BY GRAHAM MATTHEWS
MELBOURNE — During an October 25 interview on Radio 3AW, Socialist Alliance Senate candidate for Victoria Alison Thorne faced a barrage of abuse and accusation.
Thorne was invited by 3AW drive-time host Steve Price to talk about Socialist Alliance policy for the November 10 federal election. During the course of the interview, he played a piece of file tape from a radio interview in 1983 in which Thorne said "paedophiles really care for children". He then accused her of supporting paedophilia. In a subsequent talk-back session, Price attempted to paint the Socialist Alliance as a party that supports child abuse.
Price's question was "an ambush", Thorne told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly. "It was a piece of cheap entertainment for talk-back listeners, using sensationalism to prevent the Socialist Alliance getting out information."
The 1983 comments were made in an interview about a campaign that Thorne, a long-time lesbian and gay rights activist, was involved in to defend gay men who were being prosecuted for "corrupting public morals". The cases were thrown out of court as spurious, anti-homosexual exercises.
As a result of her public defence of the accused men, Thorne was sacked from her job as a secondary teacher by the Victorian education department. She appealed her sacking to the Victorian Equal Opportunity Board, with the support of the Australian Education Union and the gay and lesbian community. She won her reinstatement in 1986 despite opposition from then Labor premier John Cain. The board found that Thorne had not defended or advocated illegal sexual activity.
Price's treatment of Thorne has subsequently become the subject of a complaint by the Socialist Alliance to the Australian Electoral Commission. The alliance is accusing 3AW of having breached 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ 327 and 329 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 because it "published and distributed a matter which is likely to deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote and interfered with the political liberty of Alison Thorne".
Following the complaint, 3AW interviewed Socialist Alliance national co-convenor Dick Nichols on November 1. Nichols clarified that the Socialist Alliance does not support child sexual abuse.
"Alison was naive [in 1983]. She should not have used the term paedophile", Nichols explained to 3AW listeners. "But she has made it clear a hundred times since then, and again in the face of your provocation, that she is totally opposed to child sexual abuse."
The Socialist Alliance demands "fully funded refuges for women and children escaping physical, psychological or sexual abuse", Nichols added.
Nichols criticised 3AW for playing the 1983 material out of context, pointing out that the Equal Opportunity Board's 1986 decision censured radio programs for "sensationalist reporting of the worst kind".
"The role of the media in blackening her name was disgusting", Nichols said of 3AW's treatment of Thorne.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, November 7, 2001.
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