Their ABC, Class Clown

The Vision Statement of the ABC Education unit, I’m told by usually reliable insiders, must read something like this:

We ensure every Australian school student becomes a green/Left voter

Because of the ABC charter’s insistence on impartiality, we camouflage what we’re doing.

The unit’s greatest hit to date has been promoting the fake narrative of the fake Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian icon Bruce Pascoe to millions of schoolkids. This involves ABC Education’s giant 15-part extravaganza – “Bruce Pascoe: Aboriginal Agriculture, Technology and Ingenuity” which is still operating flat out in classrooms.

But while that taxpayer-funded load of old rope gets the attention, ABC Education slogs away tirelessly, day-in, day-out with routine brainwashing to support leftism and leach potential votes away from conservatives. I don’t know who runs it, how many staff it fields, and where they train as indoctrinators. The shadowy group gets only a few paras in the latest ABC annual report of 280 pages, e.g.

ABC Education connects teachers, students and families to a range of educational media linked to the Australian curriculum and frameworks such as the Early Childhood Years Framework.

In 2022, the ABC Education portal was rebuilt. It now hosts 3,094 videos, 101 articles, 127 games and 102 showcase collections for teachers and students to use in formal and informal educational settings.

The additional funding provided in the October 2022 Budget allowed the ABC to invest in the creation of two new educational content initiatives: BTN High, a short-form news segment directed towards high school students, and ABC Education Studios, which produced a range of media including videos, interactives and articles for school audiences…

ABC Education also assisted in mapping relevant factual and cultural broadcast material to the website to assist teachers in planning…. (p104).

A typical ABC Education lesson landed in my inbox yesterday, which I’ll unpack in this essay. It’s for 15- to 16-year-olds doing English, and is titled “The Power of Speech”.

At first sight, the selection of speakers and speeches seems fair and balanced, but you need to remove the camouflage netting to see how the ABC artillery is emplaced.

For some reason the lesson actually dates from December 15, 2022, and no-one has bothered to do that tedious updating. Anyway the frontispiece of course is a stock pic of Barack Obama orating in full cry. His finger is pointing skywards like a saint in an old master gesturing towards the Trinity. The lesson compilers admire Obama so much they run this pic twice.

Which speech he is making in unclear. It might be the 2009 one at Cairo University, absurdly titled “On a New Beginning”, doing the anti-Semitism-plus-anti-Islamaphobia routine.[1] Almost before he sat down the speech got him a $US1 million Nobel Peace Prize. Unlike Myanmar’s Aung Sun Suu Kyi, who donated her prize to Burmese charities, Obama trousered it.

On the other hand, it could be Obama in January 2016 messaging the Iranian Ayatollahs. By pointing upwards, he indicates that his two planeloads, literally, of $US1.3b in Euro notes and $US400m in Swiss francs, total $US1.7 billion cash, are taking off from Geneva for Teheran. This generosity was meant to dissuade the mullahs from developing nukes to Israel’s detriment. For $US1.7 billion cash, Obama also hoped, Iranian mobs might even stop chanting “Death to America!”

The actual Obama segment of the oratory lesson fails to give kids a video or audio clip of the great man’s style. It just tells them that four years before becoming President he told Democrat politicians that Thomas Jefferson when drafting the Declaration of Independence, said stuff about

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Democrat politicians had probably heard about Jefferson’s remarks before, but for ABC Education it was an exciting example of how president-to-be Obama “used the rhetorical device ‘anamnesis’, which is the quoting of an author from the past.”

Before I mention who else’s rhetoric is crowned by the ABC, let’s skip to the tail of the piece and the link, “Unforgettable Speeches: The Nation Has Voted.” It tells how we the people have selected the world’s all-time great speeches, ranking them from first to 20th.

Martin Luther King Jr and “I have a dream” came top (Gold Medal), and Jesus with his Sermon on the Mount was runner-up (Silver). You’ll never guess, but who won Bronze? Paul Keating! For his 1992 Redfern Park address!

That was the one where Keating blathered about “we did the murders”. ABC Education is here dishing it out to kids as not just lofty but holy. (Keating’s Boswell, Don Watson, claimed authorship; Keating says it was all his own work). A decade later, however, many of the darker Redfern audience still don’t feel reconciled.

They rioted around Redfern railway station with missiles, bludgeons and Molotov cocktails, causing trauma and injuries to no fewer than 42 NSW police officers. The rampaging mob set the railway station and a church partially alight and torched a car. Eight coppers were hospitalised – one was knocked unconscious when a brick bounced off his helmeted head.

Limping behind Keating were the likes of Winston Churchill fighting on the beaches (4th), Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg (5th), a few others and then 9th, you’ll never guess, Gough Whitlam on Parliament House steps, abusing the governor-general and “Kerr’s cur”, little knowing that a month later Australian voters would give his rabble a resounding kick in the backside.

Trailing behind Mr Whitlam come also-rans Queen Elizabeth 1 (“heart and stomach of a king”), Mandela, Ghandi, Socrates, William Wilberforce (something about slavery), and rather surprisingly, Alfred Deakin at Bendigo, 1898. Finally, as we the nation have allegedly voted, we get to 20th place, and it’s Ben Chifley, 1949, doing his “Light on the Hill”. I’ve forgotten (if I ever knew) what that speech was all about, but I do recall the Australian people got rid of Chifley and his would-be bank nationalisers six months later. Actually Labor’s “Light on the Hill” is now mentioned only ironically, in terms of Gillard appointing Peter “Mussels” Slipper as Speaker, endemic branch-stacking brawls, Dan Andrews’ legacy, one-time ALP President Michael Williamson put inside for five years for ‘parasitic’ fraud on his Health Services Union and so on. However, Prime Minister Albanese is not into irony, and instead claims, “Chifley’s thoughts on the nature of the Australian labour movement are, in many ways, our equivalent of the Gettysburg Address.”

Time now for the big reveal: that Top 20 Speeches list headed “The Nation Has Voted” was actually chosen by a self-selected jury of some 5000 ABC Radio National fans and keyboard warriors way back in 2007, before most of today’s high-schoolers were born.

This list wasn’t ABC Education’s main game, it was just optional homework. I’ll now fill out what the main lesson involved. It’s a green/Left kernel surrounded by politically neutral or even apparently conservative material. For example, opening speaker is Republican President Ronald Reagan. He’s honouring in a bipartisan way the US troops who fought and died in Normandy on D-Day.

Then we get President John Kennedy and his 1963 Berlin speech about “Ich bin ein Berliner”. All well and good so far. Next comes Churchill and his beaches, followed by President Obama with no speech accessible. Maybe our ABC Educator/programmers haven’t yet mastered the internet.

We then get to the ABC’s core business: trashing its political enemies, starting with Senator Pauline Hanson. The ABC leftists give kids a villainously expurgated clip (2min43secs out of 21 minutes total) of her maiden speech to Parliament in 1996 at age 41. She was politically unskilled, her delivery was terrible and she was just one remove from her prior career as a fish-shop proprietor – not that many other Parliamentarians can boast small-business credentials. Sandwiching her between Obama and PM Julia Gillard for oratory seems a deliberate mockery.

ABC Education excerpted only those passages when she is strident and eliminated points with which probably 60 per cent of Australians – “No” voters, for instance – would heartily agree. The ABC wants students to mock her as “Invective, angry, attacking”. As a figleaf rationale for her inclusion, the ABC adds, “Note also her use of ‘litotes’, or understatement, around the 1.50 point” (It’s actually 1.20) when she says,

“I may be only `a fish and chip shop lady’, but some of these economists need to get their heads out of the textbooks and get a job in the real world. [Following sentence cut: I would not even let one of them handle my grocery shopping].

Here’s how the ABC edits to make sure Hanson doesn’t gain accidental influence with kids. The cut bits are in italic, bits used by the ABC in bold:

Present governments are encouraging separatism in Australia by providing opportunities, land, moneys and facilities available only to Aboriginals. Along with millions of Australians, I am fed up to the back teeth with the inequalities that are being promoted by the government and paid for by the taxpayer under the assumption that Aboriginals are the most disadvantaged people in Australia. I do not believe that the colour of one’s skin determines whether you are disadvantaged…

I have done research on benefits available only to Aboriginals and challenge anyone to tell me how Aboriginals are disadvantaged when they can obtain three and five per cent housing loans denied to non-Aboriginals. [In 1996 variable mortgage rates were around 10%].

This nation is being divided into black and white, and the present system encourages this. I am fed up with being told, `This is our land.’ Well, where the hell do I go? I was born here, and so were my parents and children. I will work beside anyone and they will be my equal but I draw the line when told I must pay and continue paying for something that happened over 200 years ago. Like most Australians, I worked for my land; no-one gave it to me.

The same ABC snip-trick is used to muffle her attack on multiculturalism — which today has led to mobs of Hamas-lovers at the Sydney Opera House chanting “Gas the Jews!” (or coppers’ version, “Where’s the Jews?”):

Immigration and multiculturalism are issues that this government is trying to address, but for far too long ordinary Australians have been kept out of any debate by the major parties. I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians.[2]Between 1984 and 1995, 40 per cent of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate. Of course, I will be called racist but, if I can invite whom I want into my home, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country. A truly multicultural country can never be strong or united. The world is full of failed and tragic examples…

Perhaps you’re thinking the ABC doesn’t really have an animus against Hanson and I’m drawing the long bow here. Not really. Soon after that maiden speech, the ABC wheeled out its “comedian”, drag queen/academic/LGBTI-activist Simon Hunt, to mock her for two decades as “Pauline Pantsdown”.The ABC Complaints Department was fine with this, considering it harmless satire, not that anyone would contemplate satirising a Federal Minister as “Penny Pantsdown” or the Reserve Bank Governor as “Michele Pantsdown”.[3] In his ABC-popular persona as Hanson, so-called comedian Hunt also created filthy misogynist songs “Back Door Man” and “I Don’t Like It”[4]. The songs were played repeatedly on ABC’s Triple J[5] over 11 days in 1997 with lyrics including

I’m a backdoor man for the Klu Klux Klan with a very horrendous plan. I’m a very caring potato. [A ‘potato’ is gay argot for a receiving male partner, according to Hanson’s lawyers]… You must come out and be one of us. As long as children come across,  I’m a happy person.[6]

Hunt was particularly proud that 8-14-year-old-children enjoyed Back Door Man, to the evident satisfaction of their teachers:

Time and time again, school teachers and parents would tell me that their kids knew all the words to the song. I hadn’t counted on the nursery-rhyme factor — I had also become some sort of alternative Ronald McDonald for the 8-14-year-olds.

Hanson sued the ABC and won, with Justice Ambrose commenting,

There’s a political overtone to the whole exercise which seems to denigrate her personally by making assertions as to her sexual preference and her abnormal sexual attraction with respect to children and so on…I can’t imagine anybody listening to that production would not conclude that the assertion was that Pauline Hanson was a paedophile … or that she was a homosexual and rejoiced in the fact… I can’t imagine that one can avoid liability for injury to reputation… by simply prefacing it by saying, `Well, this is satirical, don’t take this seriously,’ and then playing it over and over and over again.

The ABC then spent more taxpayer funds appealing, only to lose again on September 28, 1998. Chief Justice Paul De Jersey (later Queensland’s Governor 2014-21) said,

Before the Chamber Judge, [Hanson] contended that the broadcast material gave rise to imputations that she is a homosexual, a prostitute, involved in unnatural sexual practices, associated with the Ku Klux Klan, a man and/or a transvestite and involved in or party to sexual activities with children. The [ABC] essentially contended that the material amounted merely to vulgar abuse and was not defamatory.

Interesting, that the ABC condoned and defended its “vulgar abuse” of politicians it dislikes. Remember, this is the taxpayer-funded ABC airing the misogynist abuse, not some nutter on the internet. De Jersey J continued,

These were grossly offensive imputations relating to the sexual orientation and preference of a Member of Parliament and her performance which the appellant in no degree supports as accurate and which were paraded as part of an apparently fairly mindless effort at cheap denigration.

To round off this tawdry ABC affair, Pauline Hanson, whose party in 2022 scored 5 per cent of national first preferences (727,000), had the guts and moral backbone to enter the Senate proudly wearing an Israeli flag as scarf. Would even one of the ABC’s 4400 tax leeches dare to dress for work like that? And Hanson’s weekly cartoon mockery of “progressives” is brilliant comedy.

ABC Education follows its Hanson item, ironically, with an adoring homage to PM Julia Gillard’s 2012 “misogyny speech”. Kids are told merely that she was being branded as “misogynistic” for defending “controversial politician Peter Slipper”. Slipper in reality had been texting to mates comparing women’s genitals to shelled mussels in a bottle and “salty c–ts in brine”. ABC Educators say that her speech “proved to be one of her most memorable” and got 2.5 million hits on YouTube. “Explore why as you watch this clip from the speech”, the ABC orders 15- to 16-yer-olds. That’s how leftist educators push kids to the “correct” answer. To make sure kids toe the line, the ABC continues,

Things to think about

1/ What tactic does Julia Gillard use to refute Tony Abbott’s claim that her government is misogynistic? Why would this be an effective strategy? What do you notice about how Ms Gillard uses her voice when quoting Mr Abbott? What tone does she use when thanking Mr Abbott for ‘that painting of women’s roles in modern Australia’? What does Ms Gillard’s speech suggest about the manner in which Mr Abbott views women?

2/ How successful do you think Ms Gillard is in painting Tony Abbott as a misogynist? In attacking misogyny, what values does she convey? …

And one open question

3/ Following Ms Gillard’s speech, both Mr Abbott’s and her approval ratings improved. Why might the public have responded in this unexpected way?

I mentioned the ABC knows how to disguise its biases. To “balance” Gillard’s powerful but poisonous attack on Tony Abbott, the class session is then given a 2m44sec clip of Abbott himself speaking. What about? Not defending himself against Gillard’s ludicrous “misogyny” attack, but doing a bipartisan job espousing progress for Aborigines. He delivers praise to PM Kevin Rudd, to Gillard, to Labor Senator Nova Peris and footballer Adam Goodes. In other words, the Abbott clip is selected to reinforce the ABC narrative about lovely Labor, not dispute it.

This time the “Things to think about” for the kids include

1/ Why do you think Mr Abbott pays tribute to previous prime ministers, even those from opposing parties? Explain how Mr Abbott has shaped his speech in consideration of his audience.

2/ Research some of the people Mr Abbott pays tribute to. Create a poster or digital pin board exploring these people and their contributions to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs.

ABC Educators are only just getting into their stride. Next job is to gee-up the kids about The Dismissal and its canards. Kids are told

After learning of his dismissal, Mr Whitlam addressed the Australian public and uttered a line that has resonated throughout Australian politics since 1975.

Words can be immensely powerful and, as you will discover in this clip, the way they are delivered can add to their power.

The Whitlam clip is just 57secs but gets started with Whitlam’s nasty “nothing can save the Governor-General” (loud cheers – but isn’t Whitlam being a Trumpian insurrectionist?) The clip continues to Whitlam abusing incoming PM Malcolm Fraser (loud boos and jeers) as “Kerr’s cur” (wild cheers for Whitlam).

The ABC “Things to think about” now gets worse:

Whitlam uses the pun of ‘Kerr’s cur’ to characterise his rival and successor, leader of the opposition Malcolm Fraser. What is a cur? What is Mr Whitlam implying here? What emotions do you think are expressed in Mr Whitlam’s famous lineabout the governor-general? What emotions do you notice being aroused in the audience? Why do you think this is such a memorable statement?

On and on the ABC goes. Kids get a 5min-50sec blast of PM Keating at the Despatch Box in 1992 doing a fine job on pathetic Liberal-lite opponent John Hewson and on PM-to-be John Howard. Keating looks great, is passionate, witty, and all-round brilliant, except that his main message is anti-British nuttery. This includes his armchair-warrior gripes that the British “decided not to defend the Malaysian peninsular, not to worry about Singapore” and tried to retain in North Africa our troops needed to defend against Japan (true but…) He also mocks the long Menzies’ growth era, in favour of Labor’s new deal of all things wonderful. I suspect that teachers would endorse to kids not just Keating’s oratory but his political messaging as well.

After some quite OK historical speeches, ABC Educators can’t wait to give kids even more Paul Keating (via speechwriter Don Watson) – another full 5 minutes of his 1992 Redfern speech including

The starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us, the non-Aboriginal Australians…Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.

If Keating, as he says, did all these vile things, including murdering lots of our “first nations” colleagues, he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. However, the ABC in Things to Think About decides for kids that the speech was a “defining moment in Australia’s reconciliation”. ABC concedes (I think a little incredulously) that “some people at the time might have reacted negatively to what Keating said” and asks why. It fails to alert kids that on just about every indicator of health, schooling, crime, domestic violence, child neglect, substance abuse and general mayhem (think Alice Springs, Wadeye and Daly River, and here), the welfare-dependent 20 per cent cohort of Aborigines has retrogressed ever since, in many aspects at accelerating rates.

I pity any kids, identifying with a conservative household, having to sit through an ABC Education session like this. They’d probably keep their heads down, shut up and work out how to dishonestly answer all those loaded ABC questions to avoid a repeat year. I ask ABC Chair Kim Williams: “How about putting a stop to your organisation’s child abuse?”

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[2] I think by “Asians” she was mis-speaking for Middle Easterners.

[3] I complained to the ABC as follows:

Baseless sexual innuendo about a woman politician by ABC news staff : This photo montage falsely implies that Ms Pauline Hanson is promiscuous or in other ways operates with “pants down”. There is no basis whatsoever for such a smear and for such disrespect to a female.

