GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG

ISSUE – NO. 791

11 September 2026

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A NOTE

Today’s edition of Media Watch Dog is shorter than usual due to production problems. This may come as good news to MWD’s critics. Let’s hope this is not the case with MWD’s other avid readers.

 

The Latest – Fran Kelly joins the end-of-the-world-is-nigh club

It was 5.30 am on the morning of 11 September when Ellie’s (male) co-owner was walking the said canine while listening to a repeat of the Radio National Hour on RN.

The program’s presenter, Fran Kelly, introduced her first guest with the following warning:

“At first blush, it seemed more naughty than scary: a few AI agents escaped their sandbox and hacked into a real world company. But we now know that there were hundreds of them, conniving and cheating to escape and then covering it up prompting fresh warnings that AI development is moving so fast it could soon pose an existential threat to humans.”

At this stage, Hendo and Ellie immediately returned home for a quick Gin & Tonic. Even though it was Hangover Time. After all, as it turned out that Fran (“I’m an activist”) Kelly believes that The End of the World might occur by the end of the decade, and so there was not much time to prepare for it.

As former ABC chair Kim Williams once said, the ABC does not break many stories. And Comrade Kelly had delivered a real scoop about Artificial Intelligence. It was very much a “Stop Press Moment” which, alas, is now referred to as “The Latest”.

• Insiders overlooks ASIO’s reflections on the Bondi massacre

On Friday 4 September, News24 led with a story by Sharri Markson titled “‘Deep regret’: Mike Burgess says warnings about antisemitism were underestimated before the Bondi terror attack”.

On Saturday 5 September, The Weekend Australian published a story by Sharri Markson, titled “I could’ve shouted louder, but others needed to act.” Markson’s exclusive reports revealed that Mike Burgess, the director general of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), had expressed frustration that his repeated warnings before the Bondi massacre about antisemitism in Australia were underestimated by those in leadership positions.

Mike Burgess, who was interviewed by Sharri Markson for her forthcoming book Bondi Terror, which she wrote with Alex Ryvchin, did not name any names. However, the fact that he mentioned those in leadership positions was big news. Yet the story was not covered by the ABC TV Insiders program on the morning of Sunday, 6 September. David (please call me “Speersy”) Speers presented the program, and the panel consisted of James Campbell (Herald Sun), Karen Middleton (The Monthly) and journalist Niki Savva.

Speersy’s run-sheet was as follows:

– Housing

– Tobacco policy

– Digital duty of care legislation

– The Coalition’s immigration policy

– The Liberal Party’s relationship with One Nation

There was also discussion about the Liberal Party’s Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie. All worthy topics, to be sure. But not one of the biggest stories of the weekend – namely ASIO’s regrets re the Bondi massacre. It’s called missing the lede in journalistic jargon. Can You Bear It?

• ABC Media Watch lets Insiders off-the-hook for missing the big story of the weekend re ASIO

Now, here’s another question. What to do when the current left-of-centre ABC TV Media Watch program presenter, ABC journalist Linton Besser, cannot do the job for the night? Answer: get another left-of-centre ABC journalist to take his place. So it came to pass that Raf Epstein got the gig on Monday, 7 September.

Comrade Epstein currently presents the morning programme on ABC Radio Melbourne. Epstein decided to present one item bagging Queensland’s Liberal National Party (LNP) government, followed by a segment bagging the Northern Territory’s Country Liberal Party government. There was also a segment on an American murder of decades ago. This led to a criticism of media outlets accidentally using false photographs of individuals and incidents. Which is a bit like doing a critique of newspapers accidentally printing typographical errors. Unnecessarily boring, don’t you think?

The sanctimonious comrade Epstein asked this question: “How did the news miss the news” with respect to Queensland and Northern Territory governments? But the same questions could be asked of Epstein: Why did Media Watch not cover Insiders’ decision to ignore the Burgess/Markson interview concerning the Bondi massacre? Another instance of an ABC TV news program missing the news – which raises the question: Can You Bear It?

● SMH’s CBD Column Ignorant of Parliamentary Sitting Dates

The (weekend) CBD column in the Sydney Morning Herald on Friday 11 September was headed: “Labor godfather backs Malinauskas at Sydney Institute’s big night”. The lead story was written by John Buckley.

The reference was to the Sydney Institute’s 2026 Annual Dinner. South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas was the guest speaker and he was introduced by the federal Minister for Trade – Senator Don Farrell. Sydney Institute board members Jacquelynne Wilcox, Amy Menere and Andrew Siddique had roles at the dinner.

