Letters to the editor

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On the last page of Robert Manne's comprehensive analysis of what he understands to be Kevin Rudd's agenda (November) is a plaintive appeal for humanity to avert the likely looming catastrophe caused by man-made greenhouse-gas emissions. Manne writes:

Climate change demands more of politics and international relations than I think they can deliver: the end of politics as the art of the possible and of compromise between interest groups; the negotiation of an international agreement of an unprecedentedly altruistic kind; the creation of an atmosphere of wartime emergency in the absence of an enemy.

Read this in conjunction with Tim Flannery's Quarterly Essay 31, ‘Now or Never: A Sustainable Future for Australia?', and it seriously challenges our species' taxonomic description as Homo sapiens. We deserve not even Homo intelligensis; but rather, Homo expediensis. Flannery's essay appears to me to be a middle section that outlines the "known" science (due to the climate sceptics, I have to put it in inverted commas), bookended by introductory and concluding sections that raise serious philosophical and moral questions about our species' occupation of - so far - a minute proportion of the planet's history. He, along with others, asserts that we have very little time before we pass a point of no return in our despoliation of our ecosystem, upon whose physico-chemical settings our species' survival depends.

Clive Hamilton's depressingly titled review in the previous issue of The Monthly ("Six Degrees of Apocalypse", October) refers to Flannery's essay among several other books on climate change, and he concludes more despairingly even than Flannery. I am spurred by Manne's plea to pick up what is largely missing from Flannery's essay (he can't cover everything!), yet is highlighted in Hamilton's, which is the psychological contribution of our species' response to its threatened extinction: denial! Manne despairs of the likelihood of our species being able adequately to address our dire predicament. Can we risk being confident that the so-called alarmists are completely wrong? The last time, as I recall, that the "few minutes to midnight" metaphor, poignantly reprised on the QE31 cover, was utilised was during the Cold War, when it threatened to break into a global nuclear war and engulf us all.

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I was astonished to read in "What is Rudd's Agenda?" (November) the silly and, worse, ill-informed comment by Robert Manne about the campaign by groups as disparate as trade unions, paediatricians and early-child-development specialists, national women's groups, the Sex Discrimination Commission and others on paid maternity leave. His reference to "old-style feminists who are still fighting battles of an earlier era about women's right to work" combining to "determine a choice of fewer than six months of paid maternity leave" is ludicrous, disrespectful and utterly wrong. Were he informed, he would be aware that the issue is still on the political agenda, thanks to a campaign launched in June 2007 by a coalition of national women's groups, ranging from the CWA and the BPW of Australia through to the YWCA of Australia.

The campaign was led by the National Foundation for Australian Women, which joined forces with the NSW Commission for Children and Young People and NIFTEY to commission a Newspoll survey and develop an online petition, which culminated in a letter to the then leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, and to the then prime minister, John Howard, seeking a reference to the Productivity Commission. Rudd promised the reference. The entire background material, including the Rudd letter and the Newspoll results, can be found at www.nfaw.org.

For its part, the ACTU sought to form a coalition with ACCI and the AIG, and strategically promoted a 14-week-leave agenda. Unions NSW, NIFTEY, NFAW and many others, in a virtual coalition, have sought a minimum of six months. The Productivity Commission, in its draft report, states that it has been convinced by the arguments on child development to recommend a six-month leave period.

As a 75-year-old veteran of the women's movement, I take umbrage at Professor Manne's ignorance of the role of the national women's organisations, and his utterly irrelevant and discriminatory reference to old-style feminists. He is out of line, as well as out of the loop.

Body Text: Robert Forster's endorsement of Redken (November) is totally inappropriate. Did he get cash for his comments, or 12 months' supply of shampoo and conditioner? Most shampoos and conditioners contain palm oil. The palm-oil industry is destroying the habitats of orangutans in Borneo and hastening their extinction. Think green to keep clean, and save our close relatives!

Body Text: Engaging as it was to read the correspondence about the Howard years between Tony Abbott and Robert Manne in the Weekend Australian (25-26 October), a deeper and more subtle analysis is needed. More damaging over the long term than Howard's conspicuous "indigenous affairs, asylum seekers, foreign policy and climate change" failures has been the rise throughout our institutions of an oppressive managerialism, and an associated decline in visionary leadership.

