Comment

Letters to the Editor

The Coalition: Lies about McGowan in Indi are sure to backfire

Illustration: Andrew Dyson.

As an Indi constituent for most of my life, I supported Cathy McGowan's campaign.  Assisting her team at three booths in Wodonga on election day, I was disgusted to see large unauthorised banners at each of the booths screaming "A Vote for Cathy is a Vote for the Greens & Labor" accompanied by four false "facts".  The AEC officer at these booths and other across the electorate ignored requests to remove these Liberal Party banners. The Liberals also sent misleading brochures with the same lies, but with no obvious link to the party, to voters throughout the electorate prior to the election. Imagine my disgust when I heard Malcolm Turnbull's hysteria about Labor's Medicare "lies" when his party had blatantly, strategically and comprehensively lied about Cathy McGowan in the lead-up to, and on, election day. Now Malcolm may need the support of that Independent to form government … you reap what you sow, Malcolm. 

The election: Coalition exacerbates the challenges we face

Illustration: Cathy Wilcox

The program the Coalition offered not only does nothing to tackle the two greatest challenges our nation faces, but will continue to exacerbate them. Climate change is happening at an even greater rate than that predicted by the world's climate scientists. Yet in response the Coalition offers us its discredited Direct Action policy and continues to promote and massively subsidise the use of fossil fuels. Inequality in Australia is now greater than at any time since World War II; increasing inequality is surely the true story behind Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump. Yet the Coalition proposes $50 billion of company tax cuts, pandering to the ideologues who continue to espouse the long-discredited theory of trickle-down economics. 

Society: ​Brexit vote a warning shot across the bows

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis

The Brexit decision was a warning that people are beginning to understand the impact of globalisation – that their lifestyles, but not those of the born to rule, are being sacrificed on the altar of economic rationalism. The destruction of Western manufacturing and primary industries and the corresponding exploitation of workers in the developing world is a crime of profit put before people. However, the greater crime of globalisation is not the inequality between capital and wage growth and worker exploitation but the massive acceleration of pollution and damaging greenhouse gas emissions. It started with the US/Canada Free Trade Agreement in the mid-1980s and continues at reckless pace to this day.

Australian Christian Lobby in the spotlight

Illustration by Matt Golding

If, as Michael Short suggests, the Safe Schools Program is 'simply about combating injustice by raising awareness' then I, like most Christians, would have no trouble with the program.