2025 is heading for another monumental stoush between AM and FM

2025 is heading for another monumental stoush between AM and FM in the Sydney radio market, with the old soldier, 2GB, still firing off a few shots to retain the number one spot overall – holding off SMOOTH and KIIS FM. Ben Fordham and Mark Levy continued to dominate the 5 to noon slots which they're going to have to do, big time, given the overheads GB will be carrying to mount NEWS-TALK-SPORT. Both of the Morning Talkers had good increases in survey two.

SMOOTH has to be a shareholder's delight... Comparatively low costs: just excellent music with the odd bit of Information. KIIS – a bit more expensive – racked up another Breakfast FM number one for Kyle and Jackie O as we all settle down to see how this lot sorts themselves out for the next 6 months.

As predicted by everybody, including the drover's dog, PM Anthony smoked the Libs well and truly in the May election. I know I predicted an ALP minority government in the last post but actually adjusted that about a week later to make it Labor running the show on its own... The ALP with a majority. I amended my forecast after watching both men out on the hustings. Albanese was walking around as if he owned the show... Laughing, doing one-liners, shaking hands, kissing babies... Like, as if it was in his DNA. Then there was Peter Dutton, at a sausage sizzle I think, standing like a wooden totem pole, trying desperately to smile and not really making it. OMG, it was awful. It wasn't only the sausages being sizzled that day... Anthony was doing a big number on Peter and the Coalition was heading for an overwhelming loss. There are two things to look for in a political campaign: content and presentation. It's a bit like radio really. The Coalition content was weird. Why were the Lib-Nats suddenly campaigning about nuclear energy which is at least fifty years away in Australia? Why not just get out and tell Australians the absolute truth? WE NEED TO PUMP OUT OUR NATURAL GAS RESERVES immediately. These turbines and solar panels are just transitional. GAS is going to be critical for Australia and the world 'til 2070... Minimum. Why aren't we saying that a Coalition government will set up a major investigation into the whole energy sector with nuclear well and truly on the table? We can't do it now... Get out there and have a lash at the cost of living. The Libs already have a key policy. You need Dutton ploughing into this everyday. A COALITION GOVERNMENT WILL IMMEDIATELY CUT YOUR PETROL BILL BY 25c A LITRE, dropping the excise. From day one. How about that to ease your cost of living? 25 cents cheaper for everyone including the dads driving to work every day and the mums shelling out hard dollars on the school run. What about all of the vehicles transporting goods across the nation? And we'll do it for at least the next 12 months... That's a promise with an automatic review built-in after the first year. Not just a saving for your fuel but a saving for the trucks that carry your bread and butter to the local supermarket. The family's cost of living attacked on two fronts. PRESENTATION is a difficult area because the stuff we're saying is personal. Insiders tell me that Peter Dutton is a really good bloke and would have made an excellent PM. But, as they say in television, "the camera just didn't love him." He looked awkward in public and there wasn't a lot that could be done about that. In the end he just couldn't sizzle sausages like Anthony.

I've spent a while in recent times bemoaning the surrender of the US Democrats after the Trump triumph. Where are they taking on Donald in his first 100 days? Where, for example, is Kamala Harris, the Presidential candidate, once VP? Why isn't she out there having a go at Trump? Why haven't we seen her in the public arena? Recently I found out that she was making this long-awaited public return so I tuned-in: at last a leading Democrat was getting up and about. I turned on the television and Kamala walked on to centre stage and immediately started giggling... She waved and started laughing...Then she broke into a series of giggles again... I think she was saying something but it was difficult to make it out. It was minutes of bizarre giggling... I switched channels. All my questions had been answered.

The nation has just gone through another massive disaster with flooding down the East coast. We don't just lose a few houses in Australia... We lose whole towns. And once again it'll be the same old story...People just won't be able to afford insurance premiums. Insurance companies will be hard pressed to make pay-outs. Only answer: federal and state governments set up a disaster insurance system which will underwrite premiums. You can't afford the premium in a disaster zone? The nation will step in and make up the difference. Anything to stop the rising tide of uninsured residents and business. We need an insurer of last resort, difficult as that will be to legislate.

I just love running into little tidbits of history when you least expect it. I was enjoying a recent Australian Golf Digest offering about the 75th anniversary of the much admired Sydney private golf club, the majestic Castle Hill Country Club... 68 hectares dating back to 1950 as a 9-hole course to its current status as a premier championship venue. Then the revelation that the land was once owned by one of the greatest figures of early colonial times, John Macarthur. This is the man who started our Merino wool industry establishing the country that rode on the sheep's back. And the same man who conspired against Governor William Bligh in the infamous Rum Rebellion of 1808. So Castle Hill members, when you get your fairway wood out to have a crack at the green on Saturday just remember: you're in John Macarthur territory... Tou're walking through a piece of our history.

One of my all time favourite lines from the old days was, "I'll come down on ya like a ton of bricks," a warning that you'll be punished for doing the wrong thing. It goes back to the New York Atlas, 1872, and the Otago Daily Times in 1873, but was very big here in Australia for one hundred years or so. I beg you never pronounce it "tonne". For that, much thanks.

THE TREE OF MAN.

"Souls unite in the face of violence, if only on the common ground of frailty.
Two people do not lose themselves at the identical moment,or else they might find each other.
It is not as simple as that.
So that in the end,there was no end".

Written by Patrick White, 1955. White (pictured below) is the only Australian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1973).