they’re using a tragic mass shooting as a political cudgel against people who believe Palestinians are human beings. This is just one more cynical manipulation aimed at protecting Israel from criticism so that it can inflict more violence and suffering upon the world.
Looks like some kind of memo went out or something, because pro-Israel outlets and individuals are all loudly amplifying one specific talking point about the Bondi Beach shooting.
“I have a simple question for leftists after the antisemitic shooting in Australia. What do you think ‘globalize the intifada’ means?” ~ US Senator Ted Cruz
“That attack in Sydney is exactly what it means to ‘globalize intifada.’ We saw the actual application of the globalization of intifada in Sydney.” ~ New York City Mayor Eric Adams
“These are the results of the anti-Semitic rampage in the streets of Australia over the past two years, with the anti-Semitic and inciting calls of ‘Globalise the Intifada’ that were realized today.” ~ Gideon Sa’ar, Foreign Minister of Israel
“When you refuse to condemn and only ‘discourage’ use of the term ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ you help facilitate (not cause) the thinking that leads to Bondi Beach.” ~ Former US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt (addressing New York City Mayor Elect Zohran Mamdani)
“What on earth do you think globalise the intifada means? And can’t people see the link between that kind of rhetoric and attacks on Jewish people as Jewish people? Because that’s what really struck at the heart of Jewish people in our country today — an attack on Jewish people organising around Hannukah, coming together as Jewish people.” ~ UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting
“Why is it still allowed? What is the meaning of globalise the intifada? I’ll tell you the meaning… it’s what happened on Bondi Beach yesterday.” ~ Ephraim Mirvis, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom
“Calls to ‘globalise the intifada’ and chants of ‘from the river to the sea’ are not abstract or rhetorical slogans. They are explicit calls for violence, and they carry deadly consequences. What we are witnessing is the inevitable outcome of sustained radicalisation that has been allowed to fester under the guise of protest.” ~ Israeli embassy in the UK
“This is what happens when you ‘globalize the intifada.’” ~ Newsweek editors
“This was not an isolated act of violence — it was the culmination of ‘globalise the intifada’ rhetoric that has been building around the world since October 7.” ~ Yoni Bashan, The Times
“For those who’ve been marching these past few years demanding to ‘globalise the intifada’ this is a barbarous anti-Semitic consequence of their pro-Islamist stupidity.” ~ Former BBC anchor Andrew Neil
“When people call to ‘globalise the intifada’, this is what they are calling for: dead Jews, terrorism and families shattered forever.” ~ Campaign Against Antisemitism spokesperson
“Taking a stand against antisemitism after Bondi Beach should begin with an unequivocal recognition that ‘intifada’ rhetoric is hate speech.” ~ The Bulwark’s Cathy Young
“It would be great if those who have been shouting ‘Global Intifada’ would revisit that phrase right now. It is not a ‘harmless left wing slogan.’ It is a call to blame — and kill — Jews who have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the Israeli government.” ~ Spiritual guru and former US presidential candidate Marianne Williamson
Of course, these outlets and individuals do not actually care about the phrase “globalize the intifada”. If pro-Palestine activists had never chanted that slogan, pro-Israel spinmeisters would be focusing on a different line today. They are not trying to stop chants which they perceive as dangerous, they are trying to stomp out criticism of Israel’s genocidal atrocities.
As The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard wrote regarding the aforementioned Bret Stephens piece, “It’s all done in the name of fighting antisemitism by conflating the worst kinds of violent anti-Jewish bigotry, like what we saw in Bondi Beach, with any criticisms of Israel and its actions. To so much as say Palestinians ought to have basic human rights, in this view, becomes a deadly attack on Jewish safety.”
The term “intifada” means to “shake off” and “rise up”, and as Middle East Eye’s Craig Birckhead-Morton and Yasmin Zainab Bergemann explained last year, intifadas have historically included nonviolent resistance. Saying “globalize the intifada” isn’t calling for people to massacre Jewish civilians around the world, it’s advocating resistance to the power structure which incinerated Gaza and continues to inflict abuse upon Palestinians and any other population which doesn’t bow to the interests of the empire.
And the people scaremongering about this phrase know this. They’re fully aware that they’re using a tragic mass shooting as a political cudgel against people who believe Palestinians are human beings. This is just one more cynical manipulation aimed at protecting Israel from criticism so that it can inflict more violence and suffering upon the world.
As Em Hilton wrote for the Israeli outlet +972, “It is obscene how quickly the right has seized on this horror to advance an Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian agenda. And it is disgusting to see Israel’s politicians almost gleeful at the opportunity to distract from their genocidal onslaught in Gaza by using our pain and grief as a political weapon.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rarely passes an opportunity to comment upon the way Jews in other countries are treated. While the manic hatred directed against Jews remains one of history’s grotesque legacies, opportunism in the Netanyahu government is a ready instinct. With a customary sense of perversion, Netanyahu has managed to mangle Israeli policy, his own political destiny and the interests of Jews in a terrible, terrifying mix. The broad stroke charge of antisemitism is the front name of this venture, and it conveniently presents itself whenever Israeli policy requires an alibi when pursuing particularly unsavoury policies: massacre, starvation and dispossession of Gazans; the continued destruction and intended eradication of a functional Palestinian entity; efforts to prevent criticism of its settler policies in other countries.The slaughter of 15 people enjoying the festivities of Hanukkah on Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach by the father-son duo of Sajid and Naveed Akram, presented a political opportunity. Having already accused Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of being a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews” earlier in the year, Netanyahu readied another verbal lashing. In prickly remarks made at a government meeting in Dimona, the Israeli PM accused his Australian counterpart of being a leader who had “replaced weakness and appeasement with more appeasement.” His “call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.” It had rewarded “Hamas terrorists” and emboldened “those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets.”
Other Israeli politicians also decided that an unmeasured though monstrous antisemitism stalked the island continent, spawning the Bondi killings. “We felt and experienced the intense antisemitism directed against the Jewish community in Australia,” claimed Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli thought it appropriate to send “a delegation of experts in emergency response” to Australia, promising to “stand with the Jewish community in this difficult time and to ensure that we, as the State of Israel, are giving them everything within our ability.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had a list of lecturing points for his Australian counterpart, Penny Wong. There had to be, he stated with a teacherly certitude, “a real change in the public atmosphere.” This required culling phrases and expressions that had been expressed on behalf of the Palestinian cause in public debate and protest. “Call such as ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ ‘From the River to the Sea Palestine Will be Free,’ and ‘Death to the IDF’ are not legitimate, are not part of the freedom of speech, inevitably lead to what we witnessed today.”
In Australia, the acceptance of such positions, and the watering down of the Palestinian cause, was rapidly normalised. A procession line of commentators proceeded to state begrudgingly that Israeli government policy could be criticised only to demonstrate how slim such latitude was. This firm, excruciating delineation was offered by Jeremy Leibler of the Zionist Federation of Australia: “Australians can criticise Israeli government policy, Israelis do it loudly and fiercely themselves. But delegitimising Israel’s right to exist, or slipping into a moral equivalence between a liberal democracy defending its citizens and a terrorist organisation that targets civilians, is something else entirely.”
Leibler’s semantic technique is important here, forcibly linking those who claim Israel has no right to exist to critics of Israel’s policy of self-defence after October 7, 2023 that has left 68,000 Palestinians dead, Gaza pulverised and an enclave on life support. At the instigation of South Africa, it is a policy that is being scrutinised by the International Court of Justice as being potentially genocidal. It is a policy that has been deemed genocidal by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory along with a clutch of notable human rights organisations, including the Israeli outfit B’Tselem. Arrest warrants have also been issued by the International Criminal Court for Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, citing alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Establishment voices from a long moribund press class are also of the view that not enough has been done by the Albanese government to combat a supposedly mad blight of antisemitism, seemingly unique from the other jostling hatreds. (Islamophobia, anyone?) The massacre, according to the unevidenced observation of veteran journalist Michelle Grattan, was “the horrific culmination of the antisemitism epidemic that has spread like wildfire in Australia.”
She noted, with grave disapproval, the failure to “formally” respond to the combative strategy proposed by the antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal, one that openly accepts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s stifling definition of antisemitism. Any official embrace of that definition – a point made by that definition’s originator, Kenneth Stern – would be a fashioned spear against free speech, censoring genuine criticism of Israeli policies. The Jerusalem Declaration, by way of contrast, notes that hostility to the Israeli state “could be an expression of an antisemitic animus, or it could be a reaction to a human rights violation, or it could be the emotion that a Palestinian feels on account of their experience at the hands of the state.”
Like most journalists wedded to the holy writ press brief and arid political interview, Grattan shows no sign of having been to a single protest condemning the murderous death toll in Gaza, or any gathering advancing the validity of Palestinian self-determination. Woolly-headed, she freely speculates. “Most of us did not recognise this fact, but this anti-Jewish sentiment must have been embedded in sections of the Australian community – the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 was the spark that lit the conflagration.” Her travesty of an effort to understand the attacks in Bondi becomes evident in cod assessments of various protest marches and demonstrations across Australian university campuses. Without even a suggestion of evidence, she claims that “university encampments” proved “intimidating for Jewish students and staff.” Those Jewish students and staff more than willing to engage in those encampments mysteriously warrant no mention. Efforts on the part of cloddish university managers to harass, suspend and censor students expressing pro-Palestinian causes don’t seem to interest Grattan either.
With laziness, she snacks on the propagandistic samples provided by Israel’s publicity relations buffet, referring to unspecified “others” who believed that the Albanese government’s recognition of a Palestinian state stoked local antisemitism. Foreign Minister Wong’s failure to “visit the sites of the 2023 atrocities when she went to Israel early last year was much criticised in the Jewish community.”
Thus far, Israeli propagandists have shamelessly badgered their opponents down under into accepting a streaky narrative that would fail to survive judicial, let alone historical scrutiny.The agenda is clear enough: the inoculation of Israel against international opprobrium. Much will now depend on Albanese’s fortitude, if he, and his ministers, can find it.
My roommate in rabbinical school Rabbi Yaakov Levitan signed his last Facebook message to me with the words “peace and love brother”. He lived that way as a Jewish community leader in Sydney. Terrorists on Bondi Beach murdered him as he was spreading light at a Chanukah gathering. In the chaos, Australian civilian Ahmed Al Ahmed ran toward one of the gunmen, tackled him and wrestled away his weapon, saving lives. He took two bullets and is in critical but stable condition. He is a hero.
But the media’s fixation on his Syrian and Muslim identity reveals an implicit bias that this kind of heroism — especially the kind that saves Jewish lives — is not to be expected from a Muslim.