Could you please let me know what are the ABC guidelines on respectful treatment of females, especially avoidance of gratuitous references to sexual behaviour (in this case, also false). Can you also tell me whether the pic montage above complies with such ABC guidelines, and if not, what remedy you intend, and whether the ABC will make a public apology to this female politician.

On August 25 the ABC’s then complaints czarina Denise Musto replied, after apologising for the delay:

High profile public figures such as politicians are frequently the target of satire. As explained in the ABC News online story, in the late 1990s the satirical character Pauline Pantsdown achieved some popularity with the release of two satirical songs about Pauline Hanson. There was some speculation in the Australian media on whether Simon Hunt, a media lecturer and LGBTI activist who created ‘Pauline Pantsdown’, would reprise the satirical character following Ms Hanson’s successful return to Canberra.

Audience and Consumer Affairs are satisfied that the image was not in contravention of ABC editorial standards. There was news value to this story, ABC News Online readers would recognise the satirical nature of image, and many would remember the character ‘Pauline Pantsdown’: they would not interpret the name of this character as being a direct comment on the Ms Hanson’s sexual behaviour as you suggest. Nonetheless, please be assured that your concerns are noted.

[4] “I Don’t Like It” was incorporated into a permanent exhibition at the Museum of Australian Democracy at ‘old Parliament House’, Canberra.

[5] Triple-J listeners voted it No. 92 on the “Hottest 100 [Songs] of all time”, an instance of faint praise.

[6] Obama: “Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have to recognize they have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel’s right to exist.

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. (Applause.) This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop. (Applause.)

Trials of an MSO Subscriber

Leave a reply

Tony Thomas

I have been a season subscriber to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) on and off for about forty years, not that I am any sort of musical sophisticate. In about 1959, at the age of nineteen, I was bitten by the classical music bug. Through those twelve-inch long-playing records, I began working my way through all the canonical composers on the family radiogram. In that impecunious era, I could not afford to buy the records at full price; fortunately, the World Record Club offered members a free LP for each person introduced as a subscriber, and so I temporarily signed up every variety of my name (Tony, Anthony, “A.P.” …) to claim the bonus records.

Second-hand record shops sometimes stocked operas in hefty box sets, and through good fortune, with my newspaper cadet’s earnings, my first purchases were Mario del Monaco’s tuneful rendition of Il Trovatoreand that famous Lucia di Lammermoor with Joan Sutherland—rather than, for instance, Richard Strauss’s Elektra. Not long after 1960, stereo earphones arrived in Perth, creating a hemisphere of delight in one’s head. I was a long-term hospital patient at the time, and with some help from a tradie I soldered up a stereo amplifier to harness the operatic magic. One morning, whilst entranced by Victoria de los Angeles, the transformer caught fire and our whole ward had to be evacuated.

In short, I am one of those average types who probably make up the bulk of the MSO’s subscribers. And we do matter, because ticket sales make up a quarter of the MSO’s $40 million in annual revenue.

To arrive at the point, my arduous trips from Keilor to Hamer Hall for evenings of Mozart, Mahler and Dvořák, to name only a few, these days involve an irritation. This is because the MSO now sees its mission as not purely one of music but to douse the audience in progressive urgings. I think, on balance, most concertgoers are content to appease this intent. The evermore elaborate and insincere “Acknowledgements of Country” are followed by ripples of applause and no audible restlessness from any malcontents. I have heard similar accounts from friends who frequent the Sydney Opera House.

The apotheosis of Melbourne progressivism came last September when those executives and musicians, speaking on behalf of the whole orchestra and administration, threw their support behind the Voice to Parliament. They announced a desire “to walk with First Nations people to create a better future”. They viewed the impending referendum as “a unique opportunity for national reflection upon our past, and the creation of a new and respectful shared future through consultation and actions taken in the present”. Further, they pledged to pump up their Aboriginality, through more Aboriginal performers and more Aboriginal music, ensuring these Australians are “better heard within our own Orchestra”. They persisted, “This continues a tradition of storytelling through music which is an important part of a continuum on the country of the world’s longest surviving Indigenous cultures.” I am really not sure what that sentence actually means.

In March 2023, the MSO introduced what it called Mob Tix for anyone identifying as Aboriginal—or even Maori, Pasifika or “First Nations people from other countries”. Under the MSO’s rules, these people are all entitled, with no questions asked, to “a discounted rate to certain concerts”. Well, it certainly is good to encourage along any Kalahari Bushmen, Eskimos, Ainus, Kikuyus, Bedouin and Sioux into otherwise, of course, empty seats, providing that, say, Huli Wigmen do not block one’s view of the stage. The MSO’s 2022 annual report provides no less than eight mentions of the company’s programs for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) Week. The report quoted a press review about how one of the orchestra’s three offerings for NAIDOC “unashamedly” showcased the “injustices and mistreatment that still confront our First Nations People”.

As for all capital symphony orchestras, their “DEI”—that is, their diversity, equity and inclusion —credentials are being tracked by a Perth-based group called Tenth Muse Initiative, named after the Greek poet Sappho. Led by soprano and creative producer Hannah Lee Tungate and her Women Composers Project, it checks how many works of female, First Nations, living and/or historical composers of colour are performed annually. She told Limelight magazine (March 8, 2024) that she wants “to hold our major orchestras to account”, especially because of their over-scheduling of “the same dead German men every year”. Well, roll over Pachelbel, Telemann, Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, Strauss, Reger and Hindemith. Even Stockhausen can get stuffed, as now can Aribert Reimann, who passed away in March this year.

Tungate was aggrieved to learn that 90.2 per cent of works programmed by Australia’s major orchestras last year were by men, which she said was even worse than in 2022 (only 85.5 per cent men in that year). The programming of the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra (WASO) comprised 82.3 per cent dead males (labelled as “historical composers”), 11.3 per cent living males and 6.5 per cent living women. WASO failed to include any works by non-binary or gender-diverse composers, nor anything from composers of colour. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra was, by these same metrics, just as bad: 86.6 per cent dead men’s works, 8.9 per cent living men’s and 4.5 per cent living women’s. “There were more works by Beethoven, Mozart, Debussy, Schubert, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky each than by [all the] women combined,” Tungate added of the SSO. But it really is quite hard to say whether audiences are actually crying out for music by women, Aborigines, the gender-diverse and composers of colour, or whether they simply expect (and pay) to hear well-crafted orchestral music. I know I certainly do. I think all this reflects John O’Sullivan’s First Law: “All organisations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”

I HAVE an anecdote, or series of them, about the MSO from nearly fifteen years ago, before its predictable takeover by a progressive caste. From the top down, the MSO was in those days an institution quite willing to smack off any deviations from professionalism. It was even willing to concede the merits of arguments by a cantankerous conservative: me. I am certain the MSO would give short shrift to such complaints today, however cogent or meritorious.

On June 20, 2009, I turned up at the Melbourne Concert Hall to enjoy Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, and nearly blew a fuse. The MSO’s free program note was written as if by some Soviet shill. It quoted Prokofiev praising the cultural freedom of Soviet artists. Strangely for a 2009 performance, these notes were dated 1997, six years after the Soviet Union’s collapse. Without any editorial commentary from the MSO, Prokofiev in this note swiped at the lack of “freedom of the human spirit” in the United States, in contrast to “free and happy Soviet man”. Dmitri Kabalevsky, a Soviet composer, cultural enforcer, and three-time winner of the Stalin Prize, was also quoted, reporting how Prokofiev helped in the running of a war-time composers’ commune, where Prokofiev “encouraged the others to discuss their daily achievements in an atmosphere of mutual trust”.

Arriving home, I hurriedly penned a letter to the MSO. I pointed out that, prior to the premiere of the Fifth, Prokofiev had already suffered as, to ensure his good behaviour, his wife Lena and two sons were held as hostages in Siberia. For all anyone knows, the quotes attributed to him could have been drafted by the NKVD, and Prokofiev, in signing off on them, was very likely held at some implied, or even real, gunpoint. “I can hardly believe that these MSO programme notes could be so ill-informed and so keen to whitewash an era of hideous tyranny and murder in the now-unlamented Soviet Union,” I wrote to the orchestra. To defeat the normal bureaucratic reaction, I posted a copy of the letter not only to the MSO’s managing director, Trevor Green, but also its chief conductor, Oleg Caetani, himself the son of Russian conductor Igor Markevitch and doubtless well apprised of actual Soviet musical history. I am sure he had not read the published notes.

You might reasonably suppose my letter was hastily tossed into the nearest bin? Not so. One month later, Green responded to me, writing, among other things, “I agree with you that Prokofiev needs to be discussed more even-handedly. Accordingly, we will commission a new note for our next performance of this work, and will, when the budget allows, commission new annotations for other Soviet-era works that may be performed in future seasons.” Bravo, Trevor Green! However—and why must there always be a however—on May 22 the following year, I again attended the Concert Hall, and this time found myself reading the program notes to Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. When home, I penned another letter to the MSO. The notes, I wrote, were all right, but:

I was outraged by the illustration of Stalin … This [the included image] is a propagandistic illustration from the height of the Stalin cult period. Yet the caption merely states that it is Joseph Stalin. It is not Joseph Stalin, who was short, with a low forehead, and a swarthy pockmarked face. The illustration shows Stalin as handsome, wise and statesmanlike, a heroic war leader, avuncular, tall, stern but with a hint of kindness. Using such a picture without describing it as a propaganda picture is an insult to all the many millions whom that man murdered, including at least a few hundred artists, writers and, doubtless, composers, along with their colleagues, family and friends … I am sure that whoever selected the heroic Stalin illustration did so merely from lack of sophistication and lack of historical perspective. But I am surprised that someone of more maturity in a cosmopolitan city like Melbourne did not tell him or her that Stalin was a mass murderer and not a hero.

(Incidentally, one of my critics made the reasonable point that non-propaganda portraits of Stalin are almost non-existent, except maybe from group portraits at Yalta and Potsdam.) This letter was mailed to Matthew VanBesien, who had replaced Green as the orchestra’s managing director, and guest conductor Andrew Litton. After leaving the MSO, VanBesien went on to become President of the New York Philharmonic.

A month later, VanBesien replied, acknowledging that the choice of photograph could have been more discerning. “For which, of course, I apologise to you,” he wrote, before adding, “but I am not convinced that the photograph automatically denies Stalin’s atrocities”. VanBesien cited other music programs that had featured Jacques-Louis David’s propagandistic depictions of Napoleon, as well as official photographs of Tsar Nicholas II. “These men were responsible for thousands—if not millions—of deaths,” wrote VanBesien. “None of this was wiped away for me by seeing Napoleon on a horse or Nicholas II looking statesmanlike. I will of course bring this issue to the attention of the staff responsible for production of printed programs.”

So far, so good. A year passed. On December 10, 2011, I was back to the Melbourne Town Hall, this time reading the program notes to Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. The text? It was all fine. The illustration? Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. His outfit: a bemedalled uniform, circa 1945. His forehead: high. His expression: noble, but caring. His complexion: to die for! And the illustration’s caption? “Propagandaportrait of Stalin”. Huzzah!

We humble members of the public should always be assertive towards the powers-that-be when they get things wrong, for whatever reason. In that historical MSO case, the orchestra’s management was responsive and positive towards an admittedly cranky music lover, who takes anything to do with Stalin very seriously (I’ve re-read all volumes of the Gulag Archipelago several times). But sadly, the zeitgeist is now ever so different, and not for the better.

Tony Thomas is a Melbourne-based journalist whose essays are published by Quadrant and Connor Court

Suitable Cases for Treatment

Leave a reply

Tony Thomas

I suffer eco-anxiety. It hit new highs when the UN’s socialist Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced that “the era of global boiling has arrived” but I continue to draw comfort from counsellors at Psychology for a Safe Climate, who have a website full of tips on how neurotics like me can cope with global boiling. The members, largely female and Sydney-Melbourne based, will tackle the panoply of clients’ eco-anxieties including anger, fear, hopelessness, guilt, betrayal, sadness, shame, shock, trauma and delusion, plus some 200 other discomforts catalogued in a taxonomy of climate hurts by endlessly quoted eco-psychologist Panu Pihkala of the Theology Faculty of Helsinki University.

PSC now offers a “Climate Feelings Space” which went live a few months back. As they alerted me by email (Feb 15) ,

Preparing ourselves emotionally for unpredictable climate events may also be leading to unpredictable internal worlds. This is why we created this new offering. The Climate Feelings Space is filled with practices, events, and training to support your emotional wellbeing as we navigate complex climate impacts.

For my heebie-jeebies about global boiling, they recommend I take a slow walk into my back garden. It’s actually my wife’s territory and the length of a kitchen bench. I’m not normally permitted near it. But under PSC guidance I allowed myself to notice a flower and “be allured by it.” PSC continues,

Move toward this other being, with curiosity. Notice it: take in its details, savour its scent, its colour, its shape, its sound, whatever moves you in the moment … As it feels authentic to you, offer your praise to this other being, out loud. Speak (or sing or dance!) about what drew you to this Other…Appreciate its mysteries and unknowns. Let yourself be surprised at what you express. If it feels right, you might even bow to this being, or offer it a gesture of thanks. Then keep wandering!

I spotted an orange snapdragon and moved close to savour it, although it was actually on its last legs because we’ve been away in Portugal. I spoke to it, “Congrats on surviving. Sorry about you getting parched, and eaten by those pesky caterpillars.”

My next task was to sing and dance to this petalled Other. Not easy as the seedlings bordered my study wall, restricting my dancing to a half circle. I sang to it, “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina!” To finish I honoured the plant with the bow I last practised in 1962 in Hamlet at UWA Drama, where I played an attendant lord.

Little escapes my wife. As I scraped off the garden dirt at the back door she called,

“Are you OK? What were you doing out there anyway?”

“Yeah no! Nothing really, like, those seedlings needed a squirt.”

PSC SAYS its reach extends to hundreds of mental health professionals. Members are closely allied with the UK Climate Psychology Alliance and cross-contribute to each other’s journals. Not all the Alliance’s UK psychotherapy is successful: its journal chronicles how a disturbed person, “Charlie”, was being counselled about the planetary CO2 death drive.

Charlie’s own personal journey through climate activism and psychological difficulty came to a head in 2019 when he jumped from the six-storey roof of his psychotherapist’s consulting room. He survived, but only just, and both of his legs had to be amputated. (p27).

Charlie’s own therapeutic and “brilliant” book begins, “I am pretty mad, by conventional standards”. To me he seems just as sane, or insane, as all the green-Left alarmists, writing,

the politics of late capitalism divides, alienates and disorders those who struggle against the climate crisis……[involving] the depressing interrelationships of colonialism, disrespect for indigenous culture and environmental destruction…

The Alliance’s reviewer Ro Randall concludes that

there is much here for us as mental healthpractitioners, particularly in his accounts of his own and others’ psychological struggles as part of the climate movement.

I expected the leftist PSC crowd to be offering counselling gratis to mentally distressed Hamas fighters, but found no such evidence.The UK Alliance twin, however, has gone the full keffiyeh. Last March the Alliance’s co-founder Paul Hoggett wrote

The liberal West needs to face up to another truth, that the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza may be the forerunner of the catastrophic loss of life that the deepening climate crisis will visit upon the Global South in the coming decades. We don’t yet have a word for it – a mass extermination which will affect many different peoples who nevertheless will have one thing in common, they will be overwhelmingly non-white.

He deplores what he calls “the events” of October 7, but claims

we are afraid to face up to the difficult truth that, despite suffering persecution at the hands of Christians for a millennium, despite the Holocaust, Jewish people are themselves capable of becoming perpetrators … The comforting distinctions we hold to between good and bad, right and wrong, collapse under the rubble of Gaza … There is a genocidal dimension to the Israeli attacks on Palestinians, one which could prefigure the massive casualties to come in the Global South arising from the climate crisis. If we let this happen in Gaza we have taken a step towards ensuring that our indifference will be visited upon the peoples of the South in the climate deranged future.

“Deranged”? They got it in one. Back home, PSC members divide their time between hand-holding ferals at “coal protest camps” and relieving the eco-distressed of their professed emotional loads. PSC members appear to be let loose by the Education Departments on “teachers and students and parents”. But they struggle to get government grants for mental support for highway blockers, and others “grappling with grief, fear, despair, rage and hope”. In 2019 PSC did raise $40 from a workshop on “grief for activists”, but the financial grief involved a $2.98 cash loss after $42.98 for the name-tags. In 2021-22 their accounts show fundraising of $4,449.16 but offset by fundraising fees of $15,143.97. Website costs rocketed from $116.18 in 2019 to a phenomenal $11,030.07 in 2022 — if they put this job out to tender I’ll certainly apply
The PSC’s top team has included founder Carol Ride, senior psychiatrist Dr Charles Le Feuvre, activist Dr Sally Gillespie, newsletter stalwart Bianca Crapis, secretary Dr Yalcin Adal and scribe Dr Susie Burke of Castlemaine from the parent Australian Psychological Society (27,000 members). Without wanting to create an encyclopedia, I’ll sample their talents and output.

Dr Sally Gillespie is a Jungian “with a background in depth psychology and ecopsychology”. I was initially perplexed to read that she’s a recent guest editor of Quadrant, but found that her Quadrant is the Journal of the CG Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology (New York), “embracing different cultural, mythological, and arts-based perspectives including painting, music and dance.”

