Bully claims: No proof so how about an apology?
THE ABC was relentless in its pursuit of claims of bullying in the Liberal Party. Now they’ve been disproved, Australians deserve an apology from the public broadcaster, argues Andrew Bolt. Here’s why.
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FOR three weeks the ABC obsessively pushed fake news: claims that the federal Liberals had a culture of bullying, particularly of female MPs.
So how about an apology, now that this fake news has gone splat?
True, female politicians from the Liberals’ Turnbull Left did recklessly feed this story, which was also run by other media outlets.
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It all started when Julia Banks announced she’d quit politics now that Malcolm Turnbull wasn’t prime minister, adding she was sick of the bullying.
Soon other Liberals MPs also complained: former foreign minister Julie Bishop, Kelly O’Dwyer, Lucy Gichuhi and Linda Reynolds.
But why were they believed so unquestioningly when not once did any of them give a single example of this alleged bullying? There was never a what, when, where or how.
The ABC was driven so crazy by this lack of evidence that it had one reporter — widely believed to be political editor Andrew Probyn — pose as a nasty Liberal bully, hiding behind a potplant, to dramatise the only (unattributed) claim of bullying the ABC ever found.
This was an anonymous allegation that during the leadership challenge that toppled Turnbull, supporters of Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton “would enter colleagues’ offices uninvited, and sometimes first thing in the morning and refuse to leave unless they signed the petition to bring on a spill”.
Except, as the ABC admitted, they did leave, after all, with petitions unsigned. As an example of bullying, this was beyond pathetic.
And now there’s nothing. Lucy Gichuhi, who last week threatened to name the bullies in Parliament, now won’t.
In fact, Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday said Gichuhi had “told me very plainly that she was not bullied by anybody here in Canberra, in relation to that (the leadership challenge)”.
Linda Reynolds, who only two weeks ago claimed there had been “bullying”, yesterday backed off, too.
“These are not issues which need to be, or should be aired publicly,” she said, adding: “As far as I know, there have been no formal complaints made … Scott Morrison says it is not an issue.”
For three weeks the media ran with this beat-up, without a single example of bullying to back it up.
Here is identity politics at work again: women with an axe to grind whingeing about male bullies and being believed by a media too scared of seeming sexist to ask for proof.
Originally published as Bully claims: No proof so how about an apology?