Jim Cairns
Encyclopedia
James Ford "J. F." Cairns (4 October 191412 October 2003), Australia
n politician, was prominent in the Labor movement through the 1960s and 1970s, and was briefly Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam
government. He is best remembered as a leader of the movement against Australian involvement in the Vietnam War
, for his affair with Junie Morosi
and for his later renunciation of conventional politics. He was also a prominent economist
, and a prolific writer on economic and social issues.
, then a working-class suburb of Melbourne
, the son of a clerk. He grew up on a dairy farm north of Sunbury
. His father went to the First World War
as a lieutenant in the Australian Imperial Forces, but became disillusioned with the war and lost his respect for Britain
. He did not return to Australia. Following the war he essentially deserted his family, and he travelled to Africa
where he committed suicide after a stay of six or seven years.
Cairns attended Sunbury State School and later Northcote High School
, where he completed his Leaving Certificate. Though life during the Depression was difficult with his mother having to work to provide for the family, and with himself having to make a three-hour daily commute by train, he was a good student, excelling academically and athletically.
Later Cairns had to abandon his studies to support his family, and in 1933 he joined the Police Force
, becoming a detective and working in the surveillance squad. While working he studied at night and completed an economics
degree at the University of Melbourne
. He was the first Victorian policeman to hold a tertiary degree. In 1939 he married Gwen Robb (died 2000), whose two sons he adopted.
In 1944, Cairns left the Police and was employed, successively as a tutor, a lecturer and a senior lecturer in economic history, at the University of Melbourne
. He was a knowledgeable economist and also a convinced socialist
. In 1946 he applied to join the Communist Party
, but was rejected. He joined the Labor Party
and became active in its left wing. The Victorian Labor Party was at this time controlled by the Catholic right-wing forces known as the "Groupers", associated with B. A. Santamaria
, and Cairns was a leading opponent of this group.
In 1955, when the federal Labor leader, Dr. H. V. Evatt
, attacked the Groupers and brought on a major split in the Labor Party, Cairns sided with Evatt. At the 1955 election
, he stood for the House of Representatives
for the working-class seat of Yarra
, held by the leading Grouper, Stan Keon
. In what is said to have been the most violent election campaign in Australian history, Cairns was elected and held Yarra until 1969
, when it was abolished at a redistribution. He then shifted to Lalor
in Melbourne's western suburbs.
, Cairns became a leader of the left. He was a highly effective debater and was soon feared and disliked by ministers in the Liberal
government of Robert Menzies
. He was also disliked by many in his own party, who saw him as an ideologue whose political views were too left-wing for the Australian electorate.
Nevertheless Cairns's abilities could not be denied. He completed his doctorate
in economic history in 1957, and by the 1960s he was among the Labor Party's leading figures. At this time he also lectured on Marxist and socialist history, and taught at free seminars for working people in Melbourne unable to afford tertiary education. He was to travel overseas for the first time including to the United States
and Asia
. These experiences had a great effect on him. In 1967, when Arthur Calwell
retired as Labor leader, Cairns contested the leadership, but was defeated by Gough Whitlam
. The following year, when Whitlam resigned as leader as part of his fight with the left-wing of the party, Cairns again contested the leadership, but again narrowly failed. Whitlam appointed him shadow minister for trade and industry.
One of the reasons Cairns did not become leader of the Labor Party was that through the late 1960s and early 1970s his main focus was not on parliamentary politics but on leading the mass movement against the Vietnam War
, to which the Menzies government had committed combat troops in 1965, and against conscription
for that war. Until about 1968, most Australians supported the war, and opposition to it was led by the Communist Party and the trade unions. After 1968, however, opposition grew, and Cairns came to see this movement as a moral crusade. In 1969 he was assault
ed by a group of men who broke into his home.
In May 1970, Cairns, as chair of the Vietnam Moratorium
, led an estimated 100,000 people in a "sit-down" demonstration in the streets of Melbourne
. This was the largest protest in Australia until it was overtaken by the anti-Iraq war protests in February 2003. Similar protests of proportionate size took place simultaneously in other Australian cities. There was none of the predicted violence, and the moral force of the (mainly young) protesters had a major effect on Australian attitudes to the war.
, Whitlam led the Labor Party into government for the first time in 23 years, and Cairns became Minister for Overseas Trade
and Minister for Secondary Industry
. He had by now shed much of his socialist ideology of earlier years, though he was still a strong believer in state planning. He got along surprisingly well with the heads of industry, although critics said this was because he was sympathetic to their requests for government assistance. After the 1974 election
, he was elected Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, defeating Lance Barnard
, and thus became Deputy Prime Minister
.
