GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG

ISSUE – NO. 776

29 May 2026

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The Latest

  • It’s Justin Stevens out – and the already controversial Simon Robinson in at the ABC

On Wednesday 27 May, Justin Stevens – the ABC’s director of news and current affairs – announced his resignation. On Thursday 28 May, Hugh Marks – the ABC’s managing director and editor-in-chief, announced the appointment of Simon Robinson as Stevens’ replacement. Pretty quick replacement, don’t you think?

The Australian-born Robinson is currently the executive editor of the wire-agency Reuters. Quizzed by Liberal Party Senator Sarah Henderson in Senate Estimates on 28 May, Mr Marks did not deny that Mr Stevens had been encouraged to quit.

Obviously, it remains to be seen if Robinson, an outside appointment, will be able to manage the taxpayer funded public broadcaster which is a staff collective – or soviet – and take on the ABC’s conservative-free-zone culture. There is reason to wonder.

Senator Henderson stated that Robinson had re-tweeted a 7,500 word article titled “The Shoah After Gaza” – which was hostile to contemporary Israel. This is not a good sign. After all, the ABC has ample left-wing Israel antagonists on its payroll already. By the way, the essay written by Pankaj Mishra appeared in the March 2024 issue of the London Review of Books.

Media Watch Dog had a courteous, personal relationship with Justin Stevens. However, he fell into the ABC culture of denying that the ABC is a conservative free zone which lacks viewpoint diversity. Having said that, the likes of Sarah Ferguson, John Lyons, Louise Milligan and Laura Tingle have caused more problems for the ABC over the years than Justin Stevens. Yet all of this quartet have been promoted and/or protected in recent years.

  • Only the ABC seems to care about what the Teals think about taxation

On Thursday 28 May, ABC viewers saw yet another Teal – in this case Allegra Spender – receive a soft interview. Interviewed by ABC TV 7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson, the Independent MP for Wentworth was quizzed about taxation policy.

Who cares? Ms Spender has one vote out of 150 members in the House of Representatives. In short, she has no policy clout. The only Teal-like Independent whose vote matters in the Australian Parliament is the Australian Capital Territory’s Senator David Pocock. He, along with the Coalition, Greens and other Independents, can determine the outcome of legislation – since the Albanese government does not have a Senate majority. But Labor has a large majority in the House of Representatives and has no reason to take notice of Teals like Ms Spender.

It seems that the role of the Teals in the House of Representatives is to make many speeches and look forward to interviews on the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster.

  • Yet more Malcolm Turnbull on the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster

Just when it might be thought that the ABC has reached Peak Turnbull, when walking the said canine on Thursday night, Ellie’s (male) co-owner turned on ABC Radio National Big Ideas program.

And yes, Big Ideas’ big idea was to run an hour-long recording of former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Turnbull being interviewed on 16 April this year at the Harvard Kennedy School to an apparent relatively small audience. He spoke about world politics, Donald Trump and, yes, Malcolm Turnbull. He was interviewed by former Canadian deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland.

Media Watch Dog will return to this topic next week. In the meantime, check out Malcolm Turnbull’s most recent ABC interview in MWD’s hugely popular Can You Bear It? segment.

  • ABC clears Sarah Ferguson re her interruption-fuelled and combative interview with Angus Taylor

On 14 May, 7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson interviewed Opposition leader Angus Taylor about his budget-in-reply speech.  She interrupted him on 34 occasions in a 14-minute interview.  On 12 May, Ferguson had interrupted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on 8 occasions in a 18-minute interview.

The ABC received 43 complaints that the interview was not impartial and that the interviewer was combative and frequently interrupted Mr Taylor.

The matter was referred to the ABC Ombudsman. Guess what?  Fiona Cameron found that “the program did not breach the ABC’s editorial standards for impartiality”.

Here’s an example of what Ms Cameron said meets the ABC standards:

Angus Taylor: We need to get down to a number –

Sarah Ferguson: [Interjecting] Settings, we’ve discussed this before. Those were settings put in place by your, by your government —

Angus Taylor: This is the, this is the sort of nonsense this government —

Sarah Ferguson: [Interjecting] This is, this is a question about numbers —

Angus Taylor: I’d really like to finish Sarah.

Sarah Ferguson: Yes.

Angus Taylor: This is nonsense –

Sarah Ferguson: [Interjecting] I’d like you to answer the question about numbers.

Angus Taylor: Well, I will, and I’m answering the question.

