Letters to the Editor
MSM under-count indigenous deaths in US wars
September 5, 2025
This is an extremely important article by John Menadue demanding total trade sanctions against Israel because of hundreds of thousands of Gaza deaths. Dr Zeina Jamaluddine and colleagues estimated that 64,260 Gazans died violently by day 269 of the Gaza massacre (30 June 2024) (The Lancet) and hence 136,000 Gazans died violently by day 569 (25 April 2025) with a “conservatively estimated” four times that number (544,000) dying from imposed deprivation for a shocking total of 680,000 deaths from violence and deprivation by 25 April 2025. That is 28% of the pre-war Gaza population of 2.4 million, and 11...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza
Labor’s de-democratisation of Australian politics
September 5, 2025
Gregory Clark writes well on the Palestine issue. As a result of FOI applications, I now know that up till about six weeks ago, Albo had had about 65,000 pieces of correspondence on Palestine since the Israel-Palestine war broke out, and had answered none. Penny Wong had had about 52,500, and had answered about 17% of them. It is clear that governments of both persuasions largely believe that foreign affairs is not a suitable policy area for democratic control resulting from widely encouraged public debate. It has taken more than 22 months of weekly marches just to get Labor...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Canberra and Gaza
Urgent action required to stave off collapse
September 5, 2025
The latest report by the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group warns that climate change may lead to widespread food insecurity, economic destabilisation, large-scale people displacement, war, failed states and social collapse. If ever there were a better collection of people to make the connections between climate and security, it is the ASLCG led by Retired Admiral Chris Barrie. We must heed their warnings and pull out all stops to mitigate climate change. Possibly the most worrying, apart from widespread food insecurity, is large-scale people displacement. Some suggest a billion displaced by 2050. How on earth will the world cope...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Military experts warn of climate wars
Climate criminal Australia's huge CO2 emissions
September 4, 2025
Important and revealing article by Peter Sprivulis. I have been a career biochemist for the last 50 years and researched energy transduction in plants that over hundreds of millions of years generated huge fossil fuel resources. The atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs; notably CO2, CH4, and N2O) from unrestrained fossil fuel and other exploitation are at record highs, are increasing at record rates (notwithstanding “we are tackling climate change” political rhetoric), and existentially threaten humanity and the diosphere (see Gideon Polya, “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions”, 843 pages, 2020). Yet the Australian Government’s “Australian Energy Statistics...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: Sprinting to stand still: Still no progress in Australia’s energy transition
The fog of espionage
September 4, 2025
The fog of war plays a distant second to the fog of espionage. We are witnessing this writ large in the unfolding drama being played out over the alleged Iranian involvement in the recent terrorist attacks against Jewish targets here in Australia. When considering the pros and cons of the arguments being presented, it is important to keep in mind one crucial truth. The various Zionist/Israeli lobbying groups, voicing their opinions and attempting to influence both public opinion and state policy, have a long and proven record of framing the narrative. Saying something first, and loud enough and often...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Messiness in spookdom: Australia's Iran Contra deal
Labor sets sail in the same policy boat
September 4, 2025
Thank you, Annabel Hennessy, for calling out the persistent policy cruelty of our political “leadership” and its impact upon many stateless refugee neighbours in our midst. The legislation referred to, as background to the Nauru deportation proposal, presents us with the same lethargic compliance we have endured from Liberal-National Coalition hard-heartedness. Are we to allow Australia to take the same new normal path pioneered by the Trump administration to “win” by withholding justice from Kilmar Abrego Garcia? How long will it be before the Labor Party (and its equally lethargic Parliamentary opponents) realise that a healthy Australian democracy has...
Bruce Wearne from Ballarat Central
In response to: Australia should halt plan to deport refugees, migrants to Nauru
Subs deal
September 4, 2025
Noel Turnbull certainly sets out a valid alternative, but I would have thought the whole submarine saga is going to be undermined by drones in any case as the Navy is already developing long-range underwater drones! They will certainly be fully developed well before we ever see the mythical AUKUS subs, or at least my grandchildren see them!
