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	Australians are the biggest losers in the world when it comes to gambling by Tim Costello, James Panichi, Alex Mitchell Inside Story, Meanjin Australia   Aug. 2014   Will the Labor leader stand up to the greedy and powerful gambling lobby, by Tim Costello.   Australians are the biggest losers in the world when it comes to gambling, after the Singaporeans. We lose $961 each year, on average, per resident. Indeed Victorians squandered $2.3 billion on playing the pokies in the 10 months to May this year alone.   And that is just what we spend. We are losing out in other ways too.   The gambling industry is one of the most powerful and greediest lobby groups in Australia. It has already infiltrated and to a large extent tamed our federal politicians, and now it has declared war on the Victorian Napthine government, targeting 22 of its marginal seats in the November state election.   Napthine’s crime, committed late last year, was passing a 4.2 per cent tax increase for pokie venues with machines that take more than $32,000 per machine per year. There is no tax increase for venues whose machines take less than $32,000 per machine.   In having the temerity to attempt to claw back a little revenue to compensate for the vast social costs this unholy industry generates, the Premier has bought himself a powerful enemy.   The Victorian campaign is a replica of the powerful Clubs Australia 2011 federal campaign that nearly brought down the Gillard Labor government.   Community Clubs Victoria, the entity prosecuting the Victorian campaign, is making the extraordinary assertion that the clubs combined pour more than $300 million back into the community every year. This is breathtaking in its dishonesty.   Most of this is, in fact, normal business expenses – wages, capital works and equipment. And of the $60 million that may be charitable, most is devoted to special interests.   If we are forced to have to have pokies in our community, then the money they take can surely be used as state revenue to help fix our child protection system, fund vital mental health services or even clean up the harm pokies cause.   The damage caused by pokies in our community includes suicides, divorces, bankruptcy, lowered productivity and job loss, depression and anxiety, and crime (especially fraud). For every person with a gambling problem, the lives of several people will be harmed, including those of dependent children, spouses, anyone in their care, employers and work colleagues.   Many large pokie clubs are now indistinguishable from private business. Given the cost to both the state and the community of the social damage they do – 42 cents in every pokie dollar comes from an addict – they should be made to contribute as much as possible to the community.   I call on both major political parties to stand up to this greedy lobby and declare support for tax increases. A united, bipartisan stand would neutralise the wedge tactics that allow the pokie clubs to flex their muscles in our democracy and ultimately call the shots. At the same time, both parties should commit to further measures to rein in the damage pokies cause – for example, Labor and the Coalition should impose a limit of $1 per button push.   When the pokies devastate electorates, it is time for the Victorian Labor Party to put their people ahead of cynical electoral tactics and stop siding with this lobby.   In the long run, the Victorian government should wean itself off dependence on pokie losses to balance the budget, but not at the expense of handing more of the losses to the pokie barons.   Now is the time to fight back and insist on tax revenues that can support the community much more generously and genuinely.   * Tim Costello is chairman of the Australian Churches Gambling Taskforce and CEO of World Vision Australia   July 2013   The lobby group that got much more bang for its buck, by James Panichi.   Targeting marginal seats is nothing new in politics. But the gambling industry showed that it could also work for a lobby group facing a panicky government.   You will be familiar with the narrative. Lobbyists are quietly pulling all the strings in the political world. Deals are done behind closed doors, suspicious men in dark suits lurk in the corridors of power, and vested interests throw money at political parties to buy the influence they need to control what passes through parliament.   But what if that way of working is being turned on its head? What if those vested interests are out in the open now, using the methods pioneered by political parties to win their battles? Rather than waiting for political donations to trickle down and the lobbyists to bend the right ears, what if interest groups are setting up fully fledged political campaigns of their own and cutting out the middleman?   Public campaigns that bring together public relations and lobbying objectives have become the perfect tool in a political system with a chink in its armour. You don’t have to convince a majority of voters of your position, or even too sizeable a minority of voters. You’ve realised what the parties already know: to win certain kinds of fights you only have to convince a small group of people in marginal electorates.   Here’s how you do it. You pick off ten or fifteen swinging seats and scare the local MPs out of their wits. That’s all. You can give your lobbyists in Canberra the week off and simply allow the terror of the MPs to percolate through to the party room and the leader’s office. The marginal-seat politicians will be begging their government to end the pain.   