And here is an audio of a couple of Ferguson/Taylor exchanges.

This is how the Ombudsman Investigation Report concluded:

We consider the interviewer’s persistence in requesting Mr Taylor to provide specific details was justified in order to elicit relevant information for viewers to evaluate the Opposition’s proposals. While, as Mr Taylor suggested at the conclusion of the interview, it may be the convention for Opposition parties to release policy details closer to an election, this does not preclude “accountability” interviews seeking to test significant policy proposals of alternative governments.

That’s all very well. But Sarah Ferguson did not ask the Prime Minister or Treasurer about specific details concerning, for example, the Capital Gains Tax and negative gearing announcements in the 2026 Budget. She merely took up the issue of the Labor Party’s broken election promises with respect to tax. Moreover, both Ms Ferguson and Ms Cameron should understand that an Opposition cannot provide specific details about policies some two years before an election – especially when the policy turns on the number of immigrants entering Australia in the future.

By the way, the ABC Ombudsman never referred to Sarah Ferguson by name. She was only cited as “the interviewer”. This despite the fact that Comrade Ferguson is one of the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster’s highest profile and highest paid journalists. Can You Bear It?

[No, not really – now that you ask. I have always advised against making formal complaints to the ABC. The chances of having a complaint upheld is next to zero. From the complainant’s point of view, this has the unintended consequence of validating the journalist concerning whom the complaint is made. In this case, Comrade Ferguson. A better tactic is to write to the ABC managing director and editor-in-chief stating your position and leave it there. In recent years, the ABC attempted to reform the complaints proceedings. But there has been no substantive change. The ABC is in constant denial about the fact that it is a conservative free zone. – MWD Editor.]

  • Nine’s Tony Wright fangs Angus Taylor with reference to a book written before the Liberal Party leader was born

The last time Nine journalist Tony Wright made an appearance in Media Watch Dog was when he was conned by a story about the late Jim Killen. See MWD 753 and 759. Killen was a shadow minister and later minister in the Malcolm Fraser-led Liberal Party. Comrade Wright believed a story told to him by Killen’s daughter that he (Killen) opposed the Opposition’s decision to block supply in October/November 1975.

Media Watch Dog accepts that Killen might have told his daughter this. In any event, the story was false. As one-time Liberal Party MP Alan Missen wrote in his diary, Killen spoke in the Liberal Party room in support of blocking supply. He also co-signed a letter by Queensland lawyers in December 1975 in support of Fraser’s decision. And Killen acknowledged in his 1989 book Killen that he favoured blocking supply in 1975.

Clearly Comrade Wright wrote his article in Nine Newspapers in 1 November 2025 without doing any fact-checking. He just believed what he wanted to believe.

Last Saturday The Age and Sydney Morning Herald carried an article by Comrade Wright titled “Taylor takes shelter with a weird mob from a fictional past”. He used the 1957 book They’re a Weird Mob which appeared as written by a Nino Culotta (an Italian immigrant). But was in fact written by John O’Grady. The book became a film of the same name in 1966.

O’Grady was critical of some New Australians (as they were once called) for an alleged failure to assimilate. Somehow or other, Wright managed to use O’Grady’s views of seven decades ago against the Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor. He implied that Taylor is “rooted” to the 1950s and 1960s as “he seeks to out-wrangle Pauline Hanson in the ‘we’re tougher than thou on immigrants’ stakes”.

Clearly Wright objects to the Opposition’s position that social benefits should only be made available to Australian citizens and not Australian residents. But Wright failed to point out that this policy, if implemented, would be grandfathered and only apply to new immigrants.

Moreover, Wright gave readers (if readers there were) the impression that the life of an immigrant to Australia in the 1950s and 1960s can be best explained with reference to Bonegilla Migrant Camp near the Victorian/NSW border. Some 170,000 migrants went through the camp and, at times, conditions were tough. However, many immigrants got to work on the Snowy Mountains scheme – earning good wages.

In any event, the Bonegilla experience was only a part of post-war immigration to Australia – which, over all, was a remarkable success. What’s more, there is no causal connection between Bonegilla Migrant Camp in the late 1950s and 1960s and the Coalition’s immigration policy as announced by Angus Taylor’s budget right-of- reply speech on 14 May.

It would seem that Comrade Wright is yet another alienated left-wing journalist with a habit of exaggeration and making up stories. Can You Bear It?

