GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 62
16 JULY 2010
IN THIS ISSUE
STOP PRESS
Guardian-on-the-Yarra Thinks It Matters How Julian Burnside Votes
It’s official. On Wednesday The Age ran a large colour photo of Julian Burnside QC AO [why does this republican retain his Queen’s Counsel gong? – Ed] and Greens Victorian Senate candidate Richard (“actually it’s Doctor) Di Natale over the heading “Burnside endorses Greens, on principles”).
Apparently, according to The-Guardian-on-the-Yarra, this is news. Really. But why is it news that JB QC AO is supporting the Greens? Sure it would be news if Mr Burnside endorsed the Liberal Party or even Labor. But the Greens?
Still, you never know with Julian Burnside. He voted for John Howard and the Liberal Party in 1996 and then spent a decade campaigning against the consequences of his own decision. Just like Robert Manne. If Dr Di Natale makes it to the Senate, within a few years JB QC AO may be railing against the Greens. You just never know. [Has The Age reported who Danni Minogue is voting for? – Ed].
BLANCHE D’ALPUGET CHANNELS LARA ANTIPOVA
Didn’t Blanche d’Alpuget look just gorgeous when she appeared on the cover of last Saturday’s The Weekend Australian Magazine? There she was under an Ushanka hat with a wistful look – dressed like Lara Antipova out of David Lean’s film Doctor Zhivago. [Just as well it’s winter – Ed]. Then, inside, there was a full page photo of Ms d’Alpuget in a Chanel-like suit. There were also shots of her marriage to Bob Hawke along with the famous photo of Bob and Blanche in their white bathrobes. Ms d’Alpuget told Richard Guilliatt, who wrote the cover story, that the bathrobe photos were taken in Singapore as they were leaving their hotel and they “put them over our clothes”. Strange, then, that the photo shows a very unclothed Hawke chest. Oh, well.
The occasion of The Weekend Australian Magazine’s cover story was last Monday’s launch of d’Alpuget’s book Hawke: The Prime Minister (MUP). This has led to a (predictable) response from Paul Keating, who feels that his record has been downplayed and that he has been patronised in d’Alpuget’s tome. More of this at some other time. Right now, MWD is fixated on the d’Alpuget/Hawke love story. As the author told Guilliatt:
What people will think, they will think. For many people I will go to the grave as a scarlet woman. But I know that when I’m dead and when Bob’s dead, what people will remember was that this was a very great love story. And it’s the love story that will be remembered.
Yes we know. d’Alpuget wrote up this love story in her essay On Longing (MUP 2008) which was lovingly reviewed in the June 2009 issue of The Sydney Institute Quarterly. In On Longing, d’Alpuget revealed her plan to kill Hawke in the late 1970s or early 1980s – when, after a long on-again/off-again relationship, he jilted her. In Hawke: The Prime Minister she reveals how her occasional lover, and now husband, contemplated suicide circa 1984.
Put these two factors together and it has to be conceded that Louise Adler and the team at Melbourne University Publishing were fortunate that d’Alpuget wrote her second book on Hawke. Had fate played a part, Ms d’Alpuget might have been serving life in a woman’s prison and Hawke would never have become prime minister.
In Hawke: The Prime Minister, Blanche d’Alpuget writes that Hazel Hawke disliked the late Jean Sinclair – Bob Hawke’s long-serving personal assistant. In On Longing, d’Alpuget declared her very own dislike for Jean Sinclair. However, as the author of On Longing tells the story, Jean Sinclair became a “friend” after her death and – from the grave – urged Blanche to get “closer” to Bob. MWD has not being able to get in touch with Ms Sinclair to check this story and is relying on John Edward of Crossing Over fame to help out in this regard.
And now we can only wait until the movie Hawke screens on Channel 10 on Sunday at 8.30 pm. Laurie Oakes has had an early viewing. In his column in last Saturday’s Daily Telegraph, Oakes refers to the character “Grunter” in the film:
…There’s a scene in which blonde Blanche D’Alpuget sneaks up to the PM’s hotel room disguised in a red wig and is admitted by a press secretary who glories in the nickname Grunter. “Right,” says Grunter, “I’ll be in the bathroom with my Walkman on full”. And he dutifully waits in there throughout the tryst with loud music muffling the sounds made by Bob and Blanche on the bed.
Gee. Fancy that. Why could not have “Grunter” stepped outside, gone down to the lobby, and left Bob and Blanche to do their thing? Perhaps we will all find out on Sunday. Or perhaps not.
