Eddie McGuire, political turncoats, Rupert and FOI

2. Eddie Everywhere's growing conflicts of interest

By Stephen Mayne

Amid the flood of interviews that Eddie McGuire has done over the past 24 hours, one line in the Herald Sun jumped out: "I don't have to worry about conflict of interest any more, do I?"

The lad still doesn't get it. The conflict of being Collingwood President while calling Collingwood games on Channel Nine and hosting The Footy Show was always inappropriate – but at least it was totally open for public scrutiny. By only giving up his on-air roles to become Nine's CEO, if anything his conflicts get bigger.

The worst conflicts are those which remain behind closed doors – such as Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon using his influence to help direct more than $100,000 of public funds to his brother's company. Those who hold positions of power are best placed to exploit a conflict and tend to have various people with their own conflicts pitching deals all the time. Paul Lennon's brother was stupid to prevail upon him for favours and the Premier was even more daft for agreeing.

By staying on as Collingwood president and as a director of Melbourne Major Events, Eddie will have huge conflicts as the all-powerful CEO of Channel Nine. AFL presidents are privy to confidential information and once the rights go to Ten and Seven next year, Eddie will be furnished with information that the CEO of a rival network should not see.

Similarly, Eddie now finds himself right inside the Foxtel camp ahead of what will be a very tough negotiation with Seven and Ten. AFL presidents often comment about the timing and appropriateness of the AFL draw and television broadcast arrangements on free-to-air and pay-TV. Will Eddie complain if Foxtel secures loads of Collingwood games ahead of Seven or Ten?

The brutal truth is that Eddie's new role will be to stymie the growth of AFL in Brisbane and Sydney, given Nine's rock solid commitment to rugby league. There is an inherent conflict in his roles of promoting AFL at Collingwood and promoting rugby league at Nine. He should resign as Collingwood president at the end of this season.

Similarly, Melbourne Major Events is all about securing big events for Melbourne, events which are often televised. As CEO of Nine, Eddie will have an unfair advantage over his rivals in knowing what's on the shopping list. Speaking of which, new MME chairman and News Corp director Rod Eddington has been deluding himself in this week's Herald Sun exclusives, claiming he's chasing the soccer World Cup.

I was good mates with Eddie's little sister Bridget for a decade until 1998 and even stayed with the McGuire family in Scotland for a few days in 1996. Bridget explained to her delightful but poor cousins, aunts and uncles that television was a brutal industry and Eddie's approach was to "make hay while the sun shines".

Eddie's brother Frank has certainly cashed in on his brother's fame and connections through some of the production work he's done for Channel Nine and Bridget has been successful in Channel Nine's advertising department for a decade, after Eddie first helped her get in the door.

All of sudden, Eddie could start sending much more work to Frank and give his sister Bridget a big promotion or annual bonus. With all this new power, it's these sorts of under-the-surface conflicts that he'll have to watch and past behaviour suggests the warning lights should already be flashing.

The same applies to his huge network of mates, many of whom would love to get in the door at Channel Nine. Will Eddie get on the phone and start interfering with A Current Affair and Sunday if a mate is in the news. Steve Vizard and Brad Cooper are two very close mates who spring to mind.


17. Queensland – political turncoat capital of Australia

By Stephen Mayne

When it comes to ratting, no-one does it like a Queenslander – as the latest batch of 12 banana-bending defectors demonstrates:

Gilbert Allison: Liberal for Maryborough 1971-77, National for Maryborough 1983-89.
Harry Black: Queensland MP who defected from Pauline Hanson's One Nation to the City Country Alliance in 1999.
David Dalgleish: Queensland MP who defected from Pauline Hanson's One Nation to the City Country Alliance in 1999.
Sam Doumany: Liberal MLA 1974-83 & Qld Attorney-General, then held Executive positions in the non-Parliamentary National Party before coming back to the Liberal Party in recent times to be Treasurer of the Queensland Libs.
Bill Feldman: Parliamentary Leader of Pauline Hanson's One Nation in the Queensland Parliament who defected to the City Country Alliance in 1999.
Bill Kaus: Liberal MLA 1966-83, National Party MLA 1983-86
Bob Moore: Liberal MLA 1969-83, National Party MLA July-October 1983.
Beryce Nelson: Liberal MLA 1980-83, National Party MLA 1983-86
Jack Paff: Queensland MP who defected from Pauline Hanson's One Nation to the City Country Alliance in 1999.
Trevor Perrett: won Barambah in 1988 for the CEC loonies when Joh resigned, then with very little publicity later joined the National Party & ended up as Primary Industries Minister in the Borbidge Government. Lost his seat in 1998 after a sex scandal with a prostitute.
Peter Prenzler: Queensland MP who defected from Pauline Hanson's One Nation to the City Country Alliance in 1999.
Peter Slipper: Slippery was one of the original Joh for Canberra fans but lost Fisher as a Nat in 1993 but regained it as a Lib in 1996.

Check out the full list of more than 30 defectors on the site here.

21. The things you have to do for Rupert

By Stephen Mayne

The global reputation of the media has been steadily declining for decades and the most important person behind this trend has been a certain Rupert Murdoch, who hails from Melbourne's conservative and leafy suburbs.

