Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to condemn the inappropriate behaviour of the Prime Minister, who now considers it fair game to bully the employers of journalists who dare criticise her. On Saturday, 27 August, Ms Gillard reportedly attempted to influence the free press after she read the blog of media commentator Andrew Bolt. Mr Bolt had posted the following:

On Monday, I'm tipping, a witness with a statutory declaration will come forward and implicate Julia Gillard directly in another scandal involving the misuse of union funds. I suspect a friend of mine in the media will be authorised to release it first.

The Prime Minister believed that the friend Mr Bolt was referring to was his MTR colleague Steve Price. Ms Gillard personally picked up the phone and telephoned John Hartigan, the CEO of News Ltd. She sought assurances from Mr Hartigan that neither Mr Bolt nor Mr Price would publish the allegations. After Mr Hartigan made inquiries of both Mr Bolt and Mr Price, Ms Gillard received the assurances she was seeking. Mr Hartigan did not contact Glenn Milne or anyone at the Australian, however, so Ms Gillard's intervention did not stop Mr Milne's article from going to print on Monday, 29 August. Glenn Milne's article is mostly a repeat of material already in the public domain. It contained some factual errors and, to be fair to her, Ms Gillard was right to be upset about those. But her reaction to the Milne article in the Australian was inexcusable. Ms Gillard reportedly went 'ballistic' and 'nuclear'. She made repeated calls to News CEO John Hartigan and also to the editor of the Australian, Chris Mitchell.

If Ms Gillard believed she had been wronged in the article—and I am not saying that she had been or that she had not been—there was a process to follow. Firstly, she should have sought legal advice. Secondly, if the advice she received was that she had been wronged, she should have instructed her lawyers to contact the Australian and negotiate a resolution. Instead, Ms Gillard used    her position as Prime Minister to obtain immediate, direct access to the management of News Ltd to stop the publication of material she thought might further damage her. That she believed this to be appropriate in the first place is astounding, but Ms Gillard's appallingly bad behaviour is amplified by the fact that she did so with the threat of a media inquiry hanging over News Ltd's head.

The Australian responded to Ms Gillard's phone call by removing the whole Glenn Milne column from its website, at Ms Gillard's insistence. As Andrew Bolt said, in defence of the company he works for, in his column on 31 August 2011:

You may blame News Limited for being weak, but never has it felt so politically vulnerable. Gillard had for weeks exploited Britain's News of the World phone hacking scandal to threaten News Limited with inquiries that might force it to sell some of its papers or address what the Greens called its "bias".

…   …   …

Whether Gillard specifically mentioned the threat of an inquiry in her "multiple" calls to News Limited executives I do not know.

But I do know that she should have been aware of its potential impact.

This, then, is how news can be kept from the public.

Something else bizarre happened a few days later to Glenn Milne. On Saturday, 3 September, Mr Milne, one of the few relatively conservative commentators on the ABC, was sacked from the Insiders show. He had been a regular panellist up until then but he will not be appearing on the show for the rest of the year. That begs the important question: if the Prime Minister made repeated calls to John Hartigan and Chris Mitchell, who is to say that she also did not also improperly pressure ABC Managing Director Mark Scott to sack Mr Milne from Insiders?

The Prime Minister needs to come clean and say whether or not either she, or any person from her office, had any discussions with ABC management over whether or not Glenn Milne should continue as a panellist on Insiders. The Prime Minister also needs to come clean on whether or not she or anyone from her office has spoken to Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood or anyone else from Fairfax management about Michael Smith. As a conservative commentator working at a Fairfax radio station, Michael Smith has held the Gillard government to account from behind the latte curtain. His effective cross-examination of the member for Dobell, Craig Thomson, has done more to expose Mr Thomson's web of lies than any other piece of journalism this year. The admissions Smith was able to extract in his interview with Mr Thomson showed beyond doubt that the allegations previously made in the Fairfax press were entirely accurate. Mr Thomson's interview by Mr Smith and his failure to prosecute his defamation action put beyond doubt the facts of this remarkable and ongoing matter, a matter in which the Prime Minister is displaying deliberate and wilful blindness by continuing to protect Mr Thomson.

Michael Smith pre-recorded an interview with Bob Kernohan, the former AWU Victoria Branch President. In the interview, Mr Kernohan is believed to refer to conversations that were had within the AWU about the Gillard-Wilson allegations. The interview has not gone to air but, for wanting to play the interview, Mr Smith has himself been off the air since 6 September. Now Fairfax wants to sack him and he is being forced to go to court just to keep his job. In yesterday's Australian online, Mr Smith said:

This country's pretty screwed up if decent, working people can't turn to a free and open media to have their say

That is the point Ms Gillard cannot seem to understand. In Australia, we value free speech. If someone makes allegations about another person in the press that are defamatory and not true, that person has legal remedies. These remedies are available to anyone, from the Prime Minister to the man or woman on the street. The Prime Minister of this country is in a privileged position. That privilege, however, does not extend to blatant attempts to stifle free press.

Just while I have some time left open to me, I want to speak briefly about the bombing of Darwin, and I want to congratulate my colleague Natasha Griggs, the member for Solomon, who yesterday moved in the House that the anniversary of the bombing of Darwin be a day of national significance. Of course, 18 February next year is the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin. I think we should remember that more bombs were dropped on Darwin than on Pearl Harbor. We should remember that 250 civilians and military personnel lost their lives in the bombing of Darwin. I am pleased that the member for Solomon has taken the initiative and moved this private member's motion.

I notice Senator Crossin is in the chamber today. I hope Senator Crossin will pick up the phone to the Minister for Veterans' Affairs and say to him that the Australian Labor Party must support this day of national significance. Is does rather beg the question—