Mark Latham: You’re bonkers

IN one corner is Mark Latham, the ex-Labor leader ­unafraid of a bit of biffo. In the other, Hedley Thomas, our hard-hitting journo.

Mark Latham and Hedley Thomas

IN one corner is Mark Latham, the former federal Labor leader ­famous for a knuckle-crunching handshake he once gave John Howard, and a spot of biffo with a taxi driver. After his political career crashed, Latham switched to column-writing for Fairfax’s The Australian Financial Review.

In the other corner is Hedley Thomas, The Australian’s national chief correspondent and multiple Walkley Award-winner known for his investigative journalism. Thomas is also no stranger to a joust after dealing with fallout from his stories tracing Clive Palmer’s money trail and culpability for Brisbane’s disastrous Wivenhoe Dam flood.

In 2002, bullets were fired into his house after one of his ­investigations.

In 2007, Thomas was the toast of Labor and the Left for exposing mistreatment of the non-terrorist doctor Mohamed Haneef.

But Thomas’s coverage of another high-profile story — the conduct of former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard when she was a solicitor and, at the time, partner of an allegedly corrupt union official, Bruce Wilson — has particularly steamed up Latham.

So much so that the former Labor leader fired off three personal emails after Thomas had a letter published in the AFR last week accusing Latham of a gross distortion of facts in his column “Politics of smear and loathing”, and of haranguing those who do not support his “rose-coloured view about this ugly stain on the Labor Party”. Thomas also wondered aloud how the AFR’s editor-in-chief, Michael Stutchbury, could permit Latham to write on the controversy surrounding Gillard and her former Australian Workers’ Union boyfriend.

Thomas broke new ground on this story that dogged Gillard for years, and could have crippled her prime ministership, when he wrote about the legal work she did to help Wilson set up a union “slush fund”, and persistent claims that Wilson illicitly used money from the fund to pay for renova­tions on Gillard’s Melbourne house in the 1990s.

It is doubtful the current royal commission into union corruption would ever have been called without articles by Thomas that uncovered the transcript of a formal interview Gillard had with Slater & Gordon’s head partner Peter Gordon on the Wilson matter in 1995, and her subsequent, abrupt departure from the legal firm.

Latham insists he was a critic of Gillard as prime minister, and his aggressive encounter with her during the 2010 election campaign as a “reporter” for the Nine Network prompted an apology from the network’s chief executive.

But Latham is now transfixed about media coverage of the Wilson-Gillard slush fund affair, calling it a “political smear” against the former PM by “right-wing narrowcasting in the media”.

For Latham, Gillard is let off the hook on any alleged wrongdoing because one of the builders who renovated her house, Kon Spyridis, said in a 2012 newspaper report, and again in evidence to the royal commission, that she paid him by cheque for his work. Case closed? Hardly. Latham’s focus on Spyridis has been a disingenuous distraction, says Thomas, because his declaration “exonerates” no one by ignoring other evidence that Wilson allegedly paid Gillard first. It ignores that builder Athol James, who stayed silent for years until police found him, and had no axe to grind, recalled Gillard telling him that Wilson was paying for her renovations. James said he saw “wads of cash” passed to her by her then low-wage union boyfriend.

It also ignores the evidence of Wayne Hem, who swears he put $5000 in cash into Gillard’s bank account on Wilson’s instructions, and of Ralph Blewitt, who says he paid a tradesman at her home $7000 from the slush fund.

In a war of email exchanges this week, insults have flown. For Latham, the whole thing is loopy allegations. Thomas is “bonkers” and a “smear merchant, someone who lives in a malicious fantasy world”.

Latham claims he has better credentials than any journalist to examine the AWU-Gillard allegations because of his “deeper background”. Not so, says Thomas, who hits back at the former ALP leader for misleading rants, dishonesty, living in “la-la land” and running a “bogus argument”.

