THE heart of the issues around the most powerful local story of 1994 — the assassination of Labor MP John Newman — was best captured by The Australian’s cartoonist Peter Nicholson.
1994
Labor MP John Newman assassinated
It wasn’t just that the NSW lower house member, who campaigned against the ethnic gangs preying on his electorate’s Vietnamese community, was murdered in shocking circumstances because of his wish to challenge the area’s organised crime. Neither was it that Newman’s death followed 17 years after the almost identical elimination of the one-time Liberal Party candidate Donald Mackay who had been trying to cleanse Griffith of its cancerous Italian Mafia connections.
It was that so many Australians were prepared to turn a blind eye to corruption, threats and standover tactics in communities that they felt were removed from them. Both Mackay and Newman saw their communities as one — and to be protected and supported by the authorities notwithstanding their ethnicity.
Nicholson’s cartoon depicted a small family approaching the headstone of Newman, having just passed that of Mackay. A speech bubble records the father saying: “Strange how the age of innocence keeps ending, but not the age of complacency.”
It was a landmark news event for The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Paul Kelly. “We felt a dark threshold had been crossed,” he remembers. “Australian politics has always been very tough and very robust, but assassination has not been part of it.”
The newspaper's editorial described Newman's death as "one of the most shocking crimes in our history".
The newspaper’s editorial described Newman’s death as “one of the most shocking crimes in our history”. “The Newman case appears to equate more with the 1977 murder of Donald Mackay, another NSW community leader who campaigned against organised crime,” it read. “Australia’s leaders need to address the intimidation and ruthlessness apparent in these cases. It has to be made plain that this country will not accept violent breaches of the tradition of free and fearless political debate.”
It was seven years before anyone was convicted and jailed for the Newman murder. It had taken nine years before anyone was convicted over Mackay’s death. In both cases it’s likely other guilty men with a deep knowledge of the contract killings still walk free.
Republic
The Australian has always supported the republican movement, which gained support from an unlikely quarter on Australia Day 1994. Prince Charles, speaking at a reception at Sydney’s Darling Harbour, said he was not surprised some Australians wanted change and “perhaps they are right”. “Personally, I happen to think that it is the sign of a mature and self-confident nation to debate those issues and to use the democratic process to re-examine the way in which you want to face the future,” he said in the first such comment by a royal.
It’s not a day Charles will forget: just before the speech 23-year-old David Kang, wishing to protest about the treatment of detained Cambodian boatpeople, charged the stage brandishing a starter pistol, firing twice in the prince’s direction. Kang was wrestled to the ground by dignitaries including then NSW premier John Fahey. It had not been an assassination attempt and the fortunate Kang was found guilty only of threatening unlawful violence. He was sentenced to 500 hours’ community service.
The last man to attack a royal in Australia had been the Irish protester Henry James O’Farrell, who shot Prince Alfred in March 1868 at Clontarf. O’Farrell was hanged within six weeks.
Richard Nixon
Nixon dies
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former US president Richard Nixon.
Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, wrote a striking obituary in April for his old boss. The pair’s achievements had rendered Cold War politics redundant. “There was no true Nixon: several warring personalities struggled for pre-eminence in the same individual,” wrote Kissinger. “One was idealistic, thoughtful, generous; another was vindictive, petty, emotional.” It was as if the Watergate break-in, the damaging lies told about it, and Nixon’s resignation were predetermined. “The constant undercurrent of his life had been the premonition of catastrophe, which seemed to obsess him in direct proportion to his inability to define it,” observed Kissinger.
Writing on the same page that day was a keen student of US politics, Bob Carr, who would be NSW premier within a year. Carr said that the collaboration between Kissinger and Nixon resulted in China’s admission to the world community “and, thereby, a period of triangular diplomacy”. “This multi-polar world saw a network of co-operation replacing stand-off hostility between Washington and Moscow,” he wrote. “Fundamentally, Nixon’s diplomacy made the world a safer place.”
Bill Mitchell
The Australian lost its richly gifted political cartoonist Bill Mitchell who died the next month, a man described by Kelly as “fundamental to the success of the paper”. He’d been lured from the west by News’s then chairman and chief executive, Ken Cowley, joining The Australian in 1980.
His Bustards of the Bush series, in which Australian bush animals speaking Strine would make penetrating observations about the issues of the day, were loved across the nation. When it seemed that leukemia was about to claim him The Australian instituted the Bill Mitchell Award for young artists, assuming that it would be given by another cartoonist. But he lived to hand out the first, saying: “This was meant to be the Bill Mitchell memorial award.”
The newspaper turned 30 in July, publishing a 32-page commemorative edition with The Weekend Australian. The paper sold out, with a circulation of 375,000.
Prince Charles
David Kang charged the stage with a starter pistol, firing twice towards Prince Charles.