Take the gambling industry’s well executed campaign in 2011 and 2012 against the slot-machine reforms advocated by Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie. Spearheaded by ClubsNSW, it dismantled the proposed legislation one piece at a time, watering down and postponing the few minor impositions that remained in place. In terms of legislative outcomes, it was a triumph.   But the clubs went further. Even though they were acting out of self-interest, they were able to win a public relations war that, on paper, they should have lost. They achieved this by choosing the pitch on which the entire game was to be played out; it was a narrative they owned from beginning to end. The substance of the problem-gambling issue that underpinned the reforms was all but ignored.   What we heard was a story of mums and dads concerned that government policy was about to end their way of life, and of pensioners at the local bowls club voicing fears that their days may be numbered. And in their corner was a community-based, not-for-profit organisation doing what it could for members’ rights and pleading for common sense to prevail.   It was a marginal-seats political campaign in all but fact. It was carried out at a bargain-basement price: the clubs and their backers spent a mere $3.5 million out of a $40 million war chest, much less than the mining industry spent tackling Labor’s super-profits tax. And it was time and money well spent, buying the industry the strategic know-how for future campaigns and a reputation so fierce it may scare off a generation of backbenchers.   When Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie made poker machine reform a condition of his support for the minority Labor government in the wake of the 2010 election, he could have been forgiven for thinking he was onto a winner. Polls showed between two-thirds and four-fifths of Australians supporting reform and the usually hard-nosed Productivity Commission had sounded the alarm over the high incidence of problem gamblers among poker machine users (they account for 40 per cent of pokie revenue). Two things had come together: a popular mood for change and an authoritative report pointing to a serious public health problem.   http://insidestory.org.au/the-lobby-group-that-got-much-more-bang-for-its-buck http://theconversation.com/coalition-problem-gambling-policy-putting-the-fox-in-charge-of-the-henhouse-17232   Lobbying for the Dark Side, by Alex Mitchell.   Con men, swindlers and cheaters pay bribes. Sophisticates hire lobbyists because lobbyists get better, more lasting results while only rarely landing in the slammer. — Michael Maiello   Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s announcement in May 2010 of a super profits resource tax triggered the most ferocious lobbying campaign ever seen in Australia. Global giants Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Xstrata joined local mining houses in forming a multimillion-dollar slush fund to stop the tax becoming law.   They hired a string of lobbyists across the country with serious expertise in crafting campaigns on behalf of big business. Their principal job was to feed a stream of anti-tax ‘horror’ stories to handpicked newspaper columnists and radio shock jocks.   Lurid articles were planted, suggesting that overseas investment in Australia would dry up, tens of thousands of jobs would be lost and the mining boom, the saviour of the economy, would grind to a halt. The influence-pedlars had the unqualified support of Tony Abbott’s federal Opposition, so they concentrated on Labor MPs in marginal seats, particularly in Queensland and Western Australia, warning that they faced political oblivion if they supported the new tax.   They also supplied them with ‘independent’ polling showing that the measure was deeply unpopular in their electorates and suggested they do everything to halt its passage.   One Sydney-based lobbying firm doubled its staff and offered a twenty-hour information service to clients, sending them press briefings each morning on anti-tax comments made overnight by politicians and resources companies in Britain, South Africa, Canada and the United States. The lobbying machine provided a steady stream of ‘talking heads’ to the commercial television networks: the support of channels Seven, Nine and Ten was a foregone conclusion after the mining companies showered them with prime-time advertising vilifying the government’s tax plan as un-Australian and anti-Australian.   The no-tax campaigners included the Business Council of Australia, the Minerals Council of Australia, the federal Opposition and Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited newspapers. Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott helped to promote the panic with his claim that the tax was ‘a dagger aimed at the absolute heart of our economy’. The 2010 anti-tax campaign was new to Australian political life because it was organised and financed by the private corporate sector in the interests of its owners and investors. Such tactics are very familiar in the corporation-driven politics of the United States, where Washington lobbying is a US$3.3 billion industry employing 12,633 lobbyists. That’s about twenty-three lobbyists for every member of the House (435 members) and the Senate (100 members).   