Letters to the Editor
George Browning's scalding clarity of expression
September 25, 2025
No caveat, no contrary thought, no correction – and no way in which the expression of repulsion to Sussan Ley's pathetic communication to the US Republicans can be mollified. Thank you, George Browning, for a laser beam of decency and truth.
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Ex-bishop questions if Coalition is committed to Mideast peace
Yes, one rule for all
September 25, 2025
The rules around superannuation should be the same for every Australian. And while we are at it, super should be taken as a pension as a percentage of the wage at retirement, eventually replacing the old age pension. We should have an independent inquiry into employment after leaving Parliament: who they work for, future public service employment, consultancies etc
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: One rule for them, another for us
Albanese kowtows to WA Labor Party/Roger Cook
September 24, 2025
That the lives of my eight grandchildren and their contemporaries may well be cut short by catastrophic global heating is of great concern. Ross Gittins highlights the “weak job” Albanese has done in addressing such pressing concerns. Compounding the inadequacy of the 2035 62%-70% emissions reduction target is an outrageous Labor decision that makes even this weak target significantly more difficult to reach. The decision to extend the NW Shelf gas project to 2070 was appalling and should be revisited. This decision was largely driven by Labor’s WA branch which behaves like a subsidiary of the mining and gas...
Ian Bayly from Upwey, Vic. 3158
In response to: Albanese takes his usual each-way bet on climate change
Which SSN is it to be?
September 24, 2025
Mike Gilligan’s piece raises a question. Which SSN is more important to the government, seniors shower needs, or SSN submarines? The new seniors care package unveiled by Minister Rae, flouting the Aged Care Commissioner, means some seniors face paying $50 for a shower, or having to go it alone. Rex Patrick recently outlined a comprehensive defence spend without SSNs, which left $150 billion in the kitty for things like seniors care and denticare. On submarines we have to remember, not so many years back, Indonesia was regarded as our big threat. (Note they have just bought an Italian...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Australia has no alternative to biting America’s bullet
Vegetarianism may not be the answer
September 24, 2025
Julian Cribb writes that a vegetarian diet...may yield fewer greenhouse emissions, but may also cause greater soil erosion, use more pesticides and is highly vulnerable to climate. He argues for a move away from traditional farming production to regenerative farming, urban food, and deep ocean aquaculture. It is hard not to panic about the prospect of sea-level rise which the World Economic Forum warns is a global threat. It notes that the Greenland ice sheet is “at a tipping point of irreversible melting and that one to two metres of sea-level rise this century is unavoidable. This means...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Devouring the Earth may decide our future
No meeting could well clinch my vote
September 24, 2025
If Anthony Albanese cancelled all future meetings with Trump, I would vote for his government. Although it goes against my opinions on censorship, if he banned all Trump tripe on social media and on the nightly news I would hand out how to vote cards at my own expense in his electorate for the duration. As for closing all US bases in Australia, bring it on. It is time for Australia to grow up and stop marching off to war to defend UK and US right-wingers.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: How important is an Albanese-Trump meeting?
Isolating Israel? Hardly
September 24, 2025
Is “isolating Israel” on the agenda of Western political elites, as suggested by Margaret Reynolds? Given the wording of the “recognition” of Palestine proposal initiated by Emmanuel Macron in association with the Saudis, endorsed by the Albanese Government, it is obvious that the intent has nothing to do with “self-determination” of Palestine, but everything to do with ensuring a “two-state solution” entrenches and solidifies Israeli control over all of Palestine. If that is not the case, explain why the conditions imposed on “self-determination” do not destroy all possible avenues to Palestinian statehood.
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: The Australian prime minister has little time left to salvage his place in histo
An act of courage. Really?
