Public Health Experts Say Edits Represent Censoring of Science
Environmental and public health experts overwhelmingly denounced editing by the White House of a federal health agency head's testimony to Congress Tuesday. Significant deletions were made from the testimony, concerning global warming and the potential impact on human health.
The original, unedited testimony presented to Congress by Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and obtained by ABC News was 14 pages long, but the White House Office of Management and Budget edited the final version down to a mere six pages.
Scientists and public health organizations called the move "frustrating," "terrible" and "appalling." The edits essentially deleted all sections that referred to climate change as a public health concern -- including the risks of increased food-borne and waterborne diseases, worsening extreme weather events, worsening air pollution and the effect of heat stress on humans.
"Dr. Gerberding is the lead of the premiere public health agency in the U.S.," said Kim Knowlton, a science fellow on global warming and health at the National Resources Defense Council in New York. "It's shocking that she was not allowed to say in a public discussion some of these vital details.
"One has to wonder why was this is so threatening to the White House."
In response to the controversy that followed, White House press secretary Dana Perino stated that the White House Office of Management and Budget redacted the majority of the information on the basis that the science in the testimony did not match the science reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
However, a review of the latest report on climate change issued by the IPCC -- the organization that shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore two weeks ago for efforts to educate the public about climate change -- shows that it contains an entire chapter about the human health impacts.
The IPCC report describes in detail how climate change would lead to effects such as heat waves, cold spells, extreme weather events and weather disasters, air pollution, increased infectious diseases, and increased waterborne and vector-borne infectious diseases.
These same effects, listed point-by-point in Gerberding's original CDC testimony, were among the casualties in the edited version.
"The science that Dr. Gerberding was trying to bring forward was based on the IPCC report," Knowlton said. "It's quite stunning that only weeks after that group received the Nobel prize for their work that the White House is deleting scientific statements based on that work. What was cut was the section with the details -- the most detailed sections on the health impact of global warming, including descriptions of the links that are coming out of the IPCC report."
There was overwhelming agreement in the scientific community that the information was in no way alarmist or controversial.
"This is really standard information available to anyone on the issue," said Dale Jamieson, director of environmental studies at New York University. "What was removed was an uncontroversial report of what is currently known and believed about the fact of climate change, its health effects and its likely impacts on the United States."
"All of these [topics] are routinely mentioned in public health coursework across the nation," agreed Dr. Alan Ducatman, a professor of community medicine at the West Virginia University School of Medicine. "Each ? can be found in the pages of leading journals, such as Science and Nature. If anything, they understate the problem."
Censoring the Science
The problem, according to the unedited version of the testimony, is that climate change is likely to have a significant impact on health -- and not only due to heat waves and disease epidemics.
The CDC report highlighted other issues addressed in the IPCC report, including how extreme weather events such as floods and hurricanes will cause deaths, large-scale population displacement and contamination of drinking water. Other concerns included how increases in temperatures encourage the formation of ground level ozone, the primary ingredient of smog which can cause permanent lung damage and aggravate chronic lung diseases, such as asthma.
Also, climate change is predicted to alter agriculture, leading to the scarcity of some foods and increases in prices, a concern for the poor in America.
Following the deletion of these details, the remaining parts of the testimony discussed the CDC's preparedness measures -- but seemed to omit what it was they were preparing for.
"The redacted version just is a very strange document. It becomes a kind of recitation of what the CDC does in general," Jamieson said. "It becomes strangely decontextualized once you take out all the [relevant] material."
"We talk of the politicization of science," said Dr. Linda Rosenstock, dean of the UCLA School of Public Health. "In the politicization of this topic -- the science wasn't changed, it was deleted."
Could Edits Hurt Disaster Response?
Public health experts also expressed their fear over the potential impacts of ignoring the deleted sections of the testimony.
"If communities -- states and counties -- aren't given the information and the resources ? if there isn't planning to be prepared for these global warming related disasters, then our governments won't be able to help us," said Knowlton.
Jamieson agreed. "By not informing the public or emphasizing preparedness, you set yourself up for a Katrina-like failure, but on a global scale."
Significant concerns were also raised that damaging the credibility of the CDC could threaten Americans' welfare in the long run.
"We know from previous health threats, for example anthrax, 9/11, and concerns about pandemic influenza, that having a credible and believable voice from our highest officials is the best way to inform the public and get a reasonable response," said Rosenstock.
"If we have antics -- and I mean the word antics -- where we undermine the credibility of the most credible public health official, then we hurt our ability to respond to health threats."
Knowlton also felt that if information is not forthcoming from public officials, Americans may need to educate themselves. "People really need to be reading and learning," she said. "Even if the White House doesn't want them to."
RT On Air
Friday, 26 October 2007
China's green energy gap
By next autumn, a muddy construction site here in a rural part of eastern China will give way to a small power plant that burns corn stalks and cotton stalks to generate electricity for nearby villages and steam for a neighboring industrial complex.
