G’Day. More reader reaction to ethanol and Brendan Nelson’s nastiness to end the week, including more from Mitchell Beston, who explains why this traditional Labor voter is sticking by Howard. To begin, more bad ABC news.
The Australian’s Amanda Meade has a sad story today on major cuts worth $5.4 million to ABC current affairs. (ABC cuts corners on current affairs). She writes:
A cut of $5.4 million to the ABC’s news and current affairs budget has delivered a savage blow to its flagship, Four Corners, which will be forced to shorten its season, curtail its international coverage and rely more on buy-ins from foreign broadcasters.
All other programs in the news and current affairs stable will be forced to cut back on staff or come off air for several weeks each year under the ABC’s cost-cutting drive.
The Four Corners team was given the bad news yesterday. The program will lose three episodes a year and journalists will be encouraged to seek co-productions with other broadcasters to share costs and to minimise travel.
One journalist said it was the worst cut in a decade and the program’s coverage of international affairs would be severely compromised by a lack of overseas travel.
Other programs in the news stable have not had their cuts detailed yet, but The 7.30 Report is likely to lose staff and the award-winning Australian Story is expected to be trimmed from 40 weeks a year to 37.
When asked who would scrutinise the activities of Packer and Murdoch after the government lets the big two buy just about everything under his new media ownership laws, Richard Alston claims the ABC will do the job. Fat chance! The government is trying to destroy Fairfax and the ABC at the same time, leaving the big two and Howard to avoid scrutiny and divide the spoils.
As you know, I’m on a committee organising a campaign to try to stop the Senate passing the cross media legislation when the government presents it again in October. Our website is still a work in progress, but have a look at Xmedia and let me know what you think.
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BRENDAN NELSON’S CENSORSHIP SPIN (See Nelson hides behind Sir Humphrey and Nelson’s purge escalates as the education department burns)
Jonathan Pagan
Disclosure: I am an Arts/Law student at Sydney Uni completing an Honours year in Philosophy, mostly focussed on Ethics, Responsibility and Philosophy of Law. I am also a volunteer refugee caseworker for Amnesty International.
I just wanted to draw your attention to a wonderfully appropriate typo in ‘Nelson’s purge escalates as the education department burns’. Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet head Peter Shergold says:
I think the ministerial adviser and the public servant have complimentary roles.
Too funny! They most certainly do, and that’s the problem isn’t it ? It would be nice if they had complementary and disinterested roles instead, but there you go.
I notice Shergold also says that ministerial advisers are responsible to the Parliament through their Ministers. Well, that’s risible. Just look at Jane Halton (PM’s helper on the PM’s People Smuggling Taskforce). The buck stops with the Minister. If their advisers screw up, they take the responsibility. It’s not very complicated really. Shergold says as much.
So I have a question. Out of curiosity, when was the last time a Minister (from either side of the ideological fence) actually resigned? I don’t mean one that was stabbed in the back and then had it dressed up as a resignation – when did a Minister accept responsibility for a screw-up and resign? I certainly can’t remember one.
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Peter Funnell in Canberra
I thought Children Overboard ate everything for audacious, cynical manipulation of the public service, but this one indicates that it is in effect “policy”! Defended by the Head of PM&C – again. This is very dangerous stuff for our democracy, mate. When does the bloody bell ring for people? I hope it’s soon, but…
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Peter Woodforde in Canberra
It appears that the high research standards insisted on by those who doctor official documents for the lacklustre federal Minister for Education do not apply to official records of meetings of the Prime Minister or other matters of cooked-up “context” – the demise of bulkbilling, the cock-up in defence spending, the grubby Pacific refugee bribery program, Manildra, Tampa, SIEV-X and kids overboard.
Oh, and weapons of mass destruction. Those flames you see are the pants of the entire Howard frontbench going up in smoke. This government does not tell the truth.
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Robert Lawton
An interesting issue is stuck away at the end of the August 8 Herald editorial 5.8.03 editorial:
“The debate… has been about what is a fair balance between public subsidy and private contribution. The Department of Education’s finding that fee increases are now discouraging poorer and older students – especially away from expensive, high-status courses such as law and medicine – is a crucial part of this debate. Broad access to higher education protects social and economic mobility based on merit and effort – a concept deeply embedded in the Australian psyche. Within the existing user-pays model, barriers to entry to universities could be addressed through means-tested scholarships or fee relief, for example. No solution, however, can be formulated unless all the facts are on the table.”
I have little sympathy for these people [the discouraged ex-aspirant solicitor or doctor]… potentially very wealthy professionals once their courses are finished and they are a few years out of university.
Frankly the trend away from law and medicine is due to something else even more “deeply embedded in the Australian psyche” (and by the way, who let that ancient cliche go by the delete button??)
I’m talking about making money fast with minimum effort. Rum Corps ring a bell?? People with IT and business degrees are replacing the old professional graduates. You might not like that, but that’s not the heart of the story as written.
I think Shergold has noted the varying levels of embeddedness of these “concepts” and gone with the one that makes sense in these times.
