Glenn Milne is perhaps best known for two things: doggedly advocating the cause of Peter Costello for most of the life of the Howard government, and being chucked out of the 2006 Walkleys (enjoy the footage here) after assaulting Stephen Mayne.
Milne later graciously apologised to Mayne — via voicemail.
The reason Milne went for Mayne — apart from the grog — was that Christian Kerr, in Crikey, had linked to a blog post where claims were made about Milne’s private life. What did Mayne have to do with that? Nothing, but in Milne’s addled mind, he was an appropriate target.
So one might assume that Milne is conscious of the distinction between what is material that is in the public interest and what is private and not worthy of reportage, whether true or not.
Apparently not. Yesterday in the Sunday Telegraph Milne reported that two MPs — I’m not going to name them so this won’t help anyone googling the issue — are in a relationship.
First, this is ancient news. Some of us first heard about it in June. Apparently a lot of MPs became aware of it at the Labor National Conference in July. Ironically, that was when the same person responsible for the smearing of Milne in 2006 ran a blog post on it. It has been the subject of very occasional press gallery gossip ever since. There has also been some pretty idle speculation that the female MP concerned is pregnant.
Second, there’s no public interest whatsoever in the relationship. Single work colleagues end up in relationships. So what?
But Milne couldn’t help himself. Because he’d received a semi-coherent email on the subject, he had to report the relationship as news
This sort of thing is by no means new for Milne. He was instrumental in reporting a dirt file on Christopher Pyne before the 2007 election, which made several unsavoury and entirely false claims about the then-minister. Milne tried to claim it was the product of a Labor dirt unit when it was plain to all it was the product of Pyne’s factional enemies in the SA Liberal Party. Milne is famous for being the Liberal Party’s go-to journalist.
Maybe Milne thinks he’s the only one who gets emails making allegations about political figures’ personal lives. We all get them. True, false, whatever, they’re of absolutely no public interest. Except in Milne’s grubby world.
Contemptible, utterly contemptible.
What I said on yer blog Mr Keane. Agree about little or no public interest, but for about 10% factor revealing toll of political life and implicit dedication to careerism. But also domestic stability in a high pressure job. So we are talking diverse real politik hunting dogs and same playing for keeps.
Indeed one can feel a sort of orgasmic crescendo in national politiks building up, or perhaps an orgy of violent re-set of equilibrium like after one of those Pacific Rim earthquakes which goes well beyond the actors referred to above.
Call it ecological unravel Aussie Style, or simply chapter 1 – Double Dissolution.
Speaking of which just to add, Deb Cameron 702 late last week did Cormack McCarthy The Road on book club and followed up with survivalist emergency rations talk by Red Cross or someone. It’s on her blog, never read it either but I thought, uh oh, my politics is coming around the behind me like a wily dingo and surrounding me. I’m going to have to switch to frothing Alan Jones for some variety! You shoulda heard him criticising Turnbull about all the “illegals”. Is fatty Jones going senile from the chemo?
Nothing surprises me any more when it comes to subject matter written by Milne. What does surprise me is News Ltd continues to employ him. Of course the standard they expect from their so called feature writers, is practically zero, so Milne joins a collection of no brain, tripe columnists, whose job appears to be, fill the space with whatever, regardless of quality.
Maybe Keating is right about bracing up the privacy laws. If there’s a prima facie case for public interest (eg if the story raises a question of integrity or conflict of interest) then free speech needs to be protected from defamation torts, but if it’s an issue purely of taste or titillation, then the smut market is probably one of the factors keeping high quality people out of politics.
I basically don’t want anyone running my country who is that squeaky clean.
Reformed laws might be acceptable to the fourth estate if there’s a bit of give and take in it. More freedom from defamation suits (with retractions to have ten times the exposure of the original libel, instead of financial damages), and less freedom for irrelevant muckraking.
Not exactly on topic, but anyway: Peter Costello has been placed in a position he can probably just about do (after all there are other board members involved and David Murray is no clown – so that’s a smart move. He might get bored if it doesn’t stretch him, but it won’t stop him writing columns and memoirs and picking up the odd consultancy and other small tasks he feels qualified to do.
Also very important that someone reminded us what a prat he is, so thank you Paul Keating, however, outrage at the job not going to a Labor mate should be ignored as sour grapes.