GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG

ISSUE – NO. 772

1 May 2026

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THE LATEST

  • ABC RN PANEL (STARRING MARK KENNY) DISCUSSES THE BONDI BEACH MASSACRE WITHOUT MENTIONING THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OR RADICAL ISLAM

On Friday 1 May (May Day to some) the Radio National Breakfast’s Friday political panel considered the initial report of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

Sally Sara was the presenter and the panel comprised Stephanie Borys (ABC), Chloe Bouras (10 News) and Mark Kenny (Australian National University). Sally Sara directed the first question to Bouras followed by Kenny followed by Borys.

Guess what? Not one of this trio used the words Jew or Jewish or Radical Islam. Yet the Royal Commission is focused on the alleged attack by a radical Islamist on the Jewish Australian community at Bondi Beach on 14 December 2025 – the first day of the Jewish feast of Hanukkah.

Bouras and Kenny focused on matters of security and intelligence while Borys introduced the issue of gun control. This overlooked the fact that the Bondi massacre followed violent attacks on Jewish Australians and their property in the immediate past.

The former ABC and Fairfax journalist Mark Kenny was the most talkative of the panellists. He had this to say:

Mark Kenny:  It goes to the character of this event itself, the community under a lot of duress, insecurity, and anxiety about security overall. And then this catastrophic event occurring. And so I think we have to be human about it, in terms of people’s response, fear, the anger, but the political community itself, I think, moved straight into partisan mode quite quickly. And I thought that was, that was unfortunate, and here we now have, as Steph says, an interesting kind of juxtaposition between the Prime Minister’s original position on doing something about the availability of guns, which was responded to in a highly partisan manner, as if this was some sort of, you know, diversionary tactic to get out of having a Royal Commission, or to sort of, you know, fess up to any government culpability in this. And now we have this Royal Commission saying, well, it’s actually, of course, it’s a factor. So, I think that, you know, there have been political missteps, but there’s been certainly a lot of political overreach as well, and it’s affecting constantly the way this is being mediated.

Chloe Bouras: And you’ll be somewhat feeling vindicated by it being so prominent in the interim report.

Mark Kenny: Well, blind Freddie could tell you that availability of guns is an issue when someone’s done a mass shooting and using repeating weapons and so forth. I mean, it’s a factor, and to pretend that it wasn’t at any point, I think was, was ridiculous. And I hope the Queensland Government can see that, and can, can get above the politics here and respond in the way that the nation wants it to.

So, Kenny referred to “the community”. But he avoided saying it was the “Jewish” community. He was not corrected by Sara or the other two panellists. Later on, Kenny raised the issue of the Port Arthur massacre. Convenient, eh? Because Kenny could talk (again) about guns without mentioning terrorism. And, in particular, Islamist terrorism which is a fact of life in the West, including Australia.

Once again, the trouble with this ABC panel is that it lacked viewpoint diversity. Kenny is a man of the left. There was not a conservative on the panel.


  • ABC TV Insiders’ panel unanimous that the Liberal Party should not preference One Nation ahead of Teal Independent in Farrer by-election and make a Teal victory more likely

On the current opinion polls, it would seem that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party’s support is no less than 20 per cent. This is close to double that of the Greens. It also seems likely that either the Teal-like Independent or One Nation will win the Farrer by-election on 9 May.

Yet no one spoke for One Nation – or indeed the Liberals or Nationals – when the forthcoming Farrer by-election was discussed on ABC TV’s Insiders last Sunday.

David Speers was in the presenter’s chair and the panel consisted of Tom Crowley (ABC), Katina Curtis (The West Australian) and Lenore Taylor (the former editor of the avowedly leftist Guardian Australia).

Let’s go to the transcript of the discussion which took place shortly after Opposition leader Angus Taylor was interviewed by presenter David Speers:

David Speers: So just to come back to the by-election, which is now just under two weeks away. Lenore this, this debate that’s gone on, well for years, for decades, in the Liberal Party about whether to preference One Nation or not. I mean, Angus Taylor’s right, they’re preferencing their partners the Nationals first. But when it comes to those two lead candidates…it’s One Nation ahead of the Independent Michelle Milthorpe. Can you understand why they’re opting for One Nation?

