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| Issue No 28 |  |
27 August 1999 |
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Letters to the EditorNo, No, No to MSN Model
NO,NO,NO,NO,NO to any union group using MSN. Not just on political grounds but due to the inferiority of the system and the isidious nature of its cookies and who else uses it. The Television station, NINE, who lobbied hard for pay TV in cable form and who is now advertising the 'wonders' of HDTV as furthering titvation over and above more content via multichannelling, has done nothing but attempt to maintain the most controlled standard of television media broadcasting in the world. It follows as a predictable pattern that NINE would form a business partnership with MSN since Microsoft also wish to maintain market 'dominance' otherwise known as control. While everywhere else in the world, excluding the UK to my knowledge, has free and unpunctuated access to the BBC, CNN and many other free to air digital broadcasts in English not even available to Australians who pay for these privileges,NINE and others are fighting and have succeeded in relation to cross border broadcasting to maintain a level of control over satellite services and price so the average Australian cannot afford to view content out of reach of the control of NINE and its allies in the department of Communications and in the Australian Broadcasting Commission and various soft headed 'research' departments dealing with communications. For the Unions to be associated with MSN would be to vote in support of media control for the wealthy over the 'average' Australian, especially those of low income and in rural areas, in maintaining a type of broadcasting in accessible to them but accessible to their piers in every other country in the region. The average Romanians had access to cheap satellite dishes and geostationary satellites put in place by countries interested in communications over profits and were able as a result to get access to views that were not jingoistic, not biased toward the views of the powerful in side Rumania, and did not just show the achievements of winners who fit into the local accepted standards rather than universal standards. The media situation, as desired by Microsoft and NINE, in Australia excludes the average Australian from any better view of the world than the Indonesian farmers who think they are only lighting small bush fires. German TV, Chinese TV and other countries around the world have satellite signals that every Australian should have access to as do other countries in the region without having to pay thousands for so ahuge dish can be obtained like SBS has. The key to this is a reduction of price in both satelliterecievers and computers perhaps via susidies which would allow the bulk of Australians to see where the filtered news they currently recieve originates and the context of that news. The upcoming olympics will offer the best view yet of what differences exist between Australian media and OS points of view. The failure of Australia to provide access for the Serbian community to their home broadcasts on TV which were available Western Europe, or to the Chinese point of view, was the most prominant recent example of just how narrow the standard is which big players in information transmission wish to maintain. For the Union movement to accept a contract involving MSN is to accept a relatively poor situation for the Australian worker, to support the maintenance of this deliberate effort, and to compound that inequitable level of control by these media tycoons over what information Australians have access to. The union movement must trust that all Australians will can be discerning about the information they recieve and that restricting information is a national weakness. Thankyou for your forbearance. Andrew Burgess
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   Interview: Talking TurkeyA full transcript of an important interview with the Minister for Workplace Relations, the Hon Peter Reith. Politics: What Reith told the ILOWorkers Online has recevied a transcript of roving statesman Peter Reith's talk to the ILO in Geneva. This one's not satire. Unions: What the Workers SaidActor Di Smith was one of nine ordinary workers who addressed this week's rally. Here's what she had to say. International: Cancelling the DebtSign this Jubilee 2000 email petition now and tell the world's most powerful leaders to cancel the unpayable debts of the world's poorest countries by the year 2000. Environment: Greens, CFMEU call for Action on Ceiling DustResidents and workers, associated with houses damaged in the freak hail storm that hit Sydney earlier this year, may have been exposed to harmful levels of toxic materials found in the ceiling dust of the damaged buildings History: Eveleigh Railway Workshops celebration Former workers and their families from the historic Eveleigh Railway Workshops in inner-Sydney are holding a picnic reunion and folk music festival on the site this Sunday. Republic: Does the Republic Need a President?It seems inevitable that Australia will eventually become a republic but do we need a president? Satire: Liberals May Need to Sell of More of Telstra'We're running low in key marginals,� says Alston Review: A Kind of ViolenceExtracts from Yosi Berger's new book, telling the real stories behind workpalce safety.
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