Letters to the Editor
How about a complete 21st century edit?
July 2, 2025
With today’s knowledge of the physical world and what holds it together psychologically, that the Scriptures have been assembled into a politically focussed holy manual is indisputable. True, the instructions therein underwrote the evolutionary phase at a particular point in the human experiment, but beating ploughshares into swords took time and effort. We can now summon Armageddon at the press of a button. David O’Halloran’s plea to edit the Holy Book with a 21st century perspective, as essential as it is to humanity’s survival, may be falling on deaf ears. Manipulation and subjugation of people of faith has...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: Five books the Bible could do without
'Your winnings, sir'
July 2, 2025
The revelations by Warwick Anderson and Kerry Breen about medical research fraud and the ways in which it is covered up by vested interests are so shocking that I am reminded of the famous exchange in Casablanca when Captain Renault, chief of Police, closes Rick’s café and has to find a pretence for it when Rick asks him why: Captain Renault to Rick: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! Croupier, appearing at his shoulder: Your winnings, sir. Captain Renault:Oh, thank you very much.
Peter Sainsbury from Darling Point
In response to: Research misconduct: Strengthening Australia’s research integrity system
Brian Toohey makes some good points
July 2, 2025
Brian Toohey makes some very good points in his 2 July opinion piece. Australia’s security and defence requirements are not similar to either those of the US or Europe. We are not covered by NATO or any other similar treaty and we do not have Russia on our doorstep. If we did need to spend 3.5% GDP on defence, it would be a coincidence with America’s request. Given our terrible history of joining America in conflicts, no way should we join them in defending Taiwan or agree to linking Taiwan with the use of any nuclear submarines sold to...
David Hind from North Sydney NSW
In response to: How Spending More on defence harms the nation
The vengeful god on full display in Palestine
July 2, 2025
As a long lapsed Christian, whose limited knowledge comes from his teens growing up in a Protestant household, I’ve long been unable to understand the significance of the Old Testament and why the teachings of Christ don’t always trump the teachings in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the foreword setting the scene for what is to come. In Palestine, the foreword has become the text and it is time for Christians to distribute the loaves and fishes, put an end to all the smiting, and stop facilitating the smiting in an attempt to fast-track the second...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Five books the Bible could do without
Kelty and Keating’s lasting legacy
July 1, 2025
This has been one of the most significant social reforms of the past century as it has not only provided far greater security in retirement than the pension system, but has also provided a vast aggregation of capital to enable national investment in public infrastructure outside the vagaries of politics and national budgeting. This alone secures Keating’s place in Australian history.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wagess
Thanks, Paul
July 1, 2025
As a beneficiary and supporter of super, I would like to offer some improvements to the scheme: 1. That the payout be compulsorily taken as a pension. 2. That the scheme give priority to investing in Australian Government/state and national infrastructure projects with the Reserve Bank setting variable interest rates on the loan. 3. That politicians' super be included in the scheme and that the same operational rules apply to all Australians. 4. That ideologically opposed Parliaments be specifically banned from legislation allowing “crisis“ early drawdown schemes. 5. That the balance in super be considered...
Bob Pesrce from Adelaide SA
In response to: the-superannuation-system-matures-at-12-of-
Thank you, Mr Keating
July 1, 2025
I recall when our superannuation system was introduced. Further, I also well recall those days when we were fortunate to have politicians with the kind of intellectual power and vision that delivered this, and now, the extraordinary Australian superannuation assets we have today. I cannot imagine looking at retirement on a government pension, when I have the good fortune, after decades of work, to have membership in a Defined Benefit higher education industry fund. What is disappointing is the variable but overt lack of vision and imagination in subsequent politicians regarding the original dynamic purpose, collective and private...
Robyn Dalziell from Sydney
In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wages
Avoiding the maelstrom of America's death throes
July 1, 2025
Allan Patience is spot on in this article. With the American Government fighting internecine battles against its justice, educational and economic systems, the US is imploding. To avoid being caught up in its death throes we must develop an independent foreign policy. It's time we left the false security of Uncle Sam and lit out on our own.
Albert Turley from Doncaster, VIC
In response to: Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
At least I have a booming voice
July 1, 2025
I agree wholeheartedly with Trish Bolton. In my mid-70s now, with a walking stick and a booming voice, I earn my right to an Age Pension and am proud of my creative, activist life. As an active union member throughout my (paid) working life, I helped fight for better working conditions and equal opportunities for women here and around the world. As a peace activist, I've marched with hundreds of thousands of people fighting against wars and discrimination against so-called minority peoples in a US-led rules-biased global hegemony. Police violence was the norm in the 1960s and we...
Diana Rickard from Tumbling Waters NT
In response to: OK Boomers not so okay
Lower than vermin
July 1, 2025
Way back in 1948 during a speech in Manchester, Nye Bevan declared a deep burning hatred towards the UK Tory party and proclaimed they were lower than vermin and nothing more than organised spivvery. Indeed, substantial evidence indicates the words resonate much more today than they did over seven decades ago.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane QLD
In response to: The contemporary world is run by political dinosaurs facing extinction
Enduring Israeli propaganda myths
July 1, 2025
An excellent review by Jack. A couple of Israeli standard attempts to justify its abominations, however, need to be put to bed clearly and accurately. The first is that Israel has a right to exist. Under international law, no country has the right to exist. There is nothing in international law that says so. What international law does is to give a people a right to exist. Countries just exist at any one time and may not have existed in the past and may not exist in the future as international borders change constantly. Secondly Israel, in the case...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Bunker busters shook us all
I’d rather be a Boomer than a Millennial
June 30, 2025
I can’t quite grasp the overall message of Trish Bolton’s Boomer talk. Yes, we are privileged, and had things so much easier in early adulthood than do millennials these days, but we apparently have to suffer scorn, ridicule and derision from those much younger than us. And we should not be blind to the fact that not all Boomers are financially secure. But aren’t these truisms just facts of life in any non-homogenous group? Neither of my two children in their late thirties/early forties can envisage ever being able to buy their own home albeit they are both in...
Maggie Woodhead from Perth, western Australia
In response to: OK boomers not so OK
Disinformation and extreme weather the greatest risks
June 30, 2025
There are growing calls for Australia to boost defence spending – but is it wise or necessary? As Julian Cribb points out, the “lust for conquest, self-aggrandisement and dominion” from some world leaders is diverting attention and resources from the far greater threat of climate change. In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight — the closest it’s ever been — citing not only the risk of nuclear war but also escalating climate change and the spread of disinformation. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Risks Survey, based on over...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: A distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Taxes, no taxes and no services
June 30, 2025
The divisive nature of politics has led us to this point and under this system there always has to be someone to blame. It has become the norm for the cost of services and government projects to always be reported as a cost, not a benefit eg when was the last time Medicare, PBS, aged care or the NDIS were reported as the benefits provided? It is always the cost to the taxpayer. We hear about the price of upgrading the electrical supply system, NBN, highways etc forgetting that for many years private suppliers have benefitted from the...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: ok-boomers-not-so-okay
Fitness means best-suited, not strongest
June 30, 2025
Julian Cribb says, with some, I hope excusable, editing that, ‘The pathological character of modern political leadership … has diverted us from our own survival, as a civilisation – and maybe as a species, … contributing to a humanity, as Darwin might have described it, “less fit to survive”’. The phrase survival of the fittest is mostly misused these days to imply that individuals and groups who fulfill the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger”, to which one might add smarter, better armed, richer, more ruthless, etc., are very justifiably most likely to succeed in life. Julian, with...
