(image from Lars Klove for The New York Times)
Last Tuesday night, the Federal government relieved the besieged fortress of Australian public broadcasting with a modest wagon train of supplies. This moment will remembered for a long time, alongside the Fraser razor gang attack on the ABC, the creation of SBS, the first Howard [...]

(click on image for better version)
Now that Howard’s cultural agenda no longer has the force of government, what is happening to Anzac Day? The government broadcasters take some trouble over it – SBS ran Paper Dolls: Australian Pin-ups of World War 2 on the eve of the day at 7.30 for maximum family impact. Written [...]

Just to prove that we really do live in a global mediascape, this is a picture of Milka, an albino kangaroo in a zoo in Uzbekistan, carried by a North American publication and retrieved in Australia. Via an uncredited AP photographer.
The state of print journalism has me very worried, with stuff rattling around in my [...]

With some kind of European deal over the weekend, $10.4b pumped into the Australian economy mostly at the bottom ( $1000 for carers is a figure that moved me, since I know how tough their situation can be), and titanic amounts of cash deployed to stabilise the banks, the horror seems to have gone out [...]

Here is a situation which looks as if it is about an arcane squabble between television channels, and a minor protest by a couple of indy filmmakers crushed by bureaucratic shenanigans. But it is much more than that.

With barely a ripple beyond David, Margaret and the inner cities, feature documentaries are popping up on Australian cinema screens. Producers are hoping this represents a seachange in the power relationships that really determine what documentaries are made, and construct our non-fiction film culture.
Watching a documentary in the cinema can be a hypnotic experience. [...]

According to my working contact on Peter Garrett’s staff, the carve-up of the ministries is the best possible solution for the big bald one with the heart of gold. [He assumed I was ringing up to apply for a job, and made encouraging noises, which whooshed past that part of my brain labelled "Obsessed [...]

Today I hurt my head trying to write a summary of the election in the context of screen industry policy for Screen Hub. As I tried to think about Coonan’s manoevers over the new digital channels, and the state of broadband, my fingers twitched and my computer failed in sympathy. I kid you [...]

The Tour de France is all over bar the shouting, since the last day of racing seems to be largely ceremonial.
Coming into the last time trial, willed on by thousands of Australians in their midnight lounges, Cadel was nearly two minutes behind Alberto Contador, and a minute ahead of Levi Leipheimer. Evans needed to [...]

A small plea for help:
I am trying to track a vagrant memory from my adolescence. I saw a West German film called The Bridge, or Die Brücke, on Australian television in the Sixties.
There was a fuss about it at the time, as it was Not Good for the Kiddies, and I only watched [...]