https://theconversation.com/your-say-week-beginning-may-11-282576
Every day, we publish a selection of your emails in our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you, you can email us at yoursay@theconversation.edu.au.
Monday May 11
The politics of fear
“How can we take a politician seriously if all she has is stirring up hate on immigrants and Indigenous people with no other stated policies? Apparently, it seems quite easy. In his book Goliath’s Curse, author Luke Kemp cites countless examples of individuals taking leadership roles by stirring up fear of external threats to take our ‘lootable assets’ (jobs, houses, and anything of physical value). Surveys across eight modern, high-income countries found that around 10–25% ranked as highly authoritarian. We, it seems, might be on the cusp of going the same way with the surge of extreme right-wing politicians in Australia using the external threat as their only policy.”
Paul Campbell, West End QLD
The great tax debate
“To tax or not to tax? Presently, the reason for not taxing gas exports as I understand it is to keep faith with our trading partners. From my experience in competitive markets, when economic circumstances change and costs go up there’s a choice. You can put your prices up and if that makes you more expensive, then the market will react and you then have the choice of accepting less market share and retaining profit margin or accepting a lesser margin and retaining market share. Either way, a tax will benefit the Australian public and industry, either from increased federal revenue or greater gas supply at lower prices.”
Hugh Kushner
Tuesday May 12
Series finale of the podcast
“The final episode of The Making of One Nation lived up to the standard of the series. The rise of One Nation has important lessons for Australian democracy. It is not just One Nation but also the Coalition that runs on grievance politics. It should not surprise that the Coalition saw its future in moving further to the right even if that meant endorsing One Nation type policies. After all, Murdoch’s Fox News was critical in getting Trump reelected in the US. Why couldn’t he do the same thing here with Sky News TV? As a nation we have two things going for us. One is the Australian electoral system. The other is organs like The Conversation to make sure that truth isn’t totally extinguished.”
Gary Barnes, Mosman NSW 
War on the ocean
“What I’ve seen nothing about and find distressing is the thought of what may be happening to the undersea ecosystems in the Strait of Hormuz. Deep sea trawlers are destroying the ocean floor; plastic pollution is killing sea birds and fish, krill (which is more important than most people realise) is being frighteningly overfished and Blue Whales have gone silent! Now there’s war in the Persian Gulf with ships and oil tankers being attacked. What else is happening to the earth’s liquid lungs that we depend on?”
Linda Payler-Kemp, WA
