Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I've twice heard Glen Milne refer to hearing about John Brogden's bungles that saw him unfairly shafted, as something he just happen to pick up in passing conversation. Now he says he knows little of the state Liberals machinations. It's apparent he has good Coalition party scources as one would expect and hope a journalist has but the manner in which Milne distances himself from these scources is one reason many of place little trust in his writings and believe there is always a hidden agenda behind them.

Is he for real?

It is only Wednesday and the Federal Liberal Party continues to implode, or explode - it is not very clear. There are new brawls breaking out everyday as Government members scramble for their piece of the pie. It would be easy to forget what happened just about one week ago and ended up in the press at the weekend and on Monday, but that is just what Tony Abbott (Federal Minister of Health) is banking on.

Tony Abbott is allowed to make jokes that go down like lead balloons – he is the Health Minister, in charge of the administration of mental health in Australia (by now, most Australians who have eyes and ears have heard the joke). His quasi-neo-con mates (health industry executives) who saw the man live in action, would have chortled at this sad attempt at humour but many would have, at the same time, been in internal shock.

Abbott thinks this sort of behaviour is OK. After a feeble parliamentary apology on Monday, the Prime Minister backed his Minister. The Federal Liberal Party has ignored the ALP’s call for him to be sacked. Does the PM have one standard for John Brogden and another for Tony Abbott?

Many have asked whether the lay preacher has any compassion at all for the poor and sick. Is this the shape of public health care now and into the future? Is this Australian behaviour? Do Australians put the boot in when a man is down?

A quick scan of talkback radio on Tuesday morning revealed a public that was angry. Comments like “He should take a long walk off a very short pier” and “He is the wrong man in the wrong job” were common. However, there was also some insight. One caller suggested that the Health Ministry should be taken off Abbott so he can cool his heels on the backbench. This way there is the hope that he may find some compassion or, at the very least, some empathy.

Mental health is a sensitive issue and for one fifth of the Australian population it is, or has been, a life experience. John Brogden, former leader of the NSW shadow government, has just recently discovered this. However, what Abbott may not know is that publicly funded mental health services in NSW have been on the slide for the past ten years. Funding has been cut left, right and centre. Psychiatric wards in public hospitals can be seen as little more than holding cells for the sick while their medication is stabilized.

In Sydney, the private sector is not too much better. Competent psychiatrists are finding it hard to cope with patient load and some are even closing their books. Sometimes, it can take up to six weeks for a patient to secure an appointment with their doctor. The cost of these private sector services is also exorbitant, driving the uninsured back to casualty at public hospitals around the city.

It is in this climate, and only a few hours after his state colleague attempted suicide, that Tony Abbott suffered another episode of foot in mouth disease. Can this man be taken seriously? As Mike Seccombe, of the Sydney Morning Herald, said on Tuesday – “Abbott laughed, winked and smirked his way through parliamentary question time and a censure motion against him”. Surely this is a sign of a man who is truly sorry for callously hurting others. Although he still has the Prime Minister’s support, does he continue to smile?

Margo Let me re-post something I posted in another thread yesterday:

Here's a great quote, in a lecture last week from Alan Oster, NAB Chief Economist. He's speaking in relation to house prices.

"By engineering significant changes in public perceptions policy makers can, in certain circumstances, set in place powerful expectational effects. I, for one, would argue that the Reserve Bank of Australia has been quite successful in talking up the risks of both the potential for house price falls and interest rate increases. That has, in effect, by changing public perceptions been used as an alternative for actually tightening policy significantly (and - 2 - hence risking a potentially much rockier outcome)."

Classic dense economist speak - but look at the message in the very first sentence. Mr Oster acknowledges that policy makers can routinely engineer changes in public perception - and in the document I'm quoting he makes some weight of the RBA's (albeit non-partisan and benign in this case) use of the media. Of course the media is a tool of policy makers and politicians!

Here's a strong argument for the independent media we're all lusting after, but where will it get its guidance from? What will be its moral compass? How will it evolve? How will it be made accountable to?

The "benign dictator" - the proprieter of old media models was an easy point of reference and control, it's a shame they don't stay benign as power corrupts.

It's a tough dilemma as there will be a strong nexus between funding and support for independent media and the conditions under which that funding is forthcoming - of which the moral and ethical compass and performance in relation to it will form a major part.

Margo: No worries, David. Webdiary's been noting, documenting and exploring the ethical collapse across politics, business, the professions and the media for quite a while now, haven't we? Oh for a Webdiary search engine! You know, the thought that the Australian people's telecommunications infrastructure institution, let alone our government, could fall this low ethically would have shocked me to the core when my Dad was a frontline regional engineer for the PMG's department. It would have shocked me to the core ten years ago, too. Five years? I wonder. But when did I start shrugging my shoulders and noting 'another one hits the dust' as just another aspect of our elite's ethical collapse? When did the powerful, those whose role in our society it is to make prudent long term investments in our children's future as Australians, decide to forget their duty to all of us? When? Because when we know when, we'll be able to freeze frame the perpetrators, those who lost their ethics by selling them for cash. How many people will we be be looking at, I wonder. Most of us? All of us? So what do we do now we KNOW the Emperors have no clothes? What will you do? Webdiary accountibility columnist Craig Rowley is working on a Telstra piece to get our teeth into, so to speak.

I'm sorry I missed this, it would have been great to actually hear it.

I realise every situation like this has to be a judgement call, but I would love to see more discussion among journalists on what makes a situation "in the public interest" and what doesn't.

