A giant of journalism has left us, and the nation is a poorer place.
Paul Keating called him "an old fart", but John Howard considered him a "friend" who was a "superb writer" and "elegant and whimsical wordsmith". He was "one of my mistakes," said Rupert Murdoch, "but I love him." "He was a fine writer, widely read and a major editor," Archbishop Cardinal George Pell told me this week from Rome. "He was a man who helped keep Australian society decent and make it prosper."
As these observations demonstrate, Frank Devine, who died last Friday, was one of Australia's leading newspaper journalists and all-round decent guys. His many attributes have been acknowledged by others: his editorship of The Australian, Reader's Digest, the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Post; his various roles as foreign correspondent; his appetite for long lunches and thirst for beer; his passion for cricket; his devout Catholic faith; his deep love for his family; his appreciation for stories that made him throw back his head and laugh in a riproaring and infectious manner; and his 67 excellent and timeless Quadrant essays, half of which are about to appear in Keith Windschuttle's Quadrant Books compilation under the title Older and Wiser: Essays 2002-2009.
But what I recall most is the courage Devine showed in pursuing his conservative convictions. Above all, he had the nerve to resist intellectual fads. Indeed, what leading English liberal writer William Shawcross once described as a "cheerful right-winger" was a rare breed in Australian public life.
Until the Howard years, a conservative journalist was an oxymoron. In the newsrooms and editorial offices across the nation, someone slightly right on the ideological spectrum would virtually be isolated, condemned for not conforming to the smelly orthodoxies of political correctness and regarded as something of an oddity.
To be a conservative in journalism was a bit like poor old Godwin Grech at the Treasury happy hour drinks after his infamous Senate committee testimony. Or, as Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said of being a conservative Republican in the liberal Democratic state of Massachusetts: like a cattle-rancher at a vegetarian convention.
Your conservative political insights would be treated not merely as a provocative contribution to the editorial conference, but as a flat-earther's fit of extremism. Notwithstanding The Australian's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell and like minds, that condescending mindset prevails in the newsrooms across the nation.
Thus, on border protection, if you think a tough posture towards illegal immigrants helps boost public confidence in a large-scale, non-discriminatory immigration policy, you're a "racist". On climate change, if you point out the earth's surface temperature has virtually flatlined over the past decade, you're a "denier". On the economic stimulus, if you believe marginal rate tax cuts on income and investment are the sort of fiscal policy that actually changes incentives to work and invest, you're a "neo-liberal ideologue". And on it goes.
On these and other hot button issues, Devine bucked the conventional wisdom and argued his case coherently, compellingly and in a quintessentially witty manner. He was also a big believer in the liberal anti-communist Sidney Hook's wise rule for polemicists: before you impugn someone's motives, first answer his arguments.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan once noted that, some time in the second half of the 20th century, conservatives became the dominant intellectual force in American public life. From the birth of William F. Buckley's National Review in the mid-1950s to the ascent of Reaganism in the late 1970s and through to the past decade, that assessment is undeniably true. The movement was propelled by intellectuals such as Russell Kirk and Irving Kristol, journalists such as George Will and Robert Bartley and publications such as The Public Interest and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
In Australia until relatively recently, however, none of the serious publications, with the exception of Quadrant, had the conservative philosophical heft of the American or British kind. Most of the newspapers reflected a leftist, we're-ashamed-to-be-Australian orthodoxy.
During the Keating years, this groupthink reached its apogee. On all the big political issues -- land rights, reconciliation, the republic, multiculturalism -- the big three "quality" newspapers (The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian), not to mention the arts, public broadcaster, and universities, had virtually marched in lockstep in favour of progressive causes.
On the day after the May 2000 march for Aboriginal reconciliation across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, only one columnist dissented (Frank Devine). Never mind that a majority of Australians, including the then prime minister, opposed an apology, arguing it was likely to encourage a sense of victimhood among indigenous Australians and unlikely to reverse shockingly high levels of deprivation and alienation in remote communities.
When Howard lost the Liberal party leadership 20 years ago, and with his political career seemingly over, Devine, as editor of The Australian, offered him a weekly column. The future PM found the experience "fruitful and stimulating" because it gave him clear air to "crystallise his philosophical ideas", which remain at the heart of the political struggle. But as Janet Albrechtsen revealed this week, Howard had a deal with Devine: if he'd return to the front bench, he'd have to stop writing his column. When that eventually came to pass, Devine called the new shadow minister to say: "Congratulations! You're fired!"
It is no coincidence that conservatives play a more prominent role in public debate than they did two decades ago. Much to the ire of the metropolitan sophisticates, Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair, Frank's daughter Miranda Devine, and Albrechtsen herself (whom was hired to write a replacement for Devine's weekly opinion page column in the summer of 2001-2002) are some of the most widely read and influential columnists in the nation. True, The Age has not published a weekly conservative columnist since they unwisely sacked Gerard Henderson (who retains prime real estate at the Herald and The West Australian). But the joke is on what is widely regarded as "The Guardian of the Yarra": The Age's opinion pages are so dripping wet one can't even turn them.
Still, opinion debates in Australia are more pluralistic and lively today -- and that is due in no small part to the work of the man Peter Coleman calls "the laughing cavalier of Australian journalism". Indeed, what was once said of his late friend, fellow columnist and long-time drinking comrade Paddy McGuinness could easily be said of Frank Devine: his greatest achievement is that, through the power of his writing and intelligence, he helped change the culture of Australian journalism -- for the better.
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