Nancy’s co-owner has a special insight into this, the great love story or our time. In 1994 he did a Four Corners program on Bob Hawke to co-incide with the publication of The Hawke Memoirs. Gerard Henderson interviewed Bob Hawke, Hazel Hawke (the marriage was still extant but, as was found out later, the clock on the divorce was running) and Blanche d’Alpuget. The experience was later written up as the essay “Affection” in Ross Fitzgerald’s edited collection The Eleven Deadly Sins (Minerva, 1995) and can be seen here.
NANCY’S PICKS OF THE WEEK
Bob “My Cheques Bounce Higher Than Yours” Ellis Beats The Prophecy Drum (Again)
MWD has a vested interest in Bob Ellis, the (False) Prophet of Palm Beach, gaining regular employment – since any remuneration he receives might make it possible for him to honour payment on his two bounced cheques of recent memory. See Issues 54 and 56. It seems that the Prophet Bob never learns. He got into trouble by taking bets on the 2001 election – and he is still making predictions.
The ABC has put considerable funds into its The Drum website. But not enough, apparently, to employ a fact-checker. Hence Bob Ellis’ reference in his article “How can Labor win?” on The Drum Unleashed. Ellis referred to John Howard winning the 1997 election. There were elections in 1996 and 1998 – but not 1997. In any event, this is what the Prophet Ellis saw when he looked through his crystal ball last Wednesday:
This election will be very close. John Howard won with 48.8 per cent of the vote in 1997 [sic] and Tony Abbott has this, probably, now. Belinda Neal’s seat, Bob Debus’s, Mike Kelly’s and Maxine McKew’s are gone, I suspect. Duncan Kerr’s in Tasmania. Three more in Queensland, two in Victoria (one to the Greens), one in South Australia, which leaves Western Australia deciding it, a state where Liberals are these days very popular. Some polls show Labor unendangered now in the West, but you never know. There could be a coalition, with Bob Brown as deputy prime minister when Albo, also, loses his seat to a Green, in inner Sydney.
There are a lot of ardent feminists, male and female, who think Gillard’s gender will get her easily home. But balancing this is seven hundred thousand religious Rudd voters who would prefer she were married, or not living in sin, and three hundred thousand others resentful of her atheism. How do we get that million back? It’s pretty hard to say.
And so he went (on). Until the end:
We all have our sustaining fantasies and Julia’s is that she has the numbers in enough seats across the country to win. She doesn’t, not yet, believe me. And she would be a fool to call the election in August. You wait and see.
So according to Bob Ellis, Labor will lose. We shall see.
Andrew Catsaras Bounces Back After Failed Rudd Prophecy
At least there are some weeks before the Prophet Ellis election prediction will be tested at the polls. This is what strategic marketing consultant Andrew Catsaras – who is well regarded by media types as an election analyst – wrote about Labor and Kevin Rudd on 23 June 2010, the day before Julia Gillard was sworn in as prime minister:
The obituaries for Kevin Michael Rudd’s political life are already being written. Commentators are lining up to declare it all over for Rudd – by the hand of his party before the election; by voters at the election; or certainly within 12 months of winning the election. Premature obituaries are now new. Every morning, Ernest Hemingway would read a scrapbook of his obituaries with a glass of champagne…
And so it went on – until the conclusion:
It is premature to dismiss the ALP and Rudd. Perhaps that is why they are two to one on favourites to win the election. Rudd might even consider placing a small wager on it and if he wins, not collect on the ticket but frame it and quietly glance at it each morning, along with one or two hundred obituary-like commentary pieces, while he sips a glass of champagne.
Needless to say, Mr Catsaras is proceeding as if nothing happened. Writing in the Australian Financial Review on 8 July, he commented:
The elevation of Julia Gillard to the leadership of the Labor Party has had a dramatic impact on the relative market strength of the two major parties, much more so than is evident from the headline polling figures… Australian federal elections are won by the party that attracts the middle ground. These figures show that, in 2010, Labor is that party. It was so in Rudd’s final month and is even more so under Gillard.
So, according to Andrew Catsaras, Labor will win. Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s hope for Ms Gillard’s sake that Mr Catsaras’ predictions about her political fate are more accurate than they were in respect to Mr Rudd.
NANCY’S FIVE PAWS AWARD
Paul Howes On Why Laurie Short Was Correct On The CPA
This week’s gong goes to Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes who made the following comment on Sky News The Contrarians program on 9 July 2010 – following evidence in Mark Aarons’ book The Family File which demonstrates the past link between some parliamentary members of the ALP left (i.e. Arthur Gietzelt) and the Communist Party.
The AWU national secretary said that the material in Aarons’ book:
…vindicates everything that my union did during the 1950s…. One of my predecessors, Laurie Short, spent a good 40 years….fighting communist influence in the labour movement. He held a very firm belief that people like Gietzelt were secret members of the Communist Party. That’s been exposed by Mark Aarons’ book – it actually demonstrates that the Industrial Groups – that’s my side of Labor politics – were correct in generations past about talking about the great threat that communism posed to the labour movement at the time.