Selling the tax scheme to the Australian public should have been as easy as shifting meat pies to spectators at the MCG. It would add $9 billion to the budget bottom line, putting the economy into a generous surplus and making it the envy of comparable economies around the world. The overseas mining giants were pocketing an absolute fortune, while local mining entrepreneurs such as Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest, Clive Palmer and Nathan Tinkler packed the top end of the Business Review Weekly’s annual Rich List. From 1999 to 2009 the value of coal and iron ore exports rose almost sixfold from $12 billion to $69.4 billion, and it is expected to reach $100 billion by 2014.   Export sales have risen, on average, at a rate of 20 per cent per year, yet the lion’s share of the mining ‘boom’ went into the pockets and offshore accounts of the mining conglomerates, their directors, senior executives and institutional shareholders.   The nation’s finite mineral resources, owned by the Australian people through the Commonwealth Government, which awards mining leases, were being quarried and shipped to China and India to sustain their epic economic growth while Australians were not receiving a return that was either adequate or fair. Those who attempted to argue sensibly and rationally for a mining tax to underpin the nation’s long-term economic security were out-gunned by the mining industry and its high-powered lobbying campaign.   ABC TV reporter Andrew Fowler reported: ‘In the forty-one storey tower block that houses BHP Billiton’s headquarters in Melbourne, the company established a war room with a team of hired guns: pollsters and strategists. They planned a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign against the mining tax proposal. Other companies weighed in too with their own campaigns.’   http://meanjin.com.au/articles/post/lobbying-for-the-dark-side/
	2015 list of 10 Most Censored Countries by Committee to Protect Journalists, agencies   May 2015   U.N. Security Council takes Stand on Killings of Journalists. (IPS News)   The U.N. Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution condemning all violations and abuses committed against journalists and deploring impunity for such acts.   When war breaks out, most non-combatants run the other way. But a handful of courageous reporters see it as their duty to tell the world what’s happening on the ground. And many pay a high price.   Since 1992, 1,129 journalists have been killed on the job, 38 percent of them in war zones, according to figures compiled by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). And increasingly, they are being deliberately targeted.   In an explicit recognition of the key role of the media in peace and security, the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday unanimously adopted a resolution condemning all violations and abuses committed against journalists and deploring impunity for such acts.   “Recent killings of journalists have been given extensive and welcome attention around the world, including the brutal murders of Western media representatives in Syria,” said U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson.   “Yet we must not forget that around 95 per cent of the killings of journalists in armed conflict concern locally-based journalists, receiving less media coverage,” he added.   Syria remains the deadliest place for journalists, with at least 80 killed there since the conflict erupted in 2011. The second and third places in journalist deaths were shared by Iraq and Ukraine.   According to CPJ, about one quarter of the journalists killed last year were members of the international press, double the proportion the group has documented in recent years.   Eliasson urged member states to implement the U.N. Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, endorsed by the U.N. Chief Executives Board on Apr. 12, 2012.   Its measures include the establishment of a coordinated inter-agency mechanism to handle issues related to the safety of journalists, as well as assisting countries to develop legislation and mechanisms favourable to freedom of expression and information, and supporting their efforts to implement existing international rules and principles.   But this call may fall on deaf ears in some quarters. In March, a military spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition conducting air strikes in Yemen openly stated that media organisations associated with the Houthi rebels and former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh are legitimate targets.   On Mar. 18, Abdul Kareem al-Khaiwani a Yemeni journalist from Sana’a, was shot and killed by assailants on motorbikes after representing a Houthi group in a conference on Yemen’s future, while on Mar. 26 Shi’ite Houthi militiamen overran the Sana’a headquarters of three satellite television channels: Al-Jazeera, Al-Yaman-Shabab (Yemen-Youth), and Yemen Digital Media.   On Apr. 20, journalist and TV presenter Mohammed Shamsan and three other staff members of Sana’a-based television station Yemen Today were killed in an airstrike that appears to have deliberately targeted the broadcaster’s office.   Christophe Deloire, director-general of Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, said Wednesday that, “It’s historic that the Security Council should make a link between the right to freedom of expression and the need to protect journalists, even though it may seem obvious.”   But Deloire noted that hundreds of journalists have been killed since the last resolution was adopted in 2006 – 25 this year alone – and “as excellent as it may be, there is no certainty that a new resolution will in and of itself be enough to resolve the problem.”   U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power singled out Colombia, once considered the most dangerous country for journalists in South America, as taking positive action by establishing a 160-million-dollar annual fund to protect 19 groups, including journalists.   