Wendy Bacon Journalist, activist
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I'm a fan of Michael Carlton's who writes the backpage on Fairfax's weekend NewsReview. Last weekend, he tackled the 'farce of the mining tax', the latest sympton of what he calls Labor's 'terminal disease.'
Fairfax's SMH journalists have been amongst the few to probe the NSW O'Farrell's government backing of James Packer's plan for a new hotel casino in Sydney. Reporter Sean Nicholls broke a story about how the government had changed the rules for "unsolicited proposals" in a way that made it easier for Packer to avoid a competitive tender. So I was shocked when I opened the SMH on Saturday and found a plug for a story by Packer pitching his casino plan labelled as an 'exclusive' and 'news'. There were several independent reports inside the paper, but online, Packer's free promo was number three while other pieces were buried further down the page.
Nicole Gooch and I continue our investigation into the Keep Carmel Twitter campaign run by One Small Planet during the 2011 NSW Election. The NSW Greens announced that they have complained to the NSW Funding Authority.
"Claimed" said a tweet on the ‘Keep Carmel’ Twitter feed. Carmel Tebbutt had just won the inner-Sydney seat of Marrickville by a tight 0.9 % margin.