The Murdoch women turn on Donald Trump, interesting praise for Dyson Heydon and Christopher Pyne cannot stand disloyalty. Plus other tips and murmurs from the Crikey bunker.
Legal notes The Dyson Heydon scandal raises questions of who knew what, and when. This speech, delivered to St Paul’s College in September last year by New South Wales Court of Appeal president Andrew Scott Bell, caught our eye.
[Heydon’s] was, and remains, a prodigious and prolific career, as a scholar, teacher, advocate, judge and royal commissioner. His most recent book, Heydon on Contract, which I will have the honour of launching this coming Thursday … is a work of quite extraordinary erudition.
By this time the investigation into the “open secret” of Heydon’s behavior was well underway. It’s interesting that word had not filtered upwards to senior judicial ranks or, if it had, senior figures were still willing to accentuate the positive.
Trump watch Are the Murdochs turning on Donald Trump?
Kathryn Murdoch — who, with her husband James has been vocal in distancing herself from Murdoch media’s conservatism — donated $1 million to the Democrats in May.
Meanwhile, Rupert’s wife Jerry Hall donated $500 to Joe Biden’s campaign, which, all things considered, is pretty modest.
Fear and loathing on the campaign trail A tipster got in contact to share a strange, rambling hoax email being sent to Eden-Monaro voters, a week out from the vote. Claiming to be from Labor candidate Kristy McBain’s campaign manager, it says McBain has quit, and “confesses” all manner of things, including being part of a plot to frame Cardinal George Pell. It concludes:
Can you help us to remove Kristy McBain’s posters. In addition to that, since the voting card had been printed and early polling is underway … please put [Liberal candidate Fiona] Kotvojs in front of McBain or your card will be invalid.
State of the election From byelection to buy election — after dropping $60 million on getting the Coalition elected last year, Clive Palmer is apparently back in the market. A Queensland tipster got in contact to tell us Palmer has bombarded their TV screens lately:
Last night during Paramedics on Channel 9 Brisbane a Clive Palmer ad was run (I think) four times. It was a rant about how we fought in two world wars to resist a dictatorship, yet were now being locked down at home, our businesses being ruined and our tourism industry was being wrecked … It was amusing, in a maddening way.
Pyne for the fjords Christopher Pyne has a new book out tomorrow, an except of which ran in The Weekend Australian. One section, concerning leaking, caught our eye:
I’ve always thought it extraordinary how colleagues … despite knowing that leaking from the party meeting is verboten, take out their mobile phone and text a message to a journalist without any sense of conscience. I imagine they are the same calibre of person who thinks it’s clever to short-change an unsuspecting customer, or swerve to hit a small creature crossing the road. Low people.
We endorse Pyne’s moral stance that leaking is for “low people”. The normally loquacious, eloquent, even verbose South Australian was, in his days in parliament, famous for clamming up whenever a journalist appeared, keeping shtum about what was going on inside the party and its leadership groups, and never engaging in the unseemly practice of sharing information from within the secret fora of his party with the reptiles of the press, other than out in broad daylight.
Yep, if anyone can castigate colander-like colleagues, it’s Christopher “on the record” Pyne.
While I dont for a moment defend Haydon, the fuss about him is somewhat disingenuous. The plain fact is that this behaviour is not only common its also often successful. For every woman who complains about this there is another who plays the game to mutual benefit. There was a case of a woman who in her youth not only had a long and fruitful relationship with a much older legal gent but went as far as taking his family to court over his estate.
It gets back to the old question of what constitutes harrassment, sleaze and so on. If attention is welcome all is good. If not welcome the blaming and resentment starts. Its about ability to read the situation and taking no for an answer the first time. Most people are pretty good at reading whether their interest is being reciprocated. Conservative stiffs are generally either bad at this or persist anyway because of their strange view of propriety and so on. And lets not pretend older women dont try this stuff on with young men.
That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t excuse anyone in a position of power from acting in the way the complainants say, and the Chief Justice has accepted, Heydon did.
Casting couch or fainting couch?
Every woman knows the difference.
