Surprise, surprise, the Murdoch press pushes Climate Change Denialism
Biased newspaper reporting on the carbon pricing mechanism, The Conversation, By David Karoly, Christian Slattery, Kathryn Townley and Kerrie Haria Adams from University of Melbourne.) 18 Dec 12,
The Australian print media have been criticised for inaccurately reporting the carbon pricing mechanism (CPM), and in some instances for actively campaigning against the Gillard government. Research from the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, before the start of the carbon price, reinforced these claims. It found an overwhelmingly negative coverage of the carbon price by News Limited papers in a study of ten national newspapers.
Following the introduction of the carbon price, an undergraduate research team from the University of Melbourne has confirmed these findings in an analysis of The Age, Herald Sun and The Australian.
We found that these newspapers are contributing to an uninformed and inadequate public debate on the carbon price and Australian climate change policy…….
The carbon price follows logic set out in the Stern Review. It advocates for investment in climate change mitigation now, to ensure continued economic prosperity and minimise later economic costs from climate change impacts or delayed climate change mitigation.
Not only was this fundamental argument barely mentioned, discussion of climate science was almost non-existent. This is critical to public perceptions of the carbon price, as without reinforcing the motivations for introducing such a policy, readers are less likely to believe it is necessary….
the overall media coverage does not discuss the need for action on climate change, nor does it balance the short-term economic costs against long-term gains. http://theconversation.edu.au/biased-newspaper-reporting-on-the-carbon-pricing-mechanism-11373
Origin and Energy Australia – ignorant critics of wind energy community acceptance
But for Origin and Energy Australia to assert that there isn’t a social license to operate for wind farms in this country is preposterous given their small part in actually developing wind projects
What would Origin and EnergyAustralia know about wind?, Climate Spectator, 21 Nov 2012, Tristan Edis
Origin Energy and EnergyAustralia (formerly TRUenergy) were on the front page of The Australian newspaper yesterday claiming the renewable energy target couldn’t be met because of community opposition to wind farms.
According to Origin Energy, wind farms are causing greater angst in the community than coal seam gas. And Energy Australia felt the around 300 MW of wind installed each year was “already testing the limits of community acceptance.” EnergyAustraia’s CEO Richard McIndoe was cited by the newspaper as claiming that the social licence wasn’t there to ramp up construction of wind farms.
This sounded rather interesting because I regularly talk to people heavily engaged in developing wind farms. These people attend community meetings, talk with local landowners, and deal with planning approval hearings – and this is very different to what they’ve told me. Every one of them of course has a horror story to tell about some particularly challenging people they’ve had to deal with in getting planning approvals. Often these people live several kilometres from the nearest turbine, or even outside of the local community, such as just about everyone involved in the Landscape Guardians and the Waubra Foundation.
But they generally find that if you take the effort to consult extensively within the community, you can get a large proportion of the community on-board. So it poses the question – do Origin and EnergyAustralia actually know what they’re talking about?… Continue reading
What a uranium company CEO thinks of the Australian media
Funny – I go through the uranium so-called news each day. What I find there is a succession of obvious handouts from the uranium lobby, presumably to grateful journalists, who don’t bother to check the accuracy of these uranium market forecasts . Article after article has glowing predictions for the financial boom to come, (just a little later) from investing in uranium.
Nearly every article concentrates on China.And, I think to myself. Do these uranium dreamers ever consider that the Chinese might be intelligent? That they might notice how unpopular nuclear power has become globally, and the reasons why (- economic, and safety). Yes, China is reported as planning to expand its nuclear power programme. Oh goody! They might want our uranium! But what if China wakes up to the dismal outlook for nuclear, elsewhere.
But never mind. The Australian media dutifully regurgitates the China uranium-buying boom to come, – no mention of the other countries (especially India’s political mess over nuclear power). We carefully ignore the nuclear decline in Germany, Switzerland, USA, UK, even France.
However, the poor old uranium lobby still thinks itself to be hardly done by Australia’s government and media.- Christina Macpherson
Marathon Resources Chairman , Peter Williams, lambasts Government on resources industry attitude – today’s A.G.M. 22 Nov 12,
“……..The overwhelming influence of environmental and heritage activists and bureaucrats in South Australia in recent years, supported by Government, has seen the pendulum swing far away from balanced development and economic growth….
