The Front Page of Graham Perkin

Beside his desk in the newsroom a cartoon summed up his approach:  `When you’re up to your arse in alligators, it’s easy to forget that your main aim was to drain the swamp.’ The swamp of bitter political battles against corrupt politicians, police, and businessmen did not engulf him, but the decades of heavy smoking, a law of red meat and whisky took a toll.

Hills details the remarkable number of awards the paper won, under him, and since. Murdoch publicly scorns awards, but laughingly his minions in Australia run their own.

Another of Hills’s revelations is that Perkin’s assistant, Kathy Duffy, who joined the paper form the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, worked as a “post box” for an Australian spy in China, pretending to be his girlfriend. She denies passing on anything to her spymasters from the newspaper, but Perkin was given an ASIO file on one reporter who had resisted being drafted for Vietnam. Hills found ASIO claims not to have a file on Perkin. Hills concludes that Duffy was naïve but loyal to her boss

He also notes that three times he and two other journalists on the paper were asked to double as spies, recalling earlier times when security vetted all new staff.

Hills is interesting on the battles over endorsing political parties at election time, Perkin’s fight against capital punishment, draconian libel laws and for intellectually handicapped children.

Oddly Perkin became a close friend of the hapless Billy (`I didn’t win but I didn’t lose’) Snedden through membership of both the Savage Club and the Melbourne Cricket Club, although Perkin did reject overtures from the Melbourne Club and the Royal Melbourne Golf Club. It is unwise for editors to hobnob in such places

He had some huge blind spots.  When a small group of journalists started a house committee to try to improved newsroom conditions he was unhappy. One of his assistants rubbed it in by loudly asking whether he needed permission of the committee to change a story. He could be authoritarian, firing a sub-editor who defied him and moonlighted on a Saturday at a Sunday paper.

Some of those he sacked were re-hired. Others, such as this writer, who perhaps should have been fired, weren’t, and were later even hired back from the ghastly Sunday paper madness of Max Newton.

The cry by the neocons and economic rationalists who later took over the paper that they would destroy the culture of the Age was hard to take. But, in the end, they largely destroyed themselves.

Some blemishes and uneven writing aside, Hills has done an outstanding job of recreating the heady days of inspiring reporting. Some good investigative work continues at Perkin’s old paper, the award in his name is hugely sought after and those who worked with him are the better for it.