The election:

David Hand writes: Re. “It’s your fault (part two): politics sucks because you outsourced it” (yesterday, item 1). Reading about Bernard Keane’s fear and loathing as he contemplates the ultimate horror — a possible Abbott government — is truly distressing but with that strange fascination we sometimes have watching the scene of an accident.

Bernard, I feel your pain. It must be hard going through what you are at the moment. Anger and denial are the early stages of grief, as is seeking someone to blame:

  • You blame Murdoch.
  • You blame the ABC.
  • You blame lazy Journalists.
  • You blame reliance on “expert opinion”.
  • You blame the 24 hour news cycle.
  • You blame cut backs in news and current affairs funding.
  • You blame the Fin Review.
  • You blame the business community.

Then finally, you blame us.

So it’s our entire fault that Julia is in trouble.  Mate, in spite of your rhetoric about superficiality and spin, the opposite has been recently demonstrated. I put it to you that Kevin succeeded in being the most popular prime minister in living memory by winning the daily news cycle. But the moment he did something substantial, the moment he actually implemented a policy, the electorate suddenly paid attention and the spin machine crashed and burned.

I refer of course to the craven abandonment of the emissions trading scheme. Personally, I find that heartening. Voter land doesn’t pay a lot of attention to what spin is put out on a daily basis in spite of the breathless enthusiasm of political tragics like we Crikey readers. But the moment something real happens, the change in viewpoint occurs and it is policy and actual events that mostly bring it about.

There is one group missing from your blame list.  That is of course, the Parliamentary Labor Party. From the moment the ETS was abandoned, it’s been stuff up after stuff up, culminating in the utterly stupid assassination of the sitting Prime Minister. Bernard mate, the ALP has certainly got the electorate’s attention in the last three months for all the wrong reasons and the impact is profound.

I say this as a Liberal supporter — Tony Abbott should have no chance at all at leading the Coalition into Government and it is the shallowness, ineptitude, craven opportunism and disdain for the electorate by Sussex St, the Union bosses, the Parliamentary wing of the ALP and their cheer leaders such as yourself where the blame should be put for the fiasco of the ALP campaign we have unfolding before us.

But cheer up, mate. Julia still has a chance.

Niall Clugston writes: Bernard Keane’s argument begins well with the insight, “we stopped joining things”, but lapses into the lazy conclusion: “We’ve outsourced running the country because we’re too busy” == apparently chasing the proverbial “ever-bigger plasma telly”.

If the decline in “joining things” is “one of the basic social changes of the last 50 years”, affecting not just political parties, but unions, churches etc, it seems worthwhile considering it at length.  For a host of reasons, our society has become very atomised.

Furthermore, many people are dissociated from their local communities, thanks in part to information and communication technology.  It’s not uncommon for a news consumer to know more about American politics than Australian. Or an “environmentalist” to have no knowledge of their local environment. And, of course, it’s hard to lure people to a meeting or a rally when they can join a cause online with the click of a mouse.  It’s no wonder that even the Greens’ membership is greying.

In politics a major contributor has been the collapse of ideology.  There’s no longer a grand struggle for or against socialism. At present, the contradictory reign of the free market and the welfare state are practically unchallenged. The major new entrant on the scene, the green movement, offers no coherent ideology, agreeing only in lobbying on a varied range of issues.

It seems hard to generate mass politics in these circumstances.

Finally, I agree with Keane that you can’t just blame the media. But the media is no mere “parasite”. The average person’s perception of politics is largely generated by the media. While the media can argue that it is serving its audience, the fact is that its coverage of politics turns its audience off.

Fundamentally, the media and the politicians are not separate from society, but a part of it. And that society is not an undifferentiated mass of consumers, but a complex structure. Unless that structure changes, neither will our politics or our media.

Brett Gaskin writes: Bernard Keane is kidding himself. The current state of politics in Australia is just a symptom of the incessant and pervading dumbing down of society. Take a look at what passes for television, movies, newspapers, magazines, and you’ll nearly always find a product suitable for those who prefer not to think too hard. And who is generally responsible for these products? Our good and thoughtful friends — the media.

Let’s call a spade a bloody shovel and agree that News Ltd is the main driver of this “dumbing down” movement in the western world. It’s started with the UK tabloids like the Sun, and has been gathering speed as new participants enter the market. Entertainment now consists of idiots making a fool of themselves and being proud of it. It wasn’t too long ago that most people would do everything in their power NOT to act like a d-ckhead on national television. And if Fox News is news, then I’m a very good looking young man who eats well and exercises daily.

Thankfully we have not reached the US situation (Sarah Palin anyone?), where the right wing has made an art form of suggesting anyone displaying a hint of intelligence is labelled an “elite” or out of touch with “ordinary” people. Add the refusal of the media to spend more than 10 seconds evaluating complex policies, and it’s no wonder the politicians play the game.

If the pollies actually explained policy in detail, the media would take a five second sound bite, and then completely misrepresent it on the evening news.

