QED

Women Power Gets Contagious

It’s a new world, with new standards … The power feels contagious. This toppling of various giants feels like the movement’s long-lasting legacy … This is the slow burn of the #MeToo movement. The real business, the reckoning. Captains of your world, take note.              
                                                                       —Nikki Gemmell, The Australian, March 6

In the week that Commonwealth Attorney-General Christian Porter faced up to accusations that, thirty-three years ago, when he was a seventeen-year-old student, he raped a female colleague while attending a debating competition, the story attracted enormous media commentary. The dominant voices on one side, especially Paul Kelly and Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian and John Silvester in The Age, held that any political pursuit of the case, which New South Wales police had closed due to lack of evidence, would be contrary to the rule of law. There was also much discussion about the lack of reliability of the accuser, who had long-term psychiatric problems that eventually ended in her suicide in 2020.

But on the leftist side of the commentariat, they saw the case as an opportunity to pursue their own ends. They called for Porter to stand down as Attorney-General while a new inquiry was conducted.

While there was not much conservative analysis of the motives and objectives of the commentators who hoped to see Porter destroyed, those on the other side of the political fence were not shy about their real agenda.

Nikki Gemmell used her column in the Weekend Australian on March 6 to engage in some triumphalist crowing. She produced a list of prominent males who shared the fate she sought for Porter. They were men whose careers had recently been destroyed simply because they used terminology unacceptable to current woke ideology.

Gemmell named Yoshiro Mori, head of the Tokyo Olympics organising committee, who was sacked after declaring that “talkative women” made meetings “drag on”. She said Eddie McGuire, Channel Nine presenter and president of Collingwood Football Club, was gone after what she called “a long line of offensive and off-colour comments” related to race. She listed Bill Michael, an Australian who was chairman of accountants KPMG in the UK, who lost his position after declaring that younger employees should “stop moaning” about the COVID pandemic, and that the notion of unconscious bias was “complete and utter crap”.

“Perhaps it’s a logical progression from Trump’s cruel era”, Gemmell writes. “The acknowledgment that men like this are not infallible; that their era is over and they can be brought down.”

Meanwhile, on the same day in the Sydney Morning Herald, Margaret Simons declared that the structures of political reporting in the Australian media had now changed so that many more women like Gemmel were employed in positions of media power. Simons, author of a book in 1999 on the Canberra Press Gallery, argued this is now especially true of that institution. She says the culture and the “gender balance” of the gallery have both shifted:

for the first time in Australian history, the Canberra press gallery is dominated by talented, hard-nosed and courageous women journalists, and this alters the understanding of why these allegations matter, and how they should be treated. As well, there is a generation of male reporters who, in at least some cases, “get it”. The result is a new field in the ongoing journalistic job of interrogating power.

Simons singled out two women as leaders of this pack: “Samantha Maiden at News Corporation and, outside Canberra, journalists including Louise Milligan at the ABC have made the running on the issue of sexual abuse in Parliament house, and the Porter allegations.”

In other words, the women of the press gallery, and some tame blokes who follow them, will keep the issue of the rape allegation alive, even though the institutions of Australian law have declared it a non-starter. Their determination will be sustained by the radical feminist ideology to which they entrust more faith than to the legal institutions and procedures that have long governed our concept of justice.

Hence, the real goal of those afflicted with this obsession is not about justice or equality or any of the other virtues the left purportedly endorses. As Gemmell makes clear, it is all about gaining power over others, especially over those white males who have done most to shape the culture of our present existence. And for those in the communication businesses, it is also about the prospect of making their position contagious, so that it spreads itself through a mass political movement to create their imagined new world.

Now, this all looks a lot like the early stages of the trial by media that Cardinal George Pell suffered until his conviction and imprisonment was overturned by the High Court in April last year. However, there are some significant differences this time around which indicate that the sisterhood will not be as successful as they initially were with Pell.

For a start, Porter is not fighting this assault alone. So far, he has been backed by his Prime Minister who, when he declared his support, said it was based on the rule of law. The existing legal institutions, primarily the New South Wales police, had closed their books on the rape allegation and, Morrison argued, that is the end of the matter. There is no other legal institution or tribunal that could properly take it up. And the doctrine of presumption of innocence says that, unless he has gone through the process and been found guilty in a court of law, Porter is innocent and deserves to be treated as such.

