May 05, 2004

VALUE

Alan Ramsey complains:

It costs taxpayers $250,000 a year, plus expenses, to employ David Flint as John Howard's chairman of the radio and television regulator, the Australian Broadcasting Authority. For this we get Professor Flint's many years of academic legal experience (he and Howard went through law school together), his loyalty to the Liberal Party, the continuing serial of David Marr's wondrous Media Watch revelations and now the detail of Flint's gushing correspondence with Alan Jones.

Hey, Alan; it costs taxpayers $1.2 million a year for David Marr’s wondrous 15-minutes-per-week Media Watch. For this we get ... David Marr.

Posted by Tim Blair at May 5, 2004 04:31 AM
Comments

Why is it that the left becomes decificit hawks only whenever money is spent on something they don't like? I mean, they'll pour billions into programs that don't work, but will suddenly become aware of the deficit only when gov't isn't doing something left-wing.

Jay

P.S. First to comment on a Tim Blair thread! Woo Hoo! For once in my life, dammit, I feel alive!

Posted by: Jay at May 5, 2004 at 06:15 AM

Why you gotta be posting all this stuff about Aussie people ... keep it relevant, Blair. ALL AMERICA ALL THE TIME.

Posted by: Bill from INDC Journal at May 5, 2004 at 09:45 AM

Flint is supposed to be leading a regulatory body independent of the government and the media.

If you can't see how wrong Flint's behaviour has been (irrespective of irrational left-wing attacks on him), then you're as biased and ideologically bent as the whingeing socialists.

An issue like this sorts the conservatives from the reactionary cheerleaders, and you've come out on the wrong side.

I still like your blog though, Tim.

Posted by: Adam at May 5, 2004 at 10:40 AM

Adam,

I am not aware that Tim has actually dfended Flint per se.

I assume that his point is whats good for the goose is good for the gander.

Posted by: nic at May 5, 2004 at 10:49 AM

comparing apples with oranges actually.

One is supposedly regulating the industry the other is a program on the ABC which should be NEVER headed by a journo.

Posted by: Homer Paxton at May 5, 2004 at 11:27 AM

I would propose that Media Watch at 1.2 mill, and Flint at .25 of a mill give me relatively equivalent entertainment value and insight into media machinations.

You've got two pompous figureheads, but as Adam suggests, one of them so disconnected from the values of fairness and accountability that he needs a reality check.

Posted by: chico o'farrill at May 5, 2004 at 11:38 AM

"One is supposedly regulating the industry the other is a program on the ABC which should be NEVER headed by a journo."--Homer Paxton


I think it should but isn't.

Posted by: Gary at May 5, 2004 at 12:04 PM

nic: You're right, but Tim's silence on Flint stands out.

Holding Flint to the same standard that Marr holds Phillip Adams doesn't make sense, it's also shooting fish in a barrell.

Allen Fels didn't let his friendship with Bill Kelty or his personal beliefs interfere with his job during the Waterfront dispute, Flint has let his friendship and personal beliefs interfere with his job, and devalued the status of the institution he leads in the process.

Flint has a serious job.
He hasn't taken it seriously.
Ergo, he should be sacked.

At least that's my point of view a a conservative who cares about institutuions, not a unthinking reactionary cheerleader.

Posted by: Adam at May 5, 2004 at 12:08 PM

And for $1.5m we get the 51% owned Government Telco lining the pockets of Jones & Laws.

Posted by: Anthony from Chippendale at May 5, 2004 at 12:23 PM

Bill, regarding this point you made:

"Why you gotta be posting all this stuff about Aussie people ... keep it relevant, Blair. ALL AMERICA ALL THE TIME."

Amen to that, brother!

TOTAL DOMINATION! USA! USA!

Posted by: Joe Geoghegan at May 5, 2004 at 12:37 PM

The Australian Broadcasting Authority is just one of way too many qangos and industry bodies breeding a complaint/victim mentality.

We also have the Australian Communications Authority, FACTS, ACTF, FARB, various ombudsfolk and any number of other bodies.

Sack the lot of 'em. And get rid of the scores of propaganda stations run by the ABC and SBS.

The thousands of public servants and pen pushers can then go and get jobs in the real world. Or not.

