The NSW hospital crisis:

Margaret Walker writes: Re. “The NSW hospital crisis and an ALP hackette” (27 September, item 4). I am a nurse, and I am also not a fan of Deborah Piccone for many good reasons but I consider Alex Mitchell’s piece to be an example of the very worst kind of “journalism”. Instead of using facts he uses innuendo and sneers. “Labour hackette” – what sort of term is that? Ms Piccone was once a union official. So have many other people currently holding senior positions today. She has held many senior positions including CEO of a large Sydney area health service. To use the phrases “risen through the ranks” and “promoted to dizzying heights” implies that she is a lowly nurse who has somehow risen above her station. This is ridiculous. This article should have focused on the facts of the problems at Royal North Shore and perhaps challenged Ms Piccone as to how she would be addressing these. I am disappointed that Crikey would give this shoddy work house room.

Opposing windfarms on environmental grounds:

Shane Wright writes: Re. “Opposing windfarms on environmental grounds” (yesterday, item 16). Lionel Elmore seems to ignore the real reasons for Christian Zahra’s defeat at the 2004 election. To label it a surprise ignores the fact a redistribution in Victoria made McMillan a notionally Liberal seat ahead of the election. Christian was starting around two per cent behind, before the anti-Latham swing. So for him to lose the seat was certainly no surprise. Then there was also the small matter of the ALP’s Tasmanian forest that cost Zahra votes in a seat where timber logging is still a presence.

Christine Mitchell writes: Lionel Elmore is extremely selective in his article, particularly in relation to the Altamont site. And in no way are we comparing apples with apples when using the Altamont site and current wind turbines and the assessment procedure siting and environment for modern turbines. The Altamont site is an anomaly. Besides its poor location many of the turbines are over 30 years old and were installed without any type of environmental impact study and the Altamont site lies on a bird-migration route. These older designs use faster-spinning blades that reach closer to the ground than recent models where birds are more likely to be flying as they hunt for prey. A report by the Government Accountability Office (USA) on wind farms’ impact on wildlife, did not single out any other wind farms other than Altamont Pass and noted that animal mortality rates in other regions have been much lower and importantly concluded that “not enough research has been conducted to come to any conclusions about the impact of wind power on wildlife”. The power companies that operate the Altamont wind turbines are replacing some turbines with newer ones that the company says are safer for birds, and are relocating or removing about 100 of the most dangerous windmills from locations such as ridge tops their goal is to reduce bird collisions by 35 percent in three years, and to determine which turbines are the most dangerous. Mr Elmore is also wrong when he says the planning process in Victoria is cutting out locals. A planning permit is required to use and develop land for a wind energy facility. The local council can advise which planning scheme provisions apply to the land. For projects less than 30 MVW the local council is the responsible authority, the Minister for Planning is the responsible authority for proposals that are 30 MW or greater.

Rainfall will always be lower under a Coalition Government:

Christian Kent writes: Re. “Drought could open the door for corporate agriculture” (27 September, item 2). If Chris Brown, from Farm Radio, really thinks drought relief is sensible to economic rationalism, then where is the predictability? The one thing industry values most from a government is a stable outlook. Corporate agriculture would absolutely have plotted the future viability scenarios of various land areas. But if someone had asked me two years ago, or five years ago, or long before this drought was declared, about the timetable or the trigger points for drought relief, what could I tell them? What is our country’s policy on drought relief? Help them when they are almost unsustainable? When our budget is in surplus? When an election is coming? I could at least say, rainfall will always be lower under a Coalition Government.

Polls and polling:

Malcolm MacKerras writes: Re. “Which 16 seats should we be watching?” (yesterday, item 7). I refer to Peter Brent’s item in Crikey yesterday. As he notes he has excluded Bennelong, Dobell and Hasluck from his list of the first 16 Coalition seats to fall. Since Peter has invited us to vary that list let me give my alternative. As is well known I am predicting Labor wins in all of Bennelong, Dobell and Hasluck. Therefore, I would need to exclude three other seats in Peter’s list. The seats I would exclude are Cowper, Stirling and Wentworth. Actually I expect Stirling to go to Labor, but I think it is a less likely Labor win than Hasluck.

Joy Storie writes: Re. “Newspoll: 56-44 … again” (yesterday, item 6). As the Mumble poll-mix graph progresses, it resembles increasingly the Mandelbrot set. Perhaps this election campaign should be interpreted using a quantum physics model. There have been plenty of waves to view, but more fractures than fractals. The scary thing is that the Mandelbrot set can go on replicating itself to infinity…

Tony Kevin writes: Like Marilyn Shepherd (yesterday, comments), I now believe our country is going in the right direction – because we are, quite clearly, getting ready to turf out John Howard. I cannot think of a better direction for Australia to be going in. And thus, it’s a meaningless election voting indicator – because it is as likely to pick up intending Labor voters as intending Coalition voters.

The Greens:

Former SA Greens Campaign Manager Lisa Crago writes: Re. “The Greens won’t work with Labor” (Friday, item 11). Maybe the tub thumping Green apologists should do some homework. Paul Bullock (yesterday, comments) has conveniently forgotten when making his statement that the German Greens voted to bomb Belgrade causing a factional break in the party that has seen it boxed out of the current government. Not only can the Greens not work with “other” political parties; they can not even work with themselves. After 12 months working with the SA Greens at an executive level it was obvious that the socialist left hand did not know what the progressive right hand of the party were doing. They could not even produce a treasurer’s report for an AGM; accepted unethical donations from the likes of National Pharmacies and refused to uphold any form of corporate memory. The Greens in Australia are a protest party who can and will not work with policy difference; ideological political imbeciles. Except when it comes to elections where preferences are based on pragmatic electoral politics. Mark Parnell (current MLC in SA) and double defector Kris Hanna tried to negotiate a preference swap with Family First Party in 2006 …. FFP even admitted it in the Advertiser. Hanna, the only Greens Lower house MP in Australia, then defected and was re elected on Liberal preferences. Also in the 2006 State Election the Greens preferenced FFP friend “No Drugs” candidate [and anti-drugs campaigner Ann Bressington] above the environmental and social justice HEMP candidate purely because “NO Drugs” had convinced the Greens and everyone else that he had 20 000 votes already stitched up. The Greens do not preference according to principle in the Upper House, this has been proven. Keep up the scrutiny Christian, this is politics in an election year, not a forest blockade.

Classroom advertising:

Sarah Smyth writes: Re. “Corporations welcome to advertise in Australian classrooms” (Friday, item 2). I am responding to the couple of articles that have been published regarding corporate advertising and sponsorship within our schools. I think that Ray Moynihan and Miranda Burne are being incredibly naive to think that it is just corporations who sponsor or develop resources with the aim of ultimately creating loyalty and selling a product or service. If you will not recall, the Australian federal government does a pretty good job of attempting to mould the minds of our young people by producing resources such as the Values product suite. Not to mention the not-for-profit sector – where many Christian-based organisations such as World Vision adopt and maintain a very comprehensive school-based communications program. In fact, any individual or organisation that produces school-based resources has some kind of ideological leaning that will inadvertently educate students in a certain way. Australia’s young people are being exposed to vested messages everywhere. Rather than conduct a witch-hunt to name the corporations that dare to communicate to young people in school (rather than relentlessly outside of school), let’s focus on quality teaching and an appropriate curriculum that will enable young people to critically analyse what is being communicated, and encourage them to make decisions for themselves.

The pulp mill:

John Hayward writes: Re. The Tasmanian forest industry is carbon positive (yesterday, item 17). It is almost frightening that there may be credulous readers of the nonsense pumped out by Forest Industry Dep CEO Allan Hansard. Hansard is claiming that greenhouse omissions will actually be reduced by a Tasmanian pulp mill which uses 5.5m tonnes of native forest per year, 1.5m tonnes of plantation, at least .5m tonnes of boiler wood per year, and which burns a seven-figure tonnage of forestry waste in the open each year. Allan seems to have forgotten that these things have to be added to the greenhouse balance sheet along with the much smaller quantity of carbon sequestered for 15 yrs or so in the average pulp plantation. This will produce a much more sober and somber result, which is to be expected from a suite of industries which elsewhere are some of the leading carbon emitters on earth. A figure of 10.5m tonnes of emissions p.a from all the activities of the Gunns mill has been proposed.

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