MEET A BODY of public spirited citizens, an even dozen community representatives of whom you have never heard but who nevertheless play their small part in all our lives.
Today's first assignment: Can you pick the Aborigine? (Hint: It is not the dusky gentleman third from the left)
…it’s to do with the slush fund that she was helping
to establish for people who were acting as a group within the AWU at the
time. Fudge. Well, less than a group, Jon. It essentially operated just for
Bruce Wilson and, to some extent, for his bagman, Ralph Blewett. And it
was set up for their benefit as individuals, not AWU officials.
Well, at that stage, I do remember laughing out loud on air and saying
since when should a client not act for someone because they might be
breaking the law?
Red herring. No one to my knowledge has ever suggested Gillard should
not have taken as a client someone who “might be breaking the law”.
There is plenty more where that came from. And do notice Andrew's update:
"Michael Smith rang Faine for a right of reply, but was not given one."
FURTHER to the post below about the aural torment that is Jon Faine (now mercifully off the air, thanks to the cricket), it is worth remembering that the ABC is supposed to be a market-failure broadcaster. Therefore, a solemn pledge: If PM Abbott fixes the ABC, as he is duty bound to do, and perhaps appoints a Bunyip to the board, Faine will be replaced by a show guaranteed to satisfy the scandalously unfulfilled need for cracker versions of TV theme music.
This would be a good start:
followed by this gem
It's a pity Faine has no advertisers. We could all boycott them.
IF YOU are not listening to Jon Faine this morning, well, you are missing a treat. He has been going at it for a bit over an hour, in which time this government's ABC-funded publicist has
1/ Read a transcript of a woman alleged to be Ralph Blewitt's sister, Penny, telling a Perth radio station that her brother is a crook and cannot be trusted.
2/ Interviewed PR lady and former Age industrial reporter Joanne Painter, who was mentioned in Ian Cambridge's diary of his investigation of the AWU-Wilson-Gillard love triangle as having been quoted by a third party as saying that she had agreed to spike a story on renovations to Gillard's home allegedly paid for with Brown Bag Bruce's ill-gotten gains. Here is the relevant paragraph from The Australian's story:
The Cambridge diary states that in September 1995 Mr Gries revealed
to Mr Cambridge that a journalist at The Age newspaper was going to
publish a “fairly correct” story about union-funded renovations at Ms
Gillard’s house… The diary states that Mr Gries knew the proposed
article was the work of Age journalist Joanne Painter.... According to
the diary, Mr Gries said he had “specifically requested” Painter drop
the article and she had agreed to do so. Painter declined to comment
yesterday.
Today, chatting with the oh-so-sympathetic Faine, Ms Painter described the Australian's story as "a confection", said the young and naive Gillard never crossed her radar during her "crusading" days at the Age and further denied ever having worked on such a story.
Faine did not ask Ms Painter, and she did not volunteer, why she declined the Australian's request for comment. Could it be that the newspaper's Hedley Thomas is the better-versed interlocutor and Faine a more sympathetic ear?
3/ Faine then shared his microphone with former Labor spinner and Insiders compere Barrie Cassidy, who outdid his host in asserting that there is no "there" there in all this curiosity about Gillard's past, honesty and character.
Scrotum Face then announced that listeners should check the taxpayer-funded Drum later in the day, where he promised a further demolition of the baseless conspiracy against a good and virtuous woman. Ben Eltham's earlier effort needs a little bolstering, evidently.
John Howard made a half-hearted effort to clean out the ABC's stable. Prime Minister Abbott, if he is worthy of that office, will need to do a proper job.
ONE OF the nice things about being Michael Leunig must surely be that Age readers are of like mind, which is to say so narrow in their perspective that a simple meme brings absolute fulfillment. In the Duck Botherer's case it is the idea that Jews and Nazis are somehow comparable. Remember this little effort from a few years ago:
That manifestation of Leunig's insight was so offensive even then-editor Michael Gawenda refused to publish it, which is saying something, because there was almost nothing else he would not commit to print. Gawenda is long gone, but Leunig's Nazi fixation remains in effect, as may be seen in today's half measure of wit:
Regular visitors to the Billabong will need no explanation of the second cartoon's inspiration, but for the leftoids who stumble in from time to time (Numbers, where have you gone?), read this.
