Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for March, 2009
Judge goes to jail. The Marcus Einfeld mystery.
23 March 2009
The legal fraternity here in Australia has been shocked to hear that one of our most senior and most experienced judges has been sentenced to at least two years jail.
Former federal court Justice Marcus Einfeld’s mistake was that he told a lie. The enormity of his mistake was that he told that lie under oath. The lie was about whether he was driving a car that was seen committing a traffic offence. He was the driver but he claimed that a friend was the driver. From that moment things went downhill because you see, the friend was apparently dead at the time of the traffic offence. Einfeld was charged over false evidence, but continued the lie, this time before a court. So a simple traffic offence became a lie under oath. Demerit points became a criminal offence.
Einfeld was found guilty for his big lie, and sentenced to jail, and he will serve his two years in pretty onerous conditions, having to be segregated because, as a former judge, he will be a target from other prisoners.
For a man who has reached 70, and with a lifetime of public service behind him, this is a horrible outcome.
A prison officer once told my wife that most people in prison are not habitual crims, rather most of them just made a mistake.
Never though could it be such a silly, absurd mistake as Einfeld’s.
Why he made such a blunder is a mystery. He is a smart man, and a man who knows the legal system. He must’ve known that perjury is a jail offence.
I knew of Marcus Einfeld years ago when he was a federal court judge in Sydney. He was considered to be one of the most sensitive liberal judges. He was of a kind that believed people should be given second chances.
I bet he wishes he was in court with a judge more like himself.
– Phil
Water water everywhere, but maybe not for long.
20 March 2009
There are climate change deniers still around, people who believe that we humans have not really pooed in our own backyard; people who still feel that we can continue to spew emissions into the atmosphere without it having any insulating effect on that same atmosphere.
They deniers are in the minority, and will still probably be denying as riverways dry up and island nations submerge.
But the truth is that we’re getting way beyond being academic about global warming. It is happening. Weather patterns have changed; polar ice caps are melting. Our own environment minister here in Australia, Penny Wong pronounced that the very hot temperatures felt around Melbourne a month or so ago were due to climate change. As we now know, these temperatures were a direct factor in the bushfires that were the worst natural disaster in Australia’s history as a nation.
Climate change is not just about a slight warming of the planet. It’s about what these couple of degrees warmth is going to mean. As two-metre high ice shelves melt, water levels will rise further. As already seen in the Pacific islands like Tuvalu, which are low-lying nations, the slight ocean level rises already have contaminated fresh water supplies. It will get worse.
As we’ve been talking about on the Breakfast Club, one huge threat to the living world is in the north of India, where ice caps are already melting. When they melt more, there will be flooding downriver into the countries that have been relying on the regular seasonal release of water from the caps. After the intial flooding, the rivers will go dry. Millions will be without water. Tensions between countries will rise. The scenario is not a happy one.
In Turkey and Australia, some of the world’s best minds in water management are meeting to sort out what to do. There is hope that if action is taken now to conserve water supplies as best they can, governments might be able to adjust to the changes.
There will be less naturally produced fresh water in years to come. Dealing with it will be a test of our nous.
And we’ll have to have plenty of nous.
– Phil
The Pauline Hanson saga. Maybe it was her after all.
19 March 2009
We in journalism have known for years that you can find a scientist who will tell you anything you want to know. If you find someone who tells you that being shot through the head is bad for you, there will be another who will say they have research that proves that the bullet will provide you with all the daily allowances of essential minerals, and is in fact good for you.
We’ve seen the medical battles raging about the goodness of a glass of wine at night. Some cardiologists have said that vino is great for blood pressure, while other researchers claim to have statistics that show that any wine at all will increase your chance of giving birth to Klingons.
And so it is with the Pauline Hanson nude photos case. We blogged on this yesterday. This is the case where a man who claimed to be a former boyfriend of the wannabe anti-immigration politician revealed some nude photos he had taken of a former girlfirend, a girlfriend who he said was Pauline Hanson. Yesterday we told you a face reconstructionist said there was no way the photo was of a 19 year old Pauline Hanson.
Today the newspapers carry the evidence of another face reconstructionist who disgrees with the earlier assessment. This scientist says it is 99.2% probably that the woman in the nude shots was Pauline Hanson.
Two reconstructionists. Two opposing views.
And what are we to get from all that? The scientist yesterday pointed to a slew of facial features on the woman in the nude photos, things like a nose bridge that was too big to be Pauline Hanson’s, eyes too close together, neck too short. Looking at the photos, which are freely available on the web, you have to agree.
Also, an Australian current affairs program put the supposed former boyfriend on a lie detector machine last night, and he didn’t do too well.
No doubt another lie detector tomorrow will show him to be St Francis of Assisi.
Me so confused.
– Phil
Sam the Koala: the price of fame
18 March 2009
There’s nothing like an animal photo to make you go all sqeeshy.
You remember the YouTube video of Christian the Lion, who was raised by a couple of young Australians in London? They eventually gave Christian to a Kenyan reserve. The YouTube hit was of footage the Australians took when they returned to the reserve a year later to see the now-fully grown Christian. The footage is priceless. It shows Christian spotting them from quite a distance and charging towards them, and leaping all over them like the lost love that he was.
Then more recently we had the photo of Sam the Koala, who was photographed being given a drink of water from a firefighter’s bottle during the recent Australian bushfires. More than any other photo of the disaster, this image flew around the world. You could almost hear the “awww” moments clicking in brains in Amsterdam.
The latest on this story is that Sam has now got a manager (yes, Sam is a koala), and this manager is in talks with film companies, two TV production houses and even the Ellen DeGeneres TV show. Sam has already been contracted by an advertising agency (yes, Sam is a koala). One newspaper here in Australia has put photoshopped sunglasses on Sam’s head and a cigar in his mouth.
Sam, if he understood what was going on all around him, would have to wonder what the human race is all about. I’m sure he’d rather just be up a tree, chewing a gum leaf or two, and sleeping.
After having been rescued by that brave firefighter, Sam is quite an example of someone who has seen the best and weirdest of human behaviour. For the lion called Christian, he has seen nothing but the best.
And the other sure thing is that both stories have brought out the humanity in the rest of us.
– Phil
US Stockmarket. The little red engine that almost did.
17 March 2009
After four days of positive stockmarket gains, the eyes of brokers were on the U.S. market again this morning wondering if it was, like, maybe, possibly possible that the Dow and the Nasdaq would make it five good days in a row.
Half on hour before the close this morning, the Dow and the Standard & Poors 500 were up. The Nasdaq (the tech index) was down a little but we were happy to ignore that. It looked for all money like the money about the money was on the money.
Then the money went out. The banking and insurance sectors were hit with a sell-off (or ‘profit-taking’ as they put it on Wall Street). The banking/insurance stocks went south, and the Dow and the S&P went to Mexico with them.
Thus ends the bullish run. The good news though is that our Breakfast Club financial analyst, Juliana Roadley from Commsec, says that it doesn’t matter that much if the market goes down slightly. It actually doesn’t make much difference whether the market is slightly up or down. It’s the fact that people are not selling off in a big way anymore.
Following this view, if the markets are in the red again tomorrow, but by only a handful of points, then that’s a steady-as-she-goes scenario, and a good thing. People are no longer diving off the good ship Wall Street. They’re still hanging onto the lifeboats, ready to re-board.
After decrying the recession as not really possible a year ago, analysts are now exhibiting symptoms of having been bitten shy and are becoming gloomsters. The truth seems to be that analysts make their best guesses, but they’re trying to guess the psyche of investors, and this is a psyche that’s a little bit nervous, sassy, paranoid and, not to forget, greedy. There’s also the false sense of security, a sense that gets a good enema with every big stockmarket drop. As analyst Alan Kohler said yesterday, we have these market drops every thirty years, and this correlates with the average career span of a broker. Thirty years after the last drop and all the recession-experienced brokers have been replaced by new brokers who have never seen a recession and think it could never happen again.
It can and it does.
In fact it did. Let’s hope they remember it in 2040.
– Phil
