Why Media Watch is wrong about journalists and Twitter

Australia’s most important media watchdog made a rare lapse last night. ABC’s Media Watch got its message wrong where they warned off journalists from making controversial statements on Twitter. Little-known journalist Adam Turner was the scapegoat new host Paul Barry (no relation) pilloried to prove a flawed point.

Adam Turner is an Australian freelance technology journalist, formerly Melbourne deputy editor of Next and the business IT sections of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He left The Age in 2005 and has been freelance ever since providing “news, features, reviews, blogs and podcasts to various business and consumer technology publications.”

Turner is a regular user of Twitter with over 2,000 tweets. Like many in the media he was online on 21 August as the federal election results came in. Turner was an avid contributor to the #ausvotes tag with at least 50 tweets on the day (including two mentioned by Media Watch since been deleted). Turner had an opinion and was not afraid to share it.

He was no fan of Tony Abbott. There were tweets like “If Abbott wins, New Zealand will be swamped with boat people on Monday” and “If Abbott wins, helicopter waiting to fly Kerry O’Brien off the ABC roof as coalition forces close in”. His tweets were partisan but hardly noteworthy. They were little different to hundreds of other similar tweets that night from those supporting the left parties.

Turner’s turning point came as Tony Abbott emerged to address his party and the country on live TV. According to the program transcript, Turner tweeted “Listen to this c——-er gloat when he hasn’t even won” which he followed shortly by “this a—hole is trying to make a victory speech, complete with cheersquad”. I suspect Turner spelt out the words cocksucker and arsehole in his tweets though I can’t be certain as they have been deleted. They would have been lost in a swathe of tweets with the same hashtag, many would have had harsher words to say about Abbott, an extremely divisive public figure.

But someone had it in for Turner and informed the ABC. Media Watch made it seem like the pinnacle of investigative journalism tracking him down as Barry announced “I think we have our man”. All they did was count his number of followers (as if that had any meaning) and then grab the text off his bio that I’ve reproduced above. Both the bio and the tweets are openly available to anyone who looks at Turner’s Twitter page or follows him. There was no suggestion Turner had anything to hide.

Media Watch wanted to save Turner from himself. “Luckily Turner’s not a political correspondent or he might now be unemployed,” Barry said. “But even so, why on earth did this seem like a good idea?” He compared Turner to Catherine Deveny sacked for discussing child sexuality with her tweet “I do so hope Bindi Irwin gets laid”. Leaving aside the sanctimonious outcry from rival media, the Deveny furore ignores the fact The Age probably wanted to shaft the troublesome columnist anyway. Her tweets had nothing to do with her work at The Age.

Similarly with Turner. What he got up to on election night with a few bourbons on board was hardly unethical. It also had nothing to do with his work. Yet Media Watch felt the need to ask The Age’s editor Paul Ramadge about his freelancer. Ramadge’s reply was succinct “[Adam Turner] has received an official first and final warning.” Media Watch’s verdict was it was an “embarrassing mistake”. Barry didn’t seemed to understand the openness and conversation that underpins social media tools like Twitter.

This became apparent with Media Watch’s second target this week. ABC WA journalist Geoff Hutchison was forced to delete his Twitter account after he had a go at Tony Abbott during a Q&A program in the week before the election. Hutchison tweeted “Tony, why are you frightened of intercourse with Julia? Is it because we will be watching and measuring?”

This sarcastic offering offended someone enough to contact ABC management who ordered him to delete his account. ABC Radio spokesman Warwick Tiernan said the comments had breached ABC’s social media policy. “Geoff’s comments, posted on a personal Twitter account, do not meet ABC social media guidelines and do not represent the views of the ABC,” he said.

Media Watch claimed the problem with Hutchison’s tweets was it interfered with his job which to be objective. Under ABC’s social media rules staff are directed not to mix “the professional and the personal in ways likely to bring the ABC into disrepute” and not imply the ABC endorses personal views. Hutchison was not working when he attacked Abbott. No reasonable person could imagine his personal comments could bring the ABC into disrepute. It is also an insult to Hutchison to think he could not be professional enough to leave his personal opinions to one side when interviewing politicians.

Media Watch inadvertently let slip the real reason he was forced to delete the account. “Stupid comments like that make it harder for him to do that job properly… and they’re a gift to the ABC’s critics.” What Barry is really saying is that this has nothing to do with left-wingers putting their gripes on the Internet and everything to do with not giving ABC’s right-wing enemies the opportunity to make tired claims about bias.

Andrew Bolt (an able interviewer of politicians despite his own well-known political biases) was quickest off the mark lumping Turner and Hutchison together in a rogue’s gallery with Deveny, Marieke Hardy and Daniel Burt. “Yes, only five,” Bolt admitted in his final sentence, “but all attacking from the Left, with the ABC and barbarians [Fairfax] strongly represented.” Bolt avoided drawing conclusions letting his audience do the dirty work for him.

