The Australian holds the same fascination for readers 60 years on

As a year 12 student in 1964, I bought a copy of the first edition of The Australian the day it was published to show my history teacher (“60 years of The Australian”, 5/6). I still have that paper to this day – and am still an avid reader of The Oz.

Lois Coaker, Watermans Bay, WA

Coalition counts costs

Janet Albrechtsen says anyone could have engineered the economic upsurge post pandemic and she is correct (“Frydenberg’s hungry but can he walk the walk?”, 5/6). But she then says that is why there was no thankyou for the Morrison government at the ballot box.

There were a few more issues though. Just small items like Scott Morrison’s brain snap in attacking Christine Holgate from the floor of parliament.

I remember thinking at the time: “There goes the women’s vote.” That remains an ongoing problem for the Coalition.

It was much more than the economy that lost Morrison the election. He had squandered all his goodwill.

Paul Everingham, Hamilton, Qld

Pampered generation

Society is becoming a little precious if it desires more pay for less hours, heavily subsidised childcare, extended paid maternity and paternity leave, gender-specific leave and absolute equality that allows for diversity.

The children of such a pampered aspirational culture are presenting with more mental health problems than any previous generation.

There is even a condition to cover those who don’t want to attend school and an oppositional defiant disorder diagnosis for behaviour that in previous years would be described as naughty.

Where will it all lead? Already there are questions as to whether our children would defend our country should the need arise. The old and politically incorrect expression “man up” could be applied to us all as we consider the consequences of each baby step our society makes towards enlightenment.

Kim Bockos, Oatlands, NSW

Foreigners in ADF

The government seems to have bungled the announcement of a decision to allow foreign nationals to join the Australian Defence Force. Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh announced that New Zealanders would be able to join the ADF from July 1 and citizens from “all other countries” would be eligible from January 1 next year.

Within hours, Defence Minister Richard Marles had to correct that and say it was initially limited to just the Five Eyes community (US, Britain and Canada in addition to New Zealand) and “possibly” Pacific nations in the future. The two ministers couldn’t even agree on the basics of the announcement. But Marles also announced that one of the criteria was that applicants could not have served with their national defence forces in the previous two years. Surely a veteran from our closest allies should be welcomed, bringing expertise and skills directly relevant to service in the ADF? Perhaps the government doesn’t know that we have been welcoming serving members of the Five Eyes nations into our ranks for many years (as a lateral transfer often at rank), so this announcement, in that regard at least, actually reduces the opportunities for external recruitment.

The government has managed to raise more questions around what should have been a very simple policy announcement.

Kym MacMillan, O’Malley, ACT

PM’s plight

How humiliating for the Prime Minister that he cannot use his office because of pro-Palestinian protesters (“PM locked out by war protests”, 5/6). Seems to me that they are outside the law. Violence, intimidation and aggressive behaviour seem to be a common theme in such protests. Universities and now the PM have capitulated to mob rule.

Bruce Collison, Banks, ACT

Stealth war

Alan Dupont’s excellent article (“Ramp up defences against Beijing’s takeover by stealth”, 5/6) reveals the Chinese way of doing war: “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle,” to quote Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

This plan, involving cyber power as part of a matrix of intertwined information warfare strategies of spying, stealing data, “spreading lies” and attacking critical infrastructure, would be the cultural and sensible default approach of the Chinese Communist Party.

Yet, as Dupont writes, this strategy defies conventional wisdom. Contesting the CCP’s historical claims to Taiwan should also be in the mix of Western strategies to counter Beijing’s calculations. Historians thus also have a critical role to play. Yet have Western academic historians already been corrupted by Marxist thinking?

Peter R. Tredenick, Laidley, Qld