Maurice Newman:

Roger Colman writes: Re. “Beecher: ABC chairman gives editorial independence a kick in the groin” (yesterday, item 3). Well if the ABC editorial teams were not engaging in their own culture wars,  then the ABC  would not need correcting by an ABC board member (Maurice Newman) who is also responsible for ABC activities including editorial. The ABC journalists should hold to a standard based upon  impartiality,  but seem to  have become unable  to remove themselves from their highly skewed personal  left-wing voting intentions (and attendant  beliefs).

Who should correct any ABC editorial biases ? Will they report and answer to anybody at all under your policy of editorial independence? Are you crazy? Or do you  think inmates should run the asylum?

The ABC journalists themselves have trashed their editorial independence with my money. I don’t want a two-party preferred voting outcome paying for close to 100% left-wing views masquerading under “editorial independence”.

At least I can cancel my Crikey subscription if Crikey gets any more left wing and loony, but I don’t have that  ultimate vote in business terms with the ABC. So somebody has to set some standards  or balance  for  the ABC fowl yard even if it is an ex stockbroker.

David Hand writes: As with his faithful “editorially independent” regular writers, Eric Beecher continues the huffing and puffing about the ABC with the hyperbole and editorial bias that we have come to expect from Crikey. The problem with the climate change debate is that there are a lot of questions mixed up in one overall theme and your writers do us a disservice by failing to differentiate between them.

There is the basic contention, such as “The planet is warming through CO2 emissions put there by humans” then there is the Crikey editorial position, which seems to be that we must deconstruct our Western way of life and take a great leap backwards in our standard of living in order to save the planet.

Examples of this editorial bias are Senator Milne’s article “The climate nightmare is upon us” on 17 June 2009 and the “Oh sh-t moment” story on 15 October 2009 which contained the breathless warning that “The USA must reduce its carbon emissions to zero by 2020” from German scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.  These are great examples of the sort of apocalyptic hyperbole regularly dished up by Crikey.

As zero emissions from the USA by 2020 cannot possibly happen, either the professor is wrong or we are all doomed.  This is where I think Eric Beecher has misjudged the ABC. Climate change agnostics compare Monkton not with a sober scientist but with a wide eyed chaos theoretician demanding the USA revert to a pre-industrial economy by 2020 and the rest of us by 2035.

The ABC is at least facilitating this comparison and I don’t have a problem with it.  If only someone, somewhere could deliver dispassionate, objective, unbiased, unvarnished, unfinished, honest science to us to guide the way forward, I would be much happier about it.

I used to think Crikey might be capable of this but you have been captured by the lunatic fringe on one side and are reduced to lobbing rude missives at the lunatic fringe on the other.  It can be entertaining at times but not very insightful and awfully repetitive.

Tony Kevin writes: Excellent coverage of ABC chairman Maurice Newman’s outrageous speech. I heard the interview too and I was truly shocked. Crikey was right to serve it right up to him.

The only thing you did not say — I cannot believe Newman did not get some unwritten government-sourced  encouragement for this. It would suit Labor — certainly the Labor Right in bed with the coal and coal power industries — politically,  if the ABC reports as if a debate is going on between two sides of “credentialed” science about climate change.

This would divert attention from Labor’s policy failure  on climate change in an election year. Lenin’s question — who gains? — has a clear answer here. In a way the ABC has already taken Newman’s advice, as your damning ABC-broadcast time statistics on Monckton and Hansen show.

Steve Blume writes: Maurice Newman’s approach to editorial independence is bizarre — his ignorance of climate science is spectacularly so. He joins those who see a grand conspiracy where the scientists and their peak bodies around the world are enjoined with various national governments and the UN to create a confected problem — global warming.

He has chosen not to accept the evidence, endorsed by every national and international scientific institution, for the existence and impact of the greenhouse effect and that the increase and rate of increase is due to human activities.

Those interested in the evidence (Newman plainly is not) can start with the editorial of the journal Nature and move on to the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and the equivalents in Canada, any EU country, China, Japan — take your pick.

As was pointed out by William R. Freudenburg, of the University of California, in a recent AAAS presentation:

Reporters need to learn that, if they wish to discuss “both sides” of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate “other side” is that, if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date.

Tamas Calderwood writes: Re. “Maurice Newman’s pudding tastes a little off” (yesterday, item 11). Is it any wonder public support for global warming is collapsing?  Bernard Keane managed to write “denialist’” seven times in his angry rant against Maurice Newman and denounced him as “grubby and contemptible” in a national newsletter — just because he pointed out years of climate mono-think at the ABC.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists admit previous warming periods have been of similar magnitude to the one that stopped 15 years ago and the urban heat island effect on temperature measurements may be far greater than previously thought.  Oh, and weather balloons cannot find the “hotspot” tropical warming signature while satellites show cooling since 2001.

