Issue 250

ABC “JOKE” EQUATES TONY ABBOTT WITH HITLER, STALIN AND POL POT – THAT’S ALL FOLKS

Here’s the very latest Tony Abbott “joke” – brought to you by the taxpayer funded public broadcaster – per courtesy of Nice Mr Scott, the ABC’s managing director and editor-in-chief – on Soul Mates (ABC 2) last night. Here it is:

Why does everyone always want to kill Hitler? Why not Pol Pot? Why not Stalin? Why not Supreme Chancellor Abbott?

Good one, eh? So Tony Abbott’s a mass-murderer – just like Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot. LOL. Nancy’s (male) co-owner couldn’t stop. After all, the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot were hoots. Absolute hoots. Stand by next week for another Soul Mates “joke” depicting Tony Abbott as the serial killer Jack the Ripper. Or, perhaps, Fred West. After mass murder, what is a more suitable ground for attempted humour than serial murder?

Step forward the ABC’s Andrew Greene. Last week, in a piece urging that the ABC journalist attend a mother-in-law awareness course, your man’s name was misspelt. It’s Greene (with an “e”).

On Friday afternoon, Andrew Greene was the first – and only – avid MWD reader to pick the John-Laws-style-deliberate-mistake. Well done. Young Mr Greene is clearly a well-informed kind of guy. He’s set for a brilliant career at the ABC.

● CATE BLANCHETT SPRUIKES THE ARTS AT WHITLAM’S MEMORIAL SERVICE

That was a truly brilliant performance by actor Cate Blanchett at the Gough Whitlam Memorial Service in Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday. Worth an Oscar or three, to be sure. Highlights included:

▪ Cate Blanchett’s endorsement of Gough Whitlam’s claim that what matters most in a society is THE ARTS. Dr Blanchett (for an honorary doctorate she has) quoted Mr Whitlam as saying while “other objectives are means to an end, the enjoyment of the arts is an end in itself”. Needless to say, this statement was greeted by enthusiastic applause.

Nancy’s (male) co-owner all teared up on this occasion as he envisaged a Blanchett script on life during the Great Depression:

Father of six: Sorry love, I couldn’t get work on the docks today. There’s no money for food tonight.

Mother of six: That’s shocking. What will I tell the kids?

Father of six: I had a dream last night where a millionaire actress told a starving family in a similar situation, “Don’t worry about food. The Arts is all that matters; it’s the only thing that’s an end in itself. So, tonight, we’ll consume Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby for sustenance”. Worth a try don’t you think?

▪ Cate Blanchett’s comment on free tertiary education which, according to the Gough Whitlam Fan Club, the Whitlam Government established :

I am the beneficiary of free, tertiary education. When I went to university I could explore different courses, and engage with the student union in extracurricular activity. It was through that that I discovered acting. [Much applause].

Cate Blanchett was born in 1969 and educated at Methodist Ladies College in Melbourne. [Funny that. I never met a “lady” who went to MLC – Ed]. Even if Gough Whitlam had not introduced free tertiary education, a bright student like Blanchett almost certainly would have won a Commonwealth Government Scholarship under the scheme established in 1951 by the Menzies Government. This covered all university fees and paid a generous means-tested living allowance. By the 1960s about 50 per cent of all university students were on scholarships or bursaries. The percentage of full-time students in this category would have been significantly higher than 50 per cent.

▪ Meanwhile, the Sun-Herald reported last weekend that Cate Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton have purchased a waterfront weekender on the Hawkesbury River – which is accessible only by water. This matches Blanchett’s multi-million dollar home at Hunters Hill, also a waterfront property.

So there you have it. The Whitlam-loving environmental catastrophist has decided to ignore all the warnings about rising sea levels and live on the waterfront.

Can you bear it?

● JULIAN BURNSIDE’S WHITLAM CONFUSION

Federal Labor MP Michael Danby and NSW Labor MP Luke Foley nominated Michael Kirby for the Sydney Peace Prize. Despite his important work on human rights abuses in North Korea, Kirby was rejected by the leftists who run the Sydney Peace Prize.

So the gong went to Julian (“I should have got full colours at Melbourne Grammar School”) Burnside AO QC. Yet another leftist to receive this prize, albeit a relatively recent convert to the Sandalista cause.

