In 1975, the taxpayer-funded ABC broadcast a recording of three adult men and a child, talking in explicit detail about and advocating for pedophilia.
That was 50 years ago, but until very recently, the ABC have insisted that that tape had been destroyed, that, that recording no longer existed. That was a lie. The tape very much still exists. And along with that tape being revealed to the public come a host of unanswered questions about what’s really going on down at our ABC. This is a story not only about child predators in our history, but about an official taxpayer-funded cover up that potentially reaches to the highest levels of the police force in 1975 and quite possibly reaches to high levels of our national broadcaster to this day. There are a lot of unanswered questions. John Ruddick MP is on the case determined to bring this story to light and to bring some accountability at least as much as is possible all these years after the original broadcast. Here is his notice of motion from the New South Wales Parliament a few days ago.
[From video]
That this house expresses its deepest concern over the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s decision on the 14th of July 1975 to allow former Late line host Mr. Richard Neville to broadcast an interview with three self-described pedorists about their graphically worded sexual abuse of young children, some as young as three. Two, that this house recognizes that the honorable Reverend Fred Nile before his time as a member of this parliament was the director of the Festival of Light, and A. that the day after the interview on the 15th of July 1975, the Reverend Nile provided a recording of the interview and his concerns to the then New South Wales police commissioner Fred Hansen.
B. That Commissioner Hansen said the police would quote “study the situation to see if the Vice Squad should be involved.” Three, that this house notes that it’s concerned that the ABC denied the existence of this interview when questioned by Senator Erica Betts during a question on notice of the Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communication. Four, that this House commends Mr. John Adams for acquiring a copy of the interview in 2023 from the ABC and then publishing it on the 13th of October 2025. Five, that this house further notes that it’s alarmed the ABC for threatening legal action against Mr. Adams as a result of publishing this material. And six, that this house supports transparency in government including the ABC and calls on the men’s government to release all details surrounding the investigation from 1975. [End video]
That was John Ruddick MP speaking on the floor of the New South Wales Parliament House and he joins me now on the Topher Project. John, thank you so much for coming on.
[From video] Good to see you, Topher. [End video]
I want to say firstly thank you for being someone who’s willing to take on these kinds of issues and kind of be the bad guy in a sense. It is astonishing to me that as best as I can tell, and I’d love for some more detail on this, the ABC point blank denied the existence of these tapes that are now very much public and very much exist.
[From video]
In about 2014, Gerard Henderson, columnist for the Australian, mentioned and he’s been around a long time, he’s seen everything, he remembers everything he mentioned this tape. In 2016 and also in 2018, Senator Erica Betts, good man, he raised this issue when the ABC came to Senate estimates and they denied that the tape existed. [End video]
You’re watching my interview with John Ruddick MP talking about these 1975 ABC Pedo tapes. A disgusting subject, no question, but unfortunately a necessary subject that we have to talk about. My name is Topher Field. This is the Topher Project, and this is what I do. I bring you the sorts of stories that the mainstream media would rather that we didn’t talk about. The ABC of this case being especially nervous about this story and its implications, which we’ll get to in a minute with John Ruddick later on in this interview.
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[From video]
I think Gerard at one point may have even requested the tape from the ABC and they said it no longer exists. Okay. Now then very, very unusually, John Adams plain citizen John Adams, look he’s an activist, okay but he just emailed ABC archives and he said can I have a copy of this tape and some I’m guessing some junior underling who might have been new in the job went into the archives got the tape and said here Mr. Adams, here’s your tape. Now, you got to sign a waiver saying that you won’t distribute it. It’s only for personal use.
Okay. So then John came into my office about 3 weeks ago and he played it to me and my staff and I know quite a few people because Parliament is sitting this week and I think it was released on Monday. I have spoken to at least half a dozen people from across the spectrum who said to me like in the lift or in the coral they said, “Oh John, I could only listen to 5 to 10 minutes of that tape,” [End video]
And I can’t be in that category.
[From video]
That’s right. That’s right. Now there have been lots of political careers over the years that have blown up over pedophile allegations and unfortunately no evidence. Okay. Or highly disputed evidence. Okay. Sure. Now, on this occasion, we got 45 minutes of evidence. Okay, there’s no dispute about it. Okay, so now it’s obviously very, very unpleasant. Okay, it’s a very, very it’s probably the ugliest subject. Okay, but we have a choice. We have a choice. We’re at a crossroad. What do we do about this?
Option one is which is the ABC’s current strategy let’s just sweep it under the table. Let’s just move on. It was 50 years ago. Let’s not worry about it. Let’s move on. That’s the ABC’s approach. Okay. Now, the alternative is that we have transparency on it. Okay. And John Adams has at his own risk has given the public transparency. Good old YouTube like my maiden speech have decided to ban it. We’ll have to get to the bottom of that one day. But it’s out there and I don’t think you can’t ban things now, you know, because shows like yours, Topher. Okay. And so that’s the situation. [End video]
So you made that remarkable speech in parliament. You moved a series of motions. I personally agree with all of them wholeheartedly. It seems extraordinary to me that it would even need to be said. What happens from here? Was that motion ratified? I’m not even sure of the exact mechanics of how that works. What’s happened with that motion? And what do you see happening going forward?
[From video]
Well what I did yesterday that speech you’re referring to is what’s called sort of a notice of motion where you get to say that you’re introducing something to the parliament and so then we’ve got the ability to bring it back on for debate but we need to wait a week. Parliament is sitting again next week. So at some point we’ll bring it on for debate. However, at this stage, the next sort of cab off the rank from our office’s point of view is we have written to the police minister and we have said, “Look in 1975 this tape happens and Fred the Reverend Fred Nile was not at that point a member of parliament. He was soon to be one but he wasn’t. He was the head of a Christian organization called the Festival of Light,” which was a morals… morals I think.
Now, Fred Nile in his capacity as the president of Festival of Light, he wrote to the police minister and he said, “Hey, there was this tape last night on ABC where people were admitting to pretty grotesque criminal acts. So, what are you going to do about it, Mr. Police?” And then I think the Sydney Morning Herald followed up with the police minister the following day said, “Okay, what are you going to do?” And I think they said to the Sydney Morning Herald, “Oh, we’re looking into it to see if the Vice Squad should get involved.” Okay.
Now from that moment on the public record 50 years of radio silence. So now why did the cops go quiet on it? Now I’ve written to the police minister and said what happened? You know there was this official inquiry. The Sydney Morning Herald mentioned it. So what did the police do? Now, one possibility is that the police in the 1970s around Australia were often pretty seriously corrupt. Okay? Usually often tied up with gangsters and baddies of various descriptions. It’s harder to be corrupt today. Okay? But back in the 70s before the internet, before lots of other things cops always got proximity to criminals, you know. So, one possibility is that the police said, “Oh, well, you know, let’s not worry about these people because they’re mates of mates,” type of thing. That may have been what happened. So, should the public know whether that happened? Yes, I think they should. [End video]
Of course. Of course. Yeah.
Now, it’s an extraordinary story and I’m grateful to you for following it up, but there is one unpicked thread that I want to talk to you about very briefly and that is you mentioned there that John Adams had to breach an agreement that he had made with the ABC that he wasn’t going to publish this. Now, I’ve read a lot of John’s posts around this and he maintains that he made every effort to get permission and to bring this out in good faith and was ultimately left with no option but to breach that agreement. The ABC, as far as I understand it, are contemplating whether they should try and punish John in some way with some sort of a prosecution against him for breaching that. Do you know anything about what’s happening with that? Are we likely to see that happen? And should the publicly funded broadcaster who denied the existence of these tapes now be prosecuting the person who brought them to our attention?
[From video]
Okay. Well, in addition to Senator Eric Betts, I think Senator Malcolm Roberts, who’s a friend of the show very good guy I think he raised it in Senate estimates a year or so ago and again they denied it. But by this stage John Adams already had the tape and he played part of it to Senator Roberts. So, Senator Roberts was going to raise it in budget estimates this week or last week I think, and on the night before budget estimates the ABC put out a statement saying, “Oh, you know what? That tape that we said doesn’t exist. It actually does exist.” And so then John Adams announced on Sunday night that he is going to release the tape at 5:00 on Monday this week, which he did. And now at 5 minutes to 5 p.m., just before it went out, John Adams received an email from ABC Legal saying, “You know, if you go ahead with this, we’re going to take legal action.”
So, I think that would be unbelievably foolish of the ABC to spend taxpayers’ money on trying to shut up John Adams. What they should be doing they should be apologizing for airing a segment in the first place. They should be trying to find the victims and apologize to them. And they should also apologize to John Adams. They should say, “We apologize for trying to prevent you from telling the public about this very ugly chapter.” [End video]
It’s an extraordinary thing. And in addition to what you’ve just said, which I do agree with, there’s also the issue of the cover up. And so often it’s not necessarily the crime that gets you, it is the cover up. And we can say, well, that tape was aired 50 years ago. Well, yes, but they were covering it up all the way up until, as you say, last year and even more recently than that. Surely, there needs to be some measure of accountability towards the ABC and towards potentially the individuals in the ABC that have been complicit in denying the existence of this tape.
[From video]
It would be not impossible, but it would be very unusual very odd for it to have been a genuine error where they said, “No, we don’t know if the tape exists. It’s been destroyed.” But in fact, it does exist. So that would be it’s not impossible, but I think we need to get to the bottom of it. So yes, so we need to if they’ve deliberately covered it up and denied its existence, well that, as you said, is, well it’s probably not as bad as the crime, but it’s pretty bad. It’s pretty bad. You know, in this case, it’s pretty pretty bad. And I suspect that’s the case. Okay. But, you know, maybe I’m wrong. Now, it is interesting that they did forget to destroy the tape. Okay. So, they publicly said they destroyed it. I don’t know why someone didn’t go in at 11:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve when no one’s around and get that tape and burn it, but they didn’t. So, and it was foolishly just sitting there in the archives. [End video]
Look, it’s quite an extraordinary story. We’re going to have to leave it there, but I thank you so much for raising this on the floor of Parliament. I think a shout out to Senator Roberts and Senator Eric Betts and of course to the Festival of Light and all the various people and to John Adams especially the various people that have tried to bring this story to the attention of the Australian public over the years and thank you for your work. I’m trying to add my little weight, my little shoulder to getting this story out there as well. And let’s hope that we can see some follow-through and some accountability, even if not for that tape from 50 years ago, but certainly for the cover up that’s happened since then. John Ruddick MP, thank you so much for joining me on the Topher Project.
[From video] We really appreciate your interest too. Thanks so much. [End video]
That was John Ruddick MP doing very important work in the New South Wales Parliament, trying to hold the ABC accountable for a 50-year-old pedophile cover up. Very important work indeed. My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and this is what I do. I bring you these sorts of stories stomach-churning though they may be at times these are important topics that we need to talk about and the ABC specifically and the mainstream media in general don’t tend to show an interest in these sorts of stories, which is why I do what I do.
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