BERNARD KEANE AND GLENN DYER Crikey commentators	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

Is cutting the corporate tax rate a good idea? The Business Council thinks so -- it wants to increase the GST on the rest of us to cut the company tax rate to 25%. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry thinks it's a good idea, albeit for the nebulous reason that it will "boost confidence". The Coalition thought so in 2010, when it proposed a 1.5% company tax cut in that election campaign. But then the Coalition went off the idea and when Labor tried to cut the company tax rate by 1%, they joined with the Greens to block it.

The Coalition and the Greens, a unity ticket on blocking company tax cuts. Whodathunkit?

And Labor used to think so -- Kevin Rudd's original mining tax funded a 2% tax cut, curbed to 1% in the Gillard version, but after the Coalition and the Greens blocked it, Labor decided it had better things to do than wait for the business community to lobby the party of business to get behind a business tax cut.

Labor's policy of course was based on the Henry Tax Review, which backed a corporate rate cut. The fact that Australia had a high corporate tax rate compared internationally meant, that review concluded, that we should reduce "the company income tax rate to 25% over the short to medium term, as fiscal and economic circumstances permit" -- albeit coupled with a change in non-renewable resource rent taxation.

That important caveat was missing from this morning's announcement by the Coalition of a 1.5% corporate tax cut, intended to offset its 1.5% tax rise on medium and large business to fund Tony Abbott's paid parental leave scheme -- the one the rest of his party and the Nationals hate.

The Coalition has declined to explain how the tax cut, likely to cost $5 billion over four years (the costing compared to the predicted cost of Labor's tax cut is significantly lower, reflecting lower corporate tax revenue growth expectations) will be funded. "We are confident that the company tax cut will deliver some partially offsetting benefits to the budget bottom line over the medium term," Abbott announced this morning. This, of course, is supply side nonsense, articulated by economist Arthur Laffer, that cutting taxes produces higher tax revenue, which has been repeatedly mocked by economists and shown to be wrong in practice.

George H. W. Bush called this sort of thing voodoo economics and he was proven to be right by the tax history of his, his son's and the Reagan presidency.

Interestingly, though, the Business Tax Working Group last year wasn't so enamoured of a corporate tax cut, having found some businesses, namely mining companies, didn't like the idea of cutting tax concessions in order to fund cutting the headline rate:

"... the economic benefits from a reduction in the company tax rate from the current rate are likely to be smaller than when the rate was much higher in the 1980s and 1990s, notwithstanding that capital may have become more mobile since then. The Working Group considers that a cut of two to three percentage points would be required to drive a significant investment response ..."

So, the Coalition line that a tax cut will drive greater investment and more jobs might be a little, shall we say, overstated.

Indeed, the Canadian experience -- they've been cutting corporate taxes regularly since 1988 -- suggests there is no evidence that cutting corporate taxes increases investment -- if anything, lower corporate taxes there have accompanied a decline in business investment

Cutting taxes for companies has a different impact than cutting tax for individuals (the stimulus value of which is also problematic -- many people save their tax cuts, rather than spend them). Companies can spend the money paying shareholders a higher dividend, or pay company executives higher remuneration or directors higher board fees. Super funds and other big investors will press companies to pay as much of the lower tax bill back to them by way of higher dividends. That will flow into higher fees for the super fund managers and their advisers, with anything left over going into the funds themselves for policyholders.

It's higher aggregate demand boosts company sales and revenues (and, ideally, profits), not lower company tax -- particularly if, as the BCA wants, you raise the GST to fund it. Australian companies have been saving as much of their surplus cash, echoing what consumers and mortgage holders are doing at the moment. In fact, Australian companies have an estimated $100 billion in cash tucked away in their bank accounts (much of it in the major banks on term deposits earning not very much).

That cash pile has been rising for the past three years -- ever since super funds and other investors bailed out these big companies in and just after the GFC with more than $120 billion of new capital and loans. Companies have been slow to spend this money on new investment because of weak demand in the economy, not high taxes.

That makes it problematic to see how a 1.5% tax cut, in two years time, will help the economy grow and create more jobs -- not for the next two years when the economy will be at its most vulnerable during the move from the resources investment boom to growth driven by higher domestic demand.

A far smarter idea for Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott would have been to look at the entire area of corporate tax, which includes dividend imputation, the tax deductibility of interest payments and depreciation. All should be put up for discussion -- if you lower corporate tax, then dividend imputation is less needed as is tax deductibility for interest payments. Imputation costs the budget an estimated $18-20 billion a year by some estimates. The tax bill for interest payments is also substantial while depreciation is wreaking havoc on the budget at the moment and will do so for years because of the impact of the enormous mining investment boom.

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GUY RUNDLE Crikey writer-at-large on the campaign trail	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

Christ almighty, Blacktown is a dump. Two huge intersecting shopping malls ranged around a car park and a square vacant lot, a couple of brick veneer terraces of shops climbing the hills, and a stupid and artless train station plonked in the middle. There was a town here once, as evidenced by a single red brick church in the middle that has escaped the carnage, now framed between featureless slab-tilt walls. The streets it looked over, the town centre, has long since disappeared beneath the mega-retail carve-up, place giving way to zoning. The American disease, though not as bad, and with one difference: the place is teeming.

Remind yourself to try to notice what you wouldn't notice. Like how the mix changes as you head on the train out of Central, class first then ethnic, the suits peeling away from the start, then fast, around Strathfield, then a lot of the Anglos start to go, until at Blacktown, it's not some old Anglo city with a few add-ons any more, it's a Third World metropolis floated free and come up the river, everyone threading through and between each other, Asians in tan slacks, whites in Lowe's workwear finest, slender African and Aboriginal kids. Too obvious to mention, too obvious not to mention. The station feeds into the mall, Westpoint, two kids in three jump the barriers. There's a hinterland with pointless decking and municipal sculpture that someone somewhere at some time must have thought improving but simply adds to the clutter.

It's lively as hell, it's a living city, and it's the gateway to the golden outer west, the half-dozen-or-so seats the election may or may not turn on: Labor ultra-marginals Greenway and Lindsay stretching to the hills, Liberal hold Macquarie out to the Hawkesbury, Reid (Labor), and the Libs' Macarthur and Bennelong on around a 3% swing -- and should Labor slip and fall, Parramatta, at a 4.5% swing, would go too, and the heart of old working-class Sydney would be blue in a vast crescent from the north coast round to Botany Bay.

Blacktown has a workers club of such vast scope and power that its website is simply "workersclub"; it is Sikh central, and Little Manila. Around it constellates the largest Aboriginal population in the country, all but invisible to the media; northwards there's the Ponds, McMansionburg nestled in its own co-opted ecosystem, and then beyond stretches Jesusland, the hills where, in 1959, Billy Graham came and lay down his cloak for four months, virtually founding a new community. Now Hillsong is there, plain tabernacle welcoming all, and headquarters of a global mega-church, with a lot of supporters and a lot of interests.

