Tag Archives: Rupert Murdoch

Murdoch hasn’t finished yet

September 11, 2013
Written by: Michael Taylor
37 Replies

Did you notice anything during the election campaign? I noticed that the ferociously rabid Murdoch media unleashed itself as the most persuasive and effective media in the country for promoting the discourse that Tony Abbott had evolved into something worth promoting. And of course, protecting. I have no doubt that their murderous attack on the Labor Government and its leader, coupled with the elevation of Abbott to the status of living god, was enough to swing the election. David Donovan of Independent Australia summed it up succinctly:

There is no doubt whatsoever that Murdoch gifted the Coalition several per cent of the vote on Saturday and, when you consider the weekend’s result was far away from being a landslide, there is little doubt Murdoch, in effect, gifted Abbott the prime ministership.

But now the aftermath. Tony Abbott might have been gifted the prime ministership but he will fall short of his ultimate goal; control of the Senate. The minor parties took a big chunk away from mostly Labor, but also the Coalition and it means Abbott will have to show his negotiating skills, which are already proving to be zilch as he’s promised to go to an early election at the beginning of next year if he doesn’t get his way. News Limited has jumped to his cause quickly with “Welcome to your nightmare” as minor parties claim Senate seats and Abbott will have to deal with them. It is the first attack by Murdoch – of many to come – to engineer an early election to attempt to get full power for his puppet. The Australian – Murdoch’s premier broadsheet – with their usual scare tactics yesterday chimed in with:

Business and state governments have warned that the economy faces a multi-billion-dollar drag if Labor and the Greens block Tony Abbott’s plans to repeal the carbon and mining taxes, amid fears an obstructionist Senate could keep the carbon price in place until 2015.

After the prime minister-elect instructed his department on Sunday to begin drafting the legislation to abandon the carbon-pricing scheme, business groups lined up to urge parliament to respect his government’s mandate.

So according to the Murdoch media, the Senate is obstructionist.

The Senate’s role is basically a check on government by scrutinising bills, delegated legislation, government administration, and government policy in general. A government that does not have a majority in the Senate, and therefore do not always have easy passage of legislation is subject to negotiation and consultation with minor parties and independents, as well as with the Opposition of course. In a democracy, the Opposition party may have sufficient support to have the Senate reject or, more democratically, amend government bills.

The last time a Government had control of both Houses was in 2004. Remember how this gave Howard’s draconian WorkChoices an easy ride as it was rammed through Parliament at the horror of a stunned electorate?

The behaviour of the Murdoch media in the few short days since the election suggests that it is not happy with purely elevating the Coalition into Government. They want it to go further. They want Tony Abbott to have unbridled control over this country, for whatever reason. Many have been speculated. Some are frightening.

The manner in which a large number of the electorate succumbed to Murdoch’s wishes on September 7 leaves me fearful that they may just as willingly do the same if a Double Dissolution election were to be called, as promised by Abbott if he does not get his way with the Senate. In the meantime expect Murdoch to attack the Senate as not only obstructionist but one that is detrimental to the economic security of this country.

It has already started. Expect it to go feral.

Thanks to Mobius Echo from Café Whispers for his input into this topic.

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Why Labor Lost

September 10, 2013
Written by: John Lord
47 Replies

Firstly:

The truth of the matter is that my Party is at times its own worst enemy. For the six years Labor has been in power it governed well in spite of the enormous inconvenience of minority governance. This is indisputable when you look closely at its economic record, the legalisation passed and reformist policy from within a minority framework.

Its problems though did not originate from everyday governance. In this sense, it has been no better or worse than any other government.

Rather its problems stemmed from personality conflict and the pursuit of power. Politics by its very nature is confrontational and uneasy with those with ego who pursue power for power’s sake or those who think they have some sort of ownership of righteousness.

Labor had two formidable intellects in Rudd and Gillard. In fact, combined they would total much of the opposition front bench’s intellectual capacity.

It is one thing to replace a leader but a different thing when the leader happens to be the Prime Minister who the voters perceive they have elected.

Hindsight is, of course, a wonderful thing so it is easy to say that Rudd should never have been replaced. That Rudd undermined the 2007 election campaign and continued to undermine Julia Gillard for most of her tenure. He never showed the grace in defeat that Turnbull displayed.

So we had two leaders of sagacious intellect. One a ubiquitous narcissist, who couldn’t listen and who couldn’t delegate. On the other hand, we had a woman of immense policy capacity (and history will judge her that way) but would be hard pressed to sell a Collingwood Guernsey to a rabid supporter.

Minority government has enormous, day to day difficulties without having one’s leadership frequently undermined. And we can speculate about a myriad of other possibilities but it won’t change the fact that ego destroyed any chance Labor had of winning the 2013 election.

This is the main reason why Labor lost. Not because they didn’t govern well. As Tanya Plibersek said 10/10 for governance and 0/10 for behaviour.

But because life is about perceptions, not what is, but what it appears to be. We painted a picture of irrational decision making, of dysfunction and murderous disloyalty. Rightly or wrongly that is the perception. In other words, we committed political suicide.

Secondly:

There are of course other factors that contributed to our downfall.

Despite the growing influence of the Fifth Estate the Main Stream Media still packs an enormous punch. In advertising, the success of one’s spend is measured by the resulting sales. The media can measure its influence in the Polls.

Labor was the victim of the most concerted gutter attack ever insinuated upon an Australian political party, from all sections of the media, although one, in particular, News Corp, has gone well beyond the realm of impartiality.

Labor was drowned in an avalanche of lies, repugnant bile, half-truths and omissions. The media lost its objectivity and news reporting. It became so biased that it no longer pretended to disguise it.

The MSM has forsaken truth, justice and respectability in its pursuit of the protection of privilege. They printed and told lies with such reprehensible consistency that a gullible and politically undiscerning Australian public never really challenged it.

As a famous businessman once said.’’ I spend a lot of money on advertising and I know for certain that half of it works’’ Clive Palmer has won a seat because he had the money to promote himself. He proved the power of persuasion with money.

The Fifth Estate (including me) attempted to counter these nefarious attacks but in my view, we are three years away from reaching full potential.

Having said that I plead some degree of ignorance, and I must say, I am absolutely astounded at how many people participate in social media and the voice it gives them.

However, in three years’ time, its ability to influence the younger generation will have risen exponentially. Added to that will be a declining older generation.

Thirdly:

Tony Abbott successfully adopted an American Republican-style shock and awe approach in his pursuit of power. Mainstream media hailed him the most effective opposition leader in Australian political history.

This was solely based on his parties standing in the polls and said nothing about the manner in which he lied and distorted facts and science to bring about this standing.

Perhaps they should rethink the criteria they use.

On a daily basis and in the parliament he sought to abuse, disrupt proceedings and tell untruths that normal men would not.

His gutter style negativity set a new benchmark for the behaviour of future opposition leaders. Luckily though, he may be the only one of his characterless ilk, and future opposition leaders may be more affable.

However, the consistency of his negativity had an effect on an electorate in a state of comatose. From the time the election date was announced he portrayed himself as a different person. An indifferent public was fooled by this chameleon disguise. He was and still is by his own admission a liar.

David Marr used these words, to sum up, the character of this would be Prime Minister.

“An aggressive populist with a sharp tongue; a political animal with lots of charm; a born protégé with ambitions to lead; a big brain but no intellectual; a bluff guy who proved a more than competent minister; a politician with little idea of what he might do if he ever got to the top; and a man profoundly wary of change.”

“He’s a worker. No doubt about that. But the point of it all is power. Without power, it’s been a waste of time.”

How one appraisers the reasons for Labor’s loss might differ from individual to individual and there will undoubtedly be many thousands of words written on the subject. For me, it can be rather succinctly summed up in a sentence or two.

A political party, union of workers, sporting team or board of directors is only as good as the total sum of its parts. A good leader facilitates, emboldens and inspires the team, but a leader with self-interested ambition can destroy it all.

This is the first in a series. Next week: Labor reform.

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The 2016 Election

September 3, 2013
Written by: Michael Taylor
34 Replies

Let us indulge ourselves and assume that Rupert Murdoch’s shonky Newspolls are correct and the incompetent, gaffe prone Tony Abbott wins the job of leading us after Saturday’s election and look ahead three years: what would happen in the 2016 election?

What would have voters learned after three years under Tony Abbott (and his moguls)?

The first thing they’d have learned would be the obvious: the Tony Abbott Government they voted in will in no way resemble the government they voted for. What they wanted, looks nothing like what they got. But I don’t think this will be the key issue so I will not address it here. The issue will be about where the country is going, which would be nowhere, rather than how bad Abbott has been in guiding it.

His term as leader would have reinforced our perception of him as he was in opposition. Tony Abbott would not have provided one tiny morsel of evidence that he had any plan of moving this country forward, let alone managing it. This was apparent in his term as Opposition leader. The preceding Labor Government focused fairly and squarely on moving forward but it was stalled not just by sorting through the mess left by the Howard Government, but also amid screams of horror from the opposition that the government was doing absolutely nothing. And as the government’s term progressed during a period when it could have meeting its commitments to the electorate and moving this country forward, it was further stalled by an obstructionist opposition, again, amid screams of horror from those causing the obstructions. Plus of course a fair amount of chest beating.

And by 2016 we would have learned that chest beating about stopping the boats (which will not be stopped) does not move the country forward. Unplugging the national broadband network does not move the country forward either. Nothing he has offered will.

There will be a different demographic in three years time and they will want to see the country move at a pace that keeps up with the rest of the world. And this new demographic is the key. In the three years leading up to the 2016 election youth will have become a powerful electoral tool. Boxlid, who has been a guest poster here commented that:

Our current youth is far more aware than generations before us, they don’t fall for spin and media proclamations, they know how to access information and share it between everyone else.

Ask the teachers in high school about their level of understanding of the students they are teaching. From what I hear, they have to spend extra time to keep up because they don’t have adequate resources available to them.

Our youth are adults at a younger age and capable of making decisions for themselves regarding their own lives. Difficult to accept isn’t it?

