Venal Police Supress Evidence, Wrongly Keeping Man In Prison For More Than A Year

A man has just spent 18 months in jail on a rape charge because police did not pass to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) crucial evidence regarding the alleged victim’s history of mental illness and string of unsubstantiated sexual assault claims.

Peter Millhouse, also known as “The Bondi Caveman” was arrested and charged with rape by Waverley police after a complaint from a 21 year old woman who had apparently spent most of the day talking to him in his cave home, overlooking the sea on the headland at South Bondi. He was refused bail.

There are serious problems with the gradual erosion of the presumption in favour of bail in NSW, so much so that the current government has admitted this and ordered a comprehensive review of the Bail Act.

Nevertheless, in this particular case, based on the evidence available at the time, it was probably reasonable to remand the accused in custody, given the serious nature of the charge, potential danger to the community if he remained free and possibility of him failing to appear.

The problem is that the accused spent 18 months on remand while police sat on evidence that would lead any reasonable, competent person to seriously doubt the possibility of securing a conviction. In fact, when at the defence’s request, the police eventually passed the information to the DPP, they immediately no-billed the case and Peter Millhouse was freed on bail.

What does that tell you about the quality of the evidence?

Initially, the police did everything right. A very serious complaint had been made by a young woman who appeared to be in genuine distress. The alleged perpetrator was quickly arrested, charged and held in custody. On the basis of the evidence presented at the time, no reasonable person could accuse the police of wrongdoing so far.

Now it was entirely possible that the investigating officers may have neglected to look into the complainant’s background and none of the history of mental illness would have come to light. Had this been the case, they could have been accused of laziness and incompetence, but not corruption. It would have been a case of a homeless man, lost in the system, unable to adequately defend himself.

But in fact, the opposite happened. Subsequent to the arrest, the police conducted a competent and timely investigation of the complainant, uncovering a "history of mental illness and unsubstantiated sexual assault reports." So, the police had done everything right: a quick arrest and a thorough follow-up investigation which revealed extra, pertinent evidence.

Which is what makes what happened next criminally corrupt and not simply negligent: the police sat on this evidence for over a year and did not even pass it to the DPP. It is clear from the DPP’s reaction when they eventually did receive the evidence that had it been passed on as soon as the police gathered it, the rape charge would have been no-billed then and Peter Millhouse released from remand, since the two other charges of resist arrest and assault police do not have a presumption against bail.

None of the news articles I can find on the case explicitly say so, but there does not appear to be any forensic evidence of forced sexual intercourse: no bruising or other evidence of violence on the alleged victim, none of the accused’s semen.

Thus, any reasonable reading of the facts of this case leads to the conclusion that Peter Millhouse wrongly spent approximately 15 months in jail as a direct result of police deliberately not passing crucial evidence to the DPP. Even had he been found guilty of the resist arrest and assault police charges, it is likely his sentence would have been the time already served in custody, since there does not appear to be any evidence of serious injury to the arresting officers.

The police must have had a reasonable belief the evidence concerning the complainant’s history would cause the DPP to drop the rape charge, which is why I’m assuming they didn’t pass it on. This is corrupt behaviour. Pure venality. There is no way the police could simply have “forgotten” to pass on such evidence.

As a direct result, Peter Millhouse has wrongly spent at least 12 – 15 months in prison. The police involved should be charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Did the police refuse to pass on the evidence to the DPP because they believed Millhouse would receive (in their view) an insufficient sentence on the resist arrest and assault police charges, or perhaps even escape conviction? They need to be asked this in court. It is not the prerogative of the police to usurp the powers of a court by withholding evidence to achieve, in their eyes, “the right result”.

One might well ask why the names of the police officers involved have not been published. If there is some consideration being given to charging them, then it is reasonable they retain anonymity until such charges are laid.

But do you really think this will happen? Will the police really get the punishment they deserve for stealing a year of a man’s life? Not that his life was all that great anyway, but that’s for a civil court to judge when assessing compensation.

Maybe Peter Millhouse‘s civil claim will succeed, but I believe that’s against the institution of the NSW Police. I’d like to see him sue the officers, personally.

If the officers involved are not charged, which I believe is highly likely, journalists should be publicly asking them to explain their actions. The community needs to identify these corrupt police and demand they account for their actions.

This case is a good example of what happens when a culture of backing yourself and your colleagues goes too far and becomes a culture of denial and unaccountability; refusing to admit mistakes and a refusal to weed out and punish malicious behaviour.

The police have the power to ruin lives with false charges. Consequently, when individual officers lay false or clearly excessive charges, suppress or manufacture evidence, or collude when giving testimony, their criminality needs to be vigorously pursued.

