What the nation s newspapers are saying today, Tues Dec 29

AAP General News (Australia)
12-29-1998
What the nation s newspapers are saying today, Tues Dec 29

SYDNEY, Dec 29 AAP - The Sydney-Hobart yacht race, its tragedy, heroism and the belief it
will continue dominated editorials today, Tuesday, December 29.

In Sydney The Daily Telegraph said the Sydney-Hobart race tragedy was an ll wind that
battered all of us.

An Australia surrounded by and impervious to tragedy had been shaken out of its
post-Christmas lethargy when the cruel forces of nature battered one of its greatest sporting
events.

Competing yachtsmen were well aware of the risks - and knew the fearsome elements were
something not to be endured, but mastered.

"We cannot and should not try to suppress the quest for adventure," the editorial said.

"We can only pray that the effort of rescuers will be rewarded by finding those still
missing before it is too late."

The Australian said the portents that the 1998 Sydney-Hobart yacht race would not be the
swim-through of recent years were there at the start.

Since 1945 it had been one of yachting's premier events. Not since the Fastnet disaster in
the Irish Sea in 1979 had so much attention been focused on a yachting classic.

Coronial and yachting investigations will determine of organisational or equipment failures
cost lives.

"But the great sporting challenge that is the Sydney to Hobart should survive this
tragedy," The Australian said.

The Adelaide Advertiser said when it became clear the conditions were the worst in the 54
years of the Sydney to Hobart, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia correctly observed that
each skipper was sovereign, entirely responsible for crew and vessel.

To have abandoned the race in the middle of a raging tempest would have been futile, even

confusing, the newspaper says.

"Such suggestions seem to us a classic example of hindsight," the Advertiser editorial
said.

The Courier-Mail's editorial said the risks of ocean yacht racing were accepted by captains
and crew as part of the challenge of their sport.

The casualty list of the Sydney to Hobart race was was remarkably low given its 54 year
history.

"While there might be some of this year's participants who will have second thoughts about
another Sydney-to-Hobart, no doubt many will see it as just part of one of the oldest
challenges known to humankind: going down to the sea in ships," the Brisbane paper said.

In Melbourne The Herald Sun says the nation mourns the loss of life in this year's
Sydney-Hobart race, in which organisers confront a tragedy on a scale they could never have
imagined.

The newspaper says the NSW coroner and maritime safety officials will investigate why the
onset of a sudden and unexpected storm caused the crews to begin the fight for their survival.

"No one expects recreational yachtsmen to put their lives on the line simply for the honour
of competing in a race to Hobart," it says.

The Herald Sun also asks readers to spare a thought for residents of Narracoopa on the east
coast of King Island who mounted a rescue effort to save 14 stranded pilot whales.

"Here's to you Narracoopa!" it says.

The Age says in its editorial today that, for Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, and for the
state he dominates, it has been a year of recovery.

Last December, the Kennett government was in damage control after a crushing defeat in the
Mitcham by-election that for the first time made it seem mortal, the Melbourne paper says.

"But 12 months later what had appeared to be a precipitous slide in the government's
fortunes now seems to have been more a momentary wobble," it says.

The Age also says the tragedy unfolding in Bass Strait and along the New South Wales coast
is all the more so because it might have been avoided.

The Sydney to Hobart race should have been delayed, the Melbourne paper says.

"If the rules don't allow for this, then the Cruising Yacht Club should change the rules,"
it says.

Politicians who lived by the spin can also perish by it, said the Sydney Morning Herald.

That was the salutary truth British Trade Secretary, Peter Mandelson had learned.

The activities of spin doctors such as he and those in Australia who imitated the deceptive
art misled the media and the public.

Their success lead to a cynicism about the political process - but even a debauched
political system had enough integrity left to turn on the manipulators, the Herald said.

The Asian crisis was not over yet, said today's editorial in The Australian Financial
Review.

Just when there were signs that Asia was recovering, Japan and China cast a long shadow
over the year ahead.

Christmas gave little pause for reflection in a region with both a kaleidoscope of beliefs
and an economic crisis which had already sliced through one year with a ferocity few expected.

Economic reforms would do little to provide a long-term basis for recovery and growth
without a recognition that the discipline and regulation missing from the last boom period are
provided by more participatory democracy.

AAP cjh

KEYWORD: EDITORIALS TUESDAY, Dec 29, 1998

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