Letters to the Editor

Write the true history of this conflict

July 11, 2025

The nightly news is full of conflicts. Conflicts that have been brewing for generations fuelled by colonial interference, religious conflicts often about like religions verses similar religion. Until we start truly recording the history of these conflicts, we will never put an end to them. The Israelis are writing the narrative of this conflict and, in turn, the Palestinians will write their own history and the conflict will never end. The cost in human and economic terms will continue to escalate. In the meantime, the real world conflict between the climate and capitalism will take second place...

Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA

In response to: 'It is not antisemitic to criticise Israel,' says Federal Court judge – and the Executive Council of Jewry agrees!

Explaining the inexplicable

July 11, 2025

This contribution is well and truly up to Binoy's usual excellent standard. It has context and real journalistic analysis.

Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041

In response to: The fanatic’s gaze: Louis Theroux and the West Bank settlers

Leave Donald Trump out of it, Greg Barns

July 11, 2025

Albanese has special envoys for antisemitism, Islamophobia, and social cohesion, an ideological race commissioner plus a First Nations ambassador. Via endless mass migration, he's doing roughly 75% population replacement. His immigration pacts uniquely favour qualifications and students from Modi's India. In effect, he's engineering an Indian electorates to add to the Chinese electorates that helped to stymie, in turn, Dutton, Morrison, and Shorten. It's true that Donald Trump is targeting recalcitrant universities, but Albanese's free-ranging ethnic and population engineering are very much his own. Memo: so-called culture wars don't just come from the right.

Stephen Saunders from O'Connor

In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'

Context and memory missing

July 11, 2025

It appears that this article, whilst interesting in terms of being an accurate reflection of the increasingly dystopian US-centred world view in some respects, also reflects pretty clearly the disconnect between that world view and the reality as perceived by the other 85% of the world's population. That can be seen clearly in two areas of the organised forgetting that underlies much of that Western world view. The first is in seeing the overall agreement that was reflected in the uncontroversial meeting of the BRICS in Rio de Janeiro. The article suggests that the lack of excitement evident at...

Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041

In response to: BRICS is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear

Rise in antisemitism

July 11, 2025

The Jillian Segal antisemitism report is based on the assumption of a massive increase in antisemitism. No doubt I will be accused of antisemitism for questioning whether this is actually the case. Despite the attempts by the NSW Government to cover up, many of the supposed incidents in NSW were seen by police to be not antisemitic. Many of the other so-called incidences, e.g., the restaurant demonstration in Melbourne, are quite clearly attacks on Israel or Israeli supporters. I’m happy to be corrected, but I suspect even attacking a synagogue is not necessarily antisemitic. For better or for...

Brian Bycroft from Evans Head NSW

In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'

Segal's proposals make Browning's review illegal

July 11, 2025

Browning's article is one of the most erudite articles written about Western hypocrisy regarding Palestine. It is also ironic that the pro-Zionist, anti-Palestinian, anti-democratic, and autocratic anti-protest report by Jillian Segal was released on the same day. Segal's draconian report will be adopted by our cowardly Labor Government. Her Trumpian proposals will result in Browning's article being banned and any mention of the 60,000 dead Palestinians and the suffering of two million Palestinians of Gaza (some who are Christians) who are being ethnically cleansed, not to mention the apartheid-like condition that oppress and dehumanise the Palestinians of the West...

Anthony James from Warracknabeal

In response to: The story most Israelis are not allowed to hear

US president's tariff threats

July 10, 2025

Sourabh Gupta's article hits the nail on the head. Going further is this from The Guardian of 9 July: The true test will come if the crushing sanctions tabled months ago by the Republican senator Lindsey Graham are finally given the presidential go-ahead. The measures would impose a 500% tariff on imports from any country that purchases Russian uranium, gas or oil, with India and China the worst affected. Trump says his policy includes products onsold through a less tariffed country. Well, some of our petrol comes from Russia after being refined in Singapore, so that is a threat...

