whip’s office a day after Holt drowned was not as crucial an event as Reid portrayed it to be. By the morning of 18 December Gorton had already decided to nominate. The idea that he should do so had been raised with him on at least three occasions on the previous day. On one of these, it had been Erwin who had indicated that Gorton should think about nominating for leader. Hasluck also told Gorton that he assumed that he (Gorton)

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would be standing. In a separate approach, the deputy leader of the Country Party, Doug Anthony, acting on behalf of McEwen, had said that their party favoured him. Having decided to stand, Gorton repaired next day to the Whip’s office. There was no need for anyone from the Whip’s office to ‘adjourn’ to the Gorton residence to urge him to stand (as Reid later suggested) – Gorton had already said that he was going to be a candidate.20 Reid himself acknowledged that his account of the supposedly crucial meeting in the Whip’s office was essentially a scene-setting device to catch the attention of the reader: ‘Superficially the making of John Grey Gorton into a prime minister started then, but actually the making was commenced years before.’21 This longer term political process did not involve Gorton at all but centred on the toxic relationship – a ‘feud’ no less22 – between McEwen and McMahon, which was formalised when McEwen’s veto of McMahon became public knowledge on 18 December. The rift between the two men involved deep personal incompatibility and serious policy differences. The growing debility of the Holt government in the latter months of 1967 became much more explicable once Reid presented the details of this feud. The Power Struggle provided careful pen portraits of the two men since they were, in point of fact, its chief protagonists. The tone was dark when McEwen the man was introduced to the reader: Self-made, self-contained but passionate, wealthy but austere, McEwen had the aloof dignity of a patrician, a Corsican-like devotion to the pursuit of vendettas, an imperious ambition and a peasant’s suspicion of both colleagues and opponents, a trait that had distinguished him throughout his political career but which had

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A lighter tone was in order when introducing McMahon: Bald, small framed but a wiry physical fitness devotee, with hair tufts above his ears giving him a faint resemblance to a koala bear, wealthy, William McMahon was a onetime playboy and Sydney socialite who had turned serious careerist. He was intelligent, immensely ambitious, with a good university record, had increasingly grown fascinated by economics, was a tireless worker, and took politics as seriously as he once took life gaily.24

As well as finding it hard to get on personally, McEwen and McMahon pursued divergent policies as ministers in the government of Holt. For some time McEwen, with the support of a beefed-up Department of Trade, had been attempting to widen the Country Party’s appeal by winning over the manufacturing sector with the lure of tariff protection. McMahon, advised by Treasury, favoured a more open and competitive economy. Each man was linked to separate newspaper magnates. Packer’s Daily Telegraph believed McMahon to be an excellent Treasurer and Rupert Murdoch was considered to be aligned with McEwen.25 Not everything in the media was cut and dried, though. The Sydney Morning Herald was reckoned to have a policy of ‘preferring McEwen as a person but McMahon as a policymaker’.26 Its man in Canberra, Ian Fitchett, was reputedly linked to McEwen in the same way that Reid was McMahon’s friend.27 Friction between McEwen and McMahon occurred at the

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highest levels of power and policy making in the Australian government but their relationship became an even juicier story for Reid when it began to involve the murky world of shadowy organisations and men of mystery. This was a world that had long fascinated him. McEwen’s anti-McMahon phobia intensified when an outfit known as the Basic Industries Group (BIG) criticised the record of the Country Party. In the 1966 federal election campaign BIG called for the defeat of a number of sitting Country Party members. McEwen responded by denouncing BIG as the ‘faceless men’ of the Liberal Party.28 A further source of paranoia was the presence in Canberra of Max Newton, a former Murdoch employee turned selfemployed journalist, who peddled an anti-McEwen line on tariff protection in newsletters and newspaper articles. McEwen was convinced that BIG, Newton and McMahon formed an axis of evil. The atmosphere in Cabinet became toxic. Senior ministers met on 9 November 1967 to thrash out the difficulties; unfortunately for all concerned, the conclave ended up being a tense confrontation that settled nothing. Reid figured in the events described in The Power Struggle just as his alter ego Macker Kalley had appeared in the pages of The Bandar-log, in both cases partly as observer and partly as participant. He readily acknowledged in The Power Struggle that the conflict between McEwen and McMahon put him in a peculiar position. He had had a good working relationship with the Treasurer for a long time, having written positive things about McMahon since 1950. He disagreed with McEwen’s supposed conspiracy theory about the origin of the opposition to his tariff policies. There was nothing, in Reid’s view, to indicate that a McMahon-BIG-Newton alliance existed. Nevertheless he broadly supported McEwen’s protectionist position on tariffs.29

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In November 1967 there was an attempt in the parliamentary press galley to end Newton’s membership because, it was claimed, he was a lobbyist, not a journalist. This move followed hard on the heels of an allegation that the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) was paying Newton $20,000 a year to lobby for tariff concessions on behalf of Japanese exporters. To resolve the JETRO matter, Reid arranged for Newton to be questioned in the presence of other journalists. Newton, on being quizzed, said that JETRO paid him $2000 a year for operating an innocuous ‘tariff information service’. He also denied that he had ever worked for BIG. Reid felt that the heat went out of this particular anti-Newton campaign from the moment McEwen headed overseas on government business.30 As 1967 drew to a close Reid’s primary task, as a Packer man, was to help ensure that McMahon survived the onslaught that followed Holt’s death. McMahon’s alleged association with BIG was considered the most vulnerable point in the Treasurer’s line of defence. There was concern that McEwen was undermining McMahon’s credibility by insisting, privately but to great effect, that his colleague was lying when he denied being a BIG supporter. McEwen’s persistence led to the Packer hierarchy deciding that the time had come to resolve the matter. Reid ‘was instructed to get proof one way or another that McMahon was or was not associated with BIG’. The pressman visited Robert and Colin Chapman, two BIG stalwarts, and was assured that McMahon had no association with their organisation. Reid would have preferred to have access to BIG’s files and records, but as the next best option he said that the Daily Telegraph would be interested in obtaining a public statement from the Chapmans in the form of a signed statutory declaration denying any association between the Treasurer and BIG.

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In response Robert Chapman issued a statement to all the media: ‘We state unequivocally that Mr McMahon has no connection with the Basic Industries Group and never has had such a connection. I am prepared to make a statutory declaration to say precisely this.’ This appeared in the press on 29 December. The intention was to get McEwen to ‘put up or shut up’.31 The briefest of New Year breaks allowed the press campaign to save McMahon to roll on without hindrance. On 4 January the Daily Telegraph featured a glowing profile of the Treasurer in which it was stated that McEwen wanted to get rid of him ‘simply because he is his most able and energetic rival’. McMahon was described as ‘a very “gutsy” man in a party with too many weaklings’.32 Reid chimed in with a by-lined article. ‘Even those who refuse to consider him for the leadership,’ he commented, ‘concede that his performance as Treasurer cannot be criticised and that his removal from that post would be against Liberal Party interests.’33 Later on in the day Reid spent over two hours chatting to the undecided Liberal MP Jeff Bate. Reid directed his comments against McEwen’s baleful influence; Bate quickly relayed them to another Liberal, Edward St John, who summarised them in a political diary that has, fortunately, survived. According to St John’s version, the burden of Reid’s advice was that ‘If McEwen would not serve under McMahon what right had he to serve with him?’34 McEwen’s definitive anti-McMahon thrust came during the weekend before the Liberal Party leadership ballot, and appeared in the Murdoch press. On 6 January The Australian carried a story which stated that McEwen had vetoed McMahon because of a supposed close association between the Treasurer and Newton, who was described as ‘an agent of foreign interests whose public work has sought constantly to undermine

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Australia’s tariff policy’. On the following day, another Murdoch publication (the Sunday Mirror) stated that ‘A spokesman for Mr McEwen today confirmed that the association (between McMahon and Newton) was the major cause of the rift between Mr McEwen and Mr McMahon.’ The Sunday Mirror story was headlined ‘Japanese trade agent linked with McMahon – reason for feud now revealed’.35 Reid was ready with a riposte on the following day. In the Daily Telegraph of 8 January he quoted his BIG contact Robert Chapman, who said that McEwen’s loyal supporter, Doug Anthony, had phoned BIG to ask it to cooperate in supporting calls for a devaluation of the Australian currency. BIG was not beyond the pale after all. Consistency, it seemed, did not characterise the anti-McMahon camp. Twenty-four hours later the Daily Telegraph featured a preballot editorial in which it backed Gorton’s bid for the leadership. Gorton, because of his impressive performance since becoming Leader in the Senate, coupled with some persuasive television appearances in which – for the first, and indeed only, time – he eloquently presented his credentials to the national viewing public, was seen as potentially the Liberals’ most effective weapon against Whitlam whenever the next election was called. The resulting buzz of excitement, which Hasluck and the other contenders (Les Bury and Bill Snedden) could not hope to match, was enough to carry the relatively unknown Gorton over the line. On 9 January 1968 he was victorious when a secret ballot of his parliamentary colleagues was held. Reid stated at the time that Gorton won easily, by 51 votes to 30. He later ascertained that the final result was more like 43 votes for Gorton and 38 for Hasluck. 36 If the size of the new Prime Minister’s victory was modest, his spirits were not adversely affected.

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Gorton reappointed McMahon as Treasurer, thus thwarting McEwen. There is no evidence that Gorton was swayed by the Packer camp when he made this decision but it was pleased nonetheless. Reid’s account of all these events in The Power Struggle was presented as a happy ending, although the happiness was sure to be fleeting and thus hardly an ending at all: ‘In 48 minutes, the Liberals had elected a new Prime Minister and contrived to avoid what quite easily could be a crisis in Liberal-Country Party relationships.’ Gorton, Reid stated, had beaten ‘not only Hasluck, Bury and Snedden, but, indirectly, McEwen and McEwen’s design to establish unchallengeably Country Party domination of the Coalition, and the Coalition’s economic and financial policies’.37 The battle had been won; the war, however, was bound to continue. As a result, Reid’s account of events, when it did come out (in January 1969), was timely and topical, the personalities and issues that animated the summer of 1967–68 having retained their importance after Gorton became Prime Minister. The new Prime Minister’s honeymoon in office did not last long. It was soon clear to Reid that ‘Gorton has still not realised that simplicity and directness of expression have to be coupled with regard for the implications flowing from his statements.’ The statements in question had to do with a possible limitation in the level of Australia’s commitment to the Vietnam War; confusion on this front was highly unwise, as the federal Coalition’s great electoral advantage over the ALP in recent years had been its unqualified policy of support for the war.38 Reid’s misgivings about Gorton became serious in May 1968, when he accompanied the Prime Minister on a visit to the United States. Once in Washington Gorton lost his bearings

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as a result of being subjected to a standard pincer attack in which lavish hospitality alternated with hardheaded negotiations. The crunch, as far as Reid was concerned, came at a press conference when he and other Australian journalists found, to their dismay, that the Prime Minister of Australia, at a time when he was discussing defence matters with senior US officials, did not seem to know what defined areas the ANZUS defence treaty applied to.39 Such misgivings were a private matter though; none of Reid’s doubts surfaced in the Daily Telegraph’s account of Gorton’s visit. Work on finalising the text of The Power Struggle continued as Canberra’s winter months dragged on. On 17 July Reid asked Hasluck to confirm whether or not he had, like McEwen, told Casey privately that he would not serve under McMahon.40 Hasluck refused to provide him with any information on the matter. This refusal was consistent with Hasluck’s low opinion of Reid and his inquisitive ways. His hostility was constant. In August Hasluck circulated a memorandum in the Department of External Affairs which stated: ‘Reports of differences between the Prime Minister and myself are … misleading.’ The intention was to deny the truth of stories appearing under the name of Reid and his colleague Peter Samuel in the Bulletin of 24 August; the stories referred to differences of opinion in Cabinet on the issue of whether or not an Australian military presence should be maintained in Malaysia and Singapore after Britain completed its military withdrawal at the end of 1971.41 Keeping tabs on Hasluck was one of the joys of Reid’s job. He suspected that the West Australian might be contemplating leaving politics and was eager to find out how this would be effected. Initially he thought that Hasluck might go to Washington as Australia’s Ambassador.42 Soon, though, he told Peter Howson

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that he thought Hasluck would remain as a minister for another 12 months.43 He then learnt that a secret decision had been made to appoint him as the next Governor-General. A Gorton intimate told Reid of the decision ‘in circumstances that prevented [him] publishing the fact’. It is not clear if this same source told Reid the real reason for Hasluck’s departure, which was not an inability to work with Gorton but instead exasperation with McMahon (‘I suffered more attempts by McMahon to oppose and nullify my ministerial work and my standing in Cabinet than I did from Gorton’).44 In a lively discussion with colleagues over who was going to succeed Casey, Reid said he knew for sure who the next Governor-General would be; the name was in a sealed envelope to be opened when the announcement was made. When opened, the envelope was found to contain the name ‘Hasluck’.45 This passion for discovering people’s secrets made other pressmen all the keener to unearth Reid’s own private designs and schemes. Once the warmer months arrived in Canberra, hot-blooded rivals in the press gallery who knew that Reid was writing a book about Gorton began to get toey. Early in October Alan Ramsey, of The Australian, said that, for Canberra insiders, ‘by far the most talked-about back-of-the-hand subject is “the book”’. Reid’s account, Ramsey observed, was ‘a matter of considerable comment in dark corners and behind closed doors’. He claimed that The Power Struggle was supposed to have been released in November 1968, but that the date when it was to come out was now uncertain given the prevalence of speculation about a possible early federal election. The ‘good word’, according to Ramsey, was that ‘what the book discloses could, and I emphasise could, harm both the Prime Minister and the Government on the eve of an election’.46

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A degree of caution certainly was evident in the Packer camp. The lesson of The Bandar-log had been well and truly taken to heart. Litigation had to be warded off at all costs. Tom Hughes, now a Liberal MP, was asked to determine if Reid’s book contained anything of an actionable nature. He was the first person to read the text after it was typed up.47 The publisher to whom it was sent – Shakespeare Head Press – was an in-house organisation, so there would be no scope for a nonPacker publisher to throw a spanner in the works. There was still room, however, for the Packer camp’s own political agenda to complicate matters. As Ramsey had indicated, Reid’s account, since it focused on infighting among senior Liberal and Country Party ministers, might be seen, from a nonLabor point of view, to reveal far too much dirty linen and thus to complicate things for Gorton if he did decide to call an election a year ahead of schedule. In the event an early election was not called and publication of Reid’s book went ahead early in the new year. It was released to the book-buying public on 9 January 1969, a year to the day after Gorton’s party room triumph and in the middle of the book-reading season. An embargo on commenting on the book’s contents was meant to apply until the day it was released, but insiders already knew what it contained. McMahon, who saw an advance copy, characteristically dithered. He considered Reid’s account ‘rather sketchy and journalistic’, and yet could not stop talking about it.48 The Australian flouted the embargo by publishing an article on 8 January that focused on the references in Reid’s book to a mysterious letter written by Governor-General Casey to Holt after Casey had a tense chat on political matters with McMahon shortly before Holt’s death.49 Over the next few days

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the newspapers of Australia carried welcome publicity. Laurie Oakes, the young chief of its Canberra bureau, told readers of the Melbourne Sun that a copy of Reid’s book had been specially airmailed to Gorton, who was attending a Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London. The Power Struggle showed McEwen plotting against McMahon on the very night of Holt’s disappearance; this revelation, Oakes observed, had set off ‘angry mutterings’ among McMahon’s supporters. McEwen likewise was reported to be furious; he apparently believed that the book’s portrayal of him as a Machiavellian schemer could be attributed to the Treasurer’s malign influence. Reid, Oakes felt, had uncovered secrets that the Coalition would have preferred not to have been made public, especially given that 1969 was going to be an election year. 50 Elsewhere the praise was equally warm. Jonathan Gaul wrote in the Canberra Times that ‘Mr Reid has winkled out more than enough facts to constitute a clean scoop of his colleagues.’51 The Sydney Morning Herald’s reviewer, Evan Williams, said that Reid’s book was ‘tough, racy, and very readable’. 52 Writing for the Hobart Mercury, Frank Chamberlain described it as ‘required reading for any alert elector or serious student of Australian current affairs’. 53 Even the Communist Party loved the book; in a page one story Tribune hailed it as ‘a damning exposure of the political superstructure of capitalist Australia today’. 54 Publication of The Power Struggle meant that for the moment Reid was by far the most widely known member of the Canberra press corps. This was a very pleasant feeling.

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Jolly John ublication of The Power Struggle highlighted Reid’s status as one of the nation’s leading practitioners of Gorton watching at a time when this activity was a growth industry. As 1968 progressed it became clear that life under the new Prime Minister was likely to remain interesting. Gorton was prepared to flirt with heresy even if it meant arousing an array of Liberal Party fears and phobias. Nothing was sacred any more. An indication of John Gorton’s iconoclasm was his willingness to question the wisdom of sticking to an anti-Communist defence policy which involved despatching Australian troops to fight in Asia. Such questioning was at odds with the Cold War mentality that had served the Coalition so well in recent elections. Change was evident on the domestic policy front as well. Gorton was willing to engage in interventionist and highly personal policy making in areas such as financial relations with the states, foreign investment, petrol pricing and Australian involvement in overseas shipping. In doing so he cheerfully ignored textbook notions of what constituted correct behaviour in a British-style system of government based on Cabinet responsibility. Furthermore, the Prime Minister considered that he was not precluded from a normal social life in what he saw as his off-duty hours. In certain quarters such an attitude was considered unconventional. There was a growing sense of uncertainty in the ranks. In the same week that The Power Struggle came out Reid had

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a piece in the Bulletin assessing Gorton’s fortunes after a year in office. It was clear, readers were informed, that the honeymoon was over. The nation, Reid pointed out, had a highly individualistic Prime Minister and was disconcerted by the experience. Gorton’s ‘freewheeling approach’ to being Prime Minister had ‘shocked and startled’ powerful public servants and was a source of conflict with the state premiers. His attempt to chart diplomatic and defence policies which were suitable to ‘a more complex and difficult situation’ had put the DLP offside. Divisions within the Country Party over tariff protection added to the fragility of the Coalition. The Opposition, however, seemed unable to capitalise on the situation. The Labor Party, distracted by tension between Gough Whitlam and the leftwing followers of Jim Cairns, was the least of Gorton’s worries.1 ‘Gorton’s approach,’ Reid had earlier remarked in another Bulletin piece, ‘seems to be Presidential rather than Prime Ministerial.’2 He had, it was clear, little concept of shared Cabinet responsibility and showed scant respect for the collective wisdom of his senior colleagues. The cast of characters that Reid had to deal with was changing. Liberal ministers who had been prominent in the preGorton period seemed to be on the way out. Bill McMahon, however, seemed determined to be an exception. He wanted very much to continue as Treasurer, and he could rely on the support of the Packer organisation in this. The Packer line was that Gorton was singling McMahon out as a scapegoat. He had to be protected. Reid, as Sir Frank’s accredited agent in Canberra, was diligent in exercising this duty of care. He soon became aware of ‘an underground propaganda war’ in which vicious rumours were being circulated in a bid to unnerve McMahon and force him out of politics. Eventually Reid was instructed to

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quiz McMahon about a persistent rumour to the effect that the Treasurer was about to be named in a divorce case. The pressman sought a denial from McMahon which, happily for the Packer organisation, was forthcoming.3 Reid had a natural sympathy for the broad objectives that Gorton was intent on pursuing. As befitted an old-style Laborite, Reid favoured an activist federal government that refused to be a lapdog in foreign and defence policy and that was interventionist in relation to overseas investment and oil prices. There also was, he considered, nothing wrong with putting recalcitrant state premiers in their place. Gorton seemed to have similar priorities, and yet, as the Prime Minister later complained, Reid ‘was constantly having a shot at him’. Reid seemed to prefer to focus on the downside of Gorton’s wilful determination to get results. He confessed in the Bulletin that he had no idea who Gorton was turning to for advice.4 In an encounter with Gorton he explained himself thus: ‘I said that I was not opposed to his policies, but was opposed to the way he went about seeking to implement them.’ It was Reid’s judgement that because of his wilfulness, Gorton ‘was building up antagonisms which would retard for years advances which he was seeking to bring about’. 5 He was, Reid considered, letting down the noble cause of Australian patriotism because of his short-sighted bull-at-a-gate approach as Prime Minister. Reid’s doubts about Gorton’s prime ministerial style were shared, though expressed more heartily and openly, by a growing number of his colleagues in the parliamentary press gallery, a place where, in these unsettling Vietnam War years, youth, smartness and irreverence were increasingly the order of the day. A generational change was underway. Journalists who could, like Reid, fondly remember the glory days of Curtin and

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Chifley were increasingly few and far between. Early in 1969 it was announced that the press gallery’s longest serving member, the Melbourne Herald’s Harold Cox, who had first come to Canberra in 1933, was about to retire. With his departure Reid became the doyen of the parliamentary press corps.6 Within a year or so his Methuselah-like status increased when another legend, Ian Fitchett, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Falstaffian political correspondent, ceased to cover day-to-day news stories.7 Until quite recently the gallery had been dominated by grizzled veterans who had close connections with the politicians they wrote about, as exemplified by Reid’s association with McMahon. This cosy situation was now over. In the late 1960s, attracted by the buzz created by Whitlam’s charisma and Gorton’s antics, much younger and less respectful journalists began to make their presence felt in Canberra.8 Mungo MacCallum, Laurie Oakes and Alan Ramsey were prominent among the new breed, as were Reid’s Packer colleague Peter Samuel, Allan Barnes (the Age), Eric Walsh (Daily Mirror) and the Australian Financial Review’s Max Walsh (a nephew of Snowy Walsh, Reid’s youthful Labor hero). Though the copy boy route was still open, university graduates with attitude suddenly became commonplace in the Canberra press gallery. Reid did not feel threatened by this influx of brash neophytes. He was not unwelcoming; indeed the opposite was the case. He did not believe that young journalists should be thrown in at the deep end. Years later Oakes wrote that Reid was ‘generous with advice to the other journalists, especially those new to the Press gallery’.9 Ramsey, though, was less impressed. ‘Reidy,’ he soon concluded, ‘for all his ability and reputation, was owned, body and soul, by Frank Packer. He was the faithful family retainer.’10

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The reputation, however, was a mighty asset. Ramsey’s fellow pressman Graham Freudenberg, Whitlam’s speechwriter, also saw Reid as a ‘Packer agent’, but nonetheless acknowledged the powerful aura Reid enjoyed because of his association with the heroic wartime years of the 1940s.11 There was no need to be ungenerous and territorial now, though, because good stories were plentiful in the Gorton era. It was exciting to be a journalist during Gorton’s prime ministership. The nation’s newspapers and TV news and current affairs programs highlighted stuff-ups and crises on a regular basis. No one knew what was going to happen next. The Prime Minister’s non-hermetic social life added to the excitement. The power of gossip, once unleashed, could not be stopped. The doubts crystallised when the so-called Willesee affair erupted. At the start of 1969, Geraldine Willesee, aged 19, was the sole accredited female member of the federal parliamentary press corps. Reid had known her father (Senator Don Willesee) for many years and was ready to take on an in loco parentis role. This seems to have suited Geraldine Willesee, who did consult him on professional matters. The 1968 annual press gallery dinner, which took place on 1 November, was an instance where Reid was ready to act as her guardian. A few days before the dinner, Willesee came to Reid’s office and asked him if she should go. Her brother Michael, then working for the ABC, would not be there and she might be embarrassed because she would be the only female there. Reid’s advice was that she, along with every other young journalist, should go: the dinner’s guest speakers – in the past, these had included Billy Hughes and Robert Menzies – usually gave ‘fascinating revelatory glimpses’ of the human side of life at the top. There had been lone females at past functions and their presence,

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Reid recalled, had not caused problems. He had to confess that colourful incidents, fuelled by liquor, had occurred, but he would be there to ‘keep an eye on her’; he would be leaving early and could drive her home. Reid did not feel well on the day of the dinner but he attended because Gorton was guest speaker and important things were happening. The United States had just announced that it was ending the bombing of North Vietnam as of 11 o’clock on the night of the press club do. Because this announcement had come without any advance warning, it annoyed Gorton. It was not going to be a happy night. Reid judged Gorton’s address to the journalists to be ‘pedestrian’ and, on concluding that the night seemed headed for a respectable, if latish, ending, decided to head off. Geraldine Willesee seemed to be enjoying herself so he suggested that she should stay and get a lift home from someone else. A number of fellow journalists assured them that they would see to it that she got a lift home. He then left.12 When he awoke next day Reid discovered that the previous night had not ended so sedately after all. Canberra was abuzz with the news, which did not appear in the press, that Gorton, along with an uninvited female companion – who was indeed Geraldine Willesee – had paid a midnight visit to the US Embassy in the hope of finding out the latest Indochinese developments. Rumour had it that Gorton, in a foul temper, had banged on the Embassy door demanding admittance. There was no agreement on when Gorton and Willesee had left the press gallery function or on how long Gorton’s visit to the US Embassy lasted, but on 28 November his press secretary, Tony Eggleton, told pressmen (including Reid) that Gorton and Willesee had left the Embassy at 3.00am. Australian

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United Press, Willesee’s employer, terminated her employment because of the incident.13 The stir among insiders caused by the nocturnal visit to the US Embassy refused to die down. At the fag end of that summer’s journalistic silly season it was given renewed life when it inspired an article in Things I Hear, a newsletter published by the unregenerate Frank Browne. The 31 January 1969 issue of Things I Hear dealt with various Gorton-related matters, including references to an alleged incident at a Sydney nightclub and an end-of-term Canberra escapade featuring the daughter of a Senator. Browne claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency had a dirt file on Gorton. It had compiled a dossier that ‘could inhibit his right to speak with an independent Australian voice’. Information in the dossier dated back to 1947, it was claimed, and according to Things I Hear, ‘A good deal of it on legal advice was excised from journalist Alan Reid’s recent book.’ The alleged incident at a nightclub turned out to be a harmless meeting with Liza Minnelli. Gorton’s escorting of Geraldine Willesee to the late-night meeting at the US Embassy was equally innocent in substance. Willesee was at no time propositioned.14 A Prime Minister, however, had to be above suspicion, and Gorton failed this test. The notion that he was louche as well as headstrong solidified. Liberal Members of Parliament were worried when they returned to Canberra in the autumn. One of the more concerned Liberals was the Member for Warringah, Edward St John, a high-minded individual whose attitude to Gorton over the previous year, as recorded in his political diary, had slid from euphoria to disillusion. By February 1969 St John felt that Gorton was ‘not merely inadequate, but dangerous’ and set himself the goal of dislodging him as

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leader by the end of the year: I shall confine this attack to the tendency towards one man rule, Presidential government, cronyism, ‘spoils to the victor’, etc. But I believe his indiscretions will bring their own nemesis, too, and will work in parallel in bringing him down.15

Over the summer break St John compiled his own dossier of relevant material from various sources (Frank Browne, Max Newton, Francis James in The Anglican, a Max Walsh article) as he attempted to understand the Gorton phenomenon.16 Although there was never any chance of St John’s ignoring The Power Struggle, the mischievous McMahon made a point of asking him to read it. When he did, he was very much the wiser. He felt that the book would do Gorton’s cause no good at all, even though the author, he felt, seemed kindly disposed to his subject. St John was certain that people would come to ‘resent the feeling that they [had] been manipulated, particularly that they [had] been manipulated by people they regard as secondrate, or whom they positively dislike – [Dudley] Erwin, Ainsley Gotto, Malcolm Scott’.17 On 28 February Reid stopped in the corridor at Parliament House to speak with St John. The conversation turned to Gorton’s encounter with Liza Minnelli. Reid’s verdict was that ‘nothing could have happened, as there were other people there’. St John later recorded in his diary that this was the first time in 12 months that he had discussed anything with Reid. The two men were not close. St John did not like it when Reid informed him of his view that he, St John, was ‘an amateur in political tactics’.18 The Member for Warringah was much closer to Reid’s Packer colleague Peter Samuel (whom he regarded

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as ‘most helpful’19). Already he and Samuel had discussed an anti-Gorton campaign strategy. Cultivating journalists and editors and publicising alternative policies, it was agreed, were vital.20 On 6 March St John approached Reid in the newspaper reading section of the Parliamentary Library and told him that a number of backbenchers were ‘seriously disturbed’ by Browne’s January issue of Things I Hear. St John did not like Gorton doing things that led to notoriety, and informed Reid that he had told Gorton face to face that he had behaved badly in the Willesee incident. The Opposition, St John added, was weak, so there was no pressure for Gorton to change his slapdash and irresponsible ways. The situation regarding Gorton, however, could not go on indefinitely. ‘Somebody else sooner or later would “turn a bucket”’ on the Prime Minister, St John said. Reid regarded the Willesee incident as too insubstantial a matter to attract the attention of someone who was ‘really going after’ Gorton. As a result, he thought St John was just having a ‘good oldfashioned bellyache, nothing more’; he expected nothing to come of the conversation.21 St John too did not consider their conversation to have been terribly significant. In his diary he accounted 6 March as ‘A day in which I achieved little.’22 St John was not the only Liberal diarist scribbling away in Parliament House at this time. There also was Peter Howson, whom Gorton had not reappointed as a minister in February 1968 and who thereafter recorded every significant anti-Gorton thought and conversation in his private journal. There was no shortage of references to Reid in its pages either. The entry for 18 March 1969 shows that on that day the two men discussed the latest Gallup Poll, which indicated,

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‘rather surprisingly’, an improvement in Gorton’s popularity. Reid seemed to think that Gorton would easily win the next election, mostly because of the shortcomings of the ALP; since 1968 the Opposition had been racked by renewed bouts of factionalism centred on the activities of Tasmanian right-winger Brian Harradine. Reid gave Gorton some credit, however. He felt that Gorton had managed to trim his policies to the desires of the electorate in such matters as keeping a defence presence in Malaysia, continued foreign investment and more harmonious Commonwealth-State relations. However, he doubted how long Gorton’s luck would last. In his view, a re-elected Gorton would ‘get rid of more enemies, promote more friends, and revert to his former views’. On that same day Reid told Howson that he thought Gorton’s health would fail before 1972 because the strain of office was starting to tell. Perhaps thought should be given to finding a successor. Reid was ‘particularly anxious’ to find out if Howson thought Defence Minister Allen Fairhall would be available as a possible successor or whether instead Fairhall was likely to leave politics. Howson having replied that the former option was the more likely, Reid counselled patience.23 That was a productive day for Reid. In addition to chatting with Howson he also approached St John and asked for an extra copy of the speech that he had delivered a few days earlier at a seminar conducted by the Defend Australia Committee. In the course of chatting Reid commented that ‘I think a lot of news will develop out of this.’ Defence was a key issue in mobilising anti-Gorton sentiment and because of his interest in national security matters, St John was keeping interesting company, specifically Bob Santamaria, who had also been a speaker at the Defend Australia Committee’s seminar.24 St John was well

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aware that Santamaria was strongly of the view that Gorton had to go because his position on defence strategy was simply not hawkish enough and that it would be hard to find a suitable alternative. Twenty-four hours after Reid chatted with Howson and St John the political world was thrown into a spin when the Willesee affair was finally mentioned in a public forum. At 10.45pm on 19 March, Labor MP Bert James raised the Things I Hear article in the adjournment debate. James’ speech caused a sensation that took on a life of its own, even though the matters he raised could justly be characterised as malicious gossip. In the following night’s adjournment debate St John referred to Gorton’s visit to the US Embassy and stated that the Prime Minister’s behaviour raised grave doubts as to his suitability for high office. During the round of press conferences immediately following St John’s comments, Reid subjected the MP to a fair deal of questioning. He also privately told St John that he had committed a serious tactical blunder in not calling for a secret ballot to test the true state of sentiment at a meeting of Liberal MPs which was called to demonstrate support for Gorton after St John’s adjournment speech.25 The controversy generated by St John ensured that the media coverage Gorton attracted was henceforth much more searching. Reid’s professional opinion was that the political climate changed as a result of this fracas. There were, he was recorded by Howson as saying in a private conversation, ‘a number of people getting more worried about the leadership, particularly in [the Liberal] party’. A change at the top might be imminent after all.26 A few days later Howson recorded Reid as having said that there was ‘a greater amount of tension in Parliament House this week than he’[d] ever known’.27

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Reid may have regarded St John as an amateur, but he had definitely shaken things up, so Reid needed to stay in touch with him. On 10 April he phoned the MP and the two men talked about the situation generally. While Reid acknowledged that the Packer hierarchy was not inclined to support an antiGorton campaign (‘You are not very popular with our people,’ he noted), he was prepared to offer friendly advice on a range of matters, including whether or not St John had made too big a thing of the Willesee affair and whether or not he should became an Independent (the two men agreed that it would be wrong to rush a decision on that). When the conversation turned to the future of Defence Minister Fairhall, Reid suggested that while Fairhall would be reluctant, he might be ready to consider becoming leader. Now that Hasluck was gone, and with McMahon still subject to the leadership ban from McEwen, the Defence Minister had ‘a toe in the water’. Reid said that he was concerned about Gorton’s fondness for the idea of Fortress Australia in the context of the next election: ‘If Gorton wins, and I believe he will because of the state the Labor Party is in, he may take that as a mandate to go back to his own ideas. I think this is what is worrying Fairhall.’ Reid also reiterated something he had said to Queensland Liberal Kevin Cairns, whom until now he had regarded as a far better schemer than St John: ‘Perhaps the amateur will do better than the Pros could have done. It may be that things are working out better the way St John has done it than if he had done it the way we would have done it.’ The Member for Warringah, by forsaking backroom manipulation in favour of a public campaign against Gorton, may not have been such an innocent after all.28 Such talk made St John feel better. Though the US Embassy affair damaged Gorton, for a

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while Whitlam could get no traction on it because of the perception of disunity caused by his fraught relationship with leftwing critics in the ALP who recoiled from his modernising ways. The stalemate eventually eased once the divisive Harradine was forced out of the party. A federal election was fixed for October and in the lead-up to it the pressure on Gorton began to tell. Reid was dumbfounded when External Affairs Minister Gordon Freeth gave a speech in which he seemed to imply that the federal government might be prepared to adopt a more relaxed attitude to the presence of Soviet naval vessels in the Indian Ocean. A fair few Liberals, as well as the DLP, were alarmed at this ‘radical departure from previous policy’. Reid’s understanding was that Gorton, as usual, had given Freeth the go-ahead to speak on Soviet-Australian relations without having the matter first considered by Cabinet.29 Freeth’s inexplicable readiness to throw away anti-Soviet fears that had served the party so well in the past came hard on the heels of Labor’s 1969 federal conference – which, Reid reported, ‘was the best Conference that it has had for years’. Unruffled sophistication, embodied by SA delegate Don Dunstan, was the order of the day. The dominance of the ageing and uncharismatic machine men led by Joe Chamberlain, ‘though not finished’, was fading. Of the 46 delegates, 25 were parliamentarians and younger machine men, such as the media-friendly new federal secretary, Mick Young. The 1969 conference featured discussion rather than manipulation; the main decisions were made not in smoke-filled rooms but publicly, on the floor of the conference. Tension between Whitlam and his Labor critics – as exemplified by differences over state aid, foreign policy and the role of left-wing Senate leader Lionel Murphy – was still evident, but overall, Reid readily

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agreed, ‘the Conference did much to restore Labor’s image as a credible Opposition’.30 By September, keen Gorton observers such as McMahon and Howson were carefully tracking his approval rating in the Gallup Polls and were pointing out to colleagues that it was declining faster than the rating of the government as a whole. Gorton’s larrikinism had caught up with him at last. On 9 September Howson summarised in his diary a conversation with Reid in which he had talked about ‘a strong reaction’ against Gorton. Reid was prepared to name possible replacements. He suggested that the Liberals should ‘think about David Fairbairn and possibly even Gordon Freeth as a successor’.31 However, Freeth had caused the government grief with his statement on Soviet-Australian relations, and Fairbairn, the Minister for National Development, had no public profile at all. Neither man was an obvious candidate for higher things. Reid, in truth, was really scratching to come up with a likely anti-Gorton standard bearer. McEwen’s ban on McMahon was still in place and Fairhall, whom Reid had mentioned as a possible challenger back in March, had announced his retirement. The list of possible starters in a leadership challenge was, for the moment, embarrassingly short. At this stage Reid was not acting on the say-so of the Packer organisation. The Packer camp did not have much enthusiasm for Gorton but he was still preferable to the ALP. 32 In May Peter Samuel came close to being dismissed from the Bulletin because his support for St John’s anti-Gorton crusade was becoming too overt. Prudence, as Reid counselled him at the time, was imperative.33 Caution was the best policy, but Reid himself sometimes had to be reminded of this: early in July Samuel told St John that Reid had written ‘a blistering attack’

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on Gorton’s conduct at a defence conference but that Sir Frank Packer had spiked the story because it would have embarrassed the government.34 Anyone belonging to the Packer camp and peddling an anti-Gorton line needed to be discreet; the task was best pursued in private and by means of the odd Delphic aside. On 9 September Reid had a quick corridor chat in Parliament House with St John. ‘He said,’ St John noted, ‘a rotten apple at the top infected the pile worse than a rotten apple at the bottom.’35 A few days later Reid told Howson that a number of backbenchers were distancing themselves from Gorton’s leadership. Subtle positioning for a change at the top was underway. Howson was prepared to rate Fairbairn, a Cambridge man and a fellow former wartime airman, as a challenger. After talking with Reid, Howson had a chat with Fairbairn, in the course of which he indicated that ‘we might possibly renew the friendship we had some years ago in view of possible events after the election’.36 As the 1969 election drew near, Gorton still believed that the Packer organisation would back him through thick and thin. Apparently he boasted of telling Sir Frank Packer ‘where to get off’ after someone from the organisation, presumably Reid, urged him to accept the wisdom of Sir Frank’s views on how best to regulate the selling of Australian wool. Peter Samuel believed that the outburst was clear evidence that Gorton considered Sir Frank Packer so anti-Labor that his support could be taken for granted. 37 Such complacency was not groundless: in the lead-up to the election, in the Bulletin, Reid noted an attempt by External Affairs Minister Freeth in a Channel Nine interview to clear up confusion about the Gorton government’s attitude to the role of the USSR in the

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Indian Ocean.38 It was vital, for the government’s election campaign, to do this. At the start of the campaign Reid was prepared to do the right thing by Gorton. The Daily Telegraph attempted to lessen the impact of Whitlam’s policy speech by featuring a story by Reid, who claimed that an internal AWU election indicated that Whitlam’s power base in the ALP was under threat. 39 On 5 October a Reid article in the Bulletin contained the suggestion that a post-election leadership challenge was far more likely in the still faction-racked ALP, whose prospects of victory appeared bleak, than in the Liberal Party, as Gorton would coast to victory.40 But things soon became less clear cut. Whitlam ran a highly professional campaign, and it certainly helped soften the electorate’s painful memory of the long Labor record of ‘discord, infighting, disagreement, and disunity’, which Reid was wont to dwell on.41 Gorton’s campaign, in contrast, was thrown off course at the very beginning by a funereal TV policy launch. Reid was ready to be dispassionate. For the first time in years he did not advise or otherwise influence a Liberal Prime Minister on election tactics. On 19 October Samuel noted that Reid had described Gorton’s campaign as very badly handled, although Reid seemed to think that the Coalition would get back with a comfortable, but reduced, majority; in contrast, the professional psephologists Malcolm Mackerras and David Butler reportedly were of the view that Labor might win.42 Polling day came six days later. Gorton was re-elected – as Reid had said he would be – but Whitlam cut the Coalition’s Lower House majority from 39 to 7. The election result destabilised the Liberal leadership. Gorton’s post-election statements indicated that he did not intend to change his ways. Reid speedily dropped his immediate

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pre-election campaign view about the fairly smooth sailing of the Liberal Party. The exact opposite was turning out to be the case. Reid was soon caught up in a move to secure Gorton’s overthrow in a party room putsch. On 28 October, even before the final result of the election had been determined, he wrote in the Daily Telegraph that the Liberal Party’s Queensland executive, in which the McMahon confidant Eric Robinson was prominent, planned to discuss the reasons for the decline in Liberal support at the election. Reid’s interpretation of this was that ‘announcing an election post-mortem could in itself produce movement within the Liberal Party’.43 On the following day he reported that the ‘Country Party organisation has told Mr McEwen that, in its view, the personality of Mr Gorton was a major factor in the Liberal-CP’s electoral reverse.’ AntiGorton sentiment, he said, was spreading to rural voters.44 As pressure mounted, the Gorton camp created a dossier of material relating to the looming challenge, of which Reid’s articles formed a large component. The dossier soon contained a note from Ainsley Gotto which recorded the reaction of Ralph Hunt, the federal chairman of the Country Party, to Reid’s thoughts on rural anti-Gorton sentiment. Reid’s views on this matter, Hunt averred, were ‘a misrepresentation, a distortion and a complete untruth’. Hunt, she continued, had had a conversation with Reid, who had insisted that his remarks were not anti-Gorton. As Hunt recalled it, their chat went something like this: Reid: Why do you think you lost [sic] the election? Hunt: Is this to be a conversation among friends or to be published? Reid: It is a conversation for backgrounding purposes only.

