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Crikey says: don't fill the void with rumour and misinformation
As Crikey approached deadline the Martin Place siege was still unfolding. At least one gunman is reportedly holding at least a dozen people hostage in the Lindt cafe in the Sydney CBD. Australian Federal Police have joined NSW police at the scene.
It remains unclear who is behind the siege, but a flag associated with Islamic jihadis has been seen in the window of the cafe, where hostages are pressed up against the glass. It’s a serious and deeply frightening situation, and when so little official information is available -- it took the PM two hours to make a media statement -- it can be tempting to jump to conclusions.
Mainstream and social media have been in overdrive this morning, with experts in Islamic terror wheeled out in an attempt to understand the alleged perpetrators and their motives. This is understandable when there are broadcast minutes and column inches to fill, and in the absence of any concrete information.
But there’s little the media can do to help resolve the situation as it stands, and misinformation can be damaging. It’s worth remembering what happened in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon attack, when amateur sleuths on Reddit declared that a student who was missing was probably the Boston bomber. He was later found dead in a suspected suicide. The New York Post also published the pictures of two people it claimed might be connected to the bombing, under the headline "Bag Men". They had nothing to do with the attack and later sued the paper.
Until we have more information, we urge caution on behalf of the media.
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TOP STORIES
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Politics on hold while Sydney siege continues
Federal politics has in effect ground to a halt while authorities await the outcome of the siege in Sydney's Martin Place and the wider ramifications of what might be, but it is not yet confirmed as, a terrorist incident. In a brief speech this afternoon Prime Minister Tony Abbott said:
"We don't yet know the motivation of the perpetrator. We don't know whether this is politically motivated, although obviously there are some indications that it could be."
The National Security Committee of Cabinet, which includes the Treasurer and, as needed, the Minister for Finance, was briefed this morning. The planned 12.30 release of the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook by Treasurer Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann has been delayed, but MYEFO is expected to be released sometime today.
The Prime Minister released a statement calling the events underway in Sydney "a deeply concerning incident" but refrained from speculating any further about the siege. Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss acted to quash at least one of the falsehoods being spread by both social media and some media outlets when he confirmed airspace over Sydney had not been closed, but merely that flights over the CBD had been rerouted given the presence of helicopters over the CBD.
At deadline, the only established facts are that at least one hostage taker is in a Martin Place cafe with, reportedly, at least a dozen hostages; an Islamic flag (but not one used by Islamic State) has been held in the window by one of the hostages. The Sydney Opera House has also reportedly been evacuated "as a precaution", a number of Sydney CBD buildings have been evacuated or locked down, and much of the CBD road network has been shut down while the siege continues. At 11.50, NSW Police advised that they were attempting to make contact with the people inside the cafe.
Beyond that, everything has been speculation, of which there has been plenty on both social media and in the mainstream media, including the possible connection to an arrest by counter-terrorism police units this morning and suggestions of a wider conspiracy.
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The 2014 Crikeys: Ludlam top in a year of duds
Long-time readers will be aware of my uncanny knack for spectacularly wrong predictions. In my Best and Worst of 2013 piece this time last year, I saluted, among others, Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott, and declared that the new government’s troubled start to its term in office was unlikely to continue. “Abbott has consistently demonstrated a capacity to adapt his political tactics to changing circumstances. It is likely he will return in 2014 a more adept and effective leader. As the last four years have displayed, he’s too good a politician not to.”
Oops. Mea, as they say in the classics, culpa.
Instead, the successes of the government have come from unexpected sources. Surprising at the time, Abbott’s promotion of Mathias Cormann into the Finance portfolio when establishing his ministry, while moving Andrew Robb to Trade, has been vindicated. Cormann has performed strongly in the Finance portfolio, delivered the repeal of the Future of Financial Advice legislation before being undone by a change of heart on the crossbenches, and managed the highly successful sale of Medibank Private. Robb, too, has delivered exactly what he was asked as Trade Minister.
The most effective minister, however, has been Julie Bishop. Her stint as Foreign Minister has not been one of international triumph. Rather, it has been simply one of quiet but noticeable competence in implementing the government's foreign policy agenda in a year in which Australia has found itself, for reasons both positive and tragic, more engaged diplomatically than normal. That's another surprise, given her maladroit performance in opposition -- especially during her disastrous stint as shadow treasurer. But her emergence as a now obvious point of tension with the Prime Minister and his office signals the extent to which her competence has elevated her above her colleagues.
It is significant, however, that Robb, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison and Bishop have all primarily operated outside domestic politics, where the government has floundered throughout the year. The contest for least effective minister is a Melbourne Cup field, an embarrassment of riches for gaffes, dud policies, incompetence and stumbles. Where to start? There's David "Tippecanoe" Johnston, the Defence Minister with a taste for fine dining who publicly declared he had nothing to offer the National Security Committee of cabinet. Or George Brandis, who buggered up amending the Racial Discrimination Act, made a joke of himself on metadata and couldn't even organise a witch-hunt to go after Julia Gillard properly. Then there's Peter Dutton, whose stolid silence and blatant factual errors undermined any effort to sell a Medicare co-payment.
But if you stumble in Health or Defence or as Attorney-General, you mainly damage the government. If you stumble in Treasury, you can inflict real-world damage. And Joe Hockey's performance as Treasurer has undermined both business and consumer confidence, with the 2014 budget marking a clear inflection point in Australia's economic fortunes this year as growth fell significantly from April onwards. That makes him a clear winner.
Most effective shadow minister: On the Labor side, 2014 has been a year of criticism and cruising, with the government painstakingly delivering opportunity after opportunity for opposition to portray itself as the protector of voters against unfairness. Given the government's accident-prone ways and dud budget, it didn't require great skills from shadow ministers to score points. But Anthony Albanese deserves credit for demolishing what was supposed to be a major plank of the government's budget story, its commitment to infrastructure, which was intended to provide economic stimulus. Albanese has doggedly and successfully challenged virtually every project the government of "infrastructure Prime Minister Tony Abbott" has put its name to, demonstrating that they have all been Labor-initiated works. So successful has Albo been that even The Australian has admitted the government has no infrastructure program to call its own.
Special mention: he's not a frontbencher, but NSW Senator Sam Dastyari's engineering of the blocking of the government's repeal of FOFA was an outstanding achievement that will make a demonstrable difference to the lives of millions of Australians over the long run.
Least effective shadow minister: That doesn't mean all was easy going for Labor. In February, Labor was gifted another opportunity by the government with the murder on Manus Island of Iranian asylum seeker Reza Barati and Scott Morrison's attempt to exploit the death -- he initially blamed Barati for bringing his murder on himself by escaping, before admitting he had misled Australians about the circumstances in which Barati died. But Labor and its immigration spokesman Richard Marles almost entirely ignored the issue, asking just nine questions, always at the back end of question time, over the course of the following week. Throughout the year we discovered that asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island were being denied the most basic health services -- one died from an infected foot left untended -- and being knowingly subjected to conditions that foster mental health problems with minimal mental health services. Moreover, the Immigration Department tried to suppress such information. Labor adopted a clear policy throughout the year of trying to avoid mentioning asylum seekers at all, in order to neutralise an issue on which the Coalition is so dominant. But in failing to adequately scrutinise the government over the murder, abuse and ill-treatment of people in its care, Marles and Labor's tacticians omitted their most basic duty as parliamentarians for political purposes.