Our younger generation are not dumb and stupid. They are creating our future and from my interaction with them in many ways they are remarkable, skilled, talented and forward looking not just two years, not just five years or ten years: they are looking at fifty years or more and embracing all of the potential opportunities that the future has to offer.

The Abbott Government hasn’t offered this new demographic the possibilities of the future. By 2016 there will be hundreds of thousands of new voters demanding it. Hundreds of thousands of voters unhindered by the influence of a declining media and discontent with the country’s stagnation. They will have a voice.

Tony Abbott would have given no indication that he has any idea of what’s happening in the rest of the world. He would have shown also he has no idea that the mind-set of most people in Western world has been dragged out of the 1970s. The world is not flat and we now live in a global society.

Furthermore, we are in a new environment of border-less or global economies and markets. One major challenge he faced in this global economy was to think, plan and act globally as well as domestically. He will have failed. He remained entrenched in his 1970s mindset. He failed to develop an international focus amid the diminishing influence of domestic markets in the face of the competitive global economy and global ideas (think technology and climate change). This global village provided an opportunity he overlooked. In 2016 we would have expected that a successful government recognised it as an opportunity and would have initiated changes in response to those opportunities.

Mr Abbott didn’t have a global mindset and he failed to move the country forward. The new demographic will recognise this far more than the rest of us and their vote will be influential. More so than ever before. The older demographic that Tony Abbott has appealed to will have diminished significantly.

What, then, would happen in the 2016 election?

My prediction: possibly Bill Shorten to lead Labor to a win over an out-of-touch Tony Abbott.

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NBN: Redefining Possible

August 19, 2013
Written by: ozfenric
16 Replies

There’s been a lot of noise in certain corners of the media about Rupert ~~Morlock~~ Murdoch and his opposition to the NBN in Australia, which translates to his pulling out all the stops to bury the Australian Labor Party’s chances of electoral victory. It is unknown whether he will be successful in this effort. It’s certainly possible; by the American model of politics, it is possible to buy elections, and he wouldn’t be using such prime broadsheet real estate if it wasn’t at least somewhat effective. It’s also unclear whether the sudden ramping up of hysterical anti-Labor rhetoric is specifically due, as Fairfax posits, to a fear of the NBN’s commercial impact upon Murdoch’s cash-cow, Foxtel, or simply because News Ltd papers have been steadfastly against Labor since day one and the announcement of an election was a bait they couldn’t resist. But let’s, for the moment, accept the former proposition: this is all about the NBN and Foxtel. What a great excuse to examine the potential benefits of the NBN under Labor’s FTTP model.

(Technical note for lay people: FTTP = Fibre to the Premises – wherein NBN Co foots the bill for not only laying optical cable along every street, but also for wiring it to your property, like your current fixed-line telephone cable. Assuming you have one, which is no longer a given in the modern age. The Coalition’s alternative will run the cable along the streets, but it will terminate roughly on each street corner, and if you want to use it you’ll use a connection between your existing copper phone cable and the closest Node to your property, with physical limits on the speed that you can achieve over copper, even assuming it to be in good condition. Alternatively you can pay for optical fibre to be run from the node to your premises, at an estimated cost of up to $5000… ahem. Enough proselytising: we’re here to talk about the plan as it exists now, not the hobbled version of a Coalition future. The costs of the two models, and the technical merits thereof, are beyond the scope of this post.)

Detractors of the government’s FTTP NBN model often make the claim that its primary uses will be for “more interactive gambling or more movie downloads” (Tony Abbott: 2011, and just about every comment troll on this subject, everywhere, ever.) The image invoked is of greasy-haired teenagers in their parent’s basements, only pausing from downloading Game of Thrones and playing World of Warcraft for a quick spot of pornography before moving on to the next map in Counterstrike. If that were all that the NBN offered, I would find myself hard pressed to justify the investment too. (Although I wouldn’t make the continued mistake of calling it a massive waste of taxpayers’ money, seeing as taxpayers are actually not paying for it.) But as some have said, the NBN is a case of “build it, and ideas will come“. We don’t know the majority of uses the NBN will eventually be put to. They haven’t even been thought of yet. We need to have the capacity before people will start thinking of the opportunities it will offer.

That said, it is reasonable to use the leading edge of technology practice today to make some informed guesses about the technological directions that might be in use in the world of tomorrow. A lot of the ideas that follow are already here or just on the horizon. I’m also looking specifically at uses that will affect the everyday user in their suburban home, rather than offices; the need for fast broadband in office buildings is pretty much a given. When the accusation is made that all uses of the NBN will be for trivial purposes, it’s couched in terms of homes, so let’s focus specifically on that environment.

Entertainment

Let’s start with Tony Abbott’s “more interactive gambling or more movie downloads”. It’s certainly one area where current users can benefit from the increased bandwidth on offer from Labor’s FTTP model. The Coalition must have a few MPs with streaming foxtel, because they are certain that “25MB per second will be more than sufficient for most users”. But obviously their MPs haven’t upgraded to UltraHD TVs, which have four times the resolution of standard HD. Personally I’m not intrigued, but if television that eats 25MB/s is already available in the stores, I’m not taking a bet that the next generation of entertainment devices (perhaps holographic? Smellovision?) will require significantly more again. And yes, faster bandwidth means faster downloads of torrented material as well as the legal stuff. But this is hardly forward-looking.

Videoconferencing and telecommunications

Most top ten lists of NBN uses talk about e-Health. Some also list e-learning. A few might talk about videoconferencing. It all boils down to the same thing: long-distance high-speed communication with pictures. Whether it’s high-def imagery of a mole or a wound so your doctor can make an informed decision, or streaming the operating theatre so the surgeon can remotely control the robot arm that’s taking out your appendix, or interactive whiteboards and teleconferencing with your teacher, the possibilities of this use alone are endless. Imagine what today would be like if we were still restricted to the telegraph. That’s how today is going to look from the perspective of the future. (Note that unless someone has a really bad morning before drafting legislation, video content on your phone calls will still be optional in the future.) Videoconferencing is already here and in wide use in business circles. As an IT professional, I can attest to the poor quality currently offered even in an office equipped with high-speed current-generation broadband. At its simplest, this is because the quality of the communication depends upon two things: the quality of the connection for every participant, which is why ubiquity of service is important; and the upload bandwidth available. Most current “broadband” uses a technology that gives reasonably fast download speeds to your computer, but much slower speeds on upload back to the internet. For most internet use this isn’t a problem, all you’re sending is small requests for content. But in videoconferencing, you’re sending as much data as you’re receiving, and current technologies don’t cut it. The NBN is a symmetrical technology, meaning that your upload speeds can be as fast as your downloads, so now the person on the other end of the call can see and hear you as well as you them.

The Internet of Things

This current buzzword refers to internet functionality being built into all kinds of household devices. There is a trend in this direction, with entertainment devices leading the charge, but being followed closely by refrigerators (new models which can maintain an inventory of contents and automatically order replenishments when stocks are getting low) and remote household control of lights, central heating, and checking if you left the oven on. Electricity and water smart meters will require connectivity. Your answering machine will be video capable, connected to your front door camera, and available to stream the video of the Jehovah’s Witnesses leaving that pamphlet on your doorstep despite your “no junk mail” signs. It’s even feasible that you might be able to answer the door or your home phone while you are in the office. None of these applications will require huge amounts of bandwidth or speed, but taken together they add to a low level noise that is always on.

Telecommuting

Many people currently work from home. In an ever more connected world, where workers in many fields are continually mobile and supplied with laptops and tablet computers, the maintenance of a dedicated office may become more and more an extravagance. But there are limitations and hurdles to overcome, not least being the requirement for home workers to have access to the resources they need. Often these resources are tangible – computers, printers, phones. But these things can be purchased and are increasingly simple to support and manage from a central location. More difficult are information and data resources.

Internet bandwidth is already a limiting factor for many teleworkers. Architects need to regularly download, work on and then re-upload plans and diagrams. CAD operators, 3D modellers, graphic artists – these creative or information-reliant jobs are the kinds of jobs most suited to working from a remote location, but also the most reliant on the traffic of large amounts of data. Some workers currently migrate from rural areas to the cities in order to acquire the bandwidth they need. Others simply give up on teleworking and base themselves in an office, with all of the impacts on travel time and work/life balance that this entails.

Again, it is upload speed that is often the killer. Information workers and creative experts often spend many hours building, drawing, sketching or designing highly detailed outputs, creating very large files. Hard disk space is cheap. Your personal computer is more than powerful enough to data-crunch rendered 3D animated scenes with aplomb. But getting the resulting terabytes of data back to the office is where it all falls down. The NBN to your home will allow you to send those files back to your office in blinding speed, allowing you to download the next set of files and get back to work quicker. The only thing that suffers under this proposal is your spare time to play with your children while you might have otherwise been waiting an hour for the files to finish uploading.

One of the downsides of teleworking is the lack of presence with the team. This is another area where the NBN will unleash potentials. Multi-party videoconferencing with collaborative editing of a document is currently the reserve of advanced companies within their offices. In the future, being at home will be no barrier to being a part of the team brainstorming session or the design project team.

The future of computing

All of the above ideas are currently in practice to some extent. Some are in use in business which can afford the bandwidth and equipment requirements. Others are in their first stages of development into the domestic market. But all of them will benefit from increased investment and phenomenal increases in usability and functionality once they are adopted much more widely. Now we can start to think a bit more ambitiously.

Software as a Service (SAAS)

Recently Adobe Software discontinued the production and sale of boxed versions of their software applications. They are part of a growing trend towards digital distribution of software. But this is old-school: you still install the software on your local hard drive and from that point you run it from your own computer. Even if it requires always-on internet (generally not received very well in internet-challenged Australia) it’s not really SaaS.

Microsoft’s Office365 offering is a much better example of consumer-level SaaS. If you have a license for 365, you can open, edit and save Microsoft Office files from your cloud storage on a computing device with nothing but an internet browser. This includes your Android tablet, internet kiosk computer, or your iToy of choice. You can even use your touchscreen phone if you’re feeling masochistic. The web server does all the work of generating the interface and accepting your commands. There are clear benefits for users in the freedom from dependence upon a specific computer; all you need is an account and an internet connection.