She authored Climate Crisis and Consciousness: Re-imagining our world and ourselves, “an essential resource for counsellors, psychotherapists, social workers and other helping professionals, as well as climate campaigners, policy makers, educators, scientists and researchers.” In this book[i] she describes how, because of a dream “which felt more like a vision”, she abjured her previous career and lifestyle to focus on stopping global warming. Her dream

was a terrifying depiction of global chaos caused by climate disruption. In my dream I swung on a rope above the Earth as land masses shifted around beneath me. I saw continents sinking beneath rising seas. Millions of people in the oceans desperately attempted to cling to fast disappearing land. Somehow I knew I had to join them. I let go of the rope and dropped into this catastrophe, becoming one of many attempting to hold on to the heaving shores. In the midst of this horror, a desperate poodle swam into my arms. I cared for my newfound companion as best I could, while feeling the futility of everyone’s struggle to survive.

I’d label that account as expurgated, because in her PhD thesis, which involved five years’ work, she includes that she “cared for my newfound [poodle] companion as best I could” by stealing biscuits for it.[ii] Maybe dreams of biscuit-stealing wouldn’t look good on a Jungian’s CV. In any event, she was

dazed by the “shock and awe” experience of dropping into an apocalyptic world. Any possibility of distancing myself from climate change reports collapsed…

That dream

catapulted me out of my old life and view of the world. I shook for the vulnerability of all beings on Earth, as my consciousness opened up to the realities of collective fate… my world, the one I knew as a reality, was ending…I felt in my gut that I had to acknowledge the full seriousness of global warming, and that, in one way or another, I would spend the rest of my life acting in response.

My own questioning of myself, my society and our world has catapulted me into a voyage of discovery which I am grateful for, despite the horror and grief I feel.

In following years she had new dreams rounding out her poodle-powered epiphany:

In each dream, I was approached by an animal who looked for care and connection. In one, I gazed into a stormy sea, eagerly anticipating the end of the human race and, with this, the restoration of the health of the oceans. But then a thirsty, bedraggled and crusty-skinned seal unexpectedly leapt into my arms, jolting me into the present. My mind abandoned its bleak and guilty imaginings in order to work out how to best care for this desperate creature….

This series of climate change dreams navigated me through a sea of feelings. Over time, waves of despair, guilt, judgement, grief and confusion made way for currents of tenderness, connection, delight, wonder and love. In 2012, nearly four years after my initial dream, I had two successive dreams which brought some sense of resolution.

In the first, I swam in the ocean circled by two seals and a dolphin who all looked deeply into my eyes before the dolphin reached forward with its snout and touched my arm. In the second, I travelled to the United States and walked along a waterfront when a seal swam up close to greet me. I gazed back, marvelling at its rodent-like features, golden eyes and grey mottled skin…Taken together, my dreams felt like a kind of initiation. They brought me face to face with my human self, my animal relations and my place in the world. Both in dream and waking life, I found my way from hopelessness and horror to commitment and care.

Her PhD thesis[iii] (no longer online) includes another dream, which assigned her to critique a Doris Lessing novel about climate change. She gets low marks from “a young woman, a smart cultural theorist” who provides comments written on ravioli.

The tantalising image of the ‘ravioli marks’ stayed with me, strangely apt in its sensual interplay of inner and outer, forms and fillings, offering richly-embodied sustenance and meaning (p39).

For her thesis she created and tracked a seven-member group of excitable women, some 50-plus, to share their own climate-apocalypse dreams – “fellow crew members sailing a vessel of inquiry.” By their second meeting they’re fantasising about surviving “systemic collapse.” For example, “stories of cannibalism are shared” (p106).

Gillespie: I wonder what those stories are serving for us at the moment, in teasing us into these questions. Not only the literal question: would I eat someone else or not [but] what’s the value of human life and culture and society?

Participant Veronica was the most notable member, in a car-crash sort of way, of the therapeutic group of seven. Sally writes that Veronica

broke into tears on her way to our meeting when she walked past a cat, explaining “I want a cat, but I don’t want a cat. And that’s climate change in terms of species preservation … I mean the tentacles of this issue are every freaking where!” (p186).

Veronica watched the US gas documentary Gaslandon television one night and sobbed “huge wailing tears–my parents live right near where fracking is going on, they’re having earthquakes for the first time in recorded history” (p119). She and her husband fled to Australia from “their very grief-filled time” in the US, “in the hugest bastion of [Republican] denial”. She confessed that if she didn’t believe in the eternal soul, “I would be one angry bitch.” (p77).

Dr Gillespie in her book pays homage to “teenage student climate strikers who call out adult political leaders for their reckless lack of responsibility and maturity in failing to address the climate emergency.” She feels the kids highlight the “inappropriate adolescent behaviour in adult leaders”. She quotes Greta Thunberg, who seems a patron saint of green psychologists and these days gets around in a keffiyeh. Sally quotes Greta, “They [politicos] know they haven’t done their homework – but we have.” Although Dr Gillespie decided that “throwing scientific evidence at dogged denialists never works”, her tract concludes on a hopeful note:

As I finish writing this book, hundreds of thousands of school students around the world are taking to the streets demanding action on climate with placards reading “Save our planet, save our future,” “We are all in the same boat, stop drilling holes in it,” “Global warning,” “We can’t drink oil, we can’t eat money.” Their signs tell us that a global myth of alarm and danger, and care and respect is being born.[iv]

Dr Charles Le Feuvre: Melbourne psychiatrist and psychotherapist Charles Le Feuvre has been the group’s intellectual leader and now its Honorary Senior Advisor. He’s also been a consultant psychiatrist at Royal Melbourne Hospital and psychotherapy chair of the College of Psychiatrists. Sadly, his house at Wye River was completely burnt in the 2016 climate-caused bushfires. Only his statue of Venus was saved.

With fellow-psychs’ help he laid out the PSC manifesto as “The Pschodynamics of Climate Change Denial,” a work heavily referencing fellow-shrink Harold Searles and his Unconscious processes in relation to the environmental crisis. Searles rates the climate-ecological crisis as an even more dire threat to humankind than a brisk exchange of thermonuclear missiles, and he frets that people continue with “severe and pervasive apathy” about climate. Le Feuvre continues,

He (Searles) discusses the Freudian phallic and oedipal stages. Our genital primacy, he suggests, symbolized by our cars, is threatened. He mentions, for example, that our envy and hatred of Oedipal rivals, in particular succeeding generations, makes us happy for them to be polluted into extinction. These factors can contribute to Oedipal guilt. He also speaks of the moralizing tone used by writers on the subject, who imply ‘that we have raped Mother Earth and now we are being duly strangled or poisoned’ (p. 364) projecting, he suggests, their Oedipal guilt.

Searles elaborates:

“Environmental pollution shields one from the full depth of emotional depression within oneself —instead of feeling isolated within emotional depression, one feels at one with everyone else in a realistically doomed world”.

Le Feuvre finishes with a final quote from Searles:

It seems to me that we psychoanalysts, with our interest in the unconscious processes which so powerfully influence man’s behaviour, should provide our fellow men with some enlightenment in this common struggle.

Le Feuvre thinks that our global predicament is so overwhelming and so difficult to process that news on the alleged climate crisis almost needs to come with a mental health warning. Eco-anxiety victims need to get to a health specialist or Lifeline, he recommends.

He’s no fan of conservative politicians, having written (as at 2019)

In Australia there continues to be Government denial. Our leaders could be seen psychiatrically as deluded and a danger to others and if so certifiable. At worst they can be seen as guilty of crimes against humanity and nature-homicide and ecocide — and indeed in the future they may be found to be …What is the nature of Scott Morrison’s denial?

Early this year he drafted and presented the PSC’s backing of wet independent Senator David Pocock’s “Duty of [Climate] Care Bill”, and claimed the government must ratchet up anti-emission targets or kids will have nervous breakdowns.[v] He argues a similar case in a co-authored academic paper [vi]:

The authors discuss the failure of political leadership in the face of the climate and ecological crisis, particularly in the Australian context. This failure exacerbates the climate distress of young people.

Dr Yalcin Adal, the group’s secretary, who does cybersecurity at the Bureau of Meteorology. For those who thought BoM staff were dispassionate sciencey types, Yalcin writes that he “believes deeply in PSC and the work it does” and is proud to be its secretary. He says that the BoM’s mission is “zero lives lost from climate hazards” which I find a bit weird. Firstly, droughts storms and floods involve weather hazards not climate. And, secondly, lives lost globally from weather are already down 99%-plus in the past century. I don’t know how Dr Adal or the BoM can stop someone being hit by a falling tree on a windy day, but I hope Yalcin is working on it.

Bianca Crapis, PSC newsletter author, is a foe of “extractivism”, which I assume refers to Australia’s useless mining industry. She works in LGBTQIA+ mental health and ecological justice, and is “passionate about apprenticing in collective liberation practices for all beings.” She did the PSC newsletters for the past three years, “a monthly act of delight,” she says. However, for Ms Crapis

Despair, confusion and alarm about our collective climate collapse floods me regularly …. I am no stranger to catastrophic thinking, the departure of connection to my body, and the regular buzz of anxiety. But each month, I’ve had a ritual [the newsletter] that has kept me grounded… I am reminded of the power that lies in choosing to weave our griefs into something tangible. How that process of remaking our hurts into something that can be shared opens up a part of my heart that wants to keep putting time and energy into dreaming futures beyond collapse, beyond oppression, beyond extractivism and individualism. (email, May 3, 2024).

Dr Susie Burke, of the Australian Psychological Society, is also a member of the Safe Climate crowd, running similar gigs for the distressed and offering similar tipsheets for assuaging climate griefs.

Burke in her co-authored tipsheet for parents wants a total overhaul of Western lifestyles “to stop climate change”, insisting these lifestyle changes “could make us happier and healthier.” The tract illustrates its mantras with a pic of girls about 12-15 parading around Melbourne Central Station with signs “Act Green”.[vii] Her tipsheet [viii] wants parents to teach kids “active citizenship skills” including

♦ “Getting them to join you on marches/protests” (I assume not the farmer-tractor protests against greens’ attacks on farmers’ livelihoods, or covid anti-jab protests)

♦ “Showing them how to write letters and emails to politicians, CEOs of fossil fuel companies, etc.” (Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill must have a pretty full daily mailbox of kids’ templated climate rubbish).

♦ Discuss ways they [parents] could help them, like asking their school to bring in speakers who can raise awareness, raising money to send to communities that are affected by climate change, writing to the government to ask for more overseas aid. (This looks like the magic-pudding economics of unlimited government money).

The Psychological Society feels it is “contributing to a more mentally resilient, future-ready Australia”. Incidentally, 94% of the 27,000 APS members are fretting about the mental health impacts on Australians of the establishment-backed global warming hysteria.

In my opinion the PSC and APS credentials on global warming science are stuck at kindergarten level. The highly-educated members believe every word of the “global boiling” hyperbole from the UN’s climate crazies like Guterres. Like Flannery’s Climate Council, they blame all bad weather, including “droughts and floods” (make up your mind please), on CO2 emissions.

If these thousands of psychs and shrinks really want to help their new-found eco-anxious paying clientele, they should start by reassuring them that

♦ The IPCC’s global warming suite of models has to date over-hyped actual warming by a factor of two or more (also here)

♦ The past century of circa 1degC of warming has led to greening of the planet to an area of two and a half times the Australian continent along with shrinking of deserts.

♦ CO2 increases have assisted crop yield growth that shows a prolonged rising trend and is feeding the planet’s burgeoning population. Humanity has never been healthier than today.

♦ The IPCC’s latest Working Group 1 report, as distinct from “Summaries” written and vetted by its political masters, found human influence on weather as follows: Heatwaves, yes: heavy rain, yes; flooding, no; meteorological/hydrological drought, no; ecological/agricultural drought, yes; tropical cyclones, no; winter storms, no; thunderstorms, no; tornados, no; hail, no; lightning, no; extreme winds, no; fire weather, yes.

♦ Climate science after 40 years is still in its infancy, bereft of knowledge and data about key variables including long-term oceanic cycles, impacts of cloudiness and solar irradiance and even causes of warming-cooling cycles in the 20th century, let alone Minoan, Roman and medieval warming.

Why the medical/psych community (or sorority) are so out-front as climate crazies is a mystery. They need to touch base with Hippocrates about “First, do no harm”.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[i] Gillespie, Sally (2019). Climate Crisis and Consciousness: Re-imagining Our World and Ourselves . Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition $44.18, paperback $46.97.

[ii] “My thesis ‘Climate Change and Psyche: Mapping the myths, dreams and conversations in the era of global warming’ charts the psychological terrain of those who are actively engaged with climate change issues. Based upon phenomenological research, its aim was to capture something of the shifts in worldview, meaning-making, identity, behaviours, social and political understandings and anticipations of the future within individuals whose daily realities involve thinking about and working with global warming concerns.”

At another stage I cling to the shore line and a poodle swims up into my arms. I steal biscuits for us… I know billions must die and only tens of thousands will remain… The air is running out, death is close.

[iii] The book costs $44 even as a Kindle, putting it above my Quadrant pay grade, but I was able to access a sample chapter or two. I’ve infilled with material from her PhD.

[iv] School strikers aren’t actually smart or literate enough to cook up these sassy slogans themselves, it’s done for them by climate PR professionals who provide the templates on line for the kids to download.

[v] “We depend on our leaders to engage with climate reality. However we know they are only taking limited action. To feel this uncared for is deeply traumatic and can also lead to unbearable anxiety, born of a feeling of helplessness and aloneness in the face of survival threats.”

[vi] “Debate: How can child and adolescent mental health professionals show leadership in the face of the ecological and climate crisis?”

[vii] The apparent word “act” is a little hard to read on the sign.

[viii] Another co-author is Professor Ann Sanson who sings in the Melbourne Climate Choir

Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Family Secret

Leave a reply

Why do some Australians feel so affronted by pale-skinned Aboriginal people?
— Bruce Pascoe in Black Duck

I’ve been reading Black Duck, A Year at Yumburra($24), Bruce Pascoe’s latest. Pink-cheeked Bruce, in his persona as a First Nations Elder, gives me two main takeaways.

The first is what to do if your SUV skittles an echidna. He advises how to pluck the quills, prepare and cook the carcase, and enjoy flame-grilled butterflied marsupial roadkill. He doesn’t suggest the best wine to complement the dish — perhaps a Jacobs Creek cab-sav (4 litre Stanleys cask, $18).

Bruce assures us that echidna is scrumptious, akin to his delicious Aboriginal loaves made from kangaroo-grass flour, after thrifty 50 per cent dilution with baking flour ($1.55 per kg) from your IGA supermarket.[1]

The second Black Duck revelation involves Bruce’s seduction and betrayal by SBS and NITV (National Indigenous TV) on their joint and scurrilous “Insight” panel show, 20 October 2022. The producer included Professor Bruce – I hope not ironically – in the Q&A compered by Karla Grant [2] about today’s plethora of fake Aborigines. He’s still spitting chips over his authenticity being disrespected. He vows never again to cross the treacherous portals of SBS/NITV.

So, Take-away One — echidna roadkill:

A few weeks back the fellas found a freshly run over echidna on their way to work and as we had a burn pile going we threw the animal on to the flames after removing forty or so quills to use in our artwork. They are a really fatty animal which helps them cook moistly and the flesh really is delicious. It has the texture and taste of pork but I think it is sweeter. Waste not, want not. (p268).

Another time, Bruce and partner Lyn picked up a dead bandicoot from the road, “and Lyn was entranced by its sharp little teeth and soft ears.” (p192). He doesn’t say whether they made a meal of it.

So, Take-Away 2 — treachery at SBS/NTIV:

I was asked to do a program for SBS on identity but Blackfellas warned me against it. They suspected a contest between dark and pale Blackfellas. But I thought that it was a chance to set the record straight. I spent about four hours talking through my family history with SBS researchers. They seemed genuinely interested so I sent photos and documents and felt that nothing could go wrong. Off I went to Sydney, but SBS used none of what I gave them, instead preferring the rumour and assumption of the right-wing press. I was really devastated and disappointed that with all the work that needs to be done in our communities we would waste our time on this trivia. I felt sorry for some of the other participants who also thought it was a chance to have their say.

How wrong we were. The ‘real’ blacks were on one side of the room and we were on the other. I wonder if I have ever been more disillusioned. I gave really precise information about my family, so proud am I of their survival, but sadly they used none of that. I also calculated the percentage of blood in my family[isn’t that a ‘no-no’?] and the difficulty this raises in community.

These are important points to consider because as more and more Australians find black relatives these issues have to be considered before we become a bunch of wannabes, but no, SBS chose a sensationalist and divisive path. Trumpist.

Definitions of Aboriginality need to be understood by everyone. I don’t believe in self-identification, I think people ought to be able to provide some documentary evidence of their identity…

All of these issues could have built a really constructive documentary, could have drawn people toward an understanding of identity, not urged them toward scorn and contempt.

And what will happen to Aboriginal people who are made afraid to identify, will we lose their contribution to the Aboriginal family? I feel the same way about non-Aboriginal people; they are not going away so they have to be encouraged to identify with the land or otherwise how can they care for her? They will be restless spirits forever feeling at a distance from their home. I knew the show’s director, so was doubly broken by the way an important opportunity was lost. Never again.

There are people who reckon we should sue when this sort of thing happens. What, and spend the rest of our lives in court to change nothing? The tethered bear being drained of bile to please a conspiracy myth! No thanks. (p251-3).

