Credit: Illustration: Matt Golding
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COMEDY FESTIVAL
I wish to offer some clarity to the incident at the Athenaeum when Arj Barker was trying to fulfil his role of comedian during the Melbourne Comedy Festival (“Arj Barker defends decision to boot mum with baby from show”, 22/4).
After the baby cried out several times and made loud noises (we in the back rows could clearly hear the sounds) Barker politely asked the mother to remove the child as the child was disrupting his show, and unsettling the audience too. The mother has said she found Barker intimidating but he did not tower over her, criticise breastfeeding or was in any way belligerent.
He was clearly embarrassed and uncomfortable that he was forced to say something to save his concentration and his show. A comedian has to maintain focus, read an audience and deliver well-executed punchlines. His ability to do so was being disrupted by a heckler – though one tiny and oblivious to the disruption he or she was causing. My friends and I were in the last rows as a friend is in a wheelchair. He and his carer were thwarted from hearing the jokes due to the baby and other disruptions from late attendees, and I, too, strained to hear.
Barker should keep going. The show must go on. We cannot afford to have laughter be so constrained.
Carol Marshall, Williamstown
Compassion lacking
I was at the Arj Barker show – I deserve to get my money back. He was rude and impolite to an audience member who had a small child with her. If the comedy festival lets people into the audience it is not up to the performer to apply a different set of rules. If they have to leave, it is security who escorts them out. Last night was a disgrace on both the comedy festival management and the performer.
I have been to thousands of shows in my life. I have been the chair of a small board of a nationally registered acting film and television school. Arj Barker needs to go back to school to develop a concern and interest in his audience. After about 45 minutes my wife whispered “how much longer do we have to endure this” – which says it all about his performance.
Rob Gullan, Port Melbourne
Prepare for a quiet exit
I took my newborn daughter to every lecture and every tutorial of my final year at Melbourne University. I carried her in a baby basket up and down the endless stairs and breastfed her perched on the tiny benches in the showers of the women’s toilets in the Union building. In the vast lecture theatres I sat in the end seats so I could make a discreet exit when needed.
Babies and public places do not always work together and you do need to consider other people who have paid to hear or watch a performance. If you choose to take a baby to a performance, please understand other people’s rights and sit where you can make a quiet exit if required. This is not a feminist issue, it’s just about respect for other people.
April Baragwanath, Geelong
Baby rules?
Arj Barker has justified ejecting a baby from his audience for disrupting his show saying: “The show is strictly 15-plus, as clearly stated on the ticket site.” I guess the baby did not read those rules? The terms of 15-plus are surely aimed at age-appropriate entertainment as per TV show/cinema ratings, not at babies.
Theatre staff must now see photo age proof of age for entry, I assume?
Ross Kroger, Barwon Heads
What comes naturally
American stand-up comedian Arj Barker’s eviction of a breastfeeding mother from his onstage performance at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival was a petty-minded act and deserves thorough condemnation. Wake up Barker, you made a boo-boo by humiliating that lady who was only doing what comes naturally: nurturing her seven-month-old baby.
Eric Palm, Gympie, Qld
Bub’s wellbeing
And don’t bring a baby to the footy either, for the poor bub’s own wellbeing.
Ian Macdonald, Traralgon
THE FORUM
Backward step
The state government’s rejection of Ken Lay’s recommendation for a safe injecting room in the CBD is a backward step in the response to drug addiction. The winners are those stakeholders who have lobbied effectively to scuttle this initiative. Sadly, the losers are those people experiencing drug addiction, who are often very marginalised, first responders and community service providers who work in challenging environments to minimise the harm for drug users.
Anne Lyon, Camberwell
Ignoring advice
Why have an expert report into injecting rooms or an inquiry into duck shooting if the premier is going to ignore the findings? In each case it is claimed the issue would instead be resolved by them throwing money at it in other areas.
Malcolm Cameron, Camberwell
A shame
I find it unbelievable that the recommended injecting room has been scrapped when the number of drug overdoses have increased. Shame on our state government.
Mary Fenelon, Doncaster East
Election strategy
Has the proposed CBD safe-injecting room fallen victim to the Allan government’s Safe Re-election Strategy?
Kim Bessant, Footscray
Marketing genius?
