OptimismInTodaysWorld

BJORN LOMBORG

Life in 2016 is better than ever before

• The Australian
• 12:00AM December 30, 2016
• Save
• According to popular wisdom, this has been a terrible year. Horrific terror attacks struck many countries. The Syrian crisis claimed tens of thousands of lives. Turkey withstood suicide bombings and a failed coup. More than 70 countries experienced a decline in freedom. Political shocks included Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in the US — both taking many by surprise — and this year is likely to be the warmest ever measured. On top of all that, the Zika virus was declared an international public-health emergency.

Reading the opinion pages, there is a sense that the world is facing a malaise that exceeds any individual events, and that people are becoming dangerously divided. But if we take a step back, it is clear that there are many reasons to be optimistic. Indeed, in many ways, we are alive at the best time in history. What’s more, some things that we worry about the most are not the issues that should keep us awake at night.

Consider rising inequality, one of the year’s most frequently addressed topics. To be sure, over the past two centuries or so the gap between the highest and lowest incomes has grown. But that is because pretty much everyone was equally dirt poor in 1820. More than 90 per cent of humanity lived in absolute poverty.

Then the Industrial Revolution arrived, bringing rapid income growth wherever it spread, with China since 1978 and India since 1990 recording particularly high rates. As a result, last year less than 10 per cent of the world’s population was living in absolute poverty.

Furthermore, developing economies are now contributing to a global middle class whose numbers have more than doubled, from about one billion in 1985 to 2.3 billion in 2015. This tremendous reduction in poverty has sustained a decline in global income inequality over the past three decades.

Inequality has fallen by other measures as well. Since 1992, the number of hungry people worldwide has plummeted by more than 200 million, even as the population grew by nearly two billion. The percentage of people starving has been nearly halved, from 19 to 11 per cent.

In 1870, more than three-quarters of the world was illiterate, and access to education was even more unequal than income. Today, more than four out of five people can read, and young people have unprecedented access to schooling. The illiterate are mostly from older generations.

The story is similar in health. In 1990, almost 13 million children died before the age of five each year. Thanks to vaccines, better nutrition and healthcare, that number has fallen below six million. Lifespan inequality is lower today, because medical breakthroughs that were available only to the elite a century or so ago are now more broadly accessible.

In short, the world is not going to hell in a handbasket. And while plenty of problems still need to be addressed, they are often not the ones that occupy our thoughts and public debates.

Trump’s election prompted hand-wringing from commentators who fear that his potential rejection of the Paris climate agreement could “doom civilisation”. But the Paris accord was never going to solve global warming. In fact, according to the UN itself, the agreed cuts in CO2 emissions would produce only 1 per cent of the reduction needed to keep the increase in global temperature within 2C of pre-industrial levels.

In contrast, Trump’s promise to dismantle trade deals has received very little pushback. On the contrary, opposition to trade is shared in the trendy neighbourhoods of New York, Berlin, and Paris. But cost-benefit analysis shows that freer trade is the single most powerful way to help the world’s poorest.

According to research commissioned by my think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, reviving the moribund Doha Development Round of global free-trade talks would lift the incomes of billions of people worldwide, while reducing the number of people in poverty by an astonishing 145 million in 15 years.

Our global health concerns are similarly skewed. We spent much of this year worrying about the Zika virus, especially once it crossed into the West. And it is true that Zika, which has devastating effects on children, is a cause for concern in Brazil and elsewhere. Yet tuberculosis, which has received relatively little attention, remains the biggest killer among global infectious diseases.

We know how to treat TB, just like we know how to reduce child deaths and rein in malnutrition. These global challenges persist in no small part because of our focus on other problems.

Let us resolve, then, to do better in 2017. We must stop devoting our attention to the wrong issues and failed solutions. On climate change, for example, we must embrace research and development to make green energy a genuinely cheaper alternative to fossil fuels. And we must shout from the rooftops that free trade is the most effective conceivable anti-poverty policy.

At the same time, we need to remember that most of the important indicators show that life is better today than ever. We should celebrate the progress we have made against disease, famine, and poverty. And we should continue to advance that progress by focusing on the smart development investments needed to resolve the real problems we face.

Bjorn Lomborg is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School.

Multiculturism

• The Australian
• 12:00AM December 12, 2016

• JENNIFER ORIEL

  

  Columnist

  

Long after the West has defeated Islamic State, the jihadist threat will remain.

For the past 40 years, Western immigration policy has been based on multicultural ideology.

Its consequence is clear: Islamism has become a Western condition. Successive governments have diluted Western values to the point where they are no longer taught in schools. The result is a population unschooled in the ­genius of our civilisation whose youth cannot understand why it is worth defending.

Multicultural ideology must give way to a renaissance of Western civilisation in which Australian exceptionalism is celebrated and Islamism is sent packing.

Multiculturalism is not merely the acceptance of diverse cultures, or open society. It is the a priori belief that cultural diversity has a net positive effect on the West, coupled with a double standard that excuses lslamic and communist states from embracing it.

Thus, Western nations must open their borders while Islamic and communist states remain closed. The West must accept the myth that all cultures are equal while Islamic and communist states celebrate their unique contribution to world history. Under multicultural ideology, the greatest civilisation of the world, Western civilisation, is held in contempt while theocratic throwbacks and communist barbarism are extolled.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al- Hussein, regularly frames the West as xenophobic and racist. In a recent speech, he decried xenophobia and religious hatred. But he did not address the Chinese government’s persecution of Christians, or the governing Islamist regime in Gaza, Hamas, for hatred of Jews. Rather, he took aim at the West, saying: “My recent missions to Western Europe and North America have included discussions of increasingly worrying levels of incitement to racial or religious hatred and violence, whether against migrants or racial and religious groups. Discrimination, and the potential for mob violence, is being stoked by political leaders for their personal benefit.”

Western governments should explain why they continue to send taxpayers’ money to the UN when it has become an organisation expressly devoted to defending the interests of Islamist and communist regimes against the free world.

The growing hatred of Western culture goes unremarked by politicians whose populism is firmly rooted in political correctness. No major political party has calculated the cost of multicultural ideology to Western society. Instead, they extol it as a net benefit without tendering empirical evidence. When politicians claim truth without substantive supporting evidence, ideology is at play. It may be that multiculturalism is a net benefit to the West. If so, why has the evidence been withheld? Without it, minor parties can contend that multiculturalism is a net negative for the West and appear credible.

In the absence of empirical proof that multicultural ideology is beneficial, politicians such as Pauline Hanson, Donald Trump, Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen seek to curb Muslim immigration and deport those who disrespect Western values. Hanson plans to push for a burka ban in the new year. The policy has international precedent as Dutch politicians voted recently to ban the burka in some public places. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also has proposed a burka ban, but it is reasonable to question her motives ahead of the 2017 election. In a state election held in September, Merkel’s party polled below nationalist and anti-Islam party Alternative for Germany. She has driven porous border policy and repeatedly castigated European heads of state who defend their sovereign borders, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Her call for a burka ban is thus viewed by some as blatant political opportunism.

Malcolm Turnbull addressed the issue indirectly by citing poor border controls in Europe as the cause of the problem. However, as with so many issues concerning political Islam in Australia, the question of a burka ban is indivisible from the defence of Western values.

One such value is the universal application of law that requires the equal treatment of all citizens. If Australians are expected to not wear a balaclava in banks, courts or Parliament House, why are some citizens permitted to cover their faces in a burka or niqab? Double standards and preferential treatment of state-anointed minorities is fuelling widespread, and rational, resentment in the West.

Consider retelling the events of the past week to an Anzac just returned from war. We would tell him that a Muslim married to a terrorist recruiter refused to stand in court because she wanted to be judged by Allah. Muslims in Sydney and Melbourne were charged with preparing a terrorist act against Australians. In France, several people were arrested for plotting jihadist attacks. News broke that 1750 foot soldiers of a genocidal Islamic army had entered Europe without resistance from Western armies. As in Australia, many jihadists entered as refugees and lived on taxpayer-funded welfare under a program called multiculturalism.

In the same week, a German politician called Angela Merkel, who ushered Islamists into the West by enforcing open borders, was lauded by a respected magazine called The Economist as “the last leader of stature to defend the West’s values”. Yet men from Islamic countries who allegedly entered Germany under Merkel’s open-border policy were arrested for sexual assault, including the rape and murder of a teenage girl. Asylum-seekers and refugees had assaulted women and children across Europe. Less than a year before, on New Year’s Eve, Merkel’s asylum-seekers had attacked women and girls en masse.

We would tell the Anzac that Britain attempted to acknowledge the negative impact of its undiscriminating approach to immigration. A review recommended a core school curriculum to promote “British laws, history and values” and a proposal that immigrants sign an oath of allegiance to British values. But secularism, private property and Christianity were absent from the principle list and as such, it wasn’t very British at all.

There were few Anzacs left to see what the West has become. I suppose that’s a kind of mercy. We have dishonoured the millions of soldiers who laid down their lives in the 20th century fighting for our freedom and the future of Western civilisation. We should hang our heads in shame for letting the Anzac legacy come to this. We are the descendants of the world’s most enlightened civilisation. It is our turn to fight for its future.

FreeSpeech

Section 18C and attacks on Bill Leak give cause for complaint

• The Australian
• 12:00AM October 27, 2016
• • 
    STEVE WATERSON
• Commercial Editor

  Sydney

  

It’s fair to say that in the lottery of life, being a middle-class white man in Australia puts you right up there on the podium. And I’m one of the lucky winners. My existence is so comfortable compared to the lives of most people on Earth that I should spend a few hours each day squirming in embarrassment.

But I don’t. I spend my weekdays in a pleasant office surrounded by agreeable, equally comfortable workmates, my weekends indulging a range of trivial interests, and my holidays splashing in the ocean or travelling to the few places in the world nicer than where I live.

From this position of privilege I try not to look down on other races or nationalities, but here’s the thing: I wouldn’t change places with any of them, no matter how fast they can run or how many words for snow they have.

Sorry, does that sound a bit insulting? No? Let me try again.

I reckon I can work out where you’re from just by driving behind you; half the languages in the world sound like bickering monkeys; everyone’s folk songs, dances and costumes are ridiculous; some countries have national delicacies I wouldn’t feed to my dog; even more have religious beliefs that are beyond parody.

I’m not singling out any particular nationality for abuse — though you know who you are — because I’d like to catch as many members of our vibrant multicultural society as possible in my web of insults.

There: that should put me firmly in breach of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which says it’s unlawful to offend people on the grounds of race, colour, national or ethnic origin.

(I didn’t mention colour, but for the record, apart from picking up a golden tan at the beach I’d prefer to stay the way I am.)

It’s not clear what the penalty for this breach is, although judging by the experience of this newspaper’s Bill Leak, the punishment is imposed long before any hearing, with general opprobrium whipped up by the scribblers on the toilet door of social media and sanctified by the Human Rights Commission. The least I can look forward to is a Twitter storm reviling me, and a call to action from a fiercely independent commissioner eager to pass judgment.

Let me make two completely irrelevant points in relation to Leak’s cartoon about dysfunction in some Aboriginal communities: first, I have known Bill as a colleague and good friend for more than 20 years, and have never seen the slightest hint of racism in him; second, I have been to Wilcannia, Halls Creek and other, worse, places and seen tiny Aboriginal children wandering the streets in the middle of the night whose parents would seem unaware of their existence, let alone their names.

Though I hope those observations provide some small balance to the vicious attacks Leak has suffered, I say they are irrelevant because no defence should be offered to Section 18C.

It is a dreadful, ill-conceived piece of legislation and needs to go. To be required to provide an explanation or, worse, an apology for your opinion, however repellent, insults all the principles of free speech.

And in their hearts everyone, including the members of the HRC and the anonymous snipers on the internet, knows that. How many people have given their lives to demand and defend our right to free expression, and how meekly have we allowed it to be erased by meddling social engineers?

History and common sense show you do not defeat bad ideas by forbidding their expression; you destroy them with better ideas and vigorous debate. Unless that debate overflows into the clearly marked territory of defamation or criminal incitement, roar away. People may give offence, but no one is obliged to take it.

If I had Leak’s talent I’d create an image to highlight the sinister absurdity of this attempt to bully him into silence — indeed it’s a pity so few of his fellow artists have done so — but instead I propose to join him in his disgrace.

Until 18C is repealed, let me channel the spirit of Race Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane and invite anyone wounded by my earlier rudeness to make an HRC complaint against me. Maybe we can paralyse the commission with the extra paperwork.

