Pig City Read online

  For three weeks the possibility that three years’ work would come to nought was very real, with the caretaker minister, Peter Nixon, threatening to scotch the licences. In an extraordinary move, Beatson and Stanwell ‘sacked’ themselves from their positions, with cleanskin Ross Dannecker installed as station coordinator. This was of course a ruse, but it was hoped that by appearing to purge anyone with police records from the board, the station stood a better chance of survival in the face of the new regime.

  As it turned out, in the run-up to the general election called in the wake of Whitlam’s sacking, the coalition proved itself open to persuasion, especially with at least two of the proposed new stations situated in marginal electorates. Realising that he couldn’t very well proceed with the granting of some licences over others, Nixon indicated that Labor’s decision would stand. The union’s licence – for one kilowatt – was at last handed over.

  A new radio station had been born. The problem now was what to do with it.

  With its well-modulated tenor and rounded vowels, the voice could easily have hailed from the ABC. But the contents of its speech – betrayed by a slight but telltale quaver of nerves – spoke otherwise:

  You’re listening to 4ZZ–FM in Brisbane, bringing you stereo FM rock on a frequency of 105.7 megahertz. 4ZZ–FM is Brisbane’s first new radio station in over 30 years and first ever stereo FM station. 4ZZ–FM is not only Queensland’s first stereo FM station, it is also a public broadcasting station, non-commercial and non-ABC, a product of the Labor Government’s initiatives in the field of the media. These initiatives have created a host of new stations . . . As a result the Australian public is receiving a more diverse variety of program sources . . . To attempt to impose limitations or restrictions on public broadcasting is to seriously threaten a fundamental liberty, that of free speech. While it is easy to lapse into rhetoric in defence of free speech, we’ve been forced to make a stand and we intend to do so from the start. We see that freedom in danger of becoming hypothetical . . . With the time at three and a quarter minutes past 12, let’s get down to some serious business. From Who’s Next, this is the Who, and Won’t Get Fooled Again.4

  The late John Woods’ opening manifesto to mark the official birth of 4ZZ, while eloquently establishing the station’s raison d’être, was notable for its understatement. It resisted any temptation to make any comment on Whitlam’s sacking, a topic about which all at the new station felt passionate, and made only veiled references to the role the station hoped to play in Queensland politics. With the station’s position still very tenuous – the caretaker attorney-general, Ivor Greenwood, had already cast doubt on the legality of the station’s licence – it was thought better to let the music make the most powerful statement.

  Not all were in favour of such discretion. The tensions and contradictions inherent in a broadcaster that styled itself as a vehicle for radical change, yet relied on the goodwill of the state for its very existence, were already shaping the station in ways that would prove pivotal to its future development. From its inception, 4ZZZ/Triple Zed (as it became in February 1976, when the ABCB made the decision that all FM stations would have three-letter call signs) would explore the boundaries of public broadcasting.

  Although Triple Zed began with a full-time paid workforce of 12 – all of whom received the same necessarily meagre wage – it was taken for granted that anyone who contributed to the station had the right to a say in its operations. Being dependent primarily on the generosity of subscribers and a significant amount of volunteer labour, it was fundamental to the station’s ethos to operate as a collective. Thus while policy was thrashed out in often fiery collective meetings, day-to-day implementation and management of those policies was left to staff.

  The staff did, however, possess a negative quorum (meaning that for any decision to stand, a majority of staff had to be involved in the vote) that provided a bulwark against any collective takeover. Although the quorum was never used, the inherent power differential between staff and volunteers helped sow the seeds for the factions developing within the station. It was inevitable that Triple Zed’s founders would be protective of what they had created; equally inevitable that those desiring change would at times complain bitterly of being disadvantaged or even shut out of negotiations.

  Helen Hambling: With the benefit of hindsight, because that first group worked so closely together for such a long period of time, and achieved so much – from nothing to an operating radio station – the bonds were probably very strong, and I think in retrospect that was probably a little bit exclusionary. Not that I think that was deliberate, but when you get a strong, connected group of people, it’s probably more difficult to break into that than a more porous organisation.

  Triple Zed had been born of two primary motivations: to provide an alternative source of information in a state poorly served by a docile media, and to cater for the large number of radio listeners equally disenfranchised by the anaemic musical fare dished up by commercial AM radio. While most of the station’s founders regarded these objectives as entirely complementary, the relative proportions of airtime granted to music, news and information became the most keenly fought issue of Triple Zed’s early years. In the hothouse political environment post-Whitlam, there was also the question of just how far the station could afford to go in pursuit of its objectives.

  Jim Beatson: There were huge divisions within the station. Within the first 12 months there were very bitter arguments between the pragmatists, of which I was one, who argued that if we kept a low profile and pretended that they’d sacked me and the other left-wing troublemakers, then they would [leave us alone]. And on the other side there was the more militant faction, who we characterised as brainless, who said, ‘Oh no, you’ve got to fight them openly.’

