Letters to the Editor
The real threat to the South Pacific
September 12, 2025
Cogent and clear analysis and recipe for appropriate Australian policy in the Pacific. If we truly had the best interests of the Pacific nations at heart, we would encourage appropriate Chinese help to them. By pitting ourselves with the US against China, we encourage inappropriate injections of Chinese money and trinkets like flash SUVs to dubious recipients to buy favour.
Rod Madgwick from Mt Victoria
In response to: Climate change, not China, is the real threat in the South Pacific
Australia backing the wrong horse
September 12, 2025
It is no wonder that successive Australian Governments have been unable to reach an agreement on gambling advertisement reform. We, as a country, have a mug punter mentality, a culture of backing the wrong horse. We march blindly off to wars. Once again we are heading down a very dangerous path, betting our houses in a housing crisis and backing the wrong horse trotters in a steeplechase. We need to stop sticking our noses into the internal affairs of other countries at the behest of waning powers. We need to adopt a policy of friendship to everyone, helping...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Climate change, not China, is the real threat in the South Pacific
Denying Armenian genocide sets the template
September 12, 2025
Jaron Sutton asks if atrocities in Gaza will be “effectively suppressed. If history is a guide, then yes. For more than a century, most nations have been co-opted to effectively suppress the Armenian and Ottoman Christian Genocide (also called Assyrian and Greek Genocide). Between 1913-23, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians and 250,000 to 500,000 Assyrians were slaughtered, along with an estimated 300,000 Pontic and Anatolian Greeks. Denial, including the refusal of mainstream media and policy commentators, reinforces the words of Adolf Hitler, who said on the eve of unleashing the Holocaust: I have placed my death-head formation...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: The suppression of the Arab voice and the genocide in Gaza
Mysteriously superior or mysteriously doomed?
September 11, 2025
Witheringly convincing. Electing a petulant, five-alarm snake oil salesman as President (who has assembled a like-minded governing cult within the White House) is not what has caused the dismal Western trajectory so well analysed in this article – but it has certainly accelerated this development. The US — and its Global West posse — are steadily looking more mysteriously ill-starred (even doomed), rather than mysteriously superior.
Richard Cullen from Middle Park, Victoria, 3206
In response to: Trump: Russia, India are ‘lost to deepest, darkest China’. Guess who did this, Donald?
Your right versus responsibilities
September 11, 2025
I blame the ridiculous oscillation and indecision by our government and medical officers, and the unquestioning gullibility of our media during the pandemic, for the rise of the right-wing sovereign citizens, Australian Zionists and white fundamentalists. If government officials oscillate during life and death moments regarding masks and vaccines, and make a health crisis all about personal rights, it inevitably gives rise to citizens who put themselves at the centre of their own universe. You have rights, yes, but they go hand in hand with responsibilities ie your civic duty towards your fellow citizens. I fear many of...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Courts brace for next wave of 'sovereign citizens'
Devaluing the Australian flag
September 11, 2025
As we saw during the Australia-wide anti-immigration rallies, and more recently during the clash between the Sumud Flotilla supporters and Zionists on Bondi beach, the Australian flag is now being associated with the far right, white Australia pundits and genocide supporters. The words terrorist, terrorism and antisemitism have been devalued beyond recognition. Now our flag is subjected to the same. Are you ready for the future consequences of that, Anthony Albanese?
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: A good captain can stop this Senator’s social cohesion ‘Titanic
Ploy: when in trouble, attack someone else
September 11, 2025
Henry V, Maggie Thatcher and the Indonesian president Sukarno knew that when they were in trouble at home, the thing to do was to attack someone else. So killing others to protect your own skin is nothing new, is it Netanyahu?
