Letters to the Editor
Organised forgetting
November 7, 2025
Greg Barns, as always, forensically dismantles the contrived and deceitful justifications and moral insubstantiality of the odiously fascist, colonialist state of Israel and its many Western co-conspirators. That analysis makes plainly obvious the patent bastardy of the cancerous Israeli infection that has metastasized from the moral void of a dying West. It is hard not to notice that the vast bulk of the crimes against humanity being committed around the planet are being carried out by that West or arise from actions taken by the West to preserve its domination of the world. That suggests the cancer itself...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: OFFICIAL – Israel’s proposed death-penalty law is a war crime
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
November 7, 2025
Zohran Mamdandi’s victory speech was a call to the barricades if ever I heard one. The tone and confidence with which it was delivered recalled Winston Churchill’s words after the German army was turned back at El Alamein: a pivotal point of World War II; Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps, the end of the beginning. It also triggered the words of the late great Leonard Cohen’s anthem: First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin. We live in well-founded hope. Zohran Mamdani is more than...
John Mosig from Kew, 3101
In response to: ‘New York, this city belongs to you’: Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech
The private sector embedded in government
November 6, 2025
It is not just developers with too much influence in the government sector, it is the lack of separation of capitalism and state that is the source of our problems. The fox is in control of the hen house. That's not to say that there isn't a role for both, but their roles have been entwined to the point where the tail is wagging the dog. Contractors and consultants have influence in the employment of public servants and their appointments which leads to poor and biased decision-making. The current housing crisis is a case in point....
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: game-set-and-match-to-the-property-industry
Waking from beguilement
November 6, 2025
In 1945, my grandmother gave me The Two Princesses: The Story of the King's Daughters. I cherished the photos of those two special girls. Fed a solid diet of royalism by every one of society's institutions, I admired Princess, then Queen, Elizabeth. I was one of millions of Australians who saluted the flag, stood for God Save the Queen and pledged to serve her. When, in 1954, Elizabeth visited Australia for the first time, we flocked to see her, as many times as possible. On 11 November 1975, I heard radio news of the Dismissal. I remember the...
Janet Grevillea from Lake Macquarie
In response to: The Dismissal podcast
Ley's abject capitulation on mass migration
November 4, 2025
As Jane O'Sullivan points out, it's still just possible for democratic nations to defer to voters, to reverse absurdly unsustainable levels of immigration that voters don't want. In New Zealand, it took a change of government. Not so in Canada. In Australia, however, Liberal and Labor only have eyes for each other, voters are out of luck. Check what happened, when Sussan Ley's new Home Affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam (Jonno who?) finally surfaced, with a tame interview for Nine Media. Did he call out Labor's racist and neo-Nazi smears of voters? Did he roast Albanese’s permanent elevation of...
Stephen Saunders from O'Connor
In response to: When will immigration return to 'normal'?
Thank you, David
November 4, 2025
I would like to thank David Spratt for his article on Ali Kazak. My interaction with Ali was over 45 years. I learnt what advocacy meant and how justice in all things was the major point in writing on any subject involving people, wherever they may be. I was in truth, a Palestinian and all that meant. My efforts were constant over all those years, gradually learning the history of Palestine, the injustices over decades, the devious nature of those who sought to bring that country down and the hypocrisy of others who sought to gain materially from...
