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Re: Oz Politics.
Bad boy Rolf has carked it
Bad boy Rolf has carked it
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Re: Oz Politics.
In solidarity with Stan Grant - Pearls and Irritations
The racist vitriol to which our ABC colleague Stan Grant has been subjected, especially over the last few weeks, says a lot about Australia’s media. And it’s not pretty.
The decision by Stan Grant to step aside from ABC’s Q+A, after being subjected to shameful racist vitriol, is a wake-up call for all in the media. First and foremost are those who wrongfully singled out Stan to continue a long-running campaign of hysterical snipings about the ABC, and in doing so fed social media trolls with an appetite for deplorable personal invective. Then there’s the ABC management which was too slow to come to his defence. Inevitably, this has come at great personal cost to Stan and we hope that his courage in calling out malicious racism and unwarranted personal attack will be a catalyst for positive change.
The racist vitriol to which our ABC colleague Stan Grant has been subjected, especially over the last few weeks, says a lot about Australia’s media. And it’s not pretty.
While some journalists quickly rallied to Stan’s defence, others – notably in NewsCorp outlets – chose to continue an ongoing sniping attack on the ABC by singling him out for particular condemnation over what they purported was an inappropriate appearance on the ABC’s coverage of King Charles III’s coronation in early May.
It wasn’t.
This was a night of history. The ABC ran a positive documentary on the new king, followed by a relatively short panel discussion, prior to handing over to the BBC commentary for the bulk of the night’s coverage – the several hours of coronational ceremony.
Stan was invited to take part in the panel discussion to give a First Nations’ viewpoint of the monarchy and colonisation. He is eminently qualified to do so, not simply because he’s a Wiradjuri man from the Griffith region in NSW, but he’s penned respected books examining the subject. He spoke on the night, not with venom, but with thoughtfulness and authority.
Some critics have said the inclusion of Stan in this role, and his commentary, was ‘disrespectful’. Really. Disrespectful to whom? Certainly not to First Nations Australians. Nor to those of us who understand the importance of truth-telling about our troubled colonial history if the nation is to truly achieve reconciliation and an Aussie ‘fair go’ for all people.
It does not automatically follow that acknowledging the ugly realities of colonisation is a condemnation of everything else that has since been achieved.
Stan himself has always been very clear: he loves Australia – and loves even more the Australia we could be:I speak of truth, not grievance.The singling out of Stan for criticism because of his historical perspective is disgraceful in another way. Craig Foster, co-chair of the Australian Republic Movement, was also on the panel, advocating for Australia to become a republic – a future possibility that is surely a greater threat to the monarchy than a benign acknowledgement of the past. But he pretty much escaped attention and one can only conclude that the difference is that he is non-Indigenous.
Truths. Hard truths. Truths not told with hate – truths offered with love. Yes, love. I repeatedly said that these truths are spoken with love for the Australia we have never been.
As the old adage goes: “If you’re white you’re right, if you’re black step back.”
If this issue were confined to some sections of the media, it would be bad enough. But it’s more insidious.
As Denis Muller of Melbourne University’s Journalism Centre has pointed out in The Conversation, the treatment of Stan is a case study in how content in the professional media can fuel social media toxicity:It does not require the professional mass media to be overtly racist to accomplish this, but to send signals of intense disapproval that trolls then use as the basis for their racist attacks.The reality is that Stan has never been hate-filled.
Grant himself clearly sees this. In his statement on ABC Online announcing his decision to step away from hosting Q+A on ABC television, he wrote:
“Since the King’s coronation, I have seen people in the media lie and distort my words. They have tried to depict me as hate-filled. They have accused me of maligning Australia.”
Nothing could be further from the truth, my ancestors would never let me be filled with hate.His eloquent and deeply moving farewell comments at the end of Monday’s Q+A were typical of his depth and the deep humanity that drives him. He spoke of his love for Australia and Australians, and with humility of the Wiradjiri concept of Yindyamarra and his sorrow at whatever he may have done to inspire the level of hatred he’s endured:
It means that I am not just responsible for what I do, but for what you do.The truth is, Stan didn’t do anything that could possibly warrant such acrimony.
He is a man of stature with an eminent career in the media, both in Australia and internationally. His contribution to public debate on a range of issues must not be lost.