The plant would be ready sooner, but only four companies in China make the specialized precision boilers that the biomass plant requires. And all those companies are plagued by backed-up orders and delivery delays. Similar problems bedevil the wind turbine industry in China.
The same big utility company building the green plant in Boxing, CLP, has just opened a coal-fired plant in southernmost China. On schedule and built for half what it would cost in the West, that plant will generate 1,200 megawatts of electricity — compared with 6 megawatts from the Boxing biomass plant. CLP is so impressed that it is bidding to build coal-fired plants in India with Chinese technology.
These are the realities faced by companies seeking to make themselves more environmentally friendly in China, where coal is king. Coal-fired plants are quick and cheap to build and easy to run. While the Chinese government has set goals for increasing the use of a long list of alternative energies — including wind, biomass, hydroelectric, solar and nuclear — they all face obstacles, from bureaucracy to bottlenecks in manufacturing. CLP's differing energy choices are a case study in how one company grapples with the need to provide electricity to hundreds of millions of impoverished Asians even as it is under a self-imposed goal of trying to limit emissions of global warming gases.
Controlled by the Kadoorie family — one of Hong Kong's wealthiest, with a long history of supporting environmental causes — CLP's board began considering a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions on Tuesday.
While the details are still being worked out, the company plans to commit itself to "material and dramatic reductions" in such emissions in industrialized countries like Australia, while seeking to control growth in emissions in developing countries, like China, said Andrew Brandler, CLP's chief executive.
"We think the world has to address the issue of climate change as a matter of urgency," Brandler said.
Yet CLP's operations are growing so quickly in China, India and other developing countries in response to soaring electricity demand that Brandler said the company's total emissions of global warming gases may actually increase in the short term.
The problem is particularly acute because governments across Asia, from China and India to Indonesia and the Philippines, are turning mainly to coal to meet their soaring electricity needs and prevent blackouts, even though coal produces more global warming gases than any other major source of electricity.
China's increase has been the most substantial. The country built 114,000 megawatts of fossil-fuel-based generating capacity last year alone, almost all coal-fired, and is on course to complete 95,000 megawatts more this year.
For comparison, Britain has 75,000 megawatts in operation, built over a span of decades.
The most talked-about alternative to coal in China involves plans to quadruple the country's share of power from nuclear energy by 2020. But the plan, which contemplates dozens of reactors, still amounts to just 31,000 megawatts of nuclear power over the next dozen years.
"That's minuscule," said Jonathan Sinton, a China expert at the International Energy Agency. China builds more coal-fired capacity than that every four months.
Two big questions linger over even those modest goals: can equipment be manufactured for dozens of nuclear reactors, and can China train enough workers to run them?
At CLP's Daya Bay nuclear plant in Shenzhen, a house-sized dome of specially hardened steel sat next to an immense crane one recent morning, waiting to be swung and bolted into position as part of the site's sixth reactor.
But at least Daya Bay's dome is here — reactors elsewhere in China wait up to several years. Only a handful of steel mills around the world can cast the thick domes, and only now are the first two mills in China taking delivery of equipment to make them.
The plant's 1,750 employees, meanwhile, are training 500 interns at a time, according to Stephen Lau, the first deputy general manager of the plant; the government-owned nuclear power company asked that 1,000 be trained at a time, but the joint venture running the plant could not handle that many.
By contrast, there is no shortage of workers to run coal-fired power plants. China is dotted with decrepit state-owned coal-fired plants that each employ 900 to 1,000 people to produce just 50 to 100 megawatts. The government frequently asks companies to close one of these inefficient, heavily polluting operations and provide jobs or money to the workers before allowing the construction of a new coal-fired plant.
CLP's modern coal-burning plant in Fangchenggang in southernmost China — a pair of 260-foot gray towers looming over a tropical landscape of woods and emerald rice fields dotted by gray oxen — employs just 270 workers to generate 1,200 megawatts.
Before the Fangchenggang plant could be built, the local government had to buy the land from residents of a nearby fishing village, setting off discussions about whose land should be sacrificed, said Zhang Zhengde, a village elder.
"We would prefer to have a smaller site — if there were more land, it would disrupt our lives, and government compensation cannot solve that," he said.
But coal's problems are nothing compared with the challenges facing the wind-energy industry, which requires much more land and is troubled by years-long shortages of a wider range of parts, as well as contradictory regulatory policies. For instance, Beijing has mandated that power transmission companies pay at least 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour to buy wind-generated electricity from approved power producers, not much above the 4.5 cents an hour they pay for coal-generated power. But the premium is so small that only one-third of 1 percent of the nationally regulated wind power projects approved in 2004 have actually been built, and none of those approved in the last two years, said Vivek Kher, a spokesman for Suzlon Energy, an Indian manufacturer of wind turbines.
