GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG

ISSUE – NO. 767

20 March 2026

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THE LATEST

  • Sally Sara fails (once again) to disguise her hostility to contemporary Israel

How about this? ABC Radio National Breakfast presenter Sally Sara conducted yet another hostile interview with an Israeli spokesperson – on the morning of Friday 20 March. In this case David Mencer.

This is how the segment commenced:

Sally Sara: As you’re hearing this morning, energy prices have been soaring as Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz continues, and after Israel struck Iran’s South Pars facility, the largest natural gas field in the world, which drew retaliation. But in developing news overnight, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will hold off on any further attacks on the gas field following a request from the US president.

Benjamin Netanyahu: Fact number one, Israel acted alone against the Assaluyeh gas compound. Fact number two, President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks, and we’re holding off.

Sally Sara: Meanwhile, Israel’s Haifa oil refinery has been damaged by what Israeli media has described as fallen shrapnel following missile barrages from Iran.

David Mencer is a government spokesperson for the National Public Diplomacy directorate in the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I spoke to him earlier. David Mencer, welcome back to Radio National Breakfast.

David Mencer: Good to be with you.

Sally Sara: Did Israel tell the United States that it was going to strike Iran’s South Pars gas facility?

Comrade Sara asked this question in the knowledge that Benjamin Netanyahu had said that Israel acted alone in this instance and President Trump had asked it not to do so again. But her questions continued:

Sally Sara: So Israel did give the United States prior warning that it was going to carry out this strike?

David Mencer: No….

Sally Sara: But to bring, but to return to the question just on this particular strike, which has been quite significant. Did Israel notify the United States beforehand that it was going to strike around South Pars gas…

David Mencer: No, the Prime Minister made clear this evening that that’s one discussion which they did not have, I think the President said that as well….

Sally Sara: Is Israel willing to inflict further potential damage on the global economy to win this conflict?

David Mencer: The damage is being caused by Iran. It’s Iran which is seeking to blackmail the global economy….

And there was more.

Sally Sara: Israel is continuing its campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. IDF strikes have also hit a number of civilian buildings, including healthcare facilities and hotels. The death toll has now climbed beyond one thousand. At what point is the civilian death toll too high for Israel to continue pursuing objectives in Lebanon?

David Mencer: I find it strange that ABC doesn’t begin that diatribe with the fact that it was Hezbollah that broke the ceasefire, that Hezbollah sent rockets, drones and missiles over the border, despite the fact that there is a ceasefire….

You get the (hostile) tone. This compares with a soft and respectful interview which Sally Sara did with Daniel Levy of the US/Middle East Project the previous day. But then, Levy is a critic of Benjamin Netanyahu.

  • Yet another writers’ festival stack

The Melbourne Writers Festival has just released the program for 2026 which will be held in May.

Media Watch Dog will examine the 2026 MWF in depth next week. In the meantime, MWD readers might know that it looks like yet another taxpayer funded leftist stack.

Here is an example of two sessions:

۰ Political Year in Review

One year on from the Federal Election, it’s time to take stock. Respected political experts Sean Kelly, Amy Remeikis, Don Watson and host Barrie Cassidy come together for a frank conversation on how the political decisions of the past have led us to this current moment.

 

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۰ Ray Norris and Bruce Pascoe:

Big Sky

Ray Norris and Bruce Pascoe bring their jointly authored new book, Big Sky: When Emu Left the Earth, to MWF for two special events.

Not a political conservative among this lot. Barrie Cassidy worked for the Hawke Labor government. Don Watson worked for the Keating Labor government while Sean Kelly worked for the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments. And Amy Remeikis is a former Guardian Australia journalist who now works for the leftist Australia Institute.

Ellie’s (male) co-owner just wishes he could make it to Melbourne to watch as Barrie agrees with Don who agrees with Sean who agrees with Amy who agrees with Barrie who agrees with himself. Or something like that.

As to Comrades Norris and Pascoe discussing the co-authored book – enough said. Stay tuned.

