News

News.com.au has today published the results of its exclusive Cost of Living survey, and the results are a major eye-opener. The take home message is this: a huge number of us say we’re struggling.

Reading the survey, which was taken by 30,000 Australians, you wouldn’t know that we’re one of the world’s 10 wealthiest nations in raw GDP per capita terms. Neither would you think we managed to surf out the worst of the global financial crisis. Or crises. Or whatever.

The national breakdown is as follows. Forty-eight per cent of us say we are “managing to get by”, 28 per cent of place ourselves on “Struggle St”, 17 per cent are “barely coping” while 7 per cent of us are on “Easy St”.

Continue reading "The long road that leads away from Struggle Street" »

I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination.

The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does.

What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech?

Continue reading "I love Karl Stefanovic more than he loves his wife’s arse" »

In the past week over 400 people have died in floods in Thailand, three Australian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and the European economy teetered on the verge of collapse. But most devastating of all was the news that Kim Kardashian’s marriage was in disarray after just 72 days.

Australia’s commercial networks and newspapers almost fell into the trap of misreading the break-up as a pointless, inane, staged piece of nonsense, but then came to their senses and ran blanket coverage of the story for three days.

Things could’ve got much, much worse though. There was the chance the vacuous, money-hungry, talentless reality TV star could have pulled out of her promotional tour to Australia, opening up the possibility that some media outlets would have to resort to reporting serious news. 

Continue reading "Kim Kardashian 1: No news would be good news" »

There’s an awful lot of hand-wringing these days over the binge drinking epidemic. Well, here’s a really obvious thought. Maybe all those teenagers and 20-somethings are only living up to the example we’ve set them on all kinds of fronts.

Think about it. Society today is full of bingers. We’re all bingers. We consume anything and everything in ever-increasing proportions, usually to the point of excess and often to the point of vulgarity.

Forget the obvious cases of food and booze for a minute. Take entertainment. Remember the days when you’d passively sit back and wait for your weekly instalment of TV drama? That is sooo 2005.

Continue reading "FOOI #13: Young drinkers aren’t the only bingers" »

By now, you’ve probably heard about Happy Feet, the ailing emperor penguin who was found near New Zealand a few months back. After rehab, Happy Feet was released this week, only to go missing somewhere in southern waters.

Some say he was gobbled by an orca. We think he might’ve been munched by a huge manatee, even though said mammals reside only in the northern hemisphere. Hey, never let the truth get in the way of a good headline.

Dead or alive, Happy Feet has captivated everyone. This is not unusual. Animal stories are always popular in any form of media, especially online. And if you think about it, that says something gently profound about our own humanity.

Continue reading "Oh, the huge manatee!" »

“As the number of available outlets for political news grows, so does the tendency of citizens to self-select which news to consume and which to ignore.” So says Georgetown University’s Rebecca Chalif, in her 2011 study Political Media Fragmentation: Echo Chambers in Cable News.

This statement seems obvious and fairly innocuous on the surface. Thirty years ago, people were vastly more confined in how they consumed their news - it was perhaps three TV channels and one or two newspapers.

According to the Australian Market and Social Research Society, the media has become far more fragmented over the last 15 years. Free-to-air TV has gone from five to 17 channels with over 120 subscription channels available, and we have over 600 newspapers and 1,500 magazines available to us.

Continue reading "Do you ever really listen to the other side of the story?" »

So what are we to make of 2011, a year in which one has hardly been able to catch one’s breath in between momentous events (and it’s only just September!). 

We have had major environmental disasters (the Queensland floods, the Christchurch earthquake, the Japan earthquake/tsunami), and the spectacular fall from grace of seemingly unassailable powerful men (such as Tunisia’s Zine el Abadine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Osama Bin Laden, IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn (even though rape charges were recently dropped), and Rupert Murdoch).

