GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG

ISSUE – NO. 774

15 May 2026

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The Latest

  • Sarah Ferguson Wins Media Interrupter of the Week Award

What a stunning performance by Sarah Ferguson on ABC’s 7.30 Thursday 14 May. Apparently intent on winning Media Watch Dog’s (prestigious) Media Interrupter of the Week award, Sarah Ferguson interrupted Opposition Leader Angus Taylor on 34 occasions in an 18-minute interview. On 12 May, Ms Ferguson interrupted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on 8 occasions in a 14-minute interview. That is, Angus Taylor was interrupted at more than twice the rate of the Prime Minister.

It would seem that ABC management is of the opinion that viewers tune in to hear the opinions of the 7.30 presenter rather than 7.30’s guests.

And then there was this exchange between Tim Wilson and Sarah Ferguson on Tuesday 12 May when the Shadow Treasurer was criticising the Treasurer’s budget:

Tim Wilson: And the problem is there has only been one point of honesty that we’ve seen in this budget, which is we have seen 35,000 fewer homes being built over a decade and higher rents.”

Sarah Ferguson: When you talk about honesty, do you need to read that off your notes?

How’s that for an unprofessional sneer? Especially from Sarah Ferguson who frequently refers to her own notes. But honestly, of course.

  • Niki Savva & Patricia Karvelas on the “permission” needed by Liberal Party supporters to vote One Nation

One Nation’s success in the Farrer by-election last Saturday should not have come as any surprise. Pauline Hanson’s party had been gaining support during 2025 and this increased substantially after the Bondi massacre aimed at the Jewish community on 14 December.

Yet in reporting the by-election, the ABC went initially to two commentators who were hostile to One Nation and critical of the Liberal Party and the Nationals. Namely, Patricia Karvelas (who was interviewed by David Speers on the ABC News Channel on the night of the by-election) and Niki Savva (who led the discussion on the ABC TV’s Insiders on the morning after the Farrer by-election).

Despite the fact that a move towards right-of-centre populist parties is evident in Western Europe and North America, both Comrade Karvelas and Comrade Savva ran the line that Farrer electors had been given permission by the Liberal Party and the Nationals to vote for One Nation. This despite the fact that the Coalition parties campaigned against One Nation.

On Saturday night, Karvelas made the point to David Speers on a couple of occasions as the votes were counted. Let’s go to the transcript:

Patricia Karvelas: Here we’ve had Angus Taylor make a deliberate decision to preference One Nation above the Independent, which tonight could really be one of the reasons they get across the line. We’ll see as the votes come through. But that will be key, and that will legitimise them. And I used the term earlier on in the broadcast, the permission structure, if they are able to win their first Lower House seat. That begins the process of legitimising them.

Then, on Sunday morning, Savva had this to say on Insiders in response to a question from David Speers:

Niki Savva: Angus Taylor, by defending the preference decision, still doesn’t understand really what was involved in that. It was wrong politically and it was wrong morally. It gave a signal to Liberal voters that it was okay to vote for One Nation, and they took him up on it in huge numbers.

This is absolute tosh. Any political party in a democracy having about 25 per cent support in the polls is legitimate. And the electors of Farrer do not need the okay or permission from one political party to vote for another political party. Moreover, many former Coalition voters would have given their preferences to One Nation irrespective of what the Liberal Party and Nationals advised.

Since they would have opposed the Teal Independent who claimed not to be a teal but received lotsa money for her campaign from Simon Holmes à Court’s Climate 200 and the “Voices of” tealish movement.

Yet Comrades Niki Savva and Patricia Karvelas were not challenged by David Speers when they claimed that the good people of Farrer needed “permission” from Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor in order to make it “Legitimate” to vote for Pauline Hanson’s team. David Speers did not challenge this claim and no other view was heard. Can You Bear It?

  • Peter FitzSimons gives Jacinda Ardern a soft interview

In the lead up to the Farrer by-election, Peter FitzSimons put out this post:

 

In fact, the One Nation candidate received close to 60 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. On Sunday 10 May, FitzSimons interviewed former New Zealand Labour prime minister Jacinda Ardern under the heading “The key to survival in a democracy” for his Sun-Herald column. The following exchange took place:

Peter FitzSimons: Do you ever feel you need to tailor your words about him – like now when I’m recording – given I presume you often head to the USA?

Jacinda Ardern: [Flatly] No. I strongly disagree with his politics, and I disagree with his style of leadership, and I have no qualms saying that.