September 24, 2025
Although many of the points made by Stuart Rees and Greg Barns in their joint article make sense and reinforce what had already often been said in previous articles, qualifying the recognition of Palestine as a state by the Australian Government as a courageous act and congratulating it for having taken this step certainly doesn’t. Perhaps it would have been a courageous act if Australia had joined the other 93 states, which by February 1989 had recognised the State of Palestine following the Declaration of Independence proclaimed by Yasser Arafat on 15/11/1988 on behalf of the Palestinian National Council....
Michel Beuchat from Balwyn North
In response to: Recognising Palestine a long overdue act of courage
One rule for them, another for us
September 23, 2025
Sussan Ley wants to cut government assistance, saying too many are dependent on government help. This is farcical considering no one can live even on a full government pension while paying rent, healthcare, electricity, petrol and food etc. Here’s an idea, Sussan, when politicians retire, make them meet the same requirements as the average pensioner. That is, every single politician can only have $321,500 in assets including property and their superannuation. If they’re married, they’re allowed only $481,500 in combined assets. Considering the majority of politicians in Australia have more than one house, many with far more than...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: The Liberal Party's economic strategy
Strike 3 and Albanese should be out
September 23, 2025
I am fully in agreement with all that Margaret Reynolds says. Although Albanese would have to pull a mighty big rabbit out of his hat to salvage his reputation. The Age (online 23/09/2025) headline Albanese’s plea to world leaders on Palestine would be laughable if it were not so embarrassing that so very many countries got there well before us in recognising Palestine. Strike 1. Just as we are laggards (to put it politely) regarding Palestine, we are at the bottom of the rankings on action to address climate change and the environment. How Albanese has the gall...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The Australian prime minister has little time left to salvage his place in history
Living dangerously
September 23, 2025
It's probably just as well that Greg Barns is the former national president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, because if he were still the incumbent, he probably wouldn't be for much longer after expounding so eloquently on Palestine. A certain subset of Australian lawyerdom would see to that. (Circumlocution is such a painful way to express yourself, but these days it seems to be de rigeur as a way of self-preservation.) As it stands, I'm fairly certain that his (and Stuart Rees') inboxes are currently under heavy fire. Stay strong, Stuart and Greg! At least, you show no...
Alan Wilson from Adelaide
In response to: Recognising Palestine a long overdue act of courage
A stark contrast
September 23, 2025
There is a stark contrast between Stuart Rees' and Greg Barns' conception of Australia's courage in the (sort of) recognition of Palestine, with Chris Sidoti's (P & I''s 23/9) Israel must end its genocide in Gaza. But Australia must act too. For example, where Sidoti writes: I can list another eight actions that could and should be taken immediately. He does list those eight actions. Recognition, such as it is (so many caveats and delays built in), still denies the Palestinian people the right to self-determination (see Sidoti). Such recognition is not an act, it is theatre,...
David Thompson from Clayton
In response to: Recognising Palestine a long overdue act of courage
A civil service wish revisited
September 23, 2025
When reading Jack's excellent piece about the preferred behaviour of Albanese in his approach to the orange autocrat, I was reminded of a British civil service motto that I came across when working at Australia House in the 1960s. Given the rigid hierarchy that characterised the British civil service, which was substantially reflected in the colonial public service at the time, the opportunities for promotion were rare and valued. The motto was that where there's death, there's hope. That might be an entirely appropriate one for Americans to adopt to deal with the current extremity of their situation.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The stars suggest Albo should stay at home
With the conservatives, it's ideology over reality
September 23, 2025
With the conservatives in Australian politics, it is truly difficult to overstate their utter dependence upon ideology over any observable reality. They have truly reversed the scientific method in their attempts to create a fantasy reality to replace the real one. In the scientific method, you develop a theory, test it against reality and if they don't match you discard the theory and develop another in an endless cycle until you get one that matches reality and is accurately predictive. With the conservatives, they have developed a long line of theories. These have then been tested generally by...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The Liberal Party's economic strategy
The mean spectre of Robodebt
September 23, 2025
Thank you to Michael Keating for his analysis of the basic flaws in Liberal strategy, raised by Sussan Ley, that too many Australians are dependent on government. According to its website, the Liberal Party’s primary “belief” is in “the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples; and we work towards a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives; and maximises individual and private sector initiative”. The Australian Council of Social Service last week stated that the federal government “must substantially lift deeply inadequate income support payments. The routine indexation leaving 1.5 million people unable to afford...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: The Liberal Party’s economic strategy
Foget your enemies, fear your friends
September 23, 2025
Kellie Tranter correctly identifies the bull in the china shop that our great and powerful friend has become as it rapidly approaches its expected end as the head of the herd. She also identifies clearly the need of our national leadership to end our infantile and bovine subservience to that increasingly diseased and demented animal. Can we expect that kind of leadership from a class of politicians who have, over the last half-century, come to believe that their own political survival depends upon them showing appropriate submission to a very bad tempered and vindictive herd leader? Unlikely, but...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Our belligerent, authoritarian AUKUS partner
Courage or humanity?