Earlier this week, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos met with representatives of CPJ in Bogota and the Colombian press freedom group Foundation for a Free Press (FLIP) and pledged to prioritise combating impunity in attacks against the press.   While the security situation in Colombia has improved in recent years, impunity is entrenched and threats and violence against journalists continue, according to CPJ research.   “I envision a normal country where journalists won’t need bulletproof cars and bodyguards and will not need any protection,” said Santos, himself a former journalist and one-time president of the freedom of expression commission for the Inter-American Press Association.   “But for now we need to make sure that the programme is properly funded and effective,” he added.   Launched in 2011, the journalist protection programme provides protection for around 7,500 at-risk people, including human rights activists, politicians, and journalists, at a total cost of 600,000 dollars per day.   But the delegation recommended that it also focus on preventing attacks from occurring in the first place.   Colombia ranked eighth on CPJ’s 2014 Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where journalists are slain and their killers go free.   Iraq ranked number one, followed by Somalia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Syria, Afghanistan and Mexico.   At the Security Council meeting, Deloire from Reporters Without Borders called for the creation of a Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the protection of journalists in order to increase the prominence of the issue within the U.N system.   He stressed that a staggering 90 percent of crimes against journalists go unpunished.   “Such a high impunity rate encourages those who want to silence journalists by drowning them in their own blood,” Deloire said.   http://en.rsf.org/rsf-hails-security-council-s-27-05-2015,47939.html   UN and international experts release key declaration on Freedom of Expression in Conflict Situations.   The United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, David Kaye, issued a joint declaration on ‘Freedom of Expression and Responses to Conflict Situations’ together with special rapporteurs on free expression from the Organization of American States (OAS), the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights and the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media.   “This joint declaration reminds States on their longstanding commitments,” Mr. Kaye said at the World Press Freedom Day International Conference in Riga, Latvia. “Unfortunately, we are aware that the trend is not positive - many journalists, artists and activists are in detention, missing, buried, or deterred from exercising their rights to freedom of opinion and expression.”   The declaration addresses attacks perpetrated in different contexts, such as armed conflicts, terrorist attacks and widespread organised crime. It emphasizes that States should not respond to crisis situations by adopting additional restrictions on freedom of expression, except as strictly justified by the situation. It calls for a number of measures including the protection of journalists and their sources as well as the respect to everyone’s right to privacy.   For the UN Special Rapporteur attacks on a free press violate the letter and spirit of the right to freedom of expression.   “To clamp down on unwanted expression or seal off information from the public, those in power often deploy pretexts instead of legitimate justifications genuinely rooted in the protection of national security or public order,” he said.   “This is particularly harmful in situations of violence and extremism where more space for free speech is so crucial,” the human rights expert stressed.   http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15921&LangID=E   2015 list of 10 Most Censored Countries. (Committee to Protect Journalists)   Eritrea and North Korea are the first and second most censored countries worldwide, according to a list compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists of the 10 countries where the press is most restricted. The list is based on research into the use of tactics ranging from imprisonment and repressive laws to harassment of journalists and restrictions on Internet access.   In Eritrea, President Isaias Afewerki has succeeded in his campaign to crush independent journalism, creating a media climate so oppressive that even reporters for state-run news outlets live in constant fear of arrest. The threat of imprisonment has led many journalists to choose exile rather than risk arrest. Eritrea is Africa"s worst jailer of journalists, with at least 23 behind bars-none of whom has been tried in court or even charged with a crime.   Fearing the spread of Arab Spring uprisings, Eritrea scrapped plans in 2011 to provide mobile Internet for its citizens, limiting the possibility of access to independent information. Although Internet is available, it is through slow dial-up connections, and fewer than 1 percent of the population goes online, according to U.N. International Telecommunication Union figures. Eritrea also has the lowest figure globally of cell phone users, with just 5.6 percent of the population owning one.   