Gongs, McCrann and Oakles, ABC, Harold Mitchell

1. Donations for gongs – here's a pearler

By Stephen Mayne

One name that seemed a little out of place in the Howard Government's first division gong recipients – these 135 people who've received the Companion or the Order of Australia since March 1996 – was a certain Nick Paspaley.

BRW values the Paspaley family at about $400 million and Big Nick scored his AC on Australia Day 1999 "for service to business development and trade, to the Australian pearling industry and to the community".

A quick search of the AEC donation returns for Paspaley Pearls produced the following:

1998-99: $50,000 to the Liberals and nothing to Labor
1999-00: $10,000 to Liberals and nothing for Labor
2000-01: $85,000 to the Coalition and $15,000 for Labor
2001-02: $40,000 to the Coalition and $5,000 for Labor
2002-03: nothing for anyone
2003-04: $50,000 to the Liberals and nothing for Labor
2004-05: $30,000 to the Coalition and $40,000 to Labor

Hmmm, that's $265,000 to the Coalition and only $60,000 to Labor since 1998 – one of the most biased donation records of any Rich Lister.

A cheque for $50,000 was sent to the Liberals on September 23, 1998, which would have given reference writers enough time to start campaigning for Nick to be given the highest honour, ranking alongside the likes of Nelson Mandela, George Pell and Frank Lowy.

Having received the AC, Nick suddenly became less generous in 1999-00 when only $10,000 was handed over but then he was very supportive around the time of the Tampa election in 2001, giving $125,000 over the following two years.

Meanwhile, another subscriber has alerted us to the fine work of Voi Williams who joined the second division with an AO last week "for service to the arts through the support of cultural activities, particularly the 'Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields' festival, and to the community of Ballarat." Could this be the same Voi Williams who is the long-time Treasurer of the Liberal Party in Ballarat?

Keep all these tips coming to smayne@crikey.com.au because surely this is just the tip of the iceberg.



5. McCrann and Oakes – worlds apart on AWAs

By Stephen Mayne

Rupert Murdoch is visiting Australia for an "operational visit" and Nicole Kidman's wedding, so his loyal troops will be on edge for the next few days trying to impress the Sun King with their dedication to all that he believes in.

A senior journalist at The Australian told me last year that the paper has an editor for the people, Michael Stutchbury, and an editor-in-chief in Chris Mitchell who specifically shapes the paper to comply with Rupert's agenda. This might explain The Australian's feral attacks on Kim Beazley for vowing to abolish AWAs – something that News Ltd has embraced more than any other Australian company but still not disclosed in any of its coverage.

Andrew Bolt and Terry "His Master's Voice" McCrann joined the fray in the Herald Sun today and Rupert would have been mightily impressed with these lines from McCrann:

The resources industry is the goose that lays Australia's golden egg. Kim Beazley is prepared to slaughter it – mindlessly, cynically, and almost casually irresponsibly. Let there be absolutely no mistake. If Labor won the next election and if it delivered on its promise to abolish AWAs, it would seriously hurt every single current and future Australian.

McCrann went on to talk about "mass destruction of jobs", "devastating consequences" before asking the profound question: "Do we sincerely want to be the next Romania or Argentina?" We haven't had this sort of hyperbole since 2004 when McCrann declared News Corp's abandonment of Australia was "a great and exciting day for Rupert Murdoch and all the family" and "an important day for Australia, for all Australians".

It is complete bollocks to suggest IR has been the key to the resources boom when the world knows it is China-driven record commodity prices. Besides, under the current system, project costs in WA are now said to be the most expensive in the world having surpassed Siberia. Tradesmen are earning four times the award because we have the tightest labour market in living memory.

I'm in favour of further labour deregulation but a far more important issue in WA is the skills crisis and the need to alleviate spiralling costs by importing cheaper labour – something Beazley and his union string pullers are also opposing. Australia is also held back by policies that have delivered us the lowest workforce participation rates by women in the OECD, but that's another story.

Laurie Oakes delivers a completely different perspective in The Bulletin this week, pointing out that Beazley is on a winner, and even Alan Jones skewered Peter Costello when it came to the detail of how hundreds of thousands of Australians will finish up worse off under WorkChoices. Why can't McCrann just say that it's good for business, especially the multinationals which dominate our resources sector, to cut pay packets?



