It’s a bit early for a new media circus thread, but it’s also the time of year for the release of unpleasant news that the newsmakers hope will be buried by the holidays.
Here’s an example:
Brutal funding cuts no Christmas cheer for social services bodies
Rick Morton, The Australian
December 22, 2014THE peak bodies for the disability, homelessness and community sectors were told which ones would lose funding just days before Christmas in an announcement from the Department of Social Services late this afternoon.
The budget-saving measure aims to haul back tens of millions of dollars by streamlining the number of representative bodies in the two sectors.
In the disability arena most condition-specific bodies like Blind Citizens Australia — which lost $190,000 — and two deaf groups, the Disability Advocacy Network Australia and Brain Injury Australia all had their funding revoked.
Do you spy anything else crawling out from the hidden corners of this week’s news coverage?
As usual for media circus threads, please share your bouquets and brickbats for particular items in the mass media, or highlight cogent analysis or pointed twitterstorms etc in new media. Discuss any current sociopolitical issue (the theme of each edition is merely for discussion-starter purposes – all current news items are on topic!).
Categories: disability, media
Scott Morrison has already started slashing the community sector:
(from a status update on Facebook)
[ETA: press release from the Australian Services Union]
Meanwhile, loving the #thankstony and #putyourironsout hashtags.
NSW Labor seems to have hidden their leadership battle pretty effectively. On one view, they didn’t have a great deal of control over the timing but on another, if you’re going to do it, this is no bad time at all.
Abbott and Co have moved early childhood education and childcare from the Education Dept back to Social Services.
This is not good news.
They’ve also released their report on funding 15 hours of kinder: it says they haven’t decided what to do beyond 2015.
I’m hearing ominous booming sounds.
So it turns out that scrapping the carbon tax was a stupid idea. The liberals decided to release the info Christmastime for good reason:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/new-data-shows-record-fall-in-carbon-emissions-20141223-12d1z3.html
Looks bad if people start hearing “I told you so.” on the matter.