Saul Eslake (June 6) is right. Treating housing as an investment has pushed prices beyond the reach of many aspiring home owners.
The difficulty is that for most Australians, housing is also one of the few practical ways to build financial security. Simply reducing prices does not address the underlying advantage enjoyed by investors and others who can access cheap finance or buy with cash.
Another approach is to focus on how housing is financed. Instead of relying on interest-bearing loans, owner-occupiers could access newly created money through banks for a modest service fee, with repayments reducing the amount advanced and interest paid from the repayments. Appropriate safeguards are needed to prevent speculation and abuse, and the Reserve Bank and Treasury would retain control over the amount issued.
Such a system would lower repayments for people buying a home to live in, helping all occupier buyers, including those with mortgages, compete more effectively without requiring a sharp fall in house values. If successful, similar financing principles could also be explored for public infrastructure and government investment, perhaps helping solve the government's fiscal crisis, which was the subject of Eslake's recent report.
Anne Willenborg proposes ("Older drivers a risk", June 8) that everyone over 80 be banned from driving, based solely on one tragic accident caused by an 80-year-old woman. I'd like to see statistics on age-correlated road accidents and driving offences.
I have a suspicion, sans evidence, that younger age groups would show similar or even higher numbers per capita. That would, by Ms Willenborg's logic, justify a ban on younger drivers too.
There's certainly a case for regular testing of both old and young drivers guided by those statistics. Approaches to road safety (and pretty much everything else) should be strictly based on evidence rather than prejudice. Not only would they then be harder to argue against, they'd be more effective, and their effectiveness would be testable by measuring statistical outcomes.
Thank you for reporting on the important efforts of those on the King's Birthday honours List ("Capital a cradle of contribution", June 8). It's always uplifting to read about people who have made exceptional contributions to our society. I was particularly pleased to see Dr Linda Broome featured for her service to animal welfare.
The mountain pygmy-possum, threatened by escalating climate change, is one of 2245 Australian animals, plants and ecosystems on the national threatened species list. Collectively, we must do more to support Australia's beautiful and vital creatures.
Just 0.06 per cent of the Albanese government's recent budget was dedicated to protecting nature. Is it enough?
Jamie Hyams, of the Australia, Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, predictably defends the indefensible war in Iran, declaring it legal (June 5), prompting reflection on how very difficult it has proved to live in peace.
Vivere in pace, to live in peace, is an obvious though perhaps unachievable goal. It appears that all nations have had a history of wars, sometimes actual invasions, sometimes internal, civil wars, usually both. There have been several attempts to outlaw war - none has succeeded.
In Australia, we have conducted a war against the First Australians. However today, and within living memory, there has been reconciliation. We have sent our soldiers to fight other nations' wars.
On one occasion there was a real threat of invasion of our shores, so it is necessary to spend some of our purse on defensive weaponry. But we focus on defence. There would be no support for a trans-Tasman invasion fleet to acquire New Zealand. Given the obvious benefits, even the necessity, for peace, we may one day justify the title we have given ourselves, sapiens.
It is laughable to see the valiant attempt by ClubsACT - surely one of our most powerful vested interest groups - to stake out the moral high ground on lobbying (June 6). ClubsACT would have us believe that their (incredibly successful) lobbying of elected representatives should somehow be valued as an integral part of our democracy. Give me a break.
ClubsACT lobbies on behalf of venues which rely financially on losses extracted by poker machines - devices which are deliberately designed to be addictive. Poker machine losses in ACT clubs totalled $186.55 million in 2023-24.
Reported losses were more than $52.27 million in the first quarter of the 2025-26 financial year. These losses cause immense harm to individuals, families and the community.
The statistics show that fewer machines - and there are still more than 3500 in ACT clubs - mean that existing machines are played more intensively. ClubsACT's self-righteous stand should be seen for what it is: an attempt to justify their self-interested and continued opposition to meaningful gambling harm reduction measures.
In his letter (Letters, June 4) Alastair Bridges comments on the difficulty of visualising the billions and trillions that keep cropping up. Perhaps he would find this model helpful.
Most people know what a sheet of graph paper looks like, and it can be obtained with lines ruled just one millimetre apart. This divides the sheet into little squares one millimetre by one millimetre. I will call these little squares "cells".
If you could get a sheet of paper 1 metre square it would contain one million cells. A strip of paper 1 metre wide and one kilometre long would contain one billion cells, and if you could get a sheet of paper 1 kilometre square it would contain 1 trillion cells.
