Julia Baird’s article raises the question of values versus the economy in the US election and notes that Harris and the Clintons and the Obamas all focused on that issue (“This amazing Obama word made me jump”, August 24). Given the attacks on basic legal and social values by Trump, it is understandable. We have a similar problem here. Dutton is no Trump and his party are not MAGA idiots, yet the Coalition and Labor have different views on values. The issue of gambling shows this: protecting those suffering an addiction, stopping kids picking up the addiction and protecting women from gambling-related violence have lost place to corporate interests. Why be in power if you can’t see protecting citizens from greed and abuse as a key value? Opposed by many, the proposed bans are brave and send a clear signal that community interests beat those of corporations, who can well look after themselves. Enacting gambling bans might show Labor that pandering to other lobbyists such as Qantas is not necessary either. Fancy a government prioritising people over money and schmoozing with the rich and famous. Winner!
Tony Sullivan, Adamstown Heights
Julia Baird Credit: Stephen Blake/Courtesy of ABC Compass
Loved every word of Julia Baird’s article and was moved by the images behind the term “grace”. It’s good to remember we are born with and capable of grace always. It’s a quality that we lose slowly through well-intentioned but myopic parents, and religious and social leaders as they try to protect us from the “other” and suppress the ability to look out for others, something we are inherently born with. When faced with disgrace, we must remember that grace is buried under deep layers of our learning and is only a reminder away. Manbir Singh Kohli, Pemulwuy
Baird writes about the necessity of grace in our lives and how frequently it is shown. Our Grace in our family is a person with a disability. We love her and are very proud of her. She has computer skills and people skills that she puts to good use in office work. She has competed in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. A new boat was named Grace for her. Now, she is enjoying surfboard riding. She loves and feels the power of the ocean as she catches big waves to the shore and laughs at wipeouts. She competes in international adaptive board riding competitions. Her assistants show grace in their encouragement. Grace in name and grace in nature. Bea Hodgson, Gerringong
I agree with Julia Baird. The word “grace” is amazing. The reality of unconditional love is mysterious, it transcends our human understanding. Try explaining the value of loving your enemies and see what reaction you get. Mark Porter, New Lambton
Capital capers
Even if a voter were living under a rock, uninterested in politics, there are two things they might just have noticed about the Albanese government (“12 big ideas and six sitting weeks: It’s crunch time for Albanese”, August 24). First, Labor’s epic and expensive fail on the Voice. Whereupon they blamed voters and allowed them to be smeared as racists. Second, Labor’s reckless and improvident immigration flood. About one million net in two years, surpassing by hundreds of thousands the previous Rudd record. This has taken the rental crisis and housing affordability to new levels of hardship and heartbreak. Predictably, neither of these fails even rates a mention. Stephen Saunders, O’Connor (ACT)
So much to do, so little time: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s in tray is filling up.Credit: Richard Giliberto
Wow! I didn’t realise that Balgowlah was so unsafe (Letters, August 24). According to your correspondent, who lives in the (formerly desirable) beachside suburb, hardened immigrant criminals roam the streets. If that’s the case, the current median house price in Balgowlah of $3.35 million is unsustainable. I look forward to snapping up a Balgowlah bargain once word gets around. So keep beating the drum!
