Your Washington correspondent deserves a well-earned break

Bravo to Joe Biden for pledging to make America functional, respected and united again (never mind “great” — leave the hyperbole to the stump orators), and bravo also to your Washington correspondent, Cameron Stewart, for his masterly, insightful and even-handed coverage of this globally crucial election. He set a cracking pace with his daily despatches and is probably due for a well-deserved break to catch up on some sleep and restore his sanity.

Peter Austin, Mount Victoria, NSW

People are allowed their day in court but apparently this does not apply to Donald Trump. The complete dismissal of his claims by the media and the Democrats is very short sighted. To bring a better hope of harmony in the US the media should be supporting his appeal. If Trump loses then that is an end to the matter and Joe Biden is the legitimate president. Without the legal challenge being heard the election result will always have Trump supporters wondering if the result was legal and honest. That situation will make it very difficult to end the division in the US.

Ray Warren, Mandurah, WA

Caucus rules discouraging a leadership challenge can be amended as easily as they were adopted and it would be poignant if the collapse of Anthony Albanese’s career coincided with the elevation of Joe Biden’s. Biden’s narrow US victory while campaigning against fossil fuels sees the timely and essential resignation of Joel Fitzgibbon from the Labor frontbench, as he tries to save Labor from itself. But his leadership aspiration is delusional given (i) Tanya Plibersek’s ambition and (ii) the extreme dark green nature of the rank and file who will elect Albo’s replacement. When BLM and Antifa rioters were robbing and burning their communities, Albanese was uninterested and his churlish anti-Trump jibes are unprofessional and demeaning. The Left often speaks of healing and harmony, but its conduct and actions belie the babble and Albo’s poor polling reminds us that voters dislike smart-alecky politicians.

Greg Jones, Kogarah, NSW

Missions helped

My initial impressions on visiting the once-flourishing Lutheran mission complex at Hermannsburg in the Northern Territory in 2012 were that the “civilising” impact of those German missionaries had created a virtual paradise in the outback (“125-year secret ‘to restore grandad’s name’”, 10/11). Dozens of black and white photographs displayed vividly smiling, clean, well-dressed Aboriginal children (and some adults) at study in a well-equipped 19th-century schoolhouse, at work harvesting vegetables from an apparently highly productive market garden and gathered in front of the roughly hewn timber church awaiting Sunday’s service.

The concept of “Christianised natives”, whose beliefs were a hybridised amalgamation of biblical teachings mixed with thousand-year-old Indigenous concepts of spiritual beings, came to my mind as I studied those faded prints. After speaking to the Indigenous curators of today’s Hermannsburg complex, I was informed that although those missionaries of the 1880s appeared from today’s social criteria to be cruel and uncaring, they were in reality benevolent carers who brought health care and education along with their Lutheran version of Christianity.

There was no sense of vindictiveness or hatred felt toward the missionaries’ work, or treatment of past generations of Aborigines who were residents at Hermannsburg, only a solemn sadness that they had departed, leaving a positive humanitarian void that has never since been filled. My experience of Hermannsburg has left me with a profound sense of humility and sadness that we in 2020 cannot genuinely help our Indigenous brothers as those European Lutherans did over a century ago.

Lyle Geyer, Essendon, Vic