Best parliamentary performer: Look, let's just give this award to Malcolm Turnbull for the duration of his political career; he is far and away Australian politics's best orator. This year's highlight, his wonderful speech on Gough.
Politician of the year: Some readers don't quite understand this category. I copped plenty of criticism last year for saying Abbott was the politician of the year, as though that amounted to an unquestioning endorsement of Abbott and all his policies. But Abbott had achieved a landslide win over Labor, destroying the prime ministership of Julia Gillard every bit as effectively as he'd destroyed Kevin Rudd's prime ministership. In the craft of politics, which is what this category is about, it was a rare achievement, regardless of the policies or views that Abbott brought to office.
After a dismal 2014, of course, Abbott and his colleagues are anything but politicians of the year. And given Labor's task has been a straightforward one, it's hard to laud anyone in the opposition. Clive Palmer, cock of the walk in Parliament House mid-year, is increasingly looking irrelevant. Scott Ludlam is thus our politician of the year. It's almost forgotten now, but Ludlam came within, literally, a handful of votes of losing his Senate spot in the 2013 election. When a rerun was called, Ludlam set his mind to ensuring such a fate wouldn't befall him again. In a stroke of genius, in March he used a Senate adjournment debate to launch a ferocious attack on Tony Abbott. Ludlam is normally the Green you'd take home to meet mum -- softly spoken, thoughtful, pleasant -- but the speech contained real mongrel, intentionally so, because it was crafted with the intent of going viral online, which it promptly did. Predictably, enraged News Corp commentators frothed at the mouth at Ludlam, ensuring more coverage for the speech.
As the government ramped up its pre-budget rhetoric on the need for savage spending cuts, Ludlam was able to channel the gathering hostility toward the Coalition into a significantly bigger vote for the Greens in Western Australia, including a 60% rise in Ludlam's personal vote, while Labor's vote collapsed,. Since then, Ludlam has diligently defended basic rights against the national security encroachments of George Brandis and a government eager to hype up the terror threat to extend its powers of citizens. This was a breakthrough year for Ludlam, and a much-deserved one.
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Drop or scoop? Hun gets the jump on East West Link business case
The Age's editor-in-chief has accused crosstown rival the Herald Sun of receiving a Coalition drop on the East West Link intended to draw attention away from the documents being released to journalists in a budget-style lock-up this morning.
The controversial plan to build a 18-kilometre tolled road link connecting Melbourne's western suburbs to the Eastern Freeway was one of the key issues in the recent Victorian election, and upon winning government Labor promised to release the previously secret business case surrounding the proposal.
It has done so in a lock-up for journalists this morning. The lock-up ended at 12.30pm, but the Herald Sun received a leaked copy of the business case over the weekend and published it on its website this morning. The front-page story in this morning's Herald Sun revealed that the former Coalition government had considered increasing the tolls on several other Melbourne roads in order to make the East West Link financially viable.
The leak blindsided rival journalists, many of whom have slammed it as a "drop" as they pondered the point of the lock-up now that they could read the documents from their offices. But Age editor-in-chief Andrew Holden says his journalists will be going to the lock-up anyway.
"In our experience drops to the Herald Sun never tell the full story, and are used by one side to place their spin on a news story," he told Crikey. "The deal with the Herald Sun is that it does no independent journalism to test the veracity of that information." The Age, Holden says, doesn't agree to such conditions, and so it doesn't get such drops.
Crikey can't say whether the Herald Sun's scoop this morning was a drop or a leak, but we have outlined how drops work in the past. They're often used strategically by political actors who include a requirement that the outlet receiving the drop seeks no alternate comment on the information before going to print. The drop thus assures only one side gets an airing on the first day of publication. Leaks generally come with no such preconditions.
Holden says the Herald Sun's scoop is "obviously a drop from the Coalition, in an attempt to place the best possible message on the EW business case, and to disrupt the release of all documents". More than 5000 pages of policy documentation is being released today at the lock-up -- the Herald Sun has published only 200. "No doubt [the Coalition] hopes no one will bother to read the complete coverage now that one portion of the information is in the public domain."
But Herald Sun editor Damon Johnston says Holden is being hypocritical, as The Age's website is this morning "ripping off" the Herald Sun's scoop, "even linking to heraldsun.com.au so his readers can access the 223 pages we've published".
"So one the one hand he's saying with typical Fairfax pomposity 'we refuse to publish information from one source without seeking an alternative view', yet at the same time his own website is republishing our East West business case scoop. Fairfax reporters were happy to sit back and wait for the scripted release of the business case in a lock-up, while our journalists worked through the weekend getting a scoop."
The Age has this morning published a piece outlining some of the key take-outs from the documents leaked to the Herald Sun. The Herald Sun's scoop has also been widely covered on talkback radio, and the Age's piece draws on some of the comments made there.
Holden says it's business as usual at The Age this morning. "Thankfully Age readers have little regard for Murdoch journalism, and we'll provide the service they expect."
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Telstra wins, we all lose in NBN deal
It is hard to escape the feeling that the taxpayers have been had by Telstra, which has secured crucial incremental advantages in its new $11 billion deal to help build the National Broadband Network (NBN).
While the headline figure is the same -- in 2010 dollars -- as the NBN deal Telstra signed under the Labor government in 2011, this is a much better deal for Telstra, as Business Spectator’s Alan Kohler explained in this excellent piece this morning and as has been underlined by the investor reaction, which lifted the telco’s shares by 1.2% in a falling market.
For example, under the new deal the cost of remediating Telstra’s ducts and pits onto the government-owned NBN Co gets a key potential liability off the books for Telstra, and while chief executive David Thodey was coy about the numbers in an analyst briefing yesterday afternoon, he fairly crowed the result was “unquestionably better for shareholders”.
The dollar figures being bandied about are confusing because they are given in net present value terms -- i.e. the value of expected future income -- which is a familiar concept for many in the financial community but meaningless for many. This NBN-Telstra deal is really worth more like $100 billion, which is the total amount that will be paid to Telstra over the next 30-plus years for access to its infrastructure and, after yesterday, additional design, build and maintenance work.
That income stream will make Telstra a desirable investment for decades and is a remarkable demonstration of the power of this corporate behemoth, which has turned a fundamental threat to its former monopoly franchise into a goldmine and has got its arms around a competitor.
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has claimed the Coalition’s multi-technology-mix will save $30 billion compared with Labor’s promised fibre-to-the-premise rollout, and he says it will be delivered up to four years earlier.
We will never know how much Labor’s FTTP rollout would have cost or how long it would have taken, so it is hard to argue, but there are two costs that must be balanced against any upfront saving:
- As technology commentator and futurist Mark Pesce was tweeting yesterday, we forego the higher growth that would have flowed from faster internet -- he cited this Ericsson study that claimed a mere doubling of bandwidth increased GDP by 0.3% -- boosting tax revenues by the way and dwarfing any short-term saving; and
- The taxpayer was always intended to sell off the NBN at some point; it is a safe bet that a pure FTTP network would have more value than a mixed fibre, HFC and copper network. NBN appears increasingly dependent on Telstra, and while the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will be under pressure to make sure the two companies do not get too close, this is situation normal for Telstra, which loves nothing more than a standoff with the competition regulator. (One has to ponder whether Telstra might one day even bid for the NBN -- a laughable anti-competitive outcome that would defeat the whole purpose of structurally separating its wholesale and retail arms and ending its infrastructure monopoly.)