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Hunt: I think one of the problems was that we did not get our policies across clearly enough and that we did not get the Prime Minister’s personality through as well as he deserved and we should have.45

Reid felt free to push an anti-Gorton line in the Bulletin. Apart from their Vietnam policy, he wrote in an post-election article, there was little sign that Liberal Party policies were unpopular; what the election campaign did was highlight ‘an uneasiness about John Gorton, his administrative methods, and his seemingly free-wheeling approach to the problems of the country’.46 The time had come for a leadership challenge, but for a few days there was an embarrassing silence as no challenger appeared. Quite a few of the people involved in the January 1968 leadership ballot that produced Gorton, and/or in the leadership speculation of early 1969, were gone. Hasluck was out of the fray, Fairhall had retired, and McEwen had not lifted his ban on McMahon. Packer remained determined to defend McMahon and advance his career,47 but the Treasurer was not willing to stand lest he again incur McEwen’s wrath. In these circumstances Howson recalled his pre-election chat with Reid and decided to contact Fairbairn, whom he saw as the only possible alternative to McMahon.48 On 30 October the anti-Gorton MP Kevin Cairns suggested to a ‘depressed’ Howson that he should talk to Reid. Howson did so and was told not to be downhearted – ‘things might move late this afternoon’.49 There was further contact early next morning. 50 On 1 November Sir Frank’s son Clyde rang Howson to tell him how much pressure the Packer organisation was privately putting on McMahon. An excited Howson spoke to Reid about the possibility of repeating Gorton’s successful

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tactics in January 1968 by getting Fairbairn onto the TV. 51 A day later Fairbairn decided to challenge Gorton and McEwen lifted his veto on McMahon, which lured the Treasurer into the race. To increase their chances, the anti-Gorton candidates agreed to exchange preferences. To improve them still further, the Daily Telegraph featured an article by Reid which noted that McEwen had joined McMahon in backing Fairbairn’s negative view of Gorton’s leadership. 52 Writing in the Bulletin a few days before the ballot Reid claimed that the Liberal government in Canberra had to have ‘a new face at the top’ if it wished to avoid annihilation. 53 Gorton only just managed to withstand the onslaught. He defeated Fairbairn and McMahon in a ballot on 7 November; it is estimated that he had an absolute majority of from 1 to 5 votes. 54 In the wake of the ballot he solidified his place in the bad books of the Packer organisation by shifting McMahon from Treasury to External Affairs. 55 At a post-victory news conference Gorton put ‘Mr Reid’ in his place after the pressman asked about a reported demand by McEwen for a reassurance that no major future political decisions would be made until after a Cabinet discussion of the issue concerned. Gorton’s reply was that the two men had not had a discussion in those terms and that only one decision (to do with the ownership of the MLC insurance company) had ever been made without a Cabinet discussion. 56 A few days later Reid had a post-mortem chat with Howson. Reid’s opinion, as recorded by the Member for Casey, was that McMahon, having displayed a distinct lack of courage in the lead-up to the challenge, had done his dash, whereas the gallant Fairbairn, provided he maintained a public profile, was sure to see his stocks rise. The press, Reid assured Howson, was

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going to watch Gorton closely, and was prepared to be critical if he made mistakes. As a result of their recent experience, Gorton’s opponents would be in a much better position to consider mounting another challenge when the press did zero in on a mistake. Reid, it was clear, could hardly wait. 57 Further trauma was evident when the Liberal Party’s federal executive met for the first time after the 1969 election, on 20 November. A number of speakers claimed that the press had ‘ganged up’ on Gorton. Reid was identified as the worst culprit. A member of Federal Parliament (suspicion fell on Kevin Cairns) was said to have given him an account of proceedings at two Queensland Liberal Party meetings at which criticism of Gorton was voiced. 58 Reid was unmoved. In an article in the Daily Telegraph he suggested that there would continue to be unflattering press coverage until Gorton showed that he ‘intended to take a different approach to the problems of Government’. 59 The scope for Reid to air his anti-Gorton views was not unlimited, however. He did not operate in a vacuum. His dismissive treatment of Gorton’s conduct of the 1969 election campaign disturbed Packer. It was unheard of in recent times for any Packer journalist to treat a Liberal Prime Minister so disrespectfully in public. Eventually Sir Frank let it be known that he did not want Reid to be allowed to run any more ‘vitriolic’ articles on Gorton. An ‘interdiction’ to this effect was applied. Sir Frank’s intentions were clear. There was going to be no ‘Packer plot’ against Gorton.60 Sustained anti-Gorton agitation had to be eschewed because it threatened to divert attention from the Labor Party, which was the real enemy. But Reid was incorrigible. It was possible to gnaw away at Gorton’s position in Packer publications without being vitriolic.

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On 25 November he reported on a lively meeting of the parliamentary Liberal Party at which, he said, Gorton was criticised for a string of ‘unilateral actions’ in areas such as Bass Strait oil negotiations and the Freeth defence statement.61 Two days later he dwelt on the ‘bad setback’ that the Gorton camp had suffered when Fairbairn was elected as chairman of the government parties’ foreign affairs committee.62 Howson, who helped to arrange this Fairbairn victory, relished the favourable publicity.63 As 1969 drew to a close the manoeuvring continued. On 17 December Reid said that he would do his best after Howson contacted him to ‘emphasise the necessity for David Fairbairn to get some good publicity in the Melbourne press early in the new year; apparently he’s been doing well in Sydney’.64 The same Machiavellian spirit was evident in Reid’s more bookish activities as well. He was eager for The Power Struggle not to be a one-hit wonder and hoped to have a new book out in March 1970 ‘dealing with the events under the Gorton leadership, also particularly analysing the [1969] election’. Reid was confident that anything he wrote would have an effect on the Liberal Party leadership question.65 He was ready to press on with his accustomed methods. There were sources to contact; there was intelligence to chew over. Just before Christmas Dudley Erwin, whom Gorton had dropped from his ministry, told McMahon that he had given Reid a good deal of information for ‘the new book that he’s soon to publish’.66 It was looking as if 1970 would be a bumper year for plots and conspiracies.

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In cold blood he Red Fox’s determined pursuit of John Gorton meant that he had less time for hunting down other, more exotic, quarry. One likely subject who received less attention from Reid than perhaps he deserved was the expatriate Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett. In a strange way Burchett mirrored Reid, both men being journalists who participated in and reported stories. After World War II, Burchett roamed the world covering conflict and confrontation in Korea and Vietnam from a dogged leftwing perspective. In 1955 he lost his passport and was not given a new one because of his loving association with Australia’s Cold War adversaries. Thereafter he made several attempts, all of them unsuccessful, to get his passport back. In the process he became a cause célèbre. Reid’s most direct connection with Burchett might well have come straight out of a Graham Greene novel. In 1967 the pressman accompanied Prime Minister Harold Holt on a visit to various Asian leaders, including Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Burchett, by chance, was also in Cambodia, and took the opportunity to meet with one of Holt’s entourage because he was again trying – and failing – to secure an Australian passport. Reid was told at the time about what happened at the Cambodian meeting and referred to it in a later Bulletin article after the saga of Burchett’s bid for a passport dragged on into the Gorton era. His gloss on Burchett’s quasi-diplomatic quest was that in asking for a passport Burchett was really trying to

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wangle a guarantee of immunity from the Australian government against possible legal action should he ever return home.1 Burchett, writing from Paris, repudiated this suggestion.2 Reid continued to brand his fellow pressman a ‘Communist publicist’ even as he recognised that Burchett’s endless odyssey was a great story.3 In February 1970 the tale took a new turn. Burchett made yet another effort to gain entry to Australia and got as far as Noumea in New Caledonia, where he was stranded because no airline would take him without a passport. A number of Australian journalists were sent to cover the story. Eventually Reid turned up as well, although his involvement turned out to be rather baffling, and perhaps even accidental. Soon after arriving on a stopover from what appears to have been a Pacific holiday – he did take such holidays at this time – Reid happened to see Burchett and two other Australian journalists sitting outside the salubrious Chateau Royale hotel drinking a late-afternoon beer. Reid, not having seen an Australian newspaper for some days, walked up to Burchett and said: ‘Excuse me, aren’t you Wilfred Burchett? What are you doing here?’ Reid was thoroughly bemused by the contrast between the balding bespectacled Burchett and the bikini-clad young women and water skiers populating the nearby beach. Social relations were soon established despite the public demonisation of Burchett, and after a friendly chat Reid agreed to hand deliver one of Burchett’s stories when he returned to Australia.4 Burchett eventually flew to Australia with a ‘laissez passer’ document, and accompanied by Melbourne lawyer Frank Galbally, in a private aircraft. He spoke at the National Press Club in Canberra on 2 March 1970, by which time Reid was back in harness, ready to concentrate on the autumn sittings of

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the Commonwealth Parliament – and his prey, Gorton. The book about Gorton that Reid was working on at the end of 1969 failed to appear early in 1970, when he had hoped to publish it. The delay could not be avoided. Reid wrote the book in his own time, mainly in the small hours of the morning (Joan Reid later typed up what he had written). Often he finished his lonely midnight toil only to discover later in the day, after a few hours’ sleep, that developments in the unstable Gorton universe had complicated his task: ‘Every time it was nearly ready to come out,’ a fellow journalist later commented (anonymously) on Reid’s book, ‘there would be a leadership crisis or a no confidence motion or another election, or something. It will be a book which keeps trying to end but never quite makes it.’5 Sir Frank Packer’s ban on publishing overly adverse assessments of Gorton remained, but Reid was unfazed. Aware that his status brought a degree of immunity, he not so discreetly flouted the ban – not by what he wrote for public consumption, but in his capacity as someone who would, if asked, willingly provide confidential tactical advice derived from his long experience of seeing politics close up. Conversation with his sources easily shifted from talk about what was happening to talk about how best to make things happen. Not a passive observer at the best of times, Reid had a stronger incentive than ever to enliven and speed up instability in Canberra: he had become – and wanted to remain – a commercially successful writer of contemporary political history. So there was no let-up in Reid’s anti-Gorton activities. At the start of 1970 he was having ‘continual talks’ with David Fairbairn.6 Later on in the summer he chatted with Peter Howson about Gorton’s undiplomatic dealings with the state Premiers;

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this was, they agreed, an issue on which Gorton could be attacked.7 On 9 March Reid and Howson had a long talk about the prospect of Fairbairn eventually having another crack at the leadership.8 But other names were soon being bandied about. Howson began to feel that Bill McMahon had ‘as great a chance as anyone’, particularly after Reid told him that John McEwen and McMahon, despite their past differences, were getting ‘closer together’ because of their shared hostility to what they saw as Gorton’s fiscal recklessness.9 Despite these shifting alignments, Reid was still ready to do all he could to keep Fairbairn’s anti-Gorton agitation alive. Later oral history testimony indicates that around this time he regularly got Peter Samuel, his Packer colleague, to write speeches for Fairbairn.10 On 14 April Howson dined with the Reids. Fairbairn was there as well, and the discussion turned to the question of whether or not it would be possible to turn the issue of the control of Australia’s offshore minerals into a ‘real crisis’.11 Some weeks earlier federal Cabinet had unilaterally decided to proceed with legislation to assert Commonwealth sovereignty over mineral resources from the low-water mark to the edge of the continental shelf to the exclusion of the states. Gorton’s eagerness to press ahead with the contentious offshore minerals proposal dismayed the state divisions of his party and provoked serious dissension among its federal MPs. Fairbairn made his position clear at a party meeting on the day after he dined with Howson and the Reids. He was, Reid reported, ‘believed to have stated that he intended to vote against the Government’s offshore mining rights legislation’. Fairbairn accused Gorton of dishonouring a promise that there would be consultations between the Commonwealth and the states

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before the Commonwealth took any action of this kind.12 Fairbairn went public with the charge of dishonourable conduct on 8 May when he made a parliamentary statement on the offshore minerals issue. Reid told Howson that ‘it could be one of the most significant statements of the present session’.13 He also said that Labor was unlikely to move a censure motion because it wanted to keep Gorton in office.14 Nonetheless, an attack did come. Labor decided to proceed with a motion of no confidence and for a while it was thought that enough Liberals might cross the floor for the motion to get up. Reid, despite being a strong centralist himself, welcomed the offshore minerals crisis. It would surely be an excellent way of concluding his tale of Gorton’s decline and fall. He was therefore livid when the would-be rebels, led by Howson, ‘folded’ (his description) on 15 May and, in a dramatic day, accepted a last-minute compromise on the vital question of whether or not Gorton had honoured a commitment to consult with the states over the control of offshore minerals. Behind the scenes a frustrated Reid dismissed Howson and the other antiGorton ‘termites’ as ‘weak-kneed, vacillating, uncertain, and the makers of empty threats’. He castigated Jeff Bate and Howson for deserting Fairbairn and leaving him isolated and discredited. He did not seem to realise that his and Howson’s agendas differed. Howson’s aim was to provoke a crisis, not to create a ‘final rupture’. It was never his intention to bring down the government; what he was seeking was the deferral of the contentious offshore minerals legislation. He considered this the best way to destabilise Gorton without endangering the government as a whole.15 Reid was not as sanguine. While admitting at the time that his initial reaction may have been ‘a little hasty’,16 he concluded

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that there was for the moment no creditable and coherent internal opposition to Gorton. It seemed to him that most Liberals were prepared to march fatalistically to the next federal election, which would be in 1972, under their existing leader.17 And yet he did not sink into quietism. He remained ready to cultivate any signs of insurrection that might appear. This required a degree of nerve, given that the formal Packer interdiction on anti-Gorton agitation still applied. Reid needed to watch his back all the time. Following the parliamentary fracas of 15 May he made a deliberate attempt to unblot his copybook in the eyes of Sir Frank by passing on some relevant information about the fortunes of McMahon. On 20 May he told Sir Frank that during a recent prime ministerial visit to Tokyo Gorton had loudly proclaimed that ‘all the little bastard [McMahon] is interested in is promoting himself’. Reid knew that, as a result of informing Packer of the depth of Gorton’s contempt for McMahon, he was more likely to be forgiven for his recent involvement in moves against the Prime Minister.18 In the lead-up to the spring 1970 parliamentary session Reid and Howson had a strategy meeting. Reid’s advice to Howson was that he should concentrate on the offshore minerals issue and not ‘stir up trouble in every direction at the same time’. Howson ‘didn’t feel the need to continue the same battle in the next session but aimed to concentrate on important issues and go quietly for the rest of the time’.19 A follow-up meeting in September indicated some welcome progress. Reid told Howson that there was ‘a gradual realization that Gorton is not providing the votes and … the Ministry are beginning to realize that a change will be necessary’.20 To Sir Frank Packer, any Liberal government, no matter

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how inept, was preferable to a Labor government; but under Whitlam’s leadership Labor, despite the odd hiccup, was steadily becoming more competitive. There was a growing dedication to winning the next federal election, as evidenced by federal intervention in state ALP branches in New South Wales and Victoria. Curbing left-wing power in the Victorian ALP was marketed as a way of improving Labor’s electoral appeal. The likelihood of an electoral boost for Labor was discussed by Howson and Reid in the course of one of their frequent chats. ‘In the long term,’ Howson commented in relation to the ALP, ‘a move towards the right, of course, could be difficult for us.’ Both men felt that the danger was distant; in the short term there was bound to be more destructive antagonism before the new factional arrangements settled down.21 This was a welcome vista for Reid, who saw new opportunities for thrills and excitement as he investigated the effects of Labor’s realigned power structure. He sensed that, following the ALP’s recent internal changes, ‘a gesture of concession’ from Whitlam to the Labor left was imminent. Opposition to Australia’s role in the Vietnam War was an iconic issue for the left, which meant that this was the area where such an initiative was most likely. The anticipated opportunity presented itself on 25 September when, in an address to federal caucus, Whitlam reportedly said that he would advise national servicemen to refuse to accept military orders to go to Vietnam if they had indicated in public that they conscientiously objected to serving there. As soon as he heard these reported comments Reid knew that he was onto a good story. To minimise the risk of other pressmen knowing what was afoot, he went to Whitlam’s office sometime after 10.15pm and, expecting a standard no comment on a caucus leak, asked if the reported comments were accurate. To his

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amazement Whitlam, if we are to believe Samuel’s account of the day’s events, confirmed the accuracy of Reid’s information. It could now be published. However, to ensure that Reid did not monopolise the story, a press conference was hastily called at which Whitlam fielded questions about what he had told caucus. Publication of Whitlam’s comments in the following morning’s newspapers gave the beleaguered Gorton ministry a chance to get onto the front foot. Gorton accused Whitlam of advocating mutiny and the destruction of the defence forces. Other ministers – McEwen, Malcolm Fraser, Peter Nixon – joined in the hostile chorus.22 The toing and froing in the spring of 1970 amounted to a stalemate which a half-Senate election in November failed to end. The government parties polled poorly but so did Whitlam; the DLP picked up a big protest vote. The overall result of the poll had no immediate destructive impact on the government’s standing.23 Writing in the Bulletin about the result Reid said that the low vote for the Coalition pointed to the electorate picking up ‘considerable unease’ within the Liberal Party, over either its leadership or its policies. The frustrating thing was that Gorton could hardly be blamed for the election result. The consensus was that he had run a good campaign, ‘doing an infinitely superior job to the bungled and confused one he did during the 1969 campaign’.24 It was safe to conclude that Gorton’s internal foes would have to put up with him as Prime Minister for a while longer. In the wake of the Senate poll Reid had yet another chinwag with Howson, who noted that the journalist ‘strongly advised me to defer taking any action until March’, which was when members would be back in Canberra. Howson informed Reid that he had no intention of initiating any immediate move

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and would wait until the magnitude of the low Liberal vote in the Senate poll sank in among backbenchers.25 Reid assumed that Gorton would self-destruct sooner or later but the final crisis took an unexpected form. On 2 February 1971 a spill motion from maverick Senator Ian Wood came and went as a non-event. It was instead the Defence Minister, Malcolm Fraser, who provided the long-awaited catalyst. For some time Fraser had felt that his standing as a senior Cabinet minister was not being respected, and he now decided to take action. Beginning on 21 February he backgrounded pressmen on his relations with army authorities, which were strained. One of the pressmen he briefed was David Solomon; afterwards Solomon reported that the army was trying to sabotage a civic aid program in Vietnam.26 On 24 February, a Wednesday, the Defence Minister briefed the Bulletin’s Peter Samuel and gave more examples of army insubordination.27 The Daily Telegraph’s Bob Baudino, in Reid’s words, ‘got wind of the briefing and went to work on his own behalf’ (Baudino’s information came not from Samuel but from other journalists briefed by Fraser).28 Reid had to go to Sydney for the weekend to participate in a Meet the Press program in which the guest to be interviewed was McMahon. He was then planning to cover a meeting of the ALP federal executive which was scheduled to last all week. For the moment, though, he was still busy in Canberra. On Thursday, 25 February, Baudino asked Reid what he knew about the alleged strain between Fraser and the army authorities. Reid, who already seemed to know about Samuel’s story, 29 told Baudino that he did not know much but did know that there had been an argument going on for some time between Fraser and the army over the allocation of army bases. He also knew

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that there had been a row over what was alleged to be an army decision to phase out its civic aid program in Vietnam within 12 months, which was contrary to government policy. Reid did not ask Baudino if Fraser had briefed him on his relations with the army; in fact Fraser had not, though Reid later said that he had taken it for granted that he had.30 Before leaving for Sydney Reid told Baudino that if his story could not wait he should try to have a chat with Gorton, who was a friend of Baudino’s, 31 before filing it. The Prime Minister, he suggested, ‘could have an angle that puts a different emphasis on the story’.32 Reid’s suggestion that Baudino should confer with Gorton, and his deliberate avoidance of any mention of checking the story with Fraser, may well have been an attempt to increase the likelihood of a breakdown in the chain of command among ministers. Whether or not this was the case, Reid’s anti-Gorton antennae were far from inactive. Before he left for Sydney to interview McMahon – their chat produced little hard news33 – he had a late dinner with Fairbairn and Howson at Canberra’s Lobby Restaurant. The feeling among the trio was that Gorton’s ministerial colleagues were now seeing the writing on the w all, following poor results in recent state elections in New South Wales and Western Australia. There was no need for deliberate action; something was bound to happen.34 Baudino saw Gorton on the afternoon of Monday, 1 March. He later gave a copy of his story to Gorton’s office.35 His visit prompted Gorton to confer personally with Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Daly.36 Baudino’s story appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 2 March. It featured the claim that the Joint Intelligence Organisation was monitoring the Australian Army’s civic aid activities in Vietnam. Apparently Fraser had told colleagues that he had ordered this

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to be done because he did not trust the army reports that were reaching Canberra; he believed the army was being deceptive over an attempt to end civic aid activities. 37 Baudino’s claims led Fraser to draw up a reply. Before issuing it he saw Gorton, who, according to Reid, did not tell him of his meeting with Daly. Fraser’s denial of Baudino’s news report then appeared.38 On the following day (3 March) the Bulletin featured the story that Peter Samuel had been working on, the source of which was Fraser’s briefing to him on 24 February. Samuel detailed how ‘senior ministers’ were worried about the response of army personnel in Vietnam to Cabinet decisions on their role. Fraser denied the story, and Samuel then let it be known that the story had been based on a Fraser briefing. Reid was still in Sydney, where he was getting only a scanty and thirdhand version of what allegedly was said at the crucial meeting between Gorton and Sir Thomas Daly.39 Reid’s colleague, Alan Ramsey, was far closer to the action. He had a chat with Gorton, after which, in the following morning’s Australian, he reported that Daly had accused Fraser of ‘extreme disloyalty to the Army and its junior minister, Andrew Peacock’. Daly, Ramsey continued, had told Gorton that he believed the army was being discredited as part of a political campaign directed against Peacock. Gorton, according to Ramsey’s story, had told Daly that he knew the media reports that relied on Fraser’s information were wrong and that he would not allow them to go unchallenged. The conclusion to be drawn from all this was that if the Prime Minister agreed with Daly’s assessment of events, Fraser would have to go.40 The claims and counter-claims mounted. Gorton denied Ramsey’s account of his meeting with Daly; it had not,

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apparently, featured any criticism of Fraser. In response, Ramsey said (on 5 March) that Gorton had had the opportunity to repudiate his report before he published it. He had presented Gorton with a list of questions and Gorton had not discouraged him from going ahead after they went through the list. Ramsey was certain that Gorton had given him a thumbs up on the accuracy of his story.41 In Friday’s Daily Telegraph Reid referred to comments made by his press gallery colleague Max Walsh on ABC television the previous night. Because Walsh had provided detail of Fraser’s original briefing of Samuel, Reid could dwell on its substance in his Daily Telegraph story without being accused of breaching the pledge of confidentiality given by a fellow Packer journalist. Walsh had said that both Gorton and Fraser had denied the accuracy of the stories written by Ramsey and Samuel respectively, even though it seemed that the two journalists had submitted their stories to the two protagonists before publication. Both Gorton’s and Fraser’s credibility was now at stake. As a result, Reid concluded, the ALP were likely to move a vote of no confidence.42 On Saturday Reid published a front page Daily Telegraph story in which, invoking his authority as a seasoned reporter, he declared that Gorton’s non-denial when he saw the summary of Ramsey’s story before it was published constituted a confirmation of the story and thus of the conflict between him and Fraser: though it contained material damaging to Fraser, Gorton had done nothing to stop it appearing.43 The molehill had now become a mountain. Sometime late on Saturday night Reid told Howson that Sir Frank Packer had decided to come out against Gorton. There was going to be a leading article in the Sunday Telegraph saying that the time had come for a change in the Liberal Party leadership. This caused

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Howson to opine that ‘this really could precipitate an explosion next week’.44 David McNicoll received a summons to report to the Packer head office to write the anti-Gorton Sunday Telegraph editorial.45 Until recently McNicoll had been seen as the pro-Gorton element in the Packer organisation, but Gorton had lost McNicoll’s support after he savaged NSW Liberal Premier Bob Askin at a conference on state–federal financial arrangements in February.46 McNicoll’s editorial was on an inside page of the Sunday Telegraph. The front page was reserved for Reid, whose story on the crisis was headlined ‘RESIGN CALL TO FRASER’. Reid was aware that Fraser had been discussing whether or not to resign with colleagues such as John Jess and Bert Kelly.47 Some Liberal members, he reported, wanted Fraser to make a statement to Parliament in the coming week and then resign as Defence Minister. These unnamed Liberals were said to be of the view that Fraser’s resignation would precipitate the issue of what to do with Gorton, whose leadership was seen as a grave electoral liability. It is fair to say that these were Reid’s thoughts as well. The Packer camp was stoking up the crisis and it had a clear outcome in mind: it was time for McMahon to be Prime Minister. That was the purpose of McNicoll’s Sunday Telegraph editorial. Gorton had to go, but there had to be an acceptable successor. The Sunday Telegraph did not consider Fraser a good alternative in view of the week’s turbulent events. That left McMahon as, QED, the obvious successor; he did not have to be named by the Packer press to be identified as such.48 After the Sunday Telegraph appeared Reid had another long phone conversation with Howson. The Liberal MP indicated that it would be unwise – and unnecessary – for a restive backbench to accelerate the situation as the press was building up the

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crisis nicely. The important thing for Howson was for the issue to be kept going for as long as possible; he wanted to delay any discussions in the party room until the last possible moment, and he hoped things could be prolonged until Wednesday week (17 March).49 Although it was Sunday, there was no rest for the wicked. That night McNicoll moderated a special edition of Channel Nine’s Meet the Press featuring the journalists who had brought on the crisis. Clyde Packer later claimed responsibility for the idea: ‘I said to Alan Reid we should do something to get McMahon into office. It was riveting television.’50 Howson, Gorton and Fraser were among the viewers who tuned in. Reid apparently was included in the panel only by chance; he replaced Ramsey, who had been invited to join Baudino and Samuel on the program but had at the last moment indicated that he was not available. 51 During the program McNicoll pressed Samuel to publicly name Fraser as the source for his Bulletin story but he refused to do so. 52 Although the producers may not have originally intended to have Reid on the program, his appearance paid off handsomely: ‘I made a statement on TV which, apparently, many people, Gorton included, believed influenced Fraser’s decision to resign.’ The crucial moment came when Reid declared that Liberal ministers and backbenchers were less scared of Menzies even at his zenith than they were of Gorton, because he allowed ‘his emotions to divorce him from loyalty to the institutions he [was] expected to serve’. The test, he added, would come with Fraser’s reaction to the current situation. If he ‘meekly accepted’ Gorton’s attempt to ‘assassinate’ him, he would become ‘a puppet in the same way that the Federal Treasurer [Les Bury] has been reduced to a puppet’. 53 Before he fronted up to Meet the Press Reid seems to have felt

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that Fraser was of a mind to resign; 54 his reference on the program to the hapless Bury was probably designed to ensure that Fraser had no second thoughts about doing so. Reid also insisted on the program that Gorton had tacitly confirmed Ramsey’s anti-Fraser story. This too emphasised the notion of disloyalty, which he hoped Fraser would seize on. 55 The program prompted a late-night phone conversation with Gorton and Fraser, in which Fraser assured the Prime Minister that there was nothing to worry about. 56 The following day, however, the Minister for Defence announced his resignation. In the lead-up to his announcement some of Fraser’s friends and allies contacted Reid to ask if he thought the resignation would mean the end of his political career. Reid was careful to discount such fears, claiming that ‘when you resign like that, on principle, on a principle of some kind, you can always come back’. 57 Though the crisis was proceeding nicely, there was still work to be done. The Labor Party had to do the right thing. Reid treated this aspect of the equation in a front page story in Monday’s Daily Telegraph. The Opposition, he commented, was divided on whether or not it should pull out all stops with a view to getting Gorton replaced as Liberal Party leader. Reid knew that Whitlam felt that Gorton was a major asset for the Labor Party; as a perceived vote loser, he should be propped up. The purpose of Reid’s article in the Daily Telegraph was to remind the Opposition that Whitlam’s preferred course was not the only option open to them. Whitlam, Reid wrote, might not be able to persist in a policy of keeping Gorton in office now that his credibility had emerged as a major national issue; ‘Others [in the Opposition] believe that Mr Gorton must go for the nation’s sake,’ he added. 58 Just after midnight Reid rang Howson to tell him some

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riveting news: ‘he was with John Jess and David Fairbairn, and they had made a decision that the three of us should be prepared to say tomorrow morning that we were ready to cross the floor if the opposition moved a vote of no confidence in Gorton’. 59 It needed only three votes to defeat Gorton, the federal seat of Murray being vacant following McEwen’s recent retirement from politics. The intention was to use this threat to engineer a party room vote against Gorton. Everything depended, though, on convincing the party room that Gorton’s demise would not lead to the overthrow of the Coalition government as a whole. Reid was an anxious man when he turned up for work at Parliament House on Tuesday, 9 March. He feared that yet another crisis was about to be defused. The Opposition, if it decided to move a vote of no confidence in the government as a whole, might well force the Liberals to rally around the supposedly vote-losing Gorton. To ease his mind Reid asked for an interview with the Labor leader. Graham Freudenberg, Whitlam’s speechwriter, later said that the request, which was granted, marked the first time since Whitlam had become Leader of the Opposition in 1967 that Reid had ‘sought an interview with Whitlam to give him some helpful advice’. Freudenberg’s account of the meeting is that Reid was anxious to point out that if the Opposition moved a motion against Gorton the government would close ranks and Gorton would be saved. It was better to leave things as they were and see what developed.60 Faced with Freudenberg’s view of him as a peddler of unsolicited advice, Reid later published a different interpretation of the conversation. In his version of events he was not trying to impart advice. ‘My motive,’ he said, ‘was to round off a story.’ By now four Liberals, enough to defeat Gorton, had told Reid

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they would cross the floor. For the purposes of covering the story he needed to know precisely what tactics Whitlam had in mind.61 The fall of Gorton, and therefore the future of the book about Gorton that he was writing, depended on what tactics were chosen. No information of any value was exchanged at the meeting with Whitlam, and any advice, if offered, was not acted on. When the day’s proceedings began in the House of Representatives Fraser presented a statement in which he said that ‘the Prime Minister’s disloyalty to a senior Minister’, namely himself, had forced him to resign. He claimed that ‘one sentence would have killed [Ramsey’s] report’, an assertion that one observer (Whitlam) believed came straight from Reid.62 Gorton then replied; in the course of his speech he indicated that in his chat with Ramsey he had said that he thought it wrong to canvass in a newspaper what a third party (Sir Thomas Daly) had said and, he claimed, Ramsey had replied by saying ‘Fair enough.’ This caused Ramsey, who was standing in the upstairs press area immediately behind where Reid was sitting, to lean over and shout the words ‘You liar’ across the chamber. A startled Reid told him to ‘get out of here as fast as you can’, which Ramsey wisely did. Gorton calmly continued with his remarks. When he finished, Whitlam rose and gave notice of a motion (for the next day’s session) of no confidence in the government.63 This motion, combined with Ramsey’s insulting reference to the Prime Minister, looked like producing yet another anti-climax. Liberal MPs began to instinctively swing back to the embattled Gorton. His speech at a special party room meeting that evening had a similar temporarily unifying effect. Later on Reid told Howson that he doubted the anti-Gorton forces had the numbers in the party room.64

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Another party meeting to consider the leadership situation was called for 10.00am on the following day – Wednesday, 10 March. Reid was as confident as he could be in such matters that four Liberals – he later named them as Fairbairn, Jess, Howson and Harry Turner – would cross the floor of the House of Representatives if there were a vote of no confidence directed against Gorton.65 But it was not clear whether they would support a censure motion directed against the government as a whole. And indeed the two were quite different propositions. Even Howson publicly confirmed that he might be prepared to cross the floor on a vote of no confidence in Gorton but not on a vote of no confidence in the government. He was hoping that it might be possible for Whitlam to amend his no confidence motion.66 The Opposition, though, had no intention of changing its tactics: it was eager for the Liberals to rally around Gorton and keep him on as Prime Minister, as Labor still saw him as a sure election loser. So Gorton seemed about to escape the trap. Just before the party meeting, Reid told Howson that it was hard to say if the rebels had the numbers to determine the outcome in the party room.67 If Gorton was still standing after the party room meeting, Howson reassured Reid, another crisis was bound to happen sooner or later. Such an assurance was poor consolation for Reid. Gorton’s coolness under pressure was becoming a source of immense frustration for those who would destroy him. Howson was confident, when he went into the party meeting, that even if Gorton ‘tried to brazen it out [here], he would be defeated in the House; his time therefore was numbered, if not today then within the next few weeks’.68 In the event Gorton did not brazen things out. He acted in the party room in a way completely contrary to what Reid felt any half-competent

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politician would. Though every vote counted, and he knew it, Gorton failed to summon loyal supporter Duke Bonnett from his sickbed in Townsville. He agreed to let the meeting debate a motion of confidence in his leadership when the veriest tyro would have realised that it was far wiser tactically to do nothing and leave it up to his opponents to force the issue by moving a vote of no confidence. He allowed his colleagues to vote by secret ballot when by right a show of hands should have decided the matter. The decisive moment is considered to have come when, quizzed by the wily Queenslander Kevin Cairns, he told the meeting that, if defeated on the floor of the House, he would take no action that would have the effect of installing an ALP government. As Samuel wrote, ‘He could no longer bluff the party through letting the impression remain that he might be rash enough to take the ship of government down with him.’69 A vote of 33-all (there was one informal vote) defeated the unwise confidence motion. In a breach of the standing orders Gorton insisted on exercising a casting vote, and proceeded to vote against himself. He realised that up to eight Liberal MPs, emboldened by his apparent last-minute desire to self-destruct, planned to cross the floor of the House and put him in a minority irrespective of the exact form of the censure motion.70 He was finished before the vote was taken. The Packer organisation’s favourite Liberal was now anointed. Bill McMahon was elected when a ballot was held to pick Gorton’s successor. A dramatic Canberra day was not yet over, however. Gorton had been surviving in an increasingly hostile climate, but because the events of March 1971 were so sudden and traumatic, unplanned things were also likely to happen. An emotional party meeting, moved by Gorton’s act

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of self-sacrifice, elected him as the party’s new deputy leader. The Gorton experience was not completely over: the man from Mystic Park was named Defence Minister in the new McMahon government. Gorton, as deputy party leader and a senior minister, was still a force to be reckoned with. He could not yet be written off.

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McMahon PM he Packer media empire was generous in blessing Bill McMahon after he took over from John Gorton as Prime Minister of Australia. In his first week in office he attracted a brace of favourable editorials in the Daily Telegraph, which also publicised a profile of the McMahons (‘Happy Events in PM’s Life’) in the Australian Women’s Weekly.1 Alan Reid loyally upheld the corporate line in public. Everything, he reported, was going swimmingly under the new Prime Minister. ‘Former Prime Minister Mr John Gorton,’ he wrote with the straightest of faces, ‘tonight pledged complete loyalty to the McMahon administration.’2 Behind the scenes, Reid was more candid. McMahon did not, he knew, generate much enthusiasm or loyalty among his colleagues, let alone the public at large. He privately commented on the new Prime Minister’s shortcomings in a diary he kept about the McMahon administration – which, mercifully, he never culled.3 It was clear that the leopard had not changed its spots. McMahon, dithering though hardworking as an ordinary Cabinet minister, was never going to be a decisive or inspiring national leader. He was spooked by Gorton’s brooding presence in the Cabinet. Public protestations of undying loyalty, though dutifully made and reported in the press, meant nothing. McMahon, Reid noted in his diary on 22 June 1971, was ‘frightened’ of Gorton. A fearful McMahon was driven to ask for advice on how to best deal with his Defence Minister. The pressman, on 26 June, was blunt: ‘For God’s sake behave

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like a PM. If you want to take him on, take him on, but don’t keep complaining about him behind his back. All that does is give the impression that you’re dead scared of him.’ By far the best way for Reid to do his bit in ensuring that there would be no Gorton comeback was to finally publish his long-awaited account of Gorton’s record and experience as Prime Minister. Reminding people of the instability and uncertainty that set in after Gorton took over in January 1968 would be a powerful antidote to thoughts of a restoration. In the autumn of 1971 Reid set about updating his second political chronicle to incorporate a long postscript covering the events leading up to Gorton’s resignation. Reid called his sequel The Gorton Experiment, and in it he stressed Gorton’s instability and brittle fragility: The Gorton experiment [was] the experiment of a prime minister being himself, of behaving as he felt like behaving, of running a government as ‘I want it run’, of making the major decisions on which he felt deeply and then expecting his Cabinet and his party followers either to endorse his decisions or to get rid of him, of trusting nobody who disagreed with him and of being eternally suspicious, and of appealing over the heads of colleagues and opponents to the masses through the medium of TV …4

The Gorton experiment in government, as described by Reid, had been a dismal failure. It had, Reid emphasised, cost Gorton the big parliamentary majority that he had inherited from Harold Holt and had estranged him from colleagues who had propelled him to the top, leaving him surrounded by ‘timid, frightened sycophants’. The man who had been such a lucid applicant for the post of Prime Minister in 1968, he wrote,

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who appeared to be such a natural television performer, had morphed into the incoherent and self-pitying bumbler who sought re-election in 1969. Charges of ‘inconsistency, eccentricity and dogmatism’ flowed thick and fast as a result of Gorton’s insistence on being unconventional. Here was a man who did everything his own way, whatever the price: ‘He continued to act as though he could afford to ignore the residual power of the Parliament, confront the States with impunity, antagonise sizeable sections of the extra-Parliamentary Liberal Party organisation, and escape the consequences.’5 Publication of Reid’s indictment was fixed for August. Review copies were sent out and worrying rumours of an attempt to stifle publication for fear of libel were stilled only when the publishers at Shakespeare Head Press officially announced that the book would be available after 6.00am on Sunday, 1 August 1971.6 Once the embargo was lifted press commentary started to flow. Newspaper coverage zoomed in on a boldly etched portrayal in the book of Gorton’s alleged reliance on a ‘cocktail cabinet’ (likened to a Rat Pack-style ‘floating crap game’) in which Ainsley Gotto, his ‘young, petite, and vivaciously energetic’ principal private secretary, seemed to loom large. 7 Reviewers of The Gorton Experiment noted that Reid’s access to sensitive information was as impressive as ever: ‘He reports private party meetings as if they were held in public and confidential discussions as if he had been the minutes secretary.’8 A number of reviewers stressed Reid’s failure or refusal to shed light on McMahon’s likely role in hostile manoeuvres within the Liberal Party under Gorton. There must have been innumerable phone conversations between McMahon and Sir Frank Packer but not a single one was mentioned in The Gorton

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Experiment. Reid’s suggestion that McMahon ‘had had the office [of Prime Minister] virtually handed to him without him lifting a finger’9 was treated, correctly, as balderdash. Nobody believed him. Prime Minister McMahon still had Gorton in his Cabinet. If we are to believe an account by Richard Farmer of The Australian, McMahon blamed Gorton for leaking information on Cabinet discussions of defence spending. However, he still needed a clear-cut issue on which to act. ‘He was also waiting for the publication of The Gorton Experiment,’ Farmer claimed. McMahon was believed to be familiar with the contents of the book, having spoken to Reid about it on several occasions. He ‘told associates that he thought the book would finally destroy his adversary and prepare the party and the public for the sacking to come’. There were limits to Reid’s influence, though. Farmer’s understanding was that Liberal Party insiders tended to discount Reid’s views on Gorton because his hostility was so pronounced.10 Gorton was determined to exercise a right of reply to Reid’s newly published opus even if, on Farmer’s logic, he did not have to. According to a report by Mungo MacCallum, someone at the Herald & Weekly Times decided that it would be a good idea to get Gorton to review Reid’s book. Gorton, when approached, said that he would be happy to write a review if he were paid $250. The Herald & Weekly Times considered this sum excessive and approached the Fairfax organisation to see if it was interested in splitting the cost and the rights to the review. The Fairfax people reportedly ‘dickered’ for a while before agreeing. The Herald & Weekly Times then got back to Gorton, only to be told that he had done a deal with Rupert Murdoch.11 With Harry M Miller acting as his agent he had negotiated

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an agreement on 5 August to write a series of articles for the Sunday Australian. Murdoch paid $5000 for the first article, which appeared on 8 August. Five days later Gorton signed a contract for six articles for which he would be paid a total of $60,000, with the promise of a further $15,000 for another two pieces if the publisher required them.12 Gorton was soon ‘writing away in long hand on standard Public Service lined foolscap at his home in Canberra’. Friends were supportive. On Wednesday (4 August) former Navy Minister Jim Killen phoned him to talk about Reid’s book.13 Gorton’s first article duly appeared on 8 August. He intended to use the articles to present his own version of how he became Prime Minister and what he did in office, but his first and immediate aim was to discredit Reid. Gorton’s jeremiad included a memorably unflattering pen portrait of his journalistic tormentor. The Red Fox, Gorton insisted, had become rather scungy of late: He is a slightly-built, balding man with little darting eyes and an expression of perpetual cynicism. When talking to one he tends to stand slightly turned away, peeping under a drooping eyelid from the corner of one eye. There is a knowing, downward twist to his lips as he speaks from the corner of his mouth. One expects momentarily to be nudged in the ribs with a confidential elbow and given a hot tip for the 3.30 at Randwick.