  • David Marr mocks young aspirational Australians while overlooking the fact that the money used to set up their business was after-tax dollars

There was enormous interest in last week’s Media Watch Dog segment which covered ABC Radio National Late Night Live presenter David Marr’s evident disdain for Australians in business who have complained about the tax increases with respect to Capital Gains Tax and negative gearing entitlements in the 2026 Budget.

David (“Yes, I have a Sydney North Shore Pymble accent”) Marr sneered at Australians who allegedly expressed “hurt” or “pain” at having to pay more tax following the Budget. And who talk about their “aspiration” to make money.

The Late Night Left [sic] presenter is so out-of-touch he cannot appreciate that many Australians of modest means start a business or buy a negatively geared home to improve their financial circumstances.

In any event, your man Marr was at it again on LNL last Monday, while in a discussion with SBS’s political correspondent Anna Henderson (no relation). Here’s what the Pymble-born Comrade Marr had to say in mocking tone:

David Marr: Anna, you know, as every day goes by, there are fresh reasons to vote against this budget. I mean, heartbreaking stories, a heartbreaking story of young people, people in their 20s, putting together a healthy share portfolio, starting early, starting young. And by the time they’re in their 50s and 60s, they’ll have made a lot of money. And, and this government is planning to tax that money. I mean, it’s outrageous, Anna, don’t you agree?

Anna Henderson: Well, but David, this is the discussion we’ve had over a number of weeks now, about what has been the aspiration of many Australians, which is to be in a position –

David Marr: Not to pay tax.

Anna Henderson: Maybe they’re not now, maybe they never will be, but that there’s something there for them that gives them a leg up….

David Marr: I mean, apparently being taxed not only kills aspiration, it kills inspiration. Did you understand that? Anyway, enough of that nonsense.

Anna Henderson: Of all the slogans –

David Marr: I mean, you know, but look, prosperous people having to pay taxes, it’s just not the Australian way. Now, Anna, just as Paul Brereton has resigned….

What a load of absolute tosh. Anyone earning over $190,000 per year pays 47 per cent tax on their additional earnings. Moreover, Australia has perhaps the highest Capital Gains Tax in the OECD. Also, your man Marr is ignorant of the fact that virtually everyone who sets up a business has already paid tax on the money needed to start their enterprise. How financially ignorant can an ABC presenter be? And here’s another question – Can You Bear It?

  • Sally Sara goes along with the view that transwomen – born biologically male – can give birth

It’s not often that there is a biological development at the Parliament of Australia’s Senate Estimates. But it happened last Wednesday when, under questioning from Liberal Party Senator Michaelia Cash, Anna Cody, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, stated that a person born a biological male could become pregnant. Or “potentially” pregnant. Or something like that.

Earlier that very morning, Sally Sara had interviewed Melissa McIntosh, the Liberal Party MP for Lindsay in Western Sydney, about this very issue. Let’s go to the transcript:

Melissa McIntosh: Biological sex means that you can’t become pregnant if you were born a man…. So, for me as a woman who can get pregnant, that for men to be able to get these [unfair dismissal for pregnancy] rights too – I’m, I’m not happy about that. That’s because there’s discrepancies in the law.

Sally Sara: If someone is pregnant and they’re discriminated against, does the gender that they identify with really matter?

Melissa McIntosh: Well, if you’re a man, you can’t get pregnant.

Sally Sara: But if someone is pregnant –

Melissa McIntosh: You can only get pregnant if you’re a woman, and we could, we could discuss this all day. But biological sex is biological sex. And I’m not saying this to be disrespectful of transgender women. But if you’re a woman, a biological woman, you’re the only woman that can get pregnant.

Then Ms Sara abruptly changed the topic to One Nation.

How about that? Sally Sara – a biological woman – seems to believe that a biological man can get pregnant. In short, gender can override sex – even when giving birth.

Ms Sara is an intelligent woman. But it says much about the prevailing leftist orthodoxy that exists at the ABC that she seems to believe that someone without a uterus can give birth. Can You Bear It?

  • ABC Chair Kim Williams heads to the Apple Isle to defend the ABC from accusations of bias

There was enormous interest in Media Watch Dog’s last issue which covered, inter alia (as the pretentious Latin usage goes), the ABC’s Kim Williams’ letter to NewsCorp’s executive chair Michael Miller. Your man Williams complained to Miller about an article in The Weekend Australian by columnist Chris Kenny who criticised the ABC’s coverage – or, rather, lack of proper coverage – of anti-Semitism in Australia.

