Apparently Australians spent more than $200 million on chocolate so children with baskets full of chocolate eggs might fling them around local parks for their younger siblings to hunt. Meanwhile, in Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya parents cannot provide such entertainment for their babies. They are in the midst of a deadly famine, partly the result of climate change-induced drought. The Red Cross will ensure that more than 90 per cent of your donation is delivered to the people who need your help. That would be a truly delicious Easter tradition.
Lesley Walker, Northcote
![Illustration: Michael Leunig.](/web/20170424063116im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/n/8/i/q/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvmvtt.png/1492575913748.jpg)
#ALLlivesmatter a trending hashtag
The slaughter of 126 Shia Muslims in Syria who believed they were being led to safety in a secured convoy has left me baffled. I am yet to see the images of flaccid children covered in dust and blood plastered on my television with the disclaimer that their story contains graphic content. I heard little of the Egyptian Coptic Christians who were slain during Easter prayers, a most holy of times. I have not seen on my TV images of starving Yemenis as their country edges closer towards famine. Rather than creating a sectarian hashtag telling people that #shialivesmatter, I prefer to run with the statement that #ALLlivesmatter.
Cathy Soufan, Bentleigh East
How do people sleep at night?
As I close my newspaper with a deep sigh, turn off my television because I can no longer bear to watch death and destruction, I am left quietly wondering. I wonder what sort of human being made the bombs, the gas, the planes and the guns, surely knowing of the untold suffering their work would eventually cause. I sit and wonder how any human being can bring themselves to push the button in their plane, on their ship or some other remote location, sending hideous weapons of destruction into the towns and homes of innocent families, maybe not unlike their own loved ones. I sit and wonder how they can do that and how they sleep at night.
Geoff Selby, Moorooduc
A strategy for United Nations
After the bomb attack on buses in Syria it should be obvious such atrocities will not end while the war against Islamic State is seen as the West's problem. Until there is a coalition of Muslim countries prepared to co-operate in a war on this organisation and its ideology the perception will remain that it is IS versus the West and not IS versus the rest of the world. A strategy for the United Nations to develop?
Robert Brown, Camberwell
Stop being America's lapdog
Bill Shorten thinks North Korea's five nuclear tests conducted over the past 11 years constitutes "provocative conduct" (The Age, 17/4). So how should we characterise America's 1054 nuclear tests over a period of 47 years, France's 217 tests over a 36-year period and the 45 tests by Britain over a period of 29 years, including nine in Australia? And how should we characterise Mr Shorten, apart from being a hypocritical, unprincipled, lapdog of the US?
John Richardson, Wallagoot, NSW
Shining example for tyrants everywhere
I was impressed by the Turkish President's slight victory in the referendum (The Age, 17/4). Standard practice by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad was to win by implausible margins of 97 per cent, 99 per cent or even 100 per cent. This newfound subtlety in totalitarian "elections", with Recep Tayyip Erdogan's 51.5 per cent margin, gives me hope for the future of dictatorial egos. The balance Erdogan has struck between ego-stroking and plausibility is an example for wannabe tyrants everywhere.
Thomas Baker, Camberwell
THE FORUM
A time for healing
On Good Friday Papua New Guinean locals and navy personnel assaulted refugees in the Manus Island detention centre, and then fired into the camp. Our politicians have been resoundingly silent regarding this latest violent incident. It has been increasingly clear over the past four years that our government is unable to care for or protect these men, whom we have unjustly imprisoned. In the face of the ongoing violence and neglect, the government must bring these men, refugee and asylum seeker alike, to Australia for processing. We must allow these men the chance to heal.
Frances Penington, Brunswick
Moral compass lost
I asked myself: "Is there some insincerity here?" when I saw our political leaders speaking on television of love for thy neighbour at Easter. To my dismay, neither man spoke about the need to close the Manus and Nauru gulags, the site of secrecy and untold suffering of asylum seekers. Have our so-called leaders truly lost their moral compass?
