Dear Sole Subscriber,

A collection of sobering take-home points from a consortium of climate scientists and economists from around the world -- the Global Carbon Project -- and their findings for 2010, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change:

• The amount of man-made carbon dioxide released in 2010 reached a record 10 billion tonnes, nearly 6% higher than in 2009.
• Global CO2 emissions since 2000 are tracking the high end of the projections used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which far exceed 2º warming by 2100.
• The past decade has seen an unprecedented increase in greenhouse gases released from fossil fuels, deforestation and the manufacture of cement, resulting in an average rise of 3.1% per year. This compares with an annual increase of just 1% per year during the 1990s.
• The global emissions of carbon dioxide from man-made sources have increased by nearly 50% over the past two decades, culminating in the release of a record 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2010. The trend has continued on the same trajectory during 2011.
• We are now tracking the high end of the worst case scenario of the IPCC. At the moment we are very far away from keeping within the target of a 2º increase in global temperatures by the end of the century. We are more on course for a 4º rise, and possibly as high as 6º if carbon feedbacks begin.
• In the developed world, carbon dioxide emissions fell by 1.3% in 2008 and fell again by 7.6% in 2009, rising by 3.4% in 2010.
• In the developing world, dominated by China, emissions increased by 4.4% in 2008, increased by 3.9% in 2009 and 7.6% in 2010.
• The figure for 2010 cancels out a downturn in emissions the year before.

Anyone get the feeling we're going backwards? Just like the politics at Durban, the maths here suggests as much.

The ALP's Left say they will not give up on key Bracks-Carr-Faulkner reforms trashed by the Right at national conference and will urgently move to recruit multiple members to force Labor to democratise.

A devastating summary of Saturday’s reform debate, obtained by Crikey, illustrates in stark detail the emasculation of the hallowed trio’s considered initiatives. All three elder statesmen spoke during the debate and were livid after the Right welched on delivering anything meaningful.

"The 2011 National Conference rejected in whole, or in part, the vast majority of … recommendations to increase the role, influence and say of the membership in Party affairs," the Left report reads. "These recommendations if adopted, would have restrained some of the power of those currently in control of the Party."

The progressive reforms -- which included the direct election of national conference delegates and the ability of the party president to vote on national executive -- were left stillborn after the Right refused to commit to hard numbers and instead hived off the issue to an implementation committee.

The report reveals just 13 -- or 42% -- of the 31 BCF reforms were adopted with a majority adopted in only part (30%) or rejected completely (26%).

The appointment of an organising tsar, a membership amnesty, the direct election of state presidents, a ban on dual voting, a strengthened National Appeals Tribunal, a reduction in preselection interventions and the official affiliation of like-minded organisations were all junked.

"Party-building activities and community organising won’t happen effectively in some branches and direct election of National Conference delegates remains unfinished business," the report reads. It slammed the conference’s "very weak commitment organisationally to properly look at primaries".

A senior Left source with direct carriage of the faction’s agenda slammed a media report yesterday that the Left had "abandoned" the proposal to directly elect 50% of delegates and had instead put a suggestion that the national executive would "explore options" for rank and file deployment.

"There were no last-minute changes, the Right just jammed through an omnibus of resolutions and it was highly unlikely most delegates knew what they were actually voting for," they said.

At multiple points during Saturday’s debate Right convener David Feeney’s chief foot soldier Stephen Donnelly held up a sign with an up and down arrow to ensure the sheep in the bleachers baa-ed at the correct moment.

Yesterday morning, right wing AWU national secretary Paul Howes, a former socialist, was seen in close discussion with Faulkner in the conference’s nose-bleed section after his faction had smashed initiatives’ intent.

The Right’s performance "underscored the extreme reluctance to move away from pre-arranged fixes", the Left source said.

"On gay marriage, offshore processing and uranium they didn’t want to hear the argument and debate that is a normal part of open and democratic decision-making."

The Right commanded 218 delegates on conference floor, the vast majority of which are controlled by ruling daleks and business-focused trade unions who consider corporate success as a the key barometer of the national interest. The Left were within spitting distance at 177 delegates but struggled corral the 20 defectors needed to control debate. However, on contested votes on uranium, gay marriage, offshore processing and live cattle exports, the biggest gap was just 12.

Its one clear victory -- a change to the party’s platform to allow same-s-x marriage -- was carried on the voices to avoid prime ministerial embarrassment.

Australian leader writer and former Kevin Rudd speech-writer Troy Bramston, in a Fabian Society Forum compared by Geoff Gallop just hours before the reform debate kicked off, said it would take another 10 years before Labor would broach the topic again -- presumably after another bout of soul searching after defeat at the ballot box in 2013.

But change could come much sooner. The Left will campaign hard to recruit enough delegates to chip away at Right control and seize control of the agenda. Depending on which state they come from, just 500 or 1000 new members would see Right banished to minority status.

"The votes were so close that if we can turn the huge cheers heard during the conference on contentious issues into 500 or 1000 new members we’d see some important changes to the platform," a source said.

"Reform is really about removing the filters so the rank and file can select people on the basis of their views. The things people care about can become part of the process. At the moment they are not."

The Left would also abandon any previous inclination to work out fixes with the Right -- the conference signalled an attitudinal change and there would now be a supreme hesitancy to compromise.

"This is about whether we mean what we say … do we believe in democratic engagement to make a better world? If we say yes, than there’s no way we would have voted to export uranium to India," the source said, citing La Trobe MP Laura Smyth’s speech during the debate as the "best at the entire conference".

Despite the rancour, there was still some factional cross-pollination evident in the conference’s aftermath with Anthony Albanese and Wayne Swan witnessed cheering the weekend’s cautious progress over a pint at Darling Harbour’s picturesque Watershed bar. Whether the cordiality will last is another question.

To catch up on Crook's weekend coverage check out his posts on The Stump, including:

• PM -- predictably -- gets her way on uranium
• Rudd in buoyant mood at same s-x celebration
• Conscience confusion on gay marriage
• Labor squibs it on party reform, says left
• Bowen gets offshore nod at raucous ALP conf
• ALP National Conference backs Gillard on gay marriage
• ALP conference construction industry proposal a hot topic

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

It's hard to see how much benefit Julia Gillard got from the Labor conference. Indeed, there's a real question about whether it wasn't a quiet debacle for her.

Let's put all this into a bit of context: after all the media complaints about an ALP bereft of values indulging in sanitised, heavily controlled conferences devoid of spirit, it's a bit rich to flip the criticism around and lament that the Prime Minister's authority has been damaged by how she was rolled -- by her own nominal faction, better yet -- on same-s-x marriage. Finally we saw a party passionate and having serious stoushes over substantive policy issues, which is exactly what everyone believed Labor needed. But the problem was never about where Gillard stood on an issue like same-s-x marriage, so much as her bizarre decision to use her prime ministerial authority to try to fight what in the end looked like a losing battle over an issue that isn't of particular concern to voters.

There is, as Andrew Crook correctly noted on the weekend, more than a little inconsistency on the side of some same-s-x marriage advocates, for whom not so long ago an ALP conscience vote was the escape hatch from a party unwilling to embrace the late 20th century. Now that the party has boldly stepped forward into 1998, a conscience vote is suddenly a dud outcome for some. Conscience can be a funny thing, and looks an awful lot like bigotry when it's inside someone else's head.

But in any event, the Prime Minister finds herself aligned, through her own efforts, with trilobites such as Joe De Bruyn, the sort of man for whom the Counter-Reformation was a disastrous plunge into liberalism.

Gillard did have one success, in overriding her own faction's objections to uranium sales to India, albeit at the expense of trashing what's left of the party's consistency on the issue. Does Labor have any coherent policy left on uranium? But at least it has some sense of realpolitik rationale. In contrast, the issue of party reform was, more or less, an unmitigated disaster, not merely or even particularly for Gillard, but for Labor.

Possibly, in the crowded confines of the convention centre at Darling Harbour, with vigorous debate and tight votes, Labor thought itself relevant beyond the 0.1% of the population who form its base. But at some point in the next couple of years, Labor's base will form less than one in a thousand Australians, if it even reaches such great heights right now. The 2017 conference might be able to entirely avoid the issue of whether members can elect national conference delegates by having the conference made up of the entire membership itself, so small will it have become.

The failure of the party reform proposals was a failure of leadership by Gillard and the party's factional leaders and a failure of vision by the conference as a whole. Not merely was it agreed not to do anything about the fact that the party is driving towards a cliff, but it elected to throw the steering wheel out the window. Possibly Gillard feared the fate of Simon Crean, a worthy leader who expended most of his leadership authority on winding back union influence at conferences, but it seems a perverse decision to put her authority on the line over same-s-x marriage rather than trying to address the terminal -- literally, terminal -- decline of her party. The only option now is for the Labor grassroots to seize the initiative and start building structures that route around the party hierarchy as so much damage and connect together.

In the meantime, as if to demonstrate this government's remarkable capacity to shoot itself in the foot, the confidential sections of the Bracks-Carr-Faulkner report were leaked with the goal of damaging Kevin Rudd. Rudd had a good conference by dint of keeping his head down, having a few good lines about Tony Abbott, and being gracious about Gillard. Plainly, people in the Gillard camp aren't feeling as secure as they might, given the momentum Labor has developed at the end of this year. After her performance at the conference, maybe they're right to feel that way.

