Archives: Letters to the Editor

It is sad that Mainul Haque felt a necessity to defend migrants. Most of us encounter migrants every day, for instance my doctor is Chinese and my dentist Zimbabwean, and I’m grateful for their expertise and care. Nevertheless, I worry about poaching skilled workers from countries that have borne the cost of educating them but not benefited from their skills because they are over here.

Migrants bring diversity which is mostly a good thing. When overseas conflicts are played out here, for instance, between Jews and Palestinians, it is not a good thing. And most migrants are good people who share our values of liberalism and egalitarianism. Sometimes, however, cultural practices that should have been left behind in the home country, such as forced marriages, rear their ugly heads.

As for housing, migrants do not directly take houses away from Australians, but they do add to demand. That makes it harder for everyone to put a roof over their heads, be they existing residents or newly arrived migrants themselves.

It’s not migrants’ fault that infrastructure has not kept pace with population growth. Rather it’s the fault of government who, through post-Covid hyper-immigration, has allowed “too much of a good thing”.

Before our government draws up a bill to introduce a Human Rights Act in Australia, it needs to reverse the amendments made in 2013 to the Sex Discrimination Act. In 2013 the Gillard government withdrew from the Act the words “women” and “men” and introduced the notion of “gender identity”, which, in practice, has come to take precedence over sex.

One outcome is that the Human Rights Commission has ruled that it is illegal for lesbians to advertise lesbian events as female only. Another court ruling has been that Giggle, an online app for women, cannot insist on a female-only membership. There are appeals against both of these rulings.

In recent meetings of Senate Estimates, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Anna Cody, has declined to define the words “man” and “woman” (instead listing groups of people she sees as women who need her protection). Without clear legal definitions of these words, Australia is unable to introduce a Human Rights Act which ensures the rights of women and men, and the rights of all citizens to freedom of assembly.

Our ever-growing population puts pressures on our housing industry to provide ever more accommodation. Calls to increase housing density – particularly in the major cities – are met with howls of protest from those whose amenity would be compromised by being overlooked by neighbours. This leads to urban expansion – in small towns as well as cities – as farmland or woodland is absorbed into the urban dream. The result is continued loss of the natural environment that our wildlife needs, to support the growing urban environment of taxpayers and ratepayers, with little consideration of the impact this continuing degradation will have on our children’s and grandchildren’s ultimate well-being.

What we are seeing is the normalisation of environmental decline. The natural environment is being destroyed, our natural ecology is shrinking, every day. Australia has the highest mammal extinction rate in the world. And most act as if none of this matters; that we can ignore our destruction of that which sustains us, and it will all somehow be OK for our children and our grandchildren.

As Albert Schweitzer observed in the 1950s: ‘Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.’

Helen McCue gives a long list of aid agencies barred from Israel. But the relevant part of her article is the last paragraph. McCue says “… it seems that our government continues to enable Israel’s impunity with its silence regarding Israels banning of INGOs” and further refers to “lack of moral clarity”. I’d drop the “it seems that” and refer simply to both Wong and Albanese’s amorality when it comes to Palestine.

Words will never stop Israel, not formal declarations nor fake pious weasel words nor Trump’s “peace plan to build a Palestinian Riviera.”Just look at the ceasefire that isn’t.

Unless nations take action – BDS now! – Israel will not stop killing until the last Palestinian is dead. There is blood on our government’s hands already and right now it looks like there will be more.

This is an excellent explanation that AUKUS is not only a vast waste of taxpayers’ money, but also that it it will produce nothing for Australia except the bitterness of our major trading partner and the world’s emerging hegemon. That the subs involved might be used to advance the American continued desire to interfere in purely internal Chinese matters is an added and powerful reason to exit from it!

This is a beautifully put together magnum opus on the self imposed decline of empire. One can differ on the details but the direction and conclusions are spot-on.

AI is far bigger than the answers to our entertainment needs and our home computer internet searches. It has moved faster than our “gee whiz” reactions to the available interactive platforms and it is impacting increasingly on our collective freedom, our workplaces, our bodies, our livelihood and the emerging structure of our society.

That’s why Sue Barrett’s heads up piece on an existing and apparently agreed ethics framework for AI in the form of Steve Davies MEET framework is so bloody important!

Industry Minister Tim Ayers’ casual “no guardrails” response to AI ethics, using the MEET package was 2 out of 10. This would be a joke except it is so serious. Get your head out of the sand, Tim. Australia needs leadership on this not “she’ll be right.”