Major outlets led with Ahmed’s religion before describing his courage. Headlines repeatedly framed him as a “Muslim man” who stopped a shooter, as if his faith explained the story rather than his actions. Some reports highlighted his Syrian background in the opening lines, treating that identity as the headline and his bravery as a footnote.
Such framing matters. The Islamophobia implicit here does not lie in the praise. It lies in the assumption. The coverage assumes that a Muslim risking his life to save Jews defies expectation. It treats decency as anomalous when it comes from a Muslim man. When goodness from Muslims becomes newsworthy because of who they are, not what they do, the media confesses how low its baseline expectations have fallen.
The reaction went further. Commentators and viral posts tried to erase Ahmed’s identity altogether. Some insisted he could not be Muslim. Others claimed he must be Christian. Several outlets reported on this reaction, amplifying the idea that Muslim heroism required explanation or denial. Still others highlighted online attacks branding Ahmed a “traitor” for saving Jews, again focussing on his faith as a problem rather than his courage as the point.
These narratives do real damage. They reinforce the idea that Muslim morality and Jewish safety stand in tension. They are wrong.
Recent history proves it. On 7 October 2023, Hamas carried out the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Amid the carnage, Arab and Bedouin Muslims risked their lives to save Jewish civilians under fire. Four Bedouin men from Rahat pulled 30 to 40 Jews out of danger near Kibbutz Be’eri while bullets flew. They asked no questions. They acted.
Surveys after the attack showed that large majorities of Arab Israelis, Muslim and Druze rejected the attacks and backed rescue and volunteer efforts. Much of the media coverage barely mentioned those findings because they disrupted the simple story line.
At the same time, honesty requires clarity. Antisemitism has surged worldwide, and Muslim leadership too often fails to condemn it clearly, publicly and consistently. Silence creates moral fog. When Jews hear hesitation instead of unequivocal rejection of Jew-hatred, trust is eroded and extremists gain ground. This is not a uniquely Muslim failure. Antisemitism infects many ideologies, religions, and political movements. Everyone must do more.
Ahmed did not issue a statement. He did not hedge. He acted. He showed what moral clarity looks like in real time. He affirmed, without words, that Jewish lives matter. He should not be the exception. He should be the rule.
Ahmed’s bravery does not erase antisemitism. It does not remove armed guards from synagogues. It does not bring my friend Yaakov back. But it does set a standard. If we want a world where such courage becomes ordinary, every community must raise its expectations. Muslim leaders must condemn antisemitism without caveat. Jewish communities must resist judging entire populations by their worst voices. And the media must stop treating Muslim decency as an anomaly and start treating it as normal.
Ahmed Al Ahmed did what any decent human being should hope to do. The tragedy is that his courage felt unexpected. It should not have. May Ahmed’s courage stand as the rule, not the exception.
Eli Federman has written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Reuters and other media outlets on society, religion and media bias.
When journalists internalise the state, the state no longer needs to silence them.
Australia has discovered the most polite form of censorship ever devised. No jackboots, no warrants, no midnight raids; just a quiet conversation, a “national security” reminder, and journalists voluntarily silencing themselves. Why pass laws when you can persuade the press to behave as though they already exist?
This is not satire. It is policy. And its blueprint comes straight from Whitehall.
The Quiet Request
Three weeks after Labor took office in June 2022, officials in Attorney‑General Mark Dreyfus‘s department reached across hemispheres to Britain’s Ministry of Defence. Their purpose was not military cooperation, intelligence sharing, or treaty work. It was media control; specifically, how to make censorship unnecessary by convincing journalists to do it to themselves.
Freedom of Information documents show this was not curiosity. It was a virtual IKEA flat‑pack – imported, piece by bureaucratic piece, from the mother country to its former colony. The assembly instructions came straight from London. A spare Allen key always comes in handy.
2021–2022: Bureaucrats refined plans for a “similar role” in Australia.
May 2022: Secret roundtables with major editors were held. No minutes. No attendee lists. No sunlight.
June 2022: Dreyfus’s department formally requested London’s assistance.
The continuity is chilling. Liberal ministers started the project. Labor ministers continued it. Bureaucratic inertia was the constant.
This isn’t a partisan conspiracy. It’s worse: a bipartisan agreement that journalists must learn to censor themselves politely.
How Britain Silences Without Silencing
DSMA is a masterpiece of bureaucratic subtlety. It issues “advisories,” not bans. Journalists “consult” before publishing, rather than submit for approval. A discreet military officer suggests what to omit “for national security,” while the state never dirties its hands with formal censorship laws.
The committee’s proceedings are confidential. Its members are hidden. Its advice is non‑binding. Yet it boasts a 90% success rate persuading journalists not to publish.
Dissent hasn’t been criminalised; it has been professionalised. To ignore DSMA advice invites prosecution under the Official Secrets Act – or, more immediately, career suicide. The threat is legal, but the engine is cultural.
This is what Canberra admires: not censorship, but managed consent. The state doesn’t punish critics. The critics simply internalise the state. Intuit the boss’ wishes, a bit like a Murdoch editor.
And now? His department has chased a censorship model whose brilliance lies in never admitting it exists.
This isn’t hypocrisy. It’s absorption. Dreyfus didn’t renounce principle; he was subsumed by machinery. You don’t have to betray your beliefs if the institution performs the betrayal for you.
He thought he was protecting national security. What he safeguarded was secrecy itself.
The Machinery
This project did not dissolve when ministers changed. It doesn’t depend on elections. The relationships with UK Defence persist. Editors who attended closed‑door sessions still hold their seats. Bureaucrats continue to discuss frameworks for “voluntary advisory mechanisms.”
And the scaffolding grows stronger through parallel controls:
Harsher secrecy offences that criminalise public‑interest reporting.
Discussion papers on journalist registration systems.
Individually, each seems modest. Together, they form something like a velvet‑lined cage.
The Respectable Mask
Systems like DSMA need legitimacy. Enter Peter Greste: a journalist jailed in Egypt, a symbol of press freedom, a moral compass. Conference transcripts show him engaging with advocates of reviving the Australian D‑Notice system, DSMA’s predecessor.
The argument attributed to him is seductive: pre‑publication consultation protects journalists from prosecution. Ask permission; avoid jail.
And in the process, a core civic principle collapses quietly under manners and moral suasion.
The Question
Australia must stop asking whether a DSMA system will be adopted. It already has been – culturally.
The question is whether Australians still believe freedom of political communication is a public right or whether it has become a regulated professional privilege.
Is a journalist free if they must first seek permission to tell the truth?
That’s the moment democracy becomes polite enough to disappear; and the risk now confronting every newsroom in the country.
* * * * *
CLARKE & DAWE: HOW TO SILENCE A COUNTRY WITHOUT LAWS
SETTING: Parliament House lawn.
BRYAN DAWE holding freshly printed FOI documents.
JOHN CLARKE appears as a senior official from the “Department of National Information Harmony,” calm, courteous, and utterly terrifying.
BRYAN DAWE: John, your department has been in discussions with the UK about its Defence and Security Media Advisory system.
JOHN CLARKE: Yes, Bryan. Very sensible. A voluntary censorship system.
BRYAN DAWE: Voluntary censorship?
JOHN CLARKE: Correct, Bryan. It’s censorship that journalists choose.
BRYAN DAWE: Why would journalists choose to censor themselves?
JOHN CLARKE: National security, Bryan. Also career security. Also avoiding prosecution. And staying in the good books.
BRYAN DAWE: So the government isn’t forcing them?
JOHN CLARKE: No, Bryan. That would look terrible. We simply provide advice about what not to publish.
BRYAN DAWE: And the journalists follow it?
JOHN CLARKE: Over 90% of the time, Bryan. Very cooperative species.
BRYAN DAWE: Doesn’t this undermine press freedom?
JOHN CLARKE: Not at all, Bryan. The press is free to comply.
BRYAN DAWE: FOI documents show your department approached the UK three weeks after Labor was elected.
JOHN CLARKE: Correct. But the previous government started it. It’s bipartisan secrecy, Bryan. The safest kind.
BRYAN DAWE: So both sides agree on this system?
JOHN CLARKE: Absolutely. It avoids embarrassment across the aisle. Truly unifying.
BRYAN DAWE: What is the advantage of a voluntary censorship system?
JOHN CLARKE: You never need to admit you’re censoring anything. The media does it for you. It’s very efficient.
BRYAN DAWE: And what if journalists refuse?
JOHN CLARKE: They are still free to refuse, Bryan. Then they can be prosecuted. Freely.
BRYAN DAWE: John, isn’t democracy supposed to rely on an independent press?
JOHN CLARKE: Yes, Bryan. Which is why the press must work closely with the government.
BRYAN DAWE: That sounds like dependency, not independence.
JOHN CLARKE: Independence is most reliable when it is professionally supervised, Bryan.
BRYAN DAWE: So transparency is preserved?
JOHN CLARKE: Entirely, Bryan. We always encourage transparency; provided it has been cleared with us first.
BRYAN DAWE: John, is this censorship?
JOHN CLARKE: No, Bryan. It’s voluntary. Only the consequences are compulsory.
Recent programs have confirmed ABC News is increasingly under the control of pro-Coalition activists, as Alan Austin reports.
IN A SHAMEFUL display of partisan politicking for Australia’s discredited Coalition parties, ABC News devoted almost the entire Insiders program on 9 November to the Liberals and the Nationals.
This had no relevance whatsoever for viewers. Over the next ten years, the Federal Coalition will have less impact on citizens’ lives than the Australian Jugger League, the Yowie Research group and Ferret Owners Australia Inc.
Irrelevance of the Federal Liberal Party
After the May Election, the Coalition held 43 seats in the 150-member Lower House. Should the next election see a 3.9% swing back to the Coalition – same as the recent swing against them – they would gain only 14 seats and end up with 57 MPs, still a dismal minority.
So Labor will get a third term in 2028, or earlier, with a majority strong enough to propel it into a fourth in 2031 and probably a fifth in 2034
This is not fanciful. With polls showing Labor leading the Coalition 56% to 44% in its fourth year in office, it is virtually certain Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will serve as Prime Minister longer than Bob Hawke’s nine years, and likely exceed John Howard’s 11 years and nine months.
While it is improbable Albo will beat Bob Menzies’ 16 years in the top job, it is conceivable Labor could break the Coalition’s record 23-year reign. Records are made to be broken.
Insiders copies the Sky News obsession with the Coalition
A bizarre Insiders program on Sunday 9 November devoted all but nine of its 59 minutes to the Coalition parties and their brawling over climate, abortion and leadership.
“Andrew Hastie sees himself as a future leader. He has many good attributes, to be honest. He has lots of strengths.”
Karvelas also boosted Roshena Campbell:
“…who was on my show on Friday and contributed really interestingly, I think, to this debate and still has an appetite to go into politics at the federal level.”
The program allotted three minutes to Labor’s housing policy, with a 13-second clip from Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and three minutes on the economy. Mentions were made of a transferring ABC colleague and Graeme Richardson’s death.
Contributions from Labor MPs were seven seconds from Albo in Parliament, four seconds from Energy Minister Chris Bowen, ten seconds from Treasurer Jim Chalmers and two short comments from Clare O’Neil.
No time was allocated to anyone who, besides Labor, will actually influence parliamentary decisions in the foreseeable future — the Greens, who hold 11 Senate seats, One Nation with four senators and the six individual minor party or Independent senators.
This Insiders episode is not an isolated aberration. Other programs obsessing over the loser Liberals include 7.30, Radio National Breakfast, ABC AM and others.
Embracing the malice of Murdoch’s malevolent network
Kim Williams’ appointment as ABC Chair in March 2024 – after many years serving Rupert Murdoch – has disappointed those who hoped he would arrest the shift towards the Murdoch model of falsifying information and boosting right-wing political causes.
The 9 November Insiders actually played a clip direct from Sky News – with a free plug – of Shadow Energy Minister Dan Tehan extolling the gas extraction industry, one of the Liberal Party’s big donors.
There is no excuse for this. There is abundant evidence from court cases, Press Council adjudications, parliamentary inquiries, academic research, admissions from former employees and defamation settlements that distorting the news and fabricating “stories” is News Corp’s core business model.
Other ABC departments complicit
An email sent to the ABC’s mailing list last Tuesday from a unit called ‘ABC Yours’ asked for donations based on false claims.
It read:
‘Across Australia, the demand for food relief is surging, with 77% of charities reporting more people are seeking support than ever before.’
Yes, some citizens still need free food, particularly those with chronic drug dependency, severe mental health issues or who have decided to disassociate from government services. The numbers, however, are now at the lowest as a percentage of the population than ever, as shown by the Productivity Commission, the Bureau of Statistics and other agencies.
Do the food banks report strong demand? Of course. Everyone loves free meals, regardless of wealth or income.
IA asked the ABC’s media department which charities were surveyed and on what analysis the poverty claims were made, but received no substantial response.
Unfortunately, falsifying hardship in Australia to discredit Labor is a persistent ABC failing, as exposed here, here and here.
Let’s hope the national broadcaster shifts its focus henceforward to more relevant issues than the Coalition — like ferrets, yowies and the nation’s magnificent pompfen champions.
The National Press Club of Australia lists 81 corporate sponsors on its website.
Twenty-one of them (listed below) are either part of the global arms industry or actively working on its behalf.
Ten are multinational weapons manufacturers or military services corporations. They include the world’s two biggest weapons makers, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon (RTX); British giant BAE Systems; France’s largest weapons-maker, Thales; and US weapons corporation Leidos – all five are in the global top 20. BAE Systems, which is the largest contractor to the Department of Defence, received $2 billion from Australian taxpayers last year.
In 2023, these five corporations alone were responsible for almost a quarter – 23.8 per cent (US$150.4 billion (A$231.5 billion)) – of total weapons sales (US$632 billion (A$973 billion)) made by the world’s top 100 weapons companies that year.
Last year, UN experts named Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, RTX (Raytheon) and eight other multinationals in a statement, warning them that they risked being found in violation of international law for their continued supply of weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces. The experts called on the corporations to immediately end weapons transfers to Israel. None has done so.
Another of the Club’s sponsors – Thales – is being investigated by four countries for widespread criminal activity in three separate corruption probes. In a fourth, long-running corruption case in South Africa, the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, is now in court, alongside Thales, being tried on 16 charges of racketeering, fraud, corruption and money laundering in connection with arms deals his government did with Thales.
Global expert Andrew Feinstein has documented his extensive research into the arms industry. He told Undue Influence that wherever the arms trade operates, it “increases corruption and undermines democracy, good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, while, ironically, making us less safe”.
Undue Influence asked the Press Club’s CEO, Maurice Reilly, what written policies or guidelines were in place that addressed the suitability and selection of corporations proposing to become Press Club sponsors.
Mr Reilly responded: “The board are informed monthly about…proposals and have the right to refuse any application.”
Wherever the arms trade operates it “increases corruption and undermines democracy, good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, while, ironically, making us less safe”. – Andrew Feinstein, author of Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade
National Press Club board
The National Press Club, established by journalists in 1963, is an iconic Australian institution. It is best known for its weekly luncheon addresses, televised on the ABC, covering issues of national importance, after which the speaker is questioned by journalists.
The Club’s board has 10 directors led by Tom Connell, political host and reporter at Sky News, who was elected president in February following the resignation of the ABC’s Laura Tingle.
The other board members are: vice president Misha Schubert (CEO, Super Members Council of Australia; formerly with The Age and The Australian); treasurer Greg Jennett (ABC); Steve Lewis (senior adviser, SEC Newgate; formerly with NewsCorp and the Financial Review); Jane Norman (ABC); Anna Henderson (SBS); Julie Hare (Financial Review); Andrew Probyn (Nine Network); Gemma Daley (Media & Government Affairs, Ai Group); and Corrie McLeod, the sole representative from an independent media outlet – InnovationAus.
At least two board members have jobs that involve lobbying.
Long-term board member Steve Lewis works as a senior adviser for lobbying firm SEC Newgate, which itself is a Press Club sponsor and also has as clients the Press Club’s two largest sponsors: Westpac and Telstra. SEC Newgate has previously acted for several Press Club sponsors, including Serco (one of the arms industry multinationals listed below), BHP, Macquarie Bank, Tattarang, and Spirits & Cocktails Australia Inc.
Gemma Daley joined the board a year ago, having started with Ai Group as its head of media and government affairs four months earlier. Ms Daley had worked for Nationals’ leader David Littleproud, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and former treasurer Joe Hockey and, before that, for media outlets the Financial Review and Bloomberg. Ai Group has a significant defence focus and promotes itself as “the peak national representative body for the Australian defence industry”. The group has established a Defence Council and in 2017 appointed a former assistant secretary of the Defence Department, Kate Louis, to lead it. The co-chairs of its Defence Council are senior arms industry executives. One of them, Paul Chase, is CEO of Leidos Australia, a Press Club sponsor.
Undue Influence asked Ms Daley for comment on several aspects related to her position on the board, including whether she has had to declare any conflicts of interest to date. She responded: “Thanks for the inquiry. I have forwarded this through to Maurice Reilly. Have a good day.”
Given the potential for conflicts of interest to arise, as happens on any board, Undue Influence had already asked the Press Club CEO what written policies or guidelines existed to ensure the appropriate management of conflicts of interest by board members and staff.
Mr Reilly responded:
The Club has a directors’ conflict register which is updated when required. Each meeting, board members and management are asked if they have conflicts of interest with the meeting agenda. We have a standard corporate practice that where a director has a conflict on an agenda item they excuse themselves from the meeting and take no [part] in any discussion or any decision.
Undue Influence is neither alleging nor implying inappropriate or illegal behaviour by anyone named in this article. Our objective, as always, is to shine a light on, and scrutinise, the weapons industry’s opaque engagement in public life in Australia.
While Mr Reilly declined to disclose the Club’s sponsorship arrangements with Westpac and Telstra, citing “commercial in confidence” reasons, The Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier this year that Westpac paid $3 million in 2015 to replace NAB as the Press Club’s principal sponsor.
The SMH article, “Westpac centre stage at post-budget bash”, on Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ National Press Club address in the Great Hall of Parliament House in late March, added:
[Westpac] … gets more than its money’s worth in terms of access. New-ish chief executive Anthony Miller got the most coveted seat in the house, between Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese… Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles were also on the front tables.
Westpac occupied prime real estate in the Great Hall, with guests on its tables including Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet boss Glyn Davis, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and Labor national secretary and campaign mastermind Paul Erickson…
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was on the Telstra table.
Mr Reilly told Undue Influence that all the other corporate sponsors pay $25,000 per year, with a few paying extra as partners in the Club’s journalism awards.
The 21 arms industry and related sponsors therefore contribute an annual $525,000 to the Press Club’s coffers. This is 23% of the $2.26 million revenue it earns from “membership, sponsorship and broadcasting”, the Club’s largest revenue line, as shown in its 2024 financial statement.
“The National Press Club of Australia proudly partners with organisations that share our commitment to quality, independent journalism,” says the Club’s website.
“Aligning your brand with the National Press Club is an opportunity for unparalleled engagement in the Australian political debate and announces that your organisation is part of the business culture in Canberra.”
In response to Undue Influence’s questions about the Club’s cancellation of a planned address by the internationally acclaimed journalist Chris Hedges (covered below), Mr Reilly stated that: “For the avoidance of doubt [sponsors] do not receive any rights to speak at the club [nor are they] able to influence decisions on speakers.”
Sponsors may not be granted a right to speak, but they are sometimes invited to speak, with their status as sponsors not always disclosed to audiences.
When the Club’s second largest sponsor, Telstra, spoke on 10 September, both Club president Tom Connell and Telstra CEO Vicki Brady noted the corporation’s longstanding sponsorship.
Sponsors may not be granted a right to speak, but they are sometimes invited to speak, with their status as sponsors not always disclosed to audiences.
When the Club’s second largest sponsor, Telstra, spoke on 10 September, both Club president Tom Connell and Telstra CEO Vicki Brady noted the corporation’s longstanding sponsorship.
Compare this with two addresses given by $25,000 corporate sponsors – Kurt Campbell (former US deputy secretary of state, now co-founder and chair of The Asia Group) who gave an address on 7 September; and Mike Johnson, CEO of Australian Industry and Defence Network (AIDN), who gave an address on 15 October. Neither the Press Club nor the speakers disclosed the companies’ sponsorship of the Press Club.
While both speakers are considered experts in their field, the sponsorships should have been disclosed as a matter of public accountability.
“Priority seating and brand positioning”
On its website, the Club also promotes additional benefits of corporate sponsorship, including, “Brand association with inclusion on our prestigious ‘Corporate Partners’ board and recognition on the National Press Club of Australia website”.
The Club also promises corporate sponsors that they will receive “priority seating and brand positioning” at its weekly luncheon addresses, as the following examples show. (As principal sponsor, the logo of Westpac appears on every table and on the podium.)