To rub salt in yesterday’s wound, taxpayers have also been had by Optus, which has now sold the NBN a dubious-quality HFC network that it has absolutely no need for, given it overlaps almost completely with Telstra’s HFC network. There was a crazy logic to buying both HFC networks when they were to be shut down in pursuit of a greater good. It makes no sense at all to buy both networks when you can only use one. Optus is being paid to stay sweet.
There was a familiar divide yesterday between the savage reaction of technology specialists -- many of whom are understandably fibre zealots and see the NBN as essential infrastructure to future-proof Australia -- and the mainstream media, who see the NBN as a project like any other, with costs and benefits to be weighed responsibly. It is tricky to debate the potential benefits of something we're not getting. But Turnbull was right when he asked Lateline’s Emma Alberici, in a terrific pre-election debate on the NBN, whether Australia was suddenly “so rich that we can blast away billions of dollars without worrying about the cost?” And if Turnbull was right then he is more right now, as the country has only gotten poorer in the intervening 15 months as the mining boom recedes ever-more rapidly and manufacturing crumbles.
So we will get what we pay for. At least yesterday’s NBN agreements are technology-neutral, so as the relative costs of installing different technologies shifts, NBN and its partners will be free to roll out the most efficient option. Hopes are emerging that fibre to the distribution point -- which gets fibre right down the street, much closer to the home than FTTN, and can therefore deliver much higher speeds down the shorter lengths of copper that remain -- will prove increasingly competitive. The householder will bear more of the final, unpredictable cost of getting from the street into the home, but at least they will have an upgrade path to pure FTTP. Not so the millions of homeowners who will be stuck with souped-up HFC and no upgrade path to FTTP at all -- ironically, the richest third of Australian homes may end up with the inferior network.
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Malaysian conspiracy to cover up the truth of MH370
More than nine months since it vanished with at least 239 people and some mystery cargo onboard, there are two things that stand out about Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
- The 777-200ER’s diversion from its planned flight path was deliberate; and
- The Malaysian authorities have withheld critically important information related to the flight, and have wilfully lied to the world.
The only two motives that are seriously contemplated in high places in the airline industry are:
- An act of shocking evil in which a pilot committed mass murder as well as suicide in a thoroughly researched and rehearsed plan to make the jet vanish; or
- Robbery or the interdiction of something in the cargo hold, which was bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur when MH370 went dark as a transponder identified flight on air traffic control radars more than 40 minutes after departure while over the Gulf of Thailand.
There are other possibilities, including an intention to bargain the passengers for a political purpose or use the jet as a missile. The terrorism-related theories have been discounted through a total lack of evidence (or "noise" from the likely parties) and the pointed disinterest of Western and Eastern authorities in them, implying that they know it was something altogether different.
MH370 could have been flown directly into the landmark twin spires of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur even sooner than it was seen on military radar flying west across the Malaysia Peninsula near the Thai border and then north-west towards the Andaman Islands, where the published and multiply analysed data suggests it flew erratically before turning south toward ultimate oblivion in the southern Indian Ocean.
The public and leaked attitudes of the governments or relevant authorities in China, India, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia concerning the Malaysian narratives from its leaders and relevant authorities vary from indifference to contempt.
The only sucker in this is Australia, with Prime Minister Tony Abbott enthusiastically supporting the Malaysians, who are protecting someone, or something, in their lack of disclosure about MH370 and their inconsistent recounting of the events surrounding the disappearance.
The state of the search
When MH370 struck the surface of the Indian Ocean seven hours 39 minutes after takeoff it was sending signals to a geostationary Inmarsat satellite from a place where the communications platform was, line of sight, approximately 40 degrees above the horizon (90 degrees being directly overhead and 45 degrees being halfway between the horizon and the zenith).
That meant it crashed somewhere along an arc of possibilities stretching from near Sumatra to a place approaching the northern limit of iceberg sightings by ships crossing the Indian Ocean where it becomes the Southern Ocean. All places along this arc would have had the Inmarsat at 40 degrees above the horizon when a sequence of signals from MH370 abruptly ended before completion.
The investigators reporting to Kuala Lumpur say the final anomalous or unscheduled contact attempt from MH370 implies that the engines had run out of fuel, ending normal power generation, and that a RAT, or ram air turbine, had automatically popped out into the slipstream of the falling jet, generating enough emergency power to bring essential instruments and systems back on line.
One of the pre-set priorities in such an emergency is for the on-board Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System computer, which was supposed to send regular engine status signals back to Rolls-Royce in the UK to immediately ping Inmarsat, a process terminated mid-signal by force of the impact.
Constraints on such seventh-arc possibilities, representing the seventh set of signals exchanged between the jet and the satellite, leave searchers with a massive area of the sea floor to first map and then examine close up with imaging side scan sonar devices.
Luck as well as astute modeling comes into play. Especially as there are recent suggestions that the debris might have sunk much further to either side of the seventh arc than previously anticipated.
What happened inside MH370?
Suspicion is growing that someone was either inside an electronics and electrical bay under the floor of the jet when it took off, or someone entered it through an unsecured hatch immediately behind the cockpit doors at the front of the 777’s cabin.
Such access is a logical explanation for the disabling of the full ACARS transmission from MH370 about 10 minutes before the jet’s air traffic control transponder ceased operating, when the pilot at the controls signed off with Malaysian air traffic control and was expected to log in shortly afterwards with Vietnam ATC.
It is thus possible that one of the MH370 pilots left the cockpit and entered the bay, disabled full ACARS -- and presumably also cut out the in-flight map displays in passenger seat backs on the night flight -- and returned to position before making what sounded like a normal signing-off call to Malaysia ATC.
There are, however, so many other possibilities as to who might have done what and when in the cabin that night. And whatever it was that happened, despite its disabling, basic standby pings continued to be sent from MH370’s ACARS server to the satellite at regular intervals up to the abnormal and incomplete seventh-arc transmission.
The "heist" theories and the "suicide" scenarios all involve fantastical constructs and come with massive believability problems.
Yet the unbelievable happened. A large jet airliner disappeared without physical trace, and all we have are the fleeting pings of an on-board computer tapping on a window to the world, saying "I’m ready to talk".
One day answers might be found. On the sea floor, or in a dossier that reveals a terrible truth.
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For the latest on the aviation industry, visit Crikey blog Plane Talking.
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Tips and rumours
From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …
Sisterhood and publishing deals. Melbourne University Press boss Louise Adler this morning entreated the sisterhood to call out the sexism that surrounds Prime Minister Tony Abbott's chief of staff, Peta Credlin:
"Peta Credlin has been pilloried as the co-Prime Minister, the Boss and the Enforcer. She's apparently formidable, driven and, of course, a control freak. Her hair, her height, her preference for leopard prints have become suitable subjects for public discussion engendering suspicion, scuttlebutt and background briefings."
