GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 50
23 APRIL 2010
IN THIS ISSUE
● Paul Bongiorno On How The Buck Stops With The PM – Even On Insulation
● Q&A’s Usual “Balance” And Some Questions For
Germaine Greer And Henry Reynolds
● Nancy’s Pick of the Week:
Jason Stegar Laughs Loudly At John Brumby’s (Antiquated) Joke
● Did Aunty-Loving Amanda Meade Verbal
Chris Uhlmann?
● Carolyn Wilson –
Five Paws Award For Addiction Analysis
● Canberra Without Murder –
A Canberra Times Assessment
● Maurice Newman Segment –
Lateline’s “Group-Think” Documented
● How the Hungry Beast Mocked ASIO –
Much Conspiracy, Few Facts
● New Feature – Beware The Cliché In The Room:
An Elephant’s Perspective
STOP PRESS
Paul Bongiorno Does A Bongiorno
Didn’t you just love Paul Bongiorno’s terrific performance on Radio National Breakfast’s “Friday Panel” this morning? The perennial pro-Labor Mr Bongiorno (See Issue 42) actually managed to assert that Kevin Rudd had declared that the buck stopped with him over the Rudd Government’s disastrous home insulation scheme. This in spite of the fact that the announcement that the scheme had been abandoned was made in Canberra by the junior minister Greg Combet while the Prime Minister was in Hobart. Let’s go to the audio tape:
Don’t forget that Kevin Rudd put sackcloth and ashes on, on the Insiders program a couple of months ago, says: “It’s all my fault, the buck stops with me, we should do better and we’ll try to do better.” So, from that point of view, you know, the Prime Minister has taken a strategic move that makes it hard in a sense for the Opposition to look for scapegoats – ’cause Prime Minister says: “Hey, I’m it.” And what we saw yesterday was basically clearing the stables. They’re getting all the horse manure out, as quickly and as soon as they can, so they can go to an election.
Isn’t your man Bongiorno just terrific? There’s the Prime Minister in Hobart away from the home insulation front line, so to speak. And there’s Channel 10’s political editor claiming that Kevin Rudd is in the-buck-stops-with-me mode. Well done.
On the Q&A Front – Germaine and Peter and Henry – Likely To Dig In
MWD is eagerly looking forward to the Anzac Day Q&A program on ABC1 next Monday. It’s the usual Q&A “balance” – which “balances” three left-of-centre types – Dr Germaine Greer, Peter FitzSimons and Professor Henry Reynolds – with two others. In this case General Peter Cosgrove (Retd) and Brigadier Alison Creagh. Australia’s greatest military loss of life occurred during the First World War. Mr FitzSimons is on record as supporting Australia’s role in the Pacific War but dismissing as unimportant Australia’s contribution in World War I. Professor Reynolds has always opposed Australia’s involvement in the 1914-1918 conflict. It is likely that Dr Greer will be of similar mind. Very Q&Aish, to be sure, on the occasion of the 95th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing.
Here’s a couple of viewer questions which MWD would like answered on the Anzac Day Q&A program.
▪ Germaine Greer. In your 2003 Quarterly Essay titled “Whitefella Jump Up” you wrote: “When the Japanese invaded the Northern Territory, Australia had no comeback”. Precisely when did Japan invade the Northern Territory?
▪ Henry Reynolds. In your book What’s Wrong With Anzac? The Militarisation of Australian History (New South, 2010), you complain that much Anzac Day mythology is funded by Australian governments. How many jobs have you had which were not funded by a government?
NANCY’S PICK OF THE WEEK
Jason Steger Re-Cycles John Brumby’s (Re-Cycled) Joke
Nancy is very much a modern devotee of the long established the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh set. As a modern canine, Nancy really and truly believes in looming ecological catastrophe. So she looks kindly on any media type who is giving re-cycling a chance.
Step forward Jason Steger, The Age’s literary editor who writes the Bookmarks column in The-Guardian-on-the-Yarra each Saturday. On 17 April Mr Steger wrote a fawning piece about Victorian Labor Premier John Brumby – who just happens to preside over some taxpayer funded largesse in so far as the arts is concerned. Here we go – under the heading “Brumby on song”:
You would expect that the night before John Brumby outlined his objections to Kevin Rudd’s healthcare reforms at the National Press Club in Canberra he would have been buffing his big speech — or at least getting his speechwriter to buff it for him. But no, at least not the entire evening. Because he was launching the first novel by his former speechwriter, Joel Deane — and, we were assured, Deane hadn’t written the speech.
Brumby told a story about Gough Whitlam and his speechwriter, Graham Freudenberg. In his early days as PM, Whitlam was due to give an important speech about Australia’s relations with China. He rejected the first draft — “not up to scratch, comrade”; he rejected the second, telling Freudenberg to redo it for the next day. In the morning he glanced at the first page and saw it was fine. Whitlam started the speech and had the audience lapping it up. He got through the first page, the second, the third and then he reached the fourth, which was blank except for this: “You’re on your own, you big bastard”.
Good one, eh? Antique in fact. MWD first heard this joke in Parliament House Canberra circa 1976 – just after the fall of the Whitlam Labor government. Except that the (alleged) political staffer involved was a National Party (nee Country Party) speech writer. And the politician caught short around page four was Black Jack McEwen – the long-serving deputy prime minister in Robert Menzies’ Coalition government.
It’s great to hear John Brumby re-cycling jokes as a gesture towards planet saving. What’s more, it is a fine thing to observe Jason Steger laughing along at the premier’s wit. He deserves a seat on Mr Brumby’s table at the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards.
According to an avid, if some what feline correspondent, Gary Pritchard (of Mosman, NSW – no less), MWD has just five readers. Nancy, would like to invite all five to write in and advise when they – or their great-grand parents – first heard the thigh slapping joke which so impressed Jason Steger.
IN DEFENDING ALL THINGS AUNTY DID AMANDA MEADE VERBAL CHRIS UHLMANN?
Amanda Meade, who writes the “Diary” column in The Australian’s Media Section each Monday, is a big fan of the ABC TV news and current affairs. On occasions, she acts as a flag-waver for Kerry O’Brien 7.30 Report. See Issue 13.
It seems that Ms Meade went into bat for Aunty again last Monday, when flogging the ABC’S new News 24 channel and reporting that Chris Uhlmann will become its political editor. Amanda Meade quoted The Australian columnist, and former ABC board member, Janet Albrechtsen as opining that Uhlmann always receives a favourable mention when the ABC’s political balance – or lack of same – is discussed. Dr Albrechtsen is regarded as a conservative and an occasional critic of the public broadcaster. Her position is that there should be more balanced reporters like Uhlmann at the ABC.
In her ABC-boosting story, Amanda Meade quoted Chris Uhlmann as follows:
I really like Janet but I take issue with that. I can say that I know for a fact that John Howard’s press office in the last two elections came to the conclusion that the best run in terms of what they see as fair was the ABC, radio and television.
This comment surprised MWD which knows “for a fact” that senior members of the Howard Government were not at all happy with the coverage received by the Coalition on ABC radio and television – especially such important programs as Radio National Breakfast, PM, the 7.30 Report, Lateline, Four Corners and so on.
So MWD emailed Mr Uhlmann last Wednesday and asked him whether he told Ms Meade that John Howard’s press office had praised the coverage by ABC Radio and television during both the 2004 and 2007 elections. Chris Uhlmann replied that he thought that he had spoken to Amanda Meade only about the 2007 election, since he was not working in Parliament House in 2004. Mr Uhlmann also advised that he was only talking in the context of the reporting out of the ABC’s Parliament House Bureau (which he headed in 2007).
So all Chris Uhlmann said was that in 2007 Howard’s press office was happy with the coverage which the Coalition received from Uhlmann and his team. This is not what Amanda Meade wrote. But it is consistent with Janet Albrechtsen’s belief that Uhlmann sets a standard for political balance at the ABC which few of his colleagues match.
If Amanda Meade can provide a recording of her conversation with Uhlmann, MWD is willing to run a transcript next week. In the meantime, it seems to MWD that Uhlmann was verballed by Meade about the ABC. Fancy that.
FIVE PAWS AWARD
CAROLINE WILSON JUNKS ADDICTION THERAPY
These days it seems that everyone is addicted to something or other. Nancy, for example, is apparently addicted to walks, food and scratches. Gary Pritchard (of Mosman) is addicted to reading MWD. And so on. Writing in the London Sunday Times on 4 April 2010, Giles Hattersley queried the growing trend to depict bad behaviour and self-indulgence as the manifestation of an addiction.
In last week’s Sunday Age, Ms Wilson commented about the bad behaviour of occasional drinker, occasional philanderer and self-declared gambling addict Brendan Fevola. She wrote about the AFL footballer who plays for Brisbane:
…Fevola confessing that he is a gambling addict bore similarities to Tiger Woods confessing he was a sex addict. In both cases, you have to ask whether personal anarchy and narcissism is an addiction or simply a character flaw. Which 12-step program should Fev subscribe to? Gamblers’ Anonymous? Alcoholics Anonymous? Attention Seekers Anonymous?
Good point. Five Paws.
CANBERRA: THE NON-MURDER CAPITAL OF AUSTRALIA
MWD has long declared that if you want to harm someone, the Australian Capital Territory is the place to be. If you are so inclined – go live in Canberra. The ACT seems replete with judges who do not believe in the Fall and assume that the accused are innocent by definition, police who are not too good at their job and prosecutors who find it difficult to deliver an appropriate brief. There have been quite a few killings in Canberra over the last decade – but not one successful murder conviction.
Generally, the Canberra Times has covered this issue well. However, it stumbled badly last Saturday when reporting that, following a re-trial, Steve Wayne Hillier had been acquitted of murder at the ACT Supreme Court by a judge.
Noel Towell, the Canberra Times’ legal affairs reporter, wrote this last Saturday:
Justice Anthony Besanko’s decision that Steven Wayne Hillier did not murder Ana Louise Hardwick marks the end of a seven-year legal odyssey that began in Isabella Plains on October 2, 2002. Prosecutors cannot appeal against the not guilty verdict, although they haven’t ruled out a reference appeal to ensure that Justice Besanko’s verdict does not set a legal precedent.
Not so. The judge did not find make such a finding. That’s not how criminal law works. Rather, the judge found that it could not be established beyond reasonable doubt that Ms Hardwick was murdered by Mr Hillier. That’s the case with all acquittals – by the jury or by a judge sitting alone – in criminal trials. The Canberra Times’ legal affairs reporter should know this.
DOCUMENTATION – A SEGMENT DEVOTED TO MAURICE NEWMAN-TONY JONES’ “GROUP-THINK” INSPIRED MISSION TO SAVE THE PLANET
MWD continues its occasional series devoted to an analysis of ABC chairman Maurice Newman’s warning that the public broadcaster should not engage in “group think” and that “there should be no public perception that there is an ABC view”. See Issues 46, 47, 48 and 49.
It is not clear whether Mr Newman has seen the full transcript of what Lateline presenter Tony Jones said in 2008 about his program’s position on climate change. This was first reported by John Styles in his article in last Friday’s issue of The Spectator Australia. The transcript of the statement cited by Styles reveals that not only does Mr Jones advocate a Lateline view on man-made climate change – he also believes that it is up to Lateline to play its part in saving the planet. [How self-important can you get? – Ed.]
Here are Tony Jones’ comments in full. The occasion was a conversation with Eric Beecher at Melbourne’s Federation Square on Sunday 6 April 2008 which took place from 6 pm to 7 pm. Mr Jones was the editor of The Best Australian Political Writing (MUP, 2008) and the Beecher/Jones conversation covered this book.
