Correction:
Chris Feik, Editor of Quarterly Essay, Publisher at Black Inc and Associate Editor of The Monthly, writes: Re. “Tips and rumours” (yesterday, item 9). Crikey published:
“Robert Manne is furiously re-writing his investigation of News Limited and The Australian for The Monthly to include the latest information on the News of the World phone hacking scandal, we’re told. The deadline has been pushed back to accommodate.”
Going for some kind of record? Yesterday’s rumour about Robert Manne and News Ltd is wrong in every respect. The piece is for Quarterly Essay, not The Monthly; there has been no deadline shifting; Manne spent a day interviewing Chris Mitchell and others; David McKnight was nowhere to be seen.
Perhaps your informant was confusing the Manne essay with Sally Neighbour’s upcoming profile of Mitchell for The Monthly.
Latham’s Henderson watch:
Justin Templer writes: Re. “Latham’s Henderson Watch IV: the war within the Hendi Coalition” (yesterday, item 7). Mark Latham writes that, when Gerard Henderson asserted in The Sydney Morning Herald that more than 85% of Australian electors voted for a party other than the Greens in the 2010 federal election, Henderson’s facts do not stand up to scrutiny and that the proportion of primary votes lodged for parties other than the Greens was 75.4%.
I have played around with various interpretations of the figures and I cannot get any combination that fits the Latham argument. Being house-bound due to the Sydney rain and convinced that I was missing the point, I even pasted the results from the AEC website into a spreadsheet. Still no luck.
Using Latham’s own figures (and agreed to the AEC record) — of the 12,402,363 people who voted, 1,458,998 voted for the Greens — some 11.8%. This percentage is also as disclosed on the AEC website. This would mean that 88.2% of voters did not vote Green. This is what I took Gerard Henderson’ point to be (assuming that Mark Latham has successfully reproduced it). I won’t bore your readers with the myriad of other crazy combinations I tried, but nothing including the most wildly propagandist combinations came close to the Latham 75.4%.
I am assuming that Mark Latham’s calculator is one of those new-fangled solar cell models and the pathetic Sydney weather has sapped its strength. Please explain.
David Havyatt writes: Mark Latham’s ongoing series Henderson Watch is deliciously funny and demonstrates a skill for mimicry and satire on which he should build a new career.
Global food prices:
Greg Bowyer writes: Re. “Crikey clarifier: why are global food prices so volatile?” (Tuesday, item 11). Amber Jamieson’s recent piece on global food prices was very soft on the role of global corporations in recent price increases.
The article section headed: “Does speculation on the commodities market have a negative impact on global food prices?” overlooked recent reports on the disturbing role of commodity giant Glencore (part-owner of Xstrata) in the rise of food prices late last year. The final ABC Hungry Beast programme of Series 3 (June 21) also devoted its “Beast File” to Glencore, which it dubbed “the company trading on life’s essentials.” The Guardian also reported recently on UK protests against Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of Barclays, for its direct role in the global food crisis: “Along with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, BarCap has pioneered new kinds of financial products that have enabled pension funds and other investors traditionally barred from commodities exchanges to bet on food prices.”
With soaring food prices now afflicting the nations that literally cannot afford to pay, these sickening stories of corporate predation must be reported far and wide — so that global pressure may be urgently brought to bear on the corporations and funds that are growing fat on the back of human starvation.
Monckton:
John Kotsopoulos writes: Tamas Calderwood (yesterday, comments) wrote: “do you really think this government is in so much trouble because of a few characters such as Christopher Monckton?”
No Tamas, Monckton is not at the heart of Labor’s poll problems but a News Ltd dominated media bent on using the carbon price as a stick to beat up on Gillard and Labor certainly is. Even the ABC has resorted to taking a one sided stance.
The other night we had a very smug looking Chris Uhlmann on 7.30 with a lengthy report on Gillard’s polling woes and the so called carbon “tax” (it’s officially a carbon price Chris) using footage of an older lady seeking to embarrass the PM during a shopping centre visit. No mention was made at all about Abbott’s clearly contradictory comments on climate change which even the The Australian had seen fit to report on that morning.
No mention either that, based on the polls, Abbott had sacrificed principle for short term political action and has seemingly convinced a large chunk of voters that climate change action was not required, thus effectively trashing his own party’s policy which calls for climate change action.
No Tamas, Monckton is not to blame for Gillard’s polling woes but the vicious one sided media treatment of Gillard and carbon pricing surely is.
Wind turbines:
Colin Prasad writes: Re. “Richard Farmer’s chunky bits” (yesterday, item 13). Richard, I think you could have put a little more effort in to today’s article on wind turbines:
- You should note that there are no credible studies that support any claim that conventional wind farms cause ill-health. Just as there has been no land owner who is paid a rent for turbines on their land that supports that claim.
- Vertical access eggbeater type wind turbines have been around for ages, but cannot be built large enough to capture anywhere near the energy of a conventional Horizontal access wind turbines, (some now approaching 5MW each). In the table at the bottom of the paper you cite, whilst a vertical access wind turbine might have a higher density of energy capture per footprint, at only .0012MW each, you would need 2,083 of them to get the rated power of one 2.5MW HAWT. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but for practical farming and aesthetics, I know which one I would prefer.
Censorship:
Katherine Stuart writes: Re. “Rundle: kooks n crackpots … give ’em publicity, own the consequences” (yesterday, item 6). While I take Rundle’s point that the guy is being brought to Australia for a Big Ideas conference, why is the media has given such a lot of space to refuting the spurious claims of a crackpot? Why review Sarrazin’s book at all?
Although this might sound like a form of censorship, isn’t there always some form of censorship at work in journalism, in the sense of what gets written about and what doesn’t? One might well ask how newsworthy the rantings of a crackpot are.
If Thilo Sarrazin were not a former member of the Board of Germany’s state bank, would he be getting any press at all for his book? And isn’t that a form of inverse censorship?
Warfarin:
Gerald Quigley, pharmacist, writes: Re. “Tips and rumours” (yesterday, item 9). Home monitoring of warfarin has been available for years to those patients smart enough to take control of their health and to step outside the quaint service of getting the referral to pathology, finding the pathology service, giving blood and recovering, then waiting for results.
A variety of fees are usually involved. The home monitoring kit is a finger-prick with the results able to be given to the doctor for dosage alterations if needed. AND, most private health insurers cover the initial supply of machine and strips.
I think the problem with Latham is that he’s an economics graduate, and therefore his numbers are nonsense. If anything, Henderson was overstating the Greens’ vote: it’s closer to 10% than 15%! The rest of his broadside was pretty much on target, though.
Latham’s maths was: 10,628,361 / 14,086,869 x 100, which equals 75.44 … on a regular calculator.
It’s about who didn’t vote Greens, not who did. Latham’s point was that the non-Greens vote has to include total electors (including those who did not enter a formal vote) rather than Henderson’s inclusion only of electors who entered a formal vote.
It’s really not that hard to grasp.
Ok Niall and Justin, I’ll walk you through it. Mark Latham said:
“In presenting its results for the 2010 House of Representatives election, the Australian Electoral Commission website lists 14,086,869 electors (that is, people on the electoral roll) and 12,402,363 formal voters (electors who attended a polling booth and lodged a formal vote). Of these formal voters, 1,458,998 supported the Greens and a further 315,004 voted for non-party candidates. Therefore, the number of primary votes lodged for parties other than the Greens was 10,628,361.”
now the numbers:
Facts as given from AEC according to Mark Latham (i.e. if these are wrong, the reseach is wrong).
Number of Electors (E): 14 086 869
Number of Formal Votes (F): 12 402 363
Number of Green Votes (G): 1 458 998
Number of Non Party votes (I presume this is for independents) (N): 315 004
Caculated numbers (i.e. if these are wrong then Mark’s calculations are wrong)
Number of votes for parties other than Greens (P) is:
P=F-G-N= 12402363-1458998-315004= 10 628 361
The proportion of electors who voted for parties other than the Greens (O) is therefore:
O=P/E= 10 628 361/14 086 869 = 0.7544 or as a percentage 75.44%.
Now, Mark Latham was examining the claim by Gerard Henderson:
“More than 85 per cent of Australian electors voted for a party other than the Greens (at the 2010 Federal election).”
in the context of Gerard Henderson’s (in)famous pedantry. Mr Henderson is wrong, Mark Latham is right. Other statements about the proportion who did vote for the Greens, while factually correct amd indeed perhaps pleasing to non-Green voters, are irrelavent to the argument.
It took me two seconds to do the Latham calculation with my trusty iphone 4 and well I’m thinking Justin needs to go back to school if he couldn’t work it out. Basic maths.
It works as an attempt to out-pedant Brigadier Gerard but not as an accurate reflection of the election. All Latham has done is catch Henderson out with sloppy phrasing: what he meant to say was that more than 85% of voters did not vote for the Greens. In terms of electoral analysis, the 75% figure is meaningless.
Matt Hardin’s concluding sentence shows he’s right on formal logic but wrong on common sense. The truth does matter, and Henderson’s point was that the overwhelming majority of voters did not vote for the Greens. As I said, the figure is closer to 90%, and actually even higher if you count informal voters and non-voters (which arguably you should, as some of them are expressing disgust with all politicians, including the Greens).
To say the true figure is “perhaps pleasing to non-Green voters” is very revealing. Surely Green supporters should care about their electoral fortunes. I don’t know whether Hardin is a Green voter, but this attitude is very representative of Green voters: an inane boosterism and a complete disregard, or even denial, of the fact that some 90% do not vote for the Greens.