The online editor of conservative publication Quadrant has said it would have been preferable for the Manchester bomb to be exploded in the ABC’s Q&A studios on Monday night, blowing up host Tony Jones and the panellists.



“This morning, mere hours after Jones’ guests pocketed their ABC taxi vouchers and repaired to hotel rooms paid for with taxpayer dollars processed through the Sydney writers’ festival, mere children were torn to pieces on the other side of the world,” Roger Franklin wrote in a piece published online on Monday.

“Life isn’t fair and death less so. If there had been a shred of justice that blast would have detonated in an Ultimo TV studio. Unlike those young girls in Manchester, their lives snuffed out before they could begin, none of the panel’s likely casualties would have represented the slightest reduction in humanity’s intelligence, decency, empathy or honesty.”

The ABC has called the article “a new low in Australian public debate” and demanded an apology and the removal of the article from the Quadrant website. In a strongly worded letter to the editor of Quadrant, the ABC managing director, Michelle Guthrie, said ABC staff had to be reassured of their safety and safety experts had to be called in to assess if there had been any damage to security from the inflammatory words.

Guthrie’s statement said:

Quadrant promotes itself as “the leading general intellectual journal of ideas”. Those words ring hollow in the wake of last night’s vicious and offensive attack on the ABC, its staff and its program guests. To take issue with our programming and our content is one thing. But to express the wish that, if there were any justice, the horrific terrorist bombing in Manchester would have taken place in the ABC’s Ultimo studio and killed those assembled there is a new low in Australian public debate. Your subsequent attempt to make amends by changing some of the wording (without acknowledging or apologising for the original article) has done little to undo the damage. The article continues to state that if a blast occurred in one of our studios, none of the likely casualties “would have represented the slightest reduction in humanity’s intelligence, decency, empathy or honesty”. Like many others, I am appalled at your willingness to turn an act of terrorism in the United Kingdom into a means of making a political point against those you disagree with. One of the immediate results of this behaviour is that while our staff both here and in Manchester were working long hours to provide extensive coverage of this unfolding tragedy, we were also forced to reassure worried staff who had read your article and call in our own security experts to assess any possible impact flowing from your inflammatory words. I ask that this response be posted prominently on the Quadrant website, and I also ask that the article, which continues to contain entirely inappropriate comments about possible bombings at the ABC, be removed and apologised for.

In his piece, Franklin attacked Q&A panellist Lawrence Krauss as a “filthy liar” for his characterisation of the threat of Islam, and then imagined him being blown up by the terrorist bomb.

“Mind you, as Krauss felt his body being penetrated by the Prophet’s shrapnel of nuts, bolts and nails, those goitered eyes might in their last glimmering have caught a glimpse of vindication.”

Franklin has been approached for comment.

The Australian’s associate editor, Chris Kenny, joined the debate about the article on Twitter, saying while the general argument was a worthwhile point of view, the line about the ABC was appalling.

@markbjardine well I think imagining bombs anywhere else is appalling....but until that point it was a worthwhile argument... — Chris Kenny (@chriskkenny) May 23, 2017

The communications minister, Mitch Fifield, appearing before an upper house hearing in Canberra on Wednesday, agreed with Guthrie.

“I think this constitutes a new low in Australian public debate and the comments are sick and unhinged,” he said.

In the hours after the tragedy in Manchester, Franklin’s opinion piece which attacked Q&A as an unbalanced program said that every panellist was a “smug simper straight from the green-left luvviedom”.

After criticism of the piece on Twitter one sentence was amended without an editor’s note. The article remains online.

and quadrant dragoons the deaths of children to its cause. https://t.co/1I46Pka6ES pic.twitter.com/NAXSofTLNG — Jonathan Green (@GreenJ) May 23, 2017

The ABC’s national security manager, Jason Alcorn, has written to staff about the Quadrant article and assured them that “proactive steps have been taken to ensure the safety and welfare of all staff and users of ABC Ultimo”.

“While consideration is given to minimise inconvenience please appreciate that intermittent increased security presence and more rigorous security screening is to ensure staff safety and wellbeing,” Alcorn said.

“The safety and security of all ABC staff is a shared responsibility, be alert and not alarmed and if you see something unusual or suspicious, use your judgment and report [it].”