The piece is a stirring defence, but one tipster has asked if it is not without self-interest. Adler published Abbott's book Battlelines and was also was the only advocate for Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North on the Prime Minister's Literary Award panel -- the PM's personal pick. Is she angling to get a deal on Abbott's next book?
Siege safety. While the siege in Martin Place in Sydney is still underway as we press publish, we hear from a tipster in the public service that they have received an email labelled a "balanced reaction to a hostage taking 1000 kms away":
"Dear All,
Given the events currently taking place in Sydney, all staff are encouraged to take extra care today. As a precautionary measure we advise all staff to remove identifying lanyards when not on the premises ...
Remember, if you see or witness anything that may seem suspicious, or have any concerns report it!"
Remembering Stella. A memorial for comedian and disability activist Stella Young will be held in Melbourne on Friday, and we hear that organisers are working around the clock to make Melbourne Town Hall accessible for the event, which is expected to attract thousands of people. The service will also be broadcast on the big screen at Fed Square -- a venue that can be difficult to access in a wheelchair. According to our source, there's no venue in Melbourne designed for an event of that size that is easily accessible for people with disabilities -- and what a searing indictment that is.
Christmas Party Watch. We continue Christmas Party watch in our last week of publication before a festive break, and we hear that many departments of the Victorian Public Service have foregone the office party altogether -- the new government has already been accused of being wowsers, cancelling an election party and planning to breath-test MPs, but that seems a little unfair. One tipster also heard some private-sector suits chatting about their festivities, saying "well, they made so much more money than they could spend this year, so it's all going to drinks at the Christmas party ..." We're guessing they don't work for a media company.
Kris Kringle ideas. If you need a present for someone you are less than friendly with, how about these condoms? Nothing will kill the mood like a photo of the Prime Minister on a prophylactic:
Hack Attack hacked. Nespresso advocate George Clooney is one of many members of the Hollywood elite to have fallen victim to a giant leak of emails between Sony executives, including an email sent about his film based on Hack Attack, the book by journalist Nick Davies on the UK phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid empire. While we would comment on the irony of emails about a movie on hacking being hacked, it appears Clooney expected his correspondence wasn't completely private, including a note for "those of you listening in":
"how much fun are we gonna have…the stakes are higher than citizen kane…if we tell the truth in a compelling way…rupert won’t get time/warner…cnn won’t be fox….i’m so excited to do this film..and for those of you listening in…i’m the son of a news man…everything will be double sourced..so come on with your lawsuits…f***ers…"
LNP survey -- be honest. Since Friday's tip on the "15-second survey" by the Queensland LNP, some helpful tipsters sent us the link. The survey has just one question, and you can pick as many issues as you want as being "important to you". Ms Tips couldn't decide within 15 seconds, and we hear from some tipsters that they found the options available didn't really reflect their priorities -- there's a box at the bottom for "fixing one problem in your local area" . We're sure our Queensland readers could think of some creative answers.
Tabloid monikers -- how'd you go? Ms Tips has spent a somewhat frustrating morning wrangling spreadsheets of the 300-or-so answers submitted to our tabloid moniker quiz, which media reporter Myriam Robin put together on Friday. While we're still sorting out exactly who won (no one got everything right, but some of you came close), here's a sneak peek of the answers. Enjoy!
*Heard anything that might interest Crikey? Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or use our guaranteed anonymous form
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Kaspar Wowser
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POLITICS, THE UNIVERSE, ETC
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Poll Bludger: could the Greens be coming for Turnbull?
Electoral success for the Greens in lower house seats is no longer the novelty that it was just a few years ago, but last week's victory in the Victorian state seat of Prahran was particularly sweet for the party in being the first it had ever achieved in a Liberal-held seat.
To some of the Greens’ most ardent adherents on social media, the win suggested the beguiling prospect of future success in areas never before contemplated. "Today Prahran, tomorrow the world" might be a bridge too far, but some at least dared to contemplate the prospect of "today Prahran, tomorrow Hawthorn and Kew".
Previous successes had exposed the Greens to the charge that the party's efforts were hampering the main game of keeping the conservatives out of office by obliging Labor to divert resources to once-safe inner-city seats.
By contrast, Prahran delivered a seat that could not have been won by Labor, which lost the two-party preferred count against the Liberals by the tiny margin of 18,580 to 18,555.
These totals were made redundant by a second nail-biting result during the preference distribution, in which Sam Hibbins of the Greens edged out Labor’s Neil Pharaoh to take second place by 9979 votes to 9948.
A result that came down down to the balance of support between Liberal and the Greens left psephological observers in uncharted waters.
Copious data is available on how preferences divide between the Coalition and Labor, with the Australian Electoral Commission having published exact breakdowns for every minor party and independent candidate since 2004.
The Greens’ successes in inner-city Sydney and Melbourne have also established how Liberal preferences behave, with three-quarters going to the Greens when the how-to-vote card has them ahead of Labor, and two-thirds going to Labor when it hasn't.
But until last week, the division of Labor votes between Liberal and the Greens had been a purely academic consideration, on which next to no data was available. Before 2011, the Greens were able to make the final count in only in the most heavily Left-leaning of electorates. That changed with Labor’s collapse at the last state elections in New South Wales and Queensland, but the optional preferential voting system in these states meant around 60% of Labor voters failed to allocate preferences, as they would have been obliged to do in Victoria.
By the reckoning of election observer Kevin Bonham, the one precedent of a Liberal-versus-Greens contest under compulsory preferential voting was in the Adelaide Hills seat of Heysen at the South Australian election in March, a safe Liberal seat held by the party's former leader Isobel Redmond. On that occasion, 20% of Labor voters allocated their preference to Redmond against the direction of the party's how-to-vote card -- which tend to be more closely adhered to in South Australia, owing to the state’s unusual practice of putting them on display in polling booths.
With only that to go on, it seemed prior to the preference count in Prahran last Tuesday that the Greens had a high mountain to climb to secure the 83% of preferences needed to draw clear of Liberal member Clem Newton-Brown. So it was something of an eye-opener when fully 88% went Hibbins’ way, securing him what in the circumstances was a surprisingly comfortable victory by 277 votes.
With Labor preferences locking in so emphatically behind the Greens, it now appears that any circumstance where the Greens can sneak ahead of them offers a serious prospect for victory if the Liberal primary vote is more than a few points shy of 50%.
However, thoughts of a Greens march through the wealthy bastions of the Liberal Party run into the wall of the Liberal primary vote, which remains too high for them to be challenged by the Greens or anywhere else.
What Prahran was able to offer was a combination of inner-city sensibilities at the southern end of the electorate -- in Prahran itself, a focal point of the gay community, and the bohemian environs of St Kilda East -- and the affluence of South Yarra and western Toorak, which served to dampen Labor's vote to the extent that the Greens were able to surpass it.
North of the border, a similar conjunction of circumstances can be identified in a few places in Sydney, and perhaps even in the Byron Bay-region seat of Ballina. But the prospect of a Prahran scenario playing out at a New South Wales state election is effectively ruled out by optional preferential voting, which would have starved the Greens of the decisive Labor preferences if it had been in operation in Prahran.
