How entertaining watching the recent media coverage of the Queen’s Birthday honours awards and observing the blatant hypocrisy of so many journalists joyfully celebrating Mike Carlton’s AM when, only a few months ago, they were demanding that mine should be rescinded.
Last week Amanda Stoker made a speech to the Senate about the duplicity of Kristina Keneally and Penny Wong who moved the motion in February condemning me in the Senate but now are totally silent about Carlton’s award.
Amanda’s been a good friend to me and did a magnificent job in Senate Estimates last year exposing the kangaroo courts operating on our campuses. As a rising star in the government she was given no choice about voting for the motion against me, with Labor and the Greens using the issue to wedge the government over domestic violence. Her recent speech put the record straight about some key issues.
Most importantly, she clarified the fact that I simply quoted language used by the police official in describing his approach to the Baxter homicide investigation. The Senate motion omitted that vital point, falsely claiming I made the controversial statement. In the last few days, Amanda was also on Sky News making this point very clearly.
Anyway, here’s the video of Amanda Stoker’s speech: https://youtu.be/YGsAKnB9N7s
Please promote it because it is very helpful for me to have the truth out there. And it certainly doesn’t hurt to encourage more discussion of the Carlton award. News Ltd papers have been joyously digging deep into Carlton’s history finding examples of all sort of abusive behaviour, like Carlton tweeting that Jimmy Barnes should have strangled Liberal MP Nicole Flint, a fellow guest on a Q&A panel. And he’s made foul comments about Daisy Cousens and other conservative women who attract his disapproval.
When Carlton worked for Fairfax, the publishers asked him to apologise for sending abusive emails and tweets to Jewish readers in which he called them ‘Jewish bigot’, ‘pissant’ and ‘Likudnik’ and told them to “F..k off”.
There’s plenty of fodder for conservative outrage archaeologists keen to prove that Carlton wasn’t fit for the award. Or at least to show up the hypocrisy of the many journalists and public officials who condemned me whilst turning a blind eye to Carlton’s colourful history.
It’s interesting that we’ve had a whole new batch of honours handed out and I now discover that the Honours Committee has decided not to discuss the controversy about my award until their next meeting in August or September. But presumably the current circus will encourage them to stick to original decisions regarding such awards rather than be swayed by the mob. We will see.