Archives: Letters to the Editor

Stewart Sweeny’s article should be microchipped and injected into the buttock (left or right) of every federal candidate before the next election. Tough times are coming, and we need to take measures that some will find tough. Eternal tinkering simply wastes national time, money and energy. Policy risks need coherent explanation, but first we must acknowledge their real-world existence, lest public policy debate continue its current path of infantile game playing and party bickering.

TAFE is a prime example. Here we are amidst a world-wide technological/industrial/employment revolution of a magnitude not seen since the first coal-fired boiler began spitting steam. National productivity and innovation will determine our future national living standards. So, what do Australia’s leaders do but chant “Fee-free TAFE’’ and look smug.

TAFE’s structures, learning methodologies and course content date largely from the 1950s. Incremental tinkering will suit the current crop of TAFE managers and federal/state/local bureaucrats, but it will do bugger all for equity, productivity and our future well-being.

Great analysis covering the stupidity of strengthening an alliance with a country assisting and abetting Nazi regimes in Israel and Ukraine. Just one additional point about it. Even though we know the neoliberal crazies in the US want to invade China and to drag us and any other cretins willing to follow them in this enterprise, the fact is that such an invasion is an impossibility for the US.

To do so, it needs a vast armada of specific kinds of merchant vessels to carry a vast army and tens of millions of tons of war supplies across the vast expanse of the Pacific, along with millions of soldiers which they don’t currently have. It simply doesn’t currently exist. The US Merchant Marine consists of 150 vessels, only 80 of which are suitable. To mount a successful invasion it will need many thousands of such vessels. Unless it intends first to steal the merchant fleet of the country that has the largest merchant fleet in the world it simply cannot be done. And have a guess who owns that very large merchant fleet? You got it in one –China!

David Rosen misses the most glaring point: these men were not Christian in any meaningful theological or ethical sense. Their project was never about embodying the teachings of Christ — humility, mercy, justice, care for the poor, love of enemy — but about seizing state power to enforce a rigid, patriarchal, nationalist ideology under the guise of religion.

Jerry Falwell and his allies didn’t resurrect Christianity; they replaced it with a political identity masquerading as faith. What triumphed in the so-called culture wars wasn’t Christ – it was Caesar in vestments.

A lot of articles appear in the media about the effect of tariffs on the stock market. But the majority of Americans don’t own shares of any note. However the majority holds down jobs which are now under risk. GM and Ford are closing a number of manufacturing plants due to the effect of tariffs.

The chief executive of Harley Davidson motorbikes has rebuked Trump. Amazon is said to be moving its headquarters overseas. Tesla and Musk have almost become blacklisted. Delivery and truck drivers are laid off due to lack of products being shipped to America. Travel and tourism has fallen significantly.

But it is the laid-off workers who will make the loudest protests in coming weeks. They will have no money to pay for food, rent and mortgages, insurance, health costs and kids’ education. These issues are regularly reported on channels like MSNBC.

Unless Trump can pull a rabbit out of his hat, America’s internal protests about tariffs will escalate in the very near future. This has international implications for world trade. I can only hope the Albanese Government has a good crystal ball!

Henry Reynolds is a very clear thinker and spells out the case for Palestine’s future. The chance of Australia’s political elite — that small bunch that operates within Albanese’s shadow — responding unequivocally in Palestine’s favour is unlikely. It is in the thrall of Israel’s international posturing.

The American press shows many of their federal politicians are likewise beholden to that country and Murdoch is repeatedly reported to have connections of a sort. His media reporting does not suggest otherwise.

All this leads to actions and reactions by Australian politicians who see themselves answerable to foreign influencers rather than to the Australian voters. They have pacts, treaties and agreements with foreign countries that are secret or contain clauses kept secret. We, the voters, are treated like mushrooms and kept in the dark. That is not how democracy should work. “Transparency and accountability” did someone say?

With the number of seats the ALP government now has, it would be heartening if it demonstrated the courage to be honest with its voters. You will notice how the election deliberately focused on domestic prices, and deliberately avoided any mention of foreign policies. The voters were played!

Jenny Hocking is spot on with her denunciation of the National Party. That group lost its ideological bearings when it changed its name from the Country Party.

Back in those days, the members looked like farmers and acted in their interests and of their communities. To expand their political influence, they rebadged themselves as Nationals and sought to gain seats in the urban areas. To avoid conflict with the Liberals, they worked out a more aligned Coalition.