I don't think public figures should be fair game every moment of their lives, but if the media aren't able to lay down some guides as to when something should be reportable and when it shouldn't... how can our public figures ever relax! Do we need them all to be hypersensitive and stressed out?

One interesting point though... if we argue that John Brogden's alleged sordid past according to the Tele is relevant because as a family man and politician he espouses those values publicly and therefore should be held to account for them, then I agree with Margo - lets investigate Penberthy's sordid past, he has made public statements of what sort of behaviour is acceptable.... If he doesn't live up to these standards maybe the media could pillory him too.

I agree with you Michael. I find it difficult to trust the columns that Glen Milne writes and have done so for many years. Why it took three weeks to print the story about Brogden raises many questions.

Did the right wing machinery at Liberal Party headquarters keep the information in their kitbag. Maybe they thought ‘oh well see if Brogden gets any traction on Iemma before we make a move’. Expecting Iemma to blunder within weeks they miscalculated. It annoys me that Milne was apparently used as a messenger by his close Liberal contacts.

On another tack there are ethical questions about politicians and the media. Politicians I understand do not go out and publish the activities and comments of media people and their private lives. Unless I’ve been missing something, this moves the power relationship in favour of the journalist. I'm still forming this view but I will wait for others response to this before I comment further.

It has always bemused me how gentle the Australian media are with dubious behaviour of parliamentarians - much more so than the British press seem to be and much more like the US press which managed to ignore many stories over the last 50 years... some of which eventually "came to light", often after the main players had died.

I'm not particularly in favour of muck-raking but when you walk the streets of Canberra long enough a lot of stories emerge, as Margo well knows; that so few get picked up I think is unfortunate because it continues the myth that those espousing the "family value" high moral ground actually live them... sadly the street talk indicates many don't. Always hard to understand why politicians think that being in Canberra allows them to do dubious things "in private".

My impression of the ways of the media world is that some journalists may accept a proposition and keep it quiet simply because they are attracted to that person, or because they can see some advantage in it. Publishing it adds humiliation to the rejection. If I were ever in that position I simply wouldn't report it, since I'm kind and discreet by nature. On the other hand I can recognise that anyone that does that is tap-dancing in a minefield and deserves what they get.

Anybody who watched Media Watch on Monday would have been left with a sense of disgust and outrage at the treatment that Brogden received at the hands of the Murdoch press. The "shame file" story was a complete disgrace and for Milne to place all the blame upon Brogden himself (as he does above) whilst defending his employer tells us a great deal about Glenn Milne, not John Brogden.

At any rate, I must also disagree with the idea that if a political figure asks someone for sex etc, like Noel-Crichton Browne, that this then is automatically news worthy. Both Crichton-Browne and Brogden behaved poorly (but in Brogden’s case allegations have been made that are false, a crucial difference), but in the context of intense political-factional infighting. Their demise had little to do with their comments as such. Consider for instance Bob Hawke in the '70s. Hawke was being promoted by the corporate press as the man that would modernise the ALP and send it off to the right. That he engaged in crass personal behaviour did not unduly bother the media, in fact was a positive for his manufactured ocker image.

The whole point is to divert people from the real issues confronting society, such as why the Murdoch family should be allowed to own so much media in a democracy, and to get people focusing on irrelevant rubbish. I would be more interested in John Brogden's policies than his sex life; if he had policies that would help people then good on him and if he wants to he can parade naked in the Mardi Gras for all we should care.

Got to agree with Margo on at least one point.

There was no need whatsoever to publish details of Brogden's alleged sordid past after he had resigned. How the hell was that in the public interest? Where any of his alleged antics at least illegal?

If it was in the public interest why was it not published whilst he was the opposition leader and a big chance of being the next Premier of NSW? It seems to me that it was just putting the boot in for no other reason than to put the boot in.

Those sorts of antics are not a credit to the people involved with them.

Margo: Jay, since we agree on this matter, would it be fair to say that an essential aspect of our identity as Australians is that 'we don't kick a man when he's down"? I always thought that phrase means the equivalent of stabbing someone in the back. From the friendly corner, so to speak, his enemies in the party, and in the media the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph. It may have been accidental that both were on the kicking side of the John Brogden tragedy. It probably was. But what instinct was it that saw David Pemberthy order his paper to piss on a shattered human being before he'd even had a chance to catch his breath? There's a big story in the relationship between the State press galleries, the State Governments and their respective oppositions.

Speaking of Murdoch, check this out: Rupert and the Prince - media and power...

Saudi prince offers support to Rupert
September 7, 2005 - 2:54PM
(Extract)

Rupert Murdoch might be facing the wrath of some News Corp shareholders but he has a huge supporter in billionaire Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

The prince's investment company Kingdom has converted a three per cent non-voting stake in Mr Murdoch's global media and entertainment group to a 5.46 voting share, vowing to help the media tycoon fend off any takeover bid.

Jay, a toast to you old chap ;-) ... you and Margo agreeing on something is a great sign of the health of Webdiary and what we all engage in here. Cheers.

Yes I do. John Brogden had been damaged enough and there was little chance - make that zero chance - of him recovering. It also must be remembered that he is not a criminal and had not committed any crime in the true sense of the word.

His political life is open slather and so it should be. That part of his life is in the public domain put there by him and should be debated.

However his private life is a different matter when one considers that he has resigned and his judgement will no longer have an impact on the people reading the paper.

I thought that story was extremely heartless.