As the academics say, there is a lot to unpack here. First, if Bruce views the issue of his Aboriginality as “trivia”, why do he, the ABC, SBS, the Australian Academy of Science, our prestigious universities, Melbourne’s Labor-endowed Wheeler Centre, and Bruce’s every sponsor for speaking gigs, books,directorships and exclusive awards for high achieving First Nationals, trumpet him as a bona fide Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian Aborigine?

Second, what about those claimed documents of his proving Aboriginal ancestry? I remember how Professor Marcia Langton sponsored him qua Aboriginal into Melbourne University’s top ranks four years ago to become Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture. She vouched for his Aboriginality because he’d told her he had “documents”: (video at 40secs). She hadn’t seen them but who at Australia’s top university would run due diligence on Bruce’s identity?

We finally learn from Bruce’s new book that his Enterprise Professor gig (circa $200,000 full-time, plus perks) is just one day per week (p254). Bruce says ag-science students hang on his every word about (supposed) pre-colonial Aboriginal farmers.[3]

Bruce’s genealogical documents seem a bit like Lasseter’s Lost Reef — existence rumoured but never confirmed. On the other hand, sleuth Roger Karge demonstrates on his Dark Emu Exposed website that the line of all of Bruce’s forebears originated from England. Karge has asked Bruce to correct the website genealogy if necessary: Bruce hasn’t responded. Melbourne University itself has stopped calling Bruce “indigenous”: it now bills him officially just as “writer and farmer”.

Bruce has been earnestly trawling to locate his apical (oldest) black ancestor for nigh on 40 years — for no visible public success – and he must have enough documents to fill the woodshed at his hobby farm[4]near Mallacoota, Vic. His donor and grant-funded charity called Black Duck Foods has ploughed $2.2minto the little paddocks, and incidentally paid him $140,000 rent for 2021-22.[5]

Time now to see what got Bruce hopping mad about Karla Grant’s line of inquiry at that Insight special on fake Aborigines. Bruce got only a total three minutes airtime in three segments during the 52-minute show. It must have been a let-down as he’s so used to stardom as the Left’s premier Aboriginal. Instead Karla threw the switch to a line-up of genuine Aboriginal heavies including Dr Stephen Hagan, Suzanne Ingram and her cousin Yvonne Weldon. After the show Ingram commented brutally,

If the census trajectory continues unabated, it is reasonable to expect that box-tickers [race shifters] will statistically outnumber Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in 15 years or three censuses…If you live somewhere along the Australian eastern seaboard, there’s a greater than one-in-10 chance that the next “proud elder” you encounter, perhaps doing a Welcome to Country or insisting that you please call them “Aunty”, is someone you recently knew to be white. The recording of the Insight program was a unique opportunity for me to observe box-tickers in collective formation. As individuals, they crave a sense of belonging. But they do not let go of their sense of entitlement.

Stephen Hagan told the show of growing up in a community that had no taps but the nearby cemetery for whites had three. He witnessed his mother and aunty furtively rolling a 44 gallon drum to the cemetery taps.

I know what it was like to be an Aboriginal. I became a diplomat, a PhD, I’ve published six books but I know what marginalisation is like… (16.00) It’s not just the adults claiming to be First Nations, it’s their children. We have to be careful that the 27,081 registered Aboriginal organisations are not overrun by a sudden influx of First Nations claimants who don’t have connections to Country… Some of these organisations have only 40-50 people. These people can tick a box and get rubber-stamped, they can take them over. It’s a $40b industry and people are being remunerated very handsomely to hold positions… (34.20) Until the government reviews [toughens] those three categories for Aboriginality[6], things won’t be recognisable in another generation.

Karla: What about people who can’t identify their apical ancestor but are self-identifying?

Hagan: They can just sign a stat dec and they are “in”, they can take on a $200,000 job anywhere they want.

Karla: Why would people lie? – Oh, financial gain of course. People are growing rich on our misery.

Yvonne Weldon (31.50): Aboriginal” companies are created, when you look at who they employ, it’s people who have ticked that box. They [race shifters] are not going back to mob, but to suburbia to continue to benefit from the [bad] experiences of some of our people. Do not please abuse that experience of my people for the benefit of yourselves at the expense of my people.

Karla, to Suzanne Ingram: Are you concerned about people self-identifying?

Susan: It’s been taken out of [our] hands. Universities are not qualified to recognise Aboriginals as opposed to box tickers. It gets in the way, it’s all this performance [art]. The performance is very seductive, interesting and persuasive, you have costuming[7], language learning, it’s all persuasive to someone who is not Aboriginal. We are seeing the result of these distortions now. If we look at the census numbers they’re projecting 800,000 [Aboriginals]. If there was an actual audit, I would suggest, based on data, it’s probably 300,000 less. Those 300,000 people count themselves amongst us. [Without correction] this is going to erase Aboriginal persons.

None of these leaders showed Bruce the slightest deference. If anything, their body language implied polite boredom (at best). Karla Grant’s treatment of Bruce’s claims seemed like passive-aggression. Just when I expected her to lunge for the kill and request Bruce’s ancestor’s name, the camera cut away letting him off the hook. Even so, Bruce is used to the ABC and allied sycophants throwing him under-arm softballs, hence his rage at Karla’s highlighting of the fake-Aborigine circus.

Here’s the Bruce bits:

Karla [deadpan, laying the trap at 11.40]: Bruce, you wrote best-seller Dark Emu, how do you identify?

Bruce: I identify as Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian. We can trace my family back to those regions [it’s not to ‘regions’, Bruce, it’s to people[8]. I didn’t grow up as Aboriginal, my family didn’t talk about it. An uncle and aunt took me under their wing and began talking about these things, which I found incredible. [Eh? Did they claim Aboriginality themselves?] That uncle was very important as he was able to gradually introduce me to other people I needed to know in our family [So what? Have these ‘other people’ named your Aboriginal ancestor?]

Karla [being naughty]: When you say you are Tasmanian, which nation?

Bruce [airily]: We come from the north coast of Tasmania, following that family line [who?] we are connected to both Melbourne and Adelaide. We have got people who identify as our cousins in both places. It is, um, very controversial in Tasmania, but that is just how it is [I’ll say! Tasmanian Land Council chair Michael Mansell says you’re not a Tasmanian Aboriginal].

Karla [throwing a hand grenade]: Do other members of your family agree you have Aboriginal heritage?

Bruce: Some do, many don’t. [What? Even most of your own family say you’re making stuff up? First time I’ve heard you admit that]

Karla: What sparked your curiosity to look closely?

Bruce: My uncle, the photographs and constant talk. He was a bit of a ratbag but a good person. He got me working on it, I thought I’d better have a look at those photos again. I realised you could pull them out. On the back my father had written the names.

That’s where Karla’s show inexplicably does a jump-cut and she starts talking to someone else. One hypothesis doing the rounds is that Karla’s bosses wanted Bruce protected and Karla had to toe the official line. Bruce, if you’re reading this as a Quadrant subscriber, put us all out of our misery and add in Comments below who in your father’s photo album is that elusive black ancestor?

Karla at 30.20 [lobbing another grenade]: Now Bruce, some Aboriginal people have rejected your claim to be indigenous. What do you make of that?

A simple rejoinder would be, “I’ve told my critics who my ancestor was and that ought to shut the bastards up!” Instead, Bruce waffles away:

Bruce: The thing these people have in common is they have never talked to me about it. I am really always keen to talk about my family, although it is no more interesting than anyone else’s. This is a really important conversation Australia has to have.

Karla by-passes Pascoe for a while, then circles back (43.00) with a Dorothy Dixer, “Bruce what is the impact on you of people questioning your family?” This is the progressive media’s standard pivot to preserve Bruce’s cred and invite him to tell his sob-story of injured innocence. Compare that with how they go for the jugular when interviewing conservatives like Minister Christian Porter or gadfly Pauline Hanson.

Bruce [happily off the hook]: It has been very upsetting for my family [but not for the apparent majority who disbelieve his Aboriginality?] We have always been a close family [apart from that split?]. My children were hurt by that [like Pascoe pere, some now claim Aboriginality themselves].I said, ‘You are part of the community now so nothing changes if the government rejects you. You have lost nothing because you are not getting anything anyway [Bruce himself qua Aboriginal author and farmer has got fame, royalties, prizes, honours and $2m-plus donations and grants for his Black Duck Foods charity which rents his farm and has bought his used farm gear]. But hold your culture! That is what we have always been told by the people who helped me. Hold your lore, hold your culture! And just be part of the community, don’t try to be a boss, just because you have got a degree or whatever it is.’

For decades Pascoe pinned his hopes for Aboriginality on his maternal great-grandmother Sarah Matthews – even if true, this would be a ridiculously remote claim. In 1993 he wrongly put her birthplace around 1848 as Dudley, South Gippsland, when her actual birthplace was Dudley, Worcester in England. He also wrote that he believed she’d been on a sealing vessel — implying that sealers took her from her Aboriginal community. Three years later his story changed to her living on Aboriginal missions and losing a daughter as a Stolen Generation victim. She had striven to appear white and “merge with the master class,” he told the Age in 2007. In 2008 Pascoe shifted goalposts again and claimed his great-grandmother was Aboriginal from a tribe bordering the Wathaurong of Geelong and Colac (presumably the Bunurong).

Roger Karge’s genealogist Jan Holland actually tracked her arrival in Australia at Fremantle in 1863 from England on the ship Burlington, which was certainly not a sealing vessel. Pascoe finally admitted that the woman (presumably Sarah) he thought was his Aboriginal ancestor was in fact English-born.[9]But by 2014 he was claiming to have found Aboriginal relatives “all over the country”. He’s claimed to have birth certificates proving his claims – including links to at least six tribes in five States – but declined to let Karge see them.

In 2016 he described his relatives from the Lockhart River, Qld as white and then in the same year, black. In the Black Duck book, they’re white again (p91). He has even described his own pink face as “black”. Re one Invasion Day, writing of course for the ABC, “On January 26 this year (2017) I stood in Victoria Park in Sydney as people protesting about the naming of the day marched past all us surprised black faces for an hour.” He added, “Everywhere you look in our family there is the black trace”. Odd given his family tree reaches only to England.

He also felt akin to the “stolen generation”, despite having grown up happily with his white family in Tasmania and inner Melbourne, and not having canvassed his supposed Aboriginality until he was nearing 40. But for the ABC he explained

I am one of the lost. We weren’t stolen. We hid. You can’t blame anyone. It was a survival impulse. I am surrounded by families who did the same…It fills me with sadness that they choose to ignore the heroes in their families. They are not cowards, not malicious, someone in the past decided they were white enough to get away with it, so they hid…

In the same piece, the ABC described him only as “a Bunurong man”, he must have become a Yuin and Tasmanian man later.

Keeping track of Bruce’s claims to Aboriginality is like riding a bull in a rodeo (not that I’ve ever tried that). For example, he quotes his mother saying the family’s Ur-Aborigine was on his father’s side,[10]but in the new book he writes,

That old man gave me crucial information about my mother’s family. Details and contacts; it was such a wonderful gift. And he did that at risk of exposing himself to the baying hounds of the right-wing journalists who purport to know everything about the family of a man they have never met. (p81).

There is much, much more to unpack from Pascoe’s latest book, which I might get around to one day.

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Pascoe re native bread: “Anyway, the recipe is not complicated. We combine about 50 per cent baking flour with 50 per cent of our own flour, either Kangaroo and Spear, or Mitchell and Button. Chris adds yeast and salt while Lyn uses her sourdough starter. We have a breadmaker but often cook it in a camp oven or straight on the coals. The aroma is a revelation. We sell our flour on our Black Duck website or at the farm gate.” (p276).

[2] Incidentally, Karla is ex-spouse of quick-fire job-swapper Stan Grant, ex-ABC and ex-Monash Uni celebrity (for six months) leading its “Constructive Institute Asia Pacific” devoted to media integrity.

[3] Bruce: ” Once I got back to the farm I spent days doing interviews with earnest university students wanting to talk permaculture, Aboriginal sovereignty, agricultural sustainability and climate change.” (p254)

[4] “I can’t see that we will ever make much money from our growing but we will be introducing new foods to the market.” (p268).

[5] Incidentally, the 2021-22 financial accounts for Black Duck Foods has disappeared from the ACNC register. The $140,000 rent can still be seen in the 2022-23 accounts at p5.

[6] Descent, self-identification and peer community acceptance

[7] Referring to possum skin cloaks, Pascoe says some wearers are worthy “but sometimes I see people posture in them and it turns my stomach. The garment has huge spiritual significance and needs to be respected. It is not to be used as a political tool like a prime minister donning a hard hat and high vis vest to demonstrate his allegiance to the working class.” (p252). His own family gave him a possum skin rug and he doesn’t use it as a cloak.

[8] I can trace my mother’s family back to Kendenup, WA, which is Noongar territory, but that doesn’t make me an Aborigine.

[9] “My cousin had discovered the woman we thought was our Aboriginal ancestor was, in fact, born in England.”

[10] “Mum was convinced of a Tasmanian connection on Dad’s side to and we are searching that line at the moment.”

The Queen of Climate Crackpottery

Leave a reply

Trigger warning: if your household companions include a cat, dog, canary, goldfish or turtle, this article is not a safe space. I’m writing about Harvard’s distinguished agnatologist Professor Naomi Oreskes (above) and her 2014 warning that global warming would kill your pets in 2023. The warning is in her acclaimed but glum book The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Given margins of error in climate science, the pet die-off might be this year instead. Oreskes wrote,

The loss of pet cats and dogs garnered particular attention among wealthy Westerners , but what was anomalous in 2023 soon became the new normal . … A shadow of ignorance and denial had fallen over people who considered themselves children of the Enlightenment (p9).

Smarter climate alarmists don’t make short-term predictions. They choose a date like 2050 for when the oceans will boil. They’ll be senile or dead by then and can’t be humiliated if the oceans stay chilly.

Top environmentalist Paul Ehrlich forecast in 1971that by 2000 the UK “will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”[1] His 1968 book, Population Bomb, predicted starvation would shrink the US population to 23 million by 1999. Strangely, Oreskes in her book hails Ehrlich as a vindicated futurist. (p3-4 and 56).

The only good news from Naomi is that the IPCC becomes [more] discredited and is disbanded. She replaces it with such alphabet soups as the UNCCEP’s ICCEP which launches IAICEP, which she says is pronounced “ay-yi-yi-sep” (p27).The mission of ay-yi-yi-sep is to sprinkle enough fairy dust aka sulphates in the air to make an anti-sun umbrella and save the planet by 2079.

In September 2014 she was interviewed on the ABC’s Science Show by Dr (honoris causa) Robyn Williams, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, about the pet-deaths. One reader, she explained,

…started crying when the pets die, so I didn’t mean to upset people too much … I was just trying to come up with something that I thought people wouldn’t forget about, and I thought, ‘Well, Americans spend billions of dollars every year taking care of their pets’, and I thought if people’s dogs started dying, maybe then they would sit up and take notice.

Interviewer Dr Williams[2] was delighted with Oreskes’ pet-panic strategy. He chimed in,

Yes, not only because it’s an animal but it’s local. You see, one criticism of the scientists is they’re always talking about global things…And so if you are looking at your village, your animals, your fields, your park, your kids, and the scientists are talking about a small world that you know, then it makes a greater impact, doesn’t it.

Oreskes: Well, exactly. It was about bringing it literally home, literally into your home, your family, your pet, the dog or cat that you love who is your faithful and trusted companion.

As I type this, I look down fondly at Natasha, our doomed spaniel, although she is neither faithful nor trustworthy.

Oreskes began her Science Show appearance by reading from her book in sepulchrul tones:

Then, in the northern hemisphere summer of 2041, unprecedented heatwaves scorched the planet [and] led to widespread outbreaks of typhus, cholera, dengue fever, yellow fever, and viral and retroviral agents never seen before.

Naomi’s actually playing down her future horrors, she omits to tell him about the arrival of the Black Death:

Dislocation contributed to the Second Black Death, as a new strain of the bacterium Yersinia pestis emerged in Europe and spread to Asia and North America. In the Middle Ages, the Black Death killed as much as half the population of some parts of Europe; this second Black Death had similar effects. (p30).

Australians will wonder: does Medicare charge extra premiums to cover bubonic plague?

Williams, instead of asking Oreskes what she’s smoking, merely observed that all of the above is “fairly shocking”. He further wondered why it is only Western civilization that collapses, leaving the Chinese in charge. One reason, says Oreskes, is that Chinese civilisation is more durable, and two, that authoritarian regimes are better able to deal with hypothesised climate apocalypses.

Looking back from the future, Oreskes viewed China in the early 2000s as a beacon of carbon enlightenment. China, she said,

…took steps to control its population and convert its economy to non – carbon – based energy sources. These efforts were little noticed and less emulated in the West, in part because Westerners viewed Chinese population control efforts as immoral, and in part because the country’s exceptionally fast economic expansion led to a dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions, masking the impact of renewable energy. By 2050 , this impact became clear as China’s emissions began to fall rapidly. Had other nations followed China’s lead, the [grim future] history recounted here might have been very different. (p6).[3]

Another interviewer — a friendly one, actually — played the devil’s advocate:

Interviewer: Just how much do you hate the American way of life? What gives you the intellectual chutzpah to make these kinds of projections?

Oreskes: Our story is a call to protect the American way of life before it’s too late.

I identify with Oreskes, who grew up in New York, because as a lass she was a geologist working on Western Mining Corp’s Olympic project in central Australia. I phoned WMC’s retired boss Hugh Morgan but he couldn’t give me any piquant anecdotes about young Naomi.

