MORE VAN ALLEGATIONS
Senator David Van has confirmed allegations were brought against him three years ago but added he was friends with colleagues who complained about him, The Australian ($) reports. It comes as former Liberal senator Amanda Stoker accused Van of touching her backside twice at a work event, one day after independent Senator Lidia Thorpe alleged he had sexually assaulted her. Stoker’s statement alleged Van “inappropriately touched me … by squeezing my bottom twice” in November 2020 — she added that “by its nature and by its repetition, it was not accidental”. She had a meeting with Van the next day and told him the alleged grope was “unacceptable” — he apologised, she said, and vowed not to repeat it. Stoker said a private “internal process” followed, leaving her satisfied it was in the past. After Thorpe’s allegations, “It is now clear that is no longer tenable,” Stoker said.
Meanwhile, Greens Senator Larissa Waters told the Senate that Thorpe’s allegation “reflects what she disclosed to the Greens leadership two years ago”, adding: “She was greatly distressed.” Liberal Leader Peter Dutton made it clear he wasn’t saying Van was guilty, as Guardian Australia reports, but he did boot him from the Liberal partyroom because other people came forward. What happens now? Van will now sit on the Senate crossbench, and the Parliament support service will probably investigate. Meanwhile, former Liberal media adviser Rachelle Miller said the leaking and coverage of Brittany Higgins’ text messages was a “disgusting” treatment of the former Liberal staffer, the SMH ($) reports. Miller, who alleged unproven abuse by former MP Alan Tudge, said Higgins had been used as a “political football”, adding she was blown away that the “Coalition could use their own women to tear down other women”.
TRIAL AND ERROR
Disgraced soldier Ben Roberts-Smith may never face trial if he’s charged with war crimes because it could be impossible to find an impartial jury, the SMH ($) reports. That’s according to defence barrister Robert Richter who said, constitutionally, federal charges must be decided by a jury, not in a judge-only trial — and media reporting has been so widespread. Meanwhile, independent NSW MP Alex Greenwich’s statement of claim in his defamation action against NSW One Nation Leader Mark Latham says he implied Greenwich was not fit to be an MLA, The Age ($) reports, and further, a “disgusting human being who goes to schools to groom children to become homosexual”.
Speaking of buffoons in Parliament — former UK PM Boris Johnson “deliberately” misled his Parliament over what he knew about parties held at his Downing Street residence during lockdown, the ABC reports. Partygate, as it was known, saw a series of media revelations about boozy get-togethers while the government was urging people to stay home — at first, Johnson denied they’d broken the rules, but the cops found otherwise. Then he said he thought the parties were lawful at the time, but a parliamentary committee was like, that’s crap. Staying on the pandemic a moment and Australia’s population grew at its fastest rate in more than 13 years in 2022 — 1.9% — Guardian Australia reports, partly because of the post-pandemic migration boom. Our population at 31 December 2022 was 26.3 million.
YOU BET WE WON’T
Guardian Australia won’t accept advertising dollars from gambling giants, excluding lotteries, even though it could cost the paper “multi-millions”, the SMH ($) reports. Managing director Dan Stinton said wagering ad revenue has grown “massively” and the rivers of gold make it “uncomfortable” because it isn’t in line with its values. Guardian Australia’s editor Lenore Taylor notes Australians lose more on gambling per capita than any other country, and a stat that there were 948 gambling ads a day on free-to-air television in Victoria in 2021. It also comes as independent MP Zoe Daniel introduced a private member’s bill to ban gambling advertising on TV and radio, including streaming.
Meanwhile, it’s a sad week at the ABC. The broadcaster has scrapped its state-based Sunday night news bulletins and its arts department, Guardian Australia says, and political editor Andrew Probyn was made redundant. 7.30, Australian Story, Four Corners and the investigations team will lose a collective 41 journalists, editors, camera and sound operators, some of the 120 jobs to go at Aunty as it tries to become more like YouTube, Spotify and Netflix, the AFR ($) says.
And a quick correction, folks: yesterday’s Worm reported 18% of Aussies pay for news, but the most recent figure is actually, happily, 22% — up four points from 2022. Check out the Digital News Report here.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
It’s 25 years since a film about an orphan mouse’s adoption by a human couple for reasons unclear began production. Stuart Little deals with the rejection from his new brother, George, several murder plans hatched by deuteragonist cat Snowbell, and an apparent kidnap by two imposter mice posing as his late parents before a message that “family is what you make it” precedes the credits. But Gergely Barki finished watching the flick in 2009 with a much more pressing thought: namely that a long-lost avant-garde painting, Sleeping Lady with Black Vase, was hanging in plain sight in the Little’s lounge room. The researcher at Budapest’s national gallery told The Guardian back in 2014 he almost dropped his kid Lola when he spotted it.
Barki had only seen a grainy black-and-white photo of the painting by Róbert Berény, but he was possessed by the idea that the prop was real. He sent off a flurry of emails to Sony Pictures and Columbia Pictures urging them to keep it safe, but heard nothing back. Then two years later an email popped up in his inbox from a former Stuart Little set designer. She explained she had bought the painting for basically nothing at an antique shop in the late ’90s thinking it suited the elegant Little family’s taste perfectly. She’d since taken it to a collector who had joyfully verified it was the lost Berény and it was sold at auction. Barki was so pleased. Its last sale was to a “possibly Jewish” buyer in 1928 and the work had been lost before the onset of World War II, one of countless artworks that disappeared. But now it was found — all thanks to some daddy-daughter time.
Wishing you a sharp eye today, and a restful weekend ahead.
SAY WHAT?
I’ve been informed that the national broadcaster no longer need a political editor and that they want to reinvest the money into social and digital reporting roles.
Andrew Probyn
The “flabbergasted” ABC political editor is one of 120 culled in a massive restructuring for the broadcaster. Probyn said he was “still trying to come to terms with it” but remained proud of the “determination and vigour” he brought to his stories, which saw him win Press Gallery Journalist of the Year twice.
