Archives: Letters to the Editor

As a past Business Manager of a large public school, I find it disgraceful that we continue to have the most unequal education system in the OECD! Far from being “Independent”, these highly privileged “Private” schools are obtaining more and more government funding while the public schools are getting less. It has to stop, and the present federal government has to act to restore some justice to the system.

The ‘elephant in the room’ when discussing ‘theological reform’ is this: Considering that the entire history, of Christology, from even before the very beginnings of an institutional ‘church’ has been riven with ‘theological disputes’ many of which remain unresolved and swept under the ecclesiastic rug, out of sight out of mind; but the question remains, always there but never spoken: Is theology even a valid human intellectual endeavor or just the extreme of human intellectual vanity?

For if the foundations of ‘tradition’ are all theological, that being a human intellectual interpretation of scriptural materials, WHAT has been revealed by God?

For an article with promise, Alison Caddick has sadly fallen for Israel’s greatest lie – that it is the victim of a ‘genocidal’ attack by the Palestinian resistance, rather than the Palestinian people as victims of a new Holocaust. One must only look at the graveyard of cars destroyed by Apache helicopters to see who was responsible for most or almost all of the civilian deaths of October 7th, and consequently treat with great scepticism Israel’s claims of a Hamas ‘atrocity’ committed against innocent Israelis, and the ballooning claims of rapes and abuse then carried out. Then one should start to look at just how many children and innocent people have not only been killed by Israeli carpet bombing of Gaza, but understand that Hamas is not and never was the target. Israel can and does target single individuals for assassination, so those it kills in Gaza are never an accident.

Dear Michael – let’s look to ‘nature-consciousness” on which all can focus, not just ‘theology’ development. Were all in this together!

See, for example the guidance of someone like Thomas Berry.

David Spratt and Ian Dunlop provide a telling review of COP28, the most recent UN climate conference.

While it is true that the heavily modified text assumes it is possible to “negotiate with the laws of nature” and that physics doesn’t care, it is also true that there is no better process. At least Spratt and Dunlop haven’t suggested one.

But they are right to be angry and alarmed like the scientists they quote.

It is infuriating, particularly for Pacific Island nations, that in the hottest year on record, as we nudge the feared 1.5-degree anomaly, that the final text at COP28 should not contain the key words “phase-out of fossil fuels.” Fossil fuels contribute over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Perhaps if the findings of a recent Australian study had been read to the COP delegates, the final wording might have been stronger. About 125,000 years ago, when the Earth was in its last warm period between ice ages and global temperatures were similar to now, the West Antarctic ice sheet had most likely collapsed. Should this happen again sea levels will rise by three to five metres.

FF 75%: https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/causes-effects-climate-change

Study: https://theconversation.com/what-octopus-dna-tells-us-about-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse-218810

When Gough Whitlam opined that Australia would not need nor should it have a population of over 15 million, no one called him a xenophobe or racist.

Net overseas migration ran at around 70,000 per annum through the periods of government by Prime Ministers, Whitlam, Fraser, and Hawke-Keating. Yet, there was never a clamour for an expanded immigration policy.

Successive polls have found that the great majority of Australians don’t want the ‘Big Australia’ policy that proved to be the final nail in the coffin for the Rudd prime ministership.

According to TAPRI, 70% of Australians wanted lower levels of immigration, of which 42% wanted significantly lower or zero immigration when polled in 2023. The Australian Population Research Institute (February 2023). In a quick, online poll, even 65.4% of ABC’s QandA audience wanted immigration numbers cut to cope with pressure on housing. QandA (August 2023).

Rapid population growth can be seen to be putting pressure on infrastructure and the economy while destabilising social cohesion and up-ending politics in nations from South Africa, to Sweden, The Netherlands, The UK, France, and Germany.

When will Australia’s leaders change tack to focus on a better and not bigger Australia?

