Don’t sell off the grid

Niall Clugston writes: Re. “‘Elephant Man’ fishes for relevancy, shoot preference possibilities in the foot” (yesterday). While elephant-hunting Robert Borsak of the Shooters and Fishers Party is an easy target, Alex Mitchell implies that privatising the NSW electricity grid is the only way to fund the new roads, railways etc that the state is crying out for. In other words, we can only have new infrastructure if we sell off old infrastructure. That’s not economics, that’s a card trick.

The reality of asylum seeker laws

Jessica Perini writes: Re. “What it was like to be an asylum seeker in 2014” (yesterday). Crikey writes in this story that: “One of the positives of the new bill is the amendment that children on Christmas Island will be released from detention.” There is no amendment to release children. The minister had the power to release children before, he just didn’t exercise it. This bill actually increases the chances of children being deported.  The bill and what it means for child protection: it means nothing. It means children have a far greater chance of being deported without review, without proper consideration, to any nation. Read my articles on child protection for children in immigration detention.

On Joe Hockey’s economic narrative

Don Waller writes: Re. “Joe’s economic story just doesn’t add up” (Friday). A very good summary by Bernard, but I assume that you could also have mentioned in this article the additional cost to the budget forecasts of the Direct Action policy — $2.5 billion plus!