The SA Government’s actions in the North Flinders have jeopardised the State’s reputation as a safe place for resource investment…. “
Limiting the News – THE AUSTRALIAN twists a story to climate denialism
The Australian skews climate science… again, Independent Australia, 20 November, 2012 The Australian newspaper continues its relentless misrepresentation of climate change science. Graham Readfearn reports. “COOL spell to chill hearts of climate activists,” says the clickbait headline in yesterday’s The Australian (19/11/12).
The story, a reprint from the Sunday Times’ Jonathan Leake, is just the kind of editorialised-opinion-disguised-as-news which The Australian has become known for whenever it reports about climate change.
Let’s have a look through this piece; it begins:
THE world’s climate has cooled during last year and this year, temperature data from Britain’s Met Office reveals — just before this year’s talks on cutting global greenhouse gas emissions.
The figures show that, although global temperatures are still well above the long-term average, they have fallen since the record seen in 2010. The findings could prove politically sensitive, coming ahead of the UN’s climate summit in Doha, Qatar, where the global system for regulating greenhouse gas emissions faces collapse.
The threat comes because the Kyoto Treaty, under which developed nations pledged to cut their carbon emissions, expires at the end of this year. Doha is seen as the last hope of securing an extension.
In such a febrile situation, any data casting doubt on climate scientists’ predictions is potentially explosive.
Come again?
…. The findings could prove politically sensitive …. any data casting doubt on climate scientists’ predictions ….
I would challenge Jonathan Leake to find any climate scientist who in the peer reviewed literature – or anywhere else for that matter – has “predicted” that global temperatures will rise uniformly year upon year. This only becomes “politically sensitive” if the politicians in question accept this sort of spoon-fed misrepresentation of the science.
Given that 2012 will probably end up as another year in the top ten warmest years ever recorded (something the Met Office predicted back in January), actually reinforces what the climate scientists have been “predicting” rather than casting doubt on them.
Not only that, but the expert from the UK’s Met Office which Leake quotes, Peter Stott, even spells out for Leake why the strawman argument Leake went on use in his story was wrong.
However, it is such a short period that it is scientifically meaningless. Climate change can only be measured over decades — and the records show that the world has warmed by 0.75C over the past century….
Australia’s public liars being exposed
IPA falsifiers fear fact checking fad Independent Australia 19 November, 2012 Serial deceivers, the Institute of Public Affairs, appear decidedly nervous about the prospect of fact checking coming to Australia, reports Alan Austin.
WATCHING the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) become appalled at the threat of fact checking coming to Australia has been one of this year’s more entertaining media experiences. Writing on The Drum online last week, IPA research fellow and (according to his bio on The Drum*) editor of the IPA Review, Chris Berg claimed fact checking – that is, ensuring what is written is actually true – is
‘…appealing in principle. It is disappointing – even futile – in practice.’
Well, of course it is ― to the IPA. Its Review almost rivals The Australian for distortions and falsehoods. Almost. Its writers almost match Andrew Bolt for fabrications. Well, no, not really………
Even pro-Republican Fox News called Romney and Ryan out on their multiple fabrications.
Steve Benen’s influential website meticulously documented Romney’s porkies throughout the 2012 presidential campaign. He ended up with a total of 917 by election day ― a tally that would make even Australia’s “Lying Rodent” blush.
Most commentators assess this to have been a factor in the huge win for President Obama. How significant it was, of course, impossible to measure.
More urgently for Australia’s IPA, recent focus on the lies of their pal, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, has coincided with a dramatic fall in his approval rate to new record lows. Just coincidence? Again, hard to be certain. But the IPA is nervous……
Fact checkers are required primarily for calling out lies — deliberate statements of falsehood, made knowingly by politicians, the media and public commentators.
Australia, the USA and Britain today are rife with fabricators.
Journalists lie about public figures, about climate change and about Aboriginal people.
The IPA routinely fabricates and distorts in its advocacy on behalf of its undisclosed clients on tobacco marketing, internet privacy, climate change, controls over shonky charities and many other matters.
These are profound challenges facing Australia, the USA and Britain. Fact checkers can help us deal with them. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/business/media-2/ipa-falsifiers-fear-fact-checking-fad/
Australian media more interested in Julia Gillard’s shoes, than in the dangerous uranium deal with India
The opening up of nuclear trade with India — first by the US in 2008 and most recently by Australia — has broader implications. It fundamentally changes the proliferation equation for other countries.
