An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Somewhat distracted

For one reason or another I’ve been more than usually separated from my computer lately.

Last night I had to go to bed early so that I could drive down to Coolangatta airport to pick up Mark and his partner. They finally made it back from Surat Thani in Thailand after they decided they didn’t want to get on their booked flight with Asia Airlines after the plane hit the drink during a storm. Dealing with travel agents who would sell you a train ticket to somewhere even though you knew the line was cut by floods was not fun.

My sister and brother-in-law are also down from the country. Unfortunately it’s not a social visit, rather accessing medical facilities only available in the big smoke.

Then we’ve had about average rain for this time of the year, so the grass is as high as the elephant’s eye on some of the properties where I work. Well almost.

meanwhile there’s nothing but cricket on the radio, which I don’t half mind, and repeats of QI for the umpteenth time on the TV, which I do!

So apart from terrorist action in France and the Queensland election I haven’t been aware of too much that’s topical.

2. Charlie Hebdo attack

Speaking of which, the BBC has a detailed outline of what happened. They end up with the brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi holed up in a printing firm called Creation Tendance Decouverte on an industrial estate on the outskirts of at Dammartin-en-Goele, 35km (22 miles) from Paris. Apparently a hostage is involved.

Also from The Telegraph:

A second hostage situation was underway in France on Friday as a gunman linked to the killing of a policewoman a day earlier took five hostages at a grocery in eastern Paris.

Shooting was heard and one person reported wounded at the kosher grocery in the eastern suburb of Porte de Vincennes early on Friday afternoon.

Also from The Telegraph:

The man suspected of killing a policewoman in a southern suburb of Paris on Thursday before fleeing the scene was a member of the same jihadist group as the two suspects in the attack at weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a police source told Reuters.

The Economist reflects on the underlying issues.

Brisbane Times has a running commentary.

3. Smoke taint in wine

The Australian Financial Review ran an article on the problem of smoke taint in wine grapes from bushfires and burning off. Smoke impregnates the skin which affects the taste of the wine in fermentation.

Tasters commonly liken the resulting wine to an ashtray, burnt rubber and hospital disinfectant.

It can ruin a whole harvest.

This article from last year talks about research but the Fin Review article says that the Abbott government has no funds for such trivial stuff and a modest grant from the Victorian government runs out in 2015.

4. When too much sport is barely enough

Ange Postecoglou’s record with the Australian soccer team is about 2 wins out of 11, from memory. He’s tried out about 50 different players. It may be a sign that he’s finally got it right, but the 4-1 win over Kuwait is a welcome surprise.

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Changing skivvies on the Wiggles

Tim Dunlop has done a great piece on the reshuffle. He reckons it’s

like changing who wears which colour skivvy in the Wiggles: it doesn’t make any difference, and they all end up singing the same old tunes.

Tony Abbott is still the Prime Minister. Joe Hockey is still the Treasurer. They are still committed to their budget and its underlying philosophy of market liberalism and a wholesale attack on the pillars of the welfare state.

Let’s focus on that, not which Wiggle is wearing which skivvy.

Dunlop’s big idea, though is that “both major parties have drained the office of prime minister of authority by converging on an economic program that subsumes economic sovereignty into the vagaries of a globalised economy.” Hence:

The office of prime minister is thus less about leading the country than about managing the electorate’s disappointments within that system, and Mr Abbott inherited an electorate hip to the tricks of a political class who have been selling us moonshine – privatisation, deregulation and the rest of it – for the best part of four decades now.

Given that structural issue, though, Abbott has brought his own particular brand of stupid to the role, says Dunlop.

2. 2015 will be basically grim

Mungo MacCallum looks at the political/policy prospects for 2015, and doesn’t like what he sees.

What seems inevitable is that 2015 is unlikely to be any better than 2014: basically grim. The only real question is just who ends up bearing the cost. It may be Abbott himself and it may be the government as a whole. But one way or another we are all going to cop at least a bit of collateral damage.

It all depends on the next budget. If it is verse 2 of the last budget then Abbott is in trouble. He needs a fix “which is dramatic, equitable and above all plausible.” Problem is he won’t shirtfront the rich and powerful. So the rest of us cop it, while being encouraged to spend like blazes to save the economy from recession. Before Christmas they announced cuts in the area of the homeless. Morrison reckons he needs to make welfare sustainable by cutting the bejesus out of it.

So the result is confusion, and pain.

