Crikey writers Christian Kerr and Stephen Mayne have spread their wings. Both now write weekly columns in Crikey’s sister publication, The Reader .

This week in his Reader column Christian Kerr takes on the thorny issue of “conspicuous compassion” in the wake of the Sea King helicopter crash. We have every right to publicly mourn the nine who died in the crash, he says, but do we really need four separate ceremonies, or have we fallen for “ostentatious displays of empathy” that are really about “feeling good, not doing good?”

And, writing in the wake an exposé of lax drug-approval standards on Four Corners , Stephen Mayne argues that Australia’s Therapeutic Drug Administration is “soft and conflicted” because Australian governments have a history of taking a “limp-wristed and piecemeal” approach to corporate regulation.

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