A transcript from the

Presentation of the 1999 George Munster Award for Independent Journalism

 

Chris Nash

Making the presentation tonight is Tony Harris who’s just completed his term as the New South Wales Auditor General. Tony was the first appointee to that position in New South Wales who wasn’t chosen from the ranks of the State Treasury. He’s had a distinguished career in the Federal Public Service as well as holding degrees in arts and economics and an MBA. As you would know, Tony was something of a thorn in the side of governments of both political persuasions during his term, especially with respect to of secrecy and Freedom of Information. Tony’s successor was chosen from the ranks of the state treasury.

Tony Harris.

 

Tony Harris

Chris Nash and other members and friends of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.

I have been sitting here, listening to a discussion which in some senses was way beyond me, not that I’m 55, but it has shown me a part of Australia that I haven’t thought about much before and I wanted to share with you a part of Australia about which some of you probably have thought before. I’m certainly not going to talk to you about journalism; I never talk on subjects about which you know more than I do. At the moment, I must say that I’m between jobs, which gave me a discount from my builder the other day. Mind you, you have to have the money to pay it still. I’m between jobs and I say that because I will be entering journalism in October.

Now the reason that I thought I would enter journalism is because I think there’s a fundamental failure in the way that our governments in Australia are organised — not so much in the Commonwealth arena but certainly in the States, and we’ve seen a response to that expression in Victoria recently, and we have seen it in New South Wales as well. That’s because, although we’re called a democracy, we don’t have all of the trappings which suggest that it is a democracy that’s vibrant and healthy. I can give you some examples of that.

Quite early in my term as Auditor General, we had a change of government and the government did something with the Governor and the Upper House got quite upset about that and wanted to discuss that. The government didn’t like the discussion about their decision and so they pro-rogued parliament. So the Premier advised the Governor to pro-rogue parliament — which basically means that all of the work that was on foot at the time in parliament is gone — all of the bills are gone, all the debates are gone, all the questions on notice have gone and, as it were, you start again. It happened actually this year again — the Upper House wanted to have a committee examination of unlawful spending and they had set the time for that examination but the Premier asked the Governor to pro-rogue parliament so that it might not discuss that issue. That’s one example where we have the government running parliament, when really the government should be a part of parliament; the government should be a committee of parliament, in the words of Badgett, who wrote about the UK constitution, from which we get our frameworks.

Other expressions of the government’s power over parliament were seen when the government decided it had no obligation to table documents in the Upper House, to enable the Upper House to review the works of government. That seemed to me to be fairly outlandish an action by the government because, unless you have information, of course you can’t have accountability. Another example of the government’s power over parliament concerned the Upper House’s desire to institute more committee work. The Upper House in Canberra is very successful, the Senate is very successful because of its committee work; the Upper House in New South Wales wanted to emulate that, but the government wasn’t keen to fund it because the government doesn’t control the Upper House in New South Wales.

Another example is a bill that was amended in the Upper House against the Government’s wishes. Now typically, our democracy suggests that both Houses have a discussion about this disputed bill until something comes out that each can live with, or there are mechanisms to resolve it in a much more serious way. What the government did on this occasion — and did it more than once — was that it accepted the Upper House’s amendments and, indeed, voted as accepting them in the Lower House and sent them off to the Governor — sent their legislation off to the Governor — but instructed the Governor not to proclaim those bits that it disagreed with, even though both Houses of Parliament had passed the legislation.

Another example of a failure of democracy concerns the 50 days of the year in which the New South Wales Parliament sits. The Canberra Parliament sits more days in the first half of the year than the New South Parliament will sit in a full year. Of course, that limits the scope for the government to be held accountable.

On top of that, we have these very serious secrecy rules in Australian democracy. The law under which I worked actually prohibits me from telling you any information at all — at all — unless it’s been published already. So I have no capacity to talk to an audience unless I have advised parliament in a report, because that’s the only technique that I have for making views public. That’s not unusual; the Commonwealth Crimes Act is equally obsessive about public servants speaking to the public about the things they know. Some people suggest that, if people who are expert in an area are not allowed to discuss the things they know with members of the public and with the media, for example, then of course democracy can’t be informed — and you’re talking about trying to approach the truth. Well, you try to approach the truth when there’s a Crimes Act that says that any public servant that discloses information without authority can go to gaol! And you try to tell me how that kind of issue weaves into a working democracy.

Samuel Johnson said, when he was alive back in the 15th/16th century, "The only purpose of writing is to enable the readers better to appreciate life or better to endure it." He didn’t have radio or television but I don’t think he was right. I see the purpose of writing as to help people make decisions - not only to endure life but to change life. That’s why I think journalism and the media are so important.

Now the roles of Auditor General — we don’t participate in parliamentary function of making laws, we don’t participate in the judicial function of providing relief, we don’t participate in the allocation of monies and funds. All we do is report. That’s the only thing that we do. We report to parliament and we hope that, within the 50 days that parliament has available to it, reading the thousands of pages that people like me produce, they might take up some issues that they regard as important. That doesn’t work, of course, and that’s why institutions like The Nation Review, which George Munster was involved in — I didn’t know George Munster but I did know The Nation Review and I did know it at a time when I was growing up as a person in the polity of Australia. I didn’t know Wanda Jamrozik as a writer for The Sydney Morning Herald in ethnic affairs but I’ve worked for several years in immigration and I do know how hard it is to inject facts into Australian society so that those facts might allow people to change their view about people and classes of our society.

So I’m quite a supporter of journalism because journalism gets us closer to the truth than we could without it. And I’m quite supportive of the media. Indeed, one of the first things that I used to do at work of a morning, after listening to the ABC, was to read the four main papers so I could find out what the government had been doing, because I had no other ready means to find out what the government had been doing, even with 250 staff.

So here I am to celebrate with you that journalism is important and that people should be recognised for their contribution to it. We’ve heard tonight some stringent comments about how we might improve journalism; and I think we should always be working very hard to find out the weaknesses in our systems but, at the same time, I think we can also afford to celebrate those who do a good job, and that’s part of the function tonight.

Thank you.

 

Chris Nash

Thanks, Tony, and I think we all give you a very warm welcome to the ranks of journalism. If you’re half as successful as a journalist as your were as an Auditor General, then we might have you back here actually receiving a George Munster Award at some point!

The George Munster Award for Independent Journalism recognises the best piece or series of journalism published or broadcast in any medium in the preceding year. The key criteria are excellence and independence and the work must demonstrate firstly intellectual rigour, integrity and independence from undue influence; secondly, accuracy, insight and sophistication of investigation and analysis and, thirdly, excellence in craft and style in the chosen medium of production and presentation. The judges this year were Gerard Ryle ofThe Sydney Morning Herald, Liz Jackson from Four Corners at the ABC, and myself.

The winner of the 1999 George Munster Award for Independent Journalism is Pamela Williams from The Australian Financial Review for her four-part series on "Corrigan’s Cabal: the inside story of how the government joined the plot to crush a union". Pamela. [Applause]

Read the transcript from the 1999 Wanda Jamrozik Prize Presentation