3. Child shoots mum in Idaho Walmart

This has already been linked to elsewhere by Geoff Genderson and zoot, but in case you missed it, a two year-old child has shot and killed his mum in an Idaho Walmart. The boy unzippered her purse, a Christmas gift from her husband with a special pocket to conceal the weapon.

4. Carmichael mine to go ahead

Those hoping that falling coal prices will put an end to the development of the Galilee Basin mega-mine Carmichael will be disappointed.

Sydney-based engineering firm Downer EDI announced late last month it had received two Letters of Award from Adani to build and operate the Carmichael mine.

“The contracts are expected to have a combined value in excess of $2 billion over seven years,” Downer EDI said in a statement.

Adani expects to start building the rail line within the next few months despite not having a mining lease.

Adani reckon that cash costs would fall below $US50 a tonne, making Carmichael one of the cheapest mines in the world.

The mine has:

attracted a conditional debt funding of $1 billion from the State Bank of India and a promise of equity funding of up to $300 million from the Queensland Government for the rail line to Abbot Point.

Adani has also recently attracted an equity partner, POSCO, a Korean company that will build its railway and port as well as hold a stake in the infrastructure.

5. Civil society – more activity, less effect

Michael Edwards is pessimistic about the effect of civil society organisations. The numbers of organisations is impressive and continues to grow, but he thinks civil society organisations are becoming less effective. Problems include co-option, the corporatisation of civil society groups themselves and a lack of carry-through to the structures of power and influence in society.

Some progress is being made around the edges of poverty and injustice.

But there’s no sign that the underlying structures of social, political and economic violence and oppression are being shaken to their roots.

As a result, fewer people in the world are dying young, and basic indicators of health and education, income and employment are getting slightly better – at least for most people in most countries. However, economic inequality is rising, democracies are being hollowed out, climate change is worsening, and discrimination based on race, gender, ability and sexual orientation remains endemic.

Participation in voting and labour unions is falling. Social media and professional advocacy groups have strong messages, but less purchase where it counts.

Sorry!

Sorry about the gloomy line-up above. Maybe I should just pull a blanket over my head and wait the year out!

I did hear today on our ABC a riveting discussion about whether the meat pie typified the Australian cuisine!

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. It was a dark and stormy night

Actually we’ve had gentle rain tonight, easing. Probably about 15 to 20 mm. Enough to keep the grass, shrubs and trees interested, but not enough to run water into any of the dams on properties where I work.

Other than Christmas, not too much has happened that impinged on my consciousness, but then we’ve intentionally missed the news on telly a couple of times. With Christmas midweek I lost a sense of what day it was. Tomorrow’s Sunday, when I normally work on a 50-acre property with possibly an acre of kept gardens. If it’s raining in the morning I’ll put the cue in the rack which means for sure the sun will come out to a bright shiny day!

The idea of the image above came from son Mark’s Facebook. He’s holidaying in southern Thailand where I gather the weather is bad!

2. Tsunami anniversary

Mark will be here next week. I must ask him whether Koh Samui was affected by the Boxing Day tsunami.

Of course, Boxing Day was the tenth anniversary of the tsunami that destroyed large tracts of Aceh province in Sumatra, also affecting Thailand and Sri Lanka, killing some 230,000 people. See reports at the the ABC and the BBC.

3. Putin needs new annexations

Looking further abroad the German magazine Der Spiegel ran an interview with the Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who thinks that Putin needs new annexations to feed his popularity at home. Yatsenyuk is plainly pessimistic about any resolution of the situation, which is a worry for the whole world in 2015.

This article by Anatole Kaletsky is reasonably optimistic, pointing out that the formal truce struck in September is holding and that the situation should evolve into

a broadly stable “frozen conflict,” similar to the stalemates that have prevailed for years, even decades, in Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kosovo, Cyprus and Israel, to name just the frozen conflicts closest to Europe.

Kaletsky thinks Ukraine will never make it into the EU or NATO. He thinks:

an EU association agreement, similar to Turkey’s, could help reduce corruption and encourage economic reform. A dual trading relationship with both Europe and Russia could ultimately offer Ukraine the only possible route to economic viability. This sort of relationship should become possible once this year’s conflict is definitively “frozen.”

4. Heightened terrorist “chatter”

There is always a possibility that Abbott’s warning of heightened terrorist chatter is playing politics. I’d be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Professor Jeff Lewis, terrorism expert at RMIT, said:

predictions were “very, very difficult” but believed an attack would occur in the following year.