The local subsidiary of British giant BAE Systems has benefited handsomely from its modest $25,000 annual sponsorship. It had the best table – behind the microphone from which journalists asked questions – at then defence minister Peter Dutton’s address in November 2021. The BAE logo appeared on the national public broadcaster – which has strict rules against advertising – eight times during the half-hour question period following Mr Dutton’s address, giving BAE Systems extended ‘brand positioning’ with its target market: senior politicians, defence public servants and military officers.
On 28 November 2023, Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy spoke about AUKUS. The logos of Press Club sponsors DXC Technology and Deloitte were also well-situated for the camera during question time. Both companies are significant contractors to the Defence Department. Deloitte also works for the weapons industry, including BAE Systems.
Cancelling Chris Hedges
The Press Club recently drew significant attention to itself after it cancelled a planned address by the Pulitzer-prize-winning American journalist, and former long-term war correspondent, Chris Hedges. Mr Hedges reported for The New York Times for 15 years, from 1990-2005, including long stints as its bureau chief in the Middle East and in the Balkans. He was to have appeared at the Press Club on 20 October.
However, in late September, Press Club CEO Maurice Reilly cancelled Mr Hedges’ appearance. This occurred two weeks after the Club was sent details of what Mr Hedges proposed to cover, including a link to an article he had entitled The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists. In that article, Mr Hedges wrote:
Israel has murdered 245 journalists in Gaza by one count and more than 273 by another… No war I covered comes close to these numbers of dead. Since Oct 7 [2023], Israel has killed more journalists “than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined”.
Mr Hedges also intended to cover what he has described as the “barrage of Israeli lies amplified and given credibility by the Western press”, examples of which he provides in the above article.
Following a scathing post from Mr Hedges about the Press Club’s cancellation of his address, and significant public disquiet, the Press Club issued a statement denying it had come under external pressure to cancel his address. Inexplicably, the Press Club also denied it had confirmed the Hedges address. This claim was easily checked and soon reported to be false. Undue Influence has seen the emails showing that the Press Club had confirmed the address.
National Press Club funded by companies profiting from genocide
In July, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, issued a report explaining how the corporate sector had become complicit with the State of Israel in conducting the genocide.
Her report also noted that arms-making multinationals depend on legal, auditing and consulting firms to facilitate export and import transactions to supply Israel with weapons.
Numerous members of the public posted their concerns on the Press Club’s Facebook page. Here are three examples: [on original]
Four of the world’s largest accounting, audit and consulting firms – all of which have arms industry corporations as clients – are sponsors of the Press Club: KPMG, Accenture, Deloitte and EY. Until recently, PwC counted among them.
EY (Ernst & Young) has been Lockheed Martin’s auditor since 1994. EY is also one of two auditors used by Thales, and has been for 22 years. Deloitte has been BAE Systems’ auditor since 2018. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) – a Press Club sponsor until 2024 – has been Raytheon’s auditor since 1947.
Lockheed Martin’s supply to Israel of F-16 and F-35 fighter jets and C-130 Hercules transport planes, and their parts and components, along with Hellfire missiles and other munitions, has directly facilitated Israel’s genocide.
Raytheon’s (RTX) supply of guided missiles, bombs, and other advanced weaponry and defence systems, like the Iron Dome interceptors, also directly supports Israel military capability.
In England, BAE Systems builds the rear fuselage of every F-35, with the horizontal and vertical tails and other crucial components manufactured in its UK and Australian facilities. It also supplies the Israeli military with munitions, missile launching kits and armoured vehicles, while BAE technologies are integrated into Israel’s drones and warships.
Thales supplies Israel’s military with vital components, including drone transponders. Australian Zomi Frankcom and her World Central Kitchen colleagues were murdered by an Israeli Hermes drone, which contain Thales’ transponders. Yet, echoing Australia, France claims its military exports to Israel are non-lethal.
National Press Club sponsors from military-industrial complex
# Rankings compiled by SIPRI at December 2023 (published December 2024)
^ NOTE ON US COMPANIES: The Defence Department procures weapons/military goods directly from Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon) and other US corporations via the US Government’s Foreign Military Sales program. The value of FMS contracts is not included in the table.
Note on the use of the word ‘genocide’
Three independent experts appointed by the UN’s Human Rights Commission – the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel – issued a report in September that concluded Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. One of the Commissioners – Chris Sidoti – speaking at the Press Club recently, said the Commission’s report will remain the most authoritative statement on this issue until the world’s highest authority, the International Court of Justice, makes its ruling.
In an attempt to seize a share of a market currently dominated by China, Albanese has willingly placed Australia’s rare earths and critical minerals at the disposal of US strategic interests. The framework document focusing on mining and processing of such minerals is drafted with the hollow language of counterfeit equality.
the next annexation of Australian control over its own affairs by the US
The October 20 performance saw few transgressions and many feats of compliance. As a guest in the White House, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in no mood to be combative, and US President Donald Trump was accommodating. There was, however, an odd nervous glanceshot at the host at various points.
The latest turn of events from the perspective of those believing in Australian sovereignty, pitifully withered as it is, remains dark. In an attempt to seize a share of a market currently dominated by China, Albanese has willingly placed Australia’s rare earths and critical minerals at the disposal of US strategic interests. The framework document focusing on mining and processing of such minerals is drafted with the hollow language of counterfeit equality. The objective “is to assist both countries in achieving resilience and security of minerals and rare earths supply chains, including mining, separation and processing.” The necessity of securing such supply is explicitly noted for reasons of war or, as the document notes, “necessary to support manufacturing of defense and advanced technologies” for both countries.
The US and Australia will draw on the money bags of the private sector to supplement government initiatives (guarantees, loans, equity and so forth), an incentive that will cause much salivating joy in the mining industry. Within 6 months “measures to provide at least $1 billion in financing to projects located in each of the United States and Australia expected to generate end product for delivery to buyers in the United States and Australia.”
The inequality of the agreement does not bother such analysts as Bryce Wakefield, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He mysteriously thinks that Albanese did not “succumb to the routine sycophancy we’ve come to expect from other leaders”, something of a “win”. With the skill of a cabalist, he identified the benefits in the critical minerals framework which he thinks will be “the backbone for joint investment in at least six Australian projects.” The agreement would “counter China’s dominance over rare earths and supply chains.”
Much of what was agreed between Trump and Albanese was barely covered by the sleepwalking press corps, despite the details of a White House factsheet. There were more extorting deals extracted from Canberra, with agreements to purchase US$1.2 billion in Anduril unmanned underwater vehicles and US$2.6 billion worth of Apache helicopters. Of particular significance was the agreement to push Australia’s superannuation funds to increase investments in the US to US$1.44 trillion by 2035, which would increase the pool by US$1 trillion. “This unprecedented investment will create tens of thousands of new, high paying jobs for America.
Back in Australia, attention was focused on other things. The mock affair known as the opposition party tried to make something of the personal ribbing given by Trump to Australia’s ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd. Small minds are distracted by small matters, and instead of taking issue with the appalling cost of AUKUS with its chimerical submarines, or the voluntary relinquishment of various sectors of the Australian economy to US control, Sussan Ley of the Liberal Party was adamant that Rudd be sacked. This was occasioned by an encounter where Trump had turned to the Australian PM to ask if “an ambassador” had said anything “bad about me”. Trump’s follow up remarks: “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” The finger was duly pointed at Rudd by Albanese. “You said bad?” inquired Trump. Rudd, never one to manage the brief response, spoke of being critical of the president in his pre-ambassadorial phase but that was all in the past. “I don’t like you either,” shot Trump in reply. “And I probably never will.”
This was enough to exercise Ley, who claimed to be “surprised that the president didn’t know who the Australian ambassador was.” This showed her thin sheet grasp of White House realities. Freedom Land’s previous presidents have struggled with names, geography and memory, the list starting with such luminaries as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Not knowing the name of an ambassador from an imperial outpost is hardly a shock.
The Australian papers and broadcasters, however, drooled and saw seismic history in the presence of casual utterance. Sky News host Sharri Markson was reliably idiotic: “The big news of course is President Trump’s meeting with Albanese today and the major news story to come out of it is Trump putting Rudd firmly in his place.” Often sensible in her assessments, the political columnist Annabel Crabb showed she had lost her mind, imbibing the Trump jungle juice and relaying it to her unfortunate readers. “From his humble early days as a child reading Hansard in the regional Sunshine State pocket of Eumundi, Kevin Rudd has been preparing for this martyrdom.”
Having been politically martyred by the Labor Party at the hands of his own deputy Julia Gillard in June 2010, who challenged him for being a mentally unstable, micromanaging misfit driving down poll ratings, this was amateurish. But a wretchedly bad story should not be meddled with. At the very least, Crabb blandly offered a smidgen of humour, suggesting that Albanese, having gone into the meeting “with the perennially open chequebook for American submarines, plus an option over our continent’s considerable rare-earths reserves” was bound to come with some human sacrifice hovering “in the ether.”
In this grand abdication of responsibility by the press and bought think tankers, little in terms of detail was discussed about the next annexation of Australian control over its own affairs by the US. It was all babble about the views of Trump and whether, in the words of Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Rudd “did an extremely good job, not only in getting the meeting, but doing the work on the critical minerals deal and AUKUS.” For the experts moored in antipodean isolation, Rudd had either been bad by being disliked for past remarks on the US chief magistrate, or good in being a representative of servile facilitation. To give him his due, Wakefield was correct to note how commentators in Australia “continue to personalise the alliance” equating it to “an episode of The Apprentice.”
The decision to cancel Chris Hedges’ address on Gaza has raised fresh questions about the Press Club’s commitment to free speech, writes Dr Rosemary Sorensen.
FROM AN OFFICE in the heart of Canberra – where the only danger to journalists is that they have to watch their feet lest they fall over a politician passed out on the footpath – the chief executive of the National Press Club cancelled an event called ‘The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists’, as Dr Lee Duffield wrote in IA last week.
American journalist Chris Hedges, who was expecting to deliver this speech as part of a speaking tour this month, wrote in response to the shock cancellation that NPC’s Maurice Reilly had ‘perhaps inadvertently’ underlined his point. On his Substack, ‘The Chris Hedges Report’, he quoted Reilly’s explanation, “that in the interest of balancing out our program, we will withdraw our offer”.
Hedges’ response to the claim that the cancellation was ‘in the interest of’ balance is devastating:
‘It is true that I know only one side of the picture from the seven years I spent covering Gaza. I was on the receiving end of Israeli attacks, including being bombed by its air force and fired upon by its snipers, one of whom killed a young man a few feet away from me at the Netzarim Junction. We lifted him up, each person taking hold of an arm or a leg and lumbered up the road as his body swayed like a heavy sack.’