The political manipulation of the issue is another matter. As I said, it is what governments do now.
Is this really such a scandal? Where’s the significant policy issue? The real issue in this story is making sure that graduates pay for AND care for the institutions which fuel their success.
ETHANOL
Peter Woodforde in Canberra: As a fun-loving Kirribilli party-hound, the Prime Minister should know that if you line up for a full Brazilian under the influence of alcohol, within a short time you’ll be facing all kinds of prickly questions.
Pierre du Parte in Worrigee, NSW: Just read Mitchell Beston’s email in Guilty, your worship, but who cares? wherein he says, “The Australian people … are more concerned with the destination than they are with the journey, and rightly so.” I am NOT enjoying the journey – and fear the destination even more.
Jonathan Pagan in Sydney: Destination rather than journey, Mitchell Beston? So the ends justify the means, do they? Why do you think he makes those ambiguous and heavily qualified statements, Mitchell? May I suggest it is because he has no intention of being held responsible for any nastiness that should result, while if it all turns out well he will be there hugging service women and men, shaking battlers hands and generally providing the ringing endorsements and I-told-you-sos? That may be good politics, but it is also immoral, irresponsible and down-right despicable. Some leader.
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Simon Disney
I used to be an adviser/researcher to six Democrat Senators and MLC’s, including John Coulter, who pushed for years for an ethanol bounty which was eventually introduced by the Keating Government for three years. (I was most recently employed by the Dems as industry, environment and transport adviser to Meg Lees.)
I am probably one of the few people now in this debate who have actually met all the key players at some stage and have actually been to the Manildra plant near Nowra – and who have absolutely no vested interest either political or financial.
Politics and porkies aside, I can’t help feeling sorry for Dick Honan. He’s a smart self made bloke, but probably not the most sophisticated political player on the block. I get the feeling that all he wants to do is run a business that he believes is of some benefit to the country and the environment and that he holds politicians generally at all levels – like the rest of the community – with a fair degree of contempt.
I first visited the Manildra ethanol plant in Nowra in around 1993. Honan had not yet put it into full commercial production, but I was amazed at the ingenuity of the plant and the brilliance of Dr Russell Reeves, the quiet Dungog-based research scientist who developed the enzymes that broke down the waste product gluten to convert it into ethanol.
Honan had bought the majority of the plant lock stock and barrel (from Italy I think) from a company that had gone broke and shipped it over. There were bloody great stainless steel vats lying around in a paddock. Previously, the Manildra company had been under fire for polluting the local creek and had a problem getting rid of the gluten from their flour milling operation.
Manildra, by using their noggins, turned a hard to dispose of polluting waste product into an environmentally friendly, biofuel.
All this crap about car engine damage is precisely why we need a limit on how much you can put in petrol. A blend of 10% in four stroke petrol engines is fine as is a limit of 15% in diesel. Ethanol in diesel can also reduce black sooty particulate emissions by up to 50%. It can damage some plastic parts in some 1980’s car’s fuel systems and cause the fuel gauge of one particular model of 80’s Falcon to misread a bit- but that’s about it as far as I know.
Dr Russell Reeves has also developed enzymes that break down lignocellulosics (the stringy stuff that holds plants and trees together), which means that all those kazillions of green waste bins people drag up their driveways once a week could potentially be used to make biofuel- as could a range of crop wastes and other wastes.
I suppose my point is that the potential is there for dozens of regional ethanol plants in the rust-belt towns and states of Australia to be built. These would use farm wastes and city waste to produce biofuel that keep down fuel prices for farmers. In these days of non-tariff barriers to trade, etc, keeping down farm fuel costs (perhaps the biggest bill in the average farmer’s shoebox) is one of the only ways we can keep a legitimate price edge over some of our overseas competitors.)
The current bun-fight will do nothing to provide a bit of hope and employment to people in RARA-land. People wondered how and why the Hanson phenomena took off like a mid-January bushfire. It was because nobody was offering them any hope.
It looks as though yet again, ‘Canberra’ is going to snuff out another bit of light at the end of the tunnel.
Come the next election, let’s hope that the light at the end of the tunnel is not another steam train full of angry Hanson-type voters heading for the major parties.
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Mitchell Beston in Woy Woy, NSW
I just find it fascinating that people expect our Prime Minister to be morally perfect. He is no different to any other Government that has run my country while I have been alive. I have been a Labor voter traditionally, however I feel that the Labour Party is too focused on minority groups whereas the Liberal Party is focusing on middle Australia.
I hate the way that American culture is invading the Australian way of life, but I am also realistic enough to realise that as an unimportant country in the great scheme of things, our best opportunity to move forward while other countries flounder is to get in bed with the USA. I am hoping that in 40 years time, our country is much the same as it is today.
I grew up in PNG. When you have lived in another country, it enables you to understand how great our country is. I am continually dismayed at how Australia’s people denigrate this country and its Prime Minister when comparatively we are well above the average as a country and John is trying to keep it that way.
PS: To Andrew Byrne – the police were out and about on the Thursday too. Looks like it’s back to the drawing board. Oh, and the threat actually occurred at around lunchtime, not in the late afternoon.
