tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/neville-wran-10076/articlesNeville Wran – The Conversation2021-09-01T02:01:18Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1670422021-09-01T02:01:18Z2021-09-01T02:01:18ZHow Ghost Train Fire exposed remarkable police corruption, yet also failed ABC’s high journalistic standards<p>An independent <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/aug/30/independent-review-criticises-abcs-luna-park-ghost-train-fire-series-over-neville-wran-claim">review</a> has concluded that while the ABC’s recent true-crime series on the 1979 Luna Park fire makes a strong case that it was arson, the program misled its audience by suggesting a link between the notorious Sydney crime figure Abe Saffron and the late NSW premier, Neville Wran.</p>
<p>The review was commissioned by the ABC after an initial complaint about the program’s treatment of Wran had been dismissed by the ABC’s internal processes. </p>
<p>It was carried out by one of Australia’s foremost media scholars, Emeritus Professor Rodney Tiffen of Sydney University, and the distinguished investigative journalist Chris Masters.</p>
<h2>Three main questions in the series</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/exposed-the-ghost-train-fire">Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire</a> series dealt with three main issues.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Was the cause of the fire properly investigated by the police, bearing in mind six children and one adult died?</p></li>
<li><p>Who stood to benefit from the proposed redevelopment of the site that followed the fire?</p></li>
<li><p>Was Wran connected with Saffron and did he interfere with the decision-making about the redevelopment to advance Saffron’s interests?</p></li>
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<p>On the first issue, Tiffen and Masters found the program produced sufficient evidence to show that on the balance of probabilities, the fire was caused by arson. They went on to say:</p>
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<p>The police investigation was inadequate and had a predetermined outcome – that the fire was the result of an electrical fault.</p>
<p>The reason for this police failure was corruption, and the links between the officers involved and organised crime figures.</p>
<p>The program mounts a scathing demolition of the police investigation. Uncovering fresh evidence and with the use of witness testimony, Exposed demonstrated there was no effective forensic investigation of the scene, and in fact it was immediately compromised by police and others. </p>
<p>The program convincingly makes the case that the coroner had to proceed with insufficient evidence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As to who stood to benefit, the reviewers found that although Saffron’s name did not appear on any relevant documents, the program produced evidence showing Saffron’s cousins and nephew were principals of Harbourside Amusements, the company that ultimately won the tender to redevelop the Luna Park site.</p>
<p>The reviewers said the program mounted a persuasive case that through personal links, Saffron was effectively in charge of this venture.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/10-years-after-finkelstein-media-accountability-has-gone-backwards-159530">10 years after Finkelstein, media accountability has gone backwards</a>
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<h2>Shortcomings with one main argument</h2>
<p>It was on the third issue where the reviewers found fault with the series.</p>
<p>They found the crucial decision to award the contract to Harbourside Amusements was made by a committee of senior public servants, and there was no evidence of Wran interfering with that decision-making.</p>
<p>Concerning Wran’s alleged connections with Saffron, the reviewers found a number of shortcomings.</p>
<p>The first was reliance on evidence from what became known as The Age tapes. These were made by NSW police tapping the telephone of a Sydney solicitor, Morgan Ryan, who was suspected of being involved in an immigration racket, among other things.</p>
<p>Several of the taped conversations were between Ryan and Justice Lionel Murphy, a former attorney-general in the Whitlam government and by then a justice of the High Court.</p>
<p>However, because the tapping was done without a warrant, the tapes were inadmissible in court. They were leaked to the crime reporter Bob Bottom and published in The Age in February 1984. It led to a royal commission.</p>
<p>The commission found that although the tapes were genuine, the transcripts were too unreliable to be admissible as evidence in court.</p>
<p>One allegation in the transcripts was that Murphy had intervened with Wran to arrange for a Saffron company to win the lease for Luna Park, at the behest of Ryan. Further, it was alleged Murphy told Ryan that Wran had agreed to do this.</p>
<p>Concerning this, the reviewers said:</p>
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<p>Wran himself was not caught in any surviving evidence, and so he figures in the transcripts only as a figure whom others are making claims about. Even if Wran had agreed with Murphy to make representations regarding the Luna Park lease – and this is far from an established fact – it is not clear how he did so.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reviewers continued:</p>
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<p>The program makers contended to the reviewers that the surviving Age tapes evidence supports the proposition that Neville Wran was allegedly in direct communication with criminals. </p>
