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One Plus One: Peter Harvey

Veteran Nine reporter Peter Harvey will talk with Jane Hutcheon, including addressing his recent cancer diagnosis.

HarveypThis week’s episode of One Plus One on ABC1 and ABC News 24 features veteran Channel Nine reporter Peter Harvey.

Harvey will talk with presenter Jane Hutcheon, including addressing his recent cancer diagnosis. I’m sure there will be many in the industry who are thinking of him at this time.

Peter has spent more than half a century as a print, radio and television news reporter. He’s covered the Vietnam War, The Dismissal, and the second Gulf War and most of the major events in Australia and overseas in between.

In a revealing interview with presenter Jane Hutcheon, Peter talks about how his career started as a copy boy at the Daily Telegraph under Sir Frank Packer. He talks about the anchoring effect of his wife and family. His newest challenge is to stay well after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer late last year.

Peter is undergoing weekly chemotherapy and has no illusions about how serious his illness is. He tells Jane that he’s always been a ‘glass half-full’ kind of man and that he doesn’t fear what may lie ahead.

On working for Sir Frank Packer:

Jane: So did you find him daunting personally?
Peter: He could be terrifying. It was not unknown for Sir Frank to come back from the races on a Sunday where the telegraph staff – the daily staff also work for the Sunday – and sack us all! If he’d had a bad day he’d just walk into the newsroom and say ‘you’re all blood sucking leeches, get out of here!’ And we’d all go down to the pub next door as one did in those days, and wait for David McNicol or one of the editors to come down and tell us to come up. And that’s one of the reasons why the Sunday Telegraph was invariably late out every third or fourth Saturday, whenever he lost. But he was a fearsome character.

On Vietnam:

Jane: You covered Vietnam, how did that leave its mark on you and your work as a journalist
Peter: It taught me to be very careful, about all sorts of things. I mean the first thing I did in those heady days arriving in Saigon, was to go down to what was called change alley where you could buy absolutely everything and I saw all the famous American TV correspondents walking around in their combat suits. So I had to go and buy one of these things. And then I went and bought I gun…fortunately before I did anything else I went back to the Newsweek bureau and they all just recoiled in horror and they said ‘you’re asking to be shot dead! What’s the matter with you? What you do is get rid of all that stuff you’re wearing, you go back to your hotel and buy the biggest, loudest Hawaiian shirt you can find, you make sure you never ever wear anything that looks like a gun belt and you look like a tourist.’ And it was great advice, because so many people who did play the correspondent game didn’t come out of it too well.

On his sign off:

Jane: People when they hear of you would often say ‘Oh Peter Harvey…Canberra’ as I’m sure you know…
Peter: They still do. One of the funny things is that I’m getting kids aged 18 and 19 coming up to me and saying ‘would you say ‘Peter Harvey..Canberra’ for me’, you know? I left Canberra in 97 (laughs)

Then Mike Carlton, who was a very good friend, jumped onto the bandwagon with Friday News Review and Rubbery Figures and all of a sudden I was out there being poked and pillared from one side of the continent to the other. But if you look like I do, and sound like I do Jane, you just cop it!’

On cancer:
Jane: The writer Christopher Hitchens in his final book which was called ‘Mortality’ talked about the depression he faced in the first seven days after his diagnosis for oesophageal cancer, particularly when he was told that certain therapies were not open to him. He spoke about a sense of being cheated, as well as disappointed. Can you understand that, did you ever get those sentiments?
Peter: Oh yes, I don’t want to be cheated. I’m 68yrs old, I consider I’ve got a fair bit of living that I want to do. As soon as we’re able to, Anne and I are going back to Florence and Venice…It was I guess an understandable reaction (Christopher Hitchens’s), you think to yourself ‘Oh, why me, why is this happening’ but you get past that point and you say, Ok, well it is. It is happening so lets deal with it and lets be as positive as possible about it and get the show back on the road. Now there are a lot of clichés there, but they’re meaningful. If you hang on to the possibility that things are going to be better not worse, I think it sets you up pretty well. I don’t want worries about my day, ruining my tomorrows.

On continuing work 
Peter: I want to keep working as long as I possibly can which I hope is for a very long time! …Jane I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the support and reaction from people around this country, it’s been extraordinary… I felt extraordinarily grateful that so many people out there went out of their way to wish me good luck.

Join Jane Hutcheon for an inspiring conversation with journalist Peter Harvey.

Friday, 15 February at 11.30am on ABC1, repeated at: 8.30pm on Friday, 5.30pm on Saturday and 9.30pm on Sunday on ABC NEWS 24.

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