And to save the HRC time, I can let them know in advance that I don’t intend to participate in their star chamber. If I’m asked to explain myself, I won’t; if summoned to a conciliation meeting I won’t attend; if I’m told to apologise, I will refuse; I will make a complete idiot of myself in court rather than spend money on a lawyer.

I will back down the minute it looks like I’m headed to prison, naturally, but up to that point I will be as obstructive and intransigent as wit and energy allow.

All this, of course, assumes that at least one of The Australian’s readers will look at what I have written here and actually take it seriously.

But what are the chances of that? After all, I’m not a cartoonist.

A Torah Scholar Helps Explain the Age Of Foolishness

JONATHAN B. COE

Maybe it takes a Torah scholar and religious Jew to help us understand the roots of the inverted values that animate Western civilization. For over ten years, author and radio talk show host Dennis Prager taught the first five books of the Bible verse-by-verse at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. According to Prager there is no greater concept in the Torah than that of “distinction,” or, put another way, the clear separation God makes between certain things: God and man, animal and human, life and death, sacred and profane, good and evil, male and female. He even goes so far as to call these distinctions “God’s Signature” on the created order. Like six pillars holding up a great house, when the structural integrity of those columns becomes significantly compromised, the whole house comes crashing down.

Of the six distinctions listed, the one between God and man is antecedent to all the others: once it is compromised, the others will fall too like so many dominoes. When Adam and Eve succumbed to the serpent’s temptation, they switched places with God and made themselves the arbiters of truth and morality. The seeds of their godship that were sown in Eden are coming to full flower in our age. In his magisterial work, The Study of History, the eminent historian Arnold Toynbee divides world history into twenty-one ages and makes the case that our present age is the first one whose prevailing ethos does not appeal to a divine text or a holy tradition for guidance in the major areas of life. To say that we are living in a post-Christian age is as obvious as saying that the sun rises in the east.

What’s sometimes overlooked is that this godship is not exclusively driven by agnostics and atheists, but receives major contributions by those calling themselves Christians. I can’t help but think of the recent effort by Catholics for Choice to overturn the Hyde Amendment thereby allowing taxpayer-funded abortions. Their position on this issue rejects two thousand years of Church teaching.

Then there are large sectors of the mainline Protestant denominations who have become so accommodating to the Zeitgeist that they are actually just the cultural ethos dressed up in religious vestments (e.g., the United Church of Christ). Chesterton was right that only dead fish swim with the current. Without guilt I admit that I am encouraged each time I read about their precipitous decline in membership and finances and look forward to their eventual placement on the slag pile of history. As the late, great Richard John Neuhaus used to say, “The mainline has become the sideline.”

When man becomes God, the other distinctions that Prager identified become blurred and introduce toxins into the cultural bloodstream. If people are not created in the image of God, then it follows that they are no different than animals. Prager cites the example of animal rights groups like the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who call the slaughter of chickens a “Holocaust on a Plate,” thereby equating such an act with the slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust.

For over thirty years Prager has asked high school seniors the question, “If a stranger and your pet were both drowning and you could only save one, who would it be?” In this informal poll, about two-thirds of the students chose their pet. An Associated Press pollrevealed that half of American pet owners consider their pet just as much a member of the family as anyone else. Prager is right to say that we live in the Age of Foolishness with our folly being rooted in a lack of reverence for God: the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

No reverence for God = no wisdom. No wonder our secular universities have become institutions where great knowledge (e.g., the hard sciences) is juxtaposed with great foolishness. In recent years, at Swarthmore College, a course was offered called “Interrogating Gender: Centuries of Dramatic Cross-Dressing.” Examples like this are plentiful. And practicing Catholics will be embarrassed to learn that the University of Notre Dame has twice hosted the Queer Film Festival.

Prager makes the case that one of the major reasons that the Torah was written was to counteract the values of Egyptian culture. Ancient Egypt loved death. Their holy book was the Book of the Dead and their pyramids were monuments that were merely tombs for their dead kings. The Torah, in contrast, was a Book of Life that told the nation of Israel that they had a choice between death and life and exhorted them to choose life. Priests were not allowed to enter a cemetery or be in the presence of a corpse. Many other laws were given to keep death and life separate.

If people are not ascribed the dignity of being creatures made in the image of God, it opens the floodgates of death in our culture with abortion, euthanasia and infanticide. More than 57 million abortions since Roe vs. Wade in 1973. Polls reflect that America is divided on the issue but the pro-choice camp may be pulling ahead. Princeton University has a feted professor and “ethicist,” Peter Singer, who believes that if a couple has a Down Syndrome child, they have the right to kill that child one month after his or her birth.

Remember the Terry Schiavo case. Like good ancient Egyptians, the supporters of that euthanasia had palpable contempt for their opponents. They loved death. I’m no Freudian but the episode seemed to lend credibility to the Freudian concept of a Death Drive (Wish). It called to mind Walker Percy’s last novel, The Thanatos Syndrome (In Greek mythology, Thanatos was the personification of Death), where the water supply of the town where the story takes place is poisoned with a chemical additive that leads to the demeaning and destruction of the townspeople. In the novel those in power euthanize the inactive, the old, and the sick.

Because there are so many examples that are easy to come by, it seems banal to talk about the blurring of distinctions in our culture between the sacred and profane. Recent decades have seen a loss of reverent awe among American Catholics in relation to how they dress and behave during Mass. Chewing gum is more common; people wear sweat pants, tank tops, tube tops, spaghetti straps, flip flops, beach sandals, and sometimes dress immodestly. No wonder many earnest Catholics are running like frightened antelope to the Latin Mass. How would we dress if we were having dinner with the pope? Doesn’t partaking of the Holy Eucharist at least demand equal propriety? “Cultural Catholics” should also examine their lives. If you’re in Mass on Sunday morning, going through the motions, simply because you are an Italian from Providence, Rhode Island, or of Irish descent from Albany, New York, you may want to ask yourself if you’re taking Communion unworthily.

