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CLIMATE POLICY
Disappointing that the Liberal and National parties are sliding even further from sound climate and economic policy, this time under the guise of fighting inflation (“Libs gamble on retreat from climate policy to fund budget cuts″, 27/10).
Don’t they realise climate change is itself inflationary? So-called “climateflation”, driven by more severe and frequent extreme weather, is already pushing up food, insurance and infrastructure costs.
Dumping home battery programs and EV tax breaks will only add to both climate pollution and cost-of-living pressures on families. You can’t fight inflation by ignoring one of its biggest drivers.
Karen Lamb, North Geelong
Taylor and Bowen accord for UNCOP 31
I recall listening to the federal opposition leader at the UNCOP 25 in Madrid in 2019. Angus Taylor was then minister for energy and emissions reduction and led Australia’s delegation as Chris Bowen, the current minister for climate change and energy, will do at November’s UNCOP 31 in Türkiye.
Rather than what is reported to be planned by the Opposition, it would be such a kindness in current circumstances, if Taylor were to offer bipartisan cooperation to Chris Bowen. He is one who does know the need for emissions reductions if we are to implement the Paris Agreement and contain the rise in global heating to 1.5 degrees.
Philip Huggins, Point Lonsdale
Climate policy funds better spent elsewhere
Anthony Albanese and his ministers treat taxpayers and voters doing it hard like mugs (″Climate summit spend on luxury hotel sparks fiery Senate clash″, 27/10). The splurge of $682,000 on hotels for a pre-COP Sydney meeting was peanuts compared with the projected $34 million cost of the Fiji talkfest proper.
Those precious funds could have been put towards paying off the scandalous Snowy hydro 2.0 blowout, or been allocated to hard pressed hospitals and aged care improvements.
Jan Kendall, Mount Martha
Lift ban on nuclear power
Our economy is going backwards at a rate of knots: the main culprit being the high cost of energy adding to inflation. We simply cannot afford Chris Bowen’s backward plan for net zero and subsidised and unreliable wind and solar power.
If we can’t have cheap coal (and I don’t see a problem with coal power when we export it to other countries to burn), then we must have nuclear power as have some other developed countries in the world. The Australian government just needs to lift the ban on nuclear power and allow the market to develop it. Our industries and households need it.
Helen Leach, Bendigo
LNP slap young voters in the face
First, it was migration, now it’s climate change. The Coalition is moving closer and closer to the policies of One Nation (“Libs gamble on retreat from climate policy to fund budget cuts”, 27/10).
In her National Press Club address, Pauline Hanson said she would scrap net zero targets, renewable energy subsidies, the federal department of climate change, wind and large-scale solar expansion on farmland, Snowy 2.0 and other energy-transition initiatives, while expanding coal-fired power and pursuing nuclear energy.
Now we read Angus Taylor will do similar including the home battery program and the nation’s main emissions reduction policy, the safeguard mechanism.
Liberal moderate Andrew McLachlan got it right – “It’s a sad day for the Liberal Party that has repudiated its once proud policy tradition of a commitment to a healthy environment”. Young voters have been slapped in the face.
Ray Peck, Hawthorn
Australia can’t talk
As Megan Herbert’s cartoon shows, Australia’s climate efforts are missing in action (27/10). Satellites have detected huge plumes of methane, a climate pollutant around 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, above Chevron’s Gorgon gas plant in WA, prompting a United Nations warning.
This has barely registered in Canberra. Meanwhile, Albanese’s Labor seems keener on climate meetings than on winding back our reliance on coal and gas (“Climate summit spend on luxury hotel sparks fiery Senate clash″ 27/10).
And the Coalition, having already ditched net zero, now wants to scrap the safeguard mechanism, home battery subsidies and almost every other climate policy, as if the problem doesn’t exist (″Libs gamble on retreat from climate policy to fund budget cuts″ 27/10).
How can we credibly lead the world’s climate talks while methane billows from our own backyard?
Amy Hiller, Kew
LETTERS
Union assault
John Howard must be alarmed by a resurgent union movement under federal Labor, to raise his weary head even in retirement, to support his lifelong efforts to stifle any successful union movement by calling for a curb in growth of the ‘lanyard class’, aka the public service.
