Archives: Letters to the Editor

Health is an essential service, and undeniably costly. So, currently, are electricity and water supply. When the latter were taxpayer-owned and government-operated, these services were offered to consumers, domestic, commercial and industrial, at affordable rates – yet government still made a profit. This revenue was thus able to cross-subsidise services that were not operated for profit but were relatively costly to provide, for example, health and education. Seems like a no-brainer.

I’d love to see the billions we’re spending on AUKUS alternatively invested in utility buy-back and reinstatement of government-owned enterprises. This might just help attract investment by reducing costs of production for the private sector, reduce government sector outlay, and generate more to invest in public services that have a net cost.

The amount we now pay for electricity is jaw-droppping. Imagine just half of that profit-pool flowing to hospitals and health services, and add to that the potential cost savings through reduced expenditire on electricity.

I want to thank Tony Kevin for his clarity and insights about the Bankstown nurses. Many years ago I worked in mental health. Though the work changed over time, the learning didn’t. I saw what the nurses were saying as angry fantasies.. and admit that at times I have has similar thoughts about people that get under my skin.

For instance, I have been wishing Trump’s injury required more than a sanitary napkin on his ear. It was clear to me that the agent was a smooth-talking manipulator who not only led the nurses on but then exposed them to punishment which they did not deserve. I wish he had also made reference to Albanese’s obvious manipulation by the Zionist lobby via his lawyer.

This ties into Sawsan Madina’s other great story. about how one defines antisemitism. Noting the languages spoken by the pre-Christian peoples of what even the Romans called Palestine, it’s another attempt, as I see it, to patent something that is not exclusively theirs like the Holocaust.

This is more a question than a letter. The article ‘What can one say about Israel without being called an antisemetic?’ by Sawsan Madina raises such great questions.

Who was consulted? How were they chosen? and many more.

These questions should be answered, but I am not sure who or what organisation would be willing or able to do so.

I would hope that Pearls could follow up. This definition stifles so much commentary that should be heard.

Fifty years ago I learned of the existence of Pine Gap. I personally agree that we should be responsible for our own international policy, especially in our own geopolitical region. And, our own security.

But what would, or could, we do about bases like Pine Gap? I appreciate there may be benefits for us in having this facility in the middle of our country. But it would also, surely, be a major impediment to us forging a truly independent relationship with any nation that might one day be an American target.

I’d be most grateful if someone could explain whether this sovereign nation of Australia is even able to close down bases like Pine Gap.

I agreed with everything Daniel Levy says: that Bob Marley’s song that the people of the world are one love, one heart is a very beautiful way of saying we are all people. We are all born equal.

Also since Netanyahu has said he intends to resume the war, and the West Bank is being ethnically cleansed, it is imperative that countries of goodwill send peace-keeping forces under the auspices of the United Nations to the occupied Palestinian Territory to ensure the Palestinian people aren’t erased,

The reconstruction of Gaza and the resumption of vital services should take place as soon as possible, and the Palestinian people at last should live in safety and dignity in a sovereign state of their own.

We don’t live in a democracy! One of the basics of democracy is the separation of church and state. Take a look around to see how few places that’s happening. The separation of church and state should always have included the separation of state and corporations.

The majority of crises the world is facing are as a result of the failure of the separation of government and corporations. For example, because of the misbehaviour of the banking sector we had the global financial crisis, with government bailing out the banks because they are to big to fail.

This was followed by a costly royal commission. Barely any of its recommendations have been carried out; those that were have been were watered down or repealed. Now the government is having to tell banks how to deal with people in a financial and housing crisis.

I’m thinking that separation from the US should be considered, given that they seem to be central to most modern day crises and that’s before we get to Trump and the latest crisis.

I see the forthright Senator Sarah Henderson has besmirched the Jewish Council of Australia as “a fringe organisation”.

I am sure we would all welcome the chance to examine the due diligence she has undertaken to determine that — for instance — the AJAIC is undeniably a “representative organisation”.

Call me cynical, but I remember a time when the spokesman for the (old, not the current one) Pedestrian Council of Australia was trotted out as the resident expert and mouthpiece for every Australian who walked on the streets. A much-talented man whose name I could never be bothered to remember, he was (much like Alex Ryvchin) a high executive of that august body. None higher: he was, in addition to his role as mouthpiece, the president – or other-titled head honcho position.

While she is at it, Senator Henderson might elucidate us with her views on the offence to mainstream Jewish community of the ABC interviewing anybody from the AJC, given the 500 signatories to the Open Letter repudiating the Zionist actions from concerned Jewish Australian citizens.

It sounds as if the assessment doesn’t deal either with the civil defence response needed if a nuclear-tipped hypersonic missile targets Osborne, or for that matter, Garden Island and Henderson in WA.

The federal government seems to be of the view that such a response is a state government matter, but so far I have been unable to find out what the WA government’s civil defence plan for a nuclear strike on the sub facilities is.

There’s still time to invite the Chinese flotilla to visit Fremantle, and show our goodwill. The Morrison Government invited a three-ship flotilla to visit Sydney in 2019, and the invitation was accepted.

Are they the same trigger-happy people with missiles that shot down Iran Air flight 655, killing 290 passengers, covering it up and awarding the captain and crew a medal?

Not the Chinese or Russians, but those peace-loving Americans!

I’d like to see the universities adopt a similar definition for Islamophobia; i.e., among other things, criticisms of the actions of Islamic states such as Iran and Afghanistan would be considered Islamophobic and subject to the same kind of penalties. Somehow I don’t see this happening. Who is creating division?

How can Israel be the only country immune from criticism? Could we look differently at what is making some Jewish people so fearful at criticism of Israel’s genocide such that they demand unjustifiable laws banning that criticism?

Yes, antisemitism is unpleasant, even hurtful, but paralysing fear-making? The slings and arrows, real and metaphorical, hurled at Jewish Australians have been no worse than post-war Italians and Greeks suffered, Catholics of my childhood, Vietnamese refugees some decades ago, more recent migrants and refugees from Afghanistan and the Middle East, none of whom have had the special consideration given to the Jewish community.

The Holocaust shouldn’t be forgotten, but are we overdoing remembrance? How many Jewish people still suffer intergenerational post-Holocaust trauma? Subjectively, their passed-down fears are real. However, those extreme fears are objectively unfounded. Australia’s racism, verbal rather than inherently physically violent, needs addressing. But should we make more repressive laws or should we treat intergenerational trauma fear as a mental health issue?

The marginal increase in antisemitism since 2023 doesn’t require heavy-handed policing or further lawmaking. But our government should listen to the multitude of raised voices, including Jewish ones, and join in condemning Israel’s genocide in Palestine.

Fantastic protest by Judith, Suzie and Michelle. It exposes the complete hypocrisy of several aspects or our society. You are all brave heroes/heroines.

Of course, China wants to blow the shit out of us. I used to defend Western civilisation, but now I just want the final solution to white nerds that cool lefties want. I have to hate myself and my race and become genosuicidal for you lefties. Everything my grandpa worked for will be taken away by Chinese and laidback movements. Well, let’s just blow up Europe and give it to the Chinese.

Maybe if Russia nuked England and took away the monarchy and stopped them from using elaborate ornate coats of arms in favour of simplistic Americanistic logos, while black and brown people bask in their ancestral culture, you lefties might finally be appeased.

Xi and Putin, send the nukes to London and Washingtion, I say! And just to let you know how progressive I’ve become, also the Taliban should govern Australia, especially their anti-imperialist way of govering women! I can’t wait to be whipped for not staying in the kitchen by you lefties!

May I venture another response to Eric Hunt’s question “what does God think?” One answer is: Who am I to speak for God? Read the book of Job and ask Him yourself.

Christians, however, have is an obligation to proclaim “good news”. So let me try.

First, we proclaim that creation is good. This cannot mean the absence of pain. But if you had the power to switch off the universe with its good and evil, would you do it? Neither does God, mercifully.

Second, we acknowledge that God sees the pain and experiences it. This is the meaning of Jesus’s life. Belief in the resurrection affirms the ultimate triumph of love over pain and evil.

So why does He not remove evils, especially those undeserved? One answer is that the power to do good or evil is inherent in the nature of things, which we recognise is, on balance, good.  Another is that “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison”. A third is that God patiently waits for us to choose goodness and love, which is good of Him to do and is the road to fulfillment.

The only way the US would defend our shores is if we ceded our sovereignty to its emperor. We are a defenceless minnow in a sea of turmoil: because of the AUKUS “pact”; this must be blindingly obvious to the rest of the world.

Viewed from the Trump Tower, the prospect of annexing a large, unexploited and underpopulated land mass, rich in rare earths and minerals and other highly desirable commodities, must be compelling, if not irresistable.

Australia, the western front and largest island state in the US of A. Any deal on defence will never be to our advantage, can never be trusted, and will demand servile submission.

I refer to Andrew Farran’s article. We need to remember that just as we are now being asked to put our trust in Peter Dutton, after the Paris 2+2 meeting of Dutton and Marise Payne with their French counterparts, both Dutton and Payne’s official websites assured us that the French submarine deal was going swimmingly, only for AUKUS to surface days later.

Today, a “US fast-attack nuclear submarine has arrived at HMAS Stirling at Garden Island in the first of what is expected to be several visits to Australia this year”, says WAToday.

Which of 11 Oz rare earths companies will be the price? Remember, just as in the Ukraine, we will only find out from the US retrospectively. Or is the three quarters of a billion of our money already handed over enough for AUKUS sub visits? After all Donald’s man wants successive annual cuts of 8% to the US defence budget, so that will affect sub building capacity, and so our three quarter billion won’t avoid pedalling backwards, so maybe it will be a ransom for our rare earths industry.

A lot has been made of the Chinese warships off Australia’s east coast, but much less has been said about the close contact of Australian ships and planes with Chinese planes and ships in the South China Sea.

The question needs to be asked: what are we/they doing so far away from our/their own backyards? Yes, international law says we/they have a right to be there, but is it necessary to be there?

We should all regularly take a walk past the many war memorials dotted across our country and take time to think what percentage of the population of young men and women were killed, damaged for life in wars that were by and large not in defence of our country.

Think about the big brother nations that we were relying on to defend us who actually treated Australians as cannon fodder in wars we had no need to be in.

Before WW2 is quoted, ask was Australia defended or was it a convenient backwater to launch an attack from?

In these Trumpian times, let’s vote in a government that promises to rethink our defence, our need to be defended and from whom.

This article by Tony Kevin brings again into focus the unsavoury practices of the Zionist movement. However, I would like to hear from the two nurses at the centre of this affair.

Maybe I’ve missed it, but I have seen no comments whatsoever from the two nurses themselves.

Have they been silenced? Are they silent by choice? Why did they agree to the interview? What do they think now about their comments?

Surely, their comments would be of great public interest?

What you are suggesting is just another way of indoctrinating children with so-called, and long-debunked, theological truths.

Theological truths are not factual or evidence-based, but simply ideas based on a religion

Why do you select only the Bible as an example of books that greatly affect society? Why not Karl Marx, Chairman Mao, Mein Kampf, The Origin of species, etc, etc? Because they don’t promote creation and other religious fantasies?

Keep your religions, all of them, out of our schools and away from our children.

We now live in a world where rule of law is no longer even an “euphemism”. I am a very hardened person, having fought many morality battle issues through my seven decades, but about a month ago, now well over a year after I forwarded a “video” to the ICC and ICJ in the Hague, where “Israeli” monsters had herded Al Shifa Hospital workers to a “trench” and then summarily “shot them all” (mass execution style).

I then saw a video where innocent Palestinians were “blown up” by more Mk-84 bombs delivered through a port city and an airbase not too many miles to my west here in the sorry murderous filth hole called Washington State.

After the bomb exploded, it had blown “humans” everywhere. One man, hurled to the edge of the dirt road in the destroyed ruins he and others were walking in when the bomb fell and detonated, was “face down”, huddled in the foetal position. When he turned, his head was only half there, one half blown off.

I’ve seen so much of this garbage that I finally had to speak out. Enough! Enough!! Enough!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From the perspective of a polar-orbiting satellite, the new Axis Powers — Russia and America — have got poor little Canada surrounded.

They own 42% of the world’s weaponry and 90% of its nukes. They covet Canada’s natural riches – and care not a damn for its people. All they need to complete the encirclement is Greenland.

Trump’s Pentagon “Night of the Long Knives” was the first step in a deliberate putsch to eliminate rational US military leadership and replace it with fanatics, as he is doing elsewhere in government. As Hitler did with the SA/SS and Wehrmacht.

The Axis will then demand Greenland from Demark and, if denied, will take it. It is 1939 Poland in this analogy. Its acquisition will embolden them to go further.

Then they will pressure Canada to “share” its resources (as they are already doing with Ukraine). Then they will turn nasty and “trump up” a pretext for military action. Facing 90% of the world’s nukes, Europe will be paralysed by fear.

The only issue for Australia is: with whom will we side? Canada or the new Axis of Evil?

I was brought up in a Protestant household and attended church twice most Sundays until I left home at 19. I cannot understand how Christians can apply so much significance to the Old (largely Jewish) Testament often at the expense of the New (completely Christian) Testament.

