Category: Media

ABC’s Ali Moore – making up the numbers

Posted by Chief Blogger – 30 November, 2011

Ali Moore tried to ping Andrew Robb last night:

ALI MOORE: Joe Hockey said 12,000 public servants redundant in the first two years.

ANDREW ROBB: That’s the first two years, if you don’t replace anybody. This is a much higher efficiency dividend than we were looking at, and yet they were criticising our efficiency dividend and said that it would and must imply public service cuts. Well, of course now Penny Wong and Wayne Swan say that no, that’s not necessary, even though two thirds or three quarters of the bills in all of these departments are in fact wages.

ALI MOORE: But how does your policy of 12,000 public servants to be made redundant voluntarily – you’re saying no forced redundancy in the first two years – yet you’ve also got a policy that says you will scrap the Department of Climate Change. I understand that includes something like 15,000 people?

ANDREW ROBB: We’re yet to detail all of this. We will show what our cuts will be. The 12,000 was from last time, we said we will repeat that. But in the main we will wait to see… we’ve still got possibly two budgets, and if you base it on this MYEFO. I mean, this MYEFO has blown out in the space of five months by $15 billion. The debt has gone up $26 billion.

ALI MOORE: Can you confirm the decision to scrap the Department of Climate Change. Are you saying on top of your 12,000 you will now be adding more?

ANDREW ROBB: We have said we will get rid of the Department of Climate Change, and those functions will be, in a modified version, part of the Department of Environment. So that is a decision we have announced.

Try 821 people, according to the Annual Report page 119.

ABC’s disgusting coverage of Obama’s visit

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 November, 2011

A quick summary of the ABC’s coverage of President Obama’s visit:

1. None of the Republican presidential candidates look presidential.

2. Obama will be re-elected in 2012.

3. 60 per cent of Obama’s election commitments have been honoured, and that is a good thing (so much for thr 40 per cent).

4. President G.W. Bush ignored Asia (even though he visited Australia twice).

‘Guns are back’

Posted by Chief Blogger – 12 November, 2011

This is meant to be a problem, apparently:

Last financial year alone Australians imported more than 85,000 firearms, including 44,000 rifles, 12,000 shotguns and nearly 20,000 handguns, and research by Radio National’s Background Briefing program has revealed a resurging interest in guns and hunting….The national police information service CrimTrac does have a national database, and it lists 4.3 million registered firearms. A CrimTrac spokesperson says it has no control over the data and was unable to say anything else about those 4.3 million guns.

Let’s look at this ABC story in detail. The first paragraph in the story speaks volumes of the ABC’s agenda:

More than a decade after the horrific Port Arthur Massacre, gun ownership is on the rise in Australia, but experts say this resurgence is highlighting serious problems with the current regulation and registration system.

Notice how the ABC automatically links registered gun ownership with a massacre. Where’s the balance?

Gun control advocate Rebecca Peters says gun control groups are worried a resurgence of guns means a return to a pre-1996 gun culture.

“It’s possible that gun ownership is becoming cool again,” she said.

“It’s possible that the interest in guns is rising. I don’t think that’s a good thing, because in general it’s a kind of a pastime which is more associated with Australia’s past than with the modern Australia.”

Interesting how self appointed special interest groups get to determine what constitutes ‘modern Australia’. But this is the damning detail which is left for the end of the story. Despite gun ownership increasing:

For the past 15 years, gun homicide rates have been falling…

Oh…..so the murder rate has actually gone down while gun ownership has gone up, but at the beginning of the story would got an ear full of gun-massacre.

….but researchers fear because gun data is poorly kept and rarely shared, new crime trends involving guns are being missed.

Evidence? Are there gun related murders that are not being reported and recorded by the police? That makes no sense. Other factually challenged statements are throughout the ABC article as well.

It’s called avoiding a decision you don’t want to make

Posted by Chief Blogger – 8 November, 2011

Sky News probably won the tender for the Australia Network against the ABC. Senator Conroy managed to avoid awarding the contract to Sky News by cancelling the tender on the pretence that there had been too many leaks during the tender process. This allows the Australia Network contract to continue with the ABC. Convenient.

The Government last night announced it had cancelled the tender process because of significant leaks of confidential information to the media.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said leaks to the media meant a fair outcome could not be guaranteed and the Australian Federal Police had been called in to investigate.

But Sky says the cancellation is premature while the police inquiry is underway.

Like all previous AFP investigations into government leaks I am sure the AFP will find nothing and the issue will quietly go away.

The lynching of Tony Abbott by the MSM begins in earnest

Posted by Chief Blogger – 7 November, 2011

Economy in bad shape – blame Tony Abbott

Business confidence down – blame Tony Abbott

Budget facing a fiscal disaster – blame Tony Abbott

The Federal government loses control of Australia’s borders – blame Tony Abbott

Virtually every government programme a mess – blame Tony Abbott

Industrial strife increases – blame Tony Abbott

Rudd was the second worst PM of all time – blame Tony Abbott

Gillard is the worst PM of all time – blame Tony Abbott

The list goes on, but for the likes of Malcolm Farr there is only one answer, the opposition leader Tony Abbott.

