The ABC:

Alan Sunderland, Head of National Programs, ABC News, writes: Re. “ABC don’t need investigators to put fires down to insulation” (yesterday, item 12). I never object to an attack on the ABC from Bernard Keane — he needs his fun, after all — but it would be nice if he bothered to listen to the stories he attacks.

First of all, he accuses AM of linking a house fire to ceiling insulation without any evidence. A fair cop at first glance — after all, it turned out a day later that there was no link. But did he listen to the story, or just read the intro? We hardly invented the link.  We went to the scene. We spoke to the firemen who were there. They told us:

Very bad structural damage. Their house possibly will be demolished after this… the fire progressed into the roof of the house and as it had been burning for some time the weight of the tiles did bring the roof in.

Based on what we were told by a fireman at the time, we then reported, accurately and reasonably, that newly installed ceiling insulation may have been the cause and it was being carefully investigated. We said a link was suspected, not established, and that was based on what we learned direct from the scene. The Fire Brigade later confirmed to Crikey that ceiling insulation had indeed been recently installed, but by the following day the investigation had ruled out the possible link. Hindsight is a wonderful tool for the armchair critic, but it is not always available to the reporter on the ground.

He then accuses AM of towing The Australian’s editorial line on the latest Newspoll and, unlike other radio networks, failing to note that the Government retains a commanding lead.

So what were the opening lines in Lyndal Curtis’ excellent analysis on AM?:

Well, the Newspoll in The Australian shows that Labor’s primary vote is down but most of that has gone to the Greens. So on a two-party preferred basis Labor’s still in relatively the same position it was at the last election. It still has an election winning lead.

Having established the context, Lyndal then went on to discuss the important shift in satisfaction ratings. Good journalism, I’d say…

The quality of Parliament:

David Thackrah writes: I think there is disillusionment flowing in the community over the quality of our parliamentary function.

The continual papering over of documents and reports made to the PM and other ministries is creating growing concern toward the integrity of Australian politics.

Both the major parties are prone to furtive dealings over legislation caused, in the main, by the Office of Prime Minister becoming a Spin Palace. Question time has become the most preposterous activity of all time in Canberra, and again both major parties are in collusion. The loss of Malcolm Turnbull in the chair is clearly evident.

The public regard Question Time as utterly irrelevant.

I hold high concern over Defence Budgets and Forward estimates — do we know what we are actually buying ?? — the national broadband project and the issue of the PSTN network built with taxpayer money and just now the “invasion” and sudden insecurity of houses due to the incredible insulation project.

Meanwhile the health portfolio meanders amongst self interest groups and education is not at all well managed.

Spinning the media:

Paul Coulter writes: Re. “Spinning the media: the editors fire back. Or don’t.” (yesterday, item 5). Over many years, quite a lot of very good journalists have thanked me for not needing to rewrite the press releases I have sent them. Saves them time. Gets the message out. Isn’t that just the business?

Rundle’s UK:

Denis Lenihan writes from London: Re. “Rundle’s UK: no hope or glory when democracy fails” (yesterday, item 2). Guy Rundle’s piece was amusing but had three errors.

  1. In Australia, while the state frog can march you to the polling booth, it can’t make you vote: after your name is crossed off the list of voters, you don’t have to do anything; some don’t bother to vote, others write abusive comments on the voting papers.
  2. As the link makes clear, Nick Clegg’s admiration for the Thatcher is confined to her action against the trade unions as a vested interest, not generally.
  3. Sadly, the poll in The Guardian shows that far from no- one thinking that Cameron was foreman material, he is 11 points ahead of Brown as the man voters want to win, 14 points ahead as the most competent for prime minister, and so on and so on.

Health identifiers:

Michael Tatas writes: Re. “Health ID cards unleash ‘scary’ Little Brothers” (yesterday, item 17). There are already plenty of “unique identifiers” in the public systems, so the concept is not new, (i.e. a Tax File Number) but I do understand the sensitivity of medical information to a lot of people. The problem lies in that this is a medical “system”, and if we want the system to be better, it needs to be made more ‘systematic’, instead of the hodge-podge that it is now.

By identifying each patient independently we can track what people are presenting for what reasons, see what follow up issues there are, create policies to mediate the issues based on presentation symptoms etc. etc. If I present one day after being punched in the kidney, and present the next week with blood in my urine, how is the doctor going to join the dots if the two presentations are not linked via a unique identifier?

The millions of pieces of data, properly organised, would be goldmine for any medical public policy types. I know firsthand the frustration of trying to get good data out of the current systems.

