Letters to the Editor
Reader responses and commentary
Climate as the change agent
September 9, 2026
Another great analysis by Kos, but in focusing on the generations and their influence on political outcomes it misses the fundamental approaching world crisis and the impact that will have on all the generations as it invades the self-satisfied nature of the current political space. We know that actions being taken around the world, with some serious and exemplary exceptions are by far insufficient to adequately deal with the approaching Armageddon of climate change. As droughts, bushfires, water inadequacies, crop failures and unsustainable and unlivable temperatures emerge, as they certainly will, it is likely that the preferences of many generations...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The major parties collapsed. Why didn’t the Greens rise?
Another reason why the Greens vote has not risen
September 9, 2026
Kos Samaras provides some arguments for the Greens' lack of vote share but misses one very important point: from the 1980s onwards the unremitting hostility of the mainstream media has been turned on the Greens. This bias against the Greens has been far more rigorous and effective than its bias against Labor. The Greens are painted as both dangerous radicals and hypocritical, incompetent clowns, so many people have never even considered voting for them. I suspect the vigour of this campaign is because the media's paymasters recognise Green policies as the greatest danger to the status quo.
John Leonard from Canberra
In response to: The major parties collapsed. Why didn’t the Greens rise?
The Greens
September 9, 2026
The article looks at the future for the Greens and Labor but doesn't consider what is happening on the other side of politics. The combination of Pauline Hanson, the Murdochs, and the social media algorithms making Australians angrier is a real and present threat to our democracy. In that regard the missing middle represented by the independents and the new Community Strong Australia party if it successfully launches could be much more important and a real and more sensible alternative to the old duopoly by the next election.
Gary Barnes from Mosman NSW
In response to: The major parties collapsed. Why didn’t the Greens rise?
Taking responsibility for our emissions
September 9, 2026
Bob Brown has given us an excellent concept: that if Australia produces five per cent of global emissions, then we are responsible for five per cent of the damages caused. So, we should be giving Nepal $350 million, not $8m, towards their $7 billion in damages. We should be responsible for 4,650 of the 93,000 people affected by the disaster including 300 of the dead or missing. We should be responsible for 1500 of the 30,000 heat-related deaths in Europe this year. And if there are to be two billion climate-related deaths by the end of the century, then we...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Australia cannot deny its share of the climate catastrophe
A rising Global South is unstoppable
September 9, 2026
John has written an excellent summary of the impact of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. More than that he has written something that should, but won't, focus the minds of the policy elites of the West on their gradual decline into irrelevance to a future world. I have remained frustrated for decades that the bulk of humanity remained under the Western boot simply because they did not realise their collective strength. Meantime the West, first under the UK then under the US, continued to impose their egocentric, self absorbed and vainglorious will upon 88% of humanity. The SCO, BRICS and other...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is becoming harder to ignore
We can stand in the way or lead the charge
September 9, 2026
Giles writes with insight and enthusiasm on the growing lead of electric vehicles over the ICE type. This is a repeat of the century ago move from Horses and carts to internal combustion engines vehicles. All of us can be in the lead in making this change or we can resist the future by hankering for the past. Let's do the former!!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: EVs outsell petrol and diesel as Australia’s car market shifts
What will become of Australia?
September 9, 2026
There's another way to look at The Greens' static numbers. Lack of money to extend their advertising reach, lack of personnel because of party structure unlike community independents, and so many poorly educated people. The major flaw in Amy Remeikis' otherwise excellent book Where it all went wrong is that it shows how Howard demolished secondary and tertiary education via funding decisions but does not examine the consequences that continue to this day. So the loudest, best funded political voices get heard by a lot of people who, through no fault of their own, have never learned to critique what...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The major parties collapsed. Why didn’t the Greens rise?
Climate change should be depoliticised
September 9, 2026
Bob Brown's article comprehensively explains the disastrous Australian and global failure to address the climate emergency. However, there is a problem related to the final sentence in the article: The 2028 election will be the next test of the nation's conscience. Climate change has never been an issue that many people base their vote on. A recent survey related to the Victorian state election, funded by the University of Melbourne, found that only 12% of respondents included climate change in their top three issues. There is no reason to think these numbers will change significantly at the next federal election....
Ken Russell from Redcliffe, Qld
In response to: Australia cannot deny its share of the climate catastrophe
Peace-making
September 9, 2026
Thank you Connie Peck for your clear, detailed account of Trump's efforts to block true and effective peace-making. I take in all that infuriating information knowing that our own federal government's defence-and-weapons shouting would drown out the voices of peacemakers in our own land, were it not for spaces like P&I.
Janet Grevillea from Lake Macquarie
In response to: The danger of not knowing what you don’t know, part two: Why Trump’s Board of Pe
Where do I start?
