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Readers Write: You tell us your views and your comments

By Readers Write - posted Tuesday, 26 October 2004


The election, the death of Derrida and a sweet solution for the sugar-farmer’s scourge, the grasshopper… these are some of the subjects that transfixed our correspondents this week.


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Witty James, aka Lord Warburton of Warburton Heights, Woollaaahra [sic] outs himself as a capital ‘C’ Conservative…

“As a capital "C" Conservative, I hold certain things sacred. Call me an old fuddy duddy, but I still believe in Conserving what's left of our natural environment. Tell me I'm a stick-in-the-mud, but I still believe in Conserving decent levels of public education and universal access to tertiary education. Say I belong to the last century, but I still believe in Conserving a strong, independent national broadcaster.”

“Tell me I'm dreaming, but I still believe in Conserving our native heritage and the traditional relationship of the original owners with their lands. Say I'm hopelessly passé, but I still believe in Conserving universal access to a decent public health system.”

Writing before the election, Lord Warburton was about to cast his ballot against the “Liberal” party in the (as it turned out) vain hope of a “better class of ruling class”.

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Phillip Young is articulate in his support of Family First and he takes issue with the media’s portrayal of that party in a letter originally addressed to The Australian.

“Count the number of derogatory references that have been made about Family First in The Australian and ask if it is time an opportunity was given for a slight balancing of the scales before the election? A conspiracy? No way. But I do think it is another example of lazy, cheap shot journalism. I think it is lazy journalism to follow the leaders around like sheep - being told what and where to go every day by a political party and not getting the real stories out there in the community.

Why? It will make the party leaders nervous because you are not bowing down to every spin they put on issues of the day, so you do what you are told. When I read your sarcastic labelling of Family First as right wing, extreme right wing, church backed, AOG backed, I do have to ask, "What IS your problem?"

Why should people who happen to choose to have a go, use their own resources to be part of the democratic process have to crawl under a rock because elements of the southern media are bleating hysterically?”


Mimi Zilliacus, a student of history and politics at the University of New South Wales is despondent about the election result. A far cry from the exhilaration she experienced at Sydney’s recent “Rally against the Lies of the Howard Government”.

“I don't know anyone who voted for Howard,” she writes. “And herein lies the point, we need to find a way to educate the masses, those people who didn't go to the rally, and don't go to any rallies. The cab drivers, labourers, and ordinary Australians…

“I need to do something, but…I feel powerless. There has to be something that I can do. Got any ideas? Australia is supposed to be a democracy but democracy doesn't work without a well-informed public. I want help to come up with a way to educate the public, and especially those people who see "left" as being a bad thing.”


From Queensland, Richard Jeffreys heralded the election’s “outstanding result” but got stuck into the Australian Electoral Commission…

“Totally disorganised. Staff could not answer questions directed to them, the web site did not list many of the pre-poll locations, on one particular day I could not reach their office as the lines were jammed.”

And when the AEC bleated about a 50 per cent increase in demand for postal votes - it was obvious to anyone that “more and more people are working weekends - thousands upon thousands outside of their own electorates and do not have enough time during their lunch break to stand in line”.


David Mason writes in support of national self-reliance in response to Michael Wesley’s The Australia US Alliance

“The Alliance is good strategy for Australia, given our own lack of strategic leverage, but it breeds a national syndrome of psychological dependence, which has been a root cause of the failure of successive Australian governments to under-invest in defence as a percentage of GDP/GNP.”


N E Hanratty was disappointed by Greg Barnes’ review of Richard Wolin's book, The Seduction of Reason.

“Barnes does not attempt to examine, or even question, the validity or accuracy of Wolin's statements. Yet on this account, Wolin's book contains page after page of misrepresentations, cheap shots and cliches long discredited.”

As just one example: “it is well-accepted that the so-called "moral relativism" of Derrida (that "one political 'decision' seems as good as another") is a tired, inaccurate distortion of the work of a humane and brilliant man”.


Finally, new subscriber John Clarkson has a novel and non-toxic recipe to help the sugar farmers, “Use a sugar solution - 50 per cent sugar 50 per cent water - to spray grasshoppers in flight. It sticks their wings together and they fall to the ground. The birds can still eat them”.

(Yum, sugarcoated grasshoppers, what a crunchy taste treat…But I dread to think what it will do sunbaked on to the car duco!)

Maybe it would work on pesky politicians, too!

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Article edited by Margaret-Ann Williams.
If you'd like to be a volunteer editor too, click here.



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