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

So Labor got its platform change, as expected, on same-s-x marriage, but the fundamentalists got their conscience vote. Assuming a solid Coalition vote against change -- an assumption that has gone largely unchallenged -- that means legislation to change the marriage laws would be doomed in the present Parliament.

But there has been, finally, a little scrutiny of the Coalition's position. With its own battle out of the way, several senior Labor figures have been needling the opposition on its failure to embrace a conscience vote. Now Simon Birmingham, Liberal senator from South Australia, has urged his party to pay heed, saying that he would support a same-s-x marriage bill if given the opportunity.

It remains the case, however, that the media narrative is overwhelmingly obsessed with Labor's position on the issue and that the Coalition's much larger anti-gay contingent has mostly been given a free pass.

That's symptomatic of a wider problem. The debate on party reform is another instance; Labor gets plenty of publicity for its internal difficulties, with some very effective media scrutiny of reform options and the institutional obstacles that they face. Hardly anyone ever mentions that the Liberal Party has a very similar set of problems and faces broadly similar options in addressing them, with equally strong forces of inertia standing in the way.

Part of the reason is that journalists and academic experts tend to come from the left, so the Labor Party is much more familiar to them: few of them feel qualified to say much about the internal workings of the Liberal Party, and on the occasions that they try they often get things laughably wrong. The ALP is also in part a victim of its own (relative) openness; its internal disputes are more on display, whereas the Liberals do a better job of keeping things behind closed doors.

Another reason is that the Liberals are currently seen to be in the ascendant, winning state elections and ahead in the polls federally, so the assumption is made that their problems must be less serious -- although the truth is that internal strength and external performance are very weakly correlated at best.

Scrutiny for the Liberals is badly needed; just last week, when Queensland's Parliament passed legislation for civil unions, Labor MPs had a free vote but the merged Liberal National Party voted unanimously against. Only one independent joined the majority of the Labor caucus to ensure passage of the bill, 47-40.

When they're trying to sound conciliatory, the fundamentalists maintain that they don't want to discriminate, that they just want to reserve the name "marriage" for heteros-xuals but that gays are welcome to have all the substantive rights they need via civil unions. But when put to the test, it turns out they really don't like civil unions either.

Yet we know from the polls that same-s-x marriage has significant support among Liberal voters. While there is no serious doubt that Tony Abbott will succeed in imposing a party-line vote against it, it will involve suppressing a good deal of contrary opinion in the branches and in the party room.

Abbott's response to the call was to point out that "There's a sense in which every vote in the Liberal Party is a conscience vote". He's right, in that crossing the floor on the issue would not in itself be grounds for expelling a Liberal MP. But in substance, it's less true than ever.

Where once the party had an assortment of "rebels" and people who were willing to put principle ahead of their careers, that species is now almost extinct. Party discipline is in practice almost indistinguishable from what prevails in the ALP.

This simply reinforces the point that Labor and the Liberals face very similar problems. Both parties have become conformist, hierarchical organisations: decisions are made at the top, the MPs do what they're told in order to get ahead, and the ordinary members (the few that are left) turn up obediently to hand out how-to-vote cards but do little else.

The threat to our democracy doesn't come from conscience votes or from same-s-x marriage, it comes from political parties that have ceased to function as representative organisations, and from media that have failed to call them to account for it.

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

There's been a marked fall in support for an early election in the wake of the Gillard government shoring up its parliamentary numbers as the political year draws to a close.

New polling from Essential Research reveals almost half -- 47% -- of voters now believe the government should run full term, compared to 41% who want an election now. That's a reversal of sentiment from as recently as September, when 48% of voters wanted an election and only 40% wanted the government to run until 2013.

Opinion is strongly partisan on the issue, with nearly three-quarters of Coalition voters wanting an election now, while 89% of Labor voters and 73% of Greens voters want the government to serve three years.

However, voters' perceptions of the comparative competence of the major parties shows just how far Labor has to go in regaining the confidence of voters. While recent results seem to suggest Labor had at least staunched the damage to its brand of the last two years, the party still looks fatally flawed.

Essential asked voters which party they trusted to handle a variety of issues, and while Labor's position on some issues has improved since the nadir of its fortunes in June, it still trails the Coalition on every issue except industrial relations. On the key issues that influence votes -- economic management, health, protection of jobs and education -- Labor trails the Coalition, often significantly.

Only 27% of voters trust Labor over the Coalition on economic management, compared to 45% who trust the Coalition (29%-47% in June); Labor trails the Coalition 31-34% on health (33-35% in June); it trails 32-35% on protecting jobs, which is a poorer result than the 35-35% of June, and on education it has gone backwards, from a small lead in June to trailing 34-36%. Labor has also gone backwards on water supply, where it now substantially trails the Greens (24%) and the Coalition (30%).

And despite the passage of the carbon pricing package, Labor has lost ground on climate change, while the Greens have extended their lead over the major parties (31% to 25% for the Coalition and 19% for Labor). And despite an interest rate cut last month and much speculation about whether the government's fiscal policy would enable the RBA to cut rates again tomorrow, Labor still trails the Coalition on interest rates by 18 points -- 24-42% -- as it did in June.

On voting intention, there's minimal change from last week: the Coalition is down one point to 47% and Labor is steady; the Greens have dropped a point as well, for a two-party preferred outcome of 54-46% to the Coalition.

There's also a smidgeon of good news for the ever-complaining retailers, with 13% of voters saying they expected to spend more this year on Christmas gifts than last year, up from 10% last year, 11% in 2009 and up from 3% in the depths of the GFC in 2008.

But 40% say they'll spend less (compared to 38% in previous years), while 44% reckon they'll spend about the same.

The Essential Report is a weekly political poll conducted by EMC in partnership with Your Source. Drawing on an online panel of more than 100,000 members, the weekly poll tracks political performance and topical issues.

Melbourne publisher Morry Schwartz is the power behind two big media hits of the last couple of years: David Marr's devastating Quarterly Essay on Kevin Rudd in 2008, which helped put the skids under the prime minister, and Robert Manne's scorching attack on bias at Rupert Murdoch's The Australian.

The tough but charming Schwartz, who has made millions of dollars in property development, has been in publishing for 37 years, and has had a rollercoaster ride during his colourful career. But he's always bounced back, and nowadays bankrolls book publisher Black Inc as well as Quarterly Essay and The Monthly, which turns out some of the best writing in Australia.

So does he have power? "Yes, I think we do make a contribution," he tells The Power Index.

And we agree, because his small publishing company, with its 25 employees, is the most significant left-wing voice in Australia.

Schwartz's audience is not that big --  Quarterly Essay sells 15-20,000 copies and The Monthly 30,000 (with 120,000 readers) -- but it has plenty of powerful people in its ranks. "With numbers like that, there's no way we can influence society at large," says Schwartz, "but we do influence the influencers."

No doubt that's why Rudd chose The Monthly to set out his vision for an Australian version of social democracy in two major essays before the 2007 election. And why he also used its columns two years later to defend the government's response to the GFC.

So, is Morry an interventionist proprietor? Well, yes, in that he has a strong view of what he wants from his magazines, and has fallen out with at least four editors or business partners over the years. Sometimes over business, other times over ideology.

"His politics are circumstantial," says one of them, Peter Craven. "He wants to be loved by the liberal establishment. He's not left wing in the way Rupert Murdoch is right wing."

Schwartz's Quarterly Essay, which was launched in 2001 with a piece by Robert Manne on the Stolen Generation, pays some of Australia's leading thinkers to write 20,000 words on just about anything that's important to our political debate. But there's no doubt Morry has a big say in who gets invited.

The Monthly, which began life three years later, is a more traditional news and views magazine. But Morry chooses its editor and dominated the four-person editorial board, with Robert Manne, until it was disbanded this year. Indeed, when the magazine started life he styled himself editor-in-chief.

An amalgam of The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair and New York Review of Books, The Monthly is less polemic than the Quarterly Essay, but still sits to the left of centre. "It was a lifelong ambition to start a political/literary monthly magazine," says Schwartz. So it's hardly surprising that he sets the broad political tone and takes a close interest in what it's doing.

When Schwartz launched the magazine in 2005 with a 30,000 sales target, people told him he was dreaming. The Eye, Matilda and online Zeitgeist Gazette had already failed, and the now-dead Bulletin had been bleeding money for years. But with Morry happy to mop up losses, it has thrived. It carries few advertisements and has recently pared its budgets, but subscriptions are strong, online ad revenue is growing, and Schwartz says it breaks even. He is "confident it will soon make a profit".

Nevertheless, times are tough in property, and Schwartz has been doing it hard. He just auctioned 73 apartments and four retail outlets in the Victorian snowfields for a total of $12.5 million, against a reported construction cost of $40 million. But Morry denies any fire sale. "The group is healthy," he tells The Power Index. "The property market is struggling ... However, we are making sufficient sales, and credit is available to us."

Publishing takes one-third of Schwartz's time for only 1% of turnover. So why does he devote so much energy to it? "It's like breathing," he replies, "I've always done it." Or, as he confessed to The Age a few years ago, it's "an obsession, an addiction. I can't help it."

