GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 57
11 JUNE 2010
IN THIS ISSUE
● Why Phillip Adams needs John Edward
● Mungo MacCallum on the Not So Strange Death of Left Wing Magazines Down Under- and His Role in Their Demise
● Nancy’s Picks of the Week – Catherine Deveny back a-raving (this time on the ABC)
● Annie O’Rourke on One Birth and One Funeral (Her Role Fully Explained)
● Baroness Greenfield on Amnesia – and How to Confuse Marx with Mao
● Special Maurice Newman Segment – Yet More Group-Think on LNL
and RN Breakfast
● A Reader Writes – Did Bert Evatt’s Hatred of Waiters Channel a Character in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop?
● Nancy’s Five Paws Award – Well Done Susan Wyndham
● History Corner – Anthony McClellan Gets Confused About the Communist Party and Leftist Mike Carlton Emotes About Robert Menzies (Really)
● Correspondence : You Beauty – Julian Burnside QC Writes to MWD – and Receives a Reply
● Cliché of the Week: Deborah Cameron – Out of the Kitchen with a Cliché in the Lions’ Den
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STOP PRESS
MICHAEL SCHILDBERGER R.I.P. – UNKNOWN TO PHILLIP ADAMS
What a terrific discussion about the late Alan Reid last night on Radio National Late Night Live – when Phillip Adams interviewed (the never late) Ross Fitzgerald about the book he has co-authored with Stephen Holt, titled Alan Reid: The Red Fox – Pressman Par Excellence (New South, 2010).
MWD was most impressed by the Man-In-Black’s comment that Alan Reid was a journalist who was also a political activist and that, these days, only right-wing columnists fulfil such a role. This is the very same Man-In-Black who used his column in The Australian Magazine as recently as 23-25 May 2010 to brag about the political advice which he has provided to such Labor leaders as Kim Beazley and Kevin Rudd. [Is this the same Phillip Adams who backed the challenge by the loopy leftist Jim (“call me Doctor”) Cairns against Gough Whitlam in the Labor leadership contest in the late 1960s?. See Paul Strangio Keeper of the Faith: A Biography of Jim Cairns (MUP, 2002, p. 175) – Ed.]
However, MWD was most impressed with the following exchange between Adams and Fitzgerald about the journalist Michael Schildberger, who appeared with Alan Reid in the Channel 9 Federal File program in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Phillip Adams : Is Michael [Schildberger] still around?
Ross Fitzgerald : Somebody told me he died quite recently. But I’m not sure.
Phillip Adams : Okay. [Michael Schildberger] are you still listening? If you are –
Here Ross Fitzgerald changed the topic by mentioning another name. Michael Schildberger died on 2 June and his death was widely reported in the media – an obituary was published in The Age yesterday. Needless to say, Michael did not phone in to advise Phillip that he was listening. [Where is John Edward when you need him? – Ed]
NEW MATILDA (STILL) R.I.P. – WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MUNGO MACCALLUM
MWD Issue 55 reported the demise of the New Matilda on-line publication and wondered why the wealthy sandal-wearers who initially funded it lost interest. With the publication due to close down on 25 June, yesterday Marni Cordell reported back to her readers about New Matilda’s fate in the time leading up to execution day (so to speak). It seems that lotsa New Matilda types want the magazine to continue – but no one wants to kick in real money. Perhaps this reflects the fact that the left wants its political analysis for free – on the ABC, SBS, the taxpayer subsidised universities, the web and so on.
Yesterday’s New Matilda provides an insight into what might have gone wrong. The lead story, titled “Serial Killer”, is written by Mungo MacCallum – the leftist sandal-wearing (Intellectual) Commissar of Byron Bay. According to the blurb, your man Mungo was asked to contribute a piece on why so many magazines for which he has written over the years – including New Matilda – have gone cactus. It’s not until you get to the end of the article that you realise that this is a re-cycled effort of a piece written for The Monthly half a decade ago.
Your man Mungo looked back (in confusion) on the left-wing mags for which he has written – all now in an R.I.P. state. There was Oz, The National Times, Australian Left Review, Australian Society, Matilda, The Independent Monthly, The Republican, The Eye and so on. All now gone – the way New Matilda is about to go. According to MacCallum, there were so many leftie magazines which have crossed over (in John Edward terminology) that he can no longer remember their names:
Some were so fleeting that their names are forgotten. The only truly long-term survivors were the university papers, with their built-in subsidies and captive audiences, and The Bulletin, which constantly remade itself from the days of founding editor J.F. Archibald until its demise in 2008. If a year is a long time in politics, then ten years is a lifetime for an Australian political magazine.
And that’s the point. The only long-term survivors among the magazines are the university papers, which are subsidised by taxation. The only exception was The Bulletin – which was never predictably left-wing.
Leftie types have no record of wanting to spend their own money to support the causes in which they believe – they would much rather feed-off other people’s money. For a time, the likes of Gordon Barton and the Fairfax family financially backed Nation Review and The National Times respectively – but eventually they grew tired of supporting loss-making publications which carried the rantings of Mungo MacCallum and others.
MWD’s favourite of all the dead journals was The National Times – which your man Mungo describes as trying “to balance investigative journalism with reviews of expensive wine”. It became quite confusing to the reader. MWD recalls that a heading “Best of the Reds” could refer to the latest batch of Penfolds’ Grange – or a favourable assessment of Fidel Castro’s politburo in down-town Havana. In other words, you did not need to be drunk or stoned to become confused when reading The National Times.
The message seems clear. If you want a magazine to survive, don’t spend good money publishing the angry left-wing ravings of the Intellectual Commissar of Byron Bay.
As to New Matilda, yesterday’s edition carried a lengthy piece by the star columnist Ben Pobjie on why he should be elected prime minister and announcing the slogan “It’s Time for Two Thousand and Ben”. Enough said. Kill New Matilda today.
NANCY’S PICKS OF THE WEEK
– Catherine Deveny Bangs The Drum
MWD knocked back an offer from Jonathan Green late last year to write for the ABC’s on-line publication The Drum. It seemed a good idea at the time to leave as much space as possible for others to use this platform – in order to provide copy for MWD. And so it has come to pass.
It was not long ago that MWD predicted that the stand up comedian Catherine Deveny – who was employed by Andrew Jaspan to become a sit down columnist at The Age until her sacking by another editor – would drift to the ABC. See Issue 52. And so it was done that the prophecy might be fulfilled – as the saying goes (or went).
Yesterday Catherine Deveny made an appearance at the taxpayer funded The Drum with a piece titled “Leave Kevin Rudd alone”. It started like this:
LEAVE KEVIN RUDD ALONE. Okay? Can everyone just lay off him? It’s like watching a 13-year-old victim of an arranged marriage to a 77-year-old sex offender be stoned to death for escaping. I want to wrap the poor guy up in my loving arms, hold him close to my heaving bosom and sing him some John Denver. David Marr, ACNeilson [sic] polls, TROTW (The Rest Of The World), look what you’ve done now.
This is the same Catherine Deveny who, in a somewhat excited state, wrote this about Kevin Rudd on the morning after the 2007 election night before:
On Sunday morning I woke and felt like a woman in love; I felt buzzy and post-coital. – The Age, 28 November 2007.
The excitement has lapsed. But Ms Deveny still wants Mr Rudd to pull through – so to speak. So she told her followers on The Drum to back Rudd Labor since Tony Abbott is “terrifying”.
In her rant, Catherine Deveny claimed that former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser had been a prefect at school. He wasn’t. And she praised the Rudd Government’s “stimulous [sic] package”. [Doesn’t The Drum employ a fact-checker or a proof reader? Give the ABC more money next budget. – Ed].
Annie Gets Her Drum – On Kevin and Cate and her Offspring: A Real ABC Newsbreaker
As if one barracker for Kevin Rudd was not enough for The Drum in any one week, on 9 June the taxpayer funded site ran a piece by Annie O’Rourke titled “Rudd, Blanchett and Button: the real story”. According to The Drum “the author was an adviser to Kevin Rudd from 2007-2009”. Well, only just. According to MWD’s research, Ms O’Rourke joined Kevin Rudd’s staff in December 2007 (i.e. after the 2007 election) and departed in early 2009.
Who says the ABC doesn’t break news? Anne O’Rourke provided a breathtaking insider’s account of how it came to pass that, in early 2008, the Prime Minister turned up at a maternity ward with “a blue jump suit as a present” for the gorgeous Cate Blanchett’s gorgeous newborn baby. And how it came to pass that the Prime Minister did not attend the funeral service for Labor hero John Button in Melbourne on the same day.
Having resolved this, Ms O’Rourke bagged both Tony Abbott and Barack Obama and urged her readers to back the Prime Minister declaring:
I am calling on all progressives to rally behind Rudd. Stop wringing your hands with disappointment and let’s all dig in to help get this guy back on track.
Okay. We’ve got the message. And thanks for clarifying the blue jump suit matter which has been the big unresolved matter in Australian politics over the past couple of years.
THE BARONESS – LONG ON CARBS, WRONG ON MARX
MWD was still absorbing the impact of Baroness Susan Greenfield’s appearance at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday when – lo and behold – she was interviewed by Kerry O’Brien on last night’s 7.30 Report.
The Baroness’s essential message to the National Press Club was that a low-calorie diet may be the key to living to 100 years but it has the downside of killing off the sex drive. Many luncheon guests listening to the speech at the NPC were observed reaching for the bread rolls, the high G-I rice and spuds.
It seems that Red Kerry carbed-up for last night’s interview with the Baroness about dementia and all that. In a quite revealing interview, the Baroness declared:
• “It’s a wonderful thing to be a human being as opposed to, say, a gold fish”. (Good point, eh?)
• “The whole point about doing an experiment is you don’t know what the answer is going to be.” (Ditto).
• “Surely it is better, in the famous words of Marx, to let a thousand flowers bloom.” (It was Mao Zedong who said this – and he was referring to a hundred flowers).
• “If I give you a sparking plug – and ask you to drive to Sydney or Melbourne or wherever with just the sparking plug…you’d think I was mad.” (Yeah, right).
• “Just holding the sparking plug is not going to be a car – is it?” (Ditto).
• “If I give you a sparking plug, that’s not going to tell you how a car works.” (Ditto).
The Baroness concluded with an appeal that anyone watching the program should put money into research “because unless we do there will be more people going home and finding increasingly their husbands arguing with four year olds over the chocolate biscuit”.
That’s clear then. Send lotsa money to Baroness at the Oxford Center for the Science of the Mind and save on chocolate biscuits at home. [Is this the same Baroness of Oxford who was accused of squandering funds on unnecessary renovations while at the Royal Institution? – Ed]
MAURICE NEWMAN SEGMENT (CONTINUED)
This (popular) segment is devoted to ABC Chairman Maurice Newman’s suggestion that a certain “group think” might be prevalent at the ABC – and to ABC 1 Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes’ certainty that no such phenomenon is extant within the public broadcaster.
This week’s support for the Newman thesis comes (yet again) from Late Night Live and Radio National Breakfast.
Phillip and Bruce
• On Tuesday LNL presenter Phillip Adams discussed with his regular commentator on North America Bruce Shapiro the Helen Thomas case. Helen Thomas resigned from the White House Press Corps after being filmed proposing that Jews in Israel should “go home” to Poland, Germany and America. She did not make a similar suggestion with respect to Christian Israelis or Muslim Israelis.
Phillip agreed with Bruce who agreed with Phillip that Helen Thomas was basically okay sheila and that she was really misunderstood. Get the picture.
Fran and Peter and Michelle and David
• On this morning’s “Friday Panel” on Breakfast, presenter Fran Kelly basically agreed with Peter van Onselen who basically agreed with David Marr who basically agreed with Michelle Grattan who basically agreed with Fran Kelly about the week in general.
Then Fran Kelly raised David Marr’s Quarterly Essay titled Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd. Fran thought this was just super. So did Peter. And so did Michelle. David subsumed the flattery – humbly, of course.
In this intellectual love-in, nobody thought of asking one key question. Why did the Prime Minister make the error of agreeing to do an interview with David Marr – who was always likely to criticise him from the left?
A READER WRITES
Matthew Canavan’s Scoop – Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop gives Heads-Up about why Dr Evatt was Rude to Waiters
MWD fan Matthew Canavan was intrigued by the reference in Issue 56 to the fact that Dr H.V. Evatt (1894-1965) – failed Labor leader and long-time hero of the civil libertarian sandal wearing left – was rude to waiters.