Peter FitzSimons: In the case of Trump, does it not behove everyone who cares about the survival of liberal democracy to condemn him in the strongest of terms?

Jacinda Ardern: I rarely speak solely about one leader – that implies we only have one problem. What we have in front of us is a failure of political leadership that we’re seeing around the globe. I want to challenge an entire style and way of doing politics, not just one politician.

FitzSimons did not mention that Ardern was rejected by New Zealand voters and quit politics before she faced inevitable defeat at the polls. Also, he did not mention the fact that Ardern was elected in 2017 on the promise to build 100,000 homes by 2028. As of May 2022, only 1,300 homes had been completed. Ardern resigned in January 2023 citing burnout as the reason. At a time of economic decline the New Zealand Labour Party was soundly defeated in the October 2023 election.

What’s more, Fitz failed to tell his readers that he had spoken to, wait for it, Dame Jacinda Ardern.  The one-time president of the International Union of Socialist Youth became a Grand Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2023 in the King’s Birthday and Coronation Honours.

So there you have it.  A “5-minutes with Fitz” segment means the republican FitzSimons does not raise, er, difficult questions. Can You Bear It?

  • The Sydney Morning Herald’s Letters Page – to which political conservatives no longer write

There was enormous interest in Media Watch Dog’s analysis in last week’s issue of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Letters Page on 8 May. Headed “The return of Abbott is a recipe for disaster”, it ran seven letters attacking the prospect of Tony Abbott becoming the President of the Liberal Party of Australia. No supportive letter of Abbott was published. Moreover, most of the letters were of the leftist, sneering kind.

The following Monday (11 May), there was more of the leftist sneering with the Letters Page headed “It’s a bitter harvest sown by One Nation voters”. Every letter published either expressed concern about One Nation’s victory in the Farrer by-election the previous Saturday – or criticised the Liberal Party’s decision to preference One Nation ahead of the Teal-like Independent.

Oh yes, some letter writers who appear not to have got a run on Friday bagging Tony Abbott made it on Monday. One reader described Abbott as yesterday’s man. Another described him as the Grim Reaper. Groan. Earlier a letter writer warned One Nation voters “As you sow, so you shall you reap.” It was not clear whether these reapers were also grim.

The fact that the SMH could not find one letter writer who supported One Nation or the Liberal Party or the Nationals suggests that the once great newspaper has lost its politically conservative readers. Yet the SMH maintains that it is “Independent. Always” and runs a diverse Letters Page. How deluded can a newspaper get? And here’s another question: Can You Bear It?

  • The return of climate doomsaying to the ABC

The 9 May edition of Radio National’s Saturday Extra included an interview with author Sarah Wilson. In his introduction, presenter Nick Bryant described Wilson as a climate advocate. And at the end of the interview he assured the audience that she is considered a public intellectual in Europe. Really.

For those unfamiliar with her resume, Sarah Wilson first rose to prominence as the editor of the Australian version of the fashion magazine Cosmopolitan. She then served as the host of the first season of Network Ten’s reality cooking show MasterChef Australia. She wrote a lifestyle column for the Sun-Herald and created the TV show Eat Yourself Sexy on Foxtel. In 2012, she wrote the bestseller I Quit Sugar, drawing upon her nutritional expertise as the host of a reality cooking show.

She has since rebranded as an expert on climate change, conspiracy theories, anxiety and seemingly anything else that will get her interviewed in left-leaning publications. Here is how her latest book I Eat the Stars is described by publisher Penguin:

It’s hard to escape the feeling that something is deeply wrong . . . that life has become precariously off-balance. We are hit hourly with headlines about catastrophic wildfires, unprecedented flooding, record heat waves, collapsing democracies, AI and nuclear threat, rising economic inequality, widespread unrest and more. In I Eat the Stars, Sarah Wilson argues we are undergoing what every complex civilisation before us has – systemic collapse.

So how do we continue to live as sensitive humans amidst such a tumultuous shift? What does life look like when the systems we rely on deteriorate? Should we be having kids? How do we make financial decisions? Should we be prepping? And, most importantly, how do we avoid succumbing to doom and despair? In I Eat the Stars, Sarah Wilson delves into these pressing questions. Drawing on many years of research and wisdom gained from more than 200 conversations with philosophers, poets, game theorists and spiritual leaders, Wilson takes readers on an intimate journey as she lays out a path for living fully, meaningfully and beautifully through these troubled times. Our predicament, she argues, is ultimately an urgent call to us all to relish what is valuable to us – to eat the stars – and to return to our humanity once again.