Readers will miss Mark’s thoughtful and provocative commentaries on China and Australia-China relations.
Jocelyn Chey

So far, I haven’t succeeded in interesting the WA attorney general in setting up a Criminal Conviction Review Commission. Even where new facts or new science emerges after a case, there seems to be no onus on the state to correct the conviction. And yet WA has had cases of a lab failing to meet standard DNA protocols. It has had one case where some evidence appeared to indicate time runs backwards. . It would probably be better if CCRC’s were composed of jurists from another state.
It was concerning to see a judge the other day say that the probability involved in deciding beyond reasonable doubt should not be confused with statistical probability. In one case I was involved in many years ago, I asked if a numerical result should be given to include the possible experimental error. ie. was a result of 2.05% plus or minus 0.05% over the legal value of “two per cent”? I was told two is two. Several people lately have said there needs to be better understanding of the pluses and minuses of scientific evidence by courts. It can spell the difference between an interrupted life for the accused or no interrupted life.

For more on this topic, P&I recommends:

Giving science clout at court, and beyond

I should point out that allegations that the slogan “From the river to the sea” represents “calls for genocide of Israel” mean that the well-known song, “Advance Australia Fair” is unquestionably a call for an all-white Australia.

Teow Loon Ti is quite correct in stating that “…China is knowable…”., however the statement that “…Australia was not a party to China’s century of humiliation….”, is not correct.
From its colonial era to post Federation, the Australian population, has been hostile to the presence of Chinese. There are numerous documented examples of violent incidents, commencing in the 1850’s, perpetrated on Chinese gold miners in Australia by non-Chinese immigrants resulting in martial law being applied following the Lambing Flats Riot of 1861 and the creation of the “White Australia” policy and legislation post Federation.
Anti-Chinese violence occurred also in China. In 1900 the Australian Government authorized the inclusion of Australian military units serving under British officers to participate in the international military campaign in China known as the Boxer Rebellion (1900-1901). The incident is “lionised” in the Hollywood movie “55 Days in Peking” and today is probably an affront to Chinese intelligence and dignity.
There is no doubt that Australia will be significantly influenced by Asian affairs in the future, however it is unfortunate that remnants of anti-China sentiment persist thus preventing the development of an integrative attitude towards the reality that China is today.

The World at large watches as Israel’s tyrannical government continues its genocidal project in Gaza. Onlookers are either justifiably horrified, vocally admiring or perhaps casually dis-interested in this tragedy as nothing meaningful is done to halt the vengeful bloodshed of innocents by the Israeli Defense Force.
Few in Western communities appreciate the historic developments that enabled the creation of modern Israel and to this end Western mainstream media has submitted to the Zionist lobby groups that shape the false narrative of the reality that is currently on display in Gaza. (one could argue that a similar paradox exists for the turmoil in Ukraine).
Any public criticism of Israel’s behaviour instantly draws accusations of “anti-semitism”, the favoured sympathy card that Zionists falsely equate with images of another undeniable tragedy – The Holocaust. No credence is offered for those who are genuinely sympathetic with the trials and tribulations historically metered out to communities of the Jewish faith. There is a widespread mistaken belief that anti-Israeli comments automatically equate to anti-Zionism and therefor anti-semitism. This is a blatant propaganda “trick” that is constantly broadcast to a seemingly passive, if not dis-interested, public and denies the justice that democracy is designed to provide.

Dear Editor,

Contrary to what Dr Kildea claims in April 2021, Northern Ireland has not been engaged in a civil war for the past 45 or so years. Further he claims/implies in his article that the “troubles” in northern Ireland are as a result of Partition in 1921 and are therefore somehow linked to the 1916 revolution.
The fact of the matter is the “troubles” of the 1960’s started in 1968 not because of some desire to have a united Ireland but because a peaceful demonstration by Bernadette Devlin and her Peoples Democracy group attempted to walk in protest from Londonderry to Belfast. The causes for the protest are legendary, to have a political system that gave one vote for one person, i.e. where everyone had a right to a vote and a say in who represented them and what they wanted. That march became infamous as the marchers were attacked at Burntollett bridge by mainly Unionist sympathisers but others who thought democracy was at risk, the terrible standout fact of the day was that the police tasked with guarding the protest stood by and did nothing. The Peoples Democracy party were not nationalists but socialists.

We are surprised that John Menadue would publish a piece like this https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/secrecy-and-the-climate-disinformation-industry/ relying on mere innuendo and false statements.

For the record:

1: The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) was not created by Atlas. CIS was started before Atlas in Greg Lindsay’s back garden.

2: all our research is on the public record. We are not ‘trying to hide’. Further, our research is externally peer-reviewed.

3: our only carbon research to date has recommended a carbon tax.

