The doctor is in, but perhaps not Ng

ANDREW Bolt is justifiably upset today at being verballed by Peter Gebhardt in an opinion article published in the Fairfax press. The column cites the former judge's protege, Ryen Diggle, as lamenting, on the strength of an annoying but innocuous  conversation with a random idiot, that "people only see me as an Aboriginal." While his account of that waiting-room encounter speaks of his interlocutor's garrulousness, there seems to have been nothing pejorative about it. Yet Dr Diggle finds being identified as "an Aboriginal with whatever negative connotations that may bring in their minds" is hurtful and racist and, well, you name a grievance and the Indigenous intern can probably be counted upon to find it amongst the various chips piled up on both shoulders.

Well here is the funny thing: Dr Diggle has done quite nicely out of being seen as Indigenous, with Gebhardt swearing he is "very Aboriginal in his physiognomy". Indeed, had he been a member of some other oppressed minority, he might not have made it into the school of medicine at Melbourne University, where entry requirements are very tough. The 2013 ATAR score for biomed is 98.8 and it would not have been that much different in 2006, when Diggle graduated from Darwin High School. Here are the Territory's top 20 young scholars from that year, with several of his classmates figuring prominently. We can assume Diggle's score was less than 92, the lowest of 2006's listed best.

He is mentioned in the NT Education Department's end-of -year summary, but only as his school's leading Indigenous student (one hopes he would not take offence at "only").

Now here is the thing: If his Darwin HS classmate Winnie Chen, who scored a remarkable 100, had been out of sorts at one or several exams, would the Parkville Asylum have slipped her into that year's intake under, say, a Menstrual Issues Rectification Scheme or a Bad Case Of The Flu clause? The answer is probably no, which all means that Diggle, for all his bristling at "the negative" of being seen as Aboriginal,  is quite happy to be regarded in no other light when there is an advantage to be seized.
   

Why Doesn't Bolt Have a Walkley?

HEAR Jon Faine explain why Julia Gillard is pure as the driven snow.

Now go to Andrew Bolt and learn why it is a good thing the 774 toady does not work as a lawyer. Here is a sample (Faine in italics):

…it’s to do with the slush fund that she was helping to establish for people who were acting as a group within the AWU at the time.
Fudge. Well, less than a group, Jon. It essentially operated just for Bruce Wilson and, to some extent, for his bagman, Ralph Blewett. And it was set up for their benefit as individuals, not AWU officials.

Well, at that stage, I do remember laughing out loud on air and saying since when should a client not act for someone because they might be breaking the law?
Red herring. No one to my knowledge has ever suggested Gillard should not have taken as a client someone who “might be breaking the law”.

There is plenty more where that came from. And do notice Andrew's update:

"Michael Smith rang Faine for a right of reply, but was not given one."

Andrew Bolt's Pervasive Evil

CLIVE PALMER sounded very much like a man with tongue in cheek when he raised with Tony Jones the possibility of joining Gina Rinehart's campaign to force reform on Fairfax -- a possibility only a little more credible than his effusively insincere admiration for Jones' virtues as a journalist. Still, if he does want to pile on, there would be no shortage of work to keep both of the big miners busy. The most recent indication (as of midnight; by dawn there will be more) of just how deranged Fairfax has become can be found in Gerard Henderson's latest Media Watch Dog, which features several rounds of correspondence between Nancy's co-owner and Greg Baum, chief sports writer at the Phage.

The exchange concerns the late Peter Roebuck -- an an interesting enough topic, but nowhere near as revealing as Baum's reference in passing to Andrew Bolt:

I don’t know who was looking over whose shoulder, you or Bolt, but I am mystified by the allusion to priests. Roebuck was not a priest. End of story.

Henderson responds thus:

I don’t understand your reference to Andrew Bolt – who, as I understand, is one of The Age’s obsessions, judging by your paper’s coverage of him. I rarely speak to Bolt and have never discussed Roebuck with him.

Now think about that exchange for a second. Here we have a fellow who covers a field of human activity that should be immune to political interpretation, yet some paranoid fancy has evidently led him to see Bolt's insidious finger at work, stirring up trouble with catholic malevolence.

You can understand why Fairfax political writers detest Bolt, who has so often highlighted their sycophancy and many other shortcomings. And it requires no intelligence to understand why the Greens publicists who pass themselves off as environmental reporters loathe someone who exposes so many of their untruths, instances of wilful blindness and arrogantly naked biases.

