“Riot”? “Peril”? Are the rational journalists away for the long weekend?
Apparently most of the journalists with some grounding in reality took the long weekend Friday off, because it’s been a hideous day of bullshit about the incident in Canberra yesterday, now apparently being called a “riot” (although oddly none of the footage they’ve been repeating actually shows one).
Naturally the Opposition and its cheerleaders at the ABC have been trying to find a way to blame the Prime Minister for the sight of some uppity indigenous people and their supporters daring to bang on glass and call “shame” and “racist” at the elected MPs for two suburbs in Melbourne and Sydney, thereby forcing the AFP to violently drag the PM through the middle of a dozen or so of them. And they think they’ve found it. Apparently an ALP staffer dared to tell the people at the Tent Embassy demonstration about what Tony Abbott had said secretly and privately on national television, and perhaps also let them know he was in a restaurant nearby, something that only people who’d bothered to check Tony Abbott’s public appearances would have been able to find really easily. Therefore it’s all Gillard’s fault. AND ISN’T THAT JUST TYPICAL OF THIS TERRIBLE GOVERNMENT.
Tory Maguire at the News Ltd “Punch”:
So we now know who is responsible for putting Julia Gillard into the most peril she’s been in since she became Prime Minister – her own office.
“Peril”. Oh, FFS.
I’ll link you to a response to Tory by “prestontowers”, because if I go through it any further myself I think I might weep.
The problem with this insanity is that, surprisingly, it doesn’t make any logical sense.
EVIL GILLARD ‘MEDIA’ (ie: ex-News Ltd minor-hack, usually) ADVISER:
“We’ve spent all day ignoring the tent embassy and their 40th anniversary march, but Tony’s here now. And he did essentially say the embassy should move on. I’ve got a great idea. Let’s force Sky to repeat that information right now, while we’re here. And I’ll ring my mate, and they’ll mention it to someone who is at the tent embassy and we should be able to get a few hundred really angry indigenous people up here. Then, even though they are smart enough to know what angry cops do to black people in this country and have been doing for years now, they’ll give us some excuse to totally over-react even though there won’t be any real danger and the whole thing will be a massive PR win for the boss and Abbott will come out looking really bad.”
GILLARD STAFFER: “You’re insane.”
BYSTANDER: “Well that would certainly work wonders for Murdoch’s flagging relevance, MTR’s shaky ratings and viability, the general move toward a hateful society and divisiveness in society.”
GILLARD STAFFER: “Let’s do it!!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWmmK1S2KMQ
Whilst a riot certainly didn’t occur, there appeared to be the potential for one. Despite Jeremy’s attempts to spin it as innocuous as possible, the PM’s security detail were faced with an emotionally irate mob in all its attendant volatility. I think it’s being a bit disingenuous to say there was no immediate potential for ‘peril’ and it was, I feel, only prudent for the feds to take the course of action they did.
I wonder if Gillard spared a single thought for the refugees shot at by those same thug cops, violence she thought was marvellous.
Sorry Jeremy, but unfortunately you are the one that has lost touch with reality. Not hard to guess what you’d be saying if the situation was reversed and it was a member of Abbott’s staff that had made the call. Clearly your credibility takes a lower priority than pushing your political leanings, and your narrative is irrelevant – the fact is that the call to Barbara Shaw (Greeny by the way) is what caused her to send rentacrowd down to the function. Fancy Hadley being right again – ohhh the gnashing of teeth here must be deafening !
LOL @ “What angry cops do to black people” ? ah yeah….. ok…………
As far as the threat to Gillard & Abbott goes, obviously the police and no doubt highly trained security guys had a genuine enough concern to make them do what they did, but hey, why assume they were right when we can take the word of some greeny with an obvious bias who wasn’t actually there but apparently has a knack for remotely reading the mind of an angry mob ! Maybe they just wanted to throw rose petals in front of Abbott as he left. Yeah, that’s it !
Of course the biggest irony in this whole thing is that Abbott has probably spent more time with and done more for Aboriginal communities than anyone having a whinge here.