Doomsaying, of the Green/Left variety, has always found a welcome home on the ABC. Biologist Paul Ehrlich was perhaps the most notorious failed prophet of the 20th century. His 1968 book The Population Bomb predicted that there was going to be an unavoidable massive increase in starvation during the 1970s and 80s due to overpopulation. Ehrlich recommended ending all aid to India, since it could not hope to feed its population anyway, as well as campaigns of forced sterilisation by third-world governments. During a speech in September 1971 he said he thought it was more likely than not Britain wouldn’t exist by the year 2000.

None of Ehrlich’s confident predictions ever came true but that did not stop him from regularly appearing on ABC radio well into the 2000s (despite the continued existence of Britain). Invariably he was brought on to warn listeners about the impending climate apocalypse. He died in March of this year without ever seeing his prophecy of mass human death come true.

Fortunately for the ABC, Sarah Wilson is still here to warn of impending societal collapse. Let’s go to the transcript of Sarah Wilson and Nick Bryant on Saturday Extra last Saturday:

Sarah Wilson: These are leading scientists. These are, these are scientists who have the word “hope” in the titles of their books. And they said “You know what? In public, I’ve got to keep saying there’s hope, because what else do we have but between you and I, we’re done”. We’ve overstepped the boundaries. We’ve ignored the warnings, as I say in my book, we’ve hit the windscreen and we forgot to brake. We’ve really got to get honest about this. And I think the average person, they know this. Our bodies know it. I think children know it, I think they can feel it in their nervous systems. They’re being lied to. You know, they’ve been told to sort of believe that everything can continue and it’s not what they’re witnessing in the world around them.

At this point presenter Nick Bryant might have interrupted to ask what she meant by “children…can feel it in their nervous systems”. But alas he allowed her to continue in this way at some length. Your man Bryant did eventually ask her what she envisioned societal collapse looking like. Here’s what she had to say:

Sarah Wilson: Cast your hand around and look at the planet today. It’s declining democracy. I mean, 7 per cent of the globe’s population now, only 7 per cent lives in a liberal democracy now, so autocracy and fascism is on the rise. And I know you write about this quite often, we’re also witnessing the decline of populations and fertility rates, which is, you know, hugely concerning climate catastrophes. We’re seeing genocides. We’re seeing AI threat. We’re seeing nuclear threat. It’s all coming in on us. That’s what collapse looks like.

It is surprising that Sarah Wilson names decline in population and fertility rate as a sign of the ongoing apocalypse – given previous generations of eco-catastrophists focusing on overpopulation.

Although Comrade Wilson did not cite a source for her claim that only 7 per cent of the world population lives in a liberal democracy, it seems to have come from the University of Gothenburg’s V-Dem Institute. It draws a distinction between “Liberal Democracy” and mere “Electoral Democracy”. The good news for Australians is that we are still considered a liberal democracy by Swedish academics.

But the USA and UK have been downgraded to electoral democracies and are apparently in a period of “autocratization”. However, the Sweden-based Institute does separate out the UK and USA as Electoral Democracies+ which means that they “could also belong to the higher category” – which doesn’t seem particularly illuminating. By the way, Hungary, where there was just a peaceful transition of power following an election, is considered an “electoral autocracy”, whatever that means.

But it was not long before Sarah Wilson marshalled an even stranger claim in support of her end of the world is nigh feelings:

Sarah Wilson: People who’ve studied past civilisations, past complex civilisations like our own. So, the Roman Empire, the Mayan empire, the Jin dynasty, and so on. They’ve all gone this way. And interestingly, the average age of a complex civilisation before it collapses is around about 250 to 300 years, and we’re sitting at about 270 years old. So, our civilisation is regarded as having started at the beginning of industrialization, so in the 1700s.

What a load of absolute tosh. The problem with this argument is that nothing the (false) prophet said is true. The Roman and Mayan civilisations lasted far longer than 300 years. The Jin dynasty in China lasted less than 200 but it’s not clear why we should consider it a separate civilisation from other parts of classical Chinese history. And of course, as Ms Wilson sort of acknowledges, our civilisation is only 270 years old if you decide it started 270 years ago.

