Six months before the loss of government & his prime mininstership, sinophobe Scott Morrison signed Australia up to the tripartite AUKUS security pact & now those in the mainstream media who backed him whilst in office are beginning to beat the war drums

 

CEO former Australian citizen Rupert Murdoch, News Corp:

The Australian, 14 March 2023

‘It’s more than one plus one plus one’, from the pen of Canberra Bureau Chief Joe Kelly

…..“The sum of the three is more than one plus one plus one in this case,” Mr Albanese said.

“And I think that the co-operation we’ve had is really exciting. “We see that this is an investment in our capability. At the same time, of course, we’re investing in our relationships in the region as well.

“And I’ve been talking with other leaders in the region, as well, explaining our position. And it’s been well-received and understood why we’re doing this. It builds on our long-term relationship.” Mr Sunak said the deal was “about our commitment to the Pacific region, which, even though it’s geographically a long way from where we are, it’s important in a way to demonstrate our commitment to the values that we hold dear as countries.” Mr Albanese began his day with a walk alongside Chief of Navy Mark Hammond, declaring: “It’s a new dawn in San Diego, and it will be a new dawn in Australian defence policy tomorrow.” Before his trip to the US for the AUKUS announcement, Mr Sunak expressed concern about China’s future direction and role in the international system.

“It’s a country with fundamentally different values to ours, and I think over the last few years it’s become increasingly authoritarian at home and assertive abroad,” the British Prime Minister was quoted as saying in a report in The Wall Street Journal.

“It’s behaviour suggests it has the intention – but also its actions show it is interested in reshaping the world order. And that’s the crux of it.” Mr Sunak told The Wall Street Journal that threats to security were increasing. “The world has become a more volatile place,” he said. “What we need to do as allies is out-cooperate and out-compete our adversaries.” …..

‘Epoch-defining challenge’, from the pen of North Asia correspondent Will Glasgow

The hugely expensive project to acquire “world-leading” nuclear submarine capability – likely to cost hundreds of billions of dollars – is a key plank in the response by America and its allies to the massive build-up of the capabilities of China’s People’s Liberation Army over the past decade. Beijing last week further ramped up military spending by more than 7 per cent to more than $330bn. There is widespread support for the AUKUS project in Taipei. Lo Chih-Cheng, a member of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, said Taiwan’s government saw the security pact as part of a crucial effort to change Beijing’s calculus on ever using force in an attempt to bring the self-ruled island under Communist Party rule.

“Your decision to acquire nuclear submarines and to build up strength in your defence capabilities is conducive to redressing the imbalance that is happening now in the region,” said Mr Lo, a government member of Taiwan’s foreign affairs and national security committee. “We may not be able to stop China’s continuing military ­expansion, but it is imperative for us to stop the continuation of this kind of military imbalance.” Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), also welcomed the submarine acquisition. “We welcome measures to address the future balance of power in the western Pacific. And we would like to see a stronger Western alliance in terms of military capability and technology,” said the KMT’s top international adviser Alexander Huang….

The Age, 14 March 2023:

A partnership on the front foot, from the pen of International editor Peter Hartcher

Australia-India relations are thriving, driven by a mutual mistrust of China and shared economic self-interest.

Among the countries this week raising their voices against Australia's plan for nuclear-propelled submarines, you will not hear India, the world's most populous nation and fastest growing major economy….

"India did not object to AUKUS when it was announced," explains a leading Indian strategic analyst, C. Raja Mohan, because "it had no reason to. Stronger deterrence against China on the east is welcome for India," says the senior fellow of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

If you wondered why Australia's relations with India are suddenly booming - beyond the stale comforts of curry, cricket and the Commonwealth - the shared imperative of deterring the Chinese Communist Party's adventurism is key. That is the only reason Australia is arming itself with nuclear-propelled submarines…..