Lenore Taylor: No. In a word, no, I can’t….

Katina Curtis: It was interesting him [Angus Taylor] saying that, you know, his attack line is, “Vote Independent, get Greens”. I mean, you can just as easily see Labor saying for the next two years, vote –

Lenore Taylor: Vote Liberal, get One Nation.

Katina Curtis: Absolutely.

Then Tom Crowley weighed in with a criticism of Angus Taylor before discussion continued for close to 3 minutes about the error of the Liberals and Nationals placing One Nation ahead of Independent Michelle Milthorpe – who has the support of Holmes à Court’s Climate 200, a key backer of the Teal Independents.

The discussion about preferences and One Nation continued. No one mentioned what would be the likely outcome of a One Nation or Teal victory in Farrer on Australian politics. And no one referred to the One Nation, Liberal Party or Nationals candidates by name or discussed the policy issues in the campaign. Insiders focused entirely on why the Coalition should not preference One Nation ahead of the Teal-like Independent. In short, the Insiders panel, led by Comrade Taylor, clearly wanted the Teal Michelle Milthorpe to win on the back of the preferences of the Liberal Party and the Nationals. Another example of the taxpayer funded public broadcaster’s lack of balance. Which raises the question: Can You Bear It?

  • ABC management ignored Jonathan Holmes’ comment 10 years ago about the ABC’s left-leaning programs – and nothing has changed

On Friday 24 April, Sky News’ The Media Show’s panel discussed the recent dreadful ratings for ABC’s Metropolitan Radio – especially in Sydney and Melbourne. The consensus was that the ABC is losing listeners because there is little viewpoint diversity on its programs and there is not one openly conservative among its presenters.

Jonathan Holmes, a former presenter of ABC TV’s Media Watch program, is left-of- centre and no political conservative. Yet, ten years ago, Holmes acknowledged that the taxpayer funded public broadcaster leans to the left.

Writing in The Age on 6 April 2016, Jonathan Holmes referred to both Andrew Bolt and Gerard Henderson. The article, headed “ABC radio needs to tune out left-wing bias”, contained the following comment:

It’s undeniable, as the likes of Bolt and Henderson have complained for years, that the ABC’s capital city radio presenters come across, overwhelmingly, as leaning more to the left than the right. I say “undeniably”, but senior ABC managers for decades have chosen, if not to deny it, then to ignore it, and they’ve certainly failed to do anything about it.

So, a decade ago, Jonathan Holmes wrote about the fact that the ABC is left-leaning and that ABC management refuses to do anything about it. A Conservative Free Zone. Now, ten years later, the ABC still refuses to address this problem of the lack of viewpoint diversity which is reflected in declining audiences. Can You Bear It?

Jonathan Holmes’ Age article of 6 April 2016

 

  • Michael Koziol excuses Jimmy Kimmel “joke”

Michael Koziol is Nine Newspapers correspondent in Washington DC. He is one of Nine’s better reporters. But his judgment failed last Wednesday in his report titled “It’s fine to call the US president a despot, but one line has really rattled the White House”. The reference to the comment by late night host Jimmy Kimmel who, in the words of the late Barry Humphries, identifies as a comedian. In short, he’s a non-funny comedian.

In the lead-up to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington DC last Saturday, when pretending to talk to Melania Trump on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Kimmel said: “Our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania. So beautiful. Mrs Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

Commenting on Kimmel’s statement, Koziol wrote:

This aired well before Saturday’s dinner…and clearly was a reference to Trump’s age, not the president being murdered.

What a load of absolute tosh. There are two problems with Koziol’s excuse for Kimmel. First, Koziol does not know what Kimmel was on about with what Kimmel now claims was a “joke” about the age difference between the President and the First Lady. Second, joke or no joke, this was an extraordinarily reckless thing to say about a US president who, when Kimmel made his “expectant widow” remark in the lead-up to the dinner, had already escaped two assassination attempts. Which raises the question – how naïve can a Washington DC-based Nine correspondent get? And here’s another question: Can You Bear It?

