James Ford Cairns (4 October 191412 October 2003) was an Australian politician who was prominent in the Labor movement through the 1960s and 1970s, and was briefly Treasurer and the fourth deputy prime minister of Australia, both in the Whitlam government. He 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. He was also an economist, and a prolific writer on economic and social issues. Many of his books were self-published, and self-marketed at stalls he ran across Australia.
Early days
thumb|170px|Cairns c. 1956
James Ford Cairns was born in Carlton, then a working-class suburb of Melbourne, the son of a clerk. He grew up on a dairy farm north of Sunbury. His father went to World War I as a lieutenant in the Australian Imperial Force, but became disillusioned with the war and lost his respect for Britain. Following the war, he did not return to Australia and essentially deserted his family. He travelled to Africa where he committed suicide after a stay of six or seven years.
Many years later, Cairns told Gough Whitlam that he had long believed his father had been killed in World War I, but that he was eventually told the truth of his father's desertion.
Cairns attended Sunbury State School and Northcote High School, where he completed his Leaving Certificate. Though life during the Depression was difficult. His mother had to work to provide for the family, and Cairns needed travel for three hours a day to attend Northcote High. He was a good student, making his name as an athlete, easily winning the school's broad jump championship with a leap of , his competitors only managing jumps of . Lee made an unsuccessful attempt to transfer to the seat of Bendigo which had replaced part of Lalor. Cairns easily won Lalor with a healthy swing.
Leading left-winger
thumb|170px|Cairns c. 1962
In Canberra, Cairns became a leader of the left faction of the ALP. He was a highly effective debater and was soon 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. Another of Cairns' biographers, Paul Strangio, noted how, in his interview technique, Diamond successfully "managed to penetrate his subject’s emotional defences".
In May 1970, Cairns, as chair of the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign, led an estimated 100,000 people through an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in the streets of Melbourne. It was the largest protest in Australia until it was overtaken by the anti-Iraq war protests in February 2003. Protests took place simultaneously in other Australian cities. The violence predicted by some opponents of the demonstration did not occur, and the moral force of the, mainly young, protesters had a major effect on Australian attitudes to the war. and thus became Deputy Prime Minister.
In June, ‘’The Bulletin’’ magazine published a leaked Australian Security Intelligence Organisation document which gave a controversial and highly political view of Cairns. The political fallout from the leak led the government to act on its 1974 election policy to establish the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security.
In December 1974, Whitlam appointed Cairns as Treasurer, which was the high point of Cairns' political career. On Christmas Day 1974, while Whitlam was overseas, Cyclone Tracy devastated the city of Darwin, and Cairns, as Acting Prime Minister, impressed the nation with his sympathetic and decisive leadership. It was during that period that Cairns hired Junie Morosi as his principal private secretary, and he soon began a relationship with her which would eventually help ruin his career.
Australia's already severe economic problems worsened during 1975, and Cairns had few answers to the new phenomenon of stagflation, the combination of high unemployment and high inflation that followed the 1973 oil crisis. Overseas finance ministers, especially in Britain and Europe, faced the same problems at the time but, because few Australians were exposed to the foreign media, the economic credibility of the Whitlam administration suffered.
Loans affair
In late 1974, in an attempt to raise funds for large capital works projects, such as drilling for gas on the north-west shelf between Australia and Timor and constructing a pipeline for transporting the gas down to Eastern Australia, senior ministers Rex Connor and Lionel Murphy, along with Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, began to consider arrangements to borrow approximately US$4,000 million petrodollars from the Middle East. The plan was to use the services of an intermediary, Pakistani banker Tirath Khemlani. 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 Cairns co-sign approval for the loan. Cairns did so, noting to Whitlam that the state premiers should be informed of the loan, which did not occur.
Subsequently, Sir Frederick Wheeler, Secretary of the Treasury (the head of Cairns' department) and other members of staff advised Cairns that Khemlani was of questionable character. In his capacity as Acting Prime Minister during Gough Whitlam's overseas trip covering late 1974 to early 1975, Cairns arranged a meeting at the Reserve Bank in Canberra attended by various senior officials, including Lionel Murphy and Rex Connor. Connor's authority to borrow the loan was cancelled as a result of the meeting. 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 Cairns, who found out after the fact.
A short time later, when Cairns was about to visit the United States in an official capacity, his staff informed him that if the issue of the Khemlani loan were not dealt with, it would most likely overshadow his visit. That, plus Cairns' pre-existing reservations about the loan, prompted him to discuss the issue once again with Whitlam, who then agreed that Connor's dealings with Khemlani should come to an end. Cairns delivered the news to Connor at Whitlam's request. Connor was later dismissed by Whitlam for continuing his unauthorised business communications with Khemlani. Whitlam moved Cairns from Treasury to the Environment ministry.
Cairns' political undoing began with an incident that is often conflated with the Connor/Khemlani dealings but was essentially separate. In 1974, Cairns was introduced by Robert Menzies to George Harris, a Melbourne businessman and president of the Carlton Football Club. Harris had offered to secure loan funds for the Australian government and, in March 1975, Cairns signed a letter agreeing to a 2.5% commission. When Cairns gave a misleading statement in June to Parliament that he had not authorised any such commission, many blamed the disorganised state of Cairns’ office. 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 shadow cabinet members, spoke in defence of Cairns, noting that they had also signed letters of which they had little or no memory. However, since Cairns had signed the letter, Whitlam dismissed him from the ministry on 2 July 1975. Cairns remained, officially at least, deputy leader of the ALP, but chose not to fight Whitlam's decision in Caucus to avoid damaging the party further. His successor, Frank Crean, was elected on 14 July.
Cairns later stated that he felt there were ulterior motives at play on the part of Gough Whitlam; namely that Whitlam wished to be rid of Cairns because Cairns did not agree with a policy of economic rationalism and that Whitlam felt that Cairns was a threat to his leadership.
On 2 December 1974, the media reported Cairns' employment offer to Morosi. The reports highlighted Morosi's lack of public service experience, past business failures and her physical beauty, and noted that she had often been seen dining in Canberra with senior Cabinet ministers. As a result, Cairns and Morosi announced that she would not take Cairns' offer of employment. The Liberal Opposition called for a Senate inquiry. An investigation found there was no evidence of impropriety on the part of Morosi or of no preferential treatment being given to Morosi. On 13 December, it was reported that Morosi would accept Cairns' offer of employment. Four years earlier, referring to his decision to employ Morosi and the ensuing media storm that it created, Cairns said that "looking back over it, it was a mistake on my part".
In 2000, he was made a Life Member of the Labor Party. Cairns died of bronchial pneumonia, aged 89, in October 2003 and was accorded a state funeral at St John's Anglican Church in Toorak.
Personal life
Cairns married Gwen Robb in 1939. He adopted Robb's two sons by her previous marriage, Barry and Phillip, when they were 4 and 5 years old respectively.