Burchett debate rages on at Crikey

The debate about Wilfred Burchett is still raging at Crikey, so intensely that the e-newsletter has set up the Burchett Chronicles, a separate blog devoted to the topic.

Peter Coleman comments on the debate in the current issue of the Australian Spectator:

“The Cold War is as forgotten as the Crimean War and the younger generation knows little about its grand guignol, lies, and bad faith. But if there is one book a young Australian could read to capture those years, it is On Burchett written by a Hungarian in Paris, Tibor Meray, and published in Melbourne by Callistemon Publications (PO Box 293, Belgrave 3160). Burchett was an Australian communist journalist, and Meray, also once a communist journalist, was his comrade during the the Korean War. After the Hungarian revolution, Meray defected to the free world. I claim a very marginal role in the book’s production. Some years ago I ransacked the bookshops to buy most of Burchett’s 30 works and send them on to Meray in Paris to help him document Burchett’s life-long mendacity, cunning and perfidy. For more documentary detail, the student must follow the debates on Crikey in recent weeks weeks between supporters of Meray and adherents of the old-time communist religion. The Party may be dead, but the faith lives on. It will no doubt in time re-emerge as a force in the world, perhaps in alliance with Islamicism. Read On Burchett and be prepared.”

Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James made a particularly interesting contribution to the debate at Crikey, including this observation:

Finally, with recent amendments to the Defence, Sedition and Crimes Acts, if any Australian now undertook the actions Wilfred Burchett undoubtedly did in the Korean War, and perhaps the Vietnam War, they would be rightly liable to prosecution. It should be noted that these actions are separate to those claimed to be just “reporting from the other side”. (They also prevent any future equivalent of David Hicks from falling into his particular legal limbo).

This is as it should be in any liberal democracy which goes to war. Our troops are committed to war by our duly elected government. We expect and require them to risk their lives and future well-being on behalf of all their fellow Australians. We also expect — and must have — their constitutional and institutional obedience as a disciplined defence force to lawful orders from our Government. The reciprocal obligation this invokes for the Australian Government and all Australians is to back up our troops by outlawing, prosecuting and punishing any Australian who recklessly or deliberately causes harm to our forces by aiding the enemy in time of war — especially if done directly. We also have reciprocal obligations to our allies when an Australian actively aids a common enemy on the battlefield.

It should also be noted that nothing in these new laws affects the right to peaceful and legitimate dissent from an Australian Government decision to participate in the war concerned.

The issue of Wilfred Burchett is not merely a matter of political differences as Nasht, Shimmin, Clugston and others appear to believe (to give them the benefit of the doubt). Nor is it whether a journalist with pronounced communist sympathies and biases is better or worse, say, than one with nazi or fascist affiliations. It is also not about the moral, legal and professional dilemmas caused when an Australian journalist genuinely tries to “report from the other side” in a war in which Australia is a belligerent party.

Australian Conservative has copies of On Burchett available. For further details, click here.