Tag Archives: Quadrant online

Louise Milligan – youse are all wrong

Gavin Morris, ABC News Director, has tossed in the towel. Who could blame him? Louise Milligan, whose self-righteous cussedness has topped unheard of heights, would be purgatory enough. But imagine having to deal with Sarah Ferguson, Sally Neighbour and that whole band of whingeing self-righteous man-hating feminists at the ABC? Hell on earth. I wonder that Morris endured it so long. To give a taste of the brain-destroying torture Milligan has in store, I provide a link to Stuart Lindsay’s piece in the 10 January 2021 edition of Quadrant: Ignore the High Court, Louise Milligan Knows Best – Quadrant Online. Stuart Lindsay is a retired Federal Circuit Court judge .

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Ignore the High Court, Louise Milligan Knows Best

Stuart Lindsay, Quadrant, 10 January 2021

If you want a true sounding of the depths to which the trade of journalism and the vocation of writing in our country have fallen I suggest you can do no better than listen to or read the recent interview and transcript of Louise Milligan, the much-feted anti-Pell fanatic, on a podcast called The Garrett.

The Garrett is produced in Melbourne by a lady named Astrid Edwards, who interviews “writers on writing”. However, if you examine her website you will notice that the writers are overwhelmingly women and the writing is overwhelmingly leftist stock-in trade. And if you subtracted from the podcast’s interview catalogue those which deal with either feminist, black- or Islamic-grievance or climate change, you would be left with, well… Richard Fidler. He is the author of a gem of a book about the Byzantines and his undogmatic and agreeable presence on Ms Edward’s site is as anomalous as is his presence on the ABC’s airwaves. The explanation for the narrow range of the podcast’s pre-occupations is obvious enough. The website says it has “ongoing partnerships with the State Library of Victoria, Writers Victoria and RMIT University.” Alas, these days, what good thing ever comes out of an institution with “Victoria” or “Melbourne” in its name?

Remember, too, that most of The Garret‘s subjects have probably already been given their complimentary promotional tour at tax-payers’ expense by the ABC leviathan before they sat down to talk with her. In other words, The Garrett is just another of the vast number of state-funded or state-affiliated organs whose function is to sustain the Left’s stifling overlordship of every aspect of Australian cultural and political life. You know the ones I am referring to; the ones that get all of the government grants and award each other all of the prizes.

But don’t let that prevent you listening to the Milligan episode. You will learn much about Milligan and about her employer, our national broadcaster.

THE High Court judgment which set aside the Victorian Court of Appeal’s upholding (with Weinberg J in vigorous dissent) of Pell’s conviction and the unmistakable language of stern reproof in which that judgement was written don’t seem to have signified much of anything to Ms. Milligan. Rather, the High Court has taught her nothing about either the fundamental tenets of fair reporting or the criminal law. Both the woman and the ABC are unteachable. Why do I say that? Let me take you to the transcript. First, this bit (with my highlighting):

Read the rest here…

The Pell jailing – a pitiful legal farce

Keith Windschuttle not only destroys the prosecution case against Cardinal Pell but shows to what farcical depths the Australian legal system has degenerated. Legally, the world must think Australia has not progressed beyond the era of the Rum Rebellion – though that may be to insult John Macarthur and the New South Wales Corps.

The Crown Prosecutor’s Retraction

Cardinal George Pell’s appeal against his conviction of historical sexual abuse of two choirboys will be heard before the full High Court of Australia on March 11. Pell’s conviction in a Melbourne county court in December 2018 was affirmed by the Victorian Court of Appeal in August 2019. The conviction was for two incidents of abuse that allegedly occurred in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, in December 1996 and February 1997.

As several writers in Quadrant have recorded over the past twelve months, the conviction of Pell is one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Australian history. This is not just because of his status at the time as the most senior figure in the Catholic Church in this country, but also because it breached the fundamental legal principle that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That is not how George Pell was treated either at his trial or in his first appeal. The jurors did not make their decision on the weight of evidence by more than twenty witnesses, who demonstrated that Pell could not possibly have done what the complainant said. Instead, the jurors accepted the sole evidence of the accuser, given in camera, with his identity shielded, and without corroboration of any kind. A two-to-one majority of judges in the Victorian Court of Appeal confirmed both the process and the decision.

Read on…