  • Amy Remeikis’s Howard-hating rant – pity about the factual errors

There was enormous interest in the “An Amy Remeikis Moment” in last week’s Media Watch Dog. It focused on the fact that Comrade Remeikis – formerly of the leftist Guardian Australia, now with the leftist Australia Institute – had personally autographed her new book Where It All Went Wrong: The Case Against John Howard (Simon & Schuster) with this comment: “What a time, eh? So much of this is this man’s fault” – signed with an initial plus an “xx” – that is, two (written) kisses. Well thanks for that.

Moreover, the book’s Acknowledgments section concludes as follows:

And to anyone who wants something better, who feels left behind, frustrated, angry and motivated. You matter. You know what the problems are. Here’s to solving them. A x

In other words, the author assumed that any readers of her tome will be Howard Haters like her.

Last week, MWD advised avid readers that Where It All Went Wrong would be covered this week and advised that Gerard Henderson would reveal significant howlers in his column in The Weekend Australian on 14-15 March. Here is what Hendo had to say:

Howard defeated Paul Keating’s Labor government in March 1996 and went on to lead the Coalition to victory in October 1998, November 2001 and October 2004 before losing to Labor led by Kevin Rudd in November 2007. It was a remarkable achievement. Only three prime ministers have won four or more elections – Menzies, Howard and Labor’s Bob Hawke. Remeikis attempts to diminish Howard’s success, writing: “The myth that Howard was popular and unchallenged during his 11 years as prime minister is largely aimed at keeping his legacy intact. The truth is that Howard only just flopped over the line in 1999 [sic] and lost the popular vote for the two elections after but won government.”

This is hopelessly wrong. Sure, the Coalition won 49 per cent of the popular vote in 1998 (not 1999). But the Coalition took a proposed new tax to the election and won. Few incumbent governments have done this. The Coalition did win the popular vote in 2001 (51 per cent) and 2004 (52.7 per cent). This was close to the popular vote the Coalition won in 1996 (53.6 per cent). The fact-checkers at Simon & Schuster should have done better; the Remeikis error is not of the typographical kind. Rather, it’s an attempt to put down Howard and the government he led that consisted of much talent – as did the governments of Hawke and Keating before him.

This is not the only howler in Comrade Remeikis’s anti-Howard rant. Here are some more in the first half of Where It All Went Wrong: The Case Against John Howard.

▪ At Page 21 Comrade Remeikis writes:

Howard’s rallying cry to enshrine mateship as one of the defining notions of Australian character was tied to his obsession with “ordinary Australians”. “Howard’s battlers” very quickly evolved into his “forgotten people”, and decades later morphed into Scott Morrison’s “quiet Australians”.

It was Robert Menzies (not Howard) who popularised the term “The Forgotten People” in his book of the same name which was published in 1943. It would seem that Menzies got the idea from US president Franklin D. Roosevelt who popularised the phrase “The Forgotten Man” – most notably in his address at Albany on 7 April 1932.

▪ At Pages 24-25 Comrade AR writes:

Howard also elevated January 26 to a national loyalty test, taking it from a long weekend to a flashpoint in the culture wars.

Ask anyone older than forty and they’ll tell you about seeing the sudden shift in how Australia Day was celebrated, from a lazy end-of-summer long weekend which heralded the coming school and work year, to a jingoistic day with flags wrapped around cars and burnt shoulders – a day so sacred that moving a radio song countdown to a different date almost brought the nation to a halt.

This is absolute bunk. In the modern era, Australia Day was usually celebrated on the Monday closest to 26 January. This changed in 1990 when Prime Minister Bob Hawke and NSW Premier Nick Greiner decided that Australia Day should be celebrated on 26 January. The other States and Territories agreed. All this occurred before Howard became prime minister.

▪ At Page 25 Comrade AR writes that the Howard government’s “citizenship test infamously asked who was Australia’s greatest cricketer ever” – migrants had to answer questions about Don Bradman with a near-native level of English”. Not so – this question was only part of an illustration of what the citizenship test might contain.

