When Dire Straits legend Mark Knopfler penned his record-breaking song Money for Nothing, he never visualised that such a situation would actually happen in real life. But it has, in Australia in 2017.
The federal government has handed Foxtel $30 million big ones – for nothing. Ostensibly the money is for the pay TV network - yes, a pay TV operation, not one that's free-to-air - to broadcast more women's sport.
The catch, however, is that if the good taxpayers of this vast brown land want to view said sport — the broadcast of which is paid for by their tax dollars — why, they have to pay all over again.
So the TV broadcast costs Foxtel nothing, And it also gets the money from the sucker known as the subscriber.
{loadposition sam08}Anyone from outside the country, who has read up to this point, would no doubt be thinking that this pay TV network is surely a deserving case, one that is run by battlers who are close to the brink.
There's news on that front: it is half-owned by one of this country's biggest rent-seekers, Rupert Murdoch, himself. The man is now an American — sometimes even citizenship is less sacred than greenbacks — but he will never say nay when a supine Australian government forks out favours by the million.Taking handouts of this nature tends to become a habit, you know.
The other half belongs to Telstra, the biggest telco in Australia which does not have the best of reputations when it comes to service.
Had Malcolm Turnbull and his band of gutless wonders handed this money to a free-to-air mob, then at least there would have been the justification that everyone could see the women's sport that was being broadcast.
When the government is one that is perpetually complaining that it is short of money — one that cuts back on the maximum super contribution by $10,000 so that it can dud every citizen for that bit more tax, one that claims it has no money for foreign aid, one that cuts funds for the arts and everything else in sight — can gladly hand out $30 million, one would reason that there would be some indication of how this decision was reached.
No, the ever jovial Mitch Fifield, the communications tsar, tells world+dog, it is a cabinet decision taken at budget time. Whatever that means. There is no paper trail. Nothing. Zap. Zilch. Nada. Zero. Cipher.
It is just a line item in that big bundle of papers known as the Federal Budget 2017.
Foxtel ain't talking either. Why would any Murdoch venture forth and spoil the party?