As ABC viewers/listeners know, ABC presenters take a delight in criticising Sky News’ opinion programs. But your man Williams cannot accept criticism of the taxpayer funded public broadcaster. The ABC chair also told Nine Newspapers that Kenny’s piece was “inflammatory” and “divisive”. He added: “The ABC stands by its reporting of the conflict in the Middle East”. [Fancy that. Perhaps you should have put this in your brand new Quelle Surprise! Segment. – MWD Editor.]

Then, on 24 May, your man Williams popped up somewhere in Tasmania and appeared on the Poll Position podcast. He was interviewed by Brad Stansfield and Alex (Call me “AJ”) Johnston. It was a somewhat boring discussion which went on for over an hour – and seemed like an eternity. The most appropriate take-out from the occasion was this:

Kim Williams: The ABC is not an especially left-wing or right-wing organisation. And, in fact, the majority of ABC journalists – I would defy anyone to know how they vote.

Brad Stansfield: Oh, I reckon I could guess.

Kim Williams: Well, you know, guess you – guess you might. But I’m, I’m deeply sceptical as to whether you would be reliable in that judgement. But if you repeat something because it’s part of your ideology over and over and over again, it gets all of the magnetic attractiveness of a mantra. And mantras stick. When you keep on saying something, people don’t think about it, they just accept it, they say, “Oh, it’s biased”. Well, show me, show me where. Where is the ABC bias?

The problem is that Kim Williams is in denial about the fact that the ABC is a conservative free zone without one conservative presenter, producer or editor of its key news and current affairs television, radio and online outlets. Also, the ABC, being a staff collective – or soviet – invariably supports the comrades against virtually all critics. Even to the extent of the ABC chair defending the ABC on a little known podcast in Tasmania. Can You Bear It?

A Mark Kenny Moment

Without question, Mark Kenny [Professor Kenny if you don’t mind. – MWD Editor] has had a brilliant media career. Starting off studying Arts at the University of Adelaide, he soon quit university and commenced working for a socialist-left Labor Party member in the South Australian parliament. From there it was a job at the conservative-free-zone that is the ABC and then to The Advertiser and then back to the ABC, and then off to Fairfax Media becoming chief political correspondent of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. In this capacity, he appeared regularly on various outlets of the taxpayer funded public broadcaster – including ABC TV’s Insiders.

Then, in 2018, Comrade Kenny took up a position of visiting fellow at the taxpayer subsidised Australian National University. Then, soon after, it was “Arise Professor” as your man became the full-time Director at the ANU’s Australian Studies Institute.

The ANU also funds and produces his Democracy Sausage podcast.

Quite an achievement when you think about it (and, perhaps, even if you don’t). Comrade Kenny appears to have dropped out of Adelaide University and gone on to become an ANU professor without publishing a substantial book or collection of articles/essays.

But Media Watch Dog digresses, not for the first time.

  • ANU Professor Kenny on Capital Gains Tax

On Sunday 24 May, Mark Kenny was a panellist on ABC TV’s Insiders along with Clare Armstrong (ABC) and Shane Wright (Nine Newspapers, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald).

Let’s go to the transcript where Comrade Kenny – who has never run a business or significant organisation in his life – proclaimed about the reaction to the 2026 Budget from business. In particular, that part of the budget that substantially increases the Capital Gains Tax for many investors in businesses – big and small.

David Speers: Labor wants to bring…back [a situation] so that capital and labour are taxed more similarly. But is there still a need for some sort of incentive to take the risk and put your money into an investment?

Mark Kenny: Just to make a point about this, just in terms of the way the debates happened, though. I mean, it seems to me a lot of it is predicated on the idea that all of these businesses are sold at some point. In fact, that’s the intention, to start them up, grow them to a point and sell them. Now, that may be quite common, it may be quite a frequent thing. But it’s also true that people start businesses to draw an income from them, to expand them, to innovate. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t exactly get rid of Facebook, did he? – and it worked out pretty well for him.

David Speers: That’s true but –

Mark Kenny: I think, you know, having a debate where it seems to be exclusively about what happens when you sell a business, I think it sort of leaves out all of those other options that one might have for innovation, growth, expansion, employment, dynamism within the economy, animal spirit as you say, that I suppose, that can be expressed in other ways.

