Aussie PM dumped by own party

[Magda Hassan]

Rudd may well have a progressive streak in him but the toxic legacy of John Howard's lengthy span in government still lingers. Howard shamelessly used cruel and racist tactics to wedge the opposition, and encouraged national fear-mongering against refugees for the late 2001 election. (The best book on this incident remains Mungo MacCallum's entry in the Quarterly Essay series, GIRT BY SEA: AUSTRALIA, THE REFUGEES AND THE POLITICS OF FEAR.) Labor foolishly capitulated at the time, giving credence to Howard's shaping of the public narrative, then (pathetically) did little of note to reverse things for years later. Howard even stacked the board of the government funded national ABC TV network with conservatives, all of whom gradually dragged the tone of the station to the right and demanded 'equal time' for conservative perspectives on issues such as refugees. Labor also acquiesced to the various radio shock jocks (mostly from Sydney) who Howard courted during his time in Government, rather than shunning them as the domestic equivalent of Fox News mouthpieces. Opposition Leader (conservative) Tony Abbott has spent the last few years proclaiming he'd 'stop the boats', and Gillard stupidly did little to encourage a more humane viewpoint. Without supporting it at all, I read Rudd's latest actions as an attempt to neutralise Abbott prior to the imminent election - Rudd has seemingly been running through a list in the last couple of weeks addressing each of Abbott's cudgels against the government, and this is the latest. (I'm sure Rudd expects few Labor voters to depart over the issue, and the ones that do will vote Green, which preferences the Labor party anyway). If Rudd regains office, I wouldn't be surprised if he works to reframe the narrative again and gradually encourages a more humane perspective, but at this point Rudd is determined to do 'whatever it takes' to hang on to office.

Totally agree with every thing you say Anthony.

[Magda Hassan]

Labor's policies to provide a national broadband network in Australia conflict with Murdoch's business model to make billions more for himself. Not to mention Rudd's slightly independent foreign relations....Murdoch's laying off his China investments for the moment I gather...

The arrival of Col Allan in Australia is making a lot of people uneasy.
Allan is a man widely known inside News Corporation as Col Pot, a play on the name of a Cambodian genocidal dictator.
He is News Corp's most feared flamethrower in a company of flamethrowers and he has been sent to Australia by Rupert Murdoch himself. The purpose of his mission has become clear in recent days. One person who should rightly be disconcerted by Allan's sudden secondment to Australia is the head of News Corporation Australia, Kim Williams. Several other executives should also be leery, but they are not Allan's primary target.
His primary target is Kevin Rudd.
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Why Murdoch wants Rudd to lose the coming federal election is not merely political, it is commercial. News Corp hates the government's National Broadband Network (NBN). The company has formed a view that it poses a threat to the business model of by far its most important asset in Australia, the Foxtel cable TV monopoly it jointly owns with Telstra.
Murdoch has declared war on Rudd by dispatching his most trusted field general, Allan, whose reputation is built on his closeness to Murdoch and his long history of producing pungent front-page splashes and pugnacious campaigns as editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph and, for the past 12 years, The New York Post.
Allan's mission is to help consign Rudd to the dustbin of history reserved for failed leaders.
The ramp-up of the war effort has been rapid and intense.
Friday, July 26: the chief executive of News Corp, Robert Thomson, announced in New York that Allan would be returning to Australia to provide ''extra editorial leadership for our papers …''.
Monday, July 29: Allan is at work in Australia within 72 hours of the announcement.
Tuesday, July 30: he begins several days of meeting with editors. The message is simple and brutal: you have been going hard on Labor but now, with Rudd's revival in the opinion polls, you have to go harder.
Wednesday, July 31: he is spotted lunching with Lachlan Murdoch and other executives.
Friday, August 2: The Daily Telegraph depicts Rudd in a hoodie escaping from a bank he has just robbed, with the headline: ''Rudd's $733m hoist on people's savings''.
Yesterday, August 3, The Australian runs four negative headlines about the Rudd government on its front page alone, including ''Revealed: How Rudd blew $250bn''. The Daily Telegraph splashes with a front-page banner headline: ''Price of Labor - another huge budget shambles … and now we're $30bn in the red''. In Melbourne, the Herald-Sun took out page one with ''It's a ruddy mess''.
Rudd is a broad target. His own parliamentary colleagues could not stomach him and removed him from office after less than three years. After he rose like Lazarus to return as Prime Minister on June 26, one third of the cabinet departed rather than serve with him. His election-eve policy reversal on asylum-seekers was spectacular. His Papua New Guinea detention strategy was exposed as a bluff.
On June 26, Rupert Murdoch used Twitter to write: ''Australian public now totally disgusted with Labor Party wrecking country with it's sordid intrigues. Now for a quick election.'' Rudd's greatest failing, in the eyes of News Corp management, and the greatest threat he poses, is his $45+ billion NBN, a massive project announced without any serious costing. News Corp views this as a threat to the business model of its most important Australian asset, Foxtel, jointly owned with Telstra.
The company much prefers the Coalition's less costly but also less ambitious national broadband strategy. News Corp newspapers have reported the numerous failings and cost-over-runs of the NBN in hundreds of stories.
Although the Coalition's alternative is less costly, it offers an inferior capacity for downloading content at a time when consumer demand is shifting dramatically towards content-on-demand and content via computers.
This shift is reflected in the enormous run-up in the shares of the market leader in content-on-demand, Netflix. Shares in Netflix closed at $US246 (A$276) in New York on Friday, a prodigious run-up from its $52 price a year ago. Netflix now has a market valuation of $US14.5billion compared with $3 billion a year ago.
Foxtel has responded to this threat by launching its own content-on-demand product, FoxtelGo, and is launching an online-only version, FoxtelPlay.
Foxtel's co-parent, News Corp, is engaging in a more structural response.
It wants to kill the NBN threat at its ultimate source - Kevin Rudd.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/f...2r65x.html

