Predicted 38 degrees the hottest day in October- ‘Soviet-era Stasi’ or defender of media freedoms? The battle for the Broadcasting Standards Authority

Among the lowest-ranked beaches for water quality were Coogee and Little Bay in the city's eastern suburbs, which were both in the "poor" category.

Official list of Sydney's cleanest and most polluted beaches in annual Beachwatch report

When I was 12, my mother sent me to high school in The Rocks. It was the early 80s and I was following in the footsteps of my sister, who had just completed Year 10. Although we lived in south-west Sydney, my mother thought going to school in the city would broaden our horizons, helping us to understand there was a world beyond our comfortable suburban life. It managed that – and more.

St Patrick’s Girls’ High was behind St Patrick’s Church in Grosvenor Street. A small, low-fee paying school for roughly 300 students, it serviced families all over the city and inner suburbs, new migrants’ daughters, factory workers’ daughters, a ragtag group from the suburbs, and a sizeable contingent from social housing in Millers Point and Woolloomooloo. Our partner school (and Anthony Albanese’s alma mater) was St Mary’s Cathedral College, which, well before its glow-up in the ’90s, welcomed a similar demographic of working-class and middle-class parishioners and their sons.

I went to school near Millers Point. It breaks my heart to see what it’s become

The decision by the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) to formally consider a complaint about something Sean Plunket said on The Platform has now spun well beyond the complaint itself.

At the centre of the controversy is not so much the question of whether it was racist for Plunket to refer to Māori tikanga as “mumbo jumbo”, but whether the Broadcasting Act affords the authority jurisdiction over online content providers like The Platform.

Plunket insisted he would not be “censored” by “corrupt or incompetent […] Orwellian bureaucrats”, and rejected the claim that The Platform could be considered a broadcaster under the act.

Various sympathisers offered their support. NZ First leader Winston Peters accused the BSA of acting “like some Soviet-era Stasi”. Kiwiblog’s David Farrer accused the BSA of a “secret power-grab” and called for its abolition. 

And ACT MP Todd Stephenson called it “a textbook example of a public agency trying to rewrite its own job description […] dismissing freedom of choice, and disregarding the boundaries of its democratic mandate”. 

The criticism hinged on how the 1989 Broadcasting Act defines broadcasting. Now outdated, this is what makes the BSA’s manoeuvre unprecedented and therefore so contentious.

 ‘Soviet-era Stasi’ or defender of media freedoms? The battle for the Broadcasting Standards Authority

BBC reporters cannot wear Black Lives Matter T-shirts in newsroom, says Tim Davie

Director general says it is inappropriate for a journalist who may be covering that issue ‘to be campaigning in that way’

In my opinion, the US is in a very similar position to Germany in 1933-4,” he said. “And we have to ask, could 1936, 1937, 1938 have been avoided? That’s the point we are at. You can try to say fascism couldn’t happen in the US. But I think the jury’s out.”

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