Soon after receiving his latest gong, JB AO QC was interviewed on ABC Radio The World Today by Sue Lannin. Let’s go to the transcript towards the end of Ms Lanin’s report:

Sue Lannin: He [Julian Burnside] says the world sees Australia as cruel and selfish because of the way asylum seekers are treated.

Julian Burnside: Boat people who manage to get to Australia are mistreated in every possible way as if somehow that will make us feel better or safer.

Sue Lannin: Hours earlier, the Sydney Town Hall hosted a memorial service for former prime minister, Gough Whitlam. Mr Burnside says the country needs more politicians of Mr Whitlam’s calibre.

Julian Burnside: Whitlam was a colossus but a survey of today’s political landscape shows we are led by midgets.

Eleanor Hall : And that’s the winner of this year’s Sydney Peace Prize, Julian Burnside. That report from Sue Lannin.

Julian Burnside seems completely ignorant of the fact that no incumbent prime minister was as opposed to refugees/asylum seekers as Whitlam was in his final year of office. Gough Whitlam was completely opposed to Vietnamese refugees coming to Australia following the communist victory in April 1975. For details see the “Documentation” segment below.

So the refugee advocate Julian Burnside AO QC bags our current politicians as midgets – in spite of the fact that Australia has an intake of some 13,750 refugees and humanitarian entrants each year – while praising Gough Whitlam who attempted to have an intake of zero refugees in 1975. Can you bear it?

● WELL DONE, DARLING! EPISODE 2

As avid MWD readers will be aware, ABC News Breakfast co-presenter sassy Virginia Trioli is wont to praise the activities of the ABC’s Fact Checking Unit. It so happens that the ABC’s fact-checker-in-chief is none other than Russell Trioli (aka Skelton).

In a previous issue, Nancy’s (male) co-owner suggested that La Trioli should cease detailed on-air praise of the Fact Checking Unit and just say instead “Well done, Darling”.

It speaks volumes for MWD’s cultural influence that last Wednesday, after banging on about how brilliant the ABC Fact Checking Unit had been in picking the 2014 Melbourne Cup winner, La Trioli threw the switch to pride and declared: “Well done, Darling!”

Nancy’s (male) co-owner is no romantic. He reckons in recent times Russel Skelton and team should have been busy correcting the huge number of howlers about Gough Whitlam that aired on the ABC in recent weeks. Here are a few examples:

▪ On ABC News on 21 October, ABC journalists, producers and editors put to air – without correction – a statement by a young female student that Whitlam introduced votes for women.

▪ Then on Q&A on 27 October 2014, presenter Tony Jones said on two occasions, that it was Jenny Hocking who revealed for the first time that the Governor General Sir John Kerr consulted then High Court judge Sir Anthony Mason before dismissing the Whitlam government. According to Jones this information was first revealed in 2012 in her book Gough Whitlam: His Time (MUP).

Not so. Mason’s involvement in the Dismissal was revealed for the first time by Gerard Henderson in an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 8 January 1994 – some two decades ago. In her book Hocking provided new information on Mason’s already known involvement in the Dismissal. That’s all.

Rather than checking the ABC’s very own howlers, the ABC Fact Checking Unit is busy predicting the winner of the Melbourne Cup in search of a “Well done, Darling!” endorsement the following morning at breakfast.

Can you bear it?

● JONATHAN GREEN’S KEVIN RUDD CONFUSION

So what’s Jonathan (“Proudly the ABC’s Sneerer-in-Chief”) Green been up to of late. Writing reviews for Fairfax Media it seems.

On 1 November The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Canberra Times carried Green’s review of Gareth Evans’ Inside the Hawke Keating Government (MUP) and Wayne Swan’s The Good Fight (Allen & Unwin). Here is MWD’s favourite part of the ABC’s Sneerer-in-Chief’s review:

Swan spares Rudd very little in this account, joining a short list of recent titles that have done likewise. The compounded impression of the twice former prime minister is of a man who combines almost pathological incapacity with unflinching self-belief.