It's the afternoon of the second day of the election when I went up there, and I swore I wouldn't write about it, couldn't, the way I would an American city. What is to explain to people about their own country? But then, let's face it, we don't all live in one country. Blacktown is Dandenong in a way, but also it isn't, and it sure as hell isn't Darlinghurst or Newtown or even Petersham. Sydney sprawls so far, so vast, and in one direction, so that 20 kilometres out, the harbour is mere rumour for hundreds of thousands, nothing to do with them, not where they are. Queensland aside, we're a continent of city-states with vast hinterlands, joined in federation by an arrangement that sometimes feels like a treaty between principalities, whatever obeisances we may make towards a larger identity.

"... it looks like 1978, part of a vast corridor that has been underdeveloped for so long that people have become accustomed to it."

So if Labor loses here, while it swings back towards them elsewhere, it will be because of Eddie Obeid -- and you could throw a brick anywhere west of Broken Hill and never hit anyone who'd heard of him until six months ago. I must have been through Blacktown once or twice, maybe never, why would I? Like most people not from here, Sydney disappears when you can't feel the breeze any more, the world ends where the fibros start. But somewhere in a room here, some community peak body will decide which way its members will swing their votes, and that may swing the election too. Perhaps that whole business had already yielded its first result, as first Australia and then the world saw Greenway Liberal candidate Jaymes Diaz, a Filipino-Australian candidate, melt down -- when asked to name any of the six points in the Coalition's boats plan, which he was clutching to his crisp, white shirt -- and flail so badly that he eventually had to be led away gibbering by his minders.

Head office had moved heaven and earth to head off his constituency and gained a charge of racism for their troubles. But Diaz's support was anchored in Little Manila -- OK, that's about three shops in Blacktown, but sounds cooler, yeah -- and he's gained a big slice of the Christian vote, and was unshakeable. The papers lying in piles unread in the newsagents, swollen with pages of policy minutiae, treated Diaz as if he'd just dropped down from the moon, as if he did not represent an intersection of political and cultural forces. Blacktown, in all its roiling dinge, seemed to suggest otherwise. The city lived outside and beyond the talk about it.

Quite possibly I was a little grumpy. I'd flown back in barely 48 hours earlier via Doha and Kuala Lumpar, 21st-century cities reaching towards the sky, albeit on the back of, erm, slave labour. Then there was Sydney Airport, and while I loathe airportage as much as anyone, there's nowhere else that captures the essence of a state so perfectly. At SYD, that involved choosing between equally overpriced and variably ineffective mobile broadband options, a terminal shuttle bus that charges five bucks a ticket for a SHUTTLE BUS BETWEEN TERMINALS and that does not stop at terminal three, because Qantas won't let it. Indeed, there was no signage for terminal three at all, and it could only be accessed via a winding trail through the long-stay car park.

What sort of airport hides a whole terminal? The same one, run by a vast financial conglomerate, that charges for terminal transfer. The same type of conglomerate that bilks for broadband access the standard of a coat-hanger aerial. It's the baseline condition of Australia today, so vast and expansive that one only notices it at the borders -- that the place is run for an interlocking set of major media, comms, mining, etc, corps, that they see the country's citizenship as a customer base, that they set the rules, and a fair bit of that is to do with why the country has become a sinkhole for disguised inflation, and the graveyard of real productive and social development.

That probably gave Blacktown a slightly jaundiced cast. Because, really, this is a city of half-a-million people, disguised within the wider mesh of Sydney. It should have skyscrapers, plazas, focused design, be at the centre of areas of whole new industries and synergies. And yet it looks like 1978, part of a vast corridor that has been underdeveloped for so long that people have become accustomed to it. And it was only that afternoon, with the interest rate cut, that talk came round to the what we had actually been doing for the last decade or so. In the mediasphere at least.

What they think beyond Blacktown, among the fibros and McMansions, the hills and ponds, is something we'll find out.

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JOHN MENDOZA Mental health researcher and campaigner	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called for a "productivity pact" to address the decline in Australia's productivity as a key challenge for the nation, particularly in the wake of a resources boom. Australia's lower productivity growth since the early 2000s is adding to the relative cost of business and production.

Absent from the Prime Minister's strategy is a focus on addressing the massive drag on productivity from untreated mental illnesses and the poor quality of mental health care.

Mental health care became a "second-term priority" for Labor following the unprecedented community response to the lack of action on mental health care from Rudd in early 2010. In 2011, then-PM Julia Gillard announced a $2.2 billion package to address the gaps in services with an emphasis on early intervention programs and those for people with severe and persistent mental illnesses.

As the 2013 election campaign ramps up, there is little sign that mental health will again be a priority for Labor -- and the Coalition remains mute on the issue. That might be fair enough if Labor had delivered on that "second-term priority", but there is little on-the-ground evidence of new or expanded services, with the exception of the expansion in Headspace youth mental health centres and services.

At the centre of Labor’s 2010 and 2011 funding for mental health were "flexible care packages" for people with severe and persistent mental illnesses and "16 early psychosis centres". Nearly $800 million of the funds were for these two initiatives. Sadly, not one person has received a "flexible care package", and not one sod of soil has turned on a new early psychosis centre.

Consistent with a broader narrative, the government has failed to deliver on time or on budget -- or much at all -- on mental health reform.

For the millions of Australians with mental health problems, often shut out of participation in work and social activities, this is just another Groundhog Day experience. For decades, people with mental health problems and their families have been promised they would get access to care. They live in hope that someday their needs will count as much as those afflicted with cancer or cardiovascular disease or other common health conditions.

This week brought the release of the most comprehensive review of mental health and mental health services in a decade. Yet neither of the major parties has made any response to the findings and recommendations.

Obsessive Hope Disorder: reflections on 30 years of mental health reform in Australia and visions for the future documents the journey of reform since the Richmond report on deinstitutionalisation in 1983 and the commencement of the National Mental Health Strategy in 1993. The report provides an assessment of where we are now on that reform journey and sets out a better way to progress reform.

Australian mental health reform over the past 30 years is one of world-class policies and strategies let down by inadequate planning, poor implementation and our complex system of government. The results are disappointing, wasteful of scarce resources and too often devastating for millions of Australians affected by mental illness.

Despite significant new investment in mental health care since 2006 -- some $8 billion in new funding -- there is still no coherent national service framework, no service model, few care guidelines and continuing poor accountability.

The quality of and access to care continues to vary depending on your postcode, your income and your determination to find care. There are still daily accounts of "people falling through the cracks". People needing care enter a bizarre lottery.

People with mental illness experience a 15- to 25-year lower life expectancy than other Australians. Australia's failure to lift the life expectancy of people with a mental illness since Richmond's report in 1983 is arguably the starkest indictment of our public policy failure in this area.

The incremental, incomplete and inconsistent approach to mental health reform to date is clearly inadequate and unaffordable for the challenges now confronting our nation.

Mental health services in Australia are neither planned on the basis of need (that is, to respond to the population's mental health needs) nor based on evidence of what works best. There are still hundreds of "beds" in 19th-century model psychiatric hospitals costing over $10 million a week. These are not only in violation of human rights but completely unacceptable in terms of quality of care.

Leaving aside the moral and legal obligations on government to provide mental health care, the continuing hit to Australia’s productivity is no longer sustainable. The productivity cost due to mental illness in young men alone (16-24 years of age) is over $387,000 per hour 24/7. That's a small housing development with 150 dwellings ever week. Further, we know that 2% of these young men (that’s an astonishing 28,600 per annum) made a suicide attempt in the past 12 months. Then there are young women and other working-age people either unable to participate in work or caring for a loved one.