Peter Sainsbury from Sydeny
In response to: A distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Egomaniac
June 30, 2025
Did anyone ask “Do you think Trump is an egomaniac“? What percentage answered yes? A larger percentage in Australia? Did you ever see a picture of a gathering of world leaders where he isn’t front and centre and he takes his ball and goes home if he isn’t? Whatever he does is bigger and better, even if it isn’t. Trump is ungracious in his language about past and present leaders. He isn’t worthy of a Nobel Peace prize (no US president is) but his ego demands he get one. because someone else got one.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: What the world thinks of Trump
Climate action has to be our top priority
June 30, 2025
The title of Julian Cribb's article was very apt: the world is indeed too distracted by war to deal with climate change and is thus marching towards catastrophe. There is no one solution; rather many that have to be implemented in parallel. The most obvious is making the energy transition away from fossil fuels to renewables. The next is a ban on deforestation followed by widespread reafforestation. But we have to address economic growth and not regard it as a wholesale good. Like the curate's egg, it is good in part, namely in those areas that benefit the planet...
Jenny Goldie Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: GA distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Labels, not arguments
June 30, 2025
I acknowledge Sue's pain at the bullying use of labels such as antisemitism to divert community attention from the perpetration of genocide. Many of us have been similarly targeted. but not to the same extent, by the supporters of a regime that closely resembles in its guiding political ideology and its criminal actions the Nazis of mid-last century Europe. That drawing attention to this and highlighting its corrosive affect on our shared humanity can be used as a weapon demonstrates the capacity of such extreme ideologies to distort the perceptions and actions of possibly otherwise normal human beings. ...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Lattouf’s victory, our fight: Standing firm against intimidation
Not just myopia, it is developmental dependency
June 30, 2025
Bruce Dover clearly points out Australia's toxic dependency on Uncle Sam now that Mother England is ageing. He depicts Penny Wong and the prime minister as supine and timid about our international position – even though they have the numbers to be courageous and visionary. Might I suggest it is not myopia, it is an adolescent nation fearing to leave the previous cosy dependence on mum and dad.
Michael Breen from Robertson NSW
In response to: Australia's Media Myopia
China's Uighur treatment praised by world Muslims
June 30, 2025
Taken from this article: Thirty-seven other countries jumped to Beijing’s defence, with their own letter praising China’s human rights record, and dismissing the reported detention of up to two million Muslims in western China’s Xinjiang region. Nearly half of the signatories were Muslim-majority nations, including Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, according to the Chinese Government. “Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalisation measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centres,” the letter said, according to Reuters, which saw a...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China’s partnership with Muslim world is redrawing global landscape
Comptering for the Nobel Prize in perjury
June 30, 2025
The capacity of Bibi to lie, deceive, prevaricate, distort, fabricate, forge and perjure himself publicly and openly exceeds all bounds of decency, humanity and morality. It is not true to say that you can tell when he is lying when his lips are moving. It goes way past that. Every waking moment of his despicable life is a lie. The time is coming when he will have to face his Nuremburg moment. It cannot come too soon for humanity.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Twisting biblical narratives to suit aggression
We downgrade foreign language teaching at our peril
June 30, 2025
Having just read Allan Patience's fine article, I am even more perturbed than before, at Australia's mindless acceptance of the educational philosophy that currently reveres STEM education as the be-all and end-all of education, and the current downgrading of language teaching and the humanities. Yes science, maths etc are very important, but those now downgraded studies are urgently needed. Australians need to tune in to our neighbours in Asia. We're getting all our news not just from Caucasian countries, but worse just from anglophone countries. We keep being told that China is the big threat and all out to...
Noel Wauchope from Melbourne
In response to: Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
Failure to condemn
June 30, 2025
Never before has violence been so encouraged, and disdain for life and liberty been so blatant. A US president who encourages violence against immigrants living and working within his country; a man who encourages the suppression of free speech against journalists and anyone who has a difference of opinion. A president who bullies countries that don’t want to trade in the way he wishes to, and threatens to take over sovereign nations for his own means; a man who bombs countries illegally, and sends the military into a war zone -that he and his cronies created — under the...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Starvation and profiteering in Gaza
Australian media's biggest problem
June 30, 2025
It's all very well decrying Australia’s media myopia, but look who owns it. We've got Murdoch, Zuckerberg and Musk, for whom the US dollar, garnered worldwide, is God. Fairfax persisted until finally capitulating to the Nine Network. Credibility died there when a year's worth of red ink decorated Peter Hartcher's histrionic, fear-mongering, anti-China series. Poor old Aunty is seriously infected by Liberal Party appointments and funding cuts. Its former quality innovation and Australian content has diminished drastically. No wonder our always UK/US focussed mainstream media, now constricted even further by reduced ownership, is now referred to as legacy media....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Australia’s media myopia
War powers
June 30, 2025
Fred Zhang lays out quite clearly the need for balance in reporting on China. In view of Donald Trump’s attitude to China, particularly Taiwan, it is important to note the following from The Guardian on 28 June: “Tim Kaine, a Virginia democrat who sponsored the resolution, also harkened back to the founders’ drafting of the constitution when he spoke to his colleagues on Friday. He spoke about how George Washington was president at the time. “As much as they respected leaders like George Washington, they said war is too big a decision. It’s too big a decision for...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: No time to dye: ABC’s China bias is licensed to kill credibility
Lobbyists, lobbyists everywhere
June 30, 2025
I'm not the slightest bit interested in sport or physical activity. I'd rather read a book. I walk three times weekly for my health only because there's coffee and conversation at the end. Yet even I am sick of gambling ads on TV and in public spaces when I go out. And I'm aware, to my shame, that my monthly pub dinner is cheap because it's subsidised by the gambling losses of people playing pokies across the other side of the bar. So when the government caves to highly visible gambling industry lobbying and refuses to ban gambling advertising...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: How lobbyists are blocking bans on advertising for online gambling – and putting young Australians at risk
Sites to view
June 30, 2025
It would be great if Bruce Dover could suggest a few online English language news services in neighbouring countries that he considers to be good to follow.
Peter Manins from Cairns
In response to: Australia’s media myopia
Airspace usage permits for the attack on Iran?