This is a quite different position to the one Morrison adopted in 2018 when he and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten gave a public apology to victims of child sexual abuse, and declared they believed all complainants were telling the truth. The apology was delivered in Parliament House on October 22, 2018, just seventeen days before the start of the trial that convicted Pell of child sexual abuse. Most of the jurors in that trial would have heard the apology’s repeated refrain — “I believe you, we believe you, your country believes you” — as well as the invective heaped on religious authorities, police and magistrates who in the past failed to heed that message. It was no wonder Pell was declared guilty at that time. Who on a jury would want to take a stand against that kind of moral pressure?

However, Morrison made the apology less than two months after he had been sworn in as Prime Minister on August 24, and at the time he was only a stand-in for the man he replaced, Malcolm Turnbull, who had originally approved the apology and agreed to deliver it. Since then, Morrison has had time to reconsider his stance and has now acted properly to give the traditional rule of law its due respect. In response to the Porter allegation, he has shown no sign of accepting the #MeToo ideological position that was so apparent in October 2018.

There is little doubt that a great many of his constituents share Morrison’s support for Porter, and an increasing number will do so the longer this issue remains a spectacle in the media arena. To the average Australian, the idea that an accusation of rape 33 years ago could be prosecuted on the basis of written notes by a deceased woman who suffered constant bipolar disorder and consequent false memories, who could provide no corroboration for any of her claims, and who told police she wanted to withdraw the accusation, does not sound like a fair go.

An even better indicator of the future direction this contest is likely to take is the fate of Annette Kimmitt, the CEO and managing partner of Australia’s biggest law firm MinterEllison. When, in the midst of all the publicity about Christian Porter, Kimmitt discovered that one of the firm’s partners, defamation specialist Peter Bartlett, was giving advice to the Attorney-General over media reporting of his predicament, she emailed the firm’s 2500 employees expressing her dismay: “The nature of this matter is clearly causing hurt to some of you, and it has certainly triggered hurt for me.”

However, other partners were appalled by this sanctimonious outburst, especially Kimmitt’s view that the firm should not be advising someone just because he attracted condemnation from some of the media. Barely a week after Porter identified himself as the subject concerned, the MinterEllison board told Kimmitt to walk.

Even though many large firms in other industries have recently been persuaded by advertising and marketing people that support for “gender diversity” will win them customers, when serious issues arise most will see where their real interests lie. The MinterEllison incident is another sign that, in this struggle for cultural power, hysteria will not win, sanity will eventually prevail, and the leftist vision of a revolutionary new world will be seen for the utopian fantasy it is.

Keith Windschuttle is the editor of Quadrant

37 thoughts on “Women Power Gets Contagious

  • Tony Tea says:

    Being triggered has no place at a proper law firm.

  • Stephen Due says:

    It’s not so much the the allegation as such that worries me, as the way it is being used to attack a political opponent. It’s pretty obvious that this type of flimsy allegation, unsupported by any evidence sufficient even to get it into court, would not be brought against anyone who was not in a position of power whose reputation his opponents are seeking to destroy. This is not even a case of believing the victim (alleged). This is a case of believing somebody else – a stranger – to whom the victim is proving politically useful. It is disappointing to see how little logic and how much hysteria is being employed in this undertaking.

  • Doubting Thomas says:

    Being triggered has no place in any adult environment.

  • Harry Lee says:

    Yes, many women who portray themselves as feminists who are “just trying to make things fair and just” are actually power-mongers of extreme kinds and extreme degrees.
    The feminist aim is to destroy men who create and/or maintain institutions that serve the common good -so that those marxist-inspired feminists can take over and control those institutions.
    (They have no clue as to what makes effective institutions work for the common good, nor how to establish and build new, effective institutions)
    This is an simply expression of feminist power-hunger -power, power, power over everyone else- and not a skerrick of wisdom or compassionate feeling to go with their power-lust.
    Just like the NAZIs.
    Just as the ALP and the Greens are, in essence, enemies of Western Civ though they claim to be righters- of-wrongs, so are these feminists.
    For the ALP, the Greens, and the feminists, life is lived in the pursuit of Power-Uber-Alles while pretending to be Beautifully, Truly, Goodly Virtuous.
    But their Animating Creed is:
    All ordinary people must be subject to their control, or the World is Bad.
    And for feminists, Men are bad and must be destroyed.
    Which is the feminist way of being outraged by the consequences of 3 billion years of evolutionary biology, and seeking to lay blame for all of it on Men.
    Blame the Men and destroy Men -the conditions of the evolution of human beings be damned, it’s the men wot done us it.
    Meanwhile, no group has done more for the protection, the safety, the well-being and the flourishing of female human beings than have (many) White Men.
    This does not imply that it is all good for women.
    But this is a point that the Left rejects, namely:
    If you want to improve the culture of White men, you must introduce severe punishments for their violence and other criminality. And you must halt multiculturalism -because White culture cannot be improved while so many resources must be poured into the total pretence that non-White and/or anti-Westernist cultures, as practiced within Australia, are actually not violent, not criminal, not anti-Westernist, and not nett-parasitic, when the obvious truth is contrary to said pretence.

  • Phillip says:

    Yes, with “journalist” Loud Mouth … aka Louise Milligan…we all know that starting with the truth is never a forethought, and then actually reporting facts is just plainly abhorrent in Loud Mouths world. It is very disappointing that an author of bile and false defamation allegations is allowed anywhere near our Parliament House. If Loud Mouth claims to be a political journalist then commentary on Political bills and procedures surely would be her focus. But sadly no, Loud Mouth only has a goal to fabricate lies against any conservative being or ideal. Loud Mouth certainly does not meet the expected conditions of talent, merit or accountability for a journalist.
    Who knows, Minter Ellison, might turn around and appoint her CEO, just to replace one disaster with another disaster….and why?….because merit & talent got nothing to do with it boy, selection solely because Loud Mouth is female…..?!!?

  • Michael says:

    An attempt is being made to overthrow the presumption of innocence unless proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt in a properly constituted court according to established rules of evidence and to replace it with the presumption of guilt; that a women who says she is a victim of a sexual or violent offence can have a man sacked, barred from office, or thrown out of university, perhaps even gaoled, without having to do anything other than make the accusation.

  • ianl says:

    >” … Morrison has had time to reconsider his stance and has now acted properly to give the traditional rule of law its due respect. In response to the Porter allegation, he has shown no sign of accepting the #MeToo ideological position that was so apparent in October 2018″

    Or, far more likely in my view, Morrison knows his Govt will fall over if this time he plays to the press gallery again. Doubtless my view will be labelled “cynical”, yet the cynicism actually belongs to those who manipulate with 180’s.

    Would you trust this principled decision (to defend Porter) to be made if the Govt had, say, a 10-12 seat majority and the MSM was doing its’ despicable blood-baying ?

  • Greg Williams says:

    Just at the Democrats in the USA refused to accept the loss of the 2016 election to Trump and the GOP, and spent the 4 years to 2020 doing all that they could to create negatives about the incumbents, the left here have never forgiven Australians for voting in Morrison and the LNP in 2019, and they, with their compliant media, led mainly by the left-wing ABC, have spent the past 2 years doing all that they can to create a negative view of the incumbents. The bush fires came first, then they thought they had him with the pandemic, but that seems to be more of a positive than a negative for incumbents, so now they are resorting to any dirty tricks they can come up with.

  • Salome says:

    It will be interesting to see how the front page of the ME website changes in the next few weeks. At the moment it is heavy on the benefits of ‘diversity’ and the evils of harassment, which can apparently be prevented by having more diversity.

  • PT says:

    The Milligan’s, Gemmell’s Wong’s et al of this world only pretend to be concerned about “powerful” men raping women. I’ve not noticed ANY concern about allegations against left wing male figures. Bill Shorten was previously the subject of allegations that are as surely as “compelling” as those against Pell or Porter. Yet I do not recall any campaign by these left-leaning women calling for him to stand aside. What is more, the accuser has never retracted her claims. Nor is Bill Clinton the subject of any campaign or investigation for the multiple allegations against him. Apparently rape allegations only need to be taken seriously if levelled against a conservative figure.

  • Peter Bannister says:

    Harry Lee I salute you. You have stated the situation exactly. I recently lost my job because a militant feminist colleague, using outrageous lies, claimed I had destroyed her peace of mind, without my even laying a finger on her. I fell for her desire to communicate with an understanding soul.

