Archives: Letters to the Editor

John Menadue’s article is an excellent summary describing Albanese’s lack of leadership, right wing populism and his cowardice. Albanese is the best Liberal leader since John Howard.

Michael Keating – and many other well-informed sources – still seem perplexed about the motive for the US-Iran war.

The core aim of the Trump War against Iran has been in plain sight since well before its start. It is the acquisition of $15 trillion worth of Iranian oil reserves. This was made clear by the US National Energy Dominance Council months ago (Sept 2025).

It is the biggest planned theft in human history, with the proceeds going to favoured US oil companies and the Trump crime family. Its main disadvantage is that it is very difficult to accomplish militarily, without wrecking the resource itself. But they will have no problem spending vast number of US and Iranian lives to attempt it.

However, if they pull it off, the Trumps will control the planet for the rest of the century. They will spend the loot taking out their other foes (Denmark, Canada etc) one by one.

The shame is that our grovelling Albanese thinks it is Ok for Australia to be a part of this criminal mission. As no doubt do the LNP and One Nation.
Australia is a vassal state, not of a nation, but of a crime syndicate.

Albanese has shamefully appropriated the harsh asylum seeker policies of Howard, Abbott and Morrison. Now he has passed legislation to block Iranians from landing in Australia. A big change from 2001 when he publicly protested against Howard. Why is Albanese fixated on not being wedged while Labor is certain to win the 2028 election and likely to win 2031? The Labor government is now Coalition lite.

Sue Wareham’s article makes some good points. However I hope our government is genuinely trying to stay out of an offensive war against Iran. Whether one is pro-Zionism or not, there is no denying that it has led to a new war with flow on effects throughout the world. Among others, every Australian now knows the personal cost of that. Family debt strains are about to threaten “soco”. Some of the about 70 per cent of Jewish Australians shown in two Monash University surveys to support Zionism won’t be immune. Turning to the human side of the bloodletting since the October 7 uprising, let us remember how it affects the innocent. Eight year old Anila Alidarani was killed in Isfahan in January by Irani security forces, six year Hind Rajab was killed in Gaza in early 2024 by the IDF, and young Matilda was killed at Bondi in December. Food, fuel and housing security are important, but crucially, our government needs to engage with likeminded countries to collectively demand of all three sides an immediate end to the war and its looming catastrophic flow-on effects both here and worldwide.

Can I here add my name and wholehearted support to Doug Cameron and the campaign he is co-authoring against the swindle of AUKUS imposed upon us by that Dodgy Brother Scott Morrison and now supported by a supine Labor government.

If we can kill this financial dissimulation and fraud it will enable scarce resources to be committed to things that will benefit the Australian population rather than the US and UK failing military-industrial complexes. Hundreds of schools, hospitals, universities and further education institutions so badly needed in an under-educated Australia, high-speed rail networks, power networks and generation (green) and other vital community infrastructure.

Rather than pumping probably eventually a trillion dollars of taxpayers money into a bunch of useless attack submarines that will not defend Australia, but will assist the US to attempt fruitlessly to invade China, let’s think strategically as a nation. Surely this is preferable than responding like Pavlov’s dogs to the insane fear mongering of the political and military classes and their mainstream media acolytes!

I am grateful to Eugene Doyle for spelling out the details of the coming energy shock arising from the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It’s a case of batten down the hatches, though I’m not sure the Albanese government fully understands the gravity of the crisis at hand.
Energy analyst Matt Mushalik wrote to his local federal MP Jerome Laxale recommending or noting the following:
(1) Reduce or stop permanent migration. Every migrant will increase the
length of petrol lines and demand for goods in shopping centres.
(2) Diesel is most important. Government must think of priorities.
Agriculture, transport of food to cities is #1 priority. Diesel for
export coal mines and trains should come last.
(3) Do not waste any more funds on the 2nd Sydney Airport and the Metro
going there.
(4) Abandon your permanent growth narrative.
(5) Do not start any big projects like High-Speed Rail. The solution is
electric night trains between capitals but that should have started
under Howard and Rudd
(6) Prepare to bail out Transurban as traffic will go backwards. There
might be a credit crunch.
(7) NSW may have to restrict usage of Opal cards if motorists switch to
rail.

The comment by Paul Dibb that: “The joint US–Australia intelligence facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs will be by far China’s most important and time-urgent nuclear target.” should send an ice-spike of fear down Albanese’s backbone, if indeed he has such a thing.

Many years ago, I was a student at ANU of what is now known as geopolitics and Des Ball was one of my tutors. I have written of this before but it needs repetition.

Pine Gap is unquestionably a highly prime target for any entity involved in combat with the USA that has the capability to strike at this distance.