[Jan Klimkowski]

The Murdoch Crime Family.

It's just business.....

[Magda Hassan]

No wonder Murdoch wanted his boy in Canberra.

Foxtel triple-play deal hits NBN snag

PUBLISHED: 30 SEP 2013 00:05:00 | UPDATED: 30 SEP 2013 07:30:47
Foxtel CEO Richard Freudenstein . . . As CEO of BSkyB, he helped Mr Murdoch's UK pay-TV business become Britain's second-biggest internet service provider from a standing start in just five years. Photo: Christopher Pearce

DOMINIC WHITE

News Corporation and Telstra have been in secret negotiations to launch a Foxtel-branded broadband service for more than a year but talks are stuck on the price Telstra would charge for access to its network.
The telecommunications giant has been unable to tell Foxtel's management how much it would charge in the future because of uncertainty *surrounding its $11 billion deal with the national broadband network.
Complexities surrounding the talks threaten to frustrate efforts to boost Foxtel's 30 per cent penetration of Australian homes as broadband providers, free-to-air networks and foreign interlopers threaten its pay-TV monopoly.
The Australian Financial Review has learned that Foxtel chief executive Richard Freudenstein has drawn up a full business plan for a mass-market broadband service.
It would add internet and telephony to the company's pay-TV offering which reaches 2.5 million homes, making Foxtel a powerful "triple play" rival to other Telstra services in the $4 billion broadband market.
Some sections of Foxtel, which wants to launch the offer next year, are understood to be frustrated by slow progress after more than 12 months of confidential talks. Telstra and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation each own 50 per cent of the pay TV business, which is Australia's most profitable media company, generating operating earning of $944 million in 2012-13.
The Australian Financial Review has also learnt that a key brief for the new chief operating officer that Foxtel is recruiting is to deliver a "triple-play" offering. The triple-play project is led by David Duncan, according to an internal Foxtel memo.
In his former role as CEO of BSkyB, Mr Freudenstein helped Mr Murdoch's UK pay-TV business become Britain's second-biggest internet service provider from a standing start in just five years. Its aggressive campaign included giving broadband away free to its pay-TV subscribers.
However, unlike Foxtel, Sky was able to acquire its own ISP, Easynet, which owned infrastructure that allowed Sky to make huge savings on carriage costs by bypassing most of the network of BT, Telstra's UK equivalent.

