Letters to the Editor
Higher echelon loyalty to Australia not the US
July 22, 2025
Congratulations to Jack Waterford for some very plain talk about the relationship with the Trump US. I quote: ” Indeed, if Australia did blab, there would be any number of Australian officials, regarding themselves as having a loyalty to the alliance over and above their loyalty to Australia, who would leak about it.” Can we read “US” for “alliance”? And if so, and if Jack’s assertion is true, don’t words like “undue foreign influence” or even in a few possible cases, “treason” come to mind? Do we need an oath of allegiance?
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Trump’s negotiation position diminishes as Albo sits him out
Local responses to climate impacts misplaced
July 22, 2025
A focus on the marine crisis in South Australia as a matter of state versus national politics, wildly misconstrues the context and misapprehends the looming danger. Like the drought impacting Southeastern South Australia and the western half of Victoria, the dystopian-like conditions these events are characterised by are entirely consistent with all of the predictions for the extreme impacts of climate change. In Australia, the droughts and flooding rains of the past were, for all their harshness, part of a cycle our biological systems had long adapted to. These new extremities are unable to be responded to so, as we...
Patrick Hockey from Clunes, Vic
In response to: Environment: Forget 1.5 degrees C, even 2 degrees C, while forests and peat disa
Trump Governs by ventriloquist dummy
July 22, 2025
While I was disappointed that Albo didn’t cancel the AUKUS/5 ministers Morrison pact in the first weeks of his first team I have to admit that I’ve been impressed with his steady as she goes treatment of all things Trump. If he can keep a lid on any further US instalments, keeps playing the long game, perhaps buys some conventional subs from Japan, or France, or even China, as part of Trumps demands for increased defence spending, he could well out-last Trump or even the (not so) United States. As always with all politicians the polls rule. I’ve no doubt...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: trumps-negotiation-position-diminishes-as-a
Memo Wong: first, resurrect integrity
July 21, 2025
If Australia's “diplomatic, economic, strategic and military capabilities are all going in the same direction, should they be if one or more of those elements is deliberately going in the wrong direction? Marles has only ever shown the delight of the incompetent in being allowed to play with his superiors, going along with whatever they say. Hence our increasing military absorption into the US warmonger machine. Marles should be dumped. His replacement by someone even halfway more competent would be a definite improvement. Wong, on the other hand, is smart but seems to have left her integrity at...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Time for Foreign Minister Wong to put her foot down
Less Security Dependence
July 21, 2025
Good article by Paddy Gourley in the July 19 P&I. With luck America will force Australia to finally adopt a more independent security posture and capability. They have voted for Trump, twice and the world is different even if many remain in denial. Surely we must avoid being dragged into another fruitless conflict following our Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq mark 2 experiences. We have to believe we can do it as do most other countries around the world. And the Europeans are now doing as NATO is being unilaterally changed. To achieve similar national security to what we now believe...
David Hind from North Sydney NSW 2060
In response to: Time for Foreign Minister Wong to put her foot down
It's time to become truly independent
July 21, 2025
John Menadue's excellent article sums it up very well. I'd just add that the US likes to parrot its commitment to democracy. Fact is it doesn't give a rats about democracy and never has. Not only with the numerous 'regime changes' Mr Menadue refers to but some specifics would include destroying Iranian democracy in 1953 by overthrowing their government (with the UK) for oil, egging on the Hungarians endlessly in 1956, promising them the world when they overthrew the Soviet puppet government, letting them rot. Numerous incursions into the affairs of South American countries and even in their own country,...
Wes Mason from Gisborne
In response to: Donald Trump and his minions may yet do us a favour by ending AUKUS
Michael McKinley’s moral perspective
July 21, 2025
McKinley brings a refreshing moral perspective to discussion of US & Zionist false narratives on Iran. I always like to read him in P&I. I am 100% pro-Iran. I recommend Prof Mohamed Marandi's regular analysis on YouTube. He says Iran is ready for another treacherous Israeli/US surprise attack and will obliterate Tel Aviv and Haifa with nonnuclear weapons if it comes. I believe him. This is effective deterrence.
Tony Kevin from Canberra
In response to: Military operations seen through Gauguin etc
Where do all the obsolete weapons go?
July 21, 2025
I’ve often wondered where some of the poorest people in the world get their weapons/ammunition from. I constantly see that they seem to get great pleasure from firing into the air rounds from automatic weapons. Firing 100 to 1000 per min? at $1 to $2 each? How do they pay for them? Then I saw the delivery of obsolete Australian tanks to the Ukraine. Never a shot fired in anger but out of date/obsolete, scrap value to some. What a great business model! Even better when you’ve got the president of the US spruking for you.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: trump-wants-us-to-spend-a-bomb-on-defence-w
Defiant hope in the face of evil
July 21, 2025
A significant number of us are tired of cruel policies towards asylum-seekers and have been for a very long time. But like much else that is evil - incarceration of Indigenous children, supplying fighter plane parts to Israel, for example - it matters not what we think. As long as there is money to be made, or friends to appease, cruelty will continue. When Mammon is God, you will always get people who worship the Almighty Dollar doing whatever it takes to accumulate wealth for selfish, self-serving purposes. Call me a cynic if you like, but look around the world...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: 12 years on, are we not yet tired of cruel policies towards asylum-seekers?
More on the anti-semitism debate
July 21, 2025
In response to David Macilwain. This is interesting to me, as I recently was challenged by someone - a Trump supporter - telling me that the Moroccans had expelled the Jews, so I read up about that. I found that, on the contrary, they had been a valuable part of society, and still are. When Israel was first established many left to go there to be a part of a new exciting country, expecting to be a part of its development in the same way they were used to in Morocco, only to find they were discriminated against, with a...
Jo Kinnane from Waurn Ponds
In response to: A key point missing in the anti-semitism debate
Hamas are the brave Palestinian Resistance Force.
July 21, 2025
So very disappointing and disheartening to see Stephanie Dowrick supporting the lobbyist's line of 'Israel has the right to defend itself' and both sides-ism-argument. I reckon her article continues the line of dehumanisation of Hamas and casts a slur on the ONLY immediate protection and resistance available to and ELECTED by Palestine. She says. . .Since the blazingly stupid, cruel, terrifying actions of the corrupt Hamas... etc This sounds like the initial scene setting post 7th October set by the lies of the IDF, when western journalists fell over themselves to parrot ... do you condemn Hamas It has allowed...
Glenda Jones from Carlton 3053
In response to: Let’s combat antisemitism, not use it to dehumanise others - Part 1
Thank you to our letter-writers
July 21, 2025
As I read Paddy Gourley's ever so sensible and explicit advice to Minister Penny Wong, three things occurred to me. The first is that so many of us admire Penny Wong and puzzle over what seems to us like her semi-paralysis. I, and I am sure many others, would endorse Paddy's admonition that she seize the hour and get our government to move swiftly in the direction of diplomacy, reduced defence spending and peace-making. The second is that, in addition to appreciating P&I's many informed, articulate and passionate article-writers, I am so keen each day to read the...
