{"id":57957,"date":"2026-07-24T23:16:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T23:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/57957\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T23:16:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T23:16:57","slug":"sarah-fergusons-needless-just-answer-the-question-spray-at-barnaby-joyce-is-the-real-story-behind-their-viral-on-air-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/57957\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Ferguson’s needless ‘just answer the question’ spray at Barnaby Joyce is the real story behind their viral on-air interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog column\u00a0every\u00a0Saturday\u00a0morning\u00a0<\/a>on SkyNews.com.au\u00a0and watch his weekly analysis on The Media Show.<\/p>\n

The LatestThe real story behind the Ferguson-Joyce interview was Ferguson\u2019s anger towards Joyce \u2013 not Joyce\u2019s anger towards his dog<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 or whether Joyce made it up.\u00a0 Comrade Ferguson believes that the dog did bark (unlike the canine in one of Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s Sherlock Holmes stories).<\/p>\n

It’s not clear why Joyce would lie about this \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

Certainly, Sarah Ferguson\u2019s interview with One Nation\u2019s MP Barnaby Joyce on Monday 20 July has achieved international attention. It was even covered by Fox News\u2019 Gutfeld! \u00a0program on Wednesday night (US time). This is the 7.30 exchange which created the most interest:<\/p>\n

Sarah Ferguson:\u00a0But 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?<\/p>\n

Barnaby Joyce:\u00a0I think \u2013 Sit down. Sorry, it’s a dog\u2026.<\/p>\n

Barnaby Joyce became angry with his dog Stella but, later, Ferguson got angry with Joyce:<\/p>\n

Barnaby Joyce:\u00a0I have to apologise for this dog, which has decided to bail up \u2013<\/p>\n

Sarah Ferguson:\u00a0[Interjecting]\u00a0Don\u2019t\u00a0worry about the dog. Just answer the question.<\/p>\n

Barnaby Joyce:\u00a0Don\u2019t\u00a0be\u00a0rude.\u00a0Don’t\u00a0be\u00a0rude. Otherwise, this interview will come to a grinding point, Sarah. So, what was the question actually?<\/p>\n

In fact, this was a hostile interview.\u00a0 All up, Ferguson interrupted Joyce on 15 occasions in an 11-minute interview \u2013 which included Ferguson\u2019s \u201cJust answer the question\u201d demand.\u00a0 The\u00a07.30\u00a0presenter seems unable to refrain from interrupting the likes of such political conservatives as Angus Taylor, Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce \u2013 often in an angry manner.<\/p>\n

Joyce had reason to yell at Stella \u2013 who seemed to recover quickly from the exchange.\u00a0 But Ferguson had scant reason to get annoyed at Joyce\u2019s canine problem.\u00a0 Media Watch Dog\u2019s professional advice is that both should undertake anger management courses.\u00a0 The One Nation MP with respect to handling barking canines. And the ABC presenter with how to handle political conservatives.<\/p>\n

A Jacob Greber interpretation of the Pauline Hanson overseas visit<\/p>\n

I note that, covering the Pauline Hanson story on 21 July, 7.30 political editor Jacob Greber had this to say:<\/p>\n

Jacob Greber:\u00a0 The One Nation leader\u2019s return to home ground has capped a\u00a0 whirlwind tour of the UK and one of Italy\u2019s fanciest seaside resorts where she was spotted poolside with Rinehart.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a journey worthy of Barry McKenzie. Pauline Hanson has stirred headlines and emotions alike.<\/p>\n

What a load of absolute tosh.\u00a0 Is Comrade Greber unaware that Barry McKenzie was a Barry Humphries-created character, who was addicted to Foster\u2019s beer?<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s the times we live in.\u00a0 In a recent speech Pauline Hanson looked back in happiness to the lifestyle of such Australians as Norman Gunston.\u00a0 Like Mr McKenzie, Mr Gunston never existed. Ask Garry McDonald.<\/p>\n

\"AndrewCan You Bear It?ABC TV Insiders shows footage of Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young mocking Gina Rinehart\u2019s appearance<\/p>\n

On Sunday 19 July, Insiders presenter Patricia Karvelas introduced a segment on Pauline Hanson by showing some video clips \u2013 including this:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Pauline Hanson: Well haven\u2019t I heard, when the cat is away, the mice will play.<\/p>\n

Newsreader: Pauline Hanson and her benefactor Gina Rinehart, spotted poolside at a luxury hotel.<\/p>\n

Sarah Hanson-Young: I saw that…One of those images you don’t want in your head.<\/p>\n

The decision to show Greens Senator Hanson-Young making mocking remarks about Ms Rinehart\u2019s appearance was made by the Insiders\u2019 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\u2019s appearance. Can You Bear It?<\/p>\n

\"SydneyMore intellectual snobbery in the SMH\u2019s \u00a0Letters page<\/p>\n

In recent weeks this segment has demonstrated that the Sydney Morning Herald Letters editor has run correspondence critical of Pauline Hanson\u2019s (alleged) lack of education or intelligence.<\/p>\n

This letter ran in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 18 July:<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0Richard Vielie, Hunters Hill<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

This form of attack is counter-productive.\u00a0 Agree with Hanson or not, the One Nation leader and her backers are not illiterate \u2013 but the SMH\u2019s Letters Editor is clearly an intellectual snob. Can You Bear It?<\/p>\n

\"JewishNine\u2019s Calum Jaspan describes the activist left-wing Australia Institute\u2019s Amy Remeikis as \u201cindependent\u201d<\/p>\n

In his \u201cBackground\u201d column in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Friday 17 July, Nine newspapers\u2019 media reporter Calum Jaspan wrote this about Gina Rinehart:<\/p>\n

Rinehart\u2019s 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 \u201cBond villain\u201d in an article for The New Daily\u2026<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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 \u2013 a left-wing online newspaper.\u00a0 According to Comrade Jaspan, Comrade Remeikis is an \u201cindependent journalist\u201d.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not clear what she is independent of. Certainly not Richard Denniss and his comrades at The Australia Institute. Can You Bear It?<\/p>\n

\"PeopleMalcolm Turnbull (in \u201cMiserable Ghost\u201d mode) speaks at private launch of Getting Murdoched<\/p>\n

There was enormous interest in last week\u2019s coverage of Malcolm Turnbull\u2019s oh-so-private launch of Getting Murdoched: How Murdoch\u2019s Media Wields Power and Punishment (Hardie Grant, 2026).\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is assumed that the co-authors \u2013 Professor Andrew Dodd and Professor Matthew Ricketson from the University of Melbourne and Deakin University respectively \u2013 were present.\u00a0 But the report in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald by the Melbourne-based Calum Jaspan did not say so.\u00a0 Nor did Comrade Jaspan reveal where the (private) function was held. MWD assumes in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

In any event, Australia\u2019s 29th prime minister was in (what he once condemned as) \u201cMiserable Ghost\u201d 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).<\/p>\n

The Sage of Point Piper said that \u201cSky News After Dark\u201d should be treated like a drunk late on Saturday night, \u201craving and screaming and raging at the moon outside the pub\u201d.\u00a0 That is: Ignore it.\u00a0 How about that?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Work that out if you can.<\/p>\n

As previously advised, Ellie\u2019s (male) co-owner is wading through the literary sludge that is Getting Murdoched.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 See here<\/a>.\u00a0 So far neither has replied. MWD will keep you posted. But don\u2019t hold your breath \u2013 to borrow a clich\u00e9.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, MWD has examined the way the launcher Turnbull was covered in the Dodd\/Ricketson book.\u00a0 This is how the successful challenge against Turnbull in August 2018 in the Liberal Party room is covered \u2013 focusing on the proposed National Energy Guarantee (NEG) scheme (aimed at reducing carbon emissions).<\/p>\n

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 \u201ccertainly played a big role\u201d in what occurred, and that as a Liberal Party leader he was even more vulnerable to attacks from News because \u201ctheir audience is older, more conservative, more likely to be voting Liberal, more likely to be a member of the Liberal Party\u201d.<\/p>\n

A couple of university professors should be able to do better. First, some background.\u00a0 Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott as prime minister in the party room ballot on 5 September 2015.\u00a0 One of the reasons that Turnbull gave for this action was that, under Abbott, the Coalition had lost 30 Newspolls in a row.<\/p>\n

On 8 May 2016, Turnbull obtained a double dissolution election in a campaign which ran for nearly 8 weeks \u2013 the election took place on 2 July 2016.\u00a0 The campaign was an expensive disaster for the Liberal Party \u2013 losing 14 seats to the Labor Party.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

