Read Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog column every Saturday morning on SkyNews.com.au and watch his weekly analysis on The Media Show.
The LatestThe real story behind the Ferguson-Joyce interview was Ferguson’s anger towards Joyce – not Joyce’s anger towards his dog
The saga concerning ABC TV 7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson and One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce continues apace. The latest news is that Vikki Campion (Joyce’s wife who writes a valuable column for The Daily Telegraph on Saturdays) has got into action with a full-length account of the matter on Substack.
Ferguson has also engaged in a discussion with the ABC’s Hamish Macdonald (ABC Radio Sydney) about whether Joyce’s dog barked during the interview – or whether Joyce made it up. Comrade Ferguson believes that the dog did bark (unlike the canine in one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories).
It’s not clear why Joyce would lie about this – since MWD recalls that he once spoke loudly to his young children when doing a cross from his farm in his electorate of New England.
Certainly, Sarah Ferguson’s interview with One Nation’s MP Barnaby Joyce on Monday 20 July has achieved international attention. It was even covered by Fox News’ Gutfeld! program on Wednesday night (US time). This is the 7.30 exchange which created the most interest:
Sarah Ferguson: But it seems to me, Barnaby Joyce, that your decision to defect to One Nation is dragging you further into a place of intolerance and racial discrimination. You’re defending your leader, but are you really comfortable with where she is taking you?
Barnaby Joyce: I think – Sit down. Sorry, it’s a dog….
Barnaby Joyce became angry with his dog Stella but, later, Ferguson got angry with Joyce:
Barnaby Joyce: I have to apologise for this dog, which has decided to bail up –
Sarah Ferguson: [Interjecting] Don’t worry about the dog. Just answer the question.
Barnaby Joyce: Don’t be rude. Don’t be rude. Otherwise, this interview will come to a grinding point, Sarah. So, what was the question actually?
In fact, this was a hostile interview. All up, Ferguson interrupted Joyce on 15 occasions in an 11-minute interview – which included Ferguson’s “Just answer the question” demand. The 7.30 presenter seems unable to refrain from interrupting the likes of such political conservatives as Angus Taylor, Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce – often in an angry manner.
Joyce had reason to yell at Stella – who seemed to recover quickly from the exchange. But Ferguson had scant reason to get annoyed at Joyce’s canine problem. Media Watch Dog’s professional advice is that both should undertake anger management courses. The One Nation MP with respect to handling barking canines. And the ABC presenter with how to handle political conservatives.
A Jacob Greber interpretation of the Pauline Hanson overseas visit
I note that, covering the Pauline Hanson story on 21 July, 7.30 political editor Jacob Greber had this to say:
Jacob Greber: The One Nation leader’s return to home ground has capped a whirlwind tour of the UK and one of Italy’s fanciest seaside resorts where she was spotted poolside with Rinehart. It’s been a journey worthy of Barry McKenzie. Pauline Hanson has stirred headlines and emotions alike.
What a load of absolute tosh. Is Comrade Greber unaware that Barry McKenzie was a Barry Humphries-created character, who was addicted to Foster’s beer?
Perhaps it’s the times we live in. In a recent speech Pauline Hanson looked back in happiness to the lifestyle of such Australians as Norman Gunston. Like Mr McKenzie, Mr Gunston never existed. Ask Garry McDonald.
Can You Bear It?ABC TV Insiders shows footage of Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young mocking Gina Rinehart’s appearance
On Sunday 19 July, Insiders presenter Patricia Karvelas introduced a segment on Pauline Hanson by showing some video clips – including this:
Patricia Karvelas: Pauline Hanson might be 17,000km away on a European working holiday but if her political opponents thought that might keep her out of the headlines this week, they were seriously mistaken.
Pauline Hanson: Well haven’t I heard, when the cat is away, the mice will play.
Newsreader: Pauline Hanson and her benefactor Gina Rinehart, spotted poolside at a luxury hotel.
Sarah Hanson-Young: I saw that…One of those images you don’t want in your head.
The decision to show Greens Senator Hanson-Young making mocking remarks about Ms Rinehart’s appearance was made by the Insiders’ executive producer. It was totally unnecessary to the story about Senator Hanson. It is impossible to imagine that the ABC would run footage critical of a left-wing woman’s appearance. Can You Bear It?
More intellectual snobbery in the SMH’s Letters page
In recent weeks this segment has demonstrated that the Sydney Morning Herald Letters editor has run correspondence critical of Pauline Hanson’s (alleged) lack of education or intelligence.
This letter ran in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 18 July:
I wonder how many supporters of Princess Pauline can afford to pay $1000 a night to stay in a luxurious hotel anywhere, never mind one in Sicily? She will, no doubt, come up with her usual illiterate justification for what she does. It really is time everyone should stop listening to her. Richard Vielie, Hunters Hill
How about that? There is Richard Vielie Esquire of the wealthy Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill declaring that few, if any, Pauline Hanson supporters can afford to pay $1000 for even one night at a luxurious beach hotel anywhere. How would he know?
This form of attack is counter-productive. Agree with Hanson or not, the One Nation leader and her backers are not illiterate – but the SMH’s Letters Editor is clearly an intellectual snob. Can You Bear It?
Nine’s Calum Jaspan describes the activist left-wing Australia Institute’s Amy Remeikis as “independent”
In his “Background” column in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Friday 17 July, Nine newspapers’ media reporter Calum Jaspan wrote this about Gina Rinehart:
Rinehart’s media team are known to send extensive responses to articles she takes issue with that mention her by name. Her PR manager James Radford recently took issue with independent journalist and Australia Institute staffer Amy Remeikis likening his boss to a “Bond villain” in an article for The New Daily…
It’s delusional for Jaspan to call Amy Remeikis an independent journalist. For starters, she is an activist. Moreover, Remeikis is the political reporter for the avowedly left-wing The Australia Institute and her article was written in The New Daily – a left-wing online newspaper. According to Comrade Jaspan, Comrade Remeikis is an “independent journalist”. But it’s not clear what she is independent of. Certainly not Richard Denniss and his comrades at The Australia Institute. Can You Bear It?
Malcolm Turnbull (in “Miserable Ghost” mode) speaks at private launch of Getting Murdoched
There was enormous interest in last week’s coverage of Malcolm Turnbull’s oh-so-private launch of Getting Murdoched: How Murdoch’s Media Wields Power and Punishment (Hardie Grant, 2026).
It is assumed that the co-authors – Professor Andrew Dodd and Professor Matthew Ricketson from the University of Melbourne and Deakin University respectively – were present. But the report in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald by the Melbourne-based Calum Jaspan did not say so. Nor did Comrade Jaspan reveal where the (private) function was held. MWD assumes in Melbourne.
In any event, Australia’s 29th prime minister was in (what he once condemned as) “Miserable Ghost” mode as he fanged Rupert Murdoch and all his works and all his pomps (as the saying goes). Including News Corp and Sky News Australia (soon to be News24).
The Sage of Point Piper said that “Sky News After Dark” should be treated like a drunk late on Saturday night, “raving and screaming and raging at the moon outside the pub”. That is: Ignore it. How about that? Mr Turnbull launched a book which contains numerous references to Sky News by telling readers (if readers there will be) to ignore, er, Sky News. Work that out if you can.
As previously advised, Ellie’s (male) co-owner is wading through the literary sludge that is Getting Murdoched. Media Watch Dog Issue 782 carried the email which Gerard Henderson sent to the taxpayer subsidised professors on pointing to errors about him in Getting Murdoched. See here. So far neither has replied. MWD will keep you posted. But don’t hold your breath – to borrow a cliché.
In the meantime, MWD has examined the way the launcher Turnbull was covered in the Dodd/Ricketson book. This is how the successful challenge against Turnbull in August 2018 in the Liberal Party room is covered – focusing on the proposed National Energy Guarantee (NEG) scheme (aimed at reducing carbon emissions).
The NEG was supported by the cabinet but ultimately rejected by the party. The constant drip of negative stories ensured it soon became unpopular with the public too. Party hardliner Peter Dutton used the policy as a trigger to challenge for the leadership in August 2018. He lost, but just three days later the compromise candidate, Scott Morrison, also challenged. Turnbull didn’t even bother contesting. His prime ministership was over. Reflecting on these events, Turnbull says the Murdoch media “certainly played a big role” in what occurred, and that as a Liberal Party leader he was even more vulnerable to attacks from News because “their audience is older, more conservative, more likely to be voting Liberal, more likely to be a member of the Liberal Party”.
A couple of university professors should be able to do better. First, some background. Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott as prime minister in the party room ballot on 5 September 2015. One of the reasons that Turnbull gave for this action was that, under Abbott, the Coalition had lost 30 Newspolls in a row.
On 8 May 2016, Turnbull obtained a double dissolution election in a campaign which ran for nearly 8 weeks – the election took place on 2 July 2016. The campaign was an expensive disaster for the Liberal Party – losing 14 seats to the Labor Party. Anyone who knows Australian politics would understand that any political leader who calls an early election in which he or she performs so badly that 14 seats are lost is not likely to survive for long.
And so it came to pass – after Turnbull himself had led the Coalition to the loss of 30 Newspolls in a row. There was growing opposition to Turnbull’s leadership within the Liberal Party room. On 21 August, without consulting his leadership team, Turnbull called for a vote of confidence in himself as leader. He was surprised when Peter Dutton stood and contested the vacant position. And even more surprised that Dutton won 35 votes to Turnbull’s 48 votes. It wasn’t enough. From that moment, Turnbull’s leadership was finished.
On 23 August, another spill vote occurred in the Liberal Party room which was moved by Dutton. 45 MPs were for the spill; 40 against. Turnbull did not contest the subsequent leadership ballot. And, after two ballots, Scott Morrison won the leadership over Peter Dutton. Julie Bishop was eliminated on the first ballot.
The idea that in August 2018, Rupert Murdoch – plus News Corp newspapers and Sky News – brought about a leadership change in the Liberal Party is a delusional line run by Turnbull. Once Turnbull lost 14 seats to Labor in 2016, his chances of leading the Liberal Party to the 2019 election were most unlikely – with or without the News Corp/Sky News duo.
Yet none of this is mentioned by Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson in Getting Murdoched. They just ran the line of the Miserable Ghost who launched their book. Can You Bear It?
[No, not really – now that you ask. I have never heard of a private book launch before – since the aim of such functions is to seek maximum publicity and sell books. However, in this instance, it seems that Calum Jaspan was the only reporter in the room. – MWD Editor.]
A (Late) Derryn Hinch Moment Victorian taxpayers pay for Derryn Hinch’s final exit
The state of Victoria, led by Labor Party Premier Jacinta Allan, is in dire financial straits unlike its Labor government counterparts in NSW, South Australia and Western Australia. Yet the Allan government managed to collect enough taxpayers’ notes and coins, and borrow more, to give high-profile journalist Derryn Hinch (1944-2026) a State Funeral. It’s unclear that this decision will set a precedent with respect to other high-profile retired Victorian journalists.
Media Watch Dog did not attend the taxpayer funded service at The Timber Yard in Port Melbourne. It is understood that the Allan government did not pay for the wake which followed the service. Just as well – such an expense in a room full of what was once called the Fourth Estate might well have triggered Moody’s to do an instant downgrade of Victoria’s credit rating.
Ellie’s (male) co-owner wondered whether an ego of Hinch’s proportions would fit into a normal sized coffin. But all went well – until the ghost of the man called the Human Headline expressed itself ex-coffin (so to speak).
Tony Tardio’s Tasteless Oration
Tony Tardio, a one-time journalist colleague of the recently departed, set the tone – if tone there was – delivered a speech which included the following:
Tony Tardio: Hinch interviewed the Dalai Lama four times. Bob Hope, Sophia Loren, Walter Cronkite, Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Lemmon, Harrison Ford, John Wayne, [name of an extant American female actor deleted]. Derryn always said, “The only thing history owes the dead is the truth”. Well, here it goes. Derryn and [name deleted] engaged in a bit of horizontal romper after that interview, and that is the truth. Hinch was a journalistic James Bond. Drama followed him everywhere, even to his first wedding in 1965. He was at a church in Sydney, waiting at the end of the aisle for his wife-to-be Lana. She was walking down, being escorted by her uncle. Halfway down the aisle, Derryn heard a thud. He turned to see the uncle collapsed and died of a heart attack. For any person, that will be enough drama for one lifetime. Not Derryn. In the years that followed, he would marry four times, be sacked 16 times, get rich, go broke, get rich again, go to jail, get a liver transplant, become a senator, and do it all as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
How crass can a funeral oration get? It was as if your man Tardio was claiming Sex Bragging Rights for the Human Headline from beyond the grave. As to the claim that no one but Hinch would have operated normally after the sudden death of a wife-to-be’s uncle – well, that’s giving hyperbole a bad name.
Hinch’s gross irresponsibility in the case of the paedophile priest Michael Glennon
Without question, Derryn Hinch did much that was good in his life – as most do. But your man Tardio said that Hinch believed that the only thing that history owes the dead is the truth – well, here are a few truths: This is what Andrew Bolt said on Sky News’ The Bolt Report on 16 July 2026:
Andrew Bolt: Why is broadcaster Derryn Hinch getting a state funeral after the tragedies caused by his law breaking? I know we’re in an age where people are judged by how they seem and not by what they actually do. But a state funeral for broadcaster Derryn Hinch, the Victorian government gives a state funeral to a man who broke the law and so allowed a paedophile to abuse even more children?
I’m amazed by all the tributes to Hinch praising him for his campaigning against paedophiles. How he even went to jail for going on radio to denounce one in particular, the truly evil priest Michael Glennon, who was eventually convicted for crimes against 15 children. And what amazed me though about that is that yes, you know, Hinch made himself look good by going on air and naming Glennon ahead of his trial in 1985, listing Glennon’s past sex crimes, warning that he was a bad man, “don’t send your kids there”.
But none of these tributes go on to mention the tragic cost of Hinch’s “look at me” stunt. There are actually laws against doing what Hinch did, and he knew that, and almost every journalist does too. You can’t prejudice a trial by jury like that by declaring a man guilty and publicising his record just when the trial’s on.
And when Hinch did just that, the trial, the judge in Glennon’s case declared a mistrial. Hinch himself was jailed, and Glennon walked free. Three children, Aboriginal boys, paid for what Hinch had done. In the six years that that this Glennon was free, before he was charged again, he abused at least three more children, including a child under the age of 10. Hinch’s stunt saved no one, as the High Court later ruled, when it found against him.
Hinch didn’t need to publicise Glennon’s past crimes to warn parents against letting him near their children. Just saying he’d been charged would have been enough. But Hinch didn’t call himself The Human Headline for nothing. You’ve got to work at this. And three children, maybe more, paid for him to have his time in the spotlight.
Hinch’s under-age sex recollection
And here is some truth as reported in Gerard Henderson’s Cardinal Pell, The Media Pile-On & Collective Guilt (Connor Court, revised edition, 2023 at page 262):
2004 had seen the publication of Derryn Hinch’s The Fall and Rise of Derryn Hinch: How I Hit the Wall and Didn’t Bleed (Hardie Grant). In his memoir, Hinch regretted that he “did not get this exquisite Swiss woman” at a party hosted by Molly Meldrum in Melbourne in the late 1970s. However, they met for dinner “days later”. He reported in his memoir that the “stupendously beautiful model” had told him she “was fifteen years and five months old”.
The story is ambiguous, but was clarified in Hinch’s blog on 1 November 2013 where the following comment appeared (it has now been deleted): “About ten years ago, in my book, The Rise and Fall of Derryn Hinch, I admitted that in my thirties I had sex with a 15 year old girl”. He placed the Meldrum party as having occurred in 1979 and said that the girl in question, now a woman, had told him recently that she was 18 years old at the time. The implication was – no problem here.
In 1979 the age of consent in Victoria was 16 – it still is. The point here is that Hinch had no qualms about writing what he wrote in 2004 about (unintentional) underage sex. Until 2013 – the year in which the Royal Commission [into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse] commenced its operations – when he saw fit to issue a clarification by stating that the female in question was 18 years old.
As documented by Gerard Henderson, Hinch refused to accept the unanimous judgment of the High Court in George Pell v The Queen which quashed the convictions of Pell for historical child sexual abuse. Hinch, in his arrogance, implied that he knew more about the case than all seven judges of the High Court of Australia – despite the fact that he had scant knowledge of the issue and showed ignorance of Australia’s legal system.
Victorian government’s praise for The Human Headline’s “convictions”
The Victoria Government’s State Funeral announcement concluded that Derryn Hinch had “the courage of his convictions”. An unfortunate wording, to be sure, since he had three convictions for contempt of court. If everyone engaged in contempt of court, the criminal justice system would break down. But this was one truth which Tony Tardio did not believe that history owed to Derryn at his taxpayer-funded State Funeral held at The Timber Yard and, consequently, avoided the issue.
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Derryn Hinch’s famous “That’s life” comment was taken from a 1963 song of the same name. Now the Victoria Government can reflect, with respect to Derryn Hinch (1944–2026): That’s Death.
Verily, A (Late) Derryn Hinch Moment.
History CornerThe Australian left, appeasement, isolationism and the Second World War
Professor Frank Bongiorno is a labour historian. Labour historians are invariably left-wing academics who write about the labour movement broadly defined.
That is, the Australian Labor Party and the Australian trade union movement. Comrade Bongiorno (no relation to The Saturday Paper’s Paul Bongiorno) is the inaugural director of the Vice-Chancellor’s Centre of Public Affairs at the University of Canberra and Donald Horne Professor of History of Public Ideas.
As covered in Media Watch Dog (Issue 781, 3 July 2026), Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy claimed at the National Press Club on 2 July that the former Coalition Prime Minister ‘Bob’ Robert Menzies was a “Nazi appeaser” in the 1930s. And that former Labor leader John Curtin was his “hero” in so far as the Second World War is concerned. Conroy added that “this is really important stuff the Left needs to embrace more fully”.
When the issue was raised in the House of Representatives on 7 July after his National Press Club speech, Minister Conroy tabled a letter which Menzies sent to the Australian High Commissioner in London, on 11 September 1939. That is, some days after the Menzies government had declared war on Nazi Germany. This letter was initially published in Documents on Australian Foreign Policy 1937-49 (Australian Government Publishing Service, 1976) edited by R. G. Neale.
In what Menzies acknowledged was a “rambling” note, he did not query the decision to wage war on Germany but doubted that Adolf Hitler would be disposed to wage a “first class” war on either France or Great Britain once Poland had been defeated by Germany. This was an unwise, albeit tentative, prediction. However, Menzies concluded his “ramble” by conceding that “there is probably no answer to it all” while expressing concern about the immediate and long-term future. The letter concluded expressing “bitterness” at Hitler. These were not the words of what, in modern day parlance, is a “surrender monkey”.
Robert Menzies, John Curtin & Appeasement
It is true that Menzies was an appeaser of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi government throughout most of the 1930s. But so was Labor leader John Curtin. This was a common view among leaders of Western democracies at the time. For example, Neville Chamberlain in Britain, President F.D. Roosevelt in the United States, McKenzie King in Canada, Michael Savage in New Zealand and Albert Lebrun in France and the like. There were exceptions. Namely, Winston Churchill in Britain (who did not have a prominent role in government at the time) and Billy Hughes in Australia. Bongiorno maintains that Hughes “exercised no influence on government policy” at the time. Maybe so – but he was attorney- general and minister for industry in the first Menzies government.
In his Saturday Paper article, Bongiorno argued that “the efforts to rescue Menzies from the charge of appeasement is a …heroic one”. With respect to Curtin and the opposition he wrote: “Labor for its part failed to rise even to the level of foreign policy engagement required to support appeasement; its position was isolationist”. This is arrant nonsense.
In her book Menzies at War (New South, 2014), Anne Henderson revealed for the first time in the modern era that Curtin had said this in the House of Representatives on 9 May 1938 during a debate on international affairs:
They [the Germans] learn that democratic systems do not necessarily mean work and food and decent living standards, and, therefore, they are warranted, not in contrasting the speeches of leaders of other countries … but in measuring up how far the form of political system that they have accepted yields to them a more satisfactory internal social standing than does the democratic system.
Later in the speech John Curtin said this:
The efforts of the British Government in its negotiations for peace were, to some extent, made difficult by the partisan activities of those who are more concerned, as it were, with fighting Hitler than with establishing peace. There is unquestionably in the world a class that has a vested interest in war and in war-making, and the propagandist activities which are employed in the interests of this exploiting and ruthless class, which is international in character, have made difficulties for all governments, including, I believe, the governments of the dictators.
As Anne Henderson commented in her chapter “Peace and War” in The Young Menzies: Success, Failure and Resilience 1894-1942 (MUP, 2022):
These are the words of a pacifist, a man who believed that war, if it came, would be the work of international profiteers and not the result of the expansionist ambitions of Germany’s arch dictator Adolf Hitler. In other words, diplomacy (also known derisively as appeasement) was needed, and diplomacy should push on, regardless of the failure of the Munich Agreement of late 1938, in an effort to avoid war.
John Curtin’s speech in the House of Representatives on 9 May 1939 demonstrates that he, too, was an appeaser – like the rest of the Labor Party at the time. Curtin was more than just an isolationist as Bongiorno asserts. That’s just historical denial – or fudge. And now for a summary:
On 3 September 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared war on Nazi Germany. On 3 September 1939 Menzies declared that as Britain was at war, so too was Australia. The Curtin-led Labor Opposition supported the declaration of war. However, Curtin opposed the deployment of Australian troops outside of Australia. In June 1940 the Royal Australian Navy commenced operations against Italy. In January 1940, Menzies had deployed the Second Australian Imperial Force to the Middle East, North Africa and parts of south-east Europe to join allied operations against Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Vichy France. The Second AIF played an important role in stemming the military advances of the Axis powers. The Labor Party did not support this deployment.
So Bongiorno reckons that the man (Menzies) who committed Australian forces to war in the Northern Hemisphere was an appeaser – while the man (Curtin) who opposed the military commitment was just an isolationist. Really.
The Labor Party’s right-wing was not opposed to the war effort. However, sections of Labor’s left-wing, sometimes called the pro-communist left – for a couple of years attempted to sabotage the war effort even when Australian forces were fighting and dying overseas.
On 23 August 1939, the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed whereby Hitler and Stalin divided Eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union. The Nazi-Soviet Pact had effectively started the Second World War, since it was immediately followed by Germany’s invasion of Poland from the West (at a time when the Soviet Union had become an ally of Germany). Soon after, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East.
The Communist Party of Australia supported the Nazi-Soviet Pact. At the time the CPA was partly funded by the Soviet Union’s communist dictators. Thus, some members of the Labor Party’s left-wing, including some trade union leaders, were sympathetic to the Stalin-led Soviet Union at the time. And the Communist Party of Australia was effectively controlled by the Soviet Union.
In 1940 the Menzies government banned/outlawed the Communist Party of Australia. This was opposed by sections of the labour movement – which attempted to sabotage the war effort, with considerable success. This is documented in the late G.P. Colebatch’s Australia’s Secret War: How Unions Sabotaged Our Troops In World War II (Quadrant Books, 2013).
In June 1941, Nazi Germany commenced its invasion of the Soviet Union. It was only then that both the Communist Party of Australia and the entire trade union movement supported the war effort rather than disrupting it.
In late December 1941, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on the United States and the US ceased being neutral. By then, John Curtin was prime minister. The Curtin Labor government finally supported the deployment of Australian forces overseas – but only with respect to a designated area of the South-West Pacific for servicemen who had been conscripted. As distinct from those who had voluntarily joined the Second AIF.
All of this has been documented in Paul Hasluck’s official history The Government And The People 1939-1941 (Australian War Memorial, 1952).
Joseph Lyons, Robert Menzies and John Curtin in the lead-up to the Second World War
As Anne Henderson documents in Menzies at War, the Lyons-led United Australia Party (the predecessor of the Liberal Party) and the Menzies UAP governments in the 1930s saw the need to increase military expenditure. As John Edwards – a Curtin fan – concedes in his book John Curtin’s War – “Curtin’s party favoured self-reliance but with no means to attain it.” In fact, Labor opposed every attempt by the Lyons and the Menzies governments in the 1930s to increase defence expenditure. This is documented in Media Watch Dog’s History Corner on 10 April 2018.
In Menzies at War, Anne Henderson quoted Frederick Shedden as having said this about what the Curtin government inherited from the Menzies government when Labor came to government in October 1941. She located a document titled “The notable war record of the Menzies Government, 1939-1941” in the Snedden Collection at the National Archives of Australia. Shedden held a senior position in the Defence Department during the prime ministership of Menzies and Curtin during the war-time government:
Following the split in the Labor Party after the conscription issue in 1916–17, it adopted a pacifist outlook, unrealistically divorced from the trend and dangers of the international situation. It led to their constant opposition to an effective Defence Policy between the wars…. The pre-war Defence program of the Lyons and Menzies Governments and the preparation of precautionary plans for an emergency established a basis for expansion in war by the Menzies Government. Had this pre-war policy not been carried out, the magnitude of the Menzies Government’s war effort would never have been achieved, and the legacy of the Curtin Government in 1941 would have been very poor indeed.
In his book The Menzies Years (HarperCollins, 2014), John Howard quoted the Shedden comment – pointing out that he enjoyed the support of both Menzies and Curtin. It is understandable why a Labor Party minister politician like Pat Conroy would want to score a point against Menzies – the Liberal Party’s founder Robert Menzies – and praise John Curtin. However, a taxpayer subsidised professor like Frank Bongiorno is expected to be objective and fair-minded.
Also the learned professor should find more authoritative sources than The Gillies Report, which aired on ABC TV some four decades ago. Towards the end of his entire page Saturday Paper anti-Menzies polemic, Comrade Bongiorno had this to say:
… by the mid-1980s Menzies was an object of satire on the ABC comedy The Gillies Report, where he appeared in heaven, angel wings rivalled only by the size of his eyebrows, lamenting the state of modern Australia and singing of his joy at not being alive anymore. Today, the political right does its best to recover Menzies’ reputation. Their efforts might be more sensibly directed to the postwar affluence over which he presided, which he put to such deadly use in winning seven elections on the trot. The younger Menzies would be better left alone.
The Gillies Report was written, among others, by Peter Cook, John Clarke, Phillip Scott and Don Watson. Not a political conservative among this lot. It speaks volumes for the way history is currently taught at the University of Canberra, that Professor Frank Bongiorno would fall back on the words spoken by the actor Max Gillies to discredit Australia’s longest serving prime minister.
The truth is that if Menzies was a Nazi appeaser in the 1930s – then John Curtin was a Nazi appeaser in spades. But Robert Menzies put on the “khaki” in September 1939 while John Curtin remained in “mufti”. Curtin became a war leader only when the Pacific War commenced after Japan attacked the United States’ naval base at Pearl Harbor in early December 1941 and Australian forces joined the conflict.
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Until Next Time – Keep Morale High.
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Gerard Henderson is an Australian columnist, political commentator and the Executive Director of The Sydney Institute. His column Media Watch Dog is republished by SkyNews.com.au each Saturday morning. He started the blog in April 1988, before the ABC TV’s program of the same name commenced