Janet Grevillea from Lake Macquarie
In response to: Time for Foreign Minister Wong to put her foot down
The Omission
July 21, 2025
OMG iPhones are all made in China.
Con Karavas from South Australia
In response to: Round up the usual Chinese suspects
Tassie's health problem has been building a long time
July 18, 2025
The issues with the Tasmanian health system have been festering for many years. It was obvious from the first time I visited more than 30 years ago and it has become increasingly worse. Even then, retirees were invading our southern isle, as those from Sydney and Melbourne were able to buy substantial, well-located property, often for about half the amount they realised on the sale of their previous home, and so it was a no-brainer if you wanted to leave big city life, while also improving the state of your liquid assets. This trend has only continued, resulting...
Ian Ian De Landelles from Murrays Beach
In response to: The Tasmanian election on 19 July won’t fix the mess
Our democracy – taking the easy road to oblivion
July 18, 2025
Democracy gives a sense of empowerment. Voters feel free to live as they wish – albeit within reasonable limits. But democratic governments rarely take essential, unpopular steps. These days the power of the media seems so intense that governments bow to its will. Too many in the media disseminate misinformation to further proprietorial political goals. And barely-controlled lobbying, supported by substantial political donations, enables powerful interests to wield disproportionate influence over critical policy development. Daniel Andrews achieved some success in avoiding overbearing media influence when he was premier of Victoria, but our federal government, tied to three-year terms,...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Humanity is ‘risking catastrophe’: UN
Get capitalism under control first
July 18, 2025
Great article. The first step in solving all the problems is severing the ties between the capitalists and government. Recognising that the capitalists exist to make a profit/get rich; creating jobs is a by-product, a nuisance. As long as the parliamentary door is open to lobbyists and political donations, the balance will always be in favour of profit. The deportation of modern-day slaves from the US will be the downfall, one way or the other, of capitalist Trump. What we need is more regulation and auditing, not less. As long as the capitalists are complaining about government regulation...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Even Ken Henry’s best ideas can’t fix a system addicted to growth
FARMS and Usans
July 18, 2025
The issues of Australia’s over-reliance on the United States of America are, thanks to this article and similar mentions, becoming more mainstream. There are two terms which may assist these changing Australia’s perceptions on this issue. The terms are FARMS (Foreign Aid Replacing Military Spending) and Usan (citizens of the United States of America). FARMS provides a quick way of identifying an area where military spending (commonly misnamed as defence) should be redirected. In this way, the foreign aid — where does it come from” question is answered — and it identifies the greatest evil in the world...
Ian Daniels from Brisbane
In response to: Trump wants us to spend a bomb on defence. We should think twice
Trade with China is an investment in our security
July 18, 2025
Jocelyn Chey notes that Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said publicly that a strong economic relationship with China, leading to stability and prosperity, is “an investment in our security”. In that vein, we must congratulate Prime Minister Albanese on his talks with China, particularly with respect to a possible massive bilateral agreement on the development of green steel. It is a huge economic opportunity for Australia which is the world’s number one producer of iron ore with over half the global exports. It is also an exciting — indeed, exhilarating — opportunity to help mitigate climate change because...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Headline news: Australia and China
Australia's law must catch up with climate reality
July 18, 2025
It’s easy to feel disheartened by Justice Michael Wigley’s recent federal court decision that the Australian Government has no duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change. But as Liz Hicks, a lecturer in law at the University of Melbourne, points out: “It is a question of when, rather than if, law will adapt to deal with climate impacts. Much like a rising tide breaking against a seawall, the future impact of climate change on things that law already protects is too extreme for the law to resist.” Others agree. Dr Riona Moodley, lawyer and...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Federal Court rules Australian Government doesn’t have a duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change
Which Australians have held the US in high regard?
July 18, 2025
Apart from our politicians and our generals what percentage of Australians hold the US in high regard? In my lifetime, protest against the US has been a regular thing starting with “overpaid, over-sexed and over here and rumours of tensions in South Korea and Vietnam etc. It may be understandable for our politicians coveting a well-paid military lobbying position to top up their parliamentary pension. The same goes for our military who are always keen to be aligned with the US with them having the biggest and best weapons of mass destruction and our generals always wanting the...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: What Australians think of Trump and the US
Let's think at least three times instead!
July 17, 2025
Henry Kissinger once said, To be America's enemy is dangerous. To be its friend is fatal. That is one of the most accurate statements ever made about the US. All this increased defence spending is supposedly so that we can all go to sleep at night in fear and trembling of the imminent invasion by China. The question you have to ask is of the US and China, which is more dangerous to other countries? In the last 40 years, the US has been involved in dozens of armed conflicts with countries around the planet, while China has...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump wants us to spend a bomb on defence. We should think twice
A duty of care to Torres Strait Islanders
July 17, 2025
To whom we owe a duty of care is first and foremost a moral question. A duty of care represents an ethical obligation to consider the well-being of others and act in ways that avoid causing unnecessary suffering or harm, even in the absence of enforceable laws. It is a universal principle that crops up in the moral code of all peoples in various forms. In Kantian terms, it can be described as a moral imperative. The post-WWII war crimes were prosecuted applying that moral imperative – the defence that people were only following orders was not accepted. In...
John Tons from flinders university
In response to: Federal Court rules Australian Government doesn’t have a duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change
Australia is subsidising the dying US empire
July 17, 2025
With his usual precision, John identifies the pith and substance of the AUKUS fraud imposed upon us by the second-hand car salesman Scott Morrison. That redundant member of the Dodgy Brothers sought to wedge Labor by vastly indebting the Australian people to a US empire in rapid decline which continues its forlorn but dangerous, feckless and capricious attempts to remain relevant. He frankly didn't give a rat's ***e about the cost to ordinary Australians in lost healthcare, education, housing and public transport that would be needed over the next three decades to fund our satrapy to the US in...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Donald Trump and his minions may yet do us a favour in ending AUKUS
Follow the money
July 17, 2025
Is it anti-Catholic to criticise Italy? Is it anti-Anglican to criticise the UK? Is it anti-Islam to criticise Indonesia? No-one in their right mind would think so. So why the ridiculous postulate that it’s antisemitic to criticise Israel? We (and journalists please pay attention) need to rigorously question these fences erected to suppress free speech. It doesn’t take much digging to reveal the money, the power and the land grab at the heart of Israel’s assault on Gaza, and, by extension, the taboo imposed by politicians and the media in openly condemning the war crimes being committed there....
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Systematic bias: how Western media reproduces the Israeli narrative
A key point missing in the antisemitism debate
July 17, 2025
Les Macdonald rightly observes that in the discussion of antisemitism it is not recognised that Palestinians are the true Semites, and that if we use the term then all Semitic peoples should be included. But astonishingly he fails to observe that Ashkenazi Jews are not semitic but almost uniformly Slavic in origin. This includes most Israeli leaders past and present, who have been from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. It also includes Jillian Segal, born in South Africa, from parents of East European origin. In addition, speaking Hebrew does not make someone Semitic any more than it can make...