Some provincial governments have ordered payments of 8.1 cents for wind projects they regulate, he said, and these projects are being built.
Plans have slowed to expand the use of natural gas, which burns more cleanly and produces less greenhouse gas than coal or oil. It has proved costly and difficult to build pipelines from gas fields in western China, while liquefied natural gas for transport in ships is in short supply.
The future of hydroelectric power in China is clouded by severe environmental problems at the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.
One of the strangest features of China's energy policy is the paucity of environmental controls on coal-fired plants, because rules governing them were written long ago. Renewable energy projects actually face a more stringent review of their environmental impact.
China has begun telling companies that build coal-fired plants that they should choose so-called supercritical technology. Such technology increases construction costs, but the plant then requires 10 percent less coal to run, reducing emissions and long-term costs.
CLP's new coal-fired plant at Fangchenggang, near the Vietnamese border, uses supercritical technology. But it still produces considerably more global warming gases than burning natural gas, using nuclear power or turning to renewable energy sources like biomass.
Now CLP wants an international consensus on a broad successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which set some limits on greenhouse gas emissions through 2012. Clear limits on future emissions would force utilities to avoid projects that contribute to global warming, and, unlike Kyoto, might extend to more of Asia. Kyoto exempts developing countries like China and India from emissions limits.
One reason CLP seeks a new consensus is the bruising lesson it recently received. The company had proposed building a coal-fired plant in the Philippines employing supercritical technology and burning very low-sulfur coal, a more expensive but less polluting variety of coal.
In the end, though, the developer found an American private equity firm that was willing to bankroll a low-tech subcritical plant using a variety of coal that pollutes more, said Brandler, declining to identify the project or the participants. (Greenpeace officials said that they were also not aware of which project it might be among many in the Philippines.)
"You've got to get the rest of the industry to come along," Brandler said. "That's why we will be agitating more."
The plant would be ready sooner, but only four companies in China make the specialized precision boilers that the biomass plant requires. And all those companies are plagued by backed-up orders and delivery delays. Similar problems bedevil the wind turbine industry in China.
The same big utility company building the green plant in Boxing, CLP, has just opened a coal-fired plant in southernmost China. On schedule and built for half what it would cost in the West, that plant will generate 1,200 megawatts of electricity — compared with 6 megawatts from the Boxing biomass plant. CLP is so impressed that it is bidding to build coal-fired plants in India with Chinese technology.
These are the realities faced by companies seeking to make themselves more environmentally friendly in China, where coal is king. Coal-fired plants are quick and cheap to build and easy to run. While the Chinese government has set goals for increasing the use of a long list of alternative energies — including wind, biomass, hydroelectric, solar and nuclear — they all face obstacles, from bureaucracy to bottlenecks in manufacturing. CLP's differing energy choices are a case study in how one company grapples with the need to provide electricity to hundreds of millions of impoverished Asians even as it is under a self-imposed goal of trying to limit emissions of global warming gases.
Controlled by the Kadoorie family — one of Hong Kong's wealthiest, with a long history of supporting environmental causes — CLP's board began considering a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions on Tuesday.
While the details are still being worked out, the company plans to commit itself to "material and dramatic reductions" in such emissions in industrialized countries like Australia, while seeking to control growth in emissions in developing countries, like China, said Andrew Brandler, CLP's chief executive.
"We think the world has to address the issue of climate change as a matter of urgency," Brandler said.
Yet CLP's operations are growing so quickly in China, India and other developing countries in response to soaring electricity demand that Brandler said the company's total emissions of global warming gases may actually increase in the short term.
The problem is particularly acute because governments across Asia, from China and India to Indonesia and the Philippines, are turning mainly to coal to meet their soaring electricity needs and prevent blackouts, even though coal produces more global warming gases than any other major source of electricity.
China's increase has been the most substantial. The country built 114,000 megawatts of fossil-fuel-based generating capacity last year alone, almost all coal-fired, and is on course to complete 95,000 megawatts more this year.
For comparison, Britain has 75,000 megawatts in operation, built over a span of decades.
The most talked-about alternative to coal in China involves plans to quadruple the country's share of power from nuclear energy by 2020. But the plan, which contemplates dozens of reactors, still amounts to just 31,000 megawatts of nuclear power over the next dozen years.
"That's minuscule," said Jonathan Sinton, a China expert at the International Energy Agency. China builds more coal-fired capacity than that every four months.
Two big questions linger over even those modest goals: can equipment be manufactured for dozens of nuclear reactors, and can China train enough workers to run them?
At CLP's Daya Bay nuclear plant in Shenzhen, a house-sized dome of specially hardened steel sat next to an immense crane one recent morning, waiting to be swung and bolted into position as part of the site's sixth reactor.
But at least Daya Bay's dome is here — reactors elsewhere in China wait up to several years. Only a handful of steel mills around the world can cast the thick domes, and only now are the first two mills in China taking delivery of equipment to make them.
