GOOD on David Koch for slamming his employer, Channel Seven, for its purported $2 million deal with Schapelle Corby. It is disgusting.
Corby should not be paid a single cent. She is a convicted drug smuggler who deserves to be treated with nothing but a healthy dose of contempt.
I have never believed in her innocence. Not for one second. Zilch. Nada.
Yes, she has done it tough for nine years in a Balinese prison. They are not nice places. It wouldn’t have been a pleasant experience. But tough. Do the crime, do the time.
As soon as her boogie board bag was lifted off the carousel at Denpasar Airport Corby would have known it was far too heavy. Blind Freddy could have told her that a boogie board does not weigh the equivalent of two house bricks.
Why, when she realised it weighed a ton, did she not just alert the Indonesian authorities? Obviously, something was not right with it. It had suddenly become heavy. Instead of raising the alarm, she tried to get it through customs.
Regardless of how the marijuana got to be in there, it was her boogie board. Nobody else’s.
Possession is nine tenths of the law. She was busted. To me, the case always has been that simple.
But no, we’ve had to put up with years of her protesting her innocence, even when revelation after revelation came out about her family’s criminal behaviour.
I refer, particularly, to her dead drug dealing father and her home invading step-brother, who broke into a house looking for drugs and threatened its occupants with a machete.
Then there was the three-times married foul-mouthed mother, the equally foul-mouthed sister and another criminally convicted step brother who repeatedly attacked the Indonesian criminal justice system.
These are the people Channel Seven has supposedly decided to give $2 million in its bid for television ratings. Shame on them.
DAVID KOCH LETS RIP OVER $2 MILLION CORBY PAYMENT
Kochie strikes me as one of those guys who speaks his mind. Good on him. We need more people in this country’s media like him. His sentiments that Channel Seven should have nothing to do with Corby, let alone paying her $2 million, are spot on.
Veteran journo Mike Willesee, who is meant to be doing the exclusive tell-all interview, has come out denying the figure. As he would. The tide of public opinion has turned on Channel Seven this morning like a tsunami.
I have never believed in cheque-book journalism. It has been the common practice of TV networks and women’s magazines in Australia for years.
In 30 years as a newspaper journalist on both sides of the Tasman I have never paid for a story, neither am I personally aware of my employers paying for a story.
Pictures, yes. Occasionally. Depends on what they were and how they were obtained.
But if someone has ever asked for money to tell their story we have told them to go elsewhere. That has been my experience anyway.
If someone has a story to tell, particularly if they want to publicly protest their innocence, then why on earth should they be paid to do it. Surely the mere fact that they are being given an opportunity to present their side of the story should be enough motivation.
But no, not when it comes to the Corbys. They would have been aware for months they could cash in on the release of Schapelle. And cash in they have.
Negotiations to secure a $2 million exclusive interview do not happen in the space of a day.
As soon as the speculation started that Corby was going to be released some Channel Seven producer somewhere would have been assigned the task of stitching her up. And the Corbys would have played hard ball. Like the hard arses they are.
Yesterday’s events in Bali speak volumes. Corby left prison wearing a hat and scarf so her face could not be seen. It wasn’t a matter of trying to protect her privacy. It was to make sure she remained a valuable commodity.
When the formalities were completed she was whisked away amid chaotic scenes to a five-star resort in a van paid for by Channel Seven. The network apparently arranged her ridiculously opulent accommodation.
Its staff will be working right now, filming her every movement, getting her talking. Making sure she doesn’t talk to anyone else. Making sure she is not photographed or filmed. Protecting the investment.
And what can we expect for the $2 million she is said to be getting in return? More of the innocence nonsense we have heard time and again over the past nine years.
It will be a sob story that only the Corbys could be capable of spinning.
How she was set up by baggage handlers at Sydney airport, even though her former lawyer made all of that up - and was struck off for misconduct after admitting he did it during a television documentary.
She will tell us about how she had no idea the 4.2 kilos of dope was in her boogie board bag, that it was planted there. Corby will rant on about the absence of operational CCTV at the airport, the lack of proper weigh-in procedures by Qantas. How her trial was loaded against her, how important facts in her favour were ignored.
She will deny her three travelling companions, including the home-invading step brother, had anything to do with drugs. She will deny having used drugs or having anything to do with anybody who was into drugs.
As for how she was visited in jail by a convicted drug dealer from Adelaide who knew her father - and publicly claimed he sold large amounts of cannabis to him for sale interstate - that will all just be a terrible misunderstanding.
Corby will go on and on about the shocking time she had inside prison, how it made her awfully depressed and suicidal. She will bleat about the media and its shocking treatment of her and her family. She will plead to be left alone so she can get her life back together again.
It is a predictable script. I for one will not even bother watching it. Just like I don’t care about the Channel Nine mini-series, I wouldn’t waste another hour of my life on this woman.
Yes, the story of Schapelle Corby needs to be covered. Yes, it has justifiably attracted the attention of the Australian public - and the media. Yes, there have been many questions that needed answers.
But she deserves no sympathy, none whatsoever. She certainly doesn’t deserve a $2 million cheque. It is an obscene amount. It just isn’t right.
Any Australian with any intelligence knows you do not take drugs into Indonesia. Neither do you associate with people who smuggle drugs. If you do, then expect to be dealt with. Harshly.
But then Corby has never struck me as the sharpest tool in the shed. Neither have any members of her family.
Perhaps the only good outcome out of Channel Seven’s rumoured deal is that it might be the last time we have to put up the Corbys. That might be wishful thinking on my part. I sincerely hope not.
STATEMENT FROM MERCEDES CORBY:
“If Schapelle feels that she wants to tell story to the Australian public, she will do it with someone she trusts. It was never a matter of going with the highest bidder,” Mercedes said.
“This choice was made easier with Channel Nine broadcasting a film based on a book Sins of the Father which is full of false allegations and which we are taking defamation action against.”
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