Murdoch ‘cancer on democracy’
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has launched an incendiary attack on Tony Abbott and News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch, who he claims have undermined Australian democracy and contributed to the ‘‘orgy of political violence’’ that led to Malcolm Turnbull’s ousting.
In an opinion piece written for Fairfax Media, Rudd writes that Australian politics has become toxic and unstable due to an obsession with opinion polls and the juvenile culture of a ‘‘YoungLabor/Young-Liberal generation of child politicians’’.
But Rudd, who was prime minister from December 2007 to June 2010 and again from June to September 2013, argues that the most destructive forces upon politics have been the ‘‘unique negativity, toxicity and hatred’’ of Tony Abbott as well as Murdoch, who he describes as the ‘‘greatest cancer on the Australian democracy’’.
Rudd’s prime ministership coincided with the beginning of a period of unprecedented political bloodletting on both sides of politics.
Australia has changed PM seven times since the Howard government. The Liberal Party’s decision to dump Turnbull last week has sparked a debate over the role of conservative media in politics.
‘‘[Mr] Abbott has never cared about policy,’’ Rudd writes. ‘‘He has only cared about politics and winning at any cost. I cannot remember a single positive policy initiative that Abbott has championed and then implemented.
‘‘As a result, unconstrained by policy, the entire energies of this giant wrecking ball of Australian politics has been focussed on destroying his opponents.’’
Rudd courted News Corp editors during his time in politics and was the godfather to the son of Chris Mitchell, former editorin-chief of The Australian. However, he is particularly critical about News Corp’s journalism in the op ed piece.
According to Rudd, Murdoch does not run a news organisation, but instead, ‘‘operates as a political party, acting in pursuit of clearly defined commercial interests, in addition to his far-right ideological world view’’.
‘‘In Britain, Murdoch made Brexit possible because of the position taken by his papers. In the United States, Murdoch’s Fox News is the political echo chamber of the far-right which enabled the Tea Party and then the Trump party to stage a hostile take-over of the Republican Party. In Australia, as in America, Murdoch has campaigned for decades in support of tax cuts for the wealthy, killing action on climate change and destroying anything approximating multiculturalism.’’
A spokeswoman for News Corp declined to comment.
Many of Turnbull’s supporters in parliament believe last week’s coup was actively supported by News Corp’s newspapers and some presenters on its pay-TV station, Sky News, as well as by Ray Hadley and Alan Jones, employed by 2GB, which is owned by Fairfax Media, publisher
‘‘In Australia, as in America, Murdoch has campaigned for decades in support of tax cuts for the wealthy, killing action on climate change and destroying anything approximating multiculturalism.’’ Kevin Rudd
of this website.
Senior Liberal sources sympathetic to Turnbull have told
Fairfax Media that they believe some commentators overstepped democratic conventions during the coup and became active players, going so far as to lobby MPs on behalf of the insurgents and maintain momentum for Peter Dutton’s forces after the first spill failed.
Channel Nine’s chief political correspondent Chris Uhlmann last week said Jones, Hadley, and
Sky after Dark presenters such as Peta Credlin, a former chief-ofstaff to Abbott, were ‘‘players in the game’’ to depose Turnbull.
Senior Liberals close to Turnbull believe Credlin, Jones, and Ross Cameron, a former Liberal MP and current Sky News host, contacted some MPs directly to criticise Turnbull.
The sources in politics and media who spoke to Fairfax
Media for this story would not be named because they wanted to protect professional relationships.