The REAL @turnbullmalcolm trashes OUR Fibre based #NBN …whilst investing his own money in foreign fibre based broadband #auspol

— Mark(@markjs1) March 15, 2013

There are two main issues I have.

Firstly, what Malcolm Turnbull does with his own money on his own time is really no one’s business other than Malcolm Turnbull’s – unless, of course, he’s making investments similar to those that were popular amongst NSW ALP members during the 1990s.  But even then, he’s currently not a government minister, so the rules are probably different for him.

Secondly, Malcolm Turnbull is a person who believes that a

free market can often provide a better level of service in a given area than a government monopoly.  If the government provides a base and a framework for private enterprise within, then free market competition will see a level of service delivered that is of a higher quality and lower price for consumers than what would be offered, compared to what could be achieved by a government monopoly attempting to do exactly the same thing.

Now, you may or may not believe with this line of thinking, however bearing that in mind, it is completely consistent with those beliefs for Mr Turnbull to be investing in a private enterprise that is providing fibre optic internet services directly to a premises.  It makes no differences to his complaints about the operations of NBN Co and the direction the ALP federal government has chosen to take the rollout of the National Broadband Network.

So, to summarise, criticising someone for holding true to their stated political ideology does not do anything to further your arguments against them.  In fact, it just makes you look like you’re the unhinged nutcase who is just looking for an argument and not interested in an informed debate about how the government should best go about serving the interests of the Australian population.

But what do I know? I’m just another random internet bloguer myself.

You can read their comments by following the link above. More importantly, my thoughts on the questions posed by my favourite local publication, are:

What priorities should guide a transport masterplan?

The general priority of a master plan is to strike balance between the existing needs of all the relevant stakeholders whilst at the same time providing a pragmatic plan for the future that can be evolved as time, circumstances and demand changes.

Specifically for the Lower Hunter/Newcastle, a transport master plan needs to consider where people live now, where they will live in the future, where they are likely to want to go and what the best way of getting them there is.

How can transport be provided for growing areas?

See previous paragraph. The biggest obstacle to clear, when it comes to transport planning like this, is working out how you can provide adequate yet cost-effective public transport to vast swathes of urban crawl.  For mine, some rethinking about how we live is key to working out a more sustainable public transport solution.

How can public transport use be encouraged?

By making services regular, accessible and having it take me to places I actually want to go within a reasonable amount of time.

How can transport be improved to the airport, the port and major centres?

There is a valid argument to providing some sort of rail service to Newcastle Airport, however the viability of such a scheme would likely hinge on an expansion of civilian operations, which is unlikely in the current joint partnership with RAAF Williamtown as they are apparently looking to expand air force operations at the site and don’t really want to share anyway. The best solution, for the immediate future, would be a better road and improved bus services from the airport into Newcastle.

For the major centres (Charlestown, Glendale, Kotara), more frequent bus services running shorter, local routes directly to these areas would help. Any talk of light rail or trams is a complete waste of time.

Until the future of the Port of Newcastle is determined (e.g., construction of a permanent, international cruise terminal), there is really not a lot to talk about there.

How can quality transport be maintained to the Newcastle CBD?

By actually working out who goes into the CBD, why they go there and where they come from. Constantly having this question involve only discussion about a certain 2km of railway is, as I have previously and on numerous occasions in other forums, completely missing the point.

How can walking and cycling be promoted?

Refer to previous points about urban sprawl. If everything is too far away to make walking, riding practical then it is simply not going happen.

You can, however, combine more effective public transport (refer all previous questions) and combine this with facilities at outlying hubs to store bicycles, if that’s what you want

to do.  For example, if you live at Morpeth you can ride your bike into Maitland, store it at the station before catching a train into your job in Newcastle.

In short, what you need to solve the “issue” of transport in Newcastle is to first get over the bloody rail line. It’s not the important bit and, secondly, be a bit more pragmatic in your approach and think a bit more critically about what “Newcastle” actually means. A solution can be found that is both effective and practical. All you need to do is be a bit less blinkered in your thinking.

This year, however, I get the feeling that things in the Division of Shortland may be a little different.  For the September election the Liberal Party is fielding a candidate that may actually stand a chance. Standing for them is former NBN (the television station, not the broadband network) newsreader turned marketing company owner, John Church.

This is the second NBN newsreader turned marking person to go into the politics.  The first was one term wonder Jody McKay who ran for the ALP in the state seat of Newcastle in 2007 before being ousted in the Great Labor Rout that was the 2011 election.  Is this a trend? I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing Ray Dinneen giving it a shot, if only for the amazing levels of entertainment such a campaign would provide.