And if that entity can strike Pine Gap, it will almost certainly also try to take out the back-up communications facility for Pine Gap. Which is the ‘Defence Installation’ you can easily discover on Google maps at Kent Street Deakin – about 3 kilometres blast radius from Parliament House.

It gives me no satisfaction to realise that The Lodge is about 500 metres closer to the potential point zero.

Suck that up, Albo, or maybe, just maybe – get some balls to protect Toto and Jodie, if you won’t act to save the rest of us.

Thank you to Peter Sainsbury for shining a light on Australia’s LNG exporters, who are reaping windfall profits from conflict in the Middle East. Companies such as Santos and Woodside have played a major role in making Australia the second‑largest exporter of climate pollution globally. The resulting climate impacts – intensifying floods, fires and heatwaves – are hitting communities hard, yet the public receives very little benefit from the gas being extracted. Senator David Pocock has revealed that the beer excise brings in more revenue than the petroleum resource rent tax. This is deeply unfair. When the Albanese government curb the power of polluting, profiteering gas companies and ensure everyday Australians get a fair go?

Tax: Beer drinkers vs gas companies

The club of Australian doom forecasters that come out of the woodwork every so often to predict the end of civilisation as we know it, can always be relied upon to do their acts on cue for their masters in the MSPO (Main stream propaganda organs) and the MIC (Military-Industrial complex) when orders for new military hardware and are not doing so well and when the Murdoch and SMH/Age sewers want to frighten the bejesus out of the “bewildered herd” to boost their readership and to control the public mind. But like Chicken Little they have done it so often that they more resemble Pinocchio with their patronage sensitive snouts growing apace.
Not to be taken seriously!

In his inimitable combative style Keating disembowels the pompous and self-aggrandising scribbler Hartcher. It really is a tribute to the incapacity of the new ownership of the SMH and The Age to cope with the role of the Fourth Estate, to hold power to account and to report honestly and without bias. Paul eviscerates them forensically!!

Three years since ‘Red Alert‘ marks the third anniversary of my consigning mainstream newspapers (as they once were) to oblivion. Yes, I still read bits, so I know what others are talking about, and almost always readers’ letters for a (biased) selection of community views. Free-to-air TV news is no better. (I won’t mention S**.) So for factual content, expanded context, informed commentary, as little bias as possible (because we’re all biased to some degree), then I choose alternative news media, all online.

For me, Pearls and Irritations leads the pack. There are a few others I read more often than not, while I appreciate friends alerting me to articles from sources I don’t usually read … There are only so many hours in the day after all.

We recently thanked John Menadue as he handed over the baton (thankfully ‘without’ disappearing). On what I think of as the anniversary day of the terminal diagnosis for the legacy press, thanks to John bear repeating for his foresight and outstanding contribution to keeping us informed in a way we haven’t been for a very long time. And thanks too, to so many willing contributors. Champions all!

Re Donald Rothwell’s article:
Rubio said that the US launched an armed attack on Iran because Israel was going to. After Penny Wong’s initial hosedown, we find Australian sailors embedded in a US submarine, and our military in Bahrain involved. They are committed to Trump and Hegseth-rules war without any say from us, because (Richard Marles) we weren’t warned in advance. So we couldn’t say no. The submarine sinks an Iranian vessel inside Sri Lanka’s EEZ, communications with the submarine going through Harold Holt station at Exmouth, WA run by our government’s CASG. Not even the murder of 160 schoolgirls in Minab, Iran, causes Australia to pull out or back a ceasefire. The PM spouts probable furphies about nuclear WMD in Iran, channelling John Howard about Iraq. Unlike in the US Congress, there is no urgent parliamentary discussion of whether we should continue the war. We are now war combatants with no say in it. The third Gulf War, in an area that for the PM varies in far-away-ness, has made us less secure, and will reduce “soco” here. US military people are embedded in our defence structure who have to answer to an erratic leader. War powers reform please!

I made a submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion with an emphasis on the inadequacy of the limits of the IHRA definition of antisemitism and suggested that the Royal Commission should examine, instead, the alternative Jerusalem Declaration which has an equal focus on antisemitism and free speech. Apparently the Commissioner has already declared and decided that the controversial IHRA definition is not controversial – indicating the Commission has already decided to join the campaign of Zionists and Labor government to censor free speech about Israel’s apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

I wonder about the lack of respect we seem to be developing with differing opinions others hold. It was even highlighted in parliament the other day. There is also the amount of litter and rubbish that is now spreading across the land. I also have seen a lot of information on how indoctrination takes hold. So I have thought why not begin our country’s own indoctrination?

I’d love people’s ideas – I have tried not to make it to complex.

Hand on heart
We Australians believe that all of us have the right to live in harmony, respecting the land and others, no matter their colour, race, creed, beliefs, mental or physical disabilities.

