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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-03-10 Daily Xml
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NEWS LIMITED

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON (Croydon) (15:44): News Limited, publisher of Adelaidenow, The Advertiser and the Sunday Mail runs the Right to Know coalition, a pressure group that says it is in favour of more freedom in the media. So far as letters to the editor are concerned, unless one is patronised by the Letters to the Editor compiler, and unless your name is Nancy Fay of Woodville, it can be most difficult to be published in the Letters to the Editor column of News Limited publications. In fact, here is one from me that News Limited refused to publish in July last year:

Megan Lloyd, the editor of this newspaper, told an A.B.C. Radio audience recently the discussion about the Adelaide Oval re-development: 'It's, you know, a bunch of M.Ps, you know, in a party caucus, that gets to dictate what the capital expenditure is actually going to be, and the extent of the development.' Her comment was in response to my moving a party-room motion, from the backbench, to cap the cost to taxpayers at $535m.

Later in the radio discussion, a second News Limited employee canvasses throwing 'a billion dollars' at the redevelopment.

My role as an M.P., elected as recently as March, is to scrutinize public expenditure to try to ensure that spending is in the public interest and to protect taxpayers from News Limited's attempt to have them stump up about $1000m for a city stadium.

News Limited is the publisher of The Sunday Mail, Adelaide Now and The Advertiser.

I represent the people of the Croydon electorate, not News Limited, and I do not want the people I represent paying for a News Limited corporate box in a city stadium from which its management can in sybaritic comfort look down on us, in the manner of their interstate counterparts, satisfied that, yet again, they have had their corporate interest prevail over the common good.

Another letter of mine that has not been published reads:

Greg Kelton...uses 400 returns from a newsletter issued by an M.P. in one of the 47 State electoral districts to conclude that the public wants to 'Get rid of Rann and (the) Labor Government.' The electorate, Fisher, has elected an independent M.P. since 2001, sometimes with a majority on the primary vote, so one can presume that they haven't much liked Labor or Liberal for the past 14 years, especially those self-selected 400 who responded to the same Independent M.P. Mr Kelton, who has more than 30 years experience on the State politics round, also reveals that the people want more taxpayers' money spent in nearly all areas of government and lower taxes. Strike me pink!

Mr Kelton also tells us '63 p.c. said same-sex parents should not be able to have children, even by adoption.' Pray tell, how are they going to have them other than by adoption and if they are already 'same-sex parents' what's the problem?

Another letter of mine that was not published is about TheAdvertiser's polling on the leadership of the Australian Labor Party, especially after the current Premier. This letter was not published either:

As News Limited continues its campaign to remove Mike Rann as Premier, essentially because he took at face value its editorial criticism of government advertising and transferred some from News Limited to the web, it's timely to consider some polling on the Labor leadership from the past.

In 1945, as Labor Prime Minister John Curtin fell ill, a media poll found that 20 p.c. wanted Bert Evatt, 5 p.c. Ben Chifley, 4 p.c. Eddie Ward and 3 p.c. Frank Forde. When John Curtin's name was taken out of the next poll, 50 p.c. wanted Evatt, 17 p.c. Chifley, 11 p.c. Forde and 8 p.c. Ward.

When the Labor Caucus assembled to elect a new Prime Minister on Mr Curtin's death, 45 voted for Chifley, 15 for Forde, eight for Norman Makin and one for Evatt.

The rest is history.

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