‘I’m constantly self-critical; sometimes I cringe: did I really say that?’

Norman Swan speaks candidly with Steve Meacham about finding a balance between truth and alarmism, copping flak, our AstraZeneca ‘scandal’ and lessons from Israel

OVER THE PAST unforgettable 18 months, award-winning broadcaster Dr Norman Swan has become one of the most polarising journalists in the country. 

The long-standing presenter of Radio National’s The Health Report and co-host of the ABC’s extraordinarily popular Coronacast podcast has been described as “Australia’s Dr Fauci”, a beacon of hope amid an insane sea of pandemic confusion.

Ita Buttrose, appointed chair of the ABC by Prime Minister Scott Morrison in 2019, called Swan “a national treasure” for his tireless efforts during Covid-19.

Swan also has powerful detractors. Some are the usual shock-jock suspects from the Murdoch media like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt. 

Yet critics have also included people at the heart of the Morrison government and prominent specialists like Dr Nick Coatsworth, the federal government’s former deputy chief medical officer and face of the Morrison government’s multimedia AstraZeneca vaccination campaign.

“I’m not sure Nick has criticised me by name, but he’s criticised me by implication,” Swan says. “All’s fair in love and war. Nick and I have different views.”

Actually, Coatsworth did name Swan in an opinion piece for Nine Media in May, headlined Risk misdiagnosed by ‘activist’ doctors. 

Political leaders need to “communicate, and communicate more until people get sick of it,” Coatsworth wrote. “We didn't escape criticism, usually, but not exclusively, from Norman Swan.”

In a subsequent opinion piece for Nine Media, Coatsworth wrote: “The most egregious example of the influence of risk-averse academics and medical commentators on policy has been anti-AstraZenecism which has afflicted our rollout. 

“Anti-AstraZenecism was not academic freedom. It was academic dishonesty.”

Swan has previously admitted a Coalition MP he respected texted him to say the broadcaster was "single-handedly responsible for vaccine hesitancy in Australia”.

So what pressure did the Morrison government actually put on the ABC to get Swan to modify his criticisms of AstraZeneca, and the Morrison government’s vaccination roll out?

Phone calls, which Swan isn’t willing to discuss, were put into “ABC management”.

“I think I said, ‘Look, if there’s a problem, why don’t they just get Brendan (Murphy, then the federal chief medical officer, now Secretary of the Department of Health) to ring me?’ I’ve known Brendan for years.” 

No knuckles were wrapped, no loud accusations made in that phone call. 

So Sydney-based Swan, his co-host - ABC’s medical reporter Tegan Taylor in Brisbane - and Will Ockenden, their Tasmania-based producer and pod-cast guru, continued on course. 

“Coronacast is a team of three,” Swan stresses. “And we are all equal. Will has been critical to this whole thing.”

The Coronacast trio won a Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2020, a fifth Walkley for Swan including the Gold Walkley he won in 1988 for exposing fraudulent research by obstetrician William McBride.

Last week they broadcast the 350th episode of the podcast, an amazing achievement - but also an indication of how Covid-19 has put a stranglehold around the throat of the nation. 

The podcast’s tone - friendly, informative, evidence-based, and unafraid to be critical of government policy where necessary - has proven immensely popular. 

“We get three million downloads a month,” Swan says. Much of it consists of answers to listeners questions, running now at several hundred thousand. “The nature of the questions changes day by day. It’s like a barometer of the nation.”

How hard is it to strike the correct balance between explaining the ugly truth and not being alarmist?

“It’s a huge challenge. But what you’ve got to do is be transparent with the community, treat them like adults,” says Australia’s best-known Scottish-born Jew in his educated Glaswegian brogue.

“The Federal government’s response to the AstraZeneca problem, for example, was to deny it when the evidence was clear from Scandinavia and Germany. People go online, they read stuff. They’re not stupid.

“You just have to tell people the truth and put it in perspective. Blood clots following AstraZeneca injections are rare, but they are real.”

Swan, 68, rejects any suggestion he is anti-AstraZeneca. His own first jab with the vaccine was televised and he’s damning of other over-60s who aren’t fully immunised. “Forty per cent of people in Australia aged between 60 and 70 haven’t been immunised at all. That’s outrageous - a scandal.

“If you’re over 60, get your AstraZeneca now! Do not wait! 

“If you’re waiting for Pfizer, you will be in the queue behind 12-year-olds. There’s no reason not to take AstraZeneca if you’re over 60. That’s imperative. You’re just endangering yourself and endangering your families. 

“We have to get full vaccination above 90 per cent in that age group to protect them and adequately help the rest of the community reach herd immunity.

“And if you are under 60, particularly if you are in Sydney or other places with outbreaks, there’s a strong imperative to get AstraZeneca because you can’t be sure when you can get Pfizer. 

“It’s all about risk versus benefit. It always has been.”

Swan - a subscriber to The Jewish Independent who readily agreed to this interview - said his only window of opportunity was 10.10am last Friday, for 35 minutes. 

Yet throughout the interview, offstage noises indicate he’s doing something else at the same time.

Is he conducting an operation?

