GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG

ISSUE – NO. 795

9 October 2026

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The Latest – Sally Sara competes with Sara Ferguson for being tops for interruptions

Could there be a competition in this week’s Media Watch Dog? As Sarah Ferguson pitches for a Media Interrupter of the Week gong with her interview with Opposition leader Angus Taylor. See the (hugely popular) Can You Bear It? segment.

However, Comrade Ferguson was outshone by ABC National Breakfast presenter Sally Sara in her exchange with Nationals leader Matt Canavan on Friday 9 October. Let’s go to the transcript.

Matt Canavan: Well, the first point I make is that we cannot, cannot have an economic plan that relies on mass migration to this country. I mean, we’ve had a strong economy for the last few decades, notwithstanding the last few years, and that wasn’t based on the migration levels we’ve seen. In fact, in the last few years, we’ve had these massive amounts of migration that are unprecedented under this Labor government. The economy’s been doldrums. We’ve had terrible economic performance. Living standards are going backwards at a record rate, so high migration itself is clearly not a –

Sally Sara: [Interjecting] And yet, some businesses are struggling to get workers – what’s the alternative approach?

Matt Canavan: Absolutely. So, what we need is a targeted approach, and we’ve put a lot of effort and work in our migration policy in making sure that yes, we do have the skills we need to grow and develop as a country…We’re going to have a special project visa because when we have large projects, particularly in regional areas, we don’t want those to put undue –

Sally Sara: [Interjecting] And what about for unskilled workers, in things like aged care, washing dishes in restaurants, that sort of thing –

Matt Canavan: Absolutely. Well, well, obviously the the skilled visa programs with chefs and, and backpacker visas often fill the, the restaurant needs. But absolutely, one of our visas will be a transition visa for graduate visas at Rending to help with skills in health and and education, and that will eventually transfer into a new temporary skilled visa stream –

Sally Sara: [Interjecting] But what about the unskilled jobs that also keep the economy going, where people are struggling to find staff? For example, cleaners, personal care attendants in in aged care. We were hearing from the aged care –

Matt Canavan: We’ll have a specific stream. We’ll have a specific stream for health, as I mentioned, and a lot of these other streams already, like the backpacker visas, can help in unskilled areas. But look, I just, you know the idea somehow that Australia needs to maintain a permanent, temporary underclass to do unskilled jobs, I reject completely. I think –

Sally Sara: [Interjecting] Who would do those jobs in our country?

Matt Canavan: Well, well, we have done – I mean, I’m 45 years old now, and, we, we didn’t have migration of 300,000 a year like we have right now for most of my life, and those jobs got done. And and what is –

Sally Sara: [Interjecting] – So who will do them now?

Matt Canavan: What is really important here? What is really important here is that the government gets sensible about its own spending, because if you want to pinpoint —

Sally Sara: [Interjecting] But to go back to the question –

Matt Canavan: Can I answer? Can I just can, can I just answer your question? I keep getting interrupted.

You get the picture. An obvious contest between Comrades Sara and Ferguson to be tops for interruptions at the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.

Can You Bear It?

7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson rudely interrupts Angus Taylor

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor was interviewed by 7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson on the Coalition’s immigration policy on Tuesday 6 October. Ferguson interrupted Taylor on 21 occasions in an 11-minute interview – this is even more interjections per minute than the Ferguson/Taylor interview on 14 May (where there were 34 interjections in a 19-minute interview).

The following exchange is of special interest:

Angus Taylor: So, I have long believed that Australia’s immigration policy works when it’s focused on skilled immigration and it fails when it’s just focused on numbers. And this shift we are making to bringing the people we need is very much in keeping with what has made our migration approach as a country successful over a long period of time, Sarah. I grew up in a great migrant town. It was a country town in southern New South Wales with a Snowy Hydro, people coming out after the Second World War. And I saw how that skilled migration –

Sarah Ferguson: [interjecting] We’ve heard that from you before.

Angus Taylor: It’s very important….

This was an unnecessarily rude and evidently hostile interjection.

Media Watch Dog cannot recall a prominent ABC journalist rudely interrupting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when he told his familiar social-housing-to-prime-minister story. Moreover, the Opposition Leader was talking about the Australia in which he grew up – rather than himself.

The evidence suggests that Comrade Ferguson cannot hide her hostility to certain prominent political conservatives. Perhaps she should enrol in Nancy’s Courtesy Classes. In the meantime, it’s a case of Can You Bear It?

Annabel Crabb’s “crepuscular” moment in praise of George Megalogenis who took her breath away

Ellie’s (male) co-owner just loves it when journalists review the books of fellow journalists – since it’s so sure to provide copy for Hendo’s Media Watch Dog.