The plant's 1,750 employees, meanwhile, are training 500 interns at a time, according to Stephen Lau, the first deputy general manager of the plant; the government-owned nuclear power company asked that 1,000 be trained at a time, but the joint venture running the plant could not handle that many.
By contrast, there is no shortage of workers to run coal-fired power plants. China is dotted with decrepit state-owned coal-fired plants that each employ 900 to 1,000 people to produce just 50 to 100 megawatts. The government frequently asks companies to close one of these inefficient, heavily polluting operations and provide jobs or money to the workers before allowing the construction of a new coal-fired plant.
CLP's modern coal-burning plant in Fangchenggang in southernmost China — a pair of 260-foot gray towers looming over a tropical landscape of woods and emerald rice fields dotted by gray oxen — employs just 270 workers to generate 1,200 megawatts.
Before the Fangchenggang plant could be built, the local government had to buy the land from residents of a nearby fishing village, setting off discussions about whose land should be sacrificed, said Zhang Zhengde, a village elder.
"We would prefer to have a smaller site — if there were more land, it would disrupt our lives, and government compensation cannot solve that," he said.
But coal's problems are nothing compared with the challenges facing the wind-energy industry, which requires much more land and is troubled by years-long shortages of a wider range of parts, as well as contradictory regulatory policies. For instance, Beijing has mandated that power transmission companies pay at least 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour to buy wind-generated electricity from approved power producers, not much above the 4.5 cents an hour they pay for coal-generated power. But the premium is so small that only one-third of 1 percent of the nationally regulated wind power projects approved in 2004 have actually been built, and none of those approved in the last two years, said Vivek Kher, a spokesman for Suzlon Energy, an Indian manufacturer of wind turbines.
Some provincial governments have ordered payments of 8.1 cents for wind projects they regulate, he said, and these projects are being built.
Plans have slowed to expand the use of natural gas, which burns more cleanly and produces less greenhouse gas than coal or oil. It has proved costly and difficult to build pipelines from gas fields in western China, while liquefied natural gas for transport in ships is in short supply.
The future of hydroelectric power in China is clouded by severe environmental problems at the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.
One of the strangest features of China's energy policy is the paucity of environmental controls on coal-fired plants, because rules governing them were written long ago. Renewable energy projects actually face a more stringent review of their environmental impact.
China has begun telling companies that build coal-fired plants that they should choose so-called supercritical technology. Such technology increases construction costs, but the plant then requires 10 percent less coal to run, reducing emissions and long-term costs.
CLP's new coal-fired plant at Fangchenggang, near the Vietnamese border, uses supercritical technology. But it still produces considerably more global warming gases than burning natural gas, using nuclear power or turning to renewable energy sources like biomass.
Now CLP wants an international consensus on a broad successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which set some limits on greenhouse gas emissions through 2012. Clear limits on future emissions would force utilities to avoid projects that contribute to global warming, and, unlike Kyoto, might extend to more of Asia. Kyoto exempts developing countries like China and India from emissions limits.
One reason CLP seeks a new consensus is the bruising lesson it recently received. The company had proposed building a coal-fired plant in the Philippines employing supercritical technology and burning very low-sulfur coal, a more expensive but less polluting variety of coal.
In the end, though, the developer found an American private equity firm that was willing to bankroll a low-tech subcritical plant using a variety of coal that pollutes more, said Brandler, declining to identify the project or the participants. (Greenpeace officials said that they were also not aware of which project it might be among many in the Philippines.)
"You've got to get the rest of the industry to come along," Brandler said. "That's why we will be agitating more."
Monday, 22 October 2007
Rudd Beats Howard in Australian Election Debate
Australian Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd beat Prime Minister John Howard in what may be the only public debate before elections next month, analysts and newspapers said.
Rudd, 50, promised to look after working families facing financial pressures and to boost education spending during the 90-minute debate broadcast to 2.4 million people. Howard, seeking a fifth and final term, promised a strong economy, which would fund tax cuts and spending.
Newspapers ran headlines such as ``Rudd's Decisive Win'' and ``Rudd Gets a Wriggle On'' referring to a ``worm'' that appeared on television screens showing approval or disapproval from 100 people watching the debate.
``Rudd won the day on his pitch to struggling families,'' said Nick Econoumou, head of the politics department at Monash University in Melbourne.
Odds also shortened for a Labor win today at Australian betting agencies. A dollar wagered today for a Labor win returned A$1.55 from A$1.60 yesterday at Sportingbet.
``All the promises in the world mean absolutely nothing unless we have a strong economy,'' Howard, 68, said in the Canberra debate last night. ``The coalition has been able to deliver a strong economy, and we want to go on doing that.''
Rudd, who entered parliament in 1998, has led Howard in opinion polls since taking over the party leadership in December 2006. Labor held an eight-point lead over the coalition in an ACNielsen poll published in the Sydney Morning Herald Oct. 19.
