'Humour' of Chaser eulogy song a disgrace

ANDREW Hansen and Chris Taylor, you are both a bloody disgrace.

Your vile, tasteless song on the Chaser, slamming the dead, struck a new low for television, for the ABC's public accountability, and for pure sick-making gross offensiveness.

Why am I so upset?

It was your words in The Eulogy Song advising:

"It pays to throw away the facts and have a rose-coloured look . . .

"When he dies Martin Bryant will look like a saint."

There was nothing funny about the Port Arthur massacre, Andrew Hansen.

You sang the words written by Chris Taylor.

Nothing to see through rose-coloured glasses. Nothing saintly about Martin Bryant.

Alive or dead, he should always be remembered as mad, bad and possessed by the devil, an evil being who killed 35 people and who has ruined the lives of hundreds of others.

You see, Andrew, you smug, self-satisfied "comedian" tinkling away at your piano, looking for cheap laughs from a compliant studio audience, I was at Port Arthur 11 years ago. I was with a group of reporters who shook their heads and quietly wept as the horror unfolded.

The police tour of the crime site took 2 1/2 hours.

It culminated in a superintendent leading us to a place where there were green rugs and a piece of light-blue plastic sheeting held down by three orange road cones and a piece of broken branch from a gum tree. I remember it as yesterday.

The blood trails trickled down the hill towards Port Arthur, then petered out.

"A mother was here with her two little girls, one aged three and one aged six," said the policeman. "The gunman shot the mother and the young one and the six-year-old tried to hide behind that tree but he chased her and shot her."

His words hung on the air. Tiny birds cheeped somewhere in the bush but they sounded still afraid and distant.

Then, Andrew, I was in the Hobart courtroom seven months later when Martin Bryant appeared.

Funny? Well, he thought so.

This is what I wrote then:

"Martin Bryant stood in the wooden dock in his sharp light blue suit. He smiled. He smirked. He sniggered. And he giggled. But it was at the . . . 28th count of murder that he began to laugh out loud.

"Bryant stood there, hands in pockets, long tendrils of blond matted hair hanging down on each side of his flushed face, hanging like some rough woven hempen plaits around the face of a painted sailor doll.

"The judge's associate. . . had been reading the charges for eight minutes when she reached the name that he recognised, the name that provoked the laughter.

"Nanette Mikac, wife and mother. 'How say you, are you guilty or not guilty?' asked the judge's associate.

" 'Guilty,' said Martin Bryant, bobbing down as usual to mouth the words into microphones on the bench in front.

"He stood there, smiling, smirking, one hand now at his face, shielding his laughter as she read out the next two counts of murder, the children's names. " 'Count 51, Madeline Grace Mikac.' -- 'Guilty,' he laughed. 'Count 52. Alannah Louise Mikac.' -- 'Guilty,' he laughed again.

"By the 61st charge, one of attempted murder, Bryant was banging a hand on the rail in time with his glee and barely able to get the word 'guilty' out."

Andrew Hanson and Chris Taylor, you should now both appear on television and give an unreserved public apology to all those affected by the Port Arthur tragedy.

No smiling, smirking or sniggering. Say sorry -- and bloody well mean it.

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