Richard Farmer’s chunky bits: what, politicians playing politics? Outrageous

Labor’s upward creep continues. The moves might be small but the Crikey Election Indicator continues to show an upwards movement in Labor’s chances.

Continuous disclosure. I have trouble grasping the argument that not disclosing quarterly revenue from the mining tax, or the lack of it, somehow would breach privacy provisions for mining companies. Surely the obligation on companies to report material events via the stock exchange means that a tax paid when profits are extra high would be disclosed by them. Methinks the government is just being too clever by half in trying to avoid letting on that this is a new tax that so far has raised nothing.

Tut, tut, politicians playing politics. What a terrible thing. Labor parliamentary secretary Mark Dreyfus reckons some of his peers in Papua New Guinea are playing politics. Describing the PNG Opposition mounting a legal challenge against an Australian refugee processing facility on Manus Island Dreyfus commented this morning: “I think when you’ve got the opposition leader in Papua New Guinea bringing a proceeding in the Supreme Court … it does smack of politics.”

Where the growth was. Seven of the 10 areas with the nation’s highest growth rates between the censuses of 2006 and 2011 were in Western Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported this morning. These include the remote northern local government areas of East Pilbara (S), Ashburton (S) and Roebourne (S), all LGAs with mining activity, as well as the capital city LGA of Perth (C), and Serpentine-Jarrahdale (S) and Wanneroo (C) in the Greater Capital City Statistical Area (GCCSA) of Perth. The remaining three of the 10 areas with the highest population growth rates were in the GCCSA of Melbourne in Victoria. All of the 10 LGAs with the lowest average annual population growth rates were in regional or remote areas.

A headline for the day. From Ireland’s Sunday Independent commenting on the horse meat in British burgers “scandal”:

And a special “the dog ate my home work” award should go to the head of the food company which produced the Tesco value beef burgers found to contain 29% horse meat:

“We are talking about DNA testing and DNA will pick up molecules and something in the air,” he told the Financial Times at the weekend. “I would not be surprised if there was not cross-contamination of various species if one were to do DNA testing.”

And the year’s most tacky intro to a newspaper column.

News and views noted along the way.

• Political ads: not as powerful as you (or politicians) think
• Revolutionary Japan is suddenly the centre of world affairs — “To the surprise of the Japanese people, their country is smack in the middle of two riveting dramas that threaten to upturn the global strategic landscape in short order.”
• Seitz on Lance and Oprah: the sadomasochistic ritual of the celebrity apology
• The gravest of allegations: conflating critique of Israel with anti-Semitism
• Algeria, Mali, and why this week has looked like an obscene remake of earlier Western interventions — “We are outraged not by the massacre of the innocents, but because the hostages killed were largely white, blue-eyed chaps rather than darker, brown-eyed chaps.”
• Ricky Gervais: “There shouldn’t be a word for atheism”
• The NYT is upset that wages in China are rising
• Sunk costs and sports personnel decisions