Journalist Mike Carlton won’t be stripped of award despite comments about Jews

Writer won't have Order of Australia gong taken away after of complaints alleging vilification of Jews in a column

7 September 2020, 10:23 am

Mike Carlton (Wikipedia/ Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mosmanlibrary/11166139603/ / Author Mosman Library from Sydney, Australia / Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode)

Journalist Mike Carlton will not be stripped of the Order of Australia award, organisers have said, despite criticism of his past derogatory remarks about Jews.

The controversial commentator was the subject of a complaint alleging racial vilification of Jews six years ago after his column about Israel in the Sydney Morning Herald led Jewish leaders to deride it as racist.

Carlton has also made derogatory past comments about women but Shane Stone, who chairs the awards committee, said the decisions had been reviewed and that “no further recommendation” would be made to the governor-general.

After his column criticising Israeli action in Gaza in 2014, Carlton said he was “subjected to a fortnight of abuse from people calling me a Nazi sympathiser to a slimy Jew hater, with some threats of violence”. In response, he told them to “f*** off”, which earned him a reprimand from bosses.