For a good snapshot of the sacred being devoured by the profane, look at the American Pie film franchise. The original 1999 teen sex comedy told the story of five friends who were high school seniors in western Michigan who made a pact to all lose their virginity by their graduation day. The movie takes its title from the Don McClean song but also from a scene in the movie that involves the main character engaging in autoeroticism with an apple pie because he heard that “third base feels like warm apple pie.” The movie cost $11 million to make but made over $235 million at the box office and spawned three more sequels and four direct-to-DVD spin-offs. What’s somewhat depressing is how easy it is to cite dozens of other commercial successes of similar moral degradation to this franchise.

Even more revolting than the vulgar pop culture is the landscape of the avant-garde art world. The homoerotic and sadomasochistic work of Robert Maplethorpe, the immersion of a crucifix in a jar of urine by Andres Serrano, or the spattering of elephant dung on a picture of the Virgin Mary in the work of Chris Ofili leave the orthodox Christian aghast. The distinction between the sacred and profane hasn’t been blurred; it’s been destroyed: the profane is the sacred in many fashionable precincts in the art world.

The natural consequence of secularism is moral relativism. The prominent atheists who follow their beliefs to their logical conclusion all say this: Nietzsche, Sartre, Russell, Mackie, et al. Other atheists contradict themselves. Prager talks about a professor he had at Columbia University Graduate School in the early 70s who would say, “There are no moral absolutes,” on Tuesday, then say, “The Vietnam War is evil,” two days later on a Thursday. In contrast, Nietzsche would opine that we sit as gods on the throne of our universe deciding right and wrong. Morality becomes a matter of taste: “You like jazz, I like classical, she likes rock & roll.” It makes no difference whether we help the elderly woman across the street or hit her with our car. As aghast as we may be by the beliefs of Peter Singer, he is very much living consistently with his atheism.

Back in 2005 Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said, “We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate standard consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.” Dostoyevsky concurs: “If there is no God then everything is permitted.” It’s not by chance that the bloodiest regimes of the twentieth century were rooted in atheism—Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et al—with 100 millionperishing at their hands by starvation and in gulags and killing fields. The Spanish Inquisition, which is often cited to disparage the Catholic Church and make the point that most evil comes from religion, put to death approximately 3,000-5,000 people over a 350-year span. One death is too many but the Inquisition is like a bee bee rolling around in the railroad boxcar of atheistic Communism.

The Age of Foolishness continues in the realm of male and female. Prager’s first clue that Columbia University was not going to be a treasure trove of Solomonic wisdom was when he realized that many professors on campus believed that men and women were basically the same and that what seemed like differences were merely social constructs. Give little boys tea sets to play with and little girls trucks and you’ll see that this is true he was told. Only the little boys turned their tea sets into weapons of war and the little girls tucked their trucks in at night and gave them names. As George Orwell said, “There are some ideas that are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

At the same time who can’t support the First Wave of feminism that gave women the right to vote, execute wills, own property, attend college, etc.? What man can’t tip his cap to women who have attained places of high honor in our civilization: prime minister (Margaret Thatcher), CEO of a Fortune 500 company (e.g., Carli Fiorina), Harvard astrophysicist (e.g., Sallie Baliunas)? Unfortunately, we live in an age of overreach. One aspect of godship is when human beings assume divine prerogatives for themselves such as believing that there are no limits for themselves: “Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases” (Psalm 115:3 RSV).

Exhibit A: the issue of the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood. There arelimits: Jesus selected men and not women and those original apostles turned around and selected men and not women for ordained ministry. This pattern holds true for two millennia of Church history. Those who want women priests don’t understand that we have ontological limitations. In my being I cannot be a mother; I cannot carry a child in a womb for nine months and subsequently nurse that child until it is weaned. In fact, the nurture that a mother gives that child is qualitatively different than what I would give: it’s a difference in kind not a difference in degree. Women in their being cannot be fathers either biologically or spiritually. That’s not who they are. The priesthood is for spiritual fathers and there is an ontological chasm that women cannot bridge.

In the battle between distinctions in the Torah and our secular age, Prager says the Torah (Judeo-Christian values) is losing and I agree. We are like Jeremiah in 587 BC watching the Babylonian army reduce Jerusalem to a debris-strewn apocalypse. We are all called to continue to fight the good fight of faith to reverse the trend. As bleak as things can look sometimes, we must remind ourselves that, as counter-intuitive as this may sound, much good can come out of a period of captivity. In Babylon the Jewish exiles were (1) cured of their idolatry, (2) the office of the scribe emerged with its accompanying Rabbinic literature, (3) synagogues began, (4) Scripture was taught with renewed fervor, and (5) the Jewish people were more unified than they had been for centuries. Like Jeremiah we must be the Church Militant and stand against the spirit of the age and also hope against hope for renewal in the days to come.

Euthanasia'sSlipperySlope

The Australian
PAUL KELLY

Legalise euthanasia, and compassionate society dies too

• 
  

If you love your parents, respect your children, care for your society and think compassionately about your world then it is time to open your heart and brain to what happens when a jurisdiction legalises killing or, as it is called, euthanasia.

The justification for euthanasia lies in human rights, individual autonomy and relieving pain — all worthy ideas, and that may prompt the question: why then is euthanasia still opposed by most nations, most medical professional bodies around the world and the Australian Medical Association?

The reason is not hard to find. It is because crossing the threshold to euthanasia is the ultimate step in medical, moral and social terms. A polity is never the same afterwards and a society is never the same. It changes forever the doctor-patient bond. It is because, in brutal but honest terms, more people will be put at risk by the legislation than will be granted relief as beneficiaries.

The argument against euthanasia has endured for many years: it leads, on balance, to a less compassionate society that creates a new series of moral and practical hazards for itself. It is a disproportionate response to the real problem of patient pain that needs more care and money. It is because a society that legalises killing has to change fundamentally in terms of the ethics of its doctors, its medical ethos, its family relationships and its principles of human life. Belgium, having legalised euthanasia in 2002, offers a tragic picture of what can happen to a country just a few short years later.

In this debate the principle of individual autonomy is vital. Adults, as much as possible, should be able to exercise choices over their medical treatment. That means declining treatment that can keep them alive. There is no real dispute about that.

Euthanasia is different: it is an act that terminates life. It is, therefore, by definition not a private affair; not just about a patient’s right. It is a public and society-wide issue because it involves the state legalising killing subject to certain conditions. That is a grave step and it concerns everyone.

