According to Anthony Albanese, decrying the Murdoch empire is more disrespectful than destabilising democracies, destroying the planet, disinforming the public and dodging millions of dollars in taxes for decades.
No matter their stripes, one thing almost all politicians seem to have in common is a selective memory — that and their inevitable capitulation to the bloated billionaires who own the majority of our land, its natural resources and our elected officials.
At the beginning of 2022, an election year, I was filmed side-eyeing Scott Morrison, Anthony’s opponent, during a morning tea hosted at The Lodge for the Australian of the Year Award nominees. The national media landscape exploded.
That evening at the ceremony, Anthony asked to take a photo with me. He promptly posted the image of us smiling to his social media channels, capitalising on the hype and drawing a stark contrast between himself and the duplicitous thug he hoped to beat at the polls. When Anthony was asked by journalists what he thought of my behaviour towards Scott, he insisted I didn’t need his advice (as if I’d take it regardless).
While the fallout from that episode still dogs me, I regret nothing. I wonder if Anthony does. How the mighty are forgetful and forced to obey their even mightier masters.
Fast forward to January 25 this year, when Anthony Albanese, now prime minister, hosted a morning tea for the Australian of the Year Award nominees at The Lodge, where I wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “FUCK MURDOCH”. Once again, the not-so-free press erupted into a frenzy.
This time, Anthony wasn’t so pleased. My message to Rupert, the malignant media mogul with disproportionate influence over public discourse, is apparently less convenient to his current campaign.
Among Anthony’s criticisms was that my explicit t-shirt “was disrespectful of the event and of the people who that event was primarily for”, namely the award nominees, their guests, fellow alumni and National Australia Day Council members in attendance.
Surely these were not the same people who asked to take selfies with me wearing the t-shirt in the courtyard, who commended me for taking a stand and staying true to myself? These people — including medical doctors, academics, scientists, musicians, writers, entrepreneurs, athletes, advocates and even a former soldier who proudly showed me their own anti-Murdoch merchandise? As I was leaving The Lodge, one of the prime minister’s staff remarked, “There are many of us here who wish we could wear that shirt.” Afterwards, journalists wanted to pose beside me.
Each of us at the event has one thing in common: we are trying to make a positive difference. It’s all well and good for hardworking individuals and grassroots organisations to tinker around the edges of broken systems, but we are fighting an unfair fight. Hovering above us is a small cohort whose concentration of wealth is big enough to fund any number of groundbreaking, lifesaving initiatives, but who consistently choose to grow their own power instead. Should any of our causes threaten their way of life, they can simply derail them and rewrite history.
Anthony claimed it wasn’t the appropriate time or place to dress as I did. It seems there’s never an appropriate time or place to tell the truth. Maybe Mother Nature should make an appointment, because it seems it’s never the right moment to say that the glaciers are melting, or that the earth’s temperature is rising, or that non-native plants and trees are the kindling of uncontrollable fires responsible for destroying thousands of homes worldwide.
Maybe the general public should make an appointment to talk more about the overwhelming, growing body of scientific data on human-driven climate change that has been available to us for more than 50 years but which has been drenched in doubt, if not flatly denied, by the likes of Rupert Murdoch.
Being a diehard St Kilda supporter, I’m accustomed to disappointment. Although I can guarantee there’s not a single AFL team with weaker knees than the Commonwealth. We’ve all watched in disgust over the past 16 months as the once-impassioned politician, who used to make speeches in Parliament supporting Palestinian liberation, has overseen the contortion of his government’s PR apparatus in defence of Israel’s genocidal operation. There are no moral “wars”, only economic ones.
We are a spineless colony of the United States, whose overblown defence economy — propped up by warrior conservative powerbrokers like Murdoch, panicked by the slightest whiff of social revolution — dictates the play. Israel is also a proxy, using the open-air prison of Gaza as a laboratory for its booming weapons and surveillance technology industries so it can export a “battle-tested” colonial occupation model to the rest of the world. Australia is on a long client list, one that includes Arab nations that buy Israel’s products to use on their own people.
It alarms me how little people seem to know about Rupert, a man who owns far more than the news. If anything, his media empire is a front for his various business ventures. It’s the instrument he uses to promote policies that benefit him while brainwashing the everyday person into believing they’re also good for them.
I’ve read several biographies of Murdoch, all more akin to a horror novel than any work of nonfiction. For over half a century, he has owned and controlled the biggest portion of the public conscience. He is an oil baron, an inside trader, a propagandist and a political puppet master. He spearheaded the media campaign to topple Gough Whitlam, resulting in a mass exodus of newspaper staff following Gough’s dismissal in 1975.
In 1983 Rupert was introduced to Ronald Reagan, whose infamous era of deregulation helped transform Murdoch into an untouchable king. Their connection was engineered by Roy Cohn, a ruthless New York-based attorney who defended mob bosses and, most notably, served as chief counsel for Joseph McCarthy. Cohn was also a key mentor of Donald Trump, whose initial foray into politics was in the early 1980s when he tried to buy News of the World to help sway the public in his favour. He was bested by Robert Maxwell, Rupert Murdoch’s arch-nemesis.
It would be another 30 years before the first Trump administration began in 2017, proudly brought to you by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Now here we are again, watching helplessly as history repeats itself from the bleachers, behind the other oligarchs who conspired to manufacture the outcome while sitting in the front row.
Today, Rupert — whose estimated wealth exceeds $20 billion — sits on boards with former CIA directors and defence secretaries. Despite failing to guarantee his son Lachlan as his successor at the expense of his other children — and despite the Murdoch-owned News Group Newspapers recently being forced to admit unlawful activities and apologise for surveillance, misuse of private information and phone-hacking — Rupert Murdoch remains with most of his fangs intact, the ageing demon in human skin that he is.
When presented with a petition that received more than half a million signatures demanding a royal commission into the Murdoch regime, Anthony Albanese did nothing.
In the past two days, there’s been more outrage over my silly t-shirt than this genuinely outrageous reality, or the fact that on January 26, footage of young boys referring to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as “slaves” and “n*****s” flooded the internet. Australia’s mainstream media machine has once again proven itself to be a vacuous, hypocritical, self-serving vortex of exponential waste, ironically ensuring that my point was made over and over and over again. The imperialist hegemony is more afraid of equity, justice, truth, peace and a sense of humour than it is of the world literally burning.
Anthony’s predictable response to my two-word statement has reinforced just how poisonous Murdoch’s grip on the Western world still is. It’s also revealed that while Australia casts itself as a laidback larrikin, game for a laugh, it is in fact a cowardly cop bought by the illusion of civility politics.
Still, there is a bigger picture worth prioritising. While I don’t subscribe to the two-party system, I’m not naive enough to think it will suddenly dissolve. Clearly, the Murdoch propaganda outfit is backing Peter Dutton, who would be a more dangerous prime minister than Anthony Albanese.
Big conversations start with simple, effective messages. There will always be detractors. Pushback is a sign of progress. When I frowned at Scott in 2022, my mother gave me an absolute bath — she was fuming. She’s since come around and has the image on her phone case. After I wore the anti-Murdoch shirt, she sent me a text saying, “Lovely photo of you and the PM and wife”. I don’t need the approval of the prime minister or the general public. I am surrounded by people who love me for who I am. We are all equally human.
The prime minister doesn’t need my advice, and I’m sure he isn’t interested in it either. I don’t envy him or his job. I can only imagine it’s a poison chalice, and I’ve no desire to hold another one of those. I just hope he remembers that while pressure and privilege may come from the plutocracy, in this country (for now at least), his power still comes from the people.
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