If Barry and his cohorts are frightened by streams of invective from “ABC’s Critics” like Bolt and his audience then we really have a problem. Silencing Turner and Hutchison achieves no purpose. We need more robust views not less. We need to know what our politicians and our journalists think, not frighten them off into platitudes. Guiding social media policy should be an underlying philosophy of publish and be damned. There will be those who will damn the ABC no matter what they do or what their policies say. Media Watch should be standing up to them not for them.

Government proving automatic for the people

Despite the fact a week has passed after the Australian election and there is no government, the sky has not yet fallen in. The two major parties are more or less the same strength in parliament though the Liberals could still win 76-74 with the bush bloc (a gang of four not three). But as the bushies are realising, there is no good reason yet to sack the government. The rest of us are also finding out it does not matter yet who has the key to the Lodge.

Raymond Williams once said there were no masses just ways of seeing people as masses. But masses are useful constructs. In Australia they are the ways in which we govern our lives. The laws are still generally obeyed, the courts do their duty unimpeded and the health system is showing no more signs of collapse than usual.

No one has stopped coming to work or school and very few protest in the streets. The media has kept publishing, though they and the markets were the only ones in any way agitated with the political outcome. People at home consume their media in the same detached way they consume their burger.

Political stasis won’t last forever but it is re-assuring to see how unimportant politics is in everyday life. What the hung parliament is telling us is the choices we make to elect a government are small compared to our choices we make every minute of our lives in our jobs, in our relationships and in the haphazard game of life. We create our own politics to deal with all these realities of identity.

British writer Frank Furedi said he was struck by the depoliticised character of the Australian election and no-one had strong views on any of the top issues except for hardened party activists. “Yet people were far from complacent, and they clearly wanted to improve their lives,” Furedi wrote. “What really seemed to preoccupy them was their economic security: jobs, high prices, their children’s future.” 

Furedi conceded it was an interesting election in the end. If we are no longer sure what parties stand for any more, we remain interested in the health of the broader polity. Julia Gillard is still officially the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister’s site acknowledges the caretaker period has not ended. The transcript of the PM’s media conference today on the Labor site shows a steely Gillard is still very much in the hot seat.

Rob Oakeshott is one of the independents she must deal with and he has proposed a unity cabinet. This is exactly what Australia needs for the next ten years if it is serious about tackling climate change, a topic close to Oakeshott’s heart. “It is a cheeky option, and it’s not for me to pick cabinets, [but] Malcolm Turnbull in a Julia Gillard government or Kevin Rudd as foreign minister in a Tony Abbott government?” he said. “Here is a moment when we can explore the edges and explore outside the box.” Needless to say he was put back in his box and his plan was “shott down” in flames. As politicians and the media remind him, power is not for sharing in this country.

Yet maybe the paradigm of adversarial politics is changing. In the vacuum of ideas Labor and Liberal have more in common that what divides them. The independents have been a refreshing shot in the arm. For Gillard, the bush bloc may even be easier to deal with than the “faceless men” of Labor politics. It might just be the “Real Julia” can face a minority government future with more confidence than if she was handled the poisoned chalice of outright victory.

Zuma strengthens South African alliance with China

South African President Jacob Zuma is looking for ways to cut his country’s trade deficit with its largest partner as he begins a three day visit to China. Last year South Africa ran a $2.7 billion trade deficit with China and Zuma’s Trade Minister Rob Davies explained why in a press conference in Beijing today. “In South Africa’s export market to China there is a preponderance of primary products, and in our imports from China there is a preponderance of value-added goods,” he said. Davies and Zuma want Chinese manufacturers of power equipment, railway cars, solar water heaters and vehicles to consider setting up factories in South Africa.

The relationship is growing in importance as China continues its push for influence across Africa. In the first six months of 2010, there was $10.8 billion trade between the two countries almost half as much again as the same period last year. Zuma will hold talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing and will also meet Premier Wen Jiabao and tour the World Expo site in Shanghai. Zuma will be accompanied by an enormous delegation of 300 ministers and businesspeople as the Africans aim to emulate the Chinese growth rate.Zuma expects to sign a number of agreements and memorandums of understanding during the visit. These include a declaration on the establishment of a comprehensive strategic partnership, and MOUs on co-operation in the fields of geology and mineral resources, environment management, transport and railways. There will also be a business seminar in Beijing with over 200 South African business leaders and entrepreneurs to enhance and strengthen economic co-operation. The visit will conclude on Thursday when Zuma views the South African Pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.

The relationship between the two countries is one of the fastest growing in the world. The countries did not re-establish relations until 1998 but within 11 years China had overtaken the US to become SA’s largest exporter and importer of goods and services. Zuma has called the trip “crucial” with China National Nuclear Corp in talks to build a nuclear power plant in South Africa. The relationship is important to China too which imports iron ore, iron and steel to fuel its growing economy. Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said his government would encourage domestic companies to invest in South Africa’s mining and resources sector.

