Fail-y Telegraph: Absolutely monumental scoop for The Daily Telegraph overnight:
On the off chance you’re not a Tele subscriber and missed its world-leading, can’t-read-anywhere-else exclusive, Pope Francis, lauded for the decency, compassion and relative modesty he brought to the role, has died at the age of 88.
The timing created awkwardness for several people. Firstly, the news broadcasters who had to transition from insisting on how much stronger the pontiff — who had been seriously ill for weeks — was looking during his Easter mass appearance in Rome to announcing he had died in literally a matter of seconds. Then there was US Vice President JD Vance, whose conversation with Francis some seven hours before he died has a lot of people just asking questions (in some cases just making statements) about the proximity of the two events.
ToP of the ballot: “I’m nobody’s chump”, declared erstwhile Trumpet of Patriots candidate for Flinders and nominative determinism counter-balance Jason Smart after he withdrew support for… himself, having found out that the ToPs would be instructing voters to preference local teal candidate Ben Smith second. “I was given an undertaking by Clive Palmer and the TOP that if I ran as a candidate for them, that the teal, Labor (and) Greens candidates would be last on the HTV card,” Smart told The Australian. “I only agreed to run on that basis.”
“If Clive Palmer thinks I’m going to put my love for my country to the side so he can try and gain some political relevance, he’s dead wrong,” he added. Firstly, if you were so concerned about putting aside your scruples to help Palmer stay relevant, there’s a much quicker and easier way, which involves not joining his money pit in the first place. Second, as the campaign manager for Crikey‘s run for Parliament, I wish to call out Smart’s blatant appropriation of pretty much our only policy.
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Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before: It seems indicative, at this point, of the powerful, targeted anti-genius of the Liberal campaign; Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has sung back up on a cover of one of his greatest hits, standing by candidate for Dunkley, Nathan Conroy as Conroy claimed: “People don’t feel safe in their own homes, their businesses, taking public transport or even at the shops”.
It puts us in mind of so many things:
- The confected “African gangs” crisis, of which Dutton was such a cheerleader. He claimed in 2018 that Victorians felt too unsafe to go to dinner because of “African gang violence” (indeed, then Liberal MP Christopher Pyne was so assailed by the terror that he plain forgot to be scared).
- Dutton’s line was taken up with gusto by the state Liberal Party (and its many media backers) that year in the lead up to the state election — and who could forget what a great success it proved to be, wiping out 10 seats for the opposition.
- Dunkley is the very seat where the Libs and their backers tried similar tactics in last year’s by-election. Dutton’s deputy Sussan Ley tweeted that if local voters had a problem with “Victorian women being assaulted by foreign criminals”, they should “vote against Labor”, while far-right campaign group Advance had been running, at great expense, a campaign claiming Labor had allowed “rapists, paedophiles and murderers” to run free.
- This hardline approach achieved… an entirely average result for the Libs.
- To the extent there has been an increase in crime rates in Victoria, it was under a Labor government that militarised the police and boasted of locking up kids under the “toughest bail laws in Australia“.
Anyway, maybe it will work this time.
No Moore: The Daily Telegraph has corrected a piece from February 12 that incorrectly identified an Order of Australia recipient as the accused in a child sexual assault case, which feels like a long time to wait for a correction of that sort.
Peter Moore OAM, an accomplished cricket umpire and volunteer, awarded the medal in 2015 for services to cricket, had nothing to do with the case. It seems the Tele was taking notes at The Chaser’s school of Australian journalism.