The latest edition of Private Eye, the British magazine that was the original inspiration for Crikey, once again demonstrates the sort of things that Rupert's journalists do to concoct a story and make a profit for the Sun King:

How very appropriate that it was News of the Screws chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck who exposed Mark Oaten's "sordid secret double life. According to the NoW, "the scandal exposes Oaten as a hypocrite...he has no qualms about using family values to further his career".

Well, Neville Thurlbeck is a man who knows all about hypocrisy. He is the hack who made his excuses and stayed (unlike British politician Oaten, who resigned after his gay sex exploits were revealed).

In 1998 Eye 962 reported how Thurlbeck pulled off a classic NoW scam by exposing a naturist B&B in Dorset as "a kinky brothel...where all rooms come with en-suite pervert".

Landlady Sue Firth, he wrote, would serve guests breakfast in bed and stay for "romps" while husband Bob spied on the rumpy-pumpy from a hiding place in a wardrobe. Alas the story was mostly, er, balls.

Thurlbeck – writing under the pseudonym "Jack Tunstall" because his wife didn't like him working on sex stories – quoted Sue Firth as offering "a full sex session with me and my husband for 75 pounds".

The truth, captured on a security videotape by the Firths, was that the reporter offered the couple 75 pounds if he could watch them having sex. This the former "swingers" agreed to do - but were furious when Thurlbeck twisted the tale to claim that they had taken the initiative and that Sue was having sex with guests rather than her husband.

The Eye still has in its possession video stills of the News of the World man naked on Sue Firth's massage table - a sight, as the Screws might put it, too revolting to reproduce in a family magazine.

We're not aware of any Australian hacks having to get their gear off and lie for a yarn, but the global trend is with Rupert – hacks who show an ethical or moral deficiency are tolerated and often promoted. And that goes to the entire culture of News Corp, evidenced by the appalling corporate governance demonstrated from the very top.


25. The High Court's public interest foray

By Stephen Mayne

The Australian didn't exactly play up the victory in last Saturday's paper, but many lawyers and free speech advocates are becoming increasingly excited about News Ltd's High Court challenge over FOI laws, which is now backed by Fairfax and Rural Press.

A limited discussion about FOI laws and the long-running campaign by The Australian's FOI editor Michael McKinnon has now turned into what is shaping up as the High Court's first ever comprehensive look at the much broader notion of "public interest".

Given the flurry of suppression orders that courts have been dishing out in recent years, we now have the prospect of the High Court finally entering the fray and setting out a position on exactly what constitutes the "public interest".

Peter Costello's counsel, Dick Tracey, got clobbered during the brief 17 minute hearing in Sydney last Friday and the News Ltd bloke didn't even have to speak. How's this for an encouraging exchange if you're interested in free speech:

KIRBY J: Mr Tracey, by saying it is truly exceptional and an extreme case, you are making it all the more interesting to us.

MR TRACEY: Well, I am not there yet because, your Honour, that can be tested under 58(5), but not determinatively.

GUMMOW J: What is the content of this phrase “the public interest”? I see it appears also in section 33A, does it not?

MR TRACEY: Yes, it does, your Honour. There are various exemptions that refer to it but...

GUMMOW J: We would need to know, if we granted leave, in due course how this concept works its way through this statute.

MR TRACEY: Well, your Honour, there is an important difference with 36 and 58(5), and that is that it is cast in the negative, “contrary to the public interest”, whereas the other provisions are more inclined to speak in terms of the acceptance that disclosure would be contrary to the public interest.

GUMMOW J: There are a number of interests.

MR TRACEY: Yes.

GUMMOW J: How you reach a situation where you say this is the public interest is not immediately apparent in this Act.

MR TRACEY: Well, your Honour, the difference with this is that the...

KIRBY J: It may be that the scheme of the Act is, by reserving it ultimately to the Minister and a report to Parliament, it renders the Minister accountable through the electoral process and the government accountable through the electoral process, but that is, as it were, in the extreme case. The normal scheme, as you pointed out, is to render government accountable through the provision of the documentation.

MR TRACEY: Yes, your Honour, and that was where the answer was heading, that it is exceptional in the sense that everything else the Tribunal does under this Act is determinative. In this instance the Tribunal may make a decision, the Minister may disagree and the Minister can resist, and all that then follows is that the Minister is accountable to Parliament. So that it is, in our submission, for that reason right at the fringe of freedom of information.

KIRBY J: But then, as I said before, that is exactly the sort of issue that this Court should look at. I mean, we are not interested in the run‑of‑the‑mill routine ordinary case. They are not really our proper province, but cases in this scheme at the very fringe and border of accountability seems to me is the very sort of matter we should examine.

And so it went. Leave for the appeal was indeed granted and the High Court is now crawling all over this concept of the public interest. Fingers crossed that they go for a broad definition.

29. Australia's coal addiction – and the role of the Big Four

By Stephen Mayne

After seeing the broad business support for a carbon tax at the Australian Future Directions Forum, it raises the question of exactly who is still holding out against what appears a global inevitability. As one senior business figure told an environmentalist, "I have no problem with taxing poison."

Given that the coal industry is currently throwing off operating profits of almost $10 billion a year, the case in favour of ongoing subsidies and the argument that they couldn't afford a carbon tax is very hard to sustain.

Coal and Canberra have been close for decades, although the Big Four coal kings – Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Xstrata and AngloAmerican – don't appear directly in the 2004-05 political donations figures. But the connections are still there if you know where to look.

To read on, click here.

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