My dealings with the media have been purely local, and a few relevant things I've noticed are:

Stories are treated differently according to the players involved, eg. a story about peace and/or environment issues that runs in isolation as a public events are often covered in a fairly straight-forward and impartial way.

The same kind of stories taking place during an election seem to attract a layer of off-the-record spin emanating from the political parties and their minders. For example I lost track during two recent elections of the number of times journalists would seek responses to allegations that were planted by "anonymous" sources from political parties.

eg. Q "people are saying you're associated with the XXX candidate, and that's your motivation in making these claims" A "Who's saying that? It isn't true". Response "I can't tell you who my source is, it's confidential.

Now, in the instance above the journalist(s) ran the both the allegations and the denial, but not the material on who sources the "story".

In some ways I understand that the major political parties are like meat and potatoes to journalists, and no-one would want to be excluded from inside knowledge. BUT I really would like to see the day when allegations are only reported with the names attached of those who are making the claims.

The best example I have of sensationalising an action came when we knocked on the office door of the local federal member to ask if he would explain his attitudes to the Iraq war. The local paper described that action as "an attempted office invasion".

Margo and David, the rot has been setting in at the Big Telco for quite a while (at least 10+ years) - we ourselves and many other initial players in the ISP market discovered this the hard way. Very nasty behaviour was passed off as "accidentally incompetent" but we have subsequent evidence aplenty it was anything but... but the ACCC did NOTHING, despite the data.

Ask almost any 'old style' Telstra employee over a drink about it and they did and can tell you. It's been an open secret for ages - not of course the stuff that Howard or the 'press' are likely to disclose.

When will the shareholders have had enough? When will they call for heads to roll? Sadly, on current evidence, never.

Margo, that took a bit of digesting! I'm sorta with Harry H in a way here... I don't buy the nostalgia story.

You paint a nostalgic and rose tinted view of Telstra, and by implication many of our institutions. In your dad's day, Telstra was a very, very large bunch of self serving, lazy and incompent bureaucrats and lower level servants maing a nice comfortable living at the taxpayer's expense and basking in the fact that they had little or no accountability other than delivering basic services nto a public with low expectations. Same applies to our Big four banks, AMP, NRMA etc etc etc.

For all its demonstrated laziness, incompetence, and whiffy ethics, Telstra today has to be miles better than it was. What's changed is the level of visibility and accountability imposed by both privatisation and developments in the media - directly and indirectly in that Joe Punter's awareness and preparedness to listen and engage on issues Telstra has been heightened by the fact that he is now a shareholder.

A nexus of media and shareholder accountability, spin doctors and politicians has now created a public perception of Telstra's issues (and by extension the other so-called Aussie icons or 'elites') that is negative, and somewhat informed whereas in our dad's day it was blissful ignorance all round.

What scares me is the turbo-spin currently being applied by our politicians to get us to buy the privatisation of the rest of Telstra. I'm actually for privatisation, but done right. Here's not the forum for that discussion. I'm just dead nervous that we'll get the wrong outcome because the media isn't standing up to the politicans enough.

Perhaps we need out own Katrinagate:

"Never before, say some observers, have US reporters been so emotionally involved in a story to the point of being enraged. They are not just telling a story, they have become part of it.

"Has Katrina saved the US media?" asked BBC reporter Matt Wells, who sees the shift in tone as a potentially historic development.

A number of US journalists who cover federal politics, especially television presenters, had become part of the political establishment, said Wells.

"They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties. Their television companies are owned by large conglomerates who contribute to election campaigns."

It's a "perfect recipe" for fearful, self-censoring reportage, he said, but added: "Since last week, that's all over."

See the full article here.

What will it take to sort out our mainstream media?

Michelle hits on an issue about discussing what's in the public interest...

Obviously, the 'public interest' means different things to different people - as we so famously saw with Howard, Vanstone and the DIMIA debacle (a la 'we will tell you if we think you need to know!')

After hearing the whole Brogden saga play itself out in the media, I have to admit that the extra information provided by the Tele was a little bit tawdry. It felt like they were stepping over a line that you shouldn't cross. Maybe Margo correctly hit the issue, to say, "Australians don't kick someone when they're down" - and that is what made the publication of the 'Sordid Past' allegations seem distasteful.

Maybe we've been crossing the line between private interest and public interest already - when Laurie Oakes started down this slippery slope with his 'expose' on Cheryl Kernot.

Russell, take your point but disagree. Any number of old hands at these 'icon' organisations reminisce for the old days of comfort, a fat pay packet and rorts aplenty.

By way of example I once consulted to a bunch of middle level IT managers at one such organistion who were at once breathtakingly a) incompetent, b) complacent, c) arrogant, d) obsessed by internal politics over anything to do with customers and who were paid on average north of $250K a year. And, this is 1997 I'm talking about... sad, but this is a far from isolated example.

No doubt that Telstra has indeed behaved nastily in relation to its monopoly infrastructure - but it is obliged by law to do the best for its shareholders, and behaving that way is how it has done that. All's fair in love, war and competition - to a point...

...And the point is the risk of privatising any quasi or real monopoly. A half-smart, privatised monopoly is way more profitable than a dumb public sector one, and treats its customers way worse. Macquarie Bank's whole infrastructure strategy is predicated on that premise.

Only 2 answers really, don't privatise (bad bad bad solution for taxpayers and customers alike) or privatise it and beat it up / control it with a strong regulator (OK solution for all, often used overseas and here). I don't share your negative view on the ACCC. It has stuck the boot into Telstra big-time lately. Fels was good but Graeme Samuel has been a revelation.