Reid, Gorton alleged, was ready to perform any manner of journalistic bastardry on the say-so of Sir Frank Packer. His modus operandi involved ‘the question of leaks, deliberate and accidental’. Reid, Gorton claimed, flourished in a situation in which leaks and gossip were rampant:

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Al an ‘T h e Red Fox’ Reid From time to time Cabinet ministers have shown themselves so uncertain of their own opinions that they have chosen to canvass the value of impending legislation far beyond the Cabinet room, indeed beyond the confines of the Parliament altogether. Others are afflicted with a compulsion to try out ideas on their wives.

Gorton cited the ‘oil pricing agreement after BHP-Esso made their grand strike in Bass Strait’ as an example of an issue ‘that had to be treated very circumspectly’.14 These few words sealed his fate, because they were directed against two colleagues – David Fairbairn, the former Minister for National Development, and McMahon. Gorton had in effect breached Cabinet solidarity by suggesting that his colleagues had breached it. McMahon, like most people, first learned of Gorton’s impending anti-Reid riposte when another Murdoch publication, the Daily Mirror, published a teaser on Friday (6 August). Gorton’s article, Daily Mirror readers were told, was ‘sure to cause a political storm’.15 This was at a time when McMahon was wintering at Liberal powerbroker Eric Robinson’s residence on the Isle of Capri in Queensland; the news about Gorton reportedly caused the Prime Minister ‘a mixture of fear and delight’: ‘There was the concern that Mr Gorton would say something that would seriously harm the Government. There was also the delight that Mr Gorton may have given him the chance he needed to sack him.’ On Saturday, and by now in Adelaide, McMahon cut short a visit to an Australian Rules match and headed back to his hotel. Late in the afternoon he pored over extracts from the Gorton article, which had been sent by teleprinter; he was later said to be concerned at the effect on backbenchers but relieved at the

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moderation he thought Gorton had shown.16 On Sunday McMahon returned to the Isle of Capri, where he sought solace and support from his wife Sonia and from Robinson. He then phoned Cabinet colleagues and party officials. By Sunday afternoon the word was out: Gorton had to go. The mollifying reference to Gorton’s ‘moderation’ was dropped. The matter was now considered serious. Over the next few days the Prime Minister telephoned colleagues to see if the party room would back a decision to get rid of Gorton. As the crisis deepened, Sir Frank Packer decided to come out with a public statement of support for his favourite Liberal. He accepted an invitation to comment from the ABC radio program PM and in the course of his remarks refuted Gorton’s suggestion that, in writing The Gorton Experiment, Reid had been the dummy and Sir Frank the ventriloquist: ‘I certainly never spoke to him about the book and I didn’t know what was in the book.’ There was, if one believed this comment, no longthought-out ‘Packer plot’ directed against Gorton of which Reid was the advance guard. However, Sir Frank was now ready to publicly call for Gorton’s dismissal. He opined that Cabinet ministers should not be discussing contemporary political issues as Gorton had done. Gorton should be sacked because he was ‘a great embarrassment’.17 Gorton’s fate was sealed. On 12 August McMahon asked for, and received, his resignation as Defence Minister. According to the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister had breached basic principles of Cabinet solidarity and unity and had reflected on the integrity of fellow ministers. The Daily Telegraph, in reporting developments, assured McMahon that he had taken ‘the correct, and only, course’.18 This latest crisis then fizzled out, largely because Gorton, partly on the strength of a

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meaningless reassurance from McMahon that he had looked at few if any of the pages of The Gorton Experiment,19 indicated that he was not going to cross the floor and vote with the Opposition in Parliament. In his second Sunday Australian article, published on 15 August, Gorton announced his resignation as deputy leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party. As a result of this action, his four remaining articles were ‘somewhat anti-climactic’.20 The excitement surrounding Gorton’s departure from Cabinet boosted sales of Reid’s new book about him. The Gorton Experiment was, in Australian terms, commercially successful. The first run of 10,000 copies sold out on 4 August and a second print run of 10,000 was ordered two days later. There was talk of a paperback edition. Shakespeare Head Press, better known for churning out textbooks for Australian school children than for producing ‘political hot cakes’, was understandably delighted. Its manager provided the media with an approving quote: ‘There’s a book in the events happening right now and we’re hoping to have another from Mr Reid provided he is still in the mood – and hasn’t made enough to retire on this.’21 All this glib talk about fame and fortune was unwise. The feeling around Parliament House, when members returned from 1971’s winter recess, was that Reid was getting too big for his boots and deserved a comeuppance. Retribution was in the offing. Things started to unravel on 27 August, when the Daily Telegraph featured a front page story in which Reid reported that on the previous day proceedings in the House of Representatives had had to be adjourned because it lacked a quorum. This was only the third time that an adjournment on those

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grounds had occurred since 1901, and the first time since 1920. The House of Representatives, Reid wrote, had ‘ignominiously collapsed’. Reid stated that several members who were outside the chamber reading accounts of a possible rise in their parliamentary salaries ignored the warning bells. After noting that standing orders did not permit members to leave the chamber once a quorum was called, he claimed that a group of ‘ALP Parliamentarians walked out, well knowing that their action could lead to the collapse of the House of Representatives’.22 The Daily Telegraph article was a hot topic when the House of Representatives resumed after its enforced adjournment on 7 September. Labor’s Jim Cope branded Reid’s comments about an alleged walk out by Labor MPs as ‘a deliberate untruth’ and, at his instigation, the matter was referred to the House’s Privileges Committee.23 Reid was invited to appear before the Committee on 28 September. His experience on that day must have been mortifying: he was obliged to answer questions, under oath, about his sources for the story. Reid told the Privileges Committee that he was not in the press gallery in the chamber when the quorum was called, although he went there when the numbers in the House were being counted. He agreed that he did not see any member leave the chamber, but added that some of his comments were based on information provided by two members, Arthur Calwell and Les Irwin, who may or may not have been in the chamber when the quorum was called.24 On 27 October the Committee, by 3 votes to 2 (3 members were not in attendance), found that Reid’s article did not constitute a breach of privilege or contempt. But this was not the last word on the matter. Eight days later the question was recommitted (that decision was approved by 4 votes to 3). The

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Committee then found, again by 4 votes to 3, that the article did constitute a contempt of the House of Representatives. The journalist Mungo MacCallum later wrote that ‘the original finding had been recommitted and reversed at the instigation of Whitlam (who was absent when the original finding was made)’.25 Aspects of the Privileges Committee’s procedures and decision-making process were of interest to journalists other than Reid. On 10 November the Committee recommended that the editor-in-chief of ACP (David McNicoll) be required to publish a correction and apology on the front page of the Daily Telegraph and that Reid be required to furnish a written apology to the Speaker for his ‘inaccurate reflection’ on honourable members.26 Later still, with a full attendance of 8 members at the Committee occurring for the first time, the guilty verdict was recommitted and was finally upheld only on the casting vote of the chairman.27 The powers that be in the Daily Telegraph were understood to have made it clear behind the scenes that if they were told to apologise to the House of Representatives they would do so only under duress and they would not bother concealing their displeasure.28 This prospect spooked McMahon, who did not want to offend the Packer camp. The issue was canvassed in a Liberal Party room meeting on 7 December. The Prime Minister proposed that his party colleagues should merely ‘note’ the Committee’s report. This suggestion annoyed Gorton, who said he would cross the floor to vote against any motion that failed to condemn Reid. It seemed Gorton had few sympathisers; Peter Howson gleefully recorded in his diary that no other member supported him.29 Minister for National Development Reg Swartz, loyal to a

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fault, had the responsibility for handling the matter of privilege when it came before the House of Representatives for formal determination on the following day. Aware that things might well get out of hand, Swartz stressed that it was up to individual members to decide the matter for themselves. The McMahon government could not be outvoted on the issue because Swartz was not speaking in its name. He then moved the following recommendation: ‘That this House agree with the Committee in its finding and is of the opinion that it would best deal with the matter by taking no further action in the matter.’ The proposed resolution was further evidence of the Prime Minister’s association with the Packer camp. If it got up, no one associated with the Reid article would have to publish an apology. Swartz cited the treatment of Reid over the question of privilege back in 1951 as a precedent for why the House should decide to take no further action. In response, Labor’s Jim Cope called on the House to demand that the precise recommendations approved by the Privileges Committee should be carried out. When the House divided at 2.00am Cope’s motion was defeated by 3 votes (50–47). Reid, McNicoll and the Daily Telegraph had got off scot free. The emasculation of the 1971 privileges case against Reid came at a time when he had stepped up his public journalistic efforts on behalf of the McMahon government. From September onwards a new Reid column (‘The Power Game’) appeared each week in the Sunday Telegraph. Unable in all honesty to present too glowing a picture of McMahon as a national leader, Reid’s articles instead took a negative tack. The intention was to enliven fears in the mind of ‘Mr and Mrs Average’ concerning the possible installation of a Labor government in Canberra.

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Reid’s approach in his new column indicated a significant shift in his outlook. By now the disciple of Curtin and Chifley had come to regard their – and his – old party as having become altogether too modish. While stubborn 1970s-style economic problems (inflation, unemployment, currency crises) were conspiring against McMahon, another radically new iconic issue resulting from the ferment of the 1960s – ‘permissiveness’ – might well swing the balance back and save him. Reid focused on the discord in the federal ALP caused by a range of divisive issues: abortion law reform, family planning, industrial relations and Labor’s brave new non-discriminatory immigration policy. Whitlam, Reid insisted, in developing policy, seemed to favour an ‘articulate avant garde’ who supported permissiveness. Law reform in areas such as homosexuality, drug taking and pornography, as well as in relation to abortion, had replaced traditional concerns with employment and economic growth as the focus of reformist zeal. Educated middle-class types seemed bent on marginalising Labor’s traditional bluecollar constituency.30 Reid tried hard, but all attempts to shore up McMahon, whether through positive support or negative press about the Opposition, were an uphill struggle. By the spring of 1971 signs of drift and decay in the federal Cabinet were hard to miss. Reid carefully jotted them down in his diary, but did not always report them in his articles and commentaries. The setbacks McMahon suffered included Billy Snedden edging out Swartz in the post-Gorton ballot for a new deputy leader of the Liberal Party. Although Reid did not say so in his Daily Telegraph article on the result, the vanquished Swartz had been very much McMahon’s preferred candidate. 31 Further strain came during a parliamentary debate on the contentious issue of the

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appointment of assistant ministers. At one stage during the debate it was thought that three Liberal backbenchers were willing to cross the floor and vote against McMahon. 32 The 1971–72 Budget, which Whitlam claimed was intended to produce higher unemployment, provoked a further hostile reaction; in private, Reid spoke about hell breaking loose when McMahon mentioned the possibility of an unemployment figure of 100,000, but in the Bulletin he mentioned only ‘some jeers from the Opposition’.33 A trip to the United States failed to enhance McMahon’s image as a statesman even though his stylish and statuesque wife Sonia proved a hit on the fashion circuit. The McMahons were relaxing at Waikiki before returning home when the Prime Minister saw Reid’s write-up of his visit in the Bulletin. Some of Reid’s remarks were not flattering. As a public speaker McMahon did not have, Reid suggested, ‘any understanding of either brevity or of tailoring a speech for a particular audience’. He went on, adding insult to injury: ‘However uninspiring his text, his off-the-cuff efforts are usually infinitely worse.’ McMahon’s response to this assessment was to call Reid a ‘treacherous bastard’.34 This incident does not seem to have done any lasting harm to the relationship between the Prime Minister and the pressman, however. Bill and Sonia McMahon were honoured guests at the wedding of Reid’s daughter Susan just before Christmas. Reid continued to track the disintegration in the Liberal Party when Parliament returned to Canberra in the autumn of 1972. Coalition MPs, he recorded in his diary, were troubled by a lack of leadership. McMahon was blaming hostile media coverage for his plight but Reid’s view was that such an attitude was ‘a lot of rot’, as the Prime Minister insisted on providing

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journalists ‘almost daily with the pegs on which to hang criticism’. McMahon’s poor performances in Parliament and his dismal record as a public speaker were fatal, as was his refusal to take candid advice. He seemed determined to take no responsibility for mistakes and yet remained eager to steal the credit from his ministers on occasions when credit could be claimed.35 On 27 February 1972 Reid had another chat with Howson, in the course of which he suggested a number of leadership strategies that the Prime Minister might care to follow, viz.: the Prime Minister had to announce that he was determined to reduce the rate of unemployment in Australia even if this meant disagreeing with Treasury; at Question Time in the House he had to allow more questions to be handled by his ministers and should answer fewer himself; and he had to delegate detailed work to his ministers so as to free up his time for thought about longer term issues.36 If this advice was passed on, it had little effect. McMahon’s reputation continued to sink. Reid noted with horror his ‘pathetic’ performance in a no-confidence debate.37 On 1 March Reid started to hear ‘murmurs’ about whether it was still possible to get rid of McMahon as leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party. He believed that the would-be termites were sure to conclude that it was too late to secure a change, as an election had to be held by the end of the year. On the following day, however, an opinion poll recorded McMahon’s popularity at 28 per cent. This produced a further bout of leadership speculation, in the course of which Reid vowed to establish the accuracy of a report that the Liberal MP Don Dobie had warned McMahon of a likely palace revolt.38 Reid duly conducted some behind-the-scenes research to determine the level of McMahon’s unpopularity. He noted in

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his diary that attempts to find a replacement had ‘intensified’; to discover what exactly was happening, he decided to check developments with former ministers Jim Killen and Tom Hughes. The soundings he conducted indicated that many Liberal MPs were indeed ‘disenchanted’ with McMahon – one assessment was that the rebels were within 6 votes of having a majority in the party room – but that there was no agreement on a possible replacement.39 That was the rock on which all the internal dissent was bound to founder. However, in the case of McMahon it was hard to keep disloyal thoughts at bay for long. In July Reid heard that a group of ministers, including Malcolm Fraser and Snedden, had discussed the possibility of getting rid of McMahon. The idea seemed to be to persuade the Prime Minister to have a ‘diplomatic illness’ and for Doug Anthony to take over. After the election the diplomatic illness would become a ‘mild heart attack’, clearing the way for a permanent successor to be chosen. For Reid such thoughts were ‘pipe dreams’, although he knew they were an accurate reflection of the ‘depressed’ state of mind of the Liberal Party.40 The long postwar federal Liberal-Country Party government was moribund. Its disintegration was a big political story and yet Reid did not have the opportunity to record its demise in his daily journalist work: the Daily Telegraph was about to be sold. For years the paper had lost money because it was not able to break the Sydney Morning Herald’s stranglehold on classified advertisements; nor did it have an afternoon tabloid that would put its idle printing capacity to good use. The Women’s Weekly subsidised its losses. This unsatisfactory commercial arrangement came to an end on 4 June 1972. Following a printers’ strike Sir Frank Packer acceded to pressure from his sons Clyde and Kerry (his eventual heir when he died in 1974) and

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sold the Daily Telegraph to Rupert Murdoch and News Limited for $15 million.41 The new management team set out to model the former Packer flagship on the Sun News-Pictorial in Melbourne, in terms of format and by being far less partisan in its politics. The Daily Telegraph in its old Packer form having been such a supporter of McMahon, its sale was seen as a further blow to the fortunes of his government. Critics of McMahon were glad that Reid would no longer be around to write up the continuing saga of ALP divisions in the pages of the Daily Telegraph on a daily basis. His press gallery colleague Mungo MacCallum referred to the rumour that ‘the subs in the Telegraph building in Sydney held a ceremonial destruction of the various standing headlines Rebuff to Whitlam, New ALP split looms, Setback for Labor and so on, which have decorated most of Reid’s stories for the last 16 years’. It was the absence of Reid, rather than the disappearance of regular anti-Labor editorialising that mattered. ‘Reid, more than anyone else,’ MacCallum wrote, ‘has set the Telegraph political style – attack the ALP on all fronts, and blow up internal party dissension, which anyone else would regard as minor, into something enormous.’ MacCallum dwelt on a front page story which had appeared on 22 May in which Reid, under the obligatory bold headline (‘A.L.P. BALLOT BLOW TO WHITLAM’), covered a decision by the ALP federal executive to nominate Peter Morris (seen as the candidate of the left) for the safe federal seat of Shortland. The Daily Telegraph’s coverage of the Shortland affair, MacCallum observed, ‘dwarfed anything ever mentioned about the much more serious splits in the Liberal party (except for the time when it was Telegraph policy to tip Gorton out)’. This asset was now lost. Without Reid’s insistence in the Daily Telegraph that Labor was ‘a pack of sinister, faction-ridden bastards’ it would be

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much harder for McMahon to stay on message (said message being ‘although we mightn’t be perfect, they’re much worse’).42 The sale of the Daily Telegraph, if new arrangements were not put in place at once, would lead to a severe diminution in Reid’s workload. He was essentially a daily tabloid journalist, and being confined to writing a story or so a week for the Bulletin, where it was much harder to break news stories, was not his preference.43 Packer had no intention of allowing him to be underutilised. He suggested that Reid should become involved in a regular program on his TV station Channel Nine, even though his network program directors did not consider Reid’s brand of journalism good televisual fare. A solution was provided by Michael Schildberger, a TV reporter whom Reid had mentored: a weekly program that Schildberger would produce and host but that Reid would ‘dominate’, with Schildberger interviewing him at the end of each story to get his insight and verdict. And so it came to pass. The program, Federal File, was aired after the Sunday night movie. The speedy production of transcript of the prerecorded show allowed stories to be covered in the ABC’s seven o’clock news and to feature in the following morning’s newspapers, at the start of the working week.44 Although it occasionally featured criticism of McMahon, Federal File took on ‘a very definite anti-Labor trend after a few weeks’.45 Sometimes the criticism of the Prime Minister came from individual imperilled Coalition candidates who hoped to survive by distancing themselves from McMahon. In his first television interview since he became Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1967, Sir William Aston, defending a precarious majority in the seat of Phillip (and a man Reid privately described as ‘one of McM’s firmest and most level-headed

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supporters’), criticised the government for not pushing defence as a priority issue.46 The McMahon government, clearly, was in a terminal state and nothing much could be done to save it. It was every candidate for himself. Thoughts were already turning to the question of who could best lead the Liberals should they lose the election. This subject arose when Reid had a long talk with Rupert Murdoch. The magnate had been told that Don Chipp might take over, but Reid informed Murdoch that Snedden was next in the line of succession although, he added, ‘if circumstances changed it would be either Fraser or Gorton’.47 The negative perceptions of McMahon permeated the federal election campaign in the spring of 1972. Labor capitalised on the mood of disenchantment. The charm offensive in the media was supervised by ALP federal secretary Mick Young, whose ‘frankness and openness’, Reid noted in an allusion to his own role in prolonging Labor’s spell in the wilderness, ‘helped to eradicate the image of the “faceless men”’. The antiMcMahon momentum was maintained by Murdoch; as a result of his recent contact with the magnate, Reid was not surprised to learn that Murdoch’s support extended, it was believed, to advising the ALP on what to put in its press releases.48 At a little after 9.00pm on Saturday, 2 December 1972, Reid made a historic declaration on the Channel Nine election night program. ‘If the trend continues I’d say Labor is home and hosed,’ he announced. It was only when Reid made this comment that Whitlam relaxed and began to savour victory.49 The sight of Reid, regarded as the bugbear of his former party by its members, having to announce Whitlam’s triumph from the Packer bunker must have intensified the sweetness of the moment.

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Whitlam and I t was heavenly to be one of Labor’s true believers on the morning of Sunday, 3 December 1972. The previous night’s electoral victory had produced a sense of euphoria. A bold Whitlamite program of reform and enlightenment was seen as unstoppable for the next three years and beyond. Such hopes, sadly, were pitched unrealistically high. Once the election results were finalised, certain sobering facts would have been taken into account. Though weighed down by McMahon in the election campaign, the Liberals survived to fight another day. Whitlam won only one more seat in the House of Representatives than Gorton did three years earlier, and he did not have a majority in the Senate. Also, influential sections of the media, led by the Packer empire, were residually hostile. Reid had had less personal contact with the new Prime Minister than with any of his immediate predecessors. There had been some minor contact in 1952 after Whitlam returned to his boyhood haunts in Canberra as ‘a new-look glamour ALP parliamentarian’. The contact was short-lived. Reid’s settled view was that he (Reid) was on the wasp-tongued Whitlam’s list of people he liked to put down. He did not like it when the Labor leader described him and a colleague (Peter Samuel) as ‘the Jesuit and the Jew’. Personal contact was minimised as a result; Reid preferred to get Whitlam’s views from public sources such as Hansard, platform speeches, formal press conferences, policy documents and the like.1 The correct interpretation of such

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material was always contested ground. The Whitlam camp took pains to minimise Reid’s opportunity to add his own gloss to Whitlam’s words. Graham Freudenberg, early on, operated as a fully fledged speechwriter rather than just a press secretary because he needed to ensure that it was he, not senior journalists such as Reid, who sent Labor’s message out to a wider public. The Red Fox was kept at arm’s length, and was not treated to inside information. Freudenberg loved to point out that the best – and only – Whitlamesque leaks that Reid was privy to came via an air pipe from Whitlam’s ensuite toilet that passed directly into Reid’s room in the press gallery, which happened to be right above the Labor leader’s office.2 Reid participated in Whitlam’s very first prime ministerial press conference, which occurred on 5 December (just three days after election day), once Whitlam and his deputy, Lance Barnard, were installed as an interim two-man government. His question sought information on the administrative acts that could be taken to alleviate unemployment.3 It seemed as if there was no problem that could not be solved by the stroke of a Whitlamite pen. To keep track of what was going on from day one, Reid carefully jotted down the deeds performed by Whitlam and Barnard during the fortnight that the dynamic duopoly was in action. Their reformist initiatives ranged from appointing Elizabeth Evatt to the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission and asking for a reopening of the equal pay case to lifting the ban on advertising contraceptives in the Australian Capital Territory and releasing seven men imprisoned for flouting the conscription provisions of the National Service Act.4 It was all very hectic. From a Packer perspective the euphoria, and the impetus

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for undesired change, had to be curbed. As a result there was a greater reliance on Reid’s services, specifically in relation to the Bulletin. He had not featured in its coverage of the 1972 election, which was not notably anti-Labor despite the Bulletin’s being a Packer publication. In the lead-up to Whitlam’s victory the Bulletin’s position, broadly, was that any contest involving Bill McMahon must, ipso facto, be second rate and could be viewed with a degree of quizzical disinterestedness. Ironic detachment of this sort was not Reid’s style. The Bulletin’s mood changed following Whitlam’s election victory. Politics was taken seriously again. Closer attention was required. Reid was brought in to keep tabs on the new government. Spoiling tactics were adopted in a bid to truncate Whitlam’s honeymoon period. Reid aimed to rein Whitlam in by dwelling on his vulnerability when confronted with Labor’s faceless men. From this perspective, a ready target was conveniently at hand. Since its formation in the early 1970s, the Socialist Left faction in Victoria had provided the backbone of left-wing union influence in the ALP. Its spokesperson was Bill Hartley, a member of the ALP federal executive and the identifiable face of the ‘faceless men’. It was Reid’s task to scare off Whitlam’s less committed admirers by talking up the importance of the Socialist Left. He set out to expose it as a tireless perpetrator of insidious plots and schemes. Reid undertook this assignment with his customary gusto. In February 1973 he published an article in the Bulletin in which he claimed that ‘the socialist left [had] resurfaced with a vengeance’ after having wisely lain low during the lead-up to the election. The bone of contention picked by the Labor left was Whitlam’s announcement that 500 to 600 Australian troops would be retained in Singapore after the term of duty of

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Australian combat forces stationed there ran out. The Socialist Left had already got the Victorian ALP to support a call for the entire Australian force to be withdrawn. Such pressure counted, Reid said, because Whitlam was ‘naturally nervous’ of the Socialist Left. 5 A week later he was reporting that Hartley had ‘recommended’ that Defence Minister Lance Barnard should sack Sir Arthur Tange, the head of the Defence Department. The Socialist Left was determined to lean on Whitlam and Barnard in this case; offering up Tange as a sacrifice would demonstrate to those in the know that the left had to be appeased.6 The zealots were on the march. In another Bulletin story, Reid reported that the Socialist Left were ‘extremely hostile’ to Barnard after he declared, with Whitlam’s backing, that the federal government would preserve the secrecy surrounding the defence bases at Pine Gap and Woomera. Reid interpreted a strong – but unsuccessful – vote in the party room to suspend standing orders to discuss Barnard’s statement as a worrying sign for Whitlam: ‘If Whitlam is finding difficulties with his Caucus, over which he exerts a large personal influence buttressed by his dispensation of rewarding patronage, he is going to find the ALP federal conference an even more difficult body to manage.’7 It was soon time for Reid to start speculating about possible leadership challenges. The Labor left’s nominal leader, Jim Cairns, was, for the moment, an eminently responsible and loyal minister, but another possible contender was quickly spotted in the person of the Attorney-General, Lionel Murphy. Reid readily accepted the possibility that Murphy – a ‘determined radical’, in his estimation8 – could be an aspirant if anything should happen to Whitlam. Because he was an ALP senator

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(from New South Wales) he was, in Reid’s political universe, an honorary faceless man.9 As such he was fair game. The issue concerning Murphy that grabbed the headlines involved the activities of Croatian groups in Australia who opposed President Tito’s regime in Belgrade (capital of the then Yugoslavia). In mid-March, in a move that was portrayed variously as a ‘visit’ or a ‘raid’, Murphy descended on ASIO’s office in Canberra and its Melbourne headquarters to see if he was being denied the benefit of information on alleged anti-Tito terrorist networks. Such a dramatically hands-on approach was a godsend for journalists. Reid was pleased to note that his television program broke the first detailed account of what went on in ASIO’s Melbourne headquarters and Canberra office when the Attorney-General came calling.10 In the heat of a chase such as this, the notion of balanced journalism was often tested, but it did remain a consideration. Reid was aware of the dangers of getting too excited. While never concealing his lack of empathy for Murphy (‘I never liked [him], and I never liked what he stood for’),11 he was strictly professional in his reporting of the raids. ‘Suggestions that Murphy’s visit to ASIO headquarters in Melbourne was deliberately designed to secure publicity which would damage ASIO’s role as a security service appear inaccurate,’ he stated in one of his Bulletin reports.12 There was no need for exaggeration, because the unvarnished details of the story were so riveting. On 25 April Reid’s press gallery colleague Laurie Oakes broke the news that Murphy had been unofficially informed of the executions of three naturalised Australians in Yugoslavia on 9 April but had failed to inform Whitlam of this at a Cabinet meeting held the following day.13 The sense of crisis was kept on the boil when, in a private meeting, a disgruntled ASIO officer

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showed Reid’s Federal File colleague Michael Schildberger a secret telex message in which ASIO Director-General Peter Barbour advised his staff that he had complained about the ASIO raids at a meeting with Whitlam. The telex was embarrassing because Whitlam had denied in Parliament that Barbour had complained about Murphy. Reid and Schildberger discussed the information but could do nothing until they were in a position to confirm that it was genuine. This stalemate lasted for three months, until Opposition Leader Billy Snedden told the Federal File duo that he too had seen the Barbour telex message. Thereupon Federal File swung into action. On 5 August the program featured an interview with Snedden, who called on Whitlam to release the damning telex. Reid and Schildberger talked up the document’s importance; without giving details, they said it contained a section headed ‘complaint’. Though Snedden was the only MP they had spoken to about the matter, the two journalists claimed – we must rely on news coverage of the program here, as the program itself does not still exist – that ‘a prominent Government MP’ had a photostat of the complaint and was prepared to produce it. Whitlam’s response was to state that he recalled seeing Barbour but that he did not believe the purpose of their meeting took the form of a ‘complaint’. This comment defused the immediate political crisis, but the issue was kept alive through the appointment of a Senate Select Committee into the Civil Rights of Migrant Australians, which continued to consider the matter.14 On 14 August the secretary of the Committee asked Reid and Schildberger to appear before it to explain their Federal File comments;15 a joint grilling was thwarted, it seems, only by Schildberger coming down with measles and chicken pox.16 The full-scale dust-up between Whitlam and the left on

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foreign affairs and defence issues at Labor’s July national conference, which Reid had predicted early in 1973, didn’t eventuate.17 This was, from his standpoint, an anti-climax. However, the faceless men theme had remained a constant in Reid’s journalistic output throughout the initial pro-Whitlam euphoria. After mid-1973 it was clear that the peak of that euphoria had been passed. The electorate now wanted less excitement. Whitlam’s love of hyperbole, in the words of one of his camp followers, ‘was starting to scare people, as was the radical rhetoric of his ministers, not to mention the sheer unstoppable flow of reforms’.18 It was hard to deny that things were going sour: ‘there were strikes, industrial trouble, rising inflation and interest rates, and the National Party announced it would use the Senate to get rid of the Labor government as soon as it could’.19 Whitlam’s standing was put to the test after the Vince Gair affair erupted in the autumn on 1974. The veteran Queensland politician was by this time a disgruntled man, having ceased to be leader of the DLP in the Senate a few months earlier. Quite a few people, including Reid, knew that approaches had been made to Gair in relation to government posts. If he accepted one, the ALP would be in a good position to win his vacated Senate seat at the next election. The cloak of secrecy lifted on 2 April when Oakes and John Lombard, in Melbourne’s Sun News-Pictorial, revealed that Gair was about to be made Australia’s ambassador to Dublin, Ireland. The premature disclosure precipitated a political crisis. Snedden (Opposition Leader since the 1972 election) moved to block supply in the Senate, whereupon Whitlam opted for a double dissolution. In the midst of the 1974 election campaign – in the Bulletin issue dated 4 May, to be precise – Reid published an article that examined the treatment of Murphy at the hands of his Senate

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opponents. When, in the previous year, the Senate established its committee to investigate the ASIO-Croatia-Murphy affair, it had, as Reid had observed at the time, created a monster.20 The system of Senate committees that Murphy had been so influential in helping to set up a few years earlier might well end up by destroying him. Reid thought that the monster had now come calling. In this mid-campaign Bulletin article he highlighted a ‘secret and confidential draft report’ from the Senate Select Committee to Inquire into the Civil Rights of Migrant Australians. This document, he claimed, ‘harshly’ criticised Murphy’s role in the ASIO affair and in the naming of Australian residents accused of involvement in Croatian terrorism. The draft report indicated that, apart from migrants who had allegedly returned to Yugoslavia illegally or for criminal purposes, there had been ‘a disturbing number of cases’ of returning migrants who had been imprisoned or who had died or disappeared in mysterious circumstances. The article displeased Murphy. He insisted that the Committee had made no report, draft or otherwise, and announced that he intended ‘to take proceedings to vindicate my name and reputation and to prevent other people in public life being vilified in such a manner’.21 Though it is not clear how far this action was proceeded with, it was a further sign of the fraught relationship between Reid and elements of the Whitlam federal government. The government, though re-elected on 18 May, failed to offer a welcome mat for a number of the Labor ministers Reid had a soft spot for. He blamed Whitlam when loyal Barnard was defeated in the caucus ballot for deputy leader.22 It was equally harrowing to witness the long-drawn-out process which led to the dumping of Frank Crean as Treasurer. By the spring of 1974 Crean had been selected to take the rap for Australia’s

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worsening economic circumstances. An era of stagflation associated with the oil shock of 1973 had well and truly arrived. The Whitlam government’s response, Reid noted, was one of ‘almost total failure’: [Whitlam] may be remembered mainly as having presided over the slide of a prosperous country into the economic mess of spreading unemployment, declining business activity, extending industrial troubles, collapsing industries and the highest interest rates in Australia’s modern history.

Crean, as the man blamed for this dismal record, had to go. Whitlam’s inner circle, journalists were led to believe, intended to ease him out of Parliament altogether by making him the head of ‘a statutory body concerned with Australian economics and finance [the Commonwealth Banking Corporation], not an ambassador’. However, this plan went awry when the possibility arose that Labor might lose the ensuing by-election, a possibility that increased alarmingly when Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) President Bob Hawke indicated that he was not interested in standing for the seat.23 Crean lingered on as Treasurer until 11 December, when Cairns replaced him; he remained a Cabinet minister, with the portfolio of overseas trade. The Whitlam government added immensely to its already serious political problems when it began an international search for loan money. The fatal decision was made at a meeting of the federal executive council held at The Lodge in the early hours of 14 December 1974. The size of the loan – the biggest in Australia’s history – together with the choice of the Middle East as the source of funds and the decision to bypass orthodox banking channels was bound to cause obloquy once the negotiations ceased to be secret.24

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The loans affair did not become a spectacular embarrassment until the middle of 1975, but the prelude, which included the axing of Crean, did not impress Reid at all.25 As 1975 kicked in the Whitlam government lost its bearings at an alarming pace, spinning off an endless series of colourful news stories. Early on in the parliamentary year Jim Cope resigned as Speaker of the House of Representatives following a breakdown of his authority during unruly proceedings. Another big embarrassing moment came when Senator Murphy was promoted to the High Court, a move whose naivety astounded Reid. Since Murphy did not resign because of ill-health or for some personal reason, the NSW Liberal government, which had the power to choose a replacement, felt free to deprive Whitlam of a Senate seat by appointing a non-Labor senator. As the stakes increased the pressure mounted on Snedden to improve his performance as Opposition leader. However, he kept failing to present a clear and compelling message, so the Liberals replaced him with Malcolm Fraser. There was no doubting that Fraser was the more determined of the two, and he grew all the more threatening during 1975, as Australia’s winter of discontent dragged on. The retirement from politics of a disillusioned Barnard precipitated a by-election in Tasmania for which Labor was not prepared and which it lost heavily. The worrying increase in unemployment and industrial disputation led Whitlam to sack Clyde Cameron as Labour Minister. On the same day (5 June) Cairns was demoted from the Treasury. A story in the Age on 1 July precipitated a further crisis, with Cairns’ involvement in loan-raising activities leading to his complete removal from the ministry. Now that he no longer wrote for a daily newspaper, it was far harder for Reid to break news stories. There were more than

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enough far younger journalists around who could be relied on to compete for the honour of coming up with the latest dramatic revelation. But if Reid was not way out in front in whipping up a media frenzy in the wake of the loans affair it was not through want of trying. In a story on Cairns’ dismissal from the ministry on the Packer TV program A Current Affair he suggested that Whitlam was trying to divert attention from his own role in the business of raising overseas loans: ‘He’s actually steering it away from the central thing, which is the complete maladministration in raising the loans overseas by the Prime Minister … by the Australian Government. And … at every discussion on the loans, Mr Whitlam was present.’26 The Prime Minister, Reid implied, had something to be ashamed of and was using Cairns as a scapegoat. In mid-1975 the drama and excitement of events got to Reid in a most surprising way. Decades of covering politics had failed to kill off his more unworldly thoughts. He had long seen his role in theatrical terms (back in 1951 he called Parliament ‘the true national theatre of democracy’).27 He now decided to treat these words literally. Since he enjoyed intimate access to politicians, why not take the next step and get a Canberra amateur theatre company to put on a play based on the people he encountered on a daily basis in the parliamentary bearpit? Such an imaginative approach offered a safe way of canvassing topical themes of scandal and corruption without running the risk of a defamation suit. Years before, as noted in an earlier chapter, he had converted his unpublished novel about the crucifixion into a play. His depiction of Christ’s passion never saw the light of day but he did not give up on his playwrighting hopes. Reid was proud to be ‘a great theatre-goer’ and sometimes felt that he could write better plays than some of the

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‘crook’ ones that were performed.28 Things took off when the Whitlam government’s loan-raising activities jogged a remote part of his memory. He remembered that somewhere at home there was the script of a play he had written which focused on the ever timely theme of shady goings on in Parliament House. He fished it out of a drawer and decided that not a word needed to be altered. Reid’s play, which he titled The Indelible Stamp, reflected his immersion in parliamentary life, both high and low. The plot revolved around a Prime Minister identified only as ‘Honest Jack’ who demonstrates his willingness to help ordinary folk when he promises to help a migrant woman (‘Mrs Rojak’) bring her consumptive son out to Australia. The play featured a Reid alter ego in the person of Jim Todd, a boyhood chum of the Prime Minister who has become a hardbitten journalist. Todd’s cynicism is confirmed when he discovers that his friend Honest Jack is on the take. Honest Jack has accepted money, supposedly for party funds, from a leading manufacturer. Everything is hushed up when Honest Jack threatens to expose an instance of graft that would embarrass the Opposition. The triumph of grubbiness over virtue gets to Todd, who descends into drunkenness. Reid’s cast of characters also included a parliamentary attendant named Dinny, who doubles as an SP bookie and who comments on various incidents in the play.29 The Canberra Repertory Society premiered The Indelible Stamp on the evening of 11 June. Theatre-goers who responded to the publicity (‘A PLAY EVERY PUBLIC SERVANT SHOULD SEE’) and braved the Canberra winter to see it were treated to a political curiosity rather than a timeless work of art. Reid, ever hopeful of becoming an Australian George Bernard Shaw, later gave a copy of the script, along with a copy of his play

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about the crucifixion, to the writer and film-maker Phillip Adams to see if he could do anything with them. Nothing eventuated and The Indelible Stamp has never been performed again. While soon consigned to oblivion as a theatrical work, Reid’s play was not without non-literary significance. Honest Jack’s financial affairs bore faint echoes of the distant days when Reid assisted Don Rodgers in administering Chifley’s slush fund. The real story behind the decision to exhume the play, however, had more to do with another of the characters. There was a prime ministerial adviser in The Indelible Stamp named ‘Dr Oliver Ballard’. Ballard is dwarf-like in physique and yet has gigantic ambitions. His obsession with bureaucratic power irks Honest Jack, who eventually exclaims: ‘Your truly ambitious man is short. We are being ruled by a nation of runts.’ As presented by Reid, Dr Ballard was all too obviously based on the masterful Australian banker and bureaucrat Dr HC Coombs, who was an important government adviser when Reid wrote the play in the 1950s and who was still influential decades later as an adviser to the Whitlam government when the play was finally performed. Canberra in the years after 1945 was full of short men who were powerful bureaucrats under both Chifley and Menzies; but none of them could match the diminutive Coombs. During the Liberal years he was, Reid said at the time, ‘as ubiquitous as ever. You meet him emerging from the offices of men like Menzies and Holt.’30 This talent for survival propelled Coombs into the Whitlam era. Reid’s surviving papers contain a draft Whitlam-era article, which does not seem to have been published, in which he dilated unfavourably on Coombs’ ability as a wide-ranging policy adviser to exert ‘an almost Svengali influence’ over the Prime Minister.31 Over the years Reid built up a list of figures whom he

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described as Svengali-like – Santamaria before the split, Dr John Burton after it, and Ainsley Gotto – and there was no harsher description of irresponsible and sinister power in his lexicon. Reid, it is submitted, brought The Indelible Stamp out of mothballs principally because he felt the need to unburden himself of the animus he felt towards Coombs, and as good a way as any of doing this was by lampooning him in the person of the unattractive Dr Ballard. Reid was particularly peeved with Coombs because he saw him as the driving force behind a range of policies in the Whitlam years that were helping to distance the ALP from its traditional blue-collar concerns. He was concerned at the power Coombs wielded as an adviser on arts funding and in the areas of land rights and government assistance for Indigenous communities. These issues, he considered, were being prioritised, and Labor seemed less concerned with down-to-earth matters such as jobs and inflation. The uneven clash between the Whitlam-backed Coombs and people who stood in his way was symbolised, for Reid, by the removal of Gordon Bryant as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs within less than a year of Labor’s taking office.32 Reid also blamed Coombs for kicking off the process which had led to Whitlam removing the superphosphate bounty for farmers despite its importance for rural Australia. He had a low opinion generally of the role played by academic advisers and high-level experts under Whitlam. Apart from Coombs, he lamented the role of economist Fred Gruen, whom he considered the evil genius behind Whitlam’s decision, in July 1973, to cut tariffs by 25 per cent.33 This decision had struck at the heart of Reid’s old-style protectionist creed. Whitlam’s fortunes continued to slide in 1975 after Parliament resumed following a winter break interrupted by the fall

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of Cairns. Ruination for Labor drew slightly nearer when one of its Queensland Senators died and Joh Bjelke-Petersen refused to rubber stamp Labor’s Mal Colston as a successor. The Premier nominated Pat Field, french polisher, unionist and Laborite, whom the ALP promptly expelled from its ranks. A dazed Field showed up in Parliament House on 9 September and did not know who to report to until Reid told him where the Senate chamber was. It did not take long for Reid, an exALP member himself, to divine that Queensland’s unlikeliest senator ever was a man after his own heart: Field said that he was an oldtime ALP man. The Whitlam government was not an ALP government. It was more interested in looking after homosexuals than jobs and he would be helping to have Whitlam and his government thrown out of office.

