Last week, you got in touch to tell us about some of your hospitality work nightmares and your thoughts on Australia’s recycling crisis, while a South African think tank gave us a reply to Meredith Burgmann’s take on the South African farmers debate.

But first — in our 13.4.18 story on the Greens’ internal complaint against Batman candidate Alex Bhathal (“The truth about the ‘Labor mole’ hiding within the Greens“), we noted that one of the 18 complainants had not been involved with the Greens since 2004, and now worked at Trades Hall. Pia Cerveri — whom we did not originally name — has now identified herself as that person. During the campaign she hosted a “meet-the-candidate” house get-together for Ged Kearney, which was featured on Kearney’s Instagram campaign feed. Our story noted that the very fact of Cerveri’s inclusion in the complaint created a connection to Labor, whatever actions Cerveri took. We stand by our story, but in the interest of fairness, we have chosen to run a reply from Cerveri.

Pia Cerveri writes: Guy Rundle must have been having a slow day when he scraped the barrel to try and spice up a non-story about the Darebin Greens and my relationship with them.  

Instead of doing his research or even contacting me before he wrote his piece, Guy Rundle simply created a narrative about me that was way off the mark.

The suggestion that I may have tipped off the ALP about the now public internal complaint lodged by current Darebin Greens members about the Batman Greens candidate dovetails nicely with the prevailing conspiracy theories abounding that the “complaint” lost the Greens the byelection. I refute his speculations — specifically that I in any way established a “back channel” between the Darebin Greens and the ALP, that I am a “Laborista” and that I campaigned for the ALP during any byelections. Guy Rundle owes me an apology for using his access to a media platform to spread gossip about me.

Re: Meredith Burgman’s “Look at it from South Africa’s point of view … ” 

Terence Corrigan, Project Manager, Institute of Race Relations writes: Dr Meredith Burgmann is correct to caution against wild or unsubstantiated claims about rural safety, and to highlight the extent to which Australian perceptions of South Africa may owe more to domestic politics than to distant realities. There is considerable debate about the degree to which farmers are vulnerable to violent crime – depending on one’s definition and data, it is possible to argue that they are no more at risk of murder than other South Africans, or as much as twelve times more so. Farm violence is also not limited to white farmers. There have been several cases of black farmers being attacked.

Her discussion of land reform is, however, less helpful. Dr Burgmann’s claim that white commercial farmers control 73% of the arable land, is one frequently made in South Africa’s policy debate. Its source is most likely the government’s Land Audit — itself a deeply questionable document — which tried to determine the ownership profile of landholding in South Africa. It put the total area of South Africa at about 121,924,881 hectares. Some 118,727,121 hectares is classified as “farmland”  — a somewhat misleading  catch-all designation for land outside the urban centres — and of this, 37,078,289 hectares are held by individuals as privately-owned land. 

Of this privately-owned and registered land, whites own 26,663,144 hectares (72%).  The rest of the country is held as state land, by trusts, companies and community property associations. A substantial chunk is not registered at all. Put differently, white commercial farmers don’t own anything near 73% of the arable land, the correct figure is closer to 22%.

Where Dr Burgmann is correct in asserting that things have “hardly budged” since the end of apartheid, is that the deprivation of property rights has continued into the democratic era. Little interest has been shown by government in extending proper ownership to those denied it in the past — a large part of the African population — even where they have a long-standing history of land use and occupation.

Emerging policy — to push land reform through expropriation without compensation — is not driven by “frustration”, as Dr Burgmann suggests. Rather, it is the latest iteration of a long-running drive to abridge property rights and enhance the state’s control over the economic life of the country.

Re: Charlie Lewis’ “Can your boss sue you for fighting for proper wages?” 

RL writes: My niece, a student was being paid $14.00 per hour working in a coffee shop. She asked for an increase and was told “if you don’t like it, there’s the door, there’s plenty more I can get”. I advised her to join a union. She is now getting $18.00 per hour at another workplace. It’s still not great but better than what she was getting.

Re: ” Talking Trash” (Crikey Worm)

Meredith Williams writes: It is indeed necessary that governments at all levels take more action to create a sustainable recycling industry. But this still only addresses the crisis at the wrong end. All of us need to drastically modify our behaviour, reduce our consumption, refuse over-packaging, buy less and therefore waste and throw away less. “Away” has suddenly gotten a lot closer. We must live more simply and modestly, and curb our self-indulgent, environmentally abusive lifestyles or we’ll find ourselves choking in our own refuse.