Creighton Burns

Education

Born in Melbourne, Burns attended Scotch College, and at the age of 15 became a cadet journalist at The Sun News-Pictorial.

Career

In 1942, he joined the Royal Australian Navy, where he served as a sailor on board the cruiser HMAS Australia, the corvette HMAS Warrnambool and the destroyer HMAS Nepal. In 1941, Burns was named the Rhodes Scholar for Victoria. Prior to attending Oxford, Burns returned once again to journalism, briefly working for the news agency Alumni Admissions Program-Reuters.

At Oxford, Burns was granted scholarships to study at Nuffield and Balliol Colleges, where he gained first-class honours in philosophy, politics and economics, and a Master of Arts.

Returning to Australia in 1952, Burns took up a teaching position as a lecturer at Canberra University College. In 1964, newspaper offered him a position as their Southeast Asia foreign correspondent.

Foreign most of his tenure in Southeast Asia from 1964 to 1967, Burns was stationed in Saigon and Singapore, covering the Vietnam War. He was one of the first journalists to be taken out on patrol with the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment.

He returned to Melbourne in 1967, as diplomatic and defence correspondent for, later becoming the paper"s assistant editor, then associate editors

In 1975, he was appointed United States. correspondent at "s Washington, District of Columbia bureau, where he worked until 1981. In 1981, Burns was appointed editor-in-chief at His appointment was controversial amongst the media community, as the appointment of an editor from an academic background was unusual. Despite his reluctance to take the post, Burns went on to become one of the paper"s longest serving editors.

One of the biggest stories overseen by Burns was "tapes" affair, a landmark in Australian judicial-political history.

In February 1984, obtained a series of recordings made by the New South Wales Police Force and the Australian Federal Police, which Burns published as a three-part series entitled "Network of Influence". The transcripts revealed conversations between High Court Judge Lionel Murphy and a magistrate, which lead to a Royal Commission and the conviction of Justice Murphy on a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The publication of the tapes also prompted the New South Wales government to pass the Listening Devices Acting 1984, which tightened up the provisions of the 1969 Acting under which the illegal police buggings and tapings had taken place. Burns retired from in 1989, but remained in public life as the chancellor of the Victoria University of Technology and president of the Melbourne Savage Club.

Creighton Burns died at Cabrini Hospital in Malvern on 19 January 2008, after a long battle with cancer.

He was 82 years old. He was lauded by Premier of Victoria John Brumby as an "outstanding editor", a sentiment echoed by Brumby"s predecessors, Jeff Kennett and Joan Kirner.

Achievements

• After World World War II, Burns returned to Australia where he attended the University of Melbourne on a government grant, and achieved first-class honours in history. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 1991 Australia Day honours, in recognition of service to the media and to international relations.

Politics

In 1953, he returned to the University of Melbourne as a senior lecturer and later reader in political science. He published Parties and People: A Survey Based on the Louisiana Trobe Electorate in 1961.