Press Council complaints against Sunshine Coast Daily have little effect

From the Crikey grapevine, it’s the latest tips and rumours…

PC gone sad. On Monday, the Press Council announced Sunshine Coast Daily had breached press standards when, following the May federal election, it published an odious front page mock-up of Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in a set of crosshairs, with “Anna, You’re Next” as the headline. We’ve long bemoaned the defanged nature of our media regulators and a tipster got in contact to furnish another example of how little impact having a complaint in front of the council has. Our tipster pointed out that the furore didn’t stop NewsMediaWorks (a news media organisation made up of News Corp, Nine and Seven West Media) from shortlisting the paper for “Regional News Brand of the Year”.

As our tipster puts it, the nomination comes “despite its poor news judgement, truculent rejection of criticism, and churlishly delayed apology”. It didn’t end up making the finalists, so that’s something, but we doubt that had anything to do with the Press Council.

Happy Father (and the son and the holy spirit)’s day! Father’s Day is one of those days which really unites a certain wing of the cultural right; a chance to remind everyone that blokes in traditional roles are brilliant, no matter what those “feminazis” say. First, The Sydney Institute, offered what every good conservative father needed in their gift sacks this Sunday — Gerard “Gollum” Henderson’s rip-snorting tell all biography about his mentor, Bob Santamaria. It covers every twist and turn in the now properly forgotten brawls of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s inside the Democratic Labor Party, the ALP and the unions in the depths of downtown Ballarat and the wilds of inner city Carlton. Most of all, give your dad the gift of learning how the Hendo mindset was created and remained unmoved for generations.

Along similar lines, the Ramsay Centre’s Twitter account — which manages the quite remarkable feat of being packed to gills with literary allusions while also being, at best, semi-literate — had its own surreal take on the day. They paid tribute to dads everywhere by offering “gratitude to those who are known as a ‘father’ in their field of humanities. Pictured here: English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, civil law Father Justinian I, post-impressionist artist Paul Cézanne.”

Oh wait, he was serious? We thought for a while that this Kevin Rudd bit about handball was a weird, clunky, tonally-off joke — because it’s Kevin Rudd and his jokes are weird, clunky, and tonally-off — aimed at nothing more that ameliorating that throbbing in his temple when he’s not being paid attention to. But now… we’re not so sure. He followed up his appearance on the late (as in axed) Saturday Night Rove, with a post lambasting the “Murdoch media”:

As soon as I start playing handball with kids across the country to promote the National Apology Foundation for Indigenous Australians [editor’s note: this is the first we’re hearing about that part] they continue to rip into it, this time saying it’s all ‘bizarre’. Murdoch is a giant cancer on our democracy.

He goes on to ask when when we last saw “an article in the Murdoch media attacking John Howard? Murdoch’s M.O. is always clear: use every opportunity, every story, every photo to lionise conservative leaders and delegitimise Labor leaders.” Anyone who’s spent any time following Rudd since he vacated The Lodge knows he cannot pass a reflective surface without telling it about how he was dicked-over by Murdoch. It’s unsurprising that he would argue that you can either promote your eminently worthwhile cause, or contrive a way to make it all about you.

Pollies yet to take the cash and run. Following on from our reporting on just how much cash politicians are entitled to scarper with when they leave parliament to take up not-at-all compromised, highly paid consulting jobs in the private sector, here’s a quick reminder: the following people are still in parliament and will still get access to an insanely generous pre-2004 pension scheme. Bear in mind the percentage of these names you’ve never heard of, and the percentage you’ve heard of for exclusively terrible reasons:

Anthony Albanese, Kevin Andrews, Anthony Byrne,  Peter Dutton, Warren Entsch, Joel Fitzgibbon, Eric Abetz, Richard Colbeck, Marise Payne, Penny Wong, Steve Georganas, Greg Hunt, Bob Katter, Catherine King, Sussan Ley, Brendan O’Connor, Tanya Plibersek, Warren Snowdon, Maria Vamvakinou.

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