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  John Stanwell: The excesses of the police on that night was not a huge surprise to us per se – we’d seen it plenty of times, although this was on a scale and with a ferocity that we hadn’t seen very often. But the real issue was that among the crowd, there were a large number of young students who were not particularly radical, who had never been involved in demonstrations before, and who had gone along to this one event and had the shit beaten out of them. And that just totally freaked them out. It radicalised the entire campus.

  The problem for the students was how to make themselves heard outside the confines of the university. With no support from the mainstream press (dominated, as it is today, by the state’s only broadsheet, the Courier-Mail), trying to present a genuine alternative viewpoint in Queensland was strictly an underground enterprise: even the distribution of political or religious leaflets without a permit was banned.

  A more ambitious effort to reach a wider public had been made in 1968, with the attempted establishment of an alternative newspaper, the Brisbane Line. But the bravery of the exercise wasn’t matched by the primitive resources available. Each issue needed to be individually typed, laid out with glue and paper and hand-stapled together. With most newsagencies refusing to stock them, the papers were distributed by anyone with sufficient nerve to risk arrest, a beating or both selling them on the street. The paper folded after three issues.

  The university strike lasted all week, during which time students and staff staged an occupation of the student union headquarters. With access to a printing press (used for production of the student newspaper Semper Floreat), the choice of venue was as much a pragmatic decision as an expression of solidarity. But the futility of risking continual arrest for the cause of producing leaflets was becoming obvious to all concerned.

  Along with Stanwell, it was a Semper editor, Alan Knight, who floated the idea of establishing a pirate radio station. Knight saw radio’s potential to tie the multi-hued strands of Brisbane’s youth culture and resistance movement together:

  Alan Knight: Radio allowed the whole package. It brought in music. It allowed for a certain kind of theatre. It was cheap, most radio receivers at that stage had FM on them, and it could be located somewhere relatively safe, in this case the university campus, without police interference.

  A mature-age history student, Jim Beatson, was similarly attuned to the need for a more sophisticated and less labour-intensive means of information transmission. With the week’s classes abandoned, he began looking more seriously into the feasibility of radio.

  Jim Beatson: People at progressive gatherings were very prone to saying, ‘Let’s set up a pirate radio station,’ and I largely ignored them because I thought it would be a lot harder and more complicated. But we went to see this guy who was working in either the physics or engineering department, I can’t remember which, and he told me that setting up a pirate radio station was a relatively easy thing to do. The only problem was that it was also easy to monitor illegal transmissions and then block them.

  In 1968, Beatson worked as a printer in England, where he purchased an FM radio, something that had proved redundant on his return to Australia. After some tests in mono on the ABC in the early ’60s, FM had already been dismissed by the conservative federal government as a passing fad, and one that would, moreover, surely come and go with rock & roll itself.1

  AM radio reflected this complacency. Years earlier Bob Dylan’s twin peaks of Highway 61 Revisited (released in 1965) and Blonde On Blonde (1966), closely followed by the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper (1967), had given birth to album-oriented rock; by the early ’70s this was accelerating towards the orchestrated mush of full-blown progressive rock. AM, however, was stuck in a rigid format of Top 40 singles, talkback and commercials, even as singles were being vastly outsold by the likes of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon.

  While in England, Beatson had been particularly impressed by the tones and taste of the BBC’s John Peel, the doyen of British rock broadcasting. Peel’s influence was reflected by the ABC’s Chris Winter, then hosting a weekly program called Room To Move. With Winter playing music from successful albums that no commercial broadcasters dared touch, there was an obvious gap in the market for a well-directed youth radio station.

  At 26, Beatson was slightly older than most of the other students. He was also an unusually clear thinker and a brilliant organiser.

