McGuinness, voice of dissent, dies, 69 (one of Australia's great anti-Communist conservatives)

TRIBUTES flowed in yesterday from around the world for Padraic "Paddy" McGuinness, a unique character in Australian life and a man who had been central to the country's cultural, journalistic and academic life for more than half a century.

McGuinness first came to public attention as a student activist - his ASIO file is now on the National Archives website - and was a leading light during the heady days of intellectual ferment in the late 1950s and early 60s that saw the formation of the group known as the Sydney Push.

"Paddy was always passionately interested in ideas," Mr Lindsay said. "He was one of the great Australians; dying on Australia Day was very fitting."

Senior columnist with The Australian Frank Devine, who knew McGuinness for 35 years, said: "Paddy was the quintessential independent thinker, scorning humbug and stupidity. He was a bloodthirsty predator among those he identified as members of the chattering classes."

Author and new Quadrant editor Keith Windschuttle said of McGuinness: "He had a very strong eye for cant, humbug, hypocrisy and people who clothed the incoherence of their ideas in obfuscatory language. When he became editor of Quadrant in late 1997, he declared one of his targets would be postmodernism, which was then the main intellectual infection in our humanity departments of our universities. Within five years, postmodernism was dead."

Windschuttle said McGuinness was also one of the few voices brave enough to raise debate about Aborigines and the Stolen Generation at a time when even to question the topic was derided by the Left as immoral.

McGuinness's funeral will be held at Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney at 2pm on Friday. The two speakers, both former employers, will be Devine and former governor-general and long-term friend Bill Hayden.

Year ago, I was at a function where McGuinness was also present.

Talk got around where people had gone to school - Paddy was an Old Boy of one of New South Wales’ most exclusive private schools, and I am one of one of Victoria’s most exclusive private schools.

He looked at me, and said: “I hope you’ve done something useful with that type of education. Too many people just waste it all.”

I felt like I was on trial for my life.

“I’m a Naval Officer, Sir.”

“That will do nicely.”

For some reason, it seemed like very, very high praise indeed from such a man.

He edited Quadrant magazine until recently.

I love this piece from Quadrant's website.

Quadrant magazine is the leading general intellectual journal of ideas, literature, poetry and historical and political debate published in Australia. Its stance is often described as conservative, neo-conservative, or rightwing. In fact it is not necessarily any of these things, but maintains a sceptical approach to unthinking Leftism, or political correctness, and its "smelly little orthodoxies". Its pages are open to any well-written and thoughtful contribution regardless of political tendency, and while it has been at the forefront of debate on the shoddiness of much current historical and anthropological writing in Australia, particularly on issues of Aboriginal history, it has no preconceived policy positions regarding any interpretations. Unlike most intellectual journals it is open-minded on questions of religion and philosophy, judging material by the importance of ideas rather than requiring any agreement. It has no prejudices either for or against religion, and recognises that religion is an important intellectual and institutional part of society, whether or not it is "true". It is uncompromisingly in favour of freedom of thought and expression, while insisting on civilised discourse, and understands tolerance to mean the willingness to listen to unpopular or unorthodox views which are well argued, while in practice taking tolerance to mean the willingness to live and let live which is so typical of Australian life.

Quadrant was founded in 1956 as an initiative of the Australian Committee for Cultural Freedom, itself associated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and so was part of the defensive against Communist inspired, subsidised and/or influenced intellectual publications of the post-war era. Thus it remains the last survivor of the group of publications which included Encounter (UK), Preuves (France), Monat (Germany). It is alleged by its critics that Quadrant enjoyed some kind of funding through the CCF from the US Central Intelligence Agency; if so none of its editors ever knew of or were influenced in any way by such funding. It is hardly however shameful to have been indirectly in receipt of funds from the agency of a democratic government rather than the Communist dictatorships which subsidised the Leftist publications.

Quadrant's first editor was James McAuley, one of Australia's greatest poets (a convert to Catholicism), who was significant in the education of the post-war Australian administrators of Papua-New Guinea, and who was also co-author (with another poet, Harold Stewart) of the most celebrated hoax of Australian literary history, the invention of the fictitious poet Ern Malley and his poems, a spoof of meaningless modernist poetry.

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