Dear Crikey,

We are pleased you have pointed out to
your readers that the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
unemployment estimate is a sham. I have been saying this for years and
everyone including politicians knows it – except the Australian media,
who publish any “rubbish” given to them.

Check out this link
to the latest Roy Morgan Unemployment estimate, which shows true
unemployment in Australia was 7.4% in March, not 5.1% as the Australian
Bureau of Statistics would like Australians to believe.

You should also read this
August 2003 letter to the Editor of the AFR
, which was not published, highlighting my concerns about unemployment
measures. This letter was copied to then Minister of Employment, Tony
Abbott – before he was sent off to “fix” health!

Publishing
the correct (higher) unemployment figure changes the debate and how the
Government handles this important issue. It is time the Government was
honest!

Gary Morgan
Executive Chairman
Roy Morgan Research

Just because we publish the odd Gary Morgan rant and he does some
survey work for us doesn’t mean he is a protected species on Crikey.
These two letters came in when we ran his survey about public
opposition to the BHP takeover of WMC earlier this month:

A subscriber writes:

Knowing Gary Morgan, he probably surveyed the first 4 people in
his office who agreed with his view. Mayne, surely not even a
‘red-neck’ socialist like you would criticise the wisdom of a WMC
takeover by BHP and it’s tangible worth to the Australian economy?

NeoCon

A News Ltd journalist writes:

Hello Crikey, interesting to see your small sob about the
difficulty Gary Morgan had in trying to turn The Age and Herald Sun
into his personal Crimestoppers. Apart from the clear legal minefield
of publishing as robbers a picture that could have been three innocent
blokes doing absolutely nothing sinister, why should Mr Morgan be given
some sort of special treatment anyway.

Crikey,
being Crikey, would no doubt have made some mileage out of it had one
of those papers – who are affected by Mr Morgan’s readership surveys –
decided to afford Mr Morgan such special treatment.

And, incidentally, after his slash-and-burn solution to the city possum problem, probably it’s all karma, anyway.

Cheers, a possum lover