Erin Patterson on the stand; How the hell did the ABC stuff up QandA? Greta grates on the right; James Massola will know what to do!'; Lines on the Air India disaster....

Everyone's crashing this week....

Two Days in The Valley; Erin Patterson on the stand

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‘Disagree disagree disagree’. By all newspaper accounts, Erin Patterson, defendant in a triple murder case, only began to lose composure on about day three or four of her cross-examination. Your correspondent had been there for the last day of her evidence-in-chief, led by Colin Mandy, and then for the beginnings of her cross, at the hands of Nanette Rogers. There has been some surprise that she took the stand at all. Perhaps, in the end, there was little choice. Patterson, with the composure she has kept throughout the trial, moved back and forth between the dock and the witness box, shuffling the large frame that she would refer to in tearful evidence as to ‘having always had a problem with my weight’. Mandy led her on that, right in the middle of the extended account, her version, of how three people died following a lunch at her place. She had enjoyed foraging for wild mushrooms for a couple of years before the lunch, she testified. No, not with anyone else. Could anyone attest to her foraging? No, just anonymous people who had seen her doing it. Oh, the children of course. She would take the children along with her. She had wanted to bring the flavour of these mushrooms out. That’s why she had bought the dehydrator: three months before the fatal lunch. She had tupperware containers of wild mushrooms to dehydrate. Yes, she accepted that death cap mushrooms were in the fatal meal. She must have mixed in the Asian grocery mushrooms she had bought - in the store whose address and suburb she couldn’t remember, the store that has never been found - with the wild mushrooms. She was devastated by the deaths of Ian and Gail, her former in-laws. She had loved them. Her children had loved them. Yes, she had lied to them that she had cervical/ovarian cancer. That was to cover the gastric surgery she was going to have. Yes, she had told the cops she never foraged for mushrooms. That was a panicked lie. Yes, she had gone home from the hospital and taken the dehydrator to the tip. Yes, she was captured on CCTV doing it. Yes, she had lied about owning the dehydrator. Yes, the police had found the operating manual in the kitchen drawer. And so on and so on. Patterson became repeatedly emotional through the chief evidence, as she talked of her struggles with her weight, of the collapse of her marriage, of her love for Don and Gail. So there was, at the end of it, at least a possible account of how a lunch had all gone horribly wrong, accidentally picking lethal mushrooms, accidentally mixing them with shop-bought ones, accidentally putting it into a concentrated mushroom meal.

Whether that survived as a reasonable explanation, Nanette Rogers cross-examination, will be something for the jury to consider. Rogers, with a mop of gray hair, sensible shoes and Specsavers eyewear, might have given the impression that it wouldn’t be a hard cross. That might have been the point of someone looking like she’s returning Richard Flanagan novels to the branch library. But it was on from the get-go, Rogers first seeking to establish that Patterson had been running two lines for some time before the lunch. Outward amity towards ex- and family, and then a steady seething anger, expressed to Facebook groups, as the post-marriage relationship came apart, Simon Patterson put ‘separated’ on his tax form, and refused to pay the kids’ school fees. The Facebook stuff ‘I swear to God this fucking family’ etc etc was not of itself anything remotely close to establishing a focused motive - who hasn’t bitched about the people they genuinely love, in similar terms, whether at pub or on-screen? - but Rogers wanted to establish a divided public persona, one which could render the public shows of emotion as a performance that had continued, long after the feels had changed.

She had a lot of material to get through. She was dealing with a somewhat changed Patterson, as well. When the cross began, it seemed to this observer that disappeared, the blubby, blobby, slightly silly country woman, and a sharper customer appeared in her place. Patterson didn’t bite back as Rogers, hour by hour crawled through the hours and days, pulling apart Patterson’s many admitted lies. But she was suddenly sharp and focused, on the ball, quick on the response, and on the question to a question: ‘ can you repeat…’ ‘do you mean…’ ‘are you asking….’. There’s no way not to put it all in gender terms: the trial is so goddam womanish, you can see why medieval assizes started interrogating ducks as to what Goodwife Harrison said to Mistress Darby about Squire Tompkins down at the mill pond. What are these women doing all day, what are getting up to? But Rogers ‘s cross examination, and Patterson’s often understatedly combative response was less of an extension of the Patriarchal Law to women’s doings of cooking and homemaking, and possibly more, as much as it was some sort of square off between two enemies in a country kaffeeklatsch. Rogers’s tone was never pompous, but it was unsparing: it was the slow and steady thin-slice paring of a woman she thought was just a total bullshit artist from start to finish. This was all in the ‘on the record’ cross-examination style which never makes it into the TV shows: just building up the case that the witness had lied repeatedly ‘you never went to any Asian grocery store? Agree or disagree?’ ‘Disagree’. Agree or disagree Agree or disagree Agree or disagree rat a tat tat. All for the summing up, to try and shatter any possibility that one or two jurors might hang on to a ‘reasonable’ explanation.

