Grieve in peace
The strength and stoicism I’m seeing from relatives who’ve lost family members is extraordinary as they must appear on television and speak to the media about the tragedy of losing loved ones. Let’s now leave them alone and their families to grieve in peace please.
Jenny Smith, East Melbourne
No skin in the game
My overwhelming grief and rage at the horrific terrorist attack in Bondi on Sunday has been compounded by reading the letters to The Age (19/12).
Josh Frydenberg’s searing speech and subsequent comments come from his lived experience and his very raw and emotional response to not just Sunday’s massacre, but the inaction of the government to act when the warning signs were abundantly clear is deeply personal.
Sussan Ley’s role as leader of the opposition is to hold the government to account, and in this case it is with respect to a grave failure to keep Australians safe, which the prime minister himself has now admitted and for which he has (reluctantly and belatedly) accepted responsibility.
To characterise these as “political opportunism” and divisive or corrosive to social harmony speaks volumes about political tribalism and cocooned privilege of living without threat.
Perhaps letter writers should listen to those most seriously affected, the Jewish community, who overwhelmingly support the statements of both Frydenberg and Ley and try to display empathy and understanding rather than sitting in judgment about an issue in which I am guessing they have no skin in the game.
I had hoped that the “silent majority” might now finally understand what the Jewish community has been facing and where it inevitably would lead, but the letters in the paper have shattered that illusion, more concerned with denigrating the response than with tackling the underlying hate.
Lisa Mann, Kooyong
Act like a leader
Sussan Ley ought to be ashamed of herself for politicising a terrorist attack and casting aspersions on the prime minister when ASIO had not issued any warnings of an imminent attack.
Previous opposition leaders Kim Beazley, Simon Crean and Bill Shorten didn’t behave like this following the Port Arthur massacre, the Bali bombings and the Lindt cafe siege. She is Australia’s alternative prime minister, and it’s time she started acting like it.
Adele Homburg, Elsternwick
Albanese acted
It’s revealing that former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert can, from the other side of the world, see the concrete steps our government had taken before the terrible Bondi massacre to combat the rise of antisemitism in Australia.
However, so many shrill commentators here are determined not to acknowledge such steps and have made damning accusations against Anthony Albanese (“Australia is right to support a two-state solution”, 19/12). So, are we to believe there is no politics involved in any of these accusations?
Peter Kartsounis, Warrnambool
Prejudice is learnt
As we welcome government efforts to promote tolerance and respect across kindergartens, schools, childcare centres, and universities, it should not be limited to antisemitism.
Prejudice is learnt. And can be learnt by anyone. Research shows that prejudice is fuelled by perceived threats to resources – especially economic – (″immigrants are taking our land, houses, and jobs″); perceived fear of and insecurity towards other ethnic groups; and also, by limited positive interaction with different groups. This last factor is critical in order to humanise the ″other″, to increase empathy, and to build a sense of shared identity. Mono-ethnic or mono-religious schools won’t work. They don’t prepare children to live in a diverse society. In the absence of systemic change, the taskforce will hopefully include every learning institution in our education system. Teaching tolerance should not be selective, but be inclusive.
Varuni Ganepola, Mentone
The need for humanities
Teaching humanities is important after all (“Antisemitism fight to go into kinders, schools and unis”, 18/12). Despite all the propaganda for STEM, we humanities teachers knew the value of our studies. We most definitely need STEM, for careers, jobs, the economy. But Australians don’t live by bread alone: Humanities teach students their history, their culture, their society.
In such a multicultural society as ours, students must know more than their family or ethnic history; if they are not Jewish, they must know something of what it means to be Jewish; likewise, to know something of what it means to be Indigenous or Muslim, or any of our other heritages.
The humanities take students out of the immediate, the local, the insular, and encourage broader perspectives that make them better citizens in a modern, democratic state. It’s terribly sad that it took a massacre to realise this.
Pam Cupper, Dimboola
Education’s limits
Seriously, how on earth would changes to the curriculum in our schools or universities have reduced the possibility of the heinous actions of the Bondi terrorists?
Priscilla Pyett, Fitzroy North
Multicultural fractures
While the terrorist atrocities in Bondi and the Hamas massacre in Israel are unconscionable, the Australian government must be very careful to ensure that its response to hateful antisemitism does not demonise Australian Muslims and fracture the nation’s valued multicultural fabric by stoking divisions.
