The Prime Minister lauded the work done by the Australian Taxation Office and the federal police in catching the group who allegedly defrauded the ATO of $165 million. How is it that Centrelink has a system in place where it can send demand letters to welfare recipients for often minuscule amounts, yet a gang can allegedly get away with $165 million before it is noticed? Seems to me that the discovery was more good luck than good work.
Corrado Tavella, Rosslyn Park, SA
![Illustration: Andrew Dyson](http://web.archive.org./web/20170623160143im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/9/4/t/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gw931k.png/1495205115933.jpg)
Now the government is targeting pensioners
Forging ahead undeterred and unapologetically disregarding the human trail of destruction left in the wake of the robo-debt debacle, the Department of Human Services has spruiked the expanded debt recovery program targeting vulnerable pensioners ("Pensioners the target in $980m 'robot-debt' plan", 19/5). In a display of semantic wordplay, department secretary Kathryn Campbell referred to the debt recovery "error" letters as "initial clarification letters". But behind the obfuscation is the truth about the debt recovery crusade – the Coalition government's bottom line of retrieving savings expected to total $4.5 billion from its data-matching program. The savings are to be clawed back from another soft target – vulnerable pensioners. Is it possible for the government to sink any lower?
John Fitzsimmons, Mornington
![Centrelink chases a few dollars, while the ATO misses millions.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170623160143im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/9/3/l/8/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gw931k.png/1496903223726.jpg)
Medicare a rival in poor service
We get stuck into Centrelink for its tardiness, but Medicare may have it beaten. Medicare has just taken precisely six months to return a claim for benefits because one vital piece of information was missing. I wonder how long it will take to make payment with the correct info?
Ian Malcolm, Scoresby
No excuse for turning to illicit drugs
I wonder if I am missing something. Surely our welfare system is, in some cases at least, funding drug addiction. Many of us know the depths of depression or just those times when life really sucks. But we don't turn to illicit drugs to elevate our mood and sense of wellbeing. No matter how bad life is, taking illicit drugs is a choice. Rarely is anyone forced to become addicted. While I have sympathy for those people who are dependent on illicit drugs, and the pain caused to their families, for goodness' sake let's think of the pain and loss of property and life that are caused by some ice addicts out of control.
Lance Sterling, Burwood
It isn't heartless to test for drug use
In response to the letter "A hard and heartless nation" (Letters, 16/5), the writer claims that drug testing those on welfare pensions is "humiliating". Although the reasons given for this statement may be convincing, it does not address that the people who are abusing these substances must be stopped. Drug testing those on welfare enables the government to identify where the money is going and who needs support for getting their life back together. These people need help, not to be swept under the rug and ignored. Testing them takes us one step further in the right direction. Not penalising substance abusers would give them an incentive to think that what they are doing is acceptable, allowing for more consumption and leading to more problems. The article also states that Australia is becoming a "cruel and heartless" place, but is offering these people help and an alternative heartless? Drug testing those on welfare works as a wake-up call and warns those who are abusing illicit drugs.
Dinil De Silva, Glen Waverley
THE FORUM
Follow Britain's lead
The alleged $165 million tax fraud shows how easy it remains in Australia to set up front companies for all sorts of criminal activities, from fraud to tax evasion and money laundering. It appears in this case unwitting drug addicts were paid to act as sham directors for the front companies.
It is time for the Australian government to follow the lead of the UK and deliver a public register of the real owners and controllers of companies and trusts.
There should be serious penalties for acting as a front person without disclosing the real owners of the company or trust and for being the real owner or controller of a company or trust and not disclosing it.
Dr Mark Zirnsak, Melbourne
The easy way on banks
I'm not a fan of the big banks, and park my millions elsewhere. But that we don't like them is not a good and sufficient reason for increasing their tax.
Welcome to a regime of tax rates correlating to popularity. Logically, Gina Rinehart should be next.
If the banks have not been behaving fairly to their customers, it is up to the government to implement a royal commission, not to take the easy way out with cheap appeals to a baying public.
Pamela Lloyd, Brunswick West
Where the wealth goes
While agreeing with Leigh Ackland (Letters, 18/5) that medicos like neurosurgeons and ophthalmologists do a wonderful job and deserve high incomes, I wonder whether it is healthy for our society that some professionals are able to choose their own economic adventure and amass great wealth, not just through jealously-guarded fee structures but then through ready access to the additional multipliers of investments, negative gearing and capital gains relief.
Other worthy toilers, such as research scientists, university lecturers, let alone teachers, must plug along in their minor roles as lesser economic beings.
I do hope that when the neurosurgeon is probing your brain he is wholly focused on the grey matter and not daydreaming about his vast investment portfolio.
Peter McCarthy, Mentone
Don't back Adani mine
Carbon emissions from the Adani coal mine would be staggeringly high. It is very troubling that the Labor Party supports this project as long as it "stacks up".
It is good to see a federal Labor backbencher – Peter Khalil – has finally spoken up, condemning the project on both commercial and environmental grounds.
Andrea Bunting, Brunswick
Not good business
So the Adani company may receive a loan of $900 million of public money with no transparency regarding how it will be repaid.
So the Queensland government plans to forgo $320 million of royalties from this mining venture.
Am I missing something? I, like many baby boomers, have run a small business; have paid lots of tax; and would never lend a large amount of money to anyone without clarity for repayment. And I would not forgo huge royalties from my business interests.
I consider these government actions to be financial incompetence on a grand scale.
Dr Pia Brous, Parkville
Possums come first
I was so disappointed about the headline "The possum that could cost 2100 jobs" (18/5). The order suggests that the jobs count more than a species that is close to extinction.
It is immoral that we can so easily contemplate and allow the unnecessary loss of unique life-forms forever.
We must become assiduous protectors of our priceless and irreplaceable natural heritage.
Patrick Kavanagh, Strangways
Save remaining habitat
When you calculate its damage to water catchments, public health, tourism amenity, and threatened species, VicForests is a dead liability to the public and its purse.
If you can't afford to spare any habitat for a small and very rare possum, you are already into a criminal degree of vandalism.
John Hayward, Weegena, Tas
Something rotten
No money to run the ABC, no money to run a newspaper, the banks can't cope with a bit of tax. Yet the CEOs still manage to obtain obscene salaries and bonuses. What on earth are these for? None of you do anything outstanding. What you do is your job.
On top of all this we now have the sad story of the Tax Office. How did this happen?
There is something rotten in anything to do with finance!
Anne Flanagan, Box Hill North
Cornell a grunge god
As a 19-year-old in 1991, going around town in Doc Martens, cut-off knee-length jeans, a Chicago Blackhawks ice hockey jersey, and of course long hair, grunge music was my religion and Chris Cornell my god.
I first saw him perform at Festival Hall with Soundgarden, and most recently a solo acoustic gig at The Palais in St Kilda.
But it was a night at The Forum several years ago with Chris and band that was probably the greatest rock show I've ever seen.
Thank you for making me feel. You were such a talent. Rest in peace.
John Bastiras, Elsternwick
Sexism is sexism
John Laws' blokey boast that "he who pays the piper calls the tune" to Steve Price on The Project perfectly illustrates the insidious nature of gender-based power imbalances in the workplace. ("Don't skirt around it, John Laws was objectifying women. Full stop", 18/5)
Laws' insistence that he calls the shots in dictating to women what they ought to wear on his workplace turf, because it's pleasing to his eye, is an old-school, boys-club attitude that lingers on in society.
The corresponding minimisation of Laws' blokey peccadilloes by two high-profile women journalists is indicative of the power of subliminal programming in convincing women themselves that some sexist attitudes aren't that bad.
We must call a spade a spade. It is sexist behaviour and it must be challenged. This will help hone the sexist radar of younger generations who are the future custodians of cultural change.
Jelena Rosic, Mornington
Shakespeare next?
How easy to dismiss one of the finest musicals ever written on the grounds of misogyny. (Letters, 19/5).
This politically correct tut-tutting, taken to its logical extreme, would mean audiences would be deprived of the great Shakespearean and Greek dramas, because they dealt with confronting themes.
Far from being archived, I would hope that My Fair Lady continues to delight musical lovers worldwide.
Helen Scheller, Benalla
Missing the irony
Those who complain about the "misogynistic behaviour" and "patriarchal attitudes" in My Fair Lady have missed the dramatic irony very evident in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and carried through faithfully by the writer of My Fair Lady.
When Henry Higgins sings "Why can't a woman be more like a man? Men are so decent", all the audience know that he isn't, and will get his comeuppance. His mother has always had his measure ("How did you ever learn manners with my son around?"), and by the end, so does Eliza: "Oh, you are a devil." So though Eliza goes back to Wimpole Street, both she and Henry know that it will be on a very different basis from before. Let's enjoy this wonderful production with all its fun, irony, and "the divine gift of articulate speech".
Bronwen Bryant, St Kilda West
No make-up is needed
As a teenage girl, I have noticed that girls around me have been pressured to wear make-up to look good. Wearing make-up is problematic as it can cause skin problems and it does not show your inner and natural beauty.
People can be allergic to cosmetic products – it can cause itching, swelling and blisters. People believe wearing make-up will make them look as pretty as Taylor Swift. But someone who does not wear make-up looks younger and natural.
When you embrace your natural beauty you can look pretty without covering up.
Smrutii Arun Kumar, Glen Waverley
AND ANOTHER THING
Tax scandal
Wouldn't any parent, let alone a deputy commissioner of taxation, query his son about the source of the money that has evidently funded a lifestyle of extreme wealth?
Bill Molyneux, Dixons Creek
Maybe the Tax Office could use Centrelink's expertise to retrieve some of the $165 million alleged to have been "siphoned off" our PAYG contributions.
Jenifer Nicholls, Armadale
It's comforting to know that the Coalition has complete control over the Australian Tax Office.
Phil Alexander, Eltham
Donald Trump
No other president has been treated "more unfairly"? Well, no other president has behaved so abominably.
Lesley Black, Frankston
Now that Chelsea Manning is free after doing eight years for leaking classified information to the enemy, there must be a spare cell for Donald Trump.
Charles Laycock, Castlemaine
I suppose witches did object to witch-hunts.
Miranda Jones, Drummond
A bid of no Trumps is sounding more and more like a lay down misere.
Kevan Porter, Alphington
And finally
Maybe it's time to shift the PSOs from some of the safer railway stations to jewellery shops, where they may be more needed
Lindsay Donahoo, Wattle Glen
Maybe declining wages are because most of us no longer join trade unions. A few decades ago the majority of the workforce belonged to a union. Most of our current benefits were won by unions.
Peter Harkness, Mont Albert North
If all Robyn McCarthy got from My Fair Lady was "trauma suffered by women at the hands of men" (Letters, 19/5), I suggest she doesn't go to see The Book of Mormon.
Paul Custance, Highett