Write on: Letters to the editor
Non-competitive games
I've been reading and watching the news and there have been stories about possible corruption in the Olympic Games movement and another story about steroids use by sports people. There are also stories about violence and tougher laws.
You can read any newspaper or watch any TV and the stories are always the same — negative and depressing! Instead of agonising, let's organise!
Why not during the Sydney 2000 Olympics we hold a Non-Competitive Cooperative Games?
There is definitely some interest in this proposal and it could be like a fringe festival or a peaceful alternative. So we can start practising non-competitive sport soon, why not contact me on (02) 9283 2004 or write to PO Box A474, South Sydney.
Public breast-feeding
Some Queensland Young Liberals have raised their intention to ban breast-feeding in public spaces. In arguing that the practice is offensive and potentially discomforting to many people, the party has proposed that women breast-feeding be banished from the public eye.
Such a proposal highlights the irony such Liberal social values present to many women. Motherhood and childbirth is essentialised, yet attempts to publicise the private realm are condemned, placing women in a no win situation.
A stream of policies introduced by the Liberal government, especially under Howard, have acted solely to promote motherhood as women's natural and proper role. Child-care cuts, attacks on single women and cuts to education mean that women must choose to care for children as a full-time task, rather than being able to work or afford substitute care.
Under the Liberals, the role of mothering has been dictated to all women — these recent proposals by the Young Liberals attempt to push women even further away from public involvement.
Breast-feeding in public — an entirely natural act of motherhood — is now too much for the conservatives. They want to see women remain entirely in the domestic sphere where they can pose no threat to the patriarchal, capitalist system which sustains such oppression.
Sydney
Literacy I
If you're being attacked by a lion and an ant, which do you worry about? If you're the Prime Minister of Australia you reach for the Aerogard.
Not content with a sharp rise in the number of homeless since it came to power — no doubt partly as a consequence of its welfare cutbacks — the federal government is now determined to throw off benefits citizens unable to read who refuse to sign up for remedial courses.
Presumably, the PM believes he is pursuing justice and never mind the consequences for human wellbeing. Why can't he see that the chief injustices in our society are people receiving $50,000 plus salaries who work no harder than people who receive $25,000, and able-bodied people collecting share income in return for no effort at all whilst the involuntarily disabled and unemployed survive on a paltry $10,000? What about the inequity of under-resourced working-class schools that fail to address illiteracy at the source?
If the PM were committed to justice he would be increasing taxes and welfare, not the reverse. Such an action would also increase aggregate community wellbeing because an extra dollar brings far more happiness to people who are disadvantaged than to those who are already well-off. Is a national leader capable of clear thinking untainted by prejudice against the underprivileged really too much to expect?
Rydalmere NSW
Literacy II
Could John Howard and other semi-cultured, semi-educated people, who read speeches written for them — badly — be asked to improve their reading by showing that they can comprehend advanced English texts like Shakespeare, James Joyce and Emily Bronte as Year 10, 11 and 12 students must do in our high schools?
Wentworth Falls NSW
Bodgy republic
It should come as no surprise to supporters of the democratic process that politicians and political hopefuls who have been so supportive of the Indonesian dictatorship in matters of trade, foreign policy and cultural relationships are now quite vociferous in support of the minimalist position on the republic question, that is, an appointed head of state. They have a universal contempt for the rights of the ordinary person, whether in Australia, East Timor or Indonesia.
Comments by the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory to the effect that those who oppose his views on this matter are lunatics brings to mind the saying that it takes one to know one.
The arrogant and stupid belief that politicians know best helped to lose the referendum on statehood last year but the Chief Minister has learnt nothing from that experience.
What can be inferred from the fact that only eight referenda have been successful since federation is not that Australians are obstinate, stupid or obdurate as the Chief Minister implied but that Australians are smarter than their politicians and they will not accept a bodgy republic.
Alawa NT
Racism
A 22% increase in anti-Semitism in Australia is deplorable. Norman Taylor (Write On, GLW #346) is right about that. Norman gives as reasons Israel taking Palestinian land, having nuclear and chemical weapons, religious fanaticism and intransigence.
Many of us have been out on the streets, trying to argue the point with racists. We know that 95% of them are not coherent or well-informed (about Israel, or anything else). They have fallen for the "scapegoat" lies peddled by oppressors to their victims.
To fight racism, we need to be clear about why and how. All racism is vicious. Anti-Semitism is made more vicious by religious intolerance. In a century full of racist atrocities, the worst atrocity was the Nazi holocaust.
There are two pitfalls for lefties here. Many regard any religious belief as an anachronism, so religious tolerance is a low priority. We fight powerful economic interests whose dirty work is done by stooges like Howard and Hanson. Hitler would be right in there scapegoating Jews and sowing racist hatred.
We could learn a lot about defeating racism from the East Timorese — victims of racist persecution for 23 years, but always knowing the enemy. Some of Suharto's and Habibie's victims seem to fall for scapegoating. The East Timorese never have.
North Plympton SA
HIV prevention
The Australasian Society for HIV Medicine (ASHM) is a medical society with a membership which includes most of the doctors and other skilled health professionals actively engaged in treating Australians with HIV infection and preventing the spread of HIV to other Australians.
In response to the recent decision by NSW Health Minister, Dr Andrew Refshauge, to suspend a needle exchange program in Redfern, the ASHM noted that in many parts of the world, there has been an increasing trend for HIV infection to become established and spread aggressively amongst the poorest members of communities. On this ground alone, Redfern would be one of the last places in Australia where a needle exchange program should be suspended, especially on the spurious pretext of photographs in a tabloid newspaper which alleged to show young people injecting drugs.
It is a regrettable fact of life in Australia today that young people inject drugs. Unfortunately, some of these young people are unable or unwilling to stop injecting drugs. The question for the community is, do we want these young people to become infected with HIV and pass on their infection to others?
Once an HIV epidemic has begun, it is a much harder job to regain control than it is to keep control in the first place. Members of my organisation, more than any other professional organisation in the country, know only too well the horrifyingly high human cost of HIV infection.
If NSW persists with its current policies on the Redfern Needle Exchange Program and the recent ban on wide bore syringes, Sydney, and later the rest of Australia, could see an uncontrolled HIV epidemic. At this stage, an HIV epidemic is still preventable.
ASHM calls upon the NSW Minister for Health to put public health and safety first by reversing the Redfern needle exchange suspension and the ban on wide bore injecting equipment.
President, Australasian Society for HIV Medicine
Surry Hills NSW
[Abridged.]