▪ At Page 30 Comrade AR writes that “in the 2017 plebiscite the Australian community overwhelmingly declared itself comfortable with gay marriage”. What took place in 2017 was a postal ballot – not a plebiscite (where there would have been compulsory voting). There have been only three plebiscites in Australia – 1916, 1917 and 1977.

▪ At Pages 52-53 Comrade AR writes on the basis of what she concedes is speculation that Lyall Howard (John’s father) was a member of the New Guard in NSW in the early 1930s. She describes the New Guard as a “fascist movement”. There is no evidence that Lyall Howard was a New Guard member and it is an exaggeration to describe the organisation as fascist.

▪ At Page 73 Comrade AR writes about John Howard “becoming Opposition leader in 1989”. He became the Liberal Party leader and Opposition leader on 5 September 1985.

Media Watch Dog will return to the topic next week. But it is surprising that Amy Remeikis wrote a book on John Howard which contained so many errors in its first half.

And then there is this. Most of the Endnotes in Where It All Went Wrong are to transcripts and the like. There are very few references to books, articles or newspaper reports. Moreover, in the first half of her book, the author does not mention John Howard’s Lazarus Rising: A Personal and Political Autobiography (HarperCollins, 2010).

Stand by for more next week. In the meantime: Can You Bear It?

Amy Remeikis Where it all went wrong book cover

  • ABC boss Hugh Marks implies that words do not matter on live TV

Where is the ABC Americas Editor John Lyons when you need him? Has he gone “under the bed”? – as the saying goes or went, with particular reference to one-time NSW Governor William Bligh of Rum Rebellion fame. Or is Comrade Lyons on what journalists like to call on a W.E.B. (Well Earned Break)? Who knows? For whatever reason, the ABC Americas Editor seems to have been missing in action in recent times – in spite of the US/Israel attack on the mullahs in Iran, US pressure in Cuba and more besides.

As avid readers will recall, your man Lyons caused something of a stir when, doing a 5-hour appearance on the ABC News Channel on 28 February, he criticised Australia’s support for US action in bombing Iran, asserting that President Trump only acted due to pressure put on him by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and more besides. Oh yes, Comrade Lyons accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of spouting “misinformation” and “political propaganda” in supporting the initial US attack.

So, what does ABC managing director and editor-in-chief have to say about all this? Well, he was interviewed by Steve Jackson for The Weekend Australian on 14 March. Let’s go to the transcript:

Hugh Marks: I watched the whole coverage live. I thought it was outstanding. It was a high-pressure environment. It was happening in the ­moment. I thought the criticism of John Lyons during five hours of live television breaking news – happening on the run – was unfair. His analysis and the expertise that he brought to the coverage was great. Would he have changed a couple of words in hindsight if he had the opportunity? Yes … if it was written in an editorial, of course he would have, but in five hours of live television? That’s a lot harder to control. [But] overall, the coverage was balanced and impartial. An urgent inquiry is not needed. John and his expert analysis was a really valuable contributor on the evening and, frankly, the coverage would have been worse without him.

Turn it up. Hugh Marks’ defence of John Lyons – one of the taxpayer funded public broadcaster’s most senior journalists – is that words do not matter during live television.  This is an extraordinary statement – since live television is all about word usage.  But it’s yet another example of ABC management not managing its senior journalists – who effectively run the joint. Can You Bear It?

TRAVELS WITH OUR LAURA

Many decades have passed since Ellie’s (male) co-owner read Graham Greene’s 1969 novel Travels With My Aunt. He recalled this when considering what headline to use when commenting on the travels of the ABC Global Affairs Editor Laura Tingle. The taxpayer funded public broadcaster likes to refer to itself as “Our ABC”.

How appropriate, then, that the international movements of its Global Affairs Editor should be called “Travels With Our Laura”.

Media Watch Dog will follow Laura (“Australia is a racist country”) Tingle as she enacts her task of explaining Australia to the world and the world to Australia. (See MWD “A David Marr/Laura Tingle Moment” – Issue 730, 30 May 2025).