  • Harry Lee says:

    Peter Bannister, all my strongest best wishes to you as you find your way forward.
    Your very unfortunate, costly experience with that militant feminist is quite common now.
    And the result is that fewer men will offer support to women.
    That’s the way Reality works.
    I now simply dismiss, to myself, any statement made by a female with feminist credentials as “not reliable information”-
    -while remaining politely noncommittal to the feminist utterer and to all on-lookers.
    And for several decades, I have observed other men doing this all over the Anglosphere and in several other Western precincts, in various institutions, private and public sectors, at all levels of the hierarchy.
    Smart men know the score.
    It’s just like non-Nazis were in Nazi Germany, and non-communists were and are in all communist regimes.
    A bloke must survive, if he is to provide for and protect his family.

  • Ian MacKenzie says:

    The leading quote from Nikki Gemmell is interesting. She writes a weekly column in the Weekend Australian Magazine, which is where the quote appeared last weekend. Ms Gemmell has form in the demonizing of innocent men in that column, most notably Cardinal Pell. She also wrote a subsequent column attacking John Howard and Tony Abbott for the high crime of visiting their friend Cardinal Pell in prison. Several months later Ms Gemmell wrote a column extolling the virtues of honour. Any normal person, once Cardinal Pell had been found not guilty by a seven-nil verdict of the High Court, would have concluded that the honourable thing to do would be to apologise to Cardinal Pell, John Howard and Tony Abbott for the wrongful aspersions she made against them. However, by failing to do so, Ms Gemmell, by her own definition, proved herself to be dishonourable. How ironic. Strangely, much like Louise Milligan, Ms Gemmell only seems interested in demonizing conservative white men. How woke.
    Nikki Gemmell, writing for a privately owned newspaper, is of course entitled to have her dishonourable, poorly thought-out, left-wing and often rather sad opinions published. Ms Milligan, working for a government broadcaster with a charter requirement for balance, is not entitled to have her clearly biased, rather rabid left-wing accusations broadcast, especially when suppressing information supporting her victims. In allowing Ms Milligan to operate in this way the ABC has effectively declared war on the government. As it is clear that there is nothing more that can be done to persuade the ABC to operate within its charter, it should be defunded.

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    KW: “….in this struggle for cultural power, hysteria will not win, sanity will eventually prevail, and the leftist vision of a revolutionary new world will be seen for the utopian fantasy it is.”

    I hope you are right, Keith, but this has morphed into a nasty gender war in which there will be few winners and many casualties. The social engineers are already at it: “consent” classes for boys in primary school, “coercive control” laws, and so on.

    According to Gender Equity Victoria chief executive, Tanja Kovac:
    “When a woman complains about a man’s behaviour it is not just her word against his. It is her word against 2000 years of institutional sexism, 200-plus years of a male-dominated Australian justice system, and 100 years of mass media [presumably excluding the ABC] controlled by men.”
    “The fear of that – the enormity of it – it’s enough to make anyone terrified and put off from pursuing a complaint.”

  • lbloveday says:

    Mr W,
    You got me to do what I’ve avoided for years – reading some of Gemmell’s pathetic rantings. But your quotes did confirm that I’ve done the right thing.

  • Ceres says:

    As a woman I would hate to be a male in the workplace these days. What an easy weapon, vicious females have to ruin the life of a bloke they have a beef against.
    Axioms such as the rule of evidence and law should not have such a hard time seeing the light of day and once upon a time the Milligans and Kimmitts would have been ridiculed and unemployed for spouting their mob rule. Now they have the MSM and social media egging them on so they feel they’re on a roll in this atmosphere. Dangerous times.

  • lhackett01 says:

    We are back to the times when mob rule and lynching were common. Quoting from Wikipedia, “Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate. It can also be an extreme form of informal group social control, and it is often conducted with the display of a public spectacle (often in the form of hanging) for maximum intimidation.” While the lynching does not, yet, involve a rope, it nevertheless kills reputations and harms the victim in many ways.

    This is exactly what is happening with regard to Porter and across society generally.

    Disgracefully, the mob violence is based on alleged acts, not acts proved to be criminal by a court of law. The unthinking, excited, boiling blooded behaviour of the ignorant who today seek power and influence by joining a mob, mobilised by social media, is dangerous. The Government must act. It must use the law to stop these acts of mob rule. Laws against defamation, disruption of business, disturbing the peace, all means available within the law. The law must prevail.