4: we do not receive, and have never received, funding from Atlas.

The UN Child Rights Committee states that “children have a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment”. Yet, as David Shearman explains, Australia’s young people are burdened with air pollution from burning fossil fuels, and a climate and environment that is in a state of severe decline (“Amendment of the Climate Change Act will offer a future for young people” 9/12). Most remain unaware that 12 per cent of all childhood asthma cases are due to cooking with gas in the home. And that 11,000 Australians die prematurely from traffic exhaust air pollution. The impact of fine particulate matter and other toxins released from vehicle exhaust and gas in the home on developing lungs is unacceptable, especially when fossil fuel free alternatives are available. Further, the physical and mental health and well-being of our nation’s young people is increasingly impacted by the ravages of global heating. Like Shearman, I support Senator David Pocock’s Climate Change Amendment Bill which calls for a duty of care to young people to be considered in all policy decisions. The intergenerational injustice we are inflicting on young people is completely unacceptable and must be addressed.

Sources:

https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/february/vehicle-emissions-may-cause-over-11,000-deaths-a-year,-research-shows

Optimists still argue that the Paris Agreement is not dead. We heard them at Dubai, repeating over and over that we must keep 1.5 alive. But what if the odds don’t favour the Dunlop/Spratt double saviour solution? A study done recently by Professor Jacqueline Peel of the Melbourne Law School for the Climate Council discusses some of the stumbling blocks which litter Australia’s pathway to observance of Paris. The main one is our failure to recognise climate change as a matter of national environmental significance (MNES) in association with the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Protection Act.
Is it too late for us to pick ourselves up from that one? Perhaps the combined wisdom of the Australian voter will soon be ready to accept that climate change is indeed a matter of national, as well as global, environmental significance.

At COP28, King Charles said, “We are seeing alarming tipping points being reached” and we are “dreadfully far off track as the global stocktake report demonstrates.”
Noel Turnbull wonders what Tony Abbott thinks.
It’s not hard to guess.
At the inaugural conference of the ultra-conservative Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, just before COP28, Abbott said “The climate cult will inevitably be discredited …” Although Abbott is a staunch catholic, the US-based National Catholic Reporter described him as “a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s main climate science denial group.” He is even at loggerheads with Pope Francis who believes, “It is no longer possible to doubt the human – “anthropic” – origin of climate change.”
Like Germaine Greer, I’ve never really understood how Abbott could have been a Rhodes Scholar. The boxing at Oxford must have affected his thinking. Unsurprisingly, he scored “a very low second for his moral and political philosophy exam.”
No doubt Abbott is unimpressed with the King’s thoughts on climate change, or the Pope’s for that matter. But so what? The number of thinking Australians who care what Abbott thinks would fit in a Warringah café.

The humanitarian catastrophe that has befallen the people of Gaza has to be addressed. It cannot wait until the war stops. That means water, food, medical supplies and sanitation requirements need to get to them urgently.
A Berlin-type air lift is needed to accomplish this purpose. The west has the resources and the technical means for this and could relieve the suffering.
We need to demonstrate our independence and our solidarity with the innocent and the vulnerable.

In a recent issue which had Keating’s opinion of Kissinger and several high quality articles on public policy, l was disturbed to ready Brian Toohey’s piece on Hawke and Coombe.

I don’t want this to be true, because if it is true, my opinion of the “loveable larriken” transmutes into “old sleaze bag”.

There seemed to be a lot of hearsay. Also nasty stuff about Teamsters and mafia.

Would it be possible to get more fact checking for items such as this?

It in some ways lowers the tone of what is a terrific and much needed publication.

In 1962 I was trying to decide whether to enrol in science or in medicine at University of Sydney. My father’s cousin Peter Funk, a CSIRO atmospheric scientist, was sending up helium balloons from Aspendale in Melbourne to measure the changes in CO2 concentration at various heights. He told me that atmospheric CO2 was rapidly increasing and was a powerful greenhouse gas, and that its source was humanity’s burning of fossil fuels. He predicted all the effects of the climate heating crisis that we see today. Paul Ehrlich of Population Bomb fame has renamed Homo Sapiens “Homo Moronicus” and I would have to agree.