CRIKEY RECAP
“But the issue here is less about the specifics of Thorpe’s allegations against Van — as serious and damaging as they are — than about our consistency in responding to allegations of sexual assault. If we’re to be consistent, Thorpe’s allegations of sexual assault should be met with the same public rage and widespread coverage that Higgins’ allegations elicited, rather than relative silence.
“Perhaps media outlets really are gun-shy and waiting to hear what Thorpe further reveals. But is the lack of coverage driven by perceptions of Thorpe as a troublemaker and a toxic personality? Because of her alleged ‘relationship’ with an ex-bikie? Because she’s Indigenous? Because she’s a loud, opinionated Blak woman who enrages many on the left as well as the right?”
“Nine had already proved that Roberts–Smith broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement and was a criminal, and that he had disgraced his country by his conduct in Afghanistan … The judge went even further, finding that because Nine proved that Roberts-Smith was a war criminal and had disgraced his country, Roberts-Smith literally had no reputation left to harm. Because of the contextual truth defence, he is now undefamable.
“In the Murdoch case, contextual truth shifted the emphasis away from Murdoch’s pleading of a literal, criminal conspiracy with Trump. It refocused the case on the story’s intended meaning: that Murdoch was morally and ethically culpable for the January 6 insurrection because he allowed Fox News to promote Trump’s ‘Big Lie’. In that way, the defence counteracted the strategic impact of Murdoch’s pleaded imputations.”
“Right-wing social media accounts and groups have immediately reacted with derision and suspicion to independent Senator Lidia Thorpe’s allegation that she was sexually assaulted by a Coalition senator, with viral posts accusing Thorpe of making up the claim as a distraction or to seek a payout …
“Thorpe later withdrew the comments from the Senate to comply with Senate rules but promised to make a statement about her claims on Thursday. Despite a paucity of information, right-wing accounts and groups on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Telegram with tens of thousands of followers are filling up the vacuum by spreading unproven negative claims about Thorpe, a frequent target of their ire. These narratives are often accompanied by sexist and racist remarks.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Google, one of AI’s biggest backers, warns own staff about chatbots (Reuters)
Hungary–US arms deal halted as Orban blocks Sweden’s NATO membership (euronews)
Boris Johnson allies threaten to target Tories who endorse Partygate report for deselection (The Guardian)
Exclusive: US government agencies hit in global cyberattack (CNN)
US Supreme Court upholds Native American adoptions law (BBC)
North Korea fires two missiles after South Korea-US drills (Al Jazeera)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Don’t automatically write off the judge in the Trump documents case — Nick Akerman (The New York Times) ($): “Judge Aileen Cannon, randomly assigned to preside over the prosecution of Donald Trump in the classified document case, is coming under intensely critical scrutiny from the left. Some point out that she was appointed to her position by Trump. Others highlight her actions last year, when she disrupted the documents investigation by issuing rulings favourable to him when he challenged the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago resort — before an appeals court ruled that she never had legal authority to intervene.
“The criticism levelled at Cannon arises chiefly from her decision to appoint a special master to review the documents seized during last year’s FBI search. Her rulings were a major mistake, and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals soundly, and rightfully, rebuked her for those errors in two separate decisions. In finding that she had improperly appointed a special master, the three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit — two of whom were also Trump appointees — made it clear that ‘to create a special exception’ for a former president ’would defy our nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth or rank’.”
Parliament can resolve many things, but not an allegation of rape — David Crowe (The SMH) ($): “The argument was bitter and personal. There were no winners. By the end of the week, the Coalition decision to settle old scores about an alleged rape in 2019 and a political firestorm in 2021 ended up rebounding on Opposition Leader Peter Dutton with a new sexual assault claim against a Liberal senator in 2023. There was no political victory here — and certainly no triumph for Parliament. Independent MPs wanted to lower the temperature but the argument only escalated to the point where independent Senator Lidia Thorpe accused Liberal Senator David Van of sexual harassment and assault. He denied this immediately.
“Thorpe withdrew her remarks and said she would not go to police, but what is said in Parliament cannot be unsaid … Parliament is now stuck in an argument without end about Higgins’ allegation that Bruce Lehrmann raped her in the office of then-minister Linda Reynolds in March 2019. Yes, Labor sought to maximise pressure on Morrison, Reynolds and others when this burst into the public domain, but the entire matter has gone from allegation to media report, from political storm to trial and mistrial, without settling the disputed facts.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
-
Journalist Kate Legge will talk about her new book, Infidelity and Other Affairs, at the Montalto.
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
-
Writer Elyse John will talk about her new book, Orphia and Eurydicius, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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The Australian Missing Persons Register’s Nicole Morris will talk about her new book, Vanished, at Avid Reader bookshop.
Rachelle Miller claiming that using ‘leaks’ and ‘media coverage’ to turn anything relating to alleged sexual crime, abuse and harassment into a ‘political football’ is just another privileged person’s cynical and expedient try-on at everyone else’s expense, but especially those who have been sexually assaulted, abused or harassed. Most will never get a $650,000 unscrutinised payout. Miller can still choose anytime the only option most of us will ever have – to go to the police with her allegations that Tudge assaulted her.
At some point the ruinous damage these privileged few are doing to our tenable civic society with their media grifting needs to be recognised, and we need to stop indulging it uncritically.
Hang on a bit Jack Robertson. Seems like you have some sort of issue with Higgins. Geez, if this is how “these privileged few” are subject to public shaming, then what hope for the rest of us? Some issues transend one’s standing in society.
I have no particular issue with Brittany Higgins that I don’t also and equally have with the many other relatively-privileged and prominent public figures – right across the political and media spectrum – who have, in larger or smaller part, played their parts in cynically weaponising issues of sexual abuse, harassment and crime during #MeToo. My longer reply is in moderation and may or may not get up. Best regards.
