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 23
Price shocks in remote Australia
“Saman Gorji rightfully draws attention to the vulnerability of remote Aboriginal communities to supply chain issues – currently diesel fuel costs. In a previous life, from 2003–06 I worked on such remote communities in the western deserts of WA. Food was trucked out from Perth, some 2,000km away, arriving every two weeks. Fuel likewise, and in 2005, Aboriginal people were then paying close to $2.50 per litre at the roadhouse bowser. They also paid a premium on groceries, clothes and other items sold at community stores. So, while we are paying more for our food, fuel and power, let’s spare a thought for our remote, vulnerable and often hidden First Nations people – I shudder to think what the 2026 bowser fuel price currently is, out in those western desert communities.”
Scott Bell, TAS
Is negative gearing a hard sell?
“This excerpt from Michelle Grattan’s article on the budget is, I believe, misleading: ‘Some government sources point out [changes to negative gearing] would be harder to sell than the capital gains tax change because, although a relatively small number of people negatively gear (1.1 million taxpayers negatively geared properties on the latest available figures), there is a public perception it is widespread and many people aspire to buy investment properties.’ The excerpt conflates the number of people who use negative gearing with the number of investment properties that are negative-geared, implying a one-to-one relationship. In fact 25% of investment properties are owned by 1% of taxpayers.”
Zahro Muladawilah 
Tuesday March 24
Long time coming
“I find it interesting that most of the accounts of the SA election looks only at the surge of One Nation but not at why that surge may have come about. We have only a two-party system here and we have had successive alternative parties who have mostly been conservative, and often populist. In the last 20 years many working-class voters have opted for these parties, so it’s not surprising that One Nation is slotting into that field. This, coupled with the Liberal party preferencing One Nation, really does show they shot themselves in the foot. The downfall of the Liberal party in South Australia has been decades in the making. It wasn’t an overnight occurrence.”
Name withheld
Who needs policies?
“It may not be wise to expect One Nation to release their policy details that are anywhere close to those well-expounded in this article. First, a coherent overall policy to manage the nation’s complex challenges may stretch far beyond the party’s logic and capability. Like any other far-right populist parties, it has run on fear and emotional manipulation. Second, it is more likely it does not see policy details as a necessity to win seats. There have been too many precedents for skipping them or – as the two major parties have often indulged themselves in – delaying releases of policy details until the eleventh hour of the election campaign to avoid scrutiny. Third, perhaps most importantly, One Nation’s current poll rise has little, if anything, to do with policy details. There is absolutely no need to take the Bill Shorten risks.”
Ang Ung
What the CGT debate gets wrong
“One consideration lacking from discussions on capital gains tax (CGT) is housing supply. As someone who has joined the property investment market in the last five years I made the choice to build, adding two new houses to that supply. It just felt the right thing to do. CGT (and other tax incentives like negative gearing) should be restricted going forward to new builds so that investors increase housing supply. Existing housing should be left to non-investors, have no stamp duty and a requirement for owner-occupier for a set time.”
Mark Stevens, St Agnes, SA
Wednesday March 25
What happened to the ‘education state’?
“What a disgrace that in Victoria, where the vehicle registration plate once boasted ‘Victoria the Education State’, public school teachers have no other option but to strike for the first time in 13 years. Victorian teachers are among the worst paid of any state while also dealing with high class numbers and blended age group classes. Not necessarily good for students’ learning, but rather to save the education department dollars!”
Jo Justin, Inverloch, Vic
Support for siblings
“During the 1980s, Scullin Pre-School in the ACT ran a support program half day, once a week for siblings of children with a disability. I’m wondering if such programs still exist and if they could be extended to include siblings of children and/or parents with illnesses. Having experienced having a parent with a significant illness when I was a young child, some professional support from outside the family could have helped myself, my older siblings and my father understand the effects on each family member and the family unit as a whole. It may have assisted us to navigate the emotional responses to the situation we were in. I hope such support is commonplace now for children in this position 60 years down the track.”
Diane Gaylard
Security anxiety
“Connect the dots: just as it works for Donald Trump to sow fear and anger, how much of the rise of One Nation is linked directly to growing fears about security?”
Charles Wolfson, Raleigh, NSW
Thursday March 26
Not a cure, but a break
“I am a veteran with complex pain, anxiety and PTSD. The occasional use of marijuana provides some relief from my symptoms. The specialists that support me all know of my usage (about once every six months) and are able to discuss better pharmacological solutions. But the advantage of getting high is that I forget the crap that put me in the position I now find myself in. Modern medicine and psychology doesn’t do that. I am fully aware the evidence for medicinal marijuana as a long term medicinal treatment is not as well supported by the data as the hype suggests. However amongst the veteran community, veterans have been able to manipulate the legal system for obtaining THC and CBT products when the reality is they would rather just get high occasionally; they don’t want to get caught running the risk of illegal possession, alcohol abuse or use harder drugs. Perhaps part of the solution to the problem highlighted by Christine Hallinan includes the legalisation of cannabinoid products.”
Grant Palmer
A safety crisis on our streets
“I would not be the only one to have seen children under 10 ‘riding’ these large, Harley Davidson-esque electric ‘bikes’, usually sans helmets and going from road to footpath and back again at up to (but not limited to) 40km/h on the flat and ignoring all common safety practices. Putting limits on bikes, or expecting that they will be maintained, has clearly failed. With social media, Australia was the first nation to at least attempt to do anything about that mental health scourge to try to stop the harm that it’s doing to young people. To advocate for the age of consent to be lowered, for social media to have no age restrictions or to stop limits on e-bikes is effectively wishing to see kids harmed as well as see our footpaths turned into drag strips. Good on the Queensland government for tackling the issue head on; other states should follow.”
Geoff Holmes, Woonona
Friday March 27
The great divide
“The fact that public schools are struggling to provide basic services and educational equipment to students while private schools have income in the millions, private swimming pools, concert halls, and grounds more like those attached to palaces rather than schools. It is a shocking indictment of Australia’s grotesquely unequal schooling system. The fact that the government adds to this inequality by providing extraordinary amounts of funding to already staggeringly wealthy schools is simply incomprehensible. If there are to be wealthy private schools, they should be taxed say 1% of their income that would go to funding public schools.”
Gavin Oakes, West Melbourne
Why caution matters
“Thank you for the recent article on cannabis. It is very encouraging that caution is being expressed. There has been so much hype about its wonder cures with little evidence. I have worked with young people for 54 years and very often, I’ve had to deal with the sad outcomes of cannabis use.”
Dr Robert Rawson
Not yours to control
“I am sickened by the West and its colonial mentality, that it has the right to do whatever it likes to whoever it likes, whose only right is to lie down and die.”
Beverley Dight