It was a great night. The premier made a significant speech and the minister entertained the 500 attendees with a witty introduction. Don Farrell also made a positive reference to The Australian.

There were many News Corp journalists in attendance but no SMH journalists. It would seem that Comrade Buckley relied on some guests for his matter-of-fact report. Except for this where your man Buckley wrote:

Senator Don Farrell wasn’t the headline speaker at last night’s annual Sydney Institute dinner lecture. But that wasn’t going to stop the Labor Party godfather from hoofing it up to Sydney to be there for his old friend and South Australia’s Premier Peter Malinauskas.

Not a total surprise, of course, given the pair go way back. Farrell and Malinauskas met in 2001, after which Farrell, then boss of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association in South Australia, hired Malinauskas, who was working at Woolworths at the time, as a casual union organiser.

In a sense, it was only fitting to see the South Australian premier’s political mentor introduce him to guests of the annual dinner lecture that the senator has previously given himself.

But Farrell’s sitting week excursion did pique our interest, because CBD spies in the room reported that he was the only Albanese government minister seen at the dinner. The senator’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment by deadline.

Would this be CBD’s only political scoop for the year? But no. It seems that Comrade Buckley was unaware that because the night of the Sydney Institute’s Annual Dinner (Wednesday, 4 September) was a sitting night, this made it virtually impossible for any federal politicians to attend.

The CBD column in The Age did not carry your man Buckley’s piece containing his implied political conspiracy. Which raises this question – Why is CBD in Sydney so unaware that parliamentary sitting dates require parliamentarians to sit in parliament? And here’s another question: Can You Bear It?

• Paul Kennedy believes what he wants to believe about Phar Lap’s death

A constant failure among ABC journalists is the tendency to believe what they want to believe.

The ABC news bulletin last Sunday ran a story by ABC journalist Paul Kennedy about the horse Phar Lap – whose 100th birthday will be celebrated next month. Here’s how the report commenced:

Presenter: A family friend of Phar Lap’s late trainer Tommy Woodcock is on a myth-busting mission as the racing industry prepares to celebrate the wonder horse’s 100th birthday in October. Podcaster Kerry Negara wants people to know the legendary stayer was murdered, and that the horse heart being exhibited in the National Museum is not actually Phar Laps.

Soon after Comrade Kennedy said this:

Paul Kennedy: The cause of Phar Lap’s death in San Francisco 96 years ago is still debated. The earliest report was murder. Racing historians still say it was illness. But about 20 years ago, advanced testing found unusual traces of arsenic in the horse’s coat. Negara’s podcast investigation concluded American gangsters conspired to have Phar Lap poisoned.

The reference was to Kerry Negar who in 2020 released a podcast titled Killing Phar Lap: A Forensic Investigation.

Now, there is no evidence that Phar Lap was “murdered” – whatever that might mean. There are many possible reasons why he might have died at age five and a half, other than at the hands of US gangsters.

Kennedy cited podcaster Kerry Negara – who presented as a family friend of Phar Lap’s trainer Tommy Woodcock who died in 1985 – as authority for the claim. But Kennedy did not tell viewers that, on his death bed, Woodcock is reported to have admitted that Phar Lap may have died from an accidental overdose of horse tonics administered by his trainers. In other words, an accidental death.

Kerry Negara has also claimed that what is said to be Phar Lap’s heart in the Museum of Australia in Canberra is that of a draft horse. There is no evidence to support this view, either.

ABC journalist Paul Kennedy appeared to believe what Kerry Negara told him about Phar Lap’s “alleged murder” since he did not present an alternative view on air.  This is junk journalism which ran in the ABC’s evening news bulletin. Can You Bear It?

Phar Lap lives on at the Melbourne Museum

  • Sarah Ferguson interrupts Barnaby Joyce 19 times in an 11-minute interview

ABC 7.30  presenter Sarah Ferguson interviewed One Nation’s deputy leader and Treasury spokesperson Barnaby Joyce on 7 September.

It proved to be yet another occasion where Ferguson was engaged in constant interruptions when interviewing right-of-centre politicians. And then there was the sneering.  A couple of examples illustrate the point.

When Barnaby Joyce provided an answer to a long, complicated question about the possible impact of One Nation’s superannuation policy on inflation, the exchange ended as below:

Barnaby Joyce: …Now, are you saying that it has no effect whatsoever? No, I wouldn’t say that, but I’d say it is almost minute.

Sarah Ferguson: All right, I’m looking forward to seeing that answer on a bumper sticker.