But as for your ‘public shaming’ remark, which it doesn’t address…every single court in Australia now offers the option of those alleging sexual crimes remaining scrupulously anonymous, with the media at risk of contempt if they don’t observe that. The Jarryd Hayne case is a good, otherwise high-profile example. Even in the case of the very privileged, media click magnet bag George Pell, when every single journalist in Australia knew very well what was occurring, no subjudicial ‘public shaming’ occurred. Formal court processes actually – uniquely – give accusers protection from it. There are currently other potentially high profile subjudicial cases, about which all journalists doubtless know very well, regarding which no such ‘public shaming’ is occurring.
Most accusers take that option of anonymity. For better or worse, Rachelle Miller, like every one of those dominating #MeToo conversations, chose not to. She’s still yet to go to the police with her public accusation that Alan Tudge assaulted her. But she’s yet to publicly withdraw it, either, or even concede that she doesn’t regard it as sufficiently serious to pursue. It seems to me, like so much of the #MeToo noise, to be a vague and unresolved case of cake-and-eat-it insinuation.
FWIW, I don’t make these choices, for such public figures. I don’t ‘judge’ anyone’s else’s decisions. I will criticise those acts of agency that are self-contradictory and thus antithetical to the stated nobler ambitions of #MeToo. I take them very seriously, if not so much what the hijacked #MeToo movement itself has now become.
And one would like to quietly applaud Guy Rundle’s article of today in the proper authorial place, but one accepts that doing do would add nothing to its worth and not doing so subtracts same. But Rundle has been a consistently sane, genuinely progressive, and largely solo local voice on #MeToo issues, so FWIW my thnx and respect are offered anyway.
Apropos Rundle’s article today – BH herself has weighed in to describe it as ‘disgusting’. Considering the amount of uncritical column space she has received here, I find her tweet denigrating the ONE article Crikey has published that asks some pertinent questions faintly ludicrous.
Just had a quick squiz at the relevant Twit thread.
Faaaaaar…out. Some of the names on that thread, and their unhinged intellectual authoritarianism on proud display (like it’s an MRA d*ck competition in Obnoxious Chest-Beating) is well past disturbing. There’s really no other way to describe it accurately – if you’re an honest writer and care about your tools -than as a mature stage intellectual lynch mob.
It’s an excellent time to check out of this conversation. Which, of course, it hasn’t been for a long time. Chrs Cedar.
Walking that centre line.
heya klewso…I’m very sorry but my sense of irony has completely deserted me at this point. If that’s a straight comment, it’s generous and appreciated. If it’s not…OK, well, y’got me. Believe it or not I am doing my best and have done from the start. It simply bewilders now me how insanely irrational and hateful – and one-eyed – this conversation has now become. (Someone somewhere above was, I think on reflection, suggesting it’d be justified if I were to be thrown off a balcony. I think. Told you my sense of irony is shot.)
All I’d say if your comment was the latter is…why do you need to make anonymously, exactly? Yep, pretty shop-worn by now. But still as valid as ever.
Again, if it was a straight comment, thanks. This is a lonely place – and age – for genuine pluralist progressives now. Best regards.
Actually I was referring to Rundle – we’ve a legal system that can’t play favourites, no matter how some people would like that.
As for ‘Canberra Disneyland’ – who knows what they get up to in there, behind the scenes, all that time on their hands, when the curtain come and the spot-light’s off? All we usually get to see is the tip of that fatberg – thanks to some “what happens in Canberra stays in Canberra” attitude from much of the media…. “Groping senator open secret” that Dutton ‘might not have known about’…?
I feel sorry for Higgins – and her version could well be correct. But when it’s all boiled down – in court – there are only two people that know what happened on that night in question.
Trial by media/social won’t cut it.
Thanks klews. sane and decent as usual – which is why I was dismayed to think that maybe I’ve strayed far enough off piste on #MeToo to earn a klewso brickbat. the reality of this toxic mess is that it’s now incredibly hard to maintain that balanced perspective.
as for the latest turn…that there are people now running crikey who genuinely think rundle’s piece needed to be disappeared from public view…wow. just…wow. even just a few years ago his measured material statements of possible fact and his discursive line on the the higgins-sharaz sthe case would have been as remarkable as
i find it pretty scary, as I did the higgins twitter thread which got runders’ piece booted…these are not uneducated people. these are sophisticated, intelligent, engaged uni humanities grads.
gah posted prematurely…sorry
‘…even just a few years ago his measured material statements of possible fact and his discursive line on the the higgins-sharaz strategising would have been as uncontroversial as describing a woman a decade ago.’
I’ve enjoyed your comments a lot over the years klewso. the last few weeks and now this latest turn at crikey alas I thinks ought to end my twenty odd years of supporting this place. bowdlerising a writer as gifted and humane as rundle manifestly is a mark of regressive barbarianism. I’ll read rundle at arena, and anywhere else he pops up.
all the best klewso..
You too.
Just remember :- opinions are like rain drops. There’s millions out there, they only count where they fall, but some people think theirs are worth more than others, avoid the puddles….
DAMN! Dumb me didn’t bother copying it early when it was still up as ius my wont when there is anything controversial which Grundle’s piece was not.
It was simply a plain statement of facts and we know that is no longer permissible here.
The pathetic excuse for doing so is esp nauseating – not least the irony of the ‘Author’ at the bottom bein g that well know authority (sic!) Gutless Anonymous.
The board just don’t seem to care what this sort of Orwellian Stalinism is doing to their brand
About the Author ANONYMOUSCrikey Publication Crikey is Australia’s leading independent source of news, investigations, analysis and opinion.