Postscript: After the war of written words, the pair had their first actual conversation last night. After Thomas emailed him to confirm their correspondence would be published in The Australian today, Latham called back and they chatted for about 35 minutes. “It was a good talk,” Thomas says. “We found some things on which we could agree, including that when the AWU slush fund chapter is closed and his book has sold out, we’ll sit down together, break bread and have a beer.”

WAR OF WORDS

The full correspondence between Mark Latham and Hedley Thomas

Sunday, 6 July 2014 1:04 PM

To: Thomas, Hedley

Subject: The Politics of Smear

Hello Hedley,

I’m writing a follow-up to my column on your misreporting of the Spyridis/Gillard matter, and was hoping you would answer some questions.

In your “broad” letter to the AFR on Tuesday you claimed that I have engaged in a “gross distortion of facts” but provide no supporting argument.

What is your argument and why didn’t you provide details to the AFR’s readers? Surely if I’m wrong on any matter of fact, you and your paper would point this out.

Why have you described the Spyridis matter as a distraction, when, in fact, it was the main point of my column — outlining how the politics of smear operates?

In the two instances I cited in my Saturday column (The Australian 7 April 2014 and The Bolt Report 8 June 2014), why didn’t you inform your readers/viewers about Spyridis’s repeated public statements that Gillard had paid for the renovations herself?

In your work for The Australian your frequently reflect on the standards of other journalists (re Palmer, Gillard etc), so why have you been so reluctant here to defend your own standards with specific detail?

Further on the Spyridis matter: why did you claim on the Price/Bolt 2GB program on 11 June that Spyridis had not been adequately cross-examined at the Royal Commission? What part of his testimony do you regard as suspect and what evidence do you have to support this claim?

I look forward to your response.

The matter cannot be left at the “broad” smear of a “gross distortion of facts” without you backing up your statement.

Or, as I argued in my column, is this just another case of you tossing out a smear with no supporting evidence whatsoever?

Mark Latham

AFR Columnist.

Sunday, 6 July 2014 4:17 PM

To: “mark l”

Cc: Michael Stutchbury

Subject: RE: The Politics of Smear

Hello Mark

As much of your commentary on the AWU slush fund scandal is facile, distorted and uninformed by relevant facts, any effort by me — or anyone else — to respond to you is effort wasted, and time that I will never get back. That’s why I didn’t respond to your first two emails. But it’s Sunday, I’m at work anyway, and when I got your third email, I figured ‘what the heck’, I’ll give you something to chew on.

Do you know that it is customary in journalism to ask questions of a person about their conduct before — not after — publication of a story about that person? The exception of course is in a comment piece, which your rant last weekend clearly was — yet you seek my input now, after publication? Seriously?

Because I think that you are unethical and untrustworthy, and because your writing has an impact on the AFR and its readers, and because I doubt the AFR is aware of your lack of rigour and your failure to apply basic journalistic standards, I’ve copied this to Michael Stutchbury.

Mark, here are some questions for you. They revolve around the narrow topic that you are beating up at the moment, the one dealing with Kon Spyridis, a builder involved in the renovation of Julia Gillard’s home at the time of the AWU slush fund scandal.

1. How does what a builder, Kon Spyridis, said, somehow ‘exonerate’ — as you claimed in your last article in the AFR — the former PM in relation to the payments that were made to Spyridis, and presumably to others, for renovations at her house in Abbotsford, Melbourne?

2. Do you understand what you are suggesting with your ‘exonerate’ assertion?

3. Kon Spyridis said under oath at the Royal Commission last month that he was paid directly by Gillard (which is what he had said to The Australian more than a year earlier, which is why myself and a colleague reported this at that time, which is how you knew Kon had even said it in the first place, which makes your conspiracy theory about my reporting even more weird). But why are you trying to suggest that Kon Spyridis would, somehow, know — (is he telepathic?) that Julia Gillard’s boyfriend, the AWU boss Bruce Wilson, had not first paid the money to Julia Gillard?