Essentially Comrade Wilson is making up one number for the average length of a civilisation, then making up another number for the age of our civilisation and then attaching importance to these being the similar numbers. This sort of pseudo-historical claim goes well on social media but it’s not clear why it is getting a credulous run on ABC Radio National.

What is the point of all this? Well, avid readers may not be surprised it all comes down to embracing left-wing politics:

Sarah Wilson: What we need to do is let this old system die. Just let the system die. Systems have died before us. We need to actually let it happen, because if we hang on to it, we’ll go down with it. And we need to start actually building the world that comes after all of this. I mean, the ultimate ironic quote that I like to put out there, Milton Friedman, who’s sort of the founder of contemporary capitalism. He once said that, I’m paraphrasing here, that real change comes about from a crisis. But the change that happens will depend on the ideas that are lying around at the time.

So, my argument is we need to put our energy, our care, our dwindling resources, into these ideas that need to be lying around as the various systems start to go down. I mean, we’re already seeing it, the trade route system, it’s going down. The fossil fuel energy system, it’s going down. It’s no longer the reliable entity that it once was, which, of course, means, you know, the entire global economy is shaky. So we need to let go of these systems and start to build what we wish to come next.

At this point Nick Bryant was stirred to offer up his only real pushback on Ms Wilson’s apocalyptic ravings, leading the following exchange:

Nick Bryant: Sarah, I listen to all this and I think, haven’t we been here before? I mean, my parents grew up in the war when there were bomb shelters in their back garden, for when the Luftwaffe blitzed my home city. If you grew up during the Cold War, you lived with the imminent threat of nuclear Armageddon. The Great Recession in 2008 – there was the possibility there of complete financial collapse. We got through COVID. We survived the pandemic. History teaches us that civilisations collapse, but history also teaches us that civilisations can survive.

Sarah Wilson: Yeah, I think the examples that you’ve pointed to there are actually worth observing. Because we can see what actually happened during those times you know, your parents would be able to tell you that, you know, during the Blitz the Brits experience their happiest times and their healthiest times.

Nick Bryant chose not to dispute the idea that the Blitz was actually a happy and healthy time for those Londoners who did not die from Nazi bombs. Following this, Ms Wilson once again flew off into visions of AI-driven ecological collapse. This eventually led to her telling Radio National listeners to remember that AI cannot take love away – which surely came as a relief to many.

It seems unlikely that a Christian fundamentalist preaching about the imminent apocalypse would give 13 minutes to rant and rave on Radio National’s Saturday Extra. But as long as you dress up your feelings of impending doom with some sort of vague anti-capitalist, anti-carbon message you can always find a place on the ABC, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer.

[Perhaps you should have placed this in your highly popular Can You Bear It? Segment, because I cannot – MWD Editor]

Your Taxes at Work

This hugely popular Media Watch Dog segment looks at how taxpayer’s money is spent by governments and councils – along with the various institutions they fund. Of particular interest to Gerard Henderson – a published author who never gets invited to literary festivals, which obviates the need for him to respond to any literary festival RSVP in a negative way – are the various taxpayer funded writers’ weeks.

MWD defines a literary festival as an occasion when a soviet of leftist activists and bureaucrats get hold of a bucket load of taxpayer funds and invite members of the leftist intelligentsia to rock up to festivals (speakers’ fees, travel and accommodation costs all paid). There they meet fellow panellists of like mind and participate in forums in which everyone agrees with everyone else in a leftist kind of way.

Each year, MWD focuses on various writers’ festivals – in particular, the taxpayer funded get-togethers in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra.

  • 2026 Sydney Writers’ Festival’s director Ann Mossop locked-in inner-city mindset

The leftist stack that is the 2026 Sydney Writers’ Festival commences on Sunday 17 May.  As Media Watch Dog has previously mentioned, this writers’ festival is just another Conservative Free Zone attended by inner-city “progressives” and ABC viewers/listeners. In Issue 766 on 13 March, MWD had this to say:

On 9 March Ann Mossop, artistic director of the 2026 Sydney Writers’ Festival, put out a meaningless statement titled “Show Me the Truth” which commenced: “The theme of the Festival, ‘Show Me the Truth’, is an invitation to engage with the many ways writers bring the truth to life.”

Sure, Tony Abbott (talking about his history of Australia) and Greg Sheridan (talking about his book on Christianity) are the token conservatives on the SWF’s 2026 program.  For the rest in the non-fiction area, the 2026 SWF is a conservative free zone.  There is no balance in the segment on Palestinian and Lebanese diaspora.  And none in the discussion on Gaza.

