GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG

ISSUE – NO. 770

17 April 2026

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The Latest

  • The Saturday Paper’s Jason Koutsoukis does an anti-Angus Taylor rant on RN Breakfast

It was very much a Dorothy Dixer question when ABC Radio National presenter Sally Sara threw the first question on the program’s Friday political round-up this week to Jason Koutsoukis.

Now Comrade Koutsoukis is a man of the left. He is currently special correspondent for the left-wing Saturday Paper and is a panellist on the ABC TV Insiders program.

Let’s go to the transcript:

Sally Sara: Jason, we need to also speak about immigration. The opposition released a part of its immigration policy this week. Angus Taylor delivered that. Who was he talking to electorally, do you think?

Jason Koutsoukis: Well, I mean, a lot of talk about values, wasn’t there? And clearly he’s chasing this part of the electorate that are telling pollsters they’re going to vote for One Nation at the next election. He’s got this Farrer by-election looming over him. One Nation’s favoured to win that, so he’s desperate to try to peel back or pull back some of those voters. I’m not sure, though, if there’s any real long-term benefit for the Coalition here, with so many voters, either the children of first gen of migrants, or migrants themselves, you wonder how the Coalition is going to appeal to voters in some of these inner-city seats that they’ve lost, and need to win back if they are going to form government. So yes, perhaps a short-term gain here, if you’re just looking at it through the lens of the Farrer by-election, but long term, I can’t see how the Coalition uses this policy to try to win a majority in the House of Reps.

Ask an obvious question – and you get an obvious answer. The man from The [Boring] Saturday Paper – which is the only newspaper in Australia which contains no news since is goes to print on Thursday evenings and arrives in inner-city coffee shops on Saturday mornings – simply bagged Opposition leader Angus Taylor’s speech this week on immigration.

As MWD understands it, the full Opposition policy on immigration is yet to be announced with respect to numbers. Angus Taylor’s speech this week focused on values – which most migrants to Australia and their children and grandchildren would agree with to a greater or lesser extent.

In any event, the next federal election is likely to turn on the cost of living and economic security issues.

  • Travels with Nine Newspapers’ media writer Calum Jaspan on an EV from Melbourne to Portland and back

The Melbourne-based Calum Jaspan is media writer for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. However, on Sunday 12 April in The Age and Monday 12 April in the SMH, he chose to be a travel writer.  His comment piece in The Age was headed “Our EV saved us money over Easter. But it required a stressful trade-off”.  Here’s how Comrade Jaspan’s (somewhat naïve) piece commenced:

Over the Easter long weekend, my partner and I had the opportunity to borrow an electric vehicle (EV) for a camping trip in south-west Victoria. With unleaded petrol prices still hovering around $2.30 a litre, we jumped at the opportunity, knowing it would save us a few hundred dollars for the 4.5-hour each-way trip, alongside what would be plenty of driving to the beach and into the nearest town, Portland, for supplies. What we didn’t account for was the added time and stress a fully electric car would place on what was supposed to be a relaxing getaway with friends.

How about that?  Can it be that Nine’s media writer does not read/watch the media? How else to explain that, in estimating travel time from Melbourne to the town of Portland, he did not take into account the added time it takes to charge an electric vehicle [EV].  It can take literally hours.

And so it came to pass.  Your man Jaspan estimated travel time of 4.5 hours each way. But it went beyond 7 hours each way.  Quelle Surprise!

The story of the Jaspan Non-Express continued as follows:

Setting off from Melbourne at around 9.30am, in Camperdown, two hours west, we first ran into an issue that would define the weekend. With only one of the two fast-charging ports compatible with the 2021 Hyundai Kona we were driving, there was an initial wait as it was occupied on arrival. We quickly learnt there was a crucial trade-off. Do you play music through the car’s bluetooth speaker system and use the heating system (which drains the battery), or drive for longer without stopping for a recharge? After our first stop and wait took far longer than anticipated, we chose distance.

