opinion
letters
letters December 19, 2020
Mungo’s sharp wit will be missed
Mungo MacCallum will be missed by all who know the joy of words (Editorial, “Mungo MacCallum 1941-2020”, December 12-18). His acerbic wit in dedicating to Spooner some of his cleverest crossword clues has been a constant source of enjoyment. I read...
letters December 12, 2020
I thank Rick Morton for his incisive article regarding the potential changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme assessment protocol (“Exclusive: The seven-year plot to undermine the NDIS”, December 5-11). As a mother of a participant and an...
letters December 5, 2020
I fully support the call by Leanne Smith and James Cockayne (“Why we need a feminist foreign policy”, November 29–December 4). But rather than spelling out how this would change the basic assumptions of Australia’s interactions with the world, they...
letters November 28, 2020
Karen Middleton’s two commentaries on our Afghanistan horrors (“How ‘prestige, status and power’ led to Australia’s war crimes” and “The politics of deploying the SAS”, November 21-27) vindicate that ancient wisdom: good armies and their moral...
letters November 21, 2020
Mike Seccombe asks “How do you cure a cancer like Rupert Murdoch?” (November 14-20) The short answer is by refusing to buy, or read online, his newspapers; and refusing to watch Sky News. As a scientist with broad interests, I could be labelled a...
letters October 3, 2020
Health system was already flawed
Along with his two recent front-page pieces on Victoria’s contact tracing failures and its healthcare outbreaks, Osman Faruqi’s “New Covid-19 cases among staff in hotel quarantine” (September 26–October 2) shines a much-needed light on how Victoria’...
letters September 26, 2020
Aged care should not be for profit
Rick Morton has done an excellent job unravelling the aged-care debacle (“The collapse of aged care”, September 12-18 and 19-25). It must be obvious by now that allowing the elderly to be cared for by people whose main aim is profit is neither...
letters September 19, 2020
Rick Morton’s article “The collapse of aged care (part one)” (September 12-18) identifies the late 1990s as when the system started to go pear-shaped. One major failing is when the ratio of registered nurses (RNs) to residents was abandoned in 1998...
letters September 12, 2020
Hailing those on the front line
Anna Krien’s brilliant, heart-wrenching piece (“24 hours on Melbourne’s lockdown front line”, September 5–11) was both informative and timely, reminding us of the incredible stresses and sacrifices of those thousands of workers turning out day and...
letters September 4, 2020
Rick Morton’s article (“Exclusive: Jobactive virus kickbacks top $500 million”, August 29–September 4) is yet another example – as if we need any – of the failure of privatisation, not to mention the potential for corruption that seems to be endemic...
letters August 29, 2020
Karen Middleton’s article (“Exclusive: 4115 assaults in immigration detention”, August 22-28) highlights Australia’s continued maltreatment of detainees. The behaviour of guards and detainees in detention centres, as identified by the Commonwealth...