But a sports writer! If Boltaphobia is now colouring Fairfax's reports of sportsmen hitting, kicking and punching things, the sooner Palmer stops with the jokes and starts buying stock the better. Going by his Lateline performance, the magnate could have a lot of fun assuring Baum and others that neither Bolt nor Rupert Murdoch is mounting sly crusades to see the flick pass re-introduced, the cricket pitch metricated or the imposition of automatic penalty strokes on Sudanese golfers. Not that Baum would believe him.

What ails Fairfax, it must akin to syphilis. Once in the blood, there is just no stopping it from ravaging the brain.

Sorry Day

THE Herald-Sun has been ordered to make amends in print for having dared to publish a pair of Andrew Bolt columns. Would the following fit the bill, do you reckon? 

We acknowledge the people of the Litijus-Mordy Nation on whose turf we may not know we are standing until the writs arrive. They are the court-appointed custodians of this page, so we pay homage to Elders past and present, including those holding Harvard degrees, Australia Council grants and the ledgers of an Indigenous co-operative whose finances cannot be made to balance.

Of course, if that does not do the trick, the Herald-Sun could borrow inspiration from the CSIRO, formerly a scientific organisation. These days it is keen not offend spirits, perhaps fearing they might also sue:

3.3. Smoking Ceremony

The ceremony aims to cleanse the space (of evil spirits) in which the ceremony takes place and to cleanse the participants, who are asked to take in the smoke that comes from the earth to protect them on that Country v. . . People are encouraged to walk through the smoke to cleanse their spirits. Given the significant nature of the ceremony, smoking ceremonies are usually performed at major events.

Aboriginal people may request a smoking ceremony to cleanse a new work place that is opened, where culturally significant items are repatriated to Country, or where it is believed bad spirits exist.

And if things still aren’t quite harmonious enough, well the Herald-Sun could adopt another aspect of the CSIRO’s approach and dole out some cash. It will just need to make sure it gets an ABN number first.

...some organisations such as the NSW Local Aboriginal Land Councils have a set price for ceremonies and a database of Elders who can undertake them. It is advised staff contact them prior to negotiating a price . . .

Professional performers are to be asked to provide a tax invoice quoting an ABN number before payment can be made. Where an ABN cannot be provided, the service providers are to complete a statement by a Supplier form. This will ensure the earnings are not taxed at the highest margin of 48%. The Statement by a Supplier Form can be obtained by accessing the Australian Taxation Office website . . .

When making a booking ensure that a tax invoice is provided to CSIRO as soon as possible so that payment for the performance can be made without delay.

Good work if you can get it. Free speech, though, that is quite a bit messier.

A Multiculturalist Explains It All

ON THE radio this morning, Andrew Bolt and Steve Price, the columnist’s Sancho Panza, chatted with Dr Christina Ho, senior lecturer in multicultural matters at Sydney’s University of Technology. The subject was “white flight” from elite public schools, as the headline in the Silly put it, and the specialist in societal frakking did not disappoint, least of all in her subjectivity. Of her research and conclusions, which hang on comparing the number of non-Anglo/European faces in specific schools with the ethnic composition of surrounding suburbs, she could quote chapter and verse. However, when asked if those disparities were no more than the consequence of some students working harder, being coached and coming from families that regard achievement as the norm, you could almost hear her little feet scurrying for the all-purpose cover of the personal impression.

“When you go to [elite schools’ entrance] test days, you do not see a lot of Anglo students.

Therefore “part of it is that there are a lot of Anglo-Australian families who aren’t sending their kids to do the test. There are probably a lot of reasons why that is the case . . . it must have to do with some level of discomfort about schools becoming Asian-dominated, therefore putting off white families.”

It must, must it? Hmmm.

Forget for a moment Dr Ho’s grievous slur on pale, round-eyed Australian natives like Young Master Bunyip, who has been gifted with generations of thoroughly Australian blood on his father’s side and, from his mum, una prima colazione di un maiale of Calabrian, Sicilian, Neopolitan and god-only-knows-what-else many centuries of invaders left behind. So incensed was he at being disparaged as “Anglo” – a term he associates chiefly with pale Poms and a Radio Birdman number -- it was all the Professor could do to stop him ringing up Judge Mordy and demanding that Dr Ho be strapped to a stool and dunked in a vat of David Marr’s spittle.

