When the hapless Peter Dutton is rolled out to attack Malcolm Fraser's legacy you know a new chapter in the right's incessant culture war is being road-tested. You have to wonder why the Coalition is so focused on prosecuting a culture war instead of governing, but perhaps after a term and a half with no significant achievements or new ideas it is looking for a reason to exist. Exactly what it hopes to achieve by scapegoating racial and religious minorities and creating division is impossible to fathom. Through his vision and leadership, Fraser brought all sides of politics and a sceptical public together to welcome refugees of many nationalities and religions on humanitarian grounds, despite a small chorus decrying the dangers of "the yellow peril". Consequently, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Lebanese Australians, their children and grandchildren have made new, productive lives here and this nation is much richer for their contribution.
Charles Shepherd, Brighton
Illustration: Matt Golding
Like frogs in pot of boiling water
Mr Dutton says he is "not going to shy away from the facts" that 22 out of 33 people last charged with terrorism-related offences come from second and third-generation Lebanese backgrounds. But facts used selectively can be meaningless and dangerous. Why does he only "call out" Muslim Australian law-breakers? Does he really believe grandparents are responsible for criminality in their family 45 years later? Or that Mr Fraser should have been able to predict the uprising of Islamic State and which refugees (or native Australians for that matter) were going to have disaffected or easily led offspring? I interpret the facts differently. We must challenge this over-simplistic attitude towards complex issues. Or are we all just going to sit like frogs in a pot of boiling water allowing the likes of Dutton to continually raise the temperature to the point at which it is too late for all of us?
Sandra Peeters, Ventnor
Attacking fabric of society
I cannot believe Dutton specifically named Lebanese Muslims in Parliament. He might as well have drawn a circle around that community and encouraged racial hate. Our politicians like to state Australia is an outstanding example of multiculturalism. But Dutton is initiating the breakdown of this fabric and doing so deliberately. While we should not be blind to our problems, we must deal with them responsibly.
Jane Cheong, Elwood
Who will Dutton go after next?
A third-generation Australian, I'm anxious about where Dutton might land next. Does he have crime statistics on the Welsh, Irish, Scottish and English migrants who were my forebears? Or for descendants of the Italians and Greeks I first met in the 1950s, and the descendants of the Vietnamese refugees Mr Fraser allowed in during the 1980s? I am also anxious to think Mr Turnbull might really believe Dutton is a very good immigration minister. But I don't enjoy feeling so anxious, so I'll accept Dutton's comments as having been formed by a narrow view of citizenship though his Queensland Police experience, and continue to enjoy the creative and productive life migrants of all background bring to my community.
William Chandler, Surrey Hills
THE FORUM
Ethnic profiling
As a close associate of Tony Abbott, Peter Dutton's worldview sits neatly with the concept of an Anglosphere ethnic collective delineated in the former PM's book Battlelines. Significantly, this is also the outlook now shared by Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, who see the US-Great Britain relationship as one of shared values antithetical to non-English-speaking nations. Dutton's vilification of the Lebanese has its analogue in Trump's traducing of Mexicans. Make no mistake, ethnic profiling now has the formal imprimatur of Australia's government and the incoming Trump administration.
Jon McMillan, Mount Eliza
Call for reinforcements
Interesting that the Dutton Way, a seaside road near Portland in Victoria, has been under attack from the sea for years and has needed to be reinforced by artificial rock walls. There's nothing original in Canberra.
Gary Sayer, Warrnambool
PM out of action
What a sorry lot, the former and current immigration ministers, Scott Morrison and Dutton, and now George Brandis answering questions. What a triumvirate, and only silence from PM Turnbull. He is truly missing in action.
Anne Dynon, Brighton
Cruelty is endless
Little publicity is given to asylum seekers in detention within Australia. In Melbourne, for example, some "clients" have been in detention for eight years, with no idea of when they will ever be released. Others are moved without reason from one detention centre to another, breaking long-lasting friendships, which has a devastating effect.
Visiting these centres gets more difficult by the week, with the introduction of ever more hurdles. As for taking gifts to our asylum seeker friends it is nigh on impossible to even take a writing journal, a novel, a pair of slippers or a warm jacket. Conditions in our jails, where people are incarcerated for having committed crimes, would no doubt be much more humane. There is no such thing as a fair go shown in our detention centres.
Helen Stagoll, Alphington
System to emulate?
Their health system is an expensive mess, they have the highest incarceration rate and one of the highest gun-related death rates of any nation, their police are equipped like the military, they still have state-sanctioned murder via the death penalty, their carbon emissions per capita are nearly as bad as ours, their politicians are corrupted by political donations, their education performance and income inequality are worse than ours and their bizarre electoral system is corrupted by gerrymandering and racially based voter suppression. So what is it about the US that Cory Bernardi is so excited about and wants to bring home to Australia?