TONY Abbott will be out of the country tomorrow when the carbon pricing measures he dedicated himself to blocking become law.

So what. How is that news to Farr? How is it news to anyone? Abbott’s position is clear on the tax and there is nothing he can do to stop the Senate passing it. It is just a snide attempt to portray Abbott as the one thing he really is and Gillard is not: genuine.

Why Top Gear Australia failed

Posted by Chief Blogger – 27 October, 2011

Apparently Top Gear Korea is really good. I don’t speak Korean, but based on the production quality of this recent YouTube video it looks awesome.

Which is my lead in to why Top Gear Australia failed twice and has now been cancelled by Channel 9 altogether. I give two reasons:

1. They treated their audience like idiots, and

2. The people that presented and produced the series were idiots.

It was as if the people that were involved with Top Gear Australia had never actually watched Top Gear UK. This would not be a problem if the people that scripted and produced Top Gear Australia:

1. Understood cars, and

2. Were original and creative.

Unfortunately none of this was the case. I guess we will just have to wait for the subtitled Top Gear Korea.

The Monthly (Anne Summers) magazine plagiarises Right Pulse

Posted by Chief Blogger – 5 October, 2011

This is what I wrote back on 10th June 2011 about Andrew Bolt:

I am becoming more convinced that Bolt is not a conservative, but more like a salesman looking to plug a gap in a market

And this is what I wrote back on 14th June 2011 about Andrew Bolt:

…he champions the conservative cause like an entrepreneur seeking to fill a gap in a market….It tends to suggest that AB merely goes where there is a market for opinion. Currently it is conservative opinion on a few national headline issues.

I had good rational well reasoned arguments for making the above claim. My posts were not part of some ‘loose with the truth’ smear campaign, but designed to discuss issues Bolt raised which seemed outside the conservative mainstream. This lead me to question if Bolt was a conservative at all. Some conservatives disagreed with me, however I have documented a number of examples which may change your mind.

Turn now to the left-wing Monthly magazine and their publication this month of an article about Bolt. This is from the Age newspaper interviewing the author of the article Anne Summers of what appears to be a smear campaign, nothing more or less, against Bolt.

ANDREW Bolt is an opportunist who saw a gap in the market for right-wing opinion in the Fox News style and set out to fill it, according to a profile in the latest issue of The Monthly magazine by Anne Summers.

Oh really? Wonder where that idea came from. It goes on:

”There was no shortage of people filling the left-hand side [of political opinion], I told him, but there was a shortage of people of the right. He responded by saying, ‘Yes, there is a shortage in that area, maybe I can fill that space.’

You decide.

UPDATE

Apparently the article has been removed/disowned by the magazine.

What was he thinking

Posted by Chief Blogger – 3 October, 2011

Feeling like some Monday night punishment so I have tuned into the ABC’s Muslim Q&A. Typical topics about the Middle East and Muslim supposed persecution and how bad democracy and the west is, etc…. News flash to the ABC: Australian’s don’t care about the Middle East!

Some real nutters on tonight. A Marxist that is making no sense and highly fidgety. Even Tony Jones is trying to shut him up. There is also a Muslim feminist – if there is such a thing – who thinks the Muslim Brotherhood are not all that bad. Work that out. Apparently there is also a Christian Brotherhood in the USA, which is worse than the Muslim Brotherhood. Who would have thought? And the reason Bush went to war in Iraq was because he received revelation from God to do so. Google says so. Economic growth is also bad. Would stasis be preferred? And it all comes back to Big Pharma. Evil, evil, evil.

In amongst this madness what is Greg Sheridan doing on the programme? This programme is nuts. Full of crazy conspiracy theories and whacked out commentary. The programme is a total indictment on how extreme and not-mainstream the ABC has become.

What’s happened to talk back radio?

Posted by Chief Blogger – 30 September, 2011

Ever since Gillard put a call through to the Australian newspaper about Glenn Milne’s column about Gillard’s shady past talk back radio has gone into retreat. Michael Smith was sacked from 2UE for even trying to discuss Gillard’s shady past. Instead we have been treated to interviews with left-wing lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, an attack by 2UE on Andrew Bolt over his legal case involving free speech and a bunch of lifestyle non-Gillard non-political topics and interviews. On 2GB it is just as bad. Alan Jones this week spent most of his time interviewing celebrities, with one interview with Bill Heffernan about the dangers of coal seam gas – an issue that Jones’ is overstating. Not a single interview or discussion about Federal politics or Gillard was conducted. In fact across the entire 2GB line up I am struggling to see any Federal politics being discussed at all

What is going on? Have those radio stations been intimidated into silence, or is this purely ratings driven?

Tony Abbott defamed by Julian Burnside

Posted by Chief Blogger – 30 September, 2011

‘Human Rights’ advocate and self-appointed elite Julian Burnside takes a a swipe at Abbott on Twitter.

So Burnside accuses Abbott of being ‘a massive hypocrite’ while at the same time accusing Abbott of being a paedophile. So much for Abbott’s human rights. Is that a stick in your eye, Julian? Get ready for silence from the ABC.