Archives: Letters to the Editor

One can only wonder at J.D. Vance’s mental mindloops in arranging an audience with the late Pope Francis. He seems unaware of the monstrous behaviour of his regime in consigning his fellow human beings to CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo or Terrorism Confinement Centre) in El Salvador, a country named, ironically, after Jesus

Among the prisoners deported (with Protestant US politician Kristi Noem in front of them, seemingly approving their incarceration without trial), were many of his fellow Roman Catholics. Pope Francis also, like so many of us including the US Conference of [Catholic] Bishops, cared deeply about Gaza, yet the US regime under Donald Trump and Vance continues the Biden policy of actively supporting the wholesale murder of Palestinians.

Will there be a “road to Damascus” moment for J.D.?

The article referred to is a direct, powerful exposition of the situation to which we have devolved in the face of the relentless Israeli destruction of Palestinians.

Human decency has been supplanted by the lust for electoral success. While this is less than surprising for the LNP — despite the actual humanity displayed back in the days of Fraser et al — it is a massive abandonment of the basic principles that once were a part of the Labor credo.

We have a mountain of irrefutable evidence in the history of Germany post-World War II that a state that relentlessly pursues genocide and international war criminality is held in repulsion for decades by the rest of the world.

Supporting the foul, current Zionist activity and ignoring the massacre, genocide, rapacious pillage and other offences against humanity being employed by the Zionist/IDF oligarchy will rebound on Israel. Such support is in no way an expression of combatting antisemitism, it is cowardice in the face of Zionist bullying.

And it lies like scum on polluted waste on the top of the bodies, the lives, the hopes for decency of the Palestinian people.

Before even reading this article, I found the map said it all. The Union Jack trumped the Southern Cross.

If a third/fourth-generation Australian like myself finds it offensive, think how the non-Anglos in our multicultural country feel, Understand why, after leaders like Howard, Abbott etc, we still have that flag and the LNP selects Dutton for their next PM.

Now read the article. Vote as you see the flag. It’s a democracy.

J-Tariff was an off-peak circuit which charged a cheaper rate to encourage the use of electricity during low demand, largely at night. When coal-powered alternators were unable to shut down, they were run during uneconomical periods of low demand.

Now the uneconomical times are during the day and the power providers want to charge the solar providers (householders) to add to the grid. I doubt if they are charging corporate solar providers.

Providers have never had more flexibility in the electronic and telecommunications control of equiptment eg J-Tariff had mechanical/electrical time clocks.

In the age of capitalism and neoliberalism, rather than encouraging local householders by the use of a modern form of J-Tariff, companies cry poor, threaten loss of jobs, cuts to campaign funds, journalists trumpet the line and the public react. The politicians fall in line and the taxpayers pay up.

If I remember correctly, J-Tariff was set up by public utilities. Private utilities are greedy. It seems there are two ways to solve a common problem.

Describing Kim Beazley as “well meaning“ pretty much describes the way he has fooled his way through his public life, second only to Anthony Albanese who, if he pulls off a win, will surely be the great Australian “nice guy but…” (not that I’m any fan of Peter Dutton).

Everything about this election, from the constant guessing when it would be held to the sad passing of the pope has been about keeping the voters in the dark. We have seen publicly-funded electioneering by the major parties for 12+ months before the election was announced with all the talk being about when, not about policy. This was followed by the school holidays and two major public holidays, then pre-polling before any policies are announced, let alone costed. It’s a scam.

To expect any reform at the cash cow retirement home for politicians and generals, a war memorial before constitutional and Parliamentary reform, is to once again fall for the old “look over there, there is nothing to see here” trick.

Vote for me!

The wall between the public sector and the private sector has been well and truly broken . The crossing of that line is at the core of every crisis Australia/the world is now facing. Everything from the health crisis to the climate crisis is a result of the blurring of this line.

Failing to understand this most basic principal of society is at the core of every issue we now face.

Put simply, the job of the private sector is to make a profit and the job of government is to govern for the good of all society. When you lose sight of these two facts, one or other will profit above the other.

In the case of our medical system, the ever-growing presence of the private sector has put profit ahead of service and the results are long queues, ramping, co-payments, poor service in regional areas etc. If these problems are ever to be fixed, it will require government intervention and money which can’t happen as long as we have the “if you elect them they will put taxes up” mantra.

My husband and I swapped primary earner roles when the youngest of our three children was 18 months old. It took me a long time to realise they existed in practical silence. No chatter that women do instinctively with children, teaching language and communication.

