Archives: Letters to the Editor

If we accept “there are no easy prescriptions for an Australian strategy for survival independently in a singularly uncertain world”, aren’t we better off if surrounded by friends, or at least countries which respect us?

By removing US shackles which disempower us, we would reclaim our sovereignty, regain respect from our Pacific neighbours and stop being the country where the US fights its war against China, with the Pacific keeping the US itself safe.

Ordinarily, these would be the only reasons we need to grow up and take adult responsibility for our own country. But now, the US has become a dictatorship, with plenty of like-minded lunatics to take Trump’s place in the future.

If our local handyman, GP or school principal became Trump-like, we’d have nothing to do with them. So why do we accept that our ADF and by extension all Australians are now, deliberately, placed at the mercy of a madman?

For the foreseeable future there will always be a “major power” bigger than Australia. I’d rather it be one whose strength is trade not guns. To those who cite China’s human rights record I say “Pot. Kettle. Black.”

It’s beyond time to turn swords into ploughshares.

The recent federal election and and the LNP infighting tell the story. We constantly talk of two-party preferred results when it has always been three-party preferred. It has never been more obvious that the link between the Liberals and the Nationals is tenuous at the best of times, and for us these are the worst of times.

The flood of votes lost by the Liberals and the retention of seats by the Nationals indicate the concern of city dwellers about climate change. Those from the bush continue to push the line that as farmers they are more in tune with climate change than the rest of the country.

Traditionally, they have defended their right to use water from rivers, build dams, cut down trees, plant what they choose, pay farm labour slave wages, build whatever they like and enjoy subsidies in their personal fiefdoms.

A carbon tax may well put an end to the Coalition as we know it. It will end the climate wars and force the Liberals into the 21st century without having progress limited by the Nationals.

Stewart Sweeney’s article is very helpful for understanding China’s role in furthering global responses to climate change. And I’d like to submit the following as an addendum pathway to a further deep appreciation for action in relation to Chinese participation in those responses.

China amended its “Constitution” (about 2018) to include therein a policy objective of aiming for itself as an “ecological civilisation”. And partly in pursuance of this objective, it entertains frequent and widespread conferences attended by hundreds of participants in various parts of the country.

These conferences are arranged and presented under the auspices of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology – and if readers are worried by the notion of a religious dimension, they need not be. The Yale Forum is a deeply committed initiative, deriving from great universe historians such as the late Thomas Berry and today, Mary Elizabeth Tucker and John Grim.

Their studies and actions promote the notion of an environmental civilisation (sometimes discussed also as “an ecozoic era” in which humans and the rest of nature can exist in mutually enhanced ways). If only we here could see the notion of “Western Civilisation” dropped from our pursued objectives and replaced by a broader ecological perspective!

An excellent summary by Fred of the facts about the vast efforts of China in preserving the planetary environment. Their achievements are truly on a heroic scale, unlike those of the faecal farm that is the Murdoch empire.

It is a truism today that any relationship between the excrement emitted by that turgid and foul-smelling estate and the truth is purely accidental.

The UN was set up at the end of World War II to create a better world, but almost immediately its purpose was turned to preserving the power of the West (specifically the US) over the vast bulk of humanity. There have been valiant fights by that bulk of humanity — some successful, many not — to give meaning to its charter, but always against the staunch opposition of the rulers of the world.

So much is this true, and particularly with the calculated ignoring of it by the US and Europe, that the rest of the world is now designing and building institutions that will eventually supplant it with conclaves designed to eliminate the unipolarity that dominates it, with a true multipolarity of interests.

The UN is failing largely due to the fact that it operates in a world driven by the observation of Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnese War that “the strong do as they will, while the weak suffer what they must”.

The commitment of our elites to a supposed commemoration of the sacrifice of the common soldier in their chosen wars is best reflected in the words of George Orwell: “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”

The duplicity of the decision about Masters’ book simply reflects the overwhelming desire of these chicken hawks who made it, and who conspire in the sending of other people’s children to die in wars, as Clausewitz said aptly, in pursuit of their base political ends.

If there’s anyone left to write the history of the Anthropocene, it should begin with the lessons of the Polynesian voyagers who colonised Easter Island. In an ideological frenzy, they destroyed their god-given ecology and withered to a cargo cult based on stone images staring out to sea for salvation.

John Shurmann’s right; ozone is a powerful cleansing agent and has been used in recirculation aquaculture systems and water purification plants for decades. Sure, it kills both good and bad bacteria, but until the toxic Karenia mikimotoi bloom is dispelled, there’ll be no recovery of the marine ecosystem anyway.

