Abbott time
While Australia generally assembles our hard-right fixations and talking points from imported parts these days, a tipster got in touch recently to remind us that some of our world-leading efforts still reverberate.
Take Björn Höcke, the candidate who just lead the far right Alternative for Germany to its “historic success” in the eastern German state of Thuringia. In a 2017 speech he criticised Berlin’s Holocaust memorial, arguing Germany needs “nothing less than a 180-degree turnaround in the politics of remembrance”. He has since apologised. Höcke has also been repeatedly convicted of knowingly using a Nazi slogan (illegal in Germany), though the former history teacher has denied knowing the phrase’s origin. You get the idea.
Our tipster pointed out this section of a recent speech, in which Höcke praises former prime minister Tony Abbott. We ran it past some fluent German speakers, who provided the following translation:
… the AfD … put[s] German interests first, and I remember in this connection, a comment by the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, who is the father of the ‘No Way’ campaign in Australia in 2015, 2016, who were also confronted with an invasion of illegal migrants, and Abbott started the ‘No Way’ campaign.
And he made it clear with adverts and so forth — in no way for you as illegal migrants will there ever be a home in Australia. And Tony Abbott, dear friends, at that time sent a clear message to all those politicians who danced around the sovereignty issue. He said ‘There is no international law, that can break the law of a sovereign country, a sovereign people, to decide for themselves who they would like to live together with, and who not.’
He concludes, to applause, “we want an end to multi-culturalisation and an end to migration”.
Frankly, we think Höcke is giving Abbott a little too much credit — the tough talk of both John Howard and Kevin Rudd predates Tony’s time in the Lodge, and his successor Malcolm Turnbull had Donald Trump giddy with envy when describing our treatment of asylum seekers. Regardless, it’s a proud reminder that whatever other embarrassments we suffer, Australians are true world leaders when it comes to emboldening sinister political forces with hard-hearted treatment of people fleeing war and persecution.
A Sharpe little operator
Remember AUKUS Forum, the media-shy business network launched with the help of ex-ministers Joel Fitzgibbon and Arthur Sinodinos to take advantage of the rivers of AUKUS gold? We haven’t written about it in months, but that doesn’t mean the people behind the venture have been idle. A tipster reached out to call our attention to a Facebook post by the forum’s chief executive, Michael Sharpe, posted from the US where he is currently on a networking tour.
In the post, Sharpe is pictured wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, saying it’s “great to be back at Trump tower”, the “iconic landmark building on the prestigious 5th Avenue, in the heart of New York City”.
Between the time Crikey received a screenshot of the post and us trying unsuccessfully to reach Sharpe for an interview, the missive had been deleted. Had Sharpe responded, we would have loved to ask him whether it’s important for entrepreneurs in the AUKUS sphere to try to get close to Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, in case he wins in November.
Down pat
Say what you want about the guy, Pat Mesiti has a hell of an address book. We previously noted that Mesiti — most famous for pleading guilty in 2016 to assaulting his wife and for being dumped as a Hillsong minister for engaging sex workers — had done pretty well in getting John Howard to discuss how to save Australians “from the looming financial threats”.
Now Mesiti is continuing the ’90s nostalgia vibe like some kind of tory RnB Fridays. He’s getting former speaker Bronwyn Bishop and former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer to, we are promised, “reveal the truth behind the government’s huge financial, geopolitical and economic cover-ups”.
Just how much insight these two Liberal grandees can claim into anything the current Labor government is up to is debatable. But certainly cover-ups are something we wouldn’t mind hearing their views on. Downer, for example, could enlighten us about that time in 2004 when he was the foreign minister, and the Australian government ordered ASIS to illegally bug the Timor-Leste cabinet during negotiations over the country’s undersea oil and gas reserves and no-one knew about it for eight years?
As for Bishop, we’re pretty certain her theory will involve the creeping ills of “socialism”; in recent years, she’s barely encountered a parking ticket she couldn’t ascribe to the malign influence of Marx. Indeed, who better to talk us through matters of geopolitics and economics than someone who describes every attack on misuse of public money as the act of never-named “socialists“?
Adbel-Fattah says Press Council treated her complaint ‘with contempt’
The Age’s July 7 feature “The denial and disinformation facing October 7 survivors”, attracted significant criticism from pro-Palestine groups over its characterisation of the Israel-Gaza war.
Lawyer Randa Abdel-Fattah was among those contacted for the piece, and ultimately lodged a Press Council complaint, arguing she was cast as an October 7 denier and that a number of the issues raised by the article’s author Chip Le Grand (largely relying on a controversial December 2023 report in The New York Times) were either misleading in their publication or were otherwise factually incorrect.
The Press Council, in dismissing the complaint, found it was “unlikely” that the matters about which she had expressed concern “would be considered a breach of the council’s standards of practice”. The Age’s editor Patrick Elligett provided a statement to Crikey saying he was “pleased the Press Council vindicated our reporting”.
Abdel-Fattah, speaking to Crikey, said that she felt the Press Council had treated the issue with “such contempt” that she wouldn’t seek a review of the decision.
“I have no confidence it will be engaged with on a good faith basis,” she said.
Abdel-Fattah maintained that while she thought the article defamatory, she would not be filing a case owing to a lack of resources.
“For me, the bigger issue here is the laundering of Israeli propaganda points, how that manufactures consent for this genocide, and holding these publications to account,” she said.