CEO former Liberal federal treasurer Peter Costello, Nine Entertainment Co: 

The Canberra Times, 14 March 2023

Be alert and alarmed, but don't be duped on China, from the pen of columnist Crispen Hill

Australians should take special heed of the analysis of the noted defence strategist Peter Jennings and then draw the exact opposite conclusion from his about what should be done.

Jennings, who for 10 years was executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and was a deputy secretary of the Department of Defence, was one of five defence experts lined up by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in a series titled Red Alert. Its aim was to provide a more public discussion about Australia's defence needs than what will come out of the secretive Defence Strategic Review. And it was widely taken up by other media.

The five's conclusion was to expect war with China sooner rather than later because China was determined to take over Taiwan by force if necessary. The US would then move militarily to defend Taiwan and Australia would have to join in.

Jennings pointed out that in the first 72 hours, China could fire missiles (with or without nuclear warheads) on the naval fleet bases in Sydney and Perth, on RAAF bases near Brisbane and Darwin, and on communications bases near Alice Springs and Exmouth, among other targets.

The five concluded that war with China was almost inevitable and Australia needed an urgent massive upgrade and spend on its military and must maintain and strengthen its alliance with the US.

Those conclusions defy logic. Surely if Australian cities are going to be bombed because we are mad enough to follow the US blindly into a conflict that has nothing to do with us, the better course of action would be not to follow the US into that war and to loosen the ties with the US so that Australia could have its own defence policy and aims.

And the main aim should be to avoid war…..

BACKGROUND

X-Services News Pty Ltd

Australian Veteran News, 1 December 2021:

Made in Taiwan: Scott Morrison has concocted a phony war with China to take to the next election from the pen of Leo DiAngelo Fisher

“Even as Australia licks its wounds from the ignominy of the fruitless war in Afghanistan, arguably Australia’s most pointless war, the Morrison government is paving the way for a costlier, deadlier and even more contentious conflagration. This time the trumped up military foe is China….

Antagonising China – never a difficult task – has been a hallmark of the Morrison government. At first blush this might easily be attributed to the government’s diplomatic and foreign policy ineptitude. And there is that. Morrison is not a deep thinker on most fronts and especially when it comes to foreign affairs. This is a government that has wantonly sidelined diplomats and policy experts within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade – how else to explain the AUKUS debacle? – in the belief that every decision by a government is political and in the moment.

There is none so one-dimensionally political as Scott Morrison. Morrison is not a prime minister troubled by the “vision thing”. His vision rarely extends beyond the next set of headlines. For Morrison, each day is a stepping stone to the next election.

That is the only prism through which the Morrison government’s incessant goading of China can be viewed. Australia’s historical bogeyman of choice, the “yellow peril”, has been reprised with unblushing enthusiasm by this government.

The Morrison government has deliberately and relentlessly fanned tensions with China: the more it riles China, the angrier China becomes, the more tangible the threat of war becomes.

Dutton used his recent National Press Club address to raise the prospect of war with China over the future of Taiwan.

Under Dutton’s Doomsday scenario, an “aggressive” China is poised to invade Taiwan, which it considers a renegade territory. Left unchallenged, an emboldened China would inevitably seek to wrest control of the disputed Senkaku Islands, currently administered by Japan, in the East China Sea.

“If Taiwan is taken, surely the Senkakus are next,” Dutton gratuitously speculated with overtones of the discredited “domino theory” of the 1950s and 60s, which mired the West, including Australia, in futile conflicts in Indochina.

Such was the ominous tenor of Dutton’s address as he mounted the case against China.

It appears that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is unhappy with Nine Entertainment senior journalists - including Tingle, Savva, Kelly & Hartcher. So with his media chief and another political advisor in tow he met with Nine CEO Mike Sneesby and expressed his displeasure

The Australian, 6 December 2021:

Last Monday, Nine CEO Mike Sneesby made his first trip to Canberra since securing the role last year and, in a packed schedule, elbow-tapped with everyone from Labor’s Anthony Albanese, Jim Chalmers and Tony Burke to the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young.