“While we engage in war against ISIS it makes us vulnerable,” he said.
Advertisement

“I wouldn’t want to put a percentage on it, but I think in the next 12 months something else will happen, either in Australia or in Indonesia directed at Australians.”

Not good!

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Vale Phillip Hughes

From The World Today:

Cricket will go on, but when we’re ready.

That’s the message from the game’s leaders today as grief envelops the sport here and abroad.

Teams and individuals are paying tribute to Philip Hughes in their own ways and will continue to do so at games this weekend.

Some clubs will paint 63 on their ovals – marking that he was 63 not out when he was hit by that ball.

The outpouring has also been extended to bowler, Sean Abbott.

A test is due to get underway next week but at this stage cricket administrators say no one is in a position to make a decision as to if or how that will proceed.

Various sporting codes are honouring him in their own way. A state memorial service will be held at the Sydney Cricket Ground, with date and other details to be confirmed. The notion of putting out your bats has gone viral:

Like Steve Waugh, I think he should have never been dropped. He was dropped five times in 26 tests. Waugh points out that he, Waugh, took 26 tests to score his first ton.

Our sympathies to his family and all who knew him. He obviously touched many hearts in a positive way.

2. Sturm und Drang in Brisbane

That’s “storm and stress” BTW.

A savage storm lashed Brisbane City on Thursday afternoon. Here it is as captured on social media. More images of the aftermath here.

I was 11 floors up in the T&G building when it struck. There was a roar as the hail, some say as big as oranges, bounced off the rooves below.

The cleanup bill of up to $150 million compares to the storm of 1985, which is said to have cost $300 million. Certainly it was not as severe as the tornado-like storm that hit The Gap in 2008.

I heard today that 208 Energex crews were out re-establishing power. We were just fine in Ashgrove. Wind and rain, but no hail.

See also Brisbane storm: why was it so bad?

3. Victoria’s election

Most pundits and the polls suggest Labor will win, but Morgan has the LNP in a late surge and it could come down to a handful of votes in a handful of seats.

There is also interest in the upper house with Labor and The Greens playing silly buggers with preferences:

Complex tactical preference deals struck by Labor and the Greens have angered some progressive minor parties, which feel votes should rightfully flow to them.

The Greens have preferenced the Palmer United party relatively highly in some regions, while Labor has preferenced Family First above a selection of left-wing candidates in some regions and has placed the pro-hunting Country Alliance above all other parties in eastern Victoria.

The Shooters and Fishers party could win a seat in Victoria’s eastern division, due to favourable preferences, while the Greens have preferenced the Sex party highly in the northern metropolitan division, despite the party’s stated support in the past for the controversial East West toll road, which the Greens oppose.

The final makeup of the upper house is likely to prove an interesting negotiating challenge for Labor if it does manage to oust the Coalition government.

4. Right wing warriors turn on Abbott

Andrew Elder had some interesting things to say about politics and the media with special reference to the ABC. The adults are definitely not in charge.

Now Janet Albrechtsen, Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones have all turned on Abbott.

Abbott just can’t put a foot right. Laura Tingle on Thursday:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott finds himself defending the indefensible, or the already mortally-wounded, on three different fronts.

First, the government’s budget strategy is dead, a seriously ex-parrot, and we are left just going through the excruciating process of seeing how it is brought to account in next month’s mid-year budget review.

Yet the government persists – for now – with the fiction that it will all come good in the end.

Second, the prime minister’s credibility has been shattered, not just by a series of broken promises that have emerged through the year but by what one of his own backbenchers described as Abbott’s “verbal gymnastics” in trying to suggest that he had not broken any promises. The cut to ABC funding has crystallised voter disgust at such gymnastics.

Finally, the only thing that stopped an increasingly confident attack by the Opposition on the collapsing edifice of the budget bottom line and the Prime Minister’s trust deficit with voters was the spontaneous combustion of Defence Minister David Johnston when he declared on Tuesday that he would not trust the Australian Submarine Corporation to “build a canoe” . This opened up a whole new front of Labor attack on ministerial competence.

Since then the status of the $7 Medicare co-payment has depended on which minister you ask. What is definite is that they want sick people to go to the doctor less and they’ll try to find a way of making that happen!

When the photographers start piling in on you, you know you’re in trouble!

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Jacqui Lambie spins out

At the end of the week the star turn was Jacqui Lambie digging in over defense pay, lashing out at Abbott and taunting Clive palmer, daring him to sack her.

Glenn Lazarus has directly urged soldiers to ignore his colleague Jacqui Lambie and her call to protest at Remembrance Day ceremonies as Clive Palmer struggled to keep his disparate group of Senators together on Friday.

But a defiant Senator Lambie taunted leader Clive Palmer to prevent the party from splitting in the Senate and challenged her colleagues to help her block all Government legislation until the Defence Force is given a better pay rise.

Lazarus:

“Do not turn your back on any Remembrance Day activity or ceremony. Honour and respect those who have given the ultimate sacrifice,” he said.

“I married into a defence family and I understand firsthand the challenges defence personnel and their families deal with and the sacrifices they make for this country.

“Remembrance Day should be above politics,” he said.

It’s possible to feel sorry for Clive Palmer!

2. Whitlam remembered

David Marr says there was lingering sadness along with cheers and soaring oratory. I heard parts of it. I particularly liked John Faulkner’s speech, also his son Tony. Everyone has been raving about Noel Pearson’s speech. From what I’ve read he said some good stuff, but sounded stagy, self-consciously the orator.

Abbott and Howard were booed on entry, as is proper, Julia Gillard was welcomed effusively, Kevin Rudd in silence.

Lenore Taylor warns that right now Whitlam’s legacy in schools and universities is being dismantled.

3. Is the media biased, or not?

Bernard Keane at Crikey:

Let’s try a thought experiment: imagine the Rudd government had, within a few short months of being elected, fallen significantly behind Brendan Nelson’s opposition in the polls; imagine that it had produced a budget universally panned as unfair, one that it struggled to get through the Senate, that Cabinet was leaking like a sieve without any wire mesh, that treasurer Wayne Swan had made repeated gaffes and been forced to apologise and was widely regarded as a growing liability, that corruption in the NSW Labor Party had forced a Labor minister to stand aside within months of being sworn in, that Kevin Rudd had consistently negative personal ratings and at times fell behind Nelson as preferred PM, that Rudd was so unpopular, state Labor leaders preferred he kept away from them during their election campaigns, that Labor had announced it was doubling the budget deficit, and if it was reliant on a political freak show of independent and minor party senators to secure passage of its bills.

And imagine if the Rudd government had resorted to national security in an effort to take the focus off its domestic woes, and it had failed to restore its fortunes, leaving it still trailing the Coalition?

Now imagine how all that would have been reported — and not just by the Coalition cheerleaders at News Corp, but by the entire media? You wouldn’t have been able to click on a news website without seeing “debacle”, “crisis”, “fiasco” and “Whitlamesque” in every political story.

4. Stop the ABC!

At Loon Pond:

So here’s a reminder of why there’s ongoing bleating in the commercial media about the ABC:

1. Insiders (ABC 216,000 + 108,000 on News 24) — 324,000
2. Weekend Sunrise (Seven)  —  305,000
3. Landline (ABC) — 291,000
4. Weekend Today (Nine)  —  237,000
5. Offsiders (ABC) — 138,000
6. The Bolt Report (Ten) — 131,000
7. Financial Review Sunday (Nine) — 130,000
8. The Bolt Report repeat (Ten)  — 84,000

Poor Bolter. It’s a truth universally noted that once a program hits a level, it usually stays at that level.

Here’s the wonderful David Rowe cartoon at the head of the post:

5. Business leaders lose confidence in Abbott Government

Only on the ABC:

The Prime Minister Tony Abbott likes to boast that Australia is open for business, but his government appears to be losing friends at the big end of town.

A survey from Institute of Company Directors has found the nation’s most powerful board rooms are not happy with the Coalition’s performance.

Their confidence in the Government has slumped to the lowest level seen since last year’s election.

company directors are saying that government decisions are hurting their businesses and hurting their customers, hurting consumer confidence as well.

6. A busy week

Last week was a busy week for me, the next one will be also. Moreover, I could be out three nights which will nearly halve the time I have for posting. We’ll see how it goes!

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Sleep study

Overnight I’m going into hospital to have a sleep study done. My wife reckoned I stopped breathing the other night, so I thought I’d better get it checked out. I reckon I’m just a shallow breather when I’m not snoring, so we’ll see.

2. Ambulance and emergencies

Our little household has been quite sick this week. It started with our 27 year-old son, who was tired and run down, having just handed in his maths honours thesis. On Sunday night about 10pm he came down with a severe gastric upset – diarrhoea and vomiting. He was really bad, barely able to stand, going numb in his hands and feet, severe stomach cramps. We decided to call an ambulance about midnight.

After a medical officer interviewed us and him, the decision was apparently that he was not in danger of dying, so it might take a while.

Two hours later, we cancelled the ambulance and took him to the Wesley, which is about 10 minutes away. There he was seen immediately. A couple of hours later and he was back home.

It costs a maximum of $250 with Medicare, plus drugs and tests.

If we’d stuck with the public system, he would have been further triaged once the ambulance got him to the hospital.

We definitely have a two-tier medical system.

30 hours later my wife took ill, and 36 hours later so did I, both not as bad as our son. We are all on the mend, though it’s taking a while to regain full strength.

3. ALP set to win in Victoria

Premier Denis Napthine looks like becoming a oncer. The new Ipsos poll, replacing Nielsen in the Fairfax stable has the ALP ahead 56-44. Poll Bludger at Crikey reckons that’s a bit of an outlier.

However, this result is something of a puzzle, in being the odd man out in a crowded Victorian market over the past few days — Galaxy, Essential Research, ReachTEL and Morgan all having proved of one mind in showing Labor’s lead in the range of 52-48 to 53-47.

Seems there are two problems. Firstly, there’s an unusually high Greens vote, without a compensating lower vote for Labor, which no-one quite believes.

Secondly it’s how you allocate preferences. Ipsos did it two ways, by asking the people polled, and according to the 2010 election. The former produces the higher result for Labor, but may not be valid, because there is no effect of how to vote cards. Fairfax grabbed the higher number.

But for complex reasons to do with an unusual preference flow in 2010, Poll Bludger reckons the other polls might show the Libs as about one percentage point higher than they really are.

4. Labor flirts with boats turnback policy

Labor spokesman Richard Marles on immigration flirted with the idea of turning back boats to Indonesia, “if it was safe and didn’t affect Australia’s relationship with Indonesia.” In other words, with Indonesia’s cooperation.

I’ve been wondering whether there hasn’t been back-door cooperation with the LNP Governments turnback policy and what the new prez in Indonesia will have to say.

It does seem, however, that having an open mind on the matter was too much for the left within the ALP, so Shorten has gently slapped him down.

I seem to recall that Frank Brennan walked down the Marles path at the time Rudd announced his PNG solution, much to the consternation of his admirers. My recall is, however, that Brennan saw a much more full-blooded cooperation with Indonesia and other regional powers, setting up an orderly queue there, with increased assistance for asylum seekers to be treated decently in Indonesia, and taking more of our refugee quota from that source.

If the sea crossing is dangerous, which it is, we could take Clive Palmer’s advice and fly them all to Australia. Why don’t the Greens adopt that policy? It’s logical!

5. Nova Peris in the news

The point is that she shouldn’t have been.

The NT senator has broken her silence on the claims, saying she has “done nothing wrong”.

Making a statement to the Senate on Thursday, she said the claims were “baseless” and were connected to a family dispute.

“I have done nothing wrong,” she said.

“It pains me to have to talk about my private life. But the publication of my emails is part of a very difficult child access and financial estate dispute,” she said.
Audio: Nova Peris says explicit email leak was part of a blackmail attempt (PM)

She said the “aggrieved party” in the dispute contacted her by email 10 days before the emails were published to reveal “he had in his possessions a folder of information pertaining to Mr Boldon’s visit to Australia”.

“I did not realise at the time, he was referring to these emails,” she said.

“The release and publication of these emails is an attempt to extract money and embarrass me and my family.”

She told the Senate that the NT News was “well aware” the emails were part of a long-running family dispute “ahead of its publication”. (Emphasis added)

It was clear from the outset that Peris had an advisory role in athlete Ato Boldon’s visit. Athletics Australia made the decisions and paid the bills. Whether Peris had a personal relationship with Boldon (they had been training partners for years) is irrelevant.

The NT News is no doubt claiming public interest. At best they have been tools in an unseemly family dispute. At worst it was just gutter journalism, seeking to sell papers. I doubt the aim was to destroy Peris’s career, but they didn’t mind if they did.

Now we are told that the Australian Press Council has received a complaint about the coverage and is investigating. And:

The Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull says News Corp should have exercised more discretion before it published the emails but a former Media Watch host Jonathon Holmes says, in this case, the public interest outweighs any privacy concerns.

Good one Jonathon! I disagree on two counts. Firstly, there was nothing of public interest to see. Move on.

Secondly, he says we should ignore the motivation of the informants. With respect, that’s ethically bereft.