ALP’s personality politics not enough to win a second term

The Mediscare campaign is being recycled; it affected John Howard, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and now Peter Dutton, and it’s just the same old attack line (“Mediscare: ALP coughs it up again”, 31/12).

Likewise, the nuclear energy scare campaign follows a similar pattern. The line is that the safety lessons from the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents have been ignored.

In the case of Dutton, now he also is subjected to a scare campaign: the Opposition Leader is “unelectable”, he is “hard right”, looks like Voldemort from Harry Potter. It’s the same old undergraduate tactic: play the man and not the ball. Australia deserves better than this rhetoric.

Bruce Collison, Banks, ACT

No one should be surprised at the Labor Party’s attack on Peter Dutton. It’s all par for the course (“ ‘Gutter politics’: Dutton forces PM to order Labor post be removed”, 31/12). The Mediscare campaign will be rolled out in a deliberate attempt to mislead and frighten the electorate. Hopefully the electorate is awake to this bag of tricks come election time. Jim Chalmers may be out there throwing bags of money to the unsuspecting but the electorate needs to refresh its memory of Labor’s track record.

John George, Terrigal, NSW

Art of the deal

Among other likely changes to the US economy under Donald Trump and their effects on the world, Judith Sloan points to cutting tax on business and doing away with burdensome regulations (“Trump tariffs are more about the ‘art of the deal’ than economics”, 31/12). The adverse effects on Australian investment of US company tax competitiveness are obvious, but Trump’s promise to cut 10 regulations for every new one raises some questions for us.

What happened to Tony Abbott’s 2013 initiative to devote one parliamentary day a month to cutting red tape, with junior minister Josh Frydenberg to drive the process? It sank without trace under Malcolm Turnbull and his successors, and now government is in overdrive in the opposite direction. Red and green tape constrain vital resources industries and form a large chunk out of the cost of new housing. Peter Dutton could well take another leaf from Trump’s book in the coming election campaign.

John Morrissey, Hawthorn, Vic

Kowtowing to Xi

As Peter Jennings points out, Anthony Albanese and his government have facilitated the success of China’s ambassador Xiao Qian in achieving a “full turnaround” from the bad days when Canberra challenged China over spying, cyber hacking, undermining democracy and Covid-19 (“Job done for China’s ambassador, but 2025 will be a slog”, 31/12).

Since his electoral success, the Prime Minister diligently has been working through and ticking off the 14 items on China’s list of grievances.

At the same time, he has avoided any clashes over China’s continued imprisonment of Australian citizen Yang Hengjun; the appalling treatment of China’s minority Uighur population; the ongoing and frequently extrajudicial imprisonment of many innocent Hong Kong citizens; China’s frequent abuse of international law in the South China Sea; its aggressively belligerent treatment of democratic Taiwan; its cyber hacking; and its attempted interference in Australian domestic politics.

The Prime Minister also has departed from our erstwhile alignment with our major ally, the US, on frequent anti-Israel UN resolutions, instead favouring alignment with China in line with deplorable left-wing Labor policy on both Israel and China.

Alan Franklin, St Ives, NSW

Once Anthony Albanese has read and absorbed the contents of Peter Jennings’ Monday article he will come to realise that he has fallen into a well-laid trap set by Beijing and is now well and truly caught between a rock and a hard place.

All the grovelling and kowtowing will come to nought because within a few weeks Donald Trump will become president, and he appears to have an entirely different view of the world order than that of China. Whoever represents Australia at the inauguration will not be returning home until the new president has had a fireside discussion with them about our relationship with Xi Jinping.

Mike Flanigan, Wellington, Qld

Poisoned chalice

Common sense is certainly not very common in the state of Victoria. Good luck to Treasurer Jaclyn Symes being handed the poisoned chalice from recently retired Tim Pallas. As Victoria’s state debt continues to balloon into oblivion, our answer to keep things on a roll is to purchase a dining table and chairs to the value of $40,000.

You don’t have to be a fiscal genius or a treasurer to work out if you continue to spend more than you earn, you go broke.

Ross Veale, Echuca, Vic