AMA head Michael Gannon tells Inquirer: “The current policy of the AMA is that doctors should not involve themselves in any treatment that has as its aim the ending of a patient’s life. This is consistent with the policy position of most medical associations around the world and reflects 2000 years of medical ethics.”

There are three foundational points in this debate. First, in relative terms the proportion of people dying in acute pain is declining because palliative care methods have been enhanced. There is wide agreement among experts that most physical pain at life’s end can now be managed — this is a critical trend but cannot conceal the fact painful deaths still exist and become the main argument for legal change. But euthanasia should not be seen as a substitute for palliative care — that would be a medical and moral blunder.

Second, where euthanasia is legalised the record is clear — its availability generates rapid and ever expanding use and wider legal boundaries. Its rate and practice quickly exceeds the small number of cases based on the original criteria of unacceptable pain — witness Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Oregon. In Belgium, figures for sanctioned killings and assisted suicide rose from 235 in 2003 to 2012 by last year. In the Netherlands they rose from 2331 in 2008 to 5516 last year.

These figures come from Labor MLC Daniel Mulino’s minority report in the recent Victorian parliament committee report recommending euthanasia. His conclusion is that “the negative consequences arising from legislation far outweighs the benefits arising in that minority of cases”.

Experience in other jurisdictions leads to the unambiguous conclusion: the threshold event is the original legalising of euthanasia. After this there is only one debate — it is over when and how to expand the sanctioned killings. Claims made in Victoria that strict safeguards will be implemented and sustained are simply untenable and defy the lived overseas experience as well as political reality. There are many questions. If you sanction killing for end-of-life pain relief, how can you deny this right to people in pain who aren’t dying? If you give this right to adults, how can you deny this right to children? If you give this right to people in physical pain, how can you deny this right to people with mental illness? If you give this right to people with mental illness, how can you deny this right to people who are exhausted with life?

Third, culture and values will change to justify the death process. Consider the situation of one of Belgium’s most famous doctors, Wim Distelmans, applauded as a human rights champion. Having killed more than 100 patients, he is a celebrity, gives talks around the nation and is lauded as a man who “cannot stand injustice”. He toldDer Spiegel that giving a lethal injection is an act of “unconditional love”.

In Belgium, because so many are killed, the act must be converted into the exemplar of moral and medical compassion.

“Who am I to convince patients that they have to suffer longer than they want?” Distelmans said in one of the most astonishing articles of our time (“The Death Treatment” by Rachel Aviv, The New Yorker, June 22, 2015).

It is the story of how an adult son, Tom Mortier, sought justice after Distelmans killed his mother without Mortier’s knowledge. Distelmans was appointed chairman of the Federal Control and Evaluation Commission, whose job is to assess that doctors have complied with Belgian law. He told The New Yorker: “We at the commission are confronted more and more with patients who are tired of dealing with a sum of small ailments — they are what we call ‘tired of life’.”

Though their suffering derived from social as well as medical concerns, Distelmans said he regarded their pain as incurable. The article reported that 13 per cent of Belgians who were euthanised last year did not have a terminal condition. In Belgium euthanasia and suicide march together — it also has the second highest suicide rate (excluding euthanasia) in western Europe.

The most chilling aspect in a chilling story was Distelmans’s moral superiority in dealing with Mortier, prompting Mortier to write later: “I loved my mother for more than 30 years and I wanted her to live; Dr Distelmans loved her so much — ‘unconditionally’ — that after a few brief consultations over six months he gave her a ­lethal injection.”

Once you sanction euthanasia you open the door to euthanasia creep. The human heart will ­always respond to the incentives of the law. Cross the threshold and doctors will be encouraged to think it is their job to promote the end-of-life. Sick people, thinking of families, feel obliged to offer up their deaths. Less worthy people exploit the death process for gain. In Belgium children can now be euthanised. Would this have been acceptable when euthanasia was legalised in 2002? No way.

The article quoted a professor of psychiatry at the University of Leuven, Dirk De Wachter, calling euthanasia a humanist solution to a humanist dilemma. “What is life worth when there is no God?” he asked. “What is life worth when I am not successful?”

There are an infinite number of similar questions: what is life worth when you are lonely or depressed? De Wachter said he had recently ­euthanised a woman, not suffering from clinical depression but in a condition where “it was impossible for her to have a goal in life”.

Pro-euthanasia advocates in Australia are split when dealing with Belgium and The Netherlands between defending their practices or saying they are not relevant to our debate. The latter is false. These countries are highly relevant — as classic studies in how the euthanasia culture takes grips of a nation’s moral sense. It is sanctioned in terms of love, liberation and compassion — the ultimate service one human can render another.

The recent Victorian parliamentary report Inquiry into End of Life Choices recommended that people be assisted to die by being prescribed a lethal drug to be taken by themselves or administered by a doctor. It outlined a series of strict guidelines as eligibility criteria — approval by a primary doctor and a second doctor only for patients suffering at the end of life. The condition must be serious and incurable. The ­request must come from the ­patient and be free of coercion, be properly informed and be made three times: verbal, written, then verbal again.

There is significant support for euthanasia in the Victorian cabinet and in the opposing frontbench. A bill is certain in the life of the present parliament. Expectations are that it will be passed.

The AMA’s Gannon says the association is conducting a review of its euthanasia policy. He says this is “routine” and not prompted by “recent events”. He highlights the paradox of euthanasia. “It is only a rich country issue,” Gannon says. “There is no one in the developing world talking about terminating the lives of patients.” The AMA review will be completed in mid-November.

The pro-euthanasia group within the AMA hopes to shift its policy from opposition to neutral, mirroring the shift made in Canada — and that would be a significant step. In its evaluation the AMA must focus beyond the issue of patient autonomy to confront the question of doctor-patient ­relations and how they would change under euthanasia.

A critical feature of the Victorian report is the belief that a small number of people seeking euthanasia can be helped without any significant downside for ­society. It seeks to achieve this through robust eligibility criteria and the repudiation of any “slippery slope” problem with euthanasia in jurisdictions such as Oregon, The Netherlands and Switzerland.

Such optimism is heroic and typical of the euthanasia debate. It is echoed in nation after nation, year after year. It testifies to the deepest humanist conviction that mankind and wise governments can introduce euthanasia regimes with the necessary legal safeguards and the necessary regulatory protections to manage the promotion of death to ensure only net gains for the social order.