David Macilwain from Sandy Creek, NE Victoria
In response to: Antisemitism and abuse of power
Renewable meat
July 16, 2025
Jeffery Soar correctly asks What about the animals? The answer (omitted for concision) is that in 20-25 years most meat protein will be produced in cell culture – beef, lamb, chicken, pork, fish and even dairy products. The product is real meat – it just never went moo. It is very close to economic now. This will spare the world a vast amount of destructive agriculture, overgrazing, and needless cruelty. It is a 21st century solution to a 21st century problem. As to whether people will eat it, 70 years ago they never thought they would dress in...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: What about the animals?
Australia's criminal alliance
July 16, 2025
A majority of Americans voted for their nation to be run by criminals, conmen, child rapists, sexual abusers, billionaires, totalitarians, ignoramuses and racists. That's the kind of US they want. As Noel Turnbull succinctly shows, most Australians do not share the overt aims of the current US regime. Nor, if we asked them, would they share the values. Why, therefore, does the Albanese Government (or the LNP for that matter) still want an alliance with such degeneracy? As things stand, any alliance with the US constitutes a serious threat to Australian decency, fairness and democracy. Any political...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: What Australians think of Trump and the US
Yes, we need to move to a no-growth economy
July 16, 2025
David Shearman is right: if we are to avert dangerous climate change (3 degrees C warming), then we need to move to a no-growth economy. This will be a hard call in Australia, given growth is the dominant economic paradigm. Try telling it to Jim Chalmers, or most economic editors of the mainstream press! It is sacrilege. Nevertheless, Julian Cribb (Humanity is risking catastrophe, 16 July) brought to our attention the 2025 Global Risks Report. Of the four environmental risks, it cites natural resource shortages and biodiversity decline. This should be enough to indicate that we have reached...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Australia cannot survive unless it switches to a no-growth economy
Let's hear more on deep ocean aquaculture
July 16, 2025
Julian Cribb cites a possible part-solution to the world's food crisis, namely, deep ocean aquaculture. Unlike coastal fish farms, including the contentious Tasmanian salmon farms, aquaculture in the deep ocean allows currents to remove all wastes, which in coastal waters have destroyed wild ecosystems and threatened species such as the Maugean skate in Macquarie Harbour. Deep ocean aquaculture would allow us to eat salmon without the overwhelming guilt that accompanies eating it now. It would help maintain global protein supplies which are at risk because land-based production of meat is exacerbating climate change through land-clearing and emissions from ruminants....
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Why the world needs renewable food
Systematic bias
July 16, 2025
While I can agree totally with the article on systematic Bias in Western media regarding Palestine and Ukraine, it constantly astonishes me that there are almost no further articles regarding just how pervasive media bias is. Whether on the complicated housing, economic or other crises, the role of industry or even whistleblowers etc the language is also biased. Let's be honest with ourselves and call all media propaganda. Some are more competent and effective than others; the best is not recognised for what it is. I shouldn't need to demonstrate by looking at the treatment of protesters, whether...
Mark Bulluss from Dalmeny
In response to: Systematic bias: how Western media reproduces the Israeli narrative
Segal's imports
July 15, 2025
Let's be clear. This antisemitism plan is nothing but importing Israel's state-sanctioned apartheid and making it law in Australia. Don't we have foreign interference laws? How are they supposed to work when the government of the day supports this interference? And let's not forget (publicised after this article) about how Segal won't dictate to her husband, but will dictate to millions of Australians just how incorrect they in their thinking. A pointless position given to someone who has done nothing but ruthlessly exploit it for the benefit of a foreign government. But since the Americans write...
Steve M from Brisbane, QLD
In response to: 'No' to Jillian Segal's antisemitism action plan
Neither antisemitic nor anti-Jewish
July 15, 2025
One of the biggest hurdles to making the case for an antisemitism bill, such as that proposed by Jillian Segal, is that for almost two years we have all seen, and continue to see daily, clear evidence of horrific and indefensible atrocities perpetrated by the IDF on residents in Gaza. This is producing an understandable revulsion in Australia, leading to protests in support of the Gazans and against the IDF, and by extension Israel. These protests are not antisemitic, nor are they anti-Jewish. But here I have to add, unless you, Jillian Segal, choose to make them so. Instead...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Antisemitism in Australia: a 'pathology in our society'
The correspondence has been retained, Margaret
July 15, 2025
Margaret Reynolds makes the point well. I note she says: “Volumes of unanswered correspondence from civil society — if these have been retained — could detail the efforts of so many Australians to alert the government to its responsibilities during such a devastating humanitarian crisis.” We know from FOI that as of a fortnight or so ago, as previous letters note, Penny Wong had received more than 52,000 pieces of correspondence on Palestine, and Anthony Albanese more than 65,000. Their FOI people are refusing to make them available, on practicability grounds even down to the detail. (ran a...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Australian parliamentarians urgently need lessons in international law
Renewable foods offer survival and peace
July 15, 2025
Julian Cribb’s article details the threat that our changing climate poses to global peace. His charts, showing forecast water stress and degraded soils, depict this intensifying crisis with devastating clarity. The issue underlying this crisis is our ever-growing population. Jenny Goldie has recently outlined this challenge; David Shearman too. Our ever-growing global population will experience increasing desperation to grow food in ever more depleted soils and with insufficient water. This will herald intensified exploitation – plans for future sustainability will be forgotten in the face of immediate needs. Cribb highlights the potential of renewable foods. Transitioning to these...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Why the world needs renewable food
Addressing the lies
July 15, 2025
When dealing with the words of the accused war criminal Netanyahu, it is necessary to recognise that nothing he says can be taken at face value. He has for instance argued publicly that the Jews were in the Levant first and that gives them prior rights to the land. He has suggested this is confirmed by scientific research. The truth, as always with him, is actually the reverse of what he asserts. There are numerous peer reviewed and widely accepted archaeological and genetic studies in recent years that confirm the genetic and cultural continuity of the Palestinian people with...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: NYT report says Netanyahu prolonged war on Gaza to stay in power
What could possibly go wrong?
July 15, 2025
Letter writer Brian Bycroft has raised a point often ignored when he says: For better or for worse, people of the Jewish faith have become, for some, almost a proxy for Israel. In these circumstances, people attacking a synagogue may bear no specific hatred of Jews, but see the synagogue as representing Israel. Definitely for worse I suggest. That the Star of David, a religious symbol, became the symbol on the national flag of a colonising, self-declared apartheid state, divided by ethnicity/religion, has absolutely muddied the waters. One would have thought the consequences of this choice to be foreseeable....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Rise in antisemitism
Not just Asia-Pacific confrontation
July 15, 2025
The US-China confrontation which Gareth Evans raises also takes place beyond our region, at least a confrontation in US eyes. Compare the report on a meeting just held in China, ,with a report in April by the head of the US Africom, especially the last section summing up the strategic competition being waged by the US against China in Africa, based on a skewed US view of China’s current role in that continent. At the international meeting in China, it was all about win-win co-operation, respect for different versions of government, and positive development for the benefit of all...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Abandoning our fears:how Australia should respond to US-China regional confrontation
The PM doesn’t reply to webmail on Palestine
July 15, 2025
Good on Margaret Beavis and her health profession colleagues. There has to some way to cut through the government’s support by inaction of the Palestine holocaust. However, that way clearly isn’t to write to the prime minister. I have just been informed, as a result of an FOI request for his responses to webmails to him on Palestine since October 2023, that no such responses exist. That is even though there are at least over 65,000 pieces of relevant correspondence to him. It was suggested that instead one should write to Penny Wong.