Anyway, yesterday I received the first piece of election propaganda from Mr Church’s campaign and decided that instead of just lobbing it straight into the recycling bin, I might give it a look as it outlines what Mr Church alleges he will do for the Division of Shortland should he be elected on September 14.

According to Mr Church’s propaganda, there are four main points to his campaign that will deliver “real solutions for Shortland”.

The first is “our [the Liberal’s] plan to reduce your cost of living”.  Under this Mr Church says that he will “stop Labor’s new taxes that will drive up prices even further”. That’s awesome John, but what taxes? The carbon price isn’t a tax (it’s just not) and the Mining Resources Rent Tax isn’t sending the mining companies broke. So I’m struggling to see what you mean by this.

Mr Church also promises to “end government waste and reckless spending”, something that no government – ever- has ever followed through on; “reduce our national debt”, because I assume all members of the electorate in Shortland are being kept awake at night by our nation’s bugger-all-percentage-of-GDP debt; and “take the pressure off interest rates”, even though at 3 per cent there

isn’t a lot of room to lower the rate any further.

We’re then promised a “genuine paid parental leave scheme” and that he will “restore the private health rebate…to keep costs of health care down”, even though Mr Church has just promised us a reduction in government revenue.  I am not an economist, but that seems like a collection of ideas that won’t end particularly well for the Budget’s bottom line.

As an aside, the private health rebate will be introduced “as soon as we practically can” which means, surprise, they won’t.

The final point under Mr Church’s “plan to reduce your cost of living” is to order a “Productivity Commission review to make child care more accessible, flexible and affordable”.  A review that will produce a report that will be discussed and debated and not really dealt with until at least a second term of a Liberal government. Way to tackle that issue head on.

Second main point on Mr Church’s list is the always-vague promise to make “a stronger local economy”, which he says he can accomplish by “getting government out of the way, reducing regulation and removing barriers to employing staff”. That’s mostly meaningless except for the last point.  The barriers he’s talking about are the ones where a business is required to pay an employee a wage that is above subsistence.  Having to pay minimum wage is such a burden.

Mr Church’s third main point is an election favourite – “making our community safer”.  Not an election goes by where Laura Norder* gets dragged out as a sweet, delicious carrot for the voters.  The more humorous aspect of this point is that not two days earlier, I received a newsletter from the local community group with a section written by a member of the local constabulary that stated crime in my suburb was basically non-existent.  So I can only assume that Mr Church will have to first introduce crime into my area so he can then reduce it. I look forward to that.

The fourth, and final, main point of Mr Church’s campaign is “stopping the carbon tax” even though it is not a tax. “Despite many families finding it harder and harder to pay their bills,” his propaganda leaflet says, “Labor and the Greens introduced their carbon tax that is driving up prices further”.  Firstly, further than what? If you’re going to use a comparative term you have to give me the other thing you’re comparing it to.  Secondly, I’m curious as to just how many families there are that are finding it hard to pay their bills.  The other week the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal released their audit of NSW’s utilities providers that disclosed eight per cent of Hunter Water customers were on payment plans to help them pay their water bill. Is that many?  Short of living in a socialist utopia, is that about as good as we can reasonably expect? Also, did I mention that it’s not a tax?

I have to say, I hope the other candidates for this seat start sending me through things to read.  With Shortland’s northern electoral neighbour, Newcastle MP Sharon Grierson (ALP) not recontesting her seat this election and Craig Thomson’s electorate of Dobell to the south, there may be a chance that momentum could see some changes taking place in one of last real ALP-held areas.

* “Law and order”. Geddit? (HT @SnarkyPlatypus for being the first to bring that turn of phrase to my attention). If you’re after some other reading on what the whole “tough on crime” narrative comes down to, I recommend this excellent piece by Dan Nolan.

(For you first timers, I have previously said some fairly critical things about the Herald with regards to what they have published about the heavy rail line and a few other things)

The problem is, as time goes on they seem to be getting more and more terrible at what they are supposed to be doing; keeping us informed.  And that makes it quite a challenge to support them the precarious financial position of Fairfax Media results in substantial staff cuts.

I mean, look at this.

On 12 February, Penelope Green attended a Newcastle Business Club luncheon at which the Lord Mayor of Newcastle, Jeff McCloy, have the keynote address.  Her article, “McCloy says rail must go” features an overview of what went down.

NEWCASTLE’s ‘‘dying’’ centre could be revived in less than five years if the rail line and ‘‘dingo fence’’ separating the city and harbour were removed quickly to allow private enterprise to flourish, lord mayor Jeff McCloy told business leaders on Tuesday.

How, exactly? Did the Lord Mayor offer any evidence to support this assertion?  Does he have a plan to facilitate such renewal if/when the rail line gets removed? Did he explain just how a piece of infrastructure is actually stopping investment in the Newcastle CBD?