September 9, 2026
ON this and ON that. Stop and turn around and look at what we have now after the last forty years. ON does not have a sensible answer but neither does anyone else… Voters' gut reactions are here until we all learn otherwise.
aale hanse from riverina
In response to: One Nation is the symptom. Labor must treat the cause
One Nation and social media
September 9, 2026
It worries me that this and many other articles looking for the cause of One Nation's rise omit what seems to me one of the main causes if not the main one. That is social media algorithms feeding people outrage to keep them clicking to sell more ads. If more and more people spend more of their waking hours this century feeling outraged on their phones it doesn't surprise me as a retired psychiatrist if the national thermostat for anger in our brains has been changed. Far right politicians realised that early because they have always dealt in anger and...
gary barnes from mosman NSW
In response to: One Nation is the symptom. Labor must treat the cause
Mapping social cohesion
September 9, 2026
It is difficult to read James O’Donnell’s piece on the Mapping Social Cohesion study without wondering whether unmentioned climate change has contributed to our collective pessimism about the future. He says our declining sense of belonging “cuts across all social groups and classes”. It is not simply cost-of-living pressures making us more inward-looking. Australians generally are becoming “less connected, trusting and satisfied with life”, but “tackling insecurity could help rebuild social cohesion.” Could a factor in this malaise be the increasingly dire forecasts from climate scientists? Could our collective unconscious be telling us something we don’t want to address: the consequences...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Australians are hunkering down – and becoming less happy
Double standards
September 9, 2026
We should not be inhibited, when international law and common decency demand it, in naming the crime committed by our own government. International law is clear on the requirement of those countries who have signed the Treaty of Rome, to take action against those countries and individuals known to have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide: when States Parties become aware of the occurrence of war crimes or crimes against humanity, the Rome Statute requires that they must respond to the ICC's requests and provide comprehensive cooperation, including the arrest and surrender of suspects. Although states bear the...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Protesters challenge Israeli military-linked presence at Sydney Marathon
All signs point to the need for people power
September 9, 2026
Jack Waterford is again speaks truth when truth matters. The governing partiers have lost voters' trust as it is clear (and very unacceptable) that they bend the knee to lobbyists, big corporations, big party donors and foreign influencers. They hide intentions by manufacturing words and phrases that seem benign but are only partial truths – just enough to keep voters in their place. Before this trend gets worse, voters must oblige the government to listen to them. Meetings open to all voters in an electorate can be held for the local MP to listen to those voices and take the...
Ian Bowrey from HAMILTON SOUTH NSW
In response to: Albanese governs with insiders and leaves voters outside the room
Stop the wars
September 9, 2026
While I agree migration patterns will become unmanageable if the climate catastrophe keeps growing, we also have to stop the wars that make people move. These wars are largely prosecuted by The West: wars of bombs, economics, politics. The bombs are obvious and are often political too – regime change, anyone? Economic wars exploit nations by plundering their resources and keeping them in debt through disadvantageous loans and trade. Political war is often hidden in plain sight. I suggest that the US is waging a political war on Australia. AUKUS is obvious, the spread of the US military in our...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The world is not prepared for the scale of future migration
Sins of omission and desired trust
September 9, 2026
Jack Waterford nails it again. The Albanese government exudes secrecy, timidity, submission to highly paid lobbyists, who are enemies of the people. AUKUS is not a democratic policy any more than Howard's taking us to war in Iraq. Albanese is more notable for what he fears rather than his highest visions for the nation. He is frightened of the gambling industry which causes enormous suffering. He is frightened of the truth so strangles FOI. And worst of all he is scared of Marles who unaccountably spends mega money to endanger Australian sovereignty by his ambitious servile position towards the USA....
Michael Breen from Roberton NSW
In response to: Albanese governs with insiders and leaves voters outside the room
Phasing out fossil fuels is our only moral pathway
September 9, 2026
Bob Brown is right to point the finger at the Albanese government for continuing to approve fossil-fuel projects amid ongoing climate-fuelled disasters. Brown’s “proportional polluters pay” argument sounds sensible – contributing five per cent of global emissions might seem to warrant Australia paying five per cent of the damages bill. But much of today’s warming results from past emissions. The University of East Anglia estimates that, from 1851–2024, the US and China accounted for 17.6 and 13.0 per cent respectively, while Australia accounted for 1.5 per cent. Brown’s 5 per cent represents Australia’s contribution today and includes exports. While the...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn, Vic
In response to: Australia cannot deny its share of the climate catastrophe
Thank you for the delivery rider post
September 9, 2026
Dear P&I, so refreshing to read a post from someone actually doing the work. I hope P&I continue to give voice to the under-represented.
Tam Peirce from Mullumbimby
In response to: I am a Sydney delivery rider. Here’s what the new minimum wage won’t fix
Federal Labor needs vision and narrative
September 2, 2026
Increased support for One Nation includes the failure of Federal Labor to articulate a believable vision and narrative – instead of timidity and caution. Federal Labor is supposed to believe in human rights, justice and democracy – except for Indigenous people, refugees and Palestinians and these exceptions expose hypocrisy. In the UK the right-wing Reform party has stalled because momentarily at least the new Labor prime minister is offering a vision and a narrative. It is doubtful that a changed Albanese, if this were possible, would be believable. The new UK PM understands that warnings about the threat of Reform...
David Griffiths from Mordialoc, Victoria 3195
In response to: Secret Harbour is a warning about where political frustration can lead
The Albanese government is risk-averse
September 2, 2026
Mark Beeson's excellent article discusses the unlikely possibility of the Albanese government acting independently of Washington. Unfortunately, there is no chance the government will stop supporting coal and gas exports. It is not prepared to take the political risk of bringing on a fight with the powerful fossil fuel lobby. This is a major lack of leadership because the burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of climate change being an existential threat to life on Earth.
Ken Russell from Redcliffe, Qld
In response to: Albanese, climate change and the case for greater independence
Medical and dental costs could be a game-changer
September 2, 2026
Crispin Hull is right to identify medical costs and the prospect of bringing dental care into Medicare as an important electoral opportunity for Labor. The cost-of-living crisis isn’t confined to people receiving concessions. Increasingly, people on modest and even average salaries are putting off seeing a doctor because of the out-of-pocket cost. Bulk billing has increasingly become something people on concession cards can rely on, while working Australians can face significant fees simply for seeing a GP. Dental care is an even greater problem because for many Australians, the choices are limited to an already stretched public dental system or...