It’s no wonder he received a standing ovation from the studio audience, who like so many of us, are repulsed by the malign use of media and social media to spread vitriol and prosecute vendettas.
ABC management has apologised to Stan Grant for its failure to properly support him in the current dispute and is reviewing internal systemic issues, including complaints about a legacy of inhouse racism affecting ABC staff. This is in addition to work already underway through its Diversity, Indigenous and Inclusion leadership. Earlier this year ABC also lodged an official complaint with Twitter over previous abuse of Stan on its platform.
Helen Grasswill is Deputy Chair of ABC Alumni.Last edited by Hallam; 05-26-2023, 05:30 AM.Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci.
If war is the answer........... it must be a profoundly stupid question.
"Freighters on the nod on the surface of the bay, One of these days we're going to sail away"
Bruce CockburnComment
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Re: Oz Politics.
Note to Hallam. Please insert some white spaces into the textComment
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Re: Oz Politics.
Not sure if that will embed, but it is a message that the ex-servicemen that I know strongly support. The woke mob at the top of our defence force need a pointy-toed boot up the bum. The presenter is Erin Molan, daughter of the late General/SenatorComment
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Re: Oz Politics.
"Sky News"…………….."Comment
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Re: Oz Politics.
Meanwhile... talking about the Voice with some folks... bloke just commented "we've all been hard done by in the past... so what... move on, we're here now... yep, move on.Comment
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Re: Oz Politics.
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Re: Oz Politics.
So 56 years ago All Australians voted overwhelmingly to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait people as actual people.
In 2023 we are going to vote on whether we should actually listen to them.Without freedom of speech, we wouldn't know who the idiots are.Comment
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Re: Oz Politics.
I seriously wonder how many woke people it takes to make up a single average IQ?
They don't want the Voice to be about race? Duh.
This, from the ABC in response. I'm amazed they worked up the courage to post it:
Indigenous businessman and former Liberal candidate Warren Mundine said Mr Dutton's claim the Voice would "re-racialise" Australia was "spot on".
"He is right, this is really starting to get into a disgraceful campaign, and the campaign hasn't even started yet," Mr Mundine said.Comment
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Re: Oz Politics.
That is a nonsense. The 1967 referendum, put forward by the LibNats, btw... wasn't about that.
Following is from the APH website
Background
The reasons for the previous and explicit exclusion of Aboriginal people by sections 51 (xxvi) and 127 of the Constitution are not entirely clear. However, the effect of this exclusion was the implementation by the states of policies that could broadly be termed ‘assimilationist’, and laws that resulted in Aboriginal peoples’ dispossession, oppression and alienation.
Following longstanding calls for greater Commonwealth involvement in Indigenous affairs, in the 1960s the pressure for change built rapidly. In the face of evidence that assimilationist policies had failed, and with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal activists drawing attention to the denial of civil rights and discrimination that these policies entailed, the plight of Aboriginal people became a significant political issue. Activists ran petition campaigns to amend the Constitution in support of Indigenous civil rights, and bills seeking to amend the Constitution in favour of Aboriginal people were debated in the Federal Parliament.
In 1967, in response to a Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) petition calling for a referendum on sections 51 and 127 of the Constitution, the Holt Coalition Government introduced the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) Bill 1967 to the Parliament. The legislation was passed unanimously.
Because no parliamentarian had voted against the proposals relating to Aborigines, the Government only prepared a ‘Yes’ case for the referendum. The campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote gained widespread support among the Australian public and this was reflected in the final vote.
Impact
The significance of the 1967 Referendum has been somewhat obscured by a number of myths. These include the misconceptions that the Referendum granted Aboriginal people citizenship, the right to vote, wage equality and access to social security, among other things.
In terms of its practical significance, perhaps the main achievement of the Referendum was to raise the expectations of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people regarding Aboriginal rights and welfare.
The Referendum also had a great deal of symbolic significance. As John Gardiner-Garden has observed, the event ‘has come to act as a form of historical shorthand for a decade of change which began in the early 1960s and ended in the early 1970s’. The Referendum signalled a general shift in the way that Australian governments approached Indigenous issues, away from assimilationist policies towards policies based around self-determination, reconciliation and, more recently, ‘closing the gap’.Comment
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Re: Oz Politics.