Her sojourn Down Under must have been unhappy because she’s forecast that the climate emergency will kill off every Australian man woman and child (all 26 million of us). “The human populations of Australia and Africa, of course, were wiped out.” (p33). As a resident of Australia’s pagan state of Victoria, I don’t believe in the afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear. (Witticism courtesy Woody Allen).

Oreskes dropped geology to co-write that Merchants of Doubt book, painting “climate deniers” as the evil twins of those denying that smoking causes cancer. The book in 2021 was set to music by composer Yvette Jackson, who sees climate doubt as having the

… low, somber insistence of the bass clarinet, skittering flute that cranks up anxiety, sonorous cello to hold things together, and the deep, doubting rumble of double bass.

Listen to that anxious, sonorous cello and more here (fourth video down).

At 65, Naomi’s job title is Harvard Professor of the History of Science — but don’t call, she’s on leave. She co-wrote her civilisational-collapse book with fellow alarmist Erik Conway. Her other collaborators include Pope Francis: she did the intro for his Laudato si’ encyclical in 2015.

Wikipedia lists only 30 of her honours, including the Stephen H. Schneider Award in 2016 for communicating “extraordinary scientific contributions” to a broad public in a clear and compelling fashion. Schneider (1945-2010) was a top IPCC climate scientist. He urged colleagues there to strike a balance between scaring the pants off the public and being honest about how weak the CO2 evidence really is. Oreskes also scored the 2019 Mary Rabbit Award from the US Geological Society. Her lifetime of bashing denialists is surely worth a million-dollar Nobel.

The Collapse book is about Western civilisation’s ruin while China saves the planet with its enlightened anti-CO2 measures. She is writing from the future in 2393 when she will be aged 435. Oreskes (as at 2393) is cross because we have refused to build enough windmills to stop at 11degC warming (p32) and eight-metre sea rises (p30). We should not have eaten so many fillet steaks[4] and, personally, I should not have tooled around in my reasonably priced, petrol-powered Hyundai i30 when Teslas were available at $80,000.

Oreskes was talking about Collapse at a Sydney Writers’ Festival when someone in the audience piped up, “Will you write fiction next?” She doesn’t of course view Collapse as fiction: “Speculative? Of course, but the book is extremely fact-based” (p79). And she elaborated to the ABC’s Dr Williams,“Well, it’s all based on solid science. Everything in this book is based on the scientific projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. All we did was to add to the social and human aspects to it and to ask the question; what does this really mean in terms of what its potential impacts would be on people and its potential impacts on our institutions of governance?”

Her “science based” technical projection involved an angry summer in 2023 continuing year-round, “taking 500,000 lives worldwide and costing nearly $ 500 billion in losses due to fires , crop failure , and the deaths of livestock and companion animals” (p8) In 2014, how was Naomi (no-one’s perfect) to know that current agricultural output and yields continue smashing records?

The book’s “fact-based” projections have drought and desert ravaging the US in the 2050s:

The US government declared martial law to prevent food riots and looting [similar to 2020s’ mostly-peaceful burning and robbing]. A few years later, the United States announced plans with Canada for the two nations to begin negotiations … to develop an orderly plan for resource-sharing and northward population relocation (p26).

The talks led to the combined United States of North America. I imagine Texans started adding “eh” to their sentences, as in Why do Canadians say “eh?”? It’s so silly right? Because we want to, eh.

Even at the age of 435 in 2393, Oreskes remains really sore about the Climategate email scandal of 2009 (IPCC climate scientists conspiring to fudge data). She blames Climategate on a “massive campaign” that was “funded primarily by fossil fuel corporations” (p8) — this alleged largesse must have by-passed sceptic bloggers, who still rely on their tip jars. Oreskes remains vigilant to smite deniers:

It will also be crucial not to allow new forms of denial to take hold. We are already seeing examples, such as the false claim that off-shore wind kills whales and that restrictions on gas stoves are the latest excuse by liberals to control our lives and deny our freedom. Scientists will have to work with climate activists to block the spread of such misleading narratives.

She finished her interview with the ABC’s Dr Williams by claiming, improbably, that some readers of Collapse wished her 80-page book to be longer. She explained,

We didn’t want it to be too depressing, we didn’t want to go on and on and on, like 300 pages of misery, that really wouldn’t be any fun. So we are sort of hoping that the book, despite the fact that it’s a depressing topic, it’s actually we think kind of a fun read.

Apart from our dead kittens, that is.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971. Link broken.

[2] The ABC Ombudsman told me it’s fine for people with honorary doctorates to be called “Dr” in any context.

“The ABC style guide does not form part of the editorial standards and we consider there is nothing materially inaccurate in referring to Ms O’Donoghue as Dr O’Donoghue.” Email from James, Investigations Officer, ABC Ombudsman’s Office, Feb 14, 2024. (The late Ms Donoghue’s Doctorates are honorary).

[3] On the ABC iview’s posting of the Oreskes/Williams interview, the ABC claimed the planet was warming at the top of the IPCC models’ forecasting. I wrote to my friend Kirsten McLiesh, who runs Audience & Consumer Affairs (i.e. the complaints department) pointing out that actual warming was at the bottom of the IPCC models’ range. In those days (2014) the ABC had some integrity and Kirsten wrote back,

“Having been alerted to your complaint, the program acknowledges that the sentence read on the website as an incontrovertible fact and have undertaken to remove it. An Editor’s Note has been added to the page.”

[4] Oreskes, Twitter May 4, 2023: “I’m often asked “What can I do to stop climate change.” That’s a hard question because so much of the change we need is structural, but this new study proves one thing: EAT LESS BEEF. (And now, drum roll, here come the beef industry trolls.)”

Show your support

Donate Now

terenc5Brazen liars, both her and Williams.Log in to Reply
STJOHNOFGRAFTONOnce upon a time this type of pathological doom and gloomer would have had their digs courtesy the governer’s pleasure at Callan Park. Now, said person is integrated into a straight-jacketed society where she is free to inflict us with her madness. Ironically, Callan Park is now a conservation area and has friends not inmates.Log in to Reply
DaffyFaced with a bill for a pet’s ultrasound of over $1000, I’m all for pet deaths. I was tempted to ask the vet how much to end the gold-digger’s life, but wife was too near.Log in to Reply
- DaffyAnd, on smoking, it seems OK to take it up…as death for almost all looms. In fact, as elderliness tangles itself about my knees, I must check with the Cancer Council. Surely they know the age at which taking up cigar smoking will have no statistical effect on life expectancy.Log in to Reply
  - norsaintGood luck to you Daffy if you can afford the occasional lardy-da (apologies to Arfur Daly) these days.
    The ludicrous harpy and our former Attorney General, Nicola Roxon, has put that harmless pleasure beyond the means of most, with her outrageous, never-ending duty increases. The last time I checked, a run of the mill cigar cost $80.
    The egregious feminists don’t like anything which men might find enjoyable.
    It reminds me of the old gag of why woman make love with their eyes closed. (punch line available upon request)Log in to Reply
    - norsaintThat of course should read why “women” make love with their eyes closed.Log in to Reply
Twyford HallHow amazing that questioning anthropogenic global warming has been set to (alleged) music by a composer. I would bet my superannuation that the composer’s remuneration is taxpayer funded.Log in to Reply
petroalbionSellers of dog meat in Korea were told by the government to give up the trade. They said OK, we will release all 2 million of the dogs we currently own tomorrow. Government lostLog in to Reply
David IsaacThanks for digging out another failed prediction of climate doom. Paul Ehrlich’s prognosis for Britain may just’ve been delayed by a few decades but on demographic grounds. Given the repression of its native people and the demise of its native population in its largest cities including London and Birmingham it’s arguable whether England has long ceased to exist. Nominally American, Dr Oreske is a New York Jewess, whose father was also an academic, her mother a school teacher and mother of four. The odds of her politics being left radical based on this information alone are very high. Her brother Michael is a disgraced journalist and executive for leftist outfits, NYT, AP and latterly NPR, who was pinged for sexually harassing junior colleagues in 2017. It comes as no surprise that she views ‘science’ as just another vehicle for radical activism rather than as a sacred quest for truth.Log in to Reply
norsaintAnd another thing. One could hardly say the “”Prof”” is easy on the eye.Log in to Reply

Talk on media to Turks Head Club, Melbourne 10 April 2024

Leave a reply

My style is not big thinking but getting down into the weeds and detail of what’s going on. So in this talk I’ll cover a variety of issues. First an overview of the media industry’s economics and reputation. Then I’ll focus on the NYT as a case of study of where the mainstream media is at. I’ll deal with the wire services like Reuters and their new business model. I’ll provide some Australian context and Finally I’ll look at misinformation laws globally.

Business-wise, the news media are travelling poorly – the old model of ads financing journalism is broken. . In addition loyal readers are ageing, youngsters get their news from social media.

Papers that can’t generate paid on-line subscriptions will fold. In the US 2-3 papers are folding every week. The NYT says it will become on-line only before long. Personally I recently switched to reading the Australian daily on-line. It’s a different way to brief myself.

NYT publisher AO Sulzberger laments what he calls the “Collapse of public confidence in press”

Only 11 per cent of Republicans – who comprise half the population – now trust the media, and only 10 per cent of Americans as a whole trust the media’s reporting on COVID.

In Australia reporters are the second-least trusted of 30 occupations, ahead of politicians but behind delivery drivers.

Michael Gawenda, ex-editor Age is quite a leftist but disillusioned by journos and union petitions favoring Hamas.

“I think journalism is in crisis. The line between the social justice warriors on social media, and the journalists in the mainstream media, is becoming unclear. That is disastrous for journalism and journalists. And not to be too pompous, for liberal democracy as well.”

I’ve had a good look at The NYT because it is a Goliath of newspapers — Sulzberger owners claim a quarter of the world’s population engages with NYT annually. Two decades ago it seemed in a bad way as its ads migrated online, but now there’s 10m readers paying for on-line vs only half a million getting it in print. It’s profitable ; its market cap has risen ten-fold in 15 years; It’s added 1000 journalists in recent years (half through acquisitions), when elsewhere 10s of thousands of journos have lost their jobs. btw as a greedy journo, I looked up salaries at the NYT — very low, $50k to only $100k for important editors, how do they survive New York cost of living?

The other story is that it only caters for left readership . Even six years ago they were 85% lib-democrat readers — who knows what today?.

The young journos – politely people of color – are dragging it even further left.

I’ll document this in three examples.

Late 2019, NYT staff had a revolt because a headline was just neutral instead of hostile about President Trump. The staff revolt was similar to all these ABC staff revolts and no-confidences over Gaza. Someone at the internal town hall meeting with the chief editor Dean Baquet leaked the meeting transcript. Baquet said, We have to Pivot from Trump Russia collusion to 1619 Project damning US historically for slavery and white supremacy — ie get onto this whole black power/victim narrative. That won almost instant Pulitzer Prizes and brainwashing forays into thousands of US class rooms. It’s now mainstream.

NYT was caught flat-footed by Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary so Sulzberger demanded the paper broaden its range of views. (Bit like ABC having to hire or publish Andrew Bolt and Pauline Hanson). In 2020

there was the riots over the cops killing George Floyd — 500 violent outbreaks, burning and looting, 30+ deaths including half a dozen cops shot, and way over $2b damage — that was just the insured component.

So the op-ed page editor John Bennet allowed a comment piece by a Republican Senator Tom Cotton saying that as a last resort the military should control rioters. Calling in the military is not outrageous and many precedents for it in post-war US history, including the 1960s deep south school segregations. This caused another revolt of the younger black staff of saying they the Cotton piece put them (somehow) in danger. Management initially backed the op-ed editor then went completely to water and sacked him. They also demoted his deputy back to the news floor and published a grovelling apology

the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.

the essay should have undergone the highest level of scrutiny. Instead, the editing process was rushed and flawed, and senior editors were not sufficiently involved

the tone of the essay in places is needlessly harsh and falls short of the thoughtful approach that advances useful debate.

SO much for allowing diverse voices more space in the paper.

One of the NYT political-diversity hires was a Jewish conservative writer called Bari Weiss, who outraged the staff. Just a month after the Riot piece, she quit saying it was impossible to withstand the bullying culture.

She finished, Rule One at the NYT: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. . Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

the great scandal of the NYT taking China Communist Party money is public record material.

In 2020 Republicans in Congress forced China Daily, run by the CCP, to properly disclose its US influence-peddling as a foreign agent.

It showed up an undisclosed USD 100,000 a month for a decade from China Daily alias CCP for advertorial (pretend news) supplements in the NYT. like Diayou (Senkaku) Islands belong to China. and nice Tibet and HK stories. One 2019 NYT video ad depicted the oppressed Weegurs as happy under Chinese rule. In other words, the Chinese Communists bought coverage in the NYT for a decade for a piddling $10m.

When this came out, 100s of these advertorials vanished from NYT digitised archives, dating back to 1851. The CCP money could have influenced NYT covid coverage dismissing stories the Wuhan lab leak theory. 2 NYT Whistleblowers were told “don’t go near” those stories.

Not many lay people recognise the key role of the media wire services, aggregators of content to thousands of newspapers and websiites globally. They used to take pride in being neutral, not biased. That’s out the window and they’re proud to flaunt their progressive bias.

Agence France Press, Reuters and Bloomberg have literally signed the climate pledge and partnered with 460 other media groups for hyping warming and cancelling whatever doesn’t fit the climate narrative.
This green coalition is called Covering Climate Now (CCN), run by groups like The Guardian and the COlumbia Journalism School. CCN’s founders view fossil fuel executives as criminals against humanity. They also want to “revoke the social licences” of “deniers”.

The worst signatory is probably AFP. Its climate stories are even run by the Australian, coming from AFP journo Marlowe Hood who has laughably self-titled himself “Senior Editor, Future of the Planet”.

And America’s biggest wire service, Associated Press (AP), in a jaw-dropping breach of journalistic ethics, last year hired 20 specialist climate reporters using an $US8 million gift from five green/Left billionaire philanthropies. AP explained candidly that it needed the money:

philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism — at the AP and elsewhere — at a time when the industry’s financial outlook has been otherwise bleak.

AP’s style book is a global guide for publishing. It now prescribes that the term“climate change,” can be used interchangeably” with the term “climate crisis.” Also “avoid false balance” because climate science is settled and near unanimous. It’s taken other foundation money to push the diversity and inclusion line – even after the US Supreme Court struck down affirmative admissions to universities.

I’ve found it costs very little to set up an outfit to bias the climate media. — budgets of just 5, or 10 million dollars. I’ve profiled at least a dozen of them worldwide. The ABC has subscrivbed to at least three of them., One is Trusted News Initiative, launched by the BBC as a global alert system to cancel narratives that don’t suit progressives. Another is Newsguard, which puts a red warning label system on your browser to flag “untrustworthy” sites. The goal is drive advertisers away from those sites. Trusted News is being sued by Robert Kennedy Jr , the Democrat contender, for anti-trust conspiracy.

Others are Earth Journalism Network that bribes LDC journos to write climate propaganda, and Science Feedback (France), that offers ignorant journos expert advice from their tame climate alarmists.

Now for Australia’s main private climate outfit .Tim Flannery’s Climate Council as a case study in successful media manipulati0n. The Council is really a media annex for Minister Chris Bowen. They stood alongside him on the platform – literally – for his first ministerial press briefing.

$8m budget – more money from green left foundations than it knows what to do with. Council Chair is Carol Schwarz, daughter of retailing royalty Marc Besen worth $2.5 billion. Big donor is Chris Morris from Computershare – worth $1.2b.

Its latest annual report boasts of its “drumbeat” of climate calamity. Its 20 media spinners spoon-fed more than 22,000 stories into the media last year to influence “millions” of Australians . That’s 800 items a week.

The Council actually trains reporters with Media Union help to propagate the narrative like bushfires are due to climate change – when globally, wildfires are declining.

The Council is prioritising now the narratives about gas cooking in kitchens being unhealthy and why drivers should be forced into electric vehicles by so-called fuel pollution standards.

The worst threat today is literally government control of the media. Governments are sub-contracting out censorship to the media giants like Meta, microsoft and Google. Australian misinfo bill: 2300 submissions and 20,000 comments. No timeline. ACMA run by Nerida O’Loughlin on $610,000 per year — will impose its own standards. And she is to enforce them with fines literally up to billions of dollars per day. Even ABC and Media Alliance are worried, while our science and tech academies want crackdowns on climate dissent.

ACMA would turn to Fact Checkers ABC/RMIT and AAP FactCheck as arbiters for what’s misinformation. This is asking a wolf to guard the sheep.

Study by IPAs John Storey of all checks since 2019 – 65% show leftist bias . On referendum, 91% bias. On covid, 94% bias. On climate, 81%.

He concludes: “The government’s proposed misinformation and disinformation laws are the single biggest attack on freedom of speech in Australia’s peacetime history.”

OVerseas:US 2022 pre-mid-terms: Biden launched “Disinformation Governance Board” = Ministry of Truth, under Homeland Security

Headed by Nina Jankowicz, who said inn 2020 that the Hunter Biden laptop disclosures were foreign disinfo campaign . Truth Ministry Scuttled within weeks after derision and legal challenges on First Amendment.

UK and EC: each with their own sets of rules purporting to benefit online safety and democracy.

I hope all this hasn’t been too incoherent and I look forward to round-table discussion.

The MSO and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Leave a reply

Tony Thomas in 2009-10 pestered the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra with a series of complaints about the politics of its program notes on works by Prokofiev and Shostakovich. The extraordinary thing is that the MSO people took his complaints seriously, conceded error and set about improving their notes. Who knows whether the MSO would handle such complaints from the peanut gallery as professionally today?

