ABC Chair Kim Williams AM delivers the Menzies Oration
Federation University
IBM Emerging Technologies Hub, SMB Campus, Ballarat
30 October 2024
Acknowledgements
Thank you, Liz Gillies, CEO of the Menzies Foundation and Duncan Bentley, Vice-Chancellor and President, Federation University, for your warm welcome.
Colleagues: in this gathering at Federation University celebrating the legacy of Sir Robert Menzies and the Foundation created in his name, I offer my respect and greetings to friends of knowledge, universities and the ancient devotion to scholars and study. In particular, I salute my friends, the Chancellor, Terry Moran AC, Peter Jopling AM KC, chair of the Menzies Foundation, board member, Kathryn Greiner AO and their board and executive colleagues. You all do fine, indeed vital, work in the national interest.
I also acknowledge the Traditional Custodians on these ancestral lands – the Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung People and recognise their enduring connection to the land and waterways around us. I pay my respects to Elders past and present and to the Elders of other indigenous communities in Australia.
I also take this moment to acknowledge the diverse peoples and cultures who have been welcomed to this nation, along with the laws, freedoms, rights, and faiths they have brought or represent. Acknowledging this is crucial, given the never-ending assault on difference which too often permeates society today.
Institutions like Federation University and the Menzies Foundation are physical embodiments of the qualities that hold society together and secure our freedoms.
History lives here. Culture lives here. Democracy lives here. The future will come from here.
Reflections on Sir Robert Menzies
As the son in law of Gough Whitlam, it was with some surprise, but also delight, to be asked to give this year’s Menzies Oration by Peter Jopling.
In this world of increasingly bitter bipartisanship, symbolically uniting two contending clans of yesteryear seems an inspired move. If only they could do this in the United States!
If, in a couple of decades from now, the descendants of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are able to get together and imitate our example – seeing some good in each other, even saying nice things – we will know that civilisation is for the time being, safe.
Despite their differences, Whitlam and Menzies, those two titans of Australian politics had so much in common.
Both among the best young lawyers of their day, they were equally great orators – original, and erudite, with equal doses of confident rhetorical flourish and wit.
While Whitlam didn’t attend Wesley College like Menzies, his father Fred, a noted jurist, did.
Whitlam studied classics at university, Menzies failed Latin at school. Everyone knows how difficult a subject it is!
They both made their political parties – Menzies "ab initio'' with the Liberal Party, Whitlam reimagining the ALP after the split and federal intervention in Victoria.
They were both shy. Something many will find hard to believe, but true.
They both had, at times, a riotous sense of humour. As this is the Menzies Oration, I won’t invoke Gough’s wit but rather revert to three examples from the 2019 Speaker’s Lecture given by historian, journalist and Menzies biographer, Troy Bramston:
“He [Menzies] gained a reputation for his sharp wit, which was not always to his advantage, even if it won a few laughs. A woman once said to Menzies: “I wouldn’t vote for you if you were the Archangel Gabriel.” Menzies replied: “If I were the Archangel Gabriel, madam, I’m afraid you would not be in my constituency.”
A miner once interjected: “Tell us all you know, Bob — it won’t take long!” Menzies responded: “I’ll tell you everything we both know — it won’t take any longer.”
A man yelled out at a public meeting, “Watcha gonna do with ’ousing, Bob?” Menzies replied, without missing a beat, “Put an ‘h’ in front of it.”
Menzies and Whitlam were both formidable electoral campaigners.
Despite their, at times, diametrically opposed views, both respected each other and observed their opponents with keen attention.
Perhaps most importantly, they were both great parliamentarians and believed deeply in the authority of parliament and the accountability of governments to parliament. They believed in rules, standards, the law, democracy.
To sum it up: they were true believers, committed reformers and strong leaders – without being divisive populists.
Which means . . . they’re the sort of leaders much of the world could use right now.