The incremental, incomplete and inconsistent approach to mental health reform over the past 20 years is demonstrably inadequate and unaffordable for the challenges now confronting our nation. There is an urgent need for a transformation of mental health policy to ensure Australians get greater access to care, better quality of care and better integrated services with employment and housing services.

Obsessive hope disorder can be cured. But it will take sustained national leadership -- something missing from the election campaign.

*John Mendoza is a researcher at Sydney University's Brain and Mind Research Institute and a director of ConNetica, and was the inaugural chair of the federal government's National Advisory Council on Mental Health. He led the Obsessive Hope Disorder report.

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ANDREW CROOK Crikey senior journalist	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

Alarm bells are ringing inside hard right Liberal warrior Sophie Mirabella's Indi campaign as a popular local independent prepares to snag a significant proportion of the local vote and vault ahead of Labor in an Andrew Wilkie-style preference triumph.

A panicked email sent from deep inside the Mirabella camp to Liberal volunteers last week, obtained by Crikey, reveals her campaign team is gearing up for a pitched battle against rural independent Cathy McGowan in the northern Victorian seat, currently held by 9% and usually considered safe.

Realistically, McGowan is the most likely challenger to Mirabella's crown, with Labor, the Greens and Wodonga-based independent Jennifer Podesta all expected to preference her highly. McGowan also has the support of retiring New England independent and hung parliament hero Tony Windsor.

In the email, campaign staffer Adam Wyldeck admits that Mirabella is at grave risk of being overwhelmed:

"Now that the campaign is in full swing, Cathy McGowan’s supporters are flooding every single one of the local papers with vitriolic letters of hatred towards Sophie as well as supportive letters about Cathy McGowan."

The Wangaratta Chronicle reported this morning Mirabella was planning to spend a "six-figure sum" on the race and would blanket the electorate, which includes the towns of Wodonga, Mansfield and Benalla, with banner advertising.

Wyldeck says in the letter:

"In the last 2 weeks, Cathy McGowan’s team has had at least one letter in EVERY PAPER, EVERY DAY. By contrast, Liberal supporters have had a total of no more than 3 letters across the various papers in the electorate. In other words, we are getting severely outflanked and outgunned by a far more active and enthusiastic campaign team."

He goes on to suggest a number of talking points that Liberal supporters could send to local newspapers, including mocking the concept of a hung parliament and claiming Mirabella is "strong".

Indi has been held by Mirabella -- a former president of the Melbourne University Liberal Club in 1989 before she was dumped by moderate forces linked to Chris Muir halfway through her term -- since 2001. She was elected under the name Sophie Panopoulos, and her primary vote has steadily declined over the years from 62.6% in 2004 to 54.4% in 2007 to just 52.6% in 2010 (in 2001 the result was warped by a three-cornered contest with the Nationals).

For McGowan to win, Mirabella's primary vote would have to slide to well under 50% in the 10-candidate strong field (see below). McGowan, likely to come third, would need to benefit from Greens and minor party preferences to vault her over Labor's Robyn Walsh, and then use Walsh's preferences to leapfrog Mirabella. In 2010, Greens candidate Jenny O'Connor achieved 9.4% and Labor 27.2%. McGowan is not allocating preferences.

The Katter's Australian Party candidate might also round behind McGowan (especially if Tony Windsor gets on the mobile), while the Palmer United and Rise Up Australia are wild cards. The S-x Party is also an unknown quantity.

Independent Alan Lappin withdrew from the race last week, and the previous KAP candidate has withdrawn, with a replacement expected to be fingered soon.

A Greens source told Crikey this morning that the party was still investigating McGowan's bona fides but that on the surface she seemed impressive. She is former president of Women in Agriculture, is a rural consultant and farmer and has regularly travelled to Canberra to advocate for rural communities. She was a research and electorate officer for the former member for Indi, Ewen Cameron, in the 1980s and has the support of local grassroots group Voice for Indi.

Indi has been in Liberal hands since 1977 and has been controlled by conservative parties for 82 years.

McGowan told Crikey she expected the result to be "close" and there was significant support for her campaign on the ground. "I've got a local vision for Indi based on agriculture, tourism and infrastructure, so that's a huge attraction given the community campaign we're running.

"The community might have a voice that represents their interests and needs in Canberra."

In September 2011, Crikey revealed that Mirabella, then 42, was on a collision course with her deceased former lover Colin Howard's children over his will. Howard, a retired university professor, died at the age of 83 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

The Indi field in possible primary vote order:

• Sophie Mirabella -- Liberal
• Robyn Walsh -- ALP
• Cathy McGowan -- Independent
• Jenny O'Connor -- Greens 
• Jennifer Podesta -- Independent
• KAP candidate withdrawn, preselecting a replacement soon 
• Helma Aschenbrenner -- S-x Party
• James Houston -- 21st Century Australia Party
• Bob Murphy -- Palmer United
• Bob Dudley -- Rise Up Australia 

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	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

Go West, young man. The Daily Telegraph has been very strong on the need to pay more attention to western Sydney and regularly accuses politicians of ignoring the region. Here's yesterday's front page, accusing pollies of failing to create jobs there:

Which is most interesting, given that News Corp is in the process of closing down one of its Parramatta offices and shifting more of its Sydney staff to the fashionable central 'burb of Surry Hills. "The media precinct location provides employees with easy access to public transport links and all of the amenities of Surry Hills, including restaurants, bars, cafes, parks and theatres," the company bragged in an email to staff. It's certainly a long way from Blacktown, isn't it?

The tipster who's keeping tabs on the Tele's western connections said this: "It seems they are more than happy to champion the western suburbs but have no interest in actually setting foot out there themselves!"

We improve News Corp. Speaking of the Tele, remember this front page on Monday?

Here are a few improvements, courtesy of the internet:

No suds please, we're public servants. This Tip made us feel sad.

"It appears that the government’s lift in the efficiency dividend is already taking its toll in some corners of the public service. Pity the occupants of the Collins Street offices of the largest government department, Human Services, who have been told that they have to buy their own washing up liquid to do the dishes in their staff room. Yes that $1.8 billion in savings announced by the Treasurer on Friday is being steadily chipped away thanks to the parsimony of leaders in the public service. Staff were told last week that the property division is 'not responsible for the provision of kitchen consumables, and only supply cutlery and crockery during the initial office fit-out'."

No office Fairy liquid! Do you have an example of a tight-arsed boss? When Ms Tips worked for a regional daily newspaper in Tassie, the company gave us cars to drive around in to write stories (very nice of them) but wouldn't pay for street directories -- and this was pre-smartphone days. It led to some exciting detours. Email us your tales of parsimony -- and don't be shy in naming your workplace.

Don't open that! What do you do when you get this official-looking envelope in the mail? Why, you open it, of course ...

Our reader who did so was not impressed that it contained a "vote for me" plea from Tony Abbott; "note the unmarked envelope, mentioning nothing about the Liberals, which led me to believe that it might actually be important information. I think this is pretty dodgy, underhanded behaviour, tricky people into opening their mail." We agree -- and we'd guess the Liberals are not the only party using this trick. If you're so ashamed of your party, how about you don't send us mail us at all? Tips readers have done a great job sending in election material, snaps and gaffes -- make your contribution here.

