Australian leaders' sex secrets fuel bitter debate

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - Australia is locked into another sordid debate on sex and ethics after the disclosure of a five-year affair between two former political leaders whose romance allegedly led to the biggest defection in decades.

The affair between former Labor deputy leader and Foreign Affairs Minister Gareth Evans and former Democrats leader-cum-Labor frontbencher Cheryl Kernot was made public two days after Kernot published her memoirs.

Worse even than the implication that Evans romanced Kernot into dumping the Democrats was the revelation that one of Labor's most senior ministers lied to Parliament about their romance.

But the affair has also launched a furious debate about the role of the media and the line between the private and public lives of MPs.

Kernot quit the Democrats without warning even her closest colleagues, going into a brief, unsuccessful career with Labor that ended in defeat and recriminations.

Her attack in the memoirs on former leader Kim Beazley and other Labor figures outraged federal press gallery doyen Laurie Oakes, who wrote in this week's Bulletin magazine that Kernot had not disclosed the real reason for her defection.

After Kernot tried to laugh off the implication of a murky past, Oakes revealed on Nine Network's national news a leaked email confirming the worst, written by Evans to Kernot after their affair ended in 1999.

"I lied to Parliament about our relationship," the email said.

"I don't think I can yet live with the consequence of that revelation."



Both Evans and Kernot are married with children - Evans has a son and a daughter, Kernot a daughter - although Kernot is now separated from her husband, Gavin.

Oakes said they conducted their affair for five years.

During that time, Evans played a key role in arranging the defection of Kernot to Labor's front bench in a betrayal that rocked Australian politics.

Although Oakes said senior Labor figures were unaware of the romance, it was widely rumoured and erupted spectacularly in 1998 when Liberal MP Don Randall hinted at the affair in Parliament.

Saying Kernot had "the morals of an alleycat", Randall also referred to an affair Kernot had with a student when she was a teacher 20 years earlier.

A furious Evans told Parliament the allegation was "baseless, beneath contempt and a disgraceful abuse of parliamentary privilege".

No response to Oakes' revelations has come from Evans or Kernot, although Kernot's publisher, HarperCollins, said it regarded her memoirs as complete and accurate.

HarperCollins has cancelled planned promotions of the book, blaming car pursuits of Kernot and her husband.

But the revelations have raised questions - not only about Evans, Kernot and the defection, but also about the ethics of the media in revealing details of politicians' private lives in contravention of long-established convention.

Oakes said he had struggled with his conscience over the story, deciding in the end to disclose the affair because Kernot had published what he regarded as a false version of her defection and woes in Labor.

He has been supported by senior media figures, including the heads of major news organisations and Australian Broadcasting Authority chairman David Flint.

But present and former MPs - including senior Democrats and former Victorian Premier Joan Kirner, who yesterday confirmed the affair - slammed Oakes as "vindictive" and media coverage as a "salacious gutter pursuit".

Talkback radio also ran hot, one caller describing Oakes as a "nasty little toad".