Max Bourke AM from Campbell ACT
In response to: If you really want some subs – try this
When is it time for the climate rebellion?
September 4, 2025
I am so grateful to the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group for their complete commitment to our ongoing well-being and their respect for our intelligence and capacity to deal with the terrifying truth. Both this commitment and respect appear to be somewhat half-hearted from our government. The latest evidence of disregard for our climate occurred on 28 August. That day, the Albanese Government quietly granted approval for Glencore to expand its Ulan thermal coal mine near Mudgee in NSW. Meanwhile, the government steadfastly refuses to share the contents of two apparently terrifying documents detailing the security threat posed...
Lesley Walker from Northcote
In response to: Climate-first foreign policy essential for Australia and regional security
Thanks
September 4, 2025
What a privilege to read such an insightful article by someone with such a pedigree of both experience and principle, not to mention a global citizen's lifestyle. Thank you.
Bede Doherty from Melbourne
In response to: What goes around, comes around
'Turn back the boats' – tell them they're joking
September 3, 2025
The recent protest marches in Australian capital cities shows the ignorance of the protesters in basing their protests on the colour of people's skin and their religion. They should have instead protested about the climate, because rising sea levels alone in our vicinity will affect tens of thousands (17,000 in Indonesia). Many thousands of Pacific Islanders will lose their island homes and many million Indonesians will look South due to inundation of low-lying coastal areas. At present, the UK is trying to stop the refugee trickle across the Channel which will be nothing compared to the flood...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Climate-first foreign policy essential for Australia and regional security – top security leaders
Discernment and nuance: Victims of AI
September 3, 2025
Many are under the illusion that AI chatbots like ChatGPT are objective sources of information, having collected data across multiple sources. But they are not. AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, are designed to sycophantly agree with the user. This means that whatever you ask, these AI chatbots are designed to encourage, and agree with, your bias. This was demonstrated when a teenager contemplating suicide, was actively encouraged to do so by ChatGPT. That these AI platforms are designed to sycophantly agree with the user, makes them, due to our human nature, highly addictive. What human being doesn’t want someone...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: I'd rather a bloodied shark than AI
St Albo of the lost cause
September 3, 2025
Let’s get real about greenhouse gas emissions; they are a damper on productivity. They are instrumental in the function of the global ecosystem. As things stand today, the taxpayer is picking up the cost of the destruction, caused by an unstable environment, as well as the toxic pollution from the forever chemicals that actually present a bigger threat to life on our planet than rising temperatures and sea levels. From lost lives, homes and livelihoods to inflated prices and insurance premiums, they shell out while the corporations creating them are laughing all the way to the bank. Then there’s...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: The one big reform not discussed at Labor's roundtable
Common sense versus fear of uninformed criticism
September 3, 2025
This is a common sense and intelligent approach towards attendance at these important celebrations. It is unlike the federal government which continues to pander to how they think the US and Rupert Murdoch will feel about such attendance. Hopefully Bob Carr's attendance will keep those important diplomatic channels open until our governments regonise the reality of the new power dynamics at work geopolitically!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Beijing invited me to their special celebration. Here's why I'm happy to go
Bob Carr’s rational approach
September 3, 2025
Congratulations to Bob Carr for attending the 80th anniversary celebration by China of the end of World War II. And it’s hardly surprising that Vladimir Putin is attending. Without the Soviet Union, China, we (and the people of Germany, Italy and Japan) might have lost the battle against German, Italian, and Japanese fascism. The Spanish and the Portuguese had to wait well beyond World War II for an end to fascism. Carr quite rightly reminds Andrew Hastie that only weeks ago Vladimir Putin was in the United States. If you want to solve problems between nations you have...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Beijing invited me to their special celebration. Here's why I'm happy to go
Swearing in schools and community
September 3, 2025
While I agree with Samantha Helps that teachers punishing children for swearing puts the teacher in a different space to the community from which the children come, what she seems to miss is that there are multiple levels of swearing. One is when the swearing is aimed at the teacher or another pupil. This is where the teacher has a responsibility to stop this behaviour. It is clear that swearing is now endemic in our communication to add emphasis or to express emotions such as when you hit your thumb with a hammer. Such swearing is now on TV...
Richard Swinton from NSW Northern Rivers
In response to: For the sins of the father
Wanning Sun correct re over-interpreting attendance
September 3, 2025
Wanning Sun is correct in pointing out that it would be unwise to read too much into what countries have been invited and the relative seniority of those representatives. There is clearly some guidance that can be obtained from it, but there are a host of factors that shapes such attendance that are specific to the individual nations concerned. It would also be unwise to use that attendance list to draw conclusions about the relationship between China and the vast bulk of the global South. More telling are the substantive actions of that South in their enthusiasm to enter...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: A tale of two lists: How geopolitics shaped the attendance of China’s parade
Labor should, and could, introduce a price on carbon
September 3, 2025
Thanks to Ross Gittins, economics editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, for so clearly outlining Rod Sims’ five reasons why a carbon price is both “necessary and urgent”. Sims, now chair of Ross Garnaut’s Superpower Institute, argues that Australia needs a carbon price “so effective climate action can be taken, so our targets can be met, and so we can more than fully compensate households for the price effects” while also strengthening public budgets. These outcomes would be well received by Australians and should give the Albanese Government courage in its second term. There is also international precedent....
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: The one big reform not discussed at Labor's roundtable
You don't find truth or the full story in the mainstream media
September 3, 2025
The mainstream media has had years of practice ignoring reality in Palestine, not only since 2023. But if you want to argue the toss about prior to 2023, the MSM have had undeniable decades of practice reporting on climate change. Whenever it suits them, the liars, the deluded and the vested interests denying truth and science must be given equal space to spread their falsehoods. Why does anyone pay for legacy media anymore? The sooner it finally dies out, the better. We already have quality alternatives.
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The media’s Israeli atrocity treadmill
Chinese, Bengali and Gaza holocausts
September 2, 2025
Important article by Professor Jocelyn Chey. In the 1937-1945 Chinese holocaust 35-40 million Chinese died from violence and deprivation under Japanese occupation (15% of the pre-war population). Australian attorney-general Robert “Pig Iron Bob” Menzies made Australia complicit by permitting iron exports to Japan. Michael Portillo included me in a 2008 BBC program Bengal Famine that included comments from Dr Sanjoy Bhattacharya (Welcome Institute, London): “That six to seven million [World War II Bengal famine deaths] figure includes the deaths that happened in let’s say the provinces of Bihar, Orissa and Assam”, economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen (Cambridge, Harvard): “Famines...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: Marking September 2: Lest we forget
It is the (capitalist) system that is the problem
September 2, 2025
I like, and usually agree with, much of what Caitlin Johnstone has to say about world affairs. However, in her latest piece — on the demerits of Western civilisation — she is wrong to ascribe to all Westerners responsibility for the grave wrongs that have been carried out in effect by small concentrations of government and corporate power in the capitalist societies of the West. To conflate the sins of this small, grasping, self-interested minority with Western civilisation and with what most Westerners believe is a mistake. Indeed, it might be said that Caitlin has fallen victim to...
Peter Blunt from Siem Reap
In response to: Western civilisation is not worth saving
How to create fear in the Australian Jewish community
September 2, 2025
Jack Waterford's article fails to mention one pertinent aspect of the bombing of the Melbourne synagogue. That aspect is crucial, namely that the Adass branch of Jewish Orthodoxy is anti-Zionist and anti-Israel. The Israel lobby feasts on this lack of transparency and uses it to further its attempt to make Australia focus on so-called antisemitism, instead of the real issue, which is Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. In other words, if, as ASIO blandly declares, Iran is responsible for the attacks, then ASIO implies that Iranian Government officials are as uneducated and stupid as Australians who don't know...
Dieter Barkhoff from Melbourne
In response to: When spying is subcontracted to gangsters
Western civilisation is not worth saving
September 2, 2025
I agree with Caitlin Johnstone that Western civilisation has come to a very bad pass, especially in terms of politics and colonial thinking. However, I'd like to defend another aspect of Western civilisation, namely the music, art and literature it has produced. I would regard it as a crime to throw away the music of Mozart or Bach. I even think some of the Enlightenment values that originated in Western civilisation, even though they are not necessarily part of it, are worth preserving. It's right to attack values of people like Trump and others we associate today with...