So, after a learning experience, the Jaspan Non-Express continued – without music and heating – until Port Fairy. And guess what happened then?  You’ve  got it.  Comrade Jaspan found two cars ahead of him with the “only compatible port in the town”. More delays.

As Nine’s media writer put it, “It was past 5pm when we eventually rolled into camp to find our group’s tent’s [sic] set up.”  So instead of arriving at the campsite at 2 pm in time for lunch, Jaspan and his partner arrived when dinner was under way with the “fire roasting and several beers already drunk”.  [I feel sorry for your man Jaspan. I hope he caught up in the beers race. – MWD Editor.]

And what about the morning after the (late arrival) night before?  Well, the saga continued:

A next-day top-up at Portland’s only fast-charging station, operated by Evie, meant another multiple car line to gain access to the only CCS2 port available without making the 76-kilometre drive back to Port Fairy. Tragically, I almost missed our fish and chips lunch….

Some tragedy, to be sure.  In the sense that your man regards how he “almost missed” the fish and chips lunch as a “tragedy”.  Just imagine if there had been another EV in the fast charging station queue at Portland?  An End of the World Moment, perhaps?

Comrade Jaspan advised readers (if readers there were) that in Australia there are 3436 plugs in total giving each EV station “on average just below three charging points each”.  He added:

Even then, the power available at each site dictates just how much time out of your day you will be spending waiting to get back on the road. Some, as we found, were out of service or working at a lower rate…. For EVs to continue replacing petrol-powered cars, consumers need to know they won’t be trading cost for convenience. Some EV owners opt to charge fully, while others choose to charge to get them to their next charge. Every stop, another owner will eventually ask “what are you charging to?” to guesstimate their wait. Taking all of this into account, this isn’t to say “don’t buy an EV”. It is to say that the infrastructure is lagging the rollout.

So there you have it.  There’s a problem with charging EVs. Question: What to do?  Answer: Get governments to use taxpayers’ money to fund more charging stations so that Comrade Jaspan and mate can save $100 each and avoid over 6 hours waiting for a charge?  Meanwhile, EVs are owned by better-off Australians who need (more) taxpayer-funded support from the less well-off. According to Jaspan, that is. Can You Bear It?

[No, not really. Now that you ask.  I note that, somehow or other, a number of caveats appeared  in the middle of Jaspan’s article boosting EVs. Could this have been an editorial intervention to prevent Age EV drivers from invading the Age’s  Melbourne office in protest, I wonder? – MWD Editor.]

  • Sarah Ferguson’s antagonism towards Matt Canavan is evident in her pretentious comment about the poet Robert Frost

ABC TV 7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson’s antagonism towards political conservatives was evident once again on Thursday 16 April when she interviewed Nationals leader Matt Canavan.

Initially the pair clashed over whether Australia should drill for oil. Then, the topic turned to immigration. Let’s go to the transcript:

Matt Canavan: We have a certain way of life in this country. We should be proud of what we’ve delivered, one of the best countries, best countries in the world. We should be very proud of it. And of course, we should, in partnership with that, be very strong in defending that way of life. And that does mean, ultimately, it means having good fences, make for good neighbours. We need a fence….

Soon after, Sarah Ferguson, a one-time English Lit student, ended the interview with the following pretentious comment:

Sarah Ferguson: Matt Canavan. And I’ll have to wrap it up there. And I’ll just comment that Robert Frost’s line in that poem was actually delivered in irony. But we will return to that another day, along with many other questions.

Turn it up.  Little wonder if the 7.30 audience was somewhat confused.  No wonder Matt Canavan seemed pissed-off with Ferguson alleged “fact check”.

The fact is that Matt Canavan never mentioned the American poet Robert Frost or his poem “Mending Wall” which was published in his 1914 book North of Boston.  The term “good fences make good neighbours” was in use decades before Frost wrote the poem.  Frost’s meaning of the saying “Good fences make good neighbours” is contested. For his part, Robert Frost never spoke about his use of the term regarding it as some kind of secret.