Again, what scares me is media, politicians and business doing deals around the regulator that is meant to represent my interests.

Re Core liberal values.

They have been hijacked!

We tend to import everything American, the liberal party in power federally has been watching and imitating American politics and its emphasis on “values”

The current movement of political ideals in Australia to the right tends to coincide with the rise of the religious right in the USA and this movement cannot be overlooked.

This Internet site presents a fascinating picture.

Behaviour such as John Brogden's, as reported, at The Hilton Hotel, is not becoming of a potential premier of the state. That being so, it is in our interest, the public’s, to know that someone that might one day lead the state thinks that Asian women can freely be described as “mail order brides”, even despite having consumed “six beers”.

That he propositioned some women for a sexual activity is not in itself a hanging offence, after all, most men do that at one time or another, it’s the context that was at play at the time that matters. If it was offensive to the ones approached and if it merits the incident being publicly reported, I, as a consumer of such news, want to see names being quoted. In the absence of names, such reports are nothing but cheap shots.

Through Glenn Milne’s reporting we found that the Libs picked the wrong leader in NSW, (is there a right one, I wonder?). Through The Telegraph’s reporting we continue to be bombarded with cheap and salacious dribble.

I am sure things are said and done by politicians that would be offensive to some, some of it might even be witnessed by journalists. Either through supportive bias or due to the fact that it is really none of our business, we don’t get to hear about it. That is as it should be.

Making that call is the art of being a good journalist. They’re rare and usually don’t work for Murdoch, with very few exceptions.

I don't think it's right to make the assumption that Brogden tried to kill himself because of press coverage. Nobody really knows the reason. It may have simply been the result of a sudden chemical imbalance, as Kennett pointed out. My own suspicion is that whatever it was, it was building up for a long time; The fact that he let his guard down and behaved the way he did in the first place, makes me think that there was already something wrong.

Read the transcript and immediately saw the real source of trouble, even more than Penberthy. In the wake of an unexpected suicide attempt a searchlight is belatedly shone upon an immeasurably more ancient emminence - gris, well-distanced from the event, as De Angelos observes. That is, the Murdoch press hack, Glen Milne.

How is the Tele put up as an 'independent' paper, when its politics; read muck-raking, is run by the Oz's Milne?

And yes, Milne had the cheek to talk unctuously, as his wont, about 'conscience' and a 'fresh pair of eyes' etc, legitimising the old Goering comment about the Big Lie, in excoriating his victim even after the fellows painful down-fall and suicide attempt. No pathologies revealed here worthy of investigation in the Tele?

My personal problem with the above is not so much about Milne (again) talking about something which he has has no experience of; eg knowledge or understanding of the word or notion 'conscience'. But does his ignorance extend to knowing what an 'eye' is (given what he appears to be claiming that he thus 'saw' through 'fresh eyes')? Is it possible that he was really 'looking' at the incident through (say) his buttocks? Or more likely through the lens of his prejudices and double standards, or just cynical expediancy and (significant indication) did it thus hurt?

Milne talks of Brogden's refusal to attend his 'interrogation', at one stage. But I thought a political reps first loyalty was to the electorate, not the Murdoch press. Since when did they get the idea that THEY run this country, rather than the people and their elected representatives? Brogden had better things to do than participate in his own lynching by 'hanging judges' Milne and Penberthy?

Murdoch's need to learn quickly the difference between 'public interest' and 'smear campaign', although the problem is more probably that they already do.

Much more edifying after all that other sordid mess was Kingstons' worthwhile and constructive exchange with David Eastwood. Good to see some still have the 'conscience' to feel concerned.

Russell Darroch and Paul Walter thanks for your responses. I'm going to self-censor here. I'd dearly like to talk privatisation - especially in respect of Telstra, and now is indeed the time,BUT I don't want to derail an important thread on the media right now. Should the invisible hand of our editor and/or other corresponcents launch such a thread,I'll be there. But, I couldn't resist a parting shot or two:

Paul I don't unequivocaly preference privatisation, I see it as a case by case issue. It is well true to say that my preference is based on a view of the inability of the public service to deiver, but I'd not call that cynical. There's plenty of evidence around to support that point. I believe privatisation is the least worst option, I believe that it can be made to work, even if past efforts have been patchy. We learn from our mistakes.

Russell, I'd never say that our iconic organisations or public services are bereft of well intentioned, honourable and competent people. But, if levels of accountability and control in the public sector aren't generally shocking, how has the serial failure of DIMIA to act appropriately, legally and humanely over the last few years come to pass at a time when their entire brief and operation has been under intense public and media scrutiny since Hansons's 1996 brain fart? Ah, but that's only one department, you say. True. Two words: "Children Overboard"

David Eastwood, you are starting to worry me. Remember, you perceptively quoted the comments of Alan Oster, regarding Telstra: " By engineering significant changes in public perceptions, policy makers can set in place...powerful expectational effects". (Actually writing this reminds the writer of the excellent 7.30 Report coverage a night or two ago on Telstra; no links, it's at the ABC site).

Margo appropriately responded, mentioning the attempts of previous generations to build up infrastructure in common, then asking: " When did the powerful, those who's job it is to invest prudently for our children's future, decide to forget their duty to us all?".

