Letters, feedback, get it off your chest: 6 April 2011
Last week’s NSW Printers forum gets the industry thinking, while the carbon tax debate continues to attract debate. Why not write in and let us know your thoughts on these, or any of our other stories.
Re: Rough road ahead for NSW printers
Last night was a disappointing night as it was hijacked by a bunch of bean counters; I thought I was at the morgue with the undertakers. These guys hijacked the night from what could have been and should have been a night of drilling down on problems and trying to create solutions and opportunities. Thanks for the ABC in financial management but that’s why we all have accountants.
Kerim El Gabaili
Printers in all areas of the industry are starting to see the first signs of a "generational" change in reading habits.
The Baby Boomers were raised on newspapers and books; Generation Y was the first one with widespread access to computers and Generation X knows little but the internet and social networking sites.
By the time the next generation reaches adulthood the familiarity with electronic media combined with advancing technology will all but complete the transformation from paper to electronic communication. Add in online shopping and the transformation will be complete.
Any printer that is not already well advanced on the road to change to digital and electronic media has probably left it too late.
Tim Cope
Re: ISO take up still to take off
I read the ISO 12647 article with interest. We have similar problems with the certification process taking off to any meaningful extent here in the UK.
The certification processes that are normally undertaken by print companies and others (9001, 14001 etc) are all independently administered by certifying accreditation companies who employ qualified and independent auditors to undertake the certification work. In the UK this is done under the control of UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service), and there are similar bodies elsewhere. The key issue is that the certifying organisations have to be certified as being competent and independent by UKAS, and the auditors they employ must be IRCA (Independent Register of Certified Auditors) listed. This is the requirement for 9001, 14001 etc and there is in reality no reason why 12647 should be different.
However, the companies or organisations offering certification currently in Australia from your list are all commercial enterprises. They would not qualify under the ISO or UKAS rules to be organisations that could provide independent certification in the same way as certifiers do now for 9001 or 14001 etc. If they approached an organisation similar to UKAS seeking recognition as a certifying organisation they would be rejected on the grounds of not being independent if nothing else.
We have the same supplier certification through FOGRA, UGRA, and a whole host of commercial organisations going on in here in the UK. The results are very variable. Firstly what commercial certification organisations have in common is that they just focus on the press performance and not the whole of the colour management system and working procedures in an organisation as the ISO documents makes clear is necessary. It is what UKAS will require. Secondly, with some of them no one fails to get a certificate. A cynic might suggest that this is because the commercial side of the relationship could be at risk and therefore the products supplied by them to the printer if a failure notice is issued.
It is therefore not surprising that many print buyers are getting their fingers burned and often do not think the certificate is worth the paper it is written on. While this persists it risks bringing what is a very good system in its concept coming through the TC130 committee, the local accreditation bodies and the BPIF (in the UK) into disrepute before the certification process gets off the ground.
In the UK there has been a pilot scheme operating with the blessing of UKAS for some months. One company (Benson Box Ltd) has completed the process and been issued with a temporary certificate pending UKAS approval of the certifying bodies and the certification process due to be completed shortly. Others printers are in the pipeline. This can be trusted as it will be internally and externally audited independently at set intervals as required by UKAS.
In my view, you cannot successfully mix commercial interests with the requirement for independent certification. The commercial offerings have their place for measurement and control, but as has become very apparent in the UK not certification.
Malcolm McReath
An informed, informative and clearly expressed article. A welcome counterpoint to some of the emotive pub-talk recently ventilated in this forum.
Peter Lawrance
I read with interest your article on Carbon Tax. The debate never seems to deal in fact but on emotion. Carbon Dioxide and carbon are not pollutants for a start: they are essential for life.
The amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere created by humans is less than 0.003% of the total trace elements in the atmosphere and human induced C02 represents 0.015% of this. To seriously suggest that this amount of C02 has the ability to change climate is laughable.
