Aust, journalist slams his country’s politics

Press, 22 January 1988, Page 6

Aust, journalist slams his country’s politics

NZPA-Reuter London Millions of viewers saw the controversial Australian journalist, John Pilger, dissect the Australian “establishment” on British television, attacking corruption, police brutality, “closet apartheid,” the Prime Minister and state politics. It was Britain’s latest look at Australia in the bicentenary year — the second episode in a threepart documentary by Pilger. In “The Last Dream,” Pilger detailed the relationships between the country’s rulers and its rich, the treatment of Aboriginals, what he called the demise of thefree press and an economy which has left one in five children in poverty. The series, produced to coincide with the bicentenary, concentrates on a theme of inequality and injustice in Australian history. The latest instalment was a tirade against 200 years of white rule. One British critic said inviting Pilger to. help celebrate the bicentenary was like "inviting a party guest who is still suffering from a hangover from the night before.” Others agreed. Following his first episode which chronicled the treatment of Aboriginals, Pilger continued to paint a picture of unmitigated injustice in a country

which he says suffers from “historical amnesia.” The Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, and his relationship with the business magnates, Rupert Murdoch, Alan Bond, Sir Peter Abeles and Kerry Packer, came under the microscope. "Hawkie,” Pilger said, had “of course” sent his best wishes to Alan Bond’s daughter on her wedding day and had turned up at the twenty-first birthday of Kerry Packer’s daughter. The Prime Minister had also been good mates with Sir Peter Abeles, who in turn had been connected with the Mafia by a newspaper which had since been forced out of business. Mr Bond was one of the world’s biggest gold producers — and Mr Hawke had made sure there was no gold tax, Pilger said. Pilger reminded his viewers that the beer baron owned a yacht on which the Treasurer, Paul Keating, had been a guest. "Since Labour came to power the combined wealth of the Top 200 has increased from sAusts billion ($5.35 billion) to sAust2s billion ($35 billion), Pilger said. “Australia now has 31,000 millionaires, compared with seven million wage earners and two million living in poverty.” film showed Mr

Hawke in black tie at the Australian Business Awards dinner in Sydney “staged by billionaire Kerry Packer.” A Jaguar was being raffled for a charity which looked after the poor. “The irony shows. Here is a Labour Prime Minister among the quick rich at an event ostensibly in aid of the poor,” Pilger said. Pilger said that officially, the company tax rate was 49 cents in the dollar. “In 1987 Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation paid less than 13 cents and Bond less than nine cents,” he said. Most of the British critics warmed to the chief-villain role in which Rupert Murdoch was cast, but they were also close to unanimity in querying Pilger’s motives. The “Independent” called him a “miserable bludger who has come along to pee in the soup,” the “Daily Telegraph" described him as “dyspeptic,” and the “Evening Standard” more generously said he offered “an antidote to the Ozlicking tendencies among the rest of the bicentennial offerings.” Another paper suggested the new Australian press monopolies were not so much threatening the average citizen, but “Pilger’s own tribe, the stroppy journalists.”