Speaking about the more than 278 journalists killed in Gaza by Israel as well as on behalf of all those who have ‘reported a reality in Gaza that bears no resemblance to how it is portrayed by Israeli politicians, its military and many media outlets that serve as Israel’s echo chamber’, Hedges calls out Reilly’s use of the term “balance” as ‘an abandonment of the fundamental mission of journalists — to hold power accountable’.
His suggestion that ‘the corporate sponsors and wealthy donors of the Press Club’ will be pleased that the cancellation averts ‘the attacks that would come from allowing me to speak’, stirred the National Press Club’s CEO not only to refute the idea that there had been pressure ‘outside of the board, either directly or indirectly’ but also to call out Chris Hedges’ claim as ‘false’ that the ‘proposed address’ was published on the NPC website.
That refutation notwithstanding and even if, as Reilly claims, the date for Hedges’ ‘The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists’ address was only ‘tentatively agreed’, such a backflip at such a time from an organisation that puts out its media statements under the rubric “Freedom of the Press” is ugly.
Antoinette Lattouf, talking with Jan Fran on their We Used To Be Journos podcast through Ette Media, said that while outside pressure to cancel what is considered pro-Palestinian commentary has been called out over and over during the past two years, if this was an internal decision, it was “somehow worse”:
“I would argue pre-empting criticism and attacks from said lobby groups [is] self-censoring.”
Mary Kostakidis, who saw the page announcing the Hedges event on the NPC website before it was removed, wrote to Reilly to ask if, as Hedges had written, the event was reportedly to be replaced by an address by Israeli Ambassador retired Lt. Colonel Amir Maimon. The statement in response said that ‘inference… is also false and without basis’.
Like many an organisation before them, from libraries to orchestras, writers’ festivals to hospitals, what appears to be a hasty decision by the National Press Club is, at the very least, disrespectful to the proposed speaker.
The devil is, once again, in the detail: Reilly stated the club ‘is constantly reviewing its address schedule, and when more details of the address were made available we decided to pursue other speakers on the matter’.
Does Reilly mean the matter of the betrayal of Palestinian journalists? And while the statement on their website mentions Global Spokesperson UNICEF James Elder, who will speak at the NPC on ‘Children under siege’, and Judge Navi Pillay, who will speak about ‘Women, Peace and Justice’, which other speakers are they pursuing to talk about the murdered journalists?
To say the ‘proposed address was never published on our website’, to say that Hedges’ claim it was removed is false, is casuistry. According to Kostakidis, it appeared on the website, briefly, without a booking link, which suggests publication was prepared and imminent.
Late last month the National Media Section of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance put out a statement about the ‘rise in threats, harassment and intimidation of journalists who report and comment on Gaza’, citing Antoinette Lattouf, Peter Lalor and Mary Kostakidis as examples of those who have been the target of ‘powerful lobby groups’.
The statement read:
‘We stand with our colleagues in their workplaces, in the courtrooms and in their deaths to raise our voices against the silence.’
To fob off Chris Hedges, who has seen Israeli troops shoot Palestinian children, who was in Gaza when attack jets bombed Gaza City, who has ‘stood in the gutted remains of schools as well as medical clinics and mosques and counted the bodies’, with such a statement as the one published by Maurice Reilly on the National Press Club of Australia website is unfathomable.
‘We wish Chris Hedges well on his tour of Australia’ is the final sentence of that statement.
The final sentence of Hedges’ piece is:
‘Please, have the decency to remove the word press from your club.’
Today, at the Chatham House Restaurant in the National Press Club of Australia, members may choose to dine on barramundi, duck breast or lamb shank.
In Gaza, the hungry ghosts are served dust.
For those journalists and others who find the removal of an address by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Chris Hedges from the National Press Club program distressingly disappointing, you can hear him speak in person or livestreamed at the Allan Scott Auditorium, UniSA, Adelaide, 5:30 PM – 7 PM, Saturday 18 October, delivering the Edward Said Memorial Lecture. Tickets are available via the Australian Friends of Palestine Association website.
On Tuesday 21 October, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM, at Pitt St Uniting Church in Sydney, Chris Hedges will be joined by Randa Abdel-Fattah and Antoinette Lattouf for a public meeting titled ‘All eyes on Gaza’, tickets via Humanitix.
Independent media has profoundly reshaped modern communication, much to the chagrin of traditional print media. The MSM often dismisses us as falling below their standards, but I disagree. Today’s news stories are frequently little more than opinion pieces, unchallenged and unaccountable. Citizen journalists, however, hold the MSM to account – a role that sits uneasily with the media establishment.
The MSM [Main Stream Media] claimed, “The great thing about newspapers is that, love us or hate us, we’re the voice of the people. We represent the community, their views, their aspirations, and their hopes.” Represent the community? Don’t they mean control the community?
Over a decade ago, I wrote about a subject that remains as relevant today as ever. For nearly twenty years, I’ve been hammering away at the keyboard – a space where I could speak freely, defy control, and fight for democracy and truth. It was a place to be heard. But it wasn’t always this way. Before the rise of bloggers and independent media, we were limited to listening to those who controlled the narrative.
Let’s revisit the days when we found our voice, thanks to the emergence of bloggers, citizen journalists and independent media.
Plato (428–348 BC) opposed the written word, arguing it would erode memory. He believed people would stop memorising facts or stories, and that spreading words indiscriminately was wasteful and untrustworthy. How prophetic. Spoken over two millennia ago, his words feel strikingly contemporary. Consider today’s mainstream media (MSM), which claims its journalists are reliable, truthful, and objective. Who do you believe – them or Plato?
In recent decades, the MSM has leaned toward stories that are trivial, narrow, shallow, and sensationalist – often at the expense of truth. As Plato might have lamented, the MSM spreads words indiscriminately, wastefully, and with questionable trustworthiness. Truth, it seems, doesn’t sell newspapers.
Some bloggers echoed Plato’s concerns, prompting a fierce backlash from the MSM. I recall reading articles from the Murdoch press that unleashed a near-xenophobic hatred toward the blogosphere, attacking it with more zeal than they ever directed at incompetent politicians. One such critique described the blogosphere as:
A small, incestuous clique of self-identified lefties, with readerships composed mostly of themselves… Naivety and self-righteousness define the vast majority of the Australian blogosphere, along with whining conspiracy theories. Those who hide under the veil of anonymity, taking cheap shots to satisfy their trendy social agenda.
The MSM claimed, “The great thing about newspapers is that, love us or hate us, we’re the voice of the people. We represent the community, their views, their aspirations, and their hopes.” Represent the community? Don’t they mean control the community?
Independent media has profoundly reshaped modern communication, much to the chagrin of traditional print media. The MSM often dismisses us as falling below their standards, but I disagree. Today’s news stories are frequently little more than opinion pieces, unchallenged and unaccountable. Citizen journalists, however, hold the MSM to account – a role that sits uneasily with the media establishment.
Many citizen journalists possess a natural gift for taking the day’s main story, transforming it into something worth reading, and fostering a range of opinions that the MSM often ignores. In just a few years, blogging – in particular- became a global phenomenon, reshaping journalism and unlocking publishing opportunities previously unimaginable. To me, blogging is journalism. While individual blogs may have limited readership, sites with aligned agendas often link together to amplify their impact. In contrast, MSM blog platforms typically filter out contributions that don’t fit their narrative, rendering them inaccessible to dissenting voices.
So, what impact have independent sites had? Their influence has been most profound in the political sphere.
A computer-mediated environment makes it easier for citizens to express their feelings about political candidates and speak more candidly than in face-to-face settings. The internet’s diversity provides access to a wide range of opinions and information, potentially shaping or changing individuals’ political views. By disregarding blog sites with corporate or agenda-driven motives, political bloggers can foster peer-to-peer discussions of personal viewpoints.
This perspective was heartening for a then-blogger like me, who had lost faith in the MSM. It affirmed that independent voices could have an impact, however small at the time. If Australia followed the U.S. trend, a thriving blogging industry might one day emerge.
ShariVari concluded:
All research shows that increased opportunities for participation encourage democracy… Citizens are increasingly turning to and trusting the internet for accurate information, using it as a platform for participatory democracy, and becoming more knowledgeable about politics in the process. A Spiral of Silence – where people self-censor due to perceived minority views – is less likely in an online environment where citizens evaluate each other’s opinions without status cues like gender, race, or socioeconomic status. Blog sites are undeniably expanding the ways citizens participate in democracy.
Fifteen years ago, those in democratic societies seeking to share their ideas faced editorial gatekeepers whose policies often reflected their own ideologies or market-driven priorities. Today, this control is crumbling in the face of participatory media. Audiences no longer want to be passive consumers – they want to comment on and even create the news.
Citizen journalists believe they are better equipped to provide the diversity that modern democracies need, a diversity often ignored by traditional media. Independent platforms allow them to expose doctored or omitted facts, highlight biases, and give voice to alternate perspectives. These sites encourage readers to think critically, ask probing questions, and challenge the MSM’s hidden agendas. Independent media is awash with objective, fact-based analysis that counters the narratives of established outlets.
The explosion of independent sites isn’t merely an echo of dissenting voices – it’s a response to the MSM’s failure to provide objective, impartial reporting. If the MSM were truly committed to quality journalism, there might be no need for the millions of blogs and independent platforms that exist today to fill the gaps they’ve left.
In essence, it’s the People versus Murdoch… then and now.
I was scheduled to give a talk at the National Press Club of Australia on October 20 called “The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.” It was to focus on the amplification of Israeli lies in the press, which most reporters know are lies, betraying Palestinian colleagues who are slandered, targeted and killed by Israel. But, perhaps inadvertently proving my point, the chief executive of the press club, Maurice Reilly, cancelled the event. The announcement of my talk disappeared from the web site. Reilly said “that in the interest of balancing out our program we will withdraw our offer.”
The Israeli Ambassador, retired Lt. Colonel Amir Maimon, who spent 14 years in the Israeli military, is reportedly being considered to speak.
It is true that I know only one side of the picture from the seven years I spent covering Gaza. I was on the receiving end of Israeli attacks, including being bombed by its air force and fired upon by its snipers, one of whom killed a young man a few feet away from me at the Netzarim Junction. We lifted him up, each person taking hold of an arm or a leg, and lumbered up the road as his body swayed like a heavy sack. I saw small boys baited and shot by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis. The soldiers swore at the boys in Arabic over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep. The boys, about 10 years old, then threw stones at an Israeli vehicle and the soldiers opened fire, killing some, wounding others.