September 23, 2025
It’s not courageous to recognise Palestine – it’s humane, necessary and a long-overdue step toward equality. Australia has to go further, following the example of Spain and Italy, and show that real friendship between countries is built on justice, not silence in the face of oppression. Standing up for the rights of Palestinians is not about fear of “rewarding terrorism” – it’s about saying that no people should ever be denied dignity, safety or statehood. Real courage isn't measured by loyalty to powerful allies but by the willingness to defend humanity, even when it comes at political or other...
Meg Schwarz from Macclesfired, Adelaide
In response to: Recognising Palestine a long overdue act of courage
Colonialism garbed in 'national security'
September 22, 2025
An excellent summary of the truth that is becoming increasingly evident to the 88% of humanity outside the West. The West, failing as it is economically without more recent colonies to exploit and immiserate, has revived colonialism but needed a plausible excuse for doing so. What they haven't figured out is the implausibility of their plausible reason to a world that no longer buys the b****hit. Further evidence of the declining diplomatic and military power of the dying empire!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Gaza – a new springboard for Western imperialism
Does the ECAJ support Netanyahu’s Gaza ambitions?
September 22, 2025
Ian Dudgeon sets it out well. I recently provided Alex Ryvchin of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry with a parallel. In 1963, the governor-general, on the advice of the Federal Executive Council, excised 140 square miles of the Gove Peninsula from the Arnhem Land Reserve, the traditional home of the Yolngu, so that French firm Pechiney could mine it. The Yolngu were not directly consulted and this led to the famous Bark Petitions. Israel has just recently announced that it will build the E1 settlement on Palestinian land, as part of the creeping full takeover of Northeast Palestine,...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Recognition of Palestine: For and against
Positive news about China
September 22, 2025
Just read your short article as noted above. It's really good to read something positive about China in the Australian press. I look forward to reading your follow-up. I am so sick of reading nothing but negative stuff about China and the continual war mongering we get fed by mainly the right-wing nut cases in this country.
Brian Dwyer from Weston NSW 2326
In response to: Message from the editor
Save Australia. Cut the US ties that strangle us
September 22, 2025
If we accept there are no easy prescriptions for an Australian strategy for survival independently in a singularly uncertain world, aren't we better off if surrounded by friends, or at least countries which respect us? By removing US shackles which disempower us, we would reclaim our sovereignty, regain respect from our Pacific neighbours and stop being the country where the US fights its war against China, with the Pacific keeping the US itself safe. Ordinarily, these would be the only reasons we need to grow up and take adult responsibility for our own country. But now, the US...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Australia has no alternative to biting America’s bullet
A price on carbon would end the LNP
September 22, 2025
The recent federal election and and the LNP infighting tell the story. We constantly talk of two-party preferred results when it has always been three-party preferred. It has never been more obvious that the link between the Liberals and the Nationals is tenuous at the best of times, and for us these are the worst of times. The flood of votes lost by the Liberals and the retention of seats by the Nationals indicate the concern of city dwellers about climate change. Those from the bush continue to push the line that as farmers they are more in tune...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Cut emissions 70% by 2035? There’s only one policy that can get us there
China and climate change
September 22, 2025
Stewart Sweeney's article is very helpful for understanding China's role in furthering global responses to climate change. And I'd like to submit the following as an addendum pathway to a further deep appreciation for action in relation to Chinese participation in those responses. China amended its Constitution (about 2018) to include therein a policy objective of aiming for itself as an ecological civilisation. And partly in pursuance of this objective, it entertains frequent and widespread conferences attended by hundreds of participants in various parts of the country. These conferences are arranged and presented under the auspices of the...
