Garrett:

Mike Crook writes: Re. “Peter Garrett and the perpetual present of politics” (Friday, item 1). With the cessation of the Insulation Program by Peter Garrett, it is probably a good time to have a look at other methods of service delivery for infrastructure projects other than the one which seems to have failed so dismally in this case. We need also to enter into a debate about the unchallenged mantra “private is more efficient than public”.

Firstly where the profit motive is concerned. For the private contractor, or in the case of PPPs, the private partner, profit and returns on investment are always the primary consideration.

This is quite understandable, but where there is no enforcement of regulations, safety or otherwise, profit becomes the only consideration. For example, many people have died because of a simple decision made by the Goss government upon election to office in 1989, this was to sack all of the State Employed Electrical Inspectors and make certification of safe electrical work in Queensland new buildings a responsibility of the electrical contractor, this to be accompanied by spot checks to ensure compliance. But the rare spot checks diminished in number and soon it was open slather.

Australian Standard Wiring Regulations soon went by the board, and, germane to the insulation issue,  instead of cables being pin clipped to the sides of the roof joists and holes drilled through the joists where needed, and junction boxes being placed out of harms way or covered, now most Queensland roof spaces have cables draped every which way and certainly over the top of the joists, where they get in the way of everything including insulation.

There is another method of service delivery which does not give private enterprise open slather and that was the method employed by the Federal Department of Administrative Services before it was foolishly disbanded by the Keating Government in the mid nineties. The construction arm of DAS was Australian Construction Services (ACS), which would have been given the job of making the insulation program happen. I witnessed their work in the early nineties when I project managed a number of  Department Of Social Security Office relocations and refurbishments. They provided a lot of technical assistance to me at the time. It helped that they employed professional tradesmen and engineers ( unlike the current Department).

ACS would have called tenders from at least 3 tenderers for each particular section or portion of the work and would have supervised the project at all stages. Their own in house expertise would have guaranteed that the work would have been carried out in a workmanlike and timely manner. They would not have called tenders from any company that could not show an ability to actually carry out the work, and I doubt whether any of the cowboys we now see contracting to government would be allowed anywhere near it.

I note that I carried out over 20 contracts in a four year period with help from these guys and every contract came in under budget and ahead of time. I consider it time to return to a method of service delivery that actually makes things happen, in a reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. Need I mention the $672 million dollars for Northern Territory Intervention Housing and which has resulted in two houses being built in two years. Had ACS been in given the contract they would have had the 1000 odd houses built within a year.

Alan Moret writes: After two blunders Environmental Minister Garrett should  resign from the Labor party and if the Prime Minister does his job he should sack the Minister how can you trust him after four deaths and now twenty thousand homes are under threat of catching fire how many more lives at risk?

Scientology:

Cyrus Brooks, Church of Scientology Australia, writes: Re. “The Senate lends Scientology a helping hand to attack ex-members” (18 February, item 1). Justice requires that the accused may speak in their defence and put their case forward. Who would deny such a right in Australia today?

Scientologists have applied through the standard political process in parliament a right of reply to hurtful and unjustified statements by Senator Xenophon. A right no different than for other individuals and groups that have been maligned with false allegations. In a world with mass media, sensational stories get broadcast globally and sometimes almost instantaneously.

And as for a right of reply, well, how many people read that small section of the paper for “corrections”. Why wouldn’t a correction for a false statement made in a front page article get a front page mention?

Just personally, I’ve worked for over 10 years helping in the streets with drug prevention and education. And Scientologists all over Australia do such work in their communities — helping people improve their literacy, assisting with the practical needs in disaster areas, relieving trauma and other helpful activities. Some readers may have been fortunate enough to have seen some of them.

These good people don’t deserve such treatment by the Senator.

David Griffin writes: Scientology may be mocked for it’s ridiculous beliefs, but only because those beliefs are so completely different from the religion(s) from which our society has sprung. The same logic can be applied to any religion: It doesn’t matter what you believe. What matters is what you do.

Rudd, Murdoch and The OZ:

Mike Bruce writes: Re. 18 February editorial. How do you reconcile this piece: “…there’s a distinct lack of personal chemistry between Rudd and some of Murdoch’s key Australian henchmen, notably Australian editor Chris Mitchell, who has been conducting a fatwa on Rudd  for a year or more…” with this: Has the pair since fallen out? Or is Mr Mitchell just exercising rigorous journalistic practice?

No monkeying around on climate change:

Tamas Calderwood writes: Re. “And the Wankley goes to… the Monckie of the month” (Friday, item 18). Guy Rundle awards “The Monckie” to The Australian partly because it quoted Dr Bob Carter on sea level rise (an observed 16cm over the past century) and says these numbers “don’t square with those of the vast majority of scientists working in the field of sea level rises”.  Really Guy?  Got any numbers on that claim?  How many scientists did you survey?  But I digress.

To show how foolish The Australian is for quoting Dr Carter, Guy quotes Dr John Church of the CSIRO with the terrifying revelation that sea levels have risen by 3.3mm/yr since the 1990’s.  At that rate, sea levels will rise by a massive 33cm per century!  How could Carter be so wrong?

Well, interestingly enough,  that mistake-free “gold standard” of the peer reviewed literature on global warming – the IPCC’s 2007 AR4 – says sea levels will rise between 18cm and 59cm by 2100 (page 13, Summary for policy makers, The physical Science Basis).  So the IPCC forecast has a range of 41cm with a low estimate just 2cm higher than Dr Carter’s.  Carter’s estimate is also just 17cm off the CSIRO’s estimate — less than half the IPCC’s error range of 41cm.   Yet Rundle dismisses Dr Carter’s numbers as outside the estimates of “the vast majority of scientists”. Hmm…

But whatever, let’s be charitable and use the CSIRO’s scary forecast of a 33cm sea level rise.  Just for perspective, an average Sydney tide has a range of around 1 metre.  So global warming could make high tide 1/3 higher within 100 years.  How will our grandchildren ever survive?