Nobody can say that Ross Coulthart hasn’t had a stellar career in journalism; the dude has five Walkley Awards, including a Gold Walkley, a Logie, a Prime Minister’s Award for Australian History and a bunch of other prizes on the mantelpiece.
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But the former 60 Minutes and Four Corners man picked up a piece of silverware on the weekend that we suspect won’t be going anywhere near the pool room.
Coulthart is this year’s winner of the Australian Skeptics’ Bent Spoon, awarded to what the doubters’ dub “the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of pseudoscientific or paranormal piffle”.
Nice.
It’s the aliens, of course. Coulthart has been writing, broadcasting and podcasting claims these past few years that governments across the world have been secretly storing wreckage of downed extraterrestrial spacecraft and the bodies of their pilots.
Look, it’s a better way to make a living than spin-doctoring for war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith, which was how Rossco was earning a crust before he got into the aliens caper, but the Skeptics are not impressed.
Australian Skeptics chief executive Tim Mendham told us that Coulthart’s claims – he also reckons the Vatican is in on the cover-up – are “based on hearsay with no evidence, no bodies, no space junk”.
“Coulthart’s award-winning career as an investigative journalist is obviously no defence against belief in unsubstantiated claims,” Mendham said.
Coulthart’s win puts him into exalted company with past winners of the Bent Spoon including former celebrity chef-turned-wellness-weirdo Pete Evans, the ABC, SBS, former MP Craig Kelly, the Australian Vaccination Network and, it says here, a psychic dentist.
We didn’t have high hopes of getting a quote when we gave Coulthart a shout on Sunday to congratulate him on the win and ask if the Skeptics’ claims were fair after he told us last time we spoke that “CBD … belittles and takes the piss”.
We haven’t heard back.
MICK’S MATES
Last week, Project co-host, occasionally Herald columnist and nationally renowned professional smart guy Waleed Aly used his TV show to spruik a good cause.
Aly encouraged Melbourne viewers to get down to Victoria Park for an event called Laps for Love, a walkathon to raise money for autism.
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“It’s gonna be a hoot!” Aly said.
Aly, who’s got a child on the spectrum, is an ambassador for the charity behind the event, Equal Access for Autism, which was set up by the colourful Melbourne underworld figure Mick Gatto.
Now Aly, the ABC-friendly voice of small-l-liberal reason, and Gatto ain’t a crossover we expected to be discussing. But despite Gatto’s chequered past, he’s had a lot of success getting famous faces to join his charitable endeavours.
So much so that Gatto told us his event on Sunday was “massive”, drawing a far bigger crowd than expected.
That crowd included several past and present footy players, union figures, comedy troupe Sooshi Mango and celebrity chef George Calombaris. Aly was a no-show but put out a hype video for the event on Instagram on Saturday. Also unable to attend was Gatto’s good mate Charlie Teo – the neurosurgeon who’s banned from practising in Australia after being found guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct was off operating overseas.
REVOLVING DOOR
Last year, in the chaotic final days of the Perrottet government, Eleni Petinos was dumped as a minister after allegations she’d bullied her staff, using language like “stupid” and “retarded”.
After clinging onto her Miranda electorate, Petinos is back as an opposition spokeswoman in Mark Speakman’s opposition. And she’s looking for staff again, with an advertisement for a temporary electorate officer, offering up to $88,756 per annum, doing the rounds.
When the allegations against Petinos were first reported last year, about 30 staff had left her Miranda electorate office since she was elected in 2015.
We hope any aspiring young Liberal hacks know what they’re getting in for.
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