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  Of the opinion columns favourable to climate change action, the most frequently published authors were the regular left-winger Phillip Adams (8); the national affairs editor Mike Steketee (8, although later he contributed to “Inquirer”); and the former head of Greenpeace International Paul Gilding (6). Of the columns unfavourable to climate change action, the most published authors were the “all action is futile” sceptical economist Bjorn Lomborg (25); the economics editor Alan Wood (22); the regular right-wingers Christopher Pearson (21), Janet Albrechtsen (14) and Frank Devine (8); the denialist geologist Bob Carter (9); the foreign editor Greg Sheridan (8); two employees of the neo-liberal think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, Alan Moran (8) and Tim Wilson (8); the former politician Gary Johns (7); and the neo-liberal economists Alan Oxley (6) and Henry Ergas (5). Even more astonishing was the disproportionate number of columns or “Cut and Paste” extracts by denialist scientists, a group representing virtually no one published in peer-reviewed journals. Of the scientists rejecting the consensual view, the Australian published dozens of articles by Bob Carter, Michael Asten, William Kininmonth, Lord Monckton, Ian Plimer, Richard Lindzen, Jennifer Marohasy, Stewart Franks, Garth Paltridge, Dennis Jensen, David Evans, John Christy, David Bellamy and Nigel Calder. Of the scientists accepting the overwhelming consensus, it published Barry Brook (but principally in support of nuclear energy), James Hansen (but only to attack “cap and trade”), Andy Pitman (but only to disagree with Tim Flannery), Peter Doherty (but only in the Australian Literary Review), David Karoly and Kurt Lambeck. In the real world, scientists accepting the climate consensus view outnumber denialists by more than ninety-nine to one. In the Alice in Wonderland world of Chris Mitchell’s Australian their contributions were outnumbered ten to one.

  In a certain way, however, all this underestimates the kind of damage the Australian inflicted on the nation through its protracted war on climate science. During Chris Mitchell’s editorship the Australian published scores of articles by people who claimed to know that the consensual view of the climate scientists was entirely bogus but who have not passed even a first-year university examination in one of the relevant disciplines. On the extraordinarily complex and technical questions of climate science, who cared about the ignorant opinions of Christopher Pearson or Janet Albrechtsen and the scores of other Australian contributors? Not only did such writers disagree with the consensual views of the climate scientists, they did so with a comical degree of self-confidence. Why was it important to know that Christopher Pearson believed that there was “something terribly galling about the federal government deciding to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on controlling emissions of what will turn out to be, in all probability, a perfectly harmless gas”; or that Janet Albrechtsen was of the opinion that there was “real possibility of global cooling should the sun revert to the lazier position associated with the Little Ice Age”; or that Senator Cory Bernardi had come to the view that “the more you read into this situation, the more the claims that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for our warming climate do not add up”; or that the Czech president Vaclav Klaus was convinced that “global warming is a myth and every serious person and scientist says so”. No doubt such people would argue that if they are unqualified in the field of climate science, so am I. This is perfectly true. But to quote Clive Hamilton’s wise words, in an area such as this the question for laypeople is not what to believe, but who. I feel obliged to place my trust in the view of climate scientists. The climate-change deniers published by the Australian place their trust in a handful of contrarians or cranks. To borrow a turn of phrase from Greg Sheridan, either every relevant scientific association in the United States is to be trusted on climate change, or Lord Monckton is. Take your pick. Democracy relies on an understanding of the difference between those questions that involve the judgement of citizens and those where citizens have no alternative but to place their trust in those with expertise. By refusing to acknowledge this distinction, in its coverage of climate change the Australian not only waged “war on science”, the title the outstanding blogger at Deltoid, Tim Lambert, gives to his comprehensive series of postings, but also threatened the ever vulnerable place of reason in public life.