Josh Frydenberg’s condemnation of “Islamic ideology” runs the risk of forming the perception that the Islamic religion itself is antisemitic and unAustralian; hardly borne out by the condemnation by Islamic spokesmen and clerics of the killings in Bondi and the heroic actions of Ahmed al Ahmed who risked his life to disarm the killer.
It is wrong to conflate the ideology of the IS terrorist organisation with Islam. Protesting against the Zionist ideology of members of the Israeli government, who demonise Palestinians and deem Palestinian territories ‘Greater Israel’ and expand illegal settlements in the West Bank to ensure a two-state solution is impossible, should similarly not be seen as antisemitic.
Secondary and tertiary curriculums must teach about the Holocaust and the horrendous results of antisemitism. But equally, history teachers must be able to teach Palestinian history and look at the consequences of the creation of the state of Israel for the Palestinians without being regarded as antisemitic.
David Crawford, Balwyn
Opportunity? Or not?
Best of luck to whoever becomes the new CEO of Woodside (“Woodside boss resigns to run global oil giant BP″, 19/12). Taking the helm of a company that continues to damage ecosystems and accelerate climate instability – all to extract short-term profit from fossil gas that is expected to become a stranded asset – is more of a reckoning than a career opportunity. Larni Dibben, Glen Iris
The renewable question
Your correspondent reminds us that beauty is subjective (″Renewables aren’t free″, 19/12). The facts aren’t.
About 70 per cent of people, even those living in renewable energy zones, support investment in wind and solar.
So let’s be blunt: Do we Australians want clean horizons – or a new generation of coal smokestacks and nuclear towers across the countryside?
Karen Lamb, Geelong
Dirty coal’s legacy
Your correspondent (Letters, ″Renewables aren’t free″, 19/12) casting aspersions on renewable energy, obviously has no problem with the transmission lines running through Gippsland of the dirty coal-powered electricity.
No problem either with the coal dust those in the Latrobe Valley have endured for the past almost 100 years.
The same coal dust that lingered in the ceilings of homes in those towns and the impact it had on residents’ health.
No doubt, he has enjoyed the bright lights that same dirty coal has provided him all his life.
Michael McKenna, Warragul
Take a bike
I would advise the premier’s husband Yorick Piper to get a bike and for Jacinta Allan to provide him (and the rest of us in Victoria) with a suitable and safe cycling network.
We are yet to see any progress on delivering the Strategic Cycling Corridors as part of Victoria’s Cycling 2018 strategy and maybe now is a good time to put some focus on delivering the 12 priority corridors in Melbourne and a further four in each of Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Wangaratta, as per Infrastructure Victoria’s recent report.
David Blom, Nunawading
AND ANOTHER THING
Credit: Matt Golding
Bondi attack
I so envy those non-Jewish commentators and correspondents offering comments and advice on the killings of Jews, this time by jihadists at Bondi, who have never experienced racial hatred, nor are likely to be targeted for being Jewish.
Henry Herzog, St Kilda East
I’ll never be able to sing Waltzing Matilda again without sorrow and pain.
Myra Fisher, Brighton East
Re the video of Ahmed el Ahmed wrestling with and disarming one of the shooters: As a human, he did what we would like to expect others would do in the same situation – to aid and protect others. We get subsumed by culture and religion, so we forget the important fact that we are humans first.
Gabrielle Baker, Windsor
Ashes
Let’s move Snicko into Parliament House.
Bernd Rieve, Brighton
Poor Snicko seemingly gets affected by heatstroke.
Ian Macdonald, Traralgon
Watching and enjoying the Ashes. I don’t think I have ever seen two quieter wicket keepers than Carey and Smith.
Des Parkyn, Norseman, WA
Interesting that Ben Stokes, the chief proponent of entertaining cricket, bats like Boycott on valium.
Malcolm Fraser, Oakleigh South
Have to wonder if the England team were not encumbered with jewellery they might do better. Thought it was the Australians who were in chains.
Doris LeRoy, Altona
Furthermore
Is Tottenham Hotspur the Premier League’s St Kilda?
Ursula Miller, Frankston South
Two hundred teenagers brawl with police on Mordialloc beach for the second time in two days. As George Bernard Shaw said – youth is wasted on the young.
Paul Custance, Highett
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