As to the segment “Barrie Cassidy and Friends” – which the SWF describes as its “mainstay event” – all Comrade Cassidy’s friends are leftist or left-of-centre types.  Namely Waleed Aly (ABC), Sean Kelly (Nine), Amy Remeikis (Australia Institute) and Niki Savva (Nine and ABC).  All are hostile to the contemporary Liberal Party and Nationals. In short, the SWF’s mainstay event lacks viewpoint diversity.

So what about the SWF director? – MWD hears avid readers cry.  Well, Ann Mossop spoke to the Daily Telegraph’s “My Saturday ritual” segment in its Sydney Weekend magazine last Saturday.  Under the sub-title “Lives in Leichhardt”, she spoke about her Saturday life:

Comrade Mossop tries to get to the gym early but sometimes she is “only dragged out of bed” by the thought of – yes, of course – coffee.  Then, maybe, it’s something outdoors on the Bay Run in her local park. Local coffee haunt? – Dom Panino or, perhaps Bar Italia which is “home to the best coffee on earth”. What about beyond the coffee beyond earth?

Date night – there’s Cape Paci or takeaway from Jasmin 1 where a fried cauliflower and fattoush make an excellent escape from home cooking.  For exercise, there is the pool and gym at Leichhardt Park Aquatic Centre.  But for Comrade Mossop, the ideal Saturday necessitates dashing over to Coogee for a swim.  Coogee is 15 kilometres from Leichhardt.  Much travelled, don’t you think?

Little wonder that Ann Mossop regards finding “truth” at the Sydney Writers’ Festival amounts to a soviet of writers talking and agreeing with each other.  After all, how many published political conservatives could be located on a Saturday in the inner-city in search of the best iced coffee on earth while contemplating a trip to Coogee?  Little wonder that the thought of the inner-city Comrade Mossop is so limited.  Comrade Mossop should get out of inner-city Leichhardt more.

On Thursday 14 May, Ann Mossop received an oh-so-soft interview on the ABC Breakfast program. Interviewed by Emma Rebellato about the 2026 SWF, she declared, “our approach is that to have a really broad range of people speaking in our festival and to not be afraid of talking about big and difficult issues”.

Comrade Mossop pointed to the segment titled “Brave Conversations” and added:

You know, one of the things that we have … in the festival is the Brave Conversations project are coming to the festival. And they having a conversation called When Words Offend, which has a range of really people with really different opinions. Waleed Ali, Greg Sheridan, Antoinette Lattouf, Amy Tunig-McGregor and Cordelia Fine, all sitting down together to have this conversation and to show how we can have these conversations in a better way.

Turn it up. As far as MWD can discern, Greg Sheridan is the only conservative among this lot. Sure, your man Sheridan can talk – but it’s essentially a one-sided conversation

Then this exchange took place

Emma Rebellato: The Sydney Writers’ Festival gets underway on Sunday. It’s a week-long Festival, and it’s promising brave conversations on some of the biggest issues of our time. The festival’s artistic director Ann Mossop, joins us now from Sydney. Welcome Ann.

Ann Mossop: Thank you. Emma.

Emma Rebellato: How will you tackle some of these conversations, because we know, particularly with Adelaide Writers Festival and other festivals, there’s been quite a lot of controversy over recent months.

Ann Mossop: Well, our approach is that to have a really broad range of people speaking in our festival and to not be afraid of talking about big and difficult issues. But above all, the Writers Festival is an opportunity for people to come together, to meet the writer, authors of the books that they love, and to have what are really nuanced, complex, rich conversations. You know, in this febrile media environment and social media environment, it’s easy to think that, you know, everybody’s always at each other’s throats. And in fact, what you see at a writer’s festival is nuanced, interesting, detailed analysis of difficult things. You know, one of the things that we have because of this in the festival is the Brave Conversations project are coming to the festival. And they’re having a conversation called When Words Offend, which has a range of really people with really different opinions. Waleed Ali, Greg Sheridan, Antoinette Lattouf, Amy Tunig-McGregor and Cordelia Fine, all sitting down together to have this conversation and to show how we can have these conversations in a better way.

Emma Rebellato: Palestinian Australian author and academic, Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah will be there as well. We know there was a lot of controversy. She was disinvited from the Adelaide Festival. Tell me about her appearance. Have you faced any backlash because of her?