Colin Mackerras from Capalaba, Queensland
In response to: https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/09/western-civilisation-is-not-worth-saving/?u
Consultant culture at universities
September 2, 2025
It's not only at universities, our politicians have also outsourced their resposibilities. What government services are left are controlled by mostly large overseas corperations. When the roundtable discussion about regulation took place, they never mentioned that they are happy and instrumental in writing those regulations so as to exclude small to medium Australian bussiness from the honey pot.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Reining in the consultant culture in Australia’s public universities
Two world health threats
September 2, 2025
Julian Cribb's professional and prescient article shows we have two serious problems. There is the well-founded threat of lethal pathogens and also the threat from the militant, irrational groups opposed to immunisation and masks. Lately we have seen the power and rage of a resentful minority, seriously uninformed, igniting the fuse of fear and pushing an aggressive barrow. It is to be hoped there is sufficient potent research into these groups to enable myth and terror management, rather than attacking them head-on and empowering the work of the fearmongers thus granting them more potency as they will claim to...
Michael Breen from Robertson NSW
In response to: The next pandemic is 'an epidemiological certainty'
Overcrowding and overpopulation a health issue
September 1, 2025
Julian Cribb cites overpopulation and overcrowding as the two major causes of a pandemic. Thus, cruise ships and high-rise buildings must be regarded as giant petri-dishes, facilitating the growth of micro-organisms that cause disease. This is a problem because, while populations grow, we do need to densify our cities. We have to stop urban sprawl, that is, the encroachment of cities onto natural bush or farmland, the latter needed to feed people. The only solution is to stop further growth of human numbers. Cities can't go out without destroying other species' habitats or our food base, and they...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: The next pandemic is ‘an epidemiological certainty’
The circle of death
September 1, 2025
The story of what John Darby saw didn't end there. Eighty-plus years on, some of the victims of the Holocaust, some children of Holocaust survivors and some grandchildren of Holocaust victims are seeking revenge using the Holocaust to justify any and all actions. In 100 years, will the great-grandchildren of the Holocaust still be at war with the Palastinian survivors of the genocide and their offspring? Will the Palistinians be using the genocide as a justification for any and all retribution? Some of them will. The arms industry will continue to benefit from it.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide Są
In response to: The gates of Gaza
Submarines, nuclear or otherwise, are obsolete
September 1, 2025
Expensive manned submarines are a relic of past world (meaning European) wars! Just like aircraft carriers, infantry wars and manned aircraft. If the special military operation in Ukraine and the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank have taught our military leaders anything — and that is questionable — it is that the fundamental nature of war has changed. UAVs, accurately guided missiles and bombs, along with accurate detection of underwater threats and use of underwater unmanned drones using AI and quantum computing, have dramatically cheapened the fighting of wars and have increased its lethality substantially. That...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Ditch AUKUS Pillar One. It involves Australia too much in US strategy
Never again – but for whom?
September 1, 2025
I commend George Browning, former Anglican Bishop, for his valiant fight for the rights of Palestinians and for Jewish, Armenia, Rwanda, and Gaza holocausts to be remembered and not repeated. However, there appears to be an unconscious disremembering, as shown by the absence of even a cursory mention by Browning of the horrors suffered by people in the Far East (a somewhat pejorative Anglo-Saxon term). Across East and Southeast Asia, tens of millions suffered untold brutalities under World War II Japanese imperialism. Notably, the horrific Nanking Massacres and Unit 731 (Imperial Japanese Army chemical and biological warfare research unit,...
Jeffrey Chew from Melbourne
In response to: https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/08/never-again-so-the-world-pledged/
The Holocaust industry
September 1, 2025
I agree with George Browning's article; however, the horrific things perpetrated by Hitler's consort on European Jews, not to mention millions of others, do not mean Judaism has a claim on the word holocaust. Up to 10 million Congolese died under Belgian rule, Shashi Tahoor claims 120 million Indians died under British rule, and there have been countless other massive numbers of victims of European colonisation. Norman Finkelstein wrote the book The Holocaust Industry after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel began refining its River to the Sea Crusade, all the while hiding its atrocities behind the Holocaust cloak....
