On Friday night last week — the night following the terrorist attack in Christchurch — Waleed Aly gave a gut-wrenching piece to camera on The Project excoriating a political climate of wilful division, singling out comments made by Fraser Anning, Pauline Hanson, Peter Dutton, and Scott Morrison. In the piece, Aly referenced a 2011 report from the Sydney Morning Herald, which claimed that Scott Morrison, in a shadow cabinet meeting, suggested they should leverage anti-Muslim sentiment for political gain. Shortly afterwards, Morrison’s office contacted the program, suggesting that the comments were defamatory. This morning, he appeared on ABC News to refute the claims in the report, calling them a “disgraceful smear and an appalling lie“.
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In a piece on The Project tonight, host Hamish Macdonald responded to the claims, as Aly travelled to New Zealand to interview their substantially less shit PM, Jacinda Ardern. Macdoland revealed that not only did Morrison’s office chew them out in a “furious exchange“, they also rejected a right of reply offered to the PM in an already scheduled spot on the show on Monday night. Instead, they cancelled the appearance entirely.
Macdonald pushed back on Morrison’s denial of the comments, noting that the journalist who wrote it in the first place, Lenore Taylor (now the editor of The Guardian), stands by the report — also noting that the multiple sources from which she got the story still corroborate it to this day. Macdonald also pushed back on MP Greg Hunt‘s support of the PM, who said that he was in the meeting and can categorically state that he didn’t say it. This was relatively easy to push back on, because Hunt went on ABC Radio at the time and said that he wasn’t in the room. Oops.
Large sections of powerful people in this country are trying to avoid accountability on this issue, good on The Project for not letting Morrison wriggle out of this one. You can watch the piece below:
“The PM says he wants the truth. Well, here are some facts.” – @hamishnews responds to the PM. #TheProjectTV
*Correction: The first report was in 2011, the Shadow Cabinet meeting was in 2010. pic.twitter.com/r49JRKApK4
— The Project (@theprojecttv) March 20, 2019
