Professor Ross Fitzgerald’s speech about ALAN (“THE RED FOX”) REID at Dalton’s Books, 54 Marcus Clarke St, crn Rudd Street, Canberra, Wednesday June 30, 6 pm.

Thanks indeed Laurie (Oakes). As recent events here in Canberra demonstrate, in the ALP the faceless men and the factional warlords certainly live on! In many ways, the tiny Machiavellian world of Alan Reid is virtually the same world that made Julia Gillard PM.

In his excellent review of ALAN (“THE RED FOX”) REID in ‘The Canberra Times’ (June 12, 2010,p.25) the formidable Jack Waterford claims to have heard, although he does not name, “an altogether more believable story of the identity of the photographer of the “36 Faceless Men” episode” than the one provided in our book.

However in an earlier email Waterford says it was a photographer working for the Canberra Times.

Also, Peter Rees, who started his journalistic career as a copy boy on the Daily Telegraph in 1966, says that the late Peter Hardacre told him that he, Hardacre, had taken the photos. At the time, Hardacre was the staff photographer for the Daily Telegraph in the press gallery.

Without wanting to take Waterford or Rees to task, Stephen Holt and I maintain that there is reliable evidence that the famous 1963 photographs of what became known as the ALP’s 36 “Faceless Men” (and which at the time Reid termed “36 virtually unknown men”) were taken by a Canberra friend of Alan Reid’s named Vladimir Paral – known as Val – who was a scientific photographer at the John Curtin School of Medical Research.

As ALAN (“THE RED FOX”) REID makes clear, Reid got Vlad, who lived in south Canberra, not far from the Kingston Hotel, to take the photos, develop them in a dark room at the John Curtin School of Medical Research where he worked, and they were then dispatched to Frank Packer for publication in ‘The Daily Telegraph’. Reid never revealed Paral’s role to protect him – the use of ANU property for political purposes was highly irregular – but Val Paral can be named because he is no longer in the land of the living.

The 1963 photos of then ALP federal leader Arthur Calwell and his ambitious deputy Gough Whitlam waiting in the dark under a lamppost outside the Kingston Hotel in Canberra, where a special ALP party conference was in session, and which Calwell & Whitlam were not allowed to attend, significantly helped the Liberals win the next two federal elections.

With regard to finding the source of the photos about the Night of the Faceless Men, my appeal for information about Alan Reid in THE AUSTRALIAN newspaper’s STREWTH column flushed out the story about Paral from Mr Ralph Westen of Canberra who had worked with Val Paral at the same dark room at the John Curtin Medical School in 1963. Mr Westen (who is here tonight) saw the developed photos when he turned up to work on the Thursday morning. When asked, Paral, who told Western about the previous nights events, said he had taken them for his fishing mate and nature-loving pal, Alan Reid.

At page 111 of his book ‘The Gorton Experiment’ Alan Reid wrote that “the man who took the (Faceless Men) photos was an amateur, not a professional (press) photographer”, which would rule out a photographer from The Canberra Times, as it would also rule out Peter Hardacre – a professional photojournalist who worked for various Packer publications. Hardacre died in 1979.

All the available evidence, we submit, strongly suggests that the amateur photographer in question was Reid’s friend and fellow angler Vladimir Paral.

In The Gorton Experiment there is a photograph of Reid and Paral together at a fishing campsite. Reid would have told Paral about the special conference and Paral attended either as a spectator, or in his capacity as a part-time taxi driver – according to Alan Reid Jr, who is also here tonight. It was certainly no accident that Paral was there to photograph what became known as the “36 Faceless Men.” Paral’s presence was a direct result of Alan Reid’s request and the rest, as we say, was History!

In fact, at the ALP’s special conference at the Kingston Hotel there were 35 male delegates, and one woman – Mrs Phyllis Benjamin MLC – a member of the delegation from Tasmania, whose Edna Everage look-a-like photo is shown below.

But in the 1960s “36 faceless persons” wouldn’t have had the same cachet & lasting media power as “the 36 faceless men”, if you get my drift.

Later in 1963, Australia’s first televised election results featured Creighton Burns, then a lecturer in Political Science at Melbourne University, armed with a state of the art computer. The 9 Network telecast began at 8pm. A mere ten minutes later, Alan Reid, wreathed in tobacco smoke, announced, “The government’s back in.”

At 9pm, despite Burns continuing to announce that Calwell still had a good chance of winning the election, Reid reappeared in the telecast in front of a news-board, which proclaimed “MENZIES WINS”.

The wily pressman opined: “Menzies is back with a majority of about thirteen.” Confident that his man Reid had bested the machine, then and there Sir Frank Packer ordered Burns’ computer to be removed from the telecast!

As many of us here would know, this was the very same Creighton Burns who later edited The Guardian on the Yarra i.e. The Melbourne Age – from 1981 to 1989.

Thank you all for coming here tonight.

Ross Fitzgerald is a writer, broadcaster, historian and political commentator who contributes a regular Weekend Australian column for Inquirer. He has published 33 books, most recently ‘My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey’, also published by New South Books.

FYI – to check for verification, but not for general publication, here are Mr Ralph Westen’s phone & email details:
02-6292 4992 riejac@hotmail.com

Mrs Benjamin MLC from the Tasmanian delegation was the one ‘faceless’ Woman amid the 35 ‘faceless’ Men.

Surname: BENJAMIN
Given Names: Phyllis Jean
Title and Honours: Mrs, AO, MBE, Hon (12 August 1976)
Qualifications:
Date and Place of Birth: 30 August 1907 – Mosman, NSW
Date of Death: 6 April 1996

Legislative Council: 10 May 1952
Electorate: Hobart
Party: ALP
Positions Held: Leader for Government 1968-69
Date of Departure: 22 May 1976
Reason for Departure: Retired.

Later on, Professor Fitzgerald comments that “alcoholism is such an insidious disease that, unless we learn to deeply remember what happened to us under its influence, it can convince us that we are OK now and that somehow, despite all the evidence, we can drink with impunity or fix ourselves up on our own”.

This missive of My Name Is Ross is that it is crucial for alcoholics to remain vigilant and to learn how to live life on life’s terms – which, for an alcoholic, is particularly challenging.

I have known Ross for close to two decades. We disagree on some issues. However, before we met, I admired his article “Inside Alcoholics Anonymous” which was published in Quadrant in October 1982. Previously I had enjoyed the radical leftie teacher character Craig Steppenwolf – which Ross developed with his friend Barry Humphries in 1975, the final year of Gough Whitlam’s government, for Humphries’ show At Least You Can Say You’ve Seen It.

The very funny script was published in Quadrant in November 1975 – the final scene had Craig hanging out in the Ho Chi Minh unisex toilet block at West Camberwell High where he continued his profession as a de-educational strategist.

It so happened that the cover of the November 1975 issue of Quadrant was the only book or magazine in the Henderson abode which our elder daughter Elizabeth ever disfigured when she was an infant. Elizabeth drew horns on Craig Steppenwolf – as depicted by Barry Humphries. Our younger daughter Johannah’s one act of literary vandalism in infancy occurred when she ripped pages out of the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. Johannah left the Douay, or Catholic, version of The Bible unharmed. As Craig Steppenwolf was wont to say: “Do you read me?”

Ross and I first made personal contact at The Sydney Institute quite some time ago. As Ross acknowledges in his book, he is somewhat self-absorbed, has a “personality that brings out criticism in spades from others”, and a little bit of him goes a long way. Yet we get on well. He calls me “brother” and I call him “Ross”.

Ross can also be alarmingly frank. When a mutual male acquaintance in his late thirties, who had not married, told Ross some years ago that he was engaged to be married, Ross replied: “Congratulations. What’s his name”. The person in question is now a father.

We discussed Ross’ proposed memoirs at our occasional lunches over recent years and I suggested the subtitle: “An Alcoholic’s Journey”. It seemed to me that what was important about Ross’ life story is that an alcoholic can become sober and live a successful life and enjoy a successful career.

I was pleased to accept Ross’ invitation to launch his compelling book and I congratulate Phillipa McGuiness and the team at the University of New South Wales Press for the decision to publish this important memoir.

Ross Fitzgerald commenced drinking alcohol, while a student at Melbourne Boys High School, in mid 1959 – aged 14 and a half years. He had his last liquored refreshment just over a decade later – in November 1969 – and gave up abusing prescription pills on Australia Day 1970, just after his 25th birthday. Ross regards his sobriety as commencing on this date and he clocked up 40 years as a sober man on this day last week. Full recovery took some years. Well done Ross.

A reading of the early chapters of My Name is Ross reveals the young Ross as a narcissistic, alcoholic, depressive. By the end of the book it is clear that two of these conditions are in remission.

As for the narcissism. Well – Anne Henderson (who unfortunately has another commitment this evening) drew my attention to the photographic library in the middle of My Name Is Ross. It contains no fewer than two dozen images of the author.

Then there is the account of young Ross’ sporting youth. A wicket keeper for the Victorian Schoolboys team. A bowler, who opened the pace attack for a university team. A batsman who once made a century. The declaration of such achievements reminded me of an old ditty to narcissism, which I have slightly revamped for the occasion:

I am the batsman and the bat
I am the bowler and the ball
The wicket keeper
The pavilion cat
My name is Ross
I do it all.

Perhaps not quite everything. For the author reveals that he can’t cook a chop, or wash a sock, or put in an electric light bulb – but has always been able to find a woman who can handle such essential tasks. Or almost always.

My Name Is Ross is very much a tribute to the teetotal Lyndal Moor, whom Ross met when he was a recovering alcoholic and whom he married in November 1976. Lyndal is some dish and was Australian Photographic Model of the year in 1970. Like me, Ross married a non-adoring type. One of the gorgeous Lyndal’s strengths is that she does not put up with all of Ross’ crap – including his obsessive focus on his various medical conditions – all of which, reader beware, are listed in these memoirs.

In the book Partners (which Ross co-edited with Anne Henderson), Lyndal cited some of Ross’ illnesses – from “cancer of the little finger” to “anything anyone else has, especially if it is in the news”.

In his chapter in Growing Old (Dis)gracefully – which was co-edited with Lyndal –Ross described Lynda as someone who is not the slightest bit interested in illnesses. So much so that, to a Ross refrain that he didn’t feel very well, Lyndall remarked: “Darling, the pyramids were built by people who didn’t feel very well.”

Ross’ story of his life as an alcoholic is brutally frank. Put simply, he was a loathsome, rage-filled, drunk. Under the influence, Ross drew up serious plans to murder two women who had dumped him. He never paid bills or the rent. There were numerous suicide attempts, unsuccessful of course, including driving a stolen car off Camden Bridge in Sydney’s west. And there was time spent in psychiatric units and memory loss resulting from ECT (or shock treatment) and alcohol-induced amnesia.

Ross relates how, during his years on the booze, he was sacked by two universities. This seems a bit harsh, on reflection. In my days as a student in the late 1960s and as an academic in the early 1970s, our alcoholic academics enjoyed permanent tenure – along with permanent access to the staff bar.

