Roof insulation and green loans:

Ken Lambert writes: Re. “The photos that shame Garrett’s insulation scheme” (yesterday, item 12). I note that Rudd and Wong have stuffed up their “Green Loans” scheme by qualifying thousands of Green Auditors with limited funds to carry out audits (about 36 Audits each is the number funded). I suggest that Abbott and Hunt embrace the kiddies from Carbon Cops.

These bright enthusiastic young people have a TV show where they go into family homes and audit energy use via the existing power bills. I watched a couple of these shows with the kids over Christmas and the savings achieved with relatively cheap lifestyle changes, low energy light bulbs, timer switches, monitors etc were amazing.

Admittedly the homes chosen were two parent plus two or three teenager outfits of some prosperity with 3 cars in the driveway; and with existing energy bills of $10000+ per year.  Can you imagine energy bills of $10000+ per year for a household?

These households were incredibly wasteful and indulgent with lighting, TV’s and computers running or on standby 24/7, pool pumps, spa heaters, clothes dryers (pimply teenagers had to have fluffy towels fresh each day) etc:  they bad exampled many of the high energy use habits of most homes.

The savings made were 50-75% in these extreme cases. I would lay a bet that 10-15% could be saved across all Australian homes with the ‘carbon cops’ simple energy saving tools and minimal lifestyle changes.

A reasonably smart politician like Abbott could capture the kiddie vote by an innovative and well structured program of free “carbon copping” all Australian households and small to medium businesses.

The Federal Govt could pay each household or business a small amount $100-250 to facilitate the audit which would need doing in normal working hours (mum or dad would need a few hours off work).   Major energy saving items such as solar water heaters could possibly be purchased with ‘interest free green loans’ which are repaid exclusively out of audited annual energy savings by each householder.

Maybe Abbott could employ all Rudd/Wong’s unemployed “green loan” auditors in the “carbon cop” teams.This sort of energy conservation ‘direct action’ if planned and executed properly would have a real measurable benefit for reduction of emissions.

It would put the Rudd-Garrett pink batt and foil fiasco in its true light — an entirely predictable bonanza for fly-by-nighters in an unregulated frenzy, spraying taxpayer dollars into the hands of shonky insulation spivs who sent untrained kids into roofs to die.

Shirley Colless writes: Like so many others I have had a nice young man, well dressed and articulate, on my doorstep offering me an ‘insulation’ plan.  I advised him that:

  1. I did not know if the house I purchased last year already had insulation in the roof;
  2. I would at some time but not today have someone I trusted get into my roof (at 73 I’m no longer agile enough to do it for myself) to see what was up there in terms of both insulation and aged electrical cabling (the house was built in the late 1920s);
  3. If there was no insulation and if the electric cabling had been replaced reasonably recently (if it wasn’t then that would be the first thing to fix), I would speak to a company that was properly accredited and could provide me with the type of insulation I felt was safe and environmentally ticked off;
  4. I was not prepared to make any sort of commitment to a door knock proposal, so would he please leave me information on his company.

After I had repeated the above three times, he left, having given me  a single sheet of paper with some brief details on his company. As this company purported to operate out one of the more interesting Sydney suburbs and as I live in a major country city and I couldn’t be bothered doing a company search or checking the company’s track record with Fair Trading NSW I have to confess I put the sheet of paper through my shredder.

I do have to wonder if home owners’ rush to get their hands on a government handout hasn’t blinded them the fact that  caveat emptor is a wise old saying that more people should heed;  and of course unregulated market forces will always bring some degree of scum to society’s surface.

Charlie Wilson:

Guy Rundle writes: Re. “Congressman Charlie Wilson’s war is finally over” (yesterday, item 16). In his obituary for Charlie Wilson, my good friend Charles Richardson suggests, in a parallel between Afghanistan and Vietnam, that the former was better off under a Soviet, or Soviet-backed regime, and the latter under a South Vietnamese regime. This is simply to so abstract the regimes themselves from the circumstances in which they occurred as to become meaningless.

Whatever the pros and cons of life in South Vietnam, the country itself was purely a US creation, designed to prevent the election of Ho Ch Minh as President in an all-Vietnam election in the 50s. The country is inseparable from the mass killing that went on in its “defence”.

Quite aside from their desire to have an independent and unified country, the Vietnamese would have been better off without the twenty years of war, bombing, and agricultural destruction for which South Vietnam was the pretext.

Andrew Neeson writes: Charles Richardson didn’t finish the film’s story.  After securing Congressional millions for munitions for the Afghan resistance which largely caused the downfall of the Russian occupation, Charles R concluded that: “But the backwash has been awful. The Soviet-backed government gave way not to a peaceful and democratic Afghanistan but to an endless civil war between shifting alliances of extremist factions.”

My memory of the film’s ending was Charlie Wilson seeking and being dismissively denied more Congressional millions to fill the new vacuum and build roads, schools hospitals etc.  Charlie rightly concluded, “we won the war but f-cked up the end game!”

A human rights charter:

Justin Pettizini writes: Re. “Human rights: why we need a charter” (yesterday, item 18). Mark Blumer, president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, is yet another lawyer full of anger at those who dare question the idea of a human rights charter.  On balance I support such a charter, but unlike Blumer and his lawyer cohort I can see that there are significant counter arguments too.

It has always struck me that lawyers never have to think of the downside of such a charter — of the likelihood of being accused of breaching human rights over trifling issues — because they know that, unless they are employed as government lawyers, such a charter will never apply to them.

Yet why shouldn’t it?

Why should not barristers be prohibited from belittling and harassing witnesses with “robust cross-examination” in exactly the same way public servants are prohibited from breaching the human rights of citizens by belittling or harassing behaviour.  Why shouldn’t human rights protections apply to the person a judge sentences for contempt of her or his own court in the same way such protections prevent police from apprehending someone at whim.

When lawyers start demanding a human rights charter that applies to lawyers and in courtrooms as well as to police and public servants I’ll start to believe that they support such a charter because it is to the benefit of citizens and society and not just because it promises the lawyers themselves a lucrative extra line of work.

David Lodge writes: Call me Mr Thicky, but was exactly was the point of Mark Blumer’s piece today advocating a Charter of Human Rights? I may be a legal laymen, but the only argument I could see put was “well … BECAUSE!”.

Mark, you say “everyday, many people around Australia suffer human rights abuses”. Who and where are these people Mark? And what kind of abuses? And as result of what legislation or lack thereof, are these abuses in happening? I could couldn’t give a toss who’s advocating a charter, Mark, whether it’s a former chief justice or the owner of my local deli, if the facts don’t stack up, they don’t stack up. You say common law can be overridden by legislation.

To quote from Seinfeld, “err yeah”? So what? The fundamental principle here is whether we allow elected representatives to address so called abuses or whether grievances are looked at by un-elected officials who come into conflict with laws which we, the people, have allowed our representatives to pass.

Don’t worry Mark, us plebs who vote at elections know what we want from our representatives — competent and fair government carried out upon the platform for which they were elected.

We don’t need a legal “class” to right wrongs for us outside of that “social contract”.

Campaigning:

Lisa Caswell writes: Re. “Richard Farmer’s chunky bits” (yesterday, item 15). Once again Crikey contains a substantial factual error — this time in Richard Farmer’s chunky bits — “A lesson in campaigning”.

Liberal Braddon candidate Adam Brooks’ event may not have been a Liberal Party fundraiser, but it was advertised in a Liberal Party newspaper advertisement that contained the Liberal Party campaign logo, Liberal Party campaign messaging, urged readers to vote Liberal and promoted a Liberal Party candidate.

When the Hawthorn Football Club became aware that the event was clearly a partisan political event rather than a community event, it withdrew its players.  If the Liberal Party wants to attract non-partisan stars to community events, it shouldn’t advertise them as if they are Liberal Party events.

Also, Richard Farmer probably shouldn’t take his chunky bits directly from The Mercury in future, as the paper is well known for not letting facts get in the way of a sensationalised story.

Legal drinking age:

Justin Templer writes: Max Laughton (yesterday, comments) writes that if “raising the legal drinking age would reduce road deaths, then it would be an easy decision to make.”  Of course it would be an easy decision to make if one ignores constraints on civil liberties, freedom of choice and quality of life. In other words, it is not at all an easy decision to make.

One could reduce road deaths tomorrow through some fairly simple measures — ban driving between ages 30 and 70, reduce the maximum road speed to 60kph, and crush all cars or trucks over 10 years old.  While at it, ban swimming off un-patrolled beaches, parachuting, fighting in Afghanistan and fishing from rocks or small boats.

I guarantee that these measures will save lives and obviously each life is precious.

Are these all easy decisions to make?

Tony Martin:

Andrew Rosenzweig writes: Re. “Daily Proposition: let Tony Martin tickle your fancy” (yesterday, item 9). Great work on behalf of Daniel Ziffer bringing Tony Martin’s genius to the attention of the (sadly too large) group of people who haven’t yet experienced it.

I myself am still utterly mystified at Austereo’s utterly inexplicable and just plain stupid to axe Get This — a show that was funny by actually daring to respect the intelligence of the audience (even if it meant a fart joke or two were slipped in).

It’s a shame that Tony Martin doesn’t get a more prominent role in the Australian media — even if it’s not much of a mystery why, when Two and a Half Men is held up as the pinnacle of mainstream comedy nowadays.

Newspoll:

Terry Towelling writes: Re. “Climate change and polls, journalism and responsibility” (yesterday, item 14). The next Newspoll will show that:

  1. Dennis Shanahan can do anything with numbers;
  2. Peter van Onselen should put his hand up for Wentworth;
  3. Barnaby Joyce is the opposition’s best asset and the government’s worst nightmare;
  4. Barnaby Joyce is the government’s best asset and the opposition’s worst nightmare;
  5. Australians are, after all, a sensible lot.