And so it came to pass \u2013 after Turnbull himself had led the Coalition to the loss of 30 Newspolls in a row. \u00a0There was growing opposition to Turnbull\u2019s 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.\u00a0 And even more surprised that Dutton won 35 votes to Turnbull\u2019s 48 votes.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t enough.\u00a0 From that moment, Turnbull\u2019s leadership was finished.<\/p>\n

On 23 August, another spill vote occurred in the Liberal Party room which was moved by Dutton.\u00a0 45 MPs were for the spill; 40 against.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The idea that in August 2018, Rupert Murdoch \u2013 plus News Corp newspapers and Sky News \u2013 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 \u2013 with or without the News Corp\/Sky News duo.<\/p>\n

Yet none of this is mentioned by Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson in Getting Murdoched.\u00a0 They just ran the line of the Miserable Ghost who launched their book.\u00a0 Can You Bear It?<\/p>\n

[No, not really \u2013 now that you ask. I have never heard of a private book launch before \u2013 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. \u2013 MWD Editor.]<\/p>\n

\"\u2018EndA (Late) Derryn Hinch Moment\u00a0Victorian taxpayers pay for Derryn Hinch\u2019s final exit<\/p>\n

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\u2019 notes and coins, and borrow more, to give high-profile journalist Derryn Hinch (1944-2026) \u00a0a State Funeral. It’s unclear that this decision will set a precedent with respect to other high-profile retired Victorian journalists.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 such an expense in a room full of what was once called the Fourth Estate might well have triggered Moody\u2019s to do an instant downgrade of Victoria’s credit rating.<\/p>\n

Ellie’s (male) co-owner wondered whether an ego of Hinch\u2019s proportions would fit into a normal sized coffin. But all went well \u2013 until the ghost of the man called the Human Headline expressed itself ex-coffin (so to speak).<\/p>\n

\"TributesTony Tardio’s Tasteless Oration<\/p>\n

Tony Tardio, a one-time journalist colleague of the recently departed, set the tone – if tone there was \u2013 delivered a speech which included the following:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 well, that’s giving hyperbole a bad name.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018VeryHinch’s gross irresponsibility in the case of the paedophile priest Michael Glennon<\/p>\n

Without question, Derryn Hinch did much that was good in his life \u2013 as most do. But your man Tardio said that Hinch believed that the only thing that history owes the dead is the truth \u2013 well, here are a few truths: This is what Andrew Bolt said on Sky News\u2019 The Bolt Report on 16 July 2026:<\/p>\n

Andrew Bolt: Why is broadcaster Derryn Hinch getting a state funeral after the tragedies caused by his law breaking? I know we\u2019re 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?<\/p>\n

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, \u201cdon’t send your kids there\u201d.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0Three 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.<\/p>\n

Hinch didn\u2019t need to publicise Glennon’s past crimes to warn parents against letting him near their children. Just saying he\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

\"BarnabyHinch’s under-age sex recollection<\/p>\n

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):<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 no problem here.<\/p>\n

In 1979 the age of consent in Victoria was 16 \u2013 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 \u2013 the year in which the Royal Commission [into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse] \u00a0commenced its operations \u2013 when he saw fit to issue a clarification by stating that the female in question was 18 years old.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 despite the fact that he had scant knowledge of the issue and showed ignorance of Australia\u2019s legal system.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018YouVictorian government\u2019s praise for The Human Headline\u2019s \u201cconvictions\u201d<\/p>\n

The Victoria Government\u2019s State Funeral announcement concluded that Derryn Hinch had \u201cthe courage of his convictions\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n

* * * *<\/p>\n

Derryn Hinch\u2019s famous \u201cThat\u2019s life\u201d comment was taken from a 1963 song of the same name. Now the Victoria Government can reflect, with respect to Derryn Hinch (1944\u20132026): That\u2019s Death.<\/p>\n

Verily, A (Late) Derryn Hinch Moment.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018We\u2019reHistory CornerThe Australian left, appeasement, isolationism and the Second World War<\/p>\n

Professor Frank Bongiorno is a labour historian.\u00a0 Labour historians are invariably left-wing academics who write about the labour movement broadly defined.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As covered in Media Watch Dog (Issue 781, 3 July 2026), Defence Industry Minister \u00a0Pat Conroy claimed at the National Press Club on 2 July that the former Coalition Prime Minister \u2018Bob\u2019 Robert Menzies was a \u201cNazi appeaser\u201d in the 1930s. And that former Labor leader John Curtin was his \u201chero\u201d in so far as the Second World War is concerned. Conroy added that \u201cthis is really important stuff the Left needs to embrace more fully\u201d.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In what Menzies acknowledged was a \u201crambling\u201d note, he did not query the decision to wage war on Germany but doubted that Adolf Hitler would be disposed to wage a \u201cfirst 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 \u201cramble\u201d 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”.<\/p>\n

\"Iran'sRobert Menzies, John Curtin & Appeasement<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Bongiorno maintains that Hughes \u201cexercised no influence on government policy\u201d at the time. Maybe so \u2013 but he was attorney- general and minister for industry in the first Menzies government.<\/p>\n

In his Saturday Paper article, Bongiorno argued that \u201cthe efforts to rescue Menzies from the charge of appeasement is a \u2026heroic one\u201d. With respect to Curtin and the opposition he wrote: \u201cLabor for its part failed to rise even to the level of foreign policy engagement required to support appeasement; its position was isolationist\u201d. This is arrant nonsense.<\/p>\n

In her book Menzies at War \u00a0(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:<\/p>\n

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 \u2026 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.<\/p>\n

Later in the speech John Curtin said this:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As Anne Henderson commented in her chapter \u201cPeace and War\u201d in The Young Menzies: Success, Failure and Resilience 1894-1942 (MUP, 2022):<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"ABC<\/p>\n

John Curtin\u2019s speech in the House of Representatives on 9 \u00a0May 1939 demonstrates that he, too, was an appeaser \u2013 like the rest of the Labor Party at the time. Curtin was more than just an isolationist as Bongiorno asserts. That\u2019s just historical denial \u2013 or fudge. And now for a summary:<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

So Bongiorno reckons that the man (Menzies) who committed Australian forces to war in the Northern Hemisphere was an appeaser \u2013 while the man (Curtin) who opposed the military commitment was just an isolationist. Really.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 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\u2019s communist dictators. Thus, some members of the Labor Party\u2019s 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 \u2013 which attempted to sabotage the war effort, with considerable success. This is documented in the late G.P. Colebatch\u2019s Australia\u2019s 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 \u2013 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. \"Trump<\/p>\n

All of this has been documented in Paul Hasluck\u2019s official history The Government And The People 1939-1941 (Australian War Memorial, 1952).<\/p>\n

Joseph Lyons, Robert Menzies and John Curtin in the lead-up to the Second World War<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 a Curtin fan \u2013 concedes in his book John Curtin’s War \u2013 \u201cCurtin’s party favoured self-reliance but with no means to attain it.\u201d\u00a0 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\u2019s \u00a0History Corner on 10 April 2018.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 She located a document titled \u201cThe notable war record of the Menzies Government, 1939-1941\u201d 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:<\/p>\n

Following the split in the Labor Party after the conscription issue in 1916\u201317, 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\u2026. 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\u2019s war effort would never have been achieved, and the legacy of the Curtin Government in 1941 would have been very poor indeed.<\/p>\n

In his book The Menzies Years (HarperCollins, 2014), John Howard quoted the Shedden comment \u2013 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 \u2013 the Liberal Party’s founder Robert Menzies \u2013 and praise John Curtin. However, a taxpayer subsidised professor like Frank Bongiorno is expected to be objective and fair-minded.<\/p>\n

Also the learned professor should find more authoritative sources than The \u00a0Gillies Report, \u00a0which 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:<\/p>\n

… 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.<\/p>\n

The Gillies Report was written, among others, by Peter Cook, John Clarke, Phillip Scott and Don Watson. Not a political conservative among this lot.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The truth is that if Menzies was a Nazi appeaser in the 1930s \u2013 then John Curtin was a Nazi appeaser in spades.\u00a0 But Robert Menzies put on the \u201ckhaki\u201d in September 1939 while John Curtin remained in \u201cmufti\u201d. Curtin became a war leader only when the Pacific War commenced after Japan attacked the United States\u2019 naval base at Pearl Harbor in early December 1941 and Australian forces joined the conflict.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

Until Next Time \u2013 Keep Morale High.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

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\u2019s program of the same name commenced<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Read Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog column\u00a0every\u00a0Saturday\u00a0morning\u00a0on SkyNews.com.au\u00a0and watch his weekly analysis on The Media Show. 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