GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 37
27 NOVEMBER 2009
SYCOPHANTIC SPOON AWARD – A DEAD HEAT
The onset of the Festive Season invariably leads to an increase in the intensity of fawning. In a highly competitive contest, MWD Sycophantic Spoon Award is shared this week between environmentalist Tim Flannery [Is he the bloke whose entry in Who’s Who in Australia is nearly five times the length of Kevin Rudd’s? – Ed] and Beatrix Campbell (OBE, Stalinlist Retd).
▪ Dr Flannery on the Brilliant, Fabulous Kevin Rudd
On Lateline last Monday, presenter Tony Jones asked Tim Flannery whether Australia needed to have some kind of emissions trading scheme in place before the United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen – since it was clear that the United States would not have a climate bill through the Congress for at least a year. Good question, don’t you think? And how about the answer? Professor Flannery started off with a prediction about the US – and then commenced to heap lotsa praise on the Prime Minister. Let’s go to the DVD:
Tim Flannery: Tony, could I just deal with that issue of the US first? I think that the US is either going to have their bill through the Senate by April or not at all. The mid-term elections come into play after that, it becomes increasingly difficult to do anything. So I’d say we’re gonna see it in the few months after Copenhagen.
The question of Australia is an interesting one. Look my personal view is that someone has to show leadership on this. Now Kevin Rudd has been, could I say, brilliant at the international level. I was in APEC last week, he was just performed [sic] fabulously. You know, he’s clearly deeply committed to doing something at the international level. He’s been appointed as a friend of the chair for the Copenhagen meetings, which are very [sic] position. And it is critically important for Australia, if they want to live up to those leadership expectations and play a useful role, to come to the table with something in hand.
Flattery aside, Tim Flannery makes better sense when praising the Prime Minister than when he was wont to predict that Sydney’s dams would dry up and Perth would completely run out of water.
▪ Dr Campbell Grovels to Our (Equal) Queen
It’s possible that the Brit Beatrix Campbell (OBE, Stalinist Retd) watched Professor Flannery’s stunning performance on the web. In any event, when she was interviewed on Late Night Live by Phillip Adams on Wednesday, it was evident that Dr Campbell was going to give MWD’s Sycophantic Spoon Award a real shake this week. Here’s how the interview commenced:
Phillip Adams : Bea, how are you going?
Bea Campbell: Well, I suppose. Well, that question is unexpected. Rather wonderfully – it’s a gorgeous windy autumn light day.
Phillip Adams: Well, this won’t, this one won’t be unexpected. The last time we spoke you were practising your curtsey and your bob because you were off to Buck Palace to get your gong. You’ve got to tell us how it went. Please.
Bea Campbell: Without a hitch. [Phillip Adams laughs]. I was even able –
Phillip Adams: Did Her Majesty glare at you?
Bea Campbell: Oh, I was able to say, meeting Her Majesty’s eyes, within – what – half a metre of mine, I was able to say to her how great it was that she was a supporter of equality.
Phillip Adams: [Much laughter]. Take note, Gerard Henderson – who’s very critical of anything I say, and he’s been getting stuck into Bea lately. Now Bea, okay, the theme tonight is Afghanistan…
How about that? It seems that Dr Campbell (OBE, Stalinist Retd) had a fawn-again experience when she met Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace on the occasion of her gonging.
Here was the self-declared feminist and socialist Bea Campbell saying to the Monarch that she (the Queen) was a “supporter of equality”. It seems that Dr Campbell’s gonging experience may have temporarily deprived her of common sense.
After all, the Monarch sits at the top of what remains of the British class system. Moreover, the Monarchy embodies the practice of male succession over females. What’s more, Catholics are excluded from becoming king or queen due to the Act of Settlement and all that which provided Elizabeth II’s ancestors with the throne in the first place. And, ah yes, the Monarchy is hereditary. Yet Bea Campbell (OBE, Stalinist Retd) told the Queen that the Queen is a “supporter of equality” and Phillip Adams AO gave the impression that he believes that this was a just-super comment.
It seems that Marxist Beatrix has learnt from Benjamin Disraeli who once declared: “Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.”
