Drink driving:

Julian Ricci, NT News editor, writes: Re. “Media briefs: NT News editor a “bloody idiot”… Music industry to abandon law suits…” (Monday, item 18). Yes, it’s true. Just not the bits Crikey chose to print. Yes, I registered a positive breath-test several weeks ago. But no, I don’t make — and have not made — any excuses. This could have been easily fact checked in my own name-and-shame piece printed the day after my test, referred to by yourselves and accompanied by my suitably unattractive headshot.

What I did write was, “there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can excuse (my decision) to drive.” Certainly not the fact that it was raining. What I don’t understand is why you chose to link to a secondary blogged report of my piece when you could have linked to the original. Instead, your link selectively reported from the original and “Crikey reader Shane Caple”, in turn, very, very selectively reported from that. And by the way, even though Crikey and Shane charged me, the police haven’t. Although I expect they will in due course.

Pitcher Partners:

Pitcher Partners Melbourne Managing Partner Don Rankin writes: Re. “Tips and rumours” (yesterday, item 6). Yesterday Crikey published the following tip: “The fallout from the collapse of ABC continues with Pitcher Partners’ Melbourne office shedding one fifth of its audit division before Christmas.” There have been no redundancies in the audit division at Pitcher Partners Melbourne. Our staff numbers are on plan and ahead of forecast.

Furthermore, Pitcher Partners is an association of large accounting firms. Only its Brisbane firm was involved in the audit of ABC Learning Centres, and this was resigned in 2007. Pitcher Partners Melbourne is not impacted by the ABC Learning Centres issue, nor are its other firms around the country.

Gould and Windschuttle:

Philip Woods writes: Re. “Gould and Windschuttle: The fallout” (yesterday, item 1). I do hope we are not going to get a series of “he said” “she said” exchanges between Simons and Windschuttle. “Gotcha” journalism is boring. I think it is a given that Windschuttle would have loved the article that appeared to support his particular bent and fell like manna from heaven into his lap — this is what was intended!

The fraudster worked extremely long and hard to create an article that was full of half truths and hidden references to other frauds, simply so it could fool the old curmudgeon. I suspect that there was little or no research undertaken to verify the information in the article or establish the bona fides of the writer — big deal. This is entirely unsurprising; ABC’s Media Watch gives us hundreds of examples of this in our TV, press and radio media. It is what we expect from these people, look at Fox’s reporting of the US election campaign. It was full of innuendo and lies. Look at The Oz’s coverage of the 2007 Australian election campaign.

Hobby horse riding is what we expect from Flint, Windschuttle, Neil James, Andrew Bolt, Albrechtsen and almost every journo/reporter around. We love to agree or disagree with our chosen heroes or villains. But I do hope that we are not going to get ongoing reporting and comment on this fraud. We don’t want to see the media becoming the news — it will be about as interesting as reports on Paris Hilton who is seen as a vacuous celebrity for being a vacuous celebrity — spare us.

Greg Angelo writes: Having read the hoax article, and Windschuttle’s considered response, it would appear that Windschuttle has been taken in by some mischievous prank which in all seriousness should have been detected by competent editorial journalism. Notwithstanding this, I believe that Crikey has behaved irresponsibly in this manner, especially as they were aware of the issue before the publication and then lay in wait for a cheap shot.

Whilst journalists as professionals do not always see eye to eye, I would have thought that journalistic professionalism would have overridden the desire for a cheap point at this stage. I believe that Crikey, which I actively support as alternative journalism, is pandering to its left-wing sycophants and acolytes rather than behaving responsibly as a journalistic channel.

Jim Hart writes: Nice one Sharon but please spare us the claim for the high moral ground of the hoax compared to the evil swamp of fraud into which you cast authors such as Helen Demidenko on the grounds that they made “false claims for personal gain”. So it’s the money thing is it? And yet Quadrant says it pays contributors for articles, so presumably there’s a modest cheque for S. Gould waiting to be cashed. And when that happens will that make you a vile fraudster Sharon, or will you remain a virtuous hoaxer by refusing the money or donating it to Greenpeace?

As for literary hoaxes/frauds, never mind Ern Malley or Demidenko, let’s not forget the wilful deceit and cultural appropriation of They’re a Weird Mob, the story of Italian immigrant Nino Culotta who was outed as Irish-Australian journo John O’Grady. That book was a real best-seller (over 200,000 as I recall, and that was 50 years ago) which presumably makes O’Grady guilty of mega fraud in Sharon Gould’s eyes.