Posted by: ilibcc at May 5, 2004 at 01:56 PM

David Marr comes across as a pompous tool but I still appreciate the efforts of Media Watch. David Flint comes across as a massively pompous tool, and has damaged an important public instituion. (Can I also just say how irritating I find those voice actors they use to read items on Media Watch, especially when they read in unison to demonstrate plagiarism or something else...)

Posted by: bleh at May 5, 2004 at 02:45 PM

Bleh, dont you mean pompous fool?

I think you are the one being pompous in referring to the ABA as an important public institition. It's not. Apply this rule: if it didn't exist, would it be necessary to invent it? I think not. I'm with ilibcc: get rid of all these useless, time-serving, self-promoting, public-fund gobbling quangos, including the ABC and SBS. They are nothing but excrescences on the face of the body politic.

Posted by: freddyboy at May 5, 2004 at 03:47 PM

No, I liked tool better. No, policing of the media is important. And, no, I watch the ABC and SBS fairly regularly. What, you'd prefer to watch A Current Affair, 60 Minutes and My Restaurant Rules?

Posted by: bleh at May 5, 2004 at 04:38 PM

Bleh, I don't care what anyone watches - that's the whole point. We don't need a nanny institution telling us what we can and can't watch or listen to.

And if you are going to praise ABC and SBS programs, I'll ask, given the huge cost to the taxpayer, why can't we get better and more imaginative programs, instead of bland, boring PC crap and recycled overseas mediocrity. You only have to listen to some of the small community FM radio stations in Sydney to realise that it it possible to produce exciting, refreshing and stimulating broadcasting on the smell of an oilrag. Grey public institutions produce grey public broadcasting - Radio Centrelink.

And at least I'm not paying for 60 Minutes. I am for Fireflies.

Posted by: freddyboy at May 5, 2004 at 05:52 PM

Bleh, I don't care what anyone watches - that's the whole point. We don't need a nanny institution telling us what we can and can't watch or listen to.

But I never said I cared what you watch. And what exactly do you mean by "telling us what we can and can't watch or listen to"?

You also mention huge costs? To fund the ABC we pay anywhere between $17 and $100 a year, depending on where you get your statistics. I say complain and campaign all you like about the quality of the ABC and SBS's offerings, but don't advocate complete abolishment when the alternatives are much worse.

Posted by: bleh at May 5, 2004 at 06:11 PM

Well, but that's money you could have spent at McDonald's, thereby lining the pockets of an American corporation. A sad waste of your funny-looking Australian money that no doubt has colorful pictures of kangaroos and whatnot all over it.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at May 5, 2004 at 08:38 PM

Funding entertainment and state propaganda with the threat of jail should be an abomination to anyone with even a microgram of morality!

ABC & the BBC (coercion funded broadcasting) are some of the most abhorrent western institutions. It seems that statists (both left and right) love the idea of forcing others to pay for their views to be advertised.

The cost is irrelevant, it's just not morally right to mug people especially to pay for your own entertainment or propaganda. As it costs less to collect subscriptions than a license fee, you can see that it's really control freak paternalism at the root of their ideology.

Posted by: Rob Read at May 5, 2004 at 09:30 PM

Andrea, I wish we did have kangaroos on our money. Increasingly we have politically correct historic figures of doubtful value.

Expect Germaine Greer to appear on a $50 note soon, with maybe Patrick White on the back.

The five cent coin is nice. It has an echidna.

Posted by: ilibcc at May 5, 2004 at 09:39 PM

I just hope that if it is deemed that Flint is deemed to be a judicial figure in the classic sense, and if his behaviour is therefore deemed worthy of his resignation, that the behaviour of other controversial Australian jurists are also probed and reflected upon (and Australians here will know a couple of obvious names that fall into this category).

Janet was spot on in the Australian on this.

Posted by: alex at May 5, 2004 at 10:19 PM
...I wish we did have kangaroos on our money...

The 50 cent piece in front of me has a Kangaroo on it (along with an emu and a coat of arms).

Posted by: Jethro at May 6, 2004 at 10:39 AM

I read that as "an emu in a coat of arms," and got quite a strange vision.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at May 6, 2004 at 10:51 AM

The notes that I'm printing...oh, um, I mean holding have a horse on them and the words...

"There was movement at the station for the word had passed around, that the colt from Old Regret had got away"

Posted by: Jimi at May 7, 2004 at 05:28 PM