  • Has Laura Tingle ever been to Israel/the West Bank/Gaza – alas we still don’t know

As avid Media Watch Dog readers know, the ABC regards the travel of its Global Affairs Editor as TOP SECRET – equivalent to the assessment of secrecy as to the pay of its high-profile journalists such as (in alphabetical order) Sarah Ferguson, John Lyons, Louise Milligan, Sally Sara, David Speers and the like.

Consequently, the ABC’s Communications Department – which is known for its unwillingness to communicate – has declined to answer MWD’s questions about its Global Affairs Editor’s knowledge of the Middle East.

On 24 September 2025, Gerard Henderson AC (aka Always Courteous) wrote a (courteous) note to ABC Communications requesting information about La Tingle. Namely, whether Ms Tingle has spent time in (i) Israel, (ii) the West Bank and (iii) Gaza. This is the reply Hendo received: “Hi Gerard. No we won’t be commenting on Laura’s travel. Cheers.”

How about that? The taxpayer funded public broadcaster regards the taxpayer funded travel of its Global Affairs Editor as a national secret. Ellie’s (male) co-owner remains suspicious due to the fact that Tingle has never spoken with authority about the Middle East. It’s difficult to sound authoritative about Israel unless you get a first-hand understanding of how small Israel is and how close Jerusalem is to the West Bank and Tel Aviv to Gaza.

In any event, thanks to The Australian’s “News Diary” reporter Steve Jackson, we now know more about La Tingle’s travels. As MWD reported last week, Tingle is in Dubai. But MWD did not know whether she was caught up there on her way to or from the Middle East. Early on, in his piece Steve Jackson had this to say:

As the first air strikes rained down on Tehran, the public broadcaster’s outspoken global affairs editor, Laura Tingle, was among the Australian journalists who bravely boarded a flight for the Middle East to report first-hand on the rapidly escalating carnage. She made it as far as Dubai before flights were grounded and she started covering the war with daily crosses and stories from the United Arab Emirates as Iran launched retaliatory missile strikes on its neighbouring Gulf States.

So, we still do not know whether La Tingle has been to Israel/the West Bank/Gaza. As Jackson has documented, the ABC has reported that Tingle was “stuck” in Dubai while she herself has used the word “stranded” to explain her plight. In fact, there have been flights from Dubai to Australia, which the ABC Global Affairs Editor has not boarded – so she is not stuck or stranded.

Instead, Tingle has remained in Dubai and is writing a blog of mediocre quality. The problem is that she has virtually nothing fresh to say. This has angered some of Tingle’s colleagues. Jackson quoted an unnamed ABC journalist who had this to say:

People are really pissed off Laura Tingle has been in Dubai for weeks, staying in nice hotels and literally writing blogs with no material collected in Dubai. This is while other corros can’t do trips because of budget. You can write any of that stuff [she was doing in Dubai] from Sydney. It’s a complete waste of money. People are working like dogs filling shows and filing news and this stuff really is gutting. But Tingle’s one of the people [ABC News boss] Justin Stevens is scared of and she gets top cover.

Quite so. MWD has maintained for eons that the ABC is a workers’ collective where senior staff run the joint because the senior management does not have the intellectual firepower or courage or both to confront the likes of Comrade Tingle.

Media Watch Dog will let you know if La Tingle makes it to Israel/the West Bank/Gaza – provided this does not remain an ABC Secret.

A GRACE TAME MOMENT

  • Grace Tame not challenged by Hamish Macdonald about what she means by “the Israel lobby”

Grace Tame was interviewed by Hamish Macdonald on ABC Radio Sydney on Monday 16 March. The interview, which ran for over 17 minutes, became controversial when Tame defended her call “From Gadigal to Gaza; Globalise the Intifada” and described as “propaganda” a listener’s claim that on October 7, 2023 Israeli women were raped and killed by Hamas. What Tame was saying was that there should be an uprising from Gadigal (i.e. Sydney) to Gaza City.

