Phillip Adams | |
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 Adams speaking at the 2010 Global Atheist Convention | |
| Born | Phillip Andrew Hedley Adams Maryborough, Victoria, Australia |
| Occupations |
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| Known for | Revival ofAustralian cinema; Public intellectualism |
| Spouses | |
Phillip Andrew Hedley AdamsAO, FAHA,FRSA is an Australianhumanist, social commentator, ex-broadcaster,public intellectual, and farmer. He hostedLate Night Live, anAustralian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) program onRadio National from 1991 to 2024. He also writes a weekly column forThe Weekend Australian.
Adams has had careers in advertising and film production and has served on many non-profit boards includingWikiLeaks,Greenpeace Australia,Ausflag,Care Australia,Film Victoria,National Museum of Australia, both theAdelaide andBrisbane festivals of ideas, the Montsalvat Arts Society and theDon Dunstan Foundation. As a young man he joined theCommunist Party of Australia, and was a member of theAustralian Labor Party for fifty years.
Adams has been appointed both a Member and subsequently an Officer of theOrder of Australia; and he has received numerous awards including six honorary doctorates from Australian universities; Republican of the Year 2005; the Senior ANZAC Fellowship; the Australian Humanist of the Year, the Gold Lion at Cannes Lions Festival; the Longford Award; aWalkley Award; and the Henry Lawson Australian Arts Award. In 1997 theInternational Astronomical Union named a minor planet orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter after him. ANational Trust poll elected him one of Australia's 100national living treasures.
Phillip Andrew Hedley Adams[citation needed] was born inMaryborough, Victoria, the only child of an English-born[1]Congregational Church minister, the Reverend Charles Adams. His childhood was anything but idyllic and his parents separated when he was young. Interviewed in 2006, Adams said that:[2]
My first memories were my mother ... absolutely dependent on the begging bowl – that little round dish with a piece of cloth at the bottom where parishioners would put a couple of bob. When dad went off to the war, I was taken up by my grandparents ... and lived on a dirt-poor farm ... I lived in penury for the first 10, 15 years of my life. ... Mother dumped [my father] in favour of a rather sleazy businessman ... a sociopath who tried to murder me ... I spent the latter part of my childhood trying to protect my mother from this psycho.
Of his education he has said: "I was forced to leave school before completing my secondary education and the only job I could get was working in advertising."[3]
Adams joined theCommunist Party of Australia[4] at age 16, while employed in advertising, but left at age 19.[5] In a 2015 article forThe Australian, Adams wrote that theAustralian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) opened a file on him when he was 15 as a "radicalised teenager ... Having replaced scouting’s woggle and knots with Stalin’s hammer and sickle."[6]
After his time in the communist movement, Adams joined theAustralian Labor Party, parting only after what he described in 2010 as "50 years of membership, through thick and thin".[7]
Adams began his advertising career with Briggs & James and, later, with Brian Monahan and Lyle Dayman, became a partner in the agency Monahan Dayman Adams. He developed successful campaigns such asLife. Be in it.,[8]Slip, Slop, Slap,[9]Break down the Barriers for theInternational Year of the Disabled Person andCare for Kids for theInternational Year of the Child, working with talent such asFred Schepisi,Alex Stitt,Peter Best,Robyn Archer andMimmo Cozzolino. Adams left the advertising industry in the 1980s. Monahan Dayman Adams purchased the successful Sydney agencyMoJo in 1987 and carried on as MojoMDA.
He wrote regular columns forThe Age,The Australian,Sydney Morning Herald,The National Times,Nation Review,The Courier-Mail,The Advertiser (Adelaide),The Examiner (Tasmania),The Bulletin and was a contributor toThe New York Times, theFinancial Times andThe Times of London. He currently writes a weekly column forThe Australian.
Adams played a key role in the revival of theAustralian film industry during the 1970s.[10] He was the author of a 1969 report[11] which led to legislation by prime ministerJohn Gorton in 1970 for an Australian Film and Television Development Corporation (later theAustralian Film Commission) and the Experimental Film Fund.
Together withBarry Jones, Adams was a motivating force behind theAustralian Film Television and Radio School which was established under theWhitlam government.[12] Adams played a key role in the development of theSouth Australian Film Corporation,[12] which was created in 1972 and became a model for similar bodies in other Australian states; and in the establishment of theAustralia Council and theAustralian Film Development Corporation,[12] later known as the Australian Film Commission, theFilm Finance Corporation Australia, andScreen Australia. As head of delegation to theCannes Film Festival, Adams signed Australia's first co-production agreements with France and the UK.[13] He was Chairman of theAustralian Film Institute, the Film and Television Board of the Australia Council, the Australian Film Commission, and Film Australia.[14][15][16]
In the 1960s Adams co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed (as well as serving as cinematographer for) his first feature filmJack and Jill: A Postscript (1969); the first feature to win theAFI Award,[17] 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 byBruce Beresford, which became the most successful Australian film ever made up to that time. Other films includeThe Naked Bunyip,Don's Party,The Getting of Wisdom,Lonely Hearts,We of the Never Never,Grendel Grendel Grendel,Fighting Back,Hearts and Minds andAbra Cadabra.
