On New Year’s Day 2024, morale was relatively high since the Year of the Dragon was expected to usher in a time of professionalism and rational thinking.
However, that we live in a continuing vale of tears was evident as narcissism, anger, false prophecy, hyperbole, rudeness, intolerance, bad taste, double standards and ignorance prevailed over the land. On a monthly basis.
January
Leftist author Jane Caro welcomes the new year with a post on X declaring she is “blocking sanctimonious, creepy, misogynistic, human joy hating Christofascists on sight” and recommends all others “do the same”. There is no discernible change, probably because few, if any, know what she is on about. Nine columnist Jacqueline Maley enters 2024 declaring that Twitter “increased my contempt for humanity”.
February
The Australian Financial Review’s Rear Window column claims “spies in Canberra tell us (former Labor minister Stephen) Conroy has been an omnipresent odious smell wafting down the halls of parliament under the Albanese government”. Not to be outdone, Crikey contributor and non-funny comedian Tom Ballard asserts that “the Albanese government appears to have achieved the impossible: successfully polishing a turd”. The reference is to abolition of the full stage three tax cuts. Asked on the ABC TV documentary Nemesis what word springs to mind after “Peter Dutton”, Malcolm Turnbull replies “thug”.
March
The Monthly publishes its profile on newly appointed ABC chairman Kim Williams. Interviewed for the article, Phillip Adams opines: “I prefer Kim Jong-un to Kim Williams.” But Adams remains a resident near Scone, which is a long way from North Korea. ABC presenter Jonathan Green suggests a taxpayer-funded public broadcaster is a “voice for immutable truths”. Really. Crikey politics editor Bernard Keane writes that Donald Trump’s “cognitive decline makes Joe Biden’s look benign”. Enough said.
April
Former BBC Washington correspondent Nick Bryant comments in Nine newspapers that since Trump stands a good chance of returning to power, “the question of whether the United States is headed towards Civil War 2.0 no longer feels hyperbolic”. ABC television’s Compass highlights what turns out to be a soft profile on Antony Loewenstein, who presents as a Jewish atheist and critic of Israel. Titled Not in My Name, it covers Loewenstein’s claim that Israel was responding to Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, in Loewenstein’s name. And should not be doing so. Somewhat narcissistic, don’t you think?
May
ABC TV 7.30 political correspondent Laura Tingle advises the Sydney Writers Festival that Australia is “a racist country”. Tingle, however, rationalises her comment claiming she did not have the opportunity to put her remarks in context. At the same SWF, David Marr tells writer Melissa Lucashenko off stage that she is rude for having suggested, perhaps unfairly, that Marr should forward the royalties from his most recent book as reparations to Indigenous Australians.
June
Costa Georgiadis, the presenter of ABC TV’s Gardening Australia, tells Nine newspapers’ Good Weekend magazine “gardening is sexy … (it) is the ultimate release”. Thus joining the gardening band of hortosexuals. Former NSW Liberal Party energy minister Matt Kean links the challenge of climate change to the threat of Nazism during World War II and communism during the Cold War (in which nuclear war was a possibility). Kean is now chairman of the Climate Change Authority.
July
Commentator Quentin Dempster posts a warning on Elon Musk’s X. To wit: “With Trump/Project 2025 our American friends are at grave danger of turning their Country into Gilead (of The Handmaid’s Tale fame). Women will have no rights over their own bodies. Hope the women of America take a stand in November election.” Clearly most American women, who voted for Trump, do not follow Comrade Dempster. Nine journalist Maher Mughrabi criticises his colleague Peter Hartcher for condemning senator Fatima Payman’s decision to quit the Labor Party. He says Hartcher’s argument has disappeared up his own bum.
August
Nine columnist Niki Savva, a Dutton antagonist, writes in Nine newspapers about “Dutton’s clumsy dance of the seven veils on nuclear power”. Meaning he had not released details of his policy. Savva forgets that the original Dance of the Seven Veils was a strip tease act, which does not apply to someone who is allegedly without policy in the first place since they have nothing to take off.
September
Guardian Australia’s Amy Remeikis, who has since moved to the leftist Australia Institute, condemns landlords on Network 10’s The Project. Asked as to whom the anger of renters is directed, she blames capitalism, mostly, and those who uphold capitalism. It is later revealed that Remeikis herself rents out a property she part owns. Suggesting, perhaps, that capitalism is not so bad after all.
Melbourne media identity Jon Faine appears on the ABC’s Q+A playing down the extent of crime in Dandenong. He lives comfortably in inner-city Melbourne, about 35km from Dandenong.
October
The Saturday Paper (publisher Morry Schwartz, editor-in-chief Erik Jensen) supports independent senator Lidia Thorpe’s confrontation with the King during his recent visit to Parliament House. The paper editorialises: “Nothing Thorpe said is untrue; Charles sits on a throne of stolen land.” As the year ends, there is no evidence that Schwartz Media has returned its “stolen land” in the Melbourne inner-city suburb of Collingwood. On ABC Radio Sydney, Richard Glover suggests of a bad taste Puerto Rican joke told at a Trump rally in New York that “maybe this is the joke that changed history”. Meaning Trump might lose the election because of a bad joke.
November
7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson is one of several ABC journalists who have headed to the US for the presidential election, most of whom speak to other Australians and none of whom anticipates Trump’s substantial victory over Democrat candidate Kamala Harris. On the eve of the election, Ferguson tells RN Breakfast she would be “listening” to Ann Selzer’s polling in Iowa that favoured Harris. Selzer was hopelessly wrong. In the aftermath of the election, Nine columnist Hartcher prophesies: “The American people are now abandoning it (democracy) as a failed experiment.”
December
The year ends with a sense of bewilderment following reaction to ABC chairman Williams’ late November appearance at the National Press Club. Following his criticism of US podcaster Joe Rogan, Williams is criticised by, among others, billionaire Musk. Fair enough, it may be thought. But Williams describes the criticism as “demonic”. Which leads to discussion about whether the ABC chairman really believes in the Devil. Paul Barry concludes his decade-plus time as ABC Media Watch presenter by showing highlights of his Media Bites segment including footage of him presenting as an ageing clown at a six-year old’s birthday party.
And so, the media year ended on a somewhat unprofessional and irrational note.
Time to say bye-bye to the wokerati’s bullying tactics
Voters have had enough of being told how to think and how to behave and want to reassert more traditional values and attitudes that served them perfectly well.
Our values give us cause for optimism amid the terror, fear
Despite all the violence and hatred, I am still optimistic about Australia.