Never mind heat stroke from the overheated atmosphere we’ve created; the real danger lies in the seas that surround our island home. The energy absorbed has already bleached Queensland’s coral reefs, put the economic viability of Tasmania’s aquaculture sector on notice and now bitten deeply into South Australia’s GDP.

While scientists may help find the solution, it’s only action that’s going to make a difference.

There was a time when I was at the forefront of installation of technology at a plant that operated 24/7 and employed more than 20 people. The shift workers manually penned in readings every four hours and very expensive paper chart recorders recorded data 24/7, information that was seldom looked at unless something went wrong.

I’m told now that one person attends weekly to collect samples to deliver to an accredited lab and have a look around.

All the data can be accessed in real-time anywhere in the world and, instead of boxes of expensive charts and paper, all that data is stored electronically and is seldom accessed. It is possible for any breakdown to be controlled from any number of computers and phones. The real question is, is there anybody left with the experience to fix a major problem quickly enough for it not to become a disaster?

During the Y2K debacle, few people knew that as long as there was power, the system could be switched to manual and made to work if there were enough capable people left who knew how to do this.

It is difficult to conceive of the sheer depravity of a culture that can be so deprived of a moral conscience that it could take nearly two years of open and massive genocide of a people and vast destruction of the place in which they lived, for that culture and its people to just begin to emerge from their moral degeneracy. Yet that is where we in the West stand, again it should be said not for the first time.

The vast bulk of humanity, that we in the West have exploited, oppressed, colonised and debased for several hundred years, have not suffered from the same moral incapacity. They have recognised immediately the stated intent of the actions undertaken by the fascist cabal in Israel for what it is.

Another Western community (Ashkenazi Jews) seeking to bastardise another non-Western community as a continuation of that disgraceful legacy of western colonialism and imperialism.

The other 88% of humanity know we lack moral authority and they knowingly anticipate the continued decline we so richly deserve.

I don’t know what they called it in Marie-Antoinette’s day, but in our day it’s called neoliberalism and in the US we are seeing its natural endpoint, the implosion of a nation.

When the top 1%, or even .1% garner so much of the common wealth unto themselves so that in their wealthy nation people are homeless and starving, then society becomes unstable. The greater the inequality, the greater the instability. And then …. whoosh! …. look what happens! It’s not like history hasn’t warned us.

An excellent summary by Nick Deane of the cunning, dissimulation and double-dealing encompassed by the scheme dreamed up by the Dodgy brother Scott Morrison to wedge the ALP on national security and the enthusiastic promotion of it by the gormless chicken-hawk Marles.

Indeed, so successful is the scheme designed to wedge the ALP by that boneheaded and imbecilic fraudster Morrison that the ALP have allowed itself to be captured by it and have swallowed the bait of an impossible and vastly expensive fraud of an idea, that it will be held responsible for failing to achieve.

Can anyone imagine Gough or Hawke or Keating being taken in by this patently fantastical scheme?

Stewart Sweeney wants an Australian version of Jeremy Corbyn’s new party. In fact, we’ve got an “almost, not quite” version operating now. They are Community Independents – one person representing one constituency, but without a party structure. We just need more of them.

We all know party structures render the direct wishes of an electorate null and void, supplanted by party uniformity. Not to mention careerism which leaves constituents with no representation worth the name.

Community independents have shown they can pool the resources of their common interests while differing where their electorates share those differences. Every single one is free to voice the opinion of their own electorate – and yet everyone gets on. We’ve seen thoughtful critiques of government bills and legislation, sometimes taken up in part, and private members bills which, had they been debated, would have shown the Australian public what a government displaying integrity and transparency could look like.

They have supported the government in proposed legislation that almost everyone wants, only for the government to turn its back on its supposed ideals in favour of persistent cashed-up lobbyists. Gambling reform anyone?

Next election, for better government, Vote 1 Community Independent.

In reporting on the First National Climate Risk Assessment, Julian Cribb highlights a number of threats to Australia from “a wild climate that is increasingly out of control”. Among them is rising food insecurity which will result from “falling crop yields, rising heat stress for livestock, increasing loss of water for irrigation, declining output from forestry and fisheries and biosecurity threats”.

This goes far beyond the worry that our wine industry will have to relocate to Tasmania as the mainland becomes too hot. It raises the question: “Will we even be able to feed ourselves?” Right now, we can feed 60 million in a good year but barely 30 million in a bad year, namely one affected by widespread drought or flood.

