Archives: Letters to the Editor

I was disappointed that Jan Bruck in his positive focus on the “pragmatism” of former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, could not explore her “unique approach” a little further than he does in his short article.

Bruck does not recount one major occurrence during Merkel’s chancellorship which might bring into question whether pragmatism is the appropriate descriptive word.

I am referring to the Minsk Accords, two agreements made in August 2014 and February 2015, where Germany was the main negotiator (supported by the French leader, Hollande) representing Kyiv and Russia represented the breakaway Donbas republics.

The agreements were aimed at achieving a ceasefire in the Donbas and with their other measures could have formed a blueprint for resolution of the war in the two republics. However, by early 2015, the agreed ceasefire had completely collapsed and the Donbas war continued.

At the start of its “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine (24 February 2022), Russia recognised the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk and declared the Minsk agreements “no longer in existence”. At this time, Merkel commented that the Minsk agreements had not failed, but fulfilled their real objective: to prepare Ukraine for war.

Pragmatism or deception?

“The Teals’ pursuit of integrity in public service, and of major reform … have the courage of their convictions……. can help revive honest government …. now give us hope.”

I heartily endorse your correspondent’s assessment. Having experienced a (more properly described) community independent MP over the past almost three years, it has been a breath of fresh air. In Kooyong, Monique Ryan has enabled a new sense of building and being community. Her approach is to question: what is important to you, what issues concern you, how can I help you? And she listens to the answers, formulating her work both in Kooyong and Canberra based on those responses. Dr Ryan is one of a growing band of politicians doing politics differently to help the community, not climb a career ladder.

But while community independents will hopefully have increased powers of persuasion via holding the balance of power, they will not be forming government per se. Thus, the ranking of the major parties when we vote is critical for the future of the country. Jenna Price (The Age 18/02/2025) sums up my attitude to preferences: “Sure, I’m disappointed in Labor. But I’m terrified of the Coalition.” I’ll vote accordingly.

Even though it is not even at the negotiation table, Ukraine is now finding out that aid from the United States comes at a heavy price to its critical mineral resources. A debt it didn’t even know it was running up.

How long before we are asked to hand over a 50% stake in Australian critical minerals to the US in exchange for them “protecting us” with Pine Gap, Nurrungar, Northwest Cape and US forces rotation under the FPA?

Encyclopaedia Brittanica: “Semite, Name given in the 19th century to a member of any people who speak one of the Semitic languages, a family of languages spoken primarily in parts of western Asia and Africa. The term therefore came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, Hebrews, some Ethiopians (including the Amhara and the Tigrayans), and Aramaean tribes. Although Mesopotamia, the western coast of the Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa have all been proposed as possible sites for the prehistoric origins of Semitic-speaking populations,”

I reference Encyclopaedia Brittanica the bastion of white supremacy. When the leader of the Opposition vilifies the Palestinians etc he is being antisemitic. Yet another example of how some members of the Israeli community and our politicians and media have hijacked words (it wasn’t only Jews who were mass murdered during the Holocaust). It wasn’t/isn’t only the Germans who carried out/are carrying out a genocide.

Gim Teh writes chillingly of America under Trump. Surrounded by megalomaniacs and minions, with the numbers in the House and the Senate, a handpicked majority of conservative judges in the Supreme Court, and absolution from criminality while in office, he already has more power than George III. Only the 22nd Amendment stands in his way for a life tenancy of the White House.

As his increasingly irrational behaviour plunges, not only his own countrymen and women, but also the whole global community into a quagmire of fear and uncertainty, doubts as to his mental state are being raised.

While the foreboding reality of the situation is not a laughing matter, it has a certain ring of irony to it. The United States has at its heart the declaration that “a prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people”. It might be time for the Tea Party patriots to brush up on their creation mythology and get those long rifles down from their brackets over the fireplace.

“After all, according to a 2017 survey, some 23 million Americans believe chocolate comes from brown cows.” I looked into this statement and found it to be disingenuous. The survey was not scientific and wasn’t meant to be taken as evidence of Americans’ knowledge of dairy products. Also it wasn’t chocolate, it was milk chocolate. This misinformation makes me question all future P&I articles now whereas I used to think it was above reproach.

Why isn’t the world crying out about the illegal occupation of Palestine? Israel has the right to defend itself? Clearly not when it is illegally occupying Palestine and the West Bank.

The Hamas attack was bad enough, but it disappears into insignificance compared to Israel’s murderous attack on a foreign nation. Is the entire world cowering while the Zionists are exterminating an entire population? A Holocaust indeed.

Peter Sainsbury rightly draws attention to Australia’s huge exports of greenhouse gas emissions in the form of fossil fuels for combustion overseas. In addition, we must consider the emissions embodied in our imports of fossil fuels in the goods and services we purchase that are made overseas.

It has been estimated that they are similar in magnitude to our official emissions, that is, greenhouse gases emitted within Australia. We can reduce our imported emissions, as individuals, by buying Australian, and, as a nation, by using renewable energy to manufacture more goods within Australia.

The article by Andrew Podger fails to refer to the issue which concerns many aging retirees and that is the frightening cost of low- and high-care accommodation, starting with the initial bond.

The $250,000 referred to as retained superannuation capital is in no way adequate for this task. I am sure Andrew has considered this issue and i would be interested in his solutions.

Thoroughly enjoyed your article Barb, beautifully written, poignant and a call to action for all aspiring activists. Congratulations.

It seems shame is an anachronism. As Paddy Gourley amusingly, but darkly, suggests, some ghosts who should remain just that are coming back into focus, assisted by the hugely comedic and deadly Murdoch juggernaut. Mark Pezzullo for one.

An independent inquiry into the latter’s conduct as secretary of home affairs found Pezzullo had breached the rules on at least 14 occasions in relation to “overarching allegations” including using his power, status or authority “to seek to gain a benefit or advantage for himself, failing to act apolitically, failing to disclose a conflict of interest and failing to maintain confidentiality of sensitive government information”. (The Guardian, 27/12/2023).

He lost his job, but obviously feels he can speak with authority about how the government should be run, ie by the Coalition. In the event of a Coalition Government, is he positioning himself for rehabilitation and reappointment? That would not be very amusing for those working towards greater integrity in Canberra.

“They are not the same people as on whose behalf Ronald Reagan, 40 years ago, celebrated the fact that ‘Americans courageously supported the struggle for liberty, self-government, and free enterprise throughout the world, and turned the tide of history away from totalitarian darkness and into the warm sunlight of human freedom’.”

I’m really not sure about this particular bit of saintliness. Reagan was well in the grip of neoliberal big business. High profits, low wages, kill the opposition. Whatever lofty words he might have said, Reagan was leading the US down the path that has given us Trump.

Read all about it in “The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America” by William Kleinknecht. (ISBN 9781568584423, c.2009) You’ll soon see the link… if it doesn’t reach out and grab you first.

“We can no longer ignore the need for Australia to plan for its own defence, rather than fund a role as a compliant auxiliary of the US in the Pacific.” Amen to that!!

“Easier said than done when we have another unpredictable superpower in East Asia.”

Easier said than done, getting an anti-AUKUS letter published in the MSM. Speak up people. Time to rally!

Australia long since took up parroting the US’ anti-China chorus. But is any of it true, including that China is unpredictable? How has China behaved?

Spreading influence by building infrastructure, not dropping bombs and sending in the artillery.

Does “not” have 800 military bases around the world.

Has “not” dragged the ADF into (non-existent) Chinese wars.

Currently patrols our coast and has flared RAAF fighters “after” US instigated provocation by Australia.

Trades amicably enough except when we/the US threaten China.

Claims Taiwan – an argument we’re best out of.

As far as I can see, China is happy to go about its own business and leave us alone if we don’t antagonise them. Which is not the same as liking their politics. And best we look in the mirror before criticising.

Unpredictability, thy name is Trump.

Thank all the gods I don’t read any Murdoch rag. I’m with Grace Tame!

My sympathies to Paddy Gourley and all who are forced to read such garbage as part of their working life.

At least Saul Eslake managed a reasonably accurate description of Trump. Otherwise, this dalliance in knee-jerk journalism is perhaps the most condescending, patronising, presumptuous, and vacuous insult I’ve ever read on P & I.

He’s used election results in order to support his apparent political and social myopia, engaging in no analysis whatsoever in order to replace facts with generalities. He excoriates and vilifies a contrived homogeneous mass of humanity in the US with no effort to account for reality: the US population simply doesn’t fit, even generally, into his mischaracterisations.

Instead of addressing the structural faults and failures of the US political system, designed and practised over 250 years to sustain an exploitative capitalist (and, more pertinently, neoliberal capitalist) economy, Eslake jumps to sensationalised conclusions built upon illegitimate premises: the “majority” want “walls erected” to keep out the “foreign.” His assertions don’t hold up to the truth.

I’d have a lot more to say about Eslake’s miserable mischaracterisations and misinformation, but a 200-word limit isn’t nearly sufficient for addressing all his essay’s shortcomings — he and P & I readers might start with reading many past and current writers who are clearly more qualified to write on US politics.