I was present more than once as Israeli troops shot Palestinian children. Such incidents, in the Israeli lexicon, become children caught in crossfire. I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets bombed overcrowded hovels in Gaza City. I saw the corpses of the victims, including children. This became a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory. I have watched Israel demolish homes and entire apartment blocks to create wide buffer zones between the Palestinians and the Israeli troops that ring Gaza. I have interviewed the destitute and homeless families, some camped out in crude shelters erected in the rubble. The destruction becomes the demolition of the homes of terrorists. I have stood in the gutted remains of schools as well as medical clinics and mosques and counted the bodies. I have heard Israel claim that errant rockets or mortar fire from the Palestinians caused these and other deaths, or that the buildings were being used as arms depots or launching sites.
I, along with every other reporter I know who has worked in Gaza, including the over 278 Palestinians journalists and media workers who have been killed by Israel since the start of the genocide, many in targeted assassinations, have reported a reality in Gaza that bears no resemblance to how it is portrayed by Israeli politicians, its military and many media outlets that serve as Israel’s echo chamber.
Lt. Colonel Maimon can obviously, if he chooses, enlighten us about the artificial intelligence-based program known as “Lavender” and how it selects people, along with their families, in Gaza for assassination.
He can explain how Israel determines the quotas of civilian dead, how soldiers are permitted to kill as many as 20 civilians in order to target a Palestinian fighter and hundreds for a Hamas commander. He can let us know why Israel continues the mass slaughter when an internal Israeli intelligence database indicates that at least 83 percent of Palestinians killed are civilians. He can tell us how Palestinian civilians are abducted, dressed in Israeli army uniforms, have their hands tied, and are then forced to walk as human shields in front of Israeli troops into buildings and underground tunnels that are potentially booby-trapped. He can explain how the special unit called the “Legitimization Cell” carries out propaganda campaigns to portray Palestinian journalists as Hamas operatives to justify their assassinations. He can detail the targeting, bombing and controlled demolitions that have damaged or destroyed 97 percent of Gaza’s educational system, including every university and nearly all its hospitals. He can explain how, after Israel blocked all humanitarian aid on March 2 to starve the Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli officials set up the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to lure emaciated and malnourished Palestinians to four aid hubs in the south — aid hubs with little food and which Human Rights Watch calls “death traps” and Doctors Without Borders calls “orchestrated killing.” These hubs, open only an hour, usually at 2:00 am, ensure a chaotic scramble for scraps of food. Israeli soldiers, along with U.S. mercenaries, who include members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club, a self-professed anti-“radical jihadist” biker group that counts members with Crusader tattoos among its ranks, fire live rounds into the crowds killing over 1,400 Palestinians and injuring thousands more in and around the hubs since May. He can lay out the plans for the concentration camps in southern Gaza and the efforts to ultimately expel the Palestinians from Gaza and repopulate it with Jewish colonists. He can explain why Israel abandoned its own hostages, why it fired on vehicles headed into the Gaza strip on October 7 carrying Israeli captives and why it used Hellfire missiles to obliterate the Erez Crossing installation when it was seized by Palestinian fighters knowing that dozens of Israeli soldiers were inside.
If Lt. Colonel Maimon spoke with this honesty and candor we could call this balance. It would fill in a side of the equation I glimpse from the outside. It would complete the circle. It would match truth with truth.
But Lt. Colonel Maimon, I see from his past statements, will spew out the mendacious narratives used by Israel to justify genocide — Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields, it operates command centers in hospitals, it sexually assaulted Israeli women on October 7 and beheaded babies. He will make the spurious claim that Israel “has the right to defend itself,” ignoring the fact that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups, which lack an air force, mechanized units, artillery, a navy, fleets of militarized drones and missiles, pose no existential threat to Israel. More important, he will not address Israel’s flagrant violation of international law by occupying and settling colonists on Palestinian land and carrying out a livestreamed genocide.
This is not balance, unless we accept a world where truth is balanced by lies. It is an abandonment of the fundamental mission of journalists — to hold power accountable. But most egregiously, it is a terrible betrayal of our colleagues in Gaza who have been killed for chronicling the daily savagery in Gaza, for doing their job.
No doubt, the corporate sponsors and wealthy donors of the press club are pleased. No doubt, the club is able to slither away from its journalistic integrity. No doubt, it is spared the attacks that would come from allowing me to speak.
But please, have the decency to remove the word press from your club.
Trump turned a simple conflict-of-interest question into a schoolyard spat — threatening to “tell on” a journo to Australia’s Prime Minister, writes Vince Hooper.
IT TAKES A CERTAIN theatre of the absurd to transform a routine White House press gaggle into a diplomatic sideshow. Yet that is precisely what happened when an Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist, researching U.S. President Donald Trump’s family business interests, asked a straightforward question about whether it is appropriate for a sitting president to be engaged in so many business activities.
The question was sober and reasonable: a matter of conflicts of interest, wealth accumulation, and transparency in public office. Trump’s response, however, veered quickly into the surreal. He first insisted that his children were running the business empire, then abruptly shifted the ground.
Instead of grappling with the premise, he went after the journalist’s nationality, declaring:
“The Australians, you’re hurting Australia.”
And then came the kicker — Trump promised to personally inform Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about the journalist’s behaviour, as if geopolitics had suddenly collapsed into a schoolyard spat where the ultimate threat was tattling to the headmaster. The art of dobbing.
At one level, the episode is comic, a reminder of Trump’s instinct for spectacle and grievance. But beneath the absurdity lies something darker: a consistent refusal to treat journalistic inquiry as a legitimate part of democracy. Instead, accountability is reframed as disloyalty. The president of the United States, confronted with a basic question about conflicts of interest, responded not with explanation but with a kind of diplomatic intimidation.
This is part of a longer pattern. From his first term to his second, Trump has cast journalists as enemies rather than interlocutors. The “war on the media” is not rhetorical garnish but central to his political style. In this worldview, truth-seekers are painted as traitors, tough questions are reframed as acts of sabotage, and now even foreign allies are enlisted as props in his domestic culture wars. By claiming that the ABC reporter was “hurting Australia,” Trump implied that the act of pressing a leader for clarity was somehow an attack on his allies themselves.
What is most revealing is how quickly Trump personalised diplomacy. The U.S.–Australia relationship is built on strategic alignment, trade, military cooperation, and shared democratic values. It is not dictated by whether a reporter poses a question he finds confrontational. Yet in his rhetoric, the fate of nations collapsed into the thin skin of one man. This habit of reducing statecraft to personal loyalty tests is not merely undignified; it is dangerous. If bilateral alliances can be bent around one leader’s grievances, they risk becoming unstable, transactional, and unpredictable.
Trump turned a simple conflict-of-interest question into a schoolyard spat — threatening to “tell on” a journo to Australia’s Prime Minister, writes Vince Hooper.
IT TAKES A CERTAIN theatre of the absurd to transform a routine White House press gaggle into a diplomatic sideshow. Yet that is precisely what happened when an Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist, researching U.S. President Donald Trump’s family business interests, asked a straightforward question about whether it is appropriate for a sitting president to be engaged in so many business activities.
The question was sober and reasonable: a matter of conflicts of interest, wealth accumulation, and transparency in public office. Trump’s response, however, veered quickly into the surreal. He first insisted that his children were running the business empire, then abruptly shifted the ground.
Instead of grappling with the premise, he went after the journalist’s nationality, declaring:
“The Australians, you’re hurting Australia.”
And then came the kicker — Trump promised to personally inform Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about the journalist’s behaviour, as if geopolitics had suddenly collapsed into a schoolyard spat where the ultimate threat was tattling to the headmaster. The art of dobbing.
At one level, the episode is comic, a reminder of Trump’s instinct for spectacle and grievance. But beneath the absurdity lies something darker: a consistent refusal to treat journalistic inquiry as a legitimate part of democracy. Instead, accountability is reframed as disloyalty. The president of the United States, confronted with a basic question about conflicts of interest, responded not with explanation but with a kind of diplomatic intimidation.
This is part of a longer pattern. From his first term to his second, Trump has cast journalists as enemies rather than interlocutors. The “war on the media” is not rhetorical garnish but central to his political style. In this worldview, truth-seekers are painted as traitors, tough questions are reframed as acts of sabotage, and now even foreign allies are enlisted as props in his domestic culture wars. By claiming that the ABC reporter was “hurting Australia,” Trump implied that the act of pressing a leader for clarity was somehow an attack on his allies themselves.
What is most revealing is how quickly Trump personalised diplomacy. The U.S.–Australia relationship is built on strategic alignment, trade, military cooperation, and shared democratic values. It is not dictated by whether a reporter poses a question he finds confrontational. Yet in his rhetoric, the fate of nations collapsed into the thin skin of one man. This habit of reducing statecraft to personal loyalty tests is not merely undignified; it is dangerous. If bilateral alliances can be bent around one leader’s grievances, they risk becoming unstable, transactional, and unpredictable.
Compare this to other democratic leaders. Joe Biden, for all his gaffes, generally responds to press scrutiny with irritation at worst, never with the threat of raising the matter in a diplomatic call. Anthony Albanese himself fields barbed questions from Australian journalists on policy, integrity, and leadership without implying that the act of questioning undermines Australia’s alliances. Even populist figures like Britain’s ex-PM Boris Johnson or India’s Narendra Modi, while often prickly, have not suggested that reporters risk harming national security simply by doing their jobs. Trump stands almost alone in converting a press query into a matter of international loyalty.
In the end, Trump’s outburst says less about Australia than about America. It was not Australia’s reputation on trial, nor the alliance, nor the ABC reporter’s patriotism. It was the president’s tolerance for accountability — and that, once again, proved to be vanishingly thin and fake.
Vince Hooper is a proud Australian/British citizen and professor of finance and discipline head at SP Jain School of Global Management with campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.
Sky News assembling a cabinet of experts to talk about Australia’s readiness for war is a problem we should be worried about, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR NEWS networks have demonstrated that surfeit kills discretion. The search for fillers, distractions and items that will titillate, enrage or simply sedate, is an ongoing process.
Gone are the days when discerning choices were made about what constituted worthy news, an admittedly difficult problem that would always lead to priorities, rankings and judgments that might well be challenged. At the very least, news could be kept to specific time slots during the day, meaning that audiences could, at the very least, be given some form of rationing.
Such an approach culminated in that most famous of occasions on April 18, 1933 when the BBC’s news announcer declared with a minimum of fuss that, “There is no news.” This was followed by piano music playing out the rest of the segment.
On the pretext of coming across as informed and enlightened, such networks have also bought into astrology masquerading as sound comment. The commentators are intended to lend an air of respectability to something that either has not happened or something they have little idea about. Their credentials, however, are advertised like glitzy baubles, intended to arrest the intelligence of the viewing audience long enough to realise they have been had.
