DONKEY DOLLARS
One of Julia Gillard’s final acts as Prime Minister was to give an extra $10 million to the ABC, a local community-based broadcasting outfit struggling to get by on a mere $1.2 billion every year.
That additional cash helped the ABC to fund an elite fact-checking unit ahead of last year’s election. Sadly, the ABC’s fact-checkers have since made little public impact. Their biggest success may have been crowding another truth-seeking bunch, the privately-funded PolitiFact Australia, out of the market.
But over the Anzac Day weekend the ABC’s fact-checkers finally hit their stride.
Kalgoorlie Miner Tuesday 20 July 1915
GALLIPOLI OPERATIONS. STRETCHER-BEARERS THEIR MAGNIFICENT WORK
Some, of us were sitting yarning that evening, whilst the sun set over the sea turning the craters of Imbros into the dull grey of an elephant's hide set against a back ground of the most delicate rose— - when someone passing said: 'I suppose you've heard that the man with the donkeys is dead?" It came as a real shock. Every body knew the man with the donkeys, and everybody knew that ifa man deserved honour in this war, it was he.He was a stretcher-bearer. Few people knew his name. , To most he was 'Scotty' or 'Murphy'—those who called him the one called his donkey the other. He was really Private Simpson, of the 3rd Field Ambulance.