As Ross now concedes, he was an unprincipled user of young women. Readers of My Name Is Ross might well conclude that Tony Abbott’s advice to his young daughters not to screw around was soundly based. Fortunately, Ross escaped revenge attacks from the siblings or friends of his aggrieved young female victims. But as one woman wrote to Ross, when rejecting his clumsy attempt at apology some years later, “obviously, you are still the same vicious shit”.

As someone who has consumed an alcoholic beverage at the Moor/Fitzgerald household while enjoying Lyndal’s fine cuisine, I can attest that Ross is not a wowser. He is comfortable being in the presence of alcohol. It’s just that he cannot trust himself to be home alone with booze. Ross understands, from painful experience, that some of us cannot successfully consume alcohol.

I have always held the view that there is something to be said for alcohol. Let’s be frank. Without some Australians having been under the influence, some of us would not be here today. I have not done any research on this (perhaps I should apply to the Australian Research Council for a grant – it funds much more trivial topics than this). However, I suspect that quite a few of my generation, especially those of Irish-Catholic background, were conceived on a Saturday night with a little help from Mr Carlton-United and/or Ms Penfolds – perhaps even a little Johnnie Walker.

This, of course, does not apply to the Fizgerald/Moor offspring – the beautiful Emily, who is here this evening. Emily was conceived when her father had been sober for over a decade. Ross relates how he was not allowed to be present at Emily’s birth – and then concedes that this did not upset him one bit. I concur. It has always seemed to me that, for men of our generation, the real challenge was to have been present at the conception – rather than at the birth. A task which is becoming increasingly challenging due to modern technology and lifestyle changes.

There are many insights into Ross in this memoir. When I first ate out with Ross, I was surprised that he insisted on ordering the dessert before entrée or main-course – and then obsessively checking with the waiter to ensure that his ice-cream was still in situ. It turns out that this is a family tradition, inherited from his father’s side.

Readers of My Name Is Ross will learn that, with at least one person, the author has enjoyed a telepathic communication. There is much to be said for this – especially for those intent on reducing their telephone bills. Also, on occasions, Ross “speaks directly to the moon and the sea and the stars”. It is not clear whether any of these entities respond.

My Name Is Ross is an entertaining read with some witty anecdotes of tales told at various Alcoholics Anonymous meetings around the world. But it is also a significant work – especially for its message about the link between depression and alcohol and drug abuse and the causal connection between addiction and some suicides or attempted suicides.

Here Ross’ advice is direct. Those afflicted with alcoholism should deal with their drinking problem first and then see what’s left of any other conditions. After becoming sober, invariably they will find that their acute depression was inflamed by alcohol or other drugs.

Before Ross moved to Sydney from Brisbane, I arranged for him to make a reservation at the (then) University and Schools Club on Phillip Street. On each occasion, prior to arriving at the Club, Ross used to ensure that all liquor was removed from the mini-bar in his room. I then understood just what a challenge each and every day is for Ross. As he writes: “Each day not drinking alcohol or using other drugs is the paramount fact about my life.”

Ross knows that he is still living on borrowed time because he remains powerless over alcohol. He also understands that, without alcohol, he can manage his depression. With alcohol he would revert to what he once was – a narcissistic, rage-fuelled, alcoholic depressive – and quickly die.

Lyndal Moor has been central to Ross remaining sober along with some of Ross’ friends who are mentioned in these memoirs. Ross has also benefited from the great work of Alcoholic Anonymous. AA preaches an uncomplicated faith – if a sober alcoholic does not “pick up” a drink, he or she will not revert to the insidious disease of alcoholism. It’s as straight forward – and as difficult – as that.

Alcoholics Anonymous is a path-breaking organisation – all the more so because it refuses to accept public or private funding. It’s all about people dealing with, and resolving, their own problems. And it’s all about dry alcoholics supporting each other in an endeavour not to “pick-up” each and every day.

Ross reflects on AA’s lack of sentimentality. He quotes George E. Valliant’s seminal work The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited to the effect that so-called harm-minimisation by controlled drinking is but a mirage. For alcoholics, only the abstinence model works.

In his memoirs Ross wonders out loud how he became responsive to AA when so many men and women, who were and are much kinder and smarter than he, never managed to get sober for any extended time. To me this seems due to Ross’ sometimes annoying persistence. But it works.

Persistence got Lyndal to what used to be called the altar – assisted, fortuitously, by her determination never go out with a man who could change a light bulb. Persistence has ensured Ross’ professional success over four decades. And persistence has kept Ross true to the principles of AA.

Once again, I congratulate New South for publishing My Name Is Ross and I call on the author of this quite courageous memoir to make some comments. His name is Ross.

Gerard Henderson, The Sydney Institute, 2 February 2010

Like a lot of teenagers who are prone to addiction, I got into trouble with alcohol at an early age – in fact from my first drink of alcohol at age fourteen I drank in a manner that was out of control.

Despite all the advances in medicine and in the so-called “helping professions”, few experts understand that a significant number of teenagers who drink alcohol, no matter what their level of education, ethnicity or gender, will end up becoming alcohol-dependent. And for those who become alcoholic, however young, the only safe solution is not to drink at all – otherwise the end result may eventually be severe physical and mental impairment or death.

It is important to stress that alcoholism is a health problem, not a moral problem. Alcoholics are not bad people who need to be good, but people suffering from an illness who can recover – if they learn to totally avoid drinking alcohol, one day at a time.

In the twenty-first century, one disturbing trend is an exponential increase, among Australians aged 16 to 24, in out-of-control drinking, and especially of binge drinking in teenage girls.

This problem is accentuated if, as so often happens, teenagers use other drugs including ecstasy, ice, cocaine, and especially marijuana, which is cultivated hydroponically and is therefore so much stronger than it used to be 20 or 30 years ago.

In spite of abstinence having saved the lives of countless people, not drinking alcohol at all is seen by many as being rather weird, especially if one is young. Yet these days, a number of 16, 17 and 18 year old drinkers have done so much physical, emotional and social damage to themselves and others that they are seeking help, including joining groups like Alcoholics Anonymous whose meetings they regularly attend in order to remain abstinent from alcohol and other drugs.

Unfortunately, in our society there is still enormous social and peer-group pressure on those who wish to avoid alcohol. Not surprisingly, this pressure is extremely strong on the young, be it from friends, school or workmates, or from other members of sporting clubs and other organizations to which teenagers may belong.

In a society like ours, with such an entrenched drink culture and with such a politically powerful liquor industry, advertising and significant social and peer group pressure is often applied to those who need to remain abstinent in order to stay alive, let alone to live productive lives. This even applies in our prisons, where 80% of inmates have significant problems with alcohol and other drugs. Of this group, there is a core of about 40% who need to remain totally abstinent if they are not to become recidivists. Yet even within our prison population there is strong pressure, from psychologists and other professionals, to advocate so –called “harm minimisation” and to oppose the notion of total abstinence.

In common (and often professional) usage the notion of “harm minimisation” conflates two separate, and very different, ideas. Only one of these do I support and that is the idea of preventing avoidable harms, for example by providing safe needle exchanges and supervised injecting rooms to prevent users contracting HIV, hepatitis and other preventable disease.

But the second notion of so-called harm minimization I cannot support and that is the notion that alcoholics and addicts can (and should) be taught to somehow “moderate” or “control” their usage, as opposed to try and learn to abstain. And this is despite the fundamental fact that most other drug use in our society is illegal! How bizarre then to be informed by prison psychologists that, while in custody, prisoner X and Y is learning to moderate his or her drug use – as though this was somehow praiseworthy.

In Australia there is still strong pressure exercised against those who don’t drink alcohol.  This includes deep suspicion about those who do abstain. As Sir Les Patterson puts it: “Never trust a man who doesn’t drink/ Though he may not throw up on your kitchen sink/ I’d rather be half-hearted/ Than be a blue-nose, wowser bastard/ So NEVER trust a man who doesn’t drink.”

Recently at a party in Redfern I overheard someone say “Watch her, she doesn’t drink!” Indeed at social functions when I drink mineral water or fruit juice I am often asked, “What’s the matter, don’t you drink?” To which I sometimes reply, “What do you think I’m doing, eating a sandwich?”?

Of course I drink. I drink a lot. It’s just that I don’t drink alcohol. This is because, as with about 7 to 8 per cent of the Australian population, one glass containing alcohol is one too many – and a hundred are not enough. The trick for people like me is therefore not to imbibe the first one, and to have nothing in our blood but blood.

Although not always the case, quite often a propensity to alcoholism and other drug addition is genetically based. Speaking personally, my father was a rough, tough footballer who played Aussie Rules for Collingwood, but he never drank a teaspoon full of alcohol in his life. This was because his father was an alcoholic whose drinking blighted his marriage and destroyed the family business.

My first drink of alcohol, at age 14, was at the same place that, up to now, I had my last drink – at Her Majesty’s Hotel in Toorak Road in Melbourne, then run by Maisy, a well-known drag queen. For no other reason than that it seemed exotic, after having visited a local doctor, I fronted the bar in my Melbourne Boys High school uniform at about 11AM and ordered a brandy, lime and soda. The waiter, very kindly, suggested that I take off my school hat!

That first drink of alcohol was like an injection of rocket fuel. Very soon, I was drinking as much as I could, usually on my own. Quite often, my idea of a good Saturday night was to go to the Brighton Cemetery, with a flagon of claret, and sit drinking in front of Adam Lindsay Gordon’s obelisk which reads: “Life is only froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone, Kindness in another’s trouble, Courage in your own.”

I now think it significant that, instead of being attracted to the grave of the gangster Squizzy Taylor or to the bent Victorian politician Sir Thomas Bent, I found myself in front of Gordon, the alcoholic poet, who killed himself on the beach near Park Street Brighton, where when young I often used to drink myself.

When I was 16, I stumbled home drunk from Middle Brighton beach at 2AM. My father, fit, tall and erect, was waiting up for me. “What are you celebrating, son?” he said. I had no answer. I didn’t know that I was drinking because I had to. Then Dad told me something I’ve never forgotten. “When I was your age, son, I lost two bicycles looking for my father.”

It seems to me that my dad knew that he, like his father, was potentially an alcoholic and that’s why he never drank at all. He believed, from experiencing his father’s alcoholism at close hand, that if he started drinking, he’d be putting himself at great risk. He also understood that booze would also get me – his only living child – into terrible trouble. And it did. From the age of 15 to 25 alcohol caused me, and those close to me, enormous damage.

Finally, it dawned that, rather than other people, situations and things being to blame, alcohol was the primary cause of my problems. So, after returning from America, and turning on one last catastrophic drinking session at Maisy’s, in January 1970 I managed to put the cork in the bottle, and, so far, to keep it there. Since then I have been free of all other drugs as well.

I’m pleased to say that I managed to stop drinking three years before my father died, which meant that he and I were able to get to know each other properly, without my drunkenness sullying our relationship.

But despite being almost 40 years sober, I still need to be vigilant. I need to realise that what matters most in my life is that I don’t pick up the first drink of alcohol, one day at a time.

