Paul Murray: Anthony Albanese’s arrogance and vulgarity is as greasy as the ABC

Anthony Albanese and the ABC are peas in a pod.

Both have transgressed acceptable community standards, tried to stare down demands to be properly accountable and together have taken a big hit to their credibility and reputations.

And they both seem to think they are untouchable while a praetorian guard of ideological supporters protects them against an increasingly angry public.

The controversies surrounding the treatment of two women – Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and business leader Gina Rinehart – have rightly led to a reckoning of social norms in modern Australia.

And there is apparently a deep schism between the so-called progressive Left and the rest of the country.

The Government’s attempted butt-covering for Albanese’s crass behaviour in the now-notorious Bush Deep podcast, in which he made reference to Takaichi’s “melons”, has deepened the Prime Minister’s existential crisis.

The latest YouGov polling this week has Albanese’s dissatisfaction rating at 57 per cent. Derided former opposition leader Peter Dutton’s highest score was 53 in April, last year, still soundly beaten by fallen PM Julia Gillard who maxed out with the record in a Newspoll in 2012 at 59.

The phalanx of Labor women prepared to demean themselves by regurgitating prepared lines that Albanese’s podcast comments were “misinterpreted” or “misconstrued” has been a remarkable show of hypocrisy and double standards.

Many of them use the now standard Labor get-out clause that goes something like “I haven’t seen the whole show”, but still offer blanket support from the day’s circulated talking points.

They seek to excuse Albanese for being drawn into crude banter from a lounge in the Prime Minister’s official residence, while sipping first-class whisky with a second-rate comedian in a misguided effort to appear relevant to younger voters.

Anyone who has watched it knows Albanese raised the melons in response to a dumb question about “crap gifts” he has received. His choice. Why take the bait?

That gaffe hasn’t escaped the Japanese for whom gift-giving has deep meaning.

The Prime Minister singled out just one gracious gift for a laugh. No escape from that decision.

Nor from the Benny Hill gestures when asked how Takaichi got her gift of prized crown melons into Australia. Nothing Italian about it.

At first, the dopey interviewer didn’t even realise the Japanese PM was a woman, but when that become clear, she began mimicking a pregnant female, suggesting how the melon might have been smuggled in.

Albanese then advanced the crudity when his account moved to the statement there were two melons, not one, with the comic alluding to the endowments of actor Pamela Anderson. Again, his decision. Cringeworthy.

What followed were his unmistakeable hand gestures that the Labor female drones say were “misconstrued” but which they would use for a ritual decapitation if made by a conservative male MP. As you do, to quote Albanese.

“What dismayed some was that Takaichi has recently been subject to derogatory remarks about her body and gender,” former ambassador to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, wrote in The Australian on Monday. “When she stood firm against China, the Chinese consul-general in Osaka posted on X that ‘(Takaichi’s) dirty neck will be chopped off without hesitation’.

“With all this, the last thing she expected was to be so casually mocked by the trusted leader of Japan’s special strategic partner.”

Casually mocked. Then someone in Albanese’s orbit leaked to the media private correspondence from the Japanese embassy, further inflaming the controversy.

“We have been informed by the Australian side that Prime Minister Albanese did not make the comments in the way that has been reported,” Japan’s ambassador to Australia, Kazuhiro Suzuki, wrote.

The diplomacy was clear. Even though the Japanese had obviously seen the performance and were able to judge its content, it was polite to accept the Government’s assurances that media reporting was to blame. It wasn’t.

Thinking he was in the clear, Albanese then deflected all attempts to secure an apology to Takaichi with blandishments that our relationship with Japan has never been stronger.

As someone who has had regular interactions with Japanese diplomats, I know what he says about the crucial alliance is crap.

The Japanese are distrustful of Albanese’s supplicant posture with China and highly suspicious of our intentions with gas and coal exports, on which they depend. This latest blotch is neither catastrophic nor fatal, but further evidence that Australia is no longer a reliable ally.

It follows Albanese’s undergraduate brand of Marxism which is what provides him media cover from the green-left cartel that controls the ABC. Peas in a pod.

In the huge public outcry about the taxpayer-funded outfit’s disgusting attack on Rinehart there has been little examination of how its internal watchdog managed to excuse it.

While the ABC’s managing director did what Albanese has been unable to do and eventually apologised, after an excruciating 25 days of stalling, he noted that the broadcaster’s Ombudsman, Fiona Cameron, had found no breach of its codified standards.

That should concern and incense every fair-minded Australian. What part of depicting the anal rape of a prominent Australian woman with a stick is acceptable anywhere?

All the hand wringing about violence against women is just hot air if something like that can be excused by the ABC as “the filmmaker’s established creative style”. Which is what Cameron did.

Leni Riefenstahl had an “established style” which she used to make propaganda films extolling the virtues of Adolf Hitler, designed to make his persecution of Germany’s Jews acceptable in the 1930s.

Cameron assessed the 996 complaints about the Race Around The World video under these ABC Editorial Standards relating to harm and offence:

7.1 Content that is likely to cause harm or offence must be justified by the editorial context.

7.6 Where there is editorial justification for content which may lead to dangerous imitation or exacerbate serious threats to individual or public health, safety or welfare, take appropriate steps to mitigate those risks, particularly by taking care with how content is expressed or presented.

How the broadcast could have complied with the 7.6 compulsion for care is bewildering. But a deeper investigation shows these standards are so openly drawn as to be completely meaningless, other than to allow the Ombudsman to excuse any breach that suits the ABC’s purposes.

Cameron says: “The film ends with a dramatic call not to hide under the bed in the face of a revolution, but to use the self-help tools promoted in the video to rescue the future and ‘make something from nothing’.

“In this context the final sentence is the subject of the complaints: ‘Cos, when the revolution comes, will you hide under your bed or will you know exactly how to shove a stick right up Gina Rinehart’s butt hole, stirring it around, mixing her guts up nice and smooth, making her into one big sausage roll to make something out of nothing’.”

The ABC’s defence was this: “The film was intended to be humorous in tone and considered to be editorially justifiable within the context of the program. We recognise that audiences may respond differently to creative content and hold a range of views about how it is presented.”

Cameron says: “The question for the Ombudsman is not whether the remarks were offensive or in good taste, but whether any likely offence was justified by the editorial context.”

Like Albanese, the ABC has lost its way. Neither has a grasp on common decency.

And this is how she found there was no breach: “Violent language directed at a named public figure may have a greater impact on some audiences because violence against women is a significant social concern and at the forefront of community consciousness.”

Some audiences? So there’s a discrete ABC audience that accepts or tolerates violence against women? It would probably include female Labor MPs in this case too.

“However, in context, the target of the satire appeared to be Ms Rinehart’s public profile and status within contemporary political and economic debates rather than her gender,” Cameron argues.

“The remarks did not draw upon gender-based stereotypes, nor were they framed in terms of hostility towards women as a group.”

That’s simply perverse and verging on intellectual bastardry.

No reasonable person watching that film with an intact moral compass would come to that twisted conclusion.

The target was not Rinehart’s nebulous “profile and status”, but her “butt hole.” With a stick.

Hardly satirical. It was deeply personal and arguably motivated by loathing, not a pursuit of comedy.

To excuse the attack because it didn’t draw on gender stereotypes and was only hostile to one woman is beneath contempt. It fails any simple test of human dignity.

Like Albanese, the ABC has lost its way. Neither has a grasp on common decency.

Neither understands community standards, nor has any intention of protecting or preserving them. Proclaimed progressives actively facilitate moral regression.

We have reached a very low point in our national journey.