Credit: Illustration: Megan Herbert
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.
INEQUITY
Two different subjects reported in The Age lately may appear poles apart but they not so different. Both subjects are very much how much money you may have.
The private school PLC is allocated a substantial amount for each student, (″Funding review ordered for Melbourne private school swimming in federal cash″, 29/9).
It’s appalling to read the difference per student PLC receives compared to public school children. The other frequent subject is landlords receiving large amounts of taxpayers’ money via owning more than one property.
Both of these smack of lack of equality in society, but also smack of class and money. It is usually those who can afford to live decently who scream the loudest when they look like losing their nest egg.
Both systems are in dire need of re-evaluation.
Dare I cite that old adage ″keep the working class in their place″ might still be in use.
Nola Cormick, Albert Park
Only those with means have a choice
The case of the Presbyterian Ladies College is just a fresh example of something that has been going on for decades. Wealthy “private schools”, bizarrely, receive public funding and then lash it on ridiculously exorbitant facilities.
Meanwhile, the public schools that desperately need money, struggle to meet basic ends. How long can this go on? It’s not about maintaining “choice”, since only those with the means have had any actual choice.
It’s merely about robbing public school kids and privileging the already privileged. Class segregated school systems are already known to be bad practice, but to have it funded by the taxpayer is incredible.
Todd Jorgensen, Healesville
What has happened to the Australian ″fair go″?
Re ″PLC’s $85m pool sparks probe″, 29/9. Exclusive private schools should be ashamed of how they use the system to hypocritically break their own stated values by claiming excessive government funds.
The federal government, likewise, should be ashamed of setting up a system that encourages this unfair behaviour. Whatever happened to the Australian ″fair go‴, integrity and moral character?
John Hannah, Castlemaine
An old Hyundai gives way to Mercedes and Teslas
The government funding PLC receives compared to government schools is simply outrageous, as is its new swimming pool.
Finishing work each day at Deakin University, just across the road from PLC’s elaborate school pick-up loop, I’ve noticed that there are generally four car brands represented, in four colours.
You have a choice of BMW, Mercedes Benz, Audi and Tesla. The colours are a monotonous ″greige″ palette of white, black, grey and silver.
A cavalcade of these expensive vehicles, mostly outsized SUVs, occupies an entire lane on Elgar Rd when the girls get dropped off and picked up.
What exactly is the rationale for this affluent demographic receiving such generous government funding? My car is also white, but it’s a 25-year-old Hyundai and my son goes to the local government high school which has neither a pick-up loop nor an $85 million swimming pool.
Marish Mackowiak, Ormond
Former Fitzroy’s working class, class
What a drubbing by the Brisbane Lions (the formerly grand old Fitzroy whose last premiership was in 1899). And what a grand gesture it was when the Lions – set to win by squillions – allowed its opponents to bag some goals in order for them to avoid utter humiliation.
That was the working class way, and all credit to the Lions of today. Sportsmanship will always be admired, even if you lose with grace.
Margaret Skeen, Pt Lonsdale
THE FORUM
Property ladder out of reach
We are kidding ourselves in thinking that our housing situation is based on two factors - negative gearing and capital gains tax. The real problems is home ownership.
The Grattan Institute concludes that about 66 per cent of Australians aged 30 to 34 owned their own home in 1981, but that fell to 49 per cent in 2021. In other words, the Baby Boomers own homes and many of our younger generations will be permanent rent payers.
One of the major problems is the entry point to purchasing. A home buyer can only afford to manage repayments out of their wages. A home investor can afford to borrow a lot more because they can use the rent and their wages to pay off their mortgage. They can also deduct all costs associated with the property.
Until governments do something to reduce these deductions then home owners will be outbid by property investors.
John Rome, Mount Lawley, WA
Internecine conflicts
I am a Greens voter and I agree that the party should push the Labor government on climate, housing and social justice. But I do worry that there is growing antagonism between the two parties in Australian politics that share so many progressive aims.
There are differences in emphasis and focus on many issues, but visceral disagreements can have only one result – a boost to Peter Dutton and the Coalition.