This reminded Mr Canavan of the character Pappenhacker (a journalist on the Daily Twopence) in Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel Scoop. Let’s go to the text where Mr Salter is describing Pappenhacker to a guest, while dining with William Boot in London at the favourite location of The Beast’s staff (when being entertained at the paper’s expense, of course).
“See that man there, that’s Pappenhacker.”
William looked, and saw.
“Yes?”
“The cleverest man in Fleet Street.”
William looked again. Pappenhacker was young and swarthy, with great horn goggles and a receding, stubbly chin. He was having an altercation with some waiters.
“Yes?”
“He’s going to Ishmaelia for the Daily Twopence.”
“He seems to be in a very bad temper.”
“Not really. He’s always like that to waiters. You see he’s a communist. Most of the staff of the Twopence are – they’re University men, you see. Pappenhacker says that every time you are polite to a proletarian you are helping bolster up the capitalist system. He’s very clever of course, but he gets rather unpopular.”
“He looks as if he were going to hit them.”
“Yes, he does sometimes. Quite a lot of restaurants won’t have him in. You see, you’ll meet a lot of interesting people when you go to Ishmaelia.”
So here’s a theory. Perhaps H.V. (“call me Doc”) Evatt was a leftie disciple of Pappenhacker and believed that it was politically smart to be rude to waiters since it would embolden them to engage in revolutionary struggle against the (rude) capitalist class. Or perhaps the Doc was just rude to waiters because he didn’t like waiters and was full of contempt for the working class.
Thanks to Matthew Canavan for the historical insight. Any other ideas out there about Doc Evatt?
NANCY’S FIVE PAWS AWARD
Susan Wyndham Bags Peter Carey (Ex-Geelong Grammar)
Nancy was just so impressed by Susan Wyndham’s coverage of Peter Carey’s most recent visit to Australia – where he was a star at the taxpayer subsidised Sydney Writers’ Festival and appeared on the taxpayer funded Q&A ABC1 program. Mr Carey these days is a Fly-In-Fly-Out-Intellectual (or FIFOI )– who visits the country of his birth every now and then dumps on Australia and Australians and whinges about how there are not enough really clever people around to buy his works of fiction.
Mr Carey’s most recent FIFOI performance Down Under was criticised by Sydney Morning Herald columnists Gerard Henderson (25 May 2010), Miranda Devine (27 May) and Rick Feneley (29 May).
Just when you thought that an occasional luvvie like Herald literary editor Susan Wyndham would weigh in with a defence of the leftist New York based sandal-wearer, she didn’t. This is what Ms Wyndham wrote in her “Undercover” column in the Sydney Morning Herald on 5-6 June 2010:
….[Peter Carey] was pounded, especially in this newspaper, by the very literate people he was talking to: one columnist [Rick Feneley] called him “a one-dimensional misanthrope, a miserable intellectual snob with a phobia for the rest of us knuckle-draggers who read cookbooks and Dan Brown and, God forbid, vote”.
Carey probably judged this another predictable bash by the Herald. It wasn’t. I heard similar comments from the audience. His lament did come from the ivory tower and seemed to have the subtext, “Why don’t more people read my books?”…
Five paws to Ms Wyndham.
By the way, Peter Carey has made a contribution to the Q&A website which asks the oh-so-boring question: “What would you do if you were Prime Minister?” Peter Carey has declared that he would “nationalise education and recruit high quality teachers”. Wow.
How about that? Peter Carey wants government to nationalise primary, secondary and tertiary education. So, presumably, the commissar for literature in a Carey regime would demand that the likes of Mr Carey – and, perhaps, Mr Shakespeare – be read.
In Who’s Who in Australia, Peter Carey describes his educational qualifications as being “D.Litt (Monash and Qld)”. In other words, he has two honorary degrees from two publicly funded universities. As to his other education, Carey reports that he went to Geelong Grammar School – that posh institution on the shores of Corio Bay.
So Peter Carey attended Geelong Grammar along with such Establishment families as the Baillieus, the Murdochs and the Packers. But now he wants the government to nationalise his alma mater and deprive Bacchus Marsh boys of having an education which leads straight to the GGS and on to advertising and on to an apartment in New York writing books which, alas, too few readers want to buy – which makes the alienated novelist want to nationalise his alma mater. Or something like that.