According to Swan, a man whose opinion of Rudd carries the weight of a three-decade friendship, Rudd froze in the headlights of office. He was “unstable”, “vengeful”. Finance minister Lyndsay [sic] Tanner stopped attending meetings of Rudd’s strategic priorities and budget committee in frustration and disgust, avoiding even that “kitchen cabinet”, a group that like the government at large was the victim of the prime minister’s utter failure to organise, delegate and implement.

If Jonathan Green believes that Wayne Swan enjoyed a three-decade friendship with Kevin Rudd – he’s dreaming. And if Rudd was as bad as Green now concedes – why is this matter not reported in Green’s very own The Year My Politics Broke (MUP)?

By the way, Jonathan Green has still not produced any evidence to support his claim that Julia Gillard promised to put a price on carbon before the 2010 election. Can you bear it.

FRAN KELLY PROVIDES HEADS-UP ON THE END OF THE WORLD

Due to overwhelming popular demand, MWD is introducing this new feature titled “Armageddon Update”. The aim of what will surely become a hugely popular segment is to give “The-End-of-the-World-is-Nigh” types an idea of how long we’ve got to go before Armageddon arrives. Not long – apparently, if the word of ABC Radio National Breakfast guests this week is to be believed.

On Monday, following the release of the very latest report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Australian National University senior fellow Dr Elizabeth Hanna received a soft interview from Fran (“I’m an activist”) Kelly on RN Breakfast. This is what Dr Hanna (for a doctor she is) had to say. Let’s go to the transcript:

Fran Kelly: What is the key main [IPCC] findings in your view?

Dr Elizabeth Hanna: Well, the main points of course is that warming is unequivocal… Without concerted action on carbon, the temperatures are going to increase in the coming decades and it could be almost up to 5 degrees by the end of this century.

Fran Kelly: If we kept on that trajectory – that’s the trajectory 5 degrees rise in temperature by the end of the century, if nothing changed. What would that mean for us in health terms?

Dr Elizabeth Hanna: At 5 degrees? We won’t be here is the short answer. Because it will be catastrophic in terms of our water supply, our food supply, stability of the climate with the extreme storms, droughts. And, of course, we’re already seeing temperatures in Australia that are getting… awfully close to 50 degrees. With this, we will have temperatures in excess of 50 degrees and people will be dying.

So there you have it. If global temperatures increase by 5 per cent over the next eight decades, “we won’t be here” in 2100. This means that a baby born today could live to witness THE END OF THE WORLD. Fancy that. Brought to you by an epidemiologist on RN Breakfast this week. Next week, MWD will focus on the world’s greatest catastrophist Dr Paul Ehrlich who received a soft interview on RN Breakfast yesterday.

● FAIRFAX MEDIA ON WHY NO MORE REMAINS OF MH17 VICTIMS WILL BE FOUND

“… on the 100-day anniversary of the tragedy – which has been blamed on pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine – hope is fading that investigators will be able to find any more remains even if they do gain access to the crash site again.”

– Sydney Morning Herald, 25-26 October 2014

● FAIRFAX MEDIA ON HOW MORE REMAINS OF MH17 VICTIMS HAVE BEEN FOUND

“More human remains have been found at the crash site of flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte says. A Dutch team, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and local disaster relief workers went to the crash site on Friday, De Telegraaf said. They found the remains in a field where aircraft parts had been on fire on the day of the crash.”

– Sun-Herald, 2 November 2014

So there you have it. Or not.

There was barely a luvvie in the land who did not express faux anger following Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s announcement on 23 May 2014 of the judging panel for the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (PMLA) for Australian history and non-fiction.

The Sandalista Set at The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, The [Boring] Saturday Paper and more besides, got oh-so-upset. Among those to let off literary steam were SMH literary editor Susan Wyndham (plenty), Age literary editor Jason Stegar (quite a bit), The Guardian’s Daniel Hurst (lotsa), Crikey’s Cathy Alexander (ditto) and The Hoopla’s Mark Skulley (ditto). The line was that the judging panel appointed by Prime Minister Tony Abbott – with Gerard Henderson as chairman along with Peter Coleman, Ross Fitzgerald, Ida Lichter and Anne Moyal – would not be fair and balanced.