At federal level, though, the description just offered of Prahran sounds rather a lot like Malcolm Turnbull's electorate of Wentworth, which spans exclusive Vaucluse, the gay enclave around Paddington and the Left-leaning domains of Randwick and Bronte.
Turnbull's epic personal vote is such that the Liberals have nothing to fear for as long as he is there to defend it. But the seat was looking increasingly marginal not so long ago, and should Turnbull decide to move on -- as he briefly did after losing the leadership at the end of 2009, only to change his mind shortly afterwards -- the Greens will have something to play for, particularly if the broader election result is a poor one for the Liberals.
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For more from William Bowe visit his Crikey blog Poll Bludger
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'No business case' for East West Link
Today the Andrews government released reams of documents marked "cabinet in confidence" aimed at supporting the business case for the 18-kilometre East West Link, a planned $8 billion road tunnel under inner-northern Melbourne.
Work on the project has been frozen since December 12, when Premier Daniel Andrews ordered it halted and announced the business case, often the subject of a game of hide-and-seek by the former Napthine government, would be released.
A 225-page East West Link business case cabinet document was posted on the Herald Sun website overnight. The document is dated June 30, 2013, and appears to be a draft.
The document shows the project would cost 56 times as much as its expected annual return in tolls of $112 million, due mainly to the expanded construction cost per kilometre, but that doesn't mean it would pay itself off in 56 years. Unless tolls were increased over time the road project wouldn't pay for itself in 100 years, if at all, based on traffic flow estimates of about 190,000 on a tolled road by 2031.
Melbourne University principal fellow Nicholas Reece, who lectures in public infrastructure policy, says the project was not ready to be built. "There will come a day when this project needs to be built, but this business case would suggest that this time is not now. Governments need to make choices and there are other projects that should be given a higher priority," he said.
Using industry parlance for the time it takes for a project to pay its own way, he said: "For a project to take over five decades to wash its own face is quite extraordinary. It would need to be bathing in the fountain of youth."
VicRoads' own statistics on current road use in its annual average traffic data of July 2014 showed use of the Eastern Freeway at Hoddle Street was well under the East West estimates, and the numbers had plateaued by 2013. Eastbound daily traffic rose from 27,000 in 2003 to a peak of 34,000 in 2012, which then fell back to 33,000 in 2013. Westbound traffic dropped from 46,000 in 2003 to a low of 43,000 in 2012, rising to 44,000 in 2013. The increase in expected traffic flows in the business case is due to the addition of three lanes to the Eastern Freeway.
The document also shows that a third of morning eastbound traffic is going into the city. Only about 5% of traffic is going towards the city from the west in the mornings, and during the day there is a "high bi-directional demand," and a "high off-peak demand," the document states.
The document sets expected peak time tolls at $5.50 for cars, $8.80 for light commercial vehicles and $16.50 for heavy trucks.
Expected net toll revenue over the operation period of the eastern section of East West Link after subtraction of administration fees was $841 million at 2014 value, short of the construction cost estimate of $6.5 billion.
That is why the business case offered other methods of paying for the East West Link, by tolling an array of other major roads in Melbourne, including the Westgate Bridge, currently Melbourne's only east-west road connection linked in to the M1 freeway system.
The document's writers approached the two companies charged with running Melbourne's other tolled freeways, Transurban and Connect East, with a plan to increase tolls on their roads.
On ABC radio this morning former treasurer Michael O'Brien said the Napthine government had "ruled out" tolling other roads as it was a break from government policy. "The reason I ran surpluses as treasurer is so that I could afford, so that the government could afford to invest in major projects including an East-West Link. There's no need to toll existing roads because we managed the state's budget well enough that it funded projects like East West Link without needing to look at tolling existing roads."
"Unless you're giving people something new, why should they be paying extra for something that's already been built?" O'Brien said.
Greens leader Greg Barber says O'Brien is "trying to win the 24-hour news cycle and acting like a government in exile".
He says the document shows the road is "a lemon." "The road construction industry wants a bloody big road to build, their demands are insatiable, but there's no business case for it," he said.
Any mention of the project by its legislative chauffeurs the Linking Melbourne Authority has been obliterated from its website, including some of Napthine's attempts to sell the project to journalists with a shortened document he called a business case. The truncated form still offered a fairly weak but positive benefit cost ratio of 1.4 and only lead to further queries about why the real thing was being hidden.
Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or submit them anonymously here.
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What Guy Rundle doesn't get about native title
Last Wednesday, Warren Mundine called for changes to the native title claims process and advocated a series of treaties between Aboriginal "nations" and the Australian nation state. The head of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council is given to programmatic pronouncements on welfare reform, extolling the merits of the pretty much meritless Forrest Review, and recycling the themes of Marcia Langton’s 2012 Boyer Lectures, but this speech raises quite different questions, contradicts other of Mundine’s views and is interesting for those reasons. Guy Rundle’s response on Friday misses a few crucial things. I propose thinking more seriously and a little more slowly about what’s going on here.
Rundle maps out two possible ways of formulating a contemporary indigenous identity, or more precisely of conceiving of Aboriginal peoplehood. There are more, to be sure, but these two are crucial.
We might think of Aboriginality as something to do with pre-colonial cultural and social forms, as a question of origins, and as something realised through processes of excavation, reclamation and the reproduction of those forms. Or we might think of the way the unified category of Aboriginal was brought into being by the colonial encounter and speaks of a shared history and the shared condition of being the invaded: the colonised in a settler colonial society. The 1972 Tent Embassy dramatised this shared condition -- that was its brilliance. It's no coincidence that the Aboriginal flag, the proud symbol of a unified, historicised collective identity, was designed and popularised in the same era.
Rundle tells us authoritatively that the second model just is how peoplehood is brought into being and experienced, it’s the relation to other categories of peoples that matter. But it ain't 1972. Over the last two decades especially, the native title claims process has reorganised the grounds on which indigenous identities are made, lived and legitimised. State processes are at work here, and resources are at stake. Put simply, the native title era has stimulated a return to "mythopoetic origins". To embrace an Aboriginality formed through the vicissitudes of colonial history -- through shared experiences of dispossession, disjunction, movement and a deep entanglement with settler colonial economies and people -- has become a liability within a system widely acknowledged to be unfair. The more "unchanged" Aboriginal groups can prove themselves to be, the more they might hope to gain. Those who have lost the most stand little chance of satisfying the requirements for continuity.
Mundine proposes to do away with the stress on continuity within native title. It’s hard to see that happening, but there’s something significant being said here. Are we seeing the beginnings of a movement back towards the very kind of collective Aboriginal identity Rundle not only sees as desirable but assumes to be obvious, without seeming to realise how arduous that is to sustain in the present?
Second, as much as state-authored processes have compelled Aboriginal groups to identify with and retrieve some version of a pre-colonial way of being, and as problematic, "cunning" and retrograde as native title is in this regard, there’s more to the story than this. Everywhere across Australia there’s an enormous amount of enthusiastic language revival work going on, for example. There’s a power in the primordial past that passes Rundle by. Going back to an identity sourced in distinctive, localised origins connects contemporary Aboriginal people with a past that many see as a source of strength: a whole world existed before becoming "the invaded". I have worked with Aboriginal people who relish recalling a time of perceived autonomy, health and abundance.