For the second time in a few years, the global economy teeters (including the first downgrade of the US’s sovereign debt status since 1917 and the very real possibility of the demise of the Eurozone). Anders Breivik wreaked havoc in a murderous rampage in Norway.  We also have a new state in the form of South Sudan. There have also been flashbacks to unfortunate episodes of the 1980s, with a major (and ongoing and unresolved) nuclear emergency in Japan’s Fukushima recalling the Chernobyl disaster, famine in East Africa, and England’s recent riots recalling unrest under Thatcher, oh ... and on a nicer note, a Royal Wedding.

Continue reading "If no news is good news what do we make of 2011?" »

So much for the schadenfreudegasm.

Last night’s grilling of Rupert and James Murdoch by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee was rather more like a ‘rose ceremony’ in an episode of The Bachelor: slow and excruciating, but compulsive viewing nonetheless.

The entire event was full of tension and politeness in equal measure, and James Murdoch’s long-winded non-response to the first question was more heavily scripted than the episode of Winners and Losers which aired earlier in the evening.

Continue reading "Po-faced and pie-faced, what next for Murdoch?" »

I was going to start this with a deliberately understated introduction along the lines of: This is not journalism’s finest hour. But then I remembered that the whole News of the World scandal was in fact unearthed by journalists. And then I couldn’t work out how to start.

Journalists are prone to navel gazing; the unkind would say that’s because of an over-inflated sense of our own importance. The kind would say it’s because we are aware of the inherent privilege and responsibility of what we do.

But you can’t deny the NOTW catastrophe is an incredibly significant story, so no wonder the non-News Ltd press are wallowing in it – gleefully, in many instances.

Continue reading "News of the World scandal doesn’t make us all hacks" »

Sex and alcohol used to be the weapons of choice if you wanted to attract fellow uni students to a meeting.  The ad industry has known for decades that sex sells. 

And now we have the internet to tell us in even more precise detail just how attractive humans find sex, scandals or booze – preferably all three.

So should we be surprised that, as Lindsay Tanner’s new book Sideshow highlights, the media don’t love good policy, but they simply adore “sexy” stories? 

Continue reading "We are all to blame for the dumbing down of politics" »

I don’t usually write about myself, because I’m interested in issues rather than personalities. Some commenters - not speaking of you, James - frequently try to derail conversations by launching personal attacks, and the best response is to ignore these and concentrate on the topic at hand.

In this case, however, I can make an exception because the topic is me. It’s good to be recognised, even in a tongue-in-cheek way. Not just because it amuses me or inflates my ego, but because it means my message is being heard.

Of course, I don’t expect James to suddenly renounce the errors of his ways and become a born-again conservative, but then that isn’t my purpose.

Continue reading "Erick responds: I am just one voice" »

In the past week we have all grieved in our own particular way over something lost. For some it was trivial: a train ticket, phone number, or perhaps a bet on the big race. For the more unfortunate it was something significantly worse: a job, a house, a friend or loved one.

But for much of Australia, it seems, as millions gather to attend tonight’s funeral, it has been the loss of Melissa Rafter.

The something I’m currently concerned with losing is our collective plot.

Continue reading "Losing the plot over the Rafters’ family death" »

Why didn’t the Q&A shoe‑thrower Peter Gray toss former Prime Minister John Howard a lamington instead?

Taking his cue from an Iraqi journalist, turned footwear rejecter, who flung his possessions at then‑US President George W Bush, Gray in one unoriginal act exposed the limitations of the Q&A program as an uninhibited experiment in deliberative democracy.

According to the program’s website, Q&A aims to place punters, pollies and pundits together to ‘thrash out’ the hot issues of the week. Think of it as the political equivalent of a WWE steel cage match.

Continue reading "It’s better to take Q&A as a comment, not democracy" »

It’s pretty clear everyone with an indulgent boss is glued to the television right now watching the early stages of the extraction of the 33 Chilean miners who’ve been trapped underground for more than two months.