Then there was that moment:

Rogers: I put it to you that you had never sought medical consultation for gastric bypass

Patterson: No, no I’d made an appointment for pre-advice at the Enrich Clinic in South Yarra…

Rogers, slightly stopped over the over the …law-talking person lectern thing, twitched a little at that. One of the lean young juniors twitched too, and began scribbling something down

A longish pause

Rogers: That is a matter to which I will return…Now, did you…

Return Rogers did, in the last two days, to this matter which had never come up in main evidence, and after the prosecution gophers had presumably scrambled all over Enrich Clinic in South Yarra, at which apparently Erin Patterson had made no appointment, for a service that the clinic does not in fact offer. This came as Rogers really got up in the grill of the defence account, and really let nothing unchallenged. Gradually, the parallel narrative started to fit together, of Patterson panicked (for whatever reason) checking herself out of hospital so she could get home and get that dehydrator to the tip. The dehydrator she does not deny must have had death caps in it. The species of mushroom she appears to have done an online global location search for. On Bing. Someone used Bing!

God almighty, wild mushrooms, churches, foragings, meticulous preparations, chat group mutterings, country towns, laneways, properties, the affections of children. The wifi hums, as did once the aether, with rumour and incantation, the tenth century folded into the twenty-first. Houses, hearths, hamlets, animal feedings, bakings, table layings, kids ballet gear, and for whatever reason, dead, the parents and aunt of the man she had made a home with, shared a bed with, let into her womb. And, how, the morning of the day, she had drawn on every remnant affection they might have had, every string she could tug, every, ah say it Rundle, every wiles she, well read the text when he said he wasn’t coming:

That’s really disappointing. I’ve spent many hours this week preparing lunch for tomorrow, which has been exhausting in light of the issues I’m facing, and spent a small fortune on beef eye fillet to make beef Wellingtons because I wanted it to be a special meal, as I may not be able to host a lunch like this again for some time. It’s important to me that you’re all there tomorrow, and that I can have the conversations that I need to have. I hope you’ll change your mind. Your parents, and Heather and Ian are coming at 12.30. I hope to see you there.

There’s a lot we don’t know, but one thing of which we’re certain. Erin Patterson really, really, really wanted the father of her children at that lunch.

The trial continues.

Meeja

Tell Me Quanda Quanda Quanda

How did the ABC screw up Q and A?

Every week when I lived in the UK, I would tune into, or catch up stream, Question Time, the standby TV programme, hitherto hosted by the Dimblebii, in which five people sit round a horseshoe shaped desk and respond to questions from host and audience on the topics of the day. This would either be four politicians (Sir Richard Greebly-Botherton, Tory MP for Preening Quotford, Dave Sidcup, Labour for Birmingham Slapping, Baronness Lizzo Slice [ex singer with punk classics Bloodspotting, now Lib Dem Lords] and Nigel Farage, always Nigel Farage). Fifth would be a ring in: Howard Jacobson, Jennifer Saunders, or a recently released convicted murderer. Other times it would be non-pollies: Will Self, an ageing Cambridge Boy who knows the Guardian editor, a woman arctic explorer who shot and ate her own sled dogs, and Grayson Perry, always Grayson Perry.

Thus, it has ticked along for decades. As did before it, and still, the radio equivalent Any Questions on BBC Radio Four, which is now seventy years old. There’s no magic to it. Get the host right, get the questions right, and make sure some people are never invited for a second time. There’s no concept there. It’s just people round a desk.

Which raises the question, how did the ABC screw up QandA, so badly that it could not continue? What sort of anti-genius does it take to do that?

