Brian Toohey - Fifty Years Before the Mastheads

Name: Brian Toohey - Fifty Years Before the Mastheads
Start: 2026-06-12T18:00:00+10:00
End: 2026-06-12T18:00:00+10:00
Location: Upstairs at Gleebooks

About

6pm for 6:30pm Friday 12 June

Brian Toohey launched by David Marr

Malcolm Fraser wanted ASIO to tap his phone. Bob Hawke took him to the High Court. The Senate privileges committee held him in contempt. And former foreign minister Gareth Evans wanted him jailed.

There are few journalists in Australian history who have published as many leaks and so enraged governments in the process as former National Times editor and Australian Financial Review correspondent Brian Toohey.

50 years before the mastheads is a selection of Toohey’s articles since the 1970s covering corruption, the US alliance, national security and intelligence, secrecy, and economic reform.

It includes previously unpublished articles on the US government’s deep involvement in the dismissal of the Whitlam government, and the businessmen who supplied Bob Hawke with prostitutes.

Toohey also recounts stories from his foreign travels of the misadventures of an Australian government official and young female staffer, and the time Lady Mary Fairfax expected him to swap his hotel room for her hut in the hotel grounds.

Brian Toohey was born in Queensland 1944 and has worked as a political staffer and journalist. In 1973 he left the Whitlam government to work as political correspondent for the Australian Financial Review in Canberra before becoming the paper’s Washington correspondent in 1979 and editor of The National Times in 1982. He founded The Eye magazine in 1987 and was later a columnist for the AFR for decades.

He has also written for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Nikkei Asia Review, The West Australian, The Sunday Age, Inside Story, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper and other publications. He is the author or co-author of five books. He has written extensively about national security, politics, economics, corruption and secrecy. In 1999 he received a Walkley Award for Journalistic leadership.

David Marr has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Saturday Paper, The Guardian and The Monthly, and has served as editor of The National Times, reporter for Four Corners and presenter of ABC TV's Media Watch. His books include Patrick White: A Life, The High Price of Heaven, Dark Victory (with Marian Wilkinson), Panic and six bestselling Quarterly Essays. His most recent book is My Country. David is the recipient of four Walkley awards for journalism, an Honorary Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities and received Honorary Doctorates from Newcastle and Sydney Universities. He currently hosts Late Night Live on ABC Radio National.