About 20 years ago, I was waiting for my friend, Jim Maclaine, then a psychologist at Sydney’s Langton Clinic, when it was abstinence-oriented. Through the paper-thin walls, I overheard Jim talking to a new patient whose name, I recall, was Boris. Said Jim, “Boris, now that you’ve been admitted to this hospital as an alcoholic, for as long as you live you’ll be spending a lot of your time with other alcoholics. The big question is whether they’re going to be drunken ones or sober ones.”

Jim continued: “If you cross South Dowling Street outside the Clinic, and get run over by a truck and break your hip, depending on your personality if may take three months, it may take six months, it may take a year or even two, but eventually you’ll forget the dreadful pain of breaking your hip and be able to cross a road without a qualm.” That forgetfulness, he explained, is a necessary and important part of human evolution. If we remembered all the dreadful pains of existence we’d never get out of bed. “That forgetfulness is enormously helpful – except for what you’ve got Boris, except for alcoholism. You need to remember organically what has happened to you. The best way that I know of achieving this”, he said,  “is to regularly attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and listen to other alcoholics tell what they used to be like, what happened, and what they are like now.”

Alcoholism and drug addiction among the young is much more prevalent than most people in Australia, and many in the media, realise.

If someone, young or old, inquires ‘Am I an alcoholic?’ I suggest they ask themselves four questions:

Most importantly:  Is alcohol costing you more than money?
Then:
* Does your personality change for the worse after drinking?
*  Do your relatives, friends, lovers etc point out that you have a problem with alcohol?

and
* Sometimes after drinking, do you have hours, or even days, that you cannot remember?

If you answer yes to at least three of these questions you are almost certainly an alcoholic or at the very least a severely impaired problem drinker.  And over the long term (i.e. over 2 to 3 years) the only safe option is to aim for total abstinence.

Yet regretfully these days as a therapeutic aim, abstinence is still often regarded with askance.

Thank God for groups like the Salvos who in treating alcoholics and other addicts, still aims for complete abstinence rather than so-called “controlled” drinking or drug use. Indeed in many centres across Australia, the Salvos’ Bridge Program still makes pivotal use of Alcoholics Anonymous, its meetings and its 12 suggested steps of recovery.

The first of AA’s 12 steps says: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.” No matter how long they have been sober, alcoholics in the Bridge Program and in AA always speak of their alcoholism in the present tense: “My name is … and I am an alcoholic.” This is because alcoholics and other addicts are never really cured of their alcoholism, in that if they start drinking and using again they are bound, over the long term, to relapse into uncontrolled usage. In order to stay alive and to live useful and meaningful lives, alcoholics and other addicts need to make a daily commitment to a life choice of stable abstinence.

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who was instrumental in the founding of AA, explained that the Latin word for alcohol is spiritus and that we use the same term “for the highest religious experience as well as the most depraving poison”. When dealing with alcoholism, said Jung, the most helpful formula is spiritus contra spiritum: spirit against spirit, or power against power. This is why AA suggests that newcomers to the program try to develop a belief in what it calls “a power greater than oneself”.

This notion can apply equally for theists and for non-theists, for agnostics and for atheists. All that is required is the realisation that, like cancer or diabetes, usually alcoholism cannot, over the long term, be vanquished by an isolated exertion of the individual’s will.

To most people it is obvious, given the damaging, life-threatening consequences of alcoholism and other drug addiction, and the proven inability of alcoholics and addicts to control their drinking or drug use, that the goal of treatment should be total abstinence. Yet in the past 30 years in Australia, and elsewhere in the West, an anti-abstinence orthodoxy has become entrenched in health department and corrective services practice and policy, with extremely unfortunate results.

What is particularly damaging is that alcoholics and other addicts and their families are given the false hope that controlled drinking is a viable option and that abstinence is no longer necessary.

Despite the continued advocacy by many state and federal health workers and government bureaucrats for alcoholics to be treated by controlled drinking programs, the evidence is very strong that after three years or more the aim of controlled use fails miserably for people with addictions. Indeed, over the long term, almost all alcoholics who aim for anything other than complete abstinence return to full-blown addiction.

May I draw your attention to the path-breaking work of Professor George Vaillant from Harvard University who has shown that there is compelling long-term evidence that for alcoholics and those addicted to other drugs, moderation and so-called controlled usage does not work.

As Vaillant succinctly puts it in his long-term longitudinal study, ‘The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited’:  “Despite its prominence 20 years ago, training alcohol-dependent individuals to achieve stable return to controlled drinking is a mirage. Hopeful initial reports have not led to replication.”

Initially, in the 1980s, funded by the Rand Foundation Vaillant supported the controlled use of alcohol and other drugs but, after seeing the results of his long-term follow-up studies, he has moved to advocating abstinence and the 12-step approach of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is by far the most successful agency in helping alcoholics and problem drinkers to stop drinking alcohol and to stop using other drugs as well.

Yet because it is an unpaid lay movement of men and women who have managed to stay free of alcohol and wish to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety, AA is often undervalued or not valued at all by medical practitioners and health professionals.

Despite overwhelming long-term evidence, in Australia the proponents of controlled usage remain in favour with most government bureaucrats and health professionals, while those who advocate a strategy of abstinence are marginalised or ignored. As Vaillant’s comprehensive studies of alcohol abusers clearly demonstrate, while five to six years of abstinence is adequate to predict a stable future, return to controlled drinking is a much less stable state. To put it another way, after abstinence has been maintained for five years, relapse is rare. In contrast, return to controlled drinking without eventual relapse is unlikely.

This is not to deny that even severely dependent individuals can occasionally achieve more moderate drinking; the crucial caveat is that this is a relatively unusual occurrence. Moreover, even staunch control drinking or drug usage advocates acknowledge that a successful outcome becomes less likely as the severity of dependence on alcohol and other drugs increases.

This is not to dispute that alcoholics and addicts are extremely resistant to adopting a goal of abstinence and often strongly deny the assertion that they cannot safely use alcohol or other drugs. Indeed, such resistance and denial are integral parts of their disorder. Theoreticians who advocate controlled usage do so precisely because it is difficult for alcohol-dependent and other drug-dependent people to consider abstinence. But there is no empirical evidence that controlled drinking or drug-usage strategies works for such people for any extended period – that is, three years or more.

Although, superficially, it may seem a useful strategy to health professionals and government bureaucrats, suggesting that alcoholics and addicts should somehow try to learn to control their drug usage is an enormous waste of human and financial resources that causes, if not death, then often irreparable damage. The truth is that an alcoholic’s or an addict’s best change of recovery lies in practising total abstinence.

It is pleasing to report that groups like the Salvation Army have maintained a commitment to total abstinence via the AA program as the prime therapeutic goal for alcoholics and other addicts. Fortunately in the last few years we are also beginning to see a return to the abstinence model by a small but increasing number of psychologists and medical practitioners, and to once again valuing AA as the most effective form of long-term therapy for persons addicted to alcohol.

Although it may be regarded by some as politically incorrect, I am pleased to report that the New South Wales government, under the leadership of then Health Minister, John Della Bosca, has adopted and extended the provisions of the Inebriates Act of 1912, which for decades had not been widely used. Now in New South Wales, at various facilities throughout the state, an increasing number of severely ill alcoholics can be subject to an order forcing them into effective long-term, life-saving treatment for up to twelve months.

As a side benefit this long-term treatment regime means that, apart from those in the grip of addiction, the families of alcoholics and other addicts can be saved from immense despair and desperation and of physical and psychological injury. At the very least, the revamped Inebriates Act may save the lives of thousands of alcoholics and addicts and, in the process, allow enough time for AA and the Bridge Program to do their highly effective work.

Thank you for having me. Are there any questions?

Professor Ross Fitzgerald is a well-known Australian writer and broadcaster. Professor Fitzgerald is a member of the New South Wales Government’s Expert Advisory Group on Alcohol and Drugs, the Administrative Decisions Tribunal,  and the NSW State Parole Authority.  Ross is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University in Brisbane. Author of 32 books, this year Professor Fitzgerald co-authored ‘Made in Queensland: A New History’, published by University of Queensland Press and  ‘Under the Influence, a history of alcohol in Australia’, published by ABC Books.  He is married to Lyndal Moor, has a daughter Emily, and lives in Redfern.

As I was listening to the news of John Della Bosca’s resignation as Health Minister, yesterday I walked into South Sydney library to borrow my favourite P.G Wodehouse novel, ‘Love Among the Chickens’. As I stood in a queue, I overheard a young woman say to a friend, “I’ve just finished reading ‘Under The Influence’.

When her friend asked, “What’s it like?” my ears pricked up.  “It’s absolutely brilliant”, she said. “Superbly researched and wonderfully well written.”  Wowsers!

“If you don’t mind me asking”, I intervened, “I didn’t know that ‘Under The Influence’ was yet on sale?”  “I didn’t buy it”, the woman said. “I borrowed it.”

Gee whiz I thought, the libraries in New South Wales are really on song.  But starting to smell something of a rat, I shy inquired, “That Under The Influence book is about alcohol in Australia, isn’t it?”

“Oh no”, she replied. “It’s a new biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. You should read it.”

So there we are!

Even though Scott Fitzgerald was himself an alcoholic, our book ‘Under The Influence’ isn’t about the author of that American classic ‘The Great Gatsby’.  It is a history of alcohol in Australia. Indeed it is the first history of the role of alcohol in Australia ever published.

It is pleasing that in today’s THE AUSTRALIAN LITERARY REVIEW the Melbourne-based historian John Hirst concluded that: “UNDER THE INFLUENCE is a substantial and comprehensive work: a book for policy makers to ponder.”

This evening we have three important apologies.

One from Tony Abbott.

The second from NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos, who is now Acting Health Minister.

And the third from that sturdy NSW Labor backbencher, Frank Sartor, who said he would have loved to come, but something rather urgent has come up for him to organise.

Or is it count?

In many ways it’s a shame that Della couldn’t make it tonight because, along with the NSW police commissioner Andrew Scipione, he has been at the forefront of countering the insidious effects of the booze culture in Australia, and especially in the state of New South Wales.

A disturbing fact is that in this nation, which was from the outset launched on a sea of spirits, while alcohol per capita consumption is declining, alcohol abuse and misuse is increasing exponentially in drinkers between the ages of 16 to 24. Especially disturbing is the dangerous level of binge drinking among young women.

One side effect of this is that helping agencies, including Alcoholics Anonymous, are seeing an increasing number of young women and men seeking help for their alcoholism and alcohol abuse.

It is no accident that alcohol-fuelled violence has become the focus of concern especially in New South Wales, where Commissioner Scipione, himself a teetotaller, points out that extremely violent cities like Los Angeles have fewer alcohol-related assaults than Newcastle and Sydney.

Clearly Australia faces a huge problem that urgently needs to be addressed. And there is a good reason for New South Wales to be the focus on new initiatives to foster responsible alcohol consumption. Of the six hundred or so 24-hour drinking licenses around Australia, 60 per cent of them are located in NSW, the vast majority in Sydney and Newcastle.

Faced with the reality than tens of thousands of drinkers are admitted to our hospitals each year, we urgently need to explore a number of measures, including a freeze on new 24-hour licences and 2am lockouts in violent and high-risk pubs, as well as increased restrictions on alcohol advertising, especially those targeting the young.

