The Murdoch story may not end soon but it does afford Labor here and Labour there a good chance of retaining, and regaining, power.
Cameron, there, is enmired and cannot, may not, survive past the Tory Conference in September when he will be trailing Labour by thirteen points (he was trailing by eleven yesterday).
It would be wise therefore if Ed Milliband (aka Mr Bean) invited Nick Clegg to be Prime Minister.
The arrangement could be, as it ofttimes is in Israel, that Clegg reign in Downing Street for a year, then Bean for a year, then Clegg for eight months and call the election on Thursday, May 6, 2015. The Lib Dem vote would go up from the 8 percent it is now, Labour would win outright, bring in Proportional Representation, and the Tories, under Boris Johnson (or Hugh Grant, or Dawn French) by then, go into the dustbin of history.
In Australia the government could announce a Senate Enquiry into the influence of Murdoch — an unfit, creepy fellow — on the Australian political parties and their policies. Hawke would be found culpable, Whitlam too a little, and Rudd quite a bit, but Howard whom Rupert urged into the Iraq as he did Blair on false evidence, and Abbott, now in league with him — and the sinister, mincing Christopher Pyne — may well be found to be in criminal territory and go to gaol.
Pyne may be shown, or may not, to have conspired with Murdoch persons to put an agent provocateur in Slipper’s way with a view to later blackmail or vote manipulation. You never know.
It may not be so. But you never know.
An Enquiry, anyway, would consume public interest as the Cabcharge Horror never has. Or the Melbourne Hooker Holocaust now discomfiting Craig.
It is curious that Labor does not see, here, that the situation has changed, and the adjective ‘toxic’, now, after Thursday last, applies to Murdoch as it did thirty years ago to Richard Nixon, and to nobody else now living on this Earth.
He should be asked to appear before the Senate and say who, in that building, his friends are.
And Abbott and Pyne can either speak up for him, or speak up against him.
Either way they lose.
Tom Watson MP, whom the Murdoch people sought to blackmail and harass, put it best I think when he with characteristic plainness in the House of Commons yesterday said:
‘Everybody in the world knows who is responsible for the wrongdoing at News Corporation: Rupert Murdoch. More than any other individual he is to blame. Morally, the deeds are his. He paid the piper, and called the tune. It is his company, his culture, his people, his business, his crimes, his profits, his power.’
Publish it not in Gath, he might have added, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice.
And so it goes.
Name:
“mincing Christopher Pyne”
I trust that is not homophobia creeping in there Mr Ellis?
We all know what you mean by “mincing” don’t we.
I hope this cruel anti-gay jibe doesn’t cause Mr Pyne to suicide, such is the stigma you raise with this slanderous and hurtful comment.
Another possible death as a result of your slur … I hope not.
It was used two years ago by Gillard, yet he lives.
My wife has ordered me to cease to publish you, and I must obey.
You have twenty four hours, and then oblivion.
Bob, apologise to Terrance for your nonsense.
Let him write as he pleases.
As you do.
No.
You are banned until June 25.
See who misses you.
She who must be obeyed, hey?
Ah well, better to hide behind the skirt, Rupert & Wendi style, than to confront your critics and address issues of lies, hypocrocy and making comments likely to cause harm and offence and then blame others.
Calling Gibson an anti-Semite apparenty will make him top himself but homophobic comments about Pyne are okay because Gillard, whom you say is a lousy leader, said it first.
I’ll let others judge your ethics, sir.
They will, sir, and you will not.
Twenty-three hours.
My wife is my co-investor, and my guarantor, and she demands it.
Twenty-three hours.
Your spelling is worsening as you grow mad.
Dear Mr. Ellis
My parting message to you, good sir ..
The Gillard ascendency burns like a red-hot poker. Anyone who has contributed to the Labor movement such as yourself understandably rankles when Ms Gillard ostracizes you.
Like a court participant, Beazley and Faulkner were amused by your turn of phrase, your post-lunch prattles and procrastinations, the calling one ‘darling’ from Beazley’s office couch where you while an afternoon away.
When one has sat at the feet of power the lonely blustering of blogs and the occasional appearance is no substitute.
But these days are long gone and you no longer amuse the Leader. There is no place for you in her throne room. GetUp has replaced LieDown.
You respond with hatred and poorly veiled relevance deprivation, citing lame excuses about a falling out over an issue when truth be told she and her myrmidons block your entry. They gaze upon you as Falstaff. Latham too saw you as a entourage he didn’t require, old and in the way and not part of modern Labor.
The class and sectarian hatreds have faded, the Left-Right divide irrelevant, the need for the old school superseded. This hurts.
After all you’ve done, all you’ve given the Party, and now this woman has discarded you at the very time her leadership is under question.
And worse, your ideas rejected, your input negated. Your own riposte is this site, where the banter has gotten the better of you and your kinfolk.
To quote the late, great Zachery Smith: “Oh the pain, the pain!”
The bitterness disease has spread. You seem bitter that Gerard Henderson has a regular SMH gig and tens of thousands of readers; while you have a blog where you belittle and abuse anyone who disagrees with you.
Why ask for comments if all you do is debase those who respond? Get a dog and kick it if that’s all you desire.
You seem bitter and angry towards David Williamson, perhaps jealous of his success, his Midas touch, his stature as Australia’s leading playwright, his national treasure accolades.