Meg Schwarz from Macclesfield, South Australia
In response to: WA by-election results diabolical for ALP
Migration is neither bad nor good but size matters
September 2, 2026
My thanks to Alan Gamlen for a balanced article on migration. I welcomed his acknowledgement that: Emigration can deprive poorer countries of skilled doctors, nurses, engineers and other professionals. Rural areas may lose population. Families can spend years separated. These downsides are often forgotten by high-migration advocates, as indeed are the up-sides by the likes of One Nation. Gamlen says good migration is all about management. Yes, but that has to include size. Migration has to be set within population policy, so we do not exceed the carrying capacity of this continent. There is a great deal of evidence to...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Migration is not the problem. Bad migration policy is
TAFE barriers
September 1, 2026
Indeed, we urgently need more Voc Ed students to have a sporting chance in an increasingly competitive industrial world, but attracting more students (and employers) will require a major reset of TAFE arrangements . The current TAFE system is dominated by Competency Based Training (CBT), a managerially approved recipe for training hub-cap fitters for the vehicle assembly lines of 1960. CBT has a philosophy that only properly trained folks with the word 'MANAGER' on their office door plaques are capable of complex human thought. It’s a dead philosophy for long dead industry practices. CBT has been rescued from oblivion by...
neil hauxwell from Moe Vic
In response to: We need more Voc Ed students. Here’s why
Transparency in the Catholic church
August 31, 2026
The lack of transparency in the Catholic Church reflects the famous line of the Sicilian aristocrat in Giuseppe de Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard: “If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” In 2019 Pope Francis abolished the pontifical secret over child sexual abuse but retained what he called “office confidentiality” for canonical proceedings. In 2020, in response to the Australian Royal Commission recommendation to publish the judgments in the Church’s disciplinary proceedings, the Holy See said that it would do so on a case by case basis, but that it had an obligation to...
Kieran Tapsell from Stanwell Park
In response to: Why do problems with church governance persist?
Carbon offsetting has become greenwashing
August 31, 2026
Ross Gittins article identifies flaws with carbon offsetting. Sadly, a process that started with the good intention of accelerating global decarbonisation has become a greenwashing mechanism for the fossil fuel industry and complicit governments. A good test of the merits of carbon credits relates to who has paid for them and what this is allowing them to do. Fossil fuel companies are major users of carbon credits. This tells us all we need to know. You can't accelerate decarbonisation by burning fossil fuels!
Ken Russell from Redcliffe, Qld
In response to: Labor’s carbon offsets look better on paper than in practice
Unaccountable and untrustworthy
August 31, 2026
John's article raises the question addressed by the statement of Thomas Paine. “A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” The Catholic Church in vast stretches of its existence has been answerable only to itself. That is 2000 years of self regulation. Any human institution, and the Church is unquestionably a human institution, that has no accountability to anyone but itself must, on the basis of overwhelming historical evidence, develop a vast capacity for impunity of action and distaste for any authority but itself. That has been the fate of any long...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Why do problems with church governance persist?
We've heard it all before but love of power rules
August 31, 2026
Frankly, I would skip any public display of contrition be it for sex abuse of children and vulnerable adults or the current scandal in NSW schools mismanagement and, I would add, the failure to endorse the Yes vote for the Voice to Parliament to what should be a much longer list. Words and symbolic gestures are merely falsely pious theatre until the clerical structure of the Catholic Church has been dismantled and replaced. We've heard it all before, even from a couple of recent popes. Popes, the ones who really do have power to enforce change, still only speak words...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Catholic bishops' unfinished business
Western racism and convenient perpetrators
August 31, 2026
I could not but agree with Catriona about the pathological hatred that lies just below the surface, but sadly as she says sometimes well above the surface, of the Australian psyche when it comes to China. Much of that strain of racism we have inherited from the now appropriately dead odious, rapacious and covetous British empire. Academic estimates of the death toll of that empire range as high as 165 million other. Given the British capacity to hide what it had done by simply not recording it, these estimates may be very large underestimates. This capacity for unrestrained violence was...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Help us tell the real China story
Women's rights destroyed
August 31, 2026
It is interesting to note the impact of US intervention in Afghanistan. The Bete Noir of women's rights there was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security advisor. In a 1998 interview, he confirmed that the U.S. began covertly aiding mujahideen rebels six months before the Soviet invasion. He stated they knowingly increased the probability of a Soviet intervention. When the Soviets did invade on December 24, 1979, Brzezinski wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. The goal was to trap the Soviet Union in a costly, unwinnable conflict, regardless of the...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Afghanistan: Present, past and future
Respectful debates re immigration are important
August 27, 2026
Your correspondent suggests that in her letter regarding elements of our current immigration mess that Jenny Goldie aligns herself with Pauline Hanson. That assertion, it seems to me, is unfair, untrue and unhelpful. To oppose our current migration levels, or to take issue with elements of our migration system, is not racist. The migration debate is really a complex set of debates - debates which should be welcome in P&I. But we need robust contestation of ideas, not gratuitous argumentum ad hominem.