But for sheer entertainment value, we hear it was Sneesby’s audience with Scott Morrison in the Prime Minister’s office that stole the show.

The meeting between the PM and the media boss may have only lasted 20 minutes or so. But it was certainly meaningful.

Diary has learnt Sneesby – joined for the meeting with ScoMo by his publishing boss James Chessell, along with two prime ministerial advisers including the PM’s media chief Andrew Carswell – was offered a full and frank opinion by Morrison about Nine’s columnists at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. The PM allegedly told Sneesby his columnists were too “tough” on him. The Nine camp is adamant “no concessions” were made in response.

It is understood the PM has no problem with the political reporting of the Canberra bureaus of Nine’s TV operations, plus The SMH, The Age and The Australian Financial Review. In the meeting, he even singled out A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw for particular praise, after a tough but fair interview in the wake of the Brittany Higgins allegations earlier this year.

But the PM has a different view on how he is treated by the political columnists at the Nine papers, particularly The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age – and he wanted to put it on the record in his meeting with the Nine CEO.

Diary is told the PM’s tone was “grumpy, not furious”.

On one version out of the Nine camp, Morrison told Sneesby: “You’re too tough on me.” On another slightly more heightened version of events, the PM told him: “You smash me every single day.” While Morrison didn’t name names, a number of Nine columnists have sharpened the knives for the PM in recent weeks, including Sean Kelly, a former adviser to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, Peter Hartcher, the SMH and Age political and international editor, AFR columnist Laura Tingle, and Nine papers’ Thursday political columnist, Niki Savva. …..

[My yellow highlighting]

Later that night, Diary’s spies say Sneesby was seen out at dinner at trendy Asian eatery XO with his big two editorial executives, publishing chief James Chessell and TV news boss Darren Wick, as well as his big three political journos: the SMH and the Age’s David Crowe, the AFR’s Phil Coorey and Nine TV’s Chris Uhlmann.

Given it came in the hours after Sneesby’s meeting with the PM, we’d love to have been a fly on the wall for that one….. 

This Is Not Journalism or How A 165 Year Old Australian Masthead Finally Lost Its Good Name

The Age newspaper has been read in Melbourne since October 1854.

Over the years it grew in circulation until it was read across the state of Victoria and elsewhere in Australia.

It has survived the vagaries of the print newspaper business, until the Fairfax-Nine Entertainment merger when it became part of a media group whose chairman was a former Liberal MP and onetime Australian federal treasurer Peter Costello and its CEO began courting the Liberal Party by hosting a $10,000 dollar a head party fundraiser at its headquarters in 2019 raising at least $700,000 for the party.

It is no secret that the current Federal Liberal-Nationals Coalition Government dislikes the Victorian Labor Government and is out to criticize and undermine it at every opportunity.

So when this front page headline appeared in The Age on 5 June 2020, "Activists 'planning trouble' at protest: Exclusive", under the bylines of the newspaper's State Political Editor and a general news journalist, it came as no surprise.

The opening paragraphs ran thus:

Activists have threatened police with spitting, inflammatory chanting and other forms of physical abuse during tomorrow's "Black Lives Matter" protest in Melbourne in an attempt to provoke use-of-force responses from officers. 

A senior government source told The Age police were preparing for tactics from some protesters tomorrow designed to provoke physical confrontation and produce images of police brutality. [my yellow highlighting]

The newspaper amplified this message on social media:

The online copy of the original article in question has since been removed. With the current online article now having a different headline and and text much altered from the original.

The apology issued by The Age and published on 6 June on the second page of the print newspaper, contains a meas culpa for its lapse in "editorial standards and values". However, this creates another issue surrounding these values.

It completely omitted mention of the "senior government source". Instead the apology states "one unnamed source".

The Age, 6 June 2020, p.2:

Apology 

On June 5, The Age published a story headlined: "Activists 'planning trouble' at Protest". 