In December 1974, Whitlam appointed Cairns to the senior economic portfolio, Treasurer
. This was the high-point of Cairns's political career. On Christmas Day 1974, while Whitlam was overseas, Cyclone Tracy
devastated the city of Darwin
, and Cairns as Acting Prime Minister impressed the nation with his sympathetic and decisive leadership. It was during this period, however, that Cairns hired Junie Morosi
as his principal private secretary, and he soon began a relationship with her which would eventually help ruin his career.
Australia's economy began to decline during 1975, and Cairns (like other finance ministers around the world at this time) had few answers to the new phenomenon of stagflation
, the combination of high unemployment and high inflation that followed the 1974 oil shock
.
, tried to borrow approximately US$4 billion of petrodollars from the Middle East through an intermediary, a Pakistani banker called Tirath Khemlani (the so-called "Loans Affair
"). When the Liberal Opposition learned of this, Cairns and Connor denied to both Parliament and to Whitlam that they had given Khemlani authority to act in the name of the Australian government. When it emerged that this was untrue, Whitlam moved Cairns from Treasury to the Environment ministry.
In addition to his involvement with Khemlani, Cairns also attempted to raise overseas funds through George Harris
, a businessman and president of the Carlton Football Club
. Cairns provided Harris with written authorisation to raise A$2,000 million, offering him a 2.5% commission. Cairns denied the existence of this letter, and when it was produced he denied having signed it. On 2 July 1975, Whitlam sacked him from the ministry.
had become public, although the media at that time was still sufficiently discreet for its precise nature not to be mentioned. At the Labor Party national conference in February 1975 he gave an interview in which he confessed "a kind of love" for Morosi. Morosi considered Cairns to be sexually repressed, and evidently he found her company liberating. Cairns was not at this time directly asked if it were a sexual relationship. However, unlike other politicians of the time, he did not seek to suppress or publicly repudiate any of his private life.
In a 1982 defamation case he initiated before the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Cairns denied on oath having had a sexual relationship with Morosi. The jury in that case found that the article in question did contain "an imputation" that Cairns was "improperly involved with his assistant, Junie Morosi, in a romantic or sexual association," but that this statement was not defamatory. Cairns did not receive money for defamation, although Morosi did.
On 15 September 2002 Cairns finally admitted on ABC radio that he had a sexual relationship with Junie Morosi. In a separate interview he said that "looking back over it, it was a mistake on my part".
conference-festivals (known as Confest
s) at various rural locations, and was photographed sitting in the dust meditating. Even in the counter-culture movement, however, Cairns and Morosi remained the centre of controversy, with disputes soon arising over the organisation and finances of the Down to Earth gatherings.
In 1979 Cairns severed his formal links with the Down to Earth organisers. But he retained legally and financially embroiled with a failed communal settlement at Mount Oak, south of Canberra until, after a messy court case, he cut his losses and ended his involvement with what was left of the movement in 1991.
Cairns was subject to a great deal of media ridicule for these activities, but displayed his usual firm conviction about the rightness of his causes. In his later years he lived at Narre Warren East
near Melbourne. He sold his books outside suburban markets, where he would talk about politics, history or his life. In 2000 he was made a Life Member of the Labor Party. Cairns died of bronchial pneumonia
, aged 89, in October 2003. He was accorded a State Funeral at St John's Anglican Church in Toorak
.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n politician, was prominent in the Labor movement through the 1960s and 1970s, and was briefly Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam
Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam, AC, QC , known as Gough Whitlam , served as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia. Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party to power at the 1972 election and retained government at the 1974 election, before being dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr at the climax of the...
government. He is best remembered as a leader of the movement against Australian involvement in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, for his affair with Junie Morosi
Junie Morosi
Junie Morosi is an Australian businesswoman, who became a public figure in the 1970s through her relationship with Dr Jim Cairns, Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam Labor government...
and for his later renunciation of conventional politics. He was also a prominent economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
, and a prolific writer on economic and social issues.
Early days
James Ford Cairns was born in CarltonCarlton, Victoria
Carlton is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km north from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Melbourne...
, then a working-class suburb of Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, the son of a clerk. He grew up on a dairy farm north of Sunbury
Sunbury, Victoria
Sunbury is a regional city, located north-west of Melbourne's central business district, in the state of Victoria, Australia. Its Local Government Area is the City of Hume. At the 2006 Census, Sunbury had a population of 31,000...
