O'Neil Before Him

HAVING invested its money in 22 episodes of Crownies, an entertainment Mark Scott regards as “great Australian content”,  a cash-strapped ABC is said to be mulling some very hard economies. After tonight’s Q&A, one obvious target must be that show’s booking department, which clearly let the team down. The panel was stacked, as usual -- they got that bit right. But somebody made the terrible mistake of inviting the ferocious Brendan O’Neil from Spiked, and his fellow panelists’ discomfort at encountering an actual, ardent defender of free speech was palpable. There were moments when a seething Tanya Plibersek was caught in hatchet-faced profile, narrowed eyes casting daggers at the tormenter who kept taking apart her fuzzy fascism, one euphemism for censorship at a time.

On O’Neil’s other side, ABC favourite Stephen Mayne did a better job, most of the time, of hiding a rising gorge. But O’Neil and his sentiments eventually proved too much, prompting a series of ejaculatory eruptions about the wicked Murdochs. Eventually Mayne just had to blurt it out, couldn’t hold it a second longer – free speech and an unfettered press really do need hard scrutiny and, quite possibly, a few controls. This from a journalist, mind you, a journalist whose particular loathing for News Limited blinds him to irony. What might have happened to Jeffed.com, Mayne’s original exercise in ego and annoyance, if then-Premier Kennett had been armed with the right tools for swatting gadflies? If that thought occurred to him, it was driven very quickly from mind by the irresistible lure of taking Rupert down a peg or two. Mayne made a sad spectacle -- all the sadder for knowing in his heart that he would trade free speech for the pleasure of a good, old-fashioned pile-on.

And it just kept getting better – or worse if you happen to be the worker who opted to include that question emailed to Christine Nixon, the one asking if she enjoyed dinner as Victoria went up in flames. She’s a broken creature, you could tell by her limp admission of “mistakes” and the sagging, defeated way she didn’t even bother to try the nobody-loves-a-chubby routine. The former police commissioner was ever a font of bright and shiny words, except last night they sagged limp and empty, an old woman’s drawers being hung out with their owner to dry.

If Q&A could match tonight’s effort just a bit more often, that would be the best argument for its retention. It won’t, of course. Next week, expect orthodoxy’s return – and that will surely be bad news for one booker and one email-sifter, who are almost certain for the chop. Pity about those pink slips, but as Stephen Mayne was telling us, such disrespect for that which you and all your best mates hold dear really is beyond the pale.

Big Kev Redux

IF YOU plan on catching Q&A tonight, try not to think about this TV classic:

Also, make a point to banish all thoughts about hairdressers, appointments with hagiographers, gastro-pub meals or 173 Victorians incinerated before dessert hit the table. Instead, to get in that ABC state of mind, focus on gender discrimination, "fattism" and how, with some people, it is always somebody else's fault.

Two Pods in The Pee

ONE OF the more interesting things about smoking is the opportunity to observe the way butts discarded in the toilet often find each other. Not always – sometimes they will sulk in separate corners – but surprisingly often, and for no apparent reason, they are drawn to float butt-to-butt or side-to-side, like little logs on a Canadian river. What mystery of physics arranges these matings must remain a riddle until the grants and peer-reviewed literature are in, but it seems noxious discards’ mutual attraction also applies in the wider world.

The proof: On August 3 in Melbourne, Julia Gillard will launch former Police Commissioner Christine Nixon’s biography 

UPDATE: As a reminder of Nixon’s oily dissembling, let us re-visit her testimony before the Bushfires Royal Commission on April 14, 2010. Nixon is being asked to explain details omitted from an accounting of her social calendar provided at an earlier appearance:

Q: The statement makes no mention of a meal at a pub; do you agree with that?

NIXON: I think that, looking at the statement, it

was prepared with the best knowledge I can at the time…

Q: When you prepared this statement had you forgotten that you went to the Metropolitan [Hotel]?

NIXON: Look, I didn't think it was relevant, and what I understood I was being asked about was my role as the Police Commissioner and the other two responsibilities I had on the day. Whether I had a meal at home and prepared it myself or whether I had a meal otherwise, I didn't see as being important….

Q: …But you have just agreed, Ms Nixon, that the omission of the reference to the meal out in the statement was a matter of choice. You decided it was not relevant?

NIXON: I did.

Q: I suggest to you, you deliberately omitted reference to the meal being out at a pub both in your statement and in your oral evidence because you didn't want to reveal that you had gone out for a meal rather than stayed at home?

NIXON: Look, I don't agree with that point at all. It was an arrangement that was easily cancelled. It wasn't significant. It wasn't a celebration….

And thus it was that Victoria’s senior disaster official left the bushfires command centre to stuff her face while 173 Victorians were being burned to death. As the full transcript makes clear, for three full hours on the terrible night of February 7, 2009, not a single emergency official bothered to contact Nixon, presumably because those at the command HQ realized her wisdom was not worth the cost of a phone call.

Is it any wonder a pair of oleaginous specimens like Nixon and our PM enjoy such mutual esteem?

Tomorrow's Bacon?

IT’S quite a drive back to the tent on the upper Jamieson, where the trout have been all but leaping into the Professor’s creel and demanding to be eviscerated, but there is time before losing connectivity for one last quick thought in regard to Victoria’s Police Commissioner Simon Overland. It is just a gossipy little tidbit, gleaned several months ago over a nice red with well-informed companions at a well-known Melbourne club, where the genuine shrunken heads on display in the lounge always bring to mind Wayne Swan and other members of the Gillard cabinet.

In any case – whisper, whisper – one of those present predicted that Overland’s days were numbered, and not for the obvious reason: that he is a better-looking version of former boss Christine Nixon, who wrote the book on tickling crime stats. The allegation that he has been doing more of the same may or may not serve as the catalyst for Overland’s ouster but, if you believe the small talk, a more pertinent reason will have to do with some very rash comments he is said to have made to a member of the then-Opposition some 18 months ago.

The member had been doing some research on morale and manpower allocations in the police when the phone rang in his Spring Street office. Overland was on the other end and, if you can believe the Professor’s informant, his tone was particularly stern.

“I know everyone you are talking to, how long you talk to them and what you are talking to them about,” was the way the informant quoted the chief commissioner.

That alleged comment was taken as a threat, so much so that the member of parliament is said to have gone out,  immediately purchased a throw-away mobile phone and stopped using the parliamentary email system for his more sensitive correspondence. Of course, back then John Brumby’s travesty of a government was expected to be returned. It wasn’t, and while Victorians have cause to rejoice at being rid of governance by spin and statistical sleight of hand, Overland may not be feeling quite so sanguine.

There is hope for the man, though. The supermarket here in sleepy Jamieson lacks a security guard. If Overland were to concentrate, think really hard, he might just rise to the challenge of protecting the TimTams from sugar-crazed old ladies. And if he fails he can always doctor the inventory numbers.