About News Weekly

News Weekly

News Weekly is an Australian current-affairs magazine published fortnightly by the National Civic Council (NCC) from Balwyn, Victoria. Founded in September 1943 by B. A. Santamaria as Freedom — the mouthpiece of the Catholic anti-communist "Movement" — it adopted its current name in 1946–47 and has published continuously for more than eighty years. It provides analysis of cultural, social, political, educational and economic trends, domestic and international, from the perspective of the NCC's five primacies: the family, decentralisation, the integrity of the individual, patriotism and Judeo-Christian values.

Overview

News Weekly is a magazine of ideas rather than a news magazine in the conventional sense: its content is analysis and argument about current affairs, applying traditional Christian principles to social and political issues. Its editorial stance is socially conservative — defending the natural family, the right to life, and Judeo-Christian heritage — while on economics it rejects both socialism and the free-market economic rationalism associated with recent Liberal and Labor governments, favouring instead a distributist-leaning scepticism of globalisation and free trade.

The magazine is published fortnightly and headquartered in Balwyn, Victoria, with NCC offices in Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia supporting its distribution. Its editor is Peter Kelleher. The publication's website is newsweekly.com.au, named here as an attributed candidate rather than a load-verified address.

History

The magazine's origins lie in the most dramatic episode of Australian political Catholicism. On 1 February 1936, the young Melbourne Catholic activist B. A. "Bob" Santamaria began his publishing career with the first edition of The Catholic Worker — written, edited, published and distributed by Santamaria himself from a small suburban printery, with the first copy sent to Pope Pius XI and another to Joseph Stalin in Moscow.

In 1943, with the support of Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne, Santamaria began publishing Freedom — a four-page tabloid news sheet dated 25 September 1943 — as the mouthpiece of the incipient "Movement," the Catholic Social Studies Movement organised to counter communist influence in the trade unions. Freedom was established specifically as a counter to communist propaganda; it evolved into News Weekly in 1946–47, taking the name Australia's national news-weekly along the way.

The Movement's work — organising the Industrial Groups within the Labor Party to combat Communist Party infiltration of unions — reshaped Australian politics. The 1955 split in the Australian Labor Party, when Catholic anti-communists broke away to form the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), was the Movement's most consequential legacy; the DLP held the balance of power in the Senate for nearly two decades and kept Labor out of federal office until 1972. Through these years News Weekly was the Movement's — and then the NCC's — voice: the journal that argued the anti-communist case week by week. In 1955 its circulation reached 30,000 copies, a substantial figure for a political weekly.

The NCC itself emerged in 1957 from the Catholic Social Studies Movement after the Labor split, with Santamaria at its head until 1998, when Peter Westmore succeeded him. The magazine settled into its current magazine-type format in 1965 and became a fortnightly in 1989 — the name News Weekly retained despite the changed frequency, the NCC judging that a rename would hasten its demise.

The Santamaria legacy

B. A. Santamaria (1915–1998) remains the dominant figure in the magazine's history and in the NCC's identity. A formidable organiser, writer and broadcaster, he built the Movement into the most effective anti-communist organisation in Australian history, commanded the loyalty of thousands of Catholic activists, and exercised influence over Australian politics — particularly through the DLP — far beyond his organisation's numbers. His regular commentary shaped conservative Catholic opinion for half a century, and his legacy continues to divide historians: to admirers, the man who saved Australia's unions from communism; to critics, a sectarian warrior whose methods split the Labor Party and the Church.

News Weekly was Santamaria's instrument and remains his monument. The magazine's continued publication — more than 25 years after his death — testifies to the durability of the movement he built and the readership it cultivated: Catholics and conservatives who share the NCC's worldview and value a publication that speaks to it without compromise.

Editorial stance

The NCC's five primacies define the magazine's editorial framework: the natural family as the basic unit of society; decentralisation against excessive centralisation of power; the integrity of the individual; patriotism; and Judeo-Christian virtues. In practice this produces a distinctive combination: firm social conservatism on issues such as abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage and gender ideology, alongside economic positions — scepticism of free trade, globalisation and economic rationalism — that set it apart from the mainstream right.

The magazine's influence has historically crossed party lines: its positions have found supporters in both the Labor Party and the Coalition, reflecting the NCC's roots in the labour movement and its independence from party structures. Associated organisations include the Thomas More Centre and the Australian Family Association, the NCC's affiliate active on family and social issues.

The Movement years

The Freedom era — 1943 to 1947 — was the crucible. Santamaria's news sheet was written almost entirely by Santamaria himself in its early issues, a one-man propaganda operation against the Communist Party's influence in the unions. The stakes, as the Movement saw them, were existential: communists, though electorally negligible, had captured commanding positions in unions of strategic importance — the waterside workers, the miners, the metal trades — through what the Movement characterised as electoral fraud and disciplined organisation. Freedom's job was to expose, to organise, and to recruit.

The Industrial Groups — the Movement's vehicle within the ALP — fought the communists union by union, ballot by ballot, through the late 1940s and early 1950s. It was gruelling, often violent work, and it made Santamaria both revered and reviled. When the Groups' opponents within the ALP moved against them in 1954–55, the resulting split — formalised at the 1955 federal ALP conference — created the Democratic Labor Party and reordered Australian politics for a generation. News Weekly, by then under its current name, was the chronicler and advocate of the split: the paper its readers turned to for the Movement's account of events the mainstream press reported differently.

The NCC after Santamaria

Santamaria led the NCC until 1998, when Peter Westmore — a former DLP federal candidate — succeeded him as national president. The post-Santamaria NCC adapted the movement's framework to new battles: where the founding enemy had been communism, the contemporary concerns became the family, the right to life, religious freedom and what the NCC sees as the threats of gender ideology and radical secularism. The 2014 "strengthening the family" conference, organised in support of the World Congress of Families with NCC representation, illustrated the organisation's international conservative networking.

Through these transitions News Weekly remained the constant: the fortnightly that carried the NCC's analysis to its supporters, the institutional memory of the movement in print. The magazine's offices across four states reflect an organisation that, while smaller than in its mid-century heyday, retains a national structure and a committed base.

The magazine today

News Weekly continues as a fortnightly print magazine — one of the longest-running political periodicals in the country — under editor Peter Kelleher. In a media landscape where opinion journalism has migrated overwhelmingly online, the magazine's persistence in print reflects its readership's loyalty and the NCC's institutional commitment to the publication as the movement's voice.

For more than eighty years — from the four-page Freedom of 1943 through the anti-communist crusades, the DLP era, and the culture wars of the 21st century — News Weekly has argued a consistent worldview: that Australia's public life should be ordered by the family, the nation and the Christian tradition. Whatever one's view of that programme, the magazine's longevity makes it one of the most remarkable publishing stories in Australian political history.