John Michael Diehl Breen from Robertson NSW
In response to: Israel leaps over red lines in attack on Qatari capital Doha
A New York minute
September 11, 2025
Qatar is ostensibly a trusted US ally. It hosts the Udeid Air Base, the forward headquarters of US Central Command and headquarters of the USAF Central Command. You would think this gave it some protection when hosting a peace conference, a conference proposed by the US. Clearly this is not so, as the recent attack on Hamas delegates to that peace conference proved. I hope the sycophants in Canberra realise the extent of the Faustian bargain they have made with the twined Zionist regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv. The message from Qatar is crystal clear. Deviate from the...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Israel leaps over red lines in attack on Qatari capital Doha
We can’t stop here, this is bat country
September 11, 2025
It’s clear the geopolitical world is shifting on its axis. It’s equally clear that Australia has some serious decisions to make in the post-American world. The United States, split between the worldly and the godly, has elected a man whom history will judge as unhinged. It’s always been a task to hold half a heaving continent together in thought and purpose, and Donald J. Trump is in no way up to that challenge. So where does it leave Australia? We inhabit an island continent with fewer people than some global mega-cities. Two-thirds of our land is desert or arid...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: Trump and the post-American world
Replace multiculturalism with multiethnicities
September 11, 2025
Raghid Nahhas makes the excellent suggestion that we replace multiculturalism with multiethnicities in which belonging rests not on ancestry, culture or religion, but on adherence to democratic norms, equal rights and the rule of law. Or we could say: anyone is welcome to come here as long as they adhere to our liberal, democratic, egalitarian and humanitarian traditions. Perhaps multiracialism might be a better term, though we don't want people to abandon their cultures completely, only those aspects that are illiberal, undemocratic, unequal or inhumane. This may be difficult for those who come from cultures that are misogynist, where...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: 'Like us': Australia’s uneasy dance with immigration
Policy in silos
September 11, 2025
It seems to me that so much of the debate in this space is focused on the geopolitical and the military aspects rather than as a holistic discussion around the economic, political and military aspects as a whole. It succeeds in raising good arguments around a limited range of domains, but ignores the economic question and its impacts on capabilities. What we know is that the US has a national debt of more than US$37 trillion and a debt falling due for re-financing this year of US$9 trillion. We also know that the US bond market is unable to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Xi’s parade tips the diplomatic balance sheet in Asia
The Indonesia 'uprising'
September 10, 2025
If Duncan Graham was to trace the source(s) of the funding for the Indonesia uprising, he would find it very difficult to dismiss the notion this uprising is a Hong Kong redux. I suggest Duncan and P&I get in touch with Nury Vittachi, who has traced that funding e.g. Trump didn't gut all of the NED's funding. Not forgetting Nury has been published at P&I numerous times before.
David Thompson from CLAYTON
In response to: Xi targets Prabowo and ditches Trump
Is climate action too expensive?
September 10, 2025
A recent Lowy Institute poll shows 51% support to address the “serious and pressing problem” of global warming, even if it involves “significant cost”. However, this slim majority has dropped six points since last year. One-third says the harmful effects will be gradual and we should take steps that are “low in cost”. The case for spending large amounts of money has not been well argued. Higher energy prices are repeatedly and falsely blamed on renewables; China’s emissions are raised as a reason for Australia to do next-to-nothing; and a movement (seemingly orchestrated by far-right interests) is growing in...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Albanese’s sliding doors moment on climate
Open letter to Nobel Peace Prize panel and Donald Trump
September 10, 2025
Please read this article and, if any of it is even remotely true, ask yourselves how could you possibly award a Nobel Peace prize to an American president, any American president? I know you are under pressure to award this president the Peace Prize, but perhaps the way to appease him is to rescind all previous presidential awards. This didn't start yesterday.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: The price of genocide: How US funding sustains an unravelling Israeli economy
The Japanese in China
September 10, 2025
I was pleased to read Paul Malone's criticism of Sarah Ferguson/the ABC regarding her glib statement that it was the Nationlist's Kuomintang, not the Chinese Communist Party forces, that defeated the Japanese. It is a long time (67 years) since I studied a bit of Chinese history as part of my Chinese language study at Sydney University, but my memory is still strong that it was the CCP forces that were most influential. The only text that I recall using is that by John K. Fairbank, The United States and China, first published in 1948. Unfortunately, I have...
