Cheque-book journalism, Hack guide, Can Cossie's '06 budget beat '05
July 22, 2008
Here are Stephen Mayne's four stories from the Crikey edition on Tuesday, 9 May, 2006.
5. Sharpen the pencils for a new cheque-book journalism record
By Stephen Mayne
Crikey's longstanding list of cheque book journalism escapades will attract plenty of attention in the coming days as the media and public prepare for what almost certainly will be a new record – assuming Todd Russell and Brant Webb decide to play ball.
At the moment, the $200,000-plus club looks like this:
Lleyton & Bec: close to $1 million from various outlets for wedding and baby stories and pictures. Exclusive deal with Woman's Day for the first year of baby Mia's life.
Douglas Wood: estimated $400,000 from Channel Ten through Steve Vizard's celebrity management agency.
Stuart Diver: $300,000-plus for Thredbo survivor from Today Tonight and Women's Weekly but Seven also employed him for Winter Olympics coverage.
Simone Warne: more than $250,000 from New Idea for two-part tell all on her serial philandering husband Shane.
Natasha Ryan: $250,000 from 60 Minutes after hiding in a cupboard for four years.
Belinda Emmett: $250,000 from Women's Weekly and A Current Affair for the story of Mrs Rove's cancer battles.
James Scott: up to $250,000 from 60 Minutes in 1992 for the tale Richard Carleton didn't believe about his 40 days lost in the Himalayas with a Mars bar.
Lindy Chamberlain: $250,000 from 60 Minutes in 2000 to talk about baby Azaria.
Siamese Twins: parents of the Brisbane Siamese twins born in April 2000 sold their exclusive to Channel Seven, but 60 Minutes also had a piece of the action and they collected more than $250,000.
Delta Goodrem: signed a deal with Women's Weekly to speak exclusively to the magazine about her battle with Hodgkins disease, in exchange for a $200,000 donation to cancer research in 2004.
Bob & Blanche: $200,000 from 60 Minutes and Woman's Day for "The Love that wouldn't die".
Mamdouh Habib: $200,000 from 60 Minutes after returning from Guantanamo Bay.
If we've missed any or have the figures wrong, drop us a line at smayne@crikey.com.au.
10. Hack guide: how to avoid Cossie's regulars ruses
By Stephen Mayne
Seeing as we've been locked out of the budget lock-up by Peter Costello and won't be able to adopt our normal role of being quick with commentary, thereby influencing the mainstream media, it's worth setting down some performance criteria by which Australia's most influential email list should judge the 2006-07 budget.
For instance, I reckon the Treasurer will flick the rhetoric this year and declare that the Commonwealth is now finally forecasting it will be worth something by 2008 or 2009. For the past decade, Cossie has sucked in everyone by keeping the debate on "net debt" and "budget surpluses", while ignoring a $29 billion blowout in unfunded superannuation liabilities.
The Future Fund is a belated attempt to plug the super black hole and will be integral for future balance sheet analysis when asking the vital question: what is the Commonwealth Government worth? Go to the bottom of this page from last year's budget and you'll see a five-year projection of the Federal Government's "net worth", which was negative $32 billion at the time and projected to fall to just $2 billion by June 2009.
The unprecedented commodities boom has given the budget an enormous boost so you can expect "worth something day", as opposed to Peter Costello's illusionary "debt free day" last month, to be brought forward by a couple of years, provided the windfall isn't all recklessly given away in today's budget.
However, the Government's balance sheet has taken one major hit over the year – the reduction in Telstra's share price from $4.82 to $3.86. The blue-sky valuation of $33.8 billion or $5.25-a-share in last year's budget means the balance sheet should suffer a $9 billion write-down as the 6.446 billion shares owned by the government are now valued by the market at only $24.88 billion. Ouch.
If Costello does try the "debt free" ruse today, the press should look at the updated version of this chart from last year which showed Commonwealth debt had actually increased to about $45 billion over the previous year. It's hardly eliminating the Commonwealth bond market when you're still running the biggest debt pool in the country. Even The Australian's Alan Wood wrote the following garbage last year: "But as Peter Costello pointed out again yesterday, debt has been eliminated." Not it hasn't.
The other ruse to keep an eye on is the blowout in unfunded super liabilities which is driven in large part by Australia's expanded military commitments as defence personnel have extraordinarily generous pensions.
Go to this link in the 2005 budget and you'll see from table one that the annual superannuation expense was steady over the next few years at $2.4 billion, even though unfunded superannuation liabilities were projected to blow out as follows:
2004-05: $91.1 billion
2005-06: $95.6 billion
2006-07: $98.8 billion
2007-08: $102.0 billion
2008-09: $105.2 billion
When Peter Costello became Treasurer in 1996, unfunded super was just $69 billion. The honest thing for the government to do would have been to cap that unfunded liability and take budget hits for whatever was necessary to stabilise it. If that meant trebling the annual budget contribution to super from $2.4 billion to $7.2 billion, then so be it.