My youngest is now a silent man. I agree with sharing responsibilities, but some parental eduction is required to make well-rounded humans.

Housing Minister Hal Pawson is certainly ready to get on with the job!

However, I am surprised that his approaches to solving the appalling unavailability of adequate rental housing are all market-based: expanding “Build to Rent” and increasing rent assistance. I’m no economist, but it seems to me that government helping renters to pay excessive private rents is a convoluted way of solving the problem.

I hope such a competent minister will not be afraid to consider public housing as an important element of housing provision. Surely, we have learnt that market mechanisms cannot solve every problem? The Commonwealth could use the National Housing Strategy and a system of tied grants to the states to give the latter no choice but to get on with the job.

Thank you for reposting Peter Varghese’s AFR article, which I wouldn’t otherwise have seen. Could you also please pursue some other perspectives? With his strong international affairs credentials I hesitate to question what I have missed or failed to grasp in the underpinning narrative about “The Enemy” to us, that is China.

It’s not as if we are located where Taiwan is, for example, or even — say — Singapore which hasn’t seemed to have taken “sides”. I struggle to understand the underlying animosity towards China in a discussion of next steps in what he says is becoming a more multipolar world – it feels like the schoolyard.

If, as he says, “we must deepen our regional relationships”, don’t we want “deep but clear-eyed relationships” with all our neighbours, not just China, and with the US too, for that matter? Surely, we are capable of having adult conversations and walking and chewing gum at the same time in all our international relationships?

Also, and perhaps I am naive, but I do wonder to what extent building relations and trust with China is a chicken and egg situation – how much are we creating The Enemy and mistrust between us?

After many decades of listening to the “reds under the bed” sub-text in Australian journalism, it is totally refreshing to see that others more capable than me can see the reality that our interests, in all aspects, are those of our region.

If only such common sense was displayed, in what to my mind is a totally discredited Australian media outlook that is Sino-phobic and completely blind to the hysteria, lies and machinations of our “good friend”, the US. Their interests should certainly not be ours.

There have been times in the past when I thoroughly disagreed with a lot of what Ross Gittins wrote. This is not one of those occasions.

His article explains exactly why Peter Dutton should not ever be let near the nearest Canberra roundabout to The Lodge.

Dutton’s pathetic claims on 15 April about the Indonesian “revelations”, suggesting it is a failure on the part of the prime minister, the defence minister and the foreign minister not to know about a questionable report in an aviation journal, when even the Indonesian defence minister and/or foreign minister were unaware, is a singular example of why he is totally unfit for high office.

This is a person who throws entire communities under the bus when one person that is “alleged” to be part of a particular community is accused of a crime.

His chief apologist, the shadow Home Affairs spokesperson, who is a walking IPA policy salesman, is still trying to smear Wong, Albanese and Marles over this Russian base nonsense which even the Russians have now denied.

Paul Keating put it best, describing Dutton as “a charlatan” and “wicked and cynical”. Add intellectually moribund to that, as well.

I have concerns that Australia is moving in the wrong direction. I feel we should replace AUKUS with a more future-based military need, which I feel is not against China. Australia has skills that are not being utilised to develop drone technology, for instance, as well as anti-drone technology.

My concerns about buying from the US is that American equipment is usually so poorly designed. Also, any foreign-designed software system is often built with backdoors that enable the equipment to be disabled. (The Ukranians discovered this during their drone attack on Russian shipping).

I feel Australia needs to have stronger ties to our neighbours, particularly with trade and military agreements: Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand, as well as our other Southeast Asian friends. I would like to see a free-trade Pacific zone to counter the current silly antics of the US.

Personally, I would also like to see the end of the US surveillance bases in Australia, something I suspect Gough Whitlam was considering that perhaps led to the CIA destabilising the then Australian Government and instilling fear in all subsequent governments.

Local resilience is required, I feel.

Good to hear Hamish McDonald on ABC Radio Sydney on 16 April running through with Stephen Duckett the many and various steps that have to be taken for the public sector to acquire Northern Beaches Hospital from Healthscope.

Healthscope have offered to dissolve their ownership, but there is a Canadian investor who will no doubt want their money back. But how about we stop doing this with public-private partnerships?

How about, instead of getting the ambulance to the bottom of the cliff, we start at the top and don’t go into these PPP arrangements in the first place?

They have a poor history of corporate and clinical governance in healthcare in Australia. How about we express some confidence in the regulation of the public sector and plan, build and operate in the public sector?