Leave Iraq
Rudd has pledged to withdraw Australian soldiers from Iraq next year, ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change and hand back some power to unions in wage bargaining. Rudd needs another 16 seats in the 150-seat Australian parliament to win power.
Australia's tradition of ``fair go is under fundamental assault, and this country is calling for something better,'' Rudd said. ``I am passionate about the education revolution, about addressing climate change and delivering a fair go to Australian families struggling with the pressure of interest rate rises and high fuel prices.''
Australia's economy is in its 16th year of expansion and the jobless rate at a 33-year low. Interest rates have increased five times since the election in 2004 when Howard promised to keep them low.
Economic Record
Howard is campaigning on his economic record. He has cut income taxes by A$115 billion ($104 billion), the economy has expanded every year he has been in power and the benchmark stock index has more than tripled.
``For many voters, a strong economy is the normal state,'' Malcolm Cook, program director for Asia and the Pacific at the Lowy Institute said in Sydney today. ``Rudd has been calm in the campaign, so people might take a punt on him.''
Rudd has shrugged off comments about higher interest rates and budget deficits during Labor's last period in power from 1983 to 1996. Rudd said yesterday that he is an ``economic conservative'' who will run budget surpluses and respect the independence of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
``You're an election eve convert to economic management,'' Howard said.
Howard came from behind in opinion polls to win elections in 2001 and 2004. Australia has changed government only five times since World War II.
`Inflationary'
Howard said the coalition's plan to reduce income taxes by A$34 billion in the next three years wouldn't be ``inflationary'' and put pressure on interest rates.
Rudd on Oct. 19 announced a A$31 billion tax reduction plan similar to the coalition's, though it would delay cuts for high income earners to pay for computers for poorer families.
Howard said Australian field commanders in Iraq would meet military coalition partners in the ``next couple of days'' to discuss the future of the 1,575 troops in the region and that they may take on a training role from next year.
Rudd has asked Howard to have three debates during the six-week campaign. Howard hasn't yet agreed to the proposal.
News and politics
Rudd, 50, promised to look after working families facing financial pressures and to boost education spending during the 90-minute debate broadcast to 2.4 million people. Howard, seeking a fifth and final term, promised a strong economy, which would fund tax cuts and spending.
Newspapers ran headlines such as ``Rudd's Decisive Win'' and ``Rudd Gets a Wriggle On'' referring to a ``worm'' that appeared on television screens showing approval or disapproval from 100 people watching the debate.
``Rudd won the day on his pitch to struggling families,'' said Nick Econoumou, head of the politics department at Monash University in Melbourne.
Odds also shortened for a Labor win today at Australian betting agencies. A dollar wagered today for a Labor win returned A$1.55 from A$1.60 yesterday at Sportingbet.
``All the promises in the world mean absolutely nothing unless we have a strong economy,'' Howard, 68, said in the Canberra debate last night. ``The coalition has been able to deliver a strong economy, and we want to go on doing that.''
Rudd, who entered parliament in 1998, has led Howard in opinion polls since taking over the party leadership in December 2006. Labor held an eight-point lead over the coalition in an ACNielsen poll published in the Sydney Morning Herald Oct. 19.
Leave Iraq
Rudd has pledged to withdraw Australian soldiers from Iraq next year, ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change and hand back some power to unions in wage bargaining. Rudd needs another 16 seats in the 150-seat Australian parliament to win power.
Australia's tradition of ``fair go is under fundamental assault, and this country is calling for something better,'' Rudd said. ``I am passionate about the education revolution, about addressing climate change and delivering a fair go to Australian families struggling with the pressure of interest rate rises and high fuel prices.''
Australia's economy is in its 16th year of expansion and the jobless rate at a 33-year low. Interest rates have increased five times since the election in 2004 when Howard promised to keep them low.
Economic Record
Howard is campaigning on his economic record. He has cut income taxes by A$115 billion ($104 billion), the economy has expanded every year he has been in power and the benchmark stock index has more than tripled.
``For many voters, a strong economy is the normal state,'' Malcolm Cook, program director for Asia and the Pacific at the Lowy Institute said in Sydney today. ``Rudd has been calm in the campaign, so people might take a punt on him.''
Rudd has shrugged off comments about higher interest rates and budget deficits during Labor's last period in power from 1983 to 1996. Rudd said yesterday that he is an ``economic conservative'' who will run budget surpluses and respect the independence of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
``You're an election eve convert to economic management,'' Howard said.
Howard came from behind in opinion polls to win elections in 2001 and 2004. Australia has changed government only five times since World War II.
`Inflationary'
Howard said the coalition's plan to reduce income taxes by A$34 billion in the next three years wouldn't be ``inflationary'' and put pressure on interest rates.
Rudd on Oct. 19 announced a A$31 billion tax reduction plan similar to the coalition's, though it would delay cuts for high income earners to pay for computers for poorer families.