Third, I’m struck by the fact that everyone within these debates seem to do exactly what they accuse others of doing. Langton sketches the "economic Aborigine" and the "cultural Aborigine", and says the latter is a creation of progressive Australia’s imagination. Progressive Australia, Langton argues, cannot grant the "economic Aborigine" a reality. There’s something in this argument, and I take it seriously. But Langton, Mundine et al can’t grant Aboriginal environmentalists a reality, and so condemn, again, Aboriginal people to existing in the pre-formulated, imagined terms of more powerful others.
Similarly Guy Rundle despairs at the thought of Aboriginality being rebiologised and traced only through descent. Yes, that would be nightmarish, although it doesn’t really seem to be what Mundine is saying. But Rundle seems to have no qualms in intervening confidently into the question of how Aboriginalities are formed. Sorry, but non-Aboriginal people can’t sit around and hope that Aboriginal people will make their Aboriginality out of the symbolic and political resources that most appeal to them. Further, not accounting for the social and political conditions that make certain identities more or less possible gets us nowhere. Mundine’s speech just might be a rare invitation to grapple with these complexities.
Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or submit them anonymously here.
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BUSINESS, MEDIA, CULTURE
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Losing our religion: ABC dumps Carols and Readings
ABC TV in 2014 will have no reflection of Christmas as a religious festival anywhere in its schedule, outgoing 7.30 NSW host Quentin Dempster has said in a submission to the Senate on the impact of the ABC cuts.
"Christmas Carols and Readings which was previously part of ABC TV’s Christmas offering was dropped last year and reportedly [the] head of programming [for] ABC1 and ABC2 has said that he would not schedule it into the future 'unless he was told to do so'," Dempster, who was made redundant two weeks ago, wrote in his submission. "In short: ABC axes Christmas carols."
Dempster's 18-page submission, which he spoke about in the Senate on Friday, is the most thorough accounting of the changes at the ABC that has appeared publicly to date. Division by division, Dempster lays out exactly what he understands is being changed as a result of budget cuts, and devotes significant space to the downsizing of the ABC's religious coverage. He says the religion unit will be reduced from 10.5 full-time staff to just six, thus losing 43% of its staffing. This, Dempster claims, will be compounded by a 70% loss of the unit's production budget -- that is, money left over to commission and spend on content after salaries are paid out.
Dempster claims staff within the religion unit were given no chance to consult on these changes: "It was with immense surprise and shock that the proposed changes were presented effectively fait accompli." The rationale given by head of radio Michael Mason, Dempster writes, is that the pooling of religion's staff and resources within the broader radio division would allow for greater efficiency and cohesion across the ABC's teams. Currently, the ABC's religion unit's staff are not attached to particular programs, and Dempster fears the downsizing of the unit will limit their ability to move around between programs.
On ABC TV, the role of executive producer for Compass has also been axed, Dempster says. "This means there is no editorial head of religion in TV. Compass will now be supervised by a general commissioning editor."
Dempster's submission comes as ABC acting director of people Alan Sunderland (until recently head of editorial policy) assured staff trapped in redundancy pools that no one who didn't want to leave the ABC would be forced to do so before Christmas. In an email sent to staffers (and obtained by Crikey), Sunderland acknowledges the preference of ABC staff for redundancies to be voluntary, but says the ABC "needs to have a mix of direct redundancies and skills-based pools to properly plan for the future".
As Christmas approaches, Sunderland writes, ABC staff deserve certainty, and so the ABC is moving ahead with its redundancy arrangements accordingly:
"If we don’t proceed now, a significant number of ABC staff will go into Christmas still not knowing if they are individually affected by our proposals for change or not.
"So the primary purpose of this update is to let you know that we will now be moving to progress the pools over the next few days. Managers will be applying the selection criteria and carrying out assessments, to advise those staff in the pools who have been identified as potentially redundant by the middle of next week."
Staff were encouraged to raise whether they wanted to take a redundancy but were told this would not guarantee they would get one. Those facing redundancy who wish to stay will have the process stretched out into January, in order to allow time for them to "work through their options, and to continue consultation where necessary".
Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or submit them anonymously here.
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Mayne: Packer backed Andrews -- now how about a new Crown hotel?
Crown Casino founder Lloyd Williams didn’t intend to be overheard promising James Packer’s support to new Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews during the recent election campaign.
But the not-so-private endorsement is now potentially quite helpful for the billionaire casino mogul’s interests after James Packer put his cards on the table with this ASX announcement last Friday confirming his desire to build a new five-star hotel next to Crown’s existing complex in Melbourne.
Crikey canvassed all the historical casino issues at the time of the Williams snafu, but Crown’s aggressive hotel pitch will be an early test of the governance, planning and probity processes to be employed by the new Labor leaders in Victoria.
Interestingly, the three key players -- Gaming Minister Jane Garrett, Planning Minister Dick Wynne and the Premier -- are all members of the Socialist Left faction. The Packer family have traditionally done well from the pragmatic deal-makers in the Labor Right such as Graham Richardson, Neville Wran, Bob Carr, Stephen Conroy and James Packer’s current employees Karl Bitar and Mark Arbib.
There has been much criticism of the permissive approach to skyscrapers that new Victorian opposition leader Matthew Guy took during his period as Victorian planning minister over the past four years.
Now that Crown has shelled out $50 million buying a share of Tony Schiavello’s property holdings on Queensbridge Street opposite Crown Melbourne, how will the government respond to a powerful billionaire’s request to build a 300-metre-plus skyscraper?
Five-star hotels are a terrific asset for any city but don’t usually generate great returns, so there is often an element of ego and indulgence driving the owners. Melbourne should by no means adopt a negative posture to the idea of a new five-star Crown-branded hotel south of the river, but there are always key planning issues around height, set-backs and traffic to resolve.
Tony Schiavello and PDG are nearing completion of the 72-level Prima Pearl residential tower on the south-west boundary of the proposed site for the new Crown hotel. Prima Pearl has 667 apartments and is the fifth-tallest building in Australia.
At the rear of this site on Prime Pearl’s eastern boundary, an Asian developer has proposed a 273-metre tower on Power Street with 395 hotel rooms and 515 apartments spread across 71 levels and a whopping 110,000 square metres.
The City of Melbourne unanimously rejected this proposal in July this year, and it doesn’t appear to be on this list of skyscrapers approved by Guy before the election.
Rich lister Schiavello will be reluctant to encroach too closely on his customers at Prima Pearl, so the temptation will be to locate the new 300-metre-plus Crown Hotel closer to the 205-metre Freshwater Place residential tower on its north-eastern boundary.
In a historic planning blunder, Freshwater Place was built only two metres from the Schiavello boundary, so it will be tricky for Crown to deliver its hotel tower without creating the smallest tower setback yet in Melbourne in terms of habitable windows facing each other.
The Freshwater Place residents are a well-organised group led by retired NAB executive Peter Renner. He was quoted expressing early concerns about the Crown Hotel tower in the Saturday Herald Sun.
It is also not yet clear if a controversial sky-bridge from the new hotel directly into Crown is still being pushed.