You’ve got to hand it to those Chileans - they know an occasion when they see one - and as gripping news moments go this one is a cracker. If you can’t commandeer a tele click here for live coverage.

If you rattle off a list of other must-see-TV news moments it’s pretty dire. September 11, the Victorian Bushfires, the Mumbai terror attacks, the Beslan school seige, the London Bombings, Bali, the Port Arthur massacre, the explosion of the Challenger rocket.

Continue reading "Finally, something on the news to feel good about" »

For about the fifty-millionth time on my television screen in recent times, I recently witnessed yet another slimy current affairs story that shouldn’t have been screened at 6.35 pm.

This time it was the tale of a woman who is taking her former boss to the cleaners for sexual harassment.  In itself, the story on Today Tonight didn’t particularly offend my sensibilities; it was quite newsworthy and, if told sensitively, may not have aroused my ire.  But it’s the sleazy manner in which these stories are so often portrayed that really gets up my nose.

Why did they have to give the intimate details of the case – word for word?  Why did they have to quote the man who supposedly said to the young woman during dinner that the dessert was so good it was ‘like a **** in the mouth’?  Oh yes, they beeped out the ‘offensive’ word.  Woohoo!  Good on them for being so ‘family friendly’. 

Continue reading "Yes Today Tonight, your sleaziness has my attention" »

An unassuming bank manager who went missing in North Queensland is alleged to have made “full and frank admissions” to police about a missing $3 million from the community bank in which he worked.

The disappearance and subsequent arrest of bank manager Colin Carleton is a kind of crime story more fascinating than a heist pulled off by a gang of hardened criminals. The Courier Mail reports that Carelton is widely described as “quiet, down-to-earth, family man”.

Carleton’s alleged theft only came to light in the last few months, and is thought have taken place over a decade. He was due to meet with private investigators looking at financial irregularities at his Bendigo Community Bank when he disappeared on July 13, last seen going for a trail bike ride in the Herberton Ranges.

Continue reading "Election-Free Zone: the man who wasn’t there" »

Poor old Alvin Quah got eliminated from Masterchef last night after mucking up a cake he said you’d need a PhD to know how to cook.

I’m not sure at the bottom of which cornflake box you’d find such a qualification, but as much as I liked Alvin, and was sorry to see him go, I have to say, don’t be such a baby. What Alvin (after all this time seeing him every night I feel I can call him Alvin) said was:

Short of them making the contestants cook under water next year, I really don’t know what they’re going to do. It’s mad - they put us through the ringer. Can you imagine anything more difficult than what we went through in this series? I can’t.

Continue reading "Election-Free Zone: Is Masterchef too hard?" »

There is a wall of federal election coverage out there today. This isn’t more of it.

A glance at the list of most popular stories on any major website shows Australians are talking about a bunch of other things aside from politics. So alongside our daily campaign coverage we’ll be bringing you a daily potted summary of the non-election issues grabbing voters’ attention, trying not to draw unnecessary parallels with federal politics unless it involves budgies, forward movement, or other parallels too obvious to resist. Today, let’s start with sporting WAGs.

What makes a good WAG?

Continue reading "Election-Free Zone: What makes a good WAG?" »

A new messiah arrived in the US over the Easter weekend, ready to save the world’s flailing print media industry.

Sandal-less and sleek, it was, of course, Steve Jobs’ new fantasy tablet, the wildly anticipated, possibly revolutionary, definitely state of the art, iPad thingymajiggy. And America threw a bonza welcome party for its latest chosen one. Australia will have to wait a month to throw theirs.

Apple sold 700,000 iPads in two days, with 300,000 plucked from shelves and UPS men on Saturday, the first day of sales. By any standard that’s a massive take-off; even by Apple standards. The now ubiquitous iPhone sold 200,000 on its first day in stores in 2007, a third less than its plus-sized cousin.

But it was the media laying the palms for the iPad’s arrival more than the shoppers.

Continue reading "Will the iPad save the news?" »

Welcome to another trawl round the slightly yellow public swimming pools and suspect spa baths across our broad nation.

We start this week’s march with a fairly ill-informed assumption.

Suburban Tales representatives haven’t seen a demographic breakdown of The Punch’s readership, but being a site featuring smart, erudite, politically aware and deeply relevant thought (bar this column of course), we can assume a few things…

Continue reading "Suburban Tales: Stray trolleys and sex toys" »

Welcome to another brief sojourn through the hot bakes and juice stands across our sun-drenched country.

Readers of Suburban Tales would know the love affair the people of Melbourne seem to have with the humble turtle.  A couple of weeks ago, we reported on one such reptile who spends quality time attached to a harness being taken for beach walkies. 

A blissful existence for any animal, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Continue reading "Suburban Tales: Turtles and nudie runs" »

Is this the greatest ever send-up of 24-hour news? Warning: contains strong language and hilarity. From The Onion.

Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

Welcome to another amble around the mission-brown patios and decked al fresco areas festooned across our sea-girt nation.

We start this week in the Land of Queens, where the mighty have fallen.  The Ipswich News reports the ute at the centre of the Utegate fiasco that has been resurrected and turned into a Meals on Wheels fundraiser.

Just as the Krudster himself has pulled a hairshirt skivvy over those coke-bottle specs and wound up a mea culpa or two, so the ute that did no real damage to his political career is now a contrite charity van.

Continue reading "Suburban Tales: Utegate revisited" »

Naked cartwheels, foot spas for toddlers and a board game that teaches youngsters the ins and outs of the drug trade.

It’s been another varied week in the quirky world of local newspapers.

When an 80-year-old Adelaide woman found a board game on her front lawn, quite naturally she gave it to her grandson.

Continue reading "Suburban tales: Of nudism and monopoly" »

We’ll kick off this week’s tour of the suburbs with a story likely to leave your grandad shaking his head and telling you the world’s gone mad.

In yet another kick to the swingers for first-time buyers, a 16 square metre garage has been sold in North Bondi – for $240,000.

As the Wentworth Courier reports, a punter shelled out more than four times the average Australian salary for “a little extra space”.

Continue reading "Suburban Tales: The romance of housework" »

Late January, and it’s time for schools to repopulate with wide-eyed kids eager to resume ignoring their teachers in favour of the psychological abuse of their peers.

Consequently, it’s also the time roads start getting clogged and the strains of tune-free music to start screeching through the air as students pick up neglected instruments again.

It’s a stressful time of year, particularly for teachers.

Continue reading "Suburban tales: BBQs, buskers and killer shrubs" »

Welcome to another trip around the lawn chairs and broken trampolines of our wide brown suburbs.

There’s nothing like an urban planning story to get the heart of every local journo pumping. All those genteel ‘save our suburbs’ types in leafy inner suburbs butting heads against shadowy property developer types torn straight out of an episode of

Secret Valley. It all makes for good copy.

Take the story from Brisbane’s Springfield News this week that the local Hare Krishna community may be denied permission to build a temple.

Continue reading "Suburban tales: You left your whip and chicken in the cab" »

Last night The Punch took a flight from Canberra to Melbourne and settled in for a viewing of Qantas’ in-flight news bulletin provided by Channel Nine.

Slowly recovering my obligatory takeoff fear of dying next to some guy in a Ralph Lauren t-shirt and blond tips in his hair, it occurred to me that the entire bulletin had not mentioned the biggest news story of the last few days: the failed terrorist attack aboard the Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit.

Absolutely nothing was reported in an almost half hour long broadcast about a failed terrorist attack aboard a passenger plane which a little group called Al-Qaeda have now claimed responsibility for. A story that still commanded high priority during their national news broadcasts that evening.

This wasn’t some shocking editorial oversight by a confused news editor, rather it’s very intentional Qantas policy not to inform it’s passengers of airline disaster related news stories.

Continue reading "Do we need to know about terrorism while in the air?" »

We’ve made our list, we’ve checked it twice - this is who’s been naughty and nice. And because it’s more fun, let’s start with NAUGHTY...

1. The Home and Away kids

What are they putting in the water at Summer Bay? The big wigs at Channel Seven have had to implement a new two-strikes-an-you’re out drugs policy for the soapy after a pretty unedifying year for the young cast. First Jodi Gordon was found cowering in the bedroom cupboard of a known bikie after her boyfriend Ryan Stokes (yes, that Stokes) reported her missing after a night out on the town. Then at the wrap party the other night Todd Lasance was busted by police with cocaine. Oh, and his former housemate Lincoln Lewis had a little incident with a sex tape.

Continue reading "Naughty or nice in 2009" »

The people have spoken in two suburban electorates this week, and they said no to sex. Or at least no to the Sex Party. 

As we reported a couple of weeks ago, the party joined the electoral race in the former Peter Costello stronghold Higgins, and also in the Sydney seat of Bradfield.

Not all went swimmingly for the two candidates vying for office.  In Melbourne, Sex Party boss Fiona Patten found herself falling foul of the local plod, after some South Yarra parents found her van - with SEX PARTY written on the back - somehow offensive.

Continue reading "Suburban tales: And the van had ‘Sex Party’ written on it" »

Put your hand up if you own a dictionary. How about a thesaurus, book on grammar or an encyclopaedia? 

What do you do with them these days?

My dictionary sits beside the bed and aside from a handful of smug, self-satisfied glances at it, it’s mostly a useful prop for my bedside lamp. 

Continue reading "Did I sleep with Tiger Woods? And other questions of 2009" »

I was a late Twitter convert, only joining up at the behest of a friend who regularly spoke of its virtues in connecting with her fellow poets and Gertrude Stein enthusiasts.

I am a bit ambivalent about contributing to conversations surrounding the latest social networking fads but the other day I had a realisation that I get most of my news from Twitter.

The realisation came to me as a bit of a shock, when I was talking to my housemate about the Liberal Party leadership woes.

Continue reading "Twitter: News at the speed of light" »

Welcome to another trek across the nature strips and service lanes of splendid suburbia.

We in suburban journoland always do a good line in “animal saves human” yarns. But scratch the surface most of these stories, and you generally find that the animals being fitted up for bravery awards were mostly just trying to escape death or hump something.

Behold, for instance, the rabbit optimistically dubbed a hero because it bleated enough at its own impending fiery doom, to wake its owners to the fact they had a blaze in their house.

Continue reading "Suburban tales: of hero animals and pole dancing" »

Welcome to a week of splendid news from the suburbs, towns and semi-divisions around our sunburnt land.

We start our trip around the traps in Higgins, the very leafy and very inner eastern Melbourne electorate of former treasurer Peter Costello.  In a move that could take the blue-ribbon seat a fair bit further into the blue spectrum, Sex Party candidate Fiona Patten has thrown her hat into the by-election ring. Surrounded by supporters - including an ‘adult entertainment’ actress - the Eros Foundation lobbyist launched her tilt at a trendy Prahran café.

While we’re in the southern city’s more trend-setting parts, if you’ve ever wanted to wear a dress made of living fungus, now’s your chance.  Bio-artist Donna Franklin’s Fibre Reactive dress allows the presumably apprehensive wearer the chance to experience a fungal outbreak first hand, without need of ointment.

Continue reading "Suburban tales: politics, sex, and getting stuck in school" »

Hello. Just got back from a solitary week in a fisherman’s cottage at Brindabella Station, west of Canberra, where I was working on a writing project.

A full week without phones, telly or the internet. And you know what? It was great.

The world is richer when you turn the electronic chatter off. Here’s a selection of stuff I noticed (or didn’t)…

Continue reading "Postcard from a wireless week" »