Jan Cooper from Terrigal
In response to: The ABC is inventing China's war history
Too many in comfort denying atrocities
September 9, 2025
I share the distress identified by Dennis Altman. “Something is unnerving about seeing people sitting in comfort in Australia denying the evidence of carnage and starvation,” Altman writes in a sentence that is also applicable to Syria, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Mali and a dozen other countries suffering carnage, starvation and war crimes. The ignorance of many people about the Gaza conflict, and the many other ignored humanitarian crises, among comfortable Australians is lamentable. Maybe not for readers of this public policy journal, but in general I’ve been dismayed at the paucity of knowledge about the Middle...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: The Liberal Party and Israel
Stopping Israel's genocide
September 9, 2025
Refaat Ibrahim’s hope for a popular uprising by starving Palestinians against the rogue state, Israel, is unlikely to succeed without external pressure. So far, the Australian Government is avoiding actions of substance that could include the following: • Ban export of weapons components to Israel and any military co-operation with Israel; • Ban imports from Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law; • Impose sanctions (e.g. asset freezes, travel bans) on all members of the current Israeli Government and military commanders; • Greatly increase humanitarian funding to UN agencies and NGO groups providing food and...
Mark Diesendorf from Sydney
In response to: Seven hundred days of genocide
State terror came first
September 9, 2025
The Académie Française dictionary in 1798 defined terrorism as a system, or regime of terror and terrorist as an agent or partisan of the Terror that arose through the abuse of revolutionary measures (The French Revolution and Early European Revolutionary Terrorism by Michael Rapport) In other words, state terror came first, preceding any other kind, the very first example being the revolutionary regime in France, 1793-1794. Ample examples exist today: the US drone warfare over NW Pakistan 2004-2018; Saddam's mukhabarat; Assad's torturers and Israel's war on Gaza. All these, it might be thought, represent state terrorism – which is...
James Schofield from London
In response to: Who is a terrorist?
Vice-chancellor pay
September 8, 2025
While it is hardly unexpected that accountants would focus upon pay and governance as the source of problems in Australian universities, these are superficial targets which mask determinants. The pay that vice-chancellors receive is a symptom, not a cause. The central causes of what have become little more than state consultancies are that teaching students is now almost completely devalued. This began in the late 1970s-early 1980s and is now rife. Casual contract, part-time teachers are responsible for many first- and second-year undergraduate courses. If senior professors etc appear at lectures for these courses, it is in a Joan...
Scott MacWilliam from Amaroo, ACT
In response to: Reining in vice-chancellor and executive pay
Products of the system
September 8, 2025
The system of education and social conditioning set up by the US, in particular, since early last century and re-enforced throughout the last century has worked superbly well. It has ensured that those who do not give their assent to that conditioning are marginalised from polite society and only accidentally and temporarily occupy positions within the agencies of opinion formulation within our societies. As George Orwell pointed out, those who make it to positions of prominence within the mainstream media actually believe the nonsense they are peddling and are where they are as they can be trusted not to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The betrayal of Palestinian journalists
Thank you, Teow Loon Ti
September 8, 2025
Thank you, Teow Loon Ti for your clear and well-formed response to the piece by Ju Hyung Kim titled “Asia must learn from SEATO and build its own NATO”. In truth, I read the title of the article mentioned and couldn't read it as it is obviously an Uncle Sam homily. Too bad our media is so saturated with such articles of faith, detached from reality, history and evidence. Teow has spoken to reality, a relief in troubled times.
Mark Bulluss from Dalmeny
In response to: Seeing truth through the fog of war mongering
Bolton, the archetypal chickenhawk, all squark!
