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Australia is facing a crisis of character, driven by the erosion of mutual respect and constructive debate. One only has to listen to Question Time to witness the appalling behaviour of our elected representatives. Instead of robust, intellectual policy discourse, the chamber routinely devolves into a theatre of personal insults, selective hearing, and outright hostility. It is a profound failure of parliamentary dialogue. If the people who lead this country want to foster a more respectful and cohesive society, they must begin by leading by example. After all, when our highest leaders behave like children in a school playground, we cannot be surprised when the rest of the nation follows suit.
Miranda Lewis, Camberwell
PM, take a stand on conduct
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese needs to make a definite statement about the need for the community to treat each other with common decency. Perhaps he could call a meeting of all members of parliament and facilitate an agreed process of how debate should occur in both houses such as personal attacks will not be tolerated, debates will be about the issues and members will refrain from personalising them, any members personalising debates will be removed from the chamber by the Speaker of the House with no exceptions.
We surely can’t be asking the public to ″lower the temperature″ of debate when our elected representatives aren’t being seen to do the same. It starts from the top.
Brendan Douglas, Alphington
Extend a helping hand of kindness
Thanks to your correspondent (Letters, 22/10) for their call for all of us to be kind. After learning of the news about Helen Haines I boarded a plane in Italy and arrived home in Melbourne and wanted to see the best in people and have hope for a new wave of respect and consideration for each other. We are a great country, which collectively is richer then past generations, but the fast pace of our digital transformation is crowding out kindness and our natural co-operative instincts. We can, and need to, do more for those in our community who live on the margins. But feeling left out, having less than you feel you deserve or having mental health vulnerabilities is no excuse for violence. We cannot wait for others to tell us how to be kind and respectful. The story we tell ourselves is the story we become.
Julianna Green, West Footscray
Time for a little reflection
It is a bit hypocritical for the PM, and for that matter politicians of all persuasions, to claim the moral high in urging discussions to be more respectful and less heated. One only has to observe Question Time in Canberra and other capitals. The insults, catcalling and interruptions of speeches is considered a ″treasured″ piece of the Westminster parliamentary system. Time for MPs to look in the mirror at their own behaviour before they lecture morality to their constituents.
Stephen Saks, Glen Iris
Assume the best in all? What if?
Our adversarial political system, our civic culture, our digital environment and, sadly, our psyche, all incline us to a Machiavellian approach to government where we suspect politicians, or at least most of those of the party with which we disagree, of being self-interested, cynical, wrong-headed malign opportunists who deserve contempt and combat. I do not claim to have been immune to this. What if, instead, we took a Pollyanna-ish view, where, naively, we assume that most politicians are basically concerned citizens with good intentions, who are subject to the same conflicts, temptations, and human frailties as the rest of us, and who deal, as best they can, with the challenges of putting their beliefs and values into play in a complex world of wicked problems that are almost impossible to understand and solve?
I suspect the undoubted risks of living in a naively forgiving society may well be less than those of today’s cynical, over-excited and conflict-riven one.
Michael Liffman, Middle Park
THE FORUM
Community first
The growth in data centres with their huge appetite for energy and water has occurred with minimal community consultation and apparently a lack of credible information (″$3 billion power pole shock″, 22/10). Community anger and distrust is believable and understandable. That these data centres are being courted by government as an economic advantage seems duplicitous when we still have insufficient information regarding their energy requirements and the potential hazards of co-location among housing and in inner-city suburbs.
It’s as though they’ve appeared overnight and now we just have to deal with them. Governments at all levels have to consider both the social and economic cost, otherwise all the benefits, again, go to the corporations and not to us, the community.
Denise Stevens, St Kilda
Power to the people
The real fight against the AI industry building data centres in local communities around the world is being taken on not by submissive governments but by real people whose lives and amenities are actually impacted. Keep up the fight.
Peter Randles, Pascoe Vale South
City’s quality of life
As a social and urban planner of 50 years’ experience, I reject former New York mayor Bill de Blasio’s “solution” for Melbourne: build as many high-rise buildings as possible and “as tall as you can go” in inner Melbourne.