  • Wyndham Dix says:

    As a boy in the 1940s I was taught to offer my seat to a woman, to open a door for her, to allow her to enter or leave a lift (elevator) first, and so on. Women of the day had the grace to acknowledge such courtesies.
    .
    How things have changed, not universally, but widely. Today, such behaviour risks a biting response along the lines of “I don’t need your patronising!”. Such was the fate of a youngish male some years ago who offered to assist a young mother with infant in arms struggling to get her stroller onto a bus.
    .
    Upon relating the incident to an elderly female friend she remarked “But we’re not all like that”, to which I replied “Yes, but we men do not know who is and who is not” and so today we keep our distance (Harry Lee).
    .
    I regard most modern females as the generation of ingrates, to whom affirmative action legislation has ceded privilege, only for it to be abused because it has been given not earned.
    .
    I cancelled my subscription to The Australian several years ago. Even longer ago I stopped watching the ABC, once the channel of choice of my elderly wife and I. The Gemmells, Milligans, Kimmitts and their ilk are thus mere noise, though dangerous (Ceres) because they hold sway today and are utterly impervious to contradiction by the male of the species. And also to male courtesy it seems.

  • March says:

    As reported in the OZ…
    Christian Porter launches defamation action against ABC and journalist Louise Milligan

    Attorney-General Christian Porter has commenced defamation action in the Federal Court against the ABC and journalist Louise Milligan in a bid to clear his name and save his political career.

    Mr Porter is suing the ABC for publishing “false allegations against him” in an online story that claimed he was the subject of historical rape allegations and also for a report in November last year that alleged he was a misogynist and sexist.

    A powerhouse legal team of Bret Walker SC, Sue Chrysanthou SC and Rebekah Giles commenced proceedings in the Federal Court today against the ABC, accusing the public broadcaster of “trial by media” and Milligan of acting with “malice” and engaging in a campaign against Porter in order to harm his reputation and have him removed as Attorney-General.

    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/politicsnow-scramble-to-contain-covid19-leaks-from-hotels-in-brisbane-and-sydney/news-story/d5e445da72a237b4fab32a0410cdc1a9?keyevent=10.33am

  • Doubting Thomas says:

    It will be interesting to see how the ABC deals with this matter. Its blatant conflicts of interest should debar it or any of its minions making any comment whatsoever beyond reporting the bare fact that Porter has sued. Even the twitch of a newsreader’s editorial eyebrow or a contemptuous sneer or tone of voice will be problematical. For myself, many an amusing hour will be spent daydreaming about the range of possibilities should Porter win. Were I in charge of the ABC, I’d rush to settle. My first offer would be a big bundle of money and the heads of Louise Milligan and the producers involved in the Four Corners hatchet job. And if Morrison fails to use this case to totally defang the ABC, he will confirm his total spinelessness.

  • DAVID HAWCROFT says:

    Ah. Lovely to think the tide may be turning.

    And if it does what a field day? For the accusers and the wimps who act on their accusations to sack people and destroy reputations and futures are almost always breaking some law or other.

    The accusers often clearly slanderous. The ‘actors’ who do the sacking etc. often clearly overstepping their bounds and failing to act in accord with their mission statements.

    Look at those American city Mayors and Police chiefs who let Antifa and BLM mobs riot and loot and burn.

    That’s the most dramatic painting of this picture. In the USA they are apparently acting with impunity so far but don’t tell me that given a return to sanity they couldn’t all be found in breach of their duty and the laws of the land?

  • glenda ellis says:

    There are many women who are dismayed by the actions of the Powerbrokers of the Press. But we remain silent because it is just too dangerous to offer any type of alternative, questioning view. I have to put my trust in secret ballots and hope the silent majority still exists. Witch hunts are the craze of the Twittersphere.

  • Martin Carey says:

    “For a start, Porter is not fighting this assault alone.”
    Porter didn’t look like a fighter to me and he is in a fight. His opponents are delighting in his cowering posture and teary eyes and are not swayed in any way towards his totally reasonable position. Porter is a government leader and sometimes as a leader you just have to stand up firmly for what is right, not just for yourself but also for all us other lowly schmucks. What hope have we got when they come for us and we can only think of the uninspiring performance of Porter and Morrison in defending the innocent. The perpetrators of these disgraceful allegations need to be dealt with vigorously.