  John Stanwell: It was Jim that said, ‘Let’s set up a real radio station, get a real radio licence.’ He was unquestionably the driving force. He understood that it was not going to be a Mickey Mouse effort; that it was about (a) getting resources, (b) building alliances, and (c) working out a way in which it could be legitimate, or at least tolerated, because it was never going to be legitimate in the conventional sense! That’s quite a shift in thinking on one level, and yet if you look back through all those things that we’d already done, it was a logical development. Others were probably thinking along similar lines, but Jim, unlike everybody else, actually thought of making it a real radio station.

  Perhaps Beatson’s real talent, though, was his detection of bigger changes in the wind that would, over the next four years, turn Australian cultural and political life on its head. Outside Queensland, the foundations were already being laid for a series of developments that would blow the field of communications wide open.

  The ultra-conservatism of Queensland’s state government in the early ’70s was not reflected nationally. After more than 20 years of conservative Liberal–Country Party coalition rule, the country was stagnating, out of step with the accelerating social changes of the era. The election of Gough Whitlam’s Labor Party to national office in December 1972 briefly captured a mood of optimism and renewal, and precipitated a vigorous period of social reforms.

  After being quietly buried in the late ’60s, the push for the introduction of FM and public broadcasting was regaining momentum. This was largely thanks to the lobbying of the Music Broadcasting Society, founded in Victoria in 1968 to agitate for the commencement of ‘fine music’ broadcasting. While its aims were radically different to those of the Queensland students (despite Beatson’s reputation as a classical buff), the overall message was the same: communities were not being adequately serviced by existing radio formats.

  Commercial stations were adamant in their opposition to public broadcasting, and their interests had been supported by the federal coalition. Also standing in the way of FM’s introduction was the fact that the international FM broadcast band (88–108 MHz) had already been given over to Australian television, the product of an ill-judged decision to expand television broadcasting in the VHF range instead of across the internationally accepted UHF spectrum.

  In 1972, prior to Whitlam’s ascension, the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) damned the potential introduction of public broadcasting licences as, in John Tebbutt’s words, a ‘waste of a frequency’2 and suggested that if FM was to be introduced, it should be on the UHF band. This would doubtless have been music to the ears of radio manufacturers, as imported FM radios with standard VHF receivers would have remained useless.

  Whitlam’s election changed the state of play. Public broadcasting was thrust onto the national agenda, and the new government was bound to a policy of media diversification (one only tepidly supported by the responsible minister, Senator Doug McLelland – Rubber Dougie, as he was sometimes known – who had initially backed the ABCB report). In early 1973 the University of Queensland Media Committee was formed to lobby for a broadcasting licence.

  Beatson virtually hand-picked a team according to individuals’ skills. Stanwell’s background was in event coordination and promotion. Marian Wilkinson – then a significant presence in the women’s movement on campus – and Alan Knight were aspiring journalists. Stuart Matchett was an arts student and music fan who, like Beatson, had spent time in England; Ross Dannecker, an engineering student, became technical adviser. Still othe
rs, including first-year student Helen Hambling, became the announcers and volunteers of the future.

  In May, Beatson flew to Canberra to discuss the possibility of being granted a licence. An offer for an educational licence similar to that already given to Adelaide University – which stipulated that music could not be played – was rejected. Fortunately by this time another senator, Jim MacLelland, had been appointed to chair a standing committee querying the wisdom of the ABCB’s earlier report. Beatson, Dannecker and Matchett prepared a submission that they later presented in Sydney.

  Jim Beatson: The three of us went down and everybody was talking about the need for small groups to have a say on air, that marginalised groups weren’t getting a voice on the radio. And at some point I got quite agitated and made this blinder of a speech, saying that it wasn’t minorities in Australia that were dissatisfied with radio in Australia, that whole majorities were dissatisfied, and as proof of that I pointed out that the biggest-selling albums of the day weren’t getting any airplay at all.