The most dangerous lie peddled by industry and by the Australian and Indian governments is that India has a strong track record of nuclear non-proliferation.
The Gillard government has no intention of seriously addressing any of the proliferation, safety, security and regulatory problems, nor does it care about the repression and murder of peaceful citizen protesters in India.
India’s Abysmal Nuclear Record, By Jim Green, New Matilda, 18/10/12 http://newmatilda.com/2012/10/18/indias-abysmal-nuclear-track-record
While the media focuses on Julia Gillard’s stumbles, India’s clunker of a nuclear industry stays unexamined. But hey, what’s a bit of nuclear proliferation between friends? Jim Green from Friends of the Earth on the South Asian nuclear arms race
According to Gemma Bailey, writing in the Australian Financial Review, Prime Minister Gillard has a cunning plan. She will ensure that Australia’s uranium supply treaty with India contains strict conditions on the safe use of the nuclear fuel. The plan, we’re told, “is intended to neutralise opponents who highlight that India has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
If only that were true. Here’s Gillard’s real plan: trot out tired old lines about strict conditions and hope that journalists will regurgitate them without question. For the most part, it works. A number of media organisations have run an Associated Press piece which asserts as fact that Australia “sells uranium only … under strict conditions”. Michelle Grattan has twice used her Fairfax column to remind us about John Howard’s cricketing abilities, but she remains silent about the weapons proliferation issues at stake with the uranium deal.
Fairfax’s National Times ran what was essentially a propaganda piece by Professor Amitabh Mattoo from the Canberra-funded Australia India Institute. And the day before Labor’s National Conference debated uranium sales to India last year, the Sydney Morning Herald published a column by the Lowy Institute’s Rory Medcalf downplaying the risk of proliferation. The Lowy Institute — which prominently lists uranium miner BHP Billiton as a funding partner — refused to run a critique of Medcalf’s column on its blog.
At stake is the nuclear arms race in South Asia and broader, global nuclear proliferation concerns. As Ron Walker, a retired Australian diplomat and former Chair of the Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said last year: “I am horrified that the media have not explained the enormity of this proposal.”
India is at least as culpable as its neighbours in fanning the nuclear arms race in South Asia.
Despite the evidence, THE AUSTRALIAN newspaper claims that wind power does not help reduce CO2 emissions
Wind power abates greenhouse gasses in the UK, why should we believe Lloyd and Cumming’s claims that, for some reason, it is not working in Australia. See Beyond the bluster: Why wind power is an effective technology by the UK Institute of Public Policy Research.
The Australian’s Graham Lloyd pushes hard against the winds of change Independent Australia 10 September, 2012 The Australian newspaper – and its environment editor, Graham Lloyd, in particular – have a vendetta against wind power, says Dave Clarke, who reviews their latest unbalanced report. GRAHAM LLOYD, the ‘environment editor’ for The Australian has got together with Hamish Cumming, an opponent of the proposed Mortlake Wind Farm, to write a creative and imaginative piece about wind power and carbon dioxide emissions.
An environment editor who has a grudge against one of the world’s most successful forms of renewable energy must be quite a rare bird. But for an employee of the Murdoch News empire it is probably a wise career choice. Opposing the huge and powerful fossil fuel/mining industry would not be good for Lloyd’s future prospects in that system.
Lloyd relies heavily on what he calls Cumming’s ‘two year analysis of Victoria’s wind farm development’, but does not say where or how this analysis has been published, nor can I find it on the internet.
They claim that, while Victoria’s wind farms have displaced a significant amount of Victoria’s coal-fired power, this has not resulted in any less greenhouse carbon dioxide being generated by said coal-fired power stations. Lloyd and Cumming claim that when the wind blows and Victoria’s wind farms are generating at a high level, the coal-fired power stations cut back their generation, but go on polluting the atmosphere at the same rate as they would at full power.
What they are implying, but not saying, is that the coal-fired power stations are so poorly designed, poorly managed, or simply so inherently inflexible that they cannot reduce their rate of pollution, even when they are generating less power!
