GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG

ISSUE – NO. 707

15 November 2024

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  • ABC’S LINTON BESSER DOES NOT DENY HE IS THE NEXT ABC BLOKE TO PRESENT MEDIA WATCH

The ABC will announce its 2025 program on 21 November. The rumour going around is that the ABC’s Linton Besser will take over from Paul Barry as presenter of the ABC TV’s Media Watch next year.

It would seem that journalist Janine Perrett, who has stood in successfully for Comrade Barry on a number of occasions, is sinking in the odds. After all, Ms Perrett is not of the ABC family and she is not a sandal wearing leftist.

This rumour was given credence on Richard Glover’s ABC 702 Drive program on Thursday 14 November. Your man Glover put it to Comrade Besser that he is Barry’s heir. The ABC Four Corners journalist declined to respond. A clue, perhaps.

If this is the case, then Besser will join the conga line of left-of-centre types to present Media Watch since its inception in 1989. In that a “secular” Reverend Besser will replace the (secular) Reverend Barry in the Media Watch pulpit lecturing to us mere mortals.

And so, it is likely that the taxpayer funded public broadcaster will remain a conservative free zone without one conservative presenter, producer or editor for any of its key news and current affairs outlets.

This was evident when Besser appeared on ABC Radio Sydney 702’s Drive on 14 November in the Journos Forum – along with Kishor Napier-Raman of the CBD column in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian’s Sarah Ison. Richard Glover was the presenter.

The hyphenated-named one and Besser had a self-indulgent time mocking US president-elect Donald Trump. They agreed with each other that Trump was not rational. Later on, Besser tried a “joke” about transmitted diseases. Really. Will your man Besser do the same if he ends up in the Media Watch pulpit? – MWD hears avid readers cry.

The good news is that CBD is a Media Watch Dog reader. And MWD returns the compliment. Stephen Brook, CBD’s Melbourne end, is a fine writer with an irreverent style who writes with humour. Whereas the Sydney end of CBD tends to be yet another member of the Sandalista class grinding out the “truth”.

In a CBD on 15 November Comrade Napier-Raman wrote about the highly successful Annual Dinner of The Sydney Institute held at The Star Event Centre on Wednesday 13 November with Communications Minister Michelle Rowland as guest speaker. Obviously, CBD’s Sydney operative needed copy.

Comrade N-R’s take from the night was of the sneering kind. He thought it was worth a comment that a Sydney businessman with a Lebanese name was on the same table as a former Liberal Party politico with a Croatian name. Ah, yes. He also advised that the former has a brother (who was not at the dinner). A Hold the Front Page moment to be sure, of the sneering kind.

The good news was that the hyphenated-name guy noticed the John-Laws-Style- Deliberate-Mistake on the official program. Well done – don’t you think? CBD picked the “glaring error” that reference was made, on a small part of the menu, to the “2023 Annual Dinner”.

No one else noticed this deliberate mistake at the dinner. Perhaps the large audience had more important things to do than read the program. Or perhaps guests already knew what year it is.

Meanwhile MWD looks forward to Comrade Napier-Raman’s next exciting account of some boring controversy at one of Sydney’s high fee private schools. Indeed, MWD can barely wait.

  • ABC (SORT OF) CORRECTS ITS FALSE CLAIMS ABOUT DONALD TRUMP & LIZ CHENEY BUT NOT ON-AIR

As Media Watch Dog readers will recall, on ABC TV Insiders on 3 November, Farrah Tomazin, who is the North American correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, falsely suggested there was a “shy Kamala Harris” vote.  Meaning that the US Vice-President had support in the electorate which was not being picked up by the opinion polls and that this would significantly help her to prevail over Donald J. Trump in the US presidential election.  This seemed to be hopelessly wrong at the time – and so it came to pass.

Comrade Tomazin also claimed that Donald Trump had said that the former Republican parliamentarian Liz Cheney, who became a Trump antagonist, “ought to have a gun pointed in her face”. What Trump said was this – at a fundraiser on 31 October 2024:

[Liz Cheney] is a very dumb individual, very dumb. She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay. Let’s see how she feels about it when the guns are trained on her face. They are all war hawks when they are sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, “Oh gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy”. But she’s a stupid person and I used to have meetings with a lot of people, and she always wanted to go to war with people.

There was no correction on Insiders  on 10 November. However, early in the morning of Friday 8 November the ABC had issued a statement titled “Donald Trump comments [sic] on Liz Cheney” on its website. [This is an imprecise heading. – MWD Editor.]  Here is the ABC statement put out after the 5 November election:

Donald Trump comments on Liz Cheney

Fri 8 Nov 2024 at 9:35am

ABC News: Several news stories across NewsRadio and triple j on 2 November reported that US presidential candidate Donald Trump had suggested former congresswoman Liz Cheney should be “put before a firing squad” or “have guns trained on her face and be shot”. While the stories included audio of Trump saying “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?”, they did not include the full context of Trump’s remarks, which would have made it clear he was criticising Cheney’s alleged willingness to send Americans to war zones rather than advocating violence against her: “You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building, saying, ‘Oh, gee, well, let’s send, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy’.”

The ABC statement did not specifically mention Nine Newspapers’ Farrah Tomazin. The ABC did not name any of its own lazy journalists who put the false story to air.  And no on-air corrections were made.

But the taxpayer funded public broadcaster campaigns about MISINFORMATION.  Can You Bear It?

  • ABC’s GLOBAL AFFAIR’S EDITOR’s FALSE THEORY ABOUT TRUMP’s ALLEGED CALL FOR A BLOODBATH

While on the topic of the ABC’s very own misinformation, this is supplied by an avid reader.  It concerns John Lyons who is the ABC’s influential global affairs editor.

This is what Comrade Lyons published on the ABC website on Sunday 3 November:

The trauma of the Capitol riots in 2021 remains seared into the memories of Americans. Many Trump supporters stormed the bastion of US democracy in scenes reminiscent of a banana republic.

On top of that, Trump himself has not dispelled that suggestion. In March, he warned of a “bloodbath” if he did not win this election, although afterwards his advisers said he was referring to the fate of the US auto industry.

That’s not correct – misinformation in fact.  If Comrade Lyons had done some fact-checking he would have known that Donald Trump said this. Here is the transcript:

Donald Trump: You know, Mexico has taken, over a period of 30 years, 34 per cent of the automobile manufacturing business in our country. Think of it, went to Mexico. China now is building a couple of massive plants, where they’re going to build the cars in Mexico and think, they think, that they’re going to sell those cars in the United States with no tax at the border.

Let me tell you something to China, if you’re listening President Xi – and Xi and I are friends, but he understands the way I deal – those big, monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now. And you think you’re going to get that, you’re going to not hire Americans and you’re going to sell the cars to us, no.

We’re going to put a 100 per cent tariff on every single car that comes across the line. And you’re not going to be able to sell those cars. If I get elected. Now if I don’t get elected it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole, that’s going to be the least of it, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars, they’re building massive factories.

Clearly, Trump said that there would be an economic bloodbath if he did not win the 2024 presidential election and China kept dumping cars in the United States. The ABC’s global affairs editor provides an alleged quote from Donald Trump without checking and implies that this was clarified after the event that he was referring to the car industry. As your man Lyons would know, if he had done any fact-checking himself. But the ABC’s global affairs editor did not do so.  Can You Bear It?

  • WALEED ALY ON WHY DONALD J. TRUMP’S WIN WAS EXPECTED

What a stunning column in today’s Nine newspapers by columnist Waleed Aly.  It was titled “Trump’s victory surprised many. But the real shock would have been if he had lost”.  Dr Aly (for a doctor he is) made some valuable points about the US presidential election – including this:

Last week, a historically unpopular government, presiding over a period of high inflation that saw food prices especially explode, got thrown out of office. There is quite simply nothing extraordinary about that. There were some quirks along the way – Biden’s withdrawal, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally – but the essential grammar of the contest remained. Three-quarters of Americans said they were financially worse off than four years ago.

Frankly, the Republicans should be winning that election. It’s an anti-incumbent’s dream. Voters’ two biggest concerns – the economy and immigration – happened to be the Republicans’ two biggest strengths. We saw almost every demographic (black women the exception) in almost every county swing Republican.

That Trump would be the Republican candidate to benefit isn’t an endorsement of his every excess. Indeed, exit polls show that voters liked Harris more than Trump, giving her a slightly higher approval rating. But they overwhelmingly felt Trump was more likely to bring change. Put simply, his excesses weren’t enough to reverse the fundamentals.

Fair enough.