Instead of looking to the future and the need for water in their country areas, they support coal mines, gas and nuclear power. They support big corporations buying agricultural land, but are giving only enough attention to the small farmer and their community to get re-elected.

Can any member of the National Party tell us what their vision is for Australia in, say 50 years? That is what is needed for the future of this country. Unfortunately, they can barely see three years ahead. What a waste of time!

One of the issues consistently raised with the approval for the North West Shelf  extension is the impact of the use of the gas in the importing countries. This impact is generally ignored.

What I would like to see is something akin to our position on the export of uranium which is contingent on the uranium only being used for certain purposes. If a broadly similar position was adopted for our gas exports, we should, for example, only export to countries that have a credible pathway to net zero by 2050 (IPCC endorsed?), and failure to adhere to the pathway would be considered a breach of contract, and exports halted.

I’m sure with a bit of thought a coherent policy along these lines could be developed.

On the same day Peter Sainsbury’s article on endangered grasslands appeared, a critically endangered Leadbeater’s Possum was spotted for the first time in Kosciuszko National Park. The Biodiversity Council says this rare sighting highlights the need to conserve large areas of high-quality habitat, even where key species haven’t been detected before.

As Sainsbury points out, the biodiversity of the world’s grasslands supports over a billion people and stores a third of the world’s terrestrial carbon — second only to forests — playing a key role in mitigating climate change. Yet, grasslands face mounting threats. The World Resources Institute warns they are among the most at-risk biomes due to extensive loss, poor protection, and lack of effective management.

In Australia, Friends of Grasslands is calling for greater investment in protection, better management and support for pastoralists maintaining these vital ecosystems. With grasslands under increasing pressure, new Environment Minister Murray Watt has a clear opportunity to lead on biodiversity conservation and climate action by prioritising these often-overlooked landscapes. Their protection is essential – for survival of species, for climate stability, and for the well-being of future generations.

I’m beyond disappointment when it comes to your news bulletin. Time and time again, your reporters push false and misleading information. You trumpet that you endeavour to uncover and report the truth.

Every time you publish an article on “climate change” you not only do the opposite of reporting the truth but you push the false narrative of the WEF and UN. That’s where your articles border on crimes to news publishing.

To continually print the weaponised narrative on “climate change/crisis” you do truth and humanity a disservice.

If you have a investigative reporter that has a modicum of integrity, why haven’t they written a truthful article about global weather patterns?

They may include the truth of the current magnetosphere of earth collapsing. Thus a planetary shield from cosmic and solar radiation is losing any real protection.

They may include a easy-to-follow breakdown of the sun cycles and how the Mayan calendar intricately describes such.

They may include astronomical data showing how we are in the middle of the event known as the sun disaster cycle and how it affects all life on earth. This was also documented by the Mayan sean.

Following swift public approval of the North West Shelf  extension, one can only assume that the decision was taken well before the election was called, when Labor was behind in the polls and needed the WA vote.

It’s not just our environmental laws that need repairing, it’s our electoral laws, donations and truth in advertising. Having a large majority and a weak Opposition does not bode well for any real change or any real improvement.

Fight on David, perhaps Albanese will come to realise that a large majority doesn’t come with a guaranteed third term.

It’s time to admit that mainstreaming mental health patients into public hospitals has failed. Part of the reforms to mental health services in the 1990s and 2000s, mainstreaming was supposed to be a recognition that mental health patients deserved care and support in the general hospital stream. It was intended to break down stigma.

What it has done is left patients untreated in emergency departments for too many hours. In 2012, while working as an agency nurse, I treated mental health patients in EDs. They then had often been there for two days. Now it’s four days and beyond waiting to be seen by overworked psychiatrists.

There are too few acute beds. Any government or health department wanting to take immediate measures to address the mess in mental healthcare must recognise that the first thing that needs to be done is opening more acute beds in public hospitals now. Find the staff. Address the crying needs. No more Bondi Junction stabbings.

This call is not about reinstating stigma . This is about caring for seriously mentally ill patients who are immediately affected when beds close and staff resign from the system.

If only Australia would crib the defence document produced by the US Congressional Research Service in March, ignoring though its belligerence towards China. Pages 41-5 especially. It notes that project cost blowouts are often the result of failure to do an analysis of alternatives, and a business case (neither done for AUKUS), but projects become “too big to fail”.

