Letters to the Editor
The Omission
July 21, 2025
OMG iPhones are all made in China.
Con Karavas from South Australia
In response to: Round up the usual Chinese suspects
Tassie's health problem has been building a long time
July 18, 2025
The issues with the Tasmanian health system have been festering for many years. It was obvious from the first time I visited more than 30 years ago and it has become increasingly worse. Even then, retirees were invading our southern isle, as those from Sydney and Melbourne were able to buy substantial, well-located property, often for about half the amount they realised on the sale of their previous home, and so it was a no-brainer if you wanted to leave big city life, while also improving the state of your liquid assets. This trend has only continued, resulting...
Ian Ian De Landelles from Murrays Beach
In response to: The Tasmanian election on 19 July won’t fix the mess
Our democracy – taking the easy road to oblivion
July 18, 2025
Democracy gives a sense of empowerment. Voters feel free to live as they wish – albeit within reasonable limits. But democratic governments rarely take essential, unpopular steps. These days the power of the media seems so intense that governments bow to its will. Too many in the media disseminate misinformation to further proprietorial political goals. And barely-controlled lobbying, supported by substantial political donations, enables powerful interests to wield disproportionate influence over critical policy development. Daniel Andrews achieved some success in avoiding overbearing media influence when he was premier of Victoria, but our federal government, tied to three-year terms,...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Humanity is ‘risking catastrophe’: UN
Get capitalism under control first
July 18, 2025
Great article. The first step in solving all the problems is severing the ties between the capitalists and government. Recognising that the capitalists exist to make a profit/get rich; creating jobs is a by-product, a nuisance. As long as the parliamentary door is open to lobbyists and political donations, the balance will always be in favour of profit. The deportation of modern-day slaves from the US will be the downfall, one way or the other, of capitalist Trump. What we need is more regulation and auditing, not less. As long as the capitalists are complaining about government regulation...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Even Ken Henry’s best ideas can’t fix a system addicted to growth
FARMS and Usans
July 18, 2025
The issues of Australia’s over-reliance on the United States of America are, thanks to this article and similar mentions, becoming more mainstream. There are two terms which may assist these changing Australia’s perceptions on this issue. The terms are FARMS (Foreign Aid Replacing Military Spending) and Usan (citizens of the United States of America). FARMS provides a quick way of identifying an area where military spending (commonly misnamed as defence) should be redirected. In this way, the foreign aid — where does it come from” question is answered — and it identifies the greatest evil in the world...
Ian Daniels from Brisbane
In response to: Trump wants us to spend a bomb on defence. We should think twice
Trade with China is an investment in our security
July 18, 2025
Jocelyn Chey notes that Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said publicly that a strong economic relationship with China, leading to stability and prosperity, is “an investment in our security”. In that vein, we must congratulate Prime Minister Albanese on his talks with China, particularly with respect to a possible massive bilateral agreement on the development of green steel. It is a huge economic opportunity for Australia which is the world’s number one producer of iron ore with over half the global exports. It is also an exciting — indeed, exhilarating — opportunity to help mitigate climate change because...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Headline news: Australia and China
Australia's law must catch up with climate reality
July 18, 2025
It’s easy to feel disheartened by Justice Michael Wigley’s recent federal court decision that the Australian Government has no duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change. But as Liz Hicks, a lecturer in law at the University of Melbourne, points out: “It is a question of when, rather than if, law will adapt to deal with climate impacts. Much like a rising tide breaking against a seawall, the future impact of climate change on things that law already protects is too extreme for the law to resist.” Others agree. Dr Riona Moodley, lawyer and...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Federal Court rules Australian Government doesn’t have a duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change
Which Australians have held the US in high regard?
July 18, 2025
Apart from our politicians and our generals what percentage of Australians hold the US in high regard? In my lifetime, protest against the US has been a regular thing starting with “overpaid, over-sexed and over here and rumours of tensions in South Korea and Vietnam etc. It may be understandable for our politicians coveting a well-paid military lobbying position to top up their parliamentary pension. The same goes for our military who are always keen to be aligned with the US with them having the biggest and best weapons of mass destruction and our generals always wanting the...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: What Australians think of Trump and the US
Let's think at least three times instead!