In his tenure, and beyond, the LNP adopted a policy to reduce the public service to a meek, obscure but necessary group of minions who did what they were told and not offer fearless advice as they once did.
Mr Howard can quote all the figures he wants to support this canard, but who did he replace them with? Why, consultants of course from the very naughty and transactional labour hire companies whose business model charged more for their services than the public servants’ original wages bill and paid their workers much less which ended up costing the taxpayer much more.
Consultants were beholden to their free-market bosses and were unable to join the CPSU because their wages were on the lower end of the scale and every dollar counted to survive.
Mr Howard and the current LNP apparent goal is still the same; fewer union members mean the end of an effective CPSU or union. Job done!
Robert Brooks, Belmont
Reduce all violence
Your correspondent (Letters, 27/10) takes issue with Peter Hartcher’s article about the dreadful attack on Helen Haines (“Anthony Albanese must call Angus Taylor stat, and here’s what he must say”, 24/10) and suggests that rather than violence in general, the major problem threatening this country is gendered violence.
Gendered violence (predominantly males being violent to females) is definitely a problem and needs to be reduced, but it is one form of violence only and does not form the majority of violent attacks.
By advocating that only one form of violence is focused on, the opportunity to reduce violence overall within our society is missed, and the personal value of the majority of victims, who are not female, is reduced.
We should be working out ways to reduce all violence, what the causes may be, and reducing or eliminating those causes – that is the only way we’ll see true reduction in violent acts, whether they be gendered or not.
Anthony Manson, Hastings
Senator ‘gas lit’
The point made by Independent WA Senator Fatima Payman to Special Minister of State Don Farrell at the Senate Estimates Hearing regarding the two-year delay and inconsistency by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the application of staffing allocations is a fair call. (“Outrageous”: Payman asks if PM is waiting for attack on her in bitter staff feud”, 27/10)
It’s interesting that Farrell interpreted Payman’s impassioned subsequent comment “is the prime minister waiting for something like what happened to Dr Helen Haines to occur to my office, to me, for him to take our request seriously?” as an “outrageous” affront to the PM’s motivation is lamentable.
In this instance, a public figure – when asking for additional support to increase her and staffer safety – is gas lit.
This is typical of the experience of private citizen women when they go to the police and oft-times, their concerns are dismissed (ie insufficient evidence of coercive control and stalking).
Nevertheless, I suspect that ‘what Helen would say’ is listen to Payman and acknowledge and respond as a matter of urgency. Not to mention, standardise the application of staffing allocations.
Jelena Rosic, Mornington
New Labor wanting
I am not sure which behaviour typifies “new” Labor. It’s either the prime minister’s inaction to assist with Senator Payman’s two-year old request, or Senator Farrell with his lame duck excuse to protect his boss.
And let’s not forget Anthony Albanese’s ‘dirt file’ on Dr Helen Haines.
How low can they go?
Chris Morgan, Northcote
Slogans matter
Your correspondent objects to Jess Wilson’s undertaking to ban calls to “globalise the Intifada” (Letters 27/10). That slogan is not just about Palestinian struggle against Israeli action, as your correspondent claims.
The telling point is the use of the word “the”. We all know “the Intifada” was the Palestinian terror campaign that murdered more than 1000 Israelis through suicide bombings and shootings, so the slogan is a blatant call to bring that terror here, and should be banned as a clear incitement to violence.
Your correspondent says if we’re going to ban that call, we should also ban speech claiming all Palestinians are terrorists. I don’t recall hearing that, and we certainly haven’t seen crowds marching through our city streets chanting it, as we have with chants dangerously labelling all Zionists as terrorists.
George Greenberg, Malvern
Bomb not defused
Perhaps the headline for Peter Hartcher’s article (27/10) should have read “Dr Fukuyama, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”.
Here, the proverbial ‘bomb’ is the rise of extreme populism. Hartcher and his guest, Prof. Francis Fukuyama, would have us believe that the best way to ‘defuse the bomb’ is to build political alliances with extremist parties. Unfortunately, “Bring them into the fold so you can control them” has a long and colourful history of failure.
Ask any German who was alive in 1945. Ask the globalists who hailed a young Vladimir Putin as a democratic reformer. Ask the few mainstream conservatives left in today’s US Republican Party.
This argument is accompanied by outright condescension towards progressive ideas that actually resonate with voters. Apparently, a billionaire tax and affordable public transport are ‘nonsensical’, yet giving One Nation more power would merely be ‘distasteful’.
Don’t call the Hartcher-Fukuyama Bomb Squad. They won’t defuse it. They’ll just politely ask it to reduce its blast radius.
Jesse King, Brunswick East
Show me the money
I must have failed Economics 101. Victoria is deep in debt because it has invested so heavily in so many long overdue projects. Yet, all political parties in the upcoming election are promising no new taxes, a reduction in overall debt, more construction, more money for employment of healthcare workers and police, reduction in public service numbers and a more sustainable cost of living.
Is there some magic pudding being used, or is the magic merely sleight of hand and smoke and mirrors?
If you are not going to increase revenue via taxes, how can you afford all the promises without cutting services, without honouring contracts, or without selling state-owned assets?
You can redirect money from one area to another, but some of that money is specifically tagged by the federal government. We are told that each new policy announced is fully costed, but we may not see the actual costings until days before the election, when so many people will already have voted. We are being told by all political parties to trust them. They, however, need to earn that trust and a start would be telling us in detail how they are going to get around the basic economic theory that says a reduction in debt can only occur when expenditure is less than revenue.
Greg Tuck, Warragul
Take back control
“AI hit could wipe out super savings” appears as a minor small font article on the front page (27/10). This is an outrageous proposition which we shouldn’t have to live with, along with the untold harm that AI appears to be doing to society via the misinformation and subsequent anger, and psychological impacts especially to children and young people.
Human beings invented this. We need to take control back and refuse to allow this domination. AI is an extraordinary tool, but it must be corralled.
Most might say the horse has already bolted, but that is not good enough. In a deeply fractured world, surely we can agree on drawing some lines in the sand.
Fiona White, Alfredton
Theatre disappoints
I attended a performance of the Nutcracker by the Australian Ballet on October 26 at the refurbished State Theatre. It was beautiful but what a disappointment the theatre was.
The $256 million refurbishment including new seats, which are hard, narrow, with armrests that are too high, and seat numbers which are impossible to see without bending right down. What a wasted opportunity to address real problems such as the raking of the stalls to improve the view of the stage.
Cheryl Blanchard, New Gisborne
AND ANOTHER THING
Politics
It seems to me the level of shouting and savage language in parliamentary question time would not be accepted in a senior school debating competition. How do ‘grown-ups’ grow ‘backwards’ to end up speaking the way they do there?
Barbara Darvall, Caulfield North
Angus Taylor has vowed to dismantle Australia’s climate policies to fight inflation. The Coalition fiddles while home burns.
Paul Custance, Highett
Jess Wilson should call out those protesters who yell, “what do we want? ... when do we want it?“. If these people can’t remember what they want, and when, maybe they should just hold up a placard with a question mark on it.
John Bye, Elwood
Pauline Hanson refuses to remove her threatening cartoons (27/10) because she said she has received death threats. Hasn’t she learnt that two wrongs don’t make a right?
Barrie Bales, Woorinen North
I always appreciate articles by George Brandis. His (26/10) column about the bigger picture to Putin’s war in Ukraine is particularly illuminating, and particularly worrying.
Christine Bradbeer, Mont Albert North
In the depths of grief and need for guidance towards hope in our shared future, there were nine words that can save our nation: “I give the call to the Member for Indi”. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Jean Ker Walsh, Richmond
Any sort of organised march, protest or demonstration on a special date such as Remembrance Day seems a bit inappropriate.
Ian Macdonald, Traralgon
Furthermore
I am not concerned about the Volvos and Teslas I have seen on the roads, but if I ever see a ute model of either emitting doof doof ″music″, I will catch a train.
John Rawson, Mernda
Finally
Vale Phillip Island MotoGp: when it comes down to it, it’s all about the money.
Bryan Lewis, St Helena
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