Richard Barnes from Naarm / Melbourne
In response to: The immigration solution
Culpability includes enabling, aiding & abetting
August 27, 2026
Allan, it is not only war feeding the uncontrollable egos of Great Powers. Culpability is shared by the very denial of truth and justice from anyone propping up the too-hard basket. We did this for 24 years denying freedom by supporting the perpetrator in East Timor (liberated Timor-Leste). Not just supporting – enabling. Exactly the same for West Papua – enabling, aiding and abetting, exploiting and profiting from invasion, dispossession, disenfranchisement, and crimes against humanity so heinous it would be impossible to believe if it were not for the forensic evidence available – photographs and videos of the victims in...
Jim Aubrey from Ipswich QLD
In response to: America’s failed wars should be a warning for Australia
Combatting the power of vested interests
August 27, 2026
Thank you to the ABC ‘4 Corners’ program and the Australian Democracy Network for exposing the inadequate control of corporate lobbying and revolving door jobs in Australia! Together with political donations, these are the principal methods of state capture by vested interests such as the fossil fuel, weapons, gambling and property development industries. It’s time the environmental, social justice, human rights, democracy and peace movements acted together on their common interest in combatting the methods of state capture. Environment protection groups should support social justice groups, because the rich individuals, rich corporations and rich countries are by far the biggest...
Mark Diesendorf from Sydney, Australia
In response to: Who is lobbying the Australian government? Most of the industry is hidden from v
Discard anonymous objections
August 27, 2026
Where objections to various projects come from should not matter. Australians from all over the country consider climate change issues that affect us all when they object to fossil fuel projects, from exploration to mining, initiating damage in places as disparate as the North West Shelf, the Beetaloo Basin, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Otway Basin, for example. However, no anonymous objections should be accepted. Who's to say one person has not sent a dozen anonymous objections? Anonymous objections become even more suspect if the hearings those objections trigger are cancelled due to lack of interest. On occasion, a...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Battery projects stalled by serial objectors
"The way to dusty death"
August 27, 2026
Were we to have the slightest grain of common sense and moral acuity we should have recognised the futility of the US empire as far back as 1950's Korea. But as Macbeth so aptly soliloquized all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. The decades and the multiple failed wars or aggression launched by that empire should have convinced anyone with a functioning brain that it was and is no different from all the failed empires of the past. It's conceit of being the indispensable nation departs in no significant respect from the same conceits stretching back...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: America’s failed wars should be a warning for Australia
Beyond Afghanistan
August 27, 2026
Gareth Evans makes a compelling case that Australia can't simply look away from crises because they occur far from our shores. His call for Australia to be a “good international citizen” contributing to peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacebuilding and atrocity prevention, is an important one. However, if that principle is to mean anything, surely it must apply beyond Afghanistan. What's happening in Gaza demands the same moral and diplomatic urgency. The lesson of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya shouldn't be that intervention is always the answer. It should be that inaction, inadequate diplomacy and failure to build sustainable peace can have devastating consequences...
Meg Schwarz from Macclesfield, South Australia
In response to: Afghanistan: present, past and future
The real culprit
August 27, 2026
Alan Gamlen correctly identifies the proximate causes of social unrest…however, he fails to trace them back to their original cause. Every one of them is a direct result of some exercise of United States hubris. If the US wasn’t spread around the Middle East like some sort of plague, there would be no Terrorist attacks. If the US exercised even a minimum control over its completely immoral financial system, there would be no financial crises. If the US stopped trying to impose its will by force of arms (as they simply have no understanding of Diplomacy) there would be no...
Stan Holmes from Iluka NSW
In response to: Anger and fear are real - but don't blame migrants
Protest on facts, not conspiracy theories
August 25, 2026
We appear to be returning to an age of witches and hobgoblins, with the availability of what should be normal democratic processes being abused by the irrational, the blindingly ignorant and the shoddily devious. They appear to be succeeding in slowing down and possibly stopping the move to a renewable energy future free from climate change. If we are to ever match China in our ability to achieve progress in such matters, it is vital that objection processes for vital infrastructure projects are based on established facts and rational argument, not on lies, fantasy and the promotion of existing special...
Les Macdonald from Balmain, NSW
In response to: Battery projects stalled by serial objectors
Productivity - please explain
August 25, 2026
I am continually confused and bemused by the word salads that describe productivity. As one of the nation's nobodies, I'd like to understand how it is derived. Once I thought it related to the output versus cost of input. That seemed clear when describing manufactured products. But how does it describe other industries? Describing the output of white-collar workers as production seems unfeasible, so how is it measured? Similarly, how can you measure the productivity of politicians? When more generic terms are used to create a national standard of output, it hides the fact that it is lower-income earners who...
Ian Bowrey from Hamilton South, NSW
In response to: Can AI fix Australia’s cost-of-living crisis? Part one: productivity and living
Paucity of moral conscience
August 25, 2026
The outstanding feature of the current geopolitical age is the laying bare of the lie of Western moral superiority. The world has been dominated, largely through military power, for the last few hundred years by the 12% of humanity who occupy what has been widely described as the West. During that period, we have enforced the view on the other 88% that our dominance is justified by the moral, political, military and economic superiority we claimed to possess. Never mind that over that period we have been responsible for the death of hundreds of millions of that other 88% and...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Sanction Israel - French and Brit former diplomats
The immigration solution
August 25, 2026
John Menadue's piece prompted the indefatigable Goldie to write in with her solutions – as she does in media all over Australia. Her solution would fit in well with One Nation. Perhaps the simplest solution is to have huge facial recognition boards all over Australia with photos of Goldie and Hanson, and anyone who does not fit in with their visages, as determined by AI software, is immediately seized by Australia's version of ICE and deported – with a few coins to help them settle into their new land.