This story reported concerns within the Victorian government about the potential for physical confrontation during planned protests. 

The story fell short of The Age's editorial values and standards and caused understandable offence to many members of the community. 

The claim that activists had threatened police with spitting and abuse was not backed up beyond one unnamed source. 

The story put undue emphasis on these claims. The main organisers of the rally, the Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, clearly stated that they had no knowledge of any threats to police. The Age apologises. [my yellow highlighting]

It certainly differed from the "clarification" displayed under the current online article posted at 11:45pm the night before:

One has to wonder if, between the publication of that original inflammatory article and the final print apology, management began to hedge its bets because the "source" cited appeared highly suspect and may not have been a source in government or even close to government and that there was a possibility that The Age's journalists had been played.

For years mainstream media have used a presence on the Facebook platform as an easy way to extend digital audience reach. What could possibly go wrong?

There are reputedly est. 15 to 16 million Australians with active Facebook accounts and many in the mainstream media avails themselves of the digital audience this represents by maintaining their own Facebook pages on which they publish newspaper articles with an accompanying comment, image and headline.

News Corp and Nine just found out the hard way that having unmoderated Facebook pages is never a wise choice.

In July 2017 then 20 year-old Dylan Voller commenced defamation proceedings against three media companies owned by News Corp and Nine Entertainment.

This is a news article abot the third and most recent judgment rendered in the ongoing legal saga.....

ABC News, 1 June 2020:

Three Australian media outlets have lost an appeal about a key ruling holding them responsible for the alleged defamation on Facebook of former Don Dale Youth Detention Centre detainee Dylan Voller. 

The 23-year-old is suing Fairfax Media — now owned by Nine Entertainment — Nationwide News and Sky News over comments posted by members of the public in response to articles they placed on their Facebook pages. 

Last year, a New South Wales Supreme Court judge ruled the media companies were publishers of the comments — and therefore liable for them — and the media companies appealed. 

The NSW Court of Appeal today dismissed the challenge and said it was clear the relevant Facebook pages were created on the basis users would be invited to post comments. 

Justices John Basten, Anthony Meagher and Carolyn Simpson said the organisations "accepted responsibility for the use of their Facebook facilities for the publication of comments, including defamatory comments".  
"It was the applicants who provided the vehicle for publication to those who availed themselves of it," they wrote in the judgment. 

'Turning a blind eye' no defence 

The judges said it was not uncommon for someone to be held liable for publishing defamatory imputations conveyed by "matter composed by another person". 

They drew parallels to cases where the owners or occupiers of buildings had been taken to court over defamatory statements on noticeboards or scrawled in graffiti. 

The court is yet to tackle the question of whether the material in question was defamatory. 

In his initial decision last year, Justice Stephen Rothman said defendants could not escape consequences of their actions by "turning a blind eye". 

He also ruled the defence of innocent dissemination was not available because the defendants were first or primary distributors. 

Mr Voller's statement of claim alleges he was defamed by imputations including that he had "brutally bashed a Salvation Army Officer", had raped an elderly woman, that he committed a carjacking and that he had bitten off someone's ear. 

The comments were posted between July 2016 and June 2017 on pages run by the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Sky News, The Bolt Report and The Centralian Advocate. 

Mr Voller's treatment at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, which was the subject of an ABC Four Corners investigation in 2016, sparked a royal commission into youth detention facilities.

The judgment in Fairfax Media Publications; Nationwide News Pty Ltd; Australian News Channel Pty Ltd v Voller [2020] NSWCA 102 dismissed the appeal, ordered the applicants pay the respondent’s costs in the appeal proceedings and dismissed the notice of motion of Bauer Media Pty Ltd, Dailymail.com Australia Pty Ltd and Seven West Media Ltd filed on 23 August 2019 (the latter three media companies having sought leave to appear as amici curiae in the proceedings).