46 Facts About Jim Cairns

James Ford Cairns was an Australian politician who was prominent in the Labor movement through the 1960s and 1970s, and was briefly Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam government.

Jim Cairns is best remembered as a leader of the movement against Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, for his affair with Junie Morosi and for his later renunciation of conventional politics.

Jim Cairns was an economist, and a prolific writer on economic and social issues, many of them self-published and self-marketed at stalls he ran across Australia after his retirement.

James Ford Jim Cairns was born in Carlton, then a working-class suburb of Melbourne, the son of a clerk.

Jim Cairns grew up on a dairy farm north of Sunbury.

Jim Cairns's father went to the World War I as a lieutenant in the Australian Imperial Forces, but became disillusioned with the war and lost his respect for Britain.

Many years later, Jim Cairns informed Gough Whitlam that he had long believed that his father had been killed in World War I, but that he was eventually told the truth of his father's desertion.

Jim Cairns attended Sunbury State School and later Northcote High School, where he completed his Leaving Certificate.

In 1933 Jim Cairns joined the Police Force to have more time for athletics.

Jim Cairns soon became a detective and gained notoriety working in a special surveillance team known as "the dogs" shadowing squad, where he was involved in a number of dramatic arrests.

Jim Cairns was the first Victorian policeman to hold a tertiary degree.

Jim Cairns was a knowledgeable economist and was considered a socialist.

The Victorian division of the ALP had by this time been infiltrated by the mostly Catholic "Groupers", associated with Archbishop Mannix and B A Santamaria, and Cairns was a leading opponent of this group.

Evatt, attacked the Groupers and brought on a major split in the Labor Party, Jim Cairns sided with Evatt.

Jim Cairns then shifted to Lalor in Melbourne's western suburbs.

Jim Cairns was a highly effective debater and was feared and disliked by ministers in the Liberal government of Robert Menzies, although his personal dealings with Menzies himself, who nearly always felt a healthy respect for an intelligent and principled adversary, were more cordial than might have been expected.

Jim Cairns was disliked by many in his own party, who saw him as an ideologue whose political views were too left-wing for the Australian electorate.

Jim Cairns completed his doctorate in economic history in 1957, and by the 1960s he was among the Labor Party's leading figures.

Early in 1967, the septuagenarian Arthur Calwell retired as Labor leader, and Jim Cairns contested the leadership, but lost to Gough Whitlam.

One of the reasons Jim Cairns did not become leader of the Labor Party was that in the late 1960s and early 1970s his main focus was not on parliamentary politics but on leading the mass movement against the Vietnam War, to which the Menzies government had committed combat troops in 1965, and against conscription for that war.

At the December 1972 election, Whitlam led the Labor Party into government for the first time in 23 years, and Jim Cairns became Minister for Overseas Trade and Minister for Secondary Industry.

Jim Cairns had by now shed much of his socialist ideology of earlier years, though he was still a strong believer in state planning.

Jim Cairns got along surprisingly well with the heads of industry, although critics said this was because he was sympathetic to their requests for government assistance.

On Christmas Day 1974, while Whitlam was overseas, Cyclone Tracy devastated the city of Darwin, and Jim Cairns as Acting Prime Minister impressed the nation with his sympathetic and decisive leadership.

Australia's already severe economic problems worsened during 1975, and Jim Cairns had few answers to the new phenomenon of stagflation, the combination of high unemployment and high inflation that followed the 1973 oil crisis.

Jim Cairns first became aware of what was to become known as the "Loans Affair" three days after being appointed Treasurer, on 13 December 1974, when he entered at the end of a meeting of the Labor Party federal executive at the Lodge, the official residence of the Prime Minister in Canberra.

Whitlam explained the situation and asked that Jim Cairns co-sign approval for the loan.

Jim Cairns did so, noting to Whitlam that the state premiers should be informed of the loan.

Whitlam returned from overseas on 19 January 1975 and on 27 January 1975, Connor's authority to borrow the loan was reinstated without consultation with Jim Cairns, who found out after the fact.

In 1974, Jim Cairns was introduced by Robert Menzies to George Harris, a Melbourne businessman and president of the Carlton Football Club.

Jim Cairns claimed that he had signed the letter in question unknowingly while signing a batch of fifty or so letters and that it was not an uncommon practice for politicians to sign letters that they had little or no memory of signing.

Ironically, opposition politicians, including Malcolm Fraser and a number of his ministers, spoke out in defence of Jim Cairns, agreeing that they too signed letters of which they had little or no memory.

However, since Jim Cairns had signed the letter, Whitlam dismissed him from the ministry on 2 July 1975.

In late 1974 Jim Cairns met Junie Morosi who had worked for Al Grassby and Lionel Murphy.

Morosi greatly admired Jim Cairns from having read his academic writings and she introduced Jim Cairns to the work of Wilhelm Reich, opening his mind to the relevance of human psychology as it related to social change.

Jim Cairns decided to offer Morosi a position as his principal private secretary and the pair began an affair.

On 2 December 1974, the media reported Jim Cairns' employment offer to Morosi.

Jim Cairns devoted the next portion of his life to the Counterculture movement, to which he had been introduced by Morosi.

Jim Cairns sponsored a series of Down to Earth conference-festivals, known as ConFests, at various rural locations, and was photographed taking part in Counterculture inspired activities, such as meditation.

In 1979, Jim Cairns severed his formal links with the Down to Earth organizers.

Jim Cairns kept in contact with Morosi and the two remained friends.

Jim Cairns was subject to a great deal of media ridicule for these activities, but displayed his usual firm conviction about the rightness of his causes.

Jim Cairns sold his books outside suburban markets, where he would talk about politics, history or his life.

Jim Cairns died of bronchial pneumonia, aged 89, in October 2003.

Jim Cairns was accorded a State Funeral at St John's Anglican Church in Toorak.

Jim Cairns adopted Robb's two sons by her previous marriage, Barry and Phillip when they were 4 and 5 years old respectively.