So, if Frost would not state what his usage of the saying “good fences make good neighbours” meant, how would  Comrade Ferguson know what he had in mind?  Especially since many Frost scholars have different interpretations of the meaning of “Mending Wall”? And here’s another question: Can You Bear It?

[No. Not really – now that you ask.  It would seem that Sarah Ferguson was into English Lit Flashing.  In which case, she may need to join a Robert Frost Interpretation Society. – MWD Editor.]

  • Linton Besser overlooks media news for an 11-minute discussion on a gold documentary and a rant against President Trump

ABC TV’s Media Watch returned last Monday after its no-show on Easter Monday. [Don’t you mean in journalistic jargon, a Well-Earned-Break? – MWD Editor.]

Presenter Linton Besser and his team of around 10 – for a weekly 15-minute program – ignored the big local story of the week.  Namely, the media’s coverage of the arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith on five offences of the war crime of murder.

Media Watch devoted 11 minutes to the segment it called “Aussie Gold Hunters”. This has little to do with the media.  Rather it was a critique of the documentary “Aussie Gold Hunters” which runs on the Discovery Channel.  Media Watch demonstrated that the producers of “Aussie Gold Hunters” had faked a considerable amount of footage to make the program more interesting. Quelle Surprise!  And does anyone really care? At a time when there are serious economic problems at home and a war affecting Australia in the Middle East – this was a non-story. Yet it ran for 11 minutes.

Then Media Watch devoted a mere 4 minutes to a segment called “Media blockade”. It consisted primarily of Linton Besser’s sneering criticism at President Donald J Trump and the Trump administration. In the process, he praised CNN’s Jake Tapper – a Trump antagonist.

Besser, in mocking mode, referred to President Trump as a “great leader” whose attack on Iran has led to a “rather perfect outcome” and “a great triumph”. Comrade Besser added that Trump “suffered his usual conniption” – whatever that is – and referred to “another Trump tantie”. The segment ended with a reference to “the Trump propaganda machine” and a put-down of the US president as “the Mad King”.

This is not media analysis.  It is just a left-wing rant – paid for by the taxpayer.  Perhaps Comrade Besser should quit journalism and join the Greens political party. Can You Bear It?

[It would seem that your man Besser is becoming somewhat prolix and into an over-use of Roget’s International Thesaurus. After all “tantie”- as in tantrum, means much the same as the little used word “conniption”. – MWD Editor.]

AN INSIDERS MOMENT

Due to (enormous) popular demand, Ellie’s (male) co-owner has agreed to establish a Media Watch Dog  segment devoted to the ABC TV Insiders program – which airs around Hangover Time on Sunday mornings (except when it stays in bed on Easter Sunday).

Insiders is based in Canberra and presented by the Canberra-based David Speers.  Its panels consist primarily of Canberra-based journalists – most of whom have never worked outside journalism – discussing primarily Australian national politics. Somewhat inbred, don’t you think?  Here’s a brief report on last Sunday’s program

  • Karen Middleton makes unprofessional comments on the forthcoming Ben Roberts-Smith trial

It’s appropriate to comment on the way in which former SAS Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith VC was charged with war crime murder.  But it is not appropriate to publicly express opinions about the weight of evidence which may go before a jury. Especially if you are a journalist on a national TV current affairs program.

This is what Canberra Press Gallery journalist Karen Middleton said on ABC TV’s Insiders last Sunday – in a comment which was uncontested.

Karen Middleton:  You know there are some in the defence community who are outraged. There are other people who think, you know, that justice should be done and, you know, it’s the law taking its course.

Waleed Aly: And the whistle was blown by soldiers.

Karen Middleton: And soldiers were the ones who gave, who gave testimony [against Ben Roberts-Smith] about what they saw.  So the fog of war argument, you know, it doesn’t seem to apply here.

Here Karen Middleton was setting herself up as a juror – while giving a lecture to Insiders viewers about how the trial should work with respect to the presentation of evidence.  It was an unprofessional comment.