Office365 is late to the game, of course. Google Docs has been doing this for years, allowing users to create, edit and share word processed documents, spreadsheets and other files in the cloud. The recent Chromebook computers that the search behemoth has brought out don’t include an operating system to run Office, Pages or other traditional software. They rely entirely upon internet-served software including Google Docs. Clearly, local hard drives and installed software are not a big part of the future Google sees.

In addition to sending and receiving your working files, though, this model requires regular transmission of the data that forms the applications you’re using. As more and more software companies make the switch to serving their application through the web, rather than requiring installation, fast broadband will become ever more important.

Platform as a service (PAAS)

The logical extension of SaaS is Platform as a Service. PaaS spells the end of the computer as we know it. The idea is driven by the need for control and standardisation. As any IT systems manager knows, IT management is largely a matter of disaster prevention. Computer users have a long and proud history of installing anything and everything on their computers, up to and including a file for showing cute pictures of cats, named “Cat-Haxxor-lmfao!1!.exe”. In order to prevent this, or to easily repair the damage once it’s occurred, large organisations adopt Standard Operating Environments: a set of accepted software from operating system to installed programs. Anything else is not allowed to install, and if disaster strikes it’s easy to wipe the slate clean and reinstall the whole package.

The NBN will allow large companies to control the systems environments of their employees, in the office or at home, by streaming a new copy of the whole package every time you log onto your computer for work. Employees will only be able to log onto the work network with an appropriately controlled and safe computer. With the NBN, a home-based Australian employee of a US company will share exactly the same operating environment as everyone else in the organisation.

It’s not too much of a stretch to see this concept extended beyond the realm of work; where Microsoft or another company will offer a complete virtual computing experience. Windows 8 is already moving down this path; you log on to the computer using your Microsoft account, and your account is synchronised between any Windows 8 computers you log into. When this happens, it really will be the end of the desktop PC. It will probably also be the end of laptops and possibly tablets as well. Why carry a screen with you, when any surface can be turned into a desktop? When every house and every office and every shopping centre has connected terminals that you can log into to stream either your work environment or your personal (play) environment? The recent remake of Total Recall, despite its various flaws, showed this kind of computing future. It may be another thirty years away – it equally might be less than ten. But it won’t happen in Australia if we don’t have ubiqitous fast broadband.

Haptics

What’s video conferencing and ultra-high-definition holographic entertainment without utilising the sense of touch? There is already plenty of work being done in the area of touch feedback. From sensory gloves to complete virtual reality systems, the ability to add vibrational and motion feedback has good potential to be a major part of future computing. But touch feedback, like video conferencing, requires fast data transmission in both directions: a remote computer needs to sense what you’re doing pretty much instantly and feed back the appropriate response. A delay of even a few milliseconds may be enough to break any suspension of disbelief that working on a remote machine may require. Fast broadband will make all sorts of things possible, from remote driving of mechanical suits in hazardous areas to fine motor control over surgical instruments, to virtual reality and, naturally, a revolution in the experience of online pornography.

3D printing and fabrication

Domestic 3D printing is all the rage these days. 3D printers use detailed CAD plans to build physical objects using a substrate – often a kind of plastic. The technology has been in development for well over a decade, and is now reaching the exponential stage. What are now large, expensive and fiddly machines and processes will become ever smaller and faster and more useful over time. It won’t take too long before 3D printers will be available to buy at Harvey Norman, and not too long after that potentially even embedded into wearable devices. The possible uses of 3D printing are still being discovered, but could easily include assembly parts (from tools to clips and screws; from panels to electronics), 3D models, even musical instruments. People have succeeded in printing their own weaponry. For some kinds of online shopping in the future, you won’t need to wait for delivery; you’ll instantly download a 3D plan and send it to your printer for fabrication. Once again, scads of data transmission is required for every downloaded plan, and if the technology takes off it will add to the ongoing demand for bandwidth.

While we’re talking Star Trek technology, let’s go one step further. If transporter technology is ever developed, it will entail disassembling an item (or a person) at one location and reassembling an exact replica at the destination. Whilst the actual method of accomplishing this is still unknown, you just know that it’s going to require the near-instantaneous transmission of quintillibytes of data. Believe it or not, there are people currently working on this kind of technology. If they succeed, it will be decades before it becomes commercially available. But the thing about the fibre cable that forms the NBN is that it won’t be outdated; it will likely still be around and in daily use.

The future is an exciting place and the technological possibilities seem endless. But life and society will increasingly revolve around fast, ubiquitous, and always-on network connectivity. Labor’s NBN sets Australia up to be a part of this, and potentially to be a leading developer of the technologies that will shape the lives of the next generations.

First posted 9/8/2013 on the Random Pariah.

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Wapping: what can we learn from it?

August 15, 2013
Written by: Michael Taylor
5 Replies

While reading yesterday’s article Rupert Murdoch and the Liberal Party I was struck by the following:

Rupert Murdoch has shown a total disdain for governments and government regulation. They are an impediment to him shaping the world in the way he wants it to be. He believes in a conservative, business dominated world. You only have to go back to the days of Margaret Thatcher who helped Murdoch break the unions in the Wapping dispute to see what he wants. Murdoch wants to see another Thatcher run Australia.

I believe this was spot-on, as you will see.

Not many people would know about the Wapping dispute and how the Thatcher Government lent a helping hand to ensure that Murdoch got his way. The Wapping dispute started on 24 January 1986 when some 6,000 newspaper workers went on strike after protracted negotiation with their employer, News International (chaired by Murdoch). News International had built and clandestinely equipped a new printing plant for all its titles in the London district of Wapping, and when the print unions announced a strike it activated this new plant with the assistance of rogue union members.

The Wapping dispute was a story of betrayal, of connivance, and a bitter blow for workers.

The war broke out when nearly 6,000 newspaper workers went on strike after the collapse of talks with Murdoch’s News International. Murdoch had wanted to move his British newspapers from their traditional home in Fleet Street to a new purpose-built printery in London’s East End. When the workers refused to move Murdoch issued dismissal notices against all. What happened was a lockout that sparked a bitter and doomed year long strike.

And the Thatcher Government bent over backwards to ensure nothing would stand in the way of the media baron’s ambitions.

The story hit the British and later world’s press like a bomb going off. It was the story of the day if one were to believe the stories, Murdoch was as shocked as everyone else. The dispute was the last thing he expected or wanted (apparently). The back story was, however, very different. The 24th of January may well have been the day open hostilities broke out, but the war had been a long time in the planning. Neither the battle or the war were the spontaneous eruption that the British Murdoch press portrayed it to be; Rupert Murdoch was not the surprised and innocent person he claimed to be at the time. Even until very recently Murdoch maintained his innocence.

A clear understanding of what happened before and at Wapping are essential if one is to understand how the Murdoch empire grew and its relationships with subsequent British and to a lesser extent American and Australian governments.

Wapping was about profits and power and how both could be exploited to their fullest to the benefit of the Murdoch, his shareholders and successive British Governments. Before Wapping, Murdoch was making a reasonable return on investments. After Wapping, profits soared.

Murdoch had bought the Wapping site in 1978 and by the time of the strike it was truly a fortress ringed by steel fences monitored by close circuit television cameras. The razor wire came later, as did the mounted riot police and dogs.

At least one union played right into Murdoch’s hands, secretly recruiting scab labour to work at Wapping and it was this labour that allowed Murdoch to produce his papers throughout the year long strike.

Central to Murdoch’s plans was his relationship with the then Thatcher Government. Just how close this relationship was had recently become clear. Speaking shortly after Mrs Thatcher’s death Rupert Murdoch said that she was an “inspired leader” and that her “Government had made it possible for News International to survive a year of industrial action (at) Wapping.”

Rupert Murdoch never forgot his debt of gratitude to Mrs Thatcher and her Government as hundreds of headlines from The Sunday Times, Times, Sun and News of the World clearly attest.

The 2012 Leveson Inquiry into the News of the World scandal heard evidence from Murdoch’s once trusted Australian ally and former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil that Murdoch had made it clear to him that almost a year before the strike began, he (Murdoch) “had gone to Mrs Thatcher to square it with [her]”. Neil had been Murdoch’s go-between in 1985 between the unions and News Limited and was central to what happened at Wapping. O’Neil has also said “that enough police would be made available to allow him to get his papers past the massed pickets at Wapping once the dispute was underway.”

The BBC, in an interview with Mr O’Neil subsequently reported that the relationship between Mrs Thatcher and his boss was “seminal”. As Neil said in in his Leveson evidence, “Thatcher’s battles were our battles”. Clearly the relationships Rupert Murdoch developed at the time of the War at Wapping were enhanced as time went by and were pivotal to Murdoch’s political power plays in the years then ahead. These relationships were also pivotal to Murdoch’s power over every British government and many leading politicians for the next two decades. This was never more so than his personal and professional relationship with Tony Blair’s New Labour movement. Blair had seen at first hand Murdoch’s merciless attacks on Labour leader Neil Kinnock throughout the late 1980’s and 90’s. The Sun headline on the day of the 1992 general election said it all “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”

However, Rupert Murdoch ever the political chameleon was always willing to swap sides just so long as his power increased and News Limited profits continued to flow as happened when this famous headline appeared in 1997 Murdoch’s tabloid The Sun, “The Sun Backs Blair”.

It is also possible that if Wapping had never occurred the history of every subsequent British election and Government may have been very different, at the very least the headlines in the News Limited British newspapers most certainly would have been different.

As a friend commented to me: “Wapping warped the Murdoch media”.

Returning to the article Rupert Murdoch and the Liberal Party, I find this comment of concern:

Murdoch wants to see another Thatcher run Australia. In his mind, someone who supports business 100% is the only viable leader. Does he see Tony Abbott as another Margaret Thatcher?

