The ABC appears to be shoring up its Liberal credentials with the appointment of Josh Faulks, the deputy chief of staff to the attorney general, George Brandis. Faulks takes up the role of head of partnerships and policy at the broadcaster, working with head of TV, Richard Finlayson, to secure funding for content.



Finlayson says Faulks will “ensure that we have open and constructive relationships with our stakeholders and partners in the sector”. In other words, he will be a lobbyist.

The senior government staffer certainly has experience in handling budgets for the arts as he was a ministerial staffer when Brandis slashed the arts funding in the 2015 budget.

He also made news last year when Brandis insisted Faulks sit in on a meeting between the human rights commissioner, Gillian Triggs, and the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus. Faulks turned up at the commission’s Sydney office and refused to leave when both Triggs and Dreyfus asked him to, saying he was acting on the instructions of the attorney general. Brandis later said Faulks “did not in any way, shape or form seek to interfere with the conversation. He was merely present, as is appropriate”.

Faulks was also a senior adviser to Malcolm Turnbull when he was leader of the opposition in 2009.

The fifth column of the letters page

Sonia Kruger, the host of Today Extra and The Voice has not backed down since she called for an end to Muslim immigration on Channel Nine on Monday, apart from conceding tearfully the next day that her views were “extreme”. While Nine did not choose to air such opinions – and, privately, management wishes she had kept them to herself – the same cannot be said for the Australian, which published a letter calling for Muslims to be locked up on the same day.

“It seems that the Nice terrorist was only a petty criminal and wasn’t on a terror watch,” reader Malcolm Martin, of The Entrance, wrote in one of the letters published under the headline “Our leaders must act to confront this fifth column”.

“That makes it worse because it underlines how there is no defence against these kinds of attacks. Eventually, the secular world is going to have to decide if it’s going to accept these outrages as the new normal, or if it’s going to actually do something other than lay flowers and mouth pointless platitudes. The solution is radical. We will have to consider internment. Outrageous? See if you can come up with an alternative.”

WTF country do we live in?! The Australian published a letter asking for the "internment" of Muslims. pic.twitter.com/ctEhsOagVQ — Nazeem Hussain (@nazeem_hussain) July 18, 2016

Not so forgiving

Meanwhile Waleed Aly’s decision to forgive Kruger and #SendForgivenessViral continues to divide opinion. While many people praised the peaceful approach he advocated on The Project, there has been a significant backlash to his editorial, which this time did not attract the universal cry of “nailed it Waleed”.

When Kruger unreservedly apologizes, then we can #sendforgivenessviral. Until then, I am not apologizing for calling out bullshit racism. — lydia_shelly (@lydia_shelly) July 19, 2016

Writer Omar Sakr perhaps put this view best in his piece in The Vocal: “This is not a ‘cycle of outrage’, Waleed, it’s a cycle of abuse, and while the stakes for media personalities and politicians are ratings and job placement, the stakes for the rest of us are too often life and death.”

60 Minutes’ Tara Brown back at work



Kruger’s every move has been photographed by snappers lurking outside the Channel Nine studios in Willoughby this week as the story refused to die. Not so long ago those same lenses were trying to capture TV presenter, Tara Brown, when she returned to work after two weeks in a Beirut jail. Now, after being sent home to cool her heels with a stern warning from management, Brown is back in front of the camera. She will present her first story on 60 Minutes on Sunday since she became the story earlier this year. Billed as “the most powerful story of the year”, Brown is reporting on the explosion set off by convenience store owner Adeel Ahmad Khan in the Sydney suburb of Rozelle, which killed three people in 2014.

Catalyst petition cock-up

Despite being singled out for suspension by the ABC over the discredited Catalyst program, Wi-Fried!, Dr Maryanne Demasi has her supporters. People who believe mobile phones and Wi-Fi are killing us set up a change.org petition which says the TV reporter’s suspension is media censorship.

When petitioner Sue McEwen sent it out to the media she included the personal line “Maryanne Demasi suggested you could be interested in this …” which led us to believe Demasi was working hand in glove with the petitioners. But the email was quickly followed up by a grovelling apology.

“In my previous email on this subject, I made a grievous error,” McEwen said. “Maryanne Demasi did NOT suggest you might be interested in this topic, it was one of my associates that made the suggestion. I am using a new, unfamiliar email client and stayed up too late last night. Maryanne Demasi has no idea who I am and did not know it was me that had instigated the petition. It would be unfortunate if I ended up being the reason she could lose her job over this.” Ouch.

Rightwing columnist gets dose of own medicine

Courier Mail opinion editor Margaret Wenham’s column this week issued a riposte to Herald Sun columnist Rita Panahi. Panahi is the Andrew Bolt of Twitter, not afraid to wear the crown of rightwing warrior and never shy to attack an enemy.

Panahi had accused “feral elements of the left” of smearing and silencing people like Kruger who spoke their minds. It’s a familiar theme for Panahi. But fellow News Corp employee Wenham came back hours later with a column that didn’t miss. She reminded readers of Panahi’s own habit of name calling: “Duplicitous”, “arrogant”, “out of touch”, “a dud”, a “perfidious imposter”, “breathtakingly dense”, “hypersensitive”, “dim” and “miserable self-loathing leftists”.

“The right can’t have it both ways,” Wenham wrote. “They can’t howl down (and slag off ) anyone and everyone who takes issue with what they regard as sacred rightman’s business and claim to be upholders of free speech at the same time. Nor can they claim political correctness is stifling debate when millions of words each day on the airwaves, in print and on social media illustrate otherwise.”



