The Walkley Foundation and ExxonMobil :

Christopher Warren, Federal Secretary, Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, writes: Re. “Journalists in bed with Exxon — it’s a marriage that needs a divorce” (Friday, item 16). Wendy Bacon’s comments about the support the Walkley Foundation is receiving from ExxonMobil for our Media Conference in Sydney next month deserve an appropriate response.

The Walkley Foundation is a politically neutral organisation pledged to further excellence in Australian journalism and we do not make political judgements about organisations as it would not be appropriate for us to do so.

We rely on the support of our partners to do this vital work in support of transparency and press freedom and insist that, in all their engagement with us, they accept our fundamental beliefs. Journalists are not strangers to commercial arrangements. They’ve been fundamental to journalism for centuries. Our principles mean that all are arms length and are not permitted to in any way to influence the content of what we do or say.

I have absolute confidence in the ability and integrity of journalists to both understand these principles and to work to the highest ethical principles.

As Bacon would know, Exxon is among our corporate supporters, the most prominent of which is the Copyright Agency Limited, which helps journalists secure royalty payment for use of their work.

Our other sponsors include Qantas, the ABC, Al-Jazeera, APN, Fairfax Media, News Ltd, APN News and Media, SBS and Leader Community Newspapers.

Our academic partners include The University of Sydney and the University of Queensland. Bacon’s own university, UTS, is also lending its support by pledging five students to report on proceedings with the help of video cameras provided by us by Flip.

Bacon should note that among the organisations that ExxonMobil supports in this country are Opera Australia, the charity United Way, the Australian Drug Foundation, Royal Children’s Hospital Safety Centre in Melbourne and the National Youth Science Forum.

Globally the list of organisations is too exhaustive to go into, but includes Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University all of which are investigating alternative fuel technologies.

The various co-signatories to Bacon’s open letter who work at Monash University would know that the university also receives support from ExxonMobil.

It is inevitable in all of this that the company will have funded organisations that you or I may not agree with. However, this is true of almost every corporation in Australia, particularly global corporations.

Bacon refers to the Media Alliance Code of Ethics in her letter. The Code requires that journalists: “Do not allow personal interest or any belief, commitment, gift or benefit to undermine your accuracy, fairness or independence.” Further Clause 5 requires that journalists disclose any possible conflicts of interest. Clause 6 exhorts journalists not to allow advertising or any commercial considerations to undermine accuracy, fairness or independence.

In all its dealing with hundreds of sponsors over the years, the Walkley Foundation has consistently upheld this principle and will continue to do so.

The Greens and Melbourne:

Tim Norton, Online Campaigns Co-ordinator, Oxfam Australia, writes: Re. “Door knocking in Melbourne. This week: trailing the Greens” (29 July, item 1). The article states that:

“The ALP parallels don’t end with Bandt’s IR past. His ‘Make History Melbourne’ line is a riff on the Make Poverty History campaign run by Make Believe, whose director Lilian McCombs helped Labor at the last election oversee the Kevin ’07 blog.”

Make Poverty History is a coalition of NGOs, church groups, unions and other organisations. It is not a campaign run by the company Make Believe. Whilst agencies within the coalition (such as Oxfam Australia) may have worked with Make Believe in the past, they are not and have never been engaged in any official capacity by the Make Poverty History coalition.

On another note, I’d also add that the author states:

“But even with the extra focus, the Melbourne campaign is still without billboards, polling or the largest potential expense — TV ads. Only two part-time staff are working specifically with Bandt and for the most part the Greens are reliant on traditional tactics.”

The former Electrical Trades Union building on the corner of Swanston & Queensberry Streets features three very large, very prominent billboards for the Greens’ candidates Richard DiNatale and Adam Bandt.

The election:

Doug Clark writes: Re. “Richard Farmer’s chunky bits” (Friday, item 11). Shame Richard Farmer didn’t quote the end of Mark Antony’s famous rallying cry speech (which I surprisingly remember from Form 3 — that’s Year 9 in the dark ages): “Now let it work.  Mischief though art afoot: take thou what course thou wilt.” Anyone spring to mind…?