That’s just a sneer. And then there was this:

Sarah Ferguson: [Interjecting] If I may, Barnaby –

Barnaby Joyce: I’ll do it for you straight down the line.

Sarah Ferguson: [interjecting] Barnaby Joyce, if I may. Obviously, this is a policy that your party has come up with, so we would expect – 

Barnaby Joyce: You’ve just come up with a question you haven’t given me the details about —

Sarah Ferguson: [Interjecting] We would expect you as the Treasury spokesman for that party to be across – just try it –

 Barnaby Joyce: The Treasury spokesman, not Jesus Christ. I mean, you have to actually give me the details of these things if you’re going to put them forward to me.

Comrade Ferguson was asking Joyce questions about the modelling of others without advance notice. The problem with this kind of gotcha journalism is that modelling is frequently wrong. Moreover Joyce, who is a trained accountant, did not have the opportunity to assess the modelling in question before he was asked to comment on it. And then there was the distracting interruptions.

All up, Ferguson interrupted Joyce on 19 occasions in an 11-minute interview.

Comrade Ferguson: Interrupter of the Week.

Sarah Ferguson and Barnaby Joyce on 7:30

 

  • George Megalogenis acknowledges that his book Three Shocks is out of date since it was finalised before the Bondi massacre

Did anyone listen to ABC Radio National’s Saturday Extra presenter Nick Bryant’s oh-so-long interview with George Megalogenis on Saturday 5 September? It was the occasion of the publication of GM’s book Three Shocks: Who We Are Becoming in the 21st Century (Penguin).

Your man Megalogenis is a published author who also has had a documentary run on the ABC and written for Schwartz Publishing’s Quarterly Essay. He’s a left-of-centre commentator. So, it was no surprise that he rocked up on Saturday Extra to speak about his new book with left-of-centre Comrade Bryant. An ideal duo on the Conservative Free Zone that is the ABC. This is how the interview was introduced:

Nick Bryant: Now, to a writer and thinker whose books about Australia are always eagerly anticipated, George Megalogenis is one of this country’s great explainers. His latest work Three Shocks: Who We Are Becoming in the 21st Century and it’s a timely study of population, politics, and the country’s shifting power dynamics.

GM reckons that Australia’s three shocks are as follows. For the first time since Federation, we have a population that’s majority migrant and their children. Professional women are now the largest segment of the workforce. And Australia’s allies (the United States) and trading partners (China) have proven unreliable.

Well, it’s a frightfully interesting theory but not much more than that. It’s all laid out in his new book which runs for some 350 pages without photos or illustrations. Groan.

Needless to say, it was an intellectual love-in when Comrade Bryant spoke to Comrade Megalogenis. However, Media Watch Dog experienced “Three Shocks” of its own when listening. Here’s why:

• At the 14-minute mark, GM refers to the end of the White Australia Policy as commencing with Gough Whitlam’s Labor government and continuing with Malcolm Fraser’s Coalition government. Not so. The White Australia Policy was effectively ended by Harold Holt’s Coalition government in early 1966 – before the prime ministerships of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser.

• It took some 19-minutes for the interview to discuss Senator Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party. No one knows to what extent One Nation’s vote will diminish, grow or stay the same. But it was a significant player in Australian politics in Australia when Three Shocks was published.

• And then there is the Bondi terrorist attack on the Australian Jewish community and, as such, on Australian society itself. This was not mentioned until the 19-minute mark of a 25-minute interview – and only in a fleeting way.

Here is how the author explained the lack of proper coverage of One Nation and the Bondi massacre on Saturday Extra:

George Megalogenis: And whilst the, the writing process had me finishing the draft before not just the return of, of Hanson towards the end of 2025 and beginning of 2026. One of the triggers seems to be the sort of collapse in faith on the Coalition side that their side of politics can win an election, So, in the regions where sort of the last redoubt of the Coalition in 2025, a lot of those voters have moved across to One Nation.

There’s also Bondi, which, which sort of happened outside the time frame of this book, and it would have almost required a total reengineering of the last third of the book. And even then, the story, as tragic as the event or day is, the sort of consequences for social cohesion, you know, those things are still playing out. So, you can’t really fall into the trap of letting the last thing, you know, overwhelm the narrative that you’ve already built.

What a load of absolute tosh. What Megalogenis is saying is that you cannot let facts get in the way of a good theory. Turn it up.

Three Shocks is already out-of-date. Publication should have been delayed and parts of the last section of the manuscript re-written to take into effect One Nation and the Bondi massacre. Especially since support for One Nation surged after the Bondi massacre on 14 December 2025.

