Fairfax Radio Network’s general manager Graham Mott said Smith was off air until the network clarified claims made in an interview with former President of the Australian Workers Union, Bob Kernohan.

“I’ve instructed Michael not to be on air while we make further investigations,” Mott said, unwilling to use the word “suspension”.

He and 2UE management will meet with Smith tomorrow. Meanwhile Clinton Maynard is filling in during the afternoon shift today and possibly tomorrow.

2UE’s management has spent a week investigating claims made by Kernohan in a recorded interview with Smith. Smith has focused upon allegations concerning PM Julia Gillard and has promised for a week to air the interview. It is believed the interview focuses upon the behaviour of a former union official, Bruce Wilson, and his former relationship with Gillard in the early 1990s. …

He said it was a simple decision to investigate whether the material in Smith’s interview with Kernohan had evidence to support it. “It may mean we never broadcast the material,” Mott said.

We can’t hear allegations of theft from union members by a witness who has signed a statutory declaration about it?  Is that what’s happening in our free country?

Is it not on Bob Kernohan’s head if he falsely accuses someone?

All we need is the audio file – Wikileaks anyone?

Andrew Bolt,

Just what is everyone so frightened of?

First Glenn Milne has his entire column on Julia Gillard’s past relationship with a union conman pulled by The Australian, and is then dumped by the ABC as a commentator.

Now 2UE’s Michael Smith has been suspended for trying to raise the same issue and broadcast an interview with a former state president of the Australian Workers Union. Despite what Media Watch claimed last night, the decision to censor Smith’s broadcasts seems to have been based not on the usual legal grounds, because the interview and some subsequent material had been properly legalled. No, I suspect other considerations were behind it, and Media Watch should defend Smith, not slime him.

The issue isn’t so much whether you think this story is old news and a smear, or whether you think its relevant news about an issue that has never been fully investigated or properly answered.

The issue is whether you think the public should be allowed to decide such a thing for themselves, or whether you think government threats and a weak media should keep the information from it.

Again I should note that I make not the slightest suggestion that Gillard ever did anything underhand or remotely illegal. For me the issue was her judgment and the potential impact of the issue on her leadership. But now all that is as nothing compared to the issue now: a defence of a free press.

We must of course consider this could be a conspiratorial smear campaign against Ms Gillard by the Murdoch and now evidently Fairfax press organizations. However, I am sure, that Ms Gillard, as a lawyer and a Labor party member, would consider defrauding of unionists’ money a serious matter.  Notwithstanding any temporary political damage to her government, as the Prime Minister, I presume she would want to expose fully and have investigated thoroughly, any allegation involving such fraud in relation to Mr Craig Thomson as well as her previous partner, Mr Bruce Wilson. A person willing to sign a statutory declaration about misdeeds is a potential whistle blower and should be heard.

On the other hand, do we believe that a Prime Minister should have the power to suppress opinion pieces and interviews about alleged union-related crime  just by picking up the phone and talking to a newspaper editor, just because she may have been unknowingly involved with the people at the time? Is the PM above the law? I don’t believe so. If anyone does say lies and defames the PM, the PM has the right to sue for defamation, just like any other Labor MP, like Mr Thomson has done, like any of her staffers and like any citizen.

Ms Gillard has strenuously denied allegations in these stories, even though the stories do not allege any illegality by Ms Gillard, so I am not sure what she is denying.  I have not been able to find exactly which parts of the story she denies: Is it having been a solicitor at a law firm? Acting for AWU? Having had a relationship with Bruce Wilson? Having opened up accounts for him? Having renovated her house and  having bought some clothes? A simple explanation of what is true and what is false from Ms Gillard or a reference to where she has already done so sometime in the last 15 years would clear this matter up in a flash. No smearing would then be possible. Failing this, the public can only speculate what might be so embarrassing to her.

1. Climate sceptics and opponents of carbon tax are demonised and dehumanised as deniers.

2. Legal and orderly, if angry, demonstrations in Canberra and around Australia are labelled by government as extreme, right wing, Tea Party, Americanized in an effort to intimidate and delegitimize the participants and their message.

3. The ‘Convoy of No Confidence’, carefully controlled to minimise disruption in order to avoid demonisation, was then ridiculed as irrelevant, a Convoy of no Consequence and Incontinence by Mr Albanese and others.

4. Threat of investigation into media ownership and ‘bias’ by the Greens and Labor with ‘difficult questions to answer” under the guise of unrelated phone tapping in UK and talk of going to war with a news organisation.

4. Newspaper editors intimidated personally into retracting whole opinion pieces, when only a small part were alleged to be false.

5. HSU fraud whistle blower, Kathy Jackson is threatened by people unknown and silenced, now in hospital.

6. Lashing out a High Court Chief Justice for a judgment unfavourable to the government.

7. Government critic pulled off government owned ABC media channel.

8. Pressure on commercial media outlets to silence conservative bloggers  succeeds in temporarily silencing Michael Smith on2UE.

What next?

Update: edited for typos and readability.

Update:

Broadcaster taken off air over Gillard allegations

Tim Dick, SMH, September 07, 2011

They may be old, tired and comprehensively denied, but recycled claims about unproven actions by the Prime Minister’s former boyfriend have hurt a third media identity determined to air them over the objections of defamation lawyers.

Michael Smith, the afternoon host of Fairfax Media’s 2UE, was stood down yesterday after a scathing assessment by the ABC’s Media Watch of the trio reviving the claims: Smith, the News Ltd columnist Andrew Bolt and Glenn Milne of The Australian.

The general manager of 2UE, Tim McDermott, said the station supported Smith ”absolutely” but wanted to be cautious about claims surrounding Julia Gillard’s relationship in the 1990s with Bruce Wilson, a former Australian Workers Union official alleged to have embezzled funds.

No charges were laid by investigating police but Ms Gillard was linked to the allegations under the protection of parliamentary privilege in 1995 and 2001. They are repeatedly revived, and flatly denied by the Prime Minister.

During the past fortnight, Smith referred to a year-old statutory declaration by a former AWU state president, Bob Kernohan, but an interview with him has not gone to air. The station told Media Watch: ”We do not have sufficient evidence at this time to support the interview.”

Bolt referred to the declaration nine days ago and the next day Milne wrote in The Australian that in 2007 lawyers stopped him reporting ”the fact that Gillard shared a home in Fitzroy bought by Wilson using the embezzled funds”.

No evidence for that claim has emerged. The column was unchecked by lawyers and won the chief executive of News Ltd, John Hartigan, a furious prime ministerial phone call. The column was promptly pulled and an apology issued.

Bolt later implied that News Ltd capitulated in light of the possible inquiry into the media, given the sensitivity about the phone hacking scandal enveloping News Corp in Britain. News Ltd told Media Watch this was not a factor.

Yesterday, it was the turn of Fairfax Media, the publisher of the Herald, to act. Smith’s slot was filled by Clinton Maynard, a move that Mr McDermott attributed to its being ”slammed by Media Watch”. Smith would stay off air ”temporarily”, and a meeting held this morning to review his evidence for the claims.

Ms Gillard’s office said the move was a matter for 2UE but Bolt has inflated it from an issue of her judgment to that of a free press.

Mr McDermott disagreed, saying the move was to avoid a defamation action over the claims. ”We’ve got to make sure we’ve got the facts to back them up,” he said.