Catallaxy Files

The SMH has a profile of John Roskam.

His CV is a classic think tank mix of law, commerce, academia and politics, plus a stint at global mining company Rio Tinto. Indeed, it was a fellow law student at Melbourne University, John Daley – who now leads the Grattan Institute – who suggested that Roskam apply for his first job at the Liberal Party, as a junior research assistant for Victorian MP Don Hayward.

Kevin Trenberth, and many others, (all climate scientist types) have a brief op-ed (the list of names crowds out any space for mounting an argument) in The Australian.

In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work.

Yes – that’s more or less true. So how then do these climate scientists explain the last paragraph? (emphasis added)

There is also clear evidence the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth. Just what the doctor ordered.

While a GP might ‘order’ decades of economic growth, it isn’t clear that is how a market economy operates.

Rowan Dean has a great piece in the AFR lampooning those opposed to the Fairfax raid. Read the whole thing (well worth the subscription).

Acting Greens leader Christine Milne was quick to express her dismay. “This is a national scandal,” she said. “If you have a couple of people using newspapers as a mouthpiece, that is a real problem.

“For years, we in the Greens have had a total monopoly on all discussion about climate change and the long-overdue, successful and hugely popular implementation of the much-loved carbon tax, which is going to solve the global problem of an overheating planet that we daily see all around us destroying the lives of millions of people and obliterating entire species as massively populated islands disappear beneath the waves before our very eyes. The last thing a democratic, vibrant and free press needs is someone who disagrees with us.”

Recently returned from her “Rehabilitation and Re-programming Retreat” on the shores of the Volga, fellow Greens senator Lee Rhiannonovski went even further.

“For years, we have had a direct conduit to the oppressed, latte sipping masses of the inner cities thanks to our close ties with certain sections of the Fairfax media,” she said. “The idea that this should be put in jeopardy by someone who represents hard-working, successful Australian entrepreneurs and members of the capitalist conspiracy to give people jobs and keep our economy strong is an absolute betrayal of everything we believe in.”

As she was whisked away in her government limo to attend a taxpayer-funded banquet at Marrickville Town Hall in honour of the brave boycotters of Max Brenner, the senator made it clear that she would not sit idly by and watch greedy, self-interested minority groups try to influence the mainstream press.

Okay – a bit of fun.

(HT: Crapulous Coercion)

Clive Hamilton has an op-ed in The Age today bemoaning the Rinehart share raid on Fairfax. He says a lot of nice things about Gina and her father.

Last year Rinehart was named by Forbes magazine Australia’s richest person. She is reported to hold more than $20 billion in assets. Citigroup estimates she is on track to become the richest person in the world.
Rinehart inherited more than father Lang Hancock’s mining company; she took on his politics, too. Hancock was described by one journalist as “a swashbuckling right-winger who believed people and governments should bow to his will”. On workers’ rights, WA secession and special deals for mining, Gina is her father’s daughter. John Singleton, who has been close to both, said ”a conversation with Gina was a conversation with Lang. They both had the same fanaticism.”
Hancock was close to the authoritarian Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, whom even Liberal Party MPs accused of running a police state. Bjelke-Petersen gave the eulogy at Hancock’s funeral. In 1975, Hancock launched John Singleton’s Workers Party, the forerunner of the new right in Australia. Gina was in attendance, soon after she had dropped out of the University of Sydney claiming the lecturers were communists.

So the worst that can be said is that they knew Joh Bjelke-Petersen?

Anyway he then launches into a bunch of people that Gina knows – the usual suspects and the usual complaints. It was this comment that really annoyed.

He [Monckton] is better known in this country for putting a swastika next to a photo of Ross Garnaut.

Monckton is known for that? He did do it but later apologised.

But I thought it might be useful to recall some of the things Hamilton has said over time. Mind you, it isn’t a complete list.

Here he glorifying (fictional) violence

When Watt, after disrupting a public lecture, followed Coghburn out of the venue haranguing, insulting and poking him in the chest, the scientist finally lost his rag and lashed out. Who hasn’t wanted to do that?

Here he is advocating the suspension of democracy

This is because the implications of 3C, let alone 4C or 5C, are so horrible that we look to any possible scenario to head it off, including the canvassing of “emergency” responses such as the suspension of democratic processes.

Here he is denying he advocated the suspension of democracy

Sometimes a lie is too good to discard even when it is known to be a falsehood. So The Australian continues to recycle the lie that I have advocated the “suspension of democracy” to tackle climate change.

Here he is comparing climate “denialists” to mass-murdering war criminals

Instead of dishonouring the deaths of six million in the past, climate deniers risk the lives of hundreds of millions in the future. Holocaust deniers are not responsible for the Holocaust, but climate deniers, if they were to succeed, would share responsibility for the enormous suffering caused by global warming.

Here he is expounding his approach to diversity of opinion

If Australia’s security services are not closely monitoring the activities of denialist activists then they are failing in their responsibilities.

As far as I’m aware Hamilton has yet to apologise for any of those statements.