No sense of shame.
finished my gig, loaded out…alas, I can’t find it anywhere on my browser either.
as smart posters hereabouts have been quoting for years..’first they came for the…’
though in rundle’s case he’s never been a ‘and I said nothing’ lefty. one of the few remaining trots around who’ll still pipe up and go into bat on matters of discursive principle for even his most despised pol/ideol opponents’ rights – to debate, to express ideas, to hold views he regards as repulsive, to be taken seriously, etc.
guess they come for the post-enlightenment progressive pluralists in the end, too. 🙁
Ha, I wuz wong, as it turns out I did save a copy. Paranoia has its advantages! I have just re-read it, and it’s unfathomable and a little chilling to me that these making editorial calls here, who are clearly neither monsters nor idiots, could possibly regard a civilised intellectual response to its discursive sustance and writerly care would be…to retrospectively banish it from the public realm.
To justify doing so with the genuinely Trumpian epistemic self-delusion below – in fact, for once Godwin’s Law doesn’t apply, in describing it more properly as Goebbelian/Stalinist willed self-deceit – is simply to make whoever authored such Fake News…a public realm laughing stock.
“We firmly believe in promoting a space that publishes a plurality of views, and as editors we regularly publish opinion pieces that we may personally disagree with. But this piece doesn’t fall into that category, and we regret publishing it. We have consistently pointed to the flawed coverage of News Corp on this issue, only to then join it in making that same mistake ourselves.”
I have met Eric Beecher a few times (only as a bit player) over the decades. And I recently had a direct convo/discussion with current publisher Will Hayward – very generously, at his instigation -n precisely such themses as plurality, diversity of views, and freedom og speech and debate. My understanding is that both men embrace their publishing obligations not to meddle in editorial matters scrupulously and as a matter of fundamental indepoedent journalis, principle. I simply cannot believe that either of these two manifestly decent, intelligent and authentically progressive men could be comfortable with what their organ has done to an article, and a writer, of the calibre censored in this instance. I suppose we shall see, as they update us on the matter, IAW that same statement. My current sub runs out in a few weeks I think.
Thanks for your comments over the last few days – going were others fear to tread…
What I see embedded in your critique of ‘current media events’ is a very solid class analysis of power operates. It is, in my opinion, fundamental to any serious analysis of ‘current media events’ involving #MeToo. The privilege you have referenced is anchored in class, as is the soft power it has access to. However, given that class, as a ‘category’, disappeared from the media landscape decades ago, it’s not surprising (though regrettable) that readers mistake your criticism of current events as misogynistic etc. etc.
If a factory worker from Broadmeadows is assaulted, her only possible source of redress is the police/judicial system. She would not have the ‘connections’ to demand Heidi Yates or Emma Webster as her support people. Nor would she have the financial resources to engage top silks for her defence, or a media savvy partner with Canberra politicians on speed dial. She would be lucky if she receives the services of an inexperienced Legal Aid lawyer.
This is how class, does, and has always operated. But at some point decades earlier, what became more important was ‘identity politics’ – which has trumped, as it was always meant to, any detailed analysis of how class systemically functions. This is to our eternal detriment, in my opinion.
*Interesting essay from Rundle – again, not open for comments.
Yep, and thank you, TheCedarRoom, for a rare and welcomed recognition of the underlying worldview that I hold. For ten years I’ve largely worked in the Care Sector, where genuine abuse, harassment, misogyny and even sexual crime tends to flourish – certainly relative to an elite realm like Parly House, or the senior corporate climes. And with – again, relative – impunity, and almost no real media or #MeToo attention. Many of the women I’ve (mostly) worked over that time are from NES backgrounds, many on tenuous work visas, all getting paid exploitative wages, and few with any capacity or representation to do much about it. I’be been sacked from two jobs directly for trying to use my relative privilege in our shared interests. I’ve also done social policy and advocacy work over the years that’s included DV stuff – not a huge amount, I hasten to add, but enough to make the relentless accusations of misogyny and worse that get routinely flung about in this era deeply distressing and demoralising. I’m naturally of a socially conservative instinct but a very strong material political progressive. My political lodestone is a kind of amalgamation of Bill Hayden, Tom Uren, the pre-nutty Doc Evatt and the good bits – the materially realist bits – of Paul Keating, say. And my dad, who was an old school agrarian socialist, and a deeply embedded local community builder who ran for The Nats a couple of times in unwinnable sets as part of a higher collective ambition, and whose best lesson to me, by his lifelong example, was the deep truth that way to really get difficult progressive change done was to be ruthless in ensuring that everyone else got the credit for it but…you yourself. Like me, probably like you, certainly like the millions of real progressives everywhere who’ve driven so much humanity-improving change in our lifetimes and earlier…he remains a political nobody to history. Never to me. Your class analysis of the future of prog. politics grows ever harder to gainsay every day. It will come again. We can’t avoid it. The sheer weight of systemic inequality and brutality and self-destruction – I am talking globally now – makes that inevitable. My hope is that we can get ahead of it and shape it, rather than have it smashed upon us. I have my growing doubts.
I really have struggled in recent months with Crikey’s comments approach. I thought today BK’s was opening up again, and as ever chucked a heartfelt thing at it, looking for some kind of useful collective path beyond the partisanship that now batters these threads and makes voices like ours very lonely, and faintly ridiculous. Alas, it was soon closed, and that pitch binned along with the other doze or so. It’s Crikey’s site and one is never entitled to beheard, but I think the platform has made its choices clear and to be honest I’m done now. I’ve said most of what I can on this stuff over the last three years, and I leave it alone now stil mostly grateful for that. Rundle is s always a great redeeming read, especially on the class war focus that has always grounded me. I though, as a ‘progressive’! I haven’t changed my pozzy a bit since taking it up to Howard’s neolibs a couple of decades ago…but these days I feel very politically lonely. His stuff, not to mention your thoughtful and acute comment, reminds me that there re others who feel the ame way.
Best regards, comrade. Keep believing in the things you believe in. Our time will, I think, come.
To paraphrase, “I didn’t leave progessivizm, it left me!”.
There is a myth, found in many cultures – eg the Fool in Tarot- of the Trickster living in paradise but everyone sees a ragged fool rolling in squalor.