According to Chinese State news agency Xinhua, Zuma and Jintao signed a Beijing Declaration in the Great Hall of the People today. The declaration contained 38 bilateral cooperation agreements, including political dialogues, trade, investment, mineral exploration and agriculture to joint efforts in the UN and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. The declaration also promised to strengthen cooperation between the two nations in political and regional affairs by “establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership based on equality, mutual benefit and common development”.

Zuma’s China trip is a welcome relief to his mounting problems at home. The success of the World Cup is a distant glow as a strike by more than a million public sector workers enters its second week. Strikers include teachers, healthcare workers, police, customs officials and clerks seeking pay raises double the inflation rate. The strike is paralysing the economy and police have used rubber bullets to disperse angry protesters on the streets. Unions are pressing for a settlement but Zuma said he will not negotiate until he returns home.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, the health of South Africa’s economy is tied to China whose demand for SA resources is keeping the rand high. The currency’s strength continues despite the strikes and persistently high unemployment and public-sector strikes. The public sector unions were crucial in getting Zuma the top job so it is likely he will meet their demands. This will push South Africa’s already high inflation rate to well over 5 percent by year’s end, and lead to another cycle of pay demands next year. The 68-year-old president will need all the help he can get from new Chinese alliances.

Australian Academy of Science on the science of climate change

In a frenzied last week of a Federal election campaign, a new report from the Australian Academy of Science flew under the radar. The 24-page report, The Science of Climate Change, Questions and Answers is a concise and readable interdisciplinary look at factors impacting climate change. The report acknowledges the difficulty of bringing components of a complex climate system together in one model. Yet considerable progress has been made, the AAS said, and climate change should not be beyond public understanding.

The document’s science has four lines of evidence: the physical principles of greenhouse gases, the record of the distant past, measurements from the last century, and climate models that use the other three lines. These models predict a rise of between 2 and 7°C on pre-industrial levels “depending on future greenhouse gas emissions and on the ways that models represent the sensitivity of climate to small disturbances.”

At the lower end, we can expect repercussions in the form of heatwaves, higher global average rainfall, impacts to marine biodiversity and rising sea levels. At the 7°C end things get really nasty. All the 2°C changes will be magnified to a point where the scientists coolly say “such a large and rapid change in climate would likely be beyond the adaptive capacity of many societies and species.”

The report shows we are not in a natural cycle of warming. Nothing in the last 2,000 years is like the last 100 and if we add another 2-7 degrees it will be like nothing in the last 10,000 years. Data over a million years show Earth’s surface has risen and fallen by about 5°C, through 10 major ice age cycles. Feedbacks in the glacial cycle show strong links between global temperature, atmospheric water vapour, polar ice caps and greenhouse gases. In the past million years, the disturbances to the cycle have come from fluctuations in Earth’s solar orbit. In modern times human emissions affecting greenhouse gases reinforce change in the temperature, water vapour and ice caps. Even small influences can amplify into large changes.

Average temperatures have increased over 100 years to 2009 by more than 0.7°C. The global land surface is warming twice as fast as the ocean surface. There has been widespread melting of mountain glaciers and ice caps, particularly since the 1990s. The Greenland ice sheet and West Antarctica are also losing ice. Ocean levels are more than 20 cm higher than in 1870.

In Australia the average surface temperature has increased by 0.7°C in half a century. There is a continent-wide average increase in the frequency of extremely hot days and a decrease in cold days. Rainfall changes are less consistent though it is declining in southwest Western Australia and the southeast coast. In the oceans, there has been a southward shift of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Sea level has risen at 1.2 mm per year since 1920, with more frequent coastal inundations.

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide began to rise three hundred years ago and accelerated rapidly in the 20th century. From 2000 to 2007 emissions grew by 3.5 percent per year, exceeding almost all assumed scenarios from the late 1990s. Deforestation, fossil fuel burning, other industrial sources like cement production all contribute. Only 45 percent ends up as atmospheric CO2. Thirty percent is swallowed by increased plant growth and another quarter is making seawater more acidic.

If current levels of emissions continue, the AAS is tipping a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels by 2050, and possibly a tripling by 2100. This would produce a warming of around 4.5°C (plus or minus 2.5) to 2100. What this means to climate and sea levels is educated guesswork, but all scenarios are gloomy. “The further climate is pushed beyond the envelope of relative stability that has characterised the last several millennia,” concluded the report, “the greater becomes the risk of passing tipping points that will result in profound changes in climate, vegetation, ocean circulation or ice sheet stability.”

Despite its stark message, the report got little media coverage. Denialist-leaning News Limited muddied its coverage with an unrelated story about New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research which faces a legal challenge by sceptics group Climate Science Coalition. The Sydney Morning Herald preferred to highlight there were “still scientific uncertainties about some of the details of climate change”.