Where Lloyd and Cumming get really creative and imaginative is in claiming that this is not any fault of the coal-fired power stations, but of the wind farms. Somehow we are to believe that the (alleged by Lloyd and Cumming) failure of Victoria’s coal-fired power stations to reduce their emissions in response to reduced demand on their generation is all to be blamed on the wind power industry. Continue reading
The USA’s propaganda machine in action in Australian media
WikiLeaks cables show how Australia works with the US to get Iran, Green Left 6 Sept, 12, “……..Propaganda As well as efforts to contain discussions inside the conference, cables detail the “public diplomacy outreach” methods the US could employ to push its agenda outside the Conference. A cable said the US Deputy Chief of Mission in Canberra: “thought it might be good to produce a documentary laying out Iran’s history of supporting Hizbollah and other terrorists, and then ask viewers to consider what it would mean to have a nuclear-armed Iran. Luck [Ambassador At-Large for Counterterrorism] agreed – so long as the USG itself did not make the documentary”.
In a later cable the US Embassy answered questions from the US government about “the most useful ways to convey the U.S. message on NPT issues to the Australian public”, such as the use of a Digital Video Conference (DVC): “The host government is firmly on board with USG policy and does not require further outreach, but think tanks, specific journalists and universities in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne could be targeted , particularly on the need to focus on the “crisis pillar” of the NPT, which is not disarmament, but nonproliferation. Another option would be to arrange a DVC just for journalists with an eye towards placement of articles based on the discussion.”
The Embassy went on to recommend: “Articles and editorial pieces by very senior US officials for our Office of Public Affairs to place in “The Australian,” “The Sydney Morning Herald,” “The Age,” “The Daily Telegraph” and the “Australian Financial Review,” among others. … While providing the U.S. record on disarmament, the articles should also highlight the need for noncompliant states to be put under the international spotlight during the Review Conference.”
In the end the US did come under sustained criticism for alleged non-compliance with the NPT at the 2005 RevCon, by the NAM states and other delegates. However, a report by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting said the US media was significantly more compliant than the NPT delegates and largely ignored the US’s “bad atoms”….. http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/52146
Union secretary Paul Howes paid to do a Murdoch media hatchet job on the Greens
Green-hating News Ltd confirms Howes on the payroll, Crikey, by Stephen Mayne , 19 July 12, Ever since Senator John Faulkner told Paul Howes to “put a sock in it” last Sunday, the frenetic media tart, AWU national secretary and political kingmaker has been surprisingly quiet.
It was Howes, a paid News Limited columnist, who teamed with the broader Murdoch press and fellow ALP young turk Sam Dastyari to launch an all-out assault on the Greens last weekend.
……… Howes….with a paid column savaging the Greens in The Sunday Telegraph…
While many have criticised the tactics of Dastyari and Howes — there is also an important issue about conflict of interest and News Ltd payments to Howes. When the HSU scandal was at its peak, Howes tweeted that his AWU salary is only $140,000. I asked the self-described faceless man on several occasions whether he’s on the Murdoch empire payroll courtesy of his weekly Sunday Telegraph column, but he’s declined to respond.
Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen cleared up the matter when he emailed this response yesterday: “Yes he is paid. ….Howes should disclose the precise figure, but it would probably exceed $20,000 a year.
So when you add the Murdoch payments (there’s the superannuation board fees too, but it’s unlikely he’s taking those) to Howes’ $140,000 AWU salary, the former radical Trot is arguably doing better than your typical 28-year-old working for the Millionaire Factory Macquarie Bank.
…….there is a legitimate question whether Howes should be returning the Murdoch moolah to his union considering he’s a full-time AWU employee and the column is written on union time.
The other problem with a unionist pocketing Murdoch cash is the stench around News Corp’s right-wing agenda and dodgy practices in Britain. As part of its power agenda, News Corp has long put emerging politicians on the payroll as paid columnists or delivered large cash advances for publishing deals.
Some argue this is a perfectly legal way to build relationships and bank balances, but there should be disclosure. …….
Howes was certainly very obliging in delivering a paid hatchet job on the one cause the News Ltd press hates above all else — progressive Green politics. But Howes has run into more trouble than just a public John Faulkner excoriation. Some progressive AWU members are equally unimpressed and have attempted to express their concerns through the union’s Facebook page.