A contemporary version would be the brilliant, wise & witty drunk whom most would happily drop off the balcony.
Stay away from high rises.
doing my best. time for some time somewhere nice, prolly. maybe in the mountains
wrmst, cmrde.
Ice crystal clear blue sky, golden sun and rustling leaves – it’s tough trying to sort the bird calls against gentle soughing.
Pity about the first burn-off of the season…starting early this year.
phew. my sense of irony is not entirely gone…
insane times here cmrde. 🙂
PS: “But at some point decades earlier, what became more important was ‘identity politics’ – which has trumped, as it was always meant to, any detailed analysis of how class systemically functions.”
This is a critical point. Probably the key. Identity politics is the wilfully contrived handmaiden of neoliberal’s ‘obliteration of society’. It’s the deliberative functional opposite of any progressive material politics. A new opium of the masses, etc.
Rundle, again, has written on this with exceptional insight and – as far as I can tell – global originality. The onset of a seriously painful and sustained recession, if not worse, will throw this into intimidating relief for the nominally ‘progressive’ Knowledge Classes, who I like to heckle as ‘soft pap progs’. (Never caught on… :-). Trump – and the various populist-reactionary movements worldwide – are just one early and fairly benign manifestation of what prolly lurks for those head-in-the-sanders who can’t see the ID pltx stuff as the political placebo/sedative it is.
Long game brother.
‘pols, TheCedarRoom – or sister. or theyster!
pale, stale & male, me! 🙂
Apol’s entirely unnecessary JR – I prefer gender-neutral (I use that particular descriptor through gritted teeth..) user names. Tends to make ludicrous assumptions from others about my world view more difficult to hurl in my direction.
I think this thread could serve as a template for the wider convo that’s taking place on every other platform. This boils down to –
1). Rundle is a vile misogynist – always hated him and by extension, anything he has ever written. His diatribe is loaded with lies. Crikey, or any other publication should NEVER publish him again. At least not until he gets ‘the tone’ right. (Mao would be proud)
OR
2) Rundle’s writing defiantly pushes against the strictly imposed (unstated) censorship that operates across all media outlets, incl. online. Don’t always agree but for a healthy debate, all views should be welcomed and robustly debated and/or defended.
The hostility between these two camps is profound and, in my opinion, incapable of repair. Props to you for attempting this but I long ago discarded that futile, for me at least, ambition.
Agree with you regarding any possible Substack platform for Rundle and the possibility of only the like-minded subscribing. However, I’m totally done with attempts to engage/gently persuade the righteous thinkers and would happily join the wrong-thinkers circle jerk.
See you on the other side…
As with the Voice, going against the mob often means some very unsavoury bedfellows/’associates’ (gender fluidity has been a boon to dentists earning bigbuk$ treating the current bruxism epidemic).
So very true. But those of bad faith lack both legs and longing enough for the long game.
Hang in there comrade. See you somewhere nicer soon, with luck.
And all my thanks and best from the proxy-moshpit to Guy Rundle, whatever unfolds for him hereabouts, or not. For some truly exhilarating and original prose-poetry of the very best writerly kind.
Whether here and/or elsewhere, more power to your pen, comrade, and long may it flourish.
Very much hope so, CedarRoom. I am off, at last…one’s ideas and approach options and good faith discursive gambits and most winning-est optimistic manly charms are finally…exhausted!
Long game, comrade. Long game. Keep the faith, and one’s good humour. Chrs.
PS…and as one quietly pops on one’s pale, male old codger’s hat and softly closes the door, one metaphorically weeps, observing, with thuddingly wearisome predictability and a bleakened, battered heart, as Runders becomes the ultra-cynical Molochian bludeoning tool with which to settle some obvious scores…
The multiple ironies, as black as one’s outlook for the future civic health of an already near-terminal #MeToo ‘conversation’. 🙁
…countered naturally by attention-competitive Will Hayward ‘drops’ in the Fairfax press, Crikey.
You people. You arrogant, smug, bubbled, narcissistic, privileged Knowledge Class…dills. You think we’ve never heard of public-narrative manipulation. You think – you still think – we’re too stupid to know how Teh Meeja, the Information Age…works. Really. Please. Please. Some of us have been tooling around Teh Interwebz since before some you were born.
S’all yours.
*Click.*
“An editorial note admitted several factual errors….while saying “the tone of the piece did not meet Crikey’s journalistic standards, crucially given that it concerns writing about allegations of sexual assault”.
That’s just a lie, Will. There were and are…none. I’ll send you a hard copy of the article to re-check it, if you like.
Don’t lie, Crikey. Do not lie.
*double click*
Jack Robertson
5/18A Ballast Point Road
BIRCHGROVE NSW 2041
0429 690 261
I’ve been saying for months that BRS would have a win-win outcome from his action against Fairfax/Nine.
Win the case then the opening gambit at any criminal trial is “These allegations have been tested already and couldn’t be proven to the lower standard of balance of probabilities. Why are we wasting everyone’s time with this?”
Lose (as he has) and it’s “I can’t get a fair trial because of the media pile on”
If you tell me this wasn’t the plan all along, then I have a bridge shaped like a coat hanger I’d like to sell to you.
It’s hardly a win – win. If he had won the civil case then I’d agree he would have won big time. A ruling in his favour would likely have included huge damages and it would have shut up anyone else thinking of saying anything about the allegations. But losing the case is not a win. It has completely trashed BRS’s reputation here and been extensively covered internationally. It has forced his resignation from various well paid high-profile positions. It has been very expensive, though maybe Stokes does not care about that. It has made the demands for a criminal trial overwhelming. If BRS and his pals thought losing the civil case would be a win in any sense at all they must have had a vision of what would happen otherwise that is worse than all that. The only possibility I can see is that, before the civil case, they would have to be convinced that a criminal trial of BRS was inevitable and that BRS was incapable of putting up a defence – in other words they knew he was guilty and the evidence already available would prove it. On that basis they might cynically calculate that using the civil case to derail any subsequent criminal case was the less bad outcome for BRS.