And it also, dare I say, means that people like B.A. Santamaria…[and] some of the good but misguided people that went with the DLP were right. I’m pleased that in NSW we never had the Split. But, you know, it’s [i.e. anti-communism] a part of my union’s heritage that we hold very dear. And I feel vindicated – and on behalf of the late Laurie Short….one of the most amazing Australians that ever lived.
Glossary: The Industrial Groups opposed the communists within the trade union movement. Laurie Short ran the anti-communist Ironworkers Federation – the Ironworkers union later afflicted with the anti-communist Australian Workers Union. The DLP was the Democratic Labor Party which broke with/was expelled from the ALP during the Labor Split of the mid 1950s – it was primarily strong in Victoria and Queensland.
HOWLERS OF THE WEEK
• Justice Felicity Hempel
On Q&A last Monday, Victorian Country Court judge Felicity Hampel declared that she recently went to an “interesting talk” by Liberal MP Petro Georgiou whom she described as a “good man”. Judge Hampel then spoke of Mr Georgiou’s “deep knowledge” of asylum seeker issue. According to Hampel J., Petro Georgiou reckoned that Malcolm Fraser not only accepted asylum seekers but “processed them on shore”.
In fact, the Fraser Government favoured off-shore assessment of asylum seekers – in such places as Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines. The Fraser Government accepted some 80,000 refugees between 1976 and early 1983. Only 2000 of these refugees were assessed on-shore.
• John Brown
On the ABC AM program last Tuesday, former Hawke Labor Government minister John Brown confidently declared that Australia “had 170,000 Vietnamese here on boats in two years” in late 1970s.
In fact, the total intake of refugees who came by boat during the entire period of the Fraser Government – from late 1975 until early 1983 – was 2059.
• Mike Carlton
In his Sydney Morning Herald column last Saturday, Mike Carlton referred to “the detention of children behind razor wire” as an initiative of John Howard and the previous Coalition government.
In fact, mandatory detention for asylum seekers – including children – was introduced by Paul Keating’s Labor Government in May 1992. In 1994, the mid-point of the Keating Government, there were 350 children held behind wire in detention centres.
• ABC Current Affairs and Per Capita
Last Monday The World Today and PM last Monday, the Prime Minister’s address to Per Capita was covered. Per Capita was described as “an independent think-tank” (pace Jason Om TWT) and “an independent think tank (pace Alexandra Kirk PM).
In fact, Per Capita describes itself as “an independent progressive think tank” – meaning it’s left-of-centre or social democratic inclined. Its chairman is former Labor MP Evan Thornley and its board includes such Labor types as Tom Bentley (who is on Julia Gillard’s personal staff) and Josh Burnside.
• Jane Sullivan
In The Age last Saturday a break-out detailing an article by Jane Sullivan referred to the Victorian case in 1951 when author Frank Hardy was tried for criminal libel. The charges followed his characterisation of Ellen Wren in the novel Power Without Glory as an adulterer. The character had a different name but the reference was clearly to Ellen Wren, the wife of Catholic businessman John Wren. The Age wrote that “Frank Hardy was charged with criminal libel by Ellen Wren”.
In fact, individuals do not – and cannot – lay criminal charges. Frank Hardy was charged with criminal defamation by the State of Victoria. He was acquitted.
HISTORY CORNER
Lee Rhiannon – Daughter of the (Stalinist) Revolution
In recent weeks, following the publication of Mark Aarons’ book The Family File (Black Inc, 2010), The Australian has focused on the infiltration of the Australian Labor Party in the 1950s and 1960s by members of the Communist Party of Australia. This has resulted in important articles by former New South Wales premier Bob Carr and Labor speech writer Troy Bramston.
Today MWD focuses on what Mark Aarons has to say about Lee Rhiannon (nee Brown) in his book – in which he made extensive use of de-classified ASIO files. Mark is the son of Laurie and Carol Aarons. Lee is the daughter of Bill and Freda Brown. The Aarons and the Browns were communists. Laurie Aarons and Bill Brown were key Communist Party operatives. Both supported the various crimes of the communist totalitarian dictator Josef Stalin and his heirs – including the Great Terror of the 1930s, the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939-1941, the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and more besides. Laurie Aarons finally saw the light (of sorts) in 1968 when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. But Bill Brown remained a loyal follower of the dictators in Moscow for many more years.
