After Work, After Play, After All

AFTER WORK, AFTER PLAY, AFTER ALL is the story of Dr John Cornwall’s remarkable life from modest beginnings to an outstanding reformer as a Labor Government Minister. Spanning eight decades it covers a childhood in Bendigo, two decades of veterinary practice from the 1950s to the 1970s, and life as a Minister in the South Australian Government in the 1980s. 

This political memoir gives a rare insight into the challenges faced by a politician with a passion for social justice and a commitment to universal access to health care. It tells the story of how he introduced wide ranging reforms in public and environmental health in the 1980s, inspired by a worldwide movement for ‘Health for All’. It details the opposition he encountered from vested interests and how his skillful private negotiations turned things around.

There were many ‘firsts’; banning tobacco sponsorship of sport, decriminalising possession of marijuana for personal use, establishing Aboriginal controlled community health services, expanding community health centre networks, incorporating productivity and quality of care as markers in hospital budgets. redirecting resources to the most disadvantaged and a world leading program to clean up pollution from the lead smelter in Port Pirie.

The book also touches on the challenges of family life as husband and father to seven children.

It tells the story of a country vet who had bigger ambitions. Born at the height of the Great Depression, he grew up in Bendigo during the Second World War and survived a Catholic school education. It tells how he was inspired by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and South Australian Premier Don Dunstan. It recalls his early run for Parliament in the Liberal Party stronghold of Barker in the 1972 federal election, when Labor swept to victory in the It’s Time campaign.

The greatest drama, however, is the unlikely story of his political demise. Caught up in the controversy over the introduction of Medicare in 1984, in which the states’ public hospitals were central, he was sued for defamation by an orthopedic surgeon. Four years later the Minister in court on the witness stand, a hostile judge, a judgement written with what the author describes as ‘malign ferocity’, and resignation forced by a timid Premier less than 48 hours after it was delivered. It all makes a riveting read.

He survives, but not unscarred. There’s a third career and a marriage that endures.