By the way, Phillip Adams neglected to inform Late Night Live listeners last Wednesday that Beatrix Campbell has been pre-selected by the Green Party to contest the 2010 British general election against Labour’s Glenda Jackson. See Issue 36.
As Adams pointed out on Wednesday, Bea Campbell is LNL’s regular commentator on British politics. ABC Radio National has two experts on United States politics. On RN Breakfast there is the American liberal and Democrat voter E.J. Dionne and LNL has the leftist Bruce Schapiro. Apparently Radio National still cannot find one conservative commentator – from Australia or elsewhere – to engage as a regular commentator on any of its main programs.
NANCY’S PICKS OF THE WEEK
▪ Wilson Tuckey – He’s No Billy Hughes
Nancy’s no mad dog. But she is interested in the activities of those who have been tarnished – unfairly, of course – with any kind of derogatory canine description. So Nancy was especially interested in the 7.30 Report’s profile of maverick Western Australian Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey last Wednesday.
Ros Thomas’s report concluded with Mr Tuckey (born 1935) declaring that his age was irrelevant because he was a mere youth compared to Billy Hughes (1862-1952) who was a member of the House of Representatives from 1901 until his death in 1952. This is how the Tuckey profile concluded:
Wilson Tuckey: The point I’m making is that Billy Hughes hung around until he was 92 and they took him out in a box. And in his latter years he was Prime Minister for each side. You don’t know what your opportunities are.
Kerry O’Brien: So on that basis Wilson Tuckey is only going to be around for another 20 years! Ros Thomas reporting from Perth.
Not really. The fact is that Billy Hughes was prime minister for just over six years – initially as leader of the Labor Party (October 1916-November 1917), then National Labor (November 1916-February 1917) and then the Nationalist Party (February 1917-February 1923). Billy Hughes ceased his period as prime minister at age 60 and died while still an MP at age 90. Yet Tuckey conned the 7.30 Report that Billy Hughes was prime minister in his “latter years”.
▪ Junk the Advts – And Pass the Taxpayer Dollar
Nancy’s career as a media commentator commenced when she was purchased from an RSPCA shelter and went off to pursue a brilliant career as a watch-dog whose co-owners happen to work in the private sector. Call Nancy prejudiced if you like – or even if you don’t like – but the fact remains that your dog does not empathise with taxpayer-funded types who have little time for those who have to make a quid in the non-government sector.
So Nancy became somewhat agitated last Monday when leftist commentator Waleed Aly (once again) appeared on the ABC 2 News Breakfast program to discuss that morning’s newspapers. [Don’t tell me that this program still cannot get a Melbourne based conservative or right-of-centre type to get out of bed early enough on a weekday morning and head to the ABC studios in Melbourne. – Ed].
Last Monday was a big news day. But all Waleed Aly wanted to do initially was whinge about the fact that The Age was wrapped in a see-through advertisement for Toyota’s new Prado Kakadu. Ms Trioli went along with the whinge – even if her heart did not appear to fully share Dr Aly’s outrage. Here’s how the segment commenced:
Waleed Aly: I wanted to start with something on the front page of The Age today. But I couldn’t see it because it’s covered in an advertisement.
Virginia Trioli: In tracing paper.
Waleed Aly: Which is – am I, am I, am I missing something? Has this not happened before?
Virginia Trioli: It’s happened once with The Australian. The Australian did an entire wrap-around like this once.
Waleed Aly: Eh.
Virginia Trioli: Where the whole front page is actually an ad. And then you get the paper underneath.
Waleed Aly: It’s pretty, it was pretty amazing. That’s, I’ve –
Virginia Trioli: It’s good tracing paper.
Waleed Aly: It is, although –
Virginia Trioli: If you’ve got kids at home, pick up The Age – they’ll just love this.
Soon after co-presenter Joe O’Brien commented that these days newspapers have to do everything they could to “get the advertising dollar”. Good point to be sure. But Waleed Aly was none too impressed – declaring that “obscuring the front page was a fairly dramatic step”. Dr Aly is an academic whose salary is paid each month by the taxpayer subsidised Monash University.
