Archives: Letters to the Editor

The latest report by the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group warns that climate change may lead to “widespread food insecurity, economic destabilisation, large-scale people displacement, war, failed states and social collapse”. If ever there were a better collection of people to make the connections between climate and security, it is the ASLCG led by Retired Admiral Chris Barrie. We must heed their warnings and pull out all stops to mitigate climate change.

Possibly the most worrying, apart from widespread food insecurity, is large-scale people displacement. Some suggest a billion displaced by 2050. How on earth will the world cope with this? How will Australia deal with it? We can’t take a billion extra people, so how many should we take? Will our own carrying capacity be compromised by climate change?

The Murray-Darling Basin currently produces 40% of Australia’s food thanks to irrigation but Ross Garnaut warned years ago that we would lose almost all irrigated agriculture with four degrees of warming. We know large parts of the north-west of the country will become uninhabitable.

Is it possible to have a community discussion on this to underpin government policy? Chaos looms and we need to handle it, somehow.

Important and revealing article by Peter Sprivulis. I have been a career biochemist for the last 50 years and researched energy transduction in plants that over hundreds of millions of years generated huge fossil fuel resources.

The atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs; notably CO2, CH4, and N2O) from unrestrained fossil fuel and other exploitation are at record highs, are increasing at record rates (notwithstanding “we are tackling climate change” political rhetoric), and existentially threaten humanity and the diosphere (see Gideon Polya, “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions”, 843 pages, 2020).

Yet the Australian Government’s “Australian Energy Statistics – Update Report 2025” totally ignores the following: (1) atmospheric GHGs and global warming (!), (2) Australia’s huge iron ore exports that ultimately generate huge amounts of CO2 through coal-based reduction to iron, (3) gas leaks, has a high global warming potential and can be as dirty as coal use GHG-wise, (4) the damage-related carbon price is US$200 per tonne CO2 whereas the world average applied price is a mere US$2 per tonne CO2 (huge intergenerational inequity), (6) huge Australian geothermal and tide power energy resources, and (7) Australia has 0.3% of the world’s population but its annual domestic plus exported GHGs are 5.4% of the world’s.

The fog of war plays a distant second to the fog of espionage. We are witnessing this writ large in the unfolding drama being played out over the alleged Iranian involvement in the recent terrorist attacks against Jewish targets here in Australia.

When considering the pros and cons of the arguments being presented, it is important to keep in mind one crucial truth. The various Zionist/Israeli lobbying groups, voicing their opinions and attempting to influence both public opinion and state policy, have a long and proven record of framing the narrative. Saying something first, and loud enough and often enough, can be sufficient to establish what then becomes accepted as fact. It often takes years, in some cases decades, for a story countering the original narrative to emerge.

Australia is being foolish in burning a bridge we may soon want to cross. Iran is a full member of both the SCO and of BRICS. These two organisations are currently creating the global governance framework for the 21st century. We would benefit from having a seat at that table. Insulting one of their members is not the optimal way to achieve that.

Thank you, Annabel Hennessy, for calling out the persistent policy cruelty of our political “leadership” and its impact upon many stateless refugee neighbours in our midst. The legislation referred to, as background to the Nauru deportation proposal, presents us with the same lethargic compliance we have endured from Liberal-National Coalition hard-heartedness.

Are we to allow Australia to take the same “new normal” path pioneered by the Trump administration to “win” by withholding justice from Kilmar Abrego Garcia? How long will it be before the Labor Party (and its equally lethargic Parliamentary opponents) realise that a healthy Australian democracy has to be accountable to electors, with public policy opened up for discussion, rather than closed down by amoral strategic media signalling designed to protect electoral support?

How are we to avoid construing ourselves as an exploitative, malforming, neocolonial power in the South-West Pacific? Our civic task involves facing up to our responsibilities to all neighbours including those in legal limbo because they have been exploited by smugglers seeking to profit from their plight. Wasn’t Labor in government when visa holders from China were allowed to stay after the Tiananmen Square massacre was seen on Australian TV screens?

Noel Turnbull certainly sets out a valid alternative, but I would have thought the whole submarine saga is going to be undermined by drones in any case as the Navy is already developing long-range underwater drones!

They will certainly be fully developed well before we ever see the mythical AUKUS subs, or at least my grandchildren see them!

I am so grateful to the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group for their complete commitment to our ongoing well-being and their respect for our intelligence and capacity to deal with the terrifying truth. Both this commitment and respect appear to be somewhat half-hearted from our government.

The latest evidence of disregard for our climate occurred on 28 August. That day, the Albanese Government quietly granted approval for Glencore to expand its Ulan thermal coal mine near Mudgee in NSW.

