Jim Cairns

The Honourable Jim Cairns
Member of the Australian Parliament for Yarra
In office 10 December 1955 – 25 October 1969
Preceded by	Stan Keon
Succeeded by	Division abolished
Member of the Australian Parliament for Lalor
In office 25 October 1969 – 10 November 1977
Preceded by	Mervyn Lee
Succeeded by	Barry Jones
Personal details
Born	James Ford Cairns 4 October 1914 Carlton, Victoria
Died	12 October 2003 (aged 89) Narre Warren East, Victoria
Nationality	Australian
Political party	Australian Labor Party
Spouse(s)	Gwen Robb
Alma mater	University of Melbourne
Occupation	Policeman, lecturer

James Ford "Jim" Cairns (4 October 1914 – 12 October 2003), Australian politician, was prominent in the Labor movement through the 1960s and 1970s, and was briefly Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam government. He is best remembered as a leader of the movement against Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, for his affair with Junie Morosi and for his later renunciation of conventional politics. He was also an economist, and a prolific writer on economic and social issues, many of them self-published and self-marketed at stalls he ran across Australia after his retirement.

Early days

James Ford Cairns was born in Carlton, then a working-class suburb of Melbourne, the son of a clerk. He grew up on a dairy farm north of Sunbury.^[1] His father went to the First World War as a lieutenant in the Australian Imperial Forces, but became disillusioned with the war and lost his respect for Britain. He did not return to Australia. Following the war he essentially deserted his family, and he travelled to Africa where he committed suicide after a stay of six or seven years. Cairns later told Gough Whitlam that he had long believed that his father had been killed in World War I before he was eventually told the truth of his father's desertion.^[2]

Cairns attended Sunbury State School and later Northcote High School, where he completed his Leaving Certificate. Though life during the Depression was difficult with his mother having to work to provide for the family, and with himself having to make a three-hour daily commute by train, he was a good student, making his name at Northcote High School due to entering the school's broad jump championship and winning it easily with a jump of twenty feet and two inches, his competitors producing jumps of sixteen to seventeen feet.^[1]

In 1933 Cairns joined the Police Force in order to have more time for his interest in athletics. He soon became a detective and gained notoriety working in a special surveillance team known as "the dogs" shadowing squad wherein he was involved in a number of dramatic arrests.^[1] While working he studied at night and completed an economics degree at the University of Melbourne. He was the first Victorian policeman to hold a tertiary degree. In 1939 he married Gwen Robb (died 2000), whose two sons he adopted.

In 1944, Cairns left the Police and was employed, successively as a tutor and lecturer in the Army and a senior lecturer in economic history, at the University of Melbourne.^[3] He was a knowledgeable economist and was considered a convinced socialist. In 1946 he applied to join the Communist Party, but was rejected.^[4] He joined the Labor Party and became active in its left wing. The Victorian Labor Party had by this time been infiltrated by the mostly Catholic "Groupers", associated with Archbishop Mannix and B. A. Santamaria, and Cairns was a leading opponent of this group.^[3]

In 1955, when the federal Labor leader, Dr. H. V. Evatt, attacked the Groupers and brought on a major split in the Labor Party, Cairns sided with Evatt. At the 1955 election, he stood for the House of Representatives for the working-class seat of Yarra, held by the leading Grouper, Stan Keon. In what Cairns has been quoted as saying was "... the most active and intense and vigorous election campaign that's ever been run in Australia."^[3] Cairns was elected and held Yarra until 1969, when it was abolished at a redistribution. He then shifted to Lalor in Melbourne's western suburbs. The seat had been in Labor hands since its creation in 1949, but had been taken by Liberal Mervyn Lee in 1966. However, a redistribution wiped out Lee's majority and gave Labor a notional majority of six percent. Rather than face almost certain defeat, Lee made an unsuccessful bid for the nearby seat of Bendigo. This proved prescient, as Cairns easily won Lalor with a healthy swing.

Leading left-winger

In Canberra, Cairns became a leader of the left. He was a highly effective debater and was soon feared and disliked by ministers in the Liberal government of Robert Menzies, although his relationship with Menzies himself was warmer than might be expected.^[5] Cairns was also disliked by many in his own party, who saw him as an ideologue whose political views were too left-wing for the Australian electorate.