July 17, 2025
Henry Kissinger once said, To be America's enemy is dangerous. To be its friend is fatal. That is one of the most accurate statements ever made about the US. All this increased defence spending is supposedly so that we can all go to sleep at night in fear and trembling of the imminent invasion by China. The question you have to ask is of the US and China, which is more dangerous to other countries? In the last 40 years, the US has been involved in dozens of armed conflicts with countries around the planet, while China has...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump wants us to spend a bomb on defence. We should think twice
A duty of care to Torres Strait Islanders
July 17, 2025
To whom we owe a duty of care is first and foremost a moral question. A duty of care represents an ethical obligation to consider the well-being of others and act in ways that avoid causing unnecessary suffering or harm, even in the absence of enforceable laws. It is a universal principle that crops up in the moral code of all peoples in various forms. In Kantian terms, it can be described as a moral imperative. The post-WWII war crimes were prosecuted applying that moral imperative – the defence that people were only following orders was not accepted. In...
John Tons from flinders university
In response to: Federal Court rules Australian Government doesn’t have a duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change
Australia is subsidising the dying US empire
July 17, 2025
With his usual precision, John identifies the pith and substance of the AUKUS fraud imposed upon us by the second-hand car salesman Scott Morrison. That redundant member of the Dodgy Brothers sought to wedge Labor by vastly indebting the Australian people to a US empire in rapid decline which continues its forlorn but dangerous, feckless and capricious attempts to remain relevant. He frankly didn't give a rat's ***e about the cost to ordinary Australians in lost healthcare, education, housing and public transport that would be needed over the next three decades to fund our satrapy to the US in...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Donald Trump and his minions may yet do us a favour in ending AUKUS
Follow the money
July 17, 2025
Is it anti-Catholic to criticise Italy? Is it anti-Anglican to criticise the UK? Is it anti-Islam to criticise Indonesia? No-one in their right mind would think so. So why the ridiculous postulate that it’s antisemitic to criticise Israel? We (and journalists please pay attention) need to rigorously question these fences erected to suppress free speech. It doesn’t take much digging to reveal the money, the power and the land grab at the heart of Israel’s assault on Gaza, and, by extension, the taboo imposed by politicians and the media in openly condemning the war crimes being committed there....
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Systematic bias: how Western media reproduces the Israeli narrative
A key point missing in the antisemitism debate
July 17, 2025
Les Macdonald rightly observes that in the discussion of antisemitism it is not recognised that Palestinians are the true Semites, and that if we use the term then all Semitic peoples should be included. But astonishingly he fails to observe that Ashkenazi Jews are not semitic but almost uniformly Slavic in origin. This includes most Israeli leaders past and present, who have been from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. It also includes Jillian Segal, born in South Africa, from parents of East European origin. In addition, speaking Hebrew does not make someone Semitic any more than it can make...
David Macilwain from Sandy Creek, NE Victoria
In response to: Antisemitism and abuse of power
Renewable meat
July 16, 2025
Jeffery Soar correctly asks What about the animals? The answer (omitted for concision) is that in 20-25 years most meat protein will be produced in cell culture – beef, lamb, chicken, pork, fish and even dairy products. The product is real meat – it just never went moo. It is very close to economic now. This will spare the world a vast amount of destructive agriculture, overgrazing, and needless cruelty. It is a 21st century solution to a 21st century problem. As to whether people will eat it, 70 years ago they never thought they would dress in...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: What about the animals?