The growing fear of withdrawal of funds from organisations has resulted in an emphasis on obsessive control and narrowly conceived perceptions of efficiency, which in turn has led to a widespread loss of any sense of community, creativity and commitment to the long-term and to higher values. The good (in the broadest sense: caring, vision and hope of improvement) has been abandoned. As a consequence, more and more people are leaving or retiring earlier than planned from jobs that once provided them with meaning as well as income.

The sad paradox is that most of the managers - pseudo-leaders - are still in power, and will likely use any extra funds provided by our new government to do yet more of the over-management that has left so many workplaces bereft of meaning. Unless Rudd and his colleagues address this less-obvious systemic cultural change effected by the Howard years, genuine progress will continue to be eroded.

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Adrian Collette’s self-serving claim that matters raised in Gideon Haigh’s article on Opera Australia “lack substance” needs to be refuted. No attempt was made to make a realistic recording of OA’s Rusalka last year. The printed itinerary of the Chandos producer, Ralph Couzens, shows he didn’t bother to attend any of the performances in the theatre, and had no idea of what the audience heard – and he stated as much to me. It seems that he and Richard Hickox were intent on constructing a fantasy right from the start.

This became obvious at the playback session I attended, where Hickox was clearly in charge. I walked out after he ordered Couzens to turn my voice down, and after hearing special effects being applied to make it sound as if I was singing underwater or from a distance. The end result of these manipulations is best described by an eminent professor of music who was in the theatre when the opera was recorded. In his opinion, the voices of Rusalka, Jezibabo and the Wood Nymphs were “given a presence far beyond what they achieved in the theatre”, while my voice was “scaled back significantly and obviously”. The English music critic and author Norman Lebrecht has described the manipulation as “serious” and “shocking”.

While being interviewed by Alan Jones on 15 October, Adrian Collette read out a statement by Ralph Couzens, claiming, “I would stand before any judge in the world to say that the engineers and myself did not and could not interfere in a detrimental way to Bruce Martin’s sound.” Unfortunately for Couzens, if he did make such a claim in court he would probably be charged with perjury, because his claim of “could not interfere” has been contradicted by Richard Hickox himself. In an email sent to me on 7 December 2007, Hickox admits the recording was misrepresentative, that my voice was “backward in the sound picture”; but that because the engineers recorded in “multitrack”, it was possible to rectify this and do a “re-balance”. So much for “live” recording.

Hickox and Chandos had the opportunity to rectify the recording but chose not to, leaving young singers and friends of Hickox – people who would never survive in my Wagnerian repertoire because they don’t have the vocal strength for it – sounding as if they have voices four times more powerful than mine, i.e. 20 decibels louder.

Adrian Collette is fully aware of all the above. He says the company members of OA support him. But would they, if they knew the true extent of the nepotism, cronyism and blatant misrepresentation carried out in the company’s name?

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Alice Pung's article "24/7" (October) contains the startlingly specific description, "The car park was jammed with HD Holdens and Valiants ..." (emphasis added). Cultural literacy is much discussed these days, an adjunct to the so-called history wars. Should people aspiring to Australian citizenship know about Don Bradman and his Test-batting average (99.94), or when Patrick White won his Nobel? Pung excels here. Generally, only Aussie blokes born soon after World War II know the two-letter codes that identify successive models of Holdens. The HD followed the iconic EH and preceded the lacklustre HR. What was distinctive about the HD? It was the first Holden to have curved side windows.

However, if Pung aspired to true Australian automotive cultural literacy, she would have included the code for the contemporary Valiant. Holden literacy is widespread; Valiant literacy is restricted to a tiny clique of devotees.

Thanks to you and Alice Pung for an entertaining article.

Body Text: I await with interest Robert Manne's reaction to the slashing of Radio National programs under the Rudd government. Perhaps Kevin Rudd is planning to bring the culture wars "abruptly to an end" ("New Teeth for Aunty", December 2007 - January 2008) in a way Mr Manne did not quite anticipate.