Alberici, victim of the patriarchy

 ABC personality Tony Jones congratulates Emma on her Logie, another highpoint in a jaw-dropping career.

All those who read our little piece on Emma Alberici’s ham-fisted attempt to explain economics and tax policy would know, the ABC’s chief economics correspondent has some trouble discerning the difference between revenue and profit. So much trouble, in fact, the national broadcaster took down her first attempt, corrected the errors, toned down the florid language and re-posted. We managed to get our hands on the the text of the original version, which we presented in counterpoint to the cleaned-up attempt at economic analysis. The differences are telling and you can examine both versions here under the headline “Vampire Squids and Blood Funnels” — two of the more memorable turns of phrase with which Ms Alberici salted her insights.

Since then, ABC Managing Director Michelle Guthrie, whose business card is also graced by the title Editor in Chief, has defended Alberici before Senate Estimates, saying her confidence in the ABC’s in-house economics guru is unshaken and blaming the unfortunate incident on a re-organisation and, of course, the ABC’s starvation budget. Apparently $1.2 billion a year isn’t sufficient to hire journalists who know their subjects.

All of the above by way of background.

Now let’s shift the focus to the Harold Park Hotel in inner-city Sydney, where last night (May 31) Ms Alberici took the stage to do a little rapping. The occasion was a regular event, Writersports, that seems to have been established as a way of keeping lefty keyboard ticklers occupied while they wait for the postman to deliver those travel vouchers to the next taxpayer-subsidised writers festival. Her companions for the night – The Chaser‘s Charles Firth and Girt author David Hunt amongst them — were divided into two teams of four and put to work under the clock’s pressure to produce something, er, literary.

Ms Alberici’s contribution to the evening’s merriment was a little rap ditty which suggests her talents with rhyme are on a par with the capacity to read and understand a corporate ledger. The video, snapped by a Quadrant reader in attendance, can be viewed here. After a few preliminary couplets concerning her reproductive successes and the cancellation of Lateline, she intoned (emphasis added):

… Viewers said ‘That’s just galling’
Galling! That’s how some feel now
I’m scribbling about things like tax
‘Give companies more’,
The government roars
‘Don’t worry about things like facts’

Bullies, they tried to put me down,
‘Girls shouldn’t have so much front!‘
But I’m not going anywhere
Because they’re just a bunch of …
…Mean nasty people.

Given the ABC’s brazen defence of its recent practice of broadcasting the C-word into Australia’s living rooms, Ms Alberici’s refusal to rhyme “front” with its obvious partner is curious indeed — but not half so curious as her evidently unshaken conviction that her infamous tax article was composed of  “facts”, rather than a being a compote of error and crap whipped up by a financial ignoramus.

Until the ABC pops Ms Alberici into Lycra and gives her an exercise show — a more useful deployment of talent, such as it is — ABC viewers should keep the above doggerel in mind when next she attempts to navigate the difference between, say, GNP and GDP.

But do keep those guffaws to yourself. As Ms Alberici told her audience, she copped it for being a girl! Just like Julia Gillard, apparently, competence has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

MS Alberici’s rapping can be watched via this link or the one below.

— roger franklin

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