Len Puglisi from 1 Balmoral Court Burwood East
In response to: Why the planet now needs China
Murdoch ooze at the bottom of the human gene pool
September 19, 2025
An excellent summary by Fred of the facts about the vast efforts of China in preserving the planetary environment. Their achievements are truly on a heroic scale, unlike those of the faecal farm that is the Murdoch empire. It is a truism today that any relationship between the excrement emitted by that turgid and foul-smelling estate and the truth is purely accidental.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Blaming China won’t keep the lights on – or pay the power bill
Dying from malignancy of its controllers
September 19, 2025
The UN was set up at the end of World War II to create a better world, but almost immediately its purpose was turned to preserving the power of the West (specifically the US) over the vast bulk of humanity. There have been valiant fights by that bulk of humanity — some successful, many not — to give meaning to its charter, but always against the staunch opposition of the rulers of the world. So much is this true, and particularly with the calculated ignoring of it by the US and Europe, that the rest of the world is...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: UN at 80 – Rome is burning, governments are fiddling and the UN is ailing
Elites and the glorification of war
September 19, 2025
The commitment of our elites to a supposed commemoration of the sacrifice of the common soldier in their chosen wars is best reflected in the words of George Orwell: The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Flawed Hero, flawed decision: The War Memorial’s institutional cowardice
Beam me up, Scotty...
September 19, 2025
If there’s anyone left to write the history of the Anthropocene, it should begin with the lessons of the Polynesian voyagers who colonised Easter Island. In an ideological frenzy, they destroyed their god-given ecology and withered to a cargo cult based on stone images staring out to sea for salvation. John Shurmann’s right; ozone is a powerful cleansing agent and has been used in recirculation aquaculture systems and water purification plants for decades. Sure, it kills both good and bad bacteria, but until the toxic Karenia mikimotoi bloom is dispelled, there’ll be no recovery of the marine ecosystem anyway....
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: SA’s algal bloom and the big, beautiful, bureaucratic ballet
Just another technology
September 18, 2025
There was a time when I was at the forefront of installation of technology at a plant that operated 24/7 and employed more than 20 people. The shift workers manually penned in readings every four hours and very expensive paper chart recorders recorded data 24/7, information that was seldom looked at unless something went wrong. I'm told now that one person attends weekly to collect samples to deliver to an accredited lab and have a look around. All the data can be accessed in real-time anywhere in the world and, instead of boxes of expensive charts and paper,...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: ai-much-ado-about-something-that-one-day-ma
Fascism again!
September 18, 2025
It is difficult to conceive of the sheer depravity of a culture that can be so deprived of a moral conscience that it could take nearly two years of open and massive genocide of a people and vast destruction of the place in which they lived, for that culture and its people to just begin to emerge from their moral degeneracy. Yet that is where we in the West stand, again it should be said not for the first time. The vast bulk of humanity, that we in the West have exploited, oppressed, colonised and debased for several hundred...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: ‘It is clear’: UN Commission finding confirms Israel committing genocide in Gaza
Guillotines to guns... that's progress!
September 18, 2025
I don't know what they called it in Marie-Antoinette's day, but in our day it's called neoliberalism and in the US we are seeing its natural endpoint, the implosion of a nation. When the top 1%, or even .1% garner so much of the common wealth unto themselves so that in their wealthy nation people are homeless and starving, then society becomes unstable. The greater the inequality, the greater the instability. And then .... whoosh! .... look what happens! It's not like history hasn't warned us.