It’s the sort of leadership the Menzies Foundation is pursuing with its scholarships and innovative and inclusive leadership programs, and I want to applaud you for undertaking it. This is what I want to reflect upon today: the urgent need for true democratic leadership in a dangerous world.
My argument is that in a world of increasing political division, marked by misinformation and disinformation, defending the truth matters, defending public institutions matters, maintaining civility matters. And for these reasons, great public bodies like the ABC matter more than ever before.
Sir Robert Menzies was clearly no great fan of the ABC and had deep reservations about its news and current affairs, generated by the pressures of the Cold War with its domino theories and red scares, but he at least tolerated it and paid it due respect. The criticism the ABC received back in Menzies’ time seems tame compared to the excoriation and even repression the global media received in our own time. This is not wholly surprising, given that in the 1950s and ‘60s its management and board were firmly in the hands of conservatives. But as we know, respecting national institutions was something that came naturally to Sir Robert.
And the respect has been repaid in kind. In 2016 the ABC broadcast a two-part documentary Howard on Menzies: Building Modern Australia which has helped a new generation understand the politics of those times.
The ABC Education website which is primarily designed to support teachers and students, has mapped content on Menzies and his era to the Australian history curriculum.
In preparing for this speech today, I watched a piece on the importance that Menzies put on promoting home ownership as a means to ensuring social cohesion. It is policy priority which still resonates strongly today.
Another of my themes today will be the need to unite city and country. Sir Robert Menzies possessed a very real sense of regional Australia. Similar could be said of his contemporaries Joseph Lyons and Ben Chifley. Being from Jeparit and educated partly here in Ballarat, it came naturally to him to understand the beliefs, cultural priorities and political pressures coming from the bush.
With geographical cultural divides playing an ever increasing role in shaping our politics, the importance of successfully combatting and managing cultural discord, listening to everyone, and reflecting their views needs to be understood again.
Factualness is our watchword
I come to the ABC with the utmost determination to ensure that is an organisation all Australians, regardless of where they live, what they believe, or where they vote, can look towards with pride and trust and anticipation of what it can offer.
To do this, the ABC can't be about “Left” or “Right” or even “Centre”. It must be about quality, creativity and the truth. Factualness must be our watchword.
The ABC must set the standard for broadcasting quality, journalistic ethics and factual news.
It must inspire Australians to be all they can be. To be as creative, as intelligent and as good as they can be.
The ABC may never have the resources of a BBC or a CNN, but it can and must be an exemplar in diverse media delivery and in news quality. Of intellectual ambition. Of creativity. Of the values Australians hold dear. It must help Australians develop a new national outlook that will help us navigate the dangerous world in which we are now living. A world in which the misuse of information and the distortion of culture poses such a grave threat to democracy.
I want it to be the mirror, the camera and the microphone of Australia. An accurate reflector, recorder and amplifier of all that we are and believe.
I want it to remain an organisation all Australians can trust. And which the world can respect.
How do we ensure this?
That is the mission of my board colleagues and the mission for all at the ABC.
Let's start from an acknowledgement of realities: the ABC has political critics, and these tend to come from the political Right.
I don't agree with all of the Right’s criticisms – just as I don't agree with all of the Left’s criticisms or for that matter, praise.
But I take them seriously. VERY seriously.
That a sizeable proportion of national decision makers and national opinion think something is amiss is something that cannot be ignored.
I said recently, in my Sir John Monash Oration: The ABC is not in competition with the commercial newsrooms, we are in an alliance with them to create an informed democratic citizenry.
Playing party politics . . . that simply isn’t our business.
If we can get all sides of politics backing a renewed ABC, imagine what a boon it would be to our sense of cohesion and creativity as a nation. To the strength of our democracy. To our image in the world as a nation of intelligence, as a nation with a big future.
Here is what I believe: I believe the ABC should be reliably politically non-partisan.
I don't say “politically neutral” – because I believe it should be “politically positive” in the sense that it always backs democracy, always backs freedom and always backs Australia's national interests in ways consistent with telling the full truth. In the long term, the full truth is always in our national interest.