Ann Mossop: Certainly, it’s our decision to, you know, we programmed Randa last year. Her book is published in, was published last August. She’s a really important Sydney writer with something interesting to say. There was certainly pressure, and, you know, certainly people who had views that she shouldn’t appear in the festival, but our position is that we don’t cancel or censor writers. We stood by our invitation. Randa is appearing at the festival, and I have to say that audiences have been really enthusiastic in in their response. They really want to listen to her.

What Comrade Mossop did not say is that its conversation titled “Silenced – a critical dialogue about the things that we aren’t allowed to say” involves Rawda Abdel-Fattah, Antionette Lattouf, Michael Mohammad Ahmad and Jan Fran. Not a conservative among this lot. And how would they be saying things they are not allowed to say?

Mossop presents this as a segment about the Palestinian and Lebanese diaspora experience. But there is no reference to the Israeli diaspora experience.

Rawda Abdel-Fattah is also scheduled to speak at the 2026 SWF about her book Discipline, first published last year by QUP. She is in conversation with Bernadette Brennan. Not a conservative among this lot.

Clearly Emma Rebellato and her producers were not well informed enough to query Comrade Mossop’s dubious claim. So, the head of the taxpayer funded Sydney Writers Festival obtained a soft interview on the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.

Your Taxes At Work.

Since the ABC TV’s Media Watch program commenced in 1989 it has consisted of presenters laying down the (media behaviour) law as if they were a modern-day Moses descending from the mountain, commandments in hand. All of them have been left-of-centre types as befits a Conservative Free Zone. In over three decades, the taxpayer funded media “czar” has never had a conservative presenter.

  • Linton Besser reckons that the ABC is essential for democracy

Last Monday on ABC TV Media Watch, presenter Linton Besser had this to say about the Farrer by-election result which saw One Nation win its first seat in the House of Representatives. Let’s go to the transcript:

The victory in the actual electorate came about in spite, or was it because of, an ugly attitude towards the press, in particular the ABC, captured in an excruciating encounter just 24 hours before votes were cast.

The reference was to the decision of a One Nation staffer to exclude an ABC reporter from a media conference in the Farrer electorate on the eve of the by-election.

Linton Besser continued:

Reporting an election is among the most sacred of responsibilities for the press and vital to the body politic. If One Nation is blocking the ABC because it’s suffered some tough reporting or, worse, because it believes it’s lit upon some kind of cunning electoral ploy, alarm bells should be ringing.

Turn it up. This from the ABC which is a conservative free zone and lacks viewpoint diversity. The future of Australian democracy does not turn on the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster. To borrow – and then reverse – a cliché, “alarm bells should be ringing” about the fact that ABC has “cancelled” many Australian political conservatives. Comrade Besser and his Media Watch predecessors have never dealt with the ABC’s lack of viewpoint diversity. Moreover, the idea that One Nation won in spite of the fact that its staffer had upset the ABC is just self-indulgent dreaming.

Then Comrade Besser moved out of his lane – as the saying goes – and lectured viewers about how Australia should respond to the return of those women termed the “ISIS brides”. ISIS stands for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Besser moved away from his media analysis role and supported the view that the women who had chosen to join a terrorist organisation should be allowed to return to Australia. He had this to say:

It is in fact to be celebrated that we don’t exile our citizens, even those whose choices we might abhor, and marks Australia as one of the world’s most enlightened societies. That, and our rather boisterous free press.

By the way, Australia has never exiled its citizens. In any event, it is not the ABC TV Media Watch presenter’s role to get involved in Australian political debates.

Documentation

  • The Dismissal – 50 years & 6 months on

Last Monday, 11 May 2025, marked six months since the much-hyped-up 50th Anniversary of the Dismissal of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975. As is well known, after dismissing the prime minister, Kerr commissioned Coalition leader Malcolm Fraser to form a caretaker government pending an election on 13 December 1975 – which the Coalition won in a landslide. There was a debate on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Dismissal. This issue was covered in Media Watch Dog at the time and in Gerard Henderson’s column in The Weekend Australian on 7 November 2025.

Sky News was the only media outlet to present a balanced account of the Dismissal – since it carried the views of some individuals who opposed Kerr’s decision along with some who supported it. Media Watch Dog readers may be interested in a summary of where Gerard Henderson achieved changes to the coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Dismissal.

