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 March 16
A lesson from Gallipoli
“When British and ANZAC troops landed during the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915 they expected weak resistance. Instead they met determined Turkish soldiers who wanted to defend their homeland with ferocity. The planners in London, politically backed by Winston Churchill, had badly underestimated both the logistical complexity and the terrain, but more importantly underestimated the resolve of those defending their own soil. The result was slaughter and failure. Gallipoli’s enduring lesson is simple: people fight fiercely when their country is threatened. When Donald Trump escalated tensions with Iran […] his hegemonic rhetoric carried a tiresomely familiar illusion: that US distant wars will be popular, quick and easily controlled. War is not a hedgefund trade. Gallipoli shows who pays.”
Bill Leigh, West Pennant Hills NSW
Australia’s blind spot
“With regard to your article around social cohesion, I believe that the current piecemeal reactive approach is catastrophically flawed. What we desperately need in my opinion is a coherent and comprehensive Bill of Rights that provides for everyone in Australia of all cultural backgrounds, races, religious or political beliefs, sexuality or gender identity etc. We are the only Western democracy without one? Why has it not been part of any major political party’s agenda? Despite it being raised in the past by a number of prominent academics, why has it never really been part of the conversation in Australia?”
Mark Dibblin
Culture comes at a cost
“I’m surprised your article on opera and ballet attendance didn’t touch on the cost of living. I can’t speak for past trends as I’m only 28, but a major barrier many people face are ticket prices. Many people just don’t have the wiggle room to drop $100+ for nosebleed seats on a show they might not know anything about!”
Zahro Muladawilah 
Tuesday March 17
Australia’s oil woes
“Tony Woods’ article on the current fuel problems made some interesting points. First, the fact that successive governments have allowed the closure of almost all of Australia’s oil refineries, which in turn has led to a reduction in storage capacity. The Iran War demonstrates clearly what a danger this short-sighted policy is to our economy and even living standards - not to mention the real threat to the livelihoods and sustainability of our farmers and transport operators. And don’t get me started on Morrison’s ‘brilliant’ strategy of having ‘Australian’ fuel reserves stored in the US!”
Stuart Kennedy, Parramatta NSW
Where are the opera and ballet audiences?
“Your article on declining audiences for opera and ballet is another illustration of the changes in discretionary spending in our society today. The potential audiences for opera and ballet have less discretionary spending after astronomical mortgage payments are made. As a self-funded retiree I can afford a subscription to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra but opera and ballet are beyond my financial reach.”
Elaine Langshaw
How to make Australia more cohesive
“Thank you so much to Keiran Hardy and Rebecca Wickes for their article on social cohesion. Resentment and the urge to blame others (migrants, people of different faiths) builds up when we see that others have much and we have little. Redistributing Australia’s wealth, making sure everyone can afford a home to live in and has a decent welfare safety net, that we can afford aged care and disability care, that public education is taken seriously, would go a long way to rebuilding this country’s cohesion.”
Jane Rawson, Mountain River, TAS
Wednesday March 18
Are we alone out there?
“The discovery of all five fundamental nucleobases in samples from the asteroid Ryugu is wonderful science and I’m all for it. This research adds evidence ‘these ingredients for life may have been widespread throughout the Solar System in its early years’. But a paradox seems to exist – it’s perhaps near impossible for the right conditions for life to appear, yet once it has done so (as on our world) its resilience for survival has so far proven indestructible.”
Alex Nelson, NT
What are kitchens for?
“While Caroline Cumberbatch’s basic premise that kitchen design today is about status and showcasing is correct, her solution is not. Kitchens are places of work. Socialising may occur, and can be allowed for, but not at the expense of getting things done. The purpose of island benches she disparages is to provide a place for those socialising that doesn’t interfere with those working with kitchen equipment. My grandparents had a kitchen with a large dining table in the centre, but that was because they had no other space in their small house with 4 children. I remember that fondly but I doubt my grandmother did.”
Anthony McPhee
AI and researchers
“The article on the impacts of AI on PhD apprenticeship makes a very pertinent point on hidden costs to student researchers. Here arises an interesting question. While PhD supervisors may enjoy productivity gains with AI, would the PhD research students be able to use AI to fill up any gaps left by the supervisors, and perhaps also make productivity gains? The gains by both parties could be so alluring that AI may be in the long run the ultimate winner as both the supervisors and students might bear cognitive costs of AI reliance, affecting their mental autonomy.”
Ang Ung
Thursday March 19
Democracies and development
“In the article about democratisation, the authors state that data shows democratisation leads to higher GDP per capita, better social protection, better health outcomes, lower infant mortality, greater access to safe water and electricity and greater gender equality. They also mention that democracies do not wage wars as much as autocracies do. Evidence suggests that China scores well on all of the above. Yet, the article marks China as a ‘closed autocracy’. How did China achieve all these while being a ‘closed autocracy’?”
Ranjan Yagoda
Capital gains
“The recent discussion about the capital gains tax discount is focusing on the effect this may have on the housing market. What has been forgotten is the negative cost of this to the budget. It’s the equivalent to the total amount spent on aged care! I vote for aged care.”
Mark Penman, Greenslopes, QLD
Another rate rise
“Why do the banks need to pass the RBA rate increases on to mortgage holders? Why can they not take it out of their shareholder profit? I would very much like that explained. I know that will affect superannuation accounts but so what? Isn’t that part of the market super should deal with?”
Lynda Paterson, Eden NSW
Friday March 20
Australia’s innovation problem
“Your article on Australia’s current weakness in innovation is timely. I would like to draw attention to a couple of other factors. Universities are being progressively changed away from curiosity-driven research. Instead they push activities which bring in money - in particular, overseas students. A second factor is the politically driven changes in the conduct of the major research-granting bodies, which now tend to support large groups who grind out lots of predictable research, rather than supporting smaller, more nimble groups and individuals who undertake innovative but riskier fundamental research.”
Timothy Miles, Emeritus Professor, University of Adelaide
Why interest rates hit borrowers
“Lynda (Your Say, Thursday March 19) asks why banks need to pass on the interest rise to borrowers and not take it from shareholders. Many people do not realise that us older shareholders also need to have funds to live on. We are not all high-flyers, many of us are self-fund retirees often without super and not able for some reason to get a pension. We are not all money-grabbers. Also the banks are a business, not an arm of government support.”
Robyn Debnam, Clifton QLD
Did Ryan Gosling really talk to aliens?
“Project Hail Mary may be full of real science, but after watching the trailer, it also seems to be full of real nonsense as well, namely that a human could work out how to communicate with a non-human in a sort of trial-and-error fashion. As the philosopher Wittgenstein pointed out decades ago: ‘if a lion could speak, we wouldn’t be able to understand it.’ Why? Because language is embedded in what Wittgenstein describes as the ‘form of life’ that a being exists within, and as each form of life is utterly alien to every other form of life, there is simply no possibility of cross-species communication. There is only one way such communication could happen: if there exists a Rosetta Stone, something that provides direct correlations between three languages: human language, the alien language, and a third language understood by both human and alien.”
Gavin Oakes, West Melbourne VIC