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The martyrdom of Charlie Kirk
AUKUS versus sanity
September 18, 2025
An excellent summary by Nick Deane of the cunning, dissimulation and double-dealing encompassed by the scheme dreamed up by the Dodgy brother Scott Morrison to wedge the ALP on national security and the enthusiastic promotion of it by the gormless chicken-hawk Marles. Indeed, so successful is the scheme designed to wedge the ALP by that boneheaded and imbecilic fraudster Morrison that the ALP have allowed itself to be captured by it and have swallowed the bait of an impossible and vastly expensive fraud of an idea, that it will be held responsible for failing to achieve. Can anyone...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: AUKUS anniversary reminder to the prime minister
Doing politics differently
September 18, 2025
Stewart Sweeney wants an Australian version of Jeremy Corbyn's new party. In fact, we've got an almost, not quite version operating now. They are Community Independents – one person representing one constituency, but without a party structure. We just need more of them. We all know party structures render the direct wishes of an electorate null and void, supplanted by party uniformity. Not to mention careerism which leaves constituents with no representation worth the name. Community independents have shown they can pool the resources of their common interests while differing where their electorates share those differences. Every single...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Starmer’s collapse and the rebirth of a movement
Food insecurity one of the greatest climate risks
September 17, 2025
In reporting on the First National Climate Risk Assessment, Julian Cribb highlights a number of threats to Australia from a wild climate that is increasingly out of control. Among them is rising food insecurity which will result from falling crop yields, rising heat stress for livestock, increasing loss of water for irrigation, declining output from forestry and fisheries and biosecurity threats. This goes far beyond the worry that our wine industry will have to relocate to Tasmania as the mainland becomes too hot. It raises the question: Will we even be able to feed ourselves? Right now, we can...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Australia issues ‘terrifying’ climate warning
Confucius institutes
September 17, 2025
I really must respond to this article, as one of the two former academic directors of the Confucius Institute at the University of Melbourne, which we established in partnership with Nanjing University in the early 2000s. Nanjing University, by the way, was and is a highly reputable institution, judged at the time to be a fitting partner for the University of Melbourne. The CI was set up separately from the Chinese program in the Asia Institute, precisely in order to waylay any suggestions of interference. This did not stop some UoM academics from other departments from making unfounded allegations....
David Holm from Taipei
In response to: Confucius Institute decline signals China's soft power shift
Albanese is Billy Hughes and Joe Lyons, not John Curtin
September 17, 2025
Anthony Albanese styles himself as a recycled Curtin, and even as a recycled Whitlam. He is neither. He is more a combination of Billy Hughes and Joe Lyons, prime ministers who used the labour movement as vehicles, but whose ultimate ambitions to secure a place within the conservative Tory establishment, framed by loyalty to British imperial interests, “to King and Empire”, overrode all other considerations. Since 2022, Albanese has made loud and clear his loyalty to the British monarchy, his support for NATO extending its role into the Indo-Pacific, his extraordinary support for AUKUS, his determination to transfer massive...
