Vested interests cornered by shoddy ABC hatchet job
The poorly executed political hatchet job by Four Corners on two Coalition ministers has backfired dreadfully on women.
Monday night’s Four Corners story was not a public interest expose about the secret sex lives of Liberal ministers Christian Porter and Alan Tudge. The poorly executed political hatchet job by Four Corners has backfired dreadfully on women and kicked an own goal for the #MeToo movement.
A base level of intellect could have predicted this. By airing a string of nebulous claims by women against Porter and Tudge that lacked detail, let alone slam-dunk evidence of wrongdoing, Four Corners host Louise Milligan and executive producer Sally Neighbour invited curious viewers to wonder about the possible motivations of those who appeared in the program, including Malcolm Turnbull.
The Four Corners program started with Jo Dyer, described as a member of the 1987 national schools champion debating team. Her claims against Porter date back decades: He was “very charming” and “very confident”. He had an “assuredness that’s perhaps born of privilege”. He was “brash, blond and breezy”. He was “quite slick” with an “air of entitlement”.
That’s it. Without evidence, we are entitled to wonder why Dyer offered gratuitous personal criticisms of Porter?
Four Corners did not mention that Dyer was a failed Labor candidate for preselection. Nor that she has said “my political views are not exactly secret”. Nor that, as incoming director of Adelaide Writers’ Week, Dyer attacked the state Liberal government for having “no f..king idea” and predicted “they will flog off everything … to their corporate mates”.
That background could help explain why she filled out a bingo card of progressive words and phrases when speaking against Porter.
Melbourne barrister Kathleen Foley, who also made claims about Porter, says she knew him from the age of 16. She accused him of being “deeply sexist” and “actually misogynist” in how he treated women and spoke about them.
And the evidence? Foley offered this: “Everyone knew what kind of guy he was.” And this: He drank a lot and expressed a preference for women who are thin and have big breasts.
If this is public interest journalism, ABC schedulers must immediately set aside entire days every week to shame high-profile Australian men who drank a lot at university and prefer skinny women with big breasts. In the name of gender equity, an equal number of days must be set aside to shame Australian women who overindulged and fancy toned men with other particular physical attributes.
Foley, an accomplished lawyer, should know that making accusations with no clear evidence of wrongdoing is dangerous. Viewers might wonder if she has different political beliefs to Porter too? This week Foley lost her bid for re-election to the Victorian Bar’s governing council. Her platform included gender equity.
Four Corners did nothing to boost that cause, or Foley’s credibility, by airing hearsay and hazy claims overlaid with spooky music and blurred recreations of nothing in particular. Lame journalism loses control of its story.
Four Corners claims that Porter snogged a Liberal staffer at a pub in Canberra in late 2017. The woman at the centre of the claim did not feature on the program. When contacted by Four Corners, she reportedly denied the claims.
Milligan did not tell viewers this. She told ABC radio this week she did not want to talk about off-the-record conversations with people who did not want to go on camera. That’s curious. Milligan breezily mentioned “dozens” of other people she spoke to — all unnamed — who made claims off camera against Porter.
Four Corners interviewed Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who offered the ABC more hearsay evidence against Porter. Hanson-Young claims she spoke to the young woman who “found herself in somewhat of a relationship” with Porter. The Greens senator says the woman was “very upset about what had been going on in the office she worked in and how she was being treated as a result of people finding out”.
“It’s a man’s world,” said Hanson-Young, ominously.
This is not quality journalism.
There will be cases of legitimate public interest for the public to learn about the private lives of politicians. For example, where a foreign minister or defence minister becomes close to a suspected foreign agent. But presenting hearsay claims “volunteered” by Hanson-Young is not even close to serving the public interest.
Four Corners has done a serious disservice to women in particular. Look at how the program presented claims by Rachelle Miller, and still failed to move beyond a poorly executed political hatchet job.
Miller was a media adviser who had an affair with her boss, minister Tudge. Both were married, with children. Speaking to Four Corners, Miller appeared troubled. It is clear her relationship with Tudge did not work out. Yet, the precise claims she airs about him on camera are hard to pin down. A few days later, in what seemed like an orchestrated leak, we learned that Miller has lodged formal claims of bullying against Tudge and others. Those will be dissected by this column next week.
Sticking to the ABC’s shoddy effort, Miller told Four Corners she lost self-confidence, was exhausted, and “the behaviour wasn’t OK”.
What behaviour? They entered a consensual relationship. Miller was not a junior staffer. She did not appear to take responsibility for her role.
Where was an ounce of nuance from the ABC to reflect the reality that when a man behaves badly, often a woman is behaving badly too?
Miller complained that Tudge wanted her to walk next to him as they entered parliament’s Midwinter Ball. Would she have been more or less offended if he told her to walk two metres behind him?
Miller says she was shifted to another office, and then demoted. Demotion may not be fair. But did Miller expect that someone else would be demoted to make way for her? That is not fair either.
Office affairs can be a bloody mess for everyone, not just the lovers. But no one should imagine that they all fail; many women marry men they work for. And the power relationship is not all a one-way power trip for the boss.
When a female staffer sleeps with her boss, she will often secure closer access to him at work too, invited into extra meetings and on travel. It changes how an office works. Office romances should be disclosed. And if there is to be a ministerial code of conduct, there should also be a staffers code of conduct because these relationships involve consenting adults with responsibilities to their office.
None of that was canvassed by the 56-minute political hatchet job by Four Corners. It was no surprise to see Labor’s Kristina Keneally saying little more than some blokes “were on the make” at the Midwinter Ball in 2017. God forbid, maybe some women were on the make too.
Melbourne lawyer Josh Borstein loves a camera, too. He pointed out that the A-G occupies a unique place in our political system. Given he offered no evidence of wrongdoing by Porter, his presence concentrated the political bias of the program. Borstein is a Labor luvvie, trade union lawyer and partner at a law firm that rakes in fees from class action lawsuits — an industry that Porter, and the Morrison government, want to regulate to better protect plaintiffs.
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells added a conservative flavour with more vague comments, again lacking evidence of wrongdoing. Why was she there? Maybe the methodical researchers at Four Corners had not heard that the Liberal senator fancied being A-G before the role was handed to Porter by then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
It is bad enough that a bloated Four Corners team spent many months to produce a handful of discontents that might have an axe to grind. When the national broadcaster used taxpayer money to turn Four Corners into a full-throttle vengeance vehicle for Turnbull, it reinforced that politics, not public interest principles, drove its content.
Turnbull was invited to pontificate about the behaviour of two Liberal ministers who turned against him at the fag end of his leadership. As someone tweeted on Monday night, revenge is best served cold — and on TV. And then repeated.
Turnbull offered no evidence of wrongdoing that made this a public interest story either. Tudge’s affair with Miller, and the allegations against Porter, predate Turnbull’s “bonk ban” that prohibited sex between ministers and staffers.
Oh, the sweet irony that Turnbull wants a royal commission into the Murdoch media. During his dripping-wet interviews on the ABC this week, on Insiders, Four Corners and Q&A, obvious questions about his motivations went unasked.
They will be asked in Murdoch publications.
The upshot is that Turnbull, a group of apparently disgruntled women and other political junkies, have exposed a far more serious cultural problem than anything within the Liberal Party. They showcased how the revenge culture formalised by the #MeToo movement continues to backfire against women. Evidence of wrongdoing stands alone. Claims not backed by evidence invite us to check the motivations of accusatory women.
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