On Wednesday, well-regarded Melbourne barrister Gavin Silbert KC posted this message on X: “The Victorian criminal justice system is corrupt in the words of the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney (Anthony Fisher OP). This is further evidence of how badly it is broken. Lex Lasry is an honest and hardworking judge of the highest integrity.” The [...]
Readers of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories will recall that his character, Sherlock Holmes, once solved a case by drawing assumptions about a dog that did not bark. The ABC Media Watch program resumed on Monday with presenter Paul Barry stating the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster “has launched into 2024 with a hot new political drama”. The [...]
Last Monday, ABC TV showed the one-hour documentary The Search for the Palace Letters. Written and directed by Daryl Dellora and produced by Sue Maslin, it told the story of Monash University emeritus professor Jenny Hocking’s successful attempt to obtain the release of the correspondence between governor-general John Kerr and Buckingham Palace concerning his dismissal of [...]
As the saying goes, it’s unwise to make predictions, especially about the future. At the beginning of 2023, a clear majority of members of the Canberra press gallery were of the view that Anthony Albanese and the Labor government were riding high and set to be in office for at least two terms, perhaps more. [...]
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s 2023 Lowy Lecture on Tuesday was both newsworthy and considered. Which makes one omission from the address notable. His central point was that “without any doubt, Australia’s future security and prosperity will be defined by the strength and success of our engagement in the region we call home”. And he went [...]
I expect my use of the word “prominent” will decline somewhat – in the immediate term, at least. For eons I have described the ABC as a conservative-free zone without one conservative presenter, producer or editor for any of its prominent television, radio or online outlets. Now I can drop prominent. The taxpayer-funded public broadcaster [...]
It was quite a sight to behold. On Monday, Louise Adler, the director of Adelaide Writers’ Week and a high-profile critic of contemporary Israel, was the subject of a soft interview on ABC TV’s 7.30 program. The interviewer was Laura Tingle. Towards the end of the segment, Tingle asked: “As a Jewish Australian, I wonder [...]
The evidence suggests that many leaders of Western democracies, along with many of the journalists and intellectuals who comment on international and national politics, do not understand the reality of contemporary anti-Semitism. Only a conspiracy theorist of the extreme left or the extreme right would deny the reality of October 7. The Hamas terrorist organisation [...]
On Thursday, the ABC celebrated the 100th anniversary of its inaugural radio broadcast on what is now called ABC Sydney 702. The previous evening, Jess Malcolm reported in The Australian that some 5000 ABC audience members have signed an open letter to the public broadcaster’s leadership and editorial team expressing “grave concern” about “the ABC’s [...]
I have never joined a protest march or participated in a demonstration. However, if I had been in Washington on Tuesday I would have joined the March for Israel, along with tens of thousands of Americans, that was organised by the Jewish Federations of North America. Sure, I support Israel’s retaliation following Hamas’s barbaric assault [...]