Waverley Council should not escape censure in this saga. They should have forcibly moved Millhouse on years ago. He wasn’t just a homeless man living quietly in a cave and not bothering anyone. Due to his hoarding of rubbish and its attraction of vermin, he was a public nuisance. When council workers cleared his cave after his arrest, they removed 5 tonnes of rubbish. Five tonnes? Surely sufficient reason to have moved him on long ago. Look at the picture near the top of the article.

Neither should the hand wringing do-gooders who harangued a cowardly council into inertia escape blame either. It’s not his civil right to find a nice cave on public land and fill it with five tonnes of rubbish. If it’s his right, it’s all our right. Then what would your environment look like, you twats?

The Pauline Hanson Election Saga

Last month I posted about Pauline Hanson’s court challenge to the NSW Legislative Council election result.

Her claims in support of a recount are twofold:

1.      An allegedly internal NSW Electoral Commission email leaked to her which suggests that at least 1200 votes for her were found in the blank ballots pile.

2.      That the randomized preference distribution system is unfair.

Now that the evidence has been tested in court, the email on which she based her first claim appears to be almost certainly a fake. In fact the hoaxer, Sean Castle has admitted to being the “Michael Rattner” who sent Pauline Hanson the email in the first place, as well as to being the fake Daily Telegraph journalist “Michael Wilson” who obtained embargoed progressive vote tallies from the NSW Electoral Commission chief information officer, Ian Brightwell.

The email purports to be advice from Ian Brightwell to chief communications officer Richard Carroll, telling him:

“Just stonewall them (the media) as much as possible when it comes to Hanson and her issues with the count. Do not mention there is any possible provision for a recount.”

“We know the media are looking at the blank ballots and are trying to get them all rechecked because one of her scrutineers was meant to of found some of her votes in among the blanks (I have heard through the chain that there could be as many as 1200 across the state that are in with the blanks as there were a few dodgy electoral staff on, but don’t offer that).”

Both men have stated that they did not send or receive the email. The admissions by Sean Castle strongly support their claims.

Indeed, the “email” is highly defamatory of Ian Brightwell and he should certainly sue Sean Castle, who should also be charged with fraud.

To me, the most surprising aspect of this circus is the sheer dimwitted incompetence of Pauline Hanson’s no doubt expensive legal team (her own incompetence is taken for granted).

It is only in the last few days that the name Michael Rattner has been made public, as well as those of the “Daily Telegraph journalists” Michael Wilson and Sean Castle. Consequently, the rest of us have had only this time to do what Pauline Hanson and her lawyers should have been doing in the weeks they have had this information: checking their facts.

I initially thought “Rattner” was a misprint. Ratner is a Jewish name, normally spelt with a single ‘t’. There are no Rattners in the Whitepages listing in all of Australia (in fact, there are only 11 Ratners). There is no Michael Rattner on any electoral roll in Australia.

A reasonable conclusion from about 10 minutes of research is that whoever sent the email has done so via an alias. This should at least raise suspicion of the possibility the email is a fabrication.

If after this fairly routine research, Hanson’s legal team still believed there was a significant probability the email was genuine, it is evidence of a serious criminal offence. They should have referred the matter to the police and sought a court order to obtain all NSWEC email correspondence for the period in question.

An interview with Ian Brightwell would have produced a denial of ever having sent the email. His denial should have been easy to substantiate via records from the NSWEC email server.

Additionally, the interview should have quickly uncovered the names Michael Wilson and Sean Castle (a real person and the real identity of “Michael Rattner”), along with the fact that neither is a Daily Telegraph journalist.

It’s all starting to look very fishy and really not that difficult to uncover. Given the seriousness of the matter, the investigation should have been conducted with some urgency, particularly due to the possibility of evidence being destroyed.

So why did it all take so long? These facts shouldn’t have taken more than a week to reveal. It’s Pauline Hanson and her legal representatives who have had the email all this time, so I suggest it’s their own fault they’ve been made to look so foolish.

A particularly bad outcome in this case is that Hanson’s second claim is correct ie. that the randomized preference distribution system is flawed. Now this valid point will not be tested in court, completely obscured as it will be by the farce of her claim regarding the “misplaced” votes.

Also disturbing is the conduct of Ian Brightwell in passing embargoed progressive vote tallies to a fake journalist. He is the NSW Electoral Commission chief information officer, not some inexperienced clerk. Taxpayers might well ask whether he should continue in this position of responsibility.