<p>The reviewers note the 394-page report sighted by them does not mention Luna Park. Nor is there any evidence of Neville Wran’s communications being directly intercepted.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Strong impression that Wran was complicit</h2>
<p>Tiffen and Masters also did not find corroborating evidence in the program to support the related question of whether Wran socialised with Saffron.</p>
<p>The primary source here was Rosemary Opitz, who said she was “in Abe Saffron’s inner circle for approximately 40 years”. She said Saffron used to put on Friday night drinks, and that she saw Wran there, “very pally” with Saffron. </p>
<p>The reviewers concluded the program’s due diligence checks affirmed Opitz’s credibility. However, they said no solid evidence was given to corroborate her most serious claims, and no contrary views were presented.</p>
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<p>Finally, the reviewers drew attention to a storyboard used by the program to illustrate alleged connections between Saffron and several other figures, including Wran. Of this, the reviewers stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apart from the Opitz interview, no such direct relationship between Saffron and Wran has been established. This graphic is dramatic but in suggesting such a strong and direct link between Wran and Saffron it is misleading.</p>
<p>The cumulative effect of interview commentary, the storyboard graphic, the sequence summarising findings with family members and absence of rebuttal content left the reviewers with a strong impression the program concluded Wran was complicit.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In response, ABC News Director Gaven Morris issued a statement saying the network did not accept the reviewers’ opinion that the graphic was misleading. He <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/cm/lb/13520222/data/news-data.pdf">went on</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The series did not purport to have proven the allegation. The review does not question the decision to include any of that material in the series but contends that viewers would have been left with the impression that the program was asserting Mr Wran’s guilt. That was not the program’s intention or assertion.</p>
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<p>The ABC’s editorial director, Craig McMurtrie, had previously told a Senate committee the program had not needed to corroborate the material about Wran with multiple sources because Wran was not a focus of the series. Further, he said, the material about Wran was presented as allegations, not proven facts. </p>
<p>This position was also supported by the ABC’s editor-in-chief and managing director, David Anderson.</p>
<h2>‘Unproven’ allegations swinging in the breeze</h2>
<p>These responses do not represent the journalistic standards the ABC is renowned for, on the whole rightly. “What is your second source?” is one of the first questions the editor of an investigations unit will ask a reporter bringing forth serious allegations of the kind aired about Wran.</p>
<p>Serious allegations cannot just be left swinging in the breeze as “unproven” when the initiating process that hangs them out there is your own investigation.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter whether Wran was the focus of the series or not. What matters is the seriousness of the allegations made against him: that he was complicit in a corrupt process and socialised with a notorious crime figure who ultimately benefited from that corrupt process.</p>
<p>At the same time, the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater.</p>
<p>Anyone who was paying attention to the aftermath of the Luna Park fire knew there was a stench surrounding it, but in the Sydney of the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was impossible to get to the bottom of it.</p>
<p>As the reviewers noted, the Exposed series did a remarkable job in showing how corrupt police derailed the investigation from the start, prompting calls now for a new inquest or a judicial inquiry. </p>
<p>The series also joined the dots connecting Saffron to the crime, providing at least a modicum of explanatory relief for the families devastated by the deaths of six children and an innocent man.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-long-history-of-political-corruption-in-nsw-and-the-downfall-of-mps-ministers-and-premiers-147994">The long history of political corruption in NSW — and the downfall of MPs, ministers and premiers</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167042/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Serious allegations cannot just be left swinging in the breeze as ‘unproven’ when the initiating process that hangs them out there is your own investigation.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1107122019-02-13T05:42:01Z2019-02-13T05:42:01ZAustralian governments have a long history of trying to manipulate the ABC – and it’s unlikely to stop now<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258615/original/file-20190213-90488-erlef4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=520%2C5%2C2964%2C1988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Both Labor and Coalition governments have had run-ins with the ABC.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wes Mountain/The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>History tells us that no matter which side of politics – Labor or Coalition – is in power, there is no respite for the ABC from incipient government hostility.</p>
