WILLIAMSON, David. Leading Australian playwright & author of the play "Rupert": "We are less than a functioning democracy when so much of the comment is controlled by one man who is isn’t an Australian citizen"

David Keith Williamson, AO (born 19 or 24 February 1942) a former engineer and one of Australia's best-known playwrights who has also written screenplays and teleplays. He is most famous for his play “Don’s Party” about a 1969 Australia, Federal Election night party. His most recent play “Rupert” is about the ruthless rise to world media and political domination of Rupert Murdoch (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Williamson ).

David Williiamson on the malignant Murdoch influence on UK and Australian politics (2013): “Oh, there is huge ideology in the Murdoch's coverage of anything. I mean he is an extraordinary man, that is why I wrote the play about him. I wrote a play about Rupert’s cabaret. He invites you into the audience and tells you why he is one of the world's greatest men and you have got to decide whether you believe it or not. But, look, he is heavily ideological. He believes in that absolutist free market, which is a vast oversimplification of the world as it really is. And, yes, he did influence the election. The proof of that - well, it is enough for me - was that people in non-English-speaking households, their vote didn't swing nearly as much as people in English-speaking households who were reading The Daily Telegraph. Obviously the non-English speaking ones weren't. That is not exactly conclusive proof but you can't tell me that that extraordinarily biased and vindictive and humiliating coverage of the Labor Party didn't have an effect. Of course it did. He learnt - Rupert learnt the lessons in England long ago. If you want to destroy a political opponent you ridicule them and there they were in their Nazis hats and all of that sort of thing. It was - yeah, I do feel strongly that we are less than a functioning democracy when so much of the comment is controlled by one man who is isn’t an Australian citizen… Yeah, only when Tony Blair shifted his position to new Labour, which is old Thatcherism. I mean then he got the nod. No, Rupert has enormous influence. I find him fascinating as a character. I am far less judgmental of him on stage than I am being now, because I think the audience shouldn't go and see someone beaten around the head by a lefty playwright. He tells his own story. So what I am saying now is my real feelings and I think it’s - well, I wrote about him because I think it is absolutely extraordinary that he is Richard III. He starts as a little failing newspaper proprietor in Adelaide and up he goes… But he’s even more extraordinary than Richard III, because Richard III got his comeuppance in Bosworth Field and Rupert goes on forever. He's shrugged off the Leveson inquiry. He’s shrugged off the tapes that exposed him saying that cops were idiots and his share price still keeps rising.” [1].”

David Williamson in ABC TV Q&A, “Pencils, mandate and a single bed”, 16 September 2013: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3834217.htm .