June 27, 2025
Jeffrey Sachs reveals the extent of the chicanery in the Israel Iran longstanding war. But there is an aspect of the Israeli and US aeroplane attacks on Iran which seems to have sailed under the radar. Israel must have flown through Jordanian or Iraqi (even Syrian) airspace to reach Iran, while the US could have attacked from the Persian Gulf, but also seems to have overflown either Jordan or Iraq, as the B2s reportedly came from the west. My understanding is that Iraq-Iran relations are quite good. So did the Jordanian and Iraqi Governments approve the overflights? ...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Jeffrey Sachs Interview on Breaking Points Podcast: The US-Israel-Iran Ceasefire
Rise to the moment – less of the trite!
June 27, 2025
Senator Wong, I have written on several previous occasions urging your independence, strength and influence inside Cabinet to serve our country’s interest on issues such as the AUKUS disaster, our high-risk reliance on, and hosting of, US defence, and the urgency to improve relationships with our Asian neighbours. Labor’s win in the last election should not be taken as a source of steady as we go comfort. It should be heeded as a call to act as a true Labor Government, guided by the values and courage of leaders such as Curtin, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating. That is...
Sue Booth from Western Australia
In response to: Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
Iran's democracy
June 27, 2025
This might help inform Brian Toohey on Iran's democracy. I recall Iran being prevented from exporting its enriched uranium by the sanctions Trump introduced.
J. Forrest from Rural WA
In response to: Australia should not have endorsed the American bombing of Iran nor the Israeli
Setting wages and salaries
June 26, 2025
Perhaps CEO's wages and bonuses should be linked to the wages of their highest middle management employee and that percentage should be reflected all the way through the chain. Apart from being more equitable and transparent, it would save on strikes and time and money spent in arbitration discussing wages, conditions and bonuses. It could also be applied to Parliamentarians and public servants.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Australian CEOs are still getting their bonuses. Performance doesn’t seem to matter so much
The pachyderm in the papal palace
June 26, 2025
Bruce Duncan’s articles do not mention the pachyderm in Francis’ papal palace: child sexual abuse. To give Francis credit, in 2019 he abolished the pontifical secret over child sexual abuse, thus putting to an end, at least on paper, to the cover-up written into canon law from 1922 to 2019. I say, on paper, because Francis continued what he called “office confidentiality” of canonical proceedings. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended in its 2017 Final Report that the Holy See should publish its disciplinary decisions and their reasons, while accepting that the identity of...
Kieran Tapsell from STANWELL PARK
In response to: The Legacy of Pope Francis Part 2
Don’t you worry about that
June 26, 2025
What a magnificent statement about our strategic and defence situation Jack Waterford’s article is! It highlights the sickness in our democracy. It is not just Americans who don’t want a king, but rather robust public debate and an effective system of checks and balances on executive power, and input, which is listened to, into that power. At the moment we the people have to suffer the Joh Bjelke-Petersen DYWAT style of government: “Don’t you worry about that”, otherwise called the mushroom syndrome.
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Is Albo reverting to compulsive secrecy?
A concerning absence of concern
June 25, 2025
David Spratt makes it clear that we have a whole aria of canaries singing their last in the climate coalmine. Climate scientists see the risk; climate activists encourage effective policy. But nothing will be achieved without committed government action. This crisis is evolving rapidly; time to stem its impact is short. In the absence of government action, government inaction represents an alternative action decision. Theories why Labor’s first government was reluctant to take substantial action on our changing climate include political timidity and political caution; the power of fossil fuel lobbyists and donations were others. Labor’s thumping majority...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Faster than forecast, accelerated warming creates a climate time-bomb for the Al
Meanwhile. back in Australia...
June 25, 2025
I don’t know what the statistics tell us about Australia, but I’m pretty sure Australians don’t want to go marching in lockstep with the US off to yet another illegal war. They don’t want to make our country go broke buying or building submarines that will be obsolete before they arrive and will probably never be delivered. They also don’t want to keep handing more land/bases over to the US for target practice. Australians don’t want to be in the frontline when the elephants fight and our grass is damaged. I’m sure that Australians are disappointed with...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Americans don't want Trump's illegal war on Iran
Eastern seaboard suddenly remembers WA exists
June 25, 2025
I cannot readily recall Mr Eslake advocating for redress of the GST distribution inequities affecting Western Australia prior to the implementation of the No-worse-off guarantee. To contextualise his present commentary, the accompanying table illustrates Western Australia's proportional return from its substantial contributions to federal revenue in the decade prior: | Financial Year | WA | NSW | VIC | | -------------- | ------ | ------ | ------ | | 2009–10 | $0.70 | $0.86 | $0.94 | | 2010–11 | $0.65 | $0.85 | $0.95 | | 2011–12 | $0.60 | $0.84 | $0.96 | | 2012–13 | $0.55...
Chris Picard from Perth
In response to: Is there any hope for a fairer carve-up of GST between the states?
Feeding the chooks
June 25, 2025
Poor thing, Donald. I quite enjoyed him as a candidate. I was often reminded of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's feeding the chooks when describing his news conferences. Never have I watched a greater player of the media than Donald. Then he got elected only to have President Putin call his bluff in Ukraine and President Xi call his bluff on tariffs. Fortunately for Donald, along comes Netanyahu, the Zionist lobby and his own select advisers to explain that this one's easy. We can make you great again. Just bomb Iran. When was the last time that lot got it right?
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: War is the worst thing in the world
Iranians may be guided by Ferdowsi on Fordow
June 24, 2025
I note the article by Tom Hussain on Iran’s options. Will Iranians be guided by their tenth century epic poet Hakim Ferdowsi, who wrote: “چو ایران مباشد تن من مباد بدین بوم و بر زنده یک تن مباد اگر سر به سر تن به کشتن دهیم ازآن به که کشور به دشمن دهیم “If there is no Iran, let my body not be; If only one live body is in this world, let it be me. If we put head to head and body to slaughter, Let it be to protect our...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Iran retaliating against US inevitable as window for diplomacy narrows: analysts
Breach of international law
June 24, 2025
Let’s see if I have got this right: Australia fails to condemn the US attacks on Iran despite them being a clear breach of international law. However, when Iran attacks US bases in response, Australia condemns Iran although, in this instance, it seems to me, that there is a case to be made by Iran under international law for an action in self-defence.
Brian Bycroft from Evans Head NSW
In response to: Bombing Iran a clear breach of international law
Torturing the definition of Liberal Democratic
June 24, 2025
It tortures language beyond its capacity to suggest that the G7 was always a group of like-minded states that promoted liberal democratic values and supported democratic policy actions. Several of the countries involved, not excluding that US, have long since become oligarchies that rarely, if ever, reflect democratic values. Indeed, the US drafters of their Constitution deliberately set out, as they explained themselves, to limit democracy as far as they could. Public opinion poll after public opinion poll reflect what vanishingly small effect public opinion has on public policy. Democracy in the US is generally a performative art...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump’s disruption in Canada leaves the G7 at a crossroads
What is the point of extra taxes?
