2009 June: Business

2009 June: Business

Anchor: Base Index
Other months: May July
Other areas: Climate computing education health international Internet science social technology Others

Topics: Advertising agriculture banking carbon cartels climate coal competition conservation consultancy consumerism copyright corruption credit cards economics environment fraud free trade freight globalism management manufacturing marketing media mining money newspapers outsourcing pay policy politics privatism property publishing recycling social television trademarks wealth

Carbon and Coal

(see also Mining and in Climate: Mitigation and National)

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Helen Liddell, Greener can mean opportunity; after all, UK is OK, The Age, 2009 June 29 (Britain has not just made money out of the ETS, we are effectively reducing our emissions and we are on target to meet, maybe even beat, our Kyoto commitments)
Darren Gray, Farms chief warns on ETS, The Age, 2009 June 29 (Australia's dairy and fibre industries will be "drastically hit" from the first day of an emissions trading scheme, the Victorian Farmers Federation warns)
Mark Davis, Emissions law push, The Age, 2009 June 29 (Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and state premiers will seek to introduce mandatory standards this week requiring vehicle manufacturers to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new cars sold in Australia)
Kate Galbraith, Carbon capture back on agenda, The Age, 2009 June 15 (a public-private project to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions that was abandoned by the Bush administration is to be restarted)
Paddy Manning, How the carbon lobby blackens media coverage, The Age, 2009 June 6 (despite a spectacular about-face on climate change in 2007 by News Corp's chairman Rupert Murdoch, no media group can match the Murdoch press for consistently fomenting global warming scepticism and arguing against climate change mitigation measures)
Tom Arup, States could lose $5.5bn under carbon scheme, The Age, 2009 June 5 (economic modelling finds the Federal Government's emissions trading scheme would leave a collective $5.5 billion hole in state budgets by 2020)
Tom Arup, Coal miners may get top-up, The Age, 2009 June 4 (Canberra is prepared to consider extra help for coalmines under an emissions trading scheme, if the industry is willing to drop a $10 billion claim for free carbon permits)
Mohamed Nasheed, Leading by an achievable example, BBC, 2009 June 2 (President of the Maldives Nasheed argues that his country's carbon-neutral goals are practical and profitable)
Adam Morton, Greenhouse emissions rise, The Age, 2009 June 2 (Australia's greenhouse emissions continue to increase, largely because of coal-fired electricity generation; annual greenhouse accounts released last night estimate emissions rose by 1.1 per cent last year to 553 million tonnes of carbon dioxide)

Competition and Cartels

(see also Marketing)

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Leonie Wood, Marine hose cartel in for a spray, The Age, 2009 June 23 (one year after a British court jailed three executives for co-ordinating a global cartel in the supply of marine hoses, the ACCC launches court action in Melbourne alleging the secret pact conned some of Australia's biggest oil production projects)
Ian Verrender, Home is where the bank is: squatting, watching, waiting, The Age, 2009 June 23 (once the Big Four dominated the sector; now they are the sector)
Ari Sharp, Watchdog loath to take on predators, The Age, 2009 June 23 (no prosecutions launched in two years under so-called "Birdsville Amendment" to predatory pricing laws, with competition watchdog reluctant to provide guidelines)

Consumerism and Credit Cards

(see also Social and in Social)

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Mathew Murphy, Consumers face wave of greenwash, The Age, 2009 June 29 (a survey into green marketing in Australia has found almost all products carrying environmentally friendly claims are guilty of greenwashing; TerraChoice, an environmental marketing firm, has released its Seven Sins of Greenwashing report, which scrutinises the environmental claims companies put on products to see if they are misleading)
Peter Martin, Choice considers Grocery Choice suit, The Age, 2009 June 29 (the non-profit consumer group Choice had more than 25 information technology staff working almost around the clock at its Marrickville, NSW, headquarters to get the site ready by Wednesday until the Government pulled the pin on its $13 million contract with Choice on Friday)
Steve Butcher, Scam may have hit 10,000 accounts, The Age, 2009 June 17 (ten thousand ANZ customers may be victims of a Melbourne ATM "skimming" fraud it is now feared, after police arrested five Romanians they allege are members of an international syndicate linked to crimes in Victoria, NSW and Europe)
Alexandra Topping, Rock and rolled: thieves busted for bizarre online music racket, The Age, 2009 June 12 (police bust international fraud in which a gang allegedly made thousands of dollars downloading its own songs from online music stores with stolen credit cards)

Copyright and Trademarks

(see also in Internet and Technology)

