Unlike his father, whose deep involvement in politics had dated from the federation period of 1901, Rupert Murdoch had no personal political connections in Australia when he became publisher of The News. Apart from the fashionable Leninist persona he had adopted at Oxford, he displayed his first signs of an interest in politics when he wrote to the Australian Opposition Leader, Joseph Benedict Chifley, in 1950, after Robert Menzies introduced a Bill to ban the Australian Communist Party. The 19-year-old Murdoch expressed his disappointment that the Labor Party had decided not to oppose the Bill for domestic political reasons, saying, the decision had "disappointed many who held out hopes for the preservation of normal human liberties in Australia."[1]
In 1952, the Labor Party deputy leader successfully challenged the Communist Party Dissolution Act in the High Court of Australia under the Australian Constitution. Menzies called an election and campaigned on the basis of a referendum[2] to amend the Constitution. At this point Rupert Murdoch wrote again to Chifley wishing him "every success in the coming struggle" and adding, "any continuance of the present regime will prove disastrous to the country."[3]
Murdoch found first political ally in John McEwen, leader of the Australian Country Party which was governing in coalition with the larger Menzies-Holt Liberal Party. From the very first issue of The Australian Murdoch began taking McEwen's side in issues that caused tensions among the long-serving coalition partners. [4] It was an issue that threatened to split the coalition government and enable the larger Australian Labor Party to dominate Australian politics. It was the beginning of a long campaign that served McEwen well.[5]
McEwen, a man of strong principle, may not have felt a particular obligation to Murdoch but he repaid later acting in a friendly fashion to advise him on the purchase the valuable rural property, Cavan, near Canberra, to become Murdoch's principal home in Australia. McEwen later arranged a clever subterfuge by which Murdoch was able to transfer a large sum of money from Australia to England to complete the purchase of The News of the World, without obtaining the required authority from the Australian Treasury.[6]
After McEwen and Menzies retired, Murdoch transferred his support to the newly elected Leader of the Australian Labor Party, Gough Whitlam, who was elected in 1972 on a social platform that included universal free health care, free education for all Australians to tertiary level, recognition of the People's Republic of China and public ownership of Australia's oil, gas and mineral resources.[7]
Rupert Murdoch's flirtation with Whitlam turned out to be brief. He had already started his short lived National Star newspaper in America and was seeking to strengthen his political contacts there. [8] In Whitlam's second term, Murdoch returned from England to personally orchestrate a campaign to unseat the Australian government based only on rumor, innuendo and character assassinations against some of its members. In 1972 Gough Whitlam was dismissed by the Governor General, an unprecedented use of of reserve emergency powers.[9]
A subsequent national election, with the confusion of the media campaign against Whitlam still fresh in the public's mind, saw Whitlam defeated and a Liberal-Country Party coalition elected with John Malcolm Fraser as prime minister. No case was ever brought against any member of the Whitlam government as a result of the torrent of accusations alleged against them. There was, however, no doubt left in the mind of future Labor Party leaders that Ruperts Murdoch's views on anything could never be ignored.[10]
- ^ Day, David, "Chifley, " (HarperCollins, 2001) 510
- ^ The referendum was lost
- ^ Day, 519
- ^ The Australian, July 15, 1964, first edition front page: “Strain in Cabinet, Liberal-CP row flares.”
- ^ Golding, Peter, "Black Jack McEwen, political gladiator," (Melbourne University Press, 1996)
- ^ Golding
- ^ Page, 158-196
- ^ Shawcross,30-39
- ^ Page, 189-190
- ^ Page, 195