June 24, 2025
If nothing else, King Trump has proven that tariffs have minimal impact on big business and once again the general population pays the bill. One way or the other, the average person pays, be it as an increase in insurance premiums, property being uninsurable, an increase in taxes/government spending to carry out the disaster repairs/relief, homelessness bought on by their homes being burnt down, flooded or generally unlivable. The further down the food chain one is, the less likely you are to benefit/survive the horsemen of the Apocalypse, let alone the fifth and most dangerous horseman, capitalism, which...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: International survey shows 81% back forcing big oil to pay for climate destruction
The old canard of the 'rules-based order'
June 24, 2025
As always with Greg, this is an exemplar of clear and careful analysis mixed with forthright conclusions. It draws attention again to the nonsense retailed by the West of a rules-based order that has no written and universally shared set of rules outside that which is confected daily to be necessary to provide a cover for the continual breach of the rules that have been established by the world community through international law, by the dying Western empire. Make no mistake, there is no relationship between the fatuous twaddle of the rules-based order and the reality of that international...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Bombing Iran a clear breach of international law
Regime change: who has the right?
June 23, 2025
Andrew Thomas has the gall to tell us how to bring about regime change in Iran and quotes that bastion of moral genocide, Netanyahu, to reinforce his righteousness. Even more wow is that P&I publishes this example of how the Western world, led by a country not at war for just 17 years of its history, considers it has the right to determine who is allowed to rule a country anywhere in the world. Thomas seems unaware that it was British/US meddling — the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 — that gave birth to subsequent regimes, and that...
Dieter Barkhoff from Box Hill North
In response to: Regime change wouldn’t likely bring democracy to Iran. A more threatening force
Restoring diplomacy
June 23, 2025
Halfway through Fred Zhang's apt exposé of the modus operandi of News Corps' agitprop rabble-rousing with regard to China, he rightly asks: Where is the discussion about diplomacy, multilateralism, or economic interdependence as part of national resilience? Good question. But that leads to the question: Where is diplomacy? Bloated, over-reaching major political parties with a trust us outlook won't be too interested in reminding us that state-crafting responsibilities, also for international relations, are inherent in our citizenship. Trust us too often shows itself with appointments to important ambassadorial posts – where are the open statements of policy by these...
Bruce Wearne from BALLARAT CENTRAL
In response to: News Corp’s China obsession: why beating the drum is easier than thinking
Running a country is a full-time job
June 23, 2025
Replying to the press gallery about cancelled meetings with Trump, Anthony Albanese should say: “He has his country to run and I have mine, we are both busy. I look forward to him taking time out of his busy schedule to ring me sometime and I will answer if I am not otherwise engaged running Australia.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Australia’s trade survival depends on beating Trump’s tariff contagion
And then there was Indonesia...
June 23, 2025
There was a time when learning Indonesian was a priority and defence against Indonesia was taught at our military academy and it still should be. With a large population living on an archipelago under the threat of climate crisis and rising seas, the time may well come when the Indonesians are looking for somewhere safe to go and the already crowded North doesn’t appear an option. While male Anglo puppet governments in Australia continue with their US/Murdoch-promoted China fixation, the lemmings march ever onward towards the cliffs.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: News Corp’s China obsession: why beating the drum is easier than thinking
Israel-Iran fuse to World War III must be cut
June 23, 2025
Eugene Doyle raises serious issues in his article, including Chinese access to oil. If we look back 84 years, Pearl Harbour was the result of the US cutting off Japanese oil supplies among other things. (Japan had been behaving badly in China for eight years, but I doubt that was the primary rationale for the embargo). Does the US want to provoke a war with China? Is it aiming to secure control of Iranian oil? It seems that Donald Trump's access to intel on Iranian uranium enrichment is superior to that of US security agencies, well, given Tulsi Gabbard's...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Centrifugal forces have been unleashed in Iran
Let need be the only school funding criterion
June 23, 2025
MAGA USA highlights two problems. To an extent, Australia's under-appreciated electoral system protects us from outcomes caused by the problematic US system. But we're heading down the same fraught educational disparity path, as spelled out by Don and Patricia Edgar. This can only end badly for Australia. The absence of adequate supports and facilities that deter some of our better teachers from working in more challenging environments is obvious. But for some schools it also means additional funding to overcome the accidents of birth that hamper some children's chances of learning, such as poverty and family history of inadequate...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Jason Clare's monumental task in education
Education funding is establishing religion
June 23, 2025
Qualifying for enrolment at religious schools requires a demonstration of commitment. In other words, religion has become a requirement for receiving a well-funded education – a clear breach of Section 116 of the Constitution, that says, The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance.. Any religion or religious observance! The Commonwealth funding of religious schools also works against laws concerning multiculturalism and discrimination. It is currently funding schools that entrench mistrust of other religions, creating biased beliefs that will divide our society for years to come. To make...
Tom Orren from Wamberal
In response to: Jason Clare's monumental task in education
Do funders of Mediazona and BBC determine bias?
June 23, 2025
The question of the funding of media outlets and the impact of funding on bias and credibility is a basic and critical one that can help us discern media bias and war propaganda. It surprises me that it is not one raised by Joseph Camilleri, who writes, According to the thorough and regularly updated analysis conducted by Mediazona in collaboration with BBC News Russian Service… A recent article in The Grayzone (BBC’s ‘independent’ Russian partner begged UK govt for funds”) points out that Mediazona was founded in 2014 by members of Pussy Riot and that leaked documents indicate that...
Susan Dirgham from Melbourne
In response to: A new cold war is sweeping across Europe – with global repercussions
The unreal predictions of climate economists
June 23, 2025
Rarely has the chasm between “economic modelling” and reality been more spectacular than in the prognostications of climate economists. William Nordhaus won a Nobel prize for work which included the assumption that the 85% of economic activity which occurs indoors will be unaffected by climate change. The summary graph in Richard Tol’s recent meta-analysis, presented to us by Peter Sainsbury, is further evidence of the utter failure of climate economic modelling: any secondary school science student knows that at six degrees of global warming, there will be no meaningful economic activity at all – yet Tol’s line of best...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: Environment: Murray-Darling Plan delivers profits, but not environmental improve
Iran's legitimate nuclear energy interests
June 23, 2025
I find it quite astonishing that Andrew Thomas, a lecturer in Middle East Studies, repeats one of the most mendacious and persistent claims about Iran — that it has a nuclear weapons program — at this most dangerous of moments when the US and Israel have launched an unprovoked and totally illegal attack on several of Iran's nuclear installations. Not only does he repeat this false claim, thereby sharing responsibility for the escalating war, but he builds a story and case around regime change and the removal of Iran's Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, as if such a discussion were...