“No,” he apologises. “I’m just having a late breakfast - a cup of tea and some toast. How rude of me.”

When does he sleep? “I’m not a great sleeper, but I’m an Olympic champion napper!”

Always known as a workaholic, Swan - paediatrician, journalist, former general manager of Radio National and former medical consultant on The Biggest Loser reality TV show - has been Covid’s equivalent of “Eddie Everywhere”, the nickname given to fellow (but very different) broadcaster Eddie McGuire.

He has even found time to write a book, the recently released So You Think You Know What’s Good for You? (Hachette Australia, $39.99). The Conversation’s reviewer described it as full of “welcome common sense and evidence-based tips for living healthier” and applauded its use of the word ‘bullshit’ alongside the notion of ‘wellness’.

After mentioning two books of his own, reviewer Dr Ray Moynihan, a fellow journalist turned academic, landed his equivalent of a fencing touché. Moynihan would have preferred fewer “very short bites”, better indexing, and for it not to read like Swan had written it quickly.

Indeed, Swan had delivered it quickly, with little time to address footnotes. “I wrote the book between August and delivered it on deadline in January,” Swan says. 

That’s not the legendary six weeks it took the penniless former war correspondent Frederick Forsythe to write The Day of the Jackal. But Forsythe wasn’t hosting Coronacast in a pandemic at the time.

During Covid, the Coronacast team also initiated an online exhibition with the Art Gallery of NSW of children’s art. “That was because Tegan, Will and I were getting so many enquiries from families worried about how their children were coping with the pandemic,” Swan explains.

“And from the questions children were themselves sending in.”

In his self-help book, Swan reveals a surprising amount of detail about himself. Born Norman Swirsky in working class Glasgow in 1953, he tells the story of a grey uninspiring upbringing where his first choice of escape was becoming an actor. 

One reviewer said Swan’s father was “hopeless”. Obviously, something was lost in translation, and Swan is keen to correct it.

“I said in my book that my father was ‘gormless’. He wasn’t hopeless. He loved all his children.”

So how does he judge himself as a father? 

Son Jonathan, now based in the US as national political reporter for Axios, has been nominated for an Emmy Award for his take-no-bullshit interview with former President Donald Trump in August last year.

Daughter Anna suffered a catastrophic head injury on a family holiday in Italy in 2016 when they hired electric bikes without the helmet option which Swan has talked about movingly, blaming himself.

Second daughter Georgia lives in Singapore and works in the health industry.

“I tried to give my children the kind of parenting I didn’t get,” Swan says, breakfast finished. “But the only people who can rate a father or mother are their children.”

Swan says he attends a synagogue “two or three times a year” but doesn’t believe in God - though “I do strongly identify with being Jewish.”

Israel has been something of a leader in the pandemic, hasn’t it?

“Actually, Israel handled Covid-19 badly and had a major outbreak,” Swan continues. “That’s largely because of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel. They’re anti-vaxxers and they don’t like being constrained. There was one incident where ultra-Orthodox Jews forged their testing results to get back to Israel on an El-Al flight.

“They’re causing a massive problem in Israel right now: vaccination figures have really plateaued in the ultra-Orthodox community.”

Despite its bad start, Israel became a world leader when it came to vaccination roll-out. “Benjamin Netanyahu famously made many phone calls to Pfizer to secure vaccines for Israel, and that was spectacularly successful,” Swan says. 

In fact, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told Israel’s Channel 12 News in March that the-then Israeli prime minister had “called me 30 times” to ensure his nation would lead the roll-out race. 

In the interview, Bourla said it was “very appropriate for humanity” that one country be chosen as a testing ground for the efficacy of Pfizer’s vaccine. “I was talking with several heads of state. [Netanyahu] convinced me that Israel is the place with the right conditions. I was impressed, frankly, with [his] obsession.”

That proved embarrassing for Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison when it was revealed last month that Australia’s leader had not put in a single call to Bourla.

However, Israel has been criticised by the United Nations for its slow roll-out of vaccines to Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza. Even now, many Palestinians haven’t received their first dose, while Israelis while - as of Sunday - Israelis over 60 are being offered a third “booster” jab.

“The Israeli government was late to offer Palestinians the vaccines,” Swan agrees.

“Palestinians are under-immunised. There’s a huge disparity in supply between rich countries and poor countries…

“Until we have all countries fully immunised, we’ll see new variants threatening the entire world.

“So not just for humanitarian reasons, but for very practical selfish reasons, the rich world needs to make sure poorer countries have plenty of vaccine.”

Now the key question: Does Swan have any Covid regrets?

“I re-live comments I’ve made all the time. I go over them in my head, ruminate. Was that the right thing to say? Could I have said it better?

“I’m constantly self-critical. Sometimes I cringe: did I really say that?

“But was there one big thing I’ve done that haunts me? In a fast-changing news cycle you’re going to make mistakes. It’s something that keeps me up at night. There have been a few errors along the way, but on Coronacast we’ve corrected them at the first opportunity - because it’s important to keep the trust of the Coronacast audience.”

READ MORE
The life of Dr Norman Swan (ABC)
Non-fiction: So You Think You Know What’s Good for You? (SMH)