“Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance,” wrote Plato. And the medium, of course, is the message. Did your comments strike a happy medium this week and cleave to the sensible centre, or did they veer onto the verges and extremities? Read on and find out ... it’s the Readers’ Comments column. Let’s engage ...
The shock departure of Lisa Wilkinson from Nine Network’s Today show to join Waleed Aly and his allies on The Project at Ten, and the even more shocking revelation that a morning talk show specialist in double entendre is worth a couple of million a year, produced some shrill blasts of feedback, as well as this clear-sighted appraisal from Martin:
“Wilkinson walked away after 10 years at Today, having demanded that Mr Marks ‘close the gender pay gap’ between her and Stefanovic.
“Close the gender pay gap my hat. Sounds like an opportunistic publicity stunt to conflate her demand for an excessive pay rise with women’s equality. I’m sure it will make for teary-eyed reading when the autobiography is published. Good luck to her in raking in the dosh, but let’s not pretend it’s anything but ‘me me me’.’
Nigel agreed:
“Closing the gender gap? How does Waleed Aly on 500k feel about that? Or Carrie Bickmore on even less than that? What absolute BS from Wilkinson and her manager. The current love-in is going to end in tears.”
Lizzie warned:
“Hubris and humility, two very different words. Maybe in this case one will lead to the other.”
David predicted a slow fade:
“I suspect Lisa Wilkinson has tarnished her image somewhat with the people who watched and liked her on the Today show. She is likely to slowly fade out of the public spotlight.”
Rust never sleeps, said Russ:
“An overpaid (good luck to her) nodding head, easily replaced by the younger, more vibrant model. She overplayed her hand and will now fade out of the business and no one will remember her name.’
John got personal:
“Maybe the photo of her texting is to advise (husband) Pete that his red bandana is not yet available for pick up at the dry cleaners.”
Michael didn’t mind the gap:
“I’m no great fan of Stefanovic but I’d have to say he actually does more work for the Nine Network than Lisa did during her stint there. Could this explain the pay gap?”
LT played down the battle of the sexes:
“Karl is simply more popular than Lisa and for very different reasons. The perhaps distasteful reality is that Karl is simply more colourful than Lisa and this is simply a more valuable asset for breakfast television. It is not an asset I personally value more than the qualities Lisa brings to the table but they are assets that other Australians consider to be worth more. We live in a free market economy, Lisa’s response to a failed negotiate is the only one available to her.
“As for this rubbish of pitting men against women over salary the issue is not gender but qualifications, industry of employment, job difficulty, supply and demand, grades and experience. A female GP with 5 years’ experience will earn more per hour than a male GP with the same level of experience. A female lawyer or engineer in the same situation will also learn more. With like for like comparisons women will typically earn more than men and find it easier to get a job with a preferred employer in a given industry.”
Tracy saw the silver lining:
“At least it’s not taxpayers’ money.”
Anthony preached progress:
“When I first heard she was leaving Nine, I initially assumed they must have sacked her because she was too old. The fact that she is moving on to another extremely high paid job proves just how far women have come in this country.”
Ralph was puzzled:
“I thought Ten was going broke? Obviously it has a few spare million lying around.”
Out, damned fluff, said Kate’s World:
“Please leave the fluffy media gossip to the gossip rags and get back to serious news, which is what we pay for.”
G Whizz meant business:
“I’m searching for news about the six men lost at sea off central Queensland, and the heroic search for them in terrifying weather. I’m searching for news of the communities devastated by the floods in the Gladstone region, any damage to infrastructure, any loss of life. I’m searching for news of the Californian fires, where Australian firefighters are in the front line facing a raging conflagration. I’m searching. searching searching.
“But for two days I’ve been sold — and I mean sold: I’ve paid for this garbage — about an overpaid underworked television flunkey who can’t be satisfied with whatever seven-figure sum she’s most lately rejected.
“And this intelligence insulting spoof of the news is presented as a gender equality issue, which it quite plainly isn’t. It’s an expose of naked greed. If I need to know this non-news, I can find it on Twitter.”
Cassandra lamented:
“Thanks G Whizz, you have nailed it so well. The fact that this overpaid, underworked, untalented and very hypocritical television flunkey is front page news rather than stories of those missing men in QLD is, quite frankly, obscene ... I want real news, not celebrity vacuous garbage.”
John saw red:
“Did Lisa choose the red fabric top over white colour scheme to match Red Pete’s rig? Great pic by the way.”
Guy had a wider angle:
“There are more important things to worry about than whether one millionaire was paid 10pc less than another millionaire, such as the salaries paid to women in industries like childcare.”
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Gary Johns horrified the climate change true believers but delighted many readers with his suggestion that Richard Di Natale is not the green messiah, just a very naughty boy and leader of the latter-day Luddites. Said Les:
“The Greens and their supporters remind me of 16th and 17th century Puritans. The Puritans banned many activities and believed that their agenda was a religious necessity. As Macaulay noted, a significant reason in the demise of Puritan influence was that ordinary people ‘became tired of government by the saints’.”
Kathy concurred:
“Well said Gary and so true. How I see it is the Greens are nothing but a pile of wreckers who have no real knowledge of how the world works and live in fairyland.”
Margaret opined:
“The damage done to Australia by Green policies, slavishly followed by Labor to keep themselves in government — federal, state and local — can never be fixed until those who believe the drivel they spout wake up and face reality.
