Keep it up, Age
As a lifelong reader, I salute The Age for its fortitude and passionate commitment in keeping our beloved daily broadsheet alive during the past decades of immense challenge. Monday’s paper (29/9) offered unexpected hope as we navigate the tumult.
Firstly, thank you for hardly any photos or print about ″him″. The daily overwhelm of ″him″ is killing our souls.
Secondly, many in my circle are discussing the alarming state and demise of critical thinking. Voila! The Age is broadcasting the good news that reason and the hard work of assessing the whys of all sides really matters (″Here’s to reason″ wraparound cover).
Thirdly, large photographs of jolly billy buttons and bees in the excellent, ″Go West″ series, connect readers who suffer climate and earth anxieties, to the uplifting restorative work of grasslands in Melbourne’s west.
Finally, in light of Melbourne’s appalling youth crime rates and Melburnians feeling helpless in how to care and support young people (our precious canaries down the mine), the encouraging unknown known of Scotland, completely reversing the status of being the homicide capital of Western Europe to having no under-18s in jail is miracle territory offering us a blueprint.
Sally Apokis, South Melbourne
Congratulations, Brisbane
I find it odd that after the biggest football game of the year, there has not been one letter published in The Age about the actual game. No congratulations for Brisbane, no commiserations for Geelong, but plenty of complaints about Snoop Dogg. You can bet that if Collingwood had played and lost, there would have been plenty of comment, and all of it mocking.
Are we such a parochial lot that we can’t congratulate a winner from interstate? Perhaps the letters’ editor is a Geelong supporter, or just embarrassed that 12 of 14 Age footy “experts” tipped Geelong to win? So let me say it: Congratulations to Brisbane on your magnificent win.
Greg Hardy, Upper Ferntree Gully
No to a republic
Republicans understandably are disappointed that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has ruled out attempting to remove the crown from our civic system. But full marks to Albanese for correctly reading the room.
People overwhelming respect and admire King Charles and would be delighted to welcome visits from him and younger royals. More importantly, the voters genuinely fear the possibility of wrecking our superb constitutional arrangements.
David D’Lima, Sturt, SA
Goose, gander
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has inferred that Anthony Albanese is pursuing own interests in doing left politics on a taxpayer-funded trip. This is the woman who bought an investment property while on a taxpayer trip to Queensland.
Joan Segrave, Healesville
Rear-view mirror
Andrew Hastie (″Mr Conviction: Behind Andrew Hastie’s crusade to reboot the Liberal Party″, 27/9) is a man of contradictions. On the one hand, he laments a ″lost Australia″ while on the other, he says ″the world has changed and we must change with it″. He wants the return of car manufacturing and yet he joined the party that ended it. And we all know what a return to family values means: it’s code for ending LGBTQI rights and women’s right to choose.
I’m sure he will run to be leader of the opposition because conservative, nationalist, insular men like him believe that only they have the vision to lead Australia into the future, even if this vision is looking into the rear-view mirror.
Samantha Keir, East Brighton
Hastie’s Trumpian swerve
You’d think that after the result of our unofficial referendum on Trump-style politics at the federal election, Andrew Hastie would heed the mood of our country.
But no, his social media messaging, deliberately undermining his leader, Sussan Ley, illustrates his blind desire to drag his beleaguered party even further into the abyss.
Calling his colleagues ″muppets and cowards″, his call to bring back manufacturing, talk of promoting sovereignty and national identity, bemoaning supposed ″Western decay″, and labelling opponents as ″the radical left″, while vowing to return to ″family values″ – whatever that looks like – all sound eerily MAGA.
No thanks, Andrew. Too American for us.
May I suggest you adhere to our political tradition of prosecuting your policies in your party room, not resorting to a Trump-like post to attract a few ″likes″.
Craig Jory, Albury, NSW
American turmoil
Megan Herbert’s cartoon (Letters, 29/9) highlights the small-mindedness of President Donald Trump and his coterie of enabling sycophants. For the first time in the 249-year history of the United States, the government could well be described as a kleptocracy at best, and an idiocracy at worst.
The country is in turmoil. The petty targeting of perceived offenders beggars belief, as does the ridiculous policy-making.
The most recent example of Trump’s bumbling ways is the proposal to bail out American farmers using funds collected
from tariffs paid by American citizens because China isn’t
buying American soy beans because of the tariffs.
Nobody in the Trump administration is prepared to tell the president that the tariffs were a bad idea in the first place. Trump continues to lie daily. His cabinet backs up his lies. The rest of the world can only look on. This will not end well.
David Legat, South Morang
Battle stations, Portland
At last, a reaction from Donald Trump to the Russian war with Ukraine, its threats to Poland and Moldova, the killings in Gaza and China’s threats to Taiwan: He sends troops into Portland.
World geography not being my strong point, I quickly searched for Portland and found that there are 14 Portlands worldwide, none in any of the countries mentioned above. There are 12 Portlands in the US and two in Australia.
With Trump’s unpredictability, who knows which one it will be? Victoria and NSW, be on the alert.
Phil Mackenzie, Eaglemont
Free of hatred
Thank you, for publishing the letter from Rabbi Fred Morgan (29/9). Yes, what matters is whether intentions and actions are peacemaking. Labelling people as “left” or “right” doesn’t, of itself, tell us whether there is a peaceful heart seeking a peaceful world.
A peaceful heart is one which is seeking to be free of hatred and any desire to cause hurt in some resentful retaliation. That cycle goes nowhere good, as we have seen. As Gandhi and many have said: “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.“Demanding as it is, the more we all try to live with a peaceful intent, the better will be our shared future. Sustaining our intent is where our various spiritual practices of meditation can be beneficial.
Bishop Philip Huggins, Point Lonsdale
AND ANOTHER THING
Credit: Matt Golding
Trump world
Is the terrible behaviour directed at the European golfers and their families at the Ryder Cup a direct result of Donald Trump’s spiteful attitude towards his opponents? And this in the purist of sporting games with respect and honesty being paramount.
Ross Hosking, Blackwood, SA
New York golf public galleries’ lack of etiquette is clearly following in Donald Trump’s
footsteps. Pity.
Doug Perry, Mt Martha
America is a perfect example of what happens when you don’t support public education in a democracy: You get ruled by the illiterate.
Jeff Moran, Lake Wendouree
How can you qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize if you are at war with your own country?
Mark Tyquin, Parkdale
Age of reason
Hippocrates once said: ″There are, in fact, two things – science and opinion. The former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.″ Here’s to reason.
Ross McKeown, Hawthorn
″The Age of Reason″: Jean-Paul Sartre, eat your heart out.
John Rawson, Mernda
I realised that one of the tiny things in life that I love is reading Julia Baird’s insightful, cheerful, bright, and considered writings. A beautiful mind and crafty pen. Thank you, Julia!
Harry Prout, Heidelberg West
If we want a climate fit for humans, maybe we need a little more natural intelligence (“Renewables alone can’t shoulder the load of data centres expansion”, 29/9).
Lesley Walker, Northcote
AFL
Well done, Caroline Wilson: the sole “expert” who picked the winning team and the Norm
Smith medallist.
Duncan Robertson, Mont Albert
Thank you to the AFL and Mike Brady for Up there Cazaly, a song we can sing and understand, and to Baker Boy and his didgeridoo with which we can identify.
Shirley Purves, Gisborne
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