Alas, Mount Isa-based AWU member Zane Alcorn had his comments blocked, so he set up his own Facebook page “for Australian Workers Union members & supporters to discuss progressive reform of the AWU re: union democracy and climate + social justice policies”.
The Sunday Telegraph assault on the Greens was described as follows: “Pretty damn sure Paul Howes has nothing even remotely close to a mandate from the AWU membership to be embarking on such a destructive divide and conquer mission as this. Note: reading this may cause nausea and vomiting. You have been warned.” *Disclosure: Stephen Mayne was not paid for this contribution http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/07/18/green-hating-news-ltd-confirms-howes-on-the-payroll/
The politics of Australia’s ABC TV coverage of climate change
Climate change denial is as easy as ABC Independent Australia , 25 April 12, The ABC’s approach to reporting on climate change is motivated more by politics than science, says environment editor Sandi Keane — who compares its coverage to that of the BBC. “…….This week, the ABC’s Q&A show will host another ‘debate’ on climate science, with former Coalition Senator and Liberal power broker, the well-known AGW-dissenter, Nick Minchin. Regardless of the outcome, the sceptics can already chalked it up as a win thanks to the myth perpetuated by the ABC that AGW is ‘controversial’….. It is no secret that the phoney ‘debate’ about global warming was deliberately manufactured by self-interest groups to delay regulation on emissions….
In a disgraceful move by the ABC, no doubt as a result of politics once again determining program content, the above clip from the show with Professor Naomi Oreskes (author of the best seller: Merchants of Doubt) has been cut from tonight’s show – or so we are told in this morning’s Age by Prof Stephan Lewandowsky.
You will be told that each ‘side’ was able to choose its own team to convince the other to change their mind. Not so Anna Rose, it appears.
Watch the above clip of Oreskes’ interview with Nick Minchin and you’ll understand why his side of politics were afraid of it going to air. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/business/media-2/climate-change-denial-is-as-easy-as-abc/
“Balance” in the media: the ABC gives anti-science a national platform
ABC’s latest climate change doco another PR victory for doubters Crikey, by Clive Hamilton 27 April12, The strategy of doubt-mongering has been highly effective for climate deniers at exploiting the media’s practice of presenting “two sides” to controversial issues. The media have an ethical commitment to provide “balance” and stories are more interesting if there is a conflict to report, whether that conflict is real or manufactured. Which is why ABC TV’s I Can Change Your Mind … About Climate Change is yet another victory for climate denial ..
.. If there were a real debate among scientists, then the climate deniers would be publishing their counter-evidence in the professional scientific journals. But they are not, because they do not have evidence that will stand up to scrutiny.
So they set out to do something else, to create the impression in the public mind that there is a serious debate among scientists about global warming. To do so they must shift the terrain away from the scientific journals and into the popular media, where they do not have to face the scrutiny of experts.
It’s certain that when asked last year to participate in the program, Minchin grabbed the chance with two hands. His denialist comrades have been patting him on the back ever since…..
Scholars such as Naomi Oreskes have exposed the tactics of the climate deniers with a mass of documentary evidence.
Yet the ABC persists with the charade of “providing balance”. Some news organisations abroad have decided they will no longer fall for the doubt-mongering ruse. Professional pride now prevents editors and journalists from being manipulated by the denial machine.
The BBC would not air a program such as this. In the United States, National Public Radio has revised its ethics handbook. “Our goal,” it states, “is not … to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth.”
When it reports on questions such as climate science its aim is not the spurious fairness of presenting “both sides”; instead NPR commits itself to be “fair to the truth”. “To be fair to the truth.” Once we simply expected that of the national broadcaster. This latest program tells us that the truth no longer carries so much weight at the ABC, not when it comes to climate science. http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/04/26/hamilton-abcs-latest-climate-change-doco-another-pr-victory-for-doubters/
THE AUSTRALIAN newspaper ignores reputable science on wind energy
The Australian’s fear of reds under the bed, CLIMATE SPECTATOR: Tristan Edis, 12 Mar 2012 On Friday, The Australian newspaper dedicated front page coverage to a United Kingdom study that claimed that, in Britain, using wind turbines to cut emissions costs 10 times the price of a gas-fired power station. Such a claim is not correct for Australian circumstances. But what I find remarkable is why The Australian considered such a study to be front page news.