Australia's criminal alliance
July 16, 2025
A majority of Americans voted for their nation to be run by criminals, conmen, child rapists, sexual abusers, billionaires, totalitarians, ignoramuses and racists. That's the kind of US they want. As Noel Turnbull succinctly shows, most Australians do not share the overt aims of the current US regime. Nor, if we asked them, would they share the values. Why, therefore, does the Albanese Government (or the LNP for that matter) still want an alliance with such degeneracy? As things stand, any alliance with the US constitutes a serious threat to Australian decency, fairness and democracy. Any political...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: What Australians think of Trump and the US
Yes, we need to move to a no-growth economy
July 16, 2025
David Shearman is right: if we are to avert dangerous climate change (3 degrees C warming), then we need to move to a no-growth economy. This will be a hard call in Australia, given growth is the dominant economic paradigm. Try telling it to Jim Chalmers, or most economic editors of the mainstream press! It is sacrilege. Nevertheless, Julian Cribb (Humanity is risking catastrophe, 16 July) brought to our attention the 2025 Global Risks Report. Of the four environmental risks, it cites natural resource shortages and biodiversity decline. This should be enough to indicate that we have reached...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Australia cannot survive unless it switches to a no-growth economy
Let's hear more on deep ocean aquaculture
July 16, 2025
Julian Cribb cites a possible part-solution to the world's food crisis, namely, deep ocean aquaculture. Unlike coastal fish farms, including the contentious Tasmanian salmon farms, aquaculture in the deep ocean allows currents to remove all wastes, which in coastal waters have destroyed wild ecosystems and threatened species such as the Maugean skate in Macquarie Harbour. Deep ocean aquaculture would allow us to eat salmon without the overwhelming guilt that accompanies eating it now. It would help maintain global protein supplies which are at risk because land-based production of meat is exacerbating climate change through land-clearing and emissions from ruminants....
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Why the world needs renewable food
Systematic bias
July 16, 2025
While I can agree totally with the article on systematic Bias in Western media regarding Palestine and Ukraine, it constantly astonishes me that there are almost no further articles regarding just how pervasive media bias is. Whether on the complicated housing, economic or other crises, the role of industry or even whistleblowers etc the language is also biased. Let's be honest with ourselves and call all media propaganda. Some are more competent and effective than others; the best is not recognised for what it is. I shouldn't need to demonstrate by looking at the treatment of protesters, whether...
Mark Bulluss from Dalmeny
In response to: Systematic bias: how Western media reproduces the Israeli narrative
Segal's imports
July 15, 2025
Let's be clear. This antisemitism plan is nothing but importing Israel's state-sanctioned apartheid and making it law in Australia. Don't we have foreign interference laws? How are they supposed to work when the government of the day supports this interference? And let's not forget (publicised after this article) about how Segal won't dictate to her husband, but will dictate to millions of Australians just how incorrect they in their thinking. A pointless position given to someone who has done nothing but ruthlessly exploit it for the benefit of a foreign government. But since the Americans write...
Steve M from Brisbane, QLD
In response to: 'No' to Jillian Segal's antisemitism action plan
Neither antisemitic nor anti-Jewish
July 15, 2025
One of the biggest hurdles to making the case for an antisemitism bill, such as that proposed by Jillian Segal, is that for almost two years we have all seen, and continue to see daily, clear evidence of horrific and indefensible atrocities perpetrated by the IDF on residents in Gaza. This is producing an understandable revulsion in Australia, leading to protests in support of the Gazans and against the IDF, and by extension Israel. These protests are not antisemitic, nor are they anti-Jewish. But here I have to add, unless you, Jillian Segal, choose to make them so. Instead...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Antisemitism in Australia: a 'pathology in our society'
The correspondence has been retained, Margaret
July 15, 2025
Margaret Reynolds makes the point well. I note she says: “Volumes of unanswered correspondence from civil society — if these have been retained — could detail the efforts of so many Australians to alert the government to its responsibilities during such a devastating humanitarian crisis.” We know from FOI that as of a fortnight or so ago, as previous letters note, Penny Wong had received more than 52,000 pieces of correspondence on Palestine, and Anthony Albanese more than 65,000. Their FOI people are refusing to make them available, on practicability grounds even down to the detail. (ran a...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Australian parliamentarians urgently need lessons in international law
