Slap dash government and the broadcasting laws

Mark Day, writing in The Australian's media section, has picked up on the Broadcasting laws and Ms Gillard's election announcement.

We wrote about the laws on 5 February.

Mark's piece in The Australian includes this observation

 In an election period public information campaigns, such as the National Broadband Network ads now airing, shut down and all political advertising must be tagged with the name of the person authorising the ad and the name of each of the speakers -- a provision that gives rise to some of the fastest and most unintelligible spoken words in history.

It is also incumbent on broadcasters to provide balance when airing the views of candidates -- the so-called "equal time" requirements.

I recently wrote a story for the Weekend Australian Magazine about a group of nurses who served as civilians in Vietnam and now can't get the same kind of medical help as those who served in the military, even though they are suffering the same illness and problems. The reason given by a haughty bureaucrat from Veterans' Affairs is that the nurses were not under military control. "That is the law," he said. End of story. If that is the case, the same should apply here. If the government doesn't like the law, it should change it.  

 They just don't seem to care.   The law is not the law when it comes to the Gillard Government.