The editorial page of the Gammy Bird played “streams of invective across the provincial political scene like a fire hose”, wrote Annie Proulx in her novel, The Shipping News.

The Gammy Bird springs to mind as the spectre of mining billionaire Gina Rinehart’s far-right political views being played on the pages of the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ and the ‘Age’ is raised in the wake of her January Fairfax Media share-buying splurge that took her interests to 12.6 per cent, making her the biggest shareholder.

Rinehart’s “stunning raid” renews memories of an era when brazen entrepreneurs such as Alan Bond and Robert Holmes a Court “strode the national stage, buying up media assets as well as anything else that took their fancy”, wrote reporter Andrew Burrell in the ‘Australian’.

In many ways, Rinehart is following in the footsteps of her late father, Lang Hancock, who established the ‘Sunday Independent’ in Perth in 1969 before selling to Rupert Murdoch, who owned the opposition ‘Sunday Times’.

Media commentator Mark Day (The Australian) has observed, however, that because Fairfax has a long tradition of editorial independence, the views of individual shareholders “amount to diddly-squat” on the editorial floors of the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’, ‘Age’ and ‘Australian Financial Review’.

Things have certainly changed at Fairfax since 1961. Until then, the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ had never advocated the election of a Labor government. In 1961, the ‘Herald’ constantly attacked the Menzies coalition government and, at the eleventh hour, published what Fairfax historian Gavin Souter described as “an unequivocal endorsement of Labor”. Behind the scenes it had gone much further, with at least two senior Fairfax executives preparing speeches and statements for Labor leader Arthur Calwell during the election campaign. The Menzies Government scraped back into office with a majority of two.

The ‘Herald’ is the oldest surviving newspaper in Australia, having been launched on April 18, 1831, as the weekly ‘Sydney Herald’. Its initial motto, ‘Sworn to no Master, of no Sect am I’, was one adopted by a number of early Australian newspapers. Even if they did adopt such a motto at the outset, newspapers soon favoured one political perspective over another.

By 1855, when the British parliament granted self-government to the colonies, Australian colonists were divided into two clear groups, ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’, according to what they had believed was required in the constitution of each colony. The conservatives were associated with the landed gentry who saw themselves in the role of a colonial aristocracy. The liberals were mainly engaged in commercial, professional and agricultural (as opposed to pastoral) pursuits.

In country towns, the first newspaper established in a town would generally declare its neutrality, but lean towards the liberals, or it would declare its support at the outset for the liberals. The ‘Newcastle Chronicle’ (established 1858) was one of many pioneering provincial prints that claimed to be liberal in politics. Its leaders reflected the major political issues of the day and “read like a manifesto of liberal principles”. One newspaper editor commented that if NSW did not “become a liberal-minded nation, the fault certainly will not rest with the press”.

Political motivations generally arose somewhere in the establishment of a provincial newspaper – if not for the town’s first, as at Armidale in 1856 and Grafton in 1859, then certainly for its second. H.M. Franklyn captured this in describing a typical town’s growth up to 1880, with the remark that “two newspapers have been struggling into existence, and are advocating diametrically opposite views in politics”.

Provincial newspapers initiated political movements, but none so effectively as the Northern New State Movement of the 1920s in NSW. The movement was born in Tamworth, mainly through the energy and enthusiasm of Victor Charles Thompson, who had become the editor of the town’s ‘Daily Observer’ in 1911 when he was 26.

In 1915, new state advocate Earle Page – a future long-term deputy prime minister and, in 1939, briefly the prime minister – visited Tamworth and won Thompson’s support for his new-state ideas. The need to “disseminate ideas, circulate knowledge, and create a favourable public opinion” was uppermost in Page’s mind. “When the opportunity arose during 1915 to purchase the [Grafton] ‘Examiner’,” Page wrote, “a band of keen local enthusiasts joined me in floating a local company to take it over.”

The company converted the triweekly ‘Clarence and Richmond Examiner’ into the ‘Daily Examiner’ in 1915 “to keep public issues constantly before the minds of the people”. The Grafton daily, Lismore’s daily ‘Northern Star’, and the Tamworth and Murwillumbah dailies developed a uniform policy on decentralisation and became “the vehicles for our [new state] campaign”, Page said. They worked to “make the inarticulate countryside articulate”.

At the end of the World War I, Thompson secured the approval of his directors to publish a series of articles in favour of a new state. The series began on January 5, 1920, with an outspoken editorial, headed ‘Why not a new outlook?’ to meet the problem of the ‘exodus from the large towns’.

In the next 11 issues of the ‘Daily Observer’, Thompson printed a series of well-reasoned articles, calling for establishment of a new state in northern NSW. He stressed the “evils of centralisation” and echoed the assertion that the railway network had been “constructed on a definite plan aiming at the absorption of all the trade and traffic into the commercial network of Sydney”.

A new northern state, he said, would “certainly be the brightest jewel in the Australian Commonwealth’, incorporating the north coast, the tablelands, the ‘vast, productive’ north-west and the Tamworth, Upper Hunter, Maitland and Newcastle districts – an area larger than Victoria and with a larger proportionate population than Queensland.

Thompson provided a practical plan of action: an intensive press propaganda campaign leading to the establishment of local leagues in each town, after which a representative convention would be called to draw up a definite scheme for a new state.

Most newspapers followed the lead of the ‘Observer’, many publishing editorials supporting its plan. At a conference in March 1920, northern newspaper proprietors agreed to work for a new state and appointed a New State Press League and a Press Propaganda executive, with Thompson as secretary of both.

Over the coming year the executive distributed a weekly batch of news and editorial material to all northern newspapers, the cost being met by the 27 newspapers belonging to the Press League. In the first two months 450 articles were circulated and some, or all, were used by at least 61 papers.

Some editors did not toe the line. A.N Pountney (‘Quirindi Gazette’) said instead of increasing the number of states, and “attendant spending agencies”, there should be a campaign to abolish existing state parliaments and to adopt “a policy of One People, One Destiny, One Government”.  F.A. Fitzpatrick (‘Wingham Chronicle’) said if the New State scheme were submitted to a referendum “they will find just one kick from the people will leave it in the position of an exploded football or motor tyre”.

The ‘Daily Observer’, inspired by its great cause, changed its name to the ‘Northern Daily Leader’ on January 1, 1921. A formal organisation, the Northern New State Movement, was formed and in 1921 had 200 local leagues scattered throughout the northern tablelands, the north-west, the north coast, the Liverpool Plains and the Upper Hunter.

But the momentum of the 1920s and 1930s was not maintained. A referendum for voters in the areas affected was not held until April 29, 1967, and was defeated, mainly because of the strong ‘No’ vote in the Labor strongholds of Newcastle and the Lower Hunter.

• You can contact Rod Kirkpatrick at email rkhistory3@bigpond.com