Australian hung parliament – lessons from 1940

Australia has woken up to its first hung parliament in 70 years. The 21 August 2010 election has striking similarities with its 21 September 1940 forebear. Like now, Australia was involved in a faraway war which had bipartisan support. Like now Australia had a first term government (with Menzies leading the United Australia Party) and like now it had an insipid election campaign where Menzies refused to make any specific promises (though his opponent John Curtin was more forthcoming).

In 1940 Menzies and his Coalition partners dropped eight seats to Labor and its allies leaving it with 36 out of 74 seats. It turned to two Victorian independents to keep them in power. Arthur Coles is best remembered as a founder of Australia’s second largest retail group. But he was also Mayor of Melbourne in the 1930s and he gave that up to win the seat of Henty in 1940. Alexander Wilson was a member of the Northern Irish aristocracy who joined the Australian squattocracy when he moved to Victoria to become a wheat grower. He ran as an independent in 1937 and held on three years later.

Coles and Wilson were conservatives and they gave their support to the UAP. With the war worsening in Europe, Menzies spent most of 1941 in London arguing strategy with Churchill. But his position was worsening at home. He was forced to resign in favour of Country Party leader Arthur Fadden. Coles and Wilson were upset at Menzies’ overthrow and didn’t like Fadden’s agrarian-socialist philosophy. They voted against his budget causing the Government to resign in October 1941. After pressure from Governor General Gowrie, the independents agreed to support a Curtin ministry. The Labor Government muddled through to 1943 when they inflicted a crushing defeat on the Conservatives.

The 1940 election showed it is possible to avoid an election for three years despite a lack of a majority. The three key independents in 2010, Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter and Tony Windsor, all have impeccable conservative records that make them an ideal fit to back Tony Abbott as the next prime minister. As an independent state MP in 1991 Windsor kept Liberal leader Nick Greiner in power.

But as I wrote last night there is no guarantee it will happen this time. Katter and Windsor have unfinished business with former colleagues in the National Party. Both despise Barnaby Joyce and Katter said Nationals leader Warren Truss “attacked me personally last night”. Both support the NBN rollout, which the Coalition has rejected on the philosophical grounds it is owned by the Government. Katter said there is no alternative. “A privatised broadband, I mean, please, don’t even talk about it, privatised Telstra has been absolutely disastrous for rural Australia,” he said.

Oakeshott has said a key policy of any government should be an ETS – putting him at odds with the Abbott agenda. He called climate change a top priority. “I would personally say, let’s go back to the Garnaut report and try and get something through based on that,” Oakeshott said today. “The template is there, stick to the script, keep it simple.”

Oakeshott said he wanted a “fairer go” for regional and rural Australia. There will be a major focus on regional and rural issues by whatever party forms the next government. There is no reason why Labor cannot be that Government. But as the Menzies experience shows, another brutal assassination of a leader would be their death knell.

Australian election 2010 (End of Part 1)

The people of Australia have spoken and delivered a very bloody nose to Julia Gillard’s Labor Government today. Whether the blow is enough to knock it out remains to be seen. With three seats out of 150 still in doubt at the time of writing the likely make-up of Australia’s next parliament has the Coalition with 74 seats and Labor with 71 seats. As well there are 3 ex-Nationals independents, a Green and ex-Green. Voting purely along a likely left-right axis, that makes it 77-73 to Abbott and in theory enough to rule, especially if he can convince one of the independents to be the Speaker.

But his party falls short of an outright majority so Abbott cannot yet stake his claim to be Prime Minister. Australia is governed by the Westminster Convention even if these conventions can sometimes prove tenuous just as when it was stretched to breaking point in 1975. In his post-election speech Abbott offered “the Australian people” his team as an alternative “stable government”. But as Abbott well knows, it’s out of their hands right now. Gillard refused to concede tonight and remains Prime Minister. The Governor General Quentin Bryce (a Labor appointee) will have to offer her the first right of refusal to gain “the confidence” of the Lower House.

Gillard will probably accept and attempt to manage a minority government. This will be at best a short-term manoeuvre to gain time to fight another election. She might be able to rule for a while with the tacit support of the Independents if she puts forward legislation that will get what they want for their constituents. After all, this dull election campaign has proven one thing. With the exception of the NBN and the ETS (neither of which will exist much before 2013) there is little differentiation between the parties. Yet a change of government is a big thing and it might be easiest to get what you want from the party already in power. As Tony Windsor said tonight “the most important issue here is stability of governance”. They may find the acceleration of the NBN in their areas an acceptable price of support.

Gillard can rule with the independents and Greens if she can manage the difficult balancing of rural interests with environment concerns. The ETS delay may yet prove convenient. She has no major agenda that she needs to push through in the next few months. A few anodyne bills while the parties squabble through to February may be what she needs. And then with Latham and Rudd just a bad memory they get back the six or so seats they need to form outright government.

But if the independents decide to play a bigger game then Gillard is in trouble. If they publicly come out and say they will support Tony Abbott for three years as the next prime minister than she will have to resign.

If that happens, Labor has no one to blame but itself. For two and a half years of government Kevin Rudd and his party enjoyed stratospheric polls as people enjoyed the change from Howards End and the impressive weathering of the global financial crisis. Meanwhile the Liberals recycled their leaders until it found one with the stomach to take the fight to the Government.

When the polls finally levelled as they normally do closer to an election, Labor panicked and sacked the boss. Australians didn’t like being told their Prime Minister was being removed without their say so and Queensland particularly resented losing their man. The hope that Gillard as a woman would affect the female vote was possibly countered by many men voting Abbott. If people weren’t sure the “mad monk” should be Prime Minister, there was a lot who didn’t like one being an “atheist antichrist” either.

The make-up of the Senate is more assured at this stage. The Greens had a great result electing senators in all six seats. With the Coalition on 34 and Labor on 31, the Greens now have a clear balance of power with 9 seats. Allied to Bandt’s stunning and historic lower house victory in Melbourne, and former Green Andrew Wilkie’s likely win in Denison this is a watershed election for the environmental movement who must now move deeply inside the tent.

A jaded electorate won’t take kindly to be sent back to the polls in the next few months. Who they blame for that will be whoever is seen as the most obstructionist in the negotiations to come. The animus of the party leaders remains crucial. Abbott is assured and now very confident as Liberal leader but still has obvious flaws and a fractured power base. Turnbull is still waiting in the wings to pounce again.

The Labor Government has no obvious candidate out there to replace Gillard (other than Rudd) and our first female Prime Minister may yet grow in the role that Rudd squandered. But the next few months are critical. If she can learn to negotiate with the Greens without needling Oakeshott, Windsor and Katter, a saner long-term Australian policy to the overwhelming problem of climate change may yet emerge from the chaos of representative democracy. Otherwise Gillard’s bloody nose will be the least of our problems.

Labor and Liberal’s battle of the broadband

Probably much to Labor’s relief, its problematic Internet filtering policy appears dead in the water. A policy pursued with vigour during the early days of the Rudd administration, it was deferred to 2011 last month before being delivered the coup de grace when both the Liberals and Greens came out in opposition to it. Labor haven’t yet formally cut it loose but it is merely a matter of time, probably around 1 July 2011 when the buffoonish pro-filter Family First Senator Steve Fielding is finally turfed out of power squalid Labor backroom tactics got him into in the first place.

If there is a communications policy fight in this election it is now over how broadband will be delivered to the home. The centrepiece of Labor’s policy is the National Broadband Network. The ambitious NBN is Australia’s largest ever infrastructure project and will involve the laying of fibre optic cabling to Australian homes, schools and businesses. It will deliver speeds of 100 megabits per second which is 100 times faster than most current speeds. The NBN will reach 93 percent of the population with the remaining premises connected via a combination of next generation high speed wireless and satellite technologies delivering broadband at the much lower speed of 12 Mbps.

The work (fibre optic and wireless/satellite) has already started under the new NBN Co led by former Alcatel boss Mike Quigley. Quigley was chosen for his American experience developing and integrating large scale Fibre-To-The-Premise and Fibre-To-The-Node implementations for US telecommunication carriers.

Most of our telecommunications network is still copper based. This ageing technology is primarily responsible for Australia’s slow Internet response times. FTTP involves laying optical fibre from a central location to the home or business. While it could potentially deliver broadband at speeds of up to 100Mbps, the actual speed is determined by the size of the Passive Optical Network.

The technology can transmit data at speeds of up to 2.5Gbps; however this amount is divided by the number of termination points on the PON to determine the actual bandwidth to each end point. FTTN is a cheaper option (and was Labor’s policy until 2007). In this case fibre is terminated in a street cabinet possibly several kilometres away from the customer premises, with the final connection being copper. Customers typically connect using traditional coaxial cable or twisted pair wiring, both 19th century technologies.

The Labor Government is going with the FTTP option. FTTP is expensive and is one reason why the NBN is likely to cost in excess of $43 billion (though this is likely to be substantially reduced with Telstra inside the tent) with a rollout period of eight years. Phase 1 has begun in Tasmania with 1,200km of cable and the first services have been switched on in the north-east communities of Midway Point, Smithton and Scottsdale.

In these towns ISPs iiNet, Internode and iPrimus are offering 25Mbps for $29.95 and 100 Mbps for $59.95 a month. Labor is also addressing “regional blackspots” on the mainland with 6,000 km of new, competitive fibre optic backbone links rolled out in regional Australia. NBN boss Mike Quigley is now saying that 1000 Mbps plans may also be available for wholesale. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said at this speed a school could download a hi-def documentary in 20 seconds rather than the five hours it takes now.