. His father went to the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
as a lieutenant in the Australian Imperial Forces, but became disillusioned with the war and lost his respect for Britain
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
. He did not return to Australia. Following the war he essentially deserted his family, and he travelled to Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
where he committed suicide after a stay of six or seven years.
Cairns attended Sunbury State School and later Northcote High School
Northcote High School
Northcote High School is a co-educational, state high school in Northcote, Victoria, Australia. It is situated at the southern end of the City of Darebin, on St Georges Road.Teaching from Year 7 through 12, the school has a population of around 1,450 students...
, where he completed his Leaving Certificate. Though life during the Depression was difficult with his mother having to work to provide for the family, and with himself having to make a three-hour daily commute by train, he was a good student, excelling academically and athletically.
Later Cairns had to abandon his studies to support his family, and in 1933 he joined the Police Force
Victoria Police
Victoria Police is the primary law enforcement agency of Victoria, Australia. , the Victoria Police has over 12,190 sworn members, along with over 400 recruits, reservists and Protective Service Officers, and over 2,900 civilian staff across 393 police stations.-Early history:The Victoria Police...
, becoming a detective and working in the surveillance squad. While working he studied at night and completed an economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
degree at the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
. He was the first Victorian policeman to hold a tertiary degree. In 1939 he married Gwen Robb (died 2000), whose two sons he adopted.
In 1944, Cairns left the Police and was employed, successively as a tutor, a lecturer and a senior lecturer in economic history, at the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
. He was a knowledgeable economist and also a convinced socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. In 1946 he applied to join the Communist Party
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
, but was rejected. He joined the Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
and became active in its left wing. The Victorian Labor Party was at this time controlled by the Catholic right-wing forces known as the "Groupers", associated with B. A. Santamaria
B. A. Santamaria
Bartholomew Augustine "B. A." Santamaria, otherwise 'Bob' , was an Australian political activist and journalist and one of the most influential political figures in 20th century Australian history...
, and Cairns was a leading opponent of this group.
In 1955, when the federal Labor leader, Dr. H. V. Evatt
H. V. Evatt
Herbert Vere Evatt, QC KStJ , was an Australian jurist, politician and writer. He was President of the United Nations General Assembly in 1948–49 and helped draft the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
, attacked the Groupers and brought on a major split in the Labor Party, Cairns sided with Evatt. At the 1955 election
Australian federal election, 1955
Federal elections were held in Australia on 10 December 1955. All 122 seats in the House of Representatives, and 30 of the 60 seats in the Senate were up for election. The incumbent Liberal Party of Australia led by Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies with coalition partner the Country Party...
, he stood for the House of Representatives
Australian House of Representatives
The House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the Parliament of Australia; it is the lower house; the upper house is the Senate. Members of Parliament serve for terms of approximately three years....
for the working-class seat of Yarra
Division of Yarra
The Division of Yarra was an Australian Electoral Division in the state of Victoria. It was located in inner eastern suburban Melbourne, and was named after the Yarra River, which originally formed the eastern border of the Division, and eventually ran through it. It originally covered the suburbs...
, held by the leading Grouper, Stan Keon
Stan Keon
Standish Michael "Stan" Keon was an Australian politician who represented the Australian Labor Party in the Federal Parliament from 1949 to 1955 , and who helped establish the Democratic Labor Party.Keon won the House of Representatives seat of Yarra at the 1949 election, succeeding former...
. In what is said to have been the most violent election campaign in Australian history, Cairns was elected and held Yarra until 1969
Australian federal election, 1969
Federal elections were held in Australia on 25 October 1969. All 125 seats in the House of Representatives were up for election. The incumbent Liberal Party of Australia led by Prime Minister of Australia John Gorton with coalition partner the Country Party led by John McEwen defeated the Australian...
, when it was abolished at a redistribution. He then shifted to Lalor
Division of Lalor
The Division of Lalor is an Australian Electoral Division in the state of Victoria. It is located in the outer western suburbs of Melbourne. It includes the suburbs of Werribee, Point Cook, Laverton, Rockbank and Melton....
in Melbourne's western suburbs.
Leading left-winger
In CanberraCanberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
, Cairns became a leader of the left. He was a highly effective debater and was soon feared and disliked by ministers in the Liberal
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...
government of Robert Menzies
Robert Menzies
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, , Australian politician, was the 12th and longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia....
. He was also disliked by many in his own party, who saw him as an ideologue whose political views were too left-wing for the Australian electorate.