*Heard anything that might interest Crikey? Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or use our guaranteed anonymous form

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SALLY WHYTE Crikey election reporter	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

Crikey asks the sharpest political commentators which leader got the best of the campaigning day yesterday, plus we track where the leaders are and what cash promises they’ve made … 

WHO WON THE DAY ON TUESDAY?

Bernard Keane, Crikey Canberra correspondent: The RBA won it for Rudd, who is concentrating hard on wooing western Sydney -- and the interest rate cut will go down very well there. He got the bonus that shadow treasurer Joe Hockey held a media conference to say the rate cut reflected how badly Labor had managed the economy and ended up getting tangled up on the GST. What Hockey said was that the Coalition would be conducting a review of taxation and that the GST would be part of it -- no more or less than the Coalition's previously stated position (and an eminently sensible one). But that came out in the media as Hockey paving the way for lifting the GST. Election campaigns can be unfair like that.

Richard Farmer, Crikey election analyst: I'm tempted to hand victory to candidate Nick Xenophon; an independent Senate candidate could hardly hope for more than his local paper The Advertiser delivered him this morning with a plug at the top of page one. Still, taking the broader national view, the Reserve Bank came to Labor's rescue with an interest rate cut. The immediate benefit to those with a mortgage made it clearly Labor's day.

Norman Abjorensen, visiting fellow at the ANU and former Liberal speechwriter: Like all campaigns, it began with a focus on gaffes: Hockey’s confusion of a candidate’s ethnic background and a Liberal candidate’s lack of any policy grasp whatsoever. Hockey dug himself into a hole by seeking to make capital out of the fall in interest rates, which would have puzzled the punters who are looking at their mortgage repayments dropping. And is it good politics to cut the company tax rate at a time of falling revenues? Is this the discredited Laffer curve making a return to economic policy? The Coalition might have won the day purely in terms of media attention, but the gaffe focus was a real negative. ALP win.

Paul Barratt, career public servant and director of Australia21: The ALP won the day. The Labor Party can rest on the fact that it does have budget costings out there. The Coalition is looking evasive and raising the spectre of the Horvath episode of last time. Coalition spokespeople look evasive when they say you can't trust Treasury but you can trust us. They are also on the back foot about the GST. They find themselves in a defensive position.

CASH TRACKER

• Tony Abbott's 1.5% cut to the company tax rate is his first major announcement, costing $2.5 billion annually.
• Rudd announced the MyChild website would include a "MyChildcare" section, worth $2 million, to be "absorbed by the department".

CAMPAIGN DIARY (WEDNESDAY)

Kevin Rudd: Starting the day early in the marginal Sydney seat of Greenway, Rudd spruiked his after-school care plan, where babies were kissed and story books read. He moved to Bennelong, another marginal seat before the end of the morning. Appearing with candidate Jason Yat-sen Li, Rudd announced that Korean would become a priority language in schools. The PM has also agreed to a debate hosted by the Seven Network and Facebook on Sunday -- and tweeted the challenge at Abbott.

Tony Abbott: The morning was focused around the announcement of the company tax cut at Bickford's factory in Adelaide. Appearing with Joe Hockey, Abbott said that the Coalition wouldn't raise GST and maintained that Sunday's debate should be hosted by the National Press Club. Apart from an interview on Adelaide radio this morning, the Opposition Leader's morning has been based at the factory in the safe Labor seat of Makin.

Christine Milne: The Greens leader is in Canberra today, where she launched an enrolment campaign with Sarah Hanson-Young and the Greens' ACT Senate candidate Simon Sheikh. She still had time to tweet about the gardening progress at Parliament House.

QUIRK OF THE DAY

The Young Liberal Movement of Australia tallied Kevin Rudd's characteristic hair flicks at a Brisbane press conference yesterday:

TWEET OF THE DAY 

It turns out the Rudd catchphrase "in like Flynn" might have seedy origins (click on the tweet to see the link) -- but we're surprised that venerable ABC journo Rowland has sunk to this level ...

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JENNIFER DOGGETT Health journalist and Croakey contributor	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

A coalition of health groups has launched a campaign calling for reform of Medicare to address rising out-of-pocket health costs, lengthening delays for elective surgery and widespread disparities in access to doctors and other health professionals.

The Mend Medicare coalition includes the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, Catholic Health Australia, Consumers Health Forum of Australia, the Mental Health Council of Australia, and the Public Health Association of Australia. It has released a report which highlights the many inequities in the current system, specifically regarding people with chronic and complex problems, those in rural and regional areas, and preventive health care. The report calls on party leaders to spell out their plans for Medicare before the election, including addressing waste within the current system, looking at funding models that better support people with chronic conditions, and addressing inequities of access.

The Australian Medical Association is not a member of the Mend Medicare coalition (unsurprisingly). However it too has called for action via increasing rebates in line with the rise in healthcare costs. In this video, AMA president Dr Steve Hambleton argues AMA rebates have been devalued by 40% since 1986 and this is resulting in higher out-of-pocket costs for consumers.

Mend Medicare argues convincingly that it is time for major reform. Medicare was developed to meet the needs of a previous generation and since its inception in 1983 these needs have changed. We have a much greater incidence of chronic and complex illness which typically requires care from multiple providers, in a number of settings and over a long period of time. Medicare was designed to support short-term, episodic care, from a single health professional. Its fee-for-service and medical-centric approach does not support the multi-disciplinary, co-ordinated and consumer-centred care that is now required.

Another crucial change is that since 1983 we have become much wealthier. Rising property prices and increasing superannuation funds have resulted in middle and upper-income earners acquiring much larger savings than at any other time. The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that in 2009-10, middle-wealth households held $556,000, and the top 20% held $2.4 million in assets on average. While not all of these would be liquid, a significant proportion of them are, in particular as people reach retirement age and the restrictions on accessing superannuation are lifted.

As Mend Medicare argues, Medicare no longer warrants "sacred cow" status. However, the assumption that most Australians, most of the time, need a government program to help them pay for their healthcare is a sacred cow that itself needs to be challenged. The figures put out by the coalition show Australians spent on average more than $1070 a year on health services and products, meaning a typical family can shell out more than $4000 a year.

Given the level of wealth of the average Australia family, those figures hardly seem unreasonable. It is worth questioning whether they warrant a universal health insurance program of the scale of Medicare.

Of course, the issue in health is that few people are average. People are either sick or well, and those who are sick spend much more than average on healthcare and those who are well spend much less. From both an equity and efficiency perspective we need to ensure that resources are focussed on those with the greatest need. This group (or groups) can be difficult to identify as health care affordability can be as much to do with the type of illness and the timing of care needs as it is to do with overall income level. A healthy young person on a low income is probably much more able to meet her own healthcare costs than a family on a middle, or even high, income where one or more members have a chronic illness.

Identifying and targeting people with genuine difficulty affording health care, over the long-term, is the key to ensuring Medicare resources can be used most efficiently to reduce current inequities of access and health outcomes. This will be particularly difficult to achieve given that members of Mend Medicare have different views on how Medicare should be reformed.