Dieter Barkhoff from Melbourne
In response to: Never again – so the world pledged
Iran, or Israel false flag operation?
September 1, 2025
Michelle Grattan should be far more critical in her approach to Mike Burgess and the Iran affair. There has not been a shred of evidence presented to prove Iranian sponsorship of terror acts in Australia. Suggesting that Iran's motive is to cause disharmony is asinine to say the least. Clearly and logically, the only country that would gain from these terror acts is Israel. These gains include: shifting public opinion away from a free Palestine, the Palestine Resistance and its allies; emboldening the Zionist lobby in Australia at a time it is increasingly becoming isolated; elevating Iran to the...
Fergus Robinson from Melbourne
In response to: Grattan on Friday: Mike Burgess, the spycatcher who gives ASIO a very public face
Reviewing poll findings on US alliance
September 1, 2025
One striking aspect of year-to-year changes in Lowy Institute polling figures, covering the popularity among Australians of Australia-US relations reported on by Jaron Sutton, can perhaps be explained by a differing interpretation of the response to one particular question in the poll. Sutton reports that in the polls between March, 2024 and 2025, Australians' trust in the US to act responsibly in the world had plummetted from 64% to 44%, yet despite this, a whopping 80% of Australians felt the US alliance was very or fairly important for our security, down just three points from 83% in 2024. ...
Bruce Foskey from Blackwood, Vic
In response to: Time to dial back the Australia-US alliance
Australia is one trade deal away from backing authoritarians
September 1, 2025
I understand that Taiwan feels threatened by China. However, the arguments in the article I feel are not substantiated. China now has the expertise and capability of surpassing Western chip capabilities, perhaps not as yet achieved, but in development. I feel this is shown in part by the speed that China developed AI capability in such a short time. The West appears under the misapprehension that China needs chips from Western manufacturers, but I feel the reality is that China will use Western technology when it is cost-effective and available. The idiocy of forcing Dutch manufacturers to stop...
Doug Foskey from Tregeagle
In response to: Australia is one trade deal away from backing authoritarians, says Taiwan
Will the Albanese Government listen?
September 1, 2025
I commend Usman Khawaja for his principled stand on Gaza. Given his elevated position in the Australian sporting firmament, he managed to gain an audience with senior members of our current government. To his great credit, he did not waste this chance. Will the Albanese Government listen? The short answer is no. Thinking in Canberra has been captured by the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council. This is a great shame, especially as better advice is readily available from the Jewish Council of Australia, an organisation founded in February 2024 specifically to represent non-Zionist Australian Jews and to counter, or at...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Usman Khawaja urges Albanese to sanction Israel over Gaza genocide
Blurring the line between sport and politics
September 1, 2025
Usman Khawaja is claimed to have blurred the line between sport and politics, but what concerns me is that Australians don't have the same access to the prime minister as lobbyists and high-profile sportspeople. Even after the resounding victory in the federal election and a series of marches around the country, the government and, in particular, the Opposition require high-profile lobbying to see what is obvious to a large portion of the population. No matter what your nationality, religious affiliations or sporting obsession, it has become obvious that what is happening in not just Gaza and the Ukraine...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Usman Khawaja urges Albanese to sanction Israel over Gaza genocide
Unmasking propaganda
September 1, 2025
Thank you, Jeffrey Sachs. “Russians invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was thoroughly provoked by the West.” I have long held this view. The Western media’s propaganda was never enough for me to swallow Russia as the enemy. Russia lost 27 million people during World War II. The Allies wouldn’t have defeated Hitler without Russia’s staggering sacrifice. As Sachs makes clear, every war Russia has been involved in the past two centuries has been defensive. The Western narrative does not acknowledge these facts. Just as Western leaders and media have skewed their propaganda in defence of Israel’s horrific crimes, so...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: A new foreign policy for Europe
Genocide denial and Spanish Jewish organisations
September 1, 2025
In 1985, an Auschwitz survivor sued a prominent Holocaust denier in the Spanish courts for libel – and won. The result of that victory and public demand was that the Spanish penal code was amended to make genocide denial a criminal offence. An article in Spain's El Pais by Federico Zukierman Merlin, a member of JCall Spain-Another Jewish Voice, points out that the secretary-general of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, has effectively denied that genocide is taking place in Palestine. Its board of directors did not dissociate itself from his statement. It is quite possible that...