Meanwhile, the government steadfastly refuses to share the contents of two apparently terrifying documents detailing the security threat posed to us by global warming.

Do others feel, like me, that given the government’s existing failure to act in line with the science, and the presumed ignoring of the recommendations of the ASLCG, that the time for civil disobedience is fast approaching?
And if not now, when?

What a privilege to read such an insightful article by someone with such a pedigree of both experience and principle, not to mention a global citizen’s lifestyle. Thank you.

The recent protest marches in Australian capital cities shows the ignorance of the protesters in basing their protests on the colour of people’s skin and their religion.

They should have instead protested about the climate, because rising sea levels alone in our vicinity will affect tens of thousands (17,000 in Indonesia).

Many thousands of Pacific Islanders will lose their island homes and many million Indonesians will look South due to inundation of low-lying coastal areas.

At present, the UK is trying to stop the refugee trickle across the Channel which will be nothing compared to the flood of refugees storming South. We can’t rely on the Indonesians under these circumstance to aid us in turning back the boats.

With a population of 286+ million, many of whom are heading our way, forget about the European Australia policy. At the very least, we should be forgetting about submarines and start building cruise liners.

Many are under the illusion that AI chatbots like ChatGPT are objective sources of information, having collected data across multiple sources.

But they are not. AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, are designed to sycophantly agree with the user. This means that whatever you ask, these AI chatbots are designed to encourage, and agree with, your bias. This was demonstrated when a teenager contemplating suicide, was actively encouraged to do so by ChatGPT.

That these AI platforms are designed to sycophantly agree with the user, makes them, due to our human nature, highly addictive. What human being doesn’t want someone to confirm their bias?

There is great danger in this. If you hold extreme rightwing views, ChatGPT will confirm those views. If you hold extreme religious views, ChatGPT will find the data to confirm that bias.

What we are losing, by employing AI at such an accelerated rate, is discernment, objective reasoning, understanding nuance and subtlety in our dealings with each other.

As the old adage goes, “if you don’t use the skill, you’ll lose it”.

When has humanity needed discernment and understanding of nuance more than now?

Let’s get real about greenhouse gas emissions; they are a damper on productivity. They are instrumental in the function of the global ecosystem. As things stand today, the taxpayer is picking up the cost of the destruction, caused by an unstable environment, as well as the toxic pollution from the forever chemicals that actually present a bigger threat to life on our planet than rising temperatures and sea levels.

From lost lives, homes and livelihoods to inflated prices and insurance premiums, they shell out while the corporations creating them are laughing all the way to the bank. Then there’s the time lost too, and the cost of the medical issues associated with our industrialised lifestyle. Any government that ignores this truth is failing in its entrusted duty.

The tunnel vision demonstrated at Labor’s roundtable can only lead to more financial inequality for the long-suffering Australian taxpayer. Whether it’s affected by timidity, complacency or delusion is inconsequential. An inequitable and inadequate response to the real and present danger of an overheated atmosphere and toxic ecology looms as Anthony Albanese’s legacy.

This is a common sense and intelligent approach towards attendance at these important celebrations.

It is unlike the federal government which continues to pander to how they think the US and Rupert Murdoch will feel about such attendance.

Hopefully Bob Carr’s attendance will keep those important diplomatic channels open until our governments regonise the reality of the new power dynamics at work geopolitically!

Congratulations to Bob Carr for attending the 80th anniversary celebration by China of the end of World War II.

And it’s hardly surprising that Vladimir Putin is attending. Without the Soviet Union, China, we (and the people of Germany, Italy and Japan) might have lost the battle against German, Italian, and Japanese fascism. The Spanish and the Portuguese had to wait well beyond World War II for an end to fascism.

Carr quite rightly reminds Andrew Hastie that only weeks ago Vladimir Putin was in the United States. If you want to solve problems between nations you have to engage, not deliberately not turn up.

While I agree with Samantha Helps that teachers punishing children for swearing puts the teacher in a different space to the community from which the children come, what she seems to miss is that there are multiple levels of swearing. One is when the swearing is aimed at the teacher or another pupil. This is where the teacher has a responsibility to stop this behaviour.

It is clear that swearing is now endemic in our communication to add emphasis or to express emotions such as when you hit your thumb with a hammer. Such swearing is now on TV and film and in books and other literature – in fact, I find it a bit twee when punctuation is inserted in swear words in written communication (such as the article in question).

So I do believe that teachers (and parents) have a role to moderate swearing and not allow it to be used as a weapon.

