Right to Know:

Lucinda Duckett, Manager, Editorial Communication, News Limited, writes:  Re. “Is the Right to Know Coalition ready for the last rites?” (Tuesday, item 16). Right to Know is far from dead, and has been very active in the last 12 months but regrettably it seems Ackland and Timmins are not aware of this.

After establishing a profile largely through the Moss Report in the lead up to the 2007 election, the Innes Report and the 2009 conference, Right to Know decided it was time to concentrate on working to make sure the changes Right to Know helped put on the agenda would actually happen.

Rather than continuing with demands for more reform, we agreed to focus our resources on the fine detail of securing those changes. This is a slow, painstaking process.

You may have noticed several shifts in the freedom of speech landscape in the last 12 months, and you may like to ask how these came about if Right to Know wasn’t doing anything.

Here are a few examples, although this is by no means an exhaustive list as Right to Know is working with local legislators in several States, as well as with the Commonwealth.  Changes have been reported in the media, and Right to Know spokespeople have commented when asked.

There are several more changes in the works, but as there is nothing concrete to report yet, they have not been reported yet.

  • Whistleblowers: The Commonwealth has announced a new regime giving whistleblowers the ability to go to the media in more circumstances than before. This regime is superior to any other jurisdiction in Australia. The model is also in excess of that proposed by the House of Representatives Committee. As The Australian has pointed out, if these laws had existed before, Allan Kessing would not have had a problem.
  • FOI – Commonwealth Bills: ARTK has been deeply involved in the new FOI regime from the beginning and throughout the process of drafting the legislation.  In January, we detected an amendment to the Bill which was not present in the exposure draft. If passed, this would have had serious and negative consequences for journalists. This important change was not picked up by practitioners, journalists, academics, Parliamentarians or anyone else who was consulted on the Bill.  When Right to Know put it to the Senate Committee, they recommended the mistake be fixed and Right to Know is now working with the government to correct it. It is still hoped the Bills will pass both Houses in the Winter sittings.
  • FOI – States: After changes to the Act in NSW, QLD, Right to Know is active in seeking FOI in changes other States.  For example, WA is currently undertaking a review of FOI practices, and we are seeking improved review mechanisms in SA.
  • Suppression orders: Responding to the Innes Report, SCAG has been working on model suppression orders for all jurisdictions. Right to Know is working with the Government to come up with the best possible legislation.
  • Sedition: Last week the government tabled its new National Security Legislation which makes a number of changes including improving sedition laws.  Right to Know made submissions and worked closely with the government on this.
  • Secrecy Laws and Open Government: Right to Know is participating in the ALRC ‘s review of Commonwealth Secrecy Laws.  If adopted by the Government the Commission’s recommendations will fundamentally alter the way in which Commonwealth government information is handled and alter the criminal implications of release of information.
  • SA Electoral Act: ARTK was active in the opposition and reversal of the SA Government’s contentious new electoral rules requiring bloggers to provide their names and addresses during election campaigns.
  • NSW: ARTK has been active in a number of issues with the NSW Government and Opposition including the banning of schools leagues tables, the Court Information Bill and bans on naming of children.

It is regrettable — and an oversight — that we have failed to update the Right to Know website lately.  Frankly, we’ve been too busy, but if it would make you happy we will divert our efforts to this when we can.

Population growth:

Paul Hampton-Smith writes: Re. “Population growth: we will have 40 million people by 2050” (yesterday, item 1). Christopher Joye gives us a lesson in how to think inside the square. What a flawed analogy: to liken a desperate need to populate or perish with the drive for growth in the corporate world.

Most companies either naturally reduce their expansion down to a stable workforce size, or end up collapsing under their own weight, Roman Empire-style, due to lack of cohesiveness or indolence. Instead, how about a lesson from evolution, Christopher: megafauna are extinct, replaced with smaller creatures evolved from the necessity to utilise food resources more frugally.

Anyhow, to population. Firstly, let’s take a really long term view. Suppose a modest round figure of 1% annual population growth is essential to the wellbeing of Australia. So we’ll reach 500 million in 300 years and 3 billion in a further 200?! Perhaps we’ll be able to emigrate to Mars by then. Perhaps not.

Surely faced with that exponential trump card one should start with trying to determine an absolute limit of population size in Australia, and indeed the world, beyond which zero population growth should be maintained.

Some, such as Tim Flannery, say that we are already well past it, and the recent droughts and water crises alone indicate that we must at least be within a few decades of that point. ZPG doesn’t really mean stagnation — 230,000 births and immigrants are required each year in Australia to replace the deaths and permanent departures.

Major adjustments to our way of thinking and our economic models will be required to get down eventually to that level. Japan hasn’t managed to make it work well, but we can learn from their failure.

It’s a hell of a lot better legacy to leave our descendants than eventually facing Darwin with that evolutionary population cull.