  • Jacob Greber and others on Ben Roberts-Smith

The Ben Roberts-Smith discussion continued. Let’s go to the transcript…

David Speers: And the argument, how can we possibly understand what goes on? Yeah, you say they’re the ones who are blowing the whistle.

Karen Middleton: But I think in what I wrote in The Monthly was that I think, you know, what we’re seeing is yet another collision of the justice system with the political system here, because people are seeing it being in there. Some people are seeing it being in their political interests to make a particular point about it in public. And I think —

Jacob Greber: That’s why it has to be, you know, it has to go through the courts. I think it’s a test of, of the institutional fortitude and values that we uphold here. Go look elsewhere around the world where this is breaking down. A president can be impeached and there’s zero consequence. You know, people get pardoned in the United States willy nilly, and that undermines the court system, and then you have a culture that doesn’t trust the court system and thinks there is a political motivation. And I think this is, this is an important moment for people to step back and let that go through the process that you’ve described.

Waleed Aly: The problem is that it goes to the heart of one of the sacred cows in Australian popular discourse, which is about the Anzac legend, which is about the unimpeachable virtue.

Jacob Greber: It’s deeply uncomfortable.

Waleed Aly: It is very uncomfortable for a lot of people. I mean, there’s a whole other side of politics that absolutely loves taking that narrative on. And that’s partly why you’re seeing a culture war, because the narratives this attaches to are so febrile, in a way. Now, the thing is, the only way we get through this, if we actually want to get through this, rather than use it as a political cudgel, is for everyone to step back and not try to expand the narrative beyond the case. Let the case take its course.

So there you have it. It was one of those familiar moments where everyone essentially agreed with everyone else. Karen Middleton was not too sure what she wrote in The Monthly a month earlier. But she stood by it.

Meanwhile Jacob Greber’s reference to a president (presumably Donald Trump) being impeached and suffering zero consequences shows a total ignorance of the meaning of the word impeachment.

Under the US constitution, removing a president from office is a multi-stage process. First the House of Representatives votes on whether to impeach the president, needing only a majority of votes to proceed. This is analogous to the decision by a prosecutor to charge someone with a crime. An impeachment trial is then held in the Senate, with members of the House presenting the case for removal from office and the impeached president presenting a defence. The senate then votes on whether to remove the president from office, needing a two-thirds supermajority to do so.

There have been four Senate impeachment trials for a president in US history. One each for presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton and two for Donald Trump. In each case the case against the president failed to persuade two-thirds of the senate and the president was acquitted and not removed from office. President Johnson was the closest to being removed, surviving by only one vote. President Nixon resigned before being impeached.

So, Jacob Greber is essentially complaining that Donald Trump faced no consequences after being acquitted. And he reckons this shows a lack of institutional fortitude and a breakdown of values in the US.

And Waleed Aly threw the switch to Cliché Land by referring to the Anzac Legend as one of the, wait for it, sacred cows in Australian political discourse.  Dr Aly (for a doctor he is) said that someone other than himself was into culture wars.  Groan.

David Speers had the sense to raise the point about how the Australian Federal Police had acted in the public arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith in front of his children after tipping off Nine media.  But this was dismissed by Comrades Middleton and Greber, with a soft dissent by Aly.

What was missing was any real disagreement among the panel.  A familiar story.

Media Watch Dog’s “You Must Remember This” segment is based on the chorus line in the song As Time Goes By, which was popularised by the film Casablanca. It is devoted to reminding the usual suspects of what they and/or those they supported once wrote or said or did – or, indeed, what they failed to write or say.

  • Remembering the late artist Martin Sharp’s sex with underage girls

Lotsa thanks to the avid Sydney reader who drew Media Watch’s attention to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 7 April titled “Treasures of Sharp’s Dream Museum go under the hammer for artists”.