The tempting answer is the duo of Patricia Karvelas and producer Alice Workman, who supplied the usual kiss-of-death to the show, turning it into a preening celebration of a mild progressivism, heavily policed so that an actual interesting opinion - whether on Gaza, trans or whatever - never appeared. But the rot had set in long before. Stan Grant’s brief tenure had been a platform for his performative narcissistic moralising, sucking all energy in. Hamish MacDonald had left for a better gig. And so on. Through all that, the show sort of jumped the shark* in instalments, with a weird new set, panelists running out like they were on The Price is Right, and the presenter perched on the side, like they couldn’t get a ticket.

But what really killed the show was the cowardice that crept through the ABC. First in its higher ranks, and then at every level as, Soviet-style, they tried to second guess how the higher authorities would react to political pressure. With a narrowing of opinion range, the chit chat became dull. To juice it up, they shifted from Tony Jones artful ‘I’ll take that as a comment’ umpiring, to Karvelas’s cheap gotcha questioning, at which point the death spiral commenced.

The show was always somewhat limited in its opinion range, but it was wider at the start. The genuine materialist left was largely excluded. Your correspondent was on twice, but I was, it was said by the left, the ‘most left’ that the show would take (I am held to be ‘less left’ because I tend to think an 1867 economics textbook does not provide a roadmap for critique and transformation of the present). Still, no Jeff Sparrow, Antony Loewenstein, no Celeste Liddle, no Troy Gray or other left union leaders, no Melinda Cooper or numerous others. But also, a paucity of genuine conservatives. No John Carroll, no Gray Connolly, no Bettina Arndt, and so on. Some of these people appeared on ‘the Drum’, and that was significant: the idea that Q and A was too primetime to have interesting people on, but the Drum was a slum where they could lurk.

That’s what killed it. If the show had interesting stoushes, between different positions, people would watch, no matter how ludicrous the faffing around with sets and musical items was. Without it, no amount of aid faffing makes it watchable.

True, the talent pool is smaller in Australia than the UK. Possibly a show of 45 minutes, sometimes with only 3 guests might have worked. But there is enough here to fill 30 shows a year, and the inability to make it work is just lame failure for everyone concerned.

The cowardice in the ABC is everywhere. The broadcaster has now eliminated Lateline, The Drum and Q and A. Anything that resembles a place of vigorous opinion and contestation, in favour of controllable, dumbed-down news packages. There is every sign that Hugh Marks will only make it worse. It amounts to the steady, inner destruction of the broadcaster, once again, TV on the instalment plan.

*jumping the shark is TV speak for a show that has run out of ideas and possibilities. Taken from Happy Days (sitcom, not Beckett) when Fonzie bets he can, er, jump over a shark. The show was dead from then.

Scrapbook

No voyage of discovery as Greta turns her back on reality

‘Mockery’: Greta Thunberg's recent activist stunt is ‘acting’

‘Total political stunt’: Greta Thunberg’s ‘ignorant’ Gaza plan backfired by her being deported

Greta Thunberg’s ‘Mediterranean cruise holiday’ cut short by IDF

Greta Thunberg arrives in France following humiliating deportation after failed Gaza trip

‘Global warming messiah to global joke’: Greta's hypocrisy exposed in 'embarrassing' stunt

‘Does not care about reality’: Greta Thunberg’s ‘selfie yacht’ intercepted by Israel

Commodore Thunberg sails through the looking glass

Thunberg simply a naive pawn for terrorists

…

World goes ‘quiet’ on Greta Thunberg’s activism

News Corpse headlines on ‘failed’ Gaza flotilla

Erewhon

James Massola now writing columns advising individual couples on life issues. Massola, political correspondent of The Age, having now written three columns in a row advising Albo what he must do, is branching out. Friday’s column ‘Dave Prosser needs to finish concreting the drive, and listen more emphathetically to Beth’ by James Massola, has 800 words of advice for a Montmorency couple currently going through marriage difficulties. Massola lays out the case for Dave being more mindful, but he’s not without criticism elsewhere. ‘Beth, that laugh is annoying’ he signs off with. Next week’s Massola columns will be on what the Liberal Party must do now, a four point plan for Chris Minns in NSW, a suggestion for the UNSW quantum computing lab to solve qubit stabilisation problems, and how the Davis’s of Pound Street, Campsie, can resolve their annual Bali vs Bega holiday planning ding-dong.

Poem of the week

Lines on the Air India crash

by Kim Serca

‘Bodies everywhere’

Said the one who survived

Fire and metal raining

*

Confirms (perhaps unfair?)

As soon as they’ve arrived

The Poms start complaining

till next week….