THE rejection of The Voice referendum has implications beyond the bifurcation of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. First-Nation Australians and NZ Maori, as much as with indigenous peoples the world over, given the dalliance with authoritarianism – dictatorship even – in America and Europe. But the NO votes represent an unconscious and internalised reversion to type of Australia and its people more than realised. They reflect the resistance of elements of the Australian character lurking beneath the surface.
Four aspects make up this Australian character, which obscure the lineal continuity of its history. The same racism, populism, masculinity, and secularism inform the injustice meted out to peoples of the First Nation as they do today get in the way of integration and full realisation of the potential in Australia’s diverse peoples.
These characteristics mutually reinforce class differences that camouflage The Vote in The Voice.
The majority vote was carried by a fear of perceived loss of privilege. Exploited by an Opposition Leader true to type of his leadership by negativity, in the face of a naive new-broom PM.

While Ross may be keeping his eye on NZers, mine will be on the ball. The ball in this case is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Senator Lidia Thorpe’s bill before the Senate on December 6th was defeated 10 votes to 27 with the major parties combining to sink the bill.

This act of bastardry (I’m being polite) by the Federal Government exposes them for what they really are: spineless cowards! At a time when this Government had a chance to save face and show a semblance of leadership, they dogged it!

For those unfamiliar with UNDRIP, its legislation provides indigenous peoples with the same rights as non-indigenes although under the Australian Constitution we don’t have any Human Rights. And under the same Constitution we don’t live in in a democracy either. We live in an Autocracy where the Government of the Day calls the shots and people who elected the Government have none and no recourse in law to boot.

Wednesday December 6th will be remembered for what was/is: White Wednesday! Just another day in the colony.

For more on this topic, P&I recommends:

What happened to Indigenous Rights? The world will judge Australia harshly

We Baby Boomers have lived in the belief that developing a richer standard of living, an ever-more-comfortable quality of life, is the greatest gift we will leave to our children and grandchildren. But in our desire for more, and richer, we have built this gift through using ever-more fossil fuels. Our politicians, with few exceptions, have found it easier to continue the easy, but finite, path of fossil fuel use than to confront the urgent challenge of major transition, which would come at some short-term economic cost to their electorates. Politicians who support transition too often succumb to the mantra that ‘politics is the art of the possible’ to justify making only modest change.
As Julian Cribb reports, it may already be too late to stop global warming. Tipping points are being crossed. Environmental deterioration will accelerate. Cribb puts his hope in an Earth Systems Treaty. A healthy environment on a sustainable planet is the greatest gift we can leave to future generations. We need governments around the world to join in common cause to deliver this treaty. Without this, our comfortable quality of life becomes a poisoned chalice.

Australia’s superannuation funds have over $3.5 trillion under management. Industry funds are increasingly questioning Board performance, especially remuneration recommendations. The representative structure of industry fund boards — employers, members, and independent directors — suggests a reflection of the priorities of those constituencies, albeit within the directors’ fiduciary duties to the fund and its beneficiaries.
Given the increasing realisation by the general public of the horrific, not to mention illegal, mass slaughter of the Palestinian population in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces, fund members should expect something more than a purely financial, politically “neutral”, position from those who manage our retirement savings.
Some time ago I asked my fund whether it supported the BDS campaign, receiving a brief “no”.
My fund has invited participation in its AGM early in 2024. Other funds may have a similar time frame. I will be submitting questions for the trustee to consider and provide members with its attitude to finial support for Israel.
Paul Heywood-Smith could provide useful support by drafting suggested questions to be put to fund AGMs.

Alicia Vrajlal’s article was enlightening. Not only for shining a light on the prejudices women of colour in professional roles still face; but is also shows very clearly that most journalists don’t fact check, they don’t check even the simplest things in their own articles. Just get it written, get it published and the consequences be damned.

Realistically, it must be cheaper for media outlets to print falsities and then issues apologies for printing garbage; than it is to hire quality staff who can pick these mistakes up before they go into print.

Accountants cannot report “unconscionable profits” that are more than the incentive to invest. This is because accounting doctrines do not require the time horizon of investors to be reported. What is not reported cannot be taxed. Introducing boomerang ownership gets around this problem. The tax incentive would provide shareholders quicker, bigger, less risky profit sooner, on condition that they changed the corporate constitution to allocate a small fraction of their equity by book entry each year to a citizen stakeholder account. This would allow local citizens to become endowed with shares each year.