Stalin a

Call me obsessive (OK, I am) but I turned up at the Melbourne Concert Hall on June 20, 2009 to enjoy Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony (1944), and nearly blew a fuse.

The MSO’s free program notes were as if written by some hack from the Soviet era. The notes quoted Prokofiev praising the cultural freedom of Soviet artists.

Without any editorial comment from the MSO, Prokofiev in these notes swiped at the lack of ‘freedom of the human spirit’ in the US, in contrast to ‘free and happy (Soviet) man’.

A Soviet-era music bigshot called Dmitri Kabalevsky (three times a Stalin Prize-winner) was also quoted about Prokofiev helping to run a war-time composers’ commune, at which Prokofiev “encouraged the others to discuss their daily achievements in an atmosphere of mutual trust.”

(By coincidence, Prokofiev died on March 5, 1953, the same day that Stalin died).

Strangely for a 2009 performance, these notes by a “Graeme Skinner” were dated 1997 (six years after the Soviet Union’s collapse).

Arriving home, I penned a letter to the MSO noting that Prokofiev had already suffered his wife Lena and two sons being held in Siberia as hostage for his good behavior, and for all I knew, his quotes could have been drafted by the NKVD for his signature at real or implied gunpoint.

“I can hardly believe MSO program notes could be so ill-informed and so keen to whitewash an era of hideous tyranny and murder in the now-unlamented Soviet Union,” I wrote.

To defeat any normal bureaucratic reaction, I posted a copy of the letter not only to the MSO managing director Trevor Green and the MSO’s publicity guy, but also to then chief conductor Oleg Caetani, who as a son of Russian conductor Igor Markevitch, doubtless knows a thing or two about Soviet musical history. (I am sure Oleg had not read those program notes).

You suppose my letter just got filed? Not so. One month later, MD Trevor Green replied: “I agree with you that Prokofiev needs to be discussed more even-handedly. Accordingly, we will commission a new note for our next performance of this work, and will, when the budget allows, commission new annotations for other Soviet-era works that may be performed in future seasons.”

Bravo, Trevor Green!

However (why is there always a ‘however’?) on May 22, 2010 I was again in the Concert Hall, this time reading the notes for Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’.

Arriving home, I penned a further letter to the MSO. The notes, I wrote, were OK, but “I was outraged by the illustration of Stalin…This is a propaganda photo/illustration from the height of the Stalin cult period.Yet the caption merely states that it is ‘Joseph Stalin’. It is NOT Joseph Stalin, who was short, with a low forehead, and a swarthy pockmarked face. The illustration shows Stalin as handsome, wise and statesmanlike, a heroic war leader, avuncular, stern but with a hint of kindness. Using such a picture without describing it as a propaganda picture is an insult to all the many millions whom that man murdered, including at least a few hundred artists, writers and doubtless composers, along with their colleagues, family and friends.

“I am sure that in illustrating, say, a program note on Richard Strauss, you would not accompany it with an illustration such as the one I attach here {a war-time Nazi portrait of the all-conquering Der Fuehrer}.

“I am sure that whoever selected the ‘heroic Stalin’ illustration did so merely from lack of sophistication and lack of historical perspective.^[1] But I am surprised that someone of more maturity in a cosmopolitan city like Melbourne did not tell him/her that Stalin was a mass murderer and not a hero.”

This letter was mailed to the new MD Matthew VanBesien, guest conductor Andrew Litton and the MSO’s long-suffering PR guy.

A month later, Mr VanBesien replied, acknowledging that the choice of photograph could have been more discerning – “for which of course I apologise to you – but I am not convinced that the photograph automatically denies Stalin’s atrocities.”

VanBesien cited other music programs that had featured Jacques-Louis David’s propaganda picture of Napoleon or official photos of Czar Nicholas II. “These men were responsible for thousands – if not millions- of deaths…None of this was wiped away for me by seeing Napoleon on a horse or Nicholas II looking statesmanlike. I will of course bring this issue to the attention of the staff responsible for production of printed programs.”

So far so good. The MSO talks the talk but does it walk the walk?

Today (10 December 2011) I was in the Melbourne Town Hall reading the program notes for Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5.

Text? All fine.

Illustration? Joe Stalin. Outfit: bemedalled uniform circa 1945. Build: tall and fit. Forehead: high. Expression: noble, but caring. Complexion: to die for.

Caption: ”Propaganda portrait of Stalin.” (My emphasis)

Bravo, MSO!

Commenters on a current affairs blog got confused about my position, so I clarified as follows:

For all posters, could I please explain that my article above was not meant to be condemnatory of the MSO management. OK they stuffed up with their original pro-Soviet program notes to Prokofiev 5, but as I pointed out, instead of getting defensive about my complaint, they manfully admitted error and promised to do better next time.

On the Prokofiev Romeo & Juliet program notes, they stuffed up again using a propaganda pic of Stalin without labelling it as such.

Again they manfully apologised, and added an arguable point that it was no worse than using a propaganda pic of Napoleon.

On the program notes for Shostakovich last Saturday, I was delighted to discover that they had this time correctly labelled the pic of Stalin as a ‘Propaganda Portrait.’ Hence my ‘Bravo, MSO!’

The real point of my article is that we humble members of the public should always be assertive towards the powers-that-be when they get things wrong (for whatever reason). In this MSO case, they have been responsive and positive towards an admittedly cranky music lover, who takes anything to do with Stalin very seriously. (I have just been re-reading all volumes of the Gulag Archipelago).

^[1] One of my critics has made the reasonable point that non-propaganda pictures of Stalin are almost non-existent.

The Gag That’s no Laughing Matter

Leave a reply

In the dying days of Julia Gillard’s government, her communications minister, Steve Conroy, brought in two bills to regulate the media, or more succinctly, to nobble the Murdoch press. After all, the 2013 election was only months away and the Murdoch stable much more often than not gave Labor a hard time.

Murdoch’s cheeky Daily Telegraph mocked up a picture of Conroy in Stalin’s uniform. Outraged progressives demanded an apology. The Teleapologised, but to Stalin not Conroy:

… we would just like to say: We’re sorry, Joseph.

Yes, it is true that Stalin was a despicable and evil tyrant who was responsible for the death of many millions. However, at least he was upfront in his efforts to control the media instead of pretending he supported free speech and then suggesting that cheeky, satirical or provocative newspaper coverage might be against the law.

We also note that, despite his well-documented crimes against humanity, Stalin at least managed to hold a government together for more than three years. Nonetheless, we pay tribute to our new Commissar Conroy and stand ready to write and publish whatever he instructs us to.

Conroy’s Bill to save Australia from the media was based on the flimsy pretext that in England, Murdoch’s News of the World journos had been hacking phones, not just of royalty but even the families of murder victims. (Some of Britain’s non-Murdoch press had also been into hacking). Murdoch shut down News of the World in response. Nobody claimed anything like the phone hacking had occurred in Australia.

Still, it was a chance for Gillard. Pushed by the Greens, she gave Judge Ray Finkelstein and a stray journo called Matthew Ricketson the job of drafting improved media regulation. They came up with a PIMA or “Public Interest Media Advocate” to oversee self-regulation. Under the Bill, if Mr or Ms PIMA felt self-regulation wasn’t strict enough, he/she/it would cause the offending newspaper, in practical terms, to be delicensed.[1] Newspapers would be obliged to publish mandatory statements of error and, should editors demur, contempt-of-court penalties would apply — in other words, they could be locked up and kept behind bars indefinitely. This modest proposal ended in parliamentary tears for Conroy, Gillard (hello, Kevin Rudd 2.0)[2] and the Labor government itself, downed by Tony Abbott.

Politicians’ memories are short and down the turnpike now comes Prime Minister Albanese’s bill, via Communications Minister Michelle Rowland, to censor online “misinformation”. The pretext this time is that fake and malicious information on social media is wrecking our minds and unravelling our hitherto resilient society.

The rigmarole seems templated on Gillard’s lamentable model. Labor will give an “independent” regulator power to oversee voluntary censorship codes by the tech giants like Meta, Google and Twitter. If they. are seen to falter, the regulator — namely the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) run by Nerida O’Loughlin on $610,000 per year (p88) — imposes its own standards. And she enforces it with fines literally up to billions of dollars per day ($6.88 million or 5 per cent of global turnover, whichever is biggest).

You can bet the tech giants will rush to self-censor any posts that might remotely annoy Nerida or the government. So goodbye to online “misinformation” like ‘renewables are expensive and unreliable’, or ‘compulsory Covid vaccines are somewhat unproven and dangerous’.

If you think the bill itself defines the sort of “misinformation” that causes social “harms”, forget it. The definitions are broad as the earth and sky. Sure, actionable “misinformation” has to be “reasonably likely [to] cause or contribute to serious harm” but the “serious harm” test is just jelly.

Labor’s reworded bill arrives any month now. The Coalition hasn’t gained traction against it: after all, Scott Morrison’s team created the plan in the first place. ScoMo’s ethos, you might recall, was “freedom of speech doesn’t create one job.”[3] When Albanese kicked out the LNP in 2022, he merely dusted off and hardened the LNP’s handiwork. You might think Labor’s penalties are pretty draconian (Draco would execute an Athenian for stealing a cabbage). But for the leftist mobs, Minister Rowland’s onslaught against social media freedom doesn’t go nearly far enough.

The submission by the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) on August 6 takes the cake. I’m serious, ATSE applauds the draft and wants Labor to extend censorship to cover not just online screeds but all “traditional” media — newspapers, radio, TV, Quadrant and even private messaging. Why? Because “An ongoing flood of misinformation and disinformation through online platforms risks damage to Australian democracy, institutions and society.” That’s why. So we get

Recommendation 5: Expand ACMA powers to enable enforceable industry standards on traditional media sources, including print news media.

With the Murdoch press obviously in mind, ATSE continues (emphasis added),

Some Australian news providers have been shown to be havens for science denialism and science misinformation (Lowe, 2018), while other media outlets can unintentionally amplify misinformation in well- meaning attempts to debunk it. Furthermore, it is much harder for digital platforms to police information coming from traditional media sources, as these sources may produce a mix of misinformation and factual information. Given this oversized role of traditional media in spreading misinformation, any attempt to fight misinformation that does not address the role of traditional media will be insufficient.

ATSE’s favorable citation of “Lowe 2018” is the giveaway. Ian Lowe AO was Australian Conservation Foundation president 2004-14, and his cited piece “Climate of Denial” is up on ATSE’s own website.Here he spells it all out:

We are now seeing a determined campaign of misinformation by the Murdoch press. At one level, it consists of putting forward amateur contrary views as if they hold equal weight with the [climate] science. The Australian featured on its front page a sun-tanned Bondi surfer who said he had not noticed any rise in sea level, as if this anecdote cancelled out decades of analysis of about 10,000 tide gauges around the world.

With respect, Ian, the Fort Denison tide gauge in Sydney Harbour has shown a puny 110mm of sea rise per century — that’s two-thirds the length of my iphone.

At another level, it is deliberate misrepresentation … There is now no real possibility of communicating climate science through our commercial media … The good news is the community overall has clearly moved on and the denialists in power are increasingly out of touch with reality. [His piece refers to the Coalition era].

Don’t imagine ATSE is some mickey-mouse show gone rogue. Its president from 2013-15 was the urbane Alan Finkel, who became Australia’s Chief Scientist a few years later, as well as a Fellow of the Academy of Science.. ATSE is currently headed by Dr Katherine Woodthorpe AO.[4] Her ATSE biog includes that she’s a past director of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and Vast Solar, which is now installing the $200 million Port Augusta Solar Thermal Project with the help of $65 million federal funds.

ATSE has another 900 fellows, billed as our brightest boffins. Here’s how ATSE imagines itself:

[A] Learned Academy of independent, non-political experts helping Australians understand and use technology to solve complex problems. Bringing together Australia’s leading thinkers in applied science, technology and engineering, ATSE provides impartial, practical and evidence-based advice on how to achieve sustainable solutions and advance prosperity.

ATSE wants WhatsApp to deliver “functionality nudges” (an Orwellian term reminiscent of a former NSW Premier’s Department’s “Nudge Unit”) to curb any “misinformation” on it. ATSE not only wants dissemination of “misinformation” labelled and limited across the board, it also wants (Recommendation 4) the censorship reach to extend to those private messaging services, subject to concerns about privacy and “weakening of encryption”. ATSE’s submission agrees piously that Australians’ trust in government is already low and falling, “so it is essential that legislation designed to tackle misinformation does not undermine what trust remains. This is reinforced by the fact that Australians are particularly concerned about misinformation from the government and politicians.”

The ATSE submission goes on to support indoctrination of school students based on the playbook of climate psychologists John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky. They and ATSE prescribe “inoculation” of kids with supposedly truthful climate alarmism to condition kids’ brains against any reference to harmless warming and net zero impossibilities they might later encounter. Cook, whose research team indulged in some truly bizarre behaviour, was lead author for the 2013 paper falsely claiming a 97 per cent scientific consensus for the orthodox warming hypothesis).[5]

ATSE’s big program for schools was established by future chief scientist Finkel (above) himself. This program uses global warming alarmism as a bait to excite Year 5-10 kids about science. Or in ATSE’s words, it is “tapping into the high level of concern that most students have about global warming, climate change and sustainability.” This is circular as the ATSE alarmists helped stir up kids’ climate neuroses in the first place.

The ATSE program is now running in close to 1000 schools in Australasia and Asia, with 100,000 kids and 1500 teachers involved annually, with topics such as “How to save our world?”. While ATSE-sourced science lessons for the kids is lively and educationally impressive, its text material features hoary and discredited memes like anxious polar bears on ice floes (their numbers in fact have tripled in the past 50 years of mild global warming. Moreover, the material bangs on about global warming melting the Arctic sea ice whereas the sea ice has stabilised since 2007 and last month was at a 21-year high). Most disgusting of all, the course thrusts at kids a misinformation video about Tuvalu drowning from rising seas, and tells kids to write a case study on it. In the video villagers “already live with their feet in the water” and mourn, “This land will be — you know — nothing.” Fact Check against misinformation: even RMIT-ABC Fact Check ruled from scientific measurement studies that Tuvalu’s land area is expanding.

It gets worse for the reputation of science. The 2022 joint ATSE/Science Academy submission to DIGImirrors the 2023 ATSE job. DIGI is Meta (Facebook), Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and TikTok. The DIGI players are, of course, the linchpin of the new Misinformation Bill.

The two academies urged DIGI to censor and harass any Australians who circulated what they insultingly labelled “climate denialism misinformation”. They made no bones about urging the tech giants’ power to be wielded against Murdoch’s “Sky News Australia and its media personalities”. And the regime shouldn’t stop at online censorship. They urge censoring “misinformation” in the traditional media too.

Recommendation 2: Include misinformation from professional news content within the scope of the Code.

A COP26 paper, Deny, Deceive, Delay, which the Academies’ submission also cited with approval referred to “political right-wing … top influencers” as part of a conspiratorial “intellectual dark web”. Its alleged members included best-selling psychologist Dr Jordan B. Peterson and humourist Scott Adams and his Dilbert cartoons. The paper, incidentally, was particularly aggrieved that Sky News’ Rita Panahi had called Prince (now King) Charles a climate hypocrite and idiot. Would that be misinformation or treason?

Another paper cited and approved by the two academies was another far-left conspiracy rant “The Toxic Ten — How ten fringe publishers fuel 69% of digital climate change denial.” To smear sceptics by association, the list includes “Russian state media”. Big Tech blocking these key right-of-centre outlets with their 186 million followers would be a huge win for the net-zero enforcers. Not all of the 600 science fellows viewed the submission as a credit to their Academy. Garth Paltridge, a fellow for 30-plus years, is a retired atmospheric physicist.[6] He told us at the time,

The bottom line is that research on climate change is indeed still highly controversial – both in the prediction of the extent of the change and (even more so) in the prediction of the impact of the change on society. I just cannot understand how any science academy that is supposed to operate through rational debate can behave like this – that is, to use pure political brute force to prevent one side of the argument from putting its case.

I can only assume that the Academy is subconsciously ‘chasing the money’ and is influenced by the vast funding available these days for the support of alarmist climate research. Certainly there is virtually no money to support scientists brave enough to put their heads above the parapet with a contrary view. That might be why the critical scientists seem largely to be retired.

Quadrant covered that joint submission under the felicitous headline, “Shut them up, argues the Academy of Science”. The two academies are now on a collision course with the Australian Human Rights Commission (HRC) which wants the misinformation bill defanged, not augmented.

The Commission holds serious reservations about the current version of the Exposure Draft Bill’s ability to strike the correct balance. Legislation that necessitates censorship to fight misinformation and disinformation must do so in a way that prevents harm without unduly silencing reasonable minds we disagree with. Unfortunately, this initial Exposure Draft Bill has not found that equilibrium.

The HRC is not my favourite institution.[7] It lost me when then-president Gillian Triggs opined in Hobart in 2017, to a standing ovation of Greens supporters, “Sadly you can say what you like around the kitchen table at home.” But on this Misinformation BIll, HRC President Rosalind Croucher has monstered the censorship-lovers. Censorship is contrary to fundamental Australian values, she argues, and also contrary to UN human rights treaties signed by Australia. She warns that the Bill could “restrict public debate, censor unpopular opinions and enforce ideological conformity in Australia.”