Thanks Uncle Rupert, your efforts to make stupidity and idiocy a positive human trait will last long after you’ve left us.

Steven Gebert writes: I whole heartedly agree with the comments made regarding the plight of Australian politics, critical issues may be addressed but never do we delve deep down into the nitty gritty of the cold hard facts and act accordingly with the truths at hand.

We do not live in nor have we ever had a democratic rule that binds the citizenry in prosperity. Australians are just the same as anyone else in any other country where the power of ownership governs the people — for better or worse.

Ruling classes are worldwide and I am optimistic that this state of affairs will change for the benefit of all quite soon and it will have nothing to do with politics.

Mark Duffett writes: Re. “Miners pay for a welfare bribes path paved with gold” (Campaign Crikey morning edition: Day 17, item 1). In his morning campaign comment yesterday, Bernard Keane told us how whoever wins the election is going to be in budget surplus heaven because “…the resources boom is going to send revenues soaring back to the sort of levels we saw in the last years of the Howard government.”

So tell us again why the Resources Super Profit Tax was such a critical piece of reform, Bernard?

Solar research slashed:

Roy Ramage  writes: Re. “Australian solar research slashed by $25 million” (yesterday, item 16). This is short sighted government idiocy at its worst. Your story should carry the name and phone number of the Minister who made this decision. This appalling judgment will set back, if not terminate any hope Australia has of influencing or taking advantage of solar power. An industry tipped by our very own CSIRO to dominate renewable energy from 2015 and be worth $130b by 2050.

The University of NSW history of solar power development is rich with success but littered with state and federal government failure to capitalize on what they all touted as the knowledge nation. Such is government incompetence in this area that a NSW minister travelled to California to evaluate a solar solution designed and made in Australia which they had knocked back when originally presented with the opportunity. California embraced it we lost it — again!

Our area recently completed a solar panel retrofit program first espoused by Dr Blakers (ANU) in 2002. We now save a minimum of 1,700 tons of CO2 per annum, this — quite apart from the extensive economic benefits including 28 jobs. Full results can be seen at www.solarprogram.com.au.

Blakers contends that the mass retrofitting of solar panels to existing premises will have extensive economic benefits with climate change results. His model works — we have proven it. What idiot would stop us exploiting invaluable knowledge in a home grown market? This single issue is enough to change my vote.

People smuggling:

Justin Templer writes: Re. “People smuggling: how flawed policy creates criminal activity” (yesterday, item 10). Pamela Curr of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre thinks that people smuggling is a bad thing and that it’s all the fault of Australian government policy.

She writes that Australian policy has made new arrivals in Indonesia soon learn “that being processed as a refugee by UNHCR did not guarantee resettlement” and thus people resort to people smugglers, fuelled by the panic caused by Australian threats to push the boats back.

But it’s easily fixed — she reckons that “the best way to stop the boats is to give people an alternative” and that “the Australian government is to be congratulated for finally realising this and announcing an increase in places from 50 per year to 500 for these people found to be refugees by UNHCR.”

Unfortunately, Pamela, this may give us all a nice warm feeling but it does not really make a dent in the 2009 UNHCR estimation of a world population of concern of 36 million (3.5 million stateless persons in Thailand alone) and will certainly not put a stop to people smuggling.

The Libs and the Dems:

Brian Mitchell writes: Re. “Tips and rumours” (yesterday, item 6). So the Dems in the ACT are preferencing the Libs because Gary Humphries is a cuddly Lib moderate?

How then do the Dems justify preferencing the Tasmanian Senate Libs ahead of Labor and the Greens, given uber-right winger Eric Abetz heads the Liberal ticket, supported by a pair of fundamental right-winger Christians?

This perplexing decision is odder still given Greg Barns, the moderate hounded out of the Libs by Abetz, later stood as a Tas Dems candidate before settling into a post-politics career as a barrister and grumpy commentator.

Mental health:

Dr JJ Carmody, School of Medical Sciences,  University of Sydney, writes: I suppose that I should have foreseen that when I responded to what I considered an embittered and nasty comment from John Mendoza about Ms Gillard and mental health that I would be met by a similarly bilious reply from Lorraine Bochsler (yesterday, comments).

Her analogy with the family of a mass murderer is self-evidently absurd. What I simply sought to do was to say that because of the young Julia’s very close association with the Pilowsky family — her school friend also studied psychiatry — she was able to see and admire their personal and professional commitment. I did not suggest that, thereby, she gained any knowledge at all of the field other than its importance and the profound value of a commitment to treatment.

Furthermore, Ms Bochsler is being gratuitously offensive (I’ll say charitably that this is not intentional) is suggesting that I would be so presumptuous as to counsel patients with mental illness or their families. I hope that, on reflection (and in ignorance of my background), she might regret making that accusation.