I’m with the oppo on this one – let the AFP investigate (whether than constitutes an “inquiry” I’m not entirely sure – if it doesn’t, then let’s hold one of those instead).
I think it would be a good idea to put this to bed. I don’t think it’d even take very long. There are some quite interesting questions here. We know the answer to one, ie: an ALP media adviser revealed the location of tony abbott to somebody. That information didn’t appear to have been in the public domain before the event, so that probably means it wasn’t supposed to be (for lots of good reasons that even I can think of). Revealing that information, given his proximity to the tent embassy, led to a fracas, and for that he loses his job (what I meant by “consequences” yesterday). Sometimes one’s cockups can be worn, but not this time.
But who did he tell? Because THAT person then went on to tell the barbara shaw, and (whether AB likes it or not) it was THAT person who verballed the opposition leader. As stupid as it was to hand out (apparently not public) information, there’s no evidence that the staffer meant to cause mischief by it.
Another interesting question (and I think this one should be in the inquiry) is – who told hadley? Because that person not only got it wrong, but also seems to have been “in the loop” at the time. What was their role in this?
“Not hard to guess what you’d be saying if the situation was reversed and it was a member of Abbott’s staff that had made the call.”
I can’t speak for jeremy, but I’d like to think I’d still see this for what it is. I’d find it hugely entertaining, sure. But I actually can accept that people just do dumb things sometimes, and not every cock-up goes all the way to the top. Try to remember – the PM was ALSO in that building. As much as one might like to imagine somebody putting an oppo leader in that position, his own boss was ALSO in that position, right in the middle of an awards ceremony. That alone should be a bit of a hint that he wasn’t setting out to cause a confrontation. Remember – he is (or was) a media adviser.
I also agree that “noisy mob” is a much better description than “riot”. The trouble with bigging up things like this is that when a REAL riot happens (cronulla, for example) then they have to use a word that’s been watered down to describe some mouthy louts banging on windows, rather than roaming streets attacking cars, smashing property, beating people up, burning down buildings …
Of course, the media adviser — really a low-level proofreader AIUI — might simply have said something to a journo who then passed it on.
The event itself was not a secret. There were cameras there, and people receiving awards who expected to see the PM and Abbott. While the information flow may have come from Gillard’s team, there’s no reason anyone shouldn’t have passed the information in public.
What was different here was context — in this case the presence of people with a grievance — spurious as it turns out — and proximity in place and time. Perfect storm as one says. We don’t know whether it was reasonable for the media adviser to have foreseen it, and one suspects that if he had, he’d have kept his mouth shut.
That all said, it seems that the principal wrongdoers may have been the security team. Nobody manhandled the PM or Abbott apart from them. If the thing looked undignified, it was down to them.
“Fancy Hadley being right again – ohhh the gnashing of teeth here must be deafening !”
Let us know when it happens. He had half the story. He was _almost_ right, but actually wrong in one very important respect … which happens to be the one the media’s trying to milk today.
Now – if we want to put our “hyperventilating conspiracy theorist” hat on for a second, consider the following scenario:
Suppose somebody with a head for mischief gets told by a mate that he’s heard from a guy who works for the PM that tony abbott’s going to be hobnobbing at the lobby, a stone’s throw from the tent embassy (because that actually is the sort of stuff that goes around in this town – it being a lot of people’s day job). This hypothetical person thinks “here’s a go” and gets in contact with another mate who knows somebody who’s at the tent embassy and says “hey – guess what, tony abbot’s at that restaurant down the street, and he reckons the tent embassy should be TORN DOWN … like, RIGHT NOW … maybe somebody should go talk to him?”. Calls are made, and next thing you know there’s a mob. That SAME person waits to see what happens, then calls up a radio station and says “hey, I know something you don’t know …”
That scenario (however speculative and random) is actually more likely to take place in the plane of reality than a PM setting up the same situation while she’s in the building. That scenario is genuinely beyond belief – whatever you might think of the scheming back-stabber, she’s not one to go putting herself in danger unnecessarily.
And it’s why I think an inquiry might be quite interesting. And considering this from a “gaming” perspective, I’d say that right now the PM’s people do know who was told, and possibly have some idea what happened next. So I’m curious to see what happens next. Either way, I’d like to see a proper inquiry.
Aside: Yesterday, I was pondering a rubber-neck past the tent embassy to see what was going on. I decided against it, because it was basically idiot-thinking. But I had to take a friend’s moggy to the vet (took a day off – it’s been a busy year) and that meant heading past parliament house. Oh dear – there was a protest, and traffic on commonwealth avenue was nearly back to albert hall. So I pulls a quick left into the parliamentary triangle. I don’t really know that area all that well, so sure enough … … anyhow, turns out now much was going on. They were all up the hill, burning flags or something.
What is impossible to understand about all the crap being written on this event is that what really happened has been depicted repeatedly in photos and video of the event.
When the cretin who is apparently Gillard’s body protection officer knocked her arse over tit, there wasn’t a protestor within 20 metres – don’t argue about it, watch the video!
This same cretin then banged her head into the car door frame – the whole time Abbott was just walking (if you can call his gait, “walking”) to the car, totally unmolested.
The whole incident was completely unnecessary, but as usual, the politicians and police are saying it was and “outstanding effort” – the incompetent cretin will be given a medal.
This is definitive of both Australian politics and Australian political journalism. The whole thing is right there, on the TV screen for everyone to see, but even then the bullshit flows.
And then the cops use this as an excuse to attack protestors – again it’s all on video – “Push me will you prick! I won’t arrest you, I will just flatten you because I can!”
The police in this country are essentially criminal scum – the fact that they are also brain-dead and incompetent should come as no surprise. And those who defend them are no better.
Wow. The pit really is bottomless.
From The Australian:
“JUST like the people who founded the Aboriginal tent embassy 40 years ago, the 15-year-old girl who yesterday burned and spat on an Australian flag at Parliament House is angry.
“Yeah, I’m angry, I’m heaps angry,” she told The Weekend Australian. Her father, xxxx yyyy [my edit], who asked for his daughter to not to be named, had encouraged about 200 protesters to march to the forecourt of Parliament House yesterday.”
Yeah, they’re not naming the girl. After all, her father asked them not to (and she’s a minor, so that’s sort of irrelevant). But they WILL name her father. Why not point out their house on google maps? Or would that be really, like, obnoxious?
“Of course the biggest irony in this whole thing is that Abbott has probably spent more time with and done more for Aboriginal communities than anyone having a whinge here.”
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all week, shouldn’t that be in a comedy thread or something?
So who usually makes the phone call to stir up a protest on a slow news day?
“I wonder if Gillard spared a single thought for the refugees shot at by those same thug cops, violence she thought was marvellous.”
Did I miss something?
“The event itself was not a secret.”
Yes and no. There were cameras, but they weren’t live. The people who were AT the event might have known he’d be there, but it doesn’t seem to have been something that was advertised. Just as an exercise … look on the web and see if you can tell what either leader is up to next saturday (or even this afternoon). They’ll be doing something official, but you won’t be able to find out what, or where. It’s basic protest-avoidance: make sure only the invited know where you’ll be (and the press, obviously … there’s no point doing anything at all if there’s no press).
I guess this is the thing with security – mostly it doesn’t matter. Then one day it does. I think this guy did screw up, and that’s a shame for him. It does indeed appear that he didn’t mean any harm by it. But we still don’t know what happened next, and I for one would find it quite fascinating to hear how the remaining protagonists were played. The more I think about this, the more I’d like to know how ray hadley found out.
What “false information about Abbott” is Andrew Bolt talking about?
Crazy Ol’ Aunt Marilyn @ 3
Care to elaborate on that claim, or would you like us to do adopt the polite rictus reserved for when crazy ol’ aunts everywhere have one too many sherrys?
The only way celebrate what unites us is to focus what divides us.
Abbott really is the Teflon don. The guy who wants to be PM once again makes an ill-considered statement (I suppose shit continues to happen), and yet the staffer who’s a million to one chance of becoming PM loses his job for stating a public fact! And the irony of the Mark Riley episode is thick too. All the wing nuts were completely understanding if Abbott had chosen to jab Riles! Hypocrisy.
