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DOWNER: NO TEARS, NO BREAKDOWN
Author: ALAN RAMSEY
Date: 16/11/1994
Words: 888
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Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Section: News and Features
Page: 17
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A LONG time ago, when another Liberal leader was under
pressure, somebody told me something by telephone. It concerned a private
conversation between two people. What they had to say, as later passed on
to me, was unflattering of a third person and very sensitive politically.
Such conversations are hardly rare in
politics, or anywhere else for that matter. On this occasion, however, one
of the people concerned was the then Prime Minister. The other was the
military head of our armed forces. The third man, about whom they spoke,
was the Minister for Defence, somebody who would himself later become
Prime Minister in the most turbulent of circumstances.
I was told of the purported conversation in
the Prime Minister's office within 24 hours of it taking place. The person
who related it to me was not a primary source. He wasn't present when it
took place. Only the Prime Minister and the military man were there. Only
they knew absolutely what had been said
I went to one of them with five written
questions. The person I went to see was the Prime Minister. He knew in
advance what I thought I knew. He had the written questions in front of
him when I was shown into his office. I later learned he'd been advised
not to see me, given the prickly matters raised by my questions, but he
ignored the advice.
He still chose to see me. When I left his
office I was in no doubt I knew the truth. The Prime Minister had answered
in detail four of my written questions. His answers confirmed what I'd
been told by telephone. But the one question he declined to answer was
crucial. It concerned purported remarks made by the military man. The
Prime Minister would neither confirm nor deny them; he would not, he said,
talk about what the military man had said to him
I made an assumption. I felt he would have
told me if I was wrong. I assumed that while he mightn't confirm something
he knew to be true, he wouldn't allow me to leave his office thinking
something could be true which he knew to be wrong. I thought he'd have
warned me off. I'd spoken to him often enough over the years and knew him
as a stickler for the proprieties. And to my knowledge he'd never misled
me.
Yet the day my story was published the
Prime Minister and the military man denied it in a joint statement. I
reacted by disclosing the following day that the Prime Minister had been
given the opportunity to kill the story before publication and had not
done so. The Minister for Defence resigned three days later. Two days
after that we had a new Prime Minister.
All that was 23 years ago. It's now just a
bleep in history and really doesn't matter a fig to anyone. We're five
Governments further down the track and so, too, another seven Liberal
leaders, only one of whom did anything more than simply mark time. John
Gorton and Malcolm Fraser are long gone. So is the military man. So is the
person who made the telephone call all that time ago.
The only one still here is me, and
sometimes, on a dark day, I wish I wasn't. This week is one of those
times.
Last week I got another telephone call
about another Liberal Leader and what purportedly happened in his Adelaide
office in the company of two of his Liberal colleagues. Like that other
call 23 years ago, again the information passed on was not meant to assist
the leadership incumbent. It, too, came from within his own ranks. And it,
too, came from someone who wasn't there when it happened.
Unlike the earlier incident, I didn't
confront Alexander Downer with what I'd been told. I went to somebody else
I was sure would know. This person confirmed the detail of the telephone
call. I had every reason to believe this person.
After the story was published last
Saturday, Downer denied it categorically and absolutely on Sunday. The
next day, Senator Nick Minchin, one of his closest supporters, repeated
the denial in spades on ABC radio. The relevant article, asserted Minchin,
was "one of the most unprofessional pieces of journalism" he'd
ever seen.
I have since spoken to a number of people
in the Liberal Party. By midday Monday I remained convinced the article
was true. I felt Downer and Minchin were simply trying to make the best of
a lousy case by seeking to assassinate the messenger. By yesterday I was
equally convinced I'd been dudded by others' enthusiasm and my bad
judgment.
I was wrong in what I wrote. Alexander
Downer may, in my view, have no leadership future, but I accept he did not
break down and weep under the pressure of his political mistakes and have
to be taken home to bed. I have wronged him, embarrassed the Herald and
misled its readers.
I apologise to all concerned.
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