The Age got particularly worked up about the issue. Age editor-in-chief commissioned not one but two articles bagging Gerard Henderson. The first by Nick Dyrenfurth. As avid MWD readers will recall, Dr Dyrenfurth (for a doctor he is) is an historian who believes it is professional to write history without direct quotes or sources or bibliographies – and then declines to support assertions, when challenged, with evidence.

Gerard Henderson’s letter in reply to Dyrenfurth was censored by Andrew Holden.

The Age also ran an obsessive piece by Black Inc. publisher Chris Feik. Later it published an article defending the judging panel by panel member Peter Coleman. Also Crikey ran a whinge by Morry Schwartz and Chris Feik. There you go.

But the most obsessive contribution was that of Mike (“Private schools make us dumber”) Seccombe in The Saturday Paper. Without talking to any of the judging panel, Seccombe theorised that there was a 3-2 split. He also theorised about the award winners – from a position of total ignorance. [Is the Sneering Seccombe Australia’s worst journalist? – Ed].

On Sunday 18 October, the Prime Minister announced the shorts lists of the PMLA in all categories – including Australian history and non-fiction. So what did the critics say? Here’s a glimpse:

▪ Mike Seccombe and The [Boring] Saturday Paper: Absolutely Nothing.

▪ Crikey – Morry Schwartz, Chris Feik, Cathy Alexander and the team: Absolutely Nothing.

▪ The Guardian Online’s Daniel Hurst: Absolutely Nothing.

▪ The Age – Jason Stegar, Nick Dyrenfurth, Chris Feik et al ad nauseam: Absolutely Nothing.

In fact, only The Australian reported the short-lists seriously. Susan Wyndham did cover the lists – in an article which was not only confusing but also confused.

Come to think of it, Susan Wyndham’s initial report on the judging panels was also confusing and confused. For example, Ms Wyndham said that Gerard Henderson and Peter Coleman on the one hand and the gorgeous leftie Louise Adler were “like minded”. Fair dinkum.

IN WHICH MWD UNEARTHS MARK LATHAM’S (PAST) CRITICISMS OF GOUGH WHITLAM

What a stunning column by Mark Latham in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review. The Lair of Liverpool has written a total of three columns on Gough Whitlam since the former prime minister died on 21 October 2014 – just over two weeks ago. As pointed out in MWD Issue 191, your man Latham appears to be running out of topics. In this instance “Like a great oak tree crashing to the forest floor” (AFR, 22 Oct) was followed by “Whitlam breaks in upstairs” (1-2 Nov) which was followed by “Kicking over Whitlam’s tombstone” (6 Nov).

Yesterday the Lair of Liverpool endorsed a “timeless adage” which he claimed had been “passed down by generations of Australian mothers and grandmothers”. Namely, “if you can’t say something good about someone who has just died, don’t say anything at all”. It seems that your man Latham added “who has just died” to the well known saying – presumably to defend his AFR columns which essentially consist of saying lotsa bad stuff about people he doesn’t like.

Strange. Nancy’s (male) co-owner cannot recall Mark Latham condemning Paul Keating’s personal attack on the (then) recently departed Paddy McGuinness or the various personal attacks on the recently departed Margaret Thatcher by the likes of Glenda Jackson.

Most of the criticisms of the late Gough Whitlam turned on policy – they were not personal. In any event, there is something to be said for the view that if you are going to bag somebody, it’s better to do so when they are dead. At least, they will never know what you really and truly thought about them.

The evidence suggests that the Lair of Liverpool was happy to get stuck into his one-time mentor when Whitlam was old and in declining health. Here’s a glimpse of what Mark Latham had to say about Gough Whitlam (1916-2014) in The Latham Diaries:

● 17 April, 2002. Called in to see Keating in his Sydney office this afternoon. Reminiscent of the way he used to call in to see old Jack Lang in the 1960s – the wheel has turned full circle. He’s a moody guy, up and down throughout the conversation. He’s still obsessed with the Federal Parliament – quite sad, in a way. Reminds me of my worst feelings about Gough – they can’t let go, politics as an obsession, instead of an achievement in life from which you move on.