The Liberals agree Australia needs fast, reliable and affordable broadband services but differs on the technology it wants to use to provide it. It says the NBN Co will be a taxpayer funded ‘white elephant’ when completed in eight years time, does not deliver lower prices, and gives no priority to those already without an adequate service. They will cancel the NBN and instead deliver a 13 point plan they say will “encourage competition and ensure services reach all Australians.”

Their plan is significantly cheaper than Labor’s at $6 billion and will cover more of the population at 97 percent and will be completed quicker too. However they will only commit to offering 12 Mbps relying heavily on wireless technologies. They will provide $2.75 billion for an open access, fibre-optic backhaul network which connects the big cities to compete with Telstra, $2 billion for blackspots in outer metro and regional areas, $750 million for fixed broadband optimisation on older exchanges and funding for satellite serves for the outlying 3 percent.

The response from experts in the communications field has been mixed. Crikey’s tech writer Stilgherrian said the difference between the two policies as much about ideology, vision and political rhetoric as technological choice. He said the Coalition’s saves money now, but asks “is it merely delaying the inevitable big spend?” ZDNet reports some analysts saying the Liberal’s plan could potentially be safer, more flexible and “give more bang for your buck”.

Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Adam Turner said the Liberal’s plans were stop-gap measures while he called the NBN “future-proof”. The Internet Industry Association has also come out in favour of the NBN saying “the key to Australia’s broadband future is speed.” Commsday CEO Grahame Lynch in The Australian slammed the NBN as “the world’s most generous telecom industry welfare scheme”.

The Greens in the Senate will be crucial to deciding the outcome of telecommunications policy regardless of who wins the election. The Greens policy is strangely silent on the position of the NBN. However ICT spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam said the NBN should go ahead, with priority for communities in regional areas. “It should absolutely stay in public hands so that we don’t see another repeat of the debacle that followed the privatisation of Telstra,” he said. The Greens are also cold on the Coalition’s alternative with Ludlam calling it “a real patchwork of service delivery.”

Charles Taylor trial of brief interest to celebrity mags

The Special Court for Sierra Leone does not usually feature in tabloid headlines nor does it attract the attention of supermodels and Hollywood stars. The Court’s purpose is try those who bear the greatest responsibility for violations of international humanitarian and local law in Sierra Leone since it was overrun by rebels in 1996. Its most famous case is Charles Ghankay Taylor, former President of neighbouring Liberia, accused of 17 crimes against humanity including murder, rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers by arming RUF rebels during the 1991-2001 Sierra Leone civil war.

Taylor’s trial went surreal with the conflicting testimony of a Hollywood star and a supermodel. In the last month the Court heard testimony from actress Mia Farrow which contradicted that of British model Naomi Campbell. Prosecutors had called the model to provide evidence Taylor had handled blood diamonds used to purchase weapons during the war.The prosecution said Taylor gave Campbell a gift of diamonds at a dinner hosted by Nelson Mandela in September 1997 to raise funds for the Mandela Children’s Fund. Campbell attended with Farrow and Campbell’s former modelling agent Carole White. Campbell gave evidence on 5 August which attracted headlines, partially because she told the Court her appearance was a “big inconvenience” (she would later apologise to the Court) and partially because a supermodel was giving testimony at a genocide trial. The Washington Post found it hard to believe these two worlds could ever collide. “That they did, however, is testament to beauty as both valuable currency and irresistible narcotic,” said the Post.Campbell said she was woken up by two unknown men who handed her a pouch saying it was a gift. Because she was sleepy she didn’t ask who they were or who gave her the pouch. She said she did not open the pouch until the following morning and was disappointed to find a few “very small, dirty looking stones”. She said either Farrow or White suggested the stones were from Taylor and she believed so herself.

With Campbell’s testimony giving Taylor a lifeline, the Prosecution looked to White and Farrow. But they complicated the picture by contradicting Campbell and each other. Farrow said she heard Campbell say Taylor had given her a “huge diamond” at the dinner. She said Campbell told the story to guests at breakfast the following morning. Carole White said it wasn’t a huge diamond but five separate pieces. She said Campbell and Taylor were seated near each other during the dinner and started flirting. White said Campbell whispered to her Taylor was going to give her diamonds and she was very excited.

Campbell told the court she later gave the diamonds to Jeremy Ractliffe, a representative of a Mandela charity. Ractliffe said he worried the gift would damage reputations and might be illegal, so he kept the diamonds and did not tell anyone. He issued a statement last week saying he had now handed over to authorities three alleged “blood diamonds” Campbell gave him. South African police confirmed their authenticity.

The appearance of beautiful, wealthy western women and their precious stones overshadowed other testimony. Former RUF leader Issa Hassan Sesay, who was convicted by the Court for his part in the atrocities, has been on the stand for three weeks. He refuted claims Taylor directed the rebels when they entered the capital Freetown in 1999. The prosecution hammered him on his statements Taylor had directed the 1998 attack on diamond-rich town of Kono. Sesay’s testimony concludes this week.