Nevertheless Cairns's abilities could not be denied. He completed his doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
in economic history in 1957, and by the 1960s he was among the Labor Party's leading figures. At this time he also lectured on Marxist and socialist history, and taught at free seminars for working people in Melbourne unable to afford tertiary education. He was to travel overseas for the first time including to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
. These experiences had a great effect on him. In 1967, when Arthur Calwell
Arthur Calwell
Arthur Augustus Calwell Australian politician, was a member of the Australian House of Representatives for 32 years from 1940 to 1972, Immigration Minister in the government of Ben Chifley from 1945 to 1949 and Leader of the Australian Labor Party from 1960 to 1967.-Early life:Calwell was born in...
retired as Labor leader, Cairns contested the leadership, but was defeated by Gough Whitlam
Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam, AC, QC , known as Gough Whitlam , served as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia. Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party to power at the 1972 election and retained government at the 1974 election, before being dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr at the climax of the...
. The following year, when Whitlam resigned as leader as part of his fight with the left-wing of the party, Cairns again contested the leadership, but again narrowly failed. Whitlam appointed him shadow minister for trade and industry.
One of the reasons Cairns did not become leader of the Labor Party was that through the late 1960s and early 1970s his main focus was not on parliamentary politics but on leading the mass movement against the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, to which the Menzies government had committed combat troops in 1965, and against conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
for that war. Until about 1968, most Australians supported the war, and opposition to it was led by the Communist Party and the trade unions. After 1968, however, opposition grew, and Cairns came to see this movement as a moral crusade. In 1969 he was assault
Assault
In law, assault is a crime causing a victim to fear violence. The term is often confused with battery, which involves physical contact. The specific meaning of assault varies between countries, but can refer to an act that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence, or in the more...
ed by a group of men who broke into his home.
In May 1970, Cairns, as chair of the Vietnam Moratorium
Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam
The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam was a large demonstration against the United States involvement in the Vietnam War that took place across the United States on October 15, 1969. The Moratorium developed from Jerome Grossman's April 20, 1969, call for a general strike if the war had not...
, led an estimated 100,000 people in a "sit-down" demonstration in the streets of Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
. This was the largest protest in Australia until it was overtaken by the anti-Iraq war protests in February 2003. Similar protests of proportionate size took place simultaneously in other Australian cities. There was none of the predicted violence, and the moral force of the (mainly young) protesters had a major effect on Australian attitudes to the war.
Cairns in Government
In 1972Australian federal election, 1972
Federal elections were held in Australia on 2 December 1972. All 125 seats in the House of Representatives were up for election. The Liberal Party of Australia had been in power since 1949, under Prime Minister of Australia William McMahon since March 1971 with coalition partner the Country Party...
, Whitlam led the Labor Party into government for the first time in 23 years, and Cairns became Minister for Overseas Trade
Minister for Trade (Australia)
The Australian Minister for Trade has been Dr. Craig Emerson since 14 September 2010.-Portfolio:Currently the Minister for Trade administers the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade jointly with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, although prior to 1987 there was a separate Department of Trade...
and Minister for Secondary Industry
Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (Australia)
The current Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research is Kim Carr, appointed on 3 December 2007. He administers his portfolio through the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.-List of Ministers for Industry :...
. He had by now shed much of his socialist ideology of earlier years, though he was still a strong believer in state planning. He got along surprisingly well with the heads of industry, although critics said this was because he was sympathetic to their requests for government assistance. After the 1974 election
Australian federal election, 1974
Federal elections were held in Australia on 18 May 1974. All 127 seats in the House of Representatives, and all 60 seats in the Senate were up for election, due to a double dissolution...
, he was elected Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, defeating Lance Barnard
Lance Barnard
Lance Herbert Barnard AO , Australian politician, was Deputy Prime Minister of Australia for most of the Labor government of Gough Whitlam....
, and thus became Deputy Prime Minister
Deputy Prime Minister of Australia
The Deputy Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the second-most senior officer in the Government of Australia. The Deputy Prime Ministership has been a ministerial portfolio since 1968, and the Deputy Prime Minister is appointed by the Governor-General on the advice of the Prime...
.
In December 1974, Whitlam appointed Cairns to the senior economic portfolio, Treasurer
Treasurer of Australia
The Treasurer of Australia is the minister in the Government of Australia responsible for government expenditure and revenue raising. He is the head of the Department of the Treasury. The Treasurer plays a key role in the economic policy of the government...
