Credit: Cathy Wilcox
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It appears to me that we have a fundamental flaw in our electoral system. How is it that a person can be elected to the House of Representatives or the Senate, as a member of a party, and therefore elected to represent that party and, within a matter of just a few days, leave the party they were elected to represent, and defect to another? If you are elected to represent a particular political party, and you decide to leave that party, you should be deemed to have resigned from parliament and a byelection held or the next person on the ballot should be deemed to be elected. If it is the Senate, the party from which the senator has defected, should be able to nominate a replacement.
It seems some individuals standing for parliament have no scruples or standards. Am I not surprised?
Jim Hayman, Portsea
Senator should now be voting on party lines
Western Australian senator Dorinda Cox can do something for her constituents – resign. As a Labor senator, Dorinda Cox will be voting party line on every issue. If her constituents had wanted a Labor representative, they’d have voted Labor not Green.
Belinda Burke, Hawthorn
Cox should have left before the election
Most voters for Senate candidates use their pencil to vote for a party, above the line, rather than individual senators below the line. It’s easier. If Dorinda Cox, elected as a Green, had doubts about her allegiance to the Greens, the honourable thing to do would have been to resign from the party before the election.
Gillian Unicomb, South Hobart
The senator’s thwarted ambitions
Senator Dorinda Cox’s defection from the Greens to the ALP poses the question – Why? Senator Cox has said that her “values align with the Labor Party” – that’s the same Labor Party that Cox just recently accused of approving “the climate-wrecking North West Shelf gas project”.
But, as they say, not all may be as it seems. In the two weeks immediately preceding her defection from the Greens, Cox nominated for the Greens deputy leader position – and received three votes – presumably her own and two others. She then nominated for the Greens deputy Senate whip, with the same result.
However it does beg the question – did she leave because her values align with the ALP, or because she was bitterly disappointed in her failed quest for elevation to the upper echelon of the Greens. Having said that, I’m sure Senator Cox will feel at home with some of the extreme views of the Left faction of the ALP.
George Greenberg, Malvern
Change parties, relinquish seat
If a person elected as a representative of one party changes parties, who does this person represent? These parliamentarians seem to have forgotten that they are not individuals, but rather the voices of those who voted for them. In effect, by changing parties, they are no longer elected, and should relinquish their seats.
Kay Moulton, Surrey Hills
Parliament should not be ‘part-time’
I read with anger and despair that the government is to sit on the least number of days for 20 years (″40 days for ‘part-time parliament’ ″, 4/6). This at a time when the country is facing so many important issues that are crying out for attention. Members will be denied the ability to raise important issues in their electorates, which is what parliament is about. Sitting dates should be decided by the parliament via the Speaker and the President of the Senate after discussion with all parties. The parliament (the people) is superior to the government and should decide the number of days required to address the issues of the day.
Rod Mackenzie, Marshall
THE FORUM
Principally absurd
Giving Victorian principals the power to expel students for behaviour outside school is an absurd idea. Now schools have to monitor and judge behaviour outside their control and without context, as well as deal with an endless stream of parental complaints about poor behaviour. As if they don’t have enough to do.
Rosslyn Jennings, North Melbourne
Zero good in project
Yet again a thoughtful piece by columnist Ross Gittins on the government’s decision to extend the Woodside gas exploration project (″Albanese reveals his do nothing plan″, 4/6) And for what? It’s certainly sounds like a 30 pieces of silver deal – gas to be exported overseas, so nothing much for the domestic market, profits to go offshore, and minimal tax or royalties paid to us. On top of that, destruction of culture and heritage at the Murujuga site. Disgraceful and disappointing and perhaps cynical so early in the term of a new government.
Denise Stevens, St Kilda
Tip of melting iceberg
I love Ross Gittins’ observation that the effect of the company tax regime and the petroleum resource rent tax on the fossil fuel giants was like ″being hit with two feathers, not one″. All the same, Gittins’ critique could have been even sharper had he pointed out that the extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf project to 2070 paves the way for approving an even more disastrous venture, the exploitation of the Browse gas field. This is a carbon dirty deposit near the marine treasures of Scott’s Reef. The emissions this gas (exported and burnt overseas) would produce will worsen global heating. And, as Gittins wryly remarks, he doesn’t know ″how we’ll ensure their emissions worsen their climate and not ours″.
