Aussie gongs, Akerman, soccer, Dr Paul Twomey
July 22, 2008
Here are Stephen Mayne's four stories from the Crikey edition on Tuesday, 13 June, 2006.
1. The mystery of Australian gongs
By Stephen Mayne
There are two major stories which routinely get badly or under-reported in Australia – the link between political donations and public policy and the twice yearly release of gongs on Australia Day and the Queen's Birthday. Why on earth does the mainstream media continue to openly laud recipients rather than rigorously critiquing the merits of those gonged? For instance, when John Howard gonged Barbara Williams AO in 2004, The SMH produced a laudatory piece rather then asking whether it was appropriate that the PM's long-time secretary receive such an honour.
Campaign finance is the largest source of political scandal globally, and while we've all seen the "donations for honours" scandal hit the Blair Government in recent months, no-one in Australia has even had a decent look at our system, let alone assessed it corruption.
The latest 817 people honoured certainly raises plenty of eye-brows. Adelaide shock-jock Jeremy Cordeaux was a cash for comment pioneer but now he can add "AM" to his name. Presumably being Andrew Peacock's son-in-law and a staunch Liberal promoter helped him score the gong.
And why would sacked 60 Minutes reporter Jeff McMullen also get an AM, along with The AFR's health columnist and Frank Lowy biographer Jill Margo? Paddy McGuinness and Michelle Grattan were arguable AO recipients in previous years, given long service to journalism, but the bar seems to have been lowered a touch this year. If someone from 60 Minutes was going to get one, surely a posthumous honour for Richard Carleton would have been more appropriate.
With tens of thousands of gong recipients over the years it is hard to critically assess them all, but the first division recipients of the prestigious AC titles still only number a couple of hundred. The most dubious AC recipient this year was undoubtedly Shane Stone, the lacklustre former Northern Territory chief minister who, after pioneering mandatory detention, went on to become the almost invisible President of the Liberal Party, famed for his "mean and tricky" memo of 2001.
The other six inductees into the AC club yesterday had all previously featured in the second division with an AO. Stone's only previous honour was QC – but he appointed himself to that exalted position when in office.
Unlike the rest of the media, we've produced plenty on dodgy gongs over the years, so check our the lists and email smayne@crikey.com.au if you reckon any of the latest batch are deserving of some extra scrutiny.
15. Piers drags the Insiders couch down
By Stephen Mayne
Piers Akerman has always been a bit of a risk for the ABC Insiders team, but his effort on the couch on Sunday was arguably the most embarrassing we've seen over the past five years.
For starters, Piers couldn't even get basic names right – Cornelia Rau became Claudia Rau and Peter Singer was suddenly Peter Springer. However, it was the contributions on gay marriage and immigration detention where Piers really covered himself in glory and had David Marr requesting that host Barrie Cassidy move on to the next topic.
Marr laid out a typically forceful summation of the arguments in favour of ending discrimination against same sex couple gays and Piers responded by pointing out that the law currently states that two men or two women can't get married in Australia and then extended the analogy to say that a man also can't marry his dog, cat or goat. The calls started coming as Marr labelled Piers "disgusting" and they were still pouring in while the program was on air for the next 30 minutes.
Marr has been the subject of several homophobic attacks by Akerman over the years. Indeed, one column in June 2002 started as follows: "Fairfax journalist and sometime homosexual parade spokesman David Marr gives the lie to the folklore that wit and intelligence abound in the gay community."
Truth be known, Marr demolished Akerman on Insiders with a combination of passion, facts and humour.
Even Cassidy and fellow panellist Karen Middleton demanded Piers expand on his loopy theory that we should not be surprised there is rape and drugs in Villawood given that the majority of occupants are criminals. Surely comparing illegal arrivals with convicted criminals is a sad joke.
For all his faults, at least Piers' alternate on the couch, Andrew Bolt, can sustain an argument, get a few facts right and avoid sweeping inflammatory generalisations. And Bolt doesn't have personal baggage such as these claims made about Akerman in the NSW Parliament.