Jenny Ejlak writes: I cannot believe Crikey has run another article describing people as “human capital” — this time suggesting we need to increase our population to help our economy — already one of the most robust in the world.

Is Joye a climate denialist on magic mushrooms?  I’m guessing he must be because otherwise he would realise the world is grossly overpopulated as it is, that population and associated development pressures are creating increasing problems for an already damaged ecology and his antiquated economic theories are only making it worse!  Wake up, people!  Get out of the mushroom cloud and look at the world around you.  Not the “world” of textbook theories but the real world of people, food, water and the basic struggles the tens of millions of people living in absolute poverty face every day just to stay alive.

Wake up to the reality that the world is facing a future of more humanitarian crises and mass forced migration as more areas of the world becoming uninhabitable due to sea level rises, accelerated environmental degradation, intense weather events and other climate change impacts. These are not the ravings of the lunatic fringe, but conclusions that the World Bank’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has come to in recent years.

It is no longer possible to have neat, controlled little plans about how many women will be forced to pop out more hungry mouths to feed — I don’t think anyone can accurately predict the impact of the displacement on individuals, communities, countries or economies.

But hey — Joye doesn’t need to worry.  Australia’s population will increase.  It will do so because we will play our part (I hope) in taking in climate change refugees — not because they are good for the economy (if they are then that’s a bonus) but because it is the right and humane thing to do.

Mark Duffett writes: Yesterday, Christopher Joye wrote that the “single biggest externality associated with traffic congestion” is pollution.  But that distinction surely has to go to all the time that people spend stuck inside their vehicles, instead of at work or with their families or otherwise enjoying themselves.

If you multiply all those hours by all those people by (say) the average wage, how many trillions of dollars is that worth?  A good deal more than all the costs incurred by traffic-sourced pollution, I’ll wager, climate change or no.

All those companies that centralise their operations from regions and smaller centres into big cities ‘for logistical reasons’ (discount chain Chickenfeed, Tasmania-based until recently, springs to mind) are basically cost-shifting onto their employees.

Barnaby Joyce:

Chris O’Regan writes: Re. “Richard Farmer’s chunky bits” (yesterday, item 14). Godwin’s law tells us of the increasing probability of comparisons to Nazism as internet discussions continue.  There must surely be a similar aphorism that holds true with talking about irony in the media: the more it happens, the probability that multiple people will totally misdefine what irony is approaches.

Aside from Richard Farmer’s appalling misogyny (if two Asian ABC journalists had interviewed Joyce, would he be sneering at “ABC Asians”?) it seems that he really has no concept of irony.  Assuming charitably that he’s never used a dictionary or watched Reality Bites, I’ll enlighten him (and Barnaby).  Irony is a statement or form that has a meaning that is at odds with its apparent surface meaning.

When Gough used irony, (e.g. “well may we say God Save the Queen”,) he was deliberately making an unlikely statement to highlight the fact that his actual sentiments were directly at odds with what he was expressing.  Joyce, like many agrarian socialists, genuinely holds the Productivity Commission and its work in contempt.  He used a typically aggressive metaphor to express that contempt.

Actual irony would be if he was secretly suggesting that we should praise the Commission and its work, but there is nothing at all in Joyce’s remarks or opinions to suggest that.  Where Joyce is being brilliantly, albeit unintentionally, ironic, is where he confuses a “white bread politician” with a non-idiot who thinks before he (those male politicians are so hilarious!) speaks and doesn’t attempt to dissociate himself from his own remarks on the basis that he’s such a buffoon that you can’t take anything he says seriously.

Rosslyn Kemp writes: Surely humour isn’t the issue with Barnaby Joyce’s brown bread style — it’s his total lack of relevance. How can his statements be construed as ironic? He uses cheap schoolboy humour to enliven (well, in a footy show style of humour) a content free comment. He fails to make any connection between issues at stake (reports on economy, economy) other toilet humour.

There is nothing thought provoking in his comments, no idea of juxtaposition in the humour.  Perhaps he could watch some good political satire rather than just talk to the blokes around the barbie.

His “brown bread” is certainly not good wholemeal or sour dough — merely white bread with brown dye.

Gunns:

Geoffrey D. Batrouney writes:  Re. “Sue Cato spins for Gunns, not that Q&A let on” (yesterday, item 18). This expat in New York visited Hobart one week two years ago. Pulp Mill on the river? Must be mad! Nope.

So I got busy back here and I am doing everything I can to make it very, very expensive for Gunn’s to go ahead with what has to be the dumbest investment I’ve ever heard of.

The fools in Parliament House would be better off giving Richard Branson $100 million and telling him he has a free hand to develop any eco-tourism “thing” he wants.