According to a recent federal government report, partial bans on alcohol advertising would reduce drinking by 16 per cent; road fatalities by 10 per cent; the yearly social costs of alcohol abuse by $2.45 billion; and road accidents by $310 billion.

A total ban on alcohol advertising in Australia is predicted to reduce drinking by 25 per cent; road fatalities by 30 per cent; the yearly social costs of alcohol abuse by $3.86 billion; and road accidents by $960 billion. In particular, bans on advertising targeting the young would have significant benefits.

While such measures might seem drastic, since 2000 the biggest increase in alcohol-related hospital admissions has been among 18 to 24 year-olds, with an overall increase of 130 per cent. Female admissions in that age group have increased by 200 per cent. Whereas advertising bans would have garnered little support in the not so distant past, more than 72 per cent of Australians over 14 now support a ban on all alcohol advertising before 9.30pm, and more than half support banning alcohol sponsorship of sporting events.

The relationship between alcohol and sport is pivotal to our culture. It is not surprising that all major sports codes in Australia have seen the writing on the wall and signed up to be part of the federal Labor government’s $53 million national alcohol code for sports. The Australian Football League (AFL), the National Rugby League (NRL), Netball Australia, the Football Federation of Australia (soccer), the Australian Rugby Union and Cricket Australia have all supported a uniform code, which asks players to behave in a dignified and professional manner when drinking and not to put themselves or others at risk of injury or social harm.

According to Andrew Demetriou, the courageous head of the AFL, promoting healthy alcohol environments helps “ensure our clubs are family-friendly.” He takes pride in the leading role that Aussie Rules players are taking in “driving the responsible alcohol message”, citing in particular the ‘Just Think’ campaign at Geelong, where, in response to problems at local nightclubs, the team is leading a campaign to promote a responsible attitude to alcohol.

David Gallop, head of the NRL, has this year weathered a storm of alcohol-fuelled controversies, including another unsavoury series of incidents this week involving the Sydney Roosters, whose coach Brad Fittler, not so long ago had to fine himself $10,000 for drinking excessively!

The truth is that if sport addresses its own issues it can play a leading role in changing attitudes. Abuse of alcohol, David Gallop rightly says, is “never someone else’s problem.” Coupled with recent government moves to break the nexus between alcohol and sport, these are perhaps encouraging signs.

But we must never underestimate the power of the liquor industry in Australia and the pivotal role that booze still plays in our culture.

Recently at a function in Redfern I overheard a bloke say, “Watch her, she doesn’t drink.”  Abstainers in Australia are still greeted with considerable suspicion.

That is why Sir Leslie Colin Patterson’s song, “Never Trust A Man Who Doesn’t Drink”, is so telling and so powerful:

“Never trust a man who doesn’t drink,
Though he may not throw up on your kitchen sink.
I’d rather be half-hearted
Than a blue-nose wowser bastard
So never trust a man who doesn’t drink.”

Thank you all for coming.

Now I’d like to introduce the co-author of UNDER THE INFLUENCE, my friend Dr Trevor Jordan who, auspiciously, was married in Brisbane during the beer strike in 1975.

Ross Fitzgerald’s speech was given at the launch of Ross Fitzgerald and Trevor Jordan, UNDER THE INFLUENCE: A HISTORY OF ALCOHOL IN AUSTRALIA (ABC Books) 110 Trafalgar Street, Annandale, 7.30pm Wednesday September 2, 2009. The author of 31 books, PROFESSOR ROSS FITZGERALD, Professorial Fellow at the Australian Catholic University, North Sydney, is a member of the NSW government’s Expert Advisory Group on Alcohol and Other Drugs and a member of the NSW State Parole Authority.

These days, over 60 years later, I still think saying grace is a good idea. This is in part because there is a lot to be said for gratitude – about being alive for starters and for being able to eat a nourishing meal, in safety, for seconds.

Thirty years ago, my friend, “Broken Hill Jack” Harris asked me if I knew the definition of a fortunate man? In those gender specific days, Broken Hill Jack’s answer was, “A man (now it should be a person) who thinks he’s fortunate”. In lateish 2009, it strikes me that there’s a great deal of truth in that definition.

These days, when I’m asked how I am, I usually reply, “A lot better than the alternatives!” Given a past chequered with uncontrolled alcoholism and other drug abuse abuse, until I managed to stop drinking and using other drugs at 25, I am extremely lucky to still be alive, let alone to be approaching my 65th birthday, which if I survive will occur this coming Christmas Day. The fact that I’ve been sober for nearly 40 years, with nothing in my blood but blood, means that I’ve been on the planet for almost 40 years longer than I would have been, if I hadn’t stopped drinking and taking all those tablets.

I’m also grateful (indeed amazed) that I’ve been married to the one person for 35 years. This is especially the case given the fact that, when I was drinking, living with me for 35 minutes, let alone 35 weeks, or 35 years was something remarkable indeed.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that all is on the up with my own good self and with my wife and partner, Lyndal Moor, the ex Australian model of the year and star of early TV shows like ‘Skippy’, ‘Spy Force’ and ‘Long Arm’. The truth is that Lyndal and I are showing distinct signs of wear and tear, which require all sorts of help from medical, social, and other supportive agencies.

Indeed, if myself and Lyndal, who turns 65 in September, didn’t feel old enough already, the New South Wales premier, at Parliament House, launched GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Seniors’ Week!

Yet one of the advantages of ageing and especially of being seniors is that we can say what we like – which is precisely what Lyndal and I and all other contributors have done in our book.

Of course truth goes both ways. Apart from the fact that, as each year rolls by, I seem increasingly to resemble an old dog – half deaf and a quarter blind –, the state of my physique is not improved, as a comedian friend remarked, by me eating like a man with two arseholes.

Not surprisingly, other bits of the body, to which I will not refer this morning, are sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, giving up the ghost.

Then there is what appears to be emotional and mental deterioration.

Recently I said to my friend and fellow contributor, Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute, “I think I’m becoming more neurotic.” To which Gerard replied, “That’s scarcely possible!”

It will not come as any revelation to those who know me that GIVE is not my middle name. One evening at Brisbane’s peculiarly named Mater Mothers Hospital (as you would know, ‘mater’ means ‘mother’) after I presented a female acquaintance who’d just had a baby, with a less than expensive gift, I inexplicably broke into tears.

A mate explained the situation thus. “You were”, he said, ”Overwhelmed by your own sensitivity.”

Last night, before I flew down to Melbourne, Lyndal reminded me of a scathing review of my work written by one of mine many enemies from Queensland. This devastating attack concluded, “Ross Fitzgerald is one of Australia’s most prolific, yet least read, authors.”

The sad fact is that, in many ways, Lyndal agreed.

Yet at this morning’s function, I hold a shy hope that GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY and UNDER THE INFLUENCE: A HISTORY OF ALCOHOL IN AUSTRALIA which is published tomorrow by ABC Books, might buck the trend and be both well received and actually widely read.

With regard to GROWING OLD (DIS)GRACEFULLY, it was a joy to edit this book of 35 essays on retirement and ageing, whose contributors range from the 84-year-old communist, Hal Alexander, to the comic actor Gerry Connolly and the founder of The Federation Press, Diane Young, both of whom have just nudged the big Five O.

Contributors to the book, the initials of which Lyndal pointed out spell GOD (i.e. G. O. D) include committed Christians like the Brisbane-based poet and novelist, Phil Brown, and the chairperson of the New South Wales Parole Board, Ian Pike, as well as less certain believers, including noted film producer Jim McElroy, through to unambiguous atheists like myself and Lyndal and the marvelous Margaret Fink.

All of GOD’s writers, in their different ways, demonstrate that being fifty and over is anything but easy and that, to paraphrase the American playwright Lillian Hellmann, old (er) age is not for wimps.

A number of contributors confide that, slowly or suddenly, they woke up one morning and the realization dawned that they were growing older, if not old. Yet when push comes to shove, all contributors to the book manifestly value life itself and their part within it, while most, if not all, believe that in some ways (many of them unpredictable) life can get even better.

Yet despite some signs of physical decline, most contributors to GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY reveal the presence in their lives of hope, trust, commitment, persistence, good humour, and, perhaps above all, the resilient capacity to cop whatever life dishes out in the twilight, or at least the second half (or final quarter), of their lives.

But don’t be mistaken, physical and mental signs are there indeed; in my own case often in spades.

Part of my current angst concerns time and its passing, something I try to control by always carrying a diary. In it, I write a daily “shopping list” – people to meet, places to go, things to write, to do and buy. Indeed each year I go through at least two diaries, sometimes three. When, as happened once in London, I actually lost my diary, I was, to use that peculiar phrase, “beside myself”, and had to try and remember, as it happened quite unsuccessfully, all the entries for the rest of that year.

So growing old(er) is not something I’m dealing with all that well.

One of the many suggestions made by self-appointed experts about how to cope with ageing is to deliberately not remember crucial dates. In my case this is impossible. How can I forget my birthday, Christmas Day; or Lyndal’s which is September 11 (what most of the world now calls 9/11), or even our wedding anniversary which appropriately enough, given our loving but volatile relationship, is November 5 – Guy Fawkes Day?

Then there is my chronic inability to remember names. A promising suggestion from my friend Barry Humphries is to associate each person’s name with some other thing or object. Recently, on a board on which I serve in Sydney, I was introduced to a new member called Yiah. As her name sounded like ‘ear’, I decided to associate her name thus. Unfortunately the next time we met I asked “And what do you think about this matter, Chin?”

The best advice I’ve been given to cope with mental and physical deterioration, and with most other life problems as well, comes from my policeman friend from the Gold Coast, Detective-Sergeant David Isherwood, known as ‘Davo’, who simply says, “Mate. What else can you do but cop it.” All of this is aided by reminding myself of an Old Russian proverb I made up: “All that trembles, does not fall.” This quote begins BUZY IN THE FOG: FURTHER ADVENTURES OF GRAFTON EVEREST, the third of my Grafton Everest novels – all of which bombed in Australia, but which sold brilliantly in South Africa and the United Kingdom in Corgi Bantam’s “Black Swan” series. This fiction got its name after I asked a Jungian therapist who I was seeing in London: “How do you think I’m doing?” Dr Costello truthfully replied: “I think you’re buzy in the fog, Ross.”

Another Queensland friend maintains that the most brilliant idea that I have ever come up with in my entire life is that, shortly before I eat a meal at home, I turn my cardigan or jumper inside out.

This means that whatever food drops down on me, including all the dribbles and stains, will not show up when I later put it back on the right way up. The only problem is that while this procedure works wonders at home, it is difficult to achieve when Lyndal and I are eating out!

One of the many reasons that Lyndal and I have been married for 35 years is that she’s a woman who isn’t the slightest bit interested in illness. I remember years ago saying, “I don’t feel very well.” To which she replied, “Darling, the pyramids were built by people who didn’t feel very well.”

These days, one of life’s pleasures is to agree to review whatever books I am sent, no matter what their scope or subject. To any reviewing request, my motto is ‘Never, never say No; Never refuse.” It is rather like my tendency – no matter how provoked – not to respond to criticism, a position to which I almost invariably adhere.

