Tame Ted's Guest List

THE upcoming Melbourne Writers Festival grows more thrilling by the day. Much more than a corroboree for pinata-whackers, self-hating Jews and mates-taking-care-of-mates, it will also provide a forum to discuss the latest trends in quality journalism. Amongst the guests, footsore climate jogger and essence of impartiality Melissa Fyfe, who will be sharing the stage with aurally gifted and university-certified public intellectual Tim Dunlop.

But wait, that's not all!

On one particular panel of inky festibators, along with Fyfe and Dunlop, audiences will find noted expert on matters media Sue Roff, whose credentials are exquisite (emphasis added at the Billabong):

Sue Roff is the Executive Director at Arts Project Australia, a centre of excellence that supports artists with intellectual disability by promoting their work and advocating for inclusion within contemporary art practice. She has an extensive career in arts management, sponsorship, fundraising, partnering and volunteering.

The MWF is always a lot of fun, but this year's conclave promises to exceed all previous efforts at selective inclusiveness. From red to green, the guest list covers all the acceptable colours in Tame Ted Baillieu's paintbox of public funding.

Victorians attending the festival should be very pleased. Victorians underwriting the events with their tax dollars and speeding fines perhaps less so.

The Fyfe And Dumb Corps

UNLESS Mrs Rinehart happened to be in Victoria last night and in sore need of an emetic, there is little chance she caught the weekly Victorian edition of 7.30. This is a great pity, as any slight temptation she might entertain to sign that fabled Fairfax charter of editorial independence would have vanished faster than China-bound cargoes of Gaia-raped ore dip beneath the horizon. The segment on Fairfax was ABC-predictable, especially in the unintended irony of its juxtaposition. First, a dignified older gentleman, Mr Malcolm Schmidtke, was called upon to reference the Phage’s glory days and also to recall the public outcry that met Conrad Black’s brief dalliance with the company in the 1980s. Public support was intense, Schmidtke recalled, adding that money “arrived in buckets” to fund a rebel staff’s ads against the incoming owner.

That was the Phage of then. The ABC’s next source of journalistic rectitude was enviro-crusader Melissa Fyfe, whose tax returns list her occupation as “journalist”. One of her first utterances was very good news indeed: If Mrs Rinehart declines to sign away editorial control of the company she is buying and hoping to save, Ms Fyfe let it be known that she would quit, most likely – her use of the conditional perhaps reflecting the tardiness of ABC mates in coming through with firm offers of future employment.

But the fascinating part of the interview, the one Mrs Rinehart should not miss, came at the 4:30 mark, when Fyfe was asked about the importance of the charter. Here is her response:

“What we don’t know about Gina Rinehart is her true intentions with Fairfax. She hasn’t really said very much, she has, obviously, got particular views about mining, about climate change.”

Fyfe then went on on to explain exactly what her variety of “quality journalism” entails:

“I’ve been committed to doing journalism, a lot of journalism, around climate change, for example, and I would find it quite disturbing, for example, if I was told we couldn’t do that anymore. That would be very disturbing for me and, I’m sure, for our readers.”

So what sort of journalism does Fyfe believe to be in so much need of editorial protection? Why, advocacy journalism, of course, as the introduction to the compendium of paeans to wind and solar investment she penned while jogging down the east coast to raise awareness of climate change leaves no doubt. Yes, when it comes to pushing the catastropharian creed, Fyfe goes that extra mile (or thousand):

In the lead-up to December's Copenhagen climate talks, 35 emergency services workers are running from one end of Australia to the other. Sunday Age politics reporter Melissa Fyfe joins their journey, supported by The Age, as they meet the nation's leading climate experts and explore the latest developments in clean energy.

Here are just two examples of the work Fyfe believes readers of a Rinehart-controlled Fairfax may not see in quite so much gushing profusion. There are plenty of others, but the footy is about start and first things come first at the Billabong:

Fyfe on solar polar :

This technique, said [ANU’s Dr Keith Lovegrove], could see Australia use its massive solar resource to export clean fuel to countries such as Japan … "what we need to do is shift the Australian economy so that we get an equivalent income from an export to what coal gives us at the moment."

Well, Fyfe gets her wish on July 1, when the carbon tax comes in. We’ll all pay more for everything in order to make the blue-sky technology she favours somewhat more competitive. As for the Mildura solar array that so impressed Fyfe, it continues to burn public monies without, so far, producing a solitary volt.

