Former Finance Minister Ken Henry hopes the media can do better.
He said the media must hold Australia’s political system accountable for its failure to bring a better future for young Australians.
“Another report tells the same story,” he said last week.
“The environment is not protected. Biodiversity is not preserved. Naturally, it is declining systematically.
“We have the entire industry, and our business model is built on the destruction of nature.
“We have objected to us. The destruction of our natural environment now poses an existential threat to everything we value.
“I’m angry at my failure. But we should all be angry at the confidence of our collective failure to design economic structures, including environmental regulations, for a better future for our children and grandchildren,” he said.
Dr. Henry made the comments at the National News Club on Wednesday.
But in the Q&A section of the speech, he picked out the media.
He said that today’s politicians will not live within 100 years, but young Australians will have to live in the world that today’s politicians leave for them.
He said that unless the media is responsible for the political system, its obligations to provide our children with a better future, they will not be complied with.
“We’ve talked about the key role of ‘Fourth Manor’,” he said.
“It’s time we rebuild it.”
Political pressure in the media
What does he mean?
“Fourth Manor” refers to the news media.
In Australian society, the first three estates in our democracy are the parliament (legislature), the government (executive) and the courts (judicial body).
As the so-called fourth estate, the media should monitor the actions of these three estates to hold them accountable.
Dr. Henry’s appeal to Australian media last week to remember its crucial democratic role.
But this is not an easy task.
Why has the trust in mainstream media declined? Why are people increasingly turning to the “Fifth Manor” for news and analysis?
this Fifth Manor Refers to the growing network of alternative and independent news sources, including bloggers, podcasters and influencers.
Here, many journalists who once worked in traditional media are now working.
The large news output of Fifth Manor is dedicated to documenting the chronic and systematic failures of our fourth manor old media to illustrate the truth about the world today.
This phenomenon reflects something bigger in the world we live in.
Two weeks ago, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, the oldest former Malaysian Prime Minister, recently turned 100, shared his feelings about where he thinks we are:
“With the world of human civilization, there is something wrong with the world,” He wrote.
“For centuries, we have been freeing our own barbaric behavior in the midst of human society, injustice, human oppression (…)
“But can we say we are still civilized now? In the past three decades, especially we have undermined most of the moral values we have established.
“Now we see the sacrificial revelation of killing. We see genocide being committed before our own eyes. Worse, genocide is actually promoting and defending genocide (…)
“Will we stop? No. We cannot. Because those who preach human rights are those who destroy our hard civilizations.
“I hide my face. I’m ashamed. Civilization is no longer the norm.”
Independent Court and the Truth
Dr. Henry lamented in his speech last week that our entire industry is built on the destruction of the natural world.
But many of the people who run major media companies in the world have invested a lot of financial investments in these disruptive industries.
Their media (and think tanks) have spent decades attacking the scientific community and other media in order to undermine global efforts on climate change.
They have been attacking CSIRO for decades?
But for argument, let us assume that Dr. Henry fulfilled his wishes and that enough media companies could revive the ideal spirit of the Fourth Manor to form a key mass.
Where can the revitalized Fourth Manor seek “an agreed facts” about the world we live in so that our political system can occupy the next few decades?
Thankfully, Australia’s independent courts remain a recognized source of facts and truth in 2025.
We are fortunate to have a legal system that avoids corruption in other countries that avoid legal systems.
In recent weeks, federal courts have issued some judgments that should help the Fourth Manor maintain its position.
Climate Change and Law
One of these judgments is Pabai vs Australia Federationpublished on Tuesday.
As my ABC colleagues Kirstie Wellauer and Stephanie Boltje wrote, this is the first time that an Australian court has ruled whether the Commonwealth has a legal obligation to protect its citizens from climate change, and whether cultural losses should be compensated and cultural losses from climate change should be compensated.
Federal Court Judge Michael Wigney believes that the Commonwealth does not owe the people of Torres Strait Islanders the responsibility to protect them from climate change or fund adaptation measures.
He also ruled that Australia’s greenhouse gas emission targets are issues of “core government policies” and should be decided by parliament, not by courts.
He said he was “very sympathetic” to the case of the people of Torres Strait Islander, but the existence of Australian law does not provide a real or effective way through which they can make claims on the matter.
He wrote: “Unless and Australian laws change, this will be a case.
“Up until then, the only appeal that applicants and other Torres Strait Islanders have is to seek help through the ballot box.”
But Justice Wigney discovered something else.
He found that when the Australian government set targets for emission reduction between 2015 and 2021 (when the Federal Union was in power), “it “failed to interact with the best or truly available science when setting these targets.”
Judge Wigney wrote: “The best science is and is clear.”
“To prevent the most serious and dangerous effects of climate change, each country must take steps to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to ensure that the global average temperature rise reaches 2°C above the industrial level of industrialization and efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5°C to higher than the out-of-school production levels.
“These key objectives are included in the Paris Agreement where Australia is a political party.
“In this case, the evidence suggests that the reduction targets set by the federal government in 2015, 2020 and 2021 are clearly inconsistent with these targets or international obligations under the Paris Agreement,” he found.
Last week at the Press Club, I asked Dr. Henry about this discovery.
If the media wants Australia’s political system to be responsible for its obligation to bring a better future for young Australians, what hope would be if the Australian government doesn’t even care about science?
Henry replied: “What is missing here is respect for science, respect for evidence, respect for facts.”
Anti-Semitism, Israel and Zionism
The second important judgment published earlier this month is Wertheim vs. Haddad.
In this case, Federal Court Judge Angus Stewart ruled that a series of lectures by Islamic missionary Wissam Haddad at the Sydney Prayer Centre in November 2023 must be removed from social media because they contain material that is “fundamentally racist and anti-Semitism.”
He found that the speech violated the Racial Discrimination Act.
“They, as a group, made an inappropriate generalization of Jews,” he wrote.
“In November 2023, Jews in Australia will be subject to harassment and intimidation.
“This is even more so because they are made when the vulnerability and vulnerability experienced by Australian Jews, but if made by October 7, 2023, they will also harass and intimidate.
He wrote: “This is because of their deep offensiveness and the long history of persecution associated with the use of such remarks against Jews. Australia’s impact on Jews will be profound and serious.”
In his Summary In the reasons for making the judgment, Judge Stewart also said:
“The court found that the difficult passages and preaching in the interview said about Israel’s actions, especially the criticism and derogatory things of Israel’s defense force and Zionists in Gaza, but ordinary, reasonable listeners would not understand those things about Jews.
“The person would understand that not all Jews are Zionists, and that Zionist depreciation constitutes a philosophical or ideological depreciation, not a race or race or race or race or race.
“In addition, political criticism of Israel, whether inflammation or adversity, is not a criticism of the nature of Jews in general, nor is it based on the racial or racial identity of Jews.
“The conclusion is that criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitism is a necessity of conclusion, that is, blaming Jewish Israel for being anti-Semitism; one is anti-Semitism.”
This is an important paragraph.
It should help Australian media consider more clearly one of the deepest conflicts in the 21st century and maintain Australia’s political system to illustrate its participation, participation, handling, handling and debate on conflicts.
Both federal court rulings provide a reliable foundation for mainstream media to revitalize the Fourth Manor.