As Sigmund Freud rightly said, the secret to a good life is “love and work”. Every day I try to contribute, to achieve and be productive. As my friend ‘Antique Harry’ said: ” If you aim for the stars, you won’t shoot yourself in the foot!”

But, even for retirees, it is still easy to be misunderstood. My maverick friend Bob Katter, the Independent federal member for the vast north Queensland seat of Kennedy, which is actually bigger than Belgium, tells the story of his father Bob Katter Snr, who was actually a member of the ALP until the Great Labor Split in 1957.

Katter was driving a battered old Ute, windows down, through the boon-docks outside of Charters Towers. As he was hurling down an unmade road, an Aboriginal woman called out “PIG.” To which Katter Snr put his head out the window and called out “BITCH.” A second or two later, he ran slap bang into a wild boar!

Recently I was made a Professorial Fellow at the Australian Catholic University, in North Sydney. A journalist asked, “Are you a Catholic?”

“Put it this way”, I said. “And this is a true story. A friend of mine went hitchhiking in Ireland. The bloke who picked him up asked, “Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?” When my friend responded, “I’m an atheist”, the driver said. “No. Are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?” The journalist looked like she’d been hit in the face by a wet fish! “Forget it”, I said, “Let it go through to the wicketkeeper.”

After we had lived in Brisbane for over a quarter of a century, four years ago Lyndal said, “Darling, I want you to know that I am going back to Sydney. I’d like you to come with me”, she said, “But I want you to know that I’m going.” Then she said: “I don’t want to die in Brisbane.” One would have to have a heart of steel not to accede to that.

As I wanted (and still want) to stay with Lyndal, the decision was crystal clear. A fait accompli! So now we are living in the wilds of Redfern, in a terrace house called “Greystoke” which was the name of the ancestral home of Lord Greystoke – Tarzan of the Apes. The peculiar thing is that while our house was built in 1898, Edgar Rice Burroughs did not publish the first Tarzan novel until 1912.

As it happens, when walking through Redfern with my dog Maddie, I almost always carrying what my teetotal, Collingwood football playing, father Bill (‘Long Tom’) Fitzgerald used to call an umberella!

Dad also used to say, “I’m looking forwards to seeing you”, which to me makes perfect linguistic sense. By the way, Maddie, our feisty West Highland White terrier, is a groaker. For those who don’t know, to groak (GROAK) means to look at someone else’s food with imploring eyes. And did you know that Westies were bred from Cairns terriers?

As it happens, when drunk (which was frequent) a number of Scottish lairds hunting foxes shot their similarly colored dogs instead. So, believe it or not, that’s why they bred the Westies white.

One of the many positives of living in Redfern is that our sprawling suburb is close to the airport and only a 20-minute walk into the city. Despite Lyndal’s strong objection, I especially enjoy having my hair cut by Theo the Greek barber, who not only deals with hair on the head, but with recalcitrant hairs in the nose and ears as well.

Theo is famous/infamous for his VERY SHORT haircuts. What I really like is when Theo puts down his scissors and says, “Will that do?” I pause for a moment and then say, quite deliberately, “I think we need off just a little bit more!” Lyndal maintains that no one else has ever said this to Theo. In any case, it certainly produces in my barber what one might best describe as a frisson.

Outside Theo’s barbershop, there is a large sign facing Bourke Street saying ‘Gents Hairdressing. Specialising in All Styles.’

I like that. In some ways it describes the way I operate in my mid-sixties. Never limit any opportunities or possibilities. Be open and eager for experience. Avoid sloth and self-pity. And above all, be comforted by the fact that, no matter what happens, within a month or two my hair grows back to ‘normal.’

I think Lyndal’s revelations about coping with life in her 60s, after having been a well-known Australian model and actor, is one of the funniest contributions to the book.

I haven’t the time to detail Lyndal’s many suggestions for life-improvement, including the multifaceted possibilities potentially available should there ever be travelling Botox clinicians and salespersons knocking door to door.

But did you know the vast educational opportunities provided in the first decade of the 21st century by women’s panty liners?

‘For Everyday Freshness’, Lyndal uses ‘Libra Absorbent Liners’. As she reveals in her essay, a bonus for the over 50s and over 60s with time on their hands, is that inside each Libra Liner is a short page of “interesting facts.”

Recently Lyndal learnt that:

‘Mosquitoes have teeth and are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas’;

‘American Airlines saved $40,000 dollars in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in First Class’;

“Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.’

‘Cats can hear ultrasound.’

‘Sugar was added to chewing gum in 1869 by a dentist, William Semple.’

and

‘When the Eiffel Tower was built in 1884, Parisians referred to it as “the tragic lamp post”’

So here’s a tip to take home today.

Modern-day panty liners, at least the absorbent Libra brand, are highly recommended reading for women, and for men, who have moved, or are moving, beyond the big Five O.

For your interest our co-edited book, GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY, is available for sale from ABC Books and from your local bookstore.

But before I finish, let me say that, apart from Barry Humphries and Jerry Lewis, my favourite twentieth century comedian was the American with the big cigar, George Burns, who recounted that on his 100th anniversary he got a standing ovation – just for standing!

Thank you very much for having me.

Opening address to the Local Government Professional Aged & Disability Services Seminar, Melbourne, Friday 28 August, 2009.

Well-known writer and broadcaster, and regular columnist for The Australian newspaper and The Spectator Australia, Ross Fitzgerald is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University and part-time professorial fellow at The Australian Catholic University.

Ross Fitzgerald and his wife, Lyndal Moor, are contributing co-editors of ‘GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY: 35 Australians reflect on life over 50’, published by ABC Books. Price $35.00.

As well as Ross and Lyndal, contributors include Wayne Swan, Margaret Fink, Gerry Connolly, David Lord, Peter Kogoy, Susan Kurosawa, Anne Deveson, Robyn Williams, Phil Brown, Ian McFadyen, Anne & Gerard Henderson, and Heather & Peter Beattie.

Ross Fitzgerald’s coauthored book UNDER THE INFLUENCE: A HISTORY OF ALCOHOL IN AUSTRALIA is published by ABC Books.

As if my wife of 35 years, the ex Australian model of the year Lyndal Moor, and my own good self, didn’t feel old enough already, the New South Wales premier, at Parliament House, launched GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Seniors’ Week!

Yet one of the advantages of being seniors is that we can say what we like – which is precisely what Lyndal and I and all other contributors have done in this book.

Of course truth goes both ways. Apart from the fact that, as each year rolls by, I seem increasingly to resemble an old dog – half deaf and a quarter blind –, the state of my physique is not improved, as a comedian friend remarked, by me eating like a man with two arseholes.

Not surprisingly, other bits of the body, to which I will not refer this evening, are sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, giving up the ghost.

Then there is what appears to be emotional and mental deterioration.

Recently I said to my friend and fellow contributor, Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute, “I think I’m becoming more neurotic.” To which Gerard replied, “That’s scarcely possible!”

It will not come as any revelation to those who know me that GIVE is not my middle name. One evening at Brisbane’s peculiarly named Mater Mothers Hospital (as you would know, ‘mater’ means ‘mother’) after I presented a female acquaintance who’d just had a baby, with a less than expensive gift, I inexplicably broke into tears.

A mate explained the situation thus. “You were”, he said, ”Overwhelmed by your own sensitivity.”

This morning before I flew down to Melbourne, Lyndal reminded me of a scathing review of my work written by one of mine many enemies from Queensland. This devastating attack concluded, “Ross Fitzgerald is one of Australia’s most prolific, yet least read, authors.”

The sad fact is that, in many ways, Lyndal agreed.

Yet at this evening’s function, I hold a shy hope that GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY and my forthcoming co-authored books – the 150th Anniversary history of the Sunshine State, MADE IN QUEENSLAND and the history of alcohol in Australia, UNDER THE INFLUENCE -, might all buck the trend and be both well received and actually widely read.

It was a joy to edit this book of 35 essays on retirement and ageing, whose contributors range from the 84-year-old communist, Hal Alexander, to the comic actor Gerry Connolly and the founder of The Federation Press, Diane Young, both of whom have just nudged the big Five O.

Contributors to the book, the initials of which Lyndal pointed out spell GOD (i.e. G. O. D) include committed Christians like the Brisbane-based poet and novelist, Phil Brown, and the chairperson of the New South Wales Parole Board, Ian Pike, as well as less certain believers, including noted film producer Jim McElroy, through to unambiguous atheists like myself and Lyndal and the marvelous Margaret Fink.

All of GOD’s writers, in their different ways, demonstrate that being fifty and over is anything but easy and that, to paraphrase the American playwright Lillian Hellmann, old (er) age is not for wimps.

A number of contributors confide that, slowly or suddenly, they woke up one morning and the realization dawned that they were growing older, if not old. Yet when push comes to shove, all contributors to the book manifestly value life itself and their part within it, while most, if not all, believe that in some ways (many of them unpredictable) life can get even better.

Yet despite some signs of physical decline, most contributors to GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY reveal the presence in their lives of hope, trust, commitment, persistence, good humour, and, perhaps above all, the resilient capacity to cop whatever life dishes out in the twilight, or at least the second half (or final quarter), of their lives.

But don’t be mistaken, physical and mental signs are there indeed; in my own case often in spades.

Part of my current angst concerns time and its passing, something I try to control by always carrying a diary. In it, I write a daily “shopping list” – people to meet, places to go, things to write, to do and buy. Indeed each year I go through at least two diaries, sometimes three. When, as happened once in London, I actually lost my diary, I was, to use that peculiar phrase, “beside myself”, and had to try and remember, as it happened quite unsuccessfully, all the entries for the rest of that year.

So growing old is not something I’m dealing with all that well.

One of the many suggestions made by self-appointed experts about how to cope with ageing is to deliberately not remember crucial dates. In my case this is impossible. How can I forget my birthday, Christmas Day; or Lyndal’s which is September 11 (what most of the world now calls 9/11), or even our wedding anniversary which appropriately enough, given our loving but volatile relationship, is November 5 – Guy Fawkes Day?

Then there is my chronic inability to remember names. A promising suggestion from my friend Barry Humphries is to associate each person’s name with some other thing or object. Recently, on a board on which I serve in Sydney, I was introduced to a new member called Yiah. As her name sounded like ‘ear’, I decided to associate her name thus. Unfortunately the next time we met I asked “And what do you think about this matter, Chin?”

The best advice I’ve been given to cope with mental and physical deterioration, and with most other life problems as well, comes from my policeman friend from the Gold Coast, Detective-Sergeant David Isherwood, known as ‘Davo’, who simply says, “Mate. What else can you do but cop it.” All of this is aided by reminding myself of an Old Russian proverb I made up: “All that trembles, does not fall.” This quote begins BUZY IN THE FOG: FURTHER ADVENTURES OF GRAFTON EVEREST, the third of my Grafton Everest novels – all of which bombed in Australia, but which sold brilliantly in South Africa and the United Kingdom in Corgi Bantam’s “Black Swan” series. This fiction got its name after I asked a Jungian therapist who I was seeing in London: “How do you think I’m doing?” Dr Costello truthfully replied: “I think you’re buzy in the fog, Ross.”

