Bureaucratic blo​wout is a handbrake on the nation’s prosperity

The huge number of federal government taxpayer-funded agencies with more than 1000 Australian Public Service staff is unsustainable. This is unacceptable given that Anthony Albanese’s giant army of public servants provide more pen and barrow pushing than they do actual service delivery.

President Donald Trump and Vice-President JD Vance have been singing from a similar hymn sheet; namely, that in much of the Western world – where left-leaning governments were implementing stealth policies from race and gender to electric vehicles and climate via unaccountable and unelected bureaucracies – they were actually making democracies weaker and dictatorships stronger.

During May’s federal election campaign, Peter Dutton was right to call for a scaling back within Australia’s bloated bureaucracy of non-frontline service delivery roles.

Mandy Macmillan, Singleton, NSW

The very highly remunerated mandarins within DFAT would surely be celebrating the recent meeting of the QUAD, where their boss, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, achieved absolutely nothing except her well-schooled use of weasel words. Anthony Albanese’s weasel words throughout the government surely have a flow-on effect within all federal government ­departments.

World leaders attending any future meetings where Australia is present would also be expecting weasel words. The Prime Minister and his team are successful in just one ambition: ensuring the demise of our proud reputation on the world stage.

Mike Flanigan, Wellington Pt, Qld

As evidenced by the Qantas data breach, the cyber criminals are always one or more steps ahead of the IT systems that businesses have in place today. As businesses, in particular big business, have benefited from savings in wages and employment on-costs, in the process we as the consumers understandably become increasingly worried about the safety of our personal information and the consequent risk of identity theft.

The irony is that the net benefit to the businesses themselves is eroded by the monumental costs incurred in establishing and maintaining their IT systems, including cybercrime defence systems. Regardless, with every breach of the systems that are meant to guard our personal information, any semblance of trust and reliance progressively disappears. I suppose all we can do is to remain alert and not alarmed.

Geoff Forbes, Kensington Gardens SA

Sabsabi backflip

Peter Wertheim points out that a Federal Court ruling has found preacher Wissam Haddad in breach of racial hatred laws for delivering anti-Semitic speeches after the October 7 Hamas attacks (“Court rips away veil on jihadi preacher’s hateful rhetoric”, 3/7). The court rejected Haddad’s defence that his statements were protected by religious freedom or political expression.

The judgment makes clear that Australian law applies equally to all, prohibiting hate speech even when disguised as religious commentary.

Together with the cancellation of Kanye West’s visa, the Haddad case appears to signal a national resolve to limit the spread of hate and pro-terrorist sentiment. That hope seems to have faded with the decision to reinstate Khaled Sabsabi.

John Kempler, Rose Bay, NSW

Energy leadership

Many local industries are shutting down or warning they can’t survive due to energy supply issues and rising prices. Politicians appear unconcerned, possibly reflecting the public’s indifference; especially when closures, like the Boyer paper mill in Tasmania, affecting 340 jobs, have little impact on mainland cities. The danger is that by the time public opinion shifts and politicians respond, it may be too late.

What’s needed now is leadership, willing to make tough, potentially unpopular decisions on renewables, gas, and energy policy. The problem is clear; whether industry survives in Australia ­depends on political will.

Don McMillan, Paddington, Qld

Who would’ve thought it would be Labor that would lead the closure of manufacturing industries? Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s ideological obsession with renewable-only energy has destroyed the fertiliser industry, glass manufacturing, the paper industry, and soon all the smelters none of which can survive on expensive intermittent energy.

The farmers are next in line, with taxes and solar farms wrecking agriculture. Meanwhile, the rest of the world takes our iron ore and coal and gas and uranium to manufacture what we used to do here and sell it back to us at their profit when they feel like it.

Young people will never have seen whole industries collapse, but they are going to find out and soon. No jobs, no Australian products, just huge tax increases amid crippling decline.

Ian Brake, Mackay, Qld