*Read the full profile at The Power Index

This story is just a taste of what Crikey subscribers will have access to on The Power Index.

Learn more about it from Paul Barry here.

Today’s cartoon is from December 5, 2008 and is titled "The Annual General Meeting of the International Association of Australian Cheese":

Want more First Dog? Visit First Blog on the Moon.

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Gillard: pro gays, anti nuclear. This little snippet has been doing the rounds on Facebook. We're not sure what publication or year it's from -- if you know, drop us a line -- but it's clear the prime minister wasn't always for uranium exports and against gay rights ...

A new speech writer for the PM? Meanwhile, there was plenty of criticism of Gillard's lacklustre speech at the ALP national conference over the weekend. So much so that Crikey hears the hunt is on for a new ghost writer. Gillard's office was denying any move today -- "there is absolutely no truth to any of your claims," a spokesperson told us -- but two tipsters report a search has started for someone to reshape the prime minister's rhetoric. One insider says they could come from overseas ...

Drink responsibly, Fairfax reminds staff. The Fairfax share price may be in the toilet, but that's no reason to get on the sauce and offend your colleagues, the CEO of the company's New Zealand operations has warned staff:

From: ** Fairfax - Communications
Subject: Message to All Staff from Allen Williams
Date: 5 December 2011 8:29:06 AM NZDT
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;

Dear All

As we reach the end of another full year, I would like to acknowledge and thank everyone for their contribution to our Company.

In the spirit of ensuring that we create a safe and inclusive environment in which everyone can enjoy their celebrations, I would like to take the opportunity to remind you all of our ongoing responsibilities and the standards of behaviour expected as we attend Christmas / end of year functions.

Any of us who are attending functions hosted by Fairfax, customers or clients, must bear in mind that we remain bound by our Company’s policies. We continue to represent the Company, even when we attend functions outside our normal working hours, or our normal workplace.

All of us are to be aware of our behaviour.  If we behave in a manner that others find offensive, intimidating or harassing, we are liable for our actions. Further, we also risk our personal and professional reputations.

You are reminded that:

• Christmas or end of year functions provide an opportunity to celebrate our own and the Company’s achievements and to thank others for their contribution to that success. It goes without saying that your behaviour remains bound by Company policies.
• Alcohol (where available) is to be consumed responsibly. Please look out for anyone who appears intoxicated, and do everything possible to ensure they do not drink and drive.
• Being drunk is no excuse or defence for any type of harassment.
• Not everyone observes or celebrates Christmas, so please be culturally sensitive to diversity.

I encourage everyone to enjoy end of year functions, and I wish everyone a safe and happy festive season.

Regards

Allen Williams
CEO
Fairfax New Zealand Limited

A very similar stern warning to one delivered by then-Fairfax CEO David Kirk in 2007, as Crikey reported at the time. The reminder seems timely -- one Fairfax journo from across the ditch reports (reader discretion is advised):

"Let me tell you about a recent end-of-the-year staff function at Telecom's systems integrator arm, Gen-i in Wellington. A veteran Computerworld journalist was invited to it, and may have arrived somewhat worse for wear. He proceeded to vomit on the carpet and also sharted himself. People who went to assist recoiled as the pungent smell indicated what had happened, but the journo was bundled into a cab nevertheless for immediate evacuation. In the cab, the journo continued to purging himself from both ends. There was a bill of course for soiling the taxi, which he graciously insisted that Gen-i should pay. Computerworld here is part of Fairfax, but I note that Allen hasn't banned vomiting and sharting in his Christmas decree."

Charming.

Bells aren't ringing at ABC HQ. Over at the public broadcaster there seems to be a distinct lack of Christmas spirit. We revealed on Friday the ABC cancelled its traditional Christmas party at Ultimo HQ, which has angered at least one (understandably anonymous) staffer who vented their spleen to us late Friday:

"The poor, long-suffering, hard-working staff at the ABC are getting no Christmas party this year even though we usually part for it ourselves anyway. Plus this year we get no corporate Christmas cards to give away. We do get our little ABC gift shop voucher (yay us) but meanwhile that nice Mark Scott can afford to throw parties offsite in a posh hotel in Darlinghurst to announce the upcoming 2012 season of programs and a big party next week to farewell chairman Maurice Newman. Yep, I am angry. Thank you so much  for letting me vent while I bust my ass working over the holiday season with nothing to tell me I'm in the holiday season but a simple tree WE paid for in our own office."

Has your boss cut back on the festivities? Or is a more lavish soiree planned? Dish the dirt on your party -- and who disgraces themselves -- to us: email boss@crikey.com.au or use the entirely anonymous form.

Optus TV goes dark. Optus customers were left in the dark over the weekend after gremlins cut off the cable TV feed. One customer -- upset that the Test match disappeared from his screen -- reports being told a "major software malfunction" at Foxtel's end was responsible for the outage. It was still out as of last night.

Do you know more? Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or submit them anonymously here.

Nando's has choked on the bone of a new advertisement for a six-piece chicken combo after it generated a windfall of negative attention in Zimbabwe from supporters of Robert Mugabe. The fun, zesty ad sends up Mugabe and other ruthless dictators, arming them with water pistols, microphones and a swing.

View our Video of the Day gallery

Canada seems to be enjoying its status as the pariah of the Durban climate change talks, reportedly registering a louder cheer in its parliament each time it is awarded a "fossil of the day" award by environmental NGOs.

Canada has been targeted, not just because it has refused -- like Japan and Russia -- to sign up to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, but because it has also threatened to walk away from Kyoto before its expiry. This a key point -- Canada, largely as a result of its controversial oil sands exploitation, is the only one of the developed nations bound by Kyoto to radically miss its targets.

Rather than achieving a cut of 6% of its greenhouse gas emissions, it is heading for an increase of one third. Bloomberg has estimated the extra 890 million tonnes of CO2e means it is facing a bill of about $6.7 billion -- even at the current rock bottom international carbon prices. The bill would have been double at prices prevailing earlier this year, but if it leaves Kyoto before its expiry, Canada may reason that it can simply tear up the contract.

The hard-line approach of Canada and the US is ostensibly designed to help force big-emitting developing countries, such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa, to commit to a future binding treaty, and to make "comparable" reductions. But it is not entirely clear that Canada and the US are prepared for what may happen if the so-called "BRIC" nations actually make that commitment.

Such a scenario seemed remote at the start of these talks, but there is intrigue at the growing subtlety of the Chinese approach. China has, on several occasions in the past few days, asserted that it is ready to consider a legally binding agreement and accept an absolute cap on its own emissions. There are, of course, certain conditions, including agreements on finance for poorer countries, and for the developed countries to hold true to their undertakings under Kyoto.

Brazil and South Africa are talking the same language, offering the tantalising prospect that Durban may actually be able to produce its own significant accord, one based, at least loosely, around the EU vision of a new roadmap -- which is to agree on the form of such a treaty by 2015 and to implement it by 2020, or thereabouts. Of the G6 that dominate these talks -- US, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and the EU -- only the US and India seem ill-prepared for such an eventuality. And, of course, Canada: It may not have fully considered its options should China call its bluff. And there, but for the grace of a hung parliament, goes Australia.

Climate Change minister Greg Combet flew into Durban on the weekend, possibly more worried about the fate of international carbon trading than the immediate fate of Kyoto and whatever political agreement can be constructed to cover the gap between that and a new treaty.

The two are considered by many to be interlinked. Brazil says that without Kyoto or a comparable treaty, international carbon markets will serve no purpose. That would not worry some, such as Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, or the "pluri-national" state of Bolivia, who both seem ideologically opposed to the idea, albeit for different reasons.

The Bolivian delegation asserts that carbon markets do not respect the rights of Mother Nature, and insists that "there will be no commodification of the functions of nature". Deep down, Abbott may agree, but prefers to describe them as a get-rich-quick scheme for carbon traders in Equatorial Guinea and Kazakhstan.

Still, as Paul Curnow points out in this intriguing analysis, the countries that have most benefits from the Clean Development Mechanism -- Brazil, India and China -- may no longer see it as an over-riding positive. The CDM exists now because it allows developed countries to make investments in developing countries and access cheaper sources of abatement. But Brazil, China and India also realise that, when it comes to meeting their own absolute targets, exporting cheaper sources of abatement to other countries will no longer be the attractive proposition it now appears. The CDM may, in the future, have to exist in an altogether different form. The analysis is worth a read.

Turkey earned its first fossil for seeking technology and financing grants without committing to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. Turkey has doubled its emissions since 1990 and did not submit a pledge under the Copenhagen Accord.

Brazil also gained a first-prize fossil on Friday for its new forestry law, which green NGOs say will accelerate the loss of trees in the Amazon rainforest, and for proposing that credits for avoided deforestation under the REDD mechanism be issued without the benefit of international scrutiny.

New Zealand also earned a fossil for the same reason, suggesting that international credits be issued with no oversight or review. "This would likely unleash a wild west carbon market with double or triple counting of offsets and a likely increase of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere," the NGOs lamented.

And, of course, Canada earned yet another fossil for claiming that the fossil awards were "uninformed" and "ideologically driven".

*This article was first published at Climate Spectator

You know what’ll be an awesome way for Kate Langbroek and Dave Hughes to celebrate Hughesy and Kate’s 10th anniversary on breakfast radio? For Hughes to see a personal trainer to lose that embarrassing eight kilograms, then get waxed and spray-tanned, and then leap from a giant cake wearing a bikini!