Geoff Taylor from Borlu

In response to: Tariff deadline extended as Trump's trade talks falter

Antisemitism plan will only further divide Australia

July 10, 2025

An antisemitism plan, in the guise of a law and order crackdown, will only further divide our country, increasing Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, and ultimately make Jews less safe. While the federal government has moved to adopt the antisemitism plan and the recommendations from the special envoy, Jillian Segal, one must ask... is this plan beneficial for our social cohesion when Israel has been found to be committing genocide? Is Jillian Segal right for this high-profile government role, particularly one as sensitive as an “envoy for antisemitism” when, in fact, she has criticised calls for ceasefire in Gaza and...

Andréa Coney from Port Fairy

In response to: Challenging 'antisemitism'

Only developers benefit from the building that is going on

July 10, 2025

I have never seen so much building going on in our city. So many multistorey apartments, so much urban building and still a shortage of affordable housing. Why? Because like this article, all the talk is driven by those with the most to gain. Multistorey units with a desirable outlook and for those struggling at unattainable price tags. Many are built on blocks that have sat vacant waiting for developers to find a way around the zoning regulations that have made the locations the desirable areas that they are. Million-plus two-bedroom units (one bedroom and a large...

Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA

In response to: the-housing-crisis-is-everyones-problem

Repetition does not validate a falsehood

July 9, 2025

Greg Barns' article is, as usual, carefully reasoned and he lays out his argument(s) with scrupulous precision. However, on this occasion, I seek more explanation for the contentious statement that Hamas killed 1200 people in the horrendous 7 October 2023 attack. It has been widely accepted that the death toll in that attack — while due to Hamas's monumental strategic blunder that has profited nobody but Netanyahu and his ultra-Zionist coterie — is in considerable part also a product of IDF complicity. This is not a pedantic issue: the Hamas killed 1200 people mantra appears to have become...

Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale

In response to: Freedom of speech and chants

Being an 'expert' doesn't mean I don't get my view

July 9, 2025

I take issue with the following statement: ...namely the inability of many to recognise and respect genuine expertise... Expert. There has never been a more over-rated word in our age. It's almost like the author thinks that experts have never been wrong about anything ever in the history of the world. Not to mention the many experts in the health fields who would disagree with various aspects of this article. I reserve my right to question the advice or opinion of any expert because you don't get to decide for me. It's that simple. It's not...

Steve M from Brisbane

In response to: The disastrous consequences of an epidemic of misinformation about the safety of

We need fewer people and renewable food

July 9, 2025

Jenny Goldie hits the nail squarely on the head with her article on human population growth. It is wrecking the planet and is the major driver of our own probable demise as a civilisation and as a species. Fortunately, women worldwide realise this, and are lowering their fertility almost everywhere. To give every woman on the planet access to family planning would cost less than half the price of a single nuclear sub – which makes you realise how dumb men truly are when it comes to survival. Coupled with reducing human numbers to a sustainable level (about...

Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT

In response to: For the sake of food security, we must address population numbers

Incitement to criminal law

July 9, 2025

Like Bob Vylan and many Palestinian supporters and opponents of Israel's textbook, Nazi-style Holocaust and death camps, I have also been known to chant Death! Death! To the IDF!!! at a protest or two, but my chant is slightly more contextualised. It goes like this: Death! Death! To the IDF!!! ... as per Israel's Basic Law 5710-1950 the Crime of Genocide, which provides for a mandatory capital sentence for every IDF thug who has, in any way, shape or form, committed genocide, participated in genocide, conspired to commit genocide or incited genocide, whether that offence was committed in Israel...

Rick Pass from Rifle Creek FNQ

In response to: Freedom of speech and chants

Just who does our government represent?

July 9, 2025

Noel Turnbull highlights the lack of confidence in Netanyahu and Israel by a considerable majority of Australians, so just who is it that the Albanese Government is representing? Does it prefer to reflect the views of the US rather than its own electors? Does it actively honour the ALP platform on Palestine? Is it instead representing that part of our security fraternity/sorority with a narrow focus on hardware solutions to security, cavilling sotto voce at our trade relationships, and maybe in bed with Mossad? Consider how much security our government's failure to actively support longstanding international norms over...

Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Boorloo)

In response to: The One-word Problem for Israel

Distrust of the NACC

July 9, 2025

The NACC is rightly the subject of public mistrust, arising from its own reports, its choices of subjects for investigation and from errors and omissions in its leadership. Now we learn that the NACC is encouraged to think that mistrust is accepable. Funded by a government grant of taxpayer earnings, the Australian Research Council is mapping the positive values of public mistrust. Mystified? Yes, you should be. Mistrust of the NACC has been thoroughly earned. No, it contains no positive values. How has this bunkum been promoted? The researchers are misled by Erik Erikson's theoretical musings that...

