Truth should matter to all those talking about Walkley awards boycott

I was disappointed to read of journalists boycotting the Walkley Awards, started in 1956 by Ampol founder Sir William Walkley, because Ampol sells fossil fuels (“Walkley Foundation apologises for ‘racist views’ held by founder”, The Weekend Australian online, 2-3/9).

I was involved in the then Australian Journalists Association when Sir William’s family announced they were ceasing sponsorship, and saw at close hand the scramble to find a replacement sponsor. I recall president Barry Porter telling of an award nominee whose entry included criticism of Ampol. When union officials explained this potentially awkward situation to Sir William, he said there was no problem. There were no strings attached.

Boycott talk seems to come from people who use fossil fuels all the time. They would help more by getting out of the way and taking all the virtue-signalling superannuation funds, councils and state governments with them so the federal government can lift its own game and develop an actual plan for getting to net zero without economic catastrophe.

Few climate articles warrant awards anyway, with professional scepticism too often replaced by zealotry, leading to unquestioned publication of claims of ecological catastrophe.

As Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace, reportedly said: “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” But truth mattered to Sir William and should matter to us.

Arthur Gorrie, Gympie, Qld

Dam lies and statistics

Bravo Jackie Webb for identifying the IPCC’s “inadvertent” assigning of incorrect values to the greenhouse gas outputs of the Murray-Darling Basin’s irrigation and stock dams (“Local research sinks dam greenhouse gas emission models”, 2-3/9). Once again, it’s obviously an accidental error on the part of the IPCC, although it’s passing strange that all these historical errors all tend to favour the IPCC’s position.

There was the prediction in 2003, later withdrawn, that all the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035, then the UK judge’s ruling that Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, actually contained nine inconvenient untruths.

Somewhere along the way, climate change sceptics became deniers. Since then, there’s been our own BoM’s “homogenisation” of historic temperature data, which has had the “accidental” side-effect of lowering historic temperature records to inflate current maximas, and the refusal to attribute the higher maxima, in part anyway, to the Urban Heat Island effect. Ms Webb hopefully will be aware that taking a position contrary to the IPCC’s stance can be deeply detrimental to a scientific career. Ask Peter Ridd.

John McHarg, Maylands, WA

Worlds apart

Anthony Albanese may well be trying to emulate the Hawke-Keating government but in actual fact they are worlds apart. (“Reward and risk of Albanese’s historic ambition”, 2-3/9). The latter was pragmatic, which attracted bipartisan support, while the Albanese government is highly idealistic and, due to a vulnerable position, its policy formulation is heavily influenced by the Greens.

While Hawke-Keating generated reforms that boosted productivity, Albanese-Chalmers-Bowen are doing the opposite. Unaffordable energy is being locked in by a trillion-dollar outlay on a renewables superpower fantasy, ignoring the superior nuclear option; the workforce is being straitjacketed by union demands and the voice will seriously impede the operations of government and public service.

Ron Hobba, Camberwell, Vic

No more heroes

Michael Sexton (“Diggers not target of Vietnam War animosity”, 1/9) states the “myth” of public hostility was effectively demolished by writer Mark Dapin in his book published in 2019.

As the 77-year-old wife of an infantryman who returned from Vietnam in 1971, I can only ask: Where were these two living from 1965-1971? It was 16 years after the withdrawal before any formal welcome home parade and recognition was given for the thousands of servicemen and women who served, lost lives, returned injured, or remain scarred for life.

Veterans would have been happy with “welcome home, mate, thank you for your service and sacrifice”. None asked for a hero’s welcome.

The government of the day sent them to war where they served with great courage and loyalty to attempt to divert the insidious infiltration of communism.

Philippa Murphy, Albany, WA