Rudd slips on Murdoch's top editor

The consequences of opposition leader Kevin Rudd's drunken night out at a New York strip club are yet to play out. Whatever happened, he has shown an appalling lack of judgement and a dubious attitude to women.

 

There will be lots of column inches written about this incident and only time will reveal the extent of the political fallout for Labor. But there is one bit of the story that is worth putting on the record before it is sidestepped in the rush to keep the focus on Mr Rudd.

 

One of Mr Rudd's drinking partners on that infamous night in September 2003 was Col Allan, editor-in-chief of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. It was Murdoch's Sunday Telegraph that broke the Rudd-stripper story yesterday, on the eve of the federal election.

 

Mr Allan used to be editor of the Daily Telegraph. In 1995 he ran a front-page story about students who supposedly had the lowest exam marks in NSW, accompanied by a huge photo of the entire class of Mt Druitt High School (in western Sydney) who sat the Higher School Certificate that year. The headline read 'Class We Failed' and the article stated "An entire class of 36 students at Mt Druitt High School failed".

 

The students sued News Ltd for defamation, and won.

 

When interviewed by the ABC ten years later about this story, Mr Allan defended his action arguing

that he was fighting for the right of students in disadvantaged suburbs to a better education.

 

More insights

on the ways of Mr Allan came from one of his former employees at the Daily Telegraph, Stephen Mayne, founder of the website Crikey. Interestingly Mr Mayne was prompted to reveal all following that paper's revelations of former NSW opposition leader John Brogden's night on the town.

 

"I only had two years on the paper in the late 1990s, but this involved sitting in the daily news conference as business editor and later chief of staff. Coming from Melbourne, it was quite a culture shock to experience then editor Col Allan, whose conduct would include smoking in the office, urinating in his sink during news conferences and regularly making racist and sexist remarks." This is when we learnt that Mr Allan regularly referred to Muslims as "towelheads".

 

Since Mr Allan started at the New York Post, stories on his personal habits during news conferences have dried up; but details of his conservative political outlook have not. Earlier this year Mr Allan ran an editorial

the headline "Barack's blunder". Although the heading suggests this article is about pulling down presidential hopeful Barack Obama, the overall intent is to glorify Australian Prime Minister John Howard. It is sycophantic in the extreme.

 

But it is also worth remembering what the brief Obama-Howard battle was over. Mr Obama earlier this year was talking up the need for a total US troop withdrawal from Iraq by March 2008.

 

Mr Howard's response

was extreme: "If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats."

 

Yet only six months later, it is Mr Howard who is warning

his counterparts in Iraq that Australian and other western troops could pull out if there is not more "reform".  

 

Mr Allan has not yet penned an editorial on this apparent softening of Mr Howard's attitude to withdrawing troops from Iraq, and his harsh words when Mr Obama said something similar. Maybe he has been busy dredging his memory to help out with another News Ltd story – the night he invited a possible future Australian MP out in Manhattan for a few drinks.

 

But Mr Allan's flip-flopping on criticising possible pullouts of troops from Iraq and four-year memory lapse on possibly the hottest Rudd story to date would probably not worry his boss Mr Murdoch too much.

 

Mr Allan not only bucks journalistic standards; he has bucked the national trend in falling paper sales. Last year the New York Post increased its circulation by 5.1 percent. Mr Allan described

it as "a joyous occasion". Maybe that's how he also describes his night out with Mr Rudd.

 

I guess it all helps sell newspapers.