Steve Smith deserves our forgiveness but we can’t forget his actions

Your editorial (“Smith wins the character Test”, 3/8) refers to English cricket spectators as “ignoramuses”, and to the “many Aussies” who “did not expect to wake up to such a scoreboard”. Yet, the participation by Steve Smith and David Warner in Test cricket inevitably recalls how most Australians, indeed cricket lovers everywhere, felt when they woke to news of the cheating in Cape Town.

Experienced professional men chose to conspire and implicate Cameron Bancroft in calculated cheating and concealment. The response was first disbelief, then disgust, then deep disappointment. A comparable transgression of deliberate cheating in any other profession would have led to instant dismissal.

Clearly, Smith is not a bad man and deserves our forgiveness. But his was not the conduct of a wanton schoolboy. He and Warner chose to bring shame to a country and sport that had given them everything, and many millions of dollars.

But it is not about them. It is about what sort of character we should want for Australian cricket. Your suggestion that the English spectators “did not appear to understand the game or its spirit”, brings to mind a former Australia captain, Bill Woodfall, who during England’s “unsportsmanlike” use of Bodyline in 1933 famously said: “This game is too good to be spoilt. It’s time some people got out of it.”

James M. Cudmore, College Park, SA

Gender neutrality

Jennifer Oriel (“#MeToo lost integrity when it turned on Lady Justice”, 5/8) should go further to ask why are equality activists not championing gender neutral laws? Neither party should be named until a verdict is reached, and only the guilty should be identified after the verdict.

During the trial, believe the evidence, not the gender. In the judge Brett Kavanaugh Senate hearings, his entire past was combed for any embarrassing and incriminating evidence but the accuser was completely shielded from having her past probed. A level playing field would demand equal treatment of the past personal histories of both.

If a verdict of not guilty reflects the inherent difficulty of choosing between he said, she said, preserve the anonymity of all. But if the accuser is proven to have made deliberately false complaints, the punishment should match that of the accused if found guilty. Only this would serve as a strong deterrent to filing false allegations. Unless, of course, men only have responsibility and women only have rights.

Ramesh Thakur, O’Connor, ACT

Albo’s weakened cred

Just as Bill Shorten wrote off his prime ministerial chances when he failed to inform the public of the cost of his outrageous green energy policies, as well as pretending to be a superhuman who could change the world’s climate, so Anthony Albanese has seriously weakened his credibility through his stand against the parliamentary inquiry into nuclear power.

To say no to a basic inquiry into the practical use of the only proven form of large-scale, 24/7 and low-emission form of power generation is simply playing politics ahead of the interests and welfare of Australians.

To act as if we are not already involved in the international nuclear fuel cycle when we supply uranium to 12 of the 31 countries using nuclear power for electricity generation reflects an amazing level of ignorance.

After showing initial promise of a sensible, pragmatic approach to opposition, Albanese has fallen back to Labor’s bad old ways of virtue signalling to its diminishing flock of green-left supporters. Moreover, if Labor refuses to consider an energy technology that is superior in all respects to renewables, it raises the question as to what are the real motives of the green-leftists in their maniacal obsession with high-priced, industry destroying renewables.

Ron Hobba, Camberwell, Vic