Peter Hughes writes that there ‘is absolutely nothing wrong with having a debate on immigration’. Indeed not. He failed, however, to make a rational contribution to such a debate. He was too busy demonising those who question very high immigration levels as those who come out of the Trump camp. Some of us regard Trump as anathema yet can still question the economic, social and environmental effects of hyper-migration that has been the case post-Covid. Unlike Hughes, some of us can distinguish between reasonable immigration rates and unreasonable ones – or unsustainable ones if you prefer.

And the bottom line on sustainability is ecological sustainability. Our State of the Environment reports have shown a steady decline in the environment for many years, and they cite population and economic growth as the two main drivers. Net overseas migration (NOM) makes up about three quarters of population growth; more so in 2023 when NOM reached a peak of over half a million. If we want to arrest the decline in the environment, we have to stop the human encroachment on other species’ habitats. This we do through urban expansion and growing ever more food.

We are not blaming migrants, rather government policy.

The sick joke that is the Australian government’s infantile fear of the Israeli lobby reeks of the approach of Sir Humphrey to its responsibilities. Express “in-principle” moral commitments, but find all sorts of fraudulent reasons why in practice it will not do anything to implement those principles. Can anyone seriously imagine that Gough is not spinning in his grave when he sees the moral cowardice involved??

Important questions are raised in this article about the reliability of AI in putting together accurate information for an article by journalists.

There is a simple solution which I use extensively and that is to ask your questions of AI and follow that with a question as to the sources from which that information is gathered. It is then vital to double check the veracity of those sources and the way in which the information provided by those sources has been gathered and verified.

It won’t guarantee that you will get everything right, but will minimise the chance that you will get anything wrong!

I don’t think the prospect of President Trump running again in 2028 is a serious consideration. The twenty-second amendment of the US Constitution clearly limits presidential terms to two. To get around that would require a countering constitutional amendment. That would require approval by two-thirds of the US Senate and House of Representatives as well as approval by three-fourths of the 50 states. That seems to me to be highly unlikely.

I suppose there is a mathematical chance an amendment could happen, but far more likely is another impeachment process kicking off after next year’s mid-terms with the extrajudicial killings of Venezuelan fishermen featuring in the charges.

It is also possible that President Trump could be removed from office under provisions in the twenty-fifth amendment to the US Constitution. This amendment allows for the removal of a President due to incapacity, and it can be declared by the Vice-President and a majority of cabinet members.

I am not opposed to private schools but parents should pay the fees. In 1964 private schools began to receive government funding that has resulted in a two-tiered education system. Government schools are not adequately funded and cannot always provide a top quality education to all students, including sporting facilities, music schools, camps, etc. because the money to do so is syphoned off to private schools which can offer these facilities.

In most OECD countries, parents send their children to government schools, and there are very few private schools. Australia is a divided nation because of this system. This is not conducive to a sense of common community. Government funding of private schools should be phased out gradually.

Michael Keating is right, our government needs more revenue to fund important programs, and the fairest way to get it is to tax all those who are currently paying less than their fair share. This is done via the legal loophole called ‘tax deductibility’ to reduce their ‘taxable income’. Every company operating in Australia takes advantage of this, but none do it better than the transnationals. By organising over-priced, inter-company loans, they can shift the profits they earn here to any tax haven in the world. They must think we are stupid… and we are.

The solution is as obvious as it is efficient. Instead of taxing ‘taxable income’ at 25 per cent or 30 per cent, tax locally-earned revenue at 1 per cent. One cent in the dollar, is not too much to pay for the use of our markets, our social capital and our infrastructure. In fact it’s a bargain! Apart from saving the ATO billions in admin fees, and the business sector billions in accountancy fees, a revenue tax would stimulate microeconomic reform by eliminating wasteful spending. For example, it would make many practices that are currently considered economic, uneconomic; luxury vehicles, ostentatious offices, designer furniture, glamorous conferences, executive lunches, and so on.

Will we see pangs of regret from the billionaires of fossil fuels and AI, sheltering in their luxurious secure bunkers, when they think of all the places in the outside world that they’d love to visit – or revisit – which are now unreachable because of climatic deterioration, widespread famine, anarchy, or AI’s mastery of the world?

Bunkerworld encapsulates the grotesque reality today where the super-wealthy grow ever richer through exacerbating mega-threats like global warming and AI, in the face of existential risks that are well-known and documented, and then buy accommodation in ultra-safe, ultra-secure bunkers to shelter themselves and their families from the inevitable consequences that those risks presented.

Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of hope in the 88 breakaway countries that have formed the Phase-out Fossil Fuels Group in an effort to escape the suffocating grip which petrostates exert over the COPs through its absurd requirement for unanimity in decision-making.

While billionaires are securing their well-feathered nests, will there be sufficient courage among governments of the world to stare down the bunker-class, and deliver an environment which might prove, even at this late stage of deterioration, sufficiently healthy for life on earth to survive?

Albanese’s vision – “holding nobody back and leaving nobody behind” – has a superficial appeal: the most vulnerable have enough for a life of dignity, and the innovators, investors and boundary pushers reap the limitless rewards of their foresight and industry. Perfect, two popular cons (the rising tide and trickle down effects) rolled into one. But the mantra’s appeal is purely superficial.

It ignores the reality of a very rigid, highly stratified society in which society’s directions are set by select few who happily experience most of the beneficial and least of the harmful consequences. All societal decisions involve winners and losers and the same people tend to win and lose every time

It ignores the reality of the capitalist system – that capitalists accumulate more capital by stealing the surplus value created by others’ labour and by stealing the common wealth of the natural environment.

People do not want to be left behind but that is not all they want. As well as material sufficiency, people want a good life for themselves and their families and a fair society of which they feel part.

Albanese’s disgusting trite mantra guarantees both the perpetuation of inequality and oppression and its augmentation.

Brad Reed’s article is yet another exposition of the staggering slaughter of Palestinians by the actions of the genocidal Zionist forces – the Israeli government, the IDF, the Settlers. The estimated ‘body count’ is nearly twice that officially reported by Palestinian sources – and likely to be a massively conservative reckoning of the holocaust that the Zionists have wrought upon the Palestinians.

In September, IDF commander Herzi Halevi confirmed “over 200,000 Gaza casualties” since October 7 2003. “We took the gloves off,” he said – insinuating that previously the Zionist forces had been restrained! Restraint such as that the over 400 breaches of the ‘Trump ceasefire’? Even when we are confronted with direct video evidence of point-blank murder by IDF soldiers?

There has been not one word of condemnation by our government of Israeli genocidal activities since the ‘Trump ceasefire’ commenced. Accusations of HAMAS breaches in non-specific terms, yes – just assertion that the Palestinian side of the equation is the progenitor of all evil.

Our PM has just been married – all Australians would wish the couple a happy future.

It would be justice if our PM could find the grace and courage to properly support a future for Palestinians.

In SA in another technology time and space the then Liberal premier in effect nationalised the electrical supply when he created the Electricity Trust of South Australia. On many levels a great success particularly on ensure reliable electricity supply all across the state .

Like many state and federal institutions the gradual sell off of ETSA has also been a great success in saving cash strapped state governments over the years, but that money pot is broken and more importantly the technology has improved .

The national energy situation has changed and we constantly hear about the limits and massive cost in updating the national grid.

It was never practical to place Alternators on every street corner to supply neighbourhoods but times have changed and its time to rethink the system.

With our natural solar wind and mineral advantage we could have solar panels on EVERY roof , a wind turbine in every public space and a battery on every corner and a revised national grid without the massive infrastructure cost and its requirements of high voltages etc.

The experiment could start at small to medium towns around the country run by local councils.

Apart from the unfair distortions in our tax regime, like negative gearing and capital gains concessions, a most obvious source of significant revenue is from the large number of multinationals (probably all of them) who shift profits off-shore by charging immense fees to their local entities.

The Productivity Commission presented the government with a neat solution to this, namely a 5 per cent tax on cash flows. Profits are so easily manipulated by companies that there is one set of accounts for shareholders and one set for the ATO. Revenue is not distinguishable and should be the basis of taxation. How different is this concept from the GST? The cash flow proposal has great merit by providing incentives to invest back in Australia and targets companies whose interests are not those of the Australian electorate but their overseas shareholders. Courage, Albanese! This would be an easy win which would raise tens of billions of dollars.

This was a good summary of the issues around food security which the CCP have been working on for decades. But it misses the considerable efforts that are being undertaken in greening the vast deserts that comprise more than a quarter of China’s land area. These projects are aimed at turning these deserts into productive land for crops and protein production.

Efforts so far have been relatively limited scale but are gradually ramping up and will in decades to come add considerably to achieving the goal of food self-sufficiency.

Better still “Tell him nothing and take him nowhere.”