In the debate, we never read or hear about the many times throughout the last 400,000 years where the climate has been warmer or colder, has more or less of C02 and the fact that temperature rises have never coincided with high levels of C02. Warmer periods throughout history always follow approx 800 to 1000 years after high levels of C02.
I read with interest recently where Tim Flannery asserted that if the world stopped emitting Carbon and C02, it would take 1000 years to see any decline in temperature, by possibly two degrees. The reality is that if the temperature was 2 degrees warmer we would have more rain and better food production.
Hagop is correct when he cites higher administration costs to industry to facilitate Government Tax Requirements on carbon usage. Whilst it is important to reduce emissions of any kind, it must be remembered that China and India are still polluting at a rapid rate and have no intention of changing.
To give tax incentives and encourage viable clean energy industries through grants would achieve greater outcomes where there is an incentive to clean up your act rather tax the tripe out of you if you don’t.
Printing Industries should lobby Government to present an alternate view to taxing an already challenged Australian business sector and help Australia become a world leader in renewable energy.
Garry Clifford
Last Friday I heard Climate Commissioner Flannery explain that it will take 1000 years to see any drop in global temperatures should our government introduce a carbon tax. Yesterday I read how Professor Garnaut’s plan to “price carbon” will not only require a complete re-writing of the nation’s income tax structures; it will also destroy existing investments, and any incentive for future investment in electricity generation and distribution. And in Print21 today I read of the industry warming to a debate about the virtue and value of a “carbon calculator.”
It’s easy to laugh off the Climate Commissioner’s comment.
But there’s nothing to laugh about when a respected economist blithely notes that electricity generators will lose about 35% of their investment, and assumes “someone” will pick up the ruins to maintain the supply and distribution of electric power.
So it's with a wry smile I observe the printing industry getting itself tied up in knots about something that can’t be measured, to solve a problem that can’t be described, about which no consensus exists and whatever the effect may be it will evolve over a time span that no living person (nor their ancestors for about 25 generations) will see.
Except for Tony Duncan’s contribution, the data used to frame this particular industry discussion is neither helpful nor current. In other words, no one knows what it will cost, but Paul and Hagop tell us best guesses a few years ago were 5 to 35% to administer something that may cost between $13 and $35 per tonne. (That’s 65cents to $12.25 per tonne of a weightless gas – a modest range of 1855%) But never mind. Like most other industries and institutions, Print has invited itself into a torturous upheaval of existing efficient practices in order to worship at this altar of carbon. No matter how hard the industry has worked to create good jobs, satisfy its customers, provide ridiculously cheap and useful means of recording and communicating information, and get a return for investment, it must now pause and reassess itself in an effort to change the climate.
I’m sure our competitors to the north are following our example ...
Paul and Hagop tell me I have to take the word of the scientific community on CO2, unless I am convinced that they are all part of some global conspiracy. Well, actually a) I don’t, and b) I’m not. Knowing both you guys, I’m sure you didn’t mean to insult the collective intelligence of the industry.
If you think I might be a bit of a sceptic – you’re right. I learned that by getting educated. School is supposed to teach people to be sceptical, and why not; for several hundred years scepticism was the virtue that drove scientific – and any other – study.
But that was back when we knew the climate did the changing and we adapted. Now we know that is silly. The printing industry stands (a little shakily, but still stands) ready to do its bit to prevent those inconvenient droughts, floods, hot summers, cold winters and irregular El Ninos.
That’s a story worth printing.
Mark ReidIn response to Ross Campbells' comments:
I am staggered by your observation that complainants "should get a life". This juvenile phrase has always intrigued me.
Whose life should we get, Ross? Yours, mine, Stacey's, Colleen's?
Your comment assumes that there is only one life, and that's the one you think is appropriate. Can you not understand that women have been fighting for equal pay, conditions and status for so many years.
Your throw-away line is simply an insult to all of those who have fought so hard to redress the balance.
Don't bother getting another life, Ross. Just grow up into the one you've already got.
Regards from retirement,
Peter Hobbs