Wanning Sun is correct in pointing out that it would be unwise to read too much into what countries have been invited and the relative seniority of those representatives. There is clearly some guidance that can be obtained from it, but there are a host of factors that shapes such attendance that are specific to the individual nations concerned.

It would also be unwise to use that attendance list to draw conclusions about the relationship between China and the vast bulk of the global South. More telling are the substantive actions of that South in their enthusiasm to enter into trade and commercial partnerships with China and their interest in joining both the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation and the BRICS partnership.

Make no mistake, global power and influence are moving decisively away from the Western orbit towards the East and China is the pivot point for that shift.

Thanks to Ross Gittins, economics editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, for so clearly outlining Rod Sims’ five reasons why a carbon price is both “necessary and urgent”.

Sims, now chair of Ross Garnaut’s Superpower Institute, argues that Australia needs a carbon price “so effective climate action can be taken, so our targets can be met, and so we can more than fully compensate households for the price effects” while also strengthening public budgets. These outcomes would be well received by Australians and should give the Albanese Government courage in its second term.

There is also international precedent. In its series on carbon pricing and energy taxation, “Pricing Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Turning climate targets into climate action”, the OECD found that countries could raise revenue equivalent to about 2.2% of GDP if carbon prices reached the midrange value of €120 per tonne of CO2 by 2030. It also concluded that progressively increasing carbon prices while phasing out fossil fuel subsidies would allow nations to deliver more ambitious, effective, and efficient climate policy.

The lesson is simple: the longer we delay putting a price on carbon, the higher the price we will all pay.

The mainstream media has had years of practice ignoring reality in Palestine, not only since 2023. But if you want to argue the toss about prior to 2023, the MSM have had undeniable decades of practice “reporting” on climate change. Whenever it suits them, the liars, the deluded and the vested interests denying truth and science must be given equal space to spread their falsehoods.

Why does anyone pay for legacy media anymore? The sooner it finally dies out, the better. We already have quality alternatives.

Important article by Professor Jocelyn Chey. In the 1937-1945 Chinese holocaust 35-40 million Chinese died from violence and deprivation under Japanese occupation (15% of the pre-war population). Australian attorney-general Robert “Pig Iron Bob” Menzies made Australia complicit by permitting iron exports to Japan. Michael Portillo included me in a 2008 BBC program Bengal Famine that included comments from Dr Sanjoy Bhattacharya (Welcome Institute, London): “That six to seven million [World War II Bengal famine deaths] figure includes the deaths that happened in let’s say the provinces of Bihar, Orissa and Assam”, economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen (Cambridge, Harvard): “Famines happen when they’re so extraordinarily easy to prevent”, and me (“Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”): “Rational risk management… to avoid a repetition”.

Food-denying Australia was complicit in the British-imposed Bengali holocaust designed to offer any invading Japanese forces a food-free Northeast India. Today, the Zionist Israeli-imposed and Australia-complicit Gaza genocide involves mass starvation by man-made famine, 680,000 Gazans or 28% of the pre-war population have been killed (mostly children), and the death rate per capita in Gaza is 25 times greater than that of Australian PoWs of the Japanese. Holocaust ignored means holocaust repeated.

I like, and usually agree with, much of what Caitlin Johnstone has to say about world affairs.

However, in her latest piece — on the demerits of “Western civilisation” — she is wrong to ascribe to all “Westerners” responsibility for the grave wrongs that have been carried out in effect by small concentrations of government and corporate power in the capitalist societies of the West.

To conflate the sins of this small, grasping, self-interested minority with Western civilisation and with what most Westerners believe is a mistake. Indeed, it might be said that Caitlin has fallen victim to the propaganda that would have us believe this (which she will hate!) – the idea that the history of civilisations is conveyed by their ruling classes.

The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming and to be found in the worldwide protests by tens of thousands of people against the genocide in Gaza and against other capitalist crimes, in literature and in the arts, in history, and so on.

It is the system and the elites that dominate Western and other civilisations that are not worth saving.

Jack Waterford’s article fails to mention one pertinent aspect of the bombing of the Melbourne synagogue. That aspect is crucial, namely that the Adass branch of Jewish Orthodoxy is anti-Zionist and anti-Israel. The Israel lobby feasts on this lack of transparency and uses it to further its attempt to make Australia focus on so-called antisemitism, instead of the real issue, which is Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

In other words, if, as ASIO blandly declares, Iran is “responsible” for the “attacks”, then ASIO implies that Iranian Government officials are as uneducated and stupid as Australians who don’t know anything about the massive rift within the Jewish Orthodox community regarding the status and very existence of Israel.