The fact that white people look alike to Dr Ho is a minor point. Of much greater interest is her timing, because there is absolutely nothing new about her research, the gist of which was published quite some time ago. Back in May she penned a little essay for the Australian Review of Public Affairs (ARPA), and it summarises exactly the points which saw this morning's Silly go off half-cocked about white intolerance. Could it be that departmental budgets and promotions are being thrashed out for the 2012 academic year, a process in which the benefits of a higher profile and a little fresh ink can be of great assistance?

The ARPA piece includes an observation that can only lead to the conclusion Young Master Bunyip’s furious reaction was the correct one: Dr Ho really does need a stiff dose of judicial intervention. When it comes to stereotypes, she is a champ, as an interview, also in May, with The Conversation makes pretty darn clear:

The high proportion of Asian students at selective schools was also helping to create student bodies with a cultural mix that do not reflect broader Australian society and was fuelling resentment by others that Asians were ‘taking over’, she said.
That could be addressed by broadening the selection criteria to include more sports, arts and humanities topics, she said.

If Andrew Bolt were to say something similar of Aborigines – that they are good only at football, dot painting and exploring their own culture – he would be heading back to court chop chop. But when those sentiments roll from the lips of a mistress of the multiculti, no problem.whatsoever.

An Un-Appealing Prospect

THIS IS worrying:

THE below article was the subject of a decision of the Federal Court on 28 September 2011 that it contravened section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth). To view a full copy of the Federal Court decision please access the following link: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2011/1103.html.

That just-added announcement on the Adelaide Now web site precedes an archived copy of Andrew Bolt’s celebrated column, “It’s So Hip To Be Black”.

News Limited has until Wednesday to appeal Judge Mordy’s ruling that the columnist is guilty of being less than kind to white Aborigines. Does the warning’s addition to the page indicate that News Limited is unlikely to appeal? Readers with legal backgrounds who might care to interpret the announcement’s sudden appearance are welcome to do so in comments. But at the Billabong, anxiety is mounting.

A month or so ago, a trivial error in Glenn Milne’s column about our PM’s fling with a union swindler saw it pulled. All it took was a couple of presumably threatening phone calls to News Limited chieftain John Hartigan and down the memory hole it went, its disappearance marked only by craven apologies published even on News Limited web sites that did not carry the original article. That decision reeked of cowardice, not to mention a disregard for the sanctity of a free and inquiring press which Hartigan claims to hold dear. To all intents and purposes the voting public now has no way of learning more of home renovations paid for with siphoned funds, of $17,000 worth of frocks, or of the honesty of a woman who, although 35 and a rising Labor lawyer at the time of her relationship with thre light-fingered Bruce Wilson, now invokes the excuse of having been “young and naïve”. The Fairfax press will not pose those questions, having long ago been colonised by journalists and editors who barrack for causes, not unfiltered truths. The ABC is marginally worse, as anyone who has witnessed Jonathan Holmes urging viewers to file complaints against Alan Jones and others will surely appreciate.

That leaves only News Limited. An imperfect champion at the best of times, it was at least prepared to have a go. If it fails to appeal the Bolt ruling, perhaps in the hope that a supine silence might make the coming ordeal before the press inquiry less painful, access to truth in Australia will be well and truly stuffed.

Two days remain before an appeal must be lodged. If it isn’t, then Hartigan might want to consider a supreme irony: Up until now conservatives have indulged News Limited’s domination of the Old Media marketplace, preferring to view Hartigan’s company as the sole source of alternate perspectives. But if it is now in retreat on matters of principle and open inquiry, why not support its dismantling?

We would be better off with half a dozen different and competing press proprietors. With any luck one of them might boast a decent set of balls.

Marr And Pa

ANYONE who has read Dark Victory, David Marr’s co-authored expose of John Howard’s inhumanity, will have realised very early on that the man whom Silly editor Peter Fray urges his paper’s reporters to emulate has a tendency to, well, place an excessive weight on some facts while skating very lightly over others. At the start of his Tampa book, for example, the reader gets many sympathetic pages about the plight of the rescued Afghan refugees – many of whom, Marr concedes, were not Afghan at all – before any mention that “a delegation” representing the ship’s unplanned human cargo invaded the bridge and threatened its captain and crew with big trouble unless the vessel was put about immediately for Christmas Island. By any definition it was a hijacking, but Marr leaps with sprightly grace over this inconvenient reflection on his heroic victims’ disregard for law, preferring to paint Howard & Co in subsequent pages as villains for refusing to reward with entry permits those who forced with threat and intimidation that change of course. While this is all ancient history, the Marr syle is well worth keeping in mind when reading his approving analysis of the damage Judge Mordy has done to free speech in the matter of Andrew Bolt.