What a load of absolute tosh from the (learned) ANU professor.  Thanks to the avid MWD-reading economist who drew attention to the fact that Facebook –  or Meta, the parent company – is listed on NASDAQ.  As part of this process, Mark Zuckerberg sold a large portion of his holdings. More to the point, when Zuckerberg founded Facebook, he owned 100 per cent. He now owns less than 14 per cent (see Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Platforms). Along the way, Zuckerberg sold stock to investors who were looking for a financial return – and not for the warm inner glow provided by an ANU professorship.

By the way, Zuckerberg’s Facebook salary is $1 a year and has been so since 2013 (re which see Emily Rella’s article in Entrepreneur, 25 April 2025).  Zuckerberg did not buy many groceries with his yearly income of $1 US.  Clearly Zuckerberg took some financial “compensation” by way of a capital gain. To wit, $25 US million in 2023 alone. He gets paid mostly in shares which he then can sell to get the cash to buy groceries and houses etc.

Moreover, at some point, Zuckerberg will join the Requiescat In Pace (or RIP) lot and will need to leave his shares to someone. In Australia, this invariably involves one or more trusts or bequest to family or donation to charity.

Comrade Kenny wants us to believe that the focus for business is “innovation, growth, expansion, dynamism within the economy, animal spirit” and all that stuff.  This overlooks the fact that most entrepreneurs do look to selling a business in order to benefit from the profit made on the original investment. You would expect an ANU professor to know this. The first question any outside investor asks is – what is the exit strategy? How do I get my money out?  However, according to Kenny, there is no exit and investing in a business is like the mythical Eagles’ song Hotel California. You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.

  • ANU Professor Kenny declares that Israel is not a “liberal democracy”

During the “Final Observations” segment of Insiders on 24 May, the learned ANU professor had this to say:

Mark Kenny: This week we got a glimpse into the way Israel treats prisoners. It was an appalling, some appalling vision. The cruelty of it, the lack of, the breach of human rights, and so forth, was astonishing. I think we’re past the time where we should be describing Israel as a liberal democracy. I mean, there are plenty of supporters of Israel, and I would say I’m one of them. But you know, the response from Netanyahu to say that he doesn’t support this extreme minister, Ben Gvir, but not doing anything about. That I think says everything about where Israel is.

The treatment of protesters against Israel attempting to enter Gaza by sea is a matter of some controversy. The demonstrators have made allegations against the Israel Defense Forces which the IDF contests. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dressed down his minister Ben Gvir for his behaviour in mocking the detainees (contrary to Kenny’s claim, they were not “prisoners”).

The ANU professor’s assertion that Israel – the only democracy in the Middle East, some 20 per cent of whose citizens are Muslim – is not a liberal democracy is manifestly false and hyperbolic. After all, Israel has an elected parliament along with an independent supreme court. And if Mark Kenny ever reads the Israeli English press – for example, Haaretz – he would know that there is vibrant free speech in Israel.

[Is this the kind of political sludge that is taught at the ANU these days? Just wondering. – MWD Editor.]

Verily A Mark Kenny Moment – Or Rather, Two.

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.

  • Greens MP Sophie McNeill – once as the ABC’s Middle East correspondent who subsequently acknowledged that her reporting was neither dispassionate nor neutral

Lotsa thanks to the avid Melbourne reader who drew the attention of Ellie’s (male) co-owner to an article in The Australian on 30 April 2026 titled “Greens MP Sophie McNeill defends hiring activist who targeted former Woodside chief’s home”. The reference is to Western Australia Greens MP Sophie McNeill’s decision to employ an activist who targeted the home of former Woodside Energy chief executive Meg O’Neill in Perth in 2023.

A group of three activists – including Matilda Lane-Rose – intended to throw paint at Ms O’Neill’s house and chain Ms Lane-Rose (a comrade of the hyphenated name genre) to the front gate. All three were fined $2000 each and received a spent conviction (i.e. a conviction that will not appear on a standard police check).

Comrade McNeill told The Australian: “I applaud anyone who engages in peaceful direct action against climate criminals”. So, Comrade Lane-Rose is on a taxpayer funded job in Comrade McNeill’s office. Both of whom are paid by taxpayers – including Pay As You Go and company taxation.

Could this be the very same Sophie McNeill who once worked at the ABC? MWD hears avid readers cry. And the answer is in the affirmative.