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Pirate Bay starts video streaming, BBC, 2009 June 29 (Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay lifts the lid on a proposed video streaming service)
Mike Hedge, Artful Kraft spreads the word on novel Vegemite experience, The Age, 2009 June 15 (the maker of one of Australia's most identifiable foods may be American, but is well aware of the danger of tampering with a national favourite)
Cameron Houston, I'll have a little Elvis with that, thanks, The Age, 2009 June 14 (café and restaurant patrons could soon be eating in silence after proposal by record labels to increase cost of background music by up to 2000 times; the push to raise the cost of playing recorded music could also make gym membership more expensive unless fitness classes use artists excluded by Australian copyright laws, including Elvis Presley and Beethoven)
Brigid Delaney, J.D. Salinger, it's time to let your baby go, The Age, 2009 June 12 (his attempt to suppress a Catcher in the Rye sequel should not succeed)
Jesse McKinley, Driving them quackers, two 'duck' firms square off, The Age, 2009 June 4 (at issue is a "sound mark", the auditory equivalent of a trademark, which Ride the Ducks says it holds on a quack created by a yellow bill-shaped kazoo—called a Wacky Quacker—and which it says Bay Quackers has violated by using a similar kazoo that creates an identical quack)
Marcus Westbury, Opposing cultures, The Age, 2009 June 1 (digital technology has created two opposing cultures; one where copyright rules are enforced by a phalanx of lawyers with no regard for artistic intent or respect for legitimate creativity, and another—in our homes, studios and offices—where ignoring copyright has become open slather; neither serves artists or creators well)

Economics and Policy

(see also Money)

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Ross Gittins, Land tax reform rehouses a flawed focus on rational, The Age, 2009 June 29 (human behaviour is barely understood by conventional tax economists)
Economics focus: Fatalism v fetishism, Economist, 2009 June 13 (how will developing countries grow after the financial crisis?)
Paul Krugman's London lectures: Dismal science, Economist, 2009 June 13 (the Nobel laureate speaks on the crisis in the economy and in economics)
Mark Crosby, Is the data telling us big, fat, GDP lies?, The Age, 2009 June 5 (in the 1930s and 1940s the need for proper measurement of economic progress became more pressing and the solution was found in the development of the national accounts, which includes the measurement of gross domestic product, or GDP; but economists have always known that GDP is only a rough proxy for wellbeing, is subject to measurement error and is frequently revised)

Environment and Conservation

(see also in Health and Science)

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Bridie Smith, Taste for delicacy puts sharks at risk, The Age, 2009 June 29 (a third of the world's open-water sharks—including the great white and hammerhead—face extinction, according to a conservation survey that singles out overfishing as the main culprit)
Victoria Gill, Many sharks 'facing extinction', BBC, 2009 June 25 (almost a third of species of open ocean sharks are under threat of being wiped out by overfishing, say scientists)
Lee Carter, Canadian seal hunt 'collapsing', BBC, 2009 June 18 (Canada's fishermen catch only 25% of this year's seal quota, blaming falling prices for seal pelts and an expected EU ban on seal products)
William Bleisch, China 'unfairly seen as eco-villain', BBC, 2009 June 16 (China's rapid economic expansion in recent years has been matched by its increasingly voracious appetite for energy and natural resources, but the nation has sometimes been unfairly portrayed as the world's biggest environmental villain)
Afghans issue first wildlife list, BBC, 2009 June 9 (Afghanistan has published its first list of threatened wildlife that can no longer be hunted or harvested)
Jeremy Cooke, Film warns of 'world without fish', BBC, 2009 June 2 (The End of the Line is a film packed with footage of big-scale fishing in oceans around the world; the work is efficient, modern, industrial and, according to the film makers, unsustainable)

Fraud and Corruption

(see also in Internet and Social)

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Audit fails to find missing gold, BBC, 2009 June 30 (an external audit of the Royal Canadian Mint has failed to find millions of dollars' worth of "missing" gold)

Globalism and Free Trade

(see also in International)

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The plight of Ford: A stony road, Economist, 2009 June 13 (in both America and Europe, Ford faces government-backed rivals)
David Smick, Era of globalisation looks to have hit the skids, The Age, 2009 June 11 (don't expect US consumers to stimulate world economies)
World Bank sees even worse slump, BBC, 2009 June 11 (the world economy will shrink by much more than previously thought, according to the World Bank)
Vikas Bajaj and Keith Bradsher, Asia cheers signs of return to growth, The Age, 2009 June 5 (if investors in New York and London are seeing the first delicate signs of a recovery, their counterparts in developing countries say they are witnessing a full-on spring)