If unfunded super is projected to rise again in the budget papers, hacks and commentators should subtract the increase from the projected surplus in 2006-07 to get a real figure. Now that the ruses have been telegraphed, it will be interesting to see who still falls for them.
11. Can the Treasurer beat last year's high praise?
By Stephen Mayne, locked out of the 2006 budget lock-up
Peter Costello's 2005 budget was undoubtedly the best received since Paul Keating's 1988 "bringing home the bacon" performance, so the big question this year is whether Peter Costello can win even higher praise. Whilst Liberal spinners such as Grahame Morris lead the charge with declarations that the 2005 budget was "the granddaddy of them all", even News Ltd's Terry McCrann proclaimed it was "easily the best budget we've had in 30 or so years".
The editorial headlines one year ago tell the story, particularly from the Murdoch press which seemed to have a gushing house view:
The Australian: A budget that brings home the bacon
"Apart from his first, which required big spending cuts to drag back a $10.3 billion deficit, this is Peter Costello's best budget."
The Courier Mail: Treasurer writes his own date with destiny
"This is Mr Costello's date with destiny, and last night's Budget proposes measures that will frame his own report card – whether or not he is there to deliver it. It is a bold and comprehensive package."
The Daily Telegraph: Working together for a bold future
"This Budget is in essence a representation in economic terms of the Howard/Costello manifesto for good government."
The Herald Sun: Saving the best for last
"Peter Costello has saved his best for his 10th, and possibly last, Budget. The initiatives in tax cutting, imaginative spending, focus on the future and reform to superannuation are well aimed. He has achieved this and is still left with a massive $8.9 billion surplus... Ironically, his achievements with successive Budgets raises the question of why Australians would want him to leave the job and move to the Lodge."
Fairfax was a little more sanguine, although new Age editor-in-chief Andrew Jaspan was clearly impressed:
The Sydney Morning Herald: High risk tax cuts sweeten lost opportunity
"Just when the Reserve was starting to ease its interest rate trigger finger, the Treasurer has presented the inflation watchdog with billions-of-dollar reasons to get back in the game."
The Age: Tax cuts and a super time for all
"Peter Costello's 10th – and presumably last – federal budget will be recalled as generous to a fault."
The Financial Review: Positive moves but no reform
"Framing a good news budget while standing in a blizzard of revenue dollars isn't all that hard. Taking tough decisions to make the economy more productive, resilient and able to deal with the future challenges of an ageing population amid fierce global competition for talent and capital is much harder... when one looks for evidence that the Howard Government is taking the opportunity to institute fundamental reform of the economy, it is scarce."
It will be interesting to compare the editorials tomorrow in our special budget edition so you can line them up with these offerings from last year.
17. Great story clashes of our time
By Stephen Mayne
It's hard to remember another example in recent years of two huge stories happening on the same day. Tonight's federal budget will be one of the biggest in history in terms of surpluses and largesse, yet the media also has to deal with arguably the greatest survival story ever to occur in Australia.
The whole thing is a no-brainer until 7.30pm tonight when the Treasurer gets to his feet, so the first major challenge will be for slightly delayed 7.30 Report – does it stick with a dedicated budget edition or weave in some Beaconsfield coverage as well?
Lateline, Nightline and the like will have a similar wrestle but then it will get really interesting in tomorrow's papers. Which story will be the splash, which gets the liftout and which gets more column inches?
Anyone wanting to dump some bad news should release it any time this afternoon because it is absolutely guaranteed to get buried. Macquarie Bank can be thankful its bizarre Patrick bid and withdrawal won't receive nearly the attention it deserves.
Editors who were booked to fly to Canberra for the lock-up this morning have some very difficult decisions to make because they will be surrendering their ability to dictate tomorrow's Beaconsfield coverage from lunch-time until 7.30pm, by which time it will be too late to really shape the coverage and they won't be in the newsroom anyway. Which story will the editors deem more important to roll up the sleeves for?
The last major news story clash of this magnitude that I can recall came in September 2001 when Ansett collapsed a couple of days after the twin towers were hit.
Of course, there are always clashes between longer running stories such as election campaign and wars. The East Timor intervention smothered much of the early coverage of Jeff Kennett's ill-fated 1999 Victorian election defeat just as the Beslan siege drowned out the early days of the 2004 federal election campaign.
Great story clashes of our time, this might make for an interesting list. Send your entries to smayne@crikey.com.au.
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