One Nation’s policies ill-thought and detrimental

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POLICY

What will happen to generations of Australians in their retirement when they have insufficient superannuation (“One Nation doubles down on super shake-up”, 8/9)?
We could be looking at huge inequity with people unable to own their own home in retirement, and it will result in a major shift in egalitarianism.
The huge mortgages that many people have to take out may not be paid off by retirement. Leave superannuation alone.
Mary Keating, Flemington

Joyce does it again
Barnaby Joyce’s career to date has been defined by policy stumbles and gaffes, but his response to Sarah Ferguson’s question about One Nation’s superannuation policy on the ABC 7.30 program on Monday evening – ″⁣(I am) the Treasury spokesman, not Jesus Christ″⁣ – might just go down as his greatest blooper ever.
Joyce has an aptitude for blowing up his own side, as Pauline Hanson is just finding out.
Every time the former Nationals leader commits a clanger, I’m reminded of a comment by the author and former Australian Financial Review columnist, Joe Aston, that Joyce only makes sense if we discover he is a ″⁣long-term Labor plant″⁣.
Neil Hudson, East Melbourne

Joyce’s experience fails him
Barnaby Joyce ran his own accountancy firm, Barnaby Joyce and Co., for 10 years in St George, Queensland.
He should not need to be provided with prepared questions about One Nation’s superannuation policy.
Regina Fox, Cowes

One Nation should pursue wage threat
Recently, the Fair Work Commission stated that between $850 million and $1.55 billion had been stripped from Australian workers through wage theft. Price Waterhouse Coopers estimates this affects 1.5 million to
2 million workers.
These figures don’t include the unpaid millions of dollars in superannuation entitlements.
What a shame that One Nation doesn’t pursue these criminal activities which disproportionately affect their “Aussie battler” supporters as it does in proposing policies that would enable those same workers to access their possibly already depleted superannuation savings.
Craig Jory, Albury, NSW

Policy won’t help low-income people
When super is in accumulation phase, it is not taken into account for the welfare income and assets test. Once it provides income, that income will need to be declared by people receiving income support payments, and their payments may be reduced. This is a pretty dumb way of helping low-income people.
Dean Wotherspoon, Northcote

One Nation tobacco approach nonsensical
Attending my niece’s wedding to her French partner in France last year, there was a stark difference in the crowd of young guests. As soon as the ceremony concluded, nearly all the young French were either vaping or smoking but none of the Australians were.
We oldies were astonished, and concluded that Australians didn’t realise how effective our anti-smoking campaigns and higher taxes had been in changing behaviour.
Now, One Nation and the Coalition have come up with a simple answer to the complex problem of illegal cigarettes and vapes: Reduce the tax on legal ones thus making more cheap products available!
People buying the illegal product will apparently turn to the slightly more expensive legal product.
How about leaving the excise as it is and giving this money directly to the states to intensify the closure of illegal outlets and renew effective anti-smoking and anti-vaping advertising?
Helen Hook, Black Rock

THE FORUM

Insults and injuries
She’s still a newcomer (“Theatrics in question time”, 8/9) but my own MP has had some memorable lines”. Put your mask on!” regularly appears on social media from the less-imaginative of Monique Ryan’s Australia-wide trolls.
And Peter Dutton should have taken heed when Ryan said to him, “I’ll be prime minister before you are”. That remains unlikely, but retaining her seat in the house still has Ryan ahead.
However, my favourite is from the usually unflappable Speaker, Milton Dick, one for those who like their humour soft and subtle. “Sit down” was barked, followed quietly by “We don’t do that here” – in the tone of voice used for a misbehaving three-year-old when Tim Wilson was behaving like one at the despatch box. Cutting!
Margaret Callinan, Hawthorn

IBAC trim beneficiary
Premier Ben Carroll needs to revert to his ″⁣no stone unturned″⁣ stance on IBAC. To appear to be backing away from this resolve is not a good look. Every time a politician weakens a promise of this type, we should rightly be sceptical if not suspicious and ask the age-old question “Cui bono – who benefits”.
In general, we should not let politicians make the rules on who is investigated and how they are investigated.
Letting politicians determine the rules around IBAC is like letting the banks set the boundaries for the royal commission on its industry. Imagine how different the outcome would have been?
Stephen Farrelly, Donvale