Now obviously, since the thread is devoted to the likes of Milne etc, readers will know that the debate has now spread to social engineering by press and media to other issues recently, like privatisation; "privatisation of wealth/ socialisation of debt", that suspends high in the neo-liberal firmament of misappropriation and subjugation.

Yet I have the feeling, David, you are still preferencing privatisation, despite its change of orientation from public service use value, to exploitative, shareholder- oriented exchange value, whilst those who paid for the service are disenfranchised?

Isn't the notion that governments run bodies are somehow less "efficient" really just propaganda, of the type you seem to be identifying, in your correspondences with Margo and Russell Darroch?

Haven't public corporations provided services for the Australian taxpayers, as FIRST priority to those who payed for Telstra over generations as workers and families? Organisations like Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank providing a healthy, safe and secure work environment that contributed by example to the wider social wage, ethic and conditions, whilst also providing a handsome dividend for the public infrastructure purse. The ending of public investment and the weakening of government and community influence through elements like setting examples in service, efficiency and employee fair treatment, is a disastrous ideologically-driven "governance" policy with dire results for many innocent people and just continues the valorising an avaricious ethic; it is a neo lib propaganda furphy and "efficiency" has nothing to do with it.

But where then is the alternative of an example of an ethical lifestyle, well-lived. A rich person can't BUY a clear conscience, but lack of media diversity means many are so brainwashed they thing they HAVE to be animals, just to survive, exacerbating the Hobbesian mess even further.

It has just a matter of greedy parasites dreaming up scaremongering fear tactics to scare people about the bogey of "big government", so as produce conditions conducive to the laying of hands on public assets and the subsequent asset stripping the community. We are coincidentally and deliberately weakened and left further vulnerable to vested interests represented by the likes of Howard, Packer and Murdoch; curmudgeons who don't want to share ANYTHING, and would steal grain from a blind fowl.

David I'm not one of the one's saying the old Telstra was rosy; it wasn't. When I arrived in 1971 it took weeks to get a phone - the only reason I got one in less than 6 months (yes!) was because I was "Dr Darroch" and needed it for work reasons. In the US I had moved several times and Ma Bell had always had a phone in within a day. Big difference.

In those same early days I heard many complaints about PMG billing errors, abuses by staff of overseas phone links, so, yes, there were issues. Your story does not surprise me one bit.

My beef is with the outlandish idea that any privately run company is going to do the right thing by national infrastructure in this particular country (large land mass, sparse population, vast distances). They won't, can't; priorities are wrong (private company = shareholders), profit motive. [And my take on ill-informed shareholders and the utter madness of the modern “market” shouldn’t take up space here…but it is another serious issue that distorts many things.]

Personally I believe the two roles should be separated. There should be a Department of National Infrastructure and it should be fiercely independent. As one of the ex Army Corps of Engineers said in an interview about New Orleans - we build national infrastructure for our children and their children, it takes time; here we've been running down the national infrastructure (rail, air, water, natural resources (forests, land quality) in huge ways that will take generations to fix - and a lot of money.

Telstra is just an indicator of wrong priorities, the myth of the "private company" - remember Enron? - there are no guarantees that private companies behave particularly ethically at all. The regulatory bodies have to have real teeth and real determination to even begin to do it right; the ACCC (several friends have worked there) has been hampered by limited resources and variable leadership. While I agree that it is doing better these days than previously there is a long way to go and the same goes for ASIC. Both are far too cosy with Big Business and far too limited in their effect/reach/determination. I view of a lot of their "successes" as pretty token...many of the real villains go Scot free as they destroy our local industries, manufacturing, rural, service and otherwise.

By all means (given the mess that has been created) sell off the retail business of Telstra and see how it goes in the open market (so called) but the national infrastructure should not be in private hands.

I appreciate your cynical view of a public service run business but frankly, I actually think (IF there is the political will) it is easier to make it accountable; private companies run under the illusion of public scrutiny but if you look at the James Hardie case there isn't a lot of clout to make them behave, and they are an extreme case which is not yet finished...and it has taken years and years and years while many have died. The side effects of Telstra are less extreme but they are there (remember the messed up 000 calls due to consolidation of the call centres? people in the bush without phones for sick children? Every so often another story raises its head but what doesn't hit the paper is the routine stuff - the indigenous communities without working phones (despite a DCITA program I worked on there are still many issues there alone) – people who die because of it. I've written elsewhere in WD about Telstra and the bush.

My take on our personal experience is that if the regulators can't deal with relatively clear cut cases of abuse of power, market or otherwise, they are unlikely to manage the really big ones.

It will be extremely interesting to see how ASIC and the ACCC behave the next week or so in getting to the bottom of the failure to disclose information properly. Already the PM is saying it was OK (how predictable, he never ever does the wrong thing!); it wasn't - as others have said already today, the government was not entitled to a private briefing about the state of Telstra. That should not have happened but the fact is it did and now we have to cross our fingers that the regulatory agencies will take them all to task and exert the appropriate penalties. I'm betting you a Club Chaos good red that they fail miserably at that task!

Rubens One of the things really gets me about the Brogden affair is that the real stories of Liberal party factions (at all levels) remain unreported (mostly) and allowed to remain behind closed doors.

Such lack of exposure continues to encourage the electorate to think things are "OK". Abbott remains a minister, Howard remains a PM who allows an Abbott to remain a minister (utterly disgusting, he should have sacked Abbott on the spot), and on the fiasco goes. A toothless Senate, a toothless House, a gutless Liberal Party and a toothless mainstream media - wow, what a great scenario.

