Jim Cairns

1914 Dr Jim Cairns (d. October 12, 2003), Australian politician and author, Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer (1974 - '75) in Gough Whitlam's Labor Government.

Cairns is best remembered as a leader of the movement against Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, for his affair with Juni Morosi and for his later renunciation of conventional politics. After leaving politics he became a leading light of the countercultural Down to Earth movement which organised the ConFests attended by many thousands of Australians interested in alternative lifestyles (see December 12, 1976, Cotter ConFest, in the Book of Days).

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 admitted that he had had a sexual relationship with Morosi ...

Categories: australia, counterculture