I had a piece in The Guardian a couple of days ago (it's over the fold) looking at the was the mainstream print and electronic media (mis)handled the debate over the decision to reduce tax concessions on earnings of superannuation balances in excess of $3m. The weight of argument was strongly on the government's side, and the media commentariat seemed to have conceded that. But the finance lobby has hit back with a series of utterly ludicrous arguments which have nonetheless been given headline treatment, not only by Murdoch but by Nine and the ABC. The main points are
It will be interesting to see how the MSM performs in covering the coming tussle between the Federal Labor government and the Senate crossbench over the final shape of the Safeguards Mechanism on greenhouse gas emissions. There have been some good pieces so far by Katharine Murphy and Adam Morton in the Guardian, and by Sean Kelly in the Nine papers, but there has also been a lot of predictable nonsense about the likelihood of the Senate negotiations being a re-run of what the MSM thinks happened (but in fact didn't happen) with the CPRS legislation in 2009.
I fear Paul is correct, that this "we agree with the detail but vociferously oppose because that's a more important part of our identity" stuff is only getting worse. Crazy Uncle Rupert is getting crankier every year too.
But like many, I oppose these changes because based on my super fund's estimates if I keep earning until I'm about 105 this will affect me too. Although the trouble with BAU projections like that is that on the one hand the WHO says we'll have 15B people in 2100, my super fund guesses I'll have 4.5M in my super account, and the IPCC says global temperatures will be ~5°C warmer and ClimateCodeRed guesses from that there'll only be ~1B people left alive. It's all very confusing.
It will be interesting to see how the MSM performs in covering the coming tussle between the Federal Labor government and the Senate crossbench over the final shape of the Safeguards Mechanism on greenhouse gas emissions. There have been some good pieces so far by Katharine Murphy and Adam Morton in the Guardian, and by Sean Kelly in the Nine papers, but there has also been a lot of predictable nonsense about the likelihood of the Senate negotiations being a re-run of what the MSM thinks happened (but in fact didn't happen) with the CPRS legislation in 2009.
I fear Paul is correct, that this "we agree with the detail but vociferously oppose because that's a more important part of our identity" stuff is only getting worse. Crazy Uncle Rupert is getting crankier every year too.
But like many, I oppose these changes because based on my super fund's estimates if I keep earning until I'm about 105 this will affect me too. Although the trouble with BAU projections like that is that on the one hand the WHO says we'll have 15B people in 2100, my super fund guesses I'll have 4.5M in my super account, and the IPCC says global temperatures will be ~5°C warmer and ClimateCodeRed guesses from that there'll only be ~1B people left alive. It's all very confusing.
Well argued John, but since when is socialism an extreme term?