There’s too much conspiracy theory in your conjecture. The more likely reason BRS sued for defamation is that he believed he would win if he dared to sue (SAS! Who Dares Wins!), he had Stokes as his sugar-daddy so financing the case was no worry and he was too proud, angry and vain to be realistic about the risk and consequences of losing. The argument being made now that a criminal trial would be prejudiced is just an attempt by BRS’s side to salvage something from the wreckage, and anyway it is not certain they want to stop a criminal trial. Such a trial is the only chance left for BRS to salvage anything of his reputation. Does he really want that taken away?
Apologies for duplicate posts. This is the original. It includes a bad word that triggered the ModBot (second para., second sentence, eighth word) that was removed from my second attempt.
It’s hardly a win – win. If he had won the civil case then I’d agree he would have won big time. A ruling in his favour would likely have included huge damages and it would have shut up anyone else thinking of saying anything about the allegations. But losing the case is not a win. It has completely trashed BRS’s reputation here and been extensively covered internationally. It has forced his resignation from various well paid high-profile positions. It has been very expensive, though maybe Stokes does not care about that. It has made the demands for a criminal trial overwhelming. If BRS and his pals thought losing the civil case would be a win in any sense at all they must have had a vision of what would happen otherwise that is worse than all that. The only possibility I can see is that, before the civil case, they would have to be convinced that a criminal trial of BRS was inevitable and that BRS was incapable of putting up a defence – in other words they knew he was guilty and the evidence already available would prove it. On that basis they might cynically calculate that using the civil case to derail any subsequent criminal case was the less bad outcome for BRS.
There’s too much conspiracy theory in your conjecture. The more likely reason BRS sued the media is that he believed he would win if he dared go to court (SAS! Who Dares Wins!), he had Stokes as his sugar-daddy so financing the case was no worry, and he was too proud, angry and vain to be realistic about the risk and consequences of losing. The argument being made now that a criminal trial would be prejudiced is just an attempt by BRS’s side to salvage something from the wreckage, and anyway it is not certain they want to stop a criminal trial. Such a trial is the only chance left for BRS to salvage anything of his reputation. Does he really want that taken away?
Guy Rundle if you decide to resign I can afford to and will pay up to $500 a year subscription to your substack or whatever website you end up regularly contributing to.
Crikey, you have lost the plot.
On this I agree with you completely. It looks like Crikey has lost its spine, is going to play one note only in its articles and will not defend any significantly diverse or challenging views. Bit like Fox News, really. Shame on Crikey.
Yes, precisely like many of its ideological opposites. So many people on either ‘side’ now who’d regard themselves as democratic and intellectual yet are simply refusing to even read views and ideas they find offensive, let along engage and grapple with them. And would eradicate them from the discursive realm – as a moral and intellectual virtue!
It’s just not possible to financially support that kind of anti-intellectual barbarianism as my more. Whether it’s at Quadders, some whacky Moloch niche, or….here.
Thanks for you collegiate stance, SSR, we disagree on much but our shared position on this is a mark that we both still firmly inhabit the same enlightenment playing field. All the best.
Well, that didn’t take long – caved in to the ‘perpetually offended’ – a totally spineless act by Crikey.
I guess not entirely unexpected – serves as a perfect example of the ‘soft power’ I referenced earlier. Higgins and Sharaz mobilising their base to bomb Crikey with threats of cancelled subscriptions if they don’t remove the article by Rundle, who is nothing more than ‘victim shaming scum’ according to Sharaz. And Crikey now agrees with that assessment.
Lets hope Rundle severs all ties with Crikey – and, as you suggest, starts up with Substack, or otherwise makes his writing more accessible to readers who enjoy reading his views on cultural matters.
Crikey seems to have been struggling to find their ‘reason for being’ for some time – perhaps this will start them on the slide to oblivion. Not a day too soon, in my opinion – let what readers they have left wallow only in the opinions of those whose views rigidly conform to their own – that is, their ‘safe space’.
Cheers.
One is forced – very very much against every instinct and want – by spiralling self-destruction here to concede that. But the whole point of a pluralist space is that we are bound to confront, engage, interrogate, ponder over those ideas we most hate. That’s the whole point of me, for one, coming, being here in the first place. Rundle in his own curated or ‘friendly’ space would doubtless resist any temptation towards echo-chambering far better than most – he is a naturally self-correcting contrarian sh*t, in the very best sense of that description. But we his perhaps less rigorously self-policing commenters would run a risk of ending up circle-jerking in a moshpit of too-fervent groupies, like any other bubbled echo-chamber.
I’m looking for that Pythonesque room where you can pay to have an argument, not an orgy.
Incidentally, let us never forget that that odious flung description from David Sharaz comes from:
At some point, Australia’s well-meaningly woke and justifiably-angry young people…you must stop allowing yourselves to be so grotesquely…used.
Whatever the merits of the Lehrmann accusation, however badly uyou thik Brittany may have been treated …David Sharaz, at least – a white, straight, privileged, connected, powerful, conservative-elite insider – is not your political, ideological or moral friend or ally. Nor Crikey’s, either.
Stop being played for suckers.
Rundle should be able to offer his opinion without the lies and without the abuse. It’s not a big ask. And, Crikey should be able to offer it.
I read most of the opinion pieces on Crikey and regularly disagree with entire articles or parts of articles. But, I never object to them because they are written with a basic level of human decency.
I was chatting with my sister recently. She doesn’t read Crikey and we often take different positions on things. She was reading something that included some quotes of Rundle bile and said to me (and I’m paraphrasing as I can’t remember her exact words), “I thought Crikey was a reputable publication. I was reading quotes from a Crikey article and at first I thought I was reading an article written by someone from Sky after dark”.