GEORGE NEGUS – YINGING AND YANGING IN DENMARK
Just when you thought that the 67 year old George Negus might have decided that it was time to move permanently into his sandals and spend more time at his home in the Bellinger Valley, the SBS Dateline presenter winged it all the way to Denmark for his final program of the year. There were green options, of course. Your man could have gone to the SBS studios in Sydney and conducted an interview from there. And SBS could have employed a stringer to report from a far away place for a program Down Under which not many viewers watch.
But, no. George Negus and the Dateline crew decided it was time to burn some more carbon-emitting miles. So Dateline flew all the way from Australia to Denmark. There George Negus interviewed Connie Hedegaard (Denmark’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy) and did a report on the state of the environment on the island of Samso which is reported to be carbon neutral.
At the commencement of the latter report, the Dateline presenter asked: “Why has Dateline gone so far out of its way to come specifically to this remote, apparently almost windswept, Danish island community?” It was a good question which, alas, George Negus’s report did not answer. MWD offers the following responses to Mr Negus’s deep and meaningful question, viz:
1. George Negus wanted to spend time on Samso because it’s not far from Copenhagen and Copenhagen is more interesting than his Never Never Creek abode in the Bellinger Valley.
2. It’s nearly the end of the calendar year and Dateline had underspent its travel budget.
- As Mr Negus told the Sunday Magazine on 8 November, if his life is out of balance he can become quite agitated. Fortunately George’s life balance is currently sustained by a yin and yang necklace. He went to Samso to get a carbon neutral replacement.
Towards the end of his report, George Negus looked down the SBS camera and told his viewers:
Okay. I know what you’re thinking. This carbon reduction idealism stuff is all very well, but what about all those cars driving around Samso’s country roads and villages – including the one your’s truly’s been getting about in? Aren’t they running on nasty, carbon-belching petrol? They certainly are. But the Samsingers insist their emissions are more than offset by a massive wind farm just off the island’s coast.
So flying to Denmark and motoring around Samso – all for the cause of reducing carbon – appears to be a you-beaut idea. Negus concluded his report with much praise for Samso (population 4000):
What a remarkable place Samso was – carbon neutral and all that. And what about its people? In fact, it made me wonder whether the summit next month should be held in Samso, not Copenhagen.
Er, not really. Samso does not have the necessities of life for the globe-trotters who will be at Copenhagen. Like an international airport, five star accommodation and fine dining. Certainly Al Gore would not live on Samso.
Then the Dateline presenter headed off to Copenhagen for a boring interview with Ms Hedegaard where, on occasions, Negus’s questions were longer than the Minister’s responses.
HISTORY CORNER
▪ Don’t Talk About (The Third Man) Sir Anthony Mason
In the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 31 October 2009, legal affairs reporter Joel Gibson reported Chief Justice of Australia Robert French’s address two days earlier to the Melbourne University Law Review’s Annual Dinner – under the heading “Chief justice rules out a repeat of Kerr’s err [sic]”. Joel Gibson commenced his story as follows:
The nation’s top judge would not give legal advice to the Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, about dismissing the Prime Minister in a constitutional crisis and says no one in his position ever should. Robert French, Chief Justice of the High Court, stopped short of directly criticising the actions of his predecessor Sir Garfield Barwick, who was dubbed “Kerr’s cur” after advising Sir John Kerr before the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975. But he said Sir Garfield’s letter was worth no more than advice from another senior lawyer and such advice should not be repeated because the chief justice may have to later sit on a challenge to the decision.
The SMH issued a correction. In November 1975 Gough Whitlam had described Liberal Party leader Malcolm Fraser (not Barwick) as “Kerr’s cur”.
Robert French’s address to the Melbourne University Law Review, titled “The Chief Justice and the Governor-General”, was a substantial and lively address. It was also replete with history. Robert French cited several occasions, during the first two decades after Federation, when the Governor-General had consulted with the Chief Justice of the High Court. He also referred to the dismissal of Jack Lang’s Labor government in New South Wales by the New South Wales Governor Sir Phillip Game in 1932 – and to the communication between the Governor and New South Wales Chief Justice Sir Philip Street in the days leading up to the dismissal. And Chief Justice French mentioned that in 1952 Victorian Governor Sir Dallas Brooks took advice from both the Chief Justice of Victoria (Sir Edmund Herring) and the Chief Justice of Australia (Sir Owen Dixon) about whether to grant a dissolution of parliament which had been requested by the Victorian Liberal Party premier.