Consider these paragraphs:

Here's Bolt on Larissa Behrendt: "She's won many positions and honours as an Aborigine, including the David Unaipon Award for Indigenous Writers, and is often interviewed demanding special rights for 'my people'. But which people are 'yours', exactly, mein liebchen? And isn't it bizarre to demand laws to give you more rights as a white Aborigine than your own white dad?"
Among the problems here are that Behrendt's father was a black Australian, not a white German. And like all the others, Behrendt was raised black. Judge Bromberg wrote: "She denies Mr Bolt's suggestion that she chose to be Aboriginal and says that she never had a choice, she has always been Aboriginal and has 'identified as Aboriginal since before I can remember'." Bolt didn't contest her evidence.

There is no denying Bolt did get it wrong. Behrendt’s father, by his daughter’s account, came to regard himself as an Aborigine. Chalk one up for David Marr, who curiously neglects to set the record straight. Had he done so, Bolt’s error would not only have struck Silly readers as negligible, the truth would also have bolstered  Bolt’s overall argument that an individual who chooses a single, minor strand of genetic pedrigee above all the rest is making a statement not on breeding but of politics and cultural preference.

The truth is that it was Behrendt’s grandfather who was white and German. It was her grandmother who was of mixed race. Both are an equal number of generations removed from the woman who famously tweeted that she preferred bestiality to Bess Price, so while Bolt is wrong in the particular, his overall point stands.

There is another thing about those paragraphs that is worth noting, the line where Marr says Larissa “was raised black.” Her version, as told to Marr’s colleague Malcolm Knox, does nothing to explain what “raised black” actually means. Indeed,  for those not quite so exquisitely attuned to the mores of racial identity and self-identity, it is a bafflement:

It was, ironically, [her white mother] Raema who instilled a sense of Aboriginal identity in Larissa and her brother. ''When Jason got picked on because of his colour, Dad had said … 'My son is as white as you are.' It was Mum who allowed us never to feel embarrassed about our Aboriginality. She has a great heart and social conscience. But it came at a cost to her, because she couldn't feel part of it herself. So she dropped us off at rallies and stayed outside.''

How odd that Marr did not share these facts with his readers, did not plumb the Silly’s archives for a little context and background. Perhaps he was distracted at his keyboard by the sound of champagne corks popping or, just as likely, more sweet nothings from the lips of a doting editor.

I Acknowledge The Bloomingdale's People....

DR ANITA HEISS, one of the plaintiffs in the Bolt gagging, tells Crikey! readers:

"I am continuing to focus on what I love doing most, working with young Aboriginal people around the country and teaching them how to write their own stories, in the hope they too will one day have the position of privilege to publish their own words."

Well, for six months of the year, anyway (see the 2:00 mark).

(Thanks to Bob On The Murray for sending the Crikey excerpt.)


UPDATE: "Anita’s $90,000 grant over two years will help her research and produce two works, including a memoir, Am I Black Enough For You? ‘The work will include my insights on contemporary Australia and views on Aboriginal people today — like the need for greater selfrepresentation in literature and the classroom,’ said Anita.


UPDATE II: Meet Anita's mob -- the publicist, the stylists, the photographer, the life coach, the Melbourne and Sydney makeup artists and, of course, her personal stylist.

A Champion Verdict

WHAT A shame the old Champion Hotel on the corner of Brunswick and Gertrude streets was turned into a rug salesroom. The Bloodhouse was its nom de guerre, and you didn’t need to add an adjective, the adjective, because in Melbourne it went without saying. The blacks’ Bloodhouse, that is what everyone knew it to be, a place where any driver who pulled up outside and waited for the lights to change received a 60-second education in despair. Not the patrons’ despair, because they were too far gone to care, shouting and facing off, lurching into the roadway, women hiking stained dresses and squatting for a squirt in the gaps between parked cars. Much More Ballroom, the hippy mecca, used to be just up the street, but love and peace didn’t cut it on that corner. The vibe, man, it was bad. Stepping over pools of spew, sometimes comatose bodies, it just wasn’t cool. For caring, gentle white folk who talked of love and peace the Champion was a bummer, a corner to be avoided lest it spoil a nice buzz.