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Gaza: There comes a time when silence is betrayal
What about the animals?
July 15, 2025
Good points and contributes to a body of writing about controlling population growth. A dimension overlooked is the impact of animal production – both farmed animals and wild catch. There are estimated to be 80 billion farmed animals across the world. Most grain production is used to feed farmed animals. We would have more food to feed people if grains were directly available for people and not via the inefficient process of converting into animal products. There are also the dimensions of climate impact and animal cruelty involved in consuming animal products in comparison to plant products.
Jeffrey Soar from Australia
In response to: Why the world needs renewable food
End the democracy-capitalism link
July 14, 2025
“The days of the world letting America live beyond its means are rapidly coming to an end.” What needs to come to an end is the close ties with the market and government. To think that running a business and running a country are the same thing is absolutely ridiculous. A business has an obligation to make a profit and a government has social obligations. That countries have excessive debt is due to excessive spending with private companies who can only be trusted to make a profit. They will not pay any more than they have to, and disregard...
BoB Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Trump is single-handedly slaughtering America’s ‘exorbitant privilege’
Unis should focus on societal needs, not enrolments
July 14, 2025
One would hope that universities would include consideration of society’s needs in decisions about which disciplines they wanted to house, not a simple examination of enrolment numbers. If enrolments for mathematics and English courses declined at Macquarie University, Downton, Parkinson et al. would probably conclude that society no longer needs people who know the square root of zero or when it is legitimate to happily split an infinitive. An appropriate response to declining enrolment numbers (assuming that is what Macquarie University has experienced in sociology) would be to ask whether the knowledge and skills taught by that discipline...
Peter Sainsbury from Darling Point
In response to: APU Media Release: Macquarie University announces plans to axe Sociology
Less authoritarianism needed on vaccines
July 14, 2025
John Dwyer’s 9 July article on the epidemic of misinformation about the safety of vaccines omits in his bio his previous connections with Friends of Science in Medicine, an ultra-conservative organisation characterised by a narrow scientism. Dr Kerryn Phelps, formerly president of the Australian Medical Association, has been a strong critic of Dwyer’s approach. Phelps herself and her partner were both damaged by the COVID vaccines, and other highly qualified medical experts have questioned the mainstream story on COVID vaccines. For example, Wendy Hoy AO, Professor of Medicine at UQ, states in her foreword to a detailed 2022...
Murray May from Canberra
In response to: The disastrous consequences of an epidemic of misinformation about the safety of vaccines
The Voice against antisemitism
July 14, 2025
I seem to recall that one of the purported arguments against the Voice proposal was that one segment of Australian society would receive special treatment and that this inequality should therefore not be supported. I wonder how our Indigenous community are feeling right now. I wait with breathless anticipation for the Opposition to run the same argument this time around.
Alan Wilson from Adelaide
In response to: Antisemitism Plan sparks fierce debate over free speech, racism, and political agendas
Understanding growth
July 14, 2025
As a 73-year-old who left school at the end of year 11, I’ve never been understand the concept of continual profit/growth. Like compound interest, the profit/growth included the growth of the year before and in the end required dramatic change — eg expansion of output, reduction of staff etc — to be achieved and in the end it was not achievable. I have watched as multiple government institutions have been privatised, primarily to reduce taxation, only to find that eventually the services once provided had reduced and the government has had to step in for all the reasons...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Australia cannot survive unless it switches to a no-growth economy
What is the point of Trump at all?
July 14, 2025
As the nightly news is flooded by Donald Trump, his irrelevance becomes more and more obvious. Putin, Netanyahu and Xi Jinping, the real major players, humour and ignore him and the next level of leaders have come to realise that that’s the way to handle him. It is becoming more and more obvious that the US Congress, the stock market and even his appointees are going about their business recognising that the king wears no clothes. I would go far as to suggest that he be given the Nobel Peace Prize that he covets (because Obama got...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: As Trump flip-flops on tariffs, what’s the point of negotiating at all?
First they came for...
July 14, 2025
Last night, on SBS News a feeler was cautiously put to air about settlers and the IDF increasing their activities agains Christians in Palestine. As the world turns a blind eye to the attacks on Palestinians that the IDF is “looking into“, the bombings, starvation and the purging of ethnic groups (anyone other than Israelis) from their Old Testament-given homeland gathers momentum with Trump's approval.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide sa
In response to: Kostakidis to go before court, after judiciary recognises anti-Zionism is not antisemitism
Government needs to bury antisemitism report
July 14, 2025
Greg Barns' analysis of the antisemitism envoy's report and recommendations outlines the dangerous implications of it for Australian society. This outcome was entirely foreseeable and it beggars belief the government succumbed to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and the Murdoch cheer squad to establish this position and commission the report. Albanese now has to walk back on these recommendations while the usual suspects paint him as soft on antisemitism. Albanese's political problems pale in comparison with the real dangers these recommendations pose for Australian society. The erosion of the right to protest is already occurring in some states...
Philip Brennan from Darwin
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
Erasing our rights
July 14, 2025
It's bad enough that we have an antisemitism envoy at all when the nation made clear it didn't want a divisive Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Envoy Segal's proposed measures to deal with antisemitism should be dismissed from the start, based as they are on the IHRA definition of same. It is appalling that our government and universities have adopted that definition. That definition robs us of our rights to free speech and protest about actions of Israel and its government. No nation is immune to criticism. Israel is not an exception and it is not antisemitic to say,...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
Trumpian? No, McCarthyism
July 14, 2025
The Big Ride for Palestine raises between $20,000 to $30,000 per year for Palestinian charities e.g a kindergarten, an agricultural development project. The complexity and expense of transmitting the funds to the charities is beyond the capacity of such a small fund-raising project. They arranged for APHEDA – Union Aid Abroad to transmit the funds as it has well-established means to do so. APHEDA refused to act as a conduit for the funds if any of the participants expressed overt support for Boycott Divestment Sanctions or if any BDS logos appeared on the riders apparel. APHEDA made it...
John Curr from MANLY
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
When misplaced fears become phobias
July 14, 2025
Clear analysis from Professor Gareth Evans. Max gratitude. Not only would any contribution to a Taiwan battle be militarily insignificant, the response to our engagement by a riled Beijing could be effected without them sending any military force our way. We have near zero maritime capacity. We don't own or don't crew the trading vessels. They are foreign owned by entities we have no leverage with. But China does. China could bring Australian trade to a halt, by decree, without sending a single warship to sea. By the proverbial stroke of a pen they could announce an embargo:...