And in regards to privacy, keep the linking of the Unique Identifier to the personal information in a separate database, with higher levels of access required, and legislate ridiculously steep penalties for anyone who breaches it. Or encrypt the information using the fingerprint of each patient.

I’m sure the nerd boffins can come up with a solution.

Science and PR:

David Hardie writes: Re. “Research physicist despairs: how the media fails science” (yesterday, item 4). It was interesting to juxtapose Ben Bulcher’s story and the installment of “Spinning the Media”.

The cliché that is trotted out in response to Dr Bulcher’s comments about the disconnect between science and the media is that “scientists are not good communicators”.  This is a notion that is quite frankly false with Dr Bulcher’s article being an example that is as good as any.

Most scientists are highly articulate and intelligent enough to differentiate between the sort of language that is required in an academic context and a general context. Nonetheless, the disconnect appears to take place because the scientists do not engage with the PR industry to mediate (for want of a better word) between them and media.

It is difficult to imagine the dynamic of the climate change debate that would take place if the scientific community had the same access to PR resources as the climate change denialists.

Retiring MPs:

David Havyatt writes: Re. “MPs bowing out of politics at Election 2010: a Crikey List” (yesterday, item 3). Memo to Bernard Keane who wrote “If so, it raises the question of whether the Parliamentary superannuation scheme should continue at its current extraordinarily generous level.” I would expect him to have noticed this already happened under John Howard in response to Mark Latham.

Zachary King writes: I think that you made a mistake on your list of retirees as it doesn’t mention Wilson Tuckey nor Bronwyn Bishop.  Obviously this is an error, yes?  Please merciful Jesus in heaven tell me that this was just an oversight.

Barry Everingham writes: Give me a break — why haven’t Bronwyn, Andrews, Ruddock and the most egregious of them all  Wilson Tuckey, headed the list?

Keating:

“Drovers Cat” writes: Re. “Richard Farmer’s chunky bits” (yesterday, item 15). Too right, Richard. While I miss John Howard like I miss rabies, a serving up from Paul Keating always brightens my day. And clearly, after noticing about midday on Monday that his interview on Fran Kelly’s program had attracted 274 comments on news.com.au’s reporting of his comments, he’s always seen as good media even by his detractors.

Barnaby Joyce: “Joh Bjelke-Petersen” … “I wouldn’t trust them with a jam jar full of 5-cent bits” …

Long may he chip in to the news cycle, say I … and maybe a thousand years hence, for some it will finally sink in that the only people who paid 17% interest rates during his time were the mugs who borrowed during that period, and who of course were the 1980s debt-drunk dumbwits the rises were aimed at in the first place (domestic rates for existing mortgages were capped at 13.5% at the time, as they were during Howards’ similar high-interest period in 1982).

And presumably this missive will bring out the nasty Keating-Kursers too…

Rundle:

John Taylor writes: Re. “Rundle on Craven: come, come, Peter, get with the program” (yesterday, item 20). Do any of your subscribers have any idea what Rundle is on about. And to think he used to be brilliant.

Climate change:

Kieren Diment writes: Paul Mossman (yesterday, comments) gets it wrong on climate change, and it’s clear from his abuse of terminology (“statistical latency”) that he doesn’t really understand the topic at hand.  Our problem is understanding how CO2 emissions change the climate to a range where the infrastructure of industrial civilisation is no longer supportable.

The planet has been in the past, and will be in the future in a climatic regime that will not support industrial civilisation.  The correct questions are firstly:  whether humans can cause a perturbation of this size (answer:  barring a scientific conspiracy spanning centuries and involving thousands of conspirators, almost certainly yes), and secondly:  is it desirable for humans to cause this kind of perturbation (answer: almost certainly no).

Please stop publishing uninformed nonsense based on false premises, lies and misrepresentation in your letters page.  It makes you look bad and as uninformed as people like Paul and Tamas.

Anthony David writes: I was flabbergasted by Paul Mossman’s letter published in Crikey. Not one paragraph made any sense at all. Not one “fact” bore any resemblance to scientific observations and your correspondent confused his ability to use the divide button on a calculator with statistical analysis.

The only way the comment makes sense if one was to reject the foundations of physics, chemistry, mathematics, statistics, geology, oceanography, climatology, biology and statistical inference. Never before in the history of humankind have so many people had such an opportunity to educate themselves.

I suggest Paul Mossman makes an effort to learn some of the last 250 years of discoveries.