'Welfare cheats'
The Howard government has spent the past decade misrepresenting the facts to justify frequent "crackdowns on welfare cheats". There are around 3000 convictions for welfare fraud per year, or 0.05% of the total number of Australians who receive at least one type of Centrelink payment. That figure has not changed for at least 20 years.
During the Coalition's first term, nine of its members were forced to resign through the rorting of their travel allowances. That represents 8% of the government's seats in both houses, 160 times the rate of social security fraud. We were assured that changes to the rules would close off access to travel rorts. Yet, Australia's wealthiest politician, Malcolm Turnbull, and Labor leader and multimillionaire Kevin Rudd receive $175 per night, tax free to stay at Canberra apartments owned by their wives?
Politicians need frequent reminders that their salaries, expenses, staff and lotto-size superannuation pay outs are funded from the same source as welfare payments; i.e., Australian taxpayers. It comes as no surprise that there is bipartisan support for a system whereby the politicians' package is determined by the so called "independent" Remuneration Tribunal appointed by the government and funded by the taxpayers. Any government serious about welfare reform will turn the screws on parliamentary entitlement schemes and crack down on the rorters in glass houses.
Ron Baker
Eight Mile Plains, Qld
CIA torture
How come the CIA can send terrorist suspects to Syria under extraordinary rendition for torture, while President Bush refuses to talk to the Syrians about resolving the Iraq fiasco? Is torture the only tie that binds?
Gareth Smith
Byron Bay, NSW
Hicks
Messrs Howard, Downer and Ruddock surely don't expect us to believe that they have suddenly become compassionate by offering Terry Hicks an airfare to Guantanamo Bay! What a cynical election year ploy and attempt to con the electorate yet again. You can bet your life that David Hicks will not see much of his father, let alone be able to speak with him in private, or receive any family comfort or support. How can our federal government allow our supposed closest ally to try one of our citizens in a kangaroo court where Hicks' lawyers will not even see some of the evidence against him? How can this be fair and just when the jailers are also the judge and jury? In my opinion this federal government has reached its "use by date"!
Alex Hodges
Birdwood, SA
East Timor
I wonder what East Timor would look like today if the Australian government, Howard and his clique, had decided to actually help East Timor, after its decades of trauma, as so many groups of citizens around this country, especially in Victoria, did.
I remember Fran Kelly badgering the Cuban ambassador about 300 doctors his country had sent to East Timor, and phoning up the ABC (on 02 9333 1500) to point out that surely the real question should be why Australia isn't sending that sort of help and more. But Howard and company specialise in men-with-guns to stand guard over an impoverished people with sky-high unemployment.
Many of us are still optimistic about East Timor. It has oil money put away for the future. But if the "help" Australia gives amount to soldiers, it will just be another occupation protecting an embattled leadership. Instead of ripping off its oil and protecting the TNI war criminals from prosecution, Australia could follow Cuba and truly help East Timor.
Stephen Langford
Paddington, NSW
Palestine
Just a quick note to say thanks for the great article by John Pilger (GLW #696) regarding Israel's continuing genocide against the Palestinians.
As many of your readers must have seen by now, Israel illegally used Palestinians as human shields in a recent West Bank incursion. I have written to the Israeli government via its embassy in Canberra. Unfortunately, I do not seem worthy of a response.
Many of your readers may feel a bit helpless when reading about such brutal acts. Apart from demonstrating against such brutality, another method readers can use is to actually write to the relevant Australian minister and Israeli embassy in Canberra. If nothing else, it's worth writing to Alexander Downer to see which correspondences he thinks are worth replying to. Also, it sometimes means being able to catch him or his department out when they say they've heard nothing about the topic in question.
Keep up the great work, good writing,
Bart Ahluwalia
Penrith, NSW
Climate change I
Not only are Australia's per capita greenhouse gas emissions the highest of any nation in the world today, as Tim Flannery (The Future Eaters) and Tom McMahon (Global Runoff: Continental Comparisons Of Annual Flows And Peak Discharges) showed around 15 years ago, Australia has a uniquely fragile environment. This can be seen in the drying up of Melbourne's water supply, and in the severity of some recent tropical cyclones (George, Jacob, and the two last year in Queensland).
In northwestern and central-western Australia, the seven wettest years since 1885 have all occurred since 1995, while Melbourne has not had a year of above-average rainfall since 1997.
This fragility should require Australia to have the lowest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world, not the highest.
Merely to cut it back to the per capita levels of the EU or Japan or South Korea would mean a 75% cut. Putting it at levels that would fit Australia's ecological fragility would mean an almost 100% cut.
Moreover, Australia should have to do this — not within a few decades — but within a decade at most. Australia should plan to eliminate — and plan to do so now — all car transport and fossil fuel energy. It should have done this as soon as McMahon's book (published in 1991) showed the unusual ecological characteristics of Australia.
Massively cutting car production is the most basic step to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, yet Australian governments continue with outdated pro-freeway transport planning abandoned in other developed nations.
Julien Peter Benney
Carlton, Vic [Abridged]
Climate change II
Banning selected items, like incandescent light globes, is not the best way to tackle environmental problems. What matters is only our total pollution levels and use of scarce resources. Why not classify broad categories of products as environmentally good, moderate or bad, and impose a higher tax rate the more damage they do? Such a tax system could replace the single-rate GST.
This way, people with a strong desire for a specific good or service could still obtain it – at a price. They would not be inconvenienced in the manner they are by a ban. But they would then have to compensate for their indulgence by buying less, or buying more environmentally friendly products, with the rest of their income.
A comprehensive, consistent environmental tax policy is preferable to selectively banning some environmentally undesirable items while under-taxing many others.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere, NSW