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: Australia needs to diplomatically disengage from our 'dangerous ally'
America, truly the 'farewell tour'
September 16, 2025
Chris Hedges is one of the most perceptive and concerned observers of US decline. As in his book, America,The Farewell Tour, he makes a compelling case for that decline driven by extremist religious ideologies, rampant individualism and a self-destructive economic ideology. It is a society with a history of widespread resort to inter-personal violence from its very beginning in the genocide of the native peoples and the enslavement of black Africans for personal gain. Hedges has an almost unique capacity to draw all that history together with the current consequences of it, to make sense of an otherwise chaotic...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The martyrdom of Charlie Kirk
A foreign policy based on facts, not fears
September 16, 2025
Geoff's article was a careful diplomat's assessment of how Australia might work more co-operatively with a rising, but peaceful China. It needs to be recognised that the vast increase in China's armed forces capabilities is a direct response to the decades-long encirclement of China by the US. It has no intention of allowing the US to begin another century of humiliation. It is adopting a sensible policy response to that effort by the US, by focusing on defence, not on the distant projection of military power. Its principal focus is the five principles for peaceful co-existence set out first...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China’s giant military parade didn’t surprise just the West
It won’t be a surprise
September 16, 2025
The 2020s will be known as the decade when global leaders, paralysed by weakness and lack of courage, turned their backs on the greatest threat to humanity — impending climate disaster — and instead beat the drums of offshore war, until they actually had a few. Prior to that, they were lining their pockets with dosh from weapons contracts entered into because of those wars. Meanwhile, the population, smelling the deception, and feeling the growing anxiety of millions, sensing impending natural disasters, scarcity, high costs, financial instability and government waste, decided to take to the streets and make clear...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Environment: Earth is getting hotter faster thanks to humans
Integration into US defence force (Department of War)
September 16, 2025
The question in my mind is, have we gone past the tipping point in our integration into the US defence force (Department of War)? I suspect that we have because the type and number of US bases in Australia and the greater importance of the functionality of these bases are to the US. We think that we have the US where we want them. They think the same of Australia. After all, the tail does not wag the dog. We have lost sovereignty to the US (gave it away, all our own work). In a war with China...
Peter Sheehy from Blackheath NSW
In response to: Australia needs to diplomatically disengage from our 'dangerous ally'
The inspirational leaders we need must step forward
September 16, 2025
The World Bank has joined the expert chorus accepting the confronting reality of humanity’s environmental predicament. We are killing the planet which hosts us — polluting the air, poisoning the land, and choking the seas with plastic — all to maintain continuing growth in both our numbers and prosperity. We are destroying our future to enhance our present. Julian Cribb asks: can we save a ‘liveable Earth’? Even at this late stage, we probably can. We have a clear, science-based understanding of our predicament, and of the imminent irreversible tipping points that give this challenge urgency. We have the...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Can we save a 'livable Earth'?
The end of cruelty towards refugees
September 15, 2025
Sophie Singh calls for the end of cruelty towards refugees. Labor has done that in part, having transferred up to 19,000 people from TPVs to permanent residency. But we still have too many of the legacy caseload to process and they have been waiting too long. These are better circumstances for Labor. The fearmongering Peter Dutton is gone. But then we have the vitalisation of Nauru as a refugee colony of Australia if the Nauruans will let it happen. People from all parts of the world are taken to Nauru to start another life. If there are errors on...
Jennifer Haines from Glossodia
In response to: 12 years on, are we not yet tired of cruel policies towards asylum-seekers?
Armenian genocide has no comparison
September 15, 2025
Adrian Lipscomb is wrong to claim “similarities between the Armenian and Gazan genocides”. Anzac PoWs were witnesses and their uncensored accounts were recorded, as the Armenian National Committee of Australia explains: “Shortly after the Gallipoli campaign, Australian soldiers came into contact with the genocides of the Armenian, Greeks and Assyrians. Over 300 ANZACs were held as prisoners of war by the Ottoman forces. These ANZACs recorded their experiences in detailed diaries and memoirs with vivid accounts of the genocide. Many of these accounts are now stored in the archives of the Australian War Memorial.” For reasons only...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: Genocide – Armenia (1915-16) and Gaza (2023-25)
Charlie Hebdo to Charlie Kirk – in a blink
