Best of 2025 - John Menadue in conversation with David Marr |
In a wide-ranging discussion, P&I editor-in-chief John Menadue discusses a life full of achievement driven by conviction, and nominates seeing off the White Australia policy and establishing P&I as highlights. He is speaking with David Marr on ABC Radio National's Late Night Live.
A repost from 27 August 2025
David Marr: I’m David Marr, coming to you from Gadigal Land in Sydney. Now, I want to make one thing clear right from the start that John Menadue is not retiring. He has turned 90 and he’s stepping back a little from one or two of his ventures, but he is not retiring. It’s the stepping back that gives us our excuse for sitting down with him now to reflect on one or two of the lessons his long life has taught him in business, public service, and lately the media.
John Menadue was in there at the start of so much that shapes this country still. The Murdoch press, the Whitlam Government, the collapse of White Australia, the Hawke Government. Then he set up the think-tank, the Centre for Policy Development, launched the online weekly New Matilda and is proprietor, a rather grand term, but deserved, of the online site Pearls and Irritations from which he is, as I say, stepping back a little. To tell us what he’s learned along the way, John Menadue joins us from our Canberra studio.
John, welcome to Late Night Live.
John Menadue: Thank you, David. Very glad to be with you.
DM: Now, John, in a life so filled with success, there’s a failure there right back at the start that I suspect explains a lot about your career. You stood for Labor in the seat of Hume in the election of 1966 and failed. How?
JM: The feeling in Australia at that time was in favour of the war in Vietnam. Arthur Calwell was the leader of the Labor Party. He took a very principled position in opposing that war and Australian involvement in it. I was a candidate on the losing side in 1966. The tide turned in ‘69 and ‘72, but I’d gone on to other things by then. It was a useful lesson for me to get out in the electorate and listen to people.
The main opposition I got as a Labor candidate was in the railway workshops in Junee. I would have thought that would have been a natural support base for me. But there was a hostile community who feared the yellow hordes coming from the north and taking over Australia.
DM: You never stood for election again. You put that aside as a possible career path.
JM: Yes, I have. Other opportunities came along, working for Rupert Murdoch after I left Gough Whitlam. That was, for me, a quite exciting period. That was in what I would call Rupert’s better days, particularly in the launching of The Australian newspaper. Rupert was open to ideas, supporting Labor, of course, in the ‘72 election. So that opened new opportunities for me.
I found in life that you get to certain stages or certain turning points when suddenly things make sense. That’s a vocation. For example, I came from White Australia in the country towns of South Australia, and I roomed with three Malaysian students. I’d never confronted or thought about race and White Australia. White Australia was a given. And rooming with those three Malaysian students back in the mid ‘50s was an eye-opener.
DM: This was at university?
JM: University, yes, university college. It confronted my ignorance. From that time on, I’ve been concerned about race issues, relations with our own region, of course, including now China.
That was a turning point. I decided, that’s right for me. That’s what I’ll do. It’s like turning on a switch. The enthusiasm and energy come. And in my life, I’ve had many of those occasions. I think everyone does. Suddenly, something makes sense for us to change.
DM: Let me throw some footnotes in. So, you had been, before standing in the seat of Hume, Gough Whitlam’s private secretary. So, Gough was at that stage, well, he was not even leader of the opposition at that stage, was he?
JM: He was a contender, the deputy.
DM: And then you stood, lost, and then you moved to Murdoch. In those days, you were both in your 30s, you and Rupert Murdoch, both in your 30s. And he set about transforming newspapers in Australia. What were his ambitions? What did he achieve in those years?
JM: The Australian at that stage, establishing that was a great achievement. We’d had all those parochial state newspapers. The Australian now has become a disgrace. But it was very important in those early days. I found Rupert very open to ideas. I discussed things with him. I had a very close personal association with him.
When I went to London on a visit, I stayed with him at his cottage in the Cotswolds. He cooked my breakfast and drove me to church. I was close to him. It was quite exciting what Rupert was doing. I remember he said to me, that if you’re going to be successful in the media, you need to get into the three major English-speaking markets, US, UK and Australia. News is important, but sport and entertainment are vital.
The importance of entertainment has been a key factor in the way he’s developed his media. But he always remained extremely interested in politics. When I was with him, I remember he mentioned the possibility that he might run as a candidate for Parliament, presumably based on his home at Cavan, just outside Canberra.
DM: For what party?
JM: He didn’t say, but at that stage, he was very close to Jack McEwen, the leader of the National Party. It was sheer speculation on Rupert’s part. He would never have done it, I’m sure. And if he had tried, he’d [have been] very frustrated after the first six months. But he conveyed to me in that unlikely way that he was very keen on politics. He was, and still is.
Politics is something of an aphrodisiac for Rupert. He’s extremely interested in politics and events since then. When I spoke to him about the dismissal and other issues, that interest in politics has always been there. But clearly, he’s become much more conservative.
DM: What happened to him? I mean, in 1972, he was backing Labor. The Australian newspaper, The Australian transformed newspapers in Australia, changed The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald profoundly. They had to keep up with this modern, intelligent national broadsheet.
You say he was close to McEwen, the leader of the National Party, the Country Party, but he was also very close to many figures in Labor. What happened to him? Why did he become, by 1975, so profoundly hostile to Labor?
JM: He was halfway there in 1974, the election which Whitlam won. Rupert then went down the middle. He had one editorial supporting Labor and another editorial giving the case for the Liberal Party. By ‘75, he was very concerned about the way the Whitlam Government was performing, particularly over the economy. He was clearly influenced by the business community, the things he was hearing from them.
He decided, at that stage that Gough was no longer a winner and that the tide was turning. The Liberal Party, with Malcolm Fraser at the time, was an indication of what was going to happen in the future. So, he changed.
When he went to England and then to the US he became very much influenced by Maggie Thatcher and then Ronald Reagan and the neoconservative people who had a very right-wing view of the role of the economy, of the role of business and the minimal role of government. I think they were big influencers.
Maybe it’s a personal comment but a person who stabilised Rupert in those early stages was his wife, Anna Murdoch. And they divorced. Rupert lost a stabilising influence in his life.
The combination of all those factors and Rupert [has] become way out now on the extreme of the right and running an organisation which is doing enormous damage to societies in which he operates.
DM: Can you believe it is now 50 years since that day in November 1975 when you were head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet for Gough Whitlam when you discovered that your boss had been sacked and that you had, courtesy of the governor-general, a new boss.
And I can never forget one of the details of that day, that at a certain point you had a phone call from Fraser’s office to remind you that you were the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and he wanted to see you. And you, is this correct? You left Gough’s presence and went to this new man.
JM: Yes, that’s right. After I got a word of the dismissal from David Smith, the Official Secretary for the Governor-General telling me that the Whitlam Government had been dismissed. I rang Fred Wheeler, secretary of Treasury and Alan Cooley, the chairman of the Public Service Board, to inform them. Then I got a message from Gough’s driver that Gough wanted to see me at the Lodge.
When I got there Gough was eating a steak, seemed to be enjoying it. The first thing he said to me, “Comrade, that bastard Kerr has done........