Fyfe on the Great Barrier Reef:

When coral scientists first looked at the impact of global warming on reefs, they focused on rising sea temperatures and bleaching. This is still a concern and likely to impact large parts of the Great Barrier Reef, but the scientists now believe ocean acidification could be the process that will push the world's reefs to the edge. 

That edge may be quite some distance from the present if Townsville’s Institute of Marine Science is to be believed. It seems the reef is doing quite nicely, as James Delingpole recently confirmed.

Schmidtke observed that public support for the Age luvvies’ campaign against the one person who might preserve their newspaper seems not to be much in evidence. The activism of Melissa Fyfe and others may have something to do with that.

Words Fail Her

INTREPID JOGGER for climate change awareness and entirely unbiased, straight bat investigative reportette Melissa Fyfe lodges a vaguely detailed request for information about a Victorian government department and "any" savings achieved by consolidating operations.

She doesn't get info, but she does get a few tips on clear writing and thinking from departmental spokesman Ross Gilmour:

At present there are three matters which have the effect that your request does not, unfortunately, provide sufficient information for me to identify the documents you seek. I make the following comment about your request, which is presently ambiguous and unclear, and because of which a search for documents has not been commenced.

First, your request seeks “any” of certain specific documents. Could you please let me know if you mean that you seek only one document which contains the information described and that single document would suffice, or whether you seek all such documents in the possession of CenITex.

Secondly, it is ambiguous as to what is meant by the term “documenting the savingsachieved”. Do you seek a document recording the amount of any such savings, or do you seek documents which set out or describe how any savings are achieved (regardless of whether they record the amount of any savings), or do you seek something else?

Thirdly, it is uncertain and ambiguous what you mean by the phrase “the savings achieved due to CenITex’s centralisation of IT services across the Victorian public sector”.

Accordingly, consistently with my obligations under the FOI Act, I invite you to consult in writing with CenITex with a view to amending or clarifying your request....

Gilmour might have saved himself some trouble if he had simply replied that an infestation of moths spawned by climate change had eaten every single document. She would have believed every word.

Update: Several commenters see Ross Gilmour as being more at fault than his investigative correspondent, noting that Fyfe was attempting to gain information on the use and/or saving of public monies, a goal we can all agree is laudable. The problem is that Fyfe’s request is so broad it is useless – not least because it allows so much room for wiggle and obfuscation.

Had she said, “I seek copies of ALL financial estimates and analyses of efficiencies estimated to result from, and subsequently attributed to, the consolidation of IT operations”, the grey area in which bureaucrats frolic would have been substantially narrowed.

There is little sympathy at the Billabong for bureaucrats of any variety, but one must understand Gilmour’s position. He might, for example, have gamed Fyfe’s request and tossed her just a few meaningless documents while retaining the juicy ones. That would have qualified as “any”.

Similarly, because her request is so broad, he might have dumped a tonne of documents in Fyfe’s lap, which would not have pleased Fairfax’s bean-counters, as FOI search-and-copying costs involve $40-per-hour fees for search and supervision, plus 20 cents per photocopied sheet.

A further thought: One would have thought the Age would have, somewhere in the building, an FOI specialist --  either an in-house counsel or specialist on retainer -- available to provide advice and vet requests before submission. Perhaps that person was laid-off along with the newspaper's sub-editors.

Rain Of Error

GIVEN they are published in The Phage, today’s stories on the debacle that is Victoria’s desalination plant are surprisingly good. That the plant’s delayed construction is a black hole for public monies is well known, as is the $650 million per year it will cost to maintain, regardless of whether it is used or not. Just to put that annual figure in perspective, it is roughly 50% in excess of the total dollars raised in a typical 12 month period by the state’s speed cameras

While it good that The Age addresses the issue, there is, of course, a quibble, which in this case is the low prominence accorded the climate change hysteria that did so much to inspire the Brumby government’s headlong rush to wash huge sums down the gullytrap. Today’s Age barely mentions that factor, just a handful of passing words, before the newspaper’s Investigations Team rewsumes its sketch the broader picture.

It is a curious omission – but then again, perhaps not, as a current member of the Investigations Team was one of the prime instigators of the panic that prompted the desalination plant’s rushed construction. That would be Melissa “I’m Jogging Against Climate Change” Fyfe, who penned this report in 2009. It is worth reproducing in its entirety:

It's not drought, it's climate change, say scientists

SCIENTISTS studying Victoria's crippling drought have, for the first time, proved the link between rising levels of greenhouse gases and the state's dramatic decline in rainfall.
A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change.