We had 27.4 million people at the end of 2024. That year the annual growth was 445,900 people, so we grow by another million every two or so years. That 30 million figure is not too far away, which is the limit of food production in bad years.

And bad years is exactly what will become the norm under climate change. For this reason alone, we should be trying to keep our population from growing beyond 30 million.

I really must respond to this article, as one of the two former academic directors of the Confucius Institute at the University of Melbourne, which we established in partnership with Nanjing University in the early 2000s. Nanjing University, by the way, was and is a highly reputable institution, judged at the time to be a fitting partner for the University of Melbourne.

The CI was set up separately from the Chinese program in the Asia Institute, precisely in order to waylay any suggestions of interference. This did not stop some UoM academics from other departments from making unfounded allegations. The Ministry of Education office in Beijing expressed to me their support for Chinese language teaching across the spectrum of middle schools and Saturday schools in Melbourne, including support for continuing teaching in full-form characters if the teachers came from overseas. They were playing an absolutely straight game, in support of language education.

In my experience, there were sordid machinations, but they came from the UoM side, and involved pea-and-thimble tricks with the budget that had been allocated by the Hanban in Beijing.

David Holm, Professor of Chinese, University of Melbourne, 1995-2010

Anthony Albanese styles himself as a recycled Curtin, and even as a recycled Whitlam. He is neither. He is more a combination of Billy Hughes and Joe Lyons, prime ministers who used the labour movement as vehicles, but whose ultimate ambitions to secure a place within the conservative Tory establishment, framed by loyalty to British imperial interests, “to King and Empire”, overrode all other considerations.

Since 2022, Albanese has made loud and clear his loyalty to the British monarchy, his support for NATO extending its role into the Indo-Pacific, his extraordinary support for AUKUS, his determination to transfer massive amounts of Australian resources to the Biden-Trump war machine as it conducts genocide, and his determination to accelerate the transformation of Australia into a Qatar-style US military base.

There is nothing in the record of the Albanese Government which suggests it will not regard a meeting with Trump as “a great date”.

Chris Hedges is one of the most perceptive and concerned observers of US decline. As in his book, America,The Farewell Tour, he makes a compelling case for that decline driven by extremist religious ideologies, rampant individualism and a self-destructive economic ideology.

It is a society with a history of widespread resort to inter-personal violence from its very beginning in the genocide of the native peoples and the enslavement of black Africans for personal gain. Hedges has an almost unique capacity to draw all that history together with the current consequences of it, to make sense of an otherwise chaotic and inexplicable current reality.

He is a leading mind in understanding what drives the inevitable decline of another empire.

Geoff’s article was a careful diplomat’s assessment of how Australia might work more co-operatively with a rising, but peaceful China. It needs to be recognised that the vast increase in China’s armed forces capabilities is a direct response to the decades-long encirclement of China by the US. It has no intention of allowing the US to begin another century of humiliation. It is adopting a sensible policy response to that effort by the US, by focusing on defence, not on the distant projection of military power.

Its principal focus is the five principles for peaceful co-existence set out first by premier Zhou Enlai in 1953 and which China has faithfully followed ever since. They are “mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence.”

There is no sane reason to doubt these drivers of China’s foreign policy in the light of its overwhelmingly peaceful rise since then. Unlike the US, which has permanently engaged in aggressive war over almost that entire period. The primary lesson for us is to cease projecting our Western propensity for foreign violence onto a fundamentally different culture.

The 2020s will be known as the decade when global leaders, paralysed by weakness and lack of courage, turned their backs on the greatest threat to humanity — impending climate disaster — and instead beat the drums of offshore war, until they actually had a few.

Prior to that, they were lining their pockets with dosh from weapons contracts entered into because of those wars. Meanwhile, the population, smelling the deception, and feeling the growing anxiety of millions, sensing impending natural disasters, scarcity, high costs, financial instability and government waste, decided to take to the streets and make clear their dissatisfaction with their country’s weak leadership and inaction.

What happened next took the government by surprise, but to anyone watching for the past 15 years, the consequences were entirely predictable.

The question in my mind is, have we gone past the “tipping point” in our integration into the US defence force (Department of War)? I suspect that we have because the type and number of US bases in Australia and the greater importance of the functionality of these bases are to the US.

We think that we have the US where we want them. They think the same of Australia. After all, the tail does not wag the dog. We have lost sovereignty to the US (gave it away, all our own work).

In a war with China the US may decide to use Australia as a “patsy” and therefore the US may be prepared to sacrifice Australia to a Chinese attack so as to prevent an attack on the US mainland. The strategy? To test Chinese tenacity by allowing China to attack an US ally, Australia. Should that occur, the US can pull back, preventing an attack on the US mainland and then negotiate a settlement.