(see also in Computing)

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Kenneth Davidson, Caught in a public transport loop, The Age, 2009 June 29 (PPPs have a bad record at running public transport, yet here we go again; in Victoria in particular, the sacked public transport engineers were replaced by lawyers and privatisation jockeys recruited from merchant banks with expertise in setting up public-private partnerships or their near cousins, franchise agreements)
Cameron Houston, Wheel of misfortune was 'riddled with faults', The Age, 2009 June 28 (management of the Southern Star Observation Wheel ignored several defects when the $120 million tourist attraction was opened last December)
Spencer Kelly, The 'soap opera' of Apple's rise, BBC, 2009 June 12 (Apple has become one of the big success stories in the consumer tech world thanks to popular products such as the iMac, iPod and iPhone)

Manufacturing and Mining

(see also Coal and in Science and Technology)

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Mark Davis, Emissions law push, The Age, 2009 June 29 (Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and state premiers will seek to introduce mandatory standards this week requiring vehicle manufacturers to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new cars sold in Australia)
Ian McIlwraith, Greenland green policy threatens Perth explorer's rare earths project, The Age, 2009 June 25 (Perth-based explorer Greenland Minerals and Energy is urgently trying to clarify reports that plans to develop its Kvanefjeld rare earths deposit have been rejected by Greenland's new government)
Nissan eyes an electric car boost, BBC, 2009 June 23 (Nissan aims to make 100,000 electric cars a year by 2012, as it aims to become the first auto firm to mass produce the vehicles)
Mathew Murphy, Lihir may pull plug on Ballarat golden age, The Age, 2009 June 17 (future of Lihir Gold's Ballarat goldmine in doubt following another dramatic cut in production and refusal by the company to rule out further job cuts)
The plight of Ford: A stony road, Economist, 2009 June 13 (in both America and Europe, Ford faces government-backed rivals)
Lucy Battersby, Iron ore fever spurs index to highest for year, The Age, 2009 June 12 (the sharemarket has chalked up another high mark for the year, fuelled by a rush to mining stocks, with iron ore companies being revalued as China rediscovers its hunger for the metal)
Toby Hagon, Small car pulls Holden out of GM wreck, The Age, 2009 June 2 (taxpayer funds and a locally built small car will save Holden from the chopping block as parent company General Motors enters Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection)

Marketing and Advertising

(see also Competition and in Internet)

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Shilpa Kannan, Where small is beautiful and bountiful, BBC, 2009 June 30 (how India's shopkeepers beat new modern rivals: rows of large glass jars holding myriad different Indian spices and dry fruits are being cleaned and polished to prepare for the first customers of the day)
Mathew Murphy, Consumers face wave of greenwash, The Age, 2009 June 29 (a survey into green marketing in Australia has found almost all products carrying environmentally friendly claims are guilty of greenwashing; TerraChoice, an environmental marketing firm, has released its Seven Sins of Greenwashing report, which scrutinises the environmental claims companies put on products to see if they are misleading)
Julian Lee, Fast food marketing pledge called spin, The Age, 2009 June 26 (nutritionists and public health officials have described a pledge by fast-food companies to market only healthier products to children as spin and a pre-emptive strike by advertisers to stave off regulation)
Mike Hedge, Artful Kraft spreads the word on novel Vegemite experience, The Age, 2009 June 15 (the maker of one of Australia's most identifiable foods may be American, but is well aware of the danger of tampering with a national favourite)
Rachel Wells, Cheeky ad campaign or sexploitation?, The Age, 2009 June 14 (a popular clothes retailer using highly sexualised images of young women—many of them company staff—goes too far, say critics)
Daniella Miletic, Health groups want ban on junk-food marketing ploys, The Age, 2009 June 9 (health groups have called on the Federal Government to ban the junk-food industry's free toy and competition offers often used to promote fast-food meal deals and sugary cereals to children)
Mark Russell, When a 'stunning view' is a carpark, The Age, 2009 June 7 (consumer watchdog calls for end to the real estate industry "puffery" that hoodwinks prospective buyers into visiting homes that look nothing like advertisements)
Ari Sharp, Anger at lack of action on obesity, The Age, 2009 June 3 (health experts have attacked the Government's tolerance of junk food advertising aimed at children, with one accusing Parliament of "sitting on its hands" on the issue; the attacks came after a parliamentary report into obesity shied away from recommending an end to the food industry regulating its own advertising, and instead opted to give the self-regulation model more time to prove itself)