It is common practice to release information to journalists which is embargoed until a certain time, to allow them to prepare their story and release it immediately at the agreed hour. Of course, this is all done on trust, which is precisely why Ian Brightwell should have rung the Daily Telegraph to check the bona fides of the two “journalists” who contacted him, since he could not previously have met them.

In the previous post on this matter, I accused the Greens of hypocrisy because of their elected candidate Jeremy Buckingham’s implication that Pauline Hanson should not be allowed to challenge the result and should just accept it.

This remains correct. The information available at the time to Jeremy Buckingham and almost everyone but Pauline Hanson and Sean Castle was that hard evidence possibly existed of an email implying votes for Pauline Hanson had been misplaced and further, the situation had not been rectified.

These are ample grounds for contesting the result and at that time, Jeremy Buckingham had no evidence disproving the claims. Additionally, the second claim relating to the flaws in the randomized preference distribution method remains valid, although now extremely unlikely to be tested.

So, based on the then current evidence, Pauline Hanson had every right to challenge the result and yes, Jeremy Buckingham was and still is a hypocrite, even more so because he seems to think she should pay his legal fees.

Why should she? She should pay her own and perhaps some NSWEC costs, but she did not accuse Jeremy Buckingham of anything. It was the Nationals’ Sarah Johnston who would have lost her seat to a successful Hanson challenge anyway.

That he spent money on legal advice is his own choice. If he incurred any legal costs trying to prevent Pauline Hanson’s challenge, he should pay these himself (or his party should). What public benefit is there in preventing claims being heard and independently tested? Why would he have wanted to stop her challenge being heard, given he could not disprove it at the time? What was he so afraid of?

The judge hearing the application for costs gave his opinion that Pauline Hanson had no choice but to challenge the result in court. She would certainly have needed a court order to access the NSWEC email data. One might reasonably ask why her lawyers couldn't have obtained such an order within a couple of days of her receiving the original email, given the seriousness of its implications. A swift judicial examination of the email and evidence surrounding it may well have revealed the hoax much earlier.

Additionally, Hanson still has reasonable grounds to have the second part of her claim heard: that the randomised preference distribution system is flawed. Sadly, this will not now be examined by a court, but it is a valid grievance and so quite reasonably she should not pay costs for this part of the claim.

My view is that, aside from the costs of Hanson's preference distribution claim, which should be borne by the state, either everyone should pay their own legal fees, since each has incurred the majority of these costs unnecessarily or through poor judgment, or alternatively the hoaxer, Sean Castle should pay the lot.

Additionally, I said in the previous post that IF Pauline Hanson’s claim turned out to be true and 1,200 votes had been “misplaced”, the chances it was deliberate would be high and moreover, it would be lefties who were responsible.

As it turns out, it is very unlikely that 1,200 votes have been miscounted. Good.

However, had they been and an internal email discussing the fact existed (which was certainly possible – not everybody is honest, Pollyanna), then even if the initial misplacing had been accidental, the non-rectification of the error was not … and if this was the case, it wasn’t going to be Australians Against Further Immigration supporters, was it?

Although conversely, given the way the left fight amongst themselves, if 1,200 Green votes “went missing”, it could just as easily have been supporters of Socialist Alliance or the ALP as the Liberal Party.

Any confected outrage at the suggestion votes could be "misplaced" or "miscounted" by Electoral Commission staff is absurd. I don't believe it to be a regular event, however to pretend that nothing dodgy has or could ever occur is naive. There is some dishonest and corrupt behaviour in almost every large organisation.

I know of one case in a marginal seat, many elections ago now, in which an attempt was made to deliberately overstate votes for the ALP.

Votes for each party were put in bundles of 50. One counter's ALP bundles were checked and about every second one came up short ie. was 47 or 48. When this fact was discovered and an accusation made, the counter feigned offence and protested the discrepancies were all accidental. Of course, had it been just inaccurate counting, the errors would have been evenly distributed on the positive and negative side.

The perpetrator was in this case an old school, cardigan wearing unionist, trying to manufacture a few extra Labor votes. I've no doubt the odd Liberal supporter tried a similar trick.

The point is, if particular people with the right access wanted to subvert the vote count, they could, so any accusations of such conduct need to be taken seriously. Conversely, accusations found to be vexatious or otherwise without merit need to be punished.

Note that an allegation later determined to be false is not necessarily without merit: at the time, there may have been reasonable grounds to make the claim. A claim without merit is one where a competent investigation and examination of the available evidence would lead to the conclusion that there is negligible chance the claim is true.

As for Sean Castle, who it appears has created the false email which kicked off this circus: get a life, you sad, little man.