Further to the recent article from Marian Sawer and subsequent letter from Margaret Callinan it is worth taking a look at the front cover of this week’s edition of The Spectator Australia entitled ‘Drill, baby, drill.’

It features a pasquinade of a distraught looking opposition leader attempting to construct her own gallows using a substandard drill with menacing caricatures of Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie hovering in the background.

The sinister semiotics is reminiscent of those deplorable red top rag headlines – Gotcha (The S*n, 1982) and The Truth (The S*n, 1989), which were published by the scrofulous Kelvin McKenzie several decades ago.

If this is an example of how the Liberal Party and its media liaison representatives are reacting towards its own troops and current leader, it beggars belief what pernicious tactics would be engaged against its many adversaries.

Over in the US, it is debatable whether Agent Orange, the bully of humility would even stoop so low, but as the late Aneurin Bevan once proclaimed, “Politics is a blood sport.”

Adrian Rosenfeldt offers a philosophical perspective on the current brouhaha over ‘net zero’: the “net zero project” reflects “the deeper human philosophical desire for certainty rather than scientific necessity”…“What appears to be a neutral scientific framework rests on a false metaphysics: the belief that complex, uncertain realities can be mastered through perfect measurement and fixed ideals.”

The “neutral scientific framework” offered nations a rallying point and a goal on which to agree and work towards. This was not “false metaphysics”, more like nuts-and-bolts peace treaties, trade agreements and international cooperation agreements. It was not “moral arithmetic” but painstaking, historical scientific data. The breakthrough was that, for decades, this information was hidden by fossil fuel interests and scientists alike, for different reasons. The latter, having overseen a frightening lack of action, are now more outspoken about the risks.

Anxieties about change have been largely manufactured by vested interests in the industries causing the problem. The rational response to an existential crisis would be to tackle the causes. One such tactic might be to institute globally-recognised emissions-reduction targets. Far from “imposing order on uncertainty”, targets guide nations towards responsibility, towards dealing with an existential crisis scientists report with ever-expanding certainty.

Let us be clear: unless we, humankind, act urgently and radically, we will soon experience societal collapse. We will certainly experience existential anxiety as we starve, seek shelter and battle over dwindling resources.

I agree that numbers and targets are unhelpful, but not in the sense that the author intends; they allow our leaders to pretend to act while kicking real action down the road, and to create false comfort in the face of the worsening crisis. They allow us to count “land not cleared” as a reduction in CO2 emissions; to include future “carbon capture” at scale in the decarbonisation mix; to undermeasure the significant methane leakage associated with fossil gas use; to use tricky “carbon accounting” to grossly underestimate (and conceal from the public) the massive impacts of data centres, cryptocurrencies and AI

“Net zero by 2050” as a plan or policy is so discredited as to make it criminally irresponsible. Net zero as a concept is gone: we need to be aiming not just for real zero but in fact for sub-zero. And we need to get there as if we are fighting World War III, not leave it another 25 years for our children and grandchildren.

Julian Cribb reminds us of the quote from that great Canadian environmentalist, David Suzuki: “Nature, the air, the water, the soil, the biodiversity that allows us to live (are) not in the economic system.” Excluding nature from economic thought is indeed irrational.

Cribb also cites William Ripple who warned in 2017 that: “We are jeopardising our future by not reining in our intense material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many threats.” This was agreed wisdom 50 years ago yet seems to have been forgotten. Consumerism and population growth are applauded today yet there are clear resource limits on a finite planet. We are experiencing catastrophic biodiversity loss and climate change. Both are manifestations of excluding nature from our economic thinking and from allowing a massive expansion of consumption and population numbers.

If we are to mitigate climate change and halt biodiversity loss, we have to value nature. We have to stop encroaching on the territory of other species. If we want other species to live, we have to preserve their habitats. It means pulling back on the whole human enterprise – in our numbers, and in our resource and energy use.

Jack Waterford’s discussion helpfully identifies how diverse efforts across the land, of those elected to our various Parliaments with Liberal Party endorsement, are seeking a path that will not only get them back on Treasury Benches, but unite their party. Presumably the political party membership of such Parliamentarians will be confirmed by Liberals winning Government. The party’s raison d’etre will have been achieved. But in the meantime, does the Liberal Party lose its character as a political party when it defines itself in terms of such a goal?

Jack says: Liberals need a plan to make a difference. Is the difference our polity needs simply the discovery of a Liberal distinctive path to Government? Jack pictures the Liberals as trying to conjure political unity by crafting a winning plan. So, without winning, are they merely a mob led by those elected who have lost their identity even if they coalesce in Parliament under the banner of party endorsement?