September 8, 2025
This is a good summary of the truly insubstantially equipped Bolton. He hasn't seen a war, actual or proposed, that he doesn't like, from a distance of course. His later life bravado was preceded by a careful avoidance in his youth of any likelihood that he would actually serve anywhere near where the killing and the dying were taking place. His enthusiasm for war has been acquired along with an unerring capacity to avoid it in practice. Like many of his ultra-conservative colleagues in Washington, he is more than happy to send other mothers' children to fight and die...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Southeast Asia pragmatic on China's rise
A land of standing corpses
September 8, 2025
As John Menadue correctly points out, the death toll in Gaza is far higher than those killed directly by Israeli bombs and bullets. A conservative multiplier of four indirect deaths to every one direct killing gives a minimum of 300,000. But this overlooks the fundamental point: genocide is not simply about killing. Killing is but one of the depraved ways that Israel is committing genocide. Israel's Zionazi holocaust is about the destruction of the Palestinian People. A Semitic people, no less. To fully gauge that destruction, one needs to look to different research; Guillot et al, Lancet, February...
Rick Pass from Home Hill FNQ
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza, John Menadue
We must defeat the demon of fossil capital
September 8, 2025
Julian Cribb potently describes the latest report, A Climate-First Foreign Policy for Australia, from the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, as a “trailblazing vision of where an enlightened, informed, and caring humanity might go in the face of the brutal escalation in climate impacts”. Cribb would know the soon-to-be-released National Climate Risk Assessment has been evocatively depicted by insiders as “dire,” “diabolical,” and “extremely confronting”. Fittingly, ASLCG calls on government to “mobilise the resources necessary to address this clear and present danger, and to decarbonise our economy to reach net zero emissions as close to 2030 as possible. Climate...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Military experts warn of climate wars
Dump AUKUS
September 8, 2025
If you are not convinced that the Australian government must dump AUKUS by • The fact that the primary utility of the proposed AUKUS submarines is to augment a US attack force aimed at China, our major trading partner; • The obvious ceding of sovereignty to the US empire that this entails; • The questionable logic of acquiring a submarine fleet unsuitable for coastal defence of Australia; • The certainty that the $368 billion budget will blow out, as illustrated by the fact that Australia has already paid a $5 billion instalment of a $47.8 Billion...
John Curr from MANLY
In response to: SSN AUKUS – Heading for a quagmire
I nominate you
September 8, 2025
I nominate Margaret Callinan, Bob Pearce and Les MacDonald to head our new government. They know the arc of our history; they see the repeated pattern of strategic errors successive Australian Governments have made; they each have brave innovative ideas, rooted in social conscience, and can articulate and educate in less than 200 words. Bravo Margaret, Bob and Les. Your voices are so valued.
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza
It couldn’t be simpler
September 8, 2025
It’s not about decisions made by Hitler in 1939. It is no longer about decisions made by Hamas on 7 October. It’s about decisions made today, in this moment, by one's own conscience. It’s about setting aside economic contracts, monetary incentives, lobbyist influences, deals behind closed doors, and harkening to one’s own consciousness of what is right and what is evil. It couldn’t be simpler. Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong, Tony Burke: it couldn’t be simpler.
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Greta Thunberg 'disgusted' by global silence on Gaza genocide
Aussie scepticism
September 8, 2025
The courageous Sarah Dowse may have been born in America, but she has evidently acculturated well into Australia, even to taking on the fabled Aussie bullshit detector. Add to this her insider view on Israel the Jewish State and she has the basic credentials for exposing perspectives avoided by the legacy media in the face of real or perceived pressure by the powerful pro-Israel lobby. I appreciated, in particular, her scepticism about ASIO's role in the Iran affair in which, (and in numerous other national security crises) no evidence ever comes under public scrutiny.
Vince Corbett from Essendon
In response to: Israel, hasbara, antisemitism and Iran
Leaders who have lost their moral compass
September 5, 2025
It is hard, if not impossible, to any longer believe that the vast bulk of our leaders in the West are fit for their leadership positions. When they not only turn away from the grotesque, genocidal activities of the Israeli Government, but participate in, and publicly support them, knowing the truth of what that support enables. The truth about this vast criminal enterprise, and those without the moral courage to condemn it, are a rebuke to the view of Hanna Arendt about the banality of evil. This evil is not banal. It is contemptible and abhorrent. It will...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza
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