4. That last question is important, Mark, because, as you know, Athol James, another builder, said under oath at the Royal Commission last month that he was paid by Gillard, too — when, according to Athol James, Gillard had first been paid ‘wads of notes’, by Bruce Wilson, in Athol James’s presence; and in circumstances, according to Athol James, where Gillard had told Athol that she would pay him withcheques as Bruce Wilson paid her with cash. Is this one of those inconvenient truths that you find difficult to fairly characterise in the AFR or elsewhere, Mark?

5. It’s a fairly simple scenario based on evidence, isn’t it? Bruce Wilson has access to lots of cash from the AWU slush fund that his girlfriend, as a solicitor at Slater & Gordon, had helped to establish with her legal advice, and he uses some of this slush fund cash (and instructs other officials to do so, too) to pay for renovations at the house of his girlfriend, who in turn pays the builders doing the work.

Sometimes, money goes directly to a builder / tradesman from AWU official Ralph Blewitt, according to Blewitt. Sometimes it goes via Julia Gillard, according to Athol James. Just a shame if it is the proceeds of crime — due to the defrauding of a building company, Thiess, which was putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into Wilson’s slush fund, which had only come into existence because of his girlfriend’s legal advice and correspondence with the West Australian Corporate Affairs Commission.

6. Wouldn’t you be on stronger ground, Mark, by accepting that slush fund cash, or at the very least, cash direct from Bruce Wilson (who, with his wife and children to support from his union official’s salary, had no other source of additional cash), very likely did go into Julia Gillard’s house, and even personal bank account. That way, Mark, couldn’t you then argue that she didn’t know such cash represented the proceeds of crime? After all, Julia Gillard herself had said union money might have gone into her renovations — she didn’t think that it had, for sure, but she could not rule it out — see the transcript of her interview with Slater & Gordon in 1995 when they were abruptly parting company.

7. Why did you omit from your last piece in the AFR — in which you were hanging your hat on Kon Spyridis — the sworn evidence of Athol James and Wayne Hem at the Royal Commission? Was it because their sworn testimony ran contrary to your bogus ‘exonerate’ argument, so you needed to dishonestly omit it? Or were you being really sloppy?

8. If Victoria Police and / or the Royal Commission in coming weeks produces documentary evidence from a bank showing that $5000 in cash (or a sum thereabouts) was deposited into Julia Gillard’s bank account at that time, as Wayne Hem has said happened, in Hem’s sworn testimony (in addition to his evidence that he went to Julia Gillard’s house with an AWU official,

Bill ‘the Greek’ Telikostoglou, who was paying a tradesman at her house with cash), will you attack the police detectives? Will the police be ridiculed, similarly to how you ridiculed other witnesses as ageing ‘oompa loompahs’? Does it bug you that police are getting evidence inconvenient for your one-eyed narrative?

9. Does it ever trouble you, or cause you to consider a tactical retreat from your fixed position, that the earlier evidence of Ralph Blewitt (I think we agree that he was thoroughly corrupt) that he, too, had paid cash to a tradesman at Julia Gillard’s house at this time, has been generally corroborated by the sworn evidence of Wayne Hem and Athol James?

Three witnesses, Mark, all with similar-fact evidence — Blewitt, Athol James and Wayne Hem. They’re not mates, are they? Not part of a right-wing hunting pack, are they? Not

employed by News Corp, are they? Not wielding a ‘whirring chainsaw of News Corp vindictiveness’, are they? They have no connections, as you know. Hem was not even a union official, he was a staffer, a clerk who also babysat for Wilson.

Against them, you’re backing the evidence of Kon Spyridis — even though Kon can indeed be telling the truth about being paid by Julia Gillard, and still not harming, in any way, the evidence of the others.

10. Athol James is now 84, and he’s been silent about these matters until the police found him recently. If, to adopt the type of conspiracy craziness you go in for, Athol James had ever wanted to cause Gillard mischief or pain by making false and adverse claims for political reasons, wouldn’t you expect that he would have done that when she was PM, in July-August 2012, when the AWU slush fund story was most prominent?