The Quadrant thing is very entertaining, and more so for the seriousness with which it is being followed, but let’s not kid ourselves that this is some landmark event. It’s a great summer yarn, more fun than The Age‘s short story competition, so I reckon it’s got a couple of weeks to run and then I’m hoping Crikey will let it go and leave it to the insomniac bloggers.

Simon Rumble writes: Erm, guys, there’s more important things going on in the world than a double-digit circulation right-wing wonk wank mag getting pranked. Seriously, nobody cares!

Evan Thornley:

Michael Cooper writes: Re. “Thornley could breach Victoria’s conduct code — if it had one” (Tuesday, item 3). Poor Mr Thornley has backed the wrong horse. Electric cars of the future won’t rely on swap-out battery packs. They will almost certainly be built using mega-capacitors to hold the charge. The advantages of capacitors are many, cheaper to build than batteries, safer in an accident, can be shaped to form part of the vehicle body (just as they store fuel on aircraft in the wings) and most telling of all don’t suffer from the recharge time limitations of batteries.

A capacitor can be charged up pretty much as fast as you can feed the electricity in. I predict existing Service Stations will also include recharging unit’s that will have a big thick cable (just like the petrol hose) that will plug into the car and charge the capacitor from empty to full in 60 seconds or so, or just top it up in a few seconds — just pay by the KiloWatt.

The Gaza conflict:

Martyn Smith writes: Re. “Crikey Clarifier: What started the latest Gaza conflict?” (Yesterday, item 8). Whilst I accept the truth of professor Piscatori’s clarifier on Gaza I believe that the latest flare-up there is just another chapter in a conflict which started when Israel was founded in 1948. At the time General Marshall, the American Secretary of State, warned President Truman that founding Israel would cause massive problems. Marshall was ignored but he has since been proved correct.

My understanding is that the Jewish people were scattered from Palestine in CE 135 by emperor Hadrian’s general Severus, after a third rebellion against Rome had been ruthlessly put down. At the time Jews were banned from Jerusalem and the Romans built a temple to Zeus on the “Temple site”. Arabs have “always” lived in the area, as have Jews, but there has been no Jewish state there for at least 1,700 years. The Zionist settlers therefore invaded and took the Arab’s land; it’s as simple as that.

The Biblical statement that “God gave the land to them” doesn’t alter the fact, to repeat, that they took the Arabs’ land. The Americans cannot be considered honest brokers in the conflict because Israel is a client state of theirs and is probably dependent on the Americans for its existence. Gaza was always a strategic place and was fought over by the crusaders and Arabs, amongst others; an interesting, but exciting place to in which to live.

Daniel Lewis writes: Re. “Trioli trips up on Gaza” (Tuesday, item 14). In pointing out Virginia Trioli’s error, Alex Mitchell notes that Hamas won their election fair and square. Your conclusion, “Palestinian democracy 1, ABC journalism 0.” Oh so democratic Hamas have also tied their political opponents up and hurled them from high-rise buildings, when not simply shooting at them. I might also remind Crikey that Adolf Hitler was properly elected as well. Sorry. Merely winning an election (howsoever legitimately) does not equal democracy.

Of course in relation to Gaza, there are slip-ups all round. Regular Crikey correspondent, Irfan Yusuf posted a video to his blog, and noted in comments to the post, that: “The video shows the aftermath of an Israeli bombing in Gaza It shows dead bodies of women and children. If, after watching this video, you still believe there is no humanitarian problem in Gaza, you may as well believe the moon is made of lettuce.” Wrong, Irfan. Had he bothered to check his own sources (e.g. by simply clicking on the video) he would have learned it was in fact a Hamas bomb, which exploded at a Hamas rally. Another Crikey regular, Antony Loewenstein, who also linked to the video, upon becoming aware of the truth simply disappeared it from his website, hoping nobody noticed. They did.

A mixed economy:

Les Heimann writes: Re. “Refuted economic doctrines: privatisation” (Tuesday, item 12). John Quiggin makes the case for a mixed economy — some public sector competition for the private sector. Mate, those of us who have lived the good life know you are spot on. Most successful western democratic economies trundled along very nicely under this scenario — Australia in particular.

Keating — love him or hate him — deregulated us a step too far. Even Howard wasn’t up to doing what Keating did! Now, when times demonstrate this folly it would be an apt government that introduced some public sector competition once again. If not anything else it would soak up thousands of soon to be unemployed. Instead we poor consumers suffer from profit /uber alles.

