Journalist exposed Australia’s involvement in Vietnam War
Of all the many accolades paid to Evan Whitton, who has died aged 90, he seemed to take most pleasure from that offered by a corrupt senior policeman. It followed Whitton’s work with Bertram Wainer to expose police involvement in the illegal abortion industry. The revelation, in 1969, ultimately led to the decriminalisation of abortion.
Whitton’s accolade came from Inspector Jack Ford, of the Victorian police, after he read a story in Melbourne’s Truth newspaper. Asked, in conversation with a gynaecologist’s receptionist what the story said, Ford exploded: ‘‘ ‘We paid off the cops, by Evan Whitton’, f...ing mongrel bastard.’’ A taped recording of the conversation was played in court.
Whitton liked recounting this story. He could tell other important stories, such as how Australia got into the Vietnam War. The Menzies government said South Vietnam had requested Australian help. Whitton demonstrated in The National Times in 1975 that Australia had lobbied the United States and asked South Vietnam to formally request Australia to join in.
He could tell how his work with Noela Mcmahon, who was to become his wife, had helped free Rupert Maxwell Stuart, an indigenous man wrongly convicted of raping and murdering a girl of 9. And he could speak of the Fitzgerald inquiry into police and political corruption in Joh Bjelke Petersen’s Queensland, as ‘‘the biggest and most important story I ever worked on, the experience of a career’’.
Whitton won five national media awards for groundbreaking journalism, and the Graham Perkin Australian journalist of the year award in 1983 for ‘‘courage and innovation’’ in reporting for the Sydney Morning Herald on the Street royal commission. This examined allegations that chief magistrate Murray Farquhar had tried to influence a court case against rugby league boss Kevin Humphreys and that New South Wales premier Neville Wran may have influenced Farquhar. Wran was cleared, Farquhar jailed and Humphreys convicted.
He wrote about the hanging of Ronald Ryan, the last such execution in Australia, before receiving a letter from the dead man and another, later, from the hangman, criticising his report. He wrote, perhaps for light relief, about sport, particularly rugby.
Evan Whitton’s father, Thomas Evan Whitton, was a professional footrunner who went to World War I at 23, was wounded and had both legs amputated. A padre was called. ‘‘Bugger the padre,’’ he said. ‘‘I won’t see him.’’ He lived another 50 years.
He married a nurse, Bernice Collopy, and ran a newspaper in Muswellbrook, where Evan Morn Whitton was born. Aged about 8, he was buying bread when Noela Mcmahon cycled past. She smiled. It was the start of a
His father was a professional footrunner, who had both legs amputated in World War I. A padre was called. ‘‘Bugger the padre,’’ he said. ‘‘I won’t see him.’’ He lived another 50 years.
story as big as some of those about which he wrote.
They stayed in touch as teenagers, and as young adults, but Noela thought he had lost interest. She married a war veteran and had four children. Whitton married Irene Wilkes and had three children.
He became a journalist at the Toowoomba Chronicle before moving to Truth in 1966. When his marriage and Noela’s both ended, they moved in together and he joined The Sunday Australian in 1971. Together they investigated the Stuart case. She interviewed Stuart in jail, but neither the Australian nor Truth, both Rupert Murdoch papers, was interested. They took it to The Digger, an alternative journal whose front-page report aroused national interest, and Stuart was freed in 1973. As an elder of his tribe, Stuart formally welcomed the Queen to Alice Springs in 2000.
At the National Times, Whitton produced acclaimed post-mortems on various topics, including Vietnam. In 1975, after about a year’s research, he produced 26,000 words on Vietnam in three articles. He began writing in February and published in the last week of April, a day before the last Americans left Saigon.
Next day’s Fairfax board meeting began with the Times story. Chairman Sir Warwick Fairfax said Whitton’s approach was dishonest and ‘‘typically communistic’’, and he could not remain as assistant editor. He stayed, and later edited the paper.
He became the Herald’s European correspondent in 1984. He and Noela finally wed, at the Australian embassy in Paris, with Gough Whitlam as best man and Whitlam’s wife, Margaret, as matron of honour.
He became a reader in journalism at the University of Queensland and wrote for Justinian, the online legal journal, until May. Much of his recent work was an attack on the adversarial Anglo-australian legal system which, he argued, did not seek truth and justice but kept criminals out of jail and lawyers rich. He preferred the European inquisitorial system.
He is survived by Noela, their seven children, seven grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren. –