The evidence of Athol James, if he had told the media or The Australian back then, would have been very damaging — and possibly even career-ending — for the then PM. But the first that you and I and the wider public ever heard from Athol James was when he went in the witness box at the Royal Commission. For doing his duty as a citizen, albeit an elderly one with confidence in his memory, you chose to lampoon him and characterise him as a senile fool.

Having ignored your first two identical emails, I’m glad you persisted with a third — although I don’t expect you to deal with my questions or arguments, and I won’t get back the time taken to respond to you today.

Each of your columns on the AWU could be exposed for the distortions and malice you peddle. It’s not journalism, Mark. It’s you using the AFR to try to rebuild bridges to a party, and its members, that you once trashed.

Cheers

Hedley

Sunday, July 06, 2014 8:30 PM

To: Thomas, Hedley

Cc: Michael Stutchbury (AFR editor in chief)

Subject: RE: The Politics of Smear

G’day Hedley,

I thought you might be able to defend your deliberate misreporting of the Sypridis story in April this year, but you didn’t even try.

Why not answer the questions I asked, instead of rattling off your own, as some defensive release, a silly way of avoiding the main issue?

Why didn’t you tell your readers on 7 April that Sypridis had exonerated Gillard, instead of constructing paragraphs to make it look like Gillard was guilty? A simple question which you refuse to answer.

You seem to be suggesting that Wilson gave Gillard the Sypridis money, but you have no proof of that, none whatsoever. Do you?

Don’t you understand that the onus of proof lies with you? That’s how our criminal justice system works. You constantly make assertions without supporting evidence, and you have been doing that for several years now.

It’s why you are widely-known as a smear-merchant — someone who lives in a malicious fantasy world, where, apparently, Wilson gave Gillard the Spyridis money but you have no proof for that, just an extrapolated claim that would be laughed out of court in the real world.

Your comments are quite delusional and highly unprofessional, a disgrace to the standard of proof needed in making allegations against public figures in this country.

As for your Athol James assertions, why do you give no weight to the importance of cross-examination — a key part of the judicial process in gauging thecredibility of evidence?

In your AFR letter you wrote of how, at the union royal commission, James gave evidence concerning renovations to Gillard’s house in 1993. According to you, James saw “wads of

cash being handed over by an allegedly corrupt union boss, Bruce Wilson, to Julia Gillard who then paid James for his renovation work at her home.”

Anyone reading this would think that the money had gone directly from Wilson to Gillard to James. Conveniently for you, this version overlooks the detail of what James actually said under cross-examination.

Like most octogenarians talking about events from decades earlier, his recollections became increasingly vague.

When Gillard’s barrister, Neil Clelland, asked him if it was fair to say, “You can’t actually tell this commission when any cash was handed over by Mr Wilson to Ms Gillard or whether it related to any particular invoice”, James replied, “That’s fair enough”. That is, he could not establish a link between Wilson’s cash and Gillard’s payments.

What other meaning could be placed on his words?

Anyway, if Gillard was in on the fraud, why would she tell a near-stranger that Wilson was paying for the renovations? Likewise, if she was in on the fraud, why set up a WA incorporated association and establish a paper trail when a simple bank account would have done the job? Do you know how these things actually work?

I heard about all this stuff when I was in Caucus. The anti-Gillard people (led then by the AWU faction) whispered it around, but none of it checked out. In character, Gillard is a very independent person, so this ‘Wilson lap-dog’ theory has never made sense. As much as you might not like to acknowledge it, I have a deeper background in examining the AWU/Gillard allegations than you or any other journalist.

So too, you might wish otherwise, but cross-examination is an integral part of testing the quality of witnesses. By his own words, James saw cash being exchanged between two people in a relationship, but no more than that. He had no proof of wrongdoing. Only a shearer like yourself, selectively reporting material damaging to Gillard, could pretend otherwise.

For you, the cross-examination doesn’t exist, does it? An inconvenient truth, indeed.

I too have copied Michael Stutchbury into this exchange. Mainly for the reason of responding to your (unpublished) slur, questioning how I could be “permitted” to write as I do on the AWU matter. Like I’m some sort of schoolboy who needs a permission note from the editor to query your views and reportage.