Another Queensland friend maintains that the most brilliant idea that I have ever come up with in my entire life is that, shortly before I eat a meal at home, I turn my cardigan or jumper inside out. This means that whatever food drops down on me, including all the dribbles and stains, will not show up when I later put it back on the right way up. The only problem is that while this procedure works wonders at home, it is difficult to achieve when Lyndal and I are eating out!

One of the many reasons that Lyndal and I have been married for 35 years is that she’s a woman who isn’t the slightest bit interested in illness. I remember years ago saying, “I don’t feel very well.” To which she replied, “Darling, the pyramids were built by people who didn’t feel very well.”

These days, one of life’s pleasures is to agree to review whatever books I am sent, no matter what their scope or subject. To any reviewing request, my motto is ‘Never, never say No; Never refuse.” It is rather like my tendency – no matter how provoked – not to respond to criticism, a position to which I almost invariably adhere.

As Sigmund Freud rightly said, the secret to a good life is “love and work”. Every day I try to contribute, to achieve and be productive. As my friend ‘Antique Harry’ said: ” If you aim for the stars, you won’t shoot yourself in the foot!”

But, even for retirees, it is still easy to be misunderstood. My maverick friend Bob Katter, the Independent federal member for the vast north Queensland seat of Kennedy, which is actually bigger than Belgium, tells the story of his father Bob Katter Snr, who was actually a member of the Labor Party until the Great Split in 1957. He was driving a battered old Ute, windows down, through the boon-docks outside of Charters Towers. As he was hurling down an unmade road, an Aboriginal woman called out “PIG.” To which Katter Snr put his head out the window and called out “Bitch.” A second or two later ran slap bang into a wild boar!

Recently I was made a part-time Professorial Fellow at the Australian Catholic University. A journalist asked, “Are you a Catholic?”

“Put it this way”, I said. “And this is a true story. A friend of mine went hitchhiking in Ireland. The bloke who picked him up asked, “Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?” When friend responded, “I’m an atheist”, the driver said. “No. Are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?” The journalist looked like I’d hit her with a wet fish! “Forget it”, I said, “Let it go through to the keeper.”

After we had lived in Brisbane for over a quarter of a century, four years ago Lyndal said, “Darling, I want you to know that I am going back to Sydney. I’d like you to come with me”, she said, “But I want you to know that I’m going.”

As I wanted (and still want) to stay with Lyndal, the decision was crystal clear. A fait accompli! So now we are living in the wilds of Redfern, in a terrace house called “Greystoke” which was the name of the ancestral home of Lord Greystoke – Tarzan of the Apes.

As it happens, I almost always walk with my dog Maddie, carrying what my teetotal, Collingwood football playing, father Bill (‘Long Tom’) Fitzgerald used to call an umberella!

Dad also used to say, “I’m looking forwards to seeing you”, which to me makes perfect linguistic sense. By the way, Maddie, our feisty West Highland white terrier, is a groaker. For those who don’t know, to groak (GROAK) means to look at someone else’s food with imploring eyes.

One of the many positives of living in Redfern is that our sprawling suburb is close to the airport and only a 20-minute walk into the city. Despite Lyndal’s strong objection, I especially enjoy having my hair cut by Theo the Greek barber, who not only deals with hair on the head, but with recalcitrant hairs in the nose and ears as well.

Theo is famous/infamous for his VERY SHORT haircuts. What I really like is when Theo puts down his scissors and says, “Will that do?” I pause for a moment and then say, quite deliberately, “I think we need off just a little bit more!” Lyndal maintains that no one else has ever said this to Theo. In any case, it certainly produces in my barber what one might best describe as a frisson.

Outside Theo’s barbershop, there is a large sign facing Bourke Street saying ‘Gents Hairdressing. Specialising in All Styles.’

I like that. In some ways it describes the way I operate in my mid-sixties. Never limit any opportunities or possibilities. Be open and eager for experience. Avoid sloth and self-pity. And above all, be comforted by the fact that, no matter what happens, within a month or two my hair grows back to ‘normal.’

I think Lyndal’s revelations about coping with life in her 60s, after having been a well-known Australian model and actor, is one of the funniest contributions to the book.

I haven’t the time to detail Lyndal’s many suggestions for life-improvement, including the multifaceted possibilities potentially available should there ever be travelling Botox clinicians and salespersons knocking door to door.

But did you know the vast educational opportunities provided in the first decade of the 21st century by women’s panty liners?

‘For Everyday Freshness’, Lyndal uses ‘Libra Absorbent Liners’. As she reveals, a bonus for the over 50s and over 60s with time on their hands, is that inside each Libra Liner is a short page of “interesting facts.”

Recently Lyndal learnt that:

‘Mosquitoes have teeth and are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas’;

‘American Airlines saved $40,000 dollars in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in First Class’;

“Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.’

‘Cats can hear ultrasound.’

‘Sugar was added to chewing gum in 1869 by a dentist, William Semple.’

and

‘When the Eiffel Tower was built in 1884, Parisians referred to it as “the tragic lamp post”’

So here’s a tip to take home this evening.

Modern-day panty liners, at least the absorbent Libra brand, are highly recommended reading for women, and for men, who have moved, or are moving, beyond the big Five O.

As you can see from the flyers on your seat, GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY is available for sale from ABC Books and from your local book store.

But before I finish, apart from Barry Humphries and Jerry Lewis, my favourite twentieth century comedian was the American with the big cigar, George Burns, who recounted that on his 100th anniversary he got a standing ovation – just for standing!

Thank you very much for having me.

As if we didn’t feel old enough already, recently at Parliament House, premier Morris Iemma launched the book to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Seniors’ Week!

Yet one of the advantages of being seniors is that we can say what we like – which is precisely what Lyndal and I and all other contributors have done in this book.

Of course truth goes both ways. Apart from the fact that, as each year rolls by, I seem increasingly to resemble an old dog – half deaf and a quarter blind –, the state of my physique is not improved, as a comedian friend remarked, by me eating like a man with two arseholes.

Not surprisingly, other bits of the body, to which I will not refer, are sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, giving up the ghost.

Then there is what appears to be emotional and mental deterioration. Recently I said to my friend and fellow contributor, Gerard Henderson, “I think I’m becoming more neurotic.” To which Gerard replied, “That’s scarcely possible!”

It will not come as any revelation to those who know me like Anne and Margaret, that GIVE is not my middle name. One day in Brisbane, after I presented an acquaintance who’d just had a baby, with a less than expensive gift, I inexplicably broke into tears.

A mate explained the situation thus. “You were”, he said, ”Overwhelmed by your own sensitivity.”

Last month Lyndal reminded me of a scathing review of my work written by one of mine many enemies from Queensland. This devastating attack concluded, “Ross Fitzgerald is one of Australia’s most prolific, yet least read, authors.”

The sad fact is that, in many ways, Lyndal agreed.

Yet at this Writers Week function this afternoon, we hold a shy hope that GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY might buck the trend and be both well-received and actually widely read.

For Lyndal and I, it has been a joy to edit this book of 35 essays, whose contributors range in age from the 84 year old Erskineville-based communist, Hal Alexander, to the comic actor Gerry Connolly and Diane Young of the Federation Press – both of whom have just nudged the big Five O.

Contributors to the book, the initials of which spell GOD (i.e. G. O. D.), include committed Christians like Brisbane-based writer Phil Brown and the chairperson of the New South Wales State Parole Authority, Ian Pike, as well as less certain believers, including noted film producer Jim McElroy, through to unambiguous atheists like myself and Lyndal, and Margaret Fink who will speak to us later.

All of GOD’s writers, in their different ways, demonstrate that being fifty and over is anything but easy and that, to paraphrase the American playwright Lillian Hellmann, old (er) age is not for wimps.

Intriguingly, a number of contributors confide that, slowly or suddenly, they woke up one morning and the realization dawned that they were growing older, if not old. Yet when push comes to shove, all contributors to the book, including Anne & Margaret & Robyn, manifestly value life itself and their part within it, while most, if not all, believe that in some ways (many of them unpredictable) life can get even better.

Yet despite some signs of physical decline, most contributors to GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY reveal the presence in their lives of hope, trust, commitment, persistence, good humour, and, perhaps above all, the resilient capacity to cop whatever life dishes out in the twilight, or at least the second half (or final quarter), of their lives.

But don’t be mistaken, physical and mental signs are there indeed; in my own case often in spades. Part of my current angst concerns time and its passing, something I try to control by always carrying a diary.

In it, I write a daily “shopping list” – people to meet, places to go, things to write, to do and buy. Indeed each year I go through at least two diaries, sometimes three. When, as happened once in London, I actually lost my diary, I was, to use that peculiar phrase, “beside myself”, and had to try and remember, as it happened quite unsuccessfully, all the entries for the rest of that year.

So growing old is not something I’m dealing with all that well. One of the many suggestions made by self-appointed experts about how to cope with ageing is to deliberately not remember crucial dates. In my case this is impossible. How can I forget my birthday, Christmas Day; or my wife Lyndal’s which is September 11 (what most of the world now calls 9/11), or even our wedding anniversary which is November 5 – Guy Fawkes Day?

Balanced against this is my chronic inability to remember names. A promising suggestion from Barry Humphries is to associate each person’s name with some other thing or object. Recently, on a board on which I serve, I was introduced to a new member called Yiah. As her name sounded like ‘ear’, I decided to associate her name thus. Unfortunately the next time we met I asked “And what do you think about this matter, Chin?”,

The best advice I’ve been given to cope with all of this mental and physical deterioration, and indeed with most other life problems as well, comes from my policeman friend from the Gold Coast, Detective-Sergeant David Isherwood, known as ‘Davo’, who simply says, “Mate. What else can you do but cop it.” All of this is aided by reminding myself of an Old Russian proverb I made up: “All that trembles, does not fall.”

Another Queensland friend maintains that the cleverest and most brilliant idea that I have ever come up with is that, shortly before I eat a meal at home, I turn my cardigan or jumper inside out. This means that whatever food drops down on me, including all the dribbles and stains, will not show up when I later put it back on the right way up. The only problem is that while this procedure works wonders at home, it is difficult to achieve when Lyndal and I are eating out!

Speaking of Lyndal, one of the many reasons that we have been married for 33 years is that she is a woman who isn’t the slightest bit interested in illness. I remember years ago saying to her in a self-indulgent way, “I don’t feel very well.” To which she replied, “Darling, the pyramids were built by people who didn’t feel very well.”

These days, one of life’s pleasures is to agree to review whatever books I am sent, no matter what their scope or subject. Thus to any reviewing request, my motto is ‘Never, never say No; Never refuse.” It is rather like my tendency never to respond to criticism, a position to which I almost universally adhere.

Accepting a random spread of books enables me to read about new and recondite things, to confront different and unusual ideas. It is so important to try and keep learning, and constantly to explore with curiosity and enthusiasm. Each day, I try to follow Sigmund Freud’s dictum, that the secret to a good life is “love and work. ” So every day I try to contribute, to achieve and be productive. As my friend ‘Antique Harry’ said, ” If you aim for the stars, you won’t shoot yourself in the foot!”

