Qantas:

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce writes: Re. “Qantas to suffer as Virgin gets it on with Singapore Airlines” (Tuesday, item 18). It is clear that Ben Sandilands does not agree with me about the nature of the challenges facing Qantas and the solutions to them. While I am perfectly willing to accept and respond to criticism, I cannot agree with the premise of some of his arguments.

First, his claim that at IATA I was “surrounded” by “much more successful airlines” than Qantas is sensationalist. Qantas has been profitable every year since privatisation, including in each year of my time as CEO, and including at the height of the global financial crisis when airlines around the world were closing their doors, as well as winning many awards for product and service. He also overlooks the fact that I took part in a very positive announcement at IATA, about Malaysia Airlines’ decision to join oneworld — a move that will strengthen the alliance’s position in Asia with considerable commercial benefits for Qantas.

Second, he says that Qantas has “failed to make a timely resolution of enterprise agreements that it has allowed to expire”. He does not consider that the actions of the unions involved may be inimical to resolving these agreements, given that if accepted their claims would place an unsustainable cost burden on the airline and prevent us competing effectively with the carriers you name in your piece.

Third, he asserts that Virgin Australia’s proposed alliance with Singapore Airlines would make it a “more Australian airline” than Qantas. I find this statement bizarre. Qantas employs 35,000 people, the vast majority of them in Australia, and its contribution to the national economy is far greater than that of Virgin Australia. In March 2011, Virgin Australia announced a profit downgrade, forecasting a financial year loss of $30 to $80 million. Its repositioning strategy, including alliances, remains unproven.

Fourth, he criticises Qantas’ new Dallas/Fort Worth service as “amateur hour”. Yet as recently as January this year he himself listed the very good commercial and operational reasons for the launch of the route — not least an expanded partnership with American Airlines of the type he described approvingly in his June 7 piece (as “globally branded airline rationalisation”). I have full confidence that our strategy in commencing Dallas/Fort Worth services was the correct one for Qantas.

These are just a few of the matters Sandilands have raised in his recent pieces, many of which he frames as personal criticisms of my leadership and that of the Qantas board and executive team.

The live cattle trade:

Peter Angelico writes: Re. “Live exports ban a threat to delicate trade dispute” (1 June, item 3). With the stroke of a pen the Labor government has decimated the meat industry with no thought of the short or medium term consequences, does this Prime Minister care about anyone other than herself?

Latham:

David Wootton writes: Re. “Latham: Gerard Henderson suffers from chronic corresponditis” (yesterday, item 2). I loved Mark Latham’s piece on Gerard Henderson yesterday. Perhaps a permanent weekly column with Crikey could supplement his income, I certainly don’t think $78,000 annually constitutes “doing quite well” for a family of five in Sydney.

Can I request an upcoming article on the hypocrisy of other self important pedants, starting with Bill Muehlenberg.

Barry Everingham writes: Come home Mark all is forgiven.

Weiner:

H S Mackenzie writes: Re. Yesterday’s Editorial. Crikey opines about Congressman Weiner: “the implications are bigger if it can be established Weiner’s taxpayer-funded mobile was used to upload his jocks to the world “.

This is very similar to the argument used by Channel 7 to justify its outing of David Campbell by the fact that he drove to Kens of Kensington in his government funded car. Of course Campbell had every entitlement to use that vehicle for private as well as public purposes.

The US House Ethics Manual doesn’t appear to cover use of cell-phones and I’d be very surprised if US congressmen face a blanket prohibition on use of taxpayer funded mobile phones for any private purpose.

I am certainly sure that no congressman would face implications of any size for ringing his wife to say that he’d be late home.

Afghanistan:

Peter Lloyd writes: Re. “Richard Farmer’s chunky bits” (yesterday, item 10). According to senior Afghan security advisor Rangin Dadfar Spanta:

“There are 40,000 madrassas — or religious schools — in Pakistan, and even if only a small fraction of them support the terrorists, the stream of new fighters is almost endless. There will only be peace in this region when this source has been dried up” .

Never mind the absence of strategic purpose from the Australian government (voters understand our defence strategy is unchanged since 1942: help the Americans and they should help us).

The real issue is why our government, a supposedly left-wing government, can’t be bothered supporting rational secularism is it comes under siege across the world from religious manipulation and superstition.

Gillard’s denial about our prospects in Afghanistan makes perfect sense when you look, say, at the school chaplains program, which seeks to make our once-proud public schools just that little bit more like the Pakistani madrassas.  Maybe in a few years, we can breed our own home-grown abortion doctor killers.