While you haven’t defended Heydon , you have made the “somewhat disingenuous” decision to attempt to defend his type of behavior with an unsubstantiated anecdote , a slur against “older women” and the suggestion that there’s a 50/50 split on whether this behavior is beneficial/detrimental.
Well done Mr. Smith ?!?
Couple of comments – Re the older woman slur, I know of a parliamentary staffer who was seated next to a female MP at a dinner in the late 90s and several times during the course of the evening she ran her hand up and down his thigh. He told me he couldn’t get away quickly enough after the function. Of course I dare not name the MP involved for fear of lawsuits but the story is true as he told me.
Secondly, while we are hearing stories about Heydon’s romantic failures from those who spurned him, that he apparently kept trying would seem to indicate that either he was an eternal optimist (the triumph of hope over experience) or he had enjoyed a level of success in his pursuits. Which makes one wonder whether there were any young women who didn’t reject his advances, and what has happened to their careers.
And third, I was discussing the issue with a retired copper mate, who recounted at least two incidents where female police cadets were having some problems with some aspect of their training and were headed for failure until they sought and received extra “tuition” from their instructors.
Not excusing anyone, just saying it can cut both ways.
The “cuts both ways’ line doesn’t really cut it DF. We all know it’s not a level playing field.
Congrats to you too for “not defending D.H.” , well done old boy.
Lol Azzif, I deliberately chose not to identify the well known case for good reasons which I won’t go into.
Do you regard the allegations against Heydon as gospel or unsubstantiated anecdotes.
I’m glad I’m no longer young enough to have the indisputable moral certainty about human failings. Are you likely to understand ? As if.
Mark, Azzif – Anyone who has taken any interest in Federal politics in Victoria over the last 7 years will know to whom Mark was referring in his comment. It was not an unsubstantiated anecdote – the facts were all reported in the mainstream media at the time.
As I read the sentence, I knew immediately the identities of those involved.
You should be ashamed of yourselves. You give unsupported specific assertions and pretend they are general without any supporting evidence. Why have you done this?
You are aware that the legal profession is massively weighted toward males in the upper echelons and the type of “alleged” behaviour by Heydon is one of the main reasons for such an imbalance.
My daughter has just been accepted into the legal profession. I worry that she’ll have to face the same barriers to advancement as other women and have to fend off another privileged and powerful male at risk to her own career.
Mark, I am under the impression that Heydon was found guilty of sexual harassment by an independent inquiry conducted by the High Court . Is that not the case ?
If you think saying something like ‘why all the fuss when a couple of women have done the same thing ‘ is a mature comment to make in this instance ,then you really have a bit of growing up to do !
Mark, it’s a very old fashioned view. The world has moved on. It is now nothing less than a disgrace if a man, ( or woman, in best ‘Life of Brian’ tradition) tries it on with a junior employee, even if they are not a direct report.
It’s a workplace, keep it in your pants, it ain’t that hard. Oops, pun not intended.
If two people are work colleagues with no hierarchy issues, and they go out socially, off the work premises, and play the flirting game to see where things lie and take it from there, all good.
Senior people have to display a little self control. EOS.
It’s a new world Mark. Get with it.
The sign posts have changed.
Contributions by Murdoch women : meanwhile what’s all that positive PR generated by Rupert’s media empire worth?
Meanwhile Scotty From Marketing has been venting over “foreign (“Chinese”?) entities/powers fiddling in our (Labor) politics” – not including Murdoch in that condemnation of course.
And does anyone take Pyne seriously – Leigh Sales/7:30 aside?….. New book? Straight to “Bargain Bin”?
Why stain the ‘Bargain Bin’ when the garbage bin beckons ?
I’m not an insider, so I don’t know if the piece about Christopher Pyne was straight or ironic.
Anyone care to enlighten me?
me too
(is such ignorance a condition of Keithhood?)
He was notoriously loquacious.
Disgusting comments here. Most of the comments say a lot more about the commenters than they do about sexual harrassment. Clearly most of these people are happy with the status quo when it comes to gender equality.