  MacLelland’s committee issued an interim report castigating the ABCB’s earlier decision. Whitlam responded swiftly, announcing an independent inquiry into public broadcasting. The inquiry, chaired by the BBC’s Sir Francis McLean, delivered its report in March 1974. It recommended both the introduction of FM broadcasting and the granting of public licences, and set out a progressive plan for the removal of television from the VHF band in order to accommodate FM radio. In November the Music Broadcasting Societies of both New South Wales and Victoria were offered the first experimental FM licences.

  While the fine-music broadcasters had won their battle, the public broadcasting war was far from over. Beatson’s committee stepped up its campaign, lobbying various Brisbane community groups – everyone from hi-fi companies to Children By Choice – impressing upon them what they stood to gain from a new radio station. Many wrote in turn to the government expressing their support. With Whitlam’s government already staggering, the committee also lobbied directly, paying a visit to Bill Hayden’s electorate office in Ipswich.

  Jim Beatson: Hayden at that stage was the treasurer, and we popped into his office – a number of us had known him for many years – saying, ‘Bill, things aren’t looking good for Labor, quick, hand out the licence before you get the arse.’ We didn’t think they’d get dismissed; we just thought they’d get beaten at the polls. There was no doubt that if [Sir John] Kerr hadn’t sacked Whitlam, he would have gone to the next election and been savagely defeated.

  The first breakthrough came in early 1975, with the university granted a trial stereo FM broadcast, coinciding with the campus’ orientation week in February. Ross Dannecker (whose technical know-how had been vital in impressing MacLelland’s committee) constructed a one-kilowatt transmitter and antenna, while various electronic companies loaned the necessary sound equipment. Over orientation week, the new station went to air for 20 hours, working under the call sign of 4ZZ–FM.

  The experiment proved the group’s capacity to run a radio station, but with Whitlam’s government in terminal disarray, Canberra was in no rush to hand out broadcasting licences to universities. It was not until Whitlam replaced Doug McLelland with the left-leaning Moss Cass, backed by Whitlam confidant Jim Spiegleman as his head of department, that there were serious moves towards resolving the issue. When the government set up a committee for the establishment of public broadcasting, Beatson was invited to join.

  Jim Beatson: I was rung up and asked if I was interested in being on a government committee. I said, ‘Oh yeah?’ and they said, ‘Well, we’ll fly you down and have a car pick you up, what’s your home address?’ And it was a chauffeur-driven white Mercedes-Benz. I was picked up and dropped on a plane and taken to one of those expensive restaurants in Sydney, and told I would be very welcome, and I thought, ‘What have I done?’ Of course, later on I realised that I was the token radical. I said to them, ‘I only want to be on the committee if I can still wear my jeans and a denim jacket, I don’t want to compromise,’ and they said, ‘Oh, we only want you if you’re going to wear denim.’ I didn’t realise that that was my role, to look good to the left while Whitlam was still there!

  Anyway, I employed Helen Hambling to manage the station project while I was in Sydney, and the first thing I did when I arrived was I went and had a look at our file. And on the desk was a letter that I’d written to Cass saying, in a very polite way, get on with it and hand out the licence, please. And it just said in the margin, ‘Jim,’ meaning Spiegleman, ‘this group of people seem great, why don’t we get them a licence as quickly as possible, what can you do? Moss.’ So I knew then we were certain to get a licence.

  Plans were made for 4ZZ–FM to go to air permanently on 1 December. Assisted by the student union, a 10-kilowatt transmitter and antenna were purchased.

  By this stage, of course, Whitlam was doomed. The Malcolm Fraser-led opposition may not have been quite as conservative as Bjelke-Petersen’s state regime, but neither was it likely to be sympathetic to a group of leftist radicals from the Deep North, most of whom had police records. To get the licence in time was clearly going to involve making compromises that went beyond the merely sartorial.

  John Tebbutt writes that most of the participants in the McLean inquiry recognised the oppositional nature of public broadcasting, and many (including Beatson) saw the medium as an opportunity to continue the program of social change begun in the ’60s. Unexpectedly, it was Trevor Jarvie of the New South Wales Music Broadcasting Society who stated the case most boldly: ‘I think it is plain that we are discussing an alternative version of human society.’