Renewable foods offer survival and peace
July 15, 2025
Julian Cribb’s article details the threat that our changing climate poses to global peace. His charts, showing forecast water stress and degraded soils, depict this intensifying crisis with devastating clarity. The issue underlying this crisis is our ever-growing population. Jenny Goldie has recently outlined this challenge; David Shearman too. Our ever-growing global population will experience increasing desperation to grow food in ever more depleted soils and with insufficient water. This will herald intensified exploitation – plans for future sustainability will be forgotten in the face of immediate needs. Cribb highlights the potential of renewable foods. Transitioning to these...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Why the world needs renewable food
Addressing the lies
July 15, 2025
When dealing with the words of the accused war criminal Netanyahu, it is necessary to recognise that nothing he says can be taken at face value. He has for instance argued publicly that the Jews were in the Levant first and that gives them prior rights to the land. He has suggested this is confirmed by scientific research. The truth, as always with him, is actually the reverse of what he asserts. There are numerous peer reviewed and widely accepted archaeological and genetic studies in recent years that confirm the genetic and cultural continuity of the Palestinian people with...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: NYT report says Netanyahu prolonged war on Gaza to stay in power
What could possibly go wrong?
July 15, 2025
Letter writer Brian Bycroft has raised a point often ignored when he says: For better or for worse, people of the Jewish faith have become, for some, almost a proxy for Israel. In these circumstances, people attacking a synagogue may bear no specific hatred of Jews, but see the synagogue as representing Israel. Definitely for worse I suggest. That the Star of David, a religious symbol, became the symbol on the national flag of a colonising, self-declared apartheid state, divided by ethnicity/religion, has absolutely muddied the waters. One would have thought the consequences of this choice to be foreseeable....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Rise in antisemitism
Not just Asia-Pacific confrontation
July 15, 2025
The US-China confrontation which Gareth Evans raises also takes place beyond our region, at least a confrontation in US eyes. Compare the report on a meeting just held in China, ,with a report in April by the head of the US Africom, especially the last section summing up the strategic competition being waged by the US against China in Africa, based on a skewed US view of China’s current role in that continent. At the international meeting in China, it was all about win-win co-operation, respect for different versions of government, and positive development for the benefit of all...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Abandoning our fears:how Australia should respond to US-China regional confrontation
The PM doesn’t reply to webmail on Palestine
July 15, 2025
Good on Margaret Beavis and her health profession colleagues. There has to some way to cut through the government’s support by inaction of the Palestine holocaust. However, that way clearly isn’t to write to the prime minister. I have just been informed, as a result of an FOI request for his responses to webmails to him on Palestine since October 2023, that no such responses exist. That is even though there are at least over 65,000 pieces of relevant correspondence to him. It was suggested that instead one should write to Penny Wong.
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Gaza: There comes a time when silence is betrayal
What about the animals?
July 15, 2025
Good points and contributes to a body of writing about controlling population growth. A dimension overlooked is the impact of animal production – both farmed animals and wild catch. There are estimated to be 80 billion farmed animals across the world. Most grain production is used to feed farmed animals. We would have more food to feed people if grains were directly available for people and not via the inefficient process of converting into animal products. There are also the dimensions of climate impact and animal cruelty involved in consuming animal products in comparison to plant products.
Jeffrey Soar from Australia
In response to: Why the world needs renewable food
End the democracy-capitalism link
July 14, 2025
“The days of the world letting America live beyond its means are rapidly coming to an end.” What needs to come to an end is the close ties with the market and government. To think that running a business and running a country are the same thing is absolutely ridiculous. A business has an obligation to make a profit and a government has social obligations. That countries have excessive debt is due to excessive spending with private companies who can only be trusted to make a profit. They will not pay any more than they have to, and disregard...