<p>What does change, however, is the nature of the provocations that make governments antsy with Aunty.</p>
<p>Both sides get cross when the ABC criticises what the government does. But, in other respects, the provocations differ depending on which party is in power.</p>
<p>When it’s Labor, the sharpest tensions arise when the ABC’s journalism harms the party or its mates.</p>
<p>For example, during the Hawke-Keating years (1983-1996) there was fury about the ABC’s treatment of a Labor icon, Neville Wran, and Hawke’s mate, the transport tycoon Sir Peter Abeles.</p>
<p>In 1983, when Wran was premier of New South Wales, a Four Corners program, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/the-big-league---1983/2841712">The Big League</a>, implicated him in allegations of corruption in rugby league and the NSW magistracy. Wran was forced to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/neville-wran-labor-premier-had-a-golden-run-20140421-370ho.html">stand aside</a> during the ensuing royal commission. Although he was exonerated, he neither forgot nor forgave the ABC, and neither did the Labor Party.</p>
<p>Four Corners also investigated the business practices and political influence of Abeles, who was credited with playing a critical role in Hawke’s ascendancy to the Labor leadership.</p>
<p>However, under Labor these eruptions tend to be episodic – the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years were relatively tranquil – whereas during the Coalition’s past two terms in office hostility towards the ABC <a href="https://theconversation.com/constant-attacks-on-the-abc-will-come-back-to-haunt-the-coalition-government-98456">has been relentless</a>.</p>
<p>When the Coalition is in office, the sharpest tensions are caused by allegations of bias and by ideological conflict of the kind typified by the culture wars: Aboriginal issues, Reconciliation and Australian history.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/constant-attacks-on-the-abc-will-come-back-to-haunt-the-coalition-government-98456">Constant attacks on the ABC will come back to haunt the Coalition government</a>
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<p>This pattern was already established when John Howard became prime minister in 1996, but he took it to a new level. His senior adviser, Grahame Morris, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/an-eye-to-history-20081118-gdt37l.html">characterised the ABC</a> as “our enemy talking to our friends”. Howard himself referred to the 7pm ABC television news as “Labor’s home video”. </p>
<p>Within four months of the election, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/01/cabinet-papers-was-the-howard-government-conservative-or-liberal">his government cut the ABC’s budget</a> by 2% – breaking an election promise – and announced a review of the role and scope of ABC services.</p>
<p>Howard’s communications minister, Richard Alston, kept up an <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/static-from-the-newsfront-20050305-gdkv5g.html">unremitting barrage of complaints</a> that the ABC was biased. This culminated in 2003 with 68 complaints about the coverage of the second Gulf War. An independent review panel upheld 17 of these but found no systematic bias.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258056/original/file-20190210-174857-3gp846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258056/original/file-20190210-174857-3gp846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258056/original/file-20190210-174857-3gp846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258056/original/file-20190210-174857-3gp846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258056/original/file-20190210-174857-3gp846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258056/original/file-20190210-174857-3gp846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258056/original/file-20190210-174857-3gp846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">During the Howard government years, Communications Minister Richard Alston maintained a furious attack on the ABC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
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<p>This playbook – repeated funding cuts, relentless allegations of bias, and recurring inquiries into the ABC’s efficiency and scope – has been followed to the letter by the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison administrations.</p>
<p>Howard also fashioned appointments to the ABC board into a new weapon in the culture wars by selecting not just party grandees and reliable allies, but cultural warriors.</p>
<p>This reached its apogee with the appointments of Ron Brunton in 2003, Janet Albrechtsen in 2005 and the historian Keith Windshuttle in 2006.</p>
<p>Brunton is an anthropologist who worked for the Liberal Party and right-wing think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs. He made a name for himself by writing a critical response to the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.</p>
<p>Albrechtsen is a columnist with The Australian. She is a longstanding critic of the ABC and in particular its Media Watch program.</p>
<p>Her qualifications were enhanced by the fact that she had written in praise of Windshuttle’s work, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, in which he disputed estimates of the number of Aboriginal people killed in frontier massacres during European settlement. These estimates formed part of what the historian Geoffrey Blainey called the “black armband” view of Australian history, an epithet later adopted by Howard.</p>