For example, Catholic Health Australia is promoting the Medicare Select proposal from the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission. That involves giving Australians a choice of a health and hospital plan, either insured by Medicare or a private insurer. This would entrench the role of a third-party payer for "normal" healthcare expenses and expand the role of private health insurance, a funding mechanism that has administrative costs more than double that of Medicare (as a proportion of total funding).

Mend Medicare has a tough lobbying task ahead with both major parties. Labor knows the brand value of Medicare -- so much so that it named its primary care organisations "Medicare Locals", despite the fact they have nothing to do with Medicare. The government will do nothing to risk undermining the value of this brand, but may recognise the need for some tweaking of Medicare.

Perversely, the Coalition will be an even more difficult challenge. While its more market-oriented philosophy should lend itself to a Medicare reform agenda, the Coalition will shy away from any policies which Labor could argue undermine Medicare’s currency. For all its rhetoric about "personal responsibility", the opposition is unlikely to find this stretches as far as requiring a person on $200,000 a year to fund their annual flu shot without the aid of a government program.

However, regardless of whether this campaign achieves its outcomes this election, it has raised some important issues about the future of Medicare which cannot be ignored.

For more medical debate visit Crikey's health blog Croakey

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RICHARD FARMER Crikey political commentator	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

Campaign reading: choose your commentator and take your choice. It is, as they say, difference of opinion that makes a horse race. So too an interesting newspaper as The Australian proved this morning. On page one Dennis Shanahan, under the headline "ALP fears as campaign wobbles", claims senior ALP figures have told the paper there remains an intense dislike towards Kevin Rudd despite Labor's rise in the polls since his removal of Julia Gillard five weeks ago. The view is that his campaign has not started well and is losing momentum:

"The senior Labor figures, who supported Ms Gillard as leader, also claim voter satisfaction with Mr Rudd in polling in marginal seats the ALP must win to hold government is only neutral or negative."

Turn over to the editorial pages and Paul Kelly gives quite a different take on Rudd's popularity or lack of it with his "PM's audacious role play may not be enough":

"In a truly remarkable and unpredictable election, Kevin Rudd, made Prime Minister just six weeks ago, campaigns as an opposition leader against Tony Abbott, the real Opposition Leader, who campaigns to be prime minister.

"Confused? That is the idea. Rudd has been brilliant at distancing himself from the Gillard era. That severance is dramatic. Rudd does not attack the Gillard government but he either ignores it completely (almost tearing its record from the history books) or damns it with faint praise.

"He chases the amnesia effect. He wants the people to forget. He knows they cannot forgive the past several years of Labor government. But he asks people to leave it behind and think of the future.

"This claim is astonishing in its audacity. Many people will find it outrageous.

"Yet Rudd has a genius for plausibility. There is no question he has the correct strategy. Over the past six weeks, Rudd has exceeded the hopes of even his most dedicated caucus backers."

So there you have it. Choose your commentator and make your choice: senior Labor figures think the Rudd campaign has not started well and is losing momentum or Rudd has exceeded the hopes of even his most dedicated caucus backers. I've chosen to give Kelly a point on our Crikey best political journalist table and awarded Shanahan the first negative point of the campaign.

Ross Gittins in The Sydney Morning Herald gives his readers what is probably an unnecessary reminder that "Election promises destined to be broken":

"Elections have become too panic-stricken for the politicians to stick to a vow of scrupulous honesty. Already, and for the next five weeks, promises are being made that -- whether or not the makers of those promises realise it -- are destined to be broken. The hard part for voters is picking which ones they are."

But Gittins is understanding of the reasons behind that panic of the politicians:

"I suspect election campaigns have become more vicious, life-or-death affairs as politics has become less about convictions and more about careers -- a ladder to be climbed by young people who leave university to work for a union or a politician, with ambitions to win preselection for a safe seat, make it into government, make into cabinet and then have a crack at the top job.

"When almost all the opportunities for promotion or demotion come just once every three years, it's not hard to see why politicians get so desperate and campaigns so willing."

"Loosen up, Tony, to counter the fake Rudd" is an insightful analysis of the Tony Abbott campaigning style where The Australian's Janet Albrechtsen gives him some sensible advice.

"The Opposition Leader needs to recalibrate his campaigning style to counter Rudd, who is nothing if not a brilliant campaigner. Lousy at governing, Labor will worry about that other Rudd later. Abbott needs to counter the fake Rudd by being the real Abbott. When announcing policies, let voters see him smile and joke, speak normally and warmly ... Even if it means taking a few risks, making a few mistakes, the real Abbott beats the robotic man of the past few months."

And so to the scoreboard ...

Campaign listening: ABC 891 Adelaide. They bill this station's breakfast pair of Matthew Abraham and David Bevan as "the perfect breakfast blend" and to my ear this morning they were pretty close to just that: an interesting mixture of light-hearted banter with serious commentary and questioning. Local, national and international stories got this entertaining treatment with the presence of Abbott in their home town providing scope for them to demonstrate all three.

The newspaper previews of today's planned company tax cuts were a godsend for the pair when they interviewed the visiting Opposition Leader. After listening with a polite chuckle or two to the repetition of the Abbott mantra that ends with stop the boats it was on with pressing issues to find out how much of the promised $5 billion being given by a 1.5 percentage point tax cut would be taken back by the country's largest companies having to pay an extra 1.5 percentage points in tax to cover costs of the planned maternity leave scheme. Answering that question was not on the Abbott agenda, which left him sounding somewhat defensive as he preferred to use Julia Gillard as a third-party endorsement. In her words that he repeated a couple of times, "if you are against a company tax cut you are against j0bs".

From the serious it was on to the not-so-serious as Messrs Abraham and Bevan explored what the Opposition Leader thought about the involvement of his Liberal Party staffers in the promotion of this story:

It was a case of don't ask me, ask them before he was pressed to declare that posting video of a  Rudd press conference is hardly a hanging offence. All very friendly and polite really, but who wants aggro with their breakfast? And there was an even-handedness about dealing with the question of politician's staff as the case of the misleading tweet from the Labor camp about the whereabouts of the Liberal member for Boothby was pursued -- apparently for the second day in a row.

To round out the program another dash of politics featuring Labor's Mark Butler and Chris Pyne from the Liberals in a regular weekly stop discussing issues of the day. Predictable point scoring it might have been but conducted without that annoying talking over the top of each other that mars so much of what passes for political debate on radio.

Other views: blogs and tweets of note. A selection of views from the blogs, social media, comments on Crikey stories and letters to the editor. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

From Sydney's Daily Telegraph:

A tweet by Stephen Koukoulas (‏@TheKouk):

"If there is a budget 'emergency' and a debt 'crisis', giving unfunded tax cuts is the height or recklessness. No?"

From the blog Harry Clarke:

"Overseas economic experts are often amazed at the pessimism that Australians express towards their economy.  Part of the story is our national affection for some drama. Partly it  is just the lunacy of the far right in trying to  exaggerate the perils our economy faces to advance their political and Newscorp-style journalistic objectives."

From the blog of Robert B, Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley: "The Three Biggest Lies about Why Corporate Taxes Should Be Lowered".

