Millikan on record
The Supreme Court today heard contrasting recordings of the ABC’s guest producer, Reverend David Millikan, as biologist Jeremy Griffith and mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape’s defamation trial against the national broadcaster continued.
In the first of several audio and audio-visual records played before Justice David Kirby today, Reverend Millikan is heard speaking to Mr Griffith in a telephone conversation on 24 January 1995, explaining his intentions for the proposed Four Corners program some three months before it went to air:
“The situation is this. This friend of mine he has, he approached me about six months ago, and he said that he is working with a group out of San Francisco who want to put together a series of sixteen films…called ‘Beliefs for the New Millennium’ or ‘Beliefs Beyond 2000’ and it is an attempt to gather together seminal thinkers and ideas that would, that are not part of the mainstream and yet would be sort of, should be put forward for public consideration.”
“… so the deal was, I would get this up here in Australia but I would do it in a way that would give me the right to take the film beyond Australia. So I will do a deal with Four Corners if they want to do this thing, that they put it on in Australia but once it’s been shown in Australia, I have the right to take it off and package it up in another way.”
On the tape, Reverend Millikan goes on to say to Mr Griffith:
“I want to be able to give a clear statement of what it is you are saying and the implications of what you are saying in terms of the sort of the progress, the future of Australia and the world generally.”
Further on in the recording, Mr Griffith is heard responding to Reverend Millikan:
“Yeah well you’ve got all the experience in the world behind you in terms of connections … we are very lucky to have somebody who has had all that experience in the media, has training in theology, and also discipline minded and also has had experience in this tender area of ideas where they can be one or the other you know. So I’m running with you.”
Next up, the Court was shown an audio-visual recording of an ABC-TV interview conducted a month later by Reverend Millikan, with Charles and Gillian Belfield, parents of Sam Belfield, a member of the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood. In the course of the interview, portions of which were included in the Four Corners program, Mr and Mrs Belfield discussed their son’s interest in Mr Griffith’s work and his involvement in the Foundation.
Towards the end of the ABC footage, in an incomplete excerpt not included in the Four Corners program, Reverend Millikan is seen talking to Mr and Mrs Belfield, saying:
“And like I said to you I think this, it’s going to be a hard time for everyone in the group over the next, the first couple of months after [the Four Corners program] goes to air because [Griffith] will ahh he’ll bring ‘em in, he’ll reign ‘em in, just start reasserting, start asserting his authority and becoming more and more intrusive to cut off any avenues of dissention and then they’ll start to drop off. For many of them it will just get too hard and they’ll suddenly sort of feel that they just can’t keep up. And he may take a couple out, he’ll certainly lose access to the schools and the universities because whoever Macartney-Snape …”
Following this, the Court heard an ABC radio interview aired on 5AN Adelaide on 20 April 1995, four days before the defamatory Four Corners program was broadcast. Mr Griffith was heard saying:
“[Millikan] misrepresented himself when he approached us and he’s misrepresenting us, our information and the reason we’re concerned is because of that misrepresentation.”
The trial before Justice Kirby continues tomorrow.