There are three ways the ABC should act to make itself an even greater source of pride and strength for every Australian.
1. Helping Australia contribute to a safer world
The first is its pursuit of our national interests – by helping us create a safer world, especially in our region.
In my recent address to the Lowy Institute, I outlined the great work the ABC is doing aiding the development of a serious media coverage about democracy and civil society in the nations of the Indo-Pacific.
Nothing could be more in Australia's long term national interests than helping make our region one which stands for democracy and peaceful cooperation. A region where the truth triumphs over misinformation and disinformation.
In this work we are building on the Menzies legacy. In 1939 Menzies established the nation’s first international broadcast service, Australia Calling, the forerunner of Radio Australia.
Across our region, assisted by Australian Government funding, and aid organisations, we are delivering news and assisting local media organisations in the creation of a democratic media peopled by well-trained professional journalists. You will see such local journalists now appearing frequently on our news and current affairs programming.
This is truly a project worthy of a democratic media organisation like the ABC.
2. Spreading the truth in a world of increasing lies
The second way we can make ourselves a source of even greater pride and strength is the promotion of the truth in a world of increasing lies. To provide a counter-balance to the destructive effusion of misinformation and lies that are doing such harm to democracy and freedom right around the world.
Without truth there can be no democracy.
In the simplest terms, for our democratic deliberations to have meaning, we must be deliberating over accepted facts. Without accepted facts, we are talking past each other, not debating with each other.
This is something our nation needs to discuss.
Especially now, as great controversy relating to what constitutes the truth swirls around the United States election and the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
This is a subject examined at length by Yale historian and linguistic polymath, Timothy Snyder in his new book On Freedom, which I can wholeheartedly recommend to those of you wanting to come to grips with the dangers of the present world.
Snyder sees the truth – which he calls “factuality” – as one of the five necessary conditions for the flourishing of freedom.
His claim in essence is that without facts, meaningful argument and political and societal progress become impossible.
In a world of uncertain facts, our political system descends into a slanging match and our society into stagnation.
The domination of falsity has serious implications, because it prevents us from getting a grip on reality. As he puts it, falsity “doesn't deal with how the world actually works”.[1]
Snyder provides the most obvious example of this in climate change. We can wish science away, but to do so is futile, foolish and ultimately counterproductive. Its scientific truth must be reported.
He gives a further example, upon which I think we can all agree.
Hitler's contention that Germany lost the First World War because it was stabbed in the back by jews, led, he says, to the disastrous fallacy that “Germany could win a war on two fronts with America involved.”
As he remarks about this: sometimes “a big lie can bring down a whole country.”[2] By contrast, facts allows us to pursue personal sovereignty and therefore freedom because they allow people to make decisions on their own, without having to rely on the assertions of authorities. Often authoritarian ones.
In a free society, we don’t need dictators and billionaires and strongmen to tell us what to believe – we can determine it independently through our use of reason and by investigating the truth for ourselves. As Snyder puts it in his other excellent recent book On Tyranny:
To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticise power, because there is no basis on which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. [And] The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.[3]
The behaviour of the billionaire owners of major newspapers in the United States in the last week is maybe a warning.
So there's much at stake in the defence of facts.
How do we maintain the dominance of facts in this world of easily manufactured lies?
There are things we as citizens must do. I quote Snyder again from On Tyranny:
Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time on long articles. Subsidise investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realise that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you.[4]
But Snyder argues strongly that ensuring that facts win out requires more than our eternal vigilance; it needs positive action from government and society.
Negative action, such as restraining lies, is not enough. And of course framing laws to determine what is misleading and not has potential risks for freedom of speech.
The best positive step we can make is by increasing investment in journalism. We must fight fire with fire. Disinformation with truth. Liars with well-trained journalists.
Funding is a matter for government of course. But it’s my belief that as the need to combat the organised lying by democracy’s enemies becomes more and more obvious, all sides of politics will come to recognise the good sense of properly funding not just the ABC but of helping news organisations of all types flourish.
