The Guardian 14 June, 2006
Dingo bytes
The Howard Government has stepped up implementing it plans to commercialise our two public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS. SBS has announced it will begin having ads during programs from next January. The Special Broadcasting Service can run up to five minutes of advertising an hour and currently bunches those ads at the end of programs. SBS has been forced to run the ads in program time to gain more revenue because it is under-funded by the Federal Government. At the moment a lot of viewers leave SBS when the cluster of ads comes on at the end of programs, causing a drop in audience numbers and proving — if proof was needed — that advertising is a real turnoff. The drive to have the ABC take on advertising has intensified recently and its support group, Friends of the ABC spokesperson Glenys Stradijot noted, "They’ve done the ABC a favour. They’ve proved that you can’t be a little bit pregnant. Any commercialism continues along."
The deep-seated discrimination against Indigenous Australians — basically institutionalised racism — takes many cruel and unusual turns. It was revealed in the Sydney Morning Herald last week that some Aboriginal women who have reported being sexually assaulted have themselves been locked up when it was discovered that they have had some minor outstanding charge. For example, an Aboriginal woman in Sydney who last year went to police after she was raped was held in a cell overnight because of an outstanding warrant. The Wirringa Baiya Aboriginal Women’s Legal Centre in the south-west suburb of Marrickville says that that type of treatment happens a lot and that very few Aboriginal women made complaints about the way they have been treated by police. "It is difficult enough to report a sexual assault, let alone being fearful that you are going to risk being locked up for a warrant for some minor matter", said the Centre’s Christine Robinson. She said the fear of being locked up deters many Aboriginal women from reporting domestic violence or sexual assault whether they have outstanding warrants or not.
CAPITALIST HOG OF THE WEEK: is Defence Minister Brendan Nelson. Poncing around in East Timor like the arrogant popinjay he is, Nelson informed Australian troops that they will not get the highest rate of pay that can be received by soldiers on active service overseas because he claimed that the situation in East Timor is not "war-like". One of the soldiers put him right on the spot, asking, "The classification of war-like, would that change with the death of one of us?"