Rex Williams from Springwood NSW
In response to: A tribute to Ali Kazak
If only the Sudanese were fighting Jews
November 3, 2025
If only the Sudanese were being attacked by Jews they might have some Australians protesting. More than 150,000 Sudanese have been killed and more than 14 million displaced in the second Sudan War. The situation in el-Fasher is dire. The UN is pleading for support to help 30 million in desperate need in what the world body says the world’s largest hunger crisis. This doesn't deflect from the atrocities in Gaza and leaders from Ireland taking a stance, but it highlights how the public and the media select which issues to care about, and it's not massacres and starvation...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: A worldwide anti-Israel movement
Tax reform for a fairer society
November 3, 2025
Remember, ladies and gentlemen, I recall English comedian Max Miller saying, it makes no difference whether you’re rich or whether you’re poor – it’s nice to be rich. He could have been speaking of the Australian taxation system today. Income-earners carry the bulk of the taxation load. Those owning capital get taxation relief with negative gearing for investment homes and a 50% discount on capital gains. The system is skewed in their favour. This is fundamentally inequitable. Income tax will be a fundamental part of any taxation system, but the tax burden can be spread more widely to...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Taking from the young, giving to the old: How our tax system is letting us down
This story is still being written and covered up
November 3, 2025
For as long as I can remember, the story of lead levels at the Port Pirie smelters and the danger to children/residents in the area has been repeated over and over again with constant threats of closure and government handouts for cleaning up. They continued as recently as late last year and early this year. Then it seems that lead smelting and rare earth mineral processing go hand in hand and off trots our prime minister to TRUMPtopia to join the have-I-got-a-deal-for-you queue. The state premier was left behind to blow the TRUMPet. No mention of the health...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Clean your room
Belling the cat
November 3, 2025
Stella Yee says what others think but never have the courage to say. We are still, and always have been, a racist nation. That derives from imperial and aristocratic Britain which has for centuries sought to separate itself from the rest of humanity. That was after all the basis of the British Empire. Those around the planet who had the misfortune to be colonised were regarded as lesser beings. That view justified what was done to those others as they were of lesser value. It takes an emerging reality a hundred years of evidence to the contrary to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Of social cohesion, belonging and the Australian flag
The quantum leap
November 3, 2025
Sophie Vorrath is spot-on. Coal and gas in energy generation are the dinosaurs of our age. That doesn't stop politicians like Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce promoting them as the future. But, as always in politics, economics will eventually trump ignorance when the costs of backing those dinosaurs cannot be sustained any longer.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: 'Forget subsidies': Solar-battery hybrids can deliver 'incredibly competitive' power for big industry
Stay awake and act
November 3, 2025
Coen Luettringhaus finishes his insightful piece by posing the right question: are you prepared to be lulled back to sleep? Summer is coming in Australia. Many will already be turning their minds to the beach, to cricket and to travel. All well and good. But in the interests of keeping Palestine top of mind, of never being lulled to sleep, make a list now. Write down everything Gaza has taught you and what you're going to do differently as a result. Stick it on the wall, or on your desk. Being awake is one thing. So is acting....
Jaron Sutton from Melbourne
In response to: What Israel's genocide has laid bare
Our elders deserve respect
November 3, 2025
Robert Breunig needs a reality check. Every single older Australian I know is financially struggling. This includes self-funded retirees and pensioners. How dare this man talk about a retiree living on the income of a 40-year-old without the pressures? Breunig has neglected the fact these retirees have paid taxes for an average of 55 years, through many global crises and scrimped and saved to buy their home through the years when interest rates were 17%. I remind Breunig that superannuation only started in 1992, meaning many retirees do not have the amount of super that the young will have...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Taking from the young, giving to the old: How our tax system is letting us down
A succinct summary. Thank you!
November 3, 2025
I have read several books on the situation in occupied Palestine. I really appreciate this succinct summary of the history behind the current situation. Thank you.
Penny Lee from Western Australia
In response to: Gaza under siege: The continuation of Zionist demographic cleansing policies since the 19th century
Taiwan and China
November 3, 2025
An impressive and scholarly paper on Taiwan as an integral part of China; historical, legal and geopolitical analysis. However, I feel you did not give sufficient weight to the desires of the Taiwanese population which strives to maintain its democratic forms of government as opposed to the 5000 years plus history of China! The one-China policy did not work well for a majority of the Hong Kong community! You assert that peaceful reunification, consistent with both historical precedent and national law, remains the only viable path forward. This is most likely to preserve stability in the Taiwan Straits and...
Trevor Rowe AO from Sydney
In response to: Taiwan as an integral part of China: A historical, legal and geopolitical analysis
China's patience
November 3, 2025
I would appreciate James Wood's comments on how Beijing permits the US to manufacture chips at TSMC and to ban their sale to Beijing. To me, Xi seems remarkably tolerant and patient.
Selwyn Berg from Melbourne
In response to: Taiwan as an integral part of China: A historical, legal and geopolitical analysis
Gaza needs democracy
November 3, 2025
Gaza does not need leaders or rulers but democracy. Not a democracy like Australia, where government is controlled by party donors but democracy as in Switzerland or a democracy as the Kurds have developed. The people must rule directly.