As for Australians not kicking people when they are down... I'd like to think that is the case for ordinary Australians but the pollies have individually and collectively kicked an awful lot of people when they are down (figuratively and literally) the last 10 years and no one says BOO in any way that has much impact. They do it every day from their lofty, moralistic nonsense they spout in federal and state parliaments.

Spare me the nostalgia; if we were tougher on the pollies ALL the time they might have more respect for the populace they are *supposed* to represent and which they routinely fail.

David I agree that we should keep the focus of this thread on the Brogden issue. My very short response on the DIMIA mess is that the direction for that came "from the top". There is absolutely no doubt about that in the "street talk" in Canberra the past several years. None.

Paul , a lot of ordinary decent criminals own shares in Telstra. 2 million Australians bought shares in '97 and 1.8 million in '98. (Redmond, Companies & Securities Law, p67) I think Howard's startled chook response to Sol Trujillo's comments are because he wants to keep middle class speculators off-side. I've long been more scared of the people than I have of the government; Howard is just Caliban's face in the mirror and all that jazz.

Russell Darroch, you talk about about the goings on that may or may not be happening within the Libs not being reported, thereby making us in effect ignorant voters. I just wonder if the other side might not resemble something out of The Sopranos as well.

We are captives of the information we are able to source or is presented to us. Our duty is to source and sift as much as possible from as many outlets as possible , then read not what they say, but betwen the lines.

We should encourage the likes of Margo to succeed and we should let it be known that scribes like Paul Mcgeogh at The Herald get more space, (in my opinion. I hope I got his spelling right).

If those of us that vote do so in ignorance, then we get just what we have, disdainful politicians as a whole.

Solomon Wakeling, Howard's performance on 7.30 Report was abysmal. Kerry O'Brien was in cracking form despite that bizarre loss of transmission.

I think they should go to town on Howard and the government over this. The Prime Minister of this country is telling the CEO of a company, that Howard is the majority shareholder in, to LIE to mug mums and dads, so that Howard (as that largest shareholder) can get as rich as possible.

Disgusting.

Rubens, that is the argument I've been pushing for a long time about media diversity. It's becoming out-dated; There is plenty of media now and it is only going to increase. The point is to hold people to account for their failure to access different sources or to look at it critically. Individual responsibility, even.

Note to editor: Can you change "Off-side" to "On-side" in my last post? I often write sentences in two or three different forms before posting and sometimes I end up posting a frankenstein sentence, meaning the precise opposite of what I meant it to. Cheers.

ed Kerri: Hi Solomon, your published correction above should be adequate.

Thank you to David and others who have responded to my queries.
Therefore, I hope Webdiary folk got to watch the interview between Kerry O'Brien and a distinctly uncomfortable-looking PM on tonight's 7:30 Report. Personally, that piece has this writer utterly stunned as to what appear to be the implications thus arising!

John Howard was on 7.30 Report tonight.

"KERRY O'BRIEN: Prime Minister, No-one has been more passionately committed on the sale of Telstra than you have. Is it possible that your desire to sell has affected your judgment?

JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: No, it isn't, Kerry. If anything, what you've just seen and what we've seen over the last 48 hours reinforces the impossible situation that we now have where the government is simultaneously the majority shareholder and also the regulator and we really do have a ridiculous conflict of interests. You see, the government may have 51 per cent of the shares, but we don't run the company. Nobody from the Government sits on the board. Decisions about dividends are made by the company and the share price is a product of a number of factors, including of course the increased competition and I was interested that one of the commentators there made the point that Telstra's complaint that some of the profit downgrade was due to overburdensome regulation was not accurate. There are a number of reasons why a company would downgrade its profit and it's not for me to justify or, indeed, condemn what Telstra has done because the management runs the company. The Government doesn't. We don't want to be in this ridiculous situation where we don't control the company in an operational sense, yet if something goes wrong, because it's 51 per cent owned by the Government, the Government is held to account by its political opponents and by some others.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But Mr Howard, this is a situation entirely of your own making. This situation applies now because you decided to sell a third of the else tell, you then decided to sell another 16 per cent of Telstra. You've put the Government into this position where, as you say, it is conflicted and now you're using that as your main justification for selling the rest of Telstra.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, the justification for privatising Telstra is based on a number of things, including the conflict of interest. Another reason...

KERRY O'BRIEN: But it's a conflict of interest that you set up.

JOHN HOWARD: Yes. Kerry, I understand that. But, the reality is that even if we had been - if we had remained a 100 per cent shareholder, we still would have in the name of competition been regulating both ourselves as the 100 per cent shareholder and also the other competitive rivals of Telstra. It's the sort of argument you've just about advanced would be fair enough if Telstra had no competitors. But thankfully Telstra does have competitors and because Telstra has competitors, we now have some of the cheapest mobile phone situations anywhere in the world and we have enormous additional benefits for customers - additional benefits to customers. So we can't go back to where we were...

KERRY O'BRIEN: You are suggesting it's not possible for a government to set up a competitive environment while it's running a private company. You said today that you've never been in favour of government-run enterprises yet you own and run the Australian Post Office, which you also regulate, an institution which does seem to be competitive on a number of fronts and very efficient. Why is there there no conflict with the Government on the Post Office?

JOHN HOWARD: Kerry, I think both the size and the scale of the business and the nature of the competition in the market is entirely different in relation to postal services, entirely different.