Revd Neil Tolliday, Werribee
Cultural discipline
Reaction to the video of Muslim women discussing how men could symbolically discipline their wives stands in stark contrast to the generally favourable reception given to the 2015 erotic romantic drama Fifty Shades of Grey, which centred around a sadomasochistic relationship between a young girl and business magnate, Christian Grey. The embrace of that movie would probably have been different had Grey been a Muslim.
Garry Meller, Bentleigh
Making a statement
Spend less so you can live more, says The Age's "Money Brain" (18/4). She quotes a Canadian guru who says this will help save the human race from destroying itself through over-consumption of its habitat: buy less stuff, eat less meat and don't buy food you'll end up throwing out. What's good for the hip pocket is also good for the planet.
Energy (usually from dirty fossil fuels) is used to manufacture all those things advertisers tell us we need – smarter food and clothes, newer cars, bigger homes filled with sleek furniture and trinkets. An expensive lifestyle does make a statement, but it's not a socially or environmentally responsible statement.
Joan Reilly, Surrey Hills
Bond needs nurturing
Clementine Ford (Comment, 17/4) poignantly describes the experience of first-time motherhood for many. Her article could have been titled, "Reckless neglect" of new mothers and their babies by our hospital system. Ford accurately describes the compounding physical and psychological burden of pregnancy, labour and motherhood, and the shame of our hospitals for offering inadequate time for new mothers to recover and get to know their babies.
I was fortunate to have my babies in the 1980s when women could return home early or recuperate in hospital with their babies beside them and mothercraft nurses on hand to facilitate the mother-baby relationship and provide education and comfort.
The current systemic neglect of new mothers is appalling, economically short-sighted and inconsistent with rigorous evidence spanning 60 years about the importance of the early mother-baby relationship. When will we honour women's experiences and needs, rather than minimise and undermine them? We must do better. Our future depends on it.
Susie Allanson, East Melbourne
Living with pain
Well done for publishing the article "Living hell" (18/4) explaining complex regional pain syndrome. I had severe CRPS last year after fracturing a wrist but, like most non-medical professionals, had never heard of it. I could relate to much of Chantelle Baxter's story – relentless pain and total fear of what was happening to me, while also trying to rehabilitate a dominant left wrist. I was also fortunate to have access to experienced professionals. I am still on medication 13 months later, but the CRPS is under control and I have my life back. Graded motor imagery is also a treatment I found useful, along with physiotherapy.
Well done for illustrating that although debilitating, this awful condition can be beaten, with the right treatment and determination on the part of the sufferer. Well done to Chantelle for sharing her story.
Julie Holmes, Melbourne
Addictive pain relief
Doctors prescribe the strongest drugs available not just to in-patients (Letters, 17/4). On discharge from a private hospital after minor keyhole surgery, I was prescribed oxycodone. I was not asked about my pain level, and no one explained the drug's addictive side-effects. I simply picked up the pack from the hospital pharmacy as I was leaving, as instructed. For the record, all I needed was over-the-counter pain relief for one day, so a month later I took the drugs to my local pharmacist, who disposed of them.
Jill Rosenberg, South Caulfield
Get under those nails
In 2007 surgeon and author Atul Gawande wrote in On Hand Washing: "The worst place is under the fingernails. Hence the recent CDC guidelines requiring hospital personnel to keep their nails trimmed to less than a quarter of an inch and to remove artificial nails." Why do we hear nothing about fingernails in the context of poor hand hygiene? Is it because fashion rules, and the nail salon business is a sacred cow in Australia? Good fingernail hygiene is as appropriate in the kitchen and nursery as it is in the surgical suite.
Trevor Kerr, Blackburn
Historical footnote
Is it any wonder there is a crisis in the provision of mental health services (The Age, 18/4)? State governments of both sides closed dedicated mental health hospitals over 30 years and failed to fund community mental health to the same amount as they promised they would do. Hospitals such as Larundel and Mont Park are now just footnotes to history.
David Fry, Moonee Ponds
Deny trolls oxygen
The article "Inside the secret world of one of Australia's worst trolls" (The Age, 17/4) raises the issue of whether it is best to out them and condemn them, or deny them any light and bury them in their own bile. What is evident is that they are losers and society doesn't need their pathetic thoughts.