Field’s detestation of Whitlam’s tariff cuts sealed Reid’s empathy with him.34 The new Treasurer, Bill Hayden, brought down a responsible federal Budget but the fiddling of the numbers in the Senate meant that the Opposition could defer the voting of supply indefinitely. This scenario led Reid to suggest in the Bulletin that political events ‘could produce a state of near revolution in a country which has not known anything of that nature since the miners fought at the Eureka Stockade’. At the same time he believed that ACTU President Hawke could be counted on to frustrate any moves by unions to get the ACTU to authorise an indefinite general strike if the Senate blocked supply. Reid’s understanding was that ‘the highest echelons’ in the federal government had drawn up a plan that would be followed if the Opposition did try to block the Budget. Whitlam would not ask

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for a dissolution from the Governor-General but instead would ignore the blocking of his Budget and force the Opposition to cave in once funds to pay public servants and other claimants ran out. The views of the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, hardly figured in this scenario. Whitlam, Reid noted, saw his vice-regal appointee as ‘a cypher, who would accept such a departure from parliamentary procedures and would allow the situation in which constitutional government could come under real threat to develop’. Reid felt that this assumption might well be questionable, although he had no way of knowing what was going through Kerr’s mind. Like most observers, he saw the Governor-General as purely a figurehead. He had ignored Kerr’s doings after his appointment and it was hard to suddenly acquire insight into what went on at Government House.35 Excitement intensified when further allegations of dodgy loan-raising activity, replete with implications of corruption and impropriety, were raised by Tireth Khemlani, whom Minister for Energy and Minerals Rex Connor had used as his middle man in the elusive search for easy money. The Connor affair, kicked along when Khemlani unburdened himself to the Melbourne Herald, culminated in Connor’s forced resignation after Khemlani claimed that he still had Connor’s authority to raise loans, despite the fact that (as of 20 May) it was supposed to have been revoked. The Opposition was now ready to strike. On 15 October it confirmed that it intended to use its numbers in the Senate to defer supply until Whitlam announced an election for the House of Representatives. Reid came out of the press conference at which Fraser made this historic announcement with the strong impression that many of his fellow media representatives were more interested in displaying their hostility to

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Fraser for threatening to defer supply than in covering the actual news story.36 Most of his colleagues in the press gallery (especially the younger ones, most of whom were tertiary educated) seemed to be seized with an incurable affection for Whitlam. The challenge from the Opposition fired up Whitlam. He had no intention of asking for a Lower House election; he proclaimed that if the Opposition refused to pass supply he would recommend a half-Senate election. Reid, in assessing the situation, could not tell his readers for certain what the GovernorGeneral would do in response to such a recommendation. Kerr was ‘the unknown factor in the present situation’; ‘it will be an entirely new ball game’ if the Governor-General asked Whitlam for alternative advice.37 Kerr had a reputation for being careful and cautious. Reid assumed that he would put off making a decision for as long as he could. He finally agreed with the old Kerr intimate James McClelland, who was convinced that Kerr was not likely to reject Whitlam’s advice.38 Reid now thought Whitlam would try to break the deadlock by asking for a half-Senate election and that Kerr would grant the request.39 On 6 November Treasurer Hayden visited Government House to explain the financial aspects of the political crisis. He sensed that Kerr, who had met secretly with Fraser earlier in the day, was planning to force a general election to break the deadlock. After he returned from Government House he told Whitlam that Kerr might be going to sack the government, but his warning was not heeded. Within a day or so, if not before, Reid knew about Hayden’s gut feeling, though his response was to agree with Whitlam: ‘I discounted what Hayden said, I thought he’d had a wrong impression.’40

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A sense that something strange was going on, though present, did not sink in. On the evening of Monday, 10 November, Government House in Canberra put out the normal circular (‘Vice-regal news’) listing the Governor-General’s most recent visitors. The circular indicated that Kerr had received Chief Justice Barwick that morning. Reid thought the news ‘odd’ but did not tumble to its significance. He did not know that the meeting between the Governor-General and the Chief Justice had gone ahead against the advice of the Prime Minister. He and the journalist colleagues he compared notes with also did not know, naturally enough, that at the meeting Kerr told Barwick that he was ready to dismiss Whitlam and install Fraser in his place. Nor were they aware that Barwick had given Kerr a letter in which the Chief Justice endorsed the constitutional propriety of Kerr’s proposed action. Unbeknownst to the rest of Canberra, Kerr’s staff worked into the early hours of the morning drafting Kerr’s dismissal letter and an accompanying statement of justification.41 A cloud of unknowing enveloped Canberra’s supposed insiders when Tuesday, 11 November dawned. That week’s issue of the Bulletin began rolling off the Packer presses in Sydney at nine in the morning. Reid’s final pre-Dismissal despatch hinted at a possible unexpected denouement: Kerr has undoubtedly been thumbing through such books as Evatt’s [that is, Evatt’s 1936 book The King and His Dominion

Governors], and I should imagine does not see himself as [as] much of an impotent cypher as adoption in totality of the Whitlam theme that he can take his formal advice only from his current Prime Minister would make him.42

This expression of lingering doubt, however, was muted.

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Elsewhere in the magazine there was no suggestion that the end might be near for the Whitlam experiment. The Bulletin’s cover featured a photograph of Opposition leader Fraser with stars and birds round his head to illustrate his supposedly groggy condition, and was captioned ‘Fraser: Man in a muddle’.43 At 9.00am there was a meeting of political leaders from the two warring camps, which settled nothing. The Senate, unless something unexpected happened, would continue to block supply. Whitlam indicated that he was going to see the GovernorGeneral and advise him to call a half-Senate election for 13 December. As soon as the news of the proposed half-Senate election came out Reid was heard to declare that it was possible that the Governor-General might reject Whitlam’s advice but that the possibility was extremely unlikely; the half-Senate scenario, which offered no prospect of a decisive end to the crisis, was an anti-climax as far as he was concerned.44 When the House of Representatives resumed later on in the morning it had a censure motion before it. Doug Anthony was speaking at 12.35pm when Reid, understandably bored with a debate in which nothing new was being said, wandered out of the chamber. As he stood in King’s Hall he saw Malcolm Fraser striding along, clearly on his way out. Reid was surprised, because in his experience Opposition leaders seldom left the building during a censure debate. Fraser, on pausing to speak to him, struck Reid as being ‘more than usually lugubrious’. ‘Where are you off to?’ the pressman asked. ‘Government House,’ Fraser replied, ‘the GG wants to see me. Whitlam’s going out too. He’s seeing Whitlam first and then me.’ ‘What’s [Kerr] want to see you about?’ a puzzled Reid asked. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t told. I suppose it’s to get my version

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of this morning’s discussions [with Whitlam].’ ‘Well, they didn’t get far – Gough’s got you over a bit of a barrel.’ Reid accepted the view that Kerr would automatically grant Whitlam a half-Senate election. He added, for good measure: ‘You have given an undertaking that you will accept any decision made by the GG.’ ‘I qualified that, you know,’ was Fraser’s response. ‘I said that I would abide by a constitutional decision by the Governor-General.’ ‘Oh, that’s semantics. You’ve given an undertaking. You’ll have to give supply. You’re over a barrel.’ This suggestion led Fraser to gloomily observe,‘I could be.’ After some further chitchat Fraser headed off to Government House.45 The explosive events of 11 November were now ready to be unleashed. Reid was again in King’s Hall shortly before 2.00pm when a Labor MP (Vince Martin) rushed over to tell him the unbelievable news that Kerr had just sacked Whitlam and replaced him with Fraser. ‘You’re kidding,’ Reid said. ‘Crean just told me. He’s been up at the Lodge. Whitlam told him,’ was Martin’s reply. Reid tried to find Crean but he had disappeared. He then repaired to the room of one of the parliamentary officers (Clerk of the House of Representatives Doug Blake), where he learnt that the Dismissal would be announced in the House of Representatives sometime that afternoon. An astonished Reid dashed up the stairs to the press gallery, ignoring chiacking colleagues as he went. Some of them told him later that they raced downstairs, reckoning that if he was running upstairs, the news must be big indeed. Once in the

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press gallery Reid got in touch with the TV stations he was associated with and dictated a news flash on the Dismissal. He then returned to King’s Hall, where Liberal Senator Reg Withers came across to discuss the dramatic news. While they were talking Reid spotted Labor’s Senator Doug McClelland, who had spent the lunch hour with the Clerk of the Senate working out how to get the Budget Bills reintroduced in the Senate. McClelland was standing near the door of the Parliamentary Library, only a few yards away. Reid called out to him. He wanted to ask McClelland what tactics the ALP would adopt in the Senate in view of Whitlam’s sacking. Had he asked this question, McClelland would have learnt about the Dismissal, of which he was at that stage still ignorant. He would then have known that he had to get together at once with senatorial colleagues Ken Wriedt and Don Willesee to work out how to deal with this completely unexpected development. McClelland was walking towards Withers and Reid when somebody, whom Reid later recalled may have been from Doug Anthony’s staff, ran up to Withers to say, ‘Mr Fraser would like to see you urgently.’ Withers sped off to Fraser’s office while McClelland, offended by his sudden departure, took off in the opposite direction and was quickly nowhere to be seen. ‘What’s it matter,’ Reid thought, ‘I’ll know what the tactics are as soon as the Senate meets.’ It was not yet 2.00pm and the House of Representatives had not resumed its proceedings. Wriedt, Willesee and McClelland trooped into the Senate, still unaware that Kerr had dismissed Whitlam and that they were no longer ministers.46 The Senate approved the Budget (without a vote) at 2.20pm, and suspended its proceedings at 2.24pm. Had the ALP Senators known what had just happened, they may not have gone

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so quietly. Ten minutes later Fraser informed the House of Representatives of the Governor-General’s decision to dismiss Whitlam and to appoint him in his stead. Fraser was appointed on the understanding that he would be able to get supply approved; the fatal lack of communication between Whitlam and the Labor Party leadership in the Senate had allowed him to fulfil this requirement. The devastating effect of Kerr’s intervention put Reid in mind of the uncontrollable bushfires that every so often raged in the countryside not too far from Parliament House: The news of Kerr’s dramatic action must have swept through Canberra with the speed of fire in a pine forest on a scorching day in a dry summer with a howling westerly blowing from a furnace-like inland.47

Reid had the ultimate Parliament House disaster story on his hands. Victims and bystanders were thrown together amid the debris of shattered dreams. Near the series of pigeonholes where hundreds of press releases and handouts were deposited each week an encounter with a group of reporters, some of whom had tears in their eyes, led to the following brisk exchange of views: Reporters:

What do you think of this?

Reid:

It’s a great story.

Reporters: You wouldn’t have said that if it had happened Reid:

to Menzies. I’d say it if it happened to my own mother – it’s a great story.48

The Dismissal had in one fell swoop dissipated any lingering anti-Labor doubts among the younger cadre of gallery

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journalists. Anti-Fraser sentiment exploded.49 Reid, however, was unmoved. Once news of what had happened that afternoon spread, pro-Whitlam demonstrators flocked to the lawn in front of Parliament House. Reid was caught in the throng, jammed in too tightly to take shorthand notes, but his presence at the historic moment did not go unrecorded. At 4.45pm he was photographed among the politicians, journalists, parliamentary officials and security men gathered on the steps of Parliament House as Kerr’s official secretary, David Smith, read out the proclamation dissolving the 29th Commonwealth Parliament. 50 Whitlam then called on the people in the crowd to maintain their rage and enthusiasm until polling day. Before heading for home after the demonstrators dispersed Reid was stopped by a member of the Parliamentary Library staff who suggested that the enthusiasm of the crowd was a clear pointer to Whitlam winning the ensuing election. Reid was having none of this. Boisterous crowds did not impress him. He told the staffer about Lang’s monster rally in 1932, which was followed by a heavy election defeat, and about Chifley’s enthusiastic audiences in 1949, which did not presage victory either. 51 Labor, now branded as untrustworthy and reprehensible in the eyes of many voters because of Kerr’s decision to dismiss the Whitlam government, was fated to lose the election, but nothing was left to chance. The Packer empire deployed its resources, including Reid, against Whitlam. The Women’s Weekly carried a 16-page supplement in which Reid documented the combined effect of the loans crisis, the blocking of supply and the Dismissal in such a dispassionate way as to present Whitlam’s sacking as ‘an established and accepted fact’ (to quote the Marxist critic Humphrey McQueen). 52 Later on Reid

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insisted, to the editor of the Weekly (Ita Buttrose), that the supplement did indeed contribute to the final election outcome. 53 Packer hostility to Whitlam was unrelenting. For the election campaign, the National Nine Network – the empire’s television wing – created a mid-evening time slot for Reid’s program Federal File. Hosted by news director Gerald Stone, its highlights were interviews with Reid in which the Whitlam government was bucketed. This approach offended at least one of their colleagues. Reid’s interviews struck news producer (and future Independent Member of Parliament) Peter Andren as ‘the most blatant piece of ill-balanced journalism’ he had ever witnessed. Andren memoed Stone in protest, but to no effect. It seemed to him that Stone had ‘seriously compromised’ himself, getting Reid to ham it up as ‘Packer’s hatchet man’ by serving him up an unrelieved series of soft questions. 54 The highlight of Reid’s televised campaign coverage came on 2 December, when on another National Nine Network program (A Current Affair) he claimed that back on 20 October the former Whitlam minister Frank Stewart, the then vicepresident of the Executive Council, had had an interesting telephone conversation with the Governor-General. Michael Schildberger introduced the segment by stating that, according to Reid, Stewart had told Kerr that in his (Stewart’s) view, ‘Mr Connor was entitled to believe that Mr Whitlam had given his approval to continue seeking petro-dollars from overseas immediately following the May 20 Executive Council meeting during which Mr Connor’s authority [to do exactly this] had officially been revoked.’55 Reid repeated this claim in an article in that week’s Bulletin. Stewart, he wrote, had caused Kerr ‘deep concern’ by telling him that Whitlam had informed Connor after the Executive Council meeting that ‘exploratory

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activities’ could continue without its authority. On 20 May the search for petro dollars was ‘not necessarily’ at an end, no matter what the formal records of the Executive Council might indicate. 56 After the Bulletin hit the streets Whitlam issued a press statement in which he said that nobody other than the Treasurer was authorised to negotiate loans after 20 May, and that ‘Mr Reid’s allegations against me are false.’57 Stewart, who had not provided Reid with any details of his conversation with Kerr, also issued a statement denying its accuracy. But the denial came days after the claim was first made; during this period Stewart’s silence allowed the Liberal and Country parties to breathe new life into the loans affair. 58 Whitlam’s closest supporters regarded Reid’s intervention as a serious distraction. 59 On election night Reid repaired to an unlovely outer suburb of Canberra, where the local high school was used as the national tally room. He was in no mood to indulge in banter about the possibility of a close result. Hawke, a fellow member of the National Nine Network’s tally room panel, was sternly told that ‘you are going to go down very hard’. By 9.05pm the figures were bearing out this prediction. Pro-Whitlam rage had dashed without effect on the stony heart of Australia. With the exception of the complex Senate count, the full extent of Labor’s defeat – the final figure in the House of Representatives was 36 seats for Labor to 91 for the Coalition – was evident by 10.30pm. Shortly thereafter Whitlam arrived in the tally room to accept defeat. Experience had triumphed over innocence yet again.60 The Whitlam era was fast expiring, but it was to produce a few more juicy news stories before it ended. There would be no shortage of material for Reid to feed on.

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After the crash alcolm Fraser’s electoral triumph of 13 December 1975 was capped off when, after preferences were distributed and seats finalised, he gained a majority in the Senate as well as in the House of Representatives. On the Sunday after the election, Labor’s stricken hero, Gough Whitlam, conferred with Bob Hawke and, it was understood, invited him to take over as Leader of the Opposition; Bill Hayden stood out as the best qualified successor among Whitlam’s surviving caucus colleagues but he did not wish to lead the party. During the afternoon a statement was issued by someone either on Whitlam’s staff or working for the ALP in Canberra to the effect that Hawke would replace Whitlam. The story was taken up by the media, with Reid reporting in the Bulletin that soundings would be made to find out if any sitting Labor MP was willing to stand down to allow Hawke to enter Parliament. Such publicity at this point was a mistake, however, since it allowed a Stop Hawke campaign to swing into action before a deal could be finalised.1 There were bountiful possibilities for Reid to contemplate in the wake of Labor’s defeat. His enthusiasm for the blood sport of politics was undimmed, and he was eager to write a sequel to The Gorton Experiment. Over the summer of 1975–76 he began writing an account of the Whitlam government’s three years in office, even though it was soon clear that the Whitlam era would continue, at least in some sense, for some time

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yet. On 9 February 1976 Whitlam used a TV interview to reveal that he planned to stay on as Leader of the Opposition and that he intended to fight the next election. Within 24 hours Reid was dwelling in private on how Whitlam had ‘welshed’ on the possible deal with Hawke. He did so in a letter to Lance Barnard that he drafted, and no doubt sent, in a bid to secure written confirmation regarding the accuracy or otherwise of his understanding of a number of key events during the Whitlam administration. It was important, he suggested, for Barnard to get his side of the story onto the public record. This was the best way to the shore up the long-term position of likeminded souls such as Frank Crean and ‘a few others of the oldfashioned ALP types who believe that jobs, housing and such matters are more important than homosexuality, etc’. 2 Two days later Reid recorded a session of Federal File with Hawke in Canberra. Hawke was given the opportunity to comment on the suggestion that he intended to enter Federal Parliament and stand for the Labor Party leadership. The answer he gave did not entirely clarify matters. Hawke acknowledged that a number of Victorian Labor MPs had been asked, presumably in turn, to resign to ensure his early entry into the House of Representatives. He also stated, however, that he approved of Whitlam’s intention to stay on as leader until the next election.3 By now yet another crisis was about to engulf the ALP. After the Federal File program was taped at Canberra’s Rex Hotel, Ken Bennett, the acting ALP national secretary, drew Hawke aside to tell him that ‘there was $500,000 coming from Iraqi sources’ to pay off Labor’s 1975 election debt. Reid became aware of this explosive news either at the hotel or soon after. The intermediary between the ALP and Baathist Iraq was the Sydney businessman Henry Fischer, and it was he who got the

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story moving in the media. Fischer provided information to Rupert Murdoch in a series of meetings in London from 20 to 24 February. By 23 February Reid knew about a meeting on 15 February at which Hawke, Queensland’s John Egerton, John Ducker from New South Wales and other senior party figures had disowned any dealings with Iraq.4 He did not yet know, however – unlike Murdoch, who had a statutory declaration from Fischer – that there had been a high-powered breakfast meeting between Whitlam, Fischer and two Iraqi diplomats on 10 December 1975. On the evening of 24 February Reid was mulling over the story when Murdoch, who knew that the deadline for that week’s Bulletin had passed, phoned him from London. Murdoch, who had checked out the meeting places, times and travel movements mentioned by Fischer, told Reid, ‘I’ve got enough to go on.’ Reid later privately stated that in a second conversation with Murdoch he told Murdoch that Laurie Oakes was going to break the story the next morning –‘You’d better use it, Rupert, because it’s going to appear in the Sun Pic tomorrow.’ However, another source suggests that Murdoch learnt about the story only after Hawke told him that Oakes had asked him (Hawke) to comment on it. 5 The Sun tried to keep its scoop a secret by letting its first edition hit the streets without the Oakes story, but ‘Murdoch’s scouts’ (so described by Clyde Cameron) read it in the later editions and alerted Murdoch’s headquarters. Reid told Cameron that Murdoch had directed that morning’s issue of The Australian to be held over while he (Murdoch) wrote up the story.6 On the morning of 25 February both The Australian and the Sun News-Pictorial featured stories which revealed the attempt to secure $500,000 from Iraqi sources for the ALP.7 The Oakes story did not refer to the 10

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December breakfast meeting and focused on the 15 February meeting, while Murdoch dealt exclusively with the 10 December meeting (there had been two earlier meetings between Whitlam and Fischer as well). Reid revelled in the cloak and dagger atmosphere of the Iraqi loans affair. On the morning of 15 March a manilla envelope marked ‘personal’ was placed under the office door of Clyde Cameron in Parliament House. Cameron knew that government ministers had in their hands a 40-page document which purported to be the transcript of dictated evidence from Fischer and which had come from Murdoch. Cameron’s document, however, consisted of only 15 pages. He thought it might be a hoax, but within a few minutes his phone rang and a voice, which he recognised as Reid’s, said, ‘Have you got that thing, Comrade? That is only a summary of the original, but it covers the points pertinent to what we were discussing last night and you can bank on it.’ Before Cameron could respond, the caller hung up. Cameron then showed the document to his longstanding WA colleague Kim Beazley Sr, who had resigned as a shadow minister in protest at Labor’s dodgy Baghdad connection. He refused to allow the Member for Fremantle to photocopy the document, so Beazley was forced to spend the next few hours transcribing it in longhand.8 Reid was ready to step up the pressure on Whitlam. By the spring of 1976 it was widely known that his book on Whitlam’s prime ministerial years was likely to be published soon. It was rumoured that Reid’s long history of defamation suits meant that ACP was not going to be associated with this book, especially as it dealt with so contentious and touchy a topic. Fellow journalists wanted to know who the brave publisher would be. The answer to their question turned out to be Michael Zifcak,

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a Melbourne bookseller. Zifcak, who possessed ‘a mixture of Middle European charm and hard-nosed salesmanship’, was managing director of Collins Booksellers and founder of the Hill of Content publishing company.9 His dealings with Reid began when the pressman phoned him up out of the blue and asked, ‘Is that you, Zifcak? I was told that you are the best book flogger in the country, and I’d like you to distribute my book on Whitlam.’ Reid explained that he had finished writing his account of Whitlam’s three years in power. He intended to publish it in Hong Kong, because Australian publishers were reluctant to touch it. Reid told Zifcak that the manuscript had been vetted by lawyers, at whose insistence some 25,000 words had been excised. It had been edited, typeset and was in galley proof form, and all he was looking for was someone to import it from Hong Kong after it was printed and wholesale it in Australia. Reid had chosen this procedure because of his experience with Australia’s defamation laws. He had also, he told Zifcak, for the same reason, placed all his assets in his wife’s name.10 Zifcak had to explain to Reid that in matters of defamation, the country where a book was printed was irrelevant; it was the local distributor and seller of the book who, in a court of law, would be considered to have published it. There thus being no need for a foreign publisher/printer, Zifcak asked to see the manuscript. On reading it he was impressed; Reid, he felt, documented ‘a fascinating era in Australian political history and beautifully characterised the various players’. After the board of Hill of Content approved the project, another set of defamation lawyers went through Reid’s text and eliminated a further 9000 words. The stress of publishing a Reid book helped bond the two men, and they became ‘very close

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friends’; so much so that they did not see the need to sign a formal publishing contract.11 Reid’s third political chronicle – The Whitlam Venture – covered three remarkable years in Australian federal politics, from the election victory of 2 December 1972 to the Dismissal and Whitlam’s ensuing election debacle. The fulcrum for the story was the meeting at The Lodge in December 1974 when Whitlam and three fellow protagonists – Jim Cairns, Rex Connor and Lionel Murphy – ‘signed the Whitlam Government’s death warrant’ by authorising the search for an overseas loan. In view of its importance in contributing to Whitlam’s downfall, Reid removed his account of this meeting from the strict sequence of events and instead made it the opening chapter. This was an act of authorial licence that recalled the prologue of The Gorton Experiment where Ainsley Gotto and three fellow protagonists – Malcolm Fraser, Malcolm Scott and Dudley Erwin – are shown plotting John Gorton’s election as Liberal Party leader. Huddled secretive conclaves where audacious plans were devised continued to animate Reid’s vision of Australian politics. Sometimes that vision and political reality diverged … but not, it seems, in the case of Whitlam and his downfall. ‘Whitlam,’ Reid wrote when defining the Prime Minister’s style of government, ‘set out to make himself more than the first among equals, the Colossus of the ALP, and to seek to establish himself, in practice though not in name, as the George Washington of Australia and its first Prime Minister to exercise presidential powers.’12 The Whitlam Venture was cast as a tale of hubris, a tragedy of overweening pride, but Reid did concede that before excess took over, there was good reason for Whitlam to be proud. His Labor government implemented many worthwhile and lasting reforms. The pace was impressive.

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About a third of the way through The Whitlam Venture Reid unleashed an uncharacteristically lyrical overview of the beneficial changes that Whitlam’s government achieved in its first 12 months in office: It had improved immeasurably the lot of pensioners. It had abolished the means test for pensions for all persons over seventy-five. It had improved the status of women and was committed to introduce equal pay for the sexes. It had plans for setting up a national health scheme – Medibank. It had given the vote to eighteen-year-old citizens, checked foreign investment in Australian real estate, closed income tax loopholes, imposed export controls over minerals exports, and doubled government assistance to the arts.13

This litany gave a good indication of why for the next 30 years and more progressive Australians would look on the Whitlam government with undying affection and admiration. Unquestionably, its positive achievements marked a great and welcome turning point in Australian history. And yet while Reid acknowledged some of the good things Whitlam achieved, in a larger sense he remained unmoved. The song of praise was short. Reid was determined not be swept away by the political revolution of 1972. His stance, in this regard, was hardly surprising. He was employed by the Packer publishing empire, after all, where fear and hatred of Whitlam lingered long after Sir Frank Packer’s death in 1974. His earliest literary hero was Gibbon, for whom history, at its most instructive, was a tale of corruption and addiction to power followed by decline and fall. His personal political story was one long tale of estrangement from the ALP, as indicated by his expulsion in 1957 and his Whitlam-era alarm at the power of progressives and

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‘trendies’ (as exemplified by Dr Coombs and, by extension, the increasing numbers of young people staffing ministerial offices under Whitlam). He drew on these great springs of hostile energy when charting Whitlam’s three heroic years in office. They were the reasons for his pitilessness. Zifcak could not be faulted in his efforts to maximise the buzz surrounding The Whitlam Venture. He arranged for Reid’s book to be launched at the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney on Thursday, 25 November 1976. He told journalists that review copies would be delivered to them by taxi at 4.00pm on the Thursday and advised booksellers that their copies would be delivered by courier on the same day, at the same hour. This induced sense of intrigue resulted in booksellers doubling their orders and prompted Hill of Content to increase its print run.14 To add to the excitement, the Bulletin that week published an extract featuring The Whitlam Venture’s account of the events leading up to the Dismissal, and with ‘some previously secret documents’. These included a minute, dated 10 December 1974, written by Treasury deputy secretary John Stone for the then Treasurer Frank Crean, in which Stone warned that the search for a loan from sources in the Middle East was fraught with all kinds of political, economic, legal and foreign policy dangers. Other documents mentioned in the extract concerned Sir William Gunn, pastoralist-entrepreneur and member of the Reserve Bank board, and documented, Reid claimed, a continued interest in Arab funds and a continuing Treasury concern that such interest was dangerous and had no legal authority. The Gunn documents, written at various times in August 1975, included a record of a conversation between Gunn and Ken Brennan, Australia’s Ambassador to Switzerland, which

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concerned ‘an overseas loan’. Reid was pleased to have got hold of the Gunn documents, because they raised the question of whether or not Prime Minister Whitlam was involved in loan negotiations after 20 May 1975, the day on which the Executive Council’s authority to raise a loan was revoked. Ambassador Brennan understood from his conversation with Gunn in August 1975 that Gunn had been ‘making inquiries about the availability of loan moneys at the instance of, or at least with the knowledge and approval of, the Prime Minister’. Press comment on The Whitlam Venture was forbidden until the extract in the Bulletin hit the streets, but the Sydney Morning Herald flouted the publisher’s embargo. It got hold of an advance copy and two days before the launch featured a story on the confidential diplomatic documents relating to Gunn and the alleged loan-raising activities conducted on behalf of the Whitlam government after authority to do so had been withdrawn. Peter Bowers, who wrote the story, stated in it that former Prime Minister Whitlam was ‘involved in efforts to raise an overseas loan last year nearly three months after the crucial cut-off date’.15 The contentious story featured in the Melbourne Sun and The Australian on the following day,16 by which time Gunn had categorically denied that he had ever acted as an intermediary on overseas loan negotiations. He insisted that the report of his phone conversation with Ambassador Brennan reflected a misunderstanding of what he had intended to say. Reid stated, in a TV interview, that having published it, he now proposed to let the Brennan document speak for itself.17 Whitlam’s office too was involved in the hoo-hah. On 24 November, the day before the launch, The Australian reported that Whitlam had asked his staff to buy a copy of Reid’s

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book; he intended to read it and then decide whether or not to take legal action. It did not take him long to make a decision. Within 24 hours Whitlam had instructed his solicitors to issue writs for defamation against the author, printer, publisher and distributor, plus a Canberra vendor of The Whitlam Venture. He also instructed them to issue writs against the Bulletin and the three newspapers that had repeated offending comments from or related to the book in their pre-launch publicity. The proprietors involved included Fairfax and Murdoch. Whitlam was distressed that many newspapers had ‘repeated and even embellished the allegations in the book that I was seeking overseas loans after May 20, 1975, and that Sir William Gunn was making inquiries for such loans at my instance or with my knowledge and approval’. Such allegations were, Whitlam insisted, baseless, and he intended to clear his reputation.18 At seven o’clock on the morning of the launch, Zifcak was woken up at the Wentworth Hotel and handed two writs – one in his capacity as managing director of Collins Booksellers and one in his capacity as managing director of Hill of Content – each for $500,000. Publishing the material relating to Sir William Gunn, he realised, might well prove a costly oversight.19 At Reid’s insistence Zifcak’s defence was taken up by the Packer legal team. The attempt by ACP to not get sucked into yet another Reid libel case had been frustrated by the Bulletin’s publishing of an extract from the book. Whitlam’s writs cranked up press interest in the proceedings in the Matilda Room at the Wentworth Hotel when academic lawyer Geoffrey Sawer launched The Whitlam Venture. There were ‘audible intakes of breath around the room’ when Reid sidled up to the microphone and expressed the view that issuing a writ was ‘a very useful political ploy if the subject on which the writ is issued is

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likely to be raised in Parliament’. The author expressed ‘goodhumoured contempt’ for politicians who launched such stop writs.20 For as long as the libel action was in train, The Whitlam Venture had to be put on hold. Though it had been planned, a second printing did not eventuate; the book disappeared from the shelves, never to be seen in a commercial bookshop again.21 The legal limbo to which The Whitlam Venture had been consigned was a source of great concern to Reid. The angst that resulted added to his desire to assist, by providing helpful advice, in moves to end Whitlam’s leadership of the federal Labor Party. Following the 1975 election, caucus was operating under a new set of rules: they provided for a leadership ballot to be held halfway through the lifetime of the existing Parliament. Sometime in mid-1977 Whitlam would have to submit himself to the judgement of his caucus colleagues. For Reid this was an opportunity for payback. If Whitlam’s legal team could abort The Whitlam Venture, its author could help end Whitlam’s leadership. After weeks of speculation, to which Reid contributed, 22 the leadership issue blew up at the end of February 1977, with the publication of a letter to Harry Jenkins, the caucus secretary, from Clyde Cameron, known not to be well disposed towards Whitlam. Cameron’s letter called for new party rules to curb autocratic tendencies in any future Labor Prime Minister; his reference to the intolerable evil of ‘one-man dictatorship’ and to leaders who had an ‘insane obsession with pride and power’ was seen as a rallying call to end the Whitlam era. On 11 March 1977, frontbencher Hayden announced that he would contest the leadership at the mid-term ballot.23 On the day after Hayden’s announcement, Reid phoned Cameron to find out what he thought about the Hayden–

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Whitlam contest. He buttered up the Member for Hindmarsh by saying that his leaked letter to Jenkins was indeed the catalyst which had brought the leadership conflict into focus again. People had to be reminded of Whitlam’s past errors of leadership. Present indications were that Hayden would win comfortably.24 Every attempt was made by Reid’s organ, the Bulletin, to fulfil this prophecy – it ran a favourable feature article on the Queenslander, picturing him as tenacious, intelligent and responsible.25 A rumour went around Parliament House, and was duly verified by Cameron, to the effect that the Bulletin had asked Roy Morgan to conduct an opinion poll on the public acceptability of Hayden and Whitlam.26 Opinion polling was an integral part of the leadership challenge. Its importance was clear on 21 April, when Reid joined in an intimate chat between Cameron and Hayden in Hayden’s parliamentary office.27 At one point the conversation turned to the recent poll result which indicated that more people than not felt that Hayden had a better chance than Whitlam of leading Labor back to power, whereupon Reid revealed that when he heard about the poll he phoned Trevor Kennedy, the Bulletin’s editor-in-chief, to suggest that he should get the result out to the Melbourne Herald, the Brisbane Courier-Mail, the Adelaide Advertiser and other outlets through their syndicated rights, and should advise them that they could use the poll free of charge. Reid volunteered the information that there would be another poll in three weeks. Hayden would be looked after. ‘If it is an adverse one, I’ll get them to play it down,’ he rasped.28 The three weeks duly elapsed, and Reid phoned Cameron to advise him that a Gallup Poll due to come out the following morning would show that Fraser’s public approval had gone up to 42 per cent and Whitlam’s was up to 41 per cent. This

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poll was bound to strengthen Whitlam’s position in the battle for the leadership but Reid was undaunted. He told Cameron that he had already arranged for another poll to be taken in which the public would be asked to state who they thought, out of Whitlam and Hayden, was the more likely to lead Labor to victory at the next federal election.29 Cameron was unenthusiastic. He felt that Whitlam had now edged ahead of Hayden in the leadership race, by dint of greater application to the arts of lobbying and ingratiation. Reid, eventually, had to agree. He reported in the Bulletin that Whitlam was ‘shading’ Hayden. At the end of May this prophecy was fulfilled, and Whitlam was re-elected by 2 votes (32 to 30).30 In the spring of 1977 Zifcak’s lawyers advised him that Whitlam was not pursuing the defamation action with any vigour. It seemed that Reid would have ‘to press Whitlam to make the running’.31 The racing analogy was prophetic. On Melbourne Cup Day the ACT Supreme Court was told that defamation actions brought by Gough and Margaret Whitlam against John Fairfax and Sons Ltd had been settled. Fairfax publicly apologised for damage or distress caused by its reporting of references in The Whitlam Venture to the 1975 loans affair. A Whitlam lawyer said that the matter had been discontinued ‘in consideration of the payment … of a sum of money which has been agreed by all parties not to be disclosed’. 32 Later Whitlam also reached an out-of-court settlement with the Murdoch press.33 He would not, however, make a settlement with Reid because, the pressman was informed, he considered Reid ‘malicious’.34 As Reid neared old age – he was now in his sixties – the litigation generated by The Whitlam Venture threatened to take on the dimensions of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. This was not a pleasing prospect.

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From Fraser to Hawke n a bid to capitalise on abiding anti-Whitlam sentiment, Malcolm Fraser called an election at the end of 1977. Before the campaign began there was a hitch: Phil Lynch was forced to ‘stand aside as Treasurer in the present government’ – in fact it was for good – after revelations concerning unwise private financial transactions surfaced.1 Lynch’s demotion led to the appointment of a new federal Treasurer in the person of John Winston Howard, aged 38. The incoming Treasurer, as he later freely acknowledged, held Reid’s writing, particularly The Power Struggle and The Gorton Experiment, in high regard.2 Reid, for his part, resorted to a double negative in providing an initial assessment of the youthful Treasurer: ‘he does not give the impression of a man who does not speak up’. Though Howard’s career to date had been ‘meteoric’ in its speed, he had risen without trace: In nearly two years as a minister in the Fraser Government, John Winston Howard, bespectacled, solemn, usually the epitome of clerkly neatness in a drab business suit as befits a one-time Sydney solicitor climbing the steep ladder of his profession, has by and large kept out of trouble. Now, with his appointment last week as Treasurer, fate and his Prime Minister have put him in a portfolio in which trouble appears endemic.3

The Lynch affair failed to dent Fraser’s fortunes. On 10 Dec-

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ember 1977 the Australian people re-elected him as Prime Minister, with his bloated majority shrinking only slightly. Gough Whitlam stood down from the leadership of the federal parliamentary Labor Party and Bill Hayden took over. Amid the electoral wreckage there was one piece for which Reid was ready to claim personal responsibility. In the course of a post-mortem chat with Clyde Cameron he mentioned that he had secured a leaked copy of the report of the Royal Commission on Human Relationships – a ‘Whitlam-appointed’ body chaired by Elizabeth Evatt – and had published a number of its recommendations in a Bulletin article. Readers of the article were informed that the Royal Commission was supporting unrelieved permissiveness. Reid reported that it had ‘made recommendations which, if approved, would change the entire public approach to pimping (living off the earnings of a prostitute), brothel keeping, [and] teacher-pupil sexual relations, and give 14-year-olds access to legalised abortion without parental consent’. If the intention was to make conservative hackles rise, the aim was achieved; Fred Daly, Reid was pleased to hear, felt that leaking the report had been a factor in mobilising Catholic opinion against Labor in Canberra as well as elsewhere, thus ensuring the re-election of John Haslem, the Liberal who was Reid’s local federal member.4 Reid was quick to disabuse the public of the notion that political stories were bound to be ‘dreary’ now, as Fraser had retained his majority in both Houses of Federal Parliament. He insisted in a Bulletin article that politics could be ‘interesting … though in a more subtle fashion’, as a result of incipient Coalition concern about Fraser’s style. The Prime Minister was just as headstrong and non-collegiate as Whitlam and Gorton had ever been. 5

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Reid was set in his ideas about what constituted politics and knew where his strength lay. He had no intention of switching his journalistic focus from conflict and personalities in the corridors of power to fuzzier longer term issues. He did not respond with any enthusiasm when freshman Opposition member Barry Jones tried to generate interest in biotechnology as a public policy issue. ‘When I hear the words “science” and “technology”,’ Reid told Jones, ‘I close up my typewriter.’6 Reid’s love of crises and clashes was fully satisfied in the winter of 1978, when the Withers affair erupted. As a result of stalling by Prime Minister Fraser, allegations that Eric Robinson, now his Minister for Finance, had attempted to interfere with a Queensland electoral redistribution took on a life of their own. A possible police inquiry escalated into a Royal Commission. In the lead-up to the decision to appoint a Royal Commission, Fraser government heavies gathered at The Lodge one Sunday, from where, according to Reid, one unnamed participant phoned him to ask his advice. ‘You’d be out of your mind,’ Reid said. ‘When you appoint Royal Commissions you’re opening a Pandora’s box.’7 Such an outcome duly came to pass. Mr Justice McGregor, who headed the Royal Commission which examined the allegations against the Finance Minister, cleared Robinson, but his terms of reference were enlarged after Senator Reg Withers, the Minister for Administrative Services, whose responsibilities included electoral matters, gave evidence that he had communicated with the Chief Electoral Officer about the naming of Robinson’s electorate.8 When Fraser received Justice McGregor’s report he decided Withers had to go. Withers was sacked (on 7 August 1978) when he did not resign. Reid gave Withers’ version of the affair in a Bulletin article.

