In the early initial discovery work over the past months; Only Human has worked with the MoAD project team to compile the most dynamic and story-rich themes to explore across the three eras defined as the structure for the exhibition.
Note: these are broad reaching and a sign of what the strongest themes and insights are coming out of the research. Given the constraints of the Press Gallery archive and the fact that - outside of the 1970s and 1980s - few living former Press Gallery journalists remain. As a result we may not be able to include material that speaks to all of these themes, and we’d like to engage in another process of consultation with the MoAD project team to decide on final themes before the production phase of “If Walls Could Talk - Inside the House of Power”.
A further consideration to note is that OH and MoAD teams have identified the themes along with the stories around ‘Gender’ and the absence of women in the press gallery seem to be pervasive across all the ‘Acts’ - the exhibition structure explained later in the workbook. The recommendation is that this specific theme could potentially run throughout each of the exhibition sections.
1. Proximity
The physical building and the style of democracy it enabled. The Press Gallery in Old Parliament House is unique among its international peers because journalists and staff were accommodated within Parliament House. This intimacy created a Press Gallery that has been described as “an organism”, it had a living breathing rhythm of its own and a symbiotic relationship with the politicians and the politics it was reporting on.
The Press Gallery was an overcrowded hive of activity sitting among the equally overcrowded offices of politicians and staff. The level of proximity and its impact emerges in every conversation in the archive as well as in conversations with Press Gallery journalists from the 1970s and 1980s. The press gallery journalists were formidable. Their job was not only to report on parliament but to find stories, to discover leaks. In a building where politicians and journalists kept such close quarters leaks were inevitable and came from everywhere.
Beyond the leaks, members of the press gallery, especially those in the early years of the Second World War, often strayed beyond reporting and became players in the political game. What’s missing from the archive material is a deeper reflection on how this intimacy shaped the fourth estate's role in Australian democracy. Every former press gallery journalist wants to tell their stories of a once-in-a-lifetime working experience. They were at the prime of their working lives and close to power. It’s clear this press gallery influenced both the parliament they were reporting on and the national debate.
When we pull all of these stories together and zoom out to look at the bigger picture, the intimacy and proximity of this working environment reveals so much about the nature of Australian democracy and the influence of the press gallery on our politics and political debate.
“I think it's always been an incestuous, symbiotic relationship between the press gallery and politicians.”
— Kate Legge, Former Press Gallery Journalist
2. TECHNOLOGY
The press gallery experienced rapid technological change. The transition from print to radio to film and then the arrival of television and satellite technologies profoundly changed both how news was produced and how the audience received news.
Throughout the decades, journalists witnessed how new technologies were changing not only how they did their daily jobs, but how technology impacted the nature of political debate, public perceptions of leadership and risks to democracy.
This deeper thinking and discussions remain as relevant today as they were in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. The late Alan ‘Red Fox’ Reid, and his comments could almost be directly applied to the rise of Donald Trump today.
- Alan Reid, Former Press Gallery Journalist
3. LEADERSHIP SPILLS
For decades, journalists have been dangerously close to the machinations of leadership spills. The archive clearly shows that most of the early Press Gallery journalists were more than reporters; they were players, part of the political game. But when and why did Press Gallery journalists become more than reporters? Were they conscious they were crossing an invisible ethical line? How did they navigate the murky and fast-moving pace of leadership challenges? How did Press Gallery journalists identify when political forces used them as pawns to help achieve a political end game? Reporting on leadership speculation and challenges is relevant but also of great consequence.
In recent years, Australia’s political coup culture has caught the attention of the world. The New York Times reported that Australian leadership challenges are a national sport. Questions about why Australia has witnessed so many leadership spills and the role of the Press Gallery in these events over time are important to understand. Insight into how power is exercised and the impacts on our democracy is captured within this exhibition theme. What has been the Press gallery’s role in leadership spills? Is the Press Gallery an impartial observer or player? Understanding when and why the lines blurred is important to understanding the fragility within Australia’s political machinery.
“If someone said they were 100% behind the leader, you immediately became suspicious.”
— Ken Begg, Former Press Gallery Journalist
4. GENDER
Women started working in the Press Gallery in 1944 yet we know very little about them. There is little recorded about these women and the nature of their work. Through the workshop process and our own external research we are yet to fully understand the professional roles of the four women shown in the photograph of the members of the Press Gallery in 1945. The consensus among former journalists is that these women were likely telex operators given the social norms of the time but further research to confirm is required.
Miss S Lambert (ABC)
Miss L Craig (Sydney Telegraph)
Miss N. Musgrave (Mirror)
Miss K Coyne (Australian United Press)
“We had people (men) who would look out for us, we knew who not to visit in their offices at night alone.”
— Niki Savva, Former Press Gallery Journalist
Our research suggests that Megan Stoyles was the first female journalist appointed to the Parliamentary Press Gallery in February 1971. Stoyles was closely followed throughout the 1970s by Michelle Grattan, Niki Savva, Gay Davidson and Kate Legge. This rise in the number of female journalists started in the early 1970s and was mirrored by an increase in female parliamentarians.
In his oral history recording Alan ‘Red Fox’ Reid observed that the women worked much harder than the men and this was reiterated in our preliminary interviews with Kate Legge, Niki Savva and Megan Stoyles.
“I arrived in the 1980s. IT was a huge revolutionary period for the press gallery. And I think also for politics, because suddenly there's this inflow of women into the parliament and the press gallery.”
— Kate Legge, Former Press Gallery Journalist
5. Censorship
The tension between journalists who want to report on information considered in the ‘public interest’ and politicians who might prefer to suppress information is an age-old struggle. But that same tension defines the health of our democracy. During the Second World War, journalist Harold Cox recounts how he persuaded Prime Minister John Curtin to reconsider the heavy censorship regime imposed by Australia’s wartime ally, the United States. Cox succeeded. Since then, censorship has taken different forms, from D-notices to an unwieldy FOI system, ‘highly classified’ documents to sweeping intelligence legislation.
- Harold Cox, Former Press Gallery Journalist
6. Media proprietors
There is a great deal of material in the MoAD archive from Press Gallery journalists in the 1930s/40s, mostly in the form of oral history transcripts. Journalists candidly describe their interactions with the newspaper proprietors including Sir Frank Packer and Keith Murdoch. The oral histories reveal the extraordinary closeness of the media proprietors to political leaders and the influence they wielded. Through their stories, we witness moments of tension when journalists had a choice to self-censor and please their proprietors or hold the line and report politics as they saw it.
A close relationship between journalists and their proprietors was evident in the early years. Joe Alexander was one of the more complex characters of the Press Gallery. The late Professor Clem Lloyd crowned him ‘the prince of the Press Gallery and Murdoch’s Canberra listening post and occasional assassin’.
Joe Alexander recalls how Keith Murdoch used to tell his staff “Good comment was acceptable and good, but hard news was a thousand times better.”
– Joe Alexander, Former Press Gallery Journalist 
"Keith Murdoch was a despot with kid gloves, pragmatic, a law unto himself."
– Joe Alexander, Former Press Gallery Journalist
Keith Murdoch claimed credit for installing Joseph Lyons as prime minister in 1931. Menzies courted Frank Packer and Eric Kennedy to obtain their blessing to create a new political party, The Liberal Party. These types of relationships have endured through times of profound technological change and to varying degrees remain intact today.
Prime Minister Robert Menzies disliked journalist Alan Reid and tried to have him sacked over a story he'd written about the defection of Russian Spy Vladimir Petrov in 1954. But Sir Frank Packer intervened and hired Alan Reid for his Sydney-based Daily Telegraph newspaper.
“Alan Ried was there solely to do Frank Packer’s work.”
— Warwick Beutler, Former Press Gallery journalist
