About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Phillip Adams

Encyclopedia : P : PH : PHI : Phillip Adams

Phillip Adams AO (born 1939) is an Australian broadcaster on the Radio National network of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), filmmaker, author, archaeologist, controversialist, Humanist, social commentator and satirist. He is the author or editor of over 20 books, including The Unspeakable Adams, Adams Versus God, The Penguin Book of Australian Jokes, Retreat from Tolerance, Talkback and A Billion Voices and Adams Ark (published in 2004).

-->
Contents

Personal life

Adams was born in Maryborough, Victoria, the only child of a Congregational Church minister. He is an atheist who sometimes talks about spiritual matters in his interviews. Adams lives on Elmswood, a cattle property specialising in the production of chemical-free beef, in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales and also Paddington, a wealthy suburb of Sydney. He collects rare antiques, including Egyptian, Roman and Greek sculptures and artifacts.

The controversial writer has also stated that ASIO have been watching him for decades regarding his involvement with the Australian Communist Party.

Adams is married to Patrice Newell (http://www.virgo.com.au/), and has a 14-year-old daughter Aurora, as well as three older daughters with a previous wife - Saskia, Meaghan and Rebecca Adams.

Public life

Adams is one of the Australian Living Treasures. For almost 50 years, Adams' left-wing writings in newspapers and magazines have provoked discussion and outrage. He has spoken, chaired and moderated public and private sector conferences.

Films

Adams played a role in reviving the Australian film industry during the 1970s[link]. The title developed from his authorship of a report that led Prime Minister John Gorton to revive the local film industry. In addition to this was his role, with Barry Jones, in creating the Experimental Film Fund and the Australian Film and Television School. Additionally he devised the South Australian Film Corporation for Premier Don Dunstan, which became a model for similar bodies in all other States. He established the Australian Film Finance Corperation, a chain of independent Government owned cinemas for the local industry and, as head of delegation to the Cannes Film Festival, signed Australia's first co-production agreements with France and the UK. He was Chairman of the Australian Film Institute, the Film and Television Board of the Australia Council, the Australian Film Commission, and Film Australia. He helped establish the Australian Caption Centre - the subtitling service for hearing impaired television viewers - and the Travelling Film Festival to take quality films into the rural areas.

Adams also chaired the Commission for the Future, established by the Hawke Government to build bridges between science and the community. In 1988 the Commission won a major United Nations award for educating Australia on the issue of Greenhouse and Climate Change. He chaired the National Australia Day Council. it's principal task to choose the Australian of the Year. He currently chairs the Advisory Board for the Centre of the Mind at the University of Sydney and the Australia National University in Canberra.

In the late 1960s Adams wrote, produced and directed (as well as serving as cinematographer) his first feature film "Jack and Jill - A Postscript" the first feature to win the Australian Film Institute Award - and the first Australian film to win the Grand Prix at an international festival. he went on to produce or co-produced other features which are now seen as important stepping stones in the revival of the local feature film industry, including the critically-panned but hugely popular film adaptation of Barry Humphries' The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, directed by Bruce Beresford, which became the most successful Australian film ever made up to that time. Other films include "The Naked Bunyip" "Don's Party" "The Getting Of Wisdom" "Lonely Hearts" "We Of The Never Never" "Gendel Grendel Grendel" "Fighting Back" and "Hearts And Minds".

In 1979 a painting of Phillip Adams by artist Wes Walters won the Archibald Prize, Australia's most famous portraiture prize.

As a consultant to prime ministers and premiers, Adams played a key role in the establishment of the Australia Council, and the Australian Film Development Corporation, later known as the Australian Film Commission.

Adams has been Chair of the Australian Film Institute, the Australian Film Commission, the Commission for the Future, the Film Radio and Television Board, Film Australia and the National Australian Day Council. He is Chairman of the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University in Canberra. His board memberships have included Greenpeace, CARE Australia, The National Museum of Australia, Adelaide's Festival of Ideas and Brisbane's Ideas at the Powerhouse.

Broadcasting

As a broadcaster, Adams has interviewed over 15,000 prominent politicians, philosophers, economists, scientists, theologians, historians, archaeologists, novelists and scholars. His radio program, Late Night Live is broadcast twice a day over the 250-station network of ABC's Radio National and around the world on Radio Australia and the World Wide Web. Currently 30 000 international listeners are downloading Podcasts of the program each week. The program attempts a serious discussion of world issues, often with a humorous and satirical bent. Adams addresses all listeners to the program as "Gladys". (This is Adams' half-humorous and half-serious way of saying that his program is not popular, and for a single listener; but neither is the case as he also refers to listeners in the plural as "Gladdies".

Adams has a business background in advertising. His politics are progressive and he holds an atheist, humanist worldview. Adams has been criticised by the political right in Australia, especially for his role as a presenter at the ABC. The "anti-Adams" campaign reached a crescendo under the former ABC managing director Jonathan Shier, a strong supporter of the Liberal Party who was known to have a strong dislike of both Adams and his politics.

Many conservatives — including the Prime Minister and former federal Communcations Minster Richard Alston — have repeatedly attacked Adams as a prime example of supposed endemic left-wing bias in the ABC. There have been consistent calls for the ABC to give equivalent broadcast time to a politically more conservative commentator (often referred to as a "right-wing Philip Adams").

Chairmanships, boards and membership

Current chairmanships

Current board memberships include

Previous chairmanships

Previous board memberships

Memberships

Patron

Awards

Honorary Doctorate from The University of Sydney Honorary Doctorate from University of South Australia Honorary Doctorate from Edith Cowan University Western Australia

Bibliography

With his partner Patrice Newell, he is the author of several joke books:

Filmography

Film

Acting roles

Television

References

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: