Letters to the Editor
A justified and honourable conversion
November 20, 2025
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11/coalition-politicians-cannot-accept-the-threat-of-climate-change-they-should-resign/ As Chair of the Australian Coal Association Ian was an intrepid and effective spokesperson of the coal industry when I knew him back in the 80s when I ran the NSW Maritime Services Board. He was always an engaging and intelligent spokesperson for that industry. His Damascene conversion to a climate activist over the last couple of decades I have followed with interest as I always saw him as a person who allowed his common sense and acute intelligence to tell him that the industry to which he had devoted a considerable part of his life was...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Coalition politicians who can't accept the threat of climate change should resig
A spotlight can be blinding. Ask any rabbit
November 17, 2025
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11/forecasting-the-impact-of-sino-indian-relations-on-changing-world-order/?utm_source=Pearls+%26+Irritations&utm_campaign=0bbf855fd9-Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0c6b037ecb-0bbf855fd9-744841694 While Ronald Keith makes many good points, there’s reason to feel there’s some he’s misinterpreted. When it comes to China recognising world order, the annexation of Tibet, the invasions of India (1962) and Vietnam (1979), the expressed intention of annexing Taiwan, and its belligerence in the South China Sea, suggests China accepts only a Chinese world order. Mentioning the percentage of world population without reference to greenhouse gas emissions also warrants review. Emissions from China and India make up 40 per cent of the global output. It hardly looks as though they’re aligning themselves with COP decrees...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: Forecasting the impact of Sino-Indian relations on changing world order
Melick: Modelling a modern major-general
November 14, 2025
PJK rarely misses the bullseye when he launches a broadside, and this does not suggest otherwise. I have watched Melick's performance with a mixture of mirth and despair – and I was a senior member of staff when Ruxton was the RSL stooge on Council. Ruxton, for all his idiosyncrasies, was far preferable to Melick. As another of the recent coterie of ex-Army Reserve majors-general we have witnessed exhibiting all the competence of some notable British senior Army commanders of World War I vintage, it beggars the imagination as to why that career path should be considered an...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Another RSL dope wants to draw us into a major war
Albanese fakes a policy connection with Whitlam
November 14, 2025
Anthony Albanese’s panegyric on Gough Whitlam identifies many of the Whitlam Government’s achievements. But if it is an attempt to paint an image of his own government as fitting the visionary Whitlam mould, it does the opposite, because it reminds us of the stark policy differences which amount to a rejection by the Albanese Government of all that Whitlam stood for. Where Whitlam broke the shackles of imperial control, ploughed resources into public education, the creation of universal healthcare and other major social reforms, and sought to create an independent and more egalitarian Australia, the Albanese Government seeks to...
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: The Dismissal was a calculated conservative plot: Albanese
Pinocchio and the growing nose
November 13, 2025
I don't know if others have noticed that every time Mike Burgess appears in public, which is a rapidly growing and unpleasant phenomenon, his nose appears to be getting bigger. Like his puppet master Scott Morrison, his propensity for calumny, exaggeration and outright fabrication of threats that only ASIO can discover and eliminate is rampant. He can of course get away with it as the leader of an organisation that has no oversight of the truth or otherwise of what it says. He regularly fails to produce a jot of evidence for his claims that would stand any chance...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: ASIO's Mike Burgess and a lust for the limelight
A matter of cautious hope
November 13, 2025
I agree that Zohran Mamdani's victory has brought hope, not just to the Gazans but to all who have grown appalled by the apparent inability of our current crop of leaders to address the underlying issue of inequality. I suspect that this victory in New York City was aided by social media, and as a consequence I foresee a concerted effort to bring that avenue of public discourse under greater control. I feel the hope this article mentions has to be tempered by two considerations. The first is, what now? Consider the dog who, having chased the car,...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Mamdani’s victory bought hope to Gaza
Infantilism as a national value
November 13, 2025
Our national inability, cultured in us by Great Britain and the US, to bell the cat of our continued infantile need for mummy or daddy to tell us what to think and do, remains. If what happened to us in 1975 happened in a country we had been taught to hate or fear, we would have called if what it was – a coup!! But to acknowledge that happened in Australia would challenge our childish need for mummy or daddy to tell us what just happened. It relieves us of need to make a decision for ourselves....
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW2041
In response to: After 50 years, it’s time we called it a coup
Only Arabic?
November 13, 2025
Curiously, I see only Chinese text when the Vic bail ads come up while watching BBC or other English language programs on SBS. Not Arabic. This is presumably because my SBS individual profile indicates I view many Chinese language programs on SBS. So I suspect the author’s experience is likely a matter of individual viewer profiling by SBS, not collective racial profiling. Perhaps the author should seek confirmation or denial (and correction if appropriate)?
John Fitzgerald from Melbourne
In response to: Only Arabic: When 'multicultural' media turns to racial profiling
White empire redux
November 13, 2025
The RSL has for over a hundred years been an organisation committed to a white king and country. it continues to reflect the fantasy of the medieval British values of a brutal, but long dead, racist empire. It’s no surprise that it continues to promote the delusion of white supremacy over the “yellow peril” when the world has moved on and China is now the peaceful but immensely powerful emerging hegemon. Apparently, they still need the confected enemy to continue to scare the public s***less so they happily continue to fund a military to re-fight the Second World...
Les Macdonald from Balmain nsw2041
In response to: Another RSL dope wants to draw us into a major war
No gavels
November 13, 2025
Your article was very interesting and well-written but please do not use pictures of gavels in articles about our courts. There is not a court in Australia where any judge or magistrate uses a gavel. It is an Americanism which tends to show how much those who use it do not know about Australian courts and it misleads the public. Try a wig, the scales of justice or anything but do not make our judges and magistrates look like auctioneers.
Philip Walker from Canberra
In response to: We don’t do that in this country: Judge slams DPP
Whitlam dismissal
November 12, 2025
Thanks John for your article. Just heard Paul Kelly on ABC's Conversations airbrush the possibility of any CIA involvement in the last 20 seconds of the program... seems a lot of wilful fear of public examination of the claims even at 50 years!
Darryl Halden from ORANA
In response to: The Dismissal, the role of the CIA, MI6 and Austral Americans
An adroit Albanese?
November 12, 2025
Geoff Raby suggests in his interesting and informative article that Albanese has been “adroit” in his “diplomatic positioning of Australia with both the Trump administration and China’s leaders”, while Australia’s defence and foreign ministers “appear to be both out of step and out of time”. This assessment deserves more detailed clarification and explanation on the points of difference between Albanese, Wong and Marles. Where are the signs of tension or disagreement, given the strong evidence of unity re AUKUS, US bases, massive funding of the US military, special deals on mineral resources, closer relations with the UK, NATO,...
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: After Trump goes home
What can be done?
November 11, 2025
What can be done about the “Conclave of the Pernicious”? COPs have been increasingly co-opted by fossil fuel companies, their apologists, and those who are unapologetic. The big four — US, China, Russia and India — who could make a huge contribution if they cared to, are absent. Though it must be said that China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, also leads the world on renewable energy, installing more wind turbines and solar panels last year than the rest of the world combined. Australia believes it has good credentials, even as we continue to cave to those...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: The black work of big oil
Security services and government allegiance
November 11, 2025
Jon Stanford makes a good case for Gough Whitllam. But I disagree with his view on Whitlam's sacking of ASIS head Bill Robertson in 1975. Whitlam had to ask Robertson twice to shut down ASIS work for the CIA in Chile seeking to install the murderous General Pinochet by destabilisation. (A future female Chilean government member had to escape here). Then in 1975 Foreign Minister Don Willesee had not been briefed that ASIS was running a spy in East Timor. Whitlam had every right to be angry. It was this sacking, not the petroleum nationalisation loans affair that Malcolm...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Mr Whitlam’s style - Part I
Whitlam's dismissal and the CIA
November 11, 2025
Many thanks for the great analysis by Brian Toohey regarding the US imperial project in Australia. The article is revelatory about the sheer reach of US intelligence gathering in this country, not just in its power over Australian control of its foreign policy settings but the US assumptions about how far it could intrude with impunity into our politics process. We have always connived in keeping a dependency relationship in place. It is no wonder the US has been able to take for granted our mirroring of US military interventions, not for a moment needing to doubt our automatic...
Daniel Dennis from New Farm, Brisbane
In response to: Untruths, the CIA, and Whitlam’s dismissal
Lack of conviction when it comes to Palestine
November 10, 2025
The likelihood of Australia doing the right thing and setting up its own Gaza Tribunal is next to zero. Our mainstream parties are so s**t scared of the Israeli lobby that their moral consciences have been placed in a safe for removal only when easier and more congenial issues can be confected. Any Australian politician who seeks to tell you we are moral leaders when it comes to the holocaust of the 21st century is either mentally unstable or lying. We are, in fact, morally absent without leave!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The Jury of Conscience finding on Gaza
Language rendered meaningless
November 10, 2025
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports. Shakespeare, Henry IV Jeffrey Sachs has been extraordinarily successful in making us aware of the continuous and deliberate torture of the English language by the US political leadership in pursuit of its centuries long desire to rule the world. Like Humpty Dumpty, they have misused language to that end. They inherited that damnable propensity from the British who finessed the art in their rule of a globe spanning empire by dividing humanity at every turn. A...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Venezuela’s oil, US-led regime change and America’s gangster politics
1984 in the 'defence' industry
November 10, 2025
As we rapidly approach the point at which the dying West will actually fall off the cliff it has been constructing for itself for the last 30 years, we see the usual accompaniments of empire death. Frantic efforts to convince ourselves that our lashing out in all directions is actually evidence of our continued grasp of the levers of power, finding increasing numbers of relatively powerless others who we can identify as threatening our glorious civilisation and the election of increasingly unhinged leaders who reflect that civilisational decline. The most obvious of those signs is our belief that...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The defence myth
Colonialism sanitised and disinfected
November 10, 2025
Tony Abbott is a man displaced in time and place. His approach to the world derives from an 18th century Great Britain imperialism and colonialism of the white Caucasian superior being category. He would have fitted perfectly into the feudal and monarchical fabric of that time as a loyal example of the courtier dedicated to serving his monarch in the lively expectation of honours to be bestowed for faithful service to unaccountable power. Abbott must find life in the 21st century wholly unattractive in its inclination to see pomp and circumstance as retrograde and its propensity to strip away...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Tony Abbott’s history of Australia wants us to be proud of men like him
We can learn too
November 10, 2025
Professor Andrew Podger certainly had an interesting visit to China and his wide ranging report is appreciated but did he draw the right conclusions? He noted the strengthening of authoritarian control, notwithstanding improvements in public services. He goes on to note strengthened party control, the famous China firewall, ubiquitous face-recognition cameras; then comments, And yet, the forums I attended reveal… continued effort to improve services to the public and their efficiency. How can this be? Maybe, just maybe, there has been an 'authoritarian dictat' to improve services to the public! Unthinkable. The unqualified statement, The overall (Chinese)...
Colin Cook from Henley Beach, SA
In response to: 'Stabilising' relations with China while differences widen
A true insiders podcast on the 50th
November 10, 2025
Just when it seemed most everything had been said and all insights revealed about the events of 11 November 1975, along comes a most illuminating podcast on the crisis. I eagerly await Part Three of the outstanding 'Pearlcast' (extra kudos for the charming name) on the Dismissal, which should be compulsory listening for everyone interested in our past and future politics. I'd long wondered whether the prime minister was told what was overheard from the Lynch/Fraser whispers about what was in store the next day and, if so, what Whitlam made of the remarks. The specific naming of the...
Daniel Dennis from New Farm, Brisbane
In response to: The Dismissal - Podcast / Pearlcast
Knighting Prince Philip
November 10, 2025
Respect men like him? We haven't forgotten the Australia Day barbecue stopper of 2015.
Bob Beadman from Darwin
In response to: Tony Abbott’s history of Australia wants us to be proud of men like him
CIA coup numbers
November 10, 2025
John Menadue’s article “The Dismissal, the role of the CIA, MI6 and Austral Americans” provides strong evidence of US hostility towards the Whitlam Government and efforts to undermine it. Unfortunately, its own credibility is undermined by claiming that “In the Cold War, the US/CIA attempted to overthrow 72 foreign governments” . This appears based on an 2018 article by Lindsay O’Rourke that listed 72 overt or covert operations of all kinds, including support for anti-communist parties or dissidents that can hardly be called attempts to overthrow governments. Plus hazy plans that were never implemented. An accurate figure is...
Andrew Watson from Canberra
In response to: The Dismissal, the role of the CIA, MI6 and Austral Americans
ASIO's betrayal
November 10, 2025
This article could not have been more timely, given the current transparent and direct participation of ASIO as a player in the Australian political arena, openly endorsing stringent restrictions on basic civic and democratic rights of ordinary Australians to oppose the destruction of the rule of law. The public statements and speeches by ASIO boss Mike Burgess during 2025 have revealed a clear political position prejudicial to basic democratic values and opposition to international law. Two examples will suffice. In August, Burgess cited Israeli sources as a basis for advising Albanese that Iran was responsible for “antisemitic”...
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: The Dismissal, the role of the CIA, MI6 and Austral Americans
Murdoch ordure
November 7, 2025
Of all the exports Australia has managed over the last 80 years, the most significant and most laudable is one of the biggest ordure farmers on the planet, Rupert Murdoch. The fact that we exported him to the largest faecal farm on the planet is not coincidental. The sheer volume of the excrement that he so copiously distributes across the planet has made a remarkable contribution to the spreading of the accompanying diseases of ignorance, fear and xenophobia that are bringing the Western experiment to an undignified end. We have become so swamped by this excrement that we...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: When in doubt, blame China (every News Corp headline needs a villain)
Defence money thrown away again?
November 7, 2025
I note that according to the mainstream media, Defence Minister Marles first heard of the plan to build nuclear submarines for Korea in the US through the media. But what is of particular interest today in the submarine space is the news that retiring Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead headed a secret nuclear submarine taskforce from February 2021 onwards, that is seven months before France was blindsided. Presumably, in that seven months, we still had people beavering away with Naval Group on advanced design work and letting contracts for the French non-nuclear boat. The French, for their part, were busy...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: South Korea, Canada and a middle-power submarine: Can Australia join?
Feudal Australia
November 7, 2025
Gough Whitlam was a courageous and principled leader, unlike so many of his peers, who wanted Australia to grow up and cut the apron strings from a remnant of Middle Ages feudalism that was, and is, the British Royal family. That family is the most significant reason for the failure of Britain to come into the 20th, let alone the 21st century. As it sinks into well-deserved irrelevance, we should not forget its bastardry in removing an Australian Government elected by the people of Australia.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The Prince and the Dismissal
Organised forgetting
November 7, 2025
Greg Barns, as always, forensically dismantles the contrived and deceitful justifications and moral insubstantiality of the odiously fascist, colonialist state of Israel and its many Western co-conspirators. That analysis makes plainly obvious the patent bastardy of the cancerous Israeli infection that has metastasized from the moral void of a dying West. It is hard not to notice that the vast bulk of the crimes against humanity being committed around the planet are being carried out by that West or arise from actions taken by the West to preserve its domination of the world. That suggests the cancer itself...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: OFFICIAL – Israel’s proposed death-penalty law is a war crime
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
November 7, 2025
Zohran Mamdandi’s victory speech was a call to the barricades if ever I heard one. The tone and confidence with which it was delivered recalled Winston Churchill’s words after the German army was turned back at El Alamein: a pivotal point of World War II; Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps, the end of the beginning. It also triggered the words of the late great Leonard Cohen’s anthem: First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin. We live in well-founded hope. Zohran Mamdani is more than...
John Mosig from Kew, 3101
In response to: ‘New York, this city belongs to you’: Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech
The private sector embedded in government
November 6, 2025
It is not just developers with too much influence in the government sector, it is the lack of separation of capitalism and state that is the source of our problems. The fox is in control of the hen house. That's not to say that there isn't a role for both, but their roles have been entwined to the point where the tail is wagging the dog. Contractors and consultants have influence in the employment of public servants and their appointments which leads to poor and biased decision-making. The current housing crisis is a case in point....
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: game-set-and-match-to-the-property-industry
Waking from beguilement
November 6, 2025
In 1945, my grandmother gave me The Two Princesses: The Story of the King's Daughters. I cherished the photos of those two special girls. Fed a solid diet of royalism by every one of society's institutions, I admired Princess, then Queen, Elizabeth. I was one of millions of Australians who saluted the flag, stood for God Save the Queen and pledged to serve her. When, in 1954, Elizabeth visited Australia for the first time, we flocked to see her, as many times as possible. On 11 November 1975, I heard radio news of the Dismissal. I remember the...
Janet Grevillea from Lake Macquarie
In response to: The Dismissal podcast
Ley's abject capitulation on mass migration
November 4, 2025
As Jane O'Sullivan points out, it's still just possible for democratic nations to defer to voters, to reverse absurdly unsustainable levels of immigration that voters don't want. In New Zealand, it took a change of government. Not so in Canada. In Australia, however, Liberal and Labor only have eyes for each other, voters are out of luck. Check what happened, when Sussan Ley's new Home Affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam (Jonno who?) finally surfaced, with a tame interview for Nine Media. Did he call out Labor's racist and neo-Nazi smears of voters? Did he roast Albanese’s permanent elevation of...
Stephen Saunders from O'Connor
In response to: When will immigration return to 'normal'?
Thank you, David
November 4, 2025
I would like to thank David Spratt for his article on Ali Kazak. My interaction with Ali was over 45 years. I learnt what advocacy meant and how justice in all things was the major point in writing on any subject involving people, wherever they may be. I was in truth, a Palestinian and all that meant. My efforts were constant over all those years, gradually learning the history of Palestine, the injustices over decades, the devious nature of those who sought to bring that country down and the hypocrisy of others who sought to gain materially from...
Rex Williams from Springwood NSW
In response to: A tribute to Ali Kazak
If only the Sudanese were fighting Jews
November 3, 2025
If only the Sudanese were being attacked by Jews they might have some Australians protesting. More than 150,000 Sudanese have been killed and more than 14 million displaced in the second Sudan War. The situation in el-Fasher is dire. The UN is pleading for support to help 30 million in desperate need in what the world body says the world’s largest hunger crisis. This doesn't deflect from the atrocities in Gaza and leaders from Ireland taking a stance, but it highlights how the public and the media select which issues to care about, and it's not massacres and starvation...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: A worldwide anti-Israel movement
Tax reform for a fairer society
November 3, 2025
Remember, ladies and gentlemen, I recall English comedian Max Miller saying, it makes no difference whether you’re rich or whether you’re poor – it’s nice to be rich. He could have been speaking of the Australian taxation system today. Income-earners carry the bulk of the taxation load. Those owning capital get taxation relief with negative gearing for investment homes and a 50% discount on capital gains. The system is skewed in their favour. This is fundamentally inequitable. Income tax will be a fundamental part of any taxation system, but the tax burden can be spread more widely to...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Taking from the young, giving to the old: How our tax system is letting us down
This story is still being written and covered up
November 3, 2025
For as long as I can remember, the story of lead levels at the Port Pirie smelters and the danger to children/residents in the area has been repeated over and over again with constant threats of closure and government handouts for cleaning up. They continued as recently as late last year and early this year. Then it seems that lead smelting and rare earth mineral processing go hand in hand and off trots our prime minister to TRUMPtopia to join the have-I-got-a-deal-for-you queue. The state premier was left behind to blow the TRUMPet. No mention of the health...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Clean your room
Belling the cat
November 3, 2025
Stella Yee says what others think but never have the courage to say. We are still, and always have been, a racist nation. That derives from imperial and aristocratic Britain which has for centuries sought to separate itself from the rest of humanity. That was after all the basis of the British Empire. Those around the planet who had the misfortune to be colonised were regarded as lesser beings. That view justified what was done to those others as they were of lesser value. It takes an emerging reality a hundred years of evidence to the contrary to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Of social cohesion, belonging and the Australian flag
The quantum leap
November 3, 2025
Sophie Vorrath is spot-on. Coal and gas in energy generation are the dinosaurs of our age. That doesn't stop politicians like Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce promoting them as the future. But, as always in politics, economics will eventually trump ignorance when the costs of backing those dinosaurs cannot be sustained any longer.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: 'Forget subsidies': Solar-battery hybrids can deliver 'incredibly competitive' power for big industry
Stay awake and act
November 3, 2025
Coen Luettringhaus finishes his insightful piece by posing the right question: are you prepared to be lulled back to sleep? Summer is coming in Australia. Many will already be turning their minds to the beach, to cricket and to travel. All well and good. But in the interests of keeping Palestine top of mind, of never being lulled to sleep, make a list now. Write down everything Gaza has taught you and what you're going to do differently as a result. Stick it on the wall, or on your desk. Being awake is one thing. So is acting....
Jaron Sutton from Melbourne
In response to: What Israel's genocide has laid bare
Our elders deserve respect
November 3, 2025
Robert Breunig needs a reality check. Every single older Australian I know is financially struggling. This includes self-funded retirees and pensioners. How dare this man talk about a retiree living on the income of a 40-year-old without the pressures? Breunig has neglected the fact these retirees have paid taxes for an average of 55 years, through many global crises and scrimped and saved to buy their home through the years when interest rates were 17%. I remind Breunig that superannuation only started in 1992, meaning many retirees do not have the amount of super that the young will have...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Taking from the young, giving to the old: How our tax system is letting us down
A succinct summary. Thank you!
November 3, 2025
I have read several books on the situation in occupied Palestine. I really appreciate this succinct summary of the history behind the current situation. Thank you.
Penny Lee from Western Australia
In response to: Gaza under siege: The continuation of Zionist demographic cleansing policies since the 19th century
Taiwan and China
November 3, 2025
An impressive and scholarly paper on Taiwan as an integral part of China; historical, legal and geopolitical analysis. However, I feel you did not give sufficient weight to the desires of the Taiwanese population which strives to maintain its democratic forms of government as opposed to the 5000 years plus history of China! The one-China policy did not work well for a majority of the Hong Kong community! You assert that peaceful reunification, consistent with both historical precedent and national law, remains the only viable path forward. This is most likely to preserve stability in the Taiwan Straits and...
Trevor Rowe AO from Sydney
In response to: Taiwan as an integral part of China: A historical, legal and geopolitical analysis
China's patience
November 3, 2025
I would appreciate James Wood's comments on how Beijing permits the US to manufacture chips at TSMC and to ban their sale to Beijing. To me, Xi seems remarkably tolerant and patient.
Selwyn Berg from Melbourne
In response to: Taiwan as an integral part of China: A historical, legal and geopolitical analysis
Gaza needs democracy
November 3, 2025
Gaza does not need leaders or rulers but democracy. Not a democracy like Australia, where government is controlled by party donors but democracy as in Switzerland or a democracy as the Kurds have developed. The people must rule directly.
Pat Madison from callala beach nsw
In response to: The leader most capable of governing a future Palestinian state is languishing in an Israeli jail
Housing for homes, not profit
November 1, 2025
Three thousand cheers for Stewart Sweeney. He says far more elegantly and knowledgeably what I've been saying for years: housing planning is non-existent. What we have is so-called developers spotting what they deem to be profitable sites — it doesn't matter what's there already — and they go for it. In Victoria, councils used to object but were overridden by VCAT and now even the right to protest has been abolished. Public housing is demolished and sites privatised (i.e. sold for a song) with the stipulation that a meagre 5% or 10 % of new apartments be affordable. With...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Game, set and match to the property industry – unless we change everything
Up the creek
November 1, 2025
Albanese high-fives himself about his rare earths deal with Trump. However, I can’t find any clarifying details about the deal. A few days later, Trump signs an unexpected rare earths mineral deal with China who, unlike Australia, has the means to process the minerals into a saleable product and deal with the toxic waste that results from processing. Someone tell me: does this deal, with our so-called ally, leave us up yet another a faecal resource creek without a paddle?
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Trump's rare earths deal to counter China was a badly needed 'Sputnik moment
In defence of David Marr
October 31, 2025
While I am an admirer of Chris Hedges and have read him at length, I have to disagree with Vivienne Porzsolt’s characterisation of his interview with David Marr (of whom I am also a fan). Marr seemed to me to bend over backwards to accommodate Hedges' viewpoint. Hedges, in my view, overstated his case and made it very difficult, frustrating I would say, for Marr , who acted very professionally at all times. To call the interview a “hatchet job”is simply wrong.
Barry Stevens from Tura Beach, NSW 2548
In response to: Open letter to David Marr on his interview with Chris Hedges
Marred interview
October 31, 2025
I strongly support the review of David Marr's interview with Chris Hedges. It was a disgrace and I have cancelled my subscription to Late Night Live's podcasts. I do take issue with her apology for the pun she feels she has made by saying that the interview was marred by his tactics as an interviewer. I think we should embrace the word as an apt descriptor of the techniques used by an aggressive journalist who hectors his guest and seems incapable of any self-reflection when the guest defends himself against invalid criticisms. The LNL interview was Marred for...
Geoff Bower from Gooseberry Hill, WA
In response to: Open Letter to David Marr
A windfall for Vic Labor's developer's mates
October 31, 2025
Stewart Sweeney’s essay on the Australia-wide abandonment of public housing, by Labor Governments in particular, is timely. Here in Victoria, following through on Dan Andrews’ departing thought bubble, the demolition of 44 public housing towers has begun. Literally as I write, a small but staunch group of protesters is picketing a tower in Flemington, Melbourne, where Housing Victoria (a misnomer if ever there was one) is evicting the remaining residents and moving them far from their community to “temporary” accommodation. The demolitions, and the building of “social and affordable” housing in their place, have been assessed by a...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: Game, set and match to the property industry – unless we change everything