Thank you, Gareth for your clear-eyed discussion of the nuances of legitimacy and illegality of war. I’ve been dismayed (to say the least) by the line being trod by the Australian government to not upset Donald Trump. I’ve written to the Prime Minister, Deputy PM and Foreign Minister to say the same. David Pope’s ‘tits on a bull’ cartoon expressed my sentiments very nicely. Thanks Pearls and Irritations for publishing thoughtful and challenging pieces.

While I don’t have an intimate knowledge of T Abbott or A Taylor’s family history’s but on their performance in Parliament and in particular when leading the charge of Opposition for opposition sake i would be very surprised if their ancestors fought under the Southern Cross flag and not at all surprised that the fought under the Union Jack as second son commission purchased officers. I doubt they consider the Southern Cross flag as Australian and I have no doubt that they would be leading the charge against changing our out dated colonial flag and as such they should keep their opinions on flags and many other thing to themselves .

All of this recent talk of a fractured world order is not new. The United Nations-brokered Cold War was replaced by a uni-polar moment. That is now evolving into a dance of hegemons. Calls for like-minded middle powers such as Canada and Australia to find common cause make common sense.
Five Eyes will remain our default setting through ties of history, culture and language, but that needn’t be all we see. BRICS has also emerged as a result of the fractured world-as-was order. It offers an alternative way forward. It allows like-minded countries, including some middle and some emerging powers, to find common cause. But neither Canada nor Australia seem able to see that. Someone has put the blinkers on us.

Dear Gareth.

As someone who has been arrested multiple times for acts of peaceful, civil disobedience, I concur with Gareth Evans that conscience and morality sometimes demand that one ignore the law, though one expects to be prosecuted regardless. That’s the trade-off a moral man agrees to when he commits the offence. If you believe in your cause, then you must be prepared to wear the punishment and not care, for your cause is just.

But what if governments wilfully break the law in pursuit of immoral, inhuman, despicable aims?

If a government illegally maintained diplomatic, political, economic and military relations with an illegal occupying power, who bombed, strafed, starved, herded into concentration camps and exterminated a People, all the while training their death squads, refusing UN staff permission to transit, and threatening to withhold aid to poor countries if they didn’t vote against non-binding UNGA resolutions, which simply reaffirmed that People’s fundamental right to self determination, would that illegal support, during a Holocaust, that complicity in genocide, be morally defensible or common criminality?

I’m just just asking for a Timorese friend… and a Palestinian one.

Jenny Hocking convincingly lays out the social, political and constitutional problems with granting power and privilege to the members of the British royal family. But there is another side to the case against the existence of a hereditary monarchy. Quite simply, it ruins lives.

Princess Margaret was forbidden to marry a divorced RAF Group Captain (who was posted overseas to get him out of the way). Prince Charles was not permitted to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles but was pressed into a contrived marriage with Diana Spencer. Prince Harry was hounded out of the royal family, in part for his choice of bride. As for Prince Andrew, he would never have been cultivated by Jeffrey Epstein if he had been just any retired naval officer. If all of these people had been private citizens, they might still have suffered miseries but at least they would have been spared intrusive, incessant and hurtful media harassment.

Monarchy, I suggest, constitutes ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ and on this ground alone should be abolished.

While in P&I Refaat Ibrahim discusses the duplicity of Israel and the US in negotiations with Iran, over in the mainstream media, The Age has the attitude-shaping headline Australia could help defend gulf states against Iran:Wong. More dishonesty. Iran is the baddie, many will believe. While the governance of Iran was – we have to say ‘was’ – horrific, it is reliably reported that Iran was sincere and cooperative in its cut-short negotiations. The only honest broker at the table was attacked by the other two.

So, that headline … Shouldn’t we be defending Iran from attack? Isn’t calling off attack dogs Israel and the US the quickest way to end this latest conflagration? Or is it being proposed that Australia help the murderous duopoly to further extend their madness in the Middle East? I fear the latter.

I’ve lost faith in the mainstream media and I’m appalled by the persistent stance of our government so I haven’t read beyond The Age‘s headline. But I do say this: politicians who vote for this, their partners and adult children should be on the front lines. Stop playing “suck up to the US” with the lives of Australian “Defence” Force members.

This Iranian vessel was participating at the invitation of India in a mock battle exercise along with vessels of other friendly nations with India, including the US. As the US well knows the condition for vessels so participating is that they be unarmed to avoid errors. The US knew that but went ahead to torpedo the Iranian vessel off the coast of Sri Lanka. Hegseth’s grotesque boasting about a US nuclear powered submarines attacking an unarmed vessel and killing nearly 100 sailors as though it were some sort of achievement is a monstrous illustration of the moral character of the regime that undertook it, but having said that it is not at all unusual for the US to perpetrate such atrocities as they have been doing so with reckless abandon for more than a hundred years.