● 7 December, 2004. Rang Gough yesterday to collect his best Mungo [MacCallum] anecdotes. He couldn’t care less about Mungo, as he launched into a long, repetitive tirade about the Sydney-Melbourne rail line. He spoke to me not as a friend, but as a hectoring lecturer. What’s his problem with me? Every Labor Leader for 25 years tried to distance himself from Gough, until me. I hugged him at the launch but the colleagues are still bagging him, saying that any association with Gough is a vote loser. Maybe best to leave the old man alone.

● 8 January 2005. It will be even quieter when I’m gone [from politics]. I’m not going to be like Gough or Keating, agonising over daily events, ringing up for the latest goss, trying to interfere all the time, suffering from separation anxiety. Yuck.

So there you have it. Mark Latham attacked the living Gough Whitlam as a “sad”, “hectoring lecturer” who was “suffering from separation anxiety”. But he now stands as a defender of the Whitlam legacy in the face of a few critics.

WHY JULIAN BURNSIDE’S LITTLE (WHITLAM) KNOWLEDGE IS A MYTH CREATING THING

Interesting. As avid MWD readers will be aware, Gough Whitlam made the most intolerant statement concerning refugees ever mouthed by an Australian prime minister.

This is how former Labor MP Clyde Cameron, who was minister in the Whitlam Labor government, reported the “colossus” Whitlam’s response to Vietnamese asylum seekers, following the fall of South Vietnam to communist North Vietnam forces in 1975, in his book China, Communist and Coca-Cola (Hill of Content,1980):

Not long after, on 21 April, Don Willesee came to see me with a request that I accompany him to Whitlam’s office. He wanted to get a ruling on the admissibility of certain categories of refugees before Whitlam left for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in Jamaica.

Willesee is a compassionate human being who felt a sense of guilt over the Government’s apparent lack of concern for those Vietnamese who had been caught up on the wrong side in a civil war that was drawing to a sudden end. …He wanted Whitlam to recognise the realities of war and ease the restrictions applicable to other migrants.

Whitlam refused and I supported him, saying that I saw no reason why we should take the risk of opening our doors to war criminals. But Willesee argued that this was not the proposition he was putting and stubbornly refused to budge in his fight for what he regarded as a humane approach. Finally, Whitlam stuck out his jaw and, grinding his teeth, turned to Willesee and thundered, “I’m not having hundreds of f_cking Vietnamese Balts coming into this country with their religious and political hatreds against us!” Poor Don looked pleadingly toward me for help but I replied, “No, Don. I’m sorry mate, but I agree with Gough on this matter”.

Gough Whitlam never challenged the accuracy of Clyde Cameron’s report. Yet modern day refugee advocate Julian Burnside AO QC wants more politicians to be like Gough Whitlam on refugee issues.

This overwhelmingly popular segment of Media Watch Dog usually works like this. Someone or other thinks it would be a you-beaut idea to write to Nancy’s (male) co-owner about something or other. And Hendo, being a courteous and well-brought up kind of guy, replies. Then, hey presto, the correspondence is published in MWD – much to the delight of its hundreds of thousands of readers.

There are occasions, however, when Nancy’s (male) co-owner decides to write a polite note to someone or other – who, in turn, believes that a reply is in order. Publication in MWD invariably follows.

As hundreds of thousands of avid readers are aware, The Guardian Australia’s deputy editor Katharine Murphy put out the following tweet on 6 June 2014 at 4.33 pm – when that issue of MWD was “hot off the press”. Here is Ms Murphy’s tweet: “Without in any way wanting to breach anyone’s human rights or free speech – why do people write emails to Gerard Henderson?” It’s a very good question. Thankfully, not everyone follows Katharine Murphy’s wise counsel.

YET MORE ON LABOR’S 3-TIME LOSER ARTHUR CALWELL

In MWD Issue 245, Gerard Henderson documented the howlers in Mary Elizabeth Calwell’s essay on her father – former failed Labor leader Arthur Calwell – in the edited collection What Did You Do In The Cold War, Daddy? MWD understands that Miss Calwell was upset about all this – but, so far at least, she has not written to MWD. [What a pity. Let’s hope that Mary Elizabeth Calwell has not taken notice of Katharine Murphy’s wise counsel – Ed].