Andrew Haughton writes: Another Welsh redhead, Queen Elizabeth the First postponed the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots for several years because she knew that one Queen killing another was a bad look and a bad precedent. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

The WikiLeaks saga:

Neil James, Executive Director, Australia Defence Association, writes: Harry Goldsmith (Friday, comments) confuses four separate moral issues about the WikiLeaks saga:

  • whether the material should have been leaked;
  • whether WikiLeaks has sufficient knowledge to understand the material and safely make such decisions’;
  • whether it should have been leaked in the reckless way it was (insufficiently vetted to protect Afghans on our side from harm, etc); and
  • to who is WikiLeaks accountable?

Harry also misunderstands that our moral and practical objections concern the last three issues. This is why his Ellsberg analogy is invalid as, no matter your views on Ellsberg’s justification, he was responsible in his method and bravely accountable for his actions.

In a nutshell, no matter how much you might disagree with the UN-endorsed ISAF effort in Afghanistan, this gives no right to actions unfettered by responsibility or respect for international humanitarian law (IHL). All Australians also have a citizenship obligation not to add unduly to the dangers our diggers face there (on behalf of all Australians). This aspect of debate about the Afghanistan War is not a freedom of speech issue but one of fairness, human decency, reciprocal obligations and the universality of IHL.

Harry also ostensibly professes concern as to whether his words are subversive or treacherous. Whilst uninformed, illogical and polemical, they obviously fall within legitimate dissent and are therefore not as he fears (or perhaps seeks in would-be “political martyrdom”).

But such views would, for example, be rightly criminal if they led Harry, intentionally, to help the Taliban kill or wound an Australian digger.

It goes well beyond justifiable dissent, however, if an Australian is so absorbed in their own views that they neglect (or are indifferent about) their responsibilities as a citizen, and take insufficient care whether their actions, and in some cases even words, result in or seriously threaten the lives of Australian diggers lawfully deployed in a war by our elected government on behalf of all of us.

This is why the ADA advocates further reform to Australia’s treachery laws to deter and prohibit reckless, and not just intentional, assistance to the enemy. Again this would not affect normal, intelligent and responsible dissent.

Finally, Harry repeats the myth that the US somehow created the Taliban. It was instead created by Pakistan in late 1994 (as part of its strategic rivalry with India), five years after the US had stopped supporting various Mujahideen groups who forced the Soviets out (1989) and overthrew Najibullah’s communist regime (1990). The Taliban overthrew the Mujahideen regime in 1996.

Mental health:

Dr JJ Carmody, School of Medical Sciences (Discipline of Physiology), University of Sydney, writes: Re. “Gillard comes from a long line of Labor mental health policy failures” (Friday, item 2). John Mendoza seems altogether too negative.  And I can’t really see the point of reflections back as far as Chifley (who ceased to be PM, in 1949, after all: 60 years ago, since when an enormous amount has changed in all of medicine, not simply in psychiatry).

He also seems pretty unfair to Julia Gillard as if a change in PM is simply continuity, rather than a different person influencing priorities and how the issue-choosing and decision-making of Cabined will not change with a new government.

My understanding is that when Gillard was at secondary school in Adelaide, one of her best friends was the late Dr Lyn Pilowsky, whose father was Professor of Psychiatry in the Adelaide University Medical School. I would imagine, therefore, that she then learned more about mental illness and the problems which it brings than most non-medical people (including seemingly omniscient commentators) will learn in a lifetime.

I would counsel a little more tolerance, patience and understanding.

Carbon tax:

Michael R. James writes: Re. “Cash for clunkers: $1b for clapped-out, world’s worst-polluting coal generator” (Friday, item 9). As the author of story on the Hazelwood brown coal power station, I was hoping a Crikey blogger would make the obvious suggestion of a counter-punch by the Gillard government against this blatant carbon blackmail by the UK owners and the John Brumby Victorian government:  bring in a $20 per tonne carbon tax which would cost Hazelwood $320 million per year.

International Power is at least correct, in that without this clear price signal, it is hard to close dirty clunkers like Hazelwood and to encourage their replacement. With the price signal, even one at $20 per tonne — the lowest end of the scale recommended by economists and environmentalists — it would do exactly what all advocates of a Carbon Tax claim.

The company would build the gas-fired replacement in record time.