Comment

SMH Editorials

The cold, dead hands retain their grip

SMH editorial dinkus

The US National Rifle Association (slogan: "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands") has relented on one small issue of gun control.

The real chink in our armour

SMH editorial dinkus

The Prime Minister's new anti-terror measures infringe significantly on civil liberties and curtail traditional freedoms.

We should beware of ceding tobacco to the criminals

SMH editorial dinkus

No one who has watched a loved relative die of a smoking-induced disease will have much sympathy for the tobacco industry. To see someone with emphysema fighting for every breath, or to watch the painful decline of someone with lung cancer – these are harsh lessons that change lives. Smoking doesn't just kill; it kills with pain, horror and indignity. Many people will thus understand and sympathise immediately with Andrew Forrest's new anti-smoking campaign, intended to cut youth smoking and make the industry pay for some of the damage it causes. But are they right? Is this the most effective way to reduce smoking, and the harm it causes, to the minimum possible?

Turnbull turns up the heat on NSW

SMH editorial dinkus

The Prime Minister has long been accused of lacking clear thinking on the issue of meeting this country's future energy requirements. It is an opinion unlikely to be diminished over the last few rollercoaster weeks where the joint issues of electricity generation and gas supply have been high on the news agenda.

Why 'yes' deserves to win

SMH editorial dinkus

As the campaign surrounding the same-sex marriage survey has rolled on, what has been remarkable is the energy which both sides have brought to it.

Angela Merkel and the shaky centre

SMH editorial dinkus

Most observers across the world will be congratulating the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, on her fourth straight victory in national elections on Saturday, and breathing a provisional sigh of relief.

The need for legislation that curbs pernicious activities by foreign agents

SMH editorial dinkus

Transparency and accountability underpin effective and efficient public policy, political probity and good corporate governance – all of which are involved in the government's proposed overhaul of political influence laws, a response primarily to concerns about clandestine meddling in Australia by the Chinese Communist Party.

Care before costs: Our aged deserve better

Sun Herald Editorial dinkus.

Countless people in aged care are being harmed through neglect born of profit-driven cost-cutting and a failure to properly regulate an industry trusted by some of the most vulnerable people and their families.

Trump in a china shop at the UN

SMH editorial dinkus

In his speech to the UN General Assembly this week, President Donald Trump used the word we 77 times. But who exactly was he referring to?

School basics get a boost they need

SMH editorial dinkus

Parents taking a child to school for the first time will not know it, but they are entering a battleground. The war being fought here amid the desks and books and blackboards is not physical but intellectual and professional – over the best way to teach reading.

Reasons why truck driver training is overdue for an urgent review

Sun Herald Editorial dinkus.

Revelations that inexperienced truck drivers are being let loose on our roads after "grubby short courses" offering inadequate training makes for disturbing reading. The "potential for loss of life and serious injury is very real", according to the peak body for driver trainers, the Australian Drivers Association.

Clinton warns of forces out to undermine our democratic institutions

SMH editorial dinkus

Hillary Clinton's new book on her loss of the 2016 election is part confessional, part jeremiad. It is a necessarily partisan view that will rightly prompt debate about the weaknesses in Clinton's campaign that allowed a demonstrably unqualified man to become the president of the United States.