Subjects: Anti-Anzac protesters
E&OE
Steve PRICE
To my editorial that I started with tonight, another staggering Magistrate’s Court decision to suppress the identities of two alleged anti-Anzac graffiti vandals for a year, as the magistrate allowed the accused to sit in court wearing disguises. I’ve been around a long time. I have never heard of someone being able to sit in a court in this country with a disguise on. Police have alleged the pair, Edith Pope and Charlie Tidmarsh – we can identify them by name but we can’t show their photographs – pre-dawn on Anzac Day scrawled “F the ANZACs” and “death to the IDF” on two RSLs in Melbourne. Those are the allegations. Those hearings will be held heard in September, but we’re not going to be able to show you the photographs for a year. Two of their supporters, by the way, unfurled a barrier on the court steps, effectively doubling down about “F the ANZACs”. There is a lot of anger about this. I thought we would catch up with Nationals MP for the Riverina. Shadow Minister for Veterans Affairs Michael McCormack joins us. We are not wanting to go into the allegations about what they did or didn’t do, we will leave that up to the court. But you ever heard in all your time, and you’ve been a journalist reporting in courts like I have, that someone can sit in a courtroom in Australia with a disguise on their face?
Michael McCORMACK
Oh, it’s bizarre, Steve, it truly is. Currently, I’m in the Wangaratta Veterans Support Centre, and at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra there are 103,000 names of men and women who did not come back from conflict because they gave their life so that people could live in a free and fair democracy. This is not a free and fair democracy, where people can cover up, and probably as well should cover up because of the shameful allegations being brought against them. You’re right. This is just totally bizarre. I mean, what next?
Steve PRICE
Well, it is Victoria, and it shouldn’t surprise people who are in Victoria. I mean, the magistrates court system here, you know, you see teenage children getting bail after bail after bail, after committing, you know, aggravated burglary, stealing people’s cars, holding machetes to people’s throats in the middle of the night. How did we get here? I mean, I mentioned at the start of the show that that Pauline Hanson referenced these sorts of things in the speech yesterday, at The Press Club. But I know you’ve been strong on this anyway. How did Australia get to the point where there are people running around saying, “F the ANZACs?” I mean, you know, I’ve seen a lot of a lot of bad things, Michael, like you have. I never thought we would get to this point.
Michael McCORMACK
If the words “Lest we Forget” mean anything, then our magistrates have to be in touch with community centres. And we saw in New South Wales, don’t just think it’s Victoria. We saw in NSW, Premier Chris Minns, and the Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon, did not want a protest to go ahead. Yet, the magistrate allowed that protest to go ahead. And then what did we see? We saw Al Qaeda flags being flown. We saw offensive remarks being uttered. This is not Australia. This is just not the Australia that you and I grew up in, Steve. I just wonder where these courts are going to lead. I just wonder what these magistrates are thinking when they allow these things to happen. The courts have to be representative of the people, and they’re simply not at the moment. So I look forward with interest to this case and how it unfolds.
Steve PRICE
I reckon if that happened in your hometown, and someone daubed on the front of your local RSL, “F the ANZACs”, I’m not sure they’d even get to court.
Michael McCORMACK
Oh well, I don’t know. I mean, I was dressed up as a Nazi during last year’s election campaign. Charges were brought against the person who did that, and the matter was thrown out just the other week, and the police were made to pay costs. So, you know, even despite the fact that there are new laws in against Nazi slogans against all of that, the charges were dropped. So, you know, it’s not just Victoria. Don’t feel special just because of what happened was alleged to have been occurring in Victoria. Our court system needs overhaul.
Steve PRICE
So Melbourne magistrates say we can’t identify them in a photograph or any vision for 12 months. How have we gone with Ben Roberts-Smith being paraded publicly off a plane on the tarmac at Sydney Airport, and every time that BRS turns up at court, he is filmed going in and out. I know he wouldn’t want his face covered and he wouldn’t be a coward to not let people know what he looks like. But the irony there of how the two different things being treated so differently just can’t escape anybody, surely.
Michael McCORMACK
Well, I look forward to Ben Roberts-Smith going to the opening of the Australian War Memorial next week and the new galleries. That’s plan that he’s going to do that. And we talk about Ben Roberts-Smith. We also talk about this insidious Federal Budget, where the Government is spending tens of millions of dollars to conduct a witch hunt against our veterans who may or may not have done something in the fog of war a decade or two ago. We should be proud of what our veterans have achieved. We should be proud of what the men in khaki have done for our nation and women too. But seriously, our Victoria Cross recipient deserve better than what they’ve received lately, and certainly Ben Roberts-Smith does.
Steve PRICE
Just before you go, you’ve sat around the Cabinet Table and you’ve been Deputy Prime Minister. What do you make of this five-week budget, which has, you know, fallen like a lead balloon? And they’ve got the Prime Minister and the Treasurer today saying, “This is not a backflip. No, no, we’re just tinkering at the edges”. I mean, it’s an absolute joke, isn’t it?
Michael McCORMACK
Well, it is an absolute joke. And Prime Minister Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers, they know now that there is white hot anger as well there should be amongst the small business community and amongst our veterans who’ve got a $5,000 cap on the Allied Health. I mean, go figure that out. I mean, for farmers, only today the Government has spent another goodness knows how many millions of dollars doing yet another buyback, taking productive water out of the Murray-Darling system and flushing it out of the mouth of the Murray. I mean, this is a Government that doesn’t care about regional Australia. It doesn’t care about people who are really doing it tough with this cost-of-living crisis brought about by Labor. Shame on Labor.
Steve PRICE
Good on you, Michael. Thank you, Michael McCormack.
Authorized by Michael McCormack, the National Party, Wagga Wagga.