Kieran Tapsell from Stanwell Park
In response to: Never again – so the world pledged
Led by the nose, again
August 29, 2025
Based on nothing more than unsubstantiated claims presumedly made by someone with their own agenda, Australia has sent the Iranians home. This was a mistake with possible long-lasting consequences. While it was easy to send the Iranians packing, it might prove more difficult to get them back, providing they would even want to return. The idea that Iran, with troubles aplenty on its home front, would bother to send saboteurs all the way to Australia to set fire to a couple of synagogues doesn't make sense. Iran would gain nothing from such a foolish move, even if they did...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Gaslighting the electorate, virtue signalling to our ‘partners’
Coincidence? I think not
August 29, 2025
It beggars belief that the Australian Government has just expelled the Iranian ambassador based on intelligence provided by the Israeli intelligence services. Unbelievable. This expulsion happened at the same time that Defence Minister Richard Marles flew to the US for the meeting that was not a meeting, then suddenly validated as a meeting by US gaslighters, by a photo opportunity, posted on our government’s social media. Coincidence anyone?
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Gaslighting the electorate, virtue signalling to our ‘partners'
Ambassador's expulsion
August 29, 2025
I have to object to the thrust and tone of Cameron Leckie’s opinion piece “Gaslighting the electorate, virtue signalling to our partners”. Nothing happens in a vacuum. However there is credible evidence that Iran has paid criminal gangs to attack property in Australia. This requires a diplomatic response. It would be inappropriate to banish an ambassador for what another country is doing to its neighbours outside Australia, terrible though it is. We have not banished the Russian ambassador for its invasion of Ukraine, terrible though it is. I participated in the Sydney Harbour bridge walk, along with...
David Hind from North Sydney
In response to: Gaslighting the electorate, virtue signalling to our ‘partners’
Ambassador's expulsion warranted
August 29, 2025
I understand the public outrage at the government of Israel, but Cameron Leckie — who presumes Israel provided the intelligence without seeing it, or revealing any direct knowledge of the ASIO secret briefing to the government and Opposition — takes this one step further by conflating the war in Gaza with attacks on Australia’s Jewish community. Just because someone is of the Jewish religion, it doesn’t make them responsible or even associated with the actions of the Israeli Government. Yet Leckie, without access to classified intelligence briefings, reduces a firebombing of a synagogue to, “No one killed. No...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: Gaslighting the electorate, virtue signalling to our ‘partners’
Our defence capability could be in better hands
August 29, 2025
There are few among us who could consider themselves even within shouting distance of the knowledge of Australia's defence policy background that John Menadue embodies – and I certainly am not among those. However, even a far lower-tier observer such as I could find great resonance with John's comment that: We would also get better value for our defence dollars if Anthony Albanese could find a pretext to shift Richard Marles to a new job that matched his abilities. As a probable win-win solution to this enigma, I believe that we could do well — particularly in the...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: For 35 years after Vietnam, we had a self-reliant defence policy. We need it again
For many, NDIS is a disaster
August 29, 2025
Bravo to Richard Bruggemann for saying the unacceptable – backed by his many years of experience and advocacy. It was entirely predictable that a privatised disability insurance scheme would be a disaster, with unsatisfactory services for many participants and massive exploitation by unscrupulous service providers. Those who created the scheme were, of course, well motivated. And there are undoubtedly many participants who have benefitted from it – in particular, those with significant physical disabilities, but both normal intellectual capacity and a degree of bureaucratic sophistication. But for many others and/or their loved ones, it is a bureaucratic and...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: Why the NDIS inevitably went pear-shaped!