Southbank is the most vulnerable Melbourne suburb when it comes to climate change, rising sea levels, king tides and storm surge. Queensbridge Street has flooded several times in recent years, but the solution is surely to raise the street, not build a glass sky-bridge over it.
Fully building out the drainage system in Southbank is estimated to cost more than $100 million over the next 30 years, so it will be interesting to see if any of the proponents of this canyon of skyscapers near the casino are asked to contribute to the cost of this in a meaningful way.
It will also be interesting to see if Crown or any of its associates have donated to the ALP in recent months. Unfortunately, we won’t see the data on this until February 1, 2016, under Victoria’s and Australia’s woefully inadequate campaign disclosure laws.
Enterprising journalists will presumably be putting this question direct to Crown and the Victorian ALP as we go through the planning process of this latest expansion, which if approved would once again make Crown Melbourne the second-biggest casino complex in the world (after The Venetian in Macau) in terms of overall floor space.
*Stephen Mayne is deputy chair of the planning committee at City of Melbourne.
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Media briefs: Hearst splashes out ... Spanish publishes panic ... Economist struggles ...
Hearst drives credit ratings bid. US media giant Hearst Corporation is showing why being privately owned in the rapidly evolving media sector remains the smartest way to go -- if the pair of deals Hearst made last week are anything to go by. The first was a bid of US$81 million for 25% of AwesomenessTV, the teen-skewing digital video network controlled by DreamWorks Animation. AwesomenessTV operates a network of YouTube channels with more than 114 million subscribers.
On Friday night the company moved outside the media to boost its stake in the Fitch credit ratings group by nearly US$2 billion, giving Hearst a controlling 80% (with French group Fimalac retaining a 20% stake). The deal means Fitch -- one of the “big three” credit ratings agencies -- will be a majority-owned subsidiary of Hearst and will sit alongside 15 daily and 34 weekly newspapers, hundreds of magazines around the world, 29 American television stations, ownership in leading cable networks, several radio stations, significant holdings in automotive, electronic and medical/pharmaceutical business information companies, internet and marketing services businesses and real estate.
Last year, an estimated 60% of Hearst’s US$9.7 billion revenue came from sectors not reliant on advertising, such as corporate subscriptions. Hearst also has shareholdings in several digital businesses, including BuzzFeed, HootSuite and MobiTV. The 50%-owned A&E Networks bought a 10% stake recently in Vice Media, which valued the digital media and publishing group at US$2.5 billion. That was after Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox paid US$70 million for a 5% stake.
The difference between private Hearst and publicly held News Corp can be seen in the two recent diversification moves from both companies. News bought America’s third-ranked property listings company for US$950 million in cash with the help of its 61%-owned arm REA Group in Australia, which bought 20%. Hearst stumped up with US$81 million for that stake in AwesomenessTV and then a further US$1.97 billion for 30% of Fitch -- a much better deal. -- Glenn Dyer
Google departure leaves Spanish news begging. With one day to go before Google starts turning off its Spanish-language edition of Google News, there are signs of panic among Spain’s media companies at the realisation the move could cost them dearly.
Now the same local media that pushed for a new copyright law and its heavy potential fees of up to 600,000 euros for linking to articles on Spanish media sites are trying to get Google to reverse its decision. Google News says it will be gone from Spain by the new year, with Google’s search engine still operating, along with other services like Google Maps and Street View.
There are reports the Spanish newspaper association wants the country’s government to do something to halt Google News’ departure, despite the fact that they lobbied the government to introduce the new law to try to get Google to start paying them. But as in Germany (where Google stopped linking to websites owned by the huge Springer media group), Google is calling the Spanish media’s bluff. And the publishers are crumbling, with ad revenues expected to fall as fewer people visit their sites via Google News.
The Spanish Newspaper Publishers' Association (AEDE) issued a statement last night saying that Google News was "not just the closure of another service given its dominant market position", recognising that Google’s decision "will undoubtedly have a negative impact on citizens and Spanish businesses":
“Given the dominant position of Google (which in Spain controls almost all of the searches in the market and is an authentic gateway to the Internet), AEDE requires the intervention of Spanish and community authorities, and competition authorities, to effectively protect the rights of citizens and companies."
The big drawback for Google is the possibility it could have to pay up to 600,000 euros per link, a law the Spanish government says it has no intention of changing. Spain could follow the German route by giving Google a special deal that allows it to carry on regardless (a move prohibited under this law), but even now, German publishers are reportedly trying to get the country’s government to follow the Spanish law and its hefty fees. The Springer group is said to be a supporter, even though it knows traffic to its website will once again plunge if Google stops linking -- or is driven out of the country. -- Glenn Dyer
Economist struggling. Buried away in a weekend Financial Times story on The Economist magazine’s outlook in the wake of the poaching of editor-in-chief John Micklethwait by Bloomberg were clues that the paper may be struggling more than previously expected.
The story pointed out that while The Economist’s paid circulation is up nearly 50% under Micklethwait (editor-in-chief since 2006), it has fallen this year for the first time in 15 years as the previous policy of offering deep discounts to win new subscribers failed to hold them as the cheap subs ended and people were asked to pay full whack.
The FT says print advertising in The Economist has fallen by one-third in the past five years to 58 million pounds. The FT has had a similar experience -- it’s down a reported 40% or more, according to results included in the financial reports of its owners Pearson Group. Only one-third of The Economist’s paid sales involve digital access, unlike the FT, which says around 60% of its paid sales are digital subscriptions. But even then the FT has started freezing subscription costs for up to two years in recent months because of rising complaints about the way the costs have been increasing every year.
The FT says The Economist intelligence unit, the magazine’s research division, has also been under strain as corporate clients in Europe and the US cut spending. The FT reports:
"The Economist Group glossed over any difficulties, referring to a ‘year of investment’. It increased dividends to shareholders -- including the Financial Times, which owns half of the group, and the Cadburys, Rothschilds and Schroders, who together with other prominent families and past and present employees control the other half. It remains roughly as profitable as the publisher of the UK’s Daily Telegraph.”
The print magazine accounts for more than 60% of the group’s annual revenues with its paid circulation of 1.6 million a week, compared with Bloomberg’s Businessweek with 1 million. Time has around 5 million, and falling.
More than 90% of The Economist’s revenues come from Europe and North America, and the group has set its sights on emerging markets, especially India and China, for new growth, with the promotion of a new global chief strategy officer based in Mumbai. -- Glenn Dyer
News leak in court case. An apparently inadvertent disclosure in a United States court case has raised more questions about the profitability of News Corp’s news and information division and its offshoots. News Corp’s News America Marketing (NAM) branch is being sued by some of the biggest consumer goods groups in the US, which claim they have been overcharged for advertising and other marketing services for up to 15 years.
The case has been meandering through the US legal system for years in various forms, but last week there was a hearing in New York in which arguments were heard and documents filed in support. The Business Insider website has reported there was an apparent mistake in one of the documents filed, which has revealed estimates about the profitability of News America Marketing:
"Buried in the legal filings is a curious fact: News Corp’s gross profit margins on advertising placed with its News America Marketing (NAM) unit were between 81% and 86%. NAM handles in-store advertising in US supermarkets and coupons for groceries. It’s one of Rupert Murdoch’s under-the-radar businesses. It earns about $US400 million in revenues per year. That would imply that annual gross margins at NAM are somewhere approaching US$344 million ... It’s not clear whether those 80%-plus margins are common or excessive. But the document in which they are cited claims that News had the power to raise advertising prices by 54% without losing any business -- an indicator of how powerful NAM’s hold on the supermarket business is.”
