CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT

After three-nights back-to-back coverage of Scott Morrison’s alleged political capitalisation of anti-Muslim rhetoric over the last decade, it appears TV host Waleed Aly is ready to crank the machine up to the highest setting.

Even in a light pre-election nets session with a multinational media company that is usually quite supportive of the Liberal Party, the lower order leader of the Coalition Government appears to be struggling to get leather on willow.

Yesterday, the Nightwatchman accused Aly of telling a ‘disgusting lie’ on ABC breakfast, after The Project host repeated claims first made in 2011 that the politician had urged his party to exploit concerns about Muslims in Australia for votes.

Last night, the great white hope Hamish McDonald subbed in for Aly in the nets, hitting back at Prime Minister Scott Morrison in a fierce rebuttal, accusing Australia’s most senior politician of dragging Waleed Aly into “an ugly political fight” – in which he threatened to sue the network for insinuating that he had ever engaged in vilifying Muslims over his last ten years of detaining Muslim asylum seekers and blaming Muslim-Australians for Islamic terrorism.

Aly had referenced a Sydney Morning Herald story, which is still accessible online, as part of his emotional editorial he gave on Friday’s episode of The Project in the aftermath of the Christchurch terror attacks which claimed 50 lives.

With The Nightwatchman now deciding against suing Channel 10 for bringing up comments that a lot of his own colleagues are adamant he made, it appears he might not have the match fitness to carry the Coalition government through to a Dizzy Gillespie finish at the upcoming Federal Election.

Waleed Aly has reportedly turned the dial up to the perilous ‘Jeff Thomson’ setting on his 2017 brush-less motor BOLA machine, as he prepares for his next sermon.