Junie Morosi

Junie Morosi (born 26 July 1933) is an Australian businesswoman, who became a public figure in the 1970s through her relationship with Jim Cairns, Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam Labor government. Morosi's appointment as Cairns's principal private secretary, and the nature of her relationship with him, aroused intense media interest, and the affair contributed to Cairns's eventual dismissal from office and the fall of the government.

Morosi was born in Shanghai, China, and educated in the Philippines. Her father was Italian and part-Chinese, her mother Portuguese and part-Chinese also. The family moved to Manila when she was a child and from age 8 she experienced life under Japanese occupation. She worked as a journalist, becoming political correspondent at the Manila daily newspaper Voz de Manila. She also worked in advertising and travel consultancy.

While Morosi was still a teenager she married a Filipino. Together they had three sons. In 1958 she was employed by Qantas, the Australian national airline. In 1962 she moved to Australia, where she married a British businessman living in Australia, David Ditchburn. She continued to work in the airline and travel industry until 1974, when she was employed as an assistant to Al Grassby, the Commissioner for Community Relations. Grassby had been a minister in the Whitlam government before losing his seat in the May 1974 election. Her new job brought her into contact with other Whitlam government ministers. In Canberra she read and was impressed by one of Cairns' books, The Quiet Revolution, and arranged to meet him.

Cairns was then Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer in the Whitlam government. Tom Uren, another Whitlam minister and one of Cairns's closest friends, later recorded that "Jim and Junie were attracted to each other from the first time they met." She was attracted to his intellect and personal charisma, and he responded to her emotional warmth and unorthodox attitudes. Morosi greatly admired Cairns from having read his academic writings and she introduced Cairns to the work of Wilhelm Reich, opening his mind to the relevance of human psychology as it related to social change. The attraction soon became sexual, although whether and when their relationship became a sexual one remained a matter of controversy until 2002 when it was confirmed as such by Cairns.

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