  Stuart Matchett: I remember we had one meeting where Jim Beatson said that if you really thought what you were doing was being revolutionary, maybe you should think about not working on a radio station. If you thought the most important thing was the armed struggle in South Africa, maybe you should go to university and study medicine, be a doctor and go there. Doing interviews and playing music in Brisbane maybe wasn’t the way you were going to achieve what you were after!

  Triple Zed was the only station among Whitlam’s dozen with its own news and information service, consisting of fully accredited journalists, in addition to prominent future scribes Marian Wilkinson and Steve Gray. With two experienced broadcasters in John Woods and Bill Riner, Triple Zed boasted a professional edge lacking in its interstate peers. The first issue of the station’s subscriber journal Radio Times spelled out the newsroom’s intentions:

  Have you ever noticed how identical and predictable the commercial news services are? Are you disappointed at the way existing news services shirk their responsibilities by avoiding controversy? . . . There are numerous local pressure groups in the community who receive very little coverage in the media, and that which is given trivialises the issues and distorts their position in the political spectrum. The mass media thrives on the perpetuation of myths . . . We won’t be accepting press releases from political parties as documents of absolute truth, but will combine them with our own independent investigations.5

  This spiel was backed up by items on Aboriginal land rights and East Timor, which had just been invaded by Indonesia. Triple Zed was better placed to make feature reports than hard news: working on a shoestring, the station could hardly afford access to wire services, meaning that most bulletins were compiled simply by ‘borrowing’ reports from other agencies. But the news team quickly became adept at twisting others’ work enough to find their own angles.

  Still, given the station’s limited reach, tiny audience share and willingness to run with politically marginal issues, Triple Zed’s newsroom was at first seen as something of a novelty in political circles. One incident was to prove otherwise. Contrary to Beatson’s wish to maintain a low profile, Tripl
e Zed was about to become arguably the closest thing Queensland had to a genuine political opposition.

  In the dawn of 29 August 1976, 40 Queensland police, backed by a light aircraft, a helicopter, a customs launch and two black trackers, launched a raid on a hippie commune at Cedar Bay, south of Cooktown in far north Queensland. Shots were fired and a helicopter buzzed the surrounding rainforest as police entered the commune. The state government claimed the raid was intended to catch an escaped prisoner believed to be hiding in the commune.

  The escapee was not found, but a dozen hippies were charged with minor offences, four for drug possession and eight for vagrancy. More seriously, the commune itself was destroyed, despite the hippies’ entirely legal occupation of the land. Large and well-built huts were burnt to the ground, along with entire lots of personal possessions, including food and baby clothes. Even the surrounding fruit trees were chopped down.

  Initial police reports trumpeting the raid as a great success may have been accepted but for the fact that Steve Gray, who had been working with Stanwell as Triple Zed’s promotions coordinator, was holidaying in Cairns at the time. When a friend alerted him to the presence of newly homeless commune members who had straggled into the north’s biggest tourist town, Gray put them in touch with the station’s newsroom to give their very different account of events.

  The Cedar Bay story was tailor-made for Triple Zed. It was highly relevant to its audience: many of the station’s listeners still held dear the ideals of the hippie movement. It was also another dramatic demonstration of the Queensland Police’s contempt for civil liberties and alternative lifestyles. But the station didn’t yet have the national recognition and credibility it needed to publicise its scoop.

  The station decided to pass the story on to the ABC. When the late Andrew Olle contacted Gray to ask him to lead a film crew to Cedar Bay, the story began to take on a life of its own. The resulting report, aired nationally on the ABC’s This Day Tonight program, made Olle’s career. The experience was also something of an eye-opener for his crew:

  Steve Gray: They thought they were in bloody paradise. At least one of them had his first joint there, and the next day he didn’t want to leave! He really did think it was paradise, because there were these extraordinarily beautiful women walking around naked.

  The straights at the ABC were not the only ones exposed to a new lifestyle at Cedar Bay. Terry O’Gorman, by then a qualified solicitor, was despatched north by the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties to investigate.

  Terry O’Gorman: I met Steve Gray in Cairns, who drove me along a pretty tortuous track to as far as the road went. From there I walked along the beach in my green safari suit carrying my briefcase, to be confronted by two totally naked women who sort of materialised out of the distance. It was a combination of a hippie colony and a nudist colony, and my concession to this milieu was to sit around in my underpants for a couple of days taking witness statements.

  The Bjelke-Petersen government suddenly found itself under an unaccustomed level of national scrutiny. A growing chorus of calls for an inquiry into the raid split the state Liberal–National Party coalition. The premier tried his usual crash-through approach – declaring baldly that ‘the government would believe the police’6 – but he hadn’t counted on an old adversary, Ray Whitrod, who defied him by opening his own investigation.

  On 16 November, summonses were issued against four police officers on more than 20 charges, including arson. That same day, Whitrod held a press conference, announcing his resignation from the force. He would not be the first to query the government’s grasp of the ancient Westminster doctrine of the separation of powers:

  The government’s view seems to be that the police are just another public service department, accountable to the premier and cabinet through the police minister . . . I believe as a police commissioner I am answerable not to a person, not to the executive council, but to the law.