KERRY O'BRIEN: If posting letters around Australia is a vital public infrastructure underwritten and run primarily by the government but with competitive forces, why isn't the telephone call?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, Kerry, the telephone call is a very, very important community service, but the size and the scale of the business and the experience of telcos and their international operation and reach makes the whole comparisons of an entirely different order. I don't think it's a valid comparison. I really don't.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Okay. You would have us believe, or you certainly would have up until this news has broken that Telstra was in great shape, yet Telstra's new boss Sol Trujillo has now revealed there's faults on 14% of Australian phone lines and the previous Telstra management underinvested in critical infrastructure and there have been millions and millions of complaints, that he isn't confident he can even maintain the value of Telstra's shares, let alone increase it and he's downgraded profit forecasts. Perhaps some would say, no wonder you want to sell it.

JOHN HOWARD: Kerry, our commitment to sale well proceeded Mr Trujillo, but the question of whether information about the company should be made available, that is an obligation on the company and they have to make that information available to the Stock Exchange. I'm not going to comment on what Mr Trujillo told me on August 11...

KERRY O'BRIEN: But he's made that - that's now a public document, Mr Howard, so we can talk about it.

JOHN HOWARD: Kerry, my obligation is to obey the law...

KERRY O'BRIEN: It's a public document, Mr Howard.

JOHN HOWARD: I'm sorry, my obligation is to obey the law and the law says that information give on the me and given to the government as the principal shareholder can't be disclosed to outsiders. If Mr Trujillo has decided to make something public, that's his decision. Can I just make the point...

KERRY O'BRIEN: Because it's a public document, surely you can talk about it?

JOHN HOWARD: No, no. I'm not going to talk in a situation where I could be in breach of the law. We were given certain information and that information should not be disclosed by the government because the law says it can't be disclosed. The obligation of disclosure to the public - and this is fundamental to this whole debate - is the obligation on the company and the company has to disclose information to the Stock Exchange...

Well, belatedly or otherwise they've now done that. You sent a very clear message...

Well, Kerry. Hang on. Hang on. Kerry, that's something for ASIC, which is investigating to decide."

There's more.

I like the sudden concern for the law.

David Eastwood. This may not be the thread for it however I understand the point you are trying to make about Telstra....

ed Kerri: Hi Jay, I have moved and published this comment in its entirity in the Telstra thread.

Margo, my question re the Brogden events is this: Isn't this kind of chronic infighting the necessary result of a sclerotic two-party system?

Because, small groups, in medium-term possession of power, end up treating their turf as precisely such, uniting over (internal) ‘common good’ issues, and internally-feuding (increasingly and viciously) over the spoils, see Mancur Olson, hardly a left-wing source.

That is, to my mind at least, an accurate portrayal of both' sides of mainstream politics today, so expect worse (and worse) branch-stackings, and so forth, as the rot spreads. Election funding defines Thomas Ferguson's "Golden Rule" (University of Chicago Press: 1995) but, it certainly doesn't forestall fights for spoils, both within & between a far-too-stable pair of social organizations - read Liberal and Labor - who have been able to marginalize, co-opt, or otherwise exclude competitors for such a long period, that the result is an essentially (bi-stable) duopoly.

Joke is that any competent economist - particularly on the neo-liberal right, funnily enough - could predict what such a stable duopoly will result in. And, as I said earlier, Olson (being one of the fathers of rational choice modelling) is hardly any kind of left wing figure. Because (quite simply), such a duopoly is basically equivalent to one huge monopoly.

So, internal feuding to accelerate, particularly at the very top levels - read between and within the core two parties in this competition - and defence of external boundaries as such to work in an increasingly strategic fashion, ie a whole raft of fundamental questions basically vanish.

Put Ferguson and basic economic orthodoxy together (and I do mean orthodoxy) and we can definitely expect worse - probably asap - or, should I (instead) mention the Whigs in the USA, or the UAP in Australia. Because both (ruling) parties died of pure politics and in a remarkably similar fashion, too.

"Independent media has a crucial responsibility to go to where the silence is," says Amy Goodman, "to represent the diverse voices of people engaged in dissent."

She makes a compelling argument that the commercial news media have failed to represent the "true face of war."

Can’t the same be said for our complacent / compliant outfits in Oz?

Independent Media In A Time Of War

It's true that O'Brien was in cracking form, it's true the Prime Minister did badly, after all he's been caught in a "Memphis Trouser Moment". But, content aside, let's talk about the media angle. Is O'Brien's opening question not inflammatory, and doesn't it paint an immediate picture of bias?

Noelene, most of the Mum and Dad shareholders acquired their shares, post-Howard. My assessment is that they are Howard-voters and they want him to talk up the shares. He is the source of their prosperity and they are dependent upon him to top up payments for their mortgage and their kids. Why would they care what the state of the company "really" is? Their lives are based upon a pretence anyway. They want it sold so that it can go and become a profit-making machine. They're great "savers" anyway, so they would use the phone sparingly and not care about drops in services for them personally. Prolly don't even like telephones, the bastards.

Solomon, do you live in a bubble somewhere out past Jupiter?

Lots of those so-called "Mum and Dad" shareholders might have been Howard voters when they purchased their T1 shares at over $7 and their T2 shares at over $5, but they might not vote for him again now that they realise they have been right-royally duped!

As for them wanting him to talk up the value of the company, I think they much would have preferred to have known the real state of affairs within Telstra because then they wouldn't have touched the shares with a barge pole. They wouldn't have recommended them to their mothers.

