Cash for gongs, buy buy, Akerman

3. Cash for gongs: when will the dam wall break?

By Stephen Mayne, never gonged

A number of emails came in yesterday defending the Queen's Birthday gong for former 60 Minutes reporter Jeff McMullen and some of them made the very valid point that it is his charity work after leaving Channel Nine that justified the award. As one subscriber writes:

Jeff has been a tireless worker for charity, especially a wonderful program devoted to improving literacy among indigenous kids. I don't know him, but I do know his work and its results which are extremely valuable and to be much admired. You would be hard-pressed to compile a long list of journalists noted for their philanthropy. Jeff would be near the top, and his recognition is deserved. McMullen is actually the unpaid CEO of Ian Thorpe's charitable foundation and his work promoting children's literacy even attracted a $1 million grant from the Federal Government.

Meanwhile, we've stumbled across the first potential scandal of this year's honours list. We can't name the gentleman concerned yet but he did appear in Monday's list of 817 recipients for his services to "business and economic development".

This gentleman donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Federal politician over the past decade and the favour was returned when the MP put a staffer almost full time in charge of generating references to support the gong, which finally came through this week after a two year campaign. It's an utterly blatant case of gongs for donations and you can be confident this has been quite widespread over the years, although the media has never broken a single yarn.

In summary, it is possible to buy an honour – something which is particularly dishonourable about our system of gonging people. The cash for peerages scandal has blown wide open in the UK this year – how long will it take to blow up here?





4. Falling commodity prices = a great buying opportunity

By Stephen Mayne, owner of 120 stocks worth $75,935

Resource stocks have been crunched again today after another tumble on Wall Street overnight and falling commodity prices. However, for someone who largely missed the great resources boom, this 20-30% correction in resource company shares prices over the past month represents a good buying opportunity.

From a net cafe in George St Sydney I've just bought $500 worth of shares in Bendigo Mining, Newcrest Mining, Minara Resources, Worley Parsons, Paladin Resources and Excel Coal in an attempt to get some more balance into a portfolio which is heavily weighted towards industrials.

Sure, each of these companies is still well up for the year but they are down an average of almost 5% in morning trade, something you don't see too often. All these fears about inflation and rising interests don't change the phenomenal China growth story which has underpinned the resources boom.

I'm aiming to finish up with a portfolio of about 200 stocks for future AGM activities, so further falls just represent further buying opportunities and I'll be chasing the market down.

However, with a 10% correction now well and truly reached, it's worth contemplating the companies or funds which picked the top of the market. The $50 billion-plus Queensland Investment Corporation has recently been selling substantial equity holdings in a move that now looks timely.

The chairman and CEO of gold miner Oxiana Resources were dismissive of suggestions at their AGM a few weeks back that they look at locking in some of the extraordinary gold upside with some prudent opportunistic hedging. Founder Owen Hegarty could only see gold running higher forever, but with bullion now having tumbled from $US730 an ounce to just $US560 an ounce over the past month, it would have been a hugely profitable exercise.

Similarly, it is shame the Reserve Bank didn't follow our advice and cash in some of its remaining 80 tonnes of gold at the height of the bubble. Oh well, we're only talking an opportunity cost of about $300 million so far for a government that is still worth negative $20 billion.

And let's hope David Murray has finally got his act together at the Future Fund and is using this correction as an opportunity to start putting some of that $18 billion in cash on deposit with the Reserve Bank into shares. If the money had simply been lodged with the Commonwealth's existing PSS/CSS super funds they wouldn't have still been faffing about buying computers, setting up systems and trying to hire a CEO on a ridiculous package.




17. Piers Akerman's Press Council boycott

By Stephen Mayne, in a Sydney net cafe near the Press Council

When Tim Palmer took on Piers Akerman in the Australian Press Council last year, the legendary ABC foreign correspondent represented himself and faced both the controversial columnist and The Daily Telegraph's executive editor Roger Coombs.

Palmer recorded an emphatic win, which might partly explain the paper's decision not to attend this morning's hearing over my complaint about an Akerman column last December alleging that Crikey is run by people "claiming to be journalists".

Sure, some papers choose not to actually attend Press Council hearings, instead preferring to rely on the written complaint file, but the failure to show this morning speaks volumes about the News Ltd culture and the weakness of their case. It's a no contest, your honour.

The hearing kicked off at 11.35am we had a good debate with the seven member voting panel and two executive offices until 12.20pm. I made the following points:

• Crikey has never refused to publish a letter from someone at News Ltd
• Refusing to correct or engage is part of the News Corp culture – in 22 public company board tilts, only News Corporation completely censored my platform, refusing to even tell shareholders my age
• Sure, the comment defence gives some latitude to columnists expressing opinions, but this Piers opinion is demonstrably wrong.

The written Daily Telegraph response to the initial complaint included the odd argument that journalism wasn't like dentistry where you received a formal qualification. If you accept that, surely working in a profession for 16 years is proof enough that you are a journalist.

Roger Coombs also tried to argue that Crikey regularly publishes material by non-journalists. Even if you accept that, the only mentions of sedition – the subject of the Akerman column – in the month leading up to its publication were by Christian Kerr, Hugo Kelly, Stephen Feneley and Charles Richardson, all of whom have either worked for many years in the mainstream media or been published several times in News Ltd titles.

The Daily Telegraph will have to publish the adjudication no matter whether the complaint is upheld or not. Surely, it would have been simpler to just run my brief letter online as part of a mediated settlement. Sometimes giving an inch can produce a better outcome, but it's just not part of the News Corp culture.

Copyright © 2022 The Mayne Report. All rights reserved

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