Pat Madison from callala beach nsw
In response to: The leader most capable of governing a future Palestinian state is languishing in an Israeli jail
Housing for homes, not profit
November 1, 2025
Three thousand cheers for Stewart Sweeney. He says far more elegantly and knowledgeably what I've been saying for years: housing planning is non-existent. What we have is so-called developers spotting what they deem to be profitable sites — it doesn't matter what's there already — and they go for it. In Victoria, councils used to object but were overridden by VCAT and now even the right to protest has been abolished. Public housing is demolished and sites privatised (i.e. sold for a song) with the stipulation that a meagre 5% or 10 % of new apartments be affordable. With...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Game, set and match to the property industry – unless we change everything
Up the creek
November 1, 2025
Albanese high-fives himself about his rare earths deal with Trump. However, I can’t find any clarifying details about the deal. A few days later, Trump signs an unexpected rare earths mineral deal with China who, unlike Australia, has the means to process the minerals into a saleable product and deal with the toxic waste that results from processing. Someone tell me: does this deal, with our so-called ally, leave us up yet another a faecal resource creek without a paddle?
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Trump's rare earths deal to counter China was a badly needed 'Sputnik moment
In defence of David Marr
October 31, 2025
While I am an admirer of Chris Hedges and have read him at length, I have to disagree with Vivienne Porzsolt’s characterisation of his interview with David Marr (of whom I am also a fan). Marr seemed to me to bend over backwards to accommodate Hedges' viewpoint. Hedges, in my view, overstated his case and made it very difficult, frustrating I would say, for Marr , who acted very professionally at all times. To call the interview a “hatchet job”is simply wrong.
Barry Stevens from Tura Beach, NSW 2548
In response to: Open letter to David Marr on his interview with Chris Hedges
Marred interview
October 31, 2025
I strongly support the review of David Marr's interview with Chris Hedges. It was a disgrace and I have cancelled my subscription to Late Night Live's podcasts. I do take issue with her apology for the pun she feels she has made by saying that the interview was marred by his tactics as an interviewer. I think we should embrace the word as an apt descriptor of the techniques used by an aggressive journalist who hectors his guest and seems incapable of any self-reflection when the guest defends himself against invalid criticisms. The LNL interview was Marred for...
Geoff Bower from Gooseberry Hill, WA
In response to: Open Letter to David Marr
A windfall for Vic Labor's developer's mates
October 31, 2025
Stewart Sweeney’s essay on the Australia-wide abandonment of public housing, by Labor Governments in particular, is timely. Here in Victoria, following through on Dan Andrews’ departing thought bubble, the demolition of 44 public housing towers has begun. Literally as I write, a small but staunch group of protesters is picketing a tower in Flemington, Melbourne, where Housing Victoria (a misnomer if ever there was one) is evicting the remaining residents and moving them far from their community to “temporary” accommodation. The demolitions, and the building of “social and affordable” housing in their place, have been assessed by a...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: Game, set and match to the property industry – unless we change everything
Once upon a time, Iraq looked like a good idea, too
October 31, 2025
Yes, this is gunboat diplomacy at its most visible, and the spectre of drugs is nothing more than a fig leaf to cover a blatant war of aggression. Plenty of drugs make it into the US from Central and South America, but to my knowledge Venezuela has never featured prominently in that supply chain. Ever since Trump started his second term, he has been spruiking his ability to mix it with the other major world leaders and bend them to his will. He has been roundly rebuffed by Putin in Ukraine, Xi over trade and Taiwan, Iran over its...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Gunboat hypocrisy in the Caribbean
Consequences of genocide in Palestine
October 31, 2025
Julie Macken’s article raises the question so few are willing to confront: what does it mean for us, as Australians, if genocide can unfold in full view of the world and we respond with silence? Australia’s moral standing depends not only on what we say, but on what we refuse to ignore. By continuing to trade with Israel’s weapons companies and by avoiding the language of genocide, our government is effectively saying that international law is negotiable when it comes to the powerful. We can’t separate our politics from our humanity. If we accept impunity for genocide today,...
Meg Schwarz from Macclesfield
In response to: Getting away with murder
Albo's 'middle power' inertia
October 30, 2025
Alison Broinowski's 11 Opportunities piece was a blast of fresh air about the complete absence of any Australian sovereign identity or initiative from Albo's Government upon this sad planet. Our craven relationship with Trump's shambollic and vindictive America, along with our huge donations to the AUKUS farce, our indirect participation in the Gaza massacres and our absurdly conflicted relationship with China are just three key items. Albo wraps his poll-driven and timid government's inertia making the excuse that we are a middle power. Broinowski gives 11 actions a middle power can take if it had a leader with...