<p>Labor also stacks the board but tends to content itself with the appointment of straight-out political mates – ex-politicians, labour lawyers and trade union officials. According to the ABC’s historian, Ken Inglis, in 1992 the then chairman, Mark Armstrong, looked around the boardroom and wondered whether he was the only director who did not owe his place to some connection with Labor. </p>
<p>As this brief history shows, both side of politics are contemptuous of the merit-based process laid down in the <a href="https://about.abc.net.au/who-we-are/the-abc-board/">ABC Act for board appointments</a>. It requires an independent nomination panel to produce three names, based on stated selection criteria, and then to recommend them to the minister.</p>
<p>Ministers are under no legal obligation to take any notice and, as we have seen, they routinely do not.</p>
<p>Australia saw the climactic results of this shameless jobbery last September when the ABC chair, <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-justin-milne-gone-how-does-the-abc-go-about-restoring-its-crucial-independence-103987">Justin Milne</a>, and the managing director, <a href="https://theconversation.com/despite-her-good-intentions-michelle-guthrie-was-never-the-right-fit-for-the-abc-103755">Michelle Guthrie</a>, were forced out. This came amid recriminatory accusations about Guthrie’s performance, Milne’s relationship with the then prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the board’s incapacity to defend the broadcaster’s editorial independence.</p>
<p>Two changes to the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2018C00079">ABC Act</a> would go some way towards reducing the likelihood of more crises like this.</p>
<p>First, part VI of the act should be amended to include a mechanism for guaranteeing the agreed level of funding for a triennium. The finance minister would then be obligated to make a statement to parliament explaining any reduction.</p>
<p>Second, the merit-based appointment process set out in part IIIA of the act should be made mandatory. The act should also be amended so that if the minister rejects a nomination panel’s recommendations, he or she must tell parliament who has been rejected and why someone else was preferred.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to the 2019 election, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-11/labor-vows-to-restore-funding-to-abc-if-elected/9857468">Labor has promised to restore</a> the most recent cuts of A$83.7 million to the ABC budget over three years, but not the other A$250 million taken out, mainly by the Abbott government. The Coalition has kept a decent silence.</p>
<p>The moral of this story is that voters should not be too starry-eyed about how Labor is likely to treat the ABC if it wins the election. And they should be less starry-eyed still about the prospects of a minister giving up the power to manipulate board membership of Australia’s most important cultural institution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110712/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller carried out consultancy work for the ABC between 2007 and 2011 and is a guest each week on the Behind the Media segment on ABC Radio Victoria Statewide Drive.</span></em></p>The national broadcaster has had a tumultuous history, targeted by both major parties at various times. No matter who takes office after the 2019 election, the ABC can never rest easy.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/500682015-11-04T02:51:14Z2015-11-04T02:51:14ZIn Neville Wran, Turnbull has a leadership model to win the tax debate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100477/original/image-20151102-16510-19ta0gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Neville Wran, New South Wales premier from 1976 to 1986, was Australia’s first modern leader, building and using 'political capital'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Let me put it this way.</p>
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<p>That was how Neville Wran invariably dealt with an awkward question before reframing the argument to his satisfaction and delivering the television grab that would advance his case on the network news that night.</p>
<p>Wran, New South Wales premier from 1976 to 1986, was Australia’s first modern leader. He built as well as used <a href="https://theconversation.com/keating-reform-and-the-difficult-notion-of-political-capital-21315">“political capital”</a>.</p>
<p>Certainly Wran had an ego, but he had none of Gough Whitlam’s obvious arrogance, Malcolm Fraser’s imperiousness, Bob Hawke’s boastfulness or John Howard’s earnestness. Wran is clearly the model for Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership – or, at least, the way Turnbull presents his leadership.</p>
<h2>Turnbull and Wran</h2>
<p>As a young reporter, Turnbull <a href="http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/condolence-on-neville-wran">watched Wran</a> in the 1970s and later became his business partner in a highly successful merchant bank. Upon Wran’s death, Turnbull remarked that Wran was his “best friend”.</p>
<p>Turnbull <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-14/malcolm-turnbull-wins-liberal-leadership-ballot-over-tony-abbott/6775464">says</a> he wants political discourse to be a conversation, rather than politicians simply hurling burning oil at each other from the battlements. But he intends it to be a conversation on his terms, with the voters listening to what he has to say.</p>