As avid readers may recall, on 27 January 2023 MWD drew attention to Sophie McNeill’s essay in the edited collected Through Her Eyes: Australia’s Women Correspondents from Hiroshima to Ukraine (Hardie Grant, 2022). McNeill had this to say about her time as an ABC reporter based in Jerusalem – a position which she held from 2015-2018 while covering the Middle East:

The firm belief that reporters must be dispassionate, neutral observers is built on a fallacy.  While I’d never pick a military “side” in conflict, I was always firmly on one side – that of the civilians, the women and children, the victims of the violence of the war crimes, the ones caught in the middle without the power of guns or the warplanes.  It doesn’t impact my commitment to the truth, to verifying the evidence, or getting it right, I just believe that centring ethical decision-making at the heart of what you do makes better journalism…I’ve been told my approach is unique (and mostly not a compliment) and I wonder if it’s because I didn’t do any formal journalism training.  I didn’t really know how you were supposed to do it. I didn’t really know what the rules were.  I just did what felt right, what I could live with, my heart and gut leading the way….

Any objective assessment of Comrade O’Neill’s reporting for the ABC would acknowledge that she was hostile to contemporary Israel – as implied in the reference to “guns and warplanes”. Also, McNeill boasted that she was not dispassionate or neutral in her reporting. But the taxpayer funded public broadcaster employed McNeill for three years as its Middle East correspondent. And rejected any criticism of her decision to report on the Middle East without reference to roles requiring impartiality.

You Must Remember This.

As avid Media Watch Dog readers will be aware, Ellie’s (male) co-owner is somewhat fond of the French phrase “quelle surprise”. He uses it ironically in his blog to point out that the obvious has occurred. Here we go:

  • Sally Sara asks Allegra Spender & Malcolm Turnbull what they think about Tony Abbott

As a general rule, ABC journalists regard former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Turnbull as a bestie and have no love for former Liberal Party prime minister Tony Abbott. Why? An easy question. Turnbull presents as a “small ‘l’ Liberal” or “progressive” (meaning left of centre) type. And Abbott presents as a political conservative type. The ABC is a conservative free zone.

This was evident this week when Sally Sara interviewed Teal Independent Allegra Spender – followed soon after by Malcolm Turnbull on ABC Radio National Breakfast. Both were invited to discuss the possibility of a new political party being formed based on the Teals and other Independents. However, Comrade Sara decided to invite both to have a free kick at Tony Abbott’s expense. Let’s go to the transcript:

Sally Sara: As you [Allegra Spender] briefly mentioned, the former member for Warringah, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, is the new president of the Liberal Party. What do you think about that?

To cut a long story short, the Teal Allegra Spender does not think much at all about Tony Abbott. Quelle Surprise!

Soon after, Comrade Sara interviewed Malcolm Turnbull who – in his own words – once called former politicians who can’t stop talking about politics ‘Miserable Ghosts’. Moving away from the discussion about a new Teal/Independent party, Comrade Sara asked this question:

Sally Sara: You’re listening to Radio National Breakfast, and you’re hearing from former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Another former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is the new Liberal Party president. What do you think of that decision?

Malcolm Turnbull: What, for the party or for Tony?

Sally Sara: Oh, both, let’s go for both.

Malcolm Turnbull: For Tony, he’s clearly a masochist, but anyway, he’s got a strong, he’s got a strong commitment to politics. So good on him. For the Liberal Party, I think the problem is that if the, if you look at what Tony has been saying and what Peta Credlin has been saying, and you know [what] the News Corp sort of columnists that are, you know, close to them are saying. Is they’re basically arguing that the Liberal Party’s mistake has been not being right-wing enough, and you know, they’ve been saying this despite every election sending them the message that that a significant part of the electorate feel they have gone too far to the right.

So, Malcolm Turnbull does not think much at all about Tony Abbott. Quelle Surprise!

Media Watch Dog notes that during his [yet another] soft interview on the taxpayer funded public broadcaster, Malcolm Turnbull was never asked about the fact that he lost 14 seats to the Labor Party at the 2016 election – the only election at which he led the Coalition. Also, Turnbull is never asked about Snowy 2.0, his fave renewable energy project scheme. Predicted to cost under $2 billion – it is scheduled by some experts to cost the taxpayer over $40 billion.

[Interesting point. By the way, I noticed that, in this interview your man Turnbull defined insanity as “that is when you keep on doing something, the same thing and expecting a different result”. Groan. It seems that the man from Point Piper is into cliché-speak. – MWD Editor.]

 

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Until Next time – Keep Morale High

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