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The Forum > Article Comments > Adding more Salt to the wounds of Gen Y > Comments

Adding more Salt to the wounds of Gen Y : Comments

By Fiona Heinrichs, published 3/8/2011

Debating the past and the future with Bernard Salt.

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...Salt has been given his marching orders from OLO. Discredited as a seller of “Snake oil”. No, you have not inherited a lesser world but a different world. A world filled with challenges, the same challenges presented to past generations; to feed and house yourselves and your families.

...Your objective is to solve the housing cost crisis (consider for a moment the alleged housing shortage is a marketing “myth”) and to find objectives capable of usefully employing a population of youth acclimatised to unemployment and a life lived at home with parents, as a forced alternative (or is it)?
Posted by diver dan, Wednesday, 3 August 2011 9:07:12 AM
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"...yet are seemingly intimidated by the opposing perspective of a 23 year old female university student".

Far more likely than intimidated, has better things to do, can't be bothered, sees it as a waste of time. As I would
Posted by L.B.Loveday, Wednesday, 3 August 2011 9:10:03 AM
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Bullseye Fiona! This guy speacialises in spinning falsehoods that serve the pro-growthist agenda of big business. He continues to pass himself off as a demographer despite having previously and categorically stated that he is not.

http://markoconnor-australianpoet.blogspot.com/2011/05/bernard-salt-is-not-demographer.html

A flim-flam man of the highest order!
Posted by michael_in_adelaide, Wednesday, 3 August 2011 10:10:23 AM
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No wonder Salt would not enter into a debate - much easier to remain locked into his own pre-conceptions. It was our generation that came up with the term Populate or Perish and we were right - the only thing is we used the wrong conjunction - we should have used and - Populate and Perish is far more accurate.
Posted by BAYGON, Wednesday, 3 August 2011 11:06:15 AM
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Wounded vanity. Always a problem.

"So I sent him a message. He did not respond"

A message? But what did it say? Was it along the - somewhat unfriendly - lines of the article here? Did he receive it? Or did it go straight into the spam bucket? All sorts of random unsolicited items go into mine.

"I would have thought that the proposal for an intergenerational debate would be very interesting to such a passionate Baby Boomer pro-growth advocate. My being ignored shows it is clearly not."

Another unfounded assumption. Perhaps - just perhaps - Mr Salt has already looked through "Sleepwalking to Catastrophe", and has formed the quite understandable conclusion that such a discussion would yield only more polemic. He may well have taken a view that wading through 326 footnotes of supporting opinions would not allow a serious opportunity for factual discussion.

Just a thought.

It's all about being ignored, though, isn't it. Ms Heinrich has form, after all.

This, from her previous contribution...

"...why are young, up-and-coming female writers largely disregarded? This concern was partly born out of my own experiences as a 23-year old Generation Y female when my counter-responses to highly topical pieces in the Murdoch press weren’t published."

Much as they might prefer to differ on the subject, it is not an inalienable right that "a 23-year old Generation Y female" gets the automatic attention that she believes she deserves. Sometimes, content is important too.

"Writing from the perspective of a 23-year old Generation Y female, who like most people my age group, face uncertainty in employment, I am not sympathetic."

Fear not, Ms Heinrich. You are entirely qualified for a long and untroubled career in academe. You write lots of words. You choose an appropriately trendy windmill at which to tilt. Tenure is all but assured. Send the taxpayer the bill, won't you.

And before everybody shrieks "ad hominem", take another look at Ms Heinrich's piece, and mull over the fact that it is itself little more than a personal diatribe against Mr Salt.
Posted by Pericles, Wednesday, 3 August 2011 11:51:47 AM
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As Mr Loveday says, "Far more likely than intimidated, has better things to do, can't be bothered, sees it as a waste of time. As I would.

Which can be reasonably paraphrased as, "disinterested in the consideration of well constructed opposing points of view and too rude and self-indulgent to reply". Is that the view you're subscribing to Mr Loveday?

Pericles you suppose Mr Salt's disinterest in academic detail as an excuse for his silence in the face of Fiona's request for debate. I acknowledge the telling accuracy of this prognosis however you seem to be entirely ignoring the salient point made by Fiona regarding Mr Salt's whinging upon the lack of manners in others who behave so.

You are also correct to observe that, with regard to publication in the Murdoch press, 'content is important'. As anyone with a clue on the topic can clearly see, and as Dick Smith has taken to task with a full page ad in the Australian on the subject, that media group will not print content that challenges the population growth agenda amidst its unending torrent of growthist copy.

It also seems odd that yourself and the opening commentator both see Fiona's article as hostile. It reads as a perfectly well measured description of matters germane to her case. I guess form is defined within the eye of the beholder and reality is wrought to align with ones own understanding and aspiration. There is merit in considering the limiting effect that the latter of those two attributes can put upon the former.

Do you think she should be more circumspect, or perhaps even dutifully respectful, toward his dismissal of her call to substantiate his relentless, but error-riddled, crusade to deplete the finite national resources that Fiona and her loved ones will need for sustenance long after Bernard has shuffled on from the comfort-soaked mortal coil that his deeds furnish so well for him?
Posted by wallumi, Wednesday, 3 August 2011 1:23:37 PM
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