Zelman Cowen: A St Kilda boy who helped heal a wounded nation

AS a schoolboy, Zelman Cowen used to sit on the beach at St Kilda watching the ships sail out to sea.

AS a schoolboy, Zelman Cowen used to sit on the beach at St Kilda watching the ships sail out to sea.

"I hoped that one day I might be on one of them, bound for England and Oxford," he recalled.

The son of Jewish migrants, he knew the only way he could achieve this dream was through a Rhodes scholarship. He achieved his ambition, and much more.

Cowen was a vice-chancellor, a jurist, an internationally renowned legal academic, a chairman of Fairfax, a chairman of the British Press Council and a provost at Oriel College, Oxford, among many other roles. But he was probably best known for "healing" the office of governor-general after he was appointed in 1977. He followed John Kerr, who had sacked prime minister Gough Whitlam two years earlier, causing Australia's most significant constitutional crisis.

When Cowen was appointed governor-general by the Malcolm Fraser government, the headlines read "St Kilda to Yarralumla". But he never forgot his boyhood on the streets of inner-city Melbourne. His family experience informed many of his opinions. As recently as June 2003, he urged Australians to show more generosity towards refugees and recounted the migration pattern of his own family. His grandparents on both sides were immigrants from Belarus, then part of tsarist Russia.

"What is striking when comparing the experiences of my grandparents with present-day immigrants - whether they go by that name, or are called refugees or asylum-seekers - is the relative ease with which they were able to enter this country," he said in a speech for the Global Foundation. "For non-British migrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was generally no government assistance. But if they were European and could afford the passage, neither was there much hindrance."

At various times in his public life, which began in the 1940s, he was attacked by the Left and the Right but, as a whole, Cowen was embraced by his fellow Australians. His brilliant career was marked by two enduring themes: compassion and intellectual rigour, which he applied to most aspects of his public life.

Less is known about his private life. In his earlier years, he was notably guarded about matters closer to his heart, including his wife Anna and four children. But as he got older, he seemed more willing to share his feelings. In 1995, in an interview with The Age, he paid tribute to Anna, saying "Well, she's the most important thing of all. She's infinitely caring."

He also talked about his views on religion.

"I'm proud of my religious heritage," he said. "I find it difficult to believe that there is not some original creator. What flows from that I don't know. I try to live decently, contribute decently, not because of sanctions of heaven or hell, but because that's the right way."

Cowen had a strong commitment to the arts and used his first Australia Day address in 1978 to underline the importance of public and private support.

"I believe as Governor-General I shall have the opportunity to give encouragement to enterprises and activities which, I like to think, serve and advance the interests of the nation. I think immediately of the arts. I believe the arts bring a quality and a dimension of richness and maturity to the life of a nation."

When speaking about his favourite composer, Mozart, he said "There's a point, again and again, when you say: 'That's it!' Well, what is it? That's truth. Whatever truth is."

Cowen was born in Melbourne in 1919. From his early childhood, he was guided by his mother Sara into the law. By his own admission, Sara had "strong ambitions" for her son to go to the Bar, an ambition he shared. He was co-dux at Scotch College in Melbourne at the age of 15 and went to the University of Melbourne. At 19 years of age, he was appointed a tutor and extension lecturer in political philosophy at the university, after topping his year in every one of his subjects and completing two honours degrees in arts and law.

He described those years as "some of the great years".

"I took to it like a duck to water," he said. "I loved the freedom, the opportunity to debate anything and everything."

But when he won his Rhodes scholarship, it came in 1940 as the country was at war. He joined the Royal Australian Navy and was in Darwin in February 1942 when it was bombed by the Japanese. Later in the war he worked as a sub-lieutenant on the staff of US general Douglas MacArthur.

At the end of the war, he married Anna Wittner of Melbourne and they went to Oxford to take up his scholarship. While completing his postgraduate degrees in arts and law, Cowen also tutored. Again, he was dux, this time in Oxford's postgraduate law school in 1947. After his graduation he became a legal consultant to the British occupation army in Germany.

When he returned to the University of Melbourne in 1951 he took up the position of dean of the faculty of law and professor of public law - at the age of 31.

During the next two decades he worked in academe, based in Australian universities but frequently consulting and lecturing overseas. For most of that time he was based at Melbourne, until he became vice-chancellor at the University of New England in 1966, followed by vice-chancellor at the University of Queensland in 1970.

It was this last position that tested his management skills to the limit, coming at the height of the anti-Vietnam War protests. Cowen appeared torn between his civil libertarian leanings and imposing the discipline required for the university to function. Yet he was held in strong regard by sections of the student population, some of whom referred to him as "Super Zel".

The Vietnam issue was defused, however, with the election of the Whitlam government in 1972. But when Whitlam was sacked in 1975 and the Coalition government won office, prime minister Malcolm Fraser began searching for a candidate who would take the heat out of the governor-generalship after the bruising period under Kerr.

The announcement of Cowen's appointment was greeted enthusiastically by all, except for the Queensland premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Cowen had upset Bjelke-Petersen by taking a keen interest in a matter in which a university student alleged she was beaten by police. Cowen managed to persuade the police commissioner to hold an inquiry. Bjelke-Petersen sacked the commissioner soon after.

Cowen served as governor-general from 1977-82, an appointment which he described as "totally unexpected, but it was the greatest experience of my life".

At the end of 1979, he was chosen as Australian of the Year by this newspaper. The Australian editorialised: "Call him the Healer. Zelman Cowen has achieved in two short years what many Australians believed was impossible after the events of November 1975."

In 1982 he elected not to take another term in the office and returned to his beloved Oxford as provost of Oriel College, where he remained until 1990. During this period he took on the contentious position of chairman of the British Press Council at a time when it was pilloried as a "toothless tiger".

Following his return to Australia, he took up the chairmanship of Fairfax and continued to take part in public debates on a wide range of issues. He told the National Press Club in 1999: "My life is still filled with speeches, with memberships, patronages, chairmanships, and, as I approach my 80th birthday early in October, I report myself happily and fully employed."

Although he had earlier declared himself a constitutional monarchist, in later years he came to the view that Australia was moving towards a republic and he supported a (parliament-appointed) republic in that same speech.

"I believe that a distinctly Australian president can more effectively represent Australia to itself and to others than is possible under our system of monarchy."

Cowen is survived by his wife Anna, three sons and a daughter.

OBITUARY
Zelman Cowen, governor-general, jurist and academic, born Melbourne, October 7, 1919; died Melbourne, December 8, 2011.