David Macilwain from Sandy Creek, NE Victoria
In response to: Regime change wouldn’t likely bring democracy to Iran. A more threatening force
Climate hypocrisy
June 20, 2025
Oil Change International is right – with our vast coal and gas exports, Australia is a petro-state. Our hypocrisy in pretending to be a climate leader via a bid to host COP31 in 2026 is disappointing. But the bigger frustration is that we could be an electro-state, and we're squandering that opportunity because our leaders keep pandering to the fossil fuel lobby. Until environment ministers stop approving new coal and gas projects, our credibility with Pacific nations and other global climate leaders will remain weak.
Amy Hiller from Kew
In response to: 'Cakes of coal, volumes of gas’: Australia accused of being climate wrecker as it seeks to host COP31
Zionists are antisemites
June 20, 2025
A provocative title. But one with an undeniable truth at its core. Whilst almost all Zionists are Jews, the converse is most definitely not the case. Given the inhumane, racist and genocidal actions of the imposed Jewish settler state since 1948, being a Zionist isn't something about which an empathetic and decent human being can be proud. Indeed, the Zionists are quick to brand any critic of Israel’s actions as antisemitic. This ensures that the messenger is shot before the message is read. Such criticism is then immediately dismissed as antisemitism, inherently racist, and so of no value....
Peter Hehir from Rozelle
In response to: Speaking out from within: Jewish voices confront Israeli aggression
Clarifying Zionism
June 20, 2025
The words from the Universities Australia definition of antisemitism: For most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity fail to acknowledge that many who define themselves as Zionist are horrified at what Israel has done to Palestinians. Instead, those words will be used to imply that they all support anything Netanyahu might decide to do. I have read many posts and articles by Jewish Australians that say they are Zionist because they support the existence of Israel, not because they support the slaughter of Palestinians. We should also remember the...
Alexander Donald from Cairns
In response to: Universities and the 'definition' of antisemitism
Progressive patriotism and vision
June 19, 2025
Regardless of the efficacy of Albanese's stated positions at the NPC, I agree with John Menadue. But Patrick Gourley noted something in his article about the weasel words and waffle that has now become a staple of political oratory on both sides of politics. While Dutton's speech and delivery was completely boring and moribund, the PM's speech was laced with this rubbish. I'm sick of hearing politicians and others talk about actively responding or actively listening. Sorry, but what the hell does that mean? Is it assuring the targeted audience that they are not inertly listening or inactively doing...
Wes Mason from Gisborne
In response to: The hazards of Albanese's 'progressive patriotism'
Prescient speech by Tulsi Gabbard
June 19, 2025
Sachs and Fares sound a timely warning. US director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has just sounded a timely warning too. Nothing “bizarre” about it, as some media would have it. She said, “I recently visited Hiroshima in Japan and stood at the epicentre of a city that remains scarred by the unimaginable horror caused by a single nuclear bomb dropped in 1945, 80 years ago. Yet this one bomb that caused so much destruction in Hiroshima was tiny compared to today's nuclear bombs. As we stand here today closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Stop Netanyahu before he gets us all killed
Cometh the moment, cometh the man
June 19, 2025
Is it at all possible that Anthony Albanese is just the leader we need? The steady-as-we-go quiet achiever that we need. I hope so, because the alternative is unthinkable.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Goodbye to all that? Rethinking Australia’s alliance with Trump’s America
John Tons, it's not 'problems' that are wicked
June 19, 2025
Like “free markets” and “artificial intelligence”, problems themselves aren't living human beings, they can’t be “wicked”. That would be ministers and mandarins. Dr Kennedy got the top PM&C job by dueting with Dr Chalmers. Singing the Langton Crescent ballad of “net zero, budget repair, inflation fighting, million jobs, rising wages”, while delivering their million-plus migrants, carefree expansion in non-market jobs, and declining living standards for punters. A South Seas island with stable government, endless energy resources, and easily managed borders, ought to have low power prices, reasonably affordable housing, and negligible population-pressures. It amuses the elite to inflict...
Stephen Saunders from O'Connor
In response to: Addressing our wicked problems
WA and feds complicit in undermining net zero
June 19, 2025
Peter Sainsbury’s striking graph on gas use from 2013 to 2023 reveals a shocker: Western Australia consumes as much gas as Victoria, Queensland and NSW combined – despite having a much smaller population. How? Because 36% of WA’s gas is used by the gas industry itself just to produce LNG for export. As The Australia Institute notes, just running gas export terminals uses more gas than Australia’s entire manufacturing sector–— and over twice what households use. WA’s gas consumption and emissions have both soared over the decade, making it the biggest handbrake on Australia’s climate goals. It’s also stalling...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Environment: WA addicted to producing, burning and exporting gas
Oz government schizophrenia
June 19, 2025
Paul Keating is right to take to task the part of the federal government that this week wants to join the US in war with China. Last week, it seems we weren’t automatically joining the US in fighting China. After all, this week Trade Minister Don Farrell celebrated ChAFTA, the free trade agreement with China, at a 400-person event in Melbourne. I quote from China Daily: “Australia's Minister for Trade and Tourism, Don Farrell, praised ChAFTA for its 'substantial benefits for both Australia and China'. Since coming into force in December 2015, two-way trade has more...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Australia: A sovereign continent not for Marles to gift away
Going for less than a song
June 19, 2025
How stupid is Donald Trump? Greenland is closer, but it doesn't want to be taken over, annexed or bought... and it's got all that pesky ice and snow. Why isn't Trump turning his eyes to Australia? We've got all that Greenland has to offer without the hassle of all that freezing stuff. And our government is doing its darnedest to give us to to the US on a plate. Seems we can't wait to go to yet another unnecessary war. One thing we can be sure of though... it won't be Marles' or Albanese's children on the...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Australia: A sovereign continent not for Marles to gift away
Defence, defence and more defence
June 19, 2025
I’ve no doubt that China considers plans for defence as part of its normal governance and every country should and would be irresponsible if it didn’t . It may be that Chinese media is beholden to the Chinese Government or more likely that Australian media covers Chinese politics with such bias. But any world champion fighter will tell you that you don’t broadcast your punches and, if you do, you will lose. Richard Marles is unsuitable as Australia’s defence minister because for a start he can’t help himself broadcasting our punches, he can’t keep his mouth shut. Anthony...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: australia-a-sovereign-continent-not-for-mar
Marles implies we should dump the US
June 18, 2025
Marle's admission we are essential to American military action against China is necessarily an admission that we are a primary pre-emptive target for China to defend itself as long as we have the US as an ally. Also that we can enforce stability in the region simply by kicking the US out of Australia, including Pine Gap.