Despite professing himself "terrified" to perform the stunt, Hughes will do this because it’s important to encourage other men to be body-confident. "It’s never going to be perfect but it’s mine, it’s beautiful and it does a really good job," he will tell the Herald Sun.

One woman who can’t wait to see Hughes in all his glory is his breakfast "wife", Kate.

But as you may realise, it was really Langbroek who leapt from the cake in a bikini on Friday morning, and her "breakfast husband" who was set to admire her "glory".

By reversing the genders of the two radio hosts in the Herald Sun’s account of the stunt, I want to argue how ridiculous it is that anyone -- male or female -- should submit their near-naked body to public display, prefaced by an extensive grooming and reshaping of that body according to prevailing standards of beauty, and would honestly believe this encourages others to be "confident".

All it does is reinforces the cultural norm that female broadcasters, comedians and commentators -- and women in general -- are best judged on how they look, not what they do or write.

Similarly, we should all be ashamed of ourselves to interpret as "proud" and "confident" Celebrity Apprentice winner Julia Morris’s decision to pose on the cover of Woman’s Day in "my first bikini at age 43".

"Julia Morris couldn’t give two hoots she is not the mirror image of stick thin celebs," the accompanying interview gushed, while Morris laughed as she told the magazine: "I think it’s because I have really bad reverse dysmorphia -- it doesn’t matter what size I am, I look in the mirror and see someone incredibly hot. It’s outrageous."

Though Morris is to be applauded for donating the bikini shoot fee to charity, her body pride talk would be far more plausible if she had not made such a public spectacle of her weight loss in the late 1990s, in which the plump brunette from Full Frontal became much thinner, but also terrifyingly blonde and tanned.

In a recent interview with Parenting Australia, Morris revealed how her Los Angeles acting coach asked her to consider either losing weight or putting more on. "She was saying all of this because in LA you’re either really fat or skinny and I was stuck in the middle. She said I didn’t need to lose too much weight, just a little bit otherwise I would have been 'invisible' in LA terms."

Hardly the talk of someone who doesn’t care how others perceive her body.

Catherine Deveny also joined the bathing beauty parade when she spoke to noted 'body image' champion Mia Freedman at her site Mamamia under the headline: "I’m 80kg, size 16 and I love my body: Deveny". Deveny supplied a pin-up style photo of herself posing in a retro bathing suit.

Unfortunately, she then fell into what we might call the "real woman" trap, which attempts to console women who feel fat by arguing that skinny women are dupes of the beauty industries, that "real women" come in "all shapes and sizes" (except "skinny"), and that men prefer "curves" anyway.

The most valuable part of the interview is Deveny’s advice for women to "own" their bodies: "I don’t want women to feel like they are trapped in a body they don’t want … If you are not happy, change. And don’t blame anyone else for it. Own your body."

To this I’d add that you should also own the display rights to your body. Treat it as the home of your mind and your joie de vivre, not a public advertisement to others that you are happy and accomplished. To show that you’re really proud of your body, make it do stuff. Keep it healthy so it sustains the pursuits you love.

I don’t want to come over all pearl-clutchy on this, but it seems embarrassingly obvious to point out that women are encouraged, from a very young age, to derive their sense of self-worth solely from other people’s appreciation of their bodies. Little girls are praised for being pretty and docile rather than for being smart, funny, curious or resourceful. As they grow up, they learn from culture -- and from peers who’ve also absorbed that culture -- that people like girls more if they care for their bodies in certain ways.

The irony of the "feminist bikini shoot" is that feminists have used their bodies as billboards for political activism in the past because that’s pretty much all women had to work with. To make a really crude comparison, this is also why prisoners hunger-strike and asylum seekers self-harm -- they’ve been stripped of control in every arena but their own bodies.

One of the victories of feminism is that it has given women more tools. Australian women have excellent access to education, and can build rich lives on their intelligence and ideas, or the physical capabilities of their bodies, not just on looks, s-x and child-bearing. Women are active in the public sphere, where they can communicate their opinions and influence other Australians.

As the recent #mencallmethings Twitter campaign has revealed, female writers and commentators still struggle against detractors who like to reduce them to their s-xual value -- or perceived lack thereof. But there is no excuse for women reducing themselves to objects, especially in the mistaken belief that this demonstrates women shouldn’t be reduced to objects.

We don’t make men believe that "strength", "pride", "empowerment" and "inspiration" require them to strip  in public, so why do women continue to believe it of themselves? We might laugh at the absurdity of men being placed in these public situations -- like the illustrations exploring how silly male superheroes look in the same costumes and poses that female superheroes routinely wear. But it is appalling and deplorable that we present the public consumption of women’s bodies as something for women to celebrate.

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

Earlier this year, Labor women from across the country met in Queensland to discuss policy issues and progressive reforms for the country. It’s amazing what gets done in a bloke-free environment. Commitments to equal pay, a care economy, gay marriage and a carbon price -- every one of these progressive reforms passed with barely a whisper of dissent on the floor. A far cry from the, at times, rancorous debate and tight votes on some of these issues at the ALP national conference on the weekend.

In the past 72 hours we have seen a lot of Labor women leaders. Julia, Penny and Tanya took to the stage with a flair many of their male colleagues failed to match. Jenny McCallister, newly re-elected national president, marshalled delegates with professionalism and discipline while Louise Tarrant, Michele O’Neil and Nadine Flood, female federal trade union leaders all, spoke with passion about their members, calling on their parliamentary colleagues to stay true to the party platform.

But the upfront presence of female faces -- remarkable and wonderful as they may be -- masks a dismal backroom reality.

In a party where only numbers count, nothing says so much about the prospect of reform for Labor than these figures: 41% and 0%. The first number is the percentage of women on the Labor conference floor; the second is the number of women occupying a paid role as a senior Labor Party organiser.

Never mind that there are 96,400 more women in Australia than men, the oldest political party in the country is still trucking a long way behind the national demographics. Only Tasmania’s delegate list matches the national profile, with 52% of its component of the conference, women.

This is the full gender breakdown of the conference, based on the list of delegates recently supplied to Crikey.

At a parliamentary level, the representation of women is even less than this of course, with only 37% of Australian Labor MPs women. Labor delegates were reminded of the discrimination early on the first day of the conference by EMILY’s List Australia, who gave out jars of jelly beans -- only 37% full for the fellas. A bittersweet reminder of how far women have to go. At the current rate of change, women will have to wait until 2038 before there is equal representation of the s-xes in parliament.

These statistics -- the lack of gender parity on the floor of conference and of parliament -- is enough to make anyone pessimistic about the possibility of structural and ideological change within the party or of recruiting the 8000-plus people we need to sustain the Labor movement.

But numbers are only part of the story. The problem in formal representation of women pales beside the gender ghetto of informal power within Labor.

It is as true today, as it was 120 years ago, that faceless men run the ALP. Only they are not so faceless any more. Thanks to social and other media, everyone knows who they are. In fact, for anyone attending the conference, the influence of the backroom boys was obvious to even the remotest observer.

Never mind blaming Julia Gillard for the parlous state of polling, it is the men gathering at the sides of the conference; in suits and ties or rolled-up shirt sleeves, clutching fags, phones and manila folders of lists and names who need to be held to account.

At one point, just before the vote on marriage equality, NSW state secretary Sam Dastyari and Anthony Albanese summoned a group of organisers working the factions on the far side of the stage, way out of view of the TV cameras.  A scrum of men, mostly in their mid-30s, gathered in a tight conspiratorial circle, discussing tactics, votes and the imminent count. It’s in these exclusively male gatherings that the ongoing patronage and mentoring of Labor men takes place. For many women, it is not just off-putting but dispiriting to see Generation Jones male factional leadership schooling another two, Gen X and Y, to perpetuate the brotherhood. While many of those younger, up and coming factional powerbrokers should know better, it is telling that not one of them thought to include a female colleague into the mix.

While these machinations were taking place, a few metres away faceless women were slogging their guts out for Labor. A team of femme heroes working Labor’s digital campaign ensured that #alpnc trended nationally on Twitter for almost three days. It is a credit to Tegan Gilchrist and the other Labor women who huddled in front of computer screens and came up with the sensational Conference 2011 Social Media Guide. Reaching out to the community -- online or otherwise -- is likely to be women’s business.

Read the full story on our website

In the past month, FaHCSIA has released more than 1000 pages of reports that seek to justify an expansion of the NT intervention.

One of the most important for Minister Jenny Macklin has been the Community Safety and Wellbeing Research Study (CSWRS). This analyses the results of a survey and a voting process with 1343 people across 16 unnamed NT Aboriginal communities. Its findings are a cornerstone of a 400-page evaluation of the NTER.

Despite being touted as proof that communities want the intervention, the 17-page survey form used in communities does not once refer to "the intervention" or the "Northern Territory Emergency Response".

The survey process ran from December 2010-June 2011 (p4). "Three years" prior to these dates (late 2007-mid-2008), the intervention was in full swing. It is unclear why communities weren't clearly asked to compare their condition to before the intervention.