Building subs in the US has a labour deficit due to the US economy’s switch from manufacturing, it says, and notes the depth of the resource and supply chain needed to build subs. The US has had to set up special labour training, and also partner, not contract, sub builders and contractors to manage their cash flow.

The report comments on whether Australia can be part of the US geopolitical stance, when Richard Marles has said we won’t automatically engage on Taiwan, yet AUKUS is posited on that. It wonders if we wouldn’t do better with a range of alternative defence outlays. In any case if we bought eight Virginia subs for US$42 billion all up at current prices we’d get them far sooner than drawing board AUKUS SSNs (US$384 billion). Yet our Vice-Admiral Jonathan Mead dismissed the report in our Senate as “academic”.

Peter Dutton and his backers portrayed the prime minister as weak. The Labor campaign portrayed him as an everyman: the slightly daggy dog lover. David Pocock has exposed the real Anthony Albanese; the sly dealmaker and faction manipulator who won the west for Labor by selling out generations of his fellow Australians to the interests of tax-shy fossil fuel corporations.

Only anyone who still hangs up a Christmas stocking would believe the deal with Woodside and the Cook Government hadn’t been sealed before the voting booths opened.

Pocock’s revelations also expose the straight out lies we’ve knowingly been fed by both Labor and Coalition Governments since they fell over themselves writing the lame contracts that failed to secure our domestic gas supply or establish a nest egg for the nation’s future.

But don’t wait around for Albanese to grow a backbone. His light on the hill has ocean views.

Re Samantha Hepburn’s article: The Swiss village of Blatten was flattened by a collapsing glacier the day Murray Watt approved the North West Shelf gas project. The hanging glacier in Chile no longer hangs. The Manning River very recently reached its highest flood level ever. Whole villages in the Pacific face extinction by flooding.

There have been terrible bushfires in the US, Portugal, Canada and Australia. Where are you coming from Mr Watt?

In WA, we have just seen the science on pollution damage to the rock art from the existing gas plant deliberately manipulated by, or through, the WA Government. This, by eliminating from a graph produced by a Curtin University study the interim limit based on real world, not lab data. Five pollution stations exceeded the real world interim limit.

The decision is a second slap in the face to the Aboriginal people, after the Juukan Gorge cave debacle, and to anyone who values human cultural heritage.

Certainly, any expansion of the gas plant to accommodate the Browse field should be at the Maitland industrial area west of Karratha, as a study for the Shire of Roebourne recommended for the existing plant, before it was built.

Tell the government to scrap the DIV 296 Super legislation. Replace it with a new one that sets the limit of all TSB — Total Superannuation Balance — to a maximum of $3 million. Any excess must be taken out, or face a heavy penalty at personal tax rate of 49.5% + Medicare Levy.

After all the Liberal Party, under John Howard and Peter Costello, legislated unlimited accumulations of super balances with the most generous concessions.

I cannot at all understand the insistence of Western leaders and influencers in focusing so much blame on Israel and Netanyahu for the horror of Gaza and the plight of the Palestinian people … when they know damned well that this holocaust is being controlled by the Americans and can thus be stopped or moderated b them at any time.

And of course, the statehood question can also be resolved for the Palestinians by a stroke of the American pen.

Clearly, they prefer to dump it all on Israel (despite the effect this is having on the global rise of antisemitism) than risk their precious relations with the generous, though reliably vengeful, Americans.

Most mental ill-health, whoever experiences it, is preventable. That means that it does not have to happen at all. It is not in most cases genetic or neurological in origin, but is instead caused by ambient determinants – anything from bullying to financial and employment distress to lack of hope in a desirable and sustainable future to childhood abuse and trauma, which in all of its foms accounts for an exceptionally high incidence of problems throughout life.

None of this is usually considered, and prevention usually means waiting until somebody needs help, which isn’t prevention at all, but at best, early intervention.

We have systemically failed public mental health systems across the entire country due to decades of government neglect and under-funding. What we should also be seeing much more of is a radical questioning of what is wrong in our society, in our families, in our employment opportunities and conditions, in the behaviour of government and employers, in all of the now permanent stress factors to which we are subjected, and which young children are already suffering from, which are the real causes of so much mental ill-health.

How much of that could be prevented?

I would have thought that Ms Broinowski would ensure her facts were checked before commenting. Bezalel Smotrich is not the defence minister, but finance minister. Katz is the defence minister. Both equally vile.