The Crikey Daily indicator. Labor 21.8%, Coalition 78.2%. Labor up 0.2 points on the day.

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PROFESSOR DAMIEN KINGSBURY Crikey international affairs commentator	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

The closure of 21 United States embassies across the Middle East and Africa -- the widest such closure in US history -- demonstrates the "War on Terror" is far from over. As the threat that inspired the closures indicates, the "war" is unlikely to be concluded in the foreseeable future.

The war in Iraq has, from a US perspective, all but concluded and Afghanistan is starting to wind down. But both remain sites of conflict and will remain so as internal and regionally inspired factions compete for politico-religious control. Syria, too, has increasingly become the site for intra-religious conflict, rather than simply a civil war against a despised dictator.

The unspecified threat against an embassy was intercepted in Yemen, the key base for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. While effectively independent of other al-Qaeda-named organisations, AQAP is regarded as perhaps the most dangerous of its offshoots.

Key al-Qaeda planning shifted from Somalia to Yemen in 2010, while AQAP is now considered to pose a higher threat to the US mainland than Osama bin Laden's founding organisation.

So seriously is the threat being taken that the United Kingdom, France and Germany have also closed their embassies in Yemen. The US global travel alert in response to the intercept now extends to the end of August.

AQAP was initially based in both Saudi Arabia and Yemen, but was effectively suppressed in Saudi Arabia following the attempted suicide bombing of Saudi counter-terrorism chief Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. The Saudi and Yemeni branches have since merged as one, with up to 700 active members holding territory in south Yemen.

US and other regional embassies have a fortress-like construction -- so-called "Inman buildings", after the 1985 Inman Report following earlier attacks on embassies in Beirut and Kuwait City. While these buildings are able to withstand significant external attack, all embassies rely on initial protection from forces in the host country.

Even "Inman buildings" have been shown to be vulnerable to mass demonstrations and other forms of assault, given a lack of local protection. Truck bombs in conjunction with a ground assault also remain effective against even such fortified structures, such as with the attack against the US embassy in Sana'a, Yemen in 2008.

AQAP's threat status has form. Its first reported attack was against the USS Cole in 2000, killing 17 sailors. It has since been responsible for a series of major attacks and attempted attacks, including on shipping, airlines and against political and security figures, including the 2012 Sana'a bombing of a military parade, in which more than 120 people were killed and 200 injured.

In particular, US caution is in part in response to the unanticipated but highly co-ordinated 2012 Benghazi diplomatic mission attack, in which four people were killed, including US ambassador Christopher Stevens. Apart from the human cost of that attack, the fallout from recriminations over a perceived failure to act was deeply damaging.

The prevailing view in the US State Department is now to be, and to be seen to be, extra cautious in the face of real and perceived threats. The closure of US embassies, while responding to a real and deadly serious threat, also reflects that heightened sensitivity to the possibility of another Benghazi-type outcome.

*Professor Damien Kingsbury is director of the Centre for Citizenship, Development and Human Rights at Deakin University

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ERIC BEECHER Private Media (publisher of Crikey) executive chairman	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

Over the past few days, the two grandest families of American media have redefined the status of the storied big-city newspaper.

By selling The Boston Globe and The Washington Post -- to billionaires for notional prices in what are essentially non-commercial transactions -- the Sulzbergers and the Grahams have effectively brought down the curtain on the era of the celebrated big-city masthead as a business. The Globe and the Post are now, officially, philanthropic assets.

And if the Washington Post and Boston Globe can now be designated as charities, are the circumstances of The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age any different?

Actually, their circumstances are much worse. Not only are the Herald and Age print editions haemorrhaging advertising revenue and losing money on most days of the week, they do not have the protective layer of family ownership that, until last week, provided a cushion against the forces of financial reality in Boston and Washington. Not even the Graham family's passionate custodianship of the Washington Post was enough to preserve it as a commercially and editorially viable entity. As its current publisher Katherine Weymouth (a Graham family member) said yesterday:

"There are no easy answers in this business, and if there were everyone would have figured them out by now."

The "reclassification" of important newspapers from being businesses to charitable trophy assets is now a fast-rolling phenomenon. The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are in the final stages of a sales process that is likely to land them in the hands of billionaires with political agendas. In Britain, the London Evening Standard and The Independent are owned by a Russian oligarch and The Guardian and The Observer are the core assets of a charitable trust. Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch's most influential mastheads -- The Australian, The Times and The New York Post -- are effectively philanthropic assets, losing around $200 million annually and subsidised by News Corp.

The inevitability of this pattern places the SMH and The Age in a precarious position. Run by a board bereft of industry experience, owned by institutional investors whose only motive is financial, operating a strategy based exclusively on cost-cutting, these two newspapers are prime material to be reconstituted as philanthropic assets (which, in harsh reality, is what they have already become).

The problem is, Australia has very few billionaires -- and maybe only one, Gina Rinehart, with the appetite to use her wealth to bankroll editorial institutions for non-commercial motives.

When the proud family owners of a paper like The Washington Post give up, you begin to understand that certain kinds of big newspapers are unlikely to survive as businesses, no matter how much spin is attached to their trajectory.

Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or submit them anonymously here.

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JOHN CHALMERS iSentia communications manager	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

News Corp has been accused this week of throwing its weight around, The Daily Telegraph editorialising heavily against Labor on the first day of the election campaign, calling on voters to ''KICK THIS MOB OUT.'' Whether or not legendary New York Post editor Col Allan had a hand in it, and putting aside whether it’s reasonable or not for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to have a go back, the point some are missing is that when you factor in social media and declining print circulation, the Tele might not have quite the impact it once did (though it remains Australia's leading daily).

We are entering our first truly digital campaign, a classic political campaign but one fought with the aid of new weaponry, where smart politicians can bypass media gatekeepers and go direct to the voter, mobilising fans and their party bases through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. And as our social media measurement chart has consistently shown, the politician who has best harnessed social media in this country is Kevin Rudd.

In terms of mainstream media messaging, our week-on-week comparison shows Opposition Leader Tony Abbott creeping closer to Rudd for overall coverage, as he should with a campaign underway, though it is still a distant second. Indeed, only four federal Liberal MPs make our Top 20 this week, demonstrating the ALP currently has the conversation back on its terms.

Rudd’s audacious campaign strategy involves acting like an opposition leader, critiquing the opposition while emphasising the future under a "Rudd government", not a "Labor Government", in what is an increasingly presidential-style campaign. The strategy will test Abbott's credibility as an alternative PM. Yet most analysts seem to agree, it remains Rudd who has the most ground to make up.

Crikey Political Index: August 1-7

Talkback radio is still exploring the possibility of a Turnbull led Liberal party, while Julia Gillard remains part of the conversation.

Talkback top five

As we enter campaign mode, economic management is the central issue, with social media chatter focusing on the respective leaders and their treasurers.

Social media top five

Cutting to record low interest rates amid an election campaign has brought the RBA governor into the headlines, especially in the print media.

