Racist with an S

How do you spell racist?

Marieke Hardy describes herself as “your favourite ABC investigative reporter”. Addressing a lesser-known (that is, Victorian) political scandal, Hardy has chosen to go behind the scenes of Labor MP Don Nardella’s “spelling slur”.

Constituent Fiona Peterson wrote to Nardella, "You seem to not want to help anyone except the immagration people". Nardella’s reply read simply: "My advice to you stands from my initial email reply. Learn how to spell 'immigration' before using the word again"

The only outlets that appear to carry the story in a quick Google search are the Herald Sun and News.com.au, both owned by News Ltd. The stories are identical, and while Nardella’s quote contains the implication that this was not the extent of his correspondence with Peterson, the item itself suggests that Nardella did nothing but dismiss Peterson.

To Hardy herself: she covers the other side of the story, that of defending Nardella and identifying an endemic problem: racists can’t spell. Hardy has taken a non-story and transformed it into a comedy piece that also exposes a disturbing (and disturbed) subset of the internet. In so doing she reveals the more pressing issue: that racism and ignorance remain unremarked upon in society while politicians are the frequently cast as villains, particularly if their ideology is diametrically opposite that of the publishing outlet’s.

Hardy is guilty of this in that she presents Pauline Hanson as a punchline without comment – and this is where reader bias comes in, because I thought that was funny. By making a direct correlation between hate speech, racist ideas and diminished intellectual capacity, Hardy has informed, entertained and demystified a subset of “the other”.

No one could confuse Hardy’s investigative reportage with actual investigation and reportage, but she has produced an admirable piece of work nonetheless.

Gillard and Abbott nearly let The Punch have a knock out

The Punch is supposed to be News Ltd's answer to ABC’s The Drum, and similar sites such as Crikey and its spin off Pure Poison. Coming from a News Ltd funded operation, “Julia and Tony learning the art of limited overs politics” is presented surprisingly without much in the way of spin – especially in the context of it being published a mere eight hours after the somewhat dismissive “Bob Brown is feeling lucky”.

Paul Colgan approaches his subject, the second people’s forum of the election campaign, in an informative but folksy way. Colgan almost immediately admits that the cricket analogy that he is using is tenuous at best – and it was already wholly lost on me, regardless. I’m not “down home” enough for this sort of talk but undoubtedly a lot of The Punch’s readers would understand.

This recount of the forum is remarkably balanced, with Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard both coming across as flawed individuals receiving mixed reactions from their shared audience. Colgan is critical of the responses of both of them, but seems to pay particular attention to the perceived ridiculousness of Abbott’s answers in regards to peak oil and the Global Financial Crisis. It is definitely not something that I would reasonably have expected to ever read on The Punch, and certainly not on something run by News Ltd.

Colgan’s article was apparently composed in haste with a minimum of editing applied: several sentences are missing key words, meaning that the reader has to deal with a couple of stumbling blocks. Still, despite its flaws, Colgan has produced one of the more readable items on The Punch website. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but true nonetheless.