Eric Beecher: I find it really intriguing that your, the range that you’ve gone for here under the sort of banner of political writing. Am I right in saying, therefore, that in your mind, in a sense, all issues are political?
Tony Jones: Yes. All the issues in this book certainly are. I mean, there is no question, for example, that climate change was one of the fundamental political issues of the last few years. And fundamental also in the undermining of John Howard’s credibility, because up until the very end – and I still know there are people inside the Opposition front bench who are sceptics about the science and they remain so.
I’m actually in favour of scepticism. I’m naturally a sceptic myself. But if you [indistinct] asked me about this from my own point of view, from around the year 2001 on Lateline we began interviewing everybody we could about this subject and we interviewed all the main scientific sceptics and gradually over a period of time we resolved in our own minds that the sceptics had it wrong and the vast majority of scientists disagreed with their position, that there was a developing consensus and if we didn’t take it seriously we were in grave danger of moving to a position where the world simply would simply be too late to do anything about it.
And I’m still not sure right now whether we aren’t in that position, as we speak. I mean, we’re still in a position now where 200 or more – I beg your pardon – 2,000 coal-fired power stations are on the drawing boards to be built, and they’re being built at a regular timetable in India and China. We are selling them the coal.
I mean, Australia is the Saudi Arabia of coal. I mean, it’s so central to our economy that we can’t get away from selling it and that is a truism for every government that comes to power. And I was talking to you about this earlier. I suspect it’s part of the reason why you don’t see Peter Garrett now in a more significant role. His particular role as Environment Minister has been split up so that he actually doesn’t have anything to do with the actual practical deconstruction of the economy that’s required if we’re to make climate change mitigation work. And, you know that, maybe, he doesn’t have the breast of mathematics.
Look, I don’t know why but my real suspicion is he [Garrett] just simply doesn’t believe as deeply as others in the coal industry and it’s very hard to put someone in a position where they’re going to have to support the coal industry and hope like anything that the kind of mitigation efforts the coal industry are talking about, the sequestration of carbon dioxide, burying its gaseous pollution underground, is going to work, because up till now we don’t know. And we certainly don’t know it’s going to work in China, and we don’t know it’s going to work in India, and we particularly don’t know it’s going to work in China because no-one’s even done geological surveys to find out if they have the right sort of holes to put the gas. And yet we have this time frame that we’re all heading to and no-one’s done a geological survey in China – why is that?
Is that clear? Sounds like group-think to MWD. MWD would be happy to hear from Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes who is reported to have criticised Mr Newman’s address and claimed that the ABC chairman had got it wrong on attitudes within the ABC to the human induced climate change debate. [Is Mr Jones aware that his employer is funded by taxpayers and that the coal industry pays lotsa taxation? – Ed].
HISTORY CORNER
MARK SCOTT’S “SOFT DIPLOMACY IN ACTION – HUNGRY BEAST MUGS ASIO
On 5 November 2009, ABC managing director Mark Scott delivered the Bruce Allen Memorial Lecture at Macquarie University. In this address at Macquarie University, Mr Scott depicted the public broadcaster as having a key part to play in how Australia presents itself to the world. He argued that Australia has “an important role to play in this new world order”, that one of the “tools at our disposal” in such an endeavour was “soft diplomacy” and that the ABC should be the agent of such soft diplomacy on behalf of the Australian nation. Mark Scott also declared:
As Editor-in-Chief of the ABC, I feel it is important to state that the values of a nation as expressed through its journalism is an important facet of public diplomacy.
Interviewed on The World Today on 5 November 2009, Mark Scott elaborated on his speech. He maintained that an embrace of soft diplomacy would enable the ABC to influence people outside of Australia to become favourable to Australia “as they understand better your values, your culture and your way of life”.
Interesting theory. But it raises the question about what non-Australians would come to know concerning, say, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) by watching ABC TV.