“Di Natale is just another mouthpiece for those who hate us and our country. They attract the idiot fringe who have no clue that the legacy they are leaving THEIR children is disaster.”
G Whizz played hardball:
“The time has come to choke off money from Soros that funds these ninnies. We block outbound funds destined for terrorists. We should also block inbound funds that bankroll activities against our national interest.”
MikeO said oh-oh:
“I changed my opinion when I read the deep ecology manifesto or otherwise called Deep Green. The believers in this think the world should be changed from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric one.
“The best way to describe this is that the civilisation should change to what it was in the early 1700s! A population of about 500 million, subsistence farming, none of the current energy sources, short life spans and so on.
“The ramifications of such a belief system is vast. If you observe of what they want it makes sense in this context otherwise it looks to be totally irrational. Renewable energy for the Greens means wind and solar fundamentally, they are against hydro-electric.
“ It can be easily shown that the reduction in emissions compared to the overall scheme of things are minuscule but ramifications of the mess we are in because of going down this path are huge. The Greens by pushing this line are having a large economic effect on our economy already and the potential to send us into a deep recession.”
Jonathan explained:
“The Greens have always been a party of FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Their voter base is threefold: impressionable, passionate but naive youth who want save the world, koala-hugging elders who feel guilty about their lives and want to save the world, and hardcore Marxists who want to destroy democracy.
“The problem really however lies with the media who give continual oxygen to the absurd scare campaigns and then fail to follow up the equally spectacular failures of the armageddon-ish predictions (Flannery et al).”
Deborah was discombobulated:
“I have never understood the anti-Adani position. We are, after all, a country that depends on mining. Why suddenly is everyone up in arms over this one? The Barrier Reef argument really had me confused. I suspected conflation with global warming and acidification perhaps but failed to see the link with this one mine.
“But I still would like to keep a hold on the baby if we are to throw out the green bathwater. Mass extinction has indeed happened and presumably may happen again. The Permian, the Devonian and the famous Cretatious-Tertiary extinctions all happened. These were all caused by major environmental changes but more recently we have the worldwide extinction of the megafauna, arguably a human-exacerbated event.
“More recently still, Australia has lost many bird and mammal species since the arrival of Europeans. Let’s keep our mines open but let’s keep our ecosystems too. I don’t see this as a zero-sum game.”
Margaret added:
“The anti-Adani issue isn’t just about the environment, it is also about the dodgy nature of those who run the show. A little research would show that the Adanis are in trouble in India and no bank will touch them.”
Jan wasn’t a fan:
“Your opinion could not be more opposite to mine. You mention the Franklin river and what a shame it wasn’t dammed. Natural beauty is a very important thing to people now and in the future. I had the pleasure of walking with many others along the national park headland in Noosa. If it wasn’t for activists there would be no walkway for the most used park in Australia. it would be private homes shut off to the public.
“Adani is a crook, an environmental vandal (proved) yet it is OK by you to say yes he can have a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money and unlimited access to water from the Artesian basin for 70 years. You say there is no risk to the reef. Warmer water brings coral bleaching (no coral, less fish) and can you guarantee there is NO threat as you say in transporting hundreds of coal carriers across the reef? No you cannot.”
Last word and comment of the week goes to Louise:
“Calamity du jour indeed. Notice also our greenies keep shifting the goalposts but only after an extended period of denial and name-calling. First came dangerous global warming ... Then it was ocean acidification, only that one hasn’t caught on. Perhaps people now have doomsday fatigue?
“Catastrophism was fashionable. We reached peak stupid circa 2007. The operative word is ‘was’. I blame the media also who got carried away with the ‘end is nigh’ hoopla. Some are still at it. A quick visit to the ABC confirms that most of their staff would identify with minority green views and hence the steady stream of doomsday, it’s all the fault of humans, programming. “The problem is that our politicians have locked us in to a policy position that is doing real harm right now, and all because they jumped on the climate zeitgeist over fractions of a degree changes in the global temperature anomaly in 150 years. It was all a beat up but some, including some in the science community, have prospered off the back of a big scare.
“While we’ve come to expect the 8 to 10pc greenies to be illogical, hypocritical, misanthropic humanity-haters, I’m surprised at Labor. They were supposed to be the party of the people but now they campaign with miserable policy designed to shut down our economy, kill jobs and lower living standards. They sell the socialist dream of dividing a rapidly dwindling pie in the name of fairness and join far left activist groups like GetUp!
“Don’t even mention the Libs. They used to be rational but now stand for nothing. They adhere to the doomsday rhetoric only so as to avoid honest discussion and debate. In running scared of the far-left they’ve become equally slippery and untrustworthy. In summary, both the major and previously sane parties have sold us out for what is an unhinged minority worldview.”
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Each Friday the cream of your views on the news rises and we honour the voices that made the debate great. To boost your chances of being featured, please be pertinent, pithy and preferably make a point. Solid arguments, original ideas, sparkling prose, rapier wit and rhetorical flourishes may count in your favour. Civility is essential. Comments may be edited for length.
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Miners change tune on climate change
Peak mining industry body The Minerals Council of Australia has joined the fight on climate.
Easy to point the finger
Demanding we abandon coal for climate is akin to asking NZ to give up love affair with sheep.
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