  •  Nine columnist Cory Alpert blames President Trump for the fact that people want to assassinate him

Did anyone read the article by Cory Alpert titled “Trump is stoking fires of American political violence” in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on Monday 27 April?

Your man Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne who worked in the Biden-Harris administration [Wonderful news indeed – for a doctor he soon will become. – MWD Editor]

The soon-to-be Dr Alpert focused on the attempted assassination of President Donald J. Trump and key members of the Trump administration at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last Saturday.  But guess what?  Comrade Alpert blamed Trump. Really.  Here’s what he wrote:

Political violence has risen sharply over the past decade – more so than any of the five moments in US history where a sitting president has been shot, leaving four dead and one gravely wounded.  Donald Trump has been the leading accelerant of that rise, throwing fuel on the fire at every opportunity.

So, the message from Comrade Alpert seems to be that Trump is responsible for the fact that Trump antagonists want to murder him.  The same seems to be the case with the late Charlie Kirk who was murdered by a Trump antagonist.

It appears that Alpert’s article was written before the release of the manifesto of Cole Allen, the alleged gunman.  A reading of this makes it clear that Allen was targeting Trump and key figures of his administration.

It was a case of Alpert rushing to print. Which explains his claim that “we don’t yet know what initiated the attack”. He even suggested that the target of the attack may have been “the press gathered in their thousands”. And he ended with this comment:

Fire does not discriminate.  Likewise, every time that Trump makes violence more normal, more acceptable, he only makes it more likely.  This is a fire that consumes everything in its path, making no distinction between the person who lit the match and the ones trying to put it out.

All very PhD-ish, to be sure.  But what does it mean?  Moreover, Can You Bear It? [No. Not really, now that you ask. Perhaps your man Alpert’s Ph.D. supervisor should advise him that it’s wise to collect evidence before rushing to conclusions. – MWD Editor.]

  • Michael Gawenda Outs Australia’s left-liberal media quartet

There was a time when The Age in Melbourne and the Sydney Morning Herald were fine newspapers of record. This was especially the case after the arrival of The Australian as a national newspaper in 1964 – since it put pressure on the (then) broadsheets in Melbourne and Sydney to improve. Both became strong performers in the 1970s and 1980s. But not anymore. Now in tabloid size [Nine Newspapers calls it “compact”, I believe. – MWD Editor] they are essentially expressions of the left (or “liberal” in the North American sense of the term) political point of view.

This was demonstrated in the article on 29 April in The Australian by James Dowling and Stephen Rice titled “Age legend to air left-wing media’s failure on anti-Semitism at Royal Commission”. The reference was to Michael Gawenda.

Michael Gawenda was a man of the moderate left – until anti-Semitism became an increasing reality in Australia. A former contributor to leftist The Digger magazine, he became, in time, editor of the left-of-centre Melbourne Age.

As The Australian revealed last Wednesday, Michael Gawenda has provided a submission to the Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion. In it he has identified Australia’s influential left-liberal media quartet. Namely, in alphabetical order, the ABC, The Age, The Guardian Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Reflecting on the fact that the anti-Semitism spike in Australia occurred after Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, Gawenda had this to say:

I think the left liberal media – the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC, the Guardian – have basically not done the sort of job that I would expect mainstream media organisations to do. They have minimised in their commentary the effect on Jews of what is clearly an increase in antisemitism. They have favoured minority Jewish organisations and used them as if they represent some sort of mainstream Jewish opinion. That media was shocking in its treatment of the antisemitism envoy’s [Jillian Segal] report. So I think they’ve done a ­terrible job. I think it’s got to do with the fact that journalists see themselves now, not as reporters, but as social activists wanting to change the world rather than report the world.

And so, it has come to pass that Michael Gawenda, a one-time successful Age editor, cannot get published in the newspaper he once edited on account of his support for Israel’s right to exist within secure borders and outspoken opposition to anti-Semitism in Australia. Can You Bear It?