Donald Clayton from Bittern Victoria 3918
In response to: 11 Opportunities for Australia
Just who are the superior people?
October 29, 2025
As the common myth uttered by Gideon Levy, that Israeli ideology regards Palestinians as an inferior people remains to the fore, reading Ramzy Baroud (P & I's 29/10): The unvanquished will: Gaza’s triumph of spirit against the architecture of genocide one finds a more than arguable case that Palestinians are actually the superior people. To say that “Gazans are built differently” is a massive understatement... I still find their collective will astonishing. Why is five-year-old Maria Hannoun, one of Gaza’s many influencers, continuing to recite the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and sending fiery messages to US President Donald Trump...
David Thompson from CLAYTON
In response to: The three core myths driving Israel’s war on Palestine
Have a heart, Kos!
October 29, 2025
For pollster Kos Samaras, linking immigration to housing is to be patronised as a “casual narrative” of “cultural threat”, and in terms of voter profiles it is “structurally impossible” for the Coalition to offer low migration. It’s not just a cultural narrative, Kos. After a quarter-century of expansive real-estate incentives and endless mass migration (under Albo now, it’s 250,000-300,000 minimum annually), realistic capacity to pay off a house is becoming “structurally impossible” outside of the top 1-20% who both control and facilitate governments. Do you even care? Why aren’t you using your silky skills to urge any and...
Stephen Saunders from O'Connor
In response to: Why the Coalition can’t win without losing itself
The con of the rules-based international order
October 29, 2025
That anyone with a functioning brain cell can take seriously the ostentatious pomposity of the statements that emanate from the mouths of the servile politicians of the West, about the importance of the rules-based international order, is a tribute to the success of blatant dishonesty over patent reality . That is bad enough but the fact is the so-called Fourth Estate, that ostentatiously promotes itself as holding power to account, simply acts as a megaphone for the barefaced failure of the West to comply even with the rules that they have just made up, let alone completely ignoring international...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Failure to cover: A week of collective omission by the Australian media
Dirty doings finally exposed
October 29, 2025
I have long been an admirer of Jenny and her dogged and courageous attempt to expose the back-door dealings that exposed the fatal weakness at the heart of our democracy. The fact that we still call ourselves a democracy is a tribute to the continued fraudulent reasoning of our often hereditary elites to describe a system where the people's will is subject to the ultimate power of cancellation by a feudal sovereign of a long dead empire on the other side of the planet. If democracy is as Lincoln said in his Gettysburg address government of the people,...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Whitlam dismissal secrets unearthed from the archives of the Canadian governor-g
Supporting the past, not the future!
October 29, 2025
Our fearful politicians, unwilling to challenge the distortion built into our housing system by the odious midget John Howard, that turned it into an investment rather than a place to live, continue to focus on the political safety of the demand side. That way they can avoid doing anything serious about the real issue,m which is the supply side. To ensure younger Australians can never afford a home and therefore continue to put off marriage and children in the interests of rentiers, they fiddle endlessly with methods of boosting demand with the logical consequence of continuing growth in prices....
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: As the home ownership dream fades, Australians may be open to a frank conversation about house prices
It's already happened, Michael
October 29, 2025
No need to worry Michael about the possibility of the Heath Robinson insanities of the Orange Donald destroying America's leadership of the world. It is happening now and has been since Clinton's presidency. The vast bulk of the world has begun to decisively move away from the selfish, self-centred, vicious and unprincipled leadership of the US. It has already lost its capacity to tell everyone else what to do and how to govern themselves as current geopolitical events clearly demonstrate. Fear not, Michael, a multipolar world is emerging that promises to adopt the five principles of peaceful co-existence....