Giant Penises On School Lawn Seen From Space

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Times one million.

Sometimes the stars just align and the hidden forces of the universe propel an already high quality caper into the upper echelons of pranking folklore.

It started with the by now fairly well known exploit of using weed killer to paint large pictures of penises onto an area of grass, say a school oval or quadrangle. In addition to penises, giant arses are also a favourite. Sometimes the two motifs appear together and if the artists are particularly adept, one may be seen entering the other.

As the painted grass dies and the surrounding grass grows, the pictures are revealed. Even better, since the grass forming them has been killed, the “art” cannot be removed by simply mowing and will endure for weeks.

Despite having been perpetrated many times around the world, this is still a quality prank and any youths succeeding in such an endeavour should feel justly proud of their work.

And so it was that some students at Fairfield College in Waikato, New Zealand continued the tradition. By sheer good fortune, the Google Maps satellite passed overhead, snapping their work in full flower, thus disseminating it to the world and preserving it for all eternity. The linked article contains a hilarious last paragraph. I won't spoil it.

The artwork is still on Google Maps at the date of this post. Search for Fairfield College, Chartwell, Waikato. Zoom in and to the west of Bankwood Rd, you will see the famous “Fairfield Phalluses”.

My only criticism of the work: that school oval to the left is crying out for a giant arse that can be seen from space, possibly with a giant phallus halfway up it.

Help The Iraqi Interpreters Who Helped Our Soldiers

My first impression on reading the headline Iraqi Interpreters Find Hate In Their New Home in today’s Sun Herald was that interpreters who had worked for Australian troops in Iraq were experiencing racism and possibly accusations of being bogus refugees after emigrating here.

Reading the actual article reveals a completely different story: the hatred comes from the “Iraqi community” here in Australia. The interpreters are looked upon as spies or traitors by many other Iraqis who have emigrated here.

Although on the same page of the newspaper, the byline article focusing on the interpreters’ ostracism by other Iraqi immigrants is a separate link on the Herald website.

This piece quotes an “Iraqi-Australian” woman named Sara:

“Anyone who works with foreign troops are considered to me, personally, traitors.

Foreign troops shouldn't be in our country. I think it's for Iraqis, the Iraq nation, to rebuild Iraq instead of any other foreign troops.”

Sara said many interpreters now living among local Iraqi communities keep a low profile because:

“They know they're not wanted. They've done a lot of bad things to help the foreign troops.”

One interpreter said he was told by an “Iraqi-Australian who owns a bakery”:

“You betrayed your country. You’re not welcome here.”

What unbelievable hypocrisy! Take all the benefits of living in Australia, but condemn as a traitor any Iraqi who helped the soldiers of your adopted country try to keep order in your old one.

I’ll say something to you, Slimy Sara and Mr. Greasy Baker:

It will NEVER be for you to say who is welcome in this country and who is not. You two should be very grateful to have been allowed the chance of a better life in Australia. The interpreters ARE welcome here. Given your obvious disloyalty to Australia, you and all who think like you are NOT.

Given their personal accounts, corroborated by Australian defence personnel, it is clear the interpreters are genuine refugees. Their lives really would be in danger in Iraq. Moreover, they helped our troops at considerable personal risk. The valuable assistance they provided our soldiers in communicating with locals in Iraq probably saved lives on both sides by preventing our troops becoming involved in misunderstandings leading to firefights.

We owed it to these 557 interpreters and their families to allow them to resettle in Australia. As such, it is very disappointing to read that they have had almost no contact with Defence personnel since their arrival.

The interpreters helped our troops to understand how Iraqi society operates. Is it really too much to ask for Defence or Immigration Dept staff to help them settle in here? Some English classes, some information about navigating our institutions, even an occasional visit to ask how things are going?

Had this been done, perhaps these people would not feel such a need for contact within the Iraqi immigrant community and would not feel the ostracism so acutely. Don’t we want them to assimilate into wider society?

Another disappointing aspect of the interpreters' attempts to settle in Australia is their extemely high unemployment rate, even after three years.

I suggest there are three principal causes:

English proficiency and difficulty having their Iraqi qualifications recognised here. Although they can speak English, the standard is probably not sufficient for many jobs. It is quite possible that the syllabus of their degrees is not equivalent to Western universtiy standards. There's not much that can be done about this, but at least Defence could provide some assistance with spoken and written English.
Ignorance from Australian employers. Most Australians wouldn't employ someone with an attitude like Sara's. Employers need to be aware that the Iraqi interpreters helped our soldiers, do not have values antithetical to Australian society and that they deserve a go. Maybe Immigration could employ a few of them to help assess other refugees' claims and weed out the bogus ones. With appropriate oversight, their advice might be valuable.
Lack of references and advice. Employment references from Defence would go a long way toward alleviating the problem in Point 2. Would it be so hard to write each interpreter a good reference and give them some advice on writing a job application? Apparently many interpreters do have letters of recommendation from Defence, but these don't seem to be having much effect. Perhaps the COs of the units they helped acting as personal referees would carry more weight.