Clive Hamilton in The Age

Bolt is Australia’s most obsessive climate science sceptic, and ended up in court for deriding Aboriginal people whose skin was not as dark as he thought it should be.

Gary Johns in The Australian

The nine fair-skinned Aboriginal litigants who successfully sued Andrew Bolt for racial vilification are testament to the sensitivity of those Aborigines who fear that as their physical identification becomes less obvious their prized status as first Australians is at risk.

There has been some commentary that the Open Forum is getting too large and takes too long to load. So as an experiment I’ll be opening up a midweek forum. We’ll see how it goes.

As everyone knows Gina Rinehart has bought a large stake in Fairfax Media. Late 2010 she picked up about 4.9 percent and yesterday tried to pick up another 9.9 percent. All up she now owns about 10 percent of the stock. The offer yesterday suggested a 10 percent ownership premium – that was probably on the low side (a 2000 study estimated the Australian control premium to be about 20 percent – albeit that was upwardly biased). She was offering 81c per share and that’s the price today.

Right now all the speculation is on what she wants. Everyone reckons she wants a seat on the Fairfax board. Despite some blockholders suggesting that they wouldn’t want her on the board I suspect it would hard to deny her a spot if she wanted one. After all she would then be the single largest shareholder.

The Fairfax financial statements set out the directors’ shareholding (note that John Fairfax sold out his stake last year).

Her shareholding already dwarfs that of the existing directors. So a board seat isn’t unreasonable.

Michael West has another theory.

But Gina Rinehart’s more likely course of action would be to march into chairman Roger Corbett’s office with a deal to swap her Fairfax shares for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review.
That’s right; a share cancellation for three newspapers and their digital operations.
…
Any row over a board seat would merely be negotiating leverage for mining magnate Rinehart. Her prize is the two metro mastheads and the monopoly financial daily whose value, these days, is more strategic than financial.

The question is how much of the business those three papers comprise? I don’t know – but it might be a good deal for the other shareholders. Would it be a good deal for Rinehart? Alan Kohler thinks not.

Either CEO Greg Hywood pulls it off and Fairfax makes a profitable transition to being a digital company, or he doesn’t and the company goes back into receivership and shareholders lose everything. There isn’t any middle ground, in my view.

And even if he does pull it off, the stock is unlikely to be a short-term ten-bagger: there are far better speculative plays in the industry Gina Rinehart knows best.

The digital transition for all traditional media companies is more about survival than riches. It’s about figuring out how to go from high margins to low margins, not the other way around.

It’s hard to disagree with that analysis, but – and this is the important point – she is investing her own money and if the other shareholders reckon its a good deal for them, they should take it. After all they face the same outcomes as she does.

Let’s assume that gaining control over those newspapers is her objective and she succeeds. Already there are hysterical comments about the consequences of that outcome.
Michael West again

The Murdoch press is already favourably disposed to the Minerals Council view of the world while Rinehart’s politics are said to be strenuously ideological in the fashion of her late father Lang Hancock. Rinehart control of the Fairfax mastheads could have a dramatic influence on politics in this country.

Adele Ferguson

She has extreme views on the future of Australia and economic policy settings and like her father Lang Hancock, believes the media is the most powerful way to influence change.
While traditional media has taken a pummelling on the sharemarket, it still is the most effective way to pressure governments for change and get messages out. Rinehart is a big fan of online communication, writing for online mining publications, and Fairfax has the most powerful websites in the country.

What ‘extreme views’ might those be? Alan Kohler tells us

She was raised on mining and right-wing politics and was taught by her father that owning media was a source of influence, along with giving politicians money directly and nagging them, and everyone, endlessly about the benefits of small government and the evils of environmentalism.

That hardly seems extreme.

But everyone seems to suggest that she’d have difficulty imposing her views on the staff.
Adele Ferguson

Fairfax has prided itself on its independence and so the chances of her redirecting editorial content are slim.

Alan Kohler

Gina Rinehart is likely to find investing in Fairfax Media a deeply frustrating experience, whether she’s trying to influence the newspapers or just make money.

But Jason Wilson isn’t so sure.

The news values in Fairfax’s online offerings and the subtle changes which are already taking place at the Financial Review show that it is difficult for journalists there to put a red line around quality or balance.

All those changes at the AFR are for the better. I suspect, however, than any journalists who push back too hard will find themselves unemployed. The real issue here is whether this is a problem? Short answer, ‘No’. Rinehart is performing an entrepreneurial function. If she has a vision for the company (or even just part of it) and invests her own money in pursuing that vision, then we are seeing capitalism at work. What if she horribly wrong? Well then she would have lost some of her fortune and the Fairfax shareholders (or anyone else) could buy back the papers at a reduced price. Or not, as the case may be.

Alan Kohler in an article commenting on Gina Rinehart’s raid on Fairfax has an extraordinary sentence.

These days big government is ascendant and capitalism is in crisis, thanks to an excess of debt plus the fragmenting, democratising, pirating effect of the internet.

Large public debts and effects of the internet are more a challenge for big government than capitalism.