HISTORY CORNER
This week “History Corner” looks at several contributions to the public debate.
ANTHONY MCCLENNAN SPINS OUT ON THE COMMUNIST PARTY DISSOLUTION ACT
MWD just loves “the Spin Doctors” segment on ABC Radio 702 in Sydney where – each Thursday – two PR types flag their wares with presenter Deborah Cameron. Last Thursday, Anthony McClellan from AMC Media was one of the spin doctors on call [Is he a doctor like Doc Evatt and Dr Cairns? – Ed]. Discussion got around to the row between Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and such miners as Clive Palmer and Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest over the proposed Resource Super Profits Tax.
For someone who makes a living telling others how to get their message across, Anthony McClellan was in anything but his best form as he flailed around trying to explain to Ms Cameron what was going on – and how the likes of the Prime Minister and the mining entrepreneurs should be behaving. Let’s go to the audio tape:
Anthony McClellan : I think part of the problem – part of the language here that is playing – you talked about playing into the [Rudd] Government’s hands. Part of the rhetoric from some of the key leaders – and obviously [Clive] Palmer’s one of them – but, you know, Twiggy Forrest said it yesterday – is this. You know, I thought I woke up the other day and it was 1953. This stuff about them [i.e. the Rudd Government] being communists. I mean, I don’t quite understand. Do they [i.e. the miners] actually truly believe that? Or do they, you know, have they been fed a line? I mean, you know, you’re advising them to use words like to use words like –
Deborah Cameron (interjecting): Do they think it clever?
Anthony McClellan : But the point is – you know. These aren’t – these are really strange messages to be, you know, getting out there, you know. It’s like, you know: “Bring back Clive Evatt and the Communist Dissolution Bill”.
I don’t quite understand why they’re running that line unless they think that’s going to have some resonance. I think it’s, just quickly, have resonance with, you know, perhaps more conservative people in regional areas who might believe this. But I think for a metro audience it really damages because it belittles the actual argument.
Yes, we know – you know. However, clear expression aside – what about Mr McClellan’s sense of history? Here’s what:
• Robert Menzies’ Coalition government introduced the Communist Party Dissolution Act in 1950 – not 1953 – and he (unsuccessfully) put this proposal to a referendum in 1951. The Communist Party Dissolution Act was not an issue in 1953.
• The Labor Opposition leader at the time was Bert Evatt – not Clive Evatt. Clive was Bert’s brother.
• Contrary to the implication of what McClellan told Cameron, Evatt opposed the Communist Party Dissolution Act.
• The likes of Clive Palmer and Twiggy Forrest are using the term “communist” as a political tactic against the Rudd Government’s mining tax proposals. This is mere hyperbole. It is widely known that the Prime Minister and his colleagues are not communist. When Robert Menzies introduced the Communist Party Dissolution Bill in 1950, however, there were real communists around. Communist North Korea – with the assistance of communist China and the communist Soviet Union – had just invaded South Korea and there were members of the Australian Communist Party who opposed the operations of the Australian Defence Force.
MWD suggests that Anthony McClellan desists from making historical comparisons. Bunk history is invariably bunk – you know.
MIKE CARLTON PRAISES ROBERT MENZIES – ALBEIT FOR THE WRONG REASONS
Does time mellow the man? Or is it just that ageing fades the memory? In any event, MWD was intrigued that life-long leftist Mike Carlton is now praising the Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies (1884-1978). Nancy’s co-owner is around the same age as Mike Carlton. Growing up in Melbourne, he recalls that he first became aware of a certain Mr Menzies when reading graffiti near the Melbourne train lines which read: “Menzies Means War” and such like. The artists involved were invariably members of – or fellow travellers with – the Communist Party of Australia. In those days Menzies was depicted as an arch conservative war monger.
These days born-again left wingers – like former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Fraser – prefer to describe themselves as a liberal (with a small “l”, of course). Fraser claims to be in the Menzies small “l” liberal tradition – as do such Liberal MPs as Petro Georgiou and Judith Troeth.
Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald column on 29-30 May 2010, Mike Carlton reflected on Malcolm Fraser’s decision to resign from the Liberal Party and opined:
Fraser is entirely correct that the party has lunged to the hard right, leaving him and like-minded moderates out in the cold… For all his pious blather about a ”broad church”, John Howard enjoyed boasting that he was the most conservative prime minister ever. He made certain that true liberals, people in the Menzies tradition such as Bruce Baird from NSW and Judith Troeth and Petro Georgiou from Victoria, never got a ministry and were ruthlessly snubbed in the party room.
And now for some facts:
• After the 1998 election, John Howard offered Petro Georgiou a parliamentary secretary position. Unlike Nick Minchin and Brendan Nelson – who went from parliamentary secretary posts to leadership positions within the Liberal Parliamentary Party, Petro Georgiou knocked back Howard’s offer.
• Bruce Baird should have got a place in the Coalition ministry but Judith Troeth’s record did not warrant such a promotion ahead of many of her colleagues.
• As to Mike Carlton’s claim that Robert Menzies was a “true liberal”, what does Mr Carlton believe was “truly liberal” about the following decisions of the Menzies Government between December 1949 and January 1966?
The fact is that Robert Menzies:
– Committed the Australian Defence Force into action in the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, Confrontation (the ADF opposed Indonesia’s military confrontation of Malaysia) and the Vietnam War.
– Introduced conscription for overseas military service anywhere in the world. Australian conscripts fought in Vietnam.
– Banned the Communist Party when he was prime minister during the early years of the Second World War and unsuccessfully attempted to ban the Communist Party in the early 1950s.
– Introduced provisions into the Crimes Act in the early 1960s which greatly strengthened Australia’s national security laws.
Once upon a time Mike Carlton was a fervent opponent of Robert Menzies and his support for the Monarchy and his advocacy of the Australian American Alliance. But now Mike Carlton reckons that Sir Robert was always a true small “l” liberal and that the likes of Malcolm Fraser and Petro Georgiou are his true liberal disciples. [Is this the same Petro Georgiou who was a member of the extreme left Labor Club at Melbourne University in the late 1960s? If so, he was not a liberal – and certainly not a Liberal – then. – Ed]
CORRESPONDENCE
QC or not QC? – A Bewildered Julian Burnside Writes To Nancy
Julian Burnside QC (for that he is) is both a sensitive soul and pedantic chap. So it came as no surprise when he wrote to MWD last week complaining about the use of his recent Sir Maurice Blackburn Lecture as a pin to bag Dr H.V. Evatt (for “Doctor” he was). See Issue 56. It so happened that JB QC’s decision to write to MWD provided an opportunity for Nancy’s co-owner to get a few things off his chest – so to speak. The correspondence is printed here in full.
Julian Burnside QC to Gerard Henderson – 5 June 2010
Dear GH
I attach a copy of my Richard Blackburn speech, since it is apparent from your little piece that you did not have access to it.
You will note, if you trouble yourself to read it, that I say nothing about Evatt, and nothing about his attitude to justice and injustice. He is mentioned only in the first paragraph, and only as the author of “Injustice Within the law”. The book (which you might not have read recently) discusses a single case, that of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, which was genuinely a case of injustice within the law. I used the title of his book as a convenient tag for my speech.
How on earth you draw from my speech that I am a fan of Evatt beats me. Why you refer to my speech at all is something of a mystery, since you do not address its actual content at all.
As for your suggestion that I do not mention that the Keating government introduced mandatory detention, I have done so countless times, in speeches which you have also not read.
Yours in bewilderment
Julian Burnside
“Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.” – Alexander Pope: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
“The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Gerard Henderson to Julian Burnside QC – 9 June 2010
Dear JB (QC)
Thanks for your email of 5 June 2010. It’s great to hear that you read Media Watch Dog – or “my little piece”, as you call it, re which see below.
I don’t know about you. But when I studied law all those decades ago, we were advised not to make assumptions.
In your email you assert that “it is apparent from” my “little piece” that I “did not have access” to your Sir Richard Blackburn Lecture (which was delivered on 18 May 2010) prior to writing about it in MWD. The fact is that I obtained a copy of your speech from Yvette Depaoli at the ACT Law Society at 10.58 am on 18 May 2010 – you would have known this if you had bothered to check with her or me.