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He detailed the appointment of an ad hoc Cabinet committee which endorsed the Senator’s dismissal. Fraser claimed that Withers was allowed to ‘hand pick’ the ministerial jury but Reid quoted Withers’ version of a conversation with Fraser which, if ‘anywhere near accurate’, backed up Withers’ denial of Fraser’s claim. Reid’s information was that at the first full Cabinet meeting after Withers went, Defence Minister Jim Killen and Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock joined in condemning Fraser’s style of government. In his article Reid indicated that he agreed with their criticism: If they had been included [in the ad hoc committee], Fraser would undoubtedly still have got what he wanted – the Withers sacking – and they as cabinet members would have been bound by the cabinet decision and in a position where they would have to either shut up or put up.

Fraser, Reid concluded, had ‘botched’ the Withers affair. Reid’s article was accompanied by a second contribution which he worked on with a youthful Malcolm Turnbull, for whom writing for the Bulletin was supposedly a period of ‘marking time’ as he prepared to go to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship.9 (The Packer connection eventually turned out to be an invaluable asset.) Turnbull and Reid claimed that the Prime Minister, in ‘a most unusual request’, had asked Robinson to write him (Fraser) a letter saying that a crucial piece of McGregor Royal Commission evidence – to the effect that Withers had allegedly told the Prime Minister of his approach to the electoral commissioner – was not ‘sound’ because it was based on Robinson’s ‘uncertain memory’.10 Reid was pleased at the impact this new suggestion had. ‘The disclosure of the conversation,’ he noted in the Bulletin, ‘engulfed Fraser in a major political

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crisis.’ The Opposition had ‘a succession of field days in Federal Parliament … with Fraser and Robinson repeatedly refusing to deny our story’.11 Robinson and Fraser’s answers to questions on the matter in Parliament suggested to some observers ‘that they both were being shifty and deliberately evasive’. As an immediate consequence, rumours of a leadership challenge started to surface.12 Interviews and press briefings were arranged in a desperate attempt to shore up Fraser’s credibility.13 Eventually the Prime Minister was forced to ‘categorically deny’ that he had asked Robinson to cast doubt on his own evidence to the McGregor Royal Commission. This statement ended the Withers affair, but in denying the accuracy of the Bulletin story Fraser was forced to breach the unwritten rule that conversations between ministers should be confidential.14 After more than 40 years in the game Reid was still capable of kicking a story along. Robinson, though reinstated, was not happy at having been dragged into such a squalid political imbroglio. His discontent, fuelled by further personal and policy clashes over the following months, exploded early in 1979. As Reid later recalled the day’s events, at nine o’clock on the morning of Thursday, 22 February, Robinson phoned Reid to say that he was going to resign because he could no longer accept the hands-on management style favoured by ‘the bastard Fraser’. He then asked for advice on what he should say in his letter of resignation. Reid, on establishing that Robinson simply wanted to get out, and did not wish to bring Fraser down with him, counselled him to make his resignation letter ‘very brief’ and not to make himself available to the media. In this instance, as in so many others, the provision of advice from Reid worsened matters rather than calming them

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down. The two-sentence note of resignation that Robinson innocently composed and handed to Fraser at eight o’clock that night was not seen as unthreatening; its very brevity seemed to invite endless interpretation and fearful speculation. Robinson’s ‘curt, condemnatory’ tone (‘I am not able to give you the unqualified support that you expect of a minister’) threw Lynch – who was still deputy leader of the party – into a tizz. Lynch told Fraser that Robinson was expressing a view on Fraser’s style that quite a few ministers held. The entire government, Lynch warned, was in danger of self-destruction. Confronted with this proposition, Fraser buckled and asked Robinson to meet him and Lynch for ‘discussions’. He promised to be less interfering and intimidating, and Robinson withdrew his resignation. A cynical Reid opined that it remained to be seen if Fraser would in fact adopt a more conciliatory style. However, over the succeeding months the shock of Robinson’s attempt to resign seemed to have had some effect: ‘Life in Fraser’s cabinet and for his ministers generally,’ Reid reported, ‘has become easier.’15 Though Reid’s Bulletin readership did not know it at the time, Fraser rode out his mid-term blues in the face of the pressman’s best behind-the-scenes efforts. Reid’s love of mischief was unabated. In mid-1979 he acted as go-between in trying to set up a unlikely party room coup. One winter’s day he approached Wal Fife, Fraser’s Minister for Education, with an invitation to have lunch in Sydney with Kerry Packer, who had been Reid’s boss since Sir Frank died. The date of the meeting was 30 July. After lunch, Packer took Fife aside and, after criticising the performance of Fraser and his Treasurer, John Howard, announced that it was ‘time for a change’. In a scenario that had Reid’s fingerprints all over it, he asked Fife

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if he would support Peacock in a run for Prime Minister and run for Deputy Leader against Lynch. As a denizen of Wagga, Fife’s allotted role was to attract NSW votes in the party room away from Fraser and Lynch, both of whom were from Victoria. However, the plot withered and died as soon as it was proposed, with Fife immediately telling Packer that Fraser had his complete support. There was to be no party room challenge in 1979.16 Fraser’s secret reprieve left Reid free for a while to focus his beady eye on the Labor Party. As usual, he had a clear agenda. In the aftermath of the Whitlam era there was, he felt, a need to track the destabilising impact of the young radical folk now flooding into the ALP. Reid relished a comment that Kim Beazley Sr, now retired from Parliament, made at a Labor Party conference in Western Australia: When I first joined the ALP in WA it was dominated by the most responsible elements of the trade union movement and the cream of the working class. Unfortunately there has been a tendency lately for the party to be infested by middle-class perverts who treat the party as a spiritual spittoon.

That comment was seen as an infringement of the party’s policy on liberalising the laws governing homosexuality and it required the intervention of his Labor colleague John Wheeldon to prevent the WA state executive acting against him. In his coverage of these developments Reid commented that other WA Labor stalwarts, such as former Premier John Tonkin, were alarmed by the state branch’s ‘concentrating almost exclusively on the problems of homosexuality, prostitution, potsmoking and the like’ in preference to the bread and butter

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issues that had been uppermost when Reid had been a young Labor firebrand.17 He was worried by similar developments in other state branches. The social composition of the ALP was changing in ways that disturbed him. A formidable nexus of politicised schoolteachers and other progressive-minded souls, plus trade union militants, their boldness swelling as Australia teetered on ‘the threshold of the Technological Revolution’, and Socialist Left ideologues in Victoria were aggressively reshaping political debate and culture in Australia, Reid felt.18 The enemy needed to be exposed wherever it lay. Reid felt compelled to write a Bulletin story when the Victorian ALP’s Status of Women Policy Committee declared, as quoted by Reid, that, ‘In many instances, marriage is also a form of prostitution, only the pay is a lot poorer.’19 The Committee was chaired by Joan Coxsedge, whose Liberal opponent in the upcoming election for the Upper House seat of Melbourne West welcomed Reid’s article as ‘ just the right sort of grist for my electioneering mill’.20 Aboriginal land rights was another iconic issue that had Reid worried. He highlighted the unease of the Australian Mining Industry Council and the Northern Territory government about land rights legislation. Australia, Reid suggested, was being divided into ‘a two-nation country, and … in an odd kind of way apartheid similar to that in South Africa is being enforced by well-meaning but misguided Australian governments’. The continuing prominence of Dr HC Coombs fanned his fears. He saw a treaty of peace and friendship with Aboriginal people, which Coombs reportedly was promoting, as ‘an acceptance of the two-nation concept’.21 Worry on the land rights front segued into suspicion of related multiculturalism policies. A strong assimilationist, 22 Reid

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condemned the bipartisan support for a 1979 report, submitted by Melbourne lawyer Frank Galbally, on migrant services and programs. Both the Fraser government and the ALP, he lamented, were fostering policies which were designed to allow bureaucrats and ‘ambitious professional migrants’ to prop up ‘permanent ethnic enclaves’ where ‘old hates, animosities and feuds’ were kept alive.23 Reid’s position on multiculturalism provoked an editorial in Neos Kosmos which described him as a ‘faithful servant of the Anglo-Saxon Establishment’.24 Reid was keen to publicise the efforts of people in the ALP who were prepared to take on the modish leftists. He had a high regard for ACTU President Bob Hawke because he was the bane of the Labor left. By late 1979 the ideological divide between Hawke and the Socialist Left faction in Victoria was a regular leitmotif in Reid’s comments in the Bulletin, and he did not hide which side he favoured: Hawke and his factional trade union allies were righteously confronting the enemy within. Their stance, Reid suggested, was all the braver because there was no federal Labor leader around to stamp the anti-Socialist Left cause with the authority of his position, as Whitlam had once done; Hayden preferred neutrality.25 Until Hawke entered Federal Parliament in 1980 Reid looked to NSW Laborites such as Lionel Bowen and Paul Keating to champion a right-wing position in the federal party. The connection with Keating, a fellow disciple of Jack Lang, was particularly rich in potential. The young member for Blaxland was intent on going places and, in fulfilling his political hopes, a close relationship with journalists would help him a lot. Later on Keating might well dismiss Reid as an ‘infamous Labor hater’ but in the opening phase of his Canberra career he assiduously cultivated the veteran pressman:

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Al an ‘T h e Red Fox’ Reid As backbencher after entering parliament in 1969, he spent long hours with senior journalists, particularly Alan Reid …, soaking up knowledge and history but also staking his claim for influence.26

It was wondrous to see such an acolyte bloom. Factional animus was an endless source of inspiration. For part of 1979 the action, for Reid, centred on the question of whether or not the federal ALP should intervene in Queensland, where the state party machine faced organised opposition from a pro-reform minority. The dissenters included a young Peter Beattie who, attuned to the media even then, supplied Reid with background information on the push for reform in the sunshine state.27 Early in 1979 Hayden, under pressure from Bowen and Keating, postponed intervention in Queensland. Reid outlined the case for nonintervention in the Bulletin: critics claimed that intervention in Queensland would have a domino effect, triggering a leftwing bid for control of the party nationally.28 In a later issue of the Bulletin Reid said that the Socialist Left would pick up a seat on the national executive as the price for supporting federal intervention in Queensland. Extremism, he warned his readers, was on the march. The Socialist Left was ‘highly organised, indefatigable, and ruthless’.29 These comments led the Labor left in New South Wales to single out Reid as a source of misinformation; its journal Challenge featured an article entitled ‘Bully Boys of the Bulletin’ which pointed out (correctly) that hard left forces were only one element in the anti-machine revolt in Queensland. Reid, Challenge stated, was acting as ‘the mouthpiece of the NSW Labor Right’. He was not seen as the only evil-doer: Challenge also targeted Reid’s Bulletin

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colleague Bob Carr, describing him as a fellow ‘carpetbagger’. 30 Carr had joined the Bulletin two years earlier at the instigation of Turnbull.31 Trevor Kennedy and ACP executive Harry Chester were soon suggesting that he should succeed Reid as Packer’s emissary in Canberra. Though Carr found this offer tempting, he turned it down, mainly at the urging of Keating (who considered journalism ‘a rat-shit profession’). 32 Reid loved his job as much as ever; it did not take him long to fire up an issue, no matter how hoary it might be. His abiding interest in chicanery on the waterfront entered a new phase on the day he received a letter from Billy Longley, an inmate of Pentridge prison in Melbourne who was serving a sentence for the murder of a former secretary of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers’ Union. After he was jailed Longley wrote letters to journalists, media commentators (such as Phillip Adams) and legal authorities to plead his innocence.33 Reid was happy to be included in the campaign. Longley wanted Reid to use any contacts he might have with the Victorian government to wangle him a parole, or at least move him to a more salubrious prison. However, Reid could do nothing because Longley was not prepared to give him any information. That was not the end of the matter, though; criminality in Longley’s union was to become a big story after Reid’s fellow Longley media contact, Phillip Adams, introduced David Richards, a young freelance journalist, to the Bulletin.34 Beginning on 11 March 1980, four successive Bulletin articles by Richards, based on information gleaned while working undercover on the waterfront, provided detailed and exclusive coverage of alleged criminal activities in the Victorian branch of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers’ Union. Federal Cabinet, following the Bulletin articles, authorised

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police inquiries with a view to initiating prosecutions for criminal activity. Reid scoffed when he learnt that there was talk of appointing a Royal Commission. He stated in a Bulletin article that he was ‘dubious’ about such an approach, previous Royal Commission reports having produced hair-raising evidence but few results.35 Reid discussed the issue in private with ministers, including perhaps Fraser. The Prime Minister was excited by the notion of exposing evil in a maritime union which had been infiltrated by criminals perpetrating ‘murder and mayhem on a frightening scale’, as author Paul Kelly later put it. 36 There could be no better way to embarrass the Labor Party and its trade union allies. Reid agreed that there should be an ‘inquiry’ but as usual he did not think it wise, as he later recounted, to establish a Royal Commission; 37 the fate of Reg Withers had amply confirmed that Royal Commissions could easily backfire on the government that set them up. Fraser, however, thought otherwise and, in the spring of 1980, he did set up a full-scale Royal Commission, headed by the Victorian lawyer Frank Costigan, to examine the activities of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers’ Union. In December 1981 Costigan found that promoters of tax avoidance rackets were using members of the union as front men for their schemes; he sought, and was given, government approval to shift the focus of the inquiry to the tax crimes. Hawke continued to be another good source for stories. All through 1981 Reid was scouring the federal Labor landscape in search of new fractures and fissures following Hawke’s belated entry into Federal Parliament in the October 1980 federal election. ‘Rumbles in the ALP are as commonplace as earth tremors in New Zealand,’ he acknowledged, but the rumbles that he was detecting did appear ‘more ominous than

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usual, sufficiently so to suggest that there could be a major upheaval looming’. Hayden’s backing of federal intervention in the Queensland ALP remained a source of tension. The intervention had led to legal action, and Reid saw this as a potential precipitant of a Hawke–Hayden leadership clash: ‘If the Queensland judgment goes the wrong way from Hayden’s viewpoint it could start a ferment within the ALP, a ferment with the potential to bring the Hayden–Hawke rivalry to the boil.’38 Although the legal challenge foundered, 39 another source of ill-feeling surfaced, in the form of the contentious issue of whether or not Australia should participate in a proposed multinational Sinai peacekeeping force. When the federal ALP rejected Australian involvement in such a force Reid was careful to set out reasons why the decision should not be interpreted ‘as a defeat for the pro-Israel Bob Hawke and a triumph for Bill Hayden’. Hawke was, he said, ‘unusually low key, but effective. He rejected claims that Australia was in danger of involving itself in a Vietnam-type situation.’ Reid was ready to endorse Hawke’s version of events.40 Prime Minister Fraser believed that life was not meant to be easy and Reid was ready to take him at his word. He was diverted from Labor Party infighting, ever his true love, in the spring of 1981 when a scandal involving meat substitution in Australia’s beef exports to the United States led to the establishment of a Royal Commission into the Meat Industry. Though Reid’s coverage of the scandal in the Bulletin formed part of a wider public outcry which spanned the Pacific, his particular contribution did not go unnoticed. When Hayden attacked Peter Nixon, the Minister for Primary Industry, he cited Reid as an authority: ‘It is clear on the evidence, the declaration of Mr Reid and the reluctance of the Government to face up to

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this issue today, that the Federal Police have been nobbled by heavyweight intervention at the highest level.’ A Reid article alleged that Nixon did nothing despite being warned explicitly of dubious meat inspection techniques. An internal Department of Primary Industry minute which suggested that Reid’s claim was exaggerated did not gain public exposure until a year later, when the Royal Commission presented its report.41 There was conflict between Fraser and his Cabinet colleague Peacock during 1981 and 1982. An article by Reid which appeared in the Bulletin in the spring of 1981 was a by-product of the ill-feeling. The article concerned alleged delays in the deregistration of the Builders Labourers’ Federation, a policy that had been approved when Peacock was, fleetingly, Minister for Industrial Relations. In answer to a question without notice on 15 September (a question which Reid described as ‘a deliberate set-up’), Peacock’s ministerial successor, Ian Viner, described the deregistration case as having been in a ‘state of unpreparedness’ when he took over. Reid’s article suggested that Viner’s comment was ‘a political ploy, designed to lessen Peacock’s standing with his parliamentary colleagues’. In a bid to muddy the waters, Reid then referred to a leaked document from the Department of Industrial Relations, prep-ared early in May, soon after Viner took over from Peacock as minister, which provided a reassuring commentary on ‘the progress made and quality of preparation’ of the deregistration case under Peacock.42 The document was seen as detracting from Viner’s credibility, but in the event the damage was little. Reid’s article inspired an Opposition question without notice to Fraser,43 but nothing else resulted. A surface calm now prevailed on the Liberal leadership front. As Reid looked to the future there was one piece of

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unfinished business that refused to go away. Though settlement may have been reached with other parties in Whitlam’s 1977 defamation action, the case involving Reid was still on the books. In 1981 Michael Zifcak had a conversation with Whitlam in which, according to Zifcak, the former Prime Minister stated that ‘I have nothing against you – I just hate Alan Reid. Come to my office in Sydney and we will fix this.’ This option was stymied when Reid’s lawyers objected to Zifcak trying to settle, on the grounds that such a move could be interpreted as an admission on his part that The Whitlam Venture was defamatory.44 Despite the lack of resolution in this case, fear of litigation had not dampened Reid’s desire to write books. In the autumn of 1982, with another federal election due in a year, he was reported as saying that he was working on another political book, this time covering the Fraser years. ‘It won’t come out until after the election. Too often I’ve been accused of writing books to influence elections, so I’m avoiding the charge this time.’45 The Packer media empire remained as expansionist as ever, which meant that new challenges continued to open up for Reid. Since 1981 he had been appearing on the National Nine Network’s ambitious new current affairs program Sunday. The program’s news team was led by Max Walsh, whose brief was to emphasise ‘an interpretive style rather than the hit-or-miss style of daily hard news’. The intention was ‘to produce an electronic equivalent of a quality Sunday newspaper for a national audience’. Beginning at 9.00am on Sunday, 15 November 1981, the program featured commentary on the latest events in Canberra supported by a trio of journalists – Walsh, Reid and Sam Lipski – who interviewed the newsmaker of the week. The inaugural interviewee was Fraser. Reid had other input as well.

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In an earlier segment in the program, looking like ‘an escaper [sic] from a Damon Runyon story’, he revealed that there was a $10,000 contract out on the life of Billy Longley.46 It took something serious to interrupt Reid’s coverage of the political scene. He had to fight cancer, which had already robbed him of a lung, again in 1982. Newspaper reports on 14 May carried the sad news that he was to undergo surgery for stomach cancer in St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.47 His plight generated a flood of sympathetic mail and messages. Kind thoughts came from Malcolm and Tammie Fraser, John and Janette Howard, Bill and Dallas Hayden and Ros and Kerry Packer. Other well-wishers came from all the main political parties, whether Liberal (Billy Wentworth and Billy McMahon), Labor (Fred Daly, NSW Premier Neville Wran), Country Party (Doug Anthony, Ian Sinclair) or the new-fangled Australian Democrats (Don Chipp). The Communist Party journalist Harry Stein sent his regards, as did Richard Krygier, of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, who told Reid that he missed his ‘cynical half-smile when talking politics’. The up-and-coming right-wing Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson sent a get well message in which he said that with Reid ill, he could find no reliable source on developments in the Liberal and Country parties – and in the Labor Party, for that matter. An even more revealing message came from former ALP national secretary David Combe, then caught up in a preselection battle for the federal seat of Barton, who thanked Reid for contacting the editor of the St George and Sutherland Shire Leader in an effort to secure favourable publicity on his behalf.48 Reid was off work until September. His first story after returning to the Bulletin dealt with the familiar theme of evil

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doings on the waterfront. His need to expose sinister behindthe-scenes figures was as strong as ever: ‘A dominating but unnamed figure – a “Mr Big” – lurks in the pages of Royal Commissioner Frank Costigan’s fourth interim report on the activities of the Federated Painters and Dockers’ Union.’49 The fourth interim report was issued at a time when Prime Minister Fraser was toying with the idea of calling an election to capitalise on a voter-friendly federal Budget handed down by Treasurer Howard. But the idea of a snap poll was abandoned when Fraser learnt that the report’s central finding was that a large amount of tax was being lost as a result of administrative incompetence and corruption. As Paul Kelly later put it, ‘The Costigan Report danced a forensic path through petty criminals, trade union murderers and Liberal Party tax avoiders.’50 The façade of Liberal Party unity cracked when, amid dissension, Howard introduced retrospective legislative measures to gain lost tax revenue. Fraser, Reid then reported, ‘found that life was not only not meant to be easy but can be very tough indeed’. 51 The nightmare eased when attempts by Hayden to target individual perpetrators of tax evasion backfired, but as a turbulent year ended there was no relief for Fraser. A recessionfuelled rise in the jobless level to 7.8 per cent made unemployment the leading political issue. Reid publicly forecast that ‘unless the government abandons its current attitude – “We are in the grip of inexorable forces and we cannot do anything about them” – you can forget Fraser and his cohorts at the next Federal elections. They will be history.’52 The year ended with the Labor vote going nowhere in a byelection in the seat of Flinders after Lynch left Parliament. Reid wrote his last story on Hayden’s embattled leadership at the

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start of 1983, as January ticked over into February. His soundings indicated ‘renewed’ if ‘mild’ leadership speculation which was sure to intensify when Parliament resumed on 22 February. Pressure was building up as a result of right-wing concern about Hayden’s reliance on the left in caucus and his clumsy response to Fraser’s calling for a wages pause. Willing to add to the pressure, Reid zoomed in on the latest Morgan Gallup Poll figures, which indicated that 50 per cent of those polled thought Fraser made the better national leader (33 per cent opted for Hayden). Reid was prepared to offer some public advice: ‘the Labor ferment – while not yet a threat to Hayden – should give him cause for concern. He cannot afford many more mistakes.’53 The leadership speculation, however unfocused, was music to Liberal ears. Amid the chatter about the respective size of the Hayden and Hawke camps Reid was asked, in confidence (by a senior Coalition figure), about the wisdom of calling an early election to exploit the mood of uncertainty. The Delphic advice he proffered took account of the worrying growth in unemployment: ‘when things are not good, … wait, like Micawber, for something to turn up’. Reid’s unknown contact was adamant that ‘if we wait long enough, it might be Hawke’. Reid, who did yet not know that the influential Labor Senator John Button had written to Hayden calling on him to stand down, felt that a Hawke takeover was not inevitable. Fraser’s best option, he insisted in this private briefing, was to wait. 54 This advice, if it ever reached The Lodge, was ignored. In the early morning hours of Thursday, 3 February 1983, Laurie Oakes, stranded in Adelaide, rang Hayden in Queensland to tell him that he had it on good authority that Fraser was going to call an election later that day. 55 By lunchtime, Hawke, with the support

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of party elders, had replaced Hayden as Leader of the Opposition and Fraser was cooling his heels in Canberra waiting for the Governor-General to approve his request for a dissolution. Hawke’s appeal was irresistible. On 5 March Labor was swept into office. For Reid, when preparing his post-election verdict for the Bulletin, the best explanation of the outcome was, as ever, the simplest. As identified by ALP federal secretary Bob McMullan, unemployment and high interest rates in the suburban mortgage belt were the killers of the Coalition, and Hawke’s popularity provided the icing on the Labor cake. Reid did not ignore the Hawke factor either: during his decades covering federal politics he never saw as adoring a greeting as was given to Hawke when he entered the tally room in Canberra on election night to claim victory. 56 A new era had begun, one whose end Reid was fated not to see.

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A last hurrah ob Hawke, when he took up residence in the Lodge, became the 14th Australian Prime Minister whose deeds in office Reid reported on. Despite his renowned cynicism, the old journalist was ready to accept the early chatter about the new Prime Minister’s irresistible charisma. Primarily, though, he welcomed Hawke’s victory because he saw Hawke as the first down-toearth federal Labor leader since Chifley. The two men had long operated on first-name terms. Their association went back decades, to the time in the mid-1950s when both of them had been members of the Canberra branch of the ALP. Reid had followed Hawke’s career on and off ever since then. In recent times a warm regard for Hawke in his role as the bugbear of the organised Labor left had suffused many a Reid article in the Bulletin. The fondness was sincere, and featured again in the latter half of 1982, when the journalist agreed to do his bit for the buzz surrounding Blanche d’Alpuget’s biography of their mutual friend. A blurb from Reid (Hawke was ‘a complex, gifted man’) added to the sense of inexorability generated by the Hawke biography as its subject left first Hayden and then Fraser wallowing in his mighty wake. Sometimes the assistance offered was less public. In all likelihood the greatest favour Reid did for Hawke was done in private, when he reminded Hawke of the danger that a fondness for alcohol posed to his career and his family life. Reid had never forgotten his own past life as an ill-tempered drunk and

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regarded this as something important that he had in common with Hawke. He was always more than willing to give advice (‘I used to lecture Bob on his drinking, telling him he ought to give it up’), and so could claim a real though no doubt small amount of the credit for Hawke’s ensuing historic and wise decision to forswear alcohol.1 The federal election result of 5 March 1983 radically changed the political landscape that Reid was used to and comfortable with. The notion of a stable and successful peacetime national Labor government, oxymoronic since the late 1940s, soon seemed plausible again. Relying on charm, consensus and calm, sober chairmanship, Hawke started laying the groundwork that would allow him to become the nation’s longest serving Labor Prime Minister. For the moment all was stable and calm. Judicious use of patronage and well-ordered factional arrangements sedated caucus. On the industrial front, insiders in the ALP and the ACTU responded to grassroots militancy by brokering a series of orderly national wage increases. Pragmatism and deals between powerful people in peak organisations prevailed. It was nice to enjoy Reid’s affection, but as Prime Minister, Hawke knew that he had to rely on far deeper sources of support in the media to help ensure his political survival, and in this regard he enjoyed a tremendous advantage. In contrast to all his recent predecessors as federal Labor leader, he did not have to contend with embedded hostility from the entire Packer media empire. From the late 1970s onwards, Kerry Packer, notwithstanding his father’s undying hostility to the ALP, knew that he could make money as readily under Labor as under the Coalition: through his dealings with Premier Neville Wran in New South Wales, Packer had discovered that

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he could easily do business with a pragmatic and accommodating Labor Party government. Because he was the main Packer emissary in Canberra, Reid, despite the hostility generated by his anti-Labor scare stories in the past, enjoyed ‘virtually open access’ to senior ministers in the incoming Hawke government, including the new Communications Minister, Michael Duffy. The Packer message on the business front was for the federal government to ‘keep the lid’ on the introduction of pay television.2 Should Hawke and his ministers ever talk to Reid about Packer’s corporate interests, they could still be confident that they were speaking to Packer himself. Besides engaging in private lobbying activities, Reid was expected to shape the public political agenda in ways favourable to the corporate interests of the Packer empire through his articles in the Bulletin. His value from this standpoint, however, was now greatly diminished by the Hawke ascendancy. Reid was personally well disposed towards Hawke, but he also was jealous of his own fame as the nation’s primary purveyor of colourful stories about the deeds of Labor’s sinister faceless men. That was how he had made his reputation, but from Packer’s pragmatic point of view there was no point in keeping old anti-ALP mythology alive. The time had passed when Labor could be excoriated as the plaything of backroom ideologues. Now that Hawke was Prime Minister and the Labor left had been sidelined, such an approach would complicate relations with the federal government, and that was intolerable as far as Packer was concerned. Reid was alerted to this new and less ideological environment in the middle of 1983. Bob Santamaria’s weekly TV commentary Point of View had featured on Channel Nine since just before the 1963 election, 3 but now the station began to play fast

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and loose with the scheduling of the program. After the program was given a less favourable time slot and then was twice dropped in favour of a sports coverage, Reid suggested to Santamaria that he should take his concerns directly to Packer.4 It is unlikely that Santamaria got anywhere with this. The tide was turning and not even his persuasiveness could hold it back. Another sign of new times came in July, when the journalist Richard Farmer joined the Bulletin in Canberra after having worked on the three previous Labor federal election campaigns. As Reid had done before him, Farmer combined writing Bulletin articles with behind-the-scenes corporate responsibilities. Initially his work in this area was focused on efforts to preserve Packer’s standing with Hawke government ministers after Packer’s name was dragged into the investigations of tax evasion being conducted by the Costigan Royal Commission. Farmer had to undo the damage that Reid’s waterfront reporting had helped to bring about. 5 Reid had sympathised with Hawke in Labor’s past internal tussles but he was incapable of wishing to see sweetness and light prevail in the Labor Party. Internecine ALP disputes were part of his staple fare as a journalist. Barely two months after Fraser’s defeat Reid’s reports in the Bulletin had begun to dwell on the notion that the ‘honeymoon of the Hawke Government is over as far as elements of the ALP Left are concerned’. It was his understanding that left-wing elements in the party intended to confront Hawke with items from Labor’s national election platform, as well as some from its Constitution and Rules, that had yet to be acted on. As neither the Prime Minister nor Foreign Minister Bill Hayden had yet done anything to implement the party’s stated support for an independent East Timor, the initial thrust was likely to be in the area of

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Australia’s relations with Indonesia. It was, Reid claimed in the Bulletin, only a matter of time before the Socialist Left and its allies brought on a showdown.6 Months passed, and yet Reid was unable to point to any significant build-up of anti-Hawke divisiveness in caucus on the issue of East Timor, even though the government continued to not act on Labor’s policy on the matter, as evidenced by its not prohibiting defence aid to Indonesia.7 But he could always live in hope. Other issues might cause a dust-up. In a couple of his Bulletin articles Reid noted that left-wing critics were out to undermine Education Minister Susan Ryan’s conciliatory approach to state aid and were itching to confront Hawke on uranium mining policy.8 The Socialist Left would be sure to go for the jugular should Hawke’s popularity decline. In the meantime it could, he suggested, be relied on to cause further trouble by promoting the notion that Hayden, notwithstanding his shortcomings from a left-wing point of view, was a ‘stand-by prime minister’.9 The new government, because it was secure, could afford to ignore the pinpricks in the Bulletin. The opening year of the Hawke government ended on a harmonious and bipartisan note for Reid, with Doug Anthony praising him in Parliament as ‘a remarkable character’ and noting that the Prime Minister was hosting a dinner in his honour.10 Insofar as there was angst associated with Reid’s name, it reflected past rather than present conflicts. One unfinished item of business from the 1970s was the Whitlam defamation action, which continued to drag on. The matter attracted newspaper coverage in the winter of 1984 when the ACT Supreme Court heard an application by the Commonwealth for leave to intervene in the case. Counsel for the Commonwealth submitted that Whitlam should not

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be required to answer interrogatories from the defendants in relation to his ministers’ loan-raising activities on the grounds that to do so would involve him in a breach of the oath of secrecy taken by Executive Council members and would contravene the conventions of Cabinet confidentiality.11 Two days of wrangling ensued, after which the court granted the Commonwealth leave to intervene. The case remained truly Dickensian, and no quick solution seemed likely. Libel suits were one permanent element in Reid’s journalistic career, and ALP federal conferences were another. The 1984 national conference, Reid hoped, would be a stormy affair. For a while, it seemed that a stoush was indeed in the offing. The pro-Hawke camp wanted to strengthen the position of right-wing unions to counterbalance the educated singleissue types in local ALP branches. There was friction over uranium mining, the US alliance and East Timor, and in addition, Hawke and his Treasurer, Paul Keating, were committed to the novel policy of allowing foreign banks to compete in the local money market.12 The conference, however, failed to meet Reid’s expectations. Delegates seemed bent on exorcising the demon of divisiveness that was wont to enliven Australian party politics. His younger colleague Farmer reported that a pre-conference deal between Hawke and a brand new ‘centre left’ faction led by Hayden had shifted the balance of power in the ALP ‘very much to the right’. Moves to reaffiliate four right-wing unions in Victoria would cement a new power structure in which the left had ‘diminished influence’. 13 Reid had no choice but to endorse this assessment. The Hawke–Hayden alliance, based on Labor’s new system of formal factions, was undeniably in control.14

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The Orwellian year of 1984, when Hawke called an early election for the House of Representatives, saw Reid covering, for the Bulletin, his 20th federal election campaign. It was his last hurrah. Poor health was affecting his ability to work. The effects of his cancer were compounded by peripheral neuropathy, an incurable disease which restricted his use of his arms and legs. He could no longer prowl unaided around the corridors of power or wield a pen or pencil or tap on a typewriter. As his career wound down ever more rapidly, he was still receiving an average of three requests a week for tips and other sorts of information drawn from his unrivalled knowledge of the inner workings of Australian politics; he now relied on his wife Joan to prepare the replies.15 Reid was under doctor’s orders to curtail his activities, but he was determined to fight on. Amid the mindless hoopla of the 1984 election he remained on the lookout for drama behind the scenes. He was set in his ways and hoped to summon up yet again the spectre of Labor’s faceless men. They had existed under Whitlam and, with due diligence, could be found in the Hawke era as well. The importance of the unionist John Halfpenny in the councils of the Socialist Left in Victoria – ‘a party within a party’ – featured in a Reid Bulletin article written in the lead-up to the 1984 election. Halfpenny, having achieved an amicable separation from the Communist Party, was set for ‘eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with Prime Minister Bob Hawke’ once he took over the role of ‘master puppeteer’ in the ALP machine. Reid’s relief at being able to discover yet another Svengali-like figure was palpable.16 On election night Reid kept switching from one TV channel’s coverage to another. His diligence paid off: as his son Alan later related, he picked the size of Hawke’s winning

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majority a good half hour before all the networks did.17 The mischief-making Reid of old was evident when he published a post-election wrap-up. Hawke’s true opponent, he insisted, was not the Liberal Party. His real foe was Labor’s left wing, which had maintained a ‘deafening silence’ during the election campaign. Now that the election was over ‘the left wing probably will re-emerge and seek to make life difficult for the man who did so much to put the ALP on top. While a majority of the voters may like Hawke, the ALP’s left wing dislikes both him and some of his policies.’18 In a further story in the Bulletin Reid warned against seeing the Hawke government’s prospects in too a rosy light as it began its second term. Federal ministers, he commented, were worried that 1985 would see the dismantling of the ALP– ACTU Prices and Incomes Accord, rightly seen by Hawke as the cornerstone of his government. Reid suggested that such unease was understandable in view of adverse developments such as wage campaigns involving the federal public service unions and the ‘socialist left-officered’ Food Preservers’ Union. Reid predicted that it would take ‘a superman to prevent Australia returning to wages explosions and high inflation if things get out of hand’. He wrote that Industrial Relations Minister Ralph Willis, though ‘an able and quiet negotiator’, was no Clark Kent.19 Reid was wrong on the viability of the Accord. It had more than another 10 years of life in it. The ALP–ACTU Accord would see off threats from the Socialist Left and its allies in the Food Preservers’ Union and, as things transpired, would outlast Reid himself. He was starting to lose his touch. Younger eyes were needed to decipher the mysteries of federal politics in the Hawke era. An indication of the changing times came in

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February 1985, when the Bulletin announced that Laurie Oakes was joining its team of political reporters.20 It was now time for Reid’s obsession with the power of the Socialist Left to be dropped. A few months after the Hawke government was re-elected, the Bulletin featured an article from Tim Duncan on a rift in the Socialist Left in Victoria. The faction had, in effect, Duncan wrote, become two separate sub-groups. Both new groupings lacked a sense of direction or cohesion. Duncan was bent on assuaging irrational fear on the part of his readers. The homogeneity of left-wing opinion in ‘relatively exotic policy areas’ such as the Middle East had, it seemed, long concealed the Socialist Left’s true status as ‘a loose and diverse conglomeration’. Leaders of the Socialist Left were at loggerheads over the proposal, favoured by Hawke and his allies, to readmit the four disaffiliated right-wing unions. ‘Tensions are extreme and, as a result, the whole faction is looking fragile,’21 Duncan wrote. His analysis made mincemeat of Reid’s alarmist notion of sinister and monolithic leftwing forces at work in the ALP machine. It was time to move on. When the time came to sign off, Reid did so in style. His official retirement as a parliamentary journalist came on 14 October 1985. The parting good wishes were both bicameral and bipartisan. A farewell lunch was hosted by the President of the Senate. Early in the afternoon Reid entered the chamber of the House of Representatives sitting in a wheelchair pushed by his son Alan, whereupon the Speaker interrupted Question Time to acknowledge his presence as a distinguished visitor in the Speaker’s gallery. This was the first time that a member of the press gallery had been so honoured. A standing ovation from everyone in the chamber followed the Speaker’s

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announcement. And so, with his contribution to politics generously recorded in Hansard, Reid bade farewell to the parliamentary chamber that he had haunted since the distant days of Joe Lyons, Earle Page, John Curtin and the youngish Bob Menzies.22 Reid did not linger in Canberra once his career as a journalist ended. He retired with his wife Joan to a high-rise unit in Cremorne. Books culled from his impressive private library filled the unit, which was only fitting, as royalties from the sale of his own three books had helped fund the unit’s purchase.23 The apartment, once the Reids settled in, was a Mecca for wellwishers and attracted visitors eager to draw on Reid’s unparalleled insights into 50 years of political history. In December 1985, Communist journalist Harry Stein spent several hours chatting with him. Though Reid was gaunt and very ill, politics was a tonic. When their conversation turned to the unionist Laurie Carmichael, Reid said: ‘I wish he had been on our side.’ When asked what side this was, he replied, ‘emotionally, right-wing Labor’.24 Reid gave an interview to journalist Amanda Buckley with a walking stick by his side and a book about Stalin’s hatchet man Beria on his lap. Writing, a chore at the best of times, was a thing of the past, but Reid’s candid comments were still directed freely at the nation’s current crop of political leaders, from Hawke (‘less liable to corruption by power than most people’) and Keating (‘a fascinating study’) to the then new Opposition Leader John Howard (‘a very honest little man’) and his shadow, Andrew Peacock (‘he always seemed to be missing when the whips were cracking’).25 As the months dragged on, Reid’s frailty became ever more pronounced, but his spirit fought on and his mind was as acute as ever. In 1986 a ‘withered and shrunken’ Reid gave a long

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interview to David Leser from The Australian in which he predicted that Prime Minister Hawke would probably lose the next election because his pro-business policies were alienating many traditional Labor supporters.26 A round of oral history interviews went ahead in the final months of 1986 and was resumed in February 1987. The living and the dead jostled together indiscriminately in Reid’s stream of consciousness. Asked about the dreaded (for him) Lionel Murphy, whose death had occurred on the previous afternoon, he rasped: ‘Bad day to ask me, the day after he died, because I’m a biased witness.’27 In an interview on 5 February he said that on the previous day Bob Carr had told him, ‘You must be one of the best read men in Australia.’28 Reid also revealed that a local priest had offered ‘various spiritual consolations’ on a recent visit. In response Reid had said, ‘I’d be a hypocrite if I accepted them. But remember this, Father, keep your running shoes on, because you might get an urgent call and there’ll be a swift deathbed repentance. I’m a great believer in each way betting.’29 The last interview taped was on 18 February, when Reid’s remembrance of things past ranged from Jack Lang’s monster Moore Park rally in 1932 through to his departure from the ACT branch of the ALP in 1957 and on to his impressions of the recently (1986) retired Don Chipp, founder of the Australian Democrats, who at one time earlier in his career had sought Reid out because he wanted to know whether he had a future as Minister for the Navy under Prime Minister John Gorton (Reid had told him, correctly, that he was about to be dumped).30 Reid also ruefully referred to Malcolm Fraser’s setting up of the Costigan inquiry into the Packers and the Painters and Dockers’ Union. The former Prime Minister, he