● The Museum of Australian Democracy (aka Old Parliament House)

The Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD) held an exhibition titled “The Dismissal: Where were You?” which ran from 1 October 2025 until 31 January 2026. Barrie Cassidy, who worked for Labor prime minister Bob Hawke, is MoAD’s chair. On 11 November 1975 he chaired “The Dismissal 50th anniversary discussions”. This first session consisted of only Kerr antagonists. Namely, Barrie Cassidy, Kim Williams, Niki Savva, Gareth Evans, Paul Kelly and Kerry O’Brien. Not a Kerr supporter among this lot.

Having inspected The Dismissal exhibition at Old Parliament House on 19 December 2025, Gerard Henderson wrote to Comrade Cassidy drawing attention, in particular, to a label headed “Malcolm Fraser’s handwritten note in conversation with John Kerr – 11 November”. The label read as follows:

Kerr called Fraser on the morning of 11 November to discuss the conditions of his appointment, including a guarantee that Supply would pass. Kerr later claimed he had not spoken to Fraser that morning – this document suggests otherwise.

This statement implying that Kerr lied is false. Sir John Kerr never claimed that he had not spoken to Fraser on the morning of 11 November – he only disputed Fraser’s account of the phone call. After some argument and considerable correspondence, the label was corrected to read:

Kerr spoke with Fraser on 11 November about the condition of his appointment including a guarantee that Supply would pass while Fraser claimed this discussion happened during their morning phone call, Kerr maintained it occurred later in the day.

By the way, Barrie Cassidy did not reply to Gerard Henderson who negotiated the correction with MoAD staff.

● Nine’s conspiracy theory about the United States’ involvement in the Dismissal junked following MWD’s fact-checking

On Saturday 8 November, Nine’s The Age and Sydney Morning Herald ran a story by Peter Rees titled “Under influence”.  The sub-heading read “The Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen colluded with the US ambassador to bring down Gough Whitlam according to the children of the woman who eavesdropped on a crucial call”.

Comrade Rees reported that a certain Winsome Nash – a telephonist at the central telephone exchange on Elizabeth Street, Brisbane – improperly listened to a call between the US ambassador in Canberra (Marshall Green) and the National Party Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen in Brisbane. According to the report, Green wanted Bjelke Petersen to appoint Albert Field to fill a Senate vacancy following the death of Labor senator Bert Milner which would facilitate the blocking of supply by the Coalition – since Field was hostile to the Labor Party. The appointment was made but there is no evidence that Green was involved.

In reporting this story – which consisted of what Winsome Nash (allegedly) told her children Barry and Helen who (allegedly) told academic Stephen Stockwell who wrote a book which was read by Peter Rees – Rees failed to discover that there were STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling) calls between Canberra and Brisbane in 1975. Green, a cautious diplomat, did not need to go through a telephone exchange in Brisbane in order to contact the Queensland premier. Clearly, Winsome Nash had a clear “recollection” of an event that never happened.

This was a cock and bull story – for which there was no evidence. It was hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay – devoid of fact checking. Gerard Henderson criticised this conspiracy theory in MWD on 14 November 2025 – and Nine dropped Rees’ story like a dead cat being despatched from a 50 floor building.

● ABC forced to junk claim that John Kerr self-exiled in England

On 11 November 2025, ABC ran a program titled Whitlam Dismissal: 50 Years on it News Channel. Apparently it was not considered good enough to run the taxpayer funded public broadcaster’s Main Channel.

Greg Jennett presented the program – which was profoundly imbalanced. Seven critics of Kerr were interviewed but only one supporter. Comrade Jennett’s report-to-camera included this comment:

Greg Jennett: After the Dismissal, Kerr would be spurned, scorned and ridiculed – eventually choosing self-exile in England, defensive until death.

This statement was false.  After he stepped down as governor-general in November 1977 (two years before the end of his scheduled term), Sir John and Lady Kerr lived for some years in England – where Kerr wrote his book Matters for Judgment (Macmillan 1978).  However, John Kerr returned to Australia in the early 1980s and lived in retirement in Kirribilli, Sydney. He had many friends who visited him at his Sydney office or apartment – including Gerard Henderson.

Gerard Henderson took this up with the ABC and, after some argument, Comrade Jennett’s comment-to-camera was re-shot and now appears as this:

Greg Jennett: After the Dismissal, Kerr would be spurned, scorned and ridiculed. In the years that followed he chose to live in England. He returned to Australia, where he remained defensive until death in 1991.