Tame is in denial about the fact that the common word usage of intifada refers to the First and Second Intifadas, in 1987 and 2000-2005 respectively, which involved terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens – Jewish and non-Jewish alike. Tame is also ignorant of – or in denial about – the fact that Israeli women and children were murdered during Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 and that some females were kidnapped and raped.

Hamish Macdonald asked some challenging questions.  But overall, it was a soft interview – especially at the start when Macdonald did not challenge Tame’s claim that she is being deprived of speaking gigs by what she called the Israel Lobby. Let’s go to the transcript:

Grace Tame: I had speaking gigs locked in until October and since the ninth of February, when I addressed the crowd at Sydney’s Town Hall in protest of Isaac Herzog’s state visit, and used what is a contentious phrase, because it has been captured along with other phrases, like “from the river to the sea” has been captured by the Israel lobby. It’s been decontextualised. It’s been disingenuously, you know, framed as hate speech and equated to, you know, a call for collective violence against the Jewish population, which is not my interpretation. …Anyway, ever since then, there have been countless articles, talk show segments, radio interviews, headlines, defaming me, essentially painting me as a terrorist sympathiser and an anti-Semite. And there’s been a concerted sort of shadowy campaign run by the Israel lobby behind closed doors….

Hamish Macdonald: Who do you believe defamed you?

Note that Macdonald initially focused on Tame’s claim that she had been defamed. He did not challenge Grace Tame’s assertion about the “Israel Lobby” or to ask Tame to define it.  You would not need to be pro-Israel to avoid paying money to hear Tame speak – especially since many Australians know about the First and Second intifadas against Israeli citizens which were clearly violent while others are hostile to the murderous Iranian theocracy.

Moreover, the ABC interviewer did not query Grace Tame about her knowledge of Israel, the West Bank or Gaza. Or whether she had even visited the area. Meanwhile Grace Tame is given considerable time on the taxpayer funded public broadcaster to complain about being silenced by anonymous (presumably Jewish) members of the ill-defined Israel Lobby.

Verily, a Grace Tame Moment.

For a transcript of the Macdonald/Tame interview see here.

DOCUMENTATION

  • Louise Milligan nominates her flawed article in The Monthly for a Melbourne Press Club Quill Award

There was considerable interest in the section of last week’s Media Watch Dog which drew attention to the fact that ABC journalist Louise Milligan is a finalist in the Melbourne Press Club’s 31st Quill Awards for Excellence in Victorian journalism. The nomination is in the category of Feature Writing. The ABC TV Four Corners reporter paid $125 to nominate herself – for her article “The True Legacy of the Rapist George Pell” which was published in the February 2025 issue of The Monthly. Erik Jensen is the publication’s chief executive and editor-in-chief.

As MWD readers know, the February 2025 issue of The Monthly triggered a contempt application and the publication had to be taken off the shelves. In the Concise Australian Legal Dictionary “contempt by publication” is defined as “publishing material that has a real tendency to interfere with or is intended to interfere with particular pending criminal or civil proceedings”.

So, there you have it. Victorian ABC reporter Louise Milligan nominated herself for a Quill Award for a published article which had to be withdrawn in the State of Victoria.

The winner will be announced at the Quill Annual Awards Dinner on Friday 20 March – after this issue of MWD has been written.

It seems extraordinary that an article which led to contempt proceedings and had to be withdrawn from sale could be so well regarded by the powers-that-be in the Melbourne Press Club that it would be short-listed for a Quill Award in the category of “Print Media: Feature Writing”.

The cover story of The Monthly’s February 2025 issue was titled “His Victims Speak: The True Legacy Of The Rapist George Pell by Louise Milligan”. In fact, Milligan had two targets – the late George Pell and Sister Marietta Green.

• Milligan’s case against the late Cardinal George Pell

George Pell was never charged with the offence of rape. He was convicted in the County Court of Victoria of two counts of sexual assault – which were overturned by a unanimous judgment in the High Court of Australia. In her article in The Monthly and elsewhere – Milligan has made it clear that she does not accept the judgment of all seven judges of the High Court of Australia in April 2020. Namely – Chief Justice Susan Kiefel and Justices Virginia Bell, Stephen Gageler, Patrick Keane, Geoffrey Nettle, Michelle Gordon and James Edelman.