Comparisons on media mentions

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	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

Video of the day. A Labor parody ad has been pulled down by YouTube after a complaint by the Liberal Party that it breached copyright. The ALP ad, which reuses a Liberal Party ad but with a different voiceover, was pulled from YouTube with the party advised it was due to a copyright infringement complaint. The ad is now on Facebook. Christopher Pyne issued a press release:

"YouTube remove videos when they breach their terms of service, when they’re offensive, contain illegal material, or contain copyrighted content. But having a political advertisement removed is unprecedented in Australia. Even YouTube can’t trust Labor to do the right thing."

That's not quite accurate -- YouTube's policy is to automatically take down videos subject to claims of copyright infringement. And oddly enough, the Liberal Party actually hosted the ad on its Facebook page yesterday in an effort to bag Labor's negativity. -- Bernard Keane

Oz publishes fake Hockey. Journos are on tight deadlines, and the pressure to turn around a story after a national event, like the Reserve Bank cutting interest rates to a historic low, is immense. A journalist from wire service Australian Associated Press didn't do his or her due diligence in the rush to be first and included a tweet from @JoeHockey_MP (a fake Twitter account, since suspended) in AAP's story about the cut:

"Interest rates are past the emergency level. Leaving Catastrophe, Obliteration & Annihilation levels until we hit USA & Japan levels #auspol"

At 4.16pm yesterday AAP sent out a "kill/takedown notice" to inform its clients of the error and request stories containing it be taken down. The message got through to The Sydney Morning Herald, which promptly took down the AAP story that had included the fake tweet. But it seems no one at The Australian keeps an eye on the email -- its initial interest rate story, written by economics writers Adam Creighton and Michael Bennet "with additional reporting by Dow Jones Newswires and AAP", was still online as of 12.30 this afternoon.

Creighton and Bennet could have gotten a clue about the tweet from News Corp stablemate News.com.au, which published a story about the fake Twitter account yesterday at 5.40pm. And if fellow News Corp stories weren't close enough to home, Creighton and Bennet could have learnt they'd been duped by turning to page 11 of their own paper, where popular Strewth columnist James Jeffrey wrote of the hoax:

There but for the grace of God? Or simply there? Joe Hockey's real Twitter account (@JoeHockey) has not mentioned the rate cut at all. -- Cassidy Knowlton

Brooks and Murdoch ... and Murdoch? According to Michael Wolff in USA Today, Rupert Murdoch is "on his way to looking like the louche, out-of-control, s-x-crazed older men" usually featured in his tabloids after allegations that both he and his son Lachlan Murdoch had affairs with former News Corp executive Rebekah Brooks. A spokesperson for the younger Murdoch denied the original Gawker report, telling Crikey that they maintain their position on the rumours which are  "total rubbish". The gossip has been swirling as Brooks and fellow former News of the World editor Andy Coulson face conspiracy charges. -- Sally Whyte

Age hints at cause of death. The Age has published a somewhat odd clarification on page two today relating to its story about the death of milliner Paris Kyne. The story does not mention cause of death but quotes an anonymous family member as saying "We don't know how he died. We're going to have to wait for the autopsy". But on the bottom of the article the paper printed its standard suicide help information -- "For help or information call Suicide Helpline Victoria on  1300 651 251, or Lifeline on 131 114 or visit beyondblue.org.au" -- which implied that Kyne might have committed suicide. The Age has apologised for the implication, and the Lifeline information has been removed from the article online.

Twitter boosts TV ratings. Twitter boosts TV viewing and, of course, ratings, according to a new study from Nielsen Research, the US ratings and measurement giant. Reality, comedy and sport attract the biggest gains, drama the least. The study, released overnight, will confirm the feeling that many TV executives have that encouraging Twitter use during a program (such as Q&A on ABC1) is beneficial for the ratings bottom line. The benefits flow both ways, with Nielsen saying: "higher levels of tweeting may cause additional viewers to tune in to programming" and that higher TV ratings "cause more people to tweet more often".

Of course, there's a potential downside in all of this, with some canny executives artificially inflating Twitter conversations around shows. Britain's Channel 4 current affairs program Despatches reported this week that there are now click farms in Bangladesh being used to boost likes and following numbers for Facebook and Twitter. -- Glenn Dyer

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GLENN DYER Crikey business and media commentator	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

A big win to Seven in metro and regional markets and a weak night for Nine (for the second Tuesday night in a row) which saw the network's main channel in Perth run a distant fourth behind Seven, Ten and ABC1.

Big Brother (1.172 million national/ 88o,000 metro/ 292,000 regional viewers) is now about where it belongs, but it will probably dip lower  in the next week or so. It didn't help The Great Australian Bake Off at 8.30pm, which averaged (988,000 national/ 675,000 metro/ 313,000 regional viewers). And The Bible at 9.30pm(633,000 national/ 425,000 metro/ 208,000 regional viewers) which remains the most un-Australian commercial TV program of the year. In fact from around 8.30pm, Nine ran a very weak fourth behind Seven, Ten and ABC1. The baking program would be more competitive if it had a better lead-in or was at a better timeslot, say a Sunday night at 6.30pm.

Big Brother just doesn't grab viewers outside of the east coast. Many viewers in its demographic -- 16 to 49 -- hate it and preferred Home and Away and The X Factor, or Under The Dome (and New Tricks nationally) last night. Big Brother's best market is Brisbane (that's because it's a Gold Coast-based production), but is on the nose in Adelaide and Perth and in regional markets (which are a bit more traditional). And looking at the audience figures for Sydney and Melbourne, Big Brother is looking a bit weaker than its starting levels. Viewers know the format very well and realise there's not much interest until the last couple of weeks. Even the eviction episodes no longer resonate as much as they did years ago with core viewers.  The X Factor, Winners & Losers, Home and Away and MasterChef Australia all did better than Big Brother in some or most demographics (16 to 49s) last night. And core viewers can and do do their browsing of Big Brother on smartphones and tablets which are not measured.

Seven won thanks to Home and Away at 7pm (1.564 million national/ 1.015 million metro/ 549,000 regional viewers), then The X Factor with 2.318 million national/ 1.480 million metro/ 838,000 regional viewers, and then Winners & Losers (1.540 million national/ 1.015 million metro/ 525,000 regional viewers) which dominated prime time viewing. Home and Away (in the Big Brother demographic) and ABC News (out of the Big Brother demographic) had more viewers than Big Brother.

Ten had its best night of the week so far with The Project (846,000 national/ 632,000 metro/ 214,000 regional viewers) a bit higher than normal, MasterChef Australia's souffle rose a bit to 1.093 million national/ 803,000 metro/ 290,000 regional  and kept viewers who remain interested in Under The Dome at 8.30pm -- 1.285 million national/ 881,000 metro/ 404,000 regional viewers. No room for the Gold Coast refugees from Big Brother then?

