Dobbin … going low
HOLD THE PRESSES – a new contender, from right-field, has slipped into contention for worst media story from Tony Abbott’s royal commission against trade unions.
For nearly two years, it seemed the race would be fought out by runaway leaders Naughty Nick McKenzie and Slippery Stephen Drill.
McKenzie, racing under the joint ownership of Melbourne’s Age and the new-look ABC, had strung together an impressive series of results for those who wield political and economic power.
Playing fast and loose with ethical requirements for “fairness” and the “disclosure of all essential facts”, McKenzie used his twin platforms to amplify the voices of the dodgiest witnesses the trade union royal commission could find.
McKenzie’s shtick appeared to be running lengthy “investigative stories” based, almost entirely, on contentious anti-CFMEU claims that would soon re-emerge as royal commission witness statements.
Given royal commissioner Dyson Heydon’s repeated assurances that his commission did not leak to the press, we are left to wonder how this could possibly be.
McKenzie kicked off with sensational allegations from Melbourne Liberal Party donor and property developer, Peter Chiavaroli.
Even in a debut 1000-word piece, co-authored with Mark Baker, McKenzie could find no room for the name of Thomas Kelly – the 46-year-old husband and father whose horrific death on a Chiavaroli-operated site provoked all the arguments and accusations that followed.
Royal Commission senior counsel, Jeremy Stoljar, would prove similarly reluctant to acknowledge Kelly, his life or death.
McKenzie also ran anti-CFMEU tales run by convicted heroin importer Jim Byrnes, and introduced Andrew Zaf to a national audience.
Indeed, unsupported Zaf allegations that later turned to dross, helped McKenzie to a share of one of journalism’s prestigious Walkley Awards.
Zaf was a key “whistleblower” in a two-part series McKenzie presented for ABC Television’s 7.30 Report that also featured anti-union activist, Nigel Hadgkiss.
Worthies associated with the Walkely Foundation must have squirmed as Zaf’s credibility, and key elements of McKenzie’s award-winning piece, were publicly shredded.
A former Zaf business partner told the royal commission McKenzie’s source had stabbed himself in an attack commissioner John Dyson Heydon was eager to see sheeted home to the CFMEU.
More than a year after Heydon made those views clear in his infamous “not like Toorak” intervention, his senior counsel told him police documents suggested Zaf’s injuries had, in fact, been “self-inflicted” and likely amounted to a “false report”.
This time around, Heydon listened in silence.
Witness, Gary Cheetham, said he had written to The Age and Sun Herald in a bid to alert them to the truth about Zaf but had been ignored.
Zaf, himself, then coughed to falsely invoicing for tens of thousands of dollars, and receiving stolen property – a phone said to have belonged to Victorian CFMEU secretary John Setka – which he said he had delivered to his “friend” McKenzie.
People try to con reporters all the time which is where the media’s code of ethics is supposed to kick in. Properly applied, its principles should protect journalists, as well as the potential victims of shonky stories.
And, there was enough information on the public record to sound warning bells with the greenest cadet.
To give him his due, McKenzie conceded deep into the Byrnes “exclusive” that the source was a “deemed” heroin importer who had twice been banned from running public companies and had been a financial adviser to crooked businessman Alan Bond.
McKenzie, and his writing team, did not, however, mention that Byrnes had also been named by a coroner as a “person of interest” in a grizzly murder case, nor that she had labelled him “a liar, a bully, and an unreliable and manipulative witness”.
But, hey, even multiple award winners can’t cover all the bases.
The “investigative journalist” mantle was really wobbling , though, when Byrnes later admitted a multi-million dollar conflict of interest also hung over the story McKenzie’s team had swallowed.
With Zaf, the failure to do basic leg work was glaring.
His key corruption allegation against Setka was more than 20 years old. Neither it, nor a series of increasingly wild allegations, was supported by witnesses or documentary evidence.
Against that, big question marks over Zaf’s credibility sat on the public record for anyone who cared to look.
It only took a few hours to dig up the information in the second story here https://jiminnsw.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/knife-attacks-and-threats-to-the-australian-state/
Zaf also reeled in counsel assisting the royal commission but that is no excuse for investigative journalists. They are supposed to hold power to account, rather than cheerlead for it.
