Phillip Adams (writer)

Adams played a key role in the revival of the Australian film industry during the 1970s.[1] He was the author of a 1969 report[13] which led to legislation by Prime Minister John Gorton in 1970 for an Australian Film and Television Development Corporation (later the Australian Film Commission) and the Experimental Film Fund.

Together with Barry Jones, Adams was a motivating force behind the Australian Film Television and Radio School which was established under the Whitlam government.[3] Adams played a key role in the development of the South Australian Film Corporation,[3] which was created in 1972 and became a model for similar bodies in other Australian states; and in the establishment of the Australia Council and the Australian Film Development Corporation,[3] later known as the Australian Film Commission, the Film Finance Corporation Australia, and Screen Australia. As head of delegation to the Cannes Film Festival, Adams signed Australia's first co-production agreements with France and the UK.[14] He was Chairman of the Australian Film Institute, the Film and Television Board of the Australia Council, the Australian Film Commission, and Film Australia.[15][16][17]

In the 1960s Adams co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed (as well as serving as cinematographer for) his first feature film Jack and Jill: A Postscript (1969); the first feature to win the AFI Award,[18] and the first Australian film to win the Grand Prix at an international festival.

Adams produced or co-produced other features including the critically panned but hugely popular film adaptation of Barry Humphries' The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, directed by Bruce Beresford, which became the most successful Australian film ever made up to that time. Other films include The Naked Bunyip, Don's Party, The Getting of Wisdom, Lonely Hearts, We of the Never Never, Grendel Grendel Grendel, Fighting Back, Hearts and Minds and Abra Cadabra.

Adams initially presented a late-night program on Sydney commercial radio station 2UE during the late 1980s and early 1990s before succeeding Virginia Bell in 1991 as presenter of ABC Radio National's Late Night Live, interviewing guests on a wide range of topics including politics, science, philosophy, history and culture. Late Night Live is broadcast across Australia on ABC Radio National, as well as on Radio Australia and the Internet. The program is broadcast live from 22:00 AEST/ADST and is repeated the following day at 15:00 AEST/ADST.[19] A serious discussion of world issues, the program is tempered with Adams' gentle and ironic humour.[20] Regular contributors include Bruce Shapiro[19] and Beatrix Campbell.

At times, Adams refers tongue-in-cheek to his listeners as "the listener" or "Gladys", as though he had only one listener; he also refers to listeners collectively as "Gladdies". In more recent years, Adams has begun introducing the show saying "Good evening Gladdies and Poddies", in reference to the show's growing podcast listener base.

The current theme music is the first movement of Brescianello's Violin Concerto No. 4 in E minor, Op. 1. Until March 2016 the theme was a short extract from the "Eliza Aria" from the Wild Swans Concert Suite by Elena Kats-Chernin, performed by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra with soprano Jane Sheldon, chosen in 2010. From 2007 to 2010, the theme music was Kats-Chernin's "Russian Rag", which Adams humorously refers to as "The Waltz of the Wombat". The previous music was Bach's Concerto for oboe, violin and orchestra in C minor, BWV 1060: III. Allegro.

Adams was the foundation chairman of the Commission for the Future,[19][3] established by the Hawke government to build bridges between science and the community. He chaired the National Australia Day Council;[19][3] whose principal task was to choose the Australian of the Year.

Adams was the inaugural chair for the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, established by the South Australian government, and chaired the advisory board for the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University. He has been a board member of Greenpeace, CARE Australia, the National Museum of Australia, The Australian Centre for Social Innovation, the Adelaide Festival of Ideas and Brisbane's Ideas Festival, and is an Ambassador of Bush Heritage Australia and the National Secular Lobby.[21] He was co-founder of the Australian Skeptics.[22]

Adams is the author or editor of more than 20 books, including The Unspeakable Adams, Adams Versus God, The Penguin Book of Australian Jokes, Retreat from Tolerance, Talkback and A Billion Voices, Adams Ark, and, with Lee Burton, Emperors of the Air.

Robert Manne has described Adams as "the emblematic figurehead of the pro-Labor left intelligentsia".[23] After a youth in the Australian Communist movement, Adams was for many years a member of the Australian Labor Party, and had a close relationship with every Labor leader from Gough Whitlam to Kevin Rudd, advising on public relations, advertising and policy issues. In 2010, Adams resigned from the Labor Party after fifty years of membership, dissatisfied with the removal of Rudd by Julia Gillard in the 2010 Labor leadership spill.[24] The Green Left Weekly described Adams in 2011 as "unrepentantly left-wing, although, despite the tireless 71-year-old tearing up his ALP membership card (and voting Green) in 2010, he has not completely abandoned the dead carcass of the ALP that he had lugged around for decades."[25]

In 1995 Adams argued against Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, saying that a better response to expressions of racial hatred was "public debate, not legal censure".[26]

During the tenure of the Howard government, Adams described Liberal Prime Minister John Howard as "far and away the worst prime minister in living memory".[27] In 2022, Adams Tweeted that Australian cricketer Donald Bradman was a "right wing nut job" for being critical of socialism in a letter to Malcolm Fraser following the Dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government.[28] His tweet on the subject was described as racist by one of its targets, Kamahl, and no evidence has been found to support Adams assertion about Nelson Mandela, the opposite seems to be the case.[29]

Adams was accused of using a racist and pejorative term in his response to Kamahl, a Malaysian-born Australian singer, whom Adams referred to on Twitter as an "honorary white".[30] After Kamahl had informed Adams that he had been welcomed at Bradman's home from 1988 until his death in 2001, Adams responded: ""Clearly, Kamahl, he made you an Honorary White. Whereas one of the most towering political figures of the 20th century was deemed unworthy of Bradman’s approval.”[30] Adams was referring to the unsubstantiated claims that Bradman had refused to meet Mandela due to political and racial differences, which was contrary to the well-documented respect Mandela had held for Bradman arising from Bradman's staunch opposition to the apartheid regime.[31][32][33][34]

Mandela had asked to meet Bradman during a visit to Sydney in 2000 but due to poor health Bradman was unable to leave Adelaide.[35] However, Bradman did gift a framed photograph which was presented to Mandela by actor Jack Thompson.[35] Bradman died less than six months later.[36]

When ABC managing director David Anderson was asked about Adams' tweet by Senator Ross Cadell in an Australian Senate committees hearing, Anderson said it was his understanding that Adams had privately written to Kamahl to apologise.[37] Kamahl denied this and wrote to Anderson to advise him that he had received no such correspondence from Adams.[37] According to Kamahl, the only action Adams had taken was to block him on Twitter and to double down on his original comments, adding "For the record Mr Anderson, I am not an honorary white man but a very proud black Australian man, deeply insulted by the treatment I have received from your employee and your organisation."[37]

Anderson responded by asking Kamahl to accept his "sincere apologies" as he had been advised that an apology had been sent, but had now asked Adams to convey his apologies to him directly.[37] Although Adams claimed that he had sent a handwritten note to Kamahl two weeks prior, he sent an email to Kamahl in which he wrote: “It pains me deeply that you believe I’ve been both unkind and cruel to you. This stems from a misunderstanding about ‘that tweet’ – intended as a rebuke to Bradman not to you. I regret that my words have been misunderstood and that they have caused you unhappiness".[37] Kamahl rejected the apology, describing it as "arrogant", and asked Adams to apologise publicly on Late Night Live.[38]