Culbability

While we’re all finger pointing, let’s not forget to point fingers, thumbs and toes at every journalist in the country, because it seems as if every one of them was gleeful and sloppy in the way they reported the events of and statements made on Australia Day.  Even without the added burden of rubbish reporting, members of the public tend to go ferrel over things like this.  Letter writers and commenters have, alas, reflected the foaming inaccuracy of our journalists.

Oddly – and we do have to ask why – barely a couple of lines of reporting have addressed the validity of the accusation of racism against Tony Abbott.  His work in Aboriginal communities isn’t a secret, or his support and praise for Rudd’s “sorry”, and so on. That he is not a racist is demonstrable, over a long period of time.

Also odd and also left unchallenged, are the many claims by the ring leaders and various protesters that “obviously” inflammatory statements would inevitably “lead to violence”.

Really?  Every time anyone says something (even if utterly misinterpreted) that we don’t like we can – excusably – resort to violence?

I’d like to try that someday, but I don’t think the press would give me such sympathetic coverage and the police would have me rounded up, charged and put away.  So, I won’t risk the experiment.

I’m also incensed at the misrepresentation of what is and isn’t a “security breach” in relation to the activities and whereabouts of the PM or the opposition leader on any given day. 

This, from news online:

Classified breach of protocol

In one of the most serious security breaches in recent political history, it has been confirmed that classified information given to a protest group which marched on a Canberra restaurant to confront Tony Abbott came from inside the PM's office.

Julia Gillard's media adviser Tony Hodges last night resigned after admitting he revealed the location of an Australia Day awards ceremony being attended by the PM and Mr Abbott to a person linked to the Aboriginal tent embassy protest.

This is not the first mention and likely won’t be the last to suggest that this was secure information.

I don't believe it was; classified, that is.

I receive an email before 9am, Monday to Friday, along with thousands of other people who subscribe to political news from The Australian.  The first item in that email tells me – and everyone else – where the Prime Minister will be, at what time, and what she will be doing; the second item provides the same information for Tony Abbott.  The respective offices of the Prime Minister and the opposition leader GIVE this information to the media.  It’s not secure information.  Anything that is secure would not be on that list.  It’s absurd for anyone to believe that attendance at an awards ceremony on Australia Day was deemed top secret information and not on the diary lists for both the PM and for Tony Abbott. 

Classified?  If so, every person in attendance (restaurant staff, attendees, invited relatives, all journalists, camera people, etc) would have been required to sign a confidentiality agreement prior to them being told where to go for the ceremony.  I struggle to envisage that happening.  Of course, if someone produces a large pile of signed confidentiality statements, along with details of how a well known restaurant with full length windows on all sides was selected as a suitably "secret" location for the event, then I will, of course, stand (or sit) corrected. 

  

Gillard furious at Tone ... again; all back to normal

Abbott pisses away his moment of goodwill

Phew.  Crisis averted:  federal pollies have resumed their usual positions.

Only three days after an ugly protest in Canberra, during which the Prime Minister and the opposition leader shared personal protection, a car and a few moments of mutual concern, the level of politics in this country has plummeted back down to the eleventh level of hell.

It only took Tony a couple of days to go back to being feral, blowing any chance that he could spin his moment of goodwill into a year of positivity.  It need not be this way, but we all know Tony:  exactly like Homer Simpson, he always has to ruin everything by going too far.  And so he has. Again.

Julia Gillard says she is absolutely furious at Tony Abbott's insinuation that she was behind the violent protests that broke out at the Lobby restaurant in Canberra. 

 

“For it to be insinuated that I played some role to detract attention from the Australians who had performed miracles during natural disasters makes me furious. It's absolutely typical of his negativity and tendency to go too far,” Ms Gillard said in a statement.

Gillard furious at Tone ... again; all back to normal 

Meanwhile, duelling petitions have been established online:

- one to abolish the Aboriginal tent embassy 

- the other to abolish the petition to abolish the Aboriginal tent embassy.

May the best petition win.

Denial

One of the founders of the Aboriginal tent embassy, Michael Anderson, said people should "get over" the protest and denied it had been violent.

"We're over it, so get over it and move on," he said.

 Supercilious jerk. 

Flag burning inflames race protest (sub-editor was half asleep when writing that headline, yes?)

 

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s lost shoe is threatening to boost retail sales. 

Women hot foot it to buy Julia’s shoe