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump’s risky American economy
Premature expostulation
October 28, 2025
Trump may just be half-witted enough to believe that by doing a few deals with countries, that have deposits or rare earths that are capable of being mined in an economic manner, he will help the US, but if so he has simply confirmed the worldwide belief that he is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Mining ain't the hard part when it comes to rare earths. Refining and processing are the hard bits and China has those wrapped up, for at least the next five to ten years. These are incredibly complex processes that can be...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump's rare earths deal to counter China was a badly needed 'Sputnik moment'
The Enlightenment betrayed
October 28, 2025
The return of the Dark Ages of religious bigotry, superstition and unreason could not be better illustrated by the fact that supposedly intelligent people can take seriously the idea that a god, whose very existence is contested, has decided that the Jewish people are the chosen ones. What is even more extraordinary is that other supposedly sentient human beings from outside that self-interested group are prepared to give a moment's credibility to such a rationally and factually outrageous claim. What is never mentioned when this claim to being chosen is made is that the Torah is filled with...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The three core myths driving Israel’s war on Palestine
Moral blindness
October 28, 2025
Whilst Justin Glyn may be physically blind, he displays a moral clarity that is admirable and which our political leaders in Australia demonstrate a total incapacity to mirror. Their reflexive moral cowardice demonstrates the duplicity at the heart of a West that emptily lectures the rest of humanity about our moral superiority, while every day demonstrating its mendacity and fraudulence in our actions. It also clearly reflects our continued disgraceful racism as we fawn over European Zionist mass murderers and colonialists whilst ignoring an occupied and abused other. This is a superbly written J'Accuse that reveals the...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Raise the double standard high
The importance of transparency in public discourse
October 27, 2025
John Anderson’s contribution to the Boyer Lecture series largely focused on diminished trust in government, lack of civility in public discourse and the threat to democracy. However, Anderson’s account has significant omissions. He fails to acknowledge widespread public policy failures, the corrosive impact of concentrated media ownership and the lack of transparency in decision-making at all levels of government. He laboured over the housing crisis and home ownership, but other policy failures were ignored. Perhaps this explains Anderson’s two most egregious omissions and which pose the biggest threats to democracy and social cohesion. Firstly, the rise in inequality...
Brenda Tait from Northcote, Victoria
In response to: John Anderson: Our civilisational moment
It depends who is doing the measuring
October 27, 2025
I thank Alex for his thoughtful analysis which summarises pretty well the fact that, as in so many other areas of life, the Western domination of the way progress is measured and who does it, leaves some pretty important questions about the accuracy of these measures unanswered. China graduates nearly four times the number of STEM students per year than the US and is now far and away the largest filer of patents. Currently, China files around half the world total of patents and increasingly more than the US since 2015. That has produced a significant leadership for...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: As Nobel laureates show, the US can’t take tech lead over China for granted
Congrats to John Schumann
October 27, 2025
I found this a beautifully written, clear and thus impressive article. Thank you, Mr Schumann.
Chris Halloway from Coral Sea (live in Wollongong)
In response to: Article on Trump's appropriation of Christianity
Misplaced nuclear optimism
October 27, 2025
Hannah Ritchie has great insights about using data to determine the best use of resources to lower emissions. Her optimism around nuclear is debatable. Most nuclear accidents go unreported. American engineer and historian Thomas Wellock has published an account of the seemingly casual attitude within the US nuclear industry called Safe Enough? A History of Nuclear Power and Accident Risk. Analysts quoted by Wellock, and a 2016 study published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, all predict a serious accident quite soon. Wellock’s reviewer Daniel Ford did some similar calculations after Three Mile Island. “The numbers suggested that another...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Realism and optimism on energy transition
A bunch of redundant Cold War warriors
October 26, 2025
Our intelligence establishment has managed to continue to produce a long line of Cold War clones without imagination, intellect or policy skills. They have survived by dint of simply repeating what they are told by their real masters, MI6 and the CIA. They ably reflect the paranoid ignorance of those bodies that have failed almost completely to ever get any intelligence assessment anywhere near the mark. But, of course, such people flourish in agencies that have no outside assessment and oversight. They cover their failures in secrecy justified by national security. Good luck to this new boss, she...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: New Australian national intelligence chief faces a people challenge
Balance versus truth
October 26, 2025
The control that the Zionists have established over public opinion in the West is not a fly-by-night affair. The history of that political movement over the last century and a half has been one that recognised the vital importance of controlling the narrative in the mainstream media. It has spent the entire period concocting that narrative and placing key people in major mainstream outlets to ensure that narrative is the only one allowed. Many studies by academics and policy experts testify to the success of that narrative in shaping the public mind. The narrative began to lose its...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Chris Sidoti on the International Court of Justice Gaza ruling
Reason and rant
October 26, 2025
For anyone with even the remotest claim to sanity and coherence, it is an immense task to sensibly compare Xi Jinping and the orange Donald. They appear to exist on entirely different planets, or more accurately to exist in two different eras. The Donald would have fitted perfectly into the Dark Ages of Europe when superstition, fanatical religion, irrational violence and justice by the sword were the hallmarks of the age. His infantile narcissism and psychotic and vengeful nature was common amongst the kings and emperors of the age. Xi, on the other hand, is the highly trained...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump, Xi and the ‘green paradox’: How China is building a climate-proof future
Misinformation during the election
October 26, 2025
It is impossible to evaluate the analysis carried out by the researchers who reported on the survey they carried out in the absence of the identity of the statements that they said were false, and which the respondents were asked to comment on. I do not know how we the readers of this article can form any view about the value and usefulness of their survey, and the significance of the seriousness of the statements said in some way to be false or misleading. This omission renders useless the publication of the report by the researchers in the...