Re the PWC consultants playing on both teams at once. "Someone will always leak"…… One panelist making excuses on the drum. More than one, but I bet no one will go to jail.
Another fail by the previous government. Fools or criminals?
But if you are an aboriginal kid and you steal a pie in NSW? You'll join the 56% indigenous of the children in jail.Comment
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Re: Oz Politics.
Last point first - your tortured language ain't quite got it.
Back to the Drum. Excuses? Your bias is showing.
We've had this discussion before, but it always flies over your rust-belt head every time. As was said on the Drum, there's duds in every group of people. That includes politicians (check out how many of them have gone to gaol)... police (think Roger Rogerson, etc) and even printers. There's certainly a couple of duds that ended up in the thick of this one at PWC, and I'm happy to put my money on the table - there's gaol time coming for one in particular, and probably a dozen or more who were at the centre of that.
Funnily enough, the last time I met one of tonight's panelists, was at a PWC sponsored luncheon some time back... and hell, there was even a dud Premier at the same lunch.... and on that, I quote from the Inside Story:
The biggest cloud hanging over Wran’s legacy was his handling of a series of corruption allegations. As biographers Mike Steketee and Milton Cockburn conclude, “while Wran’s cynicism did him no harm in the early years of his premiership, it almost brought him undone over the corruption issue. Here the cynicism was deep-rooted and absolute: corruption was not an issue because it did not affect people’s lives, as did bread and butter issues.”
The leading historian of NSW politics, David Clune, agrees. “When confronted with evidence of widespread corruption, Wran made the serious error of trying to obfuscate and cover up,” he writes. “Rather than admitting that there was a real problem that needed to be urgently addressed, he over-confidently assumed his political and parliamentary skills would enable him to defuse the issue.”
Even future Labor premier Bob Carr took Wran’s handling of corruption as a negative exemplar: “I had seen Neville Wran’s premiership tainted and compromised on probity by three distinct errors. One, the elevation of a corrupt cop as assistant commissioner. Two, the extension of the term of a corrupt chief stipendiary magistrate, Murray Farquhar. Three, being too slow to shake out police corruption… Almost every week I was to watch him struggle to ward off allegations that his administration was tainted by a laxness towards corruption.”
Allegations of corruption in the Wran era have flared up intermittently in the decades since his retirement. Most recently, early this year, the ABC series Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire aired claims about Wran’s role in organised crime figure Abe Saffron’s successful bid to lease Luna Park after the 1979 fire that killed seven people. At around the same time, former chief magistrate Clarrie Briese published Corruption in High Places, a memoir drawing on his long and distinguished career in the NSW judiciary, and Wran is one of his main targets.Comment
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Re: Oz Politics.
The NSW corps is never far from the NSW government or policing.
Down in Vic we had Tommy Bent, and well named he was too.
To get preselection from Lib/Lab you have to be compromised. Neither wants an honest MP, could be difficult, and again on the surface Labour with its discipline rules is more prone to open corruption. Politicians of all stamps have a history of being 'duds' criminals etc, and I admit that Labour has had more crooks that have surfaced, LibNats are usually more subtle and it passes as 'normal'.Comment
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Re: Oz Politics.
Back to the PWC stuff - as I understand it, all 53 individuals involved in them trying to leverage their knowledge have been ring-fenced, 9 partners placed on leave, and some heads have rolled. They have Switkowski doing an independent review, which will be published in full. My guess is Peter Collins will do significant time in gaol... but that's up to the AFP and the legal system after they complete their review.
Funnily enough, whilst working for them I did a project, for a government agency that was providing outside advice, on "Chinese Walls and Three-Cornered Contracts".... and the last time I went to one of their luncheons, the then partner in charge asked for my opinions on a governance issue at one of the big banks. The vast majority of staff (and that's what these firms have to sell - ie their staff's knowledge) are ethical, considered and honest. Unfortunately, the collateral damage from Collin's stupidity will be significant among some of the brightest minds in this country's business community.
I keep hearing people talking about rebuilding the Public Service. I've had this discussion at high levels. Neither party has the courage to do it. Look busy, don't make decisions (you might get one wrong)... keep checking your entitlements. That's the mantra of many.Comment
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