It’s possible that Jennett’s comment was influenced by the claim by Troy Bramston in The Weekend Australian on 11 November 2023 that Kerr exiled himself to England after The Dismissal. This was incorrect.

● Nine’s Tony Wright runs the false claim that the Liberal Party’s Jim Killen opposed Malcolm Fraser’s decision to block supply

On 1 November 2025, Tony Wright wrote a story in Nine newspapers titled “The unlikely friendship that survived the rolling rage of The Dismissal”. He discussed the Dismissal with Diana Killen, the daughter of one-time Liberal Party front-bencher Jim Killen, and reported:

Diana Killen, like many young Australians, voted Labor in 1972 (“How could anyone vote for Billy McMahon?” she says) and she still approves of the Whitlam government’s storming program of legislation that transformed Australia. But she was not quite just another bystander at the Dismissal.

Her father was one of the Liberal Party’s most distinctive figures, Jim Killen, a parliamentarian since 1955. After the excitement of the day [11 November 1975] subsided, Diana had dinner with her father, and found him morose. Wedded to the Westminster system of government, he was troubled that the governor-general had sacked a government, using “reserve powers” that were not codified within the Constitution.

Media Watch Dog pointed out that, in his book Killen: Inside Australian Politics (Mandarin Australia, 1989), Killen supported Dismissal stating – with respect to the election on 13 December 1975 that followed The Dismissal: “The people of Australia had spoken”. Also, MWD located a report in The Australian on 1 December 1975 headed “Lawyers back Kerr for sacking Labor”. One of the lawyers was, wait for it, “the Minister for Defence, Mr Killen”.

This would suggest that Diana Killen would have had a clear “recollection” of an event that never happened. Or, most likely, over dinner Killen after a few drinks told his daughter something that was not true.

In any event, the Jim Killen/Diana Killen story died after MWD came out. Clearly Tony Wright did not do the required fact-checking and simply believed what he was told about a conversation which took place half a century previously.

● Dale Budd’s conflicting accounts of 11 November 1975 discredited Malcolm Fraser “tip off” claim which made it possible for Kerr antagonists to accuse the late governor-general of treachery

The only evidence to support the late Malcolm Fraser’s claim that he wrote, dated and signed a note he took about a conversation with John Kerr on 11 November is Dale Budd. Budd was Fraser’s chief-of-staff on 11 November 1975. Budd wrote in 2005 that he took a photocopy of Fraser’s document during the afternoon of 11 November 1975. Fraser’s temporarily misplaced his original – he did not locate it until the early 2000s.

Gerard Henderson asked Dale Budd for a copy of the note. He supplied it on 27 January 2026. This could not be a copy of the original since the note is all but illegible – unless the photocopier was grossly defective. Henderson asked Budd to explain the difference in Fraser’s writing on the note along with the state of what he said was a copy of an original. He also asked why Budd’s account of what occurred concerning the Kerr/Fraser phone call on 11 November differed from what he told Chris Uhlmann on Sky News’ The Dismissal: 50 Years On. Budd told Uhlmann that he knew on the morning of 11 November – following the Kerr/Fraser phone call – that Kerr had given Fraser “a signal” that he was about to dismiss Whitlam. However, in an essay which Budd wrote for his edited collection, which was published in 2005, he said that at around 1 pm on 11 November 1975 he had no idea that Kerr was about to dismiss Whitlam.

Dale Budd declined to address the issue. See MWD Issue 769, 10 April 2026. Since Budd’s account of the Dismissal in 2025 is totally at odds with what he wrote in 2005 – his claim that Fraser received a “tip-off” from Kerr does not stand up to scrutiny.

MWD is not alleging that Dale Budd did not tell the truth about the occasion – only that his memory is faulty about events of a long time ago. However, Dale Budd’s current account which supported Fraser’s version of the Kerr/Fraser phone conversation cannot be held to support Fraser’s case – in view of the contradictions involved.

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Conclusion

Media Watch Dog is pleased to have corrected some of the howlers, conspiracies and false memories concerning the Dismissal – for perpetuity. Sir John Kerr’s reputation is stronger than it was when the 50th anniversary of the Dismissal took place six months ago.

MWD readers are encouraged to watch the Sky News’ documentary The Dismissal: 50 Years On which is available online.

 

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Until Next Time, keep morale high.

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