So, how did ABC News Breakfast handle this abundance of news on the morning of Friday 4 October? Well, it seemed to spend a large amount of time fawning over Tony Armstrong who has left the program after three years in order to undertake a special project next year somewhere in the ABC.
Media Watch Dog maintains that the ABC resembles the Eagles song Hotel California in that you can check out but you can never leave.
There were lots of photos and video of the 35-year-old Armstrong channelling a 15-year-old. And lotsa footage of ABC types fawning over the soon-to-be departed.
For his part, Comrade Armstrong got to have his revenge. Presenting ABC TV Media Watch 30 September, Janine Perrett nailed your man Armstrong for doing commercial television voice-overs advertising insurance products. Sure, Armstrong did so without official permission. But in view of such problems as the taxpayer funded public broadcaster’s lack of transparent diversity, it seems a minor matter.
But, like so many journalists, Comrade Armstrong is hyper-sensitive to criticism. When Armstrong was handed a jar of coffee as a giftwith the brand name hidden, presenter Michael Rowland declared that the program would not name the brand. Whereupon Armstrong ripped off the brand and revealed all, declaring “Actually I don’t care. I’ve already been done by Media Watch – Nescafe.”
Whereupon your man Armstrong burst into loud laughter at his own joke. [Just as well someone thought it funny. MWD Editor.]
Newly appointed ABC chair Kim Williams sees the need for the taxpayer funded public broadcaster to just put more real news into ABC News. It would seem he has a job in front of him.
CAN YOU BEAR IT?
Question everything questions everything except the recycling of non-funny comedian Wil Anderson
Thank you to the avid reader from Emu Swamp who drew MWD’s attention to the ABC’s press release of 10 September 2024 announcing that the ABC’s news/comedy panel Question Everything will return on Wednesday 9 October. Like many Australians, MWD was not eagerly awaiting Question Everything’s return so would have otherwise missed the news.
The press release claims that Question Everything will be a training ground for new talent, “in the hopes that one day not every show on the ABC will need to be hosted by Wil Anderson.”
This is reminiscent of comedian Shaun Micallef’s announcement when he returned with a new show this year, after the end of the ABC’s Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell: “Two years ago I resigned from television to make way for bright new talent here at the ABC. As it turned out, there wasn’t any, so I’m back doing a new show.” It seems that the ABC’s latest response to criticism about continually recycling the same hosts is to keep doing it but make little jokes about it.
While the announcement came in the form of one of those “wacky” press releases that tries to be funny while telling you what date the show airs, it does suggest the ABC genuinely thinks no other Australian comedian is equipped with the unique skills Wil Anderson possesses to deliver pre-written jokes on a dull panel show about the news or advertising or whatever the ABC has deemed misinformation this week. Anyone who has seen one of the many shows hosted by Wil Anderson will not have mistaken him for a once-in-a-generation talent, let alone a multi-generational one.
MWD notes that programs on commercial networks, for example, The Project and Taskmaster, have given several younger comedians hosting roles, and they’ve done it without a press release talking as if they’re doing some great service to the nation. Of course, this is in relation to the ABC, so “younger” means under 50.
Based on previous episodes of Question Everything, it would be a great training ground for someone who wants to learn to be more smug, less funny and complain that things they don’t like are disinformation – in other words, perfect training for a future ABC employee. Well done Question Everything.
The announcement ends with a comment from co-host Jan Fran:
I can’t wait to laugh along with the breaking news of the week. That is, when I’m not making the headlines myself with my shock split from Ben Affleck.
How helpful for the press release to give potential viewers a preview of the calibre of jokes they can expect from the upcoming season.
Time will tell if the ABC’s quest to eventually have a non-Wil Anderson host will eventuate. MWD recalls its prediction from its 24 March 2023 issue, that Wil Anderson will be presenting ABC programs in the year 2123, in the form of a reanimated corpse, or with his head in a jar fused to a robot. Either way – Can You Bear It?
