The shameless actions of News Ltd are a threat to our democracy.

NEWS Ltd owns 70 per cent of the circulation of major newspapers in Australia. If Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, were an apolitical or a distant figure, this might not matter, but he has a powerful set of ideological beliefs and is determined to maintain tight control over the political line of all his papers on issues that interest him.

Politically engaged citizens have a plethora of accessible sources of information on the internet, but News Ltd's capacity to influence the opinions of the vast majority of less engaged citizens - whose political understanding is shaped directly by the popular newspapers and indirectly through the commercial radio and television programs that rely on newspapers for content and, more deeply, for the way they interpret the world - is unjustifiable.

The company's domination of our newspaper market poses a real and present danger to the health of Australian democracy.

Take, for example, the reported discussion by News Ltd editors and key journalists earlier this year about the need to do something about the minority Gillard government and its alliance with the Greens. Following that meeting, Murdoch tabloids began to campaign in earnest against the government and in particular against its carbon tax.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/a-pressing-case-for-standing-up-to-rupert-murdochs-bullying-20110901-1jo2i.html#ixzz1WkBj1BPO

An Australian inquiry into media bias would ignore the bigger crisis facing newspapers in the digital age.

Does Australia need an inquiry into the news media? It does, but not for the reasons that prompted Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Senator Bob Brown to discuss the idea. They are angered because of political bias. But there is an even bigger and more complex issue.

According to some, the newspapers of Australia are dinosaurs due for extinction. The vast newsrooms with busy journalists hunched over their phones and the late-night decisions on the front-page headline will disappear. And, according to some, good riddance.

We beg to differ. Newspapers' problems are problems for democracy and for an informed public. This has been recognised by several overseas inquiries.

To claim an elevated role for newspapers in a democracy may seem bizarre given the latest phone hacking revelations, but this is the case.

Newspapers are in trouble because advertisements are going online.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/print-is-at-the-root-of-good-news-20110817-1iy1k.html#ixzz1WkIEWdkL
Another major problem is that newspapers tend to become like a pack of wolves and murder the baby. For example I expect more from Michelle Grattan than this:

JULIA Gillard has been cornered by the High Court decision and, foolishly, in her anger and policy anguish, she is turning on the justices. It's a bad look.

Never mind that Liberal politicians did this on occasion. Labor's habit of invoking Liberal precedents is becoming increasingly a sign of insecurity in its own actions.

And the suggestion, as the government did some mopping up after the Gillard outburst, that this wasn't really an attack is bizarre.

Gillard took an axe to the court, saying the decision was a missed opportunity to fight people-smuggling and that it has turned the interpretation of the law on its head. For good measure, she hit out at Chief Justice Robert French for not following the line he had taken before he reached the High Court.

To attack the umpire looks like a fit of the sulks or, as Professor Frank Brennan said of her onslaught against French, a dummy spit.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/gillard-needs-show-of-control-20110901-1joau.html#ixzz1WkIzOcm6
The umpire has made an ill-informed decision and this is not the first time. On the football field one often sees a whistle blower penalising a team for an offence committed discreetly by the other.
On the boat people issue, whether we like it or not, Australia has to deal with the "problem". Democratically, 80 per cent of the population want to stop the boats. 70 per cent want the boat people to be treated decently. There is a certain disparity in this duality, because the boats are not going to stop. There is also an "industry" benefiting from dealing with the boat people, but this is a side issue. The Malaysian solution though not ideal provides a tougher environment for those seeking to come here on leaky boats, placing their lives and those of our sailors at risk, and provides a greater humanitarian access for many more who have been in line waiting for migration. These would be welcome in the order of the queue. What else can the government do but set up a ferry service between Indonesia and Chrismas Island?...

Hi Gus,

I must confess to being one of those who believes that the asylum seekers should be processed on-shore, in Australia, just as the 50,000 or so others who fly here every year are treated. I think this is just part of the obligation we accepted when we signed-up to the refugee convention. I also think Labour has gotten itself 'wedged' on the one-hand by the old rattus policy & a fear of idiots like Jones & Bolt if it was to pursue such an approach.

As to the boats, I reckon if the government worked harder with Indonesia to break the smugglers' activities at the point of departure, there would be less of a problem to start with. I think that there's very little done in that regard to start with.

In my view, Gillard & Labour had a chance to 'start again' on this issue in the wake of the High Court's decision. Instead, all they've done is carp & complain about the decision & demonstrate that they have no character.

As much as I detest Tony Abbott & the rest of the 'rattus' crew waiting in the wings, I have to say that I do not believe that Gillard is fit to be Prime Minister & sadly, I can't see anyone-else in Labour who I think could do the job better.

It shouldn't be forgotten that the main reason there are so many refugees trying to reach Australia is because of our willingness to join our "special friends" in foreign military adventures that we should never have been involved in in the first place.

Agreed on some of this, but, as I mentioned above, why not set a ferry service between Indonesia and Christmas Island and cut the middle men. I personally believe that Julia is doing a decent job under very trying circumstances... Having Abbott and his one track mind midgets at the helm of this country would lead to 10 minutes of euphoria and another decade of misery — economically, socially and environmentally. I did not do the cartoon of "Julia of Arc" for nothing... Like Joan of Arc she's has many enemies (even riding on the pig of Labor) and, after some victories, she's been burned to the stakes.

The future might prove me wrong.

from Andrew Elder

I supported the Malaysian Solution. Go ahead, laugh. Not being a journalist or a politician I'm free to admit when I'm wrong.

To inform myself on the High Court's recent decision on this matter I read both kinds of mainstream media articles about it: gloaty pieces from those who dislike everything this Government does balanced with gloaty pieces from those who disapprove of inhumane treatment of asylum seekers in particular. Hooray and whoop-de-do for balanced reportage: at least I paid for them as much as they were worth.

I supported the Malaysian Solution because I thought it would form the start of some sort of regional cooperation across South-East Asia on the matter of stateless and displaced people. Nauru and Manus Island were designed to hide the problem, not as a basis to work with others to solve it. Proposals for East Timor and, yes, bloody Manus Island again show what happens when you focus your policymaking energies on announceables rather than long-term solutions.

No country in the region can or should have to deal with thousands of refugees by themselves. Countries adjacent to states like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Burma or Vietnam from which asylum seekers come have to sustain populations far in excess of Australia's on a fraction of our income: they can be cruel to asylum seekers and refuse to recognise them legally because this is the only option they have to minimise the numbers of people they have to deal with.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2868366.html

Andrew Elder was a member of the Liberal Party of Australia, starting off as a libertarian-punk, then as a moderate seeking to preserve rights and freedoms in a changing world; now he scorns the know-nothing Liberals, doesn't trust the left and disdains the other interest groups that flit around Australian politics, and does so publicly yet obscurely.

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Andrew, I won't laugh at you... Though far from perfect, the Malaysian solution is far better and more humanitarian than the Nauru solution of Tony Abbott. The next thing after the High Court decision would be for the federal Goverment to run a boat people ferry service between Indonesia and Christmas Island. This would be safer than leaky boats smashing on the rocks.

'Profoundly disappointing,'' the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, said after the High Court demolished the so-called Malaysian solution on Wednesday.

No, it wasn't. It was a triumph, a beacon of liberty. Six of seven judges - Dyson Heydon being the predictable naysayer - stood four square in the face of the Gillard government's disgraceful stomping of its human rights obligations under the UN Refugee Convention. ''Fiat justitia, ruat caelum,'' as judges like to say to each other over a sherry in chambers. Let justice be done though the heavens fall.

So the race to the bottom is on once more. Learning nothing from its humiliation, Labor will try again to out-Tory the Tories in the fear 'n' loathing business. Beyond desperate, the government will do anything to extricate itself from a political catastrophe entirely of its own making. Decency and - most of all - commonsense were flung to the winds long ago.

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That was always the problem with the Malaysian solution. It was never a solution at all, merely political pantomime, a knee-jerk reaction to the xenophobic prejudices of focus groups in the marginal electorates of outer suburban Sydney and Melbourne.

The more the Prime Minister tricked it out with blather about ''breaking the people smugglers' business model'' and ending those dangerous boat journeys, the more cynical it looked. As I wrote here last May, it differed from the vindictive cruelty of the Howard government's ''Pacific Solution'' only in that it lay further west. That's why Kevin Rudd so clearly wanted no part of it as foreign minister, leaving all the running to Gillard and Bowen.

But this is not a race Labor can ever win. As we have seen, however low the government goes, the opposition and its claque of ranting shock jocks and the right-wing commentariat will be ready to make another leap lower.

So, Nauru here we come. Or Manus Island. Or whatever remote pile of guano or blasted coral atoll can be found to dispatch these wretched boat people out of sight and mind. More razor wire, a return to temporary protection visas, indefinite mandatory detention, yes, all the hideous apparatus of the Howard regime is on the table again. At whatever the cost in millions and billions.

This debate has been so poisonous for so long that rational decisions are probably impossible now. The sensible thing would be to recognise that, compared with rest of the world, we don't have a refugee problem. At the end of 2010, for example, Germany counted 594,300 refugees within its borders. The United States took 71,400 refugees that year, the Canadians 12,100.

We accepted just 8500, which makes us 46th, per capita, on the list of countries that provide asylum. Most of ours arrived not by boat, but by air.

Process them all on the mainland and have done with it.