Survey participants were never asked about whether they actually agree with, or consent to any law that has been imposed on them through the intervention, much as happened in the "Stronger Futures" consultations. This illustrates contempt for the right and the capacity of Aboriginal people to shape their own future.

The headline statistic for Macklin is "almost three out of four people surveyed by this study said their community is safer now than it was three years ago". She has implored anti-intervention activists, "Look at the evidence. This has nothing to do with ideology or politics".

But the ideology of the intervention is on clear display through the CSWRS survey design and the report itself. The survey is fixated on questions about dysfunctional Aboriginal behaviour. Despite this, the clearest evidence provided by the report is that meeting shortfalls in services and infrastructure is the main challenge facing communities.

Despite being touted as the work of independent consultants, the report thanks FaHCSIA’s evaluation branch for guiding the project "from conceptualisation to completion" and thanks 20 government business managers, the on-the-ground authorities imposed by the intervention, for their facilitation role (p3). Prominent pro-intervention personalities also worked as staff.

A central, racist, premise of the intervention has been that the social problems facing Aboriginal communities stem from the degenerate nature of Aboriginal culture.

However, the biggest challenges as voted for by the communities were the need for increased services, and the largest positive response generated through the entire CSWRS survey, in a section on values, demonstrates a clear desire to defend the Aboriginal kinship system and Aboriginal culture:

"Having a strong connection to your culture, living traditionally, speaking language" and "Being close to family and friends" were rated "very important" by 91.2% and 92.4% of participants (with 96% and 97% of participants rating them as overall important) .

These responses were not mentioned in 140 pages of analysis in the CSWRS report, and can only be found buried as raw data in an appendix (p149). In contrast, there are eight pages of analysis into the detail of responses around inter-personal violence. This is just one of the more stark examples of how the ideology of the intervention has profoundly shaped the selective presentation of data, and precluded conclusions that may be uncomfortable for the government.

The report acknowledges on many occasions that its "quantitative" data is unreliable. But these admissions are carefully made, in a way that does not compromise the headline statistics.

i) Are some people saying "what they thought they ought to say"?

With respect to the section on levels of interpersonal violence, the report states:

"Feedback from data collectors also suggests that some of the responses may have been what the participant thought they ought to say, rather than what they really thought -- which suggests that the true level of sanction for inter-personal violence may be higher than appears here" (p137).

But this suggestion was not made in any other context.

ii) Are communities safer since the intervention, or have they always been safe?

One of the cruel features of the survey is that there is no opportunity for people to comment on the strengths of their community. There are strong themes of Aboriginal dysfunction and an assumption that government intervention, rather than community initiative, is responsible for positive outcomes. For example, questions gauging strength of leadership or children's happiness are only posed in comparison with three years previous.

It is clear, however, that large numbers of people wanting to express pride in their community, ignored the three-year comparison and took the opportunity to make a general statement.

This is selectively acknowledged in the report. For example, on responses to the statement, "there is more respect for elders than three years ago", the report says:

"It may be that people are in effect saying that respondents are commenting (sic) more on the extent of respect for elders in the community, rather than whether or not it has changed in the last three years" (p83).

This analysis has serious implications for Macklin's headline assertion -- that three-quarters of people feel safer than three years ago. Perhaps many just think their community is a safe place to be?

Read the full story on our website

Doing himself no favours. If there was one major achievement from the ALP national conference it was to remind members of the parliamentary caucus why they dumped Kevin Rudd as their leader. The man acts like a petulant small child. If he really does want to try for the top job again then silence would have been his best policy. Surely Labor could not be so silly as to restore him to the prime ministership.

Gillard would be well pleased. As for the current incumbent, she would be quite pleased with the way things turned out. Julia Gillard had her way on all the major decisions and a leader could ask for no more from this gathering. She sensibly opted for the centrist position on most things and if that encourages a few more Labor voters to the Greens it really matters not. Their lower house preferences return.

An interest rate bonus. The Reserve Bank board looks set tomorrow to give the government a Christmas bonus by way of another cut in official interest rates. If the reduction does come, as the Crikey Interest Rate Indicator is suggesting, it will reinforce the slight improvement in Labor's prospects that recent opinion polls are pointing towards.

Who's making what. Gross operating profit figures out from the Australian Bureau of Statistics this morning show that across all industries they improved at a trend rate of 3.7% in the September quarter. The financial and insurance category leads the way.

The so-called virtues of austerity. I have listened in the last week to two finance ministers -- the Australian Treasurer and the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer -- extolling the virtues of fiscal austerity. It seems to be the political orthodoxy in most developed country democracies these days that government spending must be cut to produce budgets that balance.

There is a difference, of course, between the circumstances in the two countries. Australia survived the world financial crisis without slipping into recession and even Wayne Swan's growth expectations revised down in his mid-year economic update show a country still growing. Unemployment might rise in the next 12 months but announced spending cuts are predicted to increase it only marginally.

In the UK, Chancellor George Osborne does not have the benefit of booming mining exports to Asia to drag his economy back to healthy growth. His forecasts of the last week suggest that a dip back into recession after a short period of mediocre growth is the likely outcome. Government debt is likely to increase for many years yet despite ever more proposals to limit spending.

The paradox confronting the British is that the more they cut government spending the bigger their deficit becomes and the more they must borrow. Paul Krugman put it succinctly in a recent post on his blog after quoting this from an IMF report: "Short-run fiscal and monetary stimulus is associated with smaller medium-run deviations of output and growth from the precrisis trend."

That is, history says that a financial crisis reduces long-run growth potential if policymakers don’t limit the short-run damage it does.
And yet what’s happening in Britain now is that depressed estimates of long-run potential are being used to justify more austerity, which will depress the economy even further in the short run, leading to further depression of long-run potential, leading to …
It really is just like a medieval doctor bleeding his patient, observing that the patient is getting sicker, not better, and deciding that this calls for even more bleeding.
And the truly awful thing is that Cameron and Osborne are so deeply identified with the austerity doctrine that they can’t change course without effectively destroying themselves politically.
As the Brits would say, brilliant. Just brilliant.

This chart from BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research illustrates the same point as it compares Italy, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece with Germany.

The case against austerity seems quite compelling to me and already the British public seem to be having some doubts about whether they were right to reject the Labour Government at the election last year. While the ICM/Sunday Telegraph poll at the weekend has the Conservatives a couple of points higher than Labour, YouGov’s weekly poll for the Sunday Times has topline figures of CON 35%, LAB 43%, LDEM 9%, Others 13%.

The UK Polling Report website points out that the eight point lead for Labour in the Sunday Times poll compares with YouGov’s daily polling showing an average lead of 4 or 5 points for Labour. The last two polls from Populus (whose methodology is extremely similar to ICM’s) have shown a Labour lead of 8 points, MORI’s last few polls have shown Labour leads between 2-7 points, ComRes’s recent polls have shown Labour leads between 2-4 points, ICM’s last poll also had a 2 point Labour lead.

All this polling "evidence" makes me wonder why the betting markets still have the Conservatives favourites to win the next election. Surely there are now many in the Liberal Democrats believing that, with their own support, according to the pollsters, having halved they should leave the governing Coalition.

I am contemplating having more on a Labour victory.

A history of government debt. While musing about the fashionable economic obsession with getting rid of government debt I turned to the IMF's database to look at what has been Australia's situation over the last century and  bit.

It does make me wonder what all the fuss is about.

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

Over the past month there have been several completely contradictory statements about the financial health of Australia’s universities.

In mid-November, Tertiary Education Minister Senator Chris Evans released figures he claimed showed universities had made record operating surpluses last year. He commented to the effect that universities have never had it so good and should not expect increased public investment.

This was almost immediately contradicted by news of significant job cuts at universities. The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is currently tracking job losses at seven institutions, the most prominent being the University of Sydney, where it has been confirmed up to 340 people will be made redundant. Rumours abound significant cuts could occur at several others next year due to financial pressures. For university staff facing a likely redundancy, things have never seemed worse.

So is the financial situation of our universities healthy or unhealthy?

The answer depends on what you expect our universities to be.

If you believe universities are degree factories pumping out as many students as possible and only undertaking research if it’s supported by external competitive research grants or the prospect of major commercial returns, you could argue things are going along quite nicely.

According to this view, the role of university management is to minimise costs, mainly through the application of Taylorist or scientific management principles. This involves breaking up the production process into its constituent parts of teaching, research and community service and treating each part as a cost centre which must be profitable in its own right.

If, on the other hand, you believe universities should be autonomous civic institutions operating for the public good and with a responsibility to provide the highest quality education and research, you’d probably conclude they are rapidly approaching a financial breaking point.

On average only about 40% of university budgets are from Commonwealth grants, in favour of an increasing proportion from students, including unstable international student fee income. Student-to-staff ratios have skyrocketed, unpaid overtime is increasing and universities need to find money to repair crumbling infrastructure.

People working in universities understand the necessity for much of the change they have gone through in recent years. What they don’t share, in our experience, is the unquestioning faith politicians and policy makers have in the market to decide everything.

Nor would many agree with the overly enthusiastic way university leaders have adopted corporate management philosophies. Many university staff, not just our members believe that amid all the talk of cost centres and operating surpluses, we are in danger of losing sight of what a university is.