It is gone now, long gone, and the former patrons swept from sight. Great for property values, and not one of the terrace renovators who have transformed Fitzroy from slum to chic would wish it back. But today, a few hours after Andrew Bolt was found guilty of ruffling a new, paler and vindictively sensitive species of blackfella, you can’t help thinking how much the old Champion is needed.

The victors will be out there tonight before the cameras, telling how Black Australia just isn’t going to take the Dutchman’s slanders for one more day. Their lawyers will be skiting, too, and the ABC’s talking heads will nod and put the soft questions that, at the government broadcaster, signify support and sympathy.

Indeed, even if a reporter wanted to note that artist Bindi Cole, one of the triumphant plaintiffs, would never, ever have been denied service in the front bar of a quieter, whiter pub than the Champion, he will not put the question. Too dangerous now, legally too risky. Who but Bolt has had the balls to say the emperor has no clothes, and that the exposed skin is so often no darker than a Greek’s? Certainly nobody at the ABC or The Age, where it must have been a day of unsettling internal dialogues. Yippee, the dominant voice would have cried, that Bastard Bolt got his! But what of us and the opinions we express? Might we be next? Expect tomorrow’s editorial to begin by deploring Bolt for what he is and what he wrote, with the rest an exercise in nuanced incoherence. On matters of race, once you have mastered maudlin impotence, it is by far the best policy not to care enough to have a point of view, especially one that might see you sued.

And that is why we need the Champion, as a reminder that the problem, the real problem, has nothing to do with educated self-promoters who know how to get the grants and play the system. They can look after themselves, as it seems they have all been doing, hurt feelings and all.

But the poor bastards who made the Champion their second home, what of them? They have been moved on but are still out there, high on smack in Smith Street, pissed to the gills and just as quarrelsome in the dirt of the Fink’s dry riverbed, bearing bruises and offering sex for a flagon on the outskirts of Ceduna and a thousand other outposts of shame.

Do you think those children of the Champion – grandchildren and greatgrandchildren by now -- will be celebrating tonight in the long grass, breaking out the cheese and pinot gris, doing a little networking, sizing up the opportunities for a grant to shoot an SBS documentary about the day Bolt had his ears boxed?

Not a chance. The Champion is gone and for too many whites, the old problem, and still the real problem, has been largely pushed from sight. Now, thanks to Judge Mordy, it will be perilous even to speak of it.

Justice? We have not seen that today. Not for open debate or common sense, and certainly not for those who need it most.

UPDATE: "Emerging Indigenous artist" Bindi Cole talks about herself and Aboriginality. Have the barf bag ready at about the 3 minute mark.

Bolt Guilty Of Free Speech

THE news is just breaking on the radio. Andrew Bolt is said to have been found of guilty of writing some columns that really annoyed a few people whose ethnic backgrounds, real or confected, put them on a protected pedestal.

This is serious.

UPDATE: According to ongoing reports, ex-Labor candidate and Labor-appointed judge, Mordy Bromberg, has ruled that "the way Bolt went about writing his columns" -- the radio reporter's words --  settled his guilt.

Why is an enemy of free speech on the bench?

Why is Premier Ted Baillieu not cleaning out the courts, putting the Labor-appointed hacks, lickspittles and be-wigged totalitarians out to pasture? (UPDATE: Several readers point out Bromberg is a federal judge. Apologies for allowing the growing frustration with a state Liberal leader to spill into this post.)

Why aren't we pouring into the streets with pitchforks and flaming brands to defend the right to offend the terminally precious?

Why aren't clients of the lawyers who handled the prosecution pro bono taking their business elsewhere?

Anger isn't enough. Take a tip from the left. Get active. Defy wicked laws. Get in their faces.

Now Let's Hear From Milne

ANDREW BOLT has broken his silence, apparently having made peace with News Ltd brass. He expresses his gratitude for the permission, finally, to say his piece, while also suggesting by inference that John Hartigan was out of line in yanking Glenn Milne’s column. There are mentions of the threats, uttered or implied, hanging over the company and, almost as a form of punctuation in the early paragraphs of his post, repeated assertions that neither he nor News Ltd believe Gillard guilty of tickling the union till. Never that, good heavens no! It is all a question of what the affair with the light-fingered Bruce Wilson says of Gillard’s judgment then, and what her tolerance for the lightly-trousered Craig Thomson says about it now – a perspective that must have soothed News Ltd’s anxious lawyers.