Maybe Australia can aspire to have its own internationally-reported Koran-burning congregation, and proudly inspire the murder of UN workers thousands of miles away. And from there, who knows what’s possible?

BCA:

Peter Wildblood-Stumm writes: Re. “Business Council of where?” (yesterday, item 1). I agree with Bernard Keane and Crikey intern Iona Salter on the need to look closely at the background to all these industry groups.

I well recall a Small Business Association representative spruiking forever on ABC on small business matters, someone who I knew to be a self publicist representing a one member association and conning the ABC; he was a many times failed Liberal candidate at state and federal elections. Finally they dropped him.

Another I would like to look at more closely is the Defence Association; they look kosher enough on their website but seem to be apologists for middle level military views.  I cannot believe how heavily the ABC rely on their spokesman.

Rundle on asylum seekers:

Jennifer Dillon writes: Re. “Rundle: refugees, animal chauvinism and ALP self-destruct button” (Tuesday, item 4). Guy Rundle wrote:

“So it is a moral and political disaster when kindness towards animals becomes as important or equal a cause as our reciprocal moral obligations to other human beings”

His assertion is utterly, utterly extraordinary and based on a similarly extraordinary construction of pre-industrial English history. I cannot contemplate that Guy Rundle seriously believes that any person of goodwill is so limited in their capacity to behave in a good, moral, ethical and community minded way that they must entirely discount their obligation to animals in order to focus on their obligation to refugees or any other category or class of human beings.

We all must observe our human covenants to treat both animals and people (and indeed our planet generally) properly and decently Guy — I’m sorry you can’t cope with extending your duty beyond that of addressing one small (on a global scale of wrongs) aspect of inhumanity.

If, however, that article was either written with  tongue-in-cheek or in an excess of “cleverness”, you stand condemned: it was a disgrace.

Guy Rundle writes: Well, I knew that any article asserting that “animals don’t matter much” would attract a vociferous degree of protest (yesterday, comments). Nevertheless, it’s a little dispiriting that the pro-animal rights lobby can’t make an argument for their case, except to expostulate at mine. I don’t propose to respond in kind, but a couple of points need rebuttal.

Contrary to Andrew Bartlett’s and Ben Green’s argument, there is no evidence that brutality towards animals is twinned with brutality towards humans, and kindness to kindness — as per my example of 19th century England, kindness to animals can serve as a cover for the utmost indifference to human suffering, as does the sentimentality towards animals present in Nazism.

Not only is there no necessary correlation, they often vary inversely.

Climate change:

Rod Metcalfe writes: Re. “Emails reveal nature of attacks on climate scientists” (yesterday, item 4). It is a sad situation where research is downgraded by abusive emails. Even without the science I just figure that since 1900 the world’s population has more than tripled; the use of motor cars has grown enormously; electricity is now often generated by large coal-fired stations and our reliance on energy has grown enormously with large amounts of ‘waste’ going into the atmosphere.

Like an animal with a parasitic infection, there may be no effect for a while but after a point severe illness and even death occurs. And before anyone attacks me for claiming we are like parasites on this earth — I can only say the things we do good for the earth — fertiliser etc — come from the earth.

We live on it, use its resources and what we put back, comes from it initially.

Somewhere, somehow, we must have an effect.

Tamas Calderwood writes: Re. “Risky business in planning for rising sea levels” (yesterday, item 11). Crikey has mastered the art of publishing climate articles that make me slap my forehead in despair. Yesterday the job was given to David Spratt, who told us the government’s upper estimate of a 1.1m sea level rise by 2100 is “off by a wide margin”.

I’ll say. Over the 20th century sea levels rose by an average 1.8mm per year, or just under 20cm for the whole century. The rate has fluctuated a bit — up to a terrifying 3mm per year in the 90’s and 00’s — although it seems to have turned down slightly since 2009 according to the latest JASON-1 data.

I know, I know — the thermageddon models say we’ll all drown and David lists lots of papers that PROJECT much higher sea-level rises.  But as with all the doomsday global warming predictions there’s no sign any of this is happening just yet.

David also claims that a 2m sea level rise could cost us in excess of $532bn by 2100, but the total value of Australia’s GDP in that time will be about $405 trillion (assuming 2.5% annual growth). That’s right, trillion. So the costs will be around 0.13% of our income. How will we afford this PROJECTED disaster?