<p>Undoubtedly, polling will play a role in shaping what the voters are interested in and just what they will cop. However, it remains a conversation that Turnbull intends to control rather than some free-form undergraduate debate.</p>
<p>Like Wran and Hawke before him, Turnbull is in the unusual position of being able to build his political stocks, rather than beginning with a positive balance in the bank that then begins to dwindle. This has led to his government’s decision to finally get serious about tax reform.</p>
<h2>The tax debate</h2>
<p>As Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer and Cabinet Secretary Arthur Sinodinos <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/pleas-for-a-political-truce-with-the-labor-states-on-gst-ignored-20151031-gknvil.html">made clear</a>, changes to the level and reach of the GST are well and truly in the mix to be taken to the next election.</p>
<p>Sinodinos has been involved in every major push for tax reform since Paul Keating’s ill-fated <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/how-the-hawkekeating-team-unravelled-over-tax-20121231-2c2t8.html">“option C”</a> in the mid-1980s. As chief-of-staff, Sinodinos was instrumental in Howard’s campaign for the introduction of a consumption tax.</p>
<p>Such was the size of the bucket of money being offered to the states in the late 1990s that no premier – Labor or Liberal – was going to stand in its way. That single act made the task of selling a tax rise to the voters that much easier. Opposition from one of the big states would not only have stopped the momentum, it would probably have cost Howard government.</p>
<p>Now, an updated version of the Howard formula is <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-turnbull-really-wants-to-make-a-difference-on-tax-he-must-dig-deep-into-his-political-capital-50055">in the works</a>: an increase in the GST rate and/or extend its reach to fresh food, health and education.</p>
<p>As with Howard, compensation would be offered to the lower paid, but the rich would be soaked – not just by tighter means-testing of superannuation benefits, for example, but also for child care.</p>
<p>For a prime minister in good standing, this is marketable. There is no doubt that there is a sense among rank-and-file voters that the well-off are getting away with it. So, hitting people earning A$200,000 or more per year to pay extra for child care would not cost Turnbull a vote – and probably win him a few as well.</p>
<p>This is especially true with an opposition leader like Bill Shorten, who still struggles to <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/newspoll-shortens-whining-but-no-ones-buying-labor-message/story-fn53lw5p-1227584573354">cut through</a>. As the government was laying the ground for serious tax reform, what was Shorten talking about? Lowering the <a href="https://theconversation.com/shorten-pledges-to-lower-voting-age-50028">voting age</a> to 16.</p>
<p>The clamour for such a shift is inaudible and the idea is reminiscent of the laughable centrepiece of Kim Beazley’s response to Howard’s GST plan – increasing the sales tax on four-wheel drives, the so-called <a href="http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/hansard/hans35.nsf/16ab30a0303e54f448256bf7002049e8/b0e36687b0054184482566cd00089b89?OpenDocument">“Toorak tractors”</a>. Voters saw it for the fraud it was. Labor’s bid to make Howard a one-term prime minister suffered thereafter.</p>
<p>Turnbull’s tax initiative is bold, and Shorten has to get beyond the trivial if Labor is to have any hope at the next election.</p>
<p>Tax reform will still be a hard sell, even for a prime minister of Turnbull’s standing and imagination. But remember this: Wran turned a one-seat victory months after Whitlam had been turfed out of office into 12 years of Labor ascendancy in NSW.</p>
<p>Have no doubt, Turnbull will have watched how he did it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jim Middleton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tax reform will be a hard sell, even for a prime minister of Malcolm Turnbull’s standing and imagination.Jim Middleton, Vice Chancellor's Fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/259012014-04-24T01:38:41Z2014-04-24T01:38:41ZRemembering Neville Wran – arts aficionado or Balmain bruiser?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46951/original/7b69dk3s-1398299750.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Neville Wran had a reputation as a tough guy – but he was also a strong supporter of the arts.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1981, on a short trip back home to Australia from the UK, I saw a job advertised that I thought had been made for me. The Director, Women and Arts, according to the advertisement, was a special role created by the then Premier of New South Wales, Neville Wran, who died earlier this week.</p>
<p>I applied and to my surprise was appointed. </p>
<p>The job description envisaged a festival and research project on the subject of “women and the arts” throughout the State of New South Wales in 1982. While the job sounded impressive, the reality was there was no budget; just a salary to pay me for 18 months. </p>
<p>It was explained that while the role notionally reported to the Premier, in reality this meant that I reported to the heads of the Arts and Cultural office and the Women’s Adviser’s office, both then located within the Premier’s Department. But it seemed the project was perceived as a “political exercise” by the bureaucrats; just window dressing rather than real.</p>