Nine’s David Crowe – a Dutton antagonist – gives the Liberal Party more advice
Can you believe it? David Crowe – Nine Newspapers’ chief political correspondent who is a regular panellist on the ABC TV Insiders program – is still giving advice to Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party. This despite the fact that he is a Dutton antagonist who is invariably wrong when it comes to making predictions about the Coalition.
Remember when in 2019 Comrade Crowe had a book all ready to go to the printer titled “Venom – The Vendettas and Betrayals that Broke a Party”? It was written on the assumption that Scott Morrison’s Coalition would lose the 2019 election. It won. So, your man Crowe then changed the title to Venom: Vendettas, Betrayal and The Price of Power – and continued on as a star journalist for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald and an Insiders panellist.
Then, on April 19, 2023, Comrade Crowe wrote a column on the Voice. He maintained that Peter Dutton’s decision that the Liberal Party would oppose the Voice referendum was equivalent to “pointing their aircraft towards the ground and hitting the accelerator”. Hopelessly wrong again. The Yes case obtained 40 per cent of the national vote and failed in every state.
And now your man Crowe is at it again – giving (free) advice to Peter Dutton and the Coalition.
Writing in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on 27 September – under the title “It’s your final quarter, Mr Dutton”, Comrade Crowe gave the Liberal Party leader advice about the need to get some more policies out. He concluded his column by commencing with what Labor tacticians regard as Dutton’s weakness:
Labor tacticians see this as a flaw that will weaken Dutton when the election nears. They regard his poll gains as a protest vote on the cost of living. This is not proof that voters are buying what Dutton is selling, they say. After all, nobody is sure what he is selling just yet. The Labor tacticians could be totally wrong, but the Liberals are certainly taking their time. If Dutton wants to kick with the wind in the final quarter, he’ll need to run a little faster.
So, there you have it. Despite his total misjudgement in 2019 and 2023, David Crowe is once again telling Peter Dutton what he “needs” to do. As indicated, it’s hard to believe this. More importantly – Can You Bear It?
Laura Tingle blames the Howard coalition government for Australia’s current housing crisis
It is Media Watch Dog’s melancholy duty (to borrow Robert Menzies’ terminology from 1939) to report that ABC TV 7.30’s chief political correspondent Laura Tingle is going on a W.E.B. As avid readers know, we mere mortals take holidays. But journalists have Well Earned Breaks with the emphasis on well-earned.
Ellie’s (male) co-owner was walking the said canine shortly after 10 pm on Monday 30 September when he heard MWD fave La Tingle talking to MWD fave David Marr. It was her regular slot on ABC’s Radio National’s Late Night Live (aka Late Night Left) titled “Laura Tingle’s Canberra” when Hendo heard the news.
To wit, that Canberra’s Tingle is going on a W.E.B. and won’t be back until Remembrance Day – i.e. Monday 11 November. It is not clear who will replace her. But this is traditionally a slot for a leftist comrade of the female gender.
In recent times, Karen Middleton (of The Guardian Australia) and Niki Savva (The Age/The Sydney Morning Herald) have stepped up. If Ellie’s (male) co-owner was a betting kind of bloke he would put his money on one of this leftist duo. But who knows? Perhaps LNL’s executive producer might commission the (very) late Marxist Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) – with a little help from the American psychic John Edward who is soon to visit Australia. Re which see MWD et al ad nauseam.
But MWD digresses – again. Laura (“Australia is racist”) Tingle is one of the many Peter Dutton antagonists who appear on ABC TV’s Insiders – along with Comrade Middleton and Comrade Savva and lots more. However, when talking to LNL presenter David Marr last Monday, she decided to fang former Liberal politicians John Howard and Peter Costello. Here’s how it happened. Let’s go to the transcript:
David Marr: How is the Coalition avoiding any blame for the, for the years they were in government? I mean, this [housing crisis] didn’t suddenly start in 2022.
Laura Tingle: Oh, look, I think it’s, people just have short memories David. I think it’s always the case, but it is – most housing analysts would sort of say that a lot of the problem that we’ve got now goes back to decisions taken by John Howard and Peter Costello. Not, not even the last Coalition government. When they [Howard/Costello] transformed the tax system in 2000 you’ll remember that they did a few things. One of them was to compensate for the GST they gave first homeowners, I think it was a $7,000 first home subsidy. And if you were buying a new home, it was $14,000. And, of course, those things tend to just immediately, immediately jack up the price of houses by, by that amount of money.
So, there you have it. Messrs Howard and Costello ceased being in office in late November 2007 – nearly two decades ago. But according to Comrade Tingle, the Howard government is primarily responsible for Australia’s housing crisis today – because the Howard government gave $7,000 to first home buyers in 2000. Can You Bear It?
[No, not really, now that you raise the matter. I note that La Tingle later went into sneering mode – referring to the “sainted John Howard and Peter Costello”. And there was I thinking that an essential requirement for being “sainted” was, er, being dead. But what would I know? MWD Editor]
Laura Tingle blames the Morrison government for Australia’s current housing crisis
While on the topic of La Tingle and housing, MWD recalls her recent appearance on Insiders. The date was 1 September. On this occasion, 7.30’s chief political correspondent and Peter Dutton antagonist was criticising the Coalition’s housing policy. Not the Coalition at the time of the Howard government – but the Coalition at the time of the Morrison government.
Earlier in the program, Liberal Party Senator Andrew Bragg had said that – in Tingle’s words – migration had skyrocketed and housing has slumped under the Albanese government.
La Tingle disagreed. She claimed that migration started to skyrocket as a result of “Coalition policies” and has “fallen quite significantly by changes that the [Albanese] government has already made to students on housing”. Comrade Tingle went on to blame the housing crisis on “supply chain issues, labour market issues”. Reference was then made to Senator Bragg’s comment that there had been a high intake of yoga teachers and a low intake of construction workers. Let’s go to the transcript:
Laura Tingle: … what was that about yoga teachers and builders?
David Speers: We’re bringing in too many yoga teachers, Laura.
Mark Kenny: That’s a bit of a stretch. [Laughter] Sorry, it is Father’s Day.
Laura Tingle: My mind is just reeling here, but so anyway, but I mean it. We do have to, if we’re going to have a sensible conversation about housing. We do actually have to look at the longer-term reason why this is happening.
It was all a bit of a joke, you see. Laura Tingle’s mind was “just reeling” about the idea that Australia might be allowing into the country more migrants who are yoga teachers than construction workers. But the claim is correct.
An article by Angus Thompson in The Sydney Morning Herald on 4 June 2024 commenced: “Yoga instructors, martial artists and dog handlers have beaten some construction trades in the nation’s priority for migrants, despite the dire need for workers to tackle the nation’s housing crisis”.
So, there you have it. Australia’s draft priority skills list for migrants has a higher number of yoga teachers than some construction trade workers. But La Tingle’s response was to experience a “head reel” and go into denial. Can You Bear It?
A BAD TASTE MOMENT
Keir Starmer’s Israeli Hostages error as a mere “diplomatic doozy”
One of the most evil occasions so far of the 21st century was the invasion of southern Israel by the terrorist Hamas organisation on 7 October. It led to the murder of some 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of another 240. This was the largest death toll of Jews in a single day since the demise of Nazi Germany in 1945. There were also instances of rape and torture.
It is not clear how many of the hostages – including infants and the elderly – are alive. But it is known, from those who have been freed or released, that the conditions of their captivity are appalling.
It was bad enough when, due to misreading an autocue, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza” and “the return of the sausages”. He immediately corrected it to “hostages”. It was a dreadful error – but it was an error. And the British prime minister did not laugh. Nor did any members of his audience at the 2024 Labour Party Conference.