  LARISSA BEHRENDT

  Late in the evening on Monday, 11 April 2011, the 42-year-old professor Larissa Behrendt, research director of the Jumbunna Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney, was watching an episode of the raw and violent American television series Deadwood on ABC 2 with her partner, Michael Lavarch, a former attorney-general in the Keating government. At the same time Q&A was screening on ABC 1. One of the panellists was the Warlpiri woman from Alice Springs Bess Price. Price is a science graduate, a businesswoman and a politically committed activist sympathetic to the assimilationist group known as the Bennelong Society, whose president is Gary Johns, for whose book Bess Price wrote the foreword. She is also a strong supporter of the federal government’s Northern Territory Intervention.

  Nothing divides the Australian Indigenous community more deeply than the Intervention. Some leading Aboriginal intellectuals – like Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton – are strong supporters. Others – like Pat and Mick Dodson and Larissa Behrendt – are strong opponents. Nor is this divide any less deep among Indigenous people living under the Intervention. Some obviously do support it. The evidence, however, would suggest that more of those living under it are now opposed. In the 2007 election, following the Howard government’s decision to act, in the heavily Aboriginal seat of Lingiari in the Northern Territory there was a 3.7% swing against the Country–Liberal Party candidate. In the 2010 election, following the Rudd government’s decision to continue the Intervention, there was a 13.9% swing against the Labor candidate. All of it went either to two independents or to the Greens candidate, Barb Shaw, an anti-Intervention activist.

  While Behrendt was watching Deadwood, many of her friends were watching Q&A. There were very many hostile tweets. One came from the Indigenous radio presenter Rhianna Patrick. On Deadwood there had just been a characteristic scene. Larissa tweeted in response to something from her friend Rhianna: “I watched a show where a guy had sex with a horse and I’m sure it was less offensive than Bess Price.” It was a bad joke; a sour joke; a joke with a political sting. But it was a joke. Old human instincts often do not keep up with technology. Many people tweet to friends forgetting that what they say is public and not private. I am almost certain that here this was the case.

  The Australian on 14 April had a prominent front-page story about the tweet. The author was one of the team of reporters on Indigenous affairs, Patricia Karvelas. Karvelas’ article on Behrendt was entitled “More Offensive than ‘Sex with a Horse’: Behrendt’s Twitter Slur Against Black Leader”. Karvelas provided a brief account of Behrendt’s explanation of the tweet. She quoted Price at greater length. Behrendt was at the time involved with other lighter-skinned Aborigines in a case against Andrew Bolt, who had accused such people of using their ancestry for personal profit. Price claimed: “This is worse than what she is accusing Bolt of.” She was seeking legal advice. Price also claimed that as an urban Indigenous academic Behrendt was “out of touch” with central Australian Aborigines. Price wanted for her children what Behrendt already had. She called Behrendt a “white blackfella”. She claimed the group of white blackfellas wanted to “control” bush people and rob them of their voice. Their culture and hers were entirely different. On 14 April Karvelas’ article was accompanied by an anti-Behrendt opinion column from Gary Johns. Johns labelled Behrendt “a gross hypocrite” regarding her legal case against Bolt. What she tweeted about Price was far more offensive than anything Bolt had written about light-skinned Aborigines. For Johns, the worst examples of racism in the previous twenty years in Australia were the attacks unleashed against whites during the inquiries into Aboriginal deaths in custody and Aboriginal child removal. He expressed the hope that UTS would “review” Behrendt’s position and those of everyone emp
loyed at the Jumbunna Centre holding “similarly prejudicial views”.

  By now Behrendt was badly shaken and regretful. She did not know Bess Price. She had meant her no offence. She decided to make a public apology, which she sent both to the Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. “I take full responsibility for my carelessness in the way I expressed myself and I apologise to Ms Price unreservedly.” Not surprisingly, it was not run by the Herald. No paper in the country other than the Australian thought an injudicious late-night tweet newsworthy, let alone worthy of prominent front-page treatment. Behrendt also sent Bess Price a personal apology by email: “Dear Ms Price, I very much regret that a recent tweet of mine has caused you deep offence. I unreservedly offer you a heartfelt apology for that and hope you can accept it. Sincerely, Larissa.”

