Vision Super, which handles the superannuation of all current and past council workers, slapped Victoria’s 79 councils with a $71 million bill earlier this year.
April, 2011
Essential: the Labor Party … trashing its brand since 2009…
The extent of Labor’s brand damage is once again apparent, today’s Essential Report shows.
The bureaucracy of Gitmo
Benjamin Franklin’s famous trade-off between liberty and temporary safety – for those who deserve neither — stands itemized in human form in the Gitmo documents, in those many files full of misspellings, malapropisms and justifications, the dream-diary jottings of a superpower nightmare.
Arrests over Jakarta Easter bomb plot aimed to kill churchgoers
The cumulative effect of recent terrorist arrests is a country on edge, fearful of slipping back to the dark days of the first half of the 2000s, writes Stuart Ranfurlie, a freelance journalist in Jakarta.l
Possum: CSIRO gets insulation program to debunking media hysteria
The CSIRO last week released what was effectively a statistical analysis of the reality surrounding large parts of the infamous Home Insulation Program.l
Breaking the embargo proves Tanner’s point about media sideshow
There has to be a balance between our commercial interest in selling a book and the media’s commercial need to report on its contents, writes Scribe publicity manager Emma Morris.
Our fiscal props: financial services and mining
Quick - what’s the biggest sector of the Australian economy? The answer reveals a lot about what’s happened since 2001, and what will happen in the next recession.
Come in Spinner: Another Anzac Day and some new angles
It was moving to read in The Sunday Age a story reporting that records mapping the location of 3906 Vietnamese soldiers killed and buried by Australians during the Task Force operations had been given to Vietnam.
Housing … past performance no indication of future returns
Instead of restricting supply of dwellings, it appears that in Melbourne especially, banks appear to be doing the opposite.
Daily Proposition: Read a scintillating debut novel
The cover of Adam Ross’ first novel is swathed in praise from no lesser lights than Stephen King and Michiko Kakutani. And Mr Peanut is indeed a disturbing book, says Alice Grundy.
Video of the Day: Budweiser’s nod to military gays?
Budweiser has unexpectedly entered the gay rights debate with a new commercial focusing on a solder returning home and a young man waiting for him. Or have they? The debate on whether this is the first post-Don’t Ask Don’t Tell military ad has begun…
Tips and rumours: Tips and rumours
Boland to program Ten? Seven whiz kid Adam Boland wants to break free from the network that nurtured him, so the story goes, to join his old Seven mate James Warburton at Ten. What hasn’t been revealed is that Warburton wants Boland to revamp the Ten schedule by taking over as head programmer from David […]
Crikey Says: The Gitmo files
Some light post-holiday reading from our friends at WikiLeaks: thousands of pages of documents dating from 2002 to 2008, memoranda from JTF-GTMO, the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay, to US Southern Command in Miami, Florida…
Political snippets: Low inflation coming to an end?
A troubling sign. The March quarter consumer price figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics this morning certainly raise the question about whether the run of low inflation figures is coming to an end. As expected the headline figure was up substantially on that for the December quarter with the rise of 1.6% being […]
Paul Simons’ legacy a hazy shade of winter
Will Paul Simons be remembered? Similarly aged musicians such as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen have attracted huge support from a younger generation but Simons struggles to find new fans, writes Jim Fusilli.
Why Apple will (eventually) fail — the industry guarantees it
Apple relies on a few key products, all of which require upgrading every 12 months. That’s a horribly short product lifecycle that demands constant innovation, writes John Addis, founder of The Intelligent Investor and a Crikey director.
Media briefs: A right royal comp … Grimshaw’s mags swipe …
A Crikey reader wrote in suggesting a competition for the lamest local angle on the royal wedding story, offering up his nomination with this piece of purple prose. Got any vomit-worthy contributions?
Morning Market Report: Nasdaq hits highest since late 2007
The S&P 500 and the Dow reached the highest level since June 2008 on positive earnings announcements. The Nasdaq hit its highest level since late 2007.
Boeing takes a leaf out of Swanny’s budget book
Boeing are using the same media management technique at work for the Federal Budget: break some bad news early and draw attention to specific areas, writes Ben Sandilands.
Your Say: Daily Mail readers' feedback: Who is beating up who?
Crikey readers weigh in on English levels in universities, the carbon tax and Guy Rundle.
Has America ran out of reality TV stars?
With innumerable reality TV shows acting as talent competitions for virtually every skill under the sun, US networks have coming dangerously close to exhausting the talent pool, writes Brian Moylan.