Dave Young from NQ
In response to: Abandoning our fears: how Australia should respond to US-China regional confront
All honour to the champion of real law and justice
July 14, 2025
I'm more than a little sick of hearing the mantra about Israel's right to self-defence. That right is restricted by proportionality, something that Israel's genocide goes far beyond in Palestine. What about an occupied territory's right to humane treatment and its land not being annexed? And their right to attempt to free themselves from their captors? When will we hear something, anything, about those rights? ... Rights that have only ever been abused, never honoured, by Israel in Palestine. Francesca Albanese has heroically and steadfastly stood up for the genuine rule of law... not that also sickening international...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: US sanctions UN expert Albanese over criticism of Israeli genocide
One of history's great ironies
July 14, 2025
Geraldine Schwarz wrote in Les Amnésiques that her grandparents, along with so many Germans, were “Mitläufer”, those who turned a blind eye to Hitler’s policies, when convenient, particularly when it involved some material advantage, such as taking over a business that Jews were forced to sell on the cheap to “Aryans”. This is what her grandparents did. Her father, however, rejected what his parents had done. He recognised that if people in a culture that produced Bach, Beethoven and Goethe could do such things, or turn a blind eye to it, then anyone can. Schwarz can now add...
Kieran Tapsell from STANWELL PARK
In response to: The greatest irony in our contemporary history
Australia needs the other Albanese
July 14, 2025
Australia needs the other Albanese – Francesca, the special raporteur with the UN, with her superb courage, focus and global leadership. This is in marked contrast to our largely invisible and visionless namesake PM. She gets the attention of Trump's senior diplomat/enforcer Marco Rubio with her plain language accusations related to America's role in the Gaza genocide. Rubio responded with personal threats and sanctions. Albo, by contrast, can't apparently even get a phone call with the top end of Trump's governing circus and he continues to be cowed locally by the Zionist lobby with their ridiculous demands for student...
Donald Clayton from Bittern
In response to: US sanctions UN expert Albanese over criticism of Israeli genocide
Facts as opposed to wishes
July 14, 2025
Just a further note on the suggestion being made that BRICS is on the ropes, I suggest having a look at the detailed report on what was discussed and progress that was made. It paints a far more accurate picture together of the continuing success of the BRICS group in re-shaping the world into a multilateral one as opposed to the US unipolar dictatorship.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: BRICS is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear
Thanks Fred Zhang, along with Pearls & Irritations
July 14, 2025
I back Fred Zhang to the hilt, 100%. I’m 5th generation South Australian. I love China. I hate the US. … and of course, I love Coopers Beer.
James Scammell from Bowden, South Australia
In response to: Fred Zhang … Every day is a bad day to visit China apparentlyJuly 11, 2025
Criticism of the policies of the Israeli state
July 14, 2025
Can a movement that conflates Jewish identity with the policies of the Israeli state — and that brands all criticism of that state as antisemitism — end up becoming antisemitic itself? I strongly concur with this concern. Zionism, in its modern political form, has become entangled with the systemic displacement and disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people. The very idea of a Jewish homeland — which arose from centuries of persecution culminating in the horrors of 1933–1945 — is rooted in a need for safety and dignity. That need is real. But what are we to make of the...
Ivan Hamilton from Münster, Germany — I am Australian temporarily resident in Germany
In response to: The special envoy’s plan is the latest push to weaponise antisemitism in Australia, as a relentless campaign pays off
Hitler, Tojo and Putin – strange bedfellows
July 14, 2025
Gareth Evans’ gratuitously rude reference to “outright military aggression — Hitler, Tojo or Putin-style” — spoils an otherwise admirable essay on how and why Australia should now reposition itself in the China-US strategic equation. Gareth knows better. He has read Sachs and Mearsheimer. He knows how they and many other scholars have demolished the Western propaganda myth that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was unprovoked aggression. He knows Putin was forced into this after eight years of the Kiev Banderist regime’s rejection of Russian peace efforts and its murderous aggression and human rights abuses against Russian Ukrainians since...
Tony Kevin from Canberra
In response to: Abandoning our fears: how Australia should respond to US-China regional confrontation
Military can fight climate crisis
July 14, 2025
In April, just a third of Australians backed higher defence spending. Bravo! Depressingly, global military outlays hit $2,718 billion in 2024 — up 9.4% on 2023 and the sharpest rise since the Cold War, says the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Sadly, NATO aims to push spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. Militaries are massive polluters, responsible for at least 5.5% of global emissions – likely more, given secrecy and the exclusion of wartime emissions. Australia explicitly excluded military emissions from its 2022 climate pledges. However, now that Australia has a Defence Net Zero Strategy launched in 2024,...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Only a third of Australians support increasing defence spending: new research
Ignoring impending risks in natural disasters
July 14, 2025
I write regarding “The Texas flood, Australia and the psychology of evacuation” (Chas Keys, July 12, 2025). Reading Mr Keys’ article reminded me of the catastrophic bushfire which raged through eastern Victoria and descended on Mallacoota in late December 2019-early January 2020. (Few will forget the many out-of-control bushfires that devastated large areas of eastern NSW and Victoria that summer.) Mallacoota is a popular holiday destination, situated on the Lakes Entrance waterways. In December and January, the population swells from between 1000 to 2000 to about 10,000. While there are conflicting reports about the timing and nature of warnings...
Chris Ryan from Kirrawee, NSW
In response to: The Texas flood, Australia and the psychology of evacuation
How about an anti-China envoy?
July 14, 2025
if we were to replace China with Israel in all these conversations it would surely be antisemitic and we would need an envoy. I’m surprised that all this anti-China talk isn’t treason, considering that China is our largest trading partner and in most circumstances everything is framed from an economic point of view. From an Australian perspective, it has taken at least a year and many dollars to get the courts to consider what is antisemitic (not the same as racism) and what reporters can and can’t report under freedom of the press about Israel and the IDF ....
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Every day is a bad day to visit China, apparently
The spread of Americanisation
July 14, 2025
As my local village (one of those Blue Mountains vintage, ye olde world villages) now boosts a garish, three-meter, neon green sign at its highway entrance reading Massage Centre, I slap my forehead in despair that we are becoming Americanised so fast that apathetic acceptance seems the general response. After the PM’s trip to China, and Trump’s penchant for playground-style payback, I wonder if we should just trump Trump’s move and rearrange the AUKUS acronym to USUKA.
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: AUKUS project has worsened Australia’s ties with China
Hypocrites
July 14, 2025
So the Zionists, Jillian Segal and her husband John Roth, massive supporters of the Advance party, spread lies and disinformation about an Aboriginal voice (among other things), and yet demand a Jewish voice. They demand unbiased news, etc. I'm surprised they actually know how to spell the word; obviously, they don't know its meaning. Some things are just wrong, and you can't be unbiased; eg, Nazi gas chambers, My Lai massacre, and purposely starving children while denying them medication. Unless God says it's OK. How about a voice for atheists? Goodbye to SBS, Al Jazeera, TRT news and...