If that means higher taxes, so be it.

Ross Fitzgerald correctly asserts that alcohol is a significant sources of illness, trauma, premature death and social distress for users and people close to them. However, “in terms of its harm, alcohol is not by far Australia’s most dangerous drug”. While the proportion of the Australian population that smokes tobacco has fallen dramatically, tobacco is still the drug which causes the most illness and premature death.

In terms of disease burden in Australia (as measured with DALYs which combines premature death with years living with a disability), in 2024 tobacco was the top behavioural risk factor and alcohol was third. Illicit drug use was fourth. Of the total DALYs lost, tobacco was responsible for 7.6%, alcohol 4.1% and illicit drugs 2.9%.

Looking at only years of life lost due to premature death, tobacco caused 11.7%, alcohol 5.4% and illicit drugs 4.2%, together accounting for more than a fifth.

Alcohol is, however, a bigger problem than tobacco in both sexes before age 50, when tobacco leaps ahead.

Tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs all cause significant health and social problems in Australia. To reduce that harm, more resources should be invested in evidence-based prevention and management of all three.

In this article, the Edgars assume that by having more children we can maintain society as it is today.

In the seventies when the Paul R. Ehrlich published The Population Bomb there were 2.5 billion people on Earth. It was a time of massive famines in Africa. Ehrlich warned that we had reached the limit of what the natural world could support without borrowing from the future.

Young women, like I was then, concerned for others and the planet, adopted the meme “replacement only”. My husband and I had two children. It was considered immoral to have more when other children starved.

However, multinational companies taking over food production for profit, did just that, borrowed from the future. We are now nearly nine billion people.

We are depleting natural resources at a permanently damaging rate and climate change will exacerbate that. Informed and intelligent young women are taking the decision not to have children, not necessarily for the narrow economic reasons the Edgars give here. We need to rethink how we live, not simply breed more children.

Jack Waterford, while fairly critical of Peter Dutton, omits the latest clue to the nature of a Dutton-led Australia. Jacinta Price, full of confidence, announced to a campaign rally on 12 April that the Coalition would “Make Australia Great Again”.

Dutton decided to go for broke at the ensuing press conference and gave Price free rein. She doubled down, saying ideologically-driven Labor was ruining the country, she would do an “audit” of government waste and “reset” the curriculum. Price openly aligns with far-right group Advance, which is committed to Australia being “centred once more on the founding freedoms of its mainstream values”.

One assumes “founding freedoms” do not refer to Indigenous rights. Those who use the word “ideology” as a pejorative seem unaware of their own ideological drive. Price may believe she is a conservative, but her temperament and vocabulary all speak to a much more radical, Trumpian hostility and divisiveness.

In the event of a Coalition win, she would work within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

I am seeing an imbalance in articles extolling the virtues of immigration to Australia. There is no doubt that we benefit in so many ways, culturally, socially, via innovation, investment and economically. However, there appears to be little consideration of the cost of an increasing population. The question is, what is the right number and mix?

World population growth is the single biggest contributor to greenhouse gasses and global heating. Growing populations encroach on prime agricultural land, they require more water and energy. They displace wildlife and reduce the areas available for outdoor recreation. Growing populations require a massive investment in new housing, transport infrastructure, schools, hospitals, sewerage systems, playing fields etc.

Water shortages in Australia are already becoming chronic. We are kidding ourselves if we believe that the rapid increase in population in Australia has not contributed to the so-called housing shortage. We cannot claim that it is only a supply-side problem.

It is not just about immigration, it is about numbers, worldwide and in Australia. As Abul Rizvi pointed out, we need a plan. A proper plan and hopefully one that does not commence with the assumption that all immigration is good.

I’m not defending any war or actions, wish we could end them all today. However, the sinking of the Belgrano has never been declared a war crime except by a few groups of anti-war protesters. Even the captain, Hector Bonzo, stated years later, “It was not a war crime but an act of war.”

Reading Marcus Reubenstein’s article made the penny drop. I watched the Four Corners program and had felt very uncomfortable with the overly hawkish reporting.

Where was the balance, I thought. In fact, the ABC had omitted to let the viewers know that this was an American production (PBS), was from last year and had been edited. Shame on the ABC.

Years ago I had the opportunity to make a submission to the UK inquiry on Iraq headed by Lord Chilcot. Our own government never held one.

Today readers of P and I have the opportunity to make submissions on AUKUS to the UK parliamentary inquiry, as our own parliament has shown no signs of opening up the debate.

