Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Family Secret

Why do some Australians feel so affronted by pale-skinned Aboriginal people?  
                                                 — Bruce Pascoe in Black Duck

I’ve been reading Black Duck, A Year at Yumburra($24), Bruce Pascoe’s latest. Pink-cheeked Bruce, in his persona as a First Nations Elder, gives me two main takeaways.

The first is what to do if your SUV skittles an echidna. He advises how to pluck the quills, prepare and cook the carcase, and enjoy flame-grilled butterflied marsupial roadkill. He doesn’t suggest the best wine to complement the dish — perhaps a Jacobs Creek cab-sav (4 litre Stanleys cask, $18).

Bruce assures us that echidna is scrumptious, akin to his delicious Aboriginal loaves made from kangaroo-grass flour, after thrifty 50 per cent dilution with baking flour ($1.55 per kg) from your IGA supermarket.[1]

The second Black Duck revelation involves Bruce’s seduction and betrayal by SBS and NITV (National Indigenous TV) on their joint and scurrilous “Insight” panel show, 20 October 2022. The producer included Professor Bruce – I hope not ironically – in the Q&A compered by Karla Grant [2] about today’s plethora of fake Aborigines. He’s still spitting chips over his authenticity being disrespected. He vows never again to cross the treacherous portals of SBS/NITV.

So, Take-away One — echidna roadkill:

A few weeks back the fellas found a freshly run over echidna on their way to work and as we had a burn pile going we threw the animal on to the flames after removing forty or so quills to use in our artwork. They are a really fatty animal which helps them cook moistly and the flesh really is delicious. It has the texture and taste of pork but I think it is sweeter. Waste not, want not. (p268).

Another time, Bruce and partner Lyn picked up a dead bandicoot from the road, “and Lyn was entranced by its sharp little teeth and soft ears.” (p192). He doesn’t say whether they made a meal of it.

So, Take-Away 2 — treachery at SBS/NTIV:

I was asked to do a program for SBS on identity but Blackfellas warned me against it. They suspected a contest between dark and pale Blackfellas. But I thought that it was a chance to set the record straight. I spent about four hours talking through my family history with SBS researchers. They seemed genuinely interested so I sent photos and documents and felt that nothing could go wrong. Off I went to Sydney, but SBS used none of what I gave them, instead preferring the rumour and assumption of the right-wing press. I was really devastated and disappointed that with all the work that needs to be done in our communities we would waste our time on this trivia. I felt sorry for some of the other participants who also thought it was a chance to have their say.

How wrong we were. The ‘real’ blacks were on one side of the room and we were on the other. I wonder if I have ever been more disillusioned. I gave really precise information about my family, so proud am I of their survival, but sadly they used none of that. I also calculated the percentage of blood in my family[isn’t that a ‘no-no’?] and the difficulty this raises in community. 

These are important points to consider because as more and more Australians find black relatives these issues have to be considered before we become a bunch of wannabes, but no, SBS chose a sensationalist and divisive path. Trumpist. 

Definitions of Aboriginality need to be understood by everyone. I don’t believe in self-identification, I think people ought to be able to provide some documentary evidence of their identity…

All of these issues could have built a really constructive documentary, could have drawn people toward an understanding of identity, not urged them toward scorn and contempt.

And what will happen to Aboriginal people who are made afraid to identify, will we lose their contribution to the Aboriginal family? I feel the same way about non-Aboriginal people; they are not going away so they have to be encouraged to identify with the land or otherwise how can they care for her? They will be restless spirits forever feeling at a distance from their home. I knew the show’s director, so was doubly broken by the way an important opportunity was lost. Never again. 

There are people who reckon we should sue when this sort of thing happens. What, and spend the rest of our lives in court to change nothing? The tethered bear being drained of bile to please a conspiracy myth! No thanks. (p251-3).

As the academics say, there is a lot to unpack here. First, if Bruce views the issue of his Aboriginality as “trivia”, why do he, the ABC, SBS, the Australian Academy of Science, our prestigious universities, Melbourne’s Labor-endowed Wheeler Centre, and Bruce’s every sponsor for speaking gigs, books,directorships and exclusive awards for high achieving First Nationals, trumpet him as a bona fide Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian Aborigine?

Second, what about those claimed documents of his proving Aboriginal ancestry? I remember how Professor Marcia Langton sponsored him qua Aboriginal into Melbourne University’s top ranks four years ago to become Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture. She vouched for his Aboriginality because he’d told her he had “documents”: (video at 40secs). She hadn’t seen them but who at Australia’s top university would run due diligence on Bruce’s identity?

We finally learn from Bruce’s new book that his Enterprise Professor gig (circa $200,000 full-time, plus perks) is just one day per week (p254). Bruce says ag-science students hang on his every word about (supposed) pre-colonial Aboriginal farmers.[3]

Bruce’s genealogical documents seem a bit like Lasseter’s Lost Reef — existence rumoured but never confirmed. On the other hand, sleuth Roger Karge demonstrates on his Dark Emu Exposed website that the line of all of Bruce’s forebears originated from England. Karge has asked Bruce to correct the website genealogy if necessary: Bruce hasn’t responded. Melbourne University itself has stopped calling Bruce “indigenous”: it now bills him officially just as “writer and farmer”.

Bruce has been earnestly trawling to locate his apical (oldest) black ancestor for nigh on 40 years — for no visible public success – and he must have enough documents to fill the woodshed at his hobby farm[4]near Mallacoota, Vic. His donor and grant-funded charity called Black Duck Foods has ploughed $2.2minto the little paddocks, and incidentally paid him $140,000 rent for 2021-22.[5]

Time now to see what got Bruce hopping mad about Karla Grant’s line of inquiry at that Insight special on fake Aborigines. Bruce got only a total three minutes airtime in three segments during the 52-minute show. It must have been a let-down as he’s so used to stardom as the Left’s premier Aboriginal. Instead Karla threw the switch to a line-up of genuine Aboriginal heavies including Dr Stephen Hagan, Suzanne Ingram and her cousin Yvonne Weldon. After the show Ingram commented brutally,

If the census trajectory continues unabated, it is reasonable to expect that box-tickers [race shifters] will statistically outnumber Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in 15 years or three censuses…If you live somewhere along the Australian eastern seaboard, there’s a greater than one-in-10 chance that the next “proud elder” you encounter, perhaps doing a Welcome to Country or insisting that you please call them “Aunty”, is someone you recently knew to be white. The recording of the Insight program was a unique opportunity for me to observe box-tickers in collective formation. As individuals, they crave a sense of belonging. But they do not let go of their sense of entitlement. 

Stephen Hagan told the show of growing up in a community that had no taps but the nearby cemetery for whites had three. He witnessed his mother and aunty furtively rolling a 44 gallon drum to the cemetery taps.

I know what it was like to be an Aboriginal. I became a diplomat, a PhD, I’ve published six books but I know what marginalisation is like… (16.00) It’s not just the adults claiming to be First Nations, it’s their children. We have to be careful that the 27,081 registered Aboriginal organisations are not overrun by a sudden influx of First Nations claimants who don’t have connections to Country… Some of these organisations have only 40-50 people. These people can tick a box and get rubber-stamped, they can take them over. It’s a $40b industry and people are being remunerated very handsomely to hold positions… (34.20) Until the government reviews [toughens] those three categories for Aboriginality[6], things won’t be recognisable in another generation.

Karla: What about people who can’t identify their apical ancestor but are self-identifying?

Hagan: They can just sign a stat dec and they are “in”, they can take on a $200,000 job anywhere they want.

Karla: Why would people lie? – Oh, financial gain of course. People are growing rich on our misery.

Yvonne Weldon (31.50): Aboriginal” companies are created, when you look at who they employ, it’s people who have ticked that box. They [race shifters] are not going back to mob, but to suburbia to continue to benefit from the [bad] experiences of some of our people. Do not please abuse that experience of my people for the benefit of yourselves at the expense of my people.

Karla, to Suzanne Ingram: Are you concerned about people self-identifying?

Susan: It’s been taken out of [our] hands. Universities are not qualified to recognise Aboriginals as opposed to box tickers. It gets in the way, it’s all this performance [art]. The performance is very seductive, interesting and persuasive, you have costuming[7], language learning, it’s all persuasive to someone who is not Aboriginal. We are seeing the result of these distortions now. If we look at the census numbers they’re projecting 800,000 [Aboriginals]. If there was an actual audit, I would suggest, based on data, it’s probably 300,000 less. Those 300,000 people count themselves amongst us. [Without correction] this is going to erase   Aboriginal persons.

None of these leaders showed Bruce the slightest deference. If anything, their body language implied polite boredom (at best). Karla Grant’s treatment of Bruce’s claims seemed like passive-aggression. Just when I expected her to lunge for the kill and request Bruce’s ancestor’s name, the camera cut away letting him off the hook. Even so, Bruce is used to the ABC and allied sycophants throwing him under-arm softballs, hence his rage at Karla’s highlighting of the fake-Aborigine circus.

Here’s the Bruce bits:

Karla [deadpan, laying the trap at 11.40]: Bruce, you wrote best-seller Dark Emu, how do you identify?

Bruce: I identify as Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian. We can trace my family back to those regions [it’s not to ‘regions’, Bruce, it’s to people[8]. I didn’t grow up as Aboriginal, my family didn’t talk about it. An uncle and aunt took me under their wing and began talking about these things, which I found incredible. [Eh? Did they claim Aboriginality themselves?] That uncle was very important as he was able to gradually introduce me to other people I needed to know in our family [So what? Have these ‘other people’ named your Aboriginal ancestor?]

Karla [being naughty]: When you say you are Tasmanian, which nation?

Bruce [airily]: We come from the north coast of Tasmania, following that family line [who?] we are connected to both Melbourne and Adelaide. We have got people who identify as our cousins in both places. It is, um, very controversial in Tasmania, but that is just how it is [I’ll say! Tasmanian Land Council chair Michael Mansell says you’re not a Tasmanian Aboriginal].

Karla [throwing a hand grenade]: Do other members of your family agree you have Aboriginal heritage?

Bruce: Some do, many don’t. [What? Even most of your own family say you’re making stuff up? First time I’ve heard you admit that]

Karla: What sparked your curiosity to look closely?

Bruce: My uncle, the photographs and constant talk. He was a bit of a ratbag but a good person. He got me working on it, I thought I’d better have a look at those photos again. I realised you could pull them out. On the back my father had written the names.

That’s where Karla’s show inexplicably does a jump-cut and she starts talking to someone else. One hypothesis doing the rounds is that Karla’s bosses wanted Bruce protected and Karla had to toe the official line. Bruce, if you’re reading this as a Quadrant subscriber, put us all out of our misery and add in Comments below who in your father’s photo album is that elusive black ancestor?

Karla at 30.20 [lobbing another grenade]: Now Bruce, some Aboriginal people have rejected your claim to be indigenous. What do you make of that?

A simple rejoinder would be, “I’ve told my critics who my ancestor was and that ought to shut the bastards up!” Instead, Bruce waffles away:

Bruce: The thing these people have in common is they have never talked to me about it. I am really always keen to talk about my family, although it is no more interesting than anyone else’s. This is a really important conversation Australia has to have.

Karla by-passes Pascoe for a while, then circles back (43.00) with a Dorothy Dixer, “Bruce what is the impact on you of people questioning your family?” This is the progressive media’s standard pivot to preserve Bruce’s cred and invite him to tell his sob-story of injured innocence. Compare that with how they go for the jugular when interviewing conservatives like Minister Christian Porter or gadfly Pauline Hanson.

Bruce [happily off the hook]: It has been very upsetting for my family [but not for the apparent majority who disbelieve his Aboriginality?] We have always been a close family [apart from that split?]. My children were hurt by that [like Pascoe pere, some now claim Aboriginality themselves].I said, ‘You are part of the community now so nothing changes if the government rejects you. You have lost nothing because you are not getting anything anyway [Bruce himself qua Aboriginal author and farmer has got fame, royalties, prizes, honours and $2m-plus donations and grants for his Black Duck Foods charity which rents his farm and has bought his used farm gear]. But hold your culture! That is what we have always been told by the people who helped me. Hold your lore, hold your culture! And just be part of the community, don’t try to be a boss, just because you have got a degree or whatever it is.’

For decades Pascoe pinned his hopes for Aboriginality on his maternal great-grandmother Sarah Matthews – even if true, this would be a ridiculously remote claim. In 1993 he wrongly put her birthplace around 1848 as Dudley, South Gippsland, when her actual birthplace was Dudley, Worcester in England. He also wrote that he believed she’d been on a sealing vessel — implying that sealers took her from her Aboriginal community. Three years later his story changed to her living on Aboriginal missions and losing a daughter as a Stolen Generation victim. She had striven to appear white and “merge with the master class,” he told the Age in 2007. In 2008 Pascoe shifted goalposts again and claimed his great-grandmother was Aboriginal from a tribe bordering the Wathaurong of Geelong and Colac (presumably the Bunurong).

Roger Karge’s genealogist Jan Holland actually tracked her arrival in Australia at Fremantle in 1863 from England on the ship Burlington, which was certainly not a sealing vessel. Pascoe finally admitted that the woman (presumably Sarah) he thought was his Aboriginal ancestor was in fact English-born.[9]But by 2014 he was claiming to have found Aboriginal relatives “all over the country”. He’s claimed to have birth certificates proving his claims – including links to at least six tribes in five States – but declined to let Karge see them.

In 2016 he described his relatives from the Lockhart River, Qld as white and then in the same year, black. In the Black Duck book, they’re white again (p91). He has even described his own pink face as “black”. Re one Invasion Day, writing of course for the ABC, “On January 26 this year (2017) I stood in Victoria Park in Sydney as people protesting about the naming of the day marched past all us surprised black faces for an hour.” He added, “Everywhere you look in our family there is the black trace”. Odd given his family tree reaches only to England.

He also felt akin to the “stolen generation”, despite having grown up happily with his white family in Tasmania and inner Melbourne, and not having canvassed his supposed Aboriginality until he was nearing 40. But for the ABC he explained

I am one of the lost. We weren’t stolen. We hid. You can’t blame anyone. It was a survival impulse. I am surrounded by families who did the same…It fills me with sadness that they choose to ignore the heroes in their families. They are not cowards, not malicious, someone in the past decided they were white enough to get away with it, so they hid…

In the same piece, the ABC described him only as “a Bunurong man”, he must have become a Yuin and Tasmanian man later.

Keeping track of Bruce’s claims to Aboriginality is like riding a bull in a rodeo (not that I’ve ever tried that). For example, he quotes his mother saying the family’s Ur-Aborigine was on his father’s side,[10]but in the new book he writes,

That old man gave me crucial information about my mother’s family. Details and contacts; it was such a wonderful gift. And he did that at risk of exposing himself to the baying hounds of the right-wing journalists who purport to know everything about the family of a man they have never met. (p81).

There is much, much more to unpack from Pascoe’s latest book, which I might get around to one day.

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Pascoe re native bread: “Anyway, the recipe is not complicated. We combine about 50 per cent baking flour with 50 per cent of our own flour, either Kangaroo and Spear, or Mitchell and Button. Chris adds yeast and salt while Lyn uses her sourdough starter. We have a breadmaker but often cook it in a camp oven or straight on the coals. The aroma is a revelation. We sell our flour on our Black Duck website or at the farm gate.” (p276).

[2] Incidentally, Karla is ex-spouse of quick-fire job-swapper Stan Grant, ex-ABC and ex-Monash Uni celebrity (for six months) leading its “Constructive Institute Asia Pacific” devoted to media integrity.

[3] Bruce: ” Once I got back to the farm I spent days doing interviews with earnest university students wanting to talk permaculture, Aboriginal sovereignty, agricultural sustainability and climate change.” (p254)

[4] “I can’t see that we will ever make much money from our growing but we will be introducing new foods to the market.” (p268).

[5] Incidentally, the 2021-22 financial accounts for Black Duck Foods has disappeared from the ACNC register. The $140,000 rent can still be seen in the 2022-23 accounts at p5.

[6] Descent, self-identification and peer community acceptance

[7] Referring to possum skin cloaks, Pascoe says some wearers are worthy “but sometimes I see people posture in them and it turns my stomach. The garment has huge spiritual significance and needs to be respected. It is not to be used as a political tool like a prime minister donning a hard hat and high vis vest to demonstrate his allegiance to the working class.” (p252). His own family gave him a possum skin rug and he doesn’t use it as a cloak.

[8] I can trace my mother’s family back to Kendenup, WA, which is Noongar territory, but that doesn’t make me an Aborigine.

[9] “My cousin had discovered the woman we thought was our Aboriginal ancestor was, in fact, born in England.”

[10] “Mum was convinced of a Tasmanian connection on Dad’s side to and we are searching that line at the moment.”

The Queen of Climate Crackpottery

Trigger warning: if your household companions include a cat, dog, canary, goldfish or turtle, this article is not a safe space. I’m writing about Harvard’s distinguished agnatologist Professor Naomi Oreskes (above) and her 2014 warning that global warming would kill your pets in 2023. The warning is in her acclaimed but glum book The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Given margins of error in climate science, the pet die-off might be this year instead. Oreskes wrote,

The loss of pet cats and dogs garnered particular attention among wealthy Westerners , but what was anomalous in 2023 soon became the new normal . … A shadow of ignorance and denial had fallen over people who considered themselves children of the Enlightenment (p9).

Smarter climate alarmists don’t make short-term predictions. They choose a date like 2050 for when the oceans will boil. They’ll be senile or dead by then and can’t be humiliated if the oceans stay chilly.

Top environmentalist Paul Ehrlich forecast in 1971that by 2000 the UK “will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”[1] His 1968 book, Population Bomb, predicted starvation would shrink the US population to 23 million by 1999. Strangely, Oreskes in her book hails Ehrlich as a vindicated futurist. (p3-4 and 56).

The only good news from Naomi is that the IPCC becomes [more] discredited and is disbanded. She replaces it with such alphabet soups as the UNCCEP’s ICCEP which launches IAICEP, which she says is pronounced “ay-yi-yi-sep” (p27).The mission of ay-yi-yi-sep is to sprinkle enough fairy dust aka sulphates in the air to make an anti-sun umbrella and save the planet by 2079.

