The Guardian 10 August, 2005
Dingo bytes
Out of their own mouths #1: Quote of the year from the employers' national daily,
The Australian Financial Review, on the full sale of Telstra: "The aim of every business is to
get the government to pick up the tab for investment costs and cover its losses …"
Beautiful.
Out of their own mouths #2: The Sydney Daily Telegraph last week ran a story in
its inimitable gutter fashion with the headline "Why are we breeding evil families of hate". It was a
shoddy law-and-order beat up about the members of three different families who early on in life
carried out violent criminal activities, most notably rape. Its author says, "Yet all these convicted
gang rapists come from supposedly loving families. So how and where did it go so wrong?"
Nowhere did it examine their social and economic background, let alone consider the society we
live in, based as it is on theft and the ultimate in violence, war.
Out of their own mouths #3: At the same time as the "evil families" piece there were
gossipy reports on another evil family. "Murdoch quits as News executive" ran the headline in
The Australian above a story about son Lachlan flying from daddy Rupert's News Ltd nest.
The family that heads the world's biggest propaganda machine — which includes the Daily
Telegraph — is obscenely rich from its lie mill that has promoted Bush's criminal war in Iraq all
along the line. Lachlan's pay out package — a $9 million kiss-off — has a "no compete" clause
stipulating that he will not "engage in business which is directly competitive with any business
carried on [by News Corp] or any of its affiliates." It's a class thing.
Out of their mouths #4: Dingo knows this will come as a shock to readers but "A culture
of aggressive trading where profit was king prevailed at the National Australia Bank, ultimately
leading to the nation's biggest bank losing $360 million on foreign currency deals …" The former
head of the bank's foreign currency desk was giving evidence about rogue traders at the bank to
the Melbourne Magistrates Court and said the desk had an "aggressive, blokey culture". In a word,
greed.
CAPITALIST HOG OF THE WEEK: is federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson who
has backed the university lecturer who cast racist slurs on non-white immigrants coming to
Australia. Andrew Frazer, who has links with neo-Nazi groups, said black Africans should be
stopped from coming to Australia because they are inherently more violent and that Australia was
becoming a Third World colony by allowing non-white immigration. Nelson, who is leading the
charge to take away the voice of university students by destroying their union, and the voices of
academics and uni staff by forcing them onto individual contracts, said "I think they should allow his
classes to continue". Macquarie University had, rightly, by then given Frazer the boot.