John Wheeldon: the Quadrant chapter.(Obituary)(Biography)

JOHN WHEELDON, then a Labor senator, first aroused Quadrant's enthusiasm in 1979 when he wrote the Report on Human Rights in the Soviet Union for the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. It was one of the best reports that committee has produced. There were thorough but damning chapters on the Soviet treatment of Christians, Jews, dissidents, workers and nationalities. It also reported in detail on the political abuse of psychiatry in the USSR. Martin Krygier and Peter King prepared an abridged version of the report, published by George Boniecki and widely distributed by Quadrant.

It is easy to see Wheeldon's hand in the committee's recommendations, especially his urging the Australian embassy to send observers to all Soviet political trials. (You can hear his exasperation: They should have been doing it for years!) Or in the recommendation that the Fraser government urge the Soviets to release, before the Moscow Olympic Games of 1980, a large number of political and religious prisoners from its prisons, labour colonies and psychiatric hospitals. (That would embarrass them more, he said, than a crude boycott.)

His was clearly a voice that Quadrant welcomed. He began writing for the magazine soon after he left the Senate in 1981. (His resignation was, he told me, a health measure: Caucus was giving him nausea.) His articles ranged from East Timor, New Caledonia and Sri Lanka to Lebanon, South Africa and Austria, not to mention the Australian Labor Party.

He also contributed some fascinating interviews with, for example, an old Austrian Nazi and Obersturmbannfuhrer, Wilhelm Hottl (May 1994); Trotsky's bodyguard, Albert Glotzer (November 1995); and the former South African President P.W. Botha (April 1996).

A few extracts will give the flavour of his contributions:

On multiculturalism:

 
   Sri Lanka is only one of many examples of what 
   happens in a multicultural society when times get 
   tough. If ethnic and religious differences are given 
   more regard than the unity of a nation as a whole, 
   the consequences in times of prosperity may be 
   agreeably colourful. They can be the trigger for 
   violence and persecution when there are not 
   enough jobs, houses or food to go round.