Perhaps Anthony Albanese has the answer but he hasn’t got round to telling us what it is.
Tom Knowles, Parkville
Winners and losers
Re Woodside, an awful decision indeed. It is difficult to comprehend why. There is, as Ross Gittins details, more or less nothing in this for Australia. Doing all this damage to our net-zero credibility for what?
The gas will be sold offshore, none will flow to the struggling east coast and little or no tax or revenue will go to Australia. The only winners are Woodside’s shareholders. Anthony Albanese, make it make sense.
Ross Hudson, Mount Martha
View of the gallery
A photo depicts people sitting and standing in a queue waiting to enter the courtroom of the trial of Erin Patterson for the alleged murder of three people and attempted murder of one, all of which she denies (″Chilly wait for the hottest seats″ 4/6).
The image brings to mind people jostling to see public executions in William Hogarth’s 18th century etchings. Or Charles Dickens’ portrayal in his novel A Tale of Two Cities, of Madame Defarge, who sits and knits during the French Revolution, while people are beheaded by guillotine.
It seems that people’s curiosity for the macabre never diminishes.
Beverley Campbell, Castlemaine
Sub optimal
A recent Washington Post article was headed ″Ukraine just rewrote the rules of war″. The piece compared Ukraine’s use of drones that wrought massive damage to Russia’s airforce to Japan’s surprise attack on the Pearl Harbour naval base in 1941. Ukraine showed that relatively inexpensive but technologically advanced weapons and clever planning could cause their enemy great cost and disadvantage.
There is a lesson here for Australia. The huge expense of the AUKUS nuclear submarines and the long lead time for their construction and operation means that they will be outdated or even obsolete by the time they are delivered. Already unmanned undersea drones are in operation globally and are becoming more technologically capable each year. They are vastly less expensive than building and operating the conventional AUKUS nuclear submarines. We have agreed to pay $4.6 billion to both the US and UK shipbuilding industries (with no guarantee) of a ship, and we are asked to stump up about $368 billion for a few submarines some time in the future.
It’s time to review this defence mess now.
John Thompson, Seymour
Change funding targets
If Australia were to increase its defence expenditure to 3.5 per cent of GDP as the Trump regime demands, we would need to spend around $41 billion more than the present amount of $58 billion. Alternatively, the Australian government could double our expenditure on research and development support, from $15billion to $30 billion. We could also double foreign aid to $10 billion.
Graeme Henchel, Yarra Glen
Tax reform, now
Given the disproportionate amount of tax collected from PAYG wage earners, it’s time we have a strong discussion about taxation. A super profit tax, an inheritance tax, addressing price transfers by multinationals would be a good start. Yes, the howls from vested interests groups would be deafening, but with the government’s unprecedented increase in their parliamentary majority, if not now, when?
Further, we need to separate the discussion about negative gearing and capital gains discount. One is a legitimate tax deduction, incentivising investment, the other serves no positive purpose.
Barry Buskens, Sandringham
Not so fun anymore
I sympathise with your correspondent on language (Letters, 31/5), but unfortunately, as others have pointed out long before me, language is in a state of constant change, and the gatekeepers, like teachers and dictionaries and grammar books, will always ultimately yield to the siege of popular usage and the media, a case in point being the merging of ″so funny″ and ″such fun″, to become ″so fun″.
The loss of the adverb-adjective distinction is but one more regrettable loss, but an even worse trend is the infantilism of language, as in ″my bad″, which I hear around me almost every day. Listening to this is not so fun.
Trevor Hay, Montmorency
There is a petrol app
Why is the Allan government planning to borrow and spend $2.4million on a new app through Services Victoria (″Victoria’s first petrol price app″, 3/6) to help drivers find the best real-time petrol prices?
For more than two years now Ihave saved $5 to $15 a tank using the free ″Petrol Spy″ App.