BACK in the Sixties, the ABC honoured its charter by producing quantities of genuinely educational material, of which the clip below is an example:
These days things are bit different. Rather than the Why Is It So? approach and its progression from hypothesis to experiment, observation and conclusion, the order has been reversed. Now the ABC's resident hip science dude begins with a finding and assembles the evidence to make it stand up. If a few facts get mangled in the process, so be it. And if a bit of sensationalism is required to sell the line, no worries; the planet's future is at stake, after all. The important thing is not to make children understand, it is to make them believe.
Make no mistake, Julius Sumner Miller and Ruben "The Surfing Scientist" Meerman are directly comparable in the roles the ABC of then and now have assigned them. Isn't that sad.
UPDATE: Not entirely comparable, actually. It is inconceivable Julius Sumner Miller would have put his name to this remark:
THE Silly's environmental guru, a modest fellow with much to be modest about, wonders why this little blog has published nine posts concerning his sweet self:
Barely more than a youngster and evidently quite easily distracted, Ben will learn as he grows older that finding time for important things isn't all that hard. Indeed, one can even get in a fair bit of golf and fishing without entirely forsaking curiosity.
Take this story, for example, which Cubby and colleague Peter Hannam rushed into pixels yesterday afternoon. Apart from demonstrating that there are still a couple of good things to be said of the ALP -- that would be "Martin" + "Ferguson" -- it also demonstrates what happens when reporters allow a blinkered sympathy for the cause to trump an inquisitive nature. It is not that the story is wrong, or not obviously so, it is simply that it neglects to ask any obvious questions. For example, here is a video of the researchers discussing their methods, which involve strapping some sort of a sniffing device to their car and then going for a drive.
It all seems quite reasonable, and perhaps there is nothing that can be said to fault it. But no reader of Cubby's story would know that because there is no mention of what other men and women of science might make of the technique. For example:
On the bitumen and travelling at speed, the car's engine revolutions would be low and its emissions, which might (or might not) contaminate the readings, could conceivably produce the "natural" 2ppm-or-less referenced in the video. By the same token, the bitumen itself might seal emissions, keeping readings artificially low.On broken ground -- beside a pipeline, say -- where the vehicle will be making harder work of it on more porous surfaces, recorded emissions could quite conceivably be higher.
The thing is, while these questions arise in a curious mind, they seem not to have nagged at Cubby, who appears to have made no effort to ascertain the efficacy of high-speed automated sniffing.
Nor has he placed the researchers in the context of their views, which a link to the video (above) might have achieved. Each researcher is quite clearly a warmist, so the diligently curious would want to place their pronouncements in that frame, just as it might also have been worth noting that Dr Santos is doing very nicely with climate-related ARC grants. Very nicely indeed.
And then there is the manner in which, as Ferguson noted, the sniffers began trumpeting their findings before getting the all-clear via that peer review business we hear so much about -- at least we hear about it when it suits the sort of alarmists the shark sooker is given to quoting. As for deniers, well they get a less sympathetic hearing, as this sad video of a young zealot having his ears pinned back attests. Make a note, by the way, of Cubby's emphasis at the 5:50 mark on the vital importance of peer review. Yesterday, however, when writing of the paper that drew Ferguson's ire, Cubby's approach was markedly different. The lack of peer review was merely mentioned and passed over. As for the fact that the paper has been seized upon and trumpeted by anti-CSG groups far and wide, well that context is not mentioned at all.
That a near-bankrupt company still finds the money to pay Cubby's salary and that he returns the favour by being so often unquestioning is really quite sad. Carbonphobia is costing all of us, even Cubby, a good deal of money. Curiosity is a splendid thing, often satisfying in itself. As a steward of the public trust, Cubby really should give it a try. His warmist mates might think less of him, but he could draw on the compensatory satisfaction of knowing he would no longer be accused of serving as an eager shill.
Until then, someone has to do it -- no matter how much an inquiring nature interferes with golf and fishing. Some things are worth the time, and getting as close as possible to the truth is prominent amongst them.
A NOTE: Seriously, Ben, curiosity does not demand all that much time. This post, start to finish, including the googling, writing and linking, took all of 38 minutes 53 minutes with corrections. You must spend at least that much time every day policing the office re-cycling bin.