In her article in The Monthly Milligan wrote:

A jury accepted Witness J’s account and Pell was convicted and sent to prison. In Victoria’s Court of Appeal, the majority of the court, which had viewed the video of Witness J’s evidence as well as that of all the other witnesses, upheld the conviction. But on appeal to the High Court of Australia, the judges decided, without having viewed the videos but taking into account the evidence of the church “opportunity witnesses” who said it couldn’t have happened, that any jury acting rationally must have entertained a reasonable doubt that Pell was guilty. Pell was acquitted and set free from prison.

These four sentences contain a serious error and a serious misunderstanding. First, Pell’s defence team did not call any witnesses. In other words, there were no “church opportunity witnesses”. These were called by the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions. Milligan, who refers to her law degree on occasions, should know this. Second, Milligan does not understand the decision of the High Court in George Pell vs The Queen. Some of the judges made it clear that they were not interested in the demeanour of witnesses but, rather, in what witnesses said or did. For example, Justice Bell had this to say when the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions (Kerri Judd) appeared before the High Court:

Bell J: Ms Judd, at a point in the closing address of the Crown Prosecutor [in the District Court of Victoria], he invited the jury to remember two occasions when the complainant had been asked a question by defence counsel and the complainant had paused and he closed his eyes before responding, in the Crown Prosecutor’s submission, one of those indications of a witness truthfully trying to reflect back and remember the subject matter that his attention was directed to.

Now, the matter I am going to raise with you, Ms Judd, is this. It may be that watching and seeing the complainant close his eyes and think back impressed members of the jury as an evident sign of truthfulness. It may be that some people might look at that and say, “He’s giving himself time to think up an answer”.

Milligan is a journalist who believes what she wants to believe. She seems not to understand that some people tell the truth, some have clear “recollections” of events that never happened, while others tell lies and there are cases of mistaken identity. In Pell’s first trial, at least two members of the jury and probably more did not accept the accuracy of Witness J’s account. For the record, neither Milligan nor other journalists saw the video of Witness J’s testimony. What Milligan (who has not practised law) was saying in her article is that she knows more about the law of evidence than all seven judges of the High Court.

In her article, Milligan relied on what several men had told her – alleging that Pell had raped them when they were boys in the early 1970s. She made the same allegation in an article co-written with Charlotte King which was published in ABC Online on 31 January 2025. It was titled “Cardinal George Pell abused two boys in Ballarat, compensation scheme decides”. The article, which was subsequently withdrawn, was summarised by the ABC as follows:

Two men have been granted compensation by the federal government’s National Redress Scheme for abuse by the late Cardinal George Pell, including one whom the scheme accepted was raped by Pell when the Cardinal was a young priest in Ballarat in the 1970s.

In the ABC and The Monthly articles, Milligan believed what the National Redress Scheme had found and what two men “David” and “James” had told her.

The National Redress Scheme (NRS) is not a judicial body. It is presided over by what are called independent decision makers who are anonymous. It is administered by the Commonwealth Department of Social Services. Its decision makers are not required to have expertise in criminal law or, indeed, to be a lawyer.

The findings of the NRS are made according to the “reasonable likelihood” that a sexual assault took place. This is below both the standard of proof in the criminal jurisdiction (beyond reasonable doubt) or the civil jurisdiction (on the balance of probabilities). Indeed, the “Easy Read Version” of the National Redress Scheme states:

The Scheme is different to the court system. Getting redress through the Scheme is different to getting payment through the court system. Some people will choose to go to court rather than getting a payment from the Scheme. They might do this because the court may get them a bigger payment. Courts need strong evidence about the abuse. Evidence is proof that what you shared happened. You need less evidence to get a payment from the Scheme.

In other words, Milligan and The Monthly’s editor-in-chief Erik Jensen accused a deceased man of the vile crime of pedophilia rape based on evidence which did not meet the standard of proof required for a conviction in a criminal law case or a finding in a civil law case and which the National Redress Scheme acknowledges that a complainant needs less evidence to succeed in obtaining compensation than in the criminal or civil jurisdiction.

