By Craig Cormick
Based on highly reliably international contacts, leaked documents and horoscopes from several TV magazines, Nostradamus' Media Watch presents a highly accurate forecast of political events across the globe.
Victorian police disarmed
In an effort to lower the number of fatal shootings by police in Victoria, Premier Jeff Kennett has all police officers disarmed.
The police union, supported by the duck hunting lobby, protest, predicting an immediate increase in violent armed crime and wild duck attacks.
The police defy the premier by carrying guns into the city centre in protest and discharging them in the air outside state parliament. Two dogs, one civilian and a visiting member of a Belgian Rotary delegation are killed.
Kennett relents, to an extent, and allows the police to carry Swiss army knives. The police claim this hampers their style — but nevertheless over the Christmas-New Year's period, five civilians are corkscrewed to death.
ABC denies commercialisation
The largely anonymous ABC Board goes public, at an Optus-sponsored telecast from the Opera House, to deny creeping commercialisation of the national broadcaster.
The telecast, which interrupts ABC coverage of the Fosters Grand Prix and the Winfield Cup, announces a new policy on hidden commercial support for ABC programs.
The policy, supported in principle by major tobacco and drug companies, states that two new committees within the ABC will be formed, made up of current surplus ABC middle management.
One committee, of about 50 members, will assess sponsorship proposals, and the other, with about 65 members, will assess proposals to influence editorial independence. The board promises that the inability of such committees ever to make a decision will prevent commercialism from invading the hallowed halls of the ABC.
The policy is supported by an amendment to the ABC's charter, which acknowledges that certain levels of hidden sponsorship do exist, but states that as long as one sponsored program does not offend another sponsor, or the Indonesians, then it won't be deemed to be unduly attempting to influence editorial freedom.
Alan Bond the mini-series
An Asian consortium of merchant banks puts forward a proposal to co-fund an ABC mini-series on Alan Bond.
The series, to go under the title of Truly Great Australians Whom Merchant Bankers Admire, will be filmed entirely on location in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Unfortunately for the viewing public, the proposal fails when it is stalled for two years in an ABC committee.