Mark Beacom, West Pennant Hills
The PM’s message is not getting through. Apart from trying to save all of us from a climate catastrophe, the government’s Stage 3 tax cuts removed excessive tax breaks from the wealthy elites and corporate types and sent it to middle Australia. As David Crowe’s piece itemised, it increased childcare subsidies, backed higher wages in the care sector, waived TAFE fees for thousands of students and cut $3 billion in student debt. Roger Liddle, Firefly
Has it occurred to the Liberals that some of the talented teals who have come from the families of past Liberal leaders were not put off politics but were put off by the party itself, such as Sussan and Michaelia’s behaviour coupled with their ascension as the party’s most senior women? Treatment of Julie Bishop, bullied out by her male peers, might’ve caused pause, too. Then there was the captain’s call of Katherine Deves. Andrew Cohen, Glebe
Scams and gouging
Your article had my blood boiling about the lack of enforced accountability of banks to protect their clients from scams (“Jess and Will dreamt of buying a home. Then scammers took $49,000”, August 24). The banking royal commission made it clear the banks couldn’t even be trusted to protect clients from their own banks’ greedy systems. But what has changed? Banks are clearly making a motza at their clients’ expense even more than ever these days. Anna Bligh claims our “banks have been on the front foot” at stopping scammers, but that’s simply not good enough when there is still not even a legal requirement for banks to name-check or confirm the payee for bank transfers. Why not? Make the banks legally responsible for enabling scammers to access any account held in their own banks. Make them take the hit and fully compensate their clients for the loss and you’ll get rid of such scams in no time. Terry Lavis, Coogee
Shane Wright’s article made many valid points about the rip-off by banks from cashless transaction fees (“Banks gouging $4 billion from customers for cashless transaction fees: MP”, August 24). I reject Anna Bligh’s assertion, as reported by Wright, that banks are not gouging customers and consumers. Rather than bank competition producing a reduction of merchant service fees, the banks encourage merchants to pass the cost on to the consumer, relieving the merchant of the cost but retaining the bank’s “piracy” of these fees.
Handling cash is not without cost to a business –to prepare a float, time to count and reconcile tills, bank (and insure) cash or pay security company to collect it – so why slug card users where sales revenue goes straight to the business’s bank account? I accept there is a monthly rental fee for the merchant terminal (mine is $29.50/month) but I do not understand how the card issuer justifies taking a commission on the sale (1.1 per cent of the transaction). Why is the card fee on a $2000 transaction a thousand times the fee on a $2 transaction, especially for debit cards where no funds are loaned to the customer? You are spending your own money! There should be no transaction charge on debit cards, nor on credit cards – where the customer pays interest from day one until paid off, or, if an interest-free period applies, pays exorbitant interest if the interest-free payment period is exceeded. John Affleck, Sydney
Vinyl countdown
Glenn A Baker wasn’t the only one to spend his adolescence hunting down vinyl to add to his collection (“This music journalist amassed 50,000 records. Now he’s selling all of them”, August 24). Like many others, I stood shoulder to shoulder with other audiophiles on Saturday mornings, flipping through collections of second hand LPs at Ashwoods, Lawsons and Martins, searching for that special album to add to the milk crate that was every teenager’s first record repository. I’m pretty certain my path crossed that of Herald correspondent Con Vaitsas, records in hand, trying to decide between Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde or the raw energy of Slade Alive. Happy days indeed. John Bailey, Canterbury
Baker has around 50,000 records.Credit: SMH
Signs of the presidential election times
Yesterday we drove from Oklahoma to Indiana on our annual US road trip (Letters, August 24). It was a 10-hour, 1000km drive. Along the way we saw just one Trump election sign. What an unbelievable contrast to our road trips during the 2016 and 2020 election campaigns. Then all the countryside, the fences, the front yards, the cars, the trucks, the RVs and the shops were festooned with Trump election paraphernalia. Yesterday Donald Trump’s face was nowhere to be seen. Then Kamala Harris gave an inspirational address to all Americans as she accepted the Democratic Party nomination. There is now no doubt. Donald, the party is over. Americans have eventually seen through the bizarre divisiveness and negativity of the Trump experiment. Americans have now found out that this would-be emperor has no clothes but in fact has feet of clay. Hope springs eternal. On November 5, hope will be released and decency returned around America (and the world) with the election of Kamala Harris.
Warren Marks, Hill Top
Kamala Harris is a real breath of fresh air as she brings joy and optimism to the Democratic Party campaign. This is a contrast to Donald Trump with his grievances, divisiveness, cynicism, racism, toxic nastiness. Now he has the polling moving against him. Peter Dutton with his fairly similar tactics and negativity should take note. Tony Simons, Balmain
If readers want some sense of the recent momentum change in the normally unfathomable state of US politics, they could check the online videos of just two of the many remarkable addresses on the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The first by former Republican Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger, who is actually supporting the Harris-Walz campaign on behalf of all Americans “because democracy knows no party”. And the second, the 37-minute acceptance speech by Kamala Harris herself – which might go down as one of the great American speeches, admittedly to a huge, revved-up crowd of Harris supporters. Both highly recommended.