BoB Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Trump is single-handedly slaughtering America’s ‘exorbitant privilege’
Unis should focus on societal needs, not enrolments
July 14, 2025
One would hope that universities would include consideration of society’s needs in decisions about which disciplines they wanted to house, not a simple examination of enrolment numbers. If enrolments for mathematics and English courses declined at Macquarie University, Downton, Parkinson et al. would probably conclude that society no longer needs people who know the square root of zero or when it is legitimate to happily split an infinitive. An appropriate response to declining enrolment numbers (assuming that is what Macquarie University has experienced in sociology) would be to ask whether the knowledge and skills taught by that discipline...
Peter Sainsbury from Darling Point
In response to: APU Media Release: Macquarie University announces plans to axe Sociology
Less authoritarianism needed on vaccines
July 14, 2025
John Dwyer’s 9 July article on the epidemic of misinformation about the safety of vaccines omits in his bio his previous connections with Friends of Science in Medicine, an ultra-conservative organisation characterised by a narrow scientism. Dr Kerryn Phelps, formerly president of the Australian Medical Association, has been a strong critic of Dwyer’s approach. Phelps herself and her partner were both damaged by the COVID vaccines, and other highly qualified medical experts have questioned the mainstream story on COVID vaccines. For example, Wendy Hoy AO, Professor of Medicine at UQ, states in her foreword to a detailed 2022...
Murray May from Canberra
In response to: The disastrous consequences of an epidemic of misinformation about the safety of vaccines
The Voice against antisemitism
July 14, 2025
I seem to recall that one of the purported arguments against the Voice proposal was that one segment of Australian society would receive special treatment and that this inequality should therefore not be supported. I wonder how our Indigenous community are feeling right now. I wait with breathless anticipation for the Opposition to run the same argument this time around.
Alan Wilson from Adelaide
In response to: Antisemitism Plan sparks fierce debate over free speech, racism, and political agendas
Understanding growth
July 14, 2025
As a 73-year-old who left school at the end of year 11, I’ve never been understand the concept of continual profit/growth. Like compound interest, the profit/growth included the growth of the year before and in the end required dramatic change — eg expansion of output, reduction of staff etc — to be achieved and in the end it was not achievable. I have watched as multiple government institutions have been privatised, primarily to reduce taxation, only to find that eventually the services once provided had reduced and the government has had to step in for all the reasons...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Australia cannot survive unless it switches to a no-growth economy
What is the point of Trump at all?
July 14, 2025
As the nightly news is flooded by Donald Trump, his irrelevance becomes more and more obvious. Putin, Netanyahu and Xi Jinping, the real major players, humour and ignore him and the next level of leaders have come to realise that that’s the way to handle him. It is becoming more and more obvious that the US Congress, the stock market and even his appointees are going about their business recognising that the king wears no clothes. I would go far as to suggest that he be given the Nobel Peace Prize that he covets (because Obama got...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: As Trump flip-flops on tariffs, what’s the point of negotiating at all?
First they came for...
July 14, 2025
Last night, on SBS News a feeler was cautiously put to air about settlers and the IDF increasing their activities agains Christians in Palestine. As the world turns a blind eye to the attacks on Palestinians that the IDF is “looking into“, the bombings, starvation and the purging of ethnic groups (anyone other than Israelis) from their Old Testament-given homeland gathers momentum with Trump's approval.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide sa
In response to: Kostakidis to go before court, after judiciary recognises anti-Zionism is not antisemitism
Government needs to bury antisemitism report
July 14, 2025
Greg Barns' analysis of the antisemitism envoy's report and recommendations outlines the dangerous implications of it for Australian society. This outcome was entirely foreseeable and it beggars belief the government succumbed to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and the Murdoch cheer squad to establish this position and commission the report. Albanese now has to walk back on these recommendations while the usual suspects paint him as soft on antisemitism. Albanese's political problems pale in comparison with the real dangers these recommendations pose for Australian society. The erosion of the right to protest is already occurring in some states...
