Select Page

The pile on of Dominic Perrottet by the media over his ordinary, suburban family values, Catholicism and large family as summarised by Sydney barrister, Gray Connelly is best summed up by the oafish ignorance and bigotry exhibited by Michael Rowlands of the ABC. (where else)

So unprepared, unresearched, ignorant and dumb that he didn’t know, when seeking comment from Labor leader Chris Minns, that he too is a practicing Catholic.

What an absolute fool. Perhaps he just assumed that being a fellow traveller of the left it would be an easy call and Minns would play along to seek political advantage.

The quality of much that passes for journalism in 2021 is as described by American talk legend, Rush Limbaugh who coined the phrase “the drive by media”, always cruising and hooning up and down Main Street like some 50’s louts, thugs, lairs and Normies, looking to pick a fight and always on the lookout for low hanging fruit to reinforce their prejudice and shallow, drive by opinions.

READ ON —

“… Among the many great Australians that we celebrate, few compare in stature to General Sir John Monash.
The commanding general of the Australian Corps in the Great War, Monash helped plan, methodically, the Allied advance to victory, such that Monash was in August 1918 the first soldier knighted in the field by a reigning monarch in 200 years.

The recent 90th anniversary of Monash’s passing recalled that his 1931 funeral, in the depths of the ­Depression, remains the largest in our history.

What makes General Monash so prominent in our national pantheon was not just his exceptional command ethic and soldiering skill, nor his troops’ devotion, but that Monash, as a Jew of German ancestry, advanced to such rank on his merits – and despite prejudices then (as sadly now).

Not only did the Jewish Monash advance on his merits in the Protestant Australia of the early 20th century, but so, too, did his trusted quartermaster-general and lifelong friend Brigadier General John Patrick McGlinn – a devout Catholic.

War, though, is a matter of literal life and death. Victory requires the promotion of personnel on their ­merits.

Sadly, politics in 2021 – unlike war in 1918 – presumes no such judgment of individuals on their merits. Instead, so much politics is now indistinguishable from insurgency.

War, at least, has formal rules as to who and what may be targeted.

The past week’s scurrilous campaign of vilification against the Catholic faith of the new NSW Premier, Dominic Perrottet, has seen the Australia that many of us thought we knew regress, instead, to a nasty place our founders would only have ­deplored.

When Australians federated in 1901 under our Constitution, we included two cardinal principles that endure to this day.

First, the Australian people’s indissoluble unity under the Crown proceeds from our “humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God”.

And second, that in explicitly avoiding secularity, we also prohibit any religious tests for commonwealth office.

For more than 120 years, we Australians have avoided the legislation of religious and social prejudices that have ruined other, older nations.

We have agreed to judge individuals on their merits and to give each other “a fair go”.

So, for example, in 1932, during the worst of the Depression – and a year before Hitler took power in Germany – there arose in a Protestant-majority Australia the spectacle of the (Jewish) governor-general, Sir Isaac Isaacs, swearing in the (Catholic) conservative prime minister, Joseph Lyons, on a King James Bible.

As befits the Australian way, while exceptional anywhere else at the time, no one in the Australia of 1932 thought this worthy of special note. Any and all may prosper here.

Sadly, in 2021, this most precious Australian ethos is now under siege.

In this past week, a feral media pack took aim at Perrottet – not on his merits or demerits, but because he was, as described by the West Australian newspaper’s headline, “the ­Catholic”.

Perrottet’s faith was described as “hard line”, “ultra conservative”, and a “sect” by the ABC and Sydney Morning Herald – this, a global religious faith both shared by approximately one in four Australians, and whose schools and universities educate, and whose hospitals treat, millions of Australians each day.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Stephanie Dowrick denounced Perrottet explicitly on his faith and its “dogmatism”, as if modern progressivism is not a religion of its own.

Not to be outdone, we also had the farce of Karl Stefanovic – of all people – putting himself forward on Today as tribune for “the women” when questioning new Premier Perrottet on a range of issues that elementary civics informs you are the business of the whole parliament, not any premier.

Perrottet as a happily married father of six was variously depicted as either too dutifully religious to be NSW Premier, or too removed from Macquarie Street’s sordid realities.

That so many of NSW’s recent premiers have been ICAC’s “guests” suggests NSW, especially, should risk a premier who may be tempted towards conscientious decency.

In this respect, Australians were treated to the cringe-inducing (if now viral) video of the ABC’s Michael Rowland asking – twice! – Labor leader Chris Minns to commentate on Perrottet’s faith.

Minns, the best Labor leader in NSW for some time and clearly a man of great propriety, seemed taken aback by Rowland’s questions – and also by Rowland’s embarrassing ignorance that Minns is himself a practising Catholic.

While one recalls the silence of the Canberra press gallery when former prime minister Kevin Rudd turned various church gardens into his Sunday soapbox, no Australian can be other than troubled by the venomous calumny directed at Perrottet.

Worse, what happened to Perrottet presages a grim and dangerous ­future that Australians have always rejected: the judging of anyone other than on her or his own merits.

This bigotry was and is a poisonous threat to our own harmonious, immigrant-welcoming and multi-faith Australia – and, especially, to NSW, where so many newcomers will become Australians.

We must guard, vigilantly, our fair and pluralist nation against the woke and divisive mobs.

Our inheritance from General Monash and his Anzacs demands no less of us all…”