Network channel share:

1. Seven (32.0%)
2. Nine (24.7%)
3. Ten (30.3%)
4. ABC (18.3%)
5. SBS (4.7%)

Network main channels:

1. Seven (25.4%)
2. Nine (18.1%)
3. Ten (15.4%)
4. ABC1 (13.2%)
5. SBS ONE (4.2%)

Top 5 digital channels: 

1. 7TWO (4.3%)
2. GO (4.1%)
3. ABC2 (3.4%)
4. Eleven (2.8%)
5. Gem (2.5%)

Top 10 national programs:

1. The X Factor (Seven) -- 2.318 million
2. Seven News -- 1.973 million
3. Nine News -- 1.861 million
4. Home and Away (Seven) -- 1.564 million
5. Winners & Losers (Seven) -- 1.540 million
6. ABC News -- 1.460 million
7. Today Tonight (Seven) -- 1.358 million
8. Under The Dome (Ten) -- 1.285 million
9. A Current Affair (Nine) -- 1.259 million
10. New Tricks repeat (ABC 1) -- 1.186 million

Top metro programs:

1. The X Factor (Seven) -- 1.480 million
2. Seven News -- 1.305 million
3. Nine News -- 1.249 million
4. Today Tonight (Seven) -- 1.082 million
5. A Current Affair (Nine) -- 1.036 million
6. Home and Away (Nine) -- 1.015 million
7. Winners & Losers (Seven) -- 1.015 million
8. ABC News -- 1.002 million

Losers: Nine's line-up last night. No rhyme or reason to it. The Bible is a joke bit of TV.

Read the full story on our website

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MARCUS PADLEY Sharemarket analyst and author of the Marcus Today daily newsletter	|  EMAIL   |  COMMENT

• The Market is down 48. The Dow Jones finished down 93 -- it was down 139 at worst. Now 15519.
• The S&P 500 closed down 10 and dropped below 1700 at 1697.
• Federal Governor Evans said we might get a tapering at the September FOMC meeting. This followed yesterday’s Fed Governor Fisher comments that asset purchases would be slowed later in the year if the economy improves “along the lines envisioned by the Committee”. He also talked about quantitative easing “laying the groundwork for misallocation of resources” and fuelling inflation.
• Gold down on the tapering talk.
• Good economic numbers out of UK, Italy and Germany. UK Construction PMI, Services PMI, and manufacturing production all better than expected.
• US Trade deficit was smaller than expected.
• US$ index down for the third day on the trot.
• A$ was over 90c briefly yesterday on the RBA statement.
• Euro at a six week high versus the US$.
• Financial sector led the fall -- down 0.9%. Materials down 1.0%.
• The A$ is was up on the back of the RBA statement yesterday -- briefly topped 90c at 90.07c.
• Metal prices mostly down ... Copper up 0.69%.
• The Japanese market was up 1.0% yesterday. The Chinese market was up 0.49%.
• Resources down with BHP down 0.41% and RIO down 1.65% in the US with BHP closing at the equivalent of 39c down on its close in Australia yesterday.
• European markets mostly down -- the UK FTSE down 0.23%, the German Dax down 1.17%, the French CAC down 0.43% with Spain down 0.37%, Italy down 0.44%, Greece up 0.90%.
• Oil price down $1.26 to $105.30.
• Gold price down $19.40 to $1283.20.
• Spot iron ore was up again -- by $1.20 to $131.40.
• US Economics last night -- Trade Balance: -- $34.2 billion . Consensus -- $43.4 billion, prior -- $45 billion (revised -- $44.1 billion).
• US Economics tonight -- MBA Mortgage index, Consumer credit.
• In Europe tonight -- German industrial production. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney will speak about the latest BoE Inflation Report. 

ANNOUNCEMENTS & STORIES

• 21st Century Fox (FOX) -- Has posted an increase in FY profit following its de-merger from News Corporation. Net profit of $US6.82 billion up from $US3.176 billion recorded in 2012. EBIT was $US1.238 billion and 8.3% below consensus forecast of $US1.35 billion. The company said almost three-quarters of the increase in revenue was from growth at the cable network programming, filmed entertainment and television segments, including purchases. They also noted other net income in the period of $US3.76 billion up from $US66 million. Guidance was high single to low double digit figures.
• Flexigroup (FXL) -- Has reported a profit of $72.1 million up 18% and 1% above consensus forecast of $71.4 million. EPS rose 15% to 24c. The final dividend of 7.5c was above an expected 7c. Bad debts fell from 2.9% to 2.7. The company gave guidance for FY14 cash NPAT of $84 million - $86 million which reflects 17%-19% growth.
• Karoon Gas (KAR) -- Has announced a $150 million capital raising to fund exploration plans. The raising will be done at 510c a 8.9% discount to the stock's closing price Tuesday.
• Chorus (CNU) -- Welcomes government regulatory review discussion document for consultation. The establishment of a clear set of principles will guide the review. CNU is up 5.51%.
• Cochlear (COH) -- 2 buys 2 holds and 7 sells in the research this morning.
• Seek (SEK) -- Weak job Ad numbers yesterday are deja vu for SEK shareholders.
• Westpac passes on 28 basis points of a rate cut. ANZ yet to announce.
• PROPERTY AND YOUR SMSF -- The AFR quotes one property analyst saying the RBA is risking a house price bubble -- enough to continue the trend of SMSF investors looking to invest in property as an alternative to the stock market.

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AND THE WINNER IN THE AFTER-SCHOOL CARE PLEDGE IS … SYDNEY  |  CAMPAIGN SCORECARD: LABOR’S DAY OF ANNOUNCEABLES AND CASH  |  HOLD THE FRONT PAGE: IS INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING MAKING A COMEBACK?

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Who will set the agenda?

Keith Thomas writes: Re: Crikey says: it's a question of who you can trust (Monday). But will you raise the important issues that neither party wants to address? Or are you going to let the politicians set the agenda? Look at what Lynton Crosby is advising the UK Conservatives: don't talk about controversial and divisive issues. I would suggest that you look at some of the small parties, groups of frustrated energetic individuals who have been driven to stand because the major parties ignore their issues. A few of these may be a little odd, but among them will be far-sighted individuals frustrated about the narrowness of the list of issues that mainstream media will allow into the contest. In only in a decade or two some of these issues will be critical and the mass of the population will be asking where were the media -- missing in action, as they were for the GFC, for example.

Clarification

Alan Corbett writes: Re: "It's party time: September 7 will be a voters' smorgasbord". The article says: "It's not too hard to convince the AEC you should be registered; an organisation must present the signatures of a minimum of 500 members who are listed on the electoral roll, plus a $500 application fee."

Only partially correct. Signatures are no longer required. What's required these days is the name, address and contact details of at least 500 members, plus a robust constitution, other paperwork and the money.  The AEC contacts a sample of the members to ensure they are indeed members. Believe me, it's not as easy as it is implied in the article to get a new political party registered.

Schooled

Gavin Robertson writes: Re. "And the winner in the after-school care pledge is ... Sydney" (yesterday). The main areas in Sydney affected by the after-school care crisis (according to The Sydney Morning Herald at least) are in the lower north shore of Sydney. Not a famously Labor voting area, so maybe the Libs will find a few crumbs for this cause after all.

Monaro, Eden-Monaro

Jenny Keene writes: Re. "Bell tolls for Eden-Monaro, where nobody's revved up on Monaro St" (Monday). James Rose is probably too young to know that Queanbeyan also gifted the world Heather McKay (squash champion) and George Lazenby (James Bond).

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AND THE WINNER IN THE AFTER-SCHOOL CARE PLEDGE IS … SYDNEY  |  CAMPAIGN SCORECARD: LABOR’S DAY OF ANNOUNCEABLES AND CASH  |  HOLD THE FRONT PAGE: IS INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING MAKING A COMEBACK?