Rob Firth, Red Hill (ACT)
Gary Barnes was the only writer to pour some iced water on the fevered brows of excited and optimistic Democrat sympathisers. In addition to the reasons given, there is the fact that Republican-run states have been busy for some time appointing state and county election officials who will certify, or not, the votes and nominate the electors to the college. Laws have been put in place criminalising the supplying of food or water to those in long lines of voters which, in turn, are there because the numbers of polling stations in Democrat-supporting areas have been severely reduced. The adage about a dodgy referee beating the most talented team could never be more apposite. This election really could be stolen. David Baird, Burradoo
The RFK jnr endorsement of Donald Trump for president is not surprising. A crackpot anti-vaccine advocate throws his lot in with a fabulist election denier. Why are we surprised?
Salvatore Sorbello, Campsie
On the right track
After enjoying the superb architecture and engineering of the Sydney Metro yesterday, our family witnessed a promising ray of political fairness and decency at the official opening at Barangaroo. As all sides of politics in Canberra continue to slug it out in bouts of nastiness and unnecessary disgraceful personal attacks, Premier Chris Minns shared the opening with predecessors Mike Baird and Dominic Perrottet. Sadly, Gladys had something else on. We came away so pleased that we have some excellent politicians who can do the right thing. Come on Canberra, get it together! Bob Brenner, Beacon Hill
Adverse inflection
I worked for Skillshare, trying to assist migrants with colloquial English (“All that brain power going to waste”, August 24). I recall a well-qualified engineer from Peru, who had two jobs trying to support his wife and child. One was a split shift with Australia Post, the other was cleaning toilets at the local school. His combined wages were not enough to support his family, who eventually returned to Peru. An architect, told by the Australian consulate in Lima that there were plenty of jobs for architects, came here only to discover 50 per cent of architects were unemployed. He was well-qualified, but unable to even get an interview for a job and ended up delivering pizzas. Very upset when his wife returned to Peru, he sought help from a doctor – lessening his chances of any employment because his file was then marked “mental issues”. An engineer who had managed many large civic projects in Bulgaria submitted more than 300 job applications before being granted an interview. After three years of three-month contracts working as a draftsperson she was finally granted “permanent” status. All spoke good colloquial English, but if they were asked to call for an interview, once they had spoken accented English, they were told the position was filled. There is a stringent points system to attract only qualified people as migrants, yet it is almost impossible for their qualifications to be recognised and for them to find jobs. Most end up in very inferior positions or unemployed.
Judith Rostron, Killarney Heights
Parlous times
The obituary for Merle Thornton reminded me of the 1960s in Sydney (Letters, August 24). Pubs were for men only. Male friends could bring us a beer to drink out on the footpath. Some pubs had a very dingy women’s parlour. The men claimed they wanted to relax and swear without worrying about offending females. That was when I started swearing.
Vera Yee, Waverton
Fungi-free
I certainly won’t be taking up magic mushrooms (“Escape valve”, August 24). Nothing to do with not being a young mum, but because I’ve never just nibbled at a piece of chocolate in my life, and at 71 I don’t plan to start. Prue Nelson, Cremorne Point
Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, is added to chocolate and sold illegally. Users nibble at squares to try to control the dose.Credit: Yarno Rohling
For better or terse
Letter length – keep it witty and short – leave them wanting more (Postscript, August 24)! Marjie Williamson, Blaxland
Challenge accepted, Joe Whitcombe. Jeremy Brender, West Richmond (SA)
Noted. Merilyn McClung, Forestville
How’s this? William Galton, Hurstville Grove
In – with a chance? Edward Loong, Millers Point
Brief letters, eh? I’m all in. Rosemary O’Brien, Ashfield
The letter from Brown of Orange was gold! Cath Hunting, MacMasters Beach
Grey matters
Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, has taken on an ominous new meaning (“Plastic in the brain alarms experts”, August 24). Peter Hill, East Ballina
Encroachment
How does David Farrell train his cockroaches to only come in spring, as ours don’t know the seasons (Letters, August 24)? Kev Condell, West Wollongong
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