Should the national broadcaster launch a campaign to lift the spirit of Australia to counter the daily predictions of doom and disaster voiced by the Coalition, shock jocks, Hanrahan, club tosspots , right wing media hacks and assorted other windbags ? During the Depression of the l930s when Australia really had cause to be gloomy, the ABC Optimists’ League was launched with its own song , see above , which could be played to the accompaniment of a ukulele , that urged people feeling down in the dumps and blue to pull up their socks and give Doctor Quack a miss. A member’s badge could be obtained for one shilling . Prime Minister Scullin -that’s possibly him or Dr Cheerup on the cover of the sheet music wearing his ABC badge - launched the Optimists’ League on behalf of the ABC on June 30, l930 in Canberra . “ The whispering pessimists have done, and can still do, a great deal of harm to this great continent, ” he said . A band of optimists would be of great value in counteracting their doleful propaganda.
At the time , Stuart Doyle, chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Company, said that the Optimists' League was being formed to root out of community life the spirit of pessimism, which had quite unnecessarily cast gloom from one end of the continent to the other. Admittedly there was a Depression: but depression, like all other obstacles, was created to be overcome."We refuse to subscribe further to a blank outlook bordering on despair," said Doyle, "and we are determined that the Australian Broadcasting Company's stations shall radiate a spirit of optimism.” Imagine the outcry today if the ABC, that Lefty organisation which condones obscene acts with a whopper hamster, tried to foster such an outlook in Australia. (Sheet music from Little Darwin Collection bears the trade stamp of J.J. Miller, Toowoomba ,Queensland ) .