One reason for allowing me to write about the matter is that I have a 15-year background in scrutinising the allegations.

What a hide-and-a-half you’ve got. You can’t point to a single factual error I’ve made in writing about this controversy for the AFR. Not one. You and your colleagues, by contrast, have made dozens. Including your false claim on 10 December 2013 that I have argued “there was never a fraud (by Wilson and Blewitt) in the first place”.

As for this “sucking up to the ALP” business — what a joke. I was leader of the party, took it to a national election. I do my own thing entirely, have been for nearly 10 years. I’m beholden to no one except my family — a great way of life.

Who are you to question my motives? You know next to nothing about party politics and the life I lead. What breathtaking arrogance.

As I wrote in my column, I despise the politics of smear. It’s as simple as that. I despise the assertion that Wilson paid Gillard the Spyridis money when there’s no proof to that effect. I despise your 7 April article that tried to fit up Gillard for something you knew to be untrue.

And why wouldn’t I despise these things. It’s called a sense of fairness — the reason I became interested in politics 40 years ago. A sentiment which, for all myfaults, I’m proud to say, I maintain to this day.

A fair person, of course, would not question behind-the-scenes my credentials in writing for the AFR. He’d be man enough to do it in public. Nor would he seek to use Ian Cambridge as some kind of patsy referee. How pathetic.

It’s a low act, — again confirming your status as The Australian’s Smearer-in Chief. It’s a real habit of yours, isn’t it?

Mark Latham

Sunday, July 06, 2014 9:45 PM

To: Thomas, Hedley

Subject: RE: The Politics of Smear

Hey Hedley,

You’re in pretty deep now, yep?

In effect, if I can piece together your thinking, you’re really saying that you wrote the 7 April article through the prism of your (unproven) theory that Wilson gave Gillard the Spyridis money and that the money came from the AWU-WRA, yes?

And you can’t prove either of those two links, instead relying on the likes of Blewitt in a different ‘incident’ altogether, via a police statement written for him by Nowicki?

Jeez, that’s really wild.

So that’s why you told Price/Bolt that Spyridis should have been more rigorously cross-examined (ie there was more to this than met the eye).

Do you reckon there’s any part of Gillard’s life that Wilson didn’t fund via the AWU-WRA? Why did she dump him in July 1995, when the money was still flowing?

Have you ever seen the Abbotsford home? It’s not the Taj Mahal. Even Blewitt called it a dump.

What do you reckon the renovations cost in 1994 dollars? 30 grand? 40 grand?

Anyway, why do you think the Victorian coppers haven’t arrested anyone? Twenty months is a long time looking at this matter (second time around) from 20 years ago. Either the facts exist or they do not.

It’s like they’re using the RC as a funny kind of dress rehearsal, testing witness credibility. Didn’t Ralph do well? Funny and pathetic rolled into one.

Why do you think the VP and the RC are following the Theiss fraud line, when clearly it would be easier to establish that the AWU-WRA had been defrauded via the Kerr St property purchase? Jukes says they got something (they certainly got industrial peace).

And how’s the old power-of-attorney going? Sort of fallen off the radar, I think. Gone the way of Town Mode etc. That was a beauty — Wilson says they bought union T-shirts!

Anyway, thanks for responding. Plenty more material for columns now.

Maybe it’s part of right-wing narrowcasting in the media, but there seems to be a few people out there who like to read stuff on this subject.

At a few levels, it’s fascinating. I tell people it’s better than Sudoku for keeping the brain active: ie, piecing together what actually happened circa 1995, following all the loopy allegations fired out shotgun style and understanding the Brucer mindset.

A combination of crime thriller and sitcom.

Great. Thanks again,

Mark.