15. "Mindless" ABC continues to rate well

By Stephen Mayne, who did 20 shifts on 774 ABC Melbourne last year

Phillip Adams was at his vicious best in The Australian yesterday, spraying every right-winger he could name including Paddy, Imre, Ron Brunton, Janet Albrechtsen, Alan Jones, Stan Zemanek, Michael Kroger, Keith Windschuttle and Malcolm Turnbull. However, it was this sting in the tale which would have surprised his ABC colleagues:

Anyone watching ABC TV will find it groaning beneath the weight of waffle, of programming as culturally and ideologically confrontational as The Wiggles, with shows about canines, collecting and cooking, The New Inventors and The Einstein Factor and celeb interviews by Peter Thompson and Andrew Denton. Apart from some raspberry blowing from The Chaser team and the occasional grilling from Four Corners or Red Kerry, it is an ABC not Marxist but mindless.

Purists have long decried any mindless pursuit of ratings by Aunty but that has arguably been the approach at ABC local radio in recent years which now has rock stars like Red Symons and the man who used to do Steve Vizard's Friday shift on Tonight Live, Richard Stubbs, plying their stuff in Melbourne and comedians like Adam Spencer doing the breakfast shift in Sydney.

Here's a summary of how ABC local radio performed in the survey four figures released yesterday:

Sydney: up 0.2% overall to 3rd place with 8.4%. Virginia Trioli rose again from 7% to 7.4% and is within a 0.3% of John Laws who flat-lined on 7.7%. However, the biggest rise came from Adam Spencer in Breakfast who jumped from 8.8% to 10.3% although Adams would probably call him mindless.

Melbourne: up 0.2% overall to 11.3% but FoxFM took over second place. Like Sydney, the light entertainment of Red Symons at Breakfast led the way with a stable 14.3% return, although the more serious Jon Faine gained 0.4% to 12.3% in Mornings.

Brisbane: down 0.9% to 5th place overall with 8.1% thanks to weakness in Mornings, Afternoons and Evenings.

Perth: up 0.4% to 11% but still 4th overall. Losing Liam Bartlett from Mornings in March hasn't hurt as much as expected as the fill-ins gained 0.4% to 11%, drawing level with Bartlett on 6PR who dropped from 11.4% to 11%.

Adelaide: down 0.4% to 5th place overall with 10.8% and the major weakness came in the double-headed Morning shift ("jibberers", as Mark Latham memorably described Matthew Abraham and David Bevan) which lost 1.8 points to 9.9%.

Commercial rubbish is still beating the ABC comprehensively in most markets but these are still healthy figures for Aunty and the Adams claim does get one thinking about the consistency of the taxpayer-funded content.




16. Harold Mitchell's bullish internet outlook

By Stephen Mayne, who bought 630 Emitch shares at 81c this afternoon

Advertising behemoth Harold Mitchell has made the BRW Rich List by simultaneously remaining close to Australia's media moguls whilst convincing major advertisers he can screw the best deal out of his mates. In a global advertising buying environment populated by multinationals, the dominance of the independent and privately owned Mitchell & Partners in Australia is unique in the world.

This makes Harold's views on media ownership interesting, something that Alan Kohler cottoned onto in The Smage today after reading the Mitchell & Partners submission to the media laws review. Try these lines from Kohler for size:

Mitchell's key conclusion is that FTA TV and radio — especially TV — are under significant threat from new media and will have to find new revenue streams. His worst case forecast is for the three commercial networks to go from a pre-tax profit of $600 million this year to a loss of $600 million in 2014. "This would clearly be unsustainable and the commercial FTA television industry would be decimated," he says.

Mitchell's more likely model is: TV audiences continue to decline by 1.5% a year, reducing revenue growth from 6% to 4.5%. Pre-tax profit of the networks dips to $250 million in 2014. Still a bit decimated, I'd say.

In his introduction, Mitchell makes an interesting point about the impact of the internet on journalism: "There is little published in the traditional media that can't be found on the net. On the other hand, there are many news stories that can only be found on the net."

Read the full Mitchell & Partners submission for yourself here. Given that Harold has a big internet play running through his family's 36% owned Emitch, which is now capitalised at $151 million, it is not surprising that he is fully signed up to the internet revolution.

In fact the man who helps run Emitch, Stuart Simson, probably contributed significantly to the submission as he helped produce this excellent Productivity Commission report into broadcast media which was released literally as the dotcom bubble was bursting back in April 2000.
Sadly, the Howard Government chose to ignore most of the recommendations in order to keep the moguls happy, something it'll probably do again this time.

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