Nevertheless, Cairns's abilities could not be denied. He completed his doctorate in economic history in 1957, and by the 1960s he was among the Labor Party's leading figures. At this time he also lectured on Marxist and socialist history, and taught at free seminars for working people in Melbourne unable to afford tertiary education. He was to travel overseas for the first time including to the United States and Asia. These experiences had a great effect on him. In 1967, when Arthur Calwell retired as Labor leader, Cairns contested the leadership, but was defeated by Gough Whitlam. The following year, when Whitlam resigned as leader as part of his fight with the left-wing of the party, Cairns again contested the leadership, but again narrowly failed. Whitlam appointed him shadow minister for trade and industry.^[6][7]

One of the reasons Cairns did not become leader of the Labor Party was that through the late 1960s and early 1970s his main focus was not on parliamentary politics but on leading the mass movement against the Vietnam War, to which the Menzies government had committed combat troops in 1965, and against conscription for that war. Until about 1968, most Australians supported the war, and opposition to it was led by the Communist Party and the trade unions. After 1968, however, opposition grew, and Cairns came to see this movement as a moral crusade. In 1969 he was assaulted by a group of men who broke into his home, also seriously injuring his wife.^[5][8]

In May 1970, Cairns, as chair of the Vietnam Moratorium, led an estimated 100,000 people in a "sit-down" demonstration in the streets of Melbourne. This was the largest protest in Australia until it was overtaken by the anti-Iraq war protests in February 2003. Similar protests of proportionate size took place simultaneously in other Australian cities. There was none of the predicted violence, and the moral force of the (mainly young) protesters had a major effect on Australian attitudes to the war.^[6][9]

Cairns in Government

In 1972, Whitlam led the Labor Party into government for the first time in 23 years, and Cairns became Minister for Overseas Trade and Minister for Secondary Industry. He had by now shed much of his socialist ideology of earlier years, though he was still a strong believer in state planning. He got along surprisingly well with the heads of industry, although critics said this was because he was sympathetic to their requests for government assistance. During his time as Minister for Trade and Minister for Secondary Industry, Cairns undertook a number of overseas trade visits, the most successful of which was to China; resulting in increasing Australian trade with China from 200 million dollars before the visit to 1,000 million dollars within a year after his visit.^[7] After the 1974 election, he was elected Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, defeating Lance Barnard, and thus became Deputy Prime Minister.

In December 1974, Whitlam appointed Cairns to the senior economic portfolio, Treasurer. This was the high-point of Cairns's political career. On Christmas Day 1974, while Whitlam was overseas, Cyclone Tracy devastated the city of Darwin, and Cairns as Acting Prime Minister impressed the nation with his sympathetic and decisive leadership. It was during this period, however, that Cairns hired Junie Morosi as his principal private secretary, and he soon began a relationship with her which would eventually help ruin his career.

Australia's economy began to decline during 1975, and Cairns (like other finance ministers around the world at this time) had few answers to the new phenomenon of stagflation, the combination of high unemployment and high inflation that followed the 1974 oil shock.