Do Melburnians want Melbourne to be Melbourne or somewhere else? I would hate to have to look back in 50 years and say “Ah, remember when we destroyed the essence and fabric of a beautiful city?“
Steve Bracks is right: Melbourne has outer suburbs. Accept them, stop punishing their residents and service them properly. Give them the equal of inner suburbs. Six major urban fringe hubs with top quality medical, educational, social and community services, retail, commerce, leisure and recreation, and jobs are what is needed (not to mention our dozen or so even more neglected regional cities and towns). Both sets of hubs are already well on their way: build on them.
Metro fringe hubs will make Melbourne even so much better at what it really does brilliantly: quality suburban living, as attested to by The Age’s own series penned by residents of suburban Melbourne.
Ken Marriott, Newport
Housing solutions
Ben Carroll has lurched to the past (″Labor bets on building homes for first buyers″, 22/10). In the 1950s, Victoria built tens of thousands of homes, whole suburbs, of well-built, well-located public housing in places like Hampton, Heidelberg, Bellfield, Broadmeadows, Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and more. Quality rental housing for working Australians.
Victoria then spent the 1960s and early 1970s selling those same houses to sitting tenants. Great for the buyers who benefited from the subsequent capital gains, bad for the future generations of low-income families denied access to these affordable rental homes. Housing built on government-owned land should be used to house the tens of thousands of low-income families on public housing waiting lists desperate to access stable, well-located affordable accommodation.
Craig Horne, Fitzroy North
Public assets gone
Unfortunately for Jess Wilson, preceding governments have sold off most of Victoria’s assets. She may actually have to provide stewardship of a responsible government, so that Jeffed is not replaced by Jessed.
Mike Pantzopoulos, Ashburton
Misplaced faith
The Victorian Liberal Party’s faith in privatisation is touching. However, as a privatisation agnostic I have yet to see evidence that privatising services delivers better outcomes for anyone except those who profit from their initial purchase of government-built expertise.
Jenni Colwill, Preston
Tax reform for the young
I love Ross Gittins. However, for the record I have never supported increasing the GST (Comment, 21/10). I admire Josh Frydenberg too; but why on earth should working people be paying more tax when they are struggling to pay their bills now?
The income tax compensation, like the last GST, is nearly always the tax reduction they should have had through indexation. It will be a mirage. I support real tax reform, indexation at the lower end and new top marginal tax rates that do not provide double or triple advantage to high-income earners.
That’s right. Just like the Keating tax reforms which were real.
Like Gittins, I don’t mind paying more tax but not for AUKUS and hundreds of billions of wasted dollars. Whether people like it or not, real tax reform is normally and rightfully connected with some level of fiscal discipline.
The best way to look after the young is to devise a tax system for them. Give them the advantages of a new system that those reaping the advantage of the old cannot access. Stop loading up the young with a burden that is both unfair and unprincipled. HECS-HELP now falls into that category.
Bill Kelty, Secretary, Australian Council of Trade Unions, 1983-2000, Eltham
Move on WA take
Kudos to Ross Gittins’ article on increasing GST, but surely another point to address in the GST redistribution would be to readjust the formula so that Western Australia’s politically motivated unfair GST carve-out is rectified.
Ron Townsend, Mount Eliza
Other things on the mind
Not a month ago, for the first time, I ran my groceries through a self-service checkout. I packed them and walked away. As I was walking to the car, it struck me, I don’t think I paid for them. I returned to the store and apologised profusely. The attendee was gracious and said, well at least you came back. Many don’t. I can completely understand Ben Carroll’s lapse in memory, not paying for his petrol. For heaven’s sake, he must have a million things on his mind. He’s running the state. I’m retired and was concerned about the rain that day disrupting my walk on the beach.
Frank Flynn, Cape Paterson
GST disadvantages
There are more disadvantages to increasing the GST than are being considered. It’s a discriminatory tax, just as a flat income tax would be. Low-income earners would pay the same as high-income earners on future purchases. The cost of housing would increase, at a time when house construction is in rapid decline. Far more productive would be to level a super profit tax on the banks and mining companies, ensure all big businesses pay the appropriate tax, and address transfer pricing engaged by many of our large organisations. These are measures that would be fairer, not inflationary and not add to the cost of living many are experiencing now.
