Class actions have become a predator’s picnic for funders

Janet Albrechtsen has exposed the racket of class actions in Australia (“High noon for cashed-up cowboys of class actions”, 13/5). She identifies the five ingredients that have turned Australia’s class actions into a predator’s picnic for litigation funders. And she pinpoints the fundamental flaw in this form of litigation in her assertion that the interests of justice for plaintiffs should displace the present emphasis on returns to law firms and litigation funders.

The federal Attorney-General seems in agreement with this (“Porter takes aim at litigation funders”, 13/5) — that justice is not a business for lawyers and its focus should always be on getting the best result for clients.

Hitherto, the shortcomings in and about class actions have been hidden from the public by a complicit veil of greater access to justice for impecunious plaintiffs. Albrechtsen sweeps aside this veil and makes it patently clear that those shortcomings deserve the most searching inquiry to determine their full extent and how they may be remedied.

That inquiry should determine, in the public interest, the process most suited to this form of litigation, the controls appropriate to it, the nature of any conflict of interest or other disadvantage arising, and whether such litigation should continue in present form or at all.

Ian Dunlop, Hawks Nest, NSW

Snowy snafu

Gary Dunnett is right — Malcolm Turnbull’s “electricity game changer” is an environmentally damaging white elephant and an inefficient way to generate electricity (“Snowy 2.0: it’s all downhill”, 13/5).

But even worse, it is being built to reduce CO2 output to control the climate, but like wind turbines and solar panels it will have no effect. Solar and oceanic variations are the main drivers of climate, not CO2.

We can’t control the climate. Our governments should stop pretending we can and build more environmentally friendly coal and nuclear plants to generate the reliable, cheap power we now need more than ever.

Doug Hurst, Chapman, ACT

Lockdown downsides

For many commentators, suffering and deaths not directly related to the disease itself but to the lockdowns somehow don’t seem to matter.

Youth despair and suicide, delayed treatment for cancers, children denied vaccines for preventable diseases, a predicted HIV epidemic in Africa that could kill hundreds of thousands because of disruption to the supply of medicine, the plunge into desperate poverty and possible starvation of millions of people in developing countries are ignored by the voices calling from their comfortable gardens for continued and extreme lockdowns.

The fact that all public health measures, including those necessary to fight COVID-19, depend on a functioning economy and a stable society seems to be lost on these voices. Economic collapse means misery, despair and death.

Patricia Loughlan, Glebe, NSW

Biden’s not your man

If Troy Bramston thinks Donald Trump is unworthy of office, he might take a look at what the Democrats have as an alternative. Joe Biden has been around Washington since the 1970s and his record is appalling, including erroneous claims about his academic and political record.

Meanwhile, a congressional committee is having hearings into the pandemic or, in plain English, blame it on Trump and drag it out to the election. Trump is no angel and he admits that, but after three and a half years of cherry-picked facts from the Democrats, his record is hard to beat. If anyone thinks Biden is the man to lead the US out of the recession, then China will be the economic leader of the world by the end of his first term.

Don Spence, Ashmore, Qld