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KI Accommodation Providers Have a Whinge

I watched the SA ABC’s Stateline programme on Friday night. There was a segment about KI Sealink and some of Kangaroo Island’s accommodation services.

The accommodation providers said it was unfair that they weren’t benefitting from a Sealink partnership programme they hadn’t joined and didn’t want to pay for.

They had complained to Sealink, then to the ACCC. The ACCC found their complaint was without foundation, so they enlisted a self-promoting politician and academic, and complained to the media.

I didn’t know whether to be amused or appalled.

Sealink is a commercial venture. Its future reliability depends on its continuing to make a profit.

Without strong profits it could not employ the staff it does on Kangaroo Island and elsewhere. It could not maintain and service its vessels and other infrastructure. It could not make provision to purchase replacement vessels and buildings when necessary. It could not pay $10,000 per week in wharfage fees (essentially a state government toll on the only road in and out of our community, the only community in the state that has to pay such an impost), and it could not pay taxes which contribute to roads, hospitals and schools.

Sealink is under no obligation to offer lower fares to residents, or any reduced fares at all, even as part of a campaign to bring more visitors to the island.

When it does offer below cost fares, that loss needs to be recovered from somewhere else.

One way to do this is to invite accommodation services to partner with it. Those who choose to be partners share in meeting the cost of the reduced fares. In return, they get more prominent publicity, and priority in accommodation bookings made through Sealink.

There is nothing remotely anti-competitive about this. It is not, for example, like service providers agreeing to fix prices.

But some providers who have chosen not to participate are complaining it is unfair.

This is a bit like complaining it is unfair that people who pay for advertising in The Islander get more customers than people who don’t. Fairfax has plenty of money. They should offer free advertising space to people who don’t want to pay, so those people are not disadvantaged.

That would be ridiculous. It is no less ridiculous for people who have chosen not to participate in a partnership programme to complain it is unfair when they get fewer bookings than people who have.

It is a simple commercial decision. If you think your business would be more profitable paying the partnership fee and commissions, then join. If you don’t, don’t join.

But whatever you decide, don’t whine about it.

BBC Biased?

Well, it was biased. But we’ve fixed it. It’s all OK now.

That’s according to Director General Mark Thompson.

Well, good. Everyone in England who owns a TV pays for the BBC through taxes and licence fees. So it really should be unbiased, as least as far as that is realistically possible. It should be everyone’s BBC.

Like many English persons, I will be looking forward to genuinely balanced debate on the Beeb on political and environomental issues.

Australia’s ABC is paid for by every Australian. It even tells viewers and listeners they should care about what happens to the ABC, because it’s ‘your ABC.”

But it’s never been my ABC. I never hear my opinions expressed on the ABC, except maybe by a courageous lone voice quickly shouted down by a ‘balanced’ panel.

Clive Hamilton thoughtfully explains why it is not necessary to offer a variety of opinions for consideration.

It is because only one opinion is right – his:

Presenting both sides is biased when one ‘side’ is backed by a large body of peer-reviewed research and the other is not. The ‘other side’ would deserve some reporting if there were a significant minority view that had some legitimate science to sustain its claims, even if that science proves unsustainable. In the case of climate science, there isn’t. …

A number of studies have substantiated what is obvious to anyone with even a casual knowledge of the research on the science of global warming – that is, there is an overwhelming consensus on the main conclusions presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

The trouble is Clive, there is no discussion of whether this amazing consensus actually exists.

And of course, Clive, it doesn’t. At least 31,000 scientists in the US alone agree with me. And several in Australia.

And now, Clive, even former IPCC insiders are admitting the ‘consensus’ was a complete fabrication. It wasn’t a worldwide consensus. It wasn’t even the claimed 2500 experts. It was just a couple of dozen scientists whose income depended on generating alarm.

Or, Clive, if you really think there is no peer reviewed research questioning the basis of global warming alarmism, you could start with this list of 800 peer reviewed papers.

So let’s begin to make it everyone’s ABC, Clive, by being honest about disagreements in matters of politics and environmental science.

Or is that too much to ask?

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