Loans affair

In an attempt to raise funds for large capital works projects, e.g. boring for gas on the north-west shelf between Australia and Timor and constructing a pipeline for transporting the gas down to Eastern Australia, senior ministers Rex Connor and Lionel Murphy, along with Prime Minister Gough Whitlam made arrangements to borrow approximately US$4,000 million petrodollars from the Middle East through an intermediary, a Pakistani banker called Tirath Khemlani (the so-called "Loans Affair"). Cairns first became aware of what was to become known as the Loans Affair three days after being appointed Treasurer, on 13 December 1974, when he entered at the end of a meeting of the Labor Party federal executive at the Lodge, Whitlam explained the situation and requested that Cairns co-sign approval for the loan. Cairns did so, noting to Whitlam that the state premiers should be informed of the loan (this did not occur). Subsequently, Sir Frederick Wheeler, Secretary of the Treasury (the head of Cairns' department) and other members of staff communicated to Cairns that Khemlani was of questionable character. In his capacity as Acting Prime Minister during Gough Whitlam's overseas trip covering late 1974 to early 1975, Cairns arranged a meeting at the Reserve Bank in Canberra attended by various senior officials, including Lionel Murphy and Rex Connor. After some debate, the outcome of this meeting was that Connor's authority to borrow the loan in question was cancelled. Whitlam returned from overseas on 19 January 1975 and on 27 January 1975, Connor's authority to borrow the loan was reinstated without consultation with Cairns as Treasurer, who found out after the fact. A short time later, when Cairns was about to visit the United States in an official capacity, his staff informed him that if the issue of the Khemlani loan were not dealt with, it would most likely overshadow his visit. This, plus Cairns' pre-existing reservations about the loan, prompted him to discuss the issue once again with Whitlam, who then agreed that Connor's dealings with Khemlani should come to an end. Whitlam requested that Cairns be the one to deliver the news to Connor and Cairns did so. Rex Connor was later dismissed by Whitlam for continuing his unauthorised business communications with Khemlani.^[10][11] Whitlam moved Cairns from Treasury to the Environment ministry.

Cairns' political undoing began by way of an incident that is often conflated with the Connor/Khemlani dealings, but was essentially separate. In 1974, Cairns was introduced by Robert Menzies to George Harris, a Melbourne businessman and president of the Carlton Football Club.^[12] Harris had offered to secure loan funds for the Australian government, and in March 1975 Cairns signed a letter agreeing to a 2.5% commission. Many blamed the disorganised state of Cairns’ office for what ultimately turned out to be a misleading statement to Parliament in June that he had not authorised any such commission. Cairns claimed that he had signed the letter in question unknowingly while signing a batch of fifty or so letters and that it was not uncommon practice for politicians to sign letters that they had little or no memory of signing. Ironically, politicians from across the aisle—Malcolm Fraser and a number of his ministers—spoke out in defence of Cairns on this subject, agreeing that they too signed letters of which they had little or no memory. But the fact remained that Cairns had signed the letter, and as a result Whitlam had him dismissed from the ministry on 2 July 1975. Cairns has since stated that he felt there were ulterior motives at play on the part of Gough Whitlam; namely that Whitlam wished to be rid of Cairns because Cairns did not agree with a policy of economic rationalism and that Whitlam felt that Cairns was a threat to his leadership.^[10][11]

Cairns and Morosi

In late 1974 Cairns met Junie Morosi. Morosi had worked for Cairns' contemporaries, Al Grassby and Lionel Murphy. Morosi greatly admired Cairns from having read his academic writings and she introduced Cairns to the work of Wilhelm Reich, opening his mind to the relevance of human psychology as it related to social change.^[10] Cairns decided to offer Morosi a position as his principal private secretary.^[13][14]

On 2 December 1974, the media furore around Cairns' employment offer to Morosi began. Attention continued to build with the media attempting to justify the controversy by highlighting Morosi's lack of public service experience, her physical beauty and pointing out that she had often been seen dining in Canberra with senior Cabinet ministers. Over the next few days, the media coverage was unrelenting and progressed to sexual innuendo and vague allegations of impropriety on the part of Morosi and her high profile employers. Cairns and Morosi agreed and publicly stated that she would not take Cairns' offer of employment. Both The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian reported on Cairns' and Morosi’s statements with "press accused of spying", claiming press vilification brought about the outcome, but in such a way that accepted no blame or responsibility. By this stage the media had raised the scandal to "Morosi storm rocking government" status, and bestowed upon it a moniker: "The Morosi Affair". The Liberal Opposition called for a senate inquiry. After investigation, it was revealed that there was no impropriety on the part of Morosi and no preferential treatment given to Morosi. On 13 December 1974, it was reported that Morosi would accept Cairns' offer of employment.^[14]