We’re not told. Why? Did he not take questions or did our journalist not bother asking?

A couple of days later, on 17 February, they published, “Facebook may cost you a job” by Jason Gordon and I find it strange that for an article with a headline that lends itself towards a scary tale of people’s employment prospects being jeopardised by their use of social media (along with a sizeable image of the Facebook logo), the social network in question is mentioned only briefly in the opening paragraph and then again in the closing paragraph.

The rest of the article seems to be about how some employers are doing credit checks of potential employees and using that information to help them determine how suitable a candidate might be for the position they have applied for.

What business does an employer have to look into someone’s financial history? Well, we don’t know because our intrepid reporter doesn’t seem to bother asking that question.  Instead, we get a couple of quotes from a company that provides such checks advising that businesses should “be careful”.

Well that’s great. Thanks Jason.

But Mr Gordon wasn’t finished.

“Water costs drain wallets” was the headline of his piece examining the contents of the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal’s (IPART) performance report of Hunter Water, (PDF) which was offered up the next day, 18 February.

The IPART report states that 17,946 customers of Hunter Water entered into payment plans so as to avoid going into debt with the utility provider.

Throughout the piece, our intrepid journalist insists that every single one of those 17,946 payment plans are for “households”, even though the IPART report makes no mention of this.  Further to this, Hunter Water’s 2011/12 annual report states that they have 9,068 commercial customers, 985 industrial customers, two bulk supply customers and 5,738 “other” customers who receive water and sewerage services.  This equates to 6.8 per cent of the customer base and you cannot assume that none of these customers are not also recipients of a Hunter Water payment plan – especially if small businesses are constantly telling us how hard their lives are and how on the edge they live.

In fact, commercial and industrial customers don’t even count when it comes to the Herald’s editorial on the same subject. Only residential customers matter, apparently.

It’s also worth pointing out that the 17,946 customers who entered into payment plans with Hunter Water equals 7.80 per cent of their 230,140 total customers.

Is that bad? Well, it’s hard to tell. I cannot find the number of customer accounts that Sydney Water has, although their 2012 annual report states they have 4.6 million people served by their water supply. But using some educated guesses, I’d say that their 156,502 customers who have gone onto payment plans represent about the same percentage compared

to the Hunter Water result, and given that, according to the ABS about 20% of the population are receiving some sort of government benefit, that all does not sound too out of sorts.

It’s also worth pointing out that these plans basically allow customers to pay their quarterly water bill in instalments, rather than as a lump sum every three months.  So they’re not even really falling behind, just better managing their own cash flows.  The IPART report does not include statistics on the number of customers who have not been able to meet the requirement of their payment plan.

So this seems more like a storm in a tea cup than anything worthy of a great moral panic about the government forcing people to live on the streets because they can’t pay their water bill.

Then, just this weekend, Lake Macquarie Reporter, Damon Cronshaw offers up what is probably the most nonsensical thing I’ve ever read in our beloved local rag.

“Lake resident wants nuclear power” is the headline, and the copy that follows is nothing short of spectacular.

MORISSET Park resident Albert Morgan knows a thing or two about air pollution.

Does he? Is he an expert in the field? What, Damon?

His waterfront property looks directly across the lake to Vales Point coal-fired power station.

I live just down the road from the ocean. That doesn’t make me a marine biologist.

‘‘It’s not a thing of great beauty, is it?’’ he said of the plant.

Because all industrial buildings are works of art…

Mr Morgan has lived in the suburb for more than 50 years.

‘‘I lived here before the power station was built,’’ he said.

Ahhh, he has “experience”. Right. Gotcha.

In a sou-easter, pollution from the plant blows across the lake and covers his property.

‘‘We get a lot of dust fallout,’’ he said.

He believes the pollution poses a health threat to susceptible people and counts himself lucky he hasn’t had any health problems.

Valid point. Coal dust isn’t exactly beneficial for ones health.

‘‘I’m almost 78 and it hasn’t killed me,’’ he said.

So it has caused you no direct harm? Not even a cough? Snotty nose? You’re saying that the power station causes a health risk yet can’t even provide anecdotal evidence that this is the case?

Mr Cronshaw, can you provide any research to support this claim? A link, perhaps, to a crusade started by your very own publication earlier in the year with regards to coal dust and residential areas?

He reckons coal-fired power will be a thing of the past in the near future.

You don’t say.

‘‘I reckon we’ve got to go nuclear,’’ he said.

Because…. feel free to jump in any time…

Oh? That’s it? No reasons why? This Albert Morgan, alleged expert on air pollution, reckons we should go nuclear and we’re supposed to just go “oh, well, I guess we should”?

What purpose does this story serve?

