Hasham Happy To Come Out In KL

Eric Ellis, Kuala Lumpur

01/03/1996 

IN 1972, a young lawyer named Don Finlayson broke down on the landing of a Paddington apartment building and announced what a titillated Middle Australia suspected for 12 weeks. He was gay.

It was the moment that Australian popular culture lost its virginity, being partially deflowered a few weeks earlier when Abigail's bare breasts were seen for the first time on television. The show, of course, was the ground-breaking soap opera Number 96. The gay lawyer was actor Joe Hasham and for the next six years Australians followed his life and his neighbours' with a dedication no program has since matched.

Australian culture has moved on from Moncur St, Paddington, and so has Don Finlayson.

In a nice twist on Dr Mahathir Mohamad's "Asian Values" credo, a world where families get prosperous together and homosexuality is unnatural, the man arguably most responsible, through his acting, for humanising gay culture in Australia is doing very well in Kuala Lumpur.

Happily heterosexual and married to one of Malaysia's prominent media personalities, Joe Hasham finds the twist ironic.

"I could never be as provocative here even today as we were in Oz in the 1970's," he says. "But I've found something here. I feel very comfortable."

He also feels quite wealthy. He moved to the Malaysian capital in 1985 and now runs Malaysia's biggest commercial production house, introducing Australian show biz values to the booming market.

"The best move I ever made," says Hasham. "There is so much money in this country. Everyone wants to spend, spend, spend."

Hasham personifies the type of Australian and Australian expertise Messrs Keating and McMullan are keen to export to Australia. He left Sydney where, after 96, he ran a moderately successful smaller operation in a crowded, competitive market, as well as flogging rental television.

Joe Hasham and Associates is at the top of KL advertising agency lists for top-shelf commercial work and production values.

"Don't listen to the politicians. Australia is very well respected here and they get along very well with the culture," he says. "You've got to make changes but you've got to make them if you moved from Sydney to Paris or from Sydney to Melbourne for that matter."

With government backing, Hasham says he and his wife are helping pioneer the modern Malaysian film industry, as well as introducing live Western-oriented theatre for the emerging middle class. Sydney-based Transfield Holdings, bidding for the big Malaysian Navy's frigate contract, is the principal sponsor of Hasham's theatre company and the troupe has symbolically taken digs under one of modern Malaysia's most sacred places, in the complex directly under KL's Merdeka (Freedom) Square.

"This has become a very progressive society."

Hasham calls both Sydney and KL home and has fond memories of the sudden fame that Don Finlayson brought him.

He tells an anecdote of how, at the height of his and Number 96's popularity, "concerned mothers would offer their daughters to convert me".

"John Singleton rang me up one day and said mate, mate, mate, let's have lunch," Hasham recalls.

"He took me to Darcy's and regaled me with this great scheme where we could could become filthy rich, multi-millionaires virtually overnight.

"He figured that 96 was so popular and the Don Finlayson character was obviously a large part of the reason, that we could start a church or cult, call it the Joe Hasham Church where I would be this Bhagwan kind of figure and all the disciples, who were also Number 96 viewers, would be my flock and contribute generously to the church coffers.

"I'm convinced he was serious but, tempting as it was, I declined the opportunity.

"But I'm glad I didn't decline this one here."