September 15, 2025
Every faltering cause needs a martyr. Charlie Kirk is Trump’s Maga Movement sacrificial goat. The incandescent rage and the irrational response to Kirk’s assassination is not unexpected, but no less disturbing. While stifling public debate on criticism of Kirk’s aggressively expounded and controversial views is another step down the path of authoritarianism in the land of the free, extending visa bans on “foreigners” who may have expressed an adverse opinion to Kirk’s seems ludicrous, paranoiac even. While this shift from the America we grew up with seems relatively recent, in 1986 the controversial rock musician, Frank Zappa, said, during...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: US State Dept 'reviewing' foreigner comment on Kirk killing
A great resource for educators and students
September 15, 2025
The recent article by Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University, and Ray Wills, Professor of Agriculture and Environment at the University of WA, was both timely and uplifting. In a global media climate dominated by crises, their account of humanity’s clean energy transition as “the fastest in human history” offers rare but essential optimism. The inclusion of extensive hyperlinks is a notable strength of online publishing, enhancing the article’s usefulness for educators seeking to engage an increasingly worried student cohort. Such resources may also encourage students to view the energy sector not only as a site...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Climate action can feel slow – but the fastest energy leap in history has begun
The hypocrisy of war
September 15, 2025
When two countries, who are not militarily matched, go to war we end up with a predictable outcome. In the case of Israel and Palestine, I have never seen any Palestinian tanks, jet fighters, bombers or soldiers in uniform. Maybe some Palestinian drones. And I have never heard rumours of the Palestinians having nuclear arms. Something other than just war must be happening. When I hear of hostage/prisoner exchanges, there seem to be a disproportionately high number of Palestinian prisoners released compared to the number of hostages released. And there are reports of prisoners being tortured in jail....
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: The politics of extermination
Absurd irony
September 15, 2025
Sovereign citizens attacking Camp Sovereignty. Can someone remind these sovereign seekers they —uncomfortably — have ideological ground in common? The Zionists standing side by side with white Australia pundits at Bondi Beach. Can someone tell this lot that they are traditional enemies? Your average Nazi sympathiser isn’t traditionally a fan of Jewish anything. I often wonder how Trump will reconcile the moment when the black-shirted skinheads realise they’re sharing the president’s metaphorical bed with the very ones Hitler targeted. There is an absurd irony here if it were so sickening. Can someone also remind Albo that...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: The retreat of social democracy and the rise of the hard right
Key climate mitigation issue overlooked
September 15, 2025
Like Peter Newman and Ray Wills, I’ve been a renewable energy researcher and campaigner for decades. But responsible boosting of renewables must recognise key barriers that Peter and Ray overlook. Growth in renewable energy, rapid though it is, is chasing growth in energy consumption. The result: in 2019, fossil fuels supplied 80% of global total final energy consumption, the same as in 2000. By 2022, renewables had reduced this to 78%. Even at several times their recent growth rate, renewables cannot overtake and replace fossil fuels by 2050. Yet a rapid transition is needed to avoid crossing climate tipping points....
Mark Diesendorf from Sydney, Australia
In response to: Climate action can feel slow – but the fastest energy leap in history has begun
Only you know if we did it
September 15, 2025
The year 2024 was when we exceeded 1.5 degrees, and on land this warming climbed to 1.8 degrees. Our carbon budget will be spent by October 2027. There is not enough suitable land on the planet for the necessary level of afforestation to offset fossil fuel emissions. At home, the Great Barrier Reef has suffered record losses of live coral cover. All this, again, made for difficult reading. All those with the power to make decisions to turn things around will all be gone by the time we genuinely acknowledge what needed to be done in 2025. Sainsbury concluded...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Environment: Earth is getting hotter faster thanks to humans
Truth will out
September 15, 2025
The news on 13 September confirms two extremely important developments in reporting on the genocide being inflicted by the ultra-Zionist government and the IDF on the Palestinian people. It reflects the accuracy of John Menadue’s article of 05/09 discussing the real number of casualties (deaths/injuries) from the Israeli atrocity. In official Israeli statements, the numbers of Palestinian casualties are rarely provided, but there is a continuum of protests that anything other than elimination of HAMAS terrorists is rare and sadly regretted. Unfortunate accidents; oversights, tragic mistakes… As for reports from Palestinian/UN/aid agencies etc. sources, these are discounted as propaganda....
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza