Saturday 30 November 2013

How old is DEX's oldest reader?


Readers of The Daily Examiner are invited to submit online entries for its Christmas competition.
















Readers are required to provide their date of birth and to facilitate that requirement a drop-down menu is provided. DEX, being ever so thoughtful, has made provision for readers whose DOB goes back to 01/01/1885.


Images from www.dailyexaminer.com.au

What If All The Ice Melted?


In its November 2013 issue National Geographic plays at worst case scenario with What If All The Ice Melted? with a resulting gobal sea level rise of 216 feet:


The northern NSW coastal region virtually disappears.


Friday 29 November 2013

How the Anglican Church and its Grafton Diocese failed Northern Rivers communities


The Anglican Church North Coast Children’s Home has been the subject of eight days of evidence before the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses To Child Sexual Abuse.

Most of this evidence points to a manifest failure by the Anglican Church, its clergy and Grafton Diocese's administrative body to protect those children in its care and under its protection.

It comes as no surprise then to find that to date, despite his history while an active member of the Anglican clergy, now retired priest Allan Kitchingman’s name has never been entered onto the church’s own national register of all clergy against whom a notifiable complaint or a notifiable charge has been made.

BACKGROUND

Newcastle Herald, 6 August 2002, Page 7:

Judge Coolahan said he accepted that Father Kitchingham assaulted the boy during a 12-month period and had been of good character before and after 1975.
Newcastle Anglican Christ Church Dean Graeme Lawrence had spoken in support of Father Kitchingham [sic] in court.
References on Father Kitchingham's [sic] behalf were tendered from Bishops of Brisbane and Bathurst, which were not publicly available......
Anglican year books show Allan Kitchingman was at Singleton from 1963-66, Wallsend 1966-68, Lismore 1969-70, Eureka/Clunes/Dunoon 1971-72, Lismore 1973-76, Mullumbimby 1976-81, Tweed Heads 1981-88, Tamworth 1988-97, and Darwin 1997-2000 until he retired.

Newcastle Herald November 14 2010:

The names of a number of other former Newcastle Anglican members will be entered on the church's national professional standards register according to the terms of a church canon in 2007.
They include Robert Ellmore, jailed for nine years for offences against children over more than four decades; trainee priest Ian Neil Barrick, jailed for two years for offences against a 14-year-old in 1998; Allan Kitchingman, jailed for offences against a 14-year-old in 1975; and Stephen Hatley Gray, 68, a former rector of Wyong given a good behaviour bond after sexually abusing a juvenile in 1990.

Newcastle Herald, 8 November 2013:

THE late Newcastle Anglican Bishop James Housden kept a ‘‘very careful watch’’ on Allan Kitchingman when the former ‘‘nightclub entertainer’’ and major record company public relations officer studied to be a priest at St John’s College, Morpeth, from 1960.
That was because of Kitchingman’s ‘‘earlier background and associations’’, the bishop said in a letter in 1968.
But when Kitchingman was charged with a ‘‘child sex matter’’ in 1968, the bishop offered his immediate support and pledged to keep him in the ministry ‘‘under a bishop who would be fully informed of the circumstances’’.
Two weeks later, in late December 1968, Kitchingman was interviewed by a Grafton Bishop and appointed to Lismore parish, which included the church-run North Coast Children’s Home.
In a letter to Kitchingman in January 1969 Bishop Housden wrote that he was ‘‘glad to know that the Bishop of Grafton was so kind and understanding’’.
‘‘I ... believe that you can and will have a happy and fruitful ministry there,’’ Bishop Housden wrote.
In 2002 Kitchingman pleaded guilty to five charges of sexually abusing a North Coast Children’s Home youth, 14, in 1975 and 1976. He was jailed for 18 months.....

Newcastle Herald 22 November 2013:

HISTORICAL Newcastle Anglican diocese files alleging ‘‘falsification of records’’, including those of child sex offender priest Allan Kitchingman, were found this year and referred to police, an explosive statement to the royal commission into child abuse has said.
Diocese professional standards director Michael Elliott has told the commission about an anonymous 2002 letter which said the ‘‘disappearance’’ of Kitchingman from a clergy list in 1968 and his subsequent move to the Grafton diocese ‘‘could today be construed as a type of cover-up’’.
‘‘This ‘disappearance’ was deliberate,’’ the  letter said.
In 1968 Kitchingman was convicted of an indecent assault on a male, although the commission heard on Monday ‘‘such an act is no longer a criminal offence’’.


Reverend Kitchingman was convicted in 1968 of one
count of indecent assault of a male while he was a priest
in the Diocese of Newcastle. He was sentenced at the
Newcastle Court of Sessions, placed on a recognisance and
given a two-year good behaviour bond. The Bishop at the
time wrote a reference for him, which he sent to the judge.
The offence did not apparently concern his priestly duties
and today such an act is not a criminal offence.
Nonetheless, Reverend Kitchingman was removed from his
position in the Diocese of Newcastle and the bishop
assisted him to find a place in the Diocese of Grafton.
The then Bishop of Grafton accepted him in the knowledge of
the offence and undertook to place him with an archdeacon
who understood the situation. Reverend Kitchingman then
moved to Lismore in the Diocese of Grafton where he became
assistant priest.
By 1975, he was the chaplain of the North Coast
Children's Home and had conducted evening services there
for several years. He had also had frequent access to
children in the home, teaching them music, drama and
performance, as well as in his pastoral duties.
In 2001, Reverend Kitchingman was arrested and charged
with a number of counts of indecent assault on a 12 and
13-year-old boy who was under his care at the time. The
indecent assaults involved Reverend Kitchingman
masturbating his victim and performing oral sex on him on
numerous occasions over a 12-month period.
He was sentenced on 5 August 2002 to periods of
imprisonment of 9, 10, 11 and 12 months for the first four
offences, to be served concurrently, and a partially
concurrent sentence of two and a half years for the fifth
and most serious offence. His non-parole date meant he was
to serve a maximum of 18 months' imprisonment.
At the time of Reverend Kitchingman's conviction the
then Bishop of Newcastle, Roger Herft, now the Archbishop
of Perth, was informed by an anonymous source that the 1968
conviction had not been put before the District Court. The
evidence is likely to reveal that he raised the issue with
the Office of Public Prosecutions.
The primary question for this public hearing with
respect to Reverend Kitchingman is whether steps were taken
to discipline him in the Diocese of Newcastle and in
Grafton after the conviction.
Reverend Kitchingman was resident in the Diocese of
Newcastle up until his conviction and then after his period
of imprisonment. Evidence will be adduced that during the
period 2002 to 2007 his name appeared in the Anglican
Directory as a member of clergy.


Q. Ms Cosenza has just received an email from your office
annexing, in relation to the national register, what
appears to be a national register report. I will just hand
up three copies for the Bench and one for Mr Drevikovsky.
The email we have received is from Ms Mary Phipps-Ellis.
Is that your executive assistant?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. You will see that this is a national register report
with respect to Reverend Kitchingman?
A. Yes.
Q. There is a note at the bottom there that says:
There is currently no information on the
National Register for a person with the
name ...
Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. The information we had from Bishop Stuart was dated
14 November.
A. That's right.
Q. So do I take it that it is correct to say that
notwithstanding that communication from Bishop Stuart,
there does not appear to be an entry in the register for
Allan Kitchingman?
A. That is technically a correct conclusion, but I don't
know that it addresses the substance of what Bishop Stuart
has said.

Dangerous decisions by Clarence Valley Council


A BAD MOVE BY CLARENCE VALEY COUNCIL

Letter to the editor published in The Daily Examiner 26 November 3013:

Dangerous Decision

FROM 1983 to 2003 a very large part of my life was dedicated to managing and growing tourism services within the Clarence Valley. It wasn't always easy as the Clarence River Tourist Association (CRTA) had a chequered history up until 1983 and there were five sceptical councils and hundreds of business operators to win over.
It was a long but exciting journey and with some wonderful staff, excellent CRTA management boards, highly co-operative councils and many highly supportive business operators we built one of the best tourism authorities in Australia.
The recent decision by Clarence Valley Council to terminate a current MOU and all future arrangements with the CRTA and then close the South Grafton visitor information centre within three years is alarming and fraught with danger for our local tourism industry, which has become our biggest local industry.
I cannot understand why the recently completed consultant's report was not released in draft form to allow general community input before adoption by the council. There are so many items in this report that are not accurate or not relevant to tourism in the Clarence Valley.
I cannot understand how councillors can adopt this report without so much as a question or a comment. I guess when you don't understand something it's hard to question a consultant's report that cost $30,000.
I can't understand how the council considered this matter without the input of the councillor with the most experience at the front line of the tourism industry, Karen Toms.
If this was the State Government she'd be Minister for Tourism. Within the CVC she feels she'll be in trouble if she offers guidance to other councillors and staff who have such little experience within the tourism industry.
One of the great tragedies of the consultant's report and CVC consideration of its content is that there is no appreciation of the history of many critical issues.
The first of these is CVC claiming the Commercial Rate Levy of $170,000 per annum to the CRTA is a council cost.
This levy was adopted by three councils in 1989/90 to replace CRTA business membership fees as a more effective way for local businesses to contribute to the running costs of the visitor centre at South Grafton.
If CRTA had not engineered this levy and the local business community not agreed to it, it would not exist today.
The second is the total disregard for the history of the purchase of the land and the construction of the South Grafton visitor information centre.
The CRTA selected the site, assisted with the land purchase from the NSW Government, and helped co-ordinate community and government contributions to the building costs.
Subsequently a section of this land was leased to McDonald's, but the rent paid by McDonald's is never credited to the CRTA while the costs for mowing and maintaining this front door to Grafton is inevitably allocated by CVC, in full, to the CRTA.
I have read the consultant's report and so much of it has little relevance to this area. There are great dangers in the direction CVC has taken. Of course there are ways to do some things better in future and save money - no-one should deny this.
It's not too late to revisit the council's decision and many people, including me, would be happy to work with CVC for the best possible outcomes.
Bill Day,
former CRTA manager
Yamba


AN EVEN WORSE MOVE IN PROGRESS
The Daily Examiner 26 November 2013:
Clarence Valley Council is having a workshop about its meeting structures, which could see committee meetings scrapped in favour of two ordinary meetings a month.
At present the council holds one day of two committee meetings. With five councillors on each committee, they discuss and vote on matters that are then brought to the ordinary meeting for a final decision.
In a report presented to councillors at the last ordinary meeting, general manager Scott Greensill wrote that there were a number of issues with the current format, including double handling and delayed decision making.
Before each committee meeting, the public is allowed to make deputations to the council.
"This 11th hour information can often cause problems as the person giving the deputation can introduce new information that neither councillors or officers have had time to appropriately consider," the report said.
"Many council reports are the result of months of work and the receipt of late information, often without time to allow for factual verification, is not conducive to good decision-making."
Deputations would therefore need to be held at a different time.
The council will workshop the issue before making a decision.

Thursday 28 November 2013

The list of people angry with Prime Minister Abbott's inability to govern wisely grows


On Monday 25 November 2013 the Federal Minister for Education Christopher Pyne, after just sixty-eight days in office, announced the Abbott Government’s plan to abandon the ‘Gonski’ national education funding reforms.

This was Laura Tingle writing on the subject in the Financial Review in the wake of Pyne’s press conference on 26 November:

Two months after being sworn in, the Abbott government is now at war with conservative states, the Senate and parents across the country. Not only is the politics of education calamitous, the government risks a High Court challenge to any attempt to walk away from education funding agreements with the states, being blocked in the Senate, and has even raised questions of sovereign risk...
 It now seems the Coalition neutralised a positive issue for Labor by lying about its intentions. This is the only possible conclusion you can draw from Christopher Pyne’s attempts to rewrite the history of what he said before the election at a fiery Canberra press conference on Tuesday.....
The federal government cannot surely be serious in its assertion that it can simply walk away from a binding agreement with another government.
Maybe Mr O’Farrell is right and this is but another example of the Coalition failing to come to grips with the difference between being an opposition and being a government.

NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell reported in The Sydney Morning Herald on 26 November:

"Can I just make this point to the federal Education Minister," he said. "In all my years in politics, I have worked out that it is best to have respectful discussions and consultations in private, not through the media.
Advertisement 
"And secondly, when you move into government, you have got to stop behaving like an opposition."
Mr O'Farrell said the schools funding issue had been poorly handled by the Abbott government. He wrote to Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Monday to express his concerns.

Mark Kenny writing in The Sydney Morning Herald on 26 November:

Christopher Pyne is too occupied with ripping down the education funding architecture of the past Labor government to spend a bit of extra time studying it first.
An offer by members of the Gonski panel to take him through the detail before he begins the demolition job has been rebuffed.
Of all portfolios, for a minister of state for education to appear so wilfully uninterested in further evidence is concerning at several levels.
At stake is no less than the optimum usage of multiple billions in taxpayer funds and, therefore, the future productivity of the country.
His refusal to allocate the few hours needed to satisfy himself – and be seen to be satisfying himself – of the facts, exposes an emerging pattern for this government: that its primary energies are more often directed at undoing reforms rather than making them.

Peter Van Onselen gives his opinion of Speaker Bronwyn Bishop


The Advertiser online 23 November 2013:

THE first fortnight of parliamentary sittings has proven one thing: Bronwyn Bishop is going to be a hopeless Speaker.
Not, of course, if you are a partisan who happens to enjoy the Coalition winning the day in Question Time, for Bishop ensures that happens on an all-too-regular basis.
She is hopeless for anyone who thinks a Speaker operating with even just a modicum of independence is good for our parliamentary process.
Every day of Question Time over the past two weeks she showed her partisan stripes. She was condescending to the Opposition, to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and, particularly, to manager of Opposition business Tony Burke.
She let the manager of government business, Christopher Pyne, get away with behaviour even Prime Minister Tony Abbott thinks is unparliamentary when Pyne called Shorten "electricity Bill".
Bishop has only just started in the role, so the many slip-ups forgetting members' electorates and basic procedures can be forgiven. But the overtly partisan style she has adopted is unlikely to change.
In fact, it will probably harden as the political contest becomes tighter, once the Coalition starts making unpopular decisions.
I didn't have much time for the performances of her predecessors Harry Jenkins or Anna Burke during Labor's time in power but at least they tried to develop non-partisan approaches to rulings.
If one good thing came out of the minority Parliament that was it. Bishop can't even keep her snide remarks out of her partisan interventions. She has reverted to the well-worn precedent in this country (as opposed to in the UK, for example) of the Speaker simply being an extension of the government - a hack who might as well be sitting on the benches behind the Prime Minister.
If there is one shining light in Bishop's woeful performance as Speaker this past fortnight, it is that she is doing her relatively insignificant job rather than being a member of Abbott's cabinet.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

When are organised religions finally going to freely admit the degree to which paedophiles and violent personalities number in the ranks of their clergy?



ABC News 27 August 2013:

The Anglican Church set up a national register in 2004 designed to provide a database for information if a member of clergy had a complaint or finding of abuse established against them.
The General Secretary of the Anglican Church Martin Drevikovsky told the Commission that right now there are hundreds of abuse investigations taking place nationwide.
"In the case of Sydney it was 600. In the case of Melbourne I know it was hundreds," he said.
He said the number of clergy to make it onto the register is expected to be far fewer when the review is completed in the coming months.

What ABC News is not saying is that in relation to abuse allegations the Anglican Church is understood to have a record of 122 clergy who are persons of concern and up to 209 more clergy who are under investigation in relation to emotional/physical/sexual abuse.

It would appear that some of these alleged offenders/members of the Anglican clergy were not reported to police until earlier this year – presumably only after the church realised that it could not avoid giving an accounting of it actions to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

UPDATE

The Daily Examiner 27 November 2013:

Martin Drevikovsky, General Secretary, General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia told the commission this morning that the register was incomplete.
He said that when the royal commission was announced, every diocese was given directions to "search for (complaint) files and review them to ensure all necessary steps had been taken and if not, to take immediate action".
As a result, Mr Drevikovksy said, "a large number of files have come to light".
He said an estimated 209 files were listed for review and expected that between 40 and 45 and "possibly more" names would be added to the persons of concern register.
Earlier, Grafton/Newcastle Diocese Professional Standards Director Michael Elliott said at least four names of concern from northern NSW region had not been added to the register including that of Allan Kitchingman, a former Lismore priest who was jailed in 2003 over the sexual assault of a teenage boy.
Mr Elliott also confirmed that along with the North Coast Children's Home files, there were between 10 and 15 files involving allegations against members of the Grafton Diocese which had yet to be reviewed.
The hearing continues


Hopefully Prime Minister Abbott will handle this Snowden revelation better than the last


The Age  24 November 2013:

Singapore and South Korea are playing key roles helping the United States and Australia tap undersea telecommunications links across Asia, according to top secret documents leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. New details have also been revealed about the involvement of Australia and New Zealand in the interception of global satellite communications.
A top secret United States National Security Agency map shows that the US and its “Five Eyes” intelligence partners tap high speed fibre optic cables at 20 locations worldwide. The interception operation involves cooperation with local governments and telecommunications companies or else through “covert, clandestine” operations.
The undersea cable interception operations are part of a global web that in the words of another leaked NSA planning document enables the “Five Eyes” partners – the US, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand - to trace “anyone, anywhere, anytime” in what is described as “the golden age” signals intelligence.
The NSA map, published by Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad overnight, shows that the United States maintains a stranglehold on trans-Pacific communications channels with interception facilities on the West coast of the United States and at Hawaii and Guam, tapping all cable traffic across the Pacific Ocean as well as links between Australia and Japan.
The map confirms that Singapore, one of the world's most significant telecommunications hubs, is a key “third party” working with the “Five Eyes” intelligence partners.....

http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/11/23/nsa-infected-50000-computer-networks-with-malicious-software/

The Guardian 27 November 2013:

Indonesia's president has said that his country will restore normal diplomatic relations with Australia if prime minister Tony Abbott signs up to a new bilateral code of ethics on intelligence-shariing.
But Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono also said that his government would summon Singaporean and South Korean diplomats in Jakarta over reports they had assisted Australian and US spying in the region.

Liberal-National Party Coalition now paying for Abbott's deficiencies


The gloss has gone off the Federal Coalition Government.

This is how one political cartoonist sees this loss.


Ian Martin at laberal

This is how Nielsen pollsters measured the situation seventy-seven days after the Australian federal election.

Financial Review 25 November 2013:

Tony Abbott may have proved himself electable against an unelectable government. But the first post-election Nielsen poll suggests voters find him and his government underwhelming.
With the Julia and Kevin show over, voters have shaken off some of their sourness towards Labor, cured themselves of the view that Clive Palmer represents a real alternative and are viewing the new government in a more pragmatic light altogether.
This will come as a rude shock to Abbott’s expanded backbench and provoke internal debate about the strategies pursued since September 7. The poll will quieten any government triumphalism and crystallises the question many voters are asking: what on earth is the new government actually doing?



The Sydney Morning Herald 25 November 2013:

The first Fairfax Nielsen poll since the September 7 election has charted a rapid recovery for the ALP, with the opposition shooting to a 52-48 per cent lead over the government on the preferences of respondents - the quickest poll lead achieved by any federal opposition after losing an election.




By 25 November 2013 the results of a Newspoll survey had confirmed the Coalition’s tarnished image.

The Australian 25 October 2013:

And as the Prime Minister's personal support has dropped from a post-election high, the Opposition Leader's voter satisfaction continues to rise.
According to the latest Newspoll survey, conducted exclusively for The Australian on the weekend, the Coalition's primary vote went from 45 per cent two weeks ago to 43 per cent as Labor's rose from 32 per cent to 35 per cent. Greens' support went from 12 per cent two weeks ago to 10 per cent, and ``others'' went from 11 per cent to 12 per cent.

Financial Review 26 November 2013:

A second poll in as many days has shown fading support for Tony Abbott’s Coalition government since the September 7 federal election, with a Newspoll published on Tuesday showing a 1.5 per cent swing against the government on a two-party preferred basis.
The poll, published in The Australian, found that the Coalition’s share of the two-party vote had eased to 52 per cent to Labor’s 48 per cent, down from 56 per cent to 44 per cent in a Newspoll taken in late October.
The October Newspoll had shown the Coalition increasing its share of the two-party vote since the election. At the election, the Coalition’s two-party preferred result was 53.5 per cent to Labor’s 46.5 per cent.


Tuesday 26 November 2013

Rev. Pat Comben resigns from all duties to Anglican Church


According to The Australian on 25 November 2013, former Clarence Valley Shire councillor and former registrar of the Grafton Diocese, Rev. Pat Comben has resigned from the Anglican priesthood:

He said on Monday he was quitting because history is being re-written by some members of the church.
Mr Comben said he had signed the letter of holy orders relinquishment outside the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse on Friday. That was just before he took the stand to give evidence into the diocese's handling of allegations by former residents of the home.
"Fifty years in the Church and I do not know if I can even say I am a Christian," said Mr Comben outside the commission on Monday after he had completed two days of evidence.

By 7pm his resignation "minutes before" he was due to give evidence before the Royal Commission was confirmed in an ABC News broadcast.

Caught out in what appears to be a second instance of failure to report, one suspects the Anglican Church may have been grateful for this resignation.

1999

Mr Comben testified that he did not know why he asserted that ‘we’ know something. He said only he knew things and he erred in asserting that Cabinet had knowledge of what he knew….
He said that he had no specific knowledge about any matters involving child abuse.  Over some period of time he had received complaints at his electoral office about things that had allegedly occurred at the Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Centre, he had received complaints from homeless youths who had were detained at the John Oxley Youth Centre and had received ‘low grade scuttlebutt’ from some staff about children being inappropriately treated or inappropriately punished. He said that it was information of this nature which he had in mind when he referred to ‘child abuse’ in the statement broadcast in 1999. [State of Queensland,3(e) Report: Queensland Child Protection Commission of Inquiry, June 2013]

2013

The Royal Commission into child abuse has heard a former Anglican Church official responsible for responding to historic abuse claims did not pass on allegations to police.
The former registrar of the Anglican Diocese of Grafton, Pat Comben, today took the stand for a second day at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Mr Comben, who had previously served as Queensland education minister under premier Wayne Goss, was the first to receive claims about the North Coast Children's Home at Lismore.
He has faced intense scrutiny about the evidence given to the commission by former residents of the home about the physical and sexual abuse they suffered between the 1940s and 1980s.
Witnesses at the commission last week criticised Mr Comben's handling of the allegations and subsequent negotiations for compensation, with his actions described as cruel and inappropriate.
Today counsel assisting the commission Simeon Beckett questioned Mr Comben about his actions.
"You were in possession of serious allegations of child sexual abuse made against a number of people, some named, some unnamed," Mr Beckett said.
"You did not provide that information to police. Why was that?" 
"I have no idea," Mr Comben said....[ABC News,25 November 2013,Anglican Church official Pat Comben quizzed in Royal Commission over response to child sex abuse at North Coast Children's Home]


"I became aware that (a convicted pedophile) Reverend Kitchingman, as he was, was still in the stud book...
 Mr Comben also told the commission that he subsequently took no disciplinary action against Reverend Kitchingman or another alleged pedophile priest at the home, Campbell Brown.
"I did nothing at all (about Kitchingman)," he told the commission. "I think we were too busy to take him on."

[The Australian,25 November 2013,I'm not sure I'm still a Christian, Anglican priest Pat Comben says]


* Day One (22 November 2013) of Mr. Comben’s evidence to the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses To Child Sexual Abuse,pp 64-115
* Day Two (25 November 2013) of Mr. Comben’s evidence to the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses To Child Sexual Abuse will be found here when transcribed.

Abbott's adviser deletes Twitter account now the damage is done - blames death threats



Mark Textor an adviser to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has deleted his Twitter account @markatextor after employing the same boots and all approach to Australia-Indonesia relations as Abbott himself.

Textor claimed he could not tolerate the 'death threats' received since he sent the tweets set out below, however if these alleged threats happened they must be thin on the ground because the Topsy archive carries little or no trace of these threats as far as I can tell.

Indeed the twitterverse was more likely to respond with comments such as You are a bogan moron, end of story or "Conduct unbecoming?" Don't f*cking flatter yourself, no one expects anything better from you.

Time online 22 November 2013:

Textor has admitted he slipped up. "Twenty-five years in politics, one or two mistakes, this is certainly one of them," he said Thursday.
As we ponder what the other mistake of his career could be, here are some of his mud-slinging tweets preserved for posterity.
The one where he brought up the 2005 suicide attack in Bali and linked to a photo of the bombers
"Last time I looked no Indonesians were ever bombed in Australia" (removed from Twitter)
The one where he slammed Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's propensity to use Twitter
"What sort of head of state communicates with a head of a neighbouring government by twitter FFS? SBY" (removed from Twitter)
The one where he gave tips for saving on apparently alcoholic beverages to the leader of the country with the biggest Muslim population in the world
@Drew_Bowie @Colvinius @SBYudhoyono @TonyAbbottMHR I think he should sack his foreign service and just do twitter. Save on the drinks bill
— Mark Textor (@markatextor) November 19, 2013
The one where he predicted journalists would find Indonesia's relationship with Australia sexually arousing…
Indonesian junior official criticises Oz Government. 2 things happen: left media gets hard on. Govt gets more domestic support
— Mark Textor (@markatextor) November 11, 2013
… but that anyone who mattered didn't care if Indonesians were offended
"No one gives a rat's arse in the real world. The bubble at work." (removed from Twitter)
The one where he described Indonesia's ambassador to Australia as a chess piece
Indonesian ambassador Read: Pawn of Indonesian domestic politics #indonesiavotes2014
— Mark Textor (@markatextor) November 18, 2013
The one where he implied the Indonesian President was senile
"Poor old bugger SBY is confused." (removed from Twitter)
The one where he re-tweeted a political reporter's response to his porn star slur
@latikambourke @markatextor Personally I disagree Mark. Marty looks more like a bad 70′s Bond villain.
When he reacted to the controversy over his porn star slur
@cathywilcox1 @jonathanvswan it's dull. Silly, gossipy and moronic. Compensated for by fake moral outrage and intellectual snobbery.
— Mark Textor (@markatextor) November 19, 2013
The time he claimed Indonesia's reaction to the spying controversy was fake
@PetefromHayNSW I think we act peacefully. But the fake indo outrage posturing is frustrating.
— Mark Textor (@markatextor) November 19, 2013
The one where he demanded Indonesia apologize for spying in 2004
SBY should apologise. "Indonesia 'bugged' Australia By Brendan Nicholson National Security Correspondent Canberra November 15, 2004″
— Mark Textor (@markatextor) November 19, 2013
The one where he took a dig at Australia's public broadcaster and gossip columnists
@latikambourke Where did i mention SBY exactly? More ABC inaccurate nonsense. More ant rooting from glorified gossip columnists

Front page mock up courtesy of @lol_trotsky

Miranda Devine's conspiracy theory travels into regional NSW


On 26 October 2013 Prime Minister Tony Abbott had a handful of right wing media trolls to dinner at Kirribilli House and one, Miranda Devine, returned this hospitality by obligingly beginning  a conspiracy theory on 20 November about the timing of Fairfax media reports on Australia’s spying activities in Indonesia.

Why did The Guardian sit on its bombshell allegations about Australia spying on Indonesia for five months? Ms. Devine began, went on to imply the timing was suspect, then demolished her own argument by including some inconvenient facts.

Andrew Bolt hopped on the bandwagon (along with fellow dinner invitees Greg Sheridan and Paul Sheehan) on 21 November and hasn’t exhausted his vitriol yet.

Her theory was also quickly picked up by a Northern Rivers troll who ditched the inconvenient facts and sent off a letter to the editor which was published in The Daily Examiner on 21 November 2013:

Leftwing nonsense

According to the latest revelations by the ABC, Australian spies have had their eyes and ears focused on Indonesia for years, intercepting the president's telephone calls at will and generally doing what spies are paid to do.
Shock, horror in Indonesia and threats to disembowel present relations with Australia, while the ALP demands PM Tony Abbott apologise and the ABC lovingly stirs the pot.
The question here is just when did this ABC/Guardian coalition really discover these damning revelations considering the so-called Snowden leaks have been about for quite a while, certainly before September 7, 2013, and the spying claims relate to the period of the previous Labor/Green government.
Why now with relations with Indonesia at a critical point, and not at any period of time between 2007, a year Snowden alludes to, and September 6, 2013, the six years Rudd/Gillard/Rudd took turns in the captain's cabin steering us in circles?
The election loss really got up the noses of Labor and the Green lefties and this sort of nonsense designed to detract from the workings of the new government is a good reminder of just why we voted them out en masse.
Fred Perring,
Halfway Creek
Almost as quickly, the Perring version of this conspiracy theory was knocked down in another letter to the editor on 23 November 2013:

No conspiracy
Fred Perring [The Daily Examiner, November 21, 2013] is hot on the heels of what he obviously believes is a possible Guardian Australia-ABC conspiracy, with regard to their reporting of alleged spying on the Indonesian President, his wife and assorted ministers/advisers.
"Why now, with relations with Indonesia at a critical point, and not at any period of time between 2007, a year Snowden alludes to, and September6, 2013, the six years Rudd/Gillard/Rudd took turns in the captain's cabin steering us in circles?" he asks, concerning publication of these news articles.
Now let me see - the public record shows that the original story broke on June 5, 2013, that the US National Security Agency was collecting metadata from internet service providers' records of phone calls.
The whistleblower revealed his identity on or about June 9, and then revealed Australia's links to the spy web, with a map identifying the location of Australian assets assisting American Government covert operations.
Between June 16-27 it became obvious that Snowden had taken a large number of classified intelligence documents and was releasing them to select international media as a single information transfer.
On October 31, the National Security Agency (NSA) admitted that the classified documents stolen numbered somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 individual documents.
The agency also admitted it had no way of knowing precisely which documents had been accessed until the media reported on them.
ASIO has conducted an audit of documents it shared with foreign intelligence agencies, but the Department Of Defence's Signals Directorate remains silent on whether it was aware that its documents has gone feral, before Guardian Australia and the ABC jointly reported on the directorate's alleged spying activities.
Now, if we take NSA's conservative estimate of 50,000 documents available to the media, a news agency would have to read and check the details of at least 295 intelligence documents a day to have opened all the documents by the day I write this letter.
All of which points to the fact that The Guardian UK did not have these documents before June 5, and has not yet completed reviewing all the documents in its possession.
In fact, according to evidence before a November 19 Senate Estimates Environment and Communications Legislation Committee hearing, The Guardian UK did not give Guardian Australia access to the relevant documents until November, and the ABC was not alerted to the existence of documents outlining alleged spying on Indonesia until approximately 24 hours after Guardian Australia came into possession of these documents.
Senate Estimates evidence also revealed that the ABC consulted with government authorities prior to publication and "in light of representations that were made, a decision was made to withdraw some elements" of these sensitive documents.
So on the basis of the publicly available timetable of the Snowden leak, it was impossible for the ABC to publish any details between 2007 and September 6, 2013; and therefore Mr Perring's conspiracy theory fails.
JUDITH M. MELVILLE
Yamba