Mark Jones writes: Tamas Calderwood (yesterday, comments), argues a set of simplistic notions in support of markets by raising Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” theory and questioning how an optimal mixed economy would look in practice. In response, I’d firstly argue that the world has been running mixed economies for 100s of years (and still does) and privatisation is simply a fad over the last 20 to 30 years only. As to what’s optimal well as a consumer it is fair for governments to compete with private firms and nationalise if it leads to a better price, a better quality of service, or development of products and service that would not have occurred in private enterprise i.e. unprofitable life saving drugs, the Snowy Scheme etc.

Secondly it’s easy to circumvent Schumpeters “creative destruction” in private enterprise as well as in public enterprise. For example, patents are obtained legally, or unethically, by large multi-nationals to stifle development and extend the life of their existing products, the most obvious situation being advances in environmentally friendly technologies. This practice may be legitimate, but it’s not exactly fair to consumers.

Now related to this second point and a topic which Tamas is also passionate about is perhaps the markets biggest failing, that being the pricing of goods where property rights are not clearly defined, but we all have an interest in, i.e. air, water and the environment generally. There is no doubt that many firms/industries have not incorporated in their pricing policies any negative externalities on the environment.

Now even if you are a GW/CC sceptic attempts by governments to develop markets for these goods, such as Carbon trading schemes, is better than no attempt at all. I now look forward to Tamas and every other supposed free market economist arguing that carbon is the wrong by product to price and who should decide the price, governments or private markets.

Richard McGuire writes: Tamas Calderwood made some curious observations in response to John Quiggin such as: “Private firms must perform or they are shut down.” Well not in the case of General Motors or Chrysler. The fact is that without the massive government bailouts and interventions of recent months, the world certainly would be looking at a 1930’s scenario.

And :”public enterprises on the other hand, are not subject to the disciplines of capital markets, so zombie firms can suck public money for a very long time, before they are sold off or reformed.” Sweeping statements like that Tamas amount to little more than dogma. What if the “zombie firm” is providing an essential service the private sector is unwilling, or unable to provide?

Too often in recent times privatisations have either been ideologically driven, “Telstra,” or attempts by government, desperate to prop up their short term bottom line, “NSW electricity privatisation.” Now before all you free market zealots out there hit your keyboards, answer me this. Why in a privatised telecommunications industry is the government forking out 4.7 billion to get high speed broadband up and running?

The AIRC:

“Sydney Planner” writes: Re. “Industry super funds in AIRC bonanza” (yesterday, item 22). I don’t get this preoccupation with “industry funds versus for-profit funds”. All we’re talking about, after all, is two different mechanisms for collecting and administering superannuation fund members’ money. The money that industry funds raise ends up in the hands of for-profit fund managers — EXACTLY the same place as the money collected by for-profit super funds.

So the only point of difference is the nature of the entity interposed between the fund members and the fund managers. One is designed to make a profit (increasing each year) for its shareholders/owners; the other is designed to run at cost or to return any profits to fund members. In other words, one ultimately costs members less than the other. So what’s wrong with the AIRC nominating the lower-cost option as a default fund?

Bearing in mind that the default option is the option that most people end up in if they cannot or will not (or just do not) make an active choice for themselves, one could argue the low-cost option is entirely appropriate for the default option. If members want something different (“better”, as the for-profit sector would put it), and are prepared to pay more for it, let them actively choose to do so.

Given that the money raised through both industry funds and through for-profit super funds ends up in the hands of for-profit fund managers anyway, the only people affected by the AIRC decision are the shareholders of companies who offer for-profit fund administration services. And frankly, who cares what they think? It’s not about them — and why should they presume to profit from a compulsory savings regime anyway?

Obama:

Gary Price writes: Re. Tuesday’s editorial. Please spare us this lame description of the President of the United States in the lead paragraph of the editorial. It is so wrong on so many levels. The “free” world? As opposed to…? What I AM looking forward to is people in democracies all over the world seeing in Obama the kind of quality you can get in a leader and asking — why not us as well? Why not all the time, not just after eight years of frat-boy-induced chaos?

Under the pump:

Keith Perkins writes: Re. “Mayne Report’s 2008 year ender and last minute sell-down” (Monday, item 20). If, as Stephen Mayne claimed this week, crude-oil peaked at 147 billion dollars a barrel in 2008, then its little wonder we were paying $1.50 a litre at the pumps.

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