The mathematician/philosopher/historian James Franklin did write to MWD about the late Arthur Calwell (1896-1973). His sensible correspondence continues this week. Here we go:

Jim Franklin to Gerard Henderson – 24 October 2014

Gerard

Thanks for including that in Media Watch Dog.

It’s certainly fair enough to complain that Calwell wasn’t sufficiently anti-communist in the 50s and 60s. No doubt it’s true that his version of socialist theory didn’t get much traction.

Surely it’s very unlikely that Calwell “primarily wanted immigration to Australia from the British Isles” (given that the Irish weren’t coming any more). He did say that for public consumption, but this was an Irish nationalist picked up by security for Sinn Fein sympathies in his younger days. You may remember his comment much later to the Auckland Star that if Chif [Ben Chifley] hadn’t been pro-immigration, Australia would have remained a “dull inbred country of predominantly British stock’. (Kiernan, Calwell, p. 119)

Nor is there evidence that he preferred northern fair-haired nations. He explained that the first shipment (1947) was full of blonde, blue-eyed single Baltic peoples (he didn’t mention mostly Lutheran) for the sake of the cameras, as it wasn’t known how the Australian public would react. It went over just fine, so he immediately got onto Poles, Ukrainians etc. Tribune [published by the Communist Party] served up headlines like “Calwell’s Balt Fascist concentration camp guards” (the ancestors of Whitlam’s refusal to accept “f**ing Vietnamese Balts” in 1975).

That’s true of course that he was a fervent supporter of the White Australia Policy, for reasons he explained.

Calwell’s electoral losses: it’s worth remembering that he got 50.5% of the vote in 1961.

Jim

Gerard Henderson to Jim Franklin – 6 November 2014

Thanks for your note re Arthur Calwell. Once again, apologies for the delay in responding – life has been quite busy of late.

In response, I make a few comments:

▪ I stand by my position that Arthur Calwell – when Minister for Immigration between July 1945 and December 1949 – primarily wanted immigration from the British Isles. Since, as you know, Irish immigration had almost ceased, this meant that Calwell wanted British migrants. He said this – and his actions suggest that he acted in accordance with his public statements.

As you know, Ben Kiernan was a sympathetic biographer of Calwell. In Calwell: a personal and political biography, Kiernan wrote:

Calwell’s immigration programme was subjected to three kinds of attack: that not enough migrants were coming from Britain, that there were too many alien migrants and that there were not enough migrants from Asia. These charges had enough truth to make them difficult to deal with; but they were far from being the whole truth. A result of the general difficulties experienced in getting migrants from Britain was that the ratio of alien to British migrants was higher than many had expected. The first major attack along these lines was launched by H.L Anthony. Calwell replied: “The fact is that last year [1947] 20,000 British people and approximately 10,000 persons from other countries came to Australia. We are trying to maintain at least a three-to-one majority in favour of the British people coming to Australia.”

I accept that Calwell’s role as Minister for Immigration was generally positive. However, as you are aware, he pursued the administration of the White Australia Policy with a ruthless intensity which was not continued when Harold Holt took over as Minister for Immigration in the Menzies government.

▪ It’s true that under Arthur Calwell’s leadership, Labor narrowly lost the 1961 election. It’s also true that Labor’s primary vote was a respectable 47.9 per cent – up from 42.8 per cent in 1958.

However, Calwell failed to defeat Menzies in 1961 because Labor could not win seats in Victoria – Calwell’s home state. The fact is that, from the time he became leader of the Labor Party in 1960, Calwell made no effort to heal the political wounds of the 1955 Labor Split.

Throughout 1960 and 1961, Calwell remained absolutely hostile to Senator Frank McManus and the Democratic Labor Party. In the end, Calwell failed to become prime minister in 1961 because the DLP polled 15.1 per cent of the primary vote in Victoria and its preferences went overwhelmingly to Robert Menzies and the Coalition.

Arthur Calwell failed politically in 1961 because he could not temper his political hatreds. This would be a huge failure in any politician. The problem was that in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, Calwell hated anti-communists in Victoria and elsewhere much more than he hated members of the Communist Party.

Best wishes – and keep morale high.

Gerard

Until next time – keep morale high.

“Oh Gerard. You total clown.”

