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Twelve years ago Netscape Navigator was launched and everything started to change.  More and more people now access newspapers and other media through the internet, but the big advertisers have been slow to spot the trend.  This is now changing, and it’s not looking good for TV. 

Australian media ad spending is expected to grow by 11 per cent to $11.6 billion this year; $620 million of that will be online.  Free-to-air TV will increase by only 2 per cent .

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald article on internet advertising growth says Australian advertisers are ahead of their US counterparts, spending about 9-10 per cent of their budgets online (most US marketers spend 4-10 per cent).

Australia currently ranks eighth in the world in its rate of internet access, just behind the U.S.A.  Top of the chart is New Zealand, closely followed by Iceland.  Most businesses here have a website and use email to comunicate with their clients,  and the time is rapidly approaching when it will be impossible to conduct anything but a cottage industry without it.

The news from Iraq this morning couldn’t be much worse for John Howard.  Now our own soldiers have dramatically demonstrated what a shambles the situation over there really is.  Not even a Government minister’s own staff can be distinguished from insurgents by Australian troops.  And they were all there because Australia has been working hard to win back one of its most important wheat markets after the AWB kickback scandal led to Iraq suspending dealings with them in February.  This is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.  Just look at what’s happening with the U.S. troops.

At home, the Liberal party rebels have refused to cave in on the Immigration changes before Howard goes to Indonesia, robbing him of the opportunity to show the Indonesians how well he controls Parliament.  And he didn’t even get invited to The Wedding!

Perhaps he’s wishing he had resigned while things were looking good.

It’s good to see that John Howard can sometimes spot the bleeding obvious.  It took a while, though.  And you have to admire his mental agility.  On 26 May he was saying “I am aware that the majority of people are probably opposed to this” but selling it is “the right decision”. 

Then yesterday morning it was “All Change”; it seems a lot of people are against selling the Snowy, so we have decided not to.   I guess you have to be the right people.  While he’s in this democratic mood, he might just manage to hear the voices of the 76 legal luminaries who have signed an open letter to him pointing out that the detention of David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay is “an affront to international legal standards”.  The signatories of the letter include Former New South Wales Attorney-General and Supreme Court Judge John Dowd and three other former judges.  Perhaps that’s what John was talking to George about on the phone last night! 

The letter, along with the report sent to the International Commission of Jurists on the legal status of Hick’s detention, can be found here .