Scientists working on the $7 million South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative say the rain has dropped away because the subtropical ridge - a band of high pressure systems that sits over the country's south - has strengthened over the past 13 years.

These dry, high pressure systems have become stronger, bigger and more frequent and this intensification over the past century is closely linked to rising global temperatures, they found.
Climate data from across the past century shows the subtropical ridge has peaked and waned, often in line with rising global temperatures.

But to see what role greenhouse gases played in the recent intensification, the scientists used sophisticated American computer climate models.

When they ran simulations with only the ''natural'' influences on temperature, such as changing levels of solar activity, they found there was no intensification of the subtropical ridge and no decline in rainfall.

But when they added human influences, such as greenhouse gases, aerosols and ozone depletion, the models mimicked what has occurred in south-east Australia - the high pressure systems strengthened, causing a significant drop in rainfall.

''It's reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,'' said the bureau's Bertrand Timbal.

In the minds of a lot of people, the rainfall we had in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.''

But not all experts agree. Murray-Darling Basin Authority chief Rob Freeman told a water summit in Melbourne last week he believed the extreme climate patterns that have dried out south-east Australia would not prove to be permanent.

''Some commentators say this is the new future. I think that is an extreme position and probably a position that's not helpful to take,'' he said, expressing confidence that wetter times would return.

Dr Timbal believes 80 per cent of the rain loss in south-east Australia can be attributed to the intensification of the subtropical ridge. If the next phase of the study is approved, the scientists hope to work out exactly how rising temperatures result in a stronger subtropical ridge.

The research program, supported by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, the federal Department of Climate Change and the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, was set up in 2006 to solve the puzzle of why south-east Australia had experienced such a dramatic loss of rain. The program covers the Murray-Darling Basin, Victoria and parts of South Australia.

Monash University's Neville Nicholls, a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who has also published on the subtropical ridge, said he believed the program's results were right.

''We did think that the loss of rain was simply due to the [rain-bearing] storms shifting south, off the continent,'' Professor Nicholls said.

''Now we know the reason they have slipped south is that the subtropical ridge has become more intense. It is getting bigger and stronger and that is pushing the rainstorms further south.''

The scientific results have implications for many state government water programs and drought funding, some of which factor in climate change. Projections for the water coming to Melbourne in the north-south pipeline are based on the assumption that Victoria will return to rainfall levels of last century.

Melbourne's dams get roughly a third less water than they did before the drought began in 1996.

Fyfe is not amongst the authors of today’s reports. But as a bona fide investigative journalist, one presumably committed to truth and setting the record straight, she will no doubt revisit the story above in order to review both its assertions and the credibility of those who made them.

Correspondence of the quoted Neville Nicholls, for instance, might represent a fruitful use of an investigative report’s time. And if she finds nothing in those missives, no harm done. At least she will have found  where Climategate 1.0 and 2.0 emails are available, fully searchable and, best of all, avail;able to be read by absolutely anyone, even investigative journalists.

The Age's Sward Of Justice

MELBOURNE'S Occupists must be feeling most unloved these days, having been evicted from the City Square and finding themselves with no particular place to go. Treasury Gardens is mooted as one possible site on which to build a just society, albeit a small and stinky one, but the campers would be preaching only to the converted. As the original Occupists, the park's possums have long presumed the right to invade private property, keep residents awake and crap in their ceilings. As for public servants from the adjoining government offices, they need no convincing that wealth is to be left in a citizen's care only until the state can manufacture its next excuse for additional levies, taxes, fines and speed cameras.

But there is one place the Occupists are welcome  -- the patch of grass outside The Age office at the corner of Collins and Spencer streets. Best of all, the invitation to relocate is almost an official one, courtesy of senior investigative reporter Melissa Fyfe, who is all for it, as she explained to tweeting activist Perry Stalsis (who surely has the stomach for revolution):

Perry Stalsis: @melfyfe been trying to move #occupymelbourne to grass outside Age office, where we can be seen and reach commuters. Your thoughts
15 hours ago
in reply to @PerryStalsis1 ↑
Melissa Fyfe:@PerryStalsis1 a good idea, I would have thought. Do you think you can do it?11 hours ago

Blow off the Treasury Gardens, you anti-capitalist crusaders, and move to the Age's front door. As Fairfax shareholders can testify, your hosts share a no less pronounced aversion to the profit motive. And it is not as if Age journalists would be critical, not at all.With just one exception, they love you guys.