Ross Gittins is correct that governments never pay attention to pre-budget submissions from the public. This is because the process operates on the assumption that submissions will be ignored.

As Gittins says, the call for submissions has just gone out, as usual. But the high-level outline of what is in or out of budget is usually pretty much settled in December the previous year. In recent years this has slipped under increasingly disorganised governments but my guess, from both my experience and the wan looks of of my ex-colleagues, is that the final touches are being put on budget “measures” as we speak. To the extent there are any unfinalised, that is.

So why does government seek submissions? It provides a veneer of consultation, and also provides a heads-up of attack points that will be used against government. Many NGOs know all this, but use the opportunity to get their messages out in the public to demonstrate, as Gittins also alludes to, their virtue to their target audiences. I always used to feel a touch of sadness for small NGOs who took it seriously.

There has to be concern that Peter Dutton thinks well of Trump. Trump’s pronouncements on Greenland and Panama, followed by his idea of removing Palestinians from their own land, and asserting that Ukraine started the war with Russia are cause for grave concern.

So much so, that those working in any capacity within the Australian public service whose sworn allegiance is to the US president should be asked to return to the US.

Refaat Ibrahim talks to one horrific issue in the never-ending repetition of the human experiment. It seems humankind is hardwired to a cycle of behavioural traits that finish in man’s inhumanity to man. As we lurch drunkenly into yet another catastrophic phase of what looks to be our destiny, some of the players have changed roles; sadly, the roles remain constant and the methods tragically familiar.

In the 1930s, Hitler and Stalin divided Poland as a prelude to signing a non-aggression pact. With its eastern front buffered, the Third Reich set out to make Germany great again under Lebensraum. These events occurred against the backdrop of flourishing right-wing authoritarianism around the globe that led to six years of global conflict, bringing misery and hardship to tens of millions.

Trumpian America has already suggested the ethnic cleansing of one homeland and has discussed the division of another with its authoritarian aggressor. Meanwhile communist China lays claim to Taiwan and an ever-extending South China Sea, and skirmishes with India over border territories. All that’s missing is a string of non-aggression pacts.

However, this time around there’s an old player returned to the saga: climate change. Watch this space.

The article poses that the World Trade Organisation is no longer effective and may be beyond recovery. One of the reasons for this decline seems to be the US’ aberrant behaviour.

One could pose the question whether an alternative WTO that excludes the US may serve as (temporary?) relief from the current problems. Well, there is an possible alternative that is being developed, namely BRICS. Joining BRICS may not please the US (and would likely produce more of the economic threats that Trump is happy to spray around), but sometimes it may be necessary to stand up to a bully to bring him back into line, especially if such a move would be co-ordinated with like-minded entities (Japan, South Korea, the EU?).

That, of course, requires political courage, innovative thinking and lots of conviction, none of which seem to be in great supply in our political system.

There is no evidence that cutting public sector jobs saves the taxpayer money. History attests to the contrary. The point about populist right policy is that it is based not on fact but on popular misconception exploited for electoral advantage.

During the years of Thatcherism, the series “Yes, Minister” was conceived to pillory the public sector as ridiculously bureaucratic, hopelessly inefficient, and perpetually self-serving. It thus reinforced the neoconservative ideological project of small government, “public choice” theory, and free-market economics.

The reality is that public sector job cuts equal service cuts; and outsourcing and privatisation result more often than not in higher government expenditure. Electors who naively accept that smaller government will put more in their pockets, are being misled and misinformed. Peter Dutton is once again simply shuffling his Trump cards.

Well said, Saul. In our Australian bewilderment we shouldn’t deny the benefit of the “US connection”. But our obsequious “leaders”, from our US ambassador, the foreign minister, (who both should have absented themselves from the inauguration of the felon-in-chief by making an appointment to meet Michelle Obama on that notorious occasion), prime minister and deputy prime minister following in that path, we have publicly failed miserably to assert our national interest and self-respect.

Instead of meekly submitting the first payment of our ongoing impoverishment to the bogus nuke-submarine deal, they should have instead redirected funds to the Cambodian de-mining effort that had to be suspended and do so by openly joining the Tongan PM in dissent by affirming that we do so from our side of the ANZUS alliance. We keep our promises or try to — pacts sunt servanda — even when we are now undermined and reconfigured internationally by the White House felon’s Anschluss announcements (Panama, Mexico, Canada and now Ukraine) that tell the world that from now on the US contribution to international relations will be the theatre of MAGA real estate deals.

Labor swept into office on a wave of hope for a fresh start after nine years of Coalition inertia. Those hopes have been dashed by their lack of a sense of purpose or social justice.

Anthony Albanese has not grown into the role of prime minister. He has given no sense of leadership, no impression of a vision for our future. He remains the political operator he has always been. Any sense of worthwhile government has been tarnished forever by legislation passed, in cahoots with the Coalition, in the last parliamentary sitting: muzzling charities once an election has been called, and reform of political donations and election funding designed to embed the two-party system forever. This is the work of grubby political operatives, serving their own interests at the expense of our democracy.

The Teals’ pursuit of integrity in public service, and of major reform in areas like climate, gambling, and taxation, show they have the courage of their convictions. The major parties seek to tarnish the Teals by associating them with more extreme interests; this is just more grubby politics. Teal communities can help revive honest government: it’s their candidates who now give us hope.

A good place to start seems to be to label Zionism (as clearly different from Judaism) as a terrorist creed.

The problem as I see it is there never was a separation between capitalism and state. When anything goes as long as you’re elected, the lies are ignored or go unnoticed and every election becomes about “If you elect them they will put taxes up”. “No we won’t“.

In our current election cycle, we have no mention of the billions of dollars wasted by the previous LNP govt on car parks, AUKUS etc , no mention of why we have a housing crisis, an education crisis, high inflation, no mention of the achievements of the present government, just constant talk about when the election might be, will interest rates fall, vague promises, and bigoted talk about refugees.

A complete failure to recognise that the capitalists role is to make a profit. Government’s role is to govern for the good of all Australians.

While respecting Allan Patience’s academic achievements, I wonder about his logic. He asks, if I prefer to believe in science rather than believe in God, “why did I post about God in the first place?” Why not? Isn’t it critical to consider both sides of an issue in any intelligent commentary?

Dr Patience also says that so-called philosophical “positivism” limits scientific research and theorising “to what is observable and measurable”. Sounds impressive, but hardly explains the value of science as the gathering of reliable information from all sources, experimenting and testing it before drawing conclusions that can be verified – or discounted.

None of the same applies to religion, which requires unqualified acceptance of unprovable texts purporting to be relaying the inerrant, or even literal, “words of God”, An “infantile conception of God” perhaps, but it was exactly the conception that was drilled into me from childhood through early adulthood by my church teachers.

I fully respect people of faith who practice “God’s words” advocating love and tolerance, but the opposite for those who use religion as justification for violence and destruction. I presume Dr Patience and I are at least in accord on this view.

Somewhere after my childhood and early adulthood the sense of responsibility seems to have been lost. We have charters of rights, but no charter of responsibilitities that I’ve ever heard of. We have freedom of speech without any compulsion to use that right responsibly. For years, wage theft has been an unashamed “oops”, not a crime. Teachers regularly complain that talking to parents about a child’s persistent problematic behaviour brings the response that their child can do no wrong. In my own backyard, the federal Opposition can flood my electorate with a flyer of lies and distortions about the sitting MP because it is OK to lie in an election campaign.

One suggestion to break the cycle – do not elect any “tough on crime” candidates who will only give us more of the prison > worse crime > more prison cycle. Advocate for a rehabilitative legal system that, especially when a child comes to police attention the very first time, includes education of parents and children about responsibilities, the consequences of wrong-doing for others, and the practice of reparation in a real way, or symbolic way if no practical reparation is possible. Perhaps Saturday School instead of Sunday School.

Lavrov’s views, published a few days ago, on the changing world order as “The UN Charter Should Become the Legal Foundation of a Multipolar World” should be read, considered, and critiqued by all pondering the rapidly changing nature of international relationships.

The failure of the ABC to acknowledge or describe most of the disputes, uncertainties, errors and misrepresentations related to the mainstream of COVID narrative, policies and events is another regrettable issue.

Australia is way behind the US, the UK and several other countries in exposing some of the alternate facts through broad scale inquiries, and with the commitment to transparency declared by the US’ new Health and Human Services secretary, much more material will soon appear.

I hoped that Pearls and Irritations might welcome broader discussion, but have seen little of it. Perhaps we could open this discussion up.

How will the future (if ever) AUKUS vassals be branded? Fiat! Boom boom!

Kym Davey’s article shoud be sent to every politician and every ABC board member. It is impeccable in its truth and superb in the summation of much (though sadly, not by any means all) that is a cancer eating the soul of the ABC.

And (as with Alison Broinowski’s recent letter) it highlights the very, very important point that it is the ABC that implicitly, and by its charter explicitly, is supposed to provide truth on matters of import to Australians’ understanding of events, developments etc. critical to building an intelligent nation.

The current and immediate past ABC senior management/administration should be looking for swords on which to fall for their incompetence and intransigence.