LONGSTANDING SHAREHOLDER AGREEMENT

In contrast, under a long-standing shareholder agreement between News and Telstra, Foxtel is prohibited from launching a broadband service unless Foxtel uses Telstra as its wholesale provider and Telstra approves the service.
It is believed the current shareholder agreement does not expire until 2020.
One analyst, who asked not to be named, said: "If Foxtel went to market as an independent company there is no doubt Telstra would effectively be *creating their single biggest competitor. There is no way Telstra will let that happen. It's an incredibly difficult situation for Foxtel."
Under chief executive David Thodey, Telstra has dropped its long-standing opposition to a Foxtel broadband service. Relations between News Corp and Telstra have often been strained over Foxtel strategy in the 18 years since the pay-TV business was founded, although it is believed News Corp executives have worked constructively with Mr Thodey, who was appointed CEO in 2009.
Prominent media figures, including former Foxtel shareholder James Packer and former Austar chief executive John Porter, have argued that the pay-TV company needs to embrace a "triple play" offering to grow subscribers and revenues.
News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson told investors in New York last week that a "triple play offer" had great appeal because it would increase customer "stickiness" and help Foxtel lift its "stubborn" 30 per cent take-up by the Australian population.
While Foxtel grew subscribers by 3.4 per cent in 2012-13, many new customers bought cheaper internet television packages such as Telstra's T-Box.
Discussions between Foxtel and Telstra have been hampered by uncertainty over the price NBN Co would charge Telstra for access to its fibre-to-the-home network (which was due to supplant Telstra's copper network under the Labor government's plans). The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is due to announce how much NBN Co can charge for access to that network, which could give Telstra a price point on which to base its resale price to Foxtel.
But the change of government has injected more complexity and uncertainty to the discussions.
The Coalition has yet to make clear which parts of NBN Co's $11 billion deal with Telstra it will unwind and how much NBN Co will charge for access once it has been scaled back by the new government. Telstra could also be allowed to keep its cable network open for broadband provision, which Foxtel already uses along with satellites to supply pay-TV.
Meanwhile, many Telstra insiders remain cautious to defend its 47 per cent share of the broadband market, itself under fresh threat from rivals using the nascent NBN.
"It's argued Foxtel represents potentially one of the biggest competitive threats to Telstra's consumer fixed-line business, with a triple-play from the monopoly premium pay-TV operator," wrote Citi analyst Justin Diddams in a note on the topic in November 2012.
Foxtel, though half-owned by Telstra, could cannibalise large chunks of Telstra's customer base if it priced aggressively. It could also steal customers from Telstra's biggest rivals iiNet, Optus and TPG.

HELP REDUCE CHURN

A broadband service would help Foxtel to boost revenues per subscriber, reduce "churn" the proportion of customers leaving and allow it to compete on a level playing-field with competitor pay-TV services as well as broadband over the NBN.
Mr Diddams noted that BSkyB quoted a two-percentage-points-lower churn rate for "multiple product" customers. But he also warned that "rental costs . . . to provide triple-play services could also potentially exceed the revenue opportunity" for Foxtel.
Foxtel, whose growth has been hamstrung by the anti-siphoning rules that prevent key sporting events from being shown exclusively on pay-TV, has launched web and mobile-based services Foxtel Play and Foxtel Go to try to lure customers who cannot afford its $100-a-month premium packages.
It is also preparing to sell a web-based movies-on-demand subscription service, called Presto, that is seen by analysts as a pre-emptive strike against popular US service Netflix, which has registered Australian trademarks ahead of a possible future launch.
Telstra has its own T-Box video offering, while iiNet and others are reselling Fetch TV's subscription TV service over broadband. Meanwhile, Nine Entertainment Co is working on its own video-on-demand service, which it has discussed with Seven West Media, as it seeks to persuade investors of its future growth prospects ahead of its planned $3 billion flotation in December.
Foxtel defied its doubters by reporting a 3.9 per cent rise in revenues to $3.1 billion in the year to June on a pro forma basis supported by a 3.4 per cent increase in subscribers to 2.5 million.
However, it has had to spend more to acquire customers. Marketing costs were $176 million in the year to June, up from $123 million a year earlier, and $103 million in 2011, according to full-year results for News Corp, which was demerged from Mr Murdoch's television and movies operation 21st Century Fox in June.


Telstra, Foxtel and News Corp declined to comment.

http://www.afr.com/p/business/marketing_...pv40I3FPcI

[Magda Hassan]

We have a new Prime Minister here now. A couple of weeks after Rupert Murdoch tweeted that there should be a replacement of leader of the ruling Liberal Party. New leader Malcolm Turnbull is a Rhodes scholar and former Goldman Sachs merchant banker....

[David Guyatt]

What fun down under. The resident circus clown Abbot has been ousted by Malcolm Turnbull in leadership election.

[Peter Presland]

We have a new Prime Minister here now. A couple of weeks after Rupert Murdoch tweeted that there should be a replacement of leader of the ruling Liberal Party. New leader Malcolm Turnbull is a Rhodes scholar and former Goldman Sachs merchant banker....

Credentials that will undoubtedly endear him to the Washington/London Deep State fraternities.

Certainly no threat to the '5 Eyes' and its parent Anglo-US-Nato globalising agenda from his direction; quite the opposite unless I'm very much mistaken.

[David Guyatt]

We have a new Prime Minister here now. A couple of weeks after Rupert Murdoch tweeted that there should be a replacement of leader of the ruling Liberal Party. New leader Malcolm Turnbull is a Rhodes scholar and former Goldman Sachs merchant banker....

Uh oh. Rhodes, Goldman and Rupe. Toxic triplets.