Sky News Australia is one such cringing example. The premise of The War Cabinet, which aired on August 11, was clear: those attending it were simply dying for greater militarism and war preparedness on the part of the Australian Government, while those preferring diplomacy would be treated like verminous denialists yearning for some sand to bury their heads in.
The point was less a matter of news than prediction and speculation, an exercise of mass bloviation. To lend a wartime flavour to proceedings, the event was staged in the Cabinet Room of Old Parliament House, which host Chris Uhlmanncelebrated as the place Australia’s Prime Minister “John Curtin and his ministers steered the nation through World War II.” Former ministers, defence leaders, and national security experts were gathered “around the Cabinet table to answer a single question: is Australia ready for war?”
The stale view from Alexander Downer, Australia’s longest and, in many ways, most inconspicuous foreign minister, did little to rustle or stir. Liberal democracy, to be preserved in sacred glory, needed Australia to be linked to a “strong global alliance led by the United States”. That such an alliance might itself be the catalyst for war, notably given expectations from Washington about what Australia would do in a conflict with China, was ignored with an almost studious ignorance.
Instead, Downer saw quite the opposite:
“If this alliance holds, if it’s properly cemented, if it is well-led by the Americans… and if we, as members of the alliance, are serious about making a practical contribution to defence through our spending and our equipment, then we will maintain a balance of power in the world.”
His assessment of the current Albanese Government was one of some dottiness.
“I think the government here in Australia has made a major mistake by playing, if you like, politics with this issue of the dangers of the region and losing the balance of power because they don’t want to be seen as too close to President Trump.”
Any press briefing from Defence Minister Richard Marles regarding the anti-China AUKUS pact would ease any anxiety on Downer’s part. Under the Albanese Government, sovereignty has been surrendered to Washington in a way so remarkable it could be regarded as treasonous. While the Royal Australian Navy may never see a single U.S. nuclear-powered submarine, let alone a jointly constructed one, U.S. naval shipyards are rolling in the cash of the Australian taxpayer.
Former Labor Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, lamented that Australia’s strategic outlook in the Indo-Pacific was “deteriorating rather markedly,” a formulation utterly vague and a mere parroting of just about every other hawkish analyst that sees deterioration everywhere.
Thankfully, we had Strategic Forum CEO Ross Babbage to give some shape to it, which turned out to be that ragged motif of the Yellow Horde to the North readying to strike southwards. The Oriental Barbarians with a tinge of Communist Red were primary reasons for a worsening strategic environment, aided by their generous military expenditure. With almost a note of admiration, Babbage felt that China was readying for war by adjusting its economy and readying its people “for tough times that may come”.
The venal, ever noisy former Home Affairs Department Secretary Mike Pezzullo, who has an unhealthy appetite for warring matters, drew upon figures he could not possibly know, along with everybody else who have tried to read the inscrutable entrails of international relations.
Chances of conflict in the Indo-Pacific by 2027, for instance, was a “10 to 20 per cent” likelihood. Sky News, living down to its subterranean standards, failed to mention that Pezzullo had misused his position as one of Canberra’s most powerful bureaucrats to opine on ministerial appointments via hundreds of private text messages to Liberal Party powerbroker Scott Briggs.
The Australian Public Service Commissionfound that Pezzullo had, among other things, used his “duty, power, status or authority to seek to gain a benefit or advantage for himself” and “failed to maintain confidentiality of sensitive government information” and “failed to act apolitically in his employment”. His employment was subsequently terminated, and his Order of Australia stripped in September last year. Fine credentials for balanced commentary on the strategic outlook of a state.
Other talking heads were keen to push spine-tingling prospects of wicked regimes forming alliances and making mischief. Oleksandra Molloy, billed as an aviation expert, thought the “emerging axis” between Russia, North Korea and Iran “quite concerning”. Former naval officer and defence pundit Jennifer Parker urged the fattening of the defence budget to “develop a degree of autonomy”.
Retired Australian Army major general Mick Ryan was most unimpressed by the “zero risk” mentality that seemed to pervade “pretty much every bit of Australian society”.
The Department of Defence needed to take greater risks in terms of procurement, innovation and reducing “the amount of time it takes to develop capability”. His fantasy was positively Spartan in its military totalitarianism: an Australian state nurturing “a spirit of innovation that connects military, industry and society”. The cry for conscription must be just around the corner.
Chief war monger and think tanker Peter Jennings aired his all too familiar views on China, which have become pathological.
“It is utterly false for our government to say that somehow they have stabilised the relationship with China. Things may have improved on the trade front, but that is at the expense of ignoring the strategic developments which all of our colleagues around the table have spoken about, which is China is positioning for war.”
And there you had it: an hour of furious fretting and wailing anxiety with all figures in furious agreement, with a resounding boo to diplomacy and a hurrah for astrology.
Dr Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University
News Corp, Sky after dark, Fox News … they spew lies and propaganda around the globe, and the evil empire’s tentacles keep wrapping around the fearful and the ignorant.
As Saturday’s bloodbath washes through the Liberal corridors of no power, the electoral train wreck has turned attention to other overly cocky players: the Murdoch media.
From the moment the poll was called, Rupert Murdoch’s news culture warriors turned up the heat on Labor, exhorting the brilliance of Peter Dutton’s failed nuclear fantasy and his war on migrants, “woke” schools, people who work from home and Welcomes to Country — while tearing down anyone who dared suggest he and his party were not fit for office.
But on election night none of that mattered. None of the confected outrage, the miles of newsprint, the spin and the bullying had made a jot of difference and was more likely to have worked against the Liberals’ interests. Australians it seems have a finely tuned bullshit radar.
Sky pirates
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young nailed it when she told Radio National on Monday:
“I think what has happened to the Coalition is they spent a bit too much time hangin’ out with Sky News and they forgot to really hear what people were saying. The other big loser is the Murdoch press. They created an echo chamber for themselves.”
Dr Denis Muller of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne said the Murdoch media were “agents of disaster” for the Coalition:
“I see the sun beginning to set on Rupert’s influence in Australian politics. News Corp created a bubble in which their journalists and Coalition politicians cocooned themselves, talking to each other on Sky after dark, persuading each other that everything was going to be fine.”
A setting sun? It’s a big call. Australian politicians of all persuasions famously make the trek to Murdoch headquarters after an election for a ritual known as “kissing the ring”, and Anthony Albanese, Richard Marles and Penny Wong were quick to do their duty in 2022.
Strings attached
Eric Beecher, a former News Corp employee, recalls being sued (unsuccessfully) by Lachlan Murdoch who issued a writ for defamation over an opinion piece linking the Murdoch news empire with 2021’s January 6 Capitol riots:
“The day after the defamation writ was issued, a large Commonwealth government car pulled up outside the Holt Street Surry Hills headquarters in Sydney of News Corp. Three people got out of that car to go upstairs and visit Lachlan in his office: the prime minister, the deputy prime minister and the foreign [affairs] minister of Australia. It’s been going on for 100 years and it should stop.”
The reach of puppetmaster Rupert Murdoch into governments and policy making knows no bounds and there have been countless exposés on unethical business practices. But the machine roars on, a powerhouse of global disinformation and propaganda while pretending to be a news-gathering organisation.
In January, Murdoch was photographed reclining in the Oval Office as Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a sovereign wealth fund. Fox News cable spits out Trump propaganda daily and is credited with helping to return the convicted felon and sex predator to office. Murdoch has called Trump “increasingly mad” and yet publicly admitted he knew Fox commentators were lying when they broadcast falsehoods about a “stolen rigged election” in 2020. But hey, it was good for business.
Nuke the enemy
The habitual process of retribution and vendetta from News Corp is bitter and legendary. The Australian Financial Review reports that Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd blame Murdoch for their political demise. In 1974, Murdoch famously directed his editors to “kill Whitlam” 10 months before Gough Whitlam’s electoral ousting.
Every day, Murdoch’s media rival, the ABC, is a target of sneering “hit jobs”, and any politician or voice that suggests climate change is real or nuclear reactors are a fantasy or billionaires don’t deserve tax breaks are hounded, possibly for life. The Herald Sun still runs revelations about former Labor premier Dan Andrews and sporadic pieces of condemnation over a car accident his wife had 20 years ago. According to Beecher in his book The Men Who Killed The News, Andrews was the only premier who refused to schlep up to News Corp headquarters for the compulsory kissing of the ring.
In Australia, the power base is the print media, overwhelmingly controlled by News Corp with a huge digital presence and backed by Sky News. In 2020, Rudd and Turnbull joined forces to call for a royal commission into Murdoch’s concentrated media holdings. Rudd claimed his media power is “routinely used to attack opponents in business and politics by blending editorial opinion with news reporting”.
Break the News
How is it that such deep, lasting damage to democracy, businesses and people’s lives can be inflicted with precisely zero repercussions? One part of the answer is the acceptance that democracies cannot flourish without a free press. Section 65A of the Trade Practices Act provides a general exemption to most of the media as publishers of news and current affairs from liability for publishing misleading or deceptive material. Former chairman of the ACCC Allan Fels said concerns around Murdoch’s practices are more likely to be addressed by a royal commission, an idea the government and opposition have not supported.
“I don’t have a view on whether he should be reined in. All media mislead to some extent. It’s not the sort of thing consumer protection law addresses.”
Dr Victoria Fielding, senior lecturer in strategic communication at the University of Adelaide, was bolder. She said legislative change was needed to rein in Murdoch excesses. She agrees a healthy democracy needs an independent free press populated by balanced journalists who hold the powerful to account and publish verifiable information — but that’s not what the Murdoch media are:
“If there was some legislation that said if you want to be a commentary organisation you can only have a particular share of the market — like any competition commissioner can do — you break it up. You say: ‘You can no longer be that large.’ It’s distorting our democracy.”
Running scared
The other part of the answer is fear, fear of taking on a monolithic disinformation machine which countless readers think is a news outlet and being publicly torn down and repeatedly shredded by a media gorilla with few scruples and deep pockets.
Remarkably, after cheerleading the Liberals to disaster on May 3, The Australian leapt back up onto its feet to brush off its flesh wound and lecture the Coalition on “missing the warnings”:
“Of all the mistakes that led to this result, one was fatal: the untested assumption that Labor was out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians. There can be no other interpretation that that this is fundamentally wrong.”
This from the paper that tells us pretty much every day that Labor is out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians.
Culture vultures
Reports of the death of the Murdoch brand in Australia may well be exaggerated. Like any good parasite it is known to stew and grow before attacking the host again. Fielding reminds us that backed by the Murdoch press, Dutton was on track to win the federal election as recently as January — until the catastrophic reality of the Trump presidency became obvious to Australians.