Elizabeth Knight succinctly summarises the issues confronted by Elon Musk’s Tesla operation (“Australian politicians join the unhappy queue behind Tesla investors”, 22/4). About two years ago, I looked on in awe as the price/earnings ratio of Tesla approached 8700. Its business plan overestimated the total market growth for electric motor vehicles, but more importantly did not factor in any new competition. The 2021 total profit was generated from the sale of low-fuel-emission licences to other car manufacturers. Early adopters are also finding that the second-hand car market does not want their used Tesla.
Perhaps more than any other measure, the fact that all journalists when referring to X still need to add “formerly Twitter”. Marketing genius? I think not.
Richard McLoughlin, Dromana
Power shift
Democratic governments have no one other than themselves in their abdication of the world we once lived in. The current stoush with the inflated ego that is Elon Musk (“Watchdog wins urgent court bid to make X take down stabbing videos”, 23/4) was born with the creation of the Silicon Valley kings. As Yanis Varoufakis so eloquently described in his book Techno Feudalism, governments caved into the corporate capitalists some decades ago and now as an evolutionary next step, the techno feudalists have taken complete control. The traditional capitalists at least created “things” whereas the techno feudalists create nothing.
Rob Park, Surrey Hills
Defending attack
Ben Saul denies Israel’s strike on an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria was self-defence (“Israel, Iran following rules of jungle not law”, 23/4). Since October 7, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah has been attacking Israel. Nearly 100,000 Israelis have been forced from their homes as a result.
The IRGC, also listed as a terror group in Western countries, has been arming it. The IRGC officers Israel killed in the strike were in charge of that. It will disrupt Hezbollah’s supplies of weapons, thus responding to a “continuing armed attack” so it’s very much self-defence.
Yosi Tal, Rose Bay, NSW
Rule of law
Ben Saul, while correct about countries not following the rule of law, only talks about Israel and Iran, when he should also include many other countries including the US and Russia. Both these countries have been involved in the assassination of individuals, and have bombed and invaded sovereign nations when clearly they have not been under attack.
David Eames-Mayer, Balwyn
Economic management
You have to give the Liberals their due. They have the Australian population in a fixed mindset that they are better than the Labor Party at economic management. The latest Resolve Poll showed that their rating on economic management is 11 per cent ahead of Labor, and 8 per cent ahead in managing finances. Yet, let us consider Tony Abbott’s 2013 election campaign on the alliterative “debt and deficit disaster” under Labor. He also promised that the Libs, on their first budget, would deliver a surplus, followed by surpluses every year thereafter. History shows us that in almost a decade of Liberal government, they took Labor’s deficit to steadily increasing levels, never once producing a surplus.
The irony is that it took a Labor government, under Treasurer Jim Chalmers, to deliver Australia’s first surplus since that long run of deficits. Go figure.
Walter Valles, Clayton South
Measuring motivation
Wendy Syfret’s article (“Contrast and compare, uni is wasted on young”, 23/4) rang bells with me. I was also a mature aged student when in my late 30s, and I recall an activity in a psychology class that purported to test motivation. Students held a wand over a small light fixed to a rotating turntable; the idea to record the length of time we could keep the wand in place. Myself and another mature aged student had scores streets ahead of the other students, who presumably decided the test was somewhat inane. But the test proved to be accurate in measuring motivation as the two of us achieved higher results in the course, though almost certainly we were by no means the sharpest tools in the shed. It’s a challenging road but real life experience prior to higher education can enrich learning for all those involved.
Peter McCarthy, Mentone
Mature age interlopers
Stephen Fry once wrote that education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars. After spending a decade at university, experiencing student life as both a youngling and one of Wendy Syfret’s mature-age “interlopers”, I found I learnt little from any course but plenty about the world. Attending a university without any school peers was a boon, and a long commute meant I had hours for quiet contemplation of nature and for reading. It was an escape from the trauma of bullying in year 12, and the place where I learnt how to write for pleasure. Anders Ross, Heidelberg
Sharing the load
What a brilliant idea, to have two people representing a constituency, two women who have job shared in their present roles. They have had the experience to know this can work. If it works in ordinary work environments then why is it different in a parliamentary environment? Such an arrangement offers both men and women the possibility to see more of their families and to improve work/life balance.