Failure of education policy
August 29, 2025
Whitlam created a rod for Labor with the decision to introduce state aid for private schools. At the time it secured the Catholic vote and reassured many Coalition supporters that Labor was not such a big threat. This has not fundamentally changed – Labor realises that any dimunition of funding to the private sector will be a threat to its re-election prospects. Even Albanese's substantial majority does not make the government immune. The challenge for the government is to find a way to support parental choice without exacerbating educational inequity.
John Tons from SA
In response to: How the ALP built the market that is destroying public schools
Mainstream media presents narrow, biased news
August 29, 2025
It reflects badly on what remains of Australia's mainstream media that more concern is shown for journalists in alternative media such as P&I. In the days of Peter Greste's imprisonment in Egypt, the MSM gave his plight regular coverage. There's nothing comparable about foreign journalists barred from Palestine nor the record number of native journalists deliberately killed by the IDF. Instead, our news comes with zero credibility from Israel, and the US whose complicity cannot be denied, nor its reports believed. Several thoughts come to mind: – Thankfulness for Australia's alternative media and remaining Palestinian journalists and...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The murder of journalists as an act of censorship
What democracy?
August 28, 2025
For every example of a succesful democracy, there are marginal/unsucessful so-called democracies. The latest and least dependable is the US, the democracy that has been proven to have interfered more times to undermine the democratic process of its own and other countries, including our own. The behaviour of the latest questionably democratically elected US president shows little regard for democracy and the civil liberties of US citizens. In our own country, those civil liberties are under threat from the state premiers (mostly Labor) in particular, who have been passing Trump-like laws. I doubt if those who...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Managing a mature Australia-China relationship
The tyranny of the rules-based international order
August 28, 2025
This article is a good summary of what could be a sane and balanced approach to China that does not pay homage to the absurd propaganda put out continuously by the US deep state that China is some existential threat to the democratic world. But to sensibly deal with China, we need to dispense with our fatuous dedication to a rules-based international order that appears to only exist in the minds of that US deep state and to those who have, as Gareth says, drunk the Kool-Aid of that deep state. If we are referring to international law...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Managing a mature Australia-China relationship
Rees correctly demands blunt honesty in language
August 28, 2025
Eminent and wonderfully resolute humanitarian Professor Stuart Rees correctly demands blunt honesty in language, for example: “At long last, an influential leader spoke truth to power. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia described the actions in Gaza of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his regime as inhumane and beyond the bounds of sanity. ‘I have never seen read or heard in recent times people as cruel as this. Netanyahu and his ilk are truly deranged.’ Reality shown. No politeness. Nothing abstract. Language honest, appealing, humane.” The core ethos of humanity is kindness and truth, but this is grossly and...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: Death or displacement, ‘Please no more polite language about the Netanyahu evil’
Australian kids don’t have to be nuclear targets
August 28, 2025
Excellent analysis by John Menadue, echoing the international law-cognisant and Australia-first wisdom of former prime ministers Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating. Indeed in the must-read The Big Fix: Rebuilding Australia’s National Security, Albert Palazzo argues that Australia should adopt a science-informed strategic defensive position as a truly sovereign nation to defend island continent Australia, rather than its traditional strategic offensive position since World War II as a minor partner in all US-Asian wars, paying an “insurance premium” in blood in the hope that the US will defend Australia from long-feared invasions by Asians. The racist and jingoistic Coalition blindly...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: For 35 years after Vietnam, we had a self-reliant defence policy. We need it aga
Assessment of the planet known as Earth
August 28, 2025
The Earth is sick. It is losing species to extinction at an accelerating rate. Its forests and grasslands are shrinking daily. Its environment exceeds safe limits in six of its nine key planetary boundaries. Irreversible tipping points are gaining strength – icecaps and permafrost melting, forests shrinking, coral reefs dying, ocean currents changing. This sickness has its roots in the planet’s dominant life-form – intelligent bipeds who have learned to exploit the planet’s natural resources. These beings have thrived over the last 12,000 years of exceptional climate stability, but in recent decades this life-form’s demands have grown to a...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: The great dying