Investing in factuality is maybe the most important investment our democracy can make. And that’s a proposition all sides of any great democracy like ours should accept.
No news organisation is perfect.
The ABC doesn't claim to be perfect by any means. Perfection is something no news organisation can ever hope to obtain. But it is also something every news organisation should strive to achieve.
Believe me when I say, under my leadership, the ABC will strive for objectivity and high journalistic standards, at all times.
When such qualities are doubted, there will be investigations with answers and accountability.
I do not hold the fashionable position that bias is acceptable and inescapable and that journalists have the right to express their personal political beliefs and pursue their personal political causes in their work as objective journalists. That ‘alternate’ view may sound progressive or liberating, but as I have argued, is ultimately damaging to our liberty.
We must be aware of our biases and awake to them at all times.
At the ABC the only thing we must unreservedly and passionately campaign for is the dogged pursuit of the truth.
Objectivity is our end, our motivation, our Bible, and our fight.
People who want to pursue personal and political causes cannot do so at our ABC.
This pursuit of the truth . . . this determination to uncover lies . . . and present citizens with the facts . . . requires us to invest more in investigative reporting.
As Snyder puts it: Ultimately, to resist the few big lies, we will need to produce millions of little truths.[5]
The ABC’s investigative reporting is making a dent in that figure – uncovering lying, organised theft and the abuse of vulnerable citizens.
In September, the Four Corners episode Strata Trap, fronted by Linton Besser, revealed the extent of hidden charges, phantom fees, suspect deals and kickbacks that plague the strata title industry – building on work first aired on 7.30 in March.
As a result of our reporting, insurer Steadfast went into a trading halt, the ACCC Chair called for a ban on strata insurance commissions, the NSW Strata and Property Services Commissioner has been stood aside pending an investigation, and there are now calls for a federal inquiry. This comes in addition to the strata reforms announced by the NSW government in June following 7.30’s initial reporting.
An ongoing set of investigations into financial abuse in retirement villages led by Adele Ferguson of the Investigative Reporting Team has highlighted how vulnerable residents were being forced out of villages and aged care homes, sometimes losing their life savings. A terrible and shameful injustice.
The investigation, which has spread across Four Corners, 7.30 and other media, has seen operators investigated, public calls for more consumer protections, and federal action to stamp out bad behaviour. We hope a public callout will generate more coverage and the state newsrooms are also looking at possible follow ups.
Anne Connolly's work on public trustees and the NDIS was also outstanding. As was Paul Farrell and the Background Briefing Team for their Background Briefing, 'Stop and Search'.
And finally as but one of many, many examples, ABC News Perth and the 'WA's Youth Justice Crisis — The Death of Cleveland Dodd' was an exceptional piece of public interest work.
In response to a clear and growing need, I’m delighted that in September we announced a new state and territory investigative news team to conduct more of this vital work across regional Australia which has seen such depletion of media in recent years.
It’s my hope that the ABC’s lead will propel Australian investigative reporting to new heights, to the benefit of the Australian people and Australian democracy.
3. Regional broadcasting – knitting the nation together
The third area that will enable the ABC to develop support across the board is in our core role as the premier broadcaster for regional Australia.
A nation as large, diverse and geographically far flung as ours must be knitted together by information.
Why is this such a profound duty?
Again, Timothy Snyder has something interesting to say.
Perceptively, he points out the importance of something historians and philosophers don't normally discuss: local news.
One of Snyder’s strongest adolescent memories is the existence of local newspapers – something sadly we don’t see much anymore.
He remembers their stories of local achievement, local change and even local misrule. Local news, he perceptively observes, allows us to get a picture of the true diversity of our nation – at the level of its municipalities, towns, farms, and individual people, without losing the sense of what makes us essentially the same people.
Without factual local reporting, our knowledge of each other can become nothing other than cliched parody. “Us and them.” A distortion of exaggerations and lies, often manufactured to serve nefarious political or commercial objectives.
