Under the provision of the Copyright laws known as “fair dealing”, Crikey cannot reprint the entire obituary of journalist P.P. McGuinness, written by former Prime Minister Paul Keating, which was published in this morning’s edition of the Australian Financial Review. According to the Copyright Act 1968 – Section 40 we are entitled only to publish 10% of Mr Keating’s touching obsequial footnote. Here it is:

He was a fraud. He was not just a fraud, he was a liar and a fraud.

McGuinness’s journalism did not add up to a row of beans. He held more political, philosophic and economic positions than would have the Kama Sutra had it been a philosophic text.

It was a prejudiced, capricious and intellectually corrupt mind that was all over the shop depending on what suited his miserable purposes at the time.

Like a drunken skater, he had slid across the rink to the neo-conservative Right, fulminating for all his worth against the so-called “elites”. The people who, to McGuinness’s frustration, simply maintained their moral indignation, while he and his mates in the government, the real elites, held all the power in the land.

McGuinness was a shocker. In journalistic terms, he had the morals of an alley cat.

The quality of the Australian press will rise simply because his vituperation and contumely will have been excised from it.