So Hendo was delighted, truly delighted, to come across the “On our selection: Six critics nominate their cultural highlights for the Monthly Awards for 2026” in the November 2026 issue of the said magazine.

First out of the blocks was ABC journalist Annabel Crabb’s assessment of fellow journalist George Megalogenis’s latest tome.

As avid readers will be aware, Hendo was shocked after reading Comrade Megalogenis’ Three Shocks. See MWD Issue 790, 11 September. After all, the tome covers recent developments in Australian history, focusing on immigration, the changing role of women and Australia’s trade and foreign policy. The key problem is that the manuscript was completed around this time last year and does not take into account the shock of the Bondi Massacre of 14 December 2025 and the subsequent surge in support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. It seems that Comrade George did not want the recent developments to interfere with his you-beaut theory. So the book was not withdrawn for revision to take account of Australia’s contemporary reality.

Nevertheless, Comrade Crabb just loved Three Shocks. Here’s how her review concluded:

It sounds odd to say that a book about demographic patterns and the economics and politics of immigration made me gasp out loud on multiple pages, but there it is. This is a thrilling, revelatory contribution from a writer who is exceedingly gifted at explaining things, and never stints on the work.

It’s the third in a trilogy that Megalogenis has given us over the past two decades, following The Longest Decade (2006) and The Australian Moment (2012). Read them all, but especially this latest one. It’s a precious gift from one of our most valuable “New Australians”.

Quite an achievement, to be sure. After all, Three Shocks is “the third in a trilogy”, rather than, say, the first or the second.

And this is how the Crabb literary fawn commenced:

Journalist, historian, footy freak, possessor of a brain the size of a planet. George Megalogenis is a writer whose new book I will always, always read. But his new work, Three Shocks, took my breath away. Megalogenis’s deep analysis of immigration and population movements across the continent, aided by new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, provides an uncannily well-timed series of lightbulb moments sorely required in the present scrappy and crepuscular debate about Australian immigration.

Reading this literary sludge in a darkened room, Hendo had his very own lightbulb moment. He turned on all available lighting and went in search of a dictionary to find the meaning of “crepuscular”. How pretentious can a reviewer get? And here’s another question: Can You Bear It?

Annabel Crabb in crepuscular moment

SMH economics editor Ross Gittins ignores government spending as a factor in controlling inflation

As avid readers will be aware, The Sydney Morning Herald’s economics editor Ross Gittins has been banging about his economic views since Moses wore short-pants (as the saying goes). So much so that when he completed half a century (or was it a century?) at the SMH – it was turned into “Sydney Morning Gittins” for a day with page after page after page after page devoted to your man Gittins. See MWD Issue 668, 9 February 2024.

In recent times, Gittins provided a photo of himself in intensive care with a tube stuck up his nose which the powers-that-be at the SMH saw fit to publish. Really. According to reports, there was a significant decline in breakfast orders that very day.

But MWD digresses. Lotsa thanks to the avid reader and one-time letter writer at the SMH (he seems to have been “cancelled”) who drew attention to this comment by Comrade Ross in the SMH on 7 October. Towards the end of his column titled “Taming inflation with higher rates: dumb, unfair”, the SMH’s economics editor wrote this:

“I’m old enough to remember it was only in the 1980s the job [of handling inflation] got handed to the Reserve Bank. At the time it was expected to do the job better, but it’s turned out to have big disadvantages.

“Before we switched to interest rates, we used the budget to handle inflation. When demand is too strong, you increase income tax rates by a couple of per cent; when it’s too weak, you cut income tax rates by a couple of per cent.

“From memory, the main reason we switched inflation control to the independent central bank was that the politicians were reluctant to increase tax rates if there was an election in the offing. We could solve that problem by transferring decisions about the tax surcharge or discount to a new independent authority.”

What a load of absolute tosh. Believe it or not, the SMH economics editor seems ignorant of the fact that reducing demand (including government spending) is the key way of reducing inflation. Can You Bear It?

An ABC Update – ABC AM report on the Gaza dead in the Israel Gaza war makes no reference to Hamas fighters who have been killed in the conflict

This is how ABC Radio AM presenter Rachel Mealey introduced the Israel/Gaza attack on the morning of 8 October – following the third anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Rachel Mealey: Yesterday’s third anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel has been marked with ceremonies around the world. It’s also brought attention to the plight of those in Gaza, where local health officials say more than 74,000 people have been killed since October 2023. Most of the population has been displaced, with homes destroyed.