This is what makes that statement frightening …

How the media business was transformed by her time in office:

Baroness Thatcher helped Rupert Murdoch break the power of the print unions at Wapping, paving the way for new titles such as the Independent and bigger, multi-section newspapers.
She broke the TV duopoly of ITV and the BBC – through the launch of Channel 4, independent producers and the breakfast station TV-am.
She privatised the TV transmitter networks and allowed ITV licences to be awarded to the highest bidder.
She unleashed the UK’s advertising sector, assisted by Saatchi & Saatchi – which helped her into Downing Street with its Labour Isn’t Working poster – and grew to become the world’s largest advertising group. The ad business also reaped a multi-million-pound bonanza from the privatisation campaigns for British Telecom, British Gas and the TSB.
And she crossed swords many times with the BBC, though it survived her attempts to break it up and scrap the licence fee.

It’s easy to see why Murdoch might just favour a Thatcher-lite.

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Conduct unbecoming?

August 8, 2013
Written by: Michael Taylor
18 Replies

By now everybody would have seen the widely condemned front page (above) of The Daily Telegraph, but did anybody read the accompanying editorial rubbish?

I was directed to it via the Tele’s Facebook page where they boasted that:

It’s day one of the election campaign. and the Daily Teelgraph (sic) promises the very best, most up to the minute coverage and the hardest hitting opinions. Check out today’s editorial for a taste of what’s to come. http://bit.ly/15vS8er

Here is the editorial – titled Consign Rudd to the bin of history – that their illiterate social media editors encouraged us all to read. I too encourage you to read it, even though it’s a couple of days old now as it gives us an insight from Day 1 of how the Telegraph intends to ‘run’ this campaign:

DAILY TELEGRAPH “OPINION EDITORIAL”: ‘AT last, the power is in the hands of the Australian people to deliver a change of government and to rebuild Australia’s strength and stability.

At last, the opportunity looms to put an end to two terms of political chaos and economic decline.

At last, the time is up for Kevin Rudd and his Labor government.

Announcing the September 7 election date yesterday, Prime Minister Rudd tried to distance himself from Labor’s years of disunity and destruction. He now promises “a new way” and “new politics”. But Australians know that Rudd is absolutely tied to old Labor and its socially divisive and financially ruinous policies.

Kevin Rudd is the leader of a government that confessed just three days ago that its most recent federal budget wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.

Kevin Rudd is the leader of a government that has somehow turned Australia’s boom times into a massive and ongoing debt.

Kevin Rudd is the leader of a government that punched holes in Australia’s secure borders and cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars by reinvigorating the vile people smuggling trade – one of the few economic sectors that will be unhappy to see an end to Labor’s rule.

Kevin Rudd is the leader of a government that attempted to muzzle the media and to intimidate a free people into docile, compliant silence.

Kevin Rudd is the leader of a government that didn’t keep its word on the carbon tax. A government that didn’t keep its word on delivering a surplus. A government that, in the end, didn’t even keep its word on the 2013 election date. The Prime Minister’s cabinet has already had its say. Fully one-third of the cabinet walked out on Rudd rather than work with him. Several Labor MPs prefer quitting politics entirely to the prospect of serving under Rudd’s leadership.

Now it’s your turn. We agree with the Prime Minister when he says that “the old politics of the past won’t work for Australia’s future”. The problem is, those old politics belong to Kevin Rudd and to history’s rubbish bin.

On September 7, Australia will indeed find a new way – by throwing out a government that has completely lost its way.

In 2007, The Daily Telegraph supported the election of a Labor government led by Kevin Rudd. Our argument then was that the previous Howard government had become weary and unimaginative, and that Rudd represented an opportunity for advancement.

Labor has squandered that opportunity, and is trying now to present itself as the answer to problems of its own creation.

The amount of spin implicit in the Prime Minister’s “new way” rhetoric is beyond anything ever achieved by Shane Warne. It’s a high-rotation insult to an electorate that sees through Labor’s brazen electioneering.

At The Daily Telegraph, we’re not going to cop it. Kevin Rudd and his Labor machine can save their tricks and distractions for the focus groups. We’re not going to play Labor’s game.

At the same time, we will place Coalition policies under exactly the same level of scrutiny. Labor is a known quantity, which is why they’ve lost support. It is up to the Coalition to win those voters.’

Now look at same paper’s published Code of Conduct. We need only be concerned with the sections shown below:

The policy of our publications across all platforms

This policy applies to News Limited and its editorial employees in both print and digital media platforms. It is an update of the News Limited Professional Conduct Policy which applies to editorial employees of News NSW; News Victoria, News Queensland, Davies Bros Limited, Advertiser Newspapers Limited and the regional and suburban newspaper and operations around Australia.

News Limited group publications aim for the highest editorial and ethical standards.

Editorial employees and contributors should be open-minded, be fair and respect the truth.

To this end, all staff need to be familiar with the policy detailed in the following pages, to follow the rules they contain, and to apply their underlying principles.

1. Accuracy

1.1 Facts must be reported impartially, accurately and with integrity.

1.2 Publications should take reasonable steps to ensure reports are accurate, fair and balanced.

1.3 Clear distinction must be made between fact, conjecture, comment and opinion.

1.4 Try always to tell all sides of the story in any kind of dispute. Every effort must be made to contact all relevant parties.

1.5 Do not knowingly withhold or suppress essential facts.

What a joke. Now, if you so desire, read the editorial again. There is not a lot in it that reflects the code of conduct so espoused. To the contrary, it is riddled with impartiality, inaccuracies, and conjecture. All designed, in my opinion, to encourage a vote against the Government. They are of course free to do this, but it would be preferable if the piece was filled with truth and accuracy, unlike the selected sentences from the above editorial, namely:

At last, the opportunity looms to put an end to two terms of political chaos and economic decline.

But Australians know that Rudd is absolutely tied to old Labor and its socially divisive and financially ruinous policies.

Kevin Rudd is the leader of a government that confessed just three days ago that its most recent federal budget wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.

Kevin Rudd is the leader of a government that didn’t keep its word on the carbon tax. A government that didn’t keep its word on delivering a surplus. A government that, in the end, didn’t even keep its word on the 2013 election date.

At the same time, we will place Coalition policies under exactly the same level of scrutiny. Labor is a known quantity, which is why they’ve lost support. It is up to the Coalition to win those voters.

Let’s look at each of these, starting with At last, the opportunity looms to put an end to two terms of political chaos and economic decline.

What decline? Here are the facts:

Australia is currently experiencing a very fast growth rate of 1.7%. This is the highest growth rate in the OECD and we recently achieved the milestone of 23 million people. That’s 15% growth – or three million people – since early 2004, when we reached 20 million.

Our GDP growth in Australia displayed the full brutality of the carnage being wrought on the world. Many experts and people on the street were convinced that, like the rest of the world, Australia would enter recession.

However, despite all the forecasts, Australia avoided entering recession in 2009. This isn’t to say we didn’t see the impacts. Growth went from above trend, at 3.75% in 2008, to well below, at 1.37% in 2009. Over the last 20 years, trend growth has been an impressive 3.25%.

The next impact was inevitable; with a 10.6% turnaround in revenue growth in the immediate aftermath, government revenue not only completely stalled, it went backwards to the tune of five billion dollars, or 1.5% in 2008. This was followed by a decrease of six billion dollars or 2.1% the following year. These were big falls, especially considering in the last year of John Howard’s pre-GFC government revenue grew by 9.1%.

This period, 2008 and 2009, is where all the damage was done and today’s budget still suffers from it. It was nothing government did. It happened the world over. We were fortunate we avoided recession, our unemployment peaked nowhere near expected and we kept growing.

This didn’t happen by accident. It required government to act to secure bank deposits and implement a world beating stimulus package that filled the hole in demand and kept us insulated from world events. It was a significant package of $52B, but we faced a significant problem and the response by the Australia Government was hailed by the IMF, OECD, World Bank and many economists as being a model response to the crisis.

We continue . . .

But Australians know that Rudd is absolutely tied to old Labor and its socially divisive and financially ruinous policies. And the evidence is where? Where are they socially divisive? How are they financially ruinous? See above: see how well our economy is doing.

Kevin Rudd is the leader of a government that confessed just three days ago that its most recent federal budget wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. Did they really say that, or are those just your words?

Kevin Rudd is the leader of a government that didn’t keep its word on the carbon tax. A government that didn’t keep its word on delivering a surplus. A government that, in the end, didn’t even keep its word on the 2013 election date. But hasn’t your newspaper condemned the ‘çarbon tax’ from the day it was planned? Hasn’t your newspaper fanatically promoted Tony Abbott who has continuously threatened to repeal it? Hasn’t your newspaper been screaming for an early election since Abbott was defeated in 2010?

At the same time, we will place Coalition policies under exactly the same level of scrutiny. Labor is a known quantity, which is why they’ve lost support. It is up to the Coalition to win those voters. Oh, please, are we to believe that? Show us where you have ever applied any scrutiny to the policy-free Coalition. For three years you have been promoting Team Abbott but not once have I ever known of your newspaper to apply the blowtorch.

Why bother with having a Code of Conduct. Just be honest and openly declare your support for the Coalition, and perhaps try telling us why they’ll provide us with a better government. Or don’t you know?

We certainly don’t. Strangely, we rely on newspapers such as yours to provide us with facts that are reported impartially, accurately and with integrity. Otherwise you are wasting our time.

And this was only Day 1 of the campaign!

I’m guessing that your paper is going to lose thousands of readers, but is that important to you? Another guess: No. What appears to be more important is your desire to influence the political landscape of this country. Do you assume that that’s want your readers want?

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Abbott loves Murdoch: a reminder

August 5, 2013
Written by: Carol Taylor
23 Replies

Within hours of my post “Murdoch hates Rudd: a reminder”, where I predicted that the Murdoch media would turn even more feral towards the Government as the election nears, this front page from the Daily Telegraph is splashed across the internet:

Tony Abbott was quick to kick it along:

For his part, Opposition Leader Abbott, speaking just minutes later, pointed to our “robust and diverse media culture” and said some would be in his corner, some wouldn’t, and one had to “take the rough with the smooth.”

Was he smirking at the time, I wonder? After all, we all know who’s in his corner. Someone he loves deeply, apparently. Thanks to AIMN reader Kaye Lee, here’s a reminder of how deep that love is:

TONY ABBOTT’S ADDRESS TO THE IPA APRIL 5 2013

“John Howard has said that Rupert Murdoch has been by far Australia’s most influential international businessman; but I would like to go a little further. Along with Sir John Monash, the Commander of the First AIF which saved Paris and helped to win the First World War, and Lord Florey a one-time provost of my old Oxford College, the co-inventor of penicillin that literally saved millions of lives, Rupert Murdoch is probably the Australian who has most shaped the world through the 45 million newspapers that News Corp sells each week and the one billion subscribers to News-linked programming.

Rupert Murdoch has sometimes changed his political allegiance but he’s never changed his fundamental principles. At least since the mid-70’s, those have been greater personal responsibility, smaller government, fewer regulations and support for open societies that don’t build walls against the world.

For our guest of honour, as for anyone deeply steeped in reporting, experience trumps theory and facts trump speculation. His publications have borne his ideals but never his fingerprints. They’ve been skeptical, stoical, curious, adventurous, opinionated yet broad minded. He’s influenced them, but he’s never dictated to them – as I happily discovered myself in 1989 while writing editorials in favour of the pilots who were trying to ground the airline that he then half owned. As a transgression, this turned out to be far less serious than spelling his late great mother, Dame Elisabeth’s name with a ‘z’ rather than with an ‘s’!

Rupert Murdoch is a corporate citizen of many countries, but above all else, he’s one of us. Most especially, tonight, he’s a long-serving director of the IPA, as was his distinguished and celebrated father, Sir Keith.”

Political brown-nosing of the highest order, don’t you think?

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Murdoch hates Rudd: a reminder

August 4, 2013
Written by: Carol Taylor
26 Replies

The Fairfax media and the social media have seized on the ‘rumour’ that Murdoch wants to wipe away Kevin Rudd’s chance of electoral success, in favour of Abbott; a win to Abbott would be a win for Murdoch, financially.

The barrage of frenzied attacks on Rudd from Murdoch’s News Limited media over the last few days gives this rumour some strength.

But this isn’t new. The Murdoch media is well oiled when it comes to attacking Rudd.

Let’s go back to September 2009, courtesy of Mungo MacCallum who wrote the following (reproduced below) in his article Rudd and the Murdoch Press.

“The most powerful man in Australia does not actually live in Australia. This, for many, is just one more reason to fear and loathe him. Much of Australia has never forgiven Rupert Murdoch for putting wealth and power above patriotism and deserting his country of birth to become an American citizen.

Political leaders find it particularly irksome. It was painful enough to be called into the media mogul’s Sydney headquarters, worse still to be invited to his rural estate – ‘Cavan’, near Canberra – to don gumboots and compliment him on his livestock. But to be summoned halfway around the world – to New York or, the ultimate humiliation, to one of his executive bonding retreats at Aspen, Colorado – is almost too much to bear.

Almost … but not quite. Those unwilling to undertake the pilgrimage have only to cast their minds back to 1975 to recall the terrible consequences of offending the Sun King.

The campaign waged by the News Limited press against Gough Whitlam during that year’s election was so brutal and single-minded that a number of Murdoch’s own journalists went on strike in protest. It was also overkill; in the somewhat hysterical atmosphere of the time, Whitlam was going to lose anyway. But the Dirty Digger’s Blitzkrieg undoubtedly made the result more dramatic than it might otherwise have been.

No sane politician, let alone prime minister, is going to invite an encore. For this reason, various Labor strategists are starting to worry about the simmering feud between Kevin Rudd and the Murdoch empire, concerned that there is a risk of eruption into open warfare.

Rudd and his colleagues have never tried to hide their distaste for the News Limited style of journalism, more than once accusing the corporation of deliberately distorting reports to favour Labor’s opponents. They have long since given up on some of News Limited’s columnists; you might as well try to convert Alan Jones. There is a particular contempt for what insiders describe as the Axis of Evil: Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun, Piers Akerman in the Telegraph and Janet Albrechtsen in the Australian.

When Mark Latham called Albrechtsen “a skanky ho who would die in a ditch for the Liberal Party”, he was accused of bad taste, but he was actually just summarising the general sentiment of the Labor Party. And Dennis Shanahan – working within the press gallery itself – became a standing joke at the close of the Howard era, thanks to his heroic attempts to read hope for the coalition into a long series of disastrous opinion polls.

But all this is par for the course, what Rudd himself might call the “normal argy-bargy of politics”. In recent times, though, the to-and-fro has become more particular and more serious. Rudd has been able to brush off many of the attacks against his ministers and the policies of his government, but when the concerted forces of the Murdoch press moved against his integrity it hit him where it hurts, both politically and personally.

Rudd is jealously protective of his image as a sincere prime minister.

The Opposition, of course – with the help of its cheerleaders in the media – has tried to portray him as a shallow, malleable politician, lacking both principle and conviction: all spin and no substance. But it is clear that the public does not see him that way. Indeed, a recent letter-writer to the Sydney Morning Herald explained Rudd’s longstanding ascendancy in the polls with one word: Integrity.

So when News Limited threw its considerable resources behind what became known as the ‘Utegate affair’, Rudd cracked. The accusation that he had given special favours to the car-dealer John Grant in return for – of all things – a beaten-up truck, was simply unacceptable and, when the email on which the charge was based was proved to be a forgery, he hit back.

Asked during a press conference for his reaction by Matthew Franklin, who had helped to drive the story in the Australian, Rudd responded in terms rather more measured than he had been using in private:

I think, what a number of people have said to me, Matthew, around the place is where have we kind of got to, when you have major papers like the Daily Telegraph, the Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser running on their front page that the prime minister of the country is corrupt, and then secondly the editors it seems not having sighted any original document in terms of this email, and thirdly, it turns out that, that email is a forgery, I would have thought a few people would want to know how all that happened, what sort of journalistic checks were put in place for that to be the case, or is it simply being sort of airbrushed from history?

I think the other thing which sort of comes up is, I mean, the usual accusations when political leaders respond to factually inaccurate reporting in the media, in this case in those papers that I referred to, is to accuse the political leaders in question of having some sort of glass jaw. It may simply be that what people want is just some basic answers as to how that might have happened, that’s a pretty basic thing.

The other thing I saw the chief executive of your own news organisation do yesterday was, in responding to this, indicate that somehow the deputy prime minister was raising these matters because she’d felt set upon by your newspaper over the coverage of the Building the Education Revolution stuff. Well, all’s fair in love and war, I mean, you guys will take whatever editorial position you want on the Building the Education Revolution and that’s been the case.

Rudd described this treatment of Gillard as “journalistic retaliation”. In other words, it had gone beyond Utegate: Rudd now saw it as a concerted campaign.

The Australian immediately struck back: one of its less scrupulous hit men, Glenn Milne, devoted an entire column to vilifying Rudd. And the paper’s dedicated sneer column, ‘Cut and Paste’ (which seems to exist purely for the purpose of trivialising or denigrating views to the left of the soup spoon), redoubled its attacks on Rudd and his defenders.

One of the constant accusations was that Rudd did indeed have a glass jaw: he could dish it out but he couldn’t take it. It is true that, since becoming the leader of the Labor Party, he and his staff have seemed both clumsy and overreactive in their dealings with the media. One explanation may be Rudd’s background in the Queensland arena, where the journalists (“the chooks”, as Joh Bjelke-Petersen once called them) are rather less aggressive than the Canberra press gallery.

The current stoush between the PM’s office and what is arguably the most forceful and influential constituent of the fourth estate is not a good sign. Rudd began, as quoted above, by referring specifically to three of the Murdoch tabloids, but later widened his attack to include “the Murdoch press” generally, perhaps implying that the campaign was being led by the man himself.

This is unlikely: these days Murdoch regards his Australian operations as pretty much on the fringe and allows his editors the kind of independence that their predecessors only dreamed of. An obvious example of this, is Murdoch’s support of the use of short-term stimulus packages to combat the global financial crisis, while his Australian economics writers (Michael Stutchbury in the Australian, in particular) have been highly critical.

Also, Murdoch declares himself a true believer in climate change, but the Australian has become a haven for sceptics and deniers. The anti-Rudd push, if it is coordinated at all, is almost certainly locally driven.

This may not give Rudd much immediate solace, but at least he is unlikely to suffer the kind of vendetta that was the fate of Gough Whitlam. Murdoch may well have disapproved of many aspects of the Labor government of 1972–75, but the ferocity of his onslaught was driven at least partly by a desire for payback.

The Murdoch papers had campaigned vigorously for Labor in 1972; indeed, their bashings of the incumbent prime minister, the hapless Billy McMahon, were almost as ruthless as their monstering of Whitlam three years later. And shortly after Whitlam took office, Murdoch appeared on the doorstep, claiming his reward: he wanted to be appointed to the plum diplomatic post of high commissioner to London, with the proviso that he be allowed to continue all his business operations – including running his media empire – from the official residence on the Strand.

Whitlam, outraged by the demand, refused point-blank and shortly thereafter cancelled a coal mining project that Murdoch had underway in Western Australia, on the grounds of “national interest”. The rest is history.

Kevin Rudd may find it inconvenient to have to make the trek to the United States to pay his respects, but he has reason to be thankful that Rupert Murdoch now pursues his insatiable ambitions from somewhere a long way away.”

Author’s comment:

Did Mungo provide a crystal ball for his readers to gaze into the future: September 2013. Unwittingly, it appears he has. Conversely, he has given us some history to reflect upon. History, that over the next month, will be repeated . . . with venom. We won’t need much reminding that Rupert Murdoch does indeed hate Kevin Rudd. Just keep an eye on his Australian media over the next few weeks if you have any doubt.