As he has had to have the US carriers, they sent in to the Middle east with great braggadocio, scuttle from the seas around Iran as it now has carrier killer missiles that are perfectly capable of sending those carriers to the bottom of the sea. But the pitiful drunk Hegseth likes victims much easier to kill like fisherman off Venezuela!!!

You might point out Jack to the Parliament House insider who passed on the suggestion made by “a senior and influential” minister that Australia nominate the Trump for the Nobel peace Prize, that the Government’s public affirmation of Socceroo participation in the forthcoming FIFA jamboree, will do enough to “send the right signals” to the White House, to the Felon and his gang, that Australian fealty is assured to the one who decreed (Jan 20, 2025) that his “proudest legacy will be that of peace-maker”. Since the awarding of the FIFA Peace Prize that inauguration promise has surely been fulfilled!

Ironic that those who champion free speech seemingly feel threatened by letters and articles submitted for publication that are critical or offer counter views.

Bit like the way the Murdoch media operate.

By abolishing environmental laws in the USA and promoting fossil fuels, Trump is going to kill 10,000s of Americans. He doesn’t care. But the promotion of oil gives a clue as to who is really pulling his strings – and why he is engaged in or threatening all these new conflicts – Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, Canada.

It’s all about oil. As usual.

Only this time Trump has got it sadly wrong. By cementing the US to an oil economy he has made China the technology world leader – and the rest of the world will follow their low-cost lead.

Trump is making the USA a horse-and-buggy economy.

Perhaps instead of reducing the CGT rate, might it be easier and more acceptable to reduce the number of properties that it can be claimed on? For instance, commence an annual reduction of the number of claimable properties from 10 and above, to eight then six then four, finally settling at two allowable properties. This would seem to leave small investors unaffected, and be more politically acceptable to them. It would also seem to be easy to implement, understandable by accountants, property owners, and politicians.

The sanctity of both John Howard and Tony Abbot has become an article of faith among the right. Rewrite our history so that our values are more closely aligned to that of the USA. It will result in a national lurch to the right. Were the Liberal Party to embrace the values of the Teals the wind would be taken out of the far right and we could move back to some civilised discourse that seeks to find solutions for all Australians.

Anthony Albanese was born in 1963. That was a hard time for a young unmarried woman to find herself unexpectedly pregnant, especially if she was Catholic. His mother was probably pressured by the nuns to give up her baby for adoption. But she didn’t – she had made her bed, and she lay on it. She kept him – and he became Prime Minister of Australia.

What would his mother think now, of his refusal to give 23 little Australians a chance in life like he had, and their mothers a chance to redeem themselves with love?

Time is of the essence now with the coming conflagration in the Middle East – change your mind Albo, and let them come home.

This article brings up the issue of Albanese’s Australian legacy. It will not be pretty. Aside from the petty comments about Australian women trapped in Syria, it will also include misogynistic comments about difficult women closer to home.

But Albanese’s shallow male chauvinism is not his main failing. Our PM’s main failing is his utter lack of imagination when looking at the broader geopolitical situation. He seems to be trapped in an outdated Anglo/Zionist interpretation of the world, ignoring a glaringly obvious sea change in global affairs. This sea change, not just generational but millennial in scope, is unfolding with us or without us, and it will define our shared world going forward.

The world is pivoting to Asia, not to contain as envisaged by Obama back in his day, but in a cooperative embrace. Australia, as an English-speaking Asian nation, is in a unique position to assist in that pivot. If only we had a leader with the wit to see that opportunity and the courage to grasp it with both hands.

Jack Waterford rightly criticises the Prime Minister for denying their rights as citizens to the Australian women and children in Syrian detention camps. Albanese said they had made their beds so had to lie in them, so he’d obviously given the matter ‘some’ thought.

But given he won the dubious honour of being the first world leader to voice support for the illegal US attack on Iran, you have to wonder if he gave it any thought at all.

Australian and international laws might be flawed but they do serve as boundaries to behaviour beyond which people and nations can be called to account. Ignore those laws too often and those boundaries disappear. We then enter the realm of do what you like, survival of the fittest.

Albanese will go down in history, as Waterford suggests. Although quite different to them, he will rank with our worst ever Prime Ministers, Howard, Abbott and Morrison. When courage is called for he is spineless; instead of vision we have blindness; the kindness he extols gives way to harsh and spiteful treatment; when international law is broken he offers praise and support. Albanese is a moral pygmy.

God help us!

As Jeffrey Loewenstein states, the adoption of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism by the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is ‘highly contentious’. Because the definition lacks clarity and is open to conflicting interpretations, the IHRA website contains, together with the vague definition, the statement “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”. But the website also contains 11 alleged ‘examples’ of antisemitism, several of which contradict the reassuring statement. Loewenstein’s article does not discuss the specific contradictions, however I’ve offered an analysis in Independent Australia (30/1/2026).