K Southwell from Adelaide
In response to: Immigration Mess
Who wins the prizes?
August 25, 2026
John Frew's letter on scholarships raises the interesting question of who gets them. Here in Adelaide, where you have to send your offspring to a so called private school, if you are to be anyone , many/most of the scholarships go to the well off middle class . Those with one pampered child who is already well endowed with all the right attributes that these schools want get the scholarships. Not too many poor and deserving win scholarships and even if academically smart, all the other cultural attributes that these schools hanker after are not evident enough for kids to...
K Southwell from Adelaide
In response to: Education and philanthropy
Idiocy and sanity at odds
August 24, 2026
This article makes a good case for the West, under the leadership of the dunder-headed Trump, being self destructively perverse. China simply wants to principles that underlie an increasingly challenged UN to be applied as they were meant to be. National sovereignty and territorial integrity are ones that are crucial to the five principals of peaceful co-existence enunciated by Premier Zhou Enlai in December 1953 and which China has implemented ever since. These are mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit and peaceful co-existence. All of these are factually counter...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump is making China look better to the world
Book burning and fascism
August 24, 2026
It can hardly be denied that the West, that 12 per cent of humanity, has in recent decades been moving steadily but consistently to the right economically and politically. There is much debate about what the causes of this development are but it is undeniable that at least one of those causes is the invasion of the Western mind by the semi-literate ideas of Neo-Liberalism first promoted by the Austrian School of economics alongside the fevered imaginings of Ayn Rand. It has been increasingly noted by more modern economics that the Neo-Liberal ideology and its literary running dogs were and...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: How to Sell a Genocide – libraries are for difficult books too
Lies, damned lies, and IDF investigations
August 24, 2026
The world should look forensically into the motives of the release of the IDF 'report' into its investigations. It is glaringly, stupefyingly obvious to Blind Freddy that there is not a shred of decency, of regret, of acceptance of the horrific nature of the genocide it has wreaked on Palestinians - and others in neighboring states. The HRF comment that the purpose of the IDF report 'is not to deliver accountability' is palpably obvious. In the IDF Report published in the Jerusalem Post every reference to an incident used the phrase: 'mistakenly killed'. The enormity of the exculpation so attempted...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: After years of denial, Israel opens investigation into Hind Rajab’s killing
Words about nuclear submarines
August 24, 2026
Peter Briggs has provided a valuable service with his articles about the deficiency of the AUKUS project. Many letters to the media and internet show a large number of people are questioning the government policies directed at supporting American military hardware suppliers and the reasons Australia jumped on board AUKUS. Words though are not enough. Actions are needed to show the government the objectors are determined to counter its AUKUS objectives (please explain these!). So an Anti-AUKUS political party needs to be formed for the next election to see how many first-preference votes it can take from the ALP and...
Ian Bowrey from HAMILTON SOUTH NSW
In response to: The French lesson: why Australia should take another look at LEU
IHRA unfit for purpose
August 24, 2026
Greg Barnes writes ‘the IHRA definition of antisemitism is not problematic’, reserving his criticism for some of the contentious ‘examples’. In reality, the IHRA doesn't define anything. (Even Justice Fagan noticed this!) Further, by incorporating a non exhaustive set of 'examples', it allows identification of 'iterally anything' as antisemitic and by allowing unspecified 'context' to determine application, it permits exclusion of 'literally anything' from identification as antisemitic. Insofar as it identifies anything, its concerns are with forms of expression, to the virtual exclusion of 'physical manifestations'. There is nothing in the IHRA 'working definition' that would allow identification of the...
Harry Feldman from Cobargo NSW
In response to: A judgment that challenges the IHRA definition of antisemitism
How to describe it?
August 24, 2026
Yes, we do know what the outcome of any Israeli investigation into Hind Rajab's death will be. Just another whitewash. But we can speculate on Anthony Albanese's and Penny Wong's reaction. They've done concerned, very concerned and outraged. Might they be furious, livid, apoplectic even? Place your bets! However, you can be sure they won't do anything constructive to address any of the issues raised by the genocide in Palestine. Australia's shame continues.
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: After years of denial, Israel opens investigation into Hind Rajab’s killing
Israel lobby domination faces collapse
August 24, 2026
Greg Barn's description of Justice Fagan's repudiation of the IHRA definition of antisemitism is a masterly summation - and as happenstance has it, in a week where the Israel Lobby machinations to dominate the politics of the rest of the world has come to a crashing halt in several major locations. In Australia, the Jewish Ambassador's arrogant, dissembling, hectoring bluster has likely done more harm to society's peaceful existence with the Jewish diaspora than even Jillian Segal's worst. His contempt for our decent concerns about the blatant murder of an Australian citizen engaged in humanitarian action in Gaza, where his...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: A judgment that challenges the IHRA definition of antisemitism
The migration problem can be fixed
August 24, 2026
John Menadue points out the problem the government has in reducing the migrant intake when there are three million temporary migrants in the country. And, as far as refugees are concerned, boats were stopped, but then asylum seekers came by air in large numbers with many still residing in the community for up to five years while their status is determined. While we rightly recoil in horror at American-style deportations, there is no reason why we can't do it humanely. I remember an American friend who overstayed his visitor's visa and was told by authorities to go home, which he...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Albanese inherited a migration mess. It is taking too long to fix it
Knowing more, understanding less
August 21, 2026
Stewart Sweeney's essay brings to mind Professor Carl Sagan's warning in his book of some 30 years ago The Demon-Haunted World: We've arranged a global civilisation in which most crucial elements – transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting – profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power...
