Suspension of belief In November the arrest of Australian hotel owner Jamie Pang in Papua New Guinea gained some attention in our media. Less so this week’s development: the suspension of veteran PNG journo Sincha Dimara for her coverage of his detainment, which raised concerns about police conduct. Dimara is one of PNG’s longest-serving journalists and head of news and current affairs at PNG’s public broadcaster, EMTV. She has been suspended for three weeks without pay, with EMTV’s parent company, Media Niugini Limited (MNL), alleging “insubordination” and “defamation”.
The media council of PNG alleges Dimara’s suspension is “intimidation” and amounts to the “suppression of a free media in the country”. According to Reporters San Frontiers “several accounts” put the blame on Public Enterprises and State Investment Minister William Duma, who is responsible for Telikom, which owns MNL.
Duma has denied ordering Dimara’s suspension, but says he asked management to “deal with it”. MNL has a history here: in 2019 it fired (and, following a strike by EMTV staff, was forced to reinstate) head of news Neville Choi, and in 2018 it suspended senior journalist Scott Waide after his critical reports on government spending. Waide’s suspension was overturned after public pressure. We’ll keep an eye on what happens here.
The cost of justice Rightly there has been a lot of focus recently on who helps pay our politicians’ bills and what they might expect in return. And if you wanted any sense of the level of opacity surrounding these matters, Senate estimates this week has been revealing. Sort of.
We know that taxpayers picked up the tab for former defence minister Linda Reynolds’ legal costs during the police investigation into the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins. And we also know taxpayers are helping to fund Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar’s defamation defence — but Attorney-General Michaelia Cash last night refused to say who is suing him or why.
Yet more suggestive was the refusal to rule out the possibility that more ministers might be getting taxpayer-funded legal help, including herself. The grounds are that favourite go-to: even confirming someone is receiving taxpayer support would “prejudice” their case.
Mooch-ing Given the rate at which it hired and fired, it has been an ongoing sport since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 to watch the afterlives of the assortment of grifters, opportunists and the genuinely unhinged who made up his inner circle after they were catapulted over the White House gates. A reputation-laundering book? A regular show on Fox News?
Anthony Scaramucci was perhaps the apotheosis of the Trump White House’s HR policy, lasting a mere 10 days before calling up a New Yorker journalist to make a series of damning allegations about his workplace without clarifying whether he was on the record or not.
Anyway, none of this is disqualifying as far as The Australian Financial Review is concerned. In news that feels unlikely to allay any fears about the potential dodginess of digital currencies, the AFR has engaged the Mooch as one of the speakers for its 2022 cryptocurrency summit.
On the unfortunate PNG journalist, Australia is only a wafer thin margin away from similarly authoritarian approaches on media and freedom of speech; for now our paranoid powers that be rely upon transfers, sackings and SLAPPs to shut down and punish free speech (while claiming to support it).