Jim Maloney: Australia's Orwell

A book followed in 1948 when Maloney published Inside Red Russia in which Stalin resembles Big Brother from Nineteen Eighty-Four. Maloney’s readers learnt that when gigantic portraits of Stalin were illuminated by electricity entire apartment blocks were blacked out. Maloney’s text is peppered with mendacious statements from apparatchiks lauding the USSR as "the most democratic country in the world" which belong to the political Newspeak of Nineteen Eighty-Four

Maloney’s anti-communist testimony was hardly fatal to his long-term prospects in the right-wing NSW Labor Party. He was a state government minister for over a decade until Labor was defeated in 1965.

In 1972, after having been replaced as deputy Labor leader in the upper house by the up and coming Neville Wran, Maloney abruptly resigned from state parliament. At a time when legislative councillors were elected solely by fellow parliamentarians this action effectively delivered an extra upper house seat to the Askin Liberal government. This unwelcome outcome provoked a Labor brand of Newspeak when angry party officials decreed that Maloney "had placed himself outside the party".

In 1982, when Maloney died, ill-feeling was stilled when former friends supported a motion of condolence. In what amounted to an act of rehabilitation by the NSW Labor right, future Premier Barrie Unsworth harked back to the days when Maloney had plied him with tales of past struggles.

There was certainly a lot to reminisce about. At crucial moments in his career Maloney took on two great dictatorial forces – firstly Jack Lang and then the Kremlin – and displayed the same prickly resistance that George Orwell is renowned for. It is odd but fascinating that two such comparable spirits should have sprung from such different corners of the world.