We can only assume that Piers is feeling the pressure ahead of tomorrow's showdown with yours truly at the Australian Press Council in Sydney. News Ltd baulked at the suggested mediated settlement of running a letter of mine online so now we're going to a full hearing. We're not expecting to win but are looking forward to experiencing the process and highlighting the hypocrisy of News Ltd heavyweights in demanding rights of reply in Crikey (David Penberthy last week) but refusing to run a letter when the boot is on the other foot.
23. The corporate implications of soccer's coming of age
By Stephen Mayne
Australian soccer's coming of age overnight will have profound implications for the three other football codes – league, union and AFL – and will also make for plenty of happy investors in various A-League club franchises, whether they be the Lowy family and Anthony LaPaglia in Sydney FC, or John Elliott's former offsider Geoff Lord in Melbourne Victory.
The biggest initial threat to the other codes will be substantially increased junior participation in the beautiful game – mainly because of this unprecedented marketing boost and also because many parents today regard the other codes as being too dangerous for their precious children.
The Federal Government's decision to lend and grant the FFA $13 million to lock in the inspired appointments of Frank Lowy's as FFA chairman and John O'Neil as CEO on $800,000 a year also now looks like a wonderful investment that will only reinforce bipartisan political support for East German-style public funding of elite sport in Australia.
Who's going to argue if Guus Hiddink emerges as, effectively, Australia's highest paid public servant? Indeed, eye-brows were raised about the passion being displayed by the normally poker-faced manager last night, but maybe he's thinking about that estimated $2 million bonus that will come his way if the Socceroos make the second round, as now seems a good prospect.
Foxtel will also be delighted, after having recently stitched up the FFA for a seven year exclusive deal worth just $125 million. Maybe the FFA should have opted for a shorter three-year deal, because $18 million a year now looks pretty cheap when compared with $120 million-plus that the AFL will receive.
And apologies if some of this seems muddle-headed – I've had stuff all sleep. The missus emerged at 1am to complain about all the noise and to demand I come to bed before the kids were also disturbed. Sadly, I was just too excited and had to stay up for all the post-match analysis, so it ended up being just a couple of hours sleep on the couch - the proverbial dog house.
Oh well, we're talking history here and Paula was a little more sympathetic in the morning.
24. The Australian who became the world's internet traffic cop
By Stephen Mayne
Crikey's list of the 50 most successful Australians on the global business stage usually only deals with people running businesses, but one of our most successful not-for-profit executive exports is returning to Melbourne this week to give a speech on Thursday night.
The organisation that controls traffic on the internet, ICANN, is run by a career public servant – an Australian called Dr Paul Twomey. ICANN controls what are known as Country Code Top Level Domains such as .au, .uk and .nz, plus Generic Top Levels Domains such as .com, .net. and .gov. Basically they are the traffic cops of the internet.
Twomey and ICANN are both based in the US and have enormous power. They literally hand out monopolies. To give an idea of the money involved, the Australian registrar of the .au domain (auDa) is a not for profit but still manages to eke out $2.5 million in annual revenue without trying. At the other end of the scale the primary registrar for the .com domain (Network Solutions) was last sold for $US100 million.
However, ICANN's impartiality is now being challenged. Recently ICANN knocked back a submission from an organisation for the .XXX domain (to be used for storing p*rnography). Although there were valid arguments for and against this, ICANN has come under enormous criticism for appearing to buckle to the will of the US Department of Commerce. Effectively Christian Fundamentalists in the US are now getting a say in how the internet is run.
The real problem is that the ICANN monopoly is based on them being the only people running the domain name system, but technically it doesn't have to be this way. Anyone with the technical nous, can set up a competing system and nothing can stop them. This would cause complete chaos. But why would anyone do this? Well for starters there are 100 million Chinese people using the internet that can't use their own language for their own email addresses or company names. And millions more who can't use umlaut's, accents or acutes in their domain names.
Ahhhh. Market forces. Lets hope Dr Twomey's background with organisations such as NOIE, Austrade, DFAT and the Council for Overseas Aid prepares him for the challenge. Any Australian making money out of domain names should be feeling distinctly nervous.
Dr Twomey will be speaking on Thursday night at the Churchill Club in Melbourne and subscribers can click here to register.
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