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conceded, ‘never expected it to lead where it did. And let me be truthful, neither did I.’31 Politics was as much a source of fun as it had ever been. Reid was amused by the thought of all the Labor apparatchiks who had once denounced him as a rightwinger now clambering aboard the juggernaut of privatisation. Reid was not like them; a traditionalist, he did not believe in deregulation and still thought that Chifley had been right in trying to nationalise the banks. 32 The middle months of 1987 saw Australia’s first winter federal election since World War II. A ‘Joh [Bjelke-Petersen] for PM’ campaign distracted the anti-Labor forces and proved that disunity was death. Prime Minister Hawke, on 11 July, defeated Howard and secured an increased Lower House majority. This was the first Commonwealth election contest since the 1930s that Reid did not cover, in one way or another. He was confined to the Bayview Nursing Home, his life’s journey fast nearing its end. Despite the ravages of his prolonged illness and the physical deterioration brought on by peripheral neuropathy, he retained his passion for politics and impressed visitors such as Carr as he displayed the stoicism of an ancient Roman in the face of his imminent dissolution.33 The final crisis drew near as spring approached, though Reid remained as mentally alert as ever. Politics and power were still stirring stuff. On the last Saturday in August the peace of the nursing home was shattered by a loud noise, which turned out to be the roar of a Channel Nine helicopter flying in from the direction of Kirribilli. After it landed, Hawke and his media adviser, Barrie Cassidy, jumped out. This visit to his deathbed by the Prime Minister of Australia did wonders for Reid’s spirit. ‘G’day, Comrade,’ he exclaimed as Hawke approached. The old pressman suddenly seemed 10 years younger, and for the next hour he relished

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a final long private conversation with a senior politician. He was focused and articulate. This was, for Cassidy, a ‘compelling and fascinating experience’.34 After Hawke left, Reid’s mood slumped, but equanimity was restored by his family, who had gathered around him, and by memories of his beloved Snowy Mountains and of a life well lived. By Monday evening he was ready to go.35 Death came on the night of Tuesday, 1 September 1987, when he succumbed to pneumonia. Thursday morning’s metropolitan newspapers carried tributes to the old pressman from the nation’s leading politicians and journalists. Prime Minister Hawke praised Reid’s ‘total integrity, dedication, range of contacts and capacity for analysis’.36 He was joined by Opposition leader Howard, who said that Reid ‘was liked and trusted by people on both sides of Parliament’.37 Paul Kelly observed that in many ways Reid ‘would be regarded as the finest news breaker the gallery has ever produced’38 and Clyde Cameron fondly recalled first meeting Reid at a meeting of the Canberra branch of the ALP. 39 On Friday Laurie Oakes looked back 20 years to when he first came to Canberra and used to watch with fascination as politicians came up to Reid to talk, to listen and to get advice. Oakes noted Reid’s unerring ability to add punch to a story through ‘simple messages and vivid images’, as exemplified by his treatment of the 1963 ALP conference.40 Reid’s old colleagues on the Sunday television program put together a fine 10-minute tribute which has since, in the age of cyberspace, found its way onto YouTube. A living Reid, still mulling over his secrets, can be downloaded by generations indefinitely into the future.41 Reid’s funeral rites were held at the end of the week. The mourners gathered at Sydney’s Northern Suburbs Crematorium following a short service at the Holy Name of Mary Catholic

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Church at Hunters Hill. Their thoughts that sunny spring afternoon centred on ‘politics and politicians, and journalists and journalism’. Reid’s widow Joan and their three children were joined at the funeral service by a selection of the politicians he had known and written about. Howard, then midway through his first – and unhappy – stint as federal leader of the Liberal Party, was present, along with former Liberal Prime Minister Bill McMahon. The then Deputy Prime Minister Lionel Bowen attended, as did former and current Members of Parliament David Fairbairn, Bill Wentworth, John Wheeldon, Fred Daly, Jim Carlton, Michael Hodgman and Tom Uren. The politicians mixed with the journalists, who included Max Walsh, Francis James, George Negus, Laurie Oakes, Paul Kelly and David McNicoll. The official Packer representative at the funeral was Trevor Kennedy, managing director of Consolidated Press Holdings. In his eulogy, Kennedy reminded the mourners that Reid’s was an archetypal Australian story – ‘a migrant kid from humble origins rising to become the friend and confidant of prime ministers’. After the obsequies concluded there was a wake at the Strangers Bar in the NSW Parliament in Macquarie Street, where the drink flowed and the talk again was of past politics. There could be no better farewell for a political journalist.42 Reid’s family kept the urn containing his ashes in a cupboard until, years later, they were conveyed by motorcycle to Currango in the Snowy Mountains, where they were consigned to the elements. The fond regard which suffused the memories of Reid in 1987 was strongly held. In the years that followed, his memory was cherished in the unlikeliest of quarters. A notable

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testimony came from Harry Stein, the former federal parliamentary roundsman for Tribune, whose memoirs expressed gratitude to Reid for being very helpful both to himself and to his predecessor, Paul Mortier, when they first arrived in Canberra.43 Consistent with his democratic faith, Reid was free of unworthy prejudice. Though the parliamentary press gallery had a narrow club-like male ethos when he joined it in the 1930s, he did not set his face against changing demographics or diversity in the 1960s and beyond. His professed dislike of trendiness, oft proclaimed in the Bulletin in his latter years, was not reflected in his dealings with people on a day-to-day basis. Journalists whose background might have offended a stereotypical old-style newspaperman – whether because they were young, or female or, worst of all, had a university degree – benefited from his care and consideration. But Reid’s benign impact on life in the narrow world of the Canberra press corps was only one part of his life’s story. His having fine personal qualities did not mean that the wider public consequences of his actions were always beneficial. He aspired at times to influence the course of events on the political stage to secure results that would benefit others, and sometimes the effects of his involvement were not as intended. His lurid comments in 1954 on the political role of BA Santamaria, to cite the most spectacular example, touched off a streak of paranoia in Dr Evatt that led to a debilitating split in the ALP. It soon became obvious that there was no strong middle-of-the-road factional grouping ready to take up the slack once Evatt denounced Santamaria. The ALP, as a result, lurched appreciably to the left, with disastrous electoral results. This outcome represented a stunning act of miscalculation on

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the part of Reid, Pat Kennelly and other defenders of Labor’s Chifleyite vision. Once Labor split, the way was prepared for the federal Liberal-Country Party Coalition to stay in power well beyond its use-by date, leading to the disarray under Gorton and McMahon in which Reid played such an intriguing part. Labor’s spell in the wilderness ended in 1972, but its having been so long in opposition meant that it was unprepared for office. Reid did not mourn Whitlam’s ensuing decline and fall. The Whitlam government, advised in part by Reid’s bugbear Dr Coombs, championed a raft of enlightened initiatives which left the pressman lamenting the disappearance of the solid down-to-earth Labor positions of the Chifley era. After the Kerr dismissal Reid wrote a stream of articles in the Bulletin that were directed against the growing presence of middle-class elements in the ALP, all of whom he dismissed as ‘trendies’. Reid’s attachment to old-style Labor attitudes never dimmed. His abiding fascination with Labor’s faceless men was all the more powerful because at one stage, at the height of his friendship with Pat Kennelly, he was one of them himself. He did not abandon his commitment to Chifley’s democraticvision when the faceless men threw him out of the party. Though excommunicated, he remained an old-fashioned Labor man at heart. At the end of his life he came to realise that the real menace to his deepest political attitudes came from the gathering pressure of militant market forces. Laurie Oakes, in his 1987 obituary, pointed out that Reid genuinely tried to provide advice that would achieve what people wanted to happen, even though what he advised was not always what he favoured. For Reid the greatest political adviser

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ever was Machiavelli. A proud Florentine republican, Machiavelli attained fame – or infamy – because he provided realistic professional advice to would-be Renaissance princes. Reid, in his antipodean way, followed a similar course. A socialist and disciple of Curtin and Chifley, he ended up providing advice, with the encouragement of Frank Packer, to conservative politicians such as Menzies, Holt and McMahon. The disinterestedness with which Reid offered political advice in his later years was based on long years of observation and experience. Yet there was nothing cool or clinical about his first vital sparks of interest in the game of politics. His durable engagement with the struggle for power stretched back to a time when his youthful zeal responded to impassioned Labor rhetoric. It is hard to imagine his advising Liberal Prime Ministers so professionally had he not been convinced that the Labor Party had wandered from the political path that meant so much to him when his faith in better things was at its strongest. Such, in essence, was the fate of Alan Reid.

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Notes

Prologue

1 Herald Sun, 7 June 2008, p. 34. 2 http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/ sunday/cover_stories/article_300. asp (retrieved on 3 October 2004). 3 Mark Latham, The Latham Diaries, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2005, p. 204. 4 SH, 3 January 1988, p. 41; Mungo MacCallum, Mungo: The Man Who Laughs, Duffy & Snellgrove, Sydney, 2001, p. 171; Alan Reid Jr, email to Ross Fitzgerald, 1 July 2009.

A journalist is born

1 Sam Lipski, ‘The Education of Alan Reid’, Quadrant, March–April 1969, p. 30. 2 Lipski, ‘Reid’, p. 30; NLA Oral History Interview with Alan Reid, interviewer Mel Pratt (1972–73), NLA ORAL TRC 121/40, 1:1/3. 3 Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Cyclopedia Company Limited, Christchurch, 6 vols, 1897–1908, vol. 2, p. 177. 4 His 1932 NSW Death Certificate (1932/018140) states that he was aged 70 at the time of his death. 5 Cyclopedia of New Zealand, vol. 2, pp. 177–78. 6 SMH, 5 December 1932, p. 6. 7 ‘Bellands 20 October 1918’, SP83/11, NAA. 8 Alan Villiers Papers, NLA MS 6388, Box 80, Item 4; SMH, 5 December 1932, p. 6. 9 Pratt interview, 1:1/3. 10 The Times, 1 October 1924, p. 11; Pratt interview, 1:1/3; John Thomson, Shackleton’s Captain: A Biography of Frank Worsley, Hazard

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Press, Christchurch NZ, 1988, p. 142; Scotland on Sunday, 13 January 2002 [electronic version]. 11 Pratt interview, 1:1/3–4. 12 Alan Reid, ‘That Certain Book Miss Taylor Notwithstanding’, Bulletin, 23 June 1962, p. 60. 13 SMH, 28 November 1932, p. 8; Pratt interview, 1:1/3. 14 Pratt interview, 1:1/4. 15 St Patrick’s College information provided by Brother Carl Sherrin; Reverend Brother FD Marzorini, ‘An address on the occasion of the presentation of the “Age Quod Agis” Award to Mr Alan Reid, 1 March 1980’, St Patrick’s College Goulburn, Annual Review 1980, pp.63–64; Pratt interview, 1:1/4, 8. 16 Waverley College archival information provided by Wal Cranney; NLA Oral History Interview with Alan Reid, interviewer Daniel Connell (1984–87), NLA ORAL TRC 2172, 7 October 1986, p. 2; Pratt interview, 1:1/4–6, 7. 17 Pratt interview, 1:1/13–14. 18 Ibid., 1:1/7. 19 Ibid.; Connell interview, 7 October 1986, p. 1 and 5 February 1987, p. 31. 20 Lipski, ‘Reid’, p. 30; Connell interview, 26 November 1986, pp. 149–50. 21 Pratt interview, 1:1/7–8. 22 Ibid., 1:1/9; Connell interview, 7 October 1986, pp. 2, 3. 23 Elaine Dundy, Finch, Bloody Finch: A Life of Peter Finch, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1980, pp. 54–57; Trader Faulkner, Peter Finch: A Biography, Angus & Robertson, London, 1979, pp. 46–48. 24 SMH, 19 March 2002, p. 27. 25 Bill Hudson, ‘Foreword’, That Fragile Hour: An Autobiography of Mary Marlowe, Angus & Robertson, Sydney,

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Notes to pages 16 –37

1990, p. 3. 26 Marlowe, Fragile Hour, p. 188. 27 Ibid., pp. 187, 190. 28 People, 20 May 1953, p. 21. 29 Pratt interview, 1:1/10. 30 Ibid., 1:1/10, 11, 12; Connell interview, 7 October 1986, pp. 3, 4, 5; David McNicoll, Luck’s A Fortune, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1980, p. 25. 31 Pratt interview, 1:1/17–18. 32 Kevin Perkins, Dare to Dream: The Life and Times of a Proud Australian [Tom Hayson], Golden Wattle Publishing, Sydney, 2001, pp. 51–52. 33 RJ Cooksey, Lang and Socialism: A Study in the Great Depression, ANU Press, Canberra, 1971, p. 85. 34 Connell interview, 18 February 1987, p. 6. 35 John Curtin to Eileen Walsh, 30 May 1935, John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library, Perth, 00672/1. 36 Pratt interview, 1:1/18. 37 CJ Lloyd, Parliament and the Press: The Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery 1901–1988, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1988, p. 86. 38 Alan Reid Jr, conversation with Stephen Holt, 19 July 2009. 39 Pratt interview, 1:1/26; Connell interview, 1984, p. 4; Lloyd, Parliament and the Press, p. 83. 40 JA Alexander, Diary, 4 January 1932, Joseph Alexander Papers, NLA MS 2389. 41 Clem Lloyd, ‘The Media’, in Scott Prasser, JR Nethercote and John Warhurst (eds), The Menzies Era: A Reappraisal of Government, Politics and Policy, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1995, pp. 114, 116. 42 Jack Fingleton, Batting from Memory, Collins, London, 1981, p. 159. 43 Pratt interview, 1:1/18. 44 Connell, interview, 7 October 1986, pp. 7–8. 45 Connell interview, 1984, p. 2. 46 Pratt interview, 1:1/23–24. 47 Ibid., 1:1/24. 48 Alan Reid, ‘Prime Ministers I have Known’, Bulletin, 29 January 1980, p. 359; Connell interview, 1984, p. 2. 49 Pratt interview, 1:1/31–32. 50 Ibid., 1:1/19; Connell interview, 7 October 1986, pp. 8–10.

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War and postwar

1 The scrapbook is in the Alan Reid Collection, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Item 1996.0038.0004. 2 SSG, 6 October 1940, Women’s Section, p. 8. 3 CT, 4 September 1987, p. 11. 4 Sun, 15 November 1949, p. 16. 5 Sun, 22 August 1941, p. 5. 6 Sun, 27 August 1941, p. 5. 7 Connell interview, 1984, p. 10. 8 Pratt interview, 1:1/42–47; DT, 27 April 1955, p. 11. 9 Pratt interview, 1:1/25. 10 Sun, 9 November 1941, p. 5. 11 NLA Oral History interview with Harold Cox, interviewer Mel Pratt (1973), NLA ORAL TRC 121/143 (transcript, pp. 30–31). 12 Pratt interview, 1:1/43. 13 Pratt interview, 1:2/19–20. 14 Clem Lloyd and Richard Hall (eds), Backroom Briefings: John Curtin’s War, National Library of Australia (NLA), Canberra, 1997. 15 Copy held in Alan Reid Papers, NLA MS 7796, Box 1. 16 JD Corbett, unpublished autobiography, chapter 26, NLA MS 1011, Box 1. 17 Ibid. 18 Reid, ‘Prime Ministers I have known’, Bulletin, 29 January 1980, p. 371, 6 November 1984, p. 119; Pratt interview,1:2/13–14; David Day, John Curtin: A Life, HarperCollins, Sydney, 1999, pp. 477, 479–80. 19 Allan Fraser Papers, NLA MS 1844, Folder 174, Box 21, George FitzPatrick to Allan Fraser, 13 April 1942. 20 Sun, 6 April 1943, p. 1; Lloyd and Hall, Backroom Briefings, p. 146. 21 Connell interview, 5 February 1987, pp. 52, 54. 22 Pratt interview, 1:1/25. 23 SH, 15 November 1953, p. 17. 24 Journalist, March/April 1943, p. 2. 25 Australian Journalists’ Association Canberra Branch, minute books, 16 and 18 February 1943 (NBAC, Z70, Box 1); CT, 27 February 1943; p. 2; JA Alexander, Diary, 26 February 1943; CJ Lloyd, Profession, Journalist:

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Notes to pages 37–49 A History of the Australian Journalists’ Association, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1985, p. 222; Lloyd, Parliament and Press, p. 152. 26 Sun, 9 January 1944, p. 2. 27 Tom Mead, Breaking the News, Dolphin Books, Sydney, 1998, pp. 68–70. 28 Sun, 10 January 1944, p. 3, 11 January 1944, p. 5, 12 January 1944, p. 2, 13 January 1944, p. 5. 29 Sun, 14 January 1944, p. 5, 15 January 1944, p. 2, 17 January 1944, p. 2. 30 Lloyd, Profession, Journalist, p. 221. 31 Jim Hagan, Printers and Politics: A History of the Australian Printing Unions, 1850–1950, ANU Press, Canberra, 1966, p. 274. 32 Mead, Breaking the News, p. 70; Don Whitington, Strive to be Fair: An Unfinished Autobiography, ANU Press, Canberra, 1977, p. 96. 33 Mead, Breaking the News, p. 70. 34 Whitington, Strive to be Fair, p. 97. 35 Ibid., p. 100. 36 Bob Harper (Editor of The News), telegram to EH Burgmann, 11 October 1944, Ernest Burgmann Papers, NLA MS 1998, Box 10. 37 Hagan, Printers and Politics, p. 274. 38 Mead, Breaking the News, p. 71. 39 AJA Canberra Branch minute books. 40 Connell interview, 1984, p. 12. 41 Reid, ‘Prime Ministers I have known’, Bulletin, 5 February 1980, p. 42. 42 Hangover, 3 September 1937, 21 October 1938; CT, 4 September 1937, p. 2, 22 October 1938, p. 5. 43 House of Representatives, Hansard, 13 November 1951, p. 1876 (JS Rosevear). 44 Amanda Buckley, ‘The Red Fox’, SMH, 9 November 1985, p. 45. 45 Ibid. 46 Alan Reid Jr, conversation with Stephen Holt, 7 July 2009. 47 Harold Cox, Typescript of confidential reports, 28 March 1946 and 27 February 1950, NLA MS 4554. 48 SMH, 21 June 2006, p. 22 (citing journalist Rob Chalmers). 49 Michael Schildberger, telephone conversation with Ross Fitzgerald, 26 February 2009. 50 Pratt interview, 2:1/4.

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51 CT, 20 July 2004, p. 13. 52 Pratt interview, 2:1/1, 2:1/6. 53 Clyde Cameron, The Cameron Diaries, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1990, p. 482; Clyde Cameron, letter to Stephen Holt, 21 October 2004. 54 Australian Observer, 14 June 1947, p. 63. 55 ‘Richard Watson’, ‘Allan Fraser – Potential Labor Leader’, Voice, November 1955, pp. 24–25. 56 Connell interview, 18 February 1987,p. 6. 57 Australian Labor Party, ACT Branch Records [1944–85], NLA MS 7068, membership tickets in Box 30 (25 October 1948) and Box 29 (24 January 1949). 58 Connell interview, 5 February 1987, p. 50; Janet Hawley, ‘The prowler in Canberra’s corridors of power’, Age, Saturday Extra, 22 May 1982, p. 5. 59 Hawley, ‘Prowler’; Connell interview, 5 February 1987, p. 50. 60 Ian Downs, Last Mountain: A Life in Papua New Guinea, University of Queensland Press (UQP), Brisbane, 1986, p. 160. (Downs, then an officer of the Department of External Territories, socialised with Reid and Tyrrell in 1945.) 61 Connell interview, 14 October 1986, pp. 12, 13. 62 Connell interview, 1984, p. 20. 63 NLA Oral History Interview with Alan Reid, interviewer Toby Miller (5 March 1980), NLA ORAL TRC 734, 1/1/7. 64 Sun, 22 November 1949, p. 14. 65 Henry Speagle, Editor’s Odyssey: A Reminiscence of Civil Service: 1945 to 1985, Haddington Press, Melbourne, 2005, p. 11. 66 Sir Paul Hasluck, Light That Time Has Made, NLA, Canberra, 1995, pp. 146–47. 67 Connell interview, 19 November 1986, pp. 111–12. 68 SMH, 21 April 1944, p. 4. 69 Connell interview, 1984, pp. 15–16. 70 Sunday Sun, 3 October 1948, p. 3; Sun, 17 November 1948, p. 2; CT, 17 November 1948, p. 4. 71 Connell interview, 18 February 1987, p. 20.

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336

Notes to pages 49– 67

72 Connell interview, 1984, p. 17. 73 Connell interview, 18 February 1987, p. 18.

Capital capers

1 A Calwell to J Stewart, 27 January 1950, Arthur Calwell Papers, NLA MS 4738, Series 13; Sun, 13 September 1949, p. 12, 20 September 1949, p. 12. 2 A Calwell to J Stewart, 7 July 1950, Calwell Papers; EG Wright to FD Quinane, 15 September 1950 and Quinane to Wright, 19 September 1950, NLA MS 7068, Box 27. 3 Sun, 18 July 1950, p. 14. 4 See Sun, 7 March 1950, p. 18 for Reid’s comments on Wentworth’s parliamentary debut. 5 Sun, 9 May 1950, p. 7. 6 DT, 20 April 1955, p. 11. 7 NLA Oral History Interview with Frank Chamberlain, interviewer Mel Pratt (1972–73), NLA ORAL TRC 121/39, 1:2/6. 8 SSG, 30 April 1950, p. 34; Sun, 27 June 1950, p. 12. 9 Miller interview, 1/1/2, 3, 7. 10 A Calwell to EG Wright, 11 January 1951; EG Wright to A Calwell, 9 February 1951, Calwell Papers. 11 Old Parliament House Interview with Alan Reid Jr, interviewer Michael Richards, 12 May 2005, OPH OHI 97. 12 The letter, dated 5 February 1951, is printed in Michael Moloney, St Edmund’s College: The Story 1954–2004, St Edmund’s College, Canberra, 2004, p. 5. 13 Sun, 14 June 1951, pp. 1, 20. 14 Sun, 19 June 1951, p. 10. 15 DT, 27 April 1955, p. 11. 16 Sun, 21 October 1951, p. 30. 17 Sun, 20 February 1951, p. 11. 18 Lloyd, Parliament and Press, pp. 197– 98; Sun, 2 October 1951, p. 12. 19 House of Representatives, Hansard, 3 October 1951, p. 241. 20 Lloyd, Parliament and Press, p. 198. 21 Ibid. 22 Sun, 21 October 1951, p. 30. 23 Connell interview, 22 October 1986, p. 48. 24 Committee of Privileges

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correspondence etc – Article by Alan Reid in the Sydney Sun on 2 October 1951 – Report by Committee of Privileges presented to House of Representatives on 12 November 1951, A11864/1, NAA. 25 Lloyd, Parliament and Press, p. 198. 26 House of Representatives, Hansard, 13 November 1951, pp. 1871–72. 27 Ibid., pp. 1876–77. 28 SSG, 26 August 1951, p. 28. 29 Sun, 6 November 1951, p. 12, 13 November 1951, p. 14. 30 Sun, 8 April 1952, p. 23. 31 SSG, 21 June 1953, p. 58, 28 June 1953, p. 50. 32 Sun, 27 November 1951, p. 14. 33 Sun, 6 November 1951, p. 12, 19 February 1952, p. 12. 34 Sun, 12 August 1952, p. 14. 35 Sun, 3 February 1953, p. 14, 18 August 1953, p. 17. 36 SSG, 26 April 1953, p. 40. 37 SSG, 19 April 1953, p. 38. 38 Kim E Beazley, Father of the House: The Memoirs of Kim E Beazley, Fremantle Press, Fremantle, 2009, pp. 59, 85. 39 Sun, 12 May 1953, p. 16. 40 SSG, 20 September 1953, p. 56. 41 SSG, 27 September 1953, p. 60. 42 House of Representatives, Hansard, 2 October 1953, p. 956 (H Leslie); Sun, 4 October 1953, p. 42. 43 SH, 27 December 1953, p. 51. The Gwydir by-election was on 19 December 1953. 44 Sun, 29 December 1953, p. 16. 45 Sun, 16 March 1954, p. 20. 46 Robert Murray, The Split: Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1970, p. 148. 47 ‘D Reid’ is in a class photograph in Moloney, St Edmund’s, p. 20 and his son Alan attended St Edmund’s before moving to Canberra Grammar in 1956: Reid’s ASIO file, f.21.

Petrovied

1 Sun, 30 March 1954, p. 18. 2 Extract of recorded interview with Alan Reid replayed on Media Report (ABC), 18 December 2008. 3 SH, 1 November 1953, p. 17, 8

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Notes to pages 67–92 November 1953, p. 19, 15 November 1953, p. 17. 4 Clyde Cameron, The Confessions of Clyde Cameron 1913–1990 (as told to Daniel Connell), ABC Enterprises, Sydney, 1990, p. 96. 5 SMH, 19 November 1953, p. 9; Sun, 18 November 1953, p. 21. 6 Sun, 24 November 1953, p. 22; David McKnight, Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994, pp. 67, 308n. 7 Connell interview, 12 November 1986, p. 100. 8 SH, 18 April 1954, p. 49; Nicholas Whitlam and John Stubbs, Nest of Traitors: The Petrov Affair, Jacaranda, Milton Qld, 1974, p. 82n. 9 Robert Manne, The Petrov Affair (revised edition), Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2004, pp. 94–95. 10 Bulletin, 31 May 1961, p. 14. 11 Robert Menzies Papers, NLA MS 4936/1/210; AW Martin, ‘Evatt’s Absence from the House’, Quadrant, June 1995, pp. 46–50. 12 Reid, ‘Prime Ministers I have known’, Bulletin, 5 February 1980, p. 5; Connell interview, 13 November 1986, pp. 95–96; Alan Reid to Frank Packer, 27 November 1954, NLA MS 4936/1/210. 13 NLA MS 4936/1/210. 14 Ibid.; Martin, ‘Evatt’s Absence from the House’, pp. 46–47. 15 Alan Reid to RG Menzies, 7 May 1954, NLA MS 4936/1/210. 16 Connell interview, 12 November 1986, pp. 96–97. 17 Ibid., p. 95. 18 Ibid.; Reid, ‘Prime Ministers I have known’, Bulletin, 5 February 1980, p. 44. 19 Annexure to the Report of the Royal Commission on Espionage, Reid Papers, Box 37. 20 Photocopy of Document ‘H’, Reid Papers, Box 37. 21 ASIO file on Alan Douglas Reid, NAA A6119/84, f.1. 22 AJA Canberra Branch minute books. 23 Age, 25 September 1984, p. 15. 24 Reid’s ASIO file, f.4. 25 Ibid., f.3. 26 DT, 12 May 1955, p. 3.

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27 ST, 29 May 1955, p. 34. 28 Reid’s ASIO file, f.5. 29 Ibid., f.13. 30 Manne, Petrov Affair, p. 143. 31 Sun, 18 May 1954, p. 22.

Sexing up Santamaria

1 SMH, 4 September 1987, p. 11 (Laurie Oakes). 2 Michael Gilchrist, Daniel Mannix: Wit and Wisdom, (2nd edition), Freedom Publishing, Melbourne, 2004, p. 178. 3 JD Pringle, Have Pen Will Travel, Chatto & Windus, London, 1973, p. 117. 4 Robert Murray, Split, pp. 147–48. 5 Sun, 31 May 1954, p. 12. 6 Ibid., p. 2. 7 Sun, 1 June 1954, p. 18. 8 Murray, Split, p. 148. 9 Tribune, 2 June 1954, p. 1. 10 Pringle, Have Pen Will Travel, p. 120. 11 Jack Kane, Exploding the Myths: Political Memoirs, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1989, p. 69. 12 Sun, 20 July 1954, p. 20. 13 Manne, Petrov Affair, p. 181. 14 Murray, Split, p. 161. 15 Connell interview, 7 October 1986, p. 20, 12 November 1986, p. 101. 16 Pringle, Have Pen Will Travel, pp. 117–19. 17 Sun, 10 August 1954, p. 22. 18 Connell interview, 14 October 1986, p. 14 and 30 October 1986, p. 69. 19 Sun, 31 August 1954, p. 26. 20 Argus, 22 August 1955, p. 4. 21 BA Santamaria, ‘The Movement’ 1941–60: An Outline, Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, [1961], pp. 30–31. 22 See SMH, 4 October 1994, p. 19. 23 Santamaria, ‘The Movement’, p. 31. 24 Reid Papers, Box 22. 25 Connell interview, 30 October 1986, p. 70. 26 Sun, 8 September 1954, p. 5. 27 Sun, 10 September 1954, p. 11. 28 One version of the Rupert Henderson story is in Peter Crockett, Evatt: A Life, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1993, p. 169. 29 Sun, 21 September 1954, p. 26. 30 Cox typescript report, 20 September

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338

Notes to pages 92–118

1954. 31 Sun, 12 October 1954, p. 28. 32 Cox, 20 September 1954. 33 Murray, Split, p. 179; Gerard Henderson, ‘Alan Reid on Labor’s Front Line’, Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog, 14 August 2009 (http:// www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/ wordpress). 34 SMH, 3 September 1987, p. 8 (Clyde Cameron). 35 Connell interview, 30 October 1986, p. 70. 36 SH, 17 October 1954, p. 34; ST, 2 January 1955, p. 5. 37 Notably Bruce Duncan, Crusade or Conspiracy: Catholics and the AntiCommunist Struggle in Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2001 and Ross Fitzgerald, The Pope’s Battalions: Santamaria, Catholicism and the Labor Split, UQP, Brisbane, 2003. 38 Catholic Weekly, 25 November 1954, p. 4. 39 Marzorini, ‘Address’, p. 64. 40 ST, 17 April 1955, p. 14.

The House of Packer

1 Hal Myers, The Whispering Gallery, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1999, pp. 68–69, 93–96. 2 Information derived from John Fairfax Archives, kindly provided by Dr Bridget Griffen-Foley of Macquarie University, Sydney. 3 Hawley, ‘Prowler’. 4 Lloyd, Profession, Journalist, pp. 242–43; AJA Canberra Branch minute books. 5 NLA MS 4936/1/210. 6 ST, 2 January 1955, p. 5. 7 SMH, 27 December 1954, p. 4; Connell interview, 22 October 1986, p. 62. 8 DT, 11 March 1955, p. 5. 9 Alan Reid Jr OPH interview. 10 ST, 3 April 1955, p. 1. 11 DT, 30 March 1955, p. 1, 20 March 1957, p. 15; ST, 3 April 1955, p. 1. 12 John Burton, ‘Indonesia: Unfinished Diplomacy’, in John Legge (ed.), New Directions in Australian Foreign Policy Australia and Indonesia 1945–50, Monash Asia Institute, Clayton, 1997, p. 37. 13 ST, 10 April 1955, p. 39.

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14 Fred Daly, From Curtin to Kerr, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1977, p. 135. 15 DT, 6 April 1955, p. 11. 16 Susanna Short, Laurie Short: A Political Life, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992, p. 147. 17 ST, 7 August 1955, p. 19, 14 August 1955, pp. 1, 3; DT 16 August 1955, p. 1. 18 ST, 8 May 1955, p. 7; DT, 11 June 1955, p. 2, 12 June 1955, p. 39; Australian, 1 January 2001, p. 19. 19 DT, 29 September 1955, p. 3, 5 October 1955, p. 13, 6 October 1955, p. 9; Argus, 6 October 1955, p. 9. 20 ST, 11 September 1955, p. 1. 21 CT, 2 May 1956, p. 1; SMH, 2 May 1956, p. 7; DT, 2 May 1956, p. 17. 22 Connell interview, 14 October 1986, pp. 20, 24–25, 30 October 1986, pp. 70–71, 18 February 1987, pp. 1, 5. 23 ST, 6 November 1955, p. 43. 24 DT, 9 December 1955, p. 8. 25 ST, 23 September 1956, p. 3. 26 NLA MS 7068, Box 29, Correspondence etc 1955–56 (1). 27 Ibid. 28 NLA MS 3106, ALP Canberra South Branch Attendance Book, 1956–63. 29 Connell interview, 18 February 1987, pp. 3, 4. 30 DT, 17 October 1956, p. 13. 31 ST, 25 November 1956, p. 77. 32 DT, 23 November 1960, p. 29. Sadly, the ACT TLC minute book covering this incident has gone missing. 33 DT, 22 March 1957, p. 3. 34 Ibid. 35 AJA Canberra branch minute books, 5 April 1957, 24 June 1957. 36 Brian Fitzpatrick and Rowan J Cahill, The Seamen’s Union of Australia, 1872– 1972: A History, Seamen’s Union of Australia, Sydney, 1981, p. 264; 87 CAR 934; ST, 19 May 1957, p. 45. 37 DT, 21 May 1957, p. 3. 38 DT, 30 May 1957, p. 3. 39 ST, 9 June 1957, p. 45. 40 AJA Canberra branch minute books, 10 June 1957. 41 ST, 16 June 1957, p. 43. 42 Fitzpatrick and Cahill, Seamen’s Union of Australia, pp. 264, 266. 43 Connell interview, 26 November 1986, pp. 152–53. 44 Fitzpatrick and Cahill, Seamen’s Union

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Notes to pages 118–40 of Australia, pp. 225–28; ST, 9 February 1958, p. 3. 45 Seamen’s Union of Australia, Senate Select Committee: Maritime Indemnities, Forest Lodge, [1958], p. 13. 46 DT, 9 September 1958, p. 7. 47 DT, 1 October 1958, pp. 2, 9. 48 Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Senate, Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire Into and Report upon Payments to Maritime Unions, Government Printer, Canberra, 1958, p. 46; Fitzpatrick and Cahill, Seamen’s Union of Australia, pp. 264, 268–69. 49 DT, 20 May 1957, pp. 1, 4. 50 DT, 17 June 1957, p. 3. 51 SH, 16 June 1957, p. 13. 52 ST, 16 June 1957, p. 8. 53 SMH, 18 June 1957, p. 4. 54 SMH, 4 September 1956, p. 23, 17 June 1957, p. 4. 55 D Holmes to WR Colbourne, 12 July 1957, ALP NSW Branch Records, c. 1956–1969, ML MSS 2083/206/75. 56 WR Colbourne to P Donnelly, 16 August 1957, ML MSS 2083/152/103; SMH, 10 August 1957, p. 14. 57 P Donnelly to WR Colbourne, 25 September 1957, ML MSS 2083/152/95. 58 Acting General Secretary T Mulvihill to P Donnelly, 7 October 1957, ML MSS 2083/152/89. 59 P Donnelly to WR Colbourne, 6 November 1957, ML MSS 2083/152/83. 60 Connell interview, 18 February 1987, pp. 4–5. 61 Cyril Wyndham, telephone conversation with Stephen Holt, 10 December 2008.

A Jungle Book

1 See the chapter on ‘Whitlam and I’. 2 Buckley, ‘Red Fox’, p. 41; Hawley, ‘Prowler’. 3 Sanford Greenburger to Alan Reid, 21 October 1955 and Alan Reid to Sanford Greenburger, 14 November 1955, Sanford Greenburger Collection, University of Oregon Library System, Special Collections and University Archives.

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4 Pseudonym revealed by Alan Reid Jr in conversation with Stephen Holt, 5 December 2008. 5 Alan Reid, ‘How not to get a novel published (In one hard lesson)’, Bulletin, 11 January 1961, pp. 20–21. 6 Bertrand Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1948, pp. 96, 98. 7 Jenny Hocking, Frank Hardy: Politics, Literature, Life, Lothian Books, Melbourne, 2005, p. 87. 8 Reid, ‘How not to get a novel published’, p. 20. 9 Colin Roderick to Beatrice Davis, 12 August 1958, Colin Roderick Papers, NLA MS 1578, Box 16, Folder 90. 10 Reid, ‘How not to get a novel published’, p. 20. 11 Ibid. 12 The Australian Vintage Paperback Guide, compiled by Graeme Flanagan, Gryphon Books, Brooklyn, NY, 1994, p. 117. 13 John Ryan, Panel by Panel: A History of Australian Comics, Cassell Australia, Sydney, 1979, p. 209. 14 SMH, 12 September 1961, p. 7. 15 Bulletin, 23 September 1961, p. 4. 16 NLA MS 1578, Series 6. 17 NLA MS 1578, Box 16, Folder 90. 18 SMH, 13 September 1961, p. 6. 19 Bulletin, 23 September 1961, p. 4. 20 DT, 12 September 1961, p. 22; SMH, 12 September 1961, p. 7. 21 DT, 13 September 1961, p. 24; SMH, 13 September 1961, p. 6. 22 DT, 14 September 1961, p. 11; SMH, 14 September 1961, p. 13. 23 SMH, 15 September 1961, p. 7. 24 Colin Roderick to Graeme Powell, 23 December 1987, Roderick Papers, Series 6. 25 SMH, 20 September 1961, p. 7. 26 DT, 19 September 1961, p. 26. 27 SMH, 22 September 1961, p. 5; Sun, 21 September 1961, p. 3. 28 SMH, 22 September 1961, p. 5; Sun, 22 September 1961, p. 4. 29 DT, 4 November 1961, p. 8.

Telling stories

1 [John Valder], ‘The Oracles of Shanty Town’, Nation, 28 February 1959,

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340

Notes to pages 140–55

pp. 10, 11. 2 Hawley, ‘Prowler’. 3 Telephone conversation between Stephen Holt and Mrs Joan Smith, 6 January 2009. 4 Alan Reid Jr, email to Stephen Holt, 5 November 2008. 5 DT, 28 October 1958, pp. 1, 3, 29 October 1958, pp. 1, 3, 4; National Museum of Australia, Southern Cloud display, Canberra, 13 October – 30 November 2008. 6 DD McNicoll, email to Ross Fitzgerald, 25 September 2008; Penelope Nelson, email to Ross Fitzgerald, 30 September 2008. 7 Bulletin, 21 December 1960, pp. 10–12. 8 DT, 15 August 1960, p. 9, 16 August 1960, p. 2, 17 August 1960, p. 12; BA Santamaria, Your Most Obedient Servant: Selected Letters: 1938–1996, ed. Patrick Morgan, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2007, p. 174. 9 DR Horne to Frank Packer, 28 July 1961, in ACP-FP3: Memos to and from Frank Packer, 1959–1962, Donald Horne Papers, ML MSS 3525, MLK 2147. 10 Bulletin, 22 July 1961, p. 4; Margo Beasley, Wharfies: A History of the Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia, Halstead Press in association with Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, 1996, p. 198. 11 DT, 7 April 1961, p. 1. 12 DT, 8 April 1961, p. 4. 13 Ian Hancock, National and Permanent? The Federal Organisation of the Liberal Party of Australia 1944– 1965, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2000, p. 200. 14 Bridget Griffen-Foley, Party Games: Australian Politicians and the Media from War to Dismissal, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2003, pp. 88, 89, 91–92, 95, 98–99, 102–03. 15 Griffen-Foley, Party Games, p. 106. 16 Bridget Griffen-Foley, House of Packer: The Making of a Media Empire, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999, p. 245; ST, 3 December 1961, p. 53; DT, 6 December 1961, p. 1. 17 DT, 29 November 1961, p. 10. 18 Ibid., p. 3.

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19 Bridget Griffen-Foley, Sir Frank Packer: The Young Master, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2000, p. 248. 20 DT, 30 November 1961, pp. 1, 3, 1 December 1961, p. 2. 21 Griffen-Foley, Party Games, pp. 103–05; SMH, 1 December 1961, p. 2. 22 DT, 4 December 1961, p. 10. 23 Reid, ‘Prime Ministers I have known’, Bulletin, 5 February 1980, p, 44; Connell interview, 30 October 1986, p. 73. 24 RS Whitington, Sir Frank: The Frank Packer Story, Cassell, Melbourne, 1971, p. 270. 25 DT, 4 April 1962, p. 10. 26 Brian McKinlay, The ALP: A Short History of the Australian Labor Party, Drummond/Heinemann, Melbourne, 1981, p. 125. 27 DT, 5 May 1962, p. 1, 9 May 1962, p. 10. 28 DT, 10 May 1962,p. 21 29 DT, 9 May 1962, p. 3. 30 Tom Uren, Straight Left, Random House Australia, Sydney, 1994, p. 144. 31 Reid’s ASIO file, f20. 32 Uren, Straight Left, p. 138; DT, 30 November 1962, p. 9. 33 Uren, Straight Left, p. 139. 34 Ibid., pp. 139–40; DW Rawson, ‘Political Chronicle’, AJPH, August 1964, p. 228. 35 Uren, Straight Left, p. 140; Bulletin, 3 November 1962, p. 6. 36 Whitington, Sir Frank, p. 40. 37 Uren, Straight Left, pp. 140–43. 38 Ibid., p. 138. 39 Ibid., p. 143; Connell interview, 22 October 1986, p. 53, 5 February 1987, p. 48. 40 Whitington, Sir Frank, p. 40.

