Jim Cairns

James Ford Cairns (4 October 1914 – 12 October 2003), Australian politician, was prominent in the Labor movement through the 1960s and 1970s, and was briefly Deputy Prime Minister 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 them self-published and self-marketed at stalls he ran across Australia after his retirement.

After the 1974 double dissolution election, socialist left Labor former policeman and academic economist Jim Cairns emerged as deputy prime minister, defeating Lionel Bowen in a caucus vote.

In 1972 Whitlam had ended Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war. Two years later he publicly questioned the role of US spy bases in Australia and its continued presence in Vietnam, prompting the US president, Richard Nixon, to request a state department review of American-Australian relations.

After the promotion of Cairns, US embassy officers in Canberra explained to Barbour Washington’s negative reaction to Whitlam’s new deputy.

Blaxland writes: “Barbour was pressed to say whether he could give a security clearance to Cairns enabling him to access top-secret and sensitive material. Barbour told them that in Australia decisions concerning ministerial access were made by the Prime Minister personally. Barbour advised that they urge their superiors, as far as they could, not to react precipitately in a matter of such importance and to wait the course of events.”

After Cairns was sworn in as deputy PM, a senior US embassy official visited Barbour in his office at America’s request. The American official said secretary of state Henry Kissinger and defence secretary James Schlesinger viewed Cairns as “a radical with strong anti-American and pro-Chinese sympathies”.

Whitlam Dismissal