How can we have a system in which the taxpayer foots the bill for a senator earning $340,000 pa, and that senator, Pauline Hanson, misses a sitting of parliament because she is swanning around at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump (“Young voters and women have left the Coalition – and they aren’t being tempted back”? November 30). If we ever see footage of Senate sittings in Canberra there appear to be many senators “missing in action”. Perhaps the system should be examined and if a senator is not present at a sitting they would need to produce a medical certificate to excuse their absence, or face having their salary docked. This is what the average worker to do, so why should our members of parliament be any different?
Mary Lawson, Marrickville
Pauline Hanson addressed the crowd at the Put Australia First rally in Melbourne last Sunday.Credit: Chris Hopkins
For the first time ever I have had to disagree with Jacqueline Maley when she calls Pauline Hanson stupid. She is far from it, knowing exactly what she was doing wearing a burqa in parliament to alert not just her own loud supporters, but those who remain quiet and don’t publicly display their concern and or racism towards other ethnic groups or religions, so she can gain their eventual backing come the next election. We should be more disturbed by Hanson’s increasing popularity than her silly stunts.
Con Vaitsas, Ashbury
Australia headed for benefits disaster
Parnell Palme McGuinness turns a universal issue of governance into a tirade against Labor and Labour (“Sex, money and politics: how a taboo subject could trip up the left”, November 30). Centrist democracies have been trying to redistribute wealth in society for at least a century. Realising that pushback comes with this process, they have opted for two alternatives: miserly redistribution (unemployment benefit), or universal benefits (Medicare). These are two different ways of keeping middle-income earners on side. A benefit that pushes the middle to their tolerance limit, or a benefit that extends to all. This latter type is the one that is ultimately impossible to sustain. Britain has reached crunch point on this type of welfare. Australia is heading there, especially since the introduction of the NDIS, which resulted in a surprisingly unforeseen pile-on. The Herald recently published an article about how age pension rules favour the materially better-off rather than those wholly dependent on the pension – just another example of how income redistribution is now skewed away from its original purpose. I don’t envy the juggling act required of our treasurer, nor Rachel Reeves in Britain. They didn’t create this mess, but they are obliged to hold the mop and bucket.
Garry Feeney, Kingsgrove
Parnell as usual has blinkered vision, once more dragging out the old trope that Labor is not to be trusted financially and is feckless with the economy, while ignoring the last profligate Coalition. Wasn’t it the Coalition that created a $1 trillion deficit, did not try to claw back hundreds of millions of taxpayer funds paid to profitable businesses during the pandemic, and had sports rorts, among many other questionable expenditures? Meanwhile, the public service costs may have increased due to a return to efficient staffing numbers, but what of the LNP’s eye-watering consultancy fees? Treasurer Jim Chalmers is not faultless and is being restrained by executive caution, but he is a steadier hand on the tiller than Morrison/Dutton et al and certainly, the chaotic rabble that is the opposition.
Rowan Godwin, Rozelle
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