Some months later, Cairns and Morosi were once again in the headlines. During the Australian Labor Party's National Conference in February 1975, Cairns gave an interview to a hostile reporter in which he spoke of "a kind of love" for Morosi. Cairns was not at this time directly asked if his relationship with Morosi was sexual. However, unlike other politicians of the time, he did not seek to suppress or publicly repudiate any of his private life. The press continued to encourage speculation; during the 1975 National Conference, a photographer hid in a tree and waited while Morosi, her husband, Cairns, and his wife were having breakfast on a balcony. The photographer took a photo just when Cairns’ wife left the balcony and with Morosi’s husband out of shot. The Daily Telegraph ran the picture of Cairns and Morosi the next day with the headline "Breakfast with Junie". Allegations were made in the House and the Senate and accusations of misconduct were bandied about from all parties involved.^[14]

In 1982, Morosi took 2UE and The Daily Mirror to court on defamation charges, with both Cairns and Morosi resisting the accusations of sexual impropriety and corruption, actively fighting against the media in an attempt to expose prejudice.^[14] Before the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Cairns denied under oath having had a sexual relationship with Morosi. The jury in that case found that the article in question did contain "an imputation" that Cairns was "improperly involved with his assistant, Junie Morosi, in a romantic or sexual association", but that this statement was not defamatory. Cairns did not receive compensation, although Morosi did.

On 15 September 2002, Cairns finally admitted on ABC radio that he had a sexual relationship with Junie Morosi.^[15][16] In a separate interview—referring to his decision to employ Morosi and the ensuing media storm that it created—he said that "looking back over it, it was a mistake on my part".^[13]

Aftermath

Cairns at Nambassa in 1981

Cairns's Labor colleagues found his conduct in the Loans and Morosi affairs intolerable, and his political reputation was destroyed. In 1977 he retired from Parliament. He devoted the next portion of his life to the Counterculture movement, to which he had been introduced by Morosi. He sponsored a series of Down to Earth conference-festivals (known as Confests) at various rural locations, and was photographed taking part in Counterculture inspired activities, such as meditation. Even in the Counterculture movement however, Cairns and Morosi remained the centre of controversy, with disputes soon arising over the organisation and finances of the Down to Earth gatherings.

In 1979 Cairns severed his formal links with the Down to Earth organisers. But he remained legally and financially embroiled with a failed communal settlement at Mount Oak, south of Canberra, until after a messy court case, he cut his losses and ended his involvement with what was left of the movement in 1991. Cairns kept in contact with Morosi and the two remained friends.

Cairns was subject to a great deal of media ridicule for these activities, but displayed his usual firm conviction about the rightness of his causes. In his later years he lived at Narre Warren East near Melbourne. He sold his books outside suburban markets, where he would talk about politics, history or his life. In 2000 he was made a Life Member of the Labor Party. Cairns died of bronchial pneumonia, aged 89, in October 2003. He was accorded a State Funeral at St John's Anglican Church in Toorak.

Personal life

Cairns married Gwen Robb in 1939. He adopted Robb's two sons by her previous marriage, Barry and Phillip, when they were 4 and 5 years old respectively.^[5] Cairns claimed no religious affiliation. In a 1998 interview he said: "I have never believed myself to be anything that I can attach a name to. I wasn't a Christian. I didn't regard myself as a humanist or a socialist. I was something: what I am, and it didn't have a name".^[1]

