By Craig Cormick
Based on highly reliably international contacts, leaked documents and horoscopes from several TV magazines, Nostradamus' Media Watch presents a highly accurate forecast of political events across the globe.
ASIO privatised
Following several damning reports on its inefficiency, and Commonwealth-state agreements to privatise unprofitable utilities, the government announces that ASIO is to be slowly privatised.
A series of newspaper ads is run on the theme "Want the dirt to stick — call ASIO", but only one private contract is signed, to supply stories for a TV current affairs show.
The government then offers ASIO services to overseas governments. The Malaysian government declines. The British government ignores the offer, and the US government says it is contemplating selling off its own security services, but refers the Australian government on to Moscow, which it says it knows for certain to be in the market for intelligence services.
However, the Russian government rejects the offer, saying that it bought ASIO years ago.
Malaysia-Iceland row
After several diplomatic incidents with Australia, followed by a serious confrontation with Britain, and breaking off diplomatic ties with Luxembourg, the Malaysian government receives a copy of a travel article written by an Icelandic South-East Asian correspondent.
The article, according to a translation provided by the Malaysian Bureau of International Insults, states that Malaysian officials don't take well to criticism and are "thin-skinned".
The Iceland government responds with a seven-page discourse on the semiotics of ancient Norse, and explains that the phrase used would more accurately be translated as "dog turd-like".
However, the Malaysian government refuses to accept this as an apology, and sends a three-man mission to Reykjavik specifically so that it can withdraw them.
Iceland asks the Australian government to mediate, but Paul Keating refuses to answer the phone.
The conflict ends when the Malaysian government turns its fury on Andorra, over derogatory comments on the state of public toilets in Malaysia made by two Andorran pensioners overheard at the airport, and it begins a trade embargo on all Andorran goods.
Asian language policy
For the first time in decades the state and federal governments come to an agreement on a single issue — that of teaching Asian languages in all Australian schools.
In a joint communique, the prime minister and premiers declare that by the year 2000 all Australian school children will be able to say, "Can I carry your bags please?" in the languages of all Asian with a significant GDP.