Maybe an old conflict resolution strategy should be considered by the Greens: first reminding voters of several areas of agreement with Labor; next firing off the strong critique (over housing for instance); then finally making another point about where the parties concur. Internecine conflicts are always destructive to those involved and the electorate needs to believe that our progressive parties can co-operate effectively. It seems likely that the next election result will make this essential.
Peter McCarthy, Mentone
Rising to incompetence
The authors of the 1969 book The Peter Principle apparently intended it to be read as satire. But their insight that employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent made too much sense. We see it play out all around us, with abundant evidence nowadays on the political stage.
Jim Spithill, Glen Waverley
Food bowl questions
Re “Food Bowl Dust Up”, 28/9, on the proposed Goschen Mineral Sands Mine at Lalbert, in the Mallee. When VHM tells you that its mine is “safe” and that it will “rehabilitate the land to a standard comparable or even better than what it was before”, listen carefully.
When Dr Phillip Macumber, an expert hydrologist of the Parilla Sands aquifer, tells you that VHM’s intention to pump 4.5 gigalitres per year from the nearby Kangaroo Lake into the mine will raise and overload the underground water table causing salinity, listen. The underground water in the region is part of an ancient inland sea. It is saline. You can’t grow crops in earth that is riddled with salt.
The proposed 1500-hectare mine will go 43 metres into the earth and below the water table. Contamination of disturbed radioactive rare earth minerals will seep into the aquifer and beyond.
When agronomist Ben Bennett tells you that the fragile Mallee soils, with a shallow topsoil structure is impossible to rehabilitate, listen again.
VHM is making a clear link between mining and creating renewable technologies to absolve itself of irreversible environmental damage. It has seized the world’s fear of a warming planet to make a profit. Listen to its convenient ″greenwashing″.
Listen to the experts, not the excavators.
Marian Haddrick, Birchip
AUKUS folly
Once more the spruikers of AUKUS fail to answer the troubling questions posed by Keating, Carr and Evans in recent days. Keating is correct that the majority of Labor Party members abhor the decision by a Labor government to continue the expensive thought bubble concocted by Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison and the US.
Marles fails to answer Keating’s telling comparison between Virginia class submarines, and the Collins class commissioned by Keating’s government. One is 3000 tonnes and designed for defence of Australia. What we are buying from the US is three times the size and is designed to be part of the US defence fleet. Australia may be forced into the next US misadventure in the cause of maintaining its hegemony.
Haven’t Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan taught us that such actions are costly, foolish and counterproductive?
The sooner this boondoggle is quashed, the cheaper it will be to extricate ourselves from its folly.
Ken Richards, Elwood
Wong’s timing
Foreign Minister Penny Wong says a timeline should be set by the UN Security Council for the international declaration of a Palestinian state. This is a radical departure from long-standing Australian policy. There’s been a bipartisan view that this matter should be resolved in the context of a negotiated outcome between Israel and the Palestinians, including agreement on final borders.
Both major political parties have broadly agreed that recognising Palestine should first require Palestinian leaders committing to a demilitarised Palestine, recognition of Israel, a renunciation of violence and an acceptance of existing agreements.
Penny Wong is right to stress that a Palestinian state can’t threaten Israel’s security and requires a “reformed Palestinian governing authority capable of taking responsibility for Gaza and the West Bank” (“‘With full force’: Israel rejects US, Australian backed ceasefire plan”, 27/9).
But these conditions must be in place prior to any declaration of a Palestinian state. The timing for recognition must be used to leverage the building of a rigorous peace with security.
Anthony Bergin, Reid, ACT
Complicit in destruction
During a recent visit to the Melbourne Holocaust Museum I was again moved by the terrible history of Jewish existence, and I understand their defence of Israel and their people.
In one of the displays were the words, “at what point does someone understand they have become complicit with an immoral act”. Well, I have reached that point. I believe in the existence of the state of Israel, but I cannot believe that the attitudes and strategies adopted by the Israeli government are warranted nor accepted by anyone with a sense of humanity in this world. It’s time for our government to say, no more killing and unwarranted destruction. Enough is enough.