Contrary to your assertion, I did read your speech in full before writing the “History Corner” segment in last Friday’s MWD. For the record, it seemed somewhat longish, and rather dull, for a luncheon presentation – but that’s another matter.
Since you took the title of your speech from the title of H.V. Evatt’s 1934 book Injustice Within the Law, it was reasonable for me to assume that you are supportive of Dr Evatt’s approach to justice and injustice. You say the use of Evatt’s terminology was just a “convenient” tag for you. However, there were many other tags which you could have used. It so happens that your use of Bert Evatt provided a convenient tag for me to discuss Bert Evatt’s intolerant side.
You are on record as stating that you were not even aware that mandatory detention existed before the election of the Howard Government (your profile in the AFR Magazine of August 2004 refers). In view of this, it seems reasonable that – when bagging the likes of John Howard and Philip Ruddock in a considered address to the ACT Law Society – you might have mentioned, in passing at least, that mandatory detention was introduced by Paul Keating’s Labor government.
I have read your past speeches on this issue. You always mention the Howard Government’s mandatory detention policy – but only occasionally mention the Keating Government’s role in initiating this practice. For example, there was no mention of the Keating Government in your 2003 World Refugee Day address or in your 2004 Melbourne Rotary Club speech. I doubt all who heard – or later read – the 2010 Sir Maurice Blackburn Lecture would be aware that, on occasions at least, you acknowledge the Keating Government’s role in establishing mandatory detention. To this extent, the section in your lecture titled “Injustice mandated by law” was manifestly deficient.
As I have previously noted, for one who spends a lot of time criticising others, you are remarkably sensitive to any criticism of your good self.
You may, or may not, recall that in your 2005 Jesuit Lenten Series speech, titled “Honesty Matters”, you quite falsely accused me of being unaware of – or unwilling to discuss – the Al-Kateb case. This speech was posted on the Jesuit Justice Centre’s website. In fact, I had devoted one of my weekly columns to criticising the majority High Court decision concerning the stateless Palestinian. This was recognised at the time and my column received a favourable mention in David Marr’s 2004 Alan Missen Lecture to Liberty Victoria. You should have been aware of this, since you were on the committee of Liberty Victoria around this time. Alternatively, you could have found my Sydney Morning Herald column by asking me.
Yet you resisted any apology for, or even correction of, your Jesuit Lenten Series speech and it was only some time later that you admitted to having made a “mistake” (your email of 30 March 2005 to me refers). On its own initiative, the Jesuit Justice Centre deleted your false reference to me from its website – but your false claim concerning me can still be located elsewhere on the web.
This was a professionally damaging allegation which you made due to your inability to do the relevant research. Yet, in your recent email to me, you close off the correspondence with quotes from Alexander Pope and Ralph Waldo Emerson – sending a (gratuitous) message about criticism and self-righteousness. It seems there is evidence of the psychological phenomenon at work here. I don’t know about you – but I do not go around proclaiming my “honour”.
By the way, as David Marr documented in his Sydney Morning Herald on 8 June 2010, Anne Henderson and I were successful in getting Ahmed Al-Kateb his permanent residence visa – which was personally approved by Kevin Andrews just before the Howard Government went into caretaker mode in October 2007. I just thought you might like to know this – in view of your past (false) claim that I was engaged in acts of “depravity” with respect to Al-Kateb. But, then, perhaps not.
And now for some (gratuitous) advice. If you don’t want to be associated with the views of the likes of Bert Evatt, don’t give them a favourable citation in the first utterance of your speeches.
Best wishes
GH
THE CLICHÉ IN THE LION’S DEN
Deborah Cameron on Lions, Dens and Hot Kitchens
This week many a journalist has described Kevin Rudd’s visit to Perth to discuss the mining Resource Super Profits Tax as an occasion where the Prime Minister was about to enter the lions’ den.
The star performer was Deborah Cameron who, on 702 last Tuesday, not only referred to Mr Rudd entering the Lions’ Den but also referred to his capacity to endure “the heat of the kitchen”. This suggests that in the modern abode of the thoroughly modern lion, the den is adjacent to the kitchen.
Which reminds MWD of the fable that too many brothels spoilt the cook. But that’s another story – and soon to become another cliché.
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Until next time.
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