In his first key address as ABC managing director – delivered at The Sydney Institute on 16 October 2006 – Mark Scott promised that, under his management, the ABC “will be looking for further diversity of voices – ensuring the ABC is the town square where debate can flourish and different voices heard”.
Great promise. Pity about the delivery. Three years after Mr Scott’s commitment to ABC diversity, the ABC still does not have one politically conservative inclined presenter or producer for any of its key news and current affairs programs on ABC radio or television. Not one. But there are many leftist and left-of-centre presenters and producers on the public broadcaster.
The establishment of the Hungry Beast program in 2009 provided yet another opportunity for the powers-that-be at the public broadcaster to implement Mark Scott’s commitment for greater diversity at the ABC. This did not occur. The Hungry Beast is standard fashionably-leftist ABC fare. The program criticises political conservatives (like John Howard) – from the left. And it criticises social democrats (like Kevin Rudd) – also from a left-wing perspective.
Hungry Beast is an ABC co-production. The program was created by Andrew Denton at Zapruder’s Other Films. The executive producers at Zapruder are Andrew Denton and Anita Jacoby. The ABC’s executive producer is Sophia Zachariou.
An example of what form Australia’s soft diplomacy might take – if presented by the ABC – can be gained by looking at the Hungry Beast report on ASIO which aired on 17 February 2010. The report – in “The Beast File” – was littered with conspiracies, errors and omissions. Here are some examples:
ASIO and the Petrov Defection
This is what Hungry Beast said about the defection of Vladimir Petrov in 1954, viz:
In 1954 ASIO was accused of playing a key role in Prime Minister Bob Menzies’ re-election by encouraging a Soviet defector, Vladimir Petrov, to accuse the Labor Party of having connections to the KGB.
ASIO has been accused of all sorts of actions over the years, but what about the facts?
There is no evidence of any kind that ASIO engineered the defection of Vladimir Petrov, the third secretary at the Soviet Union’s Embassy in Canberra. It is far from clear that the Petrov defection had anything to do with the Coalition’s victory in the May 1954 Federal election. And there is no evidence that ASIO encouraged Petrov to accuse the Labor Party of having connections to the KGB. All this is a mere re-statement, by GenY leftists, of the same old hoary left-wing mythology which has been doing the rounds about the Petrov Affair for over half a century. Over recent decades key Labor Party figures have junked the Petrov Affair conspiracy thesis.
The Australian left’s mythology about Petrov was demolished following the decision in 1984 of Bob Hawke’s Labor government to release the Petrov archive – and the subsequent publication of Robert Manne’s book The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage (Pergamon, 1987) which was based substantially on the Petrov archive. David McKnight’s subsequent book was broadly consistent with Manne’s findings.
After examining the official files, Robert Manne concluded that the defections of Vladimir Petrov and his wife Evdokia Petrov “were of extreme value to Western counter-intelligence in its unending war against the Soviet espionage system”. Christopher Andrew, author of The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of M15 (Allen Lane, 2009), came to a similar conclusion in his book. Professor Andrew had access to the M15 archive. Christopher Andrew spoke to ABC PM presenter Mark Colvin at some length about the Petrov Affair on 2 October 2009 – this part of the interview is on the PM website. Andrew told Colvin that the left’s take on the Petrov Affair was just another conspiracy theory. He also described the Petrovs as very important defectors – particularly Mrs Petrov, who was very knowledgeable about code breaking.
If the Hungry Beast team had done its research, they would have known that:
▪ Vladimir Petrov’s decision to defect – and the timing of his defection – was his alone. ASIO did not determine the decision. There were many reasons for Vladimir Petrov’s defection – the principal one was that he feared for his life if he returned to the Soviet Union.
▪ Vladimir Petrov defected on 3 April 1954. The election was held around its expected time – on 29 May 1954. The Australian economy was recovering in early 1954 following an economic downturn. Robert Menzies had benefited politically from the enormously successful Royal Tour which ran from 3 February 1954 to 1 April 1954. And Labor, under the leadership of the erratic and probably mentally imbalanced Dr Bert Evatt, was deeply divided. In short, the Menzies Government always had a good chance to win the election – even if, in the event, its winning margin was small. Moreover, Petrov’s defection was not used against Labor or its leader by Menzies during the 1954 election campaign.