DOCUMENTATION

  • David Williamson’s Don’s Party and Don Parties On – a correction

Gerard Henderson and the late and unlamented Saddam Hussein are responsible, in part at least, for the fact that David Williamson is alive and actively writing plays today. The story is told by Kristin Williamson in her book Behind the Scenes (Viking, 2009).

Kristin Williamson’s David Williamson Biography 

And now for some background. In October 2005, Comrade Williamson wrote an article in The Bulletin magazine about a cruise to Noumea which he won at a charity auction.

Instead of classifying the experience as a “forgettable moment”, your man Williamson saw what he described as a journey on “Cruise Ship Australia” to “a kind of metaphor for Australia”.

Why? Media Watch Dog readers cry. Well, the adults on Cruise Ship Australia “didn’t seem to be discussing Proust or George Eliot”. Nor were they interested in history or architecture. But rather, holidays, new cars, kitchen fit-outs, renovations and private education for their children.

The Sunshine Coast playwright reflected on Cruise Ship Australia and asserted that it was “a probably long-term disaster scenario…for the planet as a whole”.

[Could it be that no one on the cruise to Noumea and back had seen a Williamson play? And this upset the sage of the Sunshine Coast? – MWD Editor.]

It should have come as no surprise that some conservative commentators – including Hendo, made fun of Williamson’s Post Cruise Stress Disorder. As Kirstin Williamson put it in Behind the Scenes:

“Although David had expected some flak, the sustained savagery of the attacks stunned him. At first he replied to Gerard Henderson’s letters, but after a while he gave up. The dogs just kept barking.

It was no real surprise when his heart went into fibrillation and he was admitted to the Sunshine Coast Hospital to be cardioverted. But we did have the mutts of the right to thank for one thing.”

What could that be? MWD hears avid readers cry. Well, Williamson had a serious heart condition at the time. Moreover, he is known to be highly sensitive to criticism, despite his withering comments of, say, non-readers of Proust on the cruises to Noumea.

But there was good news. At Sunshine Coast Hospital, when discussing the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein with his Iraqi-born cardiologist, David found that the cardiologist had recently escaped from Iraq. The specialist prescribed a new drug for Williamson’s serious heart condition and, as Kirstin Williamson wrote, “the drug worked like a charm”. And so it came to pass that the playwright continued writing plays. Good medical outcome, don’t you think?

The cured Williamson went on to write Don Parties On, which commenced in January 2011. This was a follow-up to Williamson’s perhaps best-known play, Don’s Party (1971), based on the events of 10 December 1969 and set in suburban Melbourne. The play covered an evening party. When Gough Whitlam’s Labor Party failed to defeat the John Gorton-led Coalition government, the party was replete with leftist luvvies who were devastated by the election result.

Don Parties On is also set in the Melbourne suburb of Lower Plenty. The date is 21 August 2010 – the night of the 2010 election in which the Julia Gillard-led Labor narrowly retained office after being forced to form a minority government. The Tony Abbott-led Coalition won 9 seats from Labor and Labor lost two other seats. This is how the characters are described in the book Don Parties On (Currency Press, 2011):

CHARACTERS

DON, mid 60s
KATH, his wife
BELLE, 16, their granddaughter
MAL, 60s
RICHARD, 42, Don and Kath’s son, Belle’s father
COOLEY, mid 60s
HELEN, his wife, younger
JENNY, mid 60s, Mal’s ex wife
ROBERTA, 30, Richard’s girlfriend

Don, Kath, Cooley and Jenny, all characters in Don’s Party, are described as being in mid-60s in the booklet Don Parties On. How come?

Anyone in their mid-60s in 2010 would have been in their mid-20s in 1969. However, the booklet Don’s Party (Currency Press, 1973) the following comment appears:

“All characters are in their early to middle thirties, with the exception of Susan who is in her early twenties”.

Some critics have been unkind enough to state that Gerard Henderson’s head is full of trivia. But whether this is accurate or otherwise, no one else seemed to pick up a contradiction between the ages in the two plays.

MWD is of the view that since David Williamson was in his mid-20s when he wrote Don’s Party, he falsely assumed that his characters were in their mid-60s, when he wrote Don Parties On. Henderson pointed out the howler to Williamson and received a polite acknowledgement of the error.

MWD thought that avid readers would like to know this – and to be aware about the small part played by Gerard Henderson/Saddam Hussein unity ticket in Comrade Williamson’s long and successful life. With a little help from the drug Amiodarone without experiencing side effects.

 

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Until Next Time.

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