  Asked if he thought Queensland was becoming a police state, Whitrod simply answered, ‘I think there are signs of that development.’7

  The police were acquitted. This was unsurprising, given a conservative Cairns jury was being asked to believe the word of people whom the defence portrayed as savages. According to O’Gorman, however, the fact the prosecutions took place at all constituted ‘the first serious challenge to the law-and-order machine which Bjelke-Petersen had seen work so well in his favour at the time of the Springboks’.

  Steve Gray: I think that incident showed a lot of middle-class Queenslanders what the true nature of the Bjelke-Petersen government was. Because even though they were hippies, even though they were unmarried mothers, even though they had minor criminal records, Cedar Bay was their home. And obviously, when you get police on charges of arson, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Kenmore or Cedar Bay, that’s pretty serious in a bourgeois society.

  If Triple Zed received little credit for breaking the story, they certainly copped their share of blame for the embarrassment it caused the government. For years the station, its employees and volunteers were subject to continuous police surveillance and harassment, mainly by the so-called Special Branch, the tasks of which included compiling dossiers on known political dissenters.

  If Cedar Bay assured the future of Triple Zed’s news and information service, the educational programming that was a feature of its first months on air was not so lucky. As the recipient of an educational licence, it was a political imperative for the station to include educational content – not only to keep the masters in Canberra at bay, but also to further the station’s philosophy of granting airtime to issues rarely addressed by the mainstream media. This proved a double-edged sword. As the first alternative radio station in a politically repressive climate, everyone wanted a slice of the action.

  Helen Hambling: Brisbane had always had a thriving subculture, more so in my experience than Sydney or Melbourne or other places that are bigger and more diffuse. In Brisbane it was smaller, so people tended to know each other more. What I think Triple Zed did was it gave that subculture the capacity to communicate with itself. And there were a number of strands to that: it was a morale booster, it was an information circuit, and it allowed a lot of other things to thrive – the music and the drama and the art, as well as the politics.

  The divisions arose over exactly how information was to be presented. While Triple Zed allowed the subculture from which it had been born to ‘communicate with itself’, most of the staff had little interest in preaching only to the converted. Thus the majority favoured strip programming, meaning that news, information and education would be made to fit around a consistent, if eclectic musical format – music being considered the obvious bridge to a wider audience.

  On the other hand, the hard left (which grew out of the station’s academic roots) favoured block programming, whereby chunks of airtime were given over to special-interest shows. The collective structure of the station meant that ground had to be given.

  John Stanwell: We knew that the small number of very loud voices would not shut up if we didn’t give them slabs of time to have the megaphone. So that meant there was a schism there, in the sense that it was almost like at the end of a music program the subtle message would be ‘turn off now’. And at the end of the current affairs thing, the subtle message would be ‘turn off now’. It was never as blatant as that, but that kind of feeling was certainly around.

  The March 1976 issue of Radio Times provides a fair representation of a month’s worth of educational programs, running under the name In Depth: a series of readings from the Romantics, a China special featuring glowing interviews with Australians who had recently visited the communist territory (with accompanying music by Ravi Shankar), and a lecture titled ‘The Angel in the House: A Critique of the Idealisation of Victorian Women as a Strategy for Maintaining Oppression’.8

  March 1976 also saw the first appearance of the station logo: a large, che
erful and very bent banana, striking an Elvis-inspired pose with a microphone. The caricature was supplied by Matt Mawson, the station’s artist, who acquired something of a reputation as the Invisible Man:

  Bill Riner: Matt was like the Phantom! The legend goes that he would show up, deliver a cover for Radio Times, no one would even see him, but this thing would be sitting on the desk. I was there for two years before I even knew what Matt Mawson looked like!

  The amusing, whimsical and, most importantly, musical image presented by the station logo (which played on the colloquial representation of tropical Queensland as a state of banana benders) did not sit easily with the dour nature of the educational programs. In the May 1976 issue of Radio Times, an editorial described the station as ‘too humourless’, its political values ‘often crude and boringly presented’.9 It sent a blunt message that an on-air extension of university classes was unlikely to attract the mass minority audience the station sought.

  Jim Beatson: They didn’t know a lot about music. They wanted to have long worthy programs that appealed to a small bunch of committed people surrounded by bucketloads of Bob Dylan, because that was the only musician they knew. And we thought they were completely missing the point of what the station was about – it was supposed to be a celebration of what young people at their most idealistic and creative can be, rather than a bunch of lefties sitting around listening to lectures from people we already agreed with anyway.

  By October, In Depth had been axed. The decision was bitterly attacked in the February 1977 issue of the University of Queensland-based feminist journal Hecate. Written under the by-line of the Brisbane Women’s Media Group, the article savaged what the authors perceived to be Triple Zed’s transformation from an open-access broadcaster to an elite boys’ club, dedicated only to a ‘pseudo-philosophy of rock, rock, rock’. Clearly, a minority at the station felt that politically progressive radio and rock & roll were mutually exclusive forms.