In September 2014 she was interviewed on the ABC’s Science Show by Dr (honoris causa) Robyn Williams, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, about the pet-deaths. One reader, she explained,

…started crying when the pets die, so I didn’t mean to upset people too much … I was just trying to come up with something that I thought people wouldn’t forget about, and I thought, ‘Well, Americans spend billions of dollars every year taking care of their pets’, and I thought if people’s dogs started dying, maybe then they would sit up and take notice.

 Interviewer Dr Williams[2] was delighted with Oreskes’ pet-panic strategy. He chimed in,

Yes, not only because it’s an animal but it’s local. You see, one criticism of the scientists is they’re always talking about global things…And so if you are looking at your village, your animals, your fields, your park, your kids, and the scientists are talking about a small world that you know, then it makes a greater impact, doesn’t it.

Oreskes: Well, exactly. It was about bringing it literally home, literally into your home, your family, your pet, the dog or cat that you love who is your faithful and trusted companion.

As I type this, I look down fondly at Natasha, our doomed spaniel, although she is neither faithful nor trustworthy.

Oreskes began her Science Show appearance by reading from her book in sepulchrul tones:

Then, in the northern hemisphere summer of 2041, unprecedented heatwaves scorched the planet [and] led to widespread outbreaks of typhus, cholera, dengue fever, yellow fever, and viral and retroviral agents never seen before.

Naomi’s actually playing down her future horrors, she omits to tell him about the arrival of the Black Death:

Dislocation contributed to the Second Black Death, as a new strain of the bacterium Yersinia pestis emerged in Europe and spread to Asia and North America. In the Middle Ages, the Black Death killed as much as half the population of some parts of Europe; this second Black Death had similar effects. (p30).

Australians will wonder: does Medicare charge extra premiums to cover bubonic plague?

Williams, instead of asking Oreskes what she’s smoking, merely observed that all of the above is “fairly shocking”. He further wondered why it is only Western civilization that collapses, leaving the Chinese in charge. One reason, says Oreskes, is that Chinese civilisation is more durable, and two, that authoritarian regimes are better able to deal with hypothesised climate apocalypses.

Looking back from the future, Oreskes viewed China in the early 2000s as a beacon of carbon enlightenment. China, she said,

…took steps to control its population and convert its economy to non – carbon – based energy sources. These efforts were little noticed and less emulated in the West, in part because Westerners viewed Chinese population control efforts as immoral, and in part because the country’s exceptionally fast economic expansion led to a dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions, masking the impact of renewable energy. By 2050 , this impact became clear as China’s emissions began to fall rapidly. Had other nations followed China’s lead, the [grim future] history recounted here might have been very different. (p6).[3]

Another interviewer — a friendly one, actually — played the devil’s advocate:

Interviewer: Just how much do you hate the American way of life? What gives you the intellectual chutzpah to make these kinds of projections?

Oreskes: Our story is a call to protect the American way of life before it’s too late.

I identify with Oreskes, who grew up in New York, because as a lass she was a geologist working on Western Mining Corp’s Olympic project in central Australia. I phoned WMC’s retired boss Hugh Morgan but he couldn’t give me any piquant anecdotes about young Naomi.

Her sojourn Down Under must have been unhappy because she’s forecast that the climate emergency will kill off every Australian man woman and child (all 26 million of us). “The human populations of Australia and Africa, of course, were wiped out.” (p33). As a resident of Australia’s pagan state of Victoria, I don’t believe in the afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear. (Witticism courtesy Woody Allen).

Oreskes dropped geology to co-write that Merchants of Doubt book, painting “climate deniers” as the evil twins of those denying that smoking causes cancer. The book in 2021 was set to music by composer Yvette Jackson, who sees climate doubt as having the

… low, somber insistence of the bass clarinet, skittering flute that cranks up anxiety, sonorous cello to hold things together, and the deep, doubting rumble of double bass.

Listen to that anxious, sonorous cello and more here (fourth video down).

At 65, Naomi’s job title is Harvard Professor of the History of Science — but don’t call, she’s on leave. She co-wrote her civilisational-collapse book with fellow alarmist Erik Conway. Her other collaborators include Pope Francis: she did the intro for his Laudato si’ encyclical in 2015.

 Wikipedia lists only 30 of her honours, including the Stephen H. Schneider Award in 2016 for communicating “extraordinary scientific contributions” to a broad public in a clear and compelling fashion. Schneider (1945-2010) was a top IPCC climate scientist. He urged colleagues there to strike a balance between scaring the pants off the public and being honest about how weak the CO2 evidence really is. Oreskes also scored the 2019 Mary Rabbit Award from the US Geological Society. Her lifetime of bashing denialists is surely worth a million-dollar Nobel.

 The Collapse book is about Western civilisation’s ruin while China saves the planet with its enlightened anti-CO2 measures. She is writing from the future in 2393 when she will be aged 435. Oreskes (as at 2393) is cross because we have refused to build enough windmills to stop at 11degC warming (p32) and eight-metre sea rises (p30). We should not have eaten so many fillet steaks[4] and, personally, I should not have tooled around in my reasonably priced, petrol-powered Hyundai i30 when Teslas were available at $80,000.

Oreskes was talking about Collapse at a Sydney Writers’ Festival when someone in the audience piped up, “Will you write fiction next?” She doesn’t of course view Collapse as fiction: “Speculative? Of course, but the book is extremely fact-based” (p79). And she elaborated to the ABC’s Dr Williams,“Well, it’s all based on solid science. Everything in this book is based on the scientific projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. All we did was to add to the social and human aspects to it and to ask the question; what does this really mean in terms of what its potential impacts would be on people and its potential impacts on our institutions of governance?”

Her “science based” technical projection involved an angry summer in 2023 continuing year-round, “taking 500,000 lives worldwide and costing nearly $ 500 billion in losses due to fires , crop failure , and the deaths of livestock and companion animals” (p8) In 2014, how was Naomi (no-one’s perfect) to know that current agricultural output and yields continue smashing records?

The book’s “fact-based” projections have drought and desert ravaging the US in the 2050s:

The US government declared martial law to prevent food riots and looting [similar to 2020s’ mostly-peaceful burning and robbing]. A few years later, the United States announced plans with Canada for the two nations to begin negotiations … to develop an orderly plan for resource-sharing and northward population relocation (p26). 

The talks led to the combined United States of North America. I imagine Texans started adding “eh” to their sentences, as in Why do Canadians say “eh?”? It’s so silly right? Because we want to, eh.

Even at the age of 435 in 2393, Oreskes remains really sore about the Climategate email scandal of 2009 (IPCC climate scientists conspiring to fudge data). She blames Climategate on a “massive campaign” that was “funded primarily by fossil fuel corporations” (p8) — this alleged largesse must have by-passed sceptic bloggers, who still rely on their tip jars. Oreskes remains vigilant to smite deniers:

It will also be crucial not to allow new forms of denial to take hold. We are already seeing examples, such as the false claim that off-shore wind kills whales and that restrictions on gas stoves are the latest excuse by liberals to control our lives and deny our freedom. Scientists will have to work with climate activists to block the spread of such misleading narratives.

She finished her interview with the ABC’s Dr Williams by claiming, improbably, that some readers of  Collapse wished her 80-page book to be longer. She explained,

We didn’t want it to be too depressing, we didn’t want to go on and on and on, like 300 pages of misery, that really wouldn’t be any fun. So we are sort of hoping that the book, despite the fact that it’s a depressing topic, it’s actually we think kind of a fun read.

Apart from our dead kittens, that is.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971. Link broken.

[2] The ABC Ombudsman told me it’s fine for people with honorary doctorates to be called “Dr” in any context.

“The ABC style guide does not form part of the editorial standards and we consider there is nothing materially inaccurate in referring to Ms O’Donoghue as Dr O’Donoghue.” Email from James, Investigations Officer, ABC Ombudsman’s Office, Feb 14, 2024. (The late Ms Donoghue’s Doctorates are honorary).

[3] On the ABC iview’s posting of the Oreskes/Williams interview, the ABC claimed the planet was warming at the top of the IPCC models’ forecasting. I wrote to my friend Kirsten McLiesh, who runs Audience & Consumer Affairs (i.e. the complaints department) pointing out that actual warming was at the bottom of the IPCC models’ range. In those days (2014) the ABC had some integrity and Kirsten wrote back,

“Having been alerted to your complaint, the program acknowledges that the sentence read on the website as an incontrovertible fact and have undertaken to remove it. An Editor’s Note has been added to the page.”

[4] Oreskes, Twitter May 4, 2023: “I’m often asked “What can I do to stop climate change.” That’s a hard question because so much of the change we need is structural, but this new study proves one thing: EAT LESS BEEF. (And now, drum roll, here come the beef industry trolls.)”

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• terenc5Brazen liars, both her and Williams.Log in to Reply
• STJOHNOFGRAFTONOnce upon a time this type of pathological doom and gloomer would have had their digs courtesy the governer’s pleasure at Callan Park. Now, said person is integrated into a straight-jacketed society where she is free to inflict us with her madness. Ironically, Callan Park is now a conservation area and has friends not inmates.Log in to Reply
• DaffyFaced with a bill for a pet’s ultrasound of over $1000, I’m all for pet deaths. I was tempted to ask the vet how much to end the gold-digger’s life, but wife was too near.Log in to Reply
  • DaffyAnd, on smoking, it seems OK to take it up…as death for almost all looms. In fact, as elderliness tangles itself about my knees, I must check with the Cancer Council. Surely they know the age at which taking up cigar smoking will have no statistical effect on life expectancy.Log in to Reply
    • norsaintGood luck to you Daffy if you can afford the occasional lardy-da (apologies to Arfur Daly) these days.
      The ludicrous harpy and our former Attorney General, Nicola Roxon, has put that harmless pleasure beyond the means of most, with her outrageous, never-ending duty increases. The last time I checked, a run of the mill cigar cost $80.
      The egregious feminists don’t like anything which men might find enjoyable.
      It reminds me of the old gag of why woman make love with their eyes closed. (punch line available upon request)Log in to Reply
      • norsaintThat of course should read why “women” make love with their eyes closed.Log in to Reply
• Twyford HallHow amazing that questioning anthropogenic global warming has been set to (alleged) music by a composer. I would bet my superannuation that the composer’s remuneration is taxpayer funded.Log in to Reply
• petroalbionSellers of dog meat in Korea were told by the government to give up the trade. They said OK, we will release all 2 million of the dogs we currently own tomorrow. Government lostLog in to Reply
• David IsaacThanks for digging out another failed prediction of climate doom. Paul Ehrlich’s prognosis for Britain may just’ve been delayed by a few decades but on demographic grounds. Given the repression of its native people and the demise of its native population in its largest cities including London and Birmingham it’s arguable whether England has long ceased to exist. Nominally American, Dr Oreske is a New York Jewess, whose father was also an academic, her mother a school teacher and mother of four. The odds of her politics being left radical based on this information alone are very high. Her brother Michael is a disgraced journalist and executive for leftist outfits, NYT, AP and latterly NPR, who was pinged for sexually harassing junior colleagues in 2017. It comes as no surprise that she views ‘science’ as just another vehicle for radical activism rather than as a sacred quest for truth.Log in to Reply
• norsaintAnd another thing. One could hardly say the “”Prof”” is easy on the eye.Log in to Reply

Talk on media to Turks Head Club, Melbourne 10 April 2024

My style is not big thinking but getting down into the weeds and detail of what’s going on. So in this talk I’ll cover a variety of issues. First an overview of the media industry’s economics and reputation. Then I’ll focus on the NYT as a case of study of where the mainstream media is at. I’ll deal with the wire services like Reuters and their new business model. I’ll provide some Australian context and Finally I’ll look at misinformation laws globally.  

Business-wise,  the news media are travelling poorly – the old model of ads financing journalism is broken. . In addition loyal readers are ageing, youngsters get their news from social media.   

Papers that can’t generate paid on-line subscriptions will fold. In the US 2-3 papers are folding every week. The NYT says it will become on-line only before long. Personally I recently switched to reading the Australian daily on-line. It’s a different way to brief myself. 

NYT publisher AO Sulzberger laments what he calls the “Collapse of public confidence in press”  

Only 11 per cent of Republicans – who comprise half the population – now trust the media, and only 10 per cent of Americans as a whole trust the media’s reporting on COVID.   

    In Australia reporters are the second-least trusted of 30 occupations, ahead of politicians but behind delivery drivers.  

Michael Gawenda, ex-editor Age is quite a leftist but disillusioned by journos and union petitions favoring Hamas.

“I think journalism is in crisis.  The line  between   the social justice warriors on social media, and the  journalists in the mainstream media, is becoming unclear. That is disastrous for journalism and journalists. And not to be too pompous, for liberal democracy as well.”

I’ve had a good look at The NYT  because it is a Goliath of newspapers —   Sulzberger owners claim a quarter of the world’s population engages with NYT annually. Two decades ago it seemed in a bad way as its ads migrated online, but now there’s 10m readers paying for on-line vs only half a million getting it in print. It’s profitable ; its market cap has risen ten-fold in 15 years; It’s added 1000 journalists in recent years (half through acquisitions), when elsewhere 10s of thousands of journos have lost their jobs.  btw as a greedy journo, I looked up salaries at the NYT — very low, $50k to only $100k for important editors, how do they survive New York cost of living?

The other story is that it only caters for left readership . Even six years ago they were 85% lib-democrat readers — who knows what today?.

The young journos – politely people of color – are dragging it even further left.

I’ll document this in three examples.

Late 2019, NYT staff had a revolt because a headline was just neutral instead of hostile about President Trump. The staff revolt was similar to all these ABC staff revolts and no-confidences over Gaza. Someone at the internal town hall meeting with the chief editor Dean Baquet leaked the meeting transcript.  Baquet said, We have to Pivot from Trump Russia collusion to 1619 Project damning US historically for slavery and white supremacy — ie get onto this whole black power/victim narrative. That won almost instant Pulitzer Prizes and brainwashing forays into thousands of US class rooms. It’s now mainstream.

NYT was caught flat-footed by Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary   so Sulzberger demanded the paper broaden its range of views. (Bit like ABC having to hire or publish Andrew Bolt and Pauline Hanson). In 2020   

there was the  riots over the cops killing George Floyd — 500 violent outbreaks, burning and looting, 30+ deaths including half a dozen cops shot, and way over $2b damage — that was just the insured component. 

 So the op-ed page editor John Bennet allowed a comment piece by a Republican Senator Tom Cotton saying that as a last resort the military  should control rioters. Calling in the military is not outrageous and many precedents for it  in post-war US history, including the 1960s deep south school segregations. This caused another revolt of the younger black staff of saying they the Cotton piece put them (somehow) in danger. Management initially backed the op-ed editor   then went completely to water and sacked him. They also   demoted his deputy back to the news floor and published a grovelling apology 

  the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.

the essay should have undergone the highest level of scrutiny. Instead, the editing process was rushed and flawed, and senior editors were not sufficiently involved 

  the tone of the essay in places is needlessly harsh and falls short of the thoughtful approach that advances useful debate.    

 SO much for allowing diverse voices more space in the paper.

 One of the NYT political-diversity hires was a Jewish conservative writer called Bari Weiss, who outraged the staff. Just a month after the Riot piece, she quit   saying it was impossible to withstand the bullying culture.

She finished,  Rule One at the NYT:     Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative.  . Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

 the great   scandal of the NYT taking China Communist Party money is public record material. 

In 2020 Republicans in Congress forced China Daily, run by the CCP, to properly disclose its US influence-peddling as a foreign agent.

It showed up an undisclosed USD 100,000 a month for a decade from China Daily alias CCP for advertorial  (pretend news) supplements in the NYT.  like Diayou (Senkaku) Islands belong to China. and nice Tibet and HK stories. One 2019 NYT video ad depicted the oppressed Weegurs as happy under Chinese rule. In other words, the Chinese Communists bought coverage in the NYT for a decade for a piddling $10m. 

When this came out,  100s of these advertorials vanished from NYT digitised archives, dating back to 1851. The CCP money could have influenced NYT covid coverage dismissing stories the Wuhan lab leak theory.  2 NYT Whistleblowers were told “don’t go near” those stories.

Not many lay people recognise the key role of the media wire services, aggregators of content to thousands of newspapers and websiites globally. They used to take pride in being neutral, not biased. That’s out the window and they’re proud to flaunt their progressive bias.

  Agence France Press, Reuters and Bloomberg have literally signed the climate pledge and partnered with 460 other media groups for hyping warming and cancelling whatever doesn’t fit the climate narrative. 
This green coalition is called Covering Climate Now (CCN), run by groups like The Guardian and the COlumbia Journalism School. CCN’s founders view fossil fuel executives as criminals against humanity. They also want to “revoke the social licences” of “deniers”. 

The worst signatory is probably AFP. Its climate stories are even run by the Australian, coming from  AFP journo Marlowe Hood who has laughably self-titled himself “Senior Editor, Future of the Planet”.  

 And America’s biggest wire service, Associated Press (AP), in a jaw-dropping breach of journalistic ethics, last year hired 20 specialist climate  reporters using an $US8 million gift from five green/Left billionaire philanthropies. AP explained candidly that  it needed the money:

  philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism — at the AP and elsewhere — at a time when the industry’s financial outlook has been otherwise bleak.

 AP’s style book is a global guide for publishing. It now prescribes that the term“climate change,” can be used interchangeably” with the term “climate crisis.” Also “avoid false balance” because climate science is settled and near unanimous. It’s taken other foundation money to push the diversity and inclusion line – even after the US Supreme Court struck down affirmative admissions to universities.

I’ve found it costs very little to set up an outfit to bias the climate media.  — budgets of just 5, or 10 million dollars.   I’ve profiled at least a dozen of them worldwide. The ABC has subscrivbed to at least three of them., One is Trusted News Initiative, launched by the BBC as a global alert system to cancel narratives that don’t suit progressives. Another is Newsguard, which puts a red warning label system on your browser to flag “untrustworthy” sites. The goal is drive advertisers away from those sites. Trusted News is being sued by Robert Kennedy Jr , the Democrat contender, for anti-trust conspiracy.

Others are Earth Journalism Network that bribes LDC journos to write climate propaganda, and Science Feedback (France), that offers ignorant journos expert advice from their tame climate alarmists. 

Now for Australia’s main private climate outfit .Tim Flannery’s Climate Council as a case study in successful media manipulati0n.   The Council is really a media annex for Minister Chris Bowen. They stood alongside him on the platform –  literally – for his first ministerial press briefing.  

$8m budget – more money from green left foundations than it knows what to do with. Council  Chair is Carol Schwarz, daughter of retailing royalty Marc  Besen worth $2.5 billion.  Big donor is Chris Morris from Computershare – worth $1.2b. 

 Its latest annual report  boasts of its “drumbeat” of climate calamity. Its 20 media spinners spoon-fed more than 22,000 stories into the media last year   to influence “millions” of Australians . That’s 800 items a week.  

The Council   actually trains reporters with Media Union help to propagate the narrative like bushfires are due to climate change – when globally, wildfires are declining.   

 The Council is prioritising now the narratives about gas cooking in kitchens being unhealthy and why drivers should be forced into electric vehicles by so-called fuel pollution standards.

The worst threat today is literally government control of the media.  Governments are sub-contracting out censorship to the media giants like Meta, microsoft and Google.  Australian misinfo bill:  2300 submissions and 20,000 comments.  No timeline. ACMA run by Nerida O’Loughlin on $610,000 per year — will impose its own standards. And she is to enforce them with fines literally up to billions of dollars per day. Even ABC and Media Alliance are worried, while our science and tech academies want crackdowns on climate dissent. 

ACMA would turn to Fact Checkers ABC/RMIT and AAP FactCheck as arbiters for what’s misinformation. This is asking a wolf to guard the sheep.

Study by IPAs John Storey of all checks since 2019 – 65% show leftist bias . On referendum, 91%   bias. On covid, 94% bias. On climate, 81%.

He  concludes: “The government’s proposed misinformation and disinformation laws are the single biggest attack on freedom of speech in Australia’s peacetime history.”

OVerseas:US 2022 pre-mid-terms: Biden launched “Disinformation Governance Board” = Ministry of Truth, under Homeland Security 

 Headed by Nina Jankowicz, who said inn 2020 that the Hunter Biden laptop disclosures were foreign disinfo campaign . Truth Ministry Scuttled within weeks after derision and legal challenges on First Amendment.    

 UK and EC: each with their own sets of rules purporting to benefit online safety and democracy. 

I hope all this hasn’t been too incoherent and I look forward to round-table discussion.

The MSO and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Tony Thomas  in 2009-10 pestered the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra with a series of complaints about the politics of its program notes on works by Prokofiev and Shostakovich. The extraordinary thing is that the MSO people took his complaints seriously, conceded error and set about improving their notes. Who knows whether the MSO would handle such complaints from the peanut gallery as professionally today?  

Stalin a

 Call me obsessive (OK, I am) but I turned up at the Melbourne Concert Hall on June 20, 2009 to enjoy Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony (1944), and nearly blew a fuse.

The MSO’s free program notes were as if written by some hack from the Soviet era. The notes quoted Prokofiev praising the cultural freedom of Soviet artists. 

Without any editorial comment from the MSO, Prokofiev in these notes swiped at the lack of ‘freedom of the human spirit’ in the US, in contrast to ‘free and happy (Soviet) man’.

A Soviet-era music bigshot called Dmitri Kabalevsky (three times a Stalin Prize-winner) was also quoted about Prokofiev helping to run a war-time composers’ commune, at which Prokofiev “encouraged the others to discuss their daily achievements in an atmosphere of mutual trust.” 

(By coincidence, Prokofiev died on March 5, 1953, the same day that Stalin died). 

Strangely for a 2009 performance, these notes by a “Graeme Skinner” were dated 1997 (six years after the Soviet Union’s collapse).

Arriving home, I penned a letter to the MSO noting that Prokofiev had already suffered his wife Lena and two sons being held in Siberia as hostage for his good behavior, and for all I knew, his quotes could have been drafted by the NKVD for his signature at real or implied gunpoint.

“I can hardly believe MSO program notes could be so ill-informed and so keen to whitewash an era of hideous tyranny and murder in the now-unlamented Soviet Union,” I wrote.

To defeat any normal bureaucratic reaction, I posted a copy of the letter not only to the MSO managing director Trevor Green and the MSO’s publicity guy, but also to then chief conductor Oleg Caetani, who as a son of Russian conductor Igor Markevitch, doubtless knows a thing or two about Soviet musical history. (I am sure Oleg had not read those program notes).

You suppose my letter just got filed? Not so. One month later, MD Trevor Green replied: “I agree with you that Prokofiev needs to be discussed more even-handedly. Accordingly, we will commission a new note for our next performance of this work, and will, when the budget allows, commission new annotations for other Soviet-era works that may be performed in future seasons.”

Bravo, Trevor Green!

However (why is there always a ‘however’?) on May 22, 2010 I was again in the Concert Hall, this time reading the notes for Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’.

Arriving home, I penned a further letter to the MSO. The notes, I wrote, were OK, but “I was outraged by the illustration of Stalin…This is a propaganda photo/illustration from the height of the Stalin cult period.Yet the caption merely states that it is ‘Joseph Stalin’. It is NOT Joseph Stalin, who was short, with a low forehead, and a swarthy pockmarked face. The illustration shows Stalin as handsome, wise and statesmanlike, a heroic war leader, avuncular, stern but with a hint of kindness. Using such a picture without describing it as a propaganda picture is an insult to all the many millions whom that man murdered, including at least a few hundred artists, writers and doubtless composers, along with their colleagues, family and friends.

“I am sure that in illustrating, say, a program note on Richard Strauss, you would not accompany it with an illustration such as the one I attach here {a war-time Nazi portrait of the all-conquering Der Fuehrer}.

“I am sure that whoever selected the ‘heroic Stalin’ illustration did so merely from lack of sophistication and lack of historical perspective.^[1] But I am surprised that someone of more maturity in a cosmopolitan city like Melbourne did not tell him/her that Stalin was a mass murderer and not a hero.”

This letter was mailed to the new MD Matthew VanBesien, guest conductor Andrew Litton and the MSO’s long-suffering PR guy.

A month later, Mr VanBesien replied, acknowledging that the choice of photograph could have been more discerning – “for which of course I apologise to you – but I am not convinced that the photograph automatically denies Stalin’s atrocities.”

VanBesien cited other music programs that had featured Jacques-Louis David’s propaganda picture of Napoleon or official photos of Czar Nicholas II. “These men were responsible for thousands – if not millions- of deaths…None of this was wiped away for me by seeing Napoleon on a horse or Nicholas II looking statesmanlike. I will of course bring this issue to the attention of the staff responsible for production of printed programs.”

So far so good. The MSO talks the talk but does it walk the walk?

Today (10 December 2011) I was in the Melbourne Town Hall reading the program notes for Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5.

Text? All fine.

Illustration? Joe Stalin. Outfit: bemedalled uniform circa 1945. Build: tall and fit. Forehead: high. Expression: noble, but caring. Complexion: to die for. 

Caption: ”Propaganda portrait of Stalin.” (My emphasis)

Bravo, MSO! 

Commenters on a current affairs blog got confused about my position, so I clarified as follows:

For all posters, could I please explain that my article above was not meant to be condemnatory of the MSO management. OK they stuffed up with their original pro-Soviet program notes to Prokofiev 5, but as I pointed out, instead of getting defensive about my complaint, they manfully admitted error and promised to do better next time. 

On the Prokofiev Romeo & Juliet program notes, they stuffed up again using a propaganda pic of Stalin without labelling it as such. 

Again they manfully apologised, and added an arguable point that it was no worse than using a propaganda pic of Napoleon. 

On the program notes for Shostakovich last Saturday, I was delighted to discover that they had this time correctly labelled the pic of Stalin as a ‘Propaganda Portrait.’ Hence my ‘Bravo, MSO!’ 

The real point of my article is that we humble members of the public should always be assertive towards the powers-that-be when they get things wrong (for whatever reason). In this MSO case, they have been responsive and positive towards an admittedly cranky music lover, who takes anything to do with Stalin very seriously. (I have just been re-reading all volumes of the Gulag Archipelago).

#

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^[1] One of my critics has made the reasonable point that non-propaganda pictures of Stalin are almost non-existent.

The Gag That’s no Laughing Matter

In the dying days of Julia Gillard’s government, her communications minister, Steve Conroy, brought in two bills to regulate the media, or more succinctly, to nobble the Murdoch press. After all, the 2013 election was only months away and the Murdoch stable much more often than not gave Labor a hard time.

Murdoch’s cheeky Daily Telegraph mocked up a picture of Conroy in Stalin’s uniform. Outraged progressives demanded an apology. The Teleapologised, but to Stalin not Conroy:

… we would just like to say: We’re sorry, Joseph.

Yes, it is true that Stalin was a despicable and evil tyrant who was responsible for the death of many millions. However, at least he was upfront in his efforts to control the media instead of pretending he supported free speech and then suggesting that cheeky, satirical or provocative newspaper coverage might be against the law. 

We also note that, despite his well-documented crimes against humanity, Stalin at least managed to hold a government together for more than three years. Nonetheless, we pay tribute to our new Commissar Conroy and stand ready to write and publish whatever he instructs us to. 

Conroy’s Bill to save Australia from the media was based on the flimsy pretext that in England, Murdoch’s News of the World journos had been hacking phones, not just of royalty but even the families of murder victims. (Some of Britain’s non-Murdoch press had also been into hacking). Murdoch shut down News of the World in response. Nobody claimed anything like the phone hacking had occurred in Australia.

Still, it was a chance for Gillard. Pushed by the Greens, she gave Judge Ray Finkelstein and a stray journo called Matthew Ricketson the job of drafting improved media regulation. They came up with a PIMA or “Public Interest Media Advocate” to oversee self-regulation. Under the Bill, if Mr or Ms PIMA felt self-regulation wasn’t strict enough, he/she/it would cause the offending newspaper, in practical terms, to be delicensed.[1] Newspapers would be obliged to publish mandatory statements of error and, should editors demur, contempt-of-court penalties would apply — in other words, they could be locked up and kept behind bars indefinitely. This modest proposal ended in parliamentary tears for Conroy, Gillard (hello, Kevin Rudd 2.0)[2] and the Labor government itself, downed by Tony Abbott.

Politicians’ memories are short and down the turnpike now comes Prime Minister Albanese’s bill, via Communications Minister Michelle Rowland, to censor online “misinformation”. The pretext this time is that fake and malicious information on social media is wrecking our minds and unravelling our hitherto resilient society.

The rigmarole seems templated on Gillard’s lamentable model. Labor will give an “independent” regulator power to oversee voluntary censorship codes by the tech giants like Meta, Google and Twitter. If they. are seen to falter, the regulator — namely the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) run by Nerida O’Loughlin on $610,000 per year (p88) — imposes its own standards. And she enforces it with fines literally up to billions of dollars per day ($6.88 million or 5 per cent of global turnover, whichever is biggest).

You can bet the tech giants will rush to self-censor any posts that might remotely annoy Nerida or the government. So goodbye to online “misinformation” like ‘renewables are expensive and unreliable’, or ‘compulsory Covid vaccines are somewhat unproven and dangerous’.

If you think the bill itself defines the sort of “misinformation”  that causes social “harms”, forget it. The definitions are broad as the earth and sky. Sure, actionable “misinformation” has to be “reasonably likely [to] cause or contribute to serious harm” but the “serious harm”  test is just jelly.

Labor’s reworded bill arrives any month now. The  Coalition hasn’t gained traction against it: after all, Scott Morrison’s team created the plan in the first place. ScoMo’s ethos, you might recall, was “freedom of speech doesn’t create one job.”[3] When Albanese kicked out the LNP in 2022, he merely dusted off and hardened the LNP’s handiwork. You might think Labor’s penalties are pretty draconian (Draco would execute an Athenian for stealing a cabbage). But for the leftist mobs, Minister Rowland’s onslaught against social media freedom doesn’t go nearly far enough.

The submission by the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) on August 6 takes the cake. I’m serious, ATSE applauds the draft and wants Labor to extend censorship to cover not just online screeds but all “traditional” media — newspapers, radio, TV, Quadrant and even private messaging. Why? Because “An ongoing flood of misinformation and disinformation through online platforms risks damage to Australian democracy, institutions and society.” That’s why. So we get

Recommendation 5: Expand ACMA powers to enable enforceable industry standards on traditional media sources, including print news media.

With the Murdoch press obviously in mind, ATSE continues (emphasis added),

Some Australian news providers have been shown to be havens for science denialism and science misinformation (Lowe, 2018), while other media outlets can unintentionally amplify misinformation in well- meaning attempts to debunk it. Furthermore, it is much harder for digital platforms to police information coming from traditional media sources, as these sources may produce a mix of misinformation and factual information. Given this oversized role of traditional media in spreading misinformation, any attempt to fight misinformation that does not address the role of traditional media will be insufficient.

ATSE’s favorable citation of “Lowe 2018” is the giveaway. Ian Lowe AO was Australian Conservation Foundation president 2004-14, and his cited piece “Climate of Denial” is up on ATSE’s own website.Here he spells it all out:

We are now seeing a determined campaign of misinformation by the Murdoch press. At one level, it consists of putting forward amateur contrary views as if they hold equal weight with the [climate] science. The Australian featured on its front page a sun-tanned Bondi surfer who said he had not noticed any rise in sea level, as if this anecdote cancelled out decades of analysis of about 10,000 tide gauges around the world. 

With respect, Ian, the Fort Denison tide gauge in Sydney Harbour has shown a puny 110mm of sea rise per century — that’s two-thirds the length of my iphone.

At another level, it is deliberate misrepresentation … There is now no real possibility of communicating climate science through our commercial media … The good news is the community overall has clearly moved on and the denialists in power are increasingly out of touch with reality. [His piece refers to the Coalition era].

Don’t imagine ATSE is some mickey-mouse show gone rogue. Its president from 2013-15 was the urbane Alan Finkel, who became Australia’s Chief Scientist a few years later, as well as a Fellow of the Academy of Science.. ATSE is currently headed by Dr Katherine Woodthorpe AO.[4] Her ATSE biog includes that she’s a past director of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and Vast Solar, which is now installing the $200 million Port Augusta Solar Thermal Project with the help of $65 million federal funds.

ATSE has another 900 fellows, billed as our brightest boffins. Here’s how ATSE imagines itself:

[A] Learned Academy of independent, non-political experts helping Australians understand and use technology to solve complex problems. Bringing together Australia’s leading thinkers in applied science, technology and engineering, ATSE provides impartial, practical and evidence-based advice on how to achieve sustainable solutions and advance prosperity.

ATSE wants WhatsApp to deliver “functionality nudges” (an Orwellian term reminiscent of a former NSW Premier’s Department’s “Nudge Unit”) to curb any “misinformation” on it. ATSE not only wants dissemination of “misinformation” labelled and limited across the board, it also wants (Recommendation 4) the censorship reach to extend to those private messaging services, subject to concerns about privacy and “weakening of encryption”. ATSE’s submission agrees piously that Australians’ trust in government is already low and falling, “so it is essential that legislation designed to tackle misinformation does not undermine what trust remains. This is reinforced by the fact that Australians are particularly concerned about misinformation from the government and politicians.”

The ATSE submission goes on to support indoctrination of school students based on the playbook of climate psychologists John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky. They and ATSE prescribe “inoculation” of kids with supposedly truthful climate alarmism to condition kids’ brains against any reference to harmless warming and net zero impossibilities they might later encounter. Cook, whose research team indulged in some truly bizarre behaviour, was lead author for the 2013 paper falselyclaiming a 97 per cent scientific consensus for the orthodox warming hypothesis).[5]

ATSE’s big program for schools was established  by future chief scientist Finkel (above) himself. This program uses global warming alarmism as a bait to excite Year 5-10 kids about science. Or in ATSE’s words, it is “tapping into the high level of concern that most students have about global warming, climate change and sustainability.” This is circular as the ATSE alarmists helped stir up kids’ climate neuroses in the first place. 

The ATSE program is now running in close to 1000 schools in Australasia and Asia, with 100,000 kids and 1500 teachers involved annually, with topics such as “How to save our world?”. While ATSE-sourced science lessons for the kids is lively and educationally impressive, its text material features hoary and discredited memes like anxious polar bears on ice floes (their numbers in fact have tripled in the past 50 years of mild global warming. Moreover, the material bangs on about global warming melting the Arctic sea ice whereas the sea ice has stabilised since 2007 and last month was at a 21-year high). Most disgusting of all, the course thrusts at kids a misinformation video about Tuvalu drowning from rising seas, and tells kids to write a case study on it.  In the video villagers “already live with their feet in the water” and mourn, “This land will be — you know — nothing.” Fact Check against misinformation: even RMIT-ABC Fact Check ruled from scientific measurement studies that Tuvalu’s land area is expanding.

It gets worse for the reputation of science. The 2022 joint ATSE/Science Academy submission to DIGImirrors the 2023 ATSE job. DIGI is Meta (Facebook), Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and TikTok. The DIGI players are, of course, the linchpin of the new Misinformation Bill.

The two academies urged DIGI to censor and harass any Australians who circulated what they insultingly labelled “climate denialism misinformation”. They made no bones about urging the tech giants’ power to be wielded against Murdoch’s “Sky News Australia and its media personalities”. And the regime shouldn’t stop at online censorship. They urge censoring “misinformation” in the traditional media too.

Recommendation 2: Include misinformation from professional news content within the scope of the Code.

A COP26 paper, Deny, Deceive, Delay, which the Academies’ submission also cited with approval referred to “political right-wing … top influencers” as part of a conspiratorial “intellectual dark web”. Its alleged members included best-selling psychologist Dr Jordan B. Peterson and humourist Scott Adams and his Dilbert cartoons. The paper, incidentally, was particularly aggrieved that Sky News’ Rita Panahi had called Prince (now King) Charles a climate hypocrite and idiot. Would that be misinformation or treason?

Another paper cited and approved by the two academies was another far-left conspiracy rant “The Toxic Ten — How ten fringe publishers fuel 69% of digital climate change denial.” To smear sceptics by association, the list includes “Russian state media”. Big Tech blocking these key right-of-centre outlets with their 186 million followers would be a huge win for the net-zero enforcers. Not all of the 600 science fellows viewed the submission as a credit to their Academy. Garth Paltridge, a fellow for 30-plus years, is a retired atmospheric physicist.[6] He told us at the time,

The bottom line is that research on climate change is indeed still highly controversial – both in the prediction of the extent of the change and (even more so) in the prediction of the impact of the change on society. I just cannot understand how any science academy that is supposed to operate through rational debate can behave like this – that is, to use pure political brute force to prevent one side of the argument from putting its case.

I can only assume that the Academy is subconsciously ‘chasing the money’ and is influenced by the vast funding available these days for the support of alarmist climate research. Certainly there is virtually no money to support scientists brave enough to put their heads above the parapet with a contrary view. That might be why the critical scientists seem largely to be retired.

Quadrant covered that joint submission under the felicitous headline, “Shut them up, argues the Academy of Science”. The two academies are now on a collision course with the Australian Human Rights Commission (HRC) which wants the misinformation bill defanged, not augmented.

The Commission holds serious reservations about the current version of the Exposure Draft Bill’s ability to strike the correct balance. Legislation that necessitates censorship to fight misinformation and disinformation must do so in a way that prevents harm without unduly silencing reasonable minds we disagree with. Unfortunately, this initial Exposure Draft Bill has not found that equilibrium.

The HRC is not my favourite institution.[7] It lost me when then-president Gillian Triggs opined in Hobart in 2017, to a standing ovation of Greens supporters, “Sadly you can say what you like around the kitchen table at home.” But on this Misinformation BIll, HRC President Rosalind Croucher has monstered the censorship-lovers. Censorship is contrary to fundamental Australian values, she argues, and also contrary to UN human rights treaties signed by Australia. She warns that the Bill could “restrict public debate, censor unpopular opinions and enforce ideological conformity in Australia.”

Truthful information can be labelled as ‘fake news’ and delegitimized, Croucher says. “Similarly, categories [in the Bill] such as ‘harm to the health of Australians’, ‘harm to the Australian environment’ and ‘economic or financial harm to Australians, the Australian economy or a sector of the Australian economy’ are each categories about which reasonable people may legitimately have different perspectives and views.”  She complains about the Bill’s free pass to any government information, true or false, “given the enhanced legitimacy and authority that many people attach to information received from official government sources.” Arguing in surprising parallel with the Institute of Public Affairs, HRC is alarmed that government has immunity while it can get its critics censored.

As for other submissions, the draft bill is even making the ABC nervous, as its iView and Listen apps could get caught in ACMA’s censorship wringer. The ABC also complains the Bill lacks provision for ABC journos to protect their sources.

The journos’ leftist union, MEAA, like the ABC, loves the censorship Bill in principle for targeting “misinformation” that contradicts their woke opinions. MEAA’s submission complains that authorities during the Referendum failed to suppress “deliberate campaigns distributing incorrect, misleading, and damaging information” by No advocates. The MEAA — trust them, they’re journalists

believes fact checkers [like their RMIT/ABC ideological mate Russ Skelton] should be a mandatory requirement of any code or standard developed.

At the same time, the MEAA feared the enhanced ACMA blowtorch could burn its many freelance journos and small online publishers. These small-timers, unlike mainstream publishers of “professional news content”, are likely targets for the official censorship. MEAA also feared ACMA could misuse its power to censor “harmful” accounts involving “disruption of public order or society” such as street protests. In MEAA’s words, “there is a long history of important social movements being considered ‘disruptive’ by governments and powerful interests.” I’m sure the union likes rioters for Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion and  the “Gas the Jews” mob, but not the peaceful anti-lockdown protestors which, in Victoria’s case, involved Dan Andrew’s troopers firing rubber bullets into them as they fled.

The MEAA solution goes like this: instead of exemptions for “professional news content”, make it exemptions for all those subscribing to the MEAA’s Code of Ethics. These (I presume) union members can be relied on for “a commitment to the highest standards of honesty, fairness, independence, and respect for the rights of others.” The MEAA’s other faux solution to “misinformation” online, echoing ATSE, is for kids to get “media literacy” training, under the watchful eye of the leftist fact-checkers.

 Even through its leftist goggles the MEAA can see that the censorship regime looks a bit dicey given its green-light exemption for all propaganda from all levels of government:

It is simply unreasonable that the view of governments be protected from the reach of this Bill’s definition of “misinformation” and paves the way for government to politicise valid criticisms of it[self] while engaging in misinformation of its own.

Other leftist submissions on the Bill are nervous that giving such powers to their friendly government might backfire when wielded by a cabinet of conservatives.

I’d better close now, I’d hate to give you any misinformation.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] “Death by a thousand consent forms”, as one analyst put it at the time.

[2] Gillard in desperation negotiated to replace PIMA with a three-person panel, appointed by a 12-person committee, six of whom would have been appointed by the Council of the Order of Australia, three appointed by the journalists’ union and three appointed by the Australian Press Council. The bill collapsed anyway.

[3] Actually, his phrase was, ” As a senior figure in this government … I know this issue [free speech] doesn’t create one job, doesn’t open one business, doesn’t give anyone one extra hour. It doesn’t make housing more affordable or energy more affordable.”

[4] Dr Woodthorpe previously chaired the National Climate Science Advisory Committee and currently chairs the Government’s “Vision 2040” committee.

[5] Another of the Cook-Lewandowsky papers on “deniers” (Recursive Fury) in 2014 was retracted by its hosting journal, Frontiers.

[6] Paltridge from 1990 to 2002 was professor and director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Oceans Studies at the University of Tasmania and at the same time, from 1991–2002, chief executive officer of the Antarctic Co-operative Research Centre at the University of Tasmania.

[7] From October 14  to January 28 the HRC  website had nothing to say about the country’s wave of “Gas the Jews/Where’s the Jews?” anti-Semitism, though it had earlier spent four years hounding and legally impoverishing some blameless QUT students who’d objected to being kicked out of an Aboriginal-only computer room. On January 29 it posted this sludge,

The Commission is extremely concerned about reports of rising incidents of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazi rallies, Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism. We will continue to support and engage with all communities in our society for an Australia free from racial hatred, discrimination, and unlawful harassment.

On February 19 it announced 

further anti-racism work to support communities in Australia affected by the war in Gaza and the Middle East, supported by a $2 million grant from the Commonwealth.  The grant responds to an increase in racism targeting Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, and Jewish communities within Australia since the outbreak of the conflict.

Facts of the ABC Variety

Should one laugh or cry at the news ABC is dumping its so-called “fact checkers” at RMIT University? ABC news director Justin Stevens emailed staff last week explaining that  the national broadcaster’s seven-year partnership with RMIT won’t be renewed. [Cue laughter]. But Stevens also announced that the ABC would set up an in-house “fact-check” unit called ABC News Verify [Cue tears].

ABC News Verify – doubtless modelled on “BBC Verify” which launched a year ago – will maintain the rage against whatever contradicts the ABC’s version of truth-telling. For example, that renewables are cheapest, Trump won in 2016 by colluding with Putin, men can become women and vice versa, and Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe, Australia’s leading fauxborigine, is of Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian Aboriginal ancestry.[1]

I’ll discuss BBC Verify later, but as a teaser mention that one of its BBC staffers has enrolled for six months training at a climate-alarm lobby group. This group likes the idea of fining or jailing anyone rubbishing the madness of planetary apocalypse and net-zero ambitions.

For background on RMIT, the ABC has paid $670,000-plus since 2020 to RMIT to run RMIT/ABC Fact Check, a unit purportedly“combining academic excellence and the best of Australian journalism to inform the public through an independent non-partisan voice.”

The ABC’s chief partner is Russ Skelton[2], who was originally inside the ABC running its fact-check unit. When the ABC killed it in 2016 because of Coalition funding cuts, Skelton migrated to RMIT and the “fact-checking” nexus continued with the help of the ABC’s taxpayer dollars. Now, according to Liberal Senator James Paterson, who chairs the Senate Intelligence and Security Committee, “RMIT would be wise to reconsider whether it’s a good idea to continue the operation given the brand damage they’ve sustained.” If or when the RMIT setup collapses, will the ABC welcome back Skelton as an asylum-seeker?

Skelton has run RMIT FactLab plus RMIT/ABC Fact Check with various resources in common. The group also provides factchecking “education and training” to schools, university students, journalists and civil society groups.

Last August 10, FactLab slapped a “False” label on Sky News’ Peta Credlin’s revelations about the Uluru Aboriginal manifesto. She had found through FOI that it was not a one-pager but a 26-pager seeking reparations, sovereignty and much awful else. The “False” label caused Meta to restrict circulation of Credlin’s message, warning that “independent fact-checkers say that this information has no basis in fact.”[3].[4] News Corp Australia threatened legal action against FactLab for allegedly providing “misleading” information under Australian Consumer Law.

A fortnight later Sky News master sleuth Jack Houghton ran a horrific expose of their bias and malfunctions, under the header, The Fact Check Files. For example, Meta asserted independence from its fact-checkers, but Houghton reported that it was secretly paying RMIT up to $740,000 a year via a Meta subsidiary in Ireland.[5] Houghton also quoted Skelton and staffer Renee Davidson touting the Yes case on their social media while ostensibly referees of the debate. Ms Davidson’s re-tweets included likening Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to a “fear-mongering racist.”[6]

Houghton resurrected that in 2013 while Skelton was at the ABC, the SMH published a highly critical Paul Sheehan commentary. I am not saying that Sheehan’s remarks about Skelton are true or accurate, only that the SMH published them and Sky News republished them.

By the time Mark Scott [former ABC managing director] left the Senate committee hearing into the ABC on Wednesday he smelled. An unpleasant odour had attached itself to the testimony and credibility of the ABC’s managing director. The source of odour could be summed up in two words: Russell Skelton.

That Skelton has had several ethical collisions, is a fierce political partisan, and has left an unedifying trail of puerile smears, would not matter to the public at large if Skelton had not just been appointed the chief fact-checker of the ABC.

In response to Sky News’ “Fact Check Files”, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) immediately suspended its endorsement of FactLab, and Meta suspended its paid partnership. RMIT on its website de-emphasised its former “hand in hand”remarks about the two entities after Houghton’s exposure.  IFCN restored RMIT in November, saying the problem was all just a glitch. Meta announced likewise. But FactLab has published no fact checks since Sky’s August exposure.

RMIT/ABC continued operations. Its latest three checks involve ratings of “Overblown” and “Not the full story” against Opposition memes, and a green tick “Delivered” on Labor’s election promise of 500 more staff to process veterans’ claims. At February 25, the unit rated Labor as having delivered 33 per cent of its 66 election promises, with 54 per cent “in progress”, 9 per cent “stalled” and 3 per cent “broken“. Among those rated “stalled” (rather than “broken” in substance) as of February 25 was “Maintain the  Coalition’s legislated tax cuts”.

While Houghton’s Sky News expose should (but won’t) win him a Gold Walkley, terminal damage to the RMIT and ABC venture was done soon after by the Institute of Public Affairs, which functions as the ABC’s own nemesis. IPA lawyer/historian John Storey and his research assistant, Margaret Chambers, catalogued and analysed all 80 referendum “fact checks” by RMIT Factlab and RMIT/ABC Fact Check from Labor’s election in May 2022 to the vote last October 14. Storey concluded that the referendum “likely featured the most unfair targeting and censorship of one side of a political debate—the No case—in Australian history.”

♦ For RMIT/ABC, 30 checks or 77 per cent targeted “No” claims. Of the 30, the unit rated 29 as “false” and one lone check as “true”. Of the nine “Yes” claims, the unit found five to be “true”, three “false” and one “neutral”.

♦ For RMIT FactLab, all 41 checks (100 per cent) targeted “No” and all (100 per cent) ruled the “No” claims to be “false”. [7]

Skelton’s teams under their International Fact-Checking Network auspices were required to ‘not concentrate their fact-checking unduly on any one side’. They demonstrably breached this Code, Storey wrote, also eviscerating the methods by which Skelton’s teams created their ‘true/false’ verdicts (without going to the merits of any individual check).

♦ They purported to disprove “No” legal opinions by citing contrary ‘Yes’ legal opinions, which was illogical. The vagueness of the “Yes” proposition meant that legal experts had a spectrum of views. All such opinions can only be tested in the High Court in a majority verdict.

♦ Both sides made emotional claims but “Yes” advocates got a free pass. For example, Senator Mick Dodson made comparisons between a hypothetical “No” win and South African apartheid – which hasn’t eventuated here so far. Whatever opinions aligned with the RMIT worldview didn’t get fact-checked.[8]

♦ The teams made pedantic attacks on “No” claims that were mere mockery or satire, such as a mocked-up voting card with only two “Yes” options.

♦ Both sides made any number of unprovable claims, such as “Yes” arguing that it would “save money” and “close the gap”. The fact-checking of such material was implemented largely to knock the “No” case.

During the campaign the “Yes” leaders used the fact-checking results to boost their case. For example, Voice architect Megan Davis:

The fact-checking is going really well, I think the No Campaign is up to their fiftieth lie that’s been fact-checked and has been deemed as not correct. And that’s really important … the work of the fact-checkers.

Voice blueprint co-author Marcia Langton:

If you look at any reputable fact checker, every one of them says the No case is substantially false. They are lying to you.

IPA concluded,

The fundamental problem with censoring ‘misinformation’ is deciding who determines truth and falsehood. In the case of the referendum, organisations that purported to be neutral, and to whom responsibility was given to determine truth and falsehood, acted in a demonstrably one sided and biased manner. If organisations like these were empowered to censor online communications, the damage done to free political debate in this country would be profound.

Arguments about RMIT’s fact-checking are not just academic. During the Referendum when it slapped ‘False’, ‘wrong’, ‘debunked’ or ‘misinformation’ onto public figures’ views, Meta and Google restricted the views’ circulation and added warnings to damage the authors’ credibility. It’s a form of privately enforced censorship. Unwanted views can be suppressed with no explanation or right of reply and without any third party being aware of it. Throttling and labels can also bankrupt commercial sites by frightening away their advertising.

The nadir was during the final weeks of the US election in 2020,  when the FBI warned social-media leaders of likely Russian disinformation attempts. At the time the FBI knew the New York Post was about to break news of the Hunter Biden laptop and his corrupt foreign income flow from China and the Ukraine. The social media chiefs took the heavy hint and Twitter locked out the New York Post from circulating even its own scoop — along with third parties wanting to spread the news nationally. The specifics of the Deep State intervention emerged only because Elon Musk bought Twitter for $US44 billion and released the documentation. Polling suggested this censorship could have tipped enough votes into a win for Biden.

A year or more later, the New York Times and the Washington Post (but not the ABC) sheepishly acknowledged the Hunter Biden laptop disclosures were authentic. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerbergsaid Facebook’s wrongful censorship “Sucks … when we take down something that we’re not supposed to, that’s the worst.”

TIME now to catch up on BBC Verify, likely a template for ABC’s new Verify namesake.

BBC installed a team of 60 so-called “investigative and forensic” journalists promoting “radical transparency in action”, supposedly building audience trust in BBC reports and “explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth.” Its birth might well have been inspired by UK polling that trust in the BBC news is sagging dramatically. One annual survey in 2022 showed that since 2018, trust in the BBC slumped 20 points to 55 per cent, although it was still the UK’s most trusted news brand. A quarter of Britons — mostly conservative voters — don’t trust BBC News, and overall trust in journalism in the UK fell to a record low of 34 per cent.

BBC Verify got off to a bad start with its disinformation correspondent Marianna Spring promptly announcing she was studying the “UK’s conspiracy theory movement” which she connected a priori to “far right” and foreign sources. She showed no interest in any “far left” offshore conspirators. Spring hosts the BBC podcast “Marianna in Conspiracy-land”, attacking “mistruths” than can cause “really serious harm to society”. (“Serious harm” is also a key term in PM Albanese’s looming Misinformation Bill). She boasted,

There are other ways we also are able to interrogate what’s going on, including on social media. I have some undercover accounts that I’ve set up for the BBC’s Americast podcast, and we use these kinds of undercover accounts to be able to really understand polarisation online, and what’s happening on our social media feeds, and what we’re being recommended can affect all of us. 

 Frank Havilland at the European Conservative wrote,

Aside from the fact that such accounts are illegal, Spring is admitting that the BBC routinely uses fake social media accounts (which clearly influence the narrative), to understand fake social media accounts’ influence on the narrative. You couldn’t make this stuff up!

Hard to believe but the BBC is even more climate-deranged than the ABC. UK fact-checker Paul Homewood, an ex-accountant, has been nailing the BBC’s own “disinformation” on climate change on almost a daily basis for years, based on relevant readouts from multiple types of weather logging worldwide. BBC’s key misinformation is claiming extreme weather is getting worse, contrary to the data readouts and to the findings of the 5th and 6th IPCC reports.

 A typical BBC climate story was last December, quoting a young Egyptian artist Hossna Hanafy that her home city of Alexandria was at risk from rising sea levels. She complained that her school teachers had mocked such suggestions, and now runs climate-alarm workshops for kids. In the young lady’s entire lifetime, Alexandria’s tide gauge data in fact showed sea levels there had risen by a mere 2cm, or a rate of 18cm per century – less than the length of my hand and fingers. Homewood wrote,

Roger Harrabin, the BBC’s former Energy and Environment Analyst, let the cat out of the bag last year when he tweeted that the BBC has long been trying to ‘knit climate change into the fabric of the daily news’. In other words, try to link every bit of bad weather, famine or other disaster to global warming, in the most surreptitious way possible. Little wonder that only 44 per cent of Brits trust the BBC’s journalists to be truthful.

Last month another BBC Verify climate disinformation staffer, Marco Silva, started a six-months study-leave course run by the green-billionaire-funded Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN). One of OCJN’s educators was Exeter Associate Professor Saffron O’Neill. She co-wrote a paper for the alarmist Carbon Brief in 2020 advocating “even putting in place punishments, such as fines or imprisonment” for alleged misinformation against “well-supported theories, or “attempt[ing] to discredit climate science.” Her link went to Brazilian proposed legislation for jail terms of up to eight years for “publishing inaccurate media accounts”, mainly but not exclusively to do with alleged pre-election misinformation.

The current OCJN course involves stupidities for participants like describing why a mango isn’t as tasty as a year ago because of climate change. No evidence is needed. Such is the education of BBC Verify’s arbiters of truths.

I suppose the ABC’s Justin Stevens can find enough idle souls to staff up his Verified Ministry of Truth – maybe from among the hundred or so ABC layabouts passing no-confidence motions in the managing director.