I've implied that Defence is primarily responsible for assisting the interpreters in settling here (improving their English, obtaining housing and employment) because I think it is mainly their role.

The departments of Immigration and Social Security have the same responsibilities as they do for any other immigrants, but the interpreters are a special category because they were defence force employess who helped our troops at significant personal risk and we owe them help in return, particularly as a) they are being shunned by other Arab immigrants and b) Australian employers seem ignorant of their skills.

As for the people in the so-called “Iraqi community” in Australia who are shunning the interpreters as “traitors”, how many of them arrived here as refugees, allegedly “in fear of their lives”? Many, I’d suggest. How many were telling the truth? Very few, I’d suggest.

How many of them are sponging off our social security system? A lot, according to the observation from one of the interpreters:

“They receive Australian government support and they are living as any Australian person, for example, but [some] hate me … because I worked for the Australian Army.”

Australia did not advertise in Iraq for immigrants. We didn’t say to Sara and people like her: “Hey, we’re so desperate to build our population, we’ll take anyone, even people who don’t speak English, follow an alien religion and whose ability to integrate and accept our values is questionable at best.”

In fact, Sara and most other Iraqis begged to be allowed in, many on the pretext of their lives being endangered in Iraq, having already travelled through half a dozen Muslim countries and then paid people smugglers to ferry them here. Despite being allowed to live here and receive the security and freedom of our society, including, I’ll wager, social security payments courtesy of Australian taxpayers, Sara refers to Australian soldiers as “foreign troops” and Iraq as “our country”.

Her choice of words reveals her utter ingratitude and complete untrustworthiness as a potential Australian citizen. Yet, I’m sure she will take Australian citizenship as soon as she can. Her words suggest it will merely be a flag of convenience so she cannot be deported.

These people are among the worst examples of immigrants: fundamentally hostile to our values and with no genuine intention of assimilation, for them or their children. Can you imagine the rubbish they are filling their kids’ heads with?

What needs to be explained to these people, very forcefully, is that freedom of expression does not extend to treason. If you come to Australia to live and call someone who helps Australian soldiers a traitor, then YOU are the traitor and have no right to remain here.

Given our labour shortage in certain industries, Australia currently needs high levels of immigration. Despite this, there is still an order of magnitude more people wanting to settle here than we can reasonably take. Therefore, we can afford to be very choosy about who we actually accept.

In my opinion, the facts that people like Sara and the baker have been allowed to settle here and the lack of effective support given to deserving people like the interpreters represents the misguided nature of our immigration policy.

It is absurd to suggest that we cannot distinguish the relative value of the contribution of various immigrants to Australian society. In fact, this is already done for people entering under the skilled migration category. Proficiency in English is a factor, but religion and culture are not.

It is absurd that criterion scored assessments of immigrants are allowed, but only for certain categories of immigrants and then a significant portion of the variables explanatory of successful integration into Australian society are excluded for ideological reasons.

We should apply criterion scored assessments to all categories of immigrants, including refugees. Obviously the assessments would be different for different categories, but there is nothing wrong with giving preferential treatment to refugees who already speak some English, who have a good education or who have worked at a trade in their home country, if indeed these factors are explanatory of successful integration.

We should dispassionately analyse ALL the objective factors which are found to predict the future success of immigrants in becoming good Australian citizens. Success is subjective, but hardly indefinable. In addition to obvious criteria like criminal activity, it should encompass the ability to learn English, maintain steady employment and not hold views clearly completely opposed to Australian values, like the separation of religion and state and you’re not a traitor if you help our troops.

This analysis should form a points test for each category of immigrants. If some of the factors turn out to be highly correlated with race or religion, so what? We should ignore the bleating of the lying, lefty hand wringers who cry for their exclusion and want to force their misguided political views onto the rest of us, in this case to the demonstrable detriment of society. Evidence based policy should always take precedence over ideology.

We should expand the character test so that immigrants who through their words and deeds demonstrate a sufficiently high probability of unsuitability can have their visa cancelled, or indeed, their Australian citizenship torn up and be deported. In the latter case, it is almost certain that such people obtained their citizenship under false pretences: lying under oath.