Melbournians would benefit as well. Could there be a better example of what the paper represents these days than a filthy, chaotic, noisy and incoherent mob of group-thinking public urinators taking up residence in The Age's front window?


(Thanks to tipster Spencer Collins for spotting the tweets and dashing off a very informative email)

Red and Green and Dishonest All Over

GOOD Lord, but those facts are difficult, troublesome things. Suppose, for example, you are Greens publicity agent Melissa Fyfe, whose salary is paid by the Sunday Phage, and you really, really need to need to write an upbeat profile of Lee Rhiannon, who will shortly take her seat in the Senate. Well, there is your problem right there. How do you say nice things about a creature whose support for Islamic nut jobs, amongst other fruit loop causes, has divided the Greens and embarrassed Saint Bob?

Answer: Choose your words carefully, skate lightly over the bad stuff and, when all else fails, stretch euphemism to breaking point. The key is to sustain that flow of happy publicity without alienating Rhianon or your other pals in the party, the ones who think she is a loose cannon and will be a magnet for grief come the next election.

In today’s Phage, Fyfe demonstrates how a true Fairfax professional navigates such dilemmas. On the matter of personal politics, devote just one sentence to Rhiannon’s slavish adoration of Moscow, which she supported even after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, when she bolted with fellow lickers of jackboots to the Socialist Party of Australia.

Next, try to calm down Mr and Mrs Stringbag – you know, the sort who will be paying a lot more for everything when the Greens’ carbon tax becomes law. Do this by insisting Rhiannon “is no longer a socialist.”  Not at all! She just wants “more government regulation and a bigger role for public services such as education, health and transport, but not the overthrow of capitalism.”  Well that is OK, then. She is not a socialist, she just wants government to run everything

And when it comes to Rhiannon’s red-nappy upbringing, Fyfe demonstrates a skill that is the journalistic equivalent of a shonky home renovator’s eagerness to slap nice, clean wallpaper over some very toxic mould.

The consensus is that Rhiannon is quick to be combative, as The Sunday Age learnt while asking about her mother's frequent travels overseas for work.

For work!

When her mum, vile harridan Freda Brown, died in 2009, the Silly published an obituary that listed some of those “work” trips:

The Silly: She was elected president of the 1975 Women's International Democratic Federation congress in Berlin.

Backround: The WIDF was a Soviet front and the Congress was not held “in Berlin” unless you were using a pre-WWII map. It was held in East Berlin, where the one measure of equality was the Stasi’s habit of spying on everyone, oppressed housewives included. Typical chatter in the ladies room at at WIDF congresses: “Our children cannot be safe until American war-mongers are silenced.” The CIA’s appraisal of the WIDF and other front groups is to be found here. Yes, it is the CIA doing the appraising, but the file’s observations about the clash between gals of the Peking-line and Soviet-line stands up very nicely to history's scrutiny.

The Silly: While the women's union's sympathies were left-wing and some members were communists, most were not members of any political party and rejected the doctrinaire narrowness of communist leaders … Members dug wells for women in many low-income countries and campaigned for breastfeeding of babies.

Background: See the CIA report (linked above), which supports a vigorous scepticism about the clam that the WIDF concerned itself primarily with water tables and lactation.

Then there are Brown’s other travels, as the Silly also explained:

Coming home with US cluster bombs, she was attacked for working with the enemy. In Cuba, she ran workshops for women from across Latin America. In Moscow in 1977, she was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.

And her voyaging continued:

“She was one of the first westerners to enter the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps after the slaughter of 1982. She visited Cambodia shortly after Vietnam overthrew the Pol Pot regime, travelled through the Western Sahara with the Polisario Front, and worked with the African National Congress Women's League.”

To Melissa Fyfe, all of the above is just “work”, not tireless crusading for bloody tyranny. And while her astute choice of words probably means Rhiannon will continue to return Fyfe’s calls, such a flippant disregard for accuracy ill-serves Phage readers.

Freda Brown was a devoted warrior in the Soviet cause -- much, much more than one of the “useful idiots” in whom Lenin invested such hopes and joy. As for Fyfe, she fits that description very nicely indeed.