Shorten is facing questions over trust and integrity

US president Dwight Eisenhower once said “the supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity”. Bill Shorten’s confident and smiling telegenic personality cannot mask the fact that the public sees him as lacking this supreme quality.

Trust and integrity are the rock-solid core values on which the Australia we enjoy today has been built. The failings of recent leaders to measure up to the standards expected of them in this regard, not just in politics but across the breadth of society, are contributing to the difficulties we are experiencing as a nation.

Scott Morrison may have his weaknesses but he is a man of integrity whose principles, personal values and decency are not in question. The ineptness, indecision and in-fighting displayed by the Coalition he leads are failings that can be corrected and overcome; lack of trust and integrity at the top are not.

Jim Dickson, Mt Eliza, Vic

Labor’s failure to release the modelling assumptions for their taxation, climate change and industrial relations policies, and their consequential costs, is a grave matter. Announcing their various health and education spending programs without the modelling of their cost is also a matter of great concern.

If Labor is true to form, it will over-estimate the revenue from its taxation policies, while underestimating the costs of its spending policies. As Australians alter their strategies to circumvent the extortionate tax revenue Labor expects, it will leave a black hole in their projected budget surplus while changes to industrial laws drive jobs out of Australia.

The paucity of costings on Labor’s 50 per cent renewables and what impact it will have on Bill Shorten’s $18 billion extreme weather cost, reflects Labor’s deceit that will lead to higher energy costs, blackouts and some relocation by industry to foreign shores.

Mort Schwartzbord, Caulfield, Vic

There are several obligations that our main political parties should satisfy when pursuing the right to govern Australia. The first is to ensure that they act in a manner that broadly unites our people, rather than creating divisions in society. Labor’s tax policies are failing this test because they are almost designed to create significant division, with the most telling example being plans to tax different groups of self-funded retirees differently to others.

Another key obligation is for the parties to be upfront with the people. By announcing their climate change policy in general terms, and with no costings, Labor has also failed this test. Despite being asked, Bill Shorten is refusing to answer questions about this policy. Either he doesn’t know the details or, more likely, he knows the details but doesn’t want to scare people away from voting Labor.

Brian Barker, East Brisbane, Qld

Bill Shorten was embarrassed to be asked the cost of Labor’s renewables plan. He either does not know the answer because no one in Labor has been brave enough to make an estimate, or an estimate has been made and the answer is so horrendous that it cannot be released.

A 2000MW coal-fired power station would cost in the order of $2bn, but for the same output requires 670 wind turbines which at $10m each is a cost of $6.7bn. Wind turbines are located on the top of high towers where they are subject to the worst of the weather, and where it is expensive to maintain them. So their life is expectancy will be of the order of 10 years as against 50 years for a coal-fired station. By 2030, not only will the Labor plan require the cost of doubling the number of renewable units, but it will also require the cost of replacing existing wind turbines and solar panels.

If the objective is to bequeath an impoverished nation to our descendants, vote Labor.

R. Watson, Sunnybank Hills, Qld

If proof was needed that Labor cannot be trusted, it was provided by Labor’s removal from its campaign website of details explaining its signature reforms (“ALP wipes tax policies from web”, 17/4). That deception complements Bill Shorten’s evasive response to a question — “when can voters learn more about Labor’s emissions reduction target, how it will get there and the cost to the economy?”

Then there’s Janet Albrechtsen’s account of the CFMEU’s industrial mayhem and insidious influence on Labor that should make it obvious to all that if Labor wins government then Australia is in dire straits.

Ian Dunlop, Hawks Nest, NSW