I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

Really, do you?

How many immigrants like Sara and the baker would say these words without one iota of committment, with the sole purpose of obtaining the piece of paper saying “Australian citizen”.

If the Iraqi interpreters who helped our soldiers are traitors to you, you are lying if you say the above words and consequently should be sent back to where you came from, to lead the shitty life you deserve.

Charity Muggers

Like many people, I’m sick of the sheer number of charity collectors, trying to hit me up between the station and work almost every day.

I do donate to charity, but by cheque. It irritates me to be constantly asked for money by myriad charities, some of whom I believe are poor allocations of resources, by collectors who are usually being paid themselves.

Many people feel beholden to give a charity collector a little bit of money when approached because it’s well, charity and therefore all in a good cause, isn’t it? Not necessarily.

The charity may be a highly politicised organization in which the agenda of those running it differ significantly from your own. Or you may believe the goals of the charity are secondary to those of others in the field and consequently it draws resources away from your preferred charities.

A third problem is that the charity may have become too corporate; almost an industry in itself, with too many full time staff protecting their vested interests.

If you don’t think for a few seconds before dropping the money in the tin, how do you know how much of your money, if any, is going where you intend it?

Do you know whether or not the charity collector is being paid? Most of them are. It’s not merely a coincidence that such a large percentage of the charity muggers in Sydney or Melbourne have British accents. They aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their heart: they are backpackers or similar, trying to fund their extended trip to Australia.

If I think a charity worthwhile, I will donate to them, but it’s not my job to help finance some Pommy backpacker’s holiday.

I’ve noticed the paid collectors (I’m assuming this by their age and accent) are more likely to make an amateur attempt at a guilt inducing remark if you don’t donate (to their wages).

One little smart arse had the hide to say “Don’t want to help sick kids?” when I refused to give her any money. Yes, you’re right love, that’s the reason. Not because I think the Starlight Foundation is a disgraceful waste of funds.

What a brilliant idea: spend the money on sending a dying child to meet Madonna instead of trying to cure their cancer. A symbol of the debilitating modern, Western disease: the triumph of sentimentality over substance.

I saw them in the city recently. It was a major production: a stage, performers, banners, lots of staff. I’m pretty sure most were paid employees. This would seem to be borne out by the statement on their site that they “employ 187 talented people, in addition to our dedicated volunteers”.

I’m not saying the Starlight Foundation does nothing of value per se. What I am saying is that with 187 paid staff and a considerable amount of money spent on events, plus their goal of giving children a one off experience, this is not a good use of funds compared to donations to cancer research or similar. I suggest a better goal for chronically ill children is to prolong their lives (within reason) in the hope a cure is found.

The amount people allocate to charity is a finite resource. I'm not claiming it is static, but it is bounded. If people are asked for donations from 10 charities, they will probably donate more in total than if asked by 5, but their average donation will almost certainly decrease the more they are asked. This is a particular problem for the charities at the end of the sequence, since people will often start out with larger donations, then tend to decrease them the more they are asked.

Additionally, people often don't really know what each particular charity does. If all they know is that "it's for sick kids", they are more likely to feel they've already given enough to sick kids this year and a charity with more worthy goals may miss out.

On this basis, one may argue that the overall effect of the Starlight Foundation is negative, since its regular fund raising activities are likely to lead to lower donations to other charities, such as cancer research, offsetting whatever good it produces.

The other problem I have with the Starlight Foundation is that it seems to me to be as much a business as a charity. It’s very “PR” oriented, from the not-too-bright celebrities needing a cause to bolster their image to the STARS “corporate values” acronym, exactly the kind of shallow, fake feeling guff staff at large corporations like banks have to endure.

The secretary walking around your office seemingly a little too often collecting for them acts like you’re the biggest heel on the planet if you refuse to donate on the grounds your money is better spent elsewhere. “Ohh, sick kids, mate … come on, you’ve got to be in it.”

Well, if it’s for sick kids, I guess I’d better pay my $5 cringe tax like everyone else and not concern myself with how the money is actually spent.

Charity models like this encourage vested interests. People can see this and the impression projects onto the whole sector.

The only time I’ll give money to collectors on the street is to Legacy or to the Salvos or Smith Family if they are collecting in the pub. I know some of my donation to the Salvos or Smith Family goes to admin and I know the Salvos are god-botherers, nevertheless I respect their work and by and large, I can see tangible results.

A charity like Legacy is different, because the collectors are soldiers. I always give money to Legacy because I have close relatives who fought for Australia and I respect people who are prepared to. If I died on a battlefield, I’d want to know my family would be looked after.