  • Harry Lee says:

    Martin Carey, yes you make strong and valid points, and ask the important question:
    “What hope do we have?
    Answer:
    There is no prospect for saving Proper Australia from total destruction by the feminists, by the multiculturalist anti-Westernists, from the ALP Big Statists, from the anti-electricity/anti-water, pro-bushfire Greenists, from the people-of-violence and parasites both home-grown and imported by the immigration/refugee systems, from the anti-Westernists who dominate the law industry, the education industry, and the ABC, SBS and 90% of the commercial mainstream media, and almost all of public service activity at Fed, State, Territory, and local Council levels.
    No prospect, none at all.
    Well, no prospect unless several million Ordinary People volunteer their lives -their own time and their own money-to fight within Lib and Nat branches, nation-wide, to put up smart, tough, media-capable, strategy-capable candidates for elective office and the right policies for elected Lib and Nat MPs and Council members to fight for in the parliaments and in the council meetings.
    The Libs and Nats have obviously swung Left/anti-Westernist to follow the voters who have brought the destructive ALP/Green neo-marxism that is now promulgated and enforced in all institutions.
    It’s up to the Ordinary People to fight -and that will require sacrifice.
    Which is why it will likely not happen.

  • Rebekah Meredith says:

    Martin Carey–Mr. Porter may not have shown as strong a front as some of us would like (personally, I’d have preferred that he not take time off right now; but then, I can’t imagine the stress he’s going through), but at least he hasn’t knuckled under. So far he’s stuck it out, refused to admit any possibility of the accusations’ being true, and returned serve to the ABC. All of that would take a lot of courage. Of course, the fact that that is the case shows how mad this godless modern world is.

  • spanielbooks says:

    Let’s keep this simple and admit this is Australia’s Brett Kavanaugh moment. Thank God for Keith Windshuttle and Quadrant.

  • ejp says:

    It is utterly reprehensible that the presumption of innocence has not been acknowledged in this matter.

  • Ezekiel Turner says:

    Mr. Lee, you are a brave man expressing your opinions as they are. Remember the “safe-space” concept should you be attacked; let’s see if it works both ways.

  • Lewis P Buckingham says:

    IM How can one approach the Nikki Gemmell writings without wasting time and at the same time finding out what her latest idea is?
    I found that she places the idea in the first paragraph, meanders for a number, then places her conclusion in the last.
    So just read the first and last paragraphs to keep in touch with her thoughts. Yoy may then understand the inevitable letter of congratulation the following week.

  • Lewis P Buckingham says:

    The ABC has a penchant for not learning from its mistakes.
    Not that George Pell would ever sue them.
    But surely someone in authority at the ABC has figured, that if you take on a soft target, concluding you were always right, then try a hardened one, the financial and reputational damage, will be serious.
    Ditto for taking on ex military, followers of Islam or even ordinary citizens with crowd funding.
    The present attack on Christian Porter through our mouthpiece, the ABC, smacks of the ‘Get Pell’ campaign.
    Porter has the form for the next tall poppy on the ‘right’.
    Some things come to mind.
    His response to the attack on academic freedom now occurring in Australia.
    An icon being over the GBR’s scientific accuracy.
    His calm and careful handling of the legislation that led Tony Abbott before a tribunal as an agent of influence for the UK. A bipartisan bill that was used to again attack Abbott.
    Failing to throw the Universal Human Right to Freedom of Religion, under the bus.
    His seat being marginal, a good old fashioned Labor sponsored, Get Up campaign, plus the loss of his seat, is a glittering prize for the left.
    This latter probability should be part of the quantum of compensation, should he be successful in his action against the ABC.
    We, of course, the mug taxpayers, are paying for all this.
    Cry Beloved Country.

  • Ian MacKenzie says:

    Yes Lewis, that’s about right. The Weekend Magazine used to be where the Australian published the left-wingers, with Nikki Gemmell at the front, Phillip Adams at the back and a mix in-between. However since Michelle Gunn took over as editor of the weekday Australian in the middle of last year, there have been a lot more left-wing opinion writers in that, as well as more “life style” articles. Probably trying to attract a wider audience, but much like the Liberals, trying to diversify just dilutes the brand.
    Good to see Christian Porter pushing back, if somewhat belatedly. I wish him the best of luck, but don’t fancy his chances. I wonder how long it will be before Ms Milligan, probably through her friends, claims she’s the victim here.