  • WALEED ALY ON WHY KAMALA HARRIS WILL WIN

But could this be the very same Waleed Aly who had this to say on Network 10’s The Project on Tuesday 5 November (AEST) – shortly before the US presidential election commenced.  His comments were reported by Joshua Haigh on news.com.au on 5 November.  Here we go:

Kate Langbroek:  Who’s going to win?

Waleed Aly: Kamala Harris. My theory is Trump has fewer ways to win. Kamala has a bit more room for error in the people she’s targeting. Whereas Trump is really going for a particular kind of voter, especially a male voter and especially a young voter. The problem is these are people that typically do not go out and vote. But he is doing a highwire act and Kamala’s wire is slightly wider.

And the answer is, yes indeed. So, there you have it. On The Project  on 5 November Comrade Aly declared that Kamala Harris would win the election.  And yet on 15 November he wrote in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald that there was nothing extraordinary about Trump’s victory. Indeed, according to the Nine columnist, it should have been anticipated by all – including his good self.

However, Waleed Aly’s readers (if readers there were) were not informed of his U-Turn.

Verily, a Great Media U-Turn Of Our Time.

NEW SEGMENT – FALSE PROPHETS AND DYSFUNCTIONAL CRYSTAL BALLS

As avid readers will only be too well aware, Media Watch Dog abides by the saying that it’s unwise to make predictions – especially about the future.

  • THE INSIDE STORY OF PETER BRENT’S MALFUNCTIONING CRYSTAL BALL

Did anyone read Peter Brent’s article in Inside Story on 5 November? Your man Brent prides himself on the accuracy of his political commentary. Consequently, he has been reluctant to make predictions about elections.

However, Brent appears to have recently purchased a crystal ball online and put it into operation on the eve of the US presidential election.  At the end of his long Inside Story piece criticising American pollsters, Brent had this to say:

So, to sum up: the polls have it line ball. They might be wrong in either direction, but there’s an outside chance they’re about right. Who is going to win? I was going to sit this one out, but I’ve been emboldened by the recent numbers, and earlier ones that strongly suggested the electoral-college equation won’t favour Trump as much as the last two elections (in 2020, Biden won the national vote by 4.5 per cent, but in uniform terms a lead of 3.8 per cent or less would have seen him lose the college). I think Harris will probably win. And, no, it’s not likely to be “close.” But, okay, it might be.

This is what happens when a crystal ball purchased online doesn’t work. According to Brent, the polls were line-ball – and this may or may not be correct.   Kamala Harris will probably win – but then she might not. The result was not likely to be close (meaning that Harris would become president) – but then it might be.  In the end, Peter Brent was influenced by the Iowa poll which “found older white people” to be “unexpectedly pro-Harris”. It turned out that the Iowa poll was hopelessly wrong and Harris did not attain increased support from any section of American society – including older white people.

So, it turned out that your man Peter Brent was as wrong in his predictions as The Mooch.  Here’s MWD’s  helpful advice for Mr Brent.  Put your recently acquired crystal ball out on the footpath at the next council collection day.

OUTSIDE INSIDERS

As avid readers are well aware, a certain William (Bill) Thompson – a Melburnian who identifies as the ABC’s Southbank Correspondent – set up the “Outside Insiders” video segment some years ago.  This is a print edition of the Bill Thompson initiative to report on the ABC TV Insiders program from the outside.  Mr Thompson remains in situ in Melbourne. But Insiders has fled Melbourne for the (media) safety of the Canberra Bubble and, consequently, is now loose from the troublesome Mr Thompson. [Maybe that’s why Insiders junked Melbourne – just a thought. – MWD Editor]

  • INSIDERS TRAVELS FROM AUSTRALIA TO THE UNITED STATES WHERE AUSTRALIANS MAINLY INTERVIEWED OTHER AUSTRALIANS ABOUT THE UNITED STATES ELECTIONS

Did anyone watch ABC TV’s Insiders on 10 November – the Sunday morning after the United States presidential election of 5 November?

In his wisdom, Insiders  executive producer Sam Clark took the program to the US.  This despite the fact that presenter David (“I like to be called Speersy”) Speers interviewed or spoke to mainly Australians.

The panelists on 10 November were ABC TV 7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson (who also was in the US) and Network Nine’s political editor Charles Croucher (who also travelled to the US).

On the previous Sunday, 3 November, the panellists were US based Australian journalist Farrah Tomazin (The Age/Sydney Morning Herald) and Jade Macmillan (ABC).

On 3 November, Insiders was filmed in Detroit – the following week in Washington DC. From Detroit, Speersy interviewed former Australian ambassador Joe Hockey (who was in Washington). On 10 November the Insiders guest was the American commentator Charles Edel who is chair of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

In other words, Comrade Clark used lotsa moolah from the vault of the taxpayer funded public broadcaster to take Insiders from Canberra to the US where Australians mainly spoke to other Australians about the United States.  The only non-Australian interview was with Charles Edel – and this could have been done from Canberra where Insiders is based.  Moreover, the Speers/Edel interview was pre-recorded.

Here are some highlights from the “Insiders Goes To Washington” experience:

  • On 10 November, Sarah Ferguson gave viewers (if viewers there were), a lecture about how a lot of working-class Americans voted for Donald J. Trump. She also mentioned that Trump had received significant support from “Latino voters” and “part of the black population” plus some of the youth population. Let’s go to the transcript:

Sarah Ferguson: So, I think, I think we, we make a mistake, or analysts have made a mistake, by trying to take those, those communities, like Latinos, like young black men, for example, and treating them as a thing on their own, instead of just people who are having a hard time.

David Speers: Looking at these blocks based on race rather than income. Because I think it’s people earning under $100,000 a year, the ones who have shifted the most.

Sarah Ferguson: And under $50,000 absolutely –

David Speers: And even Latino voters.

Quelle Surprise! as the saying goes.  It was known before the election that the Trump/Vance ticket – was picking up support from American minorities.  Needless to say, Comrade Ferguson did not fess-up that, when appearing on 7.30 on 4 November she had missed all of the above and suggested that Vice-President Kamala Harris was in with a real chance of winning for the Democrats.  This was based on what turned out to be one grossly inaccurate poll in Iowa. Ferguson’s hopelessly wrong analysis was documented in the previous MWD (8 November).

Ferguson asked on Insiders “What were the Democrats doing?” in failing to anticipate support for the Trump/Vance Republican ticket.  Conveniently, overlooking the fact that Ferguson herself had not anticipated this. What’s more, Ferguson overlooked the polls that got the results correct – namely, the AtlasIntel, Trafalgar and Rasmussen polls.

  • Unlike Ferguson, Charles Croucher’s coverage of the US election was quite well informed. But he did make one howler. Here it is:

David Speers: People point out, Charles, the two elections Trump has won have been against women. The one he lost was against the old white bloke [Joe Biden], but he was also fighting as an incumbent in that election in the midst of COVID. The other two, he’s fighting as an opposition insurgent.

Charles Croucher: Yeah, I think a bit more faith in the US voters. I know Anthony Scaramucci said there’s no way that America is going to elect a woman this time around. That was his, was his, his belief going in. But you think, like Texas had a female governor 30 years ago….

Quite so.  But your man Croucher made one error.  The Trump hater Scaramucci predicted that Harris would prevail over Trump on a number of ABC programs – and elsewhere.  The Mooch was one of a series of American “experts” who appeared on ABC platforms predicting a Harris victory – re which see MWD’s 8 November issue.

  • IN WHICH ELLIE IS OFFENDED BY SAUL ESLAKE’S DESCRIPTION OF SNOWY 2.0 AS “AN ABSOLUTE DOG”

As avid Media Watch Dog readers will have worked out by now, Ellie is the very model of a modern canine (to re-work the line from Gilbert & Sullivan). As such, Ellie (who is a junk professor at the Canberra Bubble Institute) readily takes offence. Whereas Ellie’s (male) co-owner, on the other hand, occasionally causes offence.

To cut a long story short [Thank God – MWD Editor.], on Monday 11 November Ellie was woken when a copy of the Australian Financial Review landed with a thud on her kennel.  This was annoying but not offensive – even though it was 5.30 am. The offence occurred later.

Page 6 carried an article by Michael Read titled “Inside Canberra’s hidden $180b spending boom”.  The piece focused on the annual cost of off-balance investments to the budget bottom line.  Such as the $70 billion Re-wiring the Nation Corporation (funding cheap loans to energy companies to rebuild and modernise the energy grid), the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund, the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.  The article also covered the National Broadband Network and the Snowy 2.0 hydro scheme.  Here’s how Michael Read’s article concluded – with reference to the independent economist Saul Eslake:

Off-budget spending can enable bad behaviour because it does not get much scrutiny, [Saul] Eslake says. Turnbull’s troubled Snowy 2.0 project has blown out sixfold, from an initial $2 billion to $12 billion. “I think Snowy 2.0 is an absolute dog. If that had been financed through the Department of Energy, it might have got more scrutiny,” Eslake says.

Snowy 2.0, an initiative of Malcolm Turnbull when he was prime minister, is running well over budget and well over time.  It is experiencing considerable construction problems along with objections from land owners concerning the construction of transmission lines over their properties.

But here’s the problem.  Snowy 2.0 is not a dog and certainly not an “absolute dog”.  In fact, most canines in Australia are neither over-budget nor late. Unlike Mr Turnbull’s renewable energy fantasy.

No wonder Ellie took offence at the economist Saul Eslake’s put-down.  Just imagine how your man Eslake would feel if he was described as, say, a “snowy” or an “absolute snowy”.

That would be offensive. And so is the use of the word dog to describe something that is hopeless or bad.  Ellie wants to let readers know that she has taken offence on behalf of the world-wide canine community.

DOCUMENTATION

  • RORY STEWART ASCRIBES HIS FAILED US PRESIDENTIAL PREDICTION TO AN EXCESS OF OPTIMISM

Many pundits chose to believe that Donald Trump could not win the 2024 presidential election. This despite the fact that Trump had proven many of those same pundits wrong during the 2016 presidential election. Invariably many of these media prognosticators are themselves Trump antagonists and are incapable of understanding why American voters would choose to vote for President Trump.

One of these failed prophets is the British ex-politician turned podcaster Rory Stewart. Stewart served as a Conservative MP and minister but was expelled from the party over the issue of Brexit. He now hosts the podcast The Rest is Politics with former UK Labour staffer Alastair Campbell.

Prior to the election Stewart announced on various platforms that he believed Kamala Harris was on track to win the election. He was interviewed by David Speers for the Insiders Podcast, some of which was played the 27 October edition of ABC TV’s Insiders, again claiming that Harris was set to win.

On election night Your Man Rory appeared on a The Rest is Politics livestream, where he, Campbell and some guests reacted live to the results. Among those who popped up on the broadcast was ABC fave Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci, who had also predicted a Harris win. Late in the show, when it was clear Trump was going to win, the panel turned to introspection. Here is what Stewart had to say about his wayward prediction:

Rory Stewart: I think I was wrong because I’m an optimist. And I hate the idea of being right pessimistically. I think you can be a false prophet and right. You can align yourself with the worst instincts of humanity. You can assume that everything is going to hell in a handbasket. Or you can hope. And my bet on Kamala Harris was a bet on the American people, it was a bet on liberal democracy, it was a bet against populism and it was a bet on hope.

So, there you have it. When Rory Stewart was confidently predicting a Kamala Harris victory prior to the election, he was merely being optimistic. Of course, he did not let those watching or listening know this at the time. That would have been useful information for an audience trying to decide how much trust to put in his prediction.

A useful reminder to ignore the predictions of pundits who cannot distinguish between what they want and reality.

HISTORY CORNER

  • JENNY HOCKING’S KING CHARLES CONSPIRACY THEORY AND REMEMBERING HER HILTON BOMBING CONSPIRACY THEORY

 Avid Media Watch Dog readers expressed enormous interest in Gerard Henderson’s column in The Weekend Australian on 19-20 October titled “Republican cause no match for star power of monarchy” – see here. And for the follow-up correspondence between David Marr and Gerard Henderson which was published in MWD on 25 October.

Your man Henderson voted “Yes” in the unsuccessful 1999 referendum about whether Australia should become a republic with a president appointed by two-thirds majority of members of the Commonwealth Parliament. However, in his column, Henderson made the point that, a quarter of a century later, it is a matter of “The Queen is dead – long live the King”.  The republican cause has not advanced in recent years and the republican movement is divided about how an Australian head of state should be chosen. Moreover, the Australian Republic Movement has little support outside the inner-city areas of Australia’s capital cities.

The Palace’s Alleged Role in The 1975 Dismissal of The Whitlam Government

But MWD digresses. The column recounted what Jenny Hocking – the taxpayer subsidised official historian of the Australian left – said in an interview with David Marr on Late Night Live  (or is it Late Night Left?) on 9 October.  Namely, a repeat of the conspiracy theory that Queen Elizabeth II and the now King Charles III were involved in the dismissal of Gough Whitlam’s government by Governor-General Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975.  Henderson had this to say in The Weekend Australian:

On 9 October, Jenny Hocking was interviewed by David Marr on Radio National Late Night Live. Hocking, author of The Palace Letters: The Queen, the Governor-General, and the Plot to Dismiss Gough Whitlam, is the principal conspiracy theorist when it comes to the dismissal and the Palace. She used the occasion to restate the allegation that Charles was “up to the neck” in the dismissal. This view has been heavily contested by Paul Kelly and Troy Bramston – but their view was not heard on LNL. The fact is that in November 1975 Kerr would have acted as he did if he were president and Australia was a minimalist republic. The Charles conspiracy theory is absolute tosh.

David Marr’s Soft Interview with Jenny Hocking

It was a soft Late Night Live interview with Kerr antagonist Comrade Marr agreeing with Kerr antagonist Dr Hocking (for a doctor she is) that Buckingham Palace was involved in the dismissal.  Here’s how the interview commenced with MWD fave republican David Marr at his sarcastic best (or worst, as the case may be).

David Marr: But first, it saddens us here at Late Night Live that so little fuss is being made of the arrival on Friday week of the King and Queen. There are no triumphant marchers in the streets. School children will not be massed in Showgrounds to greet their Majesties. Charles will review the fleet, of course, but excitement is way below a fever pitch. How can this be? The King is an interesting man with an interesting past – which we thought we would explore with Professor Jenny Hocking, who knows better than anyone the role Charles played as a young man in the Governor-General’s sacking of the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975. He was up to his neck in it…. Welcome to Late Night Live.

Jenny Hocking: Good evening. David.

Comrade Hocking told Comrade Marr that Sir John Kerr had discussed with (then) Prince Charles that the Opposition (led by Malcolm Fraser) had blocked supply and the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was intent on governing without supply. The discussion took place at Papua New Guinea celebrations in Port Moresby. The date was 15 September 1975:

Jenny Hocking: Charles went back to London from, from Port Moresby, and reported on that conversation to the Queen and her private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris. And they then wrote back to Kerr setting up a discussion about the possible use of the reserve power. So, it’s absolutely critical, and it just does show that Prince Charles was a key player in what transpired.

That’s all very well. But Charteris wrote to Kerr on 4 November 1975 and advised him that the reserve powers to dismiss a government should only be used as a last resort after careful consideration. Neither the Queen nor her private secretary indicated any wish that Whitlam be dismissed and the Palace only found out about the dismissal after it occurred.  The Charteris letter is published in The Truth of the Palace Letters (MUP, 2020) by Paul Kelly and Troy Bramston and can be read there.

The interview continued:

Jenny Hocking: ….It’s an extraordinary letter, an extremely important one. And he [Charles] writes to Kerr concerned, really, that Kerr is going to resign as Governor-General just months after the dismissal.

David Marr: Doesn’t want him to.

Jenny Hocking: He [Charles] writes and says, “I imagine that you must have come in for all sorts of misinformed criticism and prejudice since I saw you in January. I wanted you to know that I appreciate what you do and admire enormously the way you have performed your many duties. Please don’t lose heart. What you did last year was right and the courageous thing to do.” So, if there’s ever any doubt about the support of the Palace – and this wording is almost identical to a letter he got from Lord Mountbatten. You could say in within the Royal Family, just weeks after the Dismissal, that “what you did was right and the courageous thing to do”. And I would say that there are many words people would use to describe the dismissal, but right and courageous is not usually among them.

David Marr: I don’t suppose we can ever know if, if the man who is now King regretted expressing such astonishing support for Kerr’s actions.

Charles’ letter to Kerr was written in 1976. He became King in 2022 – some four decades later.  In any event, Whitlam was dismissed in November 1975. So, a letter written after the Dismissal is not evidence that Charles was involved in the Dismissal.

The Jenny Hocking-conspiracy theory about the Palace’s (alleged) role in the dismissal is an update on the late John Pilger’s view that it was all a CIA plot.

ASIO’s (Alleged) Role In The 1978 Hilton Bombing

Here’s another example of Dr Hocking in her role as the Australian left’s Conspiracist-in-Chief – which was covered in Media Watch Dog on 24 June 2020.

Jenny Hocking was a researcher on the taxpayer funded documentary Conspiracy which aired (believe it or not) in the “True Stories” series of documentaries on the taxpayer funded ABC on 19 February 1995. Conspiracy was directed by Daryl Dellora and produced by Sue Maslin. It was written by Daryl Dellora and Ian Wansbrough with Jenny Hocking as research consultant.

Conspiracy turned on the bombing of the Hilton Hotel in Sydney on 13 February 1978 – during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting.  In the event, Evan Pederick, a member of the Ananda Marga sect, pleaded guilty to the offence and served a lengthy prison term for the crime.  The story is well told in The Hilton Bombing: Evan Pederick and Ananda Marga (MUP, 2019) by Imre Salusinszky. Salusinszky’s 2020 talk on the topic can be found on The Sydney Institute’s website or on YouTube.

Put simply, Daryl Dellora’s Conspiracy did not accept that the Hilton Hotel bombing had been carried out by the Ananda Marga – despite all the evidence, including Evan Pederick’s guilty plea.  Instead, Conspiracy presented the event as a massive conspiracy involving one or more Commonwealth and NSW government entities.  Specifically, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the Australian Defence Force (ADF), the NSW Police Special Branch and more besides – including parts of the New South Wales judicial system.

The Dellora/Wansbrough/Hocking thesis goes something like this.  The Hilton Hotel bombing was a bungled security exercise.  Viewers of Conspiracy were offered several options – provided, of course, the concept of conspiracy was taken as a given.

Jenny Hocking’s Alternative Conspiracy Theories on the Hilton Bombing

  • According to Conspiracy, the bombing was probably an exercise undertaken by ASIO with the assistance of one or more State Special Branch offices.  The aim was to show that terrorism was a real threat in Australia and that ASIO and its State counterparts were deserving of more funds to fight and monitor political terrorism.  In this scenario, someone in or close to ASIO planted the bomb but it exploded accidentally before the sting could be enacted. This is the least preferred conspiracy theory.
  • Dr Hocking’s preferred conspiracy theory is equally bizarre.  Interviewed for the documentary, she reckoned that the killings “may well have” resulted from a bungled police and security forces “counter terrorist training exercise” – not all that dissimilar from the disastrous exercise at the Melbourne Sheraton Hotel in the early 1980s.  The only problem here is that the Sheraton Hotel debacle was revealed within days and an official enquiry promptly set up.  And no one was killed or injured in the Sheraton Hotel bungle.

According to this version of the conspiracy, the conspirators did not get around to evacuating all the Hilton Hotel guests and forgot to tell the garbage truck drivers not to empty the bomb into their truck.  Hocking argued that “it is not unknown for these exercises, as all human endeavours, to go wrong, to fall into error at some point”. Really.

Imre Salusinszky Demolishes the Hilton Bombing Conspiracy

As Imre Salusinszky puts it in The Hilton Bombing:

Perhaps so; but killing three innocent men is a very significant “error”, and Hocking is unable to cite any others on a similar scale.  And does she think that had the exercise worked as planned, the government would have been happy about its agencies choosing a major international meeting as the venue for a training drill using live explosives?

And what of Evan Pederick in all this – the man who, after all, is sitting in Berrima Gaol [at the time Conspiracy went to air] serving a lengthy prison term for the bombing?  Making his entry forty minutes in [to the program], Evan scores precisely one minute and six seconds in Conspiracy.  His appearance is mainly a platform for Russell Hogg – identified only as a legal academic, not as the former secretary of Academics for Justice – to outline the weak points in his trial testimony without mentioning any of the corroborative or supportive evidence that came to light. It is likewise not mentioned that Evan was convicted of the bombing, or that he is serving a long sentence for it, or that he was a member of the Ananda Marga and represented the sect in Brisbane and Canberra.

Great Conspiracy Theories – Pity About the Facts

So, there you have it.  Evan Pederick was doing porridge at Berrima Gaol for the Hilton Hotel bombing and yet this was not mentioned in Conspiracy – where Comrade Hocking blamed ASIO and others for the Hilton Hotel bombing.  And the ABC ran this conspiracy sludge in its “True Stories” series. Since then, Jenny Hocking has moved on as a conspiracist and now regards King Charles as having been up-to-his-neck in the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government nearly half a century ago – in addition to Queen Elizabeth II and her advisers.

 

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Until Next Time

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