Crispin Hull's column ("Beware the scare campaigns as election approaches", canberratimes.com.au, February 16) brings the welcome news we need not detain future asylum seekers in places like Manus or Nauru.
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The Australian navy has already stopped the boats by ensuring that "virtually all are returned to Indonesia".
It would be lovely to believe this; but the tow-back policy was not in fact such a game changer. It did work at first, but soon the boats found countermeasures. Towed boats often began to sink, forcing the navy to take the passengers on board, which placed them effectively on Australian soil.
The refugee convention gives us no obligation to rescue refugees from camps abroad, but makes it very difficult to remove asylum seekers once in Australia.
As the navy got quicker at boarding boats and preventing sabotage, the scuttling of boats became more blatant.
Now they often began to sink as soon as a navy ship heaves in sight – as numerous media reports have mentioned.
It must be frightening to take a voyage knowing you would end up in the water and depend on a quick rescue by the navy; yet so long as this was a reliable route to an asylum facility on Australian soil, the boats kept coming, and kept sinking.
Tow-back alone, without offshore processing, did not stop the boats.
Chris O'Connor, Dickson
Spending says it all
There are a few significant expenditures by the current government that expose its very poor economic management.
First is the $500 million it is prepared to spend on the Nelson/Stokes War Memorial rather than directing that money towards the physically and psychologically damaged warriors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan (for the past almost 20 years).
It could do far more good for those returned service men and women than a few dioramas and an edifice that will inevitably detract from the current memorial.
And with the $400 million remaining after assisting the veterans, it could do wonders for the NDIS, education, health, science and social services.
It could actually provide services for the people who elected it to provide those services. Next comes the extravagance of funding advertising to frighten the electorate into re-electing it at the impending election.
Again the money could have been more effectively directed into areas of need rather than those areas of its own desires. The government should be reminded often that "it's not about it" and its singular quest for ongoing power; it's about the people, their needs, health, education and services.
It's about providing opportunities and a fair go for all.
It's time to go, ScoMo!
W. Book, Hackett
Bunch of prima donnas
Scott Morrison and his acolytes have been carrying on like prima donnas who have received a bad review.
All the finger pointing at Bill Shorten cannot disguise the fact that Mr Morrison's government was defeated by a majority of the house.
The vital numbers came from a crossbench of independents, some of whom had once voted for the Coalition.
The hysterical way in which this defeat has been received by Mr Morrison and his ministers would shame even our most egotistical sporting figures.
Now we, the long-suffering taxpayers, are told we have to cough up many more millions to reopen Christmas Island to assuage the damaged ego of our prima donna and his supporters.
Enough is enough. Get over it, and start paying attention to the Murray-Darling, and the banks, and all the other issues that are important instead of confecting a giant scare campaign.
Try a role as nation builder instead.
You might win some applause for that.
K. Calvert, Downer
Enough is enough
The refugees on Nauru and Manus have been incarcerated for nearly six years for no reason. They are now so ill they must be evacuated to Australia and helped yet some are envious? Perhaps the ignorant cowards would like to spend the best years of their own lives in detention on Nauru.
Marilyn Shepherd, Angaston, SA
Diplomacy trashed
One of the bulwarks of Australia's border security is well-managed political and diplomatic relations with Indonesia.
Scott Morrison shot those bonds to pieces with his ill-timed and intemperate decision to propose the relocation of our embassy from Tel Aviv.
Consequently, Morrison's imprudence and his impetuosity will ensure less than prompt responses from Indonesia to our overtures on the possible resumption of people smuggling.
However, Morrison will dismiss any responsibility for such a situation having developed. He will be hell-bent on manufacturing an event to justify his rabid rhetoric similar to the Howard government's "children overboard" and baseless assertions of WMD in Iraq.
Can we expect an "event" along the lines of a rubber ducky with obliging asylum seekers from Manus launched from a naval craft just north of Christmas Island accompanied by a government war cry "We told you so!"?
Patrick Robertson, Rivett
Scaremongering tactics
I personally thank Dr Kerryn Phelps for engineering the medivac bill to address some humanitarian issues Australia has been ignoring for a good while.