Michael Gawenda addressing The Sydney Institute in November 2023


MEDIA FOOL OF THE MONTH

Chris Barrie’s verbal sludge suggests that the United States is no longer a democracy

Retired Admiral Chris Barrie has become a left-wing fave since he retired from the Australian Defence Force as the ADF’s chief – and founded the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group. These days, your man Barrie presents as an eco-catastrophist who comments occasionally on military matters. He regularly finds a willing microphone at the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster. So, it came as no surprise that Chris Barrie was interviewed by ABC Radio National Breakfast presenter Sally Sara on 14 April. Let’s go to the transcript:

Sally Sara: What do the actions that are taking place in and around the Strait of Hormuz, how important may they be in actions that may be conducted later in the South China Sea, and the legality of actions in the South China Sea, things like freedom of navigation?

Chris Barrie: I think it’s all relevant. But isn’t it very interesting now that of the three great powers, two of them, we’ve got one semi-authoritarian Donald Trump in the United States. It’s interesting, the United States is no longer listed as a democracy on respected listings. And we’ve got Russia and Ukraine, but there is China, of course, whose global dominance is improving every day. And who has played a bit of a role in trying to resolve the thing, if we believe the effort they made with the Pakistanis to put the ceasefire together. But you know, it’s just interesting to see how the great powers are behaving, and then to answer ourselves.

How do we see it here in Australia? And I go back to what I’ve been saying now for some time, we need to reposition Australia in the new strategic circumstances this world finds itself in, where the old rules of international behaviour seemed to be undermined, and the capriciousness of the war in Iran, I think it’s a very serious worry.

Confused by this verbal sludge? Well, Ellie’s (male) co-owner certainly was. The retired admiral advised RN Breakfast listeners (if listeners there were) that “the United States is no longer listed as a democracy on respected listings”. Really. Which respected listings did the retired admiral have in mind? Alas, he did not say. And how is President Trump “semi-authoritarian”? There was no explanation.

Your man Barrie’s hyperbole was so over-the-top that presenter Sally Sara felt the need to say this:

Sally Sara: Donald Trump is an elected leader in the United States, although his actions, obviously are having international consequences.

Yes. Donald Trump is an elected leader.

Chris Barrie – Media Fool of the Month.


  • Speersy hits the interruption button 24 times in an interview with Angus Taylor

Just when you might have thought that it was safe to assume that Media Watch

Dog’s award for “Media Interrupter of the Week” might be in extremis, David (“Please call me Speersy”) Speers has revived this segment – once again.

On Sunday 26 April, your man Speers interviewed Opposition leader Angus Taylor on the ABC TV Insiders program. It was one of those interviews when Comrade Speers appeared to be of the view that viewers were more interested in his opinions than those of the Opposition leader.

All up, Speersy interrupted Taylor on 24 occasions during a 20-minute interview. However, it was not quite a record in the Speers v Taylor contest. On 23 March 2025, Speers interrupted Taylor on 37 occasions during a 19-minute interview.

Still, it was an impressive effort by Speersy – don’t you think?

David Speers: Media Interrupter of the Week.


YOUR TAXES AT WORK

  • 2026 Sydney Writers’ Festival – only Trump critics to be heard on President Trump and the world

As avid Media Watch Dog readers know, the forthcoming Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF) is yet another taxpayer funded leftist stack. (See Issue 766 on 13 March).

On 11 April, The Saturday Paper – which is a 2026 SWF supporter – ran an advertisement for a session which will take place on 23 May at the Sydney Town Hall titled “The World According To Trump: The geopolitical implications of Trump’s second term, one year in”.

The advertisement in The [Boring] Saturday Paper names no names. It merely posted three mug shots of the three speakers – see below. They are, from left to right, the Briton Jon Sopel, the Canadian David Moscrop and the British citizen and Australian resident Nick Bryant (who presents Saturday Extra on Australia’s taxpayer funded broadcaster).

How about that? The SWF has used taxpayer funds to bring Comrade Sopel from Britain and Comrade Moscrop from Canada to join the former BBC journalist Nick Bryant in Sydney to explain Donald J. Trump (or “Trump” as The Saturday Paper refers to him) to an Australian audience. What about an Aussie commentator?