Only a clairvoyant will know if Bolt exercised a diplomatic restraint in addressing his employer’s capitulation to Theodora with a telephone, to recast one of Gough Whitlam’s better lines, but if that is the case he need feel no guilt, because what he has done is actually quite remarkable. How many newsroom types have ever threatened to quit over a matter of principle?  The brave Leunig, so beloved of those who hate Bolt, certainly did nothing of the kind when the Age refused to publish his foul equation of Israel with Nazi Germany. If readers can name any ink-stained martyrs for principle, please do so in comments.

And there is something else about Bolt’s column today, a little unintended irony in his mention of Gillard having “exploited Britain's News of the World phone hacking scandal to threaten News Limited with inquiries that might force it to sell some of its papers”, an assault that has never seen the company “so politically vulnerable”.

Well, what if News Ltd did not own so many papers? Gillard would have had to spend many more sixpences calling many more editors and publishers to suppress both the original column and any hostile reporting in rival publications of her gagging reflex. Labor and the Greens want News Ltd. broken up because they believe a fragmented empire will be easier to intimidate and control. As has been the case with so many of their other policies and predictions, they could be in for a shock if that dream is realised.

From Retreat To Rout

ANY military man will tell you it can be much more dangerous to retreat than advance. Panic sets in, order breaks down and fatal vulnerabilities are exposed, leaving even the best troops to be isolated, overrun and put to the sword. When the rout is over, the most lackluster foe will survey the butcher’s harvest and feel emboldened to attack again. It is a lesson News Limited appears not to have grasped, as today’s escalating assault on The Australian by our PM’s left-flank irregulars all too clearly demonstrates. 

Just to recap the details – or, rather, what appear to be the details: The Australian published a column by Glenn Milne dealing with Julia Gillard, her crooked former boyfriend and allegations that misappropriated union funds were poured into, amongst other things, renovations to the couple’s purported Fitzroy love nest. Something in the story was incorrect, and the PM was soon howling down the phone lines at News Ltd. chieftain John Hartigan. The column was pulled, an abject apology published -- and that retreat has set the stage for a humiliating rout which, in turn, opens the field for a further and perhaps even more damaging offensive. If the best defence is offence, the besieged and beleaguered Gillard government now has the momentum to rally its supporters and push back on several fronts. 

At the Herald Sun, where Andrew Bolt, aired similar allegations over the weekend, his blog’s current lead item is an opaque expression of discontent with, one assumes, News Ltd.’s generals and their legal batmen, who appear to have ordered his item be stripped of all quotes from an affidavit alleging wrongdoing by Gillard and her light-fingered former swain, Bruce Wilson. “No politics until further notice,” writes Bolt. “Principles to weigh up. Faith to keep. Sorry.” Today saw none of the Herald Sun blogger’s customary early morning updates, the only additions to the site being hundreds of reader comments requesting further explanation. Nor has he posted an item since.

Bolt is quite clearly ropable, but he is, as yet, holding his tongue. Asked on MTR this morning to explain the cryptic post, he declined. Later, during a phone-in on 2GB with sparring partner Paul Howes, he was more stroppy but equally unforthcoming (audio here). His tone of voice suggested a fellow with a letter of resignation in his pocket, although that is but a Bunyip’s intuition. (Bolt has since updated the post and promised to write more tomorrow)

While Bolt is unhappy, Gillard’s snipers are picking and blasting targets at will. The Phage, for example, recaps the Milne column, repeats the original allegation and provides the low-down on our PM’s righteous fury. Being an ardent ally of the PM has done nothing for the paper’s circulation or financial security, but it certainly makes for fast and reliable lines of communication. (By the way, to see how thoroughly Fairfax is tearing the arse from its own trousers, consult the annual report. The numbers for The Age and Silly on page 50 are shocking enough, but the EBITDA figure three pages later for the Financial Review – down 51.7% on the year – is a testament to staggering managerial incompetence.)

Crikey, which yesterday did truth a favour by failing to appear, summoned the wherewithal to grunt, strain and squeeze out an analysis by Andrew Crook, whose prose was the very picture of delight. The Milne piece was “error-filled”, the allegations long ago “discredited” etc etc. Crook managed to name only one perhaps-significant error – the assertion that Wilson and his doxy shared the same address. The excised portions from Bolt’s post said the couple kept their own addresses, and that the AWU had been billed for renovation work on both. If the scandal is the alleged rorting, Milne’s error would seem to be of no consequence whatsoever. All of which makes The Australian’s retraction and News Ltd’s retreat all the more curious. Hartigan was evidently so in terror of whatever Gillard threatened, the apology also was published in the Herald Sun, which did not run Milne’s column in the first place!