Howard said Australian field commanders in Iraq would meet military coalition partners in the ``next couple of days'' to discuss the future of the 1,575 troops in the region and that they may take on a training role from next year.
Rudd has asked Howard to have three debates during the six-week campaign. Howard hasn't yet agreed to the proposal.
News and politics
ABC, Press Club cut worm: Nine
The ABC, in cahoots with the National Press Club, pulled the Nine Network's election debate feed on behalf of the Liberal Party in an "outrageous act of censorship", Nine's news chief John Westacott says.
The network's feed from the televised debate between Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd last night was cut after the network broadcast the controversial "worm" with its coverage, he said.
The ABC denied the allegation and said it had "no role" in the decision to cut the feed, according to a spokeswoman.
"All decisions about the host broadcast feed, including decisions about who it would be provided to, were made by the National Press Club," she said.
Nine was warned its feed was going to be cut and was able to switch to take a feed first from the ABC and then, when that was cut, from Sky News, said Mr Westacott, Nine's director of news and current affairs.
He insists there was "absolutely no agreement" between Nine and the press club over its coverage.
"We were asked not to use the worm, that's correct, and we didn't agree with any of the conditions that were laid down by the Press Club, including charging us for the event," he told ABC Radio this morning.
"We were given warning as they were going to pull it, so we cut to our back-up feed and then they threatened to pull that too," he said.
Westacott said Nine then took the feed from Sky News and put the worm on that live feed.
"[It was a] seamless swap from feed to feed as the evildoers from the Press Club, in cahoots with the ABC, decided to censor the broadcast.
"If the ABC behaved in a proper journalistic manner then we wouldn't have the feed pulled," he said.
The ABC technicians had bowed to pressure from the Press Club who had already bowed to pressure from the Liberal Party, he said.
But one of the "accepted rules" for broadcast of the debate was that there would be no worm, the ABC spokeswoman said.
"The National Press Club was awarded the right to host last night's Leaders' Debate, and under the rules had responsibility for organising the broadcast of it," she said.
"One of the accepted rules was that there would be no "worm" on any broadcast made available."
No comment: Howard
Mr Howard refused to say if the Government had any role in cutting the feed.
He did say: ''The decision for that feed was taken by the National Press Club. I don't have any comment about that."
Comment is being sought from the National Press Club.
Mr Howard said before the debate he did not want the worm, which charted reactions from 90 swinging voters in Nine's studio audience, while Mr Rudd was in favour of it.
Nine's worm rated Mr Rudd the clear winner in the debate, but also did so in the cases of Labor's Mark Latham and Kim Beazley in the previous two elections.
Westacott said the issue was pertinent considering News Ltd's CEO John Hartigan had made a speech at the Andrew Olle lecture two days before, saying press freedom had never been under such attack.
"Pulling feeds and threatening all sorts of dire consequences if we didn't do what the Liberal Party required, this is an outrageous act, the most outrageous act of censorship I've seen in some time," he said.
Liberal sabotage: Martin
Nine's compere Ray Martin said the Liberal Party was responsible for the sabotage.
"The National Press Club was controlling the broadcast but clearly the sabotaging instructions came from the Liberal Party," Martin told the Nine Network this morning.
"They didn't want the worm from the outset."
Martin later told the ABC the network's contract to broadcast the debate did not stipulate conditions on the use of the worm.
"The deal was that we would take the coverage and we would have the worm, we didn't say when we'd run the worm," Martin told ABC Radio.
Martin said during the broadcast angry phone calls were made to the National Press Club and the ABC to Nine.
"There was some fairly angry phone calls going back and forth from the National Press Club to our producer and we got wind that they were about to cut it after 25 minutes ... so we switched to our back-up service and then they cut that as well, so we then had to go with Sky for the last hour," he said.
"There were lots of threats of what was going to happen and we just figured that they were about to pull it and they did pull the plug twice."
Scott denies threatening Nine
ABC managing director Mark Scott has denied a claim he threatened Nine.
Martin accused Scott of "screaming" at one of its producers involved in the debate.
"The CEO [Mr Scott] was screaming ... that they were going to sue us and screaming that we had broken the rules ... and screaming that we had to take the worm off and our reaction was go jump," Martin told ABC Radio.
Scott denied the claim, an ABC spokeswoman said.
News and politics
The network's feed from the televised debate between Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd last night was cut after the network broadcast the controversial "worm" with its coverage, he said.
The ABC denied the allegation and said it had "no role" in the decision to cut the feed, according to a spokeswoman.
"All decisions about the host broadcast feed, including decisions about who it would be provided to, were made by the National Press Club," she said.
Nine was warned its feed was going to be cut and was able to switch to take a feed first from the ABC and then, when that was cut, from Sky News, said Mr Westacott, Nine's director of news and current affairs.
He insists there was "absolutely no agreement" between Nine and the press club over its coverage.