In the United States, a lack of true knowledge of each other has contributed to the creation of a divided polity. As Barack Obama famously said, it divides Americans into “red states and blue states”, when they really should be the “United States”.
In Australia, ignorance and misinformation divides us into monikers like “latte sippers” and “rednecks” and those who live either side of “hipster proof fences”.
Abstract, unprovable nonsense.
In this sad situation, how can we prevent our country from losing sight of the fact that we are all essentially similar human beings, whose shared citizenship, common characteristics, similar beliefs, and aspirations for the next generation, far outweigh our differences? How do we maintain our unity and cohesion and national strength?
How do we retain our sense of democratic patriotism?
Maintaining our commonality and national cohesion is a major duty of government, especially in this dangerous world, which, as I have already argued, is being undermined by a determined and ongoing assault on truth.
We must not become “us and them”. We must remain “Australians”.
Free, equal, respectful, together, creative.
Sadly, Snyder’s lament over the disappearance of local sources of news portrays a reality that is worsening with every passing year as local reporting retreats in the face of hard commercial realities from massive technology change.
As you will know, the state of independent news in the regions is getting dire. All over Australia – as all over the world – the old media revenue and delivery model is collapsing.
When Facebook and Meta gobble up 70 per cent digital advertising revenue, and when digital delivery is axiomatic to consumption, how can news organisations afford the luxury of having reporters in each region using antiquated media delivery models?
I urge all parties to continue to pursue the digital titans for a fair cut of the revenues drained from mainstream journalism, the loss of which hurts the regions even more than the cities. The Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society is investigating ways to fund public interest journalism in the face of Meta’s attempt to exit the News Media Bargaining Code. In my view, secure progress on this is a mainstream democratic imperative.
The tech giants will complain, of course, but chipping in to the common weal is a small price to pay for the highly profitable privilege of running media organisations in free, democratic countries with modern infrastructure.
We must find ways of replenishing the newsrooms outside of the major cities and population centres.
One obvious way presents itself: properly funding the ABC.
No matter where they live, Australians need information, entertainment, news and analysis. Shared, factual news and shared creative culture make us one people.
And while the local printed physical newspapers may not be salvageable, we can fill the hole digitally through the internet, streaming, downloads and radio and television.
Every reasonable person, regardless of their politics, gets this.
In my role I talk to a lot of politicians. And I don’t think I’m breaching any confidences to reveal that I have not yet met a Minister or MP or Senator representing regional Australia who in private won't concede the absolutely priceless value of ABC services to their communities – whether it’s providing vital emergency alerts and broadcasts, or news they can believe, or portraying and celebrating their constituents accurately to people who live in metropolitan Australia.
We're incredibly proud of the services we provide to regional Australia.
No ABC, no common understanding. No common understanding, no unified nation.
We devote considerable resources to maintaining our news services in the bush.
The need for a strong regional ABC is clear.
We’re a highly urbanised nation, yes, but I think many Australians don’t realise just how many of us live outside the capital cities. The figure is 28 per cent. Some seven million of us.
Servicing those citizens, inclusively, is a big part of what the ABC does.
We operate from 58 locations across Australia, using more than 600 staff who are spread far and wide.
Needless to say, this is by far the biggest footprint of any media organisation in Australia.
To give you a sense of what we do, we have 40 ABC Regional Radio locations – many of which are the ONLY radio stations available. And with streaming and on-demand offerings through ABC Listen and ABC i-view, you can access all that the ABC offers, everywhere in the nation.
Our regional teams provide 800 hours of unique audio programming weekly – with 43 breakfast programs plus numerous morning, drive and evening shows.
Our regional programming is some of the longest running, not just here but around the world. The Country Hour will have its 80th anniversary of continuous production and broadcasting on the ABC next year, making it one of the oldest ongoing programs anywhere in the world. Landline, Country Breakfast, Countrywide, Australia Wide, Australia All Over. The list goes on.
