There are never enough hours in the day. I could adopt some time management techniques, pick up a minute here, another there but in the end, it is a fool’s errand. There is not now and never will be enough time for me to read a Van Badham column in The Guardian.
As a useful expedient I could turn to Twitter to bask in her wit and wisdom as it tumbles from mind to manicured nail, albeit expressed in expurgated 280 keystroke form but alas, Badham dispatched me to Coventry some years ago.
Long story short, I callously mocked Badham for headlining some ghastly Guardian event where she promised to unlock the secrets of column writing to a paying audience. Presumably those in attendance would be enlightened to within an inch of their lives and leave toting the dreaded Participation Award.
I ventured on Twitter that ponying up to attend may not be an especially prudent use of the punters’ hard-earned, caveat emptor and all that, and was sent to Twitter detention for my trouble.
Why does any of this matter? Well, on Tuesday evening in Brisbane, Labor leader Bill Shorten strode purposefully to the stage at the ACTU Congress dinner and delivered a speech Badham regarded as akin to the Sermon on the Mount.
Only after the event did we learn that Shorten’s speech was one of the ‘My first hundred days in office’ type. A little presumptuous, you might think. Sure, Labor has led in 36 successive Newspolls but those same polls show Shorten about as popular as something I just stepped in. Still, Shorten is the alternative PM and as such any undertaking he makes in a speech of this kind is absolutely in the public interest.
But the public was kept in the dark. If Shorten did have a dream we were not to know about it because the media was forbidden to enter. Journalists, including Ewin Hannan from this august journal, were denied entry at the door. No shorthand, no scribbles, no service.
This left Ms Badham as the sole journalist — and I apply the term with the broadest of brushes — to live-tweet the oratorial magnificence.
That she is a Labor shill is not especially important. After all bias, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. All columnists engage in polemic and sophistry. We are not paid to be right, we are paid to be certain and Ms Badham was certain that Bill Shorten’s speech was one for the ages.
Her social media gushes were all the contemporaneous reporting the public had to go on, presuming she has not already blocked them on Twitter for the crime of poking a bit of fun at her expense.
But Van Badham is not just a Labor abettor. She is a Vice President of the MEAA’s Victorian branch. The MEAA is the union responsible for journalists and other assorted weirdos who dwell somewhere on the media spectrum.
Certainly, it was not Badham’s call to ban journalists from what should have been a public function. It was said the secretary for the ACTU, Sally McManus, wanted delegates to ‘relax.’ However, the media ban extended to some of the sessions at the Congress. Presumably delegates needed a little more time to put their feet up.
Working journalists were not just prohibited from working, the entire industry, including thousands of journos represented by the MEAA specifically and the ACTU generally were virtually told to get stuffed. Freelance journos who were stopped at the door, were left to contemplate their losses in time and travel expenditure.
For what it’s worth, the MEAA has registered a complaint with the ACTU. It will almost certainly come to nothing. I suspect even Shorten would be annoyed by the censoriousness, having made a significant speech that exists now only on the flat surface of a screen on his own website.
Of the media ban, Van Badham, who is supposed to be representing journalists, said and did precisely nothing. She merrily tweeted through the evening and into the following day on sundry topics and unrelated matters. She must have known the people she was charged to represent had been royally shafted.
Solidarity, like hours in the day, has its limits.
Mack and Dismayed – thanks for your comments re the auto roughneck – pretty much what I expected. We had a ‘future tech now’ talk the other day and that model featured amongst them. No surprises!
This is the journalistic standard that Fairfax readers can look forward to:
https://twitter.com/TVofCarringbush/status/1022071360988696576
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/forging-a-full-fibre-broadband-and-5g-future-for-all
need fibre for. 5G. MOAR fibre
Already confused as to whether I’m watching a Current Affair of ABC730, I now see Nine wants to assimilate Fairfax. Still coming to terms with the energy trilemma I now have to cope with the ABC, Fairfax and Nine trilemma!
Just when you think it can’t get any crazier: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/facs-ordered-to-pay-compo-for-workers-forced-sick-leave/news-story/abe5e0b64c11665484c12bb86ed98fbd
A child protection worker who believed the world was about to be hit by a meteor and the Large Hadron Collider was shutting down the earth’s atmosphere has received a $20,000 payout under anti-discrimination laws because she was forced to go on sick leave until she could show she was mentally fit for her role.
Occupational hazard Dwight. You’d end up dingbats if you were a child protection worker. Actually, come to think of it………….. Never mind, show some compassion.
Gawd, Dwight i’m not mentally fit for any role, so where’s my coin? I’m too shy to ask for my dues.i need an advocate or a smashed advocado!
Well I’d be quite happy with a job where I was expected to take the dog walking. Sheesh, picking up dog poo would be far more pleasant than dealing with the office crap !
Another by-election coming up?
Vale Oksana Shachko
Yeah, ok
What I miss, TV? Big birthday?
I’m prepared to work for as little as $140K. I can take limos rather than drive a domestic vehicle. I’m happy to sleep with an MP for free at his/her/x place. I will walk dogs and clean up sh*t with taxpayer funded toilet paper. I will babysit. Sign me up for some hard labour!
Agree that the Kudelka toon was a cracker as is your super saturday roundup. That Skull chap looked like he was on his way around the corner to do some World Championship Wrestling in Festival Hall (the late). Probably against a guy with a moniker like Bruno Strangio.
Skull Murphy perhaps? Brute Bernard’s tag team partner. Those guys were a crack up!
The good news is Desali has gone and the bad news is after posting the comments number reverts back to, in the last post 11. Still, if that is the biggest hassle in my life i’ll take it any and every day!
If Van Badham had a song it would be “I’ve said all the said things”.