John Trew from Sydney
In response to: Misinformation was rife during the 2025 election. New research shows many people were unable to identify it
Unsupported opinions on the energy transition
October 26, 2025
Michael Edesess’ uncritical review of Hannah Ritchie’s book on energy transition fails to back up their shared opinions on important issues: 1. Levelised cost of energy comparisons of energy technologies are not flawed when used and interpreted correctly; they are the standard method in electric power engineering. 2. World leading research groups on the energy transition, such as LUT and Stanford, recognise the land-use limitations of large-scale bioenergy and therefore do not include it in their scenarios. 3. Nuclear power failed to grow beyond its maximum global generation in 2006 because it’s too expensive, too dangerous, too...
Mark Diesendorf from BEROWRA HEIGHTS
In response to: Realism and optimism on energy transition
Step 1: Pick up a book...
October 26, 2025
Since 2010, we have known that 44% of Australians are not functionally literate; i.e. they do not have the skills to understand, let alone be critical of, what they are reading. Is it any wonder that a significant segment of the population cannot identify election misinformation? Speaking as a former teacher, I maintain, one of the weakest links is the training, recruitment and ongoing up-skilling of teachers. I worked alongside teachers who thought Captain Cook bought the First Fleet to Australia, and that he personally slaughtered thousands of Indigenous Australians by his own hand. Also, these...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Misinformation was rife during the 2025 election. New research shows many people were unable to identify it
Clear and succinct
October 26, 2025
I would like to commend Michael Keating’s article to readers. It is clear, succinct, and taught me a lot – not just about Jim Chalmers’ changes but also about government concerns around equity in the superannuation scheme.
Constance Pond from Hornsby
In response to: Superannuation and the Canberra Press Gallery's fantasies
A just peace the only way to lasting security
October 26, 2025
Stewart Sweeney has reminded us of the important distinction between negative peace (the absence of violence) and positive peace (the presence of justice). Peace researcher Johan Galtung made a further distinction between direct violence (eg being killed by an enemy bullet) and structural violence, the harms that accrue from punishing social and economic conditions. While direct violence has been committed by both sides in the Gaza conflict, albeit hugely disproportionately, only the Palestinians have suffered long-term structural violence. Examples include the dehumanising impact of the “security wall” — declared a violation of international humanitarian and human rights law by...
Colin Sindall from St Kilda, Victoria
In response to: War without end, peace without justice
At last! Some long-term thinking
October 24, 2025
Is Fred Zhang to become another frustrated citizen of the Lucky Country, or are we about to make an investment in a future that takes it beyond rolling over to have our belly scratched and our food bowl raided? The technology that has been determined on these shores and developed overseas is legendary. From the black box carried by every plane flying to the solar cell technology employed globally, we have squandered opportunities to make Australia a technology and manufacturing powerhouse. With the geopolitical order shattering and climate change about to not just shift the goalposts, but to...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: China, US or us? Australia’s Upper Path in the global minerals race
Manipulation defeated by the young
October 24, 2025
As an 80-year-old, I have an abiding belief in the young who may save the West from the consequences of the indifference and ignorance of us oldies! This article re-enforces that belief, as does the their actions in saving the environment. It has been said by someone wise that we do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children. They are going to make sure we give it back in a livable form!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The crumbling illusion: Why American public opinion on Israel is shifting
Decency and humanity – many Jews demonstrate that
October 24, 2025
I have never doubted the feelings of millions of Jews around the world towards the obscene criminality being committed in their names. This article is the best illustration of that humanity so far!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Hundreds of prominent Jews and Israelis urge world powers to hold Israel account