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The growing irrelevance of the Murdoch media

July 18, 2013
Written by: Michael Taylor
12 Replies

For a number of decades the Murdoch media have enjoyed an unbridled run as the major source for news, information and opinion in this country. It is a position, many would suggest, that they’ve protected without ethics or morals. Especially when it comes to opinion. Theirs, and only theirs counts and they’ve recently become fanatical at protecting it.

For example, anyone wishing to have their own ideas and opinions published on their media sites have had to contend with the editorial policies that are generally based on the ideology of the editors (or Murdoch himself, perhaps) and of course, on what is sellable. However, this regime of control over what content is allowed to emerge is now collapsing in today’s world of participatory media.

We have witnessed the internet create an arena where everyone can be a publisher. All a person needs is an opinion. Today’s audience want to be part of the media, rather than passive receivers. Not only do they want to comment on the news, they want to be part of creating it. They no longer rely on the Murdoch media.

Hence the rise of the citizen journalists, better known as the ‘Fifth Estate’ who are better suited to provide the diversity that today’s democracies need, yet which are often ignored by traditional journalists. The Fifth Estate advances the opportunity to expose doctored or omitted facts from mainstream media and point out the bias by particular reporters who do not provide such opportunity for his/her readership to give voice to alternate opinions. Aka Andrew Bolt, for example.

The Fifth Estate also encourages contributors and readers to think objectively and ask the probing questions that have blatantly been avoided by the MM; lending rise to the growing opinion that the Murdoch media is working to a particular political agenda. Their lack of scrutiny to the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, and his empty bag of policies, is typical of this.

Further, the Fifth Estate have the opportunity to analyse and disseminate the news and opinions thrown at them from the Murdoch media. Denis Shanahan’s interpretation of the opinion polls are good example, which are clearly based on his opinions, and not the polls. After each of his articles, the Fifth Estate is awash with a more objective and factual analysis.

Another direction we’ve seen the Murdoch media lean towards are those stories that are trivial, narrow, shallow and sensationalist. And often untrue. But the Fifth Estate generally has the meaningful intention of changing the direction of the media and exposing the shallowness and inconsistencies so evident in today’s Murdoch media. The events of the last week have certainly highlighted this. Following Margo Kingston’s explosive story EXCLUSIVE: Abbott forced to repay $9,400 he charged taxpayers to promote his book the Fifth Estate (and social media) shifted into overdrive to find out more about what could turn out to be one of the defining moments of the 2013 election campaign. The mainstream media was eventually swept up with the story gaining currency with Fairfax, the Guardian and the national TV channels. But not so with the Murdoch media. While the rest of the country was falling over itself providing their readers/viewers with the latest developments, the main story on news.com was how a surfing advert was considered offensive. Clearly more important than what is now called battlerort, but I’d prefer to think that the Murdoch media is just making it obvious that they don’t want Tony Abbott tarnished in any way.

The Fifth Estate, subsequently, has exploded in numbers and influence in Australia, not because they are the echo of dissenting voices but because the Murdoch media has created an arena for them to enter. If the Murdoch media was objective, impartial and committed to providing a quality service then in a modern democracy there may not be a Fifth Estate, or for that matter, the dozens of blog sites that exist purely to fill in the gaps exposed by the Murdoch empire. It is also fair to say that the Murdoch brand has been tarnished globally over the last 18 months thanks to the despicable phone-hacking scandal. Arguably, Rupert Murdoch is one of the most despised individuals in the developed world. He could also be considered the least trustworthy. So how can we trust his media outlets? It is becoming increasingly evident that his only interest in Australia is how much it can add to his bottom line and his newspapers are filled with stories each shaped to ensure that the profits head upwards. For example, could his loving support for Tony Abbott be motivated by Abbott’s promise to dismantle to Government’s NBN program? A move, as pointed out in Why Murdoch’s media is gunning for your NBN, that would keep his bottom line healthy.

There is no doubt that in a few short years the Fifth Estate has not only reshaped our view of journalism, but has unlocked previously unrealised publishing opportunities. The blog sites of the Murdoch media usually filter out contributions from bloggers whose opinion do not fit into their schema, so while independent blog sites provide some impact, the avenues through the Murdoch media have been providing none.

Then what are the impacts of the Fifth Estate?

This remains the unanswered question, or if you will, a work in progress. The Fifth Estate still has nowhere near the influence of the Murdoch media, such as being able to manipulate election outcomes or influence public discourse, but, the events of the last week show that the sway of the Fifth Estate is gaining traction. Independent Australia (IA) and the aforementioned Margo Kingston are now providers of news, but not only news, but on the stories that would be filtered out of the Murdoch media, and both IA and Margo are attracting massive audiences which one would expect is to the detriment of the Murdoch media. They lead a number of long-established independent sites such as Andrew Elder, The Failed Estate, The Pub, Café Whispers, The Political Sword, Grog’s Gamut and more recently here at The AIMN where alternate opinions are awarded some voice.

In a democracy we need these alternate voices. Margo Kingston sums up why:

“Journalists used to be a bridge between the people and the powerful. Journalists used to be outside the circle but now they’re inside the circle. They’ve joined the powerful and this very dangerous for a democracy”.

“It’s scary that the media are not doing their job. Many journalist friends have expressed the same concerns; they don’t feel as though they are traditional journalists anymore, they are simply writing what the powerful want them to write.

Very true. Hence we need to make the Murdoch media irrelevant. And that’s not beyond us.

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House of cards

July 12, 2013
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
31 Replies

Dear Tony Abbott,

You probably get a lot of letters from both admirers and those seeking to criticise every facet of your existence. I am one of the latter. You might recall I’ve written to you before. Last time I wrote I told you about how concerned I was that you weren’t getting proper scrutiny in the mainstream media. Thankfully, since the recent change in ALP leadership, the media seem to have moved past their obsession with Julia Gillard. And in want of something else to write about, some of the more scrupulous journalists are taking some interest in your plans for the country and your behavior in trying to achieve your ambition to be the next blue-tie-wearing Prime Minister of Australia.

The introduction of the Guardian’s local edition has helped this happy scenario come about. Just in the last few days, Margo Kingston revealed your lies about using Comm cars for private travel while promoting your book Battlelines. I’ve also seen an article about your Direct Action policy by Lenore Taylor, Jonathan Swan from the SMH has taken an interest in the Ashbygate Trust and Chris Uhlmann asked you some direct questions about your ‘stop the boats’ policy on ABC’s 7:30. Did I say policy? Apologies, I meant slogan.

All of this scrutiny no doubt makes for an unhappy week for you, which I’m not ashamed to say makes for a very happy week for me. It’s clear you’re under a bit of pressure, what with your cowardly decision to turn down a debate with Kevin Rudd and this behavior in your pie stacking press conference was just, well, I don’t know what it was Tony?

But the reason for my letter is not to make your week any worse, although that would be a welcome side effect. No, I’m writing to you about your crumbling personal character and policy platform which is quite clearly a house of cards, built on quick-sand foundations. You see, the thing is Tony, when I stand back and look at what you spend 95% of your time in the media saying, it’s pretty clear to any objective outsider that you’ve set yourself up to fail. And it’s quite clear why you can’t possibly risk debating Kevin Rudd at this point in time, because you know as well as I do, if you’re really honest with yourself, that your house of cards could come crumbling down at any moment. Because its basis is a massive pile of dishonorable, weasel word, downright misleading and dishonest sloganeering and smear. This is what you have built Tony. And I think it’s time you realise just how dangerous a position you are in.

It’s all been so easy up to now. It’s no surprise that you’re suffering from the worse kind of complacency. The complacency of a man who hasn’t had to defend his own positions. Who hasn’t had to compete on a platform of ideas and intelligent debate about the merits of your alternative plans. All you’ve had to do for the last three years is to call Julia Gillard a ‘liar’ and your work for the day was done. How easy you must have thought life was. How weak your brain muscle must have got over all this time while you leisurely went about your business, doing stunt after stunt on your anti-Carbon-Price-Convoy-of-No-Charisma, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax-payers’ money on your never-ending election campaign, while paying little or no attention to the policy success of your rivals in the government. And while paying little attention to the merits of what was coming out of your mouth.

Yes, I’m talking about the merits of what you have been talking about for the last three years. Because the fact is, while you’ve been using your Murdoch-inspired media pack to convince the Australian public that Julia Gillard can’t be trusted, the real truth has been that your entire policy platform, your whole view of the world, is so easily unpicked that you literally will not risk being asked any questions about it. It’s as flimsy as your claim to have ‘no specific knowledge’ about the Slipper/Ashbygate scandal. But know this. We can see right through you Tony. And right through your cheer squad of angry Abbott supporters who scream and yell on the radio, write misogynist blogs and troll #auspol.

If you were an emperor Tony, you wouldn’t be wearing any clothes. But you’re not an emperor. And your supporters have no logical argument for why they support you. Because the truth is, they have absolutely no reasonable way to defend your policy positions, except to admit the one thing they, and you, will never admit. And that is that your slogan policies aren’t based on intelligence, truth and respect. Let that settle for a second Tony. Intelligence. Truth. Respect. When you say ‘stop the boats’, you deny the complex problem of displaced, scared, desperate people looking for some way to save their lives. When you say Labor is all about debt and you spread economic doom and gloom around the economy, you deny the Global Financial Crisis and Labor’s success in steering the country away from recession. When you say ‘axe the tax’, you’re pretending the problem of climate change is not important enough to make sacrifices for. And you think short-term opportunism is more important than the lives of future generations of earth’s inhabitants. When was the last time you, or any of your LNP colleagues, showed intelligence, truth and respect? I can’ think of a single instance.

Because let’s be frank Tony. There’s a reason why weasel words are your only option. You’re only interested in helping a very small percentage of the Australian population. The minute anyone examines your slogan policies, this truth is revealed like budgie smugglers tearing open in the surf. The reality is, you’re the enemy of the working people you stand next to at your countless factory visits and anti-carbon tax rallies. You cosy up to them as if you’re backing them all the way, when really you would happily destroy their prosperity, their stability of employment, the infrastructure they need, their access to government services including health and education, if you thought there was a buck in it for your rich mates. Everything you say and do is designed to both fool people that this is not your true purpose, and to reassure those who know you are only supporting them that you will continue to do this. Please understand that when I say you only care about Gina Rinehart and Rupert Murdoch, I’m not saying you literally only support two people. I’m talking about Rinehart, Murdoch and the people who are like them; those who aspire to be as selfish, ruthless and rich; those who fantasize about a world where the Rinehart/Murdoch philosophy is acceptable and success is measured by how like-them you are. It’s a disgusting aspiration Tony, and you should be embarrassed to be encouraging it.