It’s easy to brand those defending universities as public institutions in need of greater investment, as pipe-smoking professors with leather elbow patches and living in ivory towers (the people in those towers are more likely to be hard-working casuals with no job security taking tutorials of up to 30 students, but that’s another opinion piece).

Even more common is the argument by many senior university managers that critics are simply trying to protect outmoded and inefficient work practices, such as academics having the opportunity to engage in scholarship and curiosity-driven research that might not attract external funding.

No one is disputing universities need to be accountable for public funds. We’ve had that debate, everyone agrees and they are.

What we would like to see politicians and policymakers discuss is the bigger question of where our universities are today and where they’ll be tomorrow if we continue on the current path of market reform.

We’d also like to see vice-chancellors and chancellors, the leaders of their university communities, have the courage to stand and publicly defend what their institutions and their staff do for students, local communities and the broader economy.

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

The 10 people behind Labor's gay marriage shift. At the ALP's last national conference two years ago, the party reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining marriage as between a man and a woman. Even support for gay civil unions seemed a long way off.

This year, the party amended its official policy platform to advocate same-sex marriage. How did such a rapid change come about and who were the key players behind it? Andrew Barr and Louise Pratt are the driving force behind the Rainbow Labor Network, a group of Labor MPs agitating for gay rights within the party. -- Matthew Knott (read the full story here)

People's jury as Greiner/BOF stoush builds. Nick Greiner looks like he's still trying to live up to his mantle as Sydney's most powerful person, this time urging the implementation of a "citizen's jury" to advise on NSW infrastructure projects.

In a suggestion that echoes Julia Gillard's aborted "citizen's assembly" on climate change, Greiner is calling for a 100-member body to consult on public works. And in what amounts to a thinly-veiled swipe at NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell's refusal to sell electricity assets, Greiner says a people's jury would help politicians make "tough decisions". -- The Power Index (read the full story here)

Packer's handy profit plays. The mythical story I most love about the late Kerry Packer concerns the businessman who approached Packer in an airport lounge one day with a simple request. "Kerry, I'm about to have a really important meeting with someone. It would really impress this bloke if you came over and said hello." Packer agreed and a few minutes after the meeting started he sauntered over to help his new friend.

But before he could speak, the man waved him away. "Not now Kerry, can't you see I'm in a very important meeting." The story has been retold so many times there's probably no chance it's true, but it's a great little fable that underlines how important the backing of men like James and Kerry Packer can be. -- James Thomson (read the full story here)

This story is just a taste of what Crikey subscribers will have access to on The Power Index.

Learn more about it from Paul Barry here.

Sometimes media companies operate in the strangest ways.

Readers who have been following Crikey's coverage of the so-called Ozleaks case will know that News Limited spent about 18 months trying to suppress a report critical of its conduct, which included details of an alleged conversation between the-then editor of The Australian, Paul Whittaker, and  the Australian Federal Police’s Tony Negus.

Those details finally came out as a result of Crikey and The Age arguing against a suppression order in the Melbourne Magistrates Court last month.

Since then, The Australian has even less than usually friendly to us.

Meanwhile, the background to the Ozleaks case formed part of my submission to the federal government’s media inquiry last month.

The submission, with many others, was posted to the inquiry’s website, but the section on the Ozleaks case was redacted by me at the request of inquiry staff, due to matters being before the courts.

I didn’t think this needed to be done -- the submission, contains nothing that is not already on the public record, nothing likely to prejudice the case presently before the courts, and nothing that I have not already written for Crikey. But the inquiry is cautious on such matters.

Last week, I received an email from the inquiry informing me that legal counsel for Nationwide News, Jane Summerhayes, had requested the release of the redacted section. In a letter to the inquiry, Summerhayes wrote that the redacted section "concerns allegations against my client. In the interests of natural justice, kindly provide me with a copy of the unredacted submission so that my client is afforded the opportunity to respond to those allegations".

The inquiry secretariat said that it had yet to determine whether it would release the whole submission, but in the meantime, asked whether I would be prepared to provide a copy to Nationwide News if they asked me for it.

The answer is yes.

And, in the interests of maximum transparency, Crikey readers can have it too. Here it is.

Visit Margaret Simons' blog, The Content Makers.

Journalists are always a gloomy lot, and the present state of the media industry tends to add to that, which can obscure the immense energy and opportunity of the internet age, with its transformation of the tired old business of publishing and distribution.

Tapping into that energy is the reason for this Monday series on start-up media enterprises. We kicked it off last week with a look at the hyperlocal turned national magazine The Kings Tribune. This week, we look at an online-only women’s magazine that, coming up to its sixth month of operation, has turned a small profit, employs two journalists, pays contributors and has 45,000 unique browsers a month.

It’s The Hoopla, the brainchild of well-known comedian and journalist Wendy Harmer and marketer Jane Waterhouse, who is also the founder of Sister Communications which advises companies that want to engage women.

The idea arose, Harmer tells Crikey, because mature women are barely catered for by commercial AM radio, and are ignored by most blokey online magazine sites. Harmer sees the site picking up where Mia Freedman’s successful Mamamia leaves off.

The focus is women of mature years -- 35-plus -- and the motto is "stay in the loop". It’s a blend of commentary, entertainment and information with a strong community focus. An AAP news feed on the home page is meant, says Harmer, to allow women to make this their homepage, and thus stay up-to-date.

"We don’t do beauty or fashion," she says. "We speak to the person as a woman first, rather than as a wife or daughter."

Writers include Angela Catterns, Corinne Grant and Leslie Cannold. There is a section where readers can tell their own story.

Today, the site features an article on why female television presenters keep quiet about gender inequality (allegedly for fear of being labelled ball breakers), Harmer on cures for internet addiction in teenage boys, and a personal piece by editor Caroline Roessler in which she "comes out" about her same s-x relationship and her desire to marry her partner of 20 years, Donna Reeves. She writes:

"We didn’t have a textbook romance. It wasn’t easy. There was all the pain and guilt associated with breaking up one relationship to forge another. But there was also a longing so great, so intense, the thought of not being together was unimaginable ... I realised how much I want to marry this wonderful woman with whom I have spent so much of my life. That we have every right to do this. That we have worked incredibly hard, sometimes against the odds, to build our life together. That we should not be denied this basic human right ... Now I'm 50 and I can’t get married. And that’s just wrong."

The Hoopla’s content is updated daily. The overall impression is of a cross between a lifestyle and news magazine, with an intelligent feminist vibe.

So how is it going? Is it sustainable? Harmer says: "Well you know what it's like doing a start-up. It's relentless, and we all look like we need a really long lie down."

But having been founded in July this year, the site is already enjoying modest success. Harmer and Waterhouse have yet to pay themselves a salary, but they have made back their original investment, and are showing a modest profit.

The Hoopla, though, like most magazines, has some flexible boundaries between editorial and advertising. Harmer has been involved in promotions for Stockland, which runs ads on the site. There is also a partnership with Wellbeing Magazine, and there have been promotions for Yellowtail wines.

So what about editorial independence? Harmer acknowledges that there have been "creative tensions" between she and Waterhouse about where the boundaries lie. "I have had the stoush, but we now know where the line comes," she says.

The Hoopla is not alone in these arrangements, of course. Most print magazines have them, and Mamamia has regular promotions, including for Accor Hotels.

The Hoopla has run more than 600 articles since the site began. New material is posted daily. Contributors are paid on a sliding scale, from nothing to up to $200 a piece.

There are two employees -- Donna Kilby and Caroline Roessler (formerly editor of Notebook magazine). Kilby manages the strong social media presence and Roessler edits from her "tree change" home in the Barossa Valley.

What of the future? There are, Harmer acknowledges, a few "800 pound gorillas" approaching the space they have staked out. Fairfax has announced the launch of the "Womens Network", a "portfolio of brands with diverse female audiences". The Huffington Post -- which has a strong female section -- also plans to launch in Australia.

But in the meantime, Harmer says she is having the time of her life after a long career in media. The women in The Hoopla network are, she says "older, wiser, more relaxed and funny. I love tapping in to our audience."

Visit Margaret Simons' blog, The Content Makers.

The first full year of the new email-based complaint-making process has seen an explosion on moans and groans and worse from viewers about commercial TV, especially news and current affairs, where complaints about bias-inaccuracy and discrimination have soared by 400%.

The impact of email complaints in the 2010-11 financial year was dramatic: FTA stations received  2816 complaints under the so-called code of practice that was approved in late 2009, according to a report from Free TV Australia on Friday. That was more than double the number of complaints received in the 2009-10 financial year, which was the last year of the old method for handling complaints by restricting them to written documents and snail mail.

The 2816 received in 2010-11 compares with 1292 in 2009-10 and 908 in 2008-09. FTA Australia, the commercial network's industry group said in a statement: "This was the first full year incorporating complaints submitted electronically via the Free TV website complaints portal. On average, 2816 complaints amount to less than four complaints per month per service.

"Complaints ranged over most categories of programs, however, news, current affairs and commercials attracted the highest complaint numbers. The largest number of complaints (33.0%) related to the classification, (22.2%) discrimination and (16.3%) bias/inaccuracy." Julie Flynn, CEO of Free TV Australia said in a statement: "It’s clear from the low number of viewer complaints that the code is working well. In fact, 2816 complaints amount to less than four complaints per month per service. Considering Free TV has an output of over 6400 hours of programming a month and is watched by 14 million people every day, this is a strong result."

