George Negus on sex, religion and politics

December 08, 2006

Growing up in Queensland in the 1950s, journalist George Negus was taught never to talk about sex, religion or politics. They made bad friends, his parents explained.

“As I got older, I came to realise sex, religion and politics were the only things worth talking about,” he says today.

He had a receptive audience at the University of New England last week, where almost 300 people turned out to hear him give the 18th Sir Robert Madgwick Lecture at the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

After jokingly introducing himself as “an ageing sex symbol”, Mr Negus went on to give a “potted history” of the last two decades, drawing on his experiences as a globe-trotting television reporter for programs such as 60 Minutes, Dateline and This Day Tonight.

The world had undergone monumental change in that time, he said, and despite popular belief, much of it had little to do with the events of September 11, 2001.

“If I had said twenty years ago that in 2006 the communist bloc would no longer exist, you wouldn’t have believed me.”

“If I had said the Protestants and the Catholics would stop killing each other in Northern Ireland, you would have thought I was crazy.”

“If I had said in 1994 that the next president of South Africa would be Nelson Mandela, and Apartheid would be relegated to history, you would have thought I had lost my marbles.”

“I wonder, decades from now, will historians see September 11 or the fall of the Berlin Wall as more significant?”

While old conflicts had been laid to rest, Mr Negus said, new ones had arisen in their place. Islam had replaced communism as the so-called “enemy number one” of Western democracy, religious divides had deepened and religion had become enormously political, he said.

“In my opinion as a political observer, the biggest issue in the world today is the ‘R’ word – religion – and the most important person in the world is God.”

The vice-chancellor of UNE, Professor Alan Pettigrew, thanked Mr Negus for his lecture and said he had “communicated with us in the best Robert Madgwick tradition of a performance.”

For his part, Mr Negus said academics and the media should work more closely to publicise the good work done at universities such as UNE.

“We need people who can popularise academic knowledge without vulgarising it,” he said.

The Sir Robert Madgwick lecture is held each year in honour of the UNE’s first vice-chancellor. Sir Robert was vice-chancellor of UNE from 1954 until 1966, and chairman of the ABC from 1967 until 1973. Previous lecturers have included Manning Clark, Richard Butler and Tim Fischer.

For more information contact Leon Braun on (02) 6771 2428. A photo is available with this story.

Posted by Leon Braun at December 8, 2006 10:47 AM