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.

Cairns and Morosi

By this time Cairns's relationship with Morosi had become public, although the media at that time was still sufficiently discreet for its precise nature not to be mentioned. It took the newly elected Liberal backbencher John Howard to broadcast this fact under the protection of parliamentary privilege. At the Labor Party national conference in February 1975 he gave an interview in which he confessed "a kind of love" for Morosi. Morosi considered Cairns to be sexually repressed, and evidently he found her company liberating. It is not clear when the relationship became sexual, and Cairns was not at this time directly asked if it was a sexual relationship. However, unlike other politicians of the time, he did not seek to suppress or publically repudiate any of his private life.

Related Topics:
John Howard - Parliamentary privilege - 1975

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In a 1982 defamation case he initiated before the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Cairns denied on oath having had a sexual relationship with Morosi. The jury in that case found that the article in question did contain "an imputation" that Cairns was "improperly involved with his assistant, Junie Morosi, in a romantic or sexual association," but that this statement was not defamatory. Cairns did not receive money for defamation, although Morosi did. In 2002 Cairns was able to talk freely of his sexual relationship with Morosi.

Related Topics:
1982 - 2002

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