Nobody’s asking for “one note”. If we’re reading opinion pieces, we don’t want one note. But, we do want a basic level of dignity accorded to everyone.
I should have said that my sister and I disagreed on the quoted article. Strip away the bile and her opinion on the topic was much closer to Rundle’s than it was to mine.
There is no ‘bile’, either. Bile is what the white, straight, connected, narrative-manipulating Liberal Party operative David Sharaz flung at Rundle – ‘scum’ – in his transparent attempt to stop you asking that the circumstances of his taxpayer gift be given basic civic scrutiny.
Stop being so easily used.
And PS:..’bile’ is also what I, in my less edifying contributions here, too-often throw. I try to restrict its targets purely to those who I regard as conversing in bad faith, but that of course is a convenient delusion, too.
There are mea culpas due from many who have contributed to the #NeToo toxicity – probably us all, frankly. I’m not arrogant enough to absolve myself, or for those occasions when I’ve doubtless crossed the line between vigorous dispute and abuse, I’m sorry. Especially in any exchanges with you.
Your occasional tendency to thudding condescension is a very fine button pusher – well played, if cunningly so 🙂 – but I’ve never regarded your comments to be in outright bad faith.
And I admire and applaud your discursive tenacity and resilience. This can be a bruising realm. That is not necessarily a bad or undesirable thing in these epistemically chaotic times.
Destructive lies and truly adroit misinformation tends to just steamroll polite, civic decorum and restraint. Smash it, with a laugh. One must sometimes fight it like hell.
My very best regards to you. Thank you very much for engaging.
There is no ‘abuse’ and there are no ‘lies’ in that article. Nine. Zero. Nil.
Stop deceiving yourself, Woke Woman. Stop willing yourself to say and things that your better angels know are just not true. Warmest regards.
‘None’, not nine! 🙂
As Jack has already said, Rundle did offer his views without lies and without abuse. Did not help him much, did it? The outrage directed at him, on the other hand… No attempt to engage to with any of the substantive points he raised, just a successful demand for him to be silenced.
Shame.
Even Crikey has admitted the article contained lies and that the “tone” was unacceptable. I’d be interested to see the same opinion minus the bile and minus the lies.
I would still disagree because once again, fundamental to this article, Rundle misrepresents working class and professional women, but I probably wouldn’t object to its publication. I’d just roll my eyes at another attempt to silence working class women by speaking for us dishonestly and using us to attack women who work in professions. For me, it would still be an article with misogyny at its heart, but having lived 60 years of life as a woman in Australia, it wouldn’t cross a line I dislike but have learnt to “tolerate”.
The reality of navigating workplaces with sexual discrimination/harassment/abuse and rape for working class and professional women (I started my working life and am ending it in the first and had a 20 odd years’ middle stint in the second, and both are represented in my circle of family and friends) is communicated with honesty and with decency and dignity in Trioli’s piece on the ABC News website today and in Senator Thorpe’s speech early Friday afternoon.
Interesting that it’s the blokes, probably of about Rundle’s age who are so upset by Rundle’s piece being taken down. And by the criticisms of it mostly by women. And they mostly do genuinely appear to be upset.
Calm down chaps, Rundle will be ok. The sky is not falling.
And there will be new subscribers to Crikey to replace those of us who are leaving.
What parts of Rundle’s article demanded censorshop, catoke? Specifically? I can send you a copy if you like. My email address is jack robertson at ozemail dot com dot au. Best regards.
The criticisms of the article were just assertions about lies and so on, without providing any particulars, and denigration of its aesthetic qualities. Remarkably like various notorious politicians these days who describe anything they don’t like as lies and fake news, without taking the risk of being specific. How does being upset justify this? Boris Johnson and his supporters are clearly upset about the recently released report into his Partygate lies and are raving about it all being false. Should everyone dismiss the report because it has upset them? Should the report be withdrawn?
When that’s enough to get an article censored there is very good reason to think something is going seriously wrong here.
It seems that Crikey’s desire to promote the geriatric incel schtick has led to a Rundle piece being pulled before. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/04/crikey-abused-for-beyond-the-pale-story-about-labor-mp-david-feeneys-wife?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Again – whatever one thinks about that instance, it has nothing to do with Rundle’s latest censored piece.
Wow! Before my time as a subscriber.
During my time Rundle has written a piece blaming the USA for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And he’s also written some complete nonsense about Neurodiversity, also geriatric schtick.
Wrong then, wrong now – the antiquity of an error is small justification for its continuation.
It’s not wrong, it’s different opinions about what in acceptable from a media outfit claiming to offer quality journalism. You don’t have a problem with the geriatric incel schtick (and other expressions of degradation) and I do.
Media outlets have to decide: 1. whether they will comply with journalistic codes of ethics or not and 2. which market/s they wish to serve.
If there’s conflict between the various needs of an outlet’s customers, it has to decide on a course of action. Hopefully it will consider both the ethical aspects and the profit motive so it can survive and employ people and make a relevant contribution to society.
Its customers will also make choices. They might love the degradation and ask for more, they might consider it so problematic they vote with their wallets, they might continue to subscribe and express their concerns through statistics by not reading articles or they might continue their sub and read the articles but express their concerns through their comments. Some readers might even find there to be no ethical issue at all or one so limited they couldn’t care terribly much about the whole saga.
Businesses founded on professional practice have to make tricky ethical decisions. I think Crikey is managing the ramifications of a very poor editorial decision quite well.
It is has been making some incredibly contentious editorial decisions with many of Rundle’s articles and it will be very aware of that. It’s pushed a proportion of its readers too far and it has breached its own standards. It took the article down to rectify the breach in its standards and it has allowed its readers to discuss the ethical dilemma and what they want from their sub.
We were watching Jack Irish last night. I think Crikey is a bit like the Fitzroy Youth Club in the Prince of Prussia. The world has moved on but Crikey and a significant proportion of its readers wish the world would go back to where it was all those decades ago. But, just as Eric, Wilbur and Norm have discovered, wishing don’t make it so.