Those who missed Milne's column can find it here, where allrightallright has done the transcription.

If Hartigan hoped to calm things down, make nice with the woman who might soon order an inquiry into the ownership of Australia’s media, it was another ham-fisted move. There have been a lot of those lately, starting with the inept firing of Herald Sun editor, Bruce Guthrie, which has so far produced a scathing critique from the bench of News executives’ veracity under oath, a best-selling book and a former company insider who is making a fresh career out of telling tales and bagging his old bosses. An amicable parting or pre-trial settlement with a confidentiality agreement would have avoided all that. Now there is further evidence of things being not being quite right atop of News Ltd. Consider this paragraph from the Phage report on the Milne column’s disappearance:

The Age understands Ms Gillard was furious not only because the column included a false claim, but because she had been led to believe by Mr Hartigan that News Ltd newspapers were not intending to pursue the decades-old story of her former conman lover.

If true – and the Age’s loyalty to Labor makes you think that nugget came straight from the PM’s office – then one of the most oft-repeated charges against News Limited has just been confirmed: It cuts quiet deals with the powerful to benefit News Ltd. That may not be the case, but it is not a good look, not a good look at all – and now it is out there, grist for every journalism department’s academic mill.

Did Hartigan’s acumen go AWOL when he ordered the retraction? Was he in something of a panic, temporarily dazed and disoriented? He would have known that Four Corners was about to devote last night’s programme to the News of The World stink in Britain, so perhaps he had that looming distraction in the corner of his eye. It could easily have been a night of bruises – the possibility of a news report at 7 o’clock, a bashing from 7.30 and then Four Corners’ megadump of sleaze.

And finally there is the biggest question of the lot: Why retreat at all? If, as seems likely, Milne published only a minor error, it could have been easily corrected and the focus on our PM’s association with corrupt unionists allowed to stand. As for Andrew Bolt, there has been no suggestion of inaccuracy concerning his blog post, which actually corrected Milne on the matter of separate addresses. Why was Bolt’s coverage wrapped up and muffled in the same blanket edict to back off and back off quicksmart?

Gillard might have threatened a libel action, but would she have followed through? Craig Thomson took that route and dropped his case against Fairfax at the court’s door. Would Gillard have been any more eager to go on the sworn record about Town Modes, her grifting ex-squeeze and what she knew and when she knew it? Not a chance.

This could all be very sad for those hoping to see an early election. Now the government’s media militia can point to the Milne debacle and claim that any further attention to Craig Thomson is but more of the sleazy, error-riddled same. It will not be true, but it does not have to be for Tony Jones, Michelle Grattan and other camp followers to take up the cry. 

And News? Well if Hartigan did have a deal to make sure News Ltd was not dismembered, he sure does not have one now. 

Here Comes The Judge

ANY day now Judge Mordecai Bromberg, failed candidate for Labor pre-selection, will rule if Andrew Bolt needs to be speared in the thigh or somesuch for ruffling the feelings of nine people who believe it a shocking and racist thing that others find it difficult to perceive them as they prefer to see themselves.

The case has received much attention, including this entry on the website of Victoria Museum:

Bolt’s posts imply that Aboriginal identity is solely related to biological or racial categorisation. For communities and Aboriginal people themselves, Aboriginality is a much deeper and much more complex question, related to cultural backgrounds, familial and community ties, and self-identification.

Because the Museum takes very seriously the obligation to expand public knowledge– always in the fairest and most impartial way, mind you -- it has helpfully augmented its coverage of the trial with a video interview with photographer Bindi Cole, proud Aboriginal woman and one of the aggrieved nine, who explains why much of her shutterbuggery is inspired by  “how I was perceiving the world perceiving me.”

There appears no way to embed the video, so readers might wish to check the link., where they will also find Cole family snapshots of Bindi’s father and proud Aboriginal granny. The family resemblance, generation by generation, is very strong.

As for poor Judge Bromberg, Crikey reports – and The Australian relays -- that he can expect an all-out assault by the villainous Murdoch press if the decision goes against the News Limited’s star columnist.

Bolt has remained steadfastly silent about his legal travails, the day-by-day details of the case and the issues of identity at the centre of it, lest he land in trouble with the law. Does that same constraint not apply to publicly funded institutions, internet newsletters and plaintiffs?