Philip Brennan from Darwin
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
Erasing our rights
July 14, 2025
It's bad enough that we have an antisemitism envoy at all when the nation made clear it didn't want a divisive Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Envoy Segal's proposed measures to deal with antisemitism should be dismissed from the start, based as they are on the IHRA definition of same. It is appalling that our government and universities have adopted that definition. That definition robs us of our rights to free speech and protest about actions of Israel and its government. No nation is immune to criticism. Israel is not an exception and it is not antisemitic to say,...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
Trumpian? No, McCarthyism
July 14, 2025
The Big Ride for Palestine raises between $20,000 to $30,000 per year for Palestinian charities e.g a kindergarten, an agricultural development project. The complexity and expense of transmitting the funds to the charities is beyond the capacity of such a small fund-raising project. They arranged for APHEDA – Union Aid Abroad to transmit the funds as it has well-established means to do so. APHEDA refused to act as a conduit for the funds if any of the participants expressed overt support for Boycott Divestment Sanctions or if any BDS logos appeared on the riders apparel. APHEDA made it...
John Curr from MANLY
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
When misplaced fears become phobias
July 14, 2025
Clear analysis from Professor Gareth Evans. Max gratitude. Not only would any contribution to a Taiwan battle be militarily insignificant, the response to our engagement by a riled Beijing could be effected without them sending any military force our way. We have near zero maritime capacity. We don't own or don't crew the trading vessels. They are foreign owned by entities we have no leverage with. But China does. China could bring Australian trade to a halt, by decree, without sending a single warship to sea. By the proverbial stroke of a pen they could announce an embargo:...
Dave Young from NQ
In response to: Abandoning our fears: how Australia should respond to US-China regional confront
All honour to the champion of real law and justice
July 14, 2025
I'm more than a little sick of hearing the mantra about Israel's right to self-defence. That right is restricted by proportionality, something that Israel's genocide goes far beyond in Palestine. What about an occupied territory's right to humane treatment and its land not being annexed? And their right to attempt to free themselves from their captors? When will we hear something, anything, about those rights? ... Rights that have only ever been abused, never honoured, by Israel in Palestine. Francesca Albanese has heroically and steadfastly stood up for the genuine rule of law... not that also sickening international...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: US sanctions UN expert Albanese over criticism of Israeli genocide
One of history's great ironies
July 14, 2025
Geraldine Schwarz wrote in Les Amnésiques that her grandparents, along with so many Germans, were “Mitläufer”, those who turned a blind eye to Hitler’s policies, when convenient, particularly when it involved some material advantage, such as taking over a business that Jews were forced to sell on the cheap to “Aryans”. This is what her grandparents did. Her father, however, rejected what his parents had done. He recognised that if people in a culture that produced Bach, Beethoven and Goethe could do such things, or turn a blind eye to it, then anyone can. Schwarz can now add...
Kieran Tapsell from STANWELL PARK
In response to: The greatest irony in our contemporary history
Australia needs the other Albanese
July 14, 2025
Australia needs the other Albanese – Francesca, the special raporteur with the UN, with her superb courage, focus and global leadership. This is in marked contrast to our largely invisible and visionless namesake PM. She gets the attention of Trump's senior diplomat/enforcer Marco Rubio with her plain language accusations related to America's role in the Gaza genocide. Rubio responded with personal threats and sanctions. Albo, by contrast, can't apparently even get a phone call with the top end of Trump's governing circus and he continues to be cowed locally by the Zionist lobby with their ridiculous demands for student...
Donald Clayton from Bittern
In response to: US sanctions UN expert Albanese over criticism of Israeli genocide
Facts as opposed to wishes
July 14, 2025
Just a further note on the suggestion being made that BRICS is on the ropes, I suggest having a look at the detailed report on what was discussed and progress that was made. It paints a far more accurate picture together of the continuing success of the BRICS group in re-shaping the world into a multilateral one as opposed to the US unipolar dictatorship.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: BRICS is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear
Thanks Fred Zhang, along with Pearls & Irritations
July 14, 2025
I back Fred Zhang to the hilt, 100%. I’m 5th generation South Australian. I love China. I hate the US. … and of course, I love Coopers Beer.
