Memo to Rudd on the Oceanic Viking:

Les Heimann writes: Re: Memo. To: PM. Re: Oceanic Viking. Subject: “gamebreaker” option’ (Friday November 6, item 1). Thanks so much for the heads-up on options concerning the Viking matter.

Some other proposals have surfaced such as:
1. Tell them all they can swim around the world if they like we don’t want them (got that from the Bolte memoirs)
2. Tell the Indonesians it’s not cricket welshing on a deal (Menzies memoirs)
3. I should have a long swim at Cheviot beach (mentioned somewhere under H. Holt)

Finally, a somewhat fanciful proposal from, I believe, one of your readers — “why don’t you let in the risk taker refugees and stop the practise of allowing all those hairdressing and cooking “students” to buy a diploma and then seek permanent residency” I mean really — that’s the Australian way — rip em off for as much as we can and call them skilled migrant labour. Please feel free to email me any time with your helpful comments — it assists my spinning momentum.

Harold Levien writes: I suggest the most sensible course of action for the Rudd government is to offer substantial aid to the Sri Lankan government for resettling Tamils on condition they accept Australian observers to oversee the use of the aid funds and to ensure the absence of reprisals against ex-Tamil fighters.This should greatly reduce, if not remove, the outflow of refugees.

John Kotsopoulos writes: John Shailer is being far too cute by his own parroting of the Opposition line on Oceanic Viking impasse, which calls for action without any specific suggestion as to what the action should be. This rank hypocrisy from the Libs does little to further the aim of a sensible and effective policy on asylum seekers and is in fact adding to the incentive for the people smugglers to ply their illegal and dangerous trade. Even the softest of the bleeding hearts is beginning to realise that waving this group through is going to be used as a marketing ploy that will only serve to weaken our migration laws and put more lives at risk. Malcolm Turnbull and his supporters like Shailer are playing politics with peoples lives in a most shameful way.

John Goldbaum writes: If Kevin wants to know what Malcolm would do, he should hand Malcolm the keys to The Lodge. Otherwise, I am advised, it remains Kevin’s problem. As people used to tell Kevin’s predecessor: “You’re the prime minister. You fix it”.

Melbourne University

Christina Buckridge, Manager, Corporate Affairs, University of Melbourne, writes: Melbourne Uni Arts Faculty anger at dean’s reappointment” (Friday, Item 2) Andrew Crook’s information on the Arts Faculty is sadly out of date. For the past two years the Faculty’s budget has been growing, 25 new academic positions have been approved for this year and next (with three in Philosophy), and the applications for graduate study in the new Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences are up 94 per cent.

The Faculty continues to receive cross subsidies from other faculties to the tune of $3-4 million a year and the Faculty has agreed to a $2.4 million cross-subsidy for the humanities in 2010. Responsibility for fixing the School of Historical Studies’ budget is firmly in the School’s hands.

The somewhat overdue rationalisation of subjects in the Arts Faculty pre-dated Professor Considine’s term but it’s worth noting that Arts students are offered around 900 subjects. The rationalisation simply discontinued subjects that were still on the books but no longer being taught and put small subjects together to create more coherent content as the Faculty did not want to lose important subject matter.

Rather than “expensive consultants’ the Faculty brought one of the world’s leading language experts from Georgetown University in the US to Melbourne to help the School of Languages and Linguistics – which has experienced major student growth with the Melbourne Model – create a benchmark which will set the School clearly amongst the world’s best.

Snide reference to deans being ‘too close to senior management’ shows an ignorance of university structure – deans are key members of the University’s senior management.

Suggestions that there was an unreasonable delay between the interviews for the Dean of Arts and the announcement of the appointment due to disagreement between members of the selection committee are false. Candidates were advised at the start of each interview that there would be no decision for a week. The selection committee wanted time to reflect on its decision after completing interviews, before finalising a choice of Dean. This is now standard procedure for senior appointments. There was no shift in views during the week, and no further meeting was required.

And contrary to the Melbourne Model courses failing to attract students, these six courses, with first preferences up 3 per cent, captured 13 per cent of first preferences in the VTAC system which includes around 3,500 courses. Four Melbourne Model courses are in the top 10 most popular courses in the State.

Crikey is wrong about redundancies. In July the University announced that it would lose an estimated 220 positions (out of 7300) – following an extensive staff consultation – as one element of a cost-containment program. The first voluntary redundancies under this program will only be approved today, 9 November – 44 academic positions and 107 professional staff positions. The University has also allowed 67 professional staff whose positions no longer exist in the Responsible Division Management process to opt for voluntary redundancy rather than a redeployment process.

Youth participation:

Lindsay Beaton writes: Re: Youth still to be seen but not heard (Friday, Item 10 ) As a former “youth” participant in all sorts of consultative workshops, for both the former Labor and Liberal governments. I regret to inform Joshua Smith that it was ever thus. Youth participants are there because everyone knows, 1) the children are our future, and 2) with any luck you can get them to do a bit of drumming or interpretative dance to liven up proceedings.

There’s a reason for this. Who is best placed to comment on youth poverty? A 40-year-old social worker who has worked with disadvantaged kids for the past 15 years?
Or a teenager from a pleasantly middle-class family whose biggest experience of deprivation is not having their own car? Are the kids who think participating in a national consultation on body image issues is a good idea actually likely to know what’s it like to be crippled with the lack of self-esteem that leads to eating disorders?

They are invited to be window dressing because that’s actually the most use they can be. At least until they grow up a bit and get some experience.