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David Shanahan
With all the discussion of politicians lying and covering it up afterwards I’d like to suggest we voters adopt a new policy towards them – zero tolerance of politicians lying to us. As soon as a pollie (ANY pollie, party is irrelevant) is caught fibbing in parliament or during an election campaign we all agree to vote against them (or their party) at the next election – no excuses, no forgiveness, completely zero tolerance for liars and the party they belong to.
It is useless to keep complaining about them or expect their laughable “codes of conduct” to improve things. Only tough love will cure them of this cancer that grows worse every year. WE are the only ones who can stop it.
Just saying (as so many of Johnny’s supporters are currently, and Paul’s did years ago) “Oh they all lie, what can you do about it?” achieves nothing and in fact encourages them to keep doing it.
It will require discipline and planning on the part of us voters – every time a politician lies and gets caught we need to write it down in an “election diary” that we can consult before we next cast our votes. They know we have short memories, and people like Peter Reith and Max Moore-Wilton will soon be forgotten, so write it down so you remember how they lied to you at the next election!
Get angry, get very angry. Go to the polls in a white hot rage and let them have it where it hurts. Do it with hatred in your heart – irrespective of what party they belong to, whether you have a job or not, whether the value of your house has gone up or down since the last election and whether you like the opposing candidates or not.
It’s for their own good, they’ll thank us later… We’ll only have to do it a couple of times before their behaviour changes, I promise.
Of course once they start telling us the truth we’ll have to face up to some unpleasant truths. We’ll be faced with difficult choices, and we’ll have to stop hiding behind politicians skirts on many issues. Hmm, maybe that’s why we’re where we are today?
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Matt Walker
Jack Robertson writes of the ethanol scandal in No clothes, John, but what a spinner!:
“(It) captures beautifully the cowardly, corrosive, buck-passing, arse-covering sickness of this now out-of-control and civically-bankrupted gaggle of conmen and women we call Federal Government. Howard’s personal tactical armoury, and thus that of the entire crowd, is now nothing but a grab-bag of all our most base Human instincts. Division, populist stirring, bureaucratic delay and ‘security’ suppression, policy hypocrisy and piecemeal opportunism, waffling obfuscation, faked conviction, endless condescending exploitation of the battler, the Anzac, the non-existent Ordinary Australian….”
Thank you Jack, you have sadly summed up my deep loathing for everything John Howard is, everything John Howard says, and everything John Howard stands for.
I keep having this horrible feeling every time that I see the newspaper, seeing the endorsement of his spins, his lies, the continual deceiving of us and the compete apathy of a nation. A nation that is just VERY happy not to know, not make a fuss, and just go on about your business.
Australia is now Howard’s own Matrix – Which pill do you choose, the Blue or Red pill, Oh the dilemma !!! Plug me back in for f…ks sake.
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John Crockett
As Alston says of the ABC, “You can’t have Caesar judging Caesar”. Perhaps the same panel that investigates allegations of bias should determine whether Howard lied to parliament.
This is really 3rd world stuff – crony capitalism and a corrupt public service.
I still can’t work out Howard – is he delusional? Surely he cannot pretend that his debasement of democratic traditions and conventions is in the interests of the Australian people. Are any back-benchers worried by his performance? What are they saying in the board rooms?
This little creep should be laughed out of office. This is a government beyond shame, satire, scruple, or restraint.
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Meg Ryan (nom de plume)
Running inexorably through Guilty, your worship, but who cares?are two inextricably linked themes – the state of the Howard mentality and the state of the nation’s mentality. Are these two related?
Increasingly, John Howard seems to employ a language to describe his actions which, whether by accident or design, follow a circuitous route into some murky nether region never to be seen again. Whatever did happen to those WMDs, children overboard and the legal, not to mention the human rights of detainees?
Nearer perhaps to the nation’s heart, whatever happened to the huge wine bill racked up by our noble leader? Did he ever manage to put his hand in his pocket and pay for that one? Who knows? Does anybody care? Are our memories in danger of becoming as short as the PMs?
These are worrying questions. The Ethanol debacle, so fleetingly and ineptly debated and so easily dismissed by Mitchell Beston as something all Governments apparently do almost as an expectation, is just another example of our ability to gloss over anything which does not directly affect us.
I seriously question Howard’s wits, have been pondering the increasingly muddled state of his language, his complete inability to answer a straightforward question, his falling back time and again on a sentence structure which reminds me of Edward Lear at his most fantastic.
Stuart Tomlinson mentions the word Alzheimers, and I must admit to having wondered about this on more than one occasion recently. As far as the state of the nation’s wits, or at least as far as what interests us, what gets our pulses racing, I have found the answer in the bottom right hand corner of today’s SMH online:-
Most Viewed Articles
1. Stripper joins queue of women with a tale about Warne
2. North America hit by mysterious power shortages
3. Struggling mags lose to web
4. Pass the sheep’s embryo wrinkle cream
5. Johns played on with serious neck injury
All power to the people, say I.