"We were asked not to use the worm, that's correct, and we didn't agree with any of the conditions that were laid down by the Press Club, including charging us for the event," he told ABC Radio this morning.
"We were given warning as they were going to pull it, so we cut to our back-up feed and then they threatened to pull that too," he said.
Westacott said Nine then took the feed from Sky News and put the worm on that live feed.
"[It was a] seamless swap from feed to feed as the evildoers from the Press Club, in cahoots with the ABC, decided to censor the broadcast.
"If the ABC behaved in a proper journalistic manner then we wouldn't have the feed pulled," he said.
The ABC technicians had bowed to pressure from the Press Club who had already bowed to pressure from the Liberal Party, he said.
But one of the "accepted rules" for broadcast of the debate was that there would be no worm, the ABC spokeswoman said.
"The National Press Club was awarded the right to host last night's Leaders' Debate, and under the rules had responsibility for organising the broadcast of it," she said.
"One of the accepted rules was that there would be no "worm" on any broadcast made available."
No comment: Howard
Mr Howard refused to say if the Government had any role in cutting the feed.
He did say: ''The decision for that feed was taken by the National Press Club. I don't have any comment about that."
Comment is being sought from the National Press Club.
Mr Howard said before the debate he did not want the worm, which charted reactions from 90 swinging voters in Nine's studio audience, while Mr Rudd was in favour of it.
Nine's worm rated Mr Rudd the clear winner in the debate, but also did so in the cases of Labor's Mark Latham and Kim Beazley in the previous two elections.
Westacott said the issue was pertinent considering News Ltd's CEO John Hartigan had made a speech at the Andrew Olle lecture two days before, saying press freedom had never been under such attack.
"Pulling feeds and threatening all sorts of dire consequences if we didn't do what the Liberal Party required, this is an outrageous act, the most outrageous act of censorship I've seen in some time," he said.
Liberal sabotage: Martin
Nine's compere Ray Martin said the Liberal Party was responsible for the sabotage.
"The National Press Club was controlling the broadcast but clearly the sabotaging instructions came from the Liberal Party," Martin told the Nine Network this morning.
"They didn't want the worm from the outset."
Martin later told the ABC the network's contract to broadcast the debate did not stipulate conditions on the use of the worm.
"The deal was that we would take the coverage and we would have the worm, we didn't say when we'd run the worm," Martin told ABC Radio.
Martin said during the broadcast angry phone calls were made to the National Press Club and the ABC to Nine.
"There was some fairly angry phone calls going back and forth from the National Press Club to our producer and we got wind that they were about to cut it after 25 minutes ... so we switched to our back-up service and then they cut that as well, so we then had to go with Sky for the last hour," he said.
"There were lots of threats of what was going to happen and we just figured that they were about to pull it and they did pull the plug twice."
Scott denies threatening Nine
ABC managing director Mark Scott has denied a claim he threatened Nine.
Martin accused Scott of "screaming" at one of its producers involved in the debate.
"The CEO [Mr Scott] was screaming ... that they were going to sue us and screaming that we had broken the rules ... and screaming that we had to take the worm off and our reaction was go jump," Martin told ABC Radio.
Scott denied the claim, an ABC spokeswoman said.
News and politics
Rudd defeats Howard in debate
Kevin Rudd and John Howard have outlined their aims for the next three years if they are elected Prime Minister, in what is expected to be the only debate of the federal election campaign.
The Prime Minister won the coin toss, forcing the Labor leader to begin with his two-minute opening statement.
Mr Rudd told the audience chosen by the Coalition and Labor it is time for a new direction in Australia.
"The greatest risk which our nation faces is this: the Coalition being returned to office and nothing, repeat nothing, changes," he said.
"Right now I've put before the Australian people a long-term plan for the nation's future. I fear Mr Howard's put before them a short-term strategy to win the election.
"Working families I talk to say to me they are under real financial pressure," he said.
"They have deep concerns about the future of the nation."
Mr Rudd says if he is elected, he intends to take our nation in a different direction.
He pledged to abolish WorkChoices, ratify Kyoto, implement an education revolution, find an exit strategy for Australian combat forces from Iraq and take action on the housing crisis.
But John Howard says Mr Rudd has a pessimistic view of Australia's future.
"I agree with Mr Rudd on one thing, and that is that this election is about the future of our nation," he said.
"But my view of the future is very different from Mr Rudd's, and it is based upon the fact that I have a fundamentally optimistic view about Australia's future."
Tempers flare
Tempers flared on both sides during the debate.
Both leaders got a grilling on a range of topics, including industrial relations, tax reform and leadership, but it was public education funding that got them both hot under the collar.
"You've been in for 11 years, the changes you've just referred to..." Mr Rudd said.
"No the last point I made Mr Rudd, I corrected your improper use of that OECD report and talking about 11 years doesn't alter the fact that you were trying to mislead the Australian public," Mr Howard replied.
"Mr Howard, your officials are represented in the OECD if there was a great problem with it I would have thought they'd put forward additional information to the OCED," the Opposition Leader said.
"No, that's pathetic," said the Prime Minister.
Both were questioned about their stance on the war in Iraq, and Mr Howard revealed in two days time, Australian force commanders will begin discussions with their coalition partners about the evolving role for those forces.
WorkChoices
Mr Howard says the Liberal Party's aim with WorkChoices is to aid the economy.
He says wages have gone and up and the number of strikes have not been as low since 1913.
Mr Howard says Mr Rudd wants the unions to return to a controlling role in work places and says Mr Rudd has to prove he is an economic conservative.
"It's understanding tax, understanding economics, it's practicing what you preach," he said.
Mr Rudd said many opportunities had been squandered by the Government.
In response to the Mr Howard's claim that some 70 per cent of Mr Rudd's frontbench were former union officials, Mr Rudd said the Liberal Party was made up entirely of Liberal Party staffers and lawyers.
Climate change
Mr Rudd said on climate change, Mr Howard did not have a plan for the future and not having a plan was dangerous for the environment and the economy.
"We need a plan of action, not a list of excuses about why it's so hard," he said.
But Mr Howard said we needed to act on climate change in a sensible, measured fashion that did not do damage to the economy.
He also announced that if re-elected, the Coalition would establish a climate change fund after 2011.
It will be funded by revenue from the auction of permits for carbon offsets.
He said its priorities would be to invest in clean energy technology and to support households who are most affected by the higher prices after a carbon price is set.
The debate is expected to be only one of campaign, although Labor is still pushing for two more over the remaining five weeks.
News and politics
The Prime Minister won the coin toss, forcing the Labor leader to begin with his two-minute opening statement.
Mr Rudd told the audience chosen by the Coalition and Labor it is time for a new direction in Australia.
"The greatest risk which our nation faces is this: the Coalition being returned to office and nothing, repeat nothing, changes," he said.
"Right now I've put before the Australian people a long-term plan for the nation's future. I fear Mr Howard's put before them a short-term strategy to win the election.
"Working families I talk to say to me they are under real financial pressure," he said.
"They have deep concerns about the future of the nation."
Mr Rudd says if he is elected, he intends to take our nation in a different direction.
He pledged to abolish WorkChoices, ratify Kyoto, implement an education revolution, find an exit strategy for Australian combat forces from Iraq and take action on the housing crisis.
But John Howard says Mr Rudd has a pessimistic view of Australia's future.
"I agree with Mr Rudd on one thing, and that is that this election is about the future of our nation," he said.
"But my view of the future is very different from Mr Rudd's, and it is based upon the fact that I have a fundamentally optimistic view about Australia's future."
Tempers flare
Tempers flared on both sides during the debate.
Both leaders got a grilling on a range of topics, including industrial relations, tax reform and leadership, but it was public education funding that got them both hot under the collar.
"You've been in for 11 years, the changes you've just referred to..." Mr Rudd said.
"No the last point I made Mr Rudd, I corrected your improper use of that OECD report and talking about 11 years doesn't alter the fact that you were trying to mislead the Australian public," Mr Howard replied.
"Mr Howard, your officials are represented in the OECD if there was a great problem with it I would have thought they'd put forward additional information to the OCED," the Opposition Leader said.
"No, that's pathetic," said the Prime Minister.
Both were questioned about their stance on the war in Iraq, and Mr Howard revealed in two days time, Australian force commanders will begin discussions with their coalition partners about the evolving role for those forces.
WorkChoices
Mr Howard says the Liberal Party's aim with WorkChoices is to aid the economy.
He says wages have gone and up and the number of strikes have not been as low since 1913.
Mr Howard says Mr Rudd wants the unions to return to a controlling role in work places and says Mr Rudd has to prove he is an economic conservative.
"It's understanding tax, understanding economics, it's practicing what you preach," he said.
Mr Rudd said many opportunities had been squandered by the Government.
In response to the Mr Howard's claim that some 70 per cent of Mr Rudd's frontbench were former union officials, Mr Rudd said the Liberal Party was made up entirely of Liberal Party staffers and lawyers.
Climate change
Mr Rudd said on climate change, Mr Howard did not have a plan for the future and not having a plan was dangerous for the environment and the economy.
"We need a plan of action, not a list of excuses about why it's so hard," he said.
But Mr Howard said we needed to act on climate change in a sensible, measured fashion that did not do damage to the economy.
He also announced that if re-elected, the Coalition would establish a climate change fund after 2011.
It will be funded by revenue from the auction of permits for carbon offsets.
He said its priorities would be to invest in clean energy technology and to support households who are most affected by the higher prices after a carbon price is set.
The debate is expected to be only one of campaign, although Labor is still pushing for two more over the remaining five weeks.
News and politics
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