Politics is a dirty word

Chaos at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with the sacking of its managing director and resignation of the chairman is likely to be repeated unless there is a radical overhaul of the organisation and its structure. The top executive should never have been a director. The role should be that of a Chief Executive Officer. The only role of directors is to set direction and policy. Implementation of the policies and day to day administration must be solely in the hands of the CEO. To ensure editorial integrity, an Editor in Chief should be appointed. Perhaps the funding model should be changed. Rather than the Government handing over a bucket of money each year, perhaps a better model would for the Government to allocate an annual amount for public broadcasting - the ABC, SBS and any other entrant could then put together bids to provide particular services.

The action of Australian politicians in allowing poultry farms with stocking densities of 10,000 hens per hectare to describe their eggs as free range, opens up some major issues. One is the level of unfair competition from big business against small family farms.Another is that consumers won’t accept that definition. Most planning authorities are unlikely to accept such a density because of issues like odour, contamination of land, aquifers and waterways. It's likely that many planning authorities will refuse permits for new free range farms because of the absurdly high standards developed by politicians.