This ASIO “indictment” of Iran is as specious as its affirmation that Saddam had WMDs and machines that shredded live human beings. The result: Albo evicts the Iranian ambassador and continues to take orders from Israel’s ambassador to Australia, not to mention heeding the “personal” letters from the mighty Bibi Mileikovsky himself. In the meantime, Gaza is being slaughtered by the “most moral army’ in the world.

I agree with Caitlin Johnstone that Western civilisation has come to a very bad pass, especially in terms of politics and colonial thinking.

However, I’d like to defend another aspect of “Western civilisation”, namely the music, art and literature it has produced. I would regard it as a crime to throw away the music of Mozart or Bach. I even think some of the “Enlightenment values” that originated in Western civilisation, even though they are not necessarily part of it, are worth preserving.

It’s right to attack values of people like Trump and others we associate today with Western civilisation, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

It’s not only at universities, our politicians have also outsourced their resposibilities. What government services are left are controlled by mostly large overseas corperations.

When the roundtable discussion about regulation took place, they never mentioned that they are happy and instrumental in writing those regulations so as to exclude small to medium Australian bussiness from the honey pot.

Julian Cribb’s professional and prescient article shows we have two serious problems. There is the well-founded threat of lethal pathogens and also the threat from the militant, irrational groups opposed to immunisation and masks.

Lately we have seen the power and rage of a resentful minority, seriously uninformed, igniting the fuse of fear and pushing an aggressive barrow. It is to be hoped there is sufficient potent research into these groups to enable myth and terror management, rather than attacking them head-on and empowering the work of the fearmongers thus granting them more potency as they will claim to be “victims of the state”.

Firmly held prejudice is not dissolved by rational argument. It requires much more inquiry into motivations, distrust and understanding socio-economic factors.

Julian Cribb cites overpopulation and overcrowding as the two major causes of a pandemic. Thus, cruise ships and high-rise buildings must be regarded as giant petri-dishes, facilitating the growth of micro-organisms that cause disease.

This is a problem because, while populations grow, we do need to densify our cities. We have to stop urban sprawl, that is, the encroachment of cities onto natural bush or farmland, the latter needed to feed people.

The only solution is to stop further growth of human numbers. Cities can’t go out without destroying other species’ habitats or our food base, and they can’t go up much without compromising the health of their inhabitants.

This is not to ignore the eight other causes of a pandemic that Cribb cites. Travel was the third. Planes are another great petri-dish. Who has not come back from an overseas trip at least once with a respiratory infection contracted on the plane? Intensive livestock industries are a nightmare, not just from an animal rights’ perspective, but also from the increased likelihood of disease transmission. And public health systems? Surely, they are the bedrock of a civilised society, yet we see funds diverted away from them for unnecessary nuclear submarines.

The story of what John Darby saw didn’t end there.

Eighty-plus years on, some of the victims of the Holocaust, some children of Holocaust survivors and some grandchildren of Holocaust victims are seeking revenge using the Holocaust to justify any and all actions.

In 100 years, will the great-grandchildren of the Holocaust still be at war with the Palastinian survivors of the genocide and their offspring? Will the Palistinians be using the genocide as a justification for any and all retribution?

Some of them will.

The arms industry will continue to benefit from it.

Expensive manned submarines are a relic of past world (meaning European) wars! Just like aircraft carriers, infantry wars and manned aircraft.

If the special military operation in Ukraine and the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank  have taught our military leaders anything — and that is questionable — it is that the fundamental nature of war has changed. UAVs, accurately guided missiles and bombs, along with accurate detection of underwater threats and use of underwater unmanned drones using AI and quantum computing, have dramatically cheapened the fighting of wars and have increased its lethality substantially.

That means a dramatic increase in the capacity of smaller or more targeted countries to defend themselves against hegemonic powers whose leaders are still fighting World Wra II with massively expensive and far more fragile technologies. Good examples are the success of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in successfully fighting the most heavily armed major powers in history. And they are doing it with vastly less expensive hardware!

The AUKUS subs are the most expensive farrago in an Australian military history littered with such failures. They will strip out Australia’s progress in meeting the needs of our citizens with no gain in security!

I commend George Browning, former Anglican Bishop, for his valiant fight for the rights of Palestinians and for Jewish, Armenia, Rwanda, and Gaza holocausts to be remembered and not repeated.

However, there appears to be an unconscious disremembering, as shown by the absence of even a cursory mention by Browning of the horrors suffered by people in the Far East (a somewhat pejorative Anglo-Saxon term). Across East and Southeast Asia, tens of millions suffered untold brutalities under World War II Japanese imperialism. Notably, the horrific Nanking Massacres and Unit 731 (Imperial Japanese Army chemical and biological warfare research unit, 1935-45).

