Sex, lies and politics

Junie Morosi was a looker. Born in China to a Portuguese mother and Italian father, she was smart and exotic, and when she arrived in Canberra in the early 70s she sent a spark through the halls of power.

In 1974 she joined the staff of treasurer Jim Cairns in a public relations capacity - he'd wanted her as his office co-ordinator despite her lack of public service experience - and within months the gossip about them was at boiling point.

Cairns, at 60 almost two decades her senior, was one of the most charismatic and smart characters in Gough Whitlam's Labor government. But his relationship with Morosi was damaging - on the day of Labor's campaign opening in 1975 he was helping to launch Morosi's book Sex, Prejudice and Politics - and he has admitted their relationship distracted him.

He was also married, as was Morosi, when people started to talk openly about their relationship.

Both denied any romantic liaison.

So when The National Times in 1981 quoted a director with finance house Morgan Stanley describing Morosi as "Cairns' girlfriend", he sued for defamation. He vigorously defended both his and Morosi's reputations and took the case to the Court of Appeal after he lost in a lower court when the jury decided the article did imply a sexual relationship, but that was not defamatory.

Cairns lost in the Court of Appeal also, but had been encouraged by Morosi's successful defamation suits in the late 70s against The Mirror and 2GB over similar imputations.

In the New South Wales Supreme Court in '82, Cairns was asked if he had ever had an adulterous relationship and he replied, "No, never".

A fortnight ago he came clean and during an ABC radio interview, admitted to an affair with Morosi. So it would appear now they perjured themselves for profit and to muzzle the media, and there is talk the media involved will try to get the money back.

The Cairns-Morosi affair isn't the only such case. A year ago, disgraced British politician and novelist Jeffrey Archer was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice after charges were laid arising from his 1987 libel case, in which it was alleged he had sex with a prostitute. Archer was found guilty of lying and creating false diaries to win $1.6 million from The Daily Star.

This week the owners of the Star announced Archer had repaid the award and he is understood to have paid at least an extra $3.3 million in legal and recovery costs.

The payment comes less than three months after the multimillionaire novelist was forced to repay $1.2 million to the News of the World, from whom he had won $160,000 damages.

At the same time the Cairns-Morosi affair was being readdressed, former British Tory MP Edwina Currie was lifting the lid on her four-year affair with fellow MP John Major, later the Prime Minister.

Unlike the Cairns-Morosi affair, and that of the "fragrant" Lady Archer - to use judge Bernard Caulfield's famous description - the Major-Currie affair has turned slightly nasty.

Morosi, now 69, has said she has no regrets about her liaison with Cairns, and Lady Archer has been astonishingly loyal to a man who seems, at best, a rogue and roue. But there are the makings of an unseemly slanging match between Currie and Major.

As Wellington media law specialist Sandra Moran notes, "Major has come out as holier-than-thou and a hypocrite in terms of moral conduct. He even said [the relationship with Currie] is the thing he feels most ashamed of. If ever he wanted to get Currie's back up, that was guaranteed to do it."

The Currie-Major affair is also different in the details. It was never alleged Major had an affair with Currie, which has come as a surprise to the British public and media. However, nine years ago Major sued the now-defunct Scallywag and New Statesman for publishing false rumours about an affair between him and a Downing St caterer Clare Latimer.

Ironically the New Statesman said the rumours were not true, but Major - an outspoken campaigner for morality in public life - sued anyway. The New Statesman settled out of court and Scallywag was forced to fold.

"Nobody could understand at the time the ferocity [with which] John Major had pursued it," New Statesman editor Peter Wilby said recently. "We now know why. He wanted to frighten the press."

Of course, had Major gone to court and been asked if he had ever had an affair, he would be obliged to tell the truth (about Currie) or perjure himself.

By urging Latimer to sue and vigorously pursuing his own litigation, the papers backed down.

As Auckland barrister Bruce Gray says, "That was good strategy because it meant he never had to say he had not had an affair with any person and so has not perjured himself."