Dave Bath from Horsham, Victoria
In response to: Australia: A sovereign continent not for Marles to gift away
Manufacturing consent
June 18, 2025
A worthwhile analysis, but to get a deeper understanding it needs to have some context. In that respect, I would recommend two ground-breaking books that set out very clearly that context. The first is Taking the Risk out of Democracy by a brilliant but now sadly deceased Australian academic Alex Carey and the other, even more detailed, is Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. Both provide a compelling reason why faith in the MSM has been in constant decline for the last century: the concentration in control of that mass media...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW
In response to: Social media takes over as main source of news as trust falls
Trump is capitalism personified
June 17, 2025
As strange as it may seem, Donald Trump may be our saviour if we learn. Trump is capitalism personified. While the world watches on alarmed as the body count rises in Gaza, Trump sees it as an opportunity to build a hotel/resort, an opportunity to make a dollar for himself and his mates. He has shown that he cannot be trusted. Despite attempts to control freedom of information, regulators and the media there have enough examples of capitalistic corruption uncovered — GFC, wars, pharmaceuticals, banking royal commission, consultants and defence spending — for all to understand that the...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: nuclear-subs-taking-on-water/
Corporate law needs to factor in environmental damage
June 16, 2025
It is a mistake to allow corporations to be formed with a directive that their directors should only “act in the[ir] companies' best interests” (as the corporate law now does). Nearly all of Australia’s corporations make money without severely harming the environment. It’s time for Australia’s Parliament to impose an obligation on directors of all companies to make sure their company doesn’t cause severe harm. This can be achieved by adding just 11 words to their existing duty “to act in the best interests of the corporation. Those words are, “but not at the expense of severe damage to...
Robert Hinkley from Berry, NSW
In response to: The murky world of lobbying and the North West Shelf
Can we believe this man?
June 16, 2025
Stewart Sweeney’s article is extremely timely. Just look at the ABC news today: “Shortly after Israel's strikes on Friday, US President Donald Trump said: 'The US had nothing to do with the attack on Iran'. Nothing, that is, except it was forewarned, and that central to Israel's military capability is US funding, US hardware, US intelligence and US technology.” That highlights the seeming perfidy surrounding the US-Iran nuclear and sanctions talks. There is a a further cost to the lives of many innocent people, and the real threat of an expansion of the conflict, drawing in yet...
Geoff Taylor from Karratha
In response to: Australia’s dependence on the US does not end with Trump
Right to peaceful protest essential for democracy
June 16, 2025
John Menadue’s recommendations for a more robust, more transparent, more participative rather than heavily (allegedly) representative democracy are all sensible, reasonable and much needed. It’s a tragedy and shameful that we cannot rely on either of the major political parties to advance these reforms. In fact, we can be confident that the two major parties will conspire together to avoid most of them or render all but ineffective any that they are dragged kicking and screaming to legislate. Absent from John’s list, although it may be implied in his bill of rights, is enshrining in legislation the right...
Peter Sainsbury from Darling Point
In response to: PM Albanese promises to restore trust in democracy
Cut the apron strings
June 16, 2025
Australia is a remarkably safe country. I disagree. Australia was a remarkably safe country. But since then, the US has infiltrated the ADF and associated entities; We have signed up to handing over billions for subs we won't get and couldn't operate without the US if we did get them; We have increasing numbers of US military bases and facilities on our soil; We joined the US in patrols and military exercises by land and sea perilously close to China's borders, air and sea limits; and We have been painting a bigger and bigger...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Perhaps Marles should ask the US why it is building up forces around China
Use words with care
June 16, 2025
Here’s a novel and innovative idea. Let’s stop talking about raising our defence spending, let’s stop talking about the threat from China, Russia and refugees. Let’s stop beating the drums of war in any sphere. Let’s replace words like fight, conquer and battle (eg fight against COVID, conquering inflation, battle against climate change) and start using our language to remember the power of diplomacy – based on co-operation and focused on our shared humanity. Let’s work with, co-operate on, and open dialogue about; let’s reach consensus, acknowledge our shared goals, and actually remind ourselves we are on a...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Why Australia needs a defence minister
The president has no clothes
June 16, 2025
The underlying truth barely mentioned in this article is the truth about Trump. For all his chest-beating and deal-making, world leaders see him for the joke he is. Putin and Netanyahu pay him lip service and continue to do as they please, as conquering whatever territory they choose knowing that the self-proclaimed king is naked. Meanwhile, the rest of the world leaders go about circumventing Trump's economic reforms, limiting their losses in the knowledge that it is the US that is suffering the most. Hopefully, Albanese is up to the job of putting Australia first. Mexico and Canada...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: US progressives say stop supporting 'rogue genocidal regime' as Israel wages illegal war on Iran
Harrowing climate impacts of Labor's decisions
June 13, 2025
Julian Cribb is right to point the finger at Albanese’s Labor for the human and environmental toll that approving vast carbon pollution from projects like the North West Shelf gas terminal will cause. From sea-level rise and extreme weather events, to water shortages from glacial melt and the rapid spread of vector-borne diseases, the predicted impact of Australia’s ongoing fossil fuel addiction is harrowing. And our unwillingness to seize the opportunity to become a powerful electro-state is frustrating. With a thumping majority and support from other progressive politicians, Albanese has a chance to create a real legacy of...
Amy Hiller from Kew
In response to: Go-ahead for new carbon bomb marks Australia as enemy of the region
Remember the way NZ was expelled from ANZUS?
June 13, 2025
Paul, you're quite right with most of what you say, but why not go on to suggest we need wise diplomats who will know how to tell the US that we will not only leave AUKUS, but will suspend our membership of ANZUS as long as the US continues down the Trump régime path of international demolition in the interests of real-estate deals? Of course, it would be a massive wrench for the prime minister and the member for Corio to face up to the shambles of ANZUS that resulted in 1986 when a previous Labor Government joined with...
Bruce Wearne from Ballarat Central
In response to: AUKUS: America saving us from ourselves
Honour for Morrison, dishonour for Australia
June 13, 2025
The awarding of Australia's highest honour to Scott Morrison is indeed an affront to decency. It utterly debases our entire awards system. Most of us, I imagine, fume in impotent rage and move on. But what can we say to those who were harmed — if not destroyed — by Robodebt? How can it be that their nation has no difficulty in honouring one of the chief architects of that vicious, illegal scheme, yet finds it impossible to bring its perpetrators to justice? It is one more kick in the guts from a nation which has repeatedly failed in...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: Award for Morrison an insult to the truth
LULUCF and the Emperor’s new clothes
June 13, 2025
Emma Lovell and Jessica Allen show how Australia is hiding behind the notorious Australia clause in the 2005 Kyoto Protocol to claim substantial reductions in our carbon emissions with only little actual reduction from our major emitting industries. The Australia clause, which allows Australia to benefit from the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry Sector (LULUCF) factor, was widely criticised when Australia insisted upon it. In targetting emissions reductions in comparison to those from exceptionally high-emission years, the Howard Government set an absurdly low target for actual emissions reduction. This may be well and good in terms of...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Australia’s latest emissions data shows a giant fossil fuel problem
AUKUS is a dud club
June 12, 2025
News is splashing around about Trump launching an inquiry into AUKUS to see if it meets his America First policy. Of course, it does. We have to pay the US $368 billion (US$239 billion) over three decades for being part of the AUKUS club and, according to the contract, they don’t have to give us anything. Zip. Of course, Trump will love this contract, all the while laughing at Australia in the back rooms of the White House for signing up to such a dud deal.
