Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

FYI: Margo is on Difference of Opinon (ABC TV) at 9.30pm tomorrow night, and Late Night Live (Radio National) after 10pm on the same night. (DOO is recorded 'as live' in the early evening)

Margo: NSW Labor and Federal Liberals have cut the Greens vote election after election through a few ethically bankrupt Murdoch journos. In 2003 and 2007, The Daily Tele came to the party at the NSW State election; in the 2004 federal election, Melbourne's Herald Sun did the job. See my piece Bashing the Greens and Harry Heidelberg's piece Why can't we ever discuss difficult things.

It hasn't happened this time, yet, so the Libs are doing it for themselves, through sneaky brochures and print ads they don't put their logo or their canadidate's name to.

It's a first for Canberra, because the Greens are close to toppling the Liberal Senator. The ACT people don't seem to be listening, though. They are closest to the systemic corruption of this government, illustrated yet again in this morning's Canberra Times:

Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull overruled an expert scientific panel's recommendation for the Australian National University to co-host a new $50 million national climate change adaptation centre.

Government sources say the bid by the Universities Climate Consortium an alliance formed by the ANU, Monash University, the University of NSW and the University of Melbourne was widely regarded as "unbeatable" because of the world-class expertise and international reputations of its key climate scientists.

They claim the expert panel's recommendation was overturned after pressure from Prime Minister John Howard to support a rival bid led by a university based in the safe Liberal seat of Moncrieff on Queensland's northern Gold Coast...

Government sources told The Canberra Times the bid was endorsed by an expert scientific panel, chaired by Australia's chief scientist Dr Jim Peacock, which applied "a thorough and rigorous process" to shortlisting and interviewing applicants.

They claim the panel sent its final recommendation to Mr Turnbull in mid-September but members were not told of the decision until last week, shortly before the announcement was made by the minister during a campaign visit to the Gold Coast.

Flanked by Mr Ciobo, Mr Turnbull announced a group of eight universities led by Griffith University's Gold Coast campus would host the new centre...

A spokesman for the minister said the decision was made "before the caretaker period was announced", but ANU sources say the university was not notified its bid had been rejected until it received a telephone call several hours before the minister's decision was announced.
Others involved in the rejected bid said they had "heard nothing" about an impending decision by the minister prior to the election being called and had assumed a decision would be deferred during the caretaker period.

The expert panel made its final recommendation to the minister in mid-September, submitting two proposals for consideration but favouring the ANU bid...

One of Australia's leading climate scientists, former chief of CSIRO's atmospheric research division, Graeme Pearman, described the Government's decision to reject the climate consortium bid "as totally bewildering".

Dr Pearman, who recently briefed former US president Al Gore on new developments in climate change research during his visit to Australia, described the rejected bid as "way out in front of all other possible contenders" to host the new national centre. "It was such a strong proposal because of the quality of the people involved."

Interestingly, this time round the Liberal scare coincides with an ugly print and TV campaign by 'Timber Workers of Australia', a front for Gunns. The Libs keep great company, don't they? Here's the text:

BROWN OUT

OR BLACKOUT

The Greens' radical policies will turn off the Australian economy

No roads = No cars

No farms = No food

No mines, no dams = No electricity

No forestry = No jobs

No Life - Goodnight

WAKE UP CANBERRA

VOTE THE GREENS OUT!

Here's Mike Clancy on the entry of hate politics into the ACT campaign.
 

Libs smear Greens in ACT, cause the times they are a changing

by Mike Clancy 

Should we be surprised that Gary Humphries' Liberal ACT Senate campaign has stooped to smearing his opponents? He is now letterboxing Canberra with tired old lies about the Greens.

Haven't we seen this before?

An article in the Herald Sun before the 2004 election slammed the Greens for a bunch of extreme policy positions they didn't hold 1, trying to paint them as irresponsible on social and tax policies. The Greens were dealt a body blow by this treatment, with leader Bob Brown estimating it cost them hundreds of thousands of votes.

The Australian Press Council, which regulates media in Australia, condemned the original article as 'irresponsible journalism'. 2

But the Murdoch journalist who wrote the article showed it went much further than that when he admitted to the Council that the source of the propaganda had been the Liberal Party itself! His newspaper had enabled the Liberals to 'launder' their own libellous concoctions and to disguise their source. As dirty tricks go, this has got to be one of the most cunning.

In 2004, the Murdoch press itself used these lies to attack the Greens, repeating them over and over in many guises and painting the Greens as untrustworthy. Yet, as the past three years have demonstrated, when it comes to the big issues, such as Iraq, WorkChoices and climate change, Bob Brown and his Greens were right time and again. They are far more trustworthy than the government.

When the nation's government conspires with the world's most powerful media organisation to disseminate lies about another political party, our democracy is in big trouble.

Will the Murdoch press do the same in 2007? Will they once again be so brazen as to pick up these Liberal lies and report them as fact?

Never has the case been stronger for a change of power in the Senate, where minor parties and independents can once again prevent such abuses. As GetUp's Brett Solomon says, " We know that there are two elections happening on November 24. There's the election for the Prime Minister and then there's the election for who is going to keep an eye on the Prime Minister."

Under pressure, Garry Humphries has shown himself as just another peddler of Liberal smears, not someone I would trust to keep an eye on government.
 

1. G McManus, 31 August 2004 ‘Greens back illegal drugs’, Herald Sun, p. 3.

2. Australian Press Council, February 2005, Adjudication No. 1270, accessed 12 March 2007.