But given that Lord Archer, Cairns and Morosi all appear to have done so - no such charges have been lodged against Cairns or Morosi - then the question must be, "Why did they do it?"

Certainly it was to silence the media, although barrister Gray says in this sensitive area you have to be cautious about offering that as a reason why people sue for defamation. It suggests some who have threatened or pursued action have done so cynically and in an attempt only to send a message of fear to the media.

Gray: "Defamation is regarded as one of the most difficult areas of the law and the reason is that it seeks to balance two things which don't balance against each other. One is the reputation of citizens and the other is the right to free speech.

"People take their reputations very seriously, and particularly prominent people, whose reputation is very valuable to them. When their reputation is threatened, they will often go to quite extraordinary lengths to protect it."

Another experienced New Zealand defamation lawyer sees it differently.

"I take the view that most people have a grossly inflated idea of what their reputation is and the kind of people who tend to sue are bullies. If you look through the history of them you'll find crooks, politicians and rich businessmen figure highly.

"They perceive themselves to have a reputation, but by and large they are bullies who don't want anyone to say anything adverse about them, so they crack the whip.

"And because they've got money and tend to be people who are inclined to be brinksmen they take the view that they'll crush somebody. They are quite happy to abuse other people, but anyone who abuses them they want to sue.

"It's the combination of money, power and arrogance, and they are used to getting away with things. They don't think they are ever going to get caught and no one is game to stand up to them."

Defamation is also a knotty area in that it operates in the plaintiff's favour once a defamatory meaning has been established. Then the onus is on the defendant to prove the plaintiff's reputation hasn't been sullied. It's messy stuff all round, however.

"Defamation trials are gladiatorial," says Gray. "No one emerges unscathed, even the successful party.

"It's also an unusual area in that if you threaten proceedings or commence them but do not go to trial, you enable everybody to say you didn't have the strength of conviction to carry it through - and that supports the possibility that what was said must be true. So you make things worse.

"So everything has to go to trial and, therefore, people have every incentive to do what it takes to win."

Which means some people - among them those who would otherwise pretend to be law-abiding, upstanding citizens - will perjure themselves.

In this country, the media tends to err on the side of caution in the face of defamation. Few print outlets have the financial resources to fight (and possibly lose) a high-profile defamation case.

Certainly those in the media close to politicians know more than they print.

An Australian journalist who wrote about Cairns and Morosi has admitted she knew the truth of the relationship. She kept her silence at the request of the couple and Morosi's husband because Cairns' wife Gwen was still alive but in ill-health.

Most of the media in New Zealand make a distinction between the public interest and what the public might simply have a prurient interest in.

Most observe the right of public figures to have a private life and, in the case of politicians, do not reveal private information unless it shows them to be hypocritical in matters of morality, or to be corrupt.

But media lawyers around the world are taking a keen interest in the Major-Currie affair, and that of Cairns and Morosi. In Britain New Statesman is looking for restitution from Major, and the Cairns confession may not be allowed to die quietly either.

Ironically, what appears defamatory may, in fact, enhance someone's reputation.

The judge at the Australian Court of Appeal who heard the Cairns case remarked, "The fact that so intelligent and glamorous a woman as Miss Morosi [Mrs Ditchburn] developed a romantic interest in him may raise his standing in public eyes".

A fortnight ago the once-angrily wronged Cairns, 88 next month, admitted as much.

"I don't think the ordinary person thought I was wrong or a fool in going to bed with Junie Morosi," he said, noting his popularity in 1974 remained high after months of publicity about their relationship.

"They thought it was a pretty good thing."

* In 1956 Liberace sued the Daily Mirror for a Cassandra column which suggested he was a homosexual. The jury read the column, which described the flamboyant pianist as "this deadly, winking, sniggering, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of Mother Love" and agreed. Liberace was awarded $26,000.

When he died in 1987 of Aids-related illnesses and openly gay, the Daily Mirror didn't sue to get its money back. Maybe these days it would.