Media and Television

(see also Newspapers and in Technology)

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Paddy Manning, How the carbon lobby blackens media coverage, The Age, 2009 June 6 (despite a spectacular about-face on climate change in 2007 by News Corp's chairman Rupert Murdoch, no media group can match the Murdoch press for consistently fomenting global warming scepticism and arguing against climate change mitigation measures)
Gail Collins, The perils of ordinary lives becoming public property, The Age, 2009 June 2 (it's early days, but two of this millennium's worst ideas seem apparent)

Money and Banking

(see also Economics and Wealth)

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Danny John, Regionals blast funding guarantee fees, The Age, 2009 June 29 (regional banks will use a Senate inquiry into the Government's wholesale funding guarantee to call for the scrapping of the three-tier pricing system that they say is helping the Big Four banks tighten their grip on the market)
Ian Verrender, Home is where the bank is: squatting, watching, waiting, The Age, 2009 June 23 (once the Big Four dominated the sector; now they are the sector)
US Treasury defends bank reforms, BBC, 2009 June 18 (the US Treasury defends sweeping financial reforms, urging Congress to pass the changes soon)
EU sets basis for finance reform, BBC, 2009 June 18 (EU ministers agree in principle on a framework for enhanced financial oversight, with the UK winning key concessions)
Steve Schifferes, US regulation still leaves gaps, BBC, 2009 June 17 (the US Treasury's plan to reshape the US financial regulatory system has ambitious goals)
Latvia denies currency pressure, BBC, 2009 June 4 (Latvia's prime minister denies the country will need to devalue its currency, the lat, after the failure of a government bond sale)
Steam giants on new £50 banknote, BBC, 2009 May 30 (steam pioneer James Watt and his business partner Matthew Boulton are to feature on a new £50 banknote)

Outsourcing and Consulting

(see also Pay and in Computing and Social)

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Pay and Wealth

(see also Outsourcing and in Computing and Social)

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Ari Sharp, Shareholders told not to interfere in bank bosses' pay, The Age, 2009 June 5 (a submission by the Australian Bankers Association to the Productivity Commission inquiry into executive remuneration argues that regulation of pay levels could undermine the ability of bank boards to manage the company)
Clancy Yeates, Probe head wary of CEO pay cap, The Age, 2009 June 4 (the head of a public inquiry into excessive executive salaries says he is wary of the union movement's push to cap pay)

Privatisation and Private Equity

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Kenneth Davidson, Caught in a public transport loop, The Age, 2009 June 29 (PPPs have a bad record at running public transport, yet here we go again; in Victoria in particular, the sacked public transport engineers were replaced by lawyers and privatisation jockeys recruited from merchant banks with expertise in setting up public-private partnerships or their near cousins, franchise agreements)
Nick Renton, Health system needs radical surgery, The Age, 2009 June 23 (eliminating private health funds would reduce costs)

Publishing and Newspapers

(see also Media and in Others)

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Ian Munro, Upbeat, in the black? Citizen Hast's novel newspaper, The Age, 2009 June 29 (fifty years after The Age refused him a job, novice publisher Tom Hast has his own newspaper and a unique budgeting program: his presses don't roll until he has sold enough advertisements to turn a profit)
Miriam Steffens, National Times set for online relaunch, The Age, 2009 June 13 (Fairfax Media set to relaunch one of Australia's historic newspaper brands, The National Times, as an opinion and editorial website covering the nation's political and national affairs)

(see also in Climate and Health)

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Adam Morton, Adelaide targets water recycling, The Age, 2009 June 29 (South Australia has taken a different approach to Victoria in securing its water future, opting for a large-scale expansion in recycling of storm and wastewater; it yesterday announced a goal to recycle 45 per cent of urban wastewater for use in agriculture, industry and parklands by 2013)
Sarah-Jane Collins, Government rejects bottle refund bill, The Age, 2009 June 25 (a Greens private member's bill to introduce a 10 cent refund on bottles and cans and promote recycling has passed the upper house, but was rejected by the lower house on a technicality)
Peter Ker, Call to recycle all water and ban outfalls, The Age, 2009 June 3 (a dramatic increase in water recycling has been recommended for Melbourne, following an 18-month investigation by a Labor-dominated parliamentary committee)

Social and Property

(see also Consumerism)

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Julian Lee, Fast food marketing pledge called spin, The Age, 2009 June 26 (nutritionists and public health officials have described a pledge by fast-food companies to market only healthier products to children as spin and a pre-emptive strike by advertisers to stave off regulation)