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Hugh White and our post-American future
Colonial minds
June 12, 2025
The Australian Government's reliance on a special relationship with the US dating back to 1942 is only part of the story. Our so-called leaders have always looked to a great and powerful friend, from 1788 on. Our leaders have never outgrown the colonial mentality. They are apparently incapable of imagining an independent Australia. The old political parties are relics of the 19th and 20th centuries. We need to get them out of our Parliament entirely. The growing numbers of independents and progressives is a start in this process, though so far they have not stepped up to international affairs.
Geoff Davies from Braidwood NSW
In response to: Hugh White and our post-American future
Hugh White sees half the elephant
June 12, 2025
I very much welcome Henry Reynolds ‘ wise exegesis on Hugh White’s essay, which I now must read. I share White’s reported view that Australia must now declare clearly to US that we will not go to war against China as the US’ ally over Taiwan. Urgently overdue. But it goes further than this, into the need to reshape our whole foreign policy world. We must reclaim Australia’s full sovereignty in this rapidly emerging multipolar world. We must truly become a friend to all and an enemy to none . We must stop demonising Russia and being trapped in...
Tony Kevin from Canberra
In response to: Hugh White and our post-American future
Let's talk sea-level rise, shall we?
June 12, 2025
I am grateful to Julian Cribb for his focus on sea-level rise (The latest numbers indicate a rise of between 0.5 and 1.9 metres by 2100 under existing carbon emissions. This is about twice the previous estimate.) When you consider even just the implications for Australian cities, it is mind-boggling. Docklands in Melbourne, for instance, might be 12 metres above sea-level but storm surges on top of nearly two metre sea-level rise will make life unpleasant. In another letter, I mentioned the Mekong delta at 0.84 metres above current sea-level. There are huge implications for global food production....
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Go-ahead for new carbon bomb marks Australia as enemy of the regionMerchants of
Australia is at a departure point
June 11, 2025
Ghaith Krayem lays things out re Palestine quite correctly. The latest sanctions move from Penny Wong marks a real point of departure by us and some partner nations from the US path. What is the US path? Well, the position of Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, is spelt out very clearly, unless, which is possible I suppose, he has changed his views in eight years. This from The Guardian today: “The ambassador’s position has deep roots in his evangelical Christian beliefs and longstanding support for Israeli settlement expansion. During his 2008 presidential campaign, Huckabee said: 'There is...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Palestine and the gravitational politics of erasure
No thanks and you can have mine back
June 11, 2025
I thought the biggest insult of all time was the presentation of the Queen's/King's Birthday honour to the husband of a British monarch by Tony Abbott until the presentation of an award — any award — to Scott Morrison. All the volunteers who have fought fires, cleaned up after floods, delivered food aid, worked at meals on wheels, coached kids sport, fixed farmers' burnt fences, worked sausage sizzles etc etc should respond with a great big no thanks until we stop rewarding those who do their job and get paid very well for it. Get paid very well...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Scott Morrrison – Australia's worst AO recipient
You're playing into Albanese's hands, Julian Cribb
June 11, 2025
Julian Cribb's carbon bomb drowning Pacific, though rallying emotionally, is music to Woodside Albanese's ears. He can carry on regardless with his immigration bomb drowning Australia. Over 2022-25, his 1.3 million (net) tally is an unbelievable five to six times the historical average, blowing Kevin Rudd's record out of the water. Hardly anyone has blinked. With our self-absorbed intelligentsia applauding, it's barely a political issue. Sussan Ley doesn't want to know. It follows, Albanese will inflict more of the same, over 2025-31.
Stephen Saunders from O'Connor
In response to: Go-ahead for new carbon bomb marks Australia as enemy of the region
Young Australians won't accept Labor hypocrisy
June 11, 2025
Still reeling from Murray Watt’s rushed approval of Woodside’s North West Shelf project, I wasn’t ready for Samantha Hepburn’s rundown of six more mega gas projects. The emissions from these alone would blow Australia’s net-zero-by-2050 pledge to pieces. As Hepburn notes, Labor’s review of environment laws is a chance to make climate impact central to approvals. But in 2024, Albanese ruled out a climate trigger. Still, with 25 Labor, 11 Greens and three independents backing net zero — and public anger over the NW Shelf decision — momentum may be building to revive it. While the PM’s second-term vision...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn, Vic
In response to: Six more giant gas projects could join Labor's latest carbon bomb
As we awake from the American dream...
June 11, 2025
Les MacDonald’s summary of the military capabilities of the two belligerent superpowers makes frightening reading; that’s if you can count America as a superpower at all. Trump and his cronies may be sitting on a superpower arsenal, but as the Trump dictatorship starts to unfurl its true colours, the support of the citizenry is being withdrawn. Moreover, presuming the superpower clash Trump is urging comes about, China will be bombing Taiwan, not Pearl Harbour. Japan’s savage rampage through Mongolia and China didn’t stir the isolationists in the 1930s doing so nicely out of the Lend/Lease program. It wasn’t till...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: US unlikely to be able to hold its own against China
War with China
June 10, 2025
Les McDonald makes a valid point in saying that the US no longer has the naval or merchant fleet strength to invade China. But I suggest that's not in the Pentagon's war plans. If they have a coherent thought on the matter, Washington's military leaders want to deter China from invading Taiwan, or punishing it if it does. That involves massive bombing from the air, as Curtis LeMay did in North Koreas in 1952-3. No land combat. The danger, of course, is that bombing could escalate to include the use by either side of nukes. Let us hope...
Richard Broinowski from Paddington
In response to: Les MacDonald's US unlikely to be able to hold its own against China
The two-state solution is a chimera
June 10, 2025
Once again the chimera of a two-state solution is raising its head in Palestine. And as usual, Israeli approval is deemed essential. The current configuration of the state of Israel has, or so is my understanding, neither a constitution nor declared national boundaries. The lack of a constitution may not be a problem since Israel already has diplomatic relations with many countries. The lack of declared national boundaries may be another matter. How can a state without boundaries cut away a portion of the land it occupies and claims and declare it a sovereign state belonging to another?...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Talk of a two-state solution may not go much further
It's commentary on the evidence, not conspiracy
June 10, 2025
Your correspondent has two problems: (i) the IHRA definition which falsely declares criticism of Israel is antisemitic, trashing the memory of the Holocaust (imagine if we couldn't criticise Germany because it's anti-Germanic) and (ii) the abundance of evidence of genocide that's available pretty much in real time. We see the dead bodies, the razed homes, farms and infrastructure, hear evidence from humanitarian aid workers, hear Israel's leaders, civilians, settlers urging the continuation of the slaughter. Most recently, aid getting in is negligible, roads to aid stations have been declared combat zones, aid stations have become IDF targets. Why...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: When critique sounds suspiciously like conspiracy
Childhood learnings
June 10, 2025
Oh! Patricia Edgar, how I hope that Mr Albanese has a skerrick of what he learnt as a child still in his brain to help him come to his senses now. He has a son. What on earth are he and his team thinking? That it's all too hard – not like the brave little engine. Thank you.
