Robert Manne Writes...

WHILE traipsing about the countryside last week, terrorising fish and cadging soft beds off rustic friends, a note from Bundoora Bob lobbed in the letterbox:

Bunyip,
You seem intelligent if rather, hmmm, right-wing. Did you realise that I have written an extensive comment on the subject of Keith Windschuttle and Robert Edgerton? It is available via The Monthly website. Indeed it has been available there for years. So far not one Windschuttle supporter has commented on it. Nor of course has Windschuttle, who refuses me the opportunity to write about his egregious articles on Aboriginal history in Quadrant, a magazine I edited for eight years. My challenge to you, Bunyip, is to read my Windschuttle/Edgerton analysis and then offer your views. I wait your response with keen anticipation. -- Robert Manne

Alas, Robert, you will be waiting a little longer - and it will not be, as you suggested in a subsequent note, because censorship is the policy at the Billabong. While it will come as a surprise, the reference to your tussle with Windschutle was not primarily about you or, indeed, the current Quadrant editor. Both of you are big boys and can duke it out amongst yourselves -- although Windschuttle may be at something of a disadvantage in that the news and opinion pages of the Fairfax press do not put themselves immediately at his disposal, as they appear to do with you.

Just to recap, the point of the post was to note the different tacks Fairfax takes when investigating accusations of plagiarism. When Ross Gittins, one of its own, lifts and borrows, Fairfax rationalises with an enthusiasm that puts the wiliest Jesuit to shame. When it is a demon of the right on the receiving end, sim-salah-bim, it is on the front page before the author can say "I'm off to edit The Drum".

Robert, there is much pain in this cruel world, and the Professor has no desire to boost its volume by denying you the attention to which, conditioned by ABC and Fairfax's feting, you have come to regard as your due. So, Bob, what about a bargain? Your counterpunch at Windschuttle will get a good look at the Billabong if you undertake to give an opinion on Ross Gittins' plagiarism and his deputy editor's defence of it. The respective analyses will be published on each other's websites and there will be no censoring of reader comments. (Only salty language is censored here, by the way.)

What could be fairer? Gittins is one of your statist allies, and the Professor is kindly disposed to Windschuttle. Let this be an interesting exercise in dispassionate analysis.