The Press Council has lashed Fairfax over an election campaign story claiming that Greens leader Richard Di Natale’s three au pairs could be paid as little as $3.75 per hour.
The story reported “Di Natale has paid three au pairs to help with his family as little as $150 a week after tax, or $3.75 an hour — based on a standard 40-hour week — as well as room and board worth $300 a week.”
The total payment per week was $487 for 25 hours of work, but Fairfax told the Press Council it had averaged out the pay over the regular 40-hour working week because Di Natale provided no proof to support his claim that the three au pairs were only working 25 hours a week. Di Natale claimed he would release documents proving his case, but eventually conceded that no timesheets existed.
The Press Council ruled — following a complaint from someone other than Di Natale himself — that it was likely that due to the informal nature of an au pair role, proper timesheets and records were not kept, and that their work could not be compared to other regular 40-hour-per-week work. It noted that although it took Di Natale five days to respond to repeated requests for documents, when the article was published there was no evidence to contradict Di Natale’s claim that the au pairs only worked 25 hours per week, and Fairfax made no attempt to contact the au pairs themselves to check.
“The Council concludes that the publication failed to take reasonable steps to ensure the article was accurate and not misleading, and was fair and balanced,” the Press Council stated.
The APC said no evidence had been provided to suggest the au pairs had been paid minimum wage, but that did not affect the conclusion.
The adjudication appeared in Fairfax papers and online today. — Josh Taylor
The Au Pair story was never anything more than a beatup to anyone having even a passing familiarity with Au Pairs.
Some people certainly abuse the Au Pair relationship – and it would certainly have been a story if there was any actual evidence of Di Natale doing this – but to quote numbers and a situation (no formal timesheets, etc) that are fairly typical while trying to present them as some horrible, hypocritical example of exploitation was nothing more than transparent gutter press.
The most staggering aspect of the SMH story was that Di Natale only owns a single investment property and that it is not negatively geared. In his demographics as both a politician and a GP, that is rarefied air, indeed.
But the story served it’s purpose, it’s now a given ‘fact’ set in concrete out there in voter land and particularly among Labor voters that Di Natale was exploiting the folk concerned.
Mission accomplished.
So, what you’re saying is that fake news has been around for a while?
Unfortunately the stain of that Fairfaxian “fakenews” will never wash out, but ironically, we find we find that the victim here is a peddler of fakenews himself.
Richard “Meg” Di Natale, Bob “Natasha” Brown , and Christine Milne seem to inform their high profile and Democrat style divisiveness from their association with the Tasmanian Wilderness Society (famously summarized by that Democrat leader as “single-issue conservationist extremists”).
Tasmanian Senator Bob Brown, the mainstream media’s fake and never elected by members of the Greens as “Leader” of the same, famously repudiated single issue
“extremism” in a Bulletin article from 2004 arguing instead to accept the four international Greens principles of the original NSW Greens, adopted from the European Greens and displayed prominently in that state party’s 1984 Senate election campaign for their candidate Ian Cohen.
Though it may be that The Wilderness Society’s Brown, Milne and Di Natale’s prominent criticism of the New South Wales State Greens party is just more “fake news”, the consequence of Brown’s repudiation of the the society which he founded, saw the headline in the Weekend Australian, just before the 2004 federal election, “Wilderness Society Turns on The Greens”.
Coincidentally, Brown’s Senate colleague from NSW, Kerry Nettle, failed to be re-elected and John Howard took control of the Senate.
The “fake” media news that Brown was “leader” of The Greens saw Nettle relegated in her own State’s leading newspaper, where Tasmanian “leader” Brown’s received four times as much publicity as their own NSW Senator.
Perhaps, if the stain of single-issue conservationist extremism cannot be eradicated from the federation of State Greens Parties, then perhaps those who seem unable to keep their unelected and unrepresentative mouths shut should go off and resurrect that original single issue environment party, the United Tasmania Group.
Can’t see any complaints from that quarter to the Press Council about the media inspired fake leadership meme that seems to have inspired Brown, Milne and Di Natale’s presumed freedom to constantly and openly criticise the NSW Greens in the media.
Like the Democrats, to be doomed to division by an abiding, anti-social, middle class selfishness?
Having worked as a freelancer for Fairfax twice over the decades I find it a bit rich for them to be even commenting on people working more hours than they are paid for. Twice I had to take legal action to get paid what I was owed let alone the 100s of extra unpaid hours they ungratefully accepted without acknowledging. And don’t get me started on out-of-pocket expenses. It’s a shame as we really need Fairfax as a buffer to News Corp but there is a real aura of arrogance that stalks their newsrooms and accounts department which is oddly vacant from their opposition News Corp.