Dennis Fitzgerald, Box Hill
Don't hock your future
Remember the 1970s, when women teachers could cash in their superannuation when they married (because of course they wouldn't need it)? Bingo: they had a house deposit. Come the divorce 10 years later and it's, "Oh, that's water under the bridge I'm afraid, dear". When the next generation is encouraged to hock their future, who will own the houses in the end?
Bernadette Reeders, Box Hill South
The fringe dwellers
There is a tendency for commentators – politicians and otherwise – to feel obliged to ingratiate the extreme right wing in any debate – never more so than with public broadcasting (Comment, 17/4).
The facts are that Australia has one of the highest concentrations of media ownership in the OECD; the vast majority of Australians value the ABC above all alternatives; and official reviews of alleged bias repeatedly exonerate the ABC in fulfilling its charter, despite operating in a climate of unremitting attack from the Murdoch press, the Institute of Public Affairs and their parliamentary disciples. Leave the hard right where it belongs – on the fringe. And leave our independent ABC well alone.
Angela Munro, Carlton North
Bendigo's drawcard
Simmone Howell would be horrified if she saw Roy Grounds' Round House today ("Happiness is a round house", Spectrum, 15/4). Melbourne's signature gateway to a generation of peninsula holiday-makers has been telescoped into a plot almost as if high rise had been allowed to surround Rose Seidler House.
Another fine example of the postwar modernist idiom has fortunately been preserved in Benalla, in the shire offices. Now a notable drawcard, the building signifies the innovative, progressive mindset of local government in 1958. Born of an individual creativity, designs such as these represent an architectural impetus dragging us out of our eclectic torpor to be celebrated again, half a century later.
Judy Durrant, Blairgowrie
Your shout, coach
It's a sad reflection on society that the hierarchy at Hawthorn Football Club temporarily adopted the "old-school tactics" of having a few beers (a controlled drinking session!) to build team solidarity and restore a winning culture, after the devastating loss to the Gold Coast Suns last weekend ("How Hawthorn spent the night after their heavy loss to Gold Coast", 14/4). Obviously, given Monday's drubbing by the Cats, it's back to the drawing board. Your shout, Alistair.
Carolyn Garvey, Kingston
I'll have baked beans
Whenever I dine in a restaurant, I hope the food I am eating has been prepared by contented and well-paid staff. To know that some preparing my meal could be paid as little as $14 an hour makes me think of staying home and having baked beans on toast.
John Rawson, Mernda
AND ANOTHER THING...
Tony Abbott
Warren Entsch has called on Abbott to quit parliament and stop trashing his legacy. Just what legacy was that Warren?
Alan Inchley, Frankston
"Sniping" hasn't been enough for Abbott; he's gone on to wage "jihad".
Hugh McCaig, Blackburn
I much prefer sauv blanc to Abbott's Bitter.
Stephen Baldwin, Frankston
A proven failure in the past making judgments on the future.
Barrie Bales, Woorinen North
Abbott v Cormann. Man to man they faced each other/Threw their words/And mocked each other.
Tony Lenten, Glen Waverley
The world
Who is the most dangerous of them all? Al-Assad, Jong-Un, Putin or Trump?
Susan Munday, Bentleigh East
The US and North Korea may be on the verge of solving the world's two greatest problems – overpopulation and global warming – by bringing on a nuclear winter.
Kishor Dabke, Mount Waverley
America readying for war: must be groundhog day.
Terry Malone, Warburton
Is Trump planning a remake of MASH?
Gregory Lee, Briagolong
Elsewhere
Perhaps restaurants that pay staff at or above legal rates could put a sign in their windows to tell us that.
Phil Bennett, Brunswick
The Premier vetoes safer bike lanes on St Kilda Road because it might create problems for drivers. We can't have that. A few dead cyclists are a minor price to pay.
Carol Skinner, Fitzroy
Who can afford to go to the dentist (Letters, 17/4)? I was in the chair for 40 minutes last week for a clean and a straightforward filling: $517.
Graham Reynolds, Ballarat North
Why don't AFL players walk off the field when morons yell racist abuse? They'd only have to do this once.
Sigbert Muysers, East Ballarat