Silence Is Golden

ONE of parenthood’s joys (there are not many) is the satisfaction to be drawn from knowing when to remain absolutely silent. One might, for example, look up from a bedtime storybook at just that the precise instant when the apple-cheeked fruit of your loins falls at long last into merciful slumber. Hush, that hard-wired wisdom whispers, don’t make a sound or your precious cherub will stir, scream and be possessed by Satan once more, for it is only Old Scratch who could sentence an adult to nightly readings over the course of interminable months of Tiger Tim (who belonged to Mr Bingo’s circus) and the mystery of Clarence Camel’s missing hump. 

If an ill-advised word were to set Junior stirring as you slip from the room all hope of a long glass and, if you have behaved yourself, a short smooch with your progeny’s co-producer, will be banished by a renewed bout of fury and maniacal screeching.

As the young ’uns grow and explore their little worlds, silence will also best suit those moments when naughtiness is in progress. Yes, the Black Dog cannot possibly think kindly of having had a crayon stuffed up its sniffable end, but it is a placid creature and unlikely to make too much of a fuss. So why should you? The lad’s fascination with canine hindquarters will fade, and to rebuke him just now could be to sow the seeds of mental infirmity in later life. The scars, the shame, the remembered sounds of a father’s fury – they might in years to come propel an adolescent into the arms of leftist causes, for it is the unresolved conflict with authority figures that appears to inspire so many pro-carbon tax chanters, G20 protesters, and commenters at the Phage and ABC websites. Let the Black Dog work it out, so to speak, and utter not a word of rebuke in the meantime. When relatives are bitten, aunts refused a kiss, teachers kicked or food flung, emit not a peep. It can only make things worse.

This was the philosophy followed for the most part at the Billabong, certainly when Mrs Bunyip was out shopping and the Professor was handling parental duties, and it is good to see that others are now embracing the wisdom of saying nothing when little darlings get out of line. Case in point, of course, is the Fairfax press, where editors of the old, stern school might have been moved to inform their readers of Larissa Behrendt’s dark words about another woman of a good deal more colour. Those days are gone, as are all the dinosaur news editors and their outmoded notions of what constitutes a matter of public interest. Unable to grasp the nuanced, post-modern sensibility that these days determines what news is fit to print, the old guard was disappeared. By their reckoning a story was worth reporting if people were likely to talk about it. Today, it is those very stories, the ones that might set people to chattering, which need to be spiked, especially if the subject of that talk happens to be a very special and favourite person.  

So far, as Keith Windschuttle points out, not a word about the Behrendt tweet has passed into print at The Phage, The Silly, The Finis or online. Some may see this as sniveling cowardice with a dash of shame, as the Fairfax papers have been amongst the high-flying Ms Behrendt’s most ardent supporters, admirers and publicists. Reporting her bitchy eruption could only prompt public speculation that all the prior ink and adulation were squandered on an arrogant, intolerant and undeserving wretch.

Worse might be the consequences for Behrendt, whose profile the Fairfax papers have so assiduously polished. With a Labor-appointed judge about to rule on Behrendt’s gripe with Andrew Bolt exercise of free speech, the knowledge that she is herself quite capable of giving offence might colour his decision. And the Behrendt fan club couldn’t have that, not at all! As The Age reported only weeks ago, it is Bolt who is so dangerous, not the lovely Larissa, who makes such a fine lunch companion and recipient of literary awards.

The Fairfax papers’ quite sensible decision to wish away the matter, to excise from their version of the public record all mention of a favourite’s little sin, cannot be criticised. Having trimmed and pruned their readerships to that smallish slice of the population which shares the editors’ and writers’ enlightened perspectives on all things, an achievement commemorated daily in the echo chamber of the Silly and Phage letters pages, many of those remaining subscribers would have found even the merest mention of Behrendt’s comment deeply upsetting – moreso, one suspects, than the comment itself. Heavens, they might have refrained from picking up their gratis copies of the Phage and Silly at the local fair-trade gymnasium, organic coffee shop and sugarless bakery or bicycle emporium.

Traditionalists like Windschuttle can carp about bias and censorship, but Fairfax understands its remaining audience, which it can thank for being where it is today.

As for Behrendt, whose reputation Fairfax must hope its silence has saved, she will continue to be available for honors, grants, appointments and, of course, lunch with her many in-house admirers.