Nonetheless, the ABC TV Insiders team – presenter David Speers, executive producer Samuel Clark – saw fit to run a “spoof” at the end of the program on 29 September. This is how Mr Speers, with a smirk on his face, introduced the clip from Sir Keir:
David Speers: Finally, we’re all guilty of the odd slip of the tongue. But this one was a diplomatic doozy. Sir Keir Starmer and the return of the sausages.
No, it was not a “diplomatic doozy”. It was an appalling, albeit unfortunate, error. And no – Sir Keir’s error did not warrant a laugh at the end of Insiders. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, amusing about the fate of Hamas’ hostages – alive or dead. Nothing at all.
NEW FEATURE: JOURNALISTS TALKING TO JOURNALISTS
Journalist La Trioli interviewed by Nine’s Jane Rocca about omelettes as a means of self-expression
Media Watch Dog just loves it when journalists talk to journalists about journalism. This is a common occurrence in the conservative free zone that is the ABC.
This is what occurred when ABC TV News Breakfast co-presenters Michael Rowland and Bridget Brennan announced on 24 September that ABC journalist Virginia Trioli would be dropping into the ABC studio in Melbourne’s inner-city Southbank to flog her book A Bit on the Side (Macmillan Australia). As MWD readers know, Virginia Trioli used to co-present ABC TV News Breakfast with Comrade Rowland. So, it was a sort of family reunion. Let’s go to the transcript:
Bridget Brennan: ... A tired Tuesday morning, that’ll wake us up. And so too is Virginia Trioli. She always brings the sun. Have you met her before?
Michael Rowland: Oh, Virginia Trioli, yes.
Bridget Brennan: Have you guys met? We’re going to introduce her in a couple of hours’ time when she comes on the couch to talk about her fabulous new book A Bit on the Side. It’s a really interesting blend of memoir and recollections and recipes as well. Because she’s a brilliant cook.
Michael Rowland: She [Trioli] says she wants to sub for you for half an hour.
Bridget Brennan: That’s absolutely fine. I might go have a nap.
Michael Rowland: For old times’ sake.
Bridget Brennan: I’ll get the expert in. This is her show...
It being Hangover Time, Ellie’s (male) co-owner decided not to wait for the interview. He had heard enough about the “brilliant” cook’s “fabulous” book. Groan.
Instead, Hendo checked out journalist Jane Rocca’s interview with the journalist Virginia Trioli for Nine Newspapers’ Sunday Life Magazine on 15 September. Jane Rocca had this to say:
A Bit on The Side is more memoir than cookbook, even though the domestic angle appealed more to Trioli, whose interest in food goes back to childhood. Throughout the book, we get glimpses into her life, all revolving around a dish, a food memory, a culinary hack. She also shares favourite recipes at her home in North Melbourne.
How about that? There are recipes. And there are favourite recipes that La Trioli makes at her home in inner-city North Melbourne. And then there is this:
Where actor Stanley Tucci brings glorious cinema to the table with his writing in Taste, and chef Nigella Lawson eloquently leans into the personal and emotive when she shares recipes, Trioli serves up a taste of both, further spiced with a reporter’s sensibility. Whether the topic is the finesse of French cooking or farm-to-table simplicity, she moves from the theoretical to the humorous with ease, using food as a means of self-exploration.
There’s a peppering of the intellectual know-it-all to her style – it wouldn’t be Trioli without it – but her academic dissection of the relevance of the egg in cinema, for example, is very entertaining. Using Stanley Tucci’s 1996 movie Big Night and the recent TV series The Bear, she cracks open a new way of looking at making an omelette. As a result, I watched Emily (Lily Collins) trying to make one in the new season of Emily in Paris in a whole new philosophical light.
What a load of verbal sludge. Believe it or not, La Trioli uses food as a means of self-exploration. How? Comrade Rocca doesn’t say. But there’s more.
Due to a Tucci film, Trioli-the-Cook has found a new way of looking at making an omelette. Josef Stalin is alleged to have said: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” But Rocca-the-Cook looks at omelette making in a new philosophical light – due to The Thought of La Trioli.
Later on, the reader (if readers there were) learns that Comrade Trioli “and her husband found themselves at the Carlton Wine Room, relishing some time together”. How fortuitous is that? Finding themselves together, that is, in Carlton.
It seems that Trioli-the-Cook is a much-travelled journalist/writer/cook. From inner-city North Melbourne to inner-city Carlton. Next stop, inner-city Fitzroy North or inner-city Collingwood where this duo would “find themselves” in Sandalista Central.
Flann O’Brien Prize
As avid Media Watch Dog readers are aware, this occasional segment is inspired by the Irish humourist Brian O’Nolan (1911-1966) – nom de plume Flann O’Brien – and, in particular, his critique of the sometimes incoherent poet Ezra Pound. By the way, your man O’Brien also had the good sense not to take seriously Eamon de Valera (1882-1975), the Fianna Fail politician and dreadful bore who was prime minister and later president of Ireland for far too long.
The Flann O’Brien Gong for Literary or Verbal Sludge is devoted to outing bad writing or incomprehensible prose or incoherent oral expression or the use of pretentious words – or a combination of all of the above.
Nine’s book reviewer Jonathan Green throws the switch to incoherent in reviewing Eric Beecher’s coverage of the Murdochs
Thanks to Melbourne inner-city writer and broadcaster Jonathan Green. Well, that’s how he was described on 28 September in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald where he reviewed Eric Beecher’s The Men Who Killed The News (Scribner, 2024). Re which see MWD 25 August 2024.
Your man Green used to feature regularly in MWD. That was when his ABC Radio National program Blueprint for Living – or was it “Blueprint for Annie Smithers’ Scones Recipes”? – used to go out at Hangover Time on a Saturday morning. This was around the time when the late Jackie (Dip Wellness, the Gunnedah Institute) used to take her (male) co-owner for a walk while he listened to ABC Radio National.
Now, alas, Comrade Green’s program airs at 1 pm on a Saturday – which is not one of Hendo’s fave dog-walking times. So, it was great to read your man Green’s review of Beecher’s book in Nine Newspapers. It was titled “The Rise of The Media Moguls”.
As it turned out, like Comrade Beecher, Comrade Green focused on the Murdochs – father Keith and son Rupert. This is what the review said about Keith Murdoch:
Sir Keith’s office is the scene for one of the book’s best and most telling anecdotes, told by a former Herald copy boy who took in his boss’s tea during a meeting with then prime minister Joseph Lyons. “I put the tea down on the big desk and went out through the door. As I went through it, I turned and there, with his hat in his hand, like a man seeking a job, stood the prime minister before Murdoch’s desk. As I shut the door, I heard the leader of the nation say: ‘Yes, sir’.”
Sure, this is a telling anecdote. But is the story true?
For starters, this is not the full quote as cited in Beecher’s book. The copy boy’s initial sentence is “Murdoch was still shouting and JA Lyons was standing before the desk”. This is taken out of the Green quote. The source is Sally Young’s Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires (NewSouth, 2019).
In fact, Sally Young’s source was Duncan Clarke’s 1962 book titled Meet the Press. Clarke recorded in 1962 what he said he heard some three decades earlier. Young writes that Clarke left the Herald in order to join the Communist Party of Australia and came to hate Lyons who left the Labor Party and helped form the United Australia Party. Clarke made allegations that Lyons was bribed to leave the Labor Party. As Young acknowledges, there was no evidence to support Clarke’s claim.
There is no evidence that Murdoch ran government policy during the prime ministership of Joseph Lyons during most of the 1930s – although he would have attempted to influence the Lyons government.
And this is how Jonathan Green concluded his review:
But journalism and its ongoing health is not the point. An informed polity capable of demanding responsible and serious democratic government very much is. Journalism may play that role, though this book reads a little like an obsequy for its most vigorous, albeit morally compromised, moment.
What comes next will be freed of the Murdoch era’s lip service to truth and journalistic responsibility, Beecher’s “loophole in democracy”. The potential in this new world for unseen psychological manipulation and the manufacture of a universe of bespoke and wilful mistruth is, momentarily, beyond imagining. That’s a prospect that makes one almost nostalgic for the century of misdeeds and manoeuvrings in Beecher’s book.
All very clever to be sure. But what does this mean? And why use words like “obsequy” and “bespoke” when “funeral” and “special” will do?
Literary Criticism
By Flann O’Brien
of Ezra Pound
My grasp of what he wrote and meant
Was only five or six %
The rest was only words and sound —
My reference is to Ezra £
Literary Criticism
By Ellie
of Jonathan Green
My grasp of what he wrote or meant
Was only four or five per cent
Words like “bespoke” – they’re just a con
The reference is to Comrade Jon
[Well done. When fact-checking your piece, I noted that Mr Green says this about himself on X: “Talks on the radio. Somewhere. Lapsed Meanjin editor. CarltonFC tragic. Typing on unceded Wurundjeri land. Making musings on Substack. he/him.” I was so impressed by Comrade Green’s honesty. But I wonder. If your man Green is living on unceded Wurundjeri land, why not return the land to its owners? Please don’t tell me that Jonathan G is into what is commonly called virtue signalling without real consequences, MWD Editor.]
Media Watch Dog’s Five Paws Award was inaugurated in Issue Number 26 (4 September 2009) during the time of Nancy (2004-2017). The first winner was ABC TV presenter Emma Alberici. Ms Alberici scored for remembering the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939 whereby Hitler and Stalin divided Eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union. And for stating that the Nazi-Soviet Pact had effectively started the Second World War, since it was immediately followed by Germany’s invasion of Poland (at a time when the Soviet Union had become an ally of Germany).
Over the years, the late Nancy’s Five Paws Award has become one of the world’s most prestigious gongs – rating just below the Nobel Prize and the Academy Awards.
The House of Reps corrects some spelling errors in Niki Savva’s speaker’s lecture – thanks to Ellie
There was enormous interest in “A Niki Savva Moment” in the previous issue of Media Watch Dog – see here.
MWD is the kind of blog which believes in “service” and is “here to help” – as some politicians are wont to say. This is what occurred in the last issue which revealed how Nine columnist Niki Savva used the House of Representatives Speaker’s Lecture to rant against the Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton and what she termed “the Murdoch mob”.
When extracts of the speech were published in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, the term “Murdoch mob” was replaced by “Murdoch empire”. Which suggests that Nine Newspapers’ editors are more committed to professional writing than the powers-that-be at the taxpayer funded House of Representatives. But there you go.
As avid readers will recall, MWD also pointed out numerous misspellings and some errors in the Savva Speaker’s Lecture. Now, MWD acknowledges its own “John Laws Deliberate Mistakes” segment – reflecting the fact that a lot of MWD is put together at Hangover Time. But MWD is of the view that the House of Representatives has the required staff to correct spellings and errors before material is placed on the Parliament House website for ever and a day.
It would seem that some of the good people at Parliament House read Media Watch Dog. Not long after the previous issue went out, Niki Savva’s speech was corrected in its online format.
On four occasions, Savva had referred to former Labor prime minister Jim Scullin as “Jim Scullen”. Corrections were also made to the spelling of Michelle Grattan, Laurie Oakes and Labor Party (since on one occasion the British/New Zealand spelling “Labour” was used).
Sure, Comrade Savva’s hopelessly wrong analysis of the Liberal Party vote at the 2022 election remains uncorrected. And her view that the Liberal Party “died” in 2022 remains in the speech. Which is fair enough because it is of value to trace the Thought of Savva through the ages.
But at least the House of Representatives has corrected the unprofessional and careless misspellings thanks, it seems, to Media Watch Dog. So MWD has decided to give Ellie a special Five Paws Award. Okay, she has four paws already. But a fifth will record the contribution made by Ellie and her (male) co-owner in correcting some howlers on the Parliament House website.
Ellie Hendo – Five Paws
DOCUMENTATION
Tim Minchin’s false memory re public shaming confession about Cardinal George Pell
There was enormous interest in the issue of 20 September which reported singer/songwriter Tim Minchin’s “In Conversation” with Nine journalist Thomas Mitchell. The event took place for the blog Good Weekend Talks. The date was 20 September 2024.
As MWD readers will recall, Comrade Minchin used the occasion to report that he had “been part of a massive public shaming with [Cardinal] Pell and stuff”. The reference was to Minchin’s song Come Home (Cardinal Pell) which referred to George Pell (1941-2023) as “scum”. It was first played on Network Ten and popularised on ABC TV.
In his download to Comrade Mitchell, your man Minchin expressed belated doubts about his “performative righteousness” with respect to Pell. Especially in view of the fact that the late Cardinal’s convictions for historical child sexual assault were quashed in a unanimous judgement of the High Court of Australia on 7 April 2020.
A reading of the High Court’s judgement in George Pell v The Queen demonstrates how the prosecution’s case fell apart in the High Court. Kerri Judd KC – the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions – put in a disastrous performance before the High Court. She could not explain how the alleged crimes could have taken place in a crowded cathedral when Pell was never alone.
The self-confessed “left-leaning progressive” Minchin used the occasion of his download to Mitchell to go into denial. He told listeners of the Good Weekend Talks podcast (if listeners there were) the following:
Tim Minchin: In my defence, or to my credit, I worked incredibly hard to make sure all I talked about in that song – by the way, people remember it as me accusing him [Pell] of being an abuser. Like, people have a massive false memory about that. People on the right, they’re like “Are you going to apologise for Pell, to Pell for calling him an abuser?” I’m like, I didn’t. It was nothing to do with that.
Minchin’s comment is simply false. Thanks to the avid reader who drew MWD’s attention to the tweet which Tim Minchin put out on 7 April 2020 immediately after the High Court’s unanimous decision in George Pell v The Queen:
@kenahodson Hey Ken. Not looking to continue this argument. I understand that Pell has been exonerated. I am sure you understand that there is still very good reason to doubt Pell’s innocence – of this & other crimes. But I just want to make sure you’ve read Witness J’s statement. Cheers
Hey Ken. Not looking to continue this argument. I understand that Pell has been exonerated. I am sure you understand that there is still very good reason to doubt Pell’s innocence - of this & other crimes. But I just want to make sure you’ve read Witness J’s statement. Cheers. pic.twitter.com/8HdzzJt0Os
— Tim Minchin (@timminchin) April 7, 2020
How about that? Tim Minchin told Nine’s Thomas Mitchell that those who say that he claimed that Pell was an “abuser” have a “false memory”. However, in a post sent out immediately after the High Court’s unanimous judgement, Minchin asserted that there was “still very good reason to doubt Pell’s innocence of this & other crimes”. He then referred to the only matter concerning which Pell had been tried – and concerning which the conviction was quashed. As to “other crimes” – Minchin did not say what they (allegedly) were.
Clearly, Minchin has a “false memory” about his own past statements.
[Well done. However, perhaps you should have put this in your hugely popular Can You Bear It? Segment. Just a thought. MWD Editor.]
* * * *
Until Next Time
* * * *
Gas deadlock won’t break without a policy short circuit
Australia’s energy transition to net zero will include a critical, albeit diminishing, role for gas. The government’s immediate challenge is to make that role clear and compelling.
The inside scoop on Jeffrey Epstein
I was his lawyer. I know things that court orders won’t allow me to disclose.
Israel is in a defensive war with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and engaged in hostilities with Lebanon. The United States presidential election is only a month away. There are demonstrations planned this weekend by Green/left advocates and Islamist radicals against Israel. Monday 7 October is the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel which led to the greatest mass murder of Jews in a day since Nazi Germany’s Holocaust. There is much news in Europe and a cost of living crisis in Australia. And more besides.