The first is about a vengeful God not unlike most mythological stories and the second is about a compassionate, all-forgiving Son of God.

It is like comparing the medical practices of the Crimean war to modern day medical practices; a reference to what once the practice of sawed bones and now we have surgeons.

Thanks so much for this article. So many people are nuclear energy fans (they tend to be Dutton fans as well) and dismiss radioactive waste storage problems as “not an issue, safe storage is almost with us”. But happy to have it in their backyards? I haven’t seen any volunteers yet.

We shouldn’t be surprised that radioactive dust is blowing in the wind from mining sites. Because those who live near mines complain of dust and various health issues depending on what is being mined in their locality. Nor should we be surprised that that there are increased cancers, especially in children, near nuclear power plants because there have been questions of similar issues where people live under, or near, high-voltage power lines.

We all need reminding sometimes about what we do or should know about certain things. This article is one such extremely timely reminder. Thank you.

I don’t believe that there is any coincidence at all that this nuclear debate has resurfaced immediately after Morrison’s signing up to AUKUS without transparent Parliamentary discussion or electoral approval.

I don’t believe that there was any scope left for Albanese to change the contract once elected not even any scope for the subject to be discussed at the ALP conference.

I believe that a compliant media has helped cover up that temporary storage of low level waste will be stored in SA and WA shipyards adjacent to the Australian population. Already the argument that we have been safely storing similar low level medical waste is being dripfed to the Australian public.

Once again, as a colony Australia will solve a storage problem for its colonial masters and in turn not only expose its children to radiation related cancers but also increase the likelihood of terrorism and our involvement in global wars.

There are already US bases in Australia where the Australian Parliament has no control. It is no surprise to me that puppet Dutton has taken up the baton on this at the expense of Australians and Australia.

Fine words John, but ain’t going to happen. Been too long in the oven, the oven’s cold. As long as Iran and its proxies (Hamas and Hezbollah) are determined to annihilate Israel there will never be a two-state realisation.

Outrage as Hamas “disrespectfully” handed back coffins containing dead Israelis, killed in an Israeli air strike, not a peep when dead Palestinians gleefully squashed by Israeli tanks filmed and posted online with descriptions describing how all their guts squirted out.

Hamas could have just said, “We don’t know where they are, probably under the rubble with all the dead and squashed Palestinians”.

Ken Russell is absolutely correct in stating that “the incorrect use of net zero, together with carbon offsetting and carbon capture and storage, has enabled the development of a highly successful greenwashing operation designed to ensure the ongoing use of fossil fuels”.

And who benefits? Fossil fuel corporations and the big end of town. Who suffers? All life on earth. The burning of fossil fuels, no matter where they are burned, is responsible for 75% of global heating. The year 2024 was 1.6 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. For fossil fuel CEOs to dodge and weave climate commitments, and governments to fail to hold them accountable, is negligence of the highest degree.

With ‘net-zero’ meaning little, interim climate targets matter. It is vital that nations like Australia contribute ambitious 2035 Nationally Determined Contributions to the UNFCCC this year.

Sources:

Breaking bad records: 2024 marks world’s worst heat, climate pollution

I have no idea what happens in secret trials in China, nor do we know what happens in secret trials and imprisonment in Australia or what is the evidence even the defendant is forbidden from seeing.

What sort of government can hold you incommunicado for weeks, not for committing a crime, but because they think you know something they want to know, then send you to jail for years if you tell where you’ve been?

The Australian government.

So the same or similar laws, but only evil when China does it.

I applaud Andrew Podger for highlighting the need for an overhaul of the retirement phase of super in his article. The spotlight on this is overdue and should commence with an understanding of “what is” at present. From personal experience with Australian Super, communications are related to superannuation funds. Once these funds are rolled into a pension fund communications from Australian Super, related to pension funds, are non existent or not relevant to retirement phases. There is no guidance for retirees on managing the risks or free independent expert advice.

A further concern is, with the rollover of monies into a super pension, the Australian Government has mandated withdrawal amounts. Retirees with a super pension are required to withdraw minimum amounts each year. If one aims to draw down on interest earned only, not capital, a concern would be that this minimum withdrawal will result in decreasing the capital resulting in reliance on government pensions.

Many retirees would like to remain financially independent, plan for old age, be confident of a comfortable future and, as Podger describes, be part of a system, “delivering income for a dignified retirement”.