Proceedings now head towards the seven year mark. Charles Taylor was indicted on 7 March 2003, when still president. The indictment was announced three months later on his first trip outside Liberia.  Taylor resigned as president and went into exile in Nigeria. Nigeria transferred him to the Special Court in March 2006. Due to Sierra Leone security concerns, the Special Court arranged for the trial at The Hague where he was transferred to in June 2006. After legal wrangling, the Prosecution re-opened witness testimony in January 2008. They closed their case 13 months later after having presented testimony from 91 witnesses. The defence opened their case on 13 July 2009. The Prosecution also reopened its case to call Campbell, Farrow and White. While the trial briefly reached the women’s magazines, it will now once again retreat into international law journals, until the final decision.

A foggy 2020 vision: The politics of climate change in Australia

That a Tory British daily could write seriously about Earth Overshoot Day shows how far the climate debate has moved in the last 20 years. Without a murmur of criticism, The Telegraph reported growing world population and increasing consumption was pushing the world ever deeper into ‘eco-debt’, quoting new statistics on global resources. From Earth Overshoot Day until the end of the year, we will meet our needs only by liquidating stocks and accumulating greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. By mirthless coincidence, 2010’s Earth Overshoot Day is this Saturday: the same day Australia goes to the polls to choose from mostly uninspiring policies to deal with the problem.

The Day is a creation of New Economics Foundation, a radical thinktank which aims to “construct a new economy centred on people and the environment”. With their funding from anonymous sources and the support of governments, they combine research, advocacy training and practical action. They say ecological overshoot is at the root of the most pressing environmental problems we face today: climate change, declining biodiversity, shrinking forests, fisheries collapse, and underlying many factors in the global food crisis.The Earth Overshoot project compares all the food, fuel and other resources consumed by humans against the ability of the biosphere to cope with the loss. Like a Doomsday clock they calculate daily profit and loss to come up with the mathematical day of the year we will overspend our inheritance. Ten years ago NEF calculated we were already in trouble with our ecological freehold running out in November 2000. By 2008 Earth Overshoot Day was coming in on 23 August, a hundred days on the wrong side of the ledger. When the clock was reset for this year’s experiment, it calculated an extra two days debt making payment due on 21 August.

Earth Overshoot Day is gimmicky, like the election on the same day. Its subject matter reminds us of the elephant in the room of Australian politics: an economic and ecological catastrophe if the country does not move from a carbon economy. Only the Greens have anything approaching a comprehensive plan to achieve this massive task but they will likely attract only one vote in every ten. Their policies of 40 percent reduction on 1990 levels by 2020 and zero emissions by 2050 remain unpalatable to the vast majority of voters.

The two major parties have far less grandiose targets. They are unwilling to advocate the difficult choices that might affect large sections of the population  and are also hamstrung by state-based brands in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth too wedded to the wealth and jobs of fossil fuel industries. They must also deal with powerful lobby groups and a point-scoring media that promotes short-term consumer benefits over the country’s longer-term needs. Leading politicians fear raising a head above the parapet lest they be wedged by the combined weight of opposing parties, PR and the press.

In 2007 the Climate Institute measured Labor and Liberal election policies. The Institute’s modelling showed both parties have failed to propose a set of measurable policies to halt the rise in pollution, let alone enact the substantial reductions required by 2020. It was impossible to judge what might happen after 2020 as neither side had a substantive policy in that area.

Things have gotten worse in the last three years. In 2007 Rudd and Howard promised to bring in an ETS if elected. No such consensus exists in 2010. Labor’s policy on climate change is in Chapter 9 of their 2010 election platform. It acknowledges “climate change is the most dangerous long term threat to Australia’s prosperity”. It commits Australia to anything from 5 percent to 25 percent reduction on 2000 emission levels depending on a “global agreement”. It has a target of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020 (a target introduced by the Howard Government in 2001).

It does not commit to any firm policies beyond ten years. Labor said it is committed to reducing Australia’s carbon pollution by 60 per cent on year 2000 levels by 2050 but has no idea how to get there. It will create the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy, to support research development and demonstration of renewable technologies, and a Solar Flagships Program to create an additional 1000 mw of solar power generation capacity in Australia. Given Queensland has 9000mw of coal fired power capacity it does not seem enough to deal with the national problem.

“Labor recognises the science of climate change is continuing to evolve and a deeper National 2050 target may be necessary to act in concert with international effort to reduce carbon pollution,” their manifesto reads. This is another excuse for delay – the science is evolving but a clear and unambiguous pattern of gas warming is emerging. It still promotes a CPRS to provide an economic platform for climate change but refuses to say when it will be re-presented to parliament.

The last CPRS vote proved the downfall of Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull and put the “human weather vane” Tony Abbott in charge of the party’s climate policies. Though it is far from a majority view in the party room, the Liberals have many high profile climate change doubters who think the science on global warming has been concocted by an international cabal with leftist leanings.

