Costello on porn. Former treasurer Peter Costello has taken aim at the ABC’s expansionism, and its recent porn special, writing in the Herald Sun:

“A fortnight ago ABC TV programmed a whole week for voyeurs on its ABC 2 channel. There was a program called Australians on Porn and a BBC documentary, Twilight of the Porn Stars. There was Websex: what’s the harm?

“There was a three-part, three-night series, Strippers, filmed in various Scottish lap-dancing clubs. To show a bit of cultural diversity, there was an Australian who showed what it was like to work in an Australian brothel and a program on A very British brothel.

“Nor is the ABC sexist because there was another program called Male Hookers Uncovered and one on transgender called Ladyboys.

“Friends of the ABC will tell you that its role is to broadcast programs that the commercial networks won’t. In this case that was probably true. A commercial network would not be game to run programming like that every night for a whole week.

“But let me ask whether Australia would be the poorer if taxpayers’ money was not used to put this stuff to air?”

Coal for Christmas. The government chose today to announce approval of the controversial Abbot Point port expansion. It’s the top item on the Oz’s website this morning, but have the subeditors gone on holiday early? Early this morning, it was spelt correctly as “Abbot Point” twice in the copy, and incorrectly as “Abbott Point” another two times (and wrong in the headline). By the time we hit our deadline it had been fixed …

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What future for foreign correspondents? Correspondents young and old considered how their craft is changing last night on the ABC …

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Front page of the day. Fresh from her Dancing with the Stars win, Bindi Irwin on the front cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly …

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