Sunday, 6 July, 2014, 11:19 PM

Subject: RE: The Politics of Smear

To: “mark l”

Cc: Michael Stutchbury

Howdy Mark

Your misleading rants are getting boring. You haven’t looked up exonerate. Your errors and distortions and misunderstandings of evidence in the AWU story are many. When you do your self righteous thing — and you fire up about someone questioning your motives — does it occur to you that you do this right after you’ve been guessing and declaring the motives of others in your actual columns? Your hypocrisy is laughable.

You reckon, do you, that nobody could find errors and distortions in your AWU columns? As if you’re somehow infallible. It is very tempting but I think you’re incapable of acknowledging the numerous defects.

I know for sure I’m not infallible — I do my best but I reckon that would be near impossible to have it all completely right in a few hundred thousand words of newspaper stories about this topic, and speaking thousands more words in live interviews. I’ll admit to it if and when I screw up. But I’m not the one telling a Royal Commission, a former High Court judge, witnesses, Vic Police, journalists, former partners of S & G, etc, that they’ve been barking up the wrong tree. You are handing out the unsolicited advice, Mark, because you think you know it all. Such hubris.

You displayed more of your dishonesty the other week when you jumped on 2UE, and helped to cite the late 2011 article I wrote, re the Pasquarelli connection to Kernohan etc, by contrasting this story with the very different stories I wrote through 2012. If anything, that change should have underlined our bona fides. New facts changed it, Mark — see my 2012 response to ABC’s Media Watch.

What a weak act by you on 2UE when you knew — but did not disclose or try to qualify in any way — that the story had changed fundamentally with those key events in 2012 — and in particular the release to me by Nick Styant-Browne of the transcript of JG’s 1995 interview with Slater & ordon’s Peter Gordon.

Did you forget to make that point when you were on a roll, Mark? Or were we hearing the ‘whirring chainsaw’ of Latham.

Should anyone care that for 15 years you’ve worn a blindfold on these matters?

Another thing — when a reader writes a letter to the Editor that bags a columnist, that letter usually gets forwarded to the columnist. I wrote to Stutch knowing, or at least expecting, that the ‘forward email’ button would be sent. I wanted you to see it. Your suggestion of back channels is silly.

I think you’ll find that I have written little about the allegations re power of attorney, and Town Mode. Perhaps like you, I was never very confident about that. I’m a cautious guy until I step onto the racetrack.

Tell me, though — why have you been as quiet as a mouse in relation to Styant-Browne and Peter Gordon?

Haven’t they tried to set you straight on some of your misunderstandings?

Cheers

Hedley

Monday, July 07, 2014 8:09 AM

To: Thomas, Hedley

Cc: Michael Stutchbury

Subject: RE: The Politics of Smear

Howdy Hedley,

Are you okay?

John Stanley raised your 2011 article, not me. We don’t confer before our 2UE interviews. He raised it off his own bat. My point that day related to yourrewriting of the Smith/Milne history — the false claim that they lost their jobs due to political censorship. Both were incompetent, peddling falsehoods, and accordingly, deserved to lose their positions.

You’re losing the plot here, mate, inventing things that just didn’t happen. Take it up with John Stanley ifyou need to. But to say that I “helped to cite the late 2011 article” is simply false.

As for the ‘forward email button’, that’s wrong too. People often write letters about my columns, but at the AFR there is no standard procedure in forwarding them to me in advance. Your letter is one of the very few times it’s happened.

I’ve copied in Stutchbury here. These two matters (Stanley and ‘forward email’) demonstrate beyond doubt that you simply invent claims — a world of make-believe.

You have no proof for any of these things. It’s just an endless flow of top-of-the-head allegations, tossed out there randomly, with no expectation of accountability.

In the past, no one has ever pulled you up. News Corp gives you prizes, instead of responsible standards of accountability.

It should be clear to your ‘court of appeal’ (Stutch) that the AFR is doing a public service in scrutinising your work and detailing the fantasy world in which you live.

Please come in here, Michael. Let’s sit down and replay the 2UE tape, if need be. And speak to John Stanley as well. You will most certainly conclude, as I have, that this bloke is bonkers.

Mark Latham.

