Competition winners:

Crikey writes: Drum roll please … We reached into the barrel to pick Adrian Dunlop as the final winner of Crikey’s end-of-financial-year subscriptions drive. A 32GB Wi-Fi + 3G Apple iPad 2 will be put in the mail shortly. Well padded. Congratulations!

Saving spaces for Aussie faces:

Tony Llewellyn-Jones writes: Re. “Get your Aussie on: defining the authenticity of Australian actors” (Friday, item 3). Vexed. Vexed. Vexed. Ever since damn Yankees either bowled or bought up chains of Aussie Cinemas across the land between the wars and still own ‘em outright or through subsidiaries, star power has oiled the economics of film production. And always will.

We down under actors can’t have it both ways. Oz actors can’t pop over to LA and live and work from time to time and make lots of moolah for themselves and their employers and then complain when the occasional Yank, Brit, Frog or Hun actor pops down under to do the same.

This has been going on since Peter Graves, Fred Astaire, Ernest Borgnine, Ava Gardner, James Mason and Walter Chiari et al popped down in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Not forgetting Mick Jagger, Rachel Roberts, Richard Chamberlain and Edward Woodward in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Brenda Blethyn, John Hurt and Dennis Hopper and Charlotte Rampling have been recent visitors. And now Leonardo di Caprio is fine tuning his accent for the forthcoming Oz production of The Great Gatsby.

If the likes of Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman who as US-born citizens of the world can straddle both sides of the Pacific (or any ocean) at will, we down under actors must just cop it sweet. There are plenty of other Aussies actors who have secured Green Cards thanks to flexible US Immigration laws and can regularly work in the US.

What we must do is ensure there is equity in the numbers. What Minister Crean might also do in the interests of Open Government is release the names of the producers who recently lobbied him to fine tune the current regulations. Then we might know who is thinking of littering our screens with off-shore- type actors who can speak intelligible English.

There is too much dosh at stake to get too angry and ropeable about this. Let us all be open, civil and even try to be humorous as we march, lobby and write letters to the editor. Else we’ll end up in the mires of recrimination and damned statistics that are littering the mining industry debate. For example.

The Greens:

John Hunwick writes: Re. “Expect the unexpected from a Greener Senate” (yesterday, item 9). The picture that Bernard Keane paints of the Greens in the Senate (mainly) and the possibility of the unexpected, is exciting to say the least. Perhaps we can see ideas relating to saving the planet, caring for the underprivileged, greater respect for migrants and indigenous people actually come to pass. Wouldn’t that be great?

However, the greatest and least likely “unexpected” would be the Australian media actually reporting on all these developments without intrusions from multi-millionaires, ex politicians and prime ministers, and political reporters who are so biased that they cannot even distinguish between an incident of no merit, and world-shaking breakthroughs.

Hopefully Crikey’s Bernard Keane will still exist to enlighten those who can think and really care about what happens in this country.

Whingeonomics:

J Gleeson writes: Re. “Can we extract some good from whingenomics?” (Friday, item 1). Regarding Bernard Keane’s “whingeonomics”, and his suggestions for housing approval reform, how about taking a look at the way the housing industry is rorted by the governments to drive up the cost of housing?

A good start would be to look at the way land release is controlled to ensure demand, and therefore increased prices for blocks, and also the various ways that costs and fees on house building gouge the home owner.

In the ACT, building a new house will set an owner back around $95k in taxes and fees. Why should this be? Why should housing be so expensive?  What is that ratio of average house price/average income 30 years ago compared to today? I estimate that it has at least doubled. Why?

Foreign ownership:

Matthew Brennan writes: Re. “What economic nationalism overlooks when it comes to multinational miners” (30 June, item 1). It surprises me that an indigenous subscriber to Crikey hasn’t beaten me to the punch on this one, but didn’t Australia pass into foreign ownership on the 18th of January 1788?