Did you know that some members of the LGBTI+ community do not feel at home on the Gold Coast? I confess to having been ignorant of that. I also only recently discovered the famous strip does not have a gay bar. I should have been aware given the ABC alerted us to this shameful cultural deficiency in March. Thankfully, it reported the fact again this week.
If you asked the average person in the street, chances are they would not consider the social life of Gold Coast gays, particularly their recourse to an exclusive form of licenced premises, to be in the top three of matters foremost on their mind. Fortunately, however, our national broadcaster will not let this go.
For example, as it reported earlier this year, the problem with the Gold Coast is it is “very masculine-driven,” according to a local drag queen who was bemoaning the absence of a gay bar. “It makes a lot of other gay people unaccepting of themselves, which leads into this toxic masculinity cycle,” she said.
This apparently leads to gays having to “dress down” their queerness. And this phenomenon could get a lot worse soon. “There are worries that the prospect of Israel Folau playing rugby league on the Gold Coast will further reinforce these attitudes,” wrote ABC features reporter Dominic Cansdale, referring to the former Wallaby who publicly subscribes to the biblical declaration that homosexuals and other sinners are destined for hell unless they repent.
Gold Coast queer artist Samuel Leighton-Dore is disconcerted by the announcement the Southport Tigers would sign Folau, telling Cansdale he has “essentially [been] given a pardon for views he still holds and still expresses”.
“It’s a problem to put them in a position of visibility and power,” he said.
I wholeheartedly agree. Aside from Rugby Australia terminating his contract and forbidding him to play for his country again, aside from the National Rugby League putting the kybosh on his playing at the top level ever again, and aside from losing millions in potential earnings, Folau has got off scot-free. For those of you who feel sympathy for him, please remember he is guilty of the worst crime possible, and that is causing great offence while not actually committing an offence.
Tolerance demands he be forever shunned from the community as well as being denied the opportunity to provide for his family. “But now the B-grade beckons,” sneered Media Watch host Paul Barry last week, referring to Folau’s new club. Fear not, tolerant types, for Queensland Rugby League is doing its best to prevent his return by refusing to register him. And full marks for ABC for continuing to stand up for the marginalised and oppressed. In one Q + A episode in April, a member of the audience purported to be “an Aboriginal queer, non-binary person … on stolen Gadigal land”. If ever there was an outlet for intersectionality indulgence, this is it.
Tweet-happy Tingle
This week the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Liberal senator and former 7.30 journalist Sarah Henderson has called for the sacking of ABC journalists whose behaviour on social media compromises the national broadcaster’s impartiality, citing ABC chief political correspondent Laura Tingle.
In October, Tingle, referring to ABC redundancies, tweeted “We grieve the loss of so many of our colleagues to government ideological bastardry. Hope you are feeling smug @ScottMorrisonMP.”
At Senates Estimates last year ABC managing director David Anderson acknowledged Tingle’s tweet was an “error of judgment” but elected not to take action against her given she agreed to delete it.
“I would ask anyone to judge her on the quality of her journalism that is otherwise put out by the ABC, as opposed to social media,” he said.
On that note there is Tingle’s appearance on Insiders in May, when she labelled “barking mad” claims by then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of evidence pointing to coronavirus having leaked from a Wuhan lab. Or her telling Radio New Zealand in December “I know there are, what seem to me, really mean-spirited and unpleasant and nasty policy changes that have taken place, you know whether it’s about sending people back to New Zealand, whether it’s the crackdown on social security and government services to people from New Zealand which, if it makes you feel any better, we seem to be mean-spirited to quite a lot of people in Australia, including a lot of our own.”
Granted, Tingle’s tweet about the Prime Minister was not impartial but it was not a serious offence. It was not as if she tweeted that biology determines one’s sex, or that 100 per cent renewable energy is an environmentalist’s pipe dream, or that the term ‘gender pay gap’ is feminist sophistry, or that the theory Indigenous Australians were advanced astronomers and agriculturalists prior to European settlement is farcical, or that a father is vital to a child’s wellbeing and stability.