Ed: This has been corrected.

Our John Laurence Menadue might be 90 years old… but right now we need him as our prime minister, and our minister for defence and our ministers for at least half a dozen other ministries. Give him all those jobs.

What an open-minded, intelligent, experienced and extremely well-educated Australian he is.

John Menadue has written correctly and persuasively about Australia’s failure to engage with Asia, and about our failure to try to understand the region. The fact is that Asian studies, and, in particular, China studies, have gone backwards over the last two decades. He lists various attempts at progress, and there is no point in repeating them. But he is absolutely right to criticise the failure of these efforts and absolutely right that “it is time to do something about it”.

The reasons for these multiple failures are complex. But I believe the main one is the deeply-rooted Sinophobia in Australian culture. And it is an irrational phobia.

China’s is an ancient and deeply embedded culture, but a study of its history tells me that the Chinese are basically peaceful. China is not a threat to Australian security. This fear is kept alive at present by the American obsession at being overtaken by a country they have become used to thinking of as inferior.

Decades of engagement with China have taught me that the Chinese demand respect, but do not seek domination. They want not hegemony, but to be part of a multipolar world. And that seems reasonable to me.

This article is very well written. I think US influence is very pervasive and instituitionalised. In 2023, The Age published two separate reports stating the Oz government has approved several US generals and admirals and CIA operatives to be based here. I did not read of any public comments or reactions. Under their watchful eyes, any major policy changes in the interest of Oz will be very difficult.

Most of our citizens have poor Asia literacy, let alone proficiency in Asian languages. I suggest changing our history syllabus (50%) to cover all the major civilisations and religions (Western/Christianity, Chinese, Indian, Islam, Buddhism) as a start. Learning Indonesian ought to be the next step as it is widely spoken in for or five ASEAN countries. In this way, our citizens will slowly become more comfortable with our geography.

In terms of security and defence, Oz needs to be more independent. Brian Farrell, a British historian in his book, The defence and fall of Singapore stated that the British Government was nearly broke in the 1920s. It could not maintain the home fleet and the Far East fleet. Hence 15000 diggers in Singapore should have been in PNG.

Today, the US debt is US$36 trillion!

The Jakarta Post editorialises bravely by recalling how Indonesia’s vibrant democratic tapestry has been woven “of our blood and tears”. But the weaving of that tapestry is still going on with the blood and tears of West Papua.

We have a regional problem to face, namely how we define the TNI’s ongoing West Papuan operations even while the 27 years is being celebrated, even as we are told an ominous revision of the TNI Law comes into force focusing upon the expansion of “military operations other than war”.

Is the Jakarta Post expecting us, as regional friends, to join with the editorial in forgetting what the “coming of democracy” has meant for West Papua and for Melanesia after 64 years of Indonesian “settlement” of a territory with such indigenous human and mineral wealth?

The Jakarta Post editorial raises an issue for us even as we turn to openly face all in our Asian and Southwest Pacific region with peaceful face-to-face post-colonial neighbourliness. But how are we then to speak out against the unjust colonisation of Melanesian West Papua, in some quarters justified by a militarising ideology that construes Indonesia as the “Father of all Nesias”?

In the 1930s, trade unions took a stand and banned the shipping of war materials to Japan. Those shipments stopped.

We are still shipping war materials to Israel.

Why not now, instead of the same weasel words like “we support the tw0-state solution” favoured by our government? And just about anybody, apart from the government of Israel which screams “never” at every opportunity?

Have you just been too gutted by successive Liberal governments? Or you don’t want to embarrass Albo?

These religious maniacs need to be stopped, now!

The recent federal election presented me with a most unwelcome and unpalatable “less bad” choice. Dutton’s Coalition had little appeal, and Albanese’s Labor not much more. But, being a life-long supporter of the “left”, I held my nose and voted for my local Labor candidate. I wish her, and the government of which she is a part, well.

And then there is Palestine.

By refusing to condemn Israel for the most recent ethnic cleansing in that blood-soaked land, Albanese and and his cabinet have made Australia, and by extension all Australians, complicit in what is happening over there. Their collective silence is deafening. For that I utterly despise them.

Courage? Honour? Backbone? Nowhere that I can see.

Why but for the purpose of re-election should the Coalition ever have existed? The L/ NP has, in most instances, been in minority government.

