Premier treats beachgoers like they’re naughty school children

The St Kilda beach breakout was a perfect example of what happens when you push people too far for too long (“Andrews flags closures after beach breaches”, 3/10). Neither Daniel Andrews nor any of his ministers has yet admitted what Victorians are going through at the moment is due entirely to their dismal handling of the hotel quarantine fiasco. At every bump in his road map the Premier threatens us as though we were naughty school children who will be punished with a Saturday detention. All this collective amnesia is due to their own industrial manslaughter legislation. Brought in to net affluent chief executives, it has backfired completely and now politicians responsible for the COVID horror are facing the very draconian penalties they themselves drew up. We’re not stupid, Premier, and the sooner you realise this the better.

Julian Smith, Melbourne, Vic

Heated debate

Graham Lloyd provides a detailed analysis of the book Climate Change: The Facts 2020 (“What if nature has the means to beat climate change itself?”, 3/10). The Facts 2020 explains the complex and dynamic nature of our climate system and the myriad physical processes influencing it. Understanding this is crucial, considering the pressure for net zero emissions, which necessitates the shutting down of the fossil fuel industry and with it our livelihoods.

Dale Ellis, Innisfail, Qld

Graham Lloyd continues to delight in introducing doubt to the climate debate. His review of the book Climate Change: The Facts 2020 would seem to be a collection of speculative reasons for the planet’s unrelenting march to a hotter place, and a better title for the book would have been “Alternative non-peer-reviewed theories on climate change”.

The theory advanced that clouds and cosmic rays are responsible for the changing climate have been extensively tested and dismissed by scientists, based on accurate measures of cosmic ray fluxes and cloud cover over several decades.

If nature could beat climate change, the planet would not be in the heated state it is now.

John Chapman, Nedlands, W

I read articles by Graham Lloyd with great interest. As a layman, forgive me if I oversimplify. As the sun is entering what could be a “grand solar minimum” it may only take a few volcanic eruptions of the severity of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 plus an extra burst of cosmic radiation to replicate the climatic conditions that produced the Maunder Minimum (1645 to 1715), when our planet experienced severe winters, crops failed, expanding glaciers buried villages in the European Alps and, as often quoted, people skated on the River Thames. Who knows, in these circumstances anthropogenic warming could be a blessing.

George Innes, Epping, NSW

Numbers game

Congratulations, Janet Albrechtsen, on your article “Today’s feminism a case of all whine and no roar” (3-4/10). While feminists decry the fact, the reality is that it is because women are the ones who give birth and breastfeed that there is a discrepancy in the numbers of women in the workforce compared with men. This reduces the pool from which to choose for promotion. To expect a 50 per cent representation for women in senior positions is unrealistic. If we have to have a nominated figure, perhaps 33 per cent would be closer to the truth? It defies logic to appoint 50 per cent from a pool of, say, 25 per cent.

I’m retired, but I did have a small boating company. I was always an advocate for employing more women. I found they brought a more balanced view to what is perceived as a male-dominated industry. After all, the classic sign on a new boat at a boat show is, “We’ve phoned your wife and she said you can buy it.”

Peter Buckingham, Melbourne, Vic