War:

Neil James, Executive Director, Australia Defence Association, writes: By totally ignoring the much more successful 2008 book on military-media relations edited by UNSW professors Dennis and Grey,  Kevin Foster (Friday, comments) artfully avoids even mentioning the biases  that largely invalidated the utility of the book edited by him the same year on the same topic (as was noted in its “Sydney Morning Herald” review).

Moreover, Kevin’s claim that he “had trouble sourcing work that supported the ADF’s media policy”, falsely implied that the chapter he sought from by me was somehow in this vein. But this too ignores the Australia Defence Association’s long record of publicly criticising Department of Defence media policy since various Ministers began tightening this improperly in the 1990s.

Indeed it was because my draft chapter addressed fault on both sides that it so clashed with Kevin’s simplistic view that journalists are always right and the military always wrong. Moreover, he knows that the ADA criticised Defence at the seminar, for declining to participate, because this was a self-fulfilling reaction that merely reinforced beliefs about the department.

Kevin also incorrectly claims that he censored out my chapter of the seminar proceedings only because I somehow “refused any proposed edits”. But I accepted many of them and only withdrew the chapter from publication after Kevin refused to discuss the more unscholarly objections. As an experienced editor of academic conference proceedings, I was simply astonished by his disrespect for the common courtesies of academic debate and the proper neutral role of a proceedings editor.

As a professed journalism academic Kevin was oddly most unwilling even to consider my thesis that journalism as a profession was at least partly responsible for the breakdown between the professions of arms and journalism, and perhaps more liable due to declining standards in media coverage of military matters.

He also refused even to consider whether the problem was because journalism, both as a profession and in the daily practice of far too many media organs, has apparently ceased to set, respect and police professional standards seriously as a profession properly should.

As a final example of ideology rejecting normal academic discourse, Kevin blankly refused to discuss the effect of cultural clashes between the necessarily non-partisan institutional culture of our military (whatever the private views of ADF personnel individually), and the growing unprofessional politicisation of reporting and comment by many reporters, columnists and media organs.

Ignoring centuries of democratic constitutional development and the rise of teaching and nursing union militancy respectively, Kevin oddly claimed that the military as a profession were (and needed to be) no more politically neutral than teachers or nurses. Only at this sad stage did I stop persevering with academic argument against ideology.

Hazlewood:

Michael R. James writes:  International Power’s Jim Kouts (yesterday, comments) complaining about my article in Crikey, accuses me of “false and misleading statements”, only one of which he identifies and actually attempts to correct (more below). He says Crikey should base their articles on facts and evidence, yet the number of references or any hard evidence for his “refutation” is … zero.  My article had ten hyperlinked references.

In identifying the one “misleading statement” Kouts wrote “Dr James claims at various points through his article that the power station was due to be closed in 2005 and that the Victorian Government had ‘extended Hazelwood’s license to pollute to 2031’. Wrong. Very wrong.”

I think Mr Kouts is playing word games since there are any number of references to the closure of Hazelwood, and it defies history and credibility that the same generators would continue until 64 years old! The average age of such coal-fired steam-turbine generators is 30-50 years, though constant parts replacement must be done to achieve the longer lifespans, which naturally enough becomes disruptive and uneconomic at some point.

This is obvious all over the world as disused inner city hulks are recycled to other uses. The most famous is probably London’s Tate Modern art museum which was built from 1947 and stopped producing power in 1982 at age 35 y. Brisbane’s own Powerhouse Museum (host to ABC’s Q&A last Monday night) replaced electricity generators of aged 31 to 43 y.

In addition to the reference to the facts as stated by Clive Hamilton in Crikey, the replacehazelwood website states (typo intact): “Hazelwood was due to be shut down in 2005. Instead, the government decided to continue with this ancient technology. It’d old, inefficient and way past its used-by-date.”

Every web page on that site has at the bottom the following statement: “Authorised by K. O’Shanassy, Environment Victoria”. Essentially the same information is on Wikipedia:

“If Hazelwood had not been sold to private interests, the SEC (State Electricity Commission) would have shut the station down in 2005.”

In the 28 July Australian Financial Review [paywall], John Breusch and Matthew Dunkley, and also Milanda Rout in The Australian, reported “‘Had there been a carbon price, Hazelwood was slated for closure in 2016,’ he [Brumby] told ABC radio.”

All of which is a long way from Kouts’ “NEVER scheduled to close in 2005.” But since Kouts mentions it, the new coal mine, road and river engineering that was necessary to extend the operation of Hazelwood beyond 2005 was a result of a dirty (in the carbon sense) deal by the Bracks government, in which the Victorian government received 160 million tonnes of brown coal. This extension was granted by an EES in 2005 which was opposed by just about everyone, including Environment Victoria, because just 4 days of operation of Hazelwood wiped out a year’s CO2e savings (200,000 tonnes p.a.) from the Victorian government’s efficient homes program.

If Mr Kouts would like to argue his case (evidence-based, referenced and accessible) on my alleged misleading statements, I am sure Crikey would allow him thousands of words if required.