Then Robert French came to the events of November 1975 and the dismissal of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government by the Governor-General. He commented that “the rights and wrongs of Sir John Kerr’s decision, the merits of Sir Garfield Barwick’s advice and the propriety of furnishing it with or without the consent of the Prime Minister, have been much debated” and added:
While the life of the law as experience rather than logic always counsels caution about taking absolute positions on anything, it is difficult to conceive of circumstances today in which it would be necessary or appropriate for the Chief Justice to provide legal advice to the Governor-General on any course of action being contemplated by the holder of that office, whether such advice were tendered with the prior consent and knowledge of the government of the day or otherwise.
Robert French concluded his address to the Melbourne University Law Review Annual Dinner by quoting with approval the views expressed in 1997 by former Chief Justice Sir Gerald Brennan, viz:
In a eulogy in honour of Sir Garfield Barwick, delivered on 5 August 1997 and recorded in Volume 187 of the Commonwealth Law Reports, Sir Gerard Brennan, then Chief Justice, referred to Sir Garfield’s tendering of advice to Sir John Kerr and said of that event: “It was, and remains, a controversial matter but, if only on that account, will not happen again.”
Those attending the Melbourne University Law Review Annual Dinner would have obtained the impression that neither Chief Justice Robert French nor Sir Gerald Brennan agreed with Sir Garfield Barwick’s decision to respond positively to John Kerr’s request for constitution advice on the constitutional crisis of 1975.
But here’s the problem. If Sir Garfield Barwick erred in giving advice to the Governor-General in November 1975 – what about Sir Anthony Mason? Sir Anthony was appointed to the High Court in 1972 and was Chief Justice from 1987 until his retirement in 1995. Mason is much admired within the judiciary and the legal profession. In a speech in July 1993, former prime minister Gough Whitlam declared: “For the first time in my lifetime, the High Court has in Sir Anthony Mason a Chief Justice who is adequate in both national and international terms.”
In Matters for Judgment (Macmillan, 1978) Sir John Kerr wrote:
Late on Sunday afternoon 9 November, having arrived conclusively at my decision as to what I must do on the following Tuesday unless, at their meeting that morning, a compromise were reached by the political leaders or one of the two withdrew from the field of battle, I decided, on one aspect only of my decision, to consult the Chief Justice. I would ask him if he were prepared to advise me as to my constitutional authority and power to make a decision of dismissal and force a dissolution, if I were minded to do so. I would seek his constitutional advice, not on what I should do, but in the form of an opinion as to whether I was empowered to take a step which I felt I should probably have to take two days later and which I believed to be within my powers.
My solitude was tempered by conversation with one person only other than the Chief Justice. The conversation did not include advice as to what I should do but sustained me in my own thinking as to the imperatives within which I had to act, and in my conclusion, already reached, as to what I could and should do.
The person with whom I spoke was not and has never been engaged in politics. His name has never been mentioned in any of the speculations about persons I might have consulted. The substance of our conversation is recorded and will some day, when for history’s sake the archives are opened, be revealed. I will not disclose it further.
The person to whom Kerr spoke in November 1975 was (then) Justice Anthony Mason. The full story is told in Gerard Henderson’s article, titled “Kerr’s matter of sound judgment”, which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 8 January 1994.
The clear implication in Chief Justice French’s address is that it was inappropriate for Garfield Barwick to have provided legal advice to the Governor-General in 1975. If this is the case then, presumably, Robert French would also regard it as inappropriate for Anthony Mason to have given advice to John Kerr around the same time. However, there is no reference to Sir Anthony Mason in Chief Justice French’s address to the Melbourne University Law Review. Nor did Sir Gerald Brennan refer to Mason in his eulogy in honour of Barwick.
Until next time.