This is just shit reporting. No matter which way you cut it.  Did Mr Cronshaw just write up a conversation he had with a bar fly down at his local on Sunday afternoon after a couple of crisp, refreshing beverages?

I just cannot see one single reason why this was worthy of being published.

So come on guys. You can do better than this. Do journalism. Ask questions. Put things into context. Inform the population.

Stop writing crap and stop insisting that I really should check out photos of people enjoying themselves at parties I wasn’t invited to.

Because, if I were getting paid a nice wage to sit around at some outlet’s bureau inside Parliament House and make words about what happens inside that building, I don’t think I’d be showing anyone the stuff I’d written that resembles those stories featured on the front pages of Fairfax and News Limited websites today.

“Beware the knives of March,” exclaims Mark Kenny (any relation to He Who Invokes Edict 9?), senior political correspondent for Fairfax.

“LABOR MPs say a showdown between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd is inevitable,” he says to start with and immediately I’m wondering who these Labor MPs are and what evidence Mr Kenny plans to offer to support this plainly put assertion.

“Some [MPs] are grimly accepting that the leadership question may again have to be visited.”

Oh yes? Which ones?

“Most

senior ministers contacted on Monday appeared to be sticking with the Prime Minister,” Mr Kenny reveals. No idea what the qualifications are for “most” or “senior” in this case. No names are offered.

”It’s simple arithmetic,” said one. ”We can’t go to an election with these numbers.”

Asked if the situation would come to a head when Parliament resumed, one minister responded: ”I don’t see how it can’t”.

He said he remained loyal to Ms Gillard but conceded there had been a discernible shift in momentum towards Mr Rudd in the past fortnight.

However, he also said Mr Rudd’s case for the leadership had been undermined as MPs in marginal seats recognised his public utterances as self-serving and destructive.

Oh, really? Did we ask MPs in marginal seats about how they “recognise” Rudd’s “public utterances”?

Also, I’d love to know who this seemingly authoritative person is. Surely if they’re so confident and “don’t see how” any current issues with regards to the leadership of the ALP can be resolved any other way, surely they wouldn’t mind putting their name of those comments so we can slap them on the back and buy them a beer when their predications turn out to be correct.

No? Damn.

“Senior Liberals welcomed the poll findings just months before the election,” Mr Kenny notes in what I can only assume is the tone of voice that is associated with one’s Completely Unsurprised Face.

The Opposition welcomes something that says the ALP is bad? You’re kidding. I would never have seen that coming.

“The manager of opposition business, Christopher Pyne, said the Coalition’s 17-point lead on primary votes showed Mr Abbott had what voters want,” Mr Kenny concludes apparently having not bothered to ask Pyne just what exactly he thinks it is that Abbott has that voters so obviously want – because it’s not costed policies, that’s for sure.

Meanwhile, at News Limited, “Political Editor Tory Shepherd” (she must have had a rough time at school. Who gives their child the name “Political Editor”?) of the Adelaide Advertiser offers up “Kevin Rudd’s the man who won’t go away for Labor”.

“Prime Minister-in-exile,” Shepherd calls Rudd. Tony Abbott must be upset at that. He’s had the whole government-in-exile attitude going ever since he couldn’t bribe the Members for Lyon and New England to form an illegitimate government with him following the 2010 federal election.

Shepherd does make an interesting observation about Rudd’s comments on Sky News about the ALP leadership and cryogenic storage.

“It’s a way of snap freezing something so that it can be restored, revived, at a later date,” she says. Which, while true, is probably not what Rudd was thinking off when he was looking to extend his cold shower/ice bath metaphor.

So does Mr Rudd fancy himself, Han Solo-like, coming out of deep freeze to rescue Labor?

That was Carbonite. If you’re going to go the Star Wars reference, get it right.

Does he have the patience to wait until they ask him?

Or will he just white-ant away in the background while Prime Minister Julia Gillard tries to soldier her way through to the next election?”

Can I think up any more hypothetical questions to pose?

Or are all these anonymous sources just messing around with journalists’ minds?

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Sadly, Shepherd doesn’t dwell on this point too much. Having to explain how the press gallery is just regurgitating whatever they’re told by people too scared to put their name to their words is just frightening, I’d imagine.

It may seem at this point that anything could happen. There’s plenty of chatter, lots of “backgrounding” going on. Lots of people with vested interests.

So maybe this point would be a good time to delve into that, pull it all apart and explain it to us, the all important reader, so that we may then place all this rumour and conjecture in context?

Nope.

 

So let’s peer into the election crystal ball and try to discern the shape of things to come.

Fuck it. Let’s just make shit up.

And I haven’t even bothered to open The Conversation to see what Michelle Grattan has decided to bestow upon us today.

