Media Watch last night ran a segment (above) on the Media’s treatment of Duncan Storrar, who appeared on ABC’s Q&A last week asking the below question:
DUNCAN STORRAR asked: I have a disability and limited education. I’ve been a low income earner my whole life and as such I pay a larger percentage of my income in taxes than the average Australian. Lifting my tax free threshold would change mine and my children’s life. How come rich people get a lift in there threshold? It means nothing to them but to me it would mean my kids hear something else apart from “sorry girls daddy is broke”?…
Following Duncan’s appearance, he unwittingly was thrust into the public spotlight, wrongly held-up by the left as a ‘battler hero’ and decried by the right as a bludger.
The Murdoch Press, however, has been most vicious, running a week long personal campaign against Storrar, painting him as a bludger, a criminal, a thug, a bad parent, you name it. And it is this incessant attack that received the most attention from Media Watch last night:
So who is Duncan Storrar?
He’s a man who asked a question on the ABC’s Q&A about why he didn’t get a tax break from the Budget.
Yes, really…
With the story ticking all boxes for News Corp:
Bash the poor.
Bash the ABC.
And Bash Labor.
The perfect trifecta.
On Friday morning the Herald Sun’s front page splash hit the streets.
And editor Damon Johnston was on ABC radio with Jon Faine to defend his paper’s actions in turning this man’s life upside down.
JON FAINE: I think you’re being a bully, Damon, and I think you’re doing it in today’s front page as well. ‘ABC hero a villain’. ‘Q&A sob story star exposed as a thug as public donate $60,000’. Another man who quite openly put his own battle with mental illness on national television on Q&A on Monday night, you go back more than 15 years to expose his criminal record to again bully and vilify him. What are you doing?
DAMON JOHNSTON: Well, I think it’s a legitimate point of public debate. If you put yourself on the public stage, and in, particularly in the middle of an election campaign, questioning government policy, questioning this, I think that you’re entitled to be subjected to a bit of scrutiny.
JON FAINE: A bit of scrutiny? A bit of scrutiny?
DAMON JOHNSTON: And this, this man’s son has obviously worked with us on the story and he was, he had a view on his father, so it was all part of legitimate public debate in my view.
— 774 ABC Melbourne, Mornings with Jon Faine, 13 May, 2016
So is this what now happens in Australia to someone who sticks their head up in public and exercises their democratic rights?
Duncan didn’t ask to be a national hero. Or a national villain. Nor did he ask for our charity.
All he did was put his hand up and ask a question. And he was crucified.
Last night he told Media Watch:
“If a person shows the powers to be out of touch people, that they are, they will be dropped, probed and attacked in any way with no thought to the mental wellbeing of their children.
This exposing of your life and every discrepancy in it will be published ruining your job prospects”.
— Duncan Storrar, Email to Media Watch, 11 May, 2016
And you can read a full statement from Duncan Storrar on our website, and despite the week he’s had, he did say:
“Thank you Australia for all your support. I didn’t want this.”
And still today, The Australian has continued its attack on Storrar, with Nick Cater, executive director of the Menzies Research Centre, penning the following today:
Storrar is not a national hero, as a Q&A producer claims, but a pitiable member of the underclass. A son spoke of Storrar’s drug habit. His lengthy record includes assault, drug possession and threatening to kill. He has also breached intervention orders taken out against him by ex-partners.
That a violent, drug-addled criminal should become an object for compassion is a measure of the moral confusion of today’s Left…
Enough already. Leave the bloke alone.