Glen Davis from New South Wales

In response to: National Anti-Corruption Commission is two years old – Has it restored integrity to federal government?

The NACC's second birthday

July 8, 2025

The NACC has been a huge disappointment. It continues to attempt to measure its success by the number of investigations, the number of reports and the prosecutions and sentances which might follow. Prof Brown's article contains important facts and an investigator's eye for cases. But it too fails to acknowledge the public's scorn and mistrust for the NACC and its founders. The NACC's leadership has consistently failed to define for its staff and its public what it is there do do. It never did put the right graphs on the wall and it never did measure real progress....

Glen Davis from NSW

In response to: National Anti-Corruption Commission is two years old – Has it restored integrity to federal government?

Capitalism should be the target

July 7, 2025

Richard, great article. In my view the corporations are not the right target, capitalism is. It inevitably generates the problems. Very good that you point to the failure to focus on what has led to Trump, and the fact that he has done us a great service by busting the mold. The Dems were only the alternative capitalist party. You see that the need is for a different vision ... of course, but, sorry, capitalist ideology is so entrenched that I have no doubt no alternative can emerge in time. Sanders is a Karmunist. Nothing good will...

Ted Trainer from Sydney, NSW

In response to: The deep politics behind Trump’s presidency

Facts sadly don't trump fantasy in the US

July 7, 2025

This article is a superb illustration of the divide in the West currently between realism and fantasy. The vast bulk of us are so conditioned by the never-ending propaganda, to which we are subjected by a mainstream media that reflects quite clearly the propensities referred to by Orwell in that unpublished preface to Animal Farm, that we simply don't recognise the reality that faces us all. A diminishing number of us prefer to face reality and dispense with the fantasy. This article is a brilliant summary of that reality!

Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041

In response to: Iran: The things it won’t do to say

Israeli McCarthyism

July 7, 2025

Jeffrey Loewenstein has highlighted the depths to which the Zionists have sunk in their desperation to make genocide acceptable, so long as it is carried out by Israel. They know that any attempt to argue rationally for what they are doing to Palestinian men women and children would simply lead back to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, as charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. So they choose the infantile but effective (at least in the guilt-ridden Western world) labeling of those who find their actions despicable as antisemites. This differs in no...

Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041

In response to: J’accuse (Part 2) – The Israel lobby

Time for rebinding the Good Book

July 7, 2025

Jesus clearly said, I’ve come to show you a new way. A new way, away from blood sacrifice and an eye for an eye. A new way founded on loving your fellow neighbour, turning the other cheek, forgiveness and compassion. A new way: far from the bloodthirsty revenge accounts of the Old Testament. What do balanced Christians truly take from the Old Testament? The Genesis story, as a story to be wary of temptation, and the 10 Commandments. The Psalms are comforters, but that’s about it. Well, Pope Leo and the soon-to- be newly-appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, you’ve...

Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook

In response to: Five books the Bible could do without

Anti-protest policing is not so benign

July 7, 2025

This article paints an inaccurately benign picture of the policing of protest in Australia in 2025. In recent years, all state governments have enacted legislation which criminalises many protest actions, with possible penalties including lengthy jail sentences and hefty fines. Armed with these new laws, and goaded by reactionary government officials and screaming tabloid headlines, police command has not hesitated to invoke these laws. Climate activists and pro-Palestine protesters, in particular, have been targeted. The “Disrupt Land Forces” protests in Melbourne in September last year marked a particularly low point. Despite many episodes of grossly excessive use of...

Richard Barnes from Melbourne

In response to: What are police allowed to do at protests and who keeps them in check?

Albo, the minister for missed opportunities

July 7, 2025

While not on the scale of of Scott Morrison in the game of who can hold the most ministerial positions, Anthony Albanese with his portfolios of prime minister and minister for missed opportunities is on the way. While on the path to US-style dubious democracy and kingship in Australia, there are far too many significant decisions outside Parliament, mandate or no mandate. Committing Australian troops to overseas wars should never happen without a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Any expenditure over a billion is another thing should require Parliamentary debate at the very least.

Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA

In response to: The magic of the mandate: Now you see it, now you don’t

Mandate furphy

July 7, 2025

Unless each election is turned into the equivalent of of a referendum eg if you vote for us we will build a fast rail from Melbourne to Canberra via Sydney, there is no mandate. Vote for us and we will improve rail services does not qualify as a mandate. Even tax reform doesn’t qualify as a mandate to introduce a GST. It does, however, give the winning party the obligation to introduce a tax reform bill for the Parliament to debate and vote on. Mandates like Opposition are political furphies used to muddy the political waters. By labelling...

Bob Pearcr from Adelaide SAv

In response to: The magic of the mandate: Now you see it, now you don’t

The Australian Greens

July 7, 2025

The most recent federal election results for the Greens, losing the able voices of reason of Adam Bandt and Max Chandler-Mather from the House of Representatives, is a tragedy. The media “dancing on their graves” and claiming their policies are too extreme is a disgrace. The Australian Greens is the only party which has morally supportable policies on Palestine/Israel, (Unequivocal condemnation of genocide and support for international law); Climate change (the greatest moral challenge of our generation); Refugees and asylum-seekers; AUKUS (withdraw from this hugely costly surrender of sovereignty to the US); and...

John Curr from MANLY

In response to: Gunning for the Greens over Gaza - Part 1

Labor is not an environmental party

July 7, 2025

In Peter Sainsbury's very fine article, he noted that only two of the 29 new Labor caucus members saw the environment and climate as a priority for the next three years. Yet, Labor still believes that being better than the other mob is enough, he wrote. No, it isn't enough. Labor needs to be a lot better than the Coalition who, at federal level, have no environmental credentials at all. In the recent past, of course, Matt Kean, now chief executive of the Climate Change Authority, was a beacon of light when it came to climate action within the...

Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW

In response to: Environment: Ken Henry and Xi Jinping agree nature is critical to productivity

Thank you

July 7, 2025

Just a few words of gratitude for your article about the issues surrounding Israel, Zionism, the Gaza conflict etc. I wish more people could see through what is really happening.

Eve Wilhelm from Adelaide, South Australia

In response to: Hypocrisy and deceit Down Under: Australia is a Zionist stronghold

Embrace positive tipping points to inspire policy

July 7, 2025

As climate warnings grow ever more strident, as carbon pollution intensifies and icecaps melt, a dystopian future seems inevitable. There is so much that governments could do – eg charge higher royalties for fossil fuel companies to contribute to the cost of repairing climate damage; increase regulations on agricultural pollution and run-offs to better protect our oceans and reefs. In tolerating environmental degradation our governments are steadily killing life on our planet. There is much concern for tipping points – those limits which, once breached, make damaging change unstoppable. These represent existential threats now imminent; the absence of any...

Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic

In response to: Australia, the UN and the future of humanity

International law: Who in Australia cares?

July 4, 2025

The same applies exactly in Australia. My letter to all mainstream media in Australia follows. Only Crikey published it. And so the Australian Government, supine to the US as usual, after deferring, now announces support for the US bombings in Iran, actions clearly contrary to international law. Article 2(4) of the 1945 UN Charter states: “Prohibition of Force: Members must refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the UN’s purposes.” Evidence for Iran developing nuclear weaponry is very weak....

John Queripel from Newcastle

In response to: Iran: The things it won't do to say

Gaza genocide

July 4, 2025

Like Refaat Ibrahim, I am appalled by the way the Western world not only looks away, but enables Israel to commit genocide in Gaza. I have been passionately crusading on behalf of Palestine, my initial interest aroused by a founding member of the Israeli Air Force, a South African-born man, who left Israel in total disgust at the country's behaviour. This was the in the late 1970s to early 1980s. What irks me about Refaat's article is his selectivity about previous genocides. My question is, why only mention what the Germans did in Namibia and Tanzania? Surely the Belgian...

Dieter Barkhoff from Victoria

In response to: Genocide in Gaza: History repeats itself.