The spokespeople who seem particularly against this idea are parliamentary males. No doubt many have wonderful wives at home running the household and caring for their children for weeks on end, alone. Aren’t they lucky?
Annie Young, Junortoun
A bright start
At last, some good news on both the climate crisis and the cost of living (“Renewables cut emissions, power prices”, 23/4). This is not final victory, but a significant step in the right direction. Planning and action by governments are showing results. Every person who put solar on their roof has helped.
The small drop in wholesale electricity prices in one quarter is welcome. But more significantly, overall electricity emissions have fallen 30 per cent since 2009, despite a growing population. Is everything going smoothly to reach net zero, and to significantly cut the cost of living with renewables? Of course not. Power bills falling by a few per cent will hardly be noticed. But overall, we can be confident that things are moving in the right direction.
John Hughes, Mentone
Productive coexistence
The picture in The Age (23/4), of a solar farm in NSW with sheep grazing in the foreground, should be instructive to those who argue that renewable energy comes at the expense of good farming country. When driving past a large solar farm in north-east Victoria the same picture could be seen; hundreds of sheep between the panels and in some cases lying down under them. Panels and sheep coexisting quite readily. A similar observation may be made as to onshore wind farms. Certain opponents of renewable energy endeavour to deceive by creating a furphy.
Ian Dunn, North Fitzroy
Questionable namesake
Your correspondent rhetorically asks “what did Lord Melbourne ever do” regards the debate of the historic naming of landmarks (“Creative Naming”, 22/4). In 1839 Lord Melbourne’s cabinet decided to invade China to protect British interests in the opium trade. China had banned the importation of opium, and the British sought to maintain the ability to traffic drugs into China. This led to the First Opium War.
How long do Melburnians want our city to be named after this individual who, when in power, invaded another sovereign nation to protect a lucrative drug trade and continue the importation of opium into a country that sought to enforce its own borders?
Justin Chan, Lower Templestowe
Suburban memories
Thank you Kellie Floyd (“The invisible thread that endures”, 23/4) Heathmont evokes memories of our first home, eight and a half squares, built on an unmade street in 1956. The lemon tree, propagated and given to us by our minister, thrived together with the Australian natives and a eucalyptus seedling, now towering over all. Ah, to reminisce.
Christine Barnes, Glen Iris
Sparing the rods
Invasive water species, such as carp, are very pleased with some of my local politicians and river keepers. Instead of encouraging the local kids to fish the carp out of Edgars and Merri creeks, some have asked these kids to hand in their “killer fishing rods”. Some NSW towns host community carp muster days, extracting tonnes of carp out of the Murray-Darling river system. I propose Melbourne’s local councils get serious, use the expertise of local angling clubs and host similar carp events to rid our waterways of invasive species.
Leon Zembekis, Reservoir
AND ANOTHER THING
X (formerly Twitter)
I would like to express my thoughts on Elon Musk and his demand for unfettered freedom of expression, but unfortunately it would be scathing and unprintable – and rightly so.
Barrie Bales, Woorinen North
Perhaps we could charge Elon Musk with inciting violence and seek his extradition from the US to face charges under our legal system. We could guarantee that he won’t face the death penalty.
Peter Loney, Drumcondra
Power
“Renewables cut emissions, power prices” (The Age, 23/4). Meanwhile the federal opposition still champion polluting fossil fuels and very expensive nuclear power.
Phil Alexander, Eltham
Re: Coalition rift emerges over Dutton’s nuclear plans (The Age, 22/4). Yes, nuclear is the answer, nuclear fusion. It’s the sun; free for the next 5 billion years. Hopefully we hit zero emissions by then.
Steve Haylock, Mount Waverley
Furthermore
Shrinkflation is not only occurring in supermarkets but also in many coffee shops where the size of coffees is also shrinking. In fact the price has gone up for a smaller cup.
Craig Calvert, Montmorency
The war to end all wars ... so were we taught. And today we despair.
Gary Bryfman, Brighton
The “top nosh” served at St Vincent’s Caritas Aged Care by celebrity chefs would be praiseworthy if being served at the publicly funded aged care homes.
Kerry Bergin, Abbotsford
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To submit a letter to The Age, email letters@theage.com.au. Please include your home address and telephone number below your letter. No attachments. See here for our rules and tips on getting your letter published.