  • Elizabeth Beare says:

    “It’s a new world, with new standards … The power feels contagious. This toppling of various giants feels like the movement’s long-lasting legacy … This is the slow burn of the #MeToo movement. The real business, the reckoning. Captains of your world, take note.
    —Nikki Gemmell, The Australian, March 6”

    Nikki Gemmell, you have sons who may be unjustly accused one day. Your ‘contagious power’ may therefore some day come back to bite you. What a very poor thinker and drama queen you really are. The capacity to write also requires the capacity to ponder and think, to investigate and assess, not simply to issue facile gee-ups to those who would rule by the mob rather than the rule of law.

  • Elizabeth Beare says:

    “Probably trying to attract a wider audience, but much like the Liberals, trying to diversify just dilutes the brand.” She’s not doing a very good job of attracting a wider audience from what I know and see. She’s the same sort of ‘hire’ I suspect as the woke purveyor of virtue at Minter Ellison and doing just as much damage to her brand as was done there; and deserving of the same response: a prompt removal. Just about everyone we know, including our good and literate selves, have dumped their subscription to The Australian in the past six months, as the reportage from the US was so hopelessly biased and the moderation of comments was intolerable, run by amateur J-school vigilantes of the millennial left.
    Why pay one’s own good taxed money for this sort of rubbish?

  • Sydgal says:

    Milligan has tweeted this afternoon that she is “delighted” about 3 Melbourne Press Club Quill nominations for her 4 Corners Stories Boys Club and Inside the Canberra Bubble, and named her colleagues involved with these programs.

  • Elizabeth Beare says:

    If Christian Porter is to be dragged over the hot coals of mob justice, so should Shorten be.
    I am in favour of neither being so treated, but at least Sheriff is alive and mentally clear enough to make her case, whereas the woman in Porter’s case seems to have been, on her family’s statements, of unsound mind for some years before and after this alleged event and the allegations themselves reek of fantasy and implanted ‘recovered’ memories. The police have declared ‘no case’ for both women. Let is rest there.

  • Harry Lee says:

    Time for this:
    Full exposure of the personal lives of the anti-Porter people, and those who are puppeteering Higgins, and Higgins herself.
    That is, we must be told of the important factors in the lives of accusers -and their handlers- that would allow us to assess the credibility of these people, and their political allegiances.
    The journalists, lawyers, friends, associates of persons, dead or alive, who claim to have they a case against Liberal ministers, MPs and staffers -we must be informed as to their claims to be plausibly truthful and/or not Leftist in ideology.
    And we must have the same full exposure of the lives of the accusers, alive or dead.
    Yes, this will be expensive and unpleasant for some -but the elevation of accusation to guilty verdict is Very Bad.
    It’s what happened in the USSR and Mao’s China, and many tens of millions of innocent people were murdered as a result.
    (Porter’s accuser told the police she did not want the case to proceed. It is highly suspicious that leftist journalists, lawyers and friends of the accuser want the case to proceed. The Left must be stopped. No Leftist can be trusted with other peoples’ lives. Obvious.)

  • nelson-jones says:

    As a retired Media Analyst I still pour over a number of daily publications and I wish to inform the public that the ‘glass ceiling’ has been well and truly been smashed through. There should now be a Royal Commission into the future of the ABC as it has become a weapon of destruction and bile and no where near any charter. With all that I am seeing on all media where women are heading large numbers of corporations, quongos, organisations etc etc and as the journalist Greg Sheridan recently wrote that these woman have gone to the left and and men to the right. Men just do not know where they stand any longer, what to say, It’s time for International men’s day because it stands to reason with the giant shift in roles (some of which were needed ) it has gone too far to the left. I have walked through a life full of participation beside men and found the majority of males respectful (even though I had two divorces). A breakdown in society is part of the problem. Turning away from God does not help either. The standard of journalism has plummeted . Social media has created more problems for this militancy to thrive on also. The behaviour these militant women slam in front of us each day should make Mrs Pankhurst turn in her grave. Spare me. BLOODY ABC!

Leave a Reply