You guys have it wrong. The ALP Staffer (Tony Hodges) told an acquaintance who told the crowd where Tony Abbott was. Keep in mind, Tony Abbott’s movements are not a state secret. Plenty of people, including journalists, knew in advance the Prime Minister and Tony Abbott would be together in the cafe.
So a ALP staffer told freely available information to a third party, who in turn told the crowd… and this is somehow Julia Gillard’s fault?
This is insane.
I think he means the “false information about what abbott said”
Try to work in the words “deceitful” and “stench” if you can. Those are important words or we wouldn’t hear them so much.
I still think we’re seeing a bit of an over-correction going on. What abbott actually DID say (although no justification for an angry mob surrounding a restaurant) is still pretty divisive. Like I said before – try making a public statement that we should “move on from all that” in relation to the war memorial and gallipoli and see what sort of reaction you get. So he didn’t say he’d tear down their camp, but he DID say they were an irrelevant anachronism because everything’s just brilliant now.
I also see a bit of opportunism (admittedly in response) in the subsequent pile-on. In order to support the rhetoric, certain columnists are relying on assertions that have no more basis in fact than the original alleged comments from tonez. They’re just speculation – they wouldn’t even be rumor if they weren’t being printed in the pages of the tele, hun and oz (motto: Stories Start Here)
I actually do think it would be in the ALP’s best interests to ensure a speedy, and very thorough investigation. Then they can just round on the entire media establishment in a week or so and tell them to pull their socks up. Call it a national security incident and get hadley’s phone records. Let’s find out what actually happened. I’ve never seen a cyclist pedal a bike backwards …
There’s also one important difference emerging between tony abbott and julia gillard today. Julez never got involved in the first round of BS, but tony’s up to his elbows in beating up the second. He knows full well that the PM wasn’t involved – he was there. Doesn’t stop him suggesting otherwise, though. So, one showed class, the other …
“So who usually makes the phone call to stir up a protest on a slow news day?”
No names, but he works for 2GB.
Of course why the hell is it a secret where Abbott is when he spends his whole life in front of cameras doing stupid stunts.
Anyone would think this was fucking North Korea the way some of you are carrying on.
Nothing much happened.
And what is there to investigate? Honestly, people are allowed to say where Abbott is.
“I wonder if Gillard spared a single thought for the refugees shot at by those same thug cops, violence she thought was marvellous.”
Hahaha I must have missed this comment. You’re fucking nuts !
Why is the story all about Abbott? Maybe someone leaked that Gillard was at the coffee shop.
Why be so precious about Tony?
OK there was a bit of pushing and shoving – mostly from the AFP. Gillard slipped over, then offered Abbott a lift in her car.
What’s all the fuss about?
Anyway ABC News has reported (with video evidence) that everyone knew where Abbott was BEFORE any alledged phone-call.
What a load of crap this all is. I agree with marilyn.
I’m saddened, but not in the least surprised, by Gillard throwing yet another staffer to the baying pack.
Why does this government constantly accept every Opposition premise and grovellingly fail to make a case? BER, Batts, Asylum, MRRT, NBN, Climate policy, is there a single issue where it has taken a stand and argued cogently, coherently and persuasively?
“Name just one“.
This from YOU?
I guess when you’re that delusional you wouldn’t be self aware enough to recognize irony as you type it.
Right-Wing Projection, Aliar Jones. They resort to it every time.
I can hear the crickets loudly …
It is frustrating, even though I didn’t vote for this regime. It recalls those panto shows one saw as a child in which the entire audience can see that someone is sneaking up behind the main character with malign and transparent intent, but in which the main character is deaf to the audience’s insistent shouted cautions.
Panto is designed as children’s entertainment, but politics is allegedly directed at adults.
“This from YOU?”
LOL hardly surprising that you fall into the same camp as her
. Better get the tin foil armour out in case Gillard sends the stormtroopers in with bazookas to take your house from you (or whatever mad Marilyn thinks is gonna happen next).
Brown, your powers of projection are so impressive I’m sure you could get a job at McDonalds University projecting powerpoints
“Rational journalists”? – name ten :-p