The Outsider: Probing Adelaide’s obsessions
This week The Outsider ponders Australia’s regression to political adolescence, News Ltd’s latest manoeuvrings, and the scuttlebutt from North Terrace and Gouger Street.
Say it isn’t so
Rumours of a high-profile, cross-party pairing are reverberating within South Australian political circles.
The Outsider doesn’t usually care about the after-dark activities of political types (lest our own proclivities be exposed to the cold glare of publicity), but this rumour, if true, could have far-reaching consequences.
It couldn’t be true? Could it?
Puberty blues
Australia’s political culture this week reminds The Outsider of our adolescence, when we achieved exquisite balance between the kilos of Clearasil we smeared on our spotty visage, and the soft weight of the white-bread rolls crammed with Burger Rings that we ate for lunch.
Ugly and counter-productive, in other words.
And yet, Howard Sattler, the Perth radio shock jock suspended for yesterday’s crass questioning of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, has had far worse moments.
The transcript of yesterday’s interview is cringe-inducing, yes. (For those who haven’t heard, Sattler asked Gillard about the “myth” that her partner, Tim Mathieson, was gay, because, you know, he’s a hairdresser.)
Sattler was one of Media Watch’s very first targets in 1990, after he had this to say following the death of three Aboriginal children, aged between 12 and 15, in a high-speed joyride in a stolen car:
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“Well, I say good riddance to bad rubbish. That’s three less car thieves. I think they’re dead and I think that’s good.”
As offensive and juvenile as yesterday’s interview was, it does say something horrible about the state of political debate that this earlier comment attracted far less condemnation.
News Ltd’s savage days
There have been more changes this week at News Ltd as the empire readies itself for June 28 when the Australian newspapers division is carved off from News Corp to survive on its own.
An executive shake-up announced Wednesday and Thursday included two influential names familiar to Adelaide readers.
Phil Gardner, editor of the Sunday Mail from 2004-2008, has left his job as editor-in-chief of the Herald and Weekly Times group in Melbourne after 28 years with News Ltd.
The lanky former South African was regarded by his Adelaide colleagues as the best newspaper man in the business, albeit slightly off-centre.
A now-TV-based sport reporter copped the full brunt of Gardner’s anger when he described a footy match outcome as carnage, a term reserved for use in the coverage of mass slaughter.
Gardner brought in Amanda Blair and Nicole Cornes as “opposite end” columnists adding a new flavour to Sunday mornings.
He was also one of the prime movers behind the public campaign to debate whether AFL games should return to the city at a time when such notions were deemed impossible.
Gardner was one of the few top-liners to resist the Adelaide media tradition of accepting “drops” from government press secretaries in exchange for favourable coverage.
Rod Savage, the first editor of The Advertiser’s digital product adelaidenow is off to Perth as editor of the Sunday Times to replace Chris Dore, who has been appointed as editor of The Courier-Mail, replacing David Fagan who left this week.
Savage’s background is heavily skewed towards digital media, suggesting the new way forward for News Ltd is less newspaper and more digital output.
Workers at the Waymouth Street bunker are waiting for the tidal wave of change to reach Adelaide, although there was a snippet yesterday.
An email advised journalists that one of the traditional layers of sub-editing – the check-sub – will end shortly.
The copy will get one quick going over before landing on the digital page.
Retired school teachers will be busy spotting the errors.
Judge not
Stay informed, daily
Gouger Street is awash with speculation about a forthcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court bench.
The Outsider has been told that Supreme Court judge Anne Vanstone is considering a proposal from Attorney-General John Rau that she move to the District Court, as chief judge.
It’s far from resolved but, if she moved, who would replace her?
The Outsider can categorically rule out the Attorney-General himself making the switch from North Terrace to Gouger Street, despite the imaginings of some of the more feverish legal speculators around town.
It won’t happen and The Outsider will eat his horse-hair wig if it does.
Perhaps the speculation comes from those with long historical memories.
There are at least two precedents in South Australia for an AG – or former AG – making the leap to the judiciary, but Rau will stand for the next election and shows no indication of being tired of his current role.
In 1982, a messy by-election followed the move to the court of a former Attorney-General Robin Millhouse.
The only other similar parliament-to-the-court move that The Outsider can recall was much more orderly. Labor AG Len King’s move to the Supreme Court coincided with the June 1975 state election.
King became Chief Justice three years later and served with distinction until 1995.
Millhouse’s move from North Terrace to Gouger Street was more difficult – and came at an electoral cost to the incumbent Tonkin government.
The flamboyant Millhouse had been a loyal Liberal until he and others took the moderates off into a splinter group called the Liberal Movement (LM), which later merged back into the Liberal Party.
Millhouse, however, stayed as a LM MP, changing the group’s name to the New Liberal Movement and then later merging with other similar interstate groups to form the Australian Democrats, becoming that party’s first sitting MP.
He was a thorn in the Liberals side, winning his once-safe Liberal seat of Mitcham three times under the breakaway banners.
The Libs wanted their seat back and had offered Millhouse several “outs”.
“I’d always made it absolutely clear that the only way I’d leave politics voluntarily was by appointment to the Supreme Court,” Millhouse recalled in 2010.
“They tried successively to get me to accept appointment to the District Court and then the Family Court and each time there was an informal approach I said, ‘No, I’m not interested’.
“Then, finally, to my great surprise and much against (then A-G) Trevor Griffin’s inclination, the party made him approach me to go on the bench.”
The Millhouse appointment caused a by-election in July 1982 at which another Democrats candidate Heather Southcott won – but her time was short-lived with the Liberal’s Stephen Baker winning the seat for the Liberal Party in the November 1982 general election.
That was the election where Labor won five seats to take a 25-22 majority from Tonkin and begin the Bannon decade.
Millhouse stayed on the Supreme Court until his enforced retirement in December 1999 when he turned 70.
At his Retirement Sitting he announced his appointment as Chief Justice of the High Court of Kiribati, a position he held until Jan 2011.
While on the subject of Millhouse – we should once again note for the history books that one of his greatest achievements was his private member’s bill for the wearing of seat belts to be compulsory.
It passed, despite media resistance, and set the standard for other states to follow.
We’re not sure how many lives have been saved by seat belts since 1970, but few, if any, lone political stands have been as effective.
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