Oscars
At the 66th Academy Awards the Steven Spielberg filmed based on Thomas Keneally’s Booker-winning historical novel Schindler’s Ark won seven Oscars, including best picture. And The Piano — an independently produced Australian film — took on the might of Hollywood and came away with Oscars for best actress (Holly Hunter), best original screenplay (Jane Campion) and best supporting actress (11-year-old Anna Paquin).
Alexander Downer
The sudden resignation of John Dawkins from the Keating government saw former West Australian premier Carmen Lawrence run for the seat of Fremantle in the subsequent by-election. Struggling Liberal leader John Hewson told the voters of Fremantle to “send a message to Paul Keating”, but they sent one to the opposition leader instead with an unlikely swing to Labor. The Liberals had experimented with Hewson, but the outwardly cold leader never won over the electorate, and Keating often speared him at question time.
Alexander Downer
Alexander Downer challenged John Hewson for the Liberal leadership and won.
Alexander Downer joined with Peter Costello for a youthful “dream ticket”, challenging for the leadership and winning 43-36. When Downer had run for the deputy’s position a little more than a year earlier, he had attracted just three votes, one of which was presumably his own.
“The party wasn’t ready to go back to Howard at that point,” Kelly recalls. “The party wanted to stick with the new generation and it was a Downer-Costello ticket. It wasn’t just Downer.”
New Liberal backbencher Tony Abbott, who not long before had been a journalist on The Australian, wrote in the newspaper that in the end “Hewson learned the hard way that politics is about people’s hopes and fears — not just cool judgments about the national interest”.
Kelly disagrees: “Politics is about both. Politics is about cool judgments of the national interests on the one hand, but it’s also an emotional project in hopes and fears. The successful politician has got to be able to operate at both levels.”
That September, Downer, speaking to NSW Liberals about the Coalition’s domestic violence policy, playfully abstracted the Liberals’ new slogan “The Things That Matter” saying abusive husbands might see it as “The Things That Batter”. The room fell silent at the extraordinary misjudgment. It was not his first. Wheels already turning in the Liberal Party’s backroom rotated a little faster and by mid-November The Australian’s Page 1 headline read: “Downer pleads for time in leadership fight”.
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - trailer2:37
Two drag queens and a transsexual travel across the desert to perform their unique style of cabaret.
Skase chase
The bid to retrieve fugitive businessman Christopher Skase from Spain, where he’d fled from debtors in the early 90s, is intensifies and the media hordes descend on Majorca. Of course we are among them, Europe correspondent Helen Trinca offering up a crash course in “The art of Skase watching”. Skase dies in Majorca in 2001.
Reckonings
Back home, former WA premier Brian Burke faces the music in the wake of the WA Inc royal commission, serving 7 months of a two-year jail term for rorting travel expenses. Businessman Laurie Connell, pictured right, serves one year for conspiring to pervert the course of justice, while former Coles Myer boss Brian Quinn faces a $4.8m fraud charge.
Ring of fire
“Sydney’s heart ablaze” is the headline on January 8 as the most widespread bushfires in 200 years surround our largest city. By the time the fire emergency is over mid-month, four people will be dead, more than 800,000 hectares of NSW bushland burnt out and more than 200 homes destroyed.
Dancing Queens I
Give us lashings of lycra and a truckload of sequins, and we’ll give you an Aussie film phenomenon – or three. Snapping at the sparkly heels of 1992’s Strictly Ballroom are the all-singing, all-dancing hits Muriel’s Wedding and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Life really is a box of chocolates, as this year’s Oscar winner Forrest Gump would say.
Dancing Queens II
US figure skating overachiever Tonya Harding becomes a household name after her ex orders an assault on fellow Olympian Nancy Kerrigan, who is hit on the leg with a baton after a practice session in Detroit. Harding pleads guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution, is fined and banned from the sport.
Cathy’s Colours
After winning gold in both the sprint and the 400m at the Commonwealth Games in Canada, young Cathy Freeman ignites controversy when she carries the Aboriginal flag on her lap of honour. The following year, PM Paul Keating announces that the red, yellow and black flag will become official alongside the blue ensign.
The journey begins...
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Hold the front page ...
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JOHN Hewson flubs his chances in the ‘unlosable’ election, but Shane Warne doesn’t miss any in the Ashes.
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JOHN Newman’s assassination rang a bell, and Henry Kissinger pulled no punches in his Nixon obituary.
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The republic can wait
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Sorry before the Games
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He shall not be moved
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Scene set for a knockout
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Suddenly, Julia steps in
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The nastiest deluge of all
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It’s the whole dam truth
QUEENSLAND’S political landscape is transformed, and we farewell two doughty Australian women.
Clash course in politics
THREE PMs starred in our longest election year.
The next half century beckons
WHATEVER the future of curated news, The Australian is determined to build on its achievements.