Here is the portal.

Good on the SMH for pushing for an Australian inquiry, but don’t hold your breath.

I do not believe Donald Trump is going to be in office for very long. Vance is being quiet because he suspects this to be the case.

Yes, Australia needs to get rid of AUKUS and buy military weapons from a range of suppliers, including Japan and the EU. We need weapons for defence, not ones that help us join the US in more wars.

As soon as Labor wins the election, they need to start taxing mining companies that are getting our resources free. The money needs to be used to build housing and lots of it. I would build big in Canberra and Adelaide because they are nice places to live with plenty of resources.

Very good idea to cosy up to China.

When the Americans start their war in the Middle East so that Israel can grab the rest of the land it wants, we need to make sure our regional security is our priority. Certainly we should not get involved.

The Europeans need to do an agreement with Russia and Ukraine that looks after the security for all of them.

It is good to see the persistent P&I campaign on this key strategic and economic matter bearing fruit. I would say that the recent public interventions by Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating were also crucial. Reviewing AUKUS is now clearly on the mainstream agenda for the next government.

We need a new defence minister as part of a desirable post-election reshuffle. Richard Marles is too compromised; he is a US defence industry mouthpiece now.

Many Australians may agree with Barb Dadd’s views on Syria as they have been pushed by the mainstream media for 14 years. However, that should not be a reason to give them an airing on P&I when John Menadue, P&I’s founder, has made a point of wanting to “tackle the issues swept aside by mainstream media”. He wrote, “Consistently, Pearls and Irritations publishes informed analysis and commentary on issues that matter to Australians…”

If you google “Pearls and Irritations + Syria”, you will find a long list of articles on Syria by analysts such as Dr Jeremy Salt (former Melbourne University academic and author of The Unmaking of the Middle East); Seymour Hersh (veteran investigative journalist); Jeffrey Sachs (Professor of Sustainable Development, Columbia University); Aaron Maté (investigative journalist and author); Chris Ray (journalist who has written for SMH’s Good Weekend on Syria); Rick Sterling (journalist whose interview with Peter Ford, a former UK ambassador to Syria, was recently published by P&I); Kevork Almassian (an Armenian Syrian analyst and podcaster); and Sawsan Madina (former head of SBS Television).

Since December 2022, I have also had articles on Syria published by P&I. I take the task of writing on Syria for P&I very seriously, invariably spending days doing research and checking sources. The editors welcomed references, so I included hyperlinks in my articles.

Does Dadd’s article indicate that P&I is no longer interested in publishing genuine, independent analysis on Syria? I hope not, especially when the people of Syria are now being led by the former head of al-Qaeda in Syria, when Syria is carved up, and when Christians, Alawites, Shia and members of other minorities are being slaughtered by the takfiri groups aligned with the interim president’s regime. Sunni Muslims, who publicly oppose the massacres of civilians, are being killed as well.

These are dangerous times. We desperately need a publication like P&I to offer an alternative to the mainstream media, and so to point out the lies that keep taking our country into catastrophic, illegal wars. Professor Sachs refers to them as “phoney wars”, ones that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu urged America to wage. Will Australia soon follow the US and Israel into a war against Iran — without any substantial opposition — because we are so poorly served by our media?

We desperately need P&I to stay true to John Menadue’s vision.

Most of the social problems we now face in this country have slowly evolved since the rise of neoliberalism. I say slowly evolved because neoliberalism has profited by leaching the fat from government-built projects of the past e.g the PMG, Telstra and the NBN. How many times can one government-built institution be sold off? (I’m told the retrieval of the copper PMG network is still profitable) How many times can these privatised companies come back with their hands out to fix no reception black spots?

In South Australia, the them LNP premier bought a variety of electricity supply companies which were in government hands largely because regional South Australia couldn’t get reliable electricity supplies from small local generators. Then they were sold off and now once again we are talking about how to fund power stations and power distribution, and renewables and nuclear are a smokescreen in the discussion. The real discussion is why the private owners aren’t funding these projects. Under neoliberalism, they should be .

What we have is a hybrid neoliberalism where the government funds infrastructure and the capitalists profit until the inevitable upgrade is required. Then the government has to step in again.

Take a long look at the Whyalla story and its history in South Australia. Who built what, who really profited? We are now in the “it can’t afford to fail” government handout phase .

Then look into the stories around social housing in South Australia, namely the housing trust ,

We don’t have toll roads in South Australia, but across the border I’m told people have apps to avoid the tolls and the $300+ per month tolls. In South Australia, we no longer have a higways department, but we can’t get a road built and, when we do, the talk is all about debt.

Then there is the health/hospital system where the poor line up to be triaged and the better-off get same day service, although that too is becoming a thing of the past. This is a sign that another federal bailout is on the cards, while ambulances ramping is a nightly occurrence.

Neoliberalism may work in other countries (I doubt it), but it is a failure in Australia. This country has a big land mass and a small population. The system of neoliberalism and no taxes has failed miserably.

We need a better system.

Re Wang Wen’s article today. The tariff war has seemingly been more or less staved off for 90 days for most countries except for China, only hours after being activated. In which time, according to Donald Trump, US$2 billion has already been collected.

Why the pause? Well, according to Trump, “[he] thought that people were getting a bit yippy, a little bit afraid.” “It looked pretty glum, I guess they say it was the biggest day in financial history.”

He said: ”I know what the hell I’m doing”. “No other president would have done what I did.” ”World leaders are kissing my ass.”

He said he had thought about it over the last few days, and the pause comes “from the heart”.

China’s continued tariffs are based on the lack of respect China has shown to the world’s markets, according to Trump. Well, then, what about Trump’s actions over the last few days?

After 2½ months of dictatorial power, not the one day he promised, he has scuttled any plans by Congress to intervene in the tariffs.

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, all this erratic behaviour is part of a plan. Really?

Let Trump finish his move to reduce water efficiency, after criticising California for not having enough water to control the LA fires. Seemingly immune to the burnt out suburbs seen this week on the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent, he said, “I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair.”

And the world has got to endure four more years of this. Maybe more, if Bannon has his way.

This article begins with the following unproven allegations: “Remember Bashar al-Assad? The man who crushed his own people under a mountain of rubble and fear? Who turned peaceful protests into mass graves, dropped barrel bombs on neighbourhoods, and used chemical weapons on children?”

Seymour Hersh, among many, many others, including UN investigators, who refused to sign the trumped-up report on the so-called chemical attacks, have proven that the lies about Assad were equal to the charge that Saddam had WMDs.

Why does Pearls and Irritations publish these US claims, crap and propaganda?

No doubt Barb Dadd writes with the best of intentions but linking Bashar al-Assad to some of the world’s worst villains is wide of the mark. Assad was a victim of the United States’ wrong-headed desire for regime change to benefit its national resource exploiters to the detriment of the host country.

To that end it armed rebel Muslim extremist groups and set them to undermine the Assad regime. Russia supported Assad (who headed a secular Christian country).

But with the aid of US weaponry, the Muslim extremists were able to oust Assad, replacing his regime with a Taliban-esque ragtag government of religious zealots who are now killing every Christian (or non-Muslim) they can find, brutally.

Most of the death and destruction attributed to Assad’s forces was caused by the US supported insurrectionists. In the process they produced another Afghanistan. Well done to the US. Again.

I am surprised that John Stace’s article fails to consider informed media commentary about the degree of involvement of the Israeli military in the events immediately following the Hamas breakout and attacks which occurred on 7 October, 2023.

There was no mention of the Israeli military’s Hannibal doctrine or of the role of the military’s helicopter gunships in the violence which occurred after the attacks commenced, or of their impact on Israeli party-goers attending the rave event that had been curiously relocated to the very edge of Gaza and inadequate security offered for the event.

There was no questioning of some of the more extreme Israeli allegations of atrocities against civilians as an integral feature of the breakout, particularly the alleged rape of Israeli women or horrific violence inflicted on babies.

Can I humbly suggest that Stace read some backdated articles from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, or in the online blog, The Grayzone, or pieces by the independent journalist, Aaron Maté, in order to broaden his understanding of what occurred on that fateful day?

Bob Douglas’ article raises the existential threats facing us.

Yet Trump has just boosted coal and is ending any US green plan. His latest statement that [any resulting sea level rise] will increase the amount of waterfront property is just mindblowingly stupid and callous.

In parts of the Pacific, it threatens to sink all property.

I have not seen any confirmation of the veracity of this article in the mainstream media. I have checked Snopes who also cannot trace its veracity.

If it is actually happening, why isn’t it all over the media?

I would really like to know the truth and not some dreamt-up thought bubble analysis.

Editor’s note: Not sure what you consider to be a reliable publication, but you can read a similar story on Bloomberg.

There has been a genocide going on in the Gaza Strip for more than a year, but one does not see coverage of it in the so-called mainstream media.