Their ABC – Australia’s taxpayer-funded leftist propaganda outfit – is at it again. Where once, perhaps, the ABC occasionally remembered how to do polity-shaking investigative journalism, now it mostly does hysterical propaganda and grubby mud-slinging. The nadir of the ABC, perhaps, has been its unhinged witch-hunting of Cardinal George Pell. Even after Pell’s name was unanimously cleared by the highest court in the land, ABC journalists were reprimanded by management for continuing to smear the Cardinal as “disgraced”.
But now the ABC’s witches have moved onto a new target for their mud-slinging: the Morrison government.
An extraordinary row has erupted between the Coalition and the ABC after the public broadcaster accused Morrison government ministers of sexism and a ”pattern of inappropriate sexual behaviour”.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told Four Corners that he had warned the then social services minister Christian Porter against inappropriate behaviour and said he could have been compromised after being seen drinking in the company of a young woman in December 2017.
Remember how the left-media mocked US vice-president Mike Pence for his “Pence Rule” of never being alone in the company of a woman? Pence is looking pretty smart, right now.
The same ABC that has spent weeks vociferously defending NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian for having a secret affair with a colleague accused of widespread corruption is now smearing former Morrison government ministers for an alleged affair with a staffer.
The program also revealed an affair between the then human services minister Alan Tudge and a member of his staff, and quoted Labor’s home affairs spokeswoman, Kristina Keneally, and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who both raised allegations about sexually inappropriate behaviour by Coalition figures.
Sarah Hanson-Young of all people might have thought twice about flinging accusations at other people. It seems somewhat hypocritical for someone who sued a fellow MP for imputing “sexually inappropriate behaviour” to now turn around and do the same.
Or is it one rule for the girls and another for the boys?
Mr Porter said he was considering legal action against the ABC as he rejected the program’s depiction of his actions in the bar and said reporter Louise Milligan failed to contact him or his office[…]
“The journalist, Louise Milligan, never contacted me or my office, despite my awareness that for many months she has been directly contacting friends, former colleagues, former students — even old school friends from the mid 1980s — asking for rumours and negative comment about me,” Mr Porter said.
Louise Milligan is already notorious for her vindictive pursuit of Cardinal Pell, having spent years levelling grubby, unsubstantiated allegations and gleefully celebrating at his (false) conviction.
But, muckrakers gotta rake muck, I guess.
The ABC program did not canvass any allegations against politicians in Labor, the Greens or on the crossbench, though it did acknowledge Liberal politicians were not the only ones to “cross this line”.
Quelle surprise.
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