Rachel Mealey made no reference to the fact that “local health officials” to whom she referred are part of the Hamas rulers in Gaza. Nor did Mealey tell listeners that the 74,000 dead figure includes Hamas fighters who have been killed in Israel’s defensive war. And there was no reference to the abduction of 251 Israeli children, women and men by Hamas. Nor was there any reference to a large number of Israelis who have been displaced in northern Israel or account of the missiles fired into Israeli towns by Hezbollah.

These issues were also avoided by Caitlin Kelly, the ABC’s newly appointed Middle East correspondent, who also focused on the contemporary situation in Gaza.

That’s fair-and-balanced news coverage – ABC style.

A Quelle Surprise! Moment – In which Laura Tingle reports on Israel with understanding

What a surprise, especially for the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.

On 7 October, the third anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attack on essentially Israeli civilians, ABC Radio National Global Roaming program held a roundtable of the GR team. Namely, Geraldine Doogue, Hamish Macdonald, ABC global affairs editor Laura Tingle and Latika Bourke (who also writes for The Nightly).

It was a reasonable and reasoned discussion in which all four made valuable contributions. MWD was particularly interested in Tingle’s contribution.

As MWD readers will know, ABC Communications declined to advise Gerard Henderson whether Tingle had ever been to Israel, Gaza or the West Bank prior to 7 October 2023 – regarding this as something of a state secret. But she has been in recent times. In any event, Tingle seems more aware of Israel’s security problems than in the past.

Laura Tingle spoke about the trauma in Israel following 7 October and said that “most Palestinians have a very dim view of Hamas and a declining one”. And then there was this exchange:

Geraldine Doogue: I don’t know whether you agree, when you’ve been there, Laura. It’s a more disparate political thinking than we generally tend to accept here in Australia.

Laura Tingle: I think that’s right, Geraldine. In two ways. One of them is people were sort of really baying for Netanyahu, his opponents before October 7 because of his attempts to weaken the judiciary, and there are all these other issues going on, and there are also these really complicated thoughts in Israel.

I was talking to one guy when I was last there, who’s sort of describes himself as a centrist, and he said, and this was in regard to the West Bank, but I think it gives you an insight into the thinking. He said: look, do I think the West Bank settlements are a good idea? No. Do I like what’s happening with this escalation of violence by settlers? No. Do I think that it’s ruining the reputation of Israel internationally? Yes. But am I sort of glad that the settlements are there? Yes, because they make me feel secure.

And I think you can’t underestimate the extent to which all of politics in Israel, particularly after October 7, is seen through that security prism. I mean, if you think about Australian politics post 9/11 and how everything suddenly was fed through the grinder of national security by John Howard, you know, boat people, whatever. Consider that on steroids, and it gives you a bit of a sort of sense of the mindset.

Clearly Laura Tingle is far more understanding of the Israeli/Hamas conflict than, say, John Lyons (the ABC’s editor Americas who has written about Israel for many years).

Your Taxes at Work – Canberra Writers Festival October 2026 – another taxpayer-subsidised left-wing stack

This hugely popular Media Watch Dog segment looks at how taxpayers’ 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’ get-togethers.

MWD defines a literary festival as an occasion when a soviet of leftist activists and bureaucrats gets 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.

The 2026 Canberra Writers Festival is on between 15-18 October. It’s another taxpayer subsidised left-wing stack essentially funded by the leftist ACT government. Along with grants from the Commonwealth Government (Creative Australia), the NSW government (Create NSW) and the Byron Shire Council.

There are a couple of token non-leftists on the program in the non-fiction section – Paul Kelly and Michelle Grattan in one session on Australian politics and Dennis Shanahan on another on the Press Gallery. But they are drowned out by fashionable left-wing types, Coalition opponents and the like. Here’s MWD’s little list:

Waleed Aly, Paul Barry, Matt Bevan, Frank Bongiorno, Jane Caro, Richard Denniss, Rosalind Dixon, Mark Fennell, First Dog On The Moon, Clive Hamilton, Bernard Keane, Phillipa McGuinness, Martin McKenzie-Smith, George Megalogenis, Karen Middleton, Amy Remeikis, Niki Savva, Bruce Scates, Paul Strangio, George Williams and Thom Woodroofe.

Not a political conservative among this lot. Notice that the leftist Australia Institute will be at the CWF represented by Comrade Denniss. But no one from the Centre for Independent Studies or the Institute of Public Affairs or the Menzies Research Centre.

The panel for the session “Climate, Chaos & COP31” consists of three eco-catastrophists – Thom Woodroofe, Clive Hamilton and Miki Perkins. Thom will essentially agree with Clive who will essentially agree with Miki who will essentially agree with Thom who will essentially agree with himself. No other viewpoint is scheduled for the panel.

The ABC is a media partner for the 2026 Canberra Writers Festival – and will broadcast some of the sessions. MWD reckons that the Woodroofe/Hamilton/Perkins trio will get a run on the ABC Radio National’s Big Ideas program. By the way, it has never had the “big idea” of throwing the switch to viewpoint diversity.

[Why does the First Dog on the Moon get invited to the 2026 CWF but not MWD’s Ellie? – MWD Editor.]

Ellie waiting for her invitation

A Kerry O’Brien Moment – Red Kerry’s address to the 2026 Byron Bay Writers Festival expresses concern about Islamophobia but totally ignores antisemitism and the Bondi massacre

The front cover of the November 2026 issue of Morry Schwartz’s The Monthly proclaims: “How Do We Survive As A Society Without Truth? Kerry O’Brien on the end of democracy”.

How about that? The Monthly (editor-in-chief the leftist Erik Jensen; editor the leftist Michael Williams) has chosen Kerry O’Brien (aka Red Kerry) to proclaim at large about truth and all that from Page 30 to Page 41. The article which runs for 6,990 words, is an edited version of Red Kerry’s 2026 Byron Writers Festival address.

The article commences with a picture of your man O’Brien standing at a lectern (remarkably still with red hair at 81 years of age), dressed in black, lecturing to (no doubt) sandal-wearing luvvies at Byron Bay on the NSW far north coast. In other words, Sandalista Country.

Now Comrade O’Brien takes himself very, very seriously. After all, his book Kerry O’Brien: A Memoir (Allen & Unwin, 2018) runs for 871 pages. KOB has been a journalist for almost his entire career. Except for a very brief time in the Queensland government’s Public Curator’s Office and for a period in the 1970s working for Labor Party leader Gough Whitlam and Labor Party frontbencher Lionel Bowen. He has never run a business of any sort. For some three decades Comrade O’Brien has been on the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster’s payroll.

Compare and contrast John Howard. His memoir Lazarus Rising (HarperCollins, 2010) runs for 711 pages. Howard played a prominent role in Australian politics from mid-1974 until March 2007 – during which time he became Australia’s second-longest serving prime minister (after Sir Robert Menzies) at close to 11 years.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is a pompous kind of guy. But even his memoir Malcolm Turnbull: A Bigger Picture (Hardie Grant, 2020) runs out of puff at page 698 – 173 pages behind “The Thought of Red Kerry” who has never held public office.

But MWD digresses, not for the first time. As The Monthly article makes clear, Red Kerry really and truly believes that he speaks the TRUTH – as distinct from those who are into “untruths”. Or, in intolerant leftist’s terminology, what is called “misinformation and disinformation”.

Red Kerry sermonises from the lectern at the 2026 Byron Writers Festival – as depicted in The Monthly

Early in his Sermon on the Byron Bay Mount, Red Kerry laid down his (long) thesis. Here it is:

There are two powerful elements that have reshaped the nature of the democracy we’ve taken for granted over the past half-century. One is the profound impact of digitisation – the exponential speed of which is unprecedented in human history. The second is the ideology that has come to frame so much of democratic government and society, inelegantly identified as neoliberalism: the ideology that has driven and coerced government as we once knew it to make itself smaller, privatise its services, nobble the trade unions (which have been one of humanity’s great civilising forces), and cede the dominant role in determining the kind of society we want to be to the free market, the power and influence of the rich and the alleged freedom of the individual, rather than the imperative of the common good. [Gosh, at 93 words that’s a long sentence. – MWD Editor.] What’s left of the democracy we thought we had?

Then there is this pomposity:

Civilisation has always been subject to change, often dramatic, but never this quickly, this intensely. Having largely hung up my spurs after 60 privileged years with a ringside seat to observe so many of the big milestone moments of a lived history, I have more time to reflect on a vista that, more than any other time in my life, is lived in the realm of the unpredictable and the uncertain. A world where one person’s truth is built on another person’s lie.

What a load of absolute tosh. Some statements are manifestly true – the world is round. And some statements are manifestly false – the world is flat. However, many issues are contested. Yet Red Kerry reckons he speaks the truth. And that all those who disagree with him are into falsehoods of various kinds.

Then, GROAN, Red Kerry throws the switch to Nazi Germany comparison mode with this comment:

How do we survive as a society without truth? The propaganda tools available to Goebbels back in 1930s Germany were child’s play compared with the digital tools for propagandists today. Have we really reached the point in our democracies where so many people are driven by disillusionment, powerlessness and blind anger to vote for a Trump or his copycats just to punish mainstream politicians, even if they’re going to blow themselves up in the process?

This is absolute nonsense. Joseph Goebbels was the official propagandist in Adolf Hitler’s totalitarian Nazi regime. In other words, Goebbels’ propaganda was enforced by violence in a nation which lacked democratic freedoms. Ideology-enforced “truth” is not comparable to the views expressed on contemporary social media. Like him or not, Donald J Trump is the democratically elected president of the United States.

Trump’s second term will expire late January 2029 – when he will become Citizen Trump again. Moreover, there is no evidence that the US has been “blown up” – whatever that means – in the six years that Trump has been president. That’s just hyperbole.

Then Red Kerry went on and on and on and on… There were also favourable citations of Stephen Hawking, Barry Jones, Robert Reich, George Monbiot plus Peter Hutchison. And hostile citations of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Kevin Roberts (of the Heritage Foundation), John Howard, Hansonism, Steve Bannon, Angus Taylor and the like – plus most of the tech high-flyers. Somewhat predictable, don’t you think?

Red Kerry even criticised the Labor Party leaders Bob Hawke and Paul Keating:

It’s instructive of how much neoliberal agendas have been driven over the decades by the exercise of private money and private power – Monbiot and Hutchison’s “invisible doctrine”. The great irony in the way neoliberalism was perpetuated globally is that it wasn’t another conservative government that picked up the baton from Reagan and Thatcher. It was Labor’s Bob Hawke and Paul Keating here in Australia. —

Instead, it was Hawke and Keating who deregulated financial markets, including the banks, cut budgets and income tax, and knocked down the protective tariff barriers, exposing Australian manufacturing to the full effects of global markets. And it was Keating who also deregulated the labour market, breaking down the old model of centralised wage bargaining through arbitration and conciliation. He also drove the privatisation agenda, selling off public icons such as Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank.

Gerard Henderson, for one, does not recall that Kerry O’Brien was critical of Hawke (when prime minister) or Keating (when treasurer or prime minister). Indeed in 1987, Hendo awarded Comrade O’Brien the (highly prestigious) Sycophantic Spoon Award for his uncritical coverage of Keating’s first budget. Comrade O’Brien was so much a member of the Keating Fan Club that Red Kerry shared the award with himself.

But Hendo does recall O’Brien’s criticism of Howard when he was prime minister. Australia’s 25th prime minister receives a special serve in what is best termed “Red Kerry’s Rant on the Mount”. Let’s hear it from the Sage of Byron Bay with respect to what he has to say about John Howard these days:

In my view, Howard also fed and exploited Australia’s culture wars – a toxic byproduct of neoliberalism in the spirit of divide and rule – at great cost to our country’s national harmony. I believe no prime minister has driven social division in this country more than John Howard, certainly in my lifetime. And for all his talk about tolerating a broad ideological church within the Liberal Party, again I would argue it was Howard who drove his party further to the right and opened the gates to today’s zealots, who have pushed it to near political bankruptcy. [Let’s hope that Mr Howard does not read this – for if he did then surely he would not sleep for 3 weeks. – MWD Editor.]

And there was more. Comrade O’Brien referred to “wage theft” in this country for which he blamed business. It overlooked the fact that the Australian industrial relations are so complicated that even universities have been into alleged wage theft. Including, er, the ABC for which Comrade O’Brien worked for some three decades.

There followed criticism of Murdoch’s Fox Corporation and Rupert Murdoch himself. Along with criticism of “Team Pauline Hanson” and her alleged attempt to “stir Islamophobic outrage”. But in his 50-minute address about contemporary Australia, Red Kerry did not once mention radical Islam, or the radical left and their contribution to anti-Semitism. Nor did he say a word about the Bondi massacre directed at the Australian Jewish community as part of Australian society. This is a TRUTH which Kerry O’Brien chose to avoid.

The ABC was a media partner of the 2026 Byron Bay Writers Festival. So it came as no surprise that, towards the end of his sermon Comrade O’Brien praised the ABC and Australia’s “strong public broadcasting culture” and called on the audience to “attack” the ABC’s critics.

Comrade O’Brien ended with praise for the Greens and such Teals as Cathy McGowan, Zali Steggall and David Pocock. And with a plea for “freedom” to be “anchored in truth”. That is, Red Kerry’s “truth”.

Verily – A Kerry O’Brien Moment (in Sandalista Country).

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Until next time.

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