Last year we activated 659 emergency events – floods, fires, tropical cyclones . . . Whatever the source of danger, people go to the ABC for this sort of lifesaving news.
And the ABC is doing its very best to keep regional news gathering alive.
The money we received from the tech giants through the Federal Government’s Media Bargaining Code has allowed us to add 60 extra journalists to regional centres. And we have guaranteed those positions will be sustained into the future.
But all of this is only part of the way the ABC is helping hold our nation together.
Every part of our continent and its people are included in our light entertainment and drama programming. There’s nothing city-centric about it at all.
Australian Story, Great Australian Stuff, Muster Dogs, Extra-Ordinary Things, Total Control, Return to Paradise, Grand Designs Australia, Bay of Fires, Mystery Road, Rosehaven, Frayed . . . I could go on. All assiduously portray the culture, history, physical beauty and people of regional and rural Australia, reminding us that we may be many, but we are one.
The ABC knows the absolute importance of recognising the profound effect of regional life on the development of our national culture. This of course includes non-urban Indigenous culture.
And the profound contribution of regional industries to our economic strength.
In September we brought back triple j’s One Night Stand that saw 15,000 music fans headed to Warnambool in Victoria to a local musical lineup. The sold out event not only meant we could partner with Support Act to provide a much needed platform for the local industry and creative economy, but also gave us great content for both triple j and ABC iview.
Think also of the wonderful Back Roads, now in its tenth year. If ever there was a program designed to bring Aussies together, Back Roads is it.
As the show’s presenters, led so wonderfully for many years by Heather Ewart, and soon to be led by Lisa Millar, makes its way around Australia, they find no café latte haters (good coffee seems to be everywhere), no angry rednecks, no hipster-proof-fences, no red states and no blue states – just Australians doing their best to get along, respect each other and keep their communities alive.
Maybe rebuilding their local country pub as a gathering place for their community. Renewing neglected land. Holding music festivals. Setting up tourism industries. Promoting reconciliation. Welcoming and giving jobs to refugees. Keeping traditional industries viable. Generally, putting aside their differences and getting on with things.
You may not have noticed, but it never seems to occur to Heather and Lisa and their guest presenters to ask the people they meet how they vote or what their political beliefs are. It’s not relevant to simple sharing. There is a light-heartedness about this work, but it is nonetheless important.
Australian Story offers a similar narrative with the remarkably positive, popular and yes, deeply loved, Leigh Sales and that amazing creative production team that illuminate diverse stories across the nation. Uniting us with stories of triumph over travail, simple celebrations of what it means to be an Australian in the 21st Century.
Conclusion
Of all Australia’s many fine media organisations, only the ABC has the ambition, resources and reach to bring the nation together in this way.
With greater resources it could do even more.
This is a proposition I believe all sides of politics can support – and must support in this era when the truth and therefore democracy are under siege.
We are living in momentous times. You might say, in a momentous week. A handful of days that for good or ill have the potential to significantly alter the fate of nations.
A period when journalists and news platforms are being tested as never before.
Some are standing tall. Others, including some famous mastheads and digital platforms, are crouching low. Neglecting their calling. Practising what Snyder would call “anticipatory obedience”.[6]
As Snyder tells us, when the truth is replaced by falsity, disaster follows. Disaster follows too when journalists react to intimidation with compliance.
That’s why, hopefully, the one thing the ABC will never lack is the will and courage to defend the truth, without which the whole journalistic profession is nothing. And democracy is nothing.
This, dare I say it – is a project not just Gough Whitlam but Sir Robert Menzies would support – on a unity ticket. One devoted to democratic values, positive purpose and social cohesion. A devotion to seek a better Australian democracy for all our citizens.
[1] Timothy Snyder, On Freedom (Penguin 2024), p.162.
[2] Snyder, On Freedom, pp.178-79.
[3] Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny (The Bodley Head, 2017), p.65.
[4] Snyder, On Tyranny, p.72.
[5] Snyder, On Freedom, p.184.
[6] Snyder, On Tyranny, chapter 1.