On the road to the invasion of Iraq, and through the two and a half years of bloody chaos since Baghdad’s fall, almost every Australian news-paper owned by Rupert Murdoch has supported each twist and turn of the American, British and Australian policy line. Oddly enough, however, during 2002 the humble Hobart Mercury did not. Here is its quite characteristic, fiercely anti-war editorial of September 12:
It would be wrong for the US pre-emptively to attack Iraq. It would be wrong for Australia to ride shotgun to any unilateral assault on the hated regime of Saddam Hussein … Australia must side with those nations urging President George W. Bush not to abandon the 50-year political doctrine which has underpinned the interests of the West … [A] blazing ember in the powder keg would be a dream scenario for the future rise of Islamic fascist fundamentalism. It would be Osama bin Laden’s dream come true – and Australia, and the world’s nightmare.
Four months later on January 17, 2003, the Hobart Mercury was singing the standard Murdoch tune:
History is littered with the victims of tyrants and the tattered reputations of those who failed to take a stand against them … There may be some disquiet in the Australian community about the Howard Government’s enthusiasm for a fight. But this is always the case when a nation – and the world – is confronted by barbarism on a scale that Saddam Hussein, armed with his weapons of mass destruction is capable of. No one wants a war. But the alternative – to let a madman thumb his nose at the rule of international law is an obscenity. Nations who live by the rule of law … have an obligation to confront these dark forces.
What had happened? In late 2003 I visited Hobart. A senior Mercury journalist told me that the newspaper for whom he worked had been instructed in writing by head office to alter its position on Iraq. One senior editorial writer had refused on principle and was given different duties. The paper, however, fell into line. When the invasion took place, like every Murdoch paper, the Mercury cheered. It called the invasion a classical “good versus evil plot”.