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Letters to the Editor


From time to time, a commentary on the world will bubble up inside of me to the extent that I'm forced to write a letter to my local, metropolitan, daily newspaper, The Age. This is where I blow of some steam. Feel like venting too? Add your own comment or visit my homepage.

Monday, May 30, 2005

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Fair Pay Commission

I trust Howard's Fair Pay Commission will look into the top rung of Macquarie Bank, where salaries average $14.5 million.

Vent!         


Sunday, May 29, 2005

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Schappelle's QCs

Given the systemic corruption and bribery in Indonesia's legal system (The Age, 27/5), a pair of upstanding QCs won't do any good. A fast-talking Gold Coast phone salesman with a shiny suit and a carpetbag full of cash will ensure the sentencing is (ahem) pre-paid - not billed per minute.

Vent!         


Thursday, May 26, 2005

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Pokies Revenue Does Not Come Cheap

Liberal MP Robin Cooper's suggestion to roll-back the pokies is an investment (The Age, 26/5). Sure, it'll cost the Victorian Budget $1.4B a year, but we need to ask: is this a sustainable, equitable and responsible source of tax anyway? At the very least each dollar raised should cost us - in the broadest sense - less than a dollar in the long run. Does it?

How much of that revenue came from embezzlement and crime? From how many family breakdowns, suicides and collapsed businesses? How much extra (unmet) demand was placed on our social and community services? Centrelink payments make up around 10% of our GDP - I'd wager it makes up more than 10% of pokies revenue. How is "laundering" welfare through the private sector a sensible mechanism for State/Commonwealth funding?

Importantly, how will questions about the net worth of pokies be answered without an independent gambling research panel?

Vent!         


Thursday, May 19, 2005

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Blank Media Levies are Bad Idea (Green Guide)

Charles Wright is to be commended for his efforts to reform Draconian copyright law in this country (Green Guide, 19/5). His support for a levy on all blank media (including hard disks) sits awkwardly with the rest of his views.

People who produce, distribute and backup their own content (home movies, digital photos, documents) owe nothing to the recording industry. Why should they get a cheque every time I post a CD of holiday snaps to my folks or backup my emails?

What will happen to the quality of the industry's output if they are guaranteed a government-enforced cheque (whether or not we buy their stuff)?

Many people - artists, programmers, academics - produce content with the express intention of sharing it with the public via the GPL, Creative Commons and other legal mechanisms. Again, why should the recording industry get a cut from this?

How is a closed-door meeting of IP lawyers, bureaucrats and industry heavies a better pricing mechanism than the open market?

Forcing consumers to (in effect) bulk pre-pay for their content - at a flat rate, by the megabyte! - will simultaneously drive up prices, lower quality and provide a windfall gain for multinationals. It's hard to imagine a worse policy.

Vent!         


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A Torturous Choice

Years hence, in a dark cell with a ticking clock, a police officer will have to choose between doing something awful (then being jailed) or the deaths of thousands. Fair?

Vent!         


Wednesday, May 18, 2005

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Tortured Scholarship

Let's be clear: Professor Bagaric's research about limited torture warrants is not party policy. Nor is it a High Court ruling. He is an academic exploring one of society's strongest taboos through analysis and debate.

When a taboo is challenged like this, we need to rise above simple-minded reactions ("it's just barbaric!"), dubious slippery-slope arguments and shoot-the-messenger (and institution) tactics. Instead, it's an opportunity to reflect on our values and arrive at a clearer view of ourselves.

Whether it's gay marriage, IVF or euthanasia, scholars must be free to undertake serious inquiry into taboos without being misrepresented, publicly scorned and subjected to vitriolic attacks.

Perhaps this can't be done through the opinion pages of a newspaper - even a broadsheet.

Vent!         


Tuesday, May 17, 2005

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The Copyright Scam

Alex Malik is right to point out the imbalance in power under our present copyright arrangements (The Age, 16/5). It stems from a deliberate conceptual confusion about purchasing content. Naively, we may think we're buying a CD or DVD (the physical object). But we're not, since we're subject to restrictions about what we can do with that object (eg rent it, broadcast it, put it in a CD copying machine).

No, we're buying a license to use the content, with the CD as just a token. But here's an experiment: cut your favourite CD in half and send both halves to the publisher, requesting a replacement. While a blank CD and postage stamp should cost about $1, you'll be told to buy another copy. But wait - haven't you been "licensed" to use the content? Isn't the broken CD proof of this license? After all, other tokens like a $50 note or a yearly MetCard will be replaced if you send in both halves.

The copyright owners are having their cake and eating it too. Their business model is to ensure that we keep buying Abbey Road every five years, for perpetuity.

Vent!         


Monday, May 16, 2005

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Preaching to the Choir

Teaching broad religious awareness and tolerance in government schools won't work for the simple reason that we can't make atheism a condition for hiring teachers. How can we expect religionists to present their faith as just one of many equally (in)valid belief systems?

In my government school we had a core subject innocuously called "Life Options", taught by the school's chaplain. We spent countless hours poring over the class copies of the New Testament, but I can recall only once looking at a non-Christian text - a single page with some particularly gruesome text from Zoroastrianism. The message? Christianity is the only religion that teaches love.

I don't doubt the good intentions of the school or the chaplain, but even with class copies of the Talmud, Holy Koran, Book of the Dead and Vedic scriptures, there are no guarantees that religionist teachers would give equal time, weight or credit to the different faiths. The risk of privileging one faith over other views would so undermine the laudable goals that it is better to just leave it out of the curriculum entirely.

Vent!         


Sunday, May 15, 2005

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Australia's Oceans in Contrast

What a study in contrast: On the one hand is the Federal Government's hairy-chested territoriality over the Timor Sea. On the other is the timid surrender of Australian Antarctic oceans to Japanese whale "researchers". Has our Government forgotten that whales have oil too?

Vent!         


Monday, May 02, 2005

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Real-World Calculations

The employers' lobby group VECCI has announced that current graduates have poor mathematical skills, on the basis of their competence with manual and mental arithmetic (The Age, 2/5). In my experience as a professional engineer, all significant calculations must be done with increasingly complex software packages, often of incredible sophistication. While there will always be a place in engineering for "the back of the envelope", mastery of these commercial-grade systems is where the "real world" is at - not long division by hand.

VECCI must know this, so why is it pushing this barrow? Perhaps it has an old-fashioned view of what it means to be educated - good at toting up figures, able to recite a Wordsworth poem and knowing the coronation dates of key English monarchs. We need creative and innovative engineers, not good clerks.

Vent!