Raising Hell: Issue: 81: "A Carefully Planned, Intensive and Continuing Campaign"
"As far as criticism is concerned, we don't resent that unless it is absolutely biased, as it is in most cases." - BJ Vorster, President Apartheid South Africa, The Observer, 1969
It’s next to impossible to talk about the influence of the Australian oil industry without talking about Sir William Walkley. Walkley was Australia’ first oil baron — generally regarded as a good natured, cut-rate Rockefeller who owned the nation’s petrol pumps. If you’re a member of Australia’s media corps, however, you likely know the man for another reason. Over the course of his life, the guy carved out a particular niche as a good mate to the Australian press and even gave his name to the Walkley Awards, today considered the local answer to the Pulitzer Prize.
The association between Walkley and the awards is long-running, but it is only in recent years that this relationship has come under scrutiny. The first was a report — published as “opinion” — by Osman Faruqi who leafed back through the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald where upon he found an old article that asked Walkley to what he would do if he “ruled Australia”. In what may be considered a proto-version of the racist conspiracy mongering among certain industrialists about the “Great Replacement”, Walkley demonstrated an overwhelming concern with the birthrates of white, European nations, writing: “Today Australians are but a drop of white in a sea of colour that teems with more than 1,200 million land-hungry Asiatics.”
Walkley’s big fear at the time is that overpopulated Asian nations would increasingly begin to eye off Australia for “breathing space” — a familiar “Yellow Peril” racist trope which, in part, formed the country’s embrace of The White Australia Policy — but more on that in a second.
When that story went live, The Walkley Foundation, which manages the awards apologised for the remarks by its founder but the language of the initial apology made it seam like it was a one-off, or that Walkley was perhaps a man-of-his-time.
Thanks to the generous support of Raising Hell’s paying subscribers, we now know much more about what Walkley really thought. About a month ago, I flew to New South Wales and Canberra to troll through his personal papers, kept at the respective state and national libraries. Among these documents, I found a report Walkley wrote for his executives back home in Australia about business conditions in Apartheid South Africa circa 1956. Walkley had taken a four-week holiday to the country, along with his wife and secretary Ms Hill, as part of a fact finding tour to decide whether his company, Ampol, should expand with a new chain of petrol stations. Ultimately, he would decide against doing so — though not out of any inherent concern about the injustice being inflicted upon the African and migrant populations. Mostly, Walkley just didn’t think it would make it any money.
These and other documents do well to establish how Walkley maintained his racist beliefs throughout his lifetime and was a support of the White Australia Policy. During his time in South Africa, Walkley remarked multiple towns on how “stupid” it was for the minority European population to rely on crass violence and censorship to maintain their dominance. Instead, he appeared to suggest South Africa should look to the example of Australia and encourage migration from European nations — or engage in “racial suicide”.
I’m not going to repeat the print edition of the story — you are free to go read it yourself. In some ways, this revelation is not much of a surprise. The White Australia Policy could not have been instituted or maintained without the explicit or implicit support of wealthy industrialists like Walkley — though Walkley’s implied desire to export Australia’s particular brand of racial domination to Africa is fascinating. Likewise, the oil and gas industry, generally, tends to lean towards the political right and associated ideologies. There are always exceptions, but if there’s one thing oilmen want to do, it’s get rich. And in the eyes of their corporate leadership, the policy environment most likely to make that happen are those which place value on hierarchy and money. Left-wing ideals like redistribution, nationalisation or racial justice tend not to draw too many supporters among the upper echelons.
Even as these documents go somewhat to providing evidence of William Walkley’s lifelong support for a strict racial hierarchy with white men at the top, they also establish the extent to which he understood what he was doing as he courted Australian media. At a speech given in on 14 May 1961 to the Australian Institute of Management in Townsville, Walkley not only disclosed how much he was paying a year to run the awards — £1350 a year — but how it allowed him to identify future public relations talent.
As an isolated fact, this may not mean much, but as I learned while researching my upcoming book, Slick, it is something that becomes more interesting given when and how Walkley learned the political power of cultivating a good relationship with the media. The first true oil find took place in Australia at Rouge Range-1 in Western Australia in 1953. To help make it happen, Walkley sought out partners in the United States — notably Standard Oil California and Texaco. What he hammered out was a joint venture (Western Australian Petroleum) with a joint venture (Caltex), and it was his joint venture partners who brought in their man to help wrangle the press. This man was named Richard “Dick” Darrow and he had been a senior consultation with the US public relations firm Hill&Knowlton. It was from Darrow that Walkley appears to have learned the power of public relations, and particularly the art of the media sponsorship. During his time in Australia, Darrow would prove so effective that Walkley would campaign for him to be fired as he felt Darrow had taken all the credit for the oil find at Rough Range-1, and not Ampol.
But what makes the American PR man so important to our story is that Darrow was also the guy who taught Big Tobacco to lie like Big Oil. For more on that score, though you’ll need to get hold of my book which is now available for pre-order.
For the period of 22 May to 4 June…
Reporting In
Where I recap what I’ve been doing this last fortnight so you know I’m not just using your money to stimulate the local economy …
‘Race suicide’: Sir William Walkley’s unearthed report on apartheid South Africa reveals birthrate fears (Guardian AU, 26 May 2024).
Before You Go (Go)…
Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make contact through Signal — contact me first for how. Alternatively you can send us your hard copies to: PO Box 134, Welland SA 5007
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