China is changing, just not into a democracy

China’s leadership change

Niall Clugston writes: Re. “Crikey says: is the Great Wall of China crumbling?” (yesterday). Regarding your editorial comments, the Chinese president is elected for five years, not 10, and this has not been going on for 60 years, but only since the 1982 constitution.

More profoundly, today’s collective leadership is very different from Mao’s anarchic dictatorship and different even from the government under Deng. The government of China is changing, just not into a liberal democracy.

Privatisation

Brian Mitchell writes: Re. “Ghost of NSW government past may haunt Gillard” (yesterday). What tosh! The NSW ALP’s opposition to power privatisation was principled and stemmed from the membership mutinying against the top-down diktat of the elite, who’d sought to abandon ALP policy by selling public assets. Iemma was rolled because he thought he was above the membership.

Keane does himself a disservice by seeking to imply the ALP’s anti-privatisation was part of the corruption that riddled the government in its latter years. Keane is clearly a supporter of privatisation, as his many columns attest. Most Australians disagree with him.

Yes, privatisation provides a big wad of cash and gets a liability off the books, but after three decades of it in other states, it’s clear that the public — whether customers or taxpayers — end up paying more for it, without the benefit of public ownership and dividends.

Lawyers at the royal commission

John Richardson writes: Re. “‘Royal commissions aren’t called lawyers’ picnics for nothing’” (yesterday). Yesterday’s piece by Kate Gibbs on “lawyering” and the benefits the profession stands to enjoy through its participation in the upcoming royal commission on child s-x abuse was most entertaining.

But I think Kate was more than a little cheeky to suggest that many lawyers will be motivated to work for the commission on a “pro bono” basis, because it will allow them an opportunity to “change the structure of how the church is involved in legal matters”. After all, surely it was the legal profession that was the architect and promoter of the legal strategies adopted by the church to defend its behaviour?

Priest confessions

Tim Dein writes: The media comments on this issue are not well informed. Politicians are following populist opinion. In reality, the potential for priests to hear p-edophile confessions of s-xual abuse and give absolution without requiring reparation is miniscule. Why?

When a priest hears the confession of a penitent  for a major sin, which is also a crime (eg. murder, theft), they would require the penitent to make reparation (ie. give themselves up to police, return money/goods) as condition of their absolution.

A p-edophile priest would recognise that they cannot get absolution unless they make reparation, ie. give themselves up. So they would not put the other priest and themselves the pain of going through confession. This would particularly be the case in recent years when it has been made clear that church organised solutions are no longer viable.