Truthful information can be labelled as ‘fake news’ and delegitimized, Croucher says. “Similarly, categories [in the Bill] such as ‘harm to the health of Australians’, ‘harm to the Australian environment’ and ‘economic or financial harm to Australians, the Australian economy or a sector of the Australian economy’ are each categories about which reasonable people may legitimately have different perspectives and views.” She complains about the Bill’s free pass to any government information, true or false, “given the enhanced legitimacy and authority that many people attach to information received from official government sources.” Arguing in surprising parallel with the Institute of Public Affairs, HRC is alarmed that government has immunity while it can get its critics censored.

As for other submissions, the draft bill is even making the ABC nervous, as its iView and Listen apps could get caught in ACMA’s censorship wringer. The ABC also complains the Bill lacks provision for ABC journos to protect their sources.

The journos’ leftist union, MEAA, like the ABC, loves the censorship Bill in principle for targeting “misinformation” that contradicts their woke opinions. MEAA’s submission complains that authorities during the Referendum failed to suppress “deliberate campaigns distributing incorrect, misleading, and damaging information” by No advocates. The MEAA — trust them, they’re journalists

believes fact checkers [like their RMIT/ABC ideological mate Russ Skelton] should be a mandatory requirement of any code or standard developed.

At the same time, the MEAA feared the enhanced ACMA blowtorch could burn its many freelance journos and small online publishers. These small-timers, unlike mainstream publishers of “professional news content”, are likely targets for the official censorship. MEAA also feared ACMA could misuse its power to censor “harmful” accounts involving “disruption of public order or society” such as street protests. In MEAA’s words, “there is a long history of important social movements being considered ‘disruptive’ by governments and powerful interests.” I’m sure the union likes rioters for Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion and the “Gas the Jews” mob, but not the peaceful anti-lockdown protestors which, in Victoria’s case, involved Dan Andrew’s troopers firing rubber bullets into them as they fled.

The MEAA solution goes like this: instead of exemptions for “professional news content”, make it exemptions for all those subscribing to the MEAA’s Code of Ethics. These (I presume) union members can be relied on for “a commitment to the highest standards of honesty, fairness, independence, and respect for the rights of others.” The MEAA’s other faux solution to “misinformation” online, echoing ATSE, is for kids to get “media literacy” training, under the watchful eye of the leftist fact-checkers.

Even through its leftist goggles the MEAA can see that the censorship regime looks a bit dicey given its green-light exemption for all propaganda from all levels of government:

It is simply unreasonable that the view of governments be protected from the reach of this Bill’s definition of “misinformation” and paves the way for government to politicise valid criticisms of it[self] while engaging in misinformation of its own.

Other leftist submissions on the Bill are nervous that giving such powers to their friendly government might backfire when wielded by a cabinet of conservatives.

I’d better close now, I’d hate to give you any misinformation.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] “Death by a thousand consent forms”, as one analyst put it at the time.

[2] Gillard in desperation negotiated to replace PIMA with a three-person panel, appointed by a 12-person committee, six of whom would have been appointed by the Council of the Order of Australia, three appointed by the journalists’ union and three appointed by the Australian Press Council. The bill collapsed anyway.

[3] Actually, his phrase was, ” As a senior figure in this government … I know this issue [free speech] doesn’t create one job, doesn’t open one business, doesn’t give anyone one extra hour. It doesn’t make housing more affordable or energy more affordable.”

[4] Dr Woodthorpe previously chaired the National Climate Science Advisory Committee and currently chairs the Government’s “Vision 2040” committee.

[5] Another of the Cook-Lewandowsky papers on “deniers” (Recursive Fury) in 2014 was retracted by its hosting journal, Frontiers.

[6] Paltridge from 1990 to 2002 was professor and director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Oceans Studies at the University of Tasmania and at the same time, from 1991–2002, chief executive officer of the Antarctic Co-operative Research Centre at the University of Tasmania.

[7] From October 14 to January 28 the HRC website had nothing to say about the country’s wave of “Gas the Jews/Where’s the Jews?” anti-Semitism, though it had earlier spent four years hounding and legally impoverishing some blameless QUT students who’d objected to being kicked out of an Aboriginal-only computer room. On January 29 it posted this sludge,

The Commission is extremely concerned about reports of rising incidents of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazi rallies, Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism. We will continue to support and engage with all communities in our society for an Australia free from racial hatred, discrimination, and unlawful harassment.

On February 19 it announced

further anti-racism work to support communities in Australia affected by the war in Gaza and the Middle East, supported by a $2 million grant from the Commonwealth. The grant responds to an increase in racism targeting Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, and Jewish communities within Australia since the outbreak of the conflict.

Facts of the ABC Variety

Leave a reply

Should one laugh or cry at the news ABC is dumping its so-called “fact checkers” at RMIT University? ABC news director Justin Stevens emailed staff last week explaining that the national broadcaster’s seven-year partnership with RMIT won’t be renewed. [Cue laughter]. But Stevens also announced that the ABC would set up an in-house “fact-check” unit called ABC News Verify [Cue tears].

ABC News Verify – doubtless modelled on “BBC Verify” which launched a year ago – will maintain the rage against whatever contradicts the ABC’s version of truth-telling. For example, that renewables are cheapest, Trump won in 2016 by colluding with Putin, men can become women and vice versa, and Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe, Australia’s leading fauxborigine, is of Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian Aboriginal ancestry.[1]

I’ll discuss BBC Verify later, but as a teaser mention that one of its BBC staffers has enrolled for six months training at a climate-alarm lobby group. This group likes the idea of fining or jailing anyone rubbishing the madness of planetary apocalypse and net-zero ambitions.

For background on RMIT, the ABC has paid $670,000-plus since 2020 to RMIT to run RMIT/ABC Fact Check, a unit purportedly“combining academic excellence and the best of Australian journalism to inform the public through an independent non-partisan voice.”

The ABC’s chief partner is Russ Skelton[2], who was originally inside the ABC running its fact-check unit. When the ABC killed it in 2016 because of Coalition funding cuts, Skelton migrated to RMIT and the “fact-checking” nexus continued with the help of the ABC’s taxpayer dollars. Now, according to Liberal Senator James Paterson, who chairs the Senate Intelligence and Security Committee, “RMIT would be wise to reconsider whether it’s a good idea to continue the operation given the brand damage they’ve sustained.” If or when the RMIT setup collapses, will the ABC welcome back Skelton as an asylum-seeker?

Skelton has run RMIT FactLab plus RMIT/ABC Fact Check with various resources in common. The group also provides factchecking “education and training” to schools, university students, journalists and civil society groups.

Last August 10, FactLab slapped a “False” label on Sky News’ Peta Credlin’s revelations about the Uluru Aboriginal manifesto. She had found through FOI that it was not a one-pager but a 26-pager seeking reparations, sovereignty and much awful else. The “False” label caused Meta to restrict circulation of Credlin’s message, warning that “independent fact-checkers say that this information has no basis in fact.”[3].[4] News Corp Australia threatened legal action against FactLab for allegedly providing “misleading” information under Australian Consumer Law.

A fortnight later Sky News master sleuth Jack Houghton ran a horrific expose of their bias and malfunctions, under the header, The Fact Check Files. For example, Meta asserted independence from its fact-checkers, but Houghton reported that it was secretly paying RMIT up to $740,000 a year via a Meta subsidiary in Ireland.[5] Houghton also quoted Skelton and staffer Renee Davidson touting the Yes case on their social media while ostensibly referees of the debate. Ms Davidson’s re-tweets included likening Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to a “fear-mongering racist.”[6]

Houghton resurrected that in 2013 while Skelton was at the ABC, the SMH published a highly critical Paul Sheehan commentary. I am not saying that Sheehan’s remarks about Skelton are true or accurate, only that the SMH published them and Sky News republished them.

By the time Mark Scott [former ABC managing director] left the Senate committee hearing into the ABC on Wednesday he smelled. An unpleasant odour had attached itself to the testimony and credibility of the ABC’s managing director. The source of odour could be summed up in two words: Russell Skelton.

That Skelton has had several ethical collisions, is a fierce political partisan, and has left an unedifying trail of puerile smears, would not matter to the public at large if Skelton had not just been appointed the chief fact-checker of the ABC.

In response to Sky News’ “Fact Check Files”, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) immediately suspended its endorsement of FactLab, and Meta suspended its paid partnership. RMIT on its website de-emphasised its former “hand in hand”remarks about the two entities after Houghton’s exposure. IFCN restored RMIT in November, saying the problem was all just a glitch. Meta announced likewise. But FactLab has published no fact checks since Sky’s August exposure.

RMIT/ABC continued operations. Its latest three checks involve ratings of “Overblown” and “Not the full story” against Opposition memes, and a green tick “Delivered” on Labor’s election promise of 500 more staff to process veterans’ claims. At February 25, the unit rated Labor as having delivered 33 per cent of its 66 election promises, with 54 per cent “in progress”, 9 per cent “stalled” and 3 per cent “broken“. Among those rated “stalled” (rather than “broken” in substance) as of February 25 was “Maintain the Coalition’s legislated tax cuts”.

While Houghton’s Sky News expose should (but won’t) win him a Gold Walkley, terminal damage to the RMIT and ABC venture was done soon after by the Institute of Public Affairs, which functions as the ABC’s own nemesis. IPA lawyer/historian John Storey and his research assistant, Margaret Chambers, catalogued and analysed all 80 referendum “fact checks” by RMIT Factlab and RMIT/ABC Fact Check from Labor’s election in May 2022 to the vote last October 14. Storey concluded that the referendum “likely featured the most unfair targeting and censorship of one side of a political debate—the No case—in Australian history.”

♦ For RMIT/ABC, 30 checks or 77 per cent targeted “No” claims. Of the 30, the unit rated 29 as “false” and one lone check as “true”. Of the nine “Yes” claims, the unit found five to be “true”, three “false” and one “neutral”.

♦ For RMIT FactLab, all 41 checks (100 per cent) targeted “No” and all (100 per cent) ruled the “No” claims to be “false”. [7]

Skelton’s teams under their International Fact-Checking Network auspices were required to ‘not concentrate their fact-checking unduly on any one side’. They demonstrably breached this Code, Storey wrote, also eviscerating the methods by which Skelton’s teams created their ‘true/false’ verdicts (without going to the merits of any individual check).

♦ They purported to disprove “No” legal opinions by citing contrary ‘Yes’ legal opinions, which was illogical. The vagueness of the “Yes” proposition meant that legal experts had a spectrum of views. All such opinions can only be tested in the High Court in a majority verdict.

♦ Both sides made emotional claims but “Yes” advocates got a free pass. For example, Senator Mick Dodson made comparisons between a hypothetical “No” win and South African apartheid – which hasn’t eventuated here so far. Whatever opinions aligned with the RMIT worldview didn’t get fact-checked.[8]

♦ The teams made pedantic attacks on “No” claims that were mere mockery or satire, such as a mocked-up voting card with only two “Yes” options.

♦ Both sides made any number of unprovable claims, such as “Yes” arguing that it would “save money” and “close the gap”. The fact-checking of such material was implemented largely to knock the “No” case.

During the campaign the “Yes” leaders used the fact-checking results to boost their case. For example, Voice architect Megan Davis:

The fact-checking is going really well, I think the No Campaign is up to their fiftieth lie that’s been fact-checked and has been deemed as not correct. And that’s really important … the work of the fact-checkers.

Voice blueprint co-author Marcia Langton:

If you look at any reputable fact checker, every one of them says the No case is substantially false. They are lying to you.

IPA concluded,

The fundamental problem with censoring ‘misinformation’ is deciding who determines truth and falsehood. In the case of the referendum, organisations that purported to be neutral, and to whom responsibility was given to determine truth and falsehood, acted in a demonstrably one sided and biased manner. If organisations like these were empowered to censor online communications, the damage done to free political debate in this country would be profound.

Arguments about RMIT’s fact-checking are not just academic. During the Referendum when it slapped ‘False’, ‘wrong’, ‘debunked’ or ‘misinformation’ onto public figures’ views, Meta and Google restricted the views’ circulation and added warnings to damage the authors’ credibility. It’s a form of privately enforced censorship. Unwanted views can be suppressed with no explanation or right of reply and without any third party being aware of it. Throttling and labels can also bankrupt commercial sites by frightening away their advertising.

The nadir was during the final weeks of the US election in 2020, when the FBI warned social-media leaders of likely Russian disinformation attempts. At the time the FBI knew the New York Post was about to break news of the Hunter Biden laptop and his corrupt foreign income flow from China and the Ukraine. The social media chiefs took the heavy hint and Twitter locked out the New York Post from circulating even its own scoop — along with third parties wanting to spread the news nationally. The specifics of the Deep State intervention emerged only because Elon Musk bought Twitter for $US44 billion and released the documentation. Polling suggested this censorship could have tipped enough votes into a win for Biden.

A year or more later, the New York Times and the Washington Post (but not the ABC) sheepishly acknowledged the Hunter Biden laptop disclosures were authentic. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerbergsaid Facebook’s wrongful censorship “Sucks … when we take down something that we’re not supposed to, that’s the worst.”

TIME now to catch up on BBC Verify, likely a template for ABC’s new Verify namesake.

BBC installed a team of 60 so-called “investigative and forensic” journalists promoting “radical transparency in action”, supposedly building audience trust in BBC reports and “explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth.” Its birth might well have been inspired by UK polling that trust in the BBC news is sagging dramatically. One annual survey in 2022 showed that since 2018, trust in the BBC slumped 20 points to 55 per cent, although it was still the UK’s most trusted news brand. A quarter of Britons — mostly conservative voters — don’t trust BBC News, and overall trust in journalism in the UK fell to a record low of 34 per cent.

BBC Verify got off to a bad start with its disinformation correspondent Marianna Spring promptly announcing she was studying the “UK’s conspiracy theory movement” which she connected a priori to “far right” and foreign sources. She showed no interest in any “far left” offshore conspirators. Spring hosts the BBC podcast “Marianna in Conspiracy-land”, attacking “mistruths” than can cause “really serious harm to society”. (“Serious harm” is also a key term in PM Albanese’s looming Misinformation Bill). She boasted,

There are other ways we also are able to interrogate what’s going on, including on social media. I have some undercover accounts that I’ve set up for the BBC’s Americast podcast, and we use these kinds of undercover accounts to be able to really understand polarisation online, and what’s happening on our social media feeds, and what we’re being recommended can affect all of us.

Frank Havilland at the European Conservative wrote,

Aside from the fact that such accounts are illegal, Spring is admitting that the BBC routinely uses fake social media accounts (which clearly influence the narrative), to understand fake social media accounts’ influence on the narrative. You couldn’t make this stuff up!

Hard to believe but the BBC is even more climate-deranged than the ABC. UK fact-checker Paul Homewood, an ex-accountant, has been nailing the BBC’s own “disinformation” on climate change on almost a daily basis for years, based on relevant readouts from multiple types of weather logging worldwide. BBC’s key misinformation is claiming extreme weather is getting worse, contrary to the data readouts and to the findings of the 5th and 6th IPCC reports.

A typical BBC climate story was last December, quoting a young Egyptian artist Hossna Hanafy that her home city of Alexandria was at risk from rising sea levels. She complained that her school teachers had mocked such suggestions, and now runs climate-alarm workshops for kids. In the young lady’s entire lifetime, Alexandria’s tide gauge data in fact showed sea levels there had risen by a mere 2cm, or a rate of 18cm per century – less than the length of my hand and fingers. Homewood wrote,

Roger Harrabin, the BBC’s former Energy and Environment Analyst, let the cat out of the bag last year when he tweeted that the BBC has long been trying to ‘knit climate change into the fabric of the daily news’. In other words, try to link every bit of bad weather, famine or other disaster to global warming, in the most surreptitious way possible. Little wonder that only 44 per cent of Brits trust the BBC’s journalists to be truthful.

Last month another BBC Verify climate disinformation staffer, Marco Silva, started a six-months study-leave course run by the green-billionaire-funded Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN). One of OCJN’s educators was Exeter Associate Professor Saffron O’Neill. She co-wrote a paper for the alarmist Carbon Brief in 2020 advocating “even putting in place punishments, such as fines or imprisonment” for alleged misinformation against “well-supported theories, or “attempt[ing] to discredit climate science.” Her link went to Brazilian proposed legislation for jail terms of up to eight years for “publishing inaccurate media accounts”, mainly but not exclusively to do with alleged pre-election misinformation.

The current OCJN course involves stupidities for participants like describing why a mango isn’t as tasty as a year ago because of climate change. No evidence is needed. Such is the education of BBC Verify’s arbiters of truths.

I suppose the ABC’s Justin Stevens can find enough idle souls to staff up his Verified Ministry of Truth – maybe from among the hundred or so ABC layabouts passing no-confidence motions in the managing director.

As Leigh Sales reminded Stevens last year, the ABC brand in the past few years has slipped from fifth most-trusted to eighteenth. Speaking generally, she continued,

My own honest opinion as to why many people are losing interest in the news? Because … people rightly don’t always trust us any more… One [reason] is that some reporters prefer to be activists and crusaders rather than fact-finders or straight reporters. They enjoy their heroic status among the tribes of social media or their subscribers. I’m not sure they can even identify their own bias. Others haven’t had enough training to understand what independent journalism actually is, or their organisation has an ideological bias and the reporter knows the way to get ahead is to toe the line … better still, to step over it. Or perhaps it’s awkward and exhausting to constantly push back against the groupthink of your colleagues. Another reason is fear of the consequences of reporting the full picture: that inconvenient facts could set back a cause the journalist believes in…

Yep, Leigh, I’ll verify that.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Stevens said Verify would be a “team of specialists with the ability to scale up to support our special coverage in times of crisis. It will be part of the Investigative Journalism and Current Affairs team led by Jo Puccini.”

