If you didn’t know any better one could almost assume Rupert
Murdoch’s latest visit to our shores was something of a victory lap, coming so
soon after the Sun King’s latest triumph in knocking over the Gillard
Government’s pesky media reforms.
Barely two weeks after his troops at News Ltd forced
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy into a humiliating back-down
on a suite of media reforms which, among other horrors, would’ve introduced a
public interest advocate to keep it accountable, Rupert and his trusted
offsider and fellow Aussie Robert Thompson were back in town. While business
was no doubt the reason for him deigning us with his presence, the great man
took time out to be guest speaker at the 70th anniversary dinner for
right wing Melbourne think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. There he was
able to rub shoulders and sip Kool Aid with the likes of Tony Abbott, George
Pell, Andrew Bolt and of course IPA hacks like John Roskam and Tim Wilson who’d
taken time out from appearing on the ABC to kiss the great man’s feet.
The buzzword of the evening was freedom. As the slogan alluded, ‘The IPA Fighting for
Freedom for 70 Years’. Freedom of speech; freedom of the press; freedom from any
accountability or oversight; freedom for corporations and billionaires to
whatever they bloody well like; you name it, the IPA and their fellow
travellers in Murdoch’s News Ltd and the Liberal Party had fought for it and
won it. Without this axis of freedom, communism would surely reign.
The most recent and prominent example of their efforts to
uphold freedom is their trashing of the affor-mentioned media reforms.
To put it mildly, the Axis of Freedom and News Ltd in particular, hated the prospect of any
government oversight of their journalism. Whether Conroy’s legislation was
actually as a bad as they made out was a moot point, but the reality is that
the Axis screeched so loudly about what
they saw as an egregious threat to freedom of the press, free speech and
democracy itself, that it was impossible for any sensible analysis of the bills
to be heard. The highpoint in this barrage of hyperbole was the Daily
Telegraph’s immortal front
page which compared Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to Joseph
Stalin. In the wake of such an offensive comparison the Tele duly apologised; to
Joe. This, along with the absurdly short time frame that Conroy allowed for
the bills to be assessed before a vote, lead to their premature death.
This scenario closely mirrors that involving another piece
of contentious legislation that the Axis was able to force the Gillard
Government to retreat from, the Human Rights and Anti- Discrimination Bill. The
bill was aimed at consolidating and simplifying existing anti-discrimination
laws such as those relating to racial and sex discrimination, with the racial
discrimination clauses coming in for particular attention from the Axis. Again
their response was to simply cry FREEDOM OF SPEECH long enough and loud enough
for any dissenting view or nuanced opinion to be completely drowned out and
ignored. New Attorney General Mark Dreyfus has since announced that the most contentious
parts of the bill have being sent back to the department for re-examination,
while his predecessor and the originator of the bills, Nicola Roxon, has resigned from her position and will soon leave
the parliament.
And who could forget the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the
Axis when one of their favourite sons, Herald Sun firebrand Andrew Bolt, was
found guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act in the Federal Court in
2011. The judgement
found that two of Bolt’s columns published in 2009 in which he attacked light
skinned aborigines for identifying as indigenous while appearing otherwise,
were riddled with errors and had an intimidatory and humiliating tone.
Such matters were of little interest to the Axis though who
just screamed FREEDOM OF SPEECH ad- nauseum in response. Bolt himself entered
the fray the day after the judgement squealing about this freedom of speech
being curtailed on the front
page of the Herald Sun. The irony of Australia’s most widely read columnist
complaining about his lack of free speech from the front page of the country’s
highest selling daily paper seemed lost on the man himself. Proving that the Axis
stick together the IPA took out full
page ads in the national press defending Bolt’s right to smear people on
the basis of falsehoods and Tony Abbott has politely agreed to abolish
the part of the act under which he was found guilty if elected Prime Minister.
So often have the Axis of Freedom shouted freedom of speech everywhere and anywhere, that it is at risk of
becoming one of those hackneyed, go-to phrases that conservatives reflexively
reach for when challenged. Much like the how the term ‘politically correct’ has been used to convey the frustration of
people who can’t be bigoted anymore, or the way ‘class warfare’ is used whenever wealthy people are asked to
contribute their fair share to society, conservatives shouting about freedom of
speech seem to be doing so to preserve the conservative hegemony that controls
much of our press and public discourse rather than any altruistic concern for
freedom and plurality.
If they really were so concerned about freedom of speech and
freedom of the press maybe they would’ve been much more vocal about some recent
developments that really threaten both of these ideals.
Gina Rhineheart is Australia’s richest person and the
world’s richest woman. She is also the largest shareholder in Fairfax Media, publisher of The Age and The
Sydney Morning Herald, the only opposition to News Ltd.’s dominance of
Australian print media. The mining heiress is also a well known conservative
with close links to The Liberal Party, IPA and is an unabashed admirer of Andrew
Bolt. With such a close association to the Axis of Freedom it was no surprise
that she was an honoured guest at the IPA’s Anniversary Dinner, where she
seated next to, you guessed it, Rupert Murdoch.
Rhineheart’s lawyers recently served a subpoena
against Fairfax journalist Adele Ferguson, that’s right a Fairfax journalist. The subpoena is aimed at forcing Ferguson to
reveal her sources for stories she has written about a protracted legal battle
between Rhineheart and her children over control of a family trust. If Ferguson
refuses to protect her sources, a
fundamental tenant of journalism, she could go to jail. If surely there is a
threat to freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Australia it is the ultra-rich
using the courts to silence journalists reporting on their affairs. The fact that Rhineheart is doing it to a
journalist working for the very same company she has invested heavily in, is
even more remarkable.
As Ferguson’s Fairfax colleague Nick McKenzie
pondered ‘
it makes one wonder whether she cares about journalism at all’.
That’s something everyone’s been wondering since Rhineheart
bought a large slice of Fairfax back in late 2011. The Fairfax board however
have always been fairly sure and as a result have refused to allow Rhineheart a
seat on the board unless she agrees to sign the company’s charter of editorial
independence. Rhineheart has duly resisted to sign the charter and her pursuit
of journalist’s such as Ferguson and The West Australians’s Steve Pennells
shows why; she’s more interested in silencing desenting voices than investing
in media or upholding any semblance of press freedom
Which brings us to Rhineheart’s presence at the IPA Dinner
and the strange silence from Axis of Freedom on an issue one would expect
they’d be all over. While Rhineheart,
Bolt and Murdoch were having a whale of a time at the IPA shindig, those truly
concerned about press freedom were adding to the more than 30,000 signatures on
the change.org petition calling on Rhinehart to drop her actions against
Ferguson and Pennells. While Bolt was acting as MC for the night, he was being
called upon by other journalists to come out in support of Ferguson, knowing
only too well what it’s like to be dragged through the courts for something
he’s written. And did Rupert Murdoch use his seat next to Miss Rhinehart to
urge her to cease her censorious ways?
Not likely.
Because, if we’ve learnt anything from the behaviour of the
Axis, it’s that freedom is important, but not as much as money and power.
Rhineheart is rumoured to be a major
donor to the IPA and has worked closely with their attempts to develop Australia’s north. She is known to be
close to Andrew Bolt who has recently used his various media appearances to act
as something of an unofficial
press secretary for the mining magnate. And Murdoch’s News Ltd.’s outlets
have practically demanded
she be allowed on the Fairfax board, knowing full well that it would further
decrease the ideological plurality of the Australian press and further enhance
the conservative control over of it.
And this of course is the ultimate goal of the Axis; the
freedom of right-wing speech.
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