Correction

Yesterday Crikey said the recommendation to split the managing director and editor-in-chief roles at the ABC was made in the Lewis review. It was not: it came from then communications minister Malcolm Turnbull.

On Michelle Guthrie

Peter Matters writes:  Re. “Meet Mark Scott’s heir apparent, a businesswoman with close ties to the Murdochs” (yesterday). To those who know her, Muchelle Guthrie is generally praised for her intelligence and general pizzazz, I would add my pleasure that a) she is a woman, b) there is no description of her personal affairs as is normal for males but rare for women.

However, I have my doubts about the fact that she has worked for so many years not only for a man who must be described on the basis of his actions as a demagogue, but is also known for his obsessive animosity towards the ABC.

National security 

David Hardie writes: Re. “Abbott undermining national security” (yesterday). If the right wing of the Liberal Party are not happy with the role that ASIO is playing then perhaps ASIO could revert to their traditional role of spying on and bugging the ALP?

Islam and the west

Richard Barlow writes: Re. “Rundle: Islam does not need a reformation, but the West might“. It is fascinating and frightening when the likes of any Republican candidate, Julie Bishop, and News Corp hacks talk as if a small insurgent group in the Levant are an existential threat to the West. The industrial scale of the fear mongering and changes to our laws makes me wonder if the real long term enemy they have in mind is not ISIS, but us.

On foreign investment

Geoff Edwards writes: Re. “The 2015 Crikeys: Turnbull the standout after sweeping away Abbott’s duds” (yesterday). Bernard Keane’s perennial faith in foreign investment is touching, but ultimately is grounded in faith alone, not evidence or logic. The list published today of multi-national corporations who are using Australia’s open borders to avoid tax and defeat Australian competitors should be sufficient grounds to rethink this optimism. Australian negotiators have approached preferential trade agreements in recent times as if they were about market access for Australian commodities, but the more powerful countries are using them to secure flows of royalties, untaxed profits, franchise fees and other forms of profit back to their homelands. We used to run our own newspapers, bus services, water supplies, electricity generators and just about everything else quite successfully. There is no obvious reason why we need now to pay fees to foreigners to operate these services or to sell our land, the ultimate source of productive economic enterprise.