[2] Skelton happens to be partnered domestic-wise by the ABC’s Virginia Trioli.

[3] At the ABC itself, star journo Leigh Sales delivered staff a script on how to justify the Labor “one-page” dogma

[4] Houghton described how Meta allowed RMIT to put a “false information” label on the video which forced users to read a disclaimer before opting to watch the video. Meta also restricted reach on the entire Sky News Australia page for weeks as a punitive response.

[5] Houghton: “The more fact checks RMIT publishes, including on the Voice, the more money it makes. This has the chilling effect of creating a financial incentive for activists to profit while controlling the national discourse.”

[6] “There is a significant difference between listening to Indigenous criticism of the Voice, and Peter Dutton’s opposition. One is healthy criticism from those impacted that challenges our colonial structures, the other is fear-mongering through racism,” Ms Davidson retweeted.

[7] The IPA study also covered the biased “AAP Fact Check” that devoted 99 or 93% of its 107 checks to “No” claims, finding every one to be “false”. Of the eight “Yes” claims, it found seven “false” and one “mixed”. Six of its eight “Yes” checks were made on or after the Sky News expose of August 23, suggesting a sudden urge by AAP Fact Check to appear less biased.

[8] For example, Sky’s Houghton says RMIT has never fact checked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese or Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney for the erroneous claim that a legislated Voice could be removed with a “stroke of a pen”.

At the ABC, it’s Always Time for Hare of the Doc

Leave a reply

ABC insiders speaking on condition of anonymity say that ABC TV has lined up a 30-minute interview with pop-singer Dr Taylor Swift. The favourites of ABC chair Dr Ita Buttrose are fighting to do the gig. Namely Dr Sarah Ferguson squaring off against Dr Leigh Sales, both having bested Dr Geraldine Doogue. ABC has-beens Dr Ray Martin and Dr Kerry O’Brien are already knocked out of contention. Incoming chair Dr Kim Williams will have final say. Over at Channel 10, Dr Lisa Wilkinson is reportedly still chasing an exclusive with Dr Swift, or failing that, with rapper Dr Kanye West.

The babelicious Dr Swift has a Doctor of Fine Arts(h.c.) from New York University. The above-mentioned talent’s doctorates are also “h.c.” It stands for honoris causa, i.e. honorary. Few at the ABC speak Latin, so you never know who next they’re going to call “Dr”.

I intended this piece to be about my old mate, net-zero spruiker Bill Hare who in his distant youth got a B.Sc.(Hons) degree from Murdoch University. Now he heads up a lavishly funded anti-gas and oil lobby called Climate Analytics.[1] He’s been the go-to climate catastrophist for every ABC reporter since forever. And every time they describe him as “Dr” Bill Hare. This makes him look more quote-worthy than “Mr Bill Hare, B.Sc. (Hons) – Murdoch 1983”.[2] His lawfare against Woodside’s Scarborough gas project also acquires a more sciencey lustre.

The woke Murdoch University in 2008 gave him an Honorary Doctor of Science, saying that “his climate change activism and political acumen have seen him described as ‘the best climate lobbyist in the world’.” (Link broken). Then it told him he could strut his Honorary Ph.D. all over the place, contrary to long-established Murdoch, pan-academic and government protocols. (Don’t let someone with an Honorary Doctorate in Veterinary Science spay your Golden Retriever).

Each time the ABC quotes “Dr Hare”, I whine to its complaints team. They’re over a barrel because the ABC Style Guide says, “Honorary doctorates do not usually confer the Dr title.” In other words ABC policy is against dubbing people “Dr” merely because some university somewhere has robed them in a black bonnet and stripey gown for running a lost dogs’ home or a loser state like Victoria (e.g. Dr Steve Bracks, Dr Ted Baillieu, and Dr Jeff Kennett, with Dan Andrews now panting for his statesmanlike turn). The ABC complaints team always agrees I’m right and alerts the 4,971 staff (as at June 2023) about the style breach. The 4,971 staff pay not the slightest attention and in as little as 24 hours, resume calling him “Dr Hare”. And so the cycle continues, as I document later as your special treat.

In my complaint last week, I saved time by also complaining about 7pm ABCTV flagship news on February 4 describing the late Lowitja O’Donoghue eight times verbally and twice in signage as “Dr O’Donoghue”. I respect her life’s work for remote-Aboriginal progress as much as anyone (except it doesn’t progress), but all her six doctorates are honorary and the ABC chose not to mention that. With Aborigines the ABC is utterly inconsistent. The very same 7pm News item quoted Pat Dodson praising Lowitja, but didn’t call him “Dr Dodson” notwithstanding his honorary doctorates from Melbourne Uni (Laws) and UNSW (Letters).

Yet whenever the ABC mentions Voice co-architect Tom Calma, who has a couple of associate diplomasin social work, it’s always “Dr Calma” this and “Dr Calma” that. Another whom the ABC loved entitling “Dr” was Galarrwuy Yunupingu, famed for his $1400-an-hour helicopter on standby full-time at his waterfront mansion to assist conjugal visits to four wives dispersed around the Gove Peninsular. Yunupingu got his honorary doctorate in laws from Melbourne University in 2015.[3] Check this Stan Grant ABC piece about Dr Yunupingu as “The great champion of the Gumatj people”.

And why does the ABC discriminate against doctorate holders (honorary) like ex-footballer Adam Goodes? If it’s Dr Calma and Dr O’Donoghue, why not Dr Goodes? The same appalling ABC discrimination was applied against their own former grievance specialist Stan Grant, whom they never called “Dr” Grant, and health advocate Dr Pat Anderson and flag designer Dr Harold Thomas.

I try to economise on my complaints to the ABC, but through initial carelessness I overlooked another wrong in that Feb 4 ABC TV item. That led me to add a further complaintlast week, about the ABC positioning Lowitja O’Donoghue at age two as having been officially stolen from her mother’s traditional native camp. She wasn’t, regardless of whether the Aboriginal Industry and the ABC would like her to be. The ABC is associated with at least three leftist gangs purporting to enforce truth and suppress mis- and disinformation from the (conservative) media. The gangs are

♦ Trusted News Initiative: ABC joined this BBC-led global consortium working with Big-Tech to suppress any narrative that conflicts with deep-State messaging on climate-doom, covid vaccines, and Hunter Biden getting a $US5m payoff from a Chinese intelligence-affiliated investment consortium.

♦ Newsguard: Another global censoring operationalso aimed at throttling the flow of advertising to on-line sites that disrupt leftist narratives. Of course it gives the ABC literally a perfect score for trustworthy bias-free reports.

♦ ABC-RMIT Fact Check: Journo Russ Skelton’s fiefdom, buttressed by $670,000 ABC money, where the overwhelming majority of checks are against the Murdoch and similar right-of-centre outlets, while endless porkies from the “progressive” side go through to the keeper. Skelton’s sister entity RMIT FactLab came a gutser over its “Yes” bias on the Referendum.[4]

Will any of these three hold ABCTV flagship news to account over its misinformation about Lowitja’s “stolen” status? And will ABC Complaints Department validate my rightful concern?

I suspect the ABC will insist without evidence that Lowitja was officially stolen, notwithstanding that Lowitja herself told Andrew Bolt she wasn’t stolen but given up by her father.

The 7PM News item began with a clip of Lowitja saying, “We were stolen but we need to move on.” (The “we” might mean herself and siblings or maybe some wider cohort). Presenter Iskhander Razak script-read, “Born in remote South Australia to an Aboriginal mother and a pastoralist father, Dr O’Donoghue and two elder sisters were taken from their parents [plural] when she was just two. She was trained as a domestic worker.” She then says in a clip, “I feel angry about the policy that removed us and also took away our culture, our language and families.”

Commentator Andrew Bolt has quoted acquaintances and a relative that her white father in fact dumped her and three siblings at Colebrook mission, where two sisters gave her the education that enabled her sterling career. Bolt interviewed her in 2001:

(My father) didn’t want to be straddled with five kids,” the former Australian of the Year said, sobbing. “I haven’t forgiven him… “I don’t like the word ‘stolen’ and it’s perhaps true that I’ve used the word loosely at times… I would see myself as a removed child, and not necessarily stolen.” Asked whether it would be better to state clearly that she wasn’t a member of the stolen generation, Dr O’Donoghue said: “I am prepared to make that concession.

While she later accused Bolt of mischievously distorting the situation, I can’t find her claiming that he quoted her words inaccurately. An authoritative transcript of her own words in 1994, when she was 62, is here

Were your older sisters also the children of Tom O’Donoghue?

… the indications are that my father had a long standing relationship with my mother and there were five children by that relationship.

And yet he did nothing to prevent you being taken away?

No, but … because it’s difficult for me to really confirm what the situation was but my understanding was that he had a … a wife and family in Adelaide, so I guess one could understand that he really was living a double life and wouldn’t want … wouldn’t have wanted for his family in the city to know that he had five half-caste children.[5]

Is it possible also that he thought it was for the best?

Well, yes, it could have well have been. It could have been a combination of both really, because obviously he wasn’t going to be staying around for that longand then, of course, the other mystery is, of course, whether in fact half-caste children were all that welcome in the … in, you know, as … within the traditions.

Hence 7pm News is wrong or misleading in saying she was “taken” (i.e. unwillingly taken or stolen) from her parents [plural]. Correct would be along the lines of, “She was given up with two sisters by their father to missionaries, probably against the wishes of her mother.”

Getting back now to my original whinge about honorary doctorates, I don’t know of any Australian instances yet of universities giving one to a fake Aborigine. It’s bound to happen as various controversial figures in academia enjoy a high profile and esteem – see Roger Karge’s brilliant website. In Canada Justice Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond notched up 11 Canadian honorary doctorates as the “first person of treaty Indian status to be named to the bench in Saskatchewan.” A tenured professor on $C300,000, she was eventually outed as a “Pretendian” or pretend-Indian, with forebears tracked as entirely European. Her supposed upbringing in a Manitoba home for First Nation kids amid poverty, alcoholism and abuse was actually in Niagara Falls, Ontario. All 11 universities said they were reviewing the doctorates but one had no internal process for revoking one.

As readers’ promised treat re Mr Hare, here’s my ABC updated campaign diary:

April Fool’s Day, 2019: Four Corners transcript refers 13 times to Bill Hare as “Dr” Hare.

April 7, 2019: I complain to the ABC and request corrections. I say the ABC would not refer to comedian Mr Yahoo Serious as “Dr Serious” even though he has an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Newcastle University, 1996.

April 11, 2019: Four Corners executive producer Sally Neighbour responds,

I am advised that Bill Hare has an Honorary Doctorate of Science awarded to him in 2008 by Murdoch University for his work on climate change science and policy. Murdoch University itself refers to Bill Hare as ‘Dr’ in some of its publications.

It is not uncommon practice to refer to people with Honorary Doctorates as ‘Dr’. I understand this is often qualified with the reference (h.c). For the purpose of our program, we did not feel this was necessary as most viewers or readers would not be familiar with the term. I am happy to take your comments onboard should we interview Bill Hare again on Four Corners. I will also convey your comments to Laura Tingle.

May 7, 2019: Michael Slezak on ABC News Analysisinterviews “Dr” Bill Hare.

October 24, 2021: David Speers on Insiders interviews “Dr” Bill Hare.

Nov 5, 2021: RN Breakfast with presenter Sally Sara: “Dr” Bill Hare again

Nov 11, 2021:ABC 7.30: A fawning Leigh Sales achieves six references to “Dr” Hare on one 7.30 episode.

Nov 14, 2021: I complain again to the ABC about “Dr” Hare:

A couple of years ago I complained about your use of “Dr” Hare, and Sally Neighbour informed me the ABC would be more careful about it. Please correct all ABC versions where you call him “Dr” Hare — or at least explain that he has only an honorary doctorate for his lobbying activity.

After 18 days, on Dec 2, 2021, Matt Galvin of ABC News Management replies:

I have referred your concerns to ABC Language, a unit that meet (sic) regularly and advise (sic) ABC staff on correct language usage. They have pointed me to the ABC’s publicly-available style guide…Honorary doctorates do not usually confer the Dr title.

Considering the above, ABC News agrees that as Bill Hare is the CEO of Climate Analytics, it would have been sufficient in both of these recent instances to introduce him without the ‘Dr’ honorific. Please be assured that both programs will be advised about the correct usage of such references. Thank you for bringing this matter to the ABC’s attention.

So Four Corners and Laura Tingle stuffed up about “Dr” Hare in 2019, the ABC organised a corrective, Leigh Sales et al stuffed it up again and the ABC again conceded fault and applied its corrective to ensure it would be repeated no more. All well and good, the system seemed to be working, albeit with some sand in the gears. But the very day after I received the apology from ABC News Management’s Matt Galvin (Dec 2), the ABC published a new report by reporter Rebecca Turner (Dec 3) touting “Dr” Hare all over again. (corrected version linked). Ms Turner confusingly called him “Bill Hare”, “Mr Bill Hare” and “Dr Hare” all within six paragraphs.

Dr [sic] Hare, who received support from the CCWA [Conservation Council of WA] for the [Woodside] study, said WA did not need Scarborough gas to keep the lights on …”So really on the time scale of a decade or so, we could be 100 per cent renewable in the electricity space by the early 2030s, as are other places.” [Like where, exactly?].

So I file yet another complaint to the ABC on December 7:

Despite being twice advised that the ABC would cease calling Mr Bill Hare of Climate Analytics “Dr” Hare, ABC News has reverted to “Dr Hare” just one day after Matt Galvin (ABC News Management) assured me it wouldn’t happen. Can you please correct that Dec 3 report and take steps to ensure that ABC people cease referring to “Dr” Bill Hare. Thanks.

Dec 8, 2021: Matt Galvin responds promptly and politely, “Thanks for pointing this out Tony – the correction has been made.”

Instead of a correction, the ABC merely did a ‘stealth edit’.

May 17, 2022: For ABCTV 7pm News, it’s “Dr” Hare all over again.

May 17, 2022: I complain again to my friend, Ms McLiesh, at ABC Audience & Consumer Affairs. Either no response or I’ve mislaid it.

February 6, 2024: “Dr” Hare was back on the ABC on January 22 (link to corrected version), courtesy Darwin reporter Roxanne Fitzgerald. I complain again at about 11am.

Can you please again advise ABC staff that however much they might want to big-up “Dr” Hare in order to big up their narrative of CAGW (catastrophic manmade global warming) he is just a BSc Hons holder and should be referred to as “Mr”. Nor has he sufficient physical science papers to warrant the ABC calling him a “climate scientist”. The appropriate descriptor would be “Climate lobbyist” or “Anti-CO2 emissions lobbyist”.

I then resumed my household chores (sweeping, dusting, tidying), not expecting a reply for a fortnight or more. Imagine my surprise — within two hours Complaints had flicked my beef to ABC Darwin office which emailed me back admitting error and by stealth edits, demoting “Dr” Hare to “Mr” or just plain Bill.

From Emily Sakzewski, Deputy News Editor, NT:

I am emailing in response to your complaint over this ABC News story to let you know the story has been updated to reflect Bill Hare’s correct honorific as Mr, rather than Dr.

I googled Emily. Without wanting to give the kiss of death to her career, I rate her published work to be well-researched and free of noticeable leftist bias. The ABC’s Darwin office seems not to be woke b/s merchants and is capable of professional journalism, good customer service and sturdy common sense. I wish Emily well and view her as a future candidate for managing director, if David Anderson (on $1.15 million p.a) retires any time during this century.

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Climate Analytics was born from the dark-green Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) , which has led the way into Germany’s current energy crisis. PIK has its anti-gas and anti-coal tentacles all over Australia. Climate Analytics’ funders include the UN and EC, the Rockefellers, Greenpeace, Lock the Gate Alliance, the Togo government (indirectly), the Ivory Coast government, Tim Flannery’s Climate Council, ACF, the World Bank, the German and UK governments, Murdoch University (or course), and the Green Climate Fund,

[2] Bill Hare was a Greenpeace International spokesman as “Climate Policy Director” 1992-2002, its “Chief Climate Negotiator” in 2007, and a Greenpeace “legend”. Notwithstanding, he was also a 2007 IPCC lead author and an expert reviewer on two out of three sections of that report, and one of 40 people on the “core writing team” for the big-picture Synthesis Report. He was a lead author for the 2014 report.

[3] MIT and University of Virginia don’t give out honorary degrees. William Barton Rogers, the founder of MIT, said the concept of honorary degrees was “literary almsgiving… of spurious merit and noisy popularity.”

[4] “[Conservative commentator Peta] Credlin’s claim that the Uluru Statement is a 26-page document and not a one-page document was found to be false information by RMIT FactLab. The finding led to Credlin’s editorial being removed from the platform, infuriating News Corp Australia which threatened legal action against FactLab for allegedly providing “misleading” information under Australian Consumer Law.”

[5] Lowitja further speculated that the missionaries in general there might have won the trust of mothers through supplying stores and “a few goodies”, but she said mothers would still be unwilling to give up children.

No B-S here (I hope)

Collected articles of Tony Thomas – climate, politics, silly stuff

Their ABC, Class Clown

Trials of an MSO Subscriber

Tony Thomas

Suitable Cases for Treatment

Tony Thomas

Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Family Secret

The Queen of Climate Crackpottery

Show your support

Talk on media to Turks Head Club, Melbourne 10 April 2024

The MSO and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

The Gag That’s no Laughing Matter

Facts of the ABC Variety

At the ABC, it’s Always Time for Hare of the Doc