  Behrendt’s apologies were reported on the front page of the Australian on 15 April. Karvelas was, however, a master of the Australian’s familiar false-inference, disguised-assumption, report-as-accusation house style. As she wrote: “The high-profile indigenous lawyer was yesterday forced into a humiliating apology to Ms Price, an Aboriginal woman who supports the federal intervention in Northern Territory communities, after Indigenous leaders expressed outrage at the comment.” This sentence suggested that Behrendt was insincere. She had been forced to apologise. It described the apology not as welcome but “humiliating”. It suggested that Aboriginal leaders were all “outraged” at Behrendt. In fact, many in the Territory, like Barb Shaw and Marlene Hodder, were outraged not at Larissa Behrendt’s tweet but at Bess Price’s Q&A claim that almost all Indigenous women in the Territory supported the Intervention. The sentence finally implied that as “a high-profile lawyer” she had no idea about what was happening in Bess Price’s “real” world.

  Karvelas’ 15 April article was accompanied by an editorial, “Who Tweets for Aborigines?” In it Behrendt’s apology was not humiliating but “belated”. The editorial explained the significance of the affair like this: “The Twitter exchanges reveal the split between urban and remote Aboriginal leaders over Canberra’s intervention in dysfunctional communities … the professional class of urban blacks” was more interested in “gesture politics and symbolism” than in “the shameful conditions endured by many Aborigines.” Five letters were published, all extremely hostile to Behrendt. On the page alongside the editorial and the letters, there appeared a furious anti-Behrendt opinion column – “Aboriginal sophisticates undermine bush sisters” – by the Indigenous academic Marcia Langton. It gave eloquent expression to the false binary opposition that dominated the Australian’s anti-Behrendt campaign – privileged, ivory-tower urban anti-Intervention Aborigines versus unprivileged pro-Intervention Aborigines on the ground. This binary was based on the self-evidently inaccurate proposition that Indigenous people in the Territory overwhelmingly favoured the Intervention. Langton supported this by claiming that Bess Price lived in Yuendumu. In fact she had not lived there for twenty years. Langton called the Twitter message “foul”. She argued that never in her life had she witnessed such disrespect for an elder except when people were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. She claimed that it was Bess Price’s “plea for an inquiry into the culture of sexual abuse” that Behrendt had found “offensive”. This was untrue and obviously damaging. She disparaged Behrendt as someone who had not been “brought up in the Aboriginal way”. She called Behrendt and her friends “sepia-toned Sydney activists”. She wondered whether or not Bolt was right after all about such people. Langton even compared Behrendt and those like her to white patrol officers who thought they knew better than the “natives” what to think.

  Marcia Langton’s central accusation – from which everything else flowed – was entirely false. Larissa Behrendt was not an out-of-touch academic. She had worked for years with people in the remote areas of north-west New South Wales, Wilcannia, Menindee and Lightning Ridge, but also throughout the communities in the Northern Territory and the town camps round Alice Springs, travelling there regularly, almost every year. After the Price controversy erupted, Valerie Martin Napaljarri wrote these words in Behrendt’s support: “I am a Warlpiri woman and community spokesperson from Yuendumu. I also spend time living in Kalkaringi … Larissa is very highly respected by me and others in my community. I have worked closely with her advocating for our rights. In 2010 I travelled with her out to community of Ampilatwatja to participate in meetings. She was always very respectful and spoke just what we were feeling.”

  When I spoke to her, Larissa Behrendt was still very deeply upset by Marcia Langton’s column. It hurt her far more than attacks by people like Keith Windschuttle. Langton’s hostility began in 2008, in an article in the Griffith Review, once it was clear that Behrendt and Langton differed over the Intervention. Behrendt contrasted Langton’s personal denigration with Noel Pearson’s respectful style of intellectual disagreement. She refused, however, to withdraw her admiration from Langton, whom she had always looked upon as a courageous role model for younger Indigenous women like herself. Ideological differences would never affect that.

  The Australian had devoted two front-page stories, two opinion columns and an editorial to Larissa Behrendt’s late-night tweet, which shortly and without irony the Australian’s gossip columnist called “the slur of the century”. Behrendt had issued two unqualified apologies. Surely now the affair was over.

