Complacency and  China's power 

Brian Toohey is smart enough to know a little about history and realpolitik, so I was surprised by his complacency about China's intentions ("We are better off without security blanket anyway" November 16). 

China may be treading carefully in the South China Sea for the moment, but we would do well to remember its past aggressions since World War Two. 

China was an active participant in the Korean War. It has shelled islands such as Amoy and Quemoy in the Taiwan Strait in its standoff with Taiwan. 

China invaded Tibet and is busily suppressing Tibetan culture as well as ethnically augmenting the country – as it has long done in Xinjiang. 

China has attacked and briefly occupied parts of north Vietnam. It has had border skirmishes with India as well as the now-defunct Soviet Union. 

Of course, all that was when China was economically and militarily weak and of little consequence in the world. It is now economically strong and is rapidly enhancing its military capabilities, including the development of an aircraft carrier capability to project power far beyond its shores. 

It is the nature of rising powers to exert influence and, when sufficiently strong, to employ force to protect their interests. Let's not be too starry-eyed about China's future intentions. 

Bob Muirhead

Port Melbourne, Vic

What happens next?

Australia can take as much "notice" as it likes of what happens to a close neighbour such as Indonesia instead of being "distracted" by disputes over "uninhabited rocks" in the South China Sea. 

Sounds like a nice way to go. 

My question for  Brian Toohey is, what does Australia do next if and when the proverbial shit hits the fan?

Joanna Wriedt

Eaglemont,Vic

Principles intact, irrespective of of results

I always find it amusing when socialists accuse non-socialists of failing to live up to their own values. 

Accusing me and others of placing interests ahead of ideology, Richard Denniss ("Interest always trumps ideology", November 15) adds factual errors and absurd strawman claims. The result is hilarious.  

I, along with others, have spoken strongly against mandatory ethanol in petrol. My statement about the police was highly qualified and should be read in context. There was no public money for the nanny state inquiry and the solution to the harm inflicted on innocent neighbours by big wind generators is to stop causing the harm, not force them to move. 

Denniss' comments about Bob Day and the grant he secured for a charitable educational institution of which he was a volunteer director are not only false, but scurrilous.  

As a consistent advocate of small government, I fight for individual rights and freedoms against big government, big business, and people like Richard Denniss. 

 I do not always get the outcomes I prefer, but I never compromise my principles. 

 David Leyonhjelm

Liberal Democrats senator 

Drummoyne, NSW

Tired mantra not the key to growth

It was disappointing to read, in "Growth and investment key: Garnaut" and "America's promise" (November4), the same tired old mantra of jobs and growth for the resolution of our economic woes. Both articles blithely assume that certain nations are wealthy and others are poor, as if they are homogeneous entities and that more growth will automatically lead to universal prosperity (via the "trickle-down" myth), while also blithely ignoring the limitations on growth imposed by resource  and environmental limitations and costs.

What both articles and other commentators and policy makers fail to acknowledge is that our problems arise to a very large extent from the maldistribution of prosperity rather than its deficiency. 

Developed and underdeveloped countries both include obscenely wealthy and poverty-stricken sectors and the gap is widening. 

Mainstream economists offer no solution to this problem and appear to be locked into a discredited neo-liberal model which our politicians do not challenge, either (to be charitable) because they do not have the nous or perhaps (more cynically) because they themselves benefit more from the status quo. 

While the experts don't seem to get it, the man in the street clearly does, and he doesn't like what he can see coming; Brexit and Trump are the first expressions of his concern, and it is not drawing too long a bow to link disparity in well-being to our mass migration problems. We'll be getting a few more such surprises before we are through;  let's hope it's only a few. 

David Barker

Bunbury, WA  

Weatherill's thinking on waste hardly agile

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill's plan to ship, store and bury up to one-third of the world's high-level radioactive waste can be described in many ways, but "imaginative, agile thinking" (Editorial, November 16) is a fair stretch.  

The plan has been roundly criticised by economists from progressive and conservative perspectives for its unproven economics and lack of modelling rigour. It has been deeply compromised by the fact that a significant part of the numbers exercise was done by long-term international waste dump advocates. Hardly robust; definitely rubbery.

 In the last month, tens of thousands of Australians have signed petitions and taken to the streets, Aboriginal traditional owners have strongly condemned the plan and Mr Weatherill's own Citizen Jury process gave the proposal a clear red light. The controversial move has also comprehensively failed to gain the requisite bipartisan state and federal political support. Nuclear waste may be undead, but the dump plan is dead. People simply don't want it – and with good reason. The failure of political leadership on this issue lies with those who will not accept that no means no. 

Dave Sweeney

Australian Conservation Foundation

Carlton, Vic

Short shrift for Gerry Harvey's 'arrogance'

I think Gerry Harvey is extremely arrogant to suggest that shareholders who do not like what he does, or are unhappy with the company's financial accounts, should simply sell their shares and go away ("Shorts deny Harvey collusion", November15).

Listed companies have an obligation to explain and shareholders have a right to ask questions. That's the nature of, and price for, being a listed company. Mr Harvey could and probably should, if he does not like engagement with shareholders, privatise the company. He can then do whatever he wants.

In addition, short selling is completely legitimate. I am almost sure Mr Harvey, a known investor/trader, would have shorted  from time to time.

If he thinks the current short sellers in HVN are wrong, then their actions are a godsend opportunity for him to profit from what they are doing – simply buy up when the shares are being smashed.

Wilson Lee

Glen Waverley, Vic