I have always contended that 'Honest' John has been able to get away with bullshitting to the electorate for so long because it really didn't affect the punters he relied on so heavily, particularly in an economic sense. Most of them just didn't care about kiddies floating in the water or invading a country they knew little about on the other side of the world. He knew that people like me who KNEW he was lying wouldn't vote for him in a pink fit anyway.

But this latest set of porkies might undo all of that because 'Howard's battlers' look like they are going to lose big time.

Solomon Wakeling, oh dear hun! Drop Communications and get ye to a Commerce/Law degree toute suite, as the divine Kath Day would opine. :) Share prices don’t just go up and up because people lie.

One day, there’ll be no cash in the petty cash tin to give Beryl and Bruce of Blacktown their quarterly spree on the pokies. Even their last pokie orgy was funded out of Telstra’s Reserves.

Now, I’m no Malleson’s partner, but that sounds mighty illegal to me. On that day all the Cheryls and Waynes, Mr and Mrs Trailer Park, as well as the fund managers will go “eeeeekkkk” ring their brokers at once and scream SELL!

Sol and the three Omigos should be given Orders of Australia, while the electorate should be giving Coonan and Howard one way tickets to flogging Leggo’s tomato paste and be hauled in front of ASIC and Supreme Court judges! I regard the performances of Coonan and Howard to be so egregious that I cannot understand why they have not been handcuffed yet.

As for 'made their money': Telstra was floated in November 1998, and its share price peaked at a 40% premium a little over 12 months later in December, 1999. Since then its trend has been overwhelmingly south. By October 2000, the share price was back to its float price and it has never recovered. In fact since that time not only has Telstra underperformed the market as a whole, but that gap has been ever-widening. In fact, at the moment, the market as a whole is performing as much as 100% better than Telstra! This is NOT good news for Mr. and Mrs. Sizzler.

Steve Turbitt, spot on. I get a strong wiff of what is spooking Howard, and why he is now hoping the spooks will rescue him with the new project for a safer Australia, aka, "laws against thinking bad thoughts and forgetting your luggage".

The fact is that no one believes that JWH is honest or doesn't tell porkies. It is just that the ALP is hopeless (and was particularly hopeless last election), and because high house prices for those that own their houses feels good, and low interest rates for those that don't are very important when you are in debt up to your eye balls. Howard knows this. The people that voted for him know this. Each party to this transaction is clear eyed about it. He is one serious interest rate rise away from oblivion and he knows it.

His IR project is an absolute dog with the 'punters' as he calls the people who pay his considerable expenses, and he knows that too. He knows that if people think he has stuffed their shares around in order to make sure he has more money to bribe them in the next election, they will be pitiless. JWH is no fool, unlike his more blinkered ideological supporters. He knows the 'project' is living on borrowed time. Higher petrol prices, the risk of inflation, with the accompanying risk of higher interest rates threatens the perfect economic storm. I reckon he will be out of Kirribilli House next year, and Costello will have what he wants, only Howard will have had the best of it, and Peter will just have to manage with more cuts to pay and conditions in order to ensure 'future productivity and prosperity' blah blah blah. Short term pain for long term gain, blah blah blah.

Only people are awake now. There are no illusions about whose friend Howard really is. None whatsoever. He and his supporters have made a fatal error. They have started to believe their own propaganda, just at the time when just about every body else is prepared to own up to the fact that they always thought he was a dishonest lying little p***k.

Since the most recent sequence of writers to this thread seem more than usually well-developed BS detectors, would love to know what they think of John Howards 'decision', announced on tonight's telly news, to 'guarantee' Barnaby Joyces '$20' fund for the bush. If he is as true to his word as he was to the T2 mums and dads, what do folk reckon certain people will be saying in a few years time in different parts of Australia?

Would YOU buy a T2 from this man?

That was just before hopping on the plane to America, just when he was looking forward to explaining himself to the Australian People.

On the same level was Coonan's nonsense about Telstra being ready for sale; this in the light of all the disclosures of last week. Either dinosaurian stupid, or a pathological liar of the same proportions.

To crown the Mad Hatter's Tea Party comes the news of the millionaire bosses of Telstra awarding themselves fat fee increases, for driving the Telstra share price down (not up!), into the gutter!

Yet the public swallows it?

Jane Doe, I concur. I think Howard is going to go within the next 12 months. He is determined to be the first since his hero, Ming to go at a time of his choosing. And he will only go when he thinks there is going to be a sea change in the electorate.

I suggested this to my Dad the other day, who agreed. I mention Dad, because his turn of phrase was, "yes, he's going to throw Peter a big lump of that concrete, and say there you go, Pete - catch!"

To which I added that once Pete has got the big lump of concrete in his hands, they will all fight over it like a pack of demented seagulls. You can already see signs of it unravelling within the NSW branch of the Tories.

Steve Turbitt, Jane Doe you two really are dreamers if you think that the little problems in the NSW Liberal Party are going to get Labor elected at a Federal level.

Steve Turbit, your dear old dad is also wrong, and you have obviously inherited his muddled thinking.

The facts are that Labor will not go to an election with Beazley and Macklin as leaders, these two are born losers and could not win a chook raffle.

Swan and Rudd have said they are not ready to carry the baton, and Gillard is certainly not ready for any responsibility.

That leaves Crean (another loser) and I would not put it past Labor to give him another chance.

From what I have heard about the Latham Diary, Labor will be in opposition for the next 12 years. They may even have to bring Latham back just to keep him quiet.