Jerry Cartwright from Perth
In response to: Antisemitism plan sparks fierce debate
Canberra School of Music – Exit stage left
July 14, 2025
I read Peter Tregear's article and I agree with some, though not all, of his summation. What the ANU administration has wrought upon what was on the way to becoming one of the great institutions of learning for musicians — akin to the Julliard School of Music, (at which my father spent most of a year studying the teaching of excellence in musicianship) — is a condemnation of the stupidity and arrogance of university academics as administrators. I have worked at ANU and consulted for a number of years at USyd; with many wonderful academics and truly woeful...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: The ANU School of Music: Requiem for a Dream?
Write the true history of this conflict
July 11, 2025
The nightly news is full of conflicts. Conflicts that have been brewing for generations fuelled by colonial interference, religious conflicts often about like religions verses similar religion. Until we start truly recording the history of these conflicts, we will never put an end to them. The Israelis are writing the narrative of this conflict and, in turn, the Palestinians will write their own history and the conflict will never end. The cost in human and economic terms will continue to escalate. In the meantime, the real world conflict between the climate and capitalism will take second place...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: 'It is not antisemitic to criticise Israel,' says Federal Court judge – and the Executive Council of Jewry agrees!
Explaining the inexplicable
July 11, 2025
This contribution is well and truly up to Binoy's usual excellent standard. It has context and real journalistic analysis.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The fanatic’s gaze: Louis Theroux and the West Bank settlers
Leave Donald Trump out of it, Greg Barns
July 11, 2025
Albanese has special envoys for antisemitism, Islamophobia, and social cohesion, an ideological race commissioner plus a First Nations ambassador. Via endless mass migration, he's doing roughly 75% population replacement. His immigration pacts uniquely favour qualifications and students from Modi's India. In effect, he's engineering an Indian electorates to add to the Chinese electorates that helped to stymie, in turn, Dutton, Morrison, and Shorten. It's true that Donald Trump is targeting recalcitrant universities, but Albanese's free-ranging ethnic and population engineering are very much his own. Memo: so-called culture wars don't just come from the right.
Stephen Saunders from O'Connor
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
Context and memory missing
July 11, 2025
It appears that this article, whilst interesting in terms of being an accurate reflection of the increasingly dystopian US-centred world view in some respects, also reflects pretty clearly the disconnect between that world view and the reality as perceived by the other 85% of the world's population. That can be seen clearly in two areas of the organised forgetting that underlies much of that Western world view. The first is in seeing the overall agreement that was reflected in the uncontroversial meeting of the BRICS in Rio de Janeiro. The article suggests that the lack of excitement evident at...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: BRICS is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear
Rise in antisemitism
July 11, 2025
The Jillian Segal antisemitism report is based on the assumption of a massive increase in antisemitism. No doubt I will be accused of antisemitism for questioning whether this is actually the case. Despite the attempts by the NSW Government to cover up, many of the supposed incidents in NSW were seen by police to be not antisemitic. Many of the other so-called incidences, e.g., the restaurant demonstration in Melbourne, are quite clearly attacks on Israel or Israeli supporters. I’m happy to be corrected, but I suspect even attacking a synagogue is not necessarily antisemitic. For better or for...
Brian Bycroft from Evans Head NSW
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
Segal's proposals make Browning's review illegal
July 11, 2025
Browning's article is one of the most erudite articles written about Western hypocrisy regarding Palestine. It is also ironic that the pro-Zionist, anti-Palestinian, anti-democratic, and autocratic anti-protest report by Jillian Segal was released on the same day. Segal's draconian report will be adopted by our cowardly Labor Government. Her Trumpian proposals will result in Browning's article being banned and any mention of the 60,000 dead Palestinians and the suffering of two million Palestinians of Gaza (some who are Christians) who are being ethnically cleansed, not to mention the apartheid-like condition that oppress and dehumanise the Palestinians of the West...
Anthony James from Warracknabeal
In response to: The story most Israelis are not allowed to hear
US president's tariff threats
July 10, 2025
Sourabh Gupta's article hits the nail on the head. Going further is this from The Guardian of 9 July: The true test will come if the crushing sanctions tabled months ago by the Republican senator Lindsey Graham are finally given the presidential go-ahead. The measures would impose a 500% tariff on imports from any country that purchases Russian uranium, gas or oil, with India and China the worst affected. Trump says his policy includes products onsold through a less tariffed country. Well, some of our petrol comes from Russia after being refined in Singapore, so that is a threat...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Tariff deadline extended as Trump's trade talks falter
Antisemitism plan will only further divide Australia
July 10, 2025
An antisemitism plan, in the guise of a law and order crackdown, will only further divide our country, increasing Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, and ultimately make Jews less safe. While the federal government has moved to adopt the antisemitism plan and the recommendations from the special envoy, Jillian Segal, one must ask... is this plan beneficial for our social cohesion when Israel has been found to be committing genocide? Is Jillian Segal right for this high-profile government role, particularly one as sensitive as an “envoy for antisemitism” when, in fact, she has criticised calls for ceasefire in Gaza and...
Andréa Coney from Port Fairy
In response to: Challenging 'antisemitism'
Only developers benefit from the building that is going on
July 10, 2025
I have never seen so much building going on in our city. So many multistorey apartments, so much urban building and still a shortage of affordable housing. Why? Because like this article, all the talk is driven by those with the most to gain. Multistorey units with a desirable outlook and for those struggling at unattainable price tags. Many are built on blocks that have sat vacant waiting for developers to find a way around the zoning regulations that have made the locations the desirable areas that they are. Million-plus two-bedroom units (one bedroom and a large...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: the-housing-crisis-is-everyones-problem
Repetition does not validate a falsehood
July 9, 2025
Greg Barns' article is, as usual, carefully reasoned and he lays out his argument(s) with scrupulous precision. However, on this occasion, I seek more explanation for the contentious statement that Hamas killed 1200 people in the horrendous 7 October 2023 attack. It has been widely accepted that the death toll in that attack — while due to Hamas's monumental strategic blunder that has profited nobody but Netanyahu and his ultra-Zionist coterie — is in considerable part also a product of IDF complicity. This is not a pedantic issue: the Hamas killed 1200 people mantra appears to have become...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Freedom of speech and chants
Being an 'expert' doesn't mean I don't get my view
July 9, 2025
I take issue with the following statement: ...namely the inability of many to recognise and respect genuine expertise... Expert. There has never been a more over-rated word in our age. It's almost like the author thinks that experts have never been wrong about anything ever in the history of the world. Not to mention the many experts in the health fields who would disagree with various aspects of this article. I reserve my right to question the advice or opinion of any expert because you don't get to decide for me. It's that simple. It's not...