Roger Byrne, Elsternwick
Libraries always relevant
Here we go yet again with another article (“Book, a room: why teens are flocking to public libraries” 28/9) about public libraries calling them “stuffy” and accompanied by a cartoon with the old cliche of a librarian with a bun.
As a retired library manager, it’s no news to hear that libraries remain the essential community-based places that they have always been.
We’ve heard the prediction for decades that libraries are in decline, that books are dead, that libraries are not needed or that libraries are not used as frequently. All such predictions proven wrong, of course.
Public libraries have always looked at ways to refresh themselves and have always remained relevant. They have always been central to their communities whether through book clubs, story times, rare safe spaces, study and homework support groups, genealogy groups and language groups.
Please let’s not have any more articles using such old-fashioned and out-of-date tropes.
Libby Sturrock, Mont Albert
Elite time-fillers
The proposed Elite Park (″Surf, golf and a movie: The $475m Melbourne Airport reinvention to lure tourists″, 27/9) at Melbourne Airport is a fantastic idea.
There is only so much social media and internet to entertain you as you wait for your flight.
Ian Cameron, Chelsea
Men take the bronze
Only 2 per cent of statues in Victoria are of females. There are more animals depicted. How come? The suggestion of a sculpture of Daniel Andrews is the perfect example. Blokes choose blokes.
Suzanne John, Richmond
Keep it minimal
What a terrific article by Denis Moriarty on the perils posed to pedestrians and smaller vehicles by very large cars and utes (″Why size really matters″, 29/9).
Moriarty also refers to these vehicles’ impacts on emissions and energy consumption, and touches upon the modern preference for large homes.
It is time for all of us as consumers to make decisions that minimise carbon emissions. We must be conscious of the energy consumed in larger homes and cars. Large homes often involve the loss of green space which is vital for mental health, children’s play and wildlife. Big cars deliver worse accident outcomes, and more road and car park congestion.
Andrew Trembath, Blackburn
Pedantry with purpose
As the writer of the letter regarding “less” and “fewer” which kicked off some parry and thrust over correct grammar, I do protest – no doubt too much – over being incorrectly accused of the grammatical crime of using “amount” where I should have used “number” (Letters, 27/9).
Au contraire, both were used correctly, and such an unjust and defamatory charge rankles mightily. We pedants are sensitive souls.
Deborah Morrison, Malvern East
AND ANOTHER THING
AFL grand final
Grit and guts beats glitz and glamour every time.
Philip West, Jan Juc
Ho hum. Another boring grand final. At least last year’s was a nail biter. How disappointing for Swans supporters.
John Walsh, Watsonia
The pre-match entertainment, replete with wobbling silver car, was reminiscent of the 1960s UK television series Thunderbirds.
Joanna Wriedt, Eaglemont
Sydney’s fourth grand final loss since 2012 means they’ve got the Swanniewobbles.
Greg Hardy, Upper Ferntree Gully
Swannislumps eclipse Colliwobbles!
Glenda Johnston, Queenscliff
Fitzroy Football Club may no longer be, but its spirit is alive and well.
Ross Ogilvie, Woodend
Furthermore
We will have leaders with a vision and the courage to implement their policies when we have an electorate with the courage to elect them.
Graeme Henchel, Yarra Glen
As Paul Keating said of John Hewson: “He was simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.” Given Albanese’s equivocating over negative gearing, the same term could be applied to him.
Jack Morris, Kennington
When will the Pesutto defamation case end? The nightly news is not the same without Pesutto’s cleverly crafted commentary from the gardens.
George Reed, Wheelers Hill
The ″bank of mum and dad″ is patronising? (Letters, 27/9). No, it’s endearing. What’s really patronising, have a go at the ″nanny state″.
John Whelen, Box Hill Sth
Finally
Vale Maggie Smith – Miss Brodie, the scruffy Lady in the Van, the inimitable Dowager Countess of Grantham. She will never be surpassed.
Myra Fisher, Brighton East
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.