Otherwise, I ignore the street collectors, even if it’s a charity I support. I prefer to give my money directly to the charity via direct deposit or cheque, not to pay the wages of some smarmy brat or backpacker.

Additionally, find out what the charity really does before you give them money and don't just give to everybody who asks. If you develop charity fatigue and just happen not to be in a good mood one day, that could lead to you giving $2 or $5 instead of your usual $10, for example ... and the charity who lucked out might just be one you'd preferentially support if you sat down and made a list.

Plain Packaging For Cigarettes

Shortly, the Australian government plans to introduce a bill requiring all tobacco products to be sold in plain or generic packaging.

The draft bill gives the government the power to (among many other things):

• Prohibit the use of any trade mark, logo, brand, business or company name, or other identifying mark on packaging or on tobacco products.
• Prohibit the use of any design of packaging or any design of a tobacco product.
• Provide that information of a specified kind is not to be included on packaging.

So, essentially the government is giving itself the power to dictate every aspect of cigarette, cigar and loose tobacco packaging: the shape, colour, markings and words.

Reading paragraphs 55 - 57 of former senator Steve Fielding’s 2009 bill gives some clues as to what the government is likely to mandate: the packaging may show only the brand name, contact details of the manufacturer and the number of cigarettes or weight of tobacco. It goes on to specify the exact number of cigarettes, size and shape of the pack and even the font face and size of the writing.

This must be the first time a government has legislated the removal of the right of manufacturers to use branding display to differentiate legal products.

To me, there is something absurdly hypocritical about this approach. You can’t say a class of products is legal to manufacture or import, allow competing, profit driven enterprises to do it, then not allow them to differentiate their products.

If tobacco is such a terrible public health hazard, then ban it. If you’re not prepared to do that AND you let corporations competitively make and sell tobacco products, then logically, you can’t remove a principal component of that competition: the development of a brand.

Most people agree with the current pre and proscriptions on the sale and advertising of tobacco products. There is nothing wrong with requiring the manufacturers to tell the truth about their products on the packaging: namely that smoking causes many diseases. There are plenty of other products whose advertising is restricted, either in the mass media or at point of sale, usually on the grounds of prohibiting advertisement to minors. Pornography is one example.

But the wholesale destruction of branding of a legal class of products is unprecedented and in my opinion, contrary to the commercial rights of a legal enterprise in an open society.

There have been several studies demonstrating a positive relationship between the display of brands’ designs and logos on tobacco packaging and the appeal of the product. A paper reviewing the evidence by the Cancer Council of Victoria summarises the results of these studies:

Virtually all the findings of these five studies converge on the following conclusions. Plain and generic packaging of tobacco products (all other things being equal), through its impact on image formation and retention, recall and recognition, knowledge, and consumer attitudes and perceived utilities, would likely depress the incidence of smoking uptake by non-smoking teens, and increase the incidence of smoking cessation by teen and adult smokers. This impact would vary across the population. The extent of change in incidence is impossible to assess except through field experiments conducted over time.

OK, so the badging effect of the brand on the packet makes it more likely young people will take up smoking and less likely existing smokers will quit, but quantifying these differences is difficult without actually bringing in the packaging change.

Coupled with the evidence of the negative health effects of smoking, plain packaging will almost certainly prevent illness and deaths and probably lead to decreased demands on the public health budget.

There have been claims from the tobacco lobby that plain packaging will lower prices and hence increase smoking. Philip Morris commissioned a behavioural econometric study purporting to demonstrate this.

The study makes standard, equilibrium economic modeling assumptions regarding market competition between a relatively small number of suppliers, then uses elasticity of demand and price arguments to conclude that prices will decrease by 5 – 20% and consumption rise by 2.5 – 16%.

So the epidemiologists and the economic consultants have produced opposing conclusions. Who is correct?

The epidemiologists.

The Philip Morris study neglects some important assumptions:

• If price reductions occur, governments will counter them by increasing taxes.
• People can still differentiate brands in a different way: by using cigarette cases. It used to be fashionable and will become so again.
• The existence of an equilibrium. Government intervention and non-independence of the suppliers will probably prevent the market from even exhibiting stationary state behaviour, let alone an equilibrium.

In my opinion, this study is a good example of the abuse of the most noble of all sciences: mathematics.

Having considerable experience with both economic modeling and consultants, I have seen this happen a lot. Constrain the environment by making the right assumptions, solve some equilibrium economic equations, derive the answers the client wants, add a disclaimer and send the invoice.

Changing the assumptions of the study to allow significant government interference in the market via taxes or other price regulation, or changing some of the assumptions about consumer utility and preferences will lead to very different model predictions.

