“Preface” by Ted Noffs, in John Singleton with Bob Howard, Rip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. xv-xvi.

John Singleton is one of the most original minds in Australia. Those who like him find they cannot help loving him, and those who hate him cannot fail to respect him. Despite all the arguments for and against his ideas, he has done two things that are of great historical importance to Australia.

First of all, he has made a lot of Australians re-think their attitude towards politics. In this regard it is no longer possible simply to accept concepts of the capitalistic free enterprise system as propounded by the Liberal Party on the one hand, nor the concepts of the welfare state as propounded by the Labor Party on the other.

He has pursued a course of thinking that many people would attribute to Ayn Rand in the United States, or Auberon Waugh in the United Kingdom, yet he is obligated to neither.

His is a decidedly provocative way of thinking that says in effect that the ancient political creeds, right and left, that we have inherited from the old-world of Europe, and the old-new world of North America, are no longer able to cope with the issues that concern us as we move towards the twenty-first century.

For that reason, his is a refreshing alternative in a world heartily sick and tired of the bickering between Right and Left, between entrepreneur and worker and ideologies that were largely shaped in the eighteenth century. His is a voice that the world can listen to beneficially.

The second issue that makes John Singleton a unique influence inside Australia comes under the title of “ockerism”. I don’t think that John Singleton particularly identifies himself with all the issues that come under that heading (indeed, he dislikes the term), but regardless of that he has, through his advertising concepts and his general philosophy, helped make Australians proud of being Australian.

We are often the meat in the sandwich between the traditions of England, on the one hand, and the ideals of the United States on the other, and as a result we search relentlessly for identity. John Singleton, perhaps more than any other Australian in the latter part of the twentieth century, has helped Australians not only to discover their identity, but to celebrate it.

To the purists as far as the English language is concerned, John Singleton is public enemy number one. But to ordinary Australians who want to hear issues discussed in their own idiom, John Singleton and his panoply of “Australian speaking Australians” makes a lot of sense.

And yet, to judge John Singleton in terms of his effect upon the Australian language, the advertising industry or new political ideals, is to miss the point of his message altogether. These are all somewhat superficial and passing questions in the life of any nation. The fundamental question is always one of spirituality. I emphasise spirituality and disregard the word “religion”. By spirituality I mean the total potential within a human being or within the life of a nation.

John Singleton, with all of his secular and seeming materialistic concerns, constantly demonstrates, to those who know him best, that here is a spiritual man who believes in the potential of this great nation. With his friend and colleague Bob Howard, I believe that John has written a book which will open many minds to the fact that Australia is asleep and it’s about time more of us woke up.