Faceless men

1 Louise Overacker, Australian Parties in a Changing Society 1945–67, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1968, p. 99. 2 Bulletin, 9 March 1963, pp. 6–7; DT, 18 March 1963, p. 5. 3 DT, 18 March 1963, p. 5. 4 DT, 20 March 1963, p. 1. 5 Ibid., p. 1; Uren, Straight Left, p. 130. 6 DT, 21 March 1963, p. 1.

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Notes to pages 155–73 7 Ibid., p. 1. 8 Uren, Straight Left, p. 130. 9 GE, pp. 94–95. 10 Connell interview, 12 November 1986, pp. 103–04. 11 GE, pp. 94–95. 12 Paral’s identity has been established by Ross Fitzgerald (Weekend Australian, 25–26 October 2008, p. 26). The photojournalist Peter Hardacre was said to be the photographer by Peter Rees in http://www.crikey.com.au (26 November 2004), but no proof was ever offered. 13 Connell interview, 12 November 1986, pp. 104–05. 14 DT, 22 March 1963, p. 5. 15 John Menadue, Things You Learn Along the Way, David Lovell Publishing, Melbourne, 1999, p. 58. 16 DT, 31 July 1963, p. 13. 17 Connell interview, 12 November 1986, p. 107. 18 Connell interview, 14 October 1986, p. 30. 19 DT, 7 October 1963, p. 1. 20 DT, 8 October 1963, p. 9. 21 DT, 23 October 1963, p. 3. 22 Bulletin, 7 December 1963, p. 6. 23 Colin A Hughes and John S Western, The Prime Minister’s Policy Speech: A Case Study in Televised Politics, ANU Press, Canberra, 1966, p. 71. 24 Graeme Starr, The Liberal Party of Australia: A Documentary History, Drummond/Heinemann, Melbourne, 1980, p. 215. 25 Colin A Hughes, ‘Political Review’, AQ, March 1964, p. 102; ST, 3 November 1963, p. 13. 26 DT, 19 November 1963, p. 1. 27 Robert Raymond, Out of the Box: An Inside View of the Coming of Current Affairs and Documentaries to Australian Television, Seaview Press, Henley Beach SA, 1999, pp. 80–82. 28 Raymond, Out of the Box, pp. 82–84.

At home with the Liberals

1 David Marr, Barwick, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992, p. 206; Connell interview, 22 October 1986, p. 48 and 18 February 1987, p. 7.

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2 Connell interview, 18 February 1987, p. 26. 3 Peter Howson (ed. Don Aitkin), The Howson Diaries: The Life of Politics, Viking Press, Melbourne, 1984, p. 105. 4 CT, 27 July 1964, p. 3, 29 July 1964, p. 1; DT, 27 July 1964, p. 10, 29 July 1964, p. 23. 5 Bill Hayden, Hayden: An Autobiography, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1996, pp. 129–30; DT, 14 April 1964, pp. 1, 3, 15 April 1964, p. 1. 6 Connell interview, 12 November 1986, p. 107. 7 Ross McMullin, The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party 1891–1991, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p. 318. 8 Alan Reid, ‘The Role of the Journalist’, First Summer School of Professional Journalism, Summer School of Professional Journalism, Canberra, 1965, pp. 26–34; CT , 8 February 1965, p. 3; Bulletin 20 February 1965, pp. 18–19 (K Wilson); Journalist, March 1965, p. 7. 9 ST, 29 November 1964, p. 4; DT, 30 November 1965, p. 5; typescript in Leslie Haylen Papers, NLA MS 5285, Box 3, Folder 15. 10 DT, 18 December 1964, p. 1. 11 Pat Mackie, with Elizabeth Vassilieff, Mount Isa; The story of a dispute, Hudson, Melbourne, 1989, p. 172; Connell interview, 26 November 1986, pp. 160–61. 12 Brian Johns, ‘The Inside Dopesters: Canberra’s Fourth Estate’, Bulletin, 12 June 1965, p. 29. 13 Michael Sexton, War for the Asking: How Australia Invited Itself to Vietnam, New Holland, Sydney, 2002 [1981], pp. 149, 194–95, 199, 203; Graham Freudenberg, A Figure of Speech: A Political Memoir, John Wiley & Sons Australia, Brisbane, 2005, p. 61; DT, 29 April 1965, p. 1. 14 Ian Day, email to Phillip Adams, 30 September 2008. 15 Bulletin, 25 December 1965, p. 15. 16 DT, 20 January 1966, p. 3. 17 Bulletin, 29 January 1966, p. 11. 18 Bulletin, 19 March 1966, pp. 21–23. 19 Bulletin, 26 March 1966, pp. 15–17. 20 Tom Frame, The Life and Death of

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342

Notes to pages 173–96

Harold Holt, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005, p. 183. 21 DT, 1 July 1966, p. 3. 22 DT, 2 July 1966, p. 3. 23 Bulletin, 12 November 1966, p. 14. 24 Connell interview, 30 October 1986, pp. 74–75. 25 Bulletin, 11 February 1967, p. 14. 26 Bulletin, 18 February 1967, p. 10. 27 RW Connell and Florence Gould, Politics of the Extreme Right: Warringah 1966, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1967. 28 DT, 11 October 1966, p. 13; Bulletin, 26 November 1966 (S Lipski), pp. 18–20, 3 December 1966, p. 13. 29 Bulletin, 25 March 1967, pp. 20–21, 23–24. 30 Howson, Diaries, p. 342. 31 Peter Cabban and David Salter, Breaking Ranks, Random House Australia, Sydney, 2005, p. 213. 32 Tom Frame, Where Fate Calls: The HMAS Voyager Tragedy, Hodder & Stoughton, Sydney, 1992, pp. 185–86. 33 Howson, Diaries, p. 321. 34 Ibid., p. 322. 35 Ibid., p. 335. The Isaacson article appeared in the Bulletin, 21 October 1967, p. 34. 36 Howson, Diaries, p. 409. 37 Ibid., p. 342. 38 Bulletin, 2 December 1967, pp. 15–16. 39 Ibid., p. 17. 40 Connell interview, 30 October 1986, pp. 75–76. 41 DT, 13 December 1967, p. 1; Bulletin, 23 December 1967, p. 13. 42 Frame, Life and Death of Harold Holt, p. 241. 43 Bulletin, 23 December 1967, p. 13. 44 Connell interview, 30 October 1986, p. 76; Reid, ‘Prime Ministers I have known’, Bulletin, 12 February 1980, p. 66.

Power struggle

1 Sam Lipski, email to Stephen Holt, 27 July 2006; Whitington, Sir Frank, p. 43. 2 Beatrice Davis to Alan Reid, 5 November 1965, Angus & Robertson Papers, ML MSS 3269/604/111. 3 Bulletin, 13 November 1961, pp.

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31–33. 4 J Abernethy to A Reid (cable), 2 June 1967, ML MSS 3269/604/113, 115. 5 A Barker to J Abernethy, with Abernethy’s annotation (undated), ML MSS 3269/604/117. 6 Beatrice Davis to Alan Reid, 14 July 1967, ML MSS 3269/604/119. 7 ST, 31 December 1967, p. 5. 8 Griffen-Foley, Party Games, p. 146. 9 PS, pp. 22–23. 10 McNicoll, Luck’s A Fortune, p. 233. 11 Connell interview, 30 October 1986, p. 77. 12 DT, 20 December 1967, p. 3. 13 Ibid. 14 Connell interview, 30 October 1986, p. 78. 15 PS, p. 18. 16 Sunday Australian, 15 August 1971, p. 10. 17 McNicoll, Luck’s A Fortune, pp. 233–35. 18 [Heinz Arndt] to Alan Reid, 27 February 1969, Heinz Arndt Papers, NLA MS 6641, Series 1, Box 5, Folder 36. 19 PS, pp. 7, 8, 16. 20 Ibid., p. 17; Ian Hancock, John Gorton: He Did It His Way, Hodder, Sydney, 2002, pp. 138–39; Sunday Australian, 15 August 1971, p. 10 (John Gorton). 21 PS., p. 18. 22 Ibid., p. 23. 23 Ibid., p. 19. 24 Ibid., p. 31. 25 Ibid., p. 126. 26 Ibid., p. 154. 27 Harry Robinson, ‘The View from the Gallery’, Australian Magazine, 8 August 1992, p. 24. 28 DT, 24 November 1966, p. 17. 29 PS, pp. 77, 126. 30 Ibid., pp. 77, 78. 31 Ibid., pp. 175–79. 32 DT, 4 January 1968, p. 8. 33 DT, 6 January 1968, p. 3. 34 Edward St John’s Political Diary 1965– 73 is now ML MSS 6690/1/1–3. 35 PS, pp. 179–82. 36 Ibid., pp. 198–99; ST, 14 January 1968, p. 11. 37 PS, p. 200. 38 Bulletin, 16 March 1968, p. 17. 39 GE, p. 58; Connell interview, 19 November 1986, p. 114; Peter

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Notes to pages 196 –217 Golding, Black Jack McEwen, Political Gladiator, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1996, pp. 294–96. 40 PS, p. 107n. 41 GE, p. 144. 42 Bulletin, 10 August 1968, p. 19. 43 Howson, Diaries, p. 452. 44 Hasluck, Light Time Has Made, p. 158. 45 GE, p. 85n. 46 Australian, 7 October 1968, p. 7. 47 GE, pp. 222, 242n. 48 Howson, Diaries, pp. 479, 484, 491. 49 Australian, 8 January 1969, p. 1. 50 Sun News-Pictorial, 15 January 1969, p. 8. 51 CT, 9 January 1969, p. 2. 52 SMH, 11 January 1969, p. 18. 53 Mercury, 18 January 1969, p. 5. 54 Tribune, 15 June 1969, p. 1.

Jolly John

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Bulletin, 4 January 1969, p. 11. Bulletin, 23 November 1968, p. 17. GE, p. 80. Bulletin, 23 November 1968, p. 18. Bulletin, 12 August 1980, p. 68. CT, 6 February 1969, p. 2. SMH, 11 October 1988, p. 8, 29 January 2003, p. 13 (Alan Ramsey); CT, 14 October 1988, p. 4. 8 Graham Freudenberg, A Certain Grandeur: Gough Whitlam in Politics, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1977, p. 143; David Solomon, Inside the Australian Parliament, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1978, p. 155; Patricia Edgar, The Politics of the Press, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1979, pp. 95–96 (quoting Peter Samuel). 9 SMH, 4 September 1987, p. 11. 10 Alan Ramsey, email to Stephen Holt, 19 July 2006. 11 Graham Freudenberg, telephone conversation with Stephen Holt, 30 November 2008. 12 GE, pp. 211–13; Hancock, Gorton, pp. 213–14. 13 GE, pp. 213–14. 14 Hancock, Gorton, p. 215. 15 St John, Political Diary, 15 February, 1969. 16 St John, Political Diary, 4 January 1969 and enclosed memo to Sir John

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Cramer, 17 February 1969. 17 St John, Political Diary, 13 January 1969, 27 January 1969. 18 St John, Political Diary, 10 April 1969, 21 May 1969; Bulletin, 5 April 1969, p. 13. 19 St John, Political Diary, 23 February, 1969. 20 Peter Samuel Papers, NLA MS 3863, Folder 24, Box 3 and Folder 58, Box 7. 21 GE, pp. 215–20. 22 St John, Political Diary, 6 March 1969. 23 Howson, Diaries, p. 497. 24 DT, 17 March 1969, p. 7. 25 St John, Political Diary, 11 April 1969. 26 Howson, Diaries, pp. 523–24. 27 Ibid., p. 525. 28 St John, Political Diary, 10 April 1969; Edward St John, A Time to Speak, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1969, p. 239 and ‘The Gorton Fiasco’, AQ, December 1971, p. 119. 29 Bulletin, 30 August 1969, p. 19. 30 Bulletin, 9 August 1969, pp. 24–25. 31 Howson, Diaries, p. 545. 32 St John, Political Diary, 6 March 1969. 33 Peter Samuel to Pat Rolfe, 23 May 1969, Samuel Papers, Series 1, Folder 66. 34 St John, Political Diary, 2 July 1969. 35 St John, Political Diary, 9 September 1969. 36 Howson, Diaries, p. 547. 37 ‘Money market’, transcript dated 6 October 1969, Samuel Papers, Series 1, Folder 31. 38 Bulletin, 20 September 1969, p. 23. 39 DT, 2 October 1969, p 6. 40 Bulletin, 4 October 1969, p. 21. 41 Bulletin, 25 October 1969, p. 16. 42 Business Report, 19 October 1969, Samuel Papers, Series 1, Folder 31. 43 DT, 28 October 1969, p. 3. 44 DT, 29 October 1969, p. 1. 45 Ainsley Gotto to John Gorton, 30 October 1969, Personal Papers of Prime Minister Gorton, Hon David Fairbairn resignation from Gorton Ministry 1969 [includes papers relating to a leadership challenge], NAA M3787. 46 Bulletin, 1 November 1969, p. 21. 47 McNicoll, Luck’s A Fortune, p. 273. 48 Howson, Diaries, p. 565. 49 Ibid., p. 566.

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344

Notes to pages 217–35

50 Ibid., p. 567. 51 Ibid., p. 568. 52 DT, 4 November 1969, p. 2. 53 Bulletin, 8 November 1969, p. 18. 54 Hancock, Gorton, p. 248. 55 Griffen-Foley, House of Packer, p. 285. 56 Hancock, Gorton, p. 248. 57 Howson, Diaries, pp. 576–77. 58 GE, pp. 383, 390n. 59 DT, 21 November 1969, p. 9. 60 Donald Horne, ‘The Packer Plot’ (memo to Sir Frank Packer, dated 13 August 1971) in ACP-B4: ‘The Bulletin (1967–72) Various plans for change’, Donald Horne Papers, ML MSS 3525, MLK 2152. 61 DT, 25 November 1969, pp. 1, 3. 62 DT, 27 November 1969, p. 1. 63 Howson, Diaries, p. 582. 64 Ibid., p. 587. 65 Ibid., p. 545. 66 Ibid., p. 588.

In cold blood

1 2 3 4

Bulletin, 11 January 1969, p. 10. Bulletin, 15 February 1969, pp. 85–86. Bulletin, 7 March 1970, p. 28. James Shrimpton, email to Ross Fitzgerald, 30 September 2008. 5 The Review, 6 August 1971, p. 1210. 6 Howson, Diaries, p. 593. 7 Ibid., p. 595. 8 Ibid., p. 607. 9 Ibid., pp. 612, 617. 10 NLA Oral History Interview with Peter Samuel, interviewer Mel Pratt (1973– 74), ORAL TRC 121/47/43. 11 Howson, Diaries, p. 618. 12 DT, 16 April 1970, p. 18. 13 Howson, Diaries, pp. 630–31. 14 Ibid., p. 632. 15 Ibid., p. 637; GE, pp. 395–97; Hancock, Gorton, p. 279. 16 Howson, Diaries, p. 641. 17 GE, pp. 398, 400. 18 Alan Reid to Sir Frank Packer, 20 May 1970, David McNicoll Papers, ML MSS 7419/3/1. 19 Howson, Diaries, p. 649. 20 Ibid., p. 657. 21 Ibid. 22 Bulletin, 3 October 1970, p. 17; P Samuel to D Horne, 25 September 1970, Samuel Papers, Series 1, Folder

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41; DT, 24 September 1970, pp. 1, 14, 25 September 1970, pp. 1, 8, 26 September 1970, p. 1. 23 GE, p. 401. 24 Bulletin, 28 November 1970, p. 20. 25 Howson, Diaries, p. 675. 26 ‘Mr Y’, ‘A Packer Plot?’, AQ, June 1971, p. 3. Mr Y was in fact Peter Samuel. See Stephen Holt, ‘Mr Y and Mr Gorton’, Quadrant, October 2008, pp. 44–46. 27 Samuel, ‘A Packer Plot?’, p. 3. 28 Reid, ‘Prime Ministers I have known’, Bulletin, 12 February 1980, p. 70; Peter Samuel to Donald Horne, 4 March 1971, Samuel Papers, Series 1, Folder 68. 29 Samuel, ‘A Packer Plot?’, p. 4. 30 GE, p. 417. 31 Samuel, ‘A Packer Plot?’, p. 4. 32 GE, p. 417. 33 DT, 1 March 1971, p. 10. 34 Howson, Diaries, p. 696. 35 Hancock, Gorton, p. 315; JS Western and Colin A Hughes, The Mass Media in Australia (2nd edn), UQP, Brisbane, 1983, p. 136. 36 Samuel, ‘A Packer Plot?’, p. 4. 37 Western and Hughes, Mass Media, p. 135. 38 Ibid., p. 136. 39 GE, p. 421. 40 Ibid., p. 424. 41 Ibid., pp. 423–24. 42 DT, 5 March 1971, p. 1. 43 DT, 6 March 1971, p. 1 and Samuel, ‘A Packer Plot?’, p. 5. 44 Howson, Diaries, p. 699. 45 Griffen-Foley, Sir Frank Packer, p. 303. 46 Samuel, ‘A Packer Plot?’, pp. 5–6. 47 Howson, Diaries, p. 698. 48 ST, 7 March 1971, p. 2. 49 Howson, Diaries, p. 699. 50 Griffen-Foley, Party Games, p. 165. 51 Reid, ‘Prime Ministers I have known’, Bulletin, 12 February 1980, p. 70. 52 Samuel, ‘A Packer Plot?’, p. 5. 53 DT, 8 March 1971, p. 13; Australian, 8 March 1971, p. 1. 54 GE, p. 445n. 55 Samuel, ‘A Packer Plot?’, p. 6. 56 Hancock, Gorton, p. 320. 57 Connell interview, 19 November 1986, p. 133. 58 DT, 8 March 1971, p. 1.

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Notes to pages 236 –58 59 Howson, Diaries, p. 700. 60 Graham Freudenberg, Certain Grandeur, p. 186. 61 Reid, ‘Prime Ministers I have known’, Bulletin, 19 February 1980, pp. 61–62. 62 Freudenberg, Certain Grandeur, p. 186. 63 GE, pp. 433–35; Connell interview, 19 November 1986, p. 134. 64 Howson, Diaries, p. 701. 65 GE, p. 438. 66 Howson, Diaries, p. 702. 67 Ibid., p. 702. 68 Ibid., p. 702. 69 Peter Samuel, ‘Who Got Gorton?’, Current Affairs Bulletin, July 1971, p. 61. 70 GE, p. 438; Samuel, ‘Who Got Gorton?’, p. 60.

McMahon PM

1 DT, 11 March 1971, p. 2, 16 March 1971, 2, 17 March 1971, p. 9; Australian Women’s Weekly, 24 March 1971, pp. 8–9. 2 DT, 16 March 1971, p. 12. 3 Reid Papers, Box 1. 4 GE, p. 387. 5 Ibid., p. 388. 6 National Times, 26–31 July 1971, p. 40. 7 GE, pp. 18, 41. 8 West Australian, 10 August 1971, p. 7 (R Pullan). 9 GE, p. 444. 10 Sunday Australian, 15 August 1971, p. 4. 11 The Review, 20 August 1971, p. 1264. 12 Hancock, Gorton, p. 346. 13 Sunday Australian, 15 August 1971, p. 4. 14 Sunday Australian, 8 August 1971, p. 10. 15 Daily Mirror, 6 August 1971, p. 2. 16 Sunday Australian, 15 August 1971, p. 4. 17 CT, 10 August 1971, p. 3; Sunday Australian, 15 August 1971, p. 5. 18 Hancock, Gorton, p. 351. 19 Ibid., p. 353. 20 Ibid., p. 354. 21 Australian, 11 August 1971, p. 9. 22 DT, 27 August 1971, p. 1. 23 House of Representatives, Hansard, 7

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September 1971, p. 801. 24 Lloyd, Parliament and Press, pp. 233–34; House of Representatives, Hansard, 8 December 1971, p. 4353 (J Cope). 25 The Review, 11–17 October 1971, p. 265; House of Representatives, Committee of Privileges, Minutes of Proceedings, Parliamentary Papers, 1971, no. 242, pp. 12, 3–14. 26 Committee of Privileges, Minutes of Proceedings, pp. 16–17. 27 House of Representatives, Hansard, 8 December 1971, pp. 4343–44 (AD Fraser). 28 The Review, 11–17 December 1971, p. 265 (M MacCallum). 29 CT, 8 December 1971, p. 1; Howson, Diaries, p. 800. 30 ST, 3 October 1971, p. 14, 24 October 1971, p. 19, 28 November 1971, p. 19. 31 Reid diary, 18 August 1971; DT, 19 August 1971, p. 9. 32 Reid diary, 20 August 1971. 33 Reid diary, 7 September 1971; Bulletin, 18 September 1971, p. 15. 34 Reid diary, 14 November 1971; Bulletin, 13 November 1971, p. 23; SMH, 17 November 1971, p. 2. 35 Reid diary, 21 and 23 February 1972. 36 Howson, Diaries, p. 828. 37 Reid diary, 29 February 1972. 38 Reid diary, 1, 2 and 7 March 1972. 39 Reid diary, 21 and 26 March 1972. 40 Reid diary, 8 July 1972. 41 Bridget Griffen-Foley, ‘Sir Douglas Frank Hewson Packer (1906–1974)’, ADB, 1940–80, vol. 15, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2000, p, 556; DT, 5 June 1972, p. 1. 42 The Review, 10–16 June 1972, p. 948. 43 Bob Carr, interview with Ross Fitzgerald, Sydney, 8 October 2008. 44 Michael Schildberger, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Spectrum, Melbourne, 2000, pp. 43–44; Michael Schildberger, telephone conversation with Ross Fitzgerald, 26 February 2009. 45 Laurie Oakes and David Solomon, The Making of an Australian Prime Minister, Cheshire, Melbourne, p. 284. 46 SMH, 30 October 1972, p. 2. 47 Reid diary, 22 August 1972.

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346

Notes to pages 258–81

48 Bulletin, 24 February 1973, pp. 46, 49 (review of Oakes and Solomon, Making of Australian Prime Minister). 49 Oakes and Solomon, Making of Australian Prime Minister, pp. 8–9.

Whitlam and I

1 Reid, ‘Prime Ministers I have known’, Bulletin, 19 February 1980, pp. 61–62. 2 Freudenberg has related this story on several occasions (e.g. telephone conversation with Stephen Holt, 30 November 2008 and National Times, 16–21 August 1971, p. 4). 3 The Whitlam Institute, University of Western Sydney (UWS), has an electronic version of the transcript. 4 Reid Papers, Box 1. 5 Bulletin, 24 February 1973, p. 21. 6 Bulletin, 3 March 1973, pp. 17–18. 7 Bulletin, 10 March 1973, p. 23, 17 March 1973, p. 23. 8 Bulletin, 28 April 1973, p. 30. 9 WV, pp. 46, 203. 10 Connell interview, 3 December 1986, p. 174. 11 Connell interview, 22 October 1986, p. 49. 12 Bulletin, 24 March 1973, p. 20. 13 WV, p. 83. 14 McKnight, Spies and Their Secrets, pp. 282–83; Schildberger, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, pp. 47–48; Australian, 6 August 1973, p. 4; DT, 6 August 1973, p. 3. 15 AH Higgins to Alan Reid, 14 August 1973, Reid Papers, Box 36. 16 Schildberger, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, p. 48. 17 Bulletin, 21 July 1973, p. 14. 18 Peter Blazey, Screw Loose: Uncalled-for Memoirs, Picador, Sydney, 1997, p. 181. 19 Ibid., p. 182. 20 Bulletin, 9 June 1973, p. 16. 21 Jenny Hocking, Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1997, pp. 171–72; Bulletin, 4 May 1974, p. 12. 22 WV, pp. 123–24. 23 Bulletin, 9 November 1974, p. 30. 24 Bill Guy, A Life on the Left: A Biography

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of Clyde Cameron, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 1999, pp, 296–97. 25 WV, p. 13. 26 Alan Reid as quoted in Stephen Foley and Marshall Wilson, Anatomy of a Coup: The Sinister Intrigue Behind the Dismissal, Canterbury Press, Melbourne, 1990, p. 172. 27 Sun, 26 June 1951, p. 10. 28 CT, 10 June 1975, p. 11. 29 Australian, 16 June 1975, p. 6 (Roger Pulvers); CT, 18 June 1975, p. 11 (Jacqueline Rees). 30 Bulletin, 21 July 1962, p. 13. 31 See ‘Personal Notes 1974–75’, Reid Papers, Box 36. 32 WV, pp. 165–75. 33 WV, p. 63–64. 34 WV, p. 349; Connell interview, 3 December 1986, pp. 179–80. 35 Bulletin, 20 September 1975, p. 13, 20 February 1979, p. 24. 36 WV, p. 360. 37 Bulletin, 25 October 1975, p. 22. 38 Connell interview, 3 December 1986, p. 187. 39 WV, p. 380. 40 Connell interview, 3 December 1986, p. 188; Hayden, Autobiography, pp. 277–78. 41 WV, p. 402. 42 Bulletin, 15 November 1975, p. 17. 43 Laurie Oakes, Crash Through or Crash: The Unmaking of a Prime Minister, Drummond Press, Melbourne, 1976, p. 3. 44 Allan Fraser, ‘The Extraordinary Day’, Quadrant, December 1975, p. 5; WV, p. 403. 45 WV, pp. 410–11. 46 WV, pp. 416–17. See also Connell interview, 3 December 1986, pp. 189–91. 47 WV, p. 421. 48 Hawley, ‘Prowler’ and Connell interview, 17 December 1986, pp. 73–74. 49 David Solomon, Inside the Australian Parliament, p. 156. 50 SMH, Good Weekend, 2 November 1985, p. 7. 51 WV, pp. 424–25. 52 Paul Barry, Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer, Bantam/ABC Books, Sydney, 1993, pp. 213–15; Humphrey

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Notes to pages 281–300 McQueen, Australia’s Media Monopolies, Visa, Melbourne, 1977, pp. 89–91. 53 Ita Buttrose, Early Edition: My First Forty Years, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1985, p. 133. 54 Peter Andren, The Andren Report: An Independent Way in Australian Politics, Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2003, p. 76. 55 David Smith, Head of State: The Governor-General, the Monarchy, the Republic and the Dismissal, Macleay Press, Sydney, 2005, pp. 310–11. 56 Bulletin, 6 December 1975, pp. 16–17. 57 Elected Prime Minister, Press Statement, 3 December 1975, Reid Papers, Box 17. 58 Australian, 4 December 1975, p. 11, 6 December 1975, p. 1. 59 Michael Sexton, Illusions of Power: The Fate of a Reform Government, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1979, p. 268. 60 WV, pp. 438–40.

After the crash

1 Bulletin, 20 December 1975, p. 19; Blanche D’Alpuget, Robert J Hawke: A Biography, Schwartz/Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1982, pp. 291–93. 2 John Faulkner and Stuart Macintyre (eds), True Believers: The Story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2001, pp. 196–97. 3 DT, 16 February 1976, p. 2. 4 WV, pp. 450–52. 5 Connell interview, 3 December 1986, pp. 184–85; 17 December 1986, pp. 57–61; Rodney Tiffen, Scandals: Media, Politics and Corruption in Contemporary Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1999, p. 41; George Munster, A Paper Prince, Penguin, Melbourne, 1987, p. 114. 6 Cameron, Diaries, p. 41. 7 WV, p. 452. 8 Cameron, Diaries, p. 79. 9 Sam Lipski, ‘A Bookseller Who Thrives On Adversity’, Bulletin, 7 April 1981, pp. 66, 68. 10 Michael Zifcak, My Life in Print, Lothian Books, Melbourne, 2006, pp.

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157–58. 11 Zifcak, My Life in Print, pp. 158–59. 12 WV, p. 53. 13 WV, p. 160. 14 Zifcak, My Life in Print, pp. 159–60. 15 SMH, 23 November 1976 p. 1. 16 Sun News-Pictorial, 24 November 1976, p. 13; Australian, 24 November 1976, p. 11. 17 SMH, 24 November 1976, p. 1. 18 SMH, 25 November 1976, p. 2; CT, 26 November 1976, p. 7. 19 Zifcak, My Life in Print, p. 160. 20 Australian, 26 November 1976, p. 3; CT, 26 November 1976, p. 7. 21 Cameron, Diaries, p. 848; Connell interview, 3 December 1986, p. 164. 22 Bulletin, 26 February 1977, p. 14–15. 23 Ian Warden, ‘Political Review’, AQ, June 1977, p. 121. 24 Cameron, Diaries, p. 348. 25 Bulletin, 26 March 1977, pp. 14–15, 17 (Peter Samuel and Jacqueline Rees). 26 Cameron, Diaries, p. 452. 27 Ibid., p. 483. 28 Ibid., p. 484. 29 Ibid., p. 530. 30 Bulletin, 21 May 1977, p. 23. 31 Zifcak, My Life in Print, p. 163. 32 CT, 2 November 1977, p. 10. 33 Munster, Paper Prince, p. 114. 34 Cameron, Diaries, p. 848.

From Fraser to Hawke

1 Bulletin, 26 November 1977, pp. 14–15, 17, 26 September 1978, pp. 23–23. 2 House of Representatives, Hansard, 27 May 2002, p. 2430; Andrew Crook, ‘John Howard on the good, the bad and the well-read’, 5 August 2009. 3 Bulletin, 26 November 1977, p. 22. 4 Bulletin, 3 December 1977, pp. 38–39; Cameron, Diaries, p. 848. 5 Bulletin, 21 March 1978, pp. 33, 36. 6 Barry Jones, A Thinking Reed, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2006, pp 353–54. 7 Connell interview, 17 December 1986, p. 80. 8 Bulletin, 13 June 1978, pp, 14–15, 17. 9 Andrew West and Rachel Morris, Bob Carr: A Self-made Man, HarperCollins,

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348

Notes to pages 300–18

Sydney, 2003, p. 99. 10 Bulletin, 22 August 1978, pp. 14–15, 17. 11 Bulletin, 29 August 1978, p. 23. 12 Ian Warden, ‘Political Review’, AQ, September 1978, p. 126. 13 Bulletin, 29 August 1978, pp. 23–24, 27. 14 David Adams, ‘Political Review’, AQ, December 1978, pp. 121–22. 15 Bulletin, 6 March 1979, pp. 20–22, 26 February 1980, p. 61; Connell interview, 17 December 1986, pp. 71–73; Australian, 23 February 1979, p. 1; CT, 24 February 1979, p. 1. 16 Wal Fife, A Country Liberal: A Political Autobiography, WC Fife, Wagga Wagga NSW, 2008, pp. 153–54. 17 Bulletin, 17 April 1979, pp. 35, 37. 18 Bulletin, 2 October 1979, p. 40; Alan Reid, ‘Government, Employer and Trade Unions: The Shift of Power’, 9th Annual John Curtin Memorial Lecture, ANU, Canberra, 1979, p. 16. 19 Bulletin, 5 December 1978, p. 21. 20 Rino Baggio to Alan Reid, 15 December 1978, Reid Papers, Box 31. 21 Bulletin, 27 March 1979, pp. 34, 36. 22 Connell interview, 17 December 1986, p. 64. 23 Bulletin, 10 July 1979, pp. 32–35. 24 Neos Kosmos (editorial dated 12 July 1979) in ‘Ethnic Affairs 1979–80’, Reid Papers, Box 21. 25 Bulletin, 4 December 1979, pp. 30–32. 26 Mike Steketee, ‘The Press Gallery at Work’, in Julian Disney and JR Nethercote (eds), The House on Capital Hill: Parliament, Politics and Power in the National Capital, Federation Press in association with the Centre for International and Public Law, Law Faculty, ANU, Sydney, 1996, p. 198. 27 Peter Beattie to Alan Reid, 28 March 1978, Reid Papers, Box 10. 28 John Stubbs, Hayden, William Heinemann, Melbourne, 1989, p. 206. 29 Bulletin, 18 March 1980, pp. 24–25. 30 Challenge, March 1980, p. 4. 31 West and Morris, Carr, p. 99. 32 Ibid., pp. 105–06. 33 Rochelle Jackson, In Your Face: The Life and Times of Billy ‘The Texan’

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Longley, ABC Books, Sydney, 2005, p. 200. 34 The Australian, 29 January 2008, p. 12 (Phillip Adams). 35 Bulletin, 15 April 1980, p. 27. 36 Paul Kelly, The Hawke Ascendancy, Angus & Robertson, Sydney,1984, p. 268. 37 Connell interview, 17 December 1986, pp. 79-80. 38 Bulletin, 2 June 1981, p. 26. 39 Stubbs, Hayden, p. 209. 40 Bulletin, 9 June 1981, pp. 20-21. 41 Bulletin, 8 September 1981, pp. 28, 31–32, 22 September 1981, pp. 22–23; House of Representatives, Hansard, 8 September 1981, pp. 1002–03 (Hayden), 21 September 1981, p. 1671 (Nixon). 42 Bulletin, 29 September 1981, pp. 22–24. 43 House of Representatives, Hansard, 24 September 1981, p. 1740. 44 Zifcak, My Life in Print, p. 164. 45 Hawley, ‘Prowler’. 46 SMH, 16 November 1981, p. 8 (Harry Robinson); Australian, 16 November 1981, p. 10 (Colin Chapman); Age, 16 November 1981, p. 2 (Brian Courtis); Bulletin, 17 November 1981, p. 56 (Glennys Bell); Sam Lipski, email to Stephen Holt, 27 July 2006. 47 Age, 14 May 1982, p. 4. 48 Reid Papers, Box 1. In the event Gary Punch, not David Combe, was preselected. 49 Bulletin, 7 September 1982, p. 22. 50 Kelly, Hawke Ascendancy, p. 288. 51 Bulletin, 14 September 1982, p. 26. 52 Bulletin, 23 November 1982, p. 28. 53 Bulletin, 8 February 1983, pp. 22–23. 54 Connell interview, 17 December 1986, p. 83. 55 Stubbs, Hayden, p. 249; Kelly, Hawke Ascendancy, p. 383. 56 Bulletin, 15 March 1983, p. 23.

A last hurrah

1 Buckley, ‘Red Fox’, p. 45. 2 Mark Westfield, The Gatekeepers: The Global Media Battle to Control Australia’s Pay TV, Pluto Press, Sydney, 2000, p. 26.

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Notes to pages 318–30 3 Fitzgerald, Pope’s Battalions, p. 192. 4 Santamaria, Selected Letters, pp. 384– 86. 5 Bulletin, 26 July 1983, p. 20; , 18 September 2006 (Richard Farmer); Colleen Ryan and Glenn Burge, Corporate Cannibals: The Taking of Fairfax, W Heinemann Australia, Melbourne, 1992, pp. 206–07. 6 Bulletin, 3 May 1983, pp. 87–88. 7 Bulletin, 9 August 1983, p. 29, 16 August 1983, pp. 24–25. 8 Bulletin, 22 November 1983, p. 28, 6 December 1983, p. 32. 9 Bulletin, 27 September 1983, pp. 35–36. 10 House of Representatives, Hansard, 8 December 1983, p. 3593. 11 CT, 29 June 1984, p. 3, 30 June 1984, p. 12. 12 Bulletin, 10 July 1984, pp. 26–28 (Richard Farmer and Alan Reid). 13 Bulletin 17 July 1984, pp. 26–28 (Richard Farmer). 14 Bulletin, 24 July 1984, p. 27. 15 Joan Reid to Mr Landers, no date but c. 1984. Jennifer Madden, Local Studies and Family History Specialist, Bankstown City Library and Information Service, kindly located this letter in her collection. 16 Bulletin, 27 November 1984, p. 45. 17 Alan Reid Jr OPH interview. 18 Bulletin, 11 December 1984, p. 25. 19 Bulletin, 29 January 1985, p. 22. 20 Bulletin, 19 February 1985, p. 4. 21 Bulletin, 14 May 1985, pp. 36, 39. 22 Bulletin, 29 October 1985, p. 157; CT, 16 October 1985, p. 12; House

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of Representatives, Hansard, 14 October 1985, p. 1935; Alan Reid Jr OPH interview and conversation with Stephen Holt, 19 July 2009. 23 Alan Reid Jr, conversation with Stephen Holt, 19 July 2009. 24 Harry Stein, Glance Over an Old Left Shoulder, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1994, p. 147. 25 Buckley, ‘Red Fox’, p. 41. 26 David Leser, ‘The political prognosis of Alan Reid’, Weekend Australian, 29–30 November 1986, p. 3. 27 Connell interview, 22 October 1986, p. 49. 28 Connell interview, 5 February 1987, p. 54. 29 Ibid. 30 Connell interview, 18 February 1987, pp. 27–28. 31 Ibid., p. 30. 32 Australian, 3 September 1987, p. 11. 33 Bob Carr, interview with Ross Fitzgerald, 8 October 2008. 34 Barrie Cassidy, email to Stephen Holt, 10 July 2009. 35 Alan Reid Jr, conversation with Stephen Holt, 9 July 2009. 36 Australian, 3 September 1987, p. 1. 37 SMH, 3 September 1987, p. 8. 38 Age, 3 September 1987, p. 2. 39 SMH, 3 September 1987, p. 8. 40 SMH, 4 September 1987, p. 11. 41 ‘The Old Red Fox – Mr Alan Reid Esq’, on YouTube at . 42 DT, 5 September 1987, p. 4. 43 Stein, Glance Over an Old Left Shoulder, p. 146.

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Abbreviations and acronyms ACTU ADB AJA AJPH ALP ANU AQ ASIO AWU CAR CT DT FIA GE ML NAA NBAC NLA OPH PS SH SMH SSG ST TLC WV

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Australian Council of Trade Unions Australian Dictionary of Biography Australian Journalists’ Association Australian Journal of Politics and History Australian Labor Party Australian National University, Canberra Australian Quarterly Australian Security Intelligence Organization Australian Workers’ Union Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports Canberra Times Daily Telegraph Federated Ironworkers’ Association Alan Reid, The Gorton Experiment, Shakespeare Head Press, Sydney, 1971 Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales National Archives of Australia Noel Butlin Archives Centre, ANU National Library of Australia Old Parliament House, Canberra Alan Reid, The Power Struggle, Shakespeare Head Press, Sydney, 1969 Sun-Herald Sydney Morning Herald Sunday Sun and Guardian Sunday Telegraph Trades and Labour Council Alan Reid, The Whitlam Venture, Hill of Content, Melbourne, 1976

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Selected bibliography This bibliography is made up of the sources cited in the text, but a few incidental sources are cited only in the relevant footnote.