There are more than 50 Australian economic modelling studies (my hard drive holds 730 megabytes worth) – prepared by a range of highly credible sources – that examine the relative costs of wind versus alternative power sources, specifically for Australian conditions. The Australian could have chosen from the Australian Energy Market Operator, the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics, Access Economics, CSIRO, Carbon Market Economics, the Treasury, the Electric Power Research Institute, several of Australia’s major electricity companies, and even ACIL Tasman (who they have cheerfully and uncritically quoted on countless occasions in the past when they have been commissioned by the Coal Association and the oil and gas industry).
If they had bothered to pick up any single one of these studies they would have found the claim of a tenfold cost difference to be profoundly exaggerated
Yet the paper decided a study analysing UK conditions and prepared for a lobby group (The Global Warming Policy Foundation) that is obviously dedicated to undermining the case for action to reduce carbon emission, was not just news, but front page news. I would have perhaps understood such a response to an international study if it had been prepared by the International Energy Agency, or the OECD, or the UK’s peak scientific body, the Royal Society. But the Global Warming Policy Foundation?
This report was supported by commentary by their environment reporter, Graham Lloyd, headed ‘An Industry Running out of Puff ’. In it he suggests that community opposition to wind farms and health fears about wind turbines are widespread, major problems afflicting the wind industry. No mention is made of the CSIRO study that found that opposition within local communities hosting wind farms in Australia is largely exaggerated. Nor does it mention that many thousands of people in Denmark have been living in close proximity to wind turbines for more than a decade without ill-effect. …..
f this was an isolated case from The Australian then one could just pass this off as ‘slow news day desperation’. But the embarrassing errors have been systematic and long-running. Below are some stand-out examples, but there are enough to fill a book……
Australia’s ABC television Q and A neglects serious thinkers in favour of “Punch and Judy
It appears that the producers have their favourites when it comes to “thinktanks”, with the free marketeering IPA topping the list with 4 different panellists and 11 appearances in total (not including appearances by former staff members). Meanwhile, prominent progressive think tank The Australia Institute has never featured on Q&A, despite TAI’s current head Dr Richard Denniss debating Lord Christopher Monckton about climate change at the National Press Club last year and its former head being prominent author and intellectual Professor Clive Hamilton.
Mining corporations’ control of Australian media to increase, as Gina Rinehart joins
Other mining billionaires may also join Rinehart’s bid to shape Australia’s media in her own image…….. the corporate rich’s control of the media is hardly limited to Rinehart. It is the rule, not the exception….. Australia already has the most monopolised media in Western world.
Rinehart grabs for media control, Green Left, February 11, 2012 ,By Paul Benedek She’s proposed nuclear explosions for open-cut mining, funded tours by climate deniers and called for bringing in cheap migrant labour to work her mines.
Now Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has bought the largest individual stake in Fairfax Media, which runs the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Australian Financial Review, plus various radio stations and regional papers.
In 2010, Rinehart bought herself a seat on the Channel 10 board when she paid $166 million for a 10% stake in the television station.
Her expansion from mining baron to media mogul is most likely not a financial decision. Rinehart is spending less than 1% of her wealth on Fairfax, and media is far less profitable than mining. Continue reading
Gina Rinehart and her influence on Australian media
Like him, [her father, Lang Hancock], she once advocated opening up new mines in Australia by using nuclear explosions. Hancock got the idea of using nukes to excavate harbours from Edward Teller, the fiercely anti-communist ”father of the H-bomb”
She is now putting her wealth into the climate change sceptics’ movement.
right-wing Melbourne think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, which has a long association with the mining industry. The IPA is secretive about its funding but it would be a reasonable suspicion that its rapid expansion during the past two years has been financed by Gina Rinehart.
Will readers of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald soon have to endure regular opinion pieces from climate sceptics like Monckton and Plimer, and various others still stuck in the politics of the Cold War?
Mining in a new vein, SMH Clive Hamilton, February 2, 2012 IF GINA Rinehart succeeds in getting a controlling
interest in Fairfax Media, the only competition to the Murdoch stable of newspapers in Australia, the nation’s political landscape will be changed.
Although she is famously shy of publicity, enough has emerged to make it clear that Rinehart has political views on the far right of the spectrum. Those close to her have reported that she would like to use her wealth to gain political influence.
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. Continue reading
1 This month
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