  In fact it had hardly begun. On 16 April Patricia Karvelas reported that “pressure was mounting” for Behrendt to be dismissed from her role as head of the Gillard government’s inquiry into Indigenous higher education. In the culture of the Australian, “pressure is mounting” is code for a journalist phoning people whose views are well known to elicit a predictable comment supporting the story that is about to be run. In this instance Karvelas appears to have phoned three Indigenous leaders, Sue Gordon, Warren Mundine and Alison Anderson, all of whom were supportive of the Intervention and hostile to the Left. They were of the opinion that Behrendt was not a suitable person to lead the government inquiry. So was the spokesperson for the Country–Liberals in the Northern Territory, Adam Giles. For the first time, there was recognition that not everyone was of identical mind. Late in the article, Barb Shaw was quoted, expressing confidence in Behrendt and outrage at Bess Price’s misrepresentation of Indigenous feeling about the Intervention in the town camps and Aboriginal communities of the Territory. This was countered by Bess Price’s husband. He said that she had been overwhelmed by “a tsunami of support”. Karvelas’ report was followed by yet another opinion piece, a 1350-word attack on Behrendt by the cultural warrior and editorial writer at the Australian Chris Kenny, and by four more hostile letters to the editor.

  On 18 April the campaign changed direction. In another front-page story – “Uni Report Adds to Scrutiny on Behrendt” – Patricia Karvelas reported that Behrendt’s suitability as head of the Gillard government’s inquiry into Indigenous higher education had been called into question “in the wake of a highly critical assessment of indigenous education at the University of Technology Sydney”. Its “revelation” would “put more pressure on Labor to choose a new head for its indigenous higher education review”. Karvelas had been sent a report into the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The report suggested problems with its Indigenous program. As Karvelas conceded, Behrendt was not mentioned in the report and the Jumbunna Centre was not located in the arts faculty. She reported, however, that “some submissions … criticised Jumbunna for focusing more on research than its role in providing student services”. What she did not report was that Larissa Behrendt was not the head of the Jumbunna Centre but its research director, whose role was to direct its research program and win research grants. It seems surpassingly strange that she was criticised for doing her job well. This line of attack was purest moonshine. It was not pursued.

  Karvelas was not yet done. On 19 April readers learned that “Behrendt ‘sought ban on writer’”. An Indigenous human-rights lawyer from Perth, Hannah McGlade, h
ad contacted the Australian. She claimed Behrendt had tried to stop her writing a column for the National Indigenous Times. “‘It was me or her, apparently,’ Ms McGlade said.” The editor of the NIT, Stephen Hagan, confirmed McGlade’s story. Both Behrendt and Chris Graham, its former editor, denied that this was an even remotely accurate version of what had occurred. The following day Karvelas published “a leaked email” which, she claimed, “demonstrates [Behrendt] did indeed try to have another Aboriginal woman banned from writing for The National Indigenous Times”. It did no such thing. At the time of the incident Larissa Behrendt was not writing her column for the NIT. The editorship had recently changed hands. When she learned that Hannah McGlade was going to be a columnist, Behrendt was upset. She felt that McGlade had displayed irrational animosity to her in the past. She felt uncomfortable about resuming her column under a new editor alongside someone as hostile as McGlade. Behrendt decided to discuss the situation with one of the owners of the paper, Beverley Wyner. Wyner told her that she would ask Stephen Hagan to ring so they could discuss the problem. No phone call came. Instead, in the next issue of the NIT, Behrendt read that her column had been terminated. It was at this point that she wrote the email that had been leaked to Karvelas. In Karvelas’ article the critical line in the email reads: “Then I read the editorial in the paper when it came out and realised that my time with NIT had come to an end.” Karvelas adds this note: “The editorial announces McGlade as one of the paper’s permanent columnists.” The clear suggestion here is that Behrendt had tried to have McGlade banned and had failed. It was the other way round. Behrendt had been a long-time NIT contributor. She had been paid a pittance or not at all. Now, without the courtesy of the promised phone conversation with Hagan concerning the discomfort she felt about having someone as hostile to her as Hannah McGlade as a fellow columnist, Behrendt had read in the editorial that she had been sacked.