Stern Hu:

Dr Ann Kent, Visiting Fellow, Centre for International and Public Law, Australian National University, writes: Re. “Crikey wrap: It’s who you know, not Hu, you know?” (yesterday, item 23). A very good summary of the articles on Stern Hu. Just one correction — I am not from the Fairfax stable, but a Visiting Fellow at the ANU! Fairfax just asked me to write an Opinion piece.

Zachary King writes: Re. John Goldbaum (yesterday, comments). John perhaps you should take your own advice and pay closer attention to the words on the page.

There were essentially two lines of charges against the Hu Gang — the first was taking bribes to allow preferential access to ore, the second relates to “obtaining commercial secrets”.  Just how exactly do you think they obtained this inside information — some sort of complicated Oceans 11 inspired hustle?

Bribery seems the obvious answer, what?  And rather convenient for Rio that this part of the trial was kept secret don’t you think?  Allowed them to disavow all knowledge, shake their heads disapprovingly and murmur “tut, tut”, they obviously didn’t read the employee handbook.  We can’t have that type of person on the books now can we?

Not exactly the kind of behaviour to fill one’s employees with faith now, is it?

John Owen Stone:

Steve Blume writes: Re. “Ken Henry: Aussie of the Year or wombat? You decide!” (Tuesday, comments). All those people complaining about Ken Henry, like Richard Farmer in Crikey a couple of days ago seem to have entirely forgotten what one John Owen Stone used to get up to when he was Treasury Secretary.

First in his public speeches, but also his well known visits to the National Press Club bar on Friday nights when he would loudly argue with any journo present and spend much time abusing Labor to all and sundry. He resigned in 1984 after the Hawke Labor win. In 1988 he became National Party Senator John Stone and had a failed tilt at the Reps in 1990.

Stone was a member of the Samuel Griffith Society and great mate of Ray Evans the notorious supporter of that society and other right wing organisations and now a climate change anti-scientist. Short memories.

WIES:

Rob Gerrand writes: Re. “Tips and rumours” (yesterday, item 8). I hope your “disgruntled surgeon” correspondent’s knowledge of hospital management is better than his knowledge of WIES (it’s not WEIS, as he mis-stated). WIES, which stands for Weighted Inlier Equivalent Separations, is a tool to enable an average payment for a hospital stay.

He says that Victoria’s hospital system is the “least worst” compared to other Australian states. Why not compare it to the US or UK? I know where I would prefer to go to hospital — and I had excellent treatment three years ago for a broken leg, in a Victorian public hospital.

Melbourne Storm:

Les Heimann writes: Re. “Try as they might, no News Ltd means no Melbourne Storm” (yesterday, item 19). How dare you! Attacking Melbourne Storm is attacking Melbourne — that’s not allowed. Melbourne is everything that is pure and right and better, much better than those slovenly Sydneyites. Look at what we in Melbourne have done for Rugby League. We have provided Sydney with their very own collective Collingwood — the team they all love to beat, and hate and envy and want to emulate. We are of course better in Melbourne when it comes to sport. We are premiers of everything after all.

That Melbourne Storm is pampered and propped up. Well of course, so it should. The AFL has poured tens of millions into propping up the Sydney Swans and is about to pour a huge bucketful of cash to develop the Greater Western Sydney money pit — just so Sydney people get to share in the delights of AFL.

Melbourne Storm — and the ARU club Melbourne Rebels — have caused the building of a brand new purpose built stadium. GWS AFL will also enable the building of a brand new stadium somewhere in the forlorn suburban wastelands in the west of Sydney. This rivalry thing is good for the economy – we on the east coast of Australia don’t need a GFC rescue package – we only need AFL – Rugby rivalry for economic stimulus! So the need to ensure a pampered, totally rich Melbourne Storm RL club in Melbourne is paramount for economic well being. Working families demand it, particularly Melbourne working families.

Build it and they will come – that’s the Melbourne sporting tradition.  In this great city, free of any humble convict heritage, people want to participate, and that doesn’t mean actually play the game (that’s for those who don’t know better) – it means watch the game; true theatre goers are we. If ancient Rome was in Melbourne there would have been ten colosseums. Long live Melbourne Storm and if News Ltd want out then clearly it will be the collective responsibility of all other NRL clubs to pay, and pay for the privilege of having such a great club in such a great city. We Melbournians deserve it and Sydney definitely does not.

Look at their record. Sacking great clubs – that’s what Sydney does. Newtown, Balmain, Western Suburbs, North Sydney and of course the mighty Rabbitohs. Where are they now? Only South Sydney fought back – and we hear it was because the guy who led the charge had Melbourne blood somewhere in his family.

So, as I sip from my Napoleon brandy, settled in my comfortable armchair, in my quiet and exclusive men’s club in the heart of Melbourne I despair for those no account northern ex convicts in Sydney who dare to rise above their station. We now have Rugby League and that’s the rightful; order of things don’t you know.