The government would gain new tax revenues from citizens receiving dividends from shares and/or reduce its welfare costs. In this way, the revenue cost from providing the incentive could be recovered to make the incentive self-financing. This allows the incentive to be increased to a level that would allow five percent of total shareholders’ equity to be endowed each year to citizens in the electorate of the politicians providing the incentive.

Firms would grow by dividend reinvestment plans in new “offspring” corporations providing continuity for executives, and investors. New investment could be attracted with locally owned and controlled human-scale businesses.

However, this slight throwaway paragraph “Public commentary will attest to the controversial decisions that Henry Kissinger made in respect of a number of regions in the world, and in his demise, we will probably hear more of that” was an extraordinary dismissal of the immense damage done by Kissenger.
Millions of people and many thousands of communities were devastated as a result of his actions on behalf of the USA.
On balance, who did he really serve and benefit?
History will not be kind, nor should it be.

I refer to the ‘journalism’ outlined in this article and cannot but stand dumbfounded by not just the audacity of the perpetrators but the willing ignorance of many.

I would like to offer an example in support.

As of 10:20am Saturday morning, I read the latest ABC News article with updates on the Israel-Gaza war. The first section is about the number of deaths since the ceasefire has ended.

178.

Gone is all reference to the horrifying tally (constantly reported like bloody sports scores) that reached over 14,000 just a week ago.

It should be 14,178. Not 178.

Where does a decision like this come from?

Smoke, mirrors and disinformation indeed. (Analysis exposes big oil P & I 1/12/2023) The International Energy Agency(IEA) has recently called out the oil sector for its reluctance to properly acknowledge the climate damage of its product, and its meagre investment (said to be 1%) in clean energy. The OPEC Secretary General, Mr Haitham Al Ghais, in reply, argued for equality of opportunity among energy sources. Cigarette makers are now obliged to warn customers of the effects of smoking. Oil merchants need a similar calling to account. Exxon Oil, one of the companies still pushing back on renewable energy sources, was proved by Harvard researchers to have long known the effects of its product on global warming. In The Harvard Gazette of January 2023, correspondent Alice McCarthy announced their conclusions, “What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modelled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy, only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades denying that very climate science”.

Reference to Exxon:
Exxon scientists predicted global warming with ‘shocking skill and accuracy,’ Harvard researchers say — Harvard Gazette 12 January 2023

Exxon disputed climate findings for years. Its scientists knew better.

Dear Editor,
The ABC reports that: 
COVID-19 entered the top five in 2022, with most deaths occurring during the Omicron wave.
It’s the first time an infectious disease has been a leading cause of death in more than 50 years. (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-27/covid-in-abs-leading-causes-of-death-data-heart-disease-/102906350)

The virus was responsible for more than one in 20 deaths in 2022, making it the third-leading cause of death behind coronary heart disease and dementia.
The latest causes of deaths report from the Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which is released once per year, said COVID-19 accounted for 9,859 of 190,939 deaths last year.
Leading causes of death 2022:
Heart disease (18,643) and Dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease (17,106)
COVID-19 (9,859)
Cerebrovascular diseases (9,829), Lung cancer (9,048)

So we see from the actual data that Covid just scrapes in as the third cause of death just a whisker ahead of Cerebravascular disease and lung cancer and way behind the two leading causes of death being Heart disease at 18, 643 and Dementia at 17,106. And if all cancers were included in the data Covid would quickly slip behind into 4th place.

Broinowski referred to Marise Payne as Malcolm Turnbull’s Foreign Minister in the context of her call for an inquiry into the source of COVID. In fact, Payne was appointed by Turnbull as Defence Minister and later appointed as Foreign Minister by Scott Morrison, who is not mentioned in the article. It was under Morrison that she called for the inquiry. Broinowski also conjectures that the Chinese assumed she was put up to this by Trump following her visit to Washington, and then says it was “very likely so, since Australia’s exports to China suffered and America’s did not”. This appears counterintuitive – if the Chinese thought the US was behind the call, surely they would also have punished them as well.
Another point which stirred my curiosity was that “Pine Gap is suspected of providing the IDF with data on Hamas rocket launch sites in the Gaza strip”. I have read this elsewhere, but I am curious to know who suspects this and on what grounds. I think this is something all Australians should know.

For more on this topic, P&I recommends: