In bocca lupo!!

We are now finished week one of a two week period in which the Federal Parliament will sit. This in itself is not all that important, but the fact that it is the last time parliament will sit before July 1st and the introduction for the 'tax on carbon', before an extended break makes it all the more important. The Carbon Tax has been the dominant issue 'debabted' in parliament and I am sure it will continue for the next 4 sitting days. This coupled with the fact that both News Limited and Fairfax Media have announced a complete overhaul of their news operations, Marriage Equality will be debated in the Lower House, the Prime Minister attended the G20 summit in Mexico and Gina Rinehart has upped her stake in Fairfax, will make for an interesting time. Just yesterday News Limited announced a reduction in their print news, as a way of keeping up with demand, and to streamline their online and print news. This does not really come as a surprise as earlier this week  Fairfax Media announced a reduction of 1900 staff and also decided to change from their traditional broadsheet layout to tabloid style layout newspapers. Although these actions seem to be quite sudden the idea behind the move is probably not all that new, and as I look back over the last 12 months this has been an issue I have been thinking a lot about. This is highlighted after watching a keynote address online given by Annabel Crabb at Melbourne University from 2010. She, even back then was speculating about how the change, inevitably she said at the time, would affect journalists and their ability to do their jobs, in a time when people want analysis of breaking (political) news as it happens not just at the start and end of every day in news bulletins and in newspapers. Therefore in the weeks ahead it shall be interesting to see the fallout from these announcements. The PM this week has been absent from Question Time, and left the country in the hands of Wayne Swan whilst she travels to Mexico for the G20 summit. She met leaders from all over the world including the United States President Barack Obama and talked up the state of our economy on the world stage. Overall this week has been fairly hectic, but then again any week in which the population of Canberra increases 2:1 will be a week, in which watching the news will bring about highly amusing results.