The article by Joyce Morgan commenced as follows:

Fancy owning eccentric crooner Tiny Tim’s colourful suit? Or the Bob Dylan image that defined 1960s psychedelia? How about an early Mickey Mouse knitted doll? These are some of the items on offer when the eclectic contents of Sydney artist Martin Sharp’s bohemian mansion, Wirian, are auctioned over two days in May. Sharp, who died in 2013, shot to international Pop Art success in the 1960s with his vivid images of rock stars. He filled his Bellevue Hill home with curios that fuelled his art, and turned a reception room into what he called the Dream Museum.

Well, all that’s true.  To an extent.  Along with the curios, Sharp also filled his mansion Wirian, which he inherited from his maternal grandmother, with underage girls.  In short, Martin Sharp was a pedophile.  But was this mentioned in Joyce Morgan’s SMH piece?  Not on your nelly – as the saying goes.

Writing in The Weekend Australian in June 2018, Rosemary Neill revealed that the writer Dorothy Hewett (1932-2002) effectively prostituted her daughters Kate Lilley (born 1960) and Rozanna Lilley (born 1962) to members of Sydney’s left libertarian intelligentsia – for free.

The Lilleys spoke to Neill on the publication of their books Tilt (Kate) and Do Oysters Get Bored? (Rozanna) in 2018. Both authors said that their left libertarian mother, Dorothy Hewett, encouraged them to have sex with older men.

As Gerard Henderson commented in The Weekend Australian on 16 June 2018:

As girls, the Lilley sisters ­embraced the sexual liberation preached and practised by their mother. If this had occurred with boys of their own age, this would have been of little moment. But both women maintain that Hewett encouraged them to have sex with older men. Their father must share at least half the blame for this.

Kate Lilley says she slept with six men before she reached the legal age of consent at 16. Rozanna puts her figure as “at least a dozen”. The former says “there were constantly men staying in the house” in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra and there were “hardly any (heterosexual) men who came to the house who didn’t try to have sex with one or more” of Kate, Rozanna or Dorothy.

In 2018, the Lilley sisters named two deceased male predators – they did not name any living abusers. Namely, the left-wing heroes Bob Ellis (1942-2016) and Martin Sharp (1942-2013).  Both men were about 20 years older than their Lilley victims at the time.

The shocking revelations of the Lilley sisters to The Australian’s Rosemary Neill were not reported by the ABC.  But the story was mentioned by the Sydney Morning Herald, The Saturday Paper and The Guardian Australia.

Interviewed by Helen Trinca for The Weekend Australian on 16 June 2018, Richard Walsh (who co-founded Oz magazine with Sharp and Richard Neville) said that while he and his colleagues were aware of what he termed Sharp’s “taste” for “younger women”, they “didn’t think it through hard enough to wonder if any of these people were underage”. As Gerard Henderson has documented in many places, Neville was also a pedophile, having boasted about having sex with an underage schoolgirl in his 1970 book Play Power which was published by Paladin. Martin Sharp designed the cover for one of the editions.

There is no reference to Martin Sharp’s interest in sex with underage girls in Joyce Morgan’s 2017 book Martin Sharp: His Life And Times (Allen & Unwin, 2017).  Or in her article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 7 April 2026.  When Morgan’s book was published in 2017, she may have been unaware that Martin Sharp was a pedophile.  But she would have to know now. It is true, as Joyce Morgan pointed out in her biography, that Martin Sharp became conservative in his final years. But this should not wipe from history his pedophile days as a young man.

In any event, as the late Martin Sharp’s multi-million dollar pile and its contents go under the hammer, Media Watch Dog says, “You Must Remember This”.

HOWLER WATCH

  • Amy Remeikis criticised for her errors – but Margaret Simons escaped criticism re her howlers in the book she wrote with the late Malcolm Fraser

There has been enormous interest over the years in Media Watch Dog’s handling of howlers.  So much so that avid readers have requested the creation of an ongoing “Howler Watch” segment.

The interest was spiked by Gerard Henderson’s The Weekend Australian column on 14 March 2026 where he revealed that, in her book Where It All Went Wrong: The Case Against John Howard (Simon & Schuster), Amy Remeikis had not only got the year of the 1998 election wrong (she went for 1999). But, more seriously, Comrade Remeikis claimed that John Howard had won four elections without winning the popular vote on any occasion.

