Abortion law:
Alister Air writes: Sinclair Davidson’s complaints against abortion law reform in Victoria are illogical. The sections of the law that Davidson refers to – 8(1)(b) — is an obvious and logical corollary to the preceding clause.
If a woman seeks advice from a doctor with a conscientious objection to providing an abortion, that doctor is ethically bound to inform that woman of her/his objection. So, then what? Davidson would suggest … nothing. The patient requests an abortion. The doctor says no. The end. This doesn’t actually make any sense, unless you see the doctor as the decision-maker here, rather than ensuring the patient makes decisions on her own health.
Modern medicine has, quite correctly, seen a relocation in decision-making from the doctor-knows-best model to one of giving patients information that allows those patients to make a decision. This is exactly what the law in Victoria supports. It is so obviously not a violation of s116 that even anti-abortionist organisations haven’t tried to take it to the High Court. If they did, they would fail. Freedom of religion would be violated if a doctor was compelled to perform an abortion irrespective of her/his religious beliefs. That’s not the case here.
ANSTO:
Andrew Raff writes: Re. “ANSTO poll goes radioactive, quietly changes no to yes” (Monday, item 3). Great to see you guys getting into ANSTO regarding their blatant attempt to manipulate a survey.
I wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald regarding their political correspondents article regarding this issue. It appears that this correspondent is politically motivated and is also pro nuclear. These types of public media reports that are severely twisting and manipulating such nefarious results should be banned.
I give talks on the “totality of the Nuclear Industry; that is the “Nuclear Cycle” from Mining to Waste management, costs, subsidies, transport, safety and security — the “factual” reality of this Industry. It appears that most Australians believe that one just has to have a Nuclear Reactor to get electricity — which is far from the facts.
Fortunately, because of leered times required for such an Industry to come into being, and the massive (and rising costs associated) it is difficult to see Australia (unless severe media restrictions are put in place to give unbiased education to the public) getting a Nuclear Industry.
Hamilton, Higgins and hot air:
Tamas Calderwood writes: Re. “Hamilton: why I am standing for the Greens in Higgins” (yesterday, item 3). Six weeks is a long time in Clive Hamilton’s politics. On September 10th he proclaimed the “failure of our democratic system” to respond to his radical green beliefs and demanded direct action, explaining that “disobeying the law should be a last resort when all other avenues have been exhausted. And they have been”.
Hmm … presumably the federal seat of Higgins now means all other avenues haven’t been exhausted. But whatever — Bravo to Clive for embracing our 108 year old democracy and seeking election. Of course, should he lose at the ballot box he can continue to write books and articles and speak out, but he can’t start calling for people to disobey the law again. Even for a Green politician that would be just too hypocritical.
Emergency alerts:
An ABC corporate spokeswoman writes: Re. “Tips and rumours” (yesterday, item 8). The current Memorandum of Understanding between the ABC and state government in Victoria doesn’t specifically mention TV or online as avenues to broadcast “emergency warnings”, both platforms have however been integral to our service over the past years.
The ABC is technically able to issue state based warnings on television. Throughout the fires earlier this year, we ran numerous “crawlers'”on ABC TV in Victoria notifying viewers of the fires and to tune to ABC Local Radio — some of these crawlers also included specific radio frequencies.
A new MOU is currently being drafted and due to be finalised shortly that will incorporate all aspects of the ABC.
NSW:
Justin Templer writes: Re. “Tips and rumours” (yesterday, item 8). A Crikey correspondent writes of Nathan Rees and his mad hatter’s tea party on the Sydney Harbour Bridge that hundreds of thousands of commuters were delayed due to the closure of the bridge — and then asks “What have we done wrong to deserve this ship of fools?”
Only God can answer that question but I do note that: Firstly, the bridge closure would have affected mainly Liberal voters living on the North Shore — Nathan Rees would not have lost a second’s sleep if a tsunami had carried them all away.
Secondly, the Harbour Bridge has been the whimsical plaything of Labor premiers going back ten years to when the people of New South Wales awoke one morning to discover that their bridge was flying the Queensland flag because Bob Carr had lost his State of Origin bet with Peter Beattie.
