The entrenched hatred of women in the News Limited stable is getting worse; Barry Everingham wonders if they will ever stop feeling intimidated by powerful women?
The outrageous hounding from office by the Melbourne Herald Sun and The Australian of former Victorian Police Commissioner Christine Nixon might have caused mirth and a GOTCHA attitude in the newsrooms of those grubby outlets but it was nothing short of criminal.
She’s only a woman — let’s get ’er!
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph adopts the same attitude to the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.
With help from Melbourne’s village idiot, Andrew Bolt, there seems to be an obsession with Ms Gillard. This is fanned along by that pompous fool Piers Ackermann, who it has to be admitted had the spine – that Bolt didn’t – to criticise that amazing Australian icon, the 102 year old Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, who had Ackerman going insane on The Insiders, because she went into bat for approving the Government’s climate change stance.
At the name of Gillard, Andrew Bolt goes ape and of course this excites beyond all measure what passes for sanity and serious thought among those readers who believe what he says on any subject.
Bolt, of course, is in the thrall of Lord Christopher Monckton — one of the most ridiculed Englishmen on the face of the Earth.
Now it has to be said that Ms Nixon, Dame Elisabeth and Prime Minister Gillard all have the right of reply.
But the rage of the News Limited rags reached unbelievable depths when they take on Australia’s number one citizen, Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce, who represents our Head of State, Queen Elizabeth II.
The Governor General is one Australian who would never dignify criticism, or even approval, by commenting.
The rules of her high office prevent this.
Which makes the totally scurrilous stories about her in Brisbane’s Courier Mail, the Herald Sun, the Daily Telegraph and The Australian so absolutely disgusting.
A recap.
The Governor General and her husband, Michael Bryce, were on leave in Queensland. They travelled north from Canberra by commercial jet paying normal commercial rates.
The vice regal couple could have used their RAAF VIP jet — that all their predecessors in similar situations had traditionally used, it should be noted.
Nothing wrong with that — it’s part of the job.
Also part of the job is the 24 hour-a-day presence of the Australian Federal Police VIP protection unit.
In these scatter-gun times all prominent federal politicians, Prime Ministers, Opposition Leaders are accorded the same protection.
In the case of Her Excellency, on her leaving Brisbane airport for Canberra she was, like all passengers, ushered through the airport security check.
Now at this point it should be said she could have “pulled rank”, as could her security detail, and opted not to have the check.
This would have been totally foreign to this iconic Australia woman — it’s just not her style.
While she was walking through she set off an alarm.
My totally impeccable sources tell me the airport officer checking the alarm was hoping to show just how important she was and started acting inappropriately, so much so she was temporarily relived of her duties.
Ms Bryce was ushered away by her security detail.
Needless to say, the unions got involved claiming the so-called treatment of the airport officer was “…an absolute disgrace for being disciplined for enforcing the law”.
An AFP spokesman said there was “no inappropriate behaviour at the airport by the AFP security detail”.
Having taken this incident out of all proportion and reporting it incorrectly, News Limited had a final shot, accusing the Governor General of spending $700,000 on a 18 day African tour.
The Governor General spending the money?
It shows the paucity of serious reporting by the News stable.
The Governor General, like her boss in London, does what the Prime Minister of the day says. Kevin Rudd sent Ms Bryce on the 18 day trip to Africa — it wasn’t her decision.
Criticism of public figures of the calibre mentioned here by an organisation who admits to hacking into a missing young girl’s mobile telephone — and actually deleting messages, giving her distraught parents hope she might still be alive when all the time the child was dead, makes the pointing of fingers by that organisation a sick – very sick – practise indeed.