Seven. More. Months.

I started reading Independent Australia.

I’d first heard of them through Twitter.  I think a few people had said some things vaguely positive about them, but I can’t remember exactly what.

Today, however, I decided to finally give them a look.

What. The. Hell.

First off, they have what I think are supposed to be political cartoons by a bloke called “Gee” who…just…probably needs help.

They are just completely unhinged.

Now I like my out-of-the-box humour as much as the next one. But this? This requires the help of some fairly powerful, mind-alerting substances.

Then, there are the words that appear on the site.

Today features one yarn written by Rodney E. Lever entitled “Unpredictive opinion polls pointless except to sow discord” about, topically, polling and, specifically, today’s Nielsen poll.

Forget for the moment that “unpredtictive” isn’t even a word (it should be “unpredictable”, Rodney), and look at what he’s written.

THE FIRST NEWSPAPER in the world to publish a political opinion poll was The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian in the 1824 US presidential election.

So he starts with a short history of of newspaper polling. Interesting, and I’m sure Rodney enjoys telling people he met Roy Morgan once, but not entirely relevant.

Moving on.

The professional pollster takes his work very seriously. They do not use the word “prediction” when referring to polling for an election. Even a few days before an election, some small revelation, some slip of the tongue, some unexpected event could change the end result. The word they use is “trend.” The polls may help to recognise a trend in voting.

This paragraph is largely true.

A professional pollster would be aghast at the concept that a poll taken seven months before an election could signify even a “trend.”

Here is where things start going off the rails. While this poll, taken by itself, does not a trend make, one can take this poll result and look at it in relation to previous poll results.

Thus uncovering a “trend”.

As it turns out, there is someone in Australia that does this quite regularly.  Possum Comitatus regularly analysis poll results and provides graphs showing the overall trends.

The most recent ones of his I could find come from two weeks ago. So they’re actually quite relevant when talking about today’s most recent results.

Pollytics’s Primary Voting trend

Pollytics’s TPP Trend

Possum’s charts show, quite clearly, a trend where the ALP’s primary and Two Party Preferred polling results peak and trough at roughly six-month intervals.  They also show, that when the ALP’s polling results drop, the LNPs increase.

I don’t know about you, but looking at a chart that shows three successive years of this cycle, I’d quite happily call that predictable.

In fact, they’re so predictable, you could safely say that come the federal election on September 14, the ALP is likely to be in the midst of, or just starting to come out of, a dip in support amongst the electorate.

The result of which is likely to be a win for the LNP Coalition and their forming government.

Rodney then goes

into outright denial.

The figures released this week mean exactly nothing

Except to continue an underlying trend that is plain as day for anyone with Excel to see.

And, finally, bonkers.

The ruthless power currently being exerted by Rupert Murdoch and the mining queen Gina Rinehart are laid bare for all to see.

That last one is quite hysterical because I cannot find anything that links Murdoch or Rinehart to Nielsen, which is a publically traded company on the New York Stock Exchange.  Further, it’s widely considered that Newspoll, published in the News Limited papers, tends to find its results skew to that audience where as Nielsen, published in Fairfax papers, skews a bit the other way.

So, Rodney, if you can show me just how Rupert and Gina influence Nielsen, I’d love to see it.

Another piece that caught my eye was penned by IA’s Managing Editor, David Donovan, on the future of the media.

“The end of newspapers – and the rise of the online magazine” (featuring bonus em dash for no discernable reason), argues that “the age of the one-stop newspaper is over – and not just in print, but also online” (mate, enough with the superfluous dashes).

The article rambles pointlessly through the author’s education and work history, but the crux of his argument is this:

A newspaper is an entity. It exists in the real world. It has a perspective. It has a philosophy. It has a team of executives. It has an editor. It has commercial interests. It has political interests. It has a proprietor. It is a player.

And he thinks that places like Independent Australia will be better because:

We don’t really care what journalistic “insiders” tell us anymore. And they don’t like it because they are losing status and power.

We now let our trusted friends help us curate the news, and fact check. And we will share this with others, so we can all be better informed — and no longer misled. Or, at least, if we are somehow misled, it will take some doing.

We will decide what is important for us to know, not some self-interested corporate entity.

But what does this mean for publications like IA? We are a news service — aren’t we?

Yes, but we are not a newspaper, nor have we ever thought of ourselves as one.

Now, my reading of this is that he dislikes newspapers because they have an agenda, yet thinks IA is better because it only takes information from “trusted friends”?

Mate. That hypocrisy is so blinding obvious it hurt me to read it. Hurt more than reading all the pointless deviations you threw in to pad that article out and make it seem more weighty than it was.

So, yeah. Not exactly sold on this mob.

EDIT: Turns out, see below, “unpredictive” is a word. I didn’t double check when my word processor threw it up as an error. That’s my bad and I’ve struck that comment from the piece.

This news often put out on Twitter where it is retweeted and commented on.  Even “traditional” media outlets go online now where they publish stories, mostly pulled straight off their wires, on their web sites with minimal input for their own editorial staff.

However, in the rush to get the latest information about a breaking news event out into the world, context can be lost and the full story about what is happening – including critical information that people may require – does not come through.

We saw this happen just today, in fact.

It started with a small piece of news that came from one of the wire services

Earthquake measuring 8.0 magnitude strikes off Solomon Islands in the Pacific: USGS

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) February 6, 2013

(I’ve picked the Reuters one as that’s what came across my feed first. Associated Press also had a tweet, as did the Breaking News account along with a couple of other news outlets)

This was followed, a short time later, by a second tweet.

Tsunami warning issued for South Pacific islands: U.S. Tsunami Warning Center

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) February 6, 2013

By now, because the news wires and outlets are rather popular on Twitter, news had spread and people began heading off to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center’s (PTWC) web page to read the warnings for themselves.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the PTWC, it is a US Government agency operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration out of Hawaii.  It was established in 1949 to monitor the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii and the US West Coast and warn of possible tsunamis generated as a result of undersea earthquakes.  Following the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, it’s role was expanded to also encompass the Indian Ocean, in conjunction with other government agencies in the region (including Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology).

At

0118 UTC (1218 Australian Eastern Daylight Time), the PTWC issued their first tsunami bulletin following the Solomon Islands earthquake, which stated:

A TSUNAMI WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR

SOLOMON ISLANDS / VANUATU / NAURU / PAPUA NEW GUINEA / TUVALU /  NEW CALEDONIA / KOSRAE / FIJI / KIRIBATI / WALLIS AND FUTUNA

A TSUNAMI WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR

MARSHALL ISLANDS / HOWLAND AND BAKER / POHNPEI / TOKELAU /  SAMOA / KERMADEC ISLANDS / NEW ZEALAND / AMERICAN SAMOA /  TONGA / AUSTRALIA / NIUE / COOK ISLANDS / INDONESIA /  WAKE ISLAND / CHUUK / JARVIS ISLAND / GUAM / NORTHERN MARIANAS /  PALMYRA ISLAND / YAP / JOHNSTON ISLAND / MINAMITORISHIMA /  BELAU

Immediately, Twitter went into overdrive and our local news outlets started to pick up on the story as they pulled it off their wire feeds.

Australia is now officially on “Tsunami watch” status following this monster 8 mag quake in the Solomons.

— Mark Parton (@markparton) February 6, 2013

The Sydney Morning Herald’s coverage included:

The Bureau of Meteorology said there was no tsunami threat to Australia. However a tsunami watch has been issued for Australia and New Zealand, and all the way to Indonesia.

News.com.au also ran a story with the line:

A tsunami watch has been issued for Australia and New Zealand, and all the way to Indonesia, but the weather bureau says there is no tsunami threat to Australia.”

This, naturally, fuelled the story that Australia had issued a tsunami watch for its east coast waters.

This was not the case. Not in the least.

At 1230 AEDT, the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre had issued their own bulletin stating, quite bluntly, that:

There is no Tsunami threat to Australia.

The accompanying image also showed that Australia was not under a tsunami watch.

Tsunami Warnings – or lack thereof – for Australia

In fact, the BoM hadn’t even issued a watch previously and then cancelled it.

Australia, at no point, was under a tsunami watch. It just didn’t happen.

So why was everyone saying that it was?

Because actually reading the information they were given and understanding how it was supposed to be interpreted and what weighting it has compared to the other information available was not something that crossed anyone’s mind at any point.

If you read the bulletins published by the PTWC, they have a paragraph about halfway down – well past all the exciting information about warnings and watches – that tells you what the purpose of their bulletin is.

THIS BULLETIN IS ISSUED AS ADVICE TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES.  ONLY NATIONAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO MAKE DECISIONS REGARDING THE OFFICIAL STATE OF ALERT IN THEIR AREA AND ANY ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN IN RESPONSE.

Yup. Their bulletins are NOT official warnings or watches for various parts of the planet.  They are advice provided to agencies like the BoM so that they can place it alongside their own data and decide what their response to any particular event will be.

It also states that the responsibility for placing an area under an official tsunami warning or watch status resides with the government agency in that area. In our case, that is the BoM.

So the BoM looked at all the information they had at their disposal and decided that Australia did not need to be placed under a tsunami watch.