James Scammell from Bowden, South Australia
In response to: Fred Zhang … Every day is a bad day to visit China apparentlyJuly 11, 2025
Criticism of the policies of the Israeli state
July 14, 2025
Can a movement that conflates Jewish identity with the policies of the Israeli state — and that brands all criticism of that state as antisemitism — end up becoming antisemitic itself? I strongly concur with this concern. Zionism, in its modern political form, has become entangled with the systemic displacement and disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people. The very idea of a Jewish homeland — which arose from centuries of persecution culminating in the horrors of 1933–1945 — is rooted in a need for safety and dignity. That need is real. But what are we to make of the...
Ivan Hamilton from Münster, Germany — I am Australian temporarily resident in Germany
In response to: The special envoy’s plan is the latest push to weaponise antisemitism in Australia, as a relentless campaign pays off
Hitler, Tojo and Putin – strange bedfellows
July 14, 2025
Gareth Evans’ gratuitously rude reference to “outright military aggression — Hitler, Tojo or Putin-style” — spoils an otherwise admirable essay on how and why Australia should now reposition itself in the China-US strategic equation. Gareth knows better. He has read Sachs and Mearsheimer. He knows how they and many other scholars have demolished the Western propaganda myth that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was unprovoked aggression. He knows Putin was forced into this after eight years of the Kiev Banderist regime’s rejection of Russian peace efforts and its murderous aggression and human rights abuses against Russian Ukrainians since...
Tony Kevin from Canberra
In response to: Abandoning our fears: how Australia should respond to US-China regional confrontation
Military can fight climate crisis
July 14, 2025
In April, just a third of Australians backed higher defence spending. Bravo! Depressingly, global military outlays hit $2,718 billion in 2024 — up 9.4% on 2023 and the sharpest rise since the Cold War, says the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Sadly, NATO aims to push spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. Militaries are massive polluters, responsible for at least 5.5% of global emissions – likely more, given secrecy and the exclusion of wartime emissions. Australia explicitly excluded military emissions from its 2022 climate pledges. However, now that Australia has a Defence Net Zero Strategy launched in 2024,...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Only a third of Australians support increasing defence spending: new research
Ignoring impending risks in natural disasters
July 14, 2025
I write regarding “The Texas flood, Australia and the psychology of evacuation” (Chas Keys, July 12, 2025). Reading Mr Keys’ article reminded me of the catastrophic bushfire which raged through eastern Victoria and descended on Mallacoota in late December 2019-early January 2020. (Few will forget the many out-of-control bushfires that devastated large areas of eastern NSW and Victoria that summer.) Mallacoota is a popular holiday destination, situated on the Lakes Entrance waterways. In December and January, the population swells from between 1000 to 2000 to about 10,000. While there are conflicting reports about the timing and nature of warnings...
Chris Ryan from Kirrawee, NSW
In response to: The Texas flood, Australia and the psychology of evacuation
How about an anti-China envoy?
July 14, 2025
if we were to replace China with Israel in all these conversations it would surely be antisemitic and we would need an envoy. I’m surprised that all this anti-China talk isn’t treason, considering that China is our largest trading partner and in most circumstances everything is framed from an economic point of view. From an Australian perspective, it has taken at least a year and many dollars to get the courts to consider what is antisemitic (not the same as racism) and what reporters can and can’t report under freedom of the press about Israel and the IDF ....
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Every day is a bad day to visit China, apparently
The spread of Americanisation
July 14, 2025
As my local village (one of those Blue Mountains vintage, ye olde world villages) now boosts a garish, three-meter, neon green sign at its highway entrance reading Massage Centre, I slap my forehead in despair that we are becoming Americanised so fast that apathetic acceptance seems the general response. After the PM’s trip to China, and Trump’s penchant for playground-style payback, I wonder if we should just trump Trump’s move and rearrange the AUKUS acronym to USUKA.
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: AUKUS project has worsened Australia’s ties with China