But looked at, that's more than 54 complaints a week or more than seven a day received by the commercial TV networks.

And what the statement didn't highlight was the way complaints about bias-inaccuracy and discrimination in news and current affairs programs soared in the year to June as viewers have obviously taken advantage of the greater freedom to make complaints after viewing something they had seen on TV.

Combined, current affairs and news claimed nearly half the complaints (1291, or almost equal to all complaints in the previous year), with advertisements coming in second at just over 18%. But if the more traditional moans about program promos and ads are added, the total reaches just over 25%.

NSW was the source of most complaints at 37% (780 in Sydney and 253 in regional areas, 1,033 in total). Interesting complaints from the Sydney metropolitan area were the largest from any centre in the country and easily exceeded complaints from other and cities, especially Melbourne.  Complaints from Queensland and Victoria (tied on 22%) totalled 626 and 627 in total respectively, a long way behind Sydney and NSW. Complaints about classification of ads and programs were the highest at 33% or 929.

Complaints about discrimination in news and current affairs programs soared from 152 in 2009-2010 to 624 in the year to June, while complaints about bias and inaccuracy jumped to 458 from 98 in 2009-10. Broken down, complaints about discrimination were highest in current affairs programs -- 375 versus 73 in news. But complaints about bias and inaccuracy were greater in news programs, 354, against 98 in current affairs programs.

Complaints about bias and inaccuracy in TV news broadcasts at 354 were 73.3 % of the total of complaints in this category of 458. That was a far higher proportion than complaints about discrimination in current affairs programs: 375 of 624, or 60%.

Interestingly there were 104 complaints about discrimination in light entertainment (which includes comedy programs), which was more than received for claimed discrimination in news broadcasts. And while it is true that the total number of complaints is low compared with the amount of TV broadcast in the 2011 financial year, the complaints about bias-inaccuracy and discrimination would have been a far higher share of TV news and current affairs programs. Commercials attracted 285 complaints about classification.

In fact the two most-complained-about programs on commercial TV would have been Today Tonight on Seven and A Current Affair on Nine. 60 Minutes would have received a fair whack of complaints as well.

The introduction of email complaints has clearly made it easier for viewers to complain (many of the complaints about program and commercial classification would have come from organised groups, such as Christian-based pressure groups moaning about nudity and ex, such as on Nine's Underbelly series. As well moans about ads and programming in C zone periods (children's programming) would have also made up a large proportion of these complaints).

The Free TV industry received an enormous bonus in the latest code of practice, which freed up restrictions on advertising on the booming digital channels and allowed the networks to sell station and program promos to advertisers (which is worth tens of millions of dollars in new revenues a year in a very weak market). But the new complaints system, based on email has clearly forced the networks to lift their game in handling complaints.

Next step should be disclosing the programs and ads and network complaint numbers, and combining the FTA complaints data with that from the ABC and SBS. The media inquiry should have examined the FTA complaints handling system to see if it can be introduced into the print media. It would be far better than what there is now. The Australian Press Council has yet  to produce its 2010-11 annual report, according to its website.

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

News changes at Aunty. The ABC is losing Lateline host Ali Moore, who hosted her final program on Friday night. She's off to Singapore with her family. Lateline returns on January 30, next year with Emma Alberici joining Tony Jones as a program host. She's currently Europe correspondent for the ABC and will return to Sydney over the break.

The ABC also said that Karina Carvalho will be joining Michael Rowland on ABC News Breakfast in 2012 while Virginia Trioli is on maternity leave. Carvalho is Western Australia’s 7pm news presenter and will start co-hosting breakfast from February. And the ABC plans to extend the Monday-to-Friday breakfast program to weekends. The Weekend Breakfast program will be hosted by Andrew Geoghegan and Miriam Corowa and will start in February.

The director of ABC news, Kate Torney, also confirmed that Chris Uhlmann will solo host 7.30 next year, while Leigh Sales is on maternity leave and Heather Ewart will step back into the role of political editor. And the ABC plans to simulcast an hour of The Drum on News 24 and ABC for six weeks from Monday, January 9 at 6pm. The ABC said Annabel Crabb, Steve Cannane and Tim Palmer will share the hosting duties Monday to Thursday and on Friday nights, Peter Wilkins will host a sports edition of the program. -- Glenn Dyer

Front page of the day. Herman Cain is out of the US presidential race, but does that mean the end of Mike Tyson send-ups? We hope not.

The Department of Corrections. We are not sure how New Zealand newspaper The Dominion Post got this so wrong: Australian skipper Michael Clarke the younger brother of English seamer Darren Clarke?

Reporters' live tweeting from court risks mistrials

"Court reporters could be compromising trials on a daily basis through live tweeting because the laws have not kept pace with social media, an expert says." -- The Australian

Election cyber attack cited on Russia media

"Two liberal Russian media outlets and an election watchdog said their sites had been shut down by hackers intent on silencing them over allegations of violations in a parliamentary vote on Sunday." -- The Jerusalem Post

Media, Twitter illuminate Islamist gains in Egypt

"Slowly coming to light in local media and dissected on Twitter by eager followers of Egypt’s electoral process, figures emerged Saturday that offered details of the success of Islamist parties in the first phase of parliamentary elections last week." -- The Washington Post

The debate on the Indian media deepens

"Discussion and debate over the key issues relating to media standards and performance -- and in particular what is to be done about them -- raised by the Press Council of India (PCI) chairman Markandey Katju continue in different places." -- The Hindu

The Winners: It was Nine's night, easily.

Christmas with The Australian Women's Weekly on Nine at 6.30pm, 994,000.

Upstairs Downstairs on the ABC at 8.30pm, 915,000.

It's a Knockout on Ten at 7.30pm, 872,000. That's down 15% or 157,000 on its debut figure of 1.029 million the week before.

And 730,000 watched the Test cricket yesterday.

1. Seven News (6pm) -- 1.144 million
2. Nine News (6pm) -- 1.068 million
3. 60 Minutes (Nine) (7.30pm) -- 1.047 million

The Losers: All of us, but, thankfully, not the Australian cricket team or its supporters.

News & CA: Nine won Sydney and Melbourne, Seven won the rest.

The morning chats have departed for another year.

1. Seven News (6pm) -- 1.144 million
2. Nine News (6pm) -- 1.068 million
3. 60 Minutes (Nine) (7.30pm) -- 1.047 million
4. ABC News (7pm) -- 848,000
5. Ten News (5pm) -- 492,000
6. SBS News (6.30pm) --189,000

In the morning:

1. Weekend Sunrise (Seven) (8am) -- 338,000
2. Weekend Today (Nine) (8am) -- 259,000
3. Insiders (ABC) (9am) --- 185,000 (+39,000 on News 24 simulcast)
4. Inside Business (ABC) (10am) -- 120,000
5. Offsiders (ABC) (10.30am) -- 120,000
6. The Bolt Report (Ten) (10am) -- 115,000
7. Meet The Press (Ten) (10.30am) -- 83,000

The Stats:

• FTA: Nine (three channels) won with a share of 29.5% from Seven (three) on 24.5%, Ten (three) was on 21.2%, the ABC (four) was on 19.0% and SBS (two) was on 5.5%.
• Main channel: Nine won with 20.3% from Seven on 17.8%, ABC 1 was on 15.6%, Ten was on 15.0% and SBS ONE was on 4.4%.
• Digital: GO won with 5.3% from 7TWO on 4.2%, Gem was on 4.1%, Eleven was on 4.0%, 7mate was on 2.6%, ONE was on 2.4%, ABC 2 was on 1.8%, SBS TWO was on 1.1%, News 24 was on 0.9% and ABC 3 ended on 0.6%. That's an FTA total last night of 27.0%

Pay TV: Nine (three channels) won with a share of 23.3% from pay TV (200-plus channels on 19.3% along with Seven (three). Ten (three) was on 26.8%, the ABC (four) was on 14.9% and SBS (two) was on 4.3%. The 15 FTA channels had a total share last night of 80.7%. The 10 digital channels had a share of 21.3% and the five main channels, 59.4%.

The five top pay TV channels were:

1. Fox 8 (2.84%)
2. Comedy Channel (2.67%)
3. Lifestyle (2.50%)
4. TV1 (2.22%)
5. Fox Sports 1 (1.68%)

The five top pay TV programs were:

1. Christmas Lights Spectacular (Lifestyle) -- 157,000
2. The Simpsons (Fox 8) -- 104,000
3. The Simpsons (Fox 8) -- 93,000
4. A League: Sydney-Brisbane Roar (Fox Sports 1) -- 93,000
5. The Big Bang Theory (Comedy Channel) -- 89,000

Regional: WIN/NBN (three channels) won with a share of 28.4%, from Prime/7Qld on 27.5%, SC Ten (three), 20.8%, the ABC (four) 18.9% and SBS (two) on 4.5%. Prime/7Qld won the main channels with 20.5%, from WIN/NBN on 18.9%, ABC 1 was on 15.1% and SC Ten was 4th with 14.2%. GO won the digitals with 5.2%, with 7TWO on 4.2% and Gem on 4.1%. The 10 digital channels had an FTA total share last night of 28.0%.