Generally there is a difference on many levels between Australians from the country and Australians from the city similar to the difference between weather in the country and climate in the city. The ongoing climate wars show no signs of abating. It is similar to the difference between the quarter-acre blocks and the farm fiefdom.

Several recent election results are a classic example, with the LNP drifting or being driven to the Nats’ views on climate, mining and women.

By taking the Nats’ path, the LNP lost many seats in the cities over several elections and held seats in the country. A shift in bias to the Libs would see the opposite result.

Like all good royalist marriages, they should/will stay together for the good of the Crown and we the voting public will have to endure the spares (ex-prime ministers).

I love your work, Henry Reynolds, and I agree with your assessment of the depraved injustice Palestinians have been subjected to. I do however, disagree with the sentence “Moscow’s annexation of the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine is an international outrage”, because as a historian, surely one must be aware of what led to this situation.

Hint, Henry, have you not heard of the US-initiated Maidan Coup, the subsequent discriminatory language and social service laws against Ukraine’s ethnic Russian community, the refusal of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians to be overnight treated as second-class citizens and the subsequent eight-year siege of the Donbas and Lugansk by Ukrainian US armed Azov troops?

Surely, Henry, you may also recall that the Russian-speaking Ukrainians begged Putin to intervene on their behalf for eight years, and, after two broken Minsk Accords, and a massive build-up of Ukrainian forces in February 2022 to kill even more citizens of those regions, Putin intervened, only to pull back two weeks later to arrange a peace agreement in Ankara, signed by both parties. But a la Minsk, Boris Johnson flew in and somehow convinced the “innocent” Zelenskyy to declare it Niet and void.

Ghaith Krayem needs to be reassured that many non-Muslims support him, and incidentally, despite huge efforts to blur the picture, we are not anti-Jewish. But many of us are shocked that a state presumably founded to realise Jewish values in practice has gone far beyond a reasonable response to 7 October 2023.

It seems as if Israel is now prepared to Hannibal the remaining hostages, who could have been freed under the early 2025 ceasefire, which it abrogated. I feel sure large numbers of people have written to the prime minister and foreign minister about the continuing massacre, but if my own experience is anything to go by, there has been no response. The prime minister’s webform doesn’t even acknowledge receipt.

I have now submitted FOI applications to both ministers for all correspondence and emails from the public relating to the Israeli response to the Hamas attacks from Gaza in October 2023.

Thanks Jack for the excellent insight.

Andrew Hastie is likely to be a significant figure in the future for conservative leadership. He concedes that the future of the Liberal Party is not assured. The Nats are a bit more solid based, but are similarly affected by divergent views.

The Independents didn’t surge this month but they are a consolidated phenomenon, representing those who would vote Liberal or Nats if those parties had evolved.

Is it time for a reformation of a progressive, modern “New” Liberal-National Party, leaving the Trumpist conservatives and SkyTV mob to regroup with the dregs of One Nation, et al, as the Conservative Regressive Australia Party?

Of course, education in Australia needs reform. For one thing, if public education funding matched the revenue that goes to private schools (fees plus government subsidies), private schools could not claim the superiority which they need to survive.

Also, fewer parents would feel the need to pay for private education. Not only would this level the educational playing field, but it would have a downward effect on the cost of living. I mean, who needs to fork out an extra $5000 a year, per kid, for the same education? As Liz Kirkby used to say, “Public schools should be so well funded that nobody in their right minds would want to pay for a private education.”

But, more importantly (with regard to the current devastation going on in Gaza) the government funding of religious schools in Australia is subsidising both Jewish and Islamic schools to propagate myths that spread distrust and hatred. Surely, it would be better if all students attended public schools where they could learn to get along with each other?

Every politician (except The Greens) and every university chancellor and vice-chancellor should be compelled to read John Menadue’s article “Weaponisation of ‘antisemitism’ hides primitive savagery of Palestinian genocide” every day before breakfast.

They should also have to read Senator David Shoebridge’s statement, “this isn’t about a political stance – this is about when you see a genocide happening in real time on your phone and on your TV, when you see thousands of children being killed, when you see starvation being used as a weapon of war, you have this, I think, basic human responsibility to do everything you can to stop it. And if you take a political hit from some people because you do that, well, you take the political hit. Because you have to speak up.”

This should be mandatory until there is action on Israel’s genocide in Palestine… because the politicians are the people who have the power to act as so many Australians want them to, in order to end the actions of this murderous regime. BDS now!