Archives and manuscripts Mitchell Library ALP New South Wales Branch Records c. 1956–69, ML MSS 2083 Angus & Robertson Papers, ML MSS 3269 Donald Horne Papers, ML MSS 3525 David McNicoll Papers, ML MSS 7419 Edward St John, Political Diary, ML MSS 6690 National Archives of Australia Australian Security Intelligence Organization file on Alan Douglas Reid, NAA A6119/84 Committee of Privileges correspondence etc – Article by Alan Reid in the Sydney Sun on 2 October 1951 – Report by Committee of Privileges presented to House of Representatives on 12 November 1951, NAA A11864/1 Inwards crew and passenger lists for Australian ports, chronological series, ‘Bellands 20 October 1918’, NAA SP83/11 Personal Papers of Prime Minister Gorton, Hon David Fairbairn resignation from Gorton Ministry 1969 (includes papers relating to a leadership challenge), NAA M3787 National Library of Australia Alexander, Joseph, Papers, NLA MS 2380 ALP Canberra South Branch Records 1956–70, NLA MS 3106

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Arndt, Heinz, Papers, NLA MS 6641 Australian Labor Party, ACT Branch Records 1944–85, NLA MS 7068 Burgmann, Ernest, Papers, NLA MS 1998 Calwell, Arthur, Papers, NLA MS 4738 Corbett, JD, Unpublished Autobiography, NLA MS 1011 Cox, Harold, Typescript confidential reports, NLA MS 4554 Fraser, Allan, Papers, NLA MS 1844 Haylen, Les, Papers, NLA MS 5285 Menzies, Robert, Papers, NLA MS 4936 Reid, Alan, Papers, NLA MS 7796 Roderick, Colin, Papers, NLA MS 1578 Samuel, Peter, Papers, NLA MS 3863 Villiers, Alan, Papers, NLA MS 6388 National Museum of Australia Alan Reid collection Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University Australian Journalists’ Association, Canberra Branch, minute books, NBAC Z70 University of Oregon Library System, Special Collections and University Archives Sanford Greenburger Collection

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Oral history interviews National Library of Australia Chamberlain, Frank, interviewer Mel Pratt (1972–73), NLA ORAL TRC 121/39 Cox, Harold, interviewer Mel Pratt (1973), NLA ORAL TRC 121/143 Reid, Alan, interviewer Daniel Connell (1984–87), NLA ORAL TRC 2172 Reid, Alan, interviewer Toby Miller (5 March 1980), NLA ORAL TRC 734 Reid, Alan, interviewer Mel Pratt (1972–73), NLA ORAL TRC

121/40 Samuel, Peter, interviewer Mel Pratt (1973–74), NLA ORAL TRC 121/47 Old Parliament House, canberra Old Parliament House Interview with Alan Reid Jr, interviewer Michael Richards, 12 May 2005, OPH OHI 97

Personal communications Cameron, Clyde, letter to Stephen Holt, 21 October 2004 Carr, Bob, interview with Ross Fitzgerald, 8 October 2008 Cassidy, Barrie, email to Stephen Holt, 10 July 2009 Cranney, Wal, information on Alan Reid’s academic record at Waverley College (received 8 December 2003) Day, Ian, email to Phillip Adams, 30 September 2008 Freudenberg, Graham, telephone conversation with Stephen Holt, 30 November 2008 Griffen-Foley, Dr Bridget, transcript of material in John Fairfax Archives, Sydney (provided 16 May 2004) Lipski, Sam, email to Stephen Holt, 27 July 2006; email to Ross Fitzgerald, 18 September 2009 McNicoll, DD, email to Ross Fitzgerald, 25 September 2008 Nelson, Penelope, email to Ross

Fitzgerald, 30 September 2008 Ramsey, Alan, email to Stephen Holt, 19 July 2006 Reid, Alan Jr, email to Stephen Holt, 5 November 2008; email to Ross Fitzgerald, 1 July 2009; conversation with Stephen Holt, 5 December 2008 and 7, 9 and 19 July 2009 Schildberger, Michael, telephone conversation with Ross Fitzgerald, 26 February 2009 Sherrin, Brother Carl, information on Alan Reid at St Patrick’s College, Goulburn (provided 14 November 2003) Shrimpton, James, email to Ross Fitzgerald, 30 September 2008 Smith, Joan (formerly Joan Reid), telephone conversation with Stephen Holt, 6 January 2009 Wyndham, Cyril, telephone conversation with Stephen Holt, 10 December 2008

Internet sites www.crikey.com.au Postings from Peter Rees (26 November 2004), Richard Farmer (18 September 2006) and Andrew Crook (5 August 2009)

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John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library, Perth John Curtin, letter to Eileen Walsh, 30 May 1935, JCPML, 00672/1

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Sel ected bibliog raphy The Whitlam Institute, University of Western Sydney Electronic version of the transcript of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s first press conference, 5 December 1972

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YouTube ‘The Old Red Fox – Mr Alan Reid Esq’ (televised tribute on Sunday program, 6 September 1987), at http://au.youtube.com/ watch?v=3uerbTrdeW0

Official publications Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, House of Representatives, Hansard Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, House of Representatives, Committee

of Privileges, Minutes of Proceedings, Parliamentary Papers, 1971 Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Senate, Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire Into and Report upon Payments to Maritime Unions, Government Printer, Canberra, 1958

Books and articles Andren, Peter, The Andren Report An Independent Way in Australian Politics, Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2003 Barry, Paul, The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer, Bantam/ABC Books, Sydney, 1993 Beasley, Margo, Wharfies: A History of the Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia, Halstead Press in association with the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, 2009 Blazey, Peter, Screw Loose: Uncalled-for Memoirs, Picador, Sydney, 1997 Buckley, Amanda, ‘The Red Fox’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 November 1985, pp. 41, 45 Burton, John, The Alternative: A Dynamic Approach to our Relations with Asia, Morgans Publications, Sydney, 1954 —— ‘Indonesia: Unfinished Diplomacy’, in Legge, John (ed.), New Directions in Australian Foreign Policy Australia and Indonesia 1945–50, Monash Asia Institute, Melbourne, 1997, pp. 33–51 Buttrose, Ita, Early Edition: My First Forty Years, Macmillan, Melbourne,

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1985 Cabban, Peter and Salter, David, Breaking Ranks, Random House Australia, Sydney, 2005 Cameron, Clyde, The Cameron Diaries, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1990 —— The Confessions of Clyde Cameron 1913–1990 (as told to Daniel Connell), ABC Enterprises, Sydney, 1990 Connell, RW and Gould, Florence, Politics of the Extreme Right: Warringah 1966, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1967 Cooksey, RJ, Lang and Socialism: A Study in the Great Depression, ANU Press, Canberra, 1971 Crockett, Peter, Evatt: A Life, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1993 Cyclopedia of New Zealand 1897–1908 (6 vols), Cyclopedia Company Limited, Christchurch NZ d’Alpuget, Blanche, Robert J Hawke: A Biography, Schwartz/Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1982 Daly, Fred, From Curtin to Kerr, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1977 Day, David, John Curtin: A Life, HarperCollins, Sydney, 1999 Downs, Ian, Last Mountain: A Life in

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Papua New Guinea, UQP, Brisbane, 1986 Duncan, Bruce, Crusade or Conspiracy: Catholics and the Anti-Communist Struggle in Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2001 Dundy, Elaine, Finch, Bloody Finch: A Life of Peter Finch, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1980 Durbin, Evan, The Politics of Democratic Socialism: An Essay on Social Policy, Routledge, London, 1945 [1940] Edgar, Patricia, The Politics of the Press, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1979 Faulkner, John and Macintyre, Stuart (eds), True Believers: The Story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2001 Faulkner, Trader, Peter Finch: A Biography, Angus & Robertson, London, 1979 Fife, Wal, A Country Liberal: A Political Autobiography, WC Fife, Wagga Wagga, 2008 Fingleton, Jack, Batting from Memory, Collins, London, 1981 Fitzgerald, Ross, The Pope’s Battalions: Santamaria, Catholicism and the Labor Split, UQP, Brisbane, 2003 Fitzpatrick, Brian and Cahill, Rowan J, The Seamen’s Union of Australia, 1872–1972: A History, Seamen’s Union of Australia, Sydney, 1981 Flanagan, Graeme, The Australian Vintage Paperback Guide, Gryphon Books, Brooklyn NY, 1994 Foley, Stephen and Wilson, Marshall, Anatomy of a Coup: The Sinister Intrigue Behind the Dismissal, Canterbury Press, Melbourne, 1990 Frame, Tom, The Life and Death of Harold Holt, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005 —— Where Fate Calls: The HMAS Voyager Tragedy, Hodder & Stoughton, Sydney, 1992 Fraser, Allan, ‘The Extraordinary Day’, Quadrant, December 1975, pp. 4–6 Freudenberg, Graham, A Certain Grandeur: Gough Whitlam in Politics, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1977 —— A Figure of Speech: A Political Memoir, John Wiley & Sons Australia, Brisbane, 2005

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Gilchrist, Michael, Daniel Mannix: Wit and Wisdom, (2nd ed), Freedom Publishing, Melbourne, 2004 Golding, Peter, Black Jack McEwen: Political Gladiator, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1996 Griffen-Foley, Bridget, House of Packer: The Making of a Media Empire, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999 —— Party Games: Australian Politicians and the Media from War to Dismissal, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2003 —— Sir Frank Packer: The Young Master, HarperCollins, Sydney, NSW, 2000 Guy, Bill, A Life on the Left: A Biography of Clyde Cameron, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 1999 Hagan, Jim, Printers and Politics: A History of the Australian Printing Unions, 1850–1950, ANU Press, Canberra, 1966 Hancock, Ian, John Gorton: He Did It His Way, Hodder, Sydney, 2002 —— National and Permanent? The Federal Organisation of the Liberal Party of Australia 1944–1965, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2000 Hasluck, Sir Paul, Light That Time Has Made, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1995 Hawley, Janet, ‘The Prowler in Canberra’s Corridors of Power’, Age, Saturday Extra, 22 May 1982, p. 5 Hayden, Bill, Hayden: An Autobiography, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1996 Hocking, Jenny, Frank Hardy: Politics Literature Life, Lothian Books, Melbourne, 2005 —— Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1997 Holt, Stephen, ‘Mr Y and Mr Gorton’, Quadrant, October 2008, pp. 44–46 Howson, Peter (ed. Don Aitkin), The Howson Diaries: The Life of Politics, Viking Press, Melbourne, 1984 Hughes, Colin A and Western, John S, The Prime Minister’s Policy Speech: A Case Study in Televised Politics, ANU Press, Canberra, 1966 Jackson, Rochelle, In Your Face: The Life and Times of Billy ‘The Texan’ Longley, ABC Books, Sydney, 2005

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Sel ected bibliog raphy Johns, Brian, ‘The Inside Dopesters: Canberra’s Fourth Estate’, Bulletin, 12 June 1965, pp. 28–30 Jones, Barry, A Thinking Reed, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2006 Kane, Jack, Exploding the Myths: Political Memoirs, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1989 Kelly, Paul, The Hawke Ascendancy, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1984 Latham, Mark, The Latham Diaries, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2005 Leser, David, ‘The Political Prognosis of Alan Reid’, Weekend Australian, 29–30 November 1986, p. 3 Lipski, Sam, ‘The Education of Alan Reid’, Quadrant, March–April 1969, pp. 29–34 —— ‘A Bookseller Who Thrives on Adversity’, Bulletin, 7 April 1981, pp. 66, 68 Lloyd, Clem, ‘The Media’, in Prasser, Scott, Nethercote, JR and Warhurst, John (eds), The Menzies Era: A Reappraisal of Government, Politics and Policy, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1995, pp. 111–22 Lloyd, CJ, Parliament and the Press: The Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery 1901–1988, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1988 —— Profession, Journalist: A History of the Australian Journalists’ Association, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1985 Lloyd, Clem and Hall, Richard (eds), Backroom Briefings: John Curtin’s War, National Library of Australia, Canberra 1997 MacCallum, Mungo, Mungo: The Man Who Laughs, Duffy & Snellgrove, Sydney, 2001 Mackie, Pat (with Elizabeth Vassilieff) Mount Isa: The Story of a Dispute, Hudson, Melbourne, 1989 McKinlay, Brian, The ALP: A Short History of the Australian Labor Party, Drummond/Heinemann, Melbourne, 1981 McKnight, David, Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994 McMullin, Ross, The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party

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1891–1991, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992 McNicoll, David, Luck’s A Fortune, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1980 McQueen, Humphrey, Australia’s Media Monopolies, Visa, Melbourne, 1977 Manne, Robert, The Petrov Affair (revised edition), Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2004 Marlowe, Mary, That Fragile Hour: An Autobiography of Mary Marlowe, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1990 Marr, David, Barwick, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992 Martin, AW, ‘Evatt’s Absence from the House’, Quadrant, June 1995, pp. 46–50 Marzorini, Reverend Brother FD, ‘An address on the occasion of the presentation of the “Age Quod Agis” Award to Mr Alan Reid, 1 March 1980’, St Patrick’s College Goulburn, Annual Review, 1980, pp. 63–64 Mead, Tom, Breaking the News, Dolphin Books, Sydney, 1998 Menadue, John, Things You Learn Along the Way, David Lovell Publishing, Melbourne, 1999 Moloney, Michael, St Edmund’s College: The Story 1954–2004, St Edmund’s College, Canberra, 2004 Munster, George, A Paper Prince, Penguin, Melbourne, 1987 Murray, Robert, The Split: Australian Labor in the Fifties, FW Cheshire, Melbourne, 1970 Myers, Hal, The Whispering Gallery, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1999 Oakes, Laurie, Crash Through or Crash: The Unmaking of a Prime Minister, Drummond, Melbourne, 1976 Oakes, Laurie and Solomon, David, The Making of an Australian Prime Minister, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1973 Overacker, Louise, Australian Parties in a Changing Society, 1945–67, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1968 Perkins, Kevin, Dare to Dream: The Life and Times of a Proud Australian [Tom Hayson], Golden Wattle Publishing, Sydney, 2001 Pringle, JD, Have Pen Will Travel,

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Chatto & Windus, London, 1973 Raymond, Robert, Out of the Box: An Inside View of the Coming of Current Affairs and Documentaries to Australian Television, Seaview Press, Henley Beach SA, 1999 Reid, Alan, ‘Government, Employer and Trade Unions: The Shift of Power, Ninth Annual John Curtin Memorial Lecture’, ANU, Canberra, 1979 —— The Gorton Experiment, Shakespeare Head Press, Sydney, 1971 —— The Power Struggle, Shakespeare Head Press, Sydney, 1969 —— ‘The Role of the Journalist’, First Summer School of Professional Journalism, Summer School of Professional Journalism, Canberra, 1965, pp. 26–34 —— The Whitlam Venture, Hill of Content, Melbourne, 1976 Robinson, Harry, ‘The View from the Gallery’, Australian Magazine, 8 August 1992, pp. 17–24 Russell, Bertrand, Power: A New Social Analysis, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1948 Ryan, Colleen and Burge, Glenn, Corporate Cannibals: The Taking of Fairfax, W Heinemann Australia, Melbourne, 1992 Ryan, John, Panel by Panel: A History of Australian Comics, Cassell Australia, Sydney, 1979 St John, Edward, ‘The Gorton Fiasco’, Australian Quarterly, December 1971, pp. 115–20 —— A Time to Speak, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1969 ‘Mr Y’” [Samuel, Peter], ‘A Packer Plot?’, Australian Quarterly, June 1971, pp. 2–7 Samuel, Peter, ‘Who Got Gorton?’, Current Affairs Bulletin, July 1971, pp. 53–61 Santamaria, BA, ‘The Movement’ 1941– 60: An Outline, Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1961 —— (ed. Patrick Morgan), Your Most Obedient Servant: Selected Letters 1938–1996, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2007 Schildberger, Michael, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Spectrum, Melbourne,

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2000 Seamen’s Union of Australia, Senate Select Committee: Maritime Indemnities, Sydney, 1958 Sexton, Michael, Illusions of Power: The Fate of a Reform Government, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1979 —— War for the Asking: How Australia Invited Itself to Vietnam, New Holland, Sydney, 2002 [1981] Short, Susanna, Laurie Short: A Political Life, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992 Smith, David, Head of State: The Governor-General, the Monarchy, the Republic and the Dismissal, Macleay Press, Sydney, 2005 Solomon, David, Inside the Australian Parliament, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1978 Speagle, Henry, Editor’s Odyssey: A Reminiscence of Civil Service, 1945 to 1985, Haddington Press, Melbourne, 2005 Starr, Graeme, The Liberal Party of Australia: A Documentary History, Drummond/Heinemann, Melbourne, 1980 Stein, Harry, Glance Over an Old Left Shoulder, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1994 Steketee, Mike, ‘The Press Gallery at Work’, in Disney, Julian and Nethercote, JR (eds), The House on Capital Hill: Parliament, Politics and Power in the National Capital, Federation Press in association with the Centre for International and Public Law, Law Faculty, ANU, Sydney, 1996, pp. 195–216 Stubbs, John, Hayden, William Heinemann, Melbourne, 1989 Thomson, John, Shackleton’s Captain: A Biography of Frank Worsley, Hazard Press, Christchurch NZ, 1988 Tiffen, Rodney, Scandals: Media, Politics and Corruption in Contemporary Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1999 Uren, Tom, Straight Left, Random House Australia, Sydney, 1994 [Valder, John], ‘The Oracles of Shanty Town’, Nation, 28 February 1959, pp. 10–12 West, Andrew and Morris, Rachel, Bob Carr: A Self-made Man,

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Sel ected bibliog raphy HarperCollins, Sydney, 2003 Western, JS and Hughes, Colin A, The Mass Media in Australia, (2nd edn), UQP, Brisbane, 1983 Westfield, Mark, The Gatekeepers: The Global Media Battle to Control Australia’s Pay TV, Pluto Press, Sydney, 2000 Whitington, Don, Strive to be Fair: An Unfinished Autobiography, ANU

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Press, Canberra, 1977 Whitington, RS, Sir Frank: The Frank Packer Story, Cassell, Melbourne, 1971 Whitlam, Nicholas and Stubbs, John, Nest of Traitors: The Petrov Affair, Jacaranda Press, Milton Qld, 1974 Zifcak, Michael, My Life in Print, Lothian Books, Melbourne, 2006

Newspapers/Journals/Magazines Age Argus Australian/Australian Magazine Australian Journal of Politics and History Australian Observer Australian Quarterly Australian Women’s Weekly Bulletin Canberra Times Catholic Weekly Challenge Courier-Mail Daily Mirror Daily Telegraph Hangover Herald Sun Journalist Mercury Nation

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National Times People Quadrant The Review Scotland on Sunday [electronic version] Sun (Sydney) Sun-Herald Sun News-Pictorial Sunday Australian Sunday Herald Sunday Sun and Guardian Sunday Telegraph Sydney Morning Herald The Times Times on Sunday Tribune Voice West Australian

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Index Abernethy, John 183 Aboriginal land rights 304 Accord between ALP and ACTU 323 air disaster at Canberra 26–27 Alexander, Joe 21–22, 30, 33, 37 Alford, Gus 143 Andren, Peter 282 Angus & Robertson 130–32, 135–38, 182–83 Anthony, Doug 312, 320 ASIO (Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation) AR’s articles on 67–68, 71 file on AR 75–77 Murphy’s raid on 263–64, 266 and Skripov’s links with Labor MPs 149–50 Aston, William 179, 257 Atkins JP (Jack) 132–33, 135–36 Australian Consolidated Press acquires the Bulletin 142 AR joins Daily Telegraph 98–99 AR’s breach of parliamentary privilege and 250 AR’s libel cases and 198, 287, 293–94 AR’s ‘Political Parade’ column 106 Burton’s defamation suit 110–11 Channel Nine 119–20, 163–64, 318–19 rejects AR’s political novel 130 Uren’s defamation suit 150–52 Whitlam’s defamation suit 293–94 Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA) AR as member 36–37, 39–40, 99–100 newspaper strikes 38–40, 99–100 Australian Labor Party 1969 federal conference 212–13 AR’s novel on the Labor split 126–39 AR’s obsession with influence of Socialist Left 261, 305–6, 319– 20, 322–24 AR’s opposition to Leftists’ influence 103–4, 303–5

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and Communist Party Dissolution Bill 53 conflict over US bases 153–59 ‘faceless men’ accusations 158–59, 162, 167 federal intervention in Queensland 306 Industrial Groups 62–63, 81–82 Iraqi loan to 285–87 organisational reforms 167–68 strips AR of membership 120–23 see also Evatt, HV (‘Doc’); Santamaria, BA Australian Observer 43–44 The Bandar-log (unpublished novel) accepted for publication 132–34 libel case 135–39 publishers’ rejections 129–32, 182–83 theme and plot 125–29 bank nationalisation 46, 327 Barker, Anthony 183 Barnard, Lance 175, 262, 266, 285 Barwick, Garfield 165–66, 276 Basic Industries Group (BIG) 191–92 Bate, Jeff 193, 225 Baudino, Bob 229–30 Beasley, JA (‘Stabber Jack’) 23, 25, 29, 35 Beattie, Peter 306 Beazley, Kim (senior) 63–64, 287, 303 Bennetts, John 149–50, 156 Bowen, Lionel 305 Bowers, Peter 4, 292 Brennan, Ken 291–92 Brickhill, Paul 15, 18 Browne, Frank 13, 108 Bulletin 142–43, 261 Burchett, Wilfred 221–23 Burns, Creighton 164 Burton, John 62–62, 85, 104, 110, 114–15, 122, 129, 137 Cairns, Kevin 211, 217, 219, 239 Calwell, Arthur antagonism towards AR 48–49, 51,

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Ind ex 54, 109, 149, 161 anti-Evatt plot 104–5 damaged by ‘faceless men’ photographs 158–59 Fairfax press supports 144–45 Petrov defection announcement and 70–71 state aid for Catholic schools 160–61 Cameron, Alan 106 Cameron, Clyde 67–68, 123, 268, 287, 294–95, 298 Campbell, Fred 120 Canberra air disaster (1940) 26–27 Catholic school for boys 55, 65 as village 56 Canberra press gallery affection for Whitlam 275 AR joins 20–21 AR’s impact on 330 Curtin’s wartime briefings to 32–36 generational change 202–3 Max Newton’s membership 192 taboo on criticising Parliament 56–71 two-up and poker games 42–43 Carr, Bob 307 Cassidy, Barrie 327–28 Catholic Action 80–81, 94–95 Catholic Social Studies Movement 79–82, 86 Chamberlain, FE (‘Joe’) 145, 148, 158 Channel Nine 119–20, 163–64, 318–19 Chapman, Robert and Colin 192 Chifley, JB AR’s admiration 40, 46–47, 56, 327 and Communist Party Dissolution Bill 53 death 56 suggests that AR enter Parliament 45 Chipp, Don 312, 326 Christ Killers (unpublished novel) 124 Cleveland Publishing 132–33 Cohen, Sam 175 Coles, AW 30 Collins Booksellers 288, 293 Combe, David 312 Communist Party Dissolution Bill Australian Labor Party and 53 High Court invalidates 55–56 Connor, Rex 274, 282 Coombs, HC 271–72, 304 Cope, Jim 249, 251

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copy boys 15–16 Corbett, John 33 Corser, Bernard 58 Costigan, Frank 308, 313 Cox, Harold 33, 37, 92, 203 Coxsedge, Joan 304 Crean, Frank 266–67 Currango (in Snowy Mountains) 141, 329 Curtin, John AR’s friendship with 19, 34, 36 as Prime Minister 31–34 wartime news management 32–36 Daily Telegraph AR joins 98–99 sold to Murdoch’s News Limited 235–36 Daly, Fred 64, 87, 105, 123, 312 Daly, Thomas 230–31 Dalziel, Allan 68, 84–85, 93 Davis, Beatrice 182–83 defamation cases 110–11, 135–39, 150–52, 293–94, 296, 311, 320–21 Denning, Warren 33 Dougherty, Tom 92, 137 Duggan, Jack 155, 159 Duncan, Tim 324 Durbin, Evan 46 elections 1949: 50 1954: 77, 82–83 1955: 112–13 1961: 144–47 1963: 162–64 1966 174 1969: 214–15 1972: 258 1975: 281–84 1977: 297–98 1983: 314–15 1984: 322–23 1987: 327 1967 half-Senate 178 1970 half-Senate 228 Elliott, Elliott V 117–18 Erwin, Dudley 220 Espionage see ASIO; Petrov affair; Royal Commission on Espionage Evatt, Elizabeth 298 Evatt, HV (‘Doc’) 56 accuses AR of desertion 111–12 AR’s assessment 182

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Burton’s influence on 85, 104, 114–16, 122 Calwell’s plot against 104–6 courts ALP Industrial Groups 62–63, 82 denounces Santamaria 79, 92–93 Kennelly’s plotting against 83, 84 libelled by AR 138 and Petrov affair 69–71, 74 plays sectarian card 111–12 as portrayed in AR’s novel 128–29, 134–35, 137–38 presents image of moderation 63, 65 private meetings with Santamaria 82–83, 119 realigns with Left 85, 103–4, 122 and Royal Commission on Espionage 84–85, 87, 90, 92 streak of paranoia 74, 77–78, 83–84, 330 ‘faceless men’ photographs 157–59, 162–63 Fadden, Arthur 69 Fadden government 30–31 Fairbairn, David 213, 217–18, 220, 223–25, 230, 236 Fairfax press AR and 67, 71–74 settles Whitlam action 296 tussle with Packer press 144–47 Fairhall, Allen 209, 211, 213, 217 Farmer, Richard 319 Federal File (television program) 257, 263, 264, 282, 285 Federated Ironworkers’ Association (FIA) 106 Federated Ship Painters and Dockers’ Union 307 Field, Pat 273 Fife, Wal 302–3 Fingleton, Wally 18 Fischer, Henry 285–86 Fitchett, Ian 123, 190, 203 Fitzpatrick, George 35 Fitzpatrick, Ray 108 Fraser, Allan 35, 37–38, 43, 45, 123, 167 Fraser, Malcolm 229–35, 268, 277–78, 302, 312 Fraser Government Fraser-Peacock conflict 310 meat export scandal 309–10 Robinson’s attempted resignation

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299–302 Withers affair 299–301 Freeth, Gordon 212–13, 215 Freudenberg, Graham 188, 204, 236, 260 Gair, Vince 135, 265 Gallagher, Norm 13, 15 The Gathering (unpublished novel) see The Bandar-log Godfrey, George 38, 120 Gollan, Ross 33 Gorton, John AR supports for Liberal leadership 186–87 AR’s involvement in downfall 208–11, 213, 216–19, 223–26, 228–38 AR’s misgivings about 195–96, 201–2, 214, 217, 219, 242–43 Fraser’s conflict with 229–35 gains Liberal Party leadership 186– 89, 194–95 Howson’s manoeuvrings against 208–11, 213–14, 217–20, 223–26, 228, 230, 232–37 iconoclastic approach 200–201 and Liza Minelli 206–7 loses Liberal leadership 238–39 offshore minerals issue 224–25 resigns from McMahon’s cabinet 246–48 response to The Gorton Experiment 244–46 St John’s campaign against 206–11 Willessee incident 204–6, 210 wins leadership challenge 218–19 The Gorton Experiment (Reid) 223, 242–48 Gotto, Ainsley 188 ‘Groupers’ see Industrial Groups Gruen, Fred 272 Grundeman, Albert 84–85 Gunn, William 291–93 Gurr, Tom 20 Haggard, Rider 12 Halfpenny, John 322 Halstead Press 134–35 Hamilton, Walter 17–18 Hardy, Frank 126–27 Harrison, Eric 60 Hartley, Bill 261 Hasluck, Paul 47–48, 186, 196–97 Hawke, Bob

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Ind ex AR’s respect for 305, 316–17 becomes Labor leader 314–15 mooted as Whitlam’s replacement 284–85 deathbed visit to AR 327-328 as source of stories 308–9 Hayden, Bill 275, 294–95, 298, 312, 314–15, 319, 321 Haylen, Les 45, 93, 123, 154, 169 Healy, Jim 143 Henderson, Rupert 72–74, 83, 89, 144 Hill, Ted 85 Hill of Content (publishing company) 288, 291 Holmes, Denis 120–21 Holt, Harold AR advises on election strategy 174 AR’s assessments 172–73, 175–76 confronts McEwen over devaluation 179 death 184 VIP planes affair 177–78 visit to the US 173–74 Voyager Royal Commission 176–77 homosexual law reform 252, 272, 285, 303 Howard, John Winston 296, 297, 312, 313, 325 Howson, Peter anti-Gorton manoeuvrings 208–11, 213–14, 217–20, 223–26, 228–30, 232–37 as Liberal Party contact 166, 176–77 Hughes, Tom 136, 138, 198, 255 Hughes, WM (Billy) 22, 30 Hunt, Ralph 216–17 The Indelible Stamp (play) 270–72 Industrial Groups 62–63, 81–82 Iraqi loan to Labor Party 285–87 James, Bert 149, 210 Jess, John 233, 236 Joshua, Robert 109 Keating, Paul 305–6 Kennedy, Trevor 329 Kennelly, Pat 49, 63, 83, 84, 85–86, 87, 89, 96, 123, 127 Keon, Stan 62, 85, 87, 109, 127 Kerr, John 274–81, 282 Khemlani, Tireth 274 Killen, Jim 255 Krygier, Richard 312

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Lang, JT (Jack) 14, 19 Lipski, Sam 311 loans affair 267–69, 274, 282–83, 289, 291–92 Lockwood, Rupert 38, 85 Longley, Bill 307, 312 Lovegrove, Dinny 84 Lyons, Joe 21, 23–24 Mackie, Pat 170–71 Marlowe, Mary 16–17 McCallum, Mungo 4, 203, 250 McClelland, Douglas 137, 279 McEwen, John 179 appointed Prime Minister 185 AR’s portrayal 189 rapprochement with McMahon 224 vetoes McMahon as Prime Minister 185, 189–91, 199, 218 see also The Power Struggle McMahon, Bill as AR friend and confidant 52, 165, 312 AR’s attempts to shore up 190, 201–2, 241, 243–44, 251–52 AR’s negative reports 241–42, 253 becomes Prime Minister 239 Frank Packer’s support for 185–86, 192–93, 201–2, 217, 241 Hasluck’s exasperation with 197 McEwen’s feud with 185, 189–91, 198–99, 224 relations with Gorton 218, 241–42, 246–48 McMahon, Sonia 253, 312 McManus, Frank 117 McNicoll, David 18, 120, 185–86, 233–34 Mead, Tom 37 Meet the Press 120, 142, 234–35 Menzies, Robert 1961 election campaign 145–46 accused of ‘scurvy conduct’ 70–72 AR gives campaign advice 146 AR’s 1961 articles in support 145–47 attacks Labor’s ‘faceless men’ 162 coolness towards AR 67, 71–74, 100–101 downfall as Prime Minister (1941) 28–30 ‘Greta Garbo act’ in New York 102–3 keeps press in dark 66 and Petrov defection 68–73

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retirement 172 supported by Keith Murdoch 22 treatment of dissenters 52 Minelli, Liza 206–7 Morgan, Charles 108 Morgan’s Bookshop 115 Mortier, Paul 330 Mount Isa dispute 169–71 The Movement see Catholic Social Studies Movement; Santamaria, BA multicultural policies 304–5 Murdoch, Keith 21–22 Murdoch, Rupert 286 buys Daily Telegraph 256–57 and Iraqi loans story 286 and McEwen-McMahon feud 190, 193–94 Murphy, Lionel 175, 263–64, 266, 268 National Catholic Rural Movement 80 The Native Born (unpublished Western) 124-25 Newhaven Press 133 News Weekly 79, 91 newspaper strike (Sydney) 38–40, 99 Newton, Max 145, 191–92 Nixon, Peter 309–10 Oakes, Laurie 203, 263, 286, 314, 324, 328 offshore minerals issue 224–25 Olsen, Otto 19–20, 27 O’Sullivan, Fergan 75, 84 Owers, Jean Darrell 137–39 Packer, Frank anti-Labor stance 99, 119, 145, 148, 169, 281–82 as backer of McMahon 185–87, 192–93, 201–2, 217, 241 demands Voyager Royal Commission 176–77 drops support for Gorton 232–33 hostility to Whitlam 281–82, 290 obtains Menzies’ acceptance of AR 100–101 poaches AR from Fairfax 98–99 relations with AR 181 settles Uren defamation action 151–52 supports Gorton for Liberal leadership 186–87, 194 supports McMahon for Liberal leadership 185–86

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vetoes anti-Gorton articles 213–14, 219, 223 see also Australian Consolidated Press Packer, Kerry 302–3, 312, 317–18 Packer, Robert Clyde 15, 17 Paral, Vladimir 157–58 parliamentary privilege AR guilty of breaching 57–61, 248–51 Browne and Fitzpatrick case 108–9 Peacock, Andrew 303 Pearl Harbor 32 Petrov affair 68–76, 84–85, 100 see also Royal Commission on Espionage Phillips, William Francis (‘Mac’) 143 The Power Struggle (Reid) AR’s figuring in 191 literary style and embellishments 187–89 publication 197–98 reviews 184, 199 Power Without Glory (Hardy) 126–27 press, power of 21–22, 38 press gallery see Canberra press gallery Pringle, John 83, 86 Ramsey, Alan 197, 203, 204, 231–32, 237 ‘Red Fox’ nickname 9 Reid, Alan (AR’s son) 28, 55, 141 Reid, Alan Douglas biography, character and personal life (chronological) birth 9 parents’ background 9–12 boyhood 11–12 school education 12–13 Gibbon as literary hero 11, 290 religious beliefs and practice 13, 55, 65, 326 as young itinerant 14–15 early interest in politics 14–15, 19 appearance 18–19 as ALP member 19, 44–45, 54, 99, 113–15, 120–23 marriage 27 children 28, 55, 65 addiction to smoking 41 gives up alcohol 41, 316–17 domestic life 54–55, 103 as fiction writer 124–39, 269 appearance 140, 245 love of the Snowy Mountains 140–

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Ind ex 41, 328 cancer operations 181, 312 life in retirement 325–26 death and funeral 328–29 tributes and obituary 328–30, 331–32 career (chronological) joins Sun as copy boy 15 gains Sun cadetship 16 mentors 16–17 as cadet reporter 18 appointed to Sun’s Canberra bureau 20 joins Canberra press gallery 20 made Sun’s Canberra representative 24–25 Labor contacts 3, 23, 25, 29, 43, 45–46, 49, 52–53, 63, 67, 85–86, 105, 123, 154, 168, 308 acquires a by-line 29 in wartime press corps 33–34 keeps news scrapbook 35–36 as active AJA member 36–37, 39– 40, 99–100 ‘Red Fox’ nickname 9 working methods 4, 41, 47, 103, 245–46, 256–57, 299 as poker and two-up player 42–43 and secret electoral slush fund 43 contributes to Australian Observe 43–44 Calwell’s animosity towards 48–49, 51, 54, 109, 142 Liberal Party contacts 52, 165–66, 209–10, 211 guilty of breaching parliamentary privilege against 57–61, 248–51 Menzies threatens his career 71–74 exposes Santamaria’s activities 80, 82–83, 86–92, 93–97, 98 role in 1954 ALP power struggles 86–87, 90, 92, 93–96, 111–12 on Svengali-like characters 91, 104, 129, 271–72, 322 distrusted in Catholic circles 95–96 head-hunted by Frank Packer 98–99 as Packer agent in Canberra 100– 102, 192, 201–2, 204, 245, 247, 282, 318 overseas trips 102–3, 173–74 protecting his sources 105 defamation suits against, 110–11, 150–52, 287–88, 293–94, 296, 311 advises party leaders 122, 146, 174,

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177–78, 215, 331–32 as political schemer and participant 126, 211, 213, 216–20, 223–26, 228–32, 236, 294–96, 302–3, 331–32 fictionalised self-portrait 128 ‘36 faceless men’ coup 154–60, 168 The Power Struggle 184–85, 187–90, 197–99 role in Gorton’s downfall 208–11, 213, 216–19, 223–26, 228–38, 242 The Gorton Experiment 223, 242–48 Gorton’s pen portrait of 245 in contempt of Parliament 248–50 television appearances 257–58, 264, 269, 282, 311–12 anti-Whitlam reporting and manoeuvring 261–63, 265–67, 281–82, 294–96 The Whitlam Venture 284–85, 287– 94, 296 reputation, standing and influence 48, 140, 164, 168, 184, 199, 203, 204, 301, 320, 328, 330–31 loses his touch 323–24 official retirement 324–25 oral history interviews 326 YouTube tribute 328 fiction and plays The Bandar-log (unpublished novel) 125–39, 182–83 Christ Killers (unpublished novel) 124 The Indelible Stamp (play) 269–72 The Native Born (unpublished Western) 124–25 opinions and attitudes hostility to Labor’s left wing 97, 103–4, 114–15, 149–50, 154, 169, 261, 305–6, 316, 319–20, 322–24 hostility to ‘permissiveness’ 252, 285, 291, 298, 303–4 as Langite 19, 23 as traditional democratic socialist 46–47, 331 view of politics 12, 53, 126–29, 289, 332 Reid, Douglas (AR’s son) 28, 55 Reid, Joan Kathleen (AR’s wife) 27–28, 223, 322 Reid, Margaret (AR’s mother) 9–10 Reid, Susan (AR’s daughter) 28, 253 Reid, William Douglas (AR’s father) 9–12

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Richards, David 307 Robinson, Eric 216, 246–47, 299–302 Roderick, Colin 127, 131–32, 135–36 Rodgers, Don 32, 35, 41, 42, 43, 45 Rosevear, Sol 61 Royal Commission into the Meat Industry 309–10 Royal Commission on Espionage appointment 69 Document J 84–85, 129, 137 Evatt’s relations with 84–85, 87, 90, 92 report 109–10 Royal Commission on Human Relationships 298 Royal Commission on Ship Painters and Dockers’ Union 308, 313, 326–27 Ryan, Susan 320 Samuel, Peter 203, 208, 213, 224, 229, 259 Santamaria, BA allows AR to write profile 88–90 AR’s contact with 89, 142 AR’s exposés 80, 86–92, 93–94, 96–97 Evatt’s private meetings with 82–83, 119 Evatt’s public denunciation of 79 interviewed by Pringle 86 as portrayed in AR’s novel 129 role in Catholic Action 79–82 weekly television commentary 318–19 Schapel, Ken (‘the Crow’) 98 Schildberger, Michael 257, 264, 282 Schmella, Jack 84 Schwartz, Reg 250–51, 252 Seamen’s Union of Australia 117–18 sectarianism 86, 95–97, 111–12, 161 Senar, Margaret (AR’s mother) 9–10 Senate’s blocking of supply 273–80 Sheppard, Alec 93, 115–16 Short, Laurie 106 Sinclair, Ian 312 Skripov, IF 150 Smith, Fred 33, 35 Snedden, Bill 194, 252, 258, 264–65, 268 Socialist Left 261, 305–6, 319–20, 322–24 Solomon, David 229 St Edmund’s Christian Brothers School, Canberra 55, 65

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St John, Edward 193, 206–11, 213–14 state aid for Catholic schools 160–61, 163 Stein, Harry 312, 325, 330 Stewart, Frank 282 Stone, John 291 Sun AR appointed Canberra correspondent 24–26 AR as copy boy 15–16 newspaper strike 38 Sun Junior 16–17 Sunday (television program) 311 Sun-Herald 67, 71–72 Sydney Morning Herald and McEwen-McMahon feud 190 supports Labor in 1961 election 144–45, 147 Taylor, Stanley 109 Taylor, Tom and Mollie 141 ‘The Native Born’ (unpublished Western) 124–25 Thompson, Albert 90 Thornton, Ernest 106 trade unions maritime union chicanery 116–18, 143, 308, 313, 326–27 seamen’s strike (1935–36) 18 see also Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA) Turnbull, Malcolm 300 Tyrrell, Murray 46 United States bases in Australia 153–59 United States Embassy incident 204–6, 211 Uren, Tom 150–52 Vietnam war 227–28 Viner, Ian 310 VIP planes affair 177–78 Voyager Royal Commission 176–77 Wallace, Con 13 Walsh, Eric 203 Walsh, Max 203, 232, 311 Walsh, Solomon (‘Snowy’) 19 Ward, Eddie 35, 61, 64, 68, 86–87, 90, 137 wartime food shortages 37–38 Waterside Workers’ Federation 116, 143 Wentworth, WC (Bill) 52, 165, 312

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Ind ex Wheeldon, John 303 Whitington, Don 33 Whitlam, EG (Gough) AR’s minimal access to 259–60 AR’s negative reporting 261–63, 265–66, 281–83 becomes Labor leader 174–75 challenges to his leadership 284– 85, 294–96 damaged by ‘faceless men’ photographs 158–59 defamation action against AR 293– 94, 296, 311, 320–21 defamation settlements 296 and privileges case against AR 250 pushes internal Labor Party reform 166–67 stands down as leader 298 Vietnam War statements 227–28 Whitlam Government AR’s use of ‘faceless men’ accusation 261, 263

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dismissal 273–81 Gair affair 265 loans affair 267–68, 274, 282–83, 289, 291–92 Murphy’s ASIO raid 263–64, 266 The Whitlam Venture (Reid) 284–85, 287–94, 296 Willessee, Geraldine 204–6, 210 Wilson, Alexander 30 Wilson, Roland 142 Winkler, Joe 30 Withers, Reg 299–300 Women’s Weekly 281–82 Wran, Neville 312, 317 Wren, John 126–27 Young, Guildford 55 YouTube tribute 328 Zifcak, Michael 287–88, 291, 293, 296, 311

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