It does exactly that, with the map-based app showing locations and real-time prices per litre across Melbourne, Victoria and interstate. We don’t need her to blow another $2.4 million of taxpayers’ funds just to reinvent the wheel.
Kevin Fox, Richmond
For young, and old
How about some consideration for the elderly.
It should not be beyond the financial capacity of the Allan Labor government to grant free public transport to all citizens in this state, who are over 70 years of age. Many are still able to take advantage of such a long overdue concession. And they vote.
This arrangement might be introduced with the free transport to be granted to the 1.5 million children, under 18 years of age, from next January. None of whom vote.
Michael Gamble, Belmont
Simpler times
I was bemused that your correspondent (Letters, 1/6) was heartbroken that their state school didn’t have a nurse or a librarian The country state school I went to also didn’t have a librarian because it didn’t have a library.
Your correspondent also complained that some times when a teacher was away, there could be 30 children in the class. I have a letter from the headmaster saying that there were 40 children in my class and if a teacher was away there could be 80. We all had to squeeze up, which meant that in winter the children without an overcoat or shoes were kept warm. Our playground was simply the paddock that the school was in, with nothing else other than the toilets. They were on one side in a corrugated-iron enclosure. It had a wooden plank seat with holes in it, over large cans that were emptied each week by the “night-man”, who came in the day.
Your correspondent also says that they are insulted that their school can’t afford a swimming pool. Well even at my impoverished state school we had a pool. It was in a bend of the local creek. Life was different then.
Jeffrey Newman, East Ivanhoe
This horror must end
The horrific daily footage from Gaza is reminiscent of Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s painting depicting the obliteration of a Spanish village by an air attack in 1937. Almost every evening, we hear of lives lost to missiles, bombs and gunfire. We see small bodies in burial shrouds, devastated parents, seriously injured people in shattered hospitals, hungry masses taking huge risks to obtain morsels from the grossly inadequate food supplies, mass destruction of houses and infrastructure, and donkeys pulling cartloads of desperate people seeking safer ground.
Hamas’s actions on October 7, 2023 were despicable, along with the continued holding of hostages, but the people of Gaza should not be subject to such endless cruelty and bombardment.
The time is well overdue for the Israeli government and Hamas to both realise that their behaviour cannot continue. It is causing immense harm now, and sowing the seeds of future hatred. The Middle East, and the world, must see that there is only one way forward: immediate and sustained peace, marked by each side recognising the other’s right to live in the region.
Andrew Trembath, Blackburn
Credit: Matt Golding
AND ANOTHER THING
Jumping ship
We’ve become used to MPs jumping from their party to graze at the backbench, but perhaps we need a name for the MPs who are now jumping from one party to another: Grasshoppers?
Wendy Brennan, Bendigo
Defections reflect poorly on everyone involved.
Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills
Furthermore
Your correspondent (Letters, 3/6) wants the Liberal Party to redefine itself and stand for lower taxation, massively increased defence spending and to cut spending heavily in other areas. That sounds like a plan for an indefinite period in opposition.
David Fry, Moonee Ponds
Given the OECD’s assessment that planning rules in Australia need to be more flexible to accommodate more housing and improve living standards only serves to vindicate the Allan government’s desire to override councils in order to do just that.
Phil Alexander, Eltham
Peter Hartcher’s column (3/6) is a shocking exposé of Donald Trump’s policies. The US is becoming a libertarian state without redeeming features.
Greg Curtin, Nunawading
Letting an aggressor keep part of an invaded country led to World War II. Europe needs to push Vladimir Putin back to the boundaries set in 1991.
Loch Wilson, Northcote
I am heartened the minimum wage will rise to $948 a week. The payment for an unemployed person is $390.55. How can government accept this disparity?
Catherine Healion, Seaford
Sicily got the boot millennia ago.
Geoff Warren, Anglesea
Just add a squeeze of lime juice (Letters, 4/6) and paw paw is transformed into something magnificent.
Jacki Hood, Rhyll
Apparently the Milky Way will now not crash into the Andromeda galaxy in 5 billion years. I am relieved.
Les Aisen, Elsternwick