Credit: Matt Golding
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Sanctions to nowhere
Donald Trump has decided to place sanctions on the International Criminal Court. In other words, he is taking action against a body that his country has always refused to recognise actually exists. Even for Trump, this is pretty out there.
Tony Haydon, Springvale
No surprises here
A good test of the sincerity of Benjamin Netanyahu’s and Donald Trump’s sudden claimed concern about the welfare of the residents of Gaza and their (optional) resettlement would be if Israel and the US lead by example and offered all the resettlements in Israel and the US with full citizen rights. Don’t expect any surprises.
Graeme Thornton, Yallambie
Unconscionable act
The Age is to be congratulated for its editorial (8/2). It encapsulates the barbarity of Donald Trump’s proposal to develop Gaza as essentially an enclave for the rich and powerful. His diminution of the rights of Palestinians to determine their own future is unconscionable. It is profoundly outrageous that Anthony Albanese could not find his humanity and courage to condemn Trump’s real-estate deal in Gaza. Other world leaders have expressed their total distain for the proposal as nothing short of ethnic cleansing. Shame on you, the PM.
The proposal gives cart-blanche to Benjamin Netanyahu, his far-right colleagues and Israeli settlers who have expressed wanting to expel Palestinians from Gaza.
Judith Morrison, Nunawading
Ethnic cleansing
As the US president declared his intention to ″clean out″ Gaza, to banish a people from their homeland, to erase their identity from their birthplace, and build a Trump-brand mediterranean seaside resort in its place, the Israeli Prime Minister stood beside him, barely able to conceal his joy. As many have suggested, this scorched-earth obliteration and subsequent real estate grab could have been the intention all along.
But whatever dubious strategy was intended, the reality is that this proposed ethnic cleansing must resonate horrifically with all those peoples who have historically been subject to such existential erasure themselves; not least of all the Jewish people, who suffered the most abominable and evil ethnic cleansing in recorded history.
Clive Shepherd, Glen Huntly
No moves on guns
The American president is fixated on fentanyl smuggled from Canada despite the figures being relatively low and certainly significantly so by Mexican smuggling figures.
Yet somehow the number of Americans who are private gun owners seems not to be a problem for the president despite increasing numbers of shootings deaths each year. One survey accounted for 383 million (or 46 per cent) of worldwide total civilian held firearms or 120 weapons per 100 American civilians.
Rosie Elsass, Brighton
Women’s health gap
As a female junior doctor working in cardiology in a metropolitan Melbourne hospital, the article ″Woman sent from hospital after having heart attack″ (8/2) hit home for me.
When I was a medical student, we would learn how to do CPR on dummies that were exclusively male (and therefore did not have breasts that could get in the way of your compressions). We learnt how to put ECG leads (used to diagnose heart attacks) on the chests of men, but not women. There was an emphasis on the typical symptoms of a heart attack, but not on the atypical symptoms that women are more likely to experience.
The result is life-threatening conditions are being missed in women. What’s more, when women do seek medical attention, they are less likely to receive adequate pain relief than male patients. This discrimination is compounded if the patient is a woman of colour. Women’s health has historically attracted much less funding than men’s health. and the outcome is that women are at great risk of dying from a heart attack. In 2025, this feels astounding. It is long past the time for more emphasis on women’s health in medical research, medical schools and hospitals.
Dr Olivia Carr, Richmond
Where’s the policies?
Bemoaning the negativity and policy-free zone that is Peter Dutton is one thing, but advocating policies that will address the grievances of working families and the poor is rarely offered as the antidote. If we want to avoid a Trump-lite election outcome, we who are well-off need to surrender some of our middle-class welfare and wealth-perpetuating benefits.
Let’s start with cancelling the absurd franking credit cash refunds. Let’s shift housing tax policy to prioritise home buyers over investors. And celebrate rather than complain when house prices fall.
Finally, let’s agree to taxing family trusts like companies, to restore some fairness to the tax system and reduce the tax burden on average wage earners.
If we’re not prepared to advocate for and accept policies that deliver a fairer tax system, affordable housing, and make life a bit easier for working families, they will of course look for political leaders promising change.
And we’ll have no one to blame but our selfish selves.
Graeme Russell, Clifton Hill
The long campaign
What a couple of months we will have to endure. A prime minister who still thinks Labor are in opposition and wants to remain a small target, an opposition leader who, as columnist Niki Savva says, (Comment, 6/2) “Dutton’s brutish strategy – which crosses the line into inciting community tensions” – believes that the way to win is to cause division within the community to blur the fact that he has no real policies.
Anthony Albanese needs to have the nerve to endorse more bold policies and positively support (not mouth platitudes) matters like the banning of gambling advertisements and the nature positive legislation. The opposition have few real policies, there is their fanciful nuclear proposal which, apparently if realised, would mean domestic solar panels will need to be isolated from the grid to ensure nuclear generators have continuous operation and the lunch tax breaks for small businesses. Two key policies, reducing both migration and the public service, numbers won’t be disclosed until after the election. The letters to The Age (7/2) following the Savva article are roundly critical of Dutton’s Trump-like approach, however, as your correspondent says re this strategy (″Dutton’s three Ds: Distract, disturb, divide″ ) he does it because large sections of the public and the media accept it”.
Bill Pimm, Mentone
The art of economics
Economics is an art not a science (Comment, 3/2). It may use mathematical tools for prediction but when the predictions don’t match the results there seems to be little change in the underlying hypothesis and, as the RBA demonstrates often, it uses the same hypothesis and tools again and, surprisingly gets similar results. Science would change the hypothesis. Perhaps we need two types of economists. Those who can understand the maths and those who do the colouring-in.
Adrian Tabor, Point Lonsdale
Privatising fiasco
Ahh! The efficiency and cost effectiveness of privatisation of government services (″Collapse of private bail-monitoring firm″, 6/2). Will government ever learn about the false economy of privatisation?
Ross Hudson, Mount Martha
Why Vatican envoy?
Could someone please explain why we need an ambassador to the Vatican. As the population of the Vatican City would fit into the MCG it hardly warrants one.
Ian Hetherington, Moama
Same old story
“They make a desolation and call it peace.” Tacitus on Gaza?
Colin Smith, Glen Waverley