And that’s the story. So, maybe, now everyone can start talking about a rather major (8.0 on the Richter Scale, last I saw) earthquake hitting a part of the world that is not exactly able to easily deal with such a thing and stop trying to make it all about us?

Ha. What am I saying?

In announcing the plan, the Minister responsible for the relevant portfolio said that it was going to be of much benefit to a particular section of the electorate that, until now, had not been targeted with a policy that provided a point of difference between the government and the opposition.

“It is about time these people were given the help they need,” they said

“The economic benefits of this policy, coupled with a raft

of positive social outcomes will help boost Australia’s economy and make this country a better place.”

When asked to specify what, exactly, those economic benefits would be, the Minister took a sudden interest in their shoes before mumbling a series of seemingly random words including “inflation”, “cost of living”, “Australia Post” and “ Julie Bishop”.

The opposition immediately condemned the plan, saying it was a blatant grab for votes and would end up ruining the excellent economic reforms undertaken by them the last time they were in government.

“This is a dangerous policy, the consequences of which will take generations for us to recover from,” an opposition spokesman said.

“This policy is just a cynical ploy to grab votes by a government that can see the writing on the wall and the Australian people are the ones who will suffer for it.”

The opposition refused to be drawn into debate about their plan – which would see the benefits from a similar, but marginally different policy spread over a different, larger section of the community.  They refused to comment on where additional revenue would come out of the budget for this, and what effect this would have on their promise to return the budget to surplus regardless of any external economic influences.

We’ll have more on this schoolyard-pissing contest as it comes to hand.

Tomorrow will likely see this story republished with the positions of government and opposition reversed depending on what is announced.  So stay tuned for that.

But hey, you can’t win them all.

In his largely rambling blog, Warne talks about some changes he’d like to see within Cricket Australia (the sport’s governing body in this country) and the selection process that chooses the players who represent Australia at the international level.

That’s handy, because I don’t want to talk about that.

What I do want to talk about is making cricket a spectacle again.

As it currently stands, watching cricket once the new years test is complete is noting more than a chore.  There were a couple of reasons for this.

The One Day International series, which has gone through a couple of iterations in recent years, takes way too long.  In its “triangular” format, Australia would take on two touring

teams in a series of 6,000 round-robin matches that ran sometime into mid-May.  In this year’s format, Australia is taking on two touring teams in two series of five matches each.

In both cases, two or three Twenty20 matches are thrown in to spice things up.

The problem is that no one really cares about either of these.  Over the past few years, the crowds at the ground have been dropping; both on TV and at the ground.  After averaging 25,000 plus crowds during the mid-2000s for the ODIs, the numbers for this summer have been 18,000, down from 22,000 in 2010/11. And, frankly, there does not look like there is going to be any improvement in the coming years.

Twenty20 Internationals, on the other hand, put 45,000 bums on seats in 2010/11.  This increased to 61,000 in 2011/12.  They have taken a slight hit in the two T20 matches played against Sri Lanka this year with an average attendance of 40,000 – still more than double the crowd at the five ODIs.

Since 2002, test matches have averaged about 20,000 people attending each day of each test match, with significant spikes during summers featuring Ashes tests against England.

So, with test match cricket not going anywhere, ODIs slowly withering on the vine and T20s pulling in the crowds, it becomes pretty obvious what needs to happen in order to keep interest in cricket for the whole Australian season.

We should keep with having test cricket opening the summer.  Six tests (three each against two opponents) or five tests (Ashes series) following their usual calendar of starting with Brisbane, having Melbourne on Boxing Day and finishing with the new year’s test in Sydney.

From here, things get different.

Drop the 50-over ODIs. That format of the game is done. Get rid of it.

Instead, we replace it with a four team Twenty20 series, and there are two ways this can be done.

It can either be Australia, Australia A and the two touring teams, or Australia, New Zealand and the two touring teams.

The teams will then play at “match days” at each of Australia’s major grounds, expanding into New Zealand’s major grounds if they are present in the competition instead of Australia A, in a round-robin format.

At each match day, there will be two T20 games played.  The afternoon match will feature Australia A versus one of the touring teams; the prime time match will feature Australia and the other touring team. For matches where Australia plays Australia A, the two touring teams play in the afternoon.  For matches hosted in New Zealand, Australia plays in the afternoon and New Zealand in prime time.

The match days can be held either once (Saturday) or twice (Saturday and Wednesday) a week, depending on how long you want the contest to run.

This format allows people attending the match to see two full games of cricket and for TV it gives them more flexibility to use multi-channelling as matches not featuring the Australian team are not subjected to anti-siphoning legislation, this means they can relegate the afternoon match to a secondary channel.  For matches played in New Zealand, the afternoon match would align with prime time in Australia.

