Lockhart Lobby Committee - get a Blog!

The acting Chair of the Lockhart Committee seems a little peeved that nobody is accepting her invitation for a sit down and a chat.

“I did say that I, and my fellow committee members, would welcome an invitation to come and talk to Cabinet about these issues," Professor Loane Skene told the Sunday Profile program on ABC Radio today. But it seems the desire for a meeting is unrequited - "No, we haven't heard from Mr Abbott, or from any of the other members of the Cabinet."

There are two good reasons why Cabinet should not feel it fitting to meet with Ms Skene or other Committee members.

First, her Committee does not exist. It is very bad form – in fact quite outrageous – for an advisory Committee, having tabled its advice, to keep buzzing round the ears of Government like a sticky fly. Such a Committee, once it has given its advice, effectively ceases to exist. It is an ex-parrot. It has done the job asked of it, and it goes home.

Not the Lockhart Lobby Committee, oh no! Skene, the acting Chair of a Committee that should no longer have an acting anything, reminds us today how very busy is the life of a lobbyist - "I've been making response in newspaper articles and on radio interviews, but I haven't been invited to talk to Mr Abbott himself," she said.

Not only Skene - one newspaper article was jointly signed by all members of the ex-committee! The audacity of an ex-advisory committee using ‘letterhead’ that is no longer theirs to use, to publish a piece pushing their radical views! And other ex-committee members, Marshall et al, also weigh into the debate at politically effective moments on behalf of ‘the Committee’.

Memo to the members of the former Lockhart Committee:

Poor form, chaps, to reduce the standing of an expert advisory committee to just another knockabout lobby group. Why don’t you get a blog like me!

More important, why did you fail to do the one honourable thing after publishing your Report – and pulp it? For, in the light of the Hwang cloning fraud, and the fact that Hwang was the sole foundation of your claim that science had advanced so much that the ban on cloning in Australia should be overturned, the whole edifice of your report has crashed to the ground.

It was extraordinary bad luck that, having published your report in mid-December, the Hwang fraud should be exposed only a matter of days later! How did you feel? To think, all that elaborate argument was founded on false premises – fake science, a pack of lies, and nothing else.

Sad indeed – but your way was clear. The report should have been withdrawn, pulped, and a reassessment made as to any ‘advance in cloning science’ that might warrant a review in Australia.

That would have produced, in disinterested hands, a very different report. For there has, of course, been no ‘advance’ in human cloning other than the Hwang fraud – not even a single peer-reviewed article - and that would have meant changing your advice to Government.

But a like-minded group such as yours with a shared passion for radical experiments on human embryos is not, it appears, for changing, and that meant not doing the right thing and withdrawing the report. Not surprisingly, an acting Chair who also acts as advisor to the International Stem Cell Society (did you note that, alert journalists with an eye to conflict of interest?) is not likely to give up easily on the battle for cloning.

Understand, though, why Cabinet is not feeling obliged to invite you for a chat. It is nothing personal. It is just that you don’t really exist any more, except as a lobby group like the rest of us, and it is hard to take tea with an illusion. Just as it is hard to take seriously a Report whose sole fraudulent scientific foundation is likewise an illusion.