As for the ANZUS treaty, all it calls for is a representation to the UN if a member is attacked. Job done, US saved.

The World Bank has joined the expert chorus accepting the confronting reality of humanity’s environmental predicament. We are killing the planet which hosts us — polluting the air, poisoning the land, and choking the seas with plastic — all to maintain continuing growth in both our numbers and prosperity. We are destroying our future to enhance our present.

Julian Cribb asks: can we save a ‘liveable Earth’? Even at this late stage, we probably can. We have a clear, science-based understanding of our predicament, and of the imminent irreversible tipping points that give this challenge urgency. We have the technologies we need to secure a sustainable future.

Our democracies are hampered, however, by their need to inspire consensus support for major disruption to our lifestyles and material prospects. This consensus has remained elusive, stifled by a succession of populist politicians reluctant to address this major challenge, which in turn has been made more difficult by misinformation and distortion from the fossil fuel industry and other vested interests.

We could maintain a “livable Earth”, but doubts linger. We need inspirational political leaders stepping forward with the courage to champion this challenge and carry through the transition we must see.

Sophie Singh calls for the end of cruelty towards refugees. Labor has done that in part, having transferred up to 19,000 people from TPVs to permanent residency. But we still have too many of the legacy caseload to process and they have been waiting too long.

These are better circumstances for Labor. The fearmongering Peter Dutton is gone. But then we have the vitalisation of Nauru as a refugee colony of Australia if the Nauruans will let it happen. People from all parts of the world are taken to Nauru to start another life. If there are errors on their record that get them there, too bad.

Australia can do better than this, especially for people with physical and mental illness from prolonged uncertainty. With the world closing down on taking our refugees, it’s time for Australia to step up and keep them here.

Adrian Lipscomb is wrong to claim “similarities between the Armenian and Gazan genocides”.

Anzac PoWs were witnesses and their uncensored accounts were recorded, as the Armenian National Committee of Australia explains:

“Shortly after the Gallipoli campaign, Australian soldiers came into contact with the genocides of the Armenian, Greeks and Assyrians. Over 300 ANZACs were held as prisoners of war by the Ottoman forces. These ANZACs recorded their experiences in detailed diaries and memoirs with vivid accounts of the genocide. Many of these accounts are now stored in the archives of the Australian War Memorial.”

For reasons only the War Memorial can justify, these records are hidden from public display.

A total of 1.5 million Armenians, up to 500,000 Assyrians and 300,000 Pontic and Anatolian Greeks were killed by the Ottoman Turks. I suggest Lispcomb undertake more thorough research into the Armenian genocide before making such spurious comparisons.

Every faltering cause needs a martyr. Charlie Kirk is Trump’s Maga Movement sacrificial goat. The incandescent rage and the irrational response to Kirk’s assassination is not unexpected, but no less disturbing. While stifling public debate on criticism of Kirk’s aggressively expounded and controversial views is another step down the path of authoritarianism in the land of the free, extending visa bans on “foreigners” who may have expressed an adverse opinion to Kirk’s seems ludicrous, paranoiac even.

While this shift from the America we grew up with seems relatively recent, in 1986 the controversial rock musician, Frank Zappa, said, during a televised debate, “The biggest threat to America today is not communism, it’s moving America towards a fascist theocracy”.

With our own national debate between the secular state and the rights of the religious still simmering from the Morrison years, we would do well to recall Zappa’s words of 40 years ago and measure his warning against the United Sates of today.

The recent article by Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University, and Ray Wills, Professor of Agriculture and Environment at the University of WA, was both timely and uplifting.

In a global media climate dominated by crises, their account of humanity’s clean energy transition as “the fastest in human history” offers rare but essential optimism. The inclusion of extensive hyperlinks is a notable strength of online publishing, enhancing the article’s usefulness for educators seeking to engage an increasingly worried student cohort.

Such resources may also encourage students to view the energy sector not only as a site of urgent transformation, but also as a field of secure employment and opportunity. Newman further highlights key professional pathways in public policy, town planning and transport, all central to achieving a sustainable future. His recent book, Net Zero Cities and Sustainability, is an important contribution — valuable for the senior geography curriculum and, importantly, for the parliamentary library.

When two countries, who are not militarily matched, go to war we end up with a predictable outcome.

In the case of Israel and Palestine, I have never seen any Palestinian tanks, jet fighters, bombers or soldiers in uniform. Maybe some Palestinian drones. And I have never heard rumours of the Palestinians having nuclear arms.