Having Australia A in such a competition also creates a platform through which to bring new players into international cricket without them having to wait for a current Australian player to either be injured or forced to not play through the absurd rotation policy.

While this format would ultimately reduce the amount of cricket being played over a summer, I don’t feel that would be a bad thing as the current schedule is way too long and not holding people’s interests.

Some people may argue that T20 isn’t “true” cricket, is little more than a novelty and not something that can be taken seriously.  While they may have a point, I don’t really consider that a bad thing.  Test cricket is, and should always be considered, the “true” form of cricket.  When the 50-over game was introduced, the attitude many hold about T20 was held about that.  So, why is an evolvement of the game such a bad thing?

There is no doubt that cricket has a lot of work to do in order to pick things up from where they are now, but I think this could be a way forward.

So, thinking that they obviously liked something about what I was doing with that blogue, when they advertised for a casual jernalismist in December, I jumped at the chance to leverage their liking of my work to gain paid employment.

Sadly, earlier today, I received this email from them:

It has been suggested that this indicates they were only advertising the position because of some requirement to do so by law. I think it was because they didn’t think I was good enough.

But I am not totally disheartened by this, because it now means that I get to share with you the, in my opinion, excellent cover letter that I wrote in the hope that I could become a fully proper jernalismist at a proper like media place.

Hello there.

My name is Matthew Hatton and I would love nothing more than to become a journalist at News.com.au.  I feel that I would fit the role perfectly and that not having me on your staff would leave News Limited at a severe disadvantage in today’s ultra-competitive news market.

I am a self-starter, having started a class newspaper in primary school, written several websites throughout high school and, now, blog regularly at matthewhatton.id.au.

I have superb editorial skills and am dedicated to getting all the facts and pointing out when people are not telling the whole story.  During 2012 I was the managing editor of Yak Magazine at the University of Newcastle.   In that role, I lead a team of eight students and delivered eight issues of engaging, typo-free content.  The magazine focussed on telling the stories of people at, and related to, the university as well as providing the student population with information about all the exciting things that happen in Newcastle so they would enjoy their time at the University just that little bit more.

I am a hobby photographer and have dabbled in video production over the past couple of years.  In fact, one video I helped produce has been featured on the ABC Open Hunter website (https://open.abc.net.au/openregions/nsw-hunter-70MU6Ji/posts/a-portrait-of-the-artist-in-double-time-30cy7yy) and a photograph I took of a bushfire out the front of my house was featured in the ABC News Online story (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-25/fire-crews-backburn-around-coastal-scrub-fire/4279066) about said fire.

Prior to becoming interesting in pursuing journalism as a career, I spent eight years working as a survey draftsman.  This involved mainly designing housing subdivisions for clients with large amounts of money and small amounts of patience.  As a result, I am now quite used to having tasks completed thoroughly and accurately within seemingly impossible deadlines.

My news judgement is superior. Since October 2012 I have

buy levitra no prescription

been demonstrating that through my Quality Jernalisms project (qualityjernalisms.tumblr.com). This project has been so successful in pointing out existing news judgment failures across the Australian media landscape that a number of News Limited employees frequently visit the site in order to be kept abreast of what is and is not considered news.

If you require some immediate examples, I know that stories featuring celebrities buying houses, kissing other celebrities, not kissing other celebrities, getting out of cars, going to clubs, altering their bodies, not wearing clothes, using Twitter, fighting, buying cars, eating food and/or going to the gym really isn’t “news” in the traditional sense.

I also know that when people make accusations about the competency or legitimacy of a federal member of parliament retaining their seat, it is usually considered irrelevant until evidence of some description (beyond their own feelings) is provided by the party making such an accusation.

That whole “Mayan Apocalypse” thing? I don’t think that was ever really news either.

I have no issues with working irregular hours.  In fact, some of my best work to date has been completed at around 0300 on a Sunday, and this letter is being written at 1100 on a Wednesday.  I am a bit weird like that.

Over my life I have participated in a number of team sports, had to work in teams at places of employment and during university studies.  As a result I am more than capable of covering for the less than useful members of the group in order to make sure that quality of output is kept high and that output is delivered on time.

I am sure I would also “exceed standards of excellence” if it were not for how that entire phrase is a contradiction. You cannot have a “standard” of excellence. Excellence is to go beyond what is considered standard.

I am available to attend an interview at your earliest convenience. References from previous places of employment can also be provided, should you require them.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me on [PHONE NUMBER] or [REDACTED]@matthewhatton.id.au.

 

Regards,

Matthew Hatton

Actually, it probably was the legal thing, wasn’t it? Arseholes.

[HT to LMCC Councillor Chad Griffiths for pointing out I left my mobile phone number in the letter. Hope you all got screenshots of it so you can prank call me at obscure hours of the morning.]