This, of course, might have made it difficult for her to be elected again should she contest. It has also created a problem for Labor.
The Morrison government is closely following Howard government tactics by engaging in scaremongering activities like opening of Christmas Island detention centre.
If any boat arrives we could point our fingers straight to the Morrison government because it is encouraging people smugglers to come.
This is a desperate act of a government lagging in opinion polls.
Sankar Kumar Chatterjee, Evatt
Means-test initiative
Andrew Leigh (Letters, February 14) states "80 per cent of the franking credit benefits accrue to the wealthiest 20 per cent of retirees".
So does this mean 20 per cent of the benefits accrue to the poorest 80 per cent of retirees? If so, why not means/income test this initiative like nearly everything else and leave the poorest retirees alone?
Peter Byrne, Chapman
Missing an opportunity
Is the current mass extinction of insects (2.5 per cent a year) the only event that Scott Morrison has not blamed on Bill Shorten, and if not, why not?
Adrian Gibbs, Yarralumla
How to boost a pension
Much of the debate around Labor's proposal to cease the refund of franking credits (with exemptions for full or part age pensioners) has been about unfairness to older self-funded retirees on relatively modest incomes.
Professor Deborah Ralston has referred to a self-funded retiree couple with $1 million in shares whose annual superannuation income would fall from $60,000 to $42,000. By contrast, a full age pensioner couple with super fund shares worth $300,000, who meet the terms of Labor's exemption, would get $53,000 annually.
If Labor is elected, Ralston's couple should investigate a new option they could find preferable to making riskier investments to maintain their lifestyle.
The government's Pension Loans Scheme (PLS) will soon allow anyone of retirement age to borrow an annual income stream against their home equity. It is effectively a reverse mortgage at a better rate of interest.
As explained in Fact Sheet 3.3 of the 2018 Budget papers, the income stream is capped at a fixed proportion of the age pension, but is generally not taxable or means-tested for age pension purposes. Ralston's couple could sell $700,000 of their shares and increase their home equity.
They could then use the PLS to borrow almost $18,000 annually. Having reduced their means-testable assets, if they then qualify to become full age pensioners, and retain their remaining shares, the couple's annual income would rise to $71,000.
The expanded PLS is no random gift from government — ultimately, it is a vehicle for limiting the government's subsidy to home-based aged care recipients.
Paul Feldman, Macquarie, ACT
Hope for Menindee fish
Recently I came across a ray of hope for those Menindee fish still living, from Professor Martin Mallen-Cooper, who advocates small continued flows for the Darling River.
The professor and others may not be aware of a major research insight into how the Darling River recharges underground water and retains flows in dry times. In 2012 Geoscience Australia discovered how the Darling recharges aquifers: "A completely new conceptual model for the Darling Floodplain hydrological system (including the Lower Darling Alluvium and Western Murray Porous Rock Groundwater Management Units) has been developed."
Recharge to local aquifers is sourced rapidly from the river during banker flows and floods. The recharge is non-linear and simple to re-engineer by changing flow regimes.
This insight is revolutionary and has been ignored.
We need a river flow of around nine gigalitres a day to begin recharging these aquifers and, when healthy, this water can then keep the river flowing in drought, irrespective of surface water stores.
The current Murray Darling Basin Plan has three relevant mistakes.
1) Dryland rainfall is assumed to recharge these aquifers (99 per cent wrong).
2) Aquifer to the river discharge is assumed as zero.
3) Leakage from river to the aquifer is assumed zero.
A new pulse-flow regime for the Darling River is feasible, together with leaky weirs over "losing reaches" (we have one already called Lake Wetherell).
Dr Peter Main, Higgins
Labor's SMSF tax attack
On the matter of franking credits, I would like to pick up on a number of Andrew Leigh's claims in his recent letter on this topic (Andrew Leigh, Letters, February 15).
Pensioners may be exempt from Labor's policy, but self-funded retirees will not be, including those with modest share portfolios producing modest income, income that will be pared back under Labor.