It is surely extraordinary that people sceptical of the ability of governments to get trains running on time fool themselves into thinking they can confidently manage a regime that sanctions the termination of human life.

The minority report from Mulino provides statistics showing there has been a sustained increase in deaths in all ­jurisdictions, no evidence that growth rates are plateauing with compound annual growth rates ranging from 13 to 22 per cent, which Mulino says has to be ­regarded as “extremely high”. He says the total number of cases in Belgium has increased by 756 per cent over 12 years and in Oregon is 725 per cent higher across the 17 years since initial legislation.

What sort of society is evolving if these growth rates continue? Why cannot we rationally confront and answer these questions? What drives the rise in deaths?

Munilo says the evidence ­reveals euthanasia and assisted suicide regimes “come under ­immediate pressure as soon as these schemes are enacted”. First, there is pressure to widen the law and second is the pressure to ­interpret more generously its implementation. And we think Australia is exempt?

There are many examples. In Canada, there are advisory group recommendations to extend the law to children. In Belgium ­extending euthanasia to dementia patients is under examination. The Netherlands is considering allowing patients to make pre-­dementia declarations.

The trend and logic is unassailable: once legislated the principle of euthanasia is settled and the practice of euthanasia is widened, if not by law then by administrative laxity and de facto regulatory sanction. Of course, many euthanasia cases are never declared.

A 2012 report by the European Institute of Bioethics said: “Initially legalised under very strict conditions, euthanasia has gradually become a very normal and even ordinary act to which patients are deemed to have a right.”

Many advocates in Australia use the rights language. Once this takes hold, then holding back the tide is near impossible. The ­upshot in The Netherlands is that the type of patients seeking euthanasia has changed with a shift to those with psychiatric illness. ­Mobile clinics offering free lethal injections are now in operation.

Mulino refers to an Oregon Public Health Division report looking at 132 deaths and finding that 48 per cent listed being a burden on family, friends or caregivers was a concern. When the Belgian law was passed politicians insisted that patients with psychiatric disorders, dementia or ­depression would be excluded — yet the prospect now is for an ­escalation in these categories.

Vulnerable people are right to feel uneasy if Australia crosses the legal threshold. In truth, it is virtually impossible to ensure all acts of euthanasia are voluntary. The elderly, lonely, handicapped and indigenous need to think how such laws mat affect them and their self-esteem.

In short, the foundational claims in the majority Victorian report of no “slippery slope” and effective “safeguards” do not pass the test of evidence, experience or careful analysis. This goes to the question of whether Australia will legislate on false and misleading assumptions that reflect ideological and political propositions.

On the pivotal and related issue of palliative care, Australia suffers a moral and humanitarian failure — and the Victorian report has responded with a strong set of recommendations.

Palliative Care Australia chief executive Liz Callaghan tells Inquirer: “The practice of palliative care does not include euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, and palliative care does not intend to hasten or postpone death. PCA believes the Australian government needs to ­increase access to palliative care.

“Currently 70 per cent of Australians want to die at home but only 14 per cent do. We believe more needs to be done to ensure that this can happen. Access to integrated, comprehensive support and pain/symptom management is often inadequate, inequitable or may not meet patient needs.”

Callaghan says evidence is that pain management improved from 2011 to last year based on data collection from 115 spec­ialist palliative care services looking after 20,000 patients needing pain management. She says PCA believes more needs to be done to ensure people are better educated about their end of life care choices and palliative care. The PCA believes any ­request for euthanasia requires “a respectful and compassionate ­response”, with Callaghan saying euthanasia is an issue for parliaments.

It is ironic this week that more evidence has emerged about the shocking impact of suicide in this country, particularly for Australians aged in the 15 to 44 age group. How, pray, does legalising euthanasia help the campaign against suicide? The most bizarre notion this week was the suggestion that legalising euthanasia may lower the suicide rate.

In many ways this entire debate is about how to interpret love and care in the context of death. Hug the person you love. But realise this is also about deciding the degree of discretion doctors have dealing with death. It may be good for a doctor to follow a patient’s wish for a lethal injection but that must be assessed against the total social impact of a regime that allows life to be terminated.

If we proceed then life will change, there will be a “slippery slope”, your relationship with your doctor will be different, the vulnerable will have reason to feel uneasy, the push to make euthanasia a right will be inevitable, the frail will feel obliged to volunteer and our values as a community will shift more quickly than you appreciate

ClimateChange, Q & A and Brian Cox

GRAHAM WOODS

Open Letter to an Alarmist Shill

That ABC would stack its Q&A panel and audience comes as no surprise, as that is standard operating procedure at the national broadcaster. But even by those low standards,  alleged climate guru Brian Cox plumbed new depths in bias, bad manners and a compere's partisan indulgence

Dear Brian,
I’d appreciate your response to this email, which deals with your recent appearance on the ABC’sQ&A program.

First, I want to make it clear that, where you’re concerned, I’m not a ‘vexatious invigilator’.  My wife and I (each with an earned PhD) have watched most of your TV programs, and have been struck by their intellectual clarity and your unassuming personal style (as well as by your BMI: we’re high-level wellness devotees).  With that said, we both have serious misgivings about your recent appearance on Q&A.

No pronouncement that enjoys an audience has zero social consequences, and the more prominent the pronouncer the more significant the consequences are likely to be.  Your recent Q&A appearance brings that out well.  You were treated like a science guru, both by the audience and by compere Tony Jones, and it’s inevitable that what you said will affect the opinions of hundreds, probably thousands, of people.

You might disagree, but I’d argue that your authority carries a responsibility: a responsibility to ensure that your audience (whether that’s one person or thousands) is not misled by your pronouncements.  It’s difficult to evade the conclusion that, on this recent occasion, you didn’t live up to that responsibility.

First, the program itself, including some of its history.  In 2007, Tony Jones brought climate change sceptic Martin Durkin onto his program.  My wife, Denise, and I, at that stage relatively uninformed and open-minded about the subject, expected Durkin to be given a decent opportunity to put his case.  Instead, we watched the attempted ‘credibility destruction’ of a person who had obviously been set up to be ambushed.  The attack was carried out most enthusiastically by Jones himself.  I was so appalled by Jones’ behaviour that I wrote to the ABC about it (so did others); Denise and I were so disgusted that we’ve never been able to bring ourselves to watch Jones since.

In the recent Q&A (which, as matter of duty, I watched during its second airing, on Tuesday, August 16, 2016), Jones attacked nobody, but the ‘stage-management’ of that episode was undisguisedly tendentious.  On the panel there was no acknowledged climate or ‘climate -related’ scientist with known anti-AGW views (e.g. Bob Carter, William Kininmonth, Ian Plimer) – and, had there been, I suspect that you wouldn’t have been there.  In fact no panel member at all was a bona fide climate scientist: i.e. a scientist with specialised knowledge in one (or more) of the disciplines that are demonstrably related to global climate behaviour and who frequently applies that knowledge as a professional contributor to that field.

Instead, the panel comprised a ‘science superstar’ (an appellation used by commentators both before and after the show); a federal minister who would (inter alia) be interrogated about cutting spending on climate change; a federal opposition member with no obvious responsibility for any aspect of climate; a ‘mathematician’ (publicity blurb) who holds a bachelor degree built only partly on mathematics per se and who, as far as I know, is a person not connected professionally with any aspect of climate science research per se; and one lay climate sceptic who is – unfairly or not –  perceived by many Australians as an extremist (on many topics) and so was expected to shoot himself in the foot on the subject of climate change.

The outcome of the ‘debate’ was predictable: most media presented it as climate change scepticism being ‘debunked’ by a leading scientist with a worldwide reputation.

Whether or not you agree with your admirers about your status, as an experienced science presenter you know as well as I do that a national broadcaster in a self-proclaimed democracy has an ethical duty to present material in a balanced and fair manner; this was never more incumbent on a broadcaster than in the case of climate change.  Yet the Q&A program was stacked in a way that should have been expected to prejudice one side of a debate.  Why, then, did you agree to take part?  If your response is that there is no valid debate (a strange stance for a scientist anyway), then why were you there?  To lend your support to interaction that had a better than even chance of being reported as the modern equivalent of bear-baiting: a spectacle to thrill the masses?  (If you think I’m exaggerating here, just look at the coverage the show got later, including in your own British papers.)

A possible defence of the makeup of the panel is that the Q&A episode would deal with more than just the subject of climate change.  I would argue that to do justice to climate change under such circumstances was therefore next to impossible, and that it should not have been on the agenda.  But it was, and you came onto the show armed with graphs; given all the circumstances a balanced treatment of climate change never had a chance.

Another defence you might put is that you tried to be reasonable on the show and you can’t be held responsible for the way it was later misrepresented in the media and that you’re really quite surprised.  That defence might excuse a naive artisan scientist who works in a lab or out in the tundra, but you’re anything but.  You’re an experienced, media-savvy science presenter, well informed about embedded messages, the importance of context, the impact of the status of the messenger on the message, and much more.  (The ‘much more’ includes, or ought to include, the politics of science career protection and of access to scientific journals: each of these connected intimately with the other.)  The idea that a world-famous scientist, armed with graphs, would not have a profound influence on public opinion about climate change, is laughable; the idea that a contest between such a person and an already somewhat demonised antagonist would produce anything other than the result that it actually did, is just as risible.

I want to turn, now, to what you actually said (i.e. on climate and climate change) and what you didn’t say.

You presented some graphs (the fact that you had some ready suggests complicity in a stitch-up, but I’ll let you tell me how it was that you came onto the show so well prepared).  I’d appreciate copies, in due course, but what I took these graphs to show is that the mean global temperature has risen steadily during the last 100 years and so has the concentration of atmospheric CO₂.

The fact that the mean global temperature has risen during the last 100 years says nothing about what it was doing before then, and says nothing at all about its causes.  Even if the 100-year correlation with rising levels of atmospheric CO₂ were perfect (and there isn’t 100% agreement even on the purely statistical question of how good the correlation is), that proves nothing whatever about causation.  The fact that correlation says nothing about causation (a fact that guides all empirical inquiry, including science) was drawn to your attention by Malcolm Roberts, your sceptical fellow panel member, the fellow who, according to subsequent media assessments, you ‘schooled in the science of climate change’ and ‘exposed and destroyed’, and who is a ‘climate change denier’ (he isn’t) whose claims you refuted (you didn’t: you disputed them).

These facts – I call them part of the immediately relevant context – you grossly played down (I quote you: ‘The absolute – absolute – consensus is that human action is leading to an increase in average temperatures.  Absolute consensus.  I know you may try to argue with that but you can’t.’).  If youwant to argue that to include this ‘relevant context’ would have opened up issues that couldn’t easily be addressed within such confines, doesn’t that apply a fortiori to your decision to display the graphs themselves?

The predictable result of your manoeuvre was well captured in a tweet I noticed during the program: ‘the graph speaks!’.  With the utmost respect to this benighted soul: in the context of the program, the graph speaks but it does not fairly inform; moreover a glove puppet speaks too, but who is its manipulator?

As I understand it you’re an astrophysicist and/or particle physicist – and, by my own reckoning, you’re an excellent science presenter.  On Q&A the other night you let yourself be manipulated (or deliberately chose the strategy yourself), such that it was your credibility as a ‘scientist’ that gave credibility to your comments on climate.  But you aren’t a ‘climate scientist’ (i.e. you don’t study climate and its perturbations as your primary professional job): in the area of climate and climate change you’re a layman – almost certainly a well-informed one but still a layman: like your chief opponent, Malcolm Roberts, and like me in fact.  Your moral duty, I believe, was to emphasise, for the benefit of your audience, that you’re NOT a climate scientist: in respect to climate change your most pertinent expertise is that you’re a presenter and explicator of science topics.  Along with any other panel member, you had a perfect right to nominate the dimensions of climate and climate change that you believe deserve to be put on the table, but as a non-specialist and a non-expert you had an obligation to confine those dimensions to those about which there can be very little doubt whatever: dimensions or facts that any intelligent non-specialist could, in principle, discover for herself.  Here are some of them, the first and second groups surely safe from dispute by any climate scientist:

• Planet Earth is a dynamic planet in a dynamic solar system: thus climate change is, now and for millions of years to come, inevitable and unstoppable.  In the absence of climate change, life as it exists on our planet simply wouldn’t.
• Our global climate system is almost incomprehensibly complex: across geological time and into the present affected interactively by the sun; the moon; possibly by some of the larger planets; by tectonic plate movement; volcanic activity; cyclical changes in the earth’s oceans; changes in the quantum and distribution of the earth’s biomass; changes in greenhouse gases that themselves are the result of changes in more underlying factors; by changes in the earth’s tilt and solar orbit; probably by changes in the earth’s magnetic field; and possibly by some other non-anthropogenic factors that at present scientists either don’t know about or whose impact they haven’t yet fully appreciated.
• ‘Consensus’ means ‘majority view’; majority views can be egregiously wrong (witness the work of apostates Marshall and Warren in the case of Helicobacter pylori and stomach ulcers).
• There is no published estimate of the degree of consensus on any aspect of climate or climate change that is so statistically robust that it can’t be contested; in any case, the size of the majority in favour of a scientific conclusion is logically disconnected from its validity: scientific hypotheses and conclusions are refined and proven by empirical data, not crowd appeal.
• There are now countless thousands of studies drawn from at least twenty scientific disciplines that aim to – or purport to – shed light on how the earth’s climate ‘works’.  Many of their results and conclusions are, by their authors’ own reckoning, tentative; the results and conclusions of some studies contest the results and conclusions of others.  There would be few, if any, aspects of climate that could claim 100% agreement among the relevant researchers except some of the raw data – and even many of these are contested, because different (though prima facie equally defensible) methods have been adopted to collect them.
• In 2016, the feedback loops and tipping points that are assumed to affect global climate systems are, in actual real-world settings, imperfectly understood, and tipping points in particular are largely speculative.  This is true regardless of the possibility (even the likelihood) that the current ‘very rapid pulse increase’ in CO₂ is geologically unprecedented or the possibility that it will have irreversible climatic consequences.
• There is demonstrable scientific debate about the presumptive roles (yes, roles) of CO₂ in medium- and long-term climate change in the real world – and there is no conclusion about how CO₂ is related to these dimensions that is supported by incontestable empirical evidence.
• The impact of anthropogenic CO₂ is therefore a scientific question, not a matter on which ‘the science is settled’ or ‘the debate is over’.

You might nit-pick one or other of my proposed ‘agreed facts or dimensions’, but as a non-specialist appearing on a national TV ‘debate’ entered into by non-experts you had no legitimate brief to ignore most of them and substitute (albeit via oblique insertion) what I assume are your personal convictions about climate and climate change, misusing the face-validity of your science credentials to have your views uncritically accepted by a wider audience.

Let us, for one phantasmagorical moment, pretend that all the data are in (this would be a first for any science ever, and would transform it from science to dogma), that ‘the (scientific) debate is over’, that CO₂ has been shown unequivocally to be the main driver of global warming during the past 40 years, and that the existence of countervailing global mechanisms is vanishingly unlikely: given the world-wide concern about ‘climate change’, and given your high profile as a scientist, you have further duties of care I believe.  Chief among them is to help people understand what sort of world they’ll inhabit if fossil-sourced substances are taken off the menu.

Nuclear-powered electricity generation could, theoretically, substitute for a very significant proportion of current fossil-fuel-powered generation.  Assuming uniformly supportive governments and negligible public opposition (an unlikely scenario), nuclear power could be up and running across the world in 5-10 years.  It follows that fossil-fuel-powered generation will be required for at least that long: in reality it’s likely to be much longer.

Assuming anything less than a massive increase in nuclear electricity generation, in the absence of fossil-sourced energy and fossil-sourced raw materials (for many of which there are currently no realistic alternatives) at least the next twenty years would be years with minimal heating and cooling; with compromised urban street lighting; with compromised sewerage and other waste disposal systems; without motorised transport, functional agricultural, mining and industrial machinery, newly manufactured computers and tablets, mobile phones, television sets, refrigerators, bicycles or any other conventional consumer goods, including clothes and shoes; and with inadequate food and/or water for most of the world’s people and their pets and livestock.  Modern medicine would collapse; so would most school systems; so, probably, would our financial systems – and possibly even our political systems.  In such a world, people like Brian Cox won’t be able to jet to Australia – and will struggle to conduct their professional lives even via video-conferencing – and Al Gore will have to significantly reduce the scale of his energy-dense lifestyle.  The world as we’ve come to expect it during the past century simply won’t exist, and many of its human inhabitants will perish: in particular the already impoverished, the very young, the otherwise frail, and the physically handicapped.  In a world so beleaguered civil unrest is certain, and food-looting, widespread violence and murder are virtually guaranteed.  This is the larger context in which the ‘climate change debate’ (now over … ) should be conducted.  It’s a context that implies balancing risks against benefits, and that balance will have to be struck even if the worst of the climate-change scenarios is realised.

The sciences that are contributing to our full understanding of climate and climate change are a long way from achieving their goal; the debate that characterises their work is a sign of a healthy scientific enterprise.  The rise of climate-related ‘think-tanks’, ‘idea clearing-houses’ and other lobby groups – or individuals (on both sides of the contest) is predictable, but the main contribution of many of them, ill-informed and/or tendentious as they are, has been to massage prejudices and close people’s minds.  Your own contribution, on the recent Q & A, will almost certainly have that effect too: in fact the subsequent media coverage already comprises powerful evidence.  Your implicit invitation, that people do their own research, is disingenuous: you know, as well as I do, that most people won’t do their own research, and that many are simply not capable of it.  The vast majority of the world’s public look to respected spokespersons such as you to instruct them about what they should think and believe.  You have a profound duty of care to instruct them even-handedly and fairly; I believe you failed in that duty on the recent Q & A.

Denise and I will continue to watch your programs, simply because they’ve been so good and you seem so decent.  However, your recent appearance and performance on Q & A have severely disillusioned us.  Perhaps now is the time for you to consider a series of programs of your own on this, one of the most vexed of current topics.  Your flair for making complex subjects intelligible to the lay person without misrepresenting them (sadly, not on display on the recent Q & A) should make the series compelling.  But it’s precisely your recent appearance on Q & A that leads us to doubt that you would be able to conduct such a project fairly and with an open mind.

Undoubtedly you have a lot on your plate, so I’m willing to wait until 7 September for your response to this letter, without taking any further action.  If I’ve heard nothing by then, I’ll rework the document and distribute it as an open letter, available for scrutiny and comment by anybody.

With best wishes

Graham Woods

Australia