Monday, 7 July, 2014, 11:01 AM

To: “mark l”

Cc: Michael Stutchbury

Good morning, Mark.

Now I’m bonkers? Everyone is in the wrong except you. The pattern of your behaviour gives you up.

Are you answering my questions? No you’re not. I don’t answer yours because you’re not credible and what you write is often coloured by your hatreds. You’re the self proclaimed expert on AWU, on my journalism, News Corp, Michael Smith, etc, but when your biases and distortions are highlighted — and there is plenty more in the locker (the one where you write about how you called the Corporate Affairs Commission to ask about registering a slush fund is a good laugh), you carry on like a prima donna and use your big stick — a column Saturday, another next week, whatever — as your attack mechanism.

I repeat — if The Oz gets a strongly worded letter about something I wrote, it gets sent to me before publication — that’s just commonsense and good editorial governance. You’re in la la land if you think that doesn’t happen — certainly it’s been the norm on every newspaper I’ve toiled on.

Happy for you to roll the reels re your interview on 2UE. Don’t verbal me or suggest that I said you had conspired beforehand. The point is that you joined in and propelled that distorted analysis — from memory, you said something like ‘good research’ to John when he raised and read aloud the 2011 lines — but you failed to provide any of the contextual truths about how subsequent events had changed things fundamentally. I didn’t take it up then with John or with you because I couldn’t be bothered; I know your style. I don’t blame John — he does not profess to know this stuff as you profess to.

Being branded as ‘bonkers’ by you is a badge of honour.

You’ll get badly found out soon, I reckon your loose hold on facts, your hatreds and your malice will cost a media outlet a lot of money one day. But you’ll walk away and blame everyone else.

Good luck Mark. It’s been great and illuminating seeing how you roll.

Cheers

Hedley

Monday, July 07, 2014 12:25 PM

To: Thomas, Hedley

Cc: Michael Stutchbury

Subject: RE: The Politics of Smear

Good one Hedley,

So you can’t point out any errors I’ve made in the past, but you have a big prediction for the future.

I’m 7 years toiling away at the AFR and never had a problem. It’s called checking your facts.

Mention of Michael Smith — says it all, really. When are you and your co-author next in print?? An expose on the good Prophet perhaps? Maybe, who paid for his mosque renovations.

Don’t worry about me being kicked off a media outlet. Smith is so extreme he got kicked off 2GB.

What about a comment on James’ cross-examination? Inconsequential to you? Or can I just tell the readers ‘No Comment’??

You’re right out there with big Gillard predictions, aren’t you? Happy to let it roll on that basis.

thanks again, mark.

Monday, July 07, 2014 2:00 PM

To: mark l

Cc: Michael Stutchbury

Subject: RE: The Politics of Smear

Mark, this is getting increasingly tedious. You wrote a column, I exercised my right to have a published reply, you then followed up with 3 emails in which you made it plain you wanted to do a lot more on me etc.

You’re obsessed. The thing is, Mark, you genius, what you’ve written to me since then is evidence of your malice about whatever you write about me in future. Nice work. Exposing your dishonesty in your output is one of life’s tantalising opportunities.

For now it is more satisfying that you’re twisting and whining, and stalking me and losing your courage. Get a job, mate. Good for the soul and will help clear your head.

Best

Hedley

Monday, July 07, 2014 8:26 AM

To: Thomas, Hedley

Subject: RE: The Politics of Smear

G’day Hedley,

Can I get a comment from you please, re the Athol James cross-examination point? As any criminal lawyer would tell you, it’s very important.

I’m writing this Saturday on your Sypridis response (as such) and then the following Thursday re James, so it would be good to have you on the record for both matters.

Then Saturday fortnight, I plan to pin down this John Stanley thing — so blatantly false. Do you now acknowledge that your allegation of me helping to cite the 2011 article is just plain wrong? Ring John Stanley if you need to, but this slur cannot be allowed to stand.

Thanks again for your help,

Mark.

PS, one day, in an appropriate forum, we should publish this exchange of emails in full. It would be very instructive for people who follow such things.