Needless to say, all the comrades in this trio are left-of-centre types. Sopel is, like Bryant, ex-BBC and has written the books If Only They Didn’t Speak English: Notes from Trump’s America, A Year At The Circus: Inside Trump’s White House and UnPresidented: Politics, pandemics and the race that Trumped all others. You get the picture.

Moscrop has written Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones. And, yes, he writes a column for the avowedly socialist Jacobin magazine. And then there’s your man Bryant – a fashionable “progressive” if ever there was one.

Not a political conservative among this lot. And not one who would vote for Trump if they had the opportunity to do so. Just another leftist stack.

Your Taxes At Work.


DOCUMENTATION

  • Louise Milligan wasted a $125 entry fee to nominate herself for a Quill Award for her article in The Monthly re both Sister Marietta Green and the late Cardinal Pell

On 14 January 2023, the whole of The Saturday Paper’s front page and all of Page 4 was devoted to an article by ABC journalist Louise Milligan titled “The child abuse cases for which George Pell was never tried”. The editor-in-chief of The Saturday Paper is Erik Jensen who – like Milligan – was an antagonist of the late Cardinal George Pell. The publisher is Morry Schwartz, Schwartz Media.

On 14 January 2025, Milligan’s article was subjected to a withering criticism by Melbourne Law School’s Professor Jeremy Gans on Twitter (now X). He focused on Milligan’s criticism of Chief Judge Peter Kidd’s decision in DPP v Pell (Evidential Ruling No.1) in the County Court of Victoria – which led to certain charges against the late Cardinal Pell being withdrawn by the Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions. Put simply, the Chief Judge found that evidence submitted by the prosecution was not substantial enough to hold up in a court.

Professor Gans demonstrated that, in her Saturday Paper article, Milligan had left out the “key bit of Kidd’s reason”. Gans added:

….It’s a recurrent problem with Milligan’s journalism. If there are facts that don’t help her argument, she doesn’t tell her readers. She just leaves them out.

Professor Gans went on to criticise Milligan’s analysis of Pell’s trial in the County Court of Victoria along with her analysis of Pell’s appeals in the Victorian Court of Appeal and the High Court of Australia. Gans concluded: “Milligan is a gifted writer. But I don’t think she’s a good court reporter.” In spite of this, Milligan has continued to write about legal matters in such Schwartz Media publications as The Saturday Paper and The Monthly.

Like many a journalist, Milligan can dish out criticism – but she cannot take criticism. Milligan did not respond to Gans’ critique. Instead, according to Gans, she just blocked him. No surprise there. Milligan has never responded to criticism of her work on Pell and never took part in any discussion on the Pell Case where her views might be challenged. It’s called intellectual cowardice.

Louise Milligan vs the late Cardinal George Pell

As discussed in MWD Issue 20 March 2026, in early 2026 Milligan paid $125 to nominate herself in the Melbourne Press Club’s 31st Quill Awards for Excellence in Victorian Journalism. The entry was for her article “The True Legacy of Rapist George Pell”. The article was promoted on the entire cover of the February 2025 edition of The Monthly titled “His Victims Speak: The True Legacy Of The Rapist George Pell by Louise Milligan”. The magazine had to be withdrawn from sale in Victoria since Milligan – despite her contacts in the Victorian legal system – was unaware that it was capable of affecting a jury in a civil case in the Victorian jurisdiction. The Milligan article re-appeared in The Monthly Online in August 2025.

As documented in Media Watch Dog on 20 March 2026, Milligan’s case against Pell turned on the decisions of two anonymous employees under the National Redress Scheme (NRS). The NRS commenced on 1 July 2018 following the closure of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Individuals who claim to have experienced institutional child sexual abuse can gain access to counselling, a direct personal response and a redress payment.

The National Redress Scheme is not a court of law. The person complained about, living or dead, has no right of defence. The NRS is presided over by what are called independent decision makers who are anonymous. It is administered by the Commonwealth Department of Social Services. Its decision makers are not required to have expertise in criminal law or, indeed, to be a lawyer.