David Blair, Healesville
Class revolt in US
Annabel Crabb credits "angry white men" for Trump's triumph (20/11). In actual fact class revolt is the only explanation for the election outcome. The working class includes men and women, white and black, unemployed and underemployed, trying to raise families on welfare because their jobs have been exported to China and elsewhere. They are tired of being ruled by self-serving, self-selecting elites, represented by the Clintons et al. They've grown tired of being offered circuses, not bread. Only some of them were angry white men.
Brian Sanaghan, West Preston
Anger is no excuse
We seem to be hearing a great deal about "angry white men". I am puzzled as to why. Are they angry because they are earning more money than many women, and/or have higher positions? Do they feel marginalised because there is less pressure on them to be young, slim and attractive? Are they jealous because they are still undertaking less housework and have fewer child-raising duties than their female counterparts? Do they truly believe they are worse off than many non-white men, including Indigenous people?
Thankfully, plenty of men do not fit in this category. We should not underestimate the "real" problems affecting men, such as the higher incidence of suicide, particularly in certain age groups, the greater propensity towards risky behaviours, and the consequences of this. Anyone is entitled to be "angry", but when this anger becomes an "excuse" for a range of poor behaviours, it's time for some reflection and self-examination.
Irene Goldwasser, St Kilda
Return on investment
In light of Trump's extraordinary triumph, those with an eye to the future should read Jane Mayer's absorbing book Dark Money. It is a tour de force on the rise of the extreme right in US politics and its influence on the political, social and economic fabric by Republicans like the enormously wealthy Koch brothers, Richard Scaife et al.
Their pervasive influence is brought about by funding individual candidates to Congress, massive contributions to the Republican Party, establishing and supporting think tanks that espouse Republican causes and underwriting academic pursuits in areas that help meet their financial and political objectives. Such men are the oil that lubricates the party while they line their own pockets at the same time. While Trump might not have been their chosen candidate, the hundreds of millions of dollars the extreme right has spent to get such acceptance of their extreme right-wing world view will seem like small change in the long run, and an eminently worthwhile investment.
Peter Wilms, Prahran
Subsidising sugar
With the medical profession confirming the causality between sugar's entrenchment in the food cycle and high and increasing cases of diabetes, heart conditions and obesity, it has been left to Barnaby Joyce to argue against the science (again) as he did so ineffectually against the carbonisation of the atmosphere.
A sugar tax will reduce the amount of sugar in our diet and provide funding to this area of medical research. The absence of such a tax (as exists now) is an ongoing subsidy to the sugar industry, which refuses to pay for the externalised healthcare costs caused by the consumption of its product. Yet another appalling example of corporate welfare.
John Ashton, Healesville
Libs sat on their hands
The front page headline (News, 20/11) said Labor was "warned about youth jail dangers" years ago, implying that Labor can largely be blamed for tensions in the youth justice system. However, as the article points out, the report by the Ombudsman came only a month before Labor lost the election to the Baillieu/Napthine government. So why didn't the Coalition government act on the report? It ignored it. This, coupled with the Coalition's destruction of the TAFE system via massive funding cuts, could go a long way to explain the problems affecting disaffected youth today.
Phil Alexander, Eltham
Parking fines boom
The booming developments in the "sandbelt" has resulted in a cut in street parking because of the "reduced requirement for parking" allowance ("Sleepy 'burbs awoken by unit boom", 20/11). Two bedroom apartments are supplied with only one car spot yet occupants usually own two cars – especially if it is rented. Increasingly, street parking is not guaranteed.
Consider the Nepean Highway service lane, between Southland Shopping Centre and Highett Road. In this lane is a motel, the justice centre and two large apartment developments. Motel patrons attending functions park in the service lane. Moorabbin Justice centre has inadequate parking so customers flow on to the street, forcing apartment dwellers to park further down the lane in a domino effect stretching all the way to Southland. The council has a great money earner here issuing parking fines to the desperadoes who have edged on to No Stopping or Police Parking zones. Why would the council resolve the problem? It's money for jam.
Judy Bruce, Highett
No care, responsibility
James Norman revealed the vulnerability of young entrepreneurs risking their lives in delivering meals ("App employment not an easy gig", 13/11). I saw a delivery cyclist having great difficulty riding up the steepest part of Punt Road. It was raining and blowing a gale, with the large box strapped to his back presenting a large area of resistance to the wind. The traffic in Punt Road moved quickly and threw up large sweeps of water. If he had come off his cycle he would not have had a chance. As the article reports, the businesses using these workers consider them "individual contractors" for whom they have no responsibility. The law needs to catch up with these new forms of "employment".
Betty Teltscher, South Yarra