Photo. Today was a chess club record

32 students!

Nifty, eh?

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APEC, as really seen by the media

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Arriving at APEC, dreaming of Darwin

I’ve spent the last week in Darwin – 33 degrees in the day, 18 at night.

And really sunny. It felt great to expose the back of my neck.

And the sunset over Mindil beach was to die for.

But it is no longer the place I knew.

I discovered Darwin 30 years ago in 1977. The houses were on stilts (or blown off stilts by the 1974 cyclone). Pawpaw trees were everywhere dropping tropical fruit on to the ground. The city was small and sun drenched; the houses and beach - summery and relaxed. On the beach, blackfellas slept under trees. Refugee boats were parked offshore.

I came back for my second visit in 1990. I stayed at the new Darwin Hospital in the north-Darwin centre of Casuarina. I went back to the places that I knew from before but they had either been demolished or left to disintegrate. The city’s focus had moved inland, away the beach. Most of the houses on stilts were gone

Last week was my third visit. Nearly all of the houses on stilts have gone. I couldn’t find a pawpaw, let alone a pawpaw tree. There was scarcely an aboriginal face around. The people seem to live in opposition to Darwin rather than letting it embrace them. Super-expensive McMansions abound, built for air-conditioning – for keeping Darwin out.

But we had a great time. And the overnight flight to Sydney’s APEC Media Centre was a surreal way to get back to work.

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Taking it easy.

I won't be writing much for the next two weeks.

You get the idea.

Back to full speed on July 23.

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Back on deck Monday.

Apologies.

I have been off work for the last week before my two youngest children go to school, and I have spent some time moving all my Sydney Morning Herald articles across to the blog, and adding tags etc.

This must have played havoc with RSS readers, and my Dad who automatically gets posts emailed.

But it'll calm down now. Mostly, what seems to be a post will be a post.

It'll be a great year to be working in Parliament House. And not just any election year. As I wrote last Tuesday, an election year in which real problems are addressed.

Can't wait.

See you Monday.

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Beloved Canberra

It is just wonderful to reacquaint myself with my beloved city of Canberra.

I love the dry parched grass, the ACTION buses, the space, the bird life and the trees and flowers, and the lazy, sunny spacious pace of life.

Even better, my family loves it too - thank heavens.

Driving down Commonwealth Avenue reminded me that the word 'Commonwealth' is not used much these days. It certainly was in the days when I worked directly for the Commonwealth, in the Department of the Treasury.

These days in a Howard government innovation, copied from the Whitlam government, everything has been rebranded "Australian Government, Capital Hill Canberra" - as if Capital Hill is Australia's HQ.

It is true that Capital Hill is where the Parliament is, although the other sadly ironic truth is that Walter Burley Griffin insisted that Capital Hill was where Australia's Parliament should NOT be.

He thought that "Capitol Hill" * was too important a location for either the Parliament or the administration. It was a site he set aside for the Australian people which should look down on the Parliament - which would either at Camp Hill below it, in the location of the first Parliament House or by the water. The administration would be somewhere else, such as West Block.

And then there's the question of logos and branding. Everything 'Government of Australia' now has to have Australia's coat of arms as its logo - logos such as the Tax Office's etc have been ditched.

I looked up the website of Screensound Australia. I thought it would be a nice place to take our children. It has reverted back to its old name: The National Film and Sound Archive, with an Australian Coat of Arms as its logo, of course.

*Griffin's name for Capital Hill ("Capitol Hill") corrected. Thanks Andrew Leigh.

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Page One

Yesterday, Wednesday was first Page One in the Canberra Times. Now I have had page one's before, quite a few times for the Sydney Morning Herald, with my name and colour photo in the puff box at the top as if that would sell a paper, and that was an awesome experience too, especially when I saw myself on the two copies I picked up to buy at the Waringah Mall newsagent. (I bought five, and wondered whether the woman serving would recognise me - she didn't.) But Page One of the Canberra Times, when it is my real job - not just filling in... that means something.

And I haven't even properly started work there yet. The removal truck arrives at our Sydney home at 7.00am tomorrow, and we will be set up in our new Canberra home by the base of Mount Ainslie by the end of the day.

I formally start at the Canberra Times next week.

The piece I wrote for tomorrow's CT is below the fold. It is about the media law changes - again, and how they'll destroy the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.

When mid- yesterday the House of Representatives voted 77 to 55 to pass the government’s new media bills it signed the death warrant for two of Australia’s three most important journalistic institutions.

They are the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. The third is the ABC. It can’t be killed and it can’t be neutered, despite what you’ve heard. It has too much public support.

But public support won’t save either of Australia’s two great newspapers.

The only votes that will count are the votes of the directors of John Fairfax Holdings. Under Australian corporate law they are duty bound to vote in the financial interest of Fairfax shareholders, rather than in the broader interests of Age and Herald readers, or the broader health of Australia’s democracy.

All over Sydney investment banks are putting together studies showing that Fairfax shares would be worth more if the company was broken up, amalgamated with a competitor or sold to a foreign investment fund that was prepared to break up or merge the company.

Late yesterday Fairfax shared were worth $4.73. There’s talk that a foreign investment house made free to bid for the company by yesterday’s House of Representatives vote might offer $6.00 dollars a share.

If that happens, and if there are no even higher bids the Fairfax directors might be legally required to recommend that their shareholders accept.

It has happened before. In the 1980’s the Herald and Weekly Times of Melbourne published the respected Herald and the Sun News-Pictorial and through affiliates the Adelaide Advertiser and the Brisbane Courier Mail. Its management and its readers vehemently resisted the idea of a takeover by Rupert Murdoch, talking of the need for continued independent reporting, free from overtly commercial considerations.

But Rupert Murdoch offered so much money per share that the company’s directors had to accept. Adelaide and Brisbane became one-newspaper towns and the Courier Mail, Courier Mail, and Herald Sun found themselves owned by a political lobbyist whose empire included a government-regulated airline business.

The forces unleashed by yesterday’s House of Representatives vote are likely to force Australia’s two greatest newspapers into the arms of a lobbyist whose empire includes a government-regulated television network and a government-regulated gambling empire.

Or perhaps into the arms of a foreign equity fund that wants to slash costs. The interests of the papers’ readers and the interests of Australians who value independent reporting won’t come into it.

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Hello

This is my first post.

I report for "The Business Show" on SBS television in Australia. 6.00pm Sunday nights.

For most of the two decades before that I was the Economics Correspondent for ABC Radio Current Affairs.

I am a former Treasury economist with an honours degree in economics.

I am married to the award winning journalist Toni Hassan, and I have two children, Alexandra and Grace.

My email address is peter at petermartin.com.au

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