There are no estimates of News America’s performance contained in the latest quarterly earnings statement from News Corp -- the legal actions are backgrounded, with their current status and activity in the quarter given, but that is as far as News goes about revealing the operations of NAM to its shareholders.
But there is the hint of solid earnings -- even at half that, that’s still gross profits a year of US$160 million. News Corp’s latest quarterly report said news and information had revenues of US$1.451 billion in the September quarter, down from US$1.495 billion, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of US$105 million, down from US$133 million. If that’s the case, then the profitability of other assets in the division, such as The Wall Street Journal, would have to be weaker than hinted at in the filings. And the losses for News Corp Australia would be larger. -- Glenn Dyer
Front page of the day. The Daily Tele's "for the bush" ...
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Glenn Dyer's TV ratings
The less said about last night and the rest of the coming week, so far as TV is concerned, the better. Insiders, and even the Bolter were missed yesterday morning ahead of Joe Hockey’s now familiar pre-Christmas whinge about nasty Labor and the black hole they left me. Some decent context to The Cigar’s rantings on deficits and debt was sorely missed, especially on News 24.
But wasn’t the final hour or so of the final day of the Adelaide Test great TV on Saturday? Nine says that 6:08pm when Nathan Lyon had Ishant Sharma stumped to win the game, 2.446 million people were watching. The excitement only matched (in my fading memory, I missed the last couple of Ashes tests earlier this year) by the 2007 World Cup win by Australia over Sri Lanka in the dusk of the West Indies, or the improbable win by Australia against England in 2006 in Adelaide. Does anything else stick in the mind?
A few Christmas tarts, a cup of tea or three and three games of croquet and some great salads certainly helped me enjoy yesterday, but last night -- no dessert. A repeat of a repeat of a repeat of Midsomer Murders, Miss Marple or Poirot would have been better than most of last night’s offerings. In metro markets, the digital channels had a combined share of 34.6%, in the metros, the share was higher, 38.3%. That says it about the quality of the main channel programming. The networks don’t really care, a person watching a digital channel is just as valuable as someone sticking with the main channel.
Shaun Micallef’s adventures in Indian spiritualism on SBS ONE at 7.30 was mildly entertaining, but somehow I was waiting for the wild man of Mad As Hell to appear. After The Wave on SBS at 8.30pm was mildly interesting, but why not a three parter on the Boxing Day tsunami (and the Aceh quake)? Sunday Night and 60 Minutes> are going through the motions, and viewers have spotted the second class fare, especially from 60 Minutes. Tonight is little better -- 7.30 perhaps, and then you're on your own.
Network channel share:
- Seven (29.3%)
- Nine (28.0%)
- Ten (20.5%)
- ABC (15.2%)
- SBS (7.0%)
Network main channels:
- Nine (19.0%)
- Seven (18.8%)
- Ten (11.6%)
- ABC (10.4%)
- SBS ONE (5.7%)
Top 5 digital channels:
- 7TWO (6.9%)
- GO (5.9%)
- ONE (4.6%)
- Eleven 3.9%)
- 7mate (3.6%)
Top 10 national programs:
- Nine News
- Seven News -- 1.346 million
- Sunday Night (Seven) -- 1.292 million
- 60 Minutes (Nine) -- 1.068 million
- ABC News -- 1.063 million
- Coastwatch Oz (Seven) -- 958,000
- The Chase (Seven) -- 950,000
- Bones (Seven) -- 793,000
- Antiques Roadshow (ABC) -- 793,000
- Modern Family repeat episode 2 (Ten) -- 769,000
Top metro programs:
- Nine News -- 1.036 million
Losers: Goes without saying, all of us still needing our TV fix.
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COMMENTS, CLARIFICATIONS, COCKUPS
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Xenophon's party all flash and no smash
Warren Mundine's motivation
Paul Schacht writes: Re. "Rundle: Warren Mundine's individual treaty idea a confused Farrago" (Friday). The piece on Mundine is interesting and makes many excellent points. However I think there may be method in Mundine's madness. I suspect he is having fantasies that his version of recognition will weaken claims to Aboriginality. There would be something in this for him. He is advising mining interests about matters Aboriginal. I suspect he is thinking that if he could weaken ties to country things might be easier for the mining industry to negotiate with Aborigines. Imagine the money Mundine could earn as a go-between between weakened Aboriginal groupings and mining interests. Of course in any final wash-up it would not be that easy or simple given existing legislation and court decisions. But I think this stuff is in the theatre of his mind. He works for Tony, advises mining interests and is married to Liberal Party royalty... Gerard Henderson's daughter.
John Strain writes: What an appalling and ignorant article. Aboriginals were hunter/ gatherers? Please read Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe's carefully researched book using European sources showing many tribes/ nations (no word exists in English to describe Aboriginal entities) revealing agriculture, aquaculture, towns and settlements, storage and preservation of food, use of fire, religion, language and law.
If each entity has its own law, leadership and language maybe a prime cause of our failure to address the problems we caused and continue to cause is our failure to recognise these differences. Maybe Europe should no longer be Scottish, Welsh, English, Castillian, Catalonian, Basque, French (province), French Belgian, Dutch Belgian, Dutch, German (German states), Polish, Czech, Slovak, etc by outsiders and they should all be treated with the same contempt as we treat our indigenous peoples. After all these entities have been invaded and suppressed too.
Did not the indigenous peoples in the area surrounding and including Melbourne speak related dialects and see themselves as part of the Kulin people? Guy states of Gary Johns, "one of the most damaging things of the destructive ignorance of people like Gary Johns is their simple disdain for this history", but then proceeds to reveal his own destructive ignorance.
Could a Nick Xenophon-led party be successful?
Vincent Burke writes: Re. "Party time: will Xenophon be able to launch a national brand?" (Friday). As a South Australian, I believe Nick Xenophon’s appeal within the electorate has been based largely on the public’s perception that he was neither Labor nor Liberal, and his profile has been greatly enhanced by his ability to grab media attention through clever stunts. He is the ultimate media tart. He is like a political ambulance chaser, who latches on to any cause which ensures yet more media attention. He will invariably pontificate on the latest problem of the day, but rarely produces results. There are so many examples of him standing up on certain issues, ensuring the media carry his political "selfie", but somehow he’s never there when the outcome is negative. He has moved on to the next issue. I challenged him on this on talk-back radio, and his instant response was to quote something he did in 2009 -- five years ago.
The worst media offender in terms of providing him constant uncritical exposure is the local ABC. He appears on the Matt and Dave Breakfast Show at least twice a week, and is rarely subjected to the aggressive scrutiny these presenters apply to government spokespersons. Someone needs to examine carefully his track record, not his media scrapbook which no doubt he maintains to peruse in his retirement. Unlike Clive Palmer, Xenophon has earned his political stripes through genuine commitment to his task of self-promotion, but ultimately NXT will fizzle just like PUP.
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. |
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