Steve M from Brisbane
In response to: The disastrous consequences of an epidemic of misinformation about the safety of
We need fewer people and renewable food
July 9, 2025
Jenny Goldie hits the nail squarely on the head with her article on human population growth. It is wrecking the planet and is the major driver of our own probable demise as a civilisation and as a species. Fortunately, women worldwide realise this, and are lowering their fertility almost everywhere. To give every woman on the planet access to family planning would cost less than half the price of a single nuclear sub – which makes you realise how dumb men truly are when it comes to survival. Coupled with reducing human numbers to a sustainable level (about...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: For the sake of food security, we must address population numbers
Incitement to criminal law
July 9, 2025
Like Bob Vylan and many Palestinian supporters and opponents of Israel's textbook, Nazi-style Holocaust and death camps, I have also been known to chant Death! Death! To the IDF!!! at a protest or two, but my chant is slightly more contextualised. It goes like this: Death! Death! To the IDF!!! ... as per Israel's Basic Law 5710-1950 the Crime of Genocide, which provides for a mandatory capital sentence for every IDF thug who has, in any way, shape or form, committed genocide, participated in genocide, conspired to commit genocide or incited genocide, whether that offence was committed in Israel...
Rick Pass from Rifle Creek FNQ
In response to: Freedom of speech and chants
Just who does our government represent?
July 9, 2025
Noel Turnbull highlights the lack of confidence in Netanyahu and Israel by a considerable majority of Australians, so just who is it that the Albanese Government is representing? Does it prefer to reflect the views of the US rather than its own electors? Does it actively honour the ALP platform on Palestine? Is it instead representing that part of our security fraternity/sorority with a narrow focus on hardware solutions to security, cavilling sotto voce at our trade relationships, and maybe in bed with Mossad? Consider how much security our government's failure to actively support longstanding international norms over...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Boorloo)
In response to: The One-word Problem for Israel
Distrust of the NACC
July 9, 2025
The NACC is rightly the subject of public mistrust, arising from its own reports, its choices of subjects for investigation and from errors and omissions in its leadership. Now we learn that the NACC is encouraged to think that mistrust is accepable. Funded by a government grant of taxpayer earnings, the Australian Research Council is mapping the positive values of public mistrust. Mystified? Yes, you should be. Mistrust of the NACC has been thoroughly earned. No, it contains no positive values. How has this bunkum been promoted? The researchers are misled by Erik Erikson's theoretical musings that...
Glen Davis from New South Wales
In response to: National Anti-Corruption Commission is two years old – Has it restored integrity to federal government?
The NACC's second birthday
July 8, 2025
The NACC has been a huge disappointment. It continues to attempt to measure its success by the number of investigations, the number of reports and the prosecutions and sentances which might follow. Prof Brown's article contains important facts and an investigator's eye for cases. But it too fails to acknowledge the public's scorn and mistrust for the NACC and its founders. The NACC's leadership has consistently failed to define for its staff and its public what it is there do do. It never did put the right graphs on the wall and it never did measure real progress....
Glen Davis from NSW
In response to: National Anti-Corruption Commission is two years old – Has it restored integrity to federal government?
Capitalism should be the target
July 7, 2025
Richard, great article. In my view the corporations are not the right target, capitalism is. It inevitably generates the problems. Very good that you point to the failure to focus on what has led to Trump, and the fact that he has done us a great service by busting the mold. The Dems were only the alternative capitalist party. You see that the need is for a different vision ... of course, but, sorry, capitalist ideology is so entrenched that I have no doubt no alternative can emerge in time. Sanders is a Karmunist. Nothing good will...
Ted Trainer from Sydney, NSW
In response to: The deep politics behind Trump’s presidency
Facts sadly don't trump fantasy in the US
July 7, 2025
This article is a superb illustration of the divide in the West currently between realism and fantasy. The vast bulk of us are so conditioned by the never-ending propaganda, to which we are subjected by a mainstream media that reflects quite clearly the propensities referred to by Orwell in that unpublished preface to Animal Farm, that we simply don't recognise the reality that faces us all. A diminishing number of us prefer to face reality and dispense with the fantasy. This article is a brilliant summary of that reality!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Iran: The things it won’t do to say
Israeli McCarthyism
July 7, 2025
Jeffrey Loewenstein has highlighted the depths to which the Zionists have sunk in their desperation to make genocide acceptable, so long as it is carried out by Israel. They know that any attempt to argue rationally for what they are doing to Palestinian men women and children would simply lead back to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, as charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. So they choose the infantile but effective (at least in the guilt-ridden Western world) labeling of those who find their actions despicable as antisemites. This differs in no...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: J’accuse (Part 2) – The Israel lobby
Time for rebinding the Good Book
July 7, 2025
Jesus clearly said, I’ve come to show you a new way. A new way, away from blood sacrifice and an eye for an eye. A new way founded on loving your fellow neighbour, turning the other cheek, forgiveness and compassion. A new way: far from the bloodthirsty revenge accounts of the Old Testament. What do balanced Christians truly take from the Old Testament? The Genesis story, as a story to be wary of temptation, and the 10 Commandments. The Psalms are comforters, but that’s about it. Well, Pope Leo and the soon-to- be newly-appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, you’ve...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Five books the Bible could do without
Anti-protest policing is not so benign
July 7, 2025
This article paints an inaccurately benign picture of the policing of protest in Australia in 2025. In recent years, all state governments have enacted legislation which criminalises many protest actions, with possible penalties including lengthy jail sentences and hefty fines. Armed with these new laws, and goaded by reactionary government officials and screaming tabloid headlines, police command has not hesitated to invoke these laws. Climate activists and pro-Palestine protesters, in particular, have been targeted. The “Disrupt Land Forces” protests in Melbourne in September last year marked a particularly low point. Despite many episodes of grossly excessive use of...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: What are police allowed to do at protests and who keeps them in check?
Albo, the minister for missed opportunities
July 7, 2025
While not on the scale of of Scott Morrison in the game of who can hold the most ministerial positions, Anthony Albanese with his portfolios of prime minister and minister for missed opportunities is on the way. While on the path to US-style dubious democracy and kingship in Australia, there are far too many significant decisions outside Parliament, mandate or no mandate. Committing Australian troops to overseas wars should never happen without a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Any expenditure over a billion is another thing should require Parliamentary debate at the very least.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: The magic of the mandate: Now you see it, now you don’t
Mandate furphy
July 7, 2025
Unless each election is turned into the equivalent of of a referendum eg if you vote for us we will build a fast rail from Melbourne to Canberra via Sydney, there is no mandate. Vote for us and we will improve rail services does not qualify as a mandate. Even tax reform doesn’t qualify as a mandate to introduce a GST. It does, however, give the winning party the obligation to introduce a tax reform bill for the Parliament to debate and vote on. Mandates like Opposition are political furphies used to muddy the political waters. By labelling...
Bob Pearcr from Adelaide SAv
In response to: The magic of the mandate: Now you see it, now you don’t
The Australian Greens
July 7, 2025
The most recent federal election results for the Greens, losing the able voices of reason of Adam Bandt and Max Chandler-Mather from the House of Representatives, is a tragedy. The media “dancing on their graves” and claiming their policies are too extreme is a disgrace. The Australian Greens is the only party which has morally supportable policies on Palestine/Israel, (Unequivocal condemnation of genocide and support for international law); Climate change (the greatest moral challenge of our generation); Refugees and asylum-seekers; AUKUS (withdraw from this hugely costly surrender of sovereignty to the US); and...