. This was the high-point of Cairns's political career. On Christmas Day 1974, while Whitlam was overseas, Cyclone Tracy
Cyclone Tracy
Cyclone Tracy was a tropical cyclone that devastated the city of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day, 1974...
devastated the city of Darwin
Darwin, Northern Territory
Darwin is the capital city of the Northern Territory, Australia. Situated on the Timor Sea, Darwin has a population of 127,500, making it by far the largest and most populated city in the sparsely populated Northern Territory, but the least populous of all Australia's capital cities...
, and Cairns as Acting Prime Minister impressed the nation with his sympathetic and decisive leadership. It was during this period, however, that Cairns hired Junie Morosi
Junie Morosi
Junie Morosi is an Australian businesswoman, who became a public figure in the 1970s through her relationship with Dr Jim Cairns, Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam Labor government...
as his principal private secretary, and he soon began a relationship with her which would eventually help ruin his career.
Australia's economy began to decline during 1975, and Cairns (like other finance ministers around the world at this time) had few answers to the new phenomenon of stagflation
Stagflation
In economics, stagflation is a situation in which the inflation rate is high and the economic growth rate slows down and unemployment remains steadily high...
, the combination of high unemployment and high inflation that followed the 1974 oil shock
1973 oil crisis
The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...
.
The Loans Affair
In an attempt to raise funds for a massive Keynesian pump-priming exercise, Cairns and another senior minister, Rex ConnorRex Connor
Reginald Francis Xavier "Rex" Connor , Australian politician, was a minister in the Whitlam government and promoted government investment to support national development...
, tried to borrow approximately US$4 billion of petrodollars from the Middle East through an intermediary, a Pakistani banker called Tirath Khemlani (the so-called "Loans Affair
Loans Affair
The Loans Affair, also called the Khemlani Affair, is the name given to the political scandal involving the Whitlam Government of Australia in 1975, in which it was accused of attempting to borrow money illegally from Middle Eastern countries by bypassing standard procedure as dictated by the...
"). When the Liberal Opposition learned of this, Cairns and Connor denied to both Parliament and to Whitlam that they had given Khemlani authority to act in the name of the Australian government. When it emerged that this was untrue, Whitlam moved Cairns from Treasury to the Environment ministry.
In addition to his involvement with Khemlani, Cairns also attempted to raise overseas funds through George Harris
George Harris (Carlton President)
George Harris was a President of Carlton Football Club in the Victorian Football League from 1964 to 1974 and again from 1978 to 1980. He was regarded as a highly significant figure in VFL-AFL history....
, a businessman and president of the Carlton Football Club
Carlton Football Club
The Carlton Football Club is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria. The club competes in the Australian Football League, and was one of the eight founding members of that competition in 1897...
. Cairns provided Harris with written authorisation to raise A$2,000 million, offering him a 2.5% commission. Cairns denied the existence of this letter, and when it was produced he denied having signed it. On 2 July 1975, Whitlam sacked him from the ministry.
Cairns and Morosi
By this time Cairns's relationship with Junie MorosiJunie Morosi
Junie Morosi is an Australian businesswoman, who became a public figure in the 1970s through her relationship with Dr Jim Cairns, Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam Labor government...
had become public, although the media at that time was still sufficiently discreet for its precise nature not to be mentioned. At the Labor Party national conference in February 1975 he gave an interview in which he confessed "a kind of love" for Morosi. Morosi considered Cairns to be sexually repressed, and evidently he found her company liberating. Cairns was not at this time directly asked if it were a sexual relationship. However, unlike other politicians of the time, he did not seek to suppress or publicly repudiate any of his private life.
In a 1982 defamation case he initiated before the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Cairns denied on oath having had a sexual relationship with Morosi. The jury in that case found that the article in question did contain "an imputation" that Cairns was "improperly involved with his assistant, Junie Morosi, in a romantic or sexual association," but that this statement was not defamatory. Cairns did not receive money for defamation, although Morosi did.
On 15 September 2002 Cairns finally admitted on ABC radio that he had a sexual relationship with Junie Morosi. In a separate interview he said that "looking back over it, it was a mistake on my part".
Aftermath
Cairns's Labor colleagues found his conduct in the Loans and Morosi affairs intolerable, and his political reputation was destroyed. In 1977 he retired from Parliament. He devoted the rest of his life to the counter-cultural movement, to which he had been introduced by Morosi. He sponsored a series of Down to EarthDown to Earth
- Media :* Down to Earth , an Indian science and environment magazine* Down to Earth , a 1999 non-fiction book by Tim Winton and Richard Woldendorp* Down to Earth , a 1983–1987 television series...
conference-festivals (known as Confest
Confest
ConFest is an alternative bush campout festival held in the south-eastern states of Australia at New Year and Easter. The name 'ConFest' derives from combining the words conference and festival. The festival was first held in 1976 near Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory...
s) at various rural locations, and was photographed sitting in the dust meditating. Even in the counter-culture movement, however, Cairns and Morosi remained the centre of controversy, with disputes soon arising over the organisation and finances of the Down to Earth gatherings.
In 1979 Cairns severed his formal links with the Down to Earth organisers. But he retained legally and financially embroiled with a failed communal settlement at Mount Oak, south of Canberra until, after a messy court case, he cut his losses and ended his involvement with what was left of the movement in 1991.
Cairns was subject to a great deal of media ridicule for these activities, but displayed his usual firm conviction about the rightness of his causes. In his later years he lived at Narre Warren East
Narre Warren East, Victoria
Narre Warren East is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 38 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the Shire of Yarra Ranges. At the 2006 Census, Narre Warren East had a population of 491....
near Melbourne. He sold his books outside suburban markets, where he would talk about politics, history or his life. In 2000 he was made a Life Member of the Labor Party. Cairns died of bronchial pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
, aged 89, in October 2003. He was accorded a State Funeral at St John's Anglican Church in Toorak
Toorak, Victoria
Toorak is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 5 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district located on a rise on the south side of a bend in the Yarra River. Its Local Government Area is the City of Stonnington...
.
Personal life
Cairns married Gwen Robb in 1939. He adopted Robb's two sons by her previous marriage, Barry and Phillip, when they were 4 and 5 years old respectively. Cairns claimed no religious affiliation. In a 1998 interview he said: "I have never believed myself to be anything that I can attach a name to. I wasn't a Christian. I didn't regard myself as a humanist or a socialist. I was something: what I am, and it didn't have a name".Cairns' bibliography
- Cairns, G. O. & Cairns, J. F., Australia, 1953
- Cairns, J. F., Socialism and the A.L.P., comment by Bruce McFarlane, 1963
- Cairns, J. F., Living with Asia, 1965
- Cairns, J. F., Vietnam : is it truth we want?, 1965
- Cairns, J. F., Economics and foreign policy, 1966
- Cairns, J. F., Here I stand : statements, 1966
- Cairns, J. F., Changing Australia's role in Asia, 1968
- Cairns, J. F., Australian foreign policy, 1968
- Cairns, J. F., Eagle and the lotus; western intervention in Vietnam 1847-1968, 1969
- Cairns, J. F. & Cairns M.P., Silence kills; events leading up to the Vietnam Moratorium, 8 May 1970
- Cairns, J. F., Eagle and the lotus : Western intervention in Vietnam, 1847-1971, 1971
- Cairns, J. F., Tariffs or planning? : the case for reassessment, 1971
- Cairns, J. F., Quiet revolution, 1972
- Cairns, J. F., Impossible attainment, 1974
- Cairns, J. F., Labor Party? Dr. Evatt - the Petrov affair - the Whitlam government., 1974
- Cairns, Jim, Vietnam : scorched earth reborn, 1976
- Cairns, Jim, Oil in troubled waters, 1976
- Cairns, Jim, Growth to freedom, 1979
- Cairns, Jim, Survival now: the human transformation, 1982
- Cairns, Jim, Human growth, its source and potential, 1984
- Cairns, Jim, Strength within: towards an end to violence, 1988
- Cairns, Jim, Towards a new society : a new day has begun, 1990-1993
- Cairns, Jim, Untried road, 1990
- Cairns, Jim, Reshaping the future : liberated human potential, 1996
- Cairns, Jim, On the horizon: a cultural transformation to a new consciousness, 1999
- Cairns, Jim, Liberated biological function: the source of human quality, 2001
- Cairns, Jim, New day : liberated biological human potential: the source of social reform to the good society there's no other way, 2002
- Heffernan, Jack, Socialist alternative : an A.L.P. view, foreword by J.F. Cairns, 1969
Further reading
- Dowsing, Irene (1971), Jim Cairns MHR, Acacia Press, Blackburn, Victoria. ISBN 085808-005-2
- Ormonde, Paul (1981), A Foolish Passionate Man, Penguin, Ringwood, Victoria. ISBN 014005975X
- Strangio, Paul (2002), Keeper of the Faith, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria. ISBN 0 522 85002 2