Waiting for the apology

A few weeks ago the Fairfax press, and indeed the Murdoch press, both ran with a story that that John Howard and Alexander Downer had "distorted" advice to them when using the phrase "biological agent" to describe a white powder that had been sent to the Indonesian embassy. The alleged reason for this was because documents obtained under FOI from ACT Pathology and the Federal Police never used the phrase. Have a look at Tim Dunlop's Blogocracy post about this, where he ends with this:

You simply can’t take at face value a word that comes out of their mouths. It’s about time the media stopped reporting this tendency as ‘smart politics’ and started calling it what it is, dishonesty.

For those who love reading stupid Howard conspiracy theories, read some of the comments to that post too.

Today, the Sydney Morning Herald points this out:

ADVICE relied on by the Prime Minister to describe flour sent to the Indonesian embassy last year as a "biological agent" appears to have originated in the ACT Emergency Services Authority, according to documents just released.

Unsigned situation reports produced by the authority's Emergency Co-ordination Centre on June 1 last year, the day the powder was found at the embassy, say the material "has been positively identified as a biological agent", that further testing was under way and a result was likely to take 24 to 48 hours.

Yet, according to the original report in The Age:

Staff at ACT Health and ACT Emergency Services were stunned when the Government called the powder a biological agent.

Obviously, whoever The Age spoke to at ACT Emergency Services did not know what was in its own situation reports. Did the reporter really speak to anyone of significance there?

Any sign of an apology from the press over this? Of course not. From further down today's SMH story:

Earlier this month Mr Howard and the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, denied a Herald report that they had distorted test results on the material. Mr Howard said he and Mr Downer had quoted directly from advice provided by the Protective Security Co-ordination Centre saying it had tested positive as a biological agent and that further testing would need to be carried out to determine what the substance actually was.

The Government has not released the full protective security advice but the new documents show the centre was liaising with the Emergency Co-ordination Centre, suggesting their reports were probably used in the protective security advice to the Commonwealth Government.

There seems to be no suggestion that the Emergency Co-ordination Centre's situation reports picked up the phrase "biological agent" from John Howard himself. (The SMH report could easily have clarified this by telling us the time of the first "situation report" was issued. If it was prior to Howard's press conference, there is no wriggle room left for conspiracy theorising at all.)

But basically, it seems to me that the SMH story comes as close as they can bring themselves to saying they were wrong, and Howard and Downer's version was completely correct, without actually saying it.

Today's story tries to salvage some criticism of the government because:

The biological terrorism scare continued until June 2, when the Government announced the powder was not harmful.

This was despite an email from the federal police national manager of intelligence, Grant Wardlaw, sent to the office of the Justice Minister, Chris Ellison, at 6.35pm on June 1 making clear there was no confirmed evidence the powder was a harmful substance. Dr Wardlaw said the powder had tested positive to gram bacilli.

"Gram bacilli is a commonly occurring bacteria. If spores of this bacteria are found to be growing in the substance this raises the level of potential risk.

"Information to date is that no spores have been identified by pathology," he said.

So, it is still some sort of scandal that the "scare" (which presumably only affected anyone working at the Indonesian embassy in the first place) was in place for about 24 hours? Talk about trying to make a story out of nothing.

And by the way, don't bother looking for this story in The Age today. It doesn't even appear there at all. News Limited doesn't seem to have run it either.

This is why our press is so respected.