The five most-watched programs on regional markets last night were:

1. Seven News -- 549,000
2. 60 Minutes -- 449,000
3. Upstairs/Downstairs -- 410,000
4. On Board Air Force One -- 409,000
5. Nine News -- 385,000

Major Markets: Nine won Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide overall and the main channels. Seven won them in Brisbane and Perth. Seven finished third overall in Melbourne, but did make the top three in the main channels. In Perth, Nine finished third overall but failed to make the top three in the main channels. The ABC (ABC 1) finished third in the main channels in Sydney (tied with Ten), Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Go won the digitals in all five markets.

(All shares on the basis of combined overnight 6pm to midnight All People)

Glenn Dyer's comments: No wonder pay TV did well and ran second last night with Seven. There was nothing of real interest at all on the commercial networks or the ABC.

The five most-watched programs nationally were:

1. Seven News -- 1.692 million
2. 60 Minutes -- 1.497 million
3. Nine News -- 1.453 million
4. Christmas with The Australian Women's Weekly -- 1.365 million
5. Upstairs/Downstairs -- 1.325 million.

Last week: Seven (27.8%) snuck home overall from Nine (27.6%), but tied with Nine in the main channels (19.1% each). That's the first week of summer ratings done.

And a very special mention for the Nine Network for going to the 6pm News on Saturday evening in Sydney and Melbourne and not staying with the cricket. There was no need to take the news early, official ratings have ended, Nine has won the Sydney news battle. But cricket viewers were deprived on seeing a dramatic few minutes. No apology from Nine. No appreciation of keeping faith with fans. Lord help us if there's a big event at next year's Olympics and Nine has to go to the News or A Current Affair. It's not the first time Nine has done this with the cricket in recent years after being flexible for a decade or more.

Tonight: The Hour on the ABC at 8.30. The Mentalist on Nine if you have a thing for good repeats. Offspring on Ten on the same basis. Ditto, Criminal Minds on Seven. A truly boring night.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports

Read more from the world of TV on Dan Barrett's blog White Noise

In light of the savage downgrading by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, are Australian banks really safe for depositors? While my answer to that question is an absolutely unqualified yes, I raise the question because just before the downgrading, I had a deep conversation with a top Australian banker about just how his bank would handle a global banking crisis.

The combination of that conversation and the Standard & Poor’s ratings downgrade made me realise that S&P is delivering to Australian banks a much needed wake-up call which bank CEOs ignore at their peril and to the peril of Australia.

And just to underline that this is a serious matter, the German-based global giant Siemens is establishing its own bank because it does not trust the solvency of the major European banks. The major Australian banks now have the same rating as some suspect European banks. While that says more about the fear inside the US-based ratings agency about the impact of bank downgrades, it again underlines our longer-term vulnerability.

Another long-term warning comes from the sharemarket, where the high yields on Australian bank shares show that international investors are worried about our banks’ ability to maintain profits in the new world of global banking.

Australian banks have been money-making machines because they have paid low rates to bank depositors and supplemented their consequent low Australian deposit base by borrowing between 40-50% of their funding requirements from the global wholesale market. (It’s currently around 40%). The banks have then used their fund avalanche not so much to support businesses, but to fund houses. Australian dwellings have become among the most expensive in the world because of the widespread availability of bank credit.

What Standard & Poor’s is telling the bank CEOs, Treasurer Wayne Swan and the Australian public is that it is highly likely that longer-term this game can't continue. Because of the deep problems in the European and US banking communities, plus the demand for funds in Asia, massive wholesale bank borrowing to fund housing markets will not be available unless you are prepared to pay much higher rates of interest.

Right now, the wholesale banking market is shut down so we can’t fund our banks, but we clearly expect it to open again. I asked my top banker what happens if it stays shut for an extended period -- say a year or two. He points out that most of the large Australian banks have borrowed over three years so they will be impacted gradually. When wholesale funds become due for rollover next year, the impact will be minimised because demand for funding from businesses is low and housing is not buoyant.

Moreover, the strong rise in local deposits has kept the banks very liquid. And the banks know that in the superannuation movement there are substantial funds which could be tapped with higher rates if necessary. And if all that proves to be insufficient, there is the Reserve Bank as a back-up.

While that is a good plan for the short term, it is not a good plan for longer-term funding. First of all, scrambling for superannuation funds in a crisis would be very expensive. Most of the big public superannuation funds do not have a "bank deposits" classification because the funds can’t get commission on them. As interest rates fall we are beginning to see the self-managed funds -- which control 30% of the superannuation market -- switch to equity-style securities that offer higher yields. A few more deposit rate reductions will accelerate that trend and that money will not be easy to get back.

The wake-up call to Australian banks requires them to become less dependent on wholesale bank deposits and begin to fund much more of their loan book at home. Secondly, banks will need to be much more active in funding businesses that create jobs to generate the capital city employment needed to enable homeowners to service their loans.

And finally, the banks better hope that the mainland Chinese cutback in apartment buying is not a signal for a wholesale mainland Chinese withdrawal from our apartment markets in Sydney and Melbourne. Then we really would have trouble.

*This article was originally published at Business Spectator

The market is up 27. The SFE Futures were up 2 this morning.

The Dow Jones closed down 1 on Friday. Dow up 127 at best and down 13 at worst. The Dow recorded its biggest weekly rise last week since 2009, up 7%. The early gains came on news of a fall in the US unemployment rate. The S&P 500 also closed flat as it failed to break through technical resistance near its 200-day moving average. This week is being described by some as a make or break week for Europe with the EU summit on Thursday and a Sunday Times article in the UK saying that if the debtor nations agree on budgetary measures the ECB has a 1 trillion euro "cash infusion" up its sleeve. Metals were mostly up on the LME, the oil price was up 76c to $100.96 and Gold put on $9.30 to $1749.10. The Aussie dollar fell to 102.68c from 102.38c.

Main points:

• The Reserve Bank of Australia holds their monthly meeting tomorrow and decides on Interest Rates. The jury is out on whether we get a second consecutive rate cut. The 90 day bank bill rate is at 4.57% against official rates at 4.5% suggesting a rate cut is not a given.
• Whitehaven Coal (WHC) is in talks with fellow coal miner Aston Resources (AZT) regarding a potential merger of equals. Whitehaven said the discussions were incomplete and there was no guarantee that an agreement would be reached. WHC up 12c to 576c and AZT up 4.6% to 953c.
• The federal court has ruled on a class action by 34,000 claimants claiming around $50 million in compensation from ANZ Banking Group (ANZ) over penalty fees. ANZ up 15c to 2103c.
• UGL Ltd (UGL) has completed the acquisition of UK property consultancy DTZ Holdings for 77.5 million, as they move to expand their corporate property services and capture growth in China. The acquisition makes them the world's third largest property services company with annual revenue of $5.1bn. Patersons have a BUY recommendation. UGL down 10c to 1280c.
• Aquila Resources (AQA) said the Environment Minister of WA has conditionally approved the construction of a mine and a rail line for their 5.77bn iron ore project. AQA up 3% to 661c.
• APN News & Media (APN) expects a FY net profit of between $75m and $77m, slightly below what the market was expecting. EBIT is expected to come in between $171m - $173m. APN up 1% to 75c.
• Consumer prices fell 0.1% in November, after a 0.1% rise in October and September according to the TD Securities-Melbourne Institute inflation gauge. In the year to November, the consumer prices rose 2.1%, compared with 2.6% in the 12 months to October.
• The AIG /CBA Performance of Services Index (PSI) fell 1.1 points to 47.7 points in November as Australia’s service sector continued to contract

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Political parties and the internet:

Niall Clugston writes: Re. Friday's Editorial. Your editorial on Friday is just another example of IT idolatry: "The first political party to understand the significance of the online public space and engage in that space effectively will reap rich rewards".

The internet is not the answer to every question. Sure, there are "communities online", but do they have more members than the union movement? And, no, sock puppets are not real people.

Declining membership in parties and social movements is a sign of pervasive apathy, passivity, lack of direction, and cynicism on social and political questions. It's not because most people are living vibrant second lives in cyberspace, leaving their bodily form to conduct only mundane tasks.

And why do parties need members? Like principles, they are more of a hindrance than a help. The ALP has shown for many years it can do without either. Sure, it's had a dramatic reversal of fortune since the heady days of 2007, but that's not about the internet!

Productivity:

Terry Mills writes: Re. "Time-honoured rituals of regulation live on" (Friday, item 2). Good to see that our Tony Abbott is going to cut into government red tape, intrusive and the unnecessary compliance costs burdening small business, largely associated with the GST and he will probably sign a blood-oath to repeal the heinous Labor consumption tax when in office: Oh, hang on ...

Martyn Smith writes: I write to support Marcus L'Estrange (Friday, comments). I would add that these days most people getting a pay increase are expected to make "productivity gains". If our politicians "did more" by reducing their numbers and increasing the size of their electorates this would be a real productivity gain. As for states and their parliaments, I fully agree with Marcus L'Estrange ... get rid of them.

Send your comments, corrections, clarifications and c*ck-ups to boss@crikey.com.au. Preference will be given to comments that are short and succinct: maximum length is 200 words (we reserve the right to edit comments for length). Please include your full name — we won’t publish comments anonymously unless there is a very good reason.