The Liberal “side” of Parliament seems to emphasise itself as representatives of their “party”, and that’s not so very different from those on the other side. Meanwhile independents emphasise a difference that Parliament is constitutionally composed of representatives of electorates.

There goes Abul Rizvi again. Shucks, if only we had a “long term immigration plan”. But we do have a plan. Despite the propaganda from Abul and Tony Burke especially, Australia can and does manage visa flows and net-migration numbers to suit itself.

Canada and NZ have made recent and sharp immigration corrections, reaping the benefits in rental and housing affordability. Cruelly for voters, Australia deliberately went the wrong way. After 1.2 million net-migration over 2022-25, we’ve an astonishing near-50 per cent surge in house prices, plus all-time lows in rental affordability. Ouch.

In annual terms, even Senator Hanson’s 130,000 immigration kite (21 November release) is too high to really ease the pain. Before we even talk about the 80,000 of skilled primary applicants – or the net-zero that a fair share of voters would like.

Tim Wilson’s Goldstein win and narrow Liberal losses elsewhere risk that Liberal tactics will be repeated in future. Democracy is endangered if that happens. Marian Sawer’s article captures the flavour of it. Mark Dreyfus’s speech in Parliament is the best summary I’ve read. Personal submissions are gritty and distressing. But nothing matches being there as a volunteer in Kooyong (or worse, Goldstein), or being re-traumatised attending the JSCEM hearing on 12 November. Listen to the audio on the APH YouTube Channel. Voices lift emotion off the flat page of transcript. Listening to only the first speaker might be enough for many people.

Sawer references the “astonishing” amount of redacted submissions. More astonishing still is that members of the JSCEM Committee also only get redacted copies. It’s like “If you don’t name the Liberals, it could be anybody.” I don’t doubt that occasionally a persecuted volunteer snapped and let fly with something inappropriate. But the only inappropriate behaviour that was “systematic” was that of the Liberal Party and its associated entities.

There are no redactions when Liberals are mentioned in the JSCEM hearings audio or transcripts. My submission is #133. On 12 November the JSCEM2025 Chair said submissions will reopen in 2026.

The secret business of Nauru offshore detention camps haunts us still. Thank you Julie Macken for the reminder of where it all began when Tampa hove into view and political machinations began.

The facts revealing that NZ bikies are now on the Australian Government payroll overseeing offshore detention caused barely a ripple with a public inured to harsh policies towards non- citizens.

What is even worse is that Australia’s toxic treatment of refugees and others has spread and is being adopted and proposed by nations as diverse as UK and EU countries.

Australia has led the way to dispose of people seeking peace from wars by hiding them in horrific conditions and paying failed states to take them.

We and they know the destructive effect on the human spirit of isolation in camps with no future.

We met the children and parents from Nauru. Children who turned their faces to the wall and gave up. Some have recovered and thrived when
brought out of that hell but not all.

If Australia is to recover its soul this offshoring of humanity must cease.

I agree with the assertion that the Epstein Files Transparency Act is a gambit.

Firstly, it calls for only the unclassified files to be made public. Secondly, with an inquiry launched by the Department of Justice into some of the more well-known associates of Epstein, any documents relating to them will be held back.

I think there is an elephant in this room. The issue is not who got on the Lolita Express to fly to that under-age island, as titillating as that may be, but rather who was Jeffery Epstein working for? Who amassed all this kompromat, and what are they doing with it?

It is hard to restrain a contemptuous laugh when continually confronted by the comic opera style of US “modern Major Generals” like Admiral Caudle. That one South Korean Nuclear sub could make any conceivable difference to the inability of the US to frustrate the growth of China is nonsensical.

The same applies to the Australian nuclear submarines that may, if ever, get delivered in a decade or two’s time. With the complete farce that is the current US and UK naval shipbuilding industries and the rapid expansion of the wholly defensive and vast Chinese fleet, the chances are derisorily non-existent. But that won’t stop the US military-Industrial complex from promoting them to generate more profits for fears deliberately generated.

The reality is that the Chinese have developed an underwater defensive shield around the coast of China that is impenetrable and are working with the Russians to either purchase or duplicate the new unmanned nuclear driven and armed Russian Poseidon class underwater drone which Western Submarines have no reliably working defence against.

But given that the West is totally the captive of a private for a profit military-industrial complex that has no interest in winning wars, just in creating them!