Barry Buskens, Beaumaris
Cost of security
Those of us concerned about the safety of the 226 federal and 599 state and territory politicians are living in la-la land if we think that 24-hour security can be provided for them. We should take into account that while there is no publicly available figure for the 24-hour security cost for all 226 federal MPs, in 2024-25 alone the Australian Federal Police spent $523 million on protection for politicians and government buildings.
Eric Palm, Gympie, Qld
Trump’s strategy?
As the US mid-term elections draw closer, with the result leaning towards the Democrats after two years of Trump mismanagement and rule by decree, Donald Trump suddenly “discovers” trillions of dollars of misused funds by the Democrats. Could this be the pretext for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and claim a national emergency to cancel the election?
Peter Russo, Brunswick West
Levy the polluters
I’m no economist (“The growing cost of food inflation”, 22/10). But I know that the Make Polluters Pay Alliance says climate disasters are costing the equivalent of $3800 per Australian household per year. And economist Dr Timothy Neal has calculated that we have probably individually suffered a more-than $20,000 hit to our annual economic output thanks to global warming damage around the planet.
It must be time for a federal climate compensation fund levy on coal and gas exports. If not now, then when?
Lesley Walker, Northcote
Change city voting
At the Melbourne Assembly, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Nick Reece, stated that “we need to return to good governance in Victoria”. I agree. Does that include addressing the inequality in the voting system for the City of Melbourne whereby businesses get two votes to residents one? This is not what democracy looks like. Sydney had this system but it was abolished in 2023 and apparently Sydney survived. So why do we still have it?
Jenny Macmillan, Clifton Hill
Yeah, right, good point
Your correspondent (Letters, 21/10) commented that only in maths do two negatives make a positive. Spoken language can do what maths can’t: have two positives make a negative.
Yeh/yes. Right.
Yes/yeh + Right = a negative, especially with a raised eyebrow.
Bernadette Cheesman, Wendouree Village
Take responsibility
It’s time for anonymity on social media to be abolished. It would be one step in making people take responsibility for what they say.
Vicki Serl, The Basin
It’s so ‘crosstrating’
And so say all of us young lad (Letters, 22/10). The deteriorating state of society “crosstrates” me no end. I wish we could create a kinder world for your generation to inherit.
Jane Ross, San Remo
AND ANOTHER THING
Politics
It’s a good time for the whole country to stop watching the news, take a deep breath, go outside and smell the roses.
Eric Kopp, Flinders
After listening to David Pocock’s address at The National Press Club, I want to live in the Australia that David Pocock wants to live in.
Ron Mather, Melbourne
In terms of social division and the fomenting of societal unrest, just remind me of which political party is advocating the jailing of former political leaders before Christmas.
Ross Corben, Knoxfield
Furthermore
Donald Trump has been played by Vladimir Putin just as American voters have been played by Trump. Both Putin and Trump are hell bent on power at any cost.
Paul Chivers, Box Hill North
Trump, always wanting to make a “deal” before the mid-terms, sells Zelensky and Ukraine down the river. Putin must be chuffed.
Greg Curtin, Nunawading
I’m disappointed to note the recent announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature. I thought Donald Trump would have been a certainty for his fiction.
Ronald Burnstein, Richmond
Thanks to Elon Musk’s decision to slow down Starlink, Ukraine’s war with Russia was seriously compromised, resulting in the potential loss of lives and territory to an aggressive Russia.
Chris Burgess, Port Melbourne
If we are obliged to adjust the GST why can’t we extend it rather than increase it?
Bronwen Murdoch, South Melbourne
If it’s a fait accompli that extra power is required via large poles for data centres, then let those who need the power pay for it to be put underground, along with power
for the community along that route.
Bruce Cormack, Kilsyth
Finally
Maybe Premier Ben Carroll forgot to pay for his fuel because he was distracted by the potholes he had encountered as he drove (CBD, 22/10).
Matthew Hamilton, Kew