Letters to the Editor
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which we are subjected by a mainstream media that reflects quite clearly the propensities referred to by Orwell in that unpublished preface to Animal Farm, that we simply don't recognise the reality that faces us all.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 policiing 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
How about a complete 21st century edit?
July 2, 2025
With today’s knowledge of the physical world and what holds it together psychologically, that the Scriptures have been assembled into a politically focussed holy manual is indisputable. True, the instructions therein underwrote the evolutionary phase at a particular point in the human experiment, but beating ploughshares into swords took time and effort. We can now summon Armageddon at the press of a button. David O’Halloran’s plea to edit the Holy Book with a 21st century perspective, as essential as it is to humanity’s survival, may be falling on deaf ears. Manipulation and subjugation of people of faith has...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: Five books the Bible could do without
'Your winnings, sir'
July 2, 2025
The revelations by Warwick Anderson and Kerry Breen about medical research fraud and the ways in which it is covered up by vested interests are so shocking that I am reminded of the famous exchange in Casablanca when Captain Renault, chief of Police, closes Rick’s café and has to find a pretence for it when Rick asks him why: Captain Renault to Rick: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! Croupier, appearing at his shoulder: Your winnings, sir. Captain Renault:Oh, thank you very much.
Peter Sainsbury from Darling Point
In response to: Research misconduct: Strengthening Australia’s research integrity system
Brian Toohey makes some good points
July 2, 2025
Brian Toohey makes some very good points in his 2 July opinion piece. Australia’s security and defence requirements are not similar to either those of the US or Europe. We are not covered by NATO or any other similar treaty and we do not have Russia on our doorstep. If we did need to spend 3.5% GDP on defence, it would be a coincidence with America’s request. Given our terrible history of joining America in conflicts, no way should we join them in defending Taiwan or agree to linking Taiwan with the use of any nuclear submarines sold to...
David Hind from North Sydney NSW
In response to: How Spending More on defence harms the nation
The vengeful god on full display in Palestine
July 2, 2025
As a long lapsed Christian, whose limited knowledge comes from his teens growing up in a Protestant household, I’ve long been unable to understand the significance of the Old Testament and why the teachings of Christ don’t always trump the teachings in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the foreword setting the scene for what is to come. In Palestine, the foreword has become the text and it is time for Christians to distribute the loaves and fishes, put an end to all the smiting, and stop facilitating the smiting in an attempt to fast-track the second...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Five books the Bible could do without
Kelty and Keating’s lasting legacy
July 1, 2025
This has been one of the most significant social reforms of the past century as it has not only provided far greater security in retirement than the pension system, but has also provided a vast aggregation of capital to enable national investment in public infrastructure outside the vagaries of politics and national budgeting. This alone secures Keating’s place in Australian history.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wagess
Thanks, Paul
July 1, 2025
As a beneficiary and supporter of super, I would like to offer some improvements to the scheme: 1. That the payout be compulsorily taken as a pension. 2. That the scheme give priority to investing in Australian Government/state and national infrastructure projects with the Reserve Bank setting variable interest rates on the loan. 3. That politicians' super be included in the scheme and that the same operational rules apply to all Australians. 4. That ideologically opposed Parliaments be specifically banned from legislation allowing “crisis“ early drawdown schemes. 5. That the balance in super be considered...
Bob Pesrce from Adelaide SA
In response to: the-superannuation-system-matures-at-12-of-
Thank you, Mr Keating
July 1, 2025
I recall when our superannuation system was introduced. Further, I also well recall those days when we were fortunate to have politicians with the kind of intellectual power and vision that delivered this, and now, the extraordinary Australian superannuation assets we have today. I cannot imagine looking at retirement on a government pension, when I have the good fortune, after decades of work, to have membership in a Defined Benefit higher education industry fund. What is disappointing is the variable but overt lack of vision and imagination in subsequent politicians regarding the original dynamic purpose, collective and private...
Robyn Dalziell from Sydney
In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wages
Avoiding the maelstrom of America's death throes
July 1, 2025
Allan Patience is spot on in this article. With the American Government fighting internecine battles against its justice, educational and economic systems, the US is imploding. To avoid being caught up in its death throes we must develop an independent foreign policy. It's time we left the false security of Uncle Sam and lit out on our own.
Albert Turley from Doncaster, VIC
In response to: Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
At least I have a booming voice
July 1, 2025
I agree wholeheartedly with Trish Bolton. In my mid-70s now, with a walking stick and a booming voice, I earn my right to an Age Pension and am proud of my creative, activist life. As an active union member throughout my (paid) working life, I helped fight for better working conditions and equal opportunities for women here and around the world. As a peace activist, I've marched with hundreds of thousands of people fighting against wars and discrimination against so-called minority peoples in a US-led rules-biased global hegemony. Police violence was the norm in the 1960s and we...
Diana Rickard from Tumbling Waters NT
In response to: OK Boomers not so okay
Lower than vermin
July 1, 2025
Way back in 1948 during a speech in Manchester, Nye Bevan declared a deep burning hatred towards the UK Tory party and proclaimed they were lower than vermin and nothing more than organised spivvery. Indeed, substantial evidence indicates the words resonate much more today than they did over seven decades ago.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane QLD
In response to: The contemporary world is run by political dinosaurs facing extinction
Enduring Israeli propaganda myths
July 1, 2025
An excellent review by Jack. A couple of Israeli standard attempts to justify its abominations, however, need to be put to bed clearly and accurately. The first is that Israel has a right to exist. Under international law, no country has the right to exist. There is nothing in international law that says so. What international law does is to give a people a right to exist. Countries just exist at any one time and may not have existed in the past and may not exist in the future as international borders change constantly. Secondly Israel, in the case...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Bunker busters shook us all
I’d rather be a Boomer than a Millennial
June 30, 2025
I can’t quite grasp the overall message of Trish Bolton’s Boomer talk. Yes, we are privileged, and had things so much easier in early adulthood than do millennials these days, but we apparently have to suffer scorn, ridicule and derision from those much younger than us. And we should not be blind to the fact that not all Boomers are financially secure. But aren’t these truisms just facts of life in any non-homogenous group? Neither of my two children in their late thirties/early forties can envisage ever being able to buy their own home albeit they are both in...
Maggie Woodhead from Perth, western Australia
In response to: OK boomers not so OK
Disinformation and extreme weather the greatest risks
June 30, 2025
There are growing calls for Australia to boost defence spending – but is it wise or necessary? As Julian Cribb points out, the “lust for conquest, self-aggrandisement and dominion” from some world leaders is diverting attention and resources from the far greater threat of climate change. In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight — the closest it’s ever been — citing not only the risk of nuclear war but also escalating climate change and the spread of disinformation. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Risks Survey, based on over...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: A distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Taxes, no taxes and no services
June 30, 2025
The divisive nature of politics has led us to this point and under this system there always has to be someone to blame. It has become the norm for the cost of services and government projects to always be reported as a cost, not a benefit eg when was the last time Medicare, PBS, aged care or the NDIS were reported as the benefits provided? It is always the cost to the taxpayer. We hear about the price of upgrading the electrical supply system, NBN, highways etc forgetting that for many years private suppliers have benefitted from the...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: ok-boomers-not-so-okay
Fitness means best-suited, not strongest
June 30, 2025
Julian Cribb says, with some, I hope excusable, editing that, ‘The pathological character of modern political leadership … has diverted us from our own survival, as a civilisation – and maybe as a species, … contributing to a humanity, as Darwin might have described it, “less fit to survive”’. The phrase survival of the fittest is mostly misused these days to imply that individuals and groups who fulfill the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger”, to which one might add smarter, better armed, richer, more ruthless, etc., are very justifiably most likely to succeed in life. Julian, with...
Peter Sainsbury from Sydeny
In response to: A distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Egomaniac
June 30, 2025
Did anyone ask “Do you think Trump is an egomaniac“? What percentage answered yes? A larger percentage in Australia? Did you ever see a picture of a gathering of world leaders where he isn’t front and centre and he takes his ball and goes home if he isn’t? Whatever he does is bigger and better, even if it isn’t. Trump is ungracious in his language about past and present leaders. He isn’t worthy of a Nobel Peace prize (no US president is) but his ego demands he get one. because someone else got one.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: What the world thinks of Trump
Climate action has to be our top priority
June 30, 2025
The title of Julian Cribb's article was very apt: the world is indeed too distracted by war to deal with climate change and is thus marching towards catastrophe. There is no one solution; rather many that have to be implemented in parallel. The most obvious is making the energy transition away from fossil fuels to renewables. The next is a ban on deforestation followed by widespread reafforestation. But we have to address economic growth and not regard it as a wholesale good. Like the curate's egg, it is good in part, namely in those areas that benefit the planet...
Jenny Goldie Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: GA distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Labels, not arguments
June 30, 2025
I acknowledge Sue's pain at the bullying use of labels such as antisemitism to divert community attention from the perpetration of genocide. Many of us have been similarly targeted. but not to the same extent, by the supporters of a regime that closely resembles in its guiding political ideology and its criminal actions the Nazis of mid-last century Europe. That drawing attention to this and highlighting its corrosive affect on our shared humanity can be used as a weapon demonstrates the capacity of such extreme ideologies to distort the perceptions and actions of possibly otherwise normal human beings. ...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Lattouf’s victory, our fight: Standing firm against intimidation
Not just myopia, it is developmental dependency
June 30, 2025
Bruce Dover clearly points out Australia's toxic dependency on Uncle Sam now that Mother England is ageing. He depicts Penny Wong and the prime minister as supine and timid about our international position – even though they have the numbers to be courageous and visionary. Might I suggest it is not myopia, it is an adolescent nation fearing to leave the previous cosy dependence on mum and dad.
Michael Breen from Robertson NSW
In response to: Australia's Media Myopia
China's Uighur treatment praised by world Muslims
June 30, 2025
Taken from this article: Thirty-seven other countries jumped to Beijing’s defence, with their own letter praising China’s human rights record, and dismissing the reported detention of up to two million Muslims in western China’s Xinjiang region. Nearly half of the signatories were Muslim-majority nations, including Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, according to the Chinese Government. “Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalisation measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centres,” the letter said, according to Reuters, which saw a...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China’s partnership with Muslim world is redrawing global landscape
Comptering for the Nobel Prize in perjury
June 30, 2025
The capacity of Bibi to lie, deceive, prevaricate, distort, fabricate, forge and perjure himself publicly and openly exceeds all bounds of decency, humanity and morality. It is not true to say that you can tell when he is lying when his lips are moving. It goes way past that. Every waking moment of his despicable life is a lie. The time is coming when he will have to face his Nuremburg moment. It cannot come too soon for humanity.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Twisting biblical narratives to suit aggression
We downgrade foreign language teaching at our peril
June 30, 2025
Having just read Allan Patience's fine article, I am even more perturbed than before, at Australia's mindless acceptance of the educational philosophy that currently reveres STEM education as the be-all and end-all of education, and the current downgrading of language teaching and the humanities. Yes science, maths etc are very important, but those now downgraded studies are urgently needed. Australians need to tune in to our neighbours in Asia. We're getting all our news not just from Caucasian countries, but worse just from anglophone countries. We keep being told that China is the big threat and all out to...
Noel Wauchope from Melbourne
In response to: Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
Failure to condemn
June 30, 2025
Never before has violence been so encouraged, and disdain for life and liberty been so blatant. A US president who encourages violence against immigrants living and working within his country; a man who encourages the suppression of free speech against journalists and anyone who has a difference of opinion. A president who bullies countries that don’t want to trade in the way he wishes to, and threatens to take over sovereign nations for his own means; a man who bombs countries illegally, and sends the military into a war zone -that he and his cronies created — under the...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Starvation and profiteering in Gaza
Australian media's biggest problem
June 30, 2025
It's all very well decrying Australia’s media myopia, but look who owns it. We've got Murdoch, Zuckerberg and Musk, for whom the US dollar, garnered worldwide, is God. Fairfax persisted until finally capitulating to the Nine Network. Credibility died there when a year's worth of red ink decorated Peter Hartcher's histrionic, fear-mongering, anti-China series. Poor old Aunty is seriously infected by Liberal Party appointments and funding cuts. Its former quality innovation and Australian content has diminished drastically. No wonder our always UK/US focussed mainstream media, now constricted even further by reduced ownership, is now referred to as legacy media....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Australia’s media myopia
War powers
June 30, 2025
Fred Zhang lays out quite clearly the need for balance in reporting on China. In view of Donald Trump’s attitude to China, particularly Taiwan, it is important to note the following from The Guardian on 28 June: “Tim Kaine, a Virginia democrat who sponsored the resolution, also harkened back to the founders’ drafting of the constitution when he spoke to his colleagues on Friday. He spoke about how George Washington was president at the time. “As much as they respected leaders like George Washington, they said war is too big a decision. It’s too big a decision for...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: No time to dye: ABC’s China bias is licensed to kill credibility
Lobbyists, lobbyists everywhere
June 30, 2025
I'm not the slightest bit interested in sport or physical activity. I'd rather read a book. I walk three times weekly for my health only because there's coffee and conversation at the end. Yet even I am sick of gambling ads on TV and in public spaces when I go out. And I'm aware, to my shame, that my monthly pub dinner is cheap because it's subsidised by the gambling losses of people playing pokies across the other side of the bar. So when the government caves to highly visible gambling industry lobbying and refuses to ban gambling advertising...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: How lobbyists are blocking bans on advertising for online gambling – and putting young Australians at risk
Sites to view
June 30, 2025
It would be great if Bruce Dover could suggest a few online English language news services in neighbouring countries that he considers to be good to follow.
Peter Manins from Cairns
In response to: Australia’s media myopia