Judith Gamper from Kambah ACT 2902
In response to: Albanese should remember his childhood - and the rhymes he learnt
Cults never die
June 10, 2025
Further to Andrew Scott's recent article, the long march of neoliberalism has witnessed greed transform from a vice into a virtue and the accumulation of extraordinary wealth is now considered the pinnacle of human achievement. Following the global financial crisis, many neoliberal acolytes and disciples of laissez-faire economics admitted their entire intellectual edifice had collapsed. The corporate welfare solution of lucrative bailouts and quantitative easing was like feeding strawberries to a donkey and it merely transformed the protean elements of fascism into a dystopian paradigm of gangster capitalism. Its trajectory and devastating consequences are evident throughout most advanced...
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill Queensland
In response to: Pushing back with new urgency against neoliberalism
Challenging policy isn’t prejudice
June 10, 2025
Raising concerns about the weaponisation of antisemitism isn’t the same as denying that antisemitism exists. It’s about questioning how the term is sometimes used to shut down legitimate discussions about human rights and foreign policy. That doesn’t mean all criticism is fair or balanced, but it does mean we should be able to talk about these issues without being accused of discrimination. It’s also important to recognise that advocacy by Jewish groups, Palestinian groups, or anyone else, plays a role in shaping public debate. Highlighting the influence of lobbying, from any side, isn’t sinister. It’s part of understanding how...
Meg Schwarz from Macclesfield, Adelaide
In response to: When critique sounds suspiciously like conspiracy
Scott Morrrison – Australia's worst AO recipient
June 10, 2025
Scott Morrison wouldn't hold a hose while the East Coast burnt. He wasn't in a hurry to tackle COVID. He subsumed five federal portfolios without telling the ministers or the nation. He was widely despised for his style by his colleagues in the ABC Nemesis program. He now works for American Global Strategies, a lobbying outfit that promotes the AUKUS defence fiasco. He successfully launched a bottomless spend for Australi to reset national defence strategy based around a political wedge with the ALP. Scotty is now working for America's military industrial complex interests as a fully superannuated...
Donald Clayton from Bittern Victoria 3918
In response to: Let's rethink Australia's national security
Hegseth's immaturity
June 10, 2025
..[Pete] Hegseth was in a fighting mood. 'America is proud to be back in the Indo-Pacific – and we’re here to stay,' he stated ... Hegseth is too young to remember that the US fought an inglorious withdrawal to the 37th parallel in the Korean War, was defeated in the Vietnam War, was humiliated by the Taliban leading to a disastrous retreat from Afghanistan and has interfered in the politics of Iran, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan Taiwan, Korea and now India. Maybe we will soon hear the cry of the 1950s in the Caribbean – ...Yankee, go home!
Peter Gumley from Northern Rivers, NSW
In response to: The Hegseth directive: Australia spend more
Don’t mention it
June 10, 2025
A total of $917 billion was spent on the recent Elbit arms contract with Israel, $800 million (plus) handed over by Richard Marles earlier this year to the US for AUKUS (plus another $12 billion a year until we receive these hypothetical submarines). But flood victims, you can have a $800 one-off payment to clean out your house, buy new beds, furniture, redo your plumbing and feed yourself: $800 to put you and your family’s life back on track. We won’t contemplate an inquiry into the many insurance companies that were hoping to charge you a minimum $28,000...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Merchants of Death
When critique sounds suspiciously like conspiracy
June 6, 2025
John Menadue’s platform has become a staging ground for increasingly toxic screeds masquerading as foreign policy critique. Two recent pieces — Weaponisation of Antisemitism... and We Must Confound the Zionist Lobby— cross the line from criticism into crude conspiracy. The claim that antisemitism is “weaponised” to silence debate collapses under scrutiny. Israel is one of the most criticised nations on earth – by the UN, media, academics, and NGOs. If there is a Zionist conspiracy to suppress criticism, it’s doing a remarkably poor job. Every cause has its advocates, but only Jewish advocacy is routinely framed as shadowy...
Adam Slonim from St Kilda East
In response to: We Must Confound The Zionist Lobby
US won’t stop the murders of the hungry in Gaza
June 6, 2025
A great article from Ralph Nader, a man who ran four times to be US president himself. We watch on in utter disbelief as UN Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea votes against a ceasefire in Gaza, knowing that that means more mass murders by Israeli forces, because US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he wants Hamas totally eliminated, so there is “not an ember”.
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Media shortcomings in covering terrorist Netanyahu’s daily Gaza mass murders
Pre-1978 progress in China
June 6, 2025
Firstly, I should say that I agree with Jocelyn about the guidance that Sun Tzu's The Art of War could give to the West as it already does to China. A very good article that summarises well the issues confronting China and the region. One area that I think may need further exploration is the progress that China made prior to opening up. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that Mao made some massive mistakes, I think it is also important to recognise the successes of that period. In 1949, China's life expectancy was 35 years. That put it...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China and the Art of War
One month in, the honeymoon is over
June 5, 2025
I could not agree more with this letter. Unfortunately, less than two weeks into the new government, we are finding out why so many people had difficulty deciding whom to vote for and left it until the last minute to choose the best of a bad bunch. The speed with which the WA gas contract was approved tells a story of how the WA votes were bought. With more to come, unfortunately. Sadly, the old saying in politics — You can’t make changes if you're not in government — only applies if you're prepared to do something once...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: marles-the-archetypal-sycophan
Gaslighting by Labor
June 5, 2025
The prime minister reportedly said while visiting South Australia, “the truth is that there are more extreme weather events, and they’re more intense now. Science told us that that was the case. The science has been proven, unfortunately, to be playing out. The thing is that climate change is real and we need to respond to it. And we need, I think, to respond to it across the board. That’s why my government has a comprehensive plan to deal with climate change. If the government believes this statement, then surely the Australian public are being subjected to gaslighting about...
Richard Ruffin from ADELAIDE
In response to: Time again for stewards to do a moral health check-up
Who does own shares?
June 5, 2025
Every night on our TV news, a disproportionate amount of time is given to the share market. Nothing could be more inflationary than the trading in shares that increase in worth without actually increasing the value of the company. That worth is being increased by chief executives and boards in the pursuit of their personal bonuses. There have been many crashes when the value of shares has fallen back more in line with the actual worth of the assets. Yet another example of where the rich get richer and the poor suffer no matter what as the...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Not all Americans own shares