Your editorial ("Why is the real estate market not front and centre of the election campaign?", canberratimes.com.au, 24 January) incisively points out that Australia's "real estate woes... are the most under-debated issue of the upcoming federal election".
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It is worthwhile adding that the problem of runaway land prices (with unimproved land values doubling to $8 trillion nationally in the last decade) is inextricably linked with the crisis of stagnant wages growth.
The general level of wages in an economy is determined by the ease or difficulty with which labour (and capital - which is just stored up labour) can gain access to land for productive purposes.
For nearly a decade the federal Coalition governments appear to have deliberately pursued policies that drive up land prices and suppress wages. We have an economy that, more than ever before, rewards speculation and usury far more than honest and productive toil.
Rising land prices have undermined the value of labour and made it much more difficult to build homes and to engage in productive enterprise. The Morrison government may win a scattering of votes in the forthcoming election from home owners or mortgagors placated or conned by the illusion of wealth flowing from rapidly rising property prices.
But the large majority of home owners should see that they have been handed a very hollow victory. All that has really changed is they are now relatively more privileged than young people stuck in the family home, renters or the homeless.
We need to level the field by lifting taxation off the backs of workers and collecting the rent of land for public revenue. Will Labor rise to the challenge?
Ronald E Johnson, Charnwood
Avoidable deaths
My father died from the effects of COVID last Thursday night in a country nursing home. Fortunately, I was able to be with him for a day before he died.
Your subsequent story recorded there were 46 deaths last Thursday. I wonder if my dad was included in the count or if he might have been the 47th given the location and logistics involved in collating information from around the state.
Could his death from COVID-19 have been avoided? He only received his booster shot last week, over six months from his second vaccination in June last year. He might still be alive had the booster been available earlier.
This one, to some, inconsequential death is a stark reminder of how the unseemly race to open up the economy has left a trail of deaths, overworked and stressed nursing home staff and a regional hospital that could not admit my severely dehydrated father for want of a bed in the COVID ward.
Philip Leeson, Wamboin, NSW
Proof positive?
I'm confused. Throughout the nearly two years of the pandemic I've not had to take a PCR test, though I understand that these are personalised and the results come with evidence of when the test was taken and by whom.
RATs, however, are a different matter. When my wife and I each took a RAT a couple of weeks back as a precautionary measure (one could say "out of an abundance of caution" but I hate that phrase) there was nothing on the the test apparatus that identified when the test was taken or by whom.
I did take a photo as "evidence" and immediately shared that with friends and family. I still have that photo in my photo library. So, what's to stop this "evidence" being shared, used and re-used to sidestep the various government and business imposed requirements for a negative RAT result?
Keith Hill, Isaacs
A big call Crispin
It takes a certain kind of self-centred, arrogant person to declare that anyone who holds a differing view to his own is either ignorant, racist, or probably both. That is exactly what Crispin Hull has done in his "A truly national day wouldn't have racist undertones" (canberratimes.com.au, January 25).
Not only is he dismissive of any other view, but he is rude and churlish in attacking any alternative. He is also just plain wrong when he says January 26 was not a nation-defining moment or relevant to states other than NSW. Quite clearly January 26 is the seminal date in Australian history, as it was the genesis of the nation and defined its development over the following 250 years.
Our language, our legal, educational and political systems all derive from that arrival of British influence.
Even the other colonies were born and developed through that first settlement. To argue that the commencement of British settlement on the east coast didn't lead to the emergence of those other colonies is plainly wrong; just as wrong as it would be to suggest that Californians or Texans wouldn't celebrate the fourth of July because they weren't one of the 13 colonies at the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. All nations evolve and develop, but they invariably started somewhere. The Australia we have now started on January 26, 1788.
Mr Hull might do well to accept that others have equally valid opinions which also deserve to be heard without petty and crude name-calling.
Kym MacMillan, O'Malley
No united voice
James Blackwell ("New Republican push distracts from real constitutional issues" (canberratimes.com.au, January 21) shares a widespread fantasy when he claims the absence of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament "causes disparity".
What specific constitutional amendments could assuage the vexation of colonial history, appalling mortality rates, incarceration rates and so forth?
The vandalisation of Old Parliament House and consequent quarrels between the perpetrators and the Tent Embassy should alert even the most starry-eyed to the illusion of a unified "voice". Rather than divide us on ethnic and cultural lines the constitution should remove all such stipulations and leave us to differ in the best way known to humanity; as a democracy of equals.
Peter Robinson, Ainslie
Looking into the abyss
As a deeply divided world stands on the precipice of a nuclear showdown, the US, Russia, NATO and Ukraine must step back from a war that can never be won and that must never be fought ("Does the world want another Crimean war?", canberratimes.com.au, January 25).
During the Cuban missile crisis, President John F Kennedy secretly agreed to remove US nuclear missiles from Turkey in return for the Soviet removal of its missiles in Cuba.
He demonstrated for all time that only through compromise was this same divided world able to avert the most dangerous crisis in human history.
So with President Vladimir Putin talking about the ability to launch Russia's "Tsirkon" submarine-based hypersonic missiles off the US coastline with nuclear payloads that can reach Washington in just five minutes, can a compromise solution still be found?
The answer lies in how seriously we take these words from the late Reverend Dr Martin Luther King: "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin (Former ADF chaplain), Rivett
Desperate measures
Ukraine would welcome IT and cyber security assistance from Australia? Seriously? From the nation that has outsourced it all and ended up unable to run an online census, that has had almost every other major new government site crash under predictable demand, and which routinely has major health service and bureaucracy data breaches and thefts sensationally in the news?
Just last month, the personal details of 80,000 South Australian public servants were stolen in a cyber attack.
From the frequency of successful attacks on us, we seem to be a preferred "international hacking 101" training ground for tyros needing to demonstrate basic proficiency. And all our "Australian Cyber Security Centre" is able to do each time is point fingers after the fact.
For that matter, remember the crash of the federal MyGov website upon its activation, in 2020? And how the minister "responsible" for it, Stuart Robert, falsely blamed a foreign cyber attack to conceal the actual inadequacy of the IT?
With cyber allies like Australia, the Ukraine doesn't need any enemies.
Alex Mattea, Sydney
Democracy's defenders
Thanks to Crispin Hull, Jack Waterford, Mark Kenny, Nicholas Stuart and others for urging us to defend democracy in Australia, most recently with Crispin Hull's "Independents could clean house" (canberratimes.com.au, January 18).
Hull called for an effective anti-corruption commission, repeal of the Community Development Grants law, giving Parliament the exclusive power to commit troops to overseas conflicts and reform of the system of political donations. All of the above policies are areas that the Greens support.
Although independents could play an important role in necessary reform the Greens are already working for these reforms.
Pamela Collett, Narrabundah
TO THE POINT
BAD INVESTMENT
I gather a Chinese businessman bought Scott Morrison's WeChat account because he thought ScoMo had lots of followers. I beg to differ.
John Howarth, Weston
RIGHT TO BE CRAZY
A rather prim David Roth (Letters, January 25) tells us that, unlike Amanda Vanstone, he doesn't question the sanity of those with different opinions. Some of us do it all the time. What we don't question is their right to be insane.
Bill Deane, Chapman
HIGH VISIBILITY
So Grace Tame states "The spotlight is not what I enjoy, if I could I would definitely take that back". Yet she is scheduled to speak at the press club. Seems a bit dubious
John Coochey, Chisholm
SHE'LL BE APPLES
Don't panic. The peak is over and every Australian will have access to a RAT by the next election.
Ed Gaykema, Kiama
RECIPIENTS, NOT WINNERS
Already this week in The Canberra Times we have had a former Australia Day award recipient described as a winner. Award recipients are chosen on merit. Please don't describe them as winners.
Pamela Fawke, Dunlop
RISIBLE SOPHISTRY
Frank Breglec (Letters, January 25) says deriding Djokovic as "No-vaxx" is racist. That's risible sophistry. "Serbian" is not a race. Australians enjoy a robust public culture of sledging.
Peter Stanley, Dickson
FAT SHAMING?
Was Douglas Mackenzie (Letters, January 24) trying to be funny by commenting that the reason George Christensen MP was "hard to overlook" was because "there is rather a lot of him"? Is this an example of a troll fat shaming a person because of their body shape? Would his letter have been published if he had been making the same comment about a female MP?
Tony Falla, Ngunnawal
WHERE'S MY RAT?
After the high priest of the Ten Gallon Hat Club said we were all hoarding RATs I went to my bathroom cupboard to look for my hoarded supply. But, alas, it was bare.
Rohan Goyne, Evatt
A VOTE CATCHER
Scott Morrison's decision to provide free rapid antigen tests to concession card holders is more about election posturing than delivering a real health initiative. This is very likely to create a run on our limited supplies by the "worried well" in the interests shoring up election votes.
Peter Gilbert, Cook
A GOOD IDEA
Before we start seeing RAT kits for resale on eBay government funded kits should have a notice printed on them saying "not for resale".
Mokhles k Sidden, Strathfield, NSW
A NIFTY NEOLOGISM
Poor old Australia Post; they meant well. In rightfully congratulating Dylan Alcott someone came up with another new word; "inclusivity". That's not in my dictionary but inclusion is. You can't get any more politically correct than that anyway.
Anthony Bruce, Gordon
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