In North Korea, 9.7 percent of the population has cell phones, a number that excludes access to phones smuggled in from China. In place of the global Internet, to which only a select few powerful individuals have access, some schools and other institutions have access to a tightly controlled intranet. And despite the arrival of an Associated Press bureau in Pyongyang in 2012, the state has such a tight grip on the news agenda that newsreel was re-edited to remove Kim Jong Un"s disgraced uncle from the archives after his execution.   The tactics used by Eritrea and North Korea are mirrored to varying degrees in other heavily censored countries. To keep their grip on power, repressive regimes use a combination of media monopoly, harassment, spying, threats of journalist imprisonment, and restriction of journalists entry into or movements within their countries.   Imprisonment is the most effective form of intimidation and harassment used against journalists.   Seven of the 10 most censored countries-Eritrea, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Iran, China, and Myanmar-are also among the top 10 worst jailers of journalists worldwide, according to CPJ"s annual prison census.   More than half of the journalists imprisoned globally are charged with anti-state crimes, including in China, the world"s worst jailer and the eighth most censored country. Of the 44 journalists imprisoned-the largest figure for China since CPJ began its annual census in 1990-29 were held on anti-state charges. Other countries that use the charge to crush critical voices include Saudi Arabia (third most censored), where the ruling monarchy, not satisfied with silencing domestic dissent, teams up with other governments in the Gulf Cooperation Council to ensure that criticism of leadership in any member state is dealt with severely.   In Ethiopia--number four on CPJ"s most censored list--the threat of imprisonment has contributed to a steep increase in the number of journalist exiles. Amid a broad crackdown on bloggers and independent publications in 2014, more than 30 journalists were forced to flee, CPJ research shows. Ethiopia"s 2009 anti-terrorism law, which criminalizes any reporting that authorities deem to "encourage" or "provide moral support" to banned groups, has been levied against many of the 17 journalists in jail there.   Vietnam (sixth most censored) uses a vague law against "abusing democratic freedom" to jail bloggers, and Myanmar (ninth most censored) relies on its 1923 Official Secrets Act to prevent critical reporting on its military.   Internet access is highly restricted in countries under Communist Party rule-North Korea, Vietnam, China, and Cuba.   In Cuba (10th most censored), the Internet is available to only a small portion of the population, despite outside investment to bring the country online. China, despite having hundreds of millions of Internet users, maintains the "Great Firewall," a sophisticated blend of human censors and technological tools, to block critical websites and rein in social media.   In countries with advanced technology such as China, Internet restrictions are combined with the threat of imprisonment to ensure that critical voices cannot gain leverage online. Thirty-two of China"s 44 jailed journalists worked online.   In Azerbaijan (fifth most censored), where there is little independent traditional media, criminal defamation laws have been extended to social media and carry a six-month prison sentence. Iran, the seventh most censored country, has one of the toughest Internet censorship regimes worldwide, with millions of websites blocked; it is also the second worst jailer of journalists, with 30 behind bars. Authorities there are suspected of setting up fake versions of popular sites and search engines as part of surveillance techniques.   Government harassment is a tactic used in at least five of the most censored countries, including Azerbaijan, where offices have been raided, advertisers threatened, and retaliatory charges such as drug possession levied against journalists. In Vietnam, many bloggers are put under surveillance in an attempt to prevent them from attending and reporting on news events.   In Iran, journalists relatives have been summoned by authorities and told that they could lose their jobs and pensions because of the journalists work.   Restricting journalists movements and barring foreign correspondents is also a common tactic used by censoring governments. In Eritrea, the last remaining accredited international reporter was expelled in 2007, and the few outside reporters invited in occasionally to interview the president are closely monitored; in China, foreign correspondents have been subjected to arbitrary delays in visa applications.   Four heavily censored nations that nearly made the list are Belarus, Equatorial Guinea, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, all of which have little to no independent media and are so tightly closed that it can be difficult even to get information about conditions for journalists.   The list of most censored countries addresses only those where government tightly controls the media. In some countries, notably Syria, conditions are extremely dangerous and journalists have been abducted, held captive, and killed, some by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad but also by militant groups such as the Islamic State.   * See link below   http://en.rsf.org/ http://www.ifj.org/en/ http://www.indexoncensorship.org/ http://www.article19.org/ http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/freedom-of-expression/press-freedom/ http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/FreedomOpinion/Pages/Standards.aspx Visit the related web page
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