▪ The fact is that two members of Dr Evatt’s personal staff – Fergan O’Sullivan and Albert Grundeman – supplied material which found its way to the Soviet Embassy. Evatt turned on O’Sullivan when, after the 1954 election, it was revealed that O’Sullivan had been involved in Soviet espionage. After the election it was also revealed that Grundeman’s name appeared in documents in the possession of Petrov.
In short, the Hungry Beast’s one-sided account of ASIO’s involvement in the Petrov Affair was long on conspiracy and factually deficient.
ASIO and John Gorton
Hungry Beast made the following comment about ASIO and John Gorton, the Liberal Party prime minister from January 1968 to March 1970, viz:
It [ASIO] spied on the prime minister, John Gorton, in 1969 compiling a dossier on his drinking habits and personal life. ASIO then tried to destroy the evidence of its surveillance.
There is no evidence that ASIO “spied” on John Gorton. In response to a query, Andrew Denton forwarded to Gerard Henderson an ASIO document dated 19 May 1971 which he claimed supported the Hungry Beast’s allegation that ASIO spied on the prime minister. It didn’t. When Gerard Henderson pointed this out, Mr Denton responded that the Hungry Beast’s comment turned on the meaning of the word “spied”. How convenient.
The May 1971 ASIO document – on which the Hungry Beast is based – merely reported the fact that in 1969 (then) ASIO director-general Charles Spry sought an appointment with Gorton and advised him of ASIO’s awareness of gossip about the prime minister’s personal behaviour which was in the public domain. That’s all.
The Hungry Beast claim wasn’t even fresh. David McKnight covered the Spry/Gorton meeting in his book Australia’s Spies and their Secrets (Allen & Unwin) which was published as long ago as 1994 – see page 246. McKnight, no fan of ASIO, did not claim that ASIO had spied on Gorton or compiled a dossier on him. In any event, if ASIO had spied on Gorton it seems unlikely that Spry would have told Gorton about such improper behaviour.
ASIO and Terrorism
And so the Hungry Beast segment went on – with undocumented sneering references to ASIO and its personnel. Towards the end of the Hungry Beast monologue, the following allegation was made:
In 2007 ASIO officers kidnapped and falsely imprisoned a terror suspect, Izhar Ul-Haque. All charges against the medical student were dropped because of gross misconduct on ASIO’s part. And yet ASIO accrues more powers.
The fact is that no ASIO officer has been convicted of – or charged with – such crimes as kidnap and false imprisonment with reference to the Ul-Haque matter. This matter was analysed by Gerard Henderson in his Sydney Morning Herald column on 25 November 2008. Moreover, ASIO has not accrued more powers over the last couple of years.
The Hungry Beast segment concluded with this refrain:
ASIO. Less than secure. Less than organised. And sometimes a little less than intelligent.
Of course, Hungry Beast made no reference to the important role played by ASIO, in conjunction with Federal and State police forces, in securing convictions in a number of recent terrorism cases in Australia – including the high profile cases involving terrorist groups in Melbourne and Sydney.
The Hungry Beast’s report on ASIO was nothing more than a left-wing, one-sided, hatchet job. Does Mark Scott really believe that in projecting such unprofessional, inaccurate and unfair programs to the world the ABC will make an important contribution to soft-diplomacy by depicting Australian values, culture and way of life?
NEW FEATURE – CLICHÉ OF THE WEEK
You’ve heard about the elephant in the room. On PM last Monday, Lyndall Curtis upped the ante by referring to “the biggest elephant in the room”. The reference was to the GST part of the health package funding debate which consumed much time when the Premiers and Territory chief ministers met in Canberra. One elephant in the room is enough – more than one is both self-indulgent and dangerous.
Until next time.