Fairfax strike

Unsurprisingly, our readers had a lot of thoughts to share with us about the absorption of Fairfax into Nine and the end of one of the major voices in Australian media. Elsewhere, our readers pondered on the dizzying, internecine goings-on inside Labor’s new factional deal.

On the end of Fairfax

Anne MF writes: A very sad day. The Age has been diminishing for ages but it is still a far cry from the overtly right-wing Murdoch papers and there are some journalists I like to follow. What is the future of Australia? We must all keep independent journalism alive and fight for the few fair and brave sources we have left. 

Petunia Winegum writes: Well, after this merger I guess we can expect the political coverage of the Fairfax mastheads to veer even further to the right. Soon you won’t be able to tell the difference in on op-ed in The Australian and one in the Sydney Morning Herald as climate change deniers, IPA goons and Business Council foghorns are given column inches that used to be filled by professional journalists. Thank God for the likes of Crikey, The Saturday Paper and Guardian Australia.

Frank Ward OAM writes: What are those of us who still require independent news and comments going to do now that we are going to have the smiler Costello deciding what goes into the columns of the SMH and the Australian Financial Review? They will end up competing for the same readership as News Corp so if you want a career in politics you have to go with the press, as it will be spreading the same garbage. It is fortunate that readership is dropping like a stone and almost non existent among the under 3os. I live in a retirement village and we have only three SMHs delivered and one Newcastle Herald, so there is bugger all oldies reading the paper also. I will miss Ross Gittins the most. 

On Jane Garrett 

Marcus L’Estrange writes: Guy Rundle’s article was interesting, but left many unanswered questions. Given that there is no discernible difference between the ALP factions, why do they even exist except to be grubby job creation schemes for those within the factions who would, metaphorically speaking, kill their own mother to become an MP?

Why should a handful of grubby factional warlords be allowed be allowed to divide up the cake between them and then expect the 50,000 ALP members nationally or 16,000 members in Victoria to do all the grunt electoral work such as door-knocking, staff the booths etc so that a relative smaller number of factional lackeys get jobs as MPs and then be in the top 1%-3% of income earners in Australia?

Talk about a ‘let them eat cake’ approach to the very battlers they purport to represent. All for ourselves, and nothing for other ALP members, seems, to be the vile maxim of the grubby, Mafia style, ALP factional warlords. Too many opportunists for too few opportunities seems to be their real reason for branch stacking, stability pacts and then dividing up the cake.

Why is Adem Somyurek a rising star? Who is he except an upper house (retirement village) member in Victoria? Did the voters ask him to do all this factional work at taxpayers expense or work hard for them?

Josh Burns got the nod for Macnamara in Victoria from the ALP National Executive on the basis of 53 votes at a local Labor Unity faction meeting yet there are around 530 ALP members in Macnamara. Simply put, if there was a genuine preselection ballot he would not receive the nomination, which of course is why there wasn’t a full, local, preselection.

Governments composed of the ‘cream of the working class’ not the ‘dregs of the middle class’ should be the ALP reason for existence.

Lee Tinson writes: Wow, who’da thought party politics could be this much fun? I reckon if you could capture the utterly wasted energy spent in this exercise, you could run a power station. But could you call it clean and green?

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