Police minister
The Beattie government must sack police minister Judy Spence immediately. She has presided over the most appalling downward spiral in the standards of police service delivery and police accountability and, in the finest Westminster tradition, she must take full responsibility and resign her commission.
In recent months, she has become nothing more than a puppet extension of the Queensland Police Union (QPU). By her own blind patronage of that select and powerful group, she has become further isolated and alienated from the broader community.
When she accepted her ministerial commission from the state governor to act on behalf of the people and in the best interests of the general community, her oath of office bound her to act for all Queenslanders, not only those in blue uniform.
The Palm Island death in custody case has brought into full focus the horrific racism that still pulses within that "thin blue line", and yet Spence steadfastly refuses to rein in the more extremist elements of the police force or show any genuine leadership.
In recent years, there has been a number of cases in which Aboriginal police officers have faced serious charges; but in those cases there has been a deafening silence from the QPU and not a word of support from the minister. Now we have the macabre threat of a mass police march on parliament because the attorney-general had the temerity to charge a member of the QPU over the death of an Aboriginal man.
Minister Spence is now seen across the state as the parliamentary face of a union that has consistently refused to engage with our broader community and has consistently failed to act in the better interests of their entire membership.
Ordinary Queenslanders certainly support the right of the QPU to act for its membership with passion and zeal, that is its job. But that commitment to its members must never be predicated or qualified by the tensions of race or colour. And ordinary Queenslanders must be able to be represented by a minister who will display integrity and honour; but tragically this incumbent police minister has an abundance of neither.
Sam Watson
Upper Mt Gravatt, Qld
Venezuela article
The drivelling, derisive article by columnist Greg Barns that appeared in the January 22 Hobart Mercury about Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez and prominent Australian signatories inviting him to visit this country and responded to by Duncan Meerding (GLW #696), is well worth bringing to the attention of GLW supporters once more. It is an incisive, instructive reminder of what a fight-back press such as GLW and committed activists and groups such as Meerding and the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network are up against.
That Barns wrote such a ridiculing one-sided article was not the essential villainy on display. This happens of course all the time in the mass media, where the internalised perceptions of the editorial line are driven by the interests of the corporate media-owners and the propaganda assumptions of state policy. It is characteristic of the "guided system" behind a propaganda model which Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky analysed and described in their famous 1994 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Nothing has changed (except perhaps for the worse) since its publication all those years ago.
Consistent within the framework of a propaganda model that employs such cheap and simple expediencies as omitting information that would be disapproved of by the powers behind it, the Mercury fixed the premises of broad based discourse on the situation in Venezuela and its leader. The newspaper did not allow a single right of reply in its press pages to Barn's article in the days and weeks following its publication.
Nigel Rogers
Mt Nelson, Tas
Confused
I am confused. Malcolm Turnbull is telling us to all buy energy efficient light bulbs because "every little bit helps", yet he refuses to phase out coal power because Australia's coal only causes about 4% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Go figure!
Colin Hughes
Swan View, WA
Naive faith
An interesting thing about people like President George Bush is the way they combine a naive faith in the capacity of Western troops to do great good with an irrational fear about what will happen if these soldiers are not deployed. We need leaders who are level-headed realists: not ones who oscillate between extremes of optimism and pessimism.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere, NSW
What ifs
ALP leader Kevin Rudd said he doesn't work on "what ifs", yet that is what his policy is on "clean coal", i.e., what if there is clean coal in the future then all the energy problems will disappear. Both PM John Howard and Rudd are clinging to straws regarding energy policy. What can we expect from straw men?
Mary Jenkins
Bibra Lake
WA
Extraordinary rendition
How come the CIA can send terrorist suspects to Syria under extraordinary rendition for torture, while Bush
refuses to talk to the Syrians about resolving the Iraq fiasco? Is torture the only tie that binds?
Gareth Smith
Byron Bay, NSW
Coal industry
It was good to hear Senator Bob Brown of the Greens calling for the phasing out of the coal industry as effective steps to slow or halt global warming. It was also good to see John Howard and Kevin Rudd standing shoulder to shoulder in condemning such a proposal. That makes it clear to the Australian people that both of the major political parties have no intention in doing anything positive about global warming.
There are a lot more hard yards to travel yet and a lot of economic and social pain to go through and there is no easy path, despite the claims of our present-day leaders and opinion-formers.
Col Friel
Alawa, NT