Adams has been appointed both a Member and subsequently an Officer of the Order 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; a Walkley Award; and the Henry Lawson Australian Arts Award. In 1997 the International Astronomical Union named a minor planet orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter after him.[3] A National Trust poll elected him one of Australia's 100 national living treasures.[2]
Early years
Adams was born in Maryborough, Victoria, the only child of an English-born[4]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:[5]
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."[6]
Adams joined the Communist Party of Australia[7] at age 16, while employed in advertising, but left at age 19.[8] In a 2015 article for The Australian, Adams wrote that the Australian 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."[9]
After his time in the communist movement, Adams joined the Australian Labor Party, parting only after what he described in 2010 as "50 years of membership, through thick and thin".[10]
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.
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 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 Monday to Thursday 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. Phillip's last episode was broadcast on 27 June 2024[21] and he will be replaced by David Marr.[22]
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.
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.
Political views and activities
Robert Manne has described Adams as "the emblematic figurehead of the pro-Labor left intelligentsia".[25] 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.[26] 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."[27]
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".[29] 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.[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 about Nelson Mandela, the opposite seems to be the case.[31]
"Honorary white" tweet
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 the apartheid 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 actor Jack Thompson.[37] Bradman died less than six months later.[38]
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.[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 on Late Night Live.[40]
Adams is married to Patrice Newell. He has four daughters: three with his first wife, Rosemary Fawcett, and one with Newell. He lives on "Elmswood", a large property near Gundy in the Hunter 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 in Paddington, an inner suburb of Sydney. Prior to this, Adams lived for some time in Stoneleigh, a heritage-listed house[41] in Darlinghurst. Adams collects antiquities from many "dead civilisations", including sculptures and artifacts 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."[6]
Compere, Australian Film Institute Awards Telecast
Co-presenter, the Australian Bicentennial Celebration
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1 2 Adams, Phillip; Croucher, Rowland (October 1998). "I Am Proud That". John Mark Ministries. Archived from the original on 27 April 2006. Retrieved 23 December 2014. Alt URL
↑ Adams, Phillip (14 September 2006). "Phillip Adams"(transcript and streaming audio). Conversations with Richard Fidler (Radio interview). Interviewed by Richard Fidler. Australia: ABC Local Radio. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
↑ Buchanan, John; Adams, Phillip, 1939-; Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1997), The retreat from tolerance: a snapshot of Australian society, ABC Books for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ISBN978-0-7333-0551-1{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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