  But the Department of the Media understood this in more prosaic terms, suggesting that what the delegations were really asking for was to be included in Australian society, not to revolutionise it. As Tebbutt says, ‘The very fact of having to negotiate with the state for acceptance demands compromise from movements aimed at securing structural change.’3

  John Stanwell: Once you realise that you’re talking about a successful, tolerated, legal medium, then you’re talking about a mass minority audience. You’re not talking about a megaphone; you’re not talking about a worthy thing in someone’s car boot that’s not being distributed. You’re actually talking about using the tools of the mainstream with full knowledge that that was going to lead to compromises.

  But for some of the more starry-eyed on campus, any such ideological betrayal was anathema. The committee soon began to fragment into factions divided between the pragmatists, led by Beatson and Stanwell, and the more doctrinaire radicals determined not to sell out what they saw as the coming revolution.

  In August a second experimental broadcast was conducted, this time from the Park Royal Motor Inn in the city, which was hosting a hi-fi show. The station was assisted by Bill Riner, an American émigré and broadcaster then working for easy-listening AM station 4KQ. Riner was at first regarded with suspicion in some quarters, coming as he did from ‘the heart of the beast’, as Stanwell puts it. But he quickly proved his worth.

  Bill Riner: I had some skills that I thought I could help people with, so in the lead-up to the station going on air, I did some production workshops, told people how to splice and odds and ends, and how to get by with only a little bit of equipment . . . I had a burning desire to work in FM radio. Sonically, it was an amazing challenge. I was into sound as art and making radio as art, and that was another thing that was very appealing. It was really just about being a part of something, and the longer I stayed there, it was more and more apparent that I was involved in something of great significance.

  With the opening date approaching, there remained the task of building a real studio within the student union offices. In a remarkable piece of DIY enterprise, this was accomplished from scratch not by contracted builders, but by staff and volunteers, led by architecture student Kevin Hayes. (This led to occasional hiccups in planning: after knocking down walls upstai
rs, it became apparent that the weight of equipment to be moved in posed a serious safety hazard to those below. The red-faced group asked to move down to the basement instead.) They were joined by the bearish figure of John Woods, the station’s first full-time radio pro. Arriving in new clothes, Cuban heels, and nursing a bad hangover, he was pressed straight into bricklaying.

  As the government lurched towards the constitutional crisis that sealed its fate, a decision was made. Whitlam announced that 12 experimental licences would be handed out to tertiary campuses, 11 of which were to be given to university administrations, the last to the University of Queensland’s Student Union. In order to push the licences through, Cass had relied on the subterfuge of classifying the stations as ‘educational’. But the licence, against all prior agreements, allowed for only low-power transmission. Worse, the already purchased 10-kilowatt transmitter, which was being imported from the US, had been ‘lost’ on a New York wharf, an event about which Beatson still harbours suspicions.

  Jim Beatson: We’d sworn that we would never go to air without a full licence. But it was clear Whitlam was in deep trouble, and the government was going to come to an end one way or another very soon. And given that the transmitter was lost, we decided to go to air on low power. It was a decision that we were very reluctant to make. The licence still hadn’t even been issued at the point when we announced we were going to begin broadcasting.

  The story of the governor-general’s dismissal of the Whitlam government on 11 November 1975 (and the significant role the Queensland premier played in engineering the coup, leading Whitlam to famously decry Bjelke-Petersen as a ‘Bible-bashing bastard’) has been told elsewhere. Suffice to say that with the licences signed but not yet sealed and delivered, it caused panic at the new station. The opening date was pushed back until 8 December.

  Jim Beatson: The general manager of the PBAA [Public Broadcasting Association of Australia] was then working for the minister in Canberra. He rang me and said, ‘Look, I’ve just been in the minister’s office and all your group’s police records are sitting on the minister’s desk. I just thought I’d let you know that they’re taking a very close look at you.’