Telstra and 000:
John Taylor writes: Re. “This emergency response is brought to you by … Telstra” (yesterday, item 11). The item by Andrew Crook is easily the most stupid item you have published in the several years I have been subscribing. Mate, it’s “roger over and out”, it’s “10-4” , it’s “copy that”. What do you want them to say? God help us. “Advertising”? It couldn’t be further away from advertising in a fit!
And yes, let iinet, or anyone take over the service and see what sort of a mess it got into. At least Telstra has the scope to handle a Universal Service Obligation imposed on it. No one else does. So bear that in mind when you start smashing up Telstra.
Emails are dangerous:
Ross Copeland writes: Re. “Not clean, not dirty … Turnbull masters inactivity” (yesterday, item 10). Maybe the advice Peter Phelps gave to Liberal media advisers was appropriate but why oh why would you circulate it by email? Phelps has been around the traps long enough now to that is so risky because you just never know where it will finish up.
A shock:
Alan Kennedy writes: Re. “Are we witnessing the death of the shock jock?” (yesterday, item 19). Mike Carlton a shock jock? I think he’d be shocked to hear that.
Pedant’s post:
Tony Berry writes: When is Crikey going to learn how to use an apostrophe? It can be used to denote a possessive or a plural, but Crikey regularly fails to understand the difference.
Send your comments, corrections, clarifications and c*ck-ups to boss@crikey.com.au. Preference will be given to comments that are short and succinct: maximum length is 200 words (we reserve the right to edit comments for length). Please include your full name — we won’t publish comments anonymously unless there is a very good reason.
And as if to prove my point one has to read no further than today’s Halloween promo to find “pdf’s” (apostrophe not required) and “Its so easy” (apostrophe is required). So sloppy.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
Crikey A TOP EDITORIAL — again, thank you Crikey.
An excellent intellegent media contribution to our ‘all of our’ national problem which like all national problems is so totally a global one.
“…In the meantime, though, the media will continue to obsess about symptomatic and ultimately trivial issues like the Oceanic Viking and the political point-scoring that trails emptily in its wake. …”
The media is more than obsessed, its mentally ill (obsession to extremes) about refugees or asylum seekers. Just as it has been about the little harmless pigglet flu, the truely deadly bird flu and just about anything that it thinks it can freak the population out over.
This ‘freak index’ needs to be studied to discover if the terror caused competes for a terrorists title. Related words and concepts Freak – Terror – Terrorist.
I think Mike would be shocked as he hung up his microphone didn’t he?
While they use ‘border security” to beat up on refugees they are sending more cops and spies to Asia to track and hound refugees. Not criminals smuggling drugs, or child sex slavers, or labour slave traders, or sex slave traffickers. Just refugees.
Reading Tuesday’s estimates was like plunging into the worst spy novel ever written but the clowns actually think they have the right to do it.
Then we see that they have set up security cameras for the Sri Lankan government to track Tamils through the airports and then they whine if some catch boats to Australia instead of flying here like they used to.
Tamils who could fly had a 80% success rate without any appeals needed.
Meanwhile we claim we have to stop the dangerous boats, but all the boats get here quite safely until we interfere with the rights of the passengers to claim asylum.
We then pack them onto war ships and traffic them across the oceans from 1800-3600 km, lock them up and never tell they why.
Good to see Jessie Taylor’s story finally getting some coverage and the mainstream also showing images of young Afghans in that dreadful prison we have built illegally in Indonesia – what right to our cops have to arrest people in other countries when they have committed no crime?
These are the questions the media don’t ask. Or why it is we are breaching the people smuggling protocols that state clearly we mustn’t punish those who have to use “smugglers” or the “smugglers” for giving them a ride.
O’Connor is now claiming that anyone who gives a refugee a ride is a criminal and Evans is still babbling like a lunatic about “border security” when signatory countries guaranteed they would not close borders to refugees.
“hundoctoreds of thousands” “because of leered times required” “The item by Andoctorew Crook”
“Hundreds of thousands of commuters were delayed for hours”.
Oh give me a break. It was 7 o’clock on Sunday morning. I’d be surprised if there were thousands, much less hundreds of thousands, of motorists (none of whom are “commuters” under the usual Mon-Fri definition).
And no matter how many (or few) people wanted to cross, they could have done so:
(a) by train; or
(b) by car through the Harbour Tunnel, which follows precisely the same route
with no delay whatsoever.
There’s a lot to complain about with this govt, but this isn’t one of them.