SRL links future tech
Thank you for your article on the promise of high-tech industries based around our highly rated universities (“Innovation hubs put Melbourne on top of the world”, 8/9).
However, tech hubs or any other employment centres only work if people can access them with world class and frequent public transport.
Fortunately, the state government built the Metro with the opening of the Parkville station last year to serve Melbourne University and the hospital and biomedical districts as illustrated by your map.
This will also be the case with the eventual opening of the Monash SRL station which was deliberately centrally located to serve both the university and other institutions such as the CSIRO.
This week, the tunnel boring machines started their march from Burwood via Glen Waverley to Monash for this rail line. This is a time to celebrate the promise of a great project which will support our future industries.
Tim Hoffmann, Brunswick

Money well-spent
Imagine what the biotech and medical research communities in Melbourne, and Australia more broadly, could do with a fraction of the money being spent on AUKUS. The article ″⁣Innovation hubs put Melbourne on top of the world″⁣ is a good news story. More power to the dedicated and smart people who are looking to improve so many aspects of our lives. AUKUS, not so much.
Ann Maginness, Beaumaris

Polygraph junk
Your correspondent (″⁣Finding leaks″⁣, Letters, 8/9) wonders why politicians are not forced to take polygraph tests. It is because polygraph tests actually only measure certain biomarkers, such as a person’s heart rate, blood pressure and pulse, which are often incorrectly thought to be correlated with truthfulness. During interrogation, a polygraph machine could easily flag a truthful person as a liar if their heart rate rose due to nervousness. It is for this reason many jurisdictions around the world, including New South Wales, have deemed polygraph evidence inadmissible in court. Polygraph machines are junk science that have no place in a criminal justice system.
Nikhil Dhanabal, Clyde North

House and or home
Re “UN slams Labor’s decision to knock down public housing towers “,6/9).
It is most commendable that bureaucrats are taking umbrage that anyone should have to live somewhere that doesn’t meet “modern building, design and livability standards”, but through the lens of relativity, surely a roof over one’s head is better than none.
Gracie Warner, Kooyong

Gloria Steinem blazed
It’s often said the trail is blazed by the feminist warriors who came before us – the women who fought to dismantle the structural barriers woven into our laws and institutions, so that those who follow might walk a little more freely.
That is precisely the legacy Gloria Steinem leaves behind (″⁣Feminist activist and writer Gloria Steinem dead at 92″⁣, 4/9).
A leading public voice for what we now call intersectional feminism; her pioneering work on reproductive freedom — including her own experience of a doctor who, ahead of his time, granted her the autonomy to choose; a passionate, lifelong advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment; the founding of Ms. magazine, the first national feminist publication run by women; and a body of feminist writing that reshaped public consciousness and helped shift the cultural and political terrain for generations of women.
All in all, a body of feminist thought, activism, and achievement that stands as her enduring legacy and one that illuminates the path for the women who will trail the next blaze around the enormous challenges now confronting gender politics.
Not least among these is the proliferation of algorithms by social media behemoths that distorts the way boys and girls, men and women, come to understand each other from an early age – and is, in effect, a weapon of widespread social (coercive control) harm. Vale Gloria Steinem.
Jelena Rosic, Mornington

Single-sex school culture
If we are serious about tackling toxic masculinity we need to address the culture of elite boys-only private schools. As we repeatedly see from the behaviour of current and past students (including many of our male politicians currently blaming feminism for the manosphere’s toxicity), these schools deeply instil 1950s entitled misogyny in young men.
They are not healthy environments for boys – they damage boys who don’t fit their mould and often make entitled prats out of those who do.
Bill Grant, Castlemaine

Vertical curriculum
There is nothing new about Kardinia International College’s vertical curriculum (“No bells, no borders: the autonomy driving college’s student success”, 8/9). The first school I taught in, Waterdale High, adopted it in 1980. My second school, Edenhope High, adopted it in 1987. It is so obviously sensible one has to wonder why it is not universal practice.
There is an extremely wide range of achievement in any secondary school class, and the idea that teachers can have individual education plans for every student is unachievable. Allowing students to work at their own level until they can master that level is just good practice, particularly in sequential subjects such as maths.
As a timetabler of many years experience, I see nothing especially difficult about timetabling it.
Perhaps vertical modular grouping and its mate, mastery learning, are due for a
comeback.
Chris Curtis, Hurstbridge

Manosphere in class
Your correspondent’s nostalgic defence of Matt Canavan’s views (“Unengaged boys”, Letters, 8/9) completely misreads the reality for teenage boys today.
Modern youth aren’t daydreaming out the classroom window or quietly choosing to “think the opposite” of their teachers. They are looking down at their screens, where sophisticated algorithms actively feed them hostile, anti-women propaganda.
The “manosphere” has replaced simple classroom boredom with digital radicalisation. Your correspondent appears to suggest that it’s pointless trying to counteract this.
Simon McInnes, Boolarra

You must remember this
Re: ″⁣Airport pushes ahead with controversial changes as part of expansion plans″⁣ (4/9). Progress is relentless, but retiring Melbourne Airport’s 56-year-old departures ramp loses an oddly sacred piece of our city’s collective soul.
The elevated drop-off is no architectural masterpiece, yet it holds a unique place in the local psyche. Like gazing at Anguish in the NGV or the Montague Street Bridge trapping an over-height truck, it is a quintessential Melbourne touchstone: scruffy, functional and universally understood.
For half a century, that ramp hosted our highest emotional dramas: tearful goodbyes before an overseas gap year, and high-stress double-parked luggage drops under the whistle of an impatient traffic officer.
Stepping onto that concrete platform hit you with bracing Tullamarine wind, aviation fuel, and the electric thrill of departure.
Funnelling our farewells into a covered, multi-storey parking structure may be drier and more efficient, but it replaces a shared ritual with clinical convenience. We are losing our giant, windswept front porch to progress.
Tim Singleton Norton, Reservoir

Forgotten Tottenham
Tottenham is not unlike many of Melbourne’s western suburbs which politicians forgot, but where multicultural communities worked and flourished.
Ceridwen Stark’s article ″⁣Inside the suburb″⁣ (8/9) mentions Stony Creek, which is a not often noticed local icon that links the suburbs back to the Yarra as it winds through Newport, Spotswood, Yarraville, Footscray, Tottenham, and Sunshine to St Albans. Not the Yarra or Maribyrnong, but a little trickle where westie kids played and got into mischief.
Margaret Raffle, Keilor East

What’s in a name?
There is West Footscray, North Melbourne, North Fitzroy, East Melbourne, and South Melbourne. Why Malvern East?
James Henshall, Richmond

AND ANOTHER THING

One Nation
Pauline Hanson is promoting the reduction of superannuation retirement balances through premature withdrawals. It’s time there was a basic economics entrance exam for members of parliament.
Matthew Hamilton, Kew

So if it’s “my money”, as a One Nation voter, can I raid my super and buy a second RAM truck? Yippee!
Mick Webster, Chiltern

And One Nation’s answer to cost-of-living pressures? Self-funded pay increases!
Dawn Richards, Huntingdale

Good of Barnaby Joyce to point out that he is not Jesus Christ. That should end the confusion.
Jane Edwards, Peterhead, SA

So much for Ben Carroll restoring public integrity. If he introduces carve-outs to IBAC, I will be changing my vote to another party, only having recently decided to trust Labor again.
Fiona Parker, Flinders

Furthermore
You have to wonder about Matt Canavan talking about an “anti-boy ideology” in Australian classrooms. I taught for 33 years, and for the most part, I simply promoted anti-idiocy.
Alan Whittaker, East Kew

How do you know when an opposition is flagging? Flag-burning becomes a major issue.
Kevan Porter, Alphington

Donald Trump has renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America. Why stop there, Donald? Just be done with it and rename the United States of America ″⁣Trumpland″⁣.
Judith Caine, Donvale

Now, let’s see. A resurgent far-right Germany re-arming, anti-migrant and pro-Russian. Haven’t we been down this path before?
Roger Holdway, Sorrento

In the interests of economy, may I suggest that Princess Anne does the school run for Archie and Lilibet?
Paul Perry, Fitzroy North

Finally
There won’t be many people working from home on Friday. Apparently, plenty will be WFMCG instead.
John Rawson, Mernda

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