Something other than just war must be happening. When I hear of hostage/prisoner exchanges, there seem to be a disproportionately high number of Palestinian prisoners released compared to the number of hostages released. And there are reports of prisoners being tortured in jail.

When i hear Israeli Government ministers saying that during wars no nation feeds its enemies (Nazis, Japanese, Ukrainians), I wonder how the starving Palestinians are expected to feed the hostages when they can’t feed themselves.

When I hear of the billions of US dollars spent supporting the Israelis and the world turns a blind eye to what is happening in Palestine, I can’t help wondering if people, including many fundamentalist Christians who believe in the second coming, are having a bet each way.

Sovereign citizens attacking Camp Sovereignty. Can someone remind these sovereign seekers they —uncomfortably — have ideological ground in common?

The Zionists standing side by side with white Australia pundits at Bondi Beach. Can someone tell this lot that they are traditional enemies? Your average Nazi sympathiser isn’t traditionally a fan of Jewish anything.

I often wonder how Trump will reconcile the moment when the black-shirted skinheads realise they’re sharing the president’s metaphorical bed with the very ones Hitler targeted.

There is an absurd irony here if it were so sickening.

Can someone also remind Albo that leadership sets the tone? If you allow bullies impunity — Nazis, genocide supporters etc — they don’t go away, they get louder.

Like Peter Newman and Ray Wills, I’ve been a renewable energy researcher and campaigner for decades. But responsible boosting of renewables must recognise key barriers that Peter and Ray overlook. Growth in renewable energy, rapid though it is, is chasing growth in energy consumption. The result: in 2019, fossil fuels supplied 80% of global total final energy consumption, the same as in 2000. By 2022, renewables had reduced this to 78%. Even at several times their recent growth rate, renewables cannot overtake and replace fossil fuels by 2050. Yet a rapid transition is needed to avoid crossing climate tipping points.

Further, in substituting renewables for fossil fuels, the rate-limiting step is not only how rapidly we can build renewables. It is also how rapidly we can shift from fossil fuels in transportation and heating to renewable electricity. Renewable electricity generation cannot be greater than total electricity demand.

The key problem is to reduce energy demand in the rich economies and rapidly growing economies. Increasing energy efficiency will help, but is unlikely to be sufficient. As energy growth has not been decoupled from economic growth, we must transition to a steady-state economy. Facing the barriers squarely is not climate fatalism!

The year 2024 was when we exceeded 1.5 degrees, and on land this warming climbed to 1.8 degrees. Our carbon budget will be spent by October 2027. There is not enough suitable land on the planet for the necessary level of afforestation to offset fossil fuel emissions.

At home, the Great Barrier Reef has suffered record losses of live coral cover. All this, again, made for difficult reading. All those with the power to make decisions to turn things around will all be gone by the time we genuinely acknowledge what needed to be done in 2025. Sainsbury concluded with the most heart-wrenching words of all.

Iceland’s letter to the future is written on a plaque, in Icelandic and English, and dated August 2019, 415 ppm CO2: “Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.”

The news on 13 September confirms two extremely important developments in reporting on the genocide being inflicted by the ultra-Zionist government and the IDF on the Palestinian people. It reflects the accuracy of John Menadue’s article of 05/09 discussing the real number of casualties (deaths/injuries) from the Israeli atrocity.

In “official” Israeli statements, the numbers of Palestinian casualties are rarely provided, but there is a continuum of protests that anything other than elimination of “HAMAS terrorists” is rare and sadly regretted. “Unfortunate accidents”; “oversights”, “tragic mistakes”… As for reports from Palestinian/UN/aid agencies etc. sources, these are discounted as propaganda.

The first item of note from the IDF commander’s statement is that it blows all previous “official” statements out of the water. It exposes them all as not just casual fiction, but monumental deliberate blazing falsehoods on a scale that even Goebbels would have hesitated to attempt.

We knew this already, but many do not accept it.

This demands that the ubiquitously-quoted “Hamas killed 1200” figure for the 7 October attack, touted as the justification for all Israeli atrocities, must be held as just as unreliable, requiring forensic examination.

We knew this already, but many do not accept.

However, QED applies.

Cogent and clear analysis and recipe for appropriate Australian policy in the Pacific. If we truly had the best interests of the Pacific nations at heart, we would encourage appropriate Chinese help to them.

By pitting ourselves with the US against China, we encourage inappropriate injections of Chinese money and trinkets like flash SUVs to dubious recipients to buy favour.