Letters to
the editor

Progressive views

It is alarming to read that Murray Watt has been installed as environment minister (“The fixer is in”, Mike Seccombe, May 24-30) with the implication that Tanya Plibersek failed in that job. To an outsider it seems Plibersek was given a thankless environmental task that clashed with the mining interests whose new proposals she was obliged to consider. This new and very dominant federal government can afford to act in the interests of Australia in both encouraging nature and being careful about approving mining and forestry. We are all looking forward to excellent progress.

– Julia Bovard, North Sydney, NSW

Peta principle

Tony Abbott became PM under the “Peter principle”, where you rise to your own level of incompetence. Now, if the Liberals remain unelectable by heeding Abbott and Peta Credlin (“Exclusive: How Abbott and Credlin control the Liberals”, Jason Koutsoukis, May 24-30), could their failure to rise above rank incompetence henceforth become the “Peta principle”?

– Chris Roylance, Paddington, Qld

Baby bust

Maybe, just maybe, there are some people who consider their potential child would suffer too much from climate chaos and decide to not procreate (Viva Hammer, “Baby blues”, May 24-30). Or they may know that, with more than eight billion humans, Earth does not need more people consuming resources, creating waste, destroying habitat, making species extinct, adding to plastic pollution and greenhouse gases. Our rapidly increasing, immigration-fuelled population is having a disastrous environmental impact, but governments and economists do not care.

– Karen Joynes, Bermagui, NSW

Childbearing rewards

As a person who chose to have a large family, I read the article by Viva Hammer with interest. I have found my experience to be profoundly rewarding and find her comment that the reward may be an occasional visit or birthday flowers to understate an experience that, for many, has brought joy. Spending time with grandchildren both gives us satisfaction in helping our adult children navigate work with a growing family and enables us to make lasting relationships with the younger generation. Our society needs to switch from thinking that having children is thankless drudgery to realising it is a life-sustaining pleasure. Maybe the introduction of incentives that result in people having their families when they are younger and therefore more flexible and energetic, will help achieve this change.

– Jan Downing, Hawthorn East, Vic

Bold new vision

Pasi Sahlberg and Glenn Savage challenge a second term Labor majority government to rethink its educational direction (“The next three steps to help public schools”, May 24-30). They lay out a vision for schooling that can both “improve student outcomes and life chances while tackling social inequities”. We should not replicate or merely tinker around the edges of past practices for a generation who engage and learn in vastly different ways. Alarming are the surveys that indicate nearly half of teachers and principals are considering leaving the profession. I fear we are losing the brightest creative teachers who entered the profession with the freedom to inspire students to achieve at their highest levels. And I fear we are losing principals who hold visions that directly adhere to their communities’ unique circumstances. There is an opportunity for this newly elected government to do far more than their campaign promise of a $37.3 billion investment on the basis of need. They can be a government that boldly envisions what our schools can become.

– Gloria Latham, Brunswick East, Vic

Love of country

What a tender, exquisite explanation is offered by Stan Grant of what it means to be Australian in this current world (“What my country will never be”, May 24-30). As a non-Aboriginal woman my experience is different, but Grant articulated so well the feelings of ambivalence I hold towards a country that refused its First Nations peoples their voices, their treaties, their truths. “The moment I knew” I was Australian was when I flew home from overseas in the 1970s: the crisp outlines of Sydney looked like a cardboard cut-out collage against the sparkling harbour. I knew I was home but was unsure what rooted me to this place. While in England I had been asked: did you come to discover your roots? No, I bemusedly replied. But I did understand the question. I love my country. I feel born of this place. I feel held within it. I will be proud to call Australia home when First Nations peoples of Australia invite me to do so.

– Christine Kerr, Marrickville, NSW