While McKenzie has thoroughbred pretensions, the Sun-Herald’s Drill is a run of the mill Murdoch hack.
Victorians called his bluff by tossing out a one-term Liberal State Government in the face of increasingly shrill Drill attempts to dirty-up the ALP through its union connections.
Another Drill story tried to link the building union to a late night assault on a royal commission solicitor, prompting Heydon, himself, to make it clear the incident had no connection to the woman’s work.
But Drill remains a genuine contender on the strength of an August 27, 2015 masterpiece in which, basically, he just made shit up.
He wrote the “CFMEU’s offices in Swanston Street have been raided by Royal Commission police, this morning”.
Of course, it never happened.
Everyone makes mistakes but the problem for Drill’s integrity will always be this line … “Rank and file CFMEU members at the office said there were several police there.”
Really, Stephen, did they?
Given the raid never actually occurred we are leaning towards this being a deliberate porky, and fundamentally unethical.
Then, just when the Royal Commission Credibility Stakes looked for all money like a two-horse race, up pops Patrick Durkin.
Patrick Who?
You might well ask.
The late entry, out of the AFR yard, will line up under the racing name Dobbin for reasons that will become all too obvious.
Under the headline, CFMEU received $700,000 from underworld figure George Alex company Durkin threw off all pretensions to objectivity to beat out the Tony Abbott/Royal Commission line.
“A labour hire company linked to underworld figure George Alex made more than $700,000 in payments to the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, amid further revelations about union kickbacks,” he wrote.
“The details of the payments from 2013-14 are disclosed in documents filed with the Australian Electoral Commission. The revelations follow findings by Dyson Heydon’s royal commission that the CFMEU received “regular cash payments” of $2500 from labour-hire companies linked to Sydney crime figure George Alex …”
This, in racing parlance, was horseshit.
The $700,000 was certainly listed in documents filed with Australian Electoral Commission. As an “associated entity” the CFMEU is required to list every receipt it writes for more than $12,400.
The AEC website from which, presumably, the information was lifted has a clear warning for the likes of Durkin.
“Associated Entities must give details of all receipts above the disclosure threshold. Many of these receipts are not donations …
“It is recommended that you read the Glossary for terms that are used in the Annual Returns Locator Service to ensure correct interpretation of information provided.”
We will never know if Durkin read on or not. What we do know is the payments he cited were clearly listed as “Other”, as opposed to “Donations”, and, for whatever reason, he either misinterpreted the data or decided to be very naughty indeed.
The actual facts are these …
— The $708,440 listed against Active Labor was a series of back payments won, during the course of the financial year, for more than 100 underpaid workers
— The $50,000 listed against Metropolis Traffic Control was backpay for workers at another Alex-linked company which Durkin obviously didn’t recognise
— Significant elements of the $220,000 listed against Steve Nolan Constructions were also underpayments recovered for Alex employees from the head contractor
— These monies are part of $2.2m the CFMEU has recovered from Alex Group companies and paid to its members over the past three years. The breakdown is set out in an affidavit held by the royal commission
Durkin’s “story” wasn’t even news. It was written, accurately, 18 months earlier, here A million questions for royal commission
But there was another serious problem with Durkin’s effort.
On the one hand, he was aware of a strongly-contested finding of $2500 a week in bribes from a politically-constituted royal commission, allegedly for a cosy run from a union. On the other, he was staring at a documented series of wage recoveries, topping $1 million in a single year, achieved by that same union.
Go on Dobbin – do the maths!
Instead of recognising the obvious news angle and questioning, even gently, the way this royal commission has exercised its powers, the senior journalist, AFR’s Melbourne Bureau Chief, chose to spend the rest of his story trotting out the official royal commission line.
For more than 200 years, unions and the media have been key institutions protecting society from the worst abuses of power and wealth. They have both scored major successes.
Abbott’s royal commission was designed to weaken unions so they could no longer effectively defend living standards and it has done some damage.
In the process, it has shown Australia’s mainstream media is gone as a positive force.
During the royal commission, the work of notable individuals shone through. But, as a whole, the media overwhelmingly chose to back power rather than question it – even when it bullied or abused process.
Operatives like McKenzie and Drill set a low bar and Durkin did his best to slither under it.
But they were not alone. Far from it.
Things about Stuff 