On 3 September, Beijing will be commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Chinese people’s war of resistance against Japanese aggression. According to Kyodo News, the Japanese Government, through its embassies and diplomatic channels, has asked other countries to refrain from attending events held in China.

Imagine Germany telling the world to boycott World War II remembrance events. That would be unthinkable and thoroughly condemned, especially by British and EU Governments. Yet, Japan is doing just that with impunity, with Western government, including Australia, remaining silent. Selective holocaust remembrance is alive and well.

I agree with George Browning’s article; however, the horrific things perpetrated by Hitler’s consort on European Jews, not to mention millions of others, do not mean Judaism has a claim on the word “holocaust”. Up to 10 million Congolese died under Belgian rule, Shashi Tahoor claims 120 million Indians died under British rule, and there have been countless other massive numbers of victims of European colonisation.

Norman Finkelstein wrote the book The Holocaust Industry after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel began refining its River to the Sea Crusade, all the while hiding its atrocities behind the Holocaust cloak. It has also used this cloak to blackmail the Western world to not only turn a blind eye to its genocide of Palestinians, but to arm and protect it as it commits mass murders.

In other words, Israel has blackmailed the world and has succeeded in the preposterous notion that criticism of a state is forbidden because it is founded on a religion. Herzl and Co, atheists, are laughing in their graves at the fraud they have perpetrated. In the meantime, humans are slaughtered, and we do nothing. Segal rules what Australians can speak, and the problem is Iran.

Michelle Grattan should be far more critical in her approach to Mike Burgess and the “Iran affair”. There has not been a shred of evidence presented to prove Iranian sponsorship of “terror acts” in Australia. Suggesting that Iran’s motive is to cause “disharmony” is asinine to say the least.

Clearly and logically, the only country that would gain from these “terror acts” is Israel. These gains include: shifting public opinion away from a free Palestine, the Palestine Resistance and its allies; emboldening the Zionist lobby in Australia at a time it is increasingly becoming isolated; elevating Iran to the status of “bete noir”, and thus deflecting attention away from Israel’s criminal actions and its genocide in Gaza; and preparing for further bombings of Iran by Israel.

Learning that Israel provided intelligence to ASIO about Iran’s alleged involvement in these “terror acts” only serves to implicate Israel in their organisation and implementation. It is mind-boggling to think that Albanese and the Labor leadership could possibly think that Israel is a credible source of information, given the constant and unrelenting lies uttered by Netanyahu. Ascribing “criminal responsibility” to Iran raises the possibility of Australia’s own “Watergate scandal”.

One striking aspect of year-to-year changes in Lowy Institute polling figures, covering the popularity among Australians of Australia-US relations reported on by Jaron Sutton, can perhaps be explained by a differing interpretation of the response to one particular question in the poll.

Sutton reports that in the polls between March, 2024 and 2025, Australians’ trust in the US to act responsibly in the world had “plummetted” from 64% to 44%, yet despite this, a “whopping” 80% of Australians felt the US alliance was very or fairly important for our security, down just three points from 83% in 2024.

I paraprase to say that Sutton concludes from this that Australians’ faith in the alliance remains stronger than it perhaps should be, given our reduced trust, and that this implies the resilience of the alliance, perhaps unfortunately in the context.

I believe another interpretation can be placed on Australians’ ranking of the ongoing importance of the alliance. I think they are seeking to be as factual as possible (i.e. not offering a preference) to what appears as a question of factual understanding, rather than an opinion, as sought by most other questions in the poll.

I can rest more peacefully that way.

I understand that Taiwan feels threatened by China. However, the arguments in the article I feel are not substantiated.

China now has the expertise and capability of surpassing Western chip capabilities, perhaps not as yet achieved, but in development. I feel this is shown in part by the speed that China developed AI capability in such a short time.

The West appears under the misapprehension that China needs chips from Western manufacturers, but I feel the reality is that China will use Western technology when it is cost-effective and available. The idiocy of forcing Dutch manufacturers to stop exports of modern chip manufacturing technology to China has merely temporarily stopped the future Chinese manufacturing capabilities. I expect China will surpass Western capabilities given some development time.

One must remember that once technology is designed, it is easier to replicate the development and, with the sheer number of Chinese technologists, easily surpass Western technology. One only needs to look at the speed of EV development to see a picture of the future.

This all comes from a very agrarian country that I visited in 1978. What is the future?