John Curr from MANLY
In response to: Gunning for the Greens over Gaza - Part 1
Labor is not an environmental party
July 7, 2025
In Peter Sainsbury's very fine article, he noted that only two of the 29 new Labor caucus members saw the environment and climate as a priority for the next three years. Yet, Labor still believes that being better than the other mob is enough, he wrote. No, it isn't enough. Labor needs to be a lot better than the Coalition who, at federal level, have no environmental credentials at all. In the recent past, of course, Matt Kean, now chief executive of the Climate Change Authority, was a beacon of light when it came to climate action within the...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Environment: Ken Henry and Xi Jinping agree nature is critical to productivity
Thank you
July 7, 2025
Just a few words of gratitude for your article about the issues surrounding Israel, Zionism, the Gaza conflict etc. I wish more people could see through what is really happening.
Eve Wilhelm from Adelaide, South Australia
In response to: Hypocrisy and deceit Down Under: Australia is a Zionist stronghold
Embrace positive tipping points to inspire policy
July 7, 2025
As climate warnings grow ever more strident, as carbon pollution intensifies and icecaps melt, a dystopian future seems inevitable. There is so much that governments could do – eg charge higher royalties for fossil fuel companies to contribute to the cost of repairing climate damage; increase regulations on agricultural pollution and run-offs to better protect our oceans and reefs. In tolerating environmental degradation our governments are steadily killing life on our planet. There is much concern for tipping points – those limits which, once breached, make damaging change unstoppable. These represent existential threats now imminent; the absence of any...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Australia, the UN and the future of humanity
International law: Who in Australia cares?
July 4, 2025
The same applies exactly in Australia. My letter to all mainstream media in Australia follows. Only Crikey published it. And so the Australian Government, supine to the US as usual, after deferring, now announces support for the US bombings in Iran, actions clearly contrary to international law. Article 2(4) of the 1945 UN Charter states: “Prohibition of Force: Members must refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the UN’s purposes.” Evidence for Iran developing nuclear weaponry is very weak....
John Queripel from Newcastle
In response to: Iran: The things it won't do to say
Gaza genocide
July 4, 2025
Like Refaat Ibrahim, I am appalled by the way the Western world not only looks away, but enables Israel to commit genocide in Gaza. I have been passionately crusading on behalf of Palestine, my initial interest aroused by a founding member of the Israeli Air Force, a South African-born man, who left Israel in total disgust at the country's behaviour. This was the in the late 1970s to early 1980s. What irks me about Refaat's article is his selectivity about previous genocides. My question is, why only mention what the Germans did in Namibia and Tanzania? Surely the Belgian...
Dieter Barkhoff from Victoria
In response to: Genocide in Gaza: History repeats itself.
Chilling words
July 4, 2025
The headline and last words of Jamal Kanj's piece on the lethal shooting of unarmed, starving Palestinians are chilling. Firing squads and Gaza assassination trap are shocking phrases, as is Haaretz's Killing Field. They're what we need after being numbed by Israel's relentless mantras of the most moral army in the world, we were targeting Hamas militants, and the IDF will investigate. It's a wonder that there are enough personnel to produce the hundreds (or is it thousands?) of reports into deadly incidents involving Israeli forces. One report that we really need is an analysis and exposé of the...
Tom Knowles from Parkville Vic
In response to: Food aid or firing squads?
No mention of lobbyists?
July 4, 2025
How can one write an article criticising full-scale institutional failure inside Australia’s peak cultural agency, Creative Australia, without mentioning the trigger for the turmoil that unfolded? The Zionist lobbyists complained about the selection of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives for the 2026 Venice Biennale. Just like at the ABC, there must have been initial letters of complaint. Julian Leeser, that well-known Liberal Party Zionist, stirred the pot, but who provided the initial complaint?
Glenda Jones from Carlton 3053
In response to: Creative Australia’s backflip on Venice Biennale representatives exposes deep governance failures
Globalisation, AI, nothing changes. Capitalism reigns
July 3, 2025
Unfortunately, the area where governments have been least effective is the one where they are now most needed. The area where they have failed time and time again – regulation. Under globalisation they have let Australia and Australians down. While governments have been snuggling up to their capitalist masters, untaxed profits have been rising and disappearing overseas. Services have been becoming more and more substandard due to a lack of funding and little or no regulation. The few regulators left are ineffectual and constantly under threat from the media and government. Puppets of governments are reliant on capitalist...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: from-globalisation-to-ai-why-history-is-abo
Is it ‘if’, not ‘when’?
July 3, 2025
Fred Zhang, among many of the excellent points made in his article, makes the call that the ABC, as our national broadcaster, has fallen well short of its job to be impartial — displaying obvious bias — and has failed at its job to state the facts of both sides of a conflict. With such obvious failures in the ABC’s journalistic duties and severe self-inflicted damage to its integrity, it would be easy to imagine that our ABC has been bought by Disney; but no, that’s America’s ABC. Are we at the point where nothing will surprise us...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: So... calling for peace isn’t enough, but dropping bombs gets a free
It’s a huge challenge, but we can’t avoid it
July 3, 2025
It’s a long-established truth that, in any situation, if you want resolution and progress you are well-advised to present people with solutions rather than problems. So thanks to Bob Douglas for offering potential solutions for global action to address the existential threats that he and his colleagues in the Council for the Human Future have been alerting us about. Quoting from Julian Cribb’s How to fix a broken planet, he presents 10 initiatives which, if undertaken on a global scale, could pull the world back from its current existential precipice. Cribb is under no illusion about the magnitude...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Australia, the UN and the future of humanity
Warfare post-globalisation
July 3, 2025
Thanks Brian Toohey, great article. As noted, during WW2, Australian industry supplied huge quantities of food, medicine, clothing, ammunition, explosives, rifles, guns, ships and 2000 combat aircraft. We also had a merchant navy, ships owned and crewed by Australians that were key to that effort. Now there are no ships and no crew. The technology is now radically different and changes at a phenomenal pace (evolving on a monthly and weekly basis in Ukraine) but the fundamental problem remains the lack of local manufacture and sustainment. Big bits of kit are vulnerable, not suited to our...
Dave Young from NQ
In response to: How spending more on defence harms the nation
More of the same?
July 3, 2025
Sadly, the second iteration of the Albanese Government seems to be headed in the same spineless, timorous, obsequious, mealy-mouthed direction as the first. If so, would this lead to what could be called a double disillusion?
Alan Wilson from Adelaide
In response to: Courage needs to be shown in politics – Israel is no longer above the law
Our catastrophic superannuation system
July 2, 2025
Australia's compulsory superannuation system, a $4 trillion behemoth, is, in my opinion, a catastrophe. In its essence, it serves to effect massive transfers of wealth from the less well-off to the most well-off. It ensures that your socioeconomic status during your working years will continue inexorably into your retirement years – the antithesis of the Australian fair go. Think, just for a moment, of those who didn't actually work much or at all (in the paid sense) during those years — carers, disabled people, life's battlers — condemned to get by solely on the old age pension – whose...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wages