As soon as this fact becomes more apparent to the electorate, as soon as they realise how abhorrent your world view is, you’re done Tony. Because I believe Australians are better than this. While you’ve been aiming for the lowest common denominator, you’ve been underestimating that Australia is a community. Not an economy. The economy serves the community, not the other way around. Your house of cards will come tumbling down as soon as this simple truth is more widely acknowledged. I just hope this happens before the election, and not after.

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Murdoch and the Internet

June 10, 2013
Written by: Rossleigh
52 Replies

“So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery. Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying.” (Rupert Murdoch, on Twitter.)

Some of you probably remember SOPA, the attempt to protect copyright owners from digital piracy. (For those that don’t: quick Wikipedia summary: “The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a United States bill introduced by U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to combat online copyright infringement and online trafficking in counterfeit goods. Provisions include the requesting of court orders to bar advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with infringing websites, and search engines from linking to the websites, and court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to the websites. The law would expand existing criminal laws to include unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, imposing a maximum penalty of five years in prison.”) Like attempts to stamp out child pornography on the internet, or cyber bullying, it’s something that we should all get behind.

But, as they say, the devil is in the detail. (Or perhaps, it’s the devil who is behind it.) The problem with the legislation was that – in effect – it has the potential to become censorship by stealth. Rather than someone who felt their copyright was being infringed asking the provider to remove it before any action was taken, the bill gave the power to judges to block it immediately. In essence, it placed the onus on the website provider to monitor breaches of copyright, including links to other sites. In other words, under some interpretations of the act, a cut and paste containing links to other sites – like I just did from Wikipedia – places the onus on me to ensure that none of those other links contain breaches of copyright.

Naturally, some people argued that concern about its misuse is misguided, and well, like with the security services and rendition, “you can trust us, we’re American” – it will only be used to stop piracy – legitimate sites have nothing to worry about. (“If you’ve done nothing wrong, why are you worried?”) Others, like Google and Wikipedia, joined the conspiracists in protest actions that have prevented the Bill from becoming law.

Rupert on the other hand, argues that Google is complicit in the piracy. As he tweeted, “Just been to google search for mission impossible. Wow, several sites offering free links. I rest my case.”

So what’s Murdoch’s big problem with the Internet, and why am I bringing it up after all this time? Well, obviously, people pirating the products of Fox Studios undercuts his profits, and he has a legitimate concern with stopping the illegal reproduction of films and other media for which he owns the copyright. I can see that, and I’m sure that any reasonable government will see that. Australia, I’m sure, could be a world leader in this, just as we’ve been a world leader in seat belt legislation and the plain packaging of cigarettes.

And whereas once you’d need to travel to some market to get a dodgy copied VHS of “Fatal Attraction” or some such new release, these days, you can download from the Internet in minutes. Or seconds, once the NBN is installed in every home. Oh, that’s right. We don’t need those sort of download speeds. And the NBN is digging up asbestos – (it’s the NBN asbestos, not Telstra’s). Well, whatever, people can still undercut his profits illegally from their own homes. And Google is helping to aid these crooks.

Of course, when one is trying to put up a pay wall to ensure that people don’t get their news for free, it helps if you can block providers who are repeating the news that you have copyright on. Oh, that’s right, there isn’t a copyright on the news. Just individual articles, by particular writers.

And if Murdoch puts up paywalls for his newspapers and media sites, won’t that encourage people to be “misinformed”, because they may go to the ABC where they can see it for free.

I have an idea, let’s make it fairer by privatising the ABC!

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Haters want to hate

May 28, 2013
Written by: Dr Victoria Fielding
42 Replies

It’s clear Australian voters aren’t rational, but do they have to be so blatantly mindless as well? When I say voters, I’m currently referring in this context to the people recently polled by ReachTEL and whose responses contributed to this headline on News.com:

“Voters trust Opposition Leader Tony Abbott most to deliver NDIS, poll reveals”

I had to read this a couple of times before I believed what I was seeing. The figures in the article state that 57% of the poll’s respondents trust Tony Abbott to deliver the NDIS, more so than they trust Julia Gillard. Surely, even someone completely rusted onto the Liberal party, even Peta Credlin, even Gina Rinehart, even Rupert Murdoch, even Alan Jones, even Tony Abbott himself must see the inanity in this poll result. The NDIS is Labor’s policy. It was the work of Bill Shorten, and only with Julia Gillard’s support did it have any hope in hell in getting a name, let alone being successfully implemented. Tony Abbott supported Labor’s NDIS policy after many months of non-commitment, only after it became obvious that if he didn’t, he would be seen as the scrooge we all know him to be. But just because he supported it, does not mean he gives a crap about it. He never raised such a scheme as even an idea when he was in government for many years. And when the policy did finally pass the lower house, much to the joy of the Labor MPs who worked tirelessly to make it happen, Tony Abbott and his team weren’t even there to see it happen. Because they couldn’t bear to be seen celebrating a policy win by the Labor government. A Labor government policy. So on what far off planet do these voters live if they think Abbott would be the better person to deliver a policy that was designed and successfully passed through the Parliament by Gillard’s Labor government?

At this point I’m pretty much ready to say to Australian voters, wake the f*ck up. Could you really be so misinformed by the Murdoch, Fairfax and ABC press, so out of touch with the policy platforms of the two major parties, and so ready to hate everything Julia Gillard does, that even when her government successfully implements a policy of huge national significance, you give Abbott the credit?

Perhaps this isn’t just a sign of an electorate that is completely uninterested with the roles played by the Labor Party and the Liberal Party in delivering the landmark NDIS policy. Perhaps it’s a sign of just how disengaged ordinary voters are from, well, political reality.

I guess it’s these same voters who haven’t twigged that the Carbon Price is designed to save them and future generations of their family from the effects of climate change. It’s these same voters who refuse to equate Murdoch’s campaign to bring down the Gillard government with an agenda to destroy the NBN, a technology that puts his Foxtel profits at risk. It’s also these same voters who don’t understand that Gina Rinehart hates the Mining Tax not because she wants to make enough money to keep employing more workers, but because she doesn’t want to pay tax on her super profits. Because she wants to keep the money from the sale of Australia’s resources for herself. These voters are probably willing to support policies that they do understand, such as the Gonski school funding, but they’re still not willing to give Gillard the credit for designing and delivering such policies. Gillard is damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t.

The other truly frustrating part of this whole messed up situation is that Abbott supporters never have anything nice to say about Abbott. They only have bile to spew at Gillard. Ad astra is right, propaganda directed at the Gillard government is spreading hatred throughout the electorate. This hatred is making the electorate crazy. Here’s a challenge for any Abbott supporters who come across this post and decide to make a comment. Please tell us why you support Abbott, without mentioning Labor or Gillard. I dare you.

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So you’re thinking of voting for Tony Abbott? Think again!

May 19, 2013
Written by: Carol Taylor
134 Replies

One of the more difficult tasks of being writer is actually doing the writing. You know what to say but you can’t put it together with any eloquence or power. Your endless search for the right words bear no fruit. Then you stumble across a comment on social media that says exactly what you were hoping to say, though perhaps with much less eloquence, but certainly packing the punch. Some things are just better when written from the heart instead of the head.

A comment by well-known and popular blogger Cuppa, on Cafe Whispers did just that and his comment deserves to be a post on its own. It has a powerful message to all those planning to vote for Tony Abbott: think about the consequences. Look beyond September 14. Getting rid of Julia Gillard will give you the real Tony Abbott and it might not be the Tony Abbott you voted for. Victoria Rollison summed it up recently with her Spinach or shit article which summarised:

‘Voting for Tony Abbott because you don’t like Julia Gillard is like eating shit because you hate spinach’.

Before quoting Cuppa’s comment, first a little background. Cuppa, among others, have been engaged with the dregs of right-wing social media brigade for a number of months over their preference for the proverbial shit sandwich without any plausible reason why they don’t like spinach. The response has always been the same: “We don’t like spinach”. You can see a sample of their responses collated by Michael Taylor here and summarised as:

. . . parrot-fashion repeats of what we hear from the opposition and the media.

Anyway, on to Cuppa’s comment:

Just remember this, if the swaggering monkey finds himself propelled into the Lodge, it won’t be YOUR victory. You will be among the losers like the other 99 per cent of us.

It will be a victory for foreign billionaire Rupert Murdoch and the richest woman in the known universe Gina Rinehart. It will be a “victory” for the radical right-wing spewing hate jocks of talkback radio, who pretend to be on the side of ‘the working man’, but are in fact orifice greasers of some of the wealthiest, grubbiest, most powerful people on earth. It will be a “victory” for those sellouts at the national broadcaster who sold out their professional journalistic ethics and impartiality, the Institution which employs them, and the whole damn community they’re meant to serve, a victory in the name of toeing the one-way biased media line of Murdoch, Rinehart and international greed merchants.

When the monkey and his misfits start taking the country apart, the howls of protest will be loud and long. When they start siphoning wealth upwards from you, your relatives and neighbours to those who already have more wealth than they possibly know what to do with, you will start waking up.

When the recessions begin, when the interest rate hikes start to cripple home – and business buyers, and the unemployment figures start climbing, you will learn that you did a bad thing.

As the country turns to a Third World shithole – with clampdowns on freedom of speech, scandals and cronyism at the highest levels, degraded public services, declining health standards, rising mortality rates, armies of poverty, beggars on the streets, shanty towns for the masses, gated communities for the One Per Cent, an atmosphere increasingly clogged with dark noxious fumes – as this happens it will slowly dawn on you that you made a big mistake.