This view is countered by hardheads within the party who hate the green movement but acknowledge there is a problem. The Liberal policy on the environment and climate change awkwardly straddles both views in its meaningless title “Direct Action Plan”. These plans, they say will reduce CO2 emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 based on 1990 levels without a CPRS. They will establish an Emissions Reduction Fund to provide “incentives” for older power stations to reduce emission “in an orderly manner.” It may be orderly but is slower than Labor’s as they only commit to a 15 percent Renewable Energy Target by 2020.

The Liberals are slightly more honest than Labor in admitting the size of the problem. They note the conservative responses of the Australian states and other parts of the world including Europe, the Americas and Asia. They also have more practical measures than Labor. But there is one glaring omission. Nowhere does it say what must happen after 2020. There is no back-up plan for the likelihood emissions will continue to increase in the next ten years. Tony Abbott’s party does not appear unduly worried when Earth Overshoot Day will fall in 2020. Here’s hoping it doesn’t coincide with an early election date that year.

John Nichols on the way forward for journalism

Queensland had its slice of this year’s Sydney Walkley Media Conference when US journalist John Nichols came to Brisbane on Thursday to talk to local industry workers. Nichols is a political writer for American periodical The Nation and is also an editor of the Internet-based The Capital Times in his home state of Wisconsin. He has also published several books on journalism most recently co-authoring The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again with Robert McChesney. Their thesis is journalism is a public good and the US government should subsidise newspapers and other media outlets to save American journalism.

Nichols spoke to this theme at the Regatta Hotel on Thursday night in a “casual conversation”. Nichols was boisterous and humorous but his tone was far from casual; he had serious matters to discuss with his Australian audience. He began with his own start in the industry. Aged just 11, he went to the editor of the local paper in Union Grove, CT and told him he had read the Constitution and Tom Paine and asked he be given a job. The editor took him on and his moment came a year later when Democrat heavy and then Vice President Hubert Humphrey came to down during a presidential primary and submitted to an in-depth interview from the 12-year-old Nichols.Looking back he said it was a highlight of his career which corresponded with a lowlight in Humphrey’s just before his unsuccessful run against Nixon in the 1968 election. The grilling the young Nichols gave him was important. Journalists were not stenographers to the Royal Court or there to put a smile on the faces of their interviewees. They were there with a “profound responsibility” to be upsetting and ask difficult questions. Anything else was PR not journalism, he said. “Journalism can be obnoxious, challenging and unsettling, as long as it conveys information.”

Nichols quoted from the Thomas Jefferson letter to Edward Carrington where he said “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” While this quote is enshrined by newspaper owners such as Murdoch, Nichols reminded us of Jefferson’s other opinion on newspapers as “evil and lying but we’ve got to have them.” Nichols said the way of the world was the wealthy always triumph over the poor and it is journalism’s job to break that inequality.

Nichols spoke about the difficulties of doing that in an era when large scale industrial journalism is declining. One hundred newspapers a year have closed in the US since 2007 including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Denver Rocky Mountain News as well as dailies in Albuquerque Tucson and Kansas City and the print edition of the Christian Science Monitor, one of just three US national dailies.

Nichols said 30,000 newspaper jobs have been lost in the States in two years and the situation is almost as bad in broadcasting with 19,000 jobs lost in 10 years. Yet he said there is no evidence people are consuming less news – he said the Guardian and Independent websites had higher numbers of visitors from the US than Britain. Nor did he blame the Internet, saying the decline of US newspaper circulations date back to the 1950s. Instead, Nichols pointed the finger at the changing nature of newspaper ownership.

In the last 30 years the newspaper companies which made large amounts of money from their exclusive access to classified ads were taken over by larger non-media companies. When they started losing their monopoly to the Internet, the new owners reacted to sudden loss of profits by closing papers or bureaus or laying off journalists. Papers were not yet unprofitable but weren’t making their new owners super-rich. More journalists covered Franklin Roosevelt’s campaign in 1940 than covered Barack Obama in 2008, he said.

Nichols said there was a knock-on dumbing down effect on political life and democracy in the US. He has testified in FTC inquiries into the status of the press, inquiries he said were a “very big deal” for which “transformations may occur”. Nichols pointed to the Baltimore study done by the Pew Centre which confirmed old media, especially newspapers, still produced the largest amount of news.

But the city’s largest paper The Baltimore Sun has lost 73 percent of its journalists in 20 years. The news gap, he said, was being filled by PR, a finding in common with recent Australian research. “Journalism is no longer speaking truth to power,” Nichols said. “Power is speaking its truth to us.” With four workers in PR for every journalist in 2010, corporate and government propaganda was wrecking the Jeffersonian ideal of the press.

Nichols said new ownership models were needed. He suggested new owners needed to emerge from the government, local communities or not-for-profit organisations. “Just because they are not making the large profits of years ago means they have to close down,” he said. He said this was a problem for democracy not just for journalism or the media. “Don’t think anyone else is going to do the job,” he warned.