After we had lived in Brisbane for over a quarter of a century, two years ago Lyndal said, “Darling, I want you to know that I am going back to Sydney. I’d like you to come with me”, she said, “But I want you to know that I’m going.”

As I wanted (and still want) to stay with Lyndal, the decision was crystal clear. A fait accompli. QED! So here we are, living in Redfern, in a terrace house called “Greystoke” which was the name of the ancestral home of Lord Greystoke – Tarzan of the Apes.

One of the many positives of living in Redfern is that it is close to the airport and only a 25-minute walk into the city. Another pleasure is going to Peter the Greek’s Seafood Café in Bourke Street which sells the best fish and chips in Sydney. And, despite my wife’s constant objections, I especially enjoy regularly having my hair cut next door to Peters by Theo the Greek barber, who not only deals with hair on the head, but with recalcitrant hairs in the nose and ears as well.

Theo is famous/infamous for his VERY SHORT haircuts. What I really like is when Theo puts down his scissors and says, “Will that do?” I pause for a moment and then almost always say, quite deliberately, “I think we need off just a little bit more!” Lyndal thinks that no one else has ever said this to Theo. In any case, it certainly produces in my barber what one might best describe as a frisson.

Outside Theo’s barbershop, there is a large sign facing the street saying ‘Gents Hairdressing. Specialising in All Styles.’ I like that. In some ways it describes the way I operate in my mid-sixties. Never limit any opportunities or possibilities. Be open and eager for experience. Avoid sloth and self-pity. And above all, be comforted by the fact that, no matter what happens, within a month or two my hair grows back to ‘normal.’

As I mentioned, I think Lyndal’s revelations about coping with life in her 60s, after having been a well-known Australian model and actor, is one of the funniest contributions to the book.
I haven’t the time to detail Lyndal’s many suggestions for life improvement, including the multifaceted possibilities potentially available should there ever be travelling Botox clinicians & salespersons knocking door to door.

But did you know the vast educational opportunities provided in the first decade of the 21st century by women’s panty liners?

“For Everyday Freshness”, Lyndal uses ‘Libra Absorbent Liners’. As she reveals in her essay, “Becoming Invisible”, a bonus for the over 50s and over 60s with time on their hands, is that inside each Libra Liner is a short page of “interesting facts.”
For example, one morning recently Lyndal learnt that: ‘Mosquitoes have teeth and are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas’;

‘American Airlines saved $40,000 dollars in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in First Class’;

“Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.’

‘Cats can hear ultrasound.’

‘Sugar was added to chewing gum in 1869 by a dentist, William Semple.’

‘Liquorice can raise your blood pressure.’

and

‘When the Eiffel Tower was built in 1884, Parisians referred to it as “the tragic lamp post”’

So here’s a tip to take home this afternoon for yourselves, your partners, and for all your friends.

To add considerably to one’s general knowledge, modern-day panty liners, at least the absorbent Libra brand, are highly recommended reading for women, and for men, and for their male and female friends and associates, who have moved, or are moving, beyond the big Five O.

So there it is. GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY.

Now it’s over to Anne and Margaret and Robyn who will each speak for about 10 minutes, to allow plenty of time for questions.

As you can see, multiple copies of the book are now on sale.

Well-known writer and broadcaster, and regular columnist for The Australian newspaper, Ross Fitzgerald is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University. Author of 29 books, he is currently completing ‘A NATION UNDER THE INFLUENCE: a history of alcohol in Australia’. Ross Fitzgerald and the ex Australian model of the Year 1970, Lyndal Moor, are contributing co-editors of ‘GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY: 35 Australians reflect on life over 50’, published by ABC Books. Price $35.00. As well as Ross and Lyndal, contributors include Wayne Swan, Margaret Fink, Gerry Connolly, Susan Kurosawa, Anne Deveson, Robyn Williams, and Anne & Gerard Henderson.

Many thanks for that kind introduction Michael. In fact, I am just finishing book number 30 – a history of alcohol in Australia, entitled A Nation Under the Influence.

Just before I hopped on the plane, my wife Lyndal reminded me of a scathing review of my work written by one of mine many enemies in Queensland. This devastating attack concluded, “Ross Fitzgerald is one of Australia’s most prolific, yet least read, authors.”

The sad fact is that, in many ways, Lyndal agreed.

Yet we both hold a shy hope that our recent collection of original essays about ageing, Growing Old (Dis) Gracefully, and next year A Nation Under the Influence, also published by ABC Books, might buck the trend and be not only well-received, but actually widely read.

Just so we know where we are coming from, the title for my talk tonight is ‘PAST PRESENT FUTURE: THE NEED FOR A UNITED CONSERVATIVE FORCE IN QUEENSLAND.’

As Australia has, for the first time in many decades, a Queensland Labor politician as Prime Minister, plus another Queenslander as federal treasurer, it is timely to recall that Queensland boasted the world’s first Labor government, which was a direct result of squabbling and disunity among Queensland’s conservatives.

From December 1-7 1899, the world’s first Labor premier, Anderson Dawson fleetingly ruled the colony of Queensland.

Born ‘Andrew’ Dawson at Rockhampton on 16 July 1863, Dawson more than rivals Kevin Rudd for humble beginnings.

Orphaned at an early age, Dawson left primary school to work as a miner in Charters Towers when he was only 12. Ten years later, in 1885 Dawson went to the Kimberley gold rush in Western Australia, but had little success and returned to Queensland where he became active in the union movement and was elected first president of the Miners’ Union. In 1891 (during the great Pastoral Strike) he was chairman of the Charters Towers strike committee, and vice-president of the Queensland provincial council of the Australian Labour Federation. He then took up journalism and for a time was editor of the ‘Charters Towers Eagle’.

In 1893 Dawson was returned as a Labor candidate for the dual seat of Charters Towers in the Queensland Legislative Assembly, and retained his seat at the 1896 election and also in 1899 – by which time he was leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party in Queensland.

In the 1890s, turmoil and division in the colony’s conservative ranks – similar to the situation, which in November 2007 helped Kevin Rudd into the nation’s top job –prompted Queensland’s Lieutenant Governor to call on Dawson as leader of the opposition to form a minority government on 1 December 1899.

Seven days later, when the House again sat, the swiftly reunited conservatives regrouped and they took the government of the colony of Queensland back from Labor.

Within a week of forming a minority government, Dawson and his ministry, which included future ALP Prime Minister Andrew Fisher, was defeated on the floor of the Lower House.

Dawson’s minority government only had control of Parliament for four hours, which may be something of a record. It wasn’t much but for Labor it was a start. How does the Paul Kelly song go? – ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’. Anderson Dawson’s brief flirtation with power had given the ALP a chance to have a quick look at previous Queensland colonial government files and dig up some dirt on the conservatives.

Although the Dawson Labor government lasted only a week, it was nonetheless a vital step forward in the long march of working men and women to improve their lot and is therefore an important moment both in the history of the labour movement and of Labor politics in Australia and the world.

Anderson Dawson himself went on to other milestones.

At the beginning of 1900, Dawson resigned his leadership of the Queensland Parliamentary Labor party on account of ill health.

Nevertheless at the first election for the Australian Senate in 1901 – the year of Australia federating to become one nation – he was returned at the head of the Queensland poll. As number 1 on the Labor ticket, Dawson was the first Senator ever elected for Queensland.

In April 1904, with the parliament of Australia based in Melbourne, he became a member of Australia’s first federal Labor Government led by J.C.

(Chris) Watson – this nation’s first Labor Prime Minister. Watson’s was also a minority Government, which lasted a little over three months.

Prime minister Watson appointed Dawson Minister for Defence, and despite the fact that he had a drinking problem, which was becoming increasingly noticeable, Dawson was quite an effective minister.

But he became increasingly unpredictable and by the mid 1900s Dawson had lost Labor Party support. Standing as an Independent, he lost his Senate seat at the federal election of December 1906. By this time, due to his escalating alcoholism, he was separated from his wife and children who remained in Melbourne when he returned to Brisbane.

There are some other poignant facts about the life and death of Anderson Dawson. Dawson never knew what happened to his father but at the age of 19, even though he had been christened Andrew, he adopted his father’s first name, Anderson, for life, as homage to him.

He never knew, but I was able to uncover, that the year Dawson was first elected to Queensland parliament in 1893, his father died insane in what was then called the Woogaroo Mental Asylum, which is near the outer-Brisbane suburbs of Goodna and Wacol. So his is a tragic story.

Even more so because like his father, Dawson was an alcoholic and, as is the nature of the illness of alcoholism, as he continued to drink, he got sicker and behaved in a more eccentric and outlandish fashion. When he was dropped from the Queensland ALP senate ticket in 1906, Dawson stood as an independent. Even though he lost the election, he caused three of his Queensland Labor mates, including one who had been a member of his December 1-7 1899 Cabinet, to lose also. So in Labor circles he was, and sometimes still is, regarded as a ‘rat’.

One of the interesting facts about Dawson’s minority government is the role played in late 1899 by Queensland’s lieutenant governor, Sir Samuel Griffith. As the governor, Lord Lamington, after whom the lamington cake was named, was away in London, Griffith, a former Liberal premier and Chief Justice of Queensland, was the acting governor of Queensland at the time.

If one looks, as I have, at the confidential dispatches of the Lieutenant governor to the British secretary of state for the colonies, Joseph Chamberlain – who invented the game of snooker and was the father of Neville the Appeaser Chamberlain – it becomes apparent that Griffith appointed the minority Labor government in December 1899 as a deliberate ploy to force the warring conservatives to get their act together.

The conservatives had been in power in Queensland for such a long time in the 1880s and 1890s that they were known as “the Continuous Government”.

As often happens with such governments, they eventually started to fracture.

One group, called the Liberal Remnants, broke off, as did another group of dissidents who also withdrew support, in large part because the then conservative Premier James Dickson had offered Queensland troops as military support for the British in the Boer War, the first colonial government to do so. And this was without Dickson even consulting the Queensland parliament.

As these dissidents and Liberal Remnants decided not to take Dickson on about a matter that would be embarrassing to the Empire, they waited a few more days and then they joined Labor to vote against the premier over what on the face of it might have seemed a minor railway bill. Even though the votes were actually 32 to 33 – Dickson snuck in with the aid of another Labor rat called Denny Kehoe, who originally hailed from Galway – premier Dickson regarded it as a vote of no confidence and he went to Griffith to surrender his premiership.

In his confidential dispatches to the British secretary of state for the colonies, Sir Samuel Griffith makes it abundantly clear that what he did was a deliberate political ploy. Griffith thought that if he appointed a minority Labor government the warring conservatives would be galvanized into getting their act together against what, in correspondence, he called the ‘socialistic Laborites’.

And that is precisely what happened. As soon as Dawson’s government was appointed, the conservatives thought, “goodness me, what have we done”, and they very quickly voted out Dawson and appointed Robert Philp as Queensland premier.

In fact, even though the December 1899 Dawson government lasted a week, they were actually only in power in parliament for four hours as I mentioned earlier. This was because Philp and his followers quickly bit the bullet and took over the reins of government.

