Blogotariat

As you can see we’ve adopted a new WordPress theme.  Many thanks to our web guru Tony Sarhanis.  What do you think?  I really like it, although I have one reservation.You can’t scroll down the main posts column until the cursor gets to the bottom of the comments column. I suspect that’s a deliberate feature rather than a bug, because it forces the eye to look at the comments first.

David Tiley was one of the early generation of bloggers in Australia, starting in 2003, approximately the same time as I started. I first met him at a blogging meet-up in St Kilda (where David lived) in about 2005. Blogging was much more social in those days, and there were frequent meet-ups of the more enthusiastic bloggers.

The common view from politicians and so-called experts is that minority government is dreadful. I don’t agree. Nor, it seems, does former Rudd and Gillard ministerial advisor Sean Kelly. In an article in today’s Age newspaper, Kelly says:

Four years ago today, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation abolished its 15-minute 7.45am news bulletin.

The 7.45 bulletin was first broadcast in December 1939, at the outset of the Second World War. I have been unable to find the exact date.

Citing cost factors and a declining audience, the ABC announced in 2020 that the 7.45 bulletin would be abolished, 80 years after it began.

The final broadcasts took place around the nation on Sunday, September 20, 2020. Five versions of the bulletin from the ABC’s Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth stations can be played below.

The following opinion piece was written by Gareth Hutchens and published in the ABC on Sunday 31st March, 2024. It is reproduced here with permission. This piece of writing was part of a 3-part series, awarded the 2024 E.J. Craigie Writing Award.