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Some years ago, Radio National’s Phillip Adams denied permission for a neighbour’s 90-year-old, wheelchair-bound mother to use the dunny lane beside his then-home in Paddington, insisting it was his property, and his property alone, by virtue of having placed a lock on its iron gate. The dispute went all the way to NSW Supreme Court, where Justice George Palmer in his ruling thought otherwise:
I hold that the action of Mr Adams in changing the lock on the gate to the right of way and in refusing to give keys to Mr Couche and his co-proprietors constitutes a complete and wrongful denial of their rights as owners of the dominant tenements.
Now the ABC compere has had a little taste of karma, as the Indian government has apparently locked the gate against a visit he had been planning for some time, as per his tweet below
Readers who have heard Adams’ radio schmooze sessions with his lefty mates, and only his lefty mates, can probably come up with any number of top-of-the-head reasons why, if given a choice, Adams’ company would be deemed something best endured by others. The Indian government has not been so candid in stating its reasons why the ABC crew is not being allowed to sully their soil, so it has been left to one of his Late Night Live feted guests, Ramachandra Guha writing in the Hindustan Times, to advance a theory complete with quaint misconceptions about Australia, the ABC and Adams’ alleged pride of place in the pantheon of our national greats, (emphasis added):
...at the advanced age of 78, this Australian national treasure would criss-cross India was not merely a manifestation of Adams’s own professionalism and intellectual curiosity; but of a wider interest in our country among his compatriots….
… There is strong speculation that Adams was not granted a visa because the ABC had recently done a television documentary on the Adani Group’s operations in that country. The documentary charged the Adanis with using illegal tax havens to minimise their tax liabilities in Australia, and with promoting environmentally hazardous projects. Denying visas to Phillip Adams and his team, a senior ABC producer told this writer, ‘does seem like payback for the 4 Corners program last year on Adani and Australia’. Another ABC staffer was told by an Australian government official that the visa refusal was ‘about Adani’. And Phillip Adams himself tweeted: ‘After a year’s planning & months seeking visas LNL was blocked from entering India ..no reasons given, just obsfucation.(might it have something to do with 4C’s Adani report?)’.
Adams also buys into the Evil Adani notion.
Australian taxpayers owe the Indian government a vote of thanks, as Adams would have schlepped about the Subcontinent with a retinue of ABCers in tow — a jolly working holiday, presumably with room service, for all concerned.
Readers can learn more of the “venerated public figure” and his thwarted travel plans by following this link or the one below, which leads to the Hindustan Times column and represents one theory. Another possibility, reproduced below, popped up among the twittered responses to Adams’ lament. As theories go it’s not a bad one:
