Another weekend! The last before the Budget. From our national media we predict more leadership speculation and something on news.com.au about crocodiles and an internet meme. We don’t know what The Age will run with, but it will be hideously laid out on their website. And the ABC will run with whatever The Australian asserted a few hours earlier.
Anyway, here’s a place to discuss it as it happens.
A new feature at Pure Poison, where you present an amusing, ironic or bizarre (or all three) quote from the current week by someone on the sidebar at the right, and challenge your fellow Pure Poison readers to guess who said it WITHOUT USING GOOGLE AND RUINING THE GAME FOR EVERYONE.
I’ll start you with an easy one:
The smear works every time with some people, provided it comes from the right side.
As I said, an easy one.
Michelle Grattan, overdosing on irony:
If it emerges that the Coalition is not telling the full story of its contact with Ashby, that will reflect very badly on it. But the government should be careful: in its quest for a smoking gun, it should beware finding itself on the wrong side of the real issue.
“The real issue”? ABOUT TIME. So we’re going to finally discuss politics in terms of actual policy? No more of this horse-race personality politics bullshit? Can’t wait. “The real issue” me, please, Michelle.
It’s pretty sensational to have a police inquiry into a Speaker, and a bit unfortunate when you’ve wooed him to be your man.
Sigh.
With the release yesterday of a state budget by the Steven Bradburies of Australian politics, Ted Baillieu’s Liberals, Victorians were thrilled to learn of massive spending cuts (including letting basic utility discounts for very low income earners fall behind inflation) in order to pander to the right-wingers’ insane fixation on surpluses-at-all-costs.
Interestingly, none of the coverage seemed to contrast the cuts with the vastly more money Baillieu’s team is spending increasing sentences and building a $500m new private prison – you know, to really lock in that crime rate and work to build it. Rehabilitative programs that actually do work – those are being slashed. But expensive new prisons that train minor offenders in more serious crime? And the extra court time needed to deal with increased contests due to mandatory sentences? For those, we can always find money. Because none of the media dare to say a word against them (The Age) – or are outright screaming for them (The Herald Sun).
But you’d think the contrast would be worth noting in budget coverage. Haven’t seen it attempted yet.
The envy-ridden, hate-filled leftist media are this morning trumpeting the finding by an envy-ridden, hate-filled leftist (including the Tories) UK parliamentary committee that Rupert Murdoch – Our Rupert – is unfit to run a global company like News:
“News International and its parent News Corporation exhibited wilful blindness, for which the companies’ directors – including Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch – should ultimately take responsibility,” it said. “Their instinct throughout, until it was too late, was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and discipline the perpetrators. Even if there were a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture at News International, the whole affair demonstrates huge failings of corporate governance at the company and its parent, News Corporation.
We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.”
Since when is buck-shifting and claiming no idea what’s going on in your own company a reason to be ashamed? As Jon Stewart wisely noted on The Daily Show, the buck stops somewhere… down there. And so it should. Read More
The right-wing game on housing:
Step 1: Through a mix of policies from slashing capital gains tax through to inflationary grants like the FHOG, cause a runaway housing bubble. The higher prices go, the more current owners with (now inflated) equity in their existing property try to get in on this high-return bonanza, completely pricing out those without existing equity in a property and forcing them to rent long-term. Your supporters feel like they’ve won the lottery.
Step 2: Suddenly, when the bubble starts to contract because housing is now ludicrously expensive, notice that a lot of people are angry that they cannot afford to buy a house.
Step 3: Blame the opposing party who came in after you and are left dealing with your mess:
Another sign of a lack of confidence in not just the economy but in Canberra: “New home sales have plunged to their lowest since May 1994…”
Step 4: Ride to power on the back of public anger about a problem you created and will exacerbate if you can?
We know that the Herald Sun’s answer to June Daly Watkins, Andrew Bolt, is not impressed by people who use harsh or inappropriate language. After all, who can forget the three separate occasions when he took Marieke Hardy to task for tweeting that she hoped Tony Abbott’s “cock drops off and falls down a plug hole” ? So it will be instructive to see his, or any other conservative commentators’, response to former Howard Chief of Staff and Liberal strategist Graeme Morris’s comments on Sky News last night.
Morris said of the Prime Minister, that Australians “ought to be kicking her to death.” Read More
A quick case study of our hack tabloid media, with the Melbourne Herald Sun‘s version of today’s “big” story (something something Gillard something Thomson Slipper something WORST GOVERNMENT EVER).
Tonight the paper is boasting that its readers don’t like the PM and are on board with the demands for a new election it’s been making pretty much since Tony lost the last one:
What an amazing correlation between Herald Sun readers and right-wing demands! Ninety-five percent of Herald Sun readers fit into a category NewsPoll says matches 52 percent of the population. Here’s an interesting figure I’d like to see them share: what percentage of News Ltd readers want a new election, compared with ordinary Australians who don’t read News Ltd papers?
It’s almost like there’s something about reading the Herald Sun that causes a person to demand exactly what the Liberal Party demands, isn’t it.
A few interesting asides from today’s edition show just how that might have come to be.
1. We’ve been telling our readers to damn Gillard for not doing what PMs have no power to do
First, the Herald Sun attacks Gillard for doing precisely what they’d been demanding she do, on the basis that she hasn’t done something she hasn’t the power to do – force an MP to resign from parliament:
Surely there’s an argument that if his position was considered untenable within the ALP – in light of an expected damning Fair Work Australia report into his alleged misconduct when Health Services Union boss – that he should also have resigned from Parliament.
Also, surely there’s an argument that if Gillard was serious about Peter Slipper she’d have conjured a magical shadow creature to assassinate him as he sleeps. The fact that she hasn’t utilised nonexistent wizard powers just proves that she’s THE WORST PRIME MINISTER WE’VE EVER HAD.
2. We relentlessly drown out any actual news about government or policy with multiple covers per drip-fed claimed “scandal”
Next, a handy graphic of Herald Sun front pages from the last few weeks demonstrating how its readers may have come to the view that LNP candidate at the last election Peter Slipper’s behaviour is just about the most important thing affecting all their lives: Read More
I am suing Andrew Bolt in the Supreme Court of Victoria
The Courts provide the hope of a levelling field where we can vindicate ourselves against the sorts of personal attacks that Andrew Bolt has recently made against me.
I am a law student and have some court experience, so have decided to go the full David v Goliath route of running my own court case (yes, I will need “good luck with that”).
…
I want to be able to raise the issues I feel should be raised with the Press Council. To have a fair hearing. Bolt’s false accusations that I am a Vexatious Litigant* stifle this.
So I have sued Bolt in the Supreme Court of Victoria to do what Bolt will not do: clear my name so that I may speak freely.
Via David Barrow
This post is an extract from David Barrow’s website linked above.
Gillard must resign, the government must go, election now. No, it’s not just Andrew Bolt saying it today.
JULIA Gillard should consider falling on her sword for the good of the Labor Party, because she can no longer present an even slightly credible face at the election.
The current Parliament is not stable and not functioning properly. The minority government, reliant on a ever-growing grab-bag of independents (which I liken to the customers in the bar scene from Star Wars), has not carried the confidence of the nation.
The usual suspects, Bolt:
The public badly wants this government gone.
Even the press gallery has now turned on Julia Gillard.
The Gillard government must go. It relies on tainted votes, as Abbott said, and the taint has spread right through Cabinet.The public thinks Gillard and her crew crossed a line a long time ago.
Gillard must ask for a new election if she wants to be seen acting decisively.
Now can someone please let me know which constitutional clause we need to call on for the will of the press gallery and opinion columnists to replace our democratic processes? Surely screeching in the journosphere is more important than our judicial processes and democratic institutions? Read More
 |
||
 |
 |
 |
Independent news, blogs and commentary on politics, media, business, the environment and life.
Copyright © 2012 Private Media Pty Ltd, Publishers of Crikey. All Rights Reserved.
Web development by Valegro
Editor: Sophie Black
Publisher: Eric Beecher
Political Correspondent: Bernard Keane
Level 6, 22 William St, Melbourne, 3000
Ph: 1800 985 502
Fax: (03) 8623 9975