The police in the Top End’s SWAT squad of elite killers, not content with having a “coon of the year award” for the most disorganised and least hygienic member, we now discover that they have for some years been emailing around a little number called Black Monopoly, a board on which all the rental sites have been replaced with the jail symbol. 

Don’t worry, it’s only soft racism, and no one was actually hurt in the process.

The football codes are now going to real lengths to stamp out racist and homophobic slurring (after conspicuously failing with Adam Goodes – hello Eddie McGuire), but our police services, the only bodies armed with legitimate force, seem incapable of straightening themselves out. 

It’s now over three decades since WA police apprehended Rhonda Collard, an indigenous actress, on her way home from a performance at Perth’s Black Swan theatre in September 1991. 

On an anonymous tipoff that there was a gun in her car (there wasn’t) she was pulled over and made prone with a shotgun at her head. She later commented that she knew the officer had only to sneeze and that would be the end.

More liberal minded Perth was outraged, so the then Police Union Secretary, Ric Stingemore, bought a page in The West Australian, the local oil and gas sheet, to remind the denizens of the leafier haunts that it was the wallopers that kept suburbia safe, so would everyone mind their own business (and we know where you live). 

Collard’s husband, Neville Collard, was the sergeant in charge at Albany, the highest ranking indigenous officer in the WA Police at the time. 

Neville Collard: coffee mug incident

He attempted to resign, but was talked out of it. However, a Christmas Party later he did, after discovering on returning at New Year that a fellow officer had defaecated in his coffee mug. 

So much for office politics.

Here we are decades later, and police forces still don’t get it: discriminatory behaviour requires ruthless excision, not indulgent overview. 

At least the WA brass appear to be making amends with a public apology from Commissioner Chris Dawson for past “wrongful actions” contributing to “traumatic history”, the ceremony involving recently graduated constable Jacob Collard in the flag raising party.       

The West seemed to be climbing out of its welded on racism, until we were confronted with the murder of 14 year old schoolboy, Cassius Turvey, 18 months ago. His grieving mother’s work in reconciliation provides a necessary balm.

Meantime, in the zone of bloody-minded prejudice,, journalist Antoinette Lattouf is in the throes of mediation ordered by the Fair Work Commission.

Lattouf: mediation

As we know, she took proceedings for her removal, three days in, from the temporary gig she was running on ABC’s Sydney Morning radio in Christmas week last year. 

The trigger “offence” is alleged to be Lattouf’s retweeting of a Human Rights Watch message dealing with the claim that Israel was using control of food supplied into Gaza as a weapon of war.

Lattouf was subject to scrutiny as to her Lebanese background, and for having tweeted material critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza prior to her being asked to compere the Morning show. 

Her very presence on the airwaves brought on a tsunami of correspondence to Aunty’s managers and directors from pro-Israeli groups.

Human Rights Watch wrote to the ABC Chair, Ita Buttrose, saying it was “troubling” that its “factual” material had been deemed “controversial'”, something it said could have a “chilling effect” on Australian journalism.  

That is rather the point: who gets to control the heart of the ABC, and with it the assumptions as to acceptability of content? Nicky Stein from Lawyers for Israel left us in no doubt as to the determination to dominate the discourse: 

“It is important ABC hears not just from individuals in the community but specifically lawyers so they feel there is an actual legal threat.” 

It was later admitted that this was “a bit cheeky”. 

Plus ça change. Wind the clock back 50 years or more and we find, surprise surprise, the saga of Allan Ashbolt, holder of various senior roles at the ABC, wily enough to survive in the heat of the political kitchen, but the cause of huge angst from the right. 

A sample from an article in a 2014 edition of Quadrant (itself reprinting an article by Anthony McAdam in a 1983 Quadrant) will suffice to set the scene, and highlight just how much the ABC has tightened up in a half century:

“In order to understand how the Marxist infiltration of our national broadcasting service came about it is necessary to go back in time. The key figure in the whole story is Allan Ashbolt. He is mainly responsible for creating and nurturing what I interpret as the Marxist ethos in so many program-making departments of the ABC, especially in his own department, now known as the Department of Radio Talks and Documentaries …

“In the early 1960s Ashbolt worked as a program director for Four Corners but was removed in 1964 after he put on a controversial report on the RSL. He later claimed his removal was an example of how the ABC censors program makers. On leaving Four Corners Ashbolt was Federal Talks Supervisor (Topical) and for some years from 1964 was President of the Senior Officers Association. In his latter capacity he spoke regularly at anti-Vietnam and anti-conscription rallies.

“In March 1967, shortly after being made Head of Special Projects (Television), Ashbolt made a speech attacking the Government’s Vietnam policy. According to the report in the Melbourne Sun (March 28, 1967), Ashbolt said that the war had become one symbolised by the killing and mutilation of women and children and that militarism had gained such a grip on Australian society that government was  becoming a military activity. He also claimed that ‘ASIO [was] one of the main props of militarist government’. 

“The following month he spoke to a “peace rally” in Sydney … He was quoted as telling the audience that, ‘We should not be surprised that the United States has found ways of burning the image of Western man on the bodies of Asian peasants’.

“In 1969, after a few more controversies, Ashbolt was ‘kicked sideways’ from Television Special Projects to the position of Director Radio Special Projects.

“Although there was the occasional row with the management, overall he seems to have got on well with Duckmanton [then the General Manager]. Ashbolt was issued with a notice of dismissal from Duckmanton for continuing to write for the New Statesman against ABC rules, but Duckmanton withdrew it when Ashbolt told [Duckmanton] his writing was part of his political activity and the ABC had no right to interfere with it … Since then [Ashbolt] and Duckmanton have managed to co-exist.” 

Duckmanton: sacked Ashbolt

Phew, leaves you all in a sweat. Lattouf’s activities are the scurrying of mice on the jungle floor compared with Ashbolt’s elephantine politicking.  

Some of his tastes were plainly ludicrous e.g. his preference for North Korean society, but his chutzpah in standing up to a notice of dismissal from the GM compared to the situation in 2024 illustrates just how successful has been the right’s reaction to Ashbolt’s then influence. 

The contest for the heart of the ABC never stops, and as presently informed, minority views can assume that the default position will sideline them. 

What we really want in this country is inertia – please don’t push us to be provoked, or even to react.