Yet, in terms of Queensland’s political history, the fact is that the December 1899 minority Dawson government paved the way for Labor to rule in its own right. In Queensland, this led, with the

radical- reformist premiers T.J. Ryan and E.G. (‘Red Ted’) Theodore initially at the helm, to the ALP governing Queensland uninterrupted from

1915 until the Labor Split in 1957, with the exception of two years during the Great Depression.

As for Dawson, after playing a pivotal part in three Labor landmarks, his life rapidly fell apart and he died a lonely, desperate death from alcoholism and an alcohol-induced coronary in Brisbane in 1910.

For years, Dawson’s grave at Brisbane’s Toowong cemetery was unkempt and dilapidated – without any mention at all of Dawson’s remarkable achievements – until in 1999 a group of Labor and unionist supporters banded together to give the world’s first Labor premier a more fitting burial site.

When my book SEVEN DAYS TO REMEMBER: The World’s First Labor Government was published by the University of Queensland Press in 1999, the British Labor government of Tony Blair purchased 200 copies and a Labor backbencher from Manchester gave a speech in the House of Commons commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first Labor government in the world.

In Queensland in December 1999, ALP premier Peter Beattie gave a passionate parliamentary address on the importance of Anderson Dawson, especially focusing on his premiership of the world’s first Labor government in 1899 ; on Dawson having been elected as Queensland’s first ever Senator in 1901; and on his ministerial role in Australia’s first federal Labor government in 1904. The Federal electoral division of Dawson is named after him.

Significantly, right from the beginning of Queensland as a separate colony in 1859 there has never been a demographic base for a strong Liberal party in the colony and later in the state.

The Liberals in Queensland, at least since Federation in 1901, have ALWAYS been the junior partner in conservative ranks.

For years, I have been arguing that the only hope that Queensland’s conservative forces have of defeating Labor in the twenty-first century is to form a single united party. I have also argued that your state National Party leader, Lawrence Springborg, who at age 21 was the youngest person to take a seat in Queensland Parliament, is far and away the most talented of the state’s conservative MPs.

First elected to the one-house Queensland Parliament in 1989, the member for Southern Downs was Queensland’s youngest cabinet minister when in 1998, aged 29, he became minister for natural resources in the government of Rob Borbidge.

Springborg is an urbane MP from the bush whom the city can readily like and relate to. Indeed, if he led a united conservative Queensland party, Lawrence Springborg could give ALP Premier Anna Bligh a real run for her money, especially if the State election is not held until next year. In part, this is because, with the conspicuous exception of Bligh herself, the Peter Beattie-less state ALP is conspicuously short on talent.

Yet even now some Queensland senators, worried about losing their positions, are putting self-interest first by opposing Springborg’s eminently sensible move.

Another obstacle, fortunately given less and less credence, is the furphy that, in the next Queensland state election due in September 2009, the state Liberals if they stand alone could win more seats than the Nationals.

Any Queensland Liberals who still think that, in the foreseeable future, they can win more state seats than the Nationals must have rocks in their heads.

For goodness sake, these dissent, stand-alone Queensland Liberals and some of their supporting apparatchiks need to be reminded that in this state the Liberals only have eight seats out of 89 in Queensland’s one-house parliament.

If Queensland does not soon have a Springborg-led united conservative party, a HUGE AND IN MY OPINION UTTERLY INSURMOUNTABLE PROBLEM facing conservatives in Queensland is the optional preferential system of voting that Beattie was able to exploit by a “Just vote 1” campaign.

Another perceived difficulty is the fact that Peter Beattie shrewdly froze the number of seats in Queensland’s one-house parliament at 89. I am aware that some commentators maintain that the current electoral redistribution means that two or three coalition seats may be lost to Labor. I must say that I remain unconvinced by this claim, which rests I would argue on an artificially inflated sense of support for Labor in Queensland, which resulted almost entirely from Opposition incompetence and division at the last Queensland state election.

In any case, somewhat balanced against this is the fact that Beattie is no longer leader of the ALP. This means that his brilliant tactic when faced with any major problem of constantly saying, “Sorry, very sorry, I will fix it” (as though the problem weren’t the making of his Labor governments) no longer applies. This quintessentially Beattie tactic is certainly not easily available to Ann Bligh who, despite her protestations to the contrary, may well call an early election some time this year.

Lawrence Springborg, who is only 40 years old, has learned a lot in the past few years in Opposition. In particular, he understands that disunity is death and that conservative forces in Queensland, and if possible in the nation as a whole, need to be swiftly welded together into one political party. As his previous championing of a single united conservative force in Queensland makes clear, he is unafraid to champion necessary but temporarily unpopular causes.

Lawrence has a number of other innovative ideas, not least of which is allowing conscience votes on a wide range of social issues and advocating the breath-testing of members of parliament. If it is good enough for the parliament to legislate for police officers, airplane pilots and train and bus drivers, why should not MPs be regularly and randomly tested for booze and other drugs?

Readers of THE AUSTRALIAN will know that I have long argued that the only hope the conservatives have of defeating the Labor government in Queensland is to form a single united party.

‘Reformist’ and ‘moderniser’ are not words usually associated with the leadership of the Queensland National Party- an organization that is often still stereotyped as representing the excesses of Johannes Bjelke-Petersen.

Yet in guiding the push to merge the state National and Liberal parties, Lawrence Springborg is proving himself to be a reformer and moderniser of non-Labor politics at a state, and with a bit of luck, at a national level as well.

Unlike the rest of Australia, as you well know, in Queensland the National Party remains the major partner in the Coalition by a ratio of two to one.

Commentators and citizens need to be reminded that the Liberals here hold a mere eight seats out of 89. Yet stubbornly, and against all the evidence, a number of Queensland Liberals keep running the line that they can gain more state seats than the Nationals.

This is absolute nonsense. As I mentioned earlier, the Queensland Liberals have never come close to ousting the Country/National Party as the major conservative party in this state. Indeed currently, Lawrence Springborg actually enjoys a greater level of support in metropolitan areas than that of any state Liberal member.

Once upon a time the Bjelke-Petersen Nationals reigned supreme in Queensland, sometimes in Coalition and sometimes not, with their grip on power seemingly entrenched. The Labor party at the time was confined to perpetual opposition; its leaders were old and tired and fighting long-standing internal battles. The infamous Queensland zonal electoral system helped keep Labor at bay, but Labor’s internal dysfunction was the root cause of its seemingly ceaseless electoral defeats.

During this period, in 1981, an ambitious union upstart called Peter Beattie became State Secretary of the ALP. As a result of federal intervention, entrenched factional warfare was gutted; the organisation reformed; and Beattie is now credited not just with his ten-year stint as Premier but also with reforming the Queensland Labor Party to ensure it was electable.

Today the shoe is on the other foot. Labor has governed Queensland for all but two of the last nineteen years, with the Nationals and Liberals seemingly trapped in perpetual opposition, often fighting outdated battles with each other instead of concentrating on a common foe. Moreover, as long as there remain two competing conservative parties, the electoral system is substantially askew in Labor’s favour.

Where once a voting system, heavily weighted in favour of Country and Far Western electorates, entrenched the Bjelke-Petersen government, now, an ‘optional preferential’ voting system allows Labor to win 66% of the seats on the back of just 47% of the vote.

Despite previous setbacks, Springborg has tenaciously pursued his aim to merge the non-Labor parties into a single conservative force. If successful, this will end the cold war between the Nationals and Liberals, at the same time as resolving seat disputes and policy differences, and preparing the groundwork to attract a better quality of candidates.

John Howard and Mark Vaile famously torpedoed Springborg’s last merger attempt. But, unlike then, the conservatives are in opposition federally and looking to the states to rebuild their tarnished and reduced electoral stocks.

Federal backing for a Queensland merger started to publicly materialize a fortnight ago when Brendan Nelson and Liberal President Alan Stockdale confirmed they had no objection to a merger in Queensland. Indeed the two went further, confirming they had been involved in, or kept abreast of, each and every development. Then this Monday it was revealed that both the federal Liberal and National Party Presidents had given their approval to the road map for unity that has resulted from months of negations between the State presidents of their respective parties – Gary Spence and Bruce McIver.

A refreshing change has followed for members of a Queensland Liberal Party, which had been widely, and justifiably, seen as factional and undemocratic.

Rank and file members now can vote themselves on whether or not to support a new merged and united conservative party.

One would think that by now the need for a single conservative party in Queensland would be a no-brainer. Yet there still remains some opposition within the ranks of the Coalition, in the main from dissident Liberals and from one or two Queensland Senators, who owe their positions to cliques and factional allegiances.

As I wrote in THE AUSTRALIAN on Wednesday, there is a chance that this weekend the Liberals may elect a new State President far from supportive of a united conservative party in this state. While the defeated former Queensland Liberal MHR and Howard Government Minister, Mal Brough, openly declared that he wanted the Queensland Presidency, to some observers it seemed that this move might have as much to do with relaunching his own political career as with fashioning a positive plan to resurrect conservative politics in Queensland.

Without detracting from Mr. Brough’s achievements, especially with regard to indigenous issues, from my perspective at least, it makes absolute sense for the new president of the Liberal National Party of Queensland to be someone known to be unambiguously committed to the merger; that is to say the current state Liberal president Garry Spence.

As I suggested on Wednesday, as Queensland Liberals gather for their annual convention they could do no better than embrace the words of their founder, Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, who wrote: ‘We were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments; in no sense reactionary.”

This coming weekend is critical for the Queensland Liberals. The only hope of defeating Labor in Queensland is for them to merge into a new, progressive, middle ground party. This would provide clear electoral momentum for conservative forces in Queensland. But if the state Liberals and the Nationals should continue to bicker and fight, there is virtually no chance of the ALP being defeated in Queensland for decades.

But in my opinion, it is crucial that, as well as maximizing urban and regional voters, the new conservative party should do as much as now can be achieved, and quickly, about protecting, for example, the dairying, the banana, and the sugar and wheat industries. With regard to the latter, given the exponentially escalating cost of fuel, I would strongly urge encouraging on a large scale, the use of new science and technology now available for organized ethanol production, as well as supporting the exploitation of Queensland’s huge shale oil deposits and in particular encouraging the swift activation of the Julia Creek Oil Shale Project.

I know that his name might not be warmly welcomed here tonight, but his active and persistent advocacy for primary industries is why, federally, the ex-National Party Independent Bob Katter keeps pulling in the votes in his vast north Queensland seat of Kennedy.

As it happens, one of my favourite quotes comes from Bob Katter senior who, until he joined the Country Party, was actually a member of the ALP – until the great Labor Split in Queensland which resulted in the conservatives coming to office in 1957 after decades of being in Opposition.

Katter senior used to recount the allegedly true story of him driving a battered old Ute, windows down, in the boondocks outside of Charters Towers, when an Aboriginal woman screamed out “PIG.” As Bob Katter senior put his head out the window and angrily responded “BITCH”, he drove smack bang into a wild boar!

True or not, the message of this story is clear – namely that, in politics, as in life, it’s easy to be misunderstood and to miss the blinding obvious.

The political obvious today is that a united conservative party in Queensland will be a force to be reckoned with.

Thank you for having me.