Well said.
Although I don’t think you’re being entirely fair to the Fitzroy Youth Club. They do move on, and start supporting the Saints!
I didn’t remember that. My late grandpop would have approved 🙂
It’s in Bad Debts, the second book in the series, which I am re-reading now.
If you haven’t already, I’d recommend reading them. Peter Temple was a great writer.
Thanks, I will ?
All that may well be so. Ir not. Or in part. It has nothing to do with Rundle’s censored article.
I’m sorry, Woke, but simply regurgitating complete fabrications will not ever make them true in the material sense. Not even if seven billion human beings echo them. There are no ‘lies’ and there is no ‘bile’ or ‘abuse’ in the article Guy Rundle wrote and which Crikey censored.
The circular assertion/ersatz-induction ‘Even Crikey has admitted the article contained lies and that the “tone” was unacceptable…’[and thus was justified in censoring its abuse and lies]’… is truly Orwellian, in every sinister and unintentionally hilarious sense. Of course Crikey would assert that. They can do so if they choose, without having to provide material evidence. Because they have obliterated the material, they – and you – can simply invent the charges, and secure the conviction for them material facts unseen and unregarded, as they please.
How do you know your repeated assertions about the article’s lies and bile/abuse are true? Did you, like me, make a copy? I can repost the article in this comments thread if need be. Or to you directly if you like. jackrobertson at ozemail dot com. Me, I have a hard copy of it sitting on my desk (god bless hard copy, god bless newsprint.) By my rough count it contains 1411 words, 66 sentences and 17 natural paragraphs, although I’d need several careful/crosscheck recounts to claim that as material fact and the different presentational modes of e- and hard copy demand caution.
Which sentences are the lies in, then? Quote me the abuse, the bile, line by line, Woke. I can see none, even accounting reasonably for pluralistic subjectivity in matters of aesthetic taste and style and morality and reader sensibility. Where are the lies, especially ? What are they? A ‘lie’ is a very concrete and specific form of misinformation. There is no fudge room here. What lie or lies does Rundle’s censored article contain?
Crikey is not telling you the truth, Woke Woman. Those who chose to censor Guy Rundle’s piece know very well that it contained – contains, it still exists, I have it before me – no lies or abuse or anything worthy or deserving of censorship. That it was in fact substantial, measured, and about as sensitive to the risk of gratuitous offence as is conceivable now in the Lehrmann matter – short of saying nothing at all, that is, self-censoring, which of course has the exact same outcome as the censorship imposed by another, anyway.
Oh, and intellectually very courageous.
I ask you again, Woke – and of Crikey: Which sentences contain its lies? Which parts are abusive, bilious, destructive? Which sentences, in specific exhaustive detail, demanded censorship, and why? Answers, please. Concrete material answers. Concrete. Specific. Material.
And now, please. Anything less is to traduce a fine writer and decent human being, and blaspheme words themselves.
Once again Woke Woman I send you my warmest best regards, and thank for continuing to engage. And I ask you – beg you – to try to understand why I would be doing this. This obscure and faintly ridiculous and probably futile exercise in literary pedantry and epistemic anal retentiveness.
I have said for twenty five years that the biggest existential crisis we humans face, simultaneously creating and defining and dwarfing and engulfing every other one we face, up to and including climate change, is an epistemic one. This transitional period into the Information Age is a kind of purgatory, from which if we can’t extract ourselves we’ll likely die.
Words matter like never before. And good writers are the first and last line of defence. Including materially/bodily, as and when required. Warmest regards, Woke Woman. Thank you again.
trioli makes the usual monetised opinion writer’s mistake (it’s an arrogant and entitled one) of conflating her ‘public realm’ – a fundamentally loaded and competing-agenda one – for the real, the full, messy, un-curatable and true public realm. higgins – and, especially sharaz, a professional agenda-driven narrative shaper – made the knowing choice to enter that ersatz ‘public realm’. the third (anonymous) Van accuser Trioli herself cites has chosen not to, precisely to avoid the risk of public shaming – and concomitant reasonable public scrutiny, and all else in b/w – of the alternate choice, to ‘go public’. most accusers choose the same path, of due process anonymity.
triloi – like Crikey – wants her cake and to eat it to. wants to assert herself as a genuine ‘public realm’ information participant – ‘Your ABC’, ‘free speech’, ‘public debate’…all that ersatz ‘plurality’ lip service that Crikey too is self-deceiving itself with here – while also asserting an entitlement to controlling the limits and tone and tenor of it.
it cannot fly. information and the true pluralist public realm simply will not be told by any individual what it can and cannot be and contain…
Moderator – where’s the n*nce in :-
“F-r-o-m A-B-C t-o W-T-F?”?
You keep moaning about the n*nce nonsense as though it relates to the content of your comment and is some sort of censorship. It is not. It has nothing to do with moderation or the ModBot and there’s no reason to imagine any moderator will have anything useful to say about it. All that is happening here is that Crikey’s crappy system has a bug that keeps screwing up its n*nce numbers, and to get around it subscribers have to refresh the web page they are viewing. Try a web search for ‘cryptographic’ n*nce to get an explanation.
And maybe their on-again-off-again ‘crappy system’ needs debugging.
It’s just part of the vanilla system Crikey uses. If you use your favourite search engine, you can find out how to avoid/resolve the problem.
I can’t remember what I discovered when I did a hunt but the issue was easy enough to get around and I’ve not struck it since.
But it’s cyclical. It will run for a few days, then drops off for a couple of weeks, before returning, to then complete that cycle.
A couple of years ago, after the Xmas break – when their ‘system’ leaked all our ‘other’ names on our comments – they had that fixed in a couple of days.
I have to refresh the page before making any comments or voting for other’s comments.
The Liberal Party: crumb maidens, prosperity gospel preaching happy clappers and sleazy gropers. What a mob.
So it really is like going to Church then?