To say that the policy only affects those receiving refunds who have not paid tax is false. Investors who receive dividends also receive franking credits attached to those dividends, independent of their marginal tax rate. And the receipt of a franking credit implies that you have paid tax.
The claim that under Labor's plan no one will pay more tax, is incorrect.
By taking away the use of their franking credits, those on marginal rates less than the company tax rate will have effectively paid 30 per cent tax on their dividends.
The statement that refunding franking credits effectively renders the corporate tax take to be nil, is incorrect.
High marginal rate shareholders pay top-up tax on the company tax levied on their dividends. Foreign investors don't receive franking credits. And profits not distributed as dividends are taxed at the company rate.
And saying no other nation has refundable franking credits is irrelevant. Other nations have more attractive tax arrangements in other areas, for example tax deductibility of owner occupied housing loans. Tax arrangements in other countries need to be considered holistically when making comparisons.
If the current policy is so flawed, why has it been untouched for 18 years? The ALP wants to raise revenue from retirees with SMSFs who have a high income/low taxable income status. They can't attack super funds because it would cost votes. They have reverted to lazy policy the electorate doesn't understand.
Tony Dillon, Melbourne, Vic
Return artefacts for study
Rohan Goyne (Letters, February 15) has proposed the repatriation of artefacts "looted" and now in the Australian Museum in Sydney, among other places.
If the goal is to enable more complete study and understanding, this could be worthwhile.
Claiming possession of an artefact of whatever provenance, curiosity or antiquity does not guarantee the adequacy of other important considerations such as expertise or safety, however well-meaning the intent.
Blind obedience to a particular policy does not guarantee good outcomes. The 125,000 cuneiform tablets now in the British Museum and slowly being translated are, I would suggest, far better off there than in Iraq.
Of course, they are only humble clay tablets in a poor state and it is very likely no one will be demanding them back, whatever their real worth may be.
Roy Darling, Florey
TO THE POINT
BIG ISSUES IGNORED
The government mounts a "boats" scare campaign over a humane refugee measure, the medivac bill supported by Labor and the crossbench, and electoral support switches to the government. Meanwhile, the fact the Morrison government has no policy on climate change, unlike Labor and the Greens, and that our country is in deep trouble from global warming seems to elude the voting public.
Rod Holesgrove, O'Connor
SENSE MISSING
America's strategy on Iran as enunciated by Vice-President Pence is not worth a penny.
Mike Quirk, Garran
CHILDISH BEHAVIOUR
The encounter between the staffer and the politician, especially having been caught on camera, confirms what many people have been thinking for some time. Then the senator admits to spreading blood on a door even though he "couldn't remember it". The behaviour of many who work up "on the hill" seems to be nothing more than that of children.
Geoff Barker, Flynn
PUT THE WORD OUT
Has ScoMo considered using listings with Booking.Com or Trivago to attract more asylum seekers to Christmas Island?
K. Davis, Pearce
KEEPING MUM
The Australian government cannot be trusted to tell Australians the truth about asylum seekers and people smugglers.
What happened to the 17 "asylum seekers" who breached border security to land near the Daintree River in August, 2018? Why have no charges been laid against people smugglers anywhere in recent years?
Trevor Wilson, Chifley
NOT VERY MULTICULTURAL
Surely this is a joke! A multicultural festival where only locally produced alcohol could be sold from the commercial stalls?
Anne Waight, Macquarie
WRONG PRIORITIES
Scott Morrison must cease his cruel politicking around the plight of refugees and asylum seekers immediately and redirect the $1.4 billion he is proposing to waste on reopening the Christmas Island Detention Centre to grants for the survival and restoration of flood and drought-ravaged land holdings and communities in outback Queensland.
Sue Currie, Northcote
POPE NAILED IT
Pope's on the money with his latest cartoon, there's plenty of red faces just waiting for the gong (Forum, February 16, p1).
Allan Gibson, Cherrybrook, NSW
SPELLING'S ILLS
Thank you for running with English and not American in your spelling of "medivac" (not medevac) as some tabloids have done.
M. Moore, Bonython
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