Australian
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Clip description

John Guise has been asked about the time frame to independence for his country. He thinks there should be a degree of self-government before independence to allow time for a constitution to be drawn up. He’s being interviewed by Richard Beckett and Donald Hogg, who have both reported from the Australian territories of Papua and New Guinea, which will become Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 1975.

Curator’s notes

This is an example of one of the earliest of the Monday Conference programs with its moderator, the television journalist Robert (Bob) Moore, and two experienced New Guinea journalists asking questions of the Papuan politician John Guise, later Sir John Guise. The interviewers are Richard Beckett and Donald Hogg. Beckett (1936-1987) is perhaps best known for his alter ego Sam Orr, the pseudonym under which he wrote his highly entertaining food column for the weekly newspaper Nation Review during the 1970s.

This clip represents a good example of intellectual, issue-based television. Two very experienced interviewers ask clear, insightful questions and the interviewee, PNG politician John Guise, is equally clear and thoughtful in his well-considered responses. The result is that the audience is quickly made aware of the issues, and drawn into forming their own opinions.

As a Monday Conference program, this episode is atypical. By the end of its first year, Monday Conference had settled into its trademark format with Bob Moore chairing the program and a couple of experts being grilled by several partisans on either side of a current debate. The program was later taken out of the studio into the community for a range of public forums on divisive issues such as homosexuality and the death penalty. The always unflappable original producer Bruce Allen seemed able to deal with any technical breakdown just as Bob Moore was able to deal with the most inflamed audiences. When Bruce Allen left the program in 1974, he was replaced by the equally talented studio producer Richard Smith.