AUSTRALIA entered 1988 in party mood. On January 26, 200 years after the arrival of the First Fleet, the nation celebrated its bicentenary in a sunny spectacle focused on where it all began — Sydney Harbour.
1988
Celebration of a nation
The central theme of celebrations revolved around Australia being a young, can-do nation of independent-minded people who took pride in their achievements while demonstrating a capacity and will to achieve more.
Yet the messages were mixed. Presiding over this pride and achievements were the Queen and Prince Charles — our present and future monarchs. We accepted that our past was British, but we asked if our future should or would be as well. It is fair to say that the seeds of the republican movement that was to flower — and be cut down — in the 1990s were strewn in the wake of the Bicentennial as people celebrated the past and contemplated the future.
Aboriginal past
And not only that: as two million people gathered around Sydney’s foreshores, and millions more gathered around countless backyard barbecues, celebrations were disturbed by conscience. By our coming to this land we had brought havoc to the indigenous way of life without so much as a “thank you” or a “sorry”.
1988: Australia celebrates its bicentennary0:29
Marking 200 years since the First Fleet arrived, boats took to Sydney's harbour to celebrate the milestone.
The Aboriginal story was largely airbrushed from the 1988 celebrations. The Hawke government refused to fund a First Fleet re-enactment for fear the sight of another “invasion fleet” coming through the Heads would create indigenous unrest. A re-enactment went ahead, privately organised, while 40,000 Aborigines and supporters marched towards the harbour from Redfern, merging with harbourside crowds with warmth rather than confrontation. It was a defining moment in the journey towards reconciliation.
The Aboriginal story was largely airbrushed from the 1988 celebrations.
John Moses, writing in The Australian on January 27, commented that most references to the First Australians in many of the official speeches were “a little oblique”. But Prince Charles went to the nub of the issue, gently urging Australians to examine their consciences.
“If they (indigenous people) should say their predicament has not yet ended,” he said, “it would be hard to know the answer, beyond suggesting that a country free enough to examine its own conscience is a land worth living in; a nation to be envied.”
Aborigines protest
40,000 Aborigines and supporters marched towards the harbour from Redfern, merging with harbourside crowds with warmth rather than confrontation.
Celebrations
Apart from these underlying and largely unspoken themes, the Bicentennial was a time for fun. In Brisbane, gearing up for its long-running expo, there were cane-toad jumping, cow-pat throwing and thong throwing contests, prompting Moses to observe, “the thong has ended but the malady lives on”.
While visiting Australia for the celebrations the Queen opened the new Parliament House, built at a cost of $1.4 billion — a huge sum in 1988 dollars. Bill Hayden, the former Labor leader ruthlessly deposed by Bob Hawke before the 1983 election, was compensated by being named to succeed Ninian Stephen as Australia’s next governor-general. Once an avowed republican, he became a loyal servant of Her Majesty during his term in Yarralumla from early 1989 to 1996.
Political rumblings
Meanwhile the first hints of disunity in the hitherto remarkably successful political duo of Hawke and his treasurer, Paul Keating, were being seen. National political correspondent Paul Kelly reported that Keating was considering leaving politics, having been rebuffed after raising the question of his succession to the leadership. Kelly wrote: “The government is facing a crisis, the extent of which is slowly unfolding.” It would unfold for a further three years before Keating rolled Hawke.
Other events in 1988 included the launch of the soapie Home and Away, which is still on air; the resignation of Brian Burke as West Australian premier after a series of WA Inc scandals, the collapse of Laurie Connell’s merchant bank Rothwells, leaving the WA government with a $100 million bill; the death of former PM Billy McMahon at 80; and the release of the $2 coin. The controversial monorail opened in Sydney, Nick Greiner beat Barrie Unsworth to take government in NSW; the Fitzgerald inquiry continued to uncover evidence of corruption in Queensland, and Michael and Lindy Chamberlain had their convictions quashed in the Northern Territory Supreme Court.
The British spy Kim Philby died in Moscow in May and the following month the up-and-coming Australian politician Malcolm Turnbull successfully defended the right of former MI5 operative Peter Wright to publish his memoirs. The Spycatcher case, in which Turnbull ridiculed the British establishment, polished his credentials to become leader of the republican movement.
Internationally, world leaders condemned Saddam Hussein for gassing and killing hundreds of Kurds in northern Iraq. Tensions in the region increased as the US sank six Iranian ships in a Persian Gulf battle and mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner, killing 290. In Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev announced democratic reforms and the Soviets began their withdrawal from Afghanistan like others before them and after them — beaten. George HW Bush won the White House after eight years of Ronald Reagan and 270 died when a bomb exploded in a jumbo jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie — an act of terrorism traced to the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Media changes
The Australian media went through a period of reorganisation following News Limited’s 1987 purchase of the Herald and Weekly Times. Warwick Fairfax Jr, now the sole proprietor of his family company, Fairfax, was forced to cut costs and close the loss-making Times on Sunday and the Sydney Sun. This handed victory in the long-running war with The Daily Mirror to Rupert Murdoch and ended one of the fiercest newspaper battles in the world. Murdoch was delighted with his triumph but not so impressed with the performance of the Melbourne Herald. Once selling 550,000 copies a day, its sales had slumped to 220,000 and it was losing $15m a year in a costly attempt to revitalise it.
News Corp’s international expansion continued in 1988 when Murdoch paid $3bn for TV Guide, the US publication that sold 17 million copies a week. It was seen as a glittering prize but it was soon apparent Murdoch had not only grossly overpaid, but computer and television technology was starting to converge — the beginning of the end of the age of printed guides to TV programming.
Nevertheless Murdoch ploughed ahead with a massive and costly expansion of his printing facilities on three continents, placing orders for colour presses worth $880m. Debt was rising and while Murdoch was sanguine about his ability to service it, others began to worry.
New guard
In September 1988, Les Hollings retired as editor-in-chief of The Australian after two stints totalling 11 years at the helm. News Limited chief executive Ken Cowley said: “Les’s editorship resembles our early explorers’ feats. He set out on a journalistic adventure determined to establish The Australian in the big and small communities across this vast continent. His passion and commitment to his newspaper and his country played an important role in building the national spirit that has finally started to bloom.”
Alan Farrelly, who had become editor under Hollings, left the chair and Frank Devine, a former editor of the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Post, took over. Devine was an erudite man, a contemporary of Sydney’s raffish and slightly bohemian literary set that included noted journalists Richard Hughes, Francis James and Cyril Pearl.
He concentrated on improving the quality of writing but confessed to creating tensions with management by trying to reorganise the editors’ responsibilities to reflect the American system, which gives the editor ultimate power over all aspects of the product — including advertising content and placement.
Devine presided over the launch of the weekend colour magazine, helping to boost sales by more than 20,000 a week.
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