Given these counter arguments, I give the Philip Morris study negligible credence.

So, the decision is a no brainer, right? Clear, evidence based policy in favour of plain packaging.

Well, to me, the above argues in favour of banning smoking tobacco altogether. That’s not to say there are no arguments against banning smoking, but public health is not one of them.

The main argument against banning smoking is liberty. Adults should have the right to harm themselves if the associated harm to others is not material. Currently, you can drink yourself to sleep every night if you wish, blow $1000 per week on the pokies if you can afford it or if you like racing cars, pay some leather clad ladies to thrash your arse to jelly with a riding crop.

People who don’t smoke should reasonably expect that smokers will not fill their environment with more than the background pollution from other sources, such as traffic fumes or industrial emissions. You can’t smoke in confined spaces with children, in office buildings or in certain areas of restaurants. Most people agree this is fair enough.

But if you are legally allowed to drink a case of beer or bottle of whisky every night, why shouldn’t you be able to smoke alone in the park, or on your own balcony? Is there really something so terrible about an old widower smoking a pipe in his study?

The health problems associated with smoking cause a drain on the public health budget. Analyses suggest the economic cost is billions of dollars per year. Consequently, it’s reasonable that smokers should bear this extra burden.

It is reasonable for governments to impose large taxes on tobacco products, which function as a proxy for a targeted increase in the Medicare levy. It is also reasonable to allow health and life insurance companies to charge significantly higher premiums for smokers, as long as their behaviour in assessing claims is rigorously and independently monitored. By this, I mean that insurers should be required to have both regular and occasional smoker categories, so that they cannot deny a claim to someone who ticked “non-smoker”, then had a cigarette when drunk one night and the insurance assessor found the picture on Facebook.

It is these alternative measures, allowing society to collect compensation for the costs of smokers’ self harm, combined with rules to protect others, governing where people can’t smoke which convince me that other people’s rights not to be unduly burdened by the harmful effects of smoking can be sufficiently protected and thus the liberty of smoking should not be banned.

The crux of the argument is that the harmful effects of smoking are mostly statistical and so therefore must be counter measures, such as insurance premia and sales taxes. By this, I mean that smoking does not necessarily cause any given disease. It increases the probability of contracting many illnesses, but there are many other genetic and environmental factors.

It is important to understand what is meant by the phrase “behaviour X causes disease Y”.

We could say “cutting someone’s head off causes death”. In this case, we mean 100% of the time. I have not tested this theory myself, however numerous experiments performed in mediaeval Europe and post revolutionary France argue in favour of the hypothesis.

We could also validly say “smoking causes cancer”, although this does not mean all smokers develop cancer. It means that the proportion of smokers who develop cancer is higher than in the general population, after controlling for other lifestyle factors which are also correlated with cancer and whose observation may be biased in smokers, such as lower rates of exercise and higher alcohol consumption.

So, smoking does not necessarily lead to any particular disease in an individual, but does almost certainly lead to higher incidences of that disease in the population.

This is why I think it shouldn’t be banned. You can’t prove that smoking will later definitely cause a particular disease in any particular individual (except perhaps emphysema). So, society is better off banning smoking in certain places and making smokers pay en masse for the overall costs of the smoking as a group, rather than going down the draconian, nanny state option of banning it altogether … and if it’s to continue being legally sold, by corporations, I don’t see that it’s reasonable to outlaw product differentiation, notwithstanding the decrease in smoking rates which it appears would ensue.

If you’re going to allow tobacco companies to manufacture and market a harmful product, is there anything extra you can do to ameliorate its public health effects?

It’s generally believed that smoking pure tobacco is less harmful to health than tailor made cigarettes, due to the many chemicals added to the latter by the manufacturers. This may well be true, however medical studies imply that pure tobacco smoke is itself carcinogenic, in addition to still causing emphysema.

OK, so any tobacco smoke is potentially harmful, but apparently the plethora of additives makes it worse, not just because some of them are carcinogens, but additionally because some of them have been implicated in increasing the addictiveness of nicotine.

Combined with the liberty argument, this tends to argue in favour of banning a large set of tobacco additives while allowing the sale of pure tobacco, or tobacco laced with natural flavours such as the cherry, vanilla, port wine etc. favoured by some pipe smokers.

I suggest this might be a better solution: allow smoking in certain environments, allow differential health and life insurance premia and prescribe a list of acceptable classes of “natural” tobacco additives such as the above, rather than proscribe a set of unacceptable ones and watch the cigarette companies try to get around your list.