CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The Australian media and other institutions that would not be able to survive without government funding have been put on notice this week, after a new report was tabled by Australian government’s special anti-Semitism envoy.
The Special Envoy made the recommendations in a report published on Thursday amid elevated concerns about anti-Semitism following a spate of violent incidents that are simply unacceptable in a civilised Western Democracy.
This report has called for the cancellation of funding to universities or other government-aided institutions that tolerate anti-Jewish sentiment – as well as increased screening for new migrants that carry political views not cohesive to Australia’s multicultural society.
The undeniable spike in anti-semitic attacks have been partly attributed to an unhealthy media landscape, where sinister forces are platformed to “entrench selective approaches to racism that serve political agendas”.
This welcomed report points out very real and urgent problems that need to be addressed when it comes to the opportunism of bad faith actors who inflame community divisions for political advantage.
While the vast majority of the Australian public would agree that the social cohesion is being disrupted by the relentless hatred that is peddled through agenda-driven media bigotry and propaganda, very few are surprised by these findings.
Especially anyone who has been witness to the extreme and brazen Islamophobia and anti-Aboriginal rhetoric that has defined Australian politics and media for the last three decades.
This brand of palatable racism is still to this day completely overlooked, if not subtly normalised, by the political class and their friends in the establishment media that would simply not exist without billion dollar tax abatements and legislative protections aimed at pumping money into outdated business models that prioritise opinion and outrage over balanced and informative news.
Culminating in the shameful Cronulla Riots that took place over the 2006 Christmas holidays, the relentless vilification of voiceless minority groups has never really been addressed or legislated against – mostly because of the political gains it presented to Federal parliamentarians.
Namely, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who would have never been picked as the Liberal candidate in Cronulla without personally tarnishing the name of his far more popular opponent Michael Towke, a Christian Lebanese-Australian.
Towke was forced to stand down from the pre-selection process in Cook after becoming the victim of NewsCorp smear campaign that peddled Morrison’s misinformation that he was ‘secretly a Moslem’ and ‘a dodgy businessman’.
It was a well hidden but very shameful affair that proves politically motivated discrimination is not new at all in this country – but is in fact, literally key to becoming a Liberal Prime Minister.