Fairfax:

Karl Quinn, Entertainment Editor, The Age, writes: Re: Crikey editorial (Friday) I have to take issue with this from today’s Crikey newsletter:

Fairfax, an organisation giving every appearance of chronic crippling decline, seems to have neither the intellectual organisation, will or resource to join the fray. And that is a great pity.

Now, I may be but a small wee voice crying in the wilderness, but I am doing my bit to respond to the mighty vision of Mark Scott’s ABC. Today’s post.

This one from October 28, which attempted to draw attention to the radical refocusing of the ABC lurking between the “arts gateway” announcement. Plus a couple of news stories on the cutting back of Sunday Arts. Yes, it’s only a blog, but I’m told some people read them. Oh, and while the Oxford apparently allows it — (introducing the first of two or more things in the negative) — I reckon it’s a bit off to use “neither” to point to any more than two items. Love your work.

Lighten up Crikey:

Brian Mitchell writes: Re: And the Wankley goes to … Photo galleries of drunk people at the Melbourne Cup (Friday, item 19) “There’s no news in this” you loftily intonated before running the pics of the drunks at Flemington. You ran the pics because you knew readers would be interested in them: Don’t try and justify it by pretending you ran them only to illustrate your harrumphing mini-lecture.

News isn’t just about politics and the “important” stuff, news is also this stuff and nonsense, vignettes of life. The definition of news may be subjective but at its heart it is what someone, somewhere, wants to see (and ideally what someone, somewhere, wishes wouldn’t appear). You didn’t run pictures of people having an ordinary time because really, who cares? Please don’t fall into the snoring, snobbish Media Watch view of what constitutes news. Have fun — revel in the fact ours is a craft as at home in the gutter as it is in the boardrooms.

Emissions Trading:

Viv Forbes writes: Mr Rudd accuses opponents of his Ration-N-Tax Scheme of  “bowing to vested interests”. That is the pot calling the kettle black. The biggest vested interest is the ALP itself, hoping to harvest Green preference votes from their green posturing. Supporting the alarmists are the gaggle of green industries already reaping dividends from the Rudd subsidies and market protection rackets. Mr Rudd also tells us that his big business mates want the “certainty” of emissions trading. A roll call of these people reveals domination by big firms of auditors and accountants, bankers and brokers, speculators and solicitors, touts and traders — all longing to get into the biggest trading lottery the world has ever seen — more snouts in the carbon trough.

The rest of big business merely wants the “certainty” of free emission permits or other special exemptions denied to Joe the Plumber and Fred the Farmer. Sceptics on the other hand do not have a mercenary army of academics, bureaucrats and publicists who can be bribed or bullied to produce scary climate forecasts or doomsdays ads on demand. Nor do sceptics have the power to silence or sack dissidents in their ranks.

Nor do they have the pulpits and power of the UN which, having failed at “peace keeping”, sees “climate control” as its new business model. The climate realists have only one big vested interest — the desire to live their lives free from the “certainty” of new taxes on everything they buy and new controls on everything they do. This is not about global pollution or global warming — it is about global energy taxes, global government and global redistribution.

A Republic:

Adrian Jackson writes: It does not surprise me that the republican rally, to mark the 10th anniversary of the referendum, in Canberra on Friday (“Republicans stay home” — Herald Sun, 07 Nov 09) was a failure with journalist nearly outnumbering the republicans. Republicans not only appear confused but have not present a better model to the Commonwealth of Australia’s democratic constitutional monarchy model. We already are a “crowned republic” as “commonwealth” means “republic”. Only in the constitutional monarchies of the world, like Australia, Britain, Norway, Denmark, Canada and Japan just to name a few, is there political stability, economic development and equal rights for women and children. In most cases the republics are at the bottom in these areas because constitutional monarchies work. A good read is www.crownedrepublic.com.au

The Stasi:

Beatrix Campbell writes: In your thing on Phillip Adams and Beatrix Campbell’s OBE you published a lie about me. I don’t, of course, mind you making any observations you like about me, but I’m sure you would want to get your facts straight.

You claim that I was a Stalinist, that I took holidays paid for by the odious regime in East Germany, that I just loved Honecker, that I took freebies from the stasi …
Here are the facts: I never took a holiday in East Germany ever. Indeed the only time I visited Germany was during a school holiday in the ’60s (West Germany) and then Berlin on my 60th birthday.

I never loved Honecker. If love or hate came into it was hate. I never took any freebie from the stasi — indeed I’d have thought they’d have thought I was one of their enemies of the people.

During the late ’60s I opposed the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. I was part of the Smith Group in the Communist Party, an anti-Stalinist faction. I was part of the anti-Stalinist group on the Morning Star, a group which put pressure on the editors to engage with the new social movements, I was part of the feminist movement which challenged the Stalinists, the centrists and the ’68 men.

All of this is well documents. I thought you’d want to know. And, of course, you will publish a correction won’t you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Telstra/Bigpond:

Daemon Singer writes: It’s interesting to note, that as various luminaries from Telstra are rushing about telling us how good they are, how much they are worth and how sorry they are for the abysmal (read non-existent) customer service, a foreign government’s investment/trading division are trying to get a technician to install a simple telephone line in Brisbane CBD. Having waited for five days since the job was first booked, we are wondering if perhaps the idea of using uncommitted, dissociated contractors to front line the Australian Comms Flagship has been a good idea.

Interestingly, the country in question could have installed the line the day it was requested, by the simple expedient of ringing the Communications Carrier office in the capital city, and asked for one. The technician would have brought the forms to be signed with him, put the line in, had it signed for and off to the next job, in under six hours. Looks to me as though Telstra is still under the misapprehension that it is still a government department.