– Jonathan (“Proudly the ABC’s Sneerer-in-Chief”) Green on Twitter, Friday 3 October 2014, 4.31 pm [Mr Green must be an obsessive avid reader to respond so soon. – Ed]

“Good morning. All the gooder for being attacked (for thousandth time) by silly Gerard in the Oz”

– Phillip Adams via Twitter, 27 September 2014

“What troubles me most is that he [Gerard Henderson] shows such low journalistic standards, yet he is politically quite influential. He is often on Insiders. It’s hard to see why: he comes across as a crank.”

– Kate Durham as told to Crikey, 16 September 2014

“The unhinged but well spoken Gerard Henderson….”

– Bob Ellis, Table Talk blog, 10 August 2014

“Gerard Henderson and Nancy are awful human beings.”

– Alexander White, Twitter, 25 July 2014

“This is my regularly scheduled “Oh Gerard” tweet for every time he appears on #insiders”

– Josh Taylor, senior journalist for ZDNet, Twitter, 20 July 2014

“…that fu-kwitted Gerard “Gollum” Henderson….”

– Mike (“I’ll pour the gin”) Carlton, via Twitter, 12 July 2014

“[Gerard Henderson is a] silly prick”

– Mike (“I’ll pour the gin”) Carlton – tweeted Saturday 27 June 2014 at 4.15 pm, i.e. after lunch

“If Gerard Henderson had run Beria’s public relations Stalin’s death would have been hidden for a year and Nikita [Khrushchev] and co would have been shot”

– Laurie Ferguson via Twitter – 22 June 2014 [By-line: Mr Ferguson is a member of the House of Representatives who speaks in riddles.]

“[Gerard Henderson] is the Eeyore of Australian public life”

– Mike Seccombe in The [Boring] Saturday Paper – 21 June 2014

“Without in any way wanting to breach anyone’s human rights or free speech – why do people write emails to Gerard Henderson?”

– Katharine Murphy, Twitter, Friday 6 June 2014

“[Gerard Henderson is] an unhinged prick”

– Mike Carlton, Twitter, Thursday 12 June 2014

“There’s no sense that Gerard Henderson has any literary credentials at all.”

– Anonymous comment quoted, highlighted and presumably endorsed by Jason (“I’m a left-leaning luvvie”) Steger, The Age, 31 May 2014

On boyfriend’s insistence, watching the notorious Gerard Henderson/@Kate_McClymont Lateline segment. GH: What an odd, angry gnome of a man.

– Benjamin Law, via Twitter, Thursday 17 Apr 2014, 11:21 pm

Can’t believe I just spent my Thursday evening with a video recap of Gerard Henderson. I’m a f-cking moron.

– Benjamin Law, via Twitter, Thursday 17 Apr 2014, 11:23 pm

“[Gerard Henderson is an] unhinged crank”

– Mike Carlton, via Twitter, Saturday 29 March 2014, 4.34 pm

Complete stranger comes up to me: that Gerard Henderson’s a xxxxxx.

– Jonathan Green via Twitter, 8 February 2014

“[Gerard Henderson is] a sclerotic warhorse, unhelpful to debate, unwilling to think…a wonderful study in delusion…ideologically-constipated.”

– Erik Jensen, editor of Morry Schwartz’s The Saturday Paper [forthcoming], 23 November 2013

“The last time Gerard Henderson smiled was in 1978, when he saw a university student being mauled by a pitbull.”

– Ben Pobjie, via Twitter, 13 October 2013 [Editor’s Note: Mr “Why Can’t I Score an

Invite on Q&A?” Pobjie is wrong. In fact, the year was 1977 and the dog was a blue-heeler – like Nancy]

“I think Henderson is seriously ill. There’s enough there for an entire convention of psychiatrists.”

– Mike (“I’ll pour the gin”) Carlton (after Pre-Dinner Drinks tweet to Jeff Sparrow), 8 October 2013

“Wrong, you got caught out, off to Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog for you!”

– Tim Wilson tweet to Jonathan Green and Virginia Trioli, 8 October 2013.

“Nancy as ever will be the judge”

– Jonathan Green to Tim Wilson and Virginia Trioli (conceding to the arbitral authority of Nancy), 8 October 2013

[Gerard Henderson’s analysis of the ABC] is absolutely simplistic.”

– ABC managing director Mark Scott talking to ABC presenter Jonathan Green on ABC Radio National Drive, 2 May 2013.

“Oh my God; you’re as bad as Gerard Henderson.”

– Dr Peter Van Onselen (for a doctor he is), The Contrarians, Sky News, 20 September 2013.

“The nation mourns Gerard Henderson. He’s in perfect health.”

– Phillip Adams, via Twitter, 2 July 2013 (favourited by Virginia Trioli)

“Old Australian saying. ‘He wouldn’t know a tram was up him unless the bell rang’. Wholly appropriate to Gerard Henderson”

– Phillip Adams, via Twitter, 7 May 2013

“I said publicly once that I thought that Gerard’s views on the ABC came not from his brain but from his spinal cord”

– Tim Bowden as told to Phillip (“I was a teenage Stalinist”) Adams, Late Night Live, 11 June 2013 – Queen’s Birthday Public Holiday.

“Gerard Henderson is a crank”

– David Marr at the 2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival (as reported by Mike Carlton)

“The great Australian media nutter Gerard [Henderson is an] ungrateful bastard”.

– Mark Latham, Q&A, 10 June 2013.

“[Gerard Henderson] is a moral dwarf …Gerard, pull your head in”

– Professor Sinclair Davidson, 24 April 2013.

“[Henderson] You are mad. In the 18th century you would have been caged, with the mob invited to poke you with sticks.”

– Mike Carlton, 5.23 pm (Gin & Tonic Time) 25 March 2013

“I like to think of Gerard [Henderson] as the Inspector Clouseau of forensic journalism”

– David Marr, ABC News 24 The Drum, 21 March 2013.

“[Media Watch Dog is] not a moan, more of a miserable dribble”

– Peter Munro, 21 March 2013

“You are a fool, Henderson, a malicious and mendacious piece of shit… Now F_ck off”

– Mike Carlton, 11 March 2013 (Hangover Time).

“[Gerard Henderson is] an internet pest”

– Dr (for a doctor he is) Jeff Sparrow, 26 February 2013.

Jonathan Green: “Nancy, will be taking notes, I suspect”

Michael Rowland: “Nancy…yes. We’ll get a nice write-up on Friday. Good morning as well, Gerard. Thanks for watching, by the way.”

– ABC 1 News Breakfast, 18 October 2012

“Gerard [Henderson] is a complete f-ckwit”

– Malcolm Farr, via Twitter, 29 June 2012 (circa pre-dinner drinks)

“What a haughty flapping half-arsed buffoon he [Henderson] is”

– Bob Ellis on his Table Talk blog, 8 May 2012 (before breakfast)

“We’d better be careful what we say, just in case Gerard’s offsider pooch Nancy is keeping an eye on us for his delightfully earnest Media Watch Dog”

– Tom Cowie of The Power Index, Crikey 20 January 2012

“Henderson…What a pompous, pretentious turd you are.”

– Mike Carlton, Saturday 13 August 2011 (after lunch)

“Go to the Sydney Institute Media Watch Dog website to marvel at [its] work”

– Mark Latham The Spectator Australia 11 June 2011.

Media Watch Dog – “disgraceful”, “sick”

– Professor Robert Manne, April Fool’s Day 2011.

“Before going further can you write to confirm that these emails are private correspondence and not for publication”

– ABC News Radio’s Marius Benson, 11 March 2011. He did go further – see MWD Issue 86.

“I realise this makes me practically retarded, but until five minutes ago I thought Nancy was Gerard Henderson’s wife, not his dog.”

– Byronbache via Twitter, Monday 7 February 2011

“Gerard Henderson is big enough to take care of himself, but that doesn’t stop us worrying about him from time to time. Lately it’s Hendo’s tendency to self-harm that has us losing sleep. For example, peruse the correspondence he’s published in his latest Media Watch Dog blog… There’s a part of us that just wants to ask: “Hendo, are you OK?”

– James Jeffrey’s “Strewth!” column, The Australian, 8 November 2010.

“Media Watch Dog on Fridays…is a sort of popular read in the Crikey office”

– Crikey’s Andrew Crook on ABC 2 News Breakfast, 24 September 2010.