As Leigh Sales reminded Stevens last year, the ABC brand in the past few years has slipped from fifth most-trusted to eighteenth. Speaking generally, she continued,

My own honest opinion as to why many people are losing interest in the news? Because … people rightly don’t always trust us any more… One [reason] is that some reporters prefer to be activists and crusaders rather than fact-finders or straight reporters. They enjoy their heroic status among the tribes of social media or their subscribers. I’m not sure they can even identify their own bias. Others haven’t had enough training to understand what independent journalism actually is, or their organisation has an ideological bias and the reporter knows the way to get ahead is to toe the line … better still, to step over it. Or perhaps it’s awkward and exhausting to constantly push back against the groupthink of your colleagues. Another reason is fear of the consequences of reporting the full picture: that inconvenient facts could set back a cause the journalist believes in…

Yep, Leigh, I’ll verify that.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Stevens said Verify would be a “team of specialists with the ability to scale up to support our special coverage in times of crisis. It will be part of the Investigative Journalism and Current Affairs team led by Jo Puccini.”

[2] Skelton happens to be partnered domestic-wise by the ABC’s Virginia Trioli.

[3] At the ABC itself, star journo Leigh Sales delivered staff a script on how to justify the Labor “one-page” dogma

[4] Houghton described how Meta allowed RMIT to put a “false information” label on the video which forced users to read a disclaimer before opting to watch the video. Meta also restricted reach on the entire Sky News Australia page for weeks as a punitive response.

[5] Houghton: “The more fact checks RMIT publishes, including on the Voice, the more money it makes. This has the chilling effect of creating a financial incentive for activists to profit while controlling the national discourse.”

[6] “There is a significant difference between listening to Indigenous criticism of the Voice, and Peter Dutton’s opposition. One is healthy criticism from those impacted that challenges our colonial structures, the other is fear-mongering through racism,” Ms Davidson retweeted.

[7] The IPA study also covered the biased “AAP Fact Check” that devoted 99 or 93% of its 107 checks to “No” claims, finding every one to be “false”. Of the eight “Yes” claims, it found seven “false” and one “mixed”. Six of its eight “Yes” checks were made on or after the Sky News expose of August 23, suggesting a sudden urge by AAP Fact Check to appear less biased.

[8] For example, Sky’s Houghton says RMIT has never fact checked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese or Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney for the erroneous claim that a legislated Voice could be removed with a “stroke of a pen”.

At the ABC, it’s Always Time for Hare of the Doc

ABC insiders speaking on condition of anonymity say that ABC TV has lined up a 30-minute interview with pop-singer Dr Taylor Swift. The favourites of ABC chair Dr Ita Buttrose are fighting to do the gig. Namely Dr Sarah Ferguson squaring off against Dr Leigh Sales, both having bested Dr Geraldine Doogue. ABC has-beens Dr Ray Martin and Dr Kerry O’Brien are already knocked out of contention. Incoming chair Dr Kim Williams will have final say. Over at Channel 10, Dr Lisa Wilkinson is reportedly still chasing an exclusive with Dr Swift, or failing that, with rapper Dr Kanye West.

The babelicious Dr Swift has a Doctor of Fine Arts(h.c.) from New York University. The above-mentioned talent’s doctorates are also “h.c.” It stands for honoris causa, i.e. honorary. Few at the ABC speak Latin, so you never know who next they’re going to call “Dr”.

I intended this piece to be about my old mate, net-zero spruiker Bill Hare who in his distant youth got a B.Sc.(Hons) degree from Murdoch University. Now he heads up a lavishly funded anti-gas and oil lobby called Climate Analytics.[1] He’s been the go-to climate catastrophist for every ABC reporter since forever. And every time they describe him as “Dr” Bill Hare. This makes him look more quote-worthy than “Mr Bill Hare, B.Sc. (Hons) – Murdoch 1983”.[2] His lawfare against Woodside’s Scarborough gas project also acquires a more sciencey lustre.

The woke Murdoch University in 2008 gave him an Honorary Doctor of Science, saying that “his climate change activism and political acumen have seen him described as ‘the best climate lobbyist in the world’.” (Link broken). Then it told him he could strut his Honorary Ph.D. all over the place, contrary to long-established Murdoch, pan-academic and government protocols. (Don’t let someone with an Honorary Doctorate in Veterinary Science spay your Golden Retriever).

Each time the ABC quotes “Dr Hare”, I whine to its complaints team. They’re over a barrel because the ABC Style Guide says, “Honorary doctorates do not usually confer the Dr title.” In other words ABC policy is against dubbing people “Dr” merely because some university somewhere has robed them in a black bonnet and stripey gown for running a lost dogs’ home or a loser state like Victoria (e.g. Dr Steve Bracks, Dr Ted Baillieu, and Dr Jeff Kennett, with Dan Andrews now panting for his statesmanlike turn). The ABC complaints team always agrees I’m right and alerts the 4,971 staff (as at June 2023) about the style breach. The 4,971 staff pay not the slightest attention and in as little as 24 hours, resume calling him “Dr Hare”. And so the cycle continues, as I document later as your special treat.

In my complaint last week, I saved time by also complaining about 7pm ABCTV flagship news on February 4 describing the late Lowitja O’Donoghue eight times verbally and twice in signage as “Dr O’Donoghue”. I respect her life’s work for remote-Aboriginal progress as much as anyone (except it doesn’t progress), but all her six doctorates are honorary and the ABC chose not to mention that. With Aborigines the ABC is utterly inconsistent. The very same 7pm News item quoted Pat Dodson praising Lowitja, but didn’t call him “Dr Dodson” notwithstanding his honorary doctorates from Melbourne Uni (Laws) and UNSW (Letters).

Yet whenever the ABC mentions Voice co-architect Tom Calma, who has a couple of associate diplomasin social work, it’s always “Dr Calma” this and “Dr Calma” that. Another whom the ABC loved entitling “Dr” was Galarrwuy Yunupingu, famed for his $1400-an-hour helicopter on standby full-time at his waterfront mansion to assist conjugal visits to four wives dispersed around the Gove Peninsular. Yunupingu got his honorary doctorate in laws from Melbourne University in 2015.[3] Check this Stan Grant ABC piece about Dr Yunupingu as “The great champion of the Gumatj people”.

And why does the ABC discriminate against doctorate holders (honorary) like ex-footballer Adam Goodes? If it’s Dr Calma and Dr O’Donoghue, why not Dr Goodes? The same appalling ABC discrimination was applied against their own former grievance specialist Stan Grant, whom they never called “Dr” Grant, and health advocate Dr Pat Anderson and flag designer Dr Harold Thomas.

I try to economise on my complaints to the ABC, but through initial carelessness I overlooked another wrong in that Feb 4 ABC TV item. That led me to add a further complaintlast week, about the ABC positioning Lowitja O’Donoghue at age two as having been officially stolen from her mother’s traditional native camp. She wasn’t, regardless of whether the Aboriginal Industry and the ABC would like her to be. The ABC is associated with at least three leftist gangs purporting to enforce truth and suppress mis- and disinformation from the (conservative) media. The gangs are

♦ Trusted News Initiative: ABC joined this BBC-led global consortium working with Big-Tech to suppress any narrative that conflicts with deep-State messaging on climate-doom, covid vaccines, and Hunter Biden getting a $US5m payoff from a Chinese intelligence-affiliated investment consortium.

♦ Newsguard: Another global censoring operationalso aimed at throttling the flow of advertising to on-line sites that disrupt leftist narratives. Of course it gives the ABC literally a perfect score for trustworthy bias-free reports.

♦ ABC-RMIT Fact Check: Journo Russ Skelton’s fiefdom, buttressed by $670,000 ABC money, where the overwhelming majority of checks are against the Murdoch and similar right-of-centre outlets, while endless porkies from the “progressive” side go through to the keeper. Skelton’s sister entity RMIT FactLab came a gutser over its “Yes” bias on the Referendum.[4]

Will any of these three hold ABCTV flagship news to account over its misinformation about Lowitja’s “stolen” status? And will ABC Complaints Department validate my rightful concern?

I suspect the ABC will insist without evidence that Lowitja was officially stolen, notwithstanding that Lowitja herself told Andrew Bolt she wasn’t stolen but given up by her father.

The 7PM News item began with a clip of Lowitja saying, “We were stolen but we need to move on.” (The “we” might mean herself and siblings or maybe some wider cohort). Presenter Iskhander Razak script-read, “Born in remote South Australia to an Aboriginal mother and a pastoralist father, Dr O’Donoghue and two elder sisters were taken from their parents [plural] when she was just two. She was trained as a domestic worker.” She then says in a clip, “I feel angry about the policy that removed us and also took away our culture, our language and families.”

Commentator Andrew Bolt has quoted acquaintances and a relative that her white father in fact dumped her and three siblings at Colebrook mission, where two sisters gave her the education that enabled her sterling career.  Bolt interviewed her in 2001:

(My father) didn’t want to be straddled with five kids,” the former Australian of the Year said, sobbing. “I haven’t forgiven him… “I don’t like the word ‘stolen’ and it’s perhaps true that I’ve used the word loosely at times… I would see myself as a removed child, and not necessarily stolen.” Asked whether it would be better to state clearly that she wasn’t a member of the stolen generation, Dr O’Donoghue said: “I am prepared to make that concession.

While she later accused Bolt of mischievously distorting the situation, I can’t find her claiming that he quoted her words inaccurately. An authoritative transcript of her own words in 1994, when she was 62, is here

Were your older sisters also the children of Tom O’Donoghue?

… the indications are that my father had a long standing relationship with my mother and there were five children by that relationship.

And yet he did nothing to prevent you being taken away?

No, but … because it’s difficult for me to really confirm what the situation was but my understanding was that he had a … a wife and family in Adelaide, so I guess one could understand that he really was living a double life and wouldn’t want … wouldn’t have wanted for his family in the city to know that he had five half-caste children.[5]

Is it possible also that he thought it was for the best?

Well, yes, it could have well have been. It could have been a combination of both really, because obviously he wasn’t going to be staying around for that longand then, of course, the other mystery is, of course, whether in fact half-caste children were all that welcome in the … in, you know, as … within the traditions.

Hence 7pm News is wrong or misleading in saying she was “taken” (i.e. unwillingly taken or stolen) from her parents [plural]. Correct would be along the lines of, “She was given up with two sisters by their father to missionaries, probably against the wishes of her mother.”

Getting back now to my original whinge about honorary doctorates, I don’t know of any Australian instances yet of universities giving one to a fake Aborigine. It’s bound to happen as various controversial figures in academia enjoy a high profile and esteem – see Roger Karge’s brilliant website. In Canada Justice Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond notched up 11 Canadian honorary doctorates as the “first person of treaty Indian status to be named to the bench in Saskatchewan.” A tenured professor on $C300,000, she was eventually outed as a “Pretendian” or pretend-Indian, with forebears tracked as entirely European. Her supposed upbringing in a Manitoba home for First Nation kids amid poverty, alcoholism and abuse was actually in Niagara Falls, Ontario. All 11 universities said they were reviewing the doctorates but one had no internal process for revoking one.

As readers’ promised treat re Mr Hare, here’s my ABC updated campaign diary:

April Fool’s Day, 2019: Four Corners transcript refers 13 times to Bill Hare as “Dr” Hare.

April 7, 2019: I complain to the ABC and request corrections. I say the ABC would not refer to comedian Mr Yahoo Serious as “Dr Serious” even though he has an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Newcastle University, 1996.

April 11, 2019: Four Corners executive producer Sally Neighbour responds,

I am advised that Bill Hare has an Honorary Doctorate of Science awarded to him in 2008 by Murdoch University for his work on climate change science and policy. Murdoch University itself refers to Bill Hare as ‘Dr’ in some of its publications. 

It is not uncommon practice to refer to people with Honorary Doctorates as ‘Dr’. I understand this is often qualified with the reference (h.c). For the purpose of our program, we did not feel this was necessary as most viewers or readers would not be familiar with the term. I am happy to take your comments onboard should we interview Bill Hare again on Four Corners. I will also convey your comments to Laura Tingle.

May 7, 2019: Michael Slezak on ABC News Analysisinterviews “Dr” Bill Hare.

October 24, 2021: David Speers on Insiders interviews “Dr” Bill Hare.

Nov 5, 2021: RN Breakfast with presenter Sally Sara: “Dr” Bill Hare again

Nov 11, 2021:ABC 7.30: A fawning Leigh Sales achieves six references to “Dr” Hare on one 7.30 episode.

Nov 14, 2021: I complain again to the ABC about “Dr” Hare:

A couple of years ago I complained about your use of “Dr” Hare, and Sally Neighbour informed me the ABC would be more careful about it. Please correct all ABC versions where you call him “Dr” Hare — or at least explain that he has only an honorary doctorate for his lobbying activity.

After 18 days, on Dec 2, 2021, Matt Galvin of ABC News Management replies:

I have referred your concerns to ABC Language, a unit that meet (sic) regularly and advise (sic) ABC staff on correct language usage. They have pointed me to the ABC’s publicly-available style guide…Honorary doctorates do not usually confer the Dr title. 

Considering the above, ABC News agrees that as Bill Hare is the CEO of Climate Analytics, it would have been sufficient in both of these recent instances to introduce him without the ‘Dr’ honorific. Please be assured that both programs will be advised about the correct usage of such references. Thank you for bringing this matter to the ABC’s attention.

So Four Corners and Laura Tingle stuffed up about “Dr” Hare in 2019, the ABC organised a corrective, Leigh Sales et al stuffed it up again and the ABC again conceded fault and applied its corrective to ensure it would be repeated no more. All well and good, the system seemed to be working, albeit with some sand in the gears. But the very day after I received the apology from ABC News Management’s Matt Galvin (Dec 2), the ABC published a new report by reporter Rebecca Turner (Dec 3) touting “Dr” Hare all over again. (corrected version linked). Ms Turner confusingly called him “Bill Hare”, “Mr Bill Hare” and “Dr Hare” all within six paragraphs.

Dr [sic] Hare, who received support from the CCWA [Conservation Council of WA] for the [Woodside] study, said WA did not need Scarborough gas to keep the lights on …”So really on the time scale of a decade or so, we could be 100 per cent renewable in the electricity space by the early 2030s, as are other places.” [Like where, exactly?].

So I file yet another complaint to the ABC on December 7:

Despite being twice advised that the ABC would cease calling Mr Bill Hare of Climate Analytics “Dr” Hare, ABC News has reverted to “Dr Hare” just one day after Matt Galvin (ABC News Management) assured me it wouldn’t happen. Can you please correct that Dec 3 report and take steps to ensure that ABC people cease referring to “Dr” Bill Hare. Thanks. 

Dec 8, 2021: Matt Galvin responds promptly and politely, “Thanks for pointing this out Tony – the correction has been made.”

Instead of a correction, the ABC merely did a ‘stealth edit’.

May 17, 2022: For ABCTV 7pm News, it’s “Dr” Hare all over again.

May 17, 2022: I complain again to my friend, Ms McLiesh, at ABC Audience & Consumer Affairs. Either no response or I’ve mislaid it.

February 6, 2024: “Dr” Hare was back on the ABC on January 22 (link to corrected version), courtesy Darwin reporter Roxanne Fitzgerald. I complain again at about 11am.

Can you please again advise ABC staff that however much they might want to big-up “Dr” Hare in order to big up their narrative of CAGW (catastrophic manmade global warming) he is just a BSc Hons holder and should be referred to as “Mr”. Nor has he sufficient physical science papers to warrant the ABC calling him a “climate scientist”. The appropriate descriptor would be “Climate lobbyist” or “Anti-CO2 emissions lobbyist”.

I then resumed my household chores (sweeping, dusting, tidying), not expecting a reply for a fortnight or more. Imagine my surprise — within two hours Complaints had flicked my beef to ABC Darwin office which emailed me back admitting error and by stealth edits, demoting “Dr” Hare to “Mr” or just plain Bill.

From Emily Sakzewski, Deputy News Editor, NT:

I am emailing in response to your complaint over this ABC News story to let you know the story has been updated to reflect Bill Hare’s correct honorific as Mr, rather than Dr. 

I googled Emily. Without wanting to give the kiss of death to her career, I rate her published work to be well-researched and free of noticeable leftist bias. The ABC’s Darwin office seems not to be woke b/s merchants and is capable of professional journalism, good customer service and sturdy common sense. I wish Emily well and view her as a future candidate for managing director, if David Anderson (on $1.15 million p.a) retires any time during this century.

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Climate Analytics was born from the dark-green Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) , which has led the way into Germany’s current energy crisis. PIK has its anti-gas and anti-coal tentacles all over Australia. Climate Analytics’ funders include the UN and EC, the Rockefellers, Greenpeace, Lock the Gate Alliance, the Togo government (indirectly), the Ivory Coast government, Tim Flannery’s Climate Council, ACF, the World Bank, the German and UK governments, Murdoch University (or course), and the Green Climate Fund,

[2] Bill Hare was a Greenpeace International spokesman as “Climate Policy Director” 1992-2002, its “Chief Climate Negotiator” in 2007, and a Greenpeace “legend”. Notwithstanding, he was also a 2007 IPCC lead author and an expert reviewer on two out of three sections of that report, and one of 40 people on the “core writing team” for the big-picture Synthesis Report. He was a lead author for the 2014 report.

[3] MIT and University of Virginia don’t give out honorary degrees. William Barton Rogers, the founder of MIT, said the concept of honorary degrees was “literary almsgiving… of spurious merit and noisy popularity.” 

[4] “[Conservative commentator Peta] Credlin’s claim that the Uluru Statement is a 26-page document and not a one-page document was found to be false information by RMIT FactLab. The finding led to Credlin’s editorial being removed from the platform, infuriating News Corp Australia which threatened legal action against FactLab for allegedly providing “misleading” information under Australian Consumer Law.”

[5] Lowitja further speculated that the missionaries in general there might have won the trust of mothers through supplying stores and “a few goodies”, but she said mothers would still be unwilling to give up children.

Bruce Pascoe, Comfortably in the Black

Would-be Aborigine Uncle Bruce Pascoe is Melbourne University’s Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture. It’s a red-letter day when his entities deliver their annual reports. I’m feasting on these just-out 2022-23 accounts like a seagull at a packet of chips.

His directorships are at Twofold Aboriginal Corporation, a welfare co-op based in Eden NSW, and a charity, Black Duck Foods , which picks up the costs of Yumburra, a 60-hectare native-grass and tuber farm at Gypsy Poin near Mallacoota, just south the NSW border. The farm is owned by Bruce’s personal business, Pascoe Publishing P/L.

Melbourne University doesn’t hand out its Enterprise Professorships to every Tom, Dick and Harry in business  (better make that, “Harriett”). The uni guidelines say,[1]

Enterprise appointments are highly selective to ensure appointees bring distinctive knowledge and skills that would be otherwise unavailable to the institution. Professorial-level Enterprise appointments are highly distinguished positions…individuals must

♦ Have an eminent and sustained record of peak level leadership, entrepreneurship and influence;

♦ Be widely recognised for their outstanding achievements in industry, business, professions and/orgovernment; and

♦ Demonstrate specialist expertise and a highly developed industry/business knowledge base that matches in breadth and depth what is expected of all professors of the University.

To illustrate Bruce’s such credentials, he bought the “old buggered-up” farm, the only one he could afford(his words, at 2.05mins) a decade ago with the proceeds from selling a family shack at Cape Otway. As he put it three years ago, “We have about $7000 worth of second-hand equipment and are lucky to have a couple of philanthropists backing us with modest funding. We live on a rag, it’s not even oily. We’re a tiny operation and the only way for us to be able to meet market expectations is to receive the warmth of the Australian heart.”

Now fasten your seatbelts, everyone. By last June, “the old buggered-up farm”  had attracted $2.21 million since 2019 in donations and government grants, including $300,000 from the warm-hearted Murdoch family via Rupert’s sister, Eve Kantor, and her Dara Foundation.[2] He also persuaded donors that native-food agriculture could rocket Labor to fulfilment of its 2030 anti-emissions target, helping in the nick of time to subdue planetary heating.

Sadly, only $208,453 of the $2.21 million was left last June. And at 2022-23’s rate of loss ($235,989), there would be nothing left by next June 30. In the four years that donors and taxpayers’ $2.2 million has kept Pascoe’s farm afloat, its sales of native-grass seed and tourist homestays have totalled a modest  $37,949.[3]If all this isn’t “enterprise” on Bruce’s part, what is?[4]

But let’s start with last year’s accounts of the Twofold charity. The Aboriginal-only co-op arranges housing and aged care for its community around Eden. Thanks to $1 million or so prior losses run up by its construction arm, Mundabaa, it has negative current assets of $796,911. Twofold has euthanased Mundabaa, or in the CEO’s words, put it into hibernation. The auditors, I’m sorry to say, have now qualified Twofold’s accounts for four years running as a going concern.

Twofold director Professor Uncle Bruce’s “specialist expertise and a highly developed industry/business knowledge base” will doubtless turn this co-op’s finances around, I’ll let you know when.

Meanwhile Dr Jenny George, Dean of  Melbourne University’s Business School, can use Twofold as a case study.[5] For example, instead of sticking to aged-care and meals-on-wheels, Twofold struck up a “Continuing And Growing Relationship” with Bruce’s old buggered-up farm down the road. As the Wheeler Centre put it in 2021, “Bruce Pascoe is a Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian man [that’s a stretch] and farms his property at Mallacoota in cooperation with Black Duck Foods and Twofold Aboriginal Corporation.”[6]

You might be wondering what pink-cheeked fair-skinned Cornishman Bruce is doing on the Aboriginal-only roll of the co-op, and I’ll revisit this issue later, along with my gripes about less-than-rigorous supervision of Twofold by the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations (ORIC).

On Black Duck Foods, I chronicled the back story a year ago but you might need a refresher. Bruce’s Dark Emu “history” books since 2014 for credulous adults and vulnerable schoolkids are about the Aborigines’ farming towns in the pre-contact era – think novelist Thomas Hardy and Wessex. Pascoe’s claims have been manna for the wokerati, the ABC [7],  indoctrinators from pre-school to university and as I mentioned last week, Australia’s PhD-toting museum curators.

His aim with his farm is to display successful Aboriginal farming (pre-contact style) to Australia and the world, inspire an Aboriginal-foods industry and ensure profits goes to Aborigines.[8]

The success of this pilot study would lead to shifting Australia’s colonial-settler wheat and barley output into mixed fields of yam daisies and kangaroo grass, to be hand-harvested if necessary by sizeable teams of Antipodean peasantry.[9] By 2030 farmers’ redundant fence posts would be inputs to the furniture-making industry. Flour from his seed harvests, with a 30,000 year pedigree, would be toasted into tasty and nutritious native bread. In Bruce’s mind-map, the native veges would supplant iceberg lettuce [at 18mins] at Coles and Woolies and “produce a truly Australian cuisine that overseas visitors will travel to experience.” 

Between wages for three or four Aboriginal workers, material costs and sadly getting burnt boundary-to-boundary in 2020 (his house survived), he was operating well out of pocket. It was from his Dark Emu royalties and spin-offs, which I’ve estimated at close to a million dollars, that he was keeping  farm and workforce afloat.[10] This wasn’t much of a business model, especially for an Enterprise Professor. To make matters worse he was playing involuntary host to white settler rubber-neckers “stealing Spirit, stealing [my] time.” [11]

His response was twofold (pardon the pun).

♦ He set up the farm-stay business at $800 a night per person [12] and $300 an hour for campfire yarning to tourists on starry nights about pelicans talking to him in the Yuin language of his supposed ancestors.[13] For a Welcome to Country? – $500 plus travel. Buy native seeds? Sure. Although three out of five of his lines remain unavailable (labelled “Out of Stock”), grab 250gm of Mitchell and Button Grass Seeds in a classy paper bag. Ninety bucks.[14]

♦ He leased his farm to Black Duck Foods for a modest $140,000 paid in 2021-22, dubbed by Pitcher Partners as “Occupancy Expense”. He had earlier sold Black Duck $82,000 worth of his above-mentioned used farm gear including, I guess, his tractor.

Black Duck’s articles say that its committee (Bruce, his son Dr Jack Pascoe[15], his ex-wife Lyn Harwood and associates), can’t distribute any profit to themselves, but they are entitled to good-faith payment for goods and services rendered – (s2.3.c,i). Whatever labour, improvements or fixes the farm needs, the charity pays for. What’s not to like?

Pascoe’s native-food-revolution was, as mentioned, irresistible to donors. Taxpayer-funded Aboriginal entities and foundations also decided to throw cash at Black Duck. Finding projects to ease their bulging coffers must be a tough gig.[16]  

I do detect in 2022-23 accounts a cooling of donor enthusiasm about Bruce’s farm. “Donations” tumbled from $263,717 in 2021-22 to only $84,893. Government and suchlike grants shrank from $396,400 to $232,468. “Other income” (mainly consulting services]), was down from $115,097 to $31,492. The item which saw a bit of an increase was “Farming income”, up from $1500 to a mighty $14,404, although “farming direct costs” also suffered a mighty increase from $21,854 to $44,402.

All this led to Black Duck’s gross surplus falling 60 per cent, from $754,861 to $318,855. After expenses including nearly $400,000 in wages,  $21,000 to lawyers, and motor vehicle costs (I wonder who drives what?), the net result for Bruce’s farm was a loss of $235,989, compared with a $180,689 loss in 2020-21. This reduced Black Duck’s funds to $208,453, which I hope can be eked out until June 30.

So how will the Pascoes stop Black Duck copping a load of shotgun pellets, fiscal-wise? In its 2023 “information statement” the Charities Commission has asked, “Does the charity intend to fundraise in the next [2023-24] reporting period?” Black Duck has answered, “No”. So heavy spending cuts seem called for.

My eyes darted to the item Rent (to Pascoe): in 2022-23 he had already cut the rent from $140,000 to only $7930. He also switched from pricey Pitcher Partners in Melbourne’s Southern Cross tower to Black Duck’s original small advisor Collective Works Pty Ltd. at St Peters, NSW, with sign-off on Black Duck by Ms Natalie Ducki. (No, I haven’t made that name up).

The farm’s big cost is labour, and last year the four full-time-equivalent paid Aboriginal workers were supplemented with a horde of 50 volunteers. The year before, it was three paid workers and, in 2020-21, five paid workers, plus 10 volunteers. In total Black Duck’s paid wages of $1,214,755.  Pascoe does deserve credit for having given good jobs to local Aborigines, albeit with other people’s money.[17]

On the academic front, Professor Bruce has hauled in one research grant for Melbourne University, namely $125,571 from AIATSIS in 2022 about yam daisies.

Australian agriculture relies on crops imported from Europe, ignoring the productive plant foods farmed before colonisation. Here, we will study the historical distribution & cultivation systems of murnong (yam daisy) on Eastern Maar lands.

The four researchers include Bruce and his son, Dr Jack Pascoe. According to AIATSIS, there are no outputs yet.

The project also has a Closing the Gap focus whereby “People maintain a distinctive cultural, spiritual, physical and economic relationship with their land and waters.” Some might think gap-closing funds could better be used directly for, say, reducing infants’ scabies in the crowded unhygienic remote settlements – the scabies rate is more than six times worse than in other developed countries.[18] No wonder Jacinta Price wants an audit of spending by the Aboriginal Industry.

Pascoe’s kangaroo-grass plot thickens with duplication when one discovers that, in 2019, National’s senator and Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie tipped $1.82 million into the Bendigo-based Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation (now called Djaara, with $26 million net assets), “to unlock the potential of Kangaroo Grass as a viable cropping option in the face of climate change.” Djaara is some 700km west of Pascoe’s spread at Gypsy Point. The project, involving half a dozen universities and government agencies will finish within a few months, and Melbourne University got a preliminary science paper published 15 months ago. Urging further research, it  concluded about ‘roo grass,

Key agronomic constraints include low and variable seed yields, limited knowledge of important aspects of crop management and difficulties in broadacre crop establishment associated with its seed diaspore morphology, low seed quality, germination requirements and weed competition.

NOW back to Pascoe’s board seat on that Aboriginal-only co-op, Twofold. Even Melbourne University no longer refers to Uncle Bruce as Aboriginal, as it did upon his appointment, for them he’s now merely a “writer and farmer”. My concern for Twofold’s native-only membership is doubly pertinent because in 2020 ORIC ordered a special examination of Twofold and discovered that a white office lady had been enrolled as a co-op member. The Registrar told Twofold to kick her off the roll, which it did.[19] Two years ago, I emailed ORIC:

Mr Pascoe has never been able to name an Aboriginal ancestor and all his relevant ancestors appear to be British residents. He has made multiple claims to ancestry from various Aboriginal nations  but has never named such an ancestor. In view of your previous action disbarring a non-Aboriginal from Twofold membership, can you please tell me whether you have taken any action regarding Mr Pascoe’s membership, if so with what result?

The bland reply from ORIC (10/2/2022):

The rule book of Twofold Aboriginal Corporation says that if a member is not an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person their membership can only be cancelled by members at a general meeting passing a special resolution to do so. 

Obviously, this hasn’t happened.

My other beef with ORIC is that its public register of Twofold accounts — and at least one other corporation’s accounts – is deficient. For example, a year ago Twofold’s important 2020-21 result (loss of $498,600, auditor’s going-concern qualification) was there to download; today it’s gone. Yet the register’s heading for Twofold promises (my emphasis), “Documents (link to all documents for this corporation)”. By request, ORIC sent me (promptly) the 2020-21 accounts by email, with an explanation:

The website view of the Register of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporations is limited to display documents for the 2 most recent reporting periods. The document you refer to is still available from the register and I have attached it for you.

This is baffling  as the website view of Twofold documents actually stretches back to 2003, including around 30 items of old trivia. The annual financial and general reports stop at 2021-22, but for some reason Auditor’s Reports for 2012 and 2011 can still be found there (both qualified, and without accompanying financial accounts). I sampled another corporation’s records at ORIC showing three years’ accounts. They were followed by none of the earlier ones but much trivia and, coincidentally, auditor’s reports for 2012 and 2011. The flow of documents ceased at 2009.  My beef to ORIC was about the Twofold 2020-21 and earlier financial reports being removed. This would never happen at say, the Australian Charities and NFP Commission(ACNC).[20]  Transparency is  vital concerning faction-ridden  ORIC corporations – where one family might be hogging or misusing royalties and benefits at the expense of other member clans. I’m inclined to the view  that the ORIC Registrar, on $325,750 a year, needs to review the Register’s website view. 

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Bruce’s paypacket as Enterprise Professor has never been disclosed but if a full-time post, he’d be on $200,000 plus endless perks. Obviously Bruce isn’t full-time as he’s a busy farmer and writer as well as propagating his “peak level leadership, entrepreneurship and influence.”

[2]   $1,009,864 in donations and $1,206,760 in grants

[3]   But $115,407 farm costs.

[4]  See here for data on Pascoe’s previous farming fails.

[5] Associate Provost Professor Marcia Langton: “Bruce Pascoe’s commitment to the recovery of Indigenous agricultural practices and native plants will enrich our curricula and contribute to the recognition of Indigenous knowledge as part of the mission of our University community.”

[6]  Other listed supporters include the super-woke Melbourne University, the troubled PWC, lawyers Arnold Bloch Leibler and Minter Ellison, and First Australians Capital.

[7] ABC radio’s Life Matters compere Hilary Harper, in an adoring interview with Pascoe, asked him this corker (at18mins):

Dark Emu busted a lot of myths about what Aboriginal people did when it came to food production. Do these myths persist and affect some of the work you are trying to do? Do you still need to deal with that misinformation about how Aboriginal people used to care for their land?

Pascoe: Some people are resistant, very few…

Ms Harper is a 30-year radio veteran with a degree in English Lit and Cultural Studies.

[8] Pascoe: “If we could convert just 5% of our agricultural lands to these environmentally friendly grains the contribution to reducing greenhouse gasses would be enormous … so maybe it is up to the Australian people to adopt these new plants and new farming techniques and convince government that the benefits far outweigh any residual colonial guilt. Let’s do it together for the sake of Mother Earth.” 5% of Australia’s grain belt is almost the area of Victoria.

[9] See 2019 UTS podcasts in which “Senior Uncle Bruce” proposes harvesting mixed grains by hand, as per Episode 5: “Instead of harvesting 1000 hectares of wheat, allow families [of native plants] to grow together and harvest them separately … If we have to revert to harvesting by hand it would put a stop to unemployment…” [at 4.00]

[10] His main revenue has been from Dark Emu royalties from Magabala Books. Magabala Book put his Dark Emu sales to mid-2021 at more than 300,000, plus 95,000 for Young Dark Emu spin-off for schoolkids. Assume by now sales are 350,000 at $18 and 100,000 at $20.50, or $7.5m after GST. At 10 per cent royalty, that’s $750,000 for Bruce, plus whatever comes from sales of numerous other books and his incessant paid-speaker gigs.

[11] UTS podcast, Episode 7 at 10.20mins.

[12] This includes a Welcome to Country.

[13] Pascoe of the pelican: “He’s like my speaking coach, if you live in country, this happens.” [here at 44.30 mins] He talks in Yuin to other animals as well, “in a culturally appropriate way because they’re my cousins”.

[14] The on-line shop went live on March 31, 2023, nearly four years after Black Duck started.

[15] Dr Jack Pascoe, by descent from Bruce, is described as a “Yuin man”. He’s an ecologist and co-founder and present chair of Black Duck Foods.

[16]  Under the “Grants” money-go-round 2020-21, Indigenous mini-bank First Australians Capital (itself a charity) put in $100,000 (2020) and $50,000 (2021). A $7 million Indigenous charity, FVTOC, paid in a handsome $180,000 Djakitjuk Djanga (tr. “Country’s food”) grant (2021), and the federal statutory Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation ponied up $50,000 (2020). Even the Victorian “Framers” (sic) lobby put in $5000 (2020), but a paltry $600 in 2021.

[17] The 2023 accounts list “wages and salaries” as $376,567, while its information statement lists four full-time workers. That looks like $94,000 per worker, before super of another $9000 each.

[18] “In remote Aboriginal communities in Australia, scabies affects 7 out of 10 children before their first birthday. This is more than six times the rate seen in the rest of the developed world. Scabies infestation is frequently complicated by bacterial infection, leading to the development of skin sores and other more serious consequences, such as septicaemia and chronic heart and kidney diseases.”

[19] SUMMARY OF INSTANCES OF NON-COMPLIANCE

Member eligibility

3. Contrary to rule 3.1, the corporation has accepted a non-aboriginal person as a member.

The examiners reported that:

• there is a non-aboriginal person entered on the register of members. They were advised at the time that this person was on the register due to work she had previously done in the past for the corporation. Since the examination, the corporation has advised that the member in question will be removed from the register of members in accordance with section 150-20 of the CATSI Act.

[20] However, I see ACNC has permitted Black Duck to file latest accounts with blanks where the directors’ names and meetings ought to be. Moreover, Black Duck’s operating deficit is stated by the un-named chairman as $311,443 (p4) but this figure appears nowhere else in the accounts, which put the deficit at $235,989 (p6).

Tom Calma, Governor-General in Waiting?

Tom Calma, co-writer of the Voice blueprint, seems a hot contender for the Governor-General job when David Hurley’s term expires later this year. The Australian cut loose on January 21 with a front-pager tipping Calma. Cathy Freeman and Ash Barty were at long odds, it’s hard to imagine either as Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces. Jacinta Price, the ‘No’ advocate, was at such long odds (a gazillion-to-one) that reporter Joe Kelly didn’t even mention her. Tom Calma, described as “one of the nation’s most respected Indigenous rights campaigners” was all over the article. Reporter Kelly continued,cob

Professor Calma’s endorsement of a qualified and capable Indigenous person as governor-general of Australia was supported by other prominent Aboriginal Australians, including Referendum Working Group member and leading voice campaigner Thomas Mayo… 

 Calma commented

“I would think it is time for an Aboriginal person. We’ve had an Aboriginal governor (of South Australia) in pastor Doug Nicholls. But there hasn’t been an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person as governor-general. So why not? I think it  is time. We shouldn’t shy away from considering an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person. A person who is amply qualified to do the job on merit is what we would be looking for. Not a token appointment. Someone who has the capacity.” 

Asked if he would be interested in the role, Professor Calma said he hadn’t “really given it any thought” but acknowledged people had suggested he was a viable option. 

 “People have said (that) to me. But that’s up to the government to determine. They will do it through whatever process they use.” (My emphases).

Calma’s reference to the Doug Nicholls precedent is interesting. SA Premier Don Dunstan appointed Nicholls as Governor in 1977 to succeed his bete noire (bete blanc?) Mark Oliphant, the atom-smasher. Governor Oliphant and Dunstan were at loggerheads over Oliphant’s disapproval of pornography. Dunstan wanted someone who would not (as Oliphant did) undermine him at Buckingham Palace, citing the premier’s loosening of censorship and tolerance for pornography.

It happened that mission-schooled Doug Nicholls could barely read and write. Some feared he might not be able to read the traditional opening-of-parliament speeches. Oliphant had concerns that Nicholls’ relatives and tribespeople might swarm Government House and “share”, i.e. pinch, stuff, but this was just Oliphant’s racist speculation and nothing like that occurred.[1] In the event, Nicholls successfully hosted Queen Elizabeth’s visit in 1977, although she slept at the royal yacht rather than in his visitors’ suite.[2]

Qualifications and merit have little to do with these appointments. It’s about identity politics, not just here  but all over the West. Case in point: President Biden promised during the 2020 election campaign that his vice-president would have to be one of four black women. He then selected cackling nitwit Kamala Harris.

How sad that no-one else has transcribed the radio interview of Tom Calma by the ABC’s Ross Solly on January 22, when Calma ruled himself out. He believes Prime Minister Albanese has already nominated someone to King Charles. It can’t be Calma himself because no-one’s rung him from the PM’s office to get his in-advance acceptance, he says.

Well, be that as it may, I still see Calma as a hot favourite G-G-to-be. Albanese might have been just a bit too busy breaking election tax promises, and put aside any drafts to King Charles. Furthermore, promoting Calma would be the PM’s sop to the Aboriginal Industry and all those Yes voters he dudded for 12 months. Moreover Albanese knows that Calma, like himself, is an ardent republican. As Albanese’s G-G, Calma could campaign to re-ignite the republic push which collapsed with the failed 1999 referendum.[3]

The ABC’s Solly began his interview abruptly, asking Calma, “Is it time to do something a little bit different?” He didn’t say what ‘different’, but from the context it meant the time is at hand for a republic. Calma replied, “Yes, we need to determine where we as a nation want to be — whether to  stay under the current regime or do what other Commonwealth countries are doing, looking at alternatives.”

Next Solly question: “To become Governor-General, would you be comfortable with that as an Indigenous Australian?”

Calma leapt into it, citing the first Aboriginal senator, the Liberal Neville Bonner, who he said sought to be “apolitical”. “You can still support the Commonwealth as it exists, but also work to effect change,” Calma continued.

Solly, showing some small reservations about activism at Yarralumla, observed: “Generally the Governor-General doesn’t stir the pot too much. Would it be appropriate for someone in there lobbying for change … any indigenous Australian to go in there and shake a few tailfeathers?”

Calma: “We’re not talking about me [in particular]. It’s an opportunity for a  conversation [about the republic] to have with the King and Parliament of England, and talk to the Australian government of the day. It doesn’t mean you [a Governor-General] have to be actively out there advocating publicly and agitating with the community to look at change. The role of the Governor-General is an important one to progress this sort of discussion and reflect what’s happening internationally. The Governor-General can talk with authority whereas others would not be able to.”

Solly: Would this be a logical first step to Australia becoming a republic? 

Calma: We’ve been tinkering around the edges talking about it, this is the next logical step, the conversation has got to start. We’ve had a change of regime in the UK [Charles III’s accession], now might be the time to lift some of the discussions around whether we stay as a kingdom [sic] of the UK or look at a bit of self-determination and being our own nation and becoming a republic.

Calma continued that appointing an Aboriginal G-G would not be a sop to the failed Voice referendum, rather a chance to get someone in as G-G “to help progress this”. He said the past three G-Gs had been very strong advocates and talked often with remote communities, and how it would be another plank in the role of G-G to get out across the nation and talk to all the constituents. (Calma is ambiguous here whether he means advocate for Aboriginal welfare, the Voice, or the republic).

Solly next badgered him about whether he wants the Governor-General job. Calma does a professional job of ducking and wearing, saying that

♦ It’s the PM and cabinet’s decision

♦ He wouldn’t answer hypotheticals; he doesn’t have a view

♦ The PM might want a second female G-G

♦ “No-one has approached me, end of story.”

Calma continued:

I don’t fully understand the role of the Governor-General, you would have to think about all of those issues of whether to just hold office or effect some change. I’m still involved in a number of [Aboriginal] organisations, the Governor-General becomes Patron of organisations which is great, but a patron is a bit different to being an effective member of a board or council.

If it [appointment] happens let’s have a think about it and see what we can do. I have engaged with all members of the monarchy over the years, I’ve met nearly all of them, I don’t have an issue with them personally, it’s just an issue of us as a nation, how do we want to position ourselves in future?

I found this ABC interview so astoundingly naive that I googled interviewer Solly out of peer interest. He disclosed all to the Canberra Times last November. He’s 57 and hosted ABC 666 breakfast radio for nine years to 2013. He left to be with his wife, current ABC News Daily host Samantha Hawley, on her foreign correspondent gigs (Bangkok, Jakarta, London). When they returned to Sydney in 2022, he resumed ABC radio shows in Canberra. (It seems the only time ABC staff ever actually separate from the ABC is over Gaza). “The audience is so switched on and so knowledgeable”, he said. “I want it to be unpredictable because I think people like to be surprised … I think if something is happening in Canberra and somebody needs to ask the tough questions, then I want people to know I’m going to be the person to do it.”

So now you know. This is all serious stuff.

So, if Calma isn’t the PM’s pick, who is? Looking at the field, Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney would get two ticks (female, Aborigine), and Calma’s sidekick on the Voice, Professor Marcia Langton, gets two ticks but one blackball (should that be “whiteball”?) for criticising the blaktivists baying for Israel’s destruction. Bravo, Marcia! Julia Gillard gets one tick (female ex-PM) but three crosses (white settler; bad chooser of at least three boyfriends[4]; ardent supporter of misogynist Speaker and ostraconophobiac Peter Slipper).

If Dr Galarrwuy Yunupingu AM (Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa, Melbourne University) were alive, he’d be a shoo-in for Governor-General. But the issue for all the Aboriginal Industry contenders is whether the housing at Yarralumla and Kirribilli is attractive enough. Yunupingu,[5] tireless critic of Aboriginal poverty while icon of the Gumatj, kept a helicopter and pilot on permanent standby ($1400 per hour) at his waterfront palace for his caring nightly visits to each of his four wives scattered around the Gove Peninsular. He was featured on a $1 stamp in 2017 among “Australian Legends”, certainly a legend of virility given his 12 children. Australia Post saw him and fellow-postage-legends Tom Calma and Lowidja ODonoghue as

tireless in their lifelong efforts to improve social and economic outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Together, their work has spanned the areas of land rights, economics, self-determination, health, welfare, education and reconciliation.

It’s a scandal that Aboriginal G-Gs would get a staff of only 80 and pre-tax pay at a modest $495,000-plus-keep. When the job is done, their pension comes in at 60 per cent of the salary of the Chief Justice, currently $584,000. That looks like only $350,000 a year for life, indexed. Opera Australia and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra are discounting their tickets to $25 for any retired G-G who happens to be Aboriginal, so there’s that too. (Recent immigrants and descendants of settlers pay the full sticker price of $120-200).

Calma is a hard worker. For what was billed merely as the Voice referendum’s courteous nod to our Aboriginal pre-arrivistes, his co-authored blueprint weighs in at 272 pages and included ten tables and 43 diagrams, figures and flow charts, along with one mind-map. For this hefty tome the government paid the pair $216,000 each. Calma’s 2007 annual report as AHRC Social Justice Commissioner was all of 411 pages, and from 2004-10 they averaged 260 annual pages. No conspicuous gain to Aboriginal welfareresulted.

ANU Politics Professor Jay Wanna identified Professor Calma as a “pretty ideal candidate. He’s very good on issues. He was part of the Voice movement. But he didn’t play a prominent political role.” Wakey wakey, Professor! Calma was everywhere, behind the scenes and front-of-house on Labor’s Referendum debacle.

The lovable Tom Calma

While all the other Aboriginal Yes leaders – especially Marcia Langton – did some snarling and reeived some brickbats in return, I have failed to find an unkind word about Calma anywhere. It’s as if he’s above the political maelstrom that surrounded the campaign for the biggest unwanted structural change to Australian democracy since Federation, along with possible reparations based on GDP percents and whatever any cargo-cult treaties might deliver. If his Voice had got up, as an Aborigine he would have gained a special status and extra privileges  while his non-Aboriginal wife of 40 years would have second-best civic status. That’s a glass ceiling she’d never break.

Here’s some of Calma’s sledging of the 60 per cent who voted No.

♦ Accepting Senior Australian of the Year Award for 2023 from Prime Minister Albanese, Calma warned fellow-seniors not to listen to “misinformation by pundits who are either ill-informed or have malicious intent regarding the Voice.” This was no slip of the tongue. He used the identical trope in an address to the woke ANU at least year’s ironically-titled “Reconciliation Lecture”.

♦ September 28, 2023: He co-signed a piece in TheLancet for global consumption that appeared under the headline “Racism and the 2023 Australian Constitutional Referendum” – as if racism and voting ‘No’ were synonymous. He blasted alleged “misinformation” and “racist abuse”, claiming the referendum process “taps into a deep well of historical racism that originated on the Australian frontier when Indigenous peoples ‘were violently dispossessed from their lands by the British.”

♦ October 4, 2023: He tells the leftist Guardian ten days before the October 14 vote that the No camp is putting out shocking

misinformation and vitriol – it’s very frustrating when politicians [presumably non-government ones] can be bald-faced liars in this whole process…All of a sudden there’s an emergence of the white supremacist groups getting involved…and others having their attitudes. 

To his credit, he didn’t echo Hillary and call No  voters “a basket of deplorables”.

Crusader for Aboriginal welfare:

Calma was Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner from 2004 to 2010 and also Race Discrimination Commissioner to 2009. On domestic violence in remote communities, the data continues shocking and worsening. To put it bluntly, Aboriginal domestic violence involves drunken monsters using blows, kicks, clubs and edged weapons to inflict appalling injuries on their partners and families. Yet tackling this violence did not seem Calma’s highest priority during his six-year tenure. His emphasis appears more to have been on importing United Nations indigenous protocols and initiatives like restorative justice, workshops/conferences and suchlike. In his final 222-page 2009 annual report, there are just 27 mentions of violence, nearly all in passing. There, Calma laments excessive jailing of perpetrators and urges softer remedies.

Did he not notice a study of hospitalisations for head injuries from assault in the May 2008 Medical Journal of Australia, covering WA, SA, NT and Qld? It mentions that for Aboriginal women this head-injury hospitalisation rate was 69 times the rate for non-Aboriginal women. For Aboriginal women aged 30-34 years, the rate was an incredible 93 times worse than for non-Aboriginal women. Within the data, Aboriginals living in rural/remote regions suffered seven times the rate even of urban Aboriginals:

The high rates in our study imply a substantial personal and social burden on injured people, their families and their communities, and a financial burden on already stretched health systems. However, the most serious cost is arguably the stressing and disruption of social bonds among Indigenous Australians as a result of such trauma. 

The researchers, after making their appalling findings, reverted to junk theorising about causation, e.g.

It has been asserted that the inferior health status of Indigenous Australians is inextricably linked to their historical legacy, their ongoing social and economic disadvantage (including displacement from their homes, land and lifestyle) and psychosocial trauma, particularly in regard to child separation. (My emphasis).

The “assertion” is in a mere MJA editorial, which in turn cites an earlier editorial, plus another assertion in an AIHW study. Calma in his report goes in for Polyanna solutions, such as

Community building through crime prevention not more prisons

Justice reinvestment acknowledges what Indigenous communities have known for a long time – taking people out of communities through imprisonment weakens the entire community. Indigenous offenders have valuable roles to play in their communities. Many are parents and also have a wide range of social, cultural and family obligations. When you take these people out of communities you are often placing an additional burden on already stretched family members. And given that family and community connections are so strong in Indigenous communities, be they in urban, regional or remote areas, these impacts ripple throughout the community. We are not only punishing the offender but also all those that are connected with them… 

We frequently hear stories of Indigenous offenders who have returned from a stint in prison far worse than when they went in. This perpetuates the cycle of crime and imprisonments, further weakening the community as individuals are very likely to return to custody… 

 Justice reinvestment will argue for resources at the front end (primary prevention) rather than the back of the system (imprisonment)… Previous Social Justice Reports have outlined some excellent but precariously funded healing and victim services. These are the sorts of programs that could benefit from additional funding as a result of justice reinvestment strategies…(p42) Again, these options are not about being soft on crime, they are about being smart about crime and safety. (p51, My emphases).

Calma went on to deplore the building of new jails in the Northern Territory and Western Australia as counter-productive compared with “community development and prevention programs” (p43). Personally I’d prefer those vicious criminals treated as harshly as any non-Aboriginal who inflicts gross head trauma on a powerless woman.

Calma successor Mick Gooda’s first Social Justice report in 2010 asserted “zero tolerance” for what he called “lateral violence” within Aboriginal communities – bashings, bullying and intimidation, and “backstabbings and attempts to isolate” (p49). Internal mayhems were the third most-prevalent reason for failures of Aboriginal corporations, he said.

In a refreshing aside, Gooda put the onus on communities themselves to address these issues. While he gave a nod to intergenerational trauma from colonisation — an unlikely theory lately rejected by Jacinta Price — he also said that drunkenness, “rather than healing the pain of colonisation and disempowerment … was causing violence, depression and anguish” among residents. He cited the Fitzroy Valley, which had 13 suicides in 2007 alone. “The grog has affected every single person in the valley at one level or another. Aboriginal people in the valley have identified grog as the most important health priority that must be confronted … the women’s refuge was unable to cope with the demand from women seeking refuge from violence at home” (p67-72).

Gooda was equally blunt about the large NT Wadeye community, writing:

Wadeye has appalling health statistics, serious overcrowding, and significant crime and violence which at times render the community virtually dysfunctional. (p109).

The sad contemporary sequels to decades of fat HRC reports and rhetoric include that, in 2022, Fitzroy Crossing was rated the 100^th worst of 100 communities on the Crime Map of Australia, based on police data. At Wadeye last year, torching of 37 homes during clan fights forced 500 people – mainly women and children – into the bush , with one man killed by a spear to the head. The Northern Land Council (NLC) issued a mealy-mouthed statement that “government has a clear law and order responsibility.”

Calma is continually lauded as a life-long champion of Aboriginal health and welfare, without much examination of whether his remedies are effective. As far as I can see, key indicators of remote welfare continue to go backwards. It also happens that Calma’s career postings have all involved excellent remuneration and prestige. His early history is set out by Andrew Alexandra in a draft biography.

Calma’s father, Tom Sr, supervised Darwin’s government construction with a workforce of at least 80 and led the clean-up after Cyclone Tracy. The Calmas were among the first Aborigines in Darwin to acquire and then buy a government house, and all four kids graduated from high school. Tom Jr captained sport teams and finished as deputy head prefect, but claimed he had been racially excluded from the head prefect role.[6] He excelled there at public speaking, a valuable skill for his later career.

Post-school, he won a Housing Department scholarship to Adelaide to earn a Diploma of Social Work at SAIT, returning to head up significant education and welfare posts in Darwin. In 1984 he won an Aboriginal Overseas Study Award to investigate satellite-powered distance education for the NT, travelling to Suva, Hawaii, Canada, England and Wales. However his world trip duplicated a Senate Committee trip and his tour “had no immediate practical effect” (apart from the expense).

His high-flyer status led to promotion to Acting State Director of the Commonwealth Employment Service. From there he applied unsuccessfully for a UNESCO Councillor slot in Paris.

He moved to Canberra with family on a fast-tracked career program, becoming executive officer running an Aboriginal support network for the head of the Education Department. In 1995 he gained a diplomatic post marketing Australian education to India and then to Vietnam.

Back in Canberra he became a ministerial senior adviser to Phil Ruddock and moved to an education role with ATSIC. Prime Minister John Howard dissolved ATSIC in 2004 over corruption and dysfunction. The same year, Calma won the post of Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner to “monitor the human rights of Indigenous Australians” ($257,000 a year)[7]. He doubled as non-paid Race Discrimination Commissioner, staying on to 2009-10. In 2008 he gave the response to Kevin Rudd’s “Stolen Generation” apology.

In 2009-11 Calma led creation of a successor body to ATSIC, the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples. This went into voluntary administration in 2019 when the Morrison government halted funding.

 In the past decade he’s been showered with honours including three doctorates, an AO, ACT Australian of the Year 2013, Senior Australian of the Year 2023, Chancellor of Canberra University from 2014-23 ($60,000 a year), a Sydney University Professorship from 2015 ($200,000 p.a. if full-time plus perks), unpaid co-chair of Reconciliation Australia (which has roped in at least 700 pre-school and child-care outfits for toddlers’ indoctrination), Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science[8] and dual author with Marcia Langton of the Voice blueprint ($216,000 each).[9]

I might be wrong about Calma’s imminent G-G appointment. Mr Albanese might already have decided to appoint someone like the Indigenous Thomas Mayo, nee Mayor, author of The Voice to Parliament Handbook.[10] If so, I’m sorry to have wasted your reading time.

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Stewart Cockburn and David Ellyard, Oliphant, Axiom Books Adelaide 1981 p 314-19. Whether the Australian Academy of Science will disown or cancel its racist founder is yet to be revealed.

[2] After only five months of his term, Nicholls resigned over ill-health.

[3] 55 per cent “No” vote.

[4] Bruce Wilson, colourful fund-raiser for the AWU Workplace Reform Association; fellow-politician Craig Emerson; and Tim Mathieson, convicted on a sexual assault case last October, a year after his decade-long partnership with Gillard ended.

[5] Professor Margaret Sheil, Provost at the University of Melbourne, said the Honorary Doctorate to Yunupingu was to recognise and celebrate the significance of his work for Indigenous rights. In 1998 Yunupingu was added to the list of 100 “Australian Living National Treasures” selected by the National Trust of Australia as leaders in society “considered to have a great influence over our environment because of the standards and examples they set”. Reconciliation Australia reported for 2023, “The year also saw the loss of Yunupingu… whose contribution to the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples was almost unparalleled over more than five decades.”

[6] The principal said it was to reduce distraction from his studies.

[7]. If HRC commissioners can double as Race Commissioner for half a decade, it suggests neither role is over-taxing.  From 2011 Helen Szoke came in as full-time Race Commissioner (pay $275,880, allowances $47,852) alongside Mick Gooda as Social Justice Commissioner ($275,880 plus $42,980 allowances). Today each role commands $384,970 plus allowances. HRC President Rosalind Croucher($495,000) is currently doubling (unpaid) as Acting Race Commissioner.

[8] His peer-reviewed science/medicine articles are minor. His election as Fellow in 2022 was via a special provision admitting eminent people lacking science output.

[9] Calma was named on the Federal Government’s Referendum Working Group until December 31 2024. The rate cited is $823 per day worked. The Working Group Registrar is cited officially as Tricia Stroud, a Kungarakan and Waramungu woman, on a five year term at $313,220 per annum until May 2, 2027. However, this salary appears applicable to her other role of Registrar of Indigenous Corporations for the same period.

[10] The SMH reported last July 22, “The No campaign unearthed two-year-old videos of Mayo calling for ‘reparations and compensation’ for Indigenous Australians, as well as appearances in online forums run by an organisation which markets itself as the Communist Party of Australia.”

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Museums Make an Exhibition of Themselves

Tony Thomas

On a wet Thursday in Adelaide last week, we took the Glenelg tram to Holdfast Bay. The old town hall there has been converted to the Bay Discovery Centre for culture and history (above), all well done and with much to learn. For example, it featured some history of topless bathing at Glenelg. In the early 1930s, the council furiously opposed topless bathing as immoral, regardless of it being practised on some European beaches. Aldermen wanted the beaches patrolled by police who would take vigorous action against any and all topless bathers.

By 1937, however, Glenelg Council was turning a blind eye to scantily-clad sunbathers “with the top of the costume rolled down”, providing they didn’t make themselves “offensively prominent”. By the following year Glenelg men could freely bathe topless, defined as wearing properly belted trunks without shoulder straps.

I was less impressed with the permanent display, Wangkanthi Kumangka (Truth-Telling Together). It was created with help from the Kaurna Nation (so-called) “and explores the true history of South Australia.” The caption says, correctly, “The exhibition about truth-telling challenges South Australia’s history books.”

It emphasises William IV’s Letters Patent establishing the South Australian colony. While the King included a guarantee for any Aboriginals and their descendants to retain all rights to their lands[1], the Kaurna can make a good case they were dudded by the colonists. Nearby was a caption headed Tiati(“truth”):

At the time of the invasion, Aboriginal people across the continent had homes, farmed the land, cared for crops, and embraced trade with neighbouring territories. They were advancing with technologies, shared language, oral traditions and ceremony. (My emphases).

Thanks a million, Bruce Pascoe and your Dark Emubest-seller, beloved by museum curators, the ABCand teachers operating from kindergarten to university. For example, Pascoe claims explorer Thomas Mitchell traversed four Aboriginal towns within a 50-mile ride, each with population of a thousand. Nowhere in Thomas Mitchell’s journals (nor Sturt’s) does the explorer mention any Aboriginal “town” of a thousand, let alone a cluster of four. The exhibit adds its own myths about pre-contact Aborigines’ “advancing with technologies” — their skills didn’t at the time extend to boiling water. Regardless, the centre’s display “won the Australian museum sector’s most prestigious award in the Museum and Galleries National Awards for 2020.”

As a dedicated museum crawler, I’ve chronicled the takeover by the woke and climate-crazed. Back in 2013 I catalogued the errors and propaganda pushed at visitors even to iconic establishments like the Field Museum in Chicago; the Smithsonian Natural History (Washington DC); Vienna Museum of Natural History; and Te Papa (NZ). The National Museum of Australia? Too sloppy and ideological to mention.[2]

So this week I decided to probe the top-tier Australian Museum and Galleries Association, which gave its 2020 prize to Glenelg’s homage to Pascoe’s rubbish. I curated my own Tracey Emin-like “Melbourne Museum of Desk-top Detritus” (pictured but minus any Emin condoms and dirty underwear).[3] Then I created an account to submit my museum for the Association’s next prestigious MAGNA award. This got me past the Association’s paywall to discover last year’s entry conditions and much else. Here we go (my emphases):

REIMAGINING REPRESENTATION:
The goal of reimagining representation is to change the way Indigenous peoples are represented in museums and galleries. To do this, museums and galleries need to reflect on past injustices. This means acknowledging the role museums and galleries played in colonisation and dominant historical narratives. How does your project represent or amplify Indigenous voices and histories? Consider past injustices and dark histories, truth-telling, Indigenous knowledge, etc (max 350 words).

EMBEDDING INDIGENOUS VALUES
This element aims to move museum and gallery values away from their Eurocentric foundations. Indigenous values need to be encouraged in museums and galleries in order to make Indigenous peoples feel welcome and safe… (max 350 words) 

INTERPRETATION
What perspectives were considered and/or integrated into the design and programming (i.e. Indigenous, queer, gender identity, age, ethnicity) and how did you utilise these perspectives sensitively and truthfully? (max 350 words) 

Are you getting the idea? And of course, the goal is to ram the Aboriginal Industry into classrooms, as per

LEARNING
How does your project reflect elements of the national curriculum and/or other learning standards, enhance critical and creative thinking, and contribute to well-being? Did the Indigenous Roadmap inform your project framework? (max 350 words) 

This “Indigenous Roadmap” turns out to be a 10-year plan to convert every museum and gallery into Aboriginal-lauding, settler-bashing institutions by 2029:

In order for the Roadmap to be successful, the entire sector needs to take it up…This includes, but is not limited to:

• • Australian Museums and Galleries Association
  • Museums
  • Galleries
  • Audiences
  • Indigenous communities
  • Individuals working inside museums and galleries
  • Educational sector including Universities and TAFEs
  • People running training programs for museums and galleries
  • Government at all levels
  • The cultural sector as a whole.” (p8)

The program was launched in 2019 based on a report by all-Aboriginal intellectual property consultants Terri Janke and Co. It was commissioned by the Association (earlier called Museums Australia) and with some Association input. The Executive Summary calls on museums to

reflect on past injustices. This means acknowledging the role museums and galleries played in colonisation and dominant historical narratives. Further, Indigenous peoples’ voice also need to be amplified by increasing exhibitions that involve strong Indigenous engagement and relationships … Additionally, exhibitions that involve truth-telling need to be addressed. A national coordinated program would encompass all museums and galleries and lead to increased Indigenous audiences.

All museums are instructed to sign on to Karen Mundine’s Reconciliation Action Plans, which in turn require total conformity with the Aboriginal Grievance Industry. A few years back 21 per cent of museums had signed on, with the goal 100 per cent by 2029 (p39).

Museum boards and executives are to be stacked with Aboriginals to make Aboriginal staff and visitors “feel safe”. Don’t expect their permission for exhibits about missionary sisters running the Derby leprosarium, let alone inter-tribal massacres or how young males and females were initiated by the polygamous old men.

Aboriginal staff are to be “compensated accordingly” for their unique cultural knowledge. The roadmap requires that by 2030 at least one national or state museum will be run by an Aboriginal director (p17),[4] while Aboriginal visitors could be offered free admission.

The “truth-telling” will somehow incorporate pre-contact knowledges of “science, technology and ecological understanding.” The document says, “There is much that the world can learn from Aboriginal cultures and traditional knowledge in terms of finding solutions to our global problems. This includes food scarcity, climate change, and environmental management.” (p15).

Even regular science museums are told to add an Aboriginal flavour to their mix for students, and “welcomes to country” could feature “at all exhibitions and events“.

The Association just about runs out of arms for all its black armbands, and even trots out the “flora and fauna” canard:

Indigenous people have felt that representations of them in museums particularly have promoted them as primitive; or just ‘flora and fauna’(p15).

The Association says,

We acknowledge the continued devastating violence and cultural interruption of colonisation.We acknowledge and work to change the practices of museums and galleries which have and continue to contribute to personal and cultural interruption, trauma and loss.

We acknowledge the history and impact of these damaging practices, and that much damage will continue to be done until museums find genuine ways to work inclusively, and respectfully with Indigenous people.

Museums and galleries have the power to help shape our nation’s identity and help end the injustices of colonisation.

It annoys museum academics that so many small-town history museums house items about white pioneer farming, mining and domestic use, thereby ignoring or fudging the Aboriginal dispossession as “just too hot to handle”, in the words of Bruce Pascoe. Mainstream curators want the “bad history” emphasised, like “how replacing the bush and swamps greatly benefited some people at the ongoing expense of others.” 

I accept that history displays should be balanced, but it’s still a bit rough for highly-paid and well-resourced curator types to talk condescendingly to shoe-string country museums reliant on their elderly volunteers, donated items and cheap premises.

The Aboriginal curators already calling the shots in big museums make no secret of their goals. Try Nathan Sentance (he/him, archival decolonist). He’s been of Head of Collections (First Nations) at Sydney’s Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences for the past two years. Writing in 2018 on “What is Our Purpose?”, he condemned museums for ” working almost as propaganda distributors for the settler state.” Instead they should “learn past strategies and get inspiration to enact the structural change we need now.” Supposedly neutral inaction is supporting “current oppressive structures”:

Memory institutions have power they need to share with grassroots organisations working towards repairing the damage done by and preventing future harm caused by white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, ableism, and capitalism.

In the US the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 involved at least 18 deaths and $US2 billion in damage from fires and looting.[5] The Australian Museums and Galleries Association gave its blessing to BLM and the copycat Aboriginal Lives Matter for their goals “to recognise institutional racism and to seek fundamental change”.

It unanimously backed the doomed Uluru Manifesto in 2018, “urging all museums and galleries to engage their audiences to promote understanding of this most powerful Statement.” And last July its national council urged Australians to vote Yes on the referendum, but couldn’t quite demand that members flood their museums with Yes propaganda because some museums’ charters and funding forbid politicking. Instead, the national council urged members to tap the Yes Alliance Campaign for funding “to help facilitate events and activities in pursuit of a Yes vote.”

Museums are leading the green-Left’s march through taxpayer-funded institutions. Perhaps it’s because staff have been screening out conservatives for a couple of generations. To avoid triggering anyone who is right of centre, they should put  warning signs at entry: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”     

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Letters Patent: “Provided Always that nothing in those our Letters Patent contained shall affect or be construed to affect the rights of any Aboriginal Natives of the said Province to the actual occupation or enjoyment in their own Persons or in the Persons of their Descendants of any Lands therein now actually occupied or enjoyed by such Natives.”

[2] Within minutes at the NMA site, you can find the NMA falsely claiming to schoolkids that the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament won a 2017 Nobel Prize. The Australian Museum’s courses for schoolkids are almost laughably green-left biased, using emotional appeals and omitting the conservative case on complex issues. A sampling of the NMA “Defining Moments Digital Classroom – Bring history to life with the NMA” includes a saintly treatment of footballer Adam Goodes and guff about the Canberra tent embassy, “with its flags fluttering proudly in the breeze”, as it agitates for “Aboriginal sovereignty over the continent and the right to self-determination.” On asylum seekers and boat people, the Museum blanks out the entire case against people smugglers and a thousand drownings in favour of multi-coloured balloons labelled “Welcome Refugees” and a successful claimant’s story:

I’m very happy because I have my liberty, but I feel that the detention adds to my problems now of fear. What I experienced there is very difficult to forget. Every day I think about my life in prison. Even this morning I thought about it and started crying…

[3] Emin’s installation, “My Bed” sold for £2,546,500 in 2014. My “Desk Detritus” is available for half that.

[4] ” The participation and representation of Indigenous Australians in this sector is crucial to securing reconciliation between first and settler Australians.” (p4)

[5] During Melbourne’s world-record duration lockdown, Black Lives Matter demonstrators in their thousands got waved through by Victoria Police. Demonstrators against the lockdown got VicPol’s rubber bullets.

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• MarchThanks Tony.
  You know it’s bad, but good grief, can’t get much worse!Reply
  • bobmbell39I find the films of aboriginal life in the Simpson desert in the early 1960s available on Kanopy very interesting. I doubt many of the progressives pushing this nonsense would like to live like that now.Reply
• NarelleGAustralia as we knew it is gone.Thanks Tony Thomas – have you been to the Australian Musuem in Sydney( I call it Aboriginal Museum) ?Also the National Museum in Canberra – whose very design was to artfully represent the holocaust!!Reply
  • James McKenzieAustralian museum in the ACT has two references to Pascoe: a national disgrace as other countries will use as a credible reference.Worse, a video claims local Eden Aboriginals had a close affiliation with Orcas whereas white man whaling unseen before was the cause?Reply
• brennan1950My recent museum visits have brought me to the conclusion that modern displays are more about the message rather than displaying artefacts and explaining uses and history.The Canberra Museum I found to be a massive disappointment.Reply
  • Doubting ThomasWe have lived in Canberra for nearly 50 years. I’m proud to say that we have never been tempted to darken its doors, and never will.Reply
    • SBBut you still have to pay for it.Reply
• STJOHNOFGRAFTONTrue history can be interrogated and come up untarnished and uncensored by the agenda of interpreters.Reply
• Ian MacKenzie“so many small-town history museums house items about white pioneer farming, mining and domestic use, thereby ignoring or fudging the Aboriginal…”. Perhaps this has something to do with the trend in demanding the return of museum-housed artifacts from around the world all, it is claimed, stolen. You can’t have it both ways. If you demand artifacts back, you can’t complain that that Aboriginal culture is under-represented in institutions created to house artifacts.
  As for Pascoe’s nonsense, all the lies in the world won’t change the evidence. The journals of Mitchell and Sturt will remain the same forever. As the wheel of fortune turns, another generation will rediscover the truth eventually.Reply
  • Paul WWe might add that those small towns are largely dependent on farming and mining and consequently feel connected to the people who made it possible. They can also drive for 10 minutes and exit civilisation. They can see and the feel the difference very well.
    By contrast, the inner-city university-educated dimwits are taught not to feel such a connection and instead to feel guilty.Reply
• call it outThis notion of “embedding indigenous culture” has also infected my local council, Mitcham, in SA.
  The question is “which indigenous culture?” So far, looks like an urban activist blak political culture., mixed in with a romantic noble savage/new age culture.Reply
• Peter OBrien‘This includes food scarcity ..’.They could certainly tell us a thing or two about food scarcity – which we aren’t actually suffering from – because that was situation normal for them.Reply
• KemperWAThank you Tony, you are braver than me. To Nathan Sentance, here is some of your own medicine…I don’t feel welcome or joyful being browbeaten in your museum with your six belligerent descriptors, nor do I have the strength to endure Terri Janke and Co’s and Karen Mundine’s programming. I’d rather fork over my compost in my garden. To be inclusive, you have just been exclusive. “There is much that the world can learn from Aboriginal cultures….in terms of finding solutions to our global problems. This includes food scarcity”.Yes Australian Museum and Galleries Association, you can learn. Learn from Zimbabwe, who violently seized farmland from highly productive and efficient Anglo-European broadacre farms and replaced with pre-colonial subsistence farming by incompetent native Zimbabweans. The result? Total collapse of its economy and exports, starvation from scarcity of wheat and maize, and 25% of it’s entire workforce sacked (millions of their dependents left homeless, schools destroyed etc).“We acknowledge the continued devastating violence and cultural interruption of colonisation”
  What utter rubbish! I cannot take this verbal horseshit (pardon me) from these psychologically maladjusted people. Give me strength!“…the power to help shape our nation’s identity”. No thank you, I am what I am. I don’t require shaping. These borderline sociopaths slander the character and lives of Australian people day after day after day.
  When they defame Australia, they are simply just hurting themselves as well.Reply
• Stephen IrelandTony, may we pass the hat around to defray your costs for membership of the non-Australian Museums and Galleries Association.
  .
  Has your entry been shortlisted for the next batch of MAGA awards?Reply
• en passantThis ‘invaders’ of our country are massively (and deliberately) in debt to bring about our societal collapse. A conservative government lead by a real leader (pardon my fantasy) would save a $billion here and a $billion there by cancelling all funding to these treasonous 5th columnists in museums and the ABC. I pay my way, they should pay theirs by attracting paying visitors. And stop paying the separatists ‘whitefella’ money.Reply
• Archidendron lovelliaeI too have experienced this fungal slime of woke history recreation as one walks through the doors of Australian Museums and parts of Art Galleries. It waters you through and through, leadens the steps, hardens the arteries and kills brain functioning via starving synapse connectivity’s. One exits cloned. It can take time to recover a la a China bat dose. You do not return for a second helping.Reply
• pmprocivI don’t recall Bruce Pascoe ever claiming that Aboriginal cultures had museums or written languages. That means we are witnessing a serious case of cultural cannibalism (“misappropriation” for more sensitive souls), with the Aboriginal Industry devouring a fundamental component of Western civilisation. Has the message of the Voice referendum not sunk in yet? We’re definitely not looking at a 50K-year, unchanged, “continuous” culture here!Reply
• subrosaAs a young person, my question to Quadrant and Quadrant readers is: What are we going to do? The long march through the institutions is succeeding, in part, because there are no/few alternative options for young, ambitious, intelligent, creative minds. Or even old, ambitious, intelligent, creative minds for that matter. Virtually every major award, scholarship, grant and research opportunity in the humanities comes from the hard-left – with only a few notable exceptions. Quadrant offers magazine publication, sure, but little chance of a book going on to win a major award. Same/same with funding within the museum sector. It’s shallow but many are willing to “play the game” and accept wokeism just to get their own piece of the pie. Sometimes it’s as simple as paying rent and putting bread on the table. Same/same with landing great jobs. I’m sure there are non-woke employers out there, but how you connect with them is anybody’s guess. The usual sectors (church, education, even science) cannot be relied upon not to force cultural Marxism down your throat anymore. Could Quadrant hold a literary prize that out-moneys the left somehow? Could Quadrant find creative ways to reward regional museums for their balanced displays and champion them? Could Quadrant set up a real truth telling history scholarship? This might all sound impossible, but the fact is, the left have done it, while the centre/conservatives have put their energy elsewhere. Yes, many of these museums are full of woke “true believers” but they’re also full of curators who love their collections; they’re playing the game to keep the funding coming in to keep their storehouses from going to ruin. I absolutely agree with en passant that museums should pay their way by attracting paying visitors, but a shift in the market won’t occur until there are real alternatives in the culture wars. After all, most of the time people go to galleries, museums, bookstores, etc, because they’re pleasant activities. The average person doesn’t really know the background political story to the various prizes being handed out, they just see the “prize winning” stickers in the corners and get curious.Reply