Paul Vellacott from Ipswich, Qld
In response to: The democratic danger of knowing more and understanding less
Government competence is the question
August 21, 2026
The articles by Peter Briggs (7), and Jon Stanford and Michael Keating (2) along with many more published in P&I and other Defence associated websites all of which identify issues with “Managing highly enriched uranium (HEU) through its life cycle represents a challenging and hazardous industrial endeavour that would pose potentially insuperable problems for Australia.” All four stages of Spent Fuel management require many years of construction and management before the final spent fuel is buried 400 to 500 metres underground in stable rock formations for hundreds of thousands of years. There are no options to this four stage process....
Bill Morris from Perth, WA
In response to: AUKUS Pillar One, part two: The nuclear dilemma – acquiring a sustainable, sover
Visas for New Zealanders?
August 18, 2026
Alan Gamlen and Peter McDonald provided some useful statistics and reminded us that New Zealanders require no visa to enter Australia. According to the table provided, it is part of the immigration program where there is no control. The number of New Zealanders moving to Australia was about 41,000 people in 2025, a 12-year high after averaging about 37,000 annually between 2005 and 2019. Australians, of course, can enter New Zealand without a visa under the Trans-Tasman Agreement. However, if we are to take control of our own immigration program, then we need to either cap the number of annual...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Six things Tony Burke should say about immigration
The elephant in the room
August 18, 2026
Julian Cribb notes that the greatest elephant in the room is the fact that we have four times more humans than the planet can sustain. Unless overpopulation is also addressed, all other solutions must fail, says Cribb. We are indeed in overshoot and need to pull back, but how to get down to two billion from the current eight billion? Japan and now China are showing the way with negative population growth. Western Europe and South Korea are on a similar track. Africa's population, however, is still exploding and is expected to grow by another billion by mid-century. Fertility rates...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: The planetary emergency is here. The warnings are getting louder
Volume of immigration is the issue
August 18, 2026
Why do writers such as Jack Waterford persist in characterising the discussion of immigration as immigration versus no immigration? This is NOT the discussion being had. It is about the volume of immigration. Even O.N. and Hanson, do not argue for an end to immigration but a reduction to 130 000 pa, about 50 per cent above the long-term average. And is immigration, over the longer term, really a must? To make this claim successfully, he & others need to explain why, despite some 8 million migrants since circa 2000, we still have a vast array of claimed skill shortages...
Graham Clews from 29 Apperly Close, Kambah, ACT. 2902
In response to: More immigration is a must, not an option
Who will care for those migrants leave behind?
August 18, 2026
Haque tells us that the impact of immigration on population growth is unimportant. He then presents a case in which population growth is central. Haque is not breaking new ground, as he suggests, in discussing the importance of immigration to our care economy. This subject is trotted out by the promoters of immigration at every opportunity. The real problem is that the subject is not being discussed honestly. One glance at our current demographic profile by age and migration status tells us that immigration is not solving our care challenges so much as ensuring far greater challenges in the future....
Graham Clews from 29 Apperly Close, Kambah, ACT. 2902
In response to: Before we debate migration, we need to ask: who will care for Australia?
Five years on and no better
August 18, 2026
Kos, your article brought tears to my eyes not because it was sad or emotional but because the trauma is still raw. To hear or read these comments that you made, evokes a sense of hope, a hope that millions will be heard and in a way justice will be done, but somehow I feel maybe not. I do know that the Labor government has to go, it’s too much pain and hurt that has afflicted on its citizens. Anyone other than them at this I would be happy with. Hopefully One Nation gets in and rattles them all. Thanks...
George Douvos from Victoria
In response to: Victorian Labor's collapse isn't about debt. It's about 2020
Propping up AUKUS
August 18, 2026
I have read many times, the observation that the first country to unleash an atomic weapon will create a response that will end life on this planet. So I do not understand why certain men in politics with no training in the destructiveness of warfare can be allowed authority to embark on a program to equip Australia with nuclear weapon capable submarines. Questions about integrity, truthfulness, sovereignty, let alone cost are deflected by those with red and blue ties. Who really benefits from the AUKUS decision? In what form does that benefit exist? Many words have been printed and spoken...
Ian Bowrey from HAMILTON SOUTH
In response to: AUKUS Pillar One, part one: The nuclear dilemma – strategic and operational conc
Aged care and migrant workers
August 18, 2026
I found the suggestion that Australia needs to “wean itself off migrant workers” in aged care concerning and, from my experience working in the sector for years, overly simplistic. There is certainly a need to train more Australians, improve wages and conditions, and make caring professions more attractive, but this doesn't mean migrant workers should be regarded as a temporary dependency that we should ultimately eliminate. Aged care has long relied on overseas-born workers because many Australians simply don't want to undertake this demanding, poorly valued work. We have always had jobs in Australia that are difficult to fill domestically...
Meg Schwarz from Macclesfield, South Australia
In response to: Before we debate migration, we need to ask: who will care for Australia?