And what about Lee Brown? As Mark Aarons puts in The Family File:
Lee Brown and I were “red-diaper babies”. This was how many CPA members affectionately referred to the children of communists destined to inherit their parents’ political genes. The Aarons and Browns shared friendship as well as ideological commitment. Lee and I followed suit.
Come 1968 and all that, Mark Aarons followed his father and broke with Moscow. But Lee followed her parents, who supported the Soviet Union’s brutal suppression of Czechoslovakia. By around 1970, Mark was aware that his friendship with Lee was changing. Around this time Lee had a disagreement with Brian Aarons – Mark’s brother. The story is told in The Family File:
In 1972 ASIO filed a sharp exchange of letters between Brian and Lee in a university newspaper. Brian’s criticism of the socialist countries, especially over the invasion of Czechoslovakia, prompted Lee to question his “revolutionary” credentials. In Brian’s riposte he asked her to indicate “whether she supports the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the shooting of the Polish workers and the suppression of socialist democracy in the Soviet Union”. Her response evaded these questions, instead adopting neo-Stalinist slogans: “Socialist countries naturally do make errors and therefore criticism and self-criticism will be forthcoming. I trust that Brian and I agree that the correct way forward is working to build international unity for socialism and peace. As we know this will only come about through a united international working class movement.”
I could not conceive of someone of my age and experience supporting Moscow’s policies. Friendship persisted, however, and I continued to visit Lee’s home. This grew less frequent as I became more uncomfortable with the tenor of her politics. On a visit in early 1974 I mentioned that the ABC Radio National program Lateline, for which I worked as a producer, had interviewed Mick McGahey, a communist official of Britain’s miners’ union, about a strike that had brought down the Tory government. Lee’s response convinced me that our friendship was finished, as she aggressively praised McGahey’s endorsement of Moscow’s invasion of Czechoslovakia.
As Mark Aarons records, Lee Brown joined the Socialist Party of Australia – the continuing Stalinist organisation after the CPA formally split with Moscow. She remained a loyal SPA operative until the early 1980s and later joined the Greens. Mark and Lee caught up again at the State Parliament House. He was working on Bob Carr’s staff. She had changed her surname to Rhiannon and was a member of the NSW Legislative Council. Lee Rhiannon’s official website as a Greens MLC makes no mention whatsoever of her former – and enthusiastic – membership of the Communist Party of Australia and the pro-Stalinist Socialist Party of Australia. She will be the leading Greens Senate candidate in New South Wales in this year’s election.
AWU national secretary Paul Howes referred to Lee Rhiannon (nee Brown) on the Sky News The Contrarians program on 9 July 2010. He said:
[Senator Bob] Brown’s call for her [Lee Rhiannon] to resign [from the NSW Legislative Council] exposes the deep divisions that are starting to bubble to the surface in the Greens. See, Bob Brown – I’ve got a lot of respect for – I disagree with a lot of his policies but I respect him. Bob Brown is a true Green. He’s a green Green. No-one can doubt his commitment to the environment.
Lee Rhiannon isn’t a Green – she’s a watermelon. She was, her family [were] lifelong members of the pro-Stalinist Socialist Party. [She] has barely spoken about environmental issues. And there’s this growing conflict between kind of ex-Comms and socialists that are trying to take over the inner-city branches of the Greens and the true green Greens like Ian Cohen and Bob Brown.
Glossary: In common parlance – watermelon types are green on the outside but red on the inside.
Freda Brown died last year. Tony Stephens wrote a challenging obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald on 27 May 2009. It was the kind of obituary which is written when the author wants to be as nice as possible to the deceased.
For example, reference was made to Freda Brown’s opposition to fascism in the 1930s. But no mention was made of the fact that if Bill and Freda Brown had got their way – Adolf Hitler and the German Nazi Party would have won the Second World War circa 1940, with the support of the Soviet Union due to the Nazi Soviet Pact. Moreover, no mention was a made of the fact that Freda Brown left the Communist Party of Australia because, in her view, by the early 1970s it was not sufficiently Stalinist. The obituarist did record, however, that in 1977 Freda Brown was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the communist dictators in Moscow. By the way, Vladimir Lenin himself never advocated peace.
CLICHÉ OF THE WEEK
Fran Kelly – and an Elephant – Steps Up
MWD has not dwelt on Radio National Breakfast’s decision on Thursday to virtually ignore the Bob Hawke v Paul Keating stoush whilst giving Phillip Adams a run reporting on something or other in New Orleans. However, the program was back to form today when presenter Fran Kelly referred to Laurie Oakes as asking a question to Julia Gillard yesterday which raised the matter of “the elephant in the room”. The elephant in question was the discussion which took place between Kevin Rudd and the Prime Minister before the Labor Party leadership change. Let’s keep these clichés going – moving forward.
Until next time.