It won’t be your victory. It will be your Mistake. And your shame. Your loss. Your regret. And we won’t let you forget it. You will get no sympathy or forgiveness from us. You will get the blame and contempt due for what you, in your stupid brainwashed partisan spite, did to your and our country and all our descendants already here and yet to come.

That’s if we even see you around here any more when the stuff ups start happening. You’ll have so much to defend and make excuses for you’ll run out of Spin, as monkey brains f*cks up in big ways or small every day.

So enjoy your brief hubris, gibbering morons, the onset of agony is just around the corner . . .

It lacks my eloquence, but well said Cuppa.

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Rupert Murdoch, where’s the outrage?

May 18, 2013
Written by: Michael Taylor
13 Replies

You may recall that one of the fabricated fears planted in people’s’ minds before the last election was that a Labor Government would raise the GST. Those of us who remember the perceived threat may also remember the public outcry expressed by readers who left comments on popular sites like Rupert Murdoch’s news.com.

Someone, somewhere, dreamt up that Gillard would raise the GST, the papers ran with it, and public outrage followed. Now who would have raised such an idea? Given the negative aspects and the timing of the alleged threat I’m sure the Liberal camp might have had a small bit to play in it. I’m sure they might have been a little bit bemused that there were genuine calls to have it raised, with many of the callers being the end of town that party with the Liberals party.

The calls became more vociferous leading up to the Tax Summit.

But you may ask: “Why should we raise such a repressive tax?” Well, there were a number of reasons mooted at the time. Independent MP Tony Windsor started off with the most simplest of these.

Tony Windsor has suggested the GST should rise by 1 percentage point to allow 115 “inefficient” taxes to be eradicated.

Mr Windsor and fellow crossbencher Tony Crook . . . called for the GST to be examined . . . following Treasury warnings that the tax has become increasingly inefficient.

Mr Windsor’s suggestion was in the wake Treasury’s executive director of revenue Rob Heferen’s statement that the GST was costing more to collect than other taxes and was “less than robust” because of increased spending on tax-free items.

The OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration highlighted the “practical reality” of an increase, being that it was essential to achieve many of the reforms recommended by the government’s tax review (The Henry Review) of 2009.

“There would seem to be a fairly compelling logic to GST base broadening and a slightly higher rate (eg 12.5 per cent) as a means of rationalising the major state taxes and compensating low-income citizens who would otherwise be unfairly impacted by GST expansion,” said the centre’s senior adviser Richard Highfield.

Viewing the current tax system as unfair and inefficient, accounting bodies also put their weight behind the call. Among them, CPA Australia suggest that:

. . . increasing the GST to 15 or 20 per cent, accompanied by cuts to business and personal tax rates, would improve the economy and raise the standard of living. “Our research helps demystify concerns that an increase in GST would hurt Australians,” CPA Australia chief executive Alex Malley said.

But the sharpest call and strongest argument comes from the big end of town; the business groups with the Australian Industry Group leading the call.

The Australian Industry Group is urging an increase in the rate of the GST – or a broadening of its application to more goods and services – as a way to pay for the removal of inefficient state taxes.

The Ai Group – whose chief executive Heather Ridout was involved in the Henry tax review – says the states and territories have among the most inefficient and poorly designed of all Australia’s taxes.

Ideally, the group says, insurance taxes and conveyancing duties would be removed and payroll tax remodelled or removed. Land tax could be improved substantially.

Compliance costs could be reduced by harmonising remaining state taxes, and economies of scale exploited by using the Australian Taxation Office to collect state revenue.

A more broadly based or higher GST should finance the removal of as many existing state taxes as possible, it says.

I found it rather interesting, that during the scare campaign the Murdoch media, in particular, were wheeling out all sorts of experts calling for the increase. In the minds of the readers raising the GST would be a good thing and Labor would fall prey to this meme.

In numerous media releases leading up to the tax summit the Government clearly ruled out the increase, or that it will be tabled for discussion. To do so would have been political suicide. It may have also been seen as an easy solution to return to surplus, even though it clearly would not have been for that purpose. It was a mute point that the Government had been widely criticized for not heeding many of the recommendations of the Henry Review, namely from those critics who sit on the opposition benches.

I was opposed to the introduction of the GST and the manner in which the Howard Government hoisted it upon us, as many people were. But it is with us, and despite its obvious flaws it nonetheless could unwittingly be the vehicle that will be used to overhaul the inequalities of the current tax system. However, this was unlikely to happen because of the negativity around the GST during the last election campaign and the Government’s reluctance to pursue the matter, particularly as it is in the minds of the electorate that the Labor Government has been painted as the party most likely to raise the GST if it ever were to be raised.

Fast forward to 2013 and Tony Abbott’s budget reply speech and this widely unpublicised comment:

We will finish the job that the Henry review started and this government squibbed.

Now, didn’t the Henry Review recommend an increase in the GST? Rupert, your papers were in a frenzy the last time an increase was put in the public sphere and the outrage against the Gillard Government was carefully nurtured.

Where is the outrage now?

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Is the ‘carbon tax’ the reason for the PM’s low popularity, or is it Murdoch?

May 17, 2013
Written by: Carol Taylor
20 Replies

Claims that Julia Gillard’s unpopularity were linked to her introduction of carbon pricing in 2012 don’t stack up, says Alex White from the UK Guardian. White points the finger at Rupert Murdoch and the people he controls in our country. Tony Abbott sits high on that list of puppets.

White’s article is reproduced in full below. It’s the type of truth in reporting we’ll be seeing more of in our country when the Guardian opens its doors here. What a relief that will be from the biased Murdoch bile we are currently force-fed.

I hope you enjoy the article:

Since the disappointment of Copenhagen in 2009, Australia has witnessed a concerted scare campaign against action on global warming. The scare campaign has been led by senior commentators in (Murdoch owned) News Limited papers, by conservative radio shock-jocks on the airwaves, and in parliament by extremist opposition party leader Tony Abbott.

From the moment Australia’s carbon pricing legislation package, the Clean Energy Future Act, was announced Tony Abbott has barnstormed from one end of Australia to another, declaring a “blood oath” that repealing the carbon price would be his first priority if elected:

“I am giving you the most definite commitment any politician can give that this tax will go. This is a pledge in blood.”

Behind this incendiary phrase is Abbott’s own climate change policy, a mishmash of ineffective handouts to industry to “clean up” polluting power stations and industrial plants, a tree-planting program, investment in bio-char, and token efforts towards energy efficiency.

Collectively, these programs are termed “direct action”, which can be boiled down, in the words of shadow minister Malcolm Turnbull, to the Liberal Party’s sop to the climate change deniers in their ranks:

If the theory of climate change was proved to be nonsense, then obviously there would be no point in cutting emissions at all. If the rest of the world ultimately resolved to do nothing then we would very likely be better off spending the resources available on adaptation – moving to higher ground and so on.

The fact remains that the direct action policy, which aims to reach the same 5% carbon emission reductions as Labor’s carbon price, is mostly a mishmash of unanswered questions and wishful thinking.

Viciousness and personal attacks have characterised the blood oath carbon price repeal campaign. Abbott and other senior conservative front-bench MPs have spoken at rallies where posters and banners have depicted Prime Minister Julia Gillard as a “witch” and a “bitch”. Tony Abbott, for a time, defended conservative radio host Alan Jones for claiming at a Liberal Party fundraiser that Gillard’s father “died of shame”. Independent MP, Tony Windsor, who voted for the carbon price, received death threats.

Unsurprisingly, over the past three years public support for the Gillard government has declined to record low levels. Many in the media, and some within the government, blame the introduction of the carbon price for the low polling numbers. Unfortunately, these claims don’t stack up.

The graph below shows the decline in the two-party polling for Labor, matched alongside the total support and oppose polling for the carbon price. The polling figures are from Essential Report, a fortnightly Australian poll.

Australian polling of the carbon price support, Labor’s two-party preferred rating and Tony Abbott’s dissatisfaction rating (source: Essential Report)

Prime Minister Gillard announced the carbon price in February 2011, after winning the election the previous August. By this stage, the fall in the government’s polling numbers is already visible.

The Clean Energy Bill passed through the lower house in October 2011 and the Senate in November. The carbon price came into effect the following year from 1 July 2012. In this time, support for the carbon price dropped to rock bottom and opposition sky-rocketed. Despite a massive pro-carbon price campaign run by Australia’s environment movement, Tony Abbott’s “blood oath” scare tactics won out through 2011 (although as is clear, his personal approval suffered).

Something happened after 1 July 2012 however.

The apocalyptic predictions made by Tony Abbott did not come to pass. The sky didn’t fall. Mining and manufacturing towns weren’t wiped off the map. Regional airlines didn’t double their prices. The carbon price wrecking ball, python strike and cobra squeeze has not impacted Australia’s interest rates, employment levels or inflation.

Support for the carbon price, and opposition to it, narrowed and equalised.

What didn’t happen was an increase in Labor’s vote. Throughout 2011 and 2012, while the carbon price’s stocks fell, Labor’s also remained low. From 1 July 2012, the two numbers decoupled. Labor’s polling remained stuck, while opposition to the carbon price declined and support increased.

This month, we passed an unprecedented milestone: global carbon levels exceeded levels not seen in over 3 million years. The carbon price in Australia has contributed to a 10-year low in carbon emissions. Few in Australia have noticed either turning point. Meanwhile, conservative state governments have quietly been dismantling carbon reduction policies established by the previous Labor governments, wilfully ignoring warnings by the scientific community of the risks.

It is unlikely that the election will be fought on climate change, or that Tony Abbott will follow through on his threat to make the election a referendum on the carbon price.

If Tony Abbott does win the Australian election on 14 September, he has announced he will do everything he can to abolish the carbon price, which would leave Australia the only nation in the world to remove carbon pricing laws. No doubt, an Abbott-led Australia will accelerate exports of fossil fuels, but it remains to be seen if he can dismantle the carbon price.

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Is the ‘carbon tax’ the reason for the PM’s low popularity, or is it Murdoch?