Monday 2nd December 1996
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Mahathir said, "I'm not to get involved in such a statement by someone whom to me looks a bit moronic".
Mahathir's ego, you might recall was severely dented when he was called a "recalcitrant" by Paul Keating some years ago.
The Australian media went into a belly-flop of orchestrated panic attacks about "damage to relations between the two countries" following Keating's remarks.
Now I guess it won't be a surprise to you when you hear that the Australian MP involved here was none other than Oxley Independent Pauline Hanson.
There are no damning comments about Mahathir's remarks, in fact the article in the paper is linked to an anti-Hanson stance with the emphasis on a new code of ethics condemning racist remarks in Parliament.
Then it dawned on me..... the Australian mainstream media are playing "global self-interest" policeman. By their own admission both Packer and Murdoch are trying to hit it big in the Pay TV markets in Asia.
What better way to score browny points than to dictate an editorial policy that is seen in a positive light to the country you are trying to establish a media business in (Asia) from the country (Australia) in which you already entrenched.
What did make headline news in today's Courier Mail is a comment by News Limited boss Ken Cowley who called on Prime Minister John Howard to step up the speed of reforming economic policy.
In the lead up to the the decision by the media review commission and News Limited's submission to it this strikes me as being rather close to the line of trying to put "pressure to bear".
Let us remember that News Limited is largely owned by a foreign company called News Corporation and, is in fact, seen by the Australian Federal Government as a foreign company - regardless of the head office being registered and located in South Australia.
No one has elected them to represent or speak for the Australian people yet here they are getting headline news on an Australian issue while an elected Member of Parliament gets called a "moron" and the only mention is made as a passing sideline in our "so-called" free press.
Now a new "voluntary" code drafted by Queensland Labor senator, Margaret Reynolds, with some cross party support and including input from ethnic and Aboriginal leaders will be handed out. The code is aimed at "stamping out" a new tide of opposition to multiculturalism.
Is the greatest expose since Houdini about to be unveiled?
I was pleased to see that you are now using my edition of Hanson's speech on your "September 1996 Pauline Hanson's address to the Federal Parliament" link almost unchanged, which I admit is fair because originally I lifted some material off your site without permission or notification when I wrote my first html.
Your comments on today's controversies are refreshingly incisive and invariably correct, and will continue I trust.
Jeff Hill
Sydney
Mr Cowley claimed that the Government were more open to Mr Packer's views of cross media ownership than to News Limited's submission which favoured easing restrictions to foreign media ownership laws.
Cowley reiterated that News Limited no longer had any interest in the Fairfax group in which Canadian media baron Conrad Black holds a 24.7% share. News last month selling its small shareholding in the company.
It is no secret that since the Super League fiasco relations between Murdoch and Packer have been icy cold.
Yesterday we went to the Karanda Downs Ratepayers Association (KADRA) meeting.
Over 500 residents of this small Ipswich suburb turned up to hear about the exhorbitant demands on our rates by overpaid and underworked councillors who get given rate-payer funded cars, salary packages of about Au$150,000 a year and yet only represent about 6,000 people in their ward. This at a time when property values have fallen by about 10% and rates have risen by about 16%.
The ratepayers have had enough and are demanding that their small suburb be embraced by Brisbane and taken out of the clutches of Ipswich. A move that I personally fully support.
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