Gladys streets ahead when it comes to premiers in this country

Daniel Andrews, the Premier responsible for the consummate COVID cock-up, has had the gall to lecture Gladys Berejiklian on how she should handle the Avalon cluster. Annastacia Palaszczuk has reacted to a relatively modest outbreak so far by slamming concrete blocks across roads and Mark McGowan seems to have seceded again.

Berejiklian closed state borders only when infections in Victoria became an undeniable threat and was the first to reopen them. She enabled citizens of other states to return to Australia through Sydney when their own premiers had slammed the door on them. This was despite the incremental risk this posed to her own citizens and a refusal by the other premiers to pay for the quarantine accommodation.

She is the only premier who has demonstrated a sense of responsibility in the COVID crisis at a national level. The rest have performed like provincial political poseurs. In contact tracing, communications and flattening the curve the NSW Premier has proven streets ahead of the rest.

Roger Pugh, Newport, NSW

Full marks to NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro for flagging the possibility of refusing quarantine in Sydney to interstate returnees from overseas (“Gladys lashes panicky premiers”, 23/12). We Sydneysiders have had enough of the ingratitude of the other premiers for the burden we have borne. The “Annastacia Bjelke-Petersen” displays of provincial chauvinism are particularly tiresome.

Scott Morrison needs to read the riot act in national cabinet and unless the premiers agree to a sensible, consistent regime of borders restrictions (applying to only small geographic hot spots), he should offer his full support for Barilaro’s recommendations.

Mitch McDonald, Abbotsford, NSW

Foreign students

Further to Judith Sloan’s excellent article “Open slather on foreign students has gone too far” (22/12), the best and brightest foreign students go to prestigious universities in the UK and the US. Xi Jinping’s daughter went to Harvard (whether she is one of the best and brightest is not clear but he certainly didn’t pick the University of Queensland or Monash for her).

If we focus on Chinese students, there are many universities in China that would knock ours into a cocked hat for STEM subjects and probably the second level of best and brightest in China go there.

Our universities have long been in decline in many areas (not all), so maybe there is another reason they come here. Enforcing China’s viewpoint on campuses may well be one of them, as Drew Pavlou found out (and shamefully, UQ did nothing about the thugs who invaded the campus to break up his peaceful little meeting about human rights abuses in China).

There is an argument that exposing Chinese students to democracy is a good idea. However, there are many Chinese Communist Party spies among their cohort so they have to be very careful how they act and what they say. They do not experience free expression.

Academic quality has suffered from the dumbing down of courses, group assignments where the local students are forced to carry the non-English speakers and student assessments of lecturers. University bureaucracies take student assessments seriously so academics wanting to retain their posts have to pander to students. The problem lies with university bureaucracies, which have become (grossly) overpaid, over-powerful and over-confident in their ability to rake in those “rivers of gold” from overseas.

Stephanie Hicks, Kelvin Grove, Qld

Judith Sloan’s article on foreign students is welcome. I decided it was time to retire as a manager of social work placements when I was pressed by the head of department at a university to offer a student an extra placement when the workplace where he had been failed him. For Australian students a fail means they can apply for another learning placement the following year, allowing time to reflect and learn more. For this international student, I was told his visa would be cancelled if he failed and was not studying so he needed a placement in the same year. There were so many international students who were totally unsuitable for the degrees they were pursuing. Language and writing proficiency might be overlooked in assignments, but not in workplaces. I could go on.

As Sloan says, a well-managed number of international students is a welcome addition, but where standards need to be lowered to meet visa requirements a detriment to education occurs. It is time to reset.

Sylvia Winton, Narrabeen, NSW

A real character

Ben Macintyre’s identification of the real people behind John le Carre’s fictional creations (“By George, so these are le Carre’s people”, 23/12) neglects to identify Australia’s own “Eiffel Tower of journalism”, the late Richard (Dick) Hughes, who not only was the basis for one of le Carre’s Smiley characters but also was used by Ian Fleming as the basis for a James Bond character.

The legendary Hughes, with cigar in hand and monocle in place, was a correspondent in Tokyo before and after the war and made Hong Kong his “archdiocese”. He scored the intelligence and journalistic scoop of the century when he found and interviewed the real British traitor spies, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, in Moscow.

Hughes knew le Carre and Fleming and they both admired him. A larger-than-life character, Hughes needed little fictionalising to become Old Craw in The Honourable Schoolboy Smiley novel and Dikko Henderson in the Bond novel You Only Live Twice.

He was a journalist in The Honourable Schoolboy and in real life a journalist of the old school who, more than 40 years ago, in his 70s, was still happy to pass on tips to a young journalist about the future of China while watching a military parade in Taipei.

Dennis Shanahan, Campbell, ACT