Murdoch has withstood worse setbacks than crashing an election and, like Monty Python’s Black Knight, his culture warriors rebound after each atrocity and, still bleeding, berate their victims for taking the advice.
I’d like to think the tide is turning on news outlets that amplify bullshit while bragging they are society’s moral pulse and insisting their bullshit is good for you. But if the tide is not for turning, you can always join the Liberals, and learn the hard way.
Whatever happens on election day, it’s certain that the Coalition’s promotion of nuclear power will cost it votes. It will probably cost the Coalition seats. It may cost the Coalition the election. And if the Coalition does unexpectedly well, it will be despite and not because of the nuclear policy.
The Murdoch press released polling results on April 19 showing that Labor’s campaign against the Coalition’s nuclear power policy is “driving a collapse in the Coalition’s primary vote in marginal seats across Australia.”
The RedBridge-Accent poll of 20 marginal seats found that Labor’s opposition to the Coalition’s nuclear plan is “a clear winner with a ‘net agree’ rating of 43.” Fifty-six per cent of poll respondents agreed with Labor’s claim that the Coalition’s plan will cost $600 billion and require spending cuts to pay for it, while only 13 per cent disagreed.
The Murdoch press reported on May 1 that 41 per cent of 1011 respondents to a Redbridge-Accent national poll ranked concerns that Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan will cost $600 billion and will require cuts to pay for it among their top five reasons for deciding to oppose a particular party.
Only one issue topped nuclear power as a vote-changing turn-off. The article was titled ‘Where the Libs went off track: Inside the Coalition’s disastrous campaign’ and it ran alongside another titled ‘Coalition nuked by nervous electors.’
In March 2024, James Campbell warned that the Coalition’s nuclear power policy is “stark raving mad.” In the same month, Tony Barry described the nuclear policy as “the longest suicide note in Australian political history.”
Meanwhile, the Coalition’s attempt to go quiet on its unpopular nuclear policy has only drawn further attention to it.
Costings
The Coalition’s decision not to release nuclear costings until December left a void which Labor filled with the $600 billion figure. Furious responses to the $600 billion figure have only served to focus attention on the expansive cost of Dutton’s taxpayer-funded nuclear frolic.
Just in the past couple of days, the Sky News Youtube channel has featured these videos:
A frustrated Barnaby Joyce told Andrew Bolt on Sky News:
“What they’ve done, ladies and gentlemen, is they’ve come up with this fantastic number. … The nuclear power stations are going to cost $600 billion. It’s like Dr Evil off one of those movies, you know coming out and saying ‘Oh you know 600 billion dollars’. BS. What they did, ladies and gentlemen, it’s like they got a turbo-charged Porsche and multiplied it by seven and said that is the price of every car in Australia.”
None of which comports with reality. Multiply the Coalition’s nuclear cost estimate by 2.5 and you’ll get the actual cost of recent reactor construction projects in the US, the UK and France. The Coalition assumes that reactors can be built in Australia for less than half the cost of recent projects in countries with vastly more experience and expertise. And much more quickly.
Liberals Against Nuclear
Polling commissioned by the Liberals Against Nuclear group provides further evidence of the political poison of the Coalition’s nuclear policy. The group said in an April 28 media release:
“A new uComms poll shows leading Liberal frontbencher Michael Sukkar could lose his seat at the coming election if the Party persists with its unpopular nuclear plan.
“The poll, commissioned by Liberals Against Nuclear, shows Labor and the Coalition tied at 50-50 in two-party preferred terms in Deakin. However, the same polling reveals that if the Liberals dumped their nuclear policy, they would surge to a commanding 53-47 lead.
“The Deakin polling showed women voters are particularly opposed to the nuclear policy, with 53.2% of women saying it makes them less likely to vote Liberal compared to 41.3% of men. Overall, 47.5% of Deakin voters are less likely to support the Coalition because of the nuclear policy.
“The data also revealed that 56.1% of respondents don’t support nuclear power at all, with concerns about renewable energy investment reductions (19.0%), nuclear waste management (15.9%), and high build costs (13.0%) being the primary objections.
“In the crucial 35-50 age demographic that makes up many families in Deakin, 48.4% are less likely to vote Liberal due to the nuclear policy.”
Another UComms poll found that Dutton could be vulnerable in the seat of Dickson because of the nuclear policy. Forty-six per cent of those surveyed said they were less likely to vote for Dutton because of the policy.
National Climate Action Survey
The latest National Climate Action Survey of more than 4,000 respondents conducted by Griffith University’s Climate Action Beacon in partnership with the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub found that support for nuclear power has fallen since the Coalition announced some details of its policy in June 2024.
The survey found that:
* 59 percent of respondents wanted to keep a legal ban on nuclear power in 2024 (up from 51 percent in 2023), while the number opposing the ban fell from 34 percent in 2023 to 30 percent in 2024.
* Only 18 percent of women were in favour of lifting the ban compared to 36 per cent of men. Two-thirds (66 per cent) of women want the ban to stay, 51 per cent of men want it to stay.
* Those who said the benefits of nuclear power far outweighed the risks fell from 24.5 per cent support in 2023 to 22 per cent in 2024. Those who said the risks of nuclear power far outweighed the benefits rose from 21.9 per cent in 2023 to 26 per cent in 2024.
* 54.8 per cent of respondents would be very or extremely concerned if a nuclear power plant was built near them while only 11 percent would be comfortable.
Local opposition
The Coalition claims to have a social licence to build nuclear power reactors in the seven selected regions, and uses that as an excuse for the paucity of visits to those regions during the election campaign – by Peter Dutton in particular.
But polling in March 2025 by research firm 89 Degrees East for the Renew Australia for All campaign found just 27 per cent support for “developing large-scale nuclear energy infrastructure” in Gladstone, 24 per cent in the rest of Central Queensland, 24 per cent in Bunbury, 22 per cent in Central West NSW which includes Lithgow, 32 per cent in Hunter, and 31 per cent in Gippsland.
The poll also found that just 13 per cent of people polled thought nuclear reactors would bring down their bills the fastest compared to 72 per cent for renewables.
By Hilary Whiteman, CNN, February 6, 2025, Brisbane, Australia,
Nuclear engineer and former Miss America Grace Stanke has entered the fierce debate in Australia over its future energy policy with a 10-day national tour extolling the benefits of nuclear power in a country where it’s been banned for almost 30 years.
The speaking tour is familiar territory for the 22-year-old former beauty queen, whosaid shestudied nuclear engineering as a “flex,” but now works for US energy giant Constellation as a spokesperson and as an engineer on its nuclear team.
Her recentarrival comes at a delicate time in Australia, months before a national election that could put the opposition Liberal Party in power, along with its promises to build seven nuclear power stations – upending the current Labor government’s plan to rely on renewable energy and gas.
For several days, Stanke has been speaking to hundreds of Australians, in events organized by Nuclear for Australia (NFA), a charity founded by 18-year-old Will Shackel, who has received backing from a wealthy Australian pro-nuclear entrepreneur.
Most talks were well-attended by attentive crowds, but not all audience members were impressed by Stanke’s message.
As she started to speak in Brisbane last Friday, a woman in the audience began shouting, becoming the first of several people to be ejected from the room as other attendees booed and jeered. One woman who was physically pushed from the premises by a security guard has since filed a formal complaint.
……………Those against nuclear power say it’s too expensive, too unsafe and too slow to replace Australia’s coal-fired power stations that would need to keep burning for several more years until nuclear plants came online.
………………….A numbers game
Australia banned nuclear energy in 1998 as part of a political deal to win approval for the country’s first and only nuclear research facility that’s still operating in southern Sydney.
A change in government in an election, to be held before mid-May, would see seven nuclear reactors built in five states to provide power alongside renewable energy – a bold shift in direction that would not only require changes to federal law, but amendments to laws in states where premiers oppose nuclear power.
According to the plan proposed by Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton, the nuclear reactors would be funded by 331 billion Australian dollars ($206 billion) in public money and the first could be working by 2035.
Both forecasts are disputed as underestimates by the government acting on the advice of the country’s independent science agency – the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) – whichsays renewables are still the cheapest and the most efficient way for Australia to reach net zero by 2050.
…………………..“I do believe that a strong grid requires both renewables and nuclear energy combined,” Ms Stanke said, referring to the argument for a “baseload” energy source that doesn’t rely on unpredictable weather.
That argument is challenged by experts worldwide, who say the need for “baseload” energy is an outdated concept, and that stability can be achieved by other means, including batteries.
……………………………………………..Advance, a conservative campaign group that says it works to counter “woke politicians and elitist activist groups” is promoting a 48-minute documentary it claims tells the “untold stories” of farmers whose “lives have been upended by the rapid rollout of wind and solar projects.”
………………………………….Rural areas where opposition is building to renewable projects are fertile ground for Shackel and his nuclear campaign. He’s already visited some areas earmarked for power stations under the Liberal proposal. And while he says NFA isn’t politically aligned with either of the major parties, he accepts he’s doing some of the groundwork to bring the community on side………………………….
Nuclear ‘foolishness’
Bringing a former Miss America to Australia was part of a plan to raise support for nuclear power among Australian women, who according to one survey are far less enthusiastic than men about the proposal.
According to several people who attended sessions in various states, the audience was dominated by older men, many of whom didn’t seem to need convincing.
Jane McNicol, the first protester escorted from the room in Brisbane, told CNN she’s been an anti-nuclear campaigner since the 1980s. She said she stood up to “ensure that this foolishness does not take off.”
“It’s just a way of spinning the fossil fuel industry out for a bit longer, and we cannot afford to do that,” she said. “You can see how the climate is collapsing around us. Look at Los Angeles. Those poor people over there lost everything.”
Others said the panel – which included local nuclear experts – made generalizations and didn’t get to the nub of issues specific to their area, like the potential strain they say a nuclear power station could have on resources in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.
“There is literally no water for a nuclear power station. The existing allocation is already committed to mine repair,” said Adrian Cosgriff, a member of community advocacy group Voices of the Valley, who attended the Melbourne talk.
“Australians know nuclear power exists. That’s fine. It’s just not suitable for here. That’s kind of the argument,” he said.
David Hood, a civil and environmental engineer who attended the Brisbane talk, said: “Renewables are working right now. We can’t wait 10 to 20 years for higher cost and risky nuclear energy.”
Stanke and Shackel delivered a parliamentary briefing in Parliament House, Canberra on Wednesday, to politicians and aides across the political spectrum.
Antinuclear 