The Week That Was – February 9 to February 15

So, Griffith will remain in Labor hands after the by-election last week, despite a lower than expected voter turnout. Who can blame them though? People in that area have had to go and vote up to five times in the last three years.

Meanwhile, the Government has decided to hold a Royal Commission into construction union corruption after the ABC and Fairfax broke the story. Speaking of unions, Tony Abbott seems to like blaming them for problems. This week Toyota announced they would stop manufacturing cars in Australia by 2017. This means that there will be no more car manufacturing in Australia after 2017. He says that the unions are to blame because they were demanding about work conditions, despite the fact that Toyota’s isn’t blaming them at all.

Tony Abbott has also been using his “some businesses close, others open” and “some jobs finish and others begin” lines again. While that line wasn’t commented on in Australia, an Australian CNN journalist threw some excellent shade by commenting “No word yet on what those new jobs will be”. There are fears however, because if the number of new jobs created is less than the number of jobs lost, there could be a recession here in Australia, which we avoided thanks to Kevin Rudd’s Labor government in 2007.

SPC Ardmona has been thrown a $22 million lifeline by the Victorian Government in a deal with the parent company Coca Cola Amatil. They’ll upgrade the plant with the money and hopeful keep some workers there. I don’t know if the Victorian Government were always going to give some money anyway, but they had promised to match the $25 million that SPC asked the Federal Government for, had they helped. Another issue is Qantas, Australia’s national airline. They would also like some money and some ownership legislation change. They’re saying that because they are not Holden, and they mainly want a change in their foreign ownership guidelines, the government should really consider helping them, and that argument appears to have worked.

Moving on, the Close the Gap Report shows that while there have been some gains within the indigenous population, particularly in decreasing infant mortality and the rise in Year 12 attainment, there are still some major issues to deal with, such as life expectancy and unemployment. The national unemployment rate also rose this month, which was expected but there are disagreements over who or what is to blame.

On to international matters, the foreign minister Julie Bishop has been in Fiji with delegates from the Pacific Forum in the hopes that once free and fair elections are held in Fiji later this year, the nation can rejoin the forum. Bishop says that she hopes to increase to trade between Australia and Fiji. Of more concern however, is that when the Americans come to Indonesia in the next week, the Indonesian Foreign Minister has said he will be talking to them about Australia’s actions in Operation Sovereign Borders. Oh dear.

Tweet of the Week

Juanita Phillips, the weekday newsreader for ABC News NSW has got Twitter (and a new news set)

Rehearsing with @Jeznews in our swish new ABC 7pm news studio. Tune in for the big reveal on Monday night … pic.twitter.com/llkvQW5UWz

— Juanita Phillips (@Juanita_Phillip) February 12, 2014

Faux Pas of the Week

A lesson in paying attention in Federal Parliament.  Nickolas Varvaris, a Liberal MP, appeared to be asleep during a division of the house and he ended up voting with Labor, because no-one told him what had happened. Oops.

What I’ve been Reading/Watching/Listening

A Valentine’s themed Dumb Ways to Die message (see the original here)

The ABC Elections Site – with two (maybe three) state elections and multiple by-elections this year, not to mention some recent redistributions, you need to have a look.

The ABC Payroll

I prefer to get my news from the ABC. Before you start yelling “latte-sipping leftie”, it has nothing to do with my political persuasion, which is none of your business anyway. I watch it because it isn’t full of sensationalist crap about how people are going to be murdered in their beds – that may be a bit extreme, but bear with me.

You see, somehow the salaries of the ABC got leaked to the Australian – who wrote this. It outlines who is paid the most at the ABC, with the highest-paid journalist being Tony Jones, who hosts Q&A. You can read it yourself and see who is paid what. The comments are pretty awful too, calling for the ABC to be privatised. Most media outlets don’t have to show what each specific employee is paid, except for the executives – which the ABC (a Government Business Enterprise or GBE) does, as well as all of the others.

Mark Scott has previously said that they don’t disclose specific salaries because the ABC is a public broadcaster and can’t match the commercial networks – this is true. Unlike the commercial networks, the ABC does not have advertising, and therefore lives off the $1 billion the government gives it – it may sound like a lot, but it has to pay for both news and entertainment production. It makes some extra off the ABC Shop, but as it says on the website: “All profits from the ABC Shop are reinvested into the ABC for program making”.

Let me put some of this into perspective. When Mark Scott said “Today, most private sector media executives looking down that list will not believe the salary rates of the ABC compared to what’s paid in commercial radio and television-land,” on Melbourne’s ABC Radio 774, he meant it.

https://soundcloud.com/774-abc-melbourne/jon-faine-with-mark-scott-on

Take the nightly news for example, Juanita Phillips, the anchor of ABC News NSW earns around $315,000 a year (2011-12) according to the Australian’s piece, while Chris Bath, who hosts 7 News Sydney, earns about $900,000 – at least that’s what news.com.au said. 

Again, using the Australian and news.com.au, I’ll compare the female co-anchors of the breakfast shows. Virginia Trioli, of ABC News Breakfast is paid about $285,000, on Channel 7, Mel Doyle was reportedly being paid about $700,000 while on Sunrise and Lisa Wilkinson is reportedly being paid about $600,000 – but that is rumoured to go up considering the ratings of the Today Show.

Mark Scott also said on Melbourne radio that he was “concerned that this gives people like David Gyngell a list, a target, and it hurts the ABC’s ability to attract and retain talent“. I’m not surprised that he is concerned – now that they know how much Leigh Sales, Juanita Phillips or Mark Colvin earn yearly, if Channel 7 or 9 wanted to lure them, they could offer them quite a lot and they might decide to go. I hope they don’t and that they like their jobs enough to stay on the ABC.

The Australian also made some comments that, if you knew anything about the ABC, would make complete sense. They’ve started a conspiracy simply by saying, “More than $214m of the $453m national wage bill is spent at Ultimo in inner Sydney“. I hate to break it to the conspiracy theorists, but the ABC is headquartered in Sydney. It is where most national current affairs TV and radio programs are produced and presented, and where many heads of department have their offices.

It annoys me that the Australian has done this because contrary to what it believes, it isn’t in the public interest. It’s not really appropriate to ask someone their wage, and even less so to publish it so everyone else knows. General politeness lectures aside, the Australian shouldn’t have done it, even though they dislike the ABC.