Philosophical inquiry is the answer
August 18, 2026
Stewart Sweeney’s article correctly pinpoints what is probably the most fundamental issue of our time. It seems to me that the answer lies in a radical change to our methods of education, in essence we need to look back to antiquity for our inspiration. Adopting a ‘Philosophical Inquiry’ approach to education develops critical thinking and a greater understanding of society. Also, giving more prominence to the arts rather than current fixation on educating for specific workplace skills, develops sensitivities and creative talent that will serve humanity well in a world that is becoming increasingly complex and out of balance.
John Turner from inverloch, Victoria
In response to: The democratic danger of knowing more and understanding less
Still missing the point
August 18, 2026
Jack has trotted out more than his usual share of tropes. To make housing affordable, we must increase supply and reduce the cost of land. Nothing written about reducing demand via a reduction in immigration. That means, at best, only half right – and surely he should aspire to better than that. Btw, if we keep on bringing in construction workers in from OS, the first house they will need to build is their own!
Dr Graham CLEWS from Canberra
In response to: Are the rich and old to be pitched against the young and poor?
'David McBride walks free' and so must West Papua!
August 18, 2026
Yes, Greg, we owe David McBride. Truth is neither circumstantial nor predatory. Truth has David’s radiance of virtue and integrity. Salute to you, David! Ask any activist “what courage looks like?” It is not any political party steeped in the unfettered tradition of enabling, supporting, sponsoring, sustaining, subsidizing, exploiting, expropriating, rewarding, and profiting from knowingly illegal conduct and crimes against humanity, crimes by unlawful settlement, crimes by unlawful acts of state, crimes by individuals, and crimes by joint criminal enterprise/common purpose and by extended joint criminal enterprise/common purpose. Free West Papua! Jim Aubrey, Genocide Rebellion-Free West Papua Chapter Australia
Jim Aubrey from Ipswich QLD
In response to: What courage looks like: David McBride walks free
Has the world reached Peak Trump?
August 17, 2026
Has the world finally reached Peak Trump? For ten years he has either thrilled or appalled, but whichever camp one chooses to align with, for those ten years Donald Trump has been the only show in town. Or so the media generated narrative led us to believe. But like a party balloon, that narrative has now burst. The mendacity and avarice beneath the glitter can no longer be denied. The uni-polar moment was misunderstood by some to be permanent. The United States bought the illusion, but the rest of the world didn't. Donald Trump clearly bought it, but he was...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Regime Change: essential, chilling reading on Trump’s second term
Closing a luxury ute tax loophole could help fund EV fast chargers
August 17, 2026
We need to get rid of this luxury car tax loophole. High-end Ford vehicles — such as top-tier Ford Ranger variants — avoid the tax because they are classified as commercial goods vehicles (light commercial Utes) rather than passenger cars. It should only exempt EVs in this category. The revenue generated could be used to build EV fast charger around the country.
Louise O'Brien from Sydney Australia
In response to: Australia’s EV boom has caught policymakers napping
Migration policy can’t be separated from population
August 17, 2026
Alan Gamlen and Peter McDonald make important points in Six things Tony Burke should say about immigration, particularly about managing temporary migration, clearer visa pathways and avoiding excessive focus on a single net overseas migration number. However, there is a seventh – can we build enough houses, schools, hospitals, transport and infrastructure for the population we're planning for? I don't think Australians are necessarily opposed to migration. Most recognise its economic and social benefits, but people are concerned when population growth outpaces governments’ capacity to provide housing and services. The authors are right that net overseas migration is an outcome,...
Meg Schwarz from Macclesfield, South Australia
In response to: Six things Tony Burke should say about immigration
We need to wean ourselves off migrant workers
August 14, 2026
Mainul Haque is right to assert: We need stronger pathways from education into care careers. We need better retention strategies. We need to value care work as highly skilled work. Yes, with an ageing population, we do need to direct more of our own young people into caring professions and, once there, look after them in terms of pay and conditions. In the short term, yes, we do need to depend on migrants to supply the skills we need as we have not trained enough of our own. In many cases, however, we have to recognise that we are poaching...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Before we debate migration, we need to ask: who will care for Australia?
Changing the structure of the UN
August 14, 2026
Connie Peck laments that the UN is being starved of funds while member nations overspend on armaments. Could we see that both of those are because the bad boys have too much power at the moment? First Trump – a malignant narcissist – seizes power in the US replaying what tyrants have done throughout history. If the world survives Trump it must work out how to stop forever new Trumps seizing power, which won't be easy. A suggestion of something that might make it easier is changing the structure of the UN. It is a body of nations and nations...
gary barnes from mosman NSW
In response to: The UN cannot be left to starve while military spending soars
Trust a relationship
August 14, 2026
Jack Waterford paints the consequences for Albanese of secrecy and distrust. Someone should tell Albanese that progress comes from the edges not the conservative centre. Albanese seems to be wanting to manage instead of governing. If he distrusts us, how can we trust him?
Michael Breen from Robertson NSW
In response to: The truth, forced out, is more damaging than coming clean
So we can't look after ourselves?
August 14, 2026
... the argument that the nation does not need a bigger and more skilled workforce is nonsense claims Jack Waterford in the first of several clangers in this commentary. Well it's true we can't supply all the needed skills tomorrow, but that's because we've wrecked our education and training systems, denying a lot of our young people a decent livelihood, and also because the housing market was left drifting in obvious dysfunction for decades. Waterford also claims Australia has virtually full employment. Is he not old enough to remember when unemployment was below 2%? The economy was booming, wealth was...