What’s causing this cooling?  Who knows?  Certainly the climate models don’t know.  Whatever it is, it’s more powerful than humanity’s puny production of CO2  (a pathetic 4% of the total).

This other side of the story is being slowly revealed by the ABC as it’s forced to report what half the country is now thinking.  This change has been a long time coming, so Newman’s observation hardly comes as a surprise.  The hysterical reaction was predictable too.

Geoff Ashton writes: I wasn’t there to hear him, but I have read the transcript. Either you have grotesquely misrepresented him, or the transcript bears little relationship to what he said in his speech to ABC staff.

Monckton vs. Hansen:

Steve O’Connor writes: Re. Yesterday’s editorial. I went to see James Hansen in Sydney earlier this week and I was struck at how reluctant he was to be in the public eye. His slides were not very polished and he seemed a little disorganised. He did, however, seem genuinely worried about our future, and about how the gap between what climate scientists know and what the public is aware of is growing larger even as the evidence becomes clearer that we are in deep sh-t (and our fingerprints are all over it.)

I also listened to Christopher Monckton’s arguments and found them quite compelling. Intrigued, I looked into these further and found out that Monckton has been somewhat flexible with the truth (Google “Monckton and the case of the missing curry” for a sample.)

For the layman, one scientist (or ‘expert’) is mostly indistinguishable from another, so it usually comes down to how they perform in front of the camera or microphone. Unfortunately some of the best performers have less than honourable agendas and tend to drown out the voices of those like Hansen, who is a leader in his field. That is exactly why the ABC’s talented journalists needs to ignore Newman’s idiocy and help sort the wheat from the chaff so the public can be better informed.

Abbott’s baby bonus:

Shirley Colless writes: Re. “Taxing at double time to pay for Abbott’s baby bonus” (yesterday, item 1). Come on, now, who — particularly those in their child bearing years — can take Tony Abbott’s off-the-cuff policy statement on maternity leave entitlements seriously?

First of all, he and his colleagues have to persuade enough voters in enough electorates to win government and control both houses.

Secondly, should that happen, he himself has said it will be at least two years into his first term as Prime Minister for him to introduce the necessary legislation;  so prospective claimants for his generous and non-government funded scheme may either endure an extremely long gestation period or else have moved out of their child bearing years before they can see any benefit.

Thirdly, should it eventually happen, I would think that Big Business would launch an appeal in the High Court against the enabling legislation, if it had not already run a blistering campaign that would ensure that any enabling legislation would take it off the hook and put the Good Old Personal Tax Payer on the hook.

To me it would seem that Abbott is being totally hypocritical by running a campaign that he well knows hasn’t a snowball’s chance of surviving a trip through Hell.  So what’s new?

Hospital reform:

David Adler writes:  Re. “Virulent strain of Ruddivirus coming to a hospital near you” (Monday, item 9). Does the PM understand his own health reform proposal?

Rudd was widely reported yesterday as saying that hospitals which better national standards will get bonus payments.

I thought it was health or hospital NETWORKS which get funded by the Commonwealth, not individual hospitals.

A network may have hospital A which performs above average and hospital B which performs below average. So if hospital A has above benchmark performance, isn’t it then up to the network CEO or Board as to what happens with bonuses? Or is Canberra now really proposing to micro manage centrally?

Palm Island:

Chris Johnson writes: Re. “Holding their breath for Palm justice” (Wednesday, item 1). Most Queenslanders haven’t a clue that Hurley and the Police Union are running an agenda over this Palm Island debacle. They only hear about the lives and careers of the players moving onwards and upward along with those of then Police Minister Judy Spence and her Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson now maxing out his super package with a three-year extension to his post.

Queensland is one mangled mess of public sector administrative bungles costing lives, careers and draining the public purse. Hugh (Charlie McColl) says a catastrophe like Palm Island would be similarly short on justice anywhere in Australia. But I bet Hurley, his mates and the Queensland Police Union would swear their state is far more fertile territory for victimising the vulnerable.

Rundle on the Venables horrors:

Diana Simmonds writes: Re. “Rundle’s UK: the life and crimes of Liverpool” (yesterday, item 5). A really good piece by Guy Rundle, I thought, but would like some clarification on the ducks that were accused of witchcraft in the middles ages. The public has a right to know — even if it was a while ago.

Stephen Mayne on pokies:

John Taylor writes: Re. “Pokies industry arguments and edifices starting to crumble” (yesterday, item 21). Stephen, Stephen, Stephen. How have the mighty fallen. From Australia’s leading shareholder activist to a poker machine wowser and Woolworths hater. Like a light version of Nick Xenophon and a long version of Alan Jones.

Bev Kilsby writes: This is my idea of gambling in clubs such as the RSL. It goes to a good cause and they give you a friendly welcome with free drinks. And though you may feel (and think) you are wasting your money and becoming addicted person to gambling, this is not all ways the case. This is because you can have a good social time also. And some of the money goes to a good cause in helping the RSL improve their work in other fields. So think in the positive.