Correction:

Margaret Simons writes: Re. “SBS gets a new boss — so what about merging with Aunty?” (yesterday, item 4). In my story yesterday I said that Broadcast Australia was owned by the Macquarie Bank. It used to be, but in  2009, Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group, including Broadcast Australia, was acquired by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. My apologies.

SBS:

Eric Brodrick writes: Margaret Simons is wrong when she states that Broadcast Australia is owned by the Macquarie Bank. MacBank sold BA to the Canadian Pension Investment Board three years ago. I also suggest she does some research to find out just how tight the ABC and SBS contracts with Broadcast Australia are and how heavily they are weighted in favour of the broadcasters, particularly SBS.

As a “Broadcasting (sic) Australia type” person I can state that, in general, relations between the the broadcasters and Broadcast Australia are good and the broadcasters are happy with BA’s performance and efforts to meet their obligations. There has also been a distinct improvement in these relations since the takeover by the CPIB.

Broadcast Australia is a commercial company and, as any good Crikey reader will know, is therefore expected to make money for it’s shareholders. If Margaret Simons does not like the idea of a private company owning the infrastructure and selling the airtime back to the broadcasters, don’t blame BA, blame the Howard Government for selling it off in the name of “Economic Purity” (i.e. the belief that government should not own assets or infrastructure) in the first place.

*Disclaimer: I am a Senior Broadcasting Technician employed by Broadcast Australia.

The nuclear debate:

Andrew Elder writes: Re. “Cleantech trends: the missing links stifling development” (yesterday, item 13). Giles Parkinson claims in yesterday’s Crikey that Fukushima has set the nuclear debate back five years. When you consider that today’s proponents of nuclear power are basically pushing the same lines that the Gorton Government put out in the late 1960s, that counts as progress.

In the fifty years since, opponents of nuclear power have grown in numbers and in sophisticated scientific understanding. They have made the case against nuclear power more compelling, and the case for inertia is entrenched by the fact that the case for nuclear power is no more compelling than it was fifty years ago. We missed the nuclear boat back then and you can’t really claim we’re worse off for having missed it, let alone that we somehow need to catch up.

Given that nuclear isn’t an answer in terms of greenhouse gases (nobody thinks there will be a new power station built and producing electricity in Australia by any means between now and 2020), the onus is on nuclear proponents to make a stronger case than simply to accuse opponents of being “emotional”.

Geoff Russell writes: Guy Rundle (Friday, comments) took exception to my calling him hysterical saying I’d missed the point. I think not. Here’s what you said Guy:

“As I write, the Japanese are conducting direct overflies to try and control the continuing damage — most likely a suicide mission for the pilots and crew. The Soviets resorted to this earlier, during the Chernobyl crisis by the simple expedient of ordering airforce crews to do it. No one knows how many died, but they died outside of the glare of publicity. The Japanese crews will slough their skin and muscles, and bleed out internally under the full glare of the world’s media. It may well be the reason why this step in dealing with the crisis was delayed for so long — because it would demonstrate that dealing with nuclear accidents will frequently involve the painful certain death of emergency workers. “

This is simply hysterical nonsense and everything about it is also false. It could have been easily checked and confirmed to be false. Has anybody seen Japanese helicopter crews sloughing skin and muscles? Two workers with burned feet graced every TV channel in the known universe but how did those air crews escape the paparazzi after their suicide mission?

I have written a full account but Crikey refuses to run it. Anybody interested can find it on BraveNewClimate. So here’s brief version.

The international scientific community was heavily involved in the Chernobyl aftermath. The stream of United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) reports is extensive and the American who coordinated medical relief efforts, Dr Robert Gale, has published clinical accounts in the scientific journals (e.g., here). UNSCEAR knows exactly how many pilots died dealing with Chernobyl … none (see the 2000 report for details). No pilots sloughed their skin and muscles. Zip. Zero.

There were 1125 helicopter pilots involved in 1800 flights over the Chernobyl reactor over some months. The first flights hovered over the damaged reactor to drop material on the core, but this was soon discontinued because measured radiation levels were too high. Sound familiar?

Subsequent material drops were done in passing rather than while hovering and were consequently less accurate but less risky. Had the evil Soviet empire wanted suicide missions it would have ordered pilots to hover. As it was, much of the material intended to blanket the core missed … precisely because no-one wanted to kill pilots and nobody did. Pilots involved in the early flights received on average 260 milli Sieverts of radiation which definitely elevates their cancer risk, not as much as in the people puffing near fire-escapes on city offices these days, but still a significant increase and one pilot died four years later of leukaemia.

Pilots flying later in the cleanup received a dose of about half this and none suffered acute radiation sickness.

George Monbiot has finally worked out that official sources are more reliable than Helen Caldicott. Guy Rundle would do well to read his subsequent hatchet jobs on her (here, here, here and here).

Larissa Behrendt:

John Thompson writes: Re. “Rundle: worse than horse love” (yesterday, item 3). The title says it all — Rundle has proven, from the content of this article, that he is worse than what he calls “horse love”.

For starters, “horse love” is a total misnomer; at best it is horse s-x and animal abuse, at worst it is human abuse. Secondly, Rundle, in his desperate attempts to denigrate News Ltd, and rehabilitate Larissa Behrendt, loses all credibility with anyone not of the “hard” left. He has no need to take such a stance; surely most thinking people have worked out News Ltd’s tactics, and he is not writing for people who don’t think.

I am worried about what motives Rundle might have for such an article. Is he concerned that Behrendt has indeed weakened her case against Bolt? After all this, will she now sue Price for her comment that ‘the white blackfellas should be happy about the lifestyle they have’?

Rundle is obviously not married to a feminist; he would not have dreamt of such comments were that his situation. He appears to be happy to snidely refer to Price as “someone who speaks for communities — such as Yuendumu — that she doesn’t live in”, but appears to be equally happy to defend Behrendt who lives thousands of kilometres further away, happily ensconced in academia.

Irrespective of the credibility of either woman, when they speak of indigenous communities, there can be no defence of the crass attack by Behrendt, nor of Rundle’s equally crass defence of the indefensible.

Not one of Rundle’s better efforts. It has the effect of making me question his motivation for other articles which he writes — perhaps, not a bad thing!

Joe Boswell writes: When creating words from bits of classical languages it is preferable to source the components from only one language. Guy Rundle’s piece included the word “equinophilia.” People with more taste prefer “hippophilia.