Geoff Davies from Braidwood NSW
In response to: More immigration is a must, not an option
Set immigration policy in context of population
August 14, 2026
Abul Rizvi highlights certain sectors within immigration that he claims are hard to cut, including: 400,000 people on bridging visas; 120,000 partner applications; 130,000 people in the asylum system; 270,000 people on temporary graduate visas; 260,000 people on skilled temporary visas; 225,000 people on working holiday maker visas. Those on bridging visas and in the asylum system may well be facing hardship, so we need to accelerate processing their cases. Partner applications are a concern (how do you refuse?) and may just need to be counted as part of the skilled program. The 270,000 on the temporary graduate visas and...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Migration targets need more than thought bubbles
Who's the terrorist?
August 14, 2026
John Menadue, thank you for your insightful assessment of how the label 'terrorist' is so misused, fabricated to suit Western and US interests while obscuring the violence and dispossession that is happening before our eyes. The violence of Hamas did not appear out of nowhere, but was the last gasp of an occupied and brutalised people over a long period of time.
Mary Burke from Melbourne
In response to: Terrorism and the deliberate corruption of language and meaning
The end of the world is really nigh, this time
August 14, 2026
Julian Cribb’s latest contribution paints a picture Hogarth or Goya would be proud of. Over the last ten years, the heedless race to embrace AI and build data centres, the sociopathic actions of world leaders, and the outright greed of the corporate world have caused preventable greenhouse emissions to dramatically overshoot predictions. There has been no indication that elected leaders, certainly in this country, have any inclination to accept and act on the pre-dystopian situation with which we’re faced. One aspect of the future Julian omitted is the oxygen levels in the air we breathe. Oxygen is produced by the...
John Mosig from Kew, 3101
In response to: Hothouse Earth is arriving faster than predicted
Has the UN been abandoned?
August 14, 2026
Dr Peck channels Dr Strangelove to a degree. I could almost hear Vera Lynn singing We’ll Meet Again as I read her forewarning. Sadly, as the world hurtles down the highway with all the certainty of a driverless car, the UN shrinks to a speck in the rear vision mirror. True, the Doomsday Clock has never been closer to midnight, but a more insidious and inexorable threat is fed by the accelerating global military budget. The heavy industry involved in manufacture and deployment of the global military machine generates, per dollar, twice the greenhouse emissions as peaceful commercial and domestic...
John Mosig from Kew, 3101
In response to: The UN cannot be left to starve while military spending soars
Electric vehicles should not be taxed
August 14, 2026
Ian McAuley's article :Australia's EV boom has caught policymakers napping considers ways to tax electric vehicles to compensate for lost fuel excise as EV's increasingly replace internal combustion engine vehicles. There is a strong case that there should be no electric vehicle tax in the foreseeable future, as the climate imperative is to rapidly reduce the use of fossil fuels. Governments can compensate for lost revenue by looking to the fossil fuel industry, that is causing the climate crisis and in Australia currently receives billions of dollars in subsidies annually.
Ken Russell from Redcliffe, Qld
In response to: Australia’s EV boom has caught policymakers napping
The proposed road pricing for EVs is stupid
August 14, 2026
Approximately $26 billion was raised from fuel excise duties in 2024-25. Incredibly, over $10 billion was returned in the form of tax credits to the mining ($4.8 billion) and agricultural ($1.2 billion) sectors and others. The economic cost of pollution produced by combustion engine cars and trucks likely exceeds the excise duties that are raised (refer to John Quiggin’s article in ‘The Conversation’ exactly one year ago.) The discriminatory Road Pricing scheme for EV proposed by the state premiers will almost certainly slow the transition from petrol/diesel vehicles to the clean energy EVs – this is bad news for everyone;...
John Turner from inverloch
In response to: Australia’s EV boom has caught policymakers napping
Full employment – not full flexibility.
August 14, 2026
How can some employers have it cosy while others struggle to attract the talent they need? Is insufficient labour mobility the cause or a symptom of something more fundamental? Is our debt culture really the 'active ingredient' in what's changed? The other cliché about 50 years ago is the golden age of full employment. Having very little labour supply slack, as a business, you naturally must either pay higher wages to attract talent (or avoid costly industrial unrest) and invest in either labour-saving ideas or better products you can sell for higher prices to obviate the risen costs. So from...
Finn Ryan from Rockingham WA
In response to: Less job mobility, lower productivity: the cost of cosy capitalism
Make Easter Island a compulsory school excursion
August 14, 2026
Alan Reid is spot on; we’re looking in the wrong place. We’re segregating our future leaders in their formative years, before their time comes to build a congruous, coherent and cohesive society. The issue is fundamental to our future. With few exceptions, private education is faith-based. It makes up 34 per cent of the education intake; and growing. As any educator will tell you, the “animals” of year nine become the young adults of years 10-12. It is in these crucial development years where thought processes are set through interaction with those around them. The question is; how can these...
John Mosig from Kew, 3101
In response to: Better education begins with better democracy
Mental health problems in today's Australia
August 14, 2026
Kos Samaras has pointed out the high levels of mental health issues in today’s Australia and the shortfall in the provision of services and funding. However, better funding, whilst it would be welcome, would not solve the present mental health crisis in Australia. This is because the current treatment for mental health issues, pharmaceutical and therapy, are not very effective. A few organic mental health conditions aside, the causes of mental health issues are not in the person but in their environment. Children are born into the world with expectations of living in the natural world, and nothing in the...
John Leonard from Canberra
In response to: Mental health is not a niche issue. It is the electorate