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

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

In other words, Milligan and The Monthly’s editor-in-chief Erik Jensen accused a deceased man, Cardinal Pell, of the vile crime of pedophile rape based on evidence which did not meet the standard of proof required for a conviction in a criminal law case or a finding in a civil law case. And which the National Redress Scheme acknowledges that complainants need less than “strong evidence” to succeed in obtaining compensation as compared with criminal or civil jurisdictions.

Milligan’s article in The Monthly did not justify the cover of the article. There has never been a legal finding of rape against the late George Pell. Consequently, it is false and unprofessional for a journalist or editor to state that Pell was a “rapist”. Such a claim would never have been made if Pell was alive when The Monthly edition of February 2025 was published – since it would have been clearly defamatory.

Louise Milligan & Erik Jensen v Sister Marietta Green

For reasons never explained by Milligan or Jensen, in the final pages of her Pell article in The Monthly, Milligan wrote about a case “brought by a First Nations man Albert Hartnett” against Sister Marietta Green and Alex Dixon (an Indigenous liaison officer at the school). Milligan had this to say:

…it involved allegations by him [Hartnett] that he was beaten by a now elderly Sister of Mercy, Sister Marietta Green, when he was a small child between 1992 and 1994 at St Ignatius Parish School, Bourke, in north-west New South Wales and within the Catholic diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes. Green denies the allegations.

The reference was to the case of Albert John Hartnett v The Trustees of the Roman Catholic Church for the Diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes. The appellant sought damages for alleged serious physical abuse inflicted on him at Saint Ignatius Parish School, Bourke by two members of the staff. Namely, Sister Marietta Green and liaison officer Alex Dixon.

On 8 February 2025, Hartnett’s claim for damages for personal injuries was dismissed by Justice J. Campbell in the NSW District Court. This was not mentioned when Milligan’s February 2025 article went up on The Monthly’s website in August 2025 – even though there was ample time to make a correction/clarification.

The plaintiff appealed to the NSW Court of Appeal. In Hartnett v Trustees of the Roman Catholic Church for the Diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes on 24 March 2026 the appeal was dismissed with costs. Chief Justice Bell’s judgement (with which Justices Kirk and Ball concurred) contained the following comments:

Chief Justice Bell: There was much evidence supporting the view that Sister Green was a “respected teacher of good character and high reputation” who, in 1995, as his Honour [Justice Campbell] noted, had been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for her services to education, including to Aboriginal children. That, of course, was not determinative or definitive evidence but it was relevant within the meaning of s 55 of the Evidence Act 1995 (NSW) (the Evidence Act) in the sense that it was evidence that “could rationally affect (directly or indirectly) the assessment of the probability” that Sister Green perpetrated the conduct the subject of the allegations made by the Appellant and a number of witnesses called by the Appellant….

The primary judge did not err in his factual findings in relation to the alleged physical abuse by Sister Green. Although the primary judge was criticised for generalising the witnesses into “camps”, it was not illegitimate to do so in the circumstances of the case, and in fact his Honour gave consideration to the evidence of each of the witnesses individually. His Honour’s findings, including in relation to the good character of Sister Green and the weaknesses of the Appellant’s evidence, turned upon a close assessment of the reliability and credibility of multiple witnesses, including considerations of demeanour, context and tone, after seeing and hearing them give evidence in the context of a lengthy trial, and so considerable appellate deference to the primary judge’s fact-finding advantages was warranted:

Once again, Louise Milligan did not deal with the NSW Court of Appeal’s decision which was contrary to the allegations in her article in The Monthly. Rather, as Professor Gans has observed, she just avoided it.

There was no correction or clarification in the April 2026 issue of The Monthly Online. It remains to be seen if the NSW Court of Appeal’s unanimous decision will be reported in the May 2026 issue of The Monthly due out soon. But don’t hold your breath – as the saying goes. Louise Milligan does not make corrections or clarifications.

Conclusion

By the way, in their wisdom the judges of the 31st Quill Award did not give the gong for Feature Writing to Louise Milligan. Rather, they awarded the prize to Melissa Fyfe for her article in the Good Weekend titled “Wedlocked”. It was an evidence-based account of the experiences of those subjected to forced marriages in Australia and well worth a literary gong.

 

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

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