Chilling words

July 4, 2025

The headline and last words of Jamal Kanj's piece on the lethal shooting of unarmed, starving Palestinians are chilling. Firing squads and Gaza assassination trap are shocking phrases, as is Haaretz's Killing Field. They're what we need after being numbed by Israel's relentless mantras of the most moral army in the world, we were targeting Hamas militants, and the IDF will investigate. It's a wonder that there are enough personnel to produce the hundreds (or is it thousands?) of reports into deadly incidents involving Israeli forces. One report that we really need is an analysis and exposé of the...

Tom Knowles from Parkville Vic

In response to: Food aid or firing squads?

No mention of lobbyists?

July 4, 2025

How can one write an article criticising full-scale institutional failure inside Australia’s peak cultural agency, Creative Australia, without mentioning the trigger for the turmoil that unfolded? The Zionist lobbyists complained about the selection of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives for the 2026 Venice Biennale. Just like at the ABC, there must have been initial letters of complaint. Julian Leeser, that well-known Liberal Party Zionist, stirred the pot, but who provided the initial complaint?

Glenda Jones from Carlton 3053

In response to: Creative Australia’s backflip on Venice Biennale representatives exposes deep governance failures

Globalisation, AI, nothing changes. Capitalism reigns

July 3, 2025

Unfortunately, the area where governments have been least effective is the one where they are now most needed. The area where they have failed time and time again – regulation. Under globalisation they have let Australia and Australians down. While governments have been snuggling up to their capitalist masters, untaxed profits have been rising and disappearing overseas. Services have been becoming more and more substandard due to a lack of funding and little or no regulation. The few regulators left are ineffectual and constantly under threat from the media and government. Puppets of governments are reliant on capitalist...

Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA

In response to: from-globalisation-to-ai-why-history-is-abo

Is it ‘if’, not ‘when’?

July 3, 2025

Fred Zhang, among many of the excellent points made in his article, makes the call that the ABC, as our national broadcaster, has fallen well short of its job to be impartial — displaying obvious bias — and has failed at its job to state the facts of both sides of a conflict. With such obvious failures in the ABC’s journalistic duties and severe self-inflicted damage to its integrity, it would be easy to imagine that our ABC has been bought by Disney; but no, that’s America’s ABC. Are we at the point where nothing will surprise us...

Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook

In response to: So... calling for peace isn’t enough, but dropping bombs gets a free

It’s a huge challenge, but we can’t avoid it

July 3, 2025

It’s a long-established truth that, in any situation, if you want resolution and progress you are well-advised to present people with solutions rather than problems. So thanks to Bob Douglas for offering potential solutions for global action to address the existential threats that he and his colleagues in the Council for the Human Future have been alerting us about. Quoting from Julian Cribb’s How to fix a broken planet, he presents 10 initiatives which, if undertaken on a global scale, could pull the world back from its current existential precipice. Cribb is under no illusion about the magnitude...

Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic

In response to: Australia, the UN and the future of humanity

Warfare post-globalisation

July 3, 2025

Thanks Brian Toohey, great article. As noted, during WW2, Australian industry supplied huge quantities of food, medicine, clothing, ammunition, explosives, rifles, guns, ships and 2000 combat aircraft. We also had a merchant navy, ships owned and crewed by Australians that were key to that effort. Now there are no ships and no crew. The technology is now radically different and changes at a phenomenal pace (evolving on a monthly and weekly basis in Ukraine) but the fundamental problem remains the lack of local manufacture and sustainment. Big bits of kit are vulnerable, not suited to our...

Dave Young from NQ

In response to: How spending more on defence harms the nation

More of the same?

July 3, 2025

Sadly, the second iteration of the Albanese Government seems to be headed in the same spineless, timorous, obsequious, mealy-mouthed direction as the first. If so, would this lead to what could be called a double disillusion?

Alan Wilson from Adelaide

In response to: Courage needs to be shown in politics – Israel is no longer above the law

Our catastrophic superannuation system

July 2, 2025

Australia's compulsory superannuation system, a $4 trillion behemoth, is, in my opinion, a catastrophe. In its essence, it serves to effect massive transfers of wealth from the less well-off to the most well-off. It ensures that your socioeconomic status during your working years will continue inexorably into your retirement years – the antithesis of the Australian fair go. Think, just for a moment, of those who didn't actually work much or at all (in the paid sense) during those years — carers, disabled people, life's battlers — condemned to get by solely on the old age pension – whose...

Richard Barnes from Melbourne

In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wages

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