Swine flu: Remarkably, discussion of swine flu was still at number one last week, despite a huge amount of speculation surrounding Tuesday’s Federal Budget and the announcement of major changes in the Government’s emissions trading plans. Both infection rates and confirmed deaths in Mexico were revised downwards during the week, although concern continued that cases may be confirmed in many more countries in the coming week, while some commentators accused the media of damaging its own credibility with the amount of coverage given to the outbreak.
Budget speculation: Leaks aplenty were seen across the media, with the Government succeeding in presenting the Budget as a Robin Hood exercise, with commitments to raise the pension certain to be kept while superannuation tax benefits introduced by the previous government seen as most likely to come under attack in an attempt to limit what all business commentators say will be a record deficit.
Emissions trading: The Government announced it would be breaking a key election commitment to introduce a carbon emissions trading scheme by 2010, with the scheme now to be phased in from 2011, with full trading from 2012. Support was gained from a number of business and environmental groups for the move, which also committed to a higher cut by 2020, dependent on international agreements, although both the Greens and Coalition maintained their opposition to the scheme.
Unemployment figures: Many commentators expressed amazement and some pure disbelief as latest job figures from the ABS reported a drop in the unemployment rate to 5.4%, while most were expecting a figure heading towards 7%. Even the Government urged caution over the figure, maintaining that it expects unemployment to rise considerably, but unsurprisingly putting the current figure down to the affect of the stimulus packages.
Logies: While it didn’t come close to making the top five in any other media, very strong coverage on television of their own awards night pushed the Logies up to number five for the week, with most coverage related to the frocks and the performance of this year’s host Gretel Killeen, although gold Logie winner Rebecca Gibney did get to share some of the limelight.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I told reporters that I would fire a "wasp" (rocket launcher) at her (the ambassador) when I was upset and as a joke.” - Damir Dokic tells a Serbian court he was only joshing about firing an RPG into the Australian Embassy in Belgrade
About the index
This list reports Australia's weekly top news stories by volume across thousands of newspaper, magazine, televion, radio and Internet news sources monitored by Media Monitors, including international and domestic, business, sport and enterainment news.
Data and analysis provided to Slice Media by Media Monitors Australia
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