The squeals of rage are palpable from the supporters of tax breaks for the well off regarding Labor's latest budget. To be sure, Labor broke an election promise for the 2025 election.
But seriously, does anyone really expect Albanese to have had the courage to even hint at such changes during the election campaign? I welcome the tax changes even though they will cost me a few dollars.
They are a step towards fairness in the taxation system, and that for me, trumps telling mistruths at election time.
Hearing David Pocock refuse to rule out the possibility that the teals might consider becoming a political party on ABCs Insiders (May 31) was like the sunshine coming out on a wintry day for me. The idea of a party of independent-thinking individuals, who undertake to collaborate together as they determine the wisest action in response to each national challenge, is very appealing.
Such a party could demonstrate to all of us how, in listening to each other and considering which decision might be, on balance, best for the common good, we could learn to deal with and even benefit from our differences.
Perhaps such a party could be called "the Dialogue Party". Plato would have approved of such a title. Or maybe it could be known simply as "the Thinking Party".
It might even take the future of our precious planet as its compass. Whatever, it would have my vote for sure.
When defence experts talk about the need for subs to help keep the sea lanes open they conveniently ignore reality. In the event of a conflict between America and China the sea lanes won't be open.
If the Chinese close the sea lanes America will have even less chance of getting them open than they have had opening the Strait of Hormuz. More likely though is that the Americans themselves will close the sea lanes in order to choke off trade with China and that includes trade between Australia and China.
Either way, any long-range attack subs we might get will be of little use. They are really just expensive toys.
Art gallery visitors often rush through exhibits, decries Ian Warden ("Paws for thought: the lost art of slow looking in a screen-addled world", May 30). This haste parallels the fleeting attention span often allocated to the ultimate art gallery: nature.
Artful nature has been methodically perfecting its multifarious magic for aeons. Only for us, bulls in a china shop, to rush in, plunder and commodify its most painstakingly crafted displays.
Will this intemperate trampling ever end?
Probably when we cease to act as transient, opportunistic visitors, and become permanent partners and trusted curators of the sublimest gallery of them all: the natural world. "... and the Earth abideth for ever" (Ecclesiastes 1:4).
A big thank you to Mark Wills and Stephen Whennan (Letters, June 8) for helping me to come to grips with huge numbers. I suggest these gentlemen get together and work on the big problems of our little world.
I just noticed that you're not allowed to wear Crocs on the escalators at DFO. Why? Snobbery or safety?
Following the One Nation housing policy farce I suggest a simple amendment. Members of that party will have to relinquish their properties for social housing within two years. Failure to do so will see the federal government compulsorily acquire whatever has not been sold.
Kathryn Kelly (Letters, June 6), we were never going to get three new submarines. The original AUKUS agreement was for two pre-loved submarines to be followed by one new submarine. What has happened is that the one new one has been swapped for an additional pre-loved one.
Ever since the rusty boats and helicopter frames, the US has realised that we're the perfect target of at least two of P. T. Barnum's aphorisms: "There's a sucker born every minute" and "Never give a sucker an even break". AUKUS is just the latest example, but it won't be the last.
Yes, Ian Jannaway (Letters, June 8) King Charles can be both King of England and King of Australia. But Australia has not previously had a King Charles or King Charles II, so when referred to as King Charles III that is as King of England. He should only be titled King Charles of Australia. The colonial cringe is still alive and well.
Chinese electric vehicles, like others, contain a SIM card which connects them to the internet ("Smart cars driving security fears," June 8). This renders them vulnerable to being hacked - but no more so than a mobile phone. But unlike the phone, the SIM in the car can be removed quite easily. In the event of a conflict with China, that's exactly what people can do. Conversely, they can just buy a non-Chinese EV.
The ACT Government is to save around $1 billion by delaying much needed, basic community infrastructure improvements. This would have been unnecessary if more than $1 billion had not been spent on the 1km light-rail extension to nowhere, probably the most expensive light-rail line anywhere in the world.
Kym MacMillan (Letters, June 7) persists in misrepresenting the scope of the Australian War Memorial. Under its 1980 Act, it not only commemorates uniformed war dead. It has a responsibility to interpret Australia's military history, and its Council has rightly decided to depict frontier conflict as part of that history. The AWM should be correcting misunderstanding among its supporters.
