The much loved (and much hated) former ABC presenter recounts his raucous youth and explains why Scott Morrison’s government is doomed
on Faine was going to call his book Dear Cretin. It would be a collection of letters he’d been sent when presenting Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne, annotated to explain the context: the particular topic or opinion of his that had inspired so much rage. But then ABC management “went nuts”.
Faine’s fascination with this larger-than-life family intersected with his long connection to the Northern Territory – he wrote a previous book, Lawyers in the Alice, about the early days of Aboriginal legal aid. As such, Apollo & Thelma takes fascinating side roads into the Gurindji walk-off and land rights activism, where Faine befriended figures such as author Frank Hardy.
Not long later, in 1982, Faine flew to Darwin to investigate Thelma’s estate and narrowly avoided getting busted for two joints in his luggage during a security search in Brisbane – which could have set him on a very different path to that of esteemed social commentator.The book also “sets the record straight” about some of Faine’s high-profile run-ins during his Mornings tenure. At one point, he was told he was the most complained-about ABC Radio presenter. “And I was proud of it.
“He’s not a friend, although he’s someone I’ve got a lot of regard for. I think he’s quite a remarkable political figure and an enduring one, much to the disgust of people who thought they run this place, by which I mean the Herald Sun and 3AW.”With Victoria heading to the polls in November, Faine says the opposition leader, Matthew Guy, has yet to offer up a convincing agenda.
“I was quite surprised at the miracle win that Scott Morrison pulled out of the bin fire last time. I will be equally surprised if he does it again. In a nutshell, they’re a minority government, young people laugh at them, women don’t like him, the Chinese ethnic community think he’s been targeting them unfairly.
“No. His job is to be an alternative government, not to pander to the fringe,” says Faine. If you’re going to go cuddling up to an extremist fringe, you’re never going to be able to, in any way, sell your brand to the centre, because you’ve poisoned your brand.”
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