Adams initially presented a late-night program on Sydney commercial radio station2UE during the late 1980s and early 1990s before succeedingVirginia Bell in 1991 as presenter of ABC Radio National'sLate 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 onRadio Australia and the Internet. The program is broadcast live Monday to Thursday from 22:00AEST/ADST and is repeated the following day at 15:00 AEST/ADST.[18] A serious discussion of world issues, the program is tempered with Adams' gentle and ironic humour.[19] Regular contributors includeBruce Shapiro[18] andBeatrix Campbell. Phillip's last episode was broadcast on 27 June 2024[20] and he will be replaced byDavid Marr.[21]
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 growingpodcast listener base.
The current theme music is the firstmovement ofBrescianello'sViolin Concerto No. 4 in E minor, Op. 1. Until March 2016 the theme was a short extract from the "Eliza Aria" from theWild Swans Concert Suite byElena Kats-Chernin, performed by theTasmanian Symphony Orchestra withsopranoJane 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 wasBach'sConcerto for oboe, violin and orchestra in C minor, BWV 1060: III.Allegro.
Adams was the foundation chairman of theCommission for the Future,[18][12] established by theHawke government to build bridges between science and the community. He chaired theNational Australia Day Council;[18][12] 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 theUniversity of Sydney and theAustralian National University. He has been a board member of Greenpeace, CARE Australia, the National Museum of Australia, The Australian Centre for Social Innovation, theAdelaide Festival of Ideas and Brisbane'sIdeas Festival, and is an Ambassador ofBush Heritage Australia and theNational Secular Lobby.[22] He was co-founder of theAustralian Skeptics.[23]
Adams is the author or editor of more than 20 books, includingThe 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 leftintelligentsia".[25] After a youth in the Australian Communist movement, Adams was for many years a member of theAustralian Labor Party, and had a close relationship with every Labor leader from Gough Whitlam toKevin 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 byJulia Gillard in the2010 Labor leadership spill.[26] TheGreen 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."[27]
In 1995 Adams argued againstSection 18C of theRacial Discrimination Act 1975, saying that a better response to expressions of racial hatred was "public debate, not legal censure".[28]
During the tenure of theHoward government, Adams described Liberal Prime MinisterJohn Howard as "far and away the worst prime minister in living memory".[29] In 2022, AdamsTweeted that Australian cricketerDonald Bradman was a "right wing nut job" for being critical of socialism in a letter toMalcolm Fraser following the Dismissal of theWhitlam Labor government.[30] 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 aboutNelson Mandela, the opposite seems to be the case.[31]
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".[32] 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.”[32] 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 theapartheid regime.[33][34][35][36]
Mandela had asked to meet Bradman during a visit to Sydney in 2000 but due to poor health Bradman was unable to leave Adelaide.[37] However, Bradman did gift a framed photograph which was presented to Mandela by actorJack Thompson.[37] Bradman died less than six months later.[38]
When ABC managing directorDavid Anderson was asked about Adams' tweet by SenatorRoss Cadell in anAustralian Senate committees hearing, Anderson said it was his understanding that Adams had privately written to Kamahl to apologise.[39] Kamahl denied this and wrote to Anderson to advise him that he had received no such correspondence from Adams.[39] 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."[39]
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.[39] 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".[39] Kamahl rejected the apology, describing it as "arrogant", and asked Adams to apologise publicly onLate Night Live.[40]
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Adams is married toPatrice Newell. He has four daughters: three with his first wife, Rosemary Fawcett, and one with Newell. He lives on "Elmswood", a large property nearGundy in theHunter Valley in mid-northern New South Wales. He and his wife grow garlic and olives, and farm organically fed cattle. He previously had a home inPaddington, an inner suburb of Sydney. Prior to this, Adams lived for some time inStoneleigh, a heritage-listed house[41] inDarlinghurst. Adams collects antiquities from many "dead civilisations", including sculptures andartifacts of Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Etruscan, South American and other indigenous cultures' origin.[42][43]
He has written "I'd been an atheist since I was five."[3]
In 1979 a portrait of Adams by artistWes Walters won theArchibald Prize.[44]
Writing inThe Monthly, ProfessorRobert Manne described Adams as 'perhaps the most remarkable broadcaster in the history of this country'.
Bradman cancelled the tour and issued his famous statement: "We will not play them until they choose a team on a non-racist basis."
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