And in fairness to Tingle, her tweet was comparatively mild compared to that of ABC radio presenter Yumi Stynes, who in January last year took great umbrage at the Prime Minister when he wished all a happy Australia Day.
“One of the great challenges we face as a nation is having YOU @ScottMorrisonMP as our so-called ‘leader’!,” Stynes tweeted. “Why don’t you shut your f**king pie-hole and go do some actual work? Today is a day when insensitive entitled assholes celebrate the trauma of others! F**K OFF” That tweet remains online.
This week ABC released the latest instalment of its so-called ‘Australia Talks’ survey, a research project that chair Ita Buttrose claims is on par with the national census. It would have you believe 44 per cent of Australians – nearly half the population – agree with the proposition that “white supremacy is ingrained in most aspects of Australian society”.
Honestly, I cannot fathom why critics get the impression the ABC is systematically biased or that it caters solely for a niche market. Incidentally, did you know there are no gay bars on the Gold Coast?
Palestinian apologists and redefining Hamas
As this newspaper reported last month, dozens of Australian journalists, including ones from The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Guardian Australia, Crikey, The Saturday Paper, SBS, and the ABC, have signed an open letter to editors and publishers, urging them to heed the “Palestinian perspective”.
“We recognise a growing dissatisfaction, both in this country and elsewhere, with the media’s treatment of Palestine,” read the letter, which was compiled by a group of journalists headed by former ABC, Crikey and News Corp staffer Jennine Khalik. It urges the media, among other things, to avoid the ‘both siderism’ that equates the victims of a military occupation with its instigators”.
In other words, to use that oxymoronic term, it wants advocacy journalism. I will do my utmost to comply. Henceforth, I hold that Hamas is not a terror group, but instead an acronym that stands for ‘Humanitarian Activists Marginalised And Slandered’.
Appearing on Q + A last week, Coalition MP Dave Sharma claimed the latest bloodshed between Israeli forces and Palestinians began because “Hamas started to fire rockets at Israeli civilian populations”.
“Nonsense, that’s a lie,” interjected author, academic, and Palestinian activist Randa Abdel-Fattah. She is correct. The Hamas ‘missiles’ were aimed at civilian areas, but they did not contain explosives. Rather, they were filled with sumptuous treats, including Palestinian baklava and awwami, those delicious and crisp dough balls coated with sesame seeds; as well as goodwill messages imploring Israelis to demand peace from their warmonger leaders.
BBC journalist Tala Halawa... The tweet was hurriedly deleted last night but clearly she felt the view was acceptable whilst working for the BBC.#DefundTheBBCpic.twitter.com/M2Bc4UCyF6
— Defund The BBC (@DefundBBC) May 23, 2021
As Abdel-Fattah’s fellow panellist and Labor MP Ed Husic pointed out, the Israeli response was “disproportionate”.
“You saw over 200 Palestinians killed,” said Husic. Conversely, 12 Israeli civilians died in the conflict, but the lower death toll was not due to lack of trying on Hamas’s behalf. Perhaps we should in the name of equality and decolonisation strip Israel of its “Iron Dome” defences to allow more of Hamas’s Iranian-supplied missiles to hit civilian targets?
Another media representative who no doubt wants to see more coverage of the Palestinian perspective is BBC journalist Tala Halawa, who until recently was covering last month’s conflict.
Last month it was revealed that in 2014 she had tweeted “#Israel is more #Nazi than #Hitler! Oh, #HitlerWasRight #IDF go to hell. #PrayForGaza.” That is on top of her calls the same year to shift Israel to the United States, and her claim that “#Zionists can’t get enough of our blood.”
Of course, that all happened prior to her joining the BBC, and as we know national broadcasters are paragons of impartiality that employ only journalists of similar mind. As for her claim that “Hitler was right,” it will not be long before some nincompoop on Q + A claims she was taken out of context, and that her affirmation of Hitler was confined solely to his vegetarianism.
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