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Letters to the editor

Letters to the editor

The Monthly publishes letters to the editor in the print edition as well as online, though longer offerings may be published on our website only.

How to submit a letter to the editor: Email letters "at" themonthly.com.au. Letters must include the writer's full name, daytime phone number and home address (for verification only), and may be edited for clarity or length. If you do not want your letter published, please mark it 'not for publication'.

  • May 2013

    Bob Katter (‘Barramundi Dreaming’, April) was “curiously reluctant to discuss his Lebanese lineage”. Could this be because he might be of Afghan lineage – as he often claimed while a boarder at Mt Carmel College, Charters Towers, in the 1960s? Also, his claim that there are hardly any homosexuals in north Queensland is extraordinary coming from someone who spent ten years in mainly male bastions such as boarding school, university college and the army, and whose own half-brother is openly gay.

    The article otherwise captures...

  • May 2013

    A full-page ad in the April issue declares that the F-35 Lightning II is “For Security. For Jobs. For Australia.” It should also have stated it was “For Lockheed Martin” and, even more importantly, “For Killing”. Twenty pages on was a half-page ad for Anne Deveson’s book Waging Peace. “How would the world look today if we devoted the same thought and resources to waging peace as we do to waging war?” How, indeed.

    David Hancocks
    Carlton, VIC

  • May 2013

    David Day’s excellent review of Madigan’s published diaries from Antarctica (‘From Cecil with Loathing’, March) neglected an important facet of the relationship between Mawson and Madigan. Not only did Madigan serve under Mawson in Antarctica, he spent most of his career as a lecturer in the geology department led by Mawson at the University of Adelaide.

    The relationship continued to be difficult, as discussed in Kristen Weidenbach’s book Rock Star, though both went on to make significant contributions to Australian geology...

  • April 2013

    On 15 September there will be no need for an analysis of “what went wrong” for federal Labor. Just read Mark Aarons’ account (‘Mate of the Union’, March) of the 20-year crawl through the gutters by a cabal of pernicious, amoral, power-hungry men.

    What a contrast to the cover photo and Anna Goldsworthy’s story on the female ministers (‘Critical Mass’, March), who now face virtual political extinction thanks to the males who control the NSW Labor machine.

    Michael Oxer
    Nicholson VIC

  • April 2013

    What great reading you have provided over the past few months. The February offering on David Walsh (‘The Gambler’) increased my understanding of him and his MONA in Hobart, just visited.

    ‘Fat City’ (March) was educational and horrifying. Karen Hitchcock conveyed her experiences of working with this tragic phenomenon of obesity with honesty and compassion.

    And thanks to Robert Manne for his superb overview (‘Tragedy of Errors’) of asylum seeker policy. When will they ever learn?

    Val Campbell
    ...

  • April 2013

    Dr Karen Hitchcock’s article on obesity was a huge breath of fresh air (‘Fat City’, March). This subject has been examined intensively in the lay and scientific press in the past decade but the unpalatable and unvarnished truth has seldom if ever been exposed as clearly as this. Go tell it on the mountain – the mountain of self-deception, psychobabble and vested interests.

    Pamela Donovan
    Coffs Harbour NSW

  • April 2013

    An overweight friend recently claimed that, far from being a “petrol guzzling car”, he was doing his bit for the environment as a carbon-sequestration unit. He, and countless others like him, were tying up millions of kilos in carbon with their extra padding and a global fat-loss program might well precipitate catastrophic climate change. Maybe next time Hitchcock is faced with a recalcitrant overweight patient she could take them aside and thank them for saving us all from certain doom. It seems more likely than them doing the same for themselves.

    ...

  • March 2013

    I very much enjoyed the article on David Walsh (‘The Gambler’, February), though it might have made a little more of his humour and playfulness – as evident in the museum and its collection.

    Shirley Round
    West Moonah TAS

  • March 2013

    My son turned 25 two weeks' ago. At 21 he made a decision, almost too late (ten minutes, he says), that saved his life. Four others made the only other choice and died.

    The intensity of the fire at Traralgon South on Black Saturday, was in places so great, that the only way of surviving would possibly have been in an underground, sealed bunker with a fire door protected from radiation. The only other choice was to leave. The house, where the four died, burned with such intensity that brick walls crumbled to rubble and the alloy bonnet of one of the cars melted and...

  • March 2013

    I am impressed that the Monthly was able to locate photos of the Australian Garden at Cranbourne unmarred by the presence of tacky plastic labels (‘Work of Wonder’, February). It is a worthy candidate for the world’s finest modern garden design, but the Garden’s administrators have clumsily and unthinkingly scattered a vast number of labels of inferior quality across it. These jar the eye and spoil the design. To add practical insult to aesthetic injury, the labels are not even functional, usually with text too small and distant to read, and decorated with...

 
"Would you like extra character with that?" – 'Junk Politics' by Mungo MacCallum. Free online until 4 pm tomorrow: http://t.co/pAUhomgi
Wednesday, 10 October 2012 - 7:46pm
Free online until 4 pm tomorrow – 'Junk Politics: The pursuit of character over substance' by Mungo MacCallum: http://t.co/E5kGlUAw
Wednesday, 10 October 2012 - 5:36pm
Mungo MacCallum on the politics of character over substance. Junk Politics: http://t.co/xS99oqDq Article free for 24 hrs
Wednesday, 10 October 2012 - 3:05pm
Vanity Fair tells the incredible story of the boy who found his family via Google Earth, 20 years after separation http://t.co/dmtLbHdZ
Wednesday, 10 October 2012 - 2:50pm