<p>For the project to succeed, though, it had to have a budget. </p>
<p>To achieve this I would have to go above everyone’s head and meet with the “boss”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46986/original/bywnxf26-1398322674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46986/original/bywnxf26-1398322674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46986/original/bywnxf26-1398322674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46986/original/bywnxf26-1398322674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46986/original/bywnxf26-1398322674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46986/original/bywnxf26-1398322674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46986/original/bywnxf26-1398322674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Neville Wran with a group of women artists and arts workers at a reception on International Women’s’ Day 1982.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jo Caust</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With some difficulty I made an appointment to see the Premier to explain the dilemma and seek his help. I had heard from different sources that Wran was an arts aficionado – but also a “Balmain boy” and rather rough around the edges. I was warned the meeting might be brutal. </p>
<p>Yet Wran must have decided it was fun to have an idealistic and naïve young woman in his office begging for money, so he put on a show for me. We talked about films and he mentioned how he and his wife Jilly liked to watch films on SBS. </p>
<p>He then described a Japanese film they had seen recently in which a character believed he was a train. As I hadn’t seen the film, Wran got up from his chair, became a train and choofed around the office, every so often tooting his whistle. </p>
<p>Following this performance he asked me how much we needed and agreed to give the women’s project a budget, provided the head of the Premier’s Department, the all powerful Gerry Gleeson, agreed. Gerry Gleeson did agree and went further by providing us with a rather expansive suite of offices to be based in.</p>
<p>To get other players on board such as the Sydney Theatre Company and the Art Gallery of New South Wales I played my bluff as the representative of a Premier (to whom they were beholden) who wanted this project to happen. </p>
<p>After initial resistance this strategy worked and very quickly we had a season of Women’s Theatre happening under the banner of the Sydney Theatre, directed by Robyn Nevin, and a substantial exhibition of works by women artists from the permanent collection of the Art Gallery (which until then rarely saw the light of day). Other participants and supporters quickly followed, particularly important women in the media and the arts.</p>
<p>As Premier, Wran was a great advocate of the project. </p>
<p>He talked warmly about it to the media, other parliamentarians, arts people and women’s groups but the opening of the Women and Arts Festival at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in October 1982 was the highlight. </p>
<p>Several hundred people gathered in the gallery foyer, plus performers, visual displays and generous amounts of champagne. There were also two political demonstrations; one was a protest about the ongoing voluntary nature of women’s work (illustrated by artists using irons and ironing boards on the gallery steps) and the other was the Prisoners’ Action Group protesting the fate of prisoners in the NSW correctional service. </p>
<p>I had the honour of showing Wran the exhibition of women artists especially mounted by the gallery. As the two of us entered the exhibition the prisoners’ group followed us, demanding action for their cause from the Premier. Something was said that he found insulting and he raised his fists ready for a fight saying “come on then, come on,” and a spokesperson from their side did the same. There, surrounded by the works of women artists, they squared off for a fist fight. </p>
<p>I had no alternative. </p>
<p>I stood between them and begged for civilised behaviour from them both claiming “this was neither the time nor the place”. Remarkably this worked. The prisoners’ group walked away. Premier Wran, still up for a fight, seemed disappointed but calmed down and agreed to continue his tour.</p>
<p>During the time of the project I had been warned by the bureaucrats to, on no account, embarrass the Premier or the government. What this meant I was never quite sure. Fortunately the Women and Arts Project was deemed a success; not least by Premier Wran who praised it fulsomely in State Parliament in December 1982.</p>
<p>As a postscript the Women and Arts Festival included more than 1,000 events throughout New South Wales during the month of October 1982 and in addition a national research project about women in the arts undertaken at the same time as the Festival, contributed greatly to understanding how to improve the lot of women in the arts. </p>
<p>An annual Women’s Arts Fellowship was then awarded to an outstanding female artist/arts worker by the NSW Government over the next several years – although sadly no longer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25901/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jo Caust does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 1981, on a short trip back home to Australia from the UK, I saw a job advertised that I thought had been made for me. The Director, Women and Arts, according to the advertisement, was a special role…Jo Caust, Associate Professor, Cultural Policy and Arts Leadership , The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.