For his part, Jensen has shown invincible ignorance in his handling of the law. Writing in The Saturday Paper on 11 April 2020 – just after Pell’s acquittal by the High Court – Jensen devoted the entire space in his editorial page to this short statement titled “A Note on George Pell”:

George Pell has not been found innocent. It is wrong to say so. The High Court accepted his appeal on the basis of reasonable doubt.

Jensen is ignorant of the fact that the legal system in Australia does not provide for an “innocent” verdict by a jury or a court. No one has ever been found “innocent” after a jury or a judge verdict.

For her part, Milligan does not appear to understand the application of tendency and coincidental evidence. In The Monthly she wrote this with respect to Chief Judge Peter Kidd’s decision in the County Court of Victoria in what was commonly called the Swimmers Case. Pell had been charged with assaulting three boys in various swimming locations.

Chief Judge Peter Kidd noted in his judgement, where he decided not to hear the swimmers’ allegations together, that the touching of Livio’s testicle could have been accidental, however, as the redress scheme decision-maker in David’s case pointed out, there was no need for Pell’s hands to be anywhere near the children’s genitals anyway. Hence, the decision-maker said they were in part reasonably satisfied (the test for granting redress) that the “play” activity in the pool constituted a sexual activity.

If Milligan had carefully read Chief Judge Kidd’s judgment in DPP v Pell (Evidential Ruling No 1) she would know that the decision was sound. The case is quoted at some length in Gerard Henderson’s Cardinal Pell, The Media Pile-On & Collective Guilt (Connor Court – Third Edition 2023).

Chief Judge Kidd’s judgement included this:

The function of tendency and coincidence evidence is undoubtedly to strengthen complaints and to make the whole stronger than the sum of its parts. However, in this instance, the whole has not been made greater than the sum of its parts, at least not to the extent necessary to justify the admission of the evidence. There is a limit to what the law allows….

Just as Milligan does not accept the detailed judgment of the High Court in George Pell v The Queen, she does not accept the judgment of the Victorian County Court in DPP v Pell (Evidential Ruling No 1). She also claims to know more about tendency and coincidence evidence than Peter Kidd who is now judge in the Supreme Court of Victoria.

Nor does Milligan accept the dissent of Justice Mark Weinberg in Pell’s appeal to the Victorian Court of Appeal. This despite the fact that Weinberg’s dissent was effectively adopted by the High Court and that, unlike the two judges in the majority, Weinberg was regarded at the time as Australia’s leading criminal law jurist. The other judges had scant background in criminal law.

Yet, despite her lack of knowledge in the law, Milligan’s The Monthly article is deemed worthy of short-listing in the 31st Quill Prize.

● Milligan’s Case Against Sister Marietta Green

In the final pages of her article, Milligan wrote about Sister Marietta Green who was alleged to have beaten a schoolboy at St Ignatius Parish School in the NSW town of Bourke in the early 1990s. Sister Green denied all allegations. In this instance, once again, Milligan believed what she wanted to believe. In the event, the judge in the NSW Supreme Court found that Sister Green had not inflicted “serious physical abuse” on the plaintiff. This decision was not reported in The Monthly.

In this instance, Milligan and Jensen thought it professional to name and shame an elderly nun by simply accepting the allegations of a complainant suing for damages in a civil case.

● Professor Jeremy Gans on Milligan’s journalism

Certainly Louise Milligan has a high opinion of her role as a journalist investigating criminal matters. Not everyone shares Milligan’s assessment of herself.

In early 2023, Professor Jeremy Gans of the Melbourne Law School tweeted: “It’s a recurrent problem with Milligan’s journalism; if there are facts that don’t help her argument, she doesn’t tell readers, she just leaves them out.”.  This fault is evident once again in Milligan’s article in The Monthly – which she submitted for a gong in the Melbourne Press Club Quill Awards.

 

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Until Next Time.

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