Subject: hello there
From: Diana R[...]
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 12:49:31 -0500
To: Robert Corr

Greetings and salutations Robert Corr

I was idly cruising the net and decided to put in my various names to see what came up. I tried my present married name, my previous married name and my maiden name. Surprise, surprise. A whole PAGE of Diana Elgars – not related to me apparently – all to do with Ms Fits aka Marieke Hardy aka Diana Elgar. I find it most disturbing that an extremely unusual surname coupled with Diana (the less common Aussie form of Diane) be a rampaging rhino on the WWW. Did this little Ms Fits steal my name from me? How old is this wretch? Did I go to school with her and piss her off royally somehow and did she in an astounding act of retribution decide to make my name mud? I was very well known as a writer at school. I’m sure there are dozens of people out there saying, “Yeah, I went to school with her!! Wow, didn’t she turn into a foul-mouthed harlot?”

Most disturbing indeed.

Most cordially yours,

Diana (ex Elgar).

I remember the last time Ms Fits was profiled in the media, by Andrew Bolt. There was no advertising deal behind that column — just a phone call from a Young Liberal with a vendetta. That Bolt was “in the pocket” of the Young Liberals is no problem at all.

Tim Blair thinks the recent profile is wrong because “anyone who cares learned long ago that Hardy posts as Ms Fits” (aw, Tim cares) — but perhaps there’s another secret identity? Perhaps there really is a Diana Elgar!

Hello Webloggers,

As co-recipient of the Best Post award in the Australian Blog Awards, I’d like to thank all of those who voted for us. It was, of course, a team effort and so I’d also so like to thank my fellow winners; Mr. Simon Hollins, BA, LLD, Ms Miranda Airey-Branson, Mr. Alexander Lew and Mr. Andrew Bolt.

I am very proud to have played my own small part in exposing to the many reader’s of the Blogs and of the Herald Sun one of the many depraved minds who populate this Nation’s television and film industries and seek to brainwash the minds of our children with their so-called “creativity”. The vile and foul-mouthed Ms Elgar has thankfully moved on from MacLeod’s Daghters, leaving more than one ruined relationship in her wake, and moved on to a more “adult” programme about young urban professionals at channel 7. I can only imagine these sorts of characters would be more suitable to her style of filthy “humour” that she’d like to put in they’re mouths, and leave the dialogue of the sensible rural characters of MacLeod’s Daghters to those less “sophisticated” writers who can string a sentence together without feeling the need to always including expletives which others have to spend hours and prescious dollars censoring, and can create storylines that don’t involve scenes of need to be completely rewritten.

Australian television is what it is today thanks to the hard work and dedication of dozens of executives and other, more junior, financial and legal minds, the unsung heroes who work behind the scenes with little or no recognition for their efforts, unlike a lot of manky, selfish-indulgent, little fame-whores cock-teasers whose only contribution is a bit of creative talent and a sense of humour.

Thank you for this award. It is truly a vindication.

Yours truly,
Brett Kleinitz.

I’d like to add a few words, if I may.

Pandagate was the strangest experience I have ever had in my life. I’m sure there are many people who still don’t understand exactly what happened (friends of mine who stumbled across it via Crikey said they couldn’t make head nor tail of it), so I’ll try to summarise it briefly.

1. A coterie of Young Liberals, based at Melbourne University and in the electorate of Melbourne Ports, started blogging.

2. They also engaged in some dodgy electioneering — pretending to be Greens while handing out how-to-vote cards for the Liberals.

3. This resulted in a newspaper report which mentioned the blog of Mirana “Panda” Airey-Branson, horse-lover, Brigette Jones wannabe and general Tiny Tory cliche.

4. Other bloggers read the report and didn’t take kindly to Miranda Panda’s comments about various issues (notably lesbianism), so in the spirit of vigorous blog debate, they took the piss out of MAB.

5. Miranda Panda cried and rang Andrew Bolt, who had become some sort of mentor to her.

6. The Liberals’ blogging transgressions got worse. They repeated defamatory claims about Michael Danby, and used their site and others to harrass his bride-to-be.

7. Someone claiming to work with Ms Fits — Brett Kleinitz — emailed the Liberals to tell them about her true identity: Diana Elgar.

8. Diana Elgar doesn’t exist.

9. That didn’t deter the Liberals, who kept promising to reveal Ms Fits’ true identity.

10. Andrew Bolt decided to write a column about Ms Fits.

11. Bolt later said he “had not talked to [MAB] before I wrote that article.” That was not true.

12. Alex Lew, Miranda’s boyfriend and a law student, wrote threatening emails pretending to be a lawyer. He CCed Liberal MPs on some of these emails.

13. In response, Diana Elgar’s lawyer, Simon Hollins (also a fictional character) started emailing cease-and-desist letters to the Young Liberals on behalf of his client.

14. Andrew Bolt, who had been in regular contact with the Young Liberals about Ms Fits and her supposed identity, chastised Simon Hollins for bullying Alex Lew (quite funny given Bolt’s later actions).

15. A series of emails between the various fictional characters and the Tories turned up in my inbox, and I duly published them.

16. Andrew Bolt went spare. It was funny, but also very scary. He emailed my boss, accusing me of “admitting to having impersonated a solicitor, which I believe is a criminal offence.” He also said “he boasts of lying and deceiving” and “he has published and emailed threats to others, which could be construed as blackmail.”

17. None of this was true.

18. Crikey joined in. Simon Hollins set Bolt straight, and pointed out his hypocrisy in threatening my employment.

19. Bolt continued to pretend the column he wrote was not prompted by contact from the Young Liberals, and that he had only contacted MAB in an interview some months ago. In fact, she had phoned him about Pandagate when it first started.

20. Eventually Andrew Bolt withdrew his insistence that “a man so shameless” — me, apparently — “deserves to be exposed for what he is, and for what he represents in the modern Left.”

21. However, he did promise me that “you have been filed under A for Anecdote.” I can’t imagine how entertaining his dinner-party conversation must be.

22. After I retracted my accusation that Bolt lied, I received confirmation that his version of events wasn’t accurate. Perhaps he was mistaken. I don’t want to risk more legal threats, so I won’t accuse him of intentionally misleading people, but here’s what Miranda told me:

    Yes, I did speak to Andrew. … I called him up and told him what was going on, and asked him how I should handle it, etc. Because I really was at a loss. He then looked at the stuff on the net for himself and decided to write about Marieke Hardy independently.

    So there.

23. Eventually, the Young Liberals took their bat and ball and went home to mummy.

Lots of fun. Thanks for playing.

(Remember, you can read all the Pandagate fun here.)

I have changed the title of this post because it was wrong. Andrew Bolt was not lying when he said he had not spoken to Miranda Airey-Branson before he wrote his hatchet job on Ms Fits. He had been interviewed by her, and he had been in contact with Ms Airey-Branson’s friend Alexander Lew. Bolt’s column was written at the urging of the Liberal students. However, by carefully answering questions about his contact with Ms Airey-Branson and ignoring my questions about his contact with Mr Lew, Mr Bolt avoided lying. I apologise for suggesting otherwise.

I have also deleted a comment I left here, which was totally inappropriate and I am ashamed that I posted it in the first place. It was a poor attempt at humour, but of course that is no excuse. I hope that both Mr Bolt and Ms Airey-Branson will accept my apologies.

Apart from those two changes, I don’t propose to back away from anything else I’ve written. If a group of Liberal students are going to:

• pass themselves off as Greens while distributing Liberal how-to-vote cards;

• make foul claims (which they know are defamatory) about a member of parliament;

• publish a photo of the MP’s partner and encourage people to ridicule her;

• set up a web form and encourage readers to spam another MP; and

• respond to criticism by contacting people’s employers and attempting to have them sacked,

then I will point out what they’re doing. Since their attacks were largely directed at an MP Mr Bolt says he considers a friend, I am surprised he is taking the Liberals’ side.

Finally, I would like to stress that this blog and its contents are completely unconnected with my employer. I think it would be wrong to put forward my political opinions without telling people about my connection to the ALP, but that does not mean everything — or, for that matter, anything! — I write is endorsed by the ALP. I thought putting a disclaimer to that effect on every page would be enough, but apparently not.

I find it somewhat ironic that my personal website is supposed to be part of an ALP conspiracy. Alexander Lew’s emails tend to be CCed to Liberal players, including Victorian frontbenchers. The only Labor MP I contacted about the Two Cents group was Michael Danby. I sent him a copy of the complaint I wrote to Hot or Not, which resulted in the removal of his partner’s photo from the site. I would have done the same thing if he was a Liberal MP — that kind of behaviour is truly disgusting.

Unless there are any major new developments — there is still a chance that Andrew Bolt will write about the Diana Elgar Affair on the weekend — I don’t propose to write anything more about this. I think we all got what we wanted: a good laugh, and proof the Liberal students can’t argue their way out of a paper bag (at least without running to their respected national friends for help).

Posting will be light until after exams.

Update: New information in point 22 here.

• I did not have anything to do with the emails until I was sent a Word document on Tuesday morning. I didn’t even know they existed until that time.

• I did not send any of the emails.

• I have never emailed Alexander Lew or Miranda Airey-Branson.

• I emailed Andrew Bolt twice — both times asking whether he had discussed his column with Miranda Airey-Branson, Alexander Lew or Rohan D’Souza.

Any other questions?