Navratilova and McEnroe are the ones showing intolerance

How dare John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova use the Australian Open stage to lecture us about how we should name our tennis venues? Here we have two foreigners who preach tolerance but are happy to vilify anyone who does not share their views on same-sex marriage.

Margaret Court and the five million other Australians who share her views have every right to make it clear that neither of these interlopers are welcome. They may be tennis legends but their intolerant and hectoring attitude has no place here.

Jeremy C. Browne, Ripponlea, Vic

I hope Martina Navratilova will be heading over to the Dubai Tennis Open to advocate for the local LGBTI community; after all homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment, flogging and the death penalty in the United Arab Emirates.

Perhaps she could unfold a banner there and explain to us why she played in Dubai in 2003 (and won the doubles) in light of her constant attacks on Margaret Court’s views on sexuality. Words might be harmful, but hypocrisy is inexcusable.

Glenn Marchant, Pascoe Vale, Vic

Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe are so self-absorbed that they don’t even begin to recognise the dichotomy in their position on Margaret Court.

They argue for diversity and inclusion but then are condemned by their own words and actions to show they don’t believe in either diversity or inclusion, particular the diversity of opinion and belief.

Jim Ball, Narrabeen, NSW

Haunted by Auschwitz

As a former German citizen but now happily an Australian, I am still horrified and haunted by the thought of Auschwitz (“The lessons of Auschwitz must never be forgotten”, 29/1). How a government could conceive and then implement these killing institutions defies belief. There was obviously something in human nature, and the morally corrupt political system in Germany that allowed that to happen.

Auschwitz must never be erased from memory. It highlights the possible cruelty and depth of depravity on the part of some people, and the suffering and deaths of so many innocent victims because they happened to be belonging to a particular cultural group.

Michael Schilling, Millswood, SA

Bitter former PMs

Janet Albrechtsen is absolutely correct in her commentary (“Oh, for a moment’s silence from these angry ghosts” 29/1).

Any good that Malcolm Turnbull or Kevin Rudd achieved in their tenure as prime ministers has been lost with their utterances once consigned to the scrap heap of has-beens.

While Turnbull and Rudd are the most recent bitter PMs, there have also been Malcolm Fraser and opposition leader John Hewson who continued to snipe at the party that gave them the mantles of leadership.

They will now — particularly Turnbull — be remembered only for the bitterness harboured having lost office. Now they seek to rewrite the history of their time as leaders but nothing can change the fact they were ousted by their colleagues and by the electorate.

Hugh Francis, Portland, Vic

Yes, Janet Albrechtsen, Tony Abbott did criticise some Turnbull government policies but this behaviour resulted from his not being part of the executive because of Turnbull’s pathological loathing of him, as distinct from Abbott’s behaviour towards Turnbull when he succeeded him as the then opposition leader.

I note Albrechtsen’s suggestion that Turnbull may well earn the reputation as Australia’s worst prime minister in the post-Menzies era, but why not since Federation?

Dick Crane, Killarney Heights, NSW