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Let's Call a Bias a Bias - The Australian is Biased

Tuesday, 30 th May, 2006

Labor behind, then front page headlines proclaim Beazley's leadership is in bother. Labor leading, then a brief page one pointer to a story inside explaining that tax cuts "do not appear to have translated into an electoral boost for the Coalition."

Rarely has the bias of a newspaper been as obvious as in the way The Australian deals with its fortnightly Newspolls.

Not that it really matters to anyone but the politicians. Outside of parliamentary offices the national daily has no influence in any case.

What an honest assessor would say is that at the half way stage of this Parliament the Coalition is in trouble. If I am right in thinking that the reason is industrial relations changes then there is more trouble to come.

Every employer that follows the Spotlight path of an extra 2 cents an hour for the removal of penalty rates increases the likelihood of Kim Beazley being third time lucky.

Federal employment minister Kevin Andrews puts no worker's mind at rest by saying that the pay and conditions of existing employees are secure at workplaces like Spotlight. People realise that employers will give the weekend shifts to new workers on ordinary rates rather than to long serving ones who have to be paid time and a half.

Effectively there are about to be major pay cuts for thousands of Australians.

The process will start with the fringe national operators like Spotlight but quickly spread throughout the retail sector. The industry is a competitive one. Woolworths and Coles cannot sustain a higher cost structure than their opposition for long.

Governments that take money out of pockets get penalised. Those that put it in through tax cuts, Newspoll suggests, do not get rewarded.