Cairns' bibliography

• Cairns, G. O. & Cairns, J. F., Australia, 1953
• Cairns, J. F., Socialism and the A.L.P., comment by Bruce McFarlane, 1963
• Cairns, J. F., Living with Asia, 1965
• Cairns, J. F., Vietnam : is it truth we want?, 1965
• Cairns, J. F., Economics and foreign policy, 1966
• Cairns, J. F., Here I stand : statements, 1966
• Cairns, J. F., Changing Australia's role in Asia, 1968
• Cairns, J. F., Australian foreign policy, 1968
• Cairns, J. F., Eagle and the lotus; western intervention in Vietnam 1847-1968, 1969
• Cairns, J. F. & Cairns M.P., Silence kills; events leading up to the Vietnam Moratorium, 8 May 1970
• Cairns, J. F., Eagle and the lotus : Western intervention in Vietnam, 1847-1971, 1971
• Cairns, J. F., Tariffs or planning? : the case for reassessment, 1971
• Cairns, J. F., Quiet revolution, 1972
• Cairns, J. F., Impossible attainment, 1974
• Cairns, J. F., Labor Party? Dr. Evatt - the Petrov affair - the Whitlam government., 1974
• Cairns, Jim, Vietnam : scorched earth reborn, 1976
• Cairns, Jim, Oil in troubled waters, 1976
• Cairns, Jim, Growth to freedom, 1979
• Cairns, Jim, Survival now: the human transformation, 1982
• Cairns, Jim, Human growth, its source and potential, 1984
• Cairns, Jim, Strength within: towards an end to violence, 1988
• Cairns, Jim, Towards a new society : a new day has begun, 1990–1993
• Cairns, Jim, Untried road, 1990
• Cairns, Jim, Reshaping the future : liberated human potential, 1996
• Cairns, Jim, On the horizon: a cultural transformation to a new consciousness, 1999
• Cairns, Jim, Liberated biological function: the source of human quality, 2001
• Cairns, Jim, New day : liberated biological human potential: the source of social reform to the good society there's no other way, 2002
• Heffernan, Jack, Socialist alternative : an A.L.P. view, foreword by J.F. Cairns, 1969

References

1. Film Australia (1998). "Australian Biography project interview - Jim Cairns - transcript page 1". The Australian Biography project. Screen Australia, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
2. Carr, Bob, "How Gough Carried The Can For Progress", Sunday Telegraph (Sydney, Australia) October 26, 2014
3. Film Australia (1998). "Australian Biography project interview - Jim Cairns - transcript page 2". The Australian Biography project. Screen Australia, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
4. Film Australia (1998). "Australian Biography project interview with Jim Cairns". The Australian Biography project. Screen Australia, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
5. Film Australia (1998). "Australian Biography project interview - Jim Cairns - transcript page 10". The Australian Biography project. Screen Australia, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
6. Film Australia (1998). "Australian Biography project interview - Jim Cairns - transcript page 6". The Australian Biography project. Screen Australia, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
7. Film Australia (1998). "Australian Biography project interview - Jim Cairns - transcript page 7". The Australian Biography project. Screen Australia, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
8. Film Australia (1998). "Australian Biography project interview - Jim Cairns - transcript page 11". The Australian Biography project. Screen Australia, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
9. Film Australia (1998). "Australian Biography project interview - Jim Cairns - transcript page 5". The Australian Biography project. Screen Australia, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
10. Film Australia (1998). "Australian Biography project interview - Jim Cairns - transcript page 8". The Australian Biography project. Screen Australia, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
11. "The loans affair, 1974–75 – Fact sheet 239". National Archives of Australia. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
12. Harris & Main (2006) pp. 149-176
13. Film Australia (1998). "Australian Biography project interview - Jim Cairns - transcript page 9". The Australian Biography project. Screen Australia, Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
14. Laing, Kate. "‘A KIND OF LOVE’: Supergirls, Scapegoats and Sexual Liberation" (PDF). University of Sydney. Retrieved 18 December 2011.
15. Richard Ackland (20 September 2002). "Cairns admits sex, and breathtaking hypocrisy". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 25 June 2010.
16. Annabel Crabb (16 September 2002). "Cairns admits Morosi affair". The Age. Retrieved 25 June 2010.

Sources

• Film Australia (1998), "Jim Cairns", Australian Biography (Screen Australia, Commonwealth of Australia), retrieved 25 June 2010
• Harris, George & Main, Jim (2006). George - by George: Changi, the Blues and Beyond. Melbourne, Victoria: Bas Publishing. ISBN 1-920910-67-0.

Further reading

• Dowsing, Irene (1971), Jim Cairns MHR, Acacia Press, Blackburn, Victoria. ISBN 0-85808-005-2
• Ormonde, Paul (1981), A Foolish Passionate Man, Penguin, Ringwood, Victoria. ISBN 014005975X
• Strangio, Paul (2002), Keeper of the Faith, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria. ISBN 0-522-85002-2

External links

• Detailed Account of Cairns' controversial involvements in the Down To Earth movement