You blame Murdoch for everything and say he is a mass murdered and killer of millions, and while no defender of his nasty politics, you are eager to defend terrorists, haters, alleged rapists, wife-beaters and the like. Why? What makes you take their side except spite and bile?
Let me predict your response.
You’ll begin with a ‘fuck off’ and add adjectives such as ‘fool’ and ‘moron’.
Then you’ll ban from your site for eternity plus 82 years.
Then you’ll write more seeking to abuse, bully, belittle me – but you will never address the substantive motion, that your bitterness and envy now overshadows everything you write.
You devalue your legacy Mr Ellis, and where once was warrior, now lies a broken angry and irrelevant old man.
TP
Comrade, seek help. You are so inured to lying it may be a sickness.
I never sought work from Gillard, I hate her. I urged two years ago in Unleashed that she be deselected. Her backers Howes and Shorten both employ me though and her Henry Higgins John McTernan takes my calls, as does her adviser Damian Khalabji. And that adds up to … what? Ostracism?
I have never sat in Faulkner’s office, nor called anyone ‘darling’ except Viv Skinner Vini Cicarello and Sasha Rann. I have no relationship with Faulkner, with whom I have spoken, uneasily, for perhaps thirteen minutes of my entire life.
I hated Latham as a madman, which he was, and as Beazley’s destroyer. I love Beazley, worked for him for eight months for money and years for free and I think of him every day.
David Williamson destroyed with his lawsuit the revived Nation Review and with it the income stream that might have kept me running the Stables Theatre. I did not mind this too much, but when Kristin in her fool book published lies and counter-fantasies about me, omitting our several fucks and our peculiar threesome with David, I saw red and went after her not him.
No play I have written is better than the best of David’s, but some plays I have co-written, the latest being Shakespeare In Italy and Intimate Strangers, outstrip anything he has ever done. I do think his tens of millions are unjustly earned, when one hundred and three plays by fifty-seven authors that are better than his very best are infrequently seen and celebrated and their authors too poor to write others, or many others, and too unknown to get them put on.
I have defended no rapist, ever. I should sue you for that. What are ‘haters’? I have defended no wife beaters. When did I do that?
You are practising what is known as a ‘smear’. You say something that sounds vaguely plausible or slightly familiar but cite no instances or examples. As when you said my films and plays are mostly about young women having affairs with middle-aged men. One is. Eighty are not.
‘Spite’ and ‘bile’ is a big call. My wife, a multi-award-winning writer, has been with me for forty-six years and finds no instance of it. Nor do my political friends Bob Carr, Mike Rann, Graham Freudenberg, Graeme Wedderburn, Geoff Gallop, Bob Debus, Duncan Kerr, Bruce Hawker, David Britton, Peter Collins, Natasha Stott-Despoja, Bob Brown, Chris Schacht, Wayne Swan, Gore Vidal, John Ralston Saul, Rhys Muldoon, Kim Beazley and Barry Jones. How do you know me better than they? How?
‘Bitterness’ and ‘envy’. Really? I am selling , hopefully, tomorrow a Fred Hollows film to Mel’s partner, planning a season of two of my (co-written) plays in Adelaide and one of my wife’s, working on The Year It All Fell Down with New South Wales’s next Labor Premier Damian Spruce, preparing to direct a feature film, also in Adelaide, writing songs with Chris Neal and Denny Lawrence for Luna Park — The Musical and making adjustments to Opening Night, another musical, which Jonathan Biggins is directing in July, and continuing with Stephen Ramsey to write our timely miniseries on the entire life of Rupert Murdoch.
What are you doing?
Feeling bitter and angry, I suspect. And annoyed that none of your smears of me have worked thus far very well.
And none of your lies were believed.
You have twenty-one more hours.
Keep going.
You shrink with your every entry.
Ah Terrance, I don’t know who you are but Bob has more relevance in the Australian landscape today than ever because he continues to have the balls to take on the media cretins.
I think you are mixing up ‘Terrance’ and ‘Bob’. Bob’s the one on about your movies and I’m 100% sure they’re different writers. Very different styles and syntax.
But both should be banned.
Say why.
And who you work for.
Back to the subject of the article, why would Miliband take on the man as PM that he has been attempting to destroy for 2 years. Also he would need the nationalists in Scotland and unionists in Northern Ireland to support him. This government would be too left-wing for Irish unionists and Salmond believes this unpopular Coalition government is his ticket to independence.
A better plan would be to offer 40 Lib Dems the opportunity to run without a Labour candidate, bring down the government and win a majority. This will send the Tories into free fall, they will elect an even more centrist leader. This will send UKIP over 10% and evict the Tories from power for a generation.
If the Lib Dems moved to Labour the others would.
Would they keep the toff David Cameron in power with a majority of three?
Really?
Discuss.
The unionists would, I believe the nationalists would declare it a crisis and claim that they would not be a vote any “English” government could rely on. Remember Salmond does not care about the next few years, he just wants a country.
The problem for Miliband is how does he accept Clegg? The great betrayer of students, the Toff in a yellow hat, the most hated politician since Thatcher. It would be tough for the public to swallow Miliband side by side with him at No. 10.
While Miliband would certainly win an election held this summer with a majority of 85, keep Scotland in the UK and send the Tories into free fall. The Lib Dems would be delighted with 40 seats, they will surely have half of that in a 2015 election.
I heart Terrance