Commendable restraint for not releasing news of asylum-boat bid
I note that Labor, the Greens and their media cheer squad were not the only ones counting their chickens on a change of government (“Asylum bid turns back time”, 30/5). Perhaps Australians will now recognise another bullet we have dodged by re-electing the Coalition.
After all, there’s reportedly about 200,000 people-smuggler clients poised for a green light for resumption of this traffic with its tragic implications. Labor support for strong borders has never been convincing. I wonder what effect this news would have had in the last week of the campaign, and marvel at the Coalition’s restraint in not releasing it.
Fantasy of gender
It is not just banality that permeates grievance feminists as Janet Albrechtsen says (“Women’s libbers clueless after rational vote”, 29/5), What’s more significant is that these women are so out of touch with reality; they are deluded by their own dogma. The focus on gender during the election campaign highlighted an issue about the fantasy of gender assuming a relevance when it wasn’t for most women — or men either.
Gender can be pertinent in a way that can be difficult to clarify. It may be worth considering that the increased number of women in parliament and in the ministry has benefited from decades of females fighting for equality of opportunity in politics. Without the efforts of these women, female MPs might still be in the kitchen and nursery.
Nuclear sense
Graham Lloyd makes a good point — nuclear energy has an important role in global emissions reduction targets (“Nuclear power decline a blow to emissions target”, 30/5). We can’t continue to use coal for power generation. But we can’t depend entirely on renewable energy sources because of their unreliability. The only source of green and relatively inexpensive power is nuclear energy.
The anti-nuclear lobby argument that nuclear energy is dangerous is ill-informed humbug. Having spent all my working life in nuclear-related research I have confidence that nuclear power is safe.
Verbal incoherence
Dean Frenkel says Anthony Albanese “sounds like a salt-of-the-earth politician” (“Banjo would love the unpolished Albo”, 30/5). Frenkel misses the logical extension of his analysis of Albanese’s speech patterning — a bumbling, poorly articulated verbal slurry is not congruent with the expectation that politicians be verbally coherent in their communication.
Bill Shorten is a terrible public speaker, with faults of inappropriate vocal pitch variation, word stress, sentence accent, intonation and poor diction. Comparison with the verbal delivery of Albanese and Scott Morrison is instructive in this regard.
Plastics at crisis point
Our plastics problem has reached crisis point (“Return to sender: plastic waste coming back”, 29/5). Consumers are increasingly developing an environmental conscience by reducing, re-using and recycling.
It’s time for governments to take a regulatory approach by making laws, phasing out the manufacture of non-recyclable food containers, introducing a refund scheme for bottles and cans, banning plastic microbeads, giving tax breaks to industries making compostable goods, banning non-biodegradable plastic bags, and funding innovation.
Our re-elected MPs shouldn’t be sitting smugly in Canberra thinking the electorate is indifferent to environmental issues.
Gender intervention a betrayal of the nation’s vulnerable youth
Major policy statements from democratic institutions, led by the UK’s Cass Review and the US fightback for common sense, are dropping totally disproved medical procedures.
Food industry brings home extent of our energy crisis
With big increases in electricity bills leading to higher food prices, the conclusion is that by placing ideology over pragmatism, the Albanese government has failed us.