In fact, the Coalition under Howard’s leadership won the two-party preferred vote on three out of four occasions –  1996, 2001 and 2004.  Sure, the Coalition under Howard won 49 per cent of the two party preferred vote in 1998. But this was the occasion when he went to the election with a proposed tax – the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Gerard Henderson went on to point out numerous errors in Where It All Went Wrong in his Media Watch Dog Issues 766, 767 and 769.  Remeikis’ book was also criticised by Dominic Kelly for factual errors in the April 2026 issue of the Australian Book Review.

However, there is reason to be concerned that Comrade Remeikis is becoming the convenient punching bag with respect to journalists making historical errors. She is not a sole offender.  Hence this new segment.

As mentioned, Amy Remeikis has copped fair criticism for the numerous errors in her book Where It All Went Wrong: The Case Against John Howard.  However, she has grudgingly accepted the mistakes – while suggesting many are due to “editing errors”  (whatever that might mean) and “typos”.  For the record, MWD did not come across “typos” in the book – only errors.  In any event, the publisher Simon & Schuster has stated that corrections will be made to any future editions of the book. A good move – it simply did not go into denial.

By the way, it should be remembered that Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs (MUP, 2010) – which the late former prime minister co-authored with left-wing journalist Margaret Simons – is littered with serious errors. Not typos.  For example, Fraser/Simons maintained that Fraser won four elections and that this put him equal with Labor leader Bob Hawke. They ignored John Howard’s four victories.  Moreover, Fraser won three elections, not four.

This is one of the numerous errors in Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs which  Gerard Henderson pointed out to the co-authors shortly after publication in 2010.  The Canberra-based historian Ian Hancock, who has written authoritative books on the Liberal Party of Australia, wrote this about Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs:

 It’s a pity that Fraser’s memory and Simons’ basic knowledge are so deficient. We all make mistakes but the number of errors in this book beggars belief.

Gerard Henderson has listed his count of howlers in the Fraser/Simons book in Appendix A of his book Malcolm Fraser: A Personal Reflection (Connor  Court, 2026).

With one exception – withdrawing the false claim that the Fraser government retained Medibank – neither Melbourne University Press nor Margaret Simons (an honorary fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne) has acknowledged the errors or made corrections.

The Fraser/Simons book won the NSW Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction and Book of the Year in 2011 – a $50,000 reward. By the way, Malcolm Fraser: The Political Biography was heavily subsidised by taxpayers via the Australian Government’s Australia Council grants.

If Simon & Schuster is prepared to correct Remeikis’ howlers – then MUP should do the same with the howlers in the Malcolm Fraser/Margaret Simons book which remains on sale as a print-to-order publication.

And Comrade Simons should be subjected to similar criticism to that extended to Comrade Remeikis.  At least, Amy Remeikis has conceded errors in her book – while MUP and Margaret Simons remain in denial.

DOCUMENTATION

  • A note on Troy Bramston’s comments on The Dismissal at Trinity  College, Melbourne, re Governor-General Sir John Kerr, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, Senator Reg Withers, Vic Garland MP, Peter Nixon MP, Bob Ellicott MP & Dale Budd

In a paper “True Liberal?  The record and legacy of the Fraser government” prepared for the symposium  held at Trinity College, University of Melbourne, on Friday 12 December 2025, the historian Troy Bramston said this about Sir John Kerr’s dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government on 11 November 1975:

[Malcolm] Fraser had been tipped off by Kerr at 9.55 am when the governor-general phoned to ask if he would accept certain terms and conditions if commissioned as prime minister. Fraser turned over the agenda paper for a joint party meeting that was on his desk and jotted down a summary of what Kerr said, including that he obtained supply and called a double-dissolution election.

There is no doubt the note is genuine, affirming Kerr’s call, although Fraser signed and dated the note later. Fraser gave me a copy. The phone call and note were witnessed by Reg Withers and Vic Garland. Dale Budd, private secretary to Fraser, made a copy. Fraser and Budd made statutory declarations attesting to its authenticity. Claims by Gerard Henderson that the note was made later cannot be substantiated and are rather silly.

This statement is, at best, contested. Kerr maintained from November 1975 that his phone call to Fraser on the morning of 11 November only involved asking the Opposition leader whether the Coalition was still determined to block supply. Kerr wrote this in a near-contemporaneous note on 16 November 1975.  Fraser, relying solely on memory, claimed in 1987 that Kerr had also asked him, if appointed caretaker prime minister, whether he would abide by certain conditions. Kerr always maintained that these conditions were laid down when he appointed Fraser caretaker prime minister at Government House around 1 pm on Tuesday 11 November 1975.  Kerr came to believe that Fraser made the note then.

Contrary to Bramston’s claim, no one has doubted that the note is genuine.  The debate turns on where and when the note was made.  The question is whether Fraser, who had mislaid the note somewhere between late 1975 and the early 2000s, signed and backdated it when he found it. The difference in handwriting and signature on the document is evidence that he did so.

As Media Watch Dog readers will be aware, on 1  April, Dale Budd wrote to Gerard Henderson declining to answer any questions about the inconsistencies in his account of 11 November. He refused to explain why the note in his possession is almost unreadable in spite of the fact that he states it is a copy of Fraser’s original note.  It cannot be a copy of an original – unless the photocopier in the Opposition Leader’s office in November 1975 was grossly defective.  Gerard Henderson has queried Dale Budd’s memory in this instance. See MWD Issue 769, 10 April 2026. See here.

So what about the Liberal Party MPs who said they were in Fraser’s office when the call was made?  Namely, Senator Reg Withers from Western Australia and Vic Garland, the member for the West Australian seat of Curtin.  Dale Budd was not in Fraser’s office when the call was made.

Bramston made it clear in The Dismissal: In the Queen’s Name (Viking, 2015), which he co-authored with Paul Kelly, that Withers, Garland and Budd were important witnesses in support of Fraser’s case against Kerr in this instance.

Let’s look at what they actually said, wrote or did.

Senator Reg Withers

Bramston wrote in his  Trinity  College paper that “in 1997-98 Reg Withers gave an oral history interview to the National Library of Australia”. In fact, Withers was interviewed by Leigh Edmonds for the Battye Collection at the State Library of Western Australia on various dates between 9 July and 22 August 1997.  A copy of the interview is held at the National Library of Australia.  Written permission is required for research, personal copies and public use.  Consequently, the Withers interview is not easy to access. This is what Withers told Edmond, as reported in The Dismissal: In The Queen’s Name:

In 1997-98, Reg Withers gave an oral history interview to the National Library of Australia. Revealed here for the first time, Withers recalls he was in Fraser’s office with Vic Garland when Fraser’s private line rang.  “He took up his big felt pen,” ready to make his note, Withers said.  “Vic and I could read it upside down.  It was the four or five points that Kerr had laid down….he [Fraser] agreed when Kerr said they’d be the conditions…. Anything that Kerr and Fraser said since has been…none of them told the truth about that.”  Withers said that “Malcolm was so excited he didn’t realise we were there” but “he came to and took the paper aside”.

That was the recollection of Withers over two decades after the Dismissal.  Withers’ memory was obviously fallible. Fraser’s handwriting, or the note above the signature and date concerning the various conditions laid down by Kerr, was clearly not done with “a big felt pen” – something which Bramston overlooked.  It was written with a normal pen and is, at times, indistinguishable.   Fraser’s signature and date, which appears to have been written with a felt pen was made after the meeting. The argument is about whether the note was dated in November 1975 or some three decades later when Fraser found it.

Moreover, Fraser’s handwriting on the note,  is very difficult to read right-side up.  It would have been impossible for Withers to have read it upside-down on Fraser’s desk.  Withers clearly had a fallible memory in this instance as an upside-down copy of the note above the signature/date demonstrates.  See the photo below.

Also, Withers’ claim that  Fraser was “excited” after the phone call is inconsistent with the report of others who were in the room including Vic Garland.  Clearly, Withers is an unreliable witness.

Vic Garland

Vic Garland spoke to Paul Kelly in July 2015 – 40 years after The Dismissal – about his “recollection” of the phone call.  He did not support Withers’ claim that he read the note “upside-down” – or at all.  This is how the interview is covered in The Dismissal: In the Queen’s Name:

Vic Garland is the only one of the three Liberals in Fraser’s office who is still alive. Interviewed in July 2015, Garland said: “I do have a recollection of that morning. I was standing in Fraser’s office with Reg Withers. In terms of this dispute it is Fraser and Withers who are right and it is Kerr who is wrong.  There were important items being discussed and this event has stuck in my mind.  I recollect Malcolm making  a note. But I don’t think he said much at the end of the conversation.  Malcolm was always reticent about these things.”

To repeat, Garland did not claim to have read the note. This contradicts Withers. Also he said that Fraser was “reticent” at the end of the conversation – whereas Withers said he was “so excited”.  Two men with different recollections of an event decades earlier.

The statement that in 2015 Vic Garland was one of the three Liberals in Fraser’s office [at the time] who were still alive in 2015 is incorrect.  Bob Ellicott, the Liberal Party MP for Wentworth, was also in the office in his capacity as shadow attorney-general.  He told Gerard Henderson that the Kerr/Fraser phone conversation was too brief for several conditions to be laid down by the Governor-General and recorded by the Opposition Leader. See Gerard Henderson’s Menzies’ Child: The Liberal Party of Australia (HarperCollins, 1998 – page 240).  Ellicott died in October 2022. No one has ever queried Henderson’s report of his conversation with Ellicott.

Peter Nixon, the National Country Party MP for Gippsland was also in the room when the call from Kerr came through.  Nixon – like Fraser –  a rural Victorian, was probably Fraser’s closest political adviser at the time.  He did not believe that Kerr would sack Whitlam.  Tony Staley remembered Nixon saying shortly before 1 pm on 11 November 1975: “It’s no damned good, Malcolm. Whitlam’s got Kerr in his bloody pocket. It’s no good.” See Philip Ayers’ Malcolm Fraser: A Biography (William Heinemann Australia, 1987, page 294).

Peter Nixon did not get a mention in The Dismissal: In the Queen’s Name.

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Troy Bramston’s paper at the Trinity College seminar last December – which was essentially a gathering of the Malcolm Fraser Fan Club – said that the claim by Gerard Henderson that “the [Fraser] note was made later cannot be substantiated and is rather silly”. This overlooks the fact that Malcom Fraser (when he was alive), and his co-author Margaret Simons along with Dale Budd all failed to substantiate that the date and timing on the note was done on 11 November 1975.  Fraser and Simons ignored Henderson’s correspondence at the time.  Margaret Simons also failed to engage with Gerard Henderson’s Malcolm Fraser:  A Personal Reflection (Connor Court, 2025) where the note is reproduced in colour. Dale Budd’s advice to Gerard Henderson that he does not want to continue the discussion is found in the Correspondence Section of last week’s MWD.

In short, the response of the Fraser/Simons/Dale trio was simply to refuse to answer questions and/or go into denial.

Troy Bramston is a sound historian for the most part.  But he is a John Kerr antagonist over many years and lacks impartiality with respect to the former Governor-General.  After all, Kerr is the only person in the controversy